y Scripture Readings."_

[28] The raven is said to live for more than a hundred years. I am,
however, not prepared to say that it was the same pair of birds that
used, year after year, to build on the same rock-shelf among the
precipices of Navity, from the times of my great-grandfather's boyhood
to those of my own.

[29] The following estimate of the air-breathing vertebrates (that of
the "Physical Atlas," second edition, 1856) may be regarded as the
latest. It will he seen that it does not include the cetacea or the
seals:--

SPECIES.
Quadrumana 170
Marsupialia 123
Edentata 28
Pachydermata 39
Terrestrial Carnivora 514
Rodentia 604
Ruminantia 180
---- 1658
Birds 6266
Reptiles 657
Turtles 8}
Sea Snakes 7} 15
---- 642

Great as is this number of animals, compared with those known a century
ago, there are indications that the list is to be increased rather than
diminished. Even by the latest European authorities the reindeer is
represented as consisting of but a single species, common to the
sub-arctic regions of both the Old and New Worlds; whereas in the
"Canadian Naturalist" for 1856 I find it stated, on what seems to be
competent authority, that America has its two species of reindeer, and
that they both differ from the European species.

[30] If I do not introduce here the argument founded on the great age of
certain gigantic trees, such as the Baobab of intertropical Africa, or
the Taxodium of South America, it is not because I have any reason to
challenge the estimates of Adamson or Candolle. The one tree may have
lived its five thousand, the other its six thousand, years; but as the
grounds have been disputed on which the calculations respecting their
vast age have been founded, and as they cannot be reexamined anew by the
reader, I wholly omit the evidence, in the general question, which they
have been supposed to furnish.

[31] The following excellent remarks on the economy of miracle, by
Chalmers, bear very directly on this subject:--"It is remarkable that
God is sparing of miracles, and seems to prefer the ordinary processes
of nature, if equally effectual for the accomplishment of his purposes.
He might have saved Noah and his family by miracles; but he is not
prodiga