perfect beauty, that it is quite certain that it is all done for us, and intended for our perpetual pleasure. And every man, whereever placed, however far from other sources of interest or of beauty, has this doing for him constantly. The noblest scenes of the earth can be seen and known but by few; it is not intended that man should live always in the midst of them; he injures them by his presence; he ceases to feel them if he be always with them. But the sky is for all; bright as it is, it is not "too bright nor good for human nature's daily food;" it is fitted, in all its functions, for the perpetual comfort and exalting of the heart; for the soothing it, and purifying it from its dross and dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful; never the same for two moments together; almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its infinity, its appeal to what is immortal in us is as distinct as its ministry of chastisement or of blessing to what is mortal, is essential. And yet we never attend to it; we never make it a subject of thought, but as it has to do with our animal sensations; we look upon all by which it speaks to us more clearly than to brutes, upon all which bears witness to the intention of the Supreme, that we are to receive more from the covering vault than the light and the dew which we share with the weed and the worm, only as a succession of meaningless and monotonous accidents, too common and too vain to be worthy of a moment of watchfulness or a glance of admiration. If, in our moments of utter idleness and insipidity, we turn to the sky as a last resource, which of its phenomena do we speak of? One says it has been wet, and another it has been windy, and another it has been warm. Who, among the whole chattering crowd, can tell me of the forms and precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that gilded the horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow sunbeam that came out of the south, and smote upon their summits, until they melted and mouldered away in a dust of blue rain? Who saw the dance of the dead clouds, when the sunlight left them last night, and the west wind blew them before it, like withered leaves? All has passed unregretted or unseen; or, if the apathy be ever shaken off, even for an instant, it is only by what is gross or what is extraordinary; and yet it is not in the broad and fierce manifestations of the elemental energies, not in the clash of the hail, nor the drift of the whirlwind, that the highest characters of the sublime are developed. . It is in

quiet and subdued passages of unobtrusive majesty; the deep, and the calm, and the perpetual; that which must be sought ere it is seen, and loved ere it is understood; things which the angels work out for us daily, and yet vary eternally, which are never wanting, and never repeated; which are to be found always, yet each found but once. It is through these that the lesson of devotion is chiefly taught, and the blessing of beauty given.

PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS.-(HUMBOLDT.)

On the Chim

WHEN the active curiosity of man is engaged in interrogating Nature, or when his imagination dwells on the wide fields of organic creation, among the multifarious impressions which his mind receives, perhaps none is so strong and profound as that of the universal profusion with which life is everywhere distributed. Even on the polar ice the air resounds with the cries or songs of birds, and with the hum of insects. Nor is it only the lower dense and vaporous strata of the atmosphere which are thus filled with life, but also the higher and more ethereal regions. Whenever Mont Blanc or the summits of the Cordilleras have been ascended, living creatures have been found there. borazo, 8000 feet higher than Etna, we found butterflies and other winged insects, borne by ascending currents of air to those almost unapproachable solitudes, which man, led by a restless curiosity or unappeasable thirst of knowledge, treads with adventurous but cautious steps: like him, strangers in those elevated regions, their presence shows us that the more flexible organization of animal creation can subsist far beyond the limits at which vegetation ceases. The condor, the giant of the vulture tribe, often soared over our heads above all the summits of the Andes, at an altitude higher than would be the Peak of Teneriffe if piled on the snow-covered crests of the Pyrenees. The rapacity of this powerful bird attracts him to these regions, whence his far-seeing eye may discern the objects of his pursuit, the soft-wooled Vicunas, which, wandering in herds, frequent, like the Chamois, the mountain pastures adjacent to the regions of perpetual snow.

We do not yet know where life is most abundant,-whether on continents or in the unfathomed depths of the ocean. Through the labours of Ehrenberg, we have seen the sphere of organic life extend, and its horizon widen before our eyes, both in the tropi

cal parts of the ocean and in the fixed or floating masses of ice of the Antarctic seas. Silicious-shelled Polygastrica, and even Coscinodiscæ, with their green ovaries, have been found alive enveloped in masses of ice only twelve degrees from the Pole; the small black Glacier flea and Podurellæ inhabit the narrow tubular holes examined by Agassiz in the Swiss glaciers. Ehrenberg has shown that on several microscopic Infusoria others live as parasites, and that in the Gallionellæ such is their prodigious power of development, or capability of division, that in the space of four days an animalcule invisible to the naked eye can form two cubic feet of the Bilin polishing slate. In the sea, gelatinous worms living or dead, shine like stars, and by their phosphoric light change the surface of the wide ocean into a sea of fire. Ineffaceable is the impression made on my mind by the calm nights of the torrid zone, on the waters of the Pacific. I still see the dark azure of the firmament, the constellation of the Ship near the zenith, and that of the Cross declining towards the horizon, shedding through the perfumed air their soft and planetary lustre; while bright furrows of flashing light marked the tract of the dolphins through the midst of the foaming waves.

