For what are poor reasonable creatures to do, when instinct leads them to the "old gentleman," and reason, let her tug as hard as she pleases, is not sufficiently powerful to overcome the adverse force. After all, I don't think that I have come to a very satisfactory conclusion. Like a puppy running round after his own tail, I am just where I was when I set out; but, like the puppy, I have been amused for the time. I only hope the reader will have been so too. And now, my brethren, I proceed to the second part of my discourse, which is, to defend anglers and fly-fishers from the charge of cruelty. It is very true that Shakspeare says, "The poor beetle that we tread on, in mortal sufferance, feels a pang as great as when a giant dies;" and it is equally true that it is as false as it is poetical. There is a scale throughout nature, and that scale has been divided by unerring justice. Man is at the summit of this scale, being more fearfully and wonderfully made, more perfect than any other of the creation, more perfect in his form, more perfect in his intellect; he is finer strung in his nerves, acuter in his sympathies; he has more susceptibility to pleasure, more susceptibility to pain. He has pleasures denied to, and he has pains not shared with him by, the rest of the creation. He enjoys most, and he suffers most. From man the scale of creation descends, and in its descent, as animals are less and less perfect, so is meted out equal but smaller proportions of pleasure and pain, until we arrive to the Mollusca and Zoophyte, beings existing certainly, but existing without pleasure and without pain-existing only to fill up the endless variety, and add the links to the chain of nature necessary to render it complete. The question which naturally will be put is, "How do you know this? it is assertion, but not proof." But arguments are always commenced in this way. The assertion is the quid, the est demonstrandum, always comes afterwards. I handle my nose, flourish my handkerchief, and proceed. Man is the most perfect of creation. What part of his body, if separated from the rest, can he renew? No part, except the hair and the nail. Reproduction can go no further. With the higher classes of animals also there is no reproduction, but even at this slight descent upon the scale, we may already point out a great difference. Although there is no reproduction, still there are decided proofs of inferiority; for instance, a hare or rabbit caught in a trap, will struggle till they escape, with the loss of a leg-a fox, which is carnivorous, will do more, he will gnaw off his own leg to escape. Do they die in consequence? no, they live and do well; but could a man live under such circumstances? impossible. And yet the conformation of the mammalia is not very dissimilar from our own; but man is the more perfect creature, and therefore has not the same resources. I have hitherto referred only to the limbs of animals; I will now go further. I had a beautiful little monkey on board my ship. By accident it was crushed, and received such injury that the back-bone was divided at the loins, and the vertebra of the upper part protruded an inch outside of its skin. Such an accident in a man would have produced immediate death, but the monkey did not die : its lower limbs were of course paralysed. The vertebra which protruded, gradually rotted off, and in six weeks the animal was crawling about the decks with its fore feet. It was however such a pitiable object, that I ordered it to be drowned. Now, if we descend lower down in the scale until we come to the reptiles and insects, we shall find not only that the loss of limbs is not attended with death, but that the members are reproduced. Let any one take a spider by its legs, it will leave them in your hands that it may escape. Confine the animal under a glass, and in a few weeks it will have all its members perfect as before. Lizards are still more peculiar in their reproduction. I was at Madeira for many months, and often caught the lizards which played about the walls and roofs of the out-houses, and if ever I caught a lizard by the tail, he would make a spring and leave his tail in my hand, which seemed to snap off as easily as would a small carrot. Now the tail of the lizard is longer than its body, and a continuation of the vertebræ of the back. I soon found out that lizards did not die from this extensive loss, but on the contrary, that their tails grew again. Even the first week afterwards a little end began to show itself, and in about two months the animal had reproduced the whole. What I am about to say now will probably be considered by some as incredible, they are however at full liberty to disbelieve it. One day I was looking out of the window with the late Tom Sheridan, who lived in the same house, and we observed on the roof of the outhouse a lizard with two tails, but neither of them full grown, and we argued that at the time the animal lost his tail he must have suffered some division of the stump. Being at that time a naturalist, i. e., very cruel, I immediately caught a lizard, pulled off his tail, notched the vertebra, and turned him loose again. Our conjectures were right; the animal in two or three weeks had two tails growing out like the one we had seen. I repeated this experiment several times, and it always appeared to succeed, and all the two-tailed lizards were called mine. Now this power of reproduction increases as you descend the scale; as an instance, take the polypus, which is as near as possible at the bottom of it. If you cut a polypus into twenty pieces without any regard to division, in a short time you will have twenty perfect polypi. Now the deductions I would draw from these remarks are That the most perfect animals are least capable of reproduction and most sensible of pain, That as the scale of nature descends, animals become less perfect and more capable of reproduction. Ergo-they cannot possibly feel the same pain as the more perfect. Now, with respect to fish, they are very inferior in the scale of creation, being, with the exception of the cetaceous tribe, which class with the mammalia, all cold-blooded animals and much less perfect than reptiles or many insects. The nervous system is the real seat of all pain, and the more perfect the animal, the more complicated is that system with cold-blooded animals the nervous organization is next to nothing. Most fish, if they disengage themselves from the hook, will take the bait again, and if they do not, it is not on account of the pain, but because their instinct tells them there is