"There are," said Bernardin de Saint Pierre to J. J. Rousseau, "more than five hundred modes of looking at Nature." "Yes," replied Rousseau, "and none of them true."

Naturalists are apt to be like that King of Siam who, after a long series of observations in the hot climate where he lived, decided that water was always, and in its own nature, a fluid: a truth which was regarded as demonstrated beyond dispute until a traveller ascended the mountains of Ava, contiguous to Siam, and there encountered some philosophers who declared water was only a fusible crystal - a rock which heat alone could dissolve. O naturalists, you also have your mountains of crystal!

The world about us is all harmony, of which we can perceive only a part. The Cephisus that watered the gardens of the Academy has disappeared with the woods of Mount Hymettus. The old Scamander has vanished with the cedars of Mount Ida, beneath whose shade it had its source. The climate of Italy was aforetime milder than now - less relentless in its heat until the destruction of the forests of the Tyrol. He who cuts down a tree destroys a colony of insects, a home or haunt of many birds, a source of food to quadrupeds perhaps, or even to man. The plantain-tree that shades a fountain or hangs over the marshy borders of a stream, is a beautiful object. Between the river and the trees there is a harmony. The Persians were scourged with pestilential maladies from their marsh-bordered rivers until they brought the plantain-trees to their aid. "There has been no epidemic at Ispahan," says Chardin, "since the Persians adorned with such trees their rivers and gardens".

Wc may observe, too, the harmony of colors, Raphaelle was no such colorist as we find the sun to be. As the winter departs the modest violet first blossoms beneath a vail of leaves. This modesty means need of shelter. Protecting leaves radiate back upon the fragrant little flower all the heat it gives out. As the snows disappear, blossoms of other flowers open, which, display themselves more boldly, but you will observe that they are blanched, or nearly so. In the transition from the last snows of winter to the first blossoms of spring, the harmony of color is preserved; hillsides and orchards are laden with a delicate white, varied rarely with the pink, as in the flowers of the almond. Petals of the apple blossoms floating on the wind resemble the flakes of snow so lately seen falling through the air. As the warm season advances, the colors deepen until we come to the dark crimson of the autumn flowers, and the brown of the autumn leaves. This change is meant not only to be beautiful; it has its use and meaning. Why are the first spring flowers all white, or nearly so? Because, while the winds are still cold, and the sun only moderately kind, a flower would be chilled to death if its heat were radiated rapidly.

But radiation takes place more freely from dark colors; from black, from the strongly-defined greens, and blues, and reds. In the hot weather flowers and leaves so colored cool themselves more rapidly at night, and form upon their surface the refreshing dew. In the early spring there is little need of dew, and consequently of facilities for cooling. The delicate spring flowers are, therefore, of a color that is least likely to encourage radiation. For the same reason, because white substances give out least freely the heat they contain or cover, arctic animals are white, like their native snows. For the same reason, too, the snow itself is white. When the cold becomes intense, snow falls, and lies like a fur mantle upon the bosom of the earth. If the snow were black, or red, or blue, it would still allow a portion of the heat to escape, which is now retained under its whiteness. The colors even of men darken in hot climates, and in the hottest they become quite black. Black substances give out heat most freely.

In regions subject to almost incessant cold, a short summer produces flowers of extremely vivid coloring. The summer, although short, is fierce, and the plants radiate rapidly that they may escape destruction. The dark verdure of the north- ern pines would cause them to lose heat with great rapidity. To compensate for this, they are found growing in a pyramidal form, which catches and retains a cover of snow so cleverly as to protect them during the severe winter season. Birches that grow in the same forests, rise among the pines like silver columns, not formed and shaped to retain a covering of snow like the evergreens, because they do not need it.

Surely we need be at no loss to discern, amid such harmonies and adaptations of Nature, that "Such bounty is no gift of chance," and that, in spite of the sneer of Rousseau, there is a true and useful way of looking at Nature.

The Parsonage, August, 1862.

[Very pleasant gleanings indeed; chaste, classical, and full of food for deep thought. We should be glad to have more such "gleanings" among the "ripe and mellow ears." - Ed].