v CLASSIFICATION OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. A LECTURE ■$[.' INTRODUCTORY TO THE COURSE OF ANATOMY, IN THE PHILADELPHIA SCHOOL OF ANATOMY. Co DELIVERED BY .^.. . D. HA.YES AGNEW, M. D. Lecturer on Anatomy, Clinical Lecturer on Surgery to the Philadelphia Hospital, &c. On Tuesday Evening, October 10, 1860. PUBLISHED BY THE CLASS. PHILADELPHIA: JOSEPH M. WILSON, No. Ill SOUTH TENTH STREET, BELOW CHESTNUT. 1860. At a general meeting of the Class of the Philadelphia School of Anatomy, held October 18th, 1860, foj the purpose of publishing Dr. Agnkw's Introductory Lec- ture, J. T. Chandler was called to the Chair, and C. B. Blackburn appointed Secretary. The following Committee was appointed to carry out the desire of the Class:— W. A. Holt, North Carolina. Thos. Welch, Maryland. L. T. Trumbower, Pennsylvania. T. J. Reid, Tennessee. II. L. Rugely, Texas. W. H. II. Michler, Pennsylvania. Dudley Bush, Kentucky. R. S. J. Peebles, Virginia. Henry Robinson, South Carolina. L. A. "Wailes, Missippi. S. J. Miller, Ohio. P. H. Percell, New Jersey. B. J. Mosely, Georgia. E. C James, Alabama. E. Thompson, New Foundland. J. B. Patterson, Illinois. Dr. A. Seydell, Nicaragua, C. J. Peacock, England. W. S. Hitch, Delaware. L. S. Bowles, Rhode Island. COERESPONDENCE. Philadelphia School of Anatomy, ( October 18th, I860. { Dr. D. Hayes Agnew. Dear Sir:—We, the undersigned, have been appointed a Special Committee by your Anatomical Class to request a copy of your Introductory Lecture, delivered on the 10th inst., for publication. Hoping that you will accede to this request of the Class, we are Respectfully, yours, J. T. Reid, H. L. Rugely, H. Robinson, L. A. Wailes, B. J. Mosely, Com. Philadelphia School of Anatomy, ( October 21st, 1800. j Gentlemen:—I am in the receipt of your letter, communicating the nattering resolution of my Anatomical Class. The Address was not written with a view to publication, yet, under the circumstances, not feeling at liberty to refuse compli- ance with your kind request, I place the manuscript at your disposal. I am, very truly, your obedient servant, D. Hayes Agnew. To Messrs. T. J. Reid, H. L. Rugeley, H. Robinson, L. A. Wailes, B. J. Moseley, Committee. L E C T U 11 E. Gentlemen:—The term nature, in its Latin derivation, implies every born thing. It embraces not only matter but its properties and laws. It is coextensive with the word creation in that won- derful chapter of condensed knowledge, wherein the Creator first communicates to man by written records the origin of his race, and the source and order of the visible world, and against which, espe- cially in this modern age, all the hosts of unsanctified learning, ridi- cule and wit have encamped in hostile array. The ancients to express the material creation and its study employed the word physica. In their system of education it main- tained priority, after which came the study of the human mind, or the metaphysica. The application of the intellectual powers to natural investigation is the most rational occupation of our race. It is thus that we obtain the most exalted and pure views of the goodness, power and wisdom of the Creator. It is thus that the intelligence unaided by revelation may reason out the existence of a great first cause, or as it is rendered by the poet, rise "Through nature up to nature's God." To the finite mind all science is originally chaotic; darkness broods over its depths, until the spirit of inductive inquiry com- mands the light to shine forth, evoking order and form. Its struc- ture is not the work of one, but of many; it does not spring into maturity, like the goddess, from the brain of Jupiter. It is a com- posite, in which every piece is bound to its fellow by the cement of 4 experimental truth. Its progress goes on like the uprising of a temple, fragment after fragment, until the capstone is laid; or, like the great luminary of light which coming forth out of the chambers of the east shineth more and more unto the perfect day. As an illustration of this fact, 1 have selected as the theme of the present address, the classification of the animal kingdom. Turn your eyes over her vast domain—the earth, the waters of the sea, the air, illimitable space, the mind is overpowered by num- ber, variety and complexity. But look again, and we discover the che- micai existence of many obvious distinctions which commend them- selves even to superficial observation. Take a handful of soil, or, what is the same thing, a portion of rock, for the former is but the crum- blings of the latter under the triturating agencies of summer's heat and winter's cold, we will perceive that it consists of homo- genous parts; that it mayor may not have a determinate form; that if it grows it is by accretion or external addition; that you may break off a portion which contains all the parts of the whole, and is therefore perfect in itself; that no mutuality of relation subsists between its parts, and that it possesses no apparatus or special organ for addition, subtraction or propagation. To