S2 CLASS MAMMALIA. 



tiquity, are of carnivorous animals now known, of others 

 of the same regimen, apparently still more formidable than 

 any that now exist, as well as of species of the herbivorous 

 races, both known and unknown, and if the antiquity of these 

 bones be established, it seems to refer the era of original 

 creation to a more remote period than is ordinarily under- 

 stood. 



The improvements in modern science lead us to the con- 

 clusion that new creation and annihilation never now take 

 place varied modifications, and consequent unceasing ac- 

 tivity, is the business of a large portion of matter, of all of 

 it, indeed, which enters into the composition of organiza- 

 tion. Organized bodies, vegetable as well as animal, are 

 minute when first endowed with vitality ; they accumulate, 

 by degrees, till maturity, perform the important office of 

 germination, and almost immediately proceed in the same 

 gradual way to nonentity again, not indeed by decreasing 

 in size, but in vital energy, till life becomes extinct, and 

 the disorganized particles separate. 



These particles sooner or later again appear to enter into 

 the composition of some other living body, modified in 

 shape indeed, but engaged in the same office of vitality, till 

 again dismissed, and taken up by a third ; and thus does 

 all matter capable of organization proceed successively in 

 its destined office. 



The modes by which this is performed, in animal and 

 vegetable bodies, are very analogous ; the plant sucks up 

 its nutrition by its roots, not from the steril sand or rock, 

 but from the disorganized particles in the earth and water, 

 which yield nutrition in proportion as they are saturated 

 with such particles. The roots of animals, that is, the sto- 

 mach, in like manner, derive support from disorganized 

 matter; in some species, from vegetables only, in others, 

 from flesh alone, and in many, from both. The animal, as 



