THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
In One Volume, with Plates, and a Map, 
 
 STORIES OF TRAVELS IN TURKEY, 
 
 WITH AN 
 ACCOUNT OF THE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 INHABITANTS OF CONSTANTINOPLE, 
 
 A\U A 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF THAT INTERESTING CITY : 
 Founded upon the Narratives of 
 
 MACFARLANE, MADDEN, WALSH, FRANKLAND, ANDREOSSY, 
 AND OTHER 11KCENT TRAVELLERS ; 
 
 WITH A GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL SKETCH 
 OF THE EMPIRE. 
 
 Printed for HURST, CHANCE, and Co., St. Paul's Church-yard. 
 
 Of whom may be had, in One Volume, with plates, price Is. lettered, 
 STORIES OF TRAVELS IN SOUTH AMERICA, 
 
 PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF THE GEOGRAPHY OF THAT 
 COUNTRY. 
 
 " The plan of this little work is excellent. A knowledge of 
 foreign countries, their customs, productions, &c., is as interesting as 
 useful to youthful readers. A spirit of inquiry is excited, a mass of 
 information is almost unconsciously collected, which cannot but have 
 a good effect in after years." Literary Gazette. 
 
 ft A better plan for the instruction of young persons could not 
 have been hit upon than the one employed by the compiler of this 
 little volume. This publication, if followed up, will be a useful 
 and convenient aid to the intelligent teacher. The present volume 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 contains an abstract of the most interesting parts of four very im- 
 portant Works, and the narratives into which they are thrown are 
 
 'casingly written." Monthly Review, July, 1829. 
 
 We warmly recommend the little volume. It would make a 
 .narming school book, and teach more geography in a week than 
 most boys learn in a year." Spectator, July 18, 1829. 
 
 " This is a very pretty and entertaining volume. It is illustrated 
 with several excellent plates. We shall be glad to see the ingenious 
 editor produce more volumes upon a similar plan." Edinburgh 
 Literary Journal, June, 1829. 
 
 " The compiler of this book has proceeded upon an excellent plan, 
 of which his success in execution is every way worthy. Although 
 the oldest may peruse the " Stories of Popular Voyages " with profit 
 and pleasure, yet they are in a particular manner suited to the 
 young ; and to them we would strongly recommend them. Youth 
 delights in tales of adventure by sea and land; and these stories are 
 calculated not only to gratify the juvenile imagination, but to fix 
 upon the memory a permanent recollection of the actual state of ex- 
 tensive sections of the busy world on which all have to play a part." 
 Morning Journal. 
 
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 terest of a continued journal, gives the chief actual details which are 
 essential to the knowledge of the country. A work of this kind has 
 long been a desideratum, peculiarly in the education of youth, and 
 we have seen nothing better adapted for the purpose." The Court 
 Journal. 
 
 " We recommend this little Work with seme confidence in its 
 merits.'' Atlas Newspaper. 
 
 " It is intended chiefly, but by no means exclusively, for the 
 young ; and the price at which it is published, renders it a cheap 
 present for youth." Brighton Gazette. 
 

 Me u^tae^^Cof/t 
 
 s ? 
 
 

 BRITISH 
 
 The Brook. 
 
 LONDON: 
 WHITTAKER, TREACHER, AND ARNOT, 
 
 AVE-MARIA LANE. 
 
 MDCCCXXX. 
 
THE 
 
 BRITISH NATURALIST; 
 
 OR, 
 SKETCHES OF THE MORE INTERESTING 
 
 PRODUCTIONS OF BRITAIN 
 
 AND THE SURROUNDING SEA, 
 
 IN THE SCENES WHICH THEY INHABIT ; 
 
 AND WITH RELATION TO 
 
 THE GENERAL ECONOMY OF NATURE, AND THE WISDOM 
 AND POWER OF ITS AUTHOR. 
 
 Nature speaks 
 
 A parent's language, and, in tones as mild 
 As e'er hush'd infant on its mother's breast, 
 Wins us to learn her lore ! 
 
 Professor Wilson's Poems. 
 
 LONDON: 
 PRINTED FOR WHITTAKER, TREACHER, AND Co. 
 
 AVE-MARIA LANE. 
 
 MDCCCXXX. 
 
PllINTED BY SAMUEL MANNING AND CO. 
 LONDON-HOUSE YARD, ST. PAUL'S. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 SOME apology may seem to be necessary for 
 the appearance of a new work upon Natural 
 History, more especially of a work that is sanc- 
 tioned by no name or authority, and pretends 
 to no systematic arrangement. Now these, which 
 not a few may think imperfections, are intended 
 to enable the British Naturalist to stand up for 
 judgment, to be awarded according to its real 
 merits. The dictum of authority, and the divi- 
 sions of system, are the bane of study to the 
 people at large. The former never fails to 
 repress the spirit of inquiry ; and in the latter, 
 the parts are so many, and so scattered, that 
 one cannot understand the whole: it were as 
 easy to tell the hour from the disjointed move- 
 ments of a number of watches jumbled together 
 in a box, as to find " how nature goes," from the 
 mere dissection of her works. 
 
 I do not want to hear the harangue of the 
 exhibitor ; I want to see the exhibition itself, and 
 b 
 
 M34S973 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 that he shall be quiet, and let me study and 
 understand that in my own way. If I meet with 
 any object that arrests my attention, I do not 
 wish to run over the roll of all objects of a similar 
 kind ; I want to know something about the next 
 one, and why they should be in juxtaposition. 
 If, for instance, I meet with an eagle on a moun- 
 tain cliff, I have no desire to be lectured about 
 all the birds that have clutching talons and 
 crooked beaks. That would take me from the 
 book of nature, which is before me, rob me of 
 spectacle, and give me only the story of the ex- 
 hibitor, which I have no wish either to hear or 
 to remember. I want to know why the eagle 
 is on that cliff, where there is not a thing for 
 her to eat, rather than down in the plain, where 
 prey is abundant; I want also to know what 
 good the mountain itself does, that great lump 
 of sterility and cold ; and if I find out, that the 
 cliff is the very place from which the eagle can 
 sally forth with the greatest ease and success, 
 and that the mountain is the parent of all those 
 streams that gladden the valleys and plains, I 
 am informed. Nay, more, I see a purpose in it, 
 the working of a Power mightier than that of 
 man. My thoughts ascend from mountains to 
 masses wheeling freely in absolute space. I look 
 for the boundary: I dare not even imagine it: 
 I cannot resist the conclusion " This is the 
 building of God." 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 Wherever I go, or whatever I meet, I cannot be 
 satisfied with the mere knowledge that it is there, 
 or that its form, texture, and composition are thus 
 or thus ; I want to find out how it came there, 
 and what purpose it serves ; because, as all the 
 practical knowledge upon which the arts of civi- 
 lization are founded has come in this way, I too 
 may haply glean a little. Nor is that all : won- 
 derful as man's inventions are, I connect myself 
 with something more wonderful and more lasting ; 
 and thus I have a hope and stay, whether the 
 world goes well or ill ; and the very feeling of 
 that, makes me better able to bear its ills. 
 When I find that the barren mountain is a source 
 of fertility, that the cold snow is a protecting 
 mantle, and that the all-devouring sea is a fabri- 
 cator of new lands, and an easy pathway round 
 the globe, I cannot help thinking that that, which 
 first seems only an annoyance to myself, must 
 ultimately involve a greater good. 
 
 This was the application given to Natural His- 
 tory in the good old days of the Derhams and the 
 Rays ; and they were the men that breathed the 
 spirit of natural science over the country. But 
 the science and the spirit have been separated ; 
 and though the learned have gone on with per- 
 haps more vigour than ever, the people have 
 fallen back. They see the very entrance of know- 
 ledge guarded by a hostile language, which must 
 be vanquished in single combat before they can 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 enter ; and they turn away in despair. I admit 
 the merit of the systems and subdivisions: for 
 those who devote themselves to a single science, 
 they are admirable ; but to the great body of the 
 people they are worse than useless. 
 
 With many works that profess to be popular, 
 the case is not better. They are in general col- 
 lections of scraps, put together by persons of no 
 observation, the illustrations of a system without 
 the system itself, and therefore of little use to 
 any body. The facts that they set forth may be 
 true ; but when one puts the cui bono, there is no 
 answer; and when one seeks for the connexion 
 by which all the parts are united into a whole, it 
 is not to be found. 
 
 Some part of this may be owing to the mischief 
 of authority ; and of the authority of one of the 
 greatest men that ever lived. Bacon, forgetting 
 for once the difference between matter of fact and 
 matter of inference, said, rather inconsiderately, 
 that " final causes produce nothing." The sentence 
 is a mere opinion, and, what is more, it is a contra- 
 diction ! as, if the causes be final, what can they 
 produce ? But the sentence has become a maxim ; 
 final causes are but seldom attended to, and the 
 history of nature, thus disjointed, becomes unin- 
 teresting. Yet final causes are, in the study of 
 organic being, what the laws of matter are in the 
 study of mere material existence, or what the 
 principles of arithmetic and geometry are in the 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 study of number and figure. They are the laws 
 of growth and life ; and those who do not keep 
 them constantly in view, study nature as if it were 
 dead ; and, of course, fall into the same blunders 
 and absurdities as those who attempted to study 
 the heavens without the laws of physics, or pro- 
 perties of substances without those of chemistry. 
 The laws of physics and chemistry are nothing 
 but the ultimate facts, to which we always arrive 
 when we pursue the same course, and beyond 
 which we can never go ; and the ultimate facts in 
 the economy of organized bodies, or the laws of 
 life, as we may term them, are to be found in the 
 same way by observation. Sometimes they act 
 contrary to those of physics or chemistry, and 
 sometimes not ; but when the former is the case, 
 we always find that there is an organization, the 
 very best adapted for producing the effect. There 
 is not one violation of this, not one production 
 of nature doing any thing at any time, but just 
 that which, if we had studied it properly before, 
 we should have expected it to do ; and when we 
 find this adaptation universal and perfect, can we 
 doubt that it is the result of infinite wisdom ? and 
 believing it in our hearts, shall we be ashamed to 
 confess it? Shall we deny the wisdom of our 
 Maker, because he is all-wise ; or his power, because 
 he is all-powerful? With all our failings, we do 
 not deal so by our fellow-men ; and shall we 
 respect the works and contemn the Maker? 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 In the following pages the subjects have been 
 viewed in those masses into which we find them 
 grouped in nature ; and the plant or the animal 
 has been taken in conjunction with the scenery, 
 and the general, and particular use ; and, when 
 that arose naturally, the lesson of morality or 
 natural religion. The subjects for a first volume 
 have been chosen more for their breadth than for 
 their number, leaving those that are more minute, 
 and stand in greater need of pictorial illustration, 
 to future volumes, in the course of which the 
 same kind of scenes will be visited, though in 
 other aspects and for other purposes. 
 
 Throughout the work, the best authorities, at 
 least those which appeared to the author to be 
 the best, have been consulted, as well for the 
 collection of facts, as for the verification of ori- 
 ginal observations; but no man's labours have 
 been appropriated without express acknowledge- 
 ment in the text, and generally speaking, with 
 inverted commas in the analytic table. 
 
 The plan, of which the present volume forms 
 a part, has been long under consideration; and 
 materials are in preparation for extending it, not 
 only to a Series of Volumes of THE BRITISH 
 NATURALIST, but to follow, or alternate those, with 
 THE FOREIGN NATURALIST, as may be most ac- 
 cordant with the successful preparation of the 
 work and the wishes of the public. 
 
 Several facts and inferences will be found in 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 the present volume, which have not been pre- 
 viously published. But the author has not put 
 them forward as his. His object is not to appear 
 a naturalist himself, but to show how delightful, 
 and how profitable, it would be, if all would be 
 their own naturalists , and go to the living foun- 
 tain instead of the stagnant pool. 
 
 Bank of the Thames, 
 Nov. 1829. 
 
Insects are 
 
 designed and executed by MR. W. H. BROOKE ; and those of 
 the Lake and the Brook, by MR. BONNER, from Drawings 
 by HARRY WILLSON, Esq., who has recently published some 
 interesting Views of Foreign Cities. 
 
ANALYSIS OF THE CONTENTS, 
 
 CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Page 
 
 GRAND distinction between the works of nature and those of art 
 The commandment to man The " knowledge " which " is 
 POWER" Man's dominional duty Vast increase in the works 
 of art ; and its effect upon the study of nature The knowledge 
 of nature is the knowledge of God Injuries done to common 
 study by the adoration of names and the admiration of cu- 
 riositiesThe knowledge of nature obtainable only by obser- 
 vationIt is easily acquired Adaptation of animals to the 
 places they inhabit Revolutions in the earth and its inhabi- 
 tantsFossil and extinct animals, not antediluvian All nature 
 worthy of study Habits of animals Instinct and education 
 The powers of plants Their stability and means of production 
 Pollen Motions of animals Structure of feet The human 
 step Incitements to the study of nature It leads to the 
 adoration of God 13 
 
 CHAPTER II. THE MOUNTAIN, 
 
 Majesty of mountains their use in the grand economy of the 
 globe Bears and wolves Habitations and habits of the wild 
 C 
 
XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 cat Not the same species as the domestic one Habits of 
 the marten Battle of the wild cat and pine marten Heath- 
 . berries Pools Production and habits of the gnat she is a 
 boat-builder The ascent The last berry The view The 
 summit frozen in summer Rolling down stones alarm the 
 golden eagle her powers and habits Plunder by eagles 
 " Hannah Lamond " Contest with the heron The Alpine hare 
 Seasonal changes of colour The ptarmigan The coverings 
 of animals whiten as they decay The eagle's eye and the 
 telescope Varieties of eyes Mechanism of vision The stoop 
 and exaltation of the eagle 40 03 
 
 CHAPTER III. THE LAKE. 
 
 Characters of lakes their effects upon temperature On floods 
 On fertility Habits of the heron wonderful power of its 
 neck its wings a parachute its skill and success as a 
 fisher its means of defence war of the herons and crows 
 pro aris et focls Fishing eagles The osprey its nature and 
 habits The sea eagle grandeur of her fishing struggles with 
 large fish Habits and migration of the wild swan its musical 
 powers Migration southward tofeed, and northward to nidify 
 Instinct sometimes confounded with reason The cause 
 Migration ef animals Detailed causes Habits of the coot- 
 Coot's nest Lake fishes Case char Torgoch Guiniad . . 94140 
 
 CHAPTER IV. THE RIVER. 
 
 Characters of rivers they are the causes of civilization the 
 preservers of the power of life Ventilators Sources of 
 health River scenery Fly catching Angling Maudlin sen- 
 timent Water moths Day flies Crane flies their singular 
 economy The genus salmo Production and habits of trout 
 The Professor in a panic The otter its habits in summer 
 and winter Water rat Water hydra Production and migra- 
 tion of fishes Structure and respiration of fishes Natural his- 
 tory of the salmon Some vulgar error's on the subject They 
 
CONTENTS. XV 
 
 Page 
 
 do not spawn annually, nor emigrate to a great distance- 
 Salmon leaps Kennerth The fall of Kilmorac Lovat's kettle 
 The Keith of Blairgowrie " Catching a salmon "Dragon 
 Hies 141203 
 
 CHAPTER V. THE SEA. 
 
 A calm The storm on the wing Cause and casualties of 
 waves Breaking on a beach On rocks and in caves The 
 power and majesty of the sea The desperate wish Natural 
 theology Motion of the sea Formation and destruction of 
 land Masses of rock Marine remains Natural history of the 
 cetacea Baleen whales Spermaceti whales Dolphins- 
 Battle of the masons and the grampuses Structure and re- 
 spiratory organs of cartilaginous fishes The lamprey The 
 pride The hag The torpedo Electricity of fishes Their 
 organs a peculiar class The gymnotus Battle of the gymnoti 
 and the horses Electric fishes of Africa and the Indian Ocean 
 The fecundity of fishes Nearly four millions at one birth 
 The sea anemone The crab and the Baillie Crabs The 
 natural history of the herring Baneful effects of old salt laws 
 Herrings do not come in shoals from the polar sea that 
 would be useless contrary to the laws of nature impossible 
 Their migrations are from the shores to the deep water imme- 
 diately off White fishing The stormy petrel Seals Anec- 
 dote of a seal Seals might be domesticated 204300 
 
 CHAPTER VI. THE MOOR. 
 
 Characters of moors their peculiar beauties uses The lap- 
 wingits courage its art its nest and eggs Tame lapwing 
 The goshawk its boldness and strength Difference between 
 hawks and eagles Grouse Habits and habitudes of the red 
 grouse Grouse-shooting Grouse In perfection Descent of 
 grouse to the low lands Habits of the kite rapacity 
 cowardice consequences of its greediness Hen harrier- 
 Cock of the mountain Black game Mountain storms . . . 301338 
 
XVI CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. THE BROOK. 
 
 Page 
 
 Character of brooks The advantages of change Repose of 
 brooks Structure and habits of the mole cricket The great 
 water beetle Land and water animals Function of re- 
 spirationIts probable use The solar microscope Habits of 
 the rail of the swift The death's-head moth Structure of 
 insects Space and time not necessary elements of power and 
 wisdom with God . 339380 
 
THE BRITISH NATURALIST. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 IT may be a trite observation, but it is at the same 
 time a true one, that " there is neither waste nor ruin 
 in nature." When the productions of human art fall 
 into decay, they are gone ; and if the artist does 
 not replace them by new formations, the species is 
 gone also ; but the works of nature are their own re- 
 pairers and continuers, .and that which we are accus- 
 tomed to look upon as destruction and putrefaction, is 
 a step in the progress of new being and life. This is 
 the grand distinction between the productions of nature 
 and those of art ; those in which the same power finds 
 both the materials and the form, and those in which 
 the form is merely impressed upon previously existing 
 materials. 
 
 The substances in nature are in themselves endowed 
 with faculties, unseen and inscrutable by man in any 
 thing but their results, which produce all the varied 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 forms of inorganic and organic being, of which the 
 solid earth, the liquid sea, and the fluid air, are formed, 
 and by which they are inhabited. The fabrications of 
 man are, on the other hand, in a state of commenced 
 decay the instant that they are made ; and without 
 the constant labour of repair and replacing, they would 
 perish altogether. The most extensive cities, and the 
 strongest fortifications, after man abandons them to 
 their fate, fade and moulder away, so that the people 
 of after-ages dispute, not merely about the places where 
 they were situated, but about the very fact of their 
 existence. It is true that, when man takes any of 
 nature's productions out of the place or circumstances 
 for which nature has fitted them, and supports them 
 by artificial means, they cannot continue to exist after 
 those means are withdrawn, any more than a roof can 
 remain suspended in the air after the walls or parts 
 that supported it are withdrawn ; or, a cork will remain 
 at the bottom of a basin of water, after the weight that 
 kept it from rising to the surface has been removed. 
 If man will have artificial shelter and food, he must 
 keep in repair the house that he has built, trim the 
 garden he has planted, and plough and sow the field 
 from which he is to obtain his artificial crop ; but if he 
 would content himself with that which is produced 
 without importation, and artificial culture, no planting, 
 sowing, or culture is necessary; for whether it be in 
 the warm regions or in the cold, in the sheltered 
 valley or upon the storm-beaten hill, in the close 
 forest or upon the open down, nature does her part 
 without intermission or error ; and while the results are 
 so many and so beautiful, the causes are those qualities 
 
INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 with which the fiat of the Almighty endowed the ele- 
 ments, when it was his pleasure to speak the whole 
 into existence. 
 
 Over the whole of this extensive, fair, and varied 
 creation, dominion was, by its Almighty and All-boun- 
 tiful Creator, given to man. When our first parents 
 were formed, and ere yet Eden had been prepared for 
 their abode, " God blessed them, and said, ' Replenish 
 the earth, and subdue it ; and have dominion over the 
 fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over 
 every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And 
 behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed 
 which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree 
 upon which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed.' " Thus 
 the commandment is ample, and it is circumstantial. 
 There is the dominion to man, as a rational and an 
 intelligent creature the study and knowledge, as an 
 exercise and improvement of the mind ; and the use, 
 for the support and comfort of the body, as the proper 
 consequence and reward of the study and knowledge. 
 
 It is this " knowledge" of the productions of nature, 
 their habits, and the laws of their being, which, in the 
 emphatic language of Lord Bacon, "is POWER;" and, 
 abundant as are the works, possessions, and comforts, 
 of civilized man extensive as is his learning, numer- 
 ous as are his arts and his sciences, and disposed as he 
 too often is to neglect nature for art, or even for indo- 
 lence, the study of the nature and properties of those 
 objects and substances around him, in the production 
 of which he had originally no concern, is the source 
 and fountain of them all. 
 
 It is true that the dominion given to man is not an 
 B 2 
 
4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 idle dominion, a mere consumption of that which he 
 finds spontaneously around him, in the state in which 
 it is found. It is a dominion of improvement and for 
 the exercise of the mind, as well as for the satisfaction 
 of the mere animal wants. These latter are common 
 to the whole creation : the meanest animal, the most 
 lowly vegetable finds its food, and protects itself from 
 the weather, in a manner far more certain and success- 
 ful than man, if he, not elevating himself above the 
 brutes of the field, do not exercise his higher and 
 nobler powers. In those countries where man im- 
 proves nothing, and cultivates nothing, he is the most 
 abject creature to be found, and suffers more privation 
 and misery than the plants and the animals. In those 
 cases he is without his power ; therefore, has not taken 
 upon him his dominion ; and, instead of being, as he 
 ought to be, the ruler and governor of the rest of the 
 creation, he is the slave of the laws and instincts of 
 these : and he is so, just because, by being ignorant of 
 those laws and instincts, he is incapable of turning them 
 to his use. 
 
 To improve that which he uses is the characteristic 
 of man, the image of the Creator which is stamped upon 
 him ; and he is the only inhabitant of the world to 
 whom this power has been given ; and though one 
 grand means of effecting this important end, be the 
 treasuring up of knowledge, so that every succeeding 
 generation may turn to account the collected wisdom of 
 all the generations that went before it ; yet the rapidity 
 with which discoveries have been made, and inventions 
 founded upon them, since the art of printing diffused 
 knowledge among all ranks of the people, abundantly 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 proves that the treasure of nature is yet far from 
 exhausted. 
 
 But numerous and splendid as those inventions of 
 modern art are, and much as they have changed the 
 habits, and added to the possessions and comforts of 
 mankind, it is but too apparent that some sacrifice has 
 been made to them. Their number and their novelty, 
 the desire that people have to possess themselves of 
 them, and the labour which must be undergone in the 
 gratification of that desire, have drawn the attention of 
 a very large portion of the people from the objects 
 that are around them. The very splendour that has 
 rewarded the knowledge of the few, has tempted the 
 many from the path of original knowledge, just in the 
 same manner that the splendour of a pageant attracts 
 the populace to the neglect of their more useful avoca- 
 tions. The world of man's making has become so great 
 and so imposing, that it has tempted people to forget 
 the world of God's making, without which, and the 
 careful study and knowledge of it, the other could not 
 have existed. 
 
 Perhaps that may have acted as a stimulus to the 
 few, though the tendency of it must have been to 
 make them seek after that which was novel, rather 
 than after that which was true ; and hence, though, 
 during the last half century, there have been many 
 more successful inventions than during any other 
 period of the same length, it is certainly not too much 
 to say that the failures have increased in a much 
 greater proportion. The reason is a very plain one : 
 the people do not see the scientific induction the 
 observation of nature, which must precede the suc- 
 B 3 
 
6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 cessful application of a new substance or a new com- 
 bination to tbe arts ; they see only the result ; and 
 therefore, when even a commendable feeling prompts 
 them to become imitators, they fix upon a result to 
 be arrived at, in total ignorance of the means that 
 ought to be used. Hence they labour for nought, 
 and vex themselves in the pursuit of vanity. 
 
 The necessary consequence is, an artificial state of 
 society, in pursuits, in manners, in the very structure 
 of the mind, and in every thing, whether of occupation 
 or engagement; nay, even in that most important of 
 all considerations, religion itself. The raw material 
 passes from the hand of the producer without much 
 change, or any knowledge of the process by which 
 it is to be made fit for use ; the manufacturer receives 
 it he knows not whence, or from what ; the merchant 
 thinks only of the sale and the profit ; the consumer, 
 of the supply of his necessity, or the gratification of 
 his vanity ; and the gratification is so very evanescent, 
 that hardly has one novelty been received, when an- 
 other becomes necessary. Thus, all is one round of 
 bustle and turmoil, in which, amid a dazzling succes- 
 sion of splendours, there is very little time for thought, 
 and less for engagement, than any one who has not 
 been a careful observer of the state of things would 
 be apt to suppose. In proof of this, it may be stated 
 with confidence, that the community have not got sub- 
 stantially wiser, even in the matter of their pecuniary 
 interests ; for there have been more wild and ruinous 
 speculations, unfounded upon a single well-established 
 fact, within the last ten years, than within any other 
 recorded period of double the duration. All those 
 
INTRODUCTION". 7 
 
 failures proceeded from an ignorance of facts, which 
 any body could have known, had they taken the 
 trouble of inquiring, of facts that stand boldly out, 
 and make themselves be felt the moment that the 
 parties come within the sphere of their operation. 
 
 But while in business there has been no very per- 
 ceptible accession of general wisdom, there has not 
 been much improvement in what are supposed to con- 
 stitute the pleasures of the world. The theatre has 
 lost its intellectual character. The delineation of 
 human nature, even in its most ordinary aspects, is 
 abandoned ; genius pens not one line for even the great 
 national houses; the fashionable, when they are at- 
 tracted, are attracted by sight and sound, without 
 meaning or moral ; the crowd are drawn by buffoonery 
 and grimace ; and the calm part of the community, 
 they who ought to impart to it its character, must 
 attend to their vocations. The other public amuse- 
 ments are all little better than mere sights ; for be 
 it a collection of pictures, or plants, or animals, one 
 can only have an observation beyond the mere ex- 
 ternal beauty or deformity of the show. There is no 
 allusion to use ; not a word about nature or properties ; 
 not even a knocking at that door of information, by 
 the opening of which so wide a vista of instructive 
 associations might be seen. The eye is gratified for 
 a moment ; but the show stands insulated, suggesting 
 nothing, and leading to nothing ; except, perhaps, the 
 craving for another show, from the restlessness of that 
 mind, which fain would break out of the prison and 
 be free as thought, but is not permitted. 
 
 In religion the case is perhaps still worse, as that is 
 
8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 altogether an intellectual matter. The most attentive 
 study of the wonders of creation, (and all its works are 
 wonders, from the animalcule which the eye cannot 
 discern without a microscope, to planets and suns and 
 systems, and those yet more incomprehensible powers 
 of mind by which these can be contemplated and known,) 
 the most attentive study of these, can impart but a 
 faint and shadowy notion of that Being, who, by a 
 simple will, imparted to them those principles which re- 
 gulate their changes and preserve their existence through 
 countless ages. This being the case, (and the wisest 
 men that have lived have felt and admitted it,) it is not 
 possible that without any knowledge of his works there 
 can be a proper knowledge of God. If the only world with 
 which we are acquainted be of man's making, the only 
 God with which we can be acquainted must be of man's 
 imagining ; and whatever may be the forms or the 
 words of the religion, it can be nothing but superstition, 
 A belief in that of which the believer knows nothing, 
 is a contradiction in terms a delusion and a cheat; 
 and, if there be but the very slightest stirring of 
 reflection, one who is just beginning to think must feel 
 that infidelity, which ignorance itself imparts, but 
 which it veils in its own darkness when only a shade 
 deeper. 
 
 That God, the Creator, can be known only from the 
 works of creation, is manifest from the whole tenor of 
 Holy Writ ; for, even in those parts of it that relate to 
 the Christian scheme of redemption, which requires an 
 immediate revelation by the Deity, the whole of the 
 illustrations are taken from the works of Nature ; and 
 though, unaided by any human science, the grand 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 truths of Revelation may be understood by man, 
 though man may know what God has done, in order 
 that man may enjoy everlasting happiness, yet, without a 
 careful study of the works of God, man cannot be so 
 impressed with the exalted nature of that Being, as to 
 estimate the astonishing goodness which condescended 
 to notice one so low. 
 
 Were it at all necessary, it would be easy to multi- 
 ply proofs of the neglect of the study of Nature, and 
 illustrations of the loss, both in pleasure and profit, 
 which society suffers through that neglect; but it 
 is always a much easier matter to point out a fault, 
 than to show how that fault is to be corrected. It 
 does not appear that the fault is altogether in society, 
 at least not directly ; for whenever a work on 
 natural subjects appears in a form intelligible to the 
 public, it is sought after and read with more avidity 
 than any other publication, so strong is the bias to 
 know something of the phenomena around us, that 
 we restrain it with reluctance even under the most 
 untoward circumstances. 
 
 One discouragement, and that of a very inveterate 
 nature, arises from the form and nomenclature of 
 the modern systems. Nature herself does not speak 
 in an unknown tongue ; and therefore a plain man 
 pauses when he finds the objects with which he is 
 most familiar, named and described in a language 
 different from that which he himself speaks. On the 
 other hand, as these names and descriptions are 
 familiar to the learned of all countries, they save a 
 little trouble to them. But while, by this means, the 
 progress of a few of the more profound and systematic 
 
10 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 students is accelerated, an incalculably greater number 
 are prevented from making any progress at all. The 
 professional students ought to be to society, what 
 pioneers are to an army on its march, they should go 
 before it and clear the way, so that it may advance the 
 faster. But if the pioneers were to block up the way 
 behind them, just in order to make their own progress 
 the more rapid, it would be difficult to point out the 
 advantage that they would be to the army. 
 
 The celebrity that has been won by system and no- 
 menclature, and the disposition which has been shown 
 to make new divisions and alter old ones, though pro- 
 bably sanctioned by the progress of discovery, has fur- 
 ther given the science of nature, as it is found in books, 
 a formidable appearance to the unscientific ; and that 
 again has been increased by the multiplicity of works 
 and systems through which one is compelled to wade, 
 before the facts that are interesting for the picture of 
 nature that they exhibit, can be collected together. 
 This, too, in England at least, is in some measure un- 
 avoidable. Works on science will not pay for the labour 
 and expense. Thus there cannot be a revision of the 
 whole subject; and the new facts come out, in the trans- 
 actions of societies and in periodical journals, in essays 
 and notices, which do not always state them with accu- 
 racy, and which seldom point out how they are to be 
 joined to the information already before the public. 
 Farther, publicity is announced by the authority of 
 names ; an influence which is always mischievous, but 
 against which there is no means or possibility of guard- 
 ing, but by the diffusion of knowledge among the pub- 
 lic generally, as they who have not the demonstrated 
 
INTRODUCTION. 11 
 
 truth to believe, must place their faith somewhere, and 
 necessarily, or at least naturally, place it in the idol 
 that is most in vogue at the time. 
 
 Out of these circumstances, and many other analo- 
 gous ones which might be enumerated, there arises a 
 farther evil, which, in its effects, is probably the most 
 baneful of all : the wonders, that is, the novelties and 
 rarities in nature, are those that are shown and written 
 about. They who avoid the mouse or the spider, whose 
 characters and habits they might be studying during 
 many an hour which is spent in idleness and gossipping, 
 throng to the exhibitions of learned cats and sapient 
 pigs. A calf with two heads, or an ox of double the 
 ordinary obesity, will attract the gaze of hundreds, who 
 care nothing for either animal in its natural form and 
 condition. Curiosity is a valuable feeling, and ought 
 not to be repressed ; but there is no feeling that stands 
 more in need of being guided ; for if it ever be de- 
 bauched by following after rarities that are of no use, 
 it can hardly be brought to regard common objects, 
 however valuable they may be. 
 
 There is a pretty strong natural tendency to this love 
 of marvels, and to pay much more attention to the de- 
 viations of nature from her ordinary mode of working, 
 than to study the laws of common occurrences ; as if 
 there were more both of pleasure and of wisdom in 
 criticising the supposed faults and blunders of nature, 
 than in contemplating her beauties. Even when at- 
 tempts are made to render the study of natural objects 
 amusing and attractive, the attention is not directed to 
 the general course, but to the deviations. If it is a 
 plant, its common habits, by the study of which alone 
 
12 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 its uses can be discovered, are passed over, and the 
 attention is directed to some freak or accidental circum> 
 stance ; and if an animal, any trick that it may have 
 been taught by man, is far more attractive than its na- 
 tural habits, and the more that it is contrary to those 
 habits, the more is it admired and wondered at. Even 
 a stone of fanciful shape and unusual colour is picked 
 up, kept, shown, and talked about as a curiosity, by 
 those who would think their time unprofitably and 
 painfully spent, were they to study the strata of which 
 the globe is composed, with a view either to the know- 
 ledge of its present state, or the elucidation of its past 
 history : just as if that which can communicate no 
 knowledge and lead to no use, were more valuable than 
 that which is fraught with the profoundest wisdom, and 
 leads to the greatest practical utility. 
 
 These are formidable barriers ; but the case is not 
 in itself so bad as, from the mere contemplation of 
 them, it would appear. They are, no doubt, obstacles 
 in the path to knowledge, but fortunately they are in 
 the by-path only. They render access to the copy a 
 good deal more difficult and uninviting than it other- 
 wise would be, but the original is as open to the public 
 as ever. The best system that man can invent, and 
 the best descriptions that he can give, with all the helps 
 of painting, engraving, or prepared specimens, are no- 
 thing to nature itself. The form may be fine, and the 
 colouring beautiful ; and we may admire the mould of 
 the one and the tints of the other ; but the charm is 
 not there life, that mysterious impulse, which moulded 
 the form, painted the colours, and caused that which 
 runs in all to assume certain characters and perform 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 certain functions is gone, and all that is left is a piece 
 of dead matter, which can remind us of nothing but 
 the size, shape, and consistency of the parts of which 
 it is made up. " A living dog" says Solomon, " is 
 better than a dead lion;" and the saying is true as re- 
 spects both the power of the animal, and the lesson 
 which the study of it is calculated to impart. 
 
 Now man cannot be shut out from this means of 
 study, either by the situation in which he is placed, or 
 by want of education. If he shall have the range but 
 of one field, or even of one pathway, be that ever so 
 limited, there is still enough of nature to engage his 
 attention, afford him pleasure, and lead him to the con- 
 templation of that Being, " in the knowledge of whom 
 stands everlasting life." Nay, even in confinement, in 
 the gloomy solitude of the dungeon, cut off from all 
 intercourse with his kind, separated from those animals 
 which have been domesticated for use or for pleasure^ 
 and forbidden to look upon the fair sky and the fertile 
 earth, there are well-authenticated instances, in which 
 the mouse and even the spider have owned his domi- 
 nion, and come at his call, to amuse his solitude. These 
 instances show that, if we had time and patience for 
 finding out their instincts and perfections, there are 
 none of the works of nature that might not have their 
 use ; and that the whole range of the works of crea- 
 tion is so given to man, as that the link by which his 
 enjoyment is bound to them can be separated only 
 by the stroke of dissolution. 
 
 When indeed our information extends only to our 
 own kind, we are, though we know all their habits and 
 all their history, in every age and country, in a state of 
 c 
 
14 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 very great ignorance and helplessness as regards even 
 the advancement of our own comfort as individuals. 
 Creation is so linked together as one whole, both in 
 space and in time, that we cannot know the nature and 
 learn the use of any one part without a knowledge of 
 the whole. For the want of this information, people 
 have often done very foolish things, such as wantonly 
 killing those rooks, that are of so much use in de- 
 stroying the larvae and eggs of insects, which, but for 
 rooks and other birds that feed upon insects, would 
 render the labour of the husbandman unavailing. In 
 like manner the garden spider is often destroyed, though 
 it be one of the grand preservers of the buds, the blos- 
 soms, and the fruit of the coming season. At the time 
 when these spiders become most abundant, the flies 
 are very numerous, most of the generations for the 
 passing summer having been produced ; and if all that 
 appear in the autumnal days were to live till they had 
 deposited their eggs, the different sorts of grubs and 
 caterpillars would be so abundant in the spring, that, 
 instead of fruit, hardly a green leaf would be left unde- 
 stroyed. 
 
 One of the most valuable consequences of the study 
 of nature is, the removal of prejudices, under the in- 
 fluence of which we are apt to act very foolishly. In- 
 stead of looking at plants and animals as forming a part 
 of nature as one whole, we are apt to make our own 
 ignorance the rule of our action, and persecute one and 
 foster another, from dislike and regard founded on no- 
 thing but our own caprice. Thus, instead of being, as 
 we ought to be, the wise and skilful rulers of the world, 
 improving its beauty at the same time that we add to 
 
INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 our own enjoyment, we become mere capricious tyrants, 
 and, like all other members of that class, feel in return 
 the miseries that we inflict. 
 
 Because, according to our limited notions, certain 
 classes of animals prey upon other classes, we call them 
 cruel ; and, not contenting ourselves with restraining 
 them from injuring us, or that on which we set a value, 
 we, from mere wantonness, wage against them a war 
 of extermination. Now we ought to bear in mind 
 that the same Creator who formed us, formed them 
 also ; and that, therefore, even those which, in our 
 estimation, are the most formidable or the most vile, 
 have a use, and an important use, in His sight ; that 
 only our ignorance prevents us from finding out and 
 admiring that use ; and that the wanton destruction of 
 any one being, is in truth a crime. Before we can 
 have any title to accuse any animal of cruelty, we must 
 first suppose it to be, which it is not, endowed with 
 reason, capable of judging of right and wrong a 
 human being and not an animal. " Do the young lions 
 roar when they have food?" asks the inspired penman; 
 and the same question may be put with regard to every 
 animal in the creation. Certain propensities, which we 
 call instincts, lead each animal to pursue the course 
 that it does, and the lion and the wolf are no more 
 guilty of cruelty than the lamb and the turtle. Ad- 
 mitting that neither of the latter feeds upon animal 
 substances, which in the case of the turtle is not the 
 fact, they cannot subsist without destroying vegetables ; 
 neither can they consume their vegetable food without 
 destroying those myriads of minute animals with which 
 every leaf is peopled. Every kind of life is supported 
 
1C INTRODUCTION. 
 
 by the destruction of some other kind ; and the same 
 power which confers the means of continuing the dif- 
 ferent races, prepares for such the means by which it 
 is to be destroyed. Hence, if we are to look upon 
 creation with eyes of wisdom, we must look upon it 
 as a whole, and as the harmony with which all the 
 parts are balanced. If we find any race or tribe that 
 has a great number of enemies, we invariably find that 
 that tribe is prolific in proportion to the number of its 
 destroyers ; so much so, that it would increase to its 
 own destruction, from the want of the proper kind 
 and quantity of food. 
 
 This holds in every region of the world, and among 
 vegetables as well as among animals. In countries 
 where the influence and operations of man have had 
 but little effect, we can trace the most beautiful adapt- 
 ation in the structure and habits to the nature of the 
 country. If that is a plain of great extent, and 
 affording pasturage at all times, the larger quadrupeds 
 are usually some of the ox or buffalo tribe, as we 
 find in the plains of India and the Savannahs of 
 North America. Those animals, from their unwieldy 
 gait and their great weight, are not adapted for 
 leaping or for taking long journeys in quest of food. 
 If the plains be subject to seasonal parching, we 
 find the race different; and lighter animals that can 
 migrate in quest of food, and bound across ravines, 
 or from rock to rock upon the mountains, are the 
 most abundant, as may be observed in the Llanos 
 of South America, and the plains of Southern Africa. 
 If the land be inclined to permanent sterility, or if it 
 be stony, alternating with swamps and marshes, either 
 
INTRODUCTION. 17 
 
 constantly, or at certain seasons of the year, we find 
 the animals undergo another change, they are calcu- 
 lated for leaping or wading, as is the case with the 
 ostrich on the borders of the great African desert, and 
 the emu and the kangaroo in New Holland. 
 
 This adaptation is not confined to any one race, or 
 to any one instinct of the race : it applies to them all, 
 and to all their habits. Some of them are not a little 
 singular. On the continuous plains, whether these be 
 adapted for occasional or for constant residence, the 
 young animals are left to use their own legs from the 
 time of their birth ; but when the country consists of 
 patches, and there must be, as it were, daily marches, 
 the mother is provided with a marsupium, or pouch, 
 in which she can carry her young until they have ac- 
 quired size and strength adapted to the nature of the 
 ground upon which they are to find their food. This 
 is the case with the kangaroo," and indeed with most 
 of the quadrupeds of Australia, with all of them that 
 can be considered as native, peculiar to that country, 
 and as singular as it is in its geography. 
 
 Where there is herbage, whether permanent or sea- 
 sonal, we find animals that browse herbage ; where 
 there are many native fruits, we find animals that can 
 live upon trees ; and where there is a tendency in hard 
 and prickly plants to overrun the ground, we find 
 elephants, and other animals that consume these. Thus 
 every vegetable-consuming animal, by consuming one 
 kind of vegetable, gives scope for other kinds ; and thus 
 yields food for other animals. Each has its destroyer ; 
 each has also that which it fattens ; and these are 
 so balanced, that the whole conduce to good. While 
 c 3 
 
1 8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 they do so, they remain ; and where there ceases to be a 
 necessity and an office for them in the economy of 
 nature, they cease to exist, and new races, adapted to 
 the change and circumstances of the place, occupy 
 their room. 
 
 The means of production and destroying are also 
 balanced in a very wonderful manner. When man 
 takes possession, he becomes the grand destroyer, 
 his arts and arms, and especially the use of fire, of 
 which he is the only creature that can take advantage, 
 are superior to the strength of lions, the wings of 
 eagles, and the coilings and fangs of serpents ; and 
 accordingly, the wild beasts vanish before him, and 
 return again when he retires. The lion, which for 
 many ages had not been found in Bengal, is said to 
 have, of late years, reappeared in some parts of that 
 country, which have been depopulated and are degene- 
 rating into desarts. 
 
 But, independently of any reference to man, there is 
 an admirable balance between the destroyer and the 
 prey ; both races thrive equally, and thus show that, 
 in the general purpose of creation, the one has been 
 made for the other. In the warmer parts of Asia and 
 Africa, where not burnt up and converted into sand, 
 large quadrupeds breed very fast, and are of numerous 
 kinds, and it is there that we find the most formidable 
 of the beasts of prey. In tropical America, large 
 quadrupeds are not so numerous; and the beasts of 
 prey are not so powerful, the puma is much inferior 
 to the lion, and so is the jaguar to the tiger. In 
 New Holland, where, from the sterile nature of the 
 country, there never could be many large animals, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 19 
 
 there is no native beast of prey worth naming. The 
 dog is, probably, not a native, and he is not a very 
 powerful animal at any rate ; and the dasyurus, which 
 has been found on that island, is very rare, and is in 
 size not superior to a cat. In the adjoining island of 
 Van Dieman's Land, where the herbage is naturally 
 better, the animals of prey are a little larger ; but 
 neither of the two species of dasyuri that are found 
 there, is more powerful than the fox. 
 
 Thus, if we leave our own notions out of the case, 
 and take nature just as we find it, there is perfection 
 in all its parts and all its forms ; and from the smallest 
 moss that consumes the damp upon a wall up to the 
 king of the forest, at whose roaring all the other 
 inhabitants quake, all is beauty ; and the same exqui- 
 site wisdom and astonishing powers are everywhere to 
 be found. 
 
 But this lesson is not confined in time any more than 
 in space. According to those laws of inorganic matter, 
 which have been proved beyond the possibility of con- 
 tradiction, or even doubt, the surfaces of countries 
 must in time undergo changes, unless when these are 
 prevented by the exercise of human industry. When 
 the summer heat partially melts the snow upon high 
 mountains, the water thus produced must insinuate 
 itself into the seams and fissures of the rock, upon 
 even the highest peaks where there is no soil to be 
 washed down ; and when the frost comes in winter, 
 the water which has thus lodged itself must crystallize 
 into ice. In doing that it expands, or occupies a larger 
 space, not very much larger, but it expands with a 
 force greater than any known resistance ; and the frag- 
 
20 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 merits that are thus loosened, must ultimately be sepa- 
 rated, and fall by their own weight. In like manner, 
 the rain that falls upon lofty places must wash down 
 the softer and less compact soils ; and thus it may be 
 asserted, that, from the necessary action of the weather, 
 there is a continual tendency to flatten the general sur- 
 face of the earth. The process is, no doubt, a slow 
 one, but it is sure ; and there is no part of the world 
 without some traces of its effects. In the champaign 
 counties of England, the pavements, altars, and other 
 remains of the Romans, are invariably found below 
 ground. In the soft lands near the mouths of the large 
 rivers, and also under the peat-bogs, the ruins of former 
 forests and former animals are abundant, and diffused 
 over all parts of the country. It is true that some 
 of the surfaces (those of the peat-bogs in particular) 
 have the power of elevating themselves, as the mosses 
 with which they are covered decay at the root while 
 they are growing at the top ; and they powerfully retain 
 humidity, by the presence of which both operations are 
 so much facilitated, that a depth of many feet has been 
 found in the memory of one individual. Other in- 
 stances occur, however, where no such assistance could 
 be obtained. In cutting the Caledonian canal, from the 
 Moray Firth on the east side of Scotland, to Fort 
 William on the west, the implements and weapons of a 
 former people were found at the depth of more than 
 twelve feet, beneath a covering of loose stones, intermix- 
 ed with very little even of sand, and exhibiting hardly a 
 trace of vegetation, except the scanty covering upon 
 the surface. 
 
 Another class of revolutions, of which there are traces 
 
INTRODUCTION. 21 
 
 in all countries, and which must change both the plants 
 and the animals, is the destruction of lakes and pools. 
 In mountainous countries, that arises from the rivers 
 which are discharged by the lakes. The beaches 
 which had once been the margins of the water, can 
 often be traced along the sides of valleys that are now 
 dry, or which, at most, contain but a small rivulet ; 
 and in other cases the river, after having mined its way 
 through the softer strata, is arrested by hard rock 
 near the lake. Scotland, Wales, Switzerland, the slopes 
 of the Andes, all mountainous countries in fact, abound 
 with instances of this description ; and those countries 
 which at one time were nearly covered with water, are 
 so completely drained by those natural changes, as at 
 another to contain hardly a drop, and thus become 
 desarts : in which state both their plants and their ani- 
 mals must undergo a change. 
 
 Sometimes, again, the land becomes parched through 
 the want of rain, to such a degree that the plants are 
 all withered, and the rain, when it does come, does 
 not penetrate into the soil. When that is the case 
 the quality of the vegetation changes, and in extreme 
 cases, wholly disappears. In the progress of this 
 change, as plants become fewer in number, they be- 
 come strongly impregnated with salt. The oil and 
 water which they contain are dried up by the heat, 
 and the charcoal, alkalis, and acids unite into new com- 
 binations, which are unfavourable to ordinary vegeta- 
 tion. The acridity augments, and at last nothing is left 
 but a barren sand covered with a crust of salt. 
 
 We have one of the most remarkable instances of 
 this kind of change on the northern parts of all the con- 
 
22 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 tinents. There there are traces of many animals that 
 do not now exist, but which have certainly existed 
 along with the races that now inhabit the same regions, 
 because their remains are found together in collections 
 of matter that have not been subjected to any other 
 change than that produced by ordinary accumulation. 
 Besides those animal remains that are imbedded in the 
 different strata of rocks, and among which, though 
 care must be taken not to confound skeletons that are 
 more changed and mutilated with animals originally 
 less perfect, there is a sort of progressive character 
 from simpler to more complex. There are animals 
 which, from the situations in which their remains are 
 found, cannot have been extinct anterior to any great 
 or general revolution of the globe. Of these, the most 
 remarkable are a species of elephant, one of rhinoceros, 
 and one of hippopotamus, which appear to have been 
 pretty generally diffused over the cold, or at least the 
 temperate parts of the northern hemisphere. The 
 tusks, teeth, and other bones of an elephant, are found 
 in soft deposits, such as clay, mud, and marie, or under 
 peat-bogs. They have been found in many parts of 
 England, in Scotland, and in Ireland ; and the remains 
 of the rhinoceros and hippopotamus are found in the 
 same kind of situations. In the clay formation at 
 Brentford, in Middlesex, at no very great depth below 
 the surface, we believe the remains of all the three have 
 been met with ; and from their being found near 
 situations which are frequented by the living species of 
 accompanying fossil animals, and also in many stages of 
 their growth, there remains not a doubt that they sub- 
 sisted in the districts that now contain their bones. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 23 
 
 When attention was first directed to those great 
 bones, the opinion was taken up, probably a little too 
 hastily, that they belonged to the identical species that are 
 now found existing in the tropical regions ; and the 
 conclusion was, that they must have existed anterior 
 to some mighty convulsion of the globe, which had 
 blended in one mass of ruin the productions of all its 
 zones. The nearness to the surface at which these 
 remains were found, and the soft substances in which 
 they were imbedded, rendered it impossible to refer 
 them to any very remote period, or their covering to 
 any thing else than the accumulation of clay or mud 
 by water, or the growth of peat. The vulgar opinion 
 referred them to the deluge ; but that did not agree 
 with the facts. The bones themselves showed that the 
 species were not quite the same with the existing ones ; 
 and there was an inconsistency in supposing that the 
 elephant of the warm countries should have escaped 
 that catastrophe, while that of the temperate was lost. 
 Besides, wherever the bones occurred, the debris over 
 them appeared to have been accumulated gradually, 
 by deposits from rivers, or in caves, or by the growth 
 of mosses and other plants. 
 
 These circumstances led the more observant and 
 reasoning naturalists to conclude, that, without any 
 necessary intervention of a deluge to drown them, or 
 to waft them from the regions of the equator, these 
 animals had, at one time, lived in the same countries in 
 which their bones are found ; and this conclusion was 
 further corroborated by the fact, that, though these 
 remains are found in North America, there is no trace 
 of an Elephant in the tropical part of that continent. In 
 
24 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the year 1799, actual obsveration established the truth of 
 these conjectures, by the discovery of an entire north- 
 ern elephant imbedded in ice at the mouth of the river 
 Lena, in Siberia. It would have been easy to argue 
 that an entire elephant, from the warmer parts of Asia, 
 could not possibly have been conveyed to the mouth of 
 the Lena by any deluge ; because, whether it had come 
 across the lofty mountains and the Table-land, or by 
 the more circuitous way of the sea, it must have been 
 dashed to pieces, and the soft parts decomposed by 
 maceration in water, before half the journey was 
 accomplished. But there was no need of arguing ; for 
 the covering of the animal was not a defence against 
 heat, like the naked dark skin of the tropical elephant, 
 but a defence against cold. It was covered with three 
 kinds of hair : one, black bristles, about eighteen inches 
 long ; another, brown hair, about four inches in length ; 
 and the third, close, reddish wool, not above an inch 
 long. This being the very winter-clothing of animals 
 of the cold countries, left not a doubt that this indi- 
 vidual kind inhabited Siberia ; and if that was the case, 
 those of England, North America, and all the other 
 countries where their remains are found, must have 
 done the same. The elephant of the Lena was a large 
 animal, sixteen feet four inches long, and nine feet four 
 inches high ; the tusks measured nine feet and a half 
 .along the curve, and weighed three hundred and sixty 
 pounds. The head and tusks together weighed nearly 
 eight hundred pounds. From this we can see that 
 nature needs no violence, no general suspension of her 
 operations or order, to effect the extermination even of 
 the most powerful of her productions, when their pur- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 25 
 
 pose is accomplished, and their existence in any par- 
 ticular place is no longer required ; but that wherever 
 any one is needed, there it is found, and where there 
 is no longer necessity for it, it vanishes from the 
 catalogue. 
 
 These, and a number of other changes, produced 
 gradually, or instantly as in the case of earthquakes, 
 volcanoes, or inundations alter the appearance of the 
 country, either upon a large scale, as respects long 
 periods, or upon a small scale, as respects short ones ; 
 but amid them all we find nature true to her general 
 principle, that " in like circumstances the results will 
 be similar ;" and the more extensive that our informa- 
 tion is, the more are we convinced that nothing is the 
 production of chance, but that the whole is governed by 
 laws which evince wisdom that we may admire, but 
 dare not imitate ; and that so universal and uniform 
 are those laws, that what we in our ignorance consider 
 to be breaches of them, are proofs that they are always 
 obeyed. 
 
 It is in this way that we are enabled to look up 
 from nature to the Author of nature ; and if our infor- 
 mation be of sufficient extent, nay, if it be but sound 
 as far as it goes, we can no more doubt or deny the 
 existence of a creating and preserving God, than we 
 can doubt or deny the fact of our own existence. Na- 
 ture is infinitely diversified, and yet each production 
 makes its appearance at the time, and under the cir- 
 cumstances, which we would be led to expect. A plan 
 which is so perfect and so harmonious, of which the 
 parts are so diversified, and yet which so mutually pro- 
 mote the existence of each other, which blend the sea, 
 D 
 
JRI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the land, and the air, into one whole, and which, though 
 always perishing, are always being produced, offers a 
 field of contemplation which the longest life and the 
 most active mind cannot exhaust; and it has the advan- 
 tage over every other subject of study, as it presents 
 or awakens none of those bad passions and imperfections 
 which always present themselves when man and his 
 works are the objects of our inquiry. 
 
 It has this farther advantage, that the details are 
 just as interesting as the whole ; that the subject which 
 is too small to be seen by the naked eye, is just as 
 perfect in all its parts, and as wonderful in the use of 
 them, as that which is of the most ample dimensions. 
 The little green moss that is as a pin's point upon a 
 wall or the bark of a tree, or the fungus that makes a 
 barely visible speck upon a leaf, is as perfect in its 
 structure, and as full of life as the pine or the oak that 
 rises majestically over the forest, and exhibits itself to 
 an entire county at once. The aphis, that hardly 
 crumples the rose leaf, or the animalcula, of which 
 myriads do not render a drop of water turbid, is equally 
 complete, and, in some respects, much more curious 
 than the horse or the elephant. Of the aphis, nine suc- 
 cessive generations, all females, succeed each other 
 every summer, and yet each produces a numerous 
 progeny ; and some of the animalculae increase in 
 number by a spontaneous division of the little bodies 
 of those previously existing. 
 
 In order to understand any thing of the subject, we 
 must, indeed, study the small as well as the great, the 
 common as well as the rare. The rarest and the most 
 majestic of animals, cannot tell us more than the worm 
 
INTRODUCTION. 27 
 
 that we trample under foot, or the caterpillar that we 
 destroy as a nuisance. Nor does the utility diminish 
 with the size. Silk, the finest substance with which we 
 are clothed carmine, the finest colour with which we 
 can paint, and the very ink with which we write, are all 
 the productions of little insects. 
 
 When we are acquainted only with the larger ani- 
 mals and the cultivated vegetables, (and a very great 
 number of persons, who would be very angry if we 
 were to accuse them of ignorance, know very little 
 about these,) we may be said to know absolutely no- 
 thing about the works of creation. Indeed, the study 
 of the domesticated animals in a state of confinement 
 is not the study of nature at all : it is the study of art, 
 by which nature has been in so far supplanted. To 
 obey the bit and the spur, is no part of the natural dis- 
 position of a horse ; to fawn, and watch, or catch game 
 for a master, is no part of the natural disposition of a 
 dog ; neither is it the natural disposition of the cow to 
 come lowing in order to be drained of that with which 
 nature provided her for the nourishment of her own 
 offspring. These and all the other matters, whether 
 useful properties or idle tricks, which make up nine- 
 tenths of the published biography of animals, are not 
 animal biography at all. They are merely instances of 
 the triumph of human art over the natural propensities 
 of the subjects upon which it has been exercised, very 
 important as they lead to useful applications, but still 
 mere art, and tending to close rather than to open the 
 door to the proper study of nature ; and it is only in 
 proportion as the animals resemble man, by possessing 
 the faculty of teachability, which is the badge and 
 
28 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 character of reason, that those things can be said of 
 them. 
 
 The unreasoning productions of nature, whether ani- 
 mal or vegetable, need no teaching. Those powers 
 which are given them for the maintenance of then- 
 being, are perfect ; and the farther they recede from 
 man, the more astonishing is the perfection. We read 
 of old lions teaching young ones to rend their prey, of 
 old eagles teaching their young ones to fly in circles 
 and to stoop on their quarry ; and that animals may 
 have been found in situations that would tempt those 
 who look upon every part of animal conduct as if it 
 were human, to come to such conclusions, is very pos- 
 sible. But any such means are unnecessary ; for what- 
 ever may be the natural habits of the animal, it will 
 assume them with the most unerring certainty, though 
 it has never seen them practised. Nobody ever heard 
 of a cat being complained of as a mouser, because it 
 had been separated from its mother before she had ini- 
 tiated it in that art. Ducklings that have been hatched 
 under a hen, take to the water, in spite of all her warn- 
 ings to the contrary. The cuckoo, when hatched by 
 the hedge-sparrow, turns all its companions out of the 
 nest ; but the sparrow, true to her instinct, feeds and 
 cherishes the unnatural intruder ; while it, equally true 
 to its instinct, flies to pass the winter in unknown re- 
 gions without a guide, and returns the next season to 
 deposit its egg in perhaps the nest of its foster-mother. 
 As we descend in the scale, the instinct becomes still 
 more perfect, at least still more wonderful. The fly 
 deposits its egg in the substance which is best adapted 
 for nourishing its young, whether that be a leaf, a tree, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 29 
 
 a piece of wood, the earth, the water, a putrid substance, 
 the body of a living animal, or that of another insect. 
 The species of tree or of animal is never mistaken. 
 The pulex penetrans, or chigoe of the West Indies, de- 
 posits her progeny in the human body. The oestrus 
 bovis, or gadfly of the ox, seeks no nidus for hers, but 
 beneath the skin of that animal ; and that of the horse, 
 fastens her eggs to the hair of the animal, and then 
 tickles and irritates the skin in such a manner as that it 
 may, by applying its mouth to the place, take the eggs 
 into the stomach. Even in those cases where the 
 animal, or egg, or whatever else is to be the nidus, and 
 supply the food, is to perish by the operation, the de- 
 struction does not take place until the young animal 
 has perfected its growth, and escaped, to pass into an- 
 other state. 
 
 In their mechanical structures, whether for their own 
 habitations, for their young, or as snares to assist them 
 in procuring their food, we have still the same unifor- 
 mity. In those that form themselves into societies, as 
 the beaver, the bee, and the ant, we find the one assist- 
 ing the other ; but we never find any teaching, or any 
 need of it. Beavers build all in the same way, in 
 similar situations, and, where they can procure them, 
 of the same materials. All bees, of the same species, 
 construct their cells in the same form; and if their 
 wax and their honey be not exactly the same, the 
 difference may always be traced to the plants from 
 which those substances are collected. In all these 
 wonderful habits they are perfectly regular. These 
 form part of the grand system of which the elements 
 and the seasons form a part ; and none of them varies 
 D 3 
 
30 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 any more than a stone ceases to fall to the earth when 
 unsupported in the air. Man requires the union of 
 favourable circumstances, and the experience of gene- 
 rations, before he can construct a decent dwelling, or 
 find a constant supply of food ; and yet he sometimes 
 forgets that Being, at whose single and instantaneous 
 word or pleasure those thousands of creatures, and 
 their millions of instincts, came into existence, in per- 
 fect regularity, amid continual change, requiring no 
 new effort and no repair ; but passing from life to 
 death, and from death back again to life, in one won- 
 derful succession, until it shall please Him, who in one 
 moment spoke them all into being, to speak them all 
 out of it in another. 
 
 But it is not in this view alone that the study of 
 nature is the most pleasing and profitable. Tn con- 
 templating the structure of any plant or any animal, 
 however common, and however, upon that account, dis- 
 regarded or overlooked, we may find finer applications 
 of mechanical art, and nicer processes in chemistry, 
 than the collected art of the whole human race can 
 boast of. That the vegetable principle in an acorn 
 should be chemist enough to fabricate oak timber, and 
 bark and leaves and new acorns ; and mechanic enough 
 to rear the tree in the air against the natural tendency 
 of gravitation, and in spite of the violence of the winds, 
 and do all this by means of a little portion of matter, 
 that can be kept for a considerable time as if it were 
 dead, is truly astonishing. It is equally demonstrative 
 of power and wisdom in Him who gave the impulse, 
 that out of the same soil and the same atmosphere 
 each plant should elaborate that which properly belongs 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 to it ; that the flower of one plant should be crimson, 
 that of the next yellow ; that one should delight us 
 with its perfume, and that the very next one should 
 offend us by its fetor ; or that a food, a medicine, 
 or a poison, should be found the closest neighbours. 
 Nor is it less singular that light, which is so necessary 
 to the growth of plants that without it they lose those 
 substances upon which their colours depend, and be- 
 come pale and sickly, is unfavourable to the germina- 
 tion of seeds. And yet the matter is no prodigy, but 
 depends upon principles which hold true in the animal 
 and the mineral kingdom as well as in the vegetable. 
 The moisture and the exclusion of light bring on a 
 fermentation, in the course of which, the farina of the 
 seed is converted into sugar ; the very same process by 
 means of which malt is made out of barley. The 
 colouring matters again are all oxides, or combinations 
 of oxygen, in some way or other, and have a very great 
 resemblance to the artificial colours which chemistry 
 has taught mankind to prepare. The colours of all 
 flowers are more intense in fine sunny weather ; the 
 skins of the inhabitants of warm countries become 
 dark ; those who are exposed to the sun in summer, 
 become brown. 
 
 In this single department of one of the kingdoms of 
 nature, we have thus not only a fund of the most 
 curious information, but of information that is prac- 
 tically useful at every step. Even from the mere form 
 of vegetables, we have some of the choicest of our 
 ornaments, and have taken some of the most useful 
 hints in our architecture. The engineer who first suc- 
 ceeded in fixing upon the dangerous rocks of Eddy- 
 
32 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 stone, a lighthouse that resisted the violence of the 
 sea, moulded its contour from the bole of a tree which 
 had withstood the tempests of ages ; and the model was 
 found so admirably adapted to the purpose, that it has 
 been copied, in similar cases, ever since. Even in the 
 more slender plants, that climb upon other plants, or 
 upon walls, the apparatus with which they are fur- 
 nished is the very best adapted for the purpose. They 
 coil round the stem, they lay hold by their spiral ten- 
 drils, or they are covered with little knobs which are 
 the rudiments of roots, that insert themselves into 
 the smallest crevices, and, when once there, so swell 
 and expand, that they break before they can be re- 
 moved. 
 
 The means that they take to secure the succession 
 are equally wonderful in themselves, and in the way in 
 which they harmonize with the rest of creation. The 
 honey that is contained in the nectaries of so many 
 flowers, and which finds so many insects in food, is one 
 certain means of preventing the loss and degeneracy 
 of the plants. The perfecting of the seed depends 
 upon the application to the pistil, or little tube that 
 stands on the rudiment of the seed-vessel, of the pollen, 
 or powder, generally of a yellowish colour, that is con- 
 tained in the anthers, or little knobs upon the top of 
 the filaments. That powder, in many cases, consists 
 of little hollow balls, which are filled with an air or 
 gas, similar to that with which balloons are inflated; 
 and which enables them to float in the air until they 
 alight upon the pistils. Sometimes those two parts 
 are in the same flower, sometimes in different flout is 
 upon the same plant, and sometimes upon different 
 
INTRODUCTION. 33 
 
 plants. Wheat is an instance of the former, on the 
 ears of which the anthers may be seen, in the summer, 
 like pieces of yellow dust. The farmer calls these the 
 bloom, and when heavy rains fall at the time they are 
 upon the ears, they are washed to the ground, and 
 in consequence, many of the grains never come to 
 maturity, but remain empty husks. Fine sunny 
 weather appears to be the best for this operation of 
 nature, as it expands the grains of pollen, and causes 
 them to float, and also to burst when they come in 
 contact with the pistils, which is also a necessary part 
 of their economy. The filbert or haze 1 is an instance 
 of two sets of flowers upon the same plant. Those 
 that are to produce the pollen make their appearance 
 in the latter part of the season, while those from 
 which the nuts are to be produced, do not appear 
 till the spring following. The willow, the hop, and 
 the juniper, are instances of the two on different 
 plants. 
 
 The volatile or floating nature of the pollen per^ 
 forms among plants an operation which, from expe- 
 rience, mankind have found to be very advantageous, 
 not only with cultivated vegetables, but with domestic 
 animals. It has been found that if the same vegetable 
 be cultivated on the same field, or the same flock 
 continued on the same pasture, for a number of suc- 
 cessive crops or generations, their quality degenerates ; 
 and if continued long enough, they would die out. 
 Something of the same kind happens to the human 
 race ; for there are many well-authenticated instances 
 where, in consequence of a few families intermarrying 
 only with each other, both the bodies and minds of 
 
34 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 their progeny have degenerated, age after age, till at 
 last they have become extinct. 
 
 Now by the floating of the pollen, and the carrying 
 it from flower to flower by insects, the pollen of one 
 plant is often applied to the pistil of another, and the 
 race prevented from degenerating. In some instances 
 this produces a little confusion. Thus, if cabbages and 
 turnips, and greens and cauliflowers, all blossom toge- 
 ther in the same field, the seeds are apt to be con- 
 founded, and produce different plants from those on 
 which they grow. It is the same with fruits and 
 berries, and also with flowers. The pips of apples, 
 the seeds of gooseberries, and those of the garden- 
 flowers that are sown in beds, produce many sorts, 
 and of those some are altogether new. In gardening 
 this is attended with considerable advantage. Seed- 
 ling pinks, auriculas, and other flowers, are often ob- 
 tained of much greater beauty than the parent plants ; 
 and some of the best strawberries and apples have 
 been procured by the same means. 
 
 But, in the forms and habits of vegetables, curious 
 though they are, we have only what may be called the 
 still life of nature ; and it is only when we turn our 
 attention to animals, that we feel it in all its wonders. 
 The plant remains in one place, drawing its nourish- 
 ment from the earth below, and the atmosphere around ; 
 and when these do not afford the proper quantity and 
 quality, the plant languishes and dies. But among 
 animals we find all the instincts and apparatus of loco- 
 motion, as well as instruments and arts necessary for 
 the obtaining of that upon which they live. Their 
 motions are of every degree of swiftness, from that of 
 
INTRODUCTION. 35 
 
 the swift, equal to, at least, two hundred and fifty miles 
 in an hour or to be in England at six in the morning, 
 and in Africa before noon, to some of the crawling 
 reptiles that cannot pass over half the number of inches 
 in double the space. Then we find them calculated 
 to move through many kinds of media, through the 
 air, through the water, under the earth, into the sub- 
 stance of timber, and even of stone. Nor does the 
 apparent size or strength appear to signify much ; for 
 with the exception of the points of the piercers that 
 enable them to mine their way, the bodies of the 
 animals that work into the hardest substances are 
 generally soft as well as small. Their passages too are 
 made over all sorts of surfaces, whatever may be their 
 texture or position. The water-flea, (gyrinus natator,) 
 whirls his fairy circles on the pool, with the same ease 
 and the same rapidity as if he were moved by the wind 
 in free space : and when a number of them are gam- 
 bolling upon a glassy pool, they seem, as the exquisite 
 gloss of their black wing-cases glitters in the sun, as 
 if they were sparks of fire rather than living creatures 
 that can move only in consequence of muscular action. 
 The gentle ripple that follows their course, as they 
 wheel and play together, seems to be occasioned rather 
 by their agitating the air than by any action of theirs 
 upon the water, and the glitter of the wing-cases is so 
 constant that in those gyrations, from which they get 
 their specific name, their wings can hardly be used; 
 and yet, small as they are, they must have the means 
 of covering their feet and bodies with an oily coat, to 
 repel the water, in the same manner as ducks and 
 other water fowl preserve their feathers from the same 
 element. 
 
36 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The number of springs and paddings upon the feet 
 of animals, by which their fall is broken, and their 
 bodies prevented from being injured, when they alight 
 on the ground, after rapid motion, with the hooks, and 
 pumps, and suckers, by means of which they are en- 
 abled at once to fasten themselves to the smoothest sur- 
 faces, though perpendicular, or even the under sides of 
 horizontal ones, are truly wonderful ; and no one can 
 examine the structure, or even watch the motions, of a 
 common house-fly, without perceiving that in science 
 of design, and elegance of execution, it is superior to 
 all the engines that ever man invented. The moment 
 that its little feet touch the surface, they adhere, by 
 the action of two small webs or membranes, one on 
 each side of the foot, which touch the surface, first in 
 the middle, and then gradually to the outsides, so as to 
 exclude the air ; and as the weight of the fly is con- 
 nected to the middle of each sucker, they never miss 
 their hold, until it relieves them first at the outsides. 
 Thus we have a series of motions all perfectly explain- 
 able upon the established doctrines of matter, as indeed 
 all mechanical contrivances for the motion of matter 
 must be, whether the "work of nature or of art. But 
 all this, which in the hands of the most expert me- 
 chanic, would require a considerable time, is done by 
 the fly in an instant. In all animals that bound and 
 leap by rapid motion, the padding of the feet, which is 
 formed of a substance not very unlike Indian rubber, 
 is of the utmost importance. The foot of the horse 
 may be taken as an example. When the horse bounds 
 forward, the point from which he takes his spring is 
 the fore-part of the hoof, because that takes a firm 
 
INTRODUCTION. 37 
 
 hold of the ground, and also gives him the advantage 
 of the whole power of the foot and leg ; but when he 
 alights it is upon the padding at the heel, by means of 
 which the violence of the fall, which if received on the 
 tip of the hoof, and with the bones in one extended 
 line, would sprain the foot, and probably split the hoof, 
 is prevented, and the strain is thrown upon all the 
 joints of the foot. The human body, being composed 
 of matter, as well as the bodies of other animals, has 
 its motions regulated by the same laws. Those who 
 walk well, raise their feet upon the toes, by which 
 means the foot as well as the leg is brought into action ; 
 but if one were to alight upon the toes after a leap, a 
 sprain would be the consequence ; when alighting, the 
 flexor muscles that draw up the foot, are contracted, 
 and the extensors and tendons in the hind part of the 
 leg made tight by the projection of the heel ; and thus 
 the body falls, as it were, upon a spring, which gra- 
 dually relaxes till the toes touch the ground ; and as 
 the heel is more padded than any other part of the 
 foot, the fall is rendered much less violent. So strong 
 is this natural tendency to plant the foot upon the heel, 
 that the majority of people do it even while walking 
 slow, when it fatigues rather than assists ; and accord- 
 ingly one of the hardest lessons that military men have 
 in teaching a recruit to march gracefully, is getting 
 him to "point his toes." The clownish motion of rising 
 much upon the toes at every step, and dodging down 
 upon the heel, besides being ungraceful, is fatiguing, 
 as there is twice as much motion in the joints of the 
 feet, and twice as much raising and letting down of the 
 body, as there is any occasion for. 
 E 
 
38 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The motions of flying and swimming, and the means 
 by which an animal can so alter its specific gravity or 
 weight, in proportion to its bulk, as to be able to ascend 
 and descend, and also to float in mediums of different 
 densities, are still more curious than those of progressive 
 motion along the earth. They are performed partly 
 by the muscular power of wings and fins, and partly 
 by the help of air-cells and air-vessels, which the ani- 
 mal can expand or compress at pleasure; but their 
 principles, as they involve a mechanical and pneumatic 
 action at the same time, are rather more difficult to 
 explain. By observing the habits, and examining the 
 structure of the animal, we may however obtain some 
 knowledge of them ; but in the most interesting parts 
 of the study, that of the instincts and dispositions of 
 the animal as a living creature, we can infer nothing 
 but that two animals, which are exactly alike in their 
 structure, will be of the same disposition ; and though 
 that be a very general rule, as established by experience, 
 it is not universal. 
 
