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are able to prevent themselves being caught and eaten by the creatures whose food Nature 

 intended them to form. Nature often seems to have ordained that her fleetest creatures, in 

 other respects, easily fall a prey to their destroyers, as she has just purposely omitted in them 

 the very condition that would have prevented their destroyer being able to seize them as an 

 instance, the terns and the gannets which drop from a height on fishes, which can move almost 

 like lightning, and would readily get out of the way had not Nature placed their eyes in such 

 a position that they could not see exactly above them, and the consequence is they are not 

 aware of their danger till they are caught. 



What a singular instance of a similar arrangement in Nature's freaks is the apparent fact 

 that a whale and a duck should apparently capture their food in a somewhat similar manner, 

 but this seems to be the case ; the whalebone in the jaw of the whale being similarly placed 

 as the teeth in the shoveller's beak and for the same purpose, which appears to be to enable 

 each to retain its food and to allow the water to pass out of its mouth through the singular 

 apparatus at the sides. 



Now as to flat fishes. Have you ever fished in the sea for these curious exceptions to 

 Nature's general rules, where uniformity in the two halves of most of her works almost constantly 

 appears? If anyone got hold of one of these fishes only, and had never heard of such before, 

 it would be set down as a malformation ; but it is certainly not, and is as Nature intended these 

 creatures to be. But I ask, have you ever caught them yourself? (there are three equally 

 common kinds which you may catch on the same spot, plaice, sandylayers, and flounders) and 

 observed that the two former kinds invariably have the portion of their heads with the eyes on 



