200 AFFINITIES AND GEOGRAPHICAL 



trachia. So do the Mammalia, after we have laid aside those 

 which appear as lateral offshoots through the birds. They 

 rank thus : the Carnivora the Herbivora (using this term to 

 include pachyderms, equidae, and ruminants) and the Pri- 

 mates. Thus, again, analyse the Herbivora, and it seems al- 

 lowable to regard such animals as the pig and hippopotamus 

 as representing the carnivores, the ruminants as representing 

 the innocent group, and the equidae, with their rapid move- 

 ments and familiar character, as standing appositely to the 

 third. So also, in the third, the bats the sloths and the 

 apes appear in precisely the same series of relations. 

 Whether there be still another grade of sub-analogies, I will 

 not take it upon me in any manner to pronounce. 



It may here be remarked that this system is not affected by 

 any determination which may be arrived at with regard to 

 the genealogy of the birds, for these, whether descended from 

 one order of reptiles or all three, would exhibit the same 

 groupings. It may also be remarked that their supposed de- 

 scendants, the Edentata, Rodentia, and Insectivora, conform 

 to the relations as thus collocated. The Fish must not yet 

 be speculated upon ; but in the Mollusca, I am tempted to 

 think that the relations apply in this order Cephalopoda 

 G asteropoda Cochifera. 



Even with those relations here indicated, we acquire first 

 the idea of three great strands of organic being, each composed 

 of three inferior strands, respectively representing the princi- 

 pal lines, and which probably were the true genealogical 

 series of our system. Verily, it would give us a curious 

 conception of organic nature, if we could satisfy ourselves 

 that, like chemistry, it had a mysterious foundation in mathe- 

 matical proportions. Threes under threes, each subordinate 

 three reflecting the trinity to which it belongs, and all others ! 

 Such an idea is obviously favourable to the development 

 theory, as arguing a unity in animated nature, and the de- 

 finite character of its entire constitution. It suggests how, 

 under the flowing robes of nature, where all looks arbitrary 

 and accidental, there is an artificiality of the most rigid kind. 

 The Natural appears to sink into and merge in a higher Arti- 