 Hence the only sure way to become naturalists, in 
 the most pleasing sense of the term, is to observe the 
 habits of the plants and animals that we see around us, 
 not so much with a view of finding out what is uncom- 
 mon, as of being well acquainted with that which is of 
 every day occurrence. Nor is this a task of difficulty, 
 or one of dull routine. Every change of elevation 
 or exposure, is accompanied by a variation both in 
 plants and in animals ; and every season and week, nay 
 almost every day, brings something new ; so that while 
 the book of nature is more accessible and more easily 
 read than the books of the library, it is at the same 
 
INTRODUCTION. 39 
 
 time more varied. In whatever place or at whatever 
 time one may be disposed to take a walk, in the most 
 sublime scenes, or on the bleakest wastes, on arid 
 downs, or by the margins of rivers or lakes, inland, 
 or by the sea-shore, in the wild or on the cultivated 
 ground, and in all kinds of weather and all seasons of 
 the year, nature is open to our inquiry. The sky 
 over us, the earth beneath our feet, the scenery around, 
 the animals that gambol in the open spaces, those that 
 hide themselves in coverts, the birds that twitter on 
 the wing, sing in the grove, ride upon the wave, or 
 float along the sky, with the fishes that tenant the 
 waters, the insects that make the summer air alive, 
 all that God has made, is to us for knowledge and 
 pleasure, and usefulness and health ; and when we 
 have studied and known the wonders of his workman- 
 ship, we have made one important step toward the 
 adoration of His omnipotence, and obedience to His 
 will. 
 
 E 2 
 
40 MOUNTAINS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE MOUNTAIN. 
 
 THIS mighty and majestic feature of nature in- 
 spires the beholder with a feeling of immensity and 
 power, like that which arises when he gazes on an in- 
 terminable desart or a boundless ocean. No eye, 
 however uninstructed, and no heart, however steeled, 
 can fail to have been impressed by a sense and a 
 feeling of the sublime and the awful, as he beholds 
 those huge and mysterious bulwarks ; towering through 
 the air, like pyramids connecting earth with heaven, 
 their sides girdled with the forests, and their 
 summits crowned with the snows of a thousand 
 years. Whether we look upon them from the plain, 
 rearing their dark and giant forms into the regions of 
 the sky, and flinging down their cataracts with the 
 resistlessness of time and the roar of thunder, or 
 wander amid their vast solitudes and horrid wastes, 
 listening to the rush of the wind among their pine- 
 organs, startling the eagle from his eyrie, and intruding 
 upon the birth-place of the storm ; and glancing down 
 through some cleft in the clouds, far below us, upon 
 the earth, which we seem to have left, with its towns 
 and rivers lying like the painted dots and lines upon 
 a map, we are alike struck by a revelation of won- 
 
MOUNTAINS. 41 
 
 ders, before which the spirit falls prostrate, and ac- 
 knowledges that, with a presence which there is no 
 doubting, " God is" indeed "here." 
 
 But, it is not to be imagined that these mighty 
 evidences of an immortal workmanship are idle and 
 unnecessary excrescences upon the otherwise fair and 
 even surface of the earth which they overlook ; or that 
 their wildernesses are set apart as the dwelling-place 
 of desolation, or their caverns as the home in which 
 the " blackness of darkness " abides. It is not to be 
 supposed that nature, (all whose other schemes are so 
 replete with a visible beneficence,) where she has 
 worked upon her mightiest scale, has worked idly or 
 ill ; or that she has created a machinery before whose 
 stupendous materials and motions the feeble imitations 
 of man are as the productions of insignificance, but in 
 the service of him to whose good her minutest opera- 
 tions tend. To say nothing of the stones, crystals, and 
 metals which they contain within their womb, to say 
 nothing of the animals which furnish food or clothing 
 to man, that wander by their torrents, or start amid 
 their echos, to say nothing of the timber which har- 
 dens on their sides, or the fuel which forms in their 
 hearts, not even to mention the medicinal plants 
 which owe their birth to the chill air of these upland 
 wastes, nor the thousand other benefits which man, 
 in his civilized and social state, gathers from these 
 great garner-houses, they are the reservoirs from 
 which the world is watered, and the fertilizing principle 
 shed abroad throughout the earth. By a process in- 
 finitely designed and beautifully framed, working with 
 immensity as unerringly as if it were with atoms, the 
 E 3 
 
42 MOUNTAINS. 
 
 peaks of the mountains are fitted for the arrest and 
 distillation of the clouds which gather round and over- 
 hang them, making half their mystery and horror ; 
 and their interior is formed into a thousand basins and 
 canals in which the waters are gathered, and by which 
 they are poured out, in streams of life and with voices 
 of gladness, through the plains. By that beneficent 
 working which, " from seeming evil still educes good," 
 the waste of glacier and the wilderness of snow send 
 forth, upon their triumphant paths, the Rhine, the 
 Danube, and the Nile ; and of the apparent desolation 
 of the mountains, are born the beauty, the glory, and 
 the fruitfulness of the earth. 
 
 But, to the eye of science, they present yet another 
 source of interest and gratitude, scarcely less important. 
 Piled up as they are, like huge portions of the central 
 earth, flung out by some antediluvian convulsion, and 
 with their sides laid bare by the violence of tempests, 
 and exhibiting the naked strata of which they are con- 
 structed, they enable us to investigate many of the 
 secrets of that earth on which we tread, and which 
 must, otherwise, remain concealed, within its inaccessible 
 depths. They are like vast warehouses, in which nature 
 has congregated samples of her works for the inspection 
 of science ; like libraries, written by no mortal hand, 
 in which may be read her mysteries, by those whom 
 study has made acquainted with her language. By a 
 careful perusal of their construction, and of the mate- 
 rials of which they are composed, by observation of 
 their various phenomena, and of that of the atmosphere 
 by which they are surrounded, together with the rela- 
 tive influences of each upon the other, we may, at 
 
EXTERMINATED ANIMALS. 43 
 
 length, discover the mechanism of the earth, and the 
 grand problem regarding the formation of the world 
 may be, one day, solved. 
 
 Though the wild deer is now the only remarkable 
 animal of the chase among the mountains of Great 
 Britain, yet the bear and the wolf have had their dens 
 in common with other beasts of prey, now only found 
 in other countries. The brown bear (ursus arctus) 
 which is still formidable in more northern regions, and 
 even in Germany and France, once infested this country. 
 Those animals were so powerful in the days of the 
 Romans that (as Plutarch informs us) they were trans- 
 ported to Rome ; and though the efforts to exterminate 
 them were unceasing, and their destruction was ac- 
 counted one of the noblest triumphs of the daring, yet 
 they appear to have held their place till a much later 
 period. Tradition says, that in the year 1057, a Gordon 
 vanquished so fierce a bear that he was permitted to 
 wear three bear's heads in the quarterings of his arms 
 as an achievement of honour. The tradition may not 
 be literally true ; but the very existence of the tradition 
 is a proof of that of the animal. It is corroborated too 
 by many circumstances connected with the honours of 
 families in Wales and Scotland, where pedigree and 
 tradition reach much further back, and are much more 
 full and circumstantial in their details, than in England. 
 " Beware the bear," though allegorical in the case 
 of the " Baron of Braidwardine," was often a real note 
 of precaution in the forest-hunts of both ends of the 
 island ; and, probably, notwithstanding the zeal and 
 ardour with which both the bear and the wolf are said 
 to have been hunted, their extirpation in the remote 
 
44? EXTERMINATED ANIMALS. 
 
 parts of the country may have been fully as much 
 promoted by the destruction of the woods which af- 
 forded them shelter and prey, as by all the exertions 
 of man. 
 
 There is evidence that at one period of its history, 
 the island was inhabited by a bear of much more for- 
 midable size than the brown bear which is still found 
 on the continent. That is the Cave Bear, (ursus spe- 
 Iceus,) so called, because as a living animal it is now 
 supposed to be every where extinct, though its remains 
 have been discovered in several of those great caves, 
 in which the bones of animals not now met with alive, 
 are often found. Those remains occur in several places 
 of England, and give evidence that the animal of which 
 they are now the only monument, must have been at 
 least the size of an ordinary horse. 
 
 The wolf, though now extinct, comes down much 
 nearer to the present time ; and seems to have been 
 peculiarly abundant in the times of the Saxons. The 
 cold time of the year, when the food of the wolf in 
 his native forest fails, is still the season at which he 
 most boldly attacks domestic animals, and sometimes 
 man himself. The Saxons called January, Wolfen 
 moneth ; but whether they invented the name after they 
 came to England, or imported it from Germany, does 
 not appear ; thougb from the number of names in 
 Germany that are compounded of rvolf, the probability 
 is that they brought the name from that country. In 
 the tenth century, the number of wolves in England is 
 supposed to have been very much thinned, in conse- 
 quence of a law of Edgar, which commuted certain 
 punishments for a fine of so many wolf's tongues. In 
 
THE WILD CAT. 45 
 
 1680, Sir Ewen Cameron, of Locbiel, is said to have 
 killed the last wolf in Scotland ; that in Ireland fell 
 within thirty years after ; but neither the time nor 
 the final extirpator for England is mentioned. The 
 remains of the wolf, in England, have not, so far as 
 we know, been met with, except in the monumental 
 caves to which allusion has been made ; and along 
 with them sleep the remains of other two extinct 
 species, a tiger about the size of the Bengal tiger, and 
 a hyaena about the size, and resembling in the skeleton 
 that of Southern Africa. These two belong to extinct 
 species, and, with the larger bear, appear to have inha- 
 bited the northern parts of the old continent about the 
 same time with the extinct elephant, rhinoceros, and 
 hippopotamus. But though all these are gone, there 
 is still in many parts of the country an animal which is 
 very destructive of birds and small quadrupeds, and 
 which, when it can find no means of retreat, sometimes 
 springs at man. That animal is 
 
 THE WOOD-CAT. 
 
 THE WOOD-CAT, (fells catus sylvestris,} in the 
 largest specimens that have been met with in places 
 where they have abundance of food, and have not 
 been hunted, is, including the tail, about four feet in 
 length, of which that appendage occupies about a foot 
 and a half. It stands about a foot and a half in height, 
 and measures, in a powerful specimen, nearly two feet 
 round the body. The head is larger, the gape wider, 
 the eyes more fiery and sparkling, and the whole air 
 of the animal more agile, bold, and fierce, than that of 
 
46 THE WILD CAT. 
 
 the domestic cat, though the wood-cat is never con- 
 sidered as any thing but a different variety, and often 
 represented as being the original race from which the 
 domestic cat has been taken. 
 
 The habits of the wood-cat are against that opinion; 
 and, so far as we know, there is not any evidence in sup- 
 port of it, farther than the similarity of colour which is 
 found between the wild one and some of the domestic. 
 Among domesticated animals, colour proves nothing; 
 and though it be more to be depended on in those that 
 are in a state of nature, it is not conclusive even there. 
 The wood-cat is a remarkably solitary animal, unless 
 when it comes abroad in the night to prowl. It used 
 to be one of the beasts of chase, and that, with its 
 solitary habits, has now nearly driven it to the fast- 
 nesses and wild parts of the country. 
 
 The colour of the wood-cat .is a ground of yellowish 
 brown, lighter towards the belly ; and the head, back, 
 sides, and tail are marked with transverse bars of deep 
 brown and black, in the form of those of the tiger, or 
 .rather of the tiger-cat, but more blended together, 
 and consequently less perfectly defined in their outlines. 
 The tail is thicker than that of the domestic cat, and 
 the end of it is blunt, whereas that of the other tapers 
 to a point. 
 
 Besides the evidence of form, superior size, and 
 habits, there is some corroboration that the domestic 
 cat is another species, most likely an imported one, 
 Asiatic in most of the varieties, and certainly so in 
 the Cyprus, or spotted. The wild cat was always a 
 native of Wales ; and had the domestic cat been the 
 wild one tamed, it would not have had to be enumerated 
 
THE WILD CAT. 47 
 
 among subjects that were worthy of having a price set 
 on them. Yet such was the case. In the tariff of 
 values set down in the Statute of Howel Dda, about 
 the beginning of the tenth century, a cat is reckoned 
 equal in value to every tree after a thorn-tree, among 
 which the oak and the elm, (the native or wych elm, 
 which is excellent timber, and one of the trees of 
 which bows were made,) are included. The Statute 
 runs to this effect : 
 
 " A kitten before it can see, its value is one penny ; 
 " After it can see, and till it has caught a mouse, 
 
 two-pence. 
 " After it has caught a mouse, four-pence." 
 
 The wood-cat does not confine its depredations to 
 mousing, but in places that are near its haunts, kills 
 poultry and lambs and kids, and is even said to 
 destroy sheep, when they are in a weakly condition. 
 As it keeps to the woods and rocky places, the grouse 
 and mountain hares are safe from it ; but it makes 
 great havoc among the coppice birds. It is rather a 
 dangerous animal to catch in a trap, as it is very 
 tenacious of life; and the moment it is loosened, it 
 springs, and fastens with great fury. For the same 
 reason it is dangerous to wound or even to irritate it ; 
 and if it cannot be killed outright, the safest way is to 
 let it alone. 
 
 There is one season at which the wood-cat becomes 
 a determined mouser, more especially on the lower 
 slopes, and in the coppices among the Scottish moun- 
 tains. When the hazel-nuts ripen and begin to drop, 
 they attract great numbers of the field mouse, (mus 
 
48 THE WILD CAT. 
 
 sylvatica ;) and an instinct corresponding to that which 
 brings the mice to prey upon the nuts, brings the cats, 
 which have their dwellings in the holes of the adjoining 
 rocks, to prey upon the mice. As the coppices are in 
 general close, and the mice numerous, the hunting is 
 carried on during the day, and the cats are very bold. 
 They are said to combine for the purpose of giving 
 battle to intruders. That, however, is not well authen- 
 ticated ; but we have had personal evidence that they 
 show front when surprised, and that they will follow 
 yelling along at the top of a precipice, at the bottom of 
 which one is walking, for a very considerable distance ; 
 and apparently in great wrath, more especially, if it be 
 twilight. In places where they abound, they are much 
 more dangerous plunderers of poultry -houses than foxes 
 are ; as they can climb where foxes cannot reach, 
 enter by a smaller opening, and if they be taken in 
 the fact, instead of making their escape by stealth or 
 stratagem, as reynard does upon such occasions, they 
 spring in the face of those who open the door ; and 
 though there is no great danger of their attack being 
 mortal, it is alarming, because unexpected, and the 
 lacerations which they inflict, are not easily healed. 
 
 The Highlanders of Scotland, with whom the wood- 
 cat is any thing but a favourite, call it chat phaidhiach, 
 the raven-cat. The wood-cat, like the rest of the 
 genus to which it belongs, is understood to eat only 
 what it kills, unless when pressed by the greatest 
 necessity. Its range of food is, however, very con- 
 siderable, as it catches insects as well as birds and 
 small quadrupeds. Its fondness for fish is very great, 
 and notwithstanding the dislike that it has to the water, 
 
THE WILD CAT. 49 
 
 because that impairs the action of its retractile claws, 
 it is said sometimes to catch them in their native ele- 
 ment. We have never seen it in the act of pouncing 
 upon them in the water ; but at a waterfall (that of 
 Kilmorac) in the north of Scotland, where, in the 
 season of the fish ascending the river, we once observed 
 a wild cat for more than a hour, crouching and watch- 
 ing the finny adventurers, though certainly without 
 once making a dart into the foaming stream, which, 
 indeed, from the height of the fall, the volume of 
 water, and the narrowness of the gorge in which it is 
 confined, would have been a daring attempt even for 
 an animal that could swim. In the domestic cat, water 
 sooner injures the fur than in almost any other animal, 
 as its fur is dry, and free from that oily matter by 
 which the skins of many other animals are protected. 
 It is understood to be chiefly owing to this dryness of 
 the fur, that electricity is so easily excited in the back 
 of a cat. Whether the wild one has the same pecu- 
 liarity has not been mentioned; though, as we have 
 seen the animal exposed to rain, without appearing to 
 feel the same inconvenience as the domestic cat, we 
 should therefore conclude, that the fur has some 
 water-proof quality ; and we have observed, that when 
 the skin of the wild-cat was used as a fur, it did not 
 suffer so much from rain as that of the domestic one. 
 A good deal of the difference may, however, be owing 
 to the differences of atmosphere to which the two 
 animals are exposed. 
 
 Formidable as the wood-cat is, it is, however, often 
 attacked, and sometimes foiled, by an inhabitant of the 
 same kind of situations, the MARTEN. 
 F 
 
50 THE MARTEN, 
 
 There are supposed to be two kinds of marten in 
 this country, the common marten and the pine-marten. 
 Of these, one is found chiefly on the south part of the 
 island. That is, 
 
 THE COMMON MARTEN. (Martes fagorum). 
 
 THIS species, if indeed it be a different species from 
 the other, and not a mere variety produced by dif- 
 ference of situation, is found in the woods of England, 
 and in the rocky parts of the Welch mountains, espe- 
 cially where they are covered with brushwood. It 
 lodges in hollow trees, and is said to eject other small 
 quadrupeds, and even birds of prey from their nests. 
 Of those it takes possession for its own brood, which 
 are generally about four in number. In its form and 
 appearance, the marten is by far the most elegant of 
 the British beasts of prey ; it is also the boldest, the 
 most agile in its motions, and the most powerful in 
 proportion to its size. Its head and body are about a 
 foot and a half long, and the tail about half as much 
 more. It is rather low on the legs, and the form of 
 
THE MARTEN. 51 
 
 the hind ones is strongest; by this structure the animal 
 is admirably adapted for leaping ; and there is also great 
 power of motion in the back-bone, by which means it 
 can throw the whole energy of its body into a leap. 
 When moving freely and without any excitement, it is 
 so lithe, that one would imagine there was hardly a 
 bone in its body ; but when it is excited, as in the 
 chase, (for it is understood to course hares and rabbits, 
 both by sight and scent,) it shoots along in leaps like 
 the successive discharges of a dart. 
 
 The colour of the marten is a brownish black on the 
 upper part, tawny on the under, the throat and breast 
 white, and the head with a reddish tinge. The fur is 
 close and rather soft; but in both respects it is inferior 
 to that which comes from colder climates. The marten 
 is a great slaughterer of game, poultry, and birds ; per- 
 petually in motion while awake, and coiled up into a 
 ball and perfectly still when asleep. It climbs trees 
 with great facility ; and though it falls even in the 
 middle of a pack of hounds, such is its agility, that it 
 will be in the tree again before they be scarcely aware 
 of its fall. Instead of that offensive smell which some 
 of the analogous animals, such as the polecat, have, the 
 scent of the marten is musky and agreeable, and on that 
 account dogs run very readily at it. Though the instinct 
 of the marten leads it to a very general destruction of 
 animal life, and though in the practice of that it shows 
 great courage and determination, it cannot be regarded 
 as a savage animal. When taken young it can be easily 
 tamed, and in that state it is very frisky and playful ; 
 but when any of the animals that are its natural prey 
 come within its reach, its playfulness is instantly sus- 
 F 2 
 
52 THE MARTEN. 
 
 pended, and it springs upon them and dispatches them 
 in a moment. 
 
 The art with which many of the wild animals dis- 
 patch their prey, without injuring or tearing the flesh, 
 is very surprising, and in none is it more so than in the 
 marten. If the animal be small, or of feeble structure, 
 it is understood by one crush of its jaws to dislocate 
 the neck, and divide the spinal marrow ; but if the 
 animal be too large, or the articulation of the neck too 
 strong for that purpose, it fastens on the side of the 
 neck behind the ear, and divides the blood-vessels 
 with as much neatness and certainty, as if it had studied 
 anatomy. 
 
 The PINE MARTEN (Maries abietmi) differs from 
 the common marten in appearance only by being a 
 little smaller, and having the throat and breast yel- 
 lowish instead of white ; though the latter is said not to 
 be always the case, and is by some supposed to be the 
 effect of age. The pine-marten is most abundant in 
 Scotland, in the w 7 ild, wooded ravines of the mountains, 
 where it either builds a nest for itself on the tops of 
 trees, or finds one ready made by dislodging or de- 
 stroying a bird. This animal is more secluded than 
 the former, and unless at lonely huts near its native 
 woods, it seldom approaches the habitation of man, or 
 interferes with his property. Their habits, as well as 
 the superior thickness and softness of the fur, may be 
 the result of the more rigid climate, as it is found that 
 the marten of countries that are still colder, has finer 
 fur than the pine-marten of Scotland. 
 
 But if those circumstances soften the fur, they do 
 
ITS CONTESTS WITH THE WILD CAT. 53 
 
 not appear to soften the courage of the animal, for the 
 pine-marten is just as bold to attack, and as stanch as 
 the common marten, if indeed it be not more so. In 
 mountain situations, it not only attacks and vanquishes 
 the wood-cat, but is said, by its stratagem, to bring down 
 the pride of the mountain the eagle herself, if the first 
 and formidable clutch of her talons does not transfix its 
 vitals. With the cat, it is in a state of open hostility ; 
 and often when she is crouching, with her eyes intent 
 only on her prey, and just ready to pounce, the pine- 
 marten will spring upon her, fasten on the vessels of 
 her neck, pin her to the spot, and put an end to her 
 hunting. It is also said that the cat, though ever so 
 much pressed with hunger, will not venture to spring 
 upon the marten. The pounce of the cat is not a 
 death-stroke, like that of the eagle indeed, death at 
 one blow is not the practice of any of the feline race, 
 from the lion downwards. Catching, crippling, and 
 then torturing to death, is the cat system ; and catching 
 a marten, without killing it, by any animal whose throat 
 it can reach, is " catching a tartar." Thus the cat does 
 not willingly attack, but still she knows her enemy, and 
 as she knows that it will attack if she do not, and as 
 she is rather a brave animal, she generally offers battle. 
 The onset is one of some skill on both sides. The 
 aim of the cat is to pounce with her paws upon the 
 head of the marten, in such a way as that the claws 
 may destroy or wound its eyes, while her teeth are 
 embedded in its neck ; and if she can accomplish that, 
 the fate of the marten is decided. That, however, if done 
 at all, must be done in a moment, and if it be lost, 
 there is no repairing the mistake. The spring of the 
 F 3 
 
54 ITS CONTESTS WITH THE WILD CAT. 
 
 wood-cat is larger than that of her opponent, and the 
 cat takes up her position so that she shall, if possible, 
 alight upon his head with her full spring and im- 
 petus. To distract her attention, he keeps moving his 
 head from side to side, and if he succeeds in his object, 
 he rushes to close quarters by a side movement. If 
 the spring of the cat takes proper effect, there is a 
 struggle, but not of long duration ; and it is the same 
 with the opposite result, if the cat miss and the marten 
 fasten, during the short pause of exhaustion after the 
 spring. Here we may notice another curious feature 
 in the economy of all the feline race. It has been 
 remarked even of the most powerful of them, that if 
 they miss their object when they spring, they sneak 
 cowardly away, and do not return to the attack for 
 some time, if, indeed, they return at all. Now the fact 
 is, that it is not cowardice, but exhaustion. The gnash- 
 ing with the teeth and the talons seems to be the re- 
 action by which the motion of the spring is balanced, 
 and the tone of the animal kept up ; and if it fail in that, 
 it takes a while to recover the use of its springing 
 niuscles. Probably the violence both of the spring 
 and the exhaustion are connected in some way or 
 other with the electric state of the body; but that is a 
 point not easily to be settled. Should both miss, the 
 contest is renewed, and seldom, in the observed cases, 
 (which are not indeed very numerous,) given up until 
 the one be killed ; and in a protracted contest, the 
 marten is always the victor, as the cat is first exhausted 
 by the greater weight of her body, and the violence of 
 her leaps. In the year 1805, a gentleman, on whose 
 veracity we can depend, witnessed one of those com- 
 
A BATTLE GAINED BY THE MARTEN. 55 
 
 bats in the Morven district of Argylshire. In crossing 
 the mountains from Loch Sunart southward, he passed 
 along the bank of a very deep wooded dell, the hollow 
 of which, though it occasionally showed green patches 
 through the trees and coppice, was one hundred and 
 fifty, or about two hundred feet from the top. The 
 dell is difficult of access, and contains nothing that 
 would compensate for the labour ; and thus it is aban- 
 doned to wild animals, and among others to the marten, 
 which, though the skin fetches a high price, is not so 
 much hunted there as in more open places ; because, 
 though they might succeed in shooting it from the 
 heights above, they could not be sure of removing the 
 body. Thus it is left to contend with the mountain 
 cat for the sovereignty of that particular dell, and both 
 are safe, except when they approach the farmhouse at 
 the bottom of the hill. The contest there lasted for 
 more than half an hour, and both combatants were too 
 intent on each other's destruction, to shun or fear 
 observation. At last, however, the marten succeeded 
 in falling upon the right side of the cat's neck, and 
 jerking his long body over her, so as to be out of the 
 reach of her claws; when, after a good deal of squeaking 
 and struggling, by which the enemy could not be shaken 
 off, the martial achievements of puss were ended in the 
 field of glory. 
 
 The victories of the marten over the golden eagle, 
 though there be a tale of one of them at every place 
 where eagles and martens are common, are not quite so 
 well authenticated ; and wood-cats, pole-cats, and even 
 weasels, which, though lithe and active enough in their 
 way, are certainly nothing to the martens, are often the 
 
56 MOUNTAIN STRAWBERRY. 
 
 heroes of the tale. It runs uniformly in the same 
 manner: Down comes the eagle in the pride of her 
 strength, slash goes her talons into the limb of the 
 marten, and with a flap of her wings she is soar- 
 ing toward the zenith. The prey, however, is only 
 scotched ; and the marten or the weasel, or whatever 
 else it may be, jerks round its head into the throat of 
 the eagle, and both fall lifeless to the earth. These 
 accounts may be true ; but they belong to that class, of 
 which there is a separate edition for every district, and 
 therefore they would need verification by an eye-witness. 
 But upon the little open glades, and in the shelves of 
 the rocks, by those dashing streams that descend and 
 cut their way in the lower slopes of mountains, there is a 
 fruit more cooling and agreeable than the nut, and it may 
 be obtained without a fear of wood-cats and martens. 
 That is the mountain strawberry, (fragaria collma^) one 
 of the finest fruits that grow, and one of those that remain 
 longest in season. If the soil of a mountain ravine is 
 good, the aspect warm, and plenty of shelter, it begins 
 to ripen in August, produces abundantly, and continues 
 till it is killed by the winter frost. There are two 
 varieties of it, the white, which is nearly round, and 
 has the one side tinged with delicate scarlet ; and the 
 red, which is of an oblong form, and nearly as dark in 
 the colour as a mulberry. The white is a very de- 
 licious luxury; and the red, though a little austere, 
 (all red fruits are mostly so,) has a high flavour. Both 
 may be cultivated, but the red is the most hardy ; and 
 they who choose to pay it proper attention may, in 
 mild seasons, have fresh-gathered strawberries to their 
 Christmas desserts. By cultivation, the size increases, 
 
THE BILBERRY. 57 
 
 and, some say, the flavour ; but those who cull it in its 
 native wilds have the advantage of health and pleasure, 
 in addition to a keenly-whetted appetite, to enjoy it. 
 
 This is not the only berry to be met with in such 
 places ; for after the coppice is cleared, and the heath 
 arrived at, if it be dry, and the soil tolerable, there is 
 the beautiful myrtle-leaved bilberry, (vaccmium monta- 
 num,) with its fine round berries, of the brightest lustre, 
 and the most intense, though very deep, purple. This 
 delicate berry can bear the keenest blast of the moun- 
 tains, and where the plant is the most stunted the 
 flavour is the richest. If the soil be inclined to moisture 
 without any admixture of peat, and especially if it be 
 under the shade of a pine forest, which often occurs in 
 such situations, sheltering the bilberry and destroying the 
 heath-plant, the bilberry assumes a more lofty character. 
 The plants are continuous, with leaves the size of those 
 of an ordinary myrtle, and the berries are as large as 
 the black currants of the garden ; they are also very 
 abundant, and more juicy than in the exposed situations, 
 though perhaps they have riot so rich a flavour. These 
 berries are often considered as a different species from 
 the others, but they are probably only a variety pro- 
 duced by difference of situation. In lonely situations 
 they afford a welcome harvest to the mountain birds. 
 The bilberry is produced so abundantly in some places 
 that, in passing through the bushes, one may gather 
 handsful without stopping ; but it is tender, and soon 
 becomes sour. Where it is abundant, it might probably 
 be made into wine. Upon the lofty parts of the heath, 
 the cow-berry (vitis idced) is now to be found ; the bush 
 is low and hard, and so is the berry, which, notwith- 
 
58 THE COMMON GNAT. 
 
 standing its fine red colour, is generally left to the 
 birds. In the bogs, at about the same elevation, the 
 cranberry, or crowberry, (oxycoccus palustris,) is very 
 frequently met with, but it is harsh and austere. 
 
 On the margin of those pools that occur in the 
 courses of the streams, as one approaches a mountain, 
 especially if the pool be surrounded with foliage, and 
 also on the sides of the little tarns or lakes, when they 
 are in sheltered situations, one meets with what would 
 hardly be looked for, a perfect inundation of gnats. 
 It is true that, during the very warm summers, the 
 sides of the rivers and lakes in Lapland are much more 
 infested with those troublesome and noisy insects than 
 countries that lie farther to the south, and have a' much 
 milder winter. From this it would appear that the 
 severity of the weather does not injure the eggs of the 
 gnat ; and indeed the instinct of the little creature 
 guards against any such injury, as the young continue 
 in the water till they assume the winged form, under 
 which they buzz and bite during their short aerial ex- 
 istence. The water, even in that state, cannot acquire 
 a very low temperature ; and as, generally speaking, 
 the pools and lakes in those countries are of sufficient 
 depth to prevent the whole from freezing down to the 
 bottom, even in the most rigorous winters, myriads 
 are reserved for each year. 
 
 The common gnat, (culex pipiens,) which disturbs 
 the silence of night with its shrill pipe, and covers with 
 blotches or blisters the skins of such as have that part 
 of their person delicate and irritable, is a very singular 
 though a very small creature. Of the vast number 
 that are ever sporting over the water any fine evening, 
 
THE COMMON GNAT. 59 
 
 perhaps the greater part may have left that element 
 only the same day. The female gnat is a regular boat- 
 builder. How the last race of the summer, that are 
 to people the air during the following year, dispose of 
 their eggs, is not completely known ; but no sooner is 
 the surface of the water loosened from the fetters of 
 the winter's ice, than the larvce, or young of the gnat 
 make their appearance in every piece of stagnant 
 water, with their tails at the surface, and reclining 
 their bodies below. If they be disturbed they natu- 
 rally sink, and thus one would be led to conclude that 
 they are hatched at the bottom ; and yet as the eggs 
 which are produced in the warm season cannot be 
 hatched except upon the surface of the water, it is not 
 easy to see how those that are produced in the cold 
 season can be hatched under the water either. That 
 they are hatched in some way or other is clear, and 
 they find their way to the surface with the first gleam 
 of heat. In this state, though they can dive, they 
 must come to the surface to breathe, which they do 
 through the tail as long as they are in the larvae state. 
 When they change to the chrysalis, the body turns and 
 acquires two breathing apertures, which stand up and 
 are open above the surface of the water. After they 
 have remained about ten days in this state, the upper 
 part of the case of the chrysalis begins to open, and 
 the perfect gnat to protrude the fore part of its body. 
 As it works away at its extrication, the case, which 
 though empty does not collapse, answers the purpose 
 of a little boat, as the perfect insect is not adapted for 
 living in, or even on, the water. The body serves as a 
 mast to the tiny vessel, the wings for sails, and the 
 
60 THE COMMON GNAT. 
 
 fringed feelers, with which the head is provided, for 
 streamers, while the tail remains in the case as ballast. 
 This bark, though ingenious, is frail; and when even 
 a smart ripple of the water happens before the gnats be 
 wholly disentangled, the number which perishes is 
 quite incredible. When no such disaster happens, they 
 escape from the case, and play and buzz in countless 
 myriads. 
 
 Of those that come to maturity, the natural life is 
 not supposed to exceed a month, and probably the 
 female begins to deposit her eggs before she has at- 
 tained the half of that age. We admire the art which 
 many birds show in the building of their nests ; and 
 the untaught geometry of the bees, that so construct 
 their cells as to combine the greatest possible strength 
 and economy ; but small and common as the gnat is, 
 and little as w r e heed her, she perhaps evinces more art 
 and science than any of them. The water is the only 
 element in which her young can subsist in the early 
 "stages of their growth ; and yet the heat of the sun and 
 the action of the atmosphere are necessary to the 
 hatching of her eggs. Instinctively she knows this 
 or which, when speaking of instinct, which is not a 
 matter of reasoning at all, but one of pure observation, 
 is the same she deposits her eggs on the water, and in 
 such a way as that they shall neither sink nor attract 
 the notice of enemies, by being attached to any bulky 
 substance. She alights upon a floating leaf, a bit of grass, 
 or any of those light substances which are found upon 
 the still water, \vhich she chooses. Projecting her hind- 
 most pair of legs backwards, and bringing them into 
 contact, she with her tail places one egg where they 
 
THE COMMON GNAT. 61 
 
 meet, witli the end where the breathing aperture of the 
 larva is to be uppermost. To this egg she cements 
 another, to that a third, and so on till the number 
 amounts to between two and three hundred. Nor does 
 she build at random, but fashions the whole into a 
 little boat, hollow, elevated and narrow at each end, 
 and broad and depressed at the middle, the very 
 model of those fishing-boats that are found to live in 
 the roughest water. When she has completed her 
 little vessel, it is launched, and committed to the water, 
 where, if no accident happen, the whole boat is con- 
 verted into detached and living larvae in the course of 
 three or four days. The success of this mode of nidi- 
 fication is best proved by the countless swarms of gnats 
 that appear at all periods of the summer, notwithstand- 
 ing the number of enemies by which they are beset. 
 Indeed, such a power of production do the little crea- 
 tures set in opposition to those of destruction, that, 
 were their destroyers fewer, they would fill the air in 
 marshy places almost to solidity. 
 
 These phenomena are not, however, altogether con- 
 fined to the mountain; its peculiar traits are of a 
 more elevated character, though they do not, and 
 cannot, exceed in wonder, the smallest that nature 
 produces. 
 
 As we gain the ascent, and bid farewell to the region 
 of phtenogamous, or flowering plants, and reach the 
 families that are nourished by the cold stone, it may 
 not be amiss to pause, and take a little breathing. 
 Even there, upon its very verge as it were, the vege- 
 table kingdom does not forget its bounty. The dwarf 
 crimson bramble, (rubus arcticus,) and more frequently 
 
CLOUDBERRY. 
 
 the luscious cloudberry, (rubus chamcemorus^) are found 
 fast by the margin of the snow, as the limit of vege- 
 tation. The first of these is a very pleasant fruit ; but 
 even in the bleakest parts of Scotland it is rare, and it 
 is not very plentiful even in Lapland ; but the cloud- 
 berry is more abundant, and it is much better. The 
 fruit is single, upon the top of a footstalk, and in 
 form, size, and colour, it is not unlike the mulberry, 
 after which it is partly named ; but in flavour, taking 
 the place where it is found into consideration, it is 
 superior to all the mulberries that ever grew. 
 
 At this elevation, the amphitheatre around the base 
 of the mountain begins to appear : its woods and 
 its pools, its green dells and its brown heaths, come 
 out with a very graphic and pleasant effect ; and as one 
 toils along the remainder of the ascent, one is glad 
 occasionally to turn and remark its changes. 
 
 The summit is gained at last. It is midsummer, 
 and yet the stones are frozen to the ground, in every 
 place where they do not feel the influence of the sun. 
 Here, an atmospheric load to a considerable amount is 
 removed. It is usually estimated, that when a man 
 of the ordinary size stands at the level of the sea, the 
 pressure of the atmosphere upon the surface of his 
 body, is about fourteen tons and a half; and that when 
 he gains an elevation of little more than four thousand 
 feet, about two tons of this pressure is taken off. It is 
 true that, generally speaking, the pressure is internal 
 as well as external, and that where it is not, the 
 external pressure gives tone to the system ; for one 
 feels relaxed in warm weather before rain, when the 
 barometer is low. But when one ascends a mountain, 
 
THE MOUNTAIN. 63 
 
 there is no such feeling; the increase of cold more 
 than counterbalances the removal ; and as the bearing 
 thus produced, is an energy of the living system, 
 instead of a dead weight, exhilaration and pleasure are 
 the consequences. 
 
 On the summits of those cliffy mountains, there are 
 generally large masses of loose stone, and it is no 
 uncommon feat, to send these booming and bounding 
 down the slope, or thundering over the precipice. In 
 the former case, how they dance, dash, and loosen 
 others, till the whole mountain side is in motion ! In 
 the latter, the stone is not seen, but the peals, as it 
 dashes from one projecting point to another, are loud ; 
 they are caught up in echoes, and reverberated from 
 cliff to cliff, till the whole wilderness is in thunder, 
 rendered the more awfully solemn, that there is not a 
 living thing visible, save one small, pale butterfly, and 
 the wind has carried it away before the species could 
 be known. 
 
 Ha! the sound of wings in the abyss, together with 
 a cherup, which again awakens the echoes, and mocks 
 the thundering of the stone. The bird appears more 
 than a thousand feet distant, and yet she is gigantic. 
 What grace of attitude, what strength of pinion, and 
 with what rapidity, yet with what ease, she wheels 
 sunward ; till, far above the summit of the mountain, 
 she leans motionless like a brown speck on the bosom 
 of the sky ! From its size, it must be twelve pounds 
 weight at the least, and yet it absolutely rises, and that 
 rapidly, as if it were of less specific gravity than the 
 medium in which it floats, rarified as it is by a height 
 of nearly a mile. The muscular energy by which that 
 
64 THE GOLDEN EAGLE. 
 
 is effected, must be immense : to sustain itself without 
 motion of the wings is astonishing enough, but it is 
 nothing to a rapid motion upward, from no fulcrum but 
 the thin air. It is 
 
 THE GOLDEN EAGLE. 
 
 FOR many years she has had her eyrie in those cliffs. 
 She has laid the surrounding heaths and valleys under 
 contribution, for the support of those successive broods, 
 for which, while they were young, she was so attentive 
 in rending the prey ; but which, when they grew up, 
 she drove far from her own immediate haunt, to become 
 the monarchs of other mountains. 
 
 In symmetry, in strength, in the vigour of her wing, 
 the acuteness of her vision, and the terrible clutch of 
 her talons, the golden eagle is superior to every other 
 bird ; and as her habitation is always in those time- 
 built palaces, the most lofty and inaccessible precipices, 
 there is sublimity in her dwelling; and though in 
 reality a long-lived bird, she has popularly gained a 
 sort of immortality, from the durable nature of her 
 abode. It appears to be one of the general provisions 
 of nature, that the most powerful destroyers of living 
 animals should have their favourite haunts in the most 
 lonely places ; and in this, the lion, the most powerful 
 of quadrupeds, and the golden eagle, the most vigorous 
 of birds, completely agree. There is, however, a won- 
 derful difference in the distances at which they can 
 discover their prey : the lion springs only a few yards, 
 while the eagle darts down from the mid-heaven, in 
 one perpendicular and accelerating stoop. 
 
THE GOLDEN EAGLE. 65 
 
 The GOLDEN EAGLE (Falco Chrysatlos) is among 
 the largest as well as the most powerful of birds. 
 Specimens have been found, measuring nearly four 
 feet in length, and about nine feet across the wings, 
 when they were fully extended. Specimens of much 
 larger dimensions have also been seen, one of which 
 was shot at Warkworth, measured eleven feet three 
 inches from the tip of the one wing to that of the 
 other, and weighed eighteen pounds. Probably large 
 specimens were more abundant formerly, when the 
 wild countries were left freer to their range than they 
 are now. The average dimensions may be taken at 
 three feet long, and seven feet and a half in expanse, 
 in the male ; and three feet and a half long, and eight 
 feet in expanse, in the female. This great extent of 
 wings, makes these when folded as long as the tail. 
 Considering its breadth and strength, the golden eagle 
 is not a very heavy animal, the average weight being w 
 about twelve pounds for the male, and fifteen for the 
 female. The figure is, however, compact, and the parts 
 admirably balanced ; and both the individual parts and 
 the general arrangement and symmetry, are indicative 
 of great strength. In order that the powerful muscles 
 and tendons by which the talons are moved may be 
 protected from the weather, the tarsi, or feet- bones of 
 the eagle are closely feathered, down to the very division 
 of the toes. The general colour of the toes, is yellow ; 
 they are defended above by horny plates, or scales, of 
 which there are only three on the last joint of each toe, 
 and they are furnished with talons, which are strong, 
 black, sharp, and very much hooked. So admirable is 
 the mechanism by which the toes and talons of the 
 
 G3 
 
66 THE GOLDEN EAGLE. 
 
 eagle are moved, that a dried foot may be made to act 
 powerfully by pulling the tendons, long after it has 
 been dead ; and the tendons themselves are among the 
 toughest of natural substances. There is considerable 
 dignity in the repose of the eagle; she usually sits upon 
 a pinnacle of rock, where she can command an ex- 
 tensive view ; and the head is often recurvated, so that 
 one eye is directed to the front, and the other to the 
 rear. The knobs on the under part of the toes pre- 
 vent any injury from the roughest rock, and take a 
 firm hold of the most slippery : so that the eagle on 
 her two feet seems as firmly based as most quadrupeds 
 do on four. The hold which she thus takes of the 
 surface, and the powerful action of the muscles that 
 move the toes, give her another advantage ; for by 
 those combined powers, she can throw herself with a 
 bound into the air, at the same time that she expands 
 her wings, and thus, contrary to the vulgar belief, rear 
 usually from level ground. When, however, the eagle 
 has been feeding in any other place than near her 
 abode, she shows an unwillingness to rise. As she is 
 so constituted as to be able to bear hunger four or five 
 weeks, her feeding is voracious in proportion ; and as, 
 notwithstanding that she shows considerable adroit- 
 ness in plucking birds, and skinning quadrupeds, she 
 always swallows, more or less, of the indigestible 
 exumce, as well as the bones of the smaller prey, her 
 meal is heavy. This, in all probability, has given rise 
 to the vulgar opinion. 
 
 The following description of the adult female, given 
 in Selby's admirable work on " British Ornithology," 
 is accurate : Bill bluish at the base, the tip black. 
 
THE GOLDEN EAGLE. 67 
 
 Cere, (the naked skin at the base of the bill,) lemon- 
 yellow. Irides, orange-brown. Primary quills, black , 
 the secondary ones, clouded with hair-brown, broccoli- 
 brown, and umber-brown. Crown of the head, and 
 nape of the neck, pale orange-brown; the feathers 
 occasionally marginated with white, narrow, elongated, 
 and distinct. Chin and throat, dark umber-brown. 
 Vent, pale reddish brown. Tail, pale broccoli-brown, 
 barred with blackish brown, and ending in a broad 
 band of the same colour. Tarsi, clothed with pale 
 reddish-brown feathers. Toes naked, yellow. Claws 
 black, very strong, and much hooked. 
 
 In the young bird, the irides of the eyes are not so 
 yellow ; the back and coverts of the wings are of a 
 deeper brown ; there are some white feathers on the 
 breast and belly ; the inside of the thighs are white ; 
 
68 THE GOLDEN EAGLE. 
 
 the feathers on the tarsi, white; the feathers of the 
 wings, white at their bases ; and the tail, white, for a 
 part of its length from the root, which becomes less 
 at each successive moulting. These distinctions dimi- 
 nish till the fourth year, when the bird arrives at its 
 full size ; they are then lost, and the age cannot be 
 known for a number of years. The story that is usually 
 told about the eagle renewing her age, is of course 
 without foundation, though it probably relates to the 
 moulting or change of the feathers, which happens to 
 the eagle as well as to other birds. 
 
 Though the golden eagle, as found in this country, 
 be perfectly untameable, there is a constant sexual 
 attachment in the race. The greater number of other 
 birds pair only during the breeding season, and become 
 indifferent to each other after the young can subsist by 
 themselves ; but the nuptials of the eagle are for life. 
 After a male and female have paired, they never sepa- 
 rate, or change their abode, and rear all their successive 
 broods in the same nest, which being made of strong 
 twigs five or six feet long, firmly wattled and placed 
 in some fissure or hollow of an abrupt rock, is sup- 
 posed to last for centuries with only additional repairs. 
 The pair, though they drive off their young, and, 
 indeed, every creature but man. whose haunts they 
 shun, arc closely associated together : when the one is 
 seen for any length of time, the other is sure not to 
 be far distant ; and the one may often be seen flying 
 low and beating the bushes, while the other floats high 
 in air, in order to pounce upon the frightened prey. 
 
 The time that they live, has not been accurately 
 ascertained i but their longevity must be very great. 
 
THE GOLDEN EAGLE. 69 
 
 In their strength they are proof against the elements, 
 for the strongest gale does not much impede their mo- 
 tion ; and their powers of endurance enable them to 
 sustain very great casualties in respect of food. In 
 many parts of Scotland, where they are much more 
 numerous than in England, there are pairs that have 
 nestled in the same cliffs, beyond the memory of the 
 inhabitants. One of these places is Lochlee, at the head 
 of the North Esk in Forfarshire. That lake lies in a 
 singular basin, between perpendicular cliffs on the 
 north, and high and precipitous mountains on the south. 
 A pair of eagles inhabit each side, so that three may 
 sometimes be seen floating in the air at once ; but 
 those that have their abode in the inaccessible cliffs on 
 the north, seem to be lords of the place, as the 
 south ones do not venture to beat the valley while these 
 are on the wing. Nor is it in their native freedom only 
 that eagles attain a great age ; for there was one kept 
 in a state of confinement at Vienna for one hundred 
 and four years. 
 
 The female lays usually two eggs, which are sup- 
 posed to produce a male and a female ; sometimes she 
 lays only one, and very rarely three. The eggs are of 
 a dirty-white colour with reddish spots. The young 
 are produced after thirty days' incubation. When they 
 come out of the shell, they are covered with a white 
 down ; and their first feathers are of a pale yellow. 
 They are exceedingly voracious; and the old ones, 
 though they drive them from the eyrie as soon as they 
 are able to shift for themselves, are, up to that period, 
 equally assiduous in finding them food, and bold in 
 defending them from attack. The vicinity of an eagle's 
 
70 THE GOLDEN EAGLE. 
 
 nest is usually indeed a scene of blood, as the prey, if 
 not killed by the blow of the wing or the clutch of the 
 talons, is carried to the ledge that contains the nest, 
 and despatched there. 
 
 Of the boldness of the eagles at that time, many 
 stories are told ; and they are so universal, that there 
 must be some foundation for them. When the old ones 
 are at the nest, the boldest fowler dares not approach 
 it, as one flap of the wing will strike a man dead to the 
 ground. Even when they are absent, an attack on 
 their brood is far from safe, as they see so far, and 
 can come so rapidly. An Irish peasant had discovered 
 the eyrie of a pair of eagles on one of the islands in 
 the Lake of Killarney $ and watching the absence of the 
 parents, he swam to the island, climbed the rocks, made 
 prize of the eaglets, and dashing into the lake, made 
 for the shore ; but before he had reached it, and while 
 only his head was above water, the eagles came, killed 
 him on the spot, and bore off their rescued brood in 
 triumph. In the northern islands, where cormorants, 
 gulls, and other aquatic birds breed in immense num- 
 bers, the eagles commit terrible devastation among the 
 young ; though in these places the sea eagle is often 
 mistaken for the golden eagle. They also attack full- 
 grown deer, and even foxes, wolves, and bears ; they 
 generally fasten on the heads of the larger quadrupeds, 
 tear out their eyes, and then beat them to death with 
 their wings. 
 
 There are accounts of their carrying off infants in 
 Britain ; and in places farther to the north, they have 
 carried off children a little more advanced. Instances 
 of this are mentioned in Iceland, in the Faroe islands, 
 
THE STORY OF HANNAH LAMOND. 71 
 
 and in Norway. In the parish of Nooder-hangs in the 
 last country, a boy two years of age was carried off in 
 1737, though his parents were close at hand, and made 
 all the exertions in their power to scare the spoiler ; 
 nor were they able to follow her to the place of her 
 retreat. In Tinkalen (Faroe islands) a child was car- 
 ried off, and the mother climbed the hitherto unascended 
 precipice, but the child was dead. Ray mentions a 
 case in the Orkneys, where the mother was more for- 
 tunate ; and it probably is the foundation of the fol- 
 lowing tale, which appeared in Blackwood's Magazine 
 for November, 1826, and which bears the exquisitely 
 graphic stamp of Professor Wilson. 
 
 THE STORY OF HANNAH LAMOND. 
 
 " ALMOST all the people in the parish were leading 
 in their meadow-hay on the same day of Midsummer, 
 so drying was the sunshine and the wind, and huge 
 heaped-up wains, that almost hid from view the horses 
 that drew them along the sward, beginning to get green 
 with second growth, were moving in all directions 
 toward the snug farm-yards. Never had the parish 
 seemed before so populous. Jocund was the balmy 
 air with laughter, whistle, and song. But the tree- 
 gnomens threw the shadow of ' one o'clock ' on the 
 green dial-face of the earth the horses were unyoked, 
 and took instantly to grazing groups of men, women, 
 lads, lasses, and children, collected under grove and 
 bush, and hedge-row, graces were pronounced, and the 
 great Being who gave them that day their daily bread, 
 looked down from his eternal throne, well-pleased with 
 
THE STORY OF HANNAH LAMOND. 
 
 the piety of his thankful creatures. The great Golden 
 Eagle, the pride and the pest of the parish, stooped 
 down, and away with something in his talons. One 
 single, sudden female shriek and then shouts and out- 
 cries as if a church-spire had tumbled down on a con- 
 gregation at a sacrament ! ' Hannah Lamond's bairn ! 
 Hannah Lamond's bairn ! ' was the loud, fast-spreading 
 cry. ' The eagle 's ta'en aff Hannah Lamond's bairn ! ' 
 and many hundred feet were in another instant hurrying 
 towards the mountain. Two miles of hill, and dale, and 
 copse, and shingle, and many intersecting brooks lay 
 between ; but in an incredibly short time, the foot of 
 the mountain was alive with people. The eyrie was 
 well-known, and both old birds were visible on the 
 rock-ledge. But who shall scale that dizzy cliff, which 
 Mark Steuart the sailor, who had been at the storming 
 of many a fort, attempted in vain ? All kept gazing, 
 weeping, wringing of hands in vain, rooted to the 
 ground, or running back and forwards, like so many 
 ants essaying their new wings in discomfiture. * What 's 
 the. use what's the use o' ony puir human means? 
 We have no power but in prayer!' and many knelt 
 down fathers and mothers, thinking of their own 
 babies, as if they would force the deaf heavens to 
 hear ! 
 
 " Hannah Lamond had all this while been sitting on 
 a rock, with a face perfectly white, and eyes like those 
 of a mad person, fixed on the eyrie. Nobody had 
 noticed her ; for strong as all sympathies with her had 
 been at the swoop of the eagle, they were now swal- 
 lowed up in the agony of eyesight. * Only last Sabbath 
 was my sweet wee wean baptized :' and on uttering these 
 
AND THE EAGLE. 73 
 
 words, she flew off through the brakes and over the 
 huge stones, up up up faster than ever huntsman 
 ran in to the death, fearless as a goat playing among 
 precipices. No one doubted, no one could doubt, that 
 she would soon be dashed to pieces. But have not 
 people who walk in their sleep, obedient to the myste- 
 rious guidance of dreams, clomb the walls of old ruins, 
 and found footing, even in decrepitude, along the edge 
 of unguarded battlements and down dilapidated stair- 
 cases, deep as draw-wells or coal-pits, and returned 
 with open, fixed, and unseeing eyes, unharmed to 
 their beds, at midnight ? It is all the work of the soul, 
 to whom the body is a slave ; and shall not the agony 
 of a mother's passion who sees her baby, whose warm 
 mouth has just left her breast, hurried off by a demon 
 to a hideous death bear her limbs aloft wherever there 
 is dust to dust, till she reach that devouring den, and 
 fiercer and more furious far, in the passion of love, 
 than any bird of prey that ever bathed its beak in 
 blood, throttle the fiends, that with their heavy wings 
 would fain flap her down the cliffs, and hold up her 
 child in deliverance before the eye of the all-seeing 
 God? 
 
 " No stop no stay she knew not that she drew 
 her breath. Beneath her feet Providence fastened 
 every loose stone, and to her hands strengthened every 
 root. How was she ever to descend ? That fear, then, 
 but once crossed her heart, as up up up to the little 
 image made of her own flesh and blood. * The God 
 who holds me now from perishing-^will not the same 
 God save me when my child is on my bosom ?' Down 
 came the fierce rushing of the eagles' wings each 
 H 
 
74 STORY OF HANNAH LAMOND 
 
 savage bird dashing close to her head, so that she saw 
 the yellow of their wrathful eyes. All at once they 
 quailed, and were cowed. Yelling, they flew off to 
 the stump of an ash jutting out of a cliff, a thousand 
 feet above the cataract, and the Christian mother fall- 
 ing across the eyrie, in the midst of bones and blood, 
 clasped her child dead dead dead, no doubt, but 
 unmangled and untorn, and swaddled up just as it was 
 when she laid it down asleep among the fresh hay, in a 
 nook of the harvest field. Oh ! what pang of perfect 
 blessedness transfixed her heart from that faint feeble 
 cry 'It lives it lives it lives!' and baring her 
 bosom, with loud laughter and eyes dry as stones, she 
 felt the lips of the unconscious innocent once more 
 murmuring at the fount of life and love ! 
 
 " Where, all this while, was Mark Steuart, the 
 sailor ? Half way up the cliffs. But his eye had got 
 dim, and his head dizzy, and his heart sick ; and he 
 who had so often reefed the top-gallant-sail, when at 
 midnight the coming of the gale was heard afar, co- 
 vered his face with his hands, and dared look no longer 
 on the swimming heights. ' And who will take care 
 of my poor bed-ridden mother,' thought Hannah, whose 
 soul, through the exhaustion of so many passions, could 
 no more retain in its grasp that hope which it had 
 clutched in despair. A voice whispered ' GOD.' She 
 looked round expecting to see an angel, but nothing 
 moved except a rotten branch, that under its own 
 weight, broke off from the crumbling rock. Her eye, 
 by some secret sympathy of her soul with the in- 
 animate object, watched its fall ; and it seemed to stop, 
 not far off on a small platform. Her child was bound 
 
AND THE EAGLE. 75 
 
 within her bosom she remembered not how or when 
 but it was safe and scarcely daring to open her eyes, 
 she slid down the shelving rocks, and found herself on, 
 a small piece of firm root-bound soil, with the tops 
 of bushes appearing below. With fingers suddenly 
 strengthened into the power of iron, she swung herself 
 down by briar and broom, and heather, and dwarf 
 birch. There a loosened stone lept over a ledge, and 
 no sound was heard, so profound was its fall. There, 
 the shingle rattled down the screes, and she hesitated 
 not to follow. Her feet bounded against the huge 
 stone that stopped them, but she felt no pain. Her body 
 was callous as the cliff. Steep as the wall of a house 
 was now the side of the precipice. But it was matted 
 with ivy, centuries old long ago dead, and without a 
 single green leaf but with thousands of arm-thick 
 stems petrified into the rock, and covering it as with a 
 trellice. She bound her baby to her neck, and with 
 hands and feet clung to that fearful ladder. Turning 
 round her head, and looking down, lo ! the whole po- 
 pulation of the parish, so great was the multitude, on 
 their knees ! and hush, the voice of psalms a hymn, 
 breathing the spirit of one united prayer ! Sad and so- 
 lemn was the strain but nothing dirge-like breathing 
 not of death, but deliverance. Often had she sung that 
 tune, perhaps the very words, but them she heard not, 
 in her own hut she and her mother or in the kirk, 
 along with all the congregation. An unseen hand 
 seemed fastening her fingers to the ribs of ivy, and in 
 sudden inspiration, believing that her life was to be 
 saved, she became almost as fearless as if she had been 
 changed into a winged creature. Again her feet touched 
 
76 STORY OF HANNAH LAMOND 
 
 stones and earth the psalm was hushed hut a tre- 
 mulous sohhing voice was close beside her, and lo ! a 
 she-goat, with two little kids at her feet ! * Wild 
 heights/ thought she, ( do these creatures climb, but 
 the dam will lead down her kid by the easiest paths ; 
 for O, even in the brute creatures, what is the holy 
 power of a mother's love !' and turning round her head, 
 she kissed her sleeping baby, and for the first time she 
 wept. 
 
 " Overhead frowned the front of the precipice, never 
 touched before by human hand or foot. No one had 
 ever dreamt of scaling it; and the golden eagles knew 
 that well in their instinct, as, before they built their 
 eyrie, they had brushed it with their wings. But all the 
 rest of this part of the mountain side, though scarred, 
 and seamed, and chasmed, was yet accessible and 
 more than one person in the parish had reached the 
 bottom of the Glead's Cliff. Many were now attempt- 
 ing it, and ere the cautious mother had followed her 
 dumb guides a hundred yards through, among dangers 
 that, although enough to terrify the stoutest heart, were 
 traversed by her without a shudder, the head of one 
 man appeared, and then the head of another, and she 
 knew that God had delivered her and her child in 
 safety, into the care of their fellow-creatures. Not a 
 word was spoken eyes said enough she hushed her 
 friends with her hands, and with uplifted eyes pointed 
 to the guides sent to her by heaven. Small green plats, 
 where those creatures nibble the wild flowers, became 
 now more frequent trodden lines, almost as easy as 
 sheep-paths, showed that the dam had not led her 
 young into danger ; and now the brushwood dwindled 
 
AND THE EAGLE. 77 
 
 away into straggling shrubs, and the party stood on a 
 little eminence above the stream, and forming part of 
 the strath. There had been trouble and agitation, 
 much sobbing and many tears among the multitude, 
 while the mother was scaling the cliffs, sublime was 
 the shout that echoed afar the moment she reached the 
 eyrie, and now that her salvation was sure, the great 
 crowd rustled like a wind-swept wood. 
 
 " And for whose sake was all this alternation of 
 agony ? A poor humble creature, unknown to many 
 even by name one who had had but few friends, nor 
 wished for more contented to work all day, here 
 there anywhere that she might be able to support 
 her aged mother and her little child and who on sab- 
 bath took her seat in an obscure pew, set apart for 
 paupers, in the kirk ! 
 
 " ' Fall back, and give her fresh air,' said the old 
 minister of the parish ; and the circle of close faces 
 widened round her, lying as in death. ' Gie me the 
 bonny bit bairn into my arms,' cried first one mother, 
 and then another, and it was tenderly handed round 
 the circle of kisses, many of the snooded maidens bath- 
 ing its face in tears. ' There's no a single scratch about 
 the puir innocent, for the eagle, you see, maun hae 
 stuck its talons into the long claes and the shawl. 
 Blin ! blin ! maun they be who see not the finger o' God 
 in this thing ! ' 
 
 " Hannah started up from her swoon, looking wildly 
 
 round, and cried, * O ! the bird, the bird ! the eagle, 
 
 the eagle ! The eagle has carried off my bonny wee 
 
 Walter is there nane to pursue ?' A neighbour put 
 
 H 3 
 
78 THE GOLDEN EAGLE. 
 
 her baby into her breast, and shutting her eyes, and 
 smiting her forehead, the sorely bewildered creature 
 said in a low voice, * Am I wauken O tell me if I'm 
 wauken, or if a' this be the wark o' a fever, and the 
 delirium o' a dream ? ' ' 
 
 The strength of wing and muscular vigour of the 
 eagle are truly astonishing. The flesh has not, as some 
 have alleged, any offensive smell or taste, but it re- 
 sembles a bundle of cords, and cannot be eaten. Some 
 notion of its power may be formed from the statement 
 of Ramond, when he had ascended Mont Perdu, the 
 loftiest of the Pyrenees, and nearly three miles above 
 the level of the sea. He had for a considerable distance 
 bid adieu to every living thing, animal or vegetable ; 
 but right over the summit there was a golden eagle far 
 above him, dashing rapidly to windward against a 
 strong gale, and apparently in her element and at her 
 ease. 
 
 In the regions which she inhabits, the golden eagle, 
 like the lion, owns no superior but man, and she owns 
 him as such only on account of his intellectual re- 
 sources. When taken ever so young, there is no very 
 well authenticated account of the taming of an eagle. 
 The wandering hordes to the eastward of the Caspian 
 sea, do, indeed, train eagles to hunt both game and 
 wild beasts ; and Marco Polo, the father of modern 
 travellers, who, in the early part of the thirteenth cen- 
 tury, spent six and twenty years in a pilgrimage over 
 the east, and revealed the wonders of the whole, as far 
 as Cathay or China itself, records the eagle hunts at 
 the court of the Great Khan of Tartary, as among the 
 
THE GOLDEN EAGLE. 79 
 
 greatest marvels with which he met. It is probable 
 that the eagle thus trained to falconry, may have been 
 the imperial eagle, which is much more common in the 
 south and east, and which, though a powerful bird, is 
 not quite so savage as the golden eagle. That the 
 eagle was never used in European falconry, is certain. 
 It is invariably classed with the "ignoble falcons," 
 or those that keep as well as kill their prey. One bird is 
 said to give the eagle more trouble than any other, 
 and that is the heron, rather a light and feeble bird. 
 The heron gets under the shelter of a stone, or the 
 stump of a tree, where neither the wing nor the talons 
 of the eagle can be effective ; and from that position it 
 twists round its long neck, and bites and gnaws the 
 legs of its enemy. Several years ago, a heron was put 
 into the cage of a powerful eagle, at the Duke of Athol's, 
 at Blair. It immediately betook itself to the shelter 
 of a block of wood, which the eagle had for a perch, 
 and began to nibble and bite ; nor did the eagle van- 
 quish it till after a contest of twenty-four hours. It is 
 not very often, however, that the golden eagle fre- 
 quents the haunts of the heron ; her favourite ranges 
 are the open moors and uplands, where the prey can be 
 seen from a great distance, and there is little cover to 
 shelter it. In this country they do not often come to the 
 woods, though they do so in the mountainous parts of 
 France, where the winter is proportionally more severe, 
 and the animals, upon which they prey at other times, 
 are passing the cold season dormant in their holes. 
 
 In Scotland, the eagle finds winter food in the very 
 fastnesses of the mountains. Of that food one favourite 
 article is 
 
80 
 
 THE ALPINE HARE. 
 
 THE ALPINE or WHITE HARE (lepus vartabilis) is, 
 in point of size, generally intermediate between the 
 common hare and the rabbit, though we have seen a 
 specimen as large as the former. It is a timid, gentle 
 creature, inhabiting the wild and lonely mountains, and 
 seldom found at a lower elevation than 1500 feet above 
 the level of the sea. They bring forth their young 
 in situations more lofty than this ; generally so much 
 so, as to be out of the reach of the wild cat and pine 
 marten. They live in holes, and under stones ; and as 
 their safety from the eagle is in concealment, and not 
 in flight, they are not easily raised. The following 
 account of their seasonal appearance, from the Edin- 
 burgh Philosophical Journal, vol. ii., is accurate; 
 though we have observed, that their whiteness is more 
 complete in long and severe winters : 
 
 " The varying hare becomes white in winter. This 
 remarkable change takes place in the following manner : 
 About the middle of September the grey feet begin to 
 be white ; and, before the month ends, all the four feet 
 are white ; and the ears and muzzle are of a brighter 
 colour. The white colour gradually ascends the legs 
 and thighs, and we may observe, under the grey hairs, 
 whitish spots, which continue to increase till about the 
 middle of October ; but still the back continues of a 
 grey colour, while the eye-brows and ears are nearly 
 white. From this period the change proceeds very 
 rapidly, and by the middle of November the whole fur, 
 with the exception of the tips of the ears, which remain 
 black, is of a shining white. The back becomes white 
 
THE WHITE HARE. 81 
 
 within eight days. During the whole of this remark- 
 able change in the fur, no hair falls from the animal; 
 hence it appears that the hair actually changes its 
 colour, and that there is no removal of it. The fur 
 retains its white colour until the month of March, or 
 even later, depending on the temperature of the atmos- 
 phere ; and, by the middle of May, it has again a grey 
 colour. But the spring change is different from the 
 winter, as the hair is completely shed." 
 
 This seasonal change of the fur of the alpine hare 
 (and it is not confined to that animal) answers several 
 important purposes. One of these is safety from 
 enemies. The summer colour approaches that of the 
 grey stones and lichen among which it lives, while its 
 winter hair is that of the snow, which then completely 
 covers the mountains. Another advantage of the 
 change of colour is even more important : it tempers 
 them to the weather. White is much more difficult 
 both to heat and to cool than black, and thus the white 
 colour preserves the natural heat of the animal in 
 winter ; and the dark colour in summer raises the tem- 
 perature of the surface, and makes the animal perspire, 
 the evaporation of which is a source of cold. The 
 adaptation of the colour to the temperature is much 
 more obvious than the protection. The animals that 
 prey upon the alpine hares are a part of creation as 
 well as they, and their preservation is just as essential ; 
 so that we may suppose that the increased mode of 
 concealment on the part of the one, is counteracted by 
 an increased vigilance on the part of the other. But 
 the protection of the animal from the weather counter- 
 acts no part of the economy of nature, and there we 
 
82 THE PTARMIGAN. 
 
 find it pretty generally extended ; birds and rapacious 
 animals become lighter in winter ; and so does the old 
 hair upon cattle, and other quadrupeds, that are left out 
 for the winter in exposed situations. The ermine, 
 which does not need much protection, except from 
 man, becomes white in winter ; and many animals that 
 are dark on the upper part of the body, are light, or 
 were white on the under, that an equal temperature of 
 the vital parts may be preserved. 
 
 This curious seasonal change has not been very 
 carefully investigated ; and, therefore, the precise way 
 in which it is brought about cannot be ascertained. 
 Attempts have been made to explain it, by urging that, 
 when animals are exposed to strong light and heat, the 
 deoxydising rays of the sun decompose carbonic acid, 
 and as that is given out at the surface, the carbon is 
 precipitated upon the rete mucosum, and produces the 
 black colour ; but the lips and tips of the ears in the 
 alpine hare retain their blackness in winter ; and there- 
 fore the several parts of the skin would require to be 
 endowed with different powers ; and in the grouse of 
 Labrador, the feathers of the tail remain black during 
 the winter, as do some feathers on the breast of 
 
 THE PTARMIGAN. 
 
 THE PTARMIGAN, rock grouse, or white partridge, 
 (Tetrao lagopusj) which is another inhabitant of the 
 most elevated parts of mountains ; and, except in lofty 
 and lonely places, it is rather a rare bird. It resembles 
 the common red grouse in form, only it is, perhaps, a 
 little less, the length being about fifteen inches, the 
 breadth two feet, and the weight nineteen ounces. 
 
THE PTARMIGAN. 83 
 
 From the still and lonely places in which it is found, 
 the ptarmigan is a very interesting bird ; very gentle in 
 its manners, and apparently courting the society of 
 man ; as if, when it is met with on the mountain-top, 
 a stone be thrown so as to light on the other side of it, 
 it will run among one's feet, and may be almost caught 
 with the hand. On this account, the ptarmigan has 
 been called a stupid bird; but stupidity cannot, with 
 any thing like propriety, be attributed to any animal 
 in a state of nature. Their habits, and means of sub- 
 sistence and defence, vary ; but they are all equally 
 wise. In summer, the ptarmigan is mottled grey and 
 white, so that, when it is in motion, it is not easily 
 distinguished from the stones among which it is found. 
 The quills of the wings are white, and so are the two 
 middle feathers of the tail, but the other tail feathers 
 are black, with white tips. In winter, the whole 
 plumage, except a feather or two on the breast, is 
 white, the change beginning in September, and being 
 usually finished in October. The moulting, or annual 
 change of feathers in those birds, has not been very 
 accurately described ; but there are some reasons for 
 concluding that the feathers alter in colour only in the 
 autumn. The young birds are mottled like the old 
 ones, but change their colour at the same season with 
 these : and if they shed their feathers then, they would 
 have to produce two complete coats in the course 
 of a few months, a degree of exhaustion of which, we 
 believe, there is no instance among the feathered tribes. 
 Neither are there any well-authenticated instances of 
 changes from lighter, either in feathers or in hair, 
 without a reproduction ; while there are many of the 
 
84 THE PTARMIGAN. 
 
 opposite change. The whitening seems always to be 
 the result of a diminished action in the hair or feather, 
 which may be produced either by heat or cold, or 
 natural decay. Thus we find that the children of 
 peasants have the points and upper parts of the hair 
 bleached almost white by the sun, while the roots are 
 brown : those alpine animals turn white in winter ; 
 and men and other animals become grey with age. It 
 seems that the bleaching process takes place in the 
 hair itself, and has no connexion with a temporary 
 change of colour in the skin, as the rete mucosum ; for 
 we often find that the same summer sun which darkens 
 the skins of those who are much exposed to it, bleaches 
 and whitens the hair upon the hands and eye-brows. 
 Thus it remains doubtful, whether the action of the 
 sun in summer, even by drying the hair and feathers 
 of those beasts and birds which turn white in the 
 winter, may not assist in producing the change of 
 colour. That these are material causes for all those 
 changes, we may rest assured ; and that these have 
 some connexion with chemical action, is highly pro- 
 bable; but we must be careful not to confound the 
 chemical action of living bodies with that chemistry 
 of dead matter which alone we can study in the 
 laboratory. 
 
 The common residences of the ptarmigans are in 
 the most elevated parts of the mountains, where they 
 hide themselves in crevices, and often in holes in the 
 snow, which, till the temperature rises as high as that at 
 which snow begins to melt, are both warm and dry ; so 
 that a ptarmigan at the top of Ben Nevis has really a 
 more comfortable winter abode than a pheasant in one 
 
THE PTARMIGAN. 85 
 
 of the low and rainy counties of England. They of 
 course feed within the range of vegetation, buds and 
 young shoots of heath and other alpine plants, with 
 mountain berries and insects, being their food ; but 
 they re-ascend during the night. In winter and spring, 
 they live in parties ; but during the breeding season, 
 they separate in pairs, descend lower, and spread over 
 a greater range of surface. 
 
 The season for their pairing is as late as June, 
 which offers another argument in favour of their 
 moulting in the spring. The nest is a circular hole, 
 scratched at the root of a bush, or at the foot of a rock, 
 with hardly any other preparation. Each female lays 
 from six to twelve eggs, larger than those of a partridge, 
 and of a reddish colour, mottled with black. The 
 young are produced in three weeks, and are of a 
 reddish mottled colour. The male is very attentive to 
 the defence and feeding of the female while she is 
 sitting ; and both birds defend their young with great 
 boldness ; but the eagles and larger hawks are too 
 powerful for them, and commit great havoc. As their 
 chief safety is in concealment on the earth rather than 
 in flight, they are much better adapted for running than 
 for flying ; and that their legs may not get numbed by 
 the cold, they are thickly feathered. Ptarmigans are 
 rarely found in England, except upon some of the 
 highest mountains in the north, and they are not very 
 frequently met with in Wales ; the part of Scotland 
 where they are most abundant, is the great ridge of 
 the Grampians, on the confines of Perth, Aberdeen, and 
 Inverness shires. 
 
