50 THE VITAL FUNCTIONS. 



they appear to require for the purposes of nutrition. We 

 may hence infer that, in their formation, other ends were 

 contemplated, besides their own individual existence. They 

 seem as if commissioned to act as the scavengers of organic 

 matter, destined to clear away all those particles, of which 

 the continued accumulation would have tainted the atmo- 

 sphere, or the waters, with infection, and spread a wide ex- 

 tent of desolation and of death. 



In taking these general surveys of the plans adopted by 

 nature for the universal subsistence of the objects of her 

 bounty, we cannot help admiring how carefully she has pro- 

 vided the means for turning to the best account every parti- 

 cle of each product of organic life, whether the material be 

 consumed as food by animals, or whether it be bestowed 

 upon the soil, reappearing in the substance of some plant, 

 and being in this way made to contribute, eventually, to the 

 same ultimate object, namely, the support of animal life. 



But we may carry these views still farther, and following 

 the ulterior destination of the minuter and unheeded frag- 

 ments of decomposed "organizations, which we might con- 

 ceive had been cast away, and lost to all useful purposes, we 

 may trace them as they are swept down by the rains, and 

 deposited in pools and lakes,* amidst waters collected from 

 the soil on every side. Here we find them, under favoura- 

 ble circumstances, again partaking of animation, and invested 

 with various forms of infusory animalcules, which sport, in 

 countless myriads, their ephemeral existence, w r ithin the 

 ample regions of every drop. Yet, even these are still qua- 

 lified to fulfil other objects in a more distant and far wider 

 sphere; for, borne along, in the course of time, by the rivers 

 into which they pass, they are at length convened into the 

 sea, the great receptacle of all the particles that are detached 

 from the objects on land. Here, also, they float not useless- 

 ly in the vast abyss, but contribute to maintain in existence 

 incalculable hosts of animal beings, w r hich people every por- 

 tion of the wide expanse of ocean, and which rise, in regu- 

 lar gradation, from the microscopic monad, and scarcely vi- 



