obedient to solar influence. Astronomers have endeavoured to calculate the returning periods of many of them; but experience has not, as yet, confirmed the veracity of their investigations. Indeed, who can tell when those wanderers have made their excursions into other worlds and distant systems, what obstacles may be found to oppose their progress, to accelerate their motions, or retard their return? But what we have hitherto attempted to sketch, is but a small part of the great fabric in which the Deity has thought proper to manifest his wisdom and omnipotence. There are multitudes of other bodies dispersed over the face of the heavens that lie too remote for examination: these have no motion, such as the planets are found to possess, and are therefore called fixed stars; and from their extreme brilliancy, and their immense distance, philosophers have been induced to suppose them to be suns resembling that which enlivens our system. As the imagination also, once excited, is seldom content to stop, it has furnished each with an attendant system of planets belonging to itself, and has even induced some to deplore the fate of those systems, whose imagined suns, which sometimes happens, have become no longer visible. But conjectures of this kind, which no reasoning can ascertain, nor experiment reach, are rather amusing than useful. Though we see the greatness and wisdom of the Deity in all the seeming worlds that surround us, it is our chief concern to trace him in that which we inhabit. The examination of the earth, the wonders of its contrivance, the history of its advantages, or of the seeming defects in its formation, are the proper business of the natural historian. A description of this earth, its animals, vegetables, and minerals, is the most delightful entertainment the mind can be furnished with, as it is most interesting and useful. I would beg leave, therefore, to conclude these common-place speculations, with an observation which, I hope, is not entirely so. An use, hitherto not much insisted upon, that may result from the contemplation of celestial magnificence, is that it will teach us to make an allowance for the apparent irregularities we find below. Whenever we can examine the works of the Deity at a proper point of distance, so as to take in the whole of His design, we see nothing but uniformity, beauty, and precision. The heavens present us with a plan, which, though inexpressibly magnificent, is yet regular beyond the power of invention. Whenever, therefore, we find any apparent defects in the earth, which we are about to consider, instead of attempting to reason ourselves into an opinion that they are beautiful, it will be wiser to say, that we do not be hold them at the proper point of distance, and that our eye is laid too close to the objects to take in the regularity of their connexion. In short, we may conclude that God, who is regular in his great productions, acts with equal uniformity in the little. CHAP. II. A SHORT SURVEY OF THE GLOBE, FROM THE LIGHT OF All the sciences are in some measure linked with each other, and before the one is ended the other begins. In a natural history, therefore, of the earth, we must begin with a short account of its situation and form, as given us by astronomers and geographers; it will be sufficient, however, upon this occasion, just to hint to the imagination what they, by the most abstract reasonings, have forced upon the understanding. The earth which we mhabit is, as has been said before, one of those bodies which circulate in our solar system; it is placed at a happy middle distance from the centre, and even seems in this respect privileged beyond all other planets that depend upon our great luminary for their support. Less Besides that motion which the earth has round the It may be also readily conceived, that a body thus wheeling in circles will most probably be itself a sphere. The earth, beyond all possibility of doubt, is found to be so. Whenever its shadow happens to fall upon the moon, in an eclipse, it appears to be always circular, in whatever position it is projected; and it is easy to prove that a body which in every position makes a circular shadow must itself be round. The rotundity of the earth may be also proved from the meeting of two ships at sea; the topmasts of each are the first parts that are discovered by both, the under parts being hidden by the convexity of the globe which rises between them. The ships in this instance may be likened to two men who approach each other on the opposite sides of a hill; their heads will first be seen, and gradually as they come nearer they will come entirely into view. However, though the earth's figure is said to be sphe rical, we ought only to conceive it as being nearly so. It has been found in the last age to be flatted at both poles, so that its form is commonly resembled to that of a turnip. The cause of this swelling of the equator is ascribed to the greater rapidity of the motion with which the parts of the earth are there carried round; and which, consequently, endeavouring to fly off, aet in opposition to central attraction. The twirling of a mop may serve as a homely illustration--which, as every one has seen, spreads and grows broader in the middle as it continues to be turned round. As the earth receives light and motion from the sun, so it derives much of its warmth and power of vegetation from the same beneficent source. However, the dif ferent parts of the globe participate of these advantages in very different