10 



who has, with such unerring wisdom, adapted means to their 

 destined ends, shouhl have performed any part of the mighty 

 work of creation without a fixed and perfect design. If we 

 consider that no muscle, tendon, or vein, however minute, 

 whether in man, the highest, or in those animals which may be 

 reckoned the lowest grade among created heings, bvit has func- 

 tions appointed for it regularly to perform, and that no single 

 portion of our frame can be parted with, without occasioning us 

 inconvenience, it seems fair to infer, that no single atom, or no 

 one created thing, exists without filling some appointed place in 

 a great and perfectly organized and arranged whole ; however far 

 that whole may, and must be, above our limited understandings.. 

 To doubt the existence of a natural system appears to me to be 

 precisely equivalent to doubting a creation ; for one cannot con- 

 ceive the various tribes of animals to have received their being 

 at the hands of an Omnipotent Creator, and yet to be indebted, 

 at the same time, to chance for those gradual shades of difference 

 from each other, which are found so harmoniously blending group 

 into group, that the practised naturalist may follow up the same 

 peculiarity of habit or structure, however varied in its develop- 

 ment, from one to the other of the most opposite beings which 

 you can place before him. Infinitely varied, however, as the 

 course of such a peculiarity must be, the naturalist never finds 

 those sudden departures from the regular flow of variation, which 

 all systems, even the most approved, are constantly exhibiting ; 

 the reason of which is, that, in thus tracing approaches in his 

 mind, he will continually discover an individual completely sur- 

 rounded by others, each of which partakes of its peculiarities, not 

 only in a different degree, but in a different mode ; and thus he 

 will perceive the character on which his attention has been fixed, 

 ramifying in all directions. Now no system, hitherto suggested, 

 will at all cope with this ; it has been the plan, and I imagine 

 the fault of all our systems, that they are so constructed as to 

 be incapable of receiving a character from, or imparting it to, more 

 than a single individual : hence they never can possess capacity 

 sufficient to exhibit those endless chains of relation which the 

 mind so luxuriates in tracing. The want of such a system has 

 been, I believe, universally acknowleged, and should my humble 



