for the comfortable existence of the healthy survivors of its own species.

The same "police of Nature," which is thus beneficial to the great family of the inhabitants of the land, is established with equal advantage among the tenants of the sea. Of these also, there is one large division that lives on vegetables, and supplies the basis of food to the other division that is carnivorous. Here again we see, that in the absence of carnivora, the uncontrolled herbivora would multiply indefinitely, until the lack of food brought them also to the verge of starvation; and the sea would be crowded with creatures under the endurance of universal pain from hunger, while death by famine would be the termination of ill fed and miserable lives.

The appointment of death by the agency of carnivora, as the ordinary termination of animal existence, appears therefore in its main results to be a dispensation of benevolence; it deducts much from the aggregate amount of the pain of universal death; it abridges, and almost annihilates, throughout the brute creation, the misery of disease, and accidental injuries, and lingering decay; and imposes such salutary restraint upon excessive increase of numbers, that the supply of food maintains perpetually a due ratio to the demand. The result is, that the surface of the land and depths of the

waters are ever crowded with myriads of animated beings, the pleasures of whose life are co-extensive with its duration; and which, throughout the little day of existence that is allotted to them, fulfil with joy the functions for which they were created. Life to each individual is a scene of continued feasting, in a region of plenty; and when unexpected death arrests its course, it repays with small interest the large debt, which it has contracted to the common fund of animal nutrition, from whence the materials of its body have been derived. Thus the great drama of universal life is perpetually sustained; and though the individual actors undergo continual change, the same parts are ever filled by another and another generation; renewing the face of the earth, and the bosom of the deep, with endless successions of life and happiness.

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CHAPTER XIV.

Proofs of Design in the Structure of Fossil
Vertebrated Animals.

SECTION I.

FOSSIL MAMMALIA. DINOTHERIUM.

ENOUGH has, I trust, been stated in the preceding chapter, to show the paramount importance of appealing to organic remains, in illustration of that branch of physico-theology with which we are at present occupied.

The structure of the greater number, even of the earliest fossil Mammalia, differs in so few essential points from that of the living representatives of their respective Orders, that I forbear to enter on details which would indeed abound with evidences of creative design, but would offer little that is not equally discoverable in the anatomy of existing species. I shall, therefore, limit my observations to two extinct genera, which are perhaps the most remarkable of all fossil Mammalia, for size and unexampled peculiarities of anatomical construction; the first of these, the Dinotherium, having been the largest of terrestrial Mammalia; and the second, the Megatherium, presenting greater deviations from

ordinary animal forms, than occur in any other species, either of recent or fossil quadrupeds.

It has been already stated, in our account of the Mammalia of the Miocene period of the tertiary series, that the most abundant remains of the Dinotherium are found at Epplesheim, in the province of Hesse Darmstadt, and are described, in a work now in process of publication, by Professor Kaup. Fragments of the same genus are mentioned by Cuvier, as occurring in several parts of France, and in Bavaria and Austria.

The form of the molar teeth of the Dinotherium (Pl. 2, C. Fig. 3), so nearly resembles that of the Tapirs, that Cuvier at first referred them to a gigantic species of this genus. Professor Kaup has since placed this animal in the new genus Dinotherium, holding an intermediate place between the Tapir and the Mastodon, and supplying another important extinct link in the great family of Pachydermata. The largest species of this genus, D. Giganteum, is calculated, both by Cuvier and Kaup, to have attained the extraordinary length of eighteen feet. The most remarkable bone of the body yet found is the shoulder-blade, the form of which more nearly resembles that of a Mole than of any other animal, and seems to indicate a peculiar adaptation of the fore leg to the purposes of digging, an indication which is

corroborated by the remarkable structure of the lower jaw.

The lower jaws of two species of Dinotherium, figured in Plate 2. C. Figs. 1. 2. exhibit peculiarities in the disposition of the tusks, such as are found in no other living or fossil animal.

The form of the molar teeth, Pl. 2. C. Fig. 3, approaches, as we have stated, most nearly to that of the molar teeth in Tapirs; but a remarkable deviation from the character of Tapirs, as well as of every other quadruped, consists in the presence of two enormous tusks, placed at the anterior extremity of the lower jaw, and curved downwards, like the tusks in the upper jaw of the Walrus. (Pl. 2. C. 1. 2.)

I shall confine my present remarks to this peculiarity in the position of the tusks, and endeavour to show how far these organs illustrate the habits of the extinct animals in which they are found. It is mechanically impossible that a lower jaw, nearly four feet long, loaded with such heavy tusks at its extremity, could have been otherwise than cumbrous aud inconvenient to a quadruped living on dry land. No such disadvantage would have attended this structure in a large animal destined to live in water; and the aquatic habits of the family of Tapirs, to which the Dinotherium was most nearly allied, render it probable that, like them, it was an inhabitant of fresh-water lakes and