the families seem suddenly to develope themselves; and this general impulse, which all nature seems to receive, continues augmenting till the middle of January, when it attains its acmè. The forests present, then, an aspect of movement and life, of which our woods in Europe can give no idea. During part of the day we hear a vast and uninterrupted hum, in which the deafening cry of the treehopper prevails, and you cannot take a step, or touch a leaf, without putting insects to flight. At eleven in the forenoon, the heat has become almost insupportable, and all animated nature becomes torpid; the noise diminishes; the insects and other animals disappear, and are seen no more till the evening. Then, when the atmosphere is again cool, to the morning species succeed others, whose office it is to embellish the nights of the torrid zone. I am speaking of the glowworms and fire-flies; whilst the former, issuing by myriads from their retreats, overspread the plants and shrubs, the latter, crossing each other in all directions, weave in the air, as it were, a luminous web, the light of which they diminish or augment at pleasure. This brilliant illumination only ceases when the night gives place to the day.*

These observations as to the effects of climate within the tropics, harmonizing as they do with what occurs in other regions of the earth, tend to show what surprising attention has been paid by the great Creator to the adaptation of organized existences, both vegetable and animal, 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.

* Kirby's Bridgewater Treatise, vol. ii. pp. 250-1.

SECOND WEEK-THURSDAY.

ADAPTATION OF ORGANIZED EXISTENCES TO TEMPERATE AND POLAR CLIMATES.

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 farther the subject is investigated, the more shall we find reason to admire and adore the Divine wisdom, so variously, and every where so bcneficently 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. A description, abridged from Goldsmith, may suffice for our purpose.

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 found spots of verdure, in the dreary wastes inhabited by the Arabian, which, though remote from each other, are, in a manner, approximated by the labour 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 on to its extreme verge, toward 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 favoured 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 corruscations 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 neighbouring 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 remains; and, within these apparently miserable habitations, they experience more enjoyment than the natives of more genial climes can easily conceive possible. The frost preserves, from corruption, the animal food they have stored; and, so long as their provisions remain, care and distress scarcely find access to their minds. 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 attended.

Of

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. 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 rigour of the season; of the instinct which induces some to emigrate 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, not perhaps without enjoyment; and of other matters connected with the season of winter in that inhospitable climate, which indicate, even in that apparently neglected corner of the world, unequivocal proofs of beneficent design, we shall afterward 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.

SECOND WEEK-FRIDAY.

I. THE STARRY HEAVENS.

Nothing is better calculated to raise the contemplative mind to the great Author of all things, than a view of the starry heavens, when night has cast her deep shade over the face of nature, and the breath of winter has not only converted the earth into stone, and the waters into crystal, but has charmed the exhalations from the air, and