ference of the globe is to us. For Nature constitutes a mirror, in which the Eternal seems to allow himself to be seen greatest in his smallest works: while, though a sublime mystery envelops and conceals, in awful solitudes, the first principles of life and reason; yet, as it is the privilege of a great mind to be capable of seeing much, where common minds see little, the most apparently insignificant object will frequently present to an enlarged imagination more than all the associations, connected with Raphael's school of Athens. COMPARATIVE QUALITIES. IF charms are elicited from resemblances, Nature, too, exhibits contrasts, which, in their harmonies, present exquisite beauty. The solitudes of the Alps frequently afford instances of this in respect to colours. The ice is blue; the rocks of a dark brown; and the sky of a deep serene azure: while the crocus, the snowdrop, and the laurustinus derive no little of their beauty from the snow, that surrounds them. The almond-tree of Africa, the finest flowering tree on that continent, delicate as are its blossoms, derives, also, additional beauty from the circumstance, that it blows when few other trees are even ornamented with leaves. Contrasts are also exhibited in the manners and capacities of animals in the effects of plants. The horse can feed upon hemlock; the Egyptian parrot upon the seeds of the carthamus; the pholas, the most humble of insects, has the power of boring into the hardest marble; and though the body of a star-fish is of a nature as soft as water, yet it swallows and digests objects, as hard as are the shells of muscles: and herons, though large and awkward, take a perpendicular flight; while hawks in pursuit of them, though apparently more capable of the action, take a circuitous one. Some plants, which are poisonous in moist soils and situations, in dry ones are resolvent, carminative, and aromatic : such are the sea holly, and the water navel-wort. But one of the greatest vegetable wonders, in respect to contrast, is presented in the root of the cassada: since, though in its crude state it is highly poisonous; by washing, pressure, and evaporation, it not only loses all its noxious qualities, but in tropical climates constitutes the bread of thousands. In Europe, mineral impregnations are fatal to vegetable productions. In Chili, however, they have no effect upon them whatever : while near the south cape of Africa iron, or its oxyds, mixed with clay, moistened with water, produces a most exuberant vegetation. In the northern regions the phalæna a tribe of insects, which, in the south, fly about in the evening, reverse their habits in Lapland by flying in the day, and reposing in the night. In Sweden the raspberry grows best among ruins and conflagrated woods; and the epilobium angustifolium, a native of every country in Europe, flourishes no where in such magnificence, as in a country where every plant diminishes in size. Cork, which is the bark of a tree, has a multitude of pores: wood itself comparatively few yet water and spirit will exude through wood, which has larger pores, sooner than they will through cork. Water elicits heat from lime; and clay, which is of a ductile nature, will become so hard with heat, as to strike fire with steel. Flint, the covering of which is rough, presents a smooth surface in whatever manner it is struck; and though to the touch it is as cold as snow, when struck with iron it elicits gems of fire. Sand, when mixed with lime, hardens into mortar; when mixed with soda and potash it will soften into glass. Lime makes water solid, and metals fluid. Bismuth, which is brittle, will, when combined with other metals, give them hardness and though platina is remarkably ductile, yet it cannot be heated in a forge. The diamond, the hardest of bodies, is yet susceptible of the most brilliant polish; and the : b Clarke, Scandinavia, 524, 4to. a Acerbi, ii. 248, 4to. e Flora Lapponica. oxyde of arsenic, which is a deadly poison, is frequently used in medicine for a beneficial purpose: while sulphur, one of the most combustible of substances, enters into combination with silver, copper, iron, pyrites, zinc, and other metals:-it even enters into the composition of sea water. COMPARATIVE FECUNDATION. CONTRASTS, too, may be observed in the relative fecundities of animals and vegetables. An orange tree generally yields from 1,500 to 2,400 oranges; but an elm, living a hundred years, produces not less than 33,000,000 of grains. I once counted in a single plant of the purpura digitalis 107,000 seeds. Some plants are, indeed, so prolific, that one flower producing only four seeds, would, if left to itself, in a very