in youth, his reason in age, and his capacities in every stage of manhood, the visible signs, by which speech is embodied, and by which sounds are realized, are found to be inadequate of media, by which to express the excellence of the wonderful machine.

In fact, man needs not blush to be proud; since he is capable of expressing all his wants and all his ideas by the medium of four and twenty characters; of calculating numbers to comparative infinity with only nine numerical figures; and with only seven separate notes, to elicit, on musical instruments, almost innumerable combinations of sound.

But the universe is replete with miracles: from the first source of caloric to the simple grain of sand; which contains animals, to which it is a world, as large as the whole circumference of the globe is to us. For Nature constitutes a mirror, in which the Eternal seems to allow himself to be seen greatest in his smallest works: while, though a sublime mystery envelops and conceals, in awful solitude, the first principles of life and reason; yet, as it is the privilege of a great mind to be capable of seeing much, where common minds see little, the most apparently insignificant object will frequently present to an enlarged imagination more than all the associations, connected with Raphael's school of Athens.

CHAPTER II.

IF charms are elicited from resemblances, Nature, too, exhibits contrasts, which, in their harmonies, present exquisite beauty. The solitudes of the Alps frequently afford instances of this in respect to colours. The ice is blue; the rocks of a dark brown; and the sky of a deep serene azure: while the crocus, the snowdrop, and the laurel-stinus derive no little of their beauty from the snow, that surrounds them. 'The almond-tree of Africa, the finest flowering tree on that continent, delicate as are its blossoms, derives, also, additional beauty from the circumstance, that it blows when few other trees are even ornamented with leaves.

Contrasts are also exhibited in the manners and capacities of animals in the effects of plants. The horse can feed upon hemlock; the Egyptian parrot upon the seeds of the carthamus; the pholas, the most humble of insects, has the power of boring into the hardest marble; and though the body of a star-fish is of a nature as soft as water, yet it swallows and digests objects, as hard as are the shells of muscles: and herons, though large and awkward, take a perpendicular flight, while hawks in pursuit of them, though apparently more capable of the action, take a circuitous

one.

Some plants, which are poisonous in moist soils and situations, in dry ones are resolvent, carminative,

and aromatic: such are the sea holly; and the water navel-wort. But one of the greatest vegetable wonders, in respect to contrast, is presented in the root of the cassada: since, though in its crude state it is highly poisonous; by washing, pressure, and evaporation, it not only loses all its noxious qualities, but in tropical climates constitutes the bread of thousands.

་

In Europe, mineral impregnations are fatal to vegetable productions. In Chili, however, they have no effect upon them whatever: while near the south cape of Africa iron, or its oxyds, mixed with clay, moistened with water, produces a most exuberant vegetation. In the northern regions the phalana' tribe of insects, which, in the south, fly about in the evening reverse their habits in Lapland by flying in the day, and reposing in the night. In Sweden the raspberry grows best among ruins and conflagrated woods;2 and the epilobium angustifolium, a native of every country in Europe, flourishes no where in such magnificence, as in a country3 where every plant diminishes in size. Cork, which is the bark of a tree, has a multitude of pores: wood itself comparatively few: yet water and spirit will exude through wood, which has larger pores, sooner than they will through cork. Water elicits heat from lime; and clay, which is of a ductile nature, will become so hard with heat, as to strike fire with steel. Flint, the covering of which

Acerbi, ii. 248, 4to.

2 Clarke, Scandinavia, 524. 4to.

3 Flora Lapponica.

is rough, presents a smooth surface in whatever manner it is struck; and though to the touch it is as cold as snow, when struck with iron it elicits gems of fire. Sand, when mixed with lime, hardens into mortar; when mixed with soda and potash it will soften into glass. Lime makes water solid, and metals fluid: Bismuth, which is brittle, will, when combined with other metals, give them hardness: and though platina is remarkably ductile, yet it cannot be heated in a forge. The diamond, the hardest of bodies, is yet susceptible of the most brilliant polish; and the oxyde of arsenic, which is a deadly poison, is frequently used in medicine for a beneficial purpose; while sulphur, one of the most combustible of substances, enters into combination with silver, copper, iron, pyrites, zinc, and other metals:-it even enters into the composition of sea water.

II.

Contrasts, too, may be observed in the relative fecundities of animals and vegetables. An orange tree generally yields from 1,500 to 2,400 oranges; but an elm, living a hundred years, produces not less than 33,000,000 of grains. I once counted in a single plant of the purpura digitalis 107,000 seeds. Some plants are indeed so prolific, that one flower producing only four seeds, would, if left to itself, in a very short space of time, spread from one end of the globe to the other. Rapacious birds generally lay but four eggs: some, however, only two: as the eagle, the cinerous vulture, and the great

horned owl. The merlin and the kestril lay six. Pigeons, on the other hand, are so prolific, that the produce of two pairs in four years may amount to 29,200. Vipers lay from six to ten eggs; the sea-tortoise ninety; the crocodile a hundred; spiders a thousand; and frogs eleven hundred. The termes bellicosus even lays 80,000 eggs in four and twenty hours! The muscaria carnaria increase so fast, that some have not hesitated even to assert, that three of them will devour a horse, as quickly as a lion: while a single aphis, if undisturbed for five generations, will amount to 5,904 millions. Fishes are equally wonderful in their relative powers of production: for though some large fishes produce only one, carps spawn 342,144 ovila ; and cod not unfrequently 9,384,000!

III.

In the relative appetites of plants and animals, also, we may trace remarkable contrasts. The earthworm lives upon a small portion of very fine earth: but the caterpillar eats double its weight in a day: and the dragon fly more than three times its weight in an hour. The leach weighs only a scruple; but, when gorged, two drachms. The leach never eats; and the house cricket never drinks: while the roughette bat drinks so copiously of the juice of the palm-tree, that it becomes intoxicated; when it is easily caught. If we recur to vegetables, we find similitudes equally extraordinary. The sun-flower imbibes and perspires, in one day and night, sixteen times more than a man of moderate growth and firm constitution.