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shrubs stand not in need of such firmness of texture, their pliability and elastic toughness, together with the prickly coat of mail by which they are enveloped, render them less susceptible of injury in their exposed situation.

Softness, united with a still greater degree of flexibility, are the distinguishing characteristics of the herbaceous order; and how wisely has this been ordered for the various purposes for which they were created! With the firmness of trees, to what a prickly stubble must nature's soft and downy carpet have given way! With the tenacity of shrubs, how would it have answered as food for our cattle?

There are, besides, a number of other properties and peculiarities in the vegetable kingdom, in which the wonderful working of the Divinity shines pre-eminent. How strange, for instance, that if a seed is sown in a reversed position, the young root turns of itself downwards, while the stem refuses to sink deeper in the soil, and bends itself round to shoot up through the surface of the earth! How surprising, that when the roots of a tree or a plant meet with a stone or other interruption in their progress under ground, they change their direction, and avoid it! How amazing, that the numerous shoots which branch out from the root in quest of moisture, pursue, as it were by instinct, the track that leads to it-turn from a barren to a more fertile soil; and that plants shut up in a darksome room, bend or creep to any aperture through which the rays of light may be admitted!

In these respects, the vegetable tribes may be said to possess something analogous to animal life; but here the resemblance does not stop. How surprising the phenomenon of what is called the sleep of plants, and the sexual system of Linnæus, founded on the discovery that there exists in the vegetable, as well as in the animal kingdom, a distinction of sexes.

What amazing variety of size, of shape, and of hue, do we discover among this multitudinous order of things! What different properties do some possess from others; and what a near approach do a few make to that superior order immediately above them, in the scale of existence! The sensitive plant, when slightly touched, evinces something like the timidity of our harmless animals; the hedysarum gyrans, or moving plant of the East, exhibits an incessant and spontaneous movement of its leaves during the day, in warm and clear weather; but in the night season, and in the absence of light and heat, its motions cease, and it remains, as it were, in a state of quiescence! The American Venus' flytrap, like an animal of prey, seems to lie in wait to catch the unwary insect.

Plants, nevertheless, do not appear to have the smallest basis for sensation, admitting that sensation is the result of a nervous system; and we are not acquainted with any other source from which it can proceed. Yet, although the vessels of plants do not appear to possess any muscular fibres, we have evident proofs of the existence of a contractile and irritable power from some other princi

ple; and the facts above referred to, among many others that might be adduced, concur in making it highly probable, that it is by the exercise of such a principle that the different fluids are propelled through their respective vessels. There is no other method by which such propulsion can be reasonably accounted for.

In what part of a plant the vital principle chiefly exists, or to what quarter it retires during the winter, we know not; but we are just as ignorant in respect to animal life. In both it operates towards every point; it consists in the whole, and resides in the whole; and its proof of existence is drawn from its exercising almost every one of its functions, and effecting its combinations in direct opposition to the laws of chemical affinity, which would otherwise as much control it as they control the mineral world, and which constantly assume an authority as soon as ever the vegetable is dead. Hence, the plant thrives and increases in its bulk, puts forth annually a new progeny of buds, and becomes clothed with a beautiful foliage of lungs (every leaf being a distinct lung in itself), for the respiration of the rising brood; and with an harmonious circle of action, that can never be too much admired, furnishes a perpetual supply of nutriment, in every diversified form, for the growth and perfection of animal life; while it receives in rich abundance, from the waste and diminution, and even decomposition of the same, the means of new births, new buds, and new harvests.

