The extraordinary tendency that Nature has to produce, and the vigilant perseverance she maintains to occupy all substances as a soil for her productions, when they arrive at a state fitting for her purposes, is a well-known fact, and is perfectly in consistency with the uniform habit she preserves, of letting “no fragment be lost.” All things tend upwards, from some original, through an infinity of gradations, though the beginning and termination may not always be perceived, nor the links of this vast chain be found. The most obscure plants, agarics or mucor, as far as we know, perfect their seed, and give birth to other generations; but there is a fine green substance, observable upon the sprays of trees, stems of various shrubs in every hedge, upon old rails and exposed wood-work, leaving a powdery mark upon one’s coat that has rubbed against such places, which I have always considered as the very lowest rudiment of vegetation. This matter, submitted to examination in the microscope, presents no foliage or plant-like form, but appears a kind of pollen, a capsule, or a perfected seed, suspended on a fine fibre; but from the extreme smallness of it I speak with hesitation, not being able to define it satisfactorily with the most powerful lens. If it be, as I have conjectured, a perfected seed, it probably is the origin of many of those minute mosses, that become rooted, we know not by what means, upon banks, stones, barks, &c., in such profusion; but here all investigation ceases: by what agency this fine seed has been so profusely scattered, or from what source it sprang, is hidden from us, and we can no more satisfactorily conjecture, than we can account for those myriads of blighting insects, which so suddenly infest our grain, our fruits, and our plants. There is an inquisition, where all human knowledge terminates; the bounds of nature have never been defined. Without considering the various sources of enjoyment and pleasure bestowed upon an intelligent creature, what a scene of glorious display might be opened to man through the agency of the eye alone! Motives we must abandon, as probably they are beyond our comprehensions; but were the powers of vision so enlarged or cleared as to bring to observation the now unknown fabrication of animate and inanimate things, what astonishment would be elicited! The seeds, the pollen of plants, the capillary vessels and channels of their several parts, with their concurrent actions, the clothing of various creatures, and all that host of unperceived wisdom around us! Yet probably the mind, constituted as it now is, would be disturbed by the constant excitement such wonders would create; but at present, though sparingly searched out by the patient investigator, and but obscurely seen, they solace and delight; “cheer, but not inebriate.”