INFLUENCE OF SEASONS ON OKGANIC LIFE. 47 



deposits of sulphur, those hygeian fountains, should ever have 

 been created ? Without him there is no design, no purpose, in 

 their existence ; with him they are wonderful sources of health 

 or necessary instruments of civilisation and improvement. Thus 

 the geological revolutions of the earth-rind harmoniously point 

 to man as to its future lord ; thus, in the life of our planet and 

 that of its inhabitants, we everywhere find proofs of a gigantic 

 unity of plan, embracing unnumbered ages in its development 

 and progress. 



The obliquity of the earth's axis to the plane of its orbit, 

 through which in its annual course round the sun each pole is 

 alternately presented to the rays of the great luminary, is like- 

 wise of such vast importance to organic life, that it must have 

 been from the beginning established with a view to the place we 

 were one day to occupy on earth. 



Supposing the equator of our globe to have been invariably 

 exposed to the vertical sunbeams, then all the year round short 

 March or September days would have fallen to the share of the 

 temperate zones, and both the poles would have been plunged 

 in constant darkness. The higher latitudes, covered with per- 

 petual ice, must have been totally uninhabitable, and the nu- 

 merous plants which require the summer's heat for the ripening 

 of their fruits must have been banished from our fields. 



The perpetual cold of the poles would no doubt have extended 

 the domains of ice and snow far beyond their present boundaries, 

 and man would have been restricted to a torrid belt, whose 

 narrow confines would have condemned him for ever to a mere 

 animal existence. 



And now compare reality with this imaginary picture, and see 

 how beautifully, by the wanderings of the sun from one tropic to 

 the other in his apparent annual motion, his genial warmth is 

 widely distributed over the earth ; how the various seasons 

 spring with his blossoms, summer with his nourishing corn, 

 autumn with his abundance of fruit, and winter with his cheerful 

 hearth are made to follow each other in charming succession, 

 and to enrich the intellectual life of man by constantly opening 

 new scenes and prospects to his view. It was only thus that he 

 could become master of the earth and of its treasures, and that 

 organic life could develope itself in countless forms up to the 

 icy poles. 



