Nat] AND SYMBOLS. 243 



Nature. To the hoarse beating of the waves the sea-bird 

 opposes his shrill strident notes ; with the monotonous murmur- 

 ings of the agitated trees the turtle-dove and a hundred birds 

 blend a soft sad cadence ; to the awakening of the fields, the 

 gaiety of the country, the lark responds with his song, and 

 bears aloft to heaven the joys of earth. Thus then everywhere, 

 above the vast instrumental concert of Nature, above her deep 

 sighs, above the sonorous waves which escape from the divine 

 organ, a vocal music springs and detaches itself that of the 

 bird almost always in vivid notes, which strike sharply on this 

 solemn base with the ardent strokes of a bow. T. B. 



Man's Power to Elicit Nature's Secrets. 



By the aid of American Brooke's invention, the entire 

 orography of the Atlantic has been mapped out with sufficient 

 exactness. This most simple instrument has already rendered 

 unappreciable services to science. The bed of the ocean has 

 been explored to a depth of 14,000 and 15,000 feet; and speci- 

 mens, perfectly intact, have been collected of the wreck of 

 shells and zoophytes with which it is carpeted. MY. 



Nature's Method of Developing New Races. 



A breeder, says Lyell, finds that a new race of cattle, with 

 short horns or without horns, may be formed in the course of 

 several generations by choosing varieties having the most stunted 

 horns as his stock from which to breed ; so Nature, by altering 

 in the course of ages the conditions of life, the geographical 

 features of a country, the climate, the associated plants and 

 animals, and consequently the food and enemies of a species and 

 its mode of life, may be said by this means to select certain 

 varieties best adapted for this new state of things. Such new 

 races may often supplant the original type from which they may 

 have diverged, although that type may have been perpetuated 

 without modification for countless anterior ages in the same 

 region, so long as it was in harmony with the surrounding con- 

 ditions then prevailing. s. L. 



