er types the body consists of
numerous segments that are alike in nearly every particular. Each has
its external ring; its pair of legs, if the creature has legs; its
equal portion of intestine, or else its separate stomach; its equal
portion of the great blood-vessel, or, in some cases, its separate
heart; its equal portion of the nervous cord; and, perhaps, its separate
pair of ganglia. But in the highest types, as in the large _Crustacea_,
many of the segments are completely fused together; and the internal
organs are no longer uniformly repeated in all the segments. Now the
segments of which nations at first consist, lose their separate external
and internal structures in a similar manner. In feudal times the minor
communities, governed by feudal lords, were severally organized in the
same rude way, and were held together only by the fealty of their
respective rulers to a suzerain. But along with the growth of a central
power, the demarcations of these local communities become relatively
unimportant, and their separate organizations merge into the general
organization. The like is seen on a larger scale in the fusion of
England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland; and, on the Continent, in the
coalescence of provinces into kingdoms. Even in the disappearance of
law-made divisions, the process is analogous. Among the Anglo-Saxons,
England was divided into tithings, hundreds, and counties: there were
county-courts, courts of hundred, and courts of tithing. The courts of
tithing disappeared first; then the courts of hundred, which have,
however, left traces; while the county-jurisdiction still exists.
Chiefly, however, it is to be noted, that there eventually grows up an
organization which has no reference to these original divisions, but
traverses them in various directions, as is the case in creatures
belonging to the sub-kingdom just named; and, further, that in both
cases it is the sustaining organization which thus traverses old
boundaries, while, in both cases, it is the governmental, or
co-ordinating organization in which the original boundaries continue
traceable. Thus, in the highest _Annulosa_ the exo-skeleton and the
muscular system never lose all traces of their primitive segmentation;
but throughout a great part of the body, the contained viscera do not in
the least conform to the external divisions. Similarly with a nation we
see that while, for governmental purposes, such divisions as counties
and parishes stil