V.

man's most aggrandized understanding. But these LETTER are only two modes of action of the transcending genius. Superior capacity will manifest its superiority in every subject to which it directs the same proportion of its activity. Grand and small make no difference to it-it uses the small to produce the great, as the Author of Nature has built up His highest masses from an adequate accumulation of the smallest corpuscules.

It is therefore pleasing to see that the whole economy of nature has been formed on one universal plan, and with equal individuality of attention in every department—as well in what we undervalue, as in what we most admire. In His Creation as in His Government, the Creator embraces at all times, with His all-comprehending kindness, the innumerable and the unbounded-the infinitesimals, as well as the immensities of nature-the invisible, from disappearing smallness, no less than the imperceptible from incalculable remoteness. We may overlook what is petty, as beneath the notice of our pride; but nothing, however small, has been deemed worthless, or is disregarded by Him, whom no name or language can sufficiently describe; whose power is omnipotence; whose presence is universal; whose knowlege is omniscience; whose creations extend and constitute space; and whose existence is eternity.

LETTER VI.

BRIEF REVIEW OF THE USES OF PLANTS IN THE SYSTEM

OF CREATION - ACTIONS AND PHENOMENA OF THEIR

LIVING PRINCIPLE.

LETTER THE anterior design, the creative and contriving VI. mind, the specific purpose, the selected means, and the appointed organization, are as discernible in the USES of Plants as in any other part of their wonderful economy.

That they should be the materials, on which all animal life subsists, and by which it is sustained in its bodily organizations, is a well-known purpose of their formation. By the operation of their own living principle, they convert the inorganic matter, which they not only find but select out of what their roots meet, into their own kind of substance ;-and this, which gives them their visible existence and beauty, becomes again transmutable into animal flesh by the animal's own vital nature and functions. This double process is every day universally going on in all the three kingdoms of nature. The word selection may seem strong; but if the radicles and the fibres of the roots entering a soil, shoot toward that which their plant needs; and tho coming in contact with other particles, yet take up those only which suit them—what can we call that but selecting? There is a refusal of the one, and an active absorption of the other. A property of discerning and taking, in preference to other matter, that which is the fittest for

their nourishment, seems therefore to belong to all LETTER Plants.

Without Vegetation, none of the animals we know, but those that live on water or air, could have continued in existence; for neither man nor animal can subsist on any thing in the mineral kingdom, until vegetation, by first making it vegetable substance, has prepared it for a future conversion into their own. Hence the justness of the Mosaic account, in placing the creation of Plants before that of Animals. Vegetation could have remained without animals,— but these, unless their food had been ready for them, would, under their present economy of being, have soon disappeared.'

While most of our Plants thus form the Sustenance and banquet of the animated kingdom, other

'It is interesting to read of the mutual services which the organized kingdoms, from their reciprocal composition and structure, can render to each other. Thus an intelligent Naturalist has observed of the OAK:

The insects which live and have their being on the Oak, amount to hundreds of species. It nourishes ferns, lichens, mosses, agaries, and boleti. It furnishes its apples, gall-nuts, acorns, leaves and sawdust. Some are attacked by small fungi, which break their surface, admit moisture, and facilitate decay. The leaves, decomposing, form a vegetable earth; and the worm seizes on them as his portion, and having fed upon part draws the remainder into the earth.'

Of the Ivy.-' This saves many animals from want and death in Autumn and Spring. In October it blooms in profusion; and its flowers become an universal banquet to the insect race. The great black fly, Musca grossa, and its numerous tribe, with multitudes of small winged creatures, resort to them: also, those beautiful animals, the latest birth of the year, the Admiral and Peacock Butterflies. In its honey, it yields a constant supply of food till the frosts of November. In Spring, in the bitter months of March and April, when the wild products of the field are nearly consumed, the Ivy ripens its berries; and almost entirely constitutes the food of the Missel-Thrush, the Wood-Pigeon, and other birds.' Knapp's Journ. of a Naturalist, p. 66, 86.

VI.

.VI.

LETTER classes of them were made and meant to be its natural Medicines and secret physicians. For this purpose, those which thus benefit, are universally dispersed. We may regard many of these as useless weeds, yet they silently spread amid all vegetation, to be every where ready for the general benefit. Brutes often need them as much as ourselves, and are repeatedly seen at particular times to select and crop the herbs that they do not use for food, but to which some recollected experience, or unexplainable perception or instinct, leads them, for their resulting efficiencies. Some of these useful plants are also so interspersed with their daily sustenance, that they cannot take the one without also digesting the other. But to man, Plants have been in all ages the natural and the earliest and the most universal physicians. The metallic and mineral drugs of our modern pharmacopeias have not been above three centuries in their sanitary use. Vegetable medicines constituted the physic of our ancestors, as they still are of all nations who do not make European science their predominating guide.

When we consider that Vegetation carpets all the surface of our Globe; and that its shrubs and forests

On this topic, Mr. Lindsey's Introd. to the Natural System of Botany will be found very valuable. Under the head of, the Properties of Plants, he gives ample, yet condensed notices of their medical uses. Decandolle's Essai sur les Proprietes Medicales des Plantes,' which he has much consulted, will be an useful companion. Mr. Lindsey deserves our thanks for so ably composing his Natural System of the Vegetable Creation. The Linnean classification and nomenclature are very ingenious and useful; but the Natural System will always be the most philosophical. Yet the truth as to both is, that each has its own value and applicability. Hence the enlightened Botanist will not confine himself to either, but will use and study both, and thereby combine in his own mind their several advantages.

VI.

still occupy the largest portion of its superficial ex- LETTER tent; and when we find that it is universally, by day and by night, streaming from its verdure-from every leaf, fruit, and flower-an aërial fluid of some sort or other, and in the lower region of the atmosphere immediately over our heads, and mixing in the gaseous strata of it which we breathe; we shall then perceive that it must be hourly causing the most important effects, additions, and changes in the air which we inhale, and must be a very essential and active agent on the vitality, functions, and

3 M. A. Moreau states, that in 1750, the Woods in France amounted to more than One-fourth of the surface of the whole country. This will give us an idea of the far greater proportion of the superficies of the Globe which the forests are occupying in less cultivated countries. In France they had been reduced to oneseventh when its Revolution began in 1788, and were not quite onetwelfth in 1814. In England now they are supposed not to occupy more than one twenty-third of our surface. Their quantity in the World we may reckon, from the circumstance, that 2,500 young trees are allotted to every acre in forming a successful plantation, allowing each to grow four feet apart. They seem to cover at least one-third of the Earth; in some parts half; in unfrequented regions, nearly the whole.

It is agreed that in the day-time plants imbibe from the atmosphere carbonic acid gas; decompose it; absorb the carbon, and emit the oxygen. In the dark, they give out carbon and absorb oxygen, but in far less proportion.' Smith Int. Bot. 212-13. . . . . . They appear also to decompose the moisture they receive, and to effuse the oxygen.

Some plants differ in what they exhale. M. Candolle found that some Mushrooms exposed to the Sun, under water, yielded 70 per cent. of hydrogen gas; others, in the Sun, in six hours, gave out 42 hydrogen and 56 nitrogen; others, in ten hours, 55 hydrogen and 44 nitrogen. In darkness, this emission ceased.

It seems to be a general rule, that the green parts of vegetables are always giving out oxygen gas in light.

Gruithuisen thinks that plants have themselves produced their carbonic acid. Bull. Univ. 1830, p. 163. ... . The leaves and bark of the Pimento exhale aromatic particles or gas so inflammable, that the growers allow no fire to be made near them.