NATURAL HISTORY. 211 



" The wisdom of the Deity, as testified in the works of 

 creation, surpasses all idea we have of wisdom, drawn from the 

 highest intellectual operations of the highest class of intelligent 

 beings with whom we are acquainted." PALKV. 



632. How is the wisdom of Providence shown in so constituting 

 the lower animals that they can exist for a long time on a limited 

 supply of air and moisture ? 



Because animals thus circumstanced would otherwise find it im- 

 possible to exist during the long intervals that many of them are 

 periodically or occasionally enclosed in inaccessible places ; so 

 that when confined in solid rocks, or sealed up in the hearts 

 of trees, so long as the smallest quantity of air or moisture 

 is supplied them, they live for an indefinite period 

 of time. 



633. One of the most remarkable accounts of the long duration of the vital prin- 

 ciple in animals is mentioned by Ur. Silliman, who, on the authority of Professor 

 Eaton,.,.of New York, states that the diluvial deposit through which the Erie canal 

 was made, contains ridges of hard compact gravel, and that on cutting through one 

 of these near Rome village, sixteen miles west of Utica, the workmen found several 

 hundreds of live molluscous animals. The workmen fried and ate them. He adds : 

 " I was assured they were taken alive forty-two feet deep hi the deposit. Several of 

 the shells are now before me. The deposit is diluvial. These animals must have 

 been there from the time of the deluge ; for the earth in which they were is too 

 compact for them to have been produced by a succession of generations. These 

 fresh-water clans of three thousand years old precisely resemble the species which 

 now inhabit the fresh water of that district ; therefore the lives of these animals 

 have been greatly prolonged by their exclusion from light and air for more than 

 three thousand years." A toad was buried in a flower-pot for twenty years, and 

 when taken out was found to be healthy and increased in size. That snails can 

 exist for a long period by means of the exclusion of air and the retention of moisture, 

 which they are enabled to accomplish by a sort of door at the aperture of the shell, 

 has been proved by Mr. Simon, who mentions the circumstance of having had one 

 in his cabinet for fifteen years ; and, for aught he knew, it might have been in his 

 father's possession many years before, as it was in his collection of fossils. Speak- 

 ing of this snail, he says it had come out four several tunes, in the presence of 

 different peope, each of whom assured him that they saw it. A day or two 

 after this, he brought the identical shell, as he declared, into the presence of several 

 other persons, that they might 'try if the snail would again make its appearance. 

 After the shell had lain ten minutes hi a glass of warm water, the snail began to 

 appear, and in five minutes more they perceived half the body fairly pushed out 

 from the cavity of the shell. It afterwards crawled about, erected its horns, au'l 

 se?med in perfect health. 



