THE FIRST IDEA OF EVERYTHING.

LONG before Pythagoras discovered the
properties of numbers, nature had ruled her
arithmetical slate, and extracted her cube
roots and her squares. Long before the
decade was inaugurated in France, in imitation
of an extinct people, ten had been made
the typical number of digits in mammalia, as
seven was the type of the cervical vertebræ,
whether long and flexile as in the giraffe,
short as in the elephant, firm as in the
whale, or erect as in the man. Two, the
patriarch of numerical generation, is the
prevailing number in the lowest division of
plants, the acrogenous or flowerless: thus,
two, four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-
four, &c., are the number of teeth in the
mouth of the capsules in mosses; and if the
author of the Vestiges of the Natural History
of Creation be right, and Oken more
than a mere dreamer, the lower contains
the germs of the higher; and, from the
multiples of the simplest form of addition,
spring both the highest forms of vegetable
life and the widest scientific combinations.
Three, or its multiples, is the typical number
of the next class of plants, the monocotyledonous
or endogenous—of plants which have
parallel-veined leaves; and also of the joints
of typical digits. Was any such scientific
secret lying hidden beneath the roots of the
old Brahminical lotus bearing the triune God
—Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer—as
belongs emphatically to the supreme and
archetypal Hand? Four is the crystalline
number—the alphabet of the whole geometry
of crystallography; for crystals, like stars,
are under strict geometric laws.* Five, with
its multiples, is the prevailing number in the
highest class of plants, the dicotyledonous
or exogenous, of plants with reticulated veins
or branches; typical also of the fingers and
toes of vertebrate animals, and of frequent
occurrence among star-fishes. There are also
five senses, five gateways by which all the
processions of knowledge may enter. One,
two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one,
thirty-four; any two immediately preceding
numbers giving the succeeding one; regulate
the arrangement of the leaf-appendages of
plants generally, and, in particular, of the
leaves and scales on the cones of firs and
pines. The same arrangement holds good
in some economic processes, and is even a
subtler form of calculation than that which
ruined the unfortunate vizier, who staked
a single grain of corn on the first square of
the chess-board, to be doubled on itself on
every square on the table, and found
himself a beggar at the end. Six is the
proportional number of carbon in chemistry;
and three multiplied by two is a common
number in the floral organs of monocotyledonous
plants. Seven is found in only one
order, heptandria; but, as we have seen, it
passes from the vegetable to the zoological
world, and is the number of vertebræ in the
neck of mammalia, as well as the typical
number of rings in the head, thorax, and
abdomen of crustacea. Eight is the definite
number for oxygen, the most universal
element in nature, and very common in the
organs of sea jellies. Nine is rare as a
typical number in animate nature; but it has
peculiar properties in its own sphere, standing
like the very Delphi of the arithmetical
table; self-centred, indestructible, ineffaceable,
always re-appearing, whole and entire
under every combination—like the life-germ
of the rabbis, that wonderful imperishable
bone, from which will be re-formed
the whole body on the day of resurrection,
and which no violence can break, kill, or
annihilate. Ten, or five multiplied by two,
is found in star-fishes, and is the number of
digits on the fore and hind limbs of animals.
* See Household Words, Volume 15, page 414.

So far, then, as this rapid and superficial
summary goes, we have found that our
calculating machines, our sums in addition,
and our progressive numbers were all in full
force in nature, long before the Egyptian
priests taught the Greek sage, or the
Sabæans studied the portents of the heavens.

Before, too, careful housewives framed that
matchless axiom of the household, Everything
in its right time, nature had put the same
order into her times, as we have seen she did
into her numbers. The magnetic variations
are periodic; the seasons are in order; and
plants have their times. Hyacinths forced
to premature bloom one year will neither
flower nor propagate the next, and the
mistimed watcher suffers as much from the
inversion of natural periods as from either