temples,
distributed about the tables 5, 6, and 7 are all worth examination.
The splendid cone shells, which include the king of the collection,
pointed out to visitors as the glory of the sea, from the Philippine
Islands, and the African setting sun cone, upon tables 5 and 4; the
rock shells upon table 4: the trumpet shells upon table 3, so called
after the large kinds which savage tribes have been known to use as
horns; and upon the last two tables, the stombs, including the
beautiful varieties from the West Indies and China, close the list.

* * * * *

The visitor has now reached the Southern Extremity of the Eastern
Zoological Gallery, and brought his first visit to a conclusion. He
may well pause, however, before dismissing from his mind the objects
which have engaged his attention.

First, then, he examined the varieties of MAMMALIA. The mammalia, of
which man himself is the highest type, are the leading class of the
great order of vertebrate, or back-boned animals, and fishes are the
lowest, the intermediate classes being birds and reptiles. VERTEBRATA
are of higher rank in the animal kingdom than the mollusca, or
soft-bodied animals, those having "red blood and a double-chambered
heart." The mammalia are the class which suckle their young; second to
them are the BIRDS; and then the blood cools, the organisation is
inferior, and the REPTILES are produced; and lastly come the FISHES,
with cold blood, and wanting aerial lungs. Philosophers, who have
settled the scheme of the world as one of progression, complication,
or development, trace animal life from the polypus, (which belongs to
the order of Radiata, or animals that have a central point in which
the vital force of the animal appears to preside, diverging in radii,
as in the sea-eggs, starfishes, coral, sponges); the polypus advances
to the Articulata, or jointed animals, including all kinds of worms,
leeches, or ringed animals, of which insects are the most highly
organised developments; next to the Mollusca, or soft-bodied animals;
and then from these, which include the shell-fish, the scheme
gradually progresses to the fish with backbones; and here the lowest
order of Vertebrata is developed: the fish merges into the reptile,
the reptile into the bird; the bird, as in the ornithorhyncus, into
the Mammalia.

Thus the gradations of life may be clearly apprehended by the visitor.
The highest development of animal life he ha