Miss Mary Briscoe, with the cordial esteeme of her friend Wertfelton. NATURAL HISTORY. MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, DID I not feel it a duty to comply with the request of some that I have now the pleasure and honour to address, I should not only have been contented, but happy to have remained on one of those benches as a delighted auditor, rather than have stood here a diffident speaker.— But born in the neighbourhood of your beautiful town, and educated within its hospitable walls, I feel it a duty cheerfully to comply with the requests of its inhabitants; at whose hands I have constantly received the most unremitting kindness, I may truly say, from my very cradle, even to the present hour I have the happiness to stand before them. And I enter upon this task with the more confidence, gratefully recollecting with how much candour and courtesy I have always been heard by them, though differing in many opinions, when speaking either in their Courts, their public meetings, Lecture-rooms, or their Theatre. And most happy shall I be this evening, if what I am about to deliver, shew but even my readiness and ardent desire to retain the esteem of my brother Salopians: for little indeed are my hopes either to distinguish myself as worthy applause amid these Lectures, or give much information or amusement to my hearers, when I see before me professors of such acknowledged talent, and an audience so highly intellectual. But as liberality is as naturally called forth by education, as blossoms are by the vernal sunbeams, I commence my discourse, not only with alacrity, but with pleasure. The subject, my respected auditors, selected for this evening, and by my partial friends committed to me, is a desultory and discursive view of Natural History: as I go along to take a cursory sketch of a few of the prominent features of the Three Great Kingdoms of Nature, denominated the Mineral, Vegetable, and Animal. And herein it is my intention to avoid altogether difficult language, and as much as possible, even technical terms, save where absolutely necessary; and to pass easily over such parts as fall in my way, in a free and familiar manner, aiming less at affording information, than exciting amusement. I am well aware that many facts must needs be mentioned, far better known to my audience than to myself. But such is the case in the road of life; we must often meet with objects that are old and familiar acquaintances; and if they excite us to enquiry, or lead us farther toward rational pleasure, we shall have no cause of regret. For which of us is so blind or incurious on the road, as observing the very stones, if no superior object allure our attention, how those we find in a natural state are worn smooth and roundish, as we instantly infer, from attrition. This leads us to reflect that they must at some period have been in a state of fluidity and motion. We then begin to look on the very uneven surface of the earth, not only in the little prominencies in the fields around us, but to think on the enormous mountains of stupendous altitude, we have either seen, or read of: some round and smooth, covered with soil and verdure; others abrupt, rugged, and precipitous; naked, barren, and bleak; we now, without doubt, begin to think on the two great agents that must have caused these inequalities, Fire and Water: from which the two sects of philosophers have been named Plutonists and Neptunists.— That these two elements have had amazing influence on the surface of our globe, is beyond all doubt; and that the earth has, at some period, been for a vast length of time, submersed in water. The limited nature of this Lecture utterly precludes my even naming, far less discussing, the various, conflicting, and almost numberless theories that have been held out, whether fictitious or plausible. It seems, however, not very unreasonable to suppose, that as water is continually, and almost perceptibly, decreasing on the surface, the planets have originally been comets, which having lost their equilibrium, have for ages and ages been whirled round the sun in very irregular orbits, till gradually regaining their nearly circular revolution, have again become habitable globes, under the unerring guidance of their Almighty Architect. Some have, in this manner, attempted to account for the rupture and desolation every where observable in rocks, and "Crags, knolls, and mounds confusedly hurl'd, and somewhat confirmatory of this, I think I have somewhere seen it remarked, that the precipitous escarpments mostly face the west, and are highest on the western sides of islands and continents. Every one must have observed it is mostly so in Britain. Geologists have accordingly classed the component parts of rocks, in reference to their supposed earlier or later formation; and call them primary, secondary, tertiary; and those of a mixed nature they call transition. I am, however, no geologist; and if I were, this is not a time to enter into the details of science; the principles of which may be found in any elementary tract. And even when I come to touch on those parts of Nature wherewith I am better acquainted, I shall treat them, as I do this, desultory and diffuse. And I beg you to keep in mind, that every section of this Lecture, would itself form a series of subjects for a long course of Lectures. It may, however, be well enough just to say, that in the primary formations, such as granite, no organic remains are found, either of vegetable or animal. And as a farther proof of the influence of turbulent water, fragments are found at immense distances from the rocks of which they have originally been a part. And the influence of still waters is obvious in all stratifications, whether horizontal, or otherwise. Objects of this nature cannot fail to strike even the commonest mind with contemplation, amazement, and delight; and if pursued, prepare it for the reception of farther information, leading it to a knowledge and adoration of the First Great Cause, which never fails to modify and ameliorate the heart. Without instruction, however, which can only be obtained by diligence, and intercourse with