270 Mr. Newport on the Class Myriapoda, Order Chilopoda, 



nutrition as not so peculiarly characteristic of animal life as necessarily to be 

 adopted as the basis of arrangement ; and I rather prefer, with De Blainville 

 and some others, to take, in the arrangement of the Invertebrata, those parts 

 of the body which seem more especially to distinguish the animal from the 

 vegetable creation, and which have obtained the preference in the classifica- 

 tion of the Vertebrata, viz. the skeleton and organs of locomotion, together 

 with the nervous system, that peculiar structure by which the animal func- 

 tions are governed, and the being elevated by its greater instinct or intelli- 

 gence. The organs of nutrition certainly are more of a vegetative than of a 

 truly animal character, and as compared with those by which the functions of 

 all the organs of the body are excited and controlled and the acts of the being 

 itself are regulated, seem to deserve but secondary consideration in any attempt 

 to assign to that being its proper position in the scale of creation. Every na- 

 turalist is aware that we are unable satisfactorily to trace a direct continuity of 

 form or structure from the lowest of one class to the most perfect of that next 

 below it ; because in each class there is a gradual convergence to some rudimen- 

 tary condition, in which the animal is of very inferior grade, and its principal 

 organs are those of the vegetative character. This, as is well known, is in a 

 marked degree the case even in some of the Vertebrata, as in Fishes, in which 

 there is a gradual transition from the perfect cartilaginous species, the Stur- 

 geons, Sharks and Rays, to the imperfect vermiform Lampreys and Lancelet, 

 of which last naturalists at first doubted whether it belonged even to the Verte- 

 brata, or whether it was not one of the Mollusca or the Vermes. In like manner 

 the Mollusca, which, in consequence of their highly developed organs of nu- 

 trition, were placed by Cuvier at the head of the Invertebrata, pass to the 

 Salpce and Pyrosomce, some of the most imperfectly organized beings. These 

 facts have induced me to pay less consideration to what otherwise might be 

 regarded as objections to the arrangement I am about to propose. On this 

 account I have adopted the skeleton and organs of locomotion, together with 

 the nervous system, as the foundation of an arrangement, and as affording the 

 most distinctive marks of the higher development of animals. I propose to 

 place the subk.ngdom Articulata at the head of the Invertebrata, and, follow- 

 ing m the steps of our distinguished countrymen Kirby and Spence, to com- 

 mence with the Hexa P ods, the true Insects, and after these the Octopods, the 



