parts (oxygen and hydrogen), which uniting with other matters contained in the earth and atmosphere (carbon and carbonic acid) become by this means the basis of all our fruits, our sweets, our sours, resins, &c., in the vegetable world; and hence there is a constant decomposition of water going forward by these alternations, and a constant formation of matters beneficial and necessary for the various inhabitants of the earth. When we perceive that a shower of rain has revived or promoted the increase of vegetation, we must understand, that the mere wetting it has not accomplished this; but that the vegetable has by means of its foliage, aided by light and heat, decomposed or separated the combined matters of the water, and taken from it certain portions as essential to its vigor, or been revictualled, in a manner, by the nutriment contained in the water. Jan. 10.—The ground covered with snow, the pools with ice, trees and hedges leafless, and patched here and there with a mantle of white, present a cheerless, dreary void; no insects are animating the air, and all our songsters are silent and away; a few miserable thrushes are hopping on the ditch-bank, swept bare by the wind; and the robin puffing out his feathers, and contracting his neck into his body, is peeping with his fine bright eyes into the windows from the cypress bough. A few evergreens are waving their sprays, and glittering in the light, yet making but poor compensation for the variety, the flutter, the verdure, of our summer. Though we have little natural beauty to note or to record, we are not left without a testimony of an overruling Power; and, however sad and melancholy things may appear at the first view, yet a more steady observation will manifest to us a presiding Providence and Mercy. Frost and snow are but cheerless subjects for contemplation, yet I would add a reflection in my Journal of our passing events, or rather recall from memory the truth, that science has made known to us, revived by the sight of that frozen pool. There is one universal body, inherent in every known substance in nature, latent heat, which chemists have agreed to call “caloric.” By artificial means bodies may be deprived of certain portions of it; and then the substance most usually contracts, and increases in weight. Water is an exception to this; for in losing a part of its heat, the cause of its fluidity, and becoming ice, it expands, and is rendered lighter, by inclosing, during the operation, more or less of atmospheric air: consequently it swims, covering the surface. To this very simple circumstance, ice floating and not sinking,[76] are the banks and vicinities of all the rivers, lakes, pools, or great bodies of water in northern Europe, Asia, and America, rendered habitable, and what are now the most fertile and peopled would be the most sterile and abandoned, were it not for this law of nature. Had ice been so heavy as to sink in water, the surface on freezing would