and seas.

are multitudes of animated beings which no man can number, invisible to the unassisted eye, and dispersed through every region of the earth, air, in a small stagnant pool which in summer appears covered with a green scum, there are more microscopic animalcules than would outnumber all the inhabitants of the earth. How immense then must be the collective number of these creatures throughout every region of the earth and atmosphere! It surpasses all our conceptions. Now, it is a fact that, from the elephant to the mite, from the whale to the oyster, and from the cagle to the gnat, or the microscopic animalcula, no animal can subsist without nourishment. Every species, too, requires a different kind of food. Some live on grass, some on shrubs, some on flowers, and some on trees. Some feed only on the roots of vegetables, some on the stalk, some on the leaves, some on the fruit, some on the seed, some on the whole plant; some prefer one species of grass, some another. Linnæus has remarked, that the cow eats 276 species of plants and rejects 218; the goat eats 449 and rejects 126; the sheep eats 387 and rejects 141; the horse number would amount to 151 millions and a half. The migratory pigeon of the United States flies in still more amazing multitudes. Wilson, in his "American Ornithology," says, "Of one of these immense flocks, let us attempt to calculate the numbers, as seen in passing between Frankfort on the Kentucky and the indian territory. If we sup. pose this column to have been one mile in breadth, and I believe it to have been much more, and that it moved four hours at the rate of one mile a minute, the time it continued in passing would make the whole length 240 milés. Again, supposing that each Square yard of this moving body comprehended three pigeons, the square yards multiplied by 5 would give 2,230,272,000," that is, two thousand two hunIred and thirty millions and two hundred and serenty-two thousand, nearly three times the number of all the human inhabitants of the globe, but which Mr. Wilson reckons to be far below the actual amount. Were we to estimate the number of animals by the scale here afforded, it would amount to several hundreds or thousands of times more than what I have stated in the text. For if a single flock

of pigeons now alluded to in only one district of the earth, amounts to so prodigious a number, how many thousand times more must be the amount of the same species in all the regions of the globe! In the above calculations, it is taken for granted that pigeons fly at the rate of from 30 to 60 miles an hour, and it is found by actual experiment that this is the case. In 1930, 110 pigeons were brought from Brussels to London, and were let fly on the 19th July, at a quarter before nine A. M. One reached Antwerp, 186 miles distance, at 18 minutes past 2, or in 5 1-2 hours, being at the rate of 34 miles an hour. Five more reached the same place within eight minutes afterwards, and thirteen others in the course of eight hours after leaving London. Another went frem London to Maestricht, 260 miles, in six hours and a quarter, being at the rate of nearly 42 miles an hour. The golden eagle sweeps through the atmosphere at the rate of 40 miles an hour, and it has been computed that the Swift flies, at an average, 500 miles a day, and yet finds time to feed, to clean itself, and to collect materials for its nest with ap parent leisure. Such are the numbers of this species of animated beings, and such the powers of rapid motion which the Creator has conferred upon them, -powers which man, with all his intellectual facul ties and inventions, has never yet been able to attain.

eats 262 and rejects 212; and the hog, more nice in its taste than any of these, eats but 72 'plants and rejects all the rest. Yet such is the unbounded munificence of the Creator, that all these countless myriads of sentient beings are amply provided for and nourished by his bounty! "The eyes of all these look unto Him, and he openeth his hand and satisfieth the desire of every living being." He has so arranged the world, that every place affords the proper food for all the living creatures with which it abounds. He has furnished them with every organ and apparatus of instruinents for the gathering, preparing, and digesting of their food, and has endowed them with admirable sagacity in finding out and providing their nourishment, and in enabling them to distinguish between what is salutary and what is pernicious. In the exercise of these faculties, and in all their movements, they appear to experience a happiness suitable to their nature. The young of all animals in the exercise of their newly acquired faculties, the fishes sporting in the waters, the birds skimming beneath the sky, and warbling in the thickets, the gamesome cattle browsing in the pastures, the wild deer bounding through the forests, the insects gliding through the air and along the ground, and even the earth-worms wriggling in the dust,-proclaim, by the vivacity of their movements and the various tones and gesticulations, that the exercise of their powers is connected with enjoyment. In this boundless scerre of beneficence, we behold a striking illustration of the declarations of the inspired writers, that "the Lord is good to all,"-that "the earth is full of his riches," and that "his tender mercies are over all his works."

