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Show 183, Valley was like these others, only more so. He even wrote a poem, "Nature Loves the Number Five," which Mrs. Carr convinced him to exclude from the Studies. After all, Agassiz, in his Methods of Study, reminded the reader that there were five orders of Echinoderms, which were but "five expressions of the same idea," and concluded that "The best result of such familiarity with Nature will be the recognition of an intellectual unity holding together all the various forms of life as part of one Creative Conception." In extending this idea to geology, Muir was simply following another geologist, Hugh Miller, who had argued that geology is "natural history extended over all ages." The Yosemite, as creative conception, could be seen as part of a family, as an example of natural history. Also, the number five has always held a place as a magical number in other views of a unified cosmos. He followed the standard textbook methods and his classification of valleys contained an internal assertion that the categories were not his own but belonged to the valleys themselves. He demonstrated significant qualitative distinctions between glacial and non-glacial valleys. Normally, botanical and zoological classifications depend on the plants' or animals' method of reproduction. This may not be what Muir had in mind when he named his chapter "Origin of Yosemite Valleys," but his description of species depended on "material, form and foliage." These are close to ecological categories, since the distinction between glacial and non-glacial valleys was partly between the valleys which contained meadows, lakes, and groves, |