BENEFICIAL TO THE HERBIVOROUS. 133 
for the comfortable existence of the healthy sur- 
vivors of its own species. 
The same " police of Nature," which is thus 
beneficial to the great family of the inhabitants 
of the land, is established with equal advantage 
among the tenants of the sea. Of these also, 
there is one large division that lives on vege- 
tables, and supplies the basis of food to the 
other division that is carnivorous. Here again 
we see, that in the absence of carnivora, the 
uncontrolled herbivora would multiply indefi- 
nitely, until the lack of food brought them also 
to the verge of starvation ; and the sea would 
be crowded with creatures under the endurance 
of universal pain from hunger, while death by 
famine would be the termination of ill fed and 
miserable lives. 
The appointment of death by the agency of 
carnivora, as the ordinary termination of animal 
existence, appears therefore in its main results 
to be a dispensation of benevolence ; it deducts 
much from the aggregate amount of the pain 
of universal death ; it abridges, and almost 
annihilates, throughout the brute creation, the 
misery of disease, and accidental injuries, and 
lingering decay ; and imposes such salutary 
restraint upon excessive increase of numbers, 
that the supply of food maintains perpetually 
a due ratio to the demand. The result is, 
that the surface of the land and depths of the 
