CHAPTER XIV. 



Annelida (Worms). 



The forms of animate existence which we have briefly 

 examined in the previous chapters, may be likened to the 

 humbler ranks of society; the Vertebrata are certainly 

 the aristocracy ; but between these there ranges a great 

 middle class, the most populous, the most ingenious, and 

 in some respects the most interesting, of the whole. They 

 constitute the important divisions which naturalists term 

 Articulata and Mollusca. 



We have alluded to the populousness of these sections : 

 a single subdivision of one of them (Insects) is believed 

 to be at least twenty times as numerous in species as all 

 other animals put together.* 



We do not expect our readers to study technical zoology 

 at the breakfast- table, nor to make a dish of prawns the 



* Some years ago, an eminent zoologist gave the folio-wing table as his esti- 

 mate of the probable number of existing species of animals, deduced frort 

 facts and principles then known Later discoveries tend to increase rathei 

 than to diminish the estimate. 



Worms 2,500 



Quadrupeds 



Birds 



Reptiles ... 



Fishes 



Insects 



1,200 

 6,300 

 1,500 

 8,000 

 550,000 



Radiata 



Polypes, <fcc. ... 



Testacea 



Naked Testacea 



1,000 

 1,530 

 4,500 

 600 



making an aggregate of 577, 

 Quadrupeds," p. 28.) 



species. (S-wainson's '* Geog. and Classit o 



