234: STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
Nor is this all: the whole of these gigantic creatures 
feed upon herbage, grass, or the leaves of trees. 
Let us imagine, then, for a moment, what would be 
the state of those countries, as the vegetable world 
is now constructed, which should be inhabited by 
thousands of such monsters, as the tropical regions 
now are by the parrots. The consumption of food 
necessary to support such creatures would be 
enormous. No plains would be sufficiently fruitful 
to graze thousands of elephants and rhinoceroses 
of hundreds of species. The trees would be bared 
of their leaves, and verdure would disappear. The 
earth, in fact, would be as much devastated as if 
perpetual swarms of locusts had stripped it of its 
clothing ; and thousands of these devouring mon- 
sters would annually perish for want of food, poison 
the air, and create pestilence and famine. Such 
results, however frightful, are too obvious to be de- 
nied. The paucity, therefore, of pachydermatous 
quadrupeds, instead of proving a want of uniformity 
and consistency in the groups of nature, is the very 
peculiarity which manifests the harmony and de- 
sign with which they were balanced and adjusted, 
by Infinite Wisdom, from the beginning. The 
pachydermatous quadrupeds, considering their im- 
mense size, are proportioned to the rest of the 
animal creation, throughout which we find that great . 
bulk is restricted to few individual forms, while 
excessive minuteness is extended to countless mil- 
lions. What, therefore, would at first seem to con- 
stitute the Pachydermata an imperfect group, is, in 
reality, its highest perfection. If its chasms were 
fewer, or narrower, it would possess more forms, 
