THE ANIMAL CREATION: 



Q |)0jniJar $nf rob action to zoology. 



CHAPTER I. 



science of Zoology teaches us the forms and habits of 

 the countless animals with which we are everywhere sur- 

 rounded,* their mutual dependencies upon each other, and their 

 relative importance in the economy of Nature. Among the in- 

 numerable beings which crowd this world not one is idle ; all are 

 actively employed each in its separate sphere of usefulness, and 

 though they blindly do the work imposed upon them by their 

 Great Creator, ignorant of other's ways, the grand result is per- 

 fect harmony. 



When we consider how innumerable are the species of animals 

 distributed over the whole surface of the earth, and throughout 

 the immeasurable realms of water, and are called upon to recog- 

 nize them individually, and to identify all the members of such a 

 multifarious host, the task might well be considered as hopeless as 

 that of the unlettered savage who, unable to count beyond twenty, 

 sets about the enumeration of the stars, and tries to fix their 

 places and assign their names. Yet even those stars have been 

 reduced to order, the very skies have been mapped out, and the 

 astronomer points with as much satisfaction to the buckle of 

 Orion's belt or the tip-of the nose of Bootes, as if these respect- 

 able gentlemen were up on high sitting for their portraits. 



A disbanded army presents to the observer nothing but a wild 

 scene of inextricable confusion ; but when at trumpet-call, the 

 soldiers hasten to their ranks, and the appropriate banner waves 

 above each company, these companies fall into regiments, and 

 the living mass, directed by one chief, moves on with the utmost 

 order and regularity. 



Systematic arrangement is, therefore, the very foundation of 



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