SOS NATURAL THEOLOaY. 



In almost all cases, nature produces her supplies with 

 profusion. A single codfish spawns, in one season, a greater 

 number of eggs than all the inhabitants of England amount 

 to. A thousand other instances of prolific generation might 

 be stated, which, though not equal to this, would carry on 

 the increase of the species with a rapidity Mhich outruns 

 calculation, and to an immeasurable extent. The advan- 

 tages of such a constitution are two : first, that it tends to 

 keep the world always full ; while, secondly, it allows the 

 proportion between the several species of animals to be dif- 

 ferently modified, as different purposes require,* or as difier- 

 ent situations may afford for them room and food. Where 

 this vast fecundity meets with a vacancy fitted to receive 

 the species, there it operates with its whole efiect — there it 

 pours in its numbers and replenishes the waste. We com- 

 plain of what we call the exorbitant multiplication of some 

 troublesome insects ; not reflecting that large portions of 

 nature might be left void without it. If the accounts of 

 travellers may be depended upon, immense tracts of forest 

 in North America would be nearly lost to sensitive existence, 

 if it were not for gnats. " In the thinly inhabited regions 

 of America, in which the waters stagnate and the climate 

 is warm, the whole air is filled with crowds of these in- 

 sect*." Thus it is, that where we looked for sohtude and 

 death-like silence, we meet with animation, activity, enjoy- 

 ment — with a busy, a happy, and a peopled world. Again, 

 hosts of 7nice are reckoned among the plagues of the north- 

 east part of Europe ; whereas vast plains in Siberia, as we 

 learn from good authority, would be lifeless without them. 

 The Caspian deserts are converted by their presence into 

 crowds of warrens. Between the Volga and the Yaik, and 

 in the country of Hyrcania, the ground, says Pallas, is in 

 many places covered with httle hills, raised by the earth 

 cast out in forming the burrows. Do we so envy these 

 blissful abodes, as to pronounce the fecundity by which they 

 are supplied with inhabitants to be an evil ; a subject of 



