THE GOODNESS OF THE DEITY. 
263 
to keep the world always full: whilst, secondly, it allows 
the proportion between the several species of animals to be 
differently modified, as different purposes require, or as 
different situations may afford for them room and food. 
Where this vast fecundity meets with a vacancy fitted to 
receive the species, there it operates with its whole effect; 
there it pours in its numbers, and replenishes the waste. 
We complain of what we call the exorbitant multiplication 
of some troublesome insects; not reflecting that large por¬ 
tions of nature might be left void without it. If the ac¬ 
counts of travellers may be depended upon, immense tracts 
of forest in North America would be nearly lost to sensitive 
existence, if it were not for gnats. “ In the thinly inhab¬ 
ited regions of America, in which the waters stagnate and 
the climate is warm, the whole air is filled with crowds of 
these insects.” Thus it is, that where we look for solitude 
and deathlike silence, we meet with animation, activity, 
enjoyment; with a busy, a happy, and a peopled world. 
Again; hosts of mice are reckoned amongst the plagues of 
the northeast part of Europe; whereas vast plains in Sibe¬ 
ria, as we learn from good authority, would be lifeless with¬ 
out them. The Caspian deserts are converted by their 
presence into crowded warrens. Between the Volga and 
the Yaik, and in the country of Hyrcania, the ground, says 
Pallas, is in many places covered with little hills, raised by 
the earth cast out in forming the burrows. Do we so 
envy these blissful abodes, as to pronounce the fecundity 
by which they are supplied with inhabitants, to be an evil; 
a subject of complaint, and not of praise? Farther; by 
virtue of this same superfecundity, what we term destruc¬ 
tion, becomes almost instantly the parent of life. What we 
call blights, are oftentimes legions of animated beings, 
claiming their portion in the bounty of nature. What cor¬ 
rupts the produce of the earth to us, prepares it for them. 
And it is by means of their rapid multiplication, that they 
take possession of their pasture; a slow propagation would 
not meet the opportunity. 
But in conjunction with the occasional use of this fruit¬ 
fulness, we observe, also, that it allows the proportion be¬ 
tween the several species of animals, to be differently mod¬ 
ified, as different purposes of utility may require. When 
the forests of America come to be cleared, and the swamps 
drained, our gnats will give place to other inhabitants. If 
the population of Europe should spread to the north and 
the east, the mice will retire before the husbandman and 
