that in every age of the world men have been apparently aware of the inexpediency of expecting it in any other sphere of material phenomena. But although we find the most correct standard by which to measure the lapse of time in the motions of the heavenly bodies, these do not furnish us with a very obvious method of measurement. The vicissitudes of day and night might give a rude division, and the heliacal* rising or setting of peculiar stars at different periods of the year a more extended measure of duration. But the length of the day perpetually varies, and in the course of years the star that once declared the commencement of a certain period or season ceases to be its messenger. The ancient Egyptians waited the overflow of the Nile when Sirius, the dog-star, rose with the sun; but Sirius has for many ages ceased to precede that event; and Aldebaran once rose heliacally on the first of May, but that star long since failed thus to attend the month of vernal hilarity and of flowers. heavenly bodies. It is a singular fact, | on the meridian, that is, at noon, we see it gradually descend and pass through the western horizon to rise in the east, and to return again to the meridian. The period occupied in performing this revolution is called a solar day. But a solar day is of longer duration than a siderial day; for although the sun and the star may be on the meridian at the same time to-day, the star will arrive there to-morrow a few moments before the sun. This is occasioned by the apparent yearly motion of the sun in the ecliptic, produced by the real annual motion of the earth. Now when we measure, day after day, the intervals between the successive arrivals of the sun on the meridian, we discover that the period is variable; sometimes it is more than twenty-four siderial hours, and sometimes less. There is therefore not only a difference between the siderial and the solar day, but also a variation in the length of the solar day, from which cause we are compelled to take a mean of the whole, and this is called a mean solar day; one twenty-fourth part of which is a mean solar hour. This division has been adopted as the civil standard of time. The motion of the earth on its axis is, however, an event of sufficient regularity to be employed as a standard measurement of time. If we take any other planetary motion, it is equally certain and uniform, but is rendered by the motion of the earth in its orbit so apparently irregular, that we cannot, without long calculation, determine its precise change of position. But the time occupied by the earth in a revolution on its axis from west to east is so uniform, that the apparent motion of the stars from east to west may be appropriately adopted as a stan dard by which to compute the lapse of time. The time which intervenes between the period when a star is seen on the meridian, and that in which it returns to the same point, is by the universal consent of astronomers denominated a siderial day, and has been divided into twenty-four equal parts, called siderial hours. The motion of the earth on its axis also gives to the sun an apparent daily motion from east to west, and there are many practical reasons why the sun should be chosen as our standard of measurement in preference to the stars, although our divisions may not be so accurate. If we observe the sun when * An epithet for the rising and setting of a star or planet, when it rises and sets with, or at the same time as the sun, The standard for the larger division of time, a year, has also been selected from the motion of the earth. In consequence of the real revolution of the earth round the sun as the centre of the system, the sun has an apparent annual revolution in the ecliptic. This motion is not so uniform as that by which we regulate our day, and a somewhat artificial arrangement has been adopted to correct the apparent irregularity. The slightest reflection upon the condition of a man as a social being will show the necessity for a division of time, and the benefit conferred on society by astronomy in providing the means. What would be the state of our large mercantile towns and cities, and how could their business be conducted, if there were no means of dividing time by a common standard? It is absolutely necessary for the well-being of society, and this has been acknowledged in every age, and by men of all ranks in civilized states. Now, let it be imagined that these standards of measurement were destroyed, by what means could time be divided, and how could engagements be regulated? We might indeed be compelled to determine its lapse by the dripping of water or by the burning of a candle; or if we imagine watches and other mechanical contrivances to be known, by what are they to be regulated, and how can their rate of motion be determined? A discordance in our measurements must necessarily result from such a condition, which would ultimately destroy all punctuality, and introduce a spirit of carelessness and indifference into all the neces sary engagements of life. And not only would it thus act directly upon society, but it would put an end to a large branch of astronomical observations which have an untraced but beneficial influence upon the comforts of man. At some distant period in the history of man, the accurate division of time may have appeared as absurd to the uneducated portion of the community as many of the expectations of the learned in the present or in recent times. It is true that there must always have been the rude division of day and night, which may have been sufficient for the purposes of an almost unemployed people. But as soon as men began to congregate toge ther, to build cities, to surround themselves with their own works, and to shut out the very sight of the great ruler of the day, some better division of time was required, and that astronomy, aided by art, has accomplished. H. thy Lord Jesus all thy strength. That is ETERNITY. WHENCE, my brethren, do you derive your confidence, that your dying day is so remote? From your youth? Yes, you reply; I am as yet only twenty-thirty years old. Ah! you completely deceive advanced twenty or thirty years, but that yourselves. No, it is not that you have death has