by their combined efforts, build up in the midst of the fluctual ing ocean, not merely insignificant islets, but whole groups of islands, which in due time are rendered fit for the habitation of man himself, and do in fact become his permanent abode -but not only this, but should so order all other circumstances connected with this procedure, as. for instance, the action of the waves and winds upon this nascent little world, that when the animal has built up to that point, which its nature, for it cannot exist when removed from the influence of its native element, enables it to attain, should take up the wonderful work and complete the design of the Great Creator, and give the structure its due elevation and consolidation, should furnish it with fountains and streams of water; should cover it with a soil capable of affording sufficient nutriment to trees and plants, which should in their turn afford food for some part of the animal kingdom, and finally for man himself. How evidently does all this show the adaptation of means to an end. What a number of calculations must be made, what a number of circumstances taken into consideration, what a number of contingences provided against, what a number of conflicting elements made to harmonize and subserve to the promotion of a common purpose, which it is impossible could have been ef fected but by the intervention and constant guidance of an unseen Being, causing all things so to concur, as to bring about and establish what he designs! And, when we farther consider the multiplicity of aspects in which the subject must be viewed, in order to get a clear and correct idea of the co-ope ration of so many causes, seeming often at variance with each other; we may farther affirm, without fear of contradiction, that the whole must be the plan and the work, as the primary and only intelligent cause, of a Being infinite in power, wisdom, and goodness.

There are two circumstances in the above account of the proceedings of these animals, that more particularly demonstrate Divine interposition. One is the precaution to which they have recourse when they build a circular reef in the sea, that they leave an opening in this part for the entrance of the tide and its reflux, so that a constant renovation of the waters takes place, without which they could not proceed in their operations, for want of their necessary aliment.

The other is, not only that they erect their buildings in the form best calculated to resist the action of the ocean, but also erect break-waters to strengthen the weakest points, and those from which the greatest danger is to be apprehended.

It is clear that beings so little organized, with scarcely any

sense or feeling, are not sufficient of themselves to take these precautions, they must be directed and impelled by some power acting upon them; which, foreseeing the want, provides for it; this can be no physical power, for that is equally without intel:gence, and acts necessarily, but it must be the result of the w and original action of Supreme Intelligence, who either so organized the animal as to direct it to certain acts, when placed in certain circumstances, by the agency of physical powers; or by his own immediate employment of these powers, fenced its action, as the occasion required.

f cannot conclude this history of the Polypes without adverting to another circumstance which proves in a very str king manner the intervention of the Deity: and that they maid not have assumed the various forms under which we behold them, from peculiar circumstances, to the influence of wt: :h, in the lapse of ages they were exposed. When we see ar mais, buried in the bosom of the ocean, symbolize the whole yot, table world from the tree to the moss and lichens that refate on its trunk, and the agaric or other funguses that

rz up beneath it, we are naturally led to inquire into the reason of this system of representation, exhibited by beings that have no affinity, nor are even contrasted with each other by juris-position.

One of the general objects of the vegetable kingdom was to ornament the dry land with what was fair to look upon as well as with what was good for food. But the depths of ocean, bugh planted with various vegetables, seem unapt to exhibit in beauty the frail blossoms of the plant, which though they can bear the fluctuations of their own atmosphere, must often be destroyed by the greater weight and more irresistible agitatins of a denser element. To ornament the bosom of the deep, therefore, more solid forms, sending forth blossoms capable of saetaining the action of such an element, were requisite: and therefore God, who gifted his creature man with an inquiring sprt, and with an appetite for knowledge of the works of erevtion, to furnish him with objects for inquiry, and to gratify that appetite to the utmost, not only placed before his eyes upon the earth an innumerable host of creatures, of which he en. i gain a notion by only opening his eyes and by observing their beauties, and experiencing their utility, might praise his Maker for them; but also filled the deep with inhabitants, and ornamented it with animals that appeared to vegetate and bossom like plants, that his curiousity being excited, he might also study the inhabitants of the water, and glorify his Maker for the creation of them also.

