genus, a class, perhaps, a great number of these, might disappear, utterly vanish from existence, and those remaining would preserve the integrity and completeness the Creator had endowed them with at the beginning. While each and every form of life is, therefore, perfect in itself and independent of all others, there are resemblances and approximations that must be regarded as of vital importance. Naturalists have divided or separated the organic world into classes, orders, genera, species and varieties. Classes are those like the mammalia—that is, all animals where the female nourishes its offspring by mammary glands. Orders are those like the quadrumana—all those having four hands. A genus, or a family proper, is composed of species; and a species includes varieties, or possible varieties, of the same being under different circumstances. But these classifications are, to a considerable extent, arbitrary; and though they serve the purpose of facilitating our studies, they may also lead us astray, if too closely followed. Genera, or families proper, in many cases at least, are, however, susceptible of very exact definitions. So, too, are species. For example:—The simiadæ, or monkey family, are so entirely distinct that they will not be or need not be confounded with anything else. Some ignorant or superficial persons, with the false notion of continuous and connecting gradations, have supposed the negro something midway between men and animals. But there is no such monstrosity in nature, for, as already observed, each form of being is a complete and independent creation in itself. A genus is composed of a given number of species, all different from each other, and, it need not be repeated, independent of each other. These genera are believed to be incapable of interunion with other genera, though this has been questioned in some cases. Species are capable of a limited interunion, though it may be doubted if such interunion ever occurs in a wild or savage state. And as each species is different in form and character from others, so the limited capacity for interunion varies, or in other words, hybrids—the product of different species—vary in their virility or power of reproduction. The given number of species of which a genus is composed, ascends or descends in the scale of being, that is, there is a head and base to the generic column. The one next above the most inferior has all the qualities of the latter, but these qualities have a fuller development, that is, the organization is more elaborate and the corresponding faculties are of a higher order. And indeed this is not confined to mere species or genera even, but is true of widely separated beings. Thus, the exalted and elegant Caucasian mother—the habitue of the Fifth avenue or St. Germain—nourishes her offspring by the same process common to the meanest of the mammalia. So, too, in the process of gestation, the function of mastication, deglutition, digestion, the sense of taste, of