RADIARIES. 199 



mode by which these creatures are produced 

 in such infinite profusion is at present unknown. 

 They do not reproduce mutilated parts ; therefore 

 it cannot be, as in the polypes, by the division 

 of their bodies. 



When we consider the extreme fragility and 

 deliquescent nature of the animals constituting 

 this order of the Radiaries, that a touch almost 

 disorganizes their structure, and moreover that 

 they form part of the food of the most gigantic 

 animals in creation, we should be led to think it 

 impossible that they could withstand all these 

 combined actions upon them, and that however 

 numerous and prolific, they must at length be 

 utterly annihilated. Nothing less, indeed, than 

 Almighty Power, and Infinite Wisdom and pre- 

 science, and a Goodness that is interested in the 

 welfare of the meanest as well as the mightiest 

 of the animals he has brought into being, could 

 have preserved them from such a fate. He who 

 made all things decreed their mutual relations, 

 limited their numbers by certain laws, and ap- 

 pointed the means by which those laws should 

 be executed. We may say, that in some sense 

 the whales were created for the gelatinous radia- 

 ries and numberless other animals with which 

 the seas frequented by these monsters abound, 

 and that these gelatinous radiaries were created 

 for the whales. The enormous mouth of the last- 

 named animals is not armed with tusks or 

 grinders, but fitted instead with vast numbers of 



