WONDERS 



OP 



ORGANIC LIFE. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE VITAL PRINCIPLE THE BLOOD. 



In the consideration of organic beings, we must 

 ever keep before us the great fact, that life is as 

 much life in the monad or animalcule, as in 

 the whale, the elephant, or the rhinoceros — that 

 mass does not add intensity to vitality — that 

 duration of existence is but an infinitesimal 

 portion of time, whether it be counted by 

 minutes or days, or measured by the revolu- 

 tions of centuries. The elephant, and the 

 ephemera ; the banian tree of three thousand 

 years, the sturdy oak, or churchyard yew, 

 and the tender little annual that blooms and 

 withers away, exist all and each according 

 to prefixed laws ; and when their extinction 

 takes place, the time is as if it had never been. 

 Startle not ; for, O man ! thou in the midst of 

 creation standest alone, the sole mighty excep- 

 tion. To thee time will not be as if it had 



