Page:M F Maury address before the Philodemic Society.pdf/18

 upper country. There is a constant ratio between the quantity that runs down and the quantity that is carried back. Were evaporation to cease, or the atmosphere to stand still—were the winds never to blow, our rivers would become dry, and the earth itself unfit for man's use. What a circulator, purifier, cooler, and condenser! In every point of view this atmosphere is a grand machine—perfect in all its parts, wonderful in its offices, sublime in its operations.

There are certain nodding flowers of the field which give an instructive lesson upon the subject of cosmical arrangements, and show how beautiful are the views which open out before the student of nature, as patiently he turns over leaf after leaf of her exquisite works. These flowers are so constituted, that at a certain stage of their growth they must bend the stalk and hang their heads for the purposes of fecundation. When they have been duly impregnated with the seed-bearing principle, their vegetable health requires them again to lift their heads and stand erect. Now, it is as easy to show, that if the earth had been greater or smaller, the stalk of this flower stronger or weaker, it could not bow its head at the right time, fecundation could not take place, the plant never could have borne seed after its kind, and its species would have become extinct with the first individual planted by its maker.

Hence we infer that, on the morning of creation, the future well-being even of the little snow-drop, whose appearance by our garden walks in early spring we hail with so much delight, was considered—that when it was made, the magnitude and dimensions of the whole earth, from the equator to the poles, from centre to circumference, were taken into the account and weighed with it; and that exactly that degree of strength was given to its fibres which is best suited to its vegetable health.