1391. [Gen. i. 6. Let there be a firmament] This expanse would be produced by the centrifugal force of the Earth's rotatory motion round its axis: which force reacts as centripetal against the centrifugal force of the revolving sun. But as the repelling ferce of the Sun's sphere will inevitably overpower that of the Earth, this latter body must be constantly driven off to a still greater distance. Mr. PARKER of Fleet-street, London, observed in the rays of the sun, at the focus of a burning-glass, a violent rotatory motion, which became visible on a small mass of gold when melted; for the gold instantly assumed a motion round its axis, and that invariably the same way as the earth moves round its axis. The velocity of this motion was accelerated, if at any time the sun shone with greater brightness than before. Thus is the earth turned by the Sun's rays. Apply the same idea to all the earths in the Universe; and account for the difference of their rotatory velocities, by their respective distances from the Sun. would necessarily raise an obstruction to the equinoctial current above described [See No. 48.]; and cause from that time such mutations in the flux of the ocean, as constitute what is now called the gulf-stream. This current, remarks the ingenious and scientific HUMBOLDT, carried at first to the north-west, and passing into the gulf of Mexico through the strait which is formed by False Cape and Cape St. Antonio, follows the bendings of the Mexican coast, from Vera Cruz to the mouth of the Rio del Norte, and thence to the mouths of the Mississippi, and the shoals to the west of the southern extremity of Florida. Having made this vast circuit to the west, the north, the east, and the south, the current takes a new direction towards the north, and throws itself with impetuosity into the Gulf of Florida; whence it issues again towards the Straits of Gibraltar, the Isle of Madeira, and the group of the Canary Islands. Knowing by repeated experiments the swiftness of this spontaneous flux, and its circuit to be 3800 leagues, we can estimate that a boat, with no extraneous impulsion, could not return by it to the same place from which it departed, in less than two years and ten months. It would require, for instance, thirteen months so to pass from the Canary islands to the coasts of Caraccas; ten months, to make the tour of the gulf of Mexico and reach Tortoise-shoals opposite the port of Havannah; while forty or fifty days might be sufficient to carry it from the Straits of Florida to the bank of Newfoundland. It would be difficult indeed, to fix the rapidity of the retrograde current from this bank to the coasts of Africa: estimating however, the mean velocity at seven or eight miles in twenty-four hours, we shall find ten or eleven months requisite for this last distance. Singular effects are produced by this slow but regular motion. Fruits from the torrid zone of America, are annually cast on the western coasts of Ireland and Norway. And WALLACE relates, that twice, in 1682 and 1684, American savages of the race of the Esquimaux, driven out to sea in their leathern canoes, during a storm, and left to the guidance of the currents, reached the Orcades. This last example is so much the more worthy of attention, as it proves at the same time how, in the infant state of the world, the spontaneous motion of the sea would providentially contribute to disseminate the different races of men over the face of the globe. 1394. When the waters of the universal sea covering the earth, had been raised into the atmosphere till the dry land began to appear, the Continent of America, if created in its present form of stretching from south to north, 1396. [Gen. i. 11, 12. And the earth brought forth grass, the herb yielding seed &c.] In the physicks of the poets and B 1398. From the Asiatic Researches, vol. ii. p. 393, we learn that the Indians made astronomical observations, so early as in the year 1181 before the birth of Christ. By repeated observations on the starry heavens, their Brahmins remarked that the course of the stars was in a certain measure retarded by their ascension and distance from the earth. They calculated this retardation, and found that, since the moon with her apogeum and ascending nodes was in conjunction with the sun on the first of April, 1,955,884,890 years must have elapsed; and that 2,364,115,110 years were necessary to produce it again: this grand period of complete revolution being thus 4,320,000,000 years. 1399. BARTOLOMEO, by Johnston, p. 349. -- If philosophy was formerly brought from India to Europe, why should it not return from polished Europe to degenerated India? (St. PIERRE.) - HOLWELL first directed the attention of Europears to the Writings of the Indians, and the excellent ideas they entertain respecting the Deity, Providence, and Virtue. Since that period, Hastings, Sir W. Jones, Halhed, Wilkins (Swedenborg), and others, have made us acquainted with many fragments of the Indian wisdom of early times. BARTOLOMEO, by Johnston, p. 378. 