Sacred philosophy of the seasons : illustrating the perfections of God in the phenomena of the year ... Summer / [Henry Duncan].

  • Duncan, Henry, 1774-1846
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sacred philosophy of the seasons : illustrating the perfections of God in the phenomena of the year ... Summer / [Henry Duncan]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    arctic snows, having- been found on limestone rocks in tile island of Lismore, in Scotland, as well as among the Alpine countries of Europe. Red snow has also been found on the Pyrenees, and the mountains of Norway. It is conjectured that snow is not the natural situation of this plant (protocoecus nivalisJ, but that, from its great tenacity of life, it not only preserves its vitality on that chilly surface, hut, during the partial thawing of snow, it continues to multiply. When once established among the eternal snows of the north, it becomes more numerous than the sands of the ocean; and, “ increas- ing in density from year to year, at last presents, to the astonished and admiring navigator, a sight more sur- prising in its reality than any of the fabled wonders of an Arabian tale.”* In reviewing this account of northern vegetation, it is interesting to remark the adaptations by which the general laws impressed on this department of nature are rendered consistent with the propagation and preserva- tion of useful plants, under circumstances of climate which would render the raising of any of the ordinary kinds of the produce of the soil utterly hopeless. Among these provisions the reader would not fail to remark, the thickened juices of the pine tribe, and their retention of masses of granite. A ready explanation of the origin of red snow was now presented to us, and not a doubt remained in the mind of any that this was the correct one.”—Magazine of Natural History, vol. ii. p. 322. It will be at once amusing and instructive, should this view be confirmed, to discover that a substance which has been soberly treated of by natural- ists as a plant, the order of which has been settled, the name of which has been added to the calendar, and on which theories have been formed, should after all prove to be nothing more than animal dung. The showers of blood which have sometimes alarmed nations by their fall, have, in like manner, been proved to be the red ejection of a species of butterfly. * It appears that the same substance which gives the red colour to snow, is occasionally detected, even during the warmth of summer, covering the brilliant white limestone of the plains. In the last named locality, it was discovered by the Baron Wrangler, in the province of Nerike. It was be- lieved by him to be of a different species. If, after all, it be the excrement of a bird, which I am inclined to believe, though I have followed naturalists in the text, it will not be surprising that it should be found in such different localities and seasons.