all such objects, the term inorganic is applied. Others, again, are seen to possess a variety of parts constituting organs, and botli in their parts and organs to sustain a determinate relation and dependence to one another. They are constantly receiving new materials, which in virtue of such organs become part of their composition,' not by simple aggregation, but by selection and assimilation, from which result growth and form. By the possession of special organs, they are able to perpetuate their kind, and when they have fulfilled their allotted round of vital activity, they die and are resolved into simple elemental forms, which sinking into the earth, or rising into the air, enter into other combinations, to-day in the person of a\ino- to-morrow in the grass of the field; to-day in the mass undergoing incipient decomposition, to-morrow in the flower whose redolent perfumes enrich a conservatory. All such are called organic These, then, the inorganic and organic, constitute the two grand primary divisions of all natural objects. The organic is next made the subject of a further division into the animal and vegetable It may seem rather singular to those who have not examined the sub- ject under consideration, to learn that it is a matter of no small difficulty to state in what the distinction between these two depart- ments consists. Will you say appearance is alone sufficient to determine the subject: that you never could mistake an ox for an oak ? This would be a very deceptive criterion by which to adjust the true affinities of the organic kingdom. A whale in external resemblance and the medium in which it lives, favors a fish much more than a man; and yet no naturalist questions the propriety of placing it in the class of mammals. Organization, not form, is the only philosophical foundation of classification. The two kingdoms, like the radii of a circle, are sufficiently wide at their periphery to avoid confusion, but they almost touch at the other extreme. So close, indeed, is the contact, that upon this narrow boundary line some of the most exciting encounters of naturalists have taken place, each claiming for his respective department the crowds of diminutive existences which there congregate in such vast numbers as utterly to defy all computation. Let us attempt some of the critera which would naturally suggest themselves as furnishing ground for distinction. Plants are fixed to a definite locality or spot, animals are not. Generally speaking, this is true, but it is far from being sufficiently universal for the construction of a law, as there are many plants which are not un- changeably fixed to any single place, but which float ever upon the waters of the sea, from which they draw the materials of growth. Animals possess the function of respiration, so do plants; and although the human lung, the gills of a fish, or the spiracle of an insect, possess very little resemblance to a leaf, yet the same, or similar, chemical combinations and products take place in both. Animals have a circulation, so have plants. The web of a frog"s foot and a sprig of natella, when placed within the field of the mi- croscope, will each exhibit to the Avondering eye the movement of the nutritive fluids. Plants are more simple in their elementary constitution than animals; but a polyp, in this respect, is less com- plex than a tree. Plants have no heart to propel the nutritive fluids, but many animals are destitute of such an organ. Plants possess no nervous system, and so also there are animals so low in the scale of organization that no nervous system, however elemen- tary, has been demonstrated to exist. Animals possess a power of motion in response to internal or external stimuli; but the spores of certain confervas manifest the same sensibility to external con- 6 tact, the resemblance between which and infusorial animals is most striking. Plants have only at certain periods organs of fecunda- tion; but the same may be said of very many insects which acquire these after having undergone the larval metamorphosis. Neverthe- less, in spite of all these resemblances, there are certain points of demarcation, distinct, though they be fine. The one is never merged into the other. The odious doctrine of Troviranus, that plants may be developed into animals, is never true. Probably the most truthful distinction, in view of our present knowledge, is founded in the food of the respective kingdoms. The vegetable subsists on inorganic matters, from which are formed organized com- pounds; animals are maintained by organic products, and can never form such, wonderful and various as are their chemical operations. I am aware the universality of this proposition has been denied. Schwammerdam asserts that there are certain worms which live exclusively upon mud, and that he was never able to discover anything else in their intestines. Humboldt, a name co- extensive with the world, relates of the people living near the Oro- noco River, that they live for as many as three months of the year upon a