228 SCRIPTURE NATURAL HISTORY. 



heat and cold ! What evident marks of wisdom and design do the 

 flowers evince in their beautiul and delicate construction ; how 

 nicely are they formed for the protection and nourishment of the 

 first and tender rudiments of the fruit, and when it has attained 

 more firmness and solidity, how readily do they relinquish their 

 charge, and drop off in decay, when no longer necessary ! How 

 wonderfully does the fruit, in some classes, envelope and protect 

 the seed till it has arrived at maturity ; and lastly, what a passing 

 strange piece of organized mechanism is the seed itself, and, being 

 necessary for the reproduction of its species, what a remarkable 

 provision is made for its preservation and succession ! What but 

 the wisdom of a Deity could have devised, that those seeds which 

 are most exposed to the ravages of the inhabitants of the forest 

 should be not only doubly, but some of them trebly enclosed ; that 

 those most in request as articles of food, should be so hardy and so 

 abundantly prolific; and that seeds in general, which are the spoit 

 of so many casualties, and exposed to injury from such a variety of 

 accidents, should be possessed of a principle of lasting vitality, 

 which makes it indeed no easy matter to deprive them of th^ir 

 fructifying power ! Plants are also multiplied and propagated by 

 a variety of ways, which strengthen the provision made for their 

 succession. 



Nor is the finger of Providence less visible in the means for dif- 

 fusing or spreading abroad vegetables, than in the provision made 

 for keeping up their succession. The earth may be said to be full 

 of the goodness of the Lord; but how comes it to pass, that in 

 parts untrod by man, and on the tops of ruinous buildings, so many 

 varied specimens of the vegetable creation are to be found ? Is it 

 not from the manner in which nature's great Husbandman scatters 

 his seeds about ? While the seeds of some plants are made suffi- 

 ciently heavy to fail down and take up their abode near the place 

 of their nativity ; and others, after having been swallowed up by 

 quadrupeds, are deposited in the neighboring soil; some are carried 

 by the fowls of the air to places more remote, or, being furnished 

 with a soft plumage, are borne on the winds of heaven to the situa- 

 tions allotted for them. To prevent some from pitching too near, 

 they are wrapped up in elastic cases, which, bursting when fully 

 ripe, the prisoners fly abroad in all directions. To prevent others 

 from straying too far, they are furnished with a kind of grappling 

 hooks, that arrest them in their flight, and attach them to the spot 

 most congenial to their growth. These are some of the doings of the 

 Lord, and are wondrous in our eyes ! 



In the construction of plants we observe a considerable differ- 

 ence in the consistence of the three classes. Compared with the 

 shrubby race, how hard, firm, and tenacious is the trunk of the 

 majestic oak ; and, compared with the herbaceous tribe, how woody, 

 tough, and elastic is the hawthorn twig! But ,for this, how 

 could the mighty monarch of the wood have been able to with- 

 stand the fury of the tempest ? While the more humble and lowly 



