The rapidity and ease with which thousands of troops were lately conveyed to the Crimea and India, together with all their stores, horses, &c., form one of the most wonderful feats of ocean navigation ever performed, and point out the beauty of those arrangements which enable man to traverse the whole earth, whether by land or by water, so that it may fairly be said that the civilisation of the world depended and still depends upon the waters. INTRODUCTION TO THE ORGANIC KINGDOMS OF NATURE. The foregoing descriptions refer to the great works of God as seen in those creations which possess not that most wonderful attribute--life. There is no limit in extent, in quality, or in number, to these works; their extension appears to be infinite; their magnitudes are large or small, just as we compare them one with the other. This earth is an enormous mass, contemplated in comparison with ourselves, but an insignificant speck when compared with the sun, and there are certain laws, chemical and mechanical, which govern them all--heat, light, and electricity permeate all the infinity of space--attraction exists everywhere. There are no individual existences among them; all are made up of matter combined according to certain definite chemical laws, and always obedient to them under the same conditions--moving according to certain mechanical laws, and always obedient to them. The Creator who made these lifeless masses made also the laws to regulate them; but, besides these, it has pleased Him to form certain other creatures not for an instant to be compared in size or quantity with the former, and made up also of certain chemical compounds obedient to the mechanical and chemical laws, with one more addition, that unknown, inexplicable attribute--life. This wonderful quality exists in all organic beings; they obtain by it individual identity; they are whole creatures--imperfect with any part taken away, also imperfect with any addition. Clay is clay, in any quality or form; iron is iron, whether a grain or a ton; but a tree is only a tree when it is complete. We cannot say "some tree," as we would "some clay," it must be _a tree_, or several trees, each a separate and complete existence--perfect in itself--made up of solids and fluids, and possessing certain attributes, namely, a constant circulation of its fluid parts, a constant appropriation of food and rejection of waste matters--growth thereby to a certain definite form, and in many a definite size, together with the production of germs, capable, under certain conditions, of producing beings exactly similar to themselves. This constitutes organic life, and is possessed by all vegetables. Animal life is exactly the same, with the super-addition of will or mind in its most perfect state, of instinct or some analogous function in its lower states, or in quite the lowest--a chemical and mechanical difference only, such as shall determine the choice of food and mode of assimilating it.