219 



Let the gardener dress for himself one field of fresh 

 earth, and make it as uniform as he can ; then let him 

 plant therein all the varieties of the vegetable world, 

 in their roots or in their seeds, as he shall think pro- 

 per : yet out of this common earth, under the drop- 

 pings of common water from heaven, every one of 

 these plants shall be nourished, and grow up in its 

 proper form ; all the infinite diversity of shapes and 

 sizes, colours, tastes and smells, which constitute and 

 adorn the vegetable world,, (would the climate permit) 

 might be produced out of the same clods. What rich 

 and surprising wisdom appears in that Almighty ope- 

 rator, who out of the same matter shall perfume the 

 bosom of the rose, and give the garlic its offensive and 

 nauseous powers ? Who from the same spot of 

 ground, shall raise liquorice and the wormwood, and 

 dress the check of the tulip in all its glowing beauties? 

 What a surprise, to see the same seed furnish the pome* 

 granate and the orange-tree with the juicy fruit, 

 and the stalks of corn with their dry and husky 

 grains ? To observe the oak raised from a little 

 acorn, into its stately growth and solid timber, out of 

 the same bed of earth that sent up the vine with such 

 soft and feeble limbs ? What a natural kind of pro* 

 digy is it, that chilling and burning vegetables should 

 arise out of the same spot ? That the fever and the 

 frenzy should start up from the same bed, where the 

 palsy and the lethargy lie dormant in their seeds ? Is 

 itfciiot exceeding strange, that healthful and poisonous 

 juices should rise up in their proper plants out of 

 the same common glebe, and that iife and death 

 should grow and thrive within an inch of each other? 



What wondrous and inimitable skill must be at. 

 tributed to that supreme power, that iirst cause, 

 who can so infinitely diversify effects, where the 

 servile second cause is always the same ? 



It is not for me in this place to enter into a long 

 detail of philosophy, and shew how the minute fibres 

 and tubes of the different seeds aud roots of vege* 

 tables take hold of, attract, and receive (he little 



