194 



<3N ZOOLOGICAL SYSTEMS, AND THE 



instances, perhaps, and by tribes invisible to the naked eye, purge it of 

 those noxious particles with which it is often impregnated, and which, at 

 certain seasons, are apt to render it pestilential. 



The indefatigable labour of the worm-tribes in promoting the general 

 good is stil! more striking and manifest. The gordius or hair-worm per- 

 forates clay to give a passage to springs and ruiming water ; the Inmbricus 

 or earth-worm pierces the soil that it may enjoy the benefit of air, .light, 

 and moi-ture ; the ter .^bel]a and teredo, the naked ship- worm and the shelly 

 ship- worm, penetrate dead wood, and the phloas and mytilus, rocks to 

 effect their dissolution ; while the termes or white aut, as we have just ob- 

 served, attacks almost every thing within its reach, animal, vegetable, or 

 mineral, with equal rapacity, and reduces to its elementary principles what- 

 ever has resisted the assault of every other species. The same system of 

 warfare is, indeed, pursued among themselves ; yet it is pursued, not from 

 hate, as among mankind, but from mstinct, and as the means of prolonging 

 and extending as well as of diminishing and cutting short the term of life 

 and enjoyment. 



It has often been urged against the goodness, and sometimes against the 

 existence of the Deity, that the different tribes of animals, are, in this man- 

 ner, allowed to prey upon one another as their natural f(jod, and that a 

 large part of the globe is covered with putrid swamps, or wide inhospitable 

 forests, or merely inhabited by ravenous beasts and deadly serpents. 



Presumptuous murmurers ! and what would your wisdom advise were 

 Providence to consult you upon so glaring an error ? Would you then 

 leave every rank of animals to perish by the mere effects of old age ? With 

 the example so often before you of the misery endured by a favourite horse 

 or a favourite dog when suffered to drain out the last dregs of existence in 

 the midst of ease he cannot enjoy, and of food he cannot partake of — aj 

 misery which often compels us, as an act of mercy, to anticipate his fate, 

 even at last, by the aid of violence, — would you abandon every animal to 

 the same wretchedness, only, a hundred fold multiphed by the horrors of 

 want and hunger which he must, by growing every day more infirm, be 

 every day growing more incapable of appeasing ? — Or would you cut short 

 the evil at once, by destroying death itself and thus rendering every ani- 

 mal immortal ? They would not thank you for such an interference, nor ap- 

 plaud the vain benevolence that might dictate it ; an interference which, 

 by preventing the necessity for offsf)ring, would extirpate from the animal 

 frame its best feelings ; which WT>uld extinguish the wise and harmonious 

 distribution into sexes ; and make an equal inroad on the pleasures of 

 sense and the endearments of instinct. 



It is granted, that a great part of the globeis an inhospitable wilderness ; 

 that it consists, to a considerable extent, of waste inaccessible jungle over- 

 run by rapacious beasts and reptiles, of putrid swamps crowded by myriads 

 of venomous insects, and of immense warrans burrowed by countless 

 hordes of the hampster, the mole-rat, and the white ant. Even here, how- 

 ever, wherever life exists, it exists to those that possess it as an enjoyment ; 

 while these very scenes and these very animals only fill up what man has 

 no occasion for, and equally and instantly disappear as soon as he presents 

 himself, and exercises that industry and ingenuity which alone constitute 

 his authority, and upon*which alone his health and his happiness are made 

 to depend. 



But this is not all. — While in their different gradations these outcasts 

 from man are thus enjoying life themselves, they are preparing, in the best 

 manner possible, the various tracts they occupy, for his future use and 



