them the most effective. We are quite sure that by going in detail over the human body, many thousands of changes could be pointed out, each entailing severe trouble and discomfort upon man, yet without hazard to the being of the individual or to the endurance of the species. How then is the actual optimism of the human frame to be accounted for? Why is it that no alteration can be proposed either in shape or locality which would not deteriorate the mechanism? There is, no doubt, a certain limit, beyond which if the changes were to proceed, they would prove incompatible with life, and so expunge the specimen altogether from observation-but how comes it, that between this limit and the actual state of every existing species we see nothing awkward, nothing misplaced, nothing that admits of being mended without one of those inaptitudes or disproportions which either a blind nature, or a sportive and capricious chance, must have infallibly and in myriads given rise to? Whence no idle excrescences in those complicated systems? How comes each part to be in such exquisite harmony with the whole? What but manifold experience could have taught the anatomist to ground such confident inferences on the uses of every thing that he discovers in the animal framework-and whence can it be, but from the actual design which presided over these formations, that, when reasoning on final causes, he is in the best possible track for the enlargement of his science ? Whence the certainty, the almost axiomatic certainty of the position, that there is nothing useless in the anato

ness.

mical structure? anatomists never reason more safely, than when they presume and reason on an universal usefulAnd this principle so far from misleading, which in a random economy of things it would infallibly have done, has often been the instrument of anatomical discovery. Could this have been the case under a mere system either of headlong forces, or of fortuitous combinations? Would not the monstrous and the grotesque and the incongruous have ever and anon been obtruded upon our view and when instead of this we behold such significancy in every part and in every function of the physiological system, does not this tell most significantly of a God?

And that, on the contrary,

10. There is an infinity of examples to the same effect in the inferior creation. As one instance out of the many, we find wings attached to the animals, who, from the smallness or comparative lightness of their bodies, can obtain the benefit of them. Why not wings on horses and other large animals, who could shift well enough to live though they could not use their wings? And here there occurs to us the remarkable instance of a congruity in the parts of animals, greatly subservient to their accommodation, yet experimentally proved in a familiar case to be not essential to life. We all know that the necks of quadrupeds, as is magnificently set forth in the camelopard, are in general commensurate with their fore legs. The same proportion is observed in birds especially those which feed upon grass. The obvious design of this collocation is that they may be enabled to

reach the ground conveniently with their bills. Now there is no exception to this rule by which the length of the neck keeps pace with that of the legs in land fowls-but there is an exception in the case of those water-fowls that feed on the produce of water bottoms-as the swan whose neck is much larger in proportion than its legs, and also the goose, both of which birds seek for their food in the slimy bottom of lakes or pools. Now it so happens of the goose that it can live upon land with its long neck and short legs-though the disproportion under which it labours gives an obvious awkwardness to its appearance and gait-besides, we have no doubt, subjecting it to a certain degree of inconvenience in feeding. Here then is one example of an incongruity consistent with life, and fully authorizing the question, why under a random or unintelligent economy of things, there is not an infinite multitude of such examples among living animals ? It will be perceived of this one example, that, while it both furnishes and illustrates the argument on which we now insist, it carries in it no exception to the wisdom of the Creator. The animal is amphibious. Its natural habitat is the margin of lakes. It may live on land, but it can live on water-and is furnished with its long neck for the sake of the additional food obtained from this latter element.

11. Before quitting this subject we may remark that the exception which takes place in the proportion between the necks and the legs is peculiar to those birds that are webfooted. Now is there aught, we would ask, in a disproportion between

necks and legs that is fitted by the mere operation of a blind and physical energy to produce these webs? Or, can the adjustment of parts so remote and unconnected be ascribed to any thing but collocation?

12. There is a very pleasing information recently given in a most entertaining book of travels by Mr. Waterton. It respects the sloth—an animal which creeps along the ground with every symptom of distress, as if it laboured under the pain and discomfort of some very grievous mal-adjustment. According to the narrative of this very adventurous traveller, he has cleared up this apparent exception to the order of perfect adaptation throughout the animal kingdom. The creature, it would appear, when on the ground, is out of its element. Its natural habitat is among the branches of trees, which branches interlaced with each other afford a continuous path for hundreds of miles in the extensive forests of South America. Its feet, it would appear, were not made for pressing upon the earth, but for lapping into each other, so as to suspend the animal with its back undermost on those horizontal branches, along which it warps its way from one tree to another. When it regains its natural situation, it instantly recovers, it is said, its natural alacrity, and exchanges the agony it experienced, when in a state of violence, for the ease and enjoyment of one who feels himself at home. The frame and habitudes of the creature are thus found, as with all other animals, to be exactly suited to the place of its proper occupation -so as no longer to stand in the way of the general

doctrine, that each creature is perfect in its kind and all very good.*

13. In order to taste the richness and power of the theistical argument, one would need to enter upon the details of it. For doing aught like adequate justice to the theme, we should go piecemeal over the face of this vast and voluminous creation; and show how in the exquisite textures of every leaf and every hair and every membrane, Nature throughout all her recesses was instinct with contrivance, and in the minute as well as the magnificent announced herself the workmanship of a Master's hand. We cannot venture on the statistics of so wide and so exuberant a territory. The variety in which we should lose ourselves, the Psalmist hath expressively designed by the epithet of "manifold"—and this sets forth the significancy of that scriptural expression, "the manifold wisdom of God." It is to us interminable. When told that we might expatiate for weeks together on the habitudes and economy of a single insect, we may guess how arduous the enterprise would be, to traverse the whole length and breadth of a land, so profusely overspread and so densely peopled with the tokens of a planning and presiding Deity. It

*

Dr. Buckland has treated this subject scientifically in a recent paper, "On the Adaptation of the Structure of the Sloths to their peculiar mode of Life," in which he demonstrates, that, so far from being chargeable with imperfection or monstrosity, the construction of the sloth "adds another striking case to the endless instances of perfect mechanism and contrivance, which we find pervading every organ of every creature, when viewed in relation to the office it is destined to fulfil; and affords a new exemplification of the principle, which has been so admirably illustrated by the judicious Paley, that the animal is fitted to its state.""