But we may derive another use from the consideration of these plant-like animals, if the skeptic endeavours to persuade us, from the gradual progress, observable in natural objects from low to high, and from the narrow interval that often separates those in the same series from each other, that by the action of certain physical causes, consequent upon certain established laws and a fixed order of things, and by the sti mulus of certain appetencies in themselves, animals gradually changed their forms and organization, and thus, by slow degrees, kept improving in all respects, till at last the monkey became the man, if the skeptic thus attempt to pervert us, we may turn round upon him, and ask him, how it was that the zoophyte, buried in the depths of the ocean, should imitate the plant? can a studied imitation every where denoting purpose and design, a mighty structure including innumerable forms and parts connected with each other and formed evidently according to a preconceived plan, be the result of the operation of blind, unguided physical agents, acting by the appetencies of these organized beings? How, indeed, could they have any appetency to put on the appearance of a set of objects they never saw? The thing is morally impossible. In fact, when we survey the whole series of natural objects, and find throughout a system of representation, as well as a chain of affinities, it is as clear as the light of day, that an infinite Intelligence must first have planned, an Almighty hand then executed, and that infinite Love still sustains the whole.

CHAPTER VI.

Functions and Instincts. Radiaries.

It happens not seldom to the student of the works of creation, when he is endeavouring to thread the labyrinth of forms in any of the three kingdoms of nature, and has arrived at any given point, to feel doubtful which course to pursue. The road divides, perhaps, into two branches, which both promise to lead him right. At the very outset of the animal kingdom, as we have seen, there was some uncertainty, whether we should begin by the Infusories or Polypes, and now the Tunicaries, or Ascidians as some call them, at the first blush seem more closely connected with the Polypes, than the Radiaries, which Lamarck has placed next to them; but when we consider that the organization is much more advanced in the former than in the latter, not only in the organs of digestion, but in those of sensation, respiration, and circulation, we feel satisfied that the latter, where the object is to ascend, should first be considered. I shall, therefore, now give some account of the Radiaries.

The animals forming this class receive this appellation, because they exhibit a disposition to form rays, both in their internal and external parts, a disposition which begins to show itself, as we have seen, both in the polypes and the infusories1 with respect to their oral appendages, and is found also in the tunicaries and cephalopods, or cuttle-fish. And this tendency in the works of the Creator to produce or imitate radiation, does not begin in the animal kingdom; the Geologist detects it in the mineral, and the Botanist in the vegetable, for Actinolites, Pyrites, and other substances exhibit it in the former, and a great variety of the blossoms of plants in the latter. We may ascend higher, and say that irradiation is the beginning of all life, from the seed in the earth and the punctum saliens in the egg, to the foetus in the womb; and still higher in the physical world, sound radiates, light radiates, heat radiates. If we farther survey the whole universe, what do we behold but

1 See above, p. 82, 89, &c.

radiating bodies dispersed in every direction. Suns of innumerable systems, shedding their rays upon their attendant planets; and the Great Spiritual Sun of the universe, even God himself, is described in Holy Scripture as that awful Being, "Whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting."

Cuvier, and after him several other modern Zoologists, have considered Lamarck's Class of Radiaries as forming a group or class of the zoophytes; but when we recollect that they cannot, like the infusories and polypes, be propagated by cuttings and offsetts, this seems to indicate an animal substance in which the nervous molecules are less dispersed, and that some tendency to nervous centres has been established. In the upper classes of invertebrated animals, indeed, many will reproduce an organ when mutilated, and some even a head, but none but the polypes and infusories multiply themselves in the way above stated. It seems, therefore, most advisable to adhere to Lamarck's system, by considering the animals in question, as forming a group by themselves, and to adopt his name of Radiaries.

These are distinguished from the class immediately preceding the polypes, by being limited as to their growth to a certain standard, as to their form by the general appearance of radiation they usually present, being either divided into rays, as in the star-fish; or having rays exhibited by their crust as in the sea-urchins; or embedded in their substance, forming appendages to their viscera, as in the sea-nettle or jelly-fish. They have not, like the polypes, a terminal mouth or orifice surrounded by food-collecting tentacles; but one placed, most commonly, underneath their body. Their digestive organs are distinct and more complex. They are never fixed, and are to be met with only in the sea and its estuaries. Lamarck has divided this class into two orders, the Gelatines1 and the Echinoderms.2

1. The Gelatines, which some consider as a distinct class under the name of Acalephes,3 are distinguished by a gelatinous body, and a soft and transparent skin; they have no retractile tubes issuing from the body; no anal passage; no hard parts in the mouth; and they have no interior cavity, their viscera being embedded in their gelatinous substance.

Some genera in this Order, like the fishes, are remarkable for an air-vessel which they can fill or empty, and so rise to the surface, or sink to the bottom at their pleasure, but it dif

1 Radiares molasses. 3 Acalepha.

2 R. Echinodermes, 4 Physsophora, &c.