Footnote 1: The following statements have been strictly considered, and are made in reference to a revised classification of the animal kingdom, the details of which must, however, be omitted here, as they would extend this article beyond our allotted bounds.
With the _Articulata_, we find another state of things. Two of their classes, the worms and _Crustacea_, are chiefly marine, or at least aquatic, as we have a number of fresh-water worms, and some fresh-water _Crustacea_. But insects are, for the most part, chiefly terrestrial, feeding upon terrestrial plants, at least in their full-grown condition; though a large number of these animals are fluviatile, and even some marine, during their earlier periods of life. In the _Vertebrata_, the adaptations are more diversified. Only one class of these animals is entirely aquatic--the fishes; and the number of the marine species is far greater than that of the fresh-water kinds. Among reptiles there are many which are aquatic, either throughout life, or through the earlier period of their existence. But, as if animal life rose to higher organization, as it leaves the ocean to inhabit dry land or fresh waters, we find that the greater number of the aquatic reptiles are fluviatile, and but a few marine. This fact agrees wonderfully with the natural gradation of the classes already mentioned. The lower type of animals, the _Radiata_, is almost exclusively marine. Among _Mollusca_, we have a greater number of marine types, a large number of fluviatile species, and fewer terrestrial, and these are the highest in their class. Again, among _Articulata_, the lower classes, worms and _Crustacea_, are marine, or at least fluviatile, whilst the highest class, that of insects, is chiefly terrestrial or fluviatile, during the earlier periods of their growth. Among the _Vertebrata_ we see the lowest form, that of fishes, entirely aquatic, and the same rule applies partially to the reptiles; but as the class rises, the number of the fluviatile species is greater than that of the marine types. Next, among birds, which by their structure are exclusively adapted to live in the atmospheric air, we find the larger number to be terrestrial, and only the lower ones to live upon water, or dive occasionally into it, always seeking the surface, however, to breathe and to perform their most important vital functions. It is, nevertheless, not a little strange, that this class should by nature be adapted to rise into the air, just as if the first tendency towards liberating them from the aquatic element had been carried to an excess, and gave them a relation to the earth which no other class, as a whole, holds to that degree, except, perhaps, the insects, which are placed among the _Articulata_ in the same relation to the lower classes and the natural element, which the class of birds maintains among _Vertebrata_. The highest class of _Vertebrata_ affords us examples of these three modes of adaptation, the lowest of these being entirely aquatic, and even absolutely marine; next, we have fluviatile types of the large terrestrial mammalia, in the family of _Manatees_, again, a swimming family among Carnivora, another flying, most of them however walking upon their four extremities on solid ground, but at the head of all, man, standing upright, to look freely upwards, and to contemplate the whole universe.