gained twenty or thirty years upon you: God has given you thirty years of grace, by suffering you to live: you are his debtor for these years; and they have brought you so much the nearer to that term, when death awaits you. Take heed, then; eternity already marks upon your brow the fatal instant in which it will begin for you. ETERNITY! Ah! know It is a time-piece, whose you what it is? two words only, in the silence of the pendulum speaks, and incessantly repeats tomb-ever, never-never, ever—and for ON SUFFERING. HEAVEN. ACQUAINT your thoughts and hearts with sufferings, that when they come, thou DEATH, to the saints, is not so much a and they may agree and comply the better. penalty as it is a remedy. It delivers Do not afflict yourselves with vain fears them up, and lets them into such joys, as beforehand of troubles to come, and so "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither make uncertain evils a certain vexation; hath entered into the heart of man to but thus forethink the hardest trial you are conceive." Yea, a man may as well with likely to be put to for the name and cause a coal paint out the sun in all its splenof Christ, and labour for a holy stability of dour, as with his pen or tongue express, mind, for encountering it if it should come or with his heart, were it deep as the upon you. Things certainly fall the sea, conceive, the fulness of those joys, lighter on us, when they fall first upon our and sweetness of those pleasures, which thoughts. In this way, indeed, of an ima- the saints shall enjoy at God's right hand gined suffering, the conquest beforehand for evermore. For quality, they are may be but imaginary, and thou mayest pleasures: for quantity, fulness: for digfail in the trial. Therefore, be still hum-nity, at God's right hand: for eternity, ble and dependent on the strength of for evermore: and, millions of years mulChrist, and seek to be previously furnished tiplied by millions, make not up a minute with much distrust of thyself, and much to this eternity.— Younge. trust in him, with much denial of thyself, and much love to him; and this preparing and training of the heart may prove useful, and make it more dexterous, when brought Price d. each, or in Monthly Parts, containing Five to a real conflict. In all, both beforehand, and in the time of the trial, make JOHN DAVIS, 56, Paternoster Row, London. Numbers in a Cover, 3d. W. TYLER, Printer, 4, Ivy Lane, St. Paul's. SCRIPTURE ILLUSTRATIONS. No. XIV. "His enemies shall lick the dust."-Psa. lxxii. 9. THIS psalm, considered by eminent critics as written by David for Solomon, is generally, if not universally acknowledged, by writers on the Bible, to have a reference to the Messiah's kingdom, since many things in it could only be strictly true of Christ; its duration as long as the sun and moon, the subjection of all kings to its authority, the happiness of all its subjects, and the universal honours of the King, admit of no other application; so that, if written in honour of the illustrious king of Israel, "a greater than Solomon is here." The language expressed in the passage above given, is descriptive of the ultimate subjection of Christ's foes to his supreme authority, whether we consider them as voluntary servants bowing before him, and subdued by his mercy, or involuntary, and VOL. III. so forced to bend beneath his power. The allusion of this passage is to the obsequious reverence with which an eastern monarch is approached. Mr. Hugh Boyd, in his account of his embassy to the king of Candy, in Ceylon, describes the manner in which his companions approached him. "They almost literally licked the dust; prostrating themselves with their faces almost close to the stone floor, and throwing out their arms and legs." The lower class of people in Japan also observe a profound silence when their princes pass, and fall prostrate on the ground, in order to show their respect." So with the Turks, as soon as an ambassador sees the sultan, whether at the winor elsewhere, he immediately falls down on his knees, and kisses the ground. J. C. dow L INSECTS.No. XXXIV. "THE world, by difference, is in order found." In every direction diversity is apparent, and that which prevails among the insect tribes, ought not to be overlooked. Among them, for instance, contrary to what generally occurs in vertebrate animals, the size of the female is almost constantly larger than that of the male. Even in the larva and pupa states, a practised eye can judge, from their greater size, which individuals will become females. There are, however, some exceptions to this rule. The size of the female in ordinary cases seems connected with her office as a mother, that sufficient space may be allowed for the vast number of eggs she is to produce; and though, in the majority of cases, the disproportion between the two sexes is not very considerable, yet in some few it is enormous. Reaumur mentions a beetle, the male of which is so small compared with the female, that a bull not bigger than a sheep, or even a hare, set by the side of the largest cow, would aptly show the contrast. The female of many gall-insects is so large compared with the male, that the latter traverses her back as an ample area for a walk. But this is nothing compared with the prodigious difference between the sexes of termesfatale, and other species of white ants, whose males are often many thousand times less than the females, when the latter are distended with eggs. When the business of oviposition commences, they take the eggs from the female, and place them in the nurseries prepared for their reception. Her abdomen now begins gradually to extend, till in process of time it is enlarged to 1500 or 2000 times the size of the rest of her body, and her bulk equal to that of 20,000 or 30,000 workers. This part, often more than three inches in length, is now a vast mass of eggs, making long circumvolutions through numberless slender serpentine vessels; which, like the undulations of water, produce a perpetual rise and fall over the whole surface of the abdomen, and occasion a constant extrusion of the eggs, amounting sometimes in old females to sixty in a minute, or eighty thousand and upwards in twenty-four hours. As