most hungry you will have a long hour and a half to wait for dinner, and when most fatigued you will have still a "guide long bittock" to travel. On the contrary, this vis medicatrix is never more provident than when accident takes us by surprise. If a grain of sand fall upon the eye, a gush of tears is instantly discharged which washes away the offending body; if any extraneous substance be received into the windpipe, violent coughing ensues and ejects it; if any dangerous poison be taken into the stomach, it will most likely be thrown out again by vomiting. If a man lose the sight of one eye, or the hearing of one ear, the sense of the remaining one will become much more acute; people born deaf and dumb have generally remarkably good eyesight, and the senses of hearing, touching, tasting and smelling of the blind, strike us with astonishment at their perfection.
Nature is a good surgeon as well as a good physician, and will amputate a limb, or unite a fracture, or salve a wound, or lose a bleeding vessel with very creditable skill. She even goes far beyond physic and surgery, for if an animal lose a member on which it is dependent for its existence, she now and then supplies a new one; a new claw to the lobster, a new tad to the lizard, new teeth to the alligator, new claws to the leopard. We cannot make a stumble without being conscious of her efforts to avert a fall; and if we do
