bited by the animals of this Order, which might be selected, I must confine myself to one or two of the most singular. The hare is only noticed for its extreme timidity and watchfulness, and the rabbit for the burrows which it excavates for its own habitation, and as a nest for its young, but there is an animal related to them, the rat-hare,1 which is gifted by its Creator with a very singular instinct, on account of which it ought rather to be called the hay-maker, since man may or might have learned that part of the business of the agriculturist, which consists in providing a store of winter provender for his cattle, from this industrious animal. Professor Pallas was the first who described the quadruped exercising this remarkable function and gave an account of it. The Tungusians, who inhabit the country beyond the Lake of Baikal, call it Pika, which has been adopted as its Trivial name.

These animals make their abode between the rocks, and during the summer employ themselves in making hay for a winter store. Inhabiting the most northern districts of the old world, the chain of Altaic mountains, extending from Siberia to the confines of Asia and Kamtschatka, they never appear in the plains, or in places exposed to observation; but always select the rudest and most elevated spots, and often the centre of the most gloomy, and at the same time humid forests, where the herbage is fