"The strong and durable affection of a parent to a child is one of the characters by which the human race are distinguished from the brutes. It is a mark of their supereminent dignity in this lower world. It is a source of amiable qualities and delightful emotions to which the lower ranks of irrational animals are entire strangers. The insect and the worm are led by the blind but irresistible force of instinct to provide for the continuance of their kind; they deposit their eggs with sagacious attention in those situations where their young offspring may readily obtain their food, But this offspring they are destined never to know, in many cases never to see. When they have fulfilled the great purposes of nature, most of them shrink before the winter's increasing cold, and survive not the declining year. Their young are warmed into life by the following summer's sun, but never know a parent's care, are never cherished with the tender fondness of a parent's love: before they awake to sense and to motion the parent has ceased to be.

"If we ascend to a higher degree in the scale of living existence we shall find the parental affection still wanting. The finny inhabi

tant of the stream or the ocean, the serpent and the lizard with all their kindred coldblooded tribes are not indeed doomed to so short an existence. They live year after year, and year after year give birth to a new race; but they are never able to distinguish their own from the rest. Some of them take a long tedious voyage, and surmount, what to an ignorant eye would appear an impassable barrier, for no other end than to place their spawn in those shallow waters which are most favourable to its growth; others carefully cover it with sand where it may feel the first influence of returning spring, but when they have done this they leave it for ever; for it's future fate they have no concern, to the quickening young they afford neither sustenance nor protection.

"The anxious delights of parental tenderness are known only to those higher orders of animated being whose generous blood sublimed by the action of perfect lungs gives warmth and vigour to the heart. The fowls of the air and the beasts of the forest are all inspired with this genial breath of heaven, and rise almost to sentiment, to reason, and to virtue, in their care of their helpless young. The most

timid become courageous, the most stupid become sagacious, the most savage soften into tenderness. They nurse and feed them with unwearied assiduity; they exert all their art and all their power to preserve or to rescue them from the gripe of a hostile intruder; in some cases they give them the first rudiments of instruction to fit them for their destined mode of life. But all this laborious care, all this painful solicitude endures only for a few weeks, or at most for a few months: it is bestowed only upon weakness, it is withdrawn at the first appearance of sufficient strength.The power which once defended is then employed to repel and to banish. The full grown young are driven from the nest or the den where they first felt vital warmth; the parental heart no longer acknowledges, the parental eye soon ceases to know them. Some of them are doomed to solitary wanderings, till at the appointed season they find themselves a mate. Or if they mingle in a common flock, or a common herd, their relation to all is exactly the same; they obey that instinctive feeling which connects like with like, but of

kindred blood they have no knowledge, from kindred attachment they obtain no advantage.

4

"It is in man alone that parental love is formed into a durable habit. It is not merely in the helpless state of infancy, nor in the thoughless days of childhood, nor yet during the dangerous inexperience of youth that the domestic tie is felt and obeyed: in the season of full grown manhood it continues to bind and to delight. The connection still subsists when the personal circumstances... are entirely changed; when the shoots are become strong and vigorous, and the original stock is grown weak and helpless; when that which once needed and received, is able and required to give assistance and support. In every varied scene the parent, finds that, like Jacob of old, his life is bound up with the life of his children; when they prosper. he is scarcely sensible of any evil, when they suffer, he knows no pleasure: to promote their good is the chief object of his daily care;-Oh! bless my children, heaven! is the last prayer of his dying lips.

3

(

"How great then is the satisfaction of the pious mind when it contemplates the God

whom it worships in the character of a parent. From a relation so intimate, how elevated must be our hopes! How firm and durable our trust! On what can we rely if we doubt a father's love? Where can we seek for refuge but in our father's house? What can be so consoling to weak and dependant creatures as the assurance that like as a father pitieth his children so the Lord pitieth them that fear him?"

It was no small pleasure and advantage which he derived from his attachment to the study of natural history, that he was introduced by this means to the knowledge and the friend ship of many eminent persons, to whom it is probable he must otherwise have been for ever a stranger. Among these the justly celebrated President of the Linnæan Society held the first place. In Dr. Smith, he found not only a similarity of taste, and an ardent love, and a profound knowledge of those most pleasing works of nature which he himself delighted to explore, but the same deep veneration of the great and good Author of nature, congenial views concerning the character and the perfections of the world's great Ruler, and the true happiness of

G