380 DESIGN IN NATURE. 



them, is just as much at home and as safe in the one 

 as in the other. 



It is this universal perfection of adaptation which 

 renders the study of nature, the more extended and 

 liberal the scale on which it is conducted, the more 

 gratifying to the best feelings, and the more cheering 

 to the best hopes, of man. When w^e study the 

 different parts of the world, in their climatal differ- 

 ences and in their productions, w^e find that they are 

 dependent upon the structure and form of the earth's 

 surface, the motions of the earth around the sun, and 

 the reciprocal actions of earth, water, and air, with 

 those of the relative positions of the sun and moon 

 upon both ; but that, in all the varieties of climate, 

 and all the differences of surface and vegetation which 

 are produced by those numerous and complicated 

 causes, the animal, to what class soever of animated 

 nature it may belong, is so true to all the rest of the 

 system, that they must be all parts of one design — 

 the workmanship of One Almighty and All-seeing 

 Architect, who required to proceed by no such expe- 

 rience of steps or induction of particulars as that 

 which hems in the widest flights of our invention ; 

 and that, ere one particle of the whole system was in 

 existence, every possible part of the complicated 

 whole, and every variety of which any one is suscep- 

 tible (even those which, to our confined perception of 

 the matter, appear anomalies or imperfections) must 

 have been far more clear and simple than is to us the 

 simplest work which we can perform, after we have 

 performed it the greatest possible number of times. 

 If we attend only to the single organ, we cannot but 

 admire the perfection of workmanship which it dis- 

 plays ; but when we, to so humble an extent as our 

 limited powers enable us, endeavour to think of the 