soft clay deposited on its banks. Other travelers make mention of similar examples. During the year 1832, in consequence of impending famine, the Scandinavians sustained life by a similar expedient. Not long since, Retzius, whose mind had been attracted to these facts, subjected some of the earth used by the last named people to the scrutiny of a microscopic test, and in which he discovered no less than nineteen different varieties of infusoria, so that whatever agency the mud may have exerted in supporting life, it was due to the organic remains which were present. One of the first occupations of the great progenitor of our race was to give appropriate names to all the animals which God had created, as they were made to pass before him in panoramic pro- C3Ssion— And as he spake each bird and beast, behold, Approaching two and two, these cowering low With blandishment; each bird stooped on his wing, I named them as they passed, and understood Their nature, with such knowledge God endued My sudden apprehension. It must have very early occurred to any one in the habit of observ- 7 ing the animal creation, that between different individuals there existed such common points of resemblance as to admit of their being gathered into groups. Classification was early felt to be a necessity, without which there could be no progress; and it is unquestionably true that such a work demands for its execution the most comprehensive and pro- found mental endowments, and he who first opened a pathway into this before untrodden solitude of knowledge, justly stands in intel- lectual superiority without a peer. A class is compound in its structure. Analyzed, it is found to include orders, under which are ranked genera, and still deeper, as a nucleus, species, in the struc- ture of the science of numbers or language, numerals or letters are the first necessity; so in the proper systematic arrangement of ani- mals, the species lies at the foundation of the whole subject. Aristotle, the head of the Peripatetic philosophy, who was born 384 years before the Christian era, may be considered as the first who made any successful attempts toward a system of classification at all comprehensive and accurate, and, considering that the work was comparatively new and untried, and that he should have seized upon the great and guiding idea of organization.it is impossible not to regard with astonishment the genius and profundity of his mind. JTis arrangement was founded upon the sanguine fluid. Supposing that only to be blood which possessed the red color, he divided all animals into two primary groups—those with blood, and those with- out blood, making out of these other subordinate distributions. This corresponded to the more modern arrangement of the vertebrated, and invertebrated animals. ' Pliny, not satisfied with the Aristotolean system, attempted to substitute it by one founded on the medi^ in which animals lived. It embraced three classes— Terrestrial, Jquatic, and Atmospheric, which has long been abandoned for a more philosophical method. Next came the great Swedish scholar, Linnaeus, a name which will command the veneration of learning to the end of the world. And it is a matter unpardonable, as it is inexplicable, that the same Sweden, which voted a public funeral to him whose genius and intellect had reflected glory upon the nation, five years after should allow his books and herbarium to be sold in England for the paltry sum of 100 guineas. Like Aristotle, he retained the two primary divisions of animals, with this modification, that those held by the 8 former to be bloodless he styled white-blooded, and then seizing upon the circulation as the basis of adjustment, he disposed of all under three divisions, which may be stated as follows:— 1. Animals having a heart with one ) WJth antennEe_Insects. cavity and with cold white \ With tentaculte—Worms. blood. ) 2. Animals having a heart with one ) IfiungS be present-Amphibia. ventricle and one auricle, and * If ^^h^. cold red blood. ) ° 3. Animals having ahcart with two ) viviparous-Mammals. ventricles and two auricles, S 0vipUuB--JBirds. and warm red blood. ) r Linnaeus was the first to apply to animals the double appellation, expressive of both the genus and species; an expedient of great importance in preventing confusion, and giving preciseness to zoo- logical nomenclature. Thus, the term Bos is a generic one, signi- fying ox, but as it comprehends several species, they are designated as Bos Taurus, Bos Bubulus, Bos Moschatus, &c. However much there is to admire in the Linnasan system of clas- sification, yet in consequence of anatomical inaccuracy, and the sub- ordinate importance of the circulation in the animal series it could not maintain a lasting perpetuity. In nothing was the system so greatly defective as in the two large classes under his first great division of animals possessing but one cardiac cavity, and which embraced insects and worms. As the investigations of entomolo- gists have been extended, great numbers of such are known to be