Such are a few evidences of the benevolence of the Deity as displayed in the arrangements of the material world. However plain and obvious they may appear to a reflecting mind, they are almost entirely overlooked by the bulk of mankind, owing to their ignorance of the facts of natural history and science, and the consequent inattention and apathy with which they are accustomed to view the objects of the visibie creation. Hence they are incapacitated for appreciating the beneficent character of the Creator, and the riches of his munificence; and incapable of feeling those emotions of admiration and gratitude which an enlightened contemplation of the scene of nature is calculated to inspire.

4. An enlightened and comprehensive survey of the universe presents to us a view of the vast multiplicity of conceptions and the infinite'y diver sified ideas which have been formed in the Divinɛ Mind.

As the conceptions existing in the mind of an artificer are known by the instruments he constructs, or the operations he performs, so the ideas which have existed from eternity in the

mind of the Creator are ascertained from the objects he has created, the events he has produced, and the operations he is incessantly conducting. The formation of a single object is an exhibition of the idea existing in the Creating Mind, of which it is a copy. The formation of a second or a third object exactly resembling the first, would barely exhibit the same ideas a second or a third time, without disclosing any thing new concerning the Creator; and, consequently, our cont eptions of his intelligence would not be enlarged, even although thousands and millions of such objects were presented to our view, just as a hundred clocks and watches, exactly of the same kind, constructed by the same artist, give us no higher idea of his skill and ingenuity than the construction of one. But, every variety in objects and arrangements exhibits a new discovery of the plans, contrivances and intelligence of the Creator.

Now, in the universe we find all things constructed and arranged on the plan of boundless and universal variety. In the animal kingdom there have been actually ascertained, as already noticed, about sixty thousand different species of living creatures. There are about 600 species of mammalia, or animals that suckle their young, most of which are quadrupeds-4000 species of birds, 3000 species of fishes, 700 species of reptiles, and 44,000 species of insects.* Besides these, there are about 3000 species of shell-fish, and perhaps not less than eighty or a hundred thousand species of animalcules invisible to the naked eye; and new species are daily discovering, in consequence of the zeal and industry of the lovers of natural history. As the system of animated nature has never yet been thoroughly explored, we might safely reckon the number of species of animals of all kinds, as amounting to at least three hundred thousand. We are next to consider, that the organical structure of each species consists of an immense multitude of parts, and that all the species are infinitely diversided-differing from each other in their forms, organs, members, faculties and motions.-They are of all shapes and sizes, from the microscopic animalculum, ten thousand times less than a mite, to the elephant and the whale. They are different in respect of the construction of their sensitive organs. In regard to the eye, some have this organ placed in the front, so as to look directly forward, as in man; others have it so placed, as to take in nearly a whole hemisphere, as in birds, hares and conies; some have it fixed, and others, moveable; some have two globes or balls, as quadrupeds; some have four, as snails, which are fixed in their horns; some have eight, set like a locket of diamonds, as spiders; some have several hundreds, as flies

• Specimens of all these species are to be seen in the magnificent collections in the Museum of Natural History at Paris,

and beetles, and others above twenty thousand, as the dragon-fly and several species of butterflies. In regard to the ear,-some have it large, erect and open, as in the hare, to hear the least approach of danger; in some it is covered to keep out noxious bodies; and, in others, as in the mole, it is lodged deep and backward in the head, and fenced and guarded from external injuries. With regard to their clothing,-some have their bodies covered with hair, as quadrupeds; some with feathers, as birds; some with scales, as fishes; some with shells, as the tor toise; some only with skin; some with stout and firm armour, as the rhinoceros; and others with prickles, as the hedgehog and porcupine-all nicely accommodated to the nature of the animal, and the element in which it lives. These coverings, too, are adorned with diversified beauties, as appears in the plumage of birds, the feathers of the peacock, the scales of the finny tribes, the hair of quadrupeds, and the variegated polish and colouring of the tropical shell-fish-beauties which, in point of symmetry, polish, texture, variety, and exquisite colouring, mock every attempt of human art to copy or to imitate.

