FUNDAMENTAL RELATIONS OF ANIMALS 109 



expressed in such harmonious proportions that every link appears 

 necessary to the full comprehension of its meaning; and yet so in- 

 dependent and perfect in itself, that it might be mistaken for a com- 

 plete whole; and again, so intimately connected with the preceding 

 and following members of the series, that one might be viewed as 

 flowing out of the other. What is universally acknowledged as char- 

 acteristic of the highest conceptions of genius is here displayed in a 

 fulness, a richness, a magnificence, an amplitude, a perfection of de- 

 tails, a complication of relations, which baffle our skill and our most 

 persevering efforts to appreciate all its beauties. Who can look upon 

 such series, coinciding to such an extent, and not read in them the 

 successive manifestations of a thought, expressed at different times, 

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

 coming of Man, whose advent is already prophesied in the first ap- 

 pearance of the earliest Fishes! 



The relative standing of plants presents a somewhat different char- 

 acter from that of animals. Their great types are not built upon so 

 strictly different plans of structure; they exhibit, therefore, a more 

 uniform gradation 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 limitation of the 

 most comprehensive general divisions than Botany, while Botany is 

 in advance respecting the limitation 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 agree in admitting among plants such primary groups as 

 Acotyledones, Monocotyledones, and Dicotyledones under these or 

 other names, others would separate the Gymnosperms from the 

 Dicotyledones. 



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 distribution in the successive QreoloCTical 

 formations, and that this case exhibits one of the most striking ex- 

 amples of the influence classification may have upon our appreciation 

 of the gradation of organized beings in the course of time. As long as 



