94? STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



meditating on all that lie 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 coeval 

 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 



