162 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



PECULIAPo ORGANIZATIONS. 



I BELiE\TE that all the instances which I shall collect 

 under this title might, consistently enough with technical 

 language, have been placed under the head of com'parative 

 anatcymy. But there appears to me an impropriety in the 

 use which that term has obtained ; it being, in some sort, 

 absurd to call that a case of comparative anatomy in which 

 there is nothing to " compa^re" — in which a conformation is 

 found in one animal which hath nothing properly answering 

 to it in another. Of this kind are the exami)les which 1 

 have to propose in the present chapter ; and the reader will 

 see that, though some of them be the strongest, perhaps, he 

 will meet with under any division of our subject, they must 

 necessarily be of an unconnected and miscellaneous nature. 

 To dispose them, however, into some sort of order, we will 

 notice, first, particularities of structure which belong to quad- 

 rupeds, birds, and fish, as such, or to many of the kinds in- 

 cluded in these classes of animals ; and then, such particu- 

 larities as are confined to one or two species. 



I. Along each side of the neck of large quadrupeds runs 

 a stiff robust cartilage, which butchers call the pax-wax. 

 No person can carve the upper end of a crop of beef without 

 driving liis knife against it. It is a tough, strong, tendinous 

 substance, braced from the head to the middle of the back : 

 its office is to assist in supporting the weight of the head. 

 It is a mechanical provision, of which this is the undisputed 

 use ; and it is sufficient, and not more than sufficient for the 

 purpose which it has to execute. The head of an ox or a 

 horse is a heavy weight, acting at the end of a long lever — 

 consequently with a great purchase — and in a direction 

 nearly perpendicular to the joints of the supporting neck. 

 From such a force, so advantageously applied, the bones o1 



