LIFE AND ORGANISATION. 63 



Huxley, f Wherever an organism is found to decompose 

 carbonic acid under the influence of sunlight, and to set 

 free oxygen, that organism may be ranked as a vegetable, 

 however active may be its movements.' Others have been 

 suggested (such, for instance, as the curious fact that no living 

 being has a form geometrically regular, or shows other than 

 a curved configuration of its surfaces) : but none, hitherto 

 adduced, are so striking or unequivocal as those to which we 

 have just adverted. 



We have before stated our design to limit the present 

 article chiefly to those researches into Animal life which have 

 been so prolific of discovery, as well as of speculation 

 often profound, sometimes rash on this higher part of 

 creation. The same reasons which lead to this limitation, 

 will oblige us to take up these topics in a somewhat desultory 

 manner ; with less regard to their order and completeness, 

 than to the interest they possess, or the illustrations they 

 afford of the progress lately effected in this part of science. 

 The two most remarkable facts attesting this progress are, 

 undoubtedly, the extraordinary additions made to our know- 

 ledge of existing species, nearly quadrupling their number 

 within half a century ; and the discovery of that vast and 

 heretofore hidden world of extinct animal life, which has 

 been entombed, for ages beyond all human count or specu- 

 lation, in the rocks that cover our globe. The ardour of the 

 traveller and naturalist, aided by the microscope, has rapidly 

 multiplied to our view the species of present animal life. 

 The equal ardour of the geologist, working amidst the 

 strata, which chance or labour discloses to him, has shown 

 what we may well call a series of successive worlds of animal 

 and vegetable life ; since, though the general types be the 

 same as those in present existence around us, the species 

 differ more or less in each of the successive periods of time, 

 thus wonderfully brought to light. 



