A COMPARISON OF ANIMALS. 227 



quantity of food, in a state of nature, is kept equal to the 

 number of the consumers ; and, lest some of the weaker 

 ranks of animals should find nothing for their support, but 

 all the provisions be devoured by the strong, different veg- 

 etables are appropriated to different appetites. If, trans- 

 gressing this rule, the stronger ranks should invade the 

 rights of the weak, and, breaking through all regard to 

 appetite, should make an indiscriminate use of every veg- 

 etable, nature then punishes the transgression, and poison 

 marks the crime as capital. 



If, again, we compare vegetables and animals with re- 

 spect to the places where they are found, we shall find 

 them bearing a still stronger similitude. The vegetables 

 that grow in a dry and sunny soil, are strong and vigorous, 

 though not luxuriant ; so, also, are the animals of such a 

 climate. Those, on the contrary, that are the joint pro- 

 duct of heat and moisture, are luxuriant and tender ; and 

 the animals assimilating to the vegetable food, on which 

 they ultimately subsist, are much larger in such places than 

 in others. Thus, in the internal parts of South America 

 and Africa, where the sun usually scorches all above, 

 while inundations cover all below, the insects, reptiles, and 

 other animals, grow to a prodigious size : the earth-worm 

 of America is often a yard in length, and as thick as a 

 walking-cane ; the boiguacu, which is the largest of the 

 serpent kind, is sometimes forty feet in length ; the bats 

 in those countries are as big as a rabbit ; the toads are 

 bigger than a duck; and their spiders cftre as large as a 

 sparrow. On the contrary, in the cold, frozen regions 

 of the north, where vegetable nature is stinted of its 

 growth, the few animals in those climates partake of the 

 diminution; all the wild animals, except the bear, are 

 much smaller than in milder countries ; and such of the 

 domestic kinds as are, carried thither, quickly degenerate, 

 and grow less. Their very insects are of the minute 