entirely destitute of any central organ corresponding to a heart, while others exceed the conditions of the law, and possess one con- taining both an auricular and ventricular cavity. The careful study of comparative anatomy, and a faithful tabulation of the different systems of the animal series, with a view to their fundamental im- port, gradually opened the way for a more natural, and, of course, more philosophical arrangement. Cuvier, the French anatomist, who died in 1832, stands pre-eminent for his achievements in this field. His Reigne Animale will ever remain a monument of indus- try and incomparable intellect. Before passing on to the Cuvierian system, it would be unpardonable to omit making some notice of the indefatigable and scientific labors of the celebrated John Hun- ter, who not only enriched and ennobled British medicine, but con- 9 tributed greatly to the solid progress of natural 'science. This distinguished savant, with the object of determining the essential organic value of the different systems in the chain of animality, set about the arduous task of constructing synoptical tables, which em- braced the apparatuses of circulation, respiration, digestion and enervation. The result of his patient and laborious work tended to give an additional importance to the circulatory system, the same upon which rose the zoological structure of Linnasus. His method ranked all animals under five heads:— First. Such as have hearts with four cavities, and which includes Mammals and Birds. Second. Such as have hearts with three cavities, and which in- cludes Reptiles and Amphibia. Third. Such as have hearts with two cavities, and which includes Fish and Molluscs. Fourth. Such as have hearts Avith a single cavity, and which in. eludes all the ArtiQulata. And Fifth. Animals in which the same organ performs the work of both heart and stomach. No naturalist will undervalue the labors of Hunter. While it is acknowledged he did not succeed in establishing an unalterable basis of classification, yet he signally advanced the science, and fur- nished voluminous data to illuminate the path both of contempora- ries and successors. The work of Cuvier, to which we have already alluded, forms an important accession to the literature of our subject. This distin- guished author formed two grand divisions of the animal kingdom, based on the presence or absence of a spinal column, and which he called the vertebrated and invertebrated, corresponding to Aristotle's blood and bloodless groups, or the red and white blooded divisions of Linnaeus. These were next distributed into classes, four of which were constructed out of the vertebrata; and five afterward increased to twelve by his colleague, Lamarck, from the inverte- bratce. The later labors of Cuvier induced him to arrange all animals under four divisions, termed vertebrates, molluscs, articulates, radiates. With this celebrated scholar the nervous system was considered as paramount to everything else in graduating the scale of animal 10 affinity; and Justin proportion as the knife of the anatomist has faithfully explored the interior organization, have these views been more and more certainly corroborated. In the four groups of ver- tebrated animals the centres of this system are provided with a canal for their protection, formed cither of cartilage or bone, and placed along the posterior aspect of the body. This is the cranial and spinal canal, and the masses of neurine occupying it, form the cerebrospinal axis with which the nerves traversing the different parts of the body, like so many telegraphic wires, are connected, bringing it into relation with objects exterior to itself. In these groups there are never more than four limbs, and the upper and lower jaws are placed the one above the other. In the other groups of animals we have a much more simple and elementary condition of the nervous system. In molluscs it is in the same cavity with the viscera, and consists of scattered ganglia, some of which are. uniformly placed around the aesophagus, similar to a collar, and the others scattered on the abdominal surface of the animal. From the sub-assophageal ganglia proceed the nerves which supply the organs of digestion, of respiration and generation. They possess nothing which can properly be called a skeleton; the muscles, which are destitute of transverse strias, being inserted into the skin. In the articulates a higher and more orderly development of the nervous system becomes conspicuous. The aesophagus is embraced by the cords which com ict the first ganglion, placed in the head, with the second. The other ganglia are arranged in a row along the belly, and connected by two delicate threads. This is a true spinal cord, the two threads of which are so related to the gan- glionic masses that one only is connected to these centres, the other passing over. This discovery, which was made by Newport, in 1834, presents us with the earliest rudiments of the vertebrated spinal axis, with its motor and sensory columns. More recently the labors of