36 ^ FOREST CREATDEES. 



THE EOE. 



PART SECOND. 

 A NEW WONDER IN NATURAL HISTORY. 



Multifarious and diversified as we may have believed 

 the arrangements of Nature to be, still with the dis- 

 coveries of new lands — of New Holland, for instance — 

 fresh proofs of the manifold ways in which she orders 

 things have been presented us ; causing additional 

 wonderment, and proving anew that whatever is of 

 divine origin is not bounded but infinite. The last 

 quarter of a century has disclosed to us connecting links 

 in the creation of which we before had not the remot- 

 est notion ; and new forms, as well as new forms of life, 

 which, had the imagination of any man happened to 

 invent the like, would have been looked upon as 

 belonging to the fabulous, and quite on a par with the 

 phoenix, or the tree whose blossoms were rubies. And 

 y,et the Indian archipelago has made us familiar with 

 plants, whose flowers, if not jewels, are winged animals 

 and reptiles, at least in shape and colour ; grotesque 

 and odd sometimes, and resembling nothing of vege- 



