DIVISIONS OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. XXXV 



taverns. Some of them live on fruits, most of them feed on 

 nocturnal insects, which they pursue from twilight to dawn, 

 and a few have the singular propensity of sucking the Wood 

 of larger animals while asleep. 



10. Quadrumana, comprehending the Apes, the Monkeys, 

 the Baboons, and others ; creatures approaching the nearest 

 to man in the form and disposition of their organs, living 

 in some cases amongst rocks, but for the most part on trees, 

 and forming marvellous commonwealths in the rich forests 

 of the warmer countries. 



11. Bimana, having two perfect hands, and comprehend- 

 ing a solitary genus, Man, classed with the Mammalia by 

 the relations of form and animal attributes, but raised far 

 above them all by those powers of mind which fit him to 

 perform the functions for which he is destined. He alone 

 is endowed with force of reason to know that the marvellous 

 system of which he forms a part has been ordained by a 

 Superior Power, and to believe that, when the frail fabric by 

 which he is permitted to communicate with the external 

 world shall have been resolved into its elements, the con- 

 sciousness will be preserved to him of his former being. 



In the Mammalia, as in the groups before them, a pro- 

 gression may be traced of animal forms, not indeed in a 

 merely linear series, such as the imperfection of our know- 

 ledge causes us to adopt in our systems of natural classifica- 

 tion, but in a certain relation, which we can trace to the 

 degree of being assured, that the Mammalia, like the groups 

 before them, pass from lower to higher degrees of organic 

 development. 



And when we look to the past history of the organic world, 

 as it is revealed to us in the innumerable remains preserved 

 in mineral depositions, we are presented with the like evi- 

 dences of a gradation of animal forms, from the simpler to 

 the more composite. Nay, there is just reason to believe 

 that animal life was first introduced on our planet in its 

 simpler forms. For, in the oldest fossiliferous strata, the 