Schwammerdam and Mueller have brought to light, particu- larly in the more perfect insects, another nervous system, which, commencing by ganglionic masses in the head, sends communicating filaments to the supra-sesophageal one of the spinal, and passing over the posterior surface of the aesophagus, is distributed to it and the stomach. This system is regarded as either an elementary, sympathetic, or par vagum. The skeletons of the articulata consist of rings or segments of 11 considerable resistance, and into these the muscles are inserted. There are generally six limbs present, though they may exceed this number, or, in exceptional cases, be entirely wanting; and the jaws, when present, are placed side by side. In Radiates the nervous system is placed as a ganglionic collar around the mouth, and from which the nervous cords run like rays to the different prolongations of the animal. The skeletons of such are firm and frequently calcareous in their consistence. It is to this last division of Cuvier that the greatest objections are urged. It is entirely too heterogeneous in composition—its elements too diverse in their organic relations. Since the introduction of the microscope as an instrument of scientific investigation, most wonderful revelations of an otherwise invisible world have been brought to light. The dreams of the far-seeing Buffon assume the form, nay, the certainty of truth: the heavens above, and the earth beneath, visible to the eye, had con- veyed to the mind, in the multitude and variety of their objects, the idea of wisdom and boundless resource; the telescope had penetrated the veil which limited the unarmed vision, opening up new systems of ponderous worlds, so great in magnitude, so mar- velous in distance, as to overpower the mind in contemplating the omnipotence of Him whose fingers formed and arm sustains this stupendous frame. And now, to render our conceptions complete, the microscope peers down into the other extreme of nature, to learn from its teeming millions the exhaustless skill and condescend- ing minuteness of God's handiwork, which " Lives through all life, extends through all extent, Spreads undivided, operates unspent." What a force and a fullness of meaning there seems now to be in the declaration, that the "hairs of our head are all numbered, and • that not a sparrow falls to the ground without the divine notice.' This instrument, with a closer study of the nervous system, has tended to elaborate a more accurate and natural zoological arrange- ment, and which is well expressed in Jones' Outlines of the Animal Kingdom, under five grand divisions. The first is designated by the term Acrita, implying that the members of this division agree in being without discernible parts or organs; at least, none such have been detected. Assuming, how- ever, that neurine is an indispensable condition of animal life, it is 12- supposed to exist in a molecular form, scattered through the body of the animal. This same division has been termed Protozoa, lite- rally the first animal, or Infusoria, from having been found to exist in liquids containing vegetable matter. In 1675 Leeuwenhoeck discovered these simple and most elemen- tary forms of animal life. If you take a drop of water containing some organic matter, and place it in the field of a microscope, you will perceive throngs of diminutive animals instinct with living activity. Adjust now your micrometer, and you will learn that many of these do not exceed the j,^ of a line in size; so small, indeed, that in this single drop, which to them is a vast and shore- less sea, it is possible for a thousand millions to exist. They are found in air, earth and water, swarming in countless myriads beyond all powers of computation. Ehrenberg, the German naturalist, who has spent much time and curious research in this department, found them sailing in the dust, borne on the wings of the trade winds; they are seen 2.000 feet above the level of the ocean; the sea itself they sometimes light up for miles in one resplendant glow of phosphorescent fire, and fields of spotless snow they occasionally appear to transmute into a quiescent lake of bloodv The immense chalk cliffs, which lift their whitened heads along the Ir»h channel, and the tertiary formations of limestone, are composed in a great measure of their skeletons; in a single ounce of sand, gathered from the shores of the Adriatic or Antilles, more have been com- puted than there are inhabitants in the four largest cities on the face of the globe. The fossiliferous remains of the Miliolce com- pose fully one-half of the magnificent structures which adorn the City of Paris; and many of the monumental piles which rise up from the historic soil of Egypt have been reared of stones formed from petrifactions of microscopic animals. From the necessarily restricted limits of this lecture, I cannot more than allude in the most general manner to the anatomical peculiarities of the different divisions. The nervous matter, if present, (and such is presumable,) is in diffused