In regard to respiration-some breathe through the mouth by means of lungs, as men and quad rupeds; some by means of gills, as fishes; and some by organs placed in other parts of their bodies, as insects. In regard to the circulation of the blood, some have but one ventricle in the heart, some two, and others three. In some animals, the heart throws its blood to the remotest parts of the system; in some it throws it only into the respiratory organs; in others, the blood from the respiratory organs is carried by the veins to another heart, and this second heart distributes the blood, by the channel of its arteries, to the several parts. In many insects, a number of hearts are placed at intervals on the circulating course, and each renews the impulse of the former, where the momentum of the blood fails. In regard to the movements of their bodies,--some are endowed with swift motions, and others with slow; some walk on two legs, as fowls; some on four, as dogs; some on eight, as caterpillars; some on a hundred, as scolopendræ or millepedes; some on fifteen hundred and twenty feet, as one: species of sea-star; and some on two thousand feet, as a certain species of echinus.* Some glide along with a sinuous motion on scales, as snakes and serpents; some skim through the air, one species on two wings, another on four; and some convey themselves with speed and safety by the help of their webs, as spiders; while others glide with agility through the waters by means of their tails and fins.But it would require volumes to enumerate and

See Lyonet's notes to Lesser's Insecto Theology, who also mentions that these Echind have 1300 horns, similar to those of snails, which they can put out and draw in at pleasure.

explain all the known varieties which distinguish the different species of animated beings. Besides the varieties of the species, there are not, perhaps, of all the hundreds of millions which compose any one species, two individuals precisely alike in every point of view in which they may be contemplated.

As an example of the numerous parts and functions which enter into the construction of an animal frame, it may be stated, that, in the human body there are 445 bones, each of them having forty distinct scopes or intentions; and 246 muscles, each having ten several intentions; so that the system of bones and muscles alone includes above 14,200 varieties, or different intentions and adaptations. But, besides the bones and muscles, there are hundreds of tendons and ligaments for the purpose of connecting them together; hundreds of nerves ramified over the whole body to convey sensation to all its parts; thousands of arteries to convey the blood to the remotest extremities, and thousands of veins to bring it back to the heart; thousands of lacteal and lymphatic vessels to absorb nutriment from the food; thousands of glands to secrete humours from the blood, and of emunctories to throw them off from the system-and, besides many other parts of this variegated system, and functions with which we are unacquainted, there are more than sixteen hundred millions of membranous cells or vesicles connected with the lungs, more than two hundred thousand millions of pores in the skin, through which the perspiration is incessantly flowing, and above a thousand millions of scales, which according to Leeuwenhoek, Baker, and others, compose the cuticle or outward covering of the body. We have also to take into the account, the compound organs of life, the numerous parts of which they consist, and the diversified functions they perform; such as the brain, with its infinite number of fibres and numerous functions; the heart, with its auricles and ventricles; the stomach, with its juices and muscular coats; the liver, with its lobes and glands; the spleen, with its infinity of cells and membranes; the pancreas, with its juice and numerous glands; the kidneys, with their fine capillary tubes; the intestines, with all their turnings and convolutions; the organs of sense, with their multifarious connexions; the mesentery, the gall-bladder, the ureters, the pylorus, the duodenum, the blood, the bile, the lymph, the saliva, the chyle, the hairs, the nails, and numerous other parts and substances, every one of which has diversified functions to perform. We have also to take into consideration the number of ideas included in the arrangement and connexion of all these parts, and in the manner in which they are compacted into one system of smail dimensions, so as to afford free scope for all the intended functions. If, then, for the sake of a rude calculation, we were to suppose,

