with cold blood, and wanting aerial lungs. Philosophers, who have
settled the scheme of the world as one of progression, complication,
or development, trace animal life from the polypus, (which belongs to
the order of Radiata, or animals that have a central point in which
the vital force of the animal appears to preside, diverging in radii,
as in the sea-eggs, starfishes, coral, sponges); the polypus advances
to the Articulata, or jointed animals, including all kinds of worms,
leeches, or ringed animals, of which insects are the most highly
organised developments; next to the Mollusca, or soft-bodied animals;
and then from these, which include the shell-fish, the scheme
gradually progresses to the fish with backbones; and here the lowest
order of Vertebrata is developed: the fish merges into the reptile,
the reptile into the bird; the bird, as in the ornithorhyncus, into
the Mammalia.

Thus the gradations of life may be clearly apprehended by the visitor.
The highest development of animal life he has seen in the MAMMALIA
SALOON, all the animals of which produce their young alive and suckle
them; the order of life immediately below the mammalia, he has
examined in the marvellous varieties of birds arranged in the NORTHERN
GALLERY; then he turned to the west, and examined the third order of
animal life in the REPTILES; then the fourth order represented by
FISH; and so on till he watched the simpler forms of life in the
STAR-FISH and the SPONGE.

The history of this marvellous progress of animal life, so far as
scientific men have gazed into its deep mysteries, is surely worth
attention. Few have the courage and the enthusiasm to follow each
footstep of the tiny ant at his complex labours,--few are the Hubers
that dwell among us; but to us all is given the love of that knowledge