DOLPHINS. 243 



should be taken along with the other, in every estimate 

 which is made of the characters of animals ; and it is 

 chiefly because that is not done, that we find some of 

 them praised and loved, and others persecuted. 



We are apt to carry man, and man's love of governing 

 and directing, into all our reasonings and judgings of 

 the works of nature, and by this means we take an 

 erroneous view of the subject. The preservation of 

 salmon, though man would like them to be preserved, 

 and though he be justified in using every means that 

 men have legalized for the furtherance of his wish, is 

 no part of the end which nature had in view in the 

 formation of a grampus, any more than the preservation 

 of sheep is a natural purpose of the wolf, or that of flies, 

 a natural purpose of a spider. The law of each is the 

 preservation of itself individually, and of the race to 

 which it belongs ; and this law, though it be different 

 in manner, according to the difference in structure and 

 habitation, is uniform in principle. The eagle,* the 

 grampus, and the lion, may be reckoned among the 

 principal depredators in the three grand departments 

 of the kingdom of nature ; but they are not on that 

 account destroyers. They are preservers : preserving 

 respectively eagles, grampuses, and lions, the only 

 animals with whose preservation they are charged. 

 Where man does not come to claim his dominion, 

 and to call the prey of those animals his, the system 

 is so admirably balanced that it never stands still, 

 or wants the least repair, the supply being so re- 

 gulated in accordance with the waste, that, if we 

 would but imitate it, it is a far better system of 

 economy than that of the wisest of human philosophy. 





