vegetables themselves were called into existence.

Vegetation itself now claims our attention. We ask, what is the principle or moving cause of vegetation? We can only answer, that it is one of the invisible agents created by Elohim, through which He governs, during the ages of time, certain portions of created matter, and induces certain motions, which produce certain forms from combinations of atoms, similar each to each in succession. The forms of vegetables by this agency, in every age, are preserved so minutely, that the product of the seed identifies it distinctly to be the legitimate successor of the parent stock. Elohim pronounced, Let the earth germinate! It instantly germinated; and, in perpetuity, having germinated to this hour, hale and healthy, it gives out note of germination through a long futurity. The principle, or moving cause of vegetation, has been by philosophers denominated the vegetative soul. But as the great Creator, by omnipotent power, raised each vegetable perfect on the third day, the processes of vegetation will be considered under the head of seeds. The classification of vegetables must now be considered. First, we have tender grass; secondly, grass; thirdly, fruit-trees; fourthly, forest-trees; and, fifthly, seeds. It is evident, that by vegetables is here meant,

"The vegetable world-each plant and tree, From the fair cedar on the craggy brow To creeping moss."

We behold these vegetables, the handywork of Him whose omnificent Word called into being worlds, and, while yet naked, clothed them with the fairest forms which mind could fancy, or the eye of man delight to dwell upon; and, lo, on scanning these, bodies duly organized, with vessels meet, arise around us, live their hour, and die; yet, midst their death, uprise and live again, blooming their fragrance to the passing breeze, and hue to hue, in verdant splendours rearing; endless in variety of tint and form, we

"See dying vegetables life sustain,

See life dissolving vegetate again." Tender grass is the first vegetable, according to the classification of the inspired volume; and to this we must attend in the first instance. Grass is literally a tender vegetable; its vessels and its shoots are of tender texture, being highly succulent. These circumstances richly qualify it for its destined uses: for, in ver. 30 of this chapter, Elohim bestowed these vegetables upon the animals for food. Being tender, the teeth of grazing animals bite off the

shoots of grass with ease; with equal ease masticate them, and thus with delight fill their maws with nutritive matter, easy of digestion, and genial to the animal frame. The abundance of grass upon rich and wellwatered soils is proverbial; for, although minute as a single plant, it spreads over the surface of a meadow so completely, that no portion of the soil beneath it can be discerned. The varieties of grass are numerous; and the rich verdures of the meads below, form a beautiful parallel with the grand azure of the towering firmament on high. The varieties of the grasses correspond with the varieties of the soil on which they prosper; hence, on one soil are fed the fattest sheep and beeves; on another, the choicest venison; here is produced the finest butter, and there the richest cheese; while every other grade in animation finds a place where the grasses are most genial to its frame; and, delighting in the bounty of Divine Providence, it feeds and gambols, fraught with joy. Even amidst the arid sands and the barren rocks, we behold, ever and anon, the germing grass, and hail its presence in these solitudes with rapture.

We must next consider the herbs. It is difficult to draw the line between what is here intended by the grasses and the herbs; wheat, rye, barley, oats, &c., rank with the grasses, having, like them, simple leaves and other conformities thereto, while even clover and other similar plants, although often called by the name of grasses, belong properly to another class, according to Linnæus and others. But Linnæus is out of the question in this classification; and it is probable that herbaceous plants of every description were here intended, from the

mint and cummin to the browsed shrub

varieties, too numerous for the narrow limits of these essays to dwell upon in detail. They were given to animals for food; and while the sheep and beeves eagerly crop the grasses, the goats and deer, as well as other animals, with equal zest browse the succulent leaves of shrubs and plants more hardy than the tender grass.

Fruit-trees now claim our attention. Numerous, indeed, are the varieties of fruitbearing plants, which the great Creator called into existence on this day of creation. From the small bilberry shrub to the towering pear-tree, and from the creeping strawberry to the vine and fig-tree, exuberant clusters of rich and luscious fruits invite the palates of men and animals, luxuriantly regaling the eye as they bloom, as they bear, as they ripen amidst the solar rays, and as they are ranged in stores for the coming

seasons of frost and barrenness. We behold these on every hand, we class them under distinguishing heads, and we cannot but admire the wisdom which called them forth, and the power which, having sustained their vegetation through the ages of allcorroding time, gives them to us the boon of Providence, fresh as on the day of creation, every season. "All Thy works shall praise Thee, O Jehovah; and Thy saints shall bless Thee. They shall speak of the glory of Thy kingdom, and talk of Thy power; to make known to the sons of men His mighty acts, and the glorious majesty of His kingdom. Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion throughout all ages."

