By this skilful adjustment, the earth is ever clothed with that abundant supply and succession of herbage, grasses, and trees, which, with unerring constancy, provide food and pleasure to all its sentient creatures that subsist upon it, although their million numbers far exceed the powers of any comprehensible arithmetic to express.*

salzolas and the salicornias. Some flourish in seawater; some in fresh -to others, water is so prejudicial that they can exist nowhere unless on bare rocks or in arid deserts. The larger number of plants prefer sunshine. Some are most vigorous in the shade, others are only found in absolute shade. There is not however a soil, however barren, nor a rock, however flinty, that has not its appropriate plant."-Dr. Prout, p. 366-8.

* "The latest discoveries in the vegetative process are ably stated by Dr. Lindley, in his Report on the Philosophy of Botany at Cambridge in 1831. From this I select the following facts:

"That plants have an ascending and a descending current of their sap or fluids.

"That dicotyledonous plants increase by an addition to the circumference.

"That wood is a deposite in some way connected with the action of the leaves.

"That the quantity of wood formed is in direct proportion to the number of leaves that are evolved, and to their healthy action; and where no leaves are formed neither is wood deposited.

"In all plants there are two distinct, simultaneous systems of growth; the cellular and the fibro-vascular, of which the former is horizontal, and the latter vertical. The cellular gives origin to the pith, the medullary rays, and the principal part of the cortical integument. The fibrovascular to the wood and a portion of the bark.

"Buds are exclusively generated by the cellular system; while roots are evolved from the fibro-vascular system.

"Wood is organized matter generated by the leaves and sent downward by them.

"The opening of the anthers is not a mere act of chance, but the admirably contrived result of the maturity of the pollen, when the pollen has acquired its full development.

"Tubes are projected into the style by the pollen.

"Dr. Brown has demonstrated the universal presence of a passage through the integuments of the ovulum at the point of the nucleus.

"It is at the point of the nucleus that the nascent embryo makes its appearance.

"The contents of the pollen pass down the pollen tubes. There is a power of motion in the granules thus emitted.

"Ovula seem to be buds."

Report Brit. Assoc. in 1833, p. 27-54,

LETTER XXI.

Appointment and Adaptation of the Surface for the Habitation of Man -Distribution of the rest into the Oceans and Seas of the GlobeViews as to the Divine Purposes in these Arrangements.

MY DEAR SON,

IN arranging and settling the surface of our earth in the diluvian commotion, was not enough to compose and place the rocks and strata so as that they should be of that sort, and disintegrate into that state, and remain always such, as would suit and cherish the general vegetation of the globe. But as the electrical influences in all their modifications, whether as magnetism, galvanism, or otherwise, and the temperature of our air and its vapours, clouds, and winds, and the succession of the seasons, depend very materially on the interior strata and disposition of our subterraneous surface, it had also to be framed and regulated with a view to all the proper results that were appointed to take place in these important respects for our benefit.

But when the construction and condition of our habitable ground had been fixed as to all its physical agencies, still other considerations were necessary in the Creator's mind, before its form and disposition should be finally determined on and these were those points which more immediately related to the nature and welfare of his human kind. Nothing as to them either could or would be left to chance, or to the mere material course and sequences of things irrespective of them; or no specific, no permanent, no rational, and no comfortable form and state of human nature could arise. It was therefore essential for the Almighty omniscience, which could do whatever it should choose to do, and without whose appointing and framing will no mode of being could exist, to determine what the numbers, the localities, the social state, the habits, the pursuits, the history, and the general characters of the renewed race of mankind were to be, in order that so far as they would be produced, governed, or affected by the nature and influence of the surface they were to dwell on, to cultivate and to obtain their subsistence and conveniences from, it might be made such as would cause and

promote what the divine economy had intended should, on all these points, be provided for and produced.

The NUMBERS of human beings who should, at every period, be living at the same time on the earth, must have been decided on in the divine mind before the new surface was settled; because on this would depend, whether the whole superficies of its circumference, or only a part of it, and in that case how much of it, should be occupied with their population, and adapted to their use. If as many were to be coexisting upon it as a globe of twenty-four thousand miles in circuit could contain and nourish, then every portion of its upper soil must be made and kept in such a state as would supply the habitable locality and the proper vegetation; but, if man was not to replenish the whole area of the circular expanse, it would then be sufficient if so much only was made cultivable and fitted for his residence as his appointed numbers should require. The space to be prepared and appropriated by man would be governed by the intended quantity of his population, that were, from time to time, to be contemporaneous. A few would require small room, multitudes much more. If the numbers were to be gradually augmented, the fitted surface might be as gradually extended; but at all events the highest quantity meant to be co-tenants must have been adverted to, that the whole space which would be in the fullest diffusion wanted, might be provided and made ready.

