Part 15

We are naturally solicitous to look back upon seasons remarkable for atmospheric phenomena, and compare their results with those passing before us, though we may be fully sensible that no conclusions can safely be drawn from them,—a variety of circumstances not known, or not comprehended, combining to produce results beyond our means of calculation. There have been times when such recollections brought no pleasure with them, by displaying the injuries and sufferings that hurricanes and floods have occasioned; and thus we who were witnesses of the distress occasioned by the lamentable rains of 1793, and the several successive years, when every wheat-sheaf presented a turf of verdant vegetation, cannot recollect it without sorrow, or ever forget that famine in our land. Yet it is amusing, on some occasions, to note the extremes of weather that our island has experienced; for though in general our seasons pass away without any very considerable dissimilitude, still we have known periods of great irregularity, drought or moisture, cold or heat. The freezing of great rivers, with the roasting of animals and passage of carriages upon the ice, our calendars and diaries relate; but instances of an opposite temperature, affording less striking events, are not so fully detailed as might be wished. The winter of 1661 appears to have been remarkable for its mildness; and it is rather curious that, in the century following, the winter of 1761 should have been equally notable for the mildness of its temperature. The winter of 1795 seems to have partaken of none of the severity usual to the season; and the summer of 1765 was remarkable for its heat and dryness, and all vegetation being influenced by their effects, brought forth fruits and flowers in unusual perfection.

But perhaps the year 1825, taking all its circumstances, is the most extraordinary to be found in our annals. The winter of 1824–5 had been mild and wet; the ensuing spring dry, but with keen winds and frosty mornings, which greatly injured the fine blossoms that appeared on our fruit trees; and the continued and profuse nightly fall of the honey-dew was quite unusual: the leaves of the oak, the cherry, and the plum, were constantly smeared and dropping with this clammy liquor, which, falling from the foliage on the ground, blackened it as if some dark fluid had been spilled upon it: the leaves of most of our stone fruits curled up, covered with aphides, and became deciduous; and their young shoots were destroyed by the punctures of these insects that clustered on them. This honey-dew continued to fall till about the middle of July, affording an abundant supply of food to multitudes of bees, moths, and other insects which swarmed about the trees. We rarely begin cutting our grass before the first week in July; but in consequence of the heat of June in this year, it was so drawn up, that much hay was made and carried by the 20th of June, which commonly is not accomplished till August. Our crops on good ground were considered as fair, though in general the chilling season of May had occasioned a deficiency; but all our clover crops and artificial grasses were harvested in the finest order, producing good- sized ricks and mows; yet their bulk was delusive, the provender cutting out light and strawy. The heat and drought continued, with very partial and slight showers of rain, all June and July; nor had we any thing like serviceable rain till the second of August. In consequence our grass lands were burned up, and our fields parched, presenting deep fissures in all parts. The heat was unusually distressing all day; and evening brought us little or no relief, as every wall radiated throughout the night the heat it had imbibed from the torrid sun of the day. Our bedroom windows were kept constantly open, all apprehension from damps and night airs, which at other times were of the first consideration, being disregarded; a cooler temperature, however obtained, was alone required; and we lingered below, unwilling to encounter the tossings and restlessness that our heated beds occasioned. Our wainscots cracked, furniture contracted and gaped with seams; a sandal-wood box, which had been in use for upwards of twenty years in dry rooms, shrunk and warped out of all form; a capsule of the sandbox tree (hura crepitans), which had remained in repose over a shelf above the fire-place for an unknown length of time, now first experienced an excess of dryness, and exploded in every direction; door frames contracted, window sashes became fixed and immovable. These are trifles to relate, but yet they mark the very unusual dryness of the atmosphere.

