of the great secondary agents that is used by the Great Mechanist of the universe to produce it.*

Let us now direct our attention more exclusively to the principles, and nature, and chief phenomena of the vegetable creation.

Of all vegetables, and especially in their flowers, light seems to be a component part, and the cause of all their lovely colours, and to be essential to their health and vigour.t But mere light of one simple and similar kind would not have had this effect. Its beauties arise from its consisting of seven distinct and separable rays, each varying in its refrangibility, and differently reflected.‡

Hitherto, only inorganic, brute, and unliving matter, and aerial and ethereal fluids of the same character had been made their elementary particles had been combined together by the subordinate operation of those means or laws

* That light is concerned in crystallization has been suggested by several philosophers. Mr. Herschel has recently intimated his opinion, and one of no small weight, that "thus relations are discovered between the optical properties of bodies and their crystalline forms."-Disc. p. 263. I cannot but think that if light be studied on the Mosaic principle, that it preceded the particular formation of things, and was therefore an active agent assisting to produce them, and most probably a component part of all, many new and curious discoveries will reward the diligent and well-reasoning observer. Several phenomena which correspond with this idea have produced this persuasion; but I have not had leisure to pursue it in the researches which it requires for its scientific verification.

"If we expose plants cholées to the sun for four or five hours, they become coloured with a green as intense as that of plants raised in the sun. Plants raised in air grow pale and fade in two or three days, if taken to a dark place. Those reared in shade, and afterward exposed for some time to the sun, will not survive another privation of light."Leuch, Bull. Univ. 1829, p. 54. He thinks that without the light of the moon and stars, night would be fatal to vegetation. This seems too strong an inference, unless it be supposed of continued night.

Dr. Brewster has very happily expressed this fact: "If the objects of the material world had been illuminated with white light, all the particles of which possessed the same degree of refrangibility, and were equally acted upon by the bodies on which they fall, all nature would have shone with a leaden hue; and all the combinations of external objects, and all the features of the human countenance, would have exhibited no other variety than that which they possess in a pencil sketch or a china-ink drawing. But He who has exhibited such matchless skill in the organization of material bodies, and such exquisite taste in the forms upon which they are modelled, has superadded that ethereal beauty which enhances their more permanent qualities, and presents them to us in the ever-varying colours of the spectrum."--Life of Sir I. Newton, p. 78.

to which we give the names of cohesion, attraction, gravitation, crystallization, and such like; but all these made only lifeless substances and compelled movement, without any spontaneous power or self-acting principle within them. Every thing was inert until impelled; and all motion was the effect of external force, ceasing when that ceased, and never proceeding beyond its compulsory impulse, either in direction or degree.

The Deity now proceeded to a new order and principle of creation-that which is associated more immediately to himself. This was, to arrange some of the material elements of nature into definite and interesting forms, with a curious internal mechanism, within which a living principle was to abide, spontaneously acting and producing those peculiar and impressive phenomena which only life can perform. It is this living principle which brings all that pos sess it into a far nearer relation to their Maker than inert and inorganic matter-for in its lowest form and activity it is still totally unlike all that is without it, and has a certain degree of assimilation to its Creator, whose essential quality is eternal, unoriginating, and ever-during life. All vitality appears to be some communication of this grand charac teristic in himself to those things which possess it, and by which they become living beings. Their forms are his special invention and construction-and their principle of life is also his special and communicated gift.

The CREATION of VEGETABLES was the formation of living organized beings, with spontaneous internal powers, but without those of locomotivity; without thinking mind, and without any sensitivity discernible by us, and yet endowed with a principle of life that has many striking analogies with that which all animals possess, and which we ourselves enjoy.

Plants are distinguished for their multiplicity and variety, for that exuberance of imagination and taste which they display, and for that sense of elegance and beauty which their Maker must have had, to have so formed and diversified them. They are entirely the creation of his choicethe inventions of his rich and beautiful fancy. Their attractive shapes and qualities, and the abundant gratifications and important uses which we and our fellow-animals derive from them, explicitly show that kindness as well as

goodness actuated his mind when he projected and made them. They have been all individually designed: and special thought must have been employed in each; both in fixing their specific differences of form and products, and in perceiving what particular combinations and variations of arrangement would effect in every one its appointed end

and use.

