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and its habits. But Job is asked, Can’st thou tell 
why the ostrich seems to be hardened against her 
young, as though they were not hers? why without 
fear she deposits her eggs in such exposed places, 
her labour being in vain? The answer, from Him 
who alone can tell, is, Because God hath so decreed. 
He has appointed the desert for the ostrich, and the 
ostrich for the fiery desert. He hath not given to 
her wisdom, nor imparted understanding: He hath 
not given her the instinct which he hath bestowed 
on the parus caudatus; or on the various species of 
the genus ploceus, the weaver bird, which suspends 
its nest over a river from the end of a slender 
branch, so that neither monkeys, nor even snakes, 
can approach it; for the attempt would be attended 
with a certain fall into the flood. How beautiful is 
the accordance of the book of nature with the page 
of the most ancient Scripture ! 
Amongst amphibia there is great diversity as to 
the number of their offspring, and to the care re- 
quired by and bestowed on them. Of the genus 
testudo, for the comfort of hungry sailors and of 
feast-loving epicures, the testudo mydas lays at least 
a thousand eggs as large as duck’s eggs, and covers 
them lightly with sand. The testudo Greca, often 
exhibited for halfpence in our streets by little vaga- 
bond Italian boys, lays four or five eggs, and pro- 
tects them by burrowing deeply. The pretty little 
testudo geometrica lays from ten to fifteen. The 
crocodile deposits 100 eggs in the sand, of which a 
great part becomes the easy prey of the viverra 
