NATURAL HISTORY. 
animals it contains and their modes of growth and 
propagation. 
This discovery of nature being animated im a por- 
tion of her works previously unsuspected, opened 
up, as he eloquentiy observes, ‘‘new scenes of 
wonder and astonishment in enabling us to con- 
template how variously, and how extensively, life is 
distributed thro’ the universe of things.”’ 
We have thus ranged thro’ the scale of vitality 
from its highest to its lowest type—in all of which 
there still remains ample room for study and obser- 
vation—for the discovery of new modificaticns of 
organizationand facts relative to the known ones— 
fur the correction of much that is uncertain or 
erroneous—and fer the purpose of blending facts now 
unconnected or apparently contradictory into more 
generaland harmonious views.—One great principle 
we may consider as firmly established,—that a 
more or less perfect and complicated organic strue- 
ture, is always found in correspondence with the 
greater or less relative size and perfection of the 
nerves.—The superiority of one animal to another 
in the scale of being, 1s to be traced to the superior- 
ity of its nervous system; thus in the radiated 
animals, we find the simplest and smallest apparatus 
compatable with existence and feeling—in the next 
a mere nervous cord or ring—then an obvious 
series of ganglhions—and as we advance higher in 
the scale, we find successively developed—a regular 
