304 ANCIENT SEA AND ATMOSPHERE, AND LIGHT. 



sentatives of one great Class in the Articulated division of 

 the Animal Kingdom. We do not find this instrument pass- 

 ing onwards, as it were, through a series of experimental 

 changes, from more simple into more complex forms; it 

 was created at the very first, in the fulness of perfect adap- 

 tation to the uses and condition of the class of creatures, to 

 which this kind of eye has ever been, and is still appro- 

 priate. 



If we should discover a microscope, or telescope, in the 

 hand of an Egyptian Mummy, or beneath the ruins of Her- 

 culaneum^ it would be impossible to deny that a knowledge 

 of the principles of Optics existed in the mind by which such 

 an instrument had been contrived. The same inference fol- 

 lows, but with cumulative force, when we see nearly four 

 hundred microscopic lenses set side by side, in the com- 

 pound eye of a fossil Trilobite ; and the weight of the ar- 

 gument is multiphed a thousand fold, when we look to the 

 infinite variety of adaptations by which similar instruments 

 have been modified, through endless genera and species, 

 from the long-lost Trilobites, of the Transition strata, through 

 the extinct Crustaceans of the Secondary and Tertiary for- 

 mations, and thence onward throughout existing Crustaceans^ 

 and the countless hosts of living Insects. 



It appears impossible to resist the conclusions as to Unitj^ 

 of Design in a common Author, which are thus attested by 

 such cumulative evidences of Creative Intelligence and 

 Power ; both, as infinitely surpassing the most exalted fa- 

 culties of the human mind, as the mechanisms of the na- 

 tural world, when magnified by the highest microscopes, 

 are found to transcend the most perfect productions of hu- 

 man art. 



