ITS FAUNA. 



Lives through all life, extends through all extent, 

 Spreads undivided, operates unspent; 

 Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, 

 As full, as perfect in a hair as heart ; 

 As full, as perfect in vile man that mourns, 

 As the rapt seraph that adores and burns ; 

 To him no high, no low, no great, no small, 

 He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all." 



While thus disclaiming the idea of "imperfection" as 

 applicable to any grade of vitality, it would be erring 

 against all reason and instinct to discard the terms " high- 

 er" and "lower" in treating of organised existences. The 

 creature consisting of a uniform mass must appear, even 

 to the most untutored observer, to stand on a humbler 

 platform than that composed of a variety of parts and tis- 

 sues. The protozoan, that envelops its food in its gelatin- 

 ous sac, assimilates the nutritive juices, and then rejects 

 the remainder, and this without mouth, stomach, or open- 

 ing of any kind, is certainly lower (or less highly organised, 

 if you will) than the mollusc, which is furnished with 

 mouth, stomach, and alimentary canal ; and the mollusc, 

 furnished only with external gill-tufts and the merest 

 heart-like cavity, can never be placed on the same level 

 with the quadruped provided with masticating and saliva- 

 tory apparatus, its stomach, its organs of chylification and 

 chymification and intestinal canal its respiratory and cir- 

 culating system of lungs, heart, veins, and arteries. Again, 

 the protozoan that reproduces itself by a mere cellular ex- 

 pansion of its own mass a mass, any portion of which is 

 equally vital, and capable of becoming a separate creature 

 is surely lower in the scale than the shell-fish that repro- 

 duces by spawn, and would perish under subdivision of its 

 tissues ; while the reptile, reproducing by eggs, which it 

 drops in the stagnant pool and never cherishes, can never, 

 without the abuse of everything like discrimination, be 



