252 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



PECULIAR ORGANIZATIONS. 



I BELIEVE that all the instances which I shall 

 collect under this title might, consistently enough 

 with technical language, have been placed under 

 the head of Co?nparative Anatomy. But there 

 appears to me an impropriety in the use which 

 that term hath obtained; it being, in some sort, 

 absurd to call that a case of comparative anatomy, 

 in which there is nothing to " compare ;" in which 

 a conformation is found in one animal, which hath 

 nothing properly answering to it in another. Of 

 this kind are the examples which I have to pro- 

 pose in the present chapter ; and the reader will 

 see that, though some of them be the strongest, 

 perhaps, he will meet with under any division of 

 our subject, they must necessarily be of an uncon- 

 nected and miscellaneous nature. To dispose 

 them, however, into some sort of order, w^e will 

 notice, first, particularities of structure which be- 

 long to quadiupeds, birds, and fish, as such, or to 

 many of the kinds included in these classes of 

 animals ; andl hen, such particularities as are con- 

 fined to one or two species. 



I. Along each side of the neck of large quadru- 

 peds runs a stiff robust cartilage, which butchers 



