TO THE USES OF MAN. 85 



that these are endowed with dispositions and faculties which 

 adapt them in a peculiar decree for domestication:* but their 

 number bears an extremely small proportion to the total 

 amount of existing species ; and with regard to the lower 

 classes of animals, there are but very few among their al- 

 most countless multitudes, that minister either to the wants 

 or luxuries of the human race. Even could it be proved 

 that all existing species are serviceable to man, no such in- 

 ference could be drawn with respect to those numerous ex- 

 tinct animals which Geology shows to have ceased to live, 

 long before our race appeared upon the earth. It is surely 

 more consistent with sound philosophy, and with all the in- 

 formation that is vouchsafed to us respecting the attributes 

 of the Deity, to consider each animal as having been cre- 

 ated first for its own sake, to receive its portion of that en- 

 joyment which the Universal Parent is pleased to impart to 

 each creature that has life ; and secondly, to bear its share 

 in the maintenance of the general system of co-ordinate re- 

 lations, whereby all families of living beings are reciprocally 

 subservient to the use and benefit of one another. Under 

 this head only can we include their relations to man; form- 

 ing, as he does, but a small, although it be the most noble 

 and exalted part, of that vast system of universal life, with 

 which it hath pleased the Creator to animate the surface of 

 the globe. 



" More than three-fifths "of the earth's surface," says Mr. 

 Bakewell, " are covered by the ocean; and if from the re- 

 maining part we deduct the space occupied by polar ice 

 and eternal snow, by sandy deserts, sterile mountains, 

 marshes, rivers and lakes, the habitable portion will scarce- 

 ly exceed one-fifth of the whole of the globe. Nor have we 

 reason to believe that at any former period the dominion of 

 man over the earth was more extensive than at present. 

 The remaining four-fifths of our globe, though untenanted 



• See Lyell's Principles of Geology, 3d edit. vol. ii. book. 3, c. 3. 

 VOL. I. — 8 



