The discovery of each
separate law of nature leads to the establishment of some other more general
law, or at least indicates to the intelligent observer its existence.
Nature, as a celebrated physiologist* has defined it, and as the word was
interpreted by the Greeks and Romans, is "that which is ever growing and
ever unfolding itself in new forms."
[Footnote] *Carus, 'Von den Urtheilen des Knochen und Schalen Gerustes',
1828 6.
The series of organic types becomes extended or perfected in proportion as
hitherto unknown regions are laid open to our view by the labors and
researches of travelers and observers; as living organisms are compared with
those which have disappeared in the great revolutions of our planet; and as
microscopes are made more perfect, and are more extensively and efficiently
employed. In the midst of this immense variety, and this periodic
transformation of animal and vegetable productions, we see incessantly
revealed the primordial mystery of all organic development, that same great
problem of 'metamorphosis' which G??the has treated with more than common
sagacity, and to the solution of which man is urged by his desire of
reducing vital forms to the smallest number of fundamental types. As men
contemplate the riches of nature, and see the mass of observations
incessantly increasing before them, they become impressed with the intimate
conviction that the surface and the interior of the earth, the depths of the
ocean, and the regions of air will still, when thousands and thousands of
years have passed away, open to the scientific observer untrodden paths of
discovery.
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