in addition to the 14,200 adaptations stater above, that there are 10,CCO veins great and small, 10,000 arteries, 10,000 nerves,* 1000 ligaments, 4000 lacteals and lymphatics, 100,000 glands, 1,600,000,000 vesicles in the lungs, 1,000,000,000 scales, and 200,000 000.000 of pores, the amount would be 202,600,149,200 different parts and adaptations in the human body; and if all the other species were supposed to be differently organised, and to consist of a similar number of parts, this number multiplied by 300,000, the supposed number of species-the product would amount to 60,780,044 760,000,000, or above sixty thousand billions, the number of distinct ideas, conceptions or contrivances, in relation to the animal world—a number of which we can have no precise conception, and which, to limited minds like ours, seems to approximate to something like infinity; but it may tend to convey a rude idea of the endless multiplicity of conceptions which pervade the Eternal Mind.

That many other tribes of animated nature have an organization no less complicated and diversified than that of man, will appear from the following statements of M. Lyonet. This celebrated naturalist wrote a treatise on one single insect, the cossus caterpillar, which lives on the leaves of the willow,-in which he has shown, from the anatomy of that minute animal, that its structure is almost as complicated as that of the human body, and many of the parts which enter into its organization even more numerous. He has found it necessary to employ twenty figures to explain the organization of the head, which contain 228 different muscles. There are 1647 muscles in the body, and 2066 in the intestinal tube, making in all 3941 muscles; o nearly nine times the number of muscles in the human body. There are 94 principal nerves which divide into innumerable ramifications. There are two large tracheal arteries, one at the right, and the other at the left side of the insect, each of them communicating with the air by means of nine spiracula. Round each spiraculum the trachea pushes forth a great number of branches, which are again divided into smaller ones, and these further subdivided and spread through the whole body of the caterpillar; they are naturally of a silver colour, and make a beautiful appearance. The principal trachael vessels divide into 1326 different branches. All this complication of delicate machinery, with numerous other parts and organs, are compressed into a body only about two inches in length.

The amazing extent of the ramification of the veins and nerves may be judged of from this circon stance, that neither the point of the smallest needle, nor the infinitely finer lance of a gnat can pierce any part without drawing blood, and causing an uneasy sensation, consequently without wounding, by so sinall a puncture, both a nerve and a vein; and therefore the number of these vessels here assumed may be considered as far below the truth.

be

Were we to direct our attention to the vegetaHe kingdom, we might contemplate a scene no less variegated and astonishing than what appears in the animal world. There have already been discovered more than fifty-six thousand species of plants, specimens of all which may seen in the Museum of Natural History at Paris. But we cannot reckon the actual number of species in the earth and seas at less than four or five hundred thousand. They are of all size3, from the invisible forests which are seen in a piece of mouldiness, by the help of the microscope, to the cocoas of Malabar fifty feet in circumference, and the banians, whose shoots cover a circumference of five acres of ground. Each of them is furnished with a complicated system of vessels for the circulation of its juices, the secretion of its odours, and other important functions somewhat analogous to those of animals. Almost every vegetable consists of a root, trunk, branches, leaves, skin, bark, pith, sap-vessels, or system of arteries and veins, glands for perspiration, flowers, petals, stamina, farina, seed-case, seed, fruit, and various other parts; and these are different in their construction and appearance in the different species. Some plants, as the oak, are distinguished for their strength and hardness; others, as the elm and fir, are tall and slender; some are tall, like the cedar of Lebanon, while others never attain to any considerable height; some have a rough and uneven bark, while others are smooth and fine, as the birch, the maple, and the poplar; some are so slight and delicate that the least wind may overturn them, while others can resist the violence of the northern blasts; some acquire their full growth in a few years, while others grow to a prodigious height and size, and stand unshaken amidst the lapse of centuries; some drop their leaves in autumn, and remain for months like blighted trunks, while others retain their verdure amidst the most furious blasts of winter; some have leaves scarcely an inch in length or breadth, while others, as the tallipot of Ceylon, have leaves so large that one of them, it is said, will shelter fifteen or twenty men from the rain.

