sequence than its severity. How many delinquents have escaped from the control of public justice and gone abroad, hardened in crime, because humane and liberal juries have shuddered at the thought of consenting to the death of a fellow-being! Forgery is no longer a capital offence, and hence it is less common.

Transportation for life has been deemed, perhaps by many, a heavier punishment than that of death. But why should the transported person be neglected and despised? We should pierce, with the eye of faith, through the shades of guilt and woe, to the light of heaven, the light, which beaming from Calvary's mount and Joseph's tomb, shineth in a dark place; we should reverence the marks and signatures of a spiritual undying nature; and we should look with joy at the trophies erected by Divine grace to melt the stony heart into penitence, and help the endeavours of firm and determined virtue. Let the convict be surrounded with moral influences, protected from dangerous temptations, and supplied with the means of religious knowledge, the food of the soul; and then, from its dark and deep recesses, a friendly voice may ascend, a sacred light spread, to show that we ought to love one another as God loves us, and proves and recommends his love by lifting us out from some of the foulest pits into which it is possible for us to fall.

A modern writer, deservedly popular,* makes on this subject the following excellent remarks :—

"Few know how numerous are the cases where it has subsequently been discovered that the innocent suffered instead of the guilty. Yet one such case in an age, is surely enough to make legislators pause before they give a vote against the abolition of Capital Punishment. But many say the Old Testament requires blood for blood. So it requires that a woman should be put to death for adultery, and men for doing work on the Sabbath, and children for cursing their parents; and if an ox were to push with his horn in time past, and it hath been testified to his owner, and he hath not kept him in, but that he hath killed a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned and his owner also shall be put to death.'

The commands given to Jews in the old dispensation do not form the basis of any legal code in Christendom, and to select one command and leave the others out, is manifestly absurd.

It is to be trusted that not alone from the chance of condemning a wrong party, but from general motives of humanity and a consideration of the utter uselessness of public executions in the way of example, Capital Punishments will ere long be numbered among the extinct barbarisms of a past age, and other and more rational means adopted for maintaining the integrity of the law and the peace of society."

* Chambers.

Let us apply this subject to personal improvement and individual reformation. He serves his country who keeps himself pure and makes his home a sanctuary. When we feel a flash of angry passion, or a spark of vindictive hate kindle in our bosoms, let us endeavour as soon as possible to extinguish it, and as we have opportunity to do good to all men, even to our enemies, that we may be the children of the Most High who is good and kind to the unthankful and evil; who set a mark upon the first murderer that he might be protected, not destroyed; and who, in his various dispensations of providence and grace, speaks, in the mild accents of a Father's voice, to every creature, that neglecting the law of love, has erred and strayed from his ways, saying "Oughtest thou not to have compassion on thy fellow-servant, even as I had pity on thee ?"

Let us, as a debt we owe to England, enter, without delay, a firm and vigorous protest against bloody strife abroad, and Death Punishment at home, as alike inconsistent with the Christian spirit and hurtful to public morals. Let us vindicate truth with an apostle's zeal and a martyrs' courage, for truth is no local, temporary, shadowy thing. It is immutable and everlasting. It will outlive mitres and tiaras, sceptres and thrones. It is beyond price and above praise. It is the same through all changes in all worlds. It is one with God, omnipotent as his arm and immortal as his love.

D. D. S.

THE WAY TO BE HAPPY.

THERE was an Italian Bishop who had struggled through great difficulties without repining, and who met with much opposition in the discharge of his episcopal function, without ever betraying the least impatience. An intimate friend of his who highly admired those virtues, which he thought it impossible to imitate, one day asked the Prelate if he could communicate the secret of being always easy? "Yes," replied the old man, "I can teach you my secret, and with great facility: it consists in nothing more than making a right use of my eyes." His friend begged him to explain himself. "Most willingly," returned the Bishop. "In whatever state I am, I first of all look up to heaven, and remember that my principle business is to get there. I then look down upon the earth, and call to mind what a small space I shall occupy, when I come to be interred. I then look abroad into the world, and observe what multitudes are there, who are, in all respects more unhappy than myself. Thus I learn where true happiness is placed; where all our cares must end; and how very little reason I have to repine, or to complain."

NATURAL THEOLOGY.

No. IV.

PROOFS OF DESIGN IN INSECTS.

