[ S°6 ] 
them, prodigious variety in the modes and dcfigns of 
fuch dwelling-places. Some are capable of erecting 
for themfelves commodious apartments to live in, as 
fhell-filh, even out of their own conftituent parts as 
they grow. Others lodge their young in the very 
ikins of animals ; and where there are any, who have 
neither fagacity nor firength enough to provide places 
for themfelves, they arc at leaft taught by their 
Maker, to find them ready made. 
Such are the bounds fet to our intellectual powers 
here, that we can have no means of judging of ob- 
jects, which do not immediately fall under our in- 
fpeCtion, but by comparing them to fomething elfe, 
as near them as may be ; or by confidering their 
proportions and effeCts ; what is probable, what is not, 
in the phenomena, that belong to them j and what 
abfurdities may arife from the ufes and aCtions 
afcribed to them ; for certainly they may be eafily 
feen, by confidering the objeCts themfelves. 
I would neither conclude, with M. Peylfonnel, 
that, becaufe I found animals upon fuch bodies as 
he mentions, they were the makers of fuch bodies; 
nor that, if one or more kinds of thofe bodies 
were actually the work of fuch creatures, all others, 
that had any relation to them, mud alfo be their 
work ; any more than I would, on the other hand, 
conclude, that, becaufe one or more of thefe fub- 
marine fubftances were not made by them, none at 
all were produced by them. I would rather examine 
the parts of thofe bodies in as nice and fcrutinous a 
manner as poflible, and compare their charaCteriftics 
with thofe of other bodies in both the animal and 
vegetable kingdoms ; and, by finding out fome of 
their 