We have at length arrived at forest trees; and these, with every propriety, may be deemed the vast of vegetation. To behold a forest stored with trees, towering in close continuity, fraught with foliaged grandeur, like the crowning domes of massive temples, stretching league to league, from vales beneath, up to the mountain-top, one mass of life, vigorous, and blooming in tints of verdant hue; who can refrain from wondering awe, at this sublime? Yea, who can fail to praise Him who these ordained? To classify and enumerate the grasses, herbs, and trees, on this day formed, would be to multiply and fill our papers with titles and names of art, well for the scientific ear, but, for the multitude, dry in the extreme; from this, therefore, we must refrain, and pass on to seeds.

At every step in the progression of creation we approach something new; and, to this moment, nothing has appeared of deeper interest than the reproduction of a vegetable from its own seed; which seed, in comparison with the vegetable it reproduces, is so minute, that it becomes matter of wonder, how the rudiments of its future product can, by any possibility, be crowded into so small a compass without total destruction to vegetable life. But so He ordained who created and formed the universe and all things contained therein; and to this day, as at the beginning, amidst our wonder, it stands fast. The structure of plants is admirably calculated for every purpose intended by the great Creator in calling them into existence. We behold roots, furnished with fibres, to penetrate, and receive, and secrete the aqueous products of the soil on the earth's surface; we view stems, knotted glands and branches, fitted to receive these secretions, concoct and convey them forward to the interior and extremities of the plant, in order at once to increase its volume and replenish the

waste of its substance; while leaves, waving to every breeze, aloft, around, spread out their fibrous organs to the atmosphere, courting its gases and vapours, and ever in motion, like gills or lungs, circulate these throughout the branches and the trunk, and concocting them with and in aid of the secretions from beneath. Around the stem we behold the bark, outward, to shield the plant, strong and ligneous; and inward, moist and succulent, to retain the sap, and prevent it from exuding into waste; within this appear the sap-vessels, conveying up those concoctions, while airvessels (in small plants, mere capillary tubes) lend their aid; and the whole process of vegetation, unimpeded, vegetates the plant into the fulness of its growth.

A seed is a plant folded up. We perceive this with the naked eye, on examining the kernel of a walnut; and, by the help of a microscope, we discern this in smaller seeds. The vegetation of a plant, therefore, from a seed, is the enlargement of all its parts, in a manner similar to that already dwelt upon. Amidst the changing seasons of this sphere, the efforts of vegetation are incessantly directed to the attainment of this one object-the production of the seed; and no sooner is this effected, than the same efforts, running a similar round, are directed to the production of seed again. This is the case in mature plants from year to year; and, but for the torpor of winter, would, without cessation, be the case throughout vegetation continually; but when the bud is projected from the plant, the chilling winter arrests its progress, and the projected bud serves for winter-quarters to the foliaged beauty of the ensuing summer, ready to burst forth amidst the genial warmth of spring, instead of its coming forth at the moment. In annual plants, the efforts of vegetation, from the moment the seed is sown, are directed to reproduce seed; and the moment the seed is ripe, the effort ceases, and these plants decay, and ultimately die. The bud, the blossom, the flower, the fruit, and all the splendid paraphernalia of vegetable grandeur, are about the seed, as if to adorn its bed, and minister to its birth, crowning it the heir and lord of vegetation.

The vital principle in vegetation maintains therein a temperature higher than the atmosphere which surrounds it in winter, and lower in summer. This has been proved by repeated experiments. This equilibrium of temperature is ministered unto by the peculiar fermentation of the vegetable mould in which the roots are planted, by the gases and vapours of the

atmosphere, and the rays of the sun; for plants delight in light, and their health is impaired by absence therefrom. The gases which predominate in vegetables are carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen; and from the great specific gravity of carbon in union with oxygen, compared with other gases of the atmosphere, these gases are ever found in abundance within and upon the earth's surface, and there they come into incessant contact with vegetation. When the temperature of a vegetable is lowered or raised beyond a certain point, disease takes place, and a continuance of either circumstance produces death. This is equally true of seeds as of plants. That the vegetable temperature exists in seeds, and is the effect of latent heat, is evinced by the circumstance of their becoming heated by contact with each other, more fatally than other substances; for, if wheat, barley, or other grain or seed, laid in heaps, is not frequently thrown about, heat and fermentation take place, and the whole mass becomes putrid.

