60 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 



Finally, M. Dujardin has shown us that the Khizo- 

 pods are animals covered with a shell, but whose 

 body is without any definite organisation. A Gromia 

 and a Milliola, before they climb up the polished side 

 of a glass vessel, form for themselves on the instant, 

 and at the cost of the substance which composes 

 them, a sort of foot, which stretches out, and becom- 

 ing elongated, affords them a point of support ; as 

 soon as they no longer need this assistance, this 

 temporary organ returns into the common mass, and 

 becomes confounded with it just in the same manner 

 as a thread of viscid matter returns to the substance 

 from which it had been drawn out. Between these 

 extreme points of the animal scale and the creatures 

 of which we have just now spoken, there no doubt 

 exist many intermediate forms ; for, as Linnaeus has 

 said, nature does not make any sudden bounds, and 

 always proceeds by insensible gradations. Here, 

 perhaps, more than elsewhere, experience and observ- 

 ation ought to precede all theoretical conceptions. 



It is, moreover, by following these two infallible 

 guides that modern zoology has arrived at a result 

 which seems to be the counterpart of those we have 

 indicated. At the same time that it discovered in 

 these last animal series (the worms) a most unexpected 

 organic complication, it also recognised the fact, that 

 the superior groups themselves comprise degraded 

 species, which appear to have lost almost all the 

 essential characters of their fundamental type ; and 

 there are certain points of view from which we are 

 justified in asserting that there exist inferior mammals, 

 birds and reptiles. This proposition is most abso- 



