176 ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE COINCIDENCES. 



LETTER XXII. 



FROM CAROLINE TO EMILY. 



MV DEAR EMILY, 



Nature, indeed, opens a delightful book, 

 abounding with novelties at every page, to those who 

 will read in it. The ignorant, the stupid, and the 

 inattentive, equally overlook its beauties : — those 

 innumerable harmonies, that so loudly proclaim the 

 benevolent designs of Him who has so largely pro- 

 vided for the enjoyments as well as the mere ex- 

 istence of all creatures — has adjusted their fornn 

 and organs to their instincts, and fitted them exact- 

 ly to fill up the situation in the material world in 

 which he has placed them. 



St. Pierre has a passage, in his Studies of Natm'e, 

 so apphcable to my subject, that I cannot resist 

 my inclination to quote it.* '' Nature has adapt- 

 ed to plants, the smelling, the mouths, the lips, 

 the tongues, the jaws, the teeth, the beaks, the 

 stomachs, the chyhfication, and the secretions, — in a 



* Hunter's translation, vol. i. p. 57. 

 I 



