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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
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