proportions, and accordingly put on very different appearances; a polar prospect, and a landscape at the equator, are as opposite in their appearances as in their situation. The polar regions, that receive the solar beams in a very oblique direction, and that continue for one-half of the year in night, receive but few of the genial comforts that other parts of the world enjoy. Nothing can be more mournful or hideous than the picture which travellers present of those wretched regions. The ground, which is rocky and barren, rears itself in every place in lofty mountains and inaccessible cliffs, and meets the mariner's eye at even forty leagues from shore. These precipices, frightful in themselves, receive an additional horror from being constantly covered with ice and snow, which daily seems to accumulate, and to fill the valleys with increasing desolation. The few rocks and clifs that are bare of snow look at a distance of a dark-brown colour, and quite naked. Upon a nearer approach, however, they are found replete with many different veins of coloured stone, here and there spread over with a little earth, and a scanty portion of grass and heath. The internal parts of the country are still more desolate and deterring. In wandering these solitudes, some plains appear covered with ice, that, at first glance, seem to promise the traveller an easy journey. But these are even more formidable and more unpassable than the 1 mountains themselves, being cleft with dreadful chasms, and every where abounding with pits that threaten certain destruction. The seas that surround these inhospitable coasts are still more astonishing, being covered with flakes of floating ice, that spread lik› extensive fields, or that rise out of the water like enormous mountains. These, which are composed of materials as clear and transparent as glass, assume many strange and phantastic appearances. Some of them look like churches or castles, with pointed turrets; some like ships in full sail; and people have often given themselves the fruitless toil to attempt piloting the imaginary vessels into harbour. There are still others that appear like large islands, with plains, valleys, and hills, which often rear their heads two hundred yards above the level of the sea; and although the height of these be amazing, yet their depth beneath is still more so; some of them being found to sink three hundred fathom under water. The earth presents a very different appearance at the equator, where the sun-beams, darting directly downwards, burn up lighter soils into extensive sandy deserts, or quicken all the moister tracts with incredile veges tation. In these regions, almost all the same inconveniences are felt from the proximity of the sun, that in the former were endured from its absence. The deserts are entirely barren, except where they are found to produce serpents, and that in such quantities, that some extensive plains seem almost entirely covered with them. It not unfrequently happens also that this dry soil, which is so parched and comminuted by the force of the sun, rises with the smallest breeze of wind; and the sands being composed of parts almost as small as those of water, they assume a similar appearance, rolling onward in waves like those of a troubled sea, and overwhelming all they meet with inevitable destruction. On the other hand, those tracts which are fertile teem with vegetation even to a noxious degree. The grass rises to such a height as often to require burning; the forests are impassable from underwoods, and so matted above, that even the sun, fierce as it is, can seldom penetrate. These are so thick as scarce to be extirpated; for the tops being so bound together by the climbing plants that grow round them, though a hundred should be cut at the bottom, yet not one would fall, as they mutually support each other. In these dark tangled forests, beasts of various kinds, insects in astonishing abundance, and serpents of surprising magnitude, find a quiet retreat from man, and are seldom disturbed except by each other. In this manner the extremes of our globe seem equally unfitted for the comforts and conveniences of life; and although the imagination may find an awful pleasure in contemplating the frightful precipices of Greenland, or the luxurious verdure of Africa, yet true happiness can only be found in the more moderate climates, where the gifts of Nature may be enjoyed without incurring danger in obtaining them. It is in the temperate zone, therefore, that all the arts of improving Nature, and refining upon happiness, have been invented: and this part of the earth is, more properly speaking, the theatre of natural history. Although there be millions of animals and vegetables in the unexplored forests under the line, yet most of these may for ever continue unknown, as curiosity is there repressed by surrounding danger. But it is otherwise in these delightful regions which we inhabit, and where this art has had its beginning. Among us there is scarce a shrub, a flower, or an insect, without its particular history; scarce a plant that could be useful which has not been propagated; nor a weed that could be noxions which has not been pointed out. CHAP. III. A VIEW OF THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH. When we take a slight survey of the surface of our globe, a thousand objects offer themselves, which, though long known, yet still demand our curiosity. The most obvious beauty that every where strikes the eye is the verdant covering of the