NATURAL THEOLOGY. 137 



contracted, the former cannot act with freedom. 

 The obstruction is, in this instance, attended with 

 little inconvenience ; but it shows what the effect 

 is where it does exist; and what loss of faculty- 

 there would be if it were more frequent. Now, 

 when we reflect upon the number of muscles, not 

 fewer than four hundred and forty-six, in the human 

 body, known and named,* how contiguous they lie 

 to each other, in layers, as it were, over one an- 

 other, crossing one another, sometimes embedded 

 in one another, sometimes perforating one an- 

 other — an arrangement which leaves to each its 

 liberty, and its full play, must necessarily require 

 meditation and counsel. 



IV. The following is oftentimes the case with 

 the muscles. Their action is wanted where their 

 situation would be inconvenient. In which case 

 the body of the muscle is placed in some commo- 

 dious position at a distance, and made to commu- 

 nicate with the point of action by slender strings 

 or wires. If the muscles which move the fingers 

 had been placed in the palm or back of the hand, 

 they would have swelled that part to an awkward 

 and clumsy thickness. The beauty, the propor- 

 tions of the part, would have been destroyed. They 

 are therefore disposed in the arm, and even up to 

 the elbow, and act by long tendons strapped down 

 at the wrist, and passing under the ligaments to the 

 fingers, and to the joints of the fingers which they 



*Keill's Anatomy, p. 295, ed. 3. 

 12* 



