He has to mend withhis own hands every sort of thing that can break or wear in his house.Yet Mr

I speak, of course, under correction for this conclusion isemphatically matter of induction, and must be verified or modified byever-fresh facts: but I meet with many a Christian passage n scientifibooks, which seems to me to go, not too far, but rather not far enough, inasserting the God of the Bible, as Saint Paul says, not to have leftHimself without witness, in nature itself, that He is the God of graceWhy speak of the God of nature and the God of grace as two antitheticalterms?

The Bible never, in a single instance, makes the distinction; andsurely, if God be(as He is) the Etemal and Unchangeable One, and if (aswe all confess) the universe bears the impress of His signet, we have nonight, in the present infantile state of science, to put arbitrary limits ofour own to the revelation which He may have thought good to make ofHimself in nature. Nay, rather, let us believe that, if our eyes wereopened, we should fulfil the requirement of Genius, to"see the universalin the particular, "by seeing God's whole likeness, His whole gloryreflected as in a mirror even in the meanest flower; and that nothing butthe dulness of our own souls prevents them from seeing day and night inall things, however small or trivial to human eclecticism, the Lord JesusChrist Himself fulfilling His own saying, "My Father worketh hitherto,

To me it seems(to sum up, in a few words, what I have tried to say)that such development and progress as have as yet been actualldiscovered in nature, bear every trace of having been produced bysuccessive acts of thought and will in some personal mind; which,however boundlessly nich and powerful, is still the Archetype of thean mind; and therefore(for to this I confess I have been all alongtending) probably capable, without violence to its properties, ofbecoming, like the human mind, incamateBut to descend from these perhaps too daring speculationsanother, and more human, source of interest about the animalwrithing feebly in the glass jar of salt water; for he is one of the manycuriosities which have been added to our fauna by that humble hero MrCharles Peach, the self-taught naturalist, of whom, as we walk on towardthe rocks, something should be said, or rather read: for Mr Chambersan often-quoted passage from his Edinburgh Joumal, which I must havethe pleasure of quoting once again, has told the story better than we cantell it.But who is that little intelligent-looking man innavaluniform, who is so invariably to be seen in a particularseat inthis section? That, gentle reader, is perhaps one of the most interestingmen who attend the British Association. He is only a private in themounted guard (preventive service)at an obscure part of the Comwallcoast, with four shillings a day, and a wife and nine children, most ofwhose education he has himself to conduct He never tastes theluxuries which are so common in the middle ranks of life and evenngst a large portion of the working classes. He has to mend withhis own hands every sort of thing that can break or wear in his house.Yet Mr. Peach is a votary of Natural History not a student of the sciencen books, for he cannot afford books; but an investigator by sea andshore, a collector of Zoophytes and Echinodermata- strange creatures,many of which are as yet hardly known to man. These he collects,preserves, and describes; and every year does he come up to the BritishAssociation with a few novelties of this kind, accompanied byillustrative papers and drawings: thus, under circumstances the veryopposite of those of such men as Lord Enniskillen, adding, in likemanner, to the general stock of knowledge. On the present occasion heis unusually elated, for he has made the discovery of a Holothuria withtwenty tentacula, a species of the Echinodermata which Professor Forbesin his book on Star-Fishes, has said was never yet observed in the Britishseas. It may be of small moment to you, who, mayhap, know nothingof Holothuria: but it is a considerable thing to the Fauna of Britain,and a vast matter to a poor private of the Cornwall mounted guardAnd accordingly he will go home in a few days, full of the glory of hisexhibition, and strong anew by the kind notice taken of him by themasters of the science, to similar inquiries, difficult as it may be toprosecute them, under such a complication of duties, professionaldomestic. Honest Peach! humble as is thy home, and simplebearing, thou art an honour even to this assemblage of nobles anddoctors: nay, more, when we consider every thing, thou art an honourto human nature itself. for where is the heroism like that of virtuousintelligent, independent poverty? And such heroism is thineCHAMBERS EDIN JOURN Now 23. 1844

Mr Peach has been since rewarded in part for his long labours in thecause of science, by having been removed to a more lucrative post onthe north coast of Scotland: the earnest, it is to be hoped, of still furtherpronI mentioned just now Synapt; or, as Montagu called it, Chirodota:a much better name, and, I think, very uselessly changed; for Chirodotaexpresses the peculiarity of the beast, which consists n-start not, readertwelve hands, like human hands, while Synapt expresses merely itspower of clinging to the fingers, which it possesses in common withnany other animals. It is, at least, a beast worth talking about; as for