happily there are not many carnivorous animals ; and they are very useful in devouring carcases, and by that means guarding us from infection, as well as in preserving a certain balancé, by preventing any species from multiplying too fast. Besides this, the Creator has properly designed the vegetable kingdom for the food of animals; and he has assigned, to almost each species of beasts, a particular kind of plant. In order that all sorts of animals should have food in proportion to their number, he has ordained that they should live in different countries of the earth. How exactly has he even measured the ground! One single tree is larger than thousands of plants; yet it fills up no more space on the surface of the earth, than a few feet square, and a multitude of quadrupeds, birds, and insects, find their food there, and lodge in it. What care also has the Creator shewn, in surrounding all animals with a fluid matter adapted to their different natures. Two sorts of seas are destined for them; one of water, and one of air. All living creatures are in one or other of these two elements, except the small number which can live in either. The bottom of these two seas is the habitation of a part of those animals; such as are in the upper sea, the reptiles, and most of the quadrupeds; and, in the lower sea, the zoophites, the shell-fish, corals, oysters, &c. Others have the power of rising and descending as they please in their element, as the birds and insects do in the air, and as the whales and most other fish do in the water.

And the Atheist dares to say in his heart, that there is no God! Senseless man; "Go and ask the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee; or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee, and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who. knoweth not in all these, that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this?"

JUNE X.

Immensity of the Firmament.

COME, O man, and contemplate the firmament! behold that multitude of lights which shine and illumine your nights. Try to count them; but thy weak sight is unable to do it; and thine eyes are lost in the numberless stars. Well, theu, take thy telescope, and double thy sight. What dost thou now see? To the first million new millions of worlds are added. Continue these observations, and undertake to count the stars thou hast discovered. Thy ideas are confounded. Thou seest that it is beyond the power of numbers to express such immense multitudes. It is true, that, for many ages past, mankind have tried to find out the number of the stars; but the discoveries made in the heavens since the invention of telescopes, plainly prove that no man can ascertain the num. ber of celestial bodies. One of the most ancient astronomers reckoned but one thousand and twenty-six; the catalogue was afterwards increased to one thousand and eighty-eight stars. But the observations made since, by the assistance of telescopes, have convinced mankind that the human sight cannot discover all the celestial bodies. Our instruments have informed us, that the long, white, and luminous tract, which fills a large space of the sky, called the Milky Way, is composed of a multitude of stars. We know even that, in places where we saw with the naked eye, only a single star, the telescopes have since discovered many more to us. By their means, we distinguish in two constellations alone, twice as many stars as we reckoned in the whole sky. How much has this of course enlarged our ideas in respect to the greatness of the universe! But if the discoveries

already made have so increased our admiration of the immensity of the Divine Power, it will rise still higher, when we reflect how vast these bodies must be, which, notwithstanding their prodigious distance from us, are many of them visible to the naked sight. Exact calculations, which may be depended on, inform us that a cannon-ball would take more than seven hundred thousand years to reach from thence to the nearest of the fixed stars; and yet the greatest astronomers agree that these nambers are not sufficient to express even the apparent distance of a fixed star. Some of these globes appear to us to be the largest, because they are the nearest to us: they are, on that account, called stars of the first magnitude. Those nearest to them are called stars of the second magnitude, because being much farther from us they appear smaller. They must be at as great a distance from the former, as the latter are from us. Those of the third magnitude must be three; those of the fourth, four times farther from us than the first, &c. Supposing there were but twenty of these, it would follow, that the diameter of the whole universe, if there were only twenty classes of stars, would be so great that a cannon ball could not go through it in twenty-four millions of years.

King of heaven! Sovereign Ruler of the stars! Father of spirits and of men! O that my ideas were vast and sublime as the expanse of the hea vens, that I might worthily meditate upon thy greatness! That I might raise them even to these innumerable worlds, where Thou displayest thy magnificence still more than on this earthly globe! That as I now pass from flower to flower, I might go from star to star, till I arrived at the august sanctuary where Thou sittest on the throne of thy glory! But my desires are vain as long as I am a sojourner upon earth. I shall not know the wonders of the celestial globes, till my soul is deliver. ed from the incumbrance of this gross body. In

the mean time, as long as I live in this world, I will raise my voice, and sing thy praise. :

JUNE XI.

·Singularities in the Vegetable Kingdom.

THE variety of animals is so great, that it appears at first difficult to find connection between them and plants. Some beasts live only in water; others only on land, or in the air; some which can live in either or both equally. But it may be said literally, that it is the same in respect to ve getables. There are plants which only live in the ground; others that only grow in water; others that can bear no moisture; others, still, which live equally in land or water: there are even some that live in the air. There is in the island of Japan a tree, which, contrary to the nature of all other plants which require moisture, cannot bear it. As soon as it is wet it withers, and the only way to save it from dying, is to cut it down to the root, to dry it in the sun, and afterwards plant it in a dry and sandy soil. It is known that a sort of mushroom, moss, and other little plants, swim in the air: but a more extraordi. nary thing is, that a sprig of rosemary, which was put into the hand of a dead person (according to the custom of some countries), took root so well to the right and to the left, that at the end of some years, when the grave was opened, it had covered all the face of the corpse with its leaves. The vegetation of the truffle is still more singular. This extraordinary tubercle has neither roots, nor stalk, nor leaves, nor blossom, nor even any visible seed: it draws its sustenance through the pores of its bark. But how it is produced, or why, in general, there should be no other herb where those sorts of mushrooms grow,

and the earth be light and full of crevices, has not yet been accounted for. There is no plant which can better be compared to the land and water animals, than that sort of membraneous moss called nostoch. It is an irregular body, a little transparent, and of a pale green colour. It trembles when touched, and is easily broken. It can only be seen after it has rained; it is then found in several places, but chiefly in uncultivated ground, and along the sides of sandy roads. It is formed also in a moment; for when in summer, walking in a garden, not the least trace of it is seen; on a sudden a storm of rain falls, and in an hour after, in the same spot, the whole walk will appear covered with a great quantity of it. For a long time it was supposed that the nostoch fell from the sky; but it is now known to be nothing but a leaf, which draws the water greatly, and sucks it in. This leaf, to which no root has been discovered, is in its natural state, when it is well impregnated with water; but heat, or a high wind, makes the water evaporate in a few hours, and then the leaf contracts, shrinks, and loses its transparency and colour. From this circumstance it appears to grow so suddenly, and to be created in a wonderful manner with the rain; as a fresh shower falling on it, when it is withered and invisible, revives and makes it again appear. But there are still more singularities worth observation among the vegetables. The whole atmosphere is filled with millions of invisible plants and seeds. Even seeds of a larger sort are scattered by the wind all over the earth; and as soon as the air has carried them to the places where they can thrive, they become plants; and it requires so little for that purpose, that it is difficult to con ceive whence they can draw what is necessary for their growth. There are considerable plants, and even trees, that take root and grow in crevices of rocks, without the least earth. Vegetation is