Monday and Tuesday, July 18th and 19th, will long be remembered as the acme of our suffering, the thermometer standing in the shade of a passage communicating immediately with the outer air, in an open situation, at 82° of Fahrenheit. A few yards nearer the air, on which the sun shone, it rose to 93°, without any influence from reflection or other causes. In towns, and more confined places, it is said, the heat was much greater. The current of air now felt like that near the mouth of an oven, heavy and oppressive, and occasioning more unpleasant sensations than such a temperature usually creates; animals became distressed, the young rooks of the season entered our gardens, and approached our doors, as in severe frosts, with open bills, panting for a cooler element; horses dropped exhausted on the roads; many of the public conveyances, which usually travelled by day, waited till night, to save the cattle from the overpowering influence of the sun. The leaves of our apple and filbert trees, in dry situations, withered up large forest trees, especially the elm, had their leaves so scorched by the sun, that they fell from their sprays as in autumn, rustling along the ground; the larch became perfectly deciduous. In our gardens, the havoc occasioned by the heat was very manifest. The fruit of the gooseberry, burnt up before maturity, hung shrivelled upon the leafless bushes; the strawberry and raspberry quite withered away; the stalk of the early potato was perfectly destroyed, and the tubers near the surface in many places became roasted and sodden by the heat, few obtaining their natural size, and sold at this period in the Bristol market at twenty-four shillings the sack. A few choice plants were saved by watering them daily; but in general the exhalation from the foliage, by reason of the heat of the earth, was greater than the root could supply, the green parts withering as if seared by a frost.

On the 20th of July, some farmers began to cut their wheat; and by the 25th reaping had generally commenced. Our bean crop presented, perhaps, an unprecedented instance of early ripeness, being usually mowed in September; but this year it was universally ripe, indeed more perfectly so than the wheat, by the 1st of August. The crop, however, proved a defective one: water became scarce, and the herbage of the fields afforded so little nutriment, that the cows nearly lost their milk, eight or ten being milked into a pail that four should have filled; and one week, from July the 18th to the 24th, butter could not be made to harden, but remained a soft oleaginous mass.

This extreme heat had a favorable influence on many of our exotic plants, enabling several to perfect their seed, which do not usually in our climate; such as nightstocks, erodiums, heliotrope, groundsels, cape-asters, and such green-house plants vegetating in the open air. With me all the polyanthus tribe, especially the double varieties, suffered greatly; lovers of the cold and moisture of a northern climate, in this tropic heat, they became so parched as never properly to recover their verdure, and in the ensuing spring I missed these gay and pleasing flowers in my borders.

It was a sad destructive season for the poor butterflies, and no sooner did a specimen appear upon the wing, than the swallow and all the fly- catching tribe snapped them up, rendered eager and vigilant from the scarcity of insect food. Even that active and circumspect creature the hummingbird sphinx could not always, with every exertion of its agility, escape their pursuit.

Early in August rains fell, and continued seasonably until September; and their effect upon our scorched vegetation, from the general heat of the earth and the air, was extremely rapid. The larch, and other trees which had shed their leaves, now put forth their tender green foliage as in spring; and by the end of September the universal verdure of the country, and profusion of feed in the pastures, was so perfectly unlike what we had been accustomed to in common years, as to be astonishing. Even as low in the year as the 11th of October, there was no appearance of any change in the foliage, except a slight tinge upon the leaves of the maple; and this day was so brilliant, that the cattle were reposing in the shade, the thermometer varying from 66° to 68° F., and the general warmth to our feelings was greater than that indicated by the instrument. October the 20th, the weather changed, some sleety rain fell, and the hills were sprinkled with snow, the thermometer falling to 40°, and all our hirundines, which had been sporting about us up to this period, departed: yet still vegetation continued in all its vigor, and on the 1st of November dog-roses hung like little garlands in the hedges; the cornel bushes (cornus sanguinea) were in full bloom; and corn-roses (rosa arvensis) were decorating our hedges in a profusion equal to that of a common August. November 4th there were slight ice and partial snow, with various alternations undeserving of notice, but the weather was generally fair and mild until Christmas.

All these preceding heats and rapid changes had, I think, a manifest influence upon our constitutions. Violent catarrhs, and lingering, unremitting coughs, prevailed among all classes, both before and after Christmas, to a degree that I never remember; and children were afflicted with measles almost universally. Early in January a violent wind was succeeded by a severe frost, and in some places by a deep snow; but, after about ten days’ duration, a very gentle thaw removed all this, and the remainder of our winter was mild and agreeable, introducing what might be called an early spring, dry and propitious for every agricultural purpose. The trees that refoliaged so vigorously in autumn seemed in no way weakened by this unusual exertion, but produced their accustomed proportion of leaves, and the sprays of every bush and tree, ripened and matured by the last summer’s sun, displayed a profusion, an accumulation of blossom, that gave the fairest promise of abundance of fruit, and every product of the earth.