The variety in the vegetable kingdom in respect of flowers, is apparent even to the least attentive observer. Every species is different from another in the form and hues which it exhibits. The carnation differs from the rose, the rose from the tulip, the tulip from the auricula, the auricula from the lily, the lily from the narcissus, and the rununculus from the daisy. At the same time each rununculus, daisy, rose or tulip, has its own particular character and beauty, something that is peculiar to itself, and in which it is distinguished from its fellows. In a bed of rununculuses, or tulips, for example, we shall scarcely find two individuals that have precisely the same aspect, or present the same assemblage of colours. Some flowers are of a stately size,

same

and seem to reign over their fellows in the sar parterre, others are lowly or creep along the ground; some exhibit the most dazzling colours, others are simple and blush almost unseen: some perfume the air with exquisite odours, while others only please the sight with their beautiful tints. Not only the forms and colours of flowers but their perfumes, are different. The odour of southernwood differs from that of thyme, that of peppermint from balm, and that of the daisy from the rose, which indicates a variety in their internal structure, and in the juices that circulate within them. The leaves of all vegetables, like the skin of the human body, are diversified with a multitude of extremely fine vessels, and an astonishing number of pores. In a kind of box-tree called Palma Cereres, it has been observed that there are above an hundred and seventy-two thousand pores on one single side of the leaf. In short, the whole earth is covered with vegetable life in such profusion and variety as astonishes the contemplative mind. Not only the fertile plains, but the rugged mountains, the hardest stones, the most barren spots, and even the caverns of the ocean, are diversified with plants of various kinds; and, from the torrid to the frigid zone, every soil and every climate has plants and flowers peculiar to itself. To attempt to estimate their number and variety would be to attempt to dive into the depths of infinity. Yet, every diversity in the species, every variety in the form of the individuals, and even every difference in the shade and combination of colour in flowers of the same species, exhibits a distinct conception which must have existed in the Divine Mind before the vegetable kingdom was created.

Were we to take a survey of the mineral kingdom, we should also behold a striking exhibition of the "manifold wisdom of God." It is true, indeed, that we cannot penetrate into the interior recesses of the globe, so as to ascertain the substances which exist, and the processes which are going on near its central regions. But, within a few hundreds of fathoms of its surface, we find such an astonishing diversity of mineral substances as clearly shows, that its internal parts have been constructed on the same plan of variety as that of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. In the classes of earthy, saline, inflammable, and metallic fossils, under which mineralogists have arranged the substances of the mineral kingdom, are contained an immense number of genera and species. Under the earthy class of fossils are comprehended diamonds, chrysolites, menilites, garnets, zeolites, corundums, agates, jaspers, opals, pearl-stones, tripoli, clay slate, basalt, lava, chalk, limestone, ceylanite strontian, barytes, celestine, and various other substances. The saline class comprehends such substances as the following, natron or natura. soda. rock salt, nitre, alum, sal-ammoniac, Ep

