NATURAL THEOLOGY. 93 



both; and also by a large tribe of aquatic animals, 

 which closely resemble the terrestrial in their in- 

 ternal structure ; I mean the cetaceous tribe, which 

 have hot blood, respiring lungs, bowels, and other 

 essential parts, like those of land-animals. This 

 similitude, surely, bespeaks the same creation and 

 the same Creator. 



Insects and shell-fish appear to me to differ from 

 other classes of animals the most widely of any. 

 Yet even here, besides many points of particular 

 resemblance, there exists a general relation of a 

 peculiar kind. It is the relation of inversion; the 

 law of contrariety: namely, that, whereas, in 

 other animals, the bones, to which the muscles 

 are attached, lie within the body, in insects and 

 shell-fish they lie on the outside of it. The shell 

 of a lobster performs to the animal the office of a 

 hone, by furnishing to the tendons that fixed basis 

 or immovable fulcrum, without which, mechani- 

 cally, they could not act. The crust of an insect 

 is its shell, and answers the like purpose. The 

 shell also of an oyster stands in the place of a hone; 

 the bases of the muscles being fixed to it, in the 

 same manner as, in other animals, they are fixed 

 to the bones. All which (under wonderful vari- 

 eties, indeed, and adaptations of form,) confesses 

 an imitation, a remembrance, a carrying on, of the 

 same plan. 



The observations here made are equally appli- 

 cable to plants ; but, I think, unnecessary to be 

 pursued. It is a very striking circumstance, and 



