one of the most wonderful of them all, which singularly exemplifies those attributes.

At first it might be imagined, that, like the youths just alluded to, this was a monstrous production of nature; but Dr. Nordmann relates that he has found thirty specimens, precisely agreeing with each other, all in a similar situation, attached namely, to the gills of the fish mentioned above, and he never found it single, or in any other situation: there can, therefore, remain no doubt on the subject. In order to find these animals, it is necessary to examine all the leaves of the gills separately under water, or to separate the lesser whitish ones with a pointed instrument, when the animal may be detected by its movements: its station is between the leaves or folds of the inner gills.

This singular creature consists of two lobes, or arms, above the point of union, and two below it. The upper pair are the longest and most divergent: they are somewhat lance-shaped, and at the extremity of each, on the under side, is a mouth, with the sucker, divided by a fleshy transverse septum; by means of these suckers, the mouths of this two-bodied monster are kept steady, so as to suck without intermission. The orifice of the mouth is large, and, when fully open, triangular: there is also an organ within the gullet which seems analogous to a tongue, resembling the sucking organ of the pseudo-leech. The alimentary canal branches out on both sides into numerous blind vessels. The whole of this canal, like the creature itself, is cruciform. The circulation of the blood is very visible: each half of the animal has on both sides two principal blood vessels, which are every where of almost equal diameter, without any enlargement; in the two exterior ones the blood runs upwards, and in the two interior ones downwards, and its motion is extremely rapid. The generative organs and ovaries are also double. The feces, as in the polypes and other lower animals, pass out at the mouth. The two lowest lobes are somewhat club-shaped, or thickest at the extremity, towards which, in each, are two oval plates, or disks, containing four oblong acetabula, or suckers: the bodies below the plates terminate in a triangular piece, or flapper. In some of their movements it seems as if the two upper lobes had different wills, since sometimes one appears inclined to move to the right, and the other to the left, or one to move and the other to remain at rest; but the lower lobes always move simultaneously, either inwardly or outwardly.

The animals that are found attached to the gills of other fishes are usually at their lower extremity furnished with sev

eral suckers; thus one genus1 infesting the gills of the sun' and sword fishes has three; and another, found in those of the tunny,3 has six, whence Cuvier would rather call it Hexastoma. But these are nothing to those of our Diplozoon, which, on the four disks just named, has no less than sixteen suckers, four on each disk." Under a strong magnifier, these suckers when opened, for they can open and shut, exhibit a complex machinery of hooks and other parts, by which their Creator has enabled them to take firm hold of the gills, so as not to be unfixed by their constant motion in respiration, especially when we consider their structure and substance. A further proof of this design is furnished by the form of the animal itself, for the body being divided upwards and downwards into two diverging lobes, it can fix itself at each extremity more firmly than if it was single, not only by having more points of attachment, but also by the divergement of its lobes, especially the lower ones. When a man wishes to stand as firmly and steadily as possible, he separates his legs so as to form a certain angle: and this is what its Creator has fitted our animal to do; and so by all these means it maintains its station on the lubricous, multifid, and constantly moving organs, from which it is commissioned to suck the blood. Probably, these Diplozoons may be of the same use to the fishes they infest, as the horse-flies are to the animal from which they take their name.

Dr. Nordmann found this creature could exist submerged for three days, during which period its movements became gradually more feeble. One specimen, which he fed twice a day with fresh fishes' blood, lived nine days in water, and appeared to die at last from being too much handled.

What can more evidently illustrate both the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Deity than this most extraordinary animal? How nicely is it formed in every respect, to fulfil the functions given in charge to it! How admirably is it secured against the mischances to which its singular situation exposes it! When we see so much art and skill put in action to adapt such seemingly insignificant creatures, and so low in the scale of creation, to the circumstances in which they are placed; so many contrivances, exhibiting the deepest intellect, taking the most comprehensive surveys of every possible contingency, and

1 Tristoma.

4 Polystoma.

2 Mola.

5 Scomber Thynnus.

3 Xiphias.

6 Even this is nothing to those of a genus infesting some Cephalopods Hectocotyle, the different species of which have from sixty to more than one hundred suckers, whence their name.

rearing a structure calculated to stand against every pressure upon it, we must feel convinced that the attention of the Creator is directed to every individual in existence, whether great or small, high or low, spiritual or material. To every thing that he created he gave a law, the law of its nature; a law emanating from Him, enforced by the physical powers acting upon certain structures, and producing certain necessary effects under His constant superintendence, direction, and action, on and by those powers.