1405. In Ching-Tu, MARTINI tells us, there is a small extraordinary bird with a red tail, and the finest variety of feathers: It is there called Tong-hoa-fang, that is, the bird of the flower Tong-hoa; from which it is supposed to be produced, and which it is so like, that one would imagine it to be a living flower. (Atlas Sinens, Martiniere, et al.) This bird, however, is now no-where to be found but in the books of the Chinese geographers. Modern Univer. Hist. vol. viii. p. 222. 1406. [Gen. i. 22.] All that now live in the sea are piscivorous; except that Barbels, unlike the rest, are just and mild, OPPIAN'S Halieutics, b. 2, vol. 1054. Thus, from God alone, proceeds all that is good in Creation; from man aloue, all that is evil and infernal; but from God and man conjoined, all that is spiritual and celestial. In the productions of the First Chapter, God is alone in the institutions of the Second, God and man join; in the disorders of the Third, man is separated, and becomes a curse. 1407. [Gen. i. 24.] The earth produces nothing of itself, but all things by the assistance of water impregnated with seeds; which it deposits in its bosom. SHERLEY, p. 109. Thales of Miletus, the first philosopher that wrote in Greek, held water to be the beginning of things; and that God out of water framed all things. CICERO, de Naturâ Deorum, lib. i. cap. 2. Orpheus teaching that, ek tou hudatos ilus kateste (Grk.), of water, slime was made; and Apollonius, that ex ilou eblaste chthonaute, earth, of slime was made; the scholiasts, in explaining the words, affirm that the Chaos, of which all things were made, was water, which coagulated itself and became slime; and that slime condensed, became solid earth. SHERLEY, on the Origin of 1410. [Gen. i. 27.] “ M. Buffon, from the rule, That animals which can procreate together, and whose progeny can also procreate, are of one species; concludes, that all inen are of one race or species; and endeavours to support that favourite opinion by ascribing to the climate, to food, or other accidental causes, all the varieties that are found among men. But is he seriously of opinion, that any operation of climate, or of other accidental cause can account for the coppercolor and smooth chin universal among the Americans; or the black nipple no less universal among the female Samoiedes? It is in vain to ascribe to the climate the low stature of the Esquimaux, the smallness of their feet, or the overgrown size of their heads. It is equally in vain to ascribe to climate the low stature of the Laplanders, or their ugly visage. The black color of negroes, their lips, flat nose, crisped woolly hair, and rank smell, distinguish them from every other race of men. The Abyssinians, on the contrary, are tall and well made, their complexion a brown olive, fcatures well proportioned, eyes large and of a sparkling black, thin lips, a nose rather high than flat. There is no such difference of climate between Abyssinia and Negro-land, as to produce these striking differences." "Nor can this hypothesis concerning the extremities of heat and cold, be supported with respect to the sallow complexion of the Samoiedes, Laplanders, and Greenlanders. The Finlanders, and northern Norwegians, live in a climate less cold than that of the people mentioned; and yet are fair beyond other Europeans. I say more, there are many instances of races of people preserving their original color, in climates very different from their own; but not a single instance of the contrary, as far as I can learn. There have been four complete generations of negroes in Pennsylvania, without any visible change of color ; they continue jet-black, as originally. Those who ascribe all to the sun, ought to consider how little probable it is, that the color it impresses on the parents should be communicated to their infant children, who never saw the sun. Let a European, for years, expose himself to the sun in a hot climate, till he be quite brown; his children will nevertheless have the same complexion with those in Europe. From the action of the sun, is it possible to explain, why a negro, like a European, is born with a ruddy skin, which turns jet-black the eighth or ninth day ?” "Upon summing up the whole particulars mentioned above, would one hesitate a moment to adopt the following opinion, where there is no counterbalancing evidence, viz. 'That God created many pairs of the human race, differing from each other, both externally and internally; that he fitted those pairs for different climates, and placed each pair in its proper climate; and that the peculiarities of the original pairs were preserved entire in their descendants ?'" See No. 63. Lord KAMES, as quoted in the History of America, vol. i. pp. 137–139. 