Page:Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, 1837, volume 1.djvu/150

 146 mechanical contrivances, which are now distributed among three distinct classes of the animal kingdom. If; for the purpose of producing vertical movements in the water, the sternum of the living Ornithorhynchus assumes forms and combinations that occur but in one other genus of Mammalia, they are the same that co-existed in the sternum of the Ichthyosaurus of the ancient world; and thus, at points of time, separated from each other by the intervention of incalculable ages, we find an identity of objects effected by instruments so similar, as to leave no doubt of the unity of the design in which they all originated.

It was a necessary and peculiar function in the economy of the fish-like Lizard of the ancient seas, to ascend continually to the surface of the water in order to breathe air, and to descend again in search of food; it is a no less peculiar function in the Duck-billed Ornithorhynchus of our own days, to perform a series of similar movements in the lakes and rivers of New Holland.

The introduction to these animals, of such aberrations from the type of their respective orders to accommodate deviations from the usual habits of these orders, exhibits a union of compensative contrivances, so similar in their relations, so identical in their objects, and so perfect in the adaptation of each subordinate part, to the harmony and perfection of the whole; that we cannot but recognise throughout them all, the workings of one and the same eternal principle of Wisdom and Intelligence, presiding from first to last over the total fabric of Creation.