18 



and such paths, without making the slightest attempt to bend or 

 turn her aside from her course where it does not precisely coin- 

 cide with his own artificial schemes, may be fairly claimed as the 

 privilege of any of her students, and ought to be freely granted 

 to him by his fellow-labourers. 



In looking for a centre around which to arrange the almost 

 infinite hosts of the animal kingdom, the vanity of man naturally 

 enough suggests himself; but to gratify this vanity, he must 

 submit to the somewhat mortifying necessity of admitting six 

 families of apes and monkies to his immediate company, and the 

 tribe thus constituted may be termed Primates, — a name ori- 

 ginally conferred on it by Linnaeus. Anatomy, as well as ex- 

 ternal appearances, prove the propriety of this arrangement, 

 however repulsive the idea may be to our false feelings of ex- 

 clusiveness. Primates thus constituted, will be found to be the 

 central seventh of a larger group, termed Mammalia by Linnaeus ; 

 a group, which includes all the truly viviparous and mammiferous 

 animals. Amongst the outermost of these, as we retrograde 

 gradually from the type, man, we shall find a bird typified in 

 the bat ; a shark in the seal ; many other fish in the whale ; a 

 tortoise, crocodile, and slender lizards, in the armadillos, ant- 

 eaters, &c., all thus exhibiting a tendency to borrow characters 

 from other approaching groups. Mammalia, thus surrounded, 

 must of necessity be the central of seven groups, within the 

 compass of which will be found all animals which possess a frame 

 of connected bones and a spinal marrow ; these are termed Ver- 

 tebrata, and, I tliink, will be found to constitute a central seventh 

 of all animated nature. 



From this it will be apparent, that there are in nature forty- 

 nine groups of animals, each of about the same value as Mam- 

 malia, as far as regards their relation to a whole. Distrustful 

 of my own very limited knowledge of the subject, and fearful of 

 encumbermg science with crude theories and ill-defined divisions 

 and characters which future discoveries may hereafter totally sub- 

 vert, I shall content myself vdth observing, that I believe in the 

 existence of such groups, and shall not presume to give them, at 

 present, definitions or even names : the charge of ignorance is 

 merited and easy to be borne, but the charge of attempting to 



