538 THE REPRODUCTIVE FUNCTIONS. 



ment of the science of Nature, removed, indeed, 

 from the gaze of ordinary observers, but present- 

 ing to the philosophic inquirer subjects not less 

 replete with interest, and not less calculated to 

 exalt our ideas of the transcendent attributes of 

 the Almighty. To a mind nurtured to reflection, 

 these divine attributes, whether of power, of wis- 

 dom, or of beneficence, are no where manifested 

 with greater distinctness, or arrayed in greater 

 glory, than in the formation of these various beings, 

 and in the progressive architecture of their won- 

 drous fabric. 



Our attention has already been directed, in a 

 former part of these inquiries, to the successive 

 changes which constitute the metamorphoses of 

 M^inged insects,* and of Batrachian reptiles, phe- 

 nomena which are too striking to have escaped the 

 notice of the earliest naturalists : but the patient 

 investigations of modern inquirers have led to dis- 

 coveries still more curious, and have shown that 

 all vertebrated animals, even those belonging to 

 the higher classes, such as birds and mammalia, 

 not excepting man himself, undergo, in the early 

 stages of their developement, a series of changes 

 fully as great and as remarkable as those which 

 constitute the transformations of inferior animals. 

 They have also rendered it extremely probable 

 that the organs of the system, instead of existing 

 simultaneously in the germ, arise in regulated 

 succession, and are the results not of the mere ex- 

 pansion of pre-existing rudiments, but of a real 



* The researches of Nordmann, on different species of Lerneea, 

 have brought to light the most singular succession of forms during 

 the progress of developement of the same individual animal. 



