GO REA-SIDE STUDIES. 



animal must do. In the earliest forms of Life, as in tlie 

 earliest states of Society, all do everything, each does alL 

 There is no separate digestive system, no separate respira- 

 tory system, no muscular system, no neiTOus system. Every 

 part of the animal assimilates, respires, contracts, moves ; 

 just as ill barbarian tribes every man is his own tailor, his 

 own purveyor, his own architect, and his own lawyer. At 

 last the principle of Division of Labour emerges ; then that 

 which is true of the whole organism ceases to be true of an 

 organ ; and we have no more right to demand that an arm 

 should digest food, than that Moses & Son should preside 

 over the deliberations of Downing Street, or cook the 

 Whitebait dinner : we have no more rio;ht to ask the luncs 

 to produce offspring, than to ask Mr Cobden to take com- 

 mand of the Baltic fleet, and Mr Bright to perform the 

 operation for stone. Each no longer does all. When, there- 

 fore, we look at these arms of the Terebella, which wrio-sle 

 after a week's separation from the body, we see them 

 manifest as much of life as they manifested a week since. 

 They would grow if they had food ; unhappily they have 



"«■. the power of preparing food, and they die at length 

 1- . starvation. 



But put down that phial, and look at this which contains 

 another and far more beautiful species of Terebella, by name 

 Nehulosa. (Plate VII., fig. ] .) It makes itself a solid tube 

 of cartli, which it cements by a mucus exuded from its sur- 

 face, and in this tube, but not attached to it, the Terebella 

 lives, merely putting forth its long tentacles into the water. 

 I have taken it from its tube to watch its beauty and its 



