800 
THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
a pole into the ground, at a moderate distance from a climbing 
plant, the plant directs its course to the pole, lays hold of it, and ri¬ 
ses on it to its natural height. A honey-suckle proceeds in its 
course, till it is too long for supporting its weight, and then strengthen 
itself by shooting into a spiral direction. Comparing these and other 
instances, of seeming voluntary motion in plants, with that share of 
life wherewith some of the inferior kind of animals are endowed, we 
can scarcely hesitate, at ascribing the superiority to the former. 
The fertility of the earth, has continued from the creation to the 
present time. Plants spring up, grow, flourish, ripen their fruit, 
wither, and at last, having finished their course die, and return to 
the dust again, ftom whence they first took their rise. But the earth 
offers again to plants what it has thus received; for when seeds are 
committed to the earth, they draw to themselves, accommodate to 
their nature, and turn into plants, the more subtile parts of the soil; 
by the co-operation of the sun, air, and rain : so that the tallest tree 
is, properly speaking, nothing but mould, wonderfully compounded 
with air and water, and modified by a virtue communicated to a small 
seed by the creator. From these plants when they die, just the 
same kind of mould is formed as gave birth to them originally whence 
fertility remains continually uninterrupted. 
That the author of nature had so constituted the world, that none 
of the elements should be subject to destruction, might have been 
supposed by the ancients; but till the present advanced state of the 
science of chemistry, no proof of this interesting fact, could have 
been adduced. Of the indestructibility of matter, it may be remarked 
that provision has been made even for the restoration of the fallen 
leaves of vegetables, which rot on the ground, and to a careless ob¬ 
server would appear lost for ever. Berthollet has shown by experi¬ 
ment, that whenever the soil becomes charged with such matter, the 
oxygen of the atmosphere combines with it, and converts it into car¬ 
bonic acid gas, and the consequence of this is, that this same carbon 
in process of time, is absorbed by a new race of vegetables, which it 
clothes with a new foliage, and which is itself destined to undergo 
similar putrefaction, and renovation to the end of time. I might ad¬ 
duce many other facts, but not to trespass longer upon your time 
I hope the few remarks I have made, though rather miscellaneous, 
may be the means of inducing some of your young readers, to study 
Natural History, with a view of obtaining a just conception of the 
infinite wisdom and goodness of the creator. 
“ Nature is but a name for an effect, 
Whose cause is God.” 