Frosts and suns, water and air, equally promote fructification in their respective ways; and the termes or white ant, the mole, the hampster, and the earth-worm, break up the ground, or delve into it, that they may enjoy their salubrious influences. In like manner, they are equally the ministers of putrefaction and decomposition; and liver-worts and fungusses, the ant and the beetle, the dewworm, the ship-worm, and the wood-pecker, contribute to the general effect, and soon reduce the trunks of the stoutest oaks, if lying waste and unemployed, to their elementary principles, so as to form a productive mould for successive progenies of animal or vegetable existence. Such is the simple but beautiful circle of nature. Every thing lives, flourishes, and decays: every thing dies, but nothing is lost; for the great principle of life only changes its form, and the destruction of one generation is the vivification of the next. Hence, the Hindu mythologists, with a force and elegance peculiarly striking, and which are no where to be paralleled in the theogonies of Greece and Rome, describe the Supreme Being, whom they denominate Brahm, as forming and regulating the universe through the agency of a triad of inferior gods, each of whom contributes equally to the general result, under the names of Brahma, Visnu, and Iswara; or the generating power, the preserving or consummating power, and the decomposing power. And hence the Christian philosopher, with a simplicity as much more sublime than the Hindu's as it is more veracious, exclaims, on con

templating the regular confusion, the intricate harmony of the scenes that rise before him:

These, as they change, Almighty Father! these
Are but the varied God: The rolling year

Is full of thee.

To the systematic arrangements of Moses and Solomon we have already adverted, in the introductory section to this volume; we shall here merely add, in the words of Mr. Charles Taylor, that no clearer proofs of system can be produced from any writer whatever, than are exhibted in Gen. i. 11, 12, and 1 Kings iv. 33. There is a uniform progress from a lesser to a larger; from 'grass,' including the minutest species of whatever is green, to 'shrubs,' which are apparently taken for trees of the smaller kinds; and from these to 'trees,' which not only differ by their enlarged dimensions, but by their permanency also,

CHAPTER I.

GRASS AND HERBS.

THE general term for herbaceous productions, in the Hebrew writings, is desha, although it is also specifically applied to grass in particular. The corresponding Greek term in the New Testament is chortos. Wetstein remarks, that the Hebrews divide all kinds of vegetables into trees and herbs; the former of which the Hellenists call xylon, the latter chortos, under which they comprehend grass, corn, and flowers. In Matt. vi. 30, and Luke xii. 28, this term is certainly designed to include the lilies of the field, of which our Saviour had just been speaking.

There is great impropriety in our version of Proverbs xxvii. 25: "The hay appeareth, and the tender grass showeth itself, and herbs of the mountains are gathered. Certainly, if the tender grass is but just beginning to show itself, the hay, which is grass cut and dried, after it has arrived at maturity, ought by no means to be associated with it; still less to precede it. Upon this passage, Mr. Taylor reinarks, that none of the Dictionaries or Lexicons give what seems to be the accurate import of the word translated hay, which he takes to mean the first shoots, the rising-just budding-spires of grass. So the wise man says, 'the tender risings of the grass are in motion; and the buddings of grass (grass in its early state) appear; and the tufts of grass, proceeding from the same root, collect themselves together, and, by their union, begin to clothe the mountain tops with a pleasing verdure.' Surely, the beautiful progress of vegetation, as described in this passage, must appear to every man of taste as too poetical to be lost; but what must it be to an eastern beholder -to one whose imagination is exalted by a poetic spirit--one who has lately witnessed an all-surrounding sterility—a grassless waste!

The same impropriety, but in a contrary order, and where perhaps the English reader would be less likely to detect it, occurs in our version of Isaiah xv. 6, 'For the waters of Nimrim [water is a principal source of vegetation] shall be desolate-departed-DEAD; so that [the 'hay' in our translation, but as it should be] the tender -just sprouting-risings of the grass are withered-dried up; the buddings of the grass are entirely ruined,' [' there is no green thing,' in our version.] The following verse may be thus translated: 'Insomuch, that the reserve he had made, and the deposit he had placed with great care in supposed security, shall all be driven to the brook of the willows.'

A similar gradation of poetical imagery is used in 2 Kings xix. 26, "Their inhabitants were of shortened hand; dismayed, ashamed, they were as grass of the field, vegetables in general, as the green buddings of grass; as the tender risings on the house tops; and those, too, struck by the wind, before it is advanced in growth to a rising up. What a climax of imbecility!

Is it not unhappy, that in the only two places of the Old Testament where our translators have used the word hay, it should be necessary to substitute a word of a directly contrary meaning, in order to accommodate the true rendering of the passages to the native (eastern) ideas of their authors?

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