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That the death of any creature should be required by the naturalist, to perfect his examination, or arrange it in his collection, (and without a collection the investigation of any branch of natural history can be but partially undertaken), may be regretted; but still the epithet of “cruel employ” must not be attached to this pursuit. We do not destroy in wantonness, or unnecessarily; and that life, of which it is expedient to deprive a creature, is taken by the most speedy, and in the least painful manner known. Some of our methods, if speedy, are at the same time injurious, such as hot water, the stifling-box, &c.; and some, that are not painful, such as stupefaction by spirits, ether, &c., and suffocation by carbonate of ammonia, are occasionally not effectual. But there is one process, which I believe to be neither painful nor injurious, yet decisive, and communicative with pleasure; I mean the prussic acid. This fluid may be imbibed by the insect without producing any particular effect; but, if brought to act upon the spinal cord, or what at least is analogous to that part of a vertebrate animal, whatever it may be called, and which seems to be the most vital part of the creation, instant death ensues. A crow-quill must be shaped into a point, like a rather long pen, this point dipped into the prussic acid, and an incision made with it immediately beneath the head into the middle of the shoulders of the creature, so as to permit the fluid it contains to enter into the body of the insect. Immediately after this, in every instance in which I have tried it, a privation of sensation appears to take place, the corporeal action of the creature ceasing, a feeble tremulous motion of the antennæ being alone perceptible; and these parts seem to be the last fortress that is abandoned by sensation, as they are the primary principle of sensibility when life is perfect: extinction of animation ensues, not a mere suspension, but an annihilation of every power, muscular and vital. As one example of the decisive effects of this fluid, I shall instance the common wasp, a creature so remarkably tenacious of sensation, or so long retaining a muscular power, that it may remain, as every one knows, for days crushed in the window, an apparently dead insect, yet upon pressing the head, the sting will be so protruded as to give a very sensible pain to the finger it should meet with; but upon the prussic acid being injected into this creature as above, when in full vigor, in the course of less than half a minute a loss of vitality ensues, the action of the muscular fibre ceases altogether, and no pressure can incite it again into action. The sudden effect of this liquor is not so generally known as from humanity and expediency might be wished. Who first devised the experiment I am ignorant; but any repetition of means whereby a necessary end can be obtained by the least painful and brief infliction, will hardly be considered as superfluous.

This subject naturally introduces the preservation of the creatures after their death, and the young entomologist is not perhaps sensible from experience of the injury some species of insects will effect in the selected specimens of others of this race, and may lament, when too late, the separation of the wings, limbs, and bodies of his collection by these tiny depredators (ptinus fur, acararus destructor). Mr. Waterton’s recipe for preventing this evil, I have used rather extensively and believe it to be a very effectual, and generally an innocuous preservative; but as this gentleman has not given us the exact proportions of his mixture, it may not be useless to observe, that if one part of corrosive sublimate be dissolved in eight parts of good spirit of wine, and the under side of the insect touched with a camel’s- hair pencil, dipped in the liquor, so as to let it lightly pervade every part of the creature, which it readily does, it will, I apprehend, prevent any future injury from insects. A larger portion of the sublimate will leave an unsightly whiteness upon the creature when the specimen becomes dry. The under side of the board, on which the insects are fixed, should be warmed a little by the fire after the application, that the superfluous moisture may fly off, before finally closing the case. If this be omitted, the inner surface of the glass will sometimes become partially obscured by the fume arising from the mixture. The experienced entomologist needs not a notice like this; but the young collector probably will not regard it as unnecessary information, and may be spared by it from both mortification and regret. I have known insects commence their serious operations before the collections of the summer could be arranged in their permanent cases.

