PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC ARRANGEMENT. 119 



laxation, inculcates in so serene and pleasing a manner 

 such profound veneration and reverence. 



To acquire the prospect of a possibility to unravel the 

 exuberant profusion of the natural objects surrounding 

 us, successive students of nature have endeavoured to 

 systematize the seeming confusion in which her riches 

 are spread about. Like has been brought to like, and 

 gradation made to succeed gradation. Resemblances 

 have been combined and disparities disjoined, until the 

 labour of centuries has constructed of all the natural 

 objects within the ken of man a vast and towering edifice, 

 whose basis is seated at the lowest substructure of the 

 earth which research has yet reached, but whose head 

 ascends high into the empyrean. 



All things have been collected, and arranged, and 

 classed. Method has endeavoured to give them suc- 

 cession according to an assumed subordination. The 

 labour of the great minds which framed the large 

 theories of this vast branch of human knowledge, has 

 permitted men of lesser powers of combination to ab- 

 stract parts for special examination and investigation. 



The study of natural science has progressively reached 

 an extraordinary development, spreading in every direc- 

 tion its innumerable tentacula; to which the perfection 

 of the telescope and of the microscope have still further 

 added by the discovery of new worlds of wonder. 



Just as language is systematized and made easier by 

 grammar methodizing its co-ordinates and their rela- 

 tions, so natural science arranges its subjects into sub- 

 divisions of which genera and species are the lowest 

 terms. The higher and more complicated are of many 

 denominations, which, notwithstanding, have for their 

 chief purpose the simplification of the survey by assisting 



