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and slays them at a distance so great, as not to awaken their apprehensions of danger.

It is thus he maintains his power over all living creatures, alike in the frozen regions of the north, and in the hot and burning plains of the torrid zone. Whenever they are discovered by his penetrating eye, the most savage and hostile tribes may for a time hold his empire in dispute: but their opposition and their force serve only to awaken his ingenuity, and call his powers into more daring action. The horse and the dog which enjoy his protection from the earliest period of their lives, are taught to know their master, and to adopt many of his habits of life. Upon the lion and the tyger, which the African leads captives from the forests, or upon the vulture and the eagle, which he secures when young, or brings down from their rapid and sublime flights, he at first imposes the severity of famine, watching, and fatigue, to conquer their savage nature, and reduce them to obedience. The dangers of the ocean stop not the pursuits of man; the sailor catches the ravenous shark, and transfixes the mighty whale. With a boldness still more desperate, the fowler of the north climbs the perpendicular rocks of Norway or St. Kilda, or lowered from their airy summits which overhang the tempestuous deep; explores the nests of the clamorous birds, and plunders them of their eggs and their young. From such arduous labours does man draw the means of his subsistence; from such exertions he acquires peculiar habits of courage and agility, becomes reconciled to his situation, and enjoys it without repining at the easier lot of others.

Thus is constantly executed that primeval law, which secured the empire of the creation to man by the ex

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press voice of divine revelation, even after he had forfeited his innocence, and was debased by guilt. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air; upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. Gen. ix, 2.

Much as we may discern in the animal economy to convince us of the benevolence of nature, there are many things, which excite our surprise, and for which we cannot readily account. That she should so far in appearance counteract her own designs, as to make one animal prey upon another, seems extraordinary ; but perhaps this law is not so severe as it appears to be, when we consider, that animals have no presentiment of their fate; that contracted as their existence is, all of them evidently enjoy that portion of happiness, which is consistent with their formation and powers. By the present constitution of the animal system the life and happiness of its superior orders are promoted the bodies of the inferior classes, which from their delicate structure, must more quickly perish, become the materials of sustaining life in others; and a much larger number is enabled to subsist in consequence of animals thus devouring each other, than could be maintained, if they all subsisted upon vegetables; because it is a received principle in physics, that animal food furnishes more nutriment than vegetable substances of equal weight.

It is sufficiently evident, that the various tribes of insects, by preying upon each other, preserve the fruits of the earth from those ravages they would necessarily suffer, should any one species of them multiply too fast; and even those which we drive from our habitations are formed for salutary purposes, and consume

such substances as would become pernicious to the health of man, if left to a gradual decay.

For what reason nature is so prodigal in the production of animals invisible, as well as visible, to the unassisted eye; for what cause such ingenious contrivance is bestowed upon their structure, and so much elegance displayed in their colours and forms; why the more noxious animals should exist, such as the tarantula, the rattle snake, the crocodile, and the izal salya*; are questions which naturalists will not be able to answer, until they are more perfectly acquainted with the general economy of her designs, and the particular relation and dependance of one animal upon another.

CHAPTER V.

THE SIMILARITY OF ANIMALS TO VEGETABLES.

II. THE powers of growth and of the propagation of their respective species are possessed in common by the animal and the vegetable; and the first step, which is made by nature towards endowing a creature with motion, constitutes the connecting link

* A species of bee, armed with a poisonous sting: when it appears in Abyssinia, and the coasts of the Red Sea, so terrified are the inhabitants, that they quit their abodes, and fly to the distant sands of Beja. See Sullivan, vol. iii, p. 287.

of the animal and vegetable kingdoms; and this link is formed by the oyster, and the various kinds of the zoophites, or those vegetable substances which are possessed of animation. Yet minute and feeble as their frame appears, wonderful and stupendous are the structures which they raise: witness those immense and dangerous coral rocks, described in Cook's voyage, which rise almost perpendicularly like walls, in the Southern Ocean, and are formed by a species of the lithophytos, to whose labours we owe those beautiful corals, known by the name of madrepores and millepores; whilst the zoophytes, from their protruding from their habitation, in the form of flowers, were once classed amongst the vegetable tribes.

The polypus ranks as the first of plants, and the last of animals, if its propagation, as some naturalists affirm, can be effected by cuttings, similar to the multiplication of plants by slips and suckers.* Difference of formation, and the power of moving from one place to another, seem to constitute the most remarkable discriminations. The lines, which divide these two kingdoms, however, cannot be very accurately marked out; and the common properties of animals and vegetables are much more numerous, than their essential distinctions.†

The poets, both ancient and modern, have indulged the pleasing fiction of attributing to vegetables the passions, actions, and many of the characteristics of

* See Martin's Abridgement of the Philosophical Transactions, vol. ix, p. 17. for the history of the polypus.

Ray, p. 109. Chambers's Dictionary. Evelyn's Sylva, p. 33. Watson's Essays. Smellie's Philosophy of Natural History, v. i.

animals. The philosophers Plato, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras, did not hesitate to raise them to that distinction; and many of the modern naturalists, for instance, Cardan, Ray, Spallanzani, Watson, and Percival, were induced, by a more accurate inspection of their structure and properties, to favour that opinion. The external form of some plants leads at first view to a curious deception. One of the flowers of the orchis tribe resembles a bee, a second a wasp, and a third, still more uncommon, is like a spider. The cypripedium of South America in its nectary resembles likewise the body, and in its petals the legs of the large spider; and this ambiguous appearance deters the humming-bird from extracting honey from its flowers.*

Nor is the close analogy of plants with animals less curious, on examining their internal structure and properties. The former are covered with a bark, which resembles the coat of the latter. Leaves, like the hair of animals and the feathers of birds, fall off at certain seasons. Some are clad with coarse garments, to resist all severity of weather; others with

* Several insects of the mantis genus are so exactly similar to a cluster of leaves, in their form and colour, that they are called by the sailors, who find them in the woods, walking leaves. When the tentacula of the sea anemone are extended, and they are themselves expanded to their greatest dimensions, they bear so strong a resemblance to a flower, that some naturalists have supposed them to be vegetables. These animals fixed to the rocks, and imperforate at the base, have a mouth situated at the top, which they possess the power of dilating, till it becomes capable of receiving a large muscle: they extract the fish, and return the vacant shell by the same aperture.

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