 It is generally supposed, that the animals upon 
 
86 POWERFUL VISION OF THE EAGLE. 
 
 which the eagle preys, are well acquainted with its 
 shadow ; and that, to prevent that from being seen, the 
 eagle floats at such a height as to make it indistin- 
 guishable. Certainly, we have always discovered the 
 eagle flying lower in cloudy weather than when the 
 sun was bright, but, whether on account of its answering 
 her vision better, or for some wise purpose, as that of 
 the shadow, has not been ascertained. 
 
 From the summit of the mountain, if one be pro- 
 vided with Dollond's best three-feet achromatic tele- 
 scope, an instrument that no traveller in these lands of 
 long views should be without, the golden eagle can 
 be followed, and her motions watched, with the same 
 accuracy as if one were a companion in her flight. In 
 this we have a very apt and striking instance of the 
 superiority of reason over even the surest instinct, and 
 the finest apparatus with which it can be furnished. 
 The eye of the eagle is so formed, that, while the bird 
 floats in the air at such an elevation as that its size 
 is reduced to a single speck, it can command miles 
 of surface with such precision as to perceive at once 
 in what part of the wide field of view there is prey 
 even though nature, equally attentive to the prey and 
 the preyer, has coloured the former so like the surface 
 on which it is found, that no eye, but that of an eagle, 
 could distinguish it at even half the distance. 
 
 But wonderful as that faculty is, it is less surprising 
 than human vision aided by the telescope, by means of 
 which man has been enabled not only to connect 
 mountain with mountain, but planet with planet ; and, 
 while he has his home localised in some little spot of 
 the earth, to become a dweller, as it were, in the whole 
 
EYES OF DIFFERENT ANIMALS. 87 
 
 solar system, and a rational speculator into the nature 
 and laws of that universe, of which the solar system 
 forms a part. Thus, while in the study of nature we 
 find every thing to admire, we find nothing to envy ; 
 and the more that we trace the power and wisdom of 
 God in his works, the more apparent becomes the 
 great goodness which he has manifested toward us. 
 This is one of the most important lessons that we 
 derive from the study of nature ; and we derive it from 
 that study alone. It teaches us gratitude to our Maker, 
 and contentment with our condition ; for the greatest 
 distinctions in the social distribution and arrangement 
 of men, are nothing when compared with those dis- 
 tinctions with which our Maker has endowed us above 
 the other productions of creation. 
 
 And yet an eye is a most curious instrument. In a 
 merely mechanical point of view, and without any 
 reference to the power that it has of conveying to the 
 sensation of animals the presence and qualities of ob- 
 jects, it embraces the principles of many sciences; and, 
 in so far as the resemblance can be traced, it is a beau- 
 tiful instance of the universality of the laws of nature. 
 The different parts of the eye have so complete a 
 resemblance to those optical contrivances by which we 
 aid it, in the observation of distant or minute objects, or 
 renovate its powers when they have begun to decay, that 
 the careful study of the eye itself might have led to the 
 construction of telescopes, microscopes, and spectacles. 
 
 In the eyes of different animals there are remarkable 
 differences, according to the nature and habits of the 
 animal, the medium in which it lives, or the time at 
 which it finds its food. The eyes of the more perfect 
 
88 EYES OF DIFFERENT ANIMALS. 
 
 animals are two, and they are, generally speaking, 
 moveable ; so that the animal may turn them in various 
 directions without moving its body, or even its head. 
 In the insect tribes the eyes are often compound, con- 
 sisting of a great number of sights or lenses, each of 
 them adapted for receiving and transmitting light, but 
 all of them, even in the most compound eye, communi- 
 cating with one single retina, or organ of perception. 
 Animals that are liable to be chased, have the eyes 
 further back in the head, and so prominent that they 
 can see laterally, or even behind. The eye of the hare 
 is an instance of this, and that of the giraffe is still 
 more remarkable. The eyes of pursuing-animals are 
 more directed to the front ; and those that spring on 
 their prey have them deeply enfonced, so that they 
 may take a more steady view, both in direction and 
 distance. In the eyes of animals that have to seek 
 their ways and their food in the direction of the per- 
 pendicular as in cats that climb trees the eyes have 
 the pupil elongated in that direction, so that they may 
 contract the opening, and exclude light from other 
 objects at the sides of the one principally looked to, 
 and yet have a considerable range in the direction of 
 that. Animals, on the other hand, that have to find 
 their food upon the ground, as those that graze, have 
 the pupil contracted above and below, with the open- 
 ing elongated in the horizontal direction. There is a 
 considerable difference in the eyes of day and night 
 animals, as they are called, as between those of an 
 eagle and those of an owl. The day animal has the 
 interior of the eye lined with a dark membrane or 
 pigment, the surface of which is without gloss; and 
 
EYES OF DIFFERENT ANIMALS. 89 
 
 which, therefore, does not allow any reflection of light 
 from one part of the interior of the eye to another. 
 The eyes of night animals are, on the other hand, with- 
 out this, or have it light-coloured, by which means 
 lights are reflected within the eye. Each of these 
 adapts the animal to the time at which it is abroad : 
 the owl cannot see in the bright sun, because the image 
 of the object, to which its eye is turned, is confused by 
 the reflection, from the inner surface of the eye, of all 
 the images of surrounding objects ; and the eagle can- 
 not see in the dark, because of the deficiency of light, 
 in consequence of none of the side lights being reflected. 
 Each, however, can see more perfectly in its own 
 element than if it had the opposite contrivance. Be- 
 tween animals that live in the air, and those that live in 
 the water, there are differences equally curious. The 
 contrivance, by which the light that enters at the fore- 
 part of the eye is so managed as to produce vision, is 
 similar to that by which the sight is improved when we 
 use spectacles or telescopes. There are certain trans- 
 parent parts of the eye which are thinned off toward 
 the sides, and left thick in the middle, as is the case 
 with those glasses or lenses, of which telescopes and 
 other optical instruments are composed. Those natural 
 lenses, by making the rays or points of light that come 
 from the outsides of objects more rapidly approach 
 each other within the eye, make the object appear to 
 occupy a much greater space than it otherwise would. 
 Thus they magnify it, and of course make all the parts 
 more distinct; as, if in looking at any surface, that 
 of the moon, for instance, the rays from the extremities 
 be made to contract twice as much, the surface will 
 
90 EYES OF DIFFERENT ANIMALS. 
 
 appear to be doubled in both its dimensions, and seem 
 consequently four times as large or it will have the 
 same appearance as if brought to half the distance. 
 There are three of those humours, as they are called, 
 in the eye of the more perfect animals. The aqueous 
 humour, which fills the foremost part of the eye, dis- 
 plays the iris or coloured portion that opens and shuts, 
 with the pupil or passage of the sight in the centre, and 
 it is supposed also to occupy a small portion behind 
 the iris. Behind the aqueous humour there is situated 
 the crystalline lens, which is equally transparent as the 
 aqueous humour, but of a firmer consistency, and has 
 both its sides convex or thickest at the middle. The 
 remaining part of the cavity is filled by the vitreous 
 humour, which is of a consistency between the two ; 
 and behind that, the retina or nervous tissue is spread 
 out, and supposed to be the most delicately sensible 
 part of the animal structure. 
 
 Now it is in consequence of these lenses being of a 
 more dense structure than the substance to which their 
 convex sides are turned, that they cause the rays to 
 approach each other, magnifying the object, and render- 
 ing it more distinct. The front surface of the aqueous 
 humour refracts the rays that come through the less 
 dense air, and they are further refracted by both sur- 
 faces of the crystalline lens. But animals, that live in 
 water, and receive the rays of light through that 
 medium, would not have them brought together by an 
 aqueous humour : and, therefore, the external eye in 
 fishes is nearly flat, while the convexity of the crystal- 
 line is increased till it be almost a little globe, like one 
 of the most powerful single-lens microscopes. 
 
ON VISION. 91 
 
 The combination of lenses, or humours in the eye, is 
 supposed to take off those prismatic colours that are 
 produced when rays of 'light are strongly and differently 
 refracted much in the same way that a similar effect is 
 produced by the compound object-glass in an achromatic 
 telescope ; and thus the eye, taken even as a piece of 
 mechanism, and without any reference to life, or the 
 faculty of sight, is equal, nay superior, to the utmost 
 effort of human contrivance. When we come to add 
 to it those natural powers of perception and adjustment 
 by which it acts and adapts itself, it would become, 
 were it not so common, and in the midst of a world 
 as wondrous, a great and constant wonder. The re- 
 fraction of rays that come from objects at different 
 distances, are different, and those which come from 
 a near one, approach each other more rapidly, and, 
 therefore, meet sooner than those that come from a 
 remote object. Light from objects at different dis- 
 tances, therefore, must meet in points at different 
 distances, behind the pupil of the eye. But vision is 
 not distinct, unless the point where the rays meet be 
 the very surface of the retina ; and, therefore, there 
 must be in the eye a power of altering its form, by 
 the motion of the retina backwards and forwards, by 
 an alteration in the convexity, or otherwise, of the 
 refractive power of the lenses, or by both ; and one 
 can easily feel such a power, by habituating the eyes 
 to look at objects at different distances. Looking 
 closely, together with the straining of the eye-lids, 
 which usually accompanies such an effort, seems to 
 increase the convexity of the lenses; for, when the 
 sight has begun to dazzle and fail at the usual reading 
 
92 THE EAGLE AND HER TREY. 
 
 or writing distance, one can, by gazing intently for 
 some time at small objects very near to the eye, recover 
 its tone, though after such an effort, distant objects 
 will be dim for some time. 
 
 It is probable that the eyes of birds, more especially 
 eagles that soar high, and depend wholly upon their 
 sight, have this power much more vigorously than 
 the eyes of men ; and it is not unlikely that the third 
 eye-lid, or nictitating membrane which they possess, 
 and the apparatus with which that embraces the ball 
 of the eye, may compress and stimulate the lenses, as 
 well as lubricate, cleanse, and protect the front of the 
 eye. In the eagle, the power of this organ is won- 
 derful ; for even when she soars so high above the 
 mountains, that you can mark her large form with 
 difficulty, down she drops with unerring certainty, even 
 upon the smallest of her prey, to a depth considerably 
 below. When one is near enough, the sound of her 
 descent is like the rustle of a whirlwind ; and even as 
 one sees her through the telescope, if the prey be 
 worthy of her, the descent is grand. Those wings, 
 upon which she the moment before floated with so 
 much grace and ease, are dashed behind her, as if they 
 were a useless impediment ; but these formidable 
 weapons are, all the while, kept in readiness, if they 
 should be needed, to aid the talons in the work of 
 death. If she mistakes or misses, and it is not often 
 that she does the one or the other, for her eye is keen 
 and her aim is true, she shoots away at a distance, as 
 if she had been unworthy of herself: but when her aim 
 is sure ; when the ptarmigan or the mountain hare is 
 transfixed ; and, while she exults for a moment over 
 
THE EAGLE AND HER PREY. 93 
 
 her victim, before she rends it, there is a terrible 
 majesty in her air ; and when all this is among the 
 grandeur of mountain scenery, while the spectator is 
 elevated above the whole ; when the dark eminence 
 and the dusky eagle are projected against a mountain 
 glen, with its bright stream, its green bosom, its scat- 
 tered trees, its abrupt hills, and its wild and rocky 
 precipices, here veiled with mist, and there glancing in 
 the sun, it is a scene which fails not to make a vivid 
 and a lasting impression. 
 
94 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE LAKE. 
 
 THE consideration of this division of the more strik- 
 ing features of the earth's surface, properly follows the 
 
LAKES. 95 
 
 last inasmuch as lakes are usual accompaniments of 
 mountain scenery, and form part of the machinery by 
 which nature works for the transmission of those waters 
 which are distilled by, and gathered into the hills ; 
 as well as for the provision of those vapours with 
 which the air feeds these huge alembics of the earth. 
 In what is, unscientifically enough, called the new world, 
 and particularly in Canada, these inland waters have 
 a character somewhat different from that which they 
 assume in the portion of the globe of which our island 
 forms a part; extending to the magnitude, and ex- 
 hibiting most of the phenomena of seas, and standing 
 in less immediate and visible connexion with moun- 
 tain ranges, to which they owe their birth. In Europe, 
 the principal lakes are those of Switzerland ; to which, 
 with their surrounding scenery, those in the northern 
 parts of our own island bear, in all respects, a close 
 resemblance. 
 
 Here, they present to the eye an appearance which 
 at once indicates their origin ; and exhibits, in imme- 
 diate connexion with each other, the various parts 
 of that eternal process by which the vivifying prin- 
 ciple is preserved from stagnation, and the spirit of 
 fruitfulness poured over the earth. Embosomed in 
 deep valleys, and shut in by circling hills, fed by 
 the streams and torrents that pour from the uplands, 
 opening chasms in the mountains, and wearing fissures 
 in the cliffs ; or by the countless streams that pene- 
 trate towards the earth's centre, till, turned by some 
 stratum of rock, they burst upward, in springs, amid 
 the hidden depths, and presenting a surface from 
 which, in turn, the air may gather exhalations, and 
 
96 LAKES. 
 
 send up" to the mountain peaks volumes of clouds, 
 laden with fresh materials for the action of their ap- 
 pointed part in the beautiful design, they afford to the 
 naturalist a field of never-wearying interest, and to 
 rational man a theme for gratitude, adoration, and love. 
 To the enthusiast in the picturesque, nature no 
 where presents an aspect of such varied beauty as 
 amid these combinations of hill and water and glade. 
 That monotony which characterizes a wide expanse of 
 unbroken plain, even when clothed in a mantle of 
 uniform hue, and that unrelieved sense of awe and 
 loneliness which a mountain range, without this sooth- 
 ing accompaniment, is apt to suggest, are, alike, absent 
 here. All that is most sublime is softened by all 
 that is most beautiful; and all that is most beau- 
 tiful, is elevated by all that is most sublime. The 
 pervading and perpetual presence of water clothes the 
 earth in its richest robe of verdure ; and there is a spirit 
 of life and motion over all, which prevents that feeling 
 of oppression and melancholy with which man finds him- 
 self bowed down in the immediate presence of nature, 
 in her mightier agencies. The air is full of soothing 
 sounds, poured from a thousand natural sources, the 
 ripple of the mimic wave upon the mimic beach ; the 
 murmur of the cascade ; the roaring of the cataract ; 
 the sighing of the breeze, or the rushing of the blast 
 among the rocking woods ; all blend into one wild, but 
 enchanting harmony, repeated by a thousand voices, 
 from hill and grove and glade, that it might well sug- 
 gest a mythology like that of the Greeks of old, and 
 lead the imagination to people every cliff and stream 
 and tree with a dryad or a faun, 
 
LAKES. 97 
 
 The atmospheric phenomena of these regions too, 
 o" to the broken surface and that motion of which 
 
 o 
 
 we have spoken, give a character of universal variety 
 and endless change to their scenery. The light of 
 familiarity, which in time deadens the enjoyment of 
 mere level landscape, however fair, comes not here ; 
 because here the landscape is never for any length 
 of time the same. The minutest alteration of the sun's 
 place in the heavens, or the passage of the lightest 
 cloud, produces a change upon the earth, and invests 
 it with a novel charm. This scene is ever changing, 
 like a succession of creations ; and every change is re- 
 peated with the rich distinctness of truth, yet with the 
 softened beauty of a fiction or a dream, in the un- 
 stained mirror of the lake. Whether we gaze upon 
 these jewels of nature, lying like giant gems in their 
 rich green setting of wood and hill, or lashed into 
 foam and tumult by the wing of the tempest from 
 the mountains, whether we view them with their 
 surface turned into plaits of gold by the alchemy 
 of sunset and the touch of the breeze, or with 
 their crystal floors paved with mimic stars and a 
 mimic moon, nature nowhere else presents herself 
 to the eye in forms in which the presence of power is 
 so intimately associated with the presence of beauty 
 the feeling of loneliness with the feeling of life the 
 sense of motion with the suggestions of repose the 
 evidences of unyielding winter with something like the 
 aspect of an ever-budding spring, and the spirit of 
 hoar antiquity with that of continual youth. 
 
 The deep lake never very much alters its tempera- 
 ture, even though situated in a northern region ; more 
 K 
 
98 LAKES. 
 
 especially if it be but little elevated above the sea, and 
 the land around it be high. The latter circumstance 
 is a certain indication of depth ; and when that extends 
 to a hundred fathoms or so, the water, instead of being 
 covered with ice, even in the longest and most severe 
 winters, does not cool nearly to the freezing-point. 
 Strange stories have been told of lakes that have this 
 property : their waters have been said to be impreg- 
 nated with substances, which, at the same time that they 
 defy the frost, act upon those who drink them. These 
 have been alleged of some of the Scottish lakes that 
 pour their limpid waters iceless into the sea; while 
 all the shallow parts of them are frozen to a consider- 
 able thickness. But there is no need for any admixture 
 to prevent the congealation ; that is the necessary 
 result of the depth, and of a well-known property of 
 water. The greatest density of that fluid is at about 
 forty-two degrees of Fahrenheit ; and until this degree 
 of cold is imparted to the whole volume of the water, 
 of course no ice can be formed on the surface. The 
 cooling process is, in deep water, a very slow one ; as 
 the instant that a pellicle on the surface becomes 
 heavier than the rest, it sinks and exposes a new one. 
 When the water has cooled so far as to become sta- 
 tionary, the action of wind upon the surface furthers 
 the cooling; but even with that assistance the very 
 deep lakes are never frozen. The winter of 1807-8 
 was one of uncommon length and severity ; and yet 
 instead of any ice forming upon Loch Ness, (probably 
 the deepest lake, and most uniformly deep, in the 
 United Kingdom,) the river that flows from it was 
 several degrees above freezing, and only a few slight 
 
LAKES. 99 
 
 traces of ice were discernible in some of the shallows 
 near to its confluence with the sea, at the distance of 
 seven miles from the lake. 
 
 But the same circumstances which render those deep 
 lakes difficult to be cooled, render them just as difficult 
 to be heated ; and thus the presence of a lake takes 
 the vicinity of it out of the extremes of chilling winter 
 and burning summer, which characterize northern coun- 
 tries, equalizes the temperature of the year, lengthens 
 the period of active vegetation, and clothes its banks 
 with a verdure unknown to any other places in the 
 same latitudes. Even the evaporation that takes place 
 from the surface of a lake which is surrounded by high 
 mountains, does not produce any thing like the same 
 degree of cold that is produced by evaporation from a 
 lake in a flat country. The air descends from the 
 mountains, is condensed in proportion to the depth to 
 which it descends, and being so, it is warmed. Another 
 thing : there is not the same difference of temperature 
 between the night and the day ; and thus there is less 
 dew and blight. In spring or autumn, the vegetation 
 around a marsh, or even a moist surface, is often found 
 destroyed, while on the banks of a lake not a leaf is 
 touched. 
 
 But lakes in mountainous countries have another 
 advantage : they prevent those floods of the rivers, 
 which are so destructive where there are no lakes ; 
 and if they be in warm latitudes, they prevent the soil 
 from being burnt up and becoming desart. Rains fall 
 with greater violence upon varied surfaces than upon 
 plains, because there the atmosphere is subject to more 
 frequent and rapid changes ; the slopes of the surfaces 
 K 2 
 
100 LAKES. 
 
 precipitate the water sooner into the rivers ; and thus 
 the rain passes off in an overwhelming flood. By the 
 interposition of lakes, this is prevented. They act as 
 regulating dams ; the discharging river cannot rise 
 higher than the lake ; and thus, when the lake is large, 
 a flood which otherwise would flow off in a day, and 
 destroy as it flowed, is made to discharge itself peace- 
 ably for \veeks. Besides the preventing of devastation, 
 this is of advantage to the country. When the flood 
 passes off, while the rain is falling, and the air is moist 
 and not in a state for evaporation, the land derives but a 
 small and temporary advantage from the rain ; but when 
 the water is confined till the state of the atmosphere 
 changes, a considerable portion of it is taken up by 
 the process of evaporation, and descends in fertilizing 
 showers. 
 
 A decisive proof of the advantage of lakes, and the 
 casualties that result from the want of lakes to regulate 
 the discharge of mountain rivers, was unfortunately 
 given in the floods in Scotland, in the summer of 1829. 
 The whole of the rivers that flow eastward from the 
 Grampians have steep courses, but no lakes to regulate 
 their flow ; and the consequence was, that they threw 
 down the bridges, flooded the fields, washed away the 
 soil and crops, and did other damage ; while those 
 streams farther to the north, that roll an equal or a 
 greater mass of water, but which are expanded into 
 lakes, did no harm. Mountainous countries, in which 
 there are no lakes, are usually barren, or in the pro- 
 gress of becoming so. The Andes in America, the 
 ridges in Southern Africa, and many other lakeless 
 elevations, are utterly sterile. The mountains of Scot- 
 
LAKES. 101 
 
 land, and even those of the north of England, have 
 little beauty where there are no lakes ; they are 
 covered with brown heather, unbroken by any admix- 
 ture save dingy stone and red gravelly banks, where 
 the rains have torn them to pieces. There are none 
 of those sweet grassy dells and glades, and none of 
 those delightful thickets, coppices, and clumps of trees, 
 that spot the watered regions. No one seeks for 
 beauty or sublimity in the mountains of Northumber- 
 land and Yorkshire ; or in that dull part of the Gram- 
 pians where the lla, the Esk, and the Dee have 
 their remotest sources. When the low lands are ap- 
 proached, there will of course be sublimity, because 
 the rivers have gained force, and will cleave the earth 
 and form precipices and cascades. But the upper 
 regions, whatever may be their elevation, are cursed 
 with more than Babylonian infliction. " The bittern 
 will not dwell there :" the dusky raven, with his revolt- 
 ing crocq, hollow and horrible, as if it came from the 
 chambers of the grave, is almost the sole inhabitant ; 
 and even he does not make these places his home, but 
 merely visits them for the purpose of devouring the 
 remains of those animals that have perished in their 
 desolation. If the surface be dry, it presents nothing 
 but miserable stunted heather, and white lichen, which 
 crackles under the foot, and is the shroud of all useful 
 vegetation. If it be moist, then it is a peat-bog, which 
 offers no safe place for the foot; or, which is more 
 unsightly still, a dead peat-bank, over the whole black 
 surface of which there is not one living thing, animal 
 or vegetable. The water that creeps away from this 
 miserable surface has the appearance of unpurified 
 K 3 
 
102 LAKES. 
 
 train oil, often has a film of iron on the surface, and 
 is always so cold and astringent that the very stones 
 seem to be shrunken by its touch. 
 
 Turning to the other parts of the very same ridges 
 of mountains, how different is the scene, and how 
 different the emotions ! The lakes of Cumberland and 
 Westmoreland, now contrasting their silvery surfaces 
 with the swell of green hills, and the shade of dark 
 woods ; and now giving back the reflection of rugged 
 cliffs and frowning precipices ; there is music in the 
 name, and at the thought of them all the wealth of the 
 plains is forgotten. The gem of every country is a 
 lake. England has her Ulswater, Ireland her Killar- 
 ney, Scotland her Katrine, and Wales her Bala, which, 
 though designated by the humble name of a pool, is 
 capable of softening down the fiery spirit of the Cam- 
 brian, as he gazes on it from the mountain's ridge, 
 and the waters are so limpid, that " the lasses of Bala," 
 by laving their beauties in it on May-morn, excel in 
 brightness all the other daughters of the principality. 
 
 There is even a deeper feeling in the contemplation 
 of a lake than in that of a mountain. It is a moving, 
 almost a living thing ; and a focus for the concentration 
 of other life than you meet with upon land. In the 
 secluded tarn, or in those coppice-encircled bays where 
 the wind is excluded, the creatures are assembled. 
 The trees are full of birds, the bushes swarm with 
 quadrupeds, the air is alive with insects, and ever and 
 anon, as they touch with tiny foot the surface of the 
 water, the dancing circles convince one that the water 
 has its inhabitants likewise. Numerous visitors have 
 their banquetting house here, One grand spoiler is 
 
103 
 THE HERON. 
 
 THE HERON (Ardea cinerea) is, in appearance and 
 habits, one of the most singular birds to be found in 
 Britain. It is longer than the golden eagle, and the 
 expanse of its wings is not much less than that of the 
 ordinary specimens of that bird. It measures about 
 forty inches in length, and sixty -four in breadth ; 
 and yet, with all this vast spread, it does not weigh 
 above three pounds. The fact is, that it is all legs, 
 wings, neck and bill, and this gives it, when seen 
 from a distance, a very formidable appearance. In 
 its way, it is a formidable bird ; and though shy and 
 retiring in its nature, and not disposed to attack any 
 thing but its finny prey, its structure is admirably 
 united to its modes of life. Its legs are of great 
 length and strength. The scaly coverings of the legs, 
 and the nature of the cuticle on the naked parts and 
 
104 THE HERON. 
 
 between the plates, enable it to bear the water for a 
 great length of time without injury. Its toes are long, 
 with claws well adapted for clutching, and one toe is 
 toothed, so that eels, and other slippery prey, may not 
 wriggle out of its clutches. The muscular power of 
 the long neck is wonderful, and by it the point of the 
 bill can be jerked to the distance of three feet in an 
 instant. No bird indeed can, with its feet at rest, 
 " strike out " so far or so instantly as the heron ; and 
 the articulations of the neck are a sort of universal 
 joints, for it can, with the same ease, and in the same 
 brief space, jerk out the head in any direction or in 
 any position ; nay, the bill can act, and that powerfully, 
 when the neck is twisted backwards and the head under 
 the wing. The bill, too, is formidable ; the points pierce 
 like spears, and toward the extremity there are sharp 
 and strong barbs turned backwards ; so that when once 
 it strikes, it never quits that which it can lift, and it 
 makes a terribly lacerated wound in that which it can- 
 not. The bill is about six inches long, and the gape 
 still longer, as it extends backward as far as the eyes. 
 The gullet and craw are exceedingly elastic, so that it 
 can swallow large fish, and a number of them. Seven- 
 teen carp have been found at once in the maw of a 
 heron. The neck of the heron is indeed one of the 
 most singular pieces of animal mechanism, and proves 
 how nicely the maximum of activity and strength can 
 be combined in the smallest possible quantity of mate- 
 rials. The wings are also admirably fitted for enabling 
 it to float itself with its weighty prey, or to lean upon 
 on the air in its long and elevated flights. They are 
 concave on their under sides, and thus act like para- 
 
THE HERON. 105 
 
 chutes. This formation of the wings also enables it to 
 alight in such a way as not to disturb the water, or in 
 any manner alarm its prey. By exerting the parachute 
 power, it not only prevents that accelerated motion in 
 descent, which makes the stoop of the eagle so terrible, 
 but it gradually softens the motion, and alights so 
 gently as not to occasion a rustle in the grass, or a 
 ripple of the water. 
 
 This structure of the wings is of great use to the 
 heron in one of its modes of feeding. Its usual mode 
 is to wade and wait for the prey; but it sometimes 
 fishes upon the wing. It seldom does that, however, 
 except in shallow water, the depth of which does not 
 exceed the length of its neck or legs ; and its vision must 
 be very acute, to enable it at once to see the fish and 
 estimate the depth of the water. It comes to the 
 surface with a gradually diminished motion ; and then, 
 suspended by the hollow wings, whose action does 
 not in the least ruffle the surface, it plunges its bill, 
 grapples the fish to the bottom, and, after perhaps 
 a minute spent in making its hold sure, rises with a 
 fish struggling in its bill. The prey is sometimes 
 borne to the land and there swallowed, and sometimes 
 it is swallowed in the air. Eels are generally carried 
 to the land, because their coiling and wriggling do not 
 admit of their being easily swallowed when the bird 
 is on the wing ; but other fishes, especially when small, 
 are swallowed almost instantly, and the fishing as 
 speedily resumed. We once had an opportunity of 
 seeing four or five small trout caught in this way in 
 about as many minutes ; and we know not how long 
 the fishing might have been continued, as the bird did 
 
106 THE HERON. 
 
 not appear to be in the least exhausted ; but a gos- 
 hawk came in sight, and at her appearance the heron 
 escaped, screaming, to the upper regions of the sky. 
 
 That is not, however, its usual mode of fishing. 
 Wading is the general method, and in it the hooked 
 and serrated toes are often used in aid of the bill. 
 Small streams and ponds are its most favourite places, 
 and the success, especially in the latter, is often very 
 great. Nor is the actual catching the only injury that 
 the heron does to fish-ponds, for it lacerates a great 
 many that it does not secure, and often in so severe a 
 manner that they will hardly recover, though fish suffer 
 far less, either in pain or injury, from wounds, than 
 land animals. The heron does not much frequent the 
 larger and deeper lakes, and seldom (perhaps never) 
 fishes in water deeper than the length of its neck and 
 legs. Its time of fishing is the dusk of the morning 
 and evening, cloudy days, and moon-light nights. We 
 remember seeing only one instance of a heron fishing 
 when the sun was bright. That was on a rivulet, in 
 the hills of Perthshire, the banks of which, at some 
 places, nearly closed over the water ; and there the 
 heron appeared, like a skilful angler, to take the side 
 opposite to the sun. 
 
 The most apparently trivial habits of organized 
 bodies are just as demonstrative of infinite wisdom, as 
 those that attract the vulgar by their novelty, or by 
 some real or fancied resemblance to the marvellous 
 among mankind : the times at which the heron resorts 
 to the water to fish, are those at which the fish come to 
 the shores and shallows to feed upon insects, and when, 
 as they are themselves splashing and dimpling the water, 
 
THE HERON. 107 
 
 they are the least apt to be disturbed by the motions 
 of the heron. The bird alights in the quiet way that 
 has been mentioned, then wades into the water to its 
 depth, folds its long neck partially over its back, and 
 forward again, and with watchful eye awaits till a fish 
 comes within the range of its beak. Instantaneously it 
 darts, and the prey is secured. That it should fish 
 only in the absence of the sun, is also a wonderful 
 instinct. Every one who is an angler, or is otherwise 
 acquainted with the habits of fish in their native ele- 
 ment, knows how acute their vision is, and how much 
 they dislike shadows in motion, or even at rest, pro- 
 jected from the bank. It is not necessary that the 
 shadow should be produced by the bright sun. Full 
 day-light will do it ; and we have seen a successful 
 fly-fishing instantly suspended, and kept so for a con- 
 siderable time, by the accidental passage of a person 
 along the opposite bank of the stream, nay, we once 
 had our sport interrupted by a cow coming to drink ; so 
 alarmed are fish, especially the trout and salmon tribe, 
 at the motion of small shadows upon the water ; though 
 shadow, generally speaking, be essential to their surface 
 operations. They do not feed, and therefore we may 
 conclude that they do not so well discern small bodies 
 upon the surface, when the sun is bright. Fishes are 
 in fact, in part, nocturnal animals ; and the heron, that 
 lives upon them, and catches them only in their feeding 
 places, is partially, also, a nocturnal animal. 
 
 There is one case in which we have observed herons 
 feeding indiscriminately in sun and shade ; and that is 
 when a river has been flooded to a great extent, and. 
 the flood has passed off, leaving the fish in small pools 
 
108 THE HERON. 
 
 over the meadows. How the herons find out these 
 occasions, it is difficult to say ; but we have seen several 
 pairs come, after a flood, to a river which they never 
 visited upon any other occasion ; and within many miles 
 of which a heronry, or even the nest of a single pair, 
 was never observed. 
 
 Few birds are more generally diffused than the 
 common heron. It is found in all latitudes and all 
 longitudes. In some places they migrate, in others 
 they merely spread themselves, or shift their quarters 
 in the same latitude, and in others again they remain 
 quite stationary. The power of changing their abode 
 is necessary for their comfort, and even for their exist- 
 ence. They are exceedingly voracious ; and their 
 powers of digestion are equal to their powers of swal- 
 lowing. The seventeen carp mentioned by Willoughby, 
 were only a meal for six or seven hours. The absolute 
 necessity of food for the preservation of the life of the 
 animal is not, however, quite so great as its rapacity ; 
 for it can not only subsist for a long time without 
 food ; but when old ones are taken alive, they prefer 
 freedom to luxury, and starve themselves to death, 
 even though food be placed within their reach, and 
 kept there till they could eat it unobserved. 
 
 Herons appear, like many other animals, to have 
 some instinctive perception of the approach of rain ; 
 as their favourite time for flying, and at which they 
 take their loftiest flights, is just before a fall of rain. 
 Their elevation then is greater than that of the eagle ; 
 and their flights are also longer at those times than 
 when they are merely in search of food. It is possible- 
 that their elevation may be chosen as an instinctive 
 
THE HERON. 109 
 
 means of defence against their enemies, as when they 
 are assailed by eagles and hawks, their first means of 
 escape is usually ascent; and if they can sufficiently 
 attain that, they are understood to be safe. 
 
 In cases of extremity, they can shake off their 
 natural timidity, and show both courage and skill. 
 When a hawk gets higher on the wing than a heron, 
 (the whole of that tribe can kill their prey only by 
 stooping upon it when it is below them,) the heron is 
 said though it is very difficult to verify the saying by 
 actual observation to assume rather an ingenious 
 system of tactics. The neck of the heron is the part 
 usually struck at, as when that is successfully hit, he 
 is finished without harm to the assailant. To prevent 
 this, he is said to double the neck backward under the 
 wing, and turn the bill upward like a spear or bayonet, 
 over the centre of his body. This bill is, as has been, 
 mentioned, six inches in length, so that, if it be well 
 aimed, and the heron can avoid the stroke of the wing, 
 the enemy is sure to be transfixed before the talons can 
 take effect. We have heard of instances in which not 
 hawks merely, but eagles (not the golden eagle, but 
 the sea-eagle, falco albicilla, or the osprey) have been 
 thus transfixed by the heron, and have fallen to the 
 ground pierced through the vitals, while their intended 
 prey has soared untouched, and made the air shiver 
 with its scream of victory. As these contests must 
 take place at a considerable height above the earth, it 
 is not easy to know the details of them ; and indeed 
 the habitual vigilance which the heron observes upon 
 all occasions, necessarily renders the encounters not 
 very frequent. Still, though we have not seen it, the 
 L 
 
110 THE HERON. 
 
 occurence may be possible ; and the greater the force 
 with which the assailant descends, the greater is the 
 probability of its being fatally pierced by the bill. 
 Even when wounded, the heron is a dangerous bird ; 
 and when winged, it cannot be approached but with 
 the utmost caution. The bill is darted out with rapid 
 and unerring aim, at the eyes of whatever animal comes 
 within its range ; and powerful dogs have been struck 
 blind in rushing too hastily upon a wounded heron. 
 
 Under almost any circumstances the herons are 
 found in pairs ; and in the breeding season they con- 
 gregate in flocks, like rooks. The female heron lays 
 four or five eggs of a bluish green colour, and about 
 the size of those of the duck. Their nests are usually 
 built upon lofty trees ; but so fond are they of the 
 society of each other, that rather than separate, part 
 of them will build on the ground. Montague mentions 
 a heronry upon a little island in a lake in the north of 
 Scotland, where, there being but one stunted tree for 
 a great number of herons, as many as it could support 
 made their nests on it, and the rest congregated round 
 it on the earth. Twenty nests upon one tree is not an 
 unusual number in cases where they are pinched for 
 room. The nests are large and flat ; the frame-work 
 being made of twigs ; and the inner coating of wool, 
 feathers, moss, or rushes, according as there may happen 
 to be a supply. While the period of incubation lasts, 
 the male fishes with assiduity, and provides his mate 
 with a supply of food ; but after the young are hatched, 
 both parents assist in providing for them. In situations 
 that are well adapted for the construction of heronries, 
 the birds have great reluctance to leave them, even 
 
THE HERON. Ill 
 
 after the trees are cut down ; and a case is mentioned 
 by Dr. Hey sham, in which, when their own habitations 
 had been destroyed, they made an attempt to possess 
 themselves of those of their neighbours. A heronry 
 and rookery had been for many years near each other, 
 and the one party had never offered to give the other 
 the least disturbance. At length, however, the trees 
 which had been the habitations of the herons were cut 
 down, while those that belonged to the rooks were 
 spared. When the pairing time came, the herons made 
 a general attack upon the habitations of their swarthy 
 neighbours ; and after a considerable time spent in 
 fighting, and a number of killed and wounded on 
 both sides, the herons remained in possession of the 
 trees. Next year, however, the rooks renewed the 
 contest with the same determination as before ; but 
 they were again worsted, and the herons were again in 
 possession. After the second brood had been hatched, 
 there was not a suspension merely, but a termination 
 of hostilites ; and afterwards the two societies occupied 
 the same trees, and lived in harmony together. The 
 labour which the herons take in fishing for their broods, 
 as well as the success with which that labour is at- 
 tended, is very considerable ; so much so that the 
 spaces between the trees on which the nests are con- 
 structed, are often strewed with fish ; even eels of large 
 size have been brought in this way, from a distance of 
 several miles. 
 
 The heron has fallen off very much in estimation, 
 both as an article of food and as a means of sport. 
 In former times it was accounted a suitable dish for 
 kings ; and so highly was the hunting of it with hawks 
 
112 THE HERON. 
 
 prized, that the destroying of a heron's nest, or the 
 capture of its eggs, subjected the party to a penalty 
 of twenty shillings. At present it is little heeded 
 in places where fish-ponds are not in use ; and where 
 they are, it is looked upon as a destroyer and a nui- 
 sance. When the peasants succeed in killing it, they 
 do not send it off as a present to royalty, or even eat 
 it themselves ; they nail it up upon the barn wall 
 or the stable door those common museums of rustic 
 natural history, along with owls and kites, and other 
 birds that are refused a place in the culinary catalogue. 
 It is difficult to generalize the natural history of a 
 lake, as it depends much upon situation. This applies 
 to the plants upon its shores, the fish in its waters, 
 the birds that frequent its surface, and even the insects 
 that sport in the air over it. Sometimes those dif- 
 ferences appear to be perfectly capricious. Thus in 
 the lower part of Strathmoor, in Scotland, there is one 
 small lake (the Loch of the Stormouth,) which, in 
 the breeding season, is literally covered with the 
 common gull, while on other lakes in the immediate 
 neighbourhood, which are to all appearance as well, if 
 not better adapted for the purpose, there is not one to 
 be seen. But in the distribution of animals, whether 
 for temporary or permanent residence, there can be 
 no caprice, their preference of any place to another 
 must depend upon some instinct, which, if known, 
 would be another point in their history ; and it is only 
 by the careful observation of their peculiarities that 
 that history can be made either general or true so far as 
 it goes. There is, however, one bird, which is pretty 
 generally found visiting all the British lakes that arc 
 
THE SEA-EAGLE. 113 
 
 surrounded with high rocks or eminences, and not at 
 any very great distance from the sea ; characters that 
 belong to most of the larger lakes in the islands. That 
 bird is 
 
 THE SEA-EAGLE. 
 
 IN the history of the sea-eagle there is some con- 
 fusion ; first, because it has been confounded with the 
 osprey, or fishing buzzard ; and secondly, because the 
 old and the young have been described as two distinct 
 species. Indeed, some naturalists are of opinion that 
 the osprey is only the eagle at a different stage of its 
 growth. The two, however, are essentially different 
 in their size, their habits, and even of the divisions 
 of the hawk tribe to which they properly belong. The 
 male of the osprey is only about one foot nine inches 
 in length, and the female about two feet; and the 
 breadth of the male about five feet, and of the female 
 about five feet and a half. The male of the sea-eagle 
 is about four feet in length, and the female about two 
 feet ten inches ; and the breadth of the female is about 
 seven feet. The tarsi of the osprey are naked and 
 scaly; those of the sea-eagle are feathered at least 
 half way to the toes. The osprey has in former times 
 been trained to catch fish for its keeper, while the sea- 
 eagle, like the golden-eagle, will not fish but for itself 
 or its young. 
 
 The OSPREY (falco haliaetus) of Linnaeus, though in 
 his time the distinctions of eagles were very imper- 
 fectly understood, and which u&ed to be called the 
 bald buzzard, or the fishing hawk, is in fact not an 
 L 3 
 
114 THE OSPREY. 
 
 eagle at all, though a very fierce and powerful bird. 
 It is common in England, and perhaps most so in the 
 warmest parts of the country, less frequent in the north, 
 and rather a rare bird in Scotland. On the other hand, 
 the fishing eagle is abundant in Scotland, much more 
 so, and more generally diffused, than the golden eagle. 
 It is most abundant in the north ; less so in the south ; 
 rather a rare bird in the north of England, and hardly 
 known in the south. This is one of the principal causes 
 of the confounding of the two : they who have de- 
 scribed from English specimens, have described the 
 bald buzzard ; and they who have done so from Scotch 
 ones, have described the sea-eagle. The other mistake 
 is precisely of the same kind with that which made the 
 old and the young of the golden eagle two different 
 species. 
 
 The beak of the osprey is of a bluish black, with 
 the cere at the base, gray, and toward the base is rather 
 straight, but not so much so as in the eagle, and the 
 point is remarkably hooked. The general colour of 
 the upper part is brown, with the feathers a little paler 
 at the margin. Those on the crown of the head are 
 edged with white, and the back of the head and nape 
 of the neck entirely white, on which account it got the 
 name of the bald buzzard, though no part of its head 
 be destitute of feathers. The lower part of the body 
 is spotted with brown in the young birds, but nearly 
 pure in the old. The whole plumage is close and 
 glossy, and resembles that of water- fowl, fully as much 
 as that of the eagle. The legs are short and very 
 strong ; the tafsi black, and defended by scales ; the 
 lower parts of the toes very much tuberculated, and 
 
THE OSPREY. 115 
 
 the claws black and remarkably strong. The flight is 
 generally rather heavy ; but at times it can shoot along 
 with great majesty. 
 
 It forms its nest on the tops of tall trees or cliffs 
 near the water, but never on the ground, as is stated by 
 some naturalists. The eggs are four or five, of a pale 
 yellow spotted with brown. 
 
 The principal food is fish, in the catching of which 
 it shows very great intrepidity. When looking out for 
 prey, it hovers over the surface of the water, at a con- 
 siderable height, with its wings continually in motion ; 
 and when the prey appears, it darts down with so 
 much force, that it plunges fairly into the water to 
 the depth of a foot or two ; and then springs buoyant 
 to the surface, ascends the air, and soars off to a rest- 
 ing place in the woods or on the cliff, according to the 
 situation, dashing the spray from its feathers as it flies. 
 The fact of its being able to plunge into the water, 
 reascend and fly immediately, led some of the earlier 
 naturalists to conclude that one of its feet, at least, 
 must be webbed ; that, however, is not the case ; and 
 the only natural protection that it has from the effects 
 of the element in which it finds its food, consists in 
 the similarity of its feathers to those of the water-fowl. 
 Even the feathers upon its thighs are different from 
 those of the eagles and hawks ; they are short, close, 
 and compact, while those of the latter birds are long 
 and plumy. The osprey, though a powerful bird, is 
 not a handsome one. As both this and the sea-eagle 
 have got the name of the osprey, and some of the more 
 modern writers confine it to the one bird, and some to 
 the other, it is necessary to attend to the specific distinc- 
 
116 THE SEA-EAGLE. 
 
 tions, which are, indeed, too marked for occasioning 
 any danger of confounding the one with the other. 
 
 The SEA-EAGLE (falco albicilla) is a powerful bird, 
 second only to the golden eagle, and probably exceed- 
 ing that in rapacity, as well as in the range of its food. 
 The dimensions of this eagle have already been men- 
 tioned. Though approaching in size to the golden 
 eagle, it is not nearly so compact or indicative of 
 strength, neither is it of the same rich colour. The 
 upper part is gray-brown with darker spots, the lower 
 part nearly cinerous, with blackish spots ; the tail in 
 the full grown bird is white, which has led some to 
 confound it with the young of the golden eagle ; and it 
 has a beard or tuft of feathers at the root of the under 
 mandible. 
 
 As fishing is their regular means of subsistence, they 
 are chiefly found near the sea, or the shores of great 
 lakes, where they build their nests in the most inacces- 
 sible precipices, and the female lays one egg, or at the 
 most two. The eggs are white, and about the size of 
 those of a goose. Like the other rapacious birds, they 
 can remain a long time without food. Selby mentions 
 one that had existed in a state of want for five weeks, 
 at the end of which time it had begun to gnaw the flesh 
 from its own wings. 
 
 Few exhibitions in nature are finer than the fishing 
 of this powerful bird. Not adapted for walking into 
 the shallow water for prey like the heron, the sea-eagle 
 courses over the surface. From her unapproachable 
 haunt in the trees or the crags the latter is, when 
 she can obtain it, her most admired residence she 
 
THE SEA-EAGLE, 117 
 
 darts forth with the straightness and fleetness of an 
 arrow, and as she glides high in the air, scanning the 
 expanse of miles with her clear and unerring vision, 
 one or two motions of her wings are sufficient to ele- 
 vate her almost above the reach of human eyes, or 
 bring her down close to the surface of the water. 
 
 o 
 
 When her prey appears within her reach, she pauses 
 not an instant, but raising her broad wings upward 
 against the air, and thus taking advantage of the elas- 
 ticity of both, shoots down as if discharged from a bow 
 or an air-gun, makes the cliffs echo to her cherrup, and 
 dashes upon the water with the same thunder and 
 spray as if a lightning-rent fragment had been preci- 
 pitated from the height. For an instant the column 
 of spray conceals her, but she soon ascends bearing the 
 prey in her talons, and brief space elapses before she is 
 lost in the distance. 
 
 In lakes that abound with large fish, if there be lofty 
 trees or rocks near, the eagle is almost sure to be found, 
 more especially if the situation be wild and lonely. 
 Those inlets of the sea to which the name of "lochs" is 
 given, upon the north and west coasts of Scotland, are, 
 from their precipitous shores, their wild and solitary 
 character, and the abundance of fish that they contain, 
 favourite haunts of the eagle ; the same may be said 
 of those on the shores of Donegal, Mayo, and Galway, 
 and especially those in the southwest of Kerry, in Ire- 
 land ; also of the wild and cliffy positions of Orkney and 
 Shetland ; and to the very margin of the polar ice, 
 Indeed, it is found in all the northern parts of both 
 continents, and in Asia as far south as the Caspian 
 Sea. 
 
118 THE SEA-EAGLE. 
 
 But though it be always found near the waters, it is 
 properly a land bird, and can neither rest nor feed 
 except upon the land ; consequently, it is never found 
 upon the ocean, or near low shores, though it is by no 
 means confined to lakes and inlets, but may be ob- 
 served at every headland which is lofty and lonely 
 enough for its residence. Many tales are told of 
 conflicts between these eagles and the larger inha- 
 bitants of the sea. The eagle can strike in the water, 
 and retain in its hooked talons, fishes that it cannot 
 lift into the air, though it can keep them at the surface. 
 The larger cod, which are very abundant on those parts 
 of the coast which the eagle haunts, and the larger 
 salmon, in the bays, or in those lakes which are near 
 the sea, are those of which the tales are usually told ; 
 but we have heard similar stories of the basking 
 shark. 
 
 If the fish be near the surface, and cod, especially, 
 swim so near it, that from a promontory, a white " blink " 
 may be seen over the shoal, if numerous, the eagle 
 dashes down, plunges its crooked talons into the prey, 
 and clutches them with such force, that it cannot dis- 
 entangle them, even though so disposed. The lacer- 
 ation, the pain, and the encumbrance, prevent the fish 
 from darting off with that activity which it could exert 
 if free ; and the exertions of the eagle, though not 
 adequate to lifting the fish into the air, are very capable 
 of keeping it at the surface, as the difference of specific 
 gravity between even the living fish and the water, is 
 but trifling. Thus a struggle ensues ; the fish en- 
 deavours to dive, and the eagle strives to pull it above 
 the water, so as to be able to strike it behind the head 
 
THE SEA-EAGLE. 119 
 
 with its wing, or tear out it eyes, or open its skull with 
 its beak. If the fish be very large, and the claws of 
 the bird do not, in consequence, very much destroy its 
 muscular power, it is sure to succeed so far as to drown 
 the eagle ; after which, the talons relax, the dead body 
 floats off, and the fish recovers. But if the fish be 
 small, it is drowned in the struggle, by the water passing 
 the reverse way into its gills, or it is lifted so far out 
 of the water, as to enable the eagle to beat or tear it to 
 death. When that takes place, the fish has no ten- 
 dency to sink, and the eagle is said to float with it to 
 the shore, rowing in the air, or occasionally on the 
 surface of the water with Its wings. 
 
 Upon those lonely islets and rocks in the North Sea, 
 where the nests and young of sea-fowl almost cover 
 the surface in the breeding season, the sea-eagle finds 
 'abundant prey, and reigns king of the place, except 
 upon an occasional visit of the golden eagle, or in 
 those wild and lofty places which are selected by the 
 skua gull, for the scenes of its nidification. Though 
 no match for the eagle, single-handed, the Skuas, which 
 are bold and powerful birds, come to the charge in 
 numbers, and so buffet the eagle with their wings, that 
 she is glad to make her escape to the upper regions of 
 the air. 
 
 Though both active and successful as a fisher, the 
 sea-eagle has other means of subsistence. She does 
 not scruple to pick up dead fish along the beach, or to 
 attack seals, and land animals. Birds and small quad- 
 rupeds, arid even lambs, fawns, and grown-up deer, 
 fall a prey to the craving of her appetite ; and, as she 
 relishes carrion, on that account, most likely hunts by 
 
120 THE SEA-EAGLE. 
 
 scent, as well as sight. On the coast of Sutherland, 
 where the rocks harbour a number of these eagles, 
 which prey upon the inhabitants of the sea and the 
 flocks of the people indiscriminately, the following is 
 mentioned, as a successful way of capturing the spoiler : 
 " A miniature house, or at least, the wall part of it, is 
 built upon the ground frequented by the eagle, and an 
 opening left at the foot of the wall, sufficient for the 
 egress of the bird. To the outside of this opening, a 
 bit of strong skeiny (packthread) is fixed, with a noose 
 on the one end, and the other end returning through 
 the noose. After this operation is finished, a piece of 
 carrion is thrown into the house, which the eagle finds 
 out and perches upon. It eats voraciously, and when 
 it is fully satiated, it never thinks of taking its flight 
 immediately upward, unless disturbed, provided it can 
 find an easier way out of the house ; for it appears, 
 that it is not easy for it to begin its flight, but in an 
 oblique direction; consequently, it walks deliberately 
 out at the opening left for it, and the skeiny being fitly 
 contrived and placed for the purpose, catches hold of 
 it, and fairly strangles it." 
 
 It would require many volumes to detail the habits of 
 all the feathered tribes that appear seasonally or con- 
 stantly in the neighbourhood of lakes ; and the circum- 
 stances of climate and situation, as well as those 
 instincts of the birds themselves which cannot be ex- 
 plained, farther increase the difficulty. The most 
 remarkable of those that wade in the shallows, and 
 skim the waters, for predatory purposes, have been 
 mentioned. The birds which are found in the rocks, 
 woods, and coppices, near lakes, will be more properly 
 
THE WILD SWAN. 121 
 
 noticed in another place. The same may he said of 
 quadrupeds and insects. There are none of the former 
 peculiar to British lakes, and the latter are more 
 abundant over pools and rivulets, than on those ex- 
 panses of water, which are the fishing grounds of the 
 eagle and the osprey. Of the feathered tenants of the 
 water, those which are web-footed for swimming, and 
 have their feathers so constantly oiled as never to 
 be wet, though immersed in water, the largest, and 
 probably the rarest, is 
 
 THE WILD SWAN. 
 
 THE WILD SWAN, or WHISTLING SWAN, (anas cygnus 
 of Linnaeus,) is but a bird of passage in the British isles, 
 though generally a few of them breed in the northern 
 counties of Scotland, and in the Orkney and Shetland 
 islands, where their places of retreat or breeding are 
 the secluded lakes. The wild swan is a majestic bird. 
 The full-grown male measures nearly four feet in 
 length, and about seven feet in the expanse of the 
 wings. The weight, about twenty-five pounds. The 
 dimensions of the female are rather less. The body of 
 the wild swan is white, like that of the tame swan ; but 
 the head and nape are yellowish, and the wings are tipt 
 with ashen gray. The appearance of the bird, the 
 different note which it utters, and the different forma- 
 tion of the wind-pipe, upon which that note seems to , 
 depend, all point out this as a species entirely different 
 from the tame or mute swan. The note of the wild 
 swan is a deep and hoarse whistle, which, however, is 
 rather musical, though not sufficiently so to have gained 
 M 
 
122 THE WILD SWAN. 
 
 for it that vocal celebrity, with which it has been 
 invested by the ancients. It is somewhat singular, that 
 this music of the swan, which was celebrated by all the 
 ancients who mentioned the bird, with the exception 
 of Lucian, should be still admired in Iceland, where 
 vast flocks of wild swans repair annually to breed. The 
 Icelanders compare the music of the swan to that of 
 the violin, though the swan has but one note, 
 
 Wild swans are, strictly speaking, natives of the cold 
 regions ; and do not migrate so far south even as the 
 warmer shores of England or France, except in very 
 severe winters. In the north of Scotland they are 
 much more common, and some remain for all the year, 
 except when the lakes and waters, in which they find 
 their food, are frozen over. The food of the swan is 
 aquatic plants with their seeds and roots, and insects 
 that float upon the surface of the water, or are found 
 at the bottom where that is shallow. It does not ap- 
 pear that they prey on fish, excepting perhaps the fry 
 when very young ; and to other birds and quadrupeds 
 they are perfectly innocuous, except when themselves 
 or their young are assailed. On these occasions, espe- 
 cially the latter, they are both bold and formidable ; 
 and not only able to beat off other assailants, but to 
 render the approach of man dangerous. The power of 
 whistling in the wild swan is supposed to depend on the 
 singular flexures of the trachea, or wind-pipe. That 
 organ enters a cavity of the breast-bone, from which it 
 is reflected backwards before its termination in the 
 lungs. It is probable that this peculiarity aids in the 
 respiration of the bird, as well as in the production of 
 sound, the length and flexibility of the neck being 
 
THE WILD SWAN. 123 
 
 apt to occasion partial interruptions of that essential 
 operation, which the air contained in the cavity of the 
 bone may enable the bird to bear. 
 
 The quiet regions of the north are the favourite 
 abodes of the "swans ; and they are said to protract 
 their residence there as long as they can ; and, when the 
 lakes begin to freeze, to assemble in flocks and break 
 the ice with their wings, or prevent it from forming by 
 flapping and dashing in the water. Their chosen 
 abodes are to the north of Iceland, for, though far 
 more of them breed there than in the northern parts of 
 Scotland, the Icelanders regard them as birds of pas- 
 sage. Iceland, indeed, seems a place of rendezvous in 
 which numerous flocks, each containing a hundred or 
 more, assemble in their passage northward, in the spring, 
 and again in their passage southward, in the autumn. 
 Their flight is elevated, and the line or wedge in which 
 they are arranged, is so close and serried that the bill of 
 the one is nearly in contact with the tail of that before. 
 Though birds of powerful wing, their progress depends 
 a good deal upon the wind. When they go before a 
 brisk gale, they fly at the rate of one hundred miles an 
 hour ; but, when the wind is against them, their flight 
 is comparatively slow ; and a side wind, which blows 
 them from their course, is understood to hinder them 
 more than one which is right a-head. When on the 
 wing, swans are very difficult to shoot, as, on account 
 of the height at which they fly, and the rapidity of their 
 motion, the aim, even at the time of pulling the trigger, 
 must be taken ten or twelve feet before the bird, 
 otherwise it will have passed before the shot reaches 
 its height. In fact, they are shot with difficulty at any 
 M 2 
 
124 MIGRATION OF BIRDS. 
 
 time, because the great thickness of the feathers and 
 down both deaden the force of the shot, and make it 
 slide off. 
 
 The nest of the female is formed of reeds, without 
 leaves and rushes ; she lays from four to seven eggs, 
 which are of a rusty colour, with some white blotches 
 about the middle ; and she sits for about six weeks, so 
 that the young are not in a condition to quit the places 
 where they are hatched during the first season. They 
 begin to moult, or cast their feathers, in August, during 
 which operation they are unable to fly, and thus readily 
 become the prey of the people of the north, who hunt 
 them with dogs, or knock them on the head with clubs. 
 The young swans are not unpleasant food ; but the 
 people of the countries where they breed do not hesitate 
 to kill and eat the old ones, the flesh of which is very 
 hard, tough, and black. The feathers and down of the 
 swan are articles of commercial value ; and the north- 
 ern people dress the skins, with the feathers and down 
 upon them, for winter garments. In the north of Scot- 
 land both the birds and eggs are sometimes wantonly 
 destroyed. 
 
 The migration of birds is a singular provision of 
 nature, and though the rapidity of their motion makes 
 their passage across the widest seas a matter easily ac- 
 complished, yet the instinct which leads them to change 
 their latitude with the seasons is worthy of notice ; the 
 more so, that it is also one of the resources of man in a 
 state of nature. The same necessity, that of finding 
 food, seems to actuate both. The Siberian hordes follow 
 the course of vegetation, moving to the south as the 
 winter cold nips the vegetation of the north ; and to the 
 
MIGRATION OF ANIMALS. 125 
 
 north, as the summer heat parches it in the south. 
 The Esquimaux, on the other hand, move to the south 
 in summer, and support themselves by hunting ; while 
 they return northward to the sea in winter, to feed 
 upon seals and other breathing natives of the deep, 
 which must keep open holes in the ice to preserve their 
 existence. In like manner, the migratory flights of 
 birds appear to be chiefly influenced by the necessity 
 of seeking food, though partly also by the finding of 
 proper places for rearing their young. 
 
 From the nature of their powers of motion, the sea- 
 sonal migrations of quadrupeds are necessarily limited. 
 If they be inhabitants of islands, they cannot pass over 
 the sea ; and upon continents, large rivers, mountains, 
 or desarts, limit their range. In Britain, the stag and 
 the roe, which are found only in the uplands in the 
 warm season, find their way to the warm and sheltered 
 plains in the winter; and on more extensive lands 
 some of the quadrupeds take longer journeys ; but 
 they are all comparatively limited, and extensive mi- 
 grations are performed only by those animals that can 
 make their pathways in the sea or the air. The seal, 
 which during summer is found in such numbers on 
 the dreary shores of Greenland, Jan Mayen, and Spitz- 
 bergen, finds its way to Iceland in the winter; but 
 its migration is limited; and numbers still remain in 
 the most northern regions that have been visited. 
 The inhabitants of the water have, indeed, less neces- 
 sity for seasonal changes of abode than those of the 
 land ; as the water undergoes less change of tempera- 
 ture, and as some of those sea animals which, like the 
 seal, require to come frequently to the surface to 
 
 M3 
 
126 MIGRATION OF ANIMALS. 
 
 breathe, do not require to remain long above water, or 
 have much of their bodies exposed to the air. The 
 grand inconvenience which they seek to avoid, appears 
 to be the labour of keeping open those breathing holes, 
 without which they could not live under the ice. Or 
 if there is any other instinct, it may be the desire of 
 escaping their enemies, as the bears and the northern 
 people watch them at their holes, and make them a 
 sure and easy prey. Those who have not thought 
 rightly upon the subject, are apt to say that they could 
 not know of those dangers, and therefore could not 
 seek to avoid them without experience. But that is 
 part of the general error into which we are so apt to 
 fall when we begin the study of nature. We make 
 ourselves the standard of comparison, and think of the 
 animals not only as if they had to deal with men, but 
 as if they actually were men themselves. Whereas, 
 in their natural state they need no teaching, and the 
 danger, or the means of life, and the instinct by which 
 the one is avoided and the other secured, are co- 
 existent. We are in the habit of attributing superior 
 sagacity to animals in certain stages of their being ; 
 as we give the "old fox" credit for greater cunning. 
 That may be, indeed must be true, as regards the arts 
 of man, because the means to which he resorts for the 
 capture or destruction of animals are not natural, and 
 thus it would be a violation of the law of nature to 
 suppose that they should be met by a natural instinct. 
 In situations which nature produces, the children of 
 nature are never at a loss ; but as the contrivances of 
 man are no part of her plans, it would be contrary to 
 the general law to suppose that they should be in- 
 
MIGRATION OF ANIMALS. 127 
 
 stinctively provided against these. That they do learn 
 a little wisdom from experience, is a proof that they 
 are not mere machines ; that they are something more 
 than mechanical; that life in the humblest thing that 
 lives, is different in kind from the action of mere 
 matter; and that there runs through the whole of 
 organized being, a philosophy which man, when he 
 thinks of it, must admire, but which he cannot fathom. 
 The animal, or even the plant, is not like an engine, 
 confined to certain movements which it cannot vary, 
 but has a certain range of volition (if we may give it 
 the name) by means of which it can deviate a little 
 from that which would otherwise be its path, if that 
 path contain ought that is dangerous or inconvenient. 
 Thus, if we would come to the living productions of 
 nature with minds fit for learning those lessons which 
 they are so well calculated for imparting, we must 
 equally avoid two extremes, the one of which would 
 lead us to confound organic being with the mere in- 
 organic clods of the valley, and the other would lead 
 us to confound their instantaneous impulses with de- 
 liberation, and measure instinct by the standard of 
 reason. 
 
 The migrations of birds are more remarkable, and 
 have been more early and more carefully observed; 
 and that birds should have a greater range, is in perfect 
 accordance with the general law of nature. The ap- 
 paratus with which the majority of birds are furnished 
 for preparing their food for digestion in the stomach, 
 confines that food within a smaller compass than the 
 food of the quadrupeds. With the exception of the 
 birds of prey, which can rend other animals for their 
 
128 MIGRATION OF BHIDS. 
 
 subsistence, and are thus capable of living at all seasons 
 of the year, the birds must subsist upon soft substances, 
 as insects and their larvae, or the seeds, and green and 
 succulent leaves of plants ; while quadrupeds, being 
 furnished with organs of mastication which, along with 
 the saliva, reduce their food to a sort of pulp before 
 it be swallowed, can subsist upon dry leaves and 
 bark, and even upon twigs. Thus, in even the coldest 
 countries, there is still some food for a portion of those 
 quadrupeds that live upon vegetables ; and these again 
 afford subsistence for the carnivorous ones, as well as 
 for the more powerful birds of prey. In very cold 
 places too, the smaller quadrupeds, and even some of 
 the larger ones, are so constituted that they hybernate, 
 or pass the winter in a state of torpidity, in which they 
 have no necessity for food, and consequently none for 
 change of place. 
 
 But in the severity of the northern winter, the food 
 of the feathered tribes fails. The earth and the waters 
 are bound up in ice, so that the worms and larvae are 
 beyond their reach ; the air, which in summer is so 
 peopled with insects, is left without a living thing; 
 the buds of the lowly evergreen shrubs, and those 
 seeds which have fallen to the ground, are hid under 
 that cold but fertilizing mantle of snow, which, cold as 
 it seems, secures the vegetation of the coming summer ; 
 the berries and capsules that rise above the snow are 
 soon exhausted ; and the buds of the alpine trees are 
 generally so enveloped in resin and other indigestible 
 matters, that they cannot be eaten. Thus the birds 
 must roam in quest of food : nor is it a hardship, it is 
 a wise provision. Were they to remain, and had they 
 
MIGRATION OF BIRDS. 129 
 
 access to the embryos of life in their then state, one 
 season would go far to make the country a desart; 
 and even the birds would be deprived of their summer 
 subsistence for themselves and their young. They are 
 also provided with means by which they can transport 
 themselves, in average states of the weather, without 
 much inconvenience; and thus, while in migration they 
 seek their own immediate comfort, they preserve other 
 races of being. In some of the species, too, they 
 preserve a portion of their own race. It has been 
 mentioned that the young of the swan are unable to 
 migrate the first year ; and of most migratory birds, 
 there are always a few that are unable for the fatigue 
 of migration. If the strong did not go away, the whole 
 of the weak, and in cases like that of the swan, the 
 whole of the young, would perish. After the moulting 
 takes place, in most birds, perhaps in all of them in a 
 state of nature, the paternal instinct ceases to operate ; 
 they feel no more for the brood of that year. It is 
 each for itself individually during the necessity of the 
 winter ; and when the genial warmth of the spring 
 again awakens the more kindly feelings, the objects of 
 those feelings are a new brood. In her march, nature 
 never looks back ; her instinct is fixed on the present, 
 and thus leads to the future, without any reference 
 to that experience which the progress of reason and 
 thought requires. In consequence of this, the strong 
 would take the food from the weak, the active from 
 the feeble, and the full-grown from their offspring, if 
 nature were not true to her purpose, and prompted 
 the powerful to wing their way to regions in which 
 food is more easily to be found, and leave the young 
 
130 MIGRATION OF BIRDS. 
 
 and the feeble to pick up the fragments that are left, in 
 those places which they are unable to quit. 
 
 It has been said that the teachableness which is the 
 characteristic of man, has nothing to do with the 
 instincts of the animals ; but it does not follow that he 
 should not take a lesson from those instincts ; because 
 the instincts of animals and the reason of man are all 
 intended to forward the very same objects the good 
 of the individual and of the race. Now, in this very 
 fact of the migration of birds, simple and natural as 
 it may seem, and unheeded as it is by careless observers, 
 we have an example worth copying, even in the most 
 refined and best governed society. The strong and 
 the active go upon far journeys, and subsist in distant 
 lands, and leave what food there is for their more 
 helpless brethren. Would men do the same would 
 they temper the work to the capacity of the worker, 
 in the way that it is done by the instincts of those 
 migratory birds the world would be spared a deal of 
 misery. It is thus that, in the careful study of nature, 
 man stands reproved at the example of the lower 
 creatures, and learns, by doing by reason as they do 
 by instinct, to be grateful to that Power, " who teacheth 
 us more than the beasts of the field, and maketh us 
 wiser than the fowls of heaven." 
 
 The migrating birds that spend part of the year in 
 the British islands, may be divided into two classes, 
 summer birds and winter birds; but of both classes 
 some are only occasional visitants, and others are mere 
 birds of passage, tarrying only for a short time, as they 
 are on their route to other countries. 
 
 The two general classes observe the same law in 
 
MIGRATION OF BIRDS. 131 
 
 both of their migratory instincts the finding of food, 
 and of fit places for the rearing of their young. The 
 general motion for these two purposes is in opposite 
 directions they move toward warmer regions in search 
 of food, and toward colder ones in order to build their 
 nests. The winter birds come to us for food, and the 
 summer ones for nidification. The winter ones never 
 are those that feed upon land insects, and but seldom 
 those that feed upon seeds ; because when they come, 
 there are few of these. They are chiefly water-birds, 
 in some sense or other. They frequent the shores of 
 the seas, the inland lakes, or the margins of springs, 
 rivulets, and rivers, and they swim or wade, or merely 
 run along the bank, according to their nature ; and 
 resort to those haunts where their food is to be found 
 with the most unerring certainty. They are all com- 
 mon inhabitants of regions farther to the north, 
 have reared their broods there, and remained till the 
 supply of food began to fail. The extent of their 
 flight southward depends upon the severity of the 
 winter; they come earlier, and extend farther, when 
 that is severe ; and their departure is accelerated by a 
 warm spring, and retarded by a cold one. Though the 
 diffusion of the same species of birds be much more 
 extended than that of the same species of quadrupeds, 
 there is still a variation according to the longitude. 
 The birds of passage which appear in Britain are not 
 exactly the same as those either of continental Europe 
 or of America ; and that accounts for the appearance 
 of the occasional visiters. A strong wind from the 
 east during the time of their flight often wafts a conti- 
 nental bjrd to our shores ; and a strong wind from the 
 
132 MIGRATION OF BIRDS. 
 
 west occasionally brings us an American visiter. The 
 flight of birds is therefore a sort of augury, though a 
 very different sort from that believed in by the super- 
 stitions of antiquity. It has no connexion with the 
 offices or fortunes of men, but it tells what kind of 
 season prevails in those climes whence the visiters come. 
 The early appearance of the winter birds is a sure sign 
 of an early winter in the northern countries ; and the 
 early appearance of the summer ones is just as sure a 
 sign of an early and genial spring in the south. 
 
 The migration of our winter visitants is a very simple 
 matter ; we can easily understand why birds, when their 
 supply of food begins to fail, should fly off in a warm 
 direction ; but the return the general migration north- 
 ward for the purpose of rearing their young, is, at first 
 consideration, a more difficult matter. Yet when we 
 think a little, the difficulty ceases, and the one move- 
 ment becomes no more a miracle or a marvel than the 
 other. Very many of the summer birds feed upon 
 insects ; and summer insects are more abundant in the 
 northern regions than in the south. This happens 
 particularly with the water-flies, of which there are 
 supposed to be several generations in the course of a 
 long summer's day ; and the short night at that season 
 occasions little interruption to their production. The 
 same causes which produce the greater supply of insect 
 food, increase the daily period during which the bird 
 can hunt, and this gives it a farther facility of finding 
 food, over what it would have in the comparatively 
 short days farther to the south. But the breeding 
 time is that at which the birds are called upon for 
 extraordinary labour. During the period that the nest 
 
MIGRATION OF BIRDS. 133 
 
 is building, there is a new occupation altogether ; and 
 the nests even of very small birds are constructed with 
 so much care, that that and the finding of subsistence 
 demand more than the average power of industry. 
 When the female begins to sit on the eggs, the feeding 
 of her partially depends upon the male ; and when the 
 young are hatched, their support, till they are in a 
 condition for supporting themselves, requires a consi- 
 derable portion of the time and industry of both parents. 
 When the young are fledged, the parent birds still 
 require long days : the operation of moulting, by which 
 their tattered plumage is replaced by a new supply, 
 exhausts them : thus they have long days, and also 
 food in abundance, when they are least able to make 
 exertions in search of it ; and by the time that the 
 decreasing supply warns them that it is time to seek 
 more southern climes, they are in prime feather and 
 vigorous health, and able to sustain the fatigues of the 
 voyage. The return, too, is, generally speaking, after 
 the autumnal equinox, so that in their migration south- 
 ward they have the same advantage of a longer day 
 than in places northward. Thus, even in this com- 
 mon-place matter, a matter which is so common-place 
 that few take the trouble of heeding it, and almost 
 none inquire farther than saying that it is the instinct 
 of the birds, we may trace as perfect a succession of 
 antecedent and consequent, or as we say, of cause and 
 effect, as in any other part of the works or economy 
 of creation. We ought, indeed, to guard very care- 
 fully against stopping at the word instinct, or indeed 
 at any other word which is so very general that we 
 cannot attach a clear and definite meaning to it. Those 
 
 N 
 
134 MIGRATION OF ANIMALS. 
 
 general words are the stumbling-blocks and barriers in 
 the way to knowledge ; and when we turn to them who 
 take upon themselves the important business of instruc- 
 tion, and ask them for an explanation, they but too 
 frequently give us a word, and when we get one, in our 
 own language or in any other, to which we can attach 
 no meaning, the path to knowledge is closed. Perhaps 
 there are few words by which it is more frequently 
 closed than this same word, " instinct ; " because we 
 are apt to rest satisfied with it as an ultimate or insu- 
 lated fact, and never inquire into that chain of pheno- 
 mena of which it forms a part. Now nothing in nature 
 stands alone : Creation needs no new fiat ; but the 
 succession of events throughout all her works depends 
 on laws which are unerring, because they are not 
 imposed by any thing from without, but are the very 
 nature and constitution of the beings that appear to 
 obey them. It is this which makes nature so won- 
 derful, which so stamps upon it the impress of an 
 almighty Creator : its parts and phenomena are mil- 
 lions ; the primary power that puts all in motion, is 
 but One. 
 
