I must confess I am infinitely delighted with those Speculations of Nature which are to be made in a Country-Life; and as my Reading has very much lain among Books of natural History, I cannot forbear recollecting upon this Occasion the several Remarks which I have met with in Authors, and comparing them with what falls under my own Observation: The Arguments for Providence drawn from the natural History of Animals being in my Opinion demonstrative.
The Make of every Kind of Animal is different from that of every other Kind; and yet there is not the least Turn in the Muscles or Twist in the Fibres of any one, which does not render them more proper for that particular Animal's Way of Life than any other Cast or Texture of them would have been.
The most violent Appetites in all Creatures are
Lust
and
Hunger
: The first is a perpetual Call upon them to propagate their Kind; the latter to preserve themselves.
It is astonishing to consider the different Degrees of Care that descend from the Parent to the Young, so far as is absolutely necessary for the leaving a Posterity.
Creatures cast their Eggs as Chance directs them, and think of them no farther, as Insects and several Kinds of Fish: Others, of a nicer Frame, find out proper Beds to