4. We have traced, in the variety of organized beings, an _adaptation_ to the variety of climates, a _provision_ for the sustentation of man all over the globe, and an _instrument_ for the promotion of civilization and many attendant benefits. We have not considered this _variety_ as _itself_ a purpose which we can perceive or understand without reference to some ulterior end. Many persons, however, and especially those who are already in the habit of referring the world to its Creator, will probably see something admirable in itself in this vast variety of created things. There is indeed something well fitted to produce and confirm a reverential wonder, in these apparently inexhaustible stores of new forms of being and modes of existence; the fixity of the laws of each class, its distinctness from all others, its relations to many. Structures and habits and characters are exhibited, which are connected and distinguished according to every conceivable degree of subordination and analogy, in their resemblances and in their differences. Every new country we explore presents us with new combinations, where the possible cases seem to be exhausted; and with new resemblances and differences, constructed as if to elude what conjecture might have hit upon, by proceeding from the old ones. Most of those who have any large portion of nature brought under their notice in this point of view, are led to feel that there is, in such a creation, a harmony, a beauty, and a dignity, of which the impression is irresistible; which would have been wanting in any more uniform and limited system such as we might try to imagine; and which of itself gives to the arrangements by which such a variety on the earth’s surface is produced, the character of well devised means to a worthy end. CHAPTER VIII. _The Constituents of Climate._