UNITY OF NATURE. 233 



succulent state then, and thus where the ground is 

 not hid also under deep snow, there is something to be 

 procured. At that time, too, the labours of all the 

 animals are restricted to the finding of their own food, 

 and, as the animal winter is diminished, a smaller 

 quantity suffices. The insects of those regions also 

 commit their broods to the waters, or to the buds of 

 the hardy plants which, by their natural varnish, re- 

 sist the action of the frost. But deep as they may be 

 hidden ; far as they may be beneath that glassy surface 

 which the keen air congeals as a barrier against its own 

 destroying power, the return of the season finds them 

 out : the breath of spring passes over them, as the spirit 

 did over the dry bones in the valley of Vision, and be 

 the germs ever so minute, ever so much indurated, or 

 ever so much hidden, they are straightway " clothed 

 with flesh, and live." Where can we find in man's 

 working, where in the deeds of that creation of a dis- 

 tempered fancy that production and cloak for human 

 ignorance chance, any thing to be compared with 

 this? Here we have the smallest insect, and most 

 insignificant vegetable, that which, as a whole, seems 

 nothing to the eye, and turns not the scale of the most 

 delicate balance, and of which the parts, more nume- 

 rous than arithmetic can reckon, elude the keenest 

 scrutiny of the microscope, yet linked in one common 

 system with the sun : dependent upon a globe more 

 than eight hundred and eighty thousand miles in di- 

 ameter, and distant nearly one hundred millions of 

 miles. What fortuitous combination of atoms, what 

 succession of events, which had not their beginning 

 with ONE who, ere then, saw the end, would come 

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