enjoys a great length of life, and has its living principle so essentially within its body, that it can subsist and move about for several days without either brain or head. This class of animals are in the waters, what the sheep are on the hills and plains, harmless, gentle, patient, and useful. The lizard division of the amphibia presents to us, as its leading class, the formidable crocodiles a name to which dread and aversion are, by the hasty prejudices of our defective knowledge, almost inseparably attached; for, although this class of creatures is the largest of all known animals, except the elephant, the hippopotamus, and the whale, and a few enormous serpents, yet it is neither a fierce nor a cruel animal, nor does it ever purposely or unnecessarily injure. It seeks its appointed prey when hunger urges it; but it destroys only for food, and has no passion or malignity. In its general form, it is similar to the other lizards, but with distinctive characteristics peculiar to itself. The mouth is enormously large, opening even beyond its ears, with jaws that are sometimes several feet long. Its teeth, about thirty in each jaw, pass between each other when the mouth is shut, and have others, of a very small size, in their socket, to replace their first ones. The lower jaw is alone movable; and having no lateral motion, they mostly swallow what they take without mastication. They are sometimes thirty feet long. Their whole body, except the top of the head, is covered with strong, hard scales, which in most parts are impenetrable even to a musket ball. Having no lips, their teeth are always bare; and from this peculiarity, though they may be walking or swimming with the utmost tranquillity, they seem to be animated with rage. Another circumstance, also, that contributes to increase the terrific nature of this animal's countenance, is the fiery appearance of its eyes, which, being placed obliquely, and very near each other, have an exceedingly malignant aspect. Its brain is extremely small. Its tail and its webbed hind toes, acting like fins, assist its swimming; and its figure, being flattened laterally, with some resemblance to an oar, enables it to cut the water with astonishing velocity. On land it can overtake a man in direct running; but if he turn quickly round in a circle, he escapes with ease, as the animal cannot so rapidly wheel round its great length of body. Its longevity rather exceeds that of the tortoise genus. When pressed with hunger, it devours mankind; and the large ones even attempt to leap or scramble into boats during the night, and in some places use their tails to overturn small skiffs, and then seize on the men or animals within them. The other lizard tribes are small and pleasing animals, and some are beautiful in their colors. All are very gentle and harmless, good-tempered and peaceful. The chameleon, which belongs to this class, is distinguished by an ocular peculiarity which no other creature possesses. Each eye has a separate motion, so that one eye sometimes looks forward while the other is turned backward; or one looks up while the other views things below. The changeability of color which distinguishes this animal, though it has been much exaggerated, is very remarkable. Nothing can be more curious or beautiful than the rapid transitions from hue to hue which it exhibits, when aroused to motion. Its lungs are vesicular, and so large that, when inflated to the utmost, the whole body becomes almost transparent. With the different degrees of inflation, the surface undergoes changes of color, owing to the variations produced in the distribution of the blood, and not, as has been fabled, by the animal assuming the color of the body upon which it happens to be placed. The chameleon is exceedingly slow, dull, and almost torpid. The only part which it moves with celerity is its long tongue, which is clothed at its extremity with a viscid, gluey mucus, and is darted out for the purpose of capturing insects, upon which the animal subsists. The flying lizard is the nearest resemblance to the fabled dragons of antiquity that nature contains; but it cannot be identified with these celebrated monsters, because of its smallness and harmlessness. It seldom exceeds a foot in length and is a weak animal, innocent and peaceful. It flies from branch to branch, feeding on the ants, flies, butterflies, and other insects that it can take; and it can flutter from one tree to another when within thirty paces. The salamander, as well as the fictitious dragon, has long lived in popular fame; but it does not verify the many fables that have been attached to it. Instead of living in fire, it delights in cold, damp places. It retires, sometimes in great multitudes, into the hollows of old trees, and under the roots of hedges; and can remain a considerable time in water. Some have been kept in water for six months without food; but it spends the greatest part of its life in holes under ground, or beneath stones and rotten trees, appearing to dread the heat of the sun. When touched, it covers itself all over with a milky fluid, which is acrid to the skin; and it does so the instant it touches fire, but never in such abundance as to extinguish the smallest flames. Frogs and toads also belong to the oviparous class of ani mals, and of the latter there are some curious species. At Surinam there is a kind called the musical toad, because, in the evening and during the whole night, it makes a musical kind of croaking; and another species, in the fenny places of Germany, is termed the laughing toad, because it emits a clear sound, like a man laughing. The toad, which is often regarded by the ignorant and unthinking with disgust and aversion, is really a very curious and interesting animal, and has been sometimes tamed and domesticated. One which had taken up its residence under an outer stone, before the door of a house, came forth every evening, immediately upon observing the candle, and waited deliberately to be lifted up and carried to a table within the house, where it was fed with insects and flies. It was particularly fond of small worms, which it would watch with great it eagerness, and, having measured the distance with its eyes, would dart out its long tongue, which brought back the animal to it. It lived thirty-six years thus domesticated, when a raven injured it at the mouth of its hole. LESSON LII. Insects. IDEM. THE insect race are, in number, by far the most consider able portion of animated beings; and whoever duly studies their habits, economy, and uses, "will perceive that they have been created with design; and will not doubt that the design was benevolent." The triple metamorphosis or transformation which most of them undergo, has been said to be effected by casting off the different coats or coverings in which the perfect insect is enclosed; but it may be nearer the unknown truth to say, that the perfect insect is forming or developing in the first or caterpillar state, and is completed in its second or chrysalis condition, from which it emerges into a new and more active existence, which is its last and reproducing form. Insects deserve our notice, and compel our admiration, not only for their sprightliness, forms, and colors, but also for affording us another example of the living, sentient, and thinking principle; and this, in full activity and power within figures and limbs so small, as to compel our wonder at the nature of that intellectual mystery to which space is indifferent, and which is equally efficient and astonishing in the smallest as in the greatest body in the winged fly, that is but a speck, as well as in the elephant, the boa, or the eagle. A yellow insect is now running before me, not bigger than a - dot, but as rapid, for him, as a dog in full speed. He runs straight forward over my paper, and turns towards the inky letters. What are dry, he runs over; what he finds wet, he stops at, and goes round; he runs over the white space in a direct line for some time, either obliquely, straight, or horizontally. When I put the feather of my pen in its way, it stops, and remains for some time motionless, till, finding no further alarm, it resumes its activity. It certainly paused by its own choice and will. It exerted an act of judgment as it came to the ink; it deemed or felt that to be unsuitable, and repeatedly turned from it; yet it discerned when the ink was dry, and then ran over what became so. In the space of a small dot, or printer's full stop, it had movable legs and their muscles, and displayed all the activity, power, and thought of a larger animal. The metamorphoses of insects are their most marked characteristics. In these we certainly behold three distinct animals, as dissimilar from each other, in some genera, as the bird is from the serpent and the shell-fish; and yet united into one and the same living being, by the personal identity of their principle of life. This alone continues permanent and abiding through their triple change of material form. The bodily substance undergoes the most striking mutations; but the exist ing and feeling self remains unceasing and unaltered through all. The same animal crawls in its caterpillar shape; rests or sleeps in its torpid chrysalis; and springs from earth into air, with its new wings, its proboscis, and its antennæ, in its butterfly or moth configuration. What a stupendous wonder this magical transformation would be to us, if it were not so familiar! There is no reason to doubt that all the parts of the butterfly are in the caterpillar. The material mechanism, the specific organization, is all ready and arranged; though not at first discernible, from its invisible minuteness. Gradually, this hidden form increases into an object of sight; every limb and function enlarging in just and progressive proportion, |