earth, which is formed by a happy mixture of herbs and trees of various magnitudes and uses. It has been often remarked that no colour refreshes the sight so well as green; and it may be added, as a further proof of the assertion, that the inhabitants of those places where the fields are continually white with snow generally become blind long before the usual course of nature. This advantage, which arises from the verdure of the fields, is not a little improved by their inequalities. There is scarce two natural landscapes that offer prospects entirely resembling each other; their risings and depressions, their hills and valleys, are never entirely the same, but always offer something new to entertain and refresh the imagination. But to increase the beauties of the face of Nature, the landscape is enlivened by springs and lakes, and intersected by rivulets. These lend a brightness to the prospect, give motion and coolness to the air, and, what is much more important, furnish health and subsistence to animated Nature. Such are the most obvious and tranquil objects that everywhere offer; but there are others of a more awful and magnificent kind---the mountain rising above the clouds, and topped with snow; the river pouring dow its sides, increasing as it runs, and losing itself at last in the ocean; the ocean spreading its immense sheet of waters over one-half of the globe, swelling and subsiding at well-known intervals, and forming a communication between the most distant parts of the earth. If we leave those objects that seem to be natural to our earth, and keep the same constant tenour, we are presented with the great irregularities of Nature. The burning mountain, the abrupt precipice, the unfathom able cavern, the headlong cataract, and the rapid whirlpool. If we carry our curiosity a little further, and descend to the objects immediately below the surface of the globe, we shall there find wonders still as amazing. We first perceive the earth for the most part lying in regular beds or layers, every bed growing thicker in proportion as it lies deeper, and its contents more compact and heavy. We shall find, almost wherever we make our subterranean inquiry, an amazing number of shells tha once belonged to aquatic animals. Here and there, ai a distance from the sea, beds of oyster-shells, several yards thick, and many miles over; sometimes testaceous substances of various kinds on the tops of mountains, and often in the heart of the hardest marble. These, which are dug up by the peasants in every country, are regarded with little curiosity; for, being so very common, they are considered as substances entirely terrene. But it is otherwise with the inquirer after Nature, who finds them, not only in shape but in substance, everyway resembling those that are bred in the sea; and he therefore is at a loss how to account for their removal. Yet not one part of Nature alone, but all her productions and varieties, become the object of the speculative man's inquiry; he takes different views of Nature from the inattentive spectator, and scarce an appearance, how common soever, but affords matter for his contemplation: he inquires how and why the surface of the earth has come to have those risings and depressions which most men call natural; he demands in what manner the mountains were formed, and in what consists their uses; he asks from whence springs arise, and how rivers flow round the convexity of the globe; he enters into an examination of the ebbings and flowings and the other wonders of the deep; he acquaints himself with the irregularities of Nature, and will endeavour to investigate their causes; by which, at least, he will become better versed in their history. The internal structure of the globe becomes an object of his curiosity; and although his inquries can fathom but a very little way, yet, if possessed with a spirit of theory, his imagination will supply the rest. He will endeavour to account for the situation of the marine fossils that are found in the earth, and for the appearance of the different beds of which it is composed. These have been the inquiries that have splendidly employed many of the philosophers of the last and present age; and, to a certain degree, they must be serviceable. But the worst of it is, that, as speculations amuse the writer more than facts, they may be often carried to an extravagant length, and that time may be spent in reasoning upon Nature which might be more usefully employed in writing her history. Too much speculation in natural history is certainly wrong; but there is a defect of an opposite nature that does much more prejudice, namely, that of silencing all inquiry, by alleging the benefits we receive from a thing, instead of investigating the cause of its production. If I enquire how a mountain came to be formed; such a reasoner, enumerating its benefits, answers, because God knew it would be useful. If I demand the cause of an earthquake, he finds some good produced by it, and alleges that as the cause. Thus such an inquirer has some ready reason for every appearance in Nature, which serves to swell his periods, and give splendour to his declamation every thing about him is, on some account or other, declared to be good; and he thinks it presumptive to scrutinize into its defects, or to endeavour to imagine how it might be better. Such writers, and there are many such, add very little to the advancement of knowledge; and it is finely remarked by Bacon, that the investigation of final causes in a barren