Page:Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, 1837, volume 1.djvu/89

 Rh that these are endowed with dispositions and faculties which adapt them in a peculiar degree for domestication: but their number bears an extremely small proportion to the total amount of existing species; and with regard to the lower classes of animals, there are but very few among their almost countless multitudes, that minister either to the wants or luxuries of the human race. Even could it be proved that all existing species are serviceable to man, no such inference could be drawn with respect to those numerous extinct animals which Geology shows to have ceased to live, long before our race appeared upon the earth. It is surely more consistent with sound philosophy, and with all the information that is vouchsafed to us respecting the attributes of the Deity, to consider each animal as having been created first for its own sake, to receive its portion of that enjoyment which the Universal Parent is pleased to impart to each creature that has life; and secondly, to bear its share in the maintenance of the general system of co-ordinate relations, whereby all families of living beings are reciprocally subservient to the use and benefit of one another. Under this head only can we include their relations to man; forming, as he does, but a small, although it be the most noble and exalted part, of that vast system of universal life, with which it hath pleased the Creator to animate the surface of the globe.

"More than three-fifths of the earth's surface," says Mr. Bakewell, "are covered by the ocean; and if from the remaining part we deduct the space occupied by polar ice and eternal snow, by sandy deserts, sterile mountains, marshes, rivers and lakes, the habitable portion will scarcely exceed one-fifth of the whole of the globe. Nor have we reason to believe that at any former period the dominion of man over the earth was more extensive than at present. The remaining four-fifths of our globe, though untenanted