NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 187 



applicable. Even in the lowly forms of the acrita 

 (polypes), the suctorial type of the animal kingdom, 

 representation has been discerned, and with some 

 remarkable results, as to the history of our world. The 

 acrita were the first forms of animal life upon earth, the 

 starting-point of that great branch of organisation. 

 Now, this sub-kingdom consists, like the rest, of five 

 groups (classes), and these are respectively representa- 

 tions of the acrita itself, and the other four sub-kingdoms, 

 which had not come into existence when the acrita were 

 formed. The polypi vaginati, in the crustaceous cover- 

 ing of the living mass, and their more or less articulated 

 structure, represent the annulosa. In the radiated 

 forms of the rotifera, and the simple structure of the 

 polypi I'udes, we are reminded of the radlata. The 

 onollusca are typified in the soft, mucous, sluggish 

 intestina. And, finally, in the fleshy living mass which 

 surrounds the bony and hollow axis of the polypi 

 natantes, we have a sketch of the vertehrata. The acrita 

 thus appear as a prophecy of the higher events of animal 

 development. They show that the nobler orders of 

 being, including man himself, w^ere contemplated from 

 the first, and came into existence by virtue of a law, the 

 operation of which had commenced ages before their 

 forms were, upon this globe at least, realised. 



The system of representation, taking it as one so far 

 proved, must be regarded as a poimrful additional j^roof 

 of the hypothesis of organic progress hy virtue of laio. It 

 establishes the unity of animated nature and the definite 

 character of its entire constitution. It enables us to see 

 how, under the flowing robes of nature, where all looks 

 arbitrary and accidental, there is an artificiality of the 

 most rigid kind. The natural, we now perceive, sinks 

 into and merges in a Higher Artificial. To adopt a com- 



