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detailed idea of the extent of the disruption which has taken 
place m that creation which we now behold. For the 
most delicate and perishable organizations— particularly in 
the lower species— have been preserved so beautifully and 
wonderfully, that we could not have known of their existence 
at all but for the care which has been taken of them in the 
bowels of the earth. 
Yet with all that the earth can disclose, and calculating* 
every known species or individual that has ever been dis^ 
covered there are still many difficulties to be explained and 
many links to be repaired, from those animals that have been 
entombed, before we can presume to say that we have in our 
possession, before our eyes, that one creation which drew 
torth from its Creator those memorable words, “ And God saw 
everything that He had made, and behold it was very good.” 
It we go into the most extensive collection of recent and fossil 
remains of animals, if we study the national museums in this 
department of history, we must see directly that all our power 
to reach anything like perfection in this direction has failed • 
that often the chain, or the circle, has been lost, and we cannot 
trace it. 
Tbe very infirmity of our mode of grouping the animal 
creation together, shows the failure which must attend the 
effort of any finite being to study to perfection the work of 
an Infinite God But the great difficulty we have of arriving 
a c. 6 °^. W la ^ constitutes the living creation, is not 
confined to the impossibility of determining all the genera and 
species which have necome extinct. Another difficulty arises 
from our inability to form a true classification, even of what 
is before us. If we attempt to make a chain, we cannot do so 
without losing the most correct idea we can possibly have of 
the living creation. That Being who made that creation is 
Bternal. He has neither beginning nor end. This idea much 
better expresses the living natural creation by a circle, having 
neither beginning nor end in which you can take no part or 
otker 1 ^ ° f Cirele " and Sa ^ one P art was higher than the 
This is just the course which the Eternal Being has pursued 
m the living creation; He has made that creation up of an 
infinite variety of circles, some larger, some smaller. In this 
way we see animals linked together, not as it were by a long 
pendent chain, but by a circle ; so that in many particulars 
which characterize the individual, the more prominent parts 
of an animal are linked by a resemblance, more or less close 
to some others. But nomenclators have, in many instances 
strung animals together by a single link, which of course gives 
