28 ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY 



It is therefore implied, that man, being the last 

 in the series of organized beings, surpassed all that 

 had preceded him in the perfection of his organs, 

 — the elements of which were displayed in a 

 graduated scale of animal mechanism. 



There is a bea itiful simplicity discoverable in 

 the structure of purely aquatic beings, that 

 strengthens the declaration of the sacred historian, 

 that they were the first that were endowed with 

 life ; — and the accurate anatomist discovers, that 

 the machinery of organic life, commencing with 

 the single heart of fishes, becomes more and more 

 complex, as species advance towards the animal 

 perfectability of man.* 



In Ichthyology, as in all other departments of 

 natural history, it was found necessary to establish 

 an orderly course of examination, in order to as- 

 certain the true characters of the almost endless 

 varieties of animals, which inhabit the ocean and 

 its tributary streams. It was discovered in the 

 earliest ages, in relation to the study of ichthyolo- 



* A certain literary gentleman, in a romantic work on the 

 Deluge, supposes that in the old world, the atmospheric 

 temperature was much greater, than in this modern affair, in 

 which we live, and consequently terrestrial animals had such 

 an exaltation of the passions, that they were destroyed for 

 their crimes ; but fishes, residing in a cooler element, were so 

 much better in their conduct, that they were exempted from 

 the otherwise terrible destruction of the primitive world. 



