210 SPUING. 



resemblance to man. Thus we have far more com- 

 mand over them, and can turn their energies more to 

 our wish. We can make them produce leaves, or 

 wood, or fruit, or seeds, according as we consider these 

 to be useful or ornamental. We can regulate their 

 place, and form, and magnitude ; we can so far blend 

 their colours and qualities ; and it is in their changes 

 and varieties that we find the grand characteristics of 

 the year. The songs of the birds, the sportings of the 

 quadrupeds, and all the other phenomena of animated 

 nature, have their attractions ; but the vegetable tribes 

 form the grand kalendar of nature. The green sward 

 with its spottings of early flowers, the orchard with its 

 mantle of soft pink and virgin white, the wood, the 

 coppice, and the hedge, all coming into leaf, these 

 are the charms of the spring, the greenness, the ver- 

 nality, is the very livery of life, the colour which always 

 pleases and never fatigues the eye. Among the ani- 

 mals, too, we meet with what we consider as instances 

 of cruelty : one race preys upon another, and many are 

 cannibals ; but we meet with nothing of the kind 

 among plants. The earth and the air, the rain and 

 the dew, are all that they require ; and they yield up a 

 portion of their substance every year for the fertilizing 

 of the soil, at the same time that they feed the whole 

 of animated nature, directly, or through the medium of 

 some other part of itself. 



As subjects for study, we have nothing equal to 

 them. The animals, when in a state of nature, flee at 

 our approach ; we see them only by snatches, and 

 therefore have not the means of getting a continuous 



