sive. Improved reason, indeed, makes the same deduction, because when it justly reflects, it feels that the grandest creature can be but insignificance before such an Infinite Creator. We are high and low, great and small, as to each other, but not to him. The ant is as full of life and comfort and curious instincts, and as skillfully organized, as the lion or the whale. It is therefore a marvelous property of the incomprehensible nature of our God, that he delights in all his creations. By having made some classes of organized being wonderously small, he proves in their fabrication and subsistence, to every order of nature, that no part of it has existed without his thought and confidence, nor is too petty for his notice, nor unworthy of his care. Whatever he has made that we deem as nothings in comparison with ourselves, are yet, in this view, heralds of comfort to us; for the inference becomes irresistible—indeed it has been made for us by the greatest of all authorities-that if he can make and regard such inconsiderable organizations of nature, he will never be indifferent or inattentive to us. This was the principle of that exhilarating assurance-pregnant with comfort to the humblest tenant of humanity, because unconfinable in its application

"Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? FEAR NOT: Ye are of more value than many sparrows."

This sentiment, like a telescope surveying the endless expansion of space, brings the immensity of Godhead into the compass of our mental perception, and awakens within us a felicitating sensibility whenever we contemplate it.

These considerations remove the barrier of doubt and dread that would repel us from our Creator. They throw an intellectual bridge from heaven to earth, over that unfathomable chasm which separates human nature from the divine. The more largely we know the living universe that surrounds us, the more strongly we shall feel our personal inabilities: but he has descended from his stupendous ubiquity into an individualizing association of creation, government, providence, and legislation with us. We learn, as we study nature, that all must have been specially planned, and provided, and ordered to exist, because the unassisted particles of nature can no more make a hair than a

head, nor a moss or an alga, than an eye or an ear; nor ever do; we have not one fact of such a formation. Every thing organic displays the touch of Deity; and whatever has the principle of life, derives it solely from him, whom the North American Indians habitually and emphatically, but with a traditional philosophy, truly characterize as "the Great Master of Life."

These considerations make the creation and diffusion of the minute organizations of nature so highly interesting and important to us, when we deduce the just inferences from them. Then they are felt to demonstrate to us, as by ocular impression, that such minuteness of attention and care are natural, usual, and pleasurable qualities of the Divine Mind, notwithstanding its unbounded grandeur. Our own experience makes this deduction the more probable to us, because the greatest human minds have been distinguished by the same property; and owe their immortalizing successes to the natural power of combining the most patient and minute examination and consideration, with the most extensive plans and with their sublimest conceptions. All those whose exertions or achievements place them at the head of human fame or talent-the Bacons, the Newtons, the Hannibals, the Napoleons, or the Wellingtons-have been equally remarkable for these extreme and opposite polarities of intellectual nature. Vast expansibility of thought, and the most scrutinizing particularity of attention, become that surprising union of counteracting qualities which constitutes man's most aggrandized understanding. But these are only two modes of action of the transcending genius. Superior capacity will manifest its superiority in every subject to which it directs the same proportion of its activity. Grand and small make no difference to it-it uses the small to produce the great, as the Author of nature has built up his highest masses from an adequate accumulation of the smallest corpuscules.

It is therefore pleasing to see that the whole economy of nature has been formed on one universal plan, and with equal individuality of attention in every department—as well in what we undervalue, as in what we most admire. In his creation, as in his government, the Creator embraces at all times, with his all-comprehending kindness, the in

numerable and the unbounded-the infinitesimals, as well as the immensities of nature-the invisible, from disappearing smallness, no less than the imperceptible, from incalculable remoteness. We may overlook what is petty, as beneath the notice of our pride; but nothing, however small, has been deemed worthless, or is disregarded by Him, whom no name or language can adequately describe; whose power is omnipotence; whose presence is universal; whose knowledge is omniscience; whose creations extend and constitute space; and whose existence is eternity.

LETTER VI.

BRIEF REVIEW OF THE USES OF PLANTS IN THE SYSTEM OF CREATION-ACTIONS AND PHENOMENA OF THIER LIVING

PRINCIPLE.

THE anterior design, the creative and contriving mind, the specific purpose, the selected means, and the appointed organization, are as discernible in the USES of plants as in any other part of their wonderful economy.

That they should be the materials, on which all animal life subsists, and by which it is sustained in its bodily organizations, is a well known purpose of their formation. By the operation of their own living principle, they convert the inorganic matter which they not only find but select out of what their roots meet, into their own kind of substance; and this, which gives them their visible existence. and beauty, becomes again transmutable into animal flesh by the animal's own vital nature and functions. This double process is every day universally going on in all the three kingdoms of nature. The word selection may seem strong; but if the radicles and the fibres of the roots entering a soil shoot toward that which their plant needs, and though coming in contact with other particles, yet take up those only which suit them-what can we call that but selecting? There is a refusal of the one, and an active absorption of the other. A property of discerning and taking, in preference to other matter, that which is the fittest for their nourishment, seems therefore to belong to all plants.

Without vegetation, none of the animals we know, but those that live on water or air, could have continued in existence; for neither man nor animal can subsist on any thing in the mineral kingdom, until vegetation, by first making it vegetable substance, has prepared it for a fu

Hence the justness of the

ture conversion into their own. Mosaic account, in placing the creation of plants before that of animals. Vegetation could have remained without animals—but these, unless their food had been ready for them, would, under their present economy of being, have soon disappeared.(1)

While most of our plants thus form the sustenance and banquet of the animated kingdom, other classes of them were made and meant to be its natural medicines and secret physicians. For this purpose, those which thus benefit are universally dispersed. We may regard many of these as useless weeds, yet they silently spread amid all vegetation, to be every where ready for the general benefit. Brutes often need them as much as ourselves, and are repeatedly seen at particular times to select and crop the herbs that they do not use for food, but to which some recollected experience, or some unexplainable perception or instinct, leads them, for their resulting efficiencies. Some of these useful plants are also so interspersed with their daily sustenance, that they cannot take the one without always digesting the other. But to man, plants have been in all ages the natu ral, and the earliest, and the most universal physicians. The metallic and mineral drugs of our modern pharmacopeias have not been above three centuries in their sanitary

(1) It is interesting to read of the mutual services which the organized kingdoms, from their reciprocal composition and structure, can render to each other. Thus an intelligent naturalist has observed of the OAK:

"The insects which live and have their being on the oak amount to hundreds of species. It nourishes ferns, lichens, mosses, agaries, and boleti. It furnishes its apples, gall-nuts, acorns, leaves, and saw-dust. Some are attacked by small fungi, which break their surface, admit moisture, and facilitate decay. The leaves, decomposing, form a vegetable earth; and the worm seizes on them as his portion, and having fed upon part draws the remainder into the earth."

Of the Ivy.-"This saves many animals from want and death in autumn and spring. In October it blooms in profusion, and its flowers become a universal banquet to the insect race. The great black fly, musca grossa, and its numerous tribe, with multitudes of small winged creatures, resort to them; also those beautiful animals, the latest birth of the year, the admiral and peacock butterflies. In its honey it yields a constant supply of food till the frosts of November. In spring, in the bitter months of March and April, when the wild products of the field are nearly consumed, the ivy ripens its berries, and almost entirely constitutes the food of the missel thrush, the wood-pigeon, and other birds," Journ. of a Naturalist, p 66, 86.