 These reflections have been a little extended, because 
 they are often in danger of being overlooked ; and 
 because the tranquil shore of an expansive lake is one 
 of the best scenes for contemplation, one at which the 
 several elements and their inhabitants are more easily 
 brought together than at almost any other. But it is 
 not the broad expanse of water, with its mountains and 
 its majestic scenery, that is alone worthy of our con- 
 templation. The mountain tarn, which gleams out in 
 the bosom of some brown hill or beetling rock, like 
 
THE COOT. 135 
 
 a gem in the desart, when one does not expect it ; 
 the sheet of glittering water amid encircling forests ; 
 and the shelving pool amid undulated green hills, with 
 its margins alternating of white marie, clean pebbles, 
 and sedgy banks, have all their beauty and their re- 
 spective inhabitants. It is true that the osprey and 
 the fishing-eagle do not there display their feats of 
 strength, and the wild swan does not bring forth her 
 young, or even often visit ; but our old friend the heron 
 is there, and she finds new associates w r ith whom she 
 can dwell in peace. One of the common summer in- 
 habitants of those more lowly and retired and warm 
 situations, is 
 
 THE COOT. 
 
 THE common coo/, or black coot, sometimes called, on 
 account of the pale colour of its forehead, the bald 
 coot, (fulica atra, Linnseus,) is a bird about the size of 
 a domestic fowl. The length is about eighteen inches, 
 the expansion of the wings about twenty-eight, and the 
 weight, from a pound and a half to two pounds. The 
 bill of the coot is straight, and of a conical shape ; it, 
 and the fore-part of the head are usually flesh-coloured, 
 but in the breeding season the latter is spotted with 
 red. This pointed beak is less in the female than in 
 the male. The body is blackish, with a little white on 
 the outer edges of the wings. The legs are greenish, 
 and the bands or bracelets greenish yellow ; the toes 
 are long, and armed with crooked claws of considerable 
 length. The three front toes are pinnated, or have 
 three lobed fin-like membranes upon each side, but 
 they are not united by a membrane, and the hind toes 
 N 2 
 
136 
 
 THE COOT. 
 
 are bare. Though the pinnated feet of the coot adapt 
 it for swimming, and the water be its principal element, 
 it walks with some vigour, but with the waddling mo- 
 tion that is so general among the web-footed animals, 
 and it is said even to be adroit in climbing trees. 
 
 The coot is common in all the northern parts of the 
 world, and is by no means a rare bird in Britain. It 
 is a permanent resident within the island, but it changes 
 its residence with the seasons. In winter, coots are 
 found about the larger lakes, and sometimes in bogs, 
 and the estuaries of rivers ; but none in the open sea, 
 and not in salt water until the fresh-water lakes be 
 frozen over. They are commonly found in flocks. 
 Being rather timid birds, they are not much seen dur- 
 ing the day, and are very inert or lazy ; so much so, 
 that they can hardly be driven from their concealment 
 in the reeds and rushes, by water spaniels, but will 
 attempt to dive in the water, or bury themselves in the 
 mud. When compelled to take wing, they do it with 
 much apparent difficulty, and even pain. They come 
 abroad in the evening, and feed upon fishes, insects, 
 seeds, and herbage ; and pick up grain with more 
 rapidity than common poultry. 
 
 When the breeding time approaches, which is early 
 in the spring, the coots separate into pairs, and betake 
 themselves to the margins of smaller pieces of water, 
 where they find rushes, reeds, or sedges to conceal their 
 nests, The rush, however, is their favourite, and they 
 choose a place surrounded with water, generally on the 
 margin of a clear pool or small lake. The nest is 
 generally begun at or near the surface of the water. 
 The quantity of materials is large. They are flags. 
 
THE COOT. 137 
 
 rushes, and other dry herbage, matted together with 
 grass, fastened to the bush of rushes with the same, 
 and lined with soft, dry grass. There is a provision 
 of nature in the construction of the coot's nest. She 
 builds at so early a period of the season, that she is 
 in danger of being inundated by the spring rains. 
 Against casualties from these, she guards both by the 
 quantity and the buoyancy of her materials. The 
 height of her nest allows a considerable rise in the 
 surface of the surrounding water, and when that in- 
 creases too much, the nest is so buoyant that it can 
 float off, bearing her and her eggs in safety, to another 
 portion of the water. This elevation of the nest is apt 
 to expose both the coot and her eggs to the buzzard, 
 and other predatory birds, and for this purpose she 
 carefully seeks the concealment of the tallest flags and 
 rushes. The coots are prolific birds; the female lays 
 from twelve to twenty eggs, and she generally has two 
 broods in the year. The eggs are about the size of 
 those of the common hen, and of a dull white colour, 
 with dark spots running into blotches at the thick end. 
 In some places those eggs are in considerable request. 
 In flavour they are certainly inferior to those of the 
 hen, but they are more handsome in appearance. The 
 female sits about three weeks ; and the instant the 
 young quit the shell, they swim and dive and play in 
 the water with the greatest ease and activity. 
 
 Many other water-fowl are found seasonally on the 
 margins of lakes ; but they, and indeed those that have 
 been mentioned, are not so strictly speaking inhabi- 
 tants of lakes, as they are of ppols, fens, marshes, and 
 the banks of rivers, or upon the shores of the sea. 
 N 3 
 
138 THE CASE CHAR. 
 
 Deep and clear water is not adapted to the habits of an 
 animal that must float on the surface, and yet find its 
 food, or a part of its food, at the bottom. Shallow 
 waters, where there are the roots of plants, are not only 
 the places where the food of water fowl is found in the 
 greatest abundance, but they are the only places where 
 it is accessible. The features of the great lakes are 
 characterised by grandeur, and as the birds that fre- 
 quent them have this character, their numbers are 
 comparatively few. 
 
 Very deep lakes appear to be as little adapted for 
 fish, especially for the catching of them : the plenty and 
 the sport being in waters that are more shallow, or 
 in the streams and rivers. Many of the British lakes 
 are, however, interesting on account of the fish they 
 contain, and several have species that are peculiar. 
 
 Of the indigenous British fishes that are found only 
 in lakes, and are peculiar to certain lakes, and not found 
 in others, the most remarkable are, 
 
 1. THE CASE CHAR. 
 
 THE CASE CHAR, (salmo alpinus,) of which the 
 habits are not very well known, is found, chiefly, if not 
 exclusively, in Winander-Mere, in Westmoreland. It 
 is nearly in the form of a trout. The back is black, 
 which passes gradually into blue on the sides, which 
 again passes into yellow on the belly, upon which there 
 are a few pale red spots. Though the case char has 
 been found in Winander-Mere, it is not a permanent in- 
 habitant of that lake, but appears to enter it from the 
 sea, for the purpose of spawning, which operation it 
 
THE GUINIAD. 139 
 
 performs about the end of September. When it first 
 appears, it is in considerable esteem, but probably more 
 on account of its rarity than of any thing else. It is 
 commonly about a foot long. 
 
 2. THE TORGOCH; OR, RED BELLY. 
 
 THIS fish, to which the Highlanders of Scotland 
 give the name of tarrag-gcheal, is much more, strictly 
 speaking, a lake and an alpine fish, than the for- 
 mer, being found in the mountain lakes of Wales 
 and Scotland, in situations from which it is not very 
 likely to migrate to the sea. It is a most beautiful 
 fish, being of a shining bluish purple on the back, 
 which passes into silvery yellow and scarlet, marked 
 with spots of deeper red on the under part. Its flesh 
 is of a red colour : but there is not much known of its 
 habits, only it is understood to remain permanently in 
 the lakes, and to spawn about the beginning of the 
 year. It is in best season in autumn. In size and 
 form, it does not differ much from the case char. 
 
 3. THE GUINIAD. 
 
 THIS fish (coregonus lavaretus,) has some resem- 
 blance in its form to the trout, and was classed by 
 Linnaeus in the genus salmo. It is about the size of 
 the former j but has the mouth very like that of a 
 herring, and the covers of the gills of a silvery hue 
 and lustre, but sprinkled with small black spots. The 
 first dorsal or back fin is of a deep blue colour. This 
 fish is found in the larger lakes, in most parts of the 
 
140 THE GUINIAD. 
 
 United Kingdom, where the situation is not very high 
 and the cold not very intense. It is found in shoals, 
 and is supposed to deposit its spawn about Christ- 
 mas. 
 
 Trout are found in most lakes, and in many of them 
 eels and pike ; perch and other fish are also met with ; 
 but some of these are (by common tradition) said not to 
 be natives of the United Kingdom; and, at any rate, 
 lakes are not the best places in which either to catch 
 fishes or to study their natural history. Some of the 
 most interesting fresh-water ones may be mentioned to 
 more advantage in the next chapter. 
 
141 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE RIVER. 
 
 THERE is no object in nature, of which the associa- 
 tions are more delightful, than a river. The mountain 
 and the lake have their sublimity ; and in the economy 
 of nature they have their uses, the mountain is the 
 father of streams, and the lake is the regulator of their 
 discharge. The lofty summit attracts and breaks the 
 clouds, which would otherwise not be carried so far 
 inland, or would pass over without falling to fertilize 
 the earth. These are collected in snow, and laid up in 
 a store against the bleak drought of the spring ; and 
 as the water, into which the melting snow is gradually 
 converted during the thaw, penetrates deep into the 
 fissures of the rock, or into the porous strata of loose 
 materials, the fountains continue to pour out their 
 cooling stores during the summer. The lake, as has 
 been mentioned, prevents the waste of water which 
 would otherwise take place in mountain rivers, as well 
 as the ravage and ruin by which that waste would be 
 attended. 
 
 These have their beauty and their value ; but they 
 can, in neither respect, be compared to the river. 
 They are fixed in their places, but that is continually 
 in motion, the emblem of life ; the source of fertility, 
 
 
142 THE RIVER. 
 
 the active servant of man ; and one of the greatest 
 means of intercourse, and, consequently, of civilization. 
 The spots where man first put forth his powers as a 
 rational being, were on the banks of rivers ; and, if no 
 Euphrates had rolled its waters to the Indian Ocean, 
 and no Nile its flood to the Mediterranean, the learning 
 of the Chaldeans and the wisdom of the Egyptians 
 would never have shone forth ; and the western world, 
 which is indebted to them for the rudiments of science 
 and the spirit that leads to the cultivation of science, 
 might have still been in a state of ignorance and bar- 
 barity no way superior to that of the nations of Aus- 
 tralia, where the want of rivers separates the people 
 into little hordes, and prevents that general intercourse 
 which is essential to even a very moderate degree of 
 civilization. 
 
 The river is a minister of health and purity. It 
 carries off the superabundant moisture, which, if stag- 
 nating on the surface of the ground, would be injurious 
 both to plants and animals. It carries off to the sea, 
 those saline products, which result from animal and 
 vegetable decomposition, and which soon convert into 
 desarts those places where there are no streams. 
 When the alkalis and alkaline earths, that enter into 
 the composition of organized bodies, are once united 
 with the more powerful acids, they cease to be ca- 
 pable of again forming part of the living structure. 
 Lime, which, chiefly combined with phosphoric acid, 
 enters largely into the composition of bones, com- 
 bines more intimately with sulphuric acid, and is then 
 unavailing for animal purposes. It is the same with 
 those alkalis which enter into the composition of plants 
 
THE RIVER. 143 
 
 and animals. Potass and soda are the alkalis usually 
 found in vegetables ; and the acids, with which they 
 are found in combination, are, principally, the carbonic 
 and acetic ; though, in saline plants growing near the 
 sea, there is usually a small portion of muriate of soda, 
 or common salt. Now these combinations are easily 
 dissolved by sulphuric or nitric acids, and the com- 
 pounds which these form with the alkalis cannot be 
 again dissolved by the weaker acid ; so that if potass 
 of soda be once united to either of those acids, it 
 ceases to be fit for entering into the vegetable structure. 
 The alkali which is found most abundant in animal 
 structures, is soda, and the acids with which it is found 
 combined are principally the muriatic and phosphoric, 
 or some having a weaker attraction for it than the 
 muriatic. Ammonia is obtained abundantly in the de- 
 composition of animal matter ; but there is much reason 
 to believe that it is formed during the process. Now, 
 whenever any of those salts are changed to the nitrate 
 or the sulphate, or when any of their alkaline bases 
 are combined with nitric or sulphuric acid, combina- 
 tions that are sure to take place in every instance 
 when the salt or the base comes in contact with either 
 of these acids, a substance is formed which cannot, by 
 any natural process of which we have any knowledge, 
 be again separated so that the alkali may again enter 
 into the composition of an organic structure. Thus, if 
 these substances were allowed to remain, they would 
 gradually accumulate, and the termination both of 
 animal and of vegetable life would be the consequence. 
 Of this we have many proofs : in those warm regions 
 which, through the want of irrigation by water, have 
 
J 11 THE RIVER. 
 
 become desarts, there is always a crust of some of those 
 salts upon the surface ; and the beds of dried-up lakes 
 in warm climates contain quantities of the same, while 
 all their vicinity is sterile. On the surface of the neg- 
 lected lands, the coat is comparatively thin, but in the 
 basins that once were lakes (as in some of those in 
 Mexico,) it is several inches, or even feet, in thickness. 
 The greater thickness in the beds of the lakes, shows 
 that there must have been an accumulation there 
 while the bed was filled with water ; and hence it is 
 evident that the purification of the soil from saline 
 compounds, deleterious to vegetable and animal life, is 
 one of the most important functions of rivers ; and if 
 not so immediately necessary to the existing races of 
 beings, at least essential to their permanent continuation. 
 
 Rivers also tend to purify the air, as well as to drain 
 the earth of deleterious matter. The current of water 
 that descends from the high ground, causes a gradual 
 motion in the air, by which that over different kinds 
 of surfaces is interchanged. This is all that is meant 
 by purifying the air. When it remains long over any 
 particular kind of surface, it ceases to take up the 
 effluvia, which, by stagnating, would be converted into 
 a poison. It is by changes of this kind, that winds, 
 hurricanes, and thunder-storms are said to clear the 
 air ; and what they do with violence, is silently done 
 by the ever-flowing current of a living stream. 
 
 Nor, important though they be, are these all. Dead 
 animal and vegetable matters accumulate in water, and 
 then undergo decomposition, in the course of which 
 they give out gases which are pernicious. Disease is 
 always found about stagnant waters ; and " the reek o' 
 
THE RIVER. 145 
 
 the rotten fens," is one of the most disagreeable things 
 that can well be imagined. But the river carries off all 
 these, and runs pure and limpid; and thus its motion 
 is an instrument as well as an emblem of life. Nor are 
 the advantages confined to the river, while it is a 
 rapid stream winding its way among hills and uplands ; 
 they continue through all its course ; and, in the puri- 
 fication of the air especially, have their full effect when 
 it has sunk down nearly to a level estuary, enjoys the 
 benefit of a tide from the sea, and is useful for the 
 purposes of navigation. 
 
 Take, as an instance, the British metropolis waiving 
 the benefit that its commerce derives from the river, 
 and the utter impossibility of carrying on that com- 
 merce without it. Suppose, for a moment, that nearly 
 a million and a half of human beings, with all their 
 domestic animals, and their fires and furnaces, and other 
 means of contaminating the air, were huddled together 
 on a plain, elevated only a few feet above the level of 
 the sea, and surrounded by marshes, which London 
 once partially was, and always would have been, had it 
 not been for the drainage of the Thames, and the gra^ 
 dual elevation of the banks of that river, by the debris 
 that it is constantly bringing down. It would have 
 been a region of death, instead of the healthy place 
 which, in spite of all its magnitude, it is. The tide in 
 the Thames not only produces a constant current, and 
 therefore change of air, in the direction of the river ; 
 but the sea and the land air that it ultimately brings, 
 occasion, by their difference of temperature, a play 
 of cross wind to and from the hills on the north 
 and south ; and thus the river puts in motion currents, 
 o 
 
146 THE RIVER. 
 
 by means of which the whole city and suburbs are 
 ventilated. 
 
 Thus we see that, setting aside all its natural beauty, 
 all the direct fertility that it produces, all the living 
 creatures that without it could not exist, all the uses to 
 which it is applied in the arts, and all the facilities which 
 it gives to intercourse and trade, that, setting all these 
 aside, and looking upon a river as merely a physical 
 part of the creation, it is one of the most important 
 that can engage our attention. But when, to the ab- 
 stract consideration of the river itself, we unite that of 
 those adjuncts, they pour in and swell the utility, just 
 as the tributary streams roll in and augment the parent 
 tide. Occupying the most sheltered part of the dis- 
 trict, and the part toward which the rains and torrents 
 wash all the more fertile mould of the uplands, the 
 river possesses on its banks the most rich and abundant 
 food for vegetation ; and, by doing so, it affords both 
 the best shelter and the most plentiful subsistence for 
 animals. Hence quadrupeds, birds, and insects, flock 
 to it, to drink its waters, to browse the herbage upon 
 its banks, to walk in its groves, to sport over its surface, 
 or to commit their young to its tide. Nor is it the 
 favourite only of the tenants of the earth and the air ; 
 for there is a charm about the aquatic tenants of a 
 river, that is not found in those either of sea or of lake. 
 They seem to partake of the wholesome freshness of 
 the living water, and to show the effects in the beauty 
 of their colours, the briskness of their motions, and 
 probably in the delicacy of their flesh as food. Those 
 who carry sentiment into nature, condemn angling as a 
 cruel sport, though anglers, from the time of Izaac 
 
THE 111 V Ell. 147 
 
 Walton, and probably from long before that, have been 
 proverbially a kind-hearted and poetic class of men, 
 models of mildness, as compared with any other sports- 
 men. A man who is amid the beauties of nature in 
 calm and silent contemplation, or intent only upon the 
 capture of a trout, is in a situation the very best calcu- 
 lated for forgetting animosity, and cherishing kindness 
 and good- will for all mankind ; and any means by which 
 that frame of mind can be ensured, are cheaply purchased 
 at the expense of any quantity of mere spoken senti- 
 ment, more especially of that very questionable kind, 
 which is just as forward to batten upon the fish, as to 
 condemn the angler. 
 
 In Sir Humphry Davy's " Salmonia," there is a pas- 
 sage, descriptive of river scenery, which is so true to 
 nature, and, at the same time, so poetical and beautiful 
 that we cannot refrain from quoting it : " As to its 
 (angling's) practical relations, it carries us into the most 
 wild and beautiful scenery of nature ; amongst the 
 mountain-lakes, and the clear and lovely streams, that 
 gush from the higher ranges of elevated hills, or make 
 their way through the cavities of calcareous strata." (We 
 should not, for our fishing, give a preference to streams 
 that run through calcareous strata ; but n'importe.) 
 " How delightful, in the early spring, after the dull and 
 tedious winter, when the frosts disappear, and the sun- 
 shine warms the earth and waters, to wander forth by 
 some clear stream, to see the leaf bursting from the 
 purple bud, to scent the odours of the bank, perfumed 
 by the violet, and enamelled, as it were, with the prim- 
 rose and the daisy ; to wander upon the fresh turf, 
 below the shade of trees ; and, on the surface of the 
 o 2 
 
148 THE RIVER. 
 
 waters, to view the gaudy flies sparkling, like animated 
 gems, in the sunbeams, while the bright, beautiful trout 
 is watching them from below ; to hear the twittering 
 of the water-birds, who, alarmed at your approach, hide 
 themselves beneath the flowers and leaves of the water- 
 lilies ; and, as the season advances, to find all these 
 objects changed for others of the same kind, but better 
 and brighter, till the swallow and the trout contend, as it 
 were, for the gaudy May-fly ; and till, in pursuing your 
 amusement in the calm and balmy evening, you are 
 serenaded by the songs of the cheerful thrush, and the 
 melodious nightingale, performing the offices of pater- 
 nal love, in thickets ornamented with the rose and 
 woodbine." 
 
 There is, indeed, a calmness and repose about an- 
 gling which belongs to no other sport, hardly to any 
 other exercise. To be alone and silent f amid the 
 beauties of nature when she is just shaking off the 
 last emblems of the winter's destruction, and springing 
 into life, fresh, green, and blooming, that, that is the 
 charm. The osier bed, as the supple twigs register 
 every fit of the breeze, display the down on the under 
 side of their leaves, and play like a sea of molten silver, 
 for the production of which no slave every toiled in 
 the mine ; and at that little nook where the stream, 
 after working itself into a ripple through the thick 
 matting of conferva and water-lilies, glides silently 
 under the hollow bank, and lies dark, deep, and still 
 as a mirror, is made exquisitely touching by the 
 pendent boughs of the weeping willow that stands 
 "mournfully ever*' over the stilly stream. In such a 
 place, who could refrain from moralizing? From the 
 
THE RIVER. 149 
 
 days of Pliny, and probably from days long before 
 Pliny was born, it has been customary to look upon a 
 river as the emblem of human life. It brawls its 
 sparkling and playful childhood among the mountains, 
 " leaps down into life " by the last cascade. Then it 
 mingles among busy scenes : laves alike the castle 
 and the cottage, grinds at the mill, and glitters round 
 the churchyard ; broadening, and slackening its pace 
 while it runs ; and at last mingles in the mass of de- 
 parted rivers in the boundless expanse of the ocean. 
 The simile is not a bad one; and as a well chosen 
 simile is to him who wishes for thought without pe- 
 dantry and formality, what a well-dressed fly is to an 
 angler, it will bear to be pursued a little farther ; and 
 this is the more pardonable, that the termination which 
 at the ocean is tinged with gloom and despair, may be 
 brightened into hope and exultation. 
 
 The river is not, in its physical structure, in the 
 water of which it is composed, the same for one day, or 
 even for one hour ; but still, there is an identity which 
 is never lost, amid all those changes. Just so with 
 man : in his structure, in his pursuits, in his feelings 
 and associations, he changes every hour ; but still he 
 is the same individual, the chain of identity is never 
 broken. Whence does the river receive that constant 
 supply, which enables it to run perennial to the sea, in 
 omne volubilis cevum, ever draining, yet never dry, 
 ever wasting, yet never the nearer done ? There is a 
 spirit in the air, an invisible agent, which sustains the 
 fountains of life ; and by the action of which, the river 
 is enabled to flow, and man to contemplate its beauties, 
 and meditate upon its wonders. It has been mentioned 
 o 3 
 
150 THE RIVER. 
 
 that the river, in its course, washes away those sub- 
 stances, which would be hurtful to plants and animals, 
 and carries them to the great laver of the ocean, where 
 the materials of new lands are mixed and prepared. 
 Over the surface of that ocean the atmosphere spreads 
 its wings, a spirit brooding over the abyss ; and it, 
 by an imperceptible and inscrutable chemistry, sepa- 
 rates the water pure and limpid, sending it back to the 
 mountains to feed the springs; and thus the river, 
 which otherwise would run completely dry in a very 
 short time, is kept in perpetual flow. It is thus hidden 
 for a time in the ocean, but it is not lost; it enters 
 there, foul with the course which it has run upon earth, 
 and it ascends again, purified by the breath of heaven. 
 Just so with man : the faculties of the body are laid 
 and lost in the dust ; but the Spirit from on high calls 
 him up again, pure and immortal, equally safe from 
 the contamination of the world, and the corruption of 
 the tomb* 
 
 Even that little nook is an emblem of life ; so true is 
 it that nature is beset with tongues, if we would but 
 cease our own idle noise and listen to them. There 
 are the activity, the flowers, and the weeds of life in 
 that little rapid and struggle ; there is the calmness 
 of the grave in that smooth, dark, and stilly pool ; 
 and the weeping willow is both a monument and a 
 mourner. The wind is on the pool, however ; it has 
 shaken the May-flies from the pendent boughs of the 
 willow ; the little things are struggling upon the 
 waters ; and mark those boiling circles ! the trout 
 hastens to the feast. One plunge after another, and 
 every plunge is the death-note of a fly. Well may 
 
THE RIVER. 151 
 
 the willow weep; for its shade, calm and beautiful 
 though it be, is a very Golgoltha, where thousands are 
 immolated every hour, and thousands more perish in 
 the stream. 
 
 They who pule about the trout, have no compassion 
 for the fly, to which life is as sweet as to any other 
 living creature. They cry out at the putting of a 
 hook in its jaws, but they mention not the millions 
 of which the same jaws have been the grave ; they 
 complain that a net is spread for the fish, but they 
 never will reflect that the same fish converts the whole 
 stream into a net for the capture of his prey* If there 
 be cruelty in the one case, there must be cruelty 
 also in the other ; but the fact is, there is cruelty in 
 neither. The trout feeds upon the flies ; man feeds 
 upon the trout ; the purposes of life are served ; and 
 nature tempers the supply to the waste. 
 
 One word more about the cruelty of angling* As 
 man is superior to all other earthly creatures-, the 
 purposes of man are those that ought first to be con- 
 sidered ; and there are two points to guide the con- 
 sideration, moral justice to ourselves, that we do not 
 waste our time, or injure our sense of right and wrong 
 by our purpose ; and moral equity, that we invade 
 not the privileges of other men. Now in any of these 
 acts that we call cruelty to the animals, we are wrong 
 when the purpose in view does not call for the act, 
 or when there are other means of accomplishing that 
 purpose, as when a brutal person attempts to beat 
 into action an animal that stands more in need of food 
 or rest. When we do the act even with a purpose, 
 there is apt to be a taint, a lessening of the delicacy 
 
152 THE RIVER. 
 
 of feeling toward our fellows, in proportion as the 
 animal to which the act is done approximates to man 
 in structure or association. That which shrieks and 
 throbs with pain, from which the blood flows warm, 
 and the breath escapes in sighs and convulsions, 
 the killing of a hare or a rabbit, or even a pig, is much 
 more likely to contaminate, than the death of a trout, 
 which has little or nothing in common with us. A cat 
 is a predatory animal, and yet a man of any pretensions 
 to right feelings would rather pull a few thousand 
 fishes from the stream, than kill the mouser which sat 
 basking in the lone old woman's cottage window, and 
 had for ten long years been the only associate of its 
 mistress. This maudlin tenderness, which is often the 
 cloak of cruelty of a far worse description, is another 
 of the fruits of that bastard tree of knowledge, which 
 produces words, not things ; and the very summit of 
 which is so dwarfed and lowly, that it can command 
 but a little shred of the prospect. Before we decide, 
 we should see the whole ; for if we do not understand 
 that, we shall never be able to comprehend the purpose 
 and working of any of the parts. But we had almost 
 forgotten 
 
 THE WATER-FLIES. 
 
 THE habits of the water-flies show that nature has 
 intended them as food for the fishes. Very many of 
 them pass through the first stages of their being in 
 water ; and when they become perfect flies, the surface 
 and vicinity of that element are still their haunts. 
 They are in general short-lived; and the instinct of 
 
PHRYGANE^E. 153 
 
 continuing their races brings them to the water that 
 they may there deposit their eggs, and that when the 
 ends of their being are accomplished, their bodies may 
 not be lost, but serve as food for those inhabitants of 
 the water, which in their turn serve as food for each 
 other, for fishing birds and quadrupeds, and for man. 
 
 Water-flies are of many genera and species ; and 
 many flies which do not naturally breed in water, and 
 also beetles, are blown upon the water by accident, 
 and supply food for fish. 
 
 The water-flies, properly so called, that are most 
 abundant on trouting streams and other waters that are 
 shaded and sheltered by trees, may be reduced to three 
 leading genera : 
 
 Phryganece, or water-moths ; 
 
 Ephemerae, or day-flies ; and 
 
 Tipulce, or crane-flies, though the latter are rather 
 meadow-flies than water ones, as most of the 
 species deposit their eggs in the earth, in fun- 
 gous plants and other substances on land, and 
 not in the water. 
 
 The PHRYGANE^B include all the species of water- 
 flies that have very long antennce, or feelers, besides 
 four wings, which, when they are at rest, they fold 
 over their bodies in the same manner as moths. Their 
 wings, however, want that exquisite powdery plumage 
 which characterises the wings of the moths, properly 
 so called. They belong to the Linnaean order of Neu- 
 roptera, or nerve-winged insects, the wings consisting 
 of a fine membrane spread upon a nervous tissue 
 resembling that in the leaves of plants. These flies 
 
154 PIIRYGANL.E. 
 
 are vulgarly called green flies and yellow flies, from 
 the colours of their bodies, and also willow flies, alder 
 flies, or other names, according to the trees that may 
 be most prevalent on the banks of the rivers, as they 
 usually deposit their young on the leaves of trees. 
 The eggs are attached to those parts of the tree that 
 hang over the stream, the mother glueing them on 
 with a viscid juice that nature has supplied her with 
 for the purpose. The eggs remain there till they are 
 hatched, and produce larvce, which are long, with the 
 body divided into rings, and having six feet. When 
 those larv<z fall into the water they would instantly be 
 devoured by water beetles, by fish, and by the larvce of 
 other insects, such as those of the dragon-fly and the 
 dytiscus beetle, were it not that they instantly build a 
 house or case for themselves. These houses are formed 
 of various substances, as grains of sand, small shells, 
 bits of vegetable matter, cemented together by a glue 
 which the larva produces. One species makes choice 
 of lemna or duck-meat, the little green plant which 
 covers the surface of ponds and other stagnated waters 
 in the summer. The leaves of the duck-meat are 
 naturally round, and therefore not very well adapted 
 for being united into a solid fabric without a great waste 
 of materials , but the larva cuts them into perfect 
 squares, and puts them together so neatly, that its 
 house seems to be covered with a delicately chequered 
 green riband wrapped spirally round it. This case 
 connects them entirely, but they can at pleasure pro- 
 trude the head for the purpose of feeding, which they 
 do indiscriminately upon vegetable and animal food. 
 These larvae are well known to anglers, who give them 
 
PHRYGANE^E. 155 
 
 the name of callis, and consider them as an excellent bait. 
 When the larva is about to change its state, it rises with 
 its case to the surface, fastens that to some water-plant 
 by silken threads ; and after remaining for two or three 
 weeks in the state of a chrysalis, comes forth from its 
 case a perfect fly. The Phryganese are usually the 
 first flies upon the water, and on that account they get 
 their common name of spring flies. In the early part 
 of the season they appear only during the warm time 
 of the day, and in those gleams of clear sunshine which 
 brighten the variable weather of March and April ; 
 but as the season becomes warmer, they make their 
 appearance only in the morning and evening ; and at 
 the very hottest period of the season only during the 
 night. Thus their habits, as well as the structure of 
 their wings, have some resemblance to those of the 
 moths. Fish are exceedingly fond of those insects ; and 
 therefore when they are upon the waters, imitations of 
 them are the surest fishing-flies. 
 
150 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 THE EPHEMER/E, or day-flies, which name they get 
 rather on account of the period to which their longest 
 life is supposed to be limited, than to the time of their 
 appearance, come later upon the water than the Phry- 
 ganese. These, like the former, have four neuropterous 
 wings, but the hinder pair are so small, that they seem 
 only to have two. Their antennae are short, compared 
 with those of the spring flies ; and they carry their 
 wings erect. Some of them have three, and others two 
 long filaments in the tail. 
 
 The economy of these little creatures is very curious. 
 The females of most, if not of all the species, deposit 
 their eggs upon the surface of the water, when they 
 sink to the bottom, and the maternal duties and cares 
 are at an end. The egg thus deposited is soon hatched 
 
EPHEMERA. 157 
 
 in the water, and the little animal enters upon the 
 longest of its states of existence. They are furnished 
 with six feet and six fins, so that they can either burrow 
 in the mud or swim in the water. The former is a 
 favourite practice with many of them : they are said to 
 live upon the soft mud ; and they certainly do make 
 holes into it for some little distance, when they turn 
 and burrow their way back to the water by another 
 route. They live in this manner for two or three years, 
 or possibly for a longer period, without quitting the 
 water, or coming to its surface ; and the larva and 
 chrysalis are not easily distinguished from each other. 
 They are supposed to remain in the latter state for some 
 time, until the temperature of the air suits their final 
 transformation. When in the water, they cast their 
 coats several times, and empty coats may be found 
 floating on the surface ; but these may in many cases 
 have had their substance sucked out by the larvae of 
 other insects. 
 
 There seems indeed to be more labour in the bring- 
 ing forward of this little creature of a few hours' 
 existence, than in that of an elephant. The three or 
 four years' preparation in the water, and the change at 
 the surface, from the cased nymph to the winged insect, 
 are not all. Even when winged, it is but for flight to 
 the nearest bank, where it again casts its covering, 
 wings and all, and comes out the final fly in which the 
 wonderful life soon closes. The males appear to do 
 little else than shake their wings, and then drop down 
 and die ; but the females are more active, though they 
 too hurry their task of depositing their eggs, lest death 
 should overtake them ere it be accomplished. 
 
158 EPHEMERAE. 
 
 The numbers in which these creatures escape from 
 the water, are truly astonishing. Under favourable 
 circumstances, they literally fill the air in a few minutes, 
 and their cast skins are like a scum upon the water. 
 Those which appear in the heat of summer are sup- 
 posed to be the longest lived ; for in spring and autumn, 
 when the nights are cold, there is usually a new and a 
 different race every day ; and sometimes two or more 
 between sunrise and sunset. The females of most of 
 the species light upon the surface of the water, and 
 deposit the whole of their eggs ; but there are others, 
 such as that called the grey drake, that gambol over 
 the surface, and only occasionally touch the water. 
 Skilful anglers often take advantage of this, by having 
 an imitation of the green May-fly which they allow to 
 float, and a grey drake farther up the line, which by a 
 nice management of the rod they contrive to make 
 touch the surface only occasionally. Those which sit 
 upon the water, deposit their eggs all at once, in two 
 packets or bags, each containing from three to four 
 hundred. So immediate a change of bulk might derange 
 the action of the little animal, but it is prepared with 
 two air-cells of considerable magnitude, which it in- 
 stantly inflates, and thus is enabled to rise if it shall 
 escape the watchful eyes of the fish ; and as there are 
 thousands for every fish, abundant store of eggs is at 
 all times deposited. We are apt to wonder at this 
 apparent waste of labour upon creatures so small, so 
 short-lived, and so destined for destruction ; but nature 
 knows no labour ; the laws of her productions are 
 simple, certain, and unerring, and no effort is needed 
 but the primary one of creation. 
 
TIPUL^E. 159 
 
 The TIPUL^E are different in their appearance from 
 any of their genera. Gaffer Longlegs, who so often 
 buzzes round the candle, and pays for his temerity 
 with limb and life, is one of the giants of the race. 
 They are dipterous or two-winged insects, and their legs 
 are generally long in proportion to their bodies. The 
 small insects that are seen so constantly over moist 
 places in warm weather, are tipulae. They frisk, gam- 
 bol, and buzz like the gnat, (culex pipiens,) but they do 
 not sting like that insect, neither is their noise trouble- 
 some during the night. Many of the species deposit 
 their eggs in the earth ; but there are also others that 
 do so in the water, the larvae of which burrow in the 
 banks. 
 
 Those three genera of little creatures, in their suc- 
 cessive generations, probably exceed in number every 
 other description of visible animals ; and as one passes 
 from them to those that are still more minute, and 
 cannot be discovered without the aid of magnifying 
 glasses, one cannot help being astonished at the abun- 
 dance and variety of life of which the world is full ; 
 nor is the demonstration of an Almighty Creator the 
 less clear and forcible when we attempt to trace the 
 infinitely small of his works, than when we think of 
 millions of systems of worlds, and turn our contempla- 
 tion to that universe, " whose centre is everywhere, 
 and its boundary nowhere ;" wherever our course of 
 inquiry lies, there is always a point at which we must 
 drop that inquiry as beyond our powers, and turn in 
 adoration of Him who is infinitely mightier and more 
 wonderful than it all. 
 
 Of the inhabitants of the water, by which the summer 
 p 2 
 
160 THE TROUT. 
 
 triflers on the surface are consumed, the most interest- 
 ing to man are 
 
 THE GENUS SALMO. 
 
 THAT prince of fishes, the salmon, (salmo salar,} from 
 which the genus is named, is an estuary fish rather 
 than a river one ; and though angled for in some rivers 
 at a great distance from the sea, it is never there 
 in its primest perfection It ascends the rivers for a 
 particular purpose, and when it has reached the grounds 
 that are adapted for that, it should be left undisturbed, 
 as the capture is then wanton, a race being destroyed ; 
 and yet the parent, in whose capture they are lost, is 
 not in a condition for being wholesome food. The 
 proper fish for the river angler's sport is 
 
 THE TROUT. 
 
 THERE are a good many ascertained varieties of trout, 
 and there are probably more supposed ones, arising 
 from differences of the water in which they live, or the 
 substances on which they feed. The proper fresh- 
 water trout (salmo fario) is found, in large lakes, of a 
 very great size, weighing as much as sixty or seventy 
 pounds. It is somewhat like the salmon in the sea, 
 however, not often or easily caught ; but when it begins 
 to ascend the rivers, which it does for the purpose of 
 spawning, at an earlier or later period of the summer, 
 according to the situation, it may be taken. Whether 
 the fishes themselves be large or small, the eggs in the 
 roe of the trout are said to be all of the same size, 
 
THE TROUT. 161 
 
 only the very large ones contain ten or even a hundred 
 times as many as the small. 
 
 The time when the trout spawn is generally about 
 the month of November. The eggs, or roe, are first 
 deposited, and then the milt over them, and they are 
 wholly or partially covered with sand or gravel. The 
 bottom of clear running water is the best adapted for 
 the purpose ; and that is the kind of ground which the 
 trout instinctively choose for their operations. Four or 
 five weeks are supposed to be sufficient for the hatch- 
 ing of the eggs, but that depends a good deal upon the 
 situation and the weather; the eggs in a shallow moun- 
 tain stream which is apt to freeze, being supposed to 
 remain unhatched till the ice be cleared away in the 
 spring. When the young fish first make their appear- 
 ance, they are riot wholly detached from the egg, but 
 have a portion of the yolk attached to the lower part 
 of their bodies, which is understood to constitute their 
 first nutriment. It does not appear that the eggs can 
 be hatched in water that is distilled, or in any other 
 manner deprived of air, or in that which is impregnated 
 with lime, or any other ingredient that is deleterious 
 to the fish in a grown state. Some have even said 
 that they have seen the young trout still attached to 
 the remains of the eggs upon a shallow sand bank, 
 poking their little heads above the water ; but though 
 we have looked for this, we have not found it, neither 
 have we found the fry of the trout adhering to the 
 place where the spawn had been deposited. We have 
 seen it in the case of those of the salmon, and thus 
 can have no doubt that it also happens with trout. 
 
 About a week or ten days after the first bursting of 
 p 3 
 
162 THE TROUT* 
 
 the egg, the fry are entirely clear of it, and begin to 
 seek their food with avidity, preying upon very minute 
 insects and larvae, though there are some larvae which 
 are said to prey in turn upon them, while they are also 
 the prey of all larger fishes, even of those of their own 
 species. 
 
 The trout, when in a healthy state, is always marked 
 with fine crimson spots, but the general colour varies 
 with the quality of the water in which it is found. If 
 that be good and clear, the trout is of a fine pale 
 brown on the back, passing into yellowish and silver 
 grey on the belly ; but when the water is blackened 
 with moss or otherwise habitually foul, the colour is 
 more dark and dusky. The colour of the flesh is 
 always white, and the scales never have any of that 
 pearly lustre which characterizes the sea-trout and 
 salmon. The river-trout is not understood to migrate 
 to the sea ; or if it does, its habits become changed, 
 and the stages of the change have not been observed. 
 There is a good deal of confusion about the history 
 and habits of fish, especially of some of those that are 
 found only at particular places, such as periodically in 
 the estuaries of rivers, and, indeed, with trout them- 
 selves, the produce of different rivers, even those that 
 are at no very great distance from each other, being 
 dissimilar in their appearance, though not so much so 
 in their habits. It is generally supposed that the larvae 
 and insects, and earth worms in a recent state, which 
 form the principal food of trout in clear and rapid 
 streams, are the causes of the greater brightness and 
 beauty of their colours, as well as of their superior 
 sweetness. It is said also that the Gillaroo trouts at 
 
THE TROUT. 163 
 
 Galway in Ireland, are not a peculiar species, but that 
 they are the common trout changed by habit, the thick 
 and almost cartilaginous stomach, somewhat like the 
 gizzard of a fowl, being produced by the shell-fish 
 upon which they feed ; and that the sea-water, with 
 the saline substances on which they feed, redden the 
 flesh and give the pearly lustre to the scales of the 
 sea-trout. The salmon is adduced as a collateral proof, 
 and certainly the flesh of the salmon is a much finer 
 red, and the scales have much more lustre, when it first 
 leaves the sea-shore, than when it has been long in the 
 fresh water, and especially after it has spawned. But 
 the condition of the flesh at those two times depends 
 upon other causes than the difference between fresh 
 and salt water ; and if salt water had a tendency to 
 redden the flesh of any kind of fish, one would be apt 
 to think that it would have the same with all fish ; yet 
 of those taken in the sea the majority are white. 
 
 The trout is a very voracious fish ; and as, like those 
 of very many fishes, the teeth are not adapted for mas- 
 tication or chewing, the prey is taken into the stomach 
 entire ; and there, in ordinary cases, probably reduced 
 to a chyme, or substance fit for nutriment, by solution. 
 In some cases, however, such as that of the Gillaroo- 
 trout, where the animal has to subsist on crustaceous 
 food, which it has no means of taking out of the shells, 
 or otherwise managing, but by swallowing them whole, 
 the stomach acquires great thickness, and probably the 
 food is ground and reduced by muscular action. That 
 part of the subject is, however, involved in consider- 
 able obscurity ; and indeed a great part of the economy 
 of fishes demands more careful attention than has 
 hitherto been bestowed upon it. 
 
164 THE TROUT. 
 
 Besides larvae, insects, worms, fresh-water mollusca, 
 and smaller fishes, trouts feed on frogs, water lizards, 
 and sometimes, it is said, on toads, though from the 
 acrid secretion that exudes from the skins of the latter, 
 which they seem to be preparing when they swell 
 themselves up, and which is probably their only means 
 of defence, they cannot be either palatable or whole- 
 some. It seems doubtful whether trout, or any of the 
 other fishes that swallow their food without mastica- 
 tion, have much, if any, sense of taste. On their 
 tongues, or the internal surface of their mouths, there 
 is nothing analogous to the papillce on the tongues of 
 the mammalia ; and it may therefore be concluded 
 that they have no means of discriminating the qualities 
 of the substances on which they feed. Some writers have 
 even gone so far as to conclude that, as the fishes have 
 no means of judging of the substances that enter their 
 stomachs, they cannot be poisoned in that way. Per- 
 haps that may be going a little too far ; but certainly 
 they admit of a wonderful latitude of aliment, and are 
 certainly much less affected by any change of it than 
 quadrupeds or birds. The organs of respiration seem 
 to be the only delicate or sensitive part of fishes ; as it 
 is always in the gills that they are immediately affected 
 by impure waters. 
 
 Though there has been a good deal of investigation 
 of the subject, and organs of hearing, of some sort or 
 other, have been found in most species of fishes, yet 
 they are simple and obscure, as compared with those of 
 land animals; and hence we may conclude that their 
 sense of hearing is proportionably feeble. That they 
 are affected by loud sounds has been proved by ex- 
 
THE TROUT. 165 
 
 periment ; as there are authenticated cases of trout and 
 carp coming for their food upon the ringing of a bell. 
 It is not understood that there is much sense of touch 
 in the mouth of fishes, and that the fixing a hook there 
 does not affect them much, unless it interpose with, and 
 prevent, the action of those muscles, upon which the 
 motion of the gills and the operation of respiration 
 depend. But that they are not destitute of sensibility 
 on the general surface of their bodies, is proved by the 
 well known operation of tickling a trout ; in the course 
 of which, the fish, instead of making the least effort to 
 escape, will press itself against the hand, as if to invite 
 a continuation of the enjoyment. 
 
 When out of the water, trout appear to feel a great 
 deal of pain ; and as that is an unnecessary continu- 
 ation of suffering, anglers generally dispatch them the 
 instant that they are off the hook. Eager fishers, when 
 they have a prospect of success, sometimes neglect 
 that, and we once witnessed rather a ludicrous retri- 
 bution. A gentleman, who is now a professor in one 
 of the universities, was a great enthusiast both in 
 literature and angling ; and as he lived in a fine retired 
 part of the country, well adapted for both, he generally 
 pursued them together by the bank of the river. 
 When it was unfavourable for the rod, he took up the 
 pen ; and when the shadow or the breeze came, the 
 rod was resumed. One day he had succeeded in 
 landing a fine trout, which he put into his basket alive, 
 and as the time was favourable, he began to fish with 
 double ardour : but his hook got entangled in the 
 bank, which was rather steep, covered with long grass 
 and bushes, and contained the holes of water-rats, 
 
1GG THE OTTER. 
 
 shrews, and, as was understood, otters. As he lay 
 along the bank, and stretched down to disentangle the 
 hook, the trout, in the basket on his back, gave a 
 flutter, and the belt of the basket came in contact with 
 his neck. The idea that lutra had him by the throat, 
 in vengeance for the inroad both upon his mansion and 
 preserve, darted across the angler's mind ; to escape 
 from the foe, he tried to start up ; but position had 
 given his heels the buoyancy, and he pitched somerset- 
 wise into the water. 
 
 THE OTTER. 
 
 THE COMMON OTTER (lutra vulgaris, muslela lutra, 
 Linnaeus) is the most formidable of British aquatic 
 quadrupeds. It is found near both lakes and rivers, 
 but it prefers the latter, as they are better fishing 
 grounds. 
 
 The body of the otter is of a blackish brown colour, 
 with three white spots ; one under the chin, and one on 
 each side of the nose. It is a long animal, the body 
 measuring about two feet, and the tail sixteen inches. 
 
THE OTTER* 167 
 
 Though the otter swims and dives with wonderful 
 facility, it cannot be considered as an amphibious 
 animal, or an animal that can remain very long under 
 water. When by accident it is entangled there, which 
 it sometimes is, by getting into nets, and attempting to 
 plunder them of fish, but not able to get out again, it 
 is soon drowned. It is indeed provided with a diving 
 apparatus, which shows that the water must be care- 
 fully excluded from its lungs ; the nostrils are fur- 
 nished with membranes, which close them like valves, 
 whenever the muzzle gets under water. The ears and 
 eyes of the otter are also very small ; but the latter, 
 which are clear and bright, and adapted for enabling it 
 to see under the water, are so placed, that its vision 
 takes in a very wide range. The feet of the otter are 
 short, but they are armed with very strong claws or 
 nails, which are grooved on their under sides, as is 
 usual with animals that burrow in the earth. 
 
 Otters are rather solitary animals ; at least, not more 
 than one pair are usually found in the same immediate 
 neighbourhood, and their haunts are in concealed 
 banks. As is the case with the golden eagle and some 
 other birds of prey, the young are driven from the 
 paternal dwelling by the old ones, as soon as they are 
 able to procure their own food. 
 
 The nest or burrow is sometimes a crevice that is 
 found ready made, but as often an artificial one, the 
 entrance of which is under the water, or at least so close 
 to it, that no land animal can enter. The female goes 
 with young about nine weeks, and brings forth four or five 
 at a litter. The time of their usual appearance is in 
 March or April, later in the colder parts of the country 
 
168 THE OTTER. 
 
 than in the warm. When taken young, the otter may 
 be tamed with very little attention, and in that state it 
 is very playful, and shows a good deal of affection for 
 those who feed it. It may be trained to catch fish for 
 its master. The cubs may be suckled along with 
 puppies, or fed upon milk and bread, as if they get 
 animal food, especially fish, at too early a period, they 
 are not so apt to obey, but will attempt to make their 
 escape when allowed to take the water. When once 
 its attachment has been won, it is, however, very steady ; 
 as is the case with all animals which, in their natural 
 state, find their food chiefly in the water. 
 
 When in a state of nature, the otter is exceedingly 
 ferocious, or rather it maintains its ground with great 
 resolution* Its bite is very hard ; and when seized by 
 dogs, it catches them by the fore leg, a part in which 
 they are very tender, and will retain its hold till the 
 bone snaps. Vulgarly, it is said to do the same with 
 men ; and stories are told of the hunters stuffing their 
 boots with cinders, in order that the animal, which is 
 then allowed to fasten upon the boot, may mistake the 
 cracking of the cinders for that of the bone ; but 
 though we have seen an otter send dogs off howling, 
 we never saw one offer to attack a human being, but 
 rather show every wish to be suffered to carry on its 
 fishing with peace and quietness. 
 
 When food is plentiful, the otter is delicate in its 
 eating. The time when the salmon are ascending the 
 rivers to spawn, is the feasting time of the otter ; and 
 then it is so dainty, that it eats only the choice portion 
 near the head ; and the country people, in some places, 
 watch, and carry off the rest of the fish. It is sometimes 
 
THE OTTER. 169 
 
 taken in a naked trap, set in the pathway between its 
 hole and the water, but seldom in a baited one, as it 
 is not fond of any prey but that which it catches for 
 itself. Instances are mentioned, in which it has been 
 said to be taken by seizing the minnows with which 
 people have been fishing, but the accounts are not very 
 well authenticated. 
 
 The fishings of the otter are not confined to, though 
 they be chiefly carried on in, fresh waters. In the 
 Shetland Islands, it frequents the shores of the sea, 
 and fishes along with the seals. 
 
 When the otter is " frozen out," by the snow storms, it 
 is forced to enter upon a new course of life. It will then 
 travel to a considerable distance, attack lambs, poultry, 
 and sucking pigs ; and is very destructive to rabbits, as it 
 follows them through all the windings of their burrows. 
 These are the times at which it is most successfully 
 hunted, and the time too at which the skin, which is a 
 very excellent fur, is the most valuable. When the 
 water is not frozen, the otter is difficult to capture, 
 unless it can be shot, as it takes to the water, and only 
 occasionally " vents," as the hunters call it that is, 
 raises its nose to the surface to breathe. The old 
 hunters, who set more value upon the difficulty of the 
 capture, than on the prey itself, attack the otter in 
 posse comitatus, beat the banks with dogs, hedge in a 
 space with nets, and assail the otter with clubs and 
 spears, when he comes up to breathe. In catholic 
 times, the otter was eaten, and was ranked among fish, 
 of which it has the smell and taste, certainly ; and 
 therefore it was a feast in Lenten days. Now it is 
 caught only for the skin, which is valuable at all times, 
 Q 
 
170 THE WATER-SHREW. 
 
 except in the very heat of summer, when the fur is dry 
 and loose. The hair, which is delicately sleek and 
 glossy, is used, either along with the skir as a fur, or 
 felted as a finishing pile to fine hats. Almost the only 
 other British quadruped that is found near, and in 
 fresh waters, is, 
 
 THE WATER-SHREW, OR WATER-RAT. 
 
 THE WATER-SHREW (sorcx fodiens) is a small quad- 
 ruped, compared with the otter. It is a handsome 
 little creature, at least, in as far as hue and gloss of 
 covering go. On the back, it is of a fine raven black, 
 and the under part is white, but with a black line along 
 the middle. The ears are wide, and lined with a tuft 
 of pale-coloured fur, apparently to defend them from 
 the action of the water. The eyes are small, and have 
 the same sort of protection. The hair upon the tail of 
 the water-shrew is very short, and the tip is almost 
 wh'ite. Its body is about three inches long, and the 
 tail two, its weight is less than half an ounce. 
 
 When alive, the fur of this animal is remarkable for 
 its power in resisting water, and as it plunges into the 
 streams, the drops recoil from its dark coat like pearls. 
 For so little a creature, it swims and dives very fast, 
 and shows great agility in catching the fry of small 
 fishes, young frogs, and insects ; but it also feeds upon 
 roots, and probably upon grass, as the approach to its 
 hole is kept very neatly shorn. It burrows very fast 
 in the soft banks of rivers and ponds, and as it carries 
 its galleries a long way, it is injurious to the banks of 
 the latter. In Holland, where a great portion of the 
 
THE WATER-HYDRA. 171 
 
 surface is below the level of the tide and the sea fenced 
 off by dykes, the water-shrew is hunted as one of the 
 most dangerous enemies of the country. In Britain it is 
 not much heeded, though dogs search for it, and some- 
 times make their appearance with it hanging to their 
 noses. The female shrew is said to produce nine young 
 in a litter, and to have several litters in the course of 
 the year. 
 
 There is one very singular aquatic animal on which 
 the shrew feeds an animal at the very lowest extremity 
 of animated life an animal without organs of loco- 
 motion, and, indeed, hardly organized, and yet it preys 
 upon animal food. That is the fresh-water polypus, 
 (hydra viridis). It is found sticking to plants, in slow 
 running shallow streams of fresh water, and it is by no 
 means uncommon. It consists of a single sack or 
 tube, about an inch in length, and open at both ends. 
 Its substance is of a jelly-looking matter, mixed 
 with small glandular bodies. It is furnished with 
 filaments, or tentaculce, by means of which, it lays 
 hold of small molluscte, the remains of which are, 
 after digestion of the soluble parts, discharged by the 
 mouth. Simple as it seems, however, it can make a 
 sort of progressive motion, in which it fastens its head 
 and tail like a leech. It can even rise to the surface, 
 where, opening the tail like a funnel, it holds itself 
 suspended, its body with the air in the funnel being 
 lighter than the bulk in water. It is chiefly when in 
 this state of exhibition that it is hunted and captured 
 by the shrew. 
 
 The means of reproduction in this apparently very 
 simple animal are very singular. Little buds appear 
 
172 PRODUCTION OF FISH. 
 
 on the sides of the parent hydra, gradually expand and 
 acquire tentaculae, and when these are of sufficient size 
 for catching food, the young animals loosen from the 
 sides of their parent, drop off, and become independent. 
 Nor is the reproduction confined to the formation of 
 new animals by buds ; for sluggish as life seems to be 
 in this Zoophyte, it seems not to depend on even the 
 simple organization of the whole animal, but to be in- 
 stinctive and perfect in every part of it : if the water 
 hydra be cut in two or more pieces, these pieces do 
 not die, but gradually reproduce the other parts and 
 become perfect animals. Thus, even in that which a 
 careless observer would not believe to be a living 
 animal at all, but merely part of the remains of a dead 
 one, there is not only one life, but absolutely a number 
 of lives, all so perfect and vigorous as to be capable 
 of fabricating new organs for their use, and preserving its 
 existence. Here we have a remarkable instance of that 
 ingenuity which is displayed in all the works of nature ; 
 which is even the most remarkable where we would 
 least expect it ; and which should teach us, that every 
 thing around us is fraught with information. 
 
 As the greater number of fishes deposit their spawn 
 in shallow water, where it may be acted upon by the 
 air an action which appears to be absolutely necessary 
 for the hatching of the young, the estuaries of rivers 
 are the resorts of many finny visitants ; and, at times, 
 they literally swarm with the fry, or young. These are 
 sometimes beaten back by storms when they are in the 
 act of entering the sea, and cast upon the shore in my- 
 riads. We have seen a bank of young herrings nearly 
 a foot high, and extending for miles along the shore, 
 
MIGRATION OF FISHES. 173 
 
 after a sudden and violent storm, cast on the eastern 
 coast of Scotland. That might naturally be expected : 
 the soft structure of a young fish cannot be supposed 
 capable of resisting the tumbling and lashing of that 
 broken water, which can tear asunder beams of oak 
 and bolts of iron. When the fish is in the deep, it 
 is safe from those casualties ; but even whales, that 
 sometimes leave their distant haunts, and visit the 
 British seas, are unable to contend with the surge, and 
 thus they are wrecked, cast on shore, and left by the 
 tide. We are not aware of any instance where that has 
 taken place, except upon low and shelving beaches, or 
 where the fish has got entangled among rocks and been 
 left dry or aground at low water. Thus we find that, 
 though the provisions of nature are abundant, they are 
 never superfluous : the animal that can live and move 
 in the water, which is a homogeneous element, is unable 
 to sustain the conflict of air, sea, and earth in a storm. 
 The migration of fishes is even a more curious matter 
 than that of birds, especially in those that alternately 
 visit salt and fresh water. The water is their atmo- 
 sphere the element from which they elaborate the air 
 necessary for their life and growth ; and any change of 
 air, even nearly as great as the change from salt water 
 to fresh, would be fatal to any land animal with which 
 we are acquainted. Change of temperature in the ele- 
 ment which they breathe, is that which land animals 
 can endure best, while fishes are adapted to bear a 
 change in the composition. The former are protected 
 against variations of temperature, by the heat of their 
 bodies being, in general, greater than that of the air ; 
 for, when the air is warm, they suffer and pant, pro- 
 Q 3 
 
 
174 STRUCTURE OF FISH. 
 
 bably, because they have no excess of heat to enable 
 them to decompose the air, and mix the oxygen with 
 the blood and the superfluous carbon. 
 
 Fishes do not bear their change so easily. A salmon, 
 when caught in the open sea, dies if put into fresh 
 water ; and if one that has been for some months in 
 fresh water, be put into salt, it also dies. It is the 
 same with almost every fish. Hence the breathing ap- 
 paratus of a fish must undergo a change, every time 
 that it passes from the sea to fresh water, or from 
 fresh water to the sea. These changes are not imme- 
 diate ; and therefore the fish linger awhile in the estu- 
 aries, upon every journey, in order that, by the brackish 
 water, and by that alternate play of fresh and salt water 
 which is occasioned by the tides, they may prepare 
 themselves gradually for their new element. 
 
 Though, generally speaking, the sea pasture tends 
 more to promote the growth, vigour, and fatness of the 
 fish, than the river pasture; yet it also demands the 
 stronger organization ; and thus, those fish that enter 
 the rivers for the purpose of spawning, are all of deli- 
 cate descriptions, and the young often linger so long 
 about particular parts of the estuaries, that they are not 
 unfrequently mistaken for distinct species. Still, all 
 this is in strict accordance with principle ; and affords 
 (as, in fact, every thing upon which we can reflect 
 affords) a proof that, though the works of creation be 
 many, the plan and the purpose are one. There is not 
 one power to adapt the fish to the water, and another 
 to adapt the water to the fish : the adaptation is reci- 
 procal, clearly proving that the power is one. The 
 whole is one complete machine, and no part can be 
 
STRUCTURE OF FISH. 175 
 
 wanted or subsist alone. If the accomplishment of 
 any purpose demands a change of power, or even of 
 structure, there is ample provision for the effecting of 
 that. When young frogs, and naked larvae of insects, 
 continue habitually in the water, they have the fins and 
 the habits offish ; but, when they change their abodes, 
 they change also their forms and habits. 
 
 The organs of respiration in fishes are very curious, 
 more so, perhaps, than those of land animals, because 
 they have a double function to perform, first, to sepa- 
 rate the air from the water, and then, to decompose 
 it. The system of circulation in fishes is, however, less 
 complicated than that of the warm-blooded land animals. 
 In these, the heart is double ; and every time that it is 
 compressed, that which has been aerated in the lungs, 
 is poured, by the aorta and its ramifications, over the 
 whole system ; while that which has passed through the 
 system, and in its course supplied new materials, and 
 washed away such as were unfit for life, is sent by the 
 pulmonary artery to the lungs, in order that it may be 
 there washed, renovated, and made fit for the purposes 
 of life, by contact with the air. It may be that this 
 double circulation is necessary for keeping up the heat 
 of the animal ; and this is rendered as probable as any 
 thing of a similar kind can be, by the fact of its being 
 peculiar to the warm-blooded animals, and by their 
 being always the animals which are most exposed to 
 the atmosphere, and liable to be affected by its changes 
 of temperature. 
 
 In fishes, the heart is single, and the whole of the 
 blood which returns from the circulation by the veins 
 is sent directly to the organs of respiration. For this 
 
176 STRUCTURE OF FISH. 
 
 purpose, the heart of a fish is situated very near the 
 gills ; and sends off from its ventricle one artery, which 
 is ultimately ramified over the whole fibrous mass of 
 the gills in a very minute manner, and forming a tissue 
 which is very tender and sensible, and bleeds profusely 
 when lacerated. The surface which the gills present 
 to the water is very great ; for Dr. Monro, whose re- 
 searches threw much light upon this curious branch of 
 Natural History, calculates that those of a large skate 
 at 2250 inches, about equal to the whole surface of a 
 man's body. 
 
 In the cartilaginous bodies, which have their skele- 
 tons comparatively soft and pliable, and are therefore 
 without distinct joints, the gills are fixed ; while in 
 bony fishes they are free ; each gill, or mass of fringe, 
 being attached to a separate curved and moveable bone. 
 The gills are, with at least few if any exceptions, open 
 to receive the water from the mouth only. The fila- 
 ments float backwards from the bones, and the action 
 is produced from the motion of the gills themselves 
 and the gill-covers and the gill-flaps in which these termi- 
 nate in some species. If the water enters the gills from 
 behind, the filaments appear to get entangled, the cir- 
 culation of the blood is stopped, and the fish is stran- 
 gled, or as it is usually called, drowned. The very 
 same takes place when, by wounding the muscles that 
 move the breathing apparatus, the motion of the gills is 
 prevented, and also, when the application of any caustic 
 substance, such as quick-lime, destroys the surface. 
 The breathing apparatus of fishes is thus liable to be 
 deranged both by mechanical and by chemical injuries. 
 
 It is impossible to contrast this complicated respi- 
 
THE SALMON. 177 
 
 ratory apparatus in fishes, with the simplicity of their 
 general structure, without admiration. Their organs 
 of motion are as simple as the fluid in which they 
 swim, considered merely in a mechanical point of view ; 
 but when they have to perform their double purpose of 
 decomposing water and air, nature heaps resource upon 
 resource, till observation is bewildered and confounded 
 at the multiplicity of parts and the nicety of their 
 action ; while acuteness of feeling, which would be super- 
 fluous in the organs of motion, or in those of the mouth 
 and palate, is bestowed largely upon the gills to defend 
 them from injury. When a fish is allowed to expire, 
 the last convulsive motion is in the gills and gill-covers. 
 In fishes that inhabit the sea, there is a triple func- 
 tion for the gills, as the salts which the water holds in 
 solution have to be separated. They have also, in 
 many cases, to be separated from the food : and pro- 
 bably it is this separation which calls for a more 
 powerful organization in sea fishes than in those that 
 live only in fresh water. Among the older marvels 
 with which triflers in the study of nature amused them- 
 selves, one was, "why the salt sea produces fresh fish!" 
 but that is nowise more wonderful than that the sea 
 should produce fish at all. 
 
 THE SALMON. 
 
 OF all the migratory fish that frequent the British 
 rivers, the salmon is by far the most valuable, both as 
 an object of study, and an article of food. Its form is 
 fine, its motions graceful, and when in the very prime 
 of its condition, it is certainly the most delicious food 
 
178 THE SALMON. 
 
 that the water supplies, and it has the advantage over 
 other delicious kinds, of being very abundant. So long 
 as the inhabitants of the north have their salmon, they 
 need not envy those of the south their turtle. 
 
 Salmon being fond of a low temperature, are con- 
 fined to the northern hemisphere, and even in that 
 they are not found only from about the parallel of 
 the south of England northwards, from which, toward 
 the arctic circle, they are found in the greatest num- 
 bers. They seek the alpine streams, but they prefer 
 those that are not frozen over ; and they are said 
 instinctively to return to those in which they were 
 produced. This cannot of course be absolutely au- 
 thenticated, as their march in the deep cannot be 
 followed ; yet there are characteristic differences in 
 those of different rivers, sufficient to enable the fisher- 
 man to know them ; but whether these characters be 
 derived from the place of their nativity, or stamped 
 upon them annually after they leave the sea, and enter 
 the estuary, is not absolutely determined. There are 
 some facts, however, which would lead one to con- 
 clude that their local characters are not annual. After 
 they have once entered an estuary, there is no reason 
 for supposing that they descend again, till they have 
 deposited their spawn ; and thus it is by no means 
 probable that the same individual would be found in 
 two estuaries during the same season ; and yet if the 
 characters were seasonal, this would be required, be- 
 fore a Tweed salmon could be found in the Tyne, or 
 a Tay salmon in the Forth. These are, however, of 
 frequent occurrence, and so decided, that those who 
 are familiar with the varieties of salmon, never mistake 
 
THE SALMON. 179 
 
 them. The salmon having ascended the streams as 
 far as they are able, and penetrated into rivulets and 
 brooks, where there is hardly water to cover them, 
 begin to deposit their spawn in the early part of Sep- 
 tember, and continue it till the end of October ; those 
 which leave the sea first, being the first to deposit the 
 spawn. The growth of the roes and the milts is 
 attended with a falling off in the flesh, flavour, and 
 general condition of the fish ; and by the time that 
 the eggs in the roe have acquired the size of common 
 duck-shot, the fish ceases to be eatable, or at least 
 to be wholesome. As the period for depositing the 
 eggs approaches, the head of the male salmon under- 
 goes a considerable change. The points of the jaws 
 are elongated and curved, and become of a horny 
 consistency, which is a- preparation of nature for en- 
 abling him to make the nest or bed for the young. 
 
 When the female is ready to deposit the eggs, she 
 becomes the suitor, going in quest of a male, which 
 accompanies her from the deep water, to the shallow 
 or bank that is fitted for their purpose. When she 
 has made her choice, they begin their operations by 
 the male forming a trench, which he does in a hollow 
 of the bank as soon as possible ; and the female assists 
 him, though she takes a comparatively light share of 
 the labour. Those poachers who destroy salmon in 
 close time, are well aware of the p'ower which the 
 female has of attracting the male to the shallows ; 
 accordingly they watch till the two have begun dig- 
 ging; and then, knowing the male by his crooked 
 jaws, they transfix him with a spear. The capture 
 is both wanton and wicked : wanton, because the fish 
 
180 THE SALMON. 
 
 is not really wholesome food; and wicked, because it 
 causes, for no adequate compensation, the loss of thou- 
 sands of salmon. When the male is thus captured, the 
 female does not continue her operations, but goes in 
 quest of another male ; and we have heard of instances 
 in which one female has thus occasioned the death of 
 five or six males in the course of a day. 
 
 When no such wasteful outrage is committed, the 
 salmon labour at their trench, till it and the heap of 
 sand or gravel with which it has again to be covered, 
 be of sufficient size. Then the female deposits her 
 eggs, and the male deposits upon them a milky fluid, 
 in appearance very like that which is found in lettuce 
 and many other plants ; and when the eggs are all 
 deposited and covered in this manner, the parents 
 spread the gravel and sand over them, which closes 
 their paternal labour for the season. The opera- 
 tion lasts for some time, often for several days ; 
 and the male is so assiduous in digging the beds and 
 replacing the gravel, that he has been known to die 
 of fatigue. 
 
 Both are indeed very much exhausted; their very 
 appearance is altered. Their heads seem out of pro- 
 portion, and the horny curvature of the lower jaw of 
 the male penetrates, and even perforates the upper jaw ; 
 their colour is dull and brownish; their bodies lank 
 and flabby ; their scales almost entirely rubbed off; 
 and their fins are ragged. Nor is exhaustion the only 
 inconvenience to which they are subjected ; for a fresh 
 water worm, (lernea salmonea,} infests that most sensitive 
 part of them, their gills and is, in all probability, in- 
 strumental in driving them to the sea. 
 
THE SALMON. 181 
 
 Salmon that have spawned, are called " shotten sal- 
 mon." They are also called kelts, black fish, foul fish, 
 shedders, and kippers. They are found only in the 
 deep places, and avoid the banks of the rivers. Their 
 course is regularly toward the sea ; but it is sluggish, 
 on account of their exhausted state ; and they are often 
 observed resting in those places where the water is 
 more than usually still. The length of time that the 
 salmon take to descend the rivers must, of course, bear 
 some proportion to the distance to which they ascend. 
 In British rivers, the descent may be considered as, on 
 the average, over by the end of December ; but as they 
 are not gregarious, and do not even go in pairs, except 
 while spawning, their progress is quite irregular, and 
 some have begun to ascend, or at least appeared in the 
 estuaries, before the last of the kelts have descended 
 the river. 
 
 A question has been raised as to whether the salmon 
 do, or do not spawn every year ; and, though the ques- 
 tion does not admit of direct proof, there are some cir- 
 cumstances that would lead to a belief, that they do not 
 spawn annually. The fishers include both males and 
 females under the common name of " spawners ; " and, 
 in addition to these, they distinguish " barren fish," in 
 which neither milt nor roe is found, and which do not 
 ascend the rivers, or change their places, except by 
 going a little further off the shores, or out of the estuary, 
 in the tempestuous months. Another fact is, that the 
 length of time between the kelts leaving the river, and 
 the fish, in very fine condition, entering it, is rather 
 short for allowing the great change which they exhibit 
 to take place. We have heard intelligent salmon-fishers 
 
 
182 THE SALMON. 
 
 say, that those barren fish are not quite in so high con- 
 dition, or nearly so much infected with the sea-louse, as 
 the spawners, when these are first found in the salt 
 water. Further, those barren fish are not gilses, or 
 young salmon ; as they are of full size, and as the gilses 
 ascend the rivers to spawn, as well as the full-grown 
 salmon. Thus there is, at least, some ground for be- 
 lieving that, after the exhaustion of ascending the rivers 
 and spawning, the salmon take one season, or probably 
 more, to recruit themselves in the sea ; and if such be 
 the fact, the continuance of the barren fish, for the 
 greater part of the year, would lead one to conclude 
 that salmon never make long journeys at sea ; and this 
 again would explain why the varieties, peculiar to dif- 
 ferent rivers, are so easily distinguished. The same 
 fishers have assured us, that, in the lower part of the 
 estuaries, the spawning salmon, or, as they are some- 
 times called, the " run fish," are never taken near the 
 shore, but that the barren fish are more abundant there 
 than in the strength of the tide or current. This fur- 
 ther strengthens the opinion that has been hazarded, 
 and it also agrees with the habits of the salmon. Its 
 principal 'food in the sea, is the sand-eel or launce, 
 (ammodytis tobianus,) a fish, on the average, about four 
 inches long, which buries itself with wonderful rapidity 
 in the sand, and which is most abundant in shallow 
 water, or near the shores. 
 
 It is rather singular that the natural history of a fish 
 which is so well known, and so productive of profit, 
 should be so very imperfect. But we ought to reflect 
 who have been the compilers of the popular systems of 
 natural history in this country. Even Lord Bacon, in 
 
THE SALMON. 183 
 
 spite of all his sagacity, set down the salmon as a 
 short-lived animal, because it grows rapidly, an analogy 
 which may be true in animals or plants of the same 
 species, but which is certainly not true in those of 
 different ones. The goose and the eagle are both 
 rapid growers, and they are both remarkable for their 
 longevity. Goldsmith has set the salmon down as a 
 ruminating animal, and the mullet arid some others 
 have also been said to chew the cud : they do not chew 
 at all; though they, in all probability, discharge by the 
 mouth those parts of their prey which are not digestible, 
 and which are too large for passing through the pylorus 
 into the intestines, just as is the case with the birds of 
 prey ; or, the motion of the jaws and gill-covers, when 
 the fish is breathing, may have been mistaken for rumi- 
 nation. The food of the salmon, when in the rivers, as 
 well as that of the herring, when on the coasts, is 
 rather an obscure matter ; as the stomachs of both are 
 generally found empty. That they do eat flies and 
 also small fishes and worms, is certain, as they are 
 taken by imitation flies, and by various baits ; but 
 the fly is their favourite food, as when they do not 
 rise to a well-dressed fly, it is in vain to attempt their 
 capture with bait. Even those that are captured in 
 the sea, have not, generally, any thing in their stomachs, 
 though instances have occurred of their containing 
 the launce above mentioned, as also sprats, and other 
 small fish ; but it has not been ascertained whether 
 the individuals in which these substances were found, 
 belonged to the spawners or the barren fish of the fishers, 
 as they have been met with only in salt water, 
 
 At a period, varying a little with the state of the 
 
184 THE SALMON. 
 
 weather, but, generally, about the month of April, the 
 heat of the sun begins to hatch the eggs, which not 
 only lie dormant during the winter, but are supposed 
 not to be in the least injured, though completely frozen. 
 The young fish begin to raise their heads through the 
 sand and gravel, but continue for some time attached 
 to the eggs, from the remains of which they derive 
 their nourishment. A fisherman, who had long been 
 familiar with salmon, in all their visible stages, com- 
 pared their first appearance to the springing of a bed 
 of " young onions." 
 
