necessity is not the same. They may be destined to swim, like the swan and the gooseander, or they may require the length of neck for other purposes than that of fishing or searching for their food, like the pelican.

A wide field opens here for displaying the relations of all nature to the wants, the powers, and the felicities of man, so plainly by his superiority of intellect destined to be the lord of the lower creation. But it is sufficient to have looked that way, the field has been so often traversed, and the proofs it affords press so continually on the observation and gratitude of every individual.*

2. We pass on to the distinction of orders. The manner in which this is effected, presents farther evidence of design, in the selection of means adapted to an end. Do we not find in nature certain uniform and invariable marks, by which the

The ever-pleasing, though too often fanciful ST. PIERRE, when treating of the colours of animals, has a dissertation on this subject more fraught with truth than many of his other speculations. 1. Nature, he observes, opposes the colour of the animal to the ground on which it lives. This renders it visible, and serves to do justice to its beauty. Exceptions there are in the case of flat fishes, and some other animals, which are confounded with the ground on which they live for particular reasons, especially for the sake of safety, when it is endangered by their weakness or slowness. 2. Nature has furnished harmless animals at once with contrasts for the ground on which they live, and with similarities to that to which they may resort for safety, as in the grey lark, partridges, the brick-coloured butterfly, the cameleon, and the young of some animals. 3. Animals which live in two situations, have two contrasts of colour, as the king-fisher, duck, woodpecker, frigat. There are exceptions, in the grand division of colour, among the animals of cold and warm climates, into light and dark, of which the reason or propriety is obvi ous. 4. Nature has adapted her harmonies to man, that the plumage of her birds and the beauty of her animals might not escape us,-that beauty might not be lavished where it is unseen, or not likely to be often beheld,—and that man might have proper alarms or invitations. The white bear of the north is distinguished from the snows he inhabits by his black snout, and the red glare of his eyes. The tiger, the leopard, the wasp, the rattlesnake, are, by the vivid contrasts of colour and other signs, pointed out to his fears, and seen at a distance. The same remarks may be applied to plants. Such is the substance of his Eighth Study on Nature. Elsewhere, he has shewn that the song of the birds, and the screams of the wild-fowl, especially at sea amidst the roaring of the waters, are adapted to their respective situations,-that the song of the birds is adapted to the ear of man, the colours of the rainbow and the glowing tints of the evening clouds to his eye. Change the relative situation of the spectator and the object, all the glories which blaze on the curtains of the west closing around the setting sun, would no longer be seen. The lark is poised at the proper elevation for mellowing its notes to his ear, and for mingling without offence with the melody of the thousands who join in the concert; but if lower and nearer, would rather incommode than delight The gay plumage of the tropical birds accords well with the bright regions they inhabit, while the sober livery of others, in temperate climes, is abundantly compensated by the more appropriate melody of song,

different classes, and subordinate kinds of animated beings, and of vegetable and mineral productions, are distinguished ? And is it not upon this principle that the whole science of Natural History is founded ?- In the department of botany, to which only we shall appeal, research has detected the distinction of classes and orders in the anthers and pistils, by whose number and relative position the purpose of discrimination is accomplished upon a plan so simple, as to leave room for the greatest display of variety in particulars,—but a plan so uniformly adhered to, as to exclude entirely the suppositions of chance. Should any one pretend to account for the common characteristics of the feline race among quadrupeds, by alleging that all the different kinds, lions, leopards, lymes, tigers, cats, &c. had originally proceeded from one pair, he will hardly venture on such an irrational assertion with regard to plants. Yet do we not see the same common characteristics, sanctioned by nature, in the different botanical classes and orders ? Could it not be owing to chance, that the grasses, for example, though differing in many respects, should all belong to the class of triandria, except one, which is also distinguished from the rest by its pleasing scent, and the reasons of whose segregation may yet be discovered ?

It deserves to be remarked on this article, that the distinction of classes and orders has been made permanent to the defeat of every attempt to confound them by the formation of any new kind of beings. Mules, which in some cases are more useful than the parent animals, may be produced, but they cannot be propagated. Botanists, indeed, speak of vegetable mules, which may be propagated to a certain extent. And we cannot wonder that Howers, so evidently adapted to the gratification of the eye and the smell, should be capable of improvement in this way, as well as by other means, to a very considerable extent of succession,-no disadvantage accruing from the attempt, but the contrary ; whereas, serious disadvantage would arise from confounding the animal departments of nature. Perhaps, however, the language of botanists may not be sufficiently accurate on this head, their vegetable mules capable of propagation rather resembling the varieties produced among sheep and other animals by crossing the breed, than the mixture which constitutes the real mule. Still, no class, no order, is confounded ; no new order is produced. The mule from Dianthus Superbus and the Carnation, still be longs to the same order, and even genus, with its parents, and both parents are not only of the same order decandria digynia, but of the one genus

dianthus. 3. The provisions in nature for the preservation of the different kinds of beings, present undeniable evidence of design. A few facts may be selected under the heads of production, food, and means of defence.

