440 OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS. half the fowls of the air, as different as they are, from thecrow to the tit-mouse, should derive their flesh and blood from the productions of the same tree, where the swine watches under the boughs of it and is nourished by the droppings of the fruit ? Nor need I stay to take notice what numerous insects find their nests and their food all the summer season from the same apples or apricots, plums or cherries, which feed hogs and crows, and a hundred small birds. Would you think that the black and the brindled kine, with the horses both grey and bay, should clothe themselves with their hairy skins of so various colours out of the same green pasture where the sheep feeds, and covers him- self with his white and woolly fleece ? And at the same time the goose is cropping-part of the grass to nourish its own flesh, and to array itself with down and feathers. Strange and stupen- dous texture of the bodies of these creatures, that should con- vert the common green herbage of the field into their different natures, and their more different clothing ! But this leads me to another remark. 2. What exceeding great diversity is found in the several parts, limbs, and coverings even of the same creature ! An animated body is made up of flesh and blood, bones and mem- branes, long hollow tubes, with a variety of liquors contained in them, together with many strings and tendons, and a thousand other things which escaped the naked sight, and for which ana- tomy has hardly found a name : Yet the very same food is by the wondrous skill and appointment of the God of nature formed into all these amazing differences. Let us take an ox to pieces, and survey the wondrous composition. Besides the flesh of this huge living structure, and the bones on which it is built, what variety of tender coats and humours belong to that admirable organ the eye? How solid and hard are the teeth which grind the food ? How firm the general ligaments that tie the joints of 'that creature together ? what horny hoofs are his support, and with what different sort of horny weapons has nature furnished his forehead ? Yet they are all framed of the same grassy ma- terials : The calf grazes upon the verdant pasture, and all its limbs and powers grow up out of the food to the size and firm- ness of an ox. Can it be supposed, that all these corpuscles, of which the several inward and outward parts of the brute are composed, are actually found in different and proper forms in the vegetable food ? Does every spire of grass actually contain the specific parts of the horn and the hoof, the teeth and the ten- dons, the glands and membranes, the humours and coats of the eye, the liquidsand solids, with all their innumerable varieties in their proper distinct forms ? This is a most unreasonable suppo- sition and vain philosophy. No, it is the wisdom of the God of
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