360 Professoi' Connell on the 



In surveying the works of creation, one of the principles 

 which strikes us most forcibly is unity of design, a character 

 wliich we naturally look for in the workmanship of a great 

 First Cause. In the animal and vegetable kingdoms, we ob- 

 serve a uniformity of plan everywhere exhibited in the struc- 

 ture of the various organs of the several classes and indivi- 

 duals of those kingdoms; and we are almost always able to 

 fix on some type applicable to each family or each set of organs. 

 The degree of perfection, however, in which individual struc- 

 tures reach this type, differs much in different instances ; and 

 we usually can trace a more or less regular progression in the 

 approaches to the standard. At the one extremity of such a 

 series we notice little deviation from the model, and at the 

 other, we not unfrequently observe so gi'eat an apparent dis- 

 conformity, that the resemblance is only remote. To this lat- 

 ter class of cases belong such organs as are called rudiment- 

 ary by physiologists, in which some particular structure is 

 incompletely developed, and of which we should hardly be 

 able to understand the purpose, did not more extended obser- 

 vation enable us to perceive, that it forms the extremity of a 

 series of connected organs, modelled upon a common type, which 

 they resemble, to a variable extent, in structure and functions. 



Although Nature generally employs only one set of organs in 

 the same individual for any given purpose, yet we occasionally 

 observe, particularly where a change occurs in the condition of 

 the individual, that the organs applicable to some common pur- 

 pose in the different states co-exist, at least, during certain 

 periods, so that we then find more than one set applicable to 

 such common object. In such a case, however, those organs 

 naturally belonging to the new condition will be reckoned the 

 proper and peculiar appendage, whilst the others will be view- 

 ed as adventitious and imperfect, with reference to the new 

 state. 



In the mineral kingdom there are, of course, no organs, but 

 we find, in most instances, a structure or arrangement of par- 

 ticles ; and we also notice a progression in the degree of per- 

 fection in which this character is discoverable. In many cases 

 the forms assumed, are in the highest degree regular and ma- 

 thematically accurate in their various proportions. In other 