study; and, like a virgin dedicated to the Deity, brings forth nothing. In fact, those men who want to compel every appear ance and every irregularity in Nature into our service, and expatiate on their benefits, combat that very morality which they would seem to promote. God has permitted thousands of natural evils to exist in the world because it is by their intervention that man is capable of moral evil; and He has permitted that we should be Bubject to moral evil that we might do something to deserve eternal happiness, by showing that we had rectitude to avoid it : CHAP. IV. ▲ REVIEW OF THE DIFFERENT THEORIES OF THE EARTH. Human invention has been exercised for several ages to account for the various irregularities of the earth. While those philosophers mentioned in the last chapter see nothing but beauty, symmetry, and order, there are others who look upon the gloomy side of Nature, enlarge on its defects, and seem to consider the earth on which they tread as one scene of extensive desolation Beneath its surface they observe minerals and waters con fusedly jumbled together; its different beds of earth irregularly lying upon each other; mountains rising from places that once were level; hills sinking into valleys; whole regions swallowed by the sea, and others again rising out of its bosom;---all these they suppose to be but a few of the changes that have been wrought in our globe; and they send out Imagination to describe it in its primeval state of beauty. Of those who have written theories describing the manner of the original formation of the earth, or accounting for its present appearances, the most celebrated are Burnet, Whiston, Woodward, and Buffon. As specula tion is endless, so it is not to be wondered that all these differ from each other, and give opposite accounts of the several changes which they suppose our earth to have undergone. As the systems of each have had their admirers, it is in some measure incumbent upon the natural historian to be acquainted at least with their outlines; and, indeed, to know what others have even dreamed in matters of science is very useful, as it may often prevent us from indulging similar delusions ourselves, which we should never have adopted, but because we take them to be wholly our own. However, as entering into a detail of these theories is rather furnishing a history of opinions than things, I will endeavour to be as concise as I can. 66 The first who formed this amusement of earth-making into system was the celebrated Thomas Burnet, a man of polite learning and rapid imagination. His Sacred Theory, as he calls it, describing the changes which the earth has undergone, or shall hereafter undergo, is well known for the warmth with which it is ima gined, and the weakness with which it is reasoned; for elegance of its style, and the meanness of its philosophy. The earth," says he, "before the deluge, was very dif ferently formed from what it is at present: it was at first a fluid mass; a chaos composed of various substances, differing both in density and figure: those which were most heavy sunk to the centre, and formed in the middle of our globe a hard solid body; those of a lighter nature remained next; and the waters, which were lighter still, swam upon its surface, and covered the earth on every side. The air, and all those fluids which were lighter than water, floated upon this also; and in the same manner encompassed the globe; so that between the surrounding body of waters and the circumambient air, there was formed a coat of oil, and other unctuous substances lighter than water. However, as the air was still extremely impure, and must have carried up with it many of those earthy particles with which it was once intimately blended, it soon began to defecate, and to depose these particles upon the oily surface already mentioned, which, soon uniting together, the earth and oil formed that crust which soon became an habitable surface, giving life to vegitation and dwelling to animals." This imaginary antideluvian abode was very different from what we see at present. "The earth was light and rich; and formed of a substance entirely adapted to the feeble state of incipient vegetation: it was an uniform plain, every where covered with verdure; without mountains, without seas, or the smallest inequalities. It had no difference of seasons, for its equator was in the plain of the ecliptic, or in other words, it turned directly opposite to the sun, so that it enjoyed one perpetual and luxuriant spring. However, this delightful face of Nature did not long continue the same, for, after a time, it began to crack and open in fissures; a circumstance which always succeeds when the sun dries away the moisture from rich or marshy situations. The crimes of mankind had been for some time preparing to draw down the wrath of Heaven; and they, at length. induced the Deity to defer repairing these breaches in Nature. Thus the chasms of the earth every day became wider, and, at length, they penetrated to the great abyss of waters; and the whole earth, in a manner, fell in. Then ensued a total disorder in the uniform beauty of the first creation, the terrene surface of the globe being broken down; as it sunk the waters gushed out into its place; the deluge became universal; all mankind, except eight persons, were punished with destruction, and their posterity condemned to toil upon the ruins of desolated Nature." It only remains to mention the manner in which He relieves the earth from this universal wreck, which would |