 After the fry are once detached from the eggs, they 
 increase very rapidly in size ; and at the age of a 
 month or six weeks they take their passage down- 
 wards to the sea, increasing in bulk as they proceed ; 
 and making a halt for some time when they first come 
 to brackish water, as they are not able to bear the 
 salt without a sort of gradual preparation. In this 
 state they are called "smouts" by the fishermen, and 
 numbers of them are often stranded in stormy weather. 
 In June and July the smouts disappear; and by the 
 time that the last of them have vanished, the first 
 re-ascend the river as gilses. Sometimes these are 
 larger than the smaller full-grown salmon, but in 
 general they are not so large ; their tails are straight 
 at the end, whereas those of the salmon are forked ; 
 and they have neither the pearly lustre, nor the rich 
 colour and flavour, of a salmon immediately from the 
 sea. They ascend the river for the purpose of spawn- 
 ing, which operation they no doubt perform in the 
 same manner as the mature fish; but they either 
 change to salmon after their first spawning, or they 
 
THE SMELT. 185 
 
 continue more than one season in the sea ; as they 
 have not been found to ascend the rivers twice as 
 gilses. 
 
 The appearances of the salmon in these three states, 
 have led to the same mistakes with regard to them 
 that we have noticed in eagles. There are milts and 
 roes in the gilses, and rudiments of them in the smouts ; 
 and on this account, as well as on the differences in 
 their appearance, they have been regarded as distinct 
 species, although a different appearance before and 
 after the period of full maturity be so far from a rare 
 occurrence, that it is one of the most common in the 
 economy of nature. The salmon is not the only fish 
 about which there is this confusion and difference of 
 opinion. The smelt, (osmerus epirlanusj) which comes 
 from the sea to the estuaries of some rivers in the 
 beginning of winter, hardly ascends farther than the 
 water continues to be salt, or at least brackish, spawns 
 early in the spring, and retires to the sea in the 
 summer, has been often regarded as the fry of some 
 fish, known or unknown. The fry of the Shad, or 
 mother herring, (clupea alosa,} has often been con- 
 sidered as a distinct species. The shad is a larger fish 
 than the smelt, being as long as eighteen inches ; while 
 the other is seldom so much as twelve. But, except- 
 ing that they come into the rivers at different times of 
 the year, they are rather similar in their habits. The 
 shad leaves the sea about May, ascends a little way 
 into the fresh water, and having deposited its eggs, 
 again returns to the sea. Salmon fishers often catch 
 it in their nets ; and when " stake nets," or permanent 
 nets, were used in the lower parts of rivers, for the 
 
 R3 
 
 
186 WHITE-BAIT. 
 
 purpose of catching salmon, they entangled and de- 
 stroyed a great deal of the fry, both of the smelt and 
 the shad. The fry of the shad lingers a good while 
 in the fresh water before it enters into the salt. In 
 the Thames it remains about Greenwich during the 
 month of July. During the time that it remains it 
 is sought after as a great delicacy ; and the corporation 
 of London, as conservators of the river, in vain attempt 
 to monopolize it, under the name of WHITE-BAIT. As 
 this fry of the shad, when in the state of white-bait, is 
 very young, not above a month or six weeks old, 
 it contains only the mere rudiments of roes and milts ; 
 and thus they who have made a species of it, have 
 been put to some shifts in attempting to account for 
 the mode of its production. 
 
 Besides the instinct which guides them to those 
 places where they can deposit their spawn in fresh 
 water, so shallow as that it can be acted upon and 
 warmed into life in the spring, the salmon appear 
 to have another inducement to quit the sea. At that 
 time it is covered with a parasitical insect, which, 
 . though the fact be not very well authenticated, is 
 supposed to cause a disagreeable itching in the surface 
 of its body. The natural history, and even the species 
 of this insect, is obscure ; and it has not been properly 
 studied ; neither is it known whether it feeds upon the 
 substance of the salmon, or merely attaches itself to 
 the body of that fish in the same manner that other 
 sea-insects attach themselves to rocks, marine plants, 
 the bottoms of ships and other substances, from which, 
 though they can get support, they cannot get any 
 nourishment. The fishers call this parasite the " sea- 
 
THE SALMON. 187 
 
 louse; " and that may have led to the belief that it 
 feeds upon the salmon, or is annoying to it. But the 
 remarkably high condition and vigour of the salmon 
 are proofs that this adhering animal cannot be a very 
 great annoyance, or very destructive in its ravages, 
 if it be a ravager at all. At all events, if the salmon 
 be necessary for its existence, the sea is obviously 
 more so ; for it shrinks and drops off almost imme- 
 diately after the fish has entered into fresh, or even 
 into weak brackish water. The more that this para- 
 site is found upon the fish, the more exquisite the 
 flavour; and those who have not tasted it, can form 
 no idea of the richness of a sea salmon, instantly out 
 of the water, which has not been injured either by 
 its own struggles or by being handled. The flakes 
 are firm, brilliant in colour, and delicious ; and sauce 
 is superfluous, any further than a little of the liquor 
 in which the fish has been boiled. There is a rich 
 curdy matter between the flakes which dissolves in 
 the liquor and thickens it to the consistency of cream ; 
 and there is a flavour, and even a perfume about the 
 whole, which cookery would find it very difficult to 
 imitate. But this exquisite richness of the salmon, 
 like the aroma of some of the more delicious fruits, 
 cannot be transported. The salmon that are taken 
 with it, lose it when they are carried, even in boxes 
 of ice ; and those which pass only a small number 
 of miles up the fresh water lose it also. So striking 
 is the difference, that those who are accustomed to 
 taste the salmon caught in the estuary of the Tay, to 
 seaward of Broughty Ferry, where the banks and 
 shallows are of pure sand, and the water is nearly as 
 
188 THE SALMON. 
 
 much impregnated with saline matters as that of the 
 ocean, do not relish the salmon that is caught about 
 Perth, only about five and twenty miles up the river, 
 with a wide estuary for great part of the way, and 
 a tide, though of fresh water, to the termination. 
 
 On this account it is to be regretted that, in conse- 
 quence of a decision of the House of Lords, given, as 
 one regrets to say, more in the spirit of aristocracy 
 than in that of wisdom, the fishings in the lower or 
 sea part of the Scottish estuaries have been in a great 
 measure destroyed ; and that, for the keeping, or upon 
 the pretext, of laws and privileges, made and granted 
 in times of comparative barbarity and ignorance, the 
 public should be compelled to use salmon in a state 
 much inferior to that in which they might have had it. 
 At one time, permanent nets, extending for a consider- 
 able way into the water, were erected in all the estua- 
 aries ; and, while there was plenty of room for the free 
 run of spawning fish in the centre or deep part of the 
 river, great numbers of fish in the very best condition 
 were caught in these nets. But as these modern im- 
 provements could not have been contemplated gene- 
 rations before any one thought of putting them in 
 execution, the proprietors of the upper parts of the 
 rivers had got vested rights in the salmon ; and, that 
 these might not be interfered with, the public are 
 obliged to content themselves with salmon in a state 
 closely verging upon that in which it is not wholesome, 
 instead of having it in prime condition. 
 
 When the salmon have once entered a river, their 
 progress is not easily stopped. In Europe, notwith- 
 standing the length of the course, and the number of 
 
THE SALMON. 189 
 
 difficulties with which they have to contend, they are 
 said to ascend the Rhine and the Aar, pass through 
 the Lake of Zurich, and find those places in the shal- 
 lows of the Limmat, among the secluded valleys of 
 the central Alps, in which they were at first produced. 
 In like manner, the salmon of North America ascend 
 the long rivers of that country, pass through the lakes, 
 and find their way to their native streams, with the 
 most persevering industry and the most unerring cer- 
 tainty. 
 
 In their progress, they always have their heads to 
 the stream ; and their muscular power must be very 
 great, as they shoot up the rapids with the velocity of 
 arrows. They are sensitive and delicate in the extreme ; 
 and equally avoid water that is turbid or tainted, and 
 that which is dark with woods or any other shade. 
 They serve as a sort of weather-glasses ; as they leap 
 and sport above the surface before rain or wind ; but 
 during violent weather, especially if it be thunder, 
 they keep close to the bottom ; and they either hear 
 better than many other species of fish, or they are 
 more sensitive to those concussions of the air produced 
 by sound, as any loud noise on the bank throws them 
 into a state of agitation. When their progress is 
 interrupted by a cascade, they make wonderful efforts 
 to surmount it by leaping ; and as they continue to do 
 that at places which a salmon has never been known to 
 ascend, their instinct cannot be to go to the particular 
 spot where they were spawned, but simply to some 
 small and shallow stream. 
 
 Many " salmon-leaps " are celebrated, in those parts 
 of the country where there are cascades upon the clear 
 
190 THE SALMON. 
 
 rivers in which they delight ; and their efforts and 
 devices have been a little exaggerated both in prose 
 and in verse. All fishes that take long or powerful 
 leaps, incurvate their bodies when they spring from the 
 water ; and that has given rise to the vulgar belief 
 that, when they are to spring over a cascade, they take 
 their tails in their mouths. Michael Dray ton, the poet, 
 has described this as part of the economy of the salmon 
 at the leap of Kennerth upon the Tivy, in the county 
 of Pembroke ; and the same has been said of those at 
 other places ; but instead of fact, it is utter impossi- 
 bility, a salmon so fastened could not leap at all. 
 That the fish bends itself laterally is true, because the 
 muscles have of course their principal action in that 
 direction in which the tail can act as an oar in swim- 
 ming, and as a fulcrum in leaping ; and that, when 
 they put forth all their vigour, the tail is brought 
 nearly in contact with the head. We have watched 
 them often, both in places where they could succeed, 
 and where they could not ; but though we could dis- 
 tinctly see the curvature before the fish vaulted into 
 the air, the whole effort was so instantaneous, that we 
 could not discover clearly whether the body was bent 
 to or from the fall ; we think, however, that it was 
 bent toward it ; and as, in the eddies from which they 
 take their spring, this position would give the tail most 
 power as a fulcrum, there is every reason to believe that 
 that is their position. 
 
 The rivers of the Scottish mountains are the best 
 adapted for witnessing those feats ; and the places 
 where we have seen them to most advantage are at the 
 fall of Kilmorac, on the Beauly, in Inverness-shire, and 
 
THE SALMON. 191 
 
 at the Keith of Blairgowrie, upon the Ericht, in Perth- 
 shire. Both these places have many charms for the 
 naturalist and the lover of nature. They are the first 
 passes into the mountains ; the scenery around is pecu- 
 liarly fine ; and plants and animals are very abundant. 
 The rocks by the very margin of the stream are in some 
 places of stupendous elevation, while their bases are 
 shaded, and even their beetling tops crowned with native 
 timber, rich in foliage and vigorous in growth. They 
 are, in fact, zoological and botanical gardens of nature's 
 own preparing, in which there are very ample collec- 
 tions. The rocks are lofty enough for affording an 
 eyrie to the eagle ; and the coppices by the banks of the 
 stream are close and tangled enough for sheltering the 
 wood-cat and the otter. Both have this advantage too, 
 that they have habitations which harmonize with the 
 wildest of these beauties. The house of Craighhali 
 stands hundreds of feet above the foaming Ericht, on 
 the top of an abrupt precipice. The garden at Kil- 
 morac parsonage also overhangs the fall. 
 
 The pool below that fall is very large ; and as it is 
 the head of the run in one of the finest salmon rivers 
 in the north, and only a few miles distant from the 
 sea, it is literally thronged with salmon, which are 
 continually attempting to pass the fall, but without 
 success, as the limit of their perpendicular spring does 
 not appear to exceed twelve or fourteen feet ; at least, 
 if they leap higher than that, they are aimless and 
 exhausted, and the force of the current dashes them 
 down again before they have recovered their energy. 
 At Kilmorac they often kill themselves by the violence 
 of their exertions to ascend ; and sometimes they fall 
 
192 THE SALMON. 
 
 upon the rocks and are captured. It is, indeed, said, 
 that one of the wonders which the Frasers of Lovat, 
 who are lords of the manor, used to show their guests, 
 was a voluntarily cooked salmon at the falls of Kil- 
 morac. For this purpose a kettle was placed upon the 
 flat rock on the south side of the fall, close by the 
 edge of the water, and kept full and boiling. There 
 is a considerable extent of the rock, where tents were 
 erected, and the whole was under a canopy of over- 
 shadowing trees. There the company are said to have 
 waited until a salmon fell into the kettle and was boiled 
 in their presence. We have already mentioned the 
 avidity with which the wild cats watch the salmon at 
 this fall, and we need hardly add that the otters com- 
 mit great depredations. The salmon are remarkably 
 abundant in that river ; and as the fall confines them 
 to the space below, they are found in good condition. 
 We have seen as many as eighty taken in a pool lower 
 down the river, at one haul of the seine, and one of 
 the number weighed more than sixty pounds. 
 
 The Keith of Blairgowrie is a still more singular 
 place. It is at the junction of the hard mountain 
 breccia, with the soft red sand-stone which is found 
 along a great extent of the southern edge of the 
 Grampians. All the rivers in that quarter have cut 
 deep channels in the sandstone : but the breccia being 
 in many places very hard, it offers interruptions. Its 
 hardness is, however, not uniform ; so it is hollowed 
 into very singular cavities. Some of these are circular 
 pits of regular figure and considerable dimensions and 
 depth ; often deeper than the adjoining bed of the 
 river, and unconnected with it, save during floods. 
 
THE SALMON. 193 
 
 Locally, they are called " giants' kettles ;" and the 
 country people regard them as the productions of men 
 or of magic, though they be simply the effect of the 
 stream dissolving the softer parts of the rock. It is 
 probable that they have been produced by little cas- 
 cades, caused by interruptions that are now worn 
 away ; as they are found under those cascades which 
 still exist. The Keith is a remarkable one. The 
 river has cut a channel for itself in the upper surface 
 of the mass of breccia, by which, during drought, it is 
 almost concealed, and it is so pent up in the gorge, 
 that an agile and adventurous person could at these 
 times jump across. In this gorge, there is still par- 
 tially concealed, under the rocks, a fall of about thirteen 
 feet in height, which would not prevent the ascent of 
 the salmon on account of its height, but does so when 
 the river is low, on account of the great velocity with 
 which the water passes through and discharges itself 
 from the narrow gorge. The pool, or kettle, into 
 which the water falls, is of great depth, not less than 
 thirty feet. During a long continuance of dry weather, 
 the salmon accumulate in it in considerable numbers ; 
 and in a favourable state of the light, they may be seen, 
 not merely covering the extent from side to side, but 
 actually built, as it were, one stratum above another, 
 all hanging suspended in the water, and waiting till a 
 flood shall come, and, by filling the gorge, overflow the 
 rocks, and thus convert the fall into a brawling rapid 
 which they can ascend. As this place is much further 
 from the sea than the fall at Kilmorac, the fish are not 
 in so good condition when they arrive at it ; but great 
 numbers of them are caught by a bag-net on the end 
 
194 CATCHING A SALMON. 
 
 of a very long pole, which is plunged into the water 
 until the net is supposed to be further down than the 
 salmon, then it is moved laterally out of the place 
 where it was plunged, and drawn to the surface, gene- 
 rally with success. This fishing is not, however, un- 
 attended with danger ; the rocks are slippery with 
 spray, and small aquatic plants ; and as the fishers have 
 to overhang the rock in getting to the best fishing, they 
 are sometimes thrown off their balance by the strug- 
 gling of the salmon, and precipitated into the abyss, 
 from which escape, even on the part of an expert 
 swimmer, is very difficult. The otter, which is active 
 enough in many other parts of the Ericht, is said never 
 to attempt fishing in the cauldron at the Keith. But 
 we must close our desultory notice of this beautiful 
 and interesting fish. Its natural history would fill 
 volumes ; and therefore, all that can be done in a 
 portion of a single chapter, is to point out how worthy 
 it is of the most complete investigation ; and that in 
 studying the instincts and habits of the salmon, science 
 and practical use are inseparably united. We cannot, 
 however, resist quoting the following directions for 
 salmon-angling from the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia. 
 They accord far more with our own observation than 
 any thing that we have seen in print. 
 
 CATCHING A SALMON. 
 
 " THERE is scarcely any time, unless when it thunders, 
 or when the water is thick with mud, but you may 
 chance to tempt the salmon to rise to an artificial fly. 
 But the most propitious are critical moments; or, un- 
 
CATCHING A SALMON. 195 
 
 doubtedly, when, clearing after a flood, the water has 
 turned to a light whey or rather brown colour ; when 
 the wind blows pretty fresh, approaching to a mackerel 
 gale, (if not from the north,) against the stream or 
 course of the river ; when the sun shines through 
 showers, or when the cloudy rack runs fast and thick, 
 and at intervals discovers the pure blue ether from 
 above. In these situations of the water and of the 
 weather, you may always depend upon excellent sport. 
 " The most difficult thing for a beginner, is to throw 
 the line far, neatly, and to make the fly first touch the 
 water. A few attentive trials will, however, bring him 
 to do it with dexterity. It should always be across 
 the river, and on the far side, when you expect the fish 
 to rise. If he appears, do not be too eager to strike, 
 but give him time to catch the fly ; then, with a gentle 
 twist, fix the hook in his lip or mouth ; if he is hooked 
 on a bone, or feels sore, he will shoot, spring, and 
 plunge with so much strength and vehemence, as to 
 make the reel run with a loud and whizzing noise, and 
 your arms to shake and quiver most violently. In this 
 situation, take out the line from the winch quickly, 
 though with composure, keeping it always at the same 
 time stretched, but yet ever ready to yield to his leap- 
 ing. Do not let it run to any great length, as it is 
 then apt to be unmanageable, but rather follow him, 
 and if he comes nearer, you retire, and wind up as fast 
 as possible, so as to have the line tight ; and hold your 
 rod nearly in a perpendicular situation. When he be- 
 comes calmer, he often turns sullen, and remains mo- 
 tionless at the bottom of the water. Then cast a few 
 stones upon the spot where you think he is, and this, 
 s 2 
 
196 CATCHING A SALMON. 
 
 in all probability, will rouse him from his inactive 
 position. If you have no servant or attendant to do 
 it for you, be cautious in the lifting and throwing of 
 them, as the salmon may spring at that instant, and 
 break your tackle, should you be off your guard. 
 Being again in motion, he generally takes his way up 
 the current, do not then check him, as by this way his 
 strength will be the sooner exhausted. When, now 
 fatigued, and no longer able to keep his direction, he 
 once more tries all his wiles in disengaging himself 
 from the guileful and hated hook ; he crosses and re- 
 crosses, sweeps and flounces through every part of the 
 pool and stream ; but finding all his efforts to be vain, 
 he at last, indignant of his fate, with immense velocity, 
 rushes headlong down the stream. If the ground is 
 rough or uneven, or if you cannot keep pace with him, 
 give him line enough, and when it slackens wind up 
 again until you nearly approach him. You will then 
 probably observe him floating on his side, his motion 
 feeble, and all his vigour gone. Being unable to make 
 any farther resistance, it behoves you now to lead him 
 gently to the nearest shelving shore ; use no gaff, as it 
 mangles the fish very much, but take him softly by the 
 gills into your arms, or throw him, if not too heavy, 
 upon the top of some adjacent bank." 
 
 As the salmon is seldom in the rivers in time for the 
 spring fly, the May fly is often imitated as a lure for 
 him, but is only an imitation, as it has to be made of 
 gigantic dimensions. The only fly of which a natural 
 imitation makes a good salmon fly, is, 
 
197 
 THE DRAGON FLY. 
 
 The under figure is the nymph case ; the one attached to it, the fly in the act 
 of escaping. The upper is the full formed llbellula varia. 
 
 OF the DRAGON FLY (llbellula) there are several 
 varieties, called water nymphs, adder bolts, and other 
 names, varying in length from half an inch to two 
 inches and a quarter. They are all remarkable in their 
 appearance, and gaudy in their colours ; and salmon at 
 all times, but more especially when the water is 
 clearing after a flood, prefer them to any other food. 
 The dragon flies are the most vigorous of British 
 winged insects ; and their long wings, of which they all 
 have four, make a whizzing noise as they vibrate 
 them in the air. Though the largest and most gaudy 
 are usually seen about the margins of rivers, rivulets, 
 s .3 
 
198 THE DRAGON FLY. 
 
 and ponds, they are not, when in their winged state, 
 confined to those situations, but roam to a considerable 
 distance in quest of their food. They may be often 
 seen hovering over flowers, especially those of which 
 the nectaries are so deep that the small flies, which 
 live upon the honey, are forced to creep into them. 
 From this, one who had not watched them, would be 
 apt to suppose that they were in quest of honey. 
 That, however, is not their food : they frequent those 
 places in order that they may prey upon the flies 
 which are intent upon the honey ; and if one finds a 
 dragon fly quietly pounced upon a flower, one may be 
 sure that he has made a capture. The large ones may 
 be found on the margins of rivers, beating the reeds 
 and sedges, and other aquatic plants, with the greatest 
 assiduity, in order to discover the moths that shelter 
 there in the heat of the day. The only safety of the 
 moth is in concealment, for the dragon fly is provided 
 with powerful organs of vision as well as of motion, 
 and if he once gets sight of the prey, he seldom quits 
 it, and will even pick it up from the surface of the 
 water with great agility, though, in those cases, the 
 salmon sometimes make reprisals. The usual way 
 with the dragon fly is to pounce upon his victims while 
 they are sitting ; and for that purpose, his favourite 
 time of hunting is when the sun is clear. This not 
 only finds him easier prey, as the moths are very 
 reluctant to stir in such states of the atmosphere ; but 
 it also contributes to his security, as the times when he 
 feeds are those at which the fish usually lie basking 
 and inert. 
 
 The female deposits her eggs in the water, and as 
 
THE DRAGON FLY. 199 
 
 the times at which she does that are those that are too 
 dusky for hunting, she is very apt to be captured hy 
 the fish. Indeed, when the salmon are intent upon 
 fishing, they do not wait till the fly touches, but spring 
 up and catch it at a considerable distance ; and we 
 have observed, that when a dragon fly has been thus 
 hit in the air by a salmon, but not caught, and fallen 
 upon the surface of the water, another salmon has 
 risen at it, and borne it off in triumph. 
 
 The bringing of so many winged insects to hover 
 over the water, either in search of food, or for the 
 depositing of their eggs, is one of the principal means 
 by which the fish of ponds and rivers, whether migrant 
 or stationary, are nourished ; for if there were no flies 
 upon the water, there would be neither salmon nor 
 trout ; and even in the vulgar view of the matter, in 
 which animals which know no law but the law of 
 nature, and never violate that unless they are com- 
 pelled, are accused of cruelty, the dragon fly suffers no 
 injustice. The whole of its own history is a tissue of 
 destructions, both when it has come into the air and 
 become a fly, and when it is in the water. Nay, such 
 is its voracity, that it slaughters prey in all the states 
 of its being, even in those states in which many insects 
 are not only abstemious, but motionless. 
 
 The eggs which the dragon fly drops into the water, 
 fall to the bottom, and if they are not found by fishes 
 or insects, they are soon hatched in the sand ; and when 
 the larvae make their appearance, they commence their 
 depredations upon every thing smaller and weaker 
 than themselves. It is generally understood, that, all 
 insects, whatever may be the number and times of 
 
200 THE DRAGON FLY. 
 
 their transformations, and however much they may 
 vary in appearance, have the forms or cases of the 
 whole, the one within the other, in the same manner as 
 those that cast their skins without altering their forms, 
 are understood to have the rudiments of all the skins ; 
 but where the transition from one state to another is great, 
 a period of quiescence is required ; for which the insect 
 prepares, by forming for itself a case, out of materials 
 furnished from its own substance. With water insects, 
 the transitions are not so great ; and therefore there is less 
 quiescence, and a less change in the quantity and nature 
 of their food. The phryganece and ephemera, already 
 mentioned, have, both in their larva and their chrysalid 
 state, a very remarkable resemblance to the perfect fly, 
 only they are without wings, which would be worse than 
 superfluous, so long as they inhabit the water. When 
 they come up to the surface, it is only the bursting of a 
 thin membrane, in which they are enclosed, and they 
 are free and fit for their new mode of life. It is the 
 same with the dragon fly. The head of the larva bears 
 a very great likeness to that of the fly ; the body is also 
 like, only it is not so thick at the thorax, most likely, 
 because the muscles that are to move the future wings 
 are not developed till they be needed. The larvae of the 
 dragon flies are of a dusky colour, inclining to brown or 
 green, according to the species, those of the Lib. varia, 
 the largest and most showy of the British species, are 
 brown, and far from handsome. They have the same 
 hard mandibles as the winged insects, and six legs, 
 ending in feet armed with claws. They eat voraciously, 
 and cast their skins several times before they arrive at 
 their full growth. No prey comes wrong to them ; for 
 
THE DRAGON FLY. 201 
 
 be it insect or larva, if they can hold it with their man- 
 dibles, they do not quit it, till it be drained of all its 
 juices. They are even said to commit havoc for its 
 own sake, and kill when they have no intention of eating. 
 This can hardly be supposed, because there is no pur- 
 pose in it, and there is a purpose for every instinct ; 
 but still they may kill without the necessity of imme- 
 diate eating. Many animals hoard up food ; and, when 
 a fox or a vicious dog kills a number of sheep, he does 
 it not from* any hatred to sheep, but that he may have 
 a store of food. Now there is no reason why a voracious 
 larva should not obey, in the water, the same kind of 
 instinct which a voracious quadruped obeys upon the 
 land. The larva is, no doubt, a much smaller animal 
 than the other, and we are much less acquainted with its 
 habits ; but it does not thence follow that its instincts 
 are less perfect. Life and instinct have nothing to do 
 with physical extension. 
 
 The dragon fly is understood to inhabit the water for 
 about two years, during which time it continues to feed 
 voraciously, and to change by slow degrees from the 
 first larva to the ultimate fly. Sometime before this 
 takes place, the rudiments of the wings are discernible 
 under the covering or sheath of the animal, and the 
 thorax has increased considerably in size. When it is 
 to change to a fly, it creeps up the stem of some water 
 plant during the night, that it may not fall a victim to 
 the swallow or any other insectiverous bird, that preys 
 on the surface of the water. In order to -extricate 
 itself, it collects the whole energy of its body into the 
 head and thorax, and by grasping the stem on which it 
 hangs with its claws, and making an effort, apparently 
 
202 THE DRAGON FLY. 
 
 inflating the thorax at the same time, it bursts the case 
 along the back, and gradually effects its escape ; but it 
 does not entirely leave the case, until its wings, which 
 are at first folded together, have acquired their full ex- 
 tent and lustre, which they speedily do upon exposure 
 to the atmosphere ; and the new-born fly wings away 
 to sport its beauties and continue its ravages. 
 
 The eyes of the dragon fly are singular pieces of 
 mechanism, and admirably adapted for enabling them 
 to see, in all directions, those insects on which they feed. 
 The surface of the eye is reticulated, or divided into a 
 net-work, of which the compartments are regular six- 
 sided figures. It is computed that there are between 
 twelve and thirteen thousand of these in each eye of the 
 species that has been examined ; and that each of these 
 is a distinct and perfect organ of vision, though the 
 whole five and twenty thousand, which the two eyes 
 contain, are for the information of one living principle, 
 and the preservation of one little insect ! 
 
 We are apt to envy the dragon fly his five and 
 twenty thousand eyes, when we think we have but 
 two ; and yet, when we come to reflect upon it, we 
 have the advantage even in the number of our points 
 of vision. The single lens of our eyes is capable of 
 motion in every direction, and with almost instant 
 celerity, over the whole field of vision. The number 
 of points that we can therefore examine without turn- 
 ing the head, is not only greater than that which the 
 eyes of the dragon fly can command, but greater than 
 arithmetic can sum up. 
 
 Such are a few of the most obvious and accessible 
 subjects which offer themselves to human contem- 
 
THE DRAGON FLY, 203 
 
 plation on the banks, or in the waters of a river ; but 
 they are few as compared with the whole catalogue ; 
 and he who would hope to linger by the margin till 
 he had exhausted the whole of its natural history, 
 would be as sure of disappointment as the clown, in 
 Horace, who sat down on the bank to wait until the 
 stream should run dry. The information and the 
 flood are equally perennial ; and the one is as re- 
 freshing and fertilizing to the mind, as the other is 
 to that accumulated abundance of life of which it is 
 the parent and the support. 
 
204 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE SEA. 
 
 FROM the consideration of rivers, the transition is 
 natural to that of the sea, the grand parent and 
 destroyer of rivers, the source whence they derive 
 their waters pure and limpid, and into which they 
 discharge them to be cleansed from those impurities 
 which they have acquired in their progress through 
 decaying animal and vegetable substances, and their 
 motion along the surface of the earth. 
 
 To those who are capable of only gazing upon its 
 surface, the ocean is a sublime sight. " The waste of 
 waters," as we are in the habit of calling it though it 
 be any thing but a waste, girdles the globe from pole 
 to pole, and occupies nearly three-fourths of its sur- 
 face. When, on some calm and pleasant day, when 
 there is not a cloud to dapple the sky, or a breath to 
 ruffle the waters, we look out from some lone pro- 
 montory or beetling rock, upon the soft green face 
 of ocean, and see it extending on and on in one glassy 
 level, till it blend its farther blue so softly with that 
 of the air, that we know not which is sea and which 
 sky, but are apt to fancy that this limpid watery 
 curtain is drawn over the universe ; and that the sun, 
 the planets, and the stars, are islands in the same sea 
 in which our own habitation is cast. In the soft but 
 
THE SEA CALM. 205 
 
 sublime contemplation, we find the mind expand with 
 the subject ; the fancy glides off to places more high 
 than line can measure, more deep than plummet can 
 sound ; we feel the link that binds us to creation ; and 
 finding it to be fair and lovely, our kindly feelings only 
 are touched, and we exult in the general happiness 
 of that of which we feel that we are a part. If then 
 a vessel should come in sight, with the sun illuminating 
 its canvas, like a beam of light on the blue sea, and 
 moving slow and stately, not seeming to us to be 
 in motion, and yet shifting miles before we can count 
 minutes, how we long to be passengers to walk upon 
 the waters to be wafted by the winds to visit the 
 remotest parts of the earth without half the effort 
 which is required before the sluggard can turn on 
 his couch. Then, if we linger till the sun declines, 
 and his beams are wholly reflected from the glowing 
 surface, what an excess of brightness ! An infinitude 
 of burnished gold, and of burnished gold all living 
 and in motion, stretches out at our feet; and as the 
 reflected light upon the shore wakens a gentle zephyr 
 of the air in that direction, the dimpling water plays 
 in alternate sunshine and shade, as if the luminary 
 had been broken to fragments, and gently strewed 
 along its surface. 
 
 But if the elements are in motion, if the winds are 
 up, if the " blackness of darkness," which cloud upon 
 cloud, rolling in masses and roaring in thunder, which 
 answers to the call of the forked lightning, has flung 
 its shadow upon the sea, so as to change the soft green 
 to a dark and dismal raven blue, which gives all the 
 effect of contrast to the spray that dances on the 
 
 T 
 
206 A STORM. THE WAVES. 
 
 crests of the waves, chafes around the reef, dashes 
 with angry foam against the precipice, or ever and 
 anon, as the fitful blast puts on all its fury, covers 
 the whole with recking confusion, as if by the force 
 of the agitation, the very water had taken fire ; if 
 one can stand so as to view the full swell of the tem- 
 pest-tossed ocean sideways, it is indeed a spirit-stirring 
 sight ! The dark trough, between every two ridges, 
 appears as if the waters were cleft in twain, and both 
 a pathway and a shelter displayed, while ridge courses 
 after ridge in eager race, but with equal celerity. 
 Some, indeed, appear to fall in their course, and to 
 be trampled down by those that are behind. They 
 are hit by one of those momentary gusts which fall ; 
 and where, as Burns expressively has it, the wind is 
 every where blowing 
 
 " As 'twould blaw its last," 
 
 it lashes a portion of the surge to a greater elevation than 
 it can bear ; or, some bank or hidden rock from below 
 arrests it in its course ; and down it thunders in brawl- 
 ing and foam, interrupting the succession, and embroil- 
 ing its successors in its fate. 
 
 Even when seen from the pebbly beach of a lee- 
 shore, the ocean in a storm is a sight both to be enjoyed 
 and remembered. The wave comes rolling onward, 
 dark and silent, till it meets with the reflux of its pre- 
 decessor, which produces a motion to seaward on the 
 ground, and throws the approaching wave off its equi- 
 librium. Its progress is arrested for a moment ; the 
 wall of water vibrates, and as it now meets the wind, 
 instead of moving before it, its crest becomes hoary 
 
POWER OF WINDS AND WAVES. 207 
 
 with spray ; it shakes it nods it curls forward, and 
 for a moment the liquid column hangs suspended in 
 the air ; but down it dashes in one volume of snow- 
 white foam, which dances and ripples upon the beach. 
 There is an instant retreat, and the clean and smooth 
 pebbles, as they are drawn back by the reflux of the 
 water, emulate in more harsh and grating sounds the 
 thunder of the wave. 
 
 Here we may see what a wonderful thing motion is. 
 What is so bland and limpid as still water ! what sub- 
 stance half so soft and fine as the motionless atmo- 
 sphere ! The one does not loosen a particle of sand : 
 the other you must question with yourself, and even 
 add a little faith to feeling, before you be quite sure 
 of its existence. But arm them once with life, or with 
 that which is the best emblem and the most universal 
 indication of life, motion, and they are terrible both in 
 their grandeur and their power. The sand is driven 
 like stubble ; the solid earth must give way ; and the 
 rocks are rent from the promontory, and flung in ruins 
 along its base. Need we, therefore, wonder that the 
 masts and cordage that man constructs should be rent as 
 if they were gossamer, and his navies scattered like chaff. 
 
 The grandest scenes, however, are found at those 
 places where former storms have washed away all the 
 softer parts, and the caverned and rifted rocks the 
 firm skeleton of the globe, as it were stand out to 
 contend with the turmoiling waters. The long roll of 
 the Atlantic upon the Cornish coast ; a south-easter 
 upon the cliffs of Yorkshire, or among the stupendous 
 caves to the eastward of Arbroath ; a north-easter in 
 the Bullers of Buchan ; or, better still, the whole mass 
 
208 CAVES AND PRECIPICES. 
 
 of the Northern ocean dashed by the black north wind 
 against the ragged brows of Caithness and Sutherland ; 
 those that especially are situations in which, if it 
 can be viewed in these islands, the majesty of the deep 
 may be seen. Upon the last, in the acme of its sub- 
 limity, one dares hardly look. The wind blows ice ; 
 and the spray, which dashes thick over five hundred 
 feet of perpendicular cliffs, falls in torrents of chilling 
 rain ; while the vollied stones which the surges batter 
 against the cliffs, the hissing of the imprisoned air in 
 the unperforated caves, and the spouting water through 
 those that are perforated, and the dashing and regurgi- 
 tation of the latter, as it falls in the pauses of the com- 
 motion, produce a combination of the terrible, which 
 the nerves of those who are unaccustomed to such 
 scenes can hardly bear. 
 
 And yet there is an enchantment a fascination 
 almost to madness in those terrible scenes. Mere 
 height often has this singular effect, which is alluded 
 to by the Philosopher of Poets in his admirable de- 
 scription of Dover cliff: 
 
 " I'll look no more ; 
 
 Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight 
 
 Topple down headlong." 
 
 But when the elements are in fury, when the earth 
 is rocking, and the sea and the sky reeling and con- 
 founding their distinctive characters in one tremendous 
 chaos, when, in all that is seen, the common laws of 
 nature seem to be abrogated, and her productions of 
 peace cast aside, in order that there may be an end of 
 her works, and that the sway of " the Anarch old" 
 may again be universal the heroism of desperation 
 
NATURAL THEOLOGY. 209 
 
 that which tempers the soldier to the strife of the field, 
 and the sailor to the yet more terrible conflict on the 
 flood comes, and comes in its power, and the dispo- 
 sition to dash into the thickest of the strife, and die in 
 the death-struggle of nature, is one of the most power- 
 ful feelings of one who can enter into the spirit of the 
 mighty scene. 
 
 We leave those who allocate the feelings of men 
 according to the scale of their artificial systems, to 
 find the place of this singular emotion, and call it a 
 good or an evil one, as they choose. But we have 
 been in the habit of feeling and thinking that it is an 
 impulse of natural theology, one of those unbidden 
 aspirations toward his Maker which man feels when 
 the ties that bind him to nature and the earth appear 
 to be loosening, and there remains no hope, but in the 
 consciousness of his God, and of that eternity, the 
 gate of which is in the shadow of death. Thus, amid the 
 fury of the elements, the unsophisticated hopes of man 
 cling to HIM, who " rideth in the whirlwind and direct- 
 eth the storm." 
 
 But beautiful or sublime as the ocean is, according 
 to situation and circumstances, we should lose its value 
 were we to look upon it only as a spectacle, and were 
 the emotions that it produced to be only the dreams 
 of feeling, however touching or however allied to re- 
 ligion. To admire and to feel are both essential and 
 valuable parts of our nature ; but neither of them is so 
 essential, as to know. That is the antecedent matter ; 
 because by it, and by it only, the admiration and the 
 feeling can be properly directed. The first property of 
 the ocean that strikes our sight, is its vast extent ; and 
 T 3 
 
210 MOTION OF THE SEA. 
 
 the first that addresses our understanding, is the vast 
 extent of its usefulness. The evaporation of water from 
 its surface, cleared from the impurities of the land, and 
 adapted for the promoting of life and fertility, has already 
 been mentioned. But the ocean is also the grand mes- 
 senger of physical nature : that general law, or pheno- 
 menon of the constitution of matter, (for the laws and the 
 phenomena of nature are the same,) by which the earth 
 is maintained in its orbit, and has the figure and con- 
 sistency which it possesses, and by which the objects 
 on its surface preserve their forms and their places, 
 that simple law occasions the tides of the ocean ; and 
 these, by moving in the very directions which an obedi- 
 ence to this law points out, produce currents, by means 
 of which there is a constant circulation of the waters of 
 the ocean through all parts of the earth's surface ; and 
 the immediate consequence is an equalization of warmth, 
 by means of which, the extremes, both of heat and cold, 
 are mitigated, and the general fertility and comfort 
 promoted. 
 
 But, when we come to look a little more attentively 
 at the structure of the earth, we find that the ocean has 
 been one of the grand agents in elaborating it to its pre- 
 sent consistency. Large tracks are covered, to a great 
 depth, by beds of gravel, containing nodules of the hard- 
 est stone, which are not in angular masses, as if they 
 had been reduced from their native rocks by any action 
 apart from the water such as that which, by means 
 of alternate frost and thaw, produces the heaps of 
 broken stone that we find on the brows of rocky moun- 
 tains, and at the bottoms of precipices but smoothed, 
 and rounded, as if they had been for ages rolled upon 
 
FORMATION OF LAND. 211 
 
 a beach. The gravel in the valley of the Thames, for 
 instance, which we find in the most elevated parts of 
 that valley, as at Wimbledon Common, and Hampstead 
 Heath, contains no stone but that very same flint, which at 
 a distance from the river, or even near it, as in the county 
 of Kent, is contained in the chalk formation ; but while 
 the pieces of flint that are found in the chalk are an- 
 gular, and covered with a rugged crust, those in the 
 gravel are all, more or less, rounded ; and they have 
 been rounded by rubbing against each other in water, 
 as the hollows in them, which could not be so easily 
 rubbed, have still the same rough surface as those 
 found in the chalk. It is therefore impossible to 
 avoid coming to the conclusion, that the gravel in the 
 valley of the Thames has been formed out of the chalk 
 soil, and formed too by the action of water ; nor can 
 we easily suppose that that water has been any other 
 than the sea ; because, the gravel has a principle of 
 adhesion, which is not found in the gravel of rivers. 
 Great part of the connecting matter in the binding 
 gravel, is the powder of flint, just in the same manner 
 as in that which does not bind ; but it also contains a 
 quantity of salts of lime, which it could have derived 
 only from the impregnation, by the sea, of a portion of 
 the original chalk ; and to that it owes its adhesive 
 nature. But wherever the river has continued to wash 
 it, those salts of lime have been decomposed and 
 floated away, and the flint-dust has been left loose. 
 The very same happens if we expose a heap of the best 
 " binding " gravel to the action of rain for a sufficient 
 length of time ; it loses its adhesiveness, and becomes 
 loose. Thus it is evident, that the gravel Jias been 
 
212 FORMATION OF LAND. 
 
 produced by the action of water, and that that water 
 must have been the sea. Many more striking instances 
 could easily be adduced, but this one has been pre- 
 ferred, just because of its simplicity. If we find vast 
 masses of gravel, some of them moulded into hills of 
 considerable elevation, which could not have been pro- 
 duced without the action of the ocean, we need not 
 hesitate to refer to that action, those formations in 
 which the remains of marine plants and animals are 
 clearly to be seen. 
 
 But we see the operation in progress. Along most of 
 the high and cliffy shores, even in this country, we 
 find places where every storm and every season take 
 something from the land. We find the stony fragments 
 in the course of being ground and rounded on some of 
 the shelving beaches, and new banks in the progress of 
 formation upon others. It is generally the lofty shore 
 that suffers, because that offers a resistance both to the 
 water of the ocean, and the wind upon its surface, 
 while shores that shelve out, receive the water in a 
 thin plate, and allow the wind to pass over. 
 
 In some districts, we find very remarkable traces of 
 the former action of water. In the vicinity of granitic 
 mountains, there are always found vast detached masses 
 of that rock, exposed upon the surface, and rounded as 
 if they had been rolled in water. If those were found 
 only upon the slopes of granitic mountains, their pre- 
 sence could be accounted for by the frost loosening 
 them in winter, and their rolling down the slopes 
 during the rains of spring or summer. Even the 
 rounding of them might be at least partially accounted 
 for, by the action of the water in the places where they 
 
MASSES OF ROCK. 213 
 
 are now found. In Cornwall and Devon, those blocks 
 of stone are numerous ; and, indeed, there is hardly a 
 granitic country in which they are not to be found. 
 In fact, we meet with them in all places where there is 
 a valley or water-course, or slope, from mountains of 
 granite to the sea ; and yet they could not have been 
 brought to the places where they are found by the 
 action of the existing rivers, in a state any thing like 
 their present one. 
 
 The southern part of Finland, which is far from the 
 granitic mountains, and consists of an alternation of 
 pine forests and pools of water, is full of them ; and 
 they have lain so long, that the soil has accumulated 
 thick enough for the growth of trees ; and that which is 
 only a single stone, has all the appearance of a hillock. 
 The pedestal of the celebrated equestrian statue of 
 Peter the Great, at St. Petersburg!!, is formed of one 
 of those masses. It is fifteen hundred tons in weight ; 
 was found as a single detached fragment, and brought 
 from a distance of several miles. Some of the granite 
 quarries at Aberdeen consist of those enormous frag- 
 ments, which are not found in a continuous mass as 
 granite is in the primitive mountains, but in huge sepa- 
 rate masses, among gravel and rubbish, which in the lapse 
 of years has become covered with heath or grass. 
 
 A very singular stone of this description, lies upon a 
 hill, on the south side of the valley of the Earn, near 
 Perth. We forget whether that stone is granite, 
 sienite, or gneiss, we rather think the latter; but at 
 all events, it lies upon the top of a hill, nearly, or fully, 
 twelve hundred feet high, which is surrounded by 
 lower grounds on every side. This hill is green-stone 
 
214 ANIMAL REMAINS. 
 
 itself; and there is not a portion of any of the three 
 alpine rocks above-named found native within twenty 
 miles of it ; and the nearest is separated by the deep 
 beds of two or three rivers. Though nothing to the 
 pedestal of Peter's statue, this is rather a large stone, 
 weighing at least six tons, and it is so poised upon a 
 ridge of the green-stone, that it vibrates to the slightest 
 touch of the little finger. Art has had something to do 
 in producing this easy vibration, as the one end of the 
 stone has been chipped, and as these " rocking stones," 
 as they are called, were used as ordeals in the times of 
 superstition ; but art had nothing to do with the bringing 
 of it, or of the hundreds of others in the same district, 
 to the places where they are now found. Thus there 
 must at one time have been a power in operation, at a 
 higher level than the present surface of the ocean, 
 which could move masses of many tons in weight to 
 considerable distances; and the only power adequate 
 to effect that purpose, with which we are acquainted, 
 is the ocean. 
 
 The remains of animals, even of marine ones, are 
 usually found in soft deposits, where they may have 
 been covered by the return of successive floods, in the 
 rivers now existing. The bones and teeth of the north- 
 ern elephant, the latter of which, as ivory, form an 
 article of export from Siberia ; the accumulated animals 
 in the caves of Germany, England, and other places ; 
 the vast mass of fishes in the hill of Bolca, near 
 Verona with the whales and other animals that have 
 been found in the flat lands near the mouth of the 
 great rivers such as in the clay at Brentford, and in 
 various clay formations in Scotland, may all be ac- 
 
ANIMAL REMAINS. 215 
 
 counted for in this manner : and yet there must have 
 been some general change since they were deposited ; 
 because we believe we may say that, without excep- 
 tion, they have been all found higher than the present 
 level of high water. The skeleton of the whale found 
 in the clay at Airthrey, on the Forth, was twenty feet 
 higher than the highest tide. It was seventy-two feet 
 long ; and it would not be easy to see how, without the 
 agency of water, a fish of such dimensions could have 
 been raised to such a height. That, however, is nothing 
 to the heights at which remains, in all probability, of 
 marine shells have been found in other countries. They 
 have been found on the Alps, at an elevation of more 
 than seven thousand feet ; on the Pyrennees, at more 
 than ten thousand; and on the Andes, in South America, 
 at more than thirteen thousand. Nay, the probability is, 
 that in all the formations of carbonate of lime, from the 
 primitive lime-stone of the mountains to chalk, and 
 those marbles in which shells are distinctly visible, 
 animals have been employed ; as we know of no process 
 in the chemistry of dead matter by which carbonate of 
 lime can be produced. We are therefore at a loss to 
 see how those marbles could have been consolidated 
 and crystallized, without the aid of another power than 
 the water ; but we do know, from direct experiment, 
 that carbonate of lime in the state of shells, or even of 
 powder, can be consolidated and crystallized by heat 
 under pressure. 
 
 Thus, if we attempt to look back at the history of 
 the ocean, we find that it involves also that of the 
 whole surface of the globe, and the subject becomes 
 too mighty for our comprehension, and too obscure 
 
216 WHALES. 
 
 for our being able to draw any certain conclusion 
 respecting it. On tins most interesting, but most 
 difficult branch of the science of nature, modern in- 
 vestigation has done much, but it must do much more 
 before any general theory can be established with 
 the certainty of being true. Out of the existing mate- 
 rials, it would be easy to form a hypothesis just as 
 it is easy to manufacture the tale of a life out of a few 
 traits ; but a mere hypothesis in the study of nature is 
 a much more blind and unsafe guide than a mere ro- 
 mance in the study of man. 
 
 But we do not need to ransack the tombs and monu- 
 ments of the ocean and its inhabitants, for subjects 
 of pleasure or instruction. Every portion of it is full 
 of life ; and though the structure, habits, and economy 
 of its plants and its animals are different from those of 
 the land, the wisdom displayed in fitting them for the 
 element in which they live is not the less manifest, or 
 the less worthy of admiration. In the British seas, 
 though only as occasional visitants, the animals that 
 claim the first attention are 
 
 WHALES. 
 
 THERE are many species to which the general name 
 of whales or cetaceous animals is given ; and they vary 
 considerably in their size, their habits, and the struc- 
 ture of particular parts of their bodies ; but they all 
 have these. in common; that they inhale the air directly 
 into lungs, and do not separate it from the water by 
 gills ; that they are warm-blooded, and have the cir- 
 culating system and the composition of the blood very 
 
WHALES. 217 
 
 little different from those of land animals, and that 
 they bring forth their young alive, and suckle them 
 with milk, in the same manner as the mammalia ; they 
 are therefore not fishes, but mammalia,- adapted to 
 swim, feed, and do every thing in the water but breathe, 
 and that they must do at the surface. 
 
 Though the skeleton of this tribe of animals be 
 concealed under the mass of muscles and of fat, it 
 has many points of resemblance to those of land 
 animals. The hinder part of the animal is that in which 
 the greatest difference is found. There are no pelvis 
 or lower extremities, but the vertebrae of the back 
 are continued to those of the tail. The bones of the 
 fore extremities are very similar, both in number and 
 articulation, to those of the human race : there is a 
 scapula, or blade-bone, a humerus, or shoulder-bone, 
 two bones in the fore-arm, and the articulation of a 
 hand with five fingers. The substance of the muscles, 
 too, is not like fish, but like that of land animals, hardly 
 to be known from the flesh on the horse or ox. 
 Even the skin is unlike the skin of fishes, with its 
 scales and mucus-glands. Externally, it resembles the 
 skin on the sole of the human foot, and consists of an 
 epidermis, or scarf skin, a mucous net, and a true skin. 
 Below all these, there is a cellular texture, similar in 
 its structure to that of the hog, capable of containing, 
 and usually containing, a vast quantity of fat in its 
 cells. That fat generally contains more fluid oil, and 
 less of white crystallizable suet or stearine, than the 
 fat of land animals ; but in some of the species there is 
 a great deal, easily separated from the fluid oil, and 
 known in commerce by the name of SPERMACETI : and 
 u 
 
218 WHALES. 
 
 those species in which it is found, are called spermaceti 
 whales. This substance has nothing to do with sper- 
 matic purposes, neither is it peculiar to whales, but 
 may be obtained from suet, lard, butter, or any other 
 animal fat, and is itself easily changed into a colourless 
 oil, by distillation. Indeed, the fats owe their white 
 colour to its existing in them partially crystallized, just 
 as snow owes its white colour to the little crystals of 
 water it is made of. This great mass of fat, with 
 which the bodies of this species of animals are sur- 
 rounded, is of the utmost importance in their economy. 
 They are, as has been said, warm-blooded animals; 
 and, therefore, their health demands that the tem- 
 perature, through all that part of their bodies where 
 there is a rapid circulation, should be kept as uniform 
 as possible. But the whale is an inhabitant of the 
 most inhospitable seas, and at certain seasons, he may 
 at once be exposed to three great variations of tem- 
 perature. Even when feeding, the whale swims with a 
 considerable portion of its body above water. Now as 
 there is almost always ice, either freezing or thawing, in 
 the northern haunts of the whale, that portion of its body 
 which is in the water must have a temperature of 
 about thirty-two degrees ; the sunny side maybe seventy 
 or eighty, or even higher, and the shady one as low as 
 ten, or even at zero. If the muscles and circulation of 
 the animal were exposed naked to such varieties of 
 heat, the structure would be destroyed; but the oil, 
 which has a slow conducting power, defends it. 
 
 There is one difference between the bones of whales 
 and those of land animals : the texture of the former is 
 loose and spongy throughout, full of pores and of oil, 
 
WHALES. 219 
 
 but destitute of medullary cavity or marrow. The fat 
 probably answers another purpose, that of preserving 
 the body of the animal from the effect of pressure when 
 it descends to the immense depths, to which it some- 
 times plunges perpendicularly. 
 
 The respiration of the whale tribe is one of the 
 most singular parts of their economy. They must feed 
 in the water, and the balcente, or common whales, must, 
 from the size of their bodies, and the smallness of their 
 gullet, which admits a hen's egg with difficulty, spend a 
 great deal of time in that operation ; so that breathing 
 by the mouth would be very inconvenient. Instead of 
 this, the blow-holes, or openings through which the 
 whale breathes, are on the very highest part of the 
 head ; and as in land animals the mouth is made to 
 assist the nostrils in the function of breathing, so the 
 nose in whales is made to assist the mouth in the dis- 
 charge of that part of the water, which, from the rapidity 
 of its motion, cannot so easily escape by the gape of 
 the jaws. 
 
 In all the tribe, there are two openings leading from 
 the back part of the mouth to the top of the head ; 
 but in many of the species, there is only one ex- 
 ternal opening, though in the common whales there 
 be two. At the top of the larynx, there are two 
 tubes of the gullet in these animals, one of which goes 
 to the cavities of the head, into which the blow-holes 
 open, and the other to the mouth. The larynx opens 
 into the former, but is so formed, that it cannot be 
 opened by pressure from without, so that any watei 
 which gets so far into the gullet, is forced up into the 
 cavities in the head. The tubes which lead to those 
 
220 WHALES. 
 
 cavities have valves, near their upper extremities, 
 which open only from below, and thus retain any water 
 that may be forced up by the circular construction of 
 the canal that leads from the larynx. Above those 
 valves there are two elastic sacs, capable of containing 
 a considerable quantity of water, and also of contracting 
 with great force ; and the structure of the whale is such 
 that the water, which must, in some portion at least, 
 always get as far as the gullet, can be sent to those sacs 
 without interrupting the respiration of the animal. 
 Thus the whale is enabled to swim and feed open- 
 mouthed, without the water either entering the stomach, 
 or disturbing its breathing; a contrivance essential to 
 its mode of life. The water appears to go to those 
 receptacles always when the animal swims with its 
 mouth below the surface ; but only in a small quantity ; 
 and while it does so, it prevents the accumulation of 
 mucus in the breathing apparatus. But there is no 
 waste of power ; the discharge of the water is not so 
 constant as its reception. It is a voluntary operation, 
 performed at intervals, and with much force. The 
 compression of the sacs projects the water, through 
 the blow-holes, to the height of nearly fifty feet, and 
 with much noise, both by the ascent of the water, and 
 by its fall. This operation is called spouting, and it is 
 one of the means by which whales are found in foggy 
 weather, as it is audible at a considerable distance. 
 
 Whales are now usually divided into four orders : 
 1. Toothless whales, (edentatce,) or those that have 
 not teeth in either jaw ; 2. Upper-toothed whales, 
 (pr<zdentat<z,) or those that have teeth only in the 
 fore-part of the upper jaw ; 3. Lower-toothed whales* 
 
WHALES. 221 
 
 (subdenlatce,) or those having teeth only in the lower 
 jaw ; 4. Double-toothed whales, (ambidentatce ^) or those 
 that have teeth in both jaws. The common Greenland 
 or black whale is an instance of the toothless ; the 
 narwhal, or sea-unicorn, of those with teeth above ; 
 the spermaceti whale, of those with teeth below ; and 
 the porpesse, of those with teeth in both jaws. With 
 the exception of the porpesse, none of them can be 
 considered as constant inhabitants of the British seas ; 
 but they are all at times occasional visitants ; and 
 therefore, independently of their peculiar interest, they 
 fall within the proper limits of British Natural History. 
 
 BALEEN, OR WHALEBONE WHALES. 
 
 OF the common, or toothless whales, there are two 
 genera, balance, without fins on the back ; and bala- 
 noptercB, with fins on the back ; and there are usually 
 reckoned two species of each genus. 
 
 The COMMON WHALE (bal&na mysticetus) is the most 
 renowned of all those giants of the deep ; and it is 
 still met with of from fifty to seventy feet in length, 
 and from thirty-four to forty- five in circumference. 
 But from the length of time that it has been fished for 
 in the polar seas, the great avidity with which the 
 fishing has been carried on, and the gentle and unsus- 
 picious nature of the great animal, there is reason to 
 believe that there were much larger specimens formerly 
 than any that are now to be met with. The ancient 
 naturalists, who were rather too much allied to that 
 u 3 
 
222 WHALES. 
 
 class which deals only in the wonderful, and partially 
 at least invents the wonderful in which it deals, give to 
 the whale a length of nine hundred or a thousand feet ; 
 but there are well authenticated accounts of individuals 
 having been met with, in the early days of the Green- 
 land fishery, that have measured from one hundred and 
 twenty to one hundred and fifty feet. Thus it must be 
 regarded as the largest animal of which naturalists have 
 any knowledge. In the present times, indeed, some 
 of the spermaceti whales, which are much more active 
 and ferocious animals, and therefore less frequently 
 caught, are said to exceed the common whale in size, 
 though none of them come up even to the authenticated 
 dimensions that were formerly assigned to it. 
 
 The whale is, independently of its size, and its 
 value in a commercial point of view, one of the most 
 interesting of animals. Its powers of motion are incre- 
 dible ; and its tail, as a weapon of defence, is most 
 formidable ; but it has neither the disposition nor the 
 means of doing voluntary harm to any other fish. It 
 is endowed with the most tender affection for its young ; 
 and though its eyes are small, the expression of them 
 indicates a degree of perception or even of understand- 
 ing, of which the eyes of fish properly so called have 
 not a trace. It has been compared to the eye of the 
 elephant ; and it is not a little singular that the largest 
 animal, both of the land and the sea, should be endowed 
 with the greatest intelligence, and not a voluntary de- 
 stroyer of other animals. Both have this common 
 character too, that they are clumsy in appearance, and 
 would not, at the first, lead one to look for that vast 
 muscular power which they can exhibit. 
 
WHALES. 223 
 
 When the common whale is at rest upon the water, 
 it looks like a shapeless mass some rock, black with 
 the beating of many storms, that rises above the sur- 
 face. On approaching it, the profile of its head ap- 
 pears triangular, but blunted at the snout, and carried 
 upwards in the upper part, at the elevation of which 
 are the blow-holes, and behind them there is a sort of 
 depression for the neck. The body is cylindrical, a 
 little thicker just behind the swimming paws than any 
 where else, and it tapers off to the tail in the form of 
 a frustum of a cone. Generally speaking, the whale is 
 of a glossy black upon the back, witb the sides slate- 
 coloured, and the under part of the purest white ; but 
 the colour is not uniform ; it seems to depend both on 
 age and situation the whales near the European coasts 
 being in general much whiter than those near the 
 coast of America. The tail is a curious piece of me- 
 chanism. It consists of two oval lobes, which are 
 entirely made up of tendinous fibres, of a very strong 
 texture, and these are connected with the greater part 
 of the muscular structure of the body. There are 
 three distinct layers of those fibres, the two external 
 ones lying in the direction of the lobes, and the internal 
 in the contrary direction. In consequence of this struc- 
 ture, the tail of the whale is, perhaps, the most moveable 
 organ in the animal creation. The whole of it can 
 move in all directions with equal ease, and every indi- 
 vidual part has also its motion ; and while it is so 
 powerful that a blow of it can stun thre largest animal, 
 or cut the strongest-built boat in two, its consistency 
 is so firm, that it sustains no injury from the most 
 powerful effort, or from striking against the hardest 
 
224 WHALES. 
 
 substance. The termination of the lobes forms a very 
 graceful curve. The one is elegantly convex, and the 
 other concave ; so that the termination of the whole is 
 like the cima recta in architecture. The extent of this 
 organ is immense : the measure, from the tip of the 
 one lobe to that of the other, being, in a large whale, 
 more than twenty feet ; so that it can hit the entire sur- 
 face of a boat at once ; and when it does so, the boat 
 is plunged so deep in the water that it never is seen to 
 rise again to the surface. Though the position of the 
 lobes of the whale's tail be naturally horizontal, and 
 not vertical like the fishes, the oblique tendons can 
 bring it into almost any position. The horizontal 
 position enables it to sink and rise in the water with 
 much more celerity than fishes ; and when the whale 
 is struck by the harpoon of the fisher, it often descends 
 quite perpendicularly to an incredible depth ; and there 
 are instances of its bounding to the surface again so 
 near the spot, as to dash the boat into the air before 
 the crew can guard against that catastrophe. 
 
 Notwithstanding the unwieldy bulk of the whale, 
 and the quantity of fluid which it must displace, its 
 motion through the water is at the rate of about twenty- 
 four miles in an hour ; and while moving at that rapid 
 rate, it continues feeding, so that in six weeks it could 
 circumnavigate the globe. 
 
 The size and structure of the mouth of this animal 
 are both worthy of notice. The gape extends back 
 nearly to the swimming paws ; and the lips, which are 
 firm and cartilaginous, overlap each other so as to form 
 a curve, which is convex toward the one extremity, and 
 concave toward the other. The tongue is of vast size, 
 
WHALES. 225 
 
 filling the greater part of the mouth, and appearing, 
 contrary to the tongues of fishes, to be an organ of 
 taste. It abounds in fat, and sometimes will produce 
 several tons of oil. 
 
 The Greenland whale is, as has been said, wholly 
 destitute of teeth, or indeed of any means of seizing 
 its prey with the mouth, vast though that be. It has 
 jawbones that support the lips, but those bones more 
 nearly resemble ribs than ordinary jawbones ; and they 
 are without those organs of rapid compression which 
 are found in all animals that chew or bite. In feeding, 
 the whale has little motion of the jaws ; and if it were 
 to move these unwieldy instruments every time that it 
 swallows one of the small and soft substances on which 
 it feeds, the labour would be so out of all proportion 
 to the result, that it would be contrary to the universal 
 practice of nature that of accomplishing every end 
 by the simplest possible means. The whale feeds with 
 the mouth open ; and the food is caught within that 
 huge cavity. Along the middle of the upper part of 
 the mouth there is a cartilaginous space, called the gum, 
 from which the palatal bones slope down on both sides, 
 and form a cavity having some similarity to the inside 
 of a boat, of which the gum represents the keel. To 
 both sides of this gum are articulated those horny 
 plates of baleen, commonly called whalebone, and in 
 commerce, absurdly enough, whale fins as if they 
 formed part of the swimming apparatus of the animal. 
 Those plates line the whole palate of the animal, and 
 vary in number and size with its age. In large whales, 
 the number on each side often exceeds a hundred, and 
 the principal ones are more than ten feet long. The 
 
226 WHALES. 
 
 largest ones are a little behind the middle of the mouth ; 
 and they become shorter, both toward the throat and 
 the snout. These plates are a little curved, and taper 
 toward their extremities. The front edges are nearly 
 smooth ; and the back ones, which are thinner, are 
 fringed with horny fibres, of the texture of coarse 
 hair, which increase towards the extremities. They 
 are sometimes black, and sometimes of a grayish 
 colour, though the latter often appears only in the 
 membrane with which they are covered. The sub- 
 stance of which these plates are composed, is nearly 
 the same as horn ; and so is the texture, though less 
 compact. Parallel to the flat surface, it can be divided 
 into smaller plates, of indefinite fineness ; but across 
 that direction the cleavage is rough and thready. It is 
 used for many purposes in the arts ; but though it has 
 considerable toughness, elasticity, and gloss, it is very 
 apt to split. It is sometimes substituted for bristles in 
 the manufacture of brushes ; but it is very inferior, 
 and lasts but a very short time. 
 
 When the mouth of the whale is open, the fringes of 
 the whalebone are brought in contact with the surface 
 of the tongue ; and the mouth is thus filled with a kind 
 of net, in which the mollusca, which are the principal 
 food of the whale, are entangled, and by the joint 
 action of the tongue and the plates of whalebone, con- 
 veyed to the gullet. From the size and position of 
 the eyes, they can be of little use to the animal in 
 finding its food ; though they enable it to make its way 
 in the water, and to avoid those animals that are hostile 
 to it, and likewise submerged rocks, which, if it were 
 to strike when in full velocity, it would be severely 
 
WHALES. 227 
 
 injured, if not killed. The organs of bearing in the 
 whale are nearly perfect, and that sense is rather acute, 
 but can be of little avail to it in feeding. It has no 
 visible organ of smell, except we suppose such to exist 
 in the spiracles or blow-holes ; but there is reason to 
 conclude that it has such a sense, and that that sense 
 is of use in guiding it to those streams of green-coloured 
 water, in which it is chiefly found, and which derive 
 their colour from myriads of small mollusca. 
 
 The habits or age of the whale are not very much 
 known ; and what is stated, cannot implicitly be relied 
 upon. The period of gestation in the female is sup- 
 posed to be about ten months, and the period of 
 suckling is about a year. The general produce is 
 one young one, though two have sometimes been 
 found following the same female. Some fanciful ac- 
 counts have been given of the mode in which the 
 mother-whale nurses her offspring; but they are not 
 to be relied on. Whales are sought for only to be 
 captured ; and capturing the female when she has her 
 young under her care, is a matter that leaves little 
 time for minute attention to her habits, any further 
 than that she is remarkably careful of her young, 
 and very bold and active in its defence. If come 
 upon unawares, she may be harpooned, and then she 
 clutches the young one in her paws and dives with it ; 
 but returns sooner to the surface than she would if 
 she had it not in charge, apparently to enable it to 
 breathe. If alarmed, or aware of the danger, and 
 sometimes after she has been wounded unawares, she 
 makes terrible resistance, boldly approaching the boat, 
 and lashing at it with blows loud as thunder ; or plung- 
 
228 WHALES. 
 
 ing, and attempting to rise under it, and dash it to pieces 
 with her back. The female is usually larger than 
 the male, and generally has a young one in attendance ; 
 so that the desire of capturing her increases with the 
 danger. Even the young when following the mother, 
 in which state the fishermen call them short-heads, 
 yield a great deal of oil, often as much as fifty 
 barrels. Those that are in their second year, and are 
 supposed to be just weaned, being much less valuable. 
 The fishers call them stunts, and reckon them not 
 half so valuable as short-heads. After this they get 
 fatter, and appear to grow progressively for a period 
 of years, the prime length of which is not known ; 
 but below a certain size they are called skull-fish, and 
 after that, fish, the size being described by the length 
 of the whalebone. 
 
 It is by no means improbable that, before whales 
 were so much thinned by fishing, they occupied a 
 much greater range of the ocean than they do at the 
 present time ; as there are many allusions to them in 
 the writings of the ancients. These accounts must, 
 however, be received with a great deal of caution, not 
 only on account of the mass of fable that they blended 
 with all descriptions of natural objects, but because 
 we are never absolutely certain of the species. The 
 M.v(rTiKrJTO$, mentioned by Aristotle, is more likely to 
 have been some of the spermaceti whales, than the 
 mysticetus of the moderns ; as these whales range more 
 extensively, are furnished with teeth, and have much 
 wider throats ; which last are two qualities that the 
 ancients generally give to their sea-monsters ; though 
 as they give them teeth in both jaws, the dolphin or 
 
WHALES. 229 
 
 the grampus must have been their general type. At 
 present, the black whale is found only in the seas near 
 the two poles ; though it may occasionally pass from 
 the one to the other : the spermaceti whale is much 
 more generally diffused, and is occasionally met with 
 in all latitudes. 
 
 If they were not so common that they pass un- 
 heeded, the voyages for the capture of those vast 
 animals might rank high in the annals of human ad- 
 venture. The islands and mountains of ice swimming 
 about in all directions, and producing winds from 
 every point of the compass within the same horizon 
 the dreadful crashes with which those cold islands 
 and continents meet, the fields which they then turn 
 up on edge the masses that they project into the 
 sky ships thrown out of the water, or having their 
 hulls cut in two, and one part above the ice and the 
 other sunk to the bottom while (for the storms are 
 often as loud as they are violent) within sight, others 
 are coursing among the whales, throwing their har- 
 poons, running out their lines after the plunging fish, 
 and piercing him with their lances when exhausted ; or 
 having him lashed to the ship's side, and flencmg off 
 the fat with shovels, amid the noise of clouds of 
 sea-fowl, screaming in expectation of the kreng, or 
 carcass, or contending with the crew for the fat : 
 these exhibit both nature and art in an aspect full of 
 interest; and, could they be seen by spectators un- 
 engaged and at their ease, would form a spectacle of 
 a very animated character. Nor would the interest 
 be diminished by the consideration, that every full- 
 sized whale that is captured, is worth upon the average 
 x 
 
230 WHALES. 
 
 about a thousand pounds, a value far exceeding that 
 of the carcass of any other animal. 
 
 As is the case with the ox and the sheep, there are 
 few parts of the whale that are not useful, in some way 
 or other. The oil and the whale-hone are well known. 
 The tendons may be split down, and used as a thread ; 
 the membranous coats of the intestines make no bad 
 substitute for window-glass ; the fibrous fringes of the 
 whale-bone make ropes and fishing-nets ; the jaws and 
 ribs serve as beams and rafters for the habitations of 
 those northern people whose countries produce no tim- 
 ber ; and the flesh is eaten by the same people with 
 avidity, the heart and the tongue being accounted 
 choice dainties. The muscle of the young ones is far 
 from unpalatable, and both looks and tastes something 
 like veal. 
 
 Though the whale has been often regarded as the 
 emblem of longevity, and the period of its natural life 
 set down at a thousand years, there is no information 
 upon the point, further than that to acquire so vast a 
 size it must live a long time. Neither is it known 
 whether, independently of the ravages of man, the race 
 be diminishing. Analogy would lead one to think so, 
 because the native races of large land animals are de- 
 creasing in the northern hemisphere, and some of them 
 extinct ; but the case is one in which no dependence 
 can be placed upon analogies. 
 
 The NORDCAPER is a smaller variety of the common 
 whale, the head and under-part of the body are white, 
 and the upper part, grey. It tapers more to the tail 
 than the common whale, and is more active in its 
 
WHALES. 231 
 
 motions, and more ferocious in its disposition. It is 
 found further to the south than the other, on the coasts 
 of Iceland and Norway, where it feeds upon medusce, 
 herrings, and shell-fish. 
 
 Though both these species were formerly cast upon 
 the British shores, especially on those of Scotland ; and 
 though, if we can trust the statements of the Romans, 
 (which are any thing but precise,) the shores of Britain 
 were the regular home of great whales in their days, yet 
 they are now of rare occurrence. Not so with the 
 bal&nopterce, or whales with a fin on the back. There 
 are two species of these, and of the one there are two 
 varieties. 
 
 One, the RAZOR-BACK, (Jbalanoptera physalis,) has 
 been cast upon the shores of Scotland, as long as eighty 
 feet, and it is met with in the Greenland seas more than 
 one hundred feet long, but not nearly so thick in pro- 
 portion as the common whale. It has a large triangular 
 fin on the back, from which it sometimes gets the name 
 of the fin-fish. It is a very active fish, swims with im- 
 mense velocity, and is seldom taken for its oil, as the 
 quantity is not great; but the northern people like it as 
 food, especially the swimming paws and the skin, which 
 is smooth and gelatinous. The plates of baleen, in the 
 razor-back, are very short, but they are fringed with 
 long hair. This animal is much more active in its 
 feeding than the common whale, and preys upon her- 
 rings, mackerel, and other small fish, which it occa- 
 sionally follows so far south as the Hebrides, but seldom 
 so far as the English coast. It blows with much more 
 force than the common whale, and sends the spout of 
 x 2 
 
232 WHALES. 
 
 water to a much greater height. Its appearance on 
 the fishing grounds is not liked, because the common 
 whales then disappear; but whether they are driven 
 away by any act of hostility on the part of the razor- 
 back, has not been ascertained. 
 
