w found favour in our eyes; and blessings be with them who
can discover, discern, and describe the least as the greatest of
Nature's works--who can see as distinctly the finger of God in the
lustre of the humming-bird murmuring round a rose-bush, as in that of
the star of Jove shining sole in heaven.

Take up now almost any book you may on any branch of Natural History,
and instead of the endless, dry details of imaginary systems and
classifications, in which the ludicrous littlenesses of man's vain
ingenuity used to be set up as a sort of symbolical scheme of revelation
of the sublime varieties of the inferior--as we choose to call
it--creation of God, you find high attempts in an humble spirit rather
to illustrate tendencies, and uses, and harmonies, and order, and
design. With some glorious exceptions, indeed, the naturalists of the
day gone by showed us a science that was but a skeleton--little but dry
bones; with some inglorious exceptions, indeed, the naturalists of the
day that is now, have been desirous to show us a living, breathing, and
moving body--to explain, as far as they might, its mechanism and its
spirit. Ere another century elapse, how familiar may men be with all the
families of the flowers of the field, and the birds of the air, with
all the interdependencies of their characters and their kindreds,
perhaps even with the mystery of that instinct which now is seen working
wonders, not only beyond the power of reason to comprehend, but of
imagination to conceive!

How deeply enshrouded are felt to be the mysteries of Nature, when,
thousands of years after Aristotle, we hear Audubon confess his utter
ignorance of what migrations and non-migrations mean--that 'tis hard to
understand why such general laws as these should be--though their benign
operation is beautifully seen in the happiness provided alike for
all--whether they reside in their own comparatively small localities,
nor ever wish to leave them--or at stated seasons instinctively fly away
over thousands of miles, to drop down and settle for a while on some
spot adapted to their necessities, of which they had prescience afar
off, though seemingly wafted thither like leaves upon the wind! Verily,
as great a mystery is that Natural Religion by the theist studied in
woods and on mountains and by sea-shores, as that Revelation which
philosophers will not believe because they do not understand--"the
blinded bigot's scorn" deriding man's highest and h