FISHES OF LAKE SUPERIOR. 877 



to denying that the creation has been made according to a wise plan. 

 It were denying to the Creator the intention of establishing well 

 regulated natural relations between the beings he has called into 

 existence. It were denying him the wisdom which is exemplified in 

 nature, to ascribe it to the creatures themselves, to ascribe it even 

 to those creatures in which we hardly see evidence of consciousness, 

 or worse than all, to ascribe this wonderful order to physical influences 

 or mere chance. 



As soon as this general conclusion is granted, there are, however, 

 some further adaptations which follow as a matter of course. Each 

 type, being created within the limits of the natural area which 

 it is to inhabit, must have been placed there under circumstances 

 favorable to its preservation and reproduction, and adapted to the 

 fulfilment of the purposes for which it was created. There are, in 

 animals, peculiar adaptations which are characteristic of their species, 

 and which cannot be supposed to have arisen from subordinate influ- 

 ences. Those which live in shoals cannot be supposed to have been 

 created in single pairs. Those which are made to be the food of 

 others cannot have been created in the same proportions as those 

 which feed upon them. Those which are everywhere found in innu- 

 merable specimens, must have been introduced in numbers capable of 

 maintaining their normal proportions to those which live isolated, and 

 are comparatively and constantly fewer. For we know that this har- 

 mony in the numerical proportions between animals is one of the great 

 laws of nature. The circumstance that species occur within definite 

 limits where no obstacles prevent their wider distribution, leads to the 

 further inference that these limits were assigned to them from the 

 beginning, and so we should come to the final conclusion, that the 

 order which prevails throughout the creation is intentional, that it is 

 regulated by the limits marked out on the first day of creation, and 

 that it has been maintained unchanged through ages, with no other 

 modifications than those which the higher intellectual powers of man 

 enable him to impose upon some few of the animals more closely 

 connected with him, and in reference to those very limited changes 

 which he is able to produce artificially upon the surface of our globe. 



