BOOK OF STATURE LAID OPEN. 77 



ture, indeed, is common in many parts of Europe, 

 and abounds in America, Asia, and Africa. In 

 Egypt and other warm countries, he is of singular 

 use. Numerous flocks of them are always hovering 

 in the neighbourhood of Grand Cairo; and for the 

 services the inhabitants experience, by these ani- 

 mals devouring the carrion and filth of that great 

 city, which, in such a sultry climate, would other- 

 wise soon putrify and corrupt the air, they are not 

 permitted to be destroyed. The Ossifrage of the. 

 woods of Syria and Egypt feeds on the dead car- 

 cases of fowls and reptiles. This brings us to say 

 a few words on the use of rapacious fowls^, which 

 may be also applied to wild beasts in general. 



Better perhaps it may appear to the imperfect 

 reasoning of short sighted mortals, that the business 

 of mutual destruction had been avoided in the eco- 

 nomy of nature, and instead of that circuit of prey 

 and devastation which we observe, all animals had 

 been formed to live on vegetable food, and suffered 

 to die a natural death. But, independent of the dif- 

 ficulty that occurs as to how such a number of crea- 

 tures could be fed from the same source, we do not 

 consider the state of suffering to which many of them 

 must necessarily have been exposed, if they had been 

 left to perish by protracted famine, after the decay 

 of their bodily powers rendered them unfit to go in 

 quest of food. Compared with this, is it not a far 

 more happy dispensation that animals are formed 

 for the destruction of each other ? and that (to fol- 

 low -the course of one circle by way of specimen,) 



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