PHYSIOLOGY OF LIFE. 73 



and it is probable that the Polynesia, as a future continent, 

 will be the gigantic monument, not so much of their 

 life, as of the life of Nature in them. Here we may 

 observe the first instance of that general law, according 

 to which Nature still assimilates her extreme points. In 

 these, her first and feeblest attempts to animalize orga- 

 nization, it is latent, because undeveloped, and merely 

 potential; while, in the human brain, the last and most 

 consummate of her combined energies, it is again lost or 

 disguised in the subtlety 1 and multiplicity of its evolution. 



In the class immediately above (Mollusca) we find the 

 individuals separate, a more determinate form, and in the 

 higher species, the rudiment of nerves, as the first scarce 

 distinguishable impress and exponent of sensibility ; still, 

 however, the vegetative reproduction is the predominant 

 form; and even the nerves "which float in the same cavity 

 with the other viscera," are probably subservient to it, 

 and extend their power in the increased intensity of the 

 reproductive force. Still prevails the transitional state 

 from the fluid to the solid; and the jelly, that rudiment 

 in which all animals, even the noblest, have their com- 

 mencement; constitutes the whole sphere of these rudi- 

 ment al animals. 



In the snail and muscle, the residuum of the coral reap- 

 pears, but refined and ennobled into a part of the animal. 

 The whole class is characterised by the separation of the 

 fluid from the solid. On the one side, a gelatinous semi- 

 fluid ; 011 the other side, an entirely inorganic, though 

 often a most exquisitely mechanised, calcareous excretion ! 



1 The Anatomical Demonstrations of the Brain, by Dr. Spurzheim, which 

 I have seen, presented to me the most satisfactory proof of this. 



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