motion, both their impulse and direction so exactly, as to throw themselves into their place of safety through an entrance hardly sufficient for them to pass through.* The annual migrations of the land-crabs of Jamaica, from the mountains to the sea, there to deposite their young brood, exhibit also judging and determined volition in steady and persevering activity for an important and rational end.† The parental and filial sensibility and attachment of the cetaceous fishes, the walrus and the seal tribes, are so like the same affections in many quadrupeds and in the human race, that it would be an apparent inconsistency to give them any other denomination.‡ Wherever joyous feelings "As is frequently seen, by the people who endeavour to take them, at Foley Bridge. They spring, tail foremost, as fast as a bird can fly. The fishermen can see them pass about thirty feet, and suppose they may go much farther. Athenæus remarks this circumstance, and says that the incurvated lobsters will spring with the activity of dolphins."— Wood's Zoog. vol. ii. p. 546. "The animals not only live in a kind of orderly society in their retreats in the mountains, but regularly once a year march down to the seaside, in a body of some millions at a time. The sea is their place of destination, and to that they direct their march with right-lined precision. No geometrician could send them to their destined station by a shorter course they turn neither to the right nor to the left. They will attempt to scale walls, to keep the unbroken tenor of their way. They are commonly divided into three battalions, of which the first consists of the boldest and strongest males. These are pioneers, who march forward, to clear the route, and to face the greatest dangers. The main body is composed of females, which never leave the mountains till the rain is set in for some time; they then descend in columns of fifty paces broad and three miles deep. Three or four days after this, the rear-guard follows, consisting of males and females neither so robust nor so numerous as the former. The night is their chief time of proceeding; but if it rains by day, they do not fail to profit by the occasion. the sun is hot, they make a universal halt, and wait till the cool of the evening. They are sometimes three months in getting to the shore."Goldsmith, from Labat's Voyage, vol. ii. p. 221. When "The fidelity of the male and female whale to each other exceeds that of most animals. When a fisherman had killed one of a pair, the other, who had assisted in its defence, stretched itself on the dead one, and shared its fate."-Bingl. vol. ii. p. 160.....The maternal whale carries her young one with her wherever she goes: when hardest pursued, supports it between her fins,-though wounded, still clasps it, takes it with her to the bottom, and rises with it to give it breath.-Ib. 161.....When a female grampus and her cub were attacked, the mother escaped, but finding her young one detained, she rushed back to share Its fate.-Ib. 175.....So Captain Cook states "that the female walrus will defend her offspring to the very last, and at the expense of her own life; nor will the young one quit its dam, though she be dead: so that if one be killed, the other is a certain prey." They display also a great attachment to each other. exist, and attest their existence by spontaneous movements of visible hilarity, we may safely infer a correspondent proportion of mental sensibility. Even the cumbersome whales display such emotions.* All the actions we have thus alluded to seem to display a thinking mind in varied operation, in addition to that living principle which every animal shares in common with the vegetable kingdom.t Such was the fish creation-a race of beings both feeling and thinking, in that particular structure of body and residentiary element to which they were assigned. Like the vegetable tribes, they have been made to be useful to man, both in contributing to his sustenance and in supplying him with many important conveniences. But independently of the human race, they have been created to be happy beings in themselves. From their vast numbers and varieties, and the comparatively small knowledge which man has of them, and the few out of their numerous species which have been converted to his use, we may assume that they were made principally on their own account, and for the display to us of our Creator's mind, power, thoughts, inventions, and imagination. They enlarge our knowledge of his omnipo, tence, and give us ocular sensations of its multifarious potentiality. Fish seem to be more exclusively confined to themselves than any other classes of animal life. For, excepting the few species of birds and amphibious quadrupeds which seek them as food, no animal but man knows or notices them. They live in an element which is mortal to all but themselves; and no other creature, nor even man, can mo❤ * A naval officer describes his amusement near New-Brunswick, "in Looking at the gambols of the whales, who here congregated in greater numbers, and seemed more frolicksome and playful. I saw these immense creatures jumping entirely out of the water, though generally their unwieldy weight allowed little more than half their length to rise above the surface, on which they fell upon their broadside with a noise like thunder."