attention to them. The call of the young birds to their parents for food is unusually disagreeable, and reminds us of the croak of a frog. The brood being reared, it becomes again a shy and wild creature, abandons our homesteads, and returns to its solitudes and heaths. The extraordinary change of character which many creatures exhibit, from timidity to boldness and rage, from stupidity to art and stratagem, for the preservation of a helpless offspring, seems to be an established ordination of Providence, actuating in various degrees most of the races of animated beings; and we have few examples of this influencing principle more obvious than this of the missel bird, in which a creature addicted to solitude and shyness will abandon its haunts, and associate with those it fears, to preserve its offspring from an enemy more merciless and predaceous still. The love of offspring, one of the strongest impressions given to created beings, and inseparable from their nature, is ordained by the Almighty as the means of preservation under helplessness and want. Dependent, totally dependent as is the creature, for every thing that can contribute to existence and support, upon the great Creator of all things, so are new-born feebleness and blindness dependent upon the parent that produced them; and to the latter is given intensity of love, to overbalance the privations and sufferings required from it. This love, that changes the nature of the timid and gentle to boldness and fury, exposes the parent to injury and death, from which its wiles and cautions do not always secure it; and in man the avarice of possession will at times subdue his merciful and better feelings. Beautifully imbued with celestial justice and humanity as all the ordinations which the Israelites received in the wilderness were, there is nothing more impressive, nothing more accordant with the divinity of our nature, than the particular injunctions which were given in respect to showing mercy to the maternal creature cherishing its young, when by reason of its parental regard it might be placed in danger. The eggs, the offspring, were allowed to be taken; but “thou shalt in anywise let the dam go;” “thou shalt not, in one day, kill both an ewe and her young.” The ardent affection, the tenderness, with which I have filled the parent, is in no way to lead to its injury or destruction: and this is enforced, not by command only, not by the threat of punishment and privation, but by the assurance of temporal reward, by promise of the greatest blessings that can be found on earth, length of days and prosperity.