startling; but when he ascends to the higher and larger animals, whose forms and habits are well known to us--when he has to find a father for the horse, the lion, the rhinoceros, the elephant--his phenomenon, we are sure, will no longer retain its "simple and modest character." Naturalists have observed, that there is a striking _uniformity of plan_ even amongst animals of very different habits, and which, perhaps, inhabit different elements; they have remarked, that this uniformity is adhered to even when it appears to answer no specific purpose, as when in the fin of a whale the unbending bone bears the semblance of the jointed hand. This, too, is pressed into the service of our author's hypothesis. It is a curious fact. But if we say of it, that it appears to hint the existence of _some law_, and to tempt the investigation of the physiologist, we assign to it all the scientific importance that it can possibly deserve. Some physiologists, we must be permitted to observe, have rather amused themselves by a display of ingenuity, than profited science by their discoveries of a _unity of structure_ in animals of the most opposite description. It is easy to surprise the imagination by pointing out unexpected resemblances, if all cases of diversity are at the same time kept out of view. These writers will mention, for instance, that all quadrupeds have uniformly _seven_ bones in the neck. The giraffe has no more than the pig. But they refuse to mention at the same time, that in _birds_ the number varies from nine to twenty-three, and in _reptiles_ from three to eight. Sometimes the merest fancy is indulged. We are told that in the pulpy substance of a certain mollusk there are lines drawn presenting a sketch of a vertebrated animal, and it is gravely intimated that nature seems to have made a rough design of the next work of art she was about to produce.