Not only the ocean, but also the waters of our marshes, hide from us an innumerable multitude of strange forms. The naked eye can with difficulty distinguish the Cyclidias, the Cuglenes, and the host of Naids divisible by branches like the Lemna or Duckweed, of which they seek the shade. Other creatures inhabit receptacles where the light cannot penetrate, and an atmosphere variously composed, but differing from that which we breathe: such are the spotted Ascaris, which lives beneath the skin of the earthworm; the Leucophra, of a bright silvery colour, in the interior of the shore Naid; and a Pentastoma, which inhabits the large pulmonary cells of the rattlesnake of the tropics. There are animalculæ in the blood of frogs and of salmon, and even, according to Nordmann, in the fluids of the eyes of fishes and in the gills of the Bleak. Thus the most hidden recesses of creation teem with life.

Turning to the vegetable world again, on the existence of which that of animals is dependent, we find that plants are incessantly engaged in disposing into order towards subsequent organization the raw materials of which the earth is composed it is their office, by their vital forces or powers, to prepare those substances which, after undergoing a thousand modifications, are gradually

converted to nobler purposes in the formation of nervous tissues. In directing our consideration towards the various families of plants, we shall at the same time glance at the multitude of animated beings to which they afford nutriment and protection.

The carpet of flowers and of verdure spread over the naked crust of our planet is unequally woven; it is thicker where the sun rises high in the ever-cloudless heavens, and thinner towards the poles, in the less happy climes where returning frosts often destroy the opening buds of spring, or the ripening fruits of autumn. Everywhere, however, man finds some plants to minister to his support and enjoyment. If new lands are formed, the organic forces are ever ready to cover the naked rock with life. Sometimes, as at an early period among the Greek islands, volcanic forces suddenly elevate above the surface of the boiling waves a rock covered with Scoriæ : sometimes, by a long-continued and more tranquil series of phenomena, the collective labours of united Lithophytes raise their cellular dwellings on the crests of submarine mountains, until, after thousands of years, the structure reaches the level of the ocean, when the creatures which have formed it die, leaving a low flat coral island. How are the seeds of plants brought so immediately to these new shores? by wandering birds, or by the winds and waves of the ocean? The distance from other coasts makes it difficult to determine this question ; but no sooner is the rock of the newly-raised islands in direct contact with the atmosphere, than there is formed on its surface, in our northern countries, a soft silky net-work, appearing to the naked eye as coloured spots and patches. Some of these patches are bordered by single or double raised lines running round their margins; other patches are crossed by similar lines traversing them in various directions. Gradually the light colour of the patches becomes darker, the bright yellow which was visible at a distance changes to brown, and the bluish grey of the Leprarias becomes a dusty black. The edges of neighbouring patches approach and run into each other; and on the dark ground thus formed there appear other lichens, of a circular shape and dazzling whiteness. Thus an organic film or covering establishes itself by successive layers; and as mankind, in forming settled communities, pass through different stages of civilisation, so is the gradual propagation and extension of plants connected with determinate physical laws. Lichens form the first covering of the naked rock, where

afterwards lofty forest trees rear their airy summits. The successive growth of mosses, grasses, herbaceous plants, and shrubs or bushes, occupies the intervening period of long but undetermined duration. The part which lichens and mosses perform in the northern countries is effected within the tropics by Portulacas, Gomphrenas, and other low and succulent shore plants. The history of the vegetable covering of our planet, and its gradual propagation over the desert crust of the earth, has its epochs, as well as that of the migrations of the animal world.

Yet although organic life is everywhere diffused, and the organic powers are incessantly at work in reconnecting with each other the elements set free by death or dissolution, the abundance and variety of organized beings, and the rapidity with which they are renewed, differ in different climates. In the cold zones, the activity of organic life undergoes a temporary suspension during a portion of the year by frost; fluidity is an essential condition of life or vital action, and animals and plants, with the exception of mosses and other cryptogamia, are in those regions buried for several months of each year in winter sleep. Over a large part of the earth, therefore, there could only be developed organic forms capable of supporting either a considerable diminution of heat, or, being without leaves, a long interruption of the vital functions. Thus we see variety and grace of form, mixture of colours, and generally the perpetually youthful energy and vigour of organic life, increase as we approach the tropics.

Those, therefore, who can view nature with a comprehensive glance and apart from local phenomena, may see from the poles to the equator, organic life and vigour gradually augment with the augmentation of vivifying heat. But in the course of this progressive increase there are reserved to each zone its own peculiar beauties; to the tropics, variety and grandeur of vegetable forms; to the north, the aspect of its meadows and green pastures, and the periodic reawakening of nature at the first breath of the mild air of spring. Each zone, besides its own peculiar advantages, has its own distinctive character. Primeval laws of organization, notwithstanding a certain degree of freedom in the abnormal development of single parts, bind all animal and vegetable forms to fixed ever-recurring types. As we recognise in distinct organic beings a determinate physiognomy, and as descriptive botany and zoology, in the restricted sense of the terms, consist in a de