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enchantment, into the forests of another world; he beheld 

 trees, of forms and characters now unknown upon the sui-face 

 of the " earth, presented to his senses almost in the beauty 

 of their primeval life; their scaly stems and bending 

 branches, with their delicate apparatus of foliage, were all spread 

 forth before him, little impaired by a lapse of countless ages, and 

 bearing faithful records of extinct systems of vegetation which 

 began and terminated in times of which those relics were the 

 infallible historians. He had attempted, he knew most feebly, to 

 describe those physical changes ; he would now briefly remind them 

 that in accord with those changes different grades of life appeared. 

 The earlier formations showed but a low order of either animal or 

 vegetable life, and it was only in the later geological epochs that 

 they saw the higher oi'der of life, with its higher development and 

 its more exquieite sensibility to the joys and pains of existence. 

 Some of their kind fi-iends had brought their microscopes, and they 

 would show them that the lower order of life had its organization 

 pei-fect for the circumstances in which it was placed, and the 

 various clusters of contrivances showed the power and wisdom of 

 the Great Creator. The microscope would also show that there 

 were other worlds beside our own, for it was well said by Channing 

 that, " whilst the telescope revealed a world in every stai-, the 

 microscope revealed a world in every leaf," and so minute were some 

 of the little creatures formed, that no less than 41 millions were 

 found in a cubic inch of tripoli, or the polishing slate. Millions 

 and millions of years had elapsed to produce those changes, but how 

 manifest through all those countless ages were shown the power 

 and wisdom of God in the works of His creation ? One more word 

 and he had done. Let them not neglect to see the spectroscope. 

 They would see every gas and liquid examined by it showed its own 

 lines of colour and coloured liquids, exactly alike to the naked eye, 

 had a marked diffei'ence when subjected to its influence. His task 

 was done, and he thanked them for the attention with which they 

 had listened to him ; and if he could induce one person to join the 

 Society and feel an interest in the contents of the Museum, he 

 should be more than satisfied. He could assure them they would 

 meet with enjoyments unalloyed with regrets ; and he believed they 

 would feel as he felt, under deep obligations to those who had 

 established the Society, and that their warmest thanks were due to 

 their exocllout Hon. Secretaries, Mr. Onions and Mr. Wonfor, who 



