MEMOIR OF SWAMMERDAM. 
39 
works, but Swammerdam’s figure greatly surpasses 
all that Lave subsequently appeared (See Biblia 
Natures, pi. 39.) It was figured before his time, 
both by Goedart and Aldrovandus, the former of 
whom called it the channel eon, from having kept 
an individual alive for nine months without food ; 
the latter names it the water intestine. Both were 
unacquainted with its metamorphosis, and nearly 
all its most remarkable peculiarities ; Swammer- 
dam’s account leaves little to be desired. He was 
so much struck with the beauty of its parts, and 
their exquisite adaptation to the functions they per- 
form, that he frequently breaks out in lamentations 
of his own inadequacy to examine them aright, and 
in adoration of the power and goodness which they 
so signally manifest. “ 0 God, thy works infinitely 
surpass the reach of our feeble understandings; all 
that we actually know of them, or ever can know, 
is but a faint and lifeless shadow of thy adorable 
perfections. The brightest understandings fail in 
the contemplation of them, and are obliged to con- 
fess, that all this boasted penetration is but short 
sightedness, when employed in fathoming the depth 
of that power, goodness, and wisdom, it has pleased 
thee to exert in the lowest part of thy creation. 
“ The transformation from a worm to a fly, ob- 
servable in this insect, presents us with a real mira- 
cle, and may justly be considered, as a laying down 
of old worn-out parts, and an acquisition of new 
perfect ones instead of them ; in fine, as a total 
change of an old to a new, and of an imperfect to a 
