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Within the highest division of the animal kingdom, namely, the Vertebrata, we can start from an eye so simple, that it consists, as in the lancelet, of a little sack of transparent skin, furnished with a nerve and lined with pigment, but destitute of any other apparatus. In fishes and reptiles, as Owen has remarked, "The range of gradation of dioptric structures is very great."
The most interesting public monuments at Palermo date from the Norman period; and while many of the buildings are strikingly Saracenic in character and recall similar structures erected by the Arabs in Spain, it will be remembered that the Normans brought no trained architects to the island, but employed the Arabs, Greeks, and Hebrews who had already been in the service of the Saracen emirs.
Arches with Saracenic domes built by the Moslems, pagodalike structures built by the Buddhists, Parsee towers, and Hindu temples, appeared at many street-crossings, and one long avenue was lined on either side with elevated rows of benches upon which were seated thousands of children from the schools.
Homologous parts, as has been remarked by some authors, tend to cohere; this is often seen in monstrous plants; and nothing is more common than the union of homologous parts in normal structures, as the union of the petals of the corolla into a tube.
Mention has been made in a previous chapter of the three great theatres of Rome, one of them said, though somewhat incredibly, to be capable of holding 40,000 spectators. Their shape and arrangement have already been hinted at. Huge structures of a similar kind existed in all the great romanized towns of Italy and other provinces.
Hence the chance of discovering species with transitional grades of structure in a fossil condition will always be less, from their having existed in lesser numbers, than in the case of species with fully developed structures. I will now give two or three instances of diversified and of changed habits in the individuals of the same species.
At Cuzco, two or more degrees north of Lake Titicaca, there are ruins of buildings that were occupied until the rule of the Incas was overthrown. Remains of the old structures are seen in various parts of the present town, some of them incorporated into new edifices built by the Spaniards. Cyclopean remains of walls of the Temple of the Sun now constitute a portion of the Convent of St. Domingo.
The relation of these structures to feathers would appear highly speculative, but they have been so interpreted for the following reason: If we compare them with the appendages represented in the design on the vase shown in CXLIII, b, we find them the same in number, form, and arrangement; the triangles in the design on this vase are directly comparable with the figures in plate CXLIII, b, in the same position, which are undoubtedly feathers, as has been shown in the discussion of this figure.
A building of any height with its walls unsupported by neighbouring structures may find its roof rocked to and fro through an arc which has a length of feet, while its base moves only through a length of inches.
But, perhaps, the class of buildings, which must in every Australian city most excite the surprise of the visitor, are the hospitals and asylums. There are no less than ten splendid structures in Melbourne devoted to charitable purposes. The Roman Catholics have built a fine cathedral, but it is not yet finished. The Church of England is collecting money for a similar purpose.
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