PERFECTION OF NATURE. 261 



is, when we understand it, the very best for the accom- 

 plishment of the purpose that it serves: there is nothing 

 bungling or unskilful, and nothing defective or re- 

 dundant. Each comes, unseen and unbidden, in the 

 very form, of the very consistency, and at the very 

 time that it is wanted ; and when the use of it ceases, it 

 decays; but even in its decay it is not lost, for the 

 moment that it has answered its purpose as part of one 

 production, it is changed and decomposed by a new 

 power and becomes part of another. Size or shape is 

 no obstacle, and that which to our art would be a phy- 

 sical impossibility, hinders not a jot the operations 

 of nature. Gravitation is nothing, and within those 

 limits which are found in the average of natural cir- 

 cumstances, heat is nothing. If it be necessary that 

 a plant should grow upwards, or that an animal should 

 run with its back downwards, there is instantly an ap- 

 paratus by which that is accomplished. It is the same 

 with regard to the media in which they exist. One 

 walks on the surface of the earth and browzes the 

 herbage under it ; and where that is the case we find 

 the neck, head, and mouth the way best constructed 

 for answering these purposes. Another roams in places 

 where there is no vegetation upon the ground, and in 

 it we find as perfect an adaptation for finding its food 

 above it. A third courses its prey along the earth, 

 and we find it endowed with all the apparatus of rapid 

 and prolonged motion. A fourth feeds upon creatures 

 that can escape from it, either by flying into the air or 

 creeping into holes in the earth, and it is so con- 

 structed that it can steal softly onward till it be near 

 its prey, and then spring upon it with so much force 



