OBJECTIONS CON SIDERED. 133 



not less regularly ranged in their order of succession in the 

 geologic record than in the "Animal Kingdom" of Cuvier, 

 — a shrewd corroboration, in both cases, I am disposed to 

 think, of the rectitude of the arrangement. What seems to 

 be the special defect of his system is, that, having erected his 

 four orders, and then finding a certain number of residuary 

 families that, on his principle of cuticular character, stubbornly 

 refused to fall into any determinate place, he distributed them 

 among the others, with reference chiefly to the totally dis- 

 tinct principle of Cuvier. Thus the Suctorii^ soft, smooth, 

 slimy-skinned fishes, that do not possess a single placoid cha- 

 racter, and are not true placoids, he has yet placed in his pla- 

 coid order, influenced, apparently, by the " perception of re- 

 semblance that has cartilage for its central idea ;" and the 

 efiect has been a massing into one anomalous and entangled 

 group the fishes of the first period of geologic history, with 

 fishes of which we do not find a trace save in the existins 

 scene of things, and of the highest families of their class with 

 families that occupy the lowest place. But we live in an age 

 in which even the benefactors of the world of mind cannot 

 make false steps with impunity ; and so, while Agassiz's three 

 ichthyic orders will continue to be recognised by the palaeon- 

 tologist as the orders of three great geologic periods, the Suc- 

 torii have already been struck from ofi" his higher fishes by the 

 classification of Muller and Owen, and carried to that lowest 

 point in the scale (indicated by Linnaeus and Oken) which 

 their inferior standing renders so obviously the natural one. 

 Some of my readers may perhaps remember how finely Bacon, 

 in his " Wisdom of the Ancients," interprets the old mytho- 

 logic story of Prometheus. Prometheus, says the philosopher, 

 had conferred inestimable favours on men, by moulding their 

 forms into shape, and bringing them fire from heaven ; and 

 yet they complained of him and his teachings to Jupiter. 

 And the god, instead jf censuring their ingratitude, was 