In noticing above, that this solution is generally harmless, it is requisite that mention should be made of the few instances in which it has been observed to be injurious. I have applied it to many specimens of foreign and British insects, and commonly observed no indication of its having been used, when the creatures had become dry. But to confine our attentions to English specimens, when the solution is made stronger than recommended, it will, after a time, injure the fine yellow of the sulphur butterfly (papilio rhamni), by turning parts of it brown and dirty; but even in its reduced state it has a manifest effect upon the colors of two of our moths, the Dartford emerald (phalæna lucidata), and what is commonly called the green housewife moth (phalæna vernaria) changing their plumage, in several places, to a red buffy hue, when at the same time the beautiful green wings of the small oak-moth (phalæna viridana) are in no way altered by it. But notwithstanding these circumstances, it will, I apprehend, be considered as a very useful preservative, and save many specimens from destruction which other means usually fail of effecting.

There are not many of our rural practices, that deserve more the disapprobation of the landed proprietor than that of pollarding trees. “It is an evil under the sun, and common among men.” Here it is universal. This system of cutting off the heads of the young trees in the hedge-rows is resorted to by the farmer for the purpose of forcing them, thus deprived of their leaders, to throw out collateral shoots, serving for stakes for the fences, and for firewood. The purposes are effected; but of all hopes of timber, or profit to the proprietor, there is an end. No trees suffer more in this respect than the ash. Prohibitions against mangling trees, in agreements, are usual; but, with some exceptions in regard to oak, little attention seems paid to the covenant, as is obvious on the most cursory view of the country in any direction; whereas the ash is not a less valuable tree, from its thriving more universally in all situations, and becoming saleable in a shorter period. One or two generations must pass before an oak should be felled; but the ash becomes useful wood while its more respected companion is but a sapling. These prohibitions should not simply be engrossed on the parchment, but the agent ought strictly to notice any infringement; and young ash trees should be more especially guarded because they are the most likely to suffer, from their producing the greatest quantity of lop in the shortest time. The injury done by this practice to the present landlord and his successors is beyond estimation, as the numbers destroyed, and the vigor of their growth, must be first known; but there is not a farm of any extent from which hundreds of ash trees might not have been felled, had their growth been permitted, making an annual return; whereas nothing can be obtained now or hereafter for the proprietor, and only a few stakes and bavins for the farmer. It is by no means an uncommon thing, to observe every ash tree in a hedge reduced to stumps by successive pollardings. Many a landlord would shudder at the thought of breaking up an old productive sward, and not regard the topping of an ash; whereas this latter act is infinitely more injurious, ultimately, than the former. The land may, and will probably, recover, but the tree is lost for ever, as to any profitable purposes for the owner. The farmer might perhaps tell the agent when he remonstrated, that he must have firewood, and hedging stuff; but the wants of the former have decreased by the facility of obtaining other fuel, and neither is to be supplied by the landlord at such a ruinous subversion of present and future benefit. I am not so silly as to enlarge upon the beauty of what has been called “picturesque farming;” but when we cast our eyes over the country, and see such rows of dark, club-headed posts, we cannot but remark upon the unsightly character they present, and consider it neither laudable to deform our beautiful country by the connivance, nor proper attention to individual profit to allow the continuation of it. The ash, after this mutilation, in a few years become flattened at the summit, moisture lodges in it, and decay commences, the central parts gradually mouldering away, though for many years the sap wood will throw out vigorous shoots for the hatchet. The goat moth now too commences its mordications, and the end is not distant. But the wood of the ash appears in every stage subject to injury; when in a dry state the weevils mine holes through it; when covered by its bark, it gives harbor to an infinite variety of insects, which are the appointed agents for the removal of the timber: the ashen bar of a stile, or a post, we may generally observe to be regularly scored by rude lines diverging from a central stem, like a trained fruit-tree, by the meanderings of a little insect (ips niger, &c.), being the passages of the creatures feeding on the wood.

There is one race of trees, the willow, very common about us, that is so universally subject to this pollarding, for the purpose of providing stakes and hurdles for the farm, that probably few persons have ever seen a willow tree. At any rate a sight of one grown unmutilated from the root is a rare occurrence. The few that I have seen constituted trees of great beauty; but as the willow, from the nature of its wood, can never be valuable as a timber tree, perhaps by topping it we obtain its best services. In the county of Gloucester there are several remarkable trees of different species now growing, but I am not acquainted with any greater natural curiosity of this sort than an uncommonly fine willow tree in the meadows on the right of the Spa-house at Gloucester. There are two of them; the species I forget, but one tree is so healthy and finely grown, that it deserves every attention, and should be preserved as a unique specimen, an example of what magnitude this despised race may attain when suffered to proceed in its own unrestrained vigor.

