and more especially the latter, with its instincts and habits, to their geographical position, and what skill has been employed in diffusing life and enjoyment throughout the world. Facts of a similar kind, will meet us every where in the course of our inquiry.

THIRD WEEK-TUESDAY.

ADAPTATION OF ORGANIZED EXISTENCES TO TEMPERATE AND POLAR CLIMATE

OUR attention was yesterday directed to those beneficent arrangements, by which organized existences, within the tropics, are adapted to their geographical position. The same observation may be extended to all the other regions of the earth, and the further the subject is investigated, the more shall we find reason to admire and adore the Divine wisdom, so variously, and every where so beneficently, displayed.

Among a vast profusion of instances which might be selected, I will take the history of the camel, which recommends itself to our notice at present, as being peculiarly appropriate, in our descent to climates of a lower temperature, because the range of this animal is extended from the tropical into the temperate regions; and, because, within that range, its conformation and habits are curiously and exclusively suited to a peculiar locality. The camel, including, of course, the dromedary, which is only a variety of the species, is an animal distinctly formed by the Author of Nature, to subsist, and to contribute to the comfort of man, in the parched and sandy wildernesses, which, in the vast regions of the East, stretch from the tropics far into the temperate zone. description, abridged from Goldsmith, may suffice for our purpose.

A

The camel is the most temperate of all animals, and

it can continue to travel, for several days, without drinking. In those vast deserts, where the earth is very dry and sandy; where there are neither birds nor beasts, neither insects nor vegetables; where nothing is to be seen but hills of sand, and heaps of stones; there the camel travels, posting forward, without requiring either drink or pasture, and is often found six or seven days without any sustenance whatever. Its feet are formed for travelling on sand, and are utterly unfit for moist or marshy places. In Arabia, and those countries where the camel is turned to useful purposes, it is considered as a sacred animal, without whose help the natives could neither subsist, traffic, nor travel. Its milk makes a part of their nourishment; they feed upon its flesh, particularly when young; they clothe themselves with its hair; and, if they fear an invading enemy, their camels serve them in flight; and, in a single day, they are known to travel a hundred miles. Thus, by means of the camel, an Arabian finds safety in his deserts. All the armies on earth might be lost in pursuit of a flying squadron of this country, mounted on their camels, and taking refuge in solitudes, where nothing interposes to stop their flight, or to force them to await the invader. There are, here and there, in the dreary wastes inhabited by the Arabian, found spots of verdure which, though remote from each other, are, in a manner, approximated by the labor and industry of the camel. Thus the Arab lives independent and tranquil amidst his solitudes; and, instead of considering the vast wilds spread around him as a restraint upon his happiness, he is, by experience, taught to regard them as the ramparts of his freedom. Who does not admire in this remarkable instance, the beneficent intentions of Providence, in the structure and habits of an animal so exclusively adapted to regions of heat, sterility, and drought?

In the temperate regions, similar adaptations to the season of scarcity are familiar to the student of nature; but, as it is in this zone of moderate climate that we dwell, and from it, therefore, that our illustrations will, in the following pages, be chiefly taken, I shall pass to its ex

treme verge, towards the polar circles, where the countries, although they still bear the geographical title of temperate, have ceased, in reality, to deserve it, and are rapidly tending to an extreme, in which organized beings are no longer to be found. The Laplander, the Greenlander, the inhabitants of Nova Zembla and Labrador, although, in winter, they suffer many privations, greater, than are experienced in our more favored climate, are yet furnished with many alleviations, which prove, that their comfort and enjoyments have not been forgotten by Him, who appointed the bounds of their habitation.

