art, such as are scarcely equalled by the most exquisite performance of any insect: they are the bud and flower. Plants exist, therefore, to vegetate and bear fruit-a subordinate end, it may appear, yet the basis of every other in the creation. This end they accomplish to perfection; and it is scarcely necessary to remark, that it is attained the more completely, as they labour at it the more incessantly, and as the end or object is less divided. Plants may be multiplied by suckers, slips, and cuttings, as well as by seeds; and where they can, they exist in the whole germ-branch, leaf, and flower, being often included in it, and protrude new shoots and buds, when not arrested by cold, with incessant powers of multiplication. And thus a single branch may represent the whole tree; for what the whole effects, each part or shoot is capable of effecting also. Plants imbibe food by the roots, the trunk, and the branches, and, in the opinion of some, also by the leaves and flowers. The plant is compensated for every thing it has been denied, by the intensity of the single power that operates in it. It neither requires the faculty of locomotion, nor the knowledge of other plants around it. But it attracts and enjoys after the manner of plants, heat, light, air, and the juices that nourish it: and the propensity to grow, to bloom, and to multiply its species, it exercises more truly and incessantly than any other creature.

The transition from plants to the zoophytes, or animal flowers, as they are sometimes called, shows

this more clearly. These seem to connect the animal with the vegetable life. Most of this order take root like the plant, as it were, and grow up into stems; multiplying life in their branches and deciduous buds, and in the transformation of their animated blossoms or polypes, which are endued with spontaneous motion. They possess therefore a degree of sensation and the organs of locomotion. In these the organs of nutrition are separated-not as in plants; but their principal organic powers are nutrition and propagation. But, like plants, the polypus puts forth shoots from its body, and not only so, but as a stimulated muscle displays more energy, so the polypus when divided into portions exerts all its powers to repair the loss; pushing forth limbs after limbs with astonishing powers of reproduction. Each section becomes an animal of the same kind. No division, however minute, can deprive the animal of life: even when inverted, as a man inverts the finger of a glove, the polypus begins to take food and to perform its natural functions. Different portions of one polypus were engrafted by Tremblay on another, as of the head of one polypus on the body of another,— and in this way the most fantastic forms were produced.*

In the order Testacea, the Snail exhibits a somewhat higher range of obscure vital powers, developed only in a few members. It possesses fine tentacula

* See Linnæus, Herder, Smellie.

or feelers; some slight appearance of nerve; eyes of the most simple construction, at the extremities. of its horns; an open mouth; something like a beating heart; and a wonderful power of reproduction. The animal renovates head, horns, and eyes. It not only forms its shell and again wears it away, but produces a living being with similar shells. Hence it is capable of effecting, in its low rank, what no other creature with more perfect limbs can perform; its living powers working more intensely, in proportion to the limited sphere in which it has to act.

If we rise to the Insect, we see an exquisite and artful structure accompanied with actions equally artful. Its nerves are delicately fine; and its muscles extremely minute. The muscles of a caterpillar amounting to nearly four thousand, while those of the human body are supposed not to exceed four hundred and fifty. They are generally defended without by a hard covering. Insects do not appear to have a regular circulation as in the larger animals. The muscular strength of insects is astonishing compared with their size. It is said that a flea will draw a chain one hundred times heavier than itself. The vast burden carried by a chafer, and the force exerted by an angry wasp, are proofs of this strength of muscle.

The head, eyes, antennæ, wings, &c. of insects, and their various works of art effected by their limbs and senses, all show a wonderful perfection of organic living powers operating in every part. But these

parts cannot be reproduced like inferior limbs in the creatures above noticed. The trembling avulsed leg of a spider or a fly, shows the force of vital irritability it retains, when separated from its trunk. This living power is distributed by nature throughout all the limbs even to the most minute. The antennæ or feelers, are senses; and the slender legs, muscles, and arms; each nervous plexus or ganglion, a smaller brain; and each irritable vessel, almost a beating heart and thus all its delicate operations are accomplished; astonishing us by their perfection and exquisite art.

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In cold-blooded animals, we see the same excess of irritability. The tortoise moves a long time without brain or even head. Redi opened the head of a tortoise, took out its brain and washed the cavity. Yet the animal walked away, as if it had sustained no injury, and it lived for six months, moving its limbs as in health: it necessarily became blind. Redi at last cut off the head, and the tortoise lived twentythree days after its separation: the head, when removed, rattling the jaws for above a quarter of an hour like a pair of castanets.

If the jaws of a dead crocodile be pulled asunder, they are capable of biting off the incautious finger. The frog will live and jump several hours after its head has been cut off. It will continue active though all its bowels are taken out; and will live many days even if it be stripped of its skin. In some of its acts its limbs may be torn off before it will relinquish its

purpose. The teeth of a viper inflict a mortal wound three, eight, nay twelve days, after the head has been separated from the body. The less therefore the vital powers are under the controul of a nervous system and ample brain, the more active are they in the offices of supporting life, of repairing losses, and of reproducing parts of the system.

This must appear, when we take into account, that even in warm-blooded animals, their flesh moves more languidly in connexion with the nerves; and their intestines are more forcibly affected by stimuli when the animal is dead. How often do we see, when sentient life is retiring, that the body is convulsed with involuntary struggles, that are nothing more than the indications of muscular power impeded by nervous animal irritability, in which sensation and perception have no part! We know to a certainty that in the most violent of convulsive motions, as in epilepsy, there is no pain: yet the voluntary muscles are frightfully distorted. The epileptic, during the paroxysm, has no consciousness of suffering, and therefore no recollection of any when he has recovered from the fit. The power of reproducing parts is lost in the more perfect animals, as they are called, that is, as they ascend higher in the scale-for each is perfect in its kind: at certain ages scarcely can they restore a tooth, or heal a wound or a fracture: and animals which possess the reproductive faculty, are not able to renew those parts in which muscular powers are condensed, like those which are, as it