would thus enable us to obtain in a small manufactory, and in a few days, effects which can be realised from present natural agencies only when they are exerted upon vast areas of land, and through considerable periods of time.”

Remote as the profound conceptions and subtle trains of thought seem to be from the needs of every-day life, the most astounding of the practical augmentation of man's power has sprung out of them. Nothing might seem less promising of profit than Oersted's painfully-pursued experiments, with his little magnets, voltaic pile, and bits of copper wire. Yet out of these has sprung the electric telegraph! Oersted himself saw such an application of his convertibility of electricity into magnetism, and made arrangements for testing that application to the instantaneous communications of signs through distances of a few miles. The resources of inventive genius have made it practicable for all distances, as we have already seen in the submergence and working of the electro-magnetic cord connecting the Old and the New World of the geographers. On the 6th of August, 1858, the laying down of upwards of 2000 nautical miles of the telegraphic cord, connecting Newfoundland and Ireland, was successfully completed; and on that day a message of thirty-one words was transmitted in thirty-five minutes, along the sinuosities of the submerged hills and valleys forming the bed of the vast Atlantic. The practicability of bringing America into electrical communication with Europe has been demonstrated; consequently a like power of instantaneous interchange of thought between the civilised inhabitants of every part of the globe becomes only a question of time. The benefits thence to ensue for the human race can be. but inadequately foreseen. The strides made, in recent years, in various branches of natural history are no less astonishing. Since Bacon's day the chief steps by which natural history had advanced to the dignity of a science are associated with the names of Ray, Linnæus, Jussieu,

Buffon, and Cuvier. By the first two the phenomena were digested and classified according to artificial, but conveniently applicable methods,—of necessity the precursors of systems more expressive of the natural affinities of plants and animals. To perfect the natural system of plants has been the great aim of botanists since Jussieu; to obtain the same true insight into the relations of animals has stimulated the labors of zoologists since the writings of Cuvier. Three principles (of the common ground of which we may ultimately obtain a clearer insight) are now recognised to have governed the construction of animals—unity of plan, vegetative repetition, and fitness for purpose.

Observations on the geographical distribution of indigenous plants are generalised by dividing the horizontal range of vegetation into zones bounded by annual isothermal lines; by classifying plants according to the regions of altitude; and by classifying them by regions defined by the proportion of plant species peculiar to them. The modes of enunciating the laws of the geographical distribution of marine animals are very analogous to those which have been applied to the vegetable kingdom, which is as diversely developed on land as the animal kingdom in the sea. Certain horizontal areas or provinces have been characterised by the entire assemblage of animals and plants constituting their population.

The restrictive laws of geographical distribution seem least applicable to birds, yet, like the plants and marine animals, they are similarly distributed. The laws of geographical distribution, as affecting mammalian life, have been reduced to great exactness by observations continued since the time of Buffon.

The most elaborate and beautiful of created things, those manifesting life, have much to teach- much that comes home to the business of man, and also to the highest elements of his moral nature. The nation that gathers together thousands of corals, shells, insects, fishes, birds,

and beasts, and votes the requisite funds for preparing, preserving, housing, and arranging them, derives the smallest possible return for the outlay by merely gazing and wondering at the manifold variety and strangeness of such specimens of natural history. The simplest coral and the meanest insect may have something in its history worth knowing, and in some way profitable. Every organism is a character in which Divine wisdom is written, and which ought to be expounded.

Agriculture has of late years made unusual progress in this country, and much of that progress is due to the application of scientific principles; chiefly of those supplied by chemistry; in a less degree of zoology and physiology. Geology now teaches the precise nature and relations of soils a knowledge of great practical importance in guiding the drainer of land in the modifications of his general rules of practice. Palæontology has brought to light unexpected sources of valuable manures, in phosphatic* relics of ancient animal life, accumulated in astounding masses in certain localities of England, as, for instance, in the red crag of Suffolk and the greensands of Cambridge. But quantities of azotic†, ammoniacal‡, and phosphatic matters are still suffered to run to waste; and, as if to bring the wastefulness more home to the conviction, those products, so valuable when rightly administered, become a source of annoyance, unremunerative outlay, and disease, when imperfectly and irrationally disposed of. For the most part, thought is taken only how to get rid of these products in the easiest and quickest way.

In the operations of Nature there is generally a succes

* Phosphatic, bone

the base of which is phosphate of lime. † Azotic or mephitic air, a constituent of the atmosphere, but, separated from oxygen, fatal to life. It exists largely in muscular fibre. Being the base of nitric acid, it is also called nitrogen.

Ammoniacal, an alkaline air, chiefly used in a liquid form. It

may be decomposed from all animal matters, except fat.

sion of processes co-ordinated for a given result; a peach is not directly developed as such from its elements; the seed would, a priori*, give no idea of the tree, nor the tree of the flower, nor the fertilised germ of that flower of the pulpy fruit in which the seed is buried. It is eminently characteristic of the Creative wisdom, this far-seeing and provision of an ultimate result, through the successive operations of a co-ordinate series of seemingly very different conditions. The further man discerns, in a series of conditions, their co-ordination to produce a given result, the nearer does his wisdom approach though the distance be still immeasurable-to the Divine wisdom. One philanthropist builds a fever-hospital, another drains a town. One crime-preventer trains the boy, another hangs the man. One statesman would raise money by augmenting a duty, or by a direct tax; and finds the revenue not increased in the expected ratio. Another diminishes a tax, or abolishes a duty, and through the foreseen consequences the revenue is improved. Every practical application of the discoveries of science, as of the political economist, tends to the promotion of the public weal.

The steam-engine, in its manifold applications, the crimedecreasing gas-lamp, the lightning conductor, the electric telegraph, the law of storms and rules for the mariner's guidance in them, the power of rendering surgical operations painless, the measures for preserving public health and for preventing or mitigating epidemics-such are among the more important practical results of pure scientific research with which mankind have been blessed and states enriched. They are evidence unmistakeable of the close affinity between the aims and tendencies of science and those of true state policy.

Owen.

A priori, mode of reasoning from cause to effect, independently of actual experience. Its opposite-a posteriori— concerns itself with proofs based on antecedent knowledge.

NATURAL HISTORY.

STINGS.

have been stung

PROBABLY at some period of your life you by a bee or wasp. I shall take it for granted that you have, and that having tested the potency of these warlike insects' weapons with one sense, you have a curiosity to examine them with another. The microscope shall aid your vision to investigate the morbific implement. This is the sting of the honey-bee, which I have but this moment extracted. It consists of a dark-brown horny sheath, bulbous at the base, but suddenly diminishing, and then tapering to a fine point. This sheath is split entirely along the inferior edge, and by pressure with a needle I have been enabled to project the two lancets, which commonly lie within the sheath. These are two slender filaments of the like brown horny substance, of which the centre is tubular, and carries a fluid in which bubbles are visible. The extremity of each displays a beautiful mechanism, for it is thinned away into two thin blade-edges, of which one remains keen and knifelike, while the opposite edge is cut into several saw-teeth pointing backwards. The lancets do not appear to be united with the sheath in any part, but simply to lie in its groove; their basal portions pass out into the body behind the sheath, where you see a number of muscle-bands crowded around them: these, acting in various directions, and being inserted into the lancets at various points, exercise a complete control over their movements, projecting or retracting them at their will. But each lancet has a singular projection from its back, which appears to act in some way as a guide to its motion, probably preventing it from slipping aside when darted forth, for the bulbous part