THE FUNCTIONS OK LIFE. 37 



removed to give place to more peruKuieiit and 

 tinislied organs. 



The utmost solicitude has been shown in every 

 part of living nature to secure the perpetuity of the 

 race, by the establishment of laws, of which the 

 operation is certain in all contingent circumstances. 

 It has also been manifestly the object of various 

 provisions to diffuse the races as widely as possible 

 over a great surface of the habitable globe. 



We are next to advert to the important conse- 

 quences which, in the animal kingdom more espe- 

 cially, flow from this law of indetinite production. 

 As animals are ultimately dependent on the vege- 

 table kingdom for the materials of their subsistence, 

 and as the quantity of these materials is, in a state 

 of nature, necessarily limited by the extent of 

 surface over which vegetation is spread, a time must 

 arrive when the number of animals thus continually 

 increasing is exactly such as the amount of food 

 produced by the earth will maintain. When this 

 limit has been attained, no further increase could 

 take place in their number, except by resorting to 

 the expedient which we find actually adopted, 

 namely, that of employing the substance of one 

 animal for the nourishment of others. Thus the 

 identical combinations of elements, effected by the 

 powers of vegetation, are transferred in succession 

 from one living being to another, and become sub- 

 servient to the maintenance of a great number of 

 different animals before they finally, by the process 

 of decomposition, revert to their original inorganic 

 state. 



" See dying vegetables life sustain, 

 See life dissolving vegetate again ; 



