486 DR KNOX on the Structure of the Stomach 



venture to declare the form of the stomach in any of the Cetacea, 

 unless he had actually seen it, or read its description by others ? 

 Surely no one will believe that the mouth of the dolphin, armed 

 with teeth for catching and holding its prey, and that prey ob- 

 viously animal, would lead any one to conjecture that the dol- 

 phin possesses a stomach more complicated than the ox, whose 

 stomach is declared, foolishly enough, to be quadruple, because 

 of its living on vegetable food. 



If we now advert to the assigned causes of structure, we shall 

 find them equally untenable, equally unphilosophical. The 

 quadruple stomach of the ox and sheep is said to compensate for 

 the deficiency of the incisor teeth ; but the camel has teeth of this 

 kind, and its stomach is quintuple. The causes, then, of nearly 

 all structures are concealed, as yet, by an impenetrable veil from 

 human sight, leaving only a few great and general laws applica- 

 ble to animal nature, but so loosely as greatly to diminish their 

 value. It is not with animal machines as with a watch or other 

 piece of human mechanism, wherein the purpose of its creation 

 is expressly known and understood, and the reason, which, more- 

 over, is purely a mechanical one, for the presence of each wheel 

 and pivot, chain and box, made known to us by the mechanist, 

 or discovered on investigation. The animal machine abounds 

 with structures, the reason for whose presence he cannot guess 

 at, neither can he calculate what might be the result of their 

 absence or destruction. That design generally, in the com- 

 plex machinery of animal bodies, is too obvious to require even 

 a thought ; but the attempts at particularizing the particular 

 design connected with separate individual organs, seem to me 

 hitherto to present a series of the most lamentable failures in 

 human reasoning. I do not hesitate to declare nearly all the 

 systems hitherto built on these opinions as so many systems of 

 false philosophy, of which some are below criticism, and others 

 of a pernicious tendency. There are persons who believe that 



