WORMS. 
133 
CHAPTEE XI Y. 
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. 
"VVc 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.* 
Wo do not expect our readers to study technical zoology 
at the breakfast-table, nor to make a dish of prawns the 
* Somo years ago, an eminent zoologist gave tho following table as his esti- 
mate of the probable number of existing species of animals, deduced from 
facts and principles then known Later discoveries tend to increase rather 
than to. diminish the estimate. 
Quadrupeds 
1,200 
Worms 
2,500 
Birds 
6,800 
Radiata 
1,000 
Reptiles ... 
1,600 
Polypes, &c 
1,530 
Fishes 
8,000 
Testacea 
4,500 
Insects 
... ... 550,000 
Naked Testacca ... 
600 
making an aggregate of 577,600 species. (Swain son’s “Gcog. and Classif. of 
Quadrupeds,” p. 28.) 
