SUCCESSION AND STANDING OF ANIMALS. 167 



manifestations of a thought, expressed at different times 

 in forms ever new, and yet tending to the same end, 

 onwards to the coming of Man, whose advent is already 

 prophesied in the first appearance of the earliest Fishes ! 



The relative standing of plants presents a somewhat 

 different character from that of animals. Their great 

 types are not built upon plans of structure so strictly 

 different ; they exhibit, therefore, a more uniform gra- 

 dation, from their lowest to their highest types, which 

 are not personified in one highest plant, as the highest 

 animals are in Man. 



Again, Zoology is more advanced respecting the limi- 

 tation of the most comprehensive general divisions than 

 Botany, while Botany is in advance respecting the limi- 

 tation and characteristics of families and genera. There 

 is, on that account, more diversity of opinion among 

 botanists respecting the number and the relative rank of 

 the primary divisions of the vegetable kingdom, than 

 among zoologists respecting the great branches of the 

 animal kingdom. While most writers 1 agree in admit- 

 ting among plants such primary groups as Acotyledones, 

 Monocotyledones, and Dicotyledones, under these or 

 other names, others would separate the Gymnosperms 

 from the Dicotyledones. 2 



It appears to me that this point in the classification of 

 the living plants cannot be fully understood without a 

 thorough acquaintance with the fossils and their distri- 

 bution in the successive geological formations, and that 

 this case exhibits one of the most striking examples of 

 the influence classification may have upon our appreci- 

 ation of the gradation of organized beings in the course of 

 time. As long as the Gymnosperms stand among the Dico- 

 tyledones, no relation can be traced between the relative 



1 GOPPEIIT, etc., (|. a., p. 141. - AD. BBOGiriART,ete.,q.a.,p.l41. 