The vegetable kingdom expands everywhere before us an immense portraiture of the Divine Mind, in its contriving skill, profuse imagination, conceiving genius, and exquisite taste; as well as its interesting qualities of the most gracious benignity and the most benevolent munificence. The various flowers we behold awaken these sentiments within us, and compel our reason to make these perceptions and this inference. They are the annual heralds and everreturning pledges to us of his continuing beneficence, of his desire to please and to benefit us, and therefore of his parental and intellectual amiabilities. They come to us, together with the attendant seasons that nurse and evolve them, as the appointed assurances that the world we inhabit is yet to be preserved, and the present course of things to go on. The thunder, the pestilence, and the tempest awe and humble us into dismaying recollections of his tremendous omnipotence and possible visitations, and of our total mability to resist or avert them; but the beauty and benefactions of his vegetable creations-the flowers and the fruits more especially-remind and assure us of his unforgetting care, of his condescending sympathy, of his paternal attentions, and of the same affectionate benignity still actuating his mind, which must have influenced it to design and execute such lovely and benevolent productions, that display the minutest thought, most elaborate compositions, and so much personal kindness. †

*The recorded promise is, that "WHILE the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease "--Gen. ch. viii. ver. 22. . . . . This declaration has been since steadily fulfilled for nearly forty-two centuries.

When, at night, in a dark room, we strike a light, and have the candle burning with its blaze till morning, we have a familiar instance of light without the sun; and which is independent of it. A more curious example of light in which the sun has no concern appears in the fungus rhizomorpha. "This genus, which vegetates in dark mines, far from the light of day, is remarkable for its phosphorescent properties. In

LETTER IV.

Outlines of some of the chief Principles and Properties of the Organization and System of the Vegetable Creation.

THE command for the rise of the VEGETABLE kingdom presents them to us in the three natural divisions of-the GRASSES, the HERBS, and the TREES and it extended to ordain their appearing with their reproductive powers for the formation of their seeds and fruits, in order to provide for their perpetuation on earth in an unfailing succession, without any new creation.* The Deity chose that his own agency, and the secondary forces it would employ, should take the form of that organical productivity which is still as great a mystery as it has ever been-which no natural properties or powers perceptible in external nature can at all explain-and which can therefore be justly referred only to his superintending and actuating Power, that prefers to act in this unseen efficacy, rather than in the perpetual display of manifest new creations. The invisible miracle is left to be inferred by the human sagacity, from the wonderful phenomena that are continually occurring to our eyesight, which no human or known natural agency can account for. It is thus that he makes his eternal Power and Godhead the deduction of our reason and the sentiment of our intellectual sensibility, as well as a communicated truth from his personal revelation. The appeal has been felt by all nations in all ages, although few have acted properly or consistently with the sublime impression.

Let us review some of the main features that were se

the coal mines near Dresden, it gives those places the air of an enchanted castle. The roofs, walls, and pillars are entirely covered with them; their beautiful light almost dazzling the eye."-Ed. Phil. Journ. 14, p. 178.

M. Marcel de Serres justly says, "Volcanoes which emit torrents of light teach us-que la lumiere est entrée dans la composition du globe→→ and not from the sun."-Geognosie Int. xix. Paris, 1829.

"And ELOHIM said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so."-Gen, ch. i. ver. 11.

lected and adopted to mark and constitute the system for that peculiar order of living things which the vegetable tribes display.

All vegetables, in every region, and of all sorts, from the most minute to the most towering,-and they are of every degree and variety of size, from that pettiness which escapes our natural sight, to that magnitude which we feel to be gigantic and would deem sublime, but that greater things are about us,-have these properties in common with all animals and with the human race-organization; an interior power of progressive growth; a principle of life, with many phenomena that resemble irritability, excitability, and susceptibility; and a self-reproductive and multiplying faculty. In all these qualities they are distinguished from inorganic and earthy matter, and from all fluids and gases; and by these are raised high in the scale of being above them. In these they resemble all animated nature, and our prouder selves. We may dislike such a relationship; but to this extent our bodily frame and functions establish a natural kinship between us. They are very humble cousins, but we cannot destroy the organical and living affinity, nor escape the closing assimilation. We decline and die, as they do; and they sicken, fade, die, and decay, like every human being. There is also another analogy. Their substance nourishes us, and ours not unfrequently becomes a part of theirs. They can feed on us, as we more continually and universally do on them. All living nature is linked together by actual connexion, if not by perceivable sympathies.

Organization of Plants.-An organized being is a peculiar conception and fabrication of the Divine mind. And vegetables have been caused to be organized beings of definite figures, diversified from each other into distinct classes and species; but each species constantly retaining and perpetuating its own peculiar configurations and the qualities thence resulting-and all with a living principle within them. Life and organization are inseparable companions.

To form a correct idea of what an organized being is, you may observe, that in human mechanism we have an imitation and an analogy of vegetable and animal organization, which enable us more fully to understand it, and to perceive how it has originated. Neither watches, cottonmills, nor steam-engines grow: they must be made by hu