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bles, we have countless myriads of more perfect insects, which prey upon and destroy plants while they are still living. These insects have several stages of existence, during the longest of which their whole business is to devour. Their eggs are deposited in or upon whatever substance they are afterwards to consume; they are hatched or become worms, and continue their destructive operations, until they reach their last state, when they mostly acquire wings, and flit away to continue their speeies, and die. But these devourers are not themselves permitted to escape without paying a tax to other creatures. Scarce has one insect deposited its egg, before another is ready to pierce this egg, and deposit within, its future destroyer. The egg first mentioned is hatched, with the other in its body; it consumes a proportion of animal or vegetable matter before the egg thrust into its substance is matured. The destroyer is at length hatched, and the larve, or worm, performs its office by consuming the body within which it was deposited, and then escapes to continue its race, or become the prey of other creatures.

The truth of this statement may be readily tested by every one. The large winged grasshopper, which flutters with so much vivacity through our meadows during the autumn, feeds upon vegetable matter, and deposits its eggs upon vegetables for the purpose of being supported until matured. Before the grasshopper takes wing, another insect, the ichneumon, alights upon its body, and thrusts under its skin a number of its eggs, by means of a tubular, awl-shaped oviduct. These eggs slowly acquire perfection, become living worms, and feed upon the body of the hapless grasshopper, until themselves ready to take wing. So admirably do they perform their office, that they do not injure the vital organs of the insect they are internally devouring, until they are just ready to change their state; and at the proper season, hundreds of grasshoppers, in this condition, have just strength enough remaining to flutter to a tree or fence, and with a dying effort fix their hooked feet so firmly as to retain their position long after death. Examine their bodies at this season, and you find an empty shell, or one filled with large and active worms, just ready to burst their coverings and become winged insects.

As restrainers of the insects, we may consider birds and reptiles as next in order of efficiency, to say nothing of the infuence of changes of temperature and atmospherie vicissitudes. Birds are not less limiters of the vegetable kingdom, by the destruction of immense quantities of seeds and the tender shoots and buds of plants, although nature in many instances employs them in scattering seeds in situations where they otherwise could not be conveyed. In this division of the animal kingdom, the same

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subordination of destructiveness occurs as in the insect tribe; and a considerable part of the feathered race are employed in thinning the ranks of creatures of their own class, as well as of vegetables, insects, reptiles, and small quadrupeds; who, in their turn, have their degrees of reprisal.

A similar gradation of destructiveness is to be observed throughout viviparous land and marine quadrupeds, as well as among reptiles, fishes, crustaceous and molluscous animals. The larger prey upon smaller creatures, either belonging to their own, or other classes. The creatures which are the most destructive of animals of their own class, are comparatively few, live long, produce but seldom, and frequent remote and solitary places; while those which rely upon the vegetable world, so bountifully extended throughout the earth, are more numerous, shorter lived, produce frequently and abundantly, and are social and familiar in their habits.

Man may justly be entitled the great destroyer and extermitor of life, without regard to time, place, or circumstance. By his power, the strongest are overcome; by his ingenuity, the most subtle are circumvented, and their energies of body and mind made subservient to his necessities or pleasures. He is superior to the whole animal creation in the noblest attributes-but he enjoys one pre-eminence for which even the lowest have no cause to envy him. All the destructive animals fulfil their dire offices upon creatures belonging to other kinds: when the lion leaps from his ambush, it is into the neck of the wild ox or of the antelope that he buries his claws;-when the wolves howl in unison, it is the deer they are pursuing;-when the scream of the eagle sounds shrillest, then let the wild duck beware! Even the insatiably ferocious tiger keeps aloof from his brethren of blood. But, when the drums roll, and the trumpets clang,-when the banner-folds are shaken abroad upon the air, and the neigh of the charger re-echoes the deep notes of the bugle; then is man, with his boasted reason, preparing to spill the blood of his brother-to drive his desolating chariot over the faces of his kindred-spread havoc and despair before his path, and leave famine and pestilence to track his footsteps!

Regarding the works of creation as a great whole, we perceive that an essential part of the plan is to make all parts mutually and reciprocally dependent upon each other, for the preservation of due equilibrium. Change of form is indispensable; loss of individual life must occur; the uninterrupted action of all laws, and modifications of laws, is essential to the security of the entire arrangement. But destruction, that is annihilation of matter, in the existing constitution of the universe, is impossible. Solids may be disintegrated, reduced to dust, changed into fluids, or be

driven to assume the aeriform or gaseous state. Still, it can be in no part destroyed-it occupies space-possesses new qualities-retains a peculiar modification of existence, and is capable of eventually occupying a situation similar to that whence it was displaced, and of again returning to the state which it was previously forced to assume.

To us, there appears to be in all things an observable tendency to this circular movement, and it is to be traced in intellectual as well as physical events. The progress of human society, the conditions of government, the advancement of knowledge, all appear to feel the influence of the great law of mutation. Their periods of origin, increase, perfection, decline, decay, separation, and re-combination, are all more or less perfectly traceable in the history of mankind; though it is a source of the purest gratification to observe, that human improvement is so far transcending the influence of this great law, as to secure for posterity those admirable inventions, that show how far our race in the aggregate is susceptible of perfection. No natural movement short of the utter destruction of the whole human race, can possibly produce the same conditions among men as existed prior to the discoveries of letters and printing-the sciences of astronomy, navigation and chemistry-and the discovery of that sublime truth, that "all MEN" are by nature "free and equal."

