water; but the Surinam toad exhibits a still more wonderful phenomenon :-its eggs are buried in the skin of its back. When the animals, enclosed in those eggs, burst from their shells, the mother is seen crawling, with her family riding on her person; some still in the egg; others just emerging out of it; and some clinging to various parts of her body. In animals an abundant supply of food tends to early production; but in vegetables, the more scanty the nourishment, the earlier will a plant propagate its kind.

ELECTRICAL AND OTHER AFFINITIES, &c.

a

In

AFFINITIES of electricity may be traced in marine substances, in insects, vegetable oils, and mineral essences. 40 degrees 30 minutes south of the Line are seen a multitude of minute sea animals, emitting colours equal to those of the most brilliant sapphires and rubies. When observed by candle-light, they appear of a pale green. In the Gulf of Guinea, ships seem frequently to sail, at night, in a sea of milk; a whiteness, which is occasioned by pellucid salpæ, and crustaceous animals of the scyllarus genus, attached to them. Other oceans contain a particular species of sea anemones, so brilliant, that the terms white, carmine, and ultramarine, are © insufficient to express their beauty. In the River St. Lawrence, luminous appearances are caused by a vast number of porpoises darting and crossing each other with great velocity. Star-fishes, also, float on the surface of the sea in summer, and emit light like phosphorus. By land these luminous appearances are far from being unknown; though in instances more detached.

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e

When Misson was in Italy, he observed the hedges,

bushes, fields, and trees, covered with innumerable flies (lucicole), which gave great splendour to the evening air. The fulgoria candelaria, and the diadema, give equal brilliancy to many parts of China and India. In the Torrid Zone, also, countless multitudes of phosphorescent insects a fly in all directions, and give light to groves of palms and mimosas. The elata noctilucus of South America emits a light so brilliant, that ten of them are equal to the effulgence of a candle: while the Peruvian fulgoria, having a head nearly as large as its entire body, is so luminous, that four, tied to the branch of a tree, are carried, near Surinam, to guide travellers by night. Light is emitted, also, by dead plants, and rotten carcasses: while sulphuric acid, if mixed with water, emits a heat more violent than even boiling water.

Under the influence of fire, coal elicits a red flame; jet a green, and amber a white one. The Siberian topaz becomes white; the Brazilian topaz red; the chrysolite fades of its green; and Oriental sapphires, from a deep blue, become so brilliant, that they are frequently taken for diamonds. At Ancliff, in Lancashire, there is a well, the vapour of which is so impregnated with sulphur, that, by applying a light to it, it burns like the flame of spirits. In the Grotto del Cane, on the road from Naples to Puzzuoli, carbonic acid gas exists in a state of purity, unmixed with the atmosphere. It rises, however, only three feet from the bottom of the grotto; so that a man may enter the cave without danger. But if an animal is held to the floor, for a short space of time, it loses all appearance of life; a state, however, from which it soon recovers if it be thrown into the adjoining lake. A torch, taken into this cave, blazes with brilliancy; but if held within three feet of the floor, it becomes immediately extinguished. In Germany there is an odoriferous plant belonging to the Decandria monogynia class and order, which blossoms in June

and July; and which, when approached of a calm night, with a candle, becomes luminous: this arises from the finer parts of its essential oil dissolving in the atmospherical air; and impregnating it.

Kircher relates, that, near the village of Pietra Mala, in Tuscany, he observed the air frequently to sparkle in the night-time. This fire was called Fuogo del Legno: and probably proceeded, like the ignis fatuus, from phosphorated hydrogen gas: since that combination fires spontaneously at any temperature of the atmosphere. Salt produced from a solution of copper in nitric acid, if sprinkled with water over tinfoil, and wrapt up suddenly, will elicit sparks of fire from the tinfoil and filings of zinc, mixed with gunpowder, produce those stars and spangles, in artificial fireworks, which it is impossible not to admire.

