HOMOLOGIES IN DISCONNECTED ANIMALS. 25 



the circumstance that he possesses those noble attributes, 

 without which, in their most exalted excellence and per- 

 fection, not one of these general traits of relationship, so 

 characteristic of the great types of the animal and vege- 

 table kingdoms, can be understood or even perceived. 

 How, then, could these relations have been devised, with- 

 out similar powers I If all these relations are almost be- 

 yond the reach of the mental powers of man, and if man 

 himself is part and parcel of the whole system, how could 

 this system have been called into existence, if there does 

 not exist One Supreme Intelligence as the Author of all 



SECTION V. 



CORRESPONDENCE IN THE DETAILS OF STRUCTURE IN ANIMALS 

 OTHERWISE ENTIRELY DISCONNECTED. 



During the first decade of this century, naturalists 

 began to study relations among animals, which had 

 escaped almost entirely the attention of earlier observers. 

 Though Aristotle already knew that the scales of fishes 



/ 



correspond to the feathers of birds, 1 it is but recently 

 that anatomists have discovered the close correspondence 

 which exists between all the parts of all animals belonging 

 to the same type, however different they may appear at 

 first sight. Not only is the wing of the bird identical in 

 its structure with the arm of man or the foreleg of a 

 quadruped, but it agrees quite as closely with the fin 

 of the whale or the pectoral fin of the fish ; and all 

 these together correspond in the same manner with their 



1 ARISTOTELES, Historia Animali- in Sect. 4, notes 1 and 2, and the 



um, Lib. i, Chap. 1, Sect. 4. & yap many other works, pamphlets, and 



(v opviGi Trrepbf, TOVTO ev l^Ovl tarl \eiris. papers quoted by them, which are too 



Consult also the authors referred to numerous to be mentioned here. 



