analyze its fluids, yet be no more sensible of its elaborate formation, and the multiplicity of influences and operations requisite to conduct it to our use, than a wandering native of a polar clime could be of the infinite number of processes that are necessary to furnish a loaf of bread, from plowing the soil to drawing from the oven. This is but an isolated instance, amidst thousands of others more complicated still. How utterly inconceivable then are the labors, the contrivances, the combinations, that are going forward, and accomplishing, in this our dull season of the year, in that host of nature’s productions with which, shortly, we shall everywhere be surrounded! Jan. 20th.—A keen frost, and the ground covered with snow, present a scene of apparent suffering and want to many of our poor little birds; but the preservation of the fowls of the air, which sow not nor gather into barns, has been beautifully instanced to us, as a manifest evidence of a superintending Providence: the full force of this testimony is most strongly impressed upon us in a season like this, when winter rules with rigor, and we marvel how the life of these beings can be supported when the waters are bound up, and earth and all its products hidden by a dense covering of snow. Many of the small birds obtain subsistence by picking the refuse of our corn-stacks, by seeds scattered about our homestalls and cattle-yards, but multitudes of others are in no way dependent upon man for shelter or support, do not even approach his dwelling, but are maintained by the universal bounty of Providence; as the woodlark, the meadow-lark, the chats, and several others; but by what means they are maintained in a period like this is not quite manifest. The portion that they require is probably small, yet it must be insect food, and the chats, larks, and gray wagtails, seem busily engaged in providing for their wants upon the furze sprays, amidst frozen grass, or upon the banks of ditches and pools; and as no insect but the winter gnat is now found in such places, it is probable that this creature, which sports in numbers in every sunny gleam, yields them in this season much of their support. Some of the insectivorous birds have at such periods no apparent difficulty in supporting their existence, finding their food in a dormant state in mosses, lichens, and crevices of trees and buildings; but for those which require animated creatures, I am sensible of none that are to be procured but this gnat, and it possibly has been endowed with its peculiar habits and dispositions for a purport like this. We have many examples in nature of similar provisions, wherein one race supports the existence and requirements of another. The molusca and insects of the deep continue the life of some, the feeble races of the air and waters maintain the beings of others, and the beast of the wild seeks his food amidst those which inhabit with him; but where this chain ends, human faculties will