 The ROUND-LIPPED WHALE (balanoptera musculus) 
 resembles the former in its habits, and rivals it in size ; 
 and is distinguished by the upper lip being narrow and 
 pointed, and the under one having a semi-circular 
 margin. Instances have occurred of its being washed 
 upon the Scottish shores, in specimens nearly eighty 
 feet long. Generally, however, it is much smaller. It 
 follows the herrings pretty regularly as far as the coasts 
 of Argyleshire, and even into the Firth of Forth and 
 Loch Fyne. Individuals of this species have often been 
 known to frequent the same station for many years. 
 That which is described, by Sir Robert Sibbald, as 
 having come ashore at Abercorn, in the Firth of Forth, 
 in September 1692, had been for twenty years well 
 known to the fishermen, who called it the " hollie pike" 
 from a bullet hole that had perforated its dorsal fin. 
 That one was seventy-eight feet long, and thirty-five in 
 circumference, where thickest. The gape of its mouth 
 was very wide ; the lower jaw more than thirteen feet 
 long ; and the tongue, which was much furrowed, fifteen 
 feet and a half long, and fifteen broad. The plates of 
 baleen were three feet in length ; the eyes, thirteen feet 
 from the snout ; the breast-fins, ten feet long ; the back 
 one, three feet high ; and the extent of the lobes of the 
 tail, eighteen feet. The skin, on the belly of this spe- 
 cies, is full of folds and corrugations, as if it could be 
 
WHALES. 233 
 
 distended to a much greater diameter than the animal 
 usually has. 
 
 The SHARP- LIPPED variety (baltenoptera hoops?) is of 
 inferior dimensions, and is indeed the smallest of the 
 baleen or whalebone whales. The upper jaw in this, 
 as in the last variety, is much shorter and narrower 
 than the lower, but they both terminate in sharp points, 
 which circumstance has obtained for it the name of 
 the " beaked whale." This, indiscriminately, with the 
 former variety, is called the " offin whale " by common 
 observers, and therefore the one may have sometimes 
 been confounded with the other. Indeed, with the ex- 
 ception of the form of the lower lip, and the difference 
 of size in some of the specimens, their appearance and 
 habits are very much alike. They both have the same 
 corrugated skin on the belly ; and probably the same 
 means of inflating or blowing it up, to increase their 
 buoyancy. Though their native region is the Green- 
 land seas, they are yet not unfrequent visitants of the 
 most northern part of the British ocean. They are 
 often seen in the sounds and bays among the Orkney 
 islands, at the time when the shoals of herrings are 
 migrating to the south. A very beautiful specimen, 
 seventeen feet in length, which was caught upon the 
 dogger-bank, is described by Hunter in the Philoso- 
 phical Transactions for 1787. The remains found in 
 its stomach were those of the dog-fish (spinax acan- 
 thiasj) the usual length of which is about three feet, 
 which proves that the finned balance, though equally 
 destitute of the means of biting, are much more vora- 
 cious in their swallowing than the common whale. The 
 x 3 
 
234 WHALES. 
 
 largest stranded on the British shores, was at Alloa, on 
 the Firth of Forth. It was forty-three feet long, and 
 twenty in circumference ; the jaws were fourteen feet 
 long ; there were about three hundred plates of baleen 
 on each side of the mouth, the longest of which were 
 about eighteen inches. 
 
 Both these varieties are great depredators. They may 
 be seen with just the top of the dorsal fin, and that part 
 of the head in which the blow-holes are situated, above 
 water, driving along with vast rapidity, while fishes 
 even of very considerable dimensions, and which are 
 themselves given to plunder, are ever and anon leaping 
 out of the water, to avoid that current which would 
 carry them into the wide mouth of the finner^ en- 
 tangle them amid the fringes of the baleen, and ulti- 
 mately find them their graves in the maw of that 
 voracious animal. Their only means of escape is 
 gaining water so shallow, that their pursuer cannot 
 follow them ; and the huge ones that have been found 
 on the shores, have generally met their fate by fol- 
 lowing their prey too eagerly, and running aground 
 during the ebbing of the tide. These finned whales 
 are of comparatively little value for their oil ; but the 
 Greenlanders are remarkably fond of the flesh, which 
 they procure, not by harpooning, as they do with the 
 larger whales, but by shooting the fish with arrows. 
 
 PR^EDENTAT^E. NARWALS. 
 
 THESE, though much inferior in size to the former, 
 are a singular race of animals. Their native habita- 
 tions, like those of the whales, are in the Greenland 
 
WHALES. 235 
 
 seas, but they occasionally make their appearance on 
 the northern shores of Scotland, or among the Orkney 
 or Shetland islands. Of these, there are two species, 
 the common, or " sea-unicorn," and the " microce- 
 phalus" or small headed. Their length seldom ex- 
 ceeds twenty-two feet ; their head and mouth are small 
 in proportion to their bodies, as compared with those 
 of the whales ; their mouths have neither teeth nor 
 whalebone, they have only one blow-hole, and they 
 have no dorsal fin, but there is a ridge from the tail 
 to the middle part of their back. The greatest pecu- 
 liarity about them, and that which has got them the 
 name of monodon, (one-toothed,) and monoceros, (one- 
 horned,) is a tooth which projects from one side of the 
 upper jaw, and extends, in a straight direction, a con- 
 siderable way in advance of the snout. This tooth is 
 sometimes on the one side of the head, and sometimes 
 on the other ; but though there be a preparation for 
 the production of one on each side, the two have very 
 seldom been found. The tooth is composed of a sub- 
 stance resembling ivory, and spirally twisted. The 
 animal is said to use it both as a weapon of war, and 
 as a means of driving shell-fish from the rocks. The 
 tooth, or "horn," as it is usually called, though much 
 more brittle than ivory, is of some value in the arts ; 
 walking-sticks are made of the small ones ; and bed- 
 posts and other articles of those that are larger ; and 
 the Greenlanders use them as poles. Though armed 
 with this powerful weapon, the narwaJs are very harm- 
 less animals, except to those fishes on which they feed ; 
 but they are said to be very revengeful when ill used ; 
 and to plunge their formidable tooth into the bodies of 
 
236 WHALES. 
 
 animals much larger than themselves. Their motions 
 are light and graceful, and they swim with uncommon 
 velocity. The tooth is sometimes ten feet in length, 
 and according to Captain Scoresby, to whom we are 
 indebted for much valuable information respecting the 
 polar seas and their inhabitants, they are found only on 
 the male ; but sometimes, though rarely, they are 
 found on the female. The tusk is most commonly 
 found on the left side, while on the right there is the 
 rudiment of another, which has not perforated the bones 
 of the skull in which it is contained. On the British 
 shores the narwal is very rare ; but it has appeared 
 on the coast of Lincolnshire, probably at the Isle of 
 May, ("Prope insulam Mayam? Tulpius,) in the 
 Firth of Forth, and at the Sound of Werdale in Zetland. 
 The oil of the narwal is in considerable quantity, and 
 peculiarly pure and valuable ; but from the activity of 
 the animal, the rapidity with which it swims, and the 
 ease with which it dives, it is caught with the greatest 
 difficulty. 
 
 Mention is made of a very small species of whale, 
 the Anarnak) found in the Greenland seas, with teeth 
 in the upper jaw, instead of the projecting tusk of the 
 narwal ; but its history is rather obscure, and no spe- 
 cimen of it has been met with upon the British shores. 
 
 SUBDENTAT^l. SPERMACETI WHALES. 
 
 THE animals of this genus are very formidable, of 
 great value in the arts, and much more widely diffused 
 over the globe than any of those that have been hitherto 
 mentioned. The most remarkable characteristic of the 
 
WHALES. 237 
 
 genus, is the immense size of the head which is, at the 
 least, equal to a third, and in some to a naif of the body. 
 The upper jaw is remarKao.y broad and deep, with a 
 very hard gum, in which there are generally some rudi- 
 ments of teeth, and also cavities to receive the teeth of 
 the lower jaw, which are strong, conical, and very for- 
 midable. The spermaceti is found in a cavity under 
 the snout of these animals, and the substance known 
 by the name of ambergris, is found in their intestines. 
 None of their mouths are furnished with plates and 
 fringes of baleen, as they are all capable of biting and 
 seizing their prey. Their throats are a great deal wider 
 than those of the common whale ; and the remains of 
 fishes, even sharks more than twelve feet in length, 
 have been found in their stomachs. Their ferocity, 
 indeed, forms a remarkable contrast to the gentle man- 
 ners of the balana mysticetus. There are a good many 
 species of spermaceti whales, inhabiting different parts 
 of the globe ; but the most remarkable for size and 
 character are the following, all of which have been met 
 with on the British shores, and in other parts of the 
 European seas : 
 
 The GREAT-HEADED. Physeter Microcephalus. 
 The BLUNT-HEADED. Physeter Trumpo. 
 The SMALL-EYED. Physeter Microps. 
 
 The GREAT-HEADED SPERMACETI WHALE is a very 
 clumsy-looking animal. The back is black, or slate- 
 colour, sometimes mottled with white, and the under 
 part white. The head has something the appearance 
 of a great tilted wagon ; the jaws are of immense 
 depth, the eyes small, and very far from the snout, the 
 
238 WHALES. 
 
 tongue a huge mass, of a red colour ; the teeth in the 
 lower jaw very strong, with holes in the upper one to 
 receive them, and the rudiments of teeth in the inter- 
 vals between. The head exceeds in size all the rest of 
 the body. 
 
 But notwithstanding the clumsiness of its form, it is 
 a very active animal, swimming with great rapidity, and 
 vaulting almost out of the water with apparent ease. 
 The bones are hard, and made into weapons by the 
 Greenlanders, while the teeth are of the purest ivory. 
 It is not very productive of oil, but the Greenlanders 
 are very fond of its flesh, which is of a pale colour, 
 and has some resemblance to pork. It attains the 
 length of sixty or seventy feet, with a circumference of 
 thirty. It is not very common in the British seas, 
 though it has been found occasionally there, as also 
 on the coast of France. 
 
 The BLUNT-HEADED SPERMACETI WHALE resembles 
 the former, only the muzzle is more blunt, and its body, 
 which grows to as great a length as that of the former, 
 is thicker in proportion ; and vastly more valuable, 
 both for its spermaceti and its oil. The capture of it 
 is not, however, unattended with danger, as it comes 
 open-mouthed with great velocity against its assailants. 
 Instead of a dorsal fin, it has a hump or protuberance 
 on the back. It is occasionally met with in the British 
 seas. 
 
 The SMALL-EYED, also called the ft/ac-headed sper- 
 maceti whale, is characterized by the smallness of its 
 eyes, and the enormous size and dark colour of its 
 
WHALES. 239 
 
 head, which, excepting the tail fin, is fully as long as all 
 the rest of the body. This animal is provided with a 
 dorsal fin. Its teeth are remarkably formidable. There 
 are twenty-one on each side of the lower jaw ; strong, 
 sharply-pointed, and incurvated backwards a little : the 
 principal ones are more than nine inches in length in a 
 large specimen, and they project more than four inches 
 from the jaw, so that its bite is much more powerful 
 than that of any land animal, the lion not excepted, 
 which, were it to come within the crunch of this terrible 
 animal, would be crushed to death in an instant. La 
 Cepede, with some poetic license certainly, but still, in 
 the main, true to the facts, says of it : " The physeter 
 rnicrops is one of the largest and most eruel and dan- 
 gerous inhabitants of the deep. Adding to formidable 
 weapons, the two great sources of strength, bulk and 
 velocity, greedy of carnage, a daring enemy, and 
 an intrepid fighter ; what part of the sea does he not 
 stain with blood ! " 
 
 The small-eyed spermaceti whale is often more than 
 fifty feet in length, and it swims about with the greatest 
 activity, and an apparent consciousness that it is the 
 monarch of the deep. The blow of its tail is not, indeed, 
 so formidable as that of the common whale, and there 
 is no instance of its venturing to attack full-grown 
 animals of that species ; but sharks, dolphins, and por- 
 pesses are an easy prey ; it attacks the balaenopterae, 
 and tears large masses from their bodies ; and the 
 Greenland whale, when not full-grown, plunges into the 
 depths of the ocean at its approach. This animal takes 
 a considerable range ; and is probably more frequent 
 upon the Scottish coast than any of the other large 
 
240 DOLPHINS. 
 
 whales. It is also found on the shores of Germany 
 and France; and in the year 1723, seventeen of them 
 appeared off the mouth of the Elbe, and with their high 
 dorsal fins, like sails, were, by the Fishermen of Cux- 
 haven, mistaken for a fleet of Dutch fishing boats. 
 This species also finds its way into the Mediterranean ; 
 and La Cepede, who seems disposed to magnify all the 
 powers of this animal and they do not stand much in 
 need of magnifying will have it, that the sea-monster, 
 from which the valorous Perseus delivered the fair 
 Andromeda, was an animal of this species ; and that 
 the Orca with which, as Pliny says, the emperor Claudius 
 and his troops fought in the port of Ostia, was another. 
 These suppositions, like the tales themselves, may be 
 true or they may be false, but there is enough contained 
 in authentic history, to show that the physeter microps, 
 if not the most powerful animal, is among the most 
 powerful animals that inhabit the globe. 
 
 The habits of the animal are of too active a nature 
 for admitting of a very great quantity of oil ; but its 
 enormous head contains a good deal of spermaceti, of 
 very excellent quality. Like the rest of the sperma- 
 ceti whales, it has only one blow-hole, but that is of 
 considerable dimensions, and it throws its jet of water 
 to a great height. 
 
 AMBIDENTATJE. 
 
 THE animals of this class are not of so large di- 
 mensions as those of any of the former, the largest of 
 them not measuring more than five and twenty feet in 
 length. Still they are formidable animals, and in some 
 
DOLPHINS. 241 
 
 of the species at least, they are much more frequent 
 and constant inhabitants of the British shores. 
 
 The general name which naturalists give to these 
 animals, is delphini, or dolphins ; and the principal 
 species are, the common dolphin, the ca'ing whale, the 
 grampus, and the porpesse, with the bottle-head, and 
 the beluga or white dolphin, which are more rarely met 
 with in the British seas. All the species are voracious, 
 and remarkable for the depredations that they commit 
 upon various fish ; and many of them are gregarious, 
 or found in herds. 
 
 The DOLPHIN (delphinus delphis) is about as unlike 
 the pictures that are usually made of it as can well be 
 imagined. Tt is usually about nine or ten feet long, 
 rarely more than twelve. Its body is straight, blackish 
 on the upper part, and white below. The nose is long, 
 narrow, and pointed, on which account the animal 
 sometimes gets the name of the " sea-goose." Its 
 favourite haunts are rather in warmer latitudes ; but it 
 is occasionally found in the British seas. The ordi- 
 nary prey is small fishes, but it can eat any garbage. 
 In former times, it was much esteemed as food, perhaps 
 on account of the difficulty of getting it, more than any 
 thing else : at present it is not in much request. The 
 stories that are told about dolphins changing their 
 colours when they are dying, and after they are dead, 
 do not appear to be very well founded. The colour 
 of the fish is very apt to vary with the angle under 
 which it is seen, or at which the light falls upon it. 
 
 The CA'ING WHALE (delphinus melas) was for a 
 considerable time confounded with the grampus. It 
 
 Y 
 
DOLPHINS. 
 
 is by no means rare upon the shores of the northern 
 parts of the island, where it arrives in herds ; and these 
 are so sluggish in their motions, that they get aground 
 and are captured. The largest are rather more than 
 twenty feet long, and about twelve feet in circum- 
 ference. The upper part of the body is a bluish black, 
 and the under part white. They feed upon small 
 fishes, and are not understood to be so voracious as 
 some of the rest of the genus. Their teeth are for- 
 midable, however, and those of the two jaws lock into 
 each other like a trap ; but they are apt to decay as the 
 animal becomes old. 
 
 The GRAMPUS (delphinus orca) is a constant inhabi- 
 tant of the British seas. There is a little confusion in 
 its natural history, some making two varieties, or even 
 species, and some only one. Probably, there is only 
 one species, though the habits of that one may be 
 changed a little with climate and food. It is a most 
 voracious animal, more so than any other of the genus, 
 for it attacks the porpesse, and probably, also, the 
 weaker individuals of its own species. It is large too, 
 sometimes equalling, or even exceeding, twenty-four 
 feet in length, with thickness and strength in pro- 
 portion. Packs of them are said to attack the Green- 
 land whale, and tear off his flesh in masses. Indeed, 
 they are so ferocious and such indiscriminate spoilers, 
 that they spare not even their own kind. But though, 
 in the one grand object of its being, the grampus be 
 thus ferocious, there lies against it no charge of cruelty ; 
 and in the other part, the care of its young, it shows 
 the greatest tenderness and solicitude. This instinct 
 
DOLPHINS. 243 
 
 should be taken along with the other, in every estimate 
 which is made of the characters of animals ; and it is 
 chiefly because that is not done, that we find some of 
 them praised and loved, and others persecuted. 
 
 We are apt to carry man, and man's love of governing 
 and directing, into all our reasonings and judgings of 
 the works of nature, and by this means we take an 
 erroneous view of the subject. The preservation of 
 salmon, though man would like them to be preserved, 
 and though he be justified in using every means that 
 men have legalized for the furtherance of his wish, is 
 no part of the end which nature had in view in the 
 formation of a grampus, any more than the preservation 
 of sheep is a natural purpose of the wolf, or that of flies, 
 a natural purpose of a spider. The law of each is the 
 preservation of itself individually, and of the race to 
 which it belongs ; and this law, though it be different 
 in manner, according to the difference in structure and 
 habitation, is uniform in principle. The eagle,* the 
 grampus, and the lion, may be reckoned among the 
 principal depredators in the three grand departments 
 of the kingdom of nature ; but they are not on that 
 account destroyers. They are preservers : preserving 
 respectively eagles, grampuses, and lions, the only 
 animals with whose preservation they are charged. 
 Where man does not come to claim his dominion, 
 and to call the prey of those animals his, the system 
 is so admirably balanced that it never stands still, 
 or wants the least repair, the supply being so re- 
 gulated in accordance with the waste, that, if we 
 would but imitate it, it is a far better system of 
 economy than that of the wisest of human philosophy. 
 
 
244 DOLPHINS. 
 
 It must be so : for it is the original and immediate 
 workmanship of God, while the greatest ingenuity of 
 man is second-hand, only one step removed from the 
 Divinity it is true, but to our comprehension that single 
 step is infinite. Man can make a trap that will catch 
 animals, if they go into it, as certainly as the claws of a 
 lion, the talons of an eagle, or the teeth of a grampus ; 
 but he must stop at the mere mechanism, he cannot 
 give it that little invisible impulse by which it goes of 
 its own accord to seek them. But man has any thing 
 but cause to complain of that. He himself is the 
 animating power of all his engines ; and, armed with 
 these, he is in truth the lord of the creation ; and, when 
 he joins wisdom to his power, there is hardly any limit 
 that can be assigned to his dominion. 
 
 Many tales, not only interesting, but absolutely affect- 
 ing, have been told of the maternal affection of the 
 grampus. It has even been the theme of poets ; for 
 Waller has a beautiful description of an instance : A 
 mother grampus and her cub had been following their 
 lawful calling that is, catching fish as fast as they could 
 in the estuary of a river ; and they had been so indus- 
 trious and intent upon their work, that they were 
 stranded by the ebbing of the tide. This being ob- 
 served by the country people, their instinct of catching 
 was immediately roused, and they came, in posse comi- 
 tatus, to capture the animals. These were speedily 
 pierced by a number of wounds, and the shallow water 
 was dyed with their blood. But they made a terrible 
 resistance ; and the old one bounded into the deep water 
 and was safe. But her young one was exposed alone 
 to the danger ; and she had no sooner turned her head 
 
DOLPHINS. 245 
 
 toward the shore, than she dashed again into the shallow 
 water, where she made so terrible a resistance, by 
 lashing around her in every direction, that she kept the 
 enemy at bay till the tide rose, upon which she and her 
 young one rode triumphantly to the sea ! 
 
 As the body of the grampus contains very little oil, 
 not enough to pay for the capture, the animal floats 
 very deep in the water ; but then, both its velocity and 
 its voracity are such, that it is very apt to dash itself 
 aground, where it makes a violent resistance, and is 
 exceedingly difficult to kill. 
 
 Though many specimens of the larger kinds of dol- 
 phins have been met with, yet there is a good deal of 
 confusion in their history. La Cepede, in his natural 
 history of the cetacece, makes two species of the dark- 
 coloured and voracious grampus, with the long dorsal 
 fin, delphmus orca, the common grampus ; and del- 
 phinus gladiator, the sea sword ; while Cuvier and 
 others reckon but one, and some consider the Ca'ing 
 whale as only a variety of the grampus. In form and 
 colour they are all very much alike, being clumsy and 
 unsightly in appearance, dark on the upper part, and 
 very white below ; but their habits are described as 
 varying from the extreme of active ferocity to that 
 of indolence. That may in part be owing to the condi- 
 tion they were in at the time when they were observed ; 
 but the ca'ing whale has the swimming paws much 
 narrower, and wants not only the white spot on the 
 shoulder and near the eye, that is found on the others, 
 but sometimes has the body entirely black. 
 
 About twelve years ago, a vast shoal of these animals 
 entered the Firth of Tay, and two dozen, at least, 
 Y 3 
 
246 DOLPHINS. 
 
 grounded on the shoal off Dundee. Their high dorsal 
 fins had been for some time observed by the fishermen, 
 coursing to and fro in the offing ; but as the fins of 
 porpesses are often seen in the same place, they did 
 not excite much attention. A new harbour being in 
 the progress of construction, a number of masons, ex- 
 cavators, and other labourers, were at work upon the 
 sea-wall and its foundations. As the tide ebbed to the 
 depth of four or five feet, a violent splashing drew the 
 attention of the workmen, who found the shoal of 
 grampuses, close by the place where they were work- 
 ing ; the larger ones already grounded, and lashing 
 furiously with their tails, and the smaller ones flouncing 
 and plunging ; the whole having their heads toward the 
 land, and working nearer to it. Stimulated by the 
 joint expectation of great fun and great wealth, the 
 men armed themselves with shovels, pickaxes, crow- 
 bars, boat-hooks, mallets, and chisels, and, in short, 
 every thing that seemed to have any chance of inflict- 
 ing a wound, and plunged into the water in a body. 
 Some of them had the temerity to catch hold of the 
 tails, and vaulting across the narrow part at the root of 
 the fins, to impel the fish further out of the water ; 
 but they were jerked off in an instant, and men and 
 grampuses were weltering in one common confusion ; 
 still, as the water was very shallow, and the men inured 
 to it, there was no danger. One got astride, just before 
 the dorsal fin, with his face to the tail ; and grasping that, 
 rode the sea like another Arion ; but though he treated 
 his beast of burden with plenty of music, or at least 
 noise, it did not show the same gratitude ; for it turned, 
 got toward the deep water, and he was glad to escape. 
 
THE PORPESSE. 24? 
 
 The greater number came close to the wall, however, 
 and were left nearly dry, and subjected to all sorts of 
 wounds. Here one man was hacking with a hatchet, 
 or the edge of a shovel ; there another was aiming a 
 blow at the head of one fish with a pick-axe, while the 
 flap of the tail of another sent him and his pick-axe 
 into the mud. Two were uniting their force at one 
 place, in order to give a death thrust with a crow-bar ; 
 while on the neck of one of the largest, sat a stone- 
 mason, malletting his pointed chisel into the skull. 
 The place soon became a sea of blood ; and what with 
 that, and the natural slipperiness of the skins, together 
 with the convulsive struggles of the wounded animals, 
 ever and anon caused some one to souse into the mire, 
 to the great amusement of the rest. The splutter, the 
 activity, the shouting, and the jocularity and glee with 
 which the whole was conducted, formed a scene to 
 which no pen, and hardly any pencil, could do justice. 
 
 The largest of these animals was more than twenty 
 feet long, and the smallest more than twelve. They 
 produced very little oil. 
 
 The cetaceous animal found most frequently and 
 habitually upon the British shores, is 
 
 THE PORPESSE. 
 
 THE PORPESSE (delphinus phoctena) is comparatively 
 a short animal, being seldom more than six feet long, 
 but it is very thick and fat ; hence the common saying, 
 " As fat as a porpesse." The weight of the porpesse 
 is great for its length. One, only five feet three inches 
 in length, examined by Dr. Fleming, to whom natural 
 
248 THE PORPESSE. 
 
 history is under many obligations, weighed one hundred 
 and thirty pounds. The upper part of the porpesse is 
 of a dull bluish or brownish black, and the under part 
 whitish. It has a number of small teeth, at least forty- 
 eight in each jaw ; the dorsal fin is not very high, and 
 placed far back, and the animal makes a curious tum- 
 bling appearance in the water, through which, however, 
 it courses along with considerable rapidity. Herrings, 
 mackerel, whitings, and all other small fish, appear 
 to be its principal food ; though it also catches salmon, 
 and may be seen coursing them in the estuaries. This 
 chase is best seen on those clear sunny evenings which, 
 in the season at which the salmon ascend the estuaries, 
 often succeed to rainy mornings. The porpesses are 
 commonly in a shoal, and their dark backs may be 
 seen tumbling on the troughs of the waves, while the 
 salmon are, ever and anon, springing out of the water, 
 with their pearly scales glittering in the sun in all the 
 radiance of prismatic colours ; but, as is understood, 
 falling down again to their certain destruction, as they 
 do not spring out of the water till the porpesse be 
 near them, and fall down again, exhausted, within its 
 reach. 
 
 With each other, the porpesses seem to be very 
 affectionate and playful animals. They are always 
 together ; and frisk, leap, and sport a great deal upon 
 the water, especially before storms, as the sailors 
 allege. In this they bear some resemblance to pigs, 
 which are understood to be very frolicsome before wind ; 
 and probably this, as well as the form of their bodies, 
 may have helped to procure them the name of " sea 
 swine,'* by which they are vulgarly called in most of 
 
THE PORPESSE. 249 
 
 the European languages in which they have any name 
 at all. 
 
 In former times, the flesh of the porpesse was 
 esteemed a great delicacy. It appeared at the tables 
 of nobles ; and was accounted by kings a donation 
 worthy of being granted to favourite monasteries : 
 Malcolm IV. of Scotland granted it to the Abbey of 
 Dumfermline. In modern times it is not eaten, though 
 it is far from being unpalatable. The old people had 
 a peculiar sauce for it, made of crumbs of bread, vine- 
 gar, and sugar. The animal is still valuable for its oil, 
 which is good in quality, and rather abundant in quan- 
 tity ; but at many of the fishing villages, the kreng or 
 carcass is left rather offensively upon the beach. Even 
 the skin of the porpesse, which is very compact, and 
 capable of being applied to many useful purposes, is 
 neglected in this country ; but in America the poor 
 people use it as an article of clothing ; and it is also 
 dressed and tanned as a covering for coaches and trunks, 
 for which purposes it is very well adapted, being firm, 
 and impervious to water. 
 
 The porpesse is rather a timid animal, and is easily 
 alarmed by any thing moving in the water, on which 
 account it is sometimes caught by an enclosure made of 
 twigs. These are fixed on a bank in the tideway, so 
 that they shall be covered at high water, but appear as 
 the tide ebbs. Shoals of porpesses pass over them in 
 the former state, in eager pursuit of the small fishes 
 which come near the shore with the tide. But as they 
 continue their fishing till the water has subsided, the 
 twigs appear in a state of motion, and the porpesses, 
 
250 THE PORPESSE. 
 
 afraid to pass or approach them, remain till they are 
 all dry, when they are killed with clubs. 
 
 Two other delphini, of the peaked or long-nosed spe- 
 cies, are sometimes found in the British seas. These 
 are, the BELUGA, (delphmus aptera, so called from its 
 having no dorsal fin, but only a ridge on the back) ; 
 and the BOTTLE-NOSE, (Jiyperoodon, so called from 
 its having tubercles resembling teeth upon the palate). 
 
 The BELUGA, which from its colour is sometimes 
 called the white dolphin, is found in large flocks in the 
 Greenland seas. It also enters the estuaries of rivers, 
 after fish, like the grampus ; but so far as we know, it 
 has not appeared on the coasts of England, and it is 
 but rare on those of Scotland. It has been found in 
 the Orkneys, and one was caught in the Forth below 
 Stirling, in the summer of 1815. Those larger visiters 
 are found in that river more frequently than in others 
 further to the north, the entrances of which are less 
 extended and more interrupted by banks and bars. The 
 salmon, on the other hand, as if instinctively to avoid 
 their enemies, are more abundant in the confined 
 estuaries. 
 
 Sometimes this animal, which is to all appearance a 
 very quiet and harmless one, and finds the Green- 
 landers in many a dainty dinner, is supposed to create 
 great alarm. It is large, (from twelve to eighteen 
 feet long) and it is white, therefore it is mistaken for 
 the formidable shark of the warmer latitudes. The 
 shark is not a warm-blooded animal, neither does it 
 suckle its young, or, though it brings them forth alive, 
 appear to care any thing about them afterwards. Their 
 
THE PORPESSE. 251 
 
 young are produced from eggs, which are hatched in- 
 ternally, as is probably the case with all the cartila- 
 ginous fishes that have fixed gills. The white shark 
 (charcharias vulgar is) is very rare indeed upon the Bri- 
 tish coasts, and we are not sure that there is any very 
 well authenticated instance of its appearance north of 
 the channel, nor very many there ; so that British bathers 
 are not in any very great danger from it. 
 
 The BOTTLE-NOSE, so called from its muzzle being 
 elongated like the neck of a bottle, is a much longer 
 fish than the former, being found as long as thirty feet. 
 The body is conical, the head thick, and terminating in 
 a projecting snout. It has been occasionally found in 
 most of the estuaries of our large rivers ; but it is far 
 from common, and probably it does not follow fish like 
 the rest of the tribe; but feeds mostly upon mollusca 
 as the snout of the cuttle-fish are the remains usually 
 found in its stomach. It has only two teeth in the 
 lower jaw ; and the tubercles on its palate serve to 
 bruise its molluscous food. The habits of many of 
 these animals, especially the two last mentioned, are 
 but very imperfectly known. The habits of all the 
 natives of the deep, even of those that are caught in 
 thousands every day, want much investigation; and, 
 from the nature of their element, the task is not an 
 easy one. 
 
 There is one fish, belonging to the same tribe with 
 the shark, which common observers are apt to con- 
 found with some of the dolphin tribe, and that is 
 
252 
 
 THE SAIL FISH. 
 
 THE SAIL-FISH, called also the Sun-Fish, and the 
 Basking- Shark, (sgualus maximus,) is not often met 
 with on the east coast of this country, though it be a 
 pretty regular summer visitant on the west. It is 
 about thirty feet long, and has two fins on the back, 
 the one on the middle and the other near the tail. The 
 former is commonly above water, and, from that cir- 
 cumstance, with the shape and size of the fin, the fish 
 has its common name. The fin is dark, and the upper 
 part of the fish of a bluish colour, but the under part 
 is white. The skin feels smooth when the hand is 
 passed over it from the head toward the tail, but rough 
 and uneven when passed in an opposite direction. It 
 is a heavy-looking fish, and not easily alarmed by the 
 approach of boats ; but the story commonly told of its 
 waiting till the harpoon is pushed a second time into it, 
 is not true ; as it usually plunges the moment that it is 
 struck. The liver contains a great quantity of oil. This 
 fish usually makes its appearance on the west coast in 
 May, and leaves it again about the end of July. 
 
 The division of fishes to which the sail-fish belongs, 
 though numerous and diversified, and containing some 
 of the most singular inhabitants of the ocean, yet all 
 agree in certain parts of their structure. They all differ 
 from the osseous fishes, or fishes with fibrous bones (of 
 which some slight notice has already been taken) in the 
 structure of their skeletons, in the nature of their in- 
 tegument or covering, and in the mode of their pro- 
 duction. The division has this farther advantage, that 
 
CARTILAGINOUS FISHES. 253 
 
 the characters by which it is marked are obvious, with- 
 out any recourse to dissection, or even minute obser- 
 vation. The most remarkable and general charac- 
 teristic is the gristly nature of the skeleton ; and on 
 that account they are called 
 
 CARTILAGINOUS FISHES. 
 
 They are also called CHONDROPTERYGIOUS ; and that 
 name is expressive both of the skeleton and of the 
 covering of the surface, especially thefins of the greater 
 part of the division, %ov$po$ signifying cartilage, and 
 also granulated, and the remainder of the compound 
 name meaning Jlnned. And a considerable number 
 of these fishes have their fins so hard and granular 
 on the surface, that they serve for polishing, like files, 
 while others have spines and shelly knobs. These 
 spines are sometimes very formidable weapons, as in 
 the serrated spine, which terminates the tail of the 
 sting ray, (trygon pastinaca ;) and in those of the 
 common dog-fish, (squalus acanthius;) although the 
 wounds inflicted by these animals are said not to occa- 
 sion nearly so much pain as those inflicted by the 
 common weever (trachmus draco,) an osseous fish, 
 about a foot long, the wounding weapon of which 
 (commonly represented as being venemous) is the first 
 spine of the dorsal fin. If w r e were not prepared to 
 meet with all sorts of organizations among the pro- 
 ductions of nature, we should be apt to wonder at this 
 production of bony matter, as hard as the most com- 
 pact teeth, upon the surface of fishes, the internal ske- 
 letons of which never acquire any harder consistency 
 
254 CARTILAGINOUS FISHES. 
 
 than gristle or cartilage, and of course composed 
 almost entirely of gelatine, without any admixture of 
 those salts of lime to which bones and shells owe their 
 stiffness. But when we come to examine the matter, 
 we find this structure a remarkable instance of con- 
 trivance and economy. The absence of lime in the 
 skeleton gives wonderful pliancy to the bodies of these 
 fishes ; while the granulated, tuberculated, or spinous 
 surface, is a coat of mail to them against enemies, and 
 not unfrequently a powerful weapon of aggression. 
 Their external bony substances differ a good deal 
 from bone. They contain a portion of carbonate of 
 lime, as well as phosphate, and thus hold an inter- 
 mediate rank between bones and shells ; and place 
 those fishes to which they belong as an intermediate 
 link between the osseous fishes and the shelled mollusca ; 
 the latter of which have not even the cartilaginous 
 rudiments of a skeleton, and have their covering chiefly 
 of carbonate of lime. We find a similar gradation in 
 those marine animals that are covered with crusts, such 
 as the crab and the lobster. Their internal bones 
 are cartilaginous, and the external crusts are com- 
 posed of carbonate and phosphate of lime. On 
 land, we find the same gradation in many of the 
 reptiles. Their bones are cartilaginous, while the 
 indurated matter is accumulated in the external scales 
 and crusts. Generally, however, there is a difference 
 in the composition of those appendages, which shows 
 that each is fitted to the element in which it is to live. 
 The scales and crusts of land animals are horny, or 
 composed almost entirely of gelatine, which, though it 
 can bear the action of the air, and a considerable change 
 
CARTILAGINOUS FISHES. 255 
 
 of temperature, would be softened and ultimately dis- 
 solved by long maceration in water. Those of sea ani- 
 mals are, on the other hand, composed of what is called 
 mother-of-pearl, from the play of colours usually ob- 
 servable in it. It consists of coagulated albumen and 
 carbonate of lime, in very thin layers ; a structure much 
 better fitted for bearing the action of water, than that 
 of the air and variations of temperature. 
 
 The breathing apparatus of those fishes is a curious 
 structure. With the exception of the sturgeon, which 
 has some other peculiarities, the gills in all are fixed, 
 and inclosed in a thorax or chest, furnished with carti- 
 laginous ribs, and a cartilaginous diaphragm, and thus 
 capable of being extended and contracted like that of 
 the mammalia. On this account, the romance writers on 
 natural history have described the cartilaginous fishes 
 as breathing with lungs, and being intermediate between 
 the cetacecB and the osseous fishes ; at the same time 
 that they had gills. Thus furnishing them with two 
 sets of respiratory apparatus, and yet with but one ven- 
 tricle and auricle in the heart. 
 
 Now the fact is, that if we are to consider the animals 
 which most resemble man to be the most perfect, (which, 
 by the way, is a very improper mode of expression, as 
 a lamprey, or even a polypus, which is nothing but a 
 little tube or sac, is just as perfect in its way as a 
 greyhound or a race-horse,) if we are to use that mode 
 of expression, we must consider the cartilaginous fishes 
 as a degree lower than the osseous, on account of their 
 soft skeleton and their mode of respiration, and also 
 in their nervous structure. They correspond in another 
 particular : those animals which are usually accounted 
 
256 CARTILAGINOUS FISHES. 
 
 the least perfect, are the most tenacious of life ; and, 
 generally speaking, cartilaginous fishes are much more 
 so than those that have bones. 
 
 In those fishes the gills consist of a greater or smaller 
 number of bags or cells, the internal surface of which 
 is covered with fleshy fibres, the same in appearance 
 as the gills of osseous fish, and, no doubt, answering 
 precisely the same purpose, that of affording the blood 
 the oxygen necessary for the purposes of life, by ex- 
 posing it to water containing that fluid, in an extended 
 tissue of minute vessels. Those gill cells vary in 
 number in different genera, there being seven on each 
 side in the lamprey, and only six in the hag. The 
 openings which lead from those cells to the surface of 
 the fish, vary even more. The lamprey has seven on 
 each side ; the hag only one, but each opening in that 
 communicates with all the cells. At their other termi- 
 nations, the cells communicate with the gullet, so that 
 they are adapted as a thoroughfare for water, like other 
 gills, and not for alternate respiration and expiration 
 by the same passage, like lungs. 
 
 Analogy would lead us to suppose that the water is 
 received by the mouth, conducted thence by the tubes 
 to the cells, deprived of the oxygen of its air by the 
 fibres in these, and then discharged through lateral 
 openings as useless, by the action of the sides and 
 diaphragm of the thorax. Nor can there be any doubt 
 that when the fish is swimming " free-mouthed," this 
 must be the case. But there are some genera, that 
 use the mouth as a sucker, during which time it cannot, 
 consistently with the principle of suction, have any 
 connexion with the breathing apparatus. Sir Everard 
 
CARTILAGINOUS FISHES. 257 
 
 Home is of opinion that the water is, in these cases, 
 both received and discharged by these lateral openings ; 
 v and the vulgar opinion is, that it is received by these 
 and discharged by the nostril. The last opinion can- 
 not be true, as the nostril is not connected with the 
 organs of respiration at all ; and even that of Sir Eve- 
 rard is suspicious, as it involves not only a violation of 
 analogy, but a want of skill not to be found in any 
 other production of nature. If the gill-openings are 
 adapted for the ingress of water, they would have this 
 property at all times, and the thoroughfare by the 
 mouth would be useless. But in a fish which, like the 
 shark, swims with great velocity, the entrance of the 
 water by the lateral openings would be accomplishing 
 a purpose by the most difficult means. Those openings 
 are behind rather than before the gill-cells, so that the 
 mechanical action of the animal through the water 
 would prevent that fluid from entering by those aper- 
 tures, though it would facilitate it in getting out. So 
 obvious is this, upon the very simplest principles of 
 motion in a fluid, that one can hardly imagine the oppo- 
 site possible ; and so much is it the case in osseous 
 fishes, that if they be drawn backward with rapidity, 
 or held by the tail in a current, they are speedily 
 drowned, strangulated, because the gills will not act. 
 When fishes of this kind are swimming, they must 
 therefore take in water by the mouth, and pass it out 
 by the gill openings, just in the same way as other 
 fishes. Still, the respiration while sucking is a diffi- 
 culty, though the difficulty does not consist, as Sir 
 Everard thinks, in how the water gets out, but in how 
 it gets in ; and that difficulty is not cleared up by his 
 z 3 
 
258 CARTILAGINOUS FISHES. 
 
 supposition that the water enters by the hole on the one 
 side, passes through, and escapes by the other ; because, 
 unless there were a difference in the two, which could 
 shut the one aperture against the escape, and the other 
 against the entrance of water, it is not easy to see how 
 it could be accomplished, any more than a person could 
 at one and the same time draw in breath by the one 
 nostril, and let it out by the other. If it is found that 
 there is no other ingress for the water of respiration, 
 while the animal is sucking, than the gill openings ; the 
 simplest plan would be to suppose that these and the 
 thorax had a power of alternate expansion to receive, 
 and contraction to expel, like lungs; and that is an 
 alternation of motion and position, for which the struc- 
 ture of gills but ill adapts them. If, however, Sir 
 Everard Home has not solved the difficulty, he has 
 found it out, and that, in such cases, is half the labour. 
 There is a general rule in all these cases ; the estab- 
 lished laws of the matter of which animals are com- 
 posed, and in or by which they perform the functions 
 of life, must never be violated ; and can never be 
 suspended, without the existence of some contrivance 
 sufficient to effect that purpose : and the great beauty 
 of the whole is, that that contrivance is always the 
 simplest possible, does its office completely, but does 
 nothing more. 
 
THE LAMPREY. 259 
 
 CHONDROPTERYGIOUS SUCKERS. 
 
 OF these singular fishes, there are three genera 
 known in the British seas and rivers : the LAMPREY, 
 (Petromyzon\) the PRIDE, (Ammocteles;) and the HAG, 
 (Myxine.) All these have a sucking apparatus sur- 
 rounding the mouth, by which they adhere to that on 
 which they feed, and also to stones. 
 
 Of the LAMPREY there are two species; the sea lam- 
 prey, which is marbled with brown, yellow, and black. 
 It grows to the length of about three feet, and has the 
 second dorsal fin separated from the fin of the tail. 
 The river lamprey is bluish on the back, and silvery 
 below ; its second dorsal fin is continued all the way to 
 the tail, and its length seldom exceeds ten inches. 
 Though the one be called the sea, and the other the 
 river lamprey, the habits of these fishes are very much 
 the same. They both ascend the rivers from the sea 
 in spring, for the purpose of spawning, which they do 
 about March or April, and return to the ocean again 
 about June. When in season, the lamprey is accounted 
 a very delicious fish ; and both ancient and modern 
 history record instances of persons having died from 
 eating it to excess. The mouth is a curious structure. 
 The sucker consists of a border without the lips, ex- 
 hibiting an outside row of papillas of a conical shape, 
 and two or three rows of fringes within. With this it 
 adheres very firmly, though without preventing the 
 action of the mouth. There are two primary or fast 
 teeth, one with two points above, and one with seven 
 below. There are several rows of moveable teeth 
 
260 THE HAG. 
 
 within these, and also smaller ones upon the tongue ; 
 thus while it holds by the sucker, it can abrade 
 and lacerate the surface to which it sticks, so as to get 
 at and extract the nutritive part, even though the cover- 
 ing be tough and hard. The accounts that are generally 
 given about the lampreys fastening on cattle and horses 
 when they pass rivers, do not appear to be very well 
 authenticated. Neither is its food known with much 
 precision, though from the great simplicity of its di- 
 gestive apparatus, the food must be of a succulent 
 description when taken into the mouth, or else reduced 
 to one there. 
 
 The PRIDE is smaller than the smallest lamprey, not 
 being above eight inches in length ; it is barred across 
 with a dusky colour. It contains fewer palatal teeth 
 than the lamprey. It is a mud fish, found in some of 
 the tributary streams of the Thames and some other 
 rivers, and has not been traced in migration, either to 
 or from the sea. 
 
 The HAG is about the same length as the Pride ; 
 but its body is very glutinous, nearly a cylinder ; there 
 are no scales upon it, and it is without eyes. There 
 is a sucker round the mouth, one large piercing tooth 
 upon the palate, and a row of very close ones upon 
 each side of the tongue. The hag has sometimes 
 been confounded with the pride, but they are different 
 in their appearance and some parts of their struc- 
 ture, and also in their habitations ; the pride being 
 found only in rivers, and the hag in the sea. The hag 
 is a very voracious fish, and very annoying to the 
 
THE HAG. 261 
 
 fishermen on some parts of the east coast. In the 
 white fishing, the lines are often left for a tide floating 
 in the sea ; when the fish are caught on the hooks and 
 struggling, the hag enters their mouths, and fastening 
 its sucker, soon drains all the juices, leaving only the 
 skin and the bones, which are called " robbed fish," by 
 the fishermen. 
 
 The most singular circumstance about these fishes, 
 is the mode of their production. It had long been 
 noticed, that when the lampreys were in season, that 
 is, while ascending the rivers from the sea, in order to 
 spawn, all that were taken contained roes or eggs 
 were females, and that a male lamprey had never been 
 observed. The researches of Sir Everard Home have 
 very satisfactorily proved, that in all the three genera 
 that have been enumerated, the male and the female 
 are united in the same individual, and that each deposits 
 its eggs in a state fit for producing young, without 
 any other intervention, though there be a great deal 
 of obscurity about the time and mode of this singular 
 impregnation. 
 
 But the peculiarities of structure and habit, even in 
 this single division of the inhabitants of the sea, are so 
 numerous, that even the bare enumeration of them 
 would extend to many volumes ; and after all, leave the 
 subject little more than merely begun. One, however, 
 possesses a property, which, though not peculiar to it, 
 is yet too singular for being passed over. That one is 
 
262 
 
 THE TORPEDO. 
 
 The lower surface is here represented :* a, the mouth, before which, in 
 the shadow, are the nostrils, b b, the gill holes, for breathing, c c, the 
 places where the electric organs are situated ; and where, if the integuments 
 were removed, the under ends of the pillars would be seen like a delicate 
 network. The light spaces outside of c c, are the situations of the cartilages 
 of the pectoral mis, which fins form the dark edges, d, the situation of the 
 transverse ligament which separates the thorax from the abdomen. 
 
 THE TORPEDO, or CRAMP-FISH, (torpedo vulgaris,} is 
 found on the British coasts, though not very frequently. 
 The specimens that have been met with, have varied 
 very much in size, some being four feet and a half in 
 length, and more than seventy pounds weight. Lin- 
 naeus classed this fish with the scate tribe, under the 
 name of raia torpedo, but it has few characters in 
 common with them, except that it is cartilaginous, and 
 the breadth considerable, as compared with the length ; 
 but its shape is unlike. The head and thick part of 
 the body form a roundish lump, from which the tail 
 
THE TORPEDO. 263 
 
 extends, having two dorsal fins, and one caudal fin on 
 the termination. The mouth, teeth, and eyes, are very 
 small, and the fish does not seem to be fitted for much 
 exertion of any kind. 
 
 Its general habits are not much known, but its elec- 
 tric power has been mentioned from very remote 
 antiquity. The fact is mentioned by Aristotle, Pliny, 
 and Appian ; and the Arabic name is the " lightning 
 fish," which would tempt one to conclude, that, at some 
 period of their history, the Arabians must have known 
 more of the nature of thunder and lightning than the 
 inhabitants of Europe, down even to a time compara- 
 tively recent. 
 
 The ancient allegation was, that the torpedo could 
 give a shock capable of numbing the hand and arm of 
 the fisherman ; and among that class of persons, the 
 fact appears to have been all along known, though it 
 it did not attract the attention of philosophers till 
 toward the close of the seventeenth century. Reaumur 
 described the phenomena with accuracy, but erred in 
 attributing them to muscular action. Mr. Walsh was 
 the first to investigate the nature of the numbing 
 power in this fish, and Dr. Hunter to examine and 
 describe the singular apparatus by which the shock is 
 given. 
 
 That apparatus consists of organs which occupy the 
 surface of the sides, from the fore-part of the animal, 
 to the hind part of the thorax, reaching from the car- 
 tilages of the fins toward the centre of the fish. The 
 length of each organ is rather more than a fourth of 
 that of the animal, and they are thicker toward the 
 centre, and thinned off toward the edges. They are 
 
264 THE TORPEDO. 
 
 fastened to the parts adjoining, by cellular texture and 
 tendinous fibres ; and their upper and under surfaces 
 are covered by the common skin of the fish, while 
 immediately under the skin there is a thin fascia of 
 longitudinal fibres, which are open in many places. 
 Another fascia immediately below this, is formed into 
 a great number of perpendicular sheaths, and these 
 again are filled by angular columns, of various numbers 
 of sides. There are several rows of these columns, 
 and the number appears to increase annually by the 
 addition of new ones at the exterior. The number of 
 columns in one organ of a torpedo, four feet and a half 
 in length, was eleven hundred and eighty-two. The 
 columns are divided across into cells, of which, with 
 these partitions, there are one hundred and fifty in an 
 inch, but they vary with the state of moisture on the 
 body of the animal. The partitions of the columns 
 contain a great number of blood-vessels, which come 
 immediately from the gill cells, in which the blood has 
 been purified by the action of the air. The cells 
 formed by the divisions of the columns are filled with 
 a fluid, which has, upon analysis, been found to consist 
 of albunum and gelatine, and which, therefore, cannot, 
 as was once supposed, possess any electric action, but 
 must merely serve to lubricate the delicate fibrous 
 structure of which the electric organs are composed. 
 Those organs contain a great?* portion of nervous 
 ramifications than almost any other animal texture, 
 except that which is an immediate seat of sensation ; 
 and as the shocks given by the torpedo appear to be, 
 in a great measure at least, voluntary, there can be 
 no doubt that their production is in some way or other 
 
THE TORPEDO. 265 
 
 produced by the action of those nerves. The following 
 are some of the leading facts in the phenomena of the 
 torpedo, as established by careful experiments, made 
 by M. M. Humboldt and Gay Lussac : 
 
 1. "A person much in the habit of receiving elec- 
 tric shocks, can sustain with some difficulty the shock 
 of a vigorous torpedo fourteen inches long. The 
 action of the torpedo below water, is not percep- 
 tible till it be raised above the surface of the water. 
 [It does not appear that the shock was tried with both 
 the torpedo and experimenter immersed in water, 
 though that would be necessary, to complete the 
 facts.] 
 
 2. " Before each shock, the torpedo moves its pec- 
 toral fins in a convulsive manner, and the violence of 
 the shock is always in proportion to the extent of the 
 surface of contact. 
 
 3. "The organs of the torpedo cannot be discharged 
 by us at our pleasure, nor does it always communicate 
 a shock when touched. It must be irritated before it 
 gives the shock ; and, in all probability, it does not keep 
 its electric organs charged. It charges them, however, 
 with astonishing quickness, and is, therefore, capable 
 of giving a great number of shocks. 
 
 4. " The shock is experienced when a single finger 
 is applied to a single surface of the electric organs, or 
 when two hands are placed, one on the upper, and one 
 on the under surface at the same time; and, in all cases, 
 the shock is equally communicated, whether the person 
 is insulated or not. 
 
 5. "If any insulated person touches the torpedo 
 with the finger, it must be in immediate contact, as no 
 
266 THE TORPEDO. 
 
 shock is perceived if the animal is touched with a key 
 or any other conducting body. 
 
 6. " When the torpedo was placed upon a metallic 
 plate, so that the interior surface of its organ touched 
 the metal, the hand which supported the plate felt no 
 shock, although the animal was irritated by another 
 insulated person, and when it was obvious, from the 
 convulsive motion of its pectoral fins, that it was in a 
 state of powerful action. 
 
 7. " If a person, on the contrary, support with his 
 left hand the torpedo placed on a metallic plate, and if 
 he touches with his right hand the upper surface of the 
 electric organ, a violent commotion will be felt in both 
 his arms atthe same instant. 
 
 8. " A similar shock will be received, if the fish is 
 placed between two metallic plates, the edges of which 
 do not touch, and if a person applies a hand to each 
 plate at the same instant. 
 
 9. " If, under the circumstances of the preceding 
 experiments, there is a connexion between the edges 
 of the plates, no shock will be experienced, as a com- 
 munication is now formed between the two surfaces of 
 the organ. 
 
 10. " The organs of the torpedo do not affect the 
 most delicate electrometer. Every method was tried 
 in vain, of communicating electricity to the condenser 
 of Volta. 
 
 11. "A circle of communication being formed by a 
 number of persons between the upper and under sur- 
 faces of the organs, they received no shock till their 
 hands were moistened with water. The shock was 
 equally felt when two persons, who had their right 
 
THE TORPEDO. 267 
 
 hands applied to the torpedo, instead of holding each 
 other's left hands, plunged a pointed piece of metal into 
 a drop of water placed upon an insulating body. 
 
 12. " By substituting flame in place of a drop of 
 water, no sensation was experienced till the two pointed 
 pieces of metal came in contact with the flame. 
 
 13. " No shock will be experienced either in air or 
 below water, unless the body of the electric fish is im- 
 mediately touched. The torpedo is unable to commu- 
 nicate its shock through a layer of water, however thin. 
 
 14. " The least injury done to the brain of the 
 animal, prevents its electric action." 
 
 Spallanzani made a number of experiments upon this 
 singular animal, the most remarkable results of which 
 were that the back of the torpedo always gives a 
 shock when irritated, whether it be in air or in water, 
 but that the action of the breast is neither so uniform 
 nor so violent ; that when both surfaces are irritated at 
 the same time, the back gives a shock and the breast 
 not ; that when the animal is about to expire, the shocks 
 become more feeble, but are repeated so fast, that 
 about forty-five are given in a minute, and that the 
 sensation which they occasion is very similar to that 
 produced by the pulsations of a heart or an artery ; 
 that the shocks are always most powerful when the 
 torpedo is laid upon glass ; and that the young, if fully 
 formed, are capable of giving shocks even before they 
 have quitted the eggs. 
 
 The difference between the electric action of the 
 torpedo, and that of a jar or battery in the common 
 electric apparatus, was explained by Cavendish, who 
 showed, by very satisfactory experiments, that the 
 
268 THE TORPEDO. 
 
 distribution of an equal share of electricity has its 
 action diminished as the number of jars, among which 
 it is distributed, is increased ; and upon the very pro- 
 bable conjecture that each column in the organs of the 
 torpedo has the nature and action of a separate jar, it 
 would follow, from the result of his experiments, that a 
 torpedo, containing 1182 columns in its organ would, 
 though equally charged as a single jar, send its energy 
 only through one thirty-second part of the distance, a 
 space much too small for allowing any shock or sound, 
 or any effect upon an electrometer. This, to a very con- 
 siderable extent, identifies the electricity of the fish 
 with that of the clouds and the electric machine ; and 
 that identity is farther rendered probable by the fact 
 that the torpedo does not give a shock till irritated, 
 and till the electric organs have been excited by the 
 friction arising from the motion of the pectoral fins. 
 
 It was once supposed, that, as the organs contain a 
 fluid, the action was similar to that of galvanism, and 
 like it, accompanied by some kind of chemical decom- 
 position ; but as the substances of which the organs 
 are composed appear to be unfit for any purpose of 
 this kind, that hypothesis has been abandoned, and the 
 action is now considered to be electric. How it is pro- 
 duced is another matter, and one which does not lie 
 within the province of accurate science. That it is 
 intimately connected with the life and health of the 
 animal, is evident, from its ceasing upon injury being 
 done to the brain, and from its becoming feeble and 
 convulsive when the animal is in the agonies of death. 
 In so far, at least, it is also voluntary, as the animal, 
 even when in vigorous health, does not always give a 
 
ELECTRIC FISHES. 269 
 
 shock when irritated, which it would of course do, if 
 the operation were purely a mechanical one. Thus, 
 though the electricity itself be analogous to that which 
 we can produce at our pleasure by other means, the 
 mode of its production is a part of the economy of life ; 
 and therefore we cannot reason about it upon the ana- 
 logies of dead matter ; but must, as in all cases involving 
 the singular mystery of vitality, content ourselves with 
 observing its phenomena, and be careful not to extend 
 our theory of its nature and laws beyond these. This 
 is a caution that should never be lost sight of in the 
 study of nature ; and the distinction between what can 
 be known and what cannot, is one of the most impor- 
 tant departments of sound philosophy, though it is 
 sometimes overlooked both by the learned and the 
 ignorant. 
 
 Though it is probable that the body of every animal, 
 and indeed every substance in nature, is capable Jof 
 being excited by electric action, yet distinct organs 
 for the purpose of producing such action, are found 
 only in fishes, and hitherto but in a very limited number 
 of these. These organs, like other parts of the organic 
 structure, appear to be admirably adapted to the instinct 
 which they serve, and the purpose which they effect ; 
 and though, in the different fishes which are furnished 
 with them, there be some difference in their form, 
 there is much resemblance in their substance and 
 structure, in the same manner as wings, claws, stings, 
 or any other class of organs, of which the existence at 
 once suggests the use. They are quite distinct from 
 the organs of motion, respiration, circulation, digestion, 
 or any other which belongs to their possessor generally 
 2 A 3 
 
270 ELECTRIC FISHES. 
 
 as an animal, or particularly as an animal of a certain 
 class adapted for living in a certain element. They do 
 not, for instance, belong to the torpedo generally be- 
 cause it is a fish, but peculiarly because it is a fish 
 capable of imparting electric shocks ; and if one were 
 to find organs of a similar kind in any other animal, 
 whether a fish or not, the natural conclusion would 
 be, that that animal was electric. Although, therefore, 
 we are unable to trace the action of the electric power 
 all the way up to the volition of the fish, we can con- 
 clude from the presence of the organ, that the power 
 exists. 
 
 The other fishes that have electric powers are all 
 natives of warmer countries, and most of them are 
 found in rivers ; and even the torpedo is said to be 
 much more powerful in its action in warmer countries 
 than it is in England. There is, therefore, some proba- 
 bility that the action is, in some way or other, influenced 
 by temperature and light." Indeed it is highly probable 
 that the sun has much more influence in producing the 
 phenomena of nature, than we are in the habit of sup- 
 posing. We know that colours and tastes and scents 
 are all elaborated by the sun ; for when the summer is 
 more than usually cold and cloudy, the flowers are de- 
 ficient both in beauty and in fragrance, and the fruits 
 in taste ; and as we pass into warmer latitudes we find 
 all these qualities increased. Nor is it a mere darkening 
 of the hues, but apparently a greater activity in the 
 structure of the leaf; for the same sunny weather which 
 increases the crimson of the rose, gives more snowy and 
 pearly lustre to the lily. The subject, it must be ad- 
 mitted, is a nice and difficult one ; but it does not 
 
THE GYMNOTUS. 271 
 
 appear to be, on all occasions, treated with the attention 
 that it merits. There is probably a little prejudice 
 connected with it : as the ridicule with which attempts to 
 read the history of men and nations in the heavens has 
 been very properly treated, may have had some effect 
 in preventing people from reading in them those lessons 
 which they are capable of affording. 
 
 The other fishes that have been observed to possess 
 electric power, are four : the electric eel of Guiana, in 
 South America, (gymnotus electricus ;) the silurus elec- 
 tricus, found in the Nile and Niger ; and the tetraodon 
 electricus, and trich'mrus Indicus, found in the Indian 
 
 The GYMNOTUS is found in the muddy places of rivers 
 and in stagnant pools, in Guiana, and the adjoining parts 
 of South America ; and from its burrowing in the mud, 
 it is not very easily caught ; and indeed the large ones 
 are not very pleasant to kill, except with a missile wea- 
 pon. They are much more formidable creatures than 
 the torpedo, killing by their shocks not only every other 
 inhabitant of the waters which they haunt, but paralyz- 
 ing the larger land quadrupeds so that they are 
 drowned, or even depriving them of life, by the violence 
 of their shocks. 
 
 The gymnotus bears some resemblance to an eel, 
 only it is thicker in proportion to its length, and more 
 spindle-shaped. The head and belly occupy only a 
 small portion of its length, the greater part being taken 
 up by the muscles and electric organs ; and the under 
 part terminating, along the whole length, except the 
 head and belly, in one strong continuous fin ; while on 
 
272 THE GYMNOTUS. 
 
 the back there are two rows of glandular apertures, 
 through which a mucous fluid is discharged, for lubri- 
 cating the skin. There are two electric organs upon 
 each side of the gymnotus, a large one near the back 
 and immediately under the skin, and a small one nearer 
 the fin, and beneath the muscular texture by which that 
 is moved. There is also a portion of muscle between 
 the small organ and the large one. Both these organs 
 extend nearly to the extremity of the tail, becoming 
 thinner as that is approached ; and they occupy about 
 one half of the mass where they are placed, or more 
 than a third of the whole fish. 
 
 The structure of these organs has a considerable re- 
 semblance to that of those of the torpedo. They are 
 divided lengthways into tubes or pillars ; and then 
 again into cells by transverse partitions. The parti- 
 tions are very near each other, there being about two 
 hundred and forty in an inch. The longitudinal ones, 
 which are at the greatest distance in the largest speci- 
 mens, are much further apart, some of them being half 
 an inch or even more. The longitudinal divisions of 
 the small organs are closer, and they lie in curves, but 
 the form of their organization is the same. Thus, while, in 
 their internal structure, the organs of the gymnotus are 
 like those of the torpedo, they seem to consist of the 
 same materials, albumen and gelatine being the pre- 
 vailing substances in both. The superior power of the 
 gymnotus may depend partly on the larger size of its 
 organs, and partly upon the larger surfaces of the trans- 
 verse cells ; at least that would be the case if they were 
 batteries of electric jars, which they resemble in some of 
 their phenomena, though, as is the case with the other 
 
THE GYMNOTUS. 273 
 
 electric fishes, we know of no means by which they can 
 be either charged or discharged, except at the will of 
 the fish. The electricity of this fish, as well as that of 
 the former, has sometimes been conjectured to be gal- 
 vanic, and some have even pretended that it contains 
 iron, and is magnetic, and that its action may be de- 
 stroyed, or at least suspended, by keeping it for some 
 time in contact with a magnet ; but these, as well as 
 every other attempt to explain the causes of its action, 
 by any analogy drawn from dead matter, have failed ; 
 and it is now admitted to be an animal action, which 
 we can no further explain than that it depends on the 
 presence of certain organs. 
 
 The accounts of the gymnotus having been found 
 twenty feet long, are probably without foundation ; as 
 the largest ones found by Humboldt were only a few 
 inches more than five feet. The scheme to which that 
 traveller had recourse in order to capture these animals 
 was not a little curious. The hook, the net, and all 
 the ordinary means of fishing having proved unsuc- 
 cessful, Humboldt had recourse to horses. About 
 thirty of these animals were driven into a pond known 
 to contain a number of these gymnoti ; and they were 
 made to splash and raise the mud and water, by the 
 shouting and hallooing of a number of Indians, armed 
 with long forks. The eels, thus attacked by hostile 
 hoofs in their native mud, rose in the water, and can- 
 nonaded the enemy with great spirit and determination. 
 The horses would have fled at the first onset of those 
 enemies, but they were driven back into the water. Some 
 of the horses were so completely stunned by the blows, 
 that they sunk in the water ; and in that way two were 
 
274 THE GYMNOTUS. 
 
 drowned, or killed in a few minutes. The eels ap- 
 peared to attack in the way best calculated for destroy- 
 ing or impeding the energies of the horses, as they 
 laid their whole length close to the thorax and belly ; 
 and it is well known that the shock of the gymnotus is 
 in proportion to the surface which it touches. Thus 
 the blows were communicated directly to the most 
 delicate and essential parts of the horses ; and even 
 those that did not sink down, gave every sign of the 
 utmost agony and alarm ; and those that made their 
 way out of the water stumbled at every step, and lay 
 down upon the sand as if their nervous energy had 
 been completely destroyed. Their exertions had been 
 very severe to the eels also ; for, after it was over, the 
 shock, on drawing them out with a dry line, was 
 hardly perceptible. 
 
 The gymnoti destroy all other kinds of fish in places 
 where they are abundant ; and they are said also to 
 prevent the multiplying of the alligators, by benumbing 
 the young ones till they are past recovery ; and when 
 the Indians find gymnoti and these together in their 
 nets, the alligators are stunned or lifeless, while there 
 is no appearance of a wound upon the others, so that 
 the alligators must have been struck before they could 
 bite. Fishes are stunned in an instant : and in the 
 experiments of Dr. Williamson, when he threw a cat- 
 fish of considerable size, into the vessel of water con- 
 taining the gymnotus, the eel first took a look at the 
 fish, and retired to a little distance ; but it instantly 
 returned and gave the cat-fish a shock, which made it 
 come to the surface motionless, and with its belly up- 
 permost. The death was not instant, however ; for if 
 
THE GYMNOTUS. 275 
 
 the fish were immediately taken out of the water that 
 contained the gymnotus, they recovered their powers, 
 though slowly ; but if they were allowed to remain in 
 the same water with it, they died. 
 
 The shock of the gymnotus is felt most strongly 
 when it is actually touched ; and the violence of the 
 shock bears some proportion to that of the touching ; 
 being much more violent when it is pressed, than 
 when the hand is simply brought into contact with 
 it. The shock is communicated to a considerable 
 extent through the water, though the violence dimi- 
 nishes with the distance, a shock at three feet distance 
 being much less severe than one obtained by immediate 
 contact. When the shock is not received by immediate 
 contact with the fish, but through some connecting 
 substance, the violence of the shock is in proportion 
 to the conducting power of those substances ; and with 
 a dry glass rod, or silk handkerchief, it may be touched 
 without inconvenience. 
 
 Like the action of the torpedo, that of the gymnotus 
 cannot be transmitted in the air, except to very minute 
 distances. If the ends of two wires be as much as 
 even the fiftieth part of an inch asunder, the shock 
 does not pass from the one of them to the other ; and 
 along a line it is weak, unless the line be wet. 
 
 Though the gymnoti are understood to be very vo- 
 racious animals, they kill much more than they are 
 able to eat ; and in the case of small fish, it is pro- 
 bable that they may kill several with one shock, as the 
 shocks are propagated all round the animal that gives 
 them. We are not aware that any satisfactory obser- 
 vations have been made as to the effects which the 
 
276 THE GYMNOTUS. 
 
 shocks of the gymnotus have upon other individuals of 
 its own species, though it would only be in accordance 
 with the general law of nature, that it should use them 
 against its own kind as well as against others. Even 
 the exhaustion which it is said to experience after 
 giving repeated shocks, is not very well explained. 
 There is not much muscular effort, to induce the lassi- 
 tude and exhaustion that take place, and the electric 
 affection is so unlike any other animal exertion with 
 which we are acquainted, that we do not very clearly 
 see what should be the effect of it. The effect upon 
 the muscles, or rather, perhaps, upon the nervous 
 energy of other animals, is very great. Humboldt 
 mentions one place where the direction of a road had 
 to be changed, in consequence of the number of bag- 
 gage mules that, while fording a river, had been killed 
 by the shocks of the gymnoti. But formidable as the 
 gymnotus is, it is not like the greater number of de- 
 stroying animals, useless when dead. The electric 
 organs are, indeed, disagreeable, or at any rate insipid ; 
 but the muscular parts are very good and wholesome, 
 and much relished by the Indians. 
 
 The other electric fishes seem to be much more 
 simple in the construction, and inferior in the power of 
 their organs, to those that have been described ; but 
 still the organization, so far as it has been examined, 
 has some resemblance. At all events, there are suffi- 
 cient data for considering this electric action as one of 
 the natural means, both of attack and defence, with 
 which animals are furnished ; and we have occupied 
 the more space with it, on account of the very few, even 
 of the inhabitants of the water, in which it is found. 
 
FECUNDITY OF FISHES. 277 
 
 The habits even of some of th6se fish with which we 
 are most familiar, and which, in a commercial point of 
 view, are the most important, have been very much 
 misunderstood and misrepresented. The annual value 
 of the whale fisheries, that are fitted out on or from 
 the British shores, is nearly nine millions of pounds 
 sterling, the nets spread out for the capture of her- 
 rings alone would cover almost two millions and a half 
 of square yards ; and yet such are the productive 
 powers of fish, that the quantity taken might be aug- 
 mented a hundred fold, and no perceptible diminution 
 of the number occasioned. It is in the sea, indeed, that 
 we have a proper view of the power of nature in mul- 
 tiplying her productions, and providing for the con- 
 tingences to which they are exposed. If a hen rears 
 more than a dozen of chickens, we think it an abundant 
 brood, and if a ewe happens to have three lambs, her 
 fecundity is published in the journals of the day ; but 
 we never hear one word about the sole, the average of 
 whose progeny at a single birth is one hundred thou- 
 sand ; or of the flounder, that brings nearly a million 
 and a half; or of the cod, with her maximum of almost 
 four millions ! and all those vast colonies come from 
 the parent egg, which is hatched in the general bosom 
 of the deep, without any care but that which they are 
 capable of taking of themselves. Every female her- 
 ring, in those countless shoals which throng round us 
 every season, that escapes the snares of man, and the 
 jaws of larger fishes, prepares little short of forty 
 thousand to increase the shoal of the future year. It 
 is true that there are many casualties and sources of 
 destruction in that element in which those abundant 
 
278 SEA ANEMONE. 
 
 shoals have their being, yet the resources of nature 
 are mightier than them all ; and man may fish away, 
 fully assured that for every fish that he can catch, not- 
 withstanding the utmost endeavours of his skill and 
 his industry, nature will be sure to provide a thousand. 
 So excessive, indeed, is the production, so full is that 
 pale green expanse, which we in the inaccuracy of our 
 speech sometimes call the " waste of waters," so full 
 and exuberant is it of the springs of life, that all 
 which man can win from its stores is not more in com- 
 parison than one little pebble from the ample bed of a 
 mighty river ; and what man does withdraw has this 
 beautiful adaptation in it, that he takes both the pre- 
 datory fish and the prey. 
 
 We are too little acquainted with the general history 
 and economy of the deep, to be able to say what may 
 be the food of all its animated inhabitants. Some 
 of them may eat its vegetable productions ; but in 
 general these seem rather to protect the spawn and the 
 fry, than to be consumed as food ; and whatever be 
 the size, form, and habits of the animal, we find it 
 living upon other animals, and not unfrequently on its 
 own kind among the rest. It may be adapted for 
 swimming rapidly through the water, for crawling 
 among the holes of the rocks, or it may be fastened to 
 the rock, and have externally the character of a plant 
 rather than an animal ; but we almost invariably find it 
 living upon animal food. 
 
 The common sea anemone, (actinia aquina,) which is 
 so common upon most of the rocky shores of this 
 country, appears, when left dry by the tide, to be a 
 little hemispherical lump of jelly, the texture of which 
 
CATCHING A CRAB. 279 
 
 is hardly organic, and which is even more simple and 
 less like a living thing than the common sea-weed ; 
 and yet, when it is covered with water, one can see it 
 spreading out its numerous tentacula like the petals 
 of a dull purplish flower, closing them with unerring 
 certainty upon any little shell-fish that the motion of the 
 water brings within their reach, and very soon after 
 ejecting the shell completely cleared of its contents. 
 And not only that, but it can choose its residence, 
 detach itself from one part of the rock and adhere to 
 another, although the precise way in which its migration 
 is accomplished be not known. 
 
 Even those natives of the sea that are defended by 
 crusts, and seize their prey by claws and pincers, like 
 the lobster and the crab, have the same fecundity and 
 the same voracity as the fishes properly so called. As 
 many as twelve or thirteen thousand eggs have been 
 found upon a single lobster, and the number in some 
 of the crabs is probably much greater. Those two 
 species answer some of the purposes of scavengers of 
 the deep, -devouring substances in a state of putridity 
 and decay, though they are very apt to seize any thing 
 that comes within their reach. We have seen rather 
 a small crab marching rapidly with a piece of offal, 
 several times its own size, while smaller ones were at 
 the other extremity holding on, and attempting to 
 divide the prize. Nay, we remember an instance in 
 which, but for timely assistance, the corporation of 
 a royal borough would have been deprived of its head 
 through the retentive clutching of a crab. 
 