soir salt, &c. The class of inflammable substances comprehends sulphur, carbon, bitumen, coal, amber, cnarcoal, naphtha, petroleum, asphalt, caoutchouc, mineral tar, &c. The metallic class comprehends platina, gold, silver, mercury, copper, iron, lead, tin, bismuth, zinc, antimony, cobalt, nickel, manganese, molybdenum, arsenic, scheele, menachante, uran, silvan chromium, tungsten, uranium, titanium, tellurium, sodium, potassium, &c. All these mineral substances are distinguished by many varieties of species. There are eight genera of earthy fossils. One of these genera, the flint, contains 34 species, besides numerous varieties, such as chrysoberyls, topazes, agates, beryls, quartz, emery, diamond spar, &c. Another genus, the clay, contains 32 species, such as opal, pitch-stone, felspar, black chalk, mica, hornblende, &c. and another, the calc, contains 20 species, as limestone, chalk, slate, spar, fluor, marle, boracite, loam, &c. There are ten species of silver, five of mercury, seventeen of copper, fourteen of iron, ten of lead, six of antimony, three of bismuth, &c. All the bodies of the mineral kingdom differ from one another as to figure, transparency, hardness, lustre, ductility, texture, structure, feel, sound, smell, taste, gravity, and their magnetical and electrical properties; and they exhibit almost every variety of colour. Some of those substances are soft and pulverable, and serve as a bed for the nourishment of vegetables, as black earth, chalk, clay, and marl. Some are solid, as lead and iron; and some are fluid, as mercury, sodium, and potassium. Some are brittle, as antimony and bismuth, and some are malleable, as silver and tin. Some are subject to the attraction of the magnet, others are conductors of the electric fire; some are easily fusible by heat, others will resist the strongest heat of our common fires. Some are extremely ductile, as platina, the heaviest of the metals, which has been drawn into wires less than the two thousandth part of an inch in diameter, and gold, the parts of which are are so fine and expansible, that an ounce of it is sufficient to gild a silver wire more than 1300 miles long.

In order to acquire the most impressive idea of the mineral kingdom, we must visit an extensive mineralogical museum, where the spectator will be astonished both at the beauty and the infinite diversity which the Creator has exhibited in this department of nature. Here it may be also noticed, that not only the external aspect of minerals, but also the interior configuration of many of them, displays innumerable beauties and varieties. A rough dark-looking pebble, which to an incurious eye appears only like a fragment of common rock, when cut asunder and polished, presents an assemblage of the finest veins and most brilliant colours. If we go into lapidary's shop and take a leisurely survey of ais jaspers, topazes, cornelians, agates, garnets,

and other stones, we cannot fail to be struck with admiration, not only at the exquisite polish and the delicate wavings which their surfaces present, but at the variety of design and colouring exhibited even by individuals of the same species, the latent beauties and diversities of which require the assistance of a microscope to discern, and are beyond the efforts of the most exquisite pencil fully to imitate.

Not only in the objects which are visible to the unassisted eye, but also in those which can only be perceived by the help of microscopes, is the characteristic of variety to be seen. In the scales of fishes, for example, we perceive an infinite number of diversified specimens of the most curious workmanship. Some of these are of a longish form, some round, some triangular, some square; in short, of all imaginable variety of shapes. Some are armed with sharp prickles, as in the perch and sole; some have smooth edges, as in the tench and cod-fish; and even in the same fish there is a considerable variety; for the scales taken from the belly, the back, the sides, the head and other parts, are all different from each other. In the scale of a perch we perceive one piece of delicate mechanism, in the scale of a haddock another, and in the scale of a sole, beauties different from both. We find some of them ornamented with a prodigious number of concentric flutings, too near each other and too fine to be easily enumerated. These flutings are frequently traversed by others diverging from the centre of the scale, and proceeding from thence in a straight line to the circumference. On every fish there are many thousands of these variegated pieces of mechanism. The hairs on the bodies of all animals are found, by the microscope, to be composed of a number of extremely minute tubes, each of which has a round bulbous root, by which it imbibes its proper nourishment from the adjacent humours, and these are all different in different animals. Hairs taken from the head, the eye-brows, the nostrils, the beard, the hand, and other parts of the body, are unlike to each other, both in the construction of the roots and the hairs themselves, and appear as varied as plants of the same genus but of different species. The parts of which the feathers of birds are composed, afford a beautiful variety of the most exquisite workmanship. There is scarcely a feather but contains a million of distinct parts, every one of them regularly shaped. In a small fibre of a goose-quill, more than 1200 downy branches or small leaves have been counted on each side, and each appeared divided into 16 or 18 small joints. A small part of the feather of a peacock, one-thirtieth of an inch in length, appears no less beautiful than the whole feather does to the naked eye, exhibiting a multitude of bright shining parts, reflecting first one colour and then another in the most vivid manner. The wings of all kind of insects, too.