trial animals are entirely without feet; yet locomotive; and in a very considerable degree swift in their motion. How is the want of feet compensated? It is done by the disposition of the muscles and fibres of the trunk. In consequence of the just collocation, and by means of the joint action of longitudinal and annular fibres, that is to say, of strings and rings, the body and train of reptiles are capable of being reciprocally shortened and lengthened, drawn up and stretched out. The result of this action is a progressive, and in some cases, a rapid movement of the whole body, in any direction to which the will of the animal determines it. The meanest creature is a collection of wonders. The play of the rings in an earth-worm, as it crawls; the undulatory motion propagated along the body; the beards or prickles with which the annuli are armed, and which the animal can either shut up close to its body, or let out to lay hold of the roughness of the surface upon which it creeps; and the power arising from all these, of changing its place and position, affords, when compared with the provisions for motion in other animals, proofs of new and appropriate mechanism. Suppose that we had never seen an animal move upon the ground without feet, and that the problem was; Muscular action, i. e. reciprocal contraction and relaxation being given, to describe how such an animal might be constructed, capable of voluntarily changing place. Something, perhaps, like the organization of rep tiles might have been hit upon by the ingenuity of an artist; or might have been exhibited in an automaton, by the combination of springs, spiral wires, and ringlets; but to the solution of the problem would not be denied, surely, the praise of invention and of successful thought: least of all could it ever be questioned, whether intelligence had been employed about it, or not. END OF VOL. I. OR EVIDENCES OF THE EXISTENCE AND ATTRIBUTES OF THE DEITY, COLLECTED FROM THE APPEARANCES OF NATURE. BY WILLIAM PALEY, D. D. ILLUSTRATED BY A SERIES OF PLATES, AND EXPLANATORY NOTES, BY JAMES PAXTON, MEMBER OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS, LONDON. VOL. II. OXFORD: PUBLISHED BY J. VINCENT. NATURAL THEOLOGY. CHAPTER XVII. THE RELATION OF ANIMATED BODIES TO INANIMATE NATURE. WE have already considered relation, and under different views; but it was the relation of parts to parts, of the parts of an animal to other parts of the same animal, or of another individual of the same species. But the bodies of animals hold, in their constitution and properties, a close and important relation to natures altogether external to their own; to inanimate substances, and to the specific qualities of these; e. g. they hold a strict relation to the ELEMENTS by which they are surrounded. I. Can it be doubted, whether the wings of birds bear a relation to air, and the fins of fish to water? They are instruments of motion, severally suited to the properties of the medium in which the motion is to be performed: which properties are different. Was not this difference contemplated, when the instruments were differently constituted? |