COMPENSATION. 163 



should seem, by the convexity of the organ. The aperture 

 in the lid meets this difficulty. It enables the animal to 

 keep the principal part of the surface of the eye under cov- 

 er, and to preserve it in a due state of humidity, without 

 shutting out the light; or without performing every moment 

 a nictitation, which, it is probable, would be more labori- 

 ous to this animal than to others. 



VIII. In another animal, and in another part of the 

 animal economy, the same Memoirs describe a most re- 

 markable substitution. The reader will remember what 

 we have already observed concerning the intestinal canal ; 

 that its length, so many times exceeding that of the body, 

 promotes the extraction of the chyle from the aliment, by 

 giving room for the lacteal vessels to act upon it through 

 a greater space. Tliis long intestine, wherever it occurs, 

 is, in other animals, disposed in the abdomen from side to 

 side in returning folds. But, in the animal now under 

 our notice, the matter is managed otherwise. The same 

 intention is mechanically effectuated ; but by a mechanism 

 of a different kind. The animal of which I speak, is an 

 amphibious quadruped, which our authors call the alope- 

 cias, or sea fox. The intestine is straight from one end to 

 the other : but in this straight, and consequently short 

 intestine, is a winding, cork-screw, spiral passage, through 

 which, the food, not without several circumvolutions, and 

 in fact by a long rout, is conducted to its exit. Here the 

 shortness of the gut is compensated by the obliquity of the 

 perforation. 



IX. But the works of the Deity are known by expedi- 

 ents. Where we should look for absolute destitution, 

 where we can reckon up nothing but wants, some contri- 

 vance always comes in to supply the privation. A sncdl^ 

 without wings, feet, or thread, climbs up the stalks of 

 plants, by the sole aid of a viscid humour discharged 

 from her skin. She adheres to the stems, leaves, and fruits 

 of plants, by means of a sticking plaster. A muscle^ 

 which might seem, by its helplessness, to lie at the mercy 

 of every wave that went over it, has the singular power of 

 spinning strong, tendinous threads, by which she moors 

 her shell to rocks and timbers. A cockle, on the contrary, 

 by means of its stiff tongue, works for itself a shelter in the 

 sand. The provisions of nature extend to casesf the most 

 desperate. A lobster has a difficulty, in its constitution so 

 great, that one could hardly conjecture beforehand how 

 sature would dispose of it. In most animals, the skia 



