thus, at last, it is brought within the action of the powerful beak of the cuttle-fish, which soon makes its way through its crust, and devours it shell and all. Even when at a distance, by means of its long arms, the cuttle-fish can lay hold of it and drag it towards it; and the poulpe, which has not these arms, makes up for it by having longer legs.

The argonaut probably uses similar means to master its prey, and finds some defence in its shell, but the nautilus has a still stronger castle, which it may be supposed defies the bite of the Crustacean; its oral organs are calculated for closer combat, but the tentacles appear less adapted for holding fast their prey, not being visibly furnished with suckers, but what they want in power is made up in numbers, since in lieu of eight or ten tentacular organs, they have nearly a hundred. So diversified are the ways and instruments by which infinite WISDOM, POWER, and GOODNESS enables its creatures to fulfil the ends for which he created them: and so an equilibrium is maintained in every part of creation.

The fossil species are mostly called by one name, Ammonites, as if they were the horns of the Egyptian Jupiter, and which, if any of them are now in existence, probably frequent the depths of ocean, and do not, like the argonaut or nautilus, visit its surface, to tell an admiring

world, that God has created such wonderful beings. Specimens have been found of the enormous diameter of six feet. Though the sculpture of many of these great cephalopods gives reason to think that they may be intermediate between the argonaut and nautilus, yet the convolutions and external form of their conchs gives them no small resemblance to a genus of snails,' the species of which are often found in fresh waters, except that in this the shell is more concave on one side than the other. The genus Spirula, the animal of which appears also to be a Cephalopod, seems to exhibit the first tendency to this form.

Amidst all this variety of Molluscous animals, exhibiting such diversity in their structure and organization, in their habits, food, modes of life, and stations, one great object seems attained by their creation especially, the production of calcareous matter. Even the shells of terrestrial testaceans, if we consider the vast numbers that every year perish, must add in no trifling degree to the quantity of that matter on the earth, and probably make up for the continual waste or employment of it, so as to maintain the necessary equilibrium; but in the ocean, the quantity added to that produced by corallines,

Planorbis.

2 PLATE VII. FIG. 2.

must be exceedingly great, even in lakes beds are formed of the deposits of the shell-fish inhabiting them, how much more gigantic must they be in the ocean, this will be evident from the superior number and size of the oceanic shells compared with the minute species, the Limnea, Planorbis, &c. that inhabit our lakes and pools. Thus, as reefs and islands are formed by the coral animals, the bed of the ocean may be elevated by the shells of dead testaceous ones. That eye which is never closed, that thought which is never intermitted, that power which never rests, but, engaged in incessant action, and employing infinite hosts of underagents to effect his purposes, sees and provides for the wants of the whole creation: the plant absorbs from the soil, the animal after devouring the plant, or the plant-fed creature, returns to the earth what the plant had absorbed, and so maintains the proper equilibrium ; He who numbers the hairs of our head, numbers the workmen that he employs, employing them only in such proportions so distributed, as may best accomplish His purposes.

318

CHAPTER XI.

Functions and Instincts. Worms.

We are now at length, after long wanderings, arrived, if I may so speak, at the limits of the Molluscan territory, and, having visited the capital, seem now to be upon the confines of the higher hemisphere of the animal kingdom, the inhabitants of which are distinguished by having their whole frame built upon a vertebral column, inclosing a medullary chord, and terminating, at its upper extremity, in a skull containing a developed brain.

But though we seem arrived at the confines of this higher order of animals, there are still many, and some superior to the most perfect of the Molluscans, in the entirety of their nervous system, and the habits and instincts which they manifest, to which we have not yet paid the attention that they merit. These animals are particularly distinguished from the preceding Classes, by the appearance, or actual existence of segments or joints in their bodies, especially in their legs, of what may be called an annular structure. They are divided into two great tribes, which, from this circumstance, have been

called Annelidans, and Annulosans, and the last, with more propriety, Condylopes.

There is one tribe, however, amongst the Radiaries, as we have seen, that shews some slight traces of insection, I allude to the star-fish and sea-urchins, forming the main body of Lamarck's Order of Echinoderms. If we examine the former, we find them marked out into areas, and in the latter, as I have before stated at large, the whole shell consists of numerous pieces united by different kinds of sutures.

Before I call the reader's attention to the two tribes lately mentioned, exhibiting the appearance or reality of insection, I must notice an anomalous tribe of animals, whose real station has not been satisfactorily made out. I am speaking of the Entozoa or Intestinal Worms. This Class, as Mr. W. S. Mac Leay has remarked, consists of animals differing widely in their organization, some having a regular nervous system formed by a medullary collar sending forth two threads, while others have no distinct organs of sense.

Lamarck places this Class between the Tunicaries and Insects, and Cuvier, amongst his Zoophytes, between the Gelatines and Echinoderms. Mr. Mac Leay has divided it into two classes, placing one, consisting of the Parenchymatous intestinal worms of Cuvier, between the Infusories and Polypes, and the Cavitaries of that