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CHAPTER II. 



ORGANIC DEVELOPMENT. 



ALTHOUGH the study of organic structures in their finished 

 state must tend to inspire the most sublime conceptions of 

 the Great Creator of this vast series of beings, extending 

 from the obscurest plant to the towering tenant of the fo- 

 rest, and from the lowest animalcule to the stately elephant 

 and gigantic whale, there yet exists another department of 

 the science of Nature, removed, indeed, from the gaze of or- 

 dinary observers, but presenting to the philosophic inquirer 

 subjects not less replete with interest, and not less calculated 

 to exalt our ideas of the transcendent attributes of the Al- 

 mighty. To a mind nurtured to reflection, these divine at- 

 tributes, whether of power, of wisdom, or of beneficence, 

 are no where manifested with greater distinctness, or ar- 

 rayed in greater glory, than in the formation of these various 

 beings, and in the progressive architecture of their wondrous 

 fabric. 



Our attention has already been directed, in a former part 

 of these inquiries, to the successive changes which consti- 

 tute the metamorphoses of winged insects,* and of Batra- 

 chian reptiles, phenomena which are too striking to have 

 escaped the notice of the earliest naturalists: but the patient 

 investigations of modern inquirers have led to discoveries 

 still more curious, and have shown that all vertebrated ani- 

 mals, even those belonging to the higher classes, such as birds, 

 and mammalia, not excepting man himself, undergo, in the 

 early stages of their development, a series of changes fully 

 as great and as remarkable as those which constitute the 



* The Researches of Nordmann, on different species of Lernaea, have 

 brought to light the most singular succession of forms during the progress of 

 development of the same individual animal. 



