30 INTRODUCTION. 



any more than a stone ceases to fall to the earth when 

 unsupported in the air. Man requires the union of 

 favourable circumstances, and the experience of gene- 

 rations, before he can construct a decent dwelling, or 

 find a constant supply of food ; and yet he sometimes 

 forgets that Being, at whose single and instantaneous 

 word or pleasure those thousands of creatures, and 

 their millions of instincts, came into existence, in per- 

 fect regularity, amid continual change, requiring no 

 new effort and no repair ; but passing from life to 

 death, and from death back again to life, in one won- 

 derful succession, until it shall please Him, who in one 

 moment spoke them all into being, to speak them all 

 out of it in another. 



But it is not in this view alone that the study of 

 nature is the most pleasing and profitable. Tn con- 

 templating the structure of any plant or any animal, 

 however common, and however, upon that account, dis- 

 regarded or overlooked, we may find finer applications 

 of mechanical art, and nicer processes in chemistry, 

 than the collected art of the whole human race can 

 boast of. That the vegetable principle in an acorn 

 should be chemist enough to fabricate oak timber, and 

 bark and leaves and new acorns ; and mechanic enough 

 to rear the tree in the air against the natural tendency 

 of gravitation, and in spite of the violence of the winds, 

 and do all this by means of a little portion of matter, 

 that can be kept for a considerable time as if it were 

 dead, is truly astonishing. It is equally demonstrative 

 of power and wisdom in Him who gave the impulse, 

 that out of the same soil and the same atmosphere 

 each plant should elaborate that which properly belongs 