 The borough alluded to, is situated on a rocky part 
 of the coast, where shell-fish are so very abundant that 
 2 B 2 
 
280 THE CRAB AND THE BAILLIE. 
 
 they are hardly regarded for any other purpose than 
 as bait for the white fishery. The official personage 
 was a man of leisure, and one favourite way of filling up 
 that leisure was the capture of crabs, which after much 
 care he had learned to do, by catching them in the 
 holes of the rocks, so adroitly as to avoid their formi- 
 dable pincers. One day he had stretched himself on 
 the top of a rock, and thrusting his arm into a crevice 
 below, got hold of a very large crab, so large, indeed, 
 that he was unable to get it out in the position in which 
 it had been taken. Shifting his position in order to 
 accommodate the posture of the prey to the size of the 
 aperture, he slipped his hold of the crab, which imme- 
 diately made reprisals by catching him by the thumb, 
 and squeezing with so much violence, that he roared 
 aloud. But though there be a vulgar opinion, of course 
 an unfounded one, that lobsters are apt to cast their 
 claws through fear at the sound of thunder or of great 
 guns, the thundering and shouting of the corporation- 
 man had no such effect upon the crab. He would 
 gladly have left it to enjoy its hole ; but it would not 
 quit him, but held him as firmly as if he had been in 
 a vice ; and though he rattled it against the rocks with 
 all the power that he could exert, which, pinched as 
 he was by the thumb, was not great, yet he was unable 
 to get out of its clutches. But " tide waits for no 
 man," even though his thumb should be in a crab's 
 claw ; and so the flood returned, till the greater part 
 of the arm was in water, and the ripple even beginning 
 to mount to the top of the rock, which, as the tides 
 were high at that particular time, was speedily to be 
 at least a fathom under water, and destruction seemed 
 
CRABS. 281 
 
 inevitable. A townsman, Who had been following the 
 same fishery with an iron hook at the end of a stick, 
 fortunately came in sight ; and by introducing that, and 
 detaching the other pincer of the crab, which is one of 
 the common means of making it let go its hold, he re- 
 stored the official personage to land and life. 
 
 There is not a great deal known of the habits of those 
 curious creatures, further than that they are exceedingly 
 voracious, and that as they are betrayed into traps by 
 garbage, they must be possessed of some sense of smell ; 
 but it is generally understood that they have desperate 
 feuds at the bottom of the sea ; and that many of those 
 mutilations, with which they are found, are obtained in 
 the field of battle. Against such casualties they are 
 much better provided than nobler animals who are sub- 
 jected to the same loppings in their encounters ; for the 
 lost member is restored, at least, at the annual change 
 of the shell ; and probably also when not undergoing 
 that change. That animals, which are in common lan- 
 guage termed imperfect, should have this power of re- 
 producing mutilated parts, and that it should be want- 
 ing in those which are usually considered perfect, ought 
 to be a caution to us how we decide as to the different 
 degrees of perfection in the works of Him, who " in 
 wisdom made them all." 
 
 One of the fish whose history and habits have been 
 very much misrepresented, is 
 
 THE HERRING. 
 
 OF the herring genus there are three species, the 
 common herring, (clupeaharengus^) the pilchard, (clupea 
 2 B 3 ' 
 
282 THE HERRING. 
 
 pilcarduSy) and the shad, (clupea alosa,) of which the 
 fry has been already mentioned as the white-bait of the 
 estuary of the Thames and other places. The common 
 herring and the pilchard are nearly of the same size, 
 about twelve inches long when full grown ; but there 
 are some obvious distinctions between them, both in 
 their appearance and in the places where they are found. 
 Their colour is nearly the same ; but the pilchard is 
 more elevated in the back, and rounder than the herring ; 
 it is also blunter in the muzzle, and the scales are larger. 
 The most obvious distinction between them, however, 
 is the position of the dorsal fin. In the pilchard that 
 is placed exactly over the centre of gravity, so that if 
 the fish be suspended by it, the body hangs in a hori- 
 zontal direction. In the herring it is placed further 
 back than the centre of gravity, so that the head droops 
 when the fish is lifted by it. The same distinction 
 holds in the fry as well as in the full-grown fish. The 
 fry of both are taken in great numbers, and known by 
 the common name of sprats. In its locality, the pil- 
 chard is a little further south than the herring, being 
 most abundant on the coasts of the British channel, and 
 very rare on those of the north of England and Scot- 
 land ; while in the latter the herring is found in great 
 abundance. Both fish are, however, a little capricious 
 with regard to the places which they frequent, and the 
 regularity of frequenting them ; and no cause can be 
 satisfactorily assigned for their caprices. 
 
 When salt was subject to a high duty, and sufficient 
 salt was not kept at those places where herrings make 
 their capricious appearances, great loss was often sus- 
 tained. This happened occasionally on many parts of 
 
THE HERRING. 283 
 
 the Scotch coast, but particularly on the north of the 
 entrance of the Firth of Forth. That Firth, as it is 
 deep water, and without any shallow or interruption, 
 is a favourable resort of herrings in the autumn and 
 early part of winter. They come from the deep water 
 in immense shoals or masses, which not only occupy 
 a great surface of the sea, but extend to a considerable 
 depth. For this reason they prefer the deep water, 
 and, generally speaking, avoid the shoal coasts ; and 
 when they do get entangled upon one, great numbers 
 are wrecked. 
 
 The rocky promontory at the east end of the county 
 of Fife, off which there lies an extensive reef or rock, 
 sometimes has that effect ; and there have been seas in 
 which, when the difficulties of the place were augmented 
 by a strong wind at south-east, that carried breakers 
 upon the reef and a heavy surf along the shore, the 
 beach for many miles has been covered with a bank of 
 herrings several feet in depth, which, if taken and 
 salted when first left by the tide, would have been 
 worth many thousands of pounds ; but which, as there 
 w r as not a sufficient supply of salt in the neighbourhood, 
 were allowed to remain putrefying upon the beach, 
 until the farmers found leisure to cart them away as 
 manure. The herring is a remarkably delicate fish, 
 and dies almost the instant that it is out of the water, 
 or gets the slightest injury in it ; and these circum- 
 stances, while they render the stranded shoals a much 
 more frequent, abundant, and easy prey than if they 
 were more tenacious of life, cause them to putrefy much 
 sooner. One of those strandings took place in and 
 around the harbour of the small town of Crail, only a 
 
THE HERRING. 
 
 few years ago, but before the new regulations were 
 passed with regard to salt. The water appeared at first 
 so full of herrings, that half a dozen could be taken 
 by one dip of a basket. Numbers of people thronged 
 to the water's edge, and fished with great success ; and 
 the public crier was sent through the town, to pro- 
 claim that " callar herrin'," that is herrings fresh out of 
 the sea, might be had at the rate of forty a penny. 
 As the water rose the fish accumulated, till numbers 
 were stunned, and the rising tide was bordered with 
 fish, with which baskets could be filled in an instant. 
 The crier was upon this instructed to alter his note, 
 and the people were invited to repair to the shore, and 
 get herrings at one shilling a cart load. But every suc- 
 cessive wave of the flood added to the mass of fish, 
 and brought it nearer to the land, which caused a fresh 
 invitation to whoever might be inclined to come and 
 take what herrings they chose, gratis. The fish still 
 continued to accumulate till the height of the flood, and 
 when the water began to ebb, they remained on the beach. 
 It was rather early in the season, so that warm weather 
 might be expected ; and the effluvia of so many putrid 
 fish might occasion disease ; therefore the corporation 
 offered a reward of one shilling to every one who would 
 remove a full cart-load of herrings from that part of the 
 shore which was under their jurisdiction, the fish being 
 immediately from the deep water, were in the highest 
 condition, and barely dead. All the salt from the town 
 and neighbourhood was instantly put in requisition, but 
 it did not suffice for the thousandth part of the mass, 
 a great proportion of which, notwithstanding some not 
 very successful attempts to carry off a few sloop loads, 
 
THE HERRING. 285 
 
 in bulk was lost. In the bays or " lochs," on the west 
 coast of Scotland, where the shoals of herrings are 
 very abundant, and apt to be driven ashore and stranded 
 by heavy gales from the north-west, these casualties 
 often occur. But though these occurrences are a great 
 and obvious loss, they do not appear to have any effect 
 upon the supply of herrings, whose numbers do not 
 seem capable of apparent diminution, either by the 
 casualties of nature or the schemes of art. 
 
 The habits of this most abundant, and, perhaps, all 
 things considered, most valuable fish, are but imper- 
 fectly known ; and they have been a good deal mis- 
 represented. Their apparently capricious visits to 
 particular parts of the .coast, which did not seem 
 to depend upon any known law, naturally enough led 
 the inhabitants of the places which they thus periodi- 
 cally, but irregularly, visited, to impute to them certain 
 superstitious likes and dislikes. The naturalists, too, 
 or those who took upon themselves that character, 
 publishing their opinions from little observation and 
 less reflection, rendered the delusion more extensive 
 and inveterate ; till those who had never seen a live 
 herring, were able to trace its migrations in the deep 
 with as much certainty as they could the motion of 
 the hands upon the dial of the village clock. 
 
 The disposition to endow the other animals with 
 that erratic propensity, that aimless wandering which 
 idle men display, has been a stumbling-block in 
 the path of natural history. The powers of man are 
 placed under his own management, and when he does 
 not manage them properly, he becomes an idler, and 
 wanders or talks, as it may be, without an aim. But 
 
286 THE HERRING. 
 
 man is the only animal that has the control of his 
 powers ; and therefore he is the only one that can be 
 idle ; and when all the other creatures are in a state 
 of nature, that is, when they are not confined, fed, or 
 otherwise restrained by man, not only have an object 
 in what they do, but what they do is always the best 
 and shortest means to the accomplishment of that 
 object. The preservation of the individual and the 
 race are the only ultimate objects of animals which 
 have not the means of accumulating knowledge ; 
 and thus becoming wiser in one generation than in 
 another; and thus all that can be alleged of them 
 must conduce to the one or the other of these ends, 
 otherwise it is a fancy of man, and not a fact in natural 
 history. 
 
 The alleged migration of the herring is a very strik- 
 ing instance of man's propensity to people nature with 
 his own whims. As the hordes that overran the empire 
 of the Romans (when its weakness and worthlessness 
 rendered it a piecemeal, and, therefore, an easy prey 
 to people whose numbers were but as a handful to its 
 whole population,) as those are said, rather roman- 
 tically, to have issued from the frozen bosom of the 
 north, that became the general origin of all sorts of 
 hordes, whose motions could not be distinctly seen 
 from the very beginning. 
 
 Accordingly, in all those books called popular, which 
 pretend to treat of the habits of British fishes, the 
 pilgrimages of the herring have been described as an 
 established fact. Produced by some unknown process 
 in the polar regions, even at a time when the surface 
 there is solid ice and snow, under which the spawn 
 
THE HERRING. 287 
 
 of no animal could be hatched, they are said to be full- 
 grown, and on their march to warmer regions as soon 
 as the weather begins to get warm ; indeed just as 
 the sun begins to decline northward from the tropic of 
 Capricorn. Onward they move through the wide waves 
 of the spray, followed and feasted upon by sea-fowl ; 
 which, if they obeyed nature, should, at that very time, 
 be attending to their nests, instead of plundering a 
 column of herrings on their march across the wide sea. 
 In the latter end of spring, or beginning of summer, 
 the herrings come to the Shetland islands, where their 
 fancied column is divided, and a division passes up 
 each side of Britain, near the southern coasts of which 
 they are found in autumn and the beginning of winter. 
 The same accounts which particuliarize this progress of 
 the herrings, mention that they are full of roe in June ; 
 and that the young ones " come to our shores " in July 
 and August. Such are the outlines of the annual motion 
 of this fish, as they are detailed by one compiler after 
 another ; and believed by thousands of readers, who 
 never pause to ask if the tale be true, or even possible. 
 Let us ask the question. But before answering it, 
 we must state, that mere criticism of the errors of 
 others is not our object : our own find us full employ- 
 ment in that way. The object which we have in view 
 is to impress upon the reader the absolute necessity of 
 looking at nature as a whole, and seeing that no general 
 law is violated by the theory that is given of any parti- 
 cular part. The migration of the herring was, we be- 
 lieve, first made a pleasing romance by Pennant, a man 
 of much merit for industry, but sadly wanting in that 
 general science, without which no naturalist ought to 
 
288 THE HERRING. 
 
 proceed one step beyond the fact that he actually 
 observes. 
 
 Simply, then, the story cannot be true, because it is 
 impossible. The herrings do not come in myriads 
 from the polar sea, beginning their progress in January, 
 because there are no means of producing them there. 
 Spawn has not been found to animate in any place 
 except floating near the surface, or in shallow water, 
 where both the sun and the air act upon it ; and while 
 the polar seas and shores are open to such action, the 
 herrings are not there ; they are on our shores, the full- 
 grown and the young. But setting aside the impossi- 
 bility, the supposed emigration would be without an 
 object : they would not come for food, as they are 
 said to leave the north just when food would be found 
 there ; and if they are annually produced in the north, 
 they could not come to our shores for the purpose of 
 spawning, even though they are all obviously in prepa- 
 ration for such a purpose. Beside, there is no animal 
 that migrates southward m the spring ; and therefore 
 the theory would require one law for the rest of crea- 
 tion, and another for the herring; that the latter should 
 be chilled by the general warmth of the spring, and 
 warmed by the polar frost. Now, so far is the pro- 
 duction of fish from being independent of the influence 
 of heat, that, just as we would be led to infer from 
 the slow progress of the solar beams through the ele- 
 ment in which they live, they require the whole, or the 
 greater part of our summer, to mature the germs of 
 their countless broods. Nay, it appears that many, if 
 not most of the species, cannot mature their spawn 
 in the depths of the ocean to which they retire to 
 
THE HERRING. 289 
 
 recruit their strength ; but that they come to the shores 
 and shallows, where the heat of the sun can penetrate 
 to the bottom, and be reflected by it, for the purpose 
 of maturing as well as of depositing their spawn. 
 
 We know not, and we cannot know, the secrets of 
 those mighty depths which no plummet can fathom ; 
 but we have every reason to believe that there is a 
 profundity where animals, constructed as the fishes 
 that we see are, could not by possibility exist. Imagine 
 the pressure of a thousand atmospheres, or between six 
 and seven tons, upon every square inch of surface, and 
 think of the miracle of muscular power which could give 
 motion even to the smallest fish there ; imagine, too, a 
 permanence of state where the air never moves, and 
 the sun never warms ; and think what a dwelling for 
 that which must breathe by an apparatus so delicate as 
 the gills of a fish ! It may be said, that God is capable 
 of making creatures adapted for living there. We do 
 not deny that he is, neither do we deny their existence ; 
 but we deny that the laws of nature are ever violated, 
 which they would be, were the fishes which we know, 
 able to move under such a pressure, or propagate, so 
 completely excluded from the action of the sun and 
 the air. 
 
 The herrings come to the shores and estuaries to 
 mature and propagate their spawn, which they do over 
 a greater range of the year than most other fish; con- 
 tinuing the operation to the middle of winter, and 
 retiring into deeper water after that is done. But 
 there is no reason to conclude, that they have much 
 migration in latitude ; or, that they ever move far from 
 those shores which they frequent in the season. The 
 
290 WHITE FISHING. 
 
 fry too are found on the shores and in the bays and 
 estuaries frequented by their parents ; and they do not 
 go to the deep water till late in the season. They 
 even appear to go farther up the rivers than the old 
 fish, for they may be taken in brackish water, with a 
 common trout-fly. 
 
 The habits of the herring are thus a good deal like 
 those of the salmon ; and it is probable that there is a 
 great similarity in the whole oviparous fishes ; that they 
 all frequent the banks and shoals for the purpose of spawn- 
 ing, and go to some short distance in deeper water to 
 recover their strength. Those which are ovoviparous, 
 or bring forth their young hatched, are under no such 
 necessity ; though they follow the others, to feed upon 
 them and their spawn or fry ; and probably require the 
 influence of the air and heat of the shallow water to 
 perfect the internal hatching of their eggs. 
 
 It has not been ascertained whether any of these fish 
 spawn every year; but there are some facts which 
 would lead to the conclusion that they do not. The 
 white-fishing, on the east coast of Scotland, which is 
 principally carried on for the common COD, (morhua 
 vulgaris,) and the HADDOCK, (morhua ceglijinus,) used 
 to be, in a great measure, suspended during the spring, 
 when the fish had spawned ; but, in time, the fishermen 
 found out, that when the fish were neither plentiful nor 
 good upon the shallow banks, they had only to be a 
 little more adventurous, and go into the deep water, 
 in order to be successful all the year round. Now the 
 fish found in the deep water cannot be those which 
 have just spawned, for they are fat and firm, and have 
 young milts and roes in them; and hence, there is 
 
THE STORMY PETREL. 291 
 
 some probability that the cod, and other fish of the 
 same structure, take two years, or more, to produce 
 their immense progeny ; and that thus there is not a 
 fish in the sea but which is in season all the year, if its 
 place of residence, and the mode of taking it, were 
 known. It is by these general views, that the particular 
 facts are made to connect themselves with the system 
 of nature, and lead to useful discoveries in the arts. 
 
 When the fish are upon the shores and in the estu- 
 aries, nay, when they are upon the wide ocean, they 
 have a host of enemies. All fishes seem to be them- 
 selves omnivorous consuming every thing that they 
 can swallow ; and the number of sea-birds is perfectly 
 incredible. The numbers that are upon the uninhabited 
 islets in Orkney, Shetland, and the Western isles, as 
 well as at those inaccessible promontories on other parts 
 of the coast, would exceed the belief of any one who 
 has not actually seen them, and yet they are nothing 
 to the numbers found in lonely places, surrounded by 
 more extensive seas. One of the most abundant, and 
 the one which is found farthest out at sea, is 
 
 THE STORMY PETREL. 
 
 THE STORMY PETREL, (procellaria pelagica,) or, 
 " Mother Gary's Chicken" has been found in flocks, 
 which, from the extent that they occupied, and the close- 
 ness with which they were serried together, could not 
 contain less than one hundred and fifty millions. It is 
 a bird about five inches and a half long ; sooty black on 
 the body, and white on the rump, tail, and wings ; but 
 having the principal feathers of these tipped with 
 2 c 2 
 
292 THE STORMY PETREL. 
 
 deep black. It is found constantly on the coasts of this 
 country, and seems to be generally diffused over the 
 world. It lodges and nestles in holes of the rocks, or 
 in burrows which it makes for itself in the earth or 
 sands ; but it is a sea-bird, in the strictest meaning 
 of the term, not being found on the land, except 
 in the breeding season, or when it is driven there 
 by the violence of gales. Ordinary gales have not, 
 indeed, much effect upon it. It is small and swift, and 
 powerful on the wing ; and in appearance and manner 
 of flight, not unlike the swallow. It seems to take par- 
 ticular delight in storms, probably, because the motion 
 of the water brings to the surface the substances on 
 which it feeds ; and it skims along the hollows of the 
 waves, and through the spray upon their tops, with 
 astonishing rapidity, at the rate of sixty miles an hour, 
 as is supposed. The sailors dislike it, and account it 
 the harbinger of storms. That it is an accompanier of 
 them, may be true ; but it is more a follower of ships 
 than a forerunner of storms. Oil, of which there is 
 always a considerable quantity floating on the sea, 
 appears to be its favourite food ; and it is supposed 
 to collect that upon the feathers of its breast, as it rides 
 on the waters. It is for the greasy substances which 
 are thrown overboard, that it follows in the wake of 
 vessels, and it probably picks up molluscce, in the 
 stormy weather, when it skims the surface. It is very 
 easily tamed, and in that state it has been fed with train 
 oil, in which it dipped the feathers of its breast, and 
 then sucked off the oil with its bill, which goes far 
 to confirm the mode of feeding on the ocean that has 
 been mentioned. As the oil upon the surface of the 
 
THE SEAL. 293 
 
 ocean is not, except when some large fish has been 
 mangled in the vicinity, so thick as to be perceptible, it 
 could not well be gathered by the bill of a bird, and 
 therefore, the feathers on the breast of the petrel are 
 so contrived, that it can collect the oil as it swims, and 
 continue that operation until there be enough for being 
 taken with the beak. Both the condition and flesh of 
 the petrel are in favour of this kind of feeding. It is 
 so fat, that the inhabitants of some of the northern 
 islands make a kind of candles, by simply drawing a 
 wick through its body ; and its flesh is so rank and dis- 
 agreeable that even those who in a great measure subsist 
 upon sea-fowl, do not eat it. The little petrel is, 
 therefore, a kind of sea-scavenger, and removes the oil, 
 which, if it were to go on accumulating, would interfere 
 with the two important operations of the impregnation 
 of the air with water for the respiration and life of 
 fishes, and the evaporation of water for the formation 
 of rain and rivers. Thus we find that there is not a 
 production of nature, or even a function of one of 
 nature's productions, but which, when we examine it, is 
 essential to the existence of the individual, and at the 
 same time connects the individual with the whole. 
 
 One of the most singular of nature's fishers, and one 
 which forms the best connecting link between sea animals 
 and land animals, properly so called, is 
 
 THE SEAL. 
 
 THE SEAL, which, except in external shape, is a per- 
 fect quadruped, resembles the otter more than any other 
 British animal in its swimming apparatus, but it is 
 more gentle in its disposition, and more easily tamed ; 
 2 c 3 
 
294 THE SEAL. 
 
 and though its feet be webbed like those of the water- 
 fowl, they are not so fully developed, and therefore it is 
 not so well adapted for motion upon land. There are 
 two species of seal on the British shores : the great 
 seal, or bearded seal, (phoca barbata,) and the common 
 seal, or sea-calf, (phoca vitulma). 
 
 The BEARDED SEAL is an inhabitant of more north- 
 erly regions than Britain, being found in greater num- 
 bers in the Greenland seas, where the natives reckon 
 the flesh of it a dainty; but among the remote Scottish 
 isles, there are generally a few to be met with, which 
 bring forth their young in the caves, though at a later 
 period of the season than the common seal. This is 
 another argument against the migration of any sea 
 animals toward the polar regions for the purpose of 
 breeding ; as we find those of the same genus that 
 have their habitude farther to the north, two or three 
 months longer in producing their young, which proves 
 that they need a longer continuation of the action of 
 the summer heat to bring them to maturity. 
 
 The bearded seal is rather a large animal, being 
 about twelve feet in length, and weighing at least two 
 tons. The hair with which it is covered is brownish, 
 or dark gray, and coarse. The upper lip is divided 
 into two lobes by a furrow, which is black and naked, 
 and upon each of the lobes there are eight rows of 
 strong white bristles, semi-transparent, and curled at 
 the end, from which it gets its specific name. As seals 
 do not swallow their food entire, as is the case with 
 the fishes, and even the cctacctz, they are furnished 
 both with incisorcs or cutting teeth, and molar 'es, or 
 
THE SEAL. 295 
 
 grinders. The teeth in the bearded seal are by no 
 means formidable, and indeed the whole formation of 
 the animal shows that it is not ferocious in proportion 
 to its bulk. The remote places in which it is found, 
 however, render its habits comparatively little known 
 as a portion of British Natural History. It is much 
 more easy, and probably more interesting, to become 
 acquainted with its congener 
 
 THE COMMON SEAL. 
 
 THE COMMON SEAL is, when full grown, about half 
 the length, and consequently about one-eighth of the 
 size and weight of the former. [We need hardly mention 
 that, as the bodies of animals are solids, having length, 
 breadth, and thickness, two which are of similar shape 
 will have their bulks as the cubes of any one dimen- 
 sion, double the length, double the breadth, and double 
 the thickness, producing, when multiplied together, 
 eight times the volume.] The fore legs of the seal 
 are very short in proportion to the size of the body ; 
 the head and neck have a considerable resemblance to 
 
296 THE SEAL. 
 
 those of land quadrupeds ; but the pelvis narrows off like 
 the hinder part of a fish, and the hind legs are nearly 
 united to the body, lie backwards on each side of the 
 tail, and the webbed feet in which they terminate, form 
 with that a very efficient swimming apparatus. The 
 body is covered with fur, which is short and glossy ; 
 most frequently of a dark brown colour, but often 
 varied or spotted, and generally supposed to whiten as 
 the animal gets old. 
 
 Though a considerable destroyer of salmon and other 
 fish, the seal is a lively and playful animal, very gentle 
 in its manners, but at the same time very watchful and 
 timid. Seals are found in great numbers upon the 
 banks in the estuaries of rivers ; but they are not so 
 much to be considered permanent inhabitants there 
 as visiters, following the fish in their migration. They 
 are fond of basking in the sun ; and they always sleep 
 upon the rocks or the bank, where at low water they 
 may be seen in hundreds together. But they are never 
 all asleep at the same time ; for if one approaches them 
 ever so eautiously, there is always a sentinel at the 
 outside, or on the highest part of the bank, that gives 
 the alarm, and the whole wriggle off to the water 
 much faster than one would imagine. When a part 
 of their march is over a beach of loose pebbles, they 
 get on with a good deal of difficulty, as the loose 
 stones give way to their paws, and instead of helping 
 forward the seal, are flung behind it with some force, 
 and to some distance. This has given rise to the 
 vulgar opinion, that the seal voluntarily throws stones 
 at its pursuers, an opinion for which there is not the 
 slightest foundation. The object of the animal is to 
 
THE SEAL. 297 
 
 escape, and that would be better accomplished if the 
 stones, instead of giving way, formed a fulcrum, from 
 which it could project itself forward. 
 
 When a seal cannot escape, it will bite in self-defence, 
 but it does so only in extremities ; and if a blow be 
 aimed at it with a stick, it tries to seize the stick rather 
 than bite the assailant. In this it sometimes succeeds, 
 and then wriggles off to the water, where it swims 
 about with the stick in its mouth, in a playful or 
 triumphant manner. 
 
 It is more easily tamed than, perhaps, any other 
 animal ; is capable of feeling a great deal of affection ; 
 and appears fond of the society of man. During the 
 time that rumoured invasions by the French caused all 
 parts of the coast of Britain to be fortified, a small 
 party on one of the little islands in the Firth of Forth, 
 above Edinburgh, amused themselves by taming a seal. 
 It had all the affection and all the playfulness of a dog. 
 It fished for itself, and (we believe) sometimes for its 
 masters. It fawned about them, licked their hands, 
 and, if it did not accompany those who made an excur- 
 sion in the boat, it was sure to meet them on their 
 return. It always came to their hut to sleep, and con- 
 ducted itself as if it felt that it was one of the party. 
 Sometimes it would snatch up a stick or a brush, and 
 scamper off to the water, where it swam about with the 
 plunder in its mouth, often approaching the shore till 
 within reach of its observers, and then it would be off 
 to a distance. But though it seemed to take delight in 
 teasing them in that way, it always ultimately came 
 back with whatever it had taken, and laid it at their 
 feet, fawning and fondling all the while. Indeed, if 
 
298 
 
 THE SEAL. 
 
 they did not give chase, it seldom remained long in the 
 water, but came back apparently disappointed at being 
 deprived of its sport. When they went to Leith for 
 orders or stores, the seal generally accompanied them, 
 swimming all the way at the side or stern of the boat ; 
 and when the boat was made fast at the pier at Leith, 
 it took up its position inside, and kept watch till they 
 returned. Fish was not its only food ; it could eat 
 many things, and it was very fond of bread and milk. 
 There was no saying how far its training might have 
 been carried, but it fell out of a bed and was killed while 
 young. 
 
 The ease with which the seal can be tamed, the 
 playfulness of its manners, and the steady attachment 
 which it has for its home and its human associates, 
 together with the value of its skin and its oil ; (its flesh 
 used formerly to be eaten, and there is no question, 
 that the quality could be greatly improved, if a mix- 
 ture of other food were given along with the fish ;) 
 these, and also its disposition to part with a portion, 
 at least, of the produce of its fishing, point out a great 
 probability of advantage that would result from the 
 addition of the seal to the list of domestic animals. 
 Probably it might be found to combine many of the 
 valuable qualities of the ox and the dog, while no 
 rent would have to be paid for its pasture. It so 
 happens also, that the places where seals are now 
 most abundant, are those at which the keep of land 
 animals is most expensive; and the idea that the 
 herd should come from the sea to be milked, or give 
 their carcasses as food, or that a man should go forth a 
 fishing with a pack of seals around his boat, involves 
 
THE SEAL. 299 
 
 no more of the impossible or the ridiculous, than many 
 things, that are now of every day occurrence, would 
 have involved, if mentioned only fifty years ago. 
 
 The female seal generally produces two at a birth, 
 and the time of their production is about Midsummer. 
 She is an affectionate mother, and battles keenly for 
 her young, if she be there when any one goes to annoy 
 them. Her nursery is generally in a cave : and in the 
 large caves, such as those upon the north coast of Scot- 
 land, there is often a number in the same. The people 
 frequently enter with torches and clubs, for the purpose 
 of dispatching them, and they are killed by a compara- 
 tively slight blow on the nose ; but when there are 
 many old ones in the cave, they often upset the intru- 
 ders in the scuffle, and thus the scene becomes ludicrous 
 if not dangerous. Seals are often caught in rather a 
 cruel manner: iron hooks are placed in the front of 
 the rock or bank on which they are basking, or in a 
 beam of timber placed against it ; a person then steals 
 near to the place where they lie, fires a musket, or 
 makes any other loud and sudden noise, at which they 
 take alarm, and, forgetting their usual caution in avoid- 
 ing dangers, plunge headlong toward the water, and are 
 caught and suspended upon the hooks. 
 
 As seals approach more nearly to the nature and 
 character of land animals than any other inhabitants of 
 the water, which are not very well fitted for loco-motion 
 upon land, so they are, like these, subject to epidemical 
 diseases, which often affect them to a very great extent. 
 There have been instances in which the beaches every 
 where on the north coast of Scotland, and the islands of 
 Orkney and Shetland, have been covered with the 
 
300 THE SEAL. 
 
 bodies of dead seals which were cast ashore by the tide ; 
 and when that has occurred, the seals that were seen 
 swimming in the water were weak and sickly. The 
 source of these casualties is not known ; and no obser- 
 vation appears to have been taken of the particular 
 state, either of the atmosphere or of the sea. 
 
 But we must get ashore, and devote a few pages to 
 the phenomena and productions of another and a dif- 
 rent scene. 
 
301 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE MOOR, OR UPLAND. 
 
 THE configuration of surface to which the one or 
 the other of those epithets may be applied, has not 
 the grand features of some of those that have been 
 mentioned. Still, it is so far from being barren of 
 interest, that we should have had abundant store of 
 observation though we had had nothing else. Moors 
 admit of more latitude of description than mountains ; 
 and, according to their different elevations, they may 
 partake more of the Alpine or the champaign country. 
 They are the favourite haunts of many of our most 
 interesting animals, both quadrupeds and birds ; and 
 though the very name expresses a certain character 
 of bleakness, there is a feeling of freedom about it. 
 It is not nature either in the terror of her majesty, 
 or in the tastefulness of her beauty ; but still it is 
 nature, where man has not altered her appearance. 
 
 We are not sure if there be any place where the 
 heart beats so lightly, and the breathing is so free, as 
 when we enter upon one of those wide expanses ; and, 
 whether it be the Alpine table-land, purple with the 
 blossom, or green with the young shoots of the heath, 
 where there is nothing to interrupt the course of your 
 meditations, or chequer the uniformity of the wide 
 
302 THE MOOR, OR UPLAND. 
 
 scene, save the white tops of the cat's-tail grass, 
 (phleum alpinum^) playing over some little morass, 
 like spray over a rock in the midst of the dark sea, 
 and where the ear catches hardly a sound, save the 
 patting foot-fall of the deer, as he springs buoyant in 
 the invigorating atmosphere, the booming of a bittern, 
 as he shakes the quagmire in some hollow, or the 
 croak of the raven, as he limps cold and sullen from 
 behind some stone; whether it be this, which is 
 wedded to sublimity, and would be sublime if there 
 were not so much of it, or any of the gradations down 
 to the common, which just rises above the fertile fields, 
 with its green bushes browzed to perfect hemispheres, 
 and its cowslips and wild hyacinths, with the twitter 
 of the little birds, the chirp of the grasshopper, as 
 he dances careless from flower to flower, or the tinkle 
 of that sheep-bell, the least musical of metallic instru- 
 ments, one stands in doubt which the most to admire ; 
 and can resolve it only by admiring them all. They 
 are admired in turn, according to the mood of the 
 mind ; or rather, each one has the power of raising the 
 mind to that mood which is best adapted to its own 
 admiration. 
 
 When we come to consider those elevated and 
 seemingly barren portions of the earth's surface, with 
 a proper reference to that by which they are sur- 
 rounded, we find that, though they be apparently 
 unproductive themselves, they are the causes of pro- 
 ductiveness. The flat summits, which are kept cold 
 by moss and damp, attract the air, and by the con- 
 densation arising from their cold, make it part with 
 its humidity ; and thus lay up a store of water, 
 
THE MOOR, OR UPLAND. 303 
 
 which would spoil vegetation if it fell wholly upon the 
 cultivated plains, and cause overwhelming floods, if it 
 fell upon the narrow tops, or steep sides of mountains. 
 Thus, though a moor be the least like a lake of any 
 of the broad features of a country, it serves some of 
 the most important purposes of one. Moors are very 
 generally composed of beds of gravel, far more gene- 
 rally than of any thing else. They are the waste of 
 mountains collected together by causes which we 
 cannot explain. This gravel is porous to a great 
 depth in some places, and to a smaller depth in others ; 
 and there are some in which it is made retentive by clay, 
 or rendered so by the accumulation of moss. Thus 
 it answers as a set of reservoirs, placed at various 
 elevations, from which springs are given out all along 
 the slopes that descend from it; and those clear 
 fountains and crystal streams, which add so much to the 
 beauty and fertility of the little sheltered glens and 
 dells with which the slopes from an elevated moor 
 abound, owe their existence to the apparent sterility 
 of its surface. The heath, with the mosses and lichens 
 with which the spaces between the roots of the heath 
 are usually filled, prevent the water from running off 
 the surface, even where the obliquity is considerable ; 
 and while the mosses and lichens retain as much of it 
 near the surface as suffices for the nourishment of them- 
 selves and the heaths, the roots of the latter penetrate 
 farther into the ground, and serve as conducting pipes 
 to the more porous strata. The heath also shades, 
 from the action of the sun and atmosphere, those more 
 lowly plants which arrest a portion of the humidity 
 in its motion downward ; and thus there is little waste 
 
304 THE MOOR, OR UPLAND. 
 
 of water by evaporation. The chief plants upon a 
 moor have, in fact, the power of satisfying themselves 
 with abundant humidity for life and growth ; and at 
 the same time laying up a store for the vegetation 
 lower down, in such a way as that it is regularly 
 distributed. Thus that which at first sight seems only 
 a wasteful heap of rubbish, is a powerful instrument 
 of good in the hand of all-bountiful and all-beneficent 
 Nature. 
 
 When one leaves the highest fields of the cultivated 
 ground, where the crops, though admirable in quality, 
 are scanty in bulk, where moss creeps over the sur- 
 face, and a bush of rushes, or a sprinkling of heath 
 upon the old lea, puts man in mind, that if he 
 will have even a grassy pasture for his cattle, he 
 must manure and plough again ; and when you have 
 cleared the last rude fence of dry stones, and feel 
 under your foot the soft elastic sod of hassocky grass, 
 rather harsh and hard for being eaten, the foremost 
 to salute you with an apparent welcome, though, in 
 reality, it is a species of coquetting to divert you from 
 what she fears is your purpose, is 
 
305 
 THE LAPWING. 
 
 WE have never seen the lapwing playing its singular 
 evolutions in the air, or even sitting sagacious on a 
 stone, or tripping lightly among the grass and heath, 
 without being impressed with the belief that it is the 
 most beautiful bird that this country produces : we 
 say, " produces," because, though it be a migratory 
 bird, it first finds its being upon our moors, and its 
 migrations seldom extend out of the country. Many 
 birds have more gaudy plumage, and a few may have 
 more graceful forms ; but taking the two combined, 
 we can recollect none that we ever so much admired, 
 as the lapwing. Then it has evidently more mind 
 more speculation in it than belongs to the majority of 
 birds. Without being at all disposed to eat what it 
 kills, it fights with the greatest bravery. The hooded 
 or carrion crow, whose shapeless carcass and dull 
 hue render him deserving of even a worse 'name, flies 
 2 D 3 
 
306 THE LAPWING. 
 
 and hops prowling about in the moors, uttering his 
 hoarsely-whispered croak, and preying upon the eggs 
 of all the birds that nestle there, without mercy or 
 discrimination. But woe be to him when the lapwing 
 catches him in the air. She wheels in curves so mazy, 
 that instead of a carrion crow, not the best mathema- 
 tician could determine the form of her orbit, so as to 
 know where she is to be at the end of the next second 
 of time. She is above, below, on every side, all in 
 the same instant, you would think ; and the poor crow 
 (for one pities even a carrion crow in such company) is 
 quite bewildered. Well, so he may ; for the lapwing hits 
 him a bang on the one side, and before he can turn his 
 lumbering neck, to find out where it came from, or how 
 to avoid another, bounce comes her strong wing against 
 the other side of his head, with so much force that 
 you may hear it at a considerable distance. He gene- 
 rally attempts to get down upon the ground for safety ; 
 but the lapwing, though no match for him on foot, so 
 stoops at and works him even there, that there is an 
 end to his egg-sucking while she has him in charge. 
 
 The LAPWING (vanellus crestatus) is a bird about 
 fourteen inches long, and more than thirty in the ex- 
 pansion of the wings. The bill is about an inch long, 
 slender, and thickened a little at the point. The legs, 
 which are of a dull orange colour, are slender ; but the 
 figure is remarkably compact ; and the plumage is as 
 smooth on the surface as if it were one polished body. 
 The crown of the head, and the crest, in which the 
 nape terminates, as well as the breast, are of an intense 
 glossy black. It is a curious black, however, being 
 
THE LAPWING. 307 
 
 irridescent, and giving a play of colours, for some of 
 which you cannot find any adequate name. Some of 
 them one would feel disposed to call bronze, and others 
 green ; but while they put one in mind of those colours, 
 they retain the depth of the most intense black. The 
 back is of an irridescent green, alternating, as most 
 greens in the colours of animals do, with burnished 
 gold, it is composed of very minute dots of intense 
 blue and golden yellow. The sides of the neck, the 
 belly, and the bases of the tail, are of the most brilliant 
 white. The principal feathers of the tail are white, 
 with black tips; the tail-covers and vent are of a russet 
 or rusty colour. The principal wing quills are black, 
 with a white spot on the tip of each of the first four ; 
 and the second ones are white for half their length from 
 the root, and black for the other half. There is a 
 great deal of harmony, both in the arrangement and 
 proportion of the different colours ; and altogether, the 
 bird is certainly a beauty. Though of considerable 
 expanse, and powerful wings, it is but a light bird, 
 seldom weighing more than eight ounces. 
 
 The wailing cry from which the lapwing has got 
 the English name of " Peewit," is the alarm cry in 
 danger, and is habitually uttered by the female when 
 endeavouring to decoy invaders away from her nest. 
 The male also utters this cry when disturbed. He 
 has another, however, a sort of love- song, which he 
 carols to his mate ; but only when he is unobserved. 
 That note is a kind of whistle, but very subdued and 
 soft. 
 
 They repair to the moors in the spring ; and there 
 is often a good deal of rivalship and fighting among 
 
308 THE LAPWING. 
 
 the males, before the pairing be satisfactorily adjusted ; 
 when that is done, all animosity ceases, and they com- 
 bine in beating off formidable enemies, when such come 
 upon their ground. The nest is on the dry surface, 
 but generally not far from some pool or marsh, in which 
 a supply of food may be found. It is very simple, 
 merely a little bed of the withered grass which has 
 been bleaching in the storms of winter ; but the sim- 
 plicity of the nest, and the resemblance of its colour 
 to that of the ground on which it is placed, conceal it 
 better than a more artificial structure ; and what with 
 that, and what with the manoeuvres of the parents, there 
 are, perhaps, fewer lapwings' nests robbed than of any 
 other birds. The eggs are four, of an olive colour, with 
 black spots ; and they are very neatly arranged, with 
 the small ends, which terminate nearly in points, all in 
 contact at the middle of the nest. While the female is 
 sitting, the male, when not occupied in finding food, 
 and that is chiefly got in the evening, acts as sentinel, 
 and very artfully decoys boys or dogs, and as boldly 
 drives away birds, from the vicinity of the nest. If he 
 should not be in the way, the female herself is abun- 
 dantly vigilant ; spies the intruder a good way off, and 
 if he be coming in the direction of her eggs, goes off 
 to meet him. She does this as fast and silently, and as 
 far from the nest as possible ; but still it is done with 
 a great deal of art and tact. She does not go in a 
 straight line, but works traverses, like a ship beating 
 to windward, or a besieging party approaching a fort ; 
 and " puts about" whenever she thinks she has been 
 observed. When she gets sufficiently far from the 
 nest, and near the visitor, she springs up in fluttering 
 
THE LAPWING. 309 
 
 alarm, as if she were just driven from her nest ; and 
 as she wheels round him, often dashing the wind in his 
 face with the sweep of her wing, she tries to wile him 
 away in another direction. If she fail by her ma- 
 noeuvres in the air, she has recourse to stratagem on 
 the ground. She lights very near, and hops as if crippled 
 in the legs and unable to fly ; but if she be pursued, 
 which is very often the case, from her apparent lame- 
 ness and the consequent ease with which she may be 
 caught, she always contrives to keep at the same dis- 
 tance, till she be so far from the nest, as to be sure that 
 that is safe ; then she again takes to the wing ; and when 
 she has wheeled and screamed a little longer, takes her 
 departure, but alights at some distance from the nest, 
 and works back to it on the ground, in the same man- 
 ner that she left it. She contrives to practise these 
 arts till the young are able to fly ; but the lapwing, 
 which will thus come close to and hover about an un- 
 armed person, or a dog, alters her tactics if a gun, or 
 even a large stick, be presented at her. She appears 
 to know the danger of weapons, and the instinct of 
 providing for her own safety gets the better of that 
 which prompts her to protect her offspring. Rooks, 
 and many other birds that frequent places where there 
 is much shooting, have this dread of fire-arms ; and 
 when one is near them, they appear to know the dif- 
 ference between a stick and a gun : we know that to 
 be fact, for we have tried it several times. When the 
 rooks were at a considerable distance, they rose indis- 
 criminately, whether the object pointed at them was 
 stick or fowling-piece, but when very near, they did not 
 heed the stick ; and when they were scattered over a 
 
310 THE LAPWING. 
 
 field, we have found the distant ones rise at the pointing 
 of the stick, while those that were nearer did not. 
 Even upon shifting a stick from the usual way that a 
 walking stick, or a stick merely carried in the hand, is 
 carried, to that in which a sportsman carries his gun, 
 the rooks do not like it, and fly off to a distance. 
 The habits of the lapwing afford stronger instances of 
 sagacity than one would be led to expect ; and they are 
 evidence that, with proper care, it might be added to 
 the number of domestic birds. 
 
 It has, indeed, often been partially tamed, and kept 
 in gardens for the purpose of clearing them of worms 
 and other insects. A case mentioned by Bewick throws 
 a good deal of light upon the habits of the bird : Two 
 were presented to a clergyman, who put them in his 
 garden for the purpose above mentioned ; but one of 
 them died in the course of the summer, and the other 
 remained shy and distant till the cold weather set in, 
 and its supply of food in the garden began to fail, when 
 it came to the door of the back-kitchen and sought 
 admittance by uttering its cry of peewit. As the winter 
 advanced, it gradually became more familiar, and ven- 
 tured to visit the kitchen ; though it was at first very 
 cautious, as a cat and dog were in possession. When 
 it found, however, that these were not disposed to be 
 hostile, it made companions of them, Cctme to the 
 kitchen every evening, and sat with them, enjoying 
 the warmth of the fire. It continued to do this during 
 the winter ; but when the summer came, it abandoned 
 the house, and betook itself to its insect-hunting in the 
 garden. When the winter again set in, it returned to 
 the house ; but without any of the caution that it had 
 
THE LAPWING. 311 
 
 observed at its first approach in the former season ; 
 for it marched boldly into the kitchen at once and joined 
 the cat and dog, and took more liberties than it had 
 done the preceding year. Lapwings are particularly 
 cleanly in their habits, and wash themselves very often 
 in water ; but though there was a bowl in the kitchen, 
 out of which the dog drank, the lapwing did not, 
 during the first winter of their acquaintance, offer to 
 avail himself of it. The second year it did so fre- 
 quently ; and showed a good deal of impatience if either 
 the cat or the dog offered to interrupt its ablution. 
 The progress of domestication in this interesting bird 
 was cut off, by his attempting to swallow something 
 that he had picked up in the kitchen, too large for 
 his gullet. 
 
 When we meet with lapwings on the moors, we 
 may be very apt to suppose that they live upon very 
 little food, as during the day they are almost perpe- 
 tually upon the wing, or running along the ground; 
 but in summer their principal feeding-time is in the 
 evening, when the worms come out of their holes. 
 They show r a good deal of art in this, for when they 
 come to earth that is newly cast up by a worm, they 
 instantly remove it ; and if the worm be too quick for 
 them, and has disappeared in the earth, the lapwing 
 begins beating with its feet, and agitating the ground, 
 till the worm again makes its appearance, when it is 
 instantly seized and drawn out. In this way it catches 
 a great deal of prey in a short time, and thus it is 
 enabled to remain on the wing during the day, for the 
 protection of its nest. 
 
 The young, which are hatched in the space of three 
 
312 THE LAPWING. 
 
 weeks, are able to run about a day or two after they 
 leave the egg ; but they are unable to take the wing 
 till they be nearly full-grown, so that the period of 
 nursing and watching is longer than that to which some 
 other birds are subjected. This protracted maternal 
 care answers very well with the lapwing, which finds 
 its food in the greatest abundance in the latter part of 
 the summer, when the young birds have increased the 
 flock. When the frost begins to set in, the lapwings 
 collect in flocks, and betake themselves to the marshes 
 and brooks of the low parts of the country, or to the 
 shores of the sea, which are the common resource of 
 all birds that live upon insects, when the severity of 
 the frost prevents them from obtaining any upon the 
 land. 
 
 From the number of birds that inhabit the moors, 
 or resort to them for the purpose of nidification, they 
 become the haunts of many ravenous birds, as these 
 can there carry on their hunting with less chance of 
 interruption than in the woods or inhabited places. 
 There are not many of these spoilers that actually breed 
 in the open uplands, as birds of prey usually make 
 their nests in places that are not easily accessible ; but 
 as they are birds of powerful wing, they make hunting 
 excursions over the open heights. All of these are 
 formidable to the smaller birds, as well as to the young 
 of the larger, and of hares and rabbits, though these 
 last are by no means common on elevated plains ; but 
 almost the only one which is a match for the lapwing 
 in fair combat in the air, is 
 
313 
 
 THE GOSHAWK. 
 
 THE GOSHAWK (falco palumbarius) is, after the golden 
 eagle, the boldest and the most destructive of the British 
 birds of prey ; and, like that bird, it is much more fre- 
 quently seen in Scotland than in England. It does not, 
 indeed, appear that it ever bred in England, though 
 its nest has been often found in Scotland. Like the 
 eagle, the goshawk does not stoop to ignoble quarry, 
 and therefore the smaller birds are safe from it ; but it 
 pursues the larger ones with great activity. The female 
 goshawk is about two feet in length, and five in the ex- 
 pansion of the wings ; and the male about a third less 
 in each dimension. The goshawk builds its nest indis- 
 criminately, on the tops of lofty trees or in the clefts of 
 rocks ; but it always chooses a situation which, while it 
 
314 THE GOSHAWK. 
 
 is both retired and inaccessible, is so chosen as that 
 there shall be plenty of game at no great distance. 
 The female lays from two to four eggs. 
 
 The colour of the goshawk varies so much at differ- 
 ent ages, and even at the same age, that it has been 
 called by a number of names ; but in the times when 
 falconry was a favourite sport, the goshawks were the 
 " gentil falcons," which were trained for flying at geese, 
 cranes, and other large birds. When on the wing, the 
 bird cannot be mistaken by those who have once been 
 acquainted with its size, its boldness, and the straight- 
 ness and rapidity of its flight, together with the unerring 
 certainty and deadly power of its stroke. 
 
 Among rapacious birds, the hawks stand in nearly 
 the same relation to eagles, that the canine species do 
 to the most powerful of the feline among quadrupeds. 
 The lion and the tiger spring, the eagle darts down 
 upon her quarry; and when any of them miss, they 
 do not course the prey. The hawks, on the other 
 hand, start their prey, run it down on the wing, and 
 strike it to the earth ; and the majesty with which they 
 shoot through the air is very great ; at the same time 
 one can see that there is an effort so to drive the game, 
 as that it may not reach the ground, or escape into 
 bushes. The goshawk dashes through the trees of a 
 forest with great vigour ; but in such situations, her 
 prey often escapes ; and therefore, when she can find 
 a proper place for her nest in the vicinity, she daily 
 beats a considerable distance of the moor, more espe- 
 cially if it abound in 
 
315 
 
 GROUSE. 
 
 THE two distinct kinds of grouse that inhabit the 
 moors and wilds of the Alpine parts of Britain, are 
 among the most famed of its feathered tribes ; and one 
 of them, the 
 
 RED GROUSE (lagopus Scoticus) is almost peculiar 
 to this island ; or, if those continental birds .which have 
 been called by the same name are of the same species, 
 they are different varieties, occasioned probably by 
 difference of food and climate. It is rather singular 
 that these birds, which are so rare in Europe as not to 
 have been known to Linnaeus as any thing else than a 
 supposed variety of the ptarmigan, should have been 
 met with in Tristan d'Acunha, a lonely island in the 
 opposite hemisphere, between St. Helena and the Cape 
 of Good Hope. 
 
 In this country they are found in the open heaths 
 only ; so that the names of heathcock, which they get in 
 England, and moorcock, which they get in Scotland, are 
 strictly apposite. So fond are they of heath, that they 
 are very seldom met with in the grassy parts of the 
 moors ; and they quit a planted moor as soon as the 
 trees make any considerable appearance, even though 
 the heath should have been improved by the planting, 
 which it generally is until the pines the trees most 
 generally planted on heaths have grown so large, as to 
 exclude the air, and destroy the heath with their falling 
 leaves. We knew one large heath, the centre of which 
 was once very thickly stocked with grouse ; but after 
 it had been planted for a few years, the birds entirely 
 2 E 2 
 
316 THE RED GROUSE. 
 
 forsook it, and betook themselves to the outskirts, 
 though those were so near the cultivated lands that the 
 birds had previously avoided them, unless when forced 
 from them by the severity of the winter. In passing 
 along the side of the young wood, in the evenings of 
 April and May, we have every where heard the cry of 
 the heathcock on the outside, but never once within the 
 wood ; even though there were wide openings between 
 the trees, and none of them above eight or ten feet in 
 height. 
 
 Many circumstances lead to this habit in the red 
 grouse : the heath is, at all seasons, nearly of their own 
 colour; as when there are not purple flowers upon it, 
 the old leaves, which are falling in the summer, are 
 brown. On an open moor the heath is short and firm, 
 and the birds can run amongst it ; while, when sheltered, 
 it gets long and lank, and makes a very bad pathway 
 even for a hare. The open heath is also dry and fra- 
 grant ; and the buds, which are the principal food of 
 the grouse in the breeding season, are sweet ; while in 
 the shaded places it is damp and rank. The superiority 
 of the path, (for grouse do not get on the wing till their 
 running be unavailing,) and also of the food, are, there- 
 fore, inducements to prefer the open heath. 
 
 But the instinct of preservation leads them to the 
 same places. Trees, the shade of which would be incon- 
 venient to grouse, afford shelter to animals that would 
 prey upon them ; not to predatory birds only, but to 
 weasels, martens, and foxes, which would prowl about 
 and destroy the eggs during the day, and the old birds 
 in the night. Thus the necessity of food, and the 
 desire of life, equally confine these birds to situations 
 
THE RED GROUSE. 317 
 
 which have, comparatively, few other inhabitants ; and 
 while they do this, they place the birds in the very 
 situation where man can preserve them most securely 
 from other destroyers. 
 
 The grown-cock is about fifteen inches long, and 
 twenty-three in the expansion of the wings ; but as the 
 majority of those that are bagged by the sportsmen in 
 the season, are poults or young ones, the full-grown 
 bird is not often met with, except " on whirring wings," 
 as Burns most accurately expresses it, on his native 
 heather. The general colour is a very red chestnut brown, 
 barred and spotted with black, with a circle of white 
 round each eye, and a spot of the same at the root of 
 the lower mandible. The carbuncles on the eyelids are 
 prominent, of a very bright scarlet, and fringed along 
 the upper edges. The feathers of the tail are black, 
 but the four middle ones are finely banded with red, 
 and the lateral ones are tipped with rich reddish 
 brown. The quill feathers of the wings are of a dusky 
 colour, and there is about the whole covering of the 
 bird that rich gloss, by which gallinaceous birds are so 
 generally characterised. The tarsi, and even the toes, 
 are covered with ashen-coloured feathers, as fine and 
 delicate as hair. The hen-grouse is rather smaller in 
 size, and has the colours less bright, and the gloss less 
 brilliant, with the carbuncles on the upper eye-lids 
 small and pale ; and the poults are much lighter in 
 their colours than the full-grown birds, and not un- 
 frequently mottled with white. 
 
 As soon as the pairing season commences, for, con- 
 trary to the habits of the black grouse, they do pair, 
 the cocks make the moors ring with their amorous 
 2 E 3 
 
318 THE RED GROUSE. 
 
 noise ; and 'though the sound which they utter cannot 
 be considered as a song of any description, it is still 
 very lively ; and as it is heard in lonely situations, and 
 over wastes of brown heather, the peasants listen to it 
 with pleasure. It is a sound not easily expressible in 
 words, but it is one which, when once heard, there is 
 no danger of forgetting. Perhaps the nearest approxi- 
 mation that can be made to it in writing, is curr-rr-rrr 
 bec-bec~bec, the r's being prolonged and strongly 
 aspirated, and the last syllables gradually shortened 
 and lowered. This cry is so loud, that it seems to 
 proceed from a much larger bird than the heath-cock ; 
 and, probably, it may have other uses than being a 
 mere love-song. It must, indeed, have for it is con- 
 tinued after the female has begun to sit upon the eggs, 
 and even after they are hatched. While the hen is 
 performing her incubation, and while she is sitting 
 upon her infant brood in their young state, the cry, 
 which the cock repeats at intervals during the night, 
 is obviously the cry of a watchman. This cry is never 
 uttered in the immediate vicinity of the nest after the 
 female has begun to sit, but always from some spot at 
 a little distance, as if it were intended to draw off any 
 spoiler of the night, that may then be prowling about. 
 Neither, in so far as we have observed, is it twice 
 uttered from the same spot; for after the cock has 
 sounded his watch-note on one side of his charge, he runs 
 quickly and silently past the nest, and sounds it on the 
 other side, and thus continues till he has made sure 
 that there is no enemy in the neighbourhood. 
 
 The nest of the grouse is very rude and simple, con- 
 sisting only of a few twigs of heath, and leaves of 
 
THE RED GROUSE. 319 
 
 withered grass ; and the place chosen for it is some 
 elevated mossy sod, concealed by tall heath, there being, 
 in all birds that build on the ground, an instinctive 
 caution against rain. The eggs are never fewer than 
 eight, and rarely more than fourteen ; they are of a 
 dull yellowish white and straw colour, marked with 
 minute rusty spots, with large blotches toward the 
 small end. The brood continue with the hen till winter ; 
 and when the cold sets in, a number of families unite 
 in a flock. It is late in the season before they come 
 to their full power of wing, though they grow rapidly 
 in size ; and after they have assembled in flocks, they 
 are so very shy and vigilant, that the best sportsmen 
 can with difficulty get within shot of them. When 
 they are in families only, they are much more easily 
 shot. They lie close in the heath, until they be ap- 
 proached very near. Then the cock is the first to 
 spring, which he does in one direction with much noise 
 and motion of his wings ; and the hen and brood run a 
 little way upon the ground, and then take their flight 
 in a direction a little different ; but when they have got 
 out of reach of the danger, they again unite, and after 
 flying in various circles, as if to bewilder their pursuers, 
 alight again, but run a considerable way, and generally 
 in an oblique direction toward the sportsman, before 
 they are again at rest. Grouse-shooting is a very 
 favourite sport, especially in the Scottish mountains ; 
 not, however, on the lofty summits, but on the lowest 
 uplands and slopes, that are covered with heath. The 
 shooting is most successful in the commencement of the 
 season, and before the birds have begun to flock ; but 
 the birds are in better condition afterwards. As is the 
 
320 THE RED GROUSE. 
 
 case with salmon, grouse is the more wholesome and 
 finely flavoured, the more recent it is ; though fashion 
 has led to the using and even praising of it, and all 
 sorts of game and venison, in being in the finest con- 
 dition when in a state of incipient putridity. In all 
 cases that taste is, of course, a vitiated one, and most 
 likely has arisen from the circumstance of food of that 
 kind not being attainable, in a recent state, in large 
 cities. In a matter so very capricious as taste, we by 
 no means give an opinion ; but we have eaten grouse, 
 with the coarse and plain cookery that it got in the 
 open air on a mountain side, within less than an 
 hour of the time that it had been on the wing, and 
 having done so, we never had any wish to taste it 
 when in the state which is called " high." Chacun d 
 son gout, however ; and if people will prefer rotten 
 food, nobody has a right to quarrel with them. 
 
 If grouse is to be kept for any length of time, or 
 carried to any distance, it should be drawn as soon as 
 killed ; as it very soon begins to putrefy internally, and 
 draws round it a number of flies, which deposit their 
 eggs, and, in brief space, have it full of maggots. 
 One would not, at first, suspect this in a bird which 
 feeds on substances that resist putrefaction so long as 
 the heath-buds and heath-berries, upon which the grouse 
 lives ; but yet it should seem that this hard food is the 
 cause of the rapid putridity. The gastric juice of the 
 bird must be more powerful than that of animals which 
 live upon food, which is softer and naturally more assi- 
 milated to the animal structure ; and a very short time 
 elapses before the juice begins to act upon the coats of 
 the stomach ; and, though this action prevents any 
 
THE RED GROUSE. 321 
 
 farther production of the juice, yet, when putridity 
 has once begun, it proceeds irresistibly ; not only in 
 that which otherwise would have kept for a long time, 
 but even in living substances. One apple, or one po- 
 tatoe, that has begun to rot, will, in a short time, pro- 
 duce rottenness in all the heap ; gangrene of the smallest 
 member of the body, will occasion dissolution ; and the 
 puncture of a needle which has passed through the 
 substance of a putrid body, will occasion gangrene and 
 death, even though the quantity of putrid matter upon 
 it should be so small as not to be discernible. 
 
 Though the grouse, from being pursued with so much 
 avidity by man, is a shy and wary bird, it will breed in 
 confinement ; and thus we do not doubt that, with a 
 little attention, it might be added to the list of domestic 
 poultry, and probably improved both in size and in 
 flavour. Iildeed this might, in all probability, be done 
 with most of the gallinaceous birds, more especially 
 those, of which the family continue together till the end 
 of the season. 
 
 The descent of the grouse from the uplands to the 
 margin of the cultivated fields, is a certain indication 
 of a storm. In September, 1807, we started a flock 
 of grouse upon the edge of a field of oats, distant at 
 least a mile and a half from the moors ; and upon 
 mentioning the fact to the owner of the field, he 
 shook his head, and wished that all his crop had been 
 gathered in. The day was more than usually fine 
 for the season. There was not a speck of cloud in 
 the whole expanse of the sky ; the sea (the Moray 
 Firth it was) lay motionless as a mirror ; the extent 
 in the offing seemed interminable, and the outlines of 
 
322 THE RED GROUSE. 
 
 the surrounding objects were as firm and well defined 
 in the aqueous reflection, as in the terrestrial reality ; 
 the ground was everywhere glittering with the snares 
 of the little field-spiders, and thousands of them were 
 navigating the atmosphere in their silken balloons. 
 The night continued serene till we had retired to rest, 
 and we thought not of the fear of the farmer. About 
 midnight, however, the wind sung in those melancholy 
 murmurs which are always the signs of some rapid 
 change for the worse in the state of the atmosphere ; 
 and in the morning, the ground was white with snow 
 to such a depth, that it concealed both the standing 
 corn and the shocks. It lay for some time, and was 
 followed by heavy rain and black frost, which com- 
 pletely destroyed the potatoe crop, and reduced the 
 poor, who depended principally upon that, to a state 
 closely bordering upon famine. 
 
 When the grouse leave their upland haunts, and even 
 in these, in some instances, especially if there be rocks 
 or woods at no great distance, one of their destroyers is 
 
THE KITE. 
 
 THE KITE (milvus vulgaris) belongs to a division 
 of rapacious birds, different from any of those that 
 have been mentioned. Its organs of flight being much 
 greater, in proportion to its organs of destruction ; and 
 while it is one of the most ravenous of birds, it is also 
 one of the most cowardly. The smallest of the hawks 
 puts it to flight; one lapwing, or two rooks, more than 
 match it ; and when it comes to the poultry-yard, it will 
 not dare to take any of the chickens from a vigilant 
 hen, but hovers about till she be off her guard? and 
 then steals ; but when it succeeds in getting prey, it 
 becomes so intent upon the satisfying of its appetite, 
 that it forgets every thing else. Advantage is often 
 taken of this, in order to destroy the bird; and one 
 chicken is sacrificed, in order to save the rest. When 
 the kite is hovering about, a chicken is put in its 
 
S24f THE KITE. 
 
 sight, and a person with a club is set to watch. The 
 moment that the kite spies the chicken, down it 
 pounces, and as the chicken is purposely left in a 
 retired place, the feast is instantly begun. While 
 it is luxuriating, the peasant comes in the rear of it, 
 and aims a blow at its wing, which generally takes 
 effect, indeed, if the bird be not hit at all, a second 
 blow may be given, and the kite is soon dispatched, 
 and nailed on the wall in terror em to all future kites. 
 This is often accomplished in so short a time, that the 
 chicken, though killed, is not mangled. This attention 
 to its meal, on the part of the kite, has procured it the 
 adjunct of " greedy" to its provincial name of " glead." 
 Nor is its absorption by the feast taken advantage of 
 by man only ; for though we have never seen an in- 
 stance, we have heard it often stated that the pole-cat, 
 and even the common weasel, will set upon and dispatch 
 the kite while it is feeding, and then eat up both the 
 preyer and the prey. 
 
 Though thus cowardly arid rapacious, the kite is 
 both a large and a handsome bird. When full-grown, 
 the length is nearly two feet and a half, and the extent 
 of the wings five and a half. More of the length is 
 taken up by the tail, than in the case of eagles and 
 hawks ; so that the kite is not so heavy in proportion 
 to its extent, its weight being generally under three 
 pounds. The beak is weaker and more slender in pro- 
 portion ; and the tarsi are thin and scaly, and the claws 
 weak, and not very much hooked ; but still, from the 
 nature of its food, and the fact of its killing nothing 
 on the wing, as the eagles and hawks do, but pouncing 
 its prey on the ground, and attacking it with beak and 
 
THE KITE. 325 
 
 claws at the same time, the assistance of each compen- 
 sates for the weakness of the other ; and greater strength 
 in either would have been superfluous. 
 
 The motion of the kite is remarkably graceful. It 
 sweeps along in curves, which it is enabled to describe 
 by using its long forky tail as a rudder ; and there is a 
 considerable interval between the times at which it gives " 
 a single jerk to its wings. Its flight is low, compared 
 with that of the eagle ; but it is higher than that of 
 some other rapacious birds that beat the ground. 
 
 The size, or even the condition of the prey, is no 
 consideration with the kite, so that it is not a creature 
 that offers resistance. The young of hares, rabbits, and 
 all sorts of game those young that cannot fly, espe- 
 cially very young lambs, carrion, mice, snakes, worms, 
 insects all come alike to the kite. Thus it has a 
 great range of food, and is in consequence fitted for a 
 number of situations. It is not so much a moor bird 
 as a prowler about woods, fields, and farm-yards, and 
 even the vicinity of towns ; but it often takes an excur- 
 sion over the moors, even to a considerable extent, if 
 it meet with a peculiarly fine day. 
 
 It is in fine weather only that the kite beats the 
 ground gracefully. The objects of which it is in quest 
 are smaller than those on which the eagle preys ; and 
 it requires, in consequence, greater light. On the fine 
 sunny days too, young heath-poults, partridges, or 
 chickens, according to the nature of the place, lie 
 basking, or even asleep, in more exposed places than 
 when the sun is clouded and the air cold. Thus the 
 sailing kite, though certainly not a harbinger of fine 
 weather, is a concomitant of it, because then its prey 
 2 F 
 
326 THE KITE. 
 
 is most in sight, as well as most easily seen. There is 
 not any thing majestic in the stoop of the kite, it 
 rather sneaks cowardly down, like a thief. In stormy 
 weather, or rather in that warning before storms, when 
 the air is dark and the birds take to their coverts, the 
 kite, when it does appear, is clamorous ; and hence it 
 has been said that its noise presages bad weather. 
 That it does precede bad weather is true, for we have 
 often observed it ; and therefore there is no more harm 
 in taking it as an omen of the weather, than there is in 
 predicting thunder and rain when the sky is full of 
 thunder-clouds. But still the crying of the kite has no 
 reference to the weather that is to come, for it refers 
 to the existing state of the atmosphere. The kite is 
 more than usually hungry, or it would not hunt in such 
 weather : the state of the air keeping the birds at rest, 
 they are difficult to be seen, and the kite screams to 
 rouse them to motion, and make their attempts at securer 
 concealment the means of their more easy discovery. 
 
 Considered merely in itself, no phenomenon or event 
 is an indication of the future, though there is not one 
 that may not be made so by due observation ; and the 
 principal distinction between superstition and philosophy 
 consists in this, that philosophy looks carefully into 
 nature, and finds what is the future event or pheno- 
 menon that follows a present one ; while the super- 
 stitious person either overlooks the succession of the 
 phenomena of nature altogether, or connects with the 
 present a future event, which has no natural connexion 
 with it. All knowledge is founded upon this observation, 
 and all ignorance arises from the want of it ; nor is 
 there any occurrence, however apparently trifling and 
 
THE HEN HARRIER. 327 
 
 simple, which would not bring us a lesson, if we would 
 but wait and watch for it But we are so apt to attend 
 only to the great events which are striking, and force 
 themselves upon our notice, that we lose the connexion 
 by not heeding those minor ones, which are the cement 
 by which the whole succession is bound together, and 
 without which the insulated partitions are of compa- 
 ratively small value. 
 
 The kite usually builds in trees, its nest is formed of 
 twigs and lined with wool. The female lays, generally, 
 three eggs, of a dirty white, and occasionally blotched 
 with rusty brown at the thick end. The eggs are larger 
 than those of the domestic hen. The young are produced 
 early in the season ; and, ^m the continent, the bird is 
 migratory, proceeding southward to Greece and Italy, 
 or even to Africa in winter, and returning as far as the 
 shores of the Baltic in the summer ; but in Britain they 
 do not leave the country ; they descend toward the sea, 
 where, though they do not appear to catch living fish, 
 they prey upon dead ones and aquatic insects, and, 
 when they can come upon them unawares, sand-pipers 
 and other birds. The kite is only an occasional visitant 
 in the bleak and northern parts of the country ; and it 
 is rather a rare bird, except in some particular districts. 
 It is far from being the most destructive bird that beats 
 the moors, and other places where there are gallina- 
 ceous game : a much more formidable destroyer is 
 
 THE HEN HARRIER. 
 
 THE HEN HARRIER (circus cyaneus) is like the 
 kite, not a regular inhabitant of the moors, but it makes 
 excursions there, and is very bold and destructive. It 
 2 F 2 
 
328 THE HEN HARRIER. 
 
 is not so partial to woods as the kite, and often makes 
 its nest in rushes, or among long grass or autumn 
 wheat ; but it also occasionally builds in trees. It is a 
 small bird compared to the kite. The length is about 
 a foot and a half; and the breadth about forty inches. 
 Its tail is long, like that of the kite, but it is not forked. 
 The general colours of the male are, gray above, and 
 white on the under side ; and those of the female, 
 brown above, and white below, and in both places 
 more or less marked with orange. The colours vary a 
 good deal, however, both in the individual and with 
 age ; and that has led to the bestowing of more names 
 upon this than upon almost any other bird. 
 
 The hen harrier flies very low, with a swift and 
 smooth motion, and few birds or small quadrupeds 
 escape its fury. It is said even to attack deer and 
 sheep, especially at the season when they are weakly, 
 and to prevent their escape by striking them blind with 
 its beak. Of all the birds of prey that are known in this 
 country, it is the most destructive in the poultry yard, 
 and also in all places where there are game. It is an 
 extensive rover, and wherever it roves it is certain of 
 success. Though it has none of the cowardice of the 
 kite, it has the same extensive range of feeding, 
 making prey of every thing that it can muster, and 
 eating garbage when it can find no food to kill. The 
 hen harrier is easily distinguished from all other hawks 
 by the length of the ear feathers, that form a complete ruff 
 round the neck, which in the female is white and very 
 stiff. Notwithstanding the hen harrier produces more 
 eggs than the kite, it is not much more common, though 
 it is more generally diffused over the low parts of the 
 
THE MOOR BUZZARD. 329 
 
 country. It is never found upon the mountains, and 
 but seldom on the higher Alpine moors ; yet it is pretty 
 general upon those that lie low. One pair seem, how- 
 ever, to require an extensive range of pasture, as they 
 are thinly scattered at any one place. 
 
 There are two other species, the moor-buzzard, 
 (falco rufusj) and the ash-coloured harrier, (Jalco cine- 
 rarius 9 ) the first, larger every way than the hen harrier, 
 and the last exceeding it in length and extent, though 
 very much lighter. They have the same general 
 habits and structure, but they are more exclusively 
 confined to marshy places, and their peculiarities will 
 come in with more propriety, when we notice a few of 
 the leading inhabitants of those situations. 
 
 Though the red grouse be now the prevailing bird 
 of the Alpine moors of this country, there is an extinct 
 species, of which both naturalists and sportsmen have 
 some cause to regret the extinction ; the more so that 
 it has, in all probability, been occasioned by an indis- 
 cretion which has been otherwise very injurious to 
 the country. We allude to the cutting down of the 
 woods, without planting others for a succession, which 
 was the general practice to a period comparatively 
 recent, and which is still done in all new countries 
 colonized by the British. They find woods ready 
 grown by nature ; they never think of the time that has 
 been taken to produce them ; thus they take the 
 hatchet and cut away ; and that which was a sheltered 
 forest riches in itself and rich in living productions, 
 becomes an unprofitable bog, or a bleak desolation of 
 black surface and stunted heath, according to the situ- 
 ation. Ireland and Scotland have both suffered very 
 1*3 
 
330 THE COCK OF THE WOOD. 
 
 much in this respect, the former having been, to a very 
 great extent, converted into unprofitable and unwhole- 
 some bogs, and the latter, even where the roots of the 
 large trees still stand bleaching on the surface, being 
 for many miles, black mud, with water almost equally 
 as black, and not producing as much, even of heath, as 
 would pasture one grouse an acre. 
 
 Among the other losses, has been that of the GREAT 
 GROUSE, cock of the wood, or cock of the mountain, 
 (tetrao urogallus, Linnaeus). That bird, which grows 
 almost as large as a turkey, was once met with in the 
 remote parts of Ireland and Scotland ; the last found 
 specimen was killed in the latter country about fifty 
 years ago, and before that time it had been extinct in 
 Ireland. The severity of the climate cannot have been 
 the cause ; for the bird is still met with in places that 
 are colder, as among the mountains of Norway, Sweden, 
 Russia, and Siberia, and high upon the ridges of the 
 Alps and Pyrenees. But the forests that afforded it 
 shelter are gone ; and both the vegetable and the insect 
 food, which the shelter of these also afforded, have been 
 swept away by the bleak winds that now play over the 
 exposed surface, and hurry all that is moveable, and 
 consequently all that is fertile of it, into the valleys 
 where it is not wanted, or the lakes and rivers, where it 
 is lost. 
 
