we quit the water, as the chief receptacle of animated life, and although many of those we shall subsequently notice inhabit it, yet, with the exception of the fishes-not one of which is known to inhabit the land unless for a very brief period-we shall find that the preponderance of life is affixed to the land. Some of the spiders we observe launching their balloon into the wide welkin as aëronautsothers descending with their diving bell beneath the waters-others, subterranean in their habitations, with superficial toils spread to take their unwary prey, whilst others weave their elegant tissues, distended from spray to spray: some are said to capture small birds, but this assertion admits of considerable doubt, and there are others again which leap like tigers suddenly upon their ravin. Attempts have been made, but hitherto unsuccessfully, to apply their webs to useful purposes, although, as objects of curiosity, gloves have been manufactured from them, and, we believe in one instance, a lady's dress. But the scorpion and the mites, or acari, are perhaps the most redoubtable to man; the first by its venom, and the second as being the cause of some of the most abhorrent of the diseases that attack the human race. The next class, the insects, present an almost illimitable host, the most extensive certainly throughout the entire range of the animal kingdom, and perhaps, also, the greatest wonders of all, from their remarkable metamorphoses, and, in many cases, highly developed instincts. Among them we find social tribes almost aping the polity of man, and none among the superiorly organized mammalia surpass them -not even the beaver-in this faculty. It is true that in all the classes we find many tribes which are gregarious, but none are social. There are approximations indeed among the rooks, but, with these solitary exceptions, the rest are heedful only of their own advantage, and do not labour in combination for the common weal. How varied besides are their forms!-how splendid their colours! The greatest poets have borrowed from them some of their happiest similes, and even inspired moralists their most pertinent illustrations. How variously useful are they to man and yet how despised by the majority! Even the little silkworm gives employment, and consequently daily bread, to many millions of the human race, and how many others supply man with luxuries and necessaries! Let us pass onward and observe the fish traversing the ocean in every possible direction, and in every imaginable form adapted to that element-some eccentric in the extreme, others as elegant, and all the most voracious of the animated creation, and, as a compensation, also the most prolific; for who shall calculate their myriads, perhaps more numerous than the sands over which they swim! How noble a gift to man merely as articles of food, and upon which some tribes of savages exclusively exist! In size also, at least in length, some of them are perhaps the largest of animals. The accounts of their excessive longevity are probably erroneous. The ring found in the gill of the pike, at Kaiserslautern, if it was not an heir-loom in the family of the fish, was a piece of chicanery practised by some interested party; for, is it credible that it should have attained the age of nearly three hundred years? which is as monstrous as nineteen feet for the length of its body. We next arrive at the reptiles, all more or less hideous in aspect and habits, and some instinctively abhorrent to us from the primeval curse. It is as denizens of this class, that the most anomalous and gigantic remains of a former creation present themselves.--Here we should arrange the huge megalosaurus, supposed to have been 70 feet long and eight feet high, and the iguanadon at least 60, did they still exist, and which idea has even been started, hypothetically, by a favourite writer,* from the analogy of a still existing individual of the class being found to inhabit subterranean lakes and pools; and he therefore conceives it probable, from the universal distribution of animation upon the surface, that Nature has been as active in her operations beneath it; proving, by the population of these abysses, that no spot which can be inhabited is left unpeopled. Some violent concussion must consequently have intermingled their remains with the upper crust, where accident has exposed them to the researches of the curious, and but for which man never could have arrived at the knowledge of them. Leaving this point in all its uncertainty and improbability, what shall we say to those most anomalous creatures, the pterodactyli, which the majority of opinions concur in considering as having been flying reptiles. Collini conceived them to be fishes; Cuvier, what they are still held to be; Soemmering classed them with the mammalia, where also Wagler has placed them, and, in fact, in a distinct order together with the plesiosaurus, the ichthyosaurus, and the existing ornithorhynchus. Wagler also has classed them with the mammalia; but what are thought to have been their wings he treats as fins, and makes them swimming animals. Oken calls them reptiles, among which they are placed by Meyer also, who holds Cuvier's opinion. It is in this class, likewise, that we find the serpents which many nations have deified, and which Scripture makes the type of evil. How elegant are their motions! from which the ancients called their progression the gait of the gods. The enormous size of the boas, their great muscular strength, dilatable jaws, and prehensile tails, enable them to capture deer, and even oxen, and crush their bones by their constriction, and then, † Proteus. *Kirby, Bridgewater Treatise. covering them with their saliva, to swallow them whole; which, according to travellers, is a lengthy process, and the horns of the animal are left projecting from the mouth, whence by degrees they ultimately rot off. The enormous pythons of the old world yield in nothing to the boas of America. The story of that which is said to have been 120 feet in length, and was killed by the army of Regulus in Africa, is doubtless an exaggeration; but we in these cold latitudes can barely form a conception of the vigour of animal life beneath the prolific heat of the sun, which stimulates their generation, imparting to them vivacity of colour, extravagance of feature, and a monstrous size. Barely mentioning the toads, turtles, and tortoises, let us proceed to the more pleasing scene presented to us by the aërial group of birds-here from the pigmy humming bird, resplendent with all the colours of the most vivid gems, scarcely larger than the bee hovering over the flower, and with distended tongue imbibing its nectar, to the majestic Condor, "towering in pride of place," how animated are their tribes! This, considered as a whole, is perhaps the most beautiful and gratifying to man of all the classes of the animal kingdom, and many of its species are infinitely serviceable to him. Our groves and fields are enlivened by their songs, and our tables amply furnished by