The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 57, July, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 57, July, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
not easily kept alive in confinement, so that they are not often seen
in aquariums.
Having thus endeavored to sketch each different kind of Echinoderm, let
us try to forget them all in their individuality, and think only of the
structural formula that applies equally to each. In all, the body has
three distinct regions, the oral, the ab-oral, and the sides; but by
giving a predominance to one or other of these regions, a variety of
outlines characteristic of the different groups is produced. In all,
the parts radiate from the oral opening, and join in the ab-oral
region. In all, this radiation is accompanied by rows of suckers
following the line of the diverging rays. It is always the same
structure, but, endowed with the freedom of life, it is never
monotonous, notwithstanding its absolute permanence. In short, drop
off the stem of the Crinoid, and depress its calyx to form a flat disk,
and we have an Ophiuran; expand that disk, and let it merge gradually
in the arms, and we have a Star-Fish; draw up the rays of the
Star-Fish, and unite them at the tips so as to form a spherical
outline, and we have a Sea-Urchin; stretch out the Sea-Urchin to form
a cylinder, and we have a Holothurian.
And now let me ask,--Is it my ingenuity that has imposed upon these
structures the conclusion I have drawn from them?--have I so combined
them in my thought that they have become to me a plastic form, out of
which I draw a Crinoid, an Ophiuran, a Star-Fish, a Sea-Urchin, or a
Holothurian at will? or is this structural idea inherent in them all,
so that every observer who has a true insight into their organization
must find it written there? Had our scientific results anything to do
with our invention, every naturalist's conclusions would be colored
by his individual opinions; but when we find all naturalists
converging more and more towards each other, arriving, as their
knowledge increases, at exactly the same views, then we must believe
that these structures are the Creative Ideas in living reality. In
other words, so far as there is truth in them, our systems are what
they are, not because Aristotle, Linnaeus, Cuvier, or all the men who
ever studied Nature, have so thought and so expressed their thought,
but because God so thought and so expressed His thought in material
forms when He laid the plan of Creation, and when man himself existed
only in the intellectual conception of his Maker.
LYRICS OF THE STREET.
II.
THE WEDDING.
In her satin gown so fine
Trips the bride within the shrine.
Waits the street to see her pass,
Like a vision in a glass.
Roses crown her peerless head:
Keep your lilies for the dead!
Something of the light without
Enters with her, veiled about;
Sunbeams, hiding in her hair,
Please themselves with silken wear;
Shadows point to what shall be
In the dim futurity.
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