-Un. Serv. Journ. Nov. 1831. †The vital principle in fish can survive the action of frost. Those which were caught by Captain Franklin's party in Winter Lake froze as they were taken out of the nets, and became in a short time a solid mass of ice. But if in this completely frozen state they were thawed before the fire, they recovered their animation. This was particularly the case with a carp, which recovered so far as to leap about with some vigour after it had been frozen for thirty-six hours. lest them, but as they choose to float near the surface of their waves, or to be tempted by the baited hook that descends deeper. But they are equally unfitted and unable to have any concernment with other beings. They die in no long time if removed from their habitual fluid: and thus they are entirely beings of the world of waters, and have no functions or faculties for any other region or mode of existence. In general, they are made to be helpless to all assailants. Animals have teeth and claws, or horns, and other weapons for fight or escape, but few fish have such endangering instruments. They are an instance that an innumerable class of animated beings may exist in great comfort and activity, whose prevailing character is that of inoffensive and unresisting helplessness. They are subjected to death, and several of their species receive the termination of their being at times, by serving as the food to others; but most of those whose life is not thus intercepted enjoy it for a duration which few other animals experience. But they are principally interesting to the contemplative student for the curious modification which they exhibit of the principles of life and of mind. They show the phenomena of these as they occur in the finny forms, functions, and element. We see in them fish mind and fish feelings, and find similarities between these and the faculties of the higher orders of animals and of ourselves, which deserve all the attention they may excite, and enlarge our conceptions of the nature of the intellectual qualities. They contribute to prove, that life and mind do not arise from form, nor depend upon it; for they exhibit these as equally existing in every configuration, and in despite of diversity. No changes of figure prevent or suppress them, nor does the matter of the bodily substance united with them either cause or destroy them. Life and mind are therefore independent of all material structure, and are some great principles added to it and co-existing within it. LETTER XI. A brief Review of the Mollusca, Testacea, Zoophyte, and Infusoria Orders; and of their Indications of Feeling and Mind. Ir has already been intimated that one of the great characteristics of creation has been that of multitudinous diversity. This peculiarly appears in the smaller classes of animated nature, and among them, in those other orders of beings which, besides the fish and crustaceous animals, inhabit the sea and other waters. These have received the discriminating denominations of mollusca, testacea, zoophyta, and infusoria. Most of them are of a miniature size, and the latter of that diminutiveness to which we give the general name of animalcules. The greatest part of them inhabit the ocean; but the last kind abound in land waters, and are found in most infusions. They all belong to the division of the invertebrated animals. They have no vertebræ. The MOLLUSCA are described as "naked simple animals, not included in a shell, but furnished with limbs." The slug, limax, is placed by Linnæus as the first genus of the class. There are many genera, and of some of these the species are very numerous. The absence of vertebræ has occasioned them to be considered by some as an inferior class of beings. This degradation in the scale of existence is not satisfactory to other naturalists, who see in their smaller frames indications of a careful and complicated construction.* The actinia, or sea anemone, is a numerous genus of this * M. G. Cuvier thinks that the mollusques in general, and especially the cephalopodes, have a richer organization; one in which there are more viscera analogous to those of the superior classes, than the other animals without vertebræ. Hence the mollusca should not be confounded with the polypi and other zoophytes, but be placed a degree higher in the scale. But though their organization approaches that of the vertebrated, yet it is not composed in the same manner, nor arranged on the same plan.-Bull. Univ. 1830, p. 447..... M. Geoffry St. Hilaire takes the other side of the question against M. Cuvier.-Ib. p. 449. order.* It is viviparous; it has no aperture but the mouth. Feeding on shellfish and other marine animals, which it draws in with its tentacula, it rejects in a short time the shells and indigestible parts. It is usually fixed to some basis, and assumes various forms. When its tentacula are all extended it has the appearance of a full-blown flower.† Some of its species adhere to rocks,‡ others to sea-weeds and millepores, others to stone.|| One kind, bellis, the sea daisy, has a head like the calyx of a flower. Some appear to like an association with their fellows.** Their sizes vary, from several inches to the smallness of a pea.tt The scylla is a genus, one of whose species lives on the ocean, among the floating sea-weed.‡‡ The sepia, or cuttlefish, has a short head, with large eyes, and a mouth like a parrot's beak. It has eight arms, with numerous suckers.§§ One species was eaten by the ancients, and is liked by the present Italians. Another, of a large size, is also a pleasant food.¶¶ In hot climates some grow to a prodigious * Dr. Turton enumerates 36 species of it. The body is oblong, cylindrical, fleshy, and contractile. Its mouth is expansile, surrounded with moving cirri.-Linn. Syst. vol. iv. p. 100. The plumera is a beautiful species.-Ib. The rufa adheres to rocks. The viridis inhabits near Alexandria, fixed to submarine rocks. It is an inch in diameter, and has several rows of tentacula. The gemmacea is on the coast of Cornwall, in the fissures of the rocks.-Ib. 102 and 104. The undata has this position. The priapus adheres to shells in the Red Sea.-Ib. The coecinia is fixed to fuci and stones. The alba, scarce an inch long, is found fixed to stones in the Red Sea.-Ib. Ib. 103. The dianthus, or sea carnation, inhabits the rocky coasts of England, adhering to the under part of rocks. It hangs down like a yellow fig.-P. 107. **The sociata, near Barbadoes, is fixed to rocks by its smaller end, and is generally found in large groups. Ib. 104. tt The nodosa, which inhabits the depths of the Greenland Sea, is four inches long. So is the gigantea, in the Red Sea. But the pusilla, met with in the ocean, lat. 570, is only the size of a large pea. It forms the principal food of whales.-Ib. p. 102, 103. 00 Ib. 118. "The body is fleshy, receiving the breast in a sheath, with a tubular aperture at its base. In most species are two peduncu lated testacea."-Ib. The officinalis species, living in the ocean. Whales and plaice also take it. The arms are frequently eaten off by the conger eel, but are then reproduced.-Ib. 119. TT The tunicata. Its large body sometimes weighs 150lbs.-Ib. 120 |