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CHAP. II. 



WORMS. 

 Vermes. Llnn. 



SECTION I. 



Introductory Remarks, 



JL he system of zoology that still continues most popular in our 

 own country is that of Linnaeus, and we shall hence make choice 

 of it in the prosecution of the present work. Under this system the 

 various classes of animals which it comprises may be contemplated 

 in an ascending or a descending scale. Having commenced with 

 inorganic matter, and meaning to close with the mechanical and 

 other curious inventions of human intellect, we shall preter the 

 former ot' these views ; and shall open with a few specimens of the 

 lowest ot the Linnaean classes, and w hich he has distinguished by the 

 name of Vermes, or the Worm Tribes, the classific and ordinal 

 characters of which we have already stated in the preceding 

 chapter. 



[Editor. 



section II. 



Infusory Worms or Animalcules ; Wheel-animal, Eel.vibrio, 

 Trichoda, Monas. 



These constitute a division of animals which until the latter part 

 of the 17th century, had escaped all human attention and investiga- 

 tion, and constituted a kind of invisible world : a series of beings, 

 the structure, powers, and properties of which, are perhaps more 

 astonishing than those of most other animals : yet of such minute. 



