DISTRIBUTION OF ORGANISMS. 203 



one law of their gracious Creator : each race and sub-race 

 true from first to last to its allotted instincts. 



A result of very profound interest may be expected from 

 the perfect development of this view of the system of nature ; 

 it will enable us to see with tolerable distinctness the status 

 of man as one of the vessels of life. Even from the sketch 

 now before us we may draw some curious inferences. It 

 appears that the stirps which terminates in the Primates is 

 one which may be considered as central between the other 

 two, combining- characters from both, along with charac- 

 ters of its own. Its central sub -line is eminently eclectic, 

 and particularly in its food, uniting the carnivorous instincts 

 of the bats, on the one hand, with the phytophagous habits of 

 the sloths, on the other. Sociality, vocality or the use of voice, 

 a prehensive use of the extremities, imitativeness, drollery, 

 sagacity, all form characteristics generally applicable to this 

 line of animals. They are, in the reptilian grade, and 

 perhaps in inferior grades also, rather below than above their 

 fellows; but in the mammalian stage, they suddenly ascend 

 to a pre-eminence, not by superior strength, but by greater 

 relative magnitude of brain, by agility, and by the use of the 

 hand. The signal superiority of the human species is thus 

 prepared for and betokened in the immediately preceding 

 portions of the line : it might have been seen, ere man existed, 

 that a remarkable creature was coming upon the earth. The 

 advance, nevertheless, which man makes above his immediate 

 predecessors is very great ; the highest of these cannot rank 

 above an infant of our species in sagacity or morale. 



This advance is no isolated fact. In each of the other sub- 

 lines, there is what may be called a crowning species, greatly 

 superior to its immediate ancestry, and these are the most 

 distinguished of all animals. In the herbivorous stirps, the 

 sub-carnivorous line is topped by the pig, the sub -herbi- 

 vorous by the sheep, the sub-central by the horse. In the 

 carnivorous stirps, the sub-central is topped by the dog. The 

 horse and dog, so eminent for their sagacity and usefulness, 

 are in this peculiar manner analogues to man, whom they 



