DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. 57 



animals, seem to require the efforts of such gi- 

 gantic and ferocious devourers to keep them in 

 check : but on this subject I shall have occasion 

 to enlarge hereafter. 



There is another point of view, illustrative of 

 the Divine attributes in this partial location of 

 various animals. If every region, or nation, con- 

 tained within its limits the entire circle that con- 

 stitutes the animal kingdom, and the remark 

 may be extended to every natural object, how 

 weak and trifling would be the incitement for 

 man to visit his fellow-men. Were the produc- 

 tions of every country the same, there would be 

 little or no temptation for commercial specula- 

 tion, therefore the merchant would stay at home ; 

 the animal, and plants, and minerals would be 

 the same, therefore the naturalist would stay at 

 home ; the astronomer indeed, and geographer, 

 and the student of his own species, might be 

 tempted sometimes to roam, but the ocean w r ould 

 be truly dissociable, and those ties that now con- 

 nect the different nations of the globe would, for 

 the most part, be broken. They are now linked 

 to each other, in a bond of amity, by the inter- 

 course which their mutual wants produce, and 

 the body geographical, if I may use such a me- 

 taphor, as well as the body natural, is so tem- 

 pered, and so furnished in every part, that con- 

 stant supplies of things, necessary or desirable, 

 are uninterruptedly circulating, by certain chan- 



VOL. I. F,5 



