572 THE MECHANICAL FUNCTIONS. 



adapted to the mechanical object which it is to 

 answer, cannot be contemplated without the 

 deepest feeling of admiration, and without the 

 most eager curiosity to gain an insight into the 

 elaborate processes, which, we cannot doubt, are 

 employed by nature in the formation of a fabric 

 so highly finished, and displaying such minute 

 and curious workmanship. It is only very re- 

 cently that we have been admitted to a close 

 inspection of the complicated machinery, which 

 is put in action in this branch of what may be 

 called organic architecture; and certainly none 

 is more fitted to call forth our profoimdest wonder 

 at the comprehensiveness of the vast scheme of 

 divine providence, which extends its care equally 

 to the perfect construction of the minutest and 

 apparently most insignificant portions of the 

 organized frame, whether it be the down of a 

 thistle, the scales of a moth, or the fibrils of a 

 feather, as well as to the completion of the larger 

 and more important organs of vitality. 



Every bird, on quitting the egg, is found to 

 be covered on all parts, except the under side, 

 with a kind of down, consisting of minute fila- 

 ments, collected in tufts, and resembling in their 

 arrangement the fibres of a camel-hair pencil. 

 Each tuft contains about ten or twelve filaments, 

 growing from the upper ends of bulbous roots 

 implanted in the skin, and which are the rudi- 

 ments of the organs that afterwards form the 



