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science." Until they have been brought under some arrangement 

 by which we can point ont and riglitly explain the several relation- 

 ships between them, they are like raw material in the arts, as yet 

 unworked up or fit for use. They add nothing to our scientific 

 knowledge. Science consists in a due subordination of all natural 

 phenomena ta laws, rising continually to still higher generalizations 

 until every observed fact shall find its place in the system. 



Now this reasoning is not inapplicable to the objects in a 

 Museum, collected, as we may suppose, for the advancement of the 

 science of Natural History. Viewed apart from its congeners, a 

 single specimen or species tells us nothing with respect to its 

 affinities, its place in the creation, its mode of subsistence, or to 

 what degree it is dependent for its support upon other species ; 

 these latter perhaps being themselves in like manner linked with 

 others again, which play a more or less direct part in the economy 

 of their life. If we would know all about an animal, Ave must set- 

 it in connection with a rightly-ordered series of other animals, 

 some of which supply it with food, others Avith a habitation, "f 

 with the materials with which it constructs its own habitation ; — 

 we must have before us its friends and its enemies, the fonnei 

 indirectly tending to its preservation, the latter either ruthlessly 

 attacking it from without, or inwardly consuming its vitals by 

 concealed parasitism. And we only get a clear view and under- 

 standing of the ways and works of nature, when we see the mutual 

 bearing in this way which one gi'oup of animals has upon another, 

 and the marvellous balance, which notwithstanding the complexity 

 of the whole system, is still so surely maintained, that it is only 

 in the most gradual manner that particular species die out from 

 time to time, retiring from the struggle of life when no longer 

 wanted for the general good, and giving place to others adapted 

 to the altered conditions of things under which their predecessors 

 could no longer exist. Perhaps no plan for a Museum, or con- 

 sidered as part of its plan, would be more interesting or instructive, 

 where practicable, than to get together in separate cases all that 