Dec. 30.—A cold foggy morning, the ground covered with a white frost; about twelve o’clock the sun burst out with great brilliancy, and life and light succeeded to torpor and gloom; a steam immediately arose from our garden beds and plowed lands, giving us a very strong example of the rapid manner in which the matter of heat (caloric) will at times unite with water. Half an hour before, this water was frozen and inert; but the instant that the sun’s rays fell upon it, their heat was imbibed, and the icy matter converted into a body lighter than the atmosphere by which it was surrounded, and passed into it in the vapor we have just noticed. I was the more particular in observing this common event, as it afforded a forcible illustration of the invisible evaporation which is constantly going forward, the unremitting changes in operation, the action and reaction of the earth and its products with the atmosphere. During the night, and the earlier parts of the morning, water was falling on the earth in minute particles, constituting what we call fog; then out burst the sun, and reclaimed this moisture which had fallen, and we could see it obeying the mandate, and pass away in steam. In the evening it will probably return again in fog, or in rain, when the atmosphere cools; and thus a constant visible intelligence is going on. How much insensible intercourse takes place we know not, but we can comprehend its agency by the effects and events that manifest themselves. Our country people think these “rokings” (reekings) of the earth greatly favorable to the growth of vegetation, supposing it occasioned by the internal heat of the earth producing a vapor like that from fermenting soil, thus warming the roots; but if the theory be defective, the fact may be true, by the caloric in the sun’s rays promoting the decomposition of the water, or separating the component parts (oxygen and hydrogen), which uniting with other matters contained in the earth and atmosphere (carbon and carbonic acid) become by this means the basis of all our fruits, our sweets, our sours, resins, &c., in the vegetable world; and hence there is a constant decomposition of water going forward by these alternations, and a constant formation of matters beneficial and necessary for the various inhabitants of the earth. When we perceive that a shower of rain has revived or promoted the increase of vegetation, we must understand, that the mere wetting it has not accomplished this; but that the vegetable has by means of its foliage, aided by light and heat, decomposed or separated the combined matters of the water, and taken from it certain portions as essential to its vigor, or been revictualled, in a manner, by the nutriment contained in the water.

Jan. 10.—The ground covered with snow, the pools with ice, trees and hedges leafless, and patched here and there with a mantle of white, present a cheerless, dreary void; no insects are animating the air, and all our songsters are silent and away; a few miserable thrushes are hopping on the ditch-bank, swept bare by the wind; and the robin puffing out his feathers, and contracting his neck into his body, is peeping with his fine bright eyes into the windows from the cypress bough. A few evergreens are waving their sprays, and glittering in the light, yet making but poor compensation for the variety, the flutter, the verdure, of our summer. Though we have little natural beauty to note or to record, we are not left without a testimony of an overruling Power; and, however sad and melancholy things may appear at the first view, yet a more steady observation will manifest to us a presiding Providence and Mercy. Frost and snow are but cheerless subjects for contemplation, yet I would add a reflection in my Journal of our passing events, or rather recall from memory the truth, that science has made known to us, revived by the sight of that frozen pool. There is one universal body, inherent in every known substance in nature, latent heat, which chemists have agreed to call “caloric.” By artificial means bodies may be deprived of certain portions of it; and then the substance most usually contracts, and increases in weight. Water is an exception to this; for in losing a part of its heat, the cause of its fluidity, and becoming ice, it expands, and is rendered lighter, by inclosing, during the operation, more or less of atmospheric air: consequently it swims, covering the surface. To this very simple circumstance, ice floating and not sinking, are the banks and vicinities of all the rivers, lakes, pools, or great bodies of water in northern Europe, Asia, and America, rendered habitable, and what are now the most fertile and peopled would be the most sterile and abandoned, were it not for this law of nature. Had ice been so heavy as to sink in water, the surface on freezing would have fallen to the bottom, and a fresh surface would be presented for congelation; this would then descend in its turn, and unite with the other; and thus during a hard frost successive surfaces would be presented, and fall to the bottom, as long as the frost or any fluid remained. By this means the whole body of the water would become a dense concretion of ice: its inhabitants would not only perish, but the indurated mass would resist the influence of the sun of any summer to thaw it, and continue congealed throughout the year, chilling the earth in its neighborhood, and the winds that passed over it, preventing the growth of vegetation in the former, or blighting and destroying it by the influence of the latter.