The immense number of acorns, or seeds produced by a single oak, during its vegetable existence, is beyond calculation; and so on of other plants and trees. And were not millions of these seeds to perish, without vegetating at all, the whole surface of the earth would, in a few successions, be unequal to the task of sustaining them; but, in their decay and death, they minister, like other manures, to the living plant.

Vegetables are not only produced by seeds, but frequently reproduced by offshoots from their roots, by cuttings or by slips from their substances; and it is astonishing to behold how vigorously they will grow, and by shoots from stools, on the stems being detached therefrom. Yet seeds are the prolific medium which predominates, to a degree beyond all comparison with all the rest. How astonishing that so minute a substance as a seed should vegetate into a large tree, producing millions of similar seeds; and that each of these should produce its millions in succession, from age to age; and that, on the lapse of six thousand years, the vitality of vegetation, unimpaired, should produce, and reproduce, from seed to seed, with the same energy which actuated it during the first ages of the world! But Elohim pronounced, "Let the earth germinate" on the third day of creation; and, on smelling a sweet savour, or a savour of rest, after the awful lustration of this sphere, he again pronounced, "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and

summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease;" and the Word of Jehovah remains sure; and thus seed succeeds to seed in perpetuity, and will, even unto the end of time.

Of this day of creation it is added, Elohim surveyed the whole, and, behold, it was beautifully perfect. The evening was, and the morning was, the third day. King Square, November 26, 1831. WM. COLDWell.

(To be continued.)

VARIETIES IN HUMAN FOOD. [From a Treatise on Pulmonary Consumption, &c. By John Murray, F, S. A., &c.] OUR real wants are few, but luxury has made them innumerable, and almost every thing that moves on earth, in the sea, or air, has been put in requisition, and devoured by that omnivorous animal, MAN; and though animal and vegetable life chiefly contributes to his support, we are informed by Humboldt that he discovered a tribe in South America, the Ottomaques, who subsisted partially on a species of magnesian and aluminous earth; and we find, accord. ing to Spix and Martius, that the natives of the river St. Francisco also eat earth: the soil there contains nitre; and boys and girls may be seen to eat the whitewash of the walls, and sometimes wood, cloth, and charcoal.

In South America, indeed, according to the same authorities, nothing in the shape of life comes wrong to them, for they eat serpents, lizards, and ounces; and Humboldt has seen children drag enormous centipedes out of their holes, and cranch them up. The negro children are as fond of a bit of rock-salt as those of England are of sugar-candy. The mere catalogue raisonné of substances used as articles of food or luxuries would occupy a volume.

Cannibals, or anthropophagi, devour human flesh. At Esmeraldi their delicate morceau is a roasted monkey. Puppies, on the Missouri and Mississipi, are choice food. Horse flesh in Arabia; elephant's flesh in India; camel's flesh in Egypt. The pariahs of Hindostan, attracted by the smell of putrid carrion, rush in crowds to dispute the mass of corruption with the dogs, vultures, and kites. The wild Bushmen generally devour their food raw. The natives of the Kurulean islands are very partial to bear's liver. The Chinese are not scrupulous in their choice; cats, dogs, rats, serpents, all are pressed into their cuisine.

Mr. Dobell, in his Travels in Siberia and China, says, "the Chinese eat frogs, cats, dogs, and rats: they are washed and pre

pared, as if they were the most delicate food; and their rice is always washed a dozen times, before it is boiled." The Kamtschadales use the fat of seals for oil and butter, and are often compelled to live on fish-oil, but they form it into a paste with saw-dust, or rasped fibres of indigenous plants. When the Indians of Asia or America take long journeys, and are likely to be destitute of provisions, they mix the juice of tobacco with powdered shells in the form of small balls; and this dissolving in the mouth allays the sensation of hunger. The negroes in the interior of Africa often subsist entirely on gum arabic; and we are informed by Hasselquist, that a caravan of Abyssinians, on their journey to Cairo, subsisted for two months on gum arabic. The crew of a vessel, also, destitute of provisions, were supported on gum senegal, of which article the cargo consisted.

