AND AMERICAN RURAL SPORTS. 
275 
seen it swim with perfect ease, which indeed Le Court 
had also observed. — lb. 
STUDY OF NATURE. 
There is a principle in the human mind, which, of it- 
self, if it be allowed fair play, obliges you to be impressed 
agreeably by the sight of a fine waterfall, the picturesque- 
ness of an aged oak or time-worn ash, the shade of woods, 
the gurgle of streams, the sounds of the ocean wave, as it 
murmurs on shelving sands, or talks in thunder on rocks 
and precipices. These, and other general components of 
nature, have only to be seen or heard, that they may come 
home with power and effect to the mind. When I see a 
chain of mountains rearing their summits to the clouds, do 
I not immediately pronounce it to be a sublime object; 
and that, without any one idea intervening between the 
moment of sight and the moment of feeling? When a per- 
son for the first time beholds the ocean, is he not wrapt 
in astonishment, and awed by its grandeur, independent- 
ly of any association of ideas? If to-day I admire the beauty 
of the cool, transparent, glassy flow of a river, and if to- 
morrow I behold it swollen to twenty times its usual mag- 
nitude, the water changed by a heavy night’s rain to a 
dark brown colour, and the rolling flood dashing with in- 
cessant roar over u foamy steeps,” or sweeping down its 
more level channel, boiling and flashing in its progress to 
the main, am I not at once impressed with the sublimity 
of the spectacle? or must I first think of flooded fields, or 
drowned cattle, or swept-away bridges, or undermined 
trees and banks? Surely not; the very first glance of the 
vexed torrent excites the feeling as instantaneously as a 
spark explodes gunpowder. I require no associations, no 
preparatory thinking; but a sentiment of sublimity and 
grandeur at the sight is at once called up, I know not how; 
but I am satisfied that it is neither artificial nor acquired. 
I believe the feeling of the sublime and beautiful in nature 
to be truly innate, and that its great value lies in its ele- 
vating our thoughts to the Deity himself. And how nu- 
merous are the lovers of general nature, in obedience to 
this innate feeling! How full of poetry, that language of 
heaven, is nature in all her amplitudes! and how indeli- 
bly rooted is the recollection of her scenes! how faith- 
fully do they remain as they first fixed their impressure 
on the young mind! and how permanently do they con- 
tinue to call up sensations of pleasure and delight! 
“ O nature ! woods, winds, music, valleys, hills, 
And gushing brooks ! — in you there is a voice 
Of potency — an utterance which instils 
Light, life, and freshness, bidding man rejoice 
As with a spirit’s transport : from the noise, 
The hum of busy towns, to you I fly : 
Ye were my earliest nurses, my first choice — 
Let me not idly hope, nor vainly sigh ; 
Whisper once more of peace — joys — years long vanished by.” 
But if the great features of nature be so impressive, 
how much is to be found in her minuter details when 
they come to be investigated. If a writer mention a forest, 
a cataract, a storm, a calm, a desert, or a paradise, and 
adapt his language to the object, all understand, and all 
are pleased, or delighted, or instructed, in proportion as 
he exhibits genius and truth. And when we examine the 
minuter parts of creation, they also can excite no little ad- 
miration, while they give a deeper, and more certain and 
solid knowledge of the power and goodness of God. The 
catalogue of the great features, too, is in comparison 
limited; while in the minuter departments, the number of 
organized beings, of geological, physiological, and other 
phenomena of the highest interest, are absolutely not to 
be numbered. And here there seems to me to be a wide 
and material distinction. The great forms of nature every 
one is impressed with from a constitutional innate feeling. 
The lesser are left to man himself to investigate, by his 
own research and the exercise of his understanding: they 
are innumerable; and we every where in them find an in- 
comprehensible wisdom directing to certain useful ends, 
and unfolding a knowledge not only of the things, but of 
the mighty Being whose work they are. Let. it not then 
besupposed, that the studyingandcollectinganimal, vegeta- 
ble, or mineral productions is a trifling occupation; for 
however general that opinion may be, it is as erroneous as 
it is vulgar. — Letters to a Young Naturalist. 
SUBTERRANEOUS AND OMINOUS SOUNDS. 
In a former volume of the Journal, we communicated 
some curious details in regard to what have been called 
subterranean and ominous sounds. Sir Sohn Herschell 
has lately considered this subject, and conjectures that 
the noises of Nakoos, in Arabia, may be owing to a sub- 
terraneous production of steam, by the generation and 
condensation of which, under certain circumstances, 
sounds are well known to be produced. They belong to 
the same class of phenomena as the combustion of a jet of 
hydrogen gas in glass tubes. He also remarks, that 
wherever extensive subterraneous caverns exist, commu- 
nicating with each other, or with the atmosphere, by 
