his subject Botanic Garden, Vol.
I. Additional Note XXIV.]

"Thus the tall mountains, that emboss the lands,
Huge isles of rock, and continents of sands,
Whose dim extent eludes the inquiring sight,
ARE MIGHTY MONUMENTS OF PAST DELIGHT; 450
Shout round the globe, how Reproduction strives
With vanquish'd Death,--and Happiness survives;
How Life increasing peoples every clime,
And young renascent Nature conquers Time;
--And high in golden characters record
The immense munificence of NATURE'S LORD!--

[Footnote: _Are mighty monuments_, l. 450. The reader is
referred to a few pages on this subject in Phytologia, Sect.
XIX. 7. 1, where the felicity of organic life is considered
more at large; but it is probable that the most certain way
to estimate the happiness and misery of organic beings; as it
depends on the actions of the organs of sense, which
constitute ideas; or of the muscular fibres which perform
locomotion; would be to consider those actions, as they are
produced or excited by the four sensorial powers of
irritation, sensation, volition, and association. A small
volume on this subject by some ingenious writer, might not
only amuse, as an object of curiosity; but by showing the
world the immediate sources of their pains and pleasures
might teach the means to avoid the one, and to procure the
other, and thus contribute both ways to increase the sum
total of organic happiness.]

[Footnote: _How Life increasing_, l. 453. Not only the vast
calcareous provinces, which form so great a part of the
terraqueous globe, and also whatever rests upon them, as
clay, marl, sand, and coal, were formed from the fluid
elements of heat, oxygen, azote, and hydrogen along with
carbon, phosphorus, and perhaps a few other substances, which
the science of chemistry has not yet decomposed; and gave the
pleasure of life to the animals and vegetables, which formed
them; and thus constitute monuments of the past happiness of
those organized beings. But as those remains of former life
are not again totally decomposed, or converted into their
original elements, they supply more copious food to the
succession of new animal or