NATURAL THEOLOGY. 271 



and it adds to other causes of our admiration, that 

 the number of the teats or paps in each species is 

 found to bear a proportion to the number of the 

 young. In the sow, the bitch, the rabbit, the cat, 

 the rat, which have numerous htters, the paps are 

 numerous, and are disposed along the whole length 

 of the belly : in the cow and mare they are few. 

 The most simple account of this, is to refer it to a 

 designing Creator." 



But in the argument before us, we are entitled 

 to consider not only animal bodies when framed, 

 but the circumstance under which they are framed : 

 and in this view of the subject, the constitution of 

 many of their parts is most strictly prospective. 



III. The eye is of no use, at the time when it is 



^ The only parallel to this is the care with which nature secures 

 the nourishment of the embryon plant, or the chick in the egg. 

 The lobes of a bean or a pea, and of most seeds, consist of a de- 

 posit of nutritious matter, and when heat and moisture favour the 

 developement of the living property, vessels which are scattered in 

 these lobes or cotyledons commence absorption of the matter, and 

 carry it to the centre of the plant. It is remarkable that these 

 lobes, having thus, in the first instance, suppUed the young plant 

 with nutritious matter, change their office, and, rising above the 

 surface, become the first leaves. Thus we see how the nourish- 

 ment is supplied, until the radicle is pushed down into the earth, 

 and the leaves receive the influence of the atmosphere. So in the 

 chick, the white or albumen of the egg goes to its nourishment 

 whilst it is in the shell : but the yolk of the egg is embraced in the 

 body of the chick when excluded from the shell, and a duct leads 

 from the membrane enclosing this mass of nutriment into the first 

 intestine. And thus is the chick nourished, not only whilst includ- 

 ed in the shell, but also during its first feeble existence, a period 

 which corresponds with that of lactation in mammalia. 



