negative evidence, but Agassiz, a geologist whose statements must be received with respect by every student of the science, finds reason to conclude that the order of the Rosacea-an order more important to the gardener than almost any other, and to which the apple, the pear, the quince, the cherry, the plum, the peach, the apricot, the nectarine, the almond, the raspberry, the strawberry, and the various brambleberries belong, together with all the roses and the potentillas-was introduced only a short time previously to the appearance of man. And the true grasses-a still more important order, which as the corn-bearing plants of the agriculturist, feed at the present time at least two-thirds of the human species, and in their humbler varieties form the staple food of the grazing animals, -scarce appear in the fossil state at all. They are peculiarly plants of the human period."-Hugh Miller's “ Testimony of the Rocks," p. 48.

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"Bees and butterflies are present in increased proportions in the later Tertiary deposits; but not until that terminal creation to which we ourselves belong was ushered on the scene did they conceive their fullest development. Flowers in general were profusely produced just ere he [man] appeared, to minister to that sense of beauty which distinguishes him from all the lower creatures, and to which he owes not a few of his most exquisite enjoyments."

Agassiz on the same.— "It is evident that there is a manifest progress in the succession of beings on the surface of the earth. This progress consists in an increasing similarity to the living fauna, and among the vertebrates, especially in their increasing resemblance to man. But this connection is not the consequence of a direct lineage between the faunas of different ages. There is nothing like parental descent connecting them. The fishes of the Palæozoic age are in no respect the ancestors of the reptiles of the Secondary age, nor does man descend from the mammals which preceded him in the Tertiary age. The link by which they are connected is of a higher and immaterial nature, and their connection is to be sought in the view of the Creator Himself, whose aim in forming the earth, in allowing it to undergo the successive changes which geology has pointed out, and in creating successively all the different types of animals which have passed away, was to introduce man upon the surface of our globe. Man is the end towards which all the animal creation has tended from the first appearance of the first Palæozoic fishes."

Amos iv. 10.-"I HAVE SENT AMONG YOU THE PESTILENCE, AFTER THE MANNER OF EGYPT."

1589. Pestilence.-There are those who will not hear of great pestilences being God's scourges of man's sins, who fain would find out natural causes for them, and account for them by the help of these. They may do so, or imagine that they do so; yet every time they use the word "plague" they implicitly own the fact which they are endeavouring to deny; for "plague" means properly, and according to its derivation, "blow" or "stroke," and was a title given to those terrible diseases, because the great universal conscience of men, which is never at fault, believed and confessed that these were "strokes or "blows" inflicted by God on a guilty and rebellious world.-ARCHBISHOP TRENCH.

Isaiah lviii. 7.-"THAT THOU BRING THE POOR THAT ARE CAST OUT [marg., AFFLICTED] TO THY HOUSE."

1590. Care for the Orphan.-The following true narrative will, it is believed, exemplify the words of the text concerning the fast which God has chosen; and, were all the circumstances connected with it more fully known, it would doubtless be far more interesting.

The Adopted Children.—A sergeant and his wife in a foreign land, having no children of their own, provided a home for at least four destitute and afflicted ones. A soldier died in the regiment to which the sergeant belonged, and his wife soon followed. They left a helpless babe, but the sergeant's wife brought it to her house, and they adopted it for their own. A short time passed away, and a poor little native child was left uncared for. It found a home, however, with this kind-hearted Christian man and his excellent wife. Two other children, in like circumstances, were afterwards added to the orphan family. The regiment was ordered to march some hundred miles.

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What will you do now with your adopted family ?" asked a lady of the sergeant's wife. You will have to leave them behind."

"No.

"Leave my children!" said this noble-hearted woman. never! they shall all go with us; we could not part with one of them."

A Lesson from the Birds.-Even the beasts and the birds are allowed to be an example to us, and to give us instruction on this subject. Two facts recently occurred in the writer's experience, to which it is certain many more might be added:

A labouring man, while mowing, was so unfortunate as to destroy with his scythe a lark, which was sitting on its nest of young and scarcely fledged birds. He took the little nestlings home, and did his utmost to rear them, but they seemed to pine away from day to day. Another poor man, more skilled in the bringing up of young birds, offered to take, and do his best for them. On going to his cottage, as he had but one cage, containing an old lark, which had been in his possession for several months, he placed the young ones, in their warm nest, in a corner of it. To his astonishment, the old bird received them as tenderly as if they had been her own, feeding and sheltering them beneath her wings.

The other fact was, perhaps, more extraordinary. A lady, who had watched with much interest a brood of chickens, seven or eight in number, felt much grieved when, from some unknown cause, the mother hen sickened and died. She feared they would never be reared without the warmth and care of the parent bird; but they were never allowed to feel their loss, as a Dorking hen, of a species which, it is believed, never hatches, took them at once beneath her wings, broke their food for them, and even called them with the peculiar note of a mother bird.

