390 THE MOUNTAIN. 



INVERTEBEATA; 



OK, 



SECOND, THIRD, AND FOURTH GREAT DIVISIONS OF 

 THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 



THE limits of the present work on the mountain being 

 fixed quite in disproportion to the magnitude of the subject- 

 matter, painful restraints, distressing hobbles, and trouble- 

 some bars, have hedged in the field of labor. Pause and 

 ponder over this " daring of the impossible," creation to 

 be squeezed into a nut-shell ; the world precipitated into a 

 thimble ; still more insane, the mountain concentrated and 

 preserved in a gallipot ? Painful reflection ! unheard of 

 audacity ! immeasurable folly ! May the disgust and indig- 

 nation of the gods be averted. 



This shadow of the "bill of fare;" this inkling of the 

 opulence of the ineifable promises of blessedness to body 

 and soul from the mountain as a habitat, would be still 

 more meagre, imperfect, and vain, without some representa- 

 tion from the invertebrates ; for here is the region where the 

 mysterious bond of animality commences ; here is an or- 

 ganic realm of wonder and fable ; here is a world of eccen- 

 tric and anomalous FORMS ; and here is the tragic union of 

 the ponderable and imponderable in the lowest media, and 

 under every possible condition of time and space, and in the 

 most doleful and repulsive domains of absolute brutism. 



"Life is a vortex more or less rapid, more or less compli- 

 cated, the direction of which is invariable, and which always 

 carries along molecules of similar kinds, but into which in- 

 dividual molecules are continually entering, and from which 