them with choice articles. of food; their down supplies us with warmth and comfort, and their quills with the instrument for the communication of our ideas. From them to the mammalia, or animals that suckle their young, a link is formed by that most extraordinary creature, the duck-billed Platypus,* which is said to be ovoviviparous, or producing young by means of eggs that are hatched within it. It is one of the most remarkable natives of New Holland, that country so remarkable in the majority of its vegetable and animal productions. Its webbed feet and aquatic habits are common to many of its class, but the extraordinary spur with which the posterior legs of the male are furnished, and which are said to vent a venom in self-defence, is the only instance, we believe, of a venomous organ being found among the mammalia. In this class man finds the greatest approximation to his own form, organisation, and intellect. He is here provided with beasts of burden, that lighten his labour, and supply him with multitudes of necessaries. Here the sagacious dog is his safeguard against the incursion of the wolf upon his flocks, which furnish him with apparel and with food; the horse is his noble * Ornithorhynchus paradoxus. companion in the chase and in the field, and his unwearied servant for the plough and the carriage. The dromedary and camel, patient of thirst, carry him fleetly across the burning desert: and the huge elephant is his irresistible bearer in the field of battle. This class, least numerous in species of the whole animal kingdom, is the most serviceable to man in supplying him with his positive and indispensable necessaries; yet here again, as elsewhere throughout the animal kingdom, those that are most serviceable to him are quiet feeders upon vegetables. The carnivorous tribes he finds less domitable, and, as it were from an instinctive abhorence of canibalism wherever he may find it, no carnivorous animal supplies him with food. Nature here again rings its repeated changes of form, colour, instinct, habits, and uses. We here ascend, by gradational structure and organization, to the keystone of the arch-man himself. It has been strongly argued that man is no animal, but he is closely allied to animals in everything save intellect, and if that wonderful organ which endows him with it places an immeasurable distance between him and even the most sagacious animal, he is still connected with them by earthly ties, which it would be well for the correction of his pride that he had the humility to remember. But it is not even in intellect alone that the human being differs from the animal-by human being we must be understood as meaning the sexes collectively, for Burdach* has proved physiologically, that in man only the animal nature predominates; but in woman, humanity, as contradistinguished to animality, in form, structure, and development, has attained its zenith, and the moral virtues are more essentially peculiar to her, whereas in man they are superinduced by intercourse and the charms and curbs of social life. Therefore as both sexes only form the complete species, we may even in a system of natural history consistently elevate mankind to a distinct class, superior to the mammalia which it prefigurates and typifies, and to which the transition is made by the male. Here, at this point of culmination, systematic natural history makes its stop; it dare not launch into the hypothetical regions of immateriality and spirit, or attempt the classification of virtues, powers, principalities, and hierarchies; for, as Linneus might have said, "they have no teeth,"-yet an ingenious systematist of the present day has insinuated their introduction into his system. Although we have thus very cursorily mentioned the series of objects and beings which the study of natural history embraces, it is not thus that we find them in nature, where all are intermingled, acting and re-acting upon each other, and the apparent discords of nature's gamut, as we overhear the solitary notes, reverberate *C. F. Burdach, Die Physiologie als Erfahrungswissenschaft, T. i. p. 284, § 218. collectively in the fullest and most perfect harmony along the stupendous vault of the creation. Partial evil is involved in the general good, and if the insect repine that it is devoured by the bird, let it be grateful that it has enjoyed an existence however brief, for no other necessity called it from the clod. It is from this individual evil that the general good arises; it is hence that such a multiplicity of beings are enabled to inhabit the world; not only species are thus interminably varied, but the numbers of the individuals in each are proportionate to the object for which they were designed, and the amount of destruction among them occasioned thereby is amply repaired by a power of propagation adequate to the loss. Thus no space is lost, and barely a species exterminated, which is owing to the force of the law that regulates their relative disposal. The relations of the animal with the vegetable kingdom are extremely diversified, but those existing in the animal kingdom itself between its several members are infinitely more complicated. We find the vegetable at the base directly or indirectly supporting all; and in return, in very many instances, it is only through the agency of animals that vegetables are perpetuated, as they serve to render these fertile by conveying the impregnating pollen, or by distributing their seeds. In the animal kingdom all classes are multifariously intermingled, some living, as parasites, upon others, supported in a variety of ways, and some, although enjoying an independent existence, live by means of the rest, if not at their expense; but the most direct relation that we observe is that which destines the herbivorous tribes to be the food of the carnivorous. Thus we find wheel working within wheel, and the complicated machine presents a sublime view of Omnipresent and Omnipotent wisdom. The vast scheme of creation here unfolds itself imperceptibly to our observation, and the object of that creation, namely, the diffusion of the greatest quantity of happiness throughout the smallest possible space, fully and energetically evinces the benevolence that prompted it. What appears exuberance of production is but provision for consumption, in the least proportion required for securing the preservation of the species. We feel astounded at the fecundity of many fishes, insects, and plants; but yet how important is it to the preservation of the balance of existence! For one egg of either that attains its complete development in the power of reproduction, what myriads are consumed in their various stages of growth! Nor can we say that any are abortive, for they have doubtless fulfilled purposes as indispensable as the propagation of their kind by supporting the life of other beings, which, in their turn, either in their fecundity carry this connexion still further, or in their several instincts exercise functions concomitant therewith for promoting the general benefit |