68 THE OCEAN WOULD. 



CHAPTEE IV. 



ZOOPHYTES. 



" Nature is nowhere more perfect than in her smaller works." 



" Natura nusquam magis qvuliu in minirais tola est." FLINT. 



IT will not be out of place here to offer some remarks on animals in 

 general, including the whole kingdom as well as the great divisions 

 which form the subject of this particular volume. But considering 

 the vastness of the subject, and our imperfect knowledge of the whole 

 animal series as a subject of study, nothing is more difficult than to 

 seize upon the real analogies between beings, of types so varied, of 

 organizations so dissimilar. The arrangements which naturalists have 

 established in order to study and describe animals the divisions, classes, 

 orders, families, genera, and species are admirable contrivances for 

 facilitating the study of creatures numerous as the sands of the sea 

 shore. Without this precious means of logical distribution, the indi- 

 vidual mind would recoil before the task of describing the innumerable 

 phalanges of contemporary animal life. But the reader must never 

 forget that these methodical divisions are pure fictions, due to human 

 invention : they form no part of nature ; for has not Linnaeus told us 

 that nature makes no leaps, natura non facit saltus ? Nature passes 

 in a manner almost insensibly from one stage of organization to 

 another, altogether irrespective of human systems. 



Moreover, when we come to watch the confines of the animal and 

 vegetable kingdom, we realise how difficult it is to seize the precise 

 line of demarcation which separates the great kingdoms of Nature. 

 We have seen in the "Vegetable World" germs of the simplest 

 organization, as in the Cryptogamia, spores, as in the Algao, and 



