A treatise on the geography and classification of animals / By William Swainson.

  • William Swainson
Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the geography and classification of animals / By William Swainson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/390 page 3
    dulge conjecture ; but when we attempt to penetrate the darkness of primitive ages, and pretend to trace the first causes of such things, we wander in regions from which human knowledge is excluded. He alone, that great First Cause, ‘* by whom all things were made that are made,” is alone master of this impenetrable secret? (3.) Let us now look to the animal world. Here we may see thousands of beings, endowed with powers of locomotion which have been utterly denied to man. The swallow, darting like an arrow through the air at the rate of sixty miles an hour, seems to mock the com- paratively snail-like pace of our swiftest vessels; the curlew runs rapidly on the ground, mounts on the breaking surge, or swiftly flies from one continent to another, thus traversing, with perfect ease, three ele-= ments, — the earth, the air, and the sea. Thousands, in short, of little tiny birds perform journies, every spring and autumn, any one of which, to us, would be the occupation of a year. Now the theoretical conclusion we should make, on considering these facts, would be, that animals, so peculiarly gifted with the powers of locomotion, would use it to wander in every clime, that they would spread their races in every region of the earth where food could be procured, or where they could enjoy a fit temperature. These deductions, theoretically, cannot be deemed otherwise than just. Yet they are diametrically opposed and contradicted by facts. ‘The swallow of England might reach America or China in as short a space of time as it would travel to Africa, and in either country would find food and warmth congenial to its nature; but it has been ap- pointed to pursue a certain course; and from that course, whether to the right or to the left, it never deviates. This is only one out of a thousand instances, to prove that the limits of every animal have been fixed by an Almighty fiat — “‘ Hither shalt thou come, but no further.” Man may do much with those animals which B 2
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3