1 ft 8 
ON THE STRUCTURE AND HABITS, ETC. 
smaller kinds of Flies. They fly along with their mouths wide open, and swallow 
every thing in their way. 
The next order is interesting, as it includes that well-known and industrious 
little insect the Bee, which, as Solomon observes, “ though they are little among 
such as fly, their food is the chief of sweet things.” 
All these insects are furnished with a sting; they are amongst the most skilful 
of insect architects, a better illustration of which need not be given than the 
comb of the Honey-bee. They are called Ilymenoptera , or Membrane-winged. 
The last order is Biptera , or the Two-winged insects. They include the Gnats 
and all kinds of Flies that are furnished with but two wincrs. 
O 
This will conclude our slight sketch of the varied forms of animals which are 
technically called Invertebrate , from the fact of their possessing no vertebne or 
back bone. Their structure, though in many instances very complicated, falls 
far short of the surprising variety and adaptation which we find in the higher 
classes of animals. They form a part of the animal kingdom which serves to 
introduce us, as it were, to the wonderful structure and instincts of that division 
of animals at which Man stands at the head. 
After the last class mentioned, we arrive in the ascending scale at the class of 
fish, whose forms become more complicated as we pursue them, from those simple 
fish with nothing more than a cartilaginous backbone, to those which have osseous 
skeletons, furnished with powerful osseous ribs, fins, and scales. From the fish 
we pass by an almost imperceptible gradation to those amphibious animals, as 
the Frog, Toad, and Salamander; from these, again, we arrive at the Reptiles, 
including the Turtles, Crocodiles, Alligators, and Snakes, and those animals of 
prodigious magnitude that have^been exhumed from the strata of the earth. 
After these we find a higher and more perfect organization in the light and active 
members of the feathered creation. On leaving the birds, we find the tribes of 
Mammalia , exhibiting still more evident traces of superior adaptation, in all 
their parts, to the circumstances in which they are placed; at the head of which, 
displaying a structure more complicated, powers more perfect, and an adaptation 
more complete than any exhibited by preceding animals, stands Man, “ the beauty 
of the world, the paragon of animals.” Man stands in the world supreme, and, 
independent of the divine gift of reason, exhibits a structural perfection that 
would point him out as the master-work of the Creation. But there is given to 
him a principle denied to other forms of animated beings, a principle that con¬ 
nects him with all that is below him in creation, and with all that is divine and 
spiritual beyond the bonds of matter, and the records of time. It is because he 
possesses this principle that he can survey the world we live in, measure its 
ponderous movements through space, expose the elements of which it consists, 
