OLD BONES.

INTRODUCTION.

IT has been eloquently and truly said, that everything in Nature is engaged in writing its own history: "the planet and the pebble are attended by their shadows, the rolling rock leaves its furrows on the mountain-side, the river its channel in the soil, the animal its bones in the stratum; the fern and leaf inscribe their modest epitaphs on the coal, and the falling drop sculptures its story on the sand and on the stone;" yet it must not be imagined that the revelations of that history will be divulged to those who seek them not, for Nature's truths are whispered rather than outspoken."

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Many persons, in a scientific age, would become scientific without the labour of study, and imagine that knowledge may be acquired by some popular, but ideal method, requiring no more mental fatigue or patient research than reading a novel or perusing a love ditty. Ladies would fain study chemistry as they sigh over the last new novel; while the "sworn horse-courser "wonders that the marvels of astronomy are not so much adapted to his capacity for knowledge as are the lucubrations of the Racing Calendar, or that the perigee is more intricate than the pedigree of an "Eclipse."

There are men believing themselves educated,

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who "occupy themselves with trivialities, and are indifferent to the grandest phenomena-care not to understand the architecture of the heavens, but are deeply interested in some contemptible controversy about the intrigues of Mary Queen of Scots-are learnedly critical over a Greek ode, and pass by without a glance that grand epic written by the finger of God upon the strata of the earth!"-while others, possessing very limited means and opportunities of studying God's works, nevertheless, as far as those means allow, do study them, and find a great increase of happiness arising from the pursuit of such knowledge, and of the gifts that Nature has in store for the humblest of her disciples.

In these pages I shall endeavour to explain how any person, wishing to become acquainted with the leading principles of Natural History, may, by pursuing the study with system and method, proceed from one subject to the other without falling into the maze of intricacy which generally besets those who commence such investigations without method, and who are altogether ignorant of the first elements that constitute a single branch of that far-spreading tree whose roots are planted in the depths of remotest time, and whose upper boughs are ever growing upwards and onwards to the remotest future.

I have had personal experience of the necessity of beginning at the right end. Many years ago I commenced the study of fossil shells and plants, without the slightest knowledge of the history of the animals that inhabit recent shells, or of the physiology of living plants, and, as a natural consequence, I became confused with terms and definitions of which I knew nothing, and, like the youth who is crammed with Virgil before he has mastered the Latin grammar, had to endure the mortifying discovery, that after months of study I was still an utter ignoramus.

"Natura non facit saltum" is an old adage, and

its truth is now being realized throughout the whole history of the animal and vegetable kingdom, past and present; from the creation of the oldest known Cambrian fossil to the creation of spiritual and intellectual man.

The contemplation of the animal kingdom reveals a wondrous unity of plan and of structure; and, notwithstanding the vast numbers of animals that now exist on this planet, we learn that all have been constructed upon a few original types.

PRIMARY DIVISIONS.

The animal kingdom was divided by the celebrated Cuvier into four sub-kingdoms-VERTEBRATA, MOLLUSCA, ARTICULATA, RADIATA. Recent naturalists, however, have separated certain organisms, called PROTOZOA, from the Radiata, and thus have erected five sub-kingdoms, which are arranged as follows:

1. Vertebrata. Animals that have a backbone and internal skeleton; as man, birds, reptiles, fish.

2. Mollusca.-Soft-bodied animals, at the head of which are ranked the nautilus and cuttle-fish, with their allies, the extinct belemnites, ammonites, and orthoceratites; and which include the shell-bearing animals, as sea-snails, welks, cowries, mussels, oysters, terebratulæ, lingulæ, &c.

3. Articulata.-Jointed animals; as insects, centipedes, scorpions, spiders, lobsters, cyclops, barnacles, and the extinct trilobites and eurypteri.

4. Radiata, or Calenterata.-Rayed animals. This sub-kingdom includes sea-cucumbers, sea-urchins, starfish, crinoids (or stone lilies), corals, and the extinct pentremites, cystideans, and graptolites.

5. Protozoa.-Minute beings "retaining the form of nucleated cells, which manifest the common organic

characters, but without the distinctive superadditions of true plants or animals."* Sponges, foraminifera, and infusorial animalcules are included in this subkingdom.

These plans of animal architecture are altered and modified in a thousand ways. However ungallant, it is more necessary to separate the "lassie fair and gentle" from the nightingale and dove, than from the hippopotamus or whale; while the winged butterfly of the air is far more nearly allied to the centipede or scorpion than it is to the humming-bird or bat.

The sub- kingdoms, therefore, are divided into CLASSES, ORDERS, FAMILIES, GENERA, SPECIES.

Vertebrate animals are divided into four ClassesMAMMALS, BIRDS, REPTILES, and FISHES.

* "Palæontology," by Professor Owen, p. 4.