ANIMAL ORGANIZATION. 97 



heat, is resolved almost wholly into a limpid 

 watery fluid.* More accurate examination, how- 

 ever, will show that it is in reality not homoge- 

 neous, but that it consists of a large proportion 

 of water, retained in a kind of spongy texture, 

 the individual fibres of which, from their extreme 

 fineness and uniformity of distribution, can with 

 difficulty be detected. Thus even those animal 

 fabrics, which on a superficial view appear most 

 simple, are in reality formed by an extremely ar- 

 tificial and complex arrangement of parts. The 

 progress of developement is continually tending 

 to solidify the structure of the body. In this 

 respect the lower orders of the animal kingdom, 

 even when arrived at maturity, resemble the 

 conditions of the higher classes at the earliest 

 stages of their existence. As we rise in the 

 scale of animals, we approximate to the con- 

 dition of the more advanced states of develope- 

 ment which are exhibited in the highest class. 



Great efforts have been made by physiologists 

 to discover the particular structure which might 

 be considered as the simplest element of all the 

 animal textures ; the raw material, as it were, 

 with which the whole fabric is wrought : but 



* Thus a Medusa, weighing twenty or thirty pounds, will, by 

 this sort of general liquefaction, be found reduced to only a few 

 grains of solid matter. Peron, Annales du Musee, torn. XV, 

 p. 43. See also a memoir by Quoy and Gaimard, Annales des 

 Sciences Naturalles, torn. I. p. 245. 



VOL. I. H 