Some inhabitants of these severe regions, have received from a bountiful Providence the gift of the rein-deer; which is not less adapted to their wants than the camel is to those of the Arab. It furnishes them with the means of rapid and easy conveyance from place to place; while its skin supplies them with clothing for their bodies, and covering for their tents, its flesh is their necessary food, and its milk their delicious drink. Their long winter night, for it is one uninterrupted night during several months, is cheered by a bright twilight, and the brilliant and busy coruscations of that wonderful meteor, the aurora borealis ; and, when they retire to their humble dwellings, they find at once, light and heat in the blaze of the oil abundantly extracted from the fish, which their industry has drawn from the neighboring seas.

In Greenland, and the countries bordering on Baffin's Bay, where the rein-deer is but seldom, if at all, domesticated, the inhabitants have other means of supplying, though less comfortably, the necessaries of life which this useful animal provides to the northern inhabitants of Europe. They build their winter huts of snow, within which they light their fires, without danger of its melting, so long as the intensity of the cold prevails; and, within these apparently miserable habitations, they experience more enjoyment than the natives of genial climes can easily conceive possible. The frost preserves from corruption the animal food they have stored; and, so long as their provisions remain, they seem to have no great care for the future. Having few wants, and little

forethought, they spend, from day to day, a contented, though a degraded life; and the goodness of the great Creator towards them, appears in this, that if their circumstances preclude them from the enjoyment of many luxuries, or even conveniences, they are happily insensible of the privation; and, if they are destitute of high intellectual pleasures, they are at least not subjected to the miseries arising from that acute sensibility, with which the cultivation of the mental powers is frequently aftended.

Were we to inquire into the condition and habits of the lower animals which inhabit these frozen regions, we should be struck with similar wise adaptations. Of the thick and shaggy fur which covers their bodies, so admirably adapted both to preserve the animal heat, and exclude the external cold, increasing in warmth with the increasing rigor of the season; of the instinct which induces some to migrate to more genial regions, and others to retire to caves and burrows, where they spend the long and dreary winter months in a state of insensibility, or of partial lethargy; and of other matters connected with the season of winter in that inhospitable climate, which afford, even in apparently neglected corners of the world, unequivocal proofs of beneficent design, we shall afterwards have occasion to speak. Meanwhile, this slight sketch seems sufficient to show, that, in every climate, even the dreariest season of the year has its uses, its adaptations, and its enjoyments.

THIRD WEEK-WEDNESDAY.

THE BALANCE PRESERVED IN THE ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE CREATION.

EVERY naturalist must have observed, that there is a tendency in the reproductive powers bestowed by the

Creator, to overstock the world, so that, if any ore species of animals were permitted to produce its kind without check, the whole earth would, in process of time, be entirely overrun by that species alone, to such an extent, that, by and by, there would not be room for the vegetable to spread, or the animal to move. Among living creatures, a remarkable example of this power may be taken from the rabbit. It has been calculated that, from a pair of these animals, may proceed, in four years, a progeny of nearly a million and a half. The common grass is an example of a similar kind among vegetables, a single plant of which would, in a very few years, under favorable circumstances, clothe a whole island like Britain. These are extreme cases; but, if any person would take the trouble of estimating the productive powers of any one kind of plant or animal, even the least remarkable for fecundity, he would soon satisfy himself, thạt the fact is not overstated.

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This excessive power of reproduction, as in one sense may be called, seems to be a necessary part of the wise economy of Nature; because it always enables organized existences to multiply their species, up to the extent in which provision is made for their subsistence; but then, it would have occasioned the most injurious consequences, were not checks provided, by which each kind might be kept within its proper bounds. These checks are numerous and effectual. The most remarkable of them, among the living tribes, is the existence of predaceous animals. One creature preys upon another, and thus, provision is made, by a remarkable contrivance, which, at first sight, appears cruel, for the existence of more numerous species, and for the more easy death of individuals, which would otherwise so press upon the means of subsistence, as to drag out a lingering and miserable life, till they perish by famine; while another instance of providential care in this provision is, that dead bodies are consumed and removed, which would otherwise infest the air with noisome and pestilential effluvia, in the process of decomposition.

But what has led me, at present, to advert to this sub