76 GLAUCUS ; OR, 



mirror even in the meanest flower ; and that 

 nothing but the dulness of our own sinful souls 

 prevents them from seeing day and night in all 

 things, however small or trivial to human eclec- 

 ticism, the Lord Jesus Christ himself fulfilling 

 his own saying, "My Father workcth hitherto, 

 and I work." 



And therefore, when we meet with such an 

 excellent passage as this : * — 



" Thus it is that Nature advances step by step, 

 gradually bringing out, through successive stages 

 of being, new organs and new faculties ; and 

 leaving, as she moves along, at every step, some 

 animals which rise no higher, as if to serve for 

 landmarks of her progress through all succeeding 

 time. And this it is which makes the study of 

 comparative anatomy so fascinating. Not that 

 I mean to favor a theory of * development,^ which 

 would obliterate all idea of species, by suppos- 

 ing that the more compound animal forms were 

 developments of their simple ancestors. For 

 such an hypothesis. Nature gives us no evidence : 

 but she gives us, through all her domains, the 

 most beautiful and diversified proofs of an ad- 

 herence to a settled order, by which new com- 

 * Harvey's Sea-side Book, p. 166. 



