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Show 185. glaciers we have been sketching are as directly related to one another, and for as definite an object, as are the organs of a plant. The petal image worked nicely, since he would have liked to suggest that the flowery snowflake was somehow related to these later flowers, that the laws of the atoms were the laws of the larger masses. When he asserted that "granite crystallizes into landscapes; snow crystallizes above them to bring their beauty to the light," he was depicting the harmony of the elements. Muir absorbed and reworked images which structured the arguments of other scientists. He had been reading Darwin's The Origin of Species, and he turned one of Darwin's key images to his own use. In the summary of the fourth chapter of the Origin, Darwin himself reworked the image of the Tree of Life, arguing against an Agassizean view that each species had been independently created. The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the truth. The green and budding twigs may represent existing species; and those produced during former years may represent the long succession of extinct species. At each period of growth all the growing twigs have tried to branch out on all sides, and to overtop and kill the surrounding twigs and branches, in the same manner as species and groups of species have at all times overmastered other species in the great |