beautiful. The serpent was also once worshipped in Greece; and Vishnu, the Indian god, is frequently represented under its form. In May, 1819, a golden image with five heads, made of pure gold of Ophir, was discovered among the Paishwa's family deities. It weighed 370 tolas; and the serpent-headed god was represented in the act of contemplating the creation of the world. The Hindus never molest snakes. They call them fathers, brothers, friends, and all manner of endearing names; and on the coast of Guinea snakes are reverenced so highly, that in Bosman's time, a hog happening to kill one, the king ordered all the swine to be destroyed.

REASONING FACULTY IN ANIMALS.

THAT beasts have reasoning faculties has been argued by Plutarch, Montaigne, and other writers, with great force of argument. Certainly many things that we observe in them it seems difficult to account for on any other supposition. Thus serpents obey the voice of their masters; the trumpeter-bird of America follows its owner like a spaniel; and the jacana acts as a guard to poultry. It preserves them in the fields all the day from birds of prey, and escorts them home regularly at night. In the Shetland Islands there is a gull which defends the flock from eagles; it is therefore regarded as a privileged bird. The chamois, bounding among the snowy mountains of the Caucasus, are indebted for their safety, in no small degree, to a peculiar species of pheasant. This bird acts as their sentinel; for as soon as it gets sight of a man it whistles, upon hearing which the chamois, knowing the hunter to be not far distant, sets off with the greatest speed, and seeks the highest precipices or the deepest recesses of the mountains. Eagles, and some other

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birds, live in pairs year after year, the male feeding the female during the time of incubation. What is this but a species of marriage?

In the menagerie of the Jardin des Plantes at Paris was a crane which M. Valentin brought from Senegal, having attended to it during the voyage with the most assiduous care; but upon landing in France it was sold or presented to the Museum of Natural History. Several months afterward, Valentin being in Paris, went to the menagerie, and walked up to the cage in which the bird was confined. The crane instantly recognised him, and, when he went into its cage, lavished upon him every mark of affectionate attachment.

That animals possess parental and filial affections, friendly dispositions, and generous sympathies, is known even to superficial observers. The artifices which partridges and plovers employ to delude their enemies from the nest of their young are familiar to all. The hind, when she hears the sound of dogs, puts herself in the way of the hunters, and starts in a direction to draw them away from her fawns.

Grief, too, works in a lively manner upon animals. I knew a dog that died for the loss of its master, and a bulfinch that abstained from singing ten entire months on account of the absence of its mistress on her return it resumed its song. Lord Kaimes relates an instance of a canary, which, while singing to his mate, hatching her eggs in a cage, fell dead. The female quitted her nest, and, finding him dead, rejected all food and died by his side. Homer was not so extravagant as some may be inclined to esteem him, when he makes the horses of Achilles weep for the loss of their master; for horses, I have little doubt, can regret; and their countenances frequently exhibit evident marks of melancholy.

Locusts display an astonishing method in their flight. They fly in bodies generally the eighth part

of a mile square in extent; and yet such is the order and regularity with which they move, they never incommode each other; and when they approach a vineyard, they send out spies to explore places for them to settle on.

Some birds are artisans. The razor-bill fastens the only egg which it lays to the bare cliff with cement, while the East Indian tailor-bird sews together the leaves of trees. To effect this it uses its bill as a needle, and the small fibres of plants for thread. The loxia of Bengal is also a remarkable bird, and has no disinclination to intercourse with mankind. In a wild state it builds upon the Indian fig-tree, and suspends its nest from the branches in a manner that secures it against all injury from the wind. Its nest consists of two, and sometimes of three chambers, in which fireflies are occasionally found; and these insects the Hindus believe the bird cherishes for the purpose of illuminating its home.

That animals have some sort of reasoning powers, few, I think, who have reasoning faculties themselves, and sufficient knowledge of natural history to form an opinion, will venture to deny. Their great want is the faculty of teaching beyond a certain extent.

"See to what point their labours tend,
And how in death their talents end!
Perfect the bird and beast we find,
Advance not here their several kind;
From race to race no wiser grow,
No gradual perfection know;

To increasing knowledge void their claim,
Still their specific powers the same,
In th' individual centred all,

Though generations rise and fall."

There is, however, a species of tuition which many animals are equal to. Old birds, for instance, teach their young ones to sing and to fly, and a long and curious process both of them are; while ants not only instruct their little ones to draw sustenance

from the aphis, but to carry other ants upon their backs and make slaves of them.

That some animals have also the capacity to improve their instincts appears certain: and Blumenbach confirms the observation, by showing that beavers are capable of directing their operations according to circumstances, in a manner far superior to the unvarying mechanical instinct of other creatures. That some birds, too, vary their methods of building according to the materials which they have to build with, is evident from what Wilson, the American ornithologist, says in regard to the Baltimore oriole and the ferruginous thrush.

That most quadrupeds have all the bodily senses that man has, and that many of them feel the various passions by which man is distinguished, would seem to be certain. In fact, it is impossible to watch them minutely without perceiving that many of their feelings and passions are similar to our own. Even insects exhibit fear, anger, sorrow, joy, and desire; and many of them express those passions by noises peculiar to themselves.

Milton makes Adam master of the language of animals, and the Deity to speak thus:

"What call'st thou solitude? Is not the earth
With various living creatures, and the air,
Replenish'd, and all these at thy command,
To come and play before thee?
Their language and their ways?
And reason not contemptibly.'

Know'st thou not
They also know,

ANIMAL CHANGES.

VEGETABLE life in many particulars resembles animal life. Thus, for instance, many vegetables resemble certain animals in their annual exhibitions of change. The cork-tree renews its bark; and for eight seasons its quality improves as the tree ad

vances in age. The marine fan-palm has a new leaf every month; during the same period the Indian bamboo issues a new shoot; and many bulbous roots have concentric rings proportionate to the number of months they have vegetated; while the cocoa-tree of the Maldive Islands each month produces à cluster of nuts. Of these, "the first," says an eminent French naturalist, "is in a state of incipiency, the second is coming out of its covering, the third is budding, the fourth is in flower, the fifth is forming a nut, and the last is in maturity."

Sheep renew their fleeces every year, lobsters their shells, and scorpions, serpents, snakes, grasshoppers, and many other insects, their skins. Stags, goats, and some other animals also shed their horns, though not, perhaps, at stated periods. The Asiatic hedgehog loses its hair during its four months' state of torpidity, and the peacock sheds its fine feathers in autumn, and renews them in the spring.

The corn-weevil undergoes several changes in the concavity of grain. The nut-weevil deposites its egg in a nut, while the latter is yet green and soft. This egg is hatched when the nut is ripe, and becomes a maggot, which feeds upon the kernel. After it has consumed the kernel it bores a hole through the shell, creeps out of it upon a leaf, or falls to the ground, where it buries itself, and becomes the next season a small brown beetle.

The caterpillar changes its skin several times before it enters its aurelia state. When it is about to enter it, it spins a cone in which it envelops itself, and remains for some time motionless. At length it issues from its mail, expands its wings, and becomes an object of delight to childhood, and the ornament of the woods and fields. Similar transformations may be observed in bees, wasps, ants, and other insects. Caterpillars become butterflies,