l which is
characteristic of him, seems capable of multiplying indefinitely,
because his intelligence and his resources secure him from seeing
his increase arrested by the voracity of any animals. He exercises
over them such a supremacy that, instead of fearing the larger and
stronger races of animals, he is thus rather capable of destroying
them, and he continually checks their increase.

"But nature has given him numerous passions, which, unfortunately,
developing with his intelligence, thus place a great obstacle to
the extreme multiplication of the individuals of his species.

"Indeed, it seems as if man had taken it upon himself unceasingly to
reduce the number of his fellow-creatures; for never, I do not
hesitate to say, will the earth be covered with the population that
it could maintain. Several of its habitable parts would always be
alternately very sparsely populated, although the time for these
alternate changes would be to us measureless.

"Thus by these wise precautions everything is preserved in the
established order; the changes and perpetual renewals which are
observable in this order are maintained within limits over which
they cannot pass; the races of living beings all subsist in spite of
their variations; the progress acquired in the improvement of the
organization is not lost; everything which appears to be disordered,
overturned, anomalous, reenters unceasingly into the general order,
and even cooeperates with it; and especially and always the will of
the sublime Author of nature and of all existing things is
invariably executed" (pp. 98-101).

In the sixth chapter the author treats of the degradation and
simplification of the structure from one end to the other of the animal
series, proceeding, as he says, inversely to the general order of
nature, from the compound to the more simple. Why he thus works out this
idea of a general degradation is not very apparent, since it is out of
tune with his views, so often elsewhere expressed, of a progressive
evolution from the simple to the complex, and to his own classification
of the animal kingdom, beginning as it does with the simplest forms and
ending with man. Perhaps, however, he temporarily adopts the prevailing
method of beginning with the highest forms in order to bring out
clearly the successive steps in inferiority or degradation presented in
descending the animal scale.

We will glean some