Diversified as the mode of production is, a certain striking uniformity pervades it, on which it is not necessary to expatiate. In plants, the expedients for impregnating the embryon in its capsule are numerous, and well known to every naturalist. If the pistil protrude beyond the anthers, the flower hangs its head, that the pollen may fall on the stigma. If the anthers be elongated, they gradually bend to the stigma, or suddenly curve down to meet it. In common broom, the stigma is formed among the taller and immature anthers, but the pistil, as soon as it bursts the keel-leaf, twists itself round in an instant, like a French horn, and inserts its head among the lower and mature. Sometimes the pollen is exploded, as by the anthers of the nettle, which, in the genial rays of the sun, presents the appearance of a distant fort gradually discharging its cannon. In other instances there is a visible approach and recession of the anthers.—Many curious facts might be adduced, illustrative of the relation of insects to plants in the system of connexions between the different departments of nature, exhibiting, at the same time, most evident and wonderful provisions, in cases where no activity could be exerted for preserving the species. Insects are found to assist greatly in the impregnation of plants especially of the dichogamia class. This fact is known to every gardener, who raises the glass of his hot-bed that bees and other insects may have free access. Some flowers have insects peculiar to themselves, and if these be wanting or have failed to find the flower (as often happens with exotic plants when brought to this country) it produces no seeds.

« An insect that does not visit one sort of flower alone, but many indiscriminately, will, during a whole day, remain with that species on which it fixed in the morning, and not touch another, provided there be enough of the first species.” So careful is nature not to mar her works, as the insect, in collecting pollen, flies covered with the impregnating dust. * Eggs and seeds, even the minutest, resist the action

a

• Willdenow's Elements of Botany, p. 316.–For evident proofs of design, consult the same writer on the impregnation of Aristolochia Clematis

of frost. But for this provision, which is strange and admirable in regard to such minute principles of life, many classes both of vegetable and animated nature would be in danger of total destruction. And is there no proof of design,-in depriving caterpillers of the power of generation, and reserving it for the perfected state of the insect,-in rendering worms, which are so liable to be cut asunder in the operations of digging and ploughing the earth, susceptible of complete re-organization,—in constituting fishes, which are the prey of one

, another to the greatest extent, as well as the food of man, so amazingly prolific -in adapting their mode of propagation to the element in which they live,-in making some animals, which are viviparous in the favourable season when food abounds, oviparous on the approach of winter,-in continuing for a successive progeny the influence of one impregnation with such as are attached to a spot, or greatly deficient in locomotive power ? In a word, the sexual conformation in all animals cannot fail to be remarked ; and what is astonishing, the proportion between the sexes, especially in the human race, which, as it depends on no natural principle, is too uniform to be ascribed to chance.*

The means of Sustaining Life, when produced, might next be considered. And here, passing the varied processes of vegetable nature, and much that belongs to this department in the animal system, the most incontrovertible marks of design appear in the adaptation of the teeth to the cutting and mastication of solids, the provisions for swallowing,—the position, coats, and muscular strength, of the stomach,—the formation of the gastric juice,—the peculiar quality by which it acts on dead substances, while it injures not the living stomach, though of the same nature with many substances on which its power

is exerted. The whole apparatus of reception, preparation, and digestion, bears the most evident relation not only to food in general, and the conversion of it into living substance, but in the different classes of animals to the different kinds of food, suited to their physical state, or furnished by the regions they inhabit.—The conviction of design is strengthened by com

parison. The bills of the feathered race, in all their variety of size and structure, and the probosces of insects, are clearly adapted to their respective sources of nourishment. They

appear too at once with the perfected animal, as they are obviously connected with the symmetry of its form, and are to be immediately used. The teeth on the other hand are not requisite to symmetry of form in the human subject, such graceful rotundity and plumpness belonging to the infant face as prevents the perception of any defect; they linger, to give place to the operation of suckling, nor are they produced till the season of it has elapsed, or the child has become so habituated to this method of receiving nourishment, that their gradual appearance occasions no inconvenience to the mother; and then, as the first set would have ceased to fill the mouth when the jaw is enlarged, it falls out at the proper age, and a permanent set is produced. Not only the reception of solid food, but the attainment of the faculty of speech, requires a set prior to the expansion of the jaw. Fowls who use their bills in uttering certain notes, are provided with these at the time of exclusion from the egg ; and the cries of other animals are not, like articulate language, dependant on the teeth,

But to return to the relations between food and animated beings, the whole race of insects, the most numerous in nature, are in the temperate and polar regions produced in the summer months, when the flowers abound with nectar, or while the plants to which in their caterpillar state they are respectively attached, are in the best state for affording the requisite nourishment. The importance of the nectary in the economy of vegetation itself, is such, that a wonderful apparatus is employed in many flowers to guard its juices from complete spoliation. In some it is lodged at the bottom of a long tube, in others it is covered with a hood filled with such acrid matter that no insects can penetrate it. Many plants of the Ophrys and Larkspur classes present the appearance of an insect, as if already pre-occupied." But in general the provision is abundant, and the nectar is common to all perfected insects, who have either to lay up stores for the winter, or to answer the purposes of nature in propagating the species. An indiscriminate feed, however, has been denied to the voracious tribes of caterpillars, who, instead of sucking the superfluous honey, devour the leaves of vegetables, and each kind is attached to its own plant,—the most noxious and the vilest weeds not excepted, -without the option of preferring those that are useful

a