40 CREATION OF ANIMALS. 



is this record, proceeding step by step from one 

 Almighty operation to another ! each the natural 

 consequence, as it were, of that which preceded 

 it. When the earth was formed, and planted, 

 and was receiving the influences of the sun 

 and other luminaries, and thus was prepared to 

 welcome and maintain her locomotive inhabitants, 

 the perfect sphere of animals, if I may so speak, 

 adapted to the wants of the primeval state of the 

 globe of dry land and sea, both external and in- 

 ternal, and to the instruction and uses of man, 

 each individual form gifted and fitted to play the 

 part assigned to it in the general plan of Provi- 

 dence, was brought into existence. The supposed 

 extinct animals all exhibit a relationship to those 

 that we now find existing, and many of them 

 evidently fill up vacant places in the general 

 system, and therefore there is no cause to sup- 

 pose that they were originally separated from 

 and anterior to their fellows. It is observed that 

 those herbivorous Saurians now inhabiting the 

 surface of our globe, as the Monitor and Iguana, 

 though these can scarcely be called herbivorous 

 since they live principally on insects, are pigmies 

 compared with their affinities, the Megalosaurus 

 and Iguanodon ; and a similar disproportion ob- 

 tains between the existing Proteus and the fossil 

 one. If any of these races are subterranean, 

 perhaps these smaller ones may be regarded, as 

 inhabiting the outskirts of the proper station, or 

 metropolis of their tribe. 



