COMMON OBJECT OF CREATION. 293 
lakes, and rivers. The great purpose of their 
existence seems at all times to have been, to fill 
the waters with the largest possible amount of 
animal enjoyment. 
The sterility and solitude which have some- 
times been attributed to the depths of the ocean, 
exist only in the fictions of poetic fancy. The 
great mass of the water that covers nearly three- 
fourths of the globe is crowded with life, per- 
haps 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 vege- 
tation, than the surface of the dry land with 
verdant herbs and stately forests. In both 
cases, the undue increase of herbivorous tribes 
is controlled by the restraining influence of those 
which are carnivorous ; and the common result 
is, and ever has been, the greatest possible 
amoimt of animal enjoyment to the greatest 
number of individuals. 
From no kingdom of nature does the doctrine 
of gradual Development and Transmutation of 
