PRINCIPLES OP SCIENTIFIC ARRANGEMENT. 119 
laxation, inculcates in so serene and pleasing a manner 
such profound veneration and reverence. 
To acquire the prospect of a possibility to unravel the 
exuberant profusion of the natural objects surrounding 
us, successive students of nature have endeavoured to 
systematize the seeming confusion in which her riches 
are spread about. Like has been brought to like, and 
gradation made to succeed gradation. Resemblances 
have been combined aud disparities disjoined, until the 
labour of centuries has constructed of all the natural 
objects within the ken of man a vast and towering edifice, 
whose basis is seated at the lowest substructure of the 
earth which research has vet reached, but whose head 
ascends high into the empyrean. 
All things have been collected, and arranged, and 
classed. Method has endeavoured to give them suc¬ 
cession according to an assumed subordination. The 
labour of the great minds which framed the large 
theories of this vast branch of human knowledge, has 
permitted men of lesser powers of combination to ab¬ 
stract parts for special examination and investigation. 
The study of natural science has progressively reached 
an extraordinary development, spreading in every direc¬ 
tion its innumerable tentacula; to which the perfection 
of the telescope and of the microscope have still further 
added by the discovery of new worlds of wonder. 
Just as language is systematized and made easier by 
grammar methodizing its co-ordinates and their rela¬ 
tions, so natural science arranges its subjects into sub¬ 
divisions of which genera and species are the lowest 
terms. The higher and more complicated are of many 
denominations, which, notwithstanding, have for their 
chief purpose the simplification of the survey by assisting 
