190 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



whole company, not only alarm by its danger, but 

 surprise by its novelty. Not two guests are 

 clioked in a century. 



There is no room for pretending that the action 

 of the parts may have gradually formed the epi- 

 glottis : I do not mean in the same individual, 

 but in a succession of generations. Not only the 

 action of the parts has no such tendency, but the 

 animal could not live, nor consequently the parts 

 act, either without it or with it in a half-formed 

 state. The species was not to wait for the gra- 

 dual formation or expansion of a part which was 

 from the first necessary to the life of the indi- 

 vidual. 



Not only is the larynx curious, but the whole 

 windpipe possesses a structure adapted to its 

 peculiar office. It is made up (as any one may 

 perceive by putting his fingers to his throat) of 

 stout cartilaginous ringlets, placed at small and 

 equal distances from one another. Now this is 

 not the case with any other of the numerous con- 

 duits of the body. The use of these cartilages is 

 to keep the passage for the air constantly open, 

 which they do mechanically. A pipe with soft 

 membranous coats, liable to collapse and close 

 when empty, would not have answered here ; 

 although this be the general vascular structure, 

 and a structure which serves very well for those 

 tubes which are kept in a state of perpetual dis 

 tention by the fluid they enclose, or which afford 

 a passage to solid and proti'uding substances. 



