down his pofitions and arguments to a level with our understanding.

As natural history depends upon patient enquiries, and the result of experiments; it must have been in an imperfect state when little attention was paid to fuch fubjects, and few experiments inade. It is true that there are fome old books upon this fubject, which may be confidered as hints to future enquiries, and have been used as fuch; but the modern additions to natural hiftory are so very great, arifing from our fuperior opportunities of procuring information, that the works of our predeceffors are of little other use, than fhewing the low state of the science when they were compofed.

The invention of the microscope opened a new field of enquiry, and from being first used as an inftrument for amusement, became the means of discoveries unfufpected by times preceding us.

Hook in

England, and Lewenhoeck in Holland, were indefatigable and very successful in these studies; together with other ingenious obfervers, they established a taste for researches into the minute and hidden parts of nature.

In our Age the most inconfiderable animal is confidered as an object worth enquiry; and as many perfons have engaged in this line of knowledge, our açquaintance with the different beings that people the globe has most wonderfully encreased within a few years.

But tho' by the affiftance of the microscope, myriads of creatures are found which were not before conceived to exist, it must not be imagined that microscopic objects alone engage the attention of the naturalist. The fuperior order of animals, through all their different departments, have been investigated with an accuracy and attention unknown to former

times. Many new animals have been discovered, and scarce a voyager returns from geographical researches, who does not enrich natural hiftory with fome new addition.

The study of plants is nearly connected with that of animals. The progress and difcoveries of modern times, in Botany, would require a much greater length than this effay, merely to enumerate. This is of late become a favourite purfuit, and, being one of the various paths which leads to knowledge, it must be confidered to be useful as well as agreeable-perhaps, fome are deterred from proceeding in this track by the found, and fome by the meaning of the terms. Admitting the truth of the theory, might not fuch terms have been used as are less pompous, and lefs connected with animal properties ?

The

The catalogue of new plants has also received an immenfe increase from the

late

voyagers; and by their bringing the feeds, and in many inftances the plants themselves to England, our gardens are enriched with objects of use, beauty, and curiofity.

It is by no means my intention to take even a curfory review of all the departments of natural history-it may be sufficient to fay, that our progrefs has been great in them all, and chiefly fo within the time supposed to be included under this head of the enquiry.

Mineralogy and lithology are fo connected with chemistry, that our great advances in the knowledge of these subjects we may juftly fuppofe to be in confequence of our application to this noble art; one great fource of the science of nature! Lithology is in fome measure a modern discovery-I do not mean to fay

that

that our ancestors did not know there were varieties of ftones; but that the investigation of the caufes of thefe varieties, and their application to natural history, were reserved for the Silver-Age, which has but just entered on the fubject.

The globular figure of the earth, although formerly fufpected by fome, and believed by a very few, was not generally received until the commencement of the æra which is our prefent fubject. Philofophers, after a long conteft with vulgar prejudices, at last established their point, and the world was acknowledged to be round-every where except in Afia; there they still infift upon its being flat, and placed upon the back of an elephant.

Some discoveries arifing from the vibration of pendulums, which was found to be performed in different times in different latitudes, gave a fufpicion that the

earth