danger. Moreover, it is very true, as Sir H. Davy observes, that fish are not killed by : the hook, but by the hooks closing their mouths and producing suffocation. How, indeed, would it otherwise be possible to land a salmon of thirty pounds weight in all its strength and vigour with a piece of gut not thicker than three or four hairs. Upon the same grounds that I argue that fish feel little comparative pain, so do I that the worm, which is so low in the scale of creation, does not suffer as supposed. Its writhings and twistings on the hook are efforts to escape natural to the form of the animal, and can be considered as little or nothing more. At the same time, I acknowledge and indeed prove by my own arguments, that it is very cruel to bob for whale. To suppose there are no gradations of feeling as well as perfection in the animal kingdom, would not only be arguing against all analogy, but against the justice and mercy of the Almighty, who does not allow a sparrow to fall to the earth without his knowledge. He gave all living things for our use and our sustenance; he gave us intellect to enable us to capture them: to suppose, therefore, at the same time that he endowed them with so fine a nervous organization as to make them undergo severe tortures previous to death, is supposing what is contrary to that goodness and mercy which, as shown towards us, we are ready to acknowledge and adore. I cannot finish this subject without making a remark upon creation and its perfectibility. All respectable animals, from man down to a certain point of the scale, have their lice or parasites to feed upon them. Some wit, to exemplify this preying upon one another, wrote the following: "Great fleas have little fleas, And less fleas to bite them, This however is not strictly true. Parasites attach themselves only to the great. Upon those they can fatten. Having your blood sucked is, therefore, a great proof of high heraldry and perfectibility in the scale of creation. If animals were endowed with speech and pride like man, we might imagine one creature boasting to another, as a proof of his importance, "And I, too, also have my louse !!" (To be continued.) Oct. 1835.-VOL. XIV.NO. LIV. M THE STATISTICS OF THE GERMAN CONFEDERATION. (Corrected up to the present Month.) BY DR. C. M. FRIEDLAENDER, membre CORRESPONDANT DE L'INSTITUT HISTORIQUE DE FRANCE, ETC.* THE German Confederation, formed with the design of curbing those aspirations for liberty, which are so natural to the inhabitants over whom it dominates, as well as to create a barrier against French propagandism and French conquest, comprehends the following States, of which fifty-four have a monarchical, and four a republican, form of government, as indicated by the Federal Act. The first session of the legislative body of the German Confederation took place on the 5th of November, 1816. The principal object of this meeting was to guarantee to Germany external and internal security, and mutually to protect the independence and inviolability of the States. The extent of its power was fixed by the final act of the Congress of Vienna, dated 15th of May, 1820. The meetings of the Germanic Confederation are constituted under a double form, Firstly. As a general re-union (Conseil Complet, Consilium Plenum, General Council,) in the which each member votes with the number of suffrages that we shall hereafter designate. The General Council must consist of sixty-nine votes, two-thirds of which form a majority that binds the whole. Secondly. As a federal council (Consilium Restrictum.) In this meeting the totality of the votes are reduced to seventeen, thus apportioned. Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, Wurtemberg, Baden, Electoral Hesse, Hesse Darmstadt, Holstein, and Luxemburg, each of which has a suffrage. The other six are thus obtained. One for the Grand Duchy of Saxe Weimar, and the three Saxon duchies; one for Brunswick and Nassau; one for Mecklenbourg Schwerin, and Strelitz; one for Oldenbourg, the three duchies of Anhalt, and the two principalities of Schwarzbourg, one for the principalities of Hohenzollern, Lichtenstein, Reuss, Lippe, and Waldeck, and one for the four free towns. The federal, as a limited council, opens the sessions, and occupies itself with the initiative of propositions for the Conseil Complet; but this Consilium Plenum never discusses, but votes simply and unconditionally, by aye or no. The discussions which previously take place in the limited council, with seventeen votes, are always decisive, as the Great States form a Author of Der Abfall der Neiderlande, eine natürliche Folge nach den Beschlüffen der Wiener Congress-Acte. Hamburgh, 1833.-Polemische Schirften über diè Belgische Revolution. Paris, Guillaumin, 1834.-Aperçu Historique des Finances Néerlandaises, traduit de l'Allemand. Brussells, Meline, 1835, etc. etc. complete majority of eleven against six, and thus the Consilium Plenum is but a kind of court ceremony. As a proof of this, let any sensible man reflect on the despicable situation of the little princes, who appear there but as the executors of the sovereign wills of Austria and Prussia. A majority of votes determine; nine votes are necessary and sufficient. Austria presides in both councils, and decides whenever the votes are equal. The Germanic Confederation does not interfere with the different States, only when there is some great abuse, and in order to uphold their respective institutions, or when public order appears to be threatened. Then, and upon the demand of the governing authority, the Confederation interferes for the re-establishment of the rights of sovereignty. The Confederated States are established to adjust, by pacific means, and without the intervention of an armed force, all the differences that may arise among them. The envoys are governed by those sending them, and by their prescribed regulations; but, in unforeseen cases, they may vote without previously referring to their sovereigns, upon innate conviction, and the dictates of their consciences. All the forces of the federal army are divided into ten corps, and comprise a total of 301,637 men, thus classified :— And 612 field-pieces, divided into seventy-six batteries. The fortresses of the Confederation are, Mayence, Luxembourg, and Landau. The Germanic Confederation consists of thirty-eight States, which we shall recapitulate in their federal order. 1. The EMPIRE OF AUSTRIA, comprising Throughout this article, German miles are spoken of, four being equal to one English geographical mile. The German mile is equal to 4 miles 760 yards English. |