The Calmucks subsist on raw flesh, and they are ugly this is rather alarming to those who follow their example, and eat their meat rare, as it is termed, or half cooked, a few degrees removed from brind. An Esquimeaux dines on a whale or a walrus: and occasionally their dinner consists of an old sack, made of fish skins. We were told that, some years ago, when gas was unknown as a source of illumination, Russian sailors, at Leith, made no scruple to dip their sop, or morsel, into the train oil of the lamps. The Solan goose or gannet is sometimes cooked in Scotland, notwithstanding its effluvium is so overpowering that the process cannot be risked in an ordinary kitchen, but must be conducted either in an outhouse, or in the open air. Veal must be blanched.

The following is rather an odd bill of fare one of the outposts of the French army, engaged in the taking of Algiers, killed two snakes and a lion, which were duly sent to the floating Restaurant, on the following day. The Carte du Jour presents the following items, in consequence of this supply: "filet de lion, sauté dans sa glace, matelotte de serpens, boa a la tartare, fraise de lion a la poulette, pieds de lion farcis, lion fraisé aux petits pois, &c." "We defy any one," says the author of Transalpine Memoirs, "to ascertain the real state of the Italian or French composées of the cuisine. At an inn, on the route from Sienna to Acquapendente, a turkey, whose neck was wrung towards evening, was served up, disguised as bouilli, boiled beef, as a stew of turkey, and as a quarter of roast lamb." Verry, of the Palais Royal, a celebrated Restaurateur, sports, if we remember right, upwards of

300 dishes on his Carte du Jour; a carte of this kind, containing 150 dishes, being put into the hands of a Londoner, he immediately returned it, saying, it must be a mistake, it was a bill of lading.

The natives of Tonquin, according to Dampier, give their friends arrack, in which snakes and scorpions have been infused. The Lotophagi lived on the lotus, while the Ophisophagi, and the Troglodites lived on serpents. The Kalmuc Tartars also feed on snakes, &c.; and the Syrians eat crocodiles. In the annals of Tacitus, we read of a man at Colonia Agrippina, whose favourite dish, like that of De la Lande, was spiders. Bear's paws, birds' nests, and sea-slug, are dainty bits; raw is esteemed superior to roast mutton, by the natives of Thibet. The inhabitants of Cochin-China prefer rotten eggs to fresh, so much so, that putrid eggs are rated thirty per cent. higher than fresh ones. Dampier tells us, that "the Indians of the Bashee Islands eat the bodies of locusts," and he, too, relished this species of food. The Tonquineze also feed on locusts, which are either fresh or pickled; sometimes broiled on coals. The inhabitants of Madagascar not only eat them, but prefer them to the finest fish. Rein-deer, and a kind of meal formed of pounded fish, are used in Lapland and Iceland; brind, still quivering with life, in Abyssinia; in Australia a good fat grub would be preferred to every thing else; and in the West Indies a large caterpillar, found on the palm, is esteemed a luxury; while the edible nest of the Java swallow (hirundo edulis) is so rich a dainty, that the auxiliary ingredients of the dish will cost about 157. In the Levant, the locust (gryllus cristata) is sold in the market as a chief article of diet.

In all these things the continent of Europe is not a whit behind the rest of the world, and displays feats which may well excite our "special wonder." Passing over such dainties as sawer craut, olla podrida, caviar, &c., France dresses up frogs and snails, con amore. Frogeries, and even Viperies, are necessary adjuncts to the mansions of the noblesse. The quantities of frogs we have seen in some of the markets on the continent have excited in us the utmost surprise: in the market of Auxerre we had the curiosity to inquire the price of snails (helix promatia,) and found them rated at three francs (2s. 6d.) per 100; not long ago, indeed, seven snails were charged a franc at an inn in Germany. In Italy we have been served up the pholas, echinus, sepia, &c., while "mine host" at Terracina asks his guest whether he prefers the eel of

The astro

the hedge or that of the river. nomer de la Lande was remarkably fond of spiders, and would chuckle them up sans cérémonie whenever they came in his way; and a young lady, too, had a particular predilection in that way.

