MAMMALS 
UR delightful labor is now approaching a close, for we have 
arrived at the last division of our subject, and 
whether we look backward or forward we are ready 
to recognize the marvellousness of creation and to 
feel with new force the thoughtfulness, power and 
mercy of a Creator whose wisdom is equally appar¬ 
ent whether exhibited in the most minute or in the 
largest of creatures; whether studied in the simplest 
form of protozoa , or in the delicate and complicated 
mechanism of the highest of animals—Man. Think of 
the harmony of adjustment required for the exercise 
of such endowments as enabled earth’s most gifted 
sons to live and do and suffer; to transform mere 
inert matter into the subtlest thought or the most ennobling deed. Con¬ 
sider all that is implied in the mere fact of human existence, and 
we shall realize that no inspiration of poet or seer approaches the 
strangeness, the unsuspected harmony which lies all about us awaiting only 
our awakening from a- life in the senses, and a life which is dead in comparison 
with its possibilities. I have endeavored to approach the story of creation in an 
humble and reverent spirit. I have sought to escape the folly of preconceived 
ideas, and to substitute for carelessness and indifference an acquaintance with a 
life that is all about us, and which illustrates each instant the wisdom and 
mercy of the omniscient and bounteous Creator. Matter is to my mind but the 
sensible form assumed by spirit; the web which spirit weaves into many a 
pattern and many a design. Matter acted upon by the power of the Creator 
becomes the visible expression of the infinitely varied tones which unite to form 
the world’s diapason which has marked the rise and setting of each day’s sun 
through the countless aeons of the past. It is not alone the rocks that tell the 
story to such a reverent mind as that of Hugh Miller. It is not simply the 
plant life which has such interest for Asa Gray that tells the story of the 
never-ceasing processes which illustrate the care of the Creator, his infinite 
wisdom and his method of governing the world of matter by law, which shall 
be the natural expression of the harmonious relationship of each object to its 
work in life. Our story has now brought us to the threshold of the highest 
realm in the animal kingdom, and yet we shall not find greater wonders than 
were furnished by the worm, the fish, the reptile and the bird. 
By the process which is termed evolution , the Lord hath seen fit to unroll 
one form from another, ever adjusting the writing on the new page to the full¬ 
est harmony with what has gone before and with what is to come after. If 
the creature is, like the tarpan , to inhabit dreary wastes and serve the needs of a 
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