THE VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS. 143 



Creation, while yet the whole phenomena are, in another 

 point of view, wonders of the highest kind, being the un- 

 doubted results of ordinances arguing the highest attributes 

 of foresight, skill, and goodness on the part of their Divine 

 Author. 



Early in this century, M. Lamarck, one of the most dis- 

 tinguished of modern naturalists, suggested that the gradation 

 of animals depended upon some general law which it was 

 important for us to discover. So far he was right ; but the 

 theory which he consequently formed with regard to the 

 causes of the varieties of animated being was so far from 

 being adequate to account for the facts, that it has had scarcely 

 a single adherent. What M. Lamarck chiefly grounded upon 

 was the well-known physiological fact, that use or exercise 

 strengthens and enlarges an organ, while disuse equally 

 atrophies it. He conceived that, an animal being brought 

 into new circumstances, and called upon to accommodate 

 itself to these, the exertions which it consequently made to 

 that effect caused the rise of new parts : on the contrary, 

 when new circumstances left certain existing parts unused, 

 these parts gradually ceased to exist. Something analogous 

 was, he thought, produced in vegetables, by changes in their 

 nutrition, in their absorptions and transpirations, and in the 

 quantity of caloric, light, air, and moisture which they 

 received. This principle, with time, he deemed sufficient to 

 have produced the advance from the monad to the mammal. 

 His illustrations were chiefly of the following nature. The 

 bird which is attracted to the water by the necessity of seek- 

 ing there its food, wishes to move about on the surface of the 

 flood, and for this purpose strikes out its toes. Through the 

 consequent repeated separations of the toes, the skin uniting 

 them at the roots is extended and at length becomes webbed. 

 In like manner, the shore bird which has no desire to swim, 

 but has to approach the water for food, is constantly subject 

 to sink in the mud. The bird, disliking this, exerts all its 

 efforts to lengthen its legs ; the result is, that, by continual 

 habit for many generations, the legs of this order do at length 

 become long and bare, as we see them. The error of the 



