After the waters had subsided, the land appeared, dry and fit for vegetation. “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind.” Here we rise to organized and vegetative bodies. At the Divine command, herbs, plants, trees, and all the almost endless varieties of the vegetable world, bearing their several seeds and fruits, according to their different kinds, immediately began to appear. Thus before God formed any living creature to dwell upon the earth, he provided abundantly for its sustenance. “Now as God delights to manifest himself in the little as well as the great,” says a celebrated commentator, “he has shown his consummate wisdom in every part of the vegetable creation. Who can account for, or comprehend, the structure of a single tree or plant? The roots, the stem, the woody fibres, the bark, the rind, the air-vessels, the sap-vessels, the leaves, the flowers, and the fruits, are so many mysteries. All the skill, wisdom, and power of men and angels, could not produce a single grain of wheat!” Dr. Hales, in his Statistical Essays, has observed, that the substances of vegetables appear, by a chemical analysis, to be composed of sulphur, volatile salt, water, and earth, which are all endued with mutually attracting powers; and also of a large portion of air, which has a wonderful power of strongly attracting in a fixed state, or of repelling in an elastic state, with a power which is superior to great compressive forces.[98] By the infinite combinations, action, and reaction of these principles, all the operations in animal and vegetable bodies are effected. These active aërial principles are very serviceable in carrying on the work of vegetation to its perfection and maturity; not only in helping, by their elasticity, to distend each ductile part, but, also, by enlivening and invigorating their sap, where, mixing with the other mutually attracting principles, they are, by gentle heat and motion, set at liberty to assimilate into the nourishment of the respective parts. The sum of the attracting powers of these mutually acting and re-acting principles, is, while in this nutritive state, superior to their repelling power; by which the work of nutrition is gradually advanced by the nearer and nearer union of these principles from a less to a greater degree of consistency, till they are advanced to that viscid, ductile state, whence the several parts of vegetables are formed; and are, at length, firmly compacted into hard substances, by the flying off of the watery diluting vehicle: but when they are again disunited by the watery particles, their repelling power is thereby become superior to their attracting power,