An observation of the circumstances relative to the operations of nature, will convince us of an important truth-that individuals are not of the slightest consequence, nor worthy of any peculiar attention, in the plan. The preservation of entire geera and species is amply provided for; but the extermination of countless myriads of individuals goes for nothing, whether the numbers be made up of insects or of men. To suppose, under ordinary circumstances, that any one law of nature is or can be suspended, out of regard to any individual object, is to suppose an impossibility-without the immediate interference of Deity, or the operation of a miracle. This truth, rightly remembered, may save us from a rashness too frequently indulged in, or prevent us from adopting incorrect ideas of the great Author of our being. Men occasionally are tempted to exclaim against the apparent inequality of events; as when excellent and inestimable persons are destroyed by accident, while the most vile or worthless escape unhurt: they imply, by their repinings, that virtue is of little avail, seeing that it is insufficient to turn aside the inevitable shafts of fate. This ignorant spirit is carried still farther by some, who, on the occurrence of any peculiarly distressing event, are ever ready to cry out "a judgment!" when, in truth, the event has resulted from the necessary action of the most natural causes. The SAVIOUR of mankind has admirably

rebuked this species of impertinence, by asking whether those upon whom the tower of Siloam fell, were more wicked than other men. These preposterous notions of Deity arise out of ignorance of his works, and the laws of their operation, which may be satisfactorily deduced from careful researches into the things and movements within our view. It is the merest selfadoring egotism, to imagine that our lives or deaths are of any moment in the great march of events; although, in respect to ourselves, the conduct of our lives and the character of our deaths are of infinite concern.

It is of high consequence, in estimating the operations of nature, to recollect, that when we refer to duration of time, we estimate the importance thereof by reference to the duration of human life. But, in the plan of nature, time and space, like individuality, are of no moment. "In His sight, a thousand years are as one day." Do we not find, in the works of nature, that this is most clearly established? Do we not find results occurring, apparently trifling in their consequences, which the combined operation of unnumbered years, and the subsidiary_agency of all the laws of nature, are required to produce? Have we not recorded in the unerring book of nature the lapse of ages, which are nowhere else noted down? Yet, within the history of the human race, a period not much exceeding four thousand years, the changes which have occurred in the condition of the earth's surface have been comparatively slight and superficial.

In strictness of signification, Natural History includes all the subjects of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms; an extent not to be fully embraced by the mind of any individual; since every department constitutes a science in itself, having its own laws and peculiarities, and including numerous extensive subdivisions. The business and duration of human life, no less than the condition of our intellectual powers, forbid the hope of grasping all the treasures of knowledge within our reach; nevertheless, by well-timed application, inestimable acquisitions may be secured, capable, at once, of augmenting our own happiness, and enabling us to contribute more efficiently to that of our fellow-creatures.

ART. VIII.-Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia, performed between the years 1818 and 1822. By Captain PHILIP P. KING, R. N. F. R. S. F. L. S. and Member of the Royal Asiatic Society of London. With an Appendix, containing various subjects relating to Hydrography and Natural History. In two volumes, illustrated by plates, charts, and wood-cuts. London: 1827.

THE efforts of the British government to obtain a fuller knowledge of the coast of Australia, or New-Holland as it was formerly called, are still continued. To the British nation it particularly belongs, to ascertain with the greatest precision, as well the exterior lines, the capes, promontories, and harbours, the reefs and shoals, on the coast, as the interior character, the existence or non-existence of any large aquatic communications that may afford access to a vast internal space, which, with much addition to botanical and zoological information, may possibly exhibit new races of men, and new formations of moral society. In pursuing the first of these objects, considerable pains had been taken before the voyages now under consideration. It was in 1770 that captain Cook touched upon the coast, as part of his great design of exploring the Pacific ocean. His survey extended from Port Hicks, in lat. 37° 58', to Cape York, lat. 104°, a distance of about two thousand miles; and its accuracy has been attested by all who have since gone over the same ground. The remaining circumference of the island was still but little known.

The scattered islands of the Pacific ocean, for some time afterwards, attracted more attention; and it was not till 1787, that New-Holland again, and from a different motive than that of geographical discovery, became, in the eyes of the British government, a subject of interest. In that country, a policy prevails, now practised by few others. With a large portion of wealth and virtue, strongly contrasted by immense masses of poverty and vice,-adhering to a sanguinary system of penal jurisprudence, which multiplies crime as it professes to punish it,-averse to pursuing a regular scheme of moral melioration by means of confinement and labour at home,-for nearly two centuries she has sought to relieve herself from the overflowing population of guilt, by banishing to other countries, those on whom she is unwilling to inflict the higher degrees of punishment, and whom she cannot conveniently confine to salutary labour at home. Banishment is in some cases less to be considered a measure of punishment, than a mode of relief to the nation. The needy wretch whose soul is blackened by habitual depravity, and whose only sustenance arises from depredations on the property of others; whose intercourse is only with those as debased as him

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