NATURAL THEOLOGY. 297 



from one end to the other ; but in this straight 

 and consequently short intestine is a winding, 

 corkscrew, spiral passage, through which the food, 

 not without several circumvolutions, and in fact 

 by a long route, is conducted to its exit. Here 

 the shortness of the gut is campensated hy the ob- 

 liquity of the perforation. 



IX. But the works of the Deity are known by 

 expedients. Where we should look for absolute 

 destitution — where w^e can reckon up nothing but 

 wants — some contrivance always comes into sup- 

 ply the privation. A sjiail, without wings, feet, or 

 thread, climbs up the stalks of plants by the sole 

 aid of a viscid humour discharged from her skin. 

 She adheres to the stems, leaves, and fruits of 

 plants by means of a sticking-plaster. A mussel, 

 which might seem by its helplessness to lie at the 

 mercy of every wave that went over it, has the 

 singular power of spinning strong tendinous threads 

 by which she moors her shell to rocks and timbers. 

 A cockle, on the contrary, by means of its stiff 

 tongue, works for itself a shelter in the sand. The 

 provisions of nature extend to cases the most des- 

 perate. A lohstei" has in its constitution a difficulty 

 so great that one could hardly conjecture before- 

 hand how nature would dispose of it. In most 

 animals the skin grows with their growth. If, in- 

 stead of a soft skin, there be a shell, still it admits 

 of a gradual enlargement. If the shell, as in the 

 tortoise, consist of several pieces, the accession of 

 substance is made at the sutures. Bivalve shells 



