which so closely resemble plants in respect to their stems, branches, and buds, that naturalists for ages believed in their vegetable nature. On every side the sands and mud have been disturbed, tracked, burrowed, and pierced by marine worms; the stones are covered with molluscs, polypes, and zoophytes of every kind, and even the very rocks seem rent asunder to furnish a retreat within their narrow crevices for entire families of living beings.

In physical science man controls, to a certain extent, the object of his investigations. Thus, for instance, in the examination of a machine he may successively study each of the parts, consider their respective actions, and judge of the effect of the whole. It is very different, however, in the case of the natural sciences generally, and especially of zoology. Here we must wait and watch. The multiplicity of vital acts in animals which occupy the highest places in the scale of being too frequently conceals the truth from us, while it is impossible for us to imitate the physicist in isolating a single phenomenon; for when we do this, the whole is lost to our inquiry, and the animal ceases to exist. But in proportion as we descend the scale of being, we find that organisation is simplified, and that life, without being altered in its essential nature, is to a certain degree modified in its manifestations. The animal machine, if we may use the expression, is shown to us piece by piece, as if to reveal the action of its several parts, and to demonstrate to us the great laws of physiology apart from all accessory phenomena. These laws are the same for the highest mammal and the lowest zoophyte; the same for man, whose complicated anatomy has been studied for ages past, and for the sponge, whose organs appear to be blended into one sole living homogeneous mass, the smallest particle of which participates in all the properties accorded to the entire organism. It will be readily conceived how much interest attaches to observations such as these, which nature itself seems to have prepared for us. Quatrefages.

ANNELIDS.

THE wandering annelids occupied my special attention during my earliest explorations. Hitherto I had only known this numerous family of animals (commonly designated sea-worms) through engravings; but, although I had formed a tolerably exact idea of their organisation, I had not the slightest conception how many points of interest attached themselves to a study of these forms. When I had once surprised within their obscure retreats the polynoa, with its broad brown scales; the phyllodoce, with its hundred bright-green rings; the eunice, with its purple crest; the terebella, surrounded by a cloud of innumerable living cables, which serve it in the place of arms; and when I had seen displayed before my eyes the rich fan of the sabella, and the enamelled collar of the serpula, I no longer smiled, as I had formerly done, at the thought of a naturalist having endowed two of these creatures with the charming names of Matilda and Herminia. These despised creatures seemed to me now no less worthy of a naturalist's homage than the most brilliant insect or the fairest flower. Let no one cite the violet as a pattern of modesty ! the coquette ! See how she shows from afar her fresh turf of green leaves, and scatters abroad the sweet perfume which invites you to gather her! More skilful than her rivals, she knows that mystery is the greatest of all attractions, and that the rose itself loses by displaying her charms in broad daylight; therefore it is that she seeks the obscurity of our woods and the friendly shelter of the hedge-sides, but, like Virgil's shepherdess, she only conceals herself for the sake of being sought for. Now turn to the annelids! What do they lack when compared with the most splendid inhabitants of earth or air? yet they shun the light, they withdraw themselves from our view, but with no design to

attract; and the naturalist alone knows where to seek the strange wonders which are hidden within the recesses of the rock and beneath the sandy beds of the ocean.

