Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 4, 2025
I think that that is a very astounding, a most astonishing fact, seeing the enormous epochs of time which have elapsed during the constitution of the surface of the earth as it at present exists; it is, indeed, a most astounding thing that the proportion of extinct ordinal types should be so exceedingly small. But now, there is another point of view in which we must look at this past creation.
The number of orders of animals, on the other hand, may be reckoned at a hundred and twenty, or thereabouts, and of these, eight or nine have no living representatives. The proportion of extinct ordinal types of animals to the existing types, therefore, does not exceed seven per cent a marvellously small proportion when we consider the vastness of geologic time.
All the specific characters stand in direct reference to the generic structure, the family form, the ordinal complication of structure, the mode of execution of the Class, and the plan of structure of the Branch, all of which are embodied in the frame of each individual in each Species, even though all these individuals are constantly dying away and reproducing others; so that the specific characters have no more permanency in the individuals than those which characterize the Genus, the Family, the Order, the Class, and the Branch.
There is no known extinct order of Birds, and no certainly known extinct order of Mammals, the ordinal distinctness of the "Toxodontia" being doubtful.
There are two hundred known orders of plants; of these not one is certainly known to exist exclusively in the fossil state. The whole lapse of geological time has as yet yielded not a single new ordinal type of vegetable structure. The positive change in passing from the recent to the ancient animal world is greater, but still singularly small.
There is not known to be a single ordinal form of insect extinct. There are only two orders extinct among the Crustacea. There is not known to be an extinct order of these creatures, the parasitic and other worms; but there are two, not to say three, absolutely extinct orders of this class, the Echinodermata; out of all the orders of the Coelenterata and Protozoa only one, the Rugose Corals.
Now when there are only a finite number of terms, we can count them in any order we like; but when there are an infinite number, what corresponds to counting will give us quite different results according to the way in which we carry out the operation. The fundamental infinite numbers are not ordinal, but are what is called cardinal.
Who has not marvelled at the strange duplication of the Litany and the Office of the Holy Communion in the Ordinal, when the special petitions proper to those services when used in that connection might easily have been printed by themselves with a direction that they be inserted in the appointed place? Scholars, of course, know perfectly well how this came about.
In ordinal light or darkness one accepts the annoyances of life as coming all in the day's work; but Nature has her sublime moments in which, if the sensitive mind may not yield itself to her delight, it is forced into extreme antagonism, either to her or to that which withholds from joining in her ecstasy.
The latter, chosen from among the simple Penguins, wore no formidable monster's crest upon his head and exercised no absolute authority over the people. He was himself subject to the laws of the nation. He was not given the title of king, and no ordinal number followed his name. He bore such names as Paturle, Janvion, Traffaldin, Coquenhot, and Bredouille. These magistrates did not make war.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking