COMMON OBJECT OF CREATION- 223 



fill the waters with the largest possible amount of animal 

 enjoyment. 



The sterility and solitude which have sometimes been 

 attributed to the depths of the ocean, exist only in the fic- 

 tions of poetic fancy. The great mass of the water that 

 covers nearly three-fourths of the globe is crowded with 

 life, perhaps more abundantly than the air and the surface 

 of the earth ; and the bottom of the sea, within a certain 

 depth, accessible to light, swarms with countless hosts of 

 worms, and creeping things, which represent the kindred 

 families of low degree which crawl upon the land. 



The common object of creation seems ever to have been, 

 the infinite multiplication of life. As the basis of animal 

 nutrition is laid in the vegetable kingdom, the bed of the 

 ocean is not less beautifully clothed with submarine vegeta- 

 tion, than the surface of the dry land with verdant herbs and 

 stately forests. In both cases, the undue increase of herbi- 

 vorous tribes is controlled by the restraining influence of 

 those which are carnivorous ; and the common result is, 

 and ever has been, the greatest possible amount of animal 

 enjoyment to the greatest number of individuals. 



From no kingdom of nature does the doctrine of gradual 

 Developement and Transmutation of species derive less 

 support, than from the progression we have been tracing in 

 the class of Fishes. The Sauroid Fishes occupy a higher 

 place in the scale of organization, than the ordinary forms 

 of bony Fishes ; yet we find examples of Sauroid s of the 

 greatest magnitude, and in abundant numbers in the Carbo- 

 niferous and Secondary formations, whilst they almost dis- 

 appear and are replaced by less perfect forms in the Ter- 

 tiary strata, and present only two genera among existing 

 Fishes. 



In this, as in many other cases, a kind of retrograde de- 

 velopement, from complex to simple forms, may be said to 

 have taken place. As some of the more early Fishes 

 united in a single species, points of organization which, at a 



