R ADI ARIES. 193 



parts, a disposition which begins to show itself, 

 as we have seen, both in the polypes and the 

 infusories 1 with respect to their oral appendages, 

 and is found also in the tunicaries and cepha- 

 lopods, or cuttle-fish. And this tendency in the 

 works of the Creator to produce or imitate 

 radiation, does not begin in the animal kingdom ; 

 the Geologist detects it in the mineral, and 

 the Botanist in the vegetable, for Actinolites, 

 Pyrites, and other substances exhibit it in the 

 former, and a great variety of the blossoms of 

 plants in the latter. We may ascend higher, and 

 say that irradiation is the beginning of all life, 

 from the seed in the earth and the punctum 

 saliens in the egg, to the foetus in the womb ; and 

 still higher in the physical world, sound radiates, 

 light radiates, heat radiates. If we further sur- 

 vey the whole universe, what do we behold but 

 radiating bodies dispersed in every direction. 

 Suns of innumerable systems, shedding their 

 rays upon their attendant planets ; and the Great 

 Spiritual Sun of the universe, even God himself, 

 is described in Holy Scripture as that awful 

 Being, " Whose goings forth have been from of 

 old, from everlasting." 



Cuvier, and after him several other modern 

 Zoologists, have considered Lamarck's Class of 

 Radiaries as forming a group or class of the 



1 See above, p. 154, 166, &c. 

 VOL. I. O 