these females live two years in their perfect state, how astonishing must be the number produced in that time! In some species, the sexes are either partly or wholly of a different colour. In the common libellula depressa, which may be seen hawking over every pool, the abdomen of the male is usually slate colour, while that of his partner is yellow, but with darker side spots. Reaumur, however, noticed some inales that were of the same colour with the females. Schelver observed, when he put the skins of these insects into water, that the colours common to both sexes were in the substance of the skin, and remained fixed; while those that were peculiar to one, could be taken off with a hair pencil, and coloured the water; which, therefore, were superficial, and, as it were, laid on. The yellow males, therefore, that Reaumur observed, were probably such as had the superficial blue colour, which distinguishes them, washed off. In one case, the males are of a lovely silky blue, and the females green; in another the male is wholly black, and the female wholly grey, and of so very different an aspect, that they were long regarded as distinct species. The sexes of insects vary also in their sculpture. Thus the wing cases of the females of many of the larger waterbeetles are deeply furrowed, while those of the males are quite smooth and level; and the thorax of the female in several species of colymbetes of the same tribe, has on each side several tortuous impressed lines or scratches, like net work, which are not to be discovered in the male. The legs of some bees are distinguished in the sexes, by a difference in their clothing. A singular apparatus has been given to the worker-bees for the purpose of carrying the propolis, (a brown, odoriferous, resinous substance, more tenacious and extensible than wax, and well adapted for cementing and varnishing,) as well as the pollen of flowers, to the hive. The shin, or middle portion of the hind pair of legs, is actually formed into a triangular basket, admirably adapted to this design. The bottom of this basket is composed of a smooth, shining, horn-like substance, hollowed out in the substance of the limb, and surrounded with a margin of strong and thickly set bristles; a structure belonging only to the females and neuters, and which will be in vain looked for in the male. Whatever materials may be placed by the bee in the interior of this basket, are secured from falling out, by the bristles around it, whose elasticity will even allow the load to be heaped beyond their points without letting it fall. Mr. Knight caused a part of a tree strip ped of the bark to be covered with a ce- the advantage seems to be wholly on the It is also worthy of remark, that when the bee is loading her singular basket, she first kneads the piece she has detached with her mandibles, till it becomes somewhat dry, and less adhesive, as otherwise it would stick to her limbs. This preliminary process sometimes occupies nearly half an hour. She then passes it backwards by means of her feet, to the cavity of her basket, giving it two or three pats to make it adhere; and when she adds a second portion to the first, she often finds it necessary to pat it still harder. When she has procured as much as the basket will conveniently hold, she flies off with it to the hive, unless relieved of it in the way that has just been described. With regard to the general shape of their body, the male and female usually resemble each other but here also there are some cases of difference. The male of the hivebee is much thicker and more clumsy than either the female or the worker; but in one tribe of insects, the males are nearly cylindrical in shape, and very narrow, while the other sex are oblong or ovate; and in another the male is long and slender, and the female short and thick; which, in more than one instance, has occasioned their being mistaken for distinct insects. In concluding this account, the differences in the structure of particular parts and organs must be briefly noticed. The male stag-beetle not only exceeds the female in the length of his mandibles, but also greatly in the size and dimensions of his head. Some males have threatening horns, usually hollow, which give them some resemblance to many of the larger quadrupeds. Many are unicorns, and have their head armed with only a single horn; others, like the he-goat or the stag, have a pair of horns; others go beyond any known quadrupeds in their number of horns. In reference to the antennæ, In the female of the common glowworm not the slightest vestige of wingcases or wings is visible, and the creature resembles a larva rather than a perfect insect; yet its mate is a true beetle, furnished with both. For the chirping of the cricket tribe, produced by the friction of the basis of their elytra, or wing-cases, against each other, there is something peculiar in their structure. These parts of both sexes are divided lengthways into two portions; a vertical or lateral one which covers the sides, and a horizontal one which covers the back. In the female both these portions resemble each other in their nervures, which, running obliquely in two directions, form, by their intersection, numerous small lozengeshaped meshes or areolets. The elytra also of these have no elevation at their base. In the males the vertical portion does not materially differ from that of the females; but in the horizontal the base of each elytrum is so elevated as to form a cavity beneath. The nervures also which are stronger and more prominent, run here and there very irregularly, with various inflexions, describing curves, spirals, and other figures difficult and tedious to describe, and producing a variety of areolets of different size and shape, but generally larger than those of the female: particularly towards the extremity of the wing may be observed a space nearly circular, surrounded by one nervure, and divided into two areolets by another. But here we may pause. With truth has it been said important in the plan of Him-who framed "Each crawling insect holds a rank And that an alteration in the appointed circumstances of any one would be attended with incalculable disadvantage, is equally certain. |