between Man and all other Animals. 83 



must be necessary for creatures of instinct to be thus expressly 

 organised in relation to their specific haunts, even to all the 

 minutiae we perceive, in order to enable them to perform ef- 

 ficiently their destined office ; which exquisite adaptation, 

 however, cannot but of course disqualify them for maintaining 

 their existence elsewhere. In man only we discover none of 

 these partial adaptations, further than that he is intended to 

 exist upon the ground ; and the human race alone, in opposition 

 to all other animals, takes cognisance of the progressive changes 

 adverted to, and, from reflection, intentionally opposes obstacles 

 to their course, or systematically endeavours to divert their 

 energy. Man's agency, indeed, tends everywhere to alter, 

 rather than to preserve, the indigenous features of a country ; 

 those features which natural causes combine to produce : in 

 short, he strives against the united efforts of all other agents, 

 insomuch that, wherever lie appears, with his faculties at all 

 developed, the aspect of the surface becomes changed : forests 

 yield to his persevering labours ; the marshes are drained, and 

 converted into fertile lands ; the very climate, accordingly, 

 changes under his influence, which every way inclines to ex- 

 tirpate the indigenous products of the soil, or to reduce them, 

 by domestication, to a condition subservient to the promotion 

 of human interests. Does not, then, all this intimate that, 

 even as a mundane being, man is no component of that reci- 

 procal system to which all other species appertain? a system 

 which for countless epochs prevailed ere the human race was 

 summoned into being. His anomalous interference, therefore 

 (for this word most aptly expresses the bearings of human in- 

 fluence upon that system), essentially differing from the uniform 

 agency of all the rest, in not conducing to the general welfare, 

 is thus shown to be in no way requisite to fill a gap in the vast 

 system alluded to. All rather tends alike to indicate him a 

 being of diverse, of higher destiny ; designed, in the course of 

 time, with the aid of physical causes ever in operation, and the 

 presumed cessation of the creative energy, to revolutionise the 

 entire surface of our planet. I will presently recur to this 

 subject as regards marine productions. It is sufficiently 

 evident, that, as the human species is bound to no description 

 of locality, but alike inhabits the mountain and the plain, and 

 is, by self-contrivance, enabled to endure the fervid heats of 

 tropical climes, equally with the withering blasts of a polar 

 winter, it is consequently proof against the undermining effects 

 of those surface changes which suffice to effect the extermi- 

 nation of every other. * Its future removal, then, from this 



* There is no occasion, here, to follow out all the causes which combine 

 to bring about the extirpation of species; but I will mention one which 



