[THE ANIMAL KINGDOM.]
FIG. 1.—ANIMALCULÆ FOUND IN STAGNANT WATER.
| A, Cyclops Quadracornis. | F, Ambœba princeps. |
| B, Anguillula. Fluviatilis. | G, Acineta mystacina. |
| C, Actinophrys. Sol. | H, Oxytrycha. |
| D, Coleps Hirtus. | I, Triophthalamus dorsalis. |
| E, Vorticella. | J, Polyarthra. |
After considering the beautiful covering which a kind Providence has given to the earth in the form of all sorts of vegetation, it will be necessary now to consider for what kind of creatures this most delightful garden was prepared, whether they seek their food in the air, water, or earth, for all these places are abodes of the vegetable tribes, and where there is vegetation there are animated beings; for there is not an animal in existence, but directly or indirectly feeds upon the vegetable kingdom, from the elephant and rhinoceros which devour whole plantations, to the minute animalculæ which float in the air or dwell in every drop of stagnant water, where food in the form of equally minute algæ is found—each possessed of wonderful organs and powers suitable to the kind of existence they lead, for God has often placed life in the most simple as well as complicated forms. Dr. Mantell says:—
"We have been accustomed to associate the presence of vitality with bodies possessing various complicated organs for the elaboration and maintenance of the energies of existence, but here we see perfect and distinct creations in the condition of globules and cells, which live and move and have their being, and increase in numbers with a rapidity so prodigious, and in modes so peculiar, as to startle all our preconceived notions of animal organisation."
And it is in these Protozoa, the lowest of the animal creation, that a perfect similarity of condition exists to those of the vegetable kingdom, they are here upon a level; but arising out of these simple forms, God has created two sets of types or portraits, the members of each resembling those below it in some particular, but having organs which are superior to it; and above these are found members whose organs are of a still higher order, and so on till the one set comprises the highest orders of the vegetable, and the other those of the animal kingdom, in its ranks. But these simple organisms are never developed so as to resemble those placed above them; they each, whether high or low, continue to produce their like, for each grade was a creation of itself and a separate one from God's hands. There have been writers, who would endeavour to make it appear that God only created the lowest and most simple germs, and the circumstances which were necessary to develop them, and then allowed these to act and re-act until a man or an oak tree at last became the result! Were this the case, geology would long before this have shown the "small beginnings" of man; but no! as soon as traces of man's creation are perceived, he is found as perfectly formed and organised as he is now, there are no transition stages of man's existence, nor of any other animal. It is true that the simpler forms of both animal and vegetable existence were created first, but this was in accordance with the state of the earth's surface, which was not at first suitable to the requirements of the higher animals, which were only created when the earth was in a state suitable to receive them.
But when the surface of the earth was still more developed God created man. His last and greatest work; and there can be no doubt that God in His wisdom caused all these changes to precede the creation of man, that he might lack nothing to confer happiness on him, nor objects to exercise his faculties upon.
Animals are divided into two great natural families, the Invertebrate and the Vertebrate, the former having neither spine nor internal skeleton, the latter having both.