naturally apt to fill the mind with calmness and tranquility, and to lay all its turbulent passions at rest. It gives us a great insight into the contrivance and wisdom of Providence, and suggests innumerable subjects for meditation. We cannot but think the very complacency and satisfaction which a man takes in these works of Nature, to be a laudable, if not a virtuous habit of mind."

But let not the poor complain, or those who have no garden to retire to, no beautifully adorned enclosure, where, secluded from society, they may give themselves up to reflection. Still the fields are open to them, and what, in the words of an eminent naturalist, is the earth, but "an immense garden, laid out and planted by the hand of the Deity?--the lofty mountains and waving forests are its terraces and groves; fertile fields and flowery meadows form its beautiful parterres.”

We cannot, we are persuaded, conclude this head of our subject better than with the following quotation from the author of The Seasons:

"Soft roll your incense herbs, and fruits, and flowers,
In mingled clouds to HIM, whose sun exalts,

Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints."

E

CHAP. II.

ANIMALS.

"Fountain of elegance, unseen thyself,

What limit owns thy beauty, when thy works
Seem to possess, to faculties like mine,
Perfection infinite! the merest speck
Of animated matter, to the eye

That studiously surveys the wise design,
Is a full volume of abundant art.

IN ascending from the Vegetable to the Animat kingdom, we cannot help our attention being foroibly engaged by the singular construction, and amazing properties of those little wonders found at the bottom of ditches, and adhering to the underside of the broad leaves of Aquatic Plants, known by the name of Fresh water Polypuses. See that little thing in form of a funnel or bell, adhering by the lower extremity to some extraneous substance at the bottom of the water! Observe how it shoots out its slender arms from the margin of its wide mouth, and casts them around, occasioning a vortex in the fluid! See how those insects, after being drawn into that vortex, are caught hold of by its arms, and conveyed to the mouth with a celerity that is astonishing; but for these signs of life and animation would you not have taken what you first saw to be a flower? Now observe how it shoots out from its sides something in form of buds; return in a few days, and, what do you behold?-these buds converted into perfect Polypuses, but still ad

hering to the parent. See how, by a sudden jirk, they separate, and immediately fix on other situa tions; cut one of these in two, the upper part shoots out a tail, and the under produces a head; cut one in three, and the upper and under do the same, while the middle division produces both a head and a tail; cut one down lengthways to the middle, and you have a monster with two heads; divide these, again and again, as often as you please, and you have a Hydra with many heads, in short cut the Polypus into ten, or ten hundred parts, the effect will be the same, and you will have as many Polypuses.

If the Sensitive Plant, the Hedysarum Gyrans, and Venus' Fly-Trap, may be considered as so many links at which the vegetable creation ends, these living plants, if we may use the expression, and animal flowers, which are found adhering to the rocks on the sea shore, may, as well as the Oyster, and other shell-fish (which form the connection betwixt the animal and the mineral kingdom,) be reckoned among those at which the mysterious and multitudinous order of beings begins, which is continued in such an infinitude of shapes and sizes, shades and differences, and possessed with such a number of dissimilar appetites and instincts, from the lowest gradation amongst the number of these imperfectly formed animals, till it arrives at that most complete piece of Nature's workmanship-that cape-stone of the inferior creation, or link which unites it with superior intelligences-Man.

The number of animated creatures is prodigious indeed! The whole creation teems as it were with existence! The dry-land sends forth its multitudes; the air hath its swarms; the sea its numerous shoals: and the very depositories of corruption produce their myriads! Indeed in the class of Insects alone there are a greater number of species than there are kinds of Plants on the surface of the earth. In a little rain water, after standing some days, Mr. Lewenhoeck discovered innumerable animalcules, many thou. sands of times less than a grain of sand, and in proportion to a mite as a bee is to a horse! Having examined the melt of a cod, he concluded that it contained more living animalcules than there were people living in the world; and by a method he made use of in order to ascertain the comparative size with the thickness or breadth of a hair of his head, it was found that 216,000 of these minute creatures are but epual to a globe whose diameter is the breath of a hair. How amazing the wonders of Omnipotence!

Yet notwithstanding these immense numbers, this amazing diversity of form and bulk, of taste and habit, all are conveniently and comfortably lodged; all are fed to their hearts' content, at the same common table, and in such a manner as not a fragment can be lost. How wonderful is it to observe how well adapted are the various appetites of his creatures, to fulfil the will of the Great Creator, that not a fragment may be lost. Some animals of the carniverous kind have an unquenchable thirst for

blood warm from the animal; others are satisfied with the flesh newly killed: a third are not pleased with it till it is in a state of putridity of those of another description, some live upon fruits and roots; others can partake of bark and leaves; a third put up with the soft herbage of the meadow; and a fourth are content with the very refuse of our fields and gardens: while each pursues that particular path chalked out for him by Nature, without repining or envying the lot of his neighbour.

The unwieldly Whale in the Greenland seas, the numerous herds of Elephants which graze the extensive regions betwixt the river Senegal and the Cape of Good Hope; and the gigantic Ostrich of the sandy borders of Egypt and Palestine, roam as much at large as the winged insect that flits from flower to flower, or the invisible Animalcule which swims in the liquid drop. The polar Bear of the Arctic Circle, wrapt in his shaggy covering, the Ermine of Siberia in his furry mantle, and the Water-Fowl with her thick-set oily feathers, no doubt feel as comfortable as the Barbary Cow, almost naked, the rhinoceros, sheltered from the tropical heats by his coat of mail, or the monstrous Hippopotamus (the Behemoth of Job,) when he retires to cool himself at the bottom of the African rivers. Those abhorred insects which feed upon ordure, or still more loathsome, that riot in putrefaction, we have reason to believe feed as deliciously as the Racoon on his West-Indian sweets, or pampered Lap-dog from the hand of its mistress. And if the