134 HIGH STANDING OF THE PLACOIDS. 



pleased with the complaint, and rewarded them with gifts. 

 In putting nature to the question, it is eminently wholesome 

 to be doubting, cross-examining, complaining ; ever demand- 

 ing of our masters and benefactors the philosophers, that they 

 should reign over us, not arbitrarily and despotically, 



" Like the old kings, with high exacting looks, 

 Sceptred and globed," 



but like our modern constitutional monarchs, who govern by 

 law ; and, further, that an appeal from their decisions on all 

 subjects within the jurisdiction of Nature should for ever lie 

 open to Nature herself. The seeming ingratitude of such 

 a course, if the " complaints" be made in a right spirit and 

 on proper grounds, Jupiter always rewards with gifts. 



Let us now see for ourselves, in this spirit, whether there 

 may not be something absolutely derogatory, in the existence 

 of a cartilaginous skeleton, to the creatures possessing it ; or 

 whether a deficit of internal bone may not be greatly more 

 than neutralized, as it assuredly must have been in the view 

 of Linnaeus, Muller, and Owen, by a larger than ordinary 

 share of a vastly more important substance. 



