purpose, necessarily unfits it for some other purpose. This is the case before us. The upper bill of the parrot is so much hooked, and so much overlaps the lower, that if, as in other birds, the. lower chap alone had motion, the bird could scarcely gape wide enough to receive its food: yet this hook and overlapping of the bill could not be spared, for it forms the very instrument by which the bird climbs: to say nothing of the use which it makes of it in breaking nuts and the hard substances upon which it feeds. How, therefore, has nature provided for the opening of this occluded mouth? By making the upper chap moveable, as well as the lower. In most birds, the upper chap is connected, and makes but one piece, with the skull; but in the parrot, the upper chap is joined to the bone of the head by a strong membrane placed on each side of it, which lifts and depresses it at pleasure*.

V. The spider's web is a compensating contrivance. The spider lives upon flies, without wings to pursue them; a case one would have thought, of great difficulty, yet provided for, and provided for by a resource which no stratagem, no effort of the animal, could have produced, had not both its ex

* Goldsmith's Natural History, vol. v. p. 274.

ternal and internal structure been specifically adapted to the operation.

VI. In many species of insects, the eye is fixed; and consequently without the power of turning the pupil to the object. This great defect is, however, perfectly compensated; and by a mechanism which we should not suspect. The eye is a multiplying glass, with a lens looking in every direction and catching every object. By which means, although the orb of the eye be stationary, the field of vision is as ample as that of other animals, and is commanded on every side. When this lattice-work was first observed, the multiplicity and minuteness of the surfaces must have added to the surprise of the discovery. Adams tells us, that fourteen hundred of these reticulations have been counted in the two eyes of a drone-bee.

In other cases the compensation is effected by the number and position of the eyes themselves. The spider has eight eyes, mounted upon different parts of the head; two in front, two in the top of the head, two on each side. These eyes are without motion; but, by their situation, suited to comprehend every view which the wants or safety of the animal render it necessary for it to take.

VII. The Memoirs for the Natural His

tory of Animals, published by the French Academy, A. D. 1687, furnish us with some curious particulars in the eye of a chameleon. Instead of two eyelids,

it is covered

by an eyelid with a hole in it. This singular structure appears to be compensatory, and to answer to some other singularities in the shape of the animal. The neck of the chameleon is inflexible. To make up for this, the eye is so prominent, as that more than half of the ball stands out of the head; by means of which extraordinary projection, the pupil of the eye can be carried by the muscles in every direction, and is capable of being pointed towards every object. But then, so unusual an exposure of the globe of the eye requires, for its lubricity and defence, a more than ordinary protection of eyelid, as well as a more than ordinary supply of moisture; yet the motion of an eyelid, formed according to the common construction, would be impeded, as it should seem, by the convexity of the organ. The aperture in the lid meets this difficulty. It enables the animal to keep the principal part of the surface of the eye under cover, and to preserve it in a due state of humidity without shutting out the light; or without performing every moment a nictitation, which, it is probable,

would be more laborious to this animal than

to others.

VIII. In another animal, and in another part of the animal economy, the same Memoirs describe a most remarkable substitution. The reader will remember what we have already observed concerning the intestinal canal; that its length, so many times exceeding that of the body, promotes the extraction of the chyle from the aliment, by giving room for the lacteal vessels to act upon it through a greater space. This long intestine, wherever it occurs, is, in other animals, disposed in the abdomen from side to side in returning folds. But, in the animal now under our notice, the matter is managed otherwise. The same intention is mechanically effectuated; but by a mechanism of a different kind. The animal of which I speak, is an amphibious quadruped, which our authors call the alopecias, or sea-fox. The intestine is straight from one end to the other: but in this straight, and consequently short intestine, is a winding, corkscrew, spiral passage, through which the food, not without several circumvolutions, and in fact by a long route, is conducted to its exit. Here the shortness of the gut is compensated by the obliquity of the perforation.

IX. But the works of the Deity are known by expedients. Where we should look for absolute destitution; where we can reckon up nothing but wants; some contrivance always comes in, to supply the privation. A snail, without wings, feet, or thread, climbs up the stalks of plants, by the sole aid of a viscid humour discharged from her skin. She adheres to the stems, leaves, and fruits of plants, by means of a sticking-plaister. A muscle, which might seem, by its helplessness, to lie at the mercy of every wave that went over it, has the singular power of spinning strong, tendinous threads, by which she moors her shell to rocks and timbers. A cockle, on the contrary, by means of its stiff tongue, works for itself a shelter in the sand. The provisions of nature extend to cases the most desperate. A lobster has in its constitution a difficulty so great, that one could hardly conjecture beforehand how nature would dispose of it. In most animals, the skin grows with their growth. If, instead of

a

soft skin, there be a shell, still it admits of a gradual enlargement. If the shell, as in the tortoise, consist of several pieces, the accession of substance is made at the sutures. Bivalve shells grow bigger by receiving an accretion at their edge; it is the same with