You may smile at my enthusiasm if you will, but come and judge for yourself. All is prepared! Our firmly adjusted microscope is furnished with its lenses, which magnify thirty diameters. Our lamp gives a light almost as white as that of a jet of gas, while a large lens, mounted upon a moveable foot, receives the rays of light and concentrates them upon our field of view. We have just placed upon the stage of our instrument a little trough filled with sea-water, in which an eunice is disporting itself. See how indignant it is at its captivity; how its numerous rings contract, elongate, twist into a spiral coil, and at every movement emit flashes of light, in which all the tints of the prism are blended in the brightest metallic reflections. It is impossible in the midst of this tumultuous agitation to distinguish anything definitely. But it is more quiet now; lose no time, therefore, in examining it; see how it crawls along the bottom of the vessel, with its thousand feet moving rapidly forward and emitting bundles of darts from the broad knobs with which they are furnished. See what beautiful plumes adorn the sides of the body; these are the branchiæ, or organs of respiration, which become vermilion as they are swelled by the blood, whose course you may trace along the whole length of the great dorsal vessel. Look at that head enamelled with the brightest colors ; -here are the five antennæ, delicate organs of touch, and here, in the midst of them, is the mouth, which, at first sight, seems merely like an irregularly puckered opening. But watch it for a few moments, see how it opens and protrudes a large proboscis, furnished with three pairs of jaws, and possessing a diameter which equals that of the body, within which it is enclosed as in a living sheath. Well! is it not wonderful? Is there any animal which can contend with it for the prize of decora

tion? the corslet of the brightest beetle, the speckled wings of the butterfly, the sparkling throat of the humming-bird, would all look pale when compared with the play of light flashing in large patches over the rings of its body, glowing in its golden threads and sparkling over its amber and coral fringes. Ibid.

THE CUTTLE-FISH.

SOME of my most interesting recollections of the cuttle-fish are associated with the captures and dissection of a single specimen. The creature, in swimming, darts through the water much in the manner that a boy slides down an icecrusted declivity, feet foremost; -the lower or nether extremities go first, and the head behind: it follows its tail, instead of being followed by it; and this curious peculiarity in its mode of progression, though, of course, on the whole, the mode best adapted to its conformation and instincts, sometimes proves fatal to it in calm weather, wher not a ripple breaks upon the pebbles, to warn that the shore is near. An enemy appears: the creature ejects its cloud of ink, like a sharp-shooter discharging his rifle ere he retreats; and then, darting away, tail foremost, under cover of the cloud, it grounds itself high upon the beach and perishes there. I was walking, one very calm day, along the Cromarty shore, a little to the west of the town, when I heard a peculiar sound-a squelch, if I may employ such a word—and saw that a large loligo, fully a foot and a half in length, had thrown itself high and dry upon the beach. I laid hold of it by its sheath or sack; and the loligo, in turn, laid hold of the pebbles, apparently to render its abduction as difficult as possible, just as I have seen a boy, when borne off against his will by a stronger than himself, grasping fast to door-posts and furniture.

The pebbles were hard and smooth, but the creature raised them very readily with his suckers. I subjected one of my hands to its grasp, and it seized fast hold; but though the suckers were still employed, it made use of them on a different principle. Around the circular rim of each there is a fringe of minute thorns, hooked somewhat like those of the wild rose. In clinging to the hard polished pebbles, these were overlapped by a fleshy membrane, much in the manner that the cushions of a cat's paw overlap its claws when the animal is in a state of tranquillity; and by means of the projecting membrane, the hollow interior was rendered air-tight, and the vacuum completed: but in dealing with the hand. a soft substance - the thorns were laid bare, like the claws of a cat when stretched out in anger, and at least a thousand minute prickles were fixed in the skin at once. They failed to penetrate it, for they were short, and individually not strong; but, acting together by hundreds, they took at least a very firm hold.

What follows may be deemed barbarous; but the men who gulp down at a sitting half-a-hundred live oysters to gratify their taste, may surely forgive me the destruction of a single mollusc to gratify my curiosity! I cut open the sack of the creature with a sharp penknife, and laid bare the viscera. What a sight for Harvey, when prosecuting, in the earlier stages, his grand discovery of the circulation! There, in the centre, was the yellow muscular heart, propelling into the transparent, tubular arteries, the yellow blood. Beat-beat-beat:-I could see the whole as in a glass model; and all I lacked were powers of vision nice enough to enable me to detect the fluid passing through the minuter arterial branches, and then returning by the veins to the two other hearts of the creature; for, strange to say, it is furnished with three. There in the midst I saw the yellow heart, and, lying altogether detached from it, two other deep-colored hearts at the sides. I cut a little deeper. There was the gizzard-like stomach, filled with