ORIGIN OF SPECIES. i 
which the attention of the reader is now called. 
First, The creation of the material universe has 
proceeded from that which is rudimentary and im- 
perfect, successively to that which is more and more 
perfect. 
Passing by the question as to what may have been 
the elementary appearances of the sun, as beyond 
the reach of any tact known to us ; it is now univer- 
sally conceded that the rudiments of the earth were 
projected or thrown from the sun in a gaseous er 
nebulous form ; and that by a series of changes, run- 
ning through a vast period of time, our planet has 
been brought into its present condition. 
The animal kingdom commenced at the lowest in 
the scale, with the Protozoa, and thence proceeded, 
step by step, up to man, the crowning work of crea- 
tion. Says Hugh Miller: “It is of itself an extra- 
ordinary fact, without reference to other considera- 
tions, that the order adopted by Cuvier in his ‘Ani- 
mal Kingdom,’ as that in which the four great classes 
of vertebrate animals, when marshalled according to 
their rank and standing, naturally range, should be 
also that in which they occur in order of time. The 
brain, which bears an average proportion to the spi- 
nal cord of not more than two to one, comes first— 
it is the brain of the fish; that which bears to the 
spinal cord an average of two and a half to one suc- 
ceeded it—it is the brain of the reptile ; then came 
the brain averaging as three to ene—it is that of the 
