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CHAPTER IV. 



UNITY OF DESIGN. 



The inquiries on Animal and Vegetable Physiology in 

 which we have been engaged, lead to the general conclusion 

 that unity of design and identity of operation pervade the 

 whole of nature; and they clearly point to one Great and 

 only Cause of all things, arrayed in the attributes of infinite 

 power, wisdom, and benevolence, whose mighty works ex- 

 tend throughout the boundless regions of space, and whose 

 comprehensive plans embrace eternity. 



In examining the manifold structures and diversified phe- 

 nomena of living beings, we cannot but perceive that they 

 are extensively, and perhaps universally connected by cer- 

 tain laws oiJinalogy; a principle, the recognition of which 

 has given us enlarged views of a multitude of important 

 facts, which would otherwise have remained isolated and 

 unintelligible. Hence naturalists, in arranging the objects 

 of their study, according to their similarities and analogies, 

 into classes, orders and genera, have but followed the foot- 

 steps of Nature herself, who in all her operations combines 

 the apparently opposite principles of general resemblance, 

 and of specific variety; so that the races which she has 

 united in the same group, though possessed of features in- 

 dividually dilTerent, may easily be recognised bv their fa- 

 mily likeness, as the offspring of a common parent. 



*• Fades non omnibus una; 

 Nee (liversa tamcn; c[ualem decet esse sororuin." 



We have seen that in each of the two great divisions, or 



