would have been an encumbrance to the bird; yet there is no necessary connexion between a long neck and a web-foot. In fact they do not usually go together. How happens it, therefore, that they meet only when a particular design demands the aid of both?

II. This mutual relation, arising from a subserviency to a common purpose, is very observable also in the parts of a mole. The strong short legs of that animal, the palmated feet armed with sharp nails, the pig-like nose, the teeth, the velvet coat, the small external ear, the sagacious smell, the sunk protected eye, all conduce to the utilities or to the safety of its under-ground life. It is a special purpose, specially consulted throughout. The form of the feet fixes the character of the animal. They are so many shovels; they determine its action to that of rooting in the ground; and every thing about its body agrees with this destination. The cylindrical figure of the mole, as well as the compactness of its form, arising from the terseness of its limbs, proportionably lessens its labour ; because, according to its bulk, it thereby requires the least possible quantity of earth to be removed for its progress. It has nearly the same structure of the face and jaws as a swine, and the same office for them. The nose is sharp, slender, tendinous, strong; with a pair of nerves going down to the end of it. The plush covering, which, by the smoothness, closeness, and

polish of the short piles that compose it, rejects the adhesion of almost every species of earth, defends the animal from cold and wet, and from the impediment which it would experience by the mould sticking to its body. From soils of all kinds the little pioneer comes forth bright and clean. Inhabiting dirt, it is, of all animals, the

neatest.

But what I have always most admired in the mole is its eyes. This animal occasionally visiting the surface, and wanting, for its safety and direction, to be informed when it does so, or when it approaches it, a perception of light was necessary. I do not know that the clearness of sight depends at all upon the size of the organ. What is gained by the largeness or prominence of the globe of the eye, is width in the field of vision. Such a capacity would be of no use to an animal which was to seek its food in the dark. The mole did not want to look about it; nor would a large advanced eye have been easily defended from the annoyance to which the life of the animal must constantly expose it. How indeed was the mole, working its way under ground, to guard its eyes at all? In order to meet this difficulty, the eyes are made scarcely larger than the head of a corking-pin; and these minute globules are sunk so deeply in the skull, and lie so sheltered within the velvet of its covering, as that any contraction of what may be called the

eye-brows, not only closes up the apertures which lead to the eyes, but presents a cushion, as it were, to any sharp or protruding substance which might push against them. This aperture, even in its ordinary state, is like a pin-hole in a piece of velvet, scarcely pervious to loose particles of earth.

Observe then, in this structure, that which we call relation. There is no natural connexion between a small sunk eye and a shovel palmated foot. Palmated feet might have been joined with goggle eyes; or small eyes might have been joined with feet of any other form. What was it therefore which brought them together in the mole? That which brought together the barrel, the chain, and the fusee, in a watch; design: and design, in both cases, inferred from the relation which the parts bear to one another in the prosecution of a common purpose. As hath already been observed, there are different ways of stating the relation, according as we set out from a dif ferent part. In the instance before us, we may either consider the shape of the feet, as qualifying the animal for that mode of life and inhabitation to which the structure of its eyes confines it; or we may consider the structure of the eye, as the only one which would have suited with the action to which the feet are adapted. The relation is manifest, whichever of the parts related we place first in the order of our consideration. In a word; the feet of the mole are made for digging; the

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neck, nose, eyes, ears, and skin, are peculiarly adapted to an under-ground life; and this is what I call relation.

CHAPTER XVI.

COMPENSATION,

COMPENSATION is a species of relation. It is relation when the defects of one part, or of one organ, are supplied by the structure of another part, or of another organ. Thus,

I. The short unbending neck of the elephant is compensated by the length and flexibility of his proboscis. He could not have reached the ground without it; or, if it be supposed that he might have fed upon the fruit, leaves, or branches of trees, how was he to drink? Should it be asked, Why is the elephant's neck so short? it may be answered, that the weight of a head so heavy could not have been supported at the end of a longer lever. To a form, therefore, in some respects necessary, but in some respects also inadequate to the occasions of the animal, a supplement is added, which exactly makes up the deficiency under which he laboured.

If it be suggested that this proboscis may have been produced, in a long course of generations, by the constant endeavour of the elephant to thrust out his nose (which is the general hypothesis by which it has lately been attempted to account for the forms of animated nature,) I would ask, How was the animal to subsist in the mean time, during the process, until this prolongation of snout were completed? What was to become of the individual, whilst the species was perfecting?

Our business at present is, simply to point out the relation which this organ bears to the peculiar figure of the animal to which it belongs. And herein all things correspond. The necessity of the elephant's proboscis arises from the shortness of his neck; the shortness of the neck is rendered necessary by the weight of the head. Were we to enter into an examination of the structure and anatomy of the proboscis itself, we should see in it one of the most curious of all examples of animal mechanism. The disposition of the ringlets and fibres, for the purpose, first, of forming a long cartilaginous pipe; secondly, of contracting and lengthening that pipe; thirdly, of turning it in every direction at the will of the animal; with the superaddition at the end, of a fleshy production, of about the length and thickness of a finger, and performing the office of a finger, so as to pick up a straw from the ground; these properties of the same organ, taken together, exhibit a specimen, not only of design (which is