36 STUDIES OF NATURE. 



ture has afllgned them. I have been often highly 

 diverted, in the Weft-Indies, at the fight of a crab- 

 on the fand, ftraining, with his claws, to break 

 into a huge cocoa-nut ; or a fliaggy ape balancing 

 himfelf on the fummit of a tree, at the extremity 

 of a lianne, loaded with pods and brilliant flowers. 



Our books of Natural Hiftory are merely the ro- 

 mance of Nature, and our cabinets her tomb. Ta 

 what a degree have our fpeculations and our pre- 

 judices degraded her? Our treatifes on Agriculture 

 fhevv us, on the plains of Ceres, nothing but bags 

 of grain ; in the meadows, the beloved haunt of 

 the nymphs, only bundles of hay j and in the ma- 

 jeftic foreft, only cords of wood and faggots. 



What fliall we fay of th-e violence done to her by 

 Pride and Avarice ? How many charming hills 

 have been reduced to a ftate of villanage, by our 

 laws ! What majeftic rivers degraded into fervi- 

 tude by impofts ! 



The Hiftory of Man has been disfigured in a 

 very different manner. If we except the intereft 

 which religion, or humanity, has prompted fomc 

 good men to take, in favour of their fellow-crea- 

 tures, the reft of Hiftorians have written under the 

 ■ im.pulfe of a thoufand different pafiSons. The Po- 

 litician reprefenls Man, as divided into nobility 



and 



