94. STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
meditating on all that he saw. Every new discovery 
would increase his veneration for the Divine Author 
of such wonders; and although placed upon earth, 
his contemplations would be those of the inhabitants 
of heaven. Such is the reply suggested by reason, 
to our previous question ; and such, does inspiration 
assure us, was the occupation of the parent of man- 
kind. ‘‘ And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to 
the fowls of the air, and to every beast of the field.” 
It is fit that the study of nature should be coéval 
with the creation of man. Though his spirit has 
been changed,— though care and trouble, those 
thorns and thistles of his present state, entangle and 
distract him, and he is called to the discharge of 
moral and social duties, —yet this remnant of prim- 
eval happiness is still left to him. The volume of 
nature, with all its variety and beauty, still lies open 
for his perusal; and in those short hours snatched 
from the stirring excitations of the troubled world, 
he may still turn aside, and consider the lilies of 
the field; and he may read, in the metamorphoses 
of the butterfly, the change that awaits himself. 
(42.) All knowledge may evidently be referred 
to one or other of the following divisions: — First, 
such as regards the works of God; and secondly, 
such as emanates from the inventions of man. As the 
former is the most noble and the most intellectual, 
so is it the most comprehensive; since it regards not 
only the natural objects which surround us, but the 
internal composition of those objects, and the laws 
by which the phenomena of nature are regulated. 
Natural History, therefore, in this its most extended 
sense, may be considered as embracing the study of 
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