Читать книгу Peter Parley's Wonders of the Earth, Sea, and Sky онлайн

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You must have seen that the more convex magnifying glasses are, the more they magnify, and the nearer you must hold them to the object you are looking at. By this contrivance, the eye of the Icthyosaurus could be made at pleasure into a microscope, so as to see with wonderful quickness things which were quite close to it, by pushing it forward and rendering it more convex; or it could be made into a telescope like the eyes of some persons who are long-sighted, for seeing what is at a greater distance, by drawing it back.

In all these particulars you may see how the skill of man leads him to adopt the same plans to produce the same ends in the works of art, as God has adopted before him in the works of nature, without his being conscious of copying them; and this should remind you that man was created in the image of his Maker. If man had never made a carriage-spring, or a diagonal bracing, he would not have understood the structure of the jaw of the Icthyosaurus; and if he had never invented the telescope, he would not have been able to explain the construction of the eye.