MULTIVALVES. 30 
taste may be combined with piety, and that the 
breast which glows with admiration amid the love- 
liness of nature, may be occupied with all that is 
serious and important in religion. 
But here the observation naturally arises, that 
though the flowers of the field instruct us—for some 
of them are beautiful, and others admirable in their 
construction ; and poets and moralists refer to them 
as striking emblems of the mutability of man,— 
yet, what knowledge, or what instruction can we 
derive from the Pholas, the Lepas, or the Chiton? I 
will not further enlarge upon the obvious and im- 
portant evidences which they afford of benevolence 
and design. But in considering the very different 
habitats of these-extraordinary multivalves, I have 
been induced to remember that the same Almighty 
Being who furnishes the defenceless Pholas with the 
means of forming a secure abode in the hardest 
substances ; who provides the dwelling of the Triton 
with a door, by means of which he excludes the 
rough beating of a boisterous sea; who enables the 
feeble Chiton to fold himself in a coat of mail resem- 
bling a perforated pebble, and thus to elude the 
vigilance of his marine enemies, has determined 
the bounds of our different habitations, and assigned 
to every individual being, his respective sphere of 
D 