What a lesson to man of providing and caring for the poor destitute and afflicted ones, the orphans, and those who have no helper! -C. W.

2 Corinthians v. 17.-"IF ANY MAN BE IN CHRIST, HE IS A NEW CREATURE."

1591. The Great Change.-A Scotch girl was converted under the preaching of Whitefield. On being asked if her heart was changed, her true and beautiful answer was, "Something I know is changed; it may be the world, it may be my heart: there is a great change somewhere, I'm sure, for everything is different from what it once was."

Psalm civ. 17.-"AS FOR THE STORK, THE FIR-TREES ARE HER HOUSE.

1592. The Stork.-The storks form a genus of the Ardeida, or heron family. The white stork (Ciconia alba) is the species commonly referred to in scripture. It is about the size of a goose in its body, but, when erect, about three or four feet high. Its general colour is white; extremity of the wings and small part of the head black; legs very long, red, and naked a great way up; the toes four, long, and connected, with flat nails, like those of a man; beak long, jagged, red, and somewhat compressed; the upper and under chaps both of a length, with a furrow from the nostrils. It feeds on serpents, frogs, and insects, on which account it might be deemed unclean; lays four eggs, and sits thirty days; migrates about August, and returns in spring, and is remarkable for its love to its young, whom it feeds and cherishes with much affection. Hebrew name, chasidah, denotes kindness or piety; and stork, from the Greek σropy”, natural affection.

Its

Some unnecessary difficulty has been raised respecting the expression, "As for the stork, the fir trees are her house." In the west of Europe the home of the stork is connected with the dwellings of man; and in the East, as the eagle is mentally associated with the most sublime scenes in nature, so, to the traveller at least, is the stork with the ruin of man's noblest works. Amid the desolation of his fallen cities throughout Eastern Europe and the classic portions of Asia and Africa, we are sure to meet with them surmounting his temples, his theatres, or baths. It is the same in Palestine. A pair of storks have possession of the only tall piece of ruin in the plain of Jericho; they are the only servants of the noble tower of Richard Coeur de Lion at Lydda; and they gaze on the plain of Sharon from the lofty tower of Ramleh (the ancient Arimathea). And no doubt in ancient times the sentry shared the watchtower of Samaria or of Jezreel with the cherished storks. But the instinct of the stork seems to be to select the loftiest and most conspicuous spot he can find where his huge nest may be supported; and whenever he can combine this taste with his instinct for the society of man, he naturally selects a tower or a roof. In lands of ruins, which, from their neglect and want of drainage, supply him with abundance of food, he finds a column or a solitary arch the most secure position for his nest; but where neither towers nor ruins abound he does not hesitate to select a tall tree, as both

storks, swallows, and many other birds must have done before they were tempted by the artificial convenience of man's buildings to desert their natural places of nidification. Thus the golden eagle builds, according to circumstances, in cliffs, on trees, or even on the ground; and the common heron, which generally associates on the tops of the tallest trees, builds, in Westmoreland and in Galway, on bushes. It is therefore needless to interpret the text of the stork merely perching on trees. It probably was no less numerous in Palestine when David wrote than now, but the number of suitable towers must have been far fewer, and it would therefore resort to trees. Though it does not frequent trees in South Judea, yet it still builds on trees by the Sea of Galilee, according to several travellers; and the writer may remark that while he has never seen the nest except on towers or pillars in that land of ruins, Tunis, the only nest he ever saw in Morocco was on a tree.-Rev. H. B. Tristram, M.A., F.L.S., in Smith's " Dictionary of the Bible."

Psalm cxxxiii. 3.-"AS THE DEW OF HERMON, AND AS THE DEW THAT DESCENDED UPON THE MOUNTAINS OF ZION."

1593. The Dew of Hermon.-We had sensible proof at Rasheiya of the copiousness of the "dew of Hermon" spoken of in Psa. cxxxiii. 3, where "Zion" is only another name for the same mountain. Unlike most other mountains, which gradually rise from lofty table-lands, and often at a distance from the sea, Hermon starts at once to the height of nearly ten thousand feet, from a platform scarcely above the sea-level. This platform, too—the upper Jordan valley, and marshes of Merom-is for the most part an impenetrable swamp of unknown depth, whence the seething vapour, under the rays of an almost tropical sun, is constantly ascending into the upper atmosphere during the day. The vapour, coming in contact with the snowy sides of the mountain, is rapidly congealed, and is precipitated in the evening in the form of a dew, the most copious we ever experienced. It penetrated everywhere, and saturated everything. The floor of our tent was soaked, our bedding was covered with it, our guns were dripping, and dewdrops hung about everywhere. No wonder that the foot of Hermon is clad with orchards and gardens of such marvellous fertility in this land of droughts.-Tristram, in "Sunday at Home."