the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat." And to this vege table diet, before the close of the present scene, we are assured they shall again return so as to render the last age of the world as happy as the original state of man in Paradise.1 This harmony of the animal creation, continued probably long enough, after the fall, to allow sufficient time for such a multiplication of the flocks and herds, and flights and shoals of the gregarious animals, as would secure them from extinction-but then, as the poet sings:

Discord first

Daughter of sin, among th' irrational

Death introduc'd through fierce antipathy:

Beast now with beast 'gan war, and fowl with fowl,
And fish with fish; to graze the herb all leaving,
Devour'd each other; nor stood much in awe
Of man but fled him, or with count'nance grim
Glar'd on him passing. These were from without
The growing miseries which Adam saw.

Had Adam not fallen, this sad change would, probably, never have taken place, for as the author of the book of wisdom argues:-" God made not death, neither hath he pleasure in the destruction of the living. For he created all things that they might have their being; and the generations of the world were healthful: and there is no

1 Isaiah, lxv. 25.

poison of destruction in them, nor the kingdom of death upon the earth."- When we consider the relative position of man and the animal kingdom, by the divine decree, subjected to his dominion, the harmony and goodwill that subsisted between them, it appears improbable that immortal man would have been afflicted by the appearance of death and destruction amongst his subjects from any cause, especially by the strong, and those armed with deadly weapons, attacking and devouring the weak and helpless. Even now, fallen as we are from our original dignity, there is no creature so fell and savage that we have not more or less the power to subdue and tame; no natures so averse, that we are not skilled to reconcile; we can counteract even instinct itself, and make a treaty of peace and mutual good will between animals, whom nature, by a law, has placed in the fiercest enmity and opposition to each other.1

The Creator, indeed, foreseeing the fatal apostacy that plunged our race in ruin, and providing for the circumstances in which our globe would eventually be placed from the too rapid increase of various animals most given to multiply, furnished the predatory tribes with organs and offensive arms, which, when he gave the word and let loose the reins, would urge them to the

1 See Appendix, note 5.

work of destruction, and impel them to attack and devour without pity, those amongst the weaker animals, that were likely to increase in a degree hurtful to the general welfare, thus fulfilling his great purpose of generally maintaining those relative proportions, as to number, of individual species, that would be most conducive to the health and mutual advantage of all parts of the system of our globe.

This too is the place to consider another circumstance connected with the appointment by Providence of certain animals to certain ends. There are, as must be evident to every one who thinks or observes at all, large numbers of the animal kingdom, which, considered in their individual capacities, may be regarded as positively injurious to man; and seem to have been created with a view to his punishment, either in his person or property. Of this description are those predatory tribes of which I have just spoken: but I here mean, more particularly, to advert to those personal pests, that not only attempt to derive their nutriment from him by occasionally sucking his blood when he comes in their way, as the flea, the horse-fly, and others, but those that make a settlement upon him or within him, selecting his body for their dwelling as well as their food, and thus infesting him with a double

torment.

Besides those insects of a disreputable name1 which, under more than one form, inhabit his person externally; and those that, burying themselves in his flesh, annoy him and produce cutaneous diseases, a whole host of others attack him internally, and sometimes fatally. Can we believe that man, in his pristine state of glory, and beauty, and dignity, could be the receptacle and the prey of these unclean and disgusting creatures? This is surely altogether incredible, I had almost said impossible. And we must either believe, with Le Clerc and Bonnet, that all those worms now infesting our intestines existed in Adam before his fall, only under the form of eggs, which did not hatch till after that sad event or that these eggs were dispersed in the air, in the water, and in various aliments, and so were ready to hatch when they met with their destined habitation: or, as some parasites are found in the earth,3 or the water, as well as in the human species, that they are in general formed for living in different stations: 5 or, lastly, that they were created subsequently to the fall of Adam, not immediately or all at once, but when occasions called for such expressions of the divine displeasure.

4

With respect to the first of these hypotheses,

1 Pediculi.

3 Lumbricus.

2 Sarcoptes Scabiei, Pulex penetrans, &c. 4 Gordius aquaticus.

5 See Introd. to Ent. iv. 229.

it seems to me very improbable for this reason, that it supposes the first pair to have in them the germes of all these animal pests, which although, before the fall, they were restrained from germination, after that event, were left to the ordinary action of physical laws, so that then every one of these scourges must have inhabited them and preyed upon them. Fallen indeed they were from glory and grace, but who can think that all the accumulated evils that their sin introduced into the world fell with concentrated violence upon their own heads, that all the various ills that flesh is heir to were experienced by them in their own persons before they were divided, some to one and some to another, amongst their posterity? It is scarcely to be supposed that any single individual, from that time to this, was subject to the annoyance of every one of these animals, and it seems incredible that Adam and Eve had experience of them all.

That they had their existence originally either as germes or as perfect animals in the air, the earth, or the waters, and were taken in by man with his food, with respect to some species may, perhaps, be true. The earth-worm is often voided by children, and some other that infest animals are found in the water, but of those that are appropriated to man internally, none have as yet been found, except that just