The following passage from Hugh Miller's Testimony of the Rocks, is full of thought and truth: "Not until the introduction of man upon earth, do we find a creature whose works sensibly affect and modify the aspects of nature. But when man appears, how mighty the change which he effects 1 Immediately on his creation, he takes under his care the vegetable productions of use and show: it becomes his business to keep and dress a garden. He next becomes a tiller of fields; then a planter of vineyards. Here he cuts down great forests; there he rears extensive woods. He makes himself places of habitation; and busy cities spring up as the trophies of his diligence and skill. His labors, as they grow upon the waste, affect the appearance of vast continents, until, at length, from many a hill-top and tall spire, scarce a rood of ground can be seen on which he has not built, or sown, or planted, or around which he has not erected his walls or reared his hedges. Man, in this great department of industry, is what none of his predecessors upon the earth ever were: 'a fellow-worker' with the Creator. He is a mighty improver of creation.

We recognise that as improvement which adapts nature more thoroughly to man's own necessities and wants, and renders it more pleasing both to his sense of the esthetic and to his more material senses also. He adds to the beauty of the flowers which he takes under his charge - to the delicacy and fertility of the fruits; the seeds of the wild grasses become corn beneath his care; the green herbs grow great of root or bulb, or bulky and succulent of top and leaf; the wild produce of nature sports under his hand; the rose and Illy broaden their disks and multiply their petals; the harsh green crab swells out into a delicious golden-rinded apple, streaked with crimson; the productions of his kitChen garden, strangely metamorphosed to serve the uses of his table, bear forms unknown to nature; an occult law of change and development inherent to these organisms, meets in him with the developing instinct and ability, and they are regenerated under his surveillance. Nov is his influence over many of the animals less marked. The habits which he imparts to the parents become nature, in his behalf, in their offspring. The dog acquires, under his tutelage, the virtues of fidelity to a master, and affection to a Mend. The on and horse learn to assist him in the labors of the fields.

The udders of the cow and goat distend beneath his care far beyond the size necessary in the wild state, and supply him with rich, milk, and the other various products of the dairy. The fleece of the sheep becomes finer of texture and longer of fibre in his pens and folds; and even the indocile silkworm spina, in his sheltered'conservatories, and among the mulberry-trees which he has planted, a larger, and brighter, and more glistening cocoon. Man is the great creature-worker of the world - its one created being, that, taking up the work of the adorable Creator, carries it on to higher results and nobler developments, and finds a field for his persevering ingenuity and skill in every province in which his Maker had expatiated before him. He is evidently - -to adopt and modify the remark of Oken-God's image 'manifest in the flesh.'"