49 



or reptilian character in that paradoxical creature, the 

 Lepidosiren, or]Mud-fish, of Western Africa. No anatomist 

 now, after examining simply the red corpuscles of the 

 "Whale and Ornithorhynchus, could for a moment think of 

 degrading the one to a fish, or the other to a bird ; nor, observ- 

 ing the great similarity of these corpuscles in birds, fail 

 to perceive in this single fact an exponent of the remarkable 

 uniformity of the general organization of this class. 



In conclusion, we are led back to the grand declaration of 

 our illustrious countryman, Harvey ; that the blood is the 

 primogenial part of the body, where the Lares and Penates 

 of Life are enshrined— the immediate and chief seat of the 

 vegetative faculties of the animal— the first part to live and 

 the last to die of this our wondrous microcosm. I may 

 add, too, as the child is more worthy than the cradle, so is 

 the blood more worthy than the parts that merely contain 

 or defend it, and that the Eed Corpuscles have now been 

 proved to occupy a most eminent place in the organic func- 

 tions of the vertebrate animal. 



And yet as to these researches we are often still pestered 

 about " cui bono ?" more " analogies" and "homologies f" 

 wider "generalizations ? " As if the uninquiring mind can 

 expect to see the good of anything beyond its own know- 

 ledge; as if the study of difference, now so saJly neglected 

 in anatomy, as Lord Bacon, too, complained was the case 

 in his time, were not as important and more difficult than 

 that of resemblance ; and as if, of late years, in the present 

 state of science, " knowing only in part," we have not 

 had some rather too sweeping generalizations— a sort of 

 new Ago of Reason : — 



" No end, in wand'ring mazes lost : 



• ••••» 



Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy." 



