| CONSTITUTION OF THE INDIAN MIND. 258
that are to search for their food along the margins
of lakes and ponds are furnished with long wading
legs and near-seeing eyes ; while those appointed
to find and devour the bodies of dead animals,
wherever they may lie, over a wide extent of
country, have eyes endowed with a most astonish-
ing extent of vision, and wings of prodigious
strength to sustain them in the longest flights, and
tarry them up to the loftiest pinnacles of the
mountains.
MENTAL ADAPTATIONS.
This adaptation of the powers and faculties of
animals to the duties, so to speak, which they are
destined to perform in life, applies to their men-
tal qualities, as well as to those which are more
purely corporeal. A lamb, being intended to feed
on grass and flowers, is gentle in spirit, and is fur-
nished with an instinct which leads him to save
himself from danger by running away from his--.
The tiger, on the other hand, is endowed
with a degree of courage and of combative ardor
so great that we call it ferocity ; and this simply
because: he is to live by seizing and conquering a
and resisting prey. The fox, who is to
feed upon timid animals that have wings to fly
away from him, is made cunning, that he may be
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