Chapter XIII: Book I: Line 753

The color of animals is acquired partly from the food they eat, thro successive generations, and partly from the objects with which they are usually surrounded. Dr. Darwin has a curious note on this subject, in which he remarks on the advantages that insects and other small animals derive from their color, as a means of rendering them invisible to their more powerful enemies; who thus find it difficult to distinguish them from other objects where they reside. Some animals which inhabit cold countries turn white in winter, when the earth is covered with snow; such as the snowbird of the Alps. Others in snowy regions are habitually white; such as the white bear of Russia.

No. 10.

_A different cast the glowing zone demands,
In Paria's blooms, from Tombut's burning sands._

Book II. Line 97.

Paria is a fertile country near the river Orinoco; the only part of the continent of America that Columbus had seen. Tombut, in the same latitude, is the most sterile part of Africa. America embraces a greater compass of latitude by many degrees than the other continent; and yet its inhabitants present a much less variety in their physical and moral character. When shall we be able to account for this fact?

No. 11.

_Yet when the hordes to happy nations rise,
And earth by culture warms the genial skies_,