216 THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 



all these places are abodes of the vegetable tribes, and where 

 there is vegetation there are animated beings ; for there is 

 not an animal in existence, but directly or indirectly feeds 

 upon the vegetable kingdom, from the elephant and 

 rhinoceros which devour whole plantations, to the minute 

 animalculae which float in the air or dwell in every drop of 

 stagnant water, where food in the form of equally minute 

 alga? is found each possessed of wonderful organs and 



Cpers suitable to the land of existence they lead, for God 

 often placed life in the most simple as well as complicated 

 forms. Dr. Mantell says : 



" We have been accustomed to associate the presence of 

 vitality with bodies possessing various complicated organs 

 for the elaboration and maintenance of the energies of 

 existence, but here we see perfect and distinct creations in 

 the condition of globules and cells, which live and move and 

 have their being, and increase in numbers with a rapidity 

 so prodigious, and in modes so peculiar, as to startle all our 

 preconceived notions of animal organisation." 



And it is in these Protozoa, the lowest of the animal 

 creation, that a perfect similarity of condition exists to those 

 of the vegetable kingdom, they are here upon a level ; but 

 arising out of these simple forms, G-od has created two sets 

 of types or portraits, the members of each resembling those 

 below it in some particular, but having organs which are 

 superior to it ; and above these are found members whose 

 organs are of a still higher order, and so on till the one set 

 comprises the highest orders of the vegetable, and the other 

 those of the animal kingdom, in its ranks. But these simple 

 organisms are never developed so as to resemble those 

 placed above them ; they each, whether high or low, continue 

 to produce their like, for each grade was a creation of itself 

 and a separate one from God's hands. There have been 

 writers, who would endeavour to make it appear that God 

 only created the lowest and most simple germs, and the 

 circumstances which were necessary to develop them, and 

 then allowed these to act and re-act until a man or an oak 

 tree at last became the result ! Were this the case, geology 

 would long before this have shown the " small beginnings " 



