THE HORSE IN MOTION. 



'5 



muscles found in the human body. This last has been the most fruit- 

 ful source of confusion, and the mind of the student is constantly 

 biassed by this correspondence of names to muscles that do not have 

 corresponding functions. It may be taken for granted that organs 

 have the same diversity of form in man and animals as there is 

 diversity of function, and in each the organisms are just such as best 

 serve the offices which they were designed to perform. Some of the 

 later authorities have attempted a reform in the nomenclature of the 

 muscles, based on their supposed uses, and have only added to the pre- 

 vious confusion. Adductors and abductors have been so multiplied 

 that it would seem that a horse, like a crab, was made to go sidewise. 



Anatomy will be treated no further than is necessary to demonstrate 

 locomotion ; and tliose who would pursue it further, and those who 

 would be more minute in their knowledge of structure, must dissect 

 for themselves. 



The writer has already had occasion to allude to design, and will 

 have frequent necessity for doing so in describing the complicated 

 mechanism by means of which locomotion in the higher orders of 

 animals is effected, and he wishes it understood that he uses that term 

 in its literal and highest signification. He does not shrink from the 

 use of terms that imply an intelligent Creator and all-pervading Spirit, 

 who, from the beginning, established the foundations of the earth, and 

 who, in incomprehensible wisdom and power, has fixed the laws which 

 govern the organic world from the bes:innins: throusfh all its chana;es. 



In using the term " higher orders of animals," he follows custom. If 

 that distinction is founded on the complexity of his locomotive powers 

 or organization, then man could not justly claim the first rank; for if 

 his preservation had depended upon his speed in locomotion, he would, 

 in the long struggle for life through which he must have passed, have 

 taken his place in the earliest paleontological deposits. 



It may seem presumptuous to compare objects, the lowest of which 

 are beyond our comprehension. The finite cannot comprehend the 

 infinite ; there must be a limit, in the nature of things, to all inquiry 

 into the phenomena of life. If physical science could determine the 

 laws of that which is hyperphysical, then to its court we might 