Winter is called a dull season; and to the sensations of some, the enjoyments of others, and, perhaps, to the vision of all, it is a most cheerless period. This is so universally felt, that we always associate the idea of pleasure with the return of spring: whatsoever our occupations or employments may be, though its sleety storms and piercing winds may at times chill the very current in our veins, yet we consider it as a harbinger of pleasurable hours and grateful pursuits. We commence our undertakings, or defer them till spring. The hopes or prospects of the coming year are principally established in spring; and we trust that the delicate health of the blossoms round our hearths, which has faded in the chilling airs of winter, may be restored by the mild influence of that season. Yet winter must be considered as the time in which Nature is most busily employed; silent in her secret mansions, she is now preparing and compounding the verdure, the flowers, the nutriment of spring; and all the fruits and glorious profusion of our summer year are only the advance of what has been ordained and fabricated in these dull months. All these advances require Omnipotent wisdom and power to perfect; but perhaps a more exalted degree of wisdom and power has been requisite to call them into a state of being from nothing. The branch of that old pear-tree now extended before me, is denuded and bare, presenting no object of curiosity or of pleasure; but, had we the faculty to detect, and power to observe, what was going forward in its secret vessels, beneath its rugged, unsightly covering, what wonder and admiration would it create!—the materials manufacturing there for its leaf, and its bark; for the petals and parts of its flowers; the tubes and machinery that concoct the juices, modify the fluids, and furnish the substance of the fruit, with multitudes of other unknown operations and contrivances, too delicate and mysterious to be seen, or even comprehended, by the blindness, the defectibility of our nature—things of which we have no information, being beyond the range of any of the works or the employments of mankind! We may gather our pear, be pleased with its form or its flavor; we may magnify its vessels, analyze its fluids, yet be no more sensible of its elaborate formation, and the multiplicity of influences and operations requisite to conduct it to our use, than a wandering native of a polar clime could be of the infinite number of processes that are necessary to furnish a loaf of bread, from plowing the soil to drawing from the oven. This is but an isolated instance, amidst thousands of others more complicated still. How utterly inconceivable then are the labors, the contrivances, the combinations, that are going forward, and accomplishing, in this our dull season of the year, in that host of nature’s productions with which, shortly, we shall everywhere be surrounded!

Jan. 20th.—A keen frost, and the ground covered with snow, present a scene of apparent suffering and want to many of our poor little birds; but the preservation of the fowls of the air, which sow not nor gather into barns, has been beautifully instanced to us, as a manifest evidence of a superintending Providence: the full force of this testimony is most strongly impressed upon us in a season like this, when winter rules with rigor, and we marvel how the life of these beings can be supported when the waters are bound up, and earth and all its products hidden by a dense covering of snow. Many of the small birds obtain subsistence by picking the refuse of our corn-stacks, by seeds scattered about our homestalls and cattle-yards, but multitudes of others are in no way dependent upon man for shelter or support, do not even approach his dwelling, but are maintained by the universal bounty of Providence; as the woodlark, the meadow-lark, the chats, and several others; but by what means they are maintained in a period like this is not quite manifest. The portion that they require is probably small, yet it must be insect food, and the chats, larks, and gray wagtails, seem busily engaged in providing for their wants upon the furze sprays, amidst frozen grass, or upon the banks of ditches and pools; and as no insect but the winter gnat is now found in such places, it is probable that this creature, which sports in numbers in every sunny gleam, yields them in this season much of their support. Some of the insectivorous birds have at such periods no apparent difficulty in supporting their existence, finding their food in a dormant state in mosses, lichens, and crevices of trees and buildings; but for those which require animated creatures, I am sensible of none that are to be procured but this gnat, and it possibly has been endowed with its peculiar habits and dispositions for a purport like this. We have many examples in nature of similar provisions, wherein one race supports the existence and requirements of another. The molusca and insects of the deep continue the life of some, the feeble races of the air and waters maintain the beings of others, and the beast of the wild seeks his food amidst those which inhabit with him; but where this chain ends, human faculties will probably never be able to ascertain. The remarkable fact which our microscopes make known to us, that all infusions of natural substances in water will produce life, however extraordinary the form may be, seems to denote a continuation of being beyond any possible comprehension, and probably subservient to the existence of each other: the minute creature that floats a hardly perceptible atom in the water of the ditch, and which subsists many of the animals which inhabit those places, feeds upon smaller than itself, and those again, possibly, upon more minute ones which the vegetable infusions of those places give existence to: here the investigation terminates, but the thread unbroken continues, probably through endless gradations, perceptible to infinity alone.