short space of time, spread from one end of the globe to the other. Rapacious birds generally lay but four eggs: some, however, only two: as the eagle, the cinerous vulture, and the great horned owl. The merlin and the kestril lay six. Pigeons, on the other hand, are so prolific, that the produce of two pairs in four years may amount to 29,200. Vipers lay from six to ten eggs; the sea-tortoise ninety; the crocodile a hundred; spiders a thousand; and frogs eleven hundred. The termes bellicosus even lays 80,000 eggs in four-and-twenty hours! The muscaria carnaria increase so fast, that some have not hesitated even to assert, that three of them will devour a horse, as quickly as a lion: while a single aphis, if undisturbed for five generations, will amount to 5,904,000,000. Fishes are equally wonderful in their relative powers of production: for though some large fishes produce only one, carps spawn 342,144 ovila; and cod not unfrequently 9,384,000! In the relative appetites of plants and animals, also, we may trace remarkable contrasts. The earthworm lives upon a small portion of very fine earth: but the caterpillar eats double its weight in a day: and the dragon-fly more than three times its weight in an hour. The leech weighs only a scruple; but when gorged, two drachms. The leech never eats; and the house cricket never drinks: while the roughette bat drinks so copiously of the juice of the palm-tree, that it becomes intoxicated; when it is easily caught. If we recur to vegetables, we find similitudes equally extraordinary. The sunflower imbibes and perspires, in one day and night, sixteen times more than a man of moderate growth and firm constitution. COMPARATIVE WEIGHTS. EQUAL weights always imply equal quantities, let the relative dimensions be ever so disproportionate. A column of air from the earth to the upper regions of the atmosphere is equal, in weight, to a column of water of thirty-three feet; and to a column of mercury of twenty-nine inches and a half. On a knowledge of this is constructed the barometer. Some substances have no sensible weight; as caloric, light, electricity, the magnetic fluid, and the effluence of flowers. Next to these are animalcules of infusion; some of which are so small, that two hundred of them are contained in a space, occupied by the minutest grain of sand. Then we may proceed to visible seeds; thence to invisible ones; contrasting them, at the same time, with the vegetables they respectively produce. Cesalpini first compared the seeds of plants to the eggs of animals. Their relative increase in weight, from their embryos to perfect animals and plants, has never been ascertained in a general way but Desaguliers found the root of a turnip to be 438,000 times heavier than its seed: and Mons. du Petit Thouars exhibited an onion to the Royal Society of a Vid. de Plantis, Romæ, 1603, 4to.; also Appendix ad Libros de Plantis, 4to, Florence, 1583. France, which weighed three pounds seven ounces. Calculating the weight of the seeds, and the periods of their respective growths, a result was found, that the onion gained three times its original weight, every minute, and the turnip seven ! If we calculate the height of Trajan's column, and the dome of St. Peter's, we find they do not reach so high as the rocks of Dover: while Solomon's temple was not higher than a sugar maple-tree. If we proceed to length, there is no work of art longer than the wall of China: but Nature has one mineral (gold), one single ounce of which is capable of being extended to a distance, not less than 13,000 miles. It may be beaten into 159,092 times its original space; and to a thinness of 300 part of an inch. 1 45 DESERTS. An attentive investigator observes little or no monotony in Nature. Day succeeds to morning; evening to noon; and night to evening: summer to spring, and winter to autumn. Even the sea itself changes frequently in the course of a day. When the sun shines, its colour is cerulean; when it gleams through a mist, it is yellow; and as the clouds pass over, it not unfrequently assumes the tintings of the clouds themselves. The same uniformity may be observed throughout the whole of Nature; even the glaciers of the Grisons presenting varied aspects, though clad in perpetual snow. At dawn of day they appear saffron ; at noon their whiteness is that of excess; and as the sun sinks in the west, the lakes become as yellow as burnished gold: while their convex and peaked summits reflect, with softened lustre, the matchless tintings of an evening sky. Hence Virgil applies the epithet purpureuma to the sea; and not unfrequently to mountains: while Statius colours the b b Theb. iii. 440. |