If, from the inferior animal creation, we turn to man, the same traces of a paternal hand are seen in providing against, or compensating for, the privations of winter. If our natural instincts and defences are not so numerous as those of the brutes, reason and foresight amply supply their place. Influenced by these, we build comfortable houses, of materials which are every where to be found, and collect supplies of fuel from bogs and forests, or dig them out of the bowels of the earth, where they are laid up as in storehouses; and we rear flocks and herds to furnish us with the means of food and clothing. Meanwhile, necessary industry occupies and cheers the dreary season; and books or social intercourse improve and exhilarate the mind.

All these proofs of paternal care deserve and will obtain a separate consideration; but the simple mention of them is calculated to call forth sentiments of pious admiration and gratitude. "Who knoweth not in all these, that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this."

SECOND WEEK-MONDAY.

PRACTICAL EFFECT OF THE COMMERCIAL SPIRIT PRODUCED BY A VARIETY OF CLIMATES.

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Ir would be very interesting to trace the progress of mercantile spirit, arising from the wants of one climate, and the superabundance of another; but this is a speculation which the nature of this work will not permit us to pursue in its various bearings; and I must confine myself to a rapid view of the practical effects actually produced by it in European countries, and especially in our

own.

The desire to possess, when once thoroughly awakened, becomes insatiable; and this, again, gives a proportional stimulus to the spirit of enterprise which induces the

traveller to urge his discoveries, and the trader to compass sea and land in the transport of produce from country to country; while the artificer, the manufacturer, and the agriculturist, each in his own department, exert their industry, skill, and ingenuity, in turning to account the knowledge and the materials which thus flow in upon them. It is because neither the climate nor the soil of any one country is naturally suited to the production of all the luxuries and conveniences which man covets, and because, even where these objects of desire might be produced by human industry, they are not naturally to be found, that the intercourse between distant countries takes place, on which so much of the civilization of the world depends. The ingenuity of man being thus stimulated, produces the most surprising changes, and promotes in an astonishing degree the means of human subsistence and enjoyment. It is not merely that the varied riches of other lands are imported, but that an essential alteration is effected in the actual produce of the soil.

It is a remarkable fact, noticed by Mr Whewell, that where man is an active cultivator, he scarcely ever bestows much of his care on those vegetables which the land would produce in a state of nature. He does not select some of the plants of the soil, and improve them by careful culture, but, for the most part, he expels the native possessors of the land, and introduces colonies of strangers. This remark he proceeds to exemplify in the condition of our own part of the globe.

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Scarcely one of the plants," he says, " which occupy our fields and gardens, is indigenous to the country. The walnut and the peach come to us from Persia; the apricot from Armenia. From Asia Minor and Syria, we have the cherry-tree, the fig, the pear, the pomegranate, the olive, the plum, and the mulberry. The vine which is now cultivated, is not a native of Europe, it is found wild on the shores of the Caspian, in Armenia, and Caramania. The most useful species of plants, the cereal vegetables, are certainly strangers, though their birth

place seems to be an impenetrable secret. Some have fancied that barley is found wild on the banks of the Semara, in Tartary; rye in Crete; wheat at Baschkiros, in Asia; but this is held by the best botanists to be very doubtful. The potato, which has been so widely diffused over the world, in modern times, and has added so much to the resources of life in many countries, has been found equally difficult to trace back to its wild condition."

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“In our own country,” Mr Whewell goes on to observe, a higher state of the arts of life is marked by a more ready and extensive adoption of foreign productions. Our fields are covered with herbs from Holland, and roots from Germany; with Flemish farming, and Swedish turnips; our hills with forests of the firs of Norway. The chestnut and the poplar of the south of Europe adorn our lawns, and below them flourish shrubs and flowers, from every clime, in profusion. In the mean time, Arabia improves our horses, China our pigs, North America our poultry, Spain our sheep, and almost every country sends its dog. The products which are ingredients in our luxuries, and which we cannot naturalize at home, we raise in our colonies; the cotton, coffee, and sugar of the east, are thus transplanted to the farthest west; and man lives in the midst of a rich and varied abundance, which depends on the facility with which plants and animals, and modes of culture can be transferred into lands far removed from those in which nature had placed them. And this plenty and variety of material comforts is the companion and the mark of advantages and improvements in social life, of progress in art and science, of activity of thought, of energy of purpose, and of ascendancy of character."

This splendid display of the effects of commercial and agricultural intercourse, which might easily be enlarged, depending as that intercourse mainly does on the in

* Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise, p. 71.-He observes in a note, that it appears now to be ascertained that the edible potato is found wild in the neighbourhood of Valparaiso.

fluence, direct and indirect, of varieties of climate on the surface of the earth, serves to show a wise and beneficent intention in so unequal a distribution of temperature, and brings us back to the conclusion, that whatever partial inconveniences may accompany such arrangement, these are vastly counterbalanced by the advantages of which it is productive. If it be true, as it undoubtedly is, that much of the activity, ingenuity, and intelligence, which exist in the world, had their first developement in the circumstances attending the differences in question; and if the very wants and privations of a less genial climate have eventually, not merely, improved the intellectual character of men, but bound them together by new and intimate ties, from the equator to the vicinity of the poles, how can we avoid the inference, that such extensive and important results were contemplated and provided for by the Divine Mind, in establishing the relations between the natural and moral worlds.

SECOND WEEK-TUESDAY.

ADAPTATION OF ORGANIZED EXISTENCES TO SEASONS AND

CLIMATES.

THE adaptation of plants and animals to the changes of the seasons, which, taken even in the broad and general view, is so clear an indication of an intelligent Designing Cause, is no where more conspicuous than in the season of winter. Were but a strong and continuous blast of the breath of winter to pass over our forests, fields, and gardens, in any of those months when vegetation is in its glory, and when animated nature luxuriates in universal plenty, the effect would be most disastrous. All organized existences would feel the fatal shock. Leaves, and fruits, and flowers, would shrink, wither and decay; insects, on the wing, would

VOL. I.

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fall lifeless to the earth; the various species of caterpillars would drop stiff and dying from the frozen vegetables on which they fed; even the larger animals would be stricken with the general blight; birds and beasts, if they did not instantly perish, would droop and shiver; and even man himself, adapted as his constitution is to sustain the rigours of all climates, would find himself invaded by deadly diseases. Nor would the evil end here. Not only would individuals die, but whole species would become extinct. The seeds, and eggs, and larvæ, which propagate the various races of plants and insects, would be unproduced. The process of reproduction would be arrested at its source; and, were the untimely blast to be universal, various links would be broken for ever in the chain of existence.

This consideration brings us, at once, to a clear perception of the kind of adaptation to which I allude. It is evident that some peculiar provision has been made, in temperate climates, for the preservation of organized existences during winter. In that season they are not in the same condition as in other seasons of the year. It is not merely that the change from heat to cold has been gradual. It is true that the hurtful effects of a violent alteration of temperature is thus avoided; and this is something which ought not to be overlooked in the wise provisions of the Author of Nature. But much more than this was necessary; and, as we shall afterward have ample means of observing, has actually been effected. It was requisite, for the preservation both of plants and animals, that, during winter, their habits and functions should be altered, or even suspended, and that peculiar contrivances should be resorted to for protecting them from the rigours of the season.

But there is another consideration which must not be overlooked. Not only are there peculiar provisions for preserving animal and vegetable life, in our temperate climates, during the cold of winter, but the whole classes of organized beings which exist in any climate, are