MIGRATIONS. 129 



mackarel, salmon, and herring oar seas, and all 

 the other animals that occasionally visit us their 

 several haunts, how vast would be the abstraction 

 from the pleasure and comfort of our lives. 



By means of .these migrations, the profits and 

 enjoyments derivable from the animal creation 

 are also more equally divided, at one season 

 visiting the south, and enlivening their winter, 

 and at another adding to the vernal and summer 

 delights of the inhabitant of the less genial 

 regions of the north, and making up to him for 

 the privations of winter. Had the Creator so 

 willed, all these animals might have been organ- 

 ized so as not to require a warmer or a colder 

 climate for the breeding or rearing of their 

 young : but his will was, that some of his best 

 gifts should thus oscillate, as it were, between 

 two points, that the benefit they conferred might 

 be more widely distributed, and not become the 

 sole property of the inhabitants of one climate : 

 thus the swallow gladdens the sight both of the 

 Briton and the African ; and the herring visits 

 the coasts, and the salmon the rivers of every 

 region of the globe. What can more strongly 

 mark design, and the intention of an all-powerful, 

 all-wise, and beneficent Being, than that such 

 a variety of animals should be so organized 

 and circumstanced as to be directed annually, 

 by some pressing want, to seek distant climates, 

 and, after a certain period, to return again to their 



VOL. I. K 



