NATURAL THEOLOGY. 289 



the forms of animated nature,) I would ask, How 

 was the animal to subsist in the mean time — du- 

 ring the process — until this prolongation of snout 

 were completed ? What was to become of the 

 individual whilst the species was perfecting V'^ 

 Our business at present is, simply to point out 



^ AVliilst we have before us the daily proof of the capacities of 

 animals for domestication, in considering their structm-e and their 

 instincts, we must look back into that long period before man's 

 creation, when they had not his protection and care. A thousand 

 concurring testimonies prove that there were periods when the 

 earth's surface was more suitable for brutes than it" was for the 

 abode of man ; and when they were grouped together, each specie? 

 with its enemy, and each with a power of preseiTation, at once to 

 prevent too great an increase and total extermination. The young 

 horse, which in his paddock has neither known bad treatment nor 

 an enemy, will yet shiver and start away from a brindled swinCj 

 or any animal that is bristled or rough. 



Geological researches, so happily combined with comparative 

 anatomy, give us no room to conjecture that there has been any- 

 thig like a progressive improvement in the species of animals. They 

 have been created with all the characters in which they are now 

 propagated; and had it been otherwise, the species would haA^e be- 

 come extinct, or they would have lost their place in that balance of 

 offence and defence by wliich it has pleased the Creator to provide 

 for their continuance. 



One would imagine that an idea so wild, as that an animal 

 should produce the variet}^ of organs or external instruments 

 which we see, by an effort — an energy proceeding from itself, 

 could never have been maintained in an age like the present, when 

 it is so fully proved that there is no change upon the extremity of 

 an animal, no additional organ like this of the trunk of the ele- 

 phant, no variety in its paw or its hoof, but what is attended with 

 a corresponding alteration in the whole system of the creature — 

 of its bones, its teeth, its stomach, as well as in its appetites and 

 desires. 



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