304 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



III. But to proceed with our compensations. A 

 very numerous and comprehensive tribe of terres- 

 trial animals are entirely without feet — yet loco- 

 motive, and in a very considerable degree swift in 

 their motion. How is the icant of feet compen- 

 sated ? It is done by the disposition of the mus- 

 cles and fibres of the tiunk. In consequence of 

 the just collocation and by means of the joint ac- 

 tion of longitudinal and annular fibres — that is to 

 say, of strings and rings — the body and train of 

 reptiles are capable of being reciprocally shorten- 

 ed and lengthened, drawn up and stretched out. 

 The result of this action is a progressive and in 

 some cases a rapid movement of the whole body, 

 in any direction to which the will of the animal 

 determines it. The meanest creature is a collec- 

 tion of wonders. The play of the rings in an earth- 

 worm, as it crawls, the undulatory motion propa- 

 gated along the body, the beards or prickles with 

 wiiich the annuli are armed, and which the ani- 

 mal can either shut up close to its body, or let out 

 to lay hold of the roughness of the surface upon 

 which it creeps, and the power arising from all 

 these of changing its place and position, aff'ord, 

 when compared with the provisions for motion in 



is termed a muscular stomach. Among fishes, the mullet and the 

 gillaroo trout have muscular stomachs. The cuttle-fish, the nau- 

 tilus, and even the earth-worm, have a crop and gizzard ; and in- 

 sects, according as they live on a leaf or suck the blood, have the 

 same difference in the internal arrangement of the structure for 

 assimilation as that which distinguishes the ox from the lion. 



