IbS NATURAL THEOLOay. 



under cover, and to preserve it in a due state of humidity 

 without shutting out the light, or without performing every 

 moment a nictitation which it is probable would be more 

 laborious to this animal than to others. 



YIII. In another animal, and in another part of the ani- 

 mal economy, the same memoirs describe a most remarkable 

 substitution. The reader will remember what we have 

 already observed concerning the intestinal canal — that its 

 length, so many times exceeding that of the body, promotes 

 the extraction of the chyle from the aliment, by giving room 

 for the lacteal vessels to act upon it through a greater space. 

 This long intestine, wherever it occurs, is, in other animals, 

 disposed in the abdomen from side to side in returning folds. 

 But in the animal now under our notice, the matter is man- 

 aged otherwise. The same intention is mechanically effect 

 uated, but by a mechanism of a different land. The animal 

 of which I speak is an amphibious quadruped, which our 

 authors call the alopecias, or sea-fox. The intestine is 

 straight from, one end to the other ; but in this straight and 

 consequently short intestine, is a winding, corkscrew, spiral 

 passage, through which the food, not without several circmii- 

 volutions, and in fact by a long route, is conducted to it.s 

 exit. Here the shortness of the gut is comj)ensated by tho 

 obliquity of the perforation. 



IX. But the works of the Deity are known by expedi- 

 ents. Where we should look for absolute destitution, 

 where we can reckon up nothing but wants, some con- 

 trivance always comes in to supply the privation. A snail, 

 without wings, feet, or thread, climbs up the stalks of plants 

 by the sole aid of a viscid humor discharged from her skin. 

 She adheres to the stems, leaves, and fruits of plants by 

 means of a sticking-plaster. A mussel, which might seem 

 by its helplessness to lie at the mercy of every wave that 

 went over it, has the singular power of spinning strong ten- 

 dinous threads, by which she moors her shell to rocks and 

 timb-yrs. A cockle, on the contrary, by means of its stiii 



