for its repetition. All well and good perhaps, but I ask, is it not also our duty to keep our minds in health, as well as our bodies? The above individual grows no richer, mentally, for his labour. How different from the case of another, who tells you he never comes home from a ramble without having discovered something fresh: he goes out to escape from his daily routine of business; he knows that nothing rests the mind so much as change, and that when it is thoroughly wearied out by continued concentration on one subject, it is better to occupy it with another than to suffer it to be idle. And therefore in his walk he notices the flower and the animal, their habitats, and their times of appearing; he discovers, without the aid of books, that there is "a time for everything —a set time, and that in the beautiful regularity which pervades nature, nothing appears out of time or order; the caterpillar is not hatched before its food-plant is putting forth its leaves; the butterfly and the bat do not wake from their winter's sleep when there is nothing for them to eat; everything is arranged. He notices, with scarcely an effort, the peculiarities of the beasts of the field, and the birds of the air; he discovers the marvellous connection between one species and another, between one family and another, and the dependence of all upon the Creator, so that

"The whole round earth is every way

Bound by gold chains about the feet of God." In the Spring his eyes first see the swallow, his ears are first greeted by the cuckoo, he is gratified by the bursting forth of the vegetation into the most lovely green; in the Autumn, while tints still more lovely

objectively array themselves before him, his delight is tempered with sober thoughts of the great change which is one day to be wrought in himself. In Summer he beholds the triumphant reign of all living things, and in Winter-generally thought to be dull and cheerless in the country, he knows where to find the squirrel and the dormouse snugly domiciled; he can find you the chrysalis of many a moth and butterfly marvellously entombed in the earth, or slung in a hammock; he can show you luxuriant beds of mosses-those children of the winter that flourish when all around is asleep. And even if he could not show you all this, think what marvellous stores of information he has laid up, that shall afford him food for thought when he is lonely, or from which he ean draw fairy lore to while away the winter evening; what tales he can tell you of the wonderful things he saw in the summer-how he found the boat of eggs floating about in the pond, so curiously and perfectly formed by the gnat, that it could not be upset-a veritable life-boat; again, how he drew from the water a thing monstrously strange, armed with jaws that could unfold themselves upon its prey while yet afar off, how with unrelenting stedfastness it destroyed and devoured the other inhabitants, and after a few months of such enjoyment it climbed up a tall reed, and splitting itself down the back, took unto itself wings and flew off to continue its carnage among the inhabitants of air. Or our naturalist may give you more pleasing accounts of the nests of the wren and titmouse, the beautiful spotted eggs of the thrush, and the pearly eggs of the azure halcyon-how one

bird assailed him with a torrent of abuse as he approached her offspring, and another suffered him to lay hold of her, sooner than she would forsake her nest again, of the banks of flowers upon which he lay and pondered-the bed of happy violets, the golden cowslips, the "jocund company of daffodils, the delicate wood sorrel, and the wind flower; he tells you how he saw the face of wintry nature turned into a perfect paradise of loveliness, and says

"Though absent long These forms of beauty have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man's eye; But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet." These are the stores upon which the lover of nature can draw.

The poets of nature have been many, and I must not take up your time in quoting what is most likely familiar to you. I have tried to show what a charm there is around us if we like to experience it—what an infinite variety there is for the mind to study. It is this infinite variety which gives the superiority to Natural History as a means of recreation: there is no fear of exhausting the subject. Alexander the Great was sorely distressed when he had conquered all there was to conquer; but it cannot be so with us, Creation knows no limit. I remember in some "wild dream of a German poet" that a human being was conducted over the universe to view GOD'S worlds, and that after sweeping past innumerable orbs,-planets, satellites, and comets, the mind of the man sank into itself, and shuddered with the

over-powering effects, begging to be shown no more. If it were so with the thought of the infinity of worlds, what would it be, could he have but a dim comprehension of the infinitude of infinities that exists in each separate world.

Here then is provided for our delectation a goodly storehouse of knowledge; volumes on volumes lie open before us; take them up and reverently turn over the leaves, they make up the Book of GOD.

II.-WINTER WORK.

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Read before the Folkestone Natural History Society, December 2nd, 1868.

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The glorious summer weather of 1868 is all past, and the usual October and November gales sent us rather sooner than we expected into the regions of winter. All around us now is inhospitable and bleak, and there is little inducement to follow out in the open air the practical study of Natural History. So we are tempted, perhaps, to sit still and ponder over the rambles we took in the summer, to regret that they are over, and to wish they would soon come again. It is well, perhaps, that we should do so, for they ought to have supplied us with a whole treasurehouse full of "studies," from which we may draw one after another to gaze and admire. It is well to ask ourselves now, with these pictures set in the golden frame of memory still fresh before us, whether we valued them so much before they were thus framed-in plainer words, whether we thought at the time that we really had great opportunities for gathering food for thought in quiet hours. Did we do all we might have done? In what respects did. we fall short? So we may gather experience to guide us when the swallow and the cuckoo return again. Perhaps some of us made a tolerable collec