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CHAPTER I, 



INANIMATE AND ANIMATED NATURE — THE MINERAL, VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL KINGDOMS 



CLASSIFICATION OF ANIMALS — THE VERTEBRATES — CLASSES OF \'ERTEBRATES. 



THE first and simplest division which an observer must make in 

 the infinite variety of natural objects by which he is surrounded 

 is a division between things living or Animated and things 

 lifeless or Inanimate. He sees the corn springing up from the seed, 

 increasing to maturity, then withering ; he sees the tree shooting heaven- 

 ward, towering higher and spreading wider year after year till a pause 

 comes to its development, and then he sees its branches decay and its 

 trunk moulder, and knows that the giant of the forest, like the grass of 

 the field, will fade and die. He knows, too, that the beasts of the earth, 

 the birds of the air, the fishes of the sea, all the thousand tribes of 

 creatures which people the globe, will pass, like the tree or plant, from 

 the seed to maturity, from maturity to death. He knows that man him- 

 self is no exception to this law of change ; that he grows to manhood and 

 declines into old age ; that from the cradle to the grave he changes surely 

 and uninterruptedly day by day, and year by year. But the cliffs which 

 lift their heads to the clouds, the rocks which crop out from the hill- 

 side, the stones he treads on, present no such phenomena of growth or 

 decay. Man may shatter them, earthquakes may rend them, frost may 

 disintegrate them, rain may wash them, but the alterations thus effected 

 are merely physical results of physical causes acting from without, not 

 the results of an indwelling force in rock or stone : even when, as in the 

 case of crystals, an increase of size takes place, this increase is not a 

 growth from within but an augmentation by the addition of particles 

 from the outside. The Mineral Kingdom is a kingdom of the dead. 



If we examine the bodies comprehended in the Mineral Kingdom 

 more closely, we find that, in addition to the entire absence of any 

 tendency to periodic change, they are characterized by possessing a 

 very simple chemical composition ; they often consist of only one ele- 