1423. See KIRWAN'S Geological Facts, as quoted in Bib. Research, vol. i. p. 217. Every animal has a particular plant on which it lives. There is not one even among the carnivorous, but what makes use of some species of vegetable. This is observable not only in dogs, which feed on the grass that bears their name, and in wolves, foxes, birds of prey, which eat the plants denominated from the names of the respective animals, but even in the fishes of the sea, which are entire strangers to our element. Most of them come to spawn on our coasts, only when certain plants are in flower, or in fruit. If these happen to be destroyed, the fishes visit us no longer. St. PIERRE's Studies of Nature, vol. i. p. 48. 1424. Providence at first presented to man his food ready dressed in the fruits of trees. He placed principally for this purpose, between the Tropics, the banana and the bread-fruit; in the Temperate Zones, the ever-green oak, and especially the chesnut-tree which produces more substantial fruit than the corn-plant on ground of equal extent with its branches; and perhaps in the Frigid Zone, the pine, whose kernels are eatable. Men ought accordingly to promote the culture of every tree which produces alimentary fruit, and attempt to naturalize in public gardens all the foreign vegetables, capable of furnishing new means of subsistence and of industry. 1425. The corn-plant, probably, was not intended for man's food at first. See Gen. iii. 19. It is no-where indigenous at present. Its grain, from the form and size, appears more adapted to the beak of birds. Its culture also is so laborious and difficult, that not a twentieth part of mankind eats bread. Almost all the people of Asia live on rice which needs no other preparation for the table, but to be stripped of its peilicle and boiled. Africa lives on millet; America on manioc, potatoes and other roots. 1426. Ibid, val. iv. p. 433. The potato possesses two modes of securing its reproduction, the one by producing tuberous roots, the other by the general mode of flowers and seedvessels. As the plant employs the same fluid in both these operations, if its blossoms are constantly picked off, and it is prevented from forming any seed at all, all the fluid which would have been employed in that operation will be exerted in forming an increased crop of tubers. Now, as the blossoming tops of the potato, when boiled, are equal to the best spinage, the scanty pittance of the poor and the advantage of the farmer may be considerably increased by permitting indigent persons or their children gratuitously to crop the potato-fields, not suffering a seed-vessel to be formed on any of the plants. 1427. See The Statesman, No. 2018, p. 3. The Earl of Lauderdale calculates that, on his plan of using a wholly vegetable diet, a farm consisting of 504 statute acres, under the management which he directs, would produce sufficient for the support of 1,977 people; and consequently that nine millions of people, the supposed population of England, would require only 2,412,746 acres. that case England would support 180,000,000, of people; that is, twenty times its present number of inhabitants. See Gen. iii. 18. In 1428. [Gen. i. 31.] It deserves to be duly examined, whether a supposed evil in the works of God may not be more than counterbalanced by advantages undiscovered by the superficial observer. The lady-bird, because its larvæ are found in the cankered spots of fruit-trees, has been supposed to be the cause of their blight, though it is in reality the best remedy against that disease: This beautiful little insect, both when perfect and in its larva-state, feeds entirely on the aphis, a genus of which the blight in question is a species. Rooks cover the fresh-ploughed fields, not in search of grain, but of the various grubs and worms injurious to the future crop. Pigeons prefer to wheat and barley the small seeds of the time-tare and melilot, which are weeds among the corn. The hedge-hog, falsely accused of sucking cows, feeds altogether ou beetles, cockchafers, and other insects, which are extremely injurious to the agriculturist either in their larva or perfect state. Worms and grubs are also the food of the mole; and although, in his mining process, he undoubtedly 1432. [Gen. ii. 5.] There are two worlds, says PLATO: one that has the form of a paradigin or exemplar, which is au intelligible world, ever existing; the other, au image of the exemplar, had a beginning and is visible. God, he adds, making use of this exemplar, frames the idea and powers; that is, the seeds of things in the intelligible world, into material beings and actual existences in the visible world. Thus Plato makes the first and original idea, resident in the Divine Wisdom or mind of God, to be the cause of the secondary idea or seed, which contains the picture of the thing to be made, and depends for its continued existence ou the primary or original idea and exemplar seated in God Himself. |