granules; they certainly do not possess the higher senses, and common sensibility will be determined by the presence or ab- sence of neurine. There are no muscular fibres, though their move- ments may depend on the presence of sarcous elements, existing like the nervous, in a molecular state. The apparatus of digestion is a simple cavity, more or less complex, excavated out of the body 13 of the animal, and which answers the purpose of both digestion and circulation, and they multiply by division, fission, budding, and ova. Under the Acrita are ranked four different classes, distinguished by the significant names of Protozoa, Phytozoa, Hydrozoa, Ento- zoa. Among these are to be found some of the most curious works of nature, and existing in such unlimited numbers as to convey to the mind, as nothing else could, the superabounding profusion of animal life. Here are Polyps, with bristling arms set all abroad in wait for prey; Medusae, whose countless hosts, stirred by the ship's keel as she ploughs the waters of the Mediterranean, gild her wake in long lines of brilliant sheen; the little Physalius, with air-bladder and purple sail, driving along the main like a man of war; so, too, the Fungiae and Meandrinas, by whose silent yet ever extending out- growths are formed those immense reefs of coral, which rise and extend in walls of massive masonry, until, like the harbor of Tinian, the sea itself becomes filled; together with various parasites, sexless and bisexual, which, singular as it may appear, find in the brain, liver, heart, muscles and eyes, a habitat congenial to their nature. The second division is the JVematoneurea. In it the nervous system assumes the form of cords or filaments; no senses are pre- sent unless it be that of touch; muscular fibres also appear: the alimentary cavity is distinct, and provided with muscular walls; the circulation of the fluids takes place in distinct canals, and their pro- pogation is effected by ova. There are five classes under this divi- sion, technically termed Bryozoa, Rotifera, Epizoa, Ccelelmintha and Echinodermata. The third division is called Homogangliata. This corresponds with Cuvier's Articulata. They possess ganglionic centres, with filamentous connections, arranged in parallel lines, and correspond- in^ to the segments of the animal. A sympathetic system also makes its appearance; the higher senses are well marked; contrac- tile vessels propel the circulating fluid, and they possess a skeleton of sufficient resistance and solidity to qualify them for an existence in other mediae than water. This division embraces five classes, which are called Annelids, .Myriapods. Insects, Arachnoids and Crustaceans. 14 The individuals under these classes have always attracted a very large share of scientific attention. Here are to be found the Ser- pula, with his elegant respiratory tufts and calcareous mail; the Aphrodite Aculeata, prized so highly as a bait by fisherman, with its rows of symmetrical setae reflecting brilliantly all the colors of the rainbow, and yet every hair by its barbed margins a weapon of efficient defence; the flea (Pulex Iratans) and the mosquito, so conducive to sound rest and pleasant dreams; the spider, (Araneidce,) like a politician or tradesman, weaving from delicate spinarets his net; with a care so cunning and treacherous as to utterly confound precaution; and the ant, (Termes,) whose industry has furnished in all times a text of rebuke to the sluggard and improvident. And so might we mention the medicinal leech, [Hirudo Medicinal is.) and the Cantharis Vessicatoria, nature's bleeders and blistcrers; the Alphides, or plant lice, whose fecundity is such that a single intercourse is sufficient to insure a progeny to the ninth generation, a population greater than all the inhabitants of the world: some, too, the scourge of the husbandman, desolating field, vineyard, and orchard; some to enrich civilization and trade with their silk, honey and wax; some with harp and dulcet, to play the part of strolling minstrels; some, by their barometrical instincts, to instruct our reason; some whose whole circle of life revolves in a few hours; some whose periodicity extends over many years; some who spring into being complete at once, and some who only attain to the per- fection of insect life after passing through a mysterious metamor- phosis. The fourth division is the Heterogangliata, corresponding to ... Cuvier's Mollusca. The term employed to distinguish this division is designed to express, as in the others, some peculiarity of the nervous system, consisting in a symmetrical arrangement of its parts. The supra-aesophageal ganglion maintains the same posi- tion; but the others, while they maintain a communication with it, are scattered, without any reference to order, through dif- ferent parts of the animal. Six classes are grouped under this division, called respectively Tunicata, Chonc/fera, Brachiopoda, Pterepoda. Gasterepoda, Cephalopoda. These classes furnish num- berless objects, the study of which might profitably