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pick up a straw from the ground; these properties of the same organ, taken together, exhibit a specimen, not only of design, (which is attested by the advantage,) but of consummate art, and, as I may say, of elaborate preparation, in accomplishing that design.

II. The hook in the wing of a bat is strictly a mechanical, and, also, a compensating contrivance. At the angle of its wing there is a bent claw, exactly in the form of a hook, by which the bat attaches itself to the sides of rocks, caves, and buildings, laying hold of crevices, joinings, chinks, and roughnesses. It hooks itself by this claw; remains suspended by this hold; takes its flight from this position: which operations compensate for the decrepitude of its legs and feet. Without her hook, the bat would be the most helpless of all animals. She can neither run upon her feet, nor raise herself from the ground. These inabilities are made up to her by the contrivance in her wing: and in placing a claw on that part, the Creator has deviated from the analogy observed in winged animals.—A singular defect required a singular substitute.

III. The crane-kind are to live and seek their food amongst the waters; yet, having no web-foot, are incapable of swimming. To make up for this deficiency, they are furnished with long legs for wading, or long bills for groping; or usually with both. This is compensation. But I think the true reflection upon the present instance is, how every part of nature is tenanted by appropriate inhabitants. Not only is the surface of deep waters peopled by numerous tribes of birds that swim, but marshes and shallow pools are furnished with hardly less numerous tribes of birds that wade.

IV. The common parrot has, in the structure of its beak, both an inconveniency, and a compensation for it. When I speak of an inconveniency, I have a view to a dilemma which frequently occurs in the works of nature, viz. that the peculiarity of structure by which an organ is made to answer one purpose, necessarily unfits it for some other purpose. This is the case before us. The upper bill of the parrot is so much hooked, and so much overlaps the lower, that if, as in other birds, the lower chap alone had motion, the bird could scarcely gape wide enough to receive its food: yet this hook and overlapping of the bill could not be spared, for it forms the very instrument by which the bird climbs; to say nothing of the use which it makes of it in breaking nuts and the hard substances upon which

it feeds. How, therefore, has nature provided for the opening of this occluded mouth? By making the upper chap moveable, as well as the lower. In most birds, the upper chap is connected, and makes but one piece, with the skull; but in the parrot, the upper chap is joined to the bone of the head by a strong membrane placed on each side of it, which lifts and depresses it at pleasure".

V. The spider's web is a compensating contrivance. The spider lives upon flies, without wings to pursue them; a case, one would have thought, of great difficulty, yet provided for, and provided for by a resource which no stratagem, no effort of the animal, could have produced, had not both its external and internal structure been specifically adapted to the operation.

VI. In many species of insects, the eye is fixed; and consequently without the power of turning the pupil to the object. This great defect is, however, perfectly compensated; and by a mechanism which we should not suspect. The eye is a multiplying glass, with a lens looking in every direction and catching every object. By which means, although the orb of the eye be stationary, the field of vision is as ample as that of other animals, and is commanded on every side. When this lattice work was first observed, the multiplicity and minuteness of the surfaces must have added to the surprise of the discovery. Adams tells us, that fourteen hundred of these reticulations have been counted in the two eyes of a drone-bee.

In other cases the compensation is effected by the number and position of the eyes themselves. The spider has eight eyes, mounted upon different parts of the head; two in front, two in the top of the head, two on each side. These eyes are without motion; but, by their situation, suited to comprehend every view which the wants or safety of the animal rendered it necessary for it to take.

VII. The Memoirs for the Natural History of Animals, published by the French Academy, A.D. 1687, furnish us with some curious particulars in the eye of a chameleon. Instead of two eyelids, it is covered by an eyelid with a hole in it. This singular structure appears to be compensatory, and to answer to some other singularities in the shape of the animal. The neck of the chameleon is inflexible. To make up for this, the eye is so prominent, as that more than half of the ball stands out of the head; by means of which extraordinary projection, the

" Goldsmith's Natural History, vol. v. p. 274.

pupil of the eye can be carried by the muscles in every direction, and is capable of being pointed towards every object. But then, so unusual an exposure of the globe of the eye requires, for its lubricity and defence, a more than ordinary protection of eyelid, as well as a more than ordinary supply of moisture; yet the motion of an eyelid, formed according to the common construction, would be impeded, as it should seem, by the convexity of the organ. The aperture in the lid meets this difficulty. It enables the animal to keep the principal part of the surface of the eye under cover, and to preserve it in a due state of humidity without shutting out the light; or without performing every moment a nictitation, which, it is probable, would be more laborious to this animal than to others.

