UNIVERSAL CONSISTENCY OF ANALOGIES. 15 



equally represent all other groups, large or small, which 

 agree in having analogies with the vertebrate series. 

 This is one of the consequences of the law of universal 

 representation, which, while it saves a world of expla- 

 natory details, reduces all the variations of animal forms 

 to one and the same uniform law. One such table as the 

 last, if correctly drawn up, does away with the necessity 

 of testing the Annulosa by comparing them with any 

 other circular group ; although such additional compa- 

 risons would certainly tend very much to elucidate the 

 subject, and confirm the correctness of our theory. The 

 reader of our former volumes will perfectly understand 

 this when he remembers that in each of those secondary 

 divisions of the Vertebrata, named in our table, there is 

 found representations of those in which the entire class 

 is first divided; so that the different races of quadrupeds 

 have their counterparts in the different races of birds, 

 of fish, and so on. Hence, if one is correct, the others, 

 theoretically, must be correct also. The student, with 

 our former volumes before him, is thus enabled to trace 

 the analogies of the Annulosa through the whole of the 

 vertebrate circle.* But he need not stop even here. If 

 the basis of an arrangement is natural, it wall stand any 

 test ; we shall, therefore, devote one more paragraph to 

 the analogies of the annulose animals, and then proceed 

 to treat them in further detail. So many curious points 

 of coincidence will thus come to light, that we trust the 

 general reader, no less than the professed entomologist, 

 will feel interested in our exposition. 



(13.) Few classes of animals can be more different 

 than insects and shellfish. Yet if our proposition, tliat 

 each forms a circular group, is true, then it will necessa- 

 rily follow that the contents of one represent the contents 

 of the other. How far this is really the case will be 

 judged of by the following table and the explanations 

 which follow : — 



* See the Treatise on Malacology, or Shells and Shellfish, where the 

 analogies they bear to the vertebrate animals and to the Annulosa are 

 stated at ch. il \i. 49. 



