404 FOSSIL ARACHNIDANS. 
both, as infinitely surpassing the most exalted 
faculties of the human mind, as the mechanisms 
of the natural world, when magnified by the 
highest microscopes, are found to transcend the 
most perfect productions of human art. 
SECTION III. 
Third Class of Articulated Animals. 
FOSSIL ARACHNIDANS. 
Under the relations that now subsist between 
the animal and vegetable kingdoms, the connec- 
tion of terrestrial Plants with Insects is so direct 
and universal, that each species of plant is consi- 
dered to afford nutriment to three or four species 
of insects. The general principle which we have 
traced throughout the Secondary and Tertiary 
formations, ever operating to maintain on the sur- 
face of the earth the greatest possible amount of 
life, affords a strong antecedent probability that 
so large a mass of terrestrial vegetables as that 
which is preserved in the Carboniferous strata of 
the Transition series, held the same relation, as 
the basis of nutriment to Insect families of this 
early date, that modern vegetables do to this most 
numerous class of existing terrestrial animals. 