VIII. In another animal, and in another part of the animal œconomy, the same Memoirs describe a most remarkable substitution. The reader will remember what we have already observed concerning the intestinal canal; that its length, so many times exceeding that of the body, promotes the extraction of the chyle from the aliment, by giving room for the lacteal vessels to act upon it through a greater space. This long intestine, wherever it occurs, is, in other animals, disposed in the abdomen from side to side in returning folds. But, in the animal now under our notice, the matter is managed otherwise. The same intention is mechanically effectuated; but by a mechanism of a different kind. The animal of which I speak, is an amphibious quadruped, which our authors call the alopecias, or sea-fox. The intestine is straight from one end to the other; but in this straight, and consequently short intestine, is a winding, corkscrew, spiral passage, through which the food, not without several circumvolutions, and in fact by a long route, is conducted to its exit. Here the shortness of the gut is compensated by the obliquity of the perforation.

IX. But the works of the Deity are known by expedients. Where we should look for absolute destitution; where we can reckon up nothing but wants; some contrivance always comes in, to supply the privation. A snail, without wings, feet, or thread, climbs up the stalks of plants, by the sole aid of a viscid humour discharged from her skin. She adheres to the stems, leaves, and fruits of plants, by means of a sticking-plaster. A muscle, which might seem, by its helplessness, to lie at the mercy of every wave that went over it, has the singular power of spinning strong, tendinous threads, by which she moors her

shell to rocks and timbers. A cockle, on the contrary, by means of its stiff tongue, works for itself a shelter in the sand. The provisions of nature extend to cases the most desperate. A lobster has in its constitution a difficulty so great, than one could hardly conjecture beforehand how nature would dispose of it. In most animals, the skin grows with their growth. If, instead of a soft skin, there be a shell, still it admits of a gradual enlargement. If the shell, as in the tortoise, consist of several pieces, the accession of substance is made at the sutures. Bivalve shells grow bigger by receiving an accretion at their edge; it is the same with spiral shells at their mouth. The simplicity of their form admits of this. But the lobster's shell being applied to the limbs of the body, as well as to the body itself, allows not of either of the modes of growth which are observed to take place in other shells. Its hardness resists expansion; and its complexity renders it incapable of increasing its size by addition of substance to its edge. How then was the growth of the lobster to be provided for? Was room to be made for it in the old shell, or was it to be successively fitted with new ones? If a change of shell became necessary, how was the lobster to extricate himself from his present confinement? how was he to uncase his buckler, or draw his legs out of his boots? The process, which fishermen have observed to take place, is as follows: At certain seasons, the shell of the lobster grows soft; the animal swells its body; the seams open, and the claws burst at the joints. When the shell has thus become loose upon the body, the animal makes a second effort, and by a tremulous, spasmodic motion, casts it off. In this state, the liberated but defenceless fish retires into holes in the rock. The released body now suddenly pushes its growth. In about eight and forty hours, a fresh concretion of humour upon the surface, i. e. a new shell is formed, adapted in every part to the increased dimensions of the animal. This wonderful mutation is repeated every year.

If there be imputed defects without compensation, I should suspect that they were defects only in appearance. Thus, the body of the sloth has often been reproached for the slowness of its motions, which has been attributed to an imperfection in the formation of its limbs. But it ought to be observed, that it is this slowness which alone suspends the voracity of the animal. He fasts during his migration from one tree to another: and this fast may be necessary for the relief of his

overcharged vessels, as well as to allow time for the concoction of the mass of coarse and hard food which he has taken into his stomach. The tardiness of his pace seems to have reference to the capacity of his organs, and to his propensities with respect to food; i. e. is calculated to counteract the effects of repletion.

Or there may be cases, in which a defect is artificial, and compensated by the very cause which produces it. Thus the sheep, in the domesticated state in which we see it, is destitute of the ordinary means of defence or escape; is incapable either of resistance or flight. But this is not so with the wild animal. The natural sheep is swift and active: and, if it lose these qualities when it comes under the subjection of man, the loss is compensated by his protection. Perhaps there is no species of quadruped whatever, which suffers so little as this does from the depredation of animals of prey.

For the sake of making our meaning better understood, we have considered this business of compensation under certain particularities of constitution, in which it appears to be most conspicuous. This view of the subject necessarily limits the instances to single species of animals. But there are compensations, perhaps not less certain, which extend over large classes, and to large portions of living nature.

I. In quadrupeds, the deficiency of teeth is usually compensated by the faculty of rumination. The sheep, deer, and ox tribe, are without fore-teeth in the upper jaw. These ruminate. The horse and ass are furnished with teeth in the upper jaw, and do not ruminate. In the former class, the grass and hay descend into the stomach, nearly in the state in which they are cropped from the pasture, or gathered from the bundle. In the stomach, they are softened by the gastric juice, which in these animals is unusually copious. Thus softened and rendered tender, they are returned a second time to the action of the mouth, where the grinding teeth complete at their leisure the trituration which is necessary, but which was before left imperfect. I say, the trituration which is necessary; for it appears from experiments, that the gastric fluid of sheep, for example, has no effect in digesting plants, unless they have been previously masticated; that it only produces a slight maceration, nearly as common water would do in a like degree of heat; but that when once vegetables are reduced to pieces by mastication, the fluid then exerts upon them its specific operation. Its

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