BUFFON FULLER QUOTATIONS. 155 



the anatomy of man, and that taking some other animal 

 we find always the same ultimate plan of organization, 

 the same senses, the same viscera, the same bones, the 

 same flesh, the same movements of the fluids, the same 

 play and action of the solids ; he would find all of them 

 with a heart, veins, arteries, in all the same organs of 

 circulation, respiration, digestion, nutrition, secretion; 

 in all of them a solid frame, composed of pieces put 

 together in nearly the same manner ; and he would find 

 this system always the same, from man to the ape, from 

 the ape to the quadrupeds, from the quadrupeds to the 

 cetacea, birds, fishes, reptiles ; this system or plan then, 

 I say, if firmly laid hold of and comprehended by the 

 human mind, is a true copy of nature ; it is the simplest 

 and most general point of view from which we can con- 

 sider her, and if we extend our view, and go on from 

 what lives to what vegetates, we may see this plan 

 which originally did but vary almost imperceptibly 

 change its scope and descend gradually from reptiles 

 to insects, from insects to worms, from worms to zoo- 

 phytes, from zoophytes to plants, and yet keeping ever 

 the same fundamental unity in spite of differences of 

 detail, insomuch that nutrition, development, and re- 

 production remain the common traits of all organic 

 bodies ; traits eternally essential and divinely implanted ; 

 which time, far from effacing or destroying, does but 

 make plainer and plainer continually." 



This is the writer who can see nothing in common 

 between the horse and the zebra except that each lias 

 a solid hoof.* He continues : 



" If from this grand tableau of resemblances, in 

 * See p. 80 of this volume. 