We conceive, however, that Great Britain in these excellencies far transcends her continental neighbours: not to mention the 'braxy" of Scotland, which is putrid mutton, the sheep having died of the rot, it is notorious that game and venison are seldom relished till it is "high," or, in honest and faithful language, till it is a mass of putrefaction, and disengaging in abundance one of the most septic poisons the chemist knows of; in numerous cases it is a mass of life and motion, the offspring of putridity. Mr. Hunter, however, says that "boiled and roasted, and even putrid meat, is easier of digestion than raw;" so that these would-be epicures, who take their food after the manner of Abyssinians, do violence to this precept, while they who take putrid (in common parlance high) game, as intenerated (as it is called) meat, i. e. on the verge of putrefaction, are but a step removed. It is truly astonishing what the respiratory organs of some individuals can withstand. We remember having been once at an inn in Derbyshire, in what is commonly termed the "commercial room," when a dinner was brought in for a "traveller" about four hours later than we should select for that meal; game was one of the dishes, and so horrid was its putrescence, that, had we not thrown up the window and made our escape, we should certainly have fallen a victim-at least temporarily; but the experiments of Dupuytren, Chausier, and Thenard, are quite conclusive.

Though we know not that the monstroussized liver of the goose, an effect of disease, has yet found its way into the English cuisine; all the rack and the ingenuity of cruelty and torture have been exhausted, to supply the cravings of a depraved and degraded appetite, and one which human nature might well be ashamed of: the bull may be no longer "baited" for this purpose, but pigs are still whipped to death; lobsters are boiled alive; cod are crimped; and eels are skinned, writhing in agony; not to mention geese, which are duly nailed to the floor by their webbed feet, that they may repose and fatten; turkeys are crammed, and finally bled to death under the tongue; hares are hunted, and die in fevered inflammation, or, it may be, duly inoculated with the poison of hydrophobia, from dogs excited to madness by the chace. Now all these practised cruelties,

though they may blanch the cod-fish, or tinge the lobster with ruby, excite inflammatory action in the animal suffering them, and inflamed surfaces evolve morbid or poisonous matter.

PRETENDED MIRACLE AT CALAIS. (Strype's Life of Cranmer, Vol. i. p. 125. A.D, 1536.) THE following curious circumstance is recorded of Sir John Butler, who was the King's Commissary in Calais, A.D. 1536.

This man was apprehended, and bound by sureties not to pass the gates of the town, upon the accusation of two soldiers, that he should say, in contempt of the corporal presence, that "if the sacrament of the altar be flesh, blood, and bone, then there is good aqua vitæ at John Spice's:' where probably it was very bad. This Butler, and one Smith, were soon after brought by pursuivants into England; and there brought before the privy council in the star-chamber, for sedition and heresy, (which were charges ordinarily laid against the professors of the gospel in those times,) and thence sent to the Fleet; and brought soon after to Bath Place: there sitting, Clark, bishop of Bath, Sampson, bishop of Chichester, and Reps, bishop of Norwich, the king's commissioners.

And no wonder he met with these troubles; for he had raised up the hatred of the friars of Calais against him, by being a discoverer and destroyer of one of their gross religious cheats. There had been great talk of a miracle in St. Nicholas' church, for the conviction of men; that the wafer, after consecration, was indeed turned into the body, flesh, and bones of Christ. For in a tomb in that church, representing the sepulchre, there were lying upon a marble stone three hosts sprinkled with blood, and a bone representing some miracle. This miracle was in writing, with a pope's bull of pardon annexed to those, I suppose, who should visit that church. There was also a picture of the resurrection, bearing some relation to this miracle.

This picture and story, Damplin, (a good and pious preacher there,) freely spoke against in one of his sermons, saying, that "it was but an illusion of the French before Calais was English." Upon this sermon, (the king also having ordered the taking away all superstitious shrines,) there came a commission to the lord deputy of Calais, to this, Sir John Butler, the arch. bishop's commissary, and one or two more, that they should search whether this were true, and, if they found it not so, that immediately the shrine should be plucked