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Show 1S4 ORIGIN OF SOCIETY. CANTO IV., The crawling crocodiles. beneath that move, Arrest with rising jaw the tribes above; With monstrous gape sepulchral whales devour Shoals at a gulp, a million in an hour. -Air, earth, and ocean, to astonish' d day One scene of blood, one mighty tomb display! From l-Iunger's arm the shafts of Death are hurl'd, And one great Slaughter-house the warring world! 60 so far over his mouth, that he is necessitated to turn upon his back, when he takes fish that swim over him, and hence seems peculiarly . formed to catch those that swim under him. The crazvling crocodiles, 1. 59. As this animal lives chiefly at the bottom of the rivers, which he frequents, he has the power of openino · the upper jaw as well as the under one, and thus ,.,.,ith greater facb ility catches the fish or water-fowl which swim over 1' 11m. One great slaughter-house, I. 66. As vegetables are an inferior order of animals fixed to the soil; and as the locomotive animals prey upon them, or upon each other; the world 111.ay indeed be said to be one great slaughter-house. As the digested food of vegetables con ists principally of sugar, and from this is produced again their mucilage, starch, and oil, and since animals are sustained by these vegetable productions, it would seem that the sugar-making process carried on in vegetable vessels was the great source oflife to all organized beings. And that if our improved chemistry should ever discover the art of making sugar from fossile or aerial matter without the assistance of vegetation, food for animals would then become as plentiful as water, and they might live upon the earth without preying on each other, as CANTO IV. OF GOOD AND EVIL. " THE brow of Man erect, with thought elate, Ducks to the mandate of resistless fate· ' Nor Love retains hin1, nor can Virtue save Her sages, saints, or heroes from the grave. While cold and hunger by defect oppress, Repletion, heat, and labour by excess, 135 70 thick as blades of grass, with no restraint to their numbers but the want of local room. It would seem that roots fixefl in the earth and leaves innumerable waving in the air were necessary for the decomposition of water and air, and the conversion of them into saccharine matter, which would have been not only cumberous but totally incompatible with the loco· moti?n of a~imal bodies. For how could a man or quadruped have ~arned on lus head or bade a forest of leaves, or have had long branchmg lacteal or absorbent vessels terminating in the earth? Animals therefore subsist on vegetables; that is they take the matter so pre· pared, and have organs to prepare it further for the purposes of higher animation and greater sensibility. 1Vhile cold and hunger, 1. 71. Those parts of our system, which are in health excited into perpetual action, give us pain, when they are not excited into action: thus when the hands are for a time imm rsed in snow, an inaction of the cutaneous capillaries is iuduced, as is seen from the paleness of the skin, which is attended with the pain of coldne s. So the pain of hunger i~ probably produced by the inaction of the muscular fibres of the stomach fi·om the want of tlle stim u1us of food. Thus those, who have used much voluntary exertion in their early years, and have continued to do so, till the decline of life commences, .if they then lay aside their employment, whether that of a minister of state, a general of an army, or a merchant, or manufacturer |