Like some grand building is the UNIVERSE,

Where ev'ry part is useful in its place;

As well the pins, which all together hold,

As the rich carvings, or the glowing gold.

Why did'st thou slaughter yonder harmless fly?-Because 'tis good for nothing, dost thou cry?

The same of thee, tho' now so vain and gay,

As justly might superior beings say:

And yet thou liv'st,-to form this impious thought,

And set thy maker's handy-work at nought.

With wonder view thy little world around;

How life, in various forms, does ev'ry where abound! Earth, water, air, with living creatures stor❜d, Myriads of myriads, numberless, afford:

The rising hill, the long extended plain,

The crystal flood, the briny raging main,

The flow'ry mead the corn-producing field,

The forest wide, the frightful desert wild,

The over-hanging rock, the cavern deep,
The sandy beach, the lofty mountain steep,
Swarm with inhabitants.In ev'ry clime,
In ev'ry season, and at ev'ry time,

Each op'ning flow'r, and ev'ry rising grain,
The life of thousands does with food sustain.*

It is credible, that there are vast numbers of animals feeding on the leaves of plants, as cattle do on pastures, and which repose under the shade of a down, imperceptible to the human eye, as these do, under the umbrageous foliage of the forest. Now, as a variety of our larger animals will depasture on the same grasses, so may we suppose that different species of those minuter animals will congregate on the leaves of the same plant, DE SAINT PIERRE, a French writer, in his "Studies of Nature," tells us that on a strawberry plant, in his window, he observed (in the course of three weeks) a multitude of insects, of at least thirty-seven species, totally distinct from each other, by their colours, their forms, and their actions. Some, he conceived, might have visited his plant to deposit their eggs, others merely to shelter themselves from the sun. Some, which stood motionless, he supposed,

Calmly consider wherefore gracious Heav'n,

To all these creatures has existence giv'n.

Eternal Goodness certainly design'd,

That ev'ry one, according to its kind,

Should happiness enjoy:-for God, all-just,

Could ne'er intend his creatures to be curs'd,

might, like himself, be employed in making observations. The number of each species, which, in the day time, visited his plant, in these few weeks, was impossible to ascertain ; much less of those which visited it in the night time, and at other seasons of the year.

Thus far of one plant only-what shall we say then of those animalcules which may be found on the vast multitude of vege tables already classed in the extensive catalogue of our our European botanists, of which LINNAEUS has reckoned eighty thousand. SHERARD and others, nearly twenty thousand species of vegetables. Besides which, an unspeakable variety may be found in the interior of Africa, Arabia, the Asiatic islands, Siberia, and other parts of this globe, where the foot of an European botanist never trod.--Yet all the numerous inhabitants of vegetables are but a very small portion of the living creatures which the God of nature has scattered through the air, over the earth, and in the waters of every narrow rill and of the widely extended ocean.

C.

When life he gave, he meant that life should be

A state productive of felicity.

And, though to kill, there may be some pretence, When raging hunger bids, or self-defence:

No cause beside can justify the deed,

'Tis murder if not urg'd by real need.

If the same pow'r did ev'ry being give,

If all for happiness did life receive,

Then ev'ry thing has equal right to live.

And how dares man, who's but himself a breath,

Destroy through wantonness, and sport with death!

Extend thy narrow sight: consult with art:

And gladly use what helps it can impart :

Each better glass will larger fields display,

And give thee scenes of life, unthought of, to survey.

Assisted thus, what beauty may'st thou find

In thousand species of the INSECT KIND!

Lost to the naked eye, so wond'rous small, Were millions join'd, one *sand would over-top [them all.

Those experienced in observations on the insect part of the creation, by the help of glasses, will not charge this with being a poetical liberty, but acknowledge its real truth: And though others, whose conceptions have never been turned that way, may find it very difficult to apprehend any living creature so extremely minute; yet I hope the opinion of the learned may clear me from any design of imposing on their belief.

Mr. BALL, in a letter to Mr. BRADLEY, says, that the green, red, or black appearance of stagnant water proceeds only from insects of several kinds and colours, 3d part Gardening, p. 87. "Nor indeed is any part of the earth, or waters; and (it may be) pure air itself, free from the seeds of life.

Mr. BRADLEY, after having given us his observations on an insect, which by computation he found more than a thousand times less than the least dust of sand visible to the naked eye, reflects thus, "It is wonderful to consider the several parts of a creature even so minute as this, (for the microscope. has