occupy a life- time. As familiar examples of a few of these animals, we may instance the Mytillus Margaritiferrous of the Persian Gulf, furnish- 15 ing the finest pearls in the world: the Toredo.. with his fatal borer, the scourge of the shipmaster, so famous in connection with the dykes of Holland, and in 1730 threatening the entire destruction of the island of Walcheran; the oyster, whose adaptation to our gas- tronomic wants is so familiar to all; the Unio, with his singular moorings; the Helices, or snails, whose slimy tracks so much excite the irrasciblc housewife; the Fissurella, with his gaudy canopy, moving on the bottom of the sea not unlike a city belle with hoisted parasol; the Clio, with his transverse paddle, from whom no doubt the inhabitants of Greenland borrowed the double-barrelled oar with which to guide their canoes; and, finally, the horrid Octopous, or sea poulpe, the scourge of the ocean, against whose nine hundred and sixty sucker armed tentacles man himself cannot cope. The fifth, and last grand division of the animal world, is the Ver- tebrata. By Owen, who may be considered the most profound natu- ralist of the present day, it is termed Myelencephala, and by others Spinicerebrata. It comprises five groups or classes. Fishes, Amphibia, Reptiles, Birds, Mammals. The distinguishing characteristics of these are to be found in the existence of an organized internal skeleton; a nervous system, concentrated and complex, presiding over organic and animal life, and provided with a spinal and cranial chamber for its protection; the organs of sense assuming the highest import- ance, and the presence of attributes indicating an intelligent essence. It is under this division that man appears, made in the likeness of the invisible God, the crowning act of creation, the epitome of all the kingdoms, and clothed by the Almighty fiat with the dignity of universal dominion. Such, gentlemen, is a very rapid survey of the zoological system in its most important features. Our object being only to com- municate the great principles which underlie the subject of ar- rangement, we have not descended below classes. Its structure is exact and rigidly logical; it is not the work of syllogism. During the two thousand years in which men groped after truth under the domination of the organuni of the Stagarite, not a principle was established. The classification of the animal kingdom on its pre- sent basis is purely an inductive triumph—the soul and essence of all solid progress; the same that animates the labors of the statis- 16 tician, appoints scats of observation, builds the laboratory of the chemist, kindles the fires of analysis, and in a thousand ways sum- mons nature before the tribunal of experiment and observation. In conclusion, gentlemen, let me extend to you on this, the occa- sion of our first introduction, a hearty and hospitable welcome. I suppose tliere are here to-night representatives from every State of the Union, as well as from the British American Provinces. And at this day, when the public mind is agitated upon the turbulent sea of political excitement, it is a glorious thought that there is one altar around which all sections can gather as brethren, and upon which they can make a common consecration of themselves to the holy cause of humanity: it is the altar of science. May its fires never grow dim; may its sacred precincts never be pressed by the footsteps of alienation or fanaticism. You have left homes of happiness and love; the prayers of many tender and trembling hearts have followed you to thij place of tem- porary sojourn. When Virgil sailed for Athens, Horace invoked the winds to be propitious, as they bore away one-half of his soul; but what arc the dangers of the sea when compared with those which encompass one full of the strength and fervid energy of un- suspecting youth, unloosed from the restraints and experience of parental watchfulness, and thrown suddenly into the vortex of me- tropolitan society. The danger is imminent in the extreme. Every man carries a traitor in his bosom, and one which is ready, when- ever the price is paid down, to throw open the doors to the enemy. The moral and intellectual constitution are constantly influenced by disturbing and antagonistic forces. It is like a camp in which the elements of insurrection and rebellion exist; the passions crave gratification and unlawful indulgence; the will and moral sentiments confront and deny assent; and, alas, how often does such remon- strance prove powerless and futile. In the fabulous story of Her- cules and Autaeas, the Lybian giant acquired new power by every contact with his mother earth; nor could the son of Jupiter termi- nate the conflict, until, lifting him aloft in one mighty embrace, he was enabled to crush cut his life. And so, my young countrymen to be successful in the great struggle against the vices of our nature we must rise above the earth; we must invoke supernatural aid, and gather strength for the conflict in an atmosphere uncongenial to their growth.