thunder and lightning (that great artillery of God Almighty) is produced; and we cannot comprehend how the voice of a man is framed, that poor little noise we make every time we speak. The motion of the sun is plain and evident to some astronomers, and of the earth to others; yet we none of us know which of them moves, and meet with many seeming impossibilities in both, and beyond the fathom of human reason or comprehension. Nay, we do not so much as know what motion is, nor how a stone moves from our hand, when we throw it cross the street. Of all these that most ancient and divine writer gives the best account in that short satire, "Vain man would fain be wise, when he is born like a wild ass's colt."

But, God be thanked, his pride is greater than his ignorance; and what he wants in knowledge, he supplies by sufficiency. When he has looked about him as far as he can, he concludes there is no more to be seen; when he is at the end of his line, he is at the bottom of the ocean; when he has shot his best, he is sure, none ever did nor ever can shoot better or beyond it. His own reason is the certain measure of truth, his own knowledge, of what is possible in nature; though his mind and his thoughts change every seven years, as well as his strength and his features: nay, though his opinions change every week or every day, yet he is sure, or at least confident, that his present thoughts and conclusions are just and true, and cannot be deceived: and, among all the miseries to which mankind is born and subjected in the whole course of his life, he has this one felicity to comfort and support him, that, in all ages, in all things, every man is always in the right. A boy of fifteen is wiser than his father at forty, the meanest subject than his prince or governors; and the modern scholars, because they have, for a hundred years past, learned their lesson pretty well, are much more knowing than the ancients their masters.

But let it be so, and proved by good reasons, is it so by experience too? Have the studies, the writings, the productions of Gresham College, or the late Academies of Paris, outshined or eclipsed the Lycæum of Plato, the Academy of Aristotle, the Stoa of Zeno, the Garden of Epicurus? Has Harvey out-done Hippocrates, or Wilkins, Archimedes? Are D'Avila's and Strada's histories beyond those of Herodotus and Livy? Are Sleyden's Commentaries beyond those of Cæsar? the flights of Boileau above those of Virgil? If all this must be allowed, I

will then yield Gondibert to have excelled Homer as is pretended; and the modern French poetry, all that of the ancients. And yet, I think, it may be as reasonably said, that the plays in Moorfields are beyond the Olympic games; a Welsh or Irish harp excel those of Orpheus and Arion; the pyramid in London, those of Memphis; and the French conquests in Flanders are greater than those of Alexander and Cæsar, as their operas and panegyrics would make us believe.

But the consideration of poetry ought to be a subject by itself. For the books we have in prose, do any of the modern we converse with appear of such a spirit and force, as if they would live longer than the ancients have done? If our wit and eloquence, our knowledge or inventions would deserve it, yet our languages would not there is no hopes of their lasting long, nor of any thing in them; they change every hundred years so as to be hardly known for the same, or any thing of the former styles to be endured by the latter; so as they can no more last like the ancients, than excellent carvings in wood, like those in marble or brass.

(From the Same.)

JOHN RAY

[John Ray (1628-1705), the first important writer on natural history in English, was born at Black Nettley, in Essex, on 29th November 1628, and, after education at Braintree School, entered at the College or Hall of St. Catharine at Cambridge, 28th June 1644. The chief exercises of the College were at that time philosophical and theological disputations, and after two academical years he migrated to Trinity College, where the regulations allowed him more time to pursue the studies in natural history to which he was already addicted. He was elected a Fellow with his friend Isaac Barrow, 8th September 1649, and his portrait hangs to this day in the College Hall. He preached in the days of the Rebellion both in his College chapel and the University Church, but was only ordained deacon and priest by the Bishop of Lincoln, 23rd December 1660, and resigned his Fellowship rather than make a declaration, in the terms of the Bartholomew Act, against the Covenant. The rest of his life was spent in the pursuit of natural history, and especially of botany and ornithology, in travels on the Continent and in England, and in editing the works of his friend Willoughby. He died at his birthplace in Essex on 17th January 1705.]

RAY'S scientific writings are chiefly in Latin, but he had given much consideration to his own language, and made a collection of English proverbs. Of his English works the most interesting are The Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of the Creation, published in 1691, and his Itineraries, published after his death by his friend Dr. William Derham, in 1710. The former may be regarded as the precursor of Paley's Natural Theology, written in the same University later in the century. The demonstration of the wisdom of the Deity from His works coincides in a large part of its extent with the proof of His existence from the evidence of design in the natural world. The Itineraries describe Ray's travels in England, Wales, and Scotland. He excels in simple description, and is, however technical his subject, always free from pedantry. Long sentences like those of his friend Isaac Barrow occasionally occur in his writings, but he has the great merit in a scientific writer of always making his subject clear, and of so expressing himself that his reader thinks of what is told without noticing the manner of telling. NORMAN MOORE. I

VOL. III

AN ARGUMENT OF PROVIDENCE

ANOTHER argument of providence and counsel relating to animals is the various kinds of voices the same animal uses on divers occasions, and to different purposes. Hen birds, for example, have a peculiar sort of voice when they would call the male; which is so eminent in quails, that it is taken notice of by men, who by counterfeiting this voice with a quail-pipe, easily draw the cocks into their snares. The common hen, all the while she is broody, sits, and leads her chickens, uses a voice which we call clocking; another she employs when she calls her chickens to partake of any food she hath found for them, upon hearing whereof they speedily run to her; another when upon sight of a bird of prey, or apprehension of any danger, she would save them, bidding them as it were to shift for themselves, whereupon they speedily run away, and seek shelter among bushes, or in the thick grass, or elsewhere dispersing themselves far and wide. These actions do indeed necessarily infer knowledge and intention of, and direction to the ends and uses to which they serve, not in the birds themselves, but in a superior agent, who hath put an instinct in them of using such a voice upon such an occasion; and in the young, of doing that upon hearing of it, which by Providence was intended. Other voices she hath

when angry, when she hath laid an egg, when in pain or in great fear, all significant; which may more easily be accounted for, as being effects of the several passions of anger, grief, fear, joy; which yet are all argumentative of Providence intending their several significations and uses.

(From The Wisdom of God in the Creation.)

HURLING

THERE are two kinds of hurling, the in-hurling and the outhurling. In the first there are chosen 20 or 25 of a side, and