The intestinal worms, as well as some other parasitic animals, are many of them so remarkable for the situation in which we discover them, that their transport to the spot where they are to exercise their function seems almost miraculous. How a mite should find its way into the human brain seems past our conjecture. We cannot clearly ascertain by what means the eye-worms are conducted to their assigned station, nor how the various species of tape-worm invariably select each its proper pabulum; the same holds good with regard to the cyst-worms, or hydatids. Do they, like the Infernal Fury, as fabled by Linné, fall from heaven upon the earth and waters, and instantly bury themselves in their allotted animals? But to speak soberly, all we can safely affirm is, that He who decreed the end decrees the means, and these probably are physical ones under his direction. He it is who guides the punitive animals that he employs to their several stations. Is there not-an omnipresent Deity, whose action is incessant, and coextensive with his presence? He it is that, as the Prophet speaks, causeth it to rain upon one city, and not to rain upon another city; that employs his instruments, both of benediction and punishment, according to his will. It is He who, by secret paths, and by means that mock our researches, conducts to their assigned station the animals in question. Every power of nature, every physical agent, is at His disposal. His is the earthquake and the volcano; the lightning of the thunder, the fire-damp of the mine; the overwhelming violence of the water flood; the the window storm and tempest: His is the widewasting sword, that destroys myriads, and the pestilence that walketh in darkness, and carries off millions; and He gives his commission to all his scourges against individuals as well as against nations, which they unconsciously execute and cannot exceed, for He saith to them, as to the raging sea, Hitherto shall ye come and no farther, and here shall the work of destruction cease.

1 Cysticercus.

2 Furia infernalis. L

We have a remarkable instance of this special guidance and employment of natural objects in the case of the prophet Jonah, when he disobeyed the word of the Lord. In the first place God sent out a great wind into the sea; in the next he prepared a great fish to swallow him alive when he should be cast overboard, and at the Lord's command the same animal cast him upon the dry land. Next God prepared a gourd for a shadow against the heat; after that he prepared a worm which destroyed the gourd; and in the last place he prepared a silent east wind, or a heat, like the sirocco, without sound. In all these cases the object employed was a physical object, under the immediate direction of the Deity. The wind, the fish, the gourd, the worm, the heat, were not new creations, but well known objects, acted upon to take a particular direction, so as to produce particular events.

By what is here said, I by no means assert the doctrine of inevitable fate, for then there would be no use in the employment of means of prevention. Sir H. Davy's safety-lamp would not preserve the life of the miner, nor Dr. Franklin's conductor disarm the thunder cloud; and all the other means that, non sine Deo, have been invented to render harmless the action of the physical powers under certain circumstances; but I would merely assert that constant superintendence of the Deity over the world that he has created, and Who upholdeth all things by the word of his power, which we call Providence, by which, in general as well as individually, his will has full accomplishment; and every substance or being, whether animate or inanimate, takes the station which he has assigned to it. This is no miraculous interference out of the general course of nature, but the adaptation of that course to answer the wise putposes of Providence, which selects individuals, and distinguishes them from other individuals by events, as to this world, seemingly prosperous or adverse, but which have their ultimate reference to the spiritual world, and to their final destiny. As God willeth not that any should perish, so he withholdeth not from any the means, that, if duly used and improved, will be sufficient for his salvation; and in all his dealings with mankind he hath this great and merciful object in view.

APPENDIX. NOTES.

NOTE 1, p. 2.-The life and motion. The word life may perhaps here be used, in some sense, improperly; but the original motion caused by the agency of the Spirit, and followed by Light and Expansion, may be called the birth, or beginning, of the life of the world, which followed, under the Divine Guidance, as a consequence of it. I speak only of animal life, not of spiritual, which resulted from the immediate insufflation, if I may so use the term, of the Deity himself.1

I may here be permitted to observe that the Mosaic account of the beginning of creation, especially of the incubation of the Holy Spirit and its consequences, has been transplanted, by many oriental and occidental nations, into their cosmogonies. The circumstances and consequences of it have, in most cases, been altered from their original simplicity; and, in some, it has been assumed as a foundation, on which an Atheistic Philosophy has been erected amongst the Greeks. But when we consider attentively the terms in which these dogmata are delivered, and recollect that the Gods of the Greeks and Romans, especially him who was invocated as the father of gods and men, were really the great elementary powers which under God govern the universe-whence Homer describer him as αιθερα ναιων, and calls him Ζευς νεφεληγερέτης, and Ennius appeals to him in these terms,

Aspice hoc sublime candens quem invocant omnes
Jovem.

And to live abroad is to live sub Jove, sub Dio. It is evident that these Gods were subsequent to Chaos, and sprung from that motion of the Spirit which first gave birth to this world as we behold it; besides these, the sun, moon, planets, earth, ocean, &c., made part of the catalogue of false Gods whom the Heathens worshipped and served instead of the Creator. These powers, which were originally reverenced as symbols

1 Genes. ii, 7, comp. John, xx. 22.