writings, or conversation, the inexperienced mind is apt to form, and ultimately believe, the most absurd conclusions; and well may the ignorant do so when philosophers themselves are not always free from such. I remember on the road between Bath and Bristol, at a pretty village called Keynsham, while struck with the prodigious size of cornua Ammonis, (Ammonites) very abundant there, the good-humoured coachman told me that in former times they had all been serpents, and that the good St. Keyna having had her foot bitten by one, with a touch of her rod, turned them into stone. He smiled incredulously when I told him they had been snails. We have not only fragments of rocks at immense distances from their beds, but even organic remains of plants and animals that exclusively belong to very remote and fervid latitudes; and even of some that are not now known to exist at all. It is from the primary rocks are obtained the metals, that contribute so largely to the use and ornament of civilized life. It may not be amiss to drop a word on the effects of fire upon the earth, and chiefly with regard to the formation called Basalt, of which Great Britain boasts the sublimest specimen, in the celebrated caves of Staffa in the Hebrides, which I visited with utter amazement and delight. The island consists of millions of pillars, shot up out of the turbulent sea to a surprising altitude, columnar, and chiefly pentagonal; and in some places most beautifully and regularly curved; and where they are broken, there is the appearance of a joint, having the upper surface concave, and the lower convex, exactly fitting into each other, like a condyle; and on the top of the island, where the sea-spray did not then reach, the water had been evaporated, which had been lodged in these cups by a previous storm, and had left in each a quantity of chrystalized salt, as pure and white as snow. These pillars when struck, rung like glass; and a bag-piper who had come on board our ship from Scotland, climbed to the summit of one of the pillars, and the musical effect of his feeble instrument, had actually, by the reverberations of the cave, the power of a very full organ, uniting with the roaring billows in deep and dreadful harmony. I suggested to the company the appropriate and awful effect of us all joining in Purcell's grand chaunt, and in that ocean fane, which God himself had erected amid the sounding sea, of singing,-" We praise Thee, O God; we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord: all the earth doth worship Thee, the Father everlasting." The different periods required by different stones to attain their present state of hardness, is extremely various; some are supposed to require hundreds of centuries, while others indurate even in a few hours: of the latter sort is the calcareous tufa so common, that will encrust birds' nests, or toys, thrown into the water wherein it is suspended. And that useful article coal, is supposed to be continually forming in the immense beds of old lakes, where the bitumen, or tar, impregnates masses of moss, vegetables, and even wood. The fossil remains I spoke of are extremely curious; not to mention the common specimens in limestone, I have seen in coal polypody, and ferns, and branches very like box, even with the seeds, and veins, as perfect as when growing. And in the Museum at Glasgow I saw that rare and wonderful fossil, Enchrinites, nearly two feet high, and so slender as to move at the breath, or at the vibration of walking on the floor: it very much resembled a fine tall plant of the Equisetum, or horsetail, with all its very long fringes or whorls. Though extremely ignorant of geology, I could still dilate with rapture even on these inanimate, and inorganic parts of creation. But mountains and rocks claim our admiration in another point of view, as highly ornamental to natural scenery; of which again our island contains as fine a specimen as exists, in those rich and romantic defiles in Scotland, called the Trossachs; which, however, my expectation was previously elevated by the Lady of the Lake, I found far to surpass all that imagination could suppose, or poetry express, by actually imagining myself in the enchanted land of Faëry. What poetry can do, Sir Walter Scott has surely effected; and a short extract so appropriate to my purpose, may a moment relieve my kind audience from the dry monotony of my prosing. "The western waves of ebbing day Roll'd o'er the glen their level ray, With cupola or minaret; Wild crests as pagod ever deck'd, Nor were these earth-born castles bare, All twinkling with the dew-drops sheen, * * So wond'rous wild, the whole might seem Had the world been permitted to have remained perfectly smooth, it could only have been pleasing to the taste of the two Yankee doodles who visited England; and coming from a country where trees were a nuisance, of all the parts of our Queendom were most enraptured with the fens of Lincolnshire, they were so beautifully flat, and not a tree to be seen! Rocks called coral-reefs, extending hundreds of miles, are formed in the south seas, by those wonderful insects called Madrepores; and that with amazing rapidity, as is related by the amiable but unfortunate Captain Cook; that where, in his first voyage, he had anchored in many fathom of depth, he could not, in his next, bring the ship near the place, as it was completely filled up by the exertions of these minute architects, whose prodigious works even appeared above the surface of the water. In those seas it might indeed be said, "There the rocks of coral grow." Assuming that water decreases, not that one particle of matter is annihilated, but assumes another quality, on the surface of planets, the tops of the highest mountains would first appear; and islands and continents are but the summits of immense mountains, peering out of the mighty ocean. On these, very soon after one appears, the extremely minute seeds of lichens lay hold, vegetate, and decay; so forming a thin earth for the seeds of larger lichens and mosses; which perishing in their turn, form earth for the growth of larger vegetables; and so on ultimately for the acorn itself, |