148 Transactions of the American Institute. 



those cells or chambers through a tube at the back of the mouth. 

 Together with these three functions, essential as they are, we have 

 another one, which must be present to provide for the possibility of 

 the creature making the other parts of his body subservient to hia 

 requirements^ in short, to put him in communication with the outer 

 world. We find, then, an agglomeration of peculiar cells and fibers, 

 constituting the brain, in one place, and attached to it a cord, which 

 I always feel disposed to compare with the electric telegraph, passing 

 through the whole length of the body from one end to the other. 

 These soft organisms are protected by a harder framework, as it were 

 to house them and keep them from all danger. The most important 

 of them, and the best protected, is that same electric telegraph. 

 This framework is from a simple design ; a simple piece of bone. It 

 is one of the features of nature that every portion of it is but a repe- 

 tition of a similar design. There is a bone, with an arch above to 

 inclose the spinal column, and protect it from injury, and below an 

 arch to contain the other vital organs. Please to remember that the 

 soft parts are first in existence, and that hard parts are only formed 

 and molded upon these soft parts ; and then you can at once appre- 

 ciate the fact that these hard parts, being secondary to the vital parts 

 are made expressly for them, and correspond to their exact situation in 

 the body ; and, consequently, knowing the relationship of these more 

 permanent parts to the vital organs, the interpretation of fossil remains 

 is no longer a mystery, but a simple faculty that every child may acquire. 

 In connection with this electric telegraph, communicating with the 

 main battery, we find from one end of the creature's body to the 

 other, sentries for its defense, putting him in communication with 

 the outer world. Here are placed a pair of eyes, which enables him 

 to see distant objects. Immediately behind these are the organs of 

 hearing, protected by a very hard piece of bone, to enable him to 

 hear that which he cannot see; and lest these should fail, there is a 

 third, the olfactory organ, containing, spread out within, a beautiful 

 reticulation of a portion of nervous matter, which enables him to 

 smell that which he can neither see nor hear; that he may know 

 when to advance if the object be useful to him, or to retreat if it be 

 the reverse. With all this, he is in a condition to live, but not in a 

 condition to move. The soft parts are protected by the repetition of 

 this piece of bone, the vertebra, one after another, united more or 

 less by an elastic material, so as to give the creature facility of move- 

 ment in one or the other direction, as may be essential. Thus these 