 For these reasons we can notice this superb bird 
 only as one of the departed wonders of the British 
 Fauna, until some patriotic proprietor shall introduce 
 it again into one of those planted forests with which 
 the spirit of recent times is clothing the bleak moun- 
 tains, and labouring (sometimes with but little success, 
 
THE COCK OF THE WOOD. S3l 
 
 because the operation has been delayed till the soil is 
 useless) to hide the shame of former ages. 
 
 The prevailing colour in the male is dusky, waved 
 with cinereous on the upper part of the body, the 
 breast of a deep glossy-green, marked with bronze 
 colour, and the tail black, with two white spots on 
 the tip of each feather. The female is ash-coloured, 
 and variegated and barred with black. The male 
 is two feet nine inches in length, and three feet in 
 the expansion of the wings, and has been met with 
 weighing as much as thirteen pounds, though it does 
 not generally weigh more than eight. The female is 
 considerably smaller, and not above half the size. Both 
 are compact and rather handsome birds, the hen being 
 not unlike the ptarmigan. The legs and tarsi of both 
 are feathered down to the toes, and these are well 
 protected by plates on the upper surfaces, and adapted 
 with knobs on the under for taking hold. 
 
 On the continent there are several species of these 
 birds ; those in the woods of Sweden are large, and 
 there are smaller ones in Norway and Lapland, as 
 far north as the shores of the Arctic ocean. 
 
 These birds are properly birds of the woods ; but 
 they come out to the sheltered moor-lands between the 
 woods in the morning and evening, and retire into the 
 silent depths of the forest during the heat of the day. 
 They scratch the earth for insects and their larvae, and 
 swallow pebbles in the same manner as domestic poul- 
 try. The breeding season begins about the middle of 
 April, at which time they remain much upon the trees. 
 The gestures and love-song of the male are both sin- 
 gular. The middle of the song is like the cry of a 
 
332 THE COCK OF THE WOOD. 
 
 drake, or rather the sharpening of a scythe, and the 
 beginning and end are a kind of explosion, as if a 
 quantity of air were shot from the beak, with a sound 
 that is not easily described. During the time that he 
 is thus agitated, he becomes insensible to danger ; and 
 though at other times a vigilant and wary bird, may 
 be shot, or even knocked on the head. The nest is 
 formed on the ground among the natural moss, and is 
 very simple in its construction ; the eggs vary from 
 eight to sixteen, about the same size as those of the 
 common hen, but blunter at the ends, and of a yel- 
 lowish white, irregularly spotted with yellow. The flesh 
 of these birds, which acquires a peculiar pungent taste 
 from the juniper berries on which they feed, is highly 
 prized ; and it is so little disposed to putridity, that, in 
 the winter months it may be brought fresh from Nor- 
 way to Britain ; the eggs too are highly valued, and 
 accounted more valuable than those of any other bird. 
 All circumstances, indeed, conspire to make one regret 
 the loss of so valuable an animal ; but if it ever again 
 should be restored to the country, it must be in the wild 
 state ; for even in those countries where it is abundant, 
 it has never been brought to live in a state of do- 
 mestication. Hybrids which are barren, and thus 
 prove, independently of other evidence, that the spe- 
 cies are distinct, have been produced between these 
 birds and the 
 
333 
 
 BLACK GROUSE. 
 
 THE BLACK GROUSE, black game, or black cock, 
 (tetrao tetrix^) though inferior in size to the cock of 
 the woods, is still a bird of considerable dimensions, 
 being much larger than the red grouse; and when full- 
 grown, larger than the pheasant. The black cock is 
 a very handsome bird ; the general colour is black, 
 but it is irridescent, arid in certain positions of the 
 light shows a very fine purple. The tail is very much 
 forked, the outside feathers curled, and the lower part, 
 toward the base, white. Upon the throat there is a 
 kind of down, but no long or regularly-formed feathers. 
 The length of the male bird is about twenty-eight 
 inches, and the extent of the wings nearly three feet ; 
 and the weight between three and four pounds. The 
 female is a much smaller bird, and has not the curled 
 feathers in the tail. 
 
 Though the places at which the black grouse is 
 found are not quite so elevated so near to the 
 summits of the mountains as the habitations of the 
 ptarmigan it is yet a bird fond of wild and secluded 
 spots ; and its numbers in these islands are very fast 
 declining. What with improvements of land, and im- 
 provements in the arts of its destruction, it is not nearly 
 so abundant in England as it was formerly; though 
 it be still met with in the more elevated and secluded 
 places in the south of England, in Staffordshire, in 
 North Wales, and generally where there are high and 
 lonely moors. In the Alpine parts of Scotland it is more 
 abundant, though the introduction of sheep, generally, 
 
334- BLACK GROUSE. 
 
 upon the mountains, is said to be diminishing the 
 numbers. The black cocks are more frequently found 
 in the woods than the red grouse, though the moors, 
 with a difference of elevation, be the favourite abodes 
 of both. Their food is also similar ; consisting of 
 mountain-berries, the tops of heath, and the buds of 
 pine and other Alpine trees. Though they seek their 
 food in the open places during the day, they, where 
 they have the accommodation of trees, perch during 
 the night, like pheasants. It is chiefly during the 
 winter months, however, and the early parts of spring, 
 when all food, save the tops of the pines, is hidden 
 under the snow, that they do that ; for when the breed- 
 ing season commences, they assemble on the tops of 
 the mountains and highest parts of the moors, but 
 never higher than they can find heath; the young 
 shoots and embryo blossoms of which are at that time 
 their principal food. 
 
 Some parts of their character resemble that of 
 common poultry. They do not pair; but when the 
 breeding season commences, the cocks ascend to the 
 tops of the mountains, and clap their wings and crow ; 
 to which call the females answer, by making their 
 appearance, and uttering a sort of clucking sound. 
 War immediately ensues among the males, as each is 
 anxious to have in his train as many females as 
 possible. Their heels are armed with spurs : their 
 mode of fighting is the same as that of game-cocks, 
 and they enter upon the strife with the same devoted- 
 ness. Although upon other occasions they are among 
 the shyest of birds, they are then so intent upon the 
 victory in their own battle, that they do not heed the 
 
J3LACK GROUSE. 335 
 
 approach of strangers. Not only may all that are 
 within the spread of a musket-shot be killed at one 
 shot, but they may be struck a second time with a 
 stick, so eager are they for victory among themselves. 
 The nests, like those of most of the gallinaceous birds, 
 are rude ; the eggs are usually six or seven ; they are 
 of a yellowish white, dotted with very minute ferru- 
 ginous specks ; and about the size of those of the 
 pheasant. The young are produced rather late in the 
 season, but as there is then plenty of food, they grow 
 rapidly. In their early stage they follow the mother, 
 and nestle under her wings in some safe place during 
 the night ; but after about five weeks, they have ac- 
 quired so much strength and use of their wings as to 
 be able to perch along with her. As the winter sets 
 in, the different families leave their mothers, and the 
 whole assemble in flocks like the red grouse. They 
 are never, so far as our observation has gone, found, 
 like those, even in the margins of the cultivated fields, 
 but continue in the mountains during the winter ; find- 
 ing, as is supposed, their food under the snow, and 
 being also often found in their retreats by beasts and 
 birds of prey. 
 
 When the snow begins to fall heavy, the black grouse 
 betake themselves to the shelter of tall heath, juniper, 
 or any other plant, that will afford them cover while 
 the violent wind with which falls of snow are usually 
 accompanied in Alpine districts lasts; or they roost 
 under the thick branches of the pines, in situations 
 where they have access to these. Even upon the 
 pines, the snow forms a close canopy, which lasts for a 
 considerable time, while below there is a sufficiency of 
 
336 SNOW STORMS. 
 
 air for the breathing of the bird. In the shelter of the 
 bushes they are obliged, like the white hares and other 
 inhabitants of the mountains, to open breathing holes 
 for themselves ; and while they are pent up in their ha- 
 bitations of snow, the tops of the heather, or leaves of 
 the bush, find them in food. When the surface be- 
 comes hard [which it does in no great length of time 
 after the fall of snow is over, in consequence of the 
 softening of the surface by the action of the sun, and 
 the congealing of it again at night, till it is converted 
 into a crust of smooth ice, and reflects off the greater 
 part of the solar heat obliquely, as the rays then fall 
 upon the surface] those breathing holes often betray 
 their inmates to the ravages of predatory birds and 
 quadrupeds. The mountain-eagles and hawks then 
 fly over the snowy surface, and beat it in the same 
 manner for these holes, as they do for the birds them- 
 selves when there is no snow upon the ground ; and 
 the four-footed ravagers, that then find an easy passage 
 along the hard surface, join in the spoil. Man some- 
 times also takes a part in it, but much less frequently, 
 because there are concealed holes and precipices under 
 the snow, which are full of danger. 
 
 But the winds by which the falls of snow in the 
 Alpine countries are accompanied, though they render 
 these formidable to the animals, whether quadruped or 
 bird, while they last, and fatal to man if he be over- 
 taken by them late in the day and far from his home, 
 have yet their uses, and tend in some measure to the 
 preservation of life. Some portions toward the wind- 
 ward are left bare, or at any rate with the tops of the 
 heath and other plants above the surface, and the 
 
SNOW STORMS. 337 
 
 vigorous find their way to these, and subsist on them till 
 other parts of the surface be clear. When, however, 
 the snow falls in continued storms, and especially with 
 the wind from opposite points during the different falls, 
 the sufferings of the creatures are extreme ; first, those 
 that live on vegetables, perish through suffocation or 
 of hunger ; and then the carnivorous ones, which can 
 in general subsist longer without food, follow in their 
 turn ; and when the snow clears away, the raven comes 
 to enjoy the spoils of both. 
 
 These are but a few of the inhabitants of the moor ; 
 but moor means so many different kinds of country, 
 according to the situation in which it is placed, that 
 there is no possibility of including in a short space the 
 characters that are common to all. There are compa- 
 ratively few quadrupeds peculiar to such situations, 
 and the number of insects is not great ; the plants, too, 
 though more abundant and more numerous in their 
 species, are not those that are the most striking in 
 their appearance, or the most interesting in their pro- 
 perties. 
 
 Alpine hares are sometimes found in the more 
 elevated parts of the higher moors, and the common 
 hare in the lower parts of those that are near the culti- 
 vated grounds ; but the only quadrupeds which can be 
 considered as natives, and permanent inhabitants of the 
 moors in any part of Britain, are deer ; and they pro- 
 perly fall into the description of a more limited and pe- 
 culiar description of scenery. We must, therefore, even 
 though the subject be merely begun, close our account 
 of this division of the surface of our country. There are 
 other circumstances connected with it in common with 
 
338 SNOW STORMS. 
 
 other places, to which we can afterwards advert with 
 more effect. What has been mentioned will tend to 
 show that, even in one of its departments, that portion 
 of the earth's surface which, on account of its flatness 
 and its sterility, is the least pleasing or promising, is yet 
 fraught with lessons of the greatest importance, if we 
 would only pause and read them. Nor even when the 
 moor has advanced one step further, and become a 
 desart in the burning climate, or a peat-bog in the cold 
 and marshy one, can we dare to say, that it is without its 
 usefulness. The peat-bog is the coal-field of future 
 times, and the waste of Zahara must have its use, or it 
 would not have existence. 
 
339 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE BROOK. 
 
 THE greatest charm about the works of nature is, 
 that, however they may vary in extent, or in the kind 
 of emotion that they excite, they never fail to be inter- 
 esting ; but when we have wearied ourselves in the 
 study of one, the change to another one destroys the 
 incipient lassitude, and we turn to the new with the 
 same freshness as if we had come at once from rest to 
 labour. If we have become giddy with the contem- 
 plation of lofty summits and wave-lashed shores, if 
 the broad-rolling tide of the river has ceased to please, 
 if the brown moor has moulded the mind to its own 
 dusky monotony, nature has still something to charm 
 us ; and when we have contemplated one part of her 
 works till we are weary, and our eyes ache, and our 
 temples throb, if the voice of another call but, " come 
 and see," the mind is up, and the momentary weariness 
 of the body is forgotten. 
 
 Even the human body is so constituted and con- 
 structed, that indolence, or even rest, is not the only 
 means by which it may be recruited. Change will do 
 the work. If the burden has been on the one shoulder 
 till pain is felt, shift it to the other, and not ease 
 
340 THE BROOK. 
 
 merely, but pleasure is the result. If we have been 
 walking upon level ground till the limbs are stiffened, 
 let us ascend or descend a steep, and we are at once 
 vigorous. Even the sluggard, who has lain dozing in 
 bed till the weight of his own flesh and bones has 
 pressed the vessels and stopped the circulation of the . 
 one side, feels ease, and even pleasure, as he turns 
 himself with slowness and hesitation to the other side. 
 If the sight has become pained and dim to the per- 
 ception of one colour, nature has another, in her won- 
 derful beam of radiance, which will not only give 
 relief to the aching eye, but absolutely, a clearer per- 
 ception of the new colour, and a keener admiration of 
 its beauty, than if the former one had never been seen. 
 All the senses have this power ; the most luscious 
 taste palls upon the tongue, and the sweetest perfume 
 offends in the nostril, when the one or the other is 
 borne too long ; and the organ and the feeling equally 
 demand that change which brings relief. 
 
 Now if the members of the body, which are merely 
 the earthy tools with which the mind works, perform 
 their offices so much better by a change in their 
 objects, how much more must it be the case with the 
 mind ! That grasping and comprehensive energy, which, 
 taking tangibility from one sense, colour from another, 
 sound from a third, scent from a fourth, and sapidity 
 from a fifth, moulds all their combined reports into one 
 idea of existent substance, distinguishes that from all 
 other substances around, however fine their shades of 
 difference may be, finds out what has been its past 
 states of existence, the uses to which it may be turned, 
 and the rank that it holds in the general scale of being 
 
THE BROOK. 341 
 
 how much more must it exalt and find delight in those 
 transitions with which the study of nature abounds ! 
 
 The bodily pleasure, and the mental delight, which 
 we feel in changing from one posture and one study to 
 another, are given to us for the most wise and bene- 
 ficent purposes ; they are among the most powerful 
 incitements to study ; and were it not that we are apt 
 to dissipate and misapply our faculties, we should 
 never think of being idle, but during those hours when 
 the body needs refreshment or sleep, and them we 
 should make as few as possible. 
 
 Of those scenes which are alike calculated to bring 
 us v down from over excitement, or rouse us from the 
 exhaustion of lassitude, none is better than the margin 
 of a brook. There is not an indication of any thing 
 either disposed or fitted to destroy : those elevated 
 banks, with their alternating glades and coppices, for- 
 bid the action of such winds as sweep the hill-side 
 and the heath, lash the shore in sounds like thunder, 
 make the lake curl its white crusted billows, and even 
 the river run foaming to the sea. That small and 
 gentle stream, now stealing unseen under beds of the 
 sweetest wild flowers, which, like a kind modest friend, 
 it nourishes in secret and in silence, now curling round 
 the large pebble, as if it would not disturb the repose 
 of even a stone, then gliding away into some stagnant 
 angle, where it woos the wild plants to come and quench 
 their thirst, and seems more a garden of herbs, than 
 even an appendage of running water ; and yet again, as 
 if it would not derange the little bank of gravel which 
 has found a resting-place in its bed, it broadens out into 
 a little pool where the gentle water-fowl may swim in 
 2 G3 
 
342 THE BROOK. 
 
 safety, the songsters of the neighbouring trees perform 
 their ablutions, the small quadrupeds drink, and the 
 insect tribes spend their brief hours in joy ; that gentle 
 stream is the cause of no inundation, tears up no soil, 
 and hardly bends a rush or drowns a fly. There is no 
 din of wings, no shadow of the eagle, no rushing of the 
 hawk, not a death-doer, or a death-cry, from all unrea- 
 soning nature in this little place ; and if man come not 
 in with his snare, or his weapon, he may make it, or 
 rather have it, the very Eden of innocence. How easily 
 can we trace it upward to the fountains, or downward 
 to the point at which it blends its waters, and loses its 
 name in the river. The well under the hawthorn, by 
 the base of the rock, the depth of whose sources defy 
 the heat of summer and the cold of winter, and which, 
 for virtues more valuable than those for which modern 
 idols are worshipped, the simple people called by the 
 name of their favourite saint; and, for the health that the 
 draught of liquid diamond had given them, hung with 
 garlands and other votive offerings, as they hymned him 
 in their grateful hearts ; that shining and sainted well 
 is the farthest source of our little brook. And though 
 the brook apparently loves to linger in the shade of its 
 little grove where the willows, whose rough stems are 
 the parents of fifty generations of osier twigs, and are 
 as likely as ever to enrich the peasants with fifty 
 more, stand rooted in the water among lofty reeds and 
 glowing iris, and sport the soft glory of their green 
 and silver in the waveless pool ; where, too, the alder 
 and the elm blend their passage, and all is so still that 
 the fluttering leaves of the aspen, ever in motion in 
 other places, are here still as if the zephyrs themselves 
 
THE BROOK. 343 
 
 had forgotten to breathe. Though it thus lingers and 
 broadens, the fountain is not at the distance of an hour's 
 walk ; and that walk is across little swells, fragrant with 
 the vernal grass, the white blossom of the creeping tre- 
 foil, the wafted sweets of the wild hyacinth, or the more 
 powerful perfume of the bean-blossom, according to the 
 season. And the inhabitants of those little cottages, as 
 one passes along to the foot of the mountain, and which 
 are so pleasingly simple, with their thatch and their 
 white walls, and their trailing briars and their cluster- 
 ing roses, with here and there a poeony or a tulip 
 when the horticultural skill and pride are more than 
 common they are as innocent as they look. They 
 are in happy ignorance, both of the grandeur of the 
 world and of its grievances. The storm that unroofs 
 the cottage, or sends the swathes of hay or the sheaves of 
 corn coursing each other over the field the fine day that 
 follows, and permits all to be recovered and safe the 
 revolving year the sun, the moon, and the stars in 
 their courses the weekly prayer and the weekly sermon 
 the noise of the mill, and the noise of the " smithy " 
 these are the world to them ; and to their minds and 
 their desires, they are more than the conquest from 
 Rhodope to the Indus was to the monarch of Macedon. 
 Those who have not visited such scenes, and known 
 such people, have something yet to learn something 
 which is one of the most delightful parts of natural 
 history. Simple as those people are, there are in them 
 the germs of all the arts and sciences, and fineries and 
 blandishments of life. The gold is there, and we want 
 only the coiner with his stamp, to make them pass 
 current among those whose superior value in exchange 
 
344 THE BROOK. 
 
 depends far more upon the impress than upon the 
 bullion. 
 
 The human heart is as warm there, and the feelings 
 are as true, as where every sentence is " cut to model," 
 and every attitude ordered by the posture-master. The 
 evening walks of lovers are as enchanting there as 
 the evening medleys in the fashionable world: eyes 
 are as bright, when the star of eve or the moon of 
 night is their only rival, as when they have to contend 
 with the glitter of jewels, and the glare of angular 
 crystal and coloured glass. Neither is the music less 
 fascinating, or less in melody with all around, that it 
 comes without purchase from the feathered tribes, than 
 if it warbled in all the wild meanders of German har- 
 mony. All are well in their own places ; and the nuptial 
 songs of the birds are just as much in accordance with 
 the plans of those rustic youths and maidens, who have 
 chiefly to consider how they shall best construct their 
 nests and rear their broods, as the exhibitions of splen- 
 dour are to those of whom splendour is the idol and 
 the joy. 
 
 There is something about a brook which leads one 
 more insensibly, but more irresistibly, to the con- 
 templation of rustic life, than any thing else in rustic 
 scenery. It is not germain to wildness and desolation, 
 and it is no kin to greatness. There is life and pro- 
 ductiveness about it ; but it is life which is simple and 
 unexpanded a shelter and repose from the sweep of 
 the elements and of time. Every thing in the place 
 itself, and in all the accompaniments of the place, pro- 
 claims that here is a fulness of life, and of life that 
 knows no enemy, unless when man steps in to play the 
 
THE MOLE CRICKET. 345 
 
 fowler. But when we come to examine it, we find that 
 it is only the exuberance of production ; for nature is 
 every where true to her economy, and the consumption 
 of life is the means of life as much on the margin of 
 a peaceful brook as in the haunts of the most formidable 
 destroyers. Still all is redolent of life, and it is of 
 little consequence whether you turn your attention to 
 the air, the earth, or the sky. Of the earth, one of 
 the most singular inhabitants that you meet with in such 
 places is 
 
 THE MOLE CRICKET. 
 
 THE MOLE CRICKET (gryllus gryllotalpd) is one of 
 the most singular insects which Britain produces. We 
 have one upon our table at this moment, (Nov. 2,) 
 that was brought us in the morning enclosed in a mass 
 of moist sandy clay, which, when we divided it, was 
 
346 THE MOLE CRICKET. 
 
 found to be perforated in all directions, by the subter- 
 raneous passages of the insect. These passages inter- 
 sected each other at short distances, where they formed 
 chambers, in some of which a quantity of white silky 
 matter remained, but we could find no appearance of 
 eggs ; at certain places the passages were shut by little 
 heaps of loose clay, which the cricket appeared to be 
 able to move almost as fast as we could open a door ; 
 though these would no doubt have formed an effectual 
 barrier against any insect not accustomed to burrowing. 
 
 The insect was found at the depth of about a foot, 
 not in the chamber but in one of the passages. There 
 were some roots of aquatic plants passing through the 
 lump of clay, but there was no sign of a store of any 
 kind of provision, and the insect appeared in rather a 
 dormant state. It was not, however, in a state of hy- 
 bernation, or any thing approaching to it, for it moved 
 immediately on being placed upon a plate ; and when 
 an inverted jar was placed over it, it ran rapidly round 
 the inside, alternately in the direction of the head and 
 the tail ; and so hard are the long claws upon its fore 
 legs, that the sound of them tapping the receiver, and 
 also the China plate, was distinctly audible. 
 
 Upon placing a lump of the clay in which it was 
 found under the receiver, the cricket ceased to make 
 any further attempt at escape by the sides of the 
 receiver, but instantly began burrowing in the clay 
 with so much vigour, that it had a portion, equal to 
 the half of its body, in motion in an instant ; and in 
 a few minutes, a passage, in which the cricket could 
 run easily, was made all round where the clay touched 
 the receiver. When disturbed by agitating its abode, 
 
THE MOLE CRICKET. 347 
 
 its motion was backwards with considerable rapidity, 
 and it kept tumbling down the clay after it, with its 
 burrowing paws as it proceeded. The motion of those 
 paws is rapid; and the articulation to the thorax seems 
 to be by a sort of universal joint, as it can instantly 
 make a semicircle with them in any direction out- 
 wards. The claws are semi-transparent, very sharp 
 at the points, and moderately hooked, and they have 
 a lateral motion as well as one of opening and shutting. 
 In those parts of the clay that were friable, from con- 
 taining much sand, the claws were spread out wide, 
 and as much was pulled down at one effort as covered the 
 head of the insect ; but when it came to a part of 
 more consistency, the claws were narrowed, so that 
 the mass attempted to be moved was still proportioned 
 to its strength. The eyes of the mole cricket, which 
 are large and prominent, seem very sensible to the 
 action of light; for when brought near an argand 
 lamp, though the eye gleamed like a little gem, the 
 insect retreated with great rapidijty backwards, and 
 hid itself on the shady side of the mass of clay ; but 
 when turned with the other extremity to the light, it 
 did not retreat by the head, but rather in the other 
 direction, until its eyes encountered the light ; and 
 even then it seemed to prefer the backward motion. 
 It is by no means improbable, that this backward 
 retreat may be intended for showing front to insect 
 foes, as well as getting more rapidly out of the way ; 
 but it offered no hostility to any thing with which we 
 could irritate it. The specimen alluded to was about 
 half-grown, and the elytra or wings were not fully 
 developed. 
 
348 THE MOLE CRICKET. 
 
 The precise age to which mole crickets live, is not 
 accurately known ; but it is probably much longer 
 than a year. The earth is their constant abode in the 
 winter. It is understood to dig downwards, so as to 
 elude the penetration of the frost ; and we have traced 
 in its burrows in loose soil, something like a drainage. 
 As the heat of the spring augments, it comes nearer 
 to the surface ; and is understood to come out and 
 fly abroad in the night, in order to pair ; but the fact 
 has not been well ascertained. 
 
 The female prepares a nest for her progeny in clay. 
 It is excavated near the surface ; and though the 
 passages generally contain a quantity of loose mud, 
 the inside of the depository for the eggs is smooth 
 and beaten, so that the young may not suffer in their 
 helpless state. The eggs are hatched by the heat of 
 the sun, but the mother remains near, to defend them 
 from insects : but we have heard, though we have had 
 no opportunity of verifying the fact, that they and 
 she often fall a sacrifice to her half namesake the 
 mole ; which is now ascertained to be, what its struc- 
 ture always led one to suspect, one of the most vora- 
 cious little animals in nature. 
 
 The mole crickets do not pass through what can 
 strictly be called a larva state ; and they have no 
 abstinent, or chrysalid state at all. Their first form 
 resembles the last, with the exception of the wings 
 and the thorax, which are not developed till the insect 
 has attained a considerable size. The wings are what 
 Linnaeus calls hemiplerous, or half-winged ; the upper 
 part consisting of two short, parchment-like cases, 
 under which the membranous wings, which are very 
 
THE MOLE CRICKET. 349 
 
 delicate, long and pointed, are folded when the insect 
 digs its way in the earth. 
 
 As soon as the young ones leave the eggs, they 
 begin to burrow along below the surface of the ground, 
 and when they are numerous, not only disfigure it 
 much, but are injurious to hosts of young plants. 
 These habits are not perfectly known, but it is not 
 impossible they may be of some service in return, by 
 destroying something that is as injurious as themselves. 
 It is possible that some may get their wings the first 
 year, which they do after successive scalings of the 
 skin ; but there are at least some which do not have 
 the means of flight till they come abroad upon their 
 amorous voyage in the spring, upon which occasions 
 the bats are understood to lay them under heavy con- 
 tributions. Though a singular insect, both in appear- 
 ance and in habit, the mole cricket is by no means 
 unhandsome. The shape is rounded off to both extre- 
 mities, so that it can easily make its way. The antenna 
 and palpi are remarkable for their sensibility and 
 power of being bended ; the down upon the body is 
 of extraordinary gloss and closeness, though not of 
 gaudy colour ; and with the exception of the harm 
 that it does by its burrowing, it appears to be an in- 
 offensive insect. 
 
 All insects which are met with about a brook, are 
 not, however, of that disposition. One of the most 
 remarkable of these, both for the rapidity of its mo- 
 tions, and the havoc that it occasions, is 
 
350 
 
 THE GREAT WATER-BEETLE. 
 
 THIS insect (dytiscus margmalis) is a more constant 
 inhabitant of the water than the mole cricket is of the 
 earth, remaining there in all the stages of its existence, 
 even after it has become winged, and only, as is sup- 
 posed, using that apparatus for enabling it to range from 
 pool to pool, in quest of more abundant prey. Its 
 flights are generally in the twilight or during the night. 
 Whether it may or may not capture land insects during 
 its flight, has not been ascertained, but it bites lustily 
 when an attempt is made to keep it prisoner in the 
 hand. From the rapidity with which it dashes from 
 the surface of the water to the bottom, it has got the 
 name of the " plunger." It is a large beetle, flattish 
 and broad for its length, and of a very compact form. 
 The head is rather small, compared with the body, 
 but the mandibles are strong, hard, and have a 
 powerful articulation; the eyes are placed so promi- 
 nently in the head, that the insect can readily see in all 
 directions; and its motions in the water along the 
 bottom, and even into the mud, are almost all as rapid 
 and vigorous as its plunging. 
 
THE WATER-BEETLE. 351 
 
 Properly speaking, it is an inhabitant of stagnant 
 waters, rather than of brooks ; but when a brook forms 
 a stagnant nook, where moss and mud are deposited, 
 that is a favourite spot for it, as larvae and insects are 
 always brought down by the current. It watches for 
 these with the greatest attention, and we have seen it 
 catching the larvae cases of the phrygancea, and shaking 
 them till it could get hold of the inmate, and plunging 
 into the mud after those of the ephemera. It is a very 
 indiscriminate devourer, and will attack not only its 
 insect neighbours, but the very young tadpoles of frogs, 
 and fry of fishes ; nor is it confined to animal food, for 
 we have seen it catch small crumbs of bread before they 
 reached the bottom, with so much apparent relish, that 
 there was little doubt that it ate them. 
 
 The young plunger has the elytra or horny covers 
 of its wings nearly transparent ; but as it gets to ma- 
 turity, they become of a deep olive green, inclining to 
 black. They have not the brilliant gloss of the elytra 
 of some insects, but they are very hard and strong, 
 and supplied with a kind of oil or varnish, by means of 
 which the water is repelled, and the insect kept con- 
 stantly dry. This beetle may easily be known from 
 the colour, and also from the margin of dull reddish 
 orange with which the body is surrounded, and which 
 has given it its specific name of marginalis. 
 
 As is indeed the case with most insects, especially 
 those that inhabit the water, the economy of the plunger 
 is but imperfectly known. It has been stated that the 
 female encloses her eggs in a cocoon of coarse silk. 
 But we have never been able to find any teats or nip- 
 ples, similar to those found upon ordinary spinning 
 2 H 2 
 
352 THE WATER-BEETLE. 
 
 insects, whether in the perfect or the larva state, 
 and such a practice would rather be an anomaly in the 
 case of insects that deposit their eggs, or have their 
 early stages of life in the water. The threads are 
 always discharged from the body of the insect in the 
 state of a viscid fluid, which acquires consistency the 
 moment that it comes in contact with the air ; and, 
 therefore, until it is actually seen, we are not prepared 
 to admit that a similar operation could go on in the 
 water. The plunger is, indeed, so far analogous to 
 the coleoptera, that inhabit the land, that it cannot 
 remain under water without coming up to breathe ; but 
 even that would not justify for it the imputation of a 
 power which was to be exercised in the water, and 
 which yet was not in accordance with the general laws 
 of the inhabitants of that fluid. 
 
 Upon most subjects, the only danger of gross error 
 lies in too hasty a generalization ; but in the study of 
 natural history, and in no part of it more than the 
 adaptation of creatures to the element in which they 
 live or find their food, there is an opposite danger 
 generalizing too little. This is too much the case in 
 the history of insects. The particular creature, or the 
 particular habitis, taken apart, and one insulated fact 
 is put in succession to another insulated fact, not only 
 without any direct observation of the fact of invariable 
 sequence, but against that which appears to be a ge- 
 neral law. In the inhabitants of the air, including 
 those that cannot fly, as well as those that can (for the 
 air is the medium in which they all live), we find a 
 certain uniform organization, varied much in form, no 
 doubt, but uniform in principle. So very uniform, that 
 
RESPIRATION. 353 
 
 not one of those creatures that have it, can remain in 
 water unless they are suffered to come to the surface 
 and breathe. This holds in the case of the plunger 
 now under notice, as well as in all the insects and 
 larvae which are not, through the whole succession of 
 their changes, to be confined to the water ; and any 
 one who waits by the side of a stagnant pool, during 
 those warm months when all is activity and life, may 
 notice the incessant ascent of larvae and full-formed 
 insects to the surface, for the purpose of that aeration 
 which is essential to life. On the other hand, the 
 animals, be they large or small, which are furnished 
 with apparatus that can separate oxygen at once from 
 water, cannot live in the air, but must get to the water 
 in order to breathe ; and it is quite as correct to say 
 that a water animal is drowned in the air, as that a 
 land animal is drowned in the water. 
 
 And whatever specific difference there may be in 
 their structure, there is a generic form of organs for 
 each class. The land animal, that which breathes 
 " free air," or air without the admixture of water, 
 whether it inhale the air by nostrils or by pores in 
 the skin, always receives it into cells, and after a 
 little time discharges it again; while those that breathe 
 air in conjunction with water, and have a double sepa- 
 ration to make, first the air from the water, and then 
 the oxygen of the air from the nitrogen, receive the 
 water in a passing current ; and perform the double 
 chemical operation by the delicate fringes of gills of 
 some description or other ; over the surface of which, 
 the minute vessels of the circulating system are rare- 
 fied. 
 
 2 H 3 
 
354 RESPIRATION. 
 
 Thus these two distinct sets of processes, by which 
 this important and essential function of animal life is 
 performed, have a distinct set of organs for each, 
 adapted admirably for that, but not for the other. 
 There is no instance of an organization that can 
 perform both operations, though the frequency with 
 which the performance is necessary varies very much, 
 according to the habits of the animal, and the place 
 and manner in which it finds its food. It has been 
 said that there is a change in some cases, from the one 
 of these organizations to the other, in those animals 
 which spend their infant states in the water, and their 
 mature ones alternately in the water and the air, or 
 wholly in the latter ; that the gills, with which they are 
 furnished in the first state, change to lungs when they 
 assume the last. The fact has not been verified by 
 the actual observation of one of those animals at every 
 instant, from the time of its being deposited in the 
 water as an egg, to that of putting on the form and 
 habits in which pulmonary breathing is unequivocal, 
 and, therefore, the better evidence is that of the uni- 
 formity of the laws of nature ; more especially, as all 
 the creatures alluded to are furnished with apparatus 
 for enabling them to ascend to the surface, and many 
 of these have no other apparent use, The germ in 
 nature, be it that of plant or of animal, contains the 
 whole elements of the future being, and there is no 
 well-established instance of any such change, as that 
 from breathing air to breathing water, or the reverse. 
 
 That insects in their chrysalid state may remain 
 under the water, though both the larva and the perfect 
 insect should have to come to the surface at long or at 
 
RESPIRATION. 355 
 
 short intervals, is nothing to the purpose. The neces- 
 sity that animals have for breathing, depends upon the 
 quantity of food that they take, or, which is the same 
 thing, upon the rapidity with which the matter of their 
 bodies is changed. In those animals which pass the 
 cold months in a state of torpidity, breathing and 
 feeding are nearly equally suspended, and as the animal 
 intrudes toward its state of quiescence, the breathing 
 becomes interrupted. But the greater part of chry- 
 salids are in a dormant state, and therefore they may 
 remain under the water without breathing, in the same 
 manner that a dormant marmot remains under the 
 earth. 
 
 But though the process of breathing differs so much 
 with the two fluids breathed, that it seems contrary to 
 the usual law of nature, that the one should be changed 
 to the other, yet the result and purpose of the ope- 
 ration are the same in both cases. The result is the 
 separation of a certain quantity of oxygen. It was 
 long supposed that this oxygen was an aliment, and 
 that it was taken into the blood, and thence into the 
 structure of the animal ; but that did not agree with 
 the fact that the blood is always exhibited to the organs 
 of respiration after it has gone its circuit for the 
 nourishment and repair of the system ; and that a 
 substance in nature should be made fit for its purpose 
 only after that had been accomplished, really seems 
 contrary to the wisdom and design that pervade the 
 works of nature in operations ten-fold more complicated 
 than this, so that one cannot help being a little surprised 
 that it should ever have been entertained. It must have 
 arisen from that disposition to look at, and draw con- 
 
356 RESPIRATION. 
 
 elusions from, the particular fact, instead of the general 
 induction, which existing men sometimes call philo- 
 sophy in themselves and their contemporaries, but quite 
 another thing in those men that lived two hundred years 
 ago ; and it shows how careful even the most accurate 
 observers and the most sagacious reasoners should be, 
 that the statute with which they are going about to 
 augment the code of nature, does not run counter to 
 another, which is more general. Had they put the 
 question to the merest clown, whether the agents of 
 nature should be made fit to do their work before 
 doing it, or after, he would have had no difficulty in 
 pointing out the absurdity involved in the hypothesis 
 of imparting the oxygen to the blood of animals in any 
 other way than as an instrument for taking up some 
 matter which the blood had received in its circulation, 
 and which had become unfit for the purposes of life. 
 
 The precise time that the oxygen may remain in 
 contact with the blood, and whether the whole, or only 
 part, and if any, what part of each inspiration is 
 given out again at the following expiration, is not 
 within the range of accurate experiment ; but we are 
 certain that the volume of expired air is very much the 
 same with that inspired, and that it comes out of the 
 lungs not deprived of the oxygen, but with oxygen, 
 (either its own or that of former inspirations,) com- 
 bined with a new substance, which is known in a sepa- 
 rate state only as a solid. That substance is carbon or 
 charcoal, which, when combined with oxygen, forms 
 carbonic acid ; the combination in which the oxygen 
 of air, that has been taken into and decomposed by the 
 respiratory organs of animals, is discharged from those 
 
RESPIRATION. 357 
 
 organs. The discharge, too, appears to be in proportion 
 to the air that is respired ; the same whether the solution 
 be performed through the operation of lungs or of gills, 
 and whether these belong to an elephant, a whale, a 
 water insect, or a mite. 
 
 Whatever may be the mysterious principle, or fact, 
 or whatever we may name it, that we call life, and which, 
 like the mind of man or the Maker of the universe, 
 can be seen and known only in that which it does, there 
 is in the functions of life, a wonderful resemblance to 
 the operation of fire as combustion, they are both a 
 consuming, and carbonic acid, charcoal united with 
 oxygen, is produced ; and the production of that sub- 
 stance is in both cases in proportion to the intensity of 
 the operation. In the dormant animal there is little 
 consumption of oxygen and production of acid, just as 
 there is in the smouldering fire ; and violent muscular 
 exertion is accompanied by a correspondingly increased 
 consumption of oxygen and production of acid. Before 
 results are so uniformly the same, we are warranted in 
 concluding, that there must be some uniformity in the 
 process ; but in what that consists, the present state of 
 information does not enable us to say. 
 
 In these remarks we have rather diverged from the 
 simple assertion, the truth of which we were led to 
 question ; but still they are proofs of the uniformity of 
 the laws upon which nature acts, and should lead us 
 not to receive as truth any departure from that uni- 
 formity, of which the fact and the reason have not 
 been carefully observed. That should teach us, that 
 when we cannot find a reason for the fact, which yet 
 seems a violation of the observed laws of nature, we 
 
 
358 THE WATER-BEETLE. 
 
 must be mistaken ; and that, if we attempt to reason 
 from foundations of that kind, we are umpires, and not 
 philosophers. 
 
 The usual way in which water insects, and indeed 
 aquatic animals of all kinds, take, to fasten together 
 protection for themselves or their progeny, is not the 
 spinning of threads, but cementation by some fluid; 
 which, though it holds chips, straws, grains of sand, 
 or other solid substances together, and resists the motion 
 of the water, when used in small quantities as a mortar, 
 does not seem capable of resisting that action when in 
 the state of a slender filament, however well such a 
 filament may resist the action of the air ; and unless 
 we actually see an aquatic animal deviating from that 
 general habit, and actually spinning a cocoon, we have 
 a right to contend that such is never the case. 
 
 The hatching of the eggs of the plunger has not, as 
 we have said, been observed through every stage of the 
 process. When, however, the larvse make their appear- 
 ance, they are not to be mistaken, either in their form 
 or their habits. They are well adapted both for running 
 and for swimming. The body is about double the 
 length of that of the full-grown beetle, formed into 
 joints or rings, the last of which tapers to a point, where 
 the body of the animal is formed round, not unlike the 
 tail of an eel ; there are six legs, which have crooked 
 claws at the extremities, and are beset with spiny fringes, 
 so that they answer the purpose either of feet or of fins. 
 The most remarkable and formidable part about it, 
 however, is the head, which is large, flat, and strong, 
 and furnished with a very powerful pair of forceps, each 
 in shape not unlike the tooth of an elephant, but more 
 
THE WATER-BEETLE. 359 
 
 hooked. These it can close with great force, and if 
 they meet with no resisting substance too hard for them 
 to penetrate, they can cross each other. It takes a very 
 firm hold with them ; for when a pond was in progress 
 of being cleaned, we have seen those larvae drawn out, 
 hanging by the pincers to an iron shovel. 
 
 It is possible that the larvae of the plunger are more 
 voracious than the full-grown beetle ; for they eat 
 every thing that they are able to seize ; and no sooner 
 have they sucked the juices of one victim than they 
 assail another. A portion of stagnant water, in which 
 these and other insects and larvae are contained, when 
 exhibited by a good solar microscope, is a singular 
 spectacle, and with only the difference of size, records 
 one of the ravages of a lion in a flock, or that of a shark 
 or grampus in the ocean. Indeed it is much more a 
 scene of slaughter; for the quadruped and the fish, 
 after they have gorged themselves full, must pause 
 and allow some time for digestion and the assimilation 
 of the solid matter of the prey with that of their own 
 bodies ; and in the case of the lion, at least, that is a 
 work of labour and lassitude. But the larva drains 
 only the juices which appear to pass to its own sub- 
 stance without any after process of assimilation ; so that 
 one victim only whets its appetite for a fresh one. 
 The microscope, of course, magnifies the velocity in 
 the same ratio as the size, and thus while an apparent 
 length of three or four feet, and a correspondence of 
 breadth is given, the assailant shoots from side to 
 side of the field of view in the microscope, with the 
 rapidity of lightning ; and when he seizes and shakes 
 his victims, the size, the distance, and especially the 
 
360 SOLAR MICROSCOPE. 
 
 velocity of the motions, are all more terrible than the 
 shaking by a lion; and forgetting the magic power of 
 the optical instrument, one shrinks back, and listens to 
 hear the yell of victory, and the shriek of death. All 
 is quiet, however, and one soon recollects that this fell 
 destroyer is a little insect, not two inches long. 
 
 Those who have not otherwise access to a solar mi- 
 croscope, and happen to be in London, may see this 
 contest very well exhibited by the powerful solar micro- 
 scope shown at Carpenter's Microcosm in Regent-street ; 
 where, on a fine sunny day, the sight of this and many 
 much smaller creatures, magnified to giants, and conse- 
 quently moving with apparently incredible swiftness, 
 the wonders of the minute of nature, may be contem- 
 plated with considerable advantage ; and though these 
 exhibitions be but mere sights, they are sights which 
 make one wish to see a little more, which is no incon- 
 siderable matter *in the study of nature. That study 
 wants only a beginning, and the size or habit of the 
 production with which we begin, is a matter of no dif- 
 ference, so that it excites the desire that is to urge us 
 on. It must be admitted, however, that a study which 
 requires microscopes, or any other apparatus, is not 
 the one best adapted for the great body of the people ; 
 and, fortunately, it is not the one most useful. 
 
 The insects which are found on the margin of a brook, 
 or living in its water, or skimming along its surface, 
 are very numerous, and they vary much with the situ- 
 ation, of the brook and its elevation above the level of 
 the sea. It is this plenitude of insect life that makes 
 the water of brooks impure and disagreeable; and 
 which, for culinary purposes and for drinking, causes 
 
IMPURE WATER. 361 
 
 it to be so inferior to the water of springs. When 
 allowed to stand in reservoirs, that water may let fall 
 the earthy substances that it holds mechanically sus- 
 pended ; but nothing, except filtration through a bed 
 of sand or some other substance, that can completely 
 keep back the feculent eggs or larvae that can float in 
 it, will preserve it from putrefaction if it afterwards 
 be allowed to stand for any length of time. It is the 
 same whether these animal impregnations live or die, 
 If they live they are unseemly, they prey upon each 
 other ; and whether they do or not, they leave their 
 exumce behind, when they change into the fly or imago 
 state, and sport their new wings in the air; these 
 putrefy, a decomposition takes place, some of the 
 water is decomposed, mixes with sulphur, and the 
 odour is offensive. Boiling, if the water be allowed 
 to settle afterwards, gets the better of those impurities; 
 but they are got rid of at an expense ; the water is 
 deprived of its air of that very carbonic acid with 
 which the respiration of the little things impregnated 
 it ; both its sparkle and its sharpness are gone, and 
 it is flat and insipid a vehicle merely, and not a 
 stimulant. 
 
 Situations which abound so much with insect life 
 both on the wing and in the water, as brooks and their 
 borders, of course, supply food for numbers of insecti- 
 vorous birds. Of these, a portion are adapted for 
 wading, and preying upon their insect food in the 
 shallow water, while others course it on the wing; 
 and in both descriptions, but more especially in the 
 latter, there are some of the most extraordinary con- 
 trivances in nature. Of the waders in brooks, one of 
 
362 THE RAIL. 
 
 the most peculiar to such situations, if not the most 
 interesting in itself, is 
 
 THE RAIL. 
 
 THE RAIL, or king of the quails, or velvet runner, 
 (rallus aquaticus,) is very frequently met with running 
 along with great velocity under the hanks, or in the half- 
 dry channel of brooks, and often engages village boys and 
 village curs in successless chase, which is the more annoy- 
 ing that the bird, though never taken, seems always within 
 reach. This bird has considerable resemblance to the 
 land-rail, or crake, (rallus crex,) and has sometimes 
 been confounded with it, or believed to be a sort of 
 transmutation of it. In their habits, however, they 
 are altogether different. The land-rail is a summer 
 visitant ; at which season the peculiar note of the male 
 fills the corn-fields with music, though the musician be 
 very seldom seen. When its brood is reared, it retires 
 altogether from the colder districts of the British isles, 
 though a few are met with during the winter, in the 
 south of Ireland, and also occasionally in England. It 
 never frequents the water, but prefers dry, though 
 low and warm, situations. Its gizzard is strong and 
 muscular, as is the case with all birds that feed upon 
 entire seeds, and swallow little pebbles for assisting 
 them in bruising the husks. 
 
 The food of the water-rail is understood to.be insects, 
 larvae, and the fibrous roots of aquatic plants. It is a 
 lively and beautiful bird. The plumage on its back is 
 of a rich black, with an olive brown border to each 
 feather ; and it is on account of the gloss and beauty 
 
THE RAIL. 363 
 
 of those feathers that it gets the name velvet, while 
 runner is characteristic of its motion ; as, though it can 
 fly tolerably well, it seldom has recourse to that ope- 
 ration. In some respects it is the most singular runner 
 among British birds. It runs through bushes that seem 
 perfectly closed with grass ; it runs up the stumps of 
 old trees ; it runs along the leaves of water-lilies and 
 other aquatic plants ; it runs from plant to plant on the 
 surface of the water ; and sometimes it dives and runs 
 along the bottom. The front plumage of this bird, and 
 also of the land -rail, is ingeniously contrived for en- 
 abling a passage to be made through reeds and bushes 
 without ruffling the feathers. The shafts of the feathers 
 in front are without webs at the points, and each ends 
 in a little knob or weight, by which the feather is kept 
 down. 
 
 The rail measures about ten inches in length, and 
 sixteen in the expansion of the wings, and it weighs 
 about a quarter of a pound. The nest is carefully 
 concealed among the tallest aquatic plants, or in beds 
 of willows ; and it is said to take particular care that 
 there shall be openings as paths past its nest, in all 
 directions, but none leading straight to it. The eggs 
 vary from six to ten, are rather larger than those of the 
 blackbird, generally of a pure white at first, but be- 
 coming covered with spots, or otherwise changing their 
 colour, in the course of the incubation. 
 
 The rail is wonderfully safe from the attacks both of 
 quadrupeds and birds ; and if it have sufficient cover, it 
 generally exhausts them by its doublings and evolutions, 
 without requiring to take to the wing. When reduced 
 to that necessity its motion is slow, and its flight re- 
 
364 THE SWIFT. 
 
 markably short ; and it flies with its feet hanging down, 
 in readiness to run the moment that they touch the 
 ground. All its practices, indeed, point out that its 
 wings serve the purpose of balancers in the uneven 
 paths along which it runs, rather than as organs of pro- 
 longed motion. Thus it is remarkably well adapted 
 for hunting for its food in the rough channels of brooks, 
 though not for seizing of any thing which is at a con- 
 siderable elevation above the surface. But there are 
 other birds equally well adapted for that purpose ; and 
 perhaps the one of these that evinces the most won- 
 derful power of wings in a little creature, is 
 
 THE SWIFT. 
 
 THE SWIFT, (cypselus murarius,) perhaps, passes 
 over more space than any other living creature, and 
 evinces powers, both of eye and of wing, which are 
 probably greater than those of the eagle. The flights 
 of the eagle are powerful, but they are only occasional, 
 and strong as she is, she seems exhausted ; but the little 
 swift continues on the wing for sixteen hours every 
 day, and moving with velocity, and with evolutions 
 that are equally rapid and graceful. The vision of the 
 swift is also wonderful ; for it has been ascertained, that 
 it can easily discern, at more than a hundred yards 
 distance, an object not half an inch in diameter. Not- 
 withstanding the great powers of the swift in the air, 
 its incessant flight during the summer, and its days' 
 journey to tropical climates in autumn, and back from 
 them in spring it can hardly walk, but crawls along 
 the ground. In passing through holes and crevices it 
 
THE SWIFT. 865 
 
 is, however, remarkably adroit; its claws are well 
 adapted for holding, and it can move edge-ways, or, in 
 fact, almost in any direction. The nest is constructed 
 much in the same manner as that of the common swal- 
 low, but the swift prefers more elevated and retired 
 situations, such as lofty precipices, steeples and towers, 
 and beneath the arches of bridges. The materials of it 
 are very diversified. Grass, moss, bits of threads, 
 feathers, (which they sometimes pull very dexterously 
 from other birds,) in short, any light substance, animal 
 or vegetable, that can be soaked, and cemented to the 
 mass of the nest, by that viscid substance secreted in 
 the throat and bill of the bird. They defend their nests 
 with great bravery, return instinctively to the same 
 ones for successive summers ; and if the swallow, which 
 generally comes a little earlier, should venture to take 
 possession, they drive her off the instant that they 
 come. They even take possession of the nests of 
 swallows, though the building by these birds is not ac- 
 counted close and fine enough for their purposes, until 
 the interior has received a coating of their own cement. 
 The female swift sits very patiently upon her eggs, 
 and never leaves them during the day, as then they 
 would be exposed to depredators ; but dashes forth at 
 dusk, hunts for her supper with great rapidity; and 
 then returns to her charge. The young swifts remain 
 in the nest for five or six weeks, during which time 
 both parents attend to them with the most constant 
 affection, and feed them regularly five or six times a 
 day. In the course of this, the parent-birds are greatly 
 exhausted, and fall off very much both in their flesh 
 and their plumage. When they first arrive they are 
 2 i3 
 
366 THE DEATH'S-HEAD MOTH. 
 
 of a glossy black, with only a white spot under the 
 throat; but before the season is over they are of a 
 dirty brown. 
 
 The swifts do not appear able to endure the greatest 
 intensity of the summer heat ; for, on very warm days, 
 their huntings are confined to the mornings and even- 
 ings ; when, in places that abound with insects, they may 
 be seen darting about in all directions. Like swallows, 
 they drink on the wing, sipping the surface of pools 
 and brooks, and also dew-drops from the leaves of 
 plants. They have different hunting times, and lay all 
 descriptions of insects under contribution. In the 
 morning their chief prey consists of day-flies ; in the 
 evening they pursue the moths; and during those hot 
 gleams at mid-day, when the dragon-flies are beating 
 the sedges along a brook for moths, the swifts may be 
 seen coursing and capturing the spoilers with equal assi- 
 duity. By a brook, those bright hours are particularly 
 interesting, and one is at a loss to determine whether 
 most to admire the ingenuity displayed in the produc- 
 tion of life, or that displayed in its extinction. 
 
 If the course of a brook is through rich, cultivated 
 lands, in a warm situation, a singular insect is some- 
 times met with near its banks. That insect is 
 
 THE DEATH'S-HEAD MOTH. 
 
 MOTHS, though often very beautiful, always indolent, 
 and, as compared with some other insects, harmless to 
 man, have, like bats and owls, got some prejudices 
 raised against them on account of the time at which 
 they are most upon the wing. Their wings are closely 
 
THE DEATH'S-HEAD MOTH. 367 
 
 feathered ; their bodies heavy and unwieldly ; and their 
 motions in consequence slow; so that they offer a 
 prey to hirds which is easily seen from its size, and 
 which has difficulty in escaping. Were they, therefore, to 
 appear during the day, they would be almost sure 
 to fall a sacrifice : the larger to birds, and the smaller 
 to dragon flies and other predatory insects. The night, 
 therefore, is their favourite time for being abroad; 
 and thus they have come in for a share in those 
 imaginary terrors which ignorance always has, and 
 most likely always will, associate with darkness ; and 
 it is one of the evils of those prejudices, that, as there 
 is no reason for their existence, they cannot be re- 
 moved by reasoning. 
 
 The DEATH'S-HEAD MOTH (sphinx atropos, Linnaeus) 
 comes in for its full share of this prejudice; and 
 wherever it is found, except by an insect- fancier, who 
 knows or cares nothing about its habits, but merely 
 
368 THE DEATH'S-HEAD MOTH. 
 
 transfixes it with a pin, and sells or shows the carcass, 
 it is regarded as an insect of evil omen. 
 
 In this country it is not often found, at least, it 
 is one of the rarest of the moths, and found only in 
 warm places. It also selects particular flowers on 
 which to alight; such as the potatoe, the wild sola- 
 nums, and the jasmine. Its size, its solitary habits, 
 and, above all, its peculiar markings, have procured 
 it the vulga-r name. But yet it is an elegant insect : its 
 feathers are peculiarly soft and glossy ; and its colours 
 are arranged with very fine effect. Like the rest of 
 the moth family, it has four lepidopterous scaly, or 
 rather, feathery wings. Of these, the upper pair are 
 of a rich dark gray, marked with orange and white ; 
 and the under ones are of a rich orange, with irregular 
 black bands ; the upper part of the abdomen is orange 
 barred with black; and there is upon that of the 
 thorax a large black spot with white markings, which 
 a moderate degree of imagination might regard as a 
 sort of resemblance of a death's-head and cross-bones ; 
 which last representation is the cause of the greater 
 part of the apprehension and dread with which the 
 appearance of this harmless and handsome insect is 
 regarded. 
 
 There are concurrent causes for the superstition: 
 the moth comes very seldom, being comparatively 
 scarce in all countries ; and when it does come, it 
 comes as " a warning voice ; " and as it carries the 
 markings of the hatchment and the hearse upon its 
 back, that voice can warn of nothing else than a pre- 
 paration for the tomb. 
 
 Now, if a warning of that sort had the proper effect, 
 
THE DEATH'S-HEAD MOTH. 369 
 
 that is, if it made people do better in this world, 
 it would matter but little who were the messenger; 
 whether moth, or monitor of a more rational kind : 
 but the mischief is, that those superstitious admoni- 
 tions, whether they proceed from moth or man, do 
 harm instead of good, cause the alarm, but not the 
 amendment, and therefore they ought, upon all oc- 
 casions, to be exposed. From this insect they are 
 not prevalent in this country ; for, to the knowledge 
 of naturalists at least, the death's-head moth is com- 
 paratively recent, as well as rare. 
 
 On the continent, it has been longer and better 
 known ; and there are instances in which its appear- 
 ance has excited great alarm. Reaumur mentions 
 an instance where, at the entrance of one, by the 
 window of a convent on a fine summer's evening, 
 the whole of the sisterhood were thrown into an alarm 
 of instant mortality; but whether the warning was 
 attended with the requisite preparation for the event- 
 whether they called upon the fathers to double their 
 diligence in the hour of peril has not been recorded ; 
 and, therefore, cannot now be known. Consequently, 
 we are left to consider the sphinx atropos simply 
 as an insect, in which character it is at least, as an 
 object of curiosity, entitled to rank at the head of 
 British moths. 
 
 The unfrequency of the appearance of this moth 
 is a proof of its delicacy, rather than of any deadly 
 power. It seems, indeed, to be much more difficult 
 to rear than any of the other kinds that we have ; as 
 the winged insect is often unknown, in places where 
 the larvae are met with. That mature insects must 
 
370 THE DEATH'S-HEAD MOTH. 
 
 have been in such places is clear, otherwise there 
 could not be larvae, but the habits of the creature are 
 so retiring that it sculks under the leaves of its 
 favourite plants, and thus may exist in many places 
 where it has not been seen. 
 
 When the larvae is met with, it occasions nearly as 
 much alarm as the moth, though the alarm be of a 
 different kind. The peasantry, and even a great 
 number of persons who have had considerable ad- 
 vantages of education, are ignorant of the changes 
 that take place in insect life; and therefore, every 
 caterpillar of an unusual size or shape portends some- 
 thing. We have more than once known one of the 
 death's-head larvae excite the dread of a plague of 
 locusts, of which ignorance and fear set it down as the 
 pledge and harbinger. True, it is far from being like 
 a locust ; but they who felt the alarm knew just as 
 little of a locust as they did of the change of the cater- 
 pillar to a moth ; and thus the unusual shape and size 
 of the young death's-head made it every way a locust 
 to them. 
 
 The caterpillar is, indeed, an unusual one ; and both 
 in size and beauty has few equals in the country. The 
 length is between four and five inches ; the eyes and 
 antennae are conspicuous, and the colours are bright. 
 The prevailing colour is a brilliant yellow, with a row 
 of stripes on each side, of azure and violet. These 
 are transverse ; the ends of them toward the back are 
 pointed, and there are black dots, which are considered 
 by the country people as eyes. 
 
 The sound which this moth utters, must, like the 
 chirping of some other insects, and the notes of birds, 
 
NOISE OF INSECTS. 371 
 
 be considered as a kind of love-song, when it is in a 
 state of nature and free ; but it emits a cry of the same 
 kind when captured, upon occasions when fear must be 
 the prevailing passion. 
 
 The noise which this, or indeed any other insect, 
 emits, is not a cry or voice of any kind, as those terms 
 are understood among mankind, that is, produced by 
 the action of certain organs upon the breath, emitted by 
 the animal in respiration, for insects have no such organi- 
 zation. The sounds which they produce arise from the 
 action of some part upon the external air, and are effected 
 generally by the rapid vibration of such part of their 
 bodies or their wings, or the rubbing or striking of 
 one part against another. The sound of the common 
 death-watch, which has been so often and so foolishly 
 considered as counting up the moments of human life, 
 is practised by the insect drumming upon wood with 
 its hard and stiff mandibles, in order that its mate may 
 answer to its call. Sometimes the sounds are produced 
 by grating against each other the horny edges of the 
 elytra or wing-covers ; in a few instances the insect is 
 provided with a natural drum, or elastic plate drawn 
 over some hollow, by which a vibrating motion is given 
 to the air, and sound produced ; and in the case of the 
 death's-head moth, Reaumur found out that the noise 
 which it makes when confined, proceeds from the friction 
 of the palpi against the mandible, which, though a sound 
 originating in part in the mouth, yet can, in no sense 
 of the word, be considered as voice. Voice, or not 
 voice, this sound is obviously intended to answer only 
 insect purposes, though how it affects them has not been 
 clearly ascertained ; because, with the exception of the 
 
372 STRUCTURE OF INSECTS. 
 
 sense of seeing, and that which is usually called touch, 
 the senses of insects have not been referred to any 
 particular organs. 
 
 The structure of insects is altogether a very curious 
 matter, at least, a matter different from those animal 
 structures with which we are the most familiar, and 
 which we are, in consequence, too apt to take as our 
 standards. They are all annulose animals, that is, have 
 their bodies divided across into a greater or smaller 
 number of rings or segments. They are without a 
 spine, or any thing like an internal skeleton, and thus 
 the insertions of all the muscles, by which their parts 
 are moved, are on the external covering, which is to 
 them at once both skin and skeleton. 
 
 That skin, though it do not contain, even in those 
 that have it the hardest, carbonate of lime, like the 
 crusts of crabs and lobsters, and the shells of oysters 
 and snails, is yet more like a horny substance than 
 the skin'of those that we call the more perfect animals. 
 The substance in the skin of the more perfect animals, 
 which the covering of insects the most nearly resembles, 
 is the epidermis, or scarf-skin ; and there is no appear- 
 ance of vessels in its structure, or of a mucous net or 
 true skin. In its composition, it is a good deal like horn, 
 though it is not fibrous, like that substance. It also 
 varies more in hardness, being in some as hard as horn, 
 and in others as flexible as leather ; in some, too, it is 
 elastic, and may be bent considerably and resume its 
 form, while in others it is exceedingly brittle. The 
 pincers, stings, claws, mandibles, and all the grasping, 
 cutting, and piercing organs of insects, are formed of 
 the same substance, though thickened and hardened 
 
STRUCTURE OF INSECTS. 373 
 
 where necessary, and also softened into pads and suckers 
 where these are required ; as on the feet of those insects 
 which retain their hold upon polished surfaces, and 
 those that are perpendicular or inverted, without the 
 aid of claws. All these, even to the minute hairs with 
 which the bodies of insects are covered as in those 
 that form the fur of the mole cricket, are, without any 
 insertion of new substance, merely elongations of the 
 general covering, by which means the delicate struc- 
 ture of the insect is kept together ; and those that 
 burrow in the earth, or bore into wood or stone, for 
 the purpose of a dwelling for themselves or a nidus 
 for their offspring, never have the most delicate hair 
 even that which requires the assistance of a powerful 
 microscope before it can be seen abraded by the 
 hard substances which they have to encounter. Those 
 which burrow in the mud, too, even though their 
 bodies be furry, seldom have the mud adhering to 
 them ; and those that are smooth have so exquisite a 
 polish, that they are nearly proof against the action 
 of water. We are not aware, indeed, of any surface 
 so perfectly smooth as that of the covering of some 
 insects. This substance, also, admits of every degree 
 of colour and transparency. The horny coats that 
 protect the fixed eyes of insects from external injury, 
 are, in some instances, as colourless as the air itself; 
 while in other parts of them we meet with hues, which 
 not only defy all the imitations of art, but are quite 
 unrivalled among the works of nature. We also meet 
 with an irridescence or play of colours, arising from the 
 light being differently reflected ; but, generally speak- 
 ing, that is mere difference of reflection from the sur- 
 2 K 
 
374 STRUCTURE Otf INSECTS, 
 
 face, and not of refraction from the inner parts of the 
 covering. It is the varying colour of the pigeon's neck, 
 or of shot silk, and not that of a mother-of-pearl shell 
 or an opal, it arises from minute surfaces of different 
 colours intermixed, and not from laminae or plates, of 
 different texture and transparency, placed the one over 
 the other. In short, it is probably the most plastic, 
 and therefore the most curious substance in nature, 
 being of all hues and all consistences, and adaptable 
 to all purposes ; and yet in its composition always the 
 same. It forms - the fine down or feathers upon the 
 moth and butterfly, the large nervous wings of the 
 dragon-fly, trie sting of the bee, the crust of the beetle ; 
 and it is very doubtful whether it does not also form 
 the web of the spider, and even the cocoon of the silk- 
 worm. 
 
 But there is a further uniformity of purpose in the 
 muscular structure of insects in those organs that move 
 their little feet, their wings, their jaws, and their won- 
 derful antennae or feelers. Those muscles, downward 
 as far as the microscope can follow them, are of the 
 same fibrous texture as the muscles of large animals ; 
 but as they do not, like these, move over internal ful- 
 crum bones, they are without tendons, and have their 
 fibres inserted immediately into the covering or crust. 
 
 The body of an insect was, by Linnaeus, regarded as 
 made up of three parts, the head, the trunk, and the 
 abdomen ; but as the middle part, or trunk, consists of 
 two distinct portions, more modern naturalists have 
 considered the whole body as made up of four, the 
 head, the thorax, the breast, and the abdomen. The 
 relative proportions of those parts, and also the mode 
 
STRUCTURE OF INSECTS. 375 
 
 and magnitude of the articulations, by which they are 
 jointed to each other, differ much in the different 
 species. The articulation of the head with the thorax 
 can always be determined, and so can the division of 
 the others, if not by the articulation, at least by the 
 annuli or rings. Whatever may be their dimensions, 
 or the mode in which they are joined together, the first 
 ring behind the head is the thorax, the second the breast, 
 and all the remainder, however many rings there may 
 be, the abdomen. 
 
 The head, as is the case with other animals, contains 
 the mouth and the organs of the senses : the only 
 ones of which the functions or the plan is known with 
 certainty, are the eyes, and the antennae or feelers, which 
 last are conceived to be more particularly organs of touch. 
 The muscles that move the head, take their rise near 
 the abdominal extremity of the trunk, and have their in- 
 sertion within the occipital opening. They are inserted 
 in the direction toward which they move the head, and 
 have their origin at the opposite side of the trunk, so that 
 they cross the trunk inside diagonally ; and they produce 
 their motion by contraction, the same as the muscles of 
 quadrupeds. In most insects the muscles that move 
 the head downwards, are more powerful than those that 
 move it in any other direction. 
 
 The thorax occupies the first ring of the trunk. It is 
 in some species very small ; but generally the centre of 
 the under part of it is formed into a prominent sternum, 
 or keel, and the fore legs are articulated to it one on 
 each side ; and the upper part sometimes terminates 
 backwards in a spine, with which the insect is capable 
 of inflicting a wound. 
 
 2K 2 
 
376 STRUCTURE OF INSECTS. 
 
 The breast forms the second and generally the largest 
 ring of the trunk ; but sometimes it and the thorax are 
 so united, that only the depression between the two 
 can be traced ; and sometimes they are so loosely arti- 
 culated, that the breast seems part of the abdomen. 
 The upper part of the breast, which is that in which 
 the principal muscles are inserted, is covered with a 
 shield or scutellum, of a horny consistency. The ima- 
 ginary death's head and cross-bones are the bearings 
 upon this shield in the sphinx atropos. The under 
 part of this has a sternum or keel, as well as that of 
 the thorax ; to the sides of that, the two remaining 
 pairs of legs, the middle and the hind ones, are arti- 
 culated, and it sometimes covers the articulation and 
 part of the first joint of the legs, and sometimes shields 
 part of the abdomen. The wings are articulated to 
 the breast, at the sides of the scutellum, immediately 
 to the sides of it in those that have not elytra or wing- 
 covers, and in those that have, the wings and wing- 
 covers are articulated to the abdominal edge and angles 
 of the scutellum so that when the wing-covers are 
 raised, they separate from the scutellum as well as 
 from each other at the middle. 
 
 The abdomen occupies the rest of the body. It 
 consists of a greater or smaller number of wings, ac- 
 cording to the genus of insect ; and the muscles by 
 which it is moved are inserted in the breast, the same 
 as those that move the head, and they pass diagonally 
 in the same manner. Thus the trunk, and usually 
 the breast, or second ring of the trunk, is the general 
 fulcrum of motion for the whole body. 
 
 The wings of insects are worthy of attention, not 
 
STRUCTURE OF INSECTS. 377 
 
 only from the beauty of their structure, and the nicety 
 with which they are adapted to the other habits of the 
 animal ; but as they are a very convenient means of 
 classing the animals. 
 
 Most winged insects have four wings, though in all, 
 the four are not of similar structure, or equally deve- 
 loped. The wings, which are the proper organs of 
 flight, are constructed of a delicate network, of the 
 horny substance which has been alluded to, upon which 
 is spread a thin membrane of the same. Frequently 
 those membranous wings are covered over with fea- 
 thers or scales, which also sometimes, as in the sphinx- 
 moths, cover other parts of the insect. 
 
 The two upper wings are often horny and not adapt- 
 ed for flying, but they serve as a protection to the 
 others. These are the elytra ; and the insects which 
 have them, beetles, as they are indiscriminately called 
 in common language, are in the habit of creeping into 
 places where membranous wings would be in danger 
 of being torn ; or diving in water, where they would be 
 rendered unfit for the purposes of flight. Even the 
 membranous wings of insects, however strong in every 
 thing but the scales with which some of them are co- 
 vered, are much less liable to injury than one not ac- 
 quainted with them would be apt to imagine. 
 
 Sometimes the upper wings are only half the length, 
 and adhere to the membranous ones that are below ; 
 and in many, the two under wings are not developed, 
 but form a slender stalk behind each wing, ending in a 
 knob. These organs are called halter es or balancers. 
 It is doubtful, however, whether these ought, in all 
 cases, to be considered as the rudiments of the second 
 
378 STRUCTURE OF INSECTS. 
 
 pair of wings, because they have been found wanting 
 in some two-winged insects, and present in some four- 
 winged ones, as in the dytiscus marginalia. 
 
 The legs of insects consist of nearly the same distinct 
 parts as those of larger animals. They are : 
 
 1. The hip, (coxa?) which is immediately articulated 
 to the side of the sternum. 
 
 2. The thigh, (femur,*) which is articulated to the 
 hip. 
 
 3. The leg, (tibia,) which is articulated to the thigh. 
 
 4. The foot or toe, (tarsus,) which consists of several 
 joints, the first of them articulated to the leg, and the 
 last to 
 
 5. The claw, (unguisj) which terminates the organ. 
 
 The form and articulations of these are often exceed- 
 ingly curious ; but we find in them all that perfect har- 
 mony of organization and use, which can be so clearly 
 traced in all the mechanism of animated nature, and 
 which indeed forces itself upon our notice, whether we 
 attempt to trace it or not. Thus, if the insect has only 
 to walk and not to leap, the thighs are slender; but 
 when it has to leap, they are swelled out in breadth to 
 afford room for the action of the muscles ; and the 
 swelling always takes place in that direction which is 
 best calculated for giving ease and force to the motion. 
 The articulation of the femur is equally well adapted 
 to the habits of the insect. In some, the motion is 
 most easy forwards, in others backwards, and in a con- 
 siderable number it answers equally both ways. 
 
 The tibia, too, is made to answer all the purposes of 
 a simple leg; or it is lengthened, flattened, and fringed, 
 that it may serve as an oar ; or yet again it is made 
 
STRUCTURE OF INSECTS. 879 
 
 compact and firm, and toothed in the edge, so that it 
 may form an engine for digging and cutting. 
 
 The tarsus, or foot, varies very much, and exhibits a 
 wonderful deal of mechanical contrivance, and a very 
 nice adaptation of parts to the office that the organ has 
 to perform. There is generally, whatever may be the 
 number of joints or articulations in the part of the 
 limb, a very strong flexor or contracting muscle, by 
 means of which it is enabled to attach itself firmly to 
 any substance. 
 
 The claw is equally varied in its structure. Some- 
 times, as in the case of the mole cricket, it is in the 
 form of a rake, for hewing down and drawing along 
 mud j at other times there are hooked claws, all bend- 
 ing in the same direction, by means of which it can 
 suspend itself; sometimes again the claws act opposite 
 to each other like a hand ; and at other times there is 
 but a single claw, to which a little protuberance on the 
 tarsus serves as a thumb. 
 
 Such are the outlines of the merely mechanical struc- 
 ture of insects. The other parts are equally curious, 
 even those that are general to the class, and have no 
 reference to the peculiar habits of any one. The nervous 
 system, which is ramified from the brain contained in the 
 head ; the singular formation that often is displayed in 
 the mouth, which is at one time a pump, and at another 
 a pair of scissors ; the complicated contrivance of cells 
 and tubes, by which the blood is aerated ; and, above 
 all, the way in which nature has provided for the con- 
 tinuation of the species, with the long probation and 
 the singular changes through which many of them have 
 to pass before they can enjoy the day or the hour 
 
 
380 STRUCTURE OF INSECTS. 
 
 which is given them to wanton in the beams of the 
 sun. Taking them, diversified as they are among many 
 genera and species, they form, even in one corner of 
 the smallest province of nature's kingdom, ample and 
 delightful study for the most active mind, through the 
 most prolonged life. 
 
 We are apt, because we cannot move from one part 
 to another without labour, to associate interest with 
 magnitude, measure power with a line, and reckon 
 wisdom by the tables of chronology ; but when the 
 work is His, " with whom a thousand years are as one 
 day, and one day as a thousand years," we find also 
 that space is not an element of the wonderful in His 
 works ; or, time of the wisdom with which they have 
 been made. 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
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