227] Atkinson's _Siberia_, 472.

XI.

PARASITES.

Vast as is this round world on which we live, its surface is not nearly
large enough for all the living creatures which are ordained to inhabit
it. Multitudes of animals do not walk on the ground, or swim in the
waters, or fly in the air, but find the scene of their abode on or in
the bodies of other animals. Multitudes of plants do not grow out of the
soil, but attach themselves to other plants, and draw their sustenance
and support thence. Nay, there are parasites upon parasites, and this,
according to Hood, in an infinitely descending series.

"Great fleas have little fleas
Upon their backs to bite 'em;
And little fleas have lesser fleas;
And so _ad infinitum_."

Perhaps the poet's imagination ran a little ahead of his science here;
but the idea of an _infinite_ succession of parasites, like nests of
pill-boxes, is surely a funny one. There is nothing funny, however, in
the thought "that even man," who was made in the image of God, "bears
about in his vital organs various forms of loathsome creatures, which
riot on his fluids, and consume the very substance of his tissues while
ensconced where no efforts of his can dislodge them, no application
destroy them. So it is; and few physical facts are better calculated to
humble man, and stain the pride of his glory, than to feel that he may
at any moment be nourishing a horrid tape-worm in his alimentary canal,
or that his muscles may be filled with millions of microscopic
_trichinae_.

I will not dwell on these; though, if I were writing a book of pure
science, there is a wondrous array of facts of the most striking and
interesting character, connected with the structure, the metamorphoses,
and the habits, of the Entozoic Worms, which I might present to my
readers. It is more pleasant to consider other facts, perhaps not less
marvellous, which, as they do not come quite so home to our personal
feelings, will not excite horror and disgust in our minds.

The _economy_ of creation is remarkable. He who, by His divine
manipulation converted five loaves and two small fishes into a hearty
meal for five thousand men, besides women and children, and who could,
with the same ease have made them a hundred times as much, said, when
the meal was over, "Gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost." And,
when He spread the earth with life, though His resources were infinite,
He ordained th