To those who are lovers of beauty, to those who are still alive to the recollections of early pleasures, to those who rejoice at contemplating anything that ministers to human improvement or happiness, and to those, especially, whose delight it is to trace every where, in the lowliest as in the loftiest, the impress of the Divine finger, INSECTS offer a study possessed of no mean attractions. Nothing can exceed the resplendent or delicate hues, with which the wings, or wing-cases, or bodies of some of them are tinted, bronzed, or enamelled; and the Diamond Beetle especially, when viewed beneath the microscope, is cased in jewellery, brighter than which was never worn by "Solomon in all his glory." How the LadyBird and the Butterfly, the universal favourites of childhood, bear us back in a moment to those gay and innocent years! How the Grasshopper speaks to us of the tangled hedgerow, and the open field, and the breezy down, recalling hours there consumed with many we have loved, and some we have lost! How the Beetle, "wheeling his drony flight," is connected for ever with the solemnities of the vesper hour, and the exquisite Elegy of Gray! And, how the "cricket on the hearth" speaks of domestic comfort and tranquillity, and all the charities and amenities of home! To the philanthropist, however, emotions still more pleasing are excited, when he thinks of the great advantages conferred by some of these little beings on the human species. Thus regarded, the Silkworm is a great benefactor of our race; for it gives employment to at least a million and a half of human beings, and causes an annual circulation of between thirty and forty millions of pounds sterling. The Cochineal insect furnishes us with one of our richest dyes, to make even one pound of which, seventy thousand of them contribute not only their bodies, but their lives; and they further cause a circulation of almost two hundred thousand pounds annually. The sticklac, seed-lac, lump-lac, and shell-lac of commerce, so much used for making ink, sealing-wax, and varnishes, besides in other branches of manufacture, is the collected coatings of gum with which a small East Indian fly covers her eggs, either as a protection, or as food, for her young when they are hatched. For this lac, and for a dye prepared from it, which is often used as a substitute for cochineal, we pay an

nually upwards of two hundred thousand pounds. To omit other instances of a similar kind, the friend of enlightenment and progress should never forget, that to an insect we are indebted for the gall-nut used in preparing that ink, wherewith the gifted of our kind shall yet succeed in obliterating Intemperance, War, Slavery, Capital Punishments, Tyranny, Error in Economics, in Politics, in Morals, in Theology, and thereby many of the evils which still, because of our ignorance or our selfishness, continue to afflict humanity.

One of the most striking peculiarities connected with insects is the metamorphoses they undergo. At the first emergence of one of them from the egg it is called a larva, and most nearly resembles a worm, or caterpillar. After attaining its full growth in this condition, it ceases to take food, becomes completely torpid, and loses all appearance of vitality. In this state, in which it sometimes continues for months, enclosed in some species of shroud it has woven for itself, it is styled a pupa or chrysalis. Lastly, at the appointed time it "bursts its cerements," and sports amid flowers and sunbeams, the Imago, or perfect insect. Its habits, especially as regards the amount of food consumed, are very different in the first and last of these conditions. In the larva state its voracity is extreme, as the depredations frequently committed in our gardens too truly testify; its increase of bulk is naturally proportionate, so that some caterpillars when full grown will weigh seventy or eighty thousand times as much as they did the moment after they were hatched. When it attains the dignity of being a complete Butterfly, on the other hand, it consumes but little, and is a perfect epicure in its choice, but sipping, as it passes, the dew from the floral chalices. The digestive apparatus is in each case adapted to the temporary habit, and is altered as the habit alters. In the larva, which devours and assimilates three or four times its own weight of food in the twenty-four hours, the stomach is of an immense size when compared with the whole dimensions of its body, to effect the digestion of such an enormous quantity of alimentary matter. During the transition-slumber, the stomach gradually diminishes, till, in the perfect insect, it has attained a size, and consequently a power, analagous to the moderate repasts in which the creature then indulges. This beautiful change of structure to such a corresponding change in the wants of the being itself is a striking proof of design, and therefore of a Mind as the framer and watcher over the insect. But, this is not all. How is the tiny animal

to be kept alive during its long sleep of weeks' and months' duration? is there no danger of its perishing of inanition? This has been foreseen and provided against; for the larvae become unusually fat just before entering into the chrysalis state, and this fat, being taken up by the different vessels, as really affords nutriment for the body and general system as if it were immediately derived from without. Nature, therefore," the name of an effect whose cause is God," has not doomed even this child of hers to its long imprisonment in its cocoon, without placing beside it, or rather within it, food sufficient to preserve it alive for the day of its emancipation. But, the whole of this great transformation is alike wonderful, and alike points, for its plan and effectuation, to a most wise Intelligence. That, in the crawling body of a perhaps unsightly worm, there should be concealed, folded up, in an undeveloped state, the rudiments of the feathered antennæthe six nimble and nicely-jointed legs-the pair or more of gauze-like, veined, and beautifully-painted wings-the compound eyes, with their almost innumerable facets, all of which are of no use to it then, but which will be of incalculable benefit when it enters on another sphere of existence-when it ceases to be an inhabitant of the ground and becomes a denizen of air; this is such a beautiful and bountiful provision for a future, which is not yet come, that we are compelled to acknowledge a Provider, and to acknowledge him with rejoicing.

Not only is there the adaptation we have pointed out of the digestive apparatus in insects to their first and final states; but, the construction of the mouth and its appendages, in the different orders, varies in the exactest manner with the nature of the food on which it is to subsist. Those which live on hard animal substances have jaws of a horny texture, and of a size large and well-developed. Such as feed chiefly, but not exclusively, on juices, are supplied with organs of suction, accompanied with organs for mastication; while such as prefer a liquid diet exclusively, are void of the latter, and have the former in a state of greater perfection. That man (if such any where there be) must be blind indeed who can ascribe contrivances so numerous and varied as these, to senseless and capricious chance.

Another proof of attention to the wants and necessities of these little creatures is furnished by the peculiar apparatus for freeing their bodies from dust and filth, with which many of them are provided. The Spider seems to have the great