REVIEW. 



would give from fifteen to eighteen inches nearly. The Mahogany tree is remarkable for 

 its magnitude, and yet the largest recorded log was only seventeen feet long by fifty-four 

 and sixty-four inches. 



Another feature of the world's timber is — the heaviest woods are not found in the largest 

 bolls, but generally in the smallest, a provision that vastly facilitates man's control over 

 them. Fir is only as heavy as oak, while ebony, lignum-vitae, and box are rather shrubs 

 than trees. Hickory is rarely seen a foot in diameter, and exceedingly few sticks of Rose- 

 wood are met with as large. Thus the largest trees are light and easily worked. Had 

 they been light and porous as the cork tree, or heavy and dense as lignum-vitaj they had 

 been of comparatively little use to man. But we are ordained to be elaborators in wood 

 as well as in the metals ; and hence the facilities for its acquisition, its varieties of masses, 

 properties and adaptations. 



Had the nature of minerals been such as to admit of the labour of man in their pre. 

 paration, it had certainly been required of him, but the processes of their formation are 

 so slow, that had the tenure of his life extended into centuries, he could not have 

 biassed their development. But the producing powers of vegetation are so active as to 

 induce greater changes in a day than do those that form minerals in a thousand years, so 

 that he has every opportunity to impress himself on them. 



But is it his duty and has he the power? undoubtedly; although it may be there are 

 some who think he cannot meddle with nature's works without marring them. A great 

 mistake. In this department she produces nothing absolutely perfect without him, and 

 she will not. Designed for a nursery, it requires nurserymen. Forest^? and praries are 

 at large, what neglected farms are in little. They cover the ground with things growing 

 rank and wild, and choking each oth:r; they are what he himself is before being drawn 

 out of the jungles of ignorance and improved by cultivation. The principles at work, 

 and the soil they work on are at his service ; but like tools in a machinists shop, their 

 profitable employment rests with himself. They will cover his fields with wheat and fill 

 his gardens with fruit, if he so wills, by properly exciting them. If he fold his arms in 

 indolence, they will expend themselves in weeds ; superior fruits will never be produced 

 without work joined to intelligence ; spontaneous growth shows the working of nature's 

 agencies, but not their perfect working; that is left for man to bring out. 



Such is an outline of our author's views, often in his own words ; as we observed in the 

 commencement, they are suggestive to thinking minds, and we wish we had the opportun- 

 ity of presenting the little volume to thousands. 



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