If some vegetables exist without roots, there are animated beings, in return, which are propagated after the manner of plants. The earthworm may be divided into two parts; upon which each part becomes a perfect worm. The head portion acquires a tail; and the tail portion acquires a head. The star-fish may be divided into many parts with similar effects: but the polypus may be divided and subdivided into 500; and thus by compulsion become the parent of 500 others. Indeed polypi exhibit the most wonderful phenomena, in respect to propagation, of any objects in nature; for they propagate fike quadrupeds; like insects; like fishes; and like plants. Some are viviparous; and some issue from an egg; some are multiplied by cuttings, and others grow out of the bodies of their parent like buds out of trees: and from which they fall, much after the manner of the testuca ovina of northern latitudes.

It may here be remarked, that, though in general plants are extremely regular in producing their relative and respective number of males and females, they do not do so always. In the flower called the Turk's-cap I have observed corollas con

taining seven, and even eight stamens, growing on the same branch with corollas having only their usual number of six.

Lizards, serpents, lobsters, and some insects, have no apparent organs of generation: they are, therefore, supposed to have the wonderful faculty of secret generation. In this they bear some affinity with the attica-tree of Ceylon, which produces fruit from the trunk and branches without flowering. The cryptogamia class of plants, also, entirely conceal their fructification. Indeed it is impossible to determine where the separate species of life and being begin and terminate. I am persuaded that even the hairs of the head, and other parts of the frame, are animal vegetables distinct from, though growing out of the body. They have roots like the bulbs of plants; and, being nourished by the blood vessels, as vegetables are nourished by the earth, they have sometimes grown, as Malpighi confesses, so thick and strong as to exude blood. Hair may, also, be transplanted from one part of the body to another. I am persuaded, also, that every stamen, every pistyl, every petal, and every leaf, however small, are distinct beings from each other: though of similar natures. The corolla of a flower is a collection of petals, forming a house for the males and the females: they all rise and have their being from one seed; but the seed, from which they rise, contains in its embryo the rudiments of every portion of the future plant.

a I am not certain that the remark may not be extended to the teeth and nails · The teeth are, next to hair and nails, the most independent part of our frame. They decay (often) long before the rest of the body; and their presence is frequently more painful than agreeable. As to the nails, they are in a perpetual state of increase. They even grow after the body has been deposited in the grave. Though growing on the body, and of use to it, they may, therefore, I think, be regarded as distinct :-so, also, the horns of quadrupeds, the feathers of birds, and the scales of fishes.

b Vid. Letter from Signor Dottore Nardo to the Academy of Padua, in Giornale di Litteratura Italiana.

ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE ANOMALIES.

WHETHER minerals grow and propagate has not been ascertained, either in the negative or the affirmative. Signor di Gimbernat has discovered lately in the thermal waters of Baden and Ischia, a substance, similar to skin and flesh: he calls it zoogene; being a species of mineral animal matter. Future investigation will lead to some important results, in respect to the connection, which this substance has with other portions of the kingdom of Nature. Indeed, wonderful discoveries are yet in store for learned men; since potash has been discovered in gehlente, needle-stone, and datolite; all of which yield a transparent jelly, when acted upon by acids. Tournefort believed that minerals emanated from seeds, as plants do: and the Otaheitans once were so extravagant as to think, that rocks were male and female, and begat soil. Milton, in the range of his vivid imagination, imparts the sexual properties even to the particles of light . Globes, also, have been said to be animated bodies; whence have emanated planets and satellites, as stars issue out of rockets, when let off in a serene atmosphere. Upon this principle the sun itself is an animal. These ideas, however, must, for the present, be esteemed poetical. If minerals grow, they grow differently from plants ; as well as from all other organised bodies.

If Nature has her resemblances, she has also her anomalies. The naked eye can discern in truffles neither root, stem, leaves, flower, nor fruit. The osyris japonica b has flowers upon the middle of its leaves; club-moss has two kinds of seeds growing on the same plant; and the same has been supposed to be the case in the genera fucus and conferva. These are wonderful phenomena ! They were first observed by Dillenius; and their separate germinations were afterwards described by Brotero.

a P. L. b. viii. 1. 150.

b Thunberg, vol. iii. 161.