flow from slimy tongues.

_Temple of Nature,_ c. 1.

The peculiarities of the shapes of animals, which distinguished them
from each other, he supposes to have been gradually formed by these same
irritable fibres, and to have been varied by reproduction. As to the
faculties of sensation, volition, and association, they come in
afterwards as matters of course, and in a manner so easy and natural,
that the only wonder is, what had kept them waiting so long. He
mentions, with something like approbation, the hypothesis of Buffon and
Helvetius, who, as he tells us, seem to imagine, that mankind arose from
one family of monkeys, on the banks of the Mediterranean, who
accidentally had learned to use the adductor pollicis, or that strong
muscle which constitutes the ball of the thumb and draws the point of it
to meet the points of the fingers, which common monkeys do not; and that
this muscle gradually increased in size, strength and activity, in
successive generations; and that, by this improved use of the sense of
the touch, monkeys acquired clear ideas, and gradually became men.

To this he gravely adds, that perhaps all the productions of nature are
in their progress to greater perfection! an idea countenanced by modern
discoveries and deductions concerning the progressive formation of the
solid parts of this terraqueous globe, and consonant of the dignity of
the Creator.

His description of the way in which clear ideas were acquired is not
much improved when he puts it into verse.

Nerved with fine touch above the bestial throngs,
The hand, first gift of Heaven! to man belongs:
Untipt with claws, the circling fingers close,
With rival points the bending thumbs oppose,
Trace the nice lines of form with sense refined,
And clear ideas charm the thinking mind.

_Temple of Nature_, c. 3.

He tells us of a naturalist who had found out a shorter cut to the
production of animal life, who thought it not impossible that the first
insects were the anthers and stigmas of flowers, which had by some means
loosened themselves, from their parent plant, and that other insects in
process of time had been formed from these; some acquiring wings, others
fins, and others claws, from their ceaseless efforts to procure food, or
to secure themselves from injury. What hindered but these insects might
have acquired hands, and by those means clear ideas also, is not
explained to us.

As great improvements, however, have ce