These recollections may satisfy us that neither the increase and amount of the human population, nor the state and form of our globular surface, have been left to be what chance, or the undirected movements of nature might make them; but that they must from the beginning of our renewal have been the subject of the divine deliberation and adjusting care. We see this immediately in one striking circumstance. The ocean has been made to occupy nearly three fourths of our surface. An event of this magnitude could be no accident. It must have been resolved from the recommencement of things, that about one fourth only of the earth's surface should be inhabited by man, and that the remainder should be covered by the seas. Here was, from the time the deluge ceased, an express limitation of the population of mankind, and of all land vegetation, and of the animals which subsist upon it. At that time or before, it was fixed that neither

of these should be as many as the globe would contain, but only, at the utmost, one fourth of that possible number. The ocean was in this respect made the limiting and confining instrument; its waves, as they rolled and expanded, spread everywhere the prohibition, and maintained it, that man and all terrestrial life should never multiply nor extend beyond one fourth of the surface of the planet in which he was stationed.

But was it also settled that the human race should ever increase to the full population which that restricted space allows? Was man ever to multiply into such a multitude of human beings as one fourth part of the surface could maintain? The facts which have occurred, enable us at once to answer that it never has been the divine intention that mankind should ever enlarge into such a productivity and quantity as this. The vegetable kingdom has been permitted and enabled to have this extent of dissemination, and some classes of the animated world attend its herbs and trees wherever they arise. Not so mankind. A proportion, and that a small one, of the habitable surface, is that which they have been designed to till and occupy; for if they had not been restricted to this minor number, the amount of their possible population, which might have subsisted at the same time on the fourth part of the earth, would have been a vast multiple of their present number.

On this point we have sufficient data to reason correctly from. From all that history presents to us, we may justly conclude that the earth never had, at one time, a larger proportion of human kind than it now possesses.

Malte Brun has reckoned the present population of the world at six hundred and fifty millions; some think it more, and others calculate it to be less.* It is in Europe that we

"A thousand millions have been mentioned, apparently for no other reason than the convenience of a round number.-M. Malte Brun reduces the amount to 650,000,000. We think his enumeration for Asia, Africa, and America still rather high, and submit the following estimate as the result of our inquiries:

might expect the greater exactness to be attainable,-but the most distinguished statistical inquirers differ also on this no less than forty-five millions.* If we take an average medium between the highest and the lowest enumerations that have been mentioned, we shall find that from seven hundred to eight hundred millions will be the number thence derivable; and this general estimation may be taken as a very probable amount. I believe that the earth never has contained so large a population as this, until within the last fifty or one hundred years.

These calculations entitle us to say, that the largest number of human beings which the Creator, from the beginning of our world to the present day, has intended to be upon it at any one time, has not exceeded seven or eight hundred millions. It never reached this amount in ancient times, according to all the documents from which we can compute it. But as our race have now multiplied up to it, we may take it as the number for which he had to provide a suitable surface.

But how much of our globular superficies would such a number require for their residence and support? We can judge of this from many circumstances. The two islands of Great Britain and Ireland contain twenty-four millions of human beings. Multiply this by thirty, and we have seven hundred and twenty. Therefore thirty times as much space of soil as Great Britain and Ireland comprehend, would be sufficient for the maintenance of seven hundred and twenty millions of human beings, living as the people of these islands generally do. Now these islands comprise an area, altogether, of one hundred and eighteen thousand four hundred and sixty miles. † This space multiplied by thirty will amount to three millions five hundred and fifty-three thousand eight hundred square miles. Thus, for the comfortable support of seven hundred and twenty millions of the

Hassell, in 1819. estimated the population of Europe to be 180,702,000; but Balbi, in 1828, raised it to 226,283,000.-Murray's Encycl. Geog. p. 385. About the same time the German A. De Schlieben reckoned it to be 188,391,174, of whom 172,432,000 were Christians. He computed the armed force of all its countries at 2,500,000-Bull. Univ. 1830, p. 218.

† England and Wales contained 57,960 square miles, Scotland 30,500, and Ireland 30,000; in all 118,460 square miles. -Murray's Encyc. Geog, p. 312, 478.