Having applauded the operations of Nature with so much cordiality, possibly I may be called her “enthusiastic adorer,” but the epithet must be disclaimed. None can respect the works of creation more, but ’tis not with an ecstasy that glows, fades, and expires, but with a calm deep- rooted conviction implanted in the boy, and increased by years of notice and experience. I have followed her footsteps, though far, very far distant, as an humble admirer of perfection, nor can my veneration cease whilst reason continues undisturbed.

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Sept. 8th, 1828.—A remarkably dry and exhausting day, not from any peculiar influence of the solar heat, but from the arid state of the air, which was very distressing to our feelings, and all tender vegetation became languid and suffering under its influence. I endeavored to ascertain the power of absorption possessed by the air at the time by an experiment, rude enough to be sure, yet it tended in some measure to indicate the rapid manner in which fluids are exhaled in particular states of the atmosphere. A linen cloth twelve inches square, which had absorbed an ounce avoirdupois of water, was suspended in the shade in a free current of air, and in the course of ten minutes it had lost 436 grains, equal to one-sixteenth of its weight. This great evaporation was principally effected by the absorbent power of the air, and manifested in some degree the exhausting influence that was passing over the earth and the vegetation exposed to the current of air; and as the roots could not derive sufficient moisture from the soil to supply what was thus drawn from the leaves, the foliage became languid and flaccid in consequence. The linen, containing the same quantity of water, was then spread upon a short turf in the sun and in the space of ten minutes it lost 368 grains, and this was effected without any particular influencing current of air; accordingly, the evaporation from an acre of moist land covered with vegetation would exceed one hundred and twenty-two cwt. of water in an hour! As the quantity drawn from the vegetation on the soil may be equal to the shelter its foliage affords to the earth, no very accurate data can be drawn from this experiment; for different soils will give out their moisture more or less easily, and succulent vegetables be more influenced than those of a drier nature; but it served at the time to indicate the portion of moisture that was escaping from a given horizontal surface. From the invisible and insensible nature of evaporation, its influences are not always considered; but such an action on the surfaces of things as that related above, must put into operation all the inherent powers of matter susceptible of impulse, and probably would produce effects which we might suppose to be accomplished by the agency of other means.

Nov. 10.—Many effusions of the mind have been produced by the approach or existence of the seasons of our year, which seem naturally to actuate our bodily or mental feelings through the agency of the eye, or temperature of the air. The peculiar silence that prevails in autumn, like the repose of wearied nature, seems to mark the decline and termination of being in many things that animated our summer months; the singing of the bird is rare, feeble, and melancholy; the hum of the insect is not heard; the breeze passes by us like a sigh from nature: we hear it, and it is gone for ever. But it is the vegetable tribes, which at this season most particularly influence our feeling, and excite our attention. We see the fruits of the earth stored up for our use in that dull season “in which there will be neither earing nor harvest,” the termination and reward of the labors of man. But this day, November 10, presented such a scene of life and mortality, that it could not be passed by without viewing it as an admonition, a display of what has been, and is. There had occurred during the night a severe white frost; and, standing by a green-house filled with verdure, fragrance, and blossom, I was surrounded in every direction by the parents of all this gaiety, in blackness, dissolution, and decay. But the very day before, they had attracted the most merited admiration and delight by the splendor of their bloom and the vigor of their growth; but now just touched by the icy finger of the night, they had become a mass of unsightly ruins and confusion. Once the gay belles of the parterre, they fluttered their hour, a generation of existent loveliness; their youthful successors, unpermitted to mingle with them, peeped from their retreats above, seeming almost to repine at their confinement; they have bloomed their day, another race succeeds, and their hour will be accomplished too. This was so perfectly in unison with the shifting scenes of life, the many changes of the hour, that it seemed inseparably connected with a train of reflection, with the precepts which all nature points out—her still small whisperings for the ears of those that can hear them.

