rhubarb and opium, alleviate the tortures of pain; and some, as the quinquina, or Peruvian bark, can subdue the rage of the burning fever. Wheat, the delicious and prolific grain which gives to the, inhabitants of the northern world their wholesome nutriment, grows in almost every climate. Where excessive heat or other causes prevent it from coming to perfection, its place is amply supplied by the bread-fruit, the cassavi-root and maize, and more particularly by rice, which is the common aliment of that great portion of mankind who inhabit the warm regions of the earth. Every meadow in the vernal season brings forth various kinds of grass; and this spontaneous and most abundant of all vegetable productions requires only the labour of the husbandman to collect its harvest. The iron-wood, solid as marble, furnishes the Otaheitean with his long spear and massy club. The wild pine of Campeachy retains the rainwater in its deep and capacious leaves not less for the refreshment of the tree itself, than of the thirsty native of a burning soil. The cocoa of the East and West Indies anwers many of the most useful Ꭱ

purposes of life to the natives of a warm climate. Its bark is manufactured into cordage and clothing, and its shell into useful vessels; its kernel affords a pleasant and nutritive food, and its milk a cooling beverage; its leaves are used for covering houses, and are worked into baskets; and its boughs are of service to make props and rafters. The rein-deer of the Laplander, so essential to his support and subsistence, could not survive through the tedious winter, without the lichen rangiferinus, which he digs from beneath the snow. On the bleak moun

tains of the north, the pine, the fir, the cedar, and man of the resinous trees grow, which shelter many from the snows by the closeness of their foliage, and furnish him in winter with torches and fuel for his fire-side. The leaves of those evergreen trees are filliform, and thus are adapted to reverberating the heat, and resisting the violent winds which beat on elevated situations. All these productions, and the various trees which produce cork and emit rosin, turpentine, pitch, gums, and balsam, either supply some constant necessity, obviate some inconvenience, or

contribute to some use or gratification of the natives of the soils where they grow, or of the inhabitants of distant climates.

WE are now come to consider the last, the noblest and the most beautiful part of the creation: the creatures for whom this earth seems to have been entirely formed, and for whose repast or use the whole of its unintelligent productions appear to have been brought forth; these are the animated tenants of our globe.

When we compare animals and vegetables together, each in their most perfect state, nothing can be easier than to distinguish them. The plant is confined to a particular spot, and exhibits no marks of consciousness or intelligence; the animal, on the contrary, can remove at pleasure from one place to another, is possessed of consciousness, and a high degree of intelligence. But on approaching the

contiguous extremities of the animal and vegetable kingdom, these striking differences gradually disappear, the objects acquire a greater degree of resemblance, and at last approach each other so nearly, that it is scarcely possible to decide whether some of those species which are situated on the very boundary, belong to the animal or vegetable kingdom. Indeed we find the vegetable, animal, and mineral kingdoms so closely connected, like the links of a chain, that there is no possibility of finding a disjunction in any part, nor saying with precision where the one ends and the other begins, so nearly do they approach each other in the extremes of each class.

The term animal, in a general sense, is applied to every thing that is supposed to be alive to the sensations of pain and pleasure. Under the name of animal, therefore, are included men, quadrupeds, birds, fishes, reptiles, and insects. Animal literally means a living thing; but plants live. Linnæus has formed a climax of the grand departments of creation. Stones grow; vegetables grow and live; animals grow, live, and feel.