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smaller tribes of animated.beings, they would in a short space 
of time overstock the air, the earth, and the waters. It may 
thence be inferred, that this faculty was bestowed on them 
with a view to meet the demands of those larger animals of 
which tbey serve as the natural food. The herring and the 
pilchard of our own seas, are preyed upon by foes, more 
numerous, and more formidable than those which pursue the 
flying-fish within the tropics; yet it has never been remarked 
that the shoals which annually visit our coasts are falling off 
in their volume. The boundless wastes of Africa are covered 
with herds of antelopes, buffaloes, and wild horses. In the 
woods that skirt those plains, the lion, the tiger, and the 
panther lurk for their prey. It is to be presumed that they have 
followed the same system from the period of their creation 
downwards, yet those regions are to this day as well stocked 
with graminivorous animals as if lions and tigers had never 
existed. This consideration, it is to be hoped, will set the 
hearts of sentimentalists at ease, or assuage, at least, their 
sympathetic feelings." 
The following passage in Darwin's Physiologia also leads 
him to the further examination of this subject: 
* The bitter, narcotic, and acrid juices of plants, are secréted 
by the glands for the defence of the vegetable against the 
pee ofa insects rad dvor Mentis Bie 
ologia. — 
- *'[his is mere cuiu. SB mri red cena 
of the author's assertions, utterly unwarranted by facts. It is 
an acknowledged axiom that nature does nothing in vain; yet 
we cannot well imagine her more idly employed than in fur- 
nishing plants with that dubious sort of armour which rarely 
contributes to their security, and proves, in numberless in- 
stances, an incitement to their destruction. In the first place, 
it may be safely affirmed, that there hardly exists a vegetable, 
some part of which does not serve as food to some description 
of animals. But in order to form a correct judgment on this 
matter, the history and ceconomy of the plant must be studied 
in the country where it is Ric Men plants are 
