gins by a _chevaux de frise_ of
strong hairs, and surrounded by muscular fibres by which they can be
hermetically sealed, effectually prevent the entrance of the fine
particles of sand which the suffocating storms of the desert raise in
fiery clouds, destructive to the lord of the creation. Erect on those
stilt-like legs, the giraffe surveys the wide expanse, and feeds at
ease, for those mild, large eyes are so placed that it can see not only
on all sides, but even behind, rendering it next to impossible for an
enemy to approach undiscovered. As we reflect on these and numberless
other points for admiration presented by the giraffe, we involuntarily
exclaim with the Psalmist, "Oh, Lord! how manifold are thy works; in
wisdom hast thou made them all!"

"Nature to these, without profusion kind,
The proper organs, proper powers assigned;
Each seeming want compensated of course,
Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force;
All in exact proportion to the state,
Nothing to add, and nothing to abate."

THE SOLAR SYSTEM.

The earth is a huge oblate or orange-shaped sphere, spinning on its
shorter axis like a humming-top, yet at such a rate of speed as to seem
standing still; it goes once round in twenty-four hours, its rotation
being both the cause and the measure of day and night. The highest
mountains range from four to five miles in height; the greatest depth
of the ocean is probably little more than five miles, although Ross let
down 27,000 feet of sounding-line in vain on one occasion. So that the
earth's surface is very irregular; but its mountainous ridges and
oceanic valleys are no greater things in proportion to its whole bulk,
than the roughness of the rind of the orange it resembles in shape. The
geological crust--that is to say, the total depth to which geologists
suppose themselves to have reached in the way of observation--is no
thicker in proportion than a sheet of thin writing paper pasted on a
globe two feet in diameter. The surface of the earth is some 148,500,000
of miles in extent; and only one-fourth of that large space is dry land,
the rest being ocean and ice. The atmosphere rises all round to a height
between forty-five and fifty miles above the sea-level. The solar
radiance sends such heat as it brings no deeper any where than 100 feet
into the surface or scurfskin of the dry land--from forty to a hundred
feet, one-third of the su