the other and furnished with tentacular filaments. The animals are fixed to rocks, shells, and sometimes to sea-weeds, and are either sessile, or elevated on a footstalk: the sessile ones present a considerable analogy with the puff-balls, and the others with different funguses, as Clavaria, &c. They seem, especially Boltenia, which is covered with short stiff bristles, to approach the Echinidans. Nothing more is known of these animals, than that, like the others, they alternately absorb and expel the sea water. The Cynthia Momus1 is remarkable for its changes of colour, being sometimes white, sometimes orange, and sometimes of a flesh-colour. As all this tribe are fixed, their history furnishes no other interesting traits.

Nothing is more striking than the infinitely diversified forms into which Creative Power has moulded the little frail animals, in this as well as the preceding classes, that are destined to inhabit, and numbers of them to illuminate, the wide expanse of waters occupying so large a portion of the globe we inhabit. When we survey, with curious and delighted eyes, the varied tribes that cover the soils of every aspect and elevation of that part of it that emerges from the fluctuating surface of the great deep, and which, instead of deriving their nutriment and means of life and breath from the waters, saline

1 PLATE IV. FIG. 1.

or fresh, live, and breathe, and are fed, by principles and elements communicated, either mediately or immediately, from the atmospheric ocean, an expanse that envelopes uninterruptedly the whole of our globe, and which itself is fed and renovated by the constant effluxes of the great centre of irradiation; which also in its turn, as well as all the other orbs that burn and are radiant, and those that revolve around them and reflect their light, receive their all from Him, that GREAT AND INEFFABLE BEING, who gives to all and receives from none. But I lose myself, in infinite amazement; I shrink into very nothingness, when I reflect that such a miserable worm as I am, so fallen and corrupted, should presume to lift its thought so high, and lose itself in the depths of the unfathomable ocean of Deity. He has, however, commanded us to seek him, and assured us we shall find him if we seek him humbly and sincerelyhe hath set before us his works and his word, in both of which he has revealed himself to us and if our great object be to glorify him rather than ourselves, we shall collect the TRUTH from each, and shall find that they deliver, though each in a different language and style, the same mysteries; for they are the work and the word of the same Almighty Author, and must, therefore, if rightly interpreted, deliver the same truths, since they can no more con

tradict each other than he can contradict himself.

But let me endeavour to emerge from this ocean in which I seem to have lost myself, and, recovering my station upon terra firma, direct the attention of the reader to the lovely tribes that adorn every part and portion of this our destined but brief abode, I mean to the vegetable kingdom; we see how they cover earth, that not a spot can be found, of which in time they do not possess themselves, and that the more we extend our inquiries the more numerous are the individual species with which we become acquainted. This being the case upon earth, reasoning from analogy, we may conclude that something similar takes place in the ocean; that could our discoveries be extended under the sea as easily as they are upon land; could we traverse the bed and waters of the great deep with the same facility that we do the surface of the earth, we should find the numbers of vegetables that respire, in some sense, the air, fall short perhaps of those plant-like animals that respire the water. And could we examine the individual species of which this infinite host consists, and compare their organizations, we should find as great a difference in the instruments and organs by which their life is supported and their kind continued, as in the animals themselves; and yet in all this diversity should trace a harmony and

concatenation that would evidently prove the Wisdom that contrived, the Power that formed, and the Goodness that gave a living principle and breath of life to all these creatures, were each of them the attributes of an INFINITE BEING.

CHAPTER VIII.

Functions and Instincts. Bivalve Molluscans.

HITHERTO in our progress from the lowest animals upwards, the mind has been perpetually submerged; not only every group, but every individual that we have had occasion to consider, has been an inhabitant of the waters, and to the great body of which a fluid medium is as necessary to life and action as an aërial one is to a land animal, but now we shall be permitted to emerge occasionally, for although the largest proportion of the animals forming the great class we are now to advert to, the Molluscans, are also aquatic, yet still a very considerable number of them are terrestrial, as a stroll abroad will soon convince us, when after a shower we find we can scarcely set a step without crushing a snail or a slug.

2

The term Molluscan' was employed by Linné to designate his second class of worms, which excluded all the shell-fish, and amongst real Molluscans included both Radiaries, Tunicaries, and Worms; it literally signifies a nut or walnut, and therefore seems more properly applied to shell-fish, than to animals which are defined as simple and naked. As now understood, it still comprehends a very wide range of animal forms, and it seems difficult to describe them by any character common to them all. Their Almighty Author, in the progress of his work of creation, linked form to form in various ways; he not only made an animal of a lower grade a steppingstone towards one of a higher, and which formed a part of the ascent to man, the highest of all; but as the mighty work proceeded, he threw out on each side collateral forms that ascend by a different route, or begin one to a different order of beings. And this circumstance it is that has opened the door for so many systems and that diversity of sentiment with respect to the grouping of animals, which we meet with in the writings of the most eminent naturalists. Some proceed by one path and some by another, though the object of all is the same, unless some bias from a favourite hypothesis interferes and diverts them from a right judgment.

The organization of the animals of the Class