The extraordinary tendency that Nature has to produce, and the vigilant perseverance she maintains to occupy all substances as a soil for her productions, when they arrive at a state fitting for her purposes, is a well-known fact, and is perfectly in consistency with the uniform habit she preserves, of letting “no fragment be lost.” All things tend upwards, from some original, through an infinity of gradations, though the beginning and termination may not always be perceived, nor the links of this vast chain be found. The most obscure plants, agarics or mucor, as far as we know, perfect their seed, and give birth to other generations; but there is a fine green substance, observable upon the sprays of trees, stems of various shrubs in every hedge, upon old rails and exposed wood-work, leaving a powdery mark upon one’s coat that has rubbed against such places, which I have always considered as the very lowest rudiment of vegetation. This matter, submitted to examination in the microscope, presents no foliage or plant-like form, but appears a kind of pollen, a capsule, or a perfected seed, suspended on a fine fibre; but from the extreme smallness of it I speak with hesitation, not being able to define it satisfactorily with the most powerful lens. If it be, as I have conjectured, a perfected seed, it probably is the origin of many of those minute mosses, that become rooted, we know not by what means, upon banks, stones, barks, &c., in such profusion; but here all investigation ceases: by what agency this fine seed has been so profusely scattered, or from what source it sprang, is hidden from us, and we can no more satisfactorily conjecture, than we can account for those myriads of blighting insects, which so suddenly infest our grain, our fruits, and our plants. There is an inquisition, where all human knowledge terminates; the bounds of nature have never been defined.

Without considering the various sources of enjoyment and pleasure bestowed upon an intelligent creature, what a scene of glorious display might be opened to man through the agency of the eye alone! Motives we must abandon, as probably they are beyond our comprehensions; but were the powers of vision so enlarged or cleared as to bring to observation the now unknown fabrication of animate and inanimate things, what astonishment would be elicited! The seeds, the pollen of plants, the capillary vessels and channels of their several parts, with their concurrent actions, the clothing of various creatures, and all that host of unperceived wisdom around us! Yet probably the mind, constituted as it now is, would be disturbed by the constant excitement such wonders would create; but at present, though sparingly searched out by the patient investigator, and but obscurely seen, they solace and delight; “cheer, but not inebriate.”

“Oh good beyond compare! If thus thy meaner works are fair, If thus thy bounties gild the span Of ruin’d earth and sinful man, How glorious must that mansion be Where thy redeem’d shall live with thee!”

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And now I think I have pretty well run over my diary, the humble record of the birds, the reptiles, the plants, and inanimate things around me. They who have had the patience to read these my notes, will probably be surprised that I could take the trouble to register such accounts of such things; and I might think so too, did I not know how much occupation and healthful recreation the seeking out these trifles have afforded me, rendering, besides, all my rural rambles full of enjoyment and interest: companions and intimates were found in every hedge, on every bank, whose connexions I knew something of, and whose individual habits had become familiar by association; and thus this narrative of my contemporaries was formed. Few of us, perhaps, in reviewing our by-gone days, could the hours return again, but would wish many of them differently disposed of, and more profitably employed: but I gratefully say, that portion of my own passed in the contemplation of the works of nature is the part which I most approve—which has been most conducive to my happiness; and, perhaps, from the sensations excited by the wisdom and benevolence perceived, not wholly unprofitable to a final state, and which might be passed again, could I but obtain a clearer comprehension of the ways of Infinite Wisdom. If in my profound ignorance I received such gratification and pleasure; what would have been my enjoyment and satisfaction, “if the secrets of the Most High had been with me, and when by His light I had walked through darkness?”

APPENDIX.