MAMMALIA. 425 



like manner, a great diversity of construction, 

 a(la})ted to the particular nature of that subsistence, 

 whether it be herbage, or the leaves of trees, or 

 fruits, or seeds, or the coarse fibres of wood and 

 bark. While all are gifted with powers to obtain 

 the noiu'ishment they require, those that have not 

 been armed with weapons of attack, are still pro- 

 vided with instruments of defence, or with means 

 of flight. Each has its respective sphere of opera- 

 tion ; and to each its appropriate soil, habitation, 

 climate, and element have been assigned. 



Tt is easy to conceive that all these various cir- 

 cumstances must lead to great diversities in the 

 apparatus for mastication and for digestion, in the 

 organization of the senses, in the construction of 

 the instruments of locomotion and of prehension, 

 and in the general form of the body to which these 

 various parts are to be adapted. Yet, amidst all 

 these variations, we may perceive the same laws of 

 analogy connecting the whole into one series, and 

 assimilating all these multiform structures to one 

 common standard. The same organ, however 

 modified in its shape and size, however stinted in 

 one, or developed in another, is ever found in its 

 appropriate place, and retains the same conuexions 

 with adjacent organs, whether we seek it in the car- 

 nivorous or the herbivorous quadruped, in the inha- 

 bitant of the land or of the water, of the frigid or 

 of the torrid zone, or in animals of the most dimi- 

 nutive or most colossal statures. 



As an example, we may take the vertebrae of the 

 neck. It is a universal law, that this part of the 

 spinal column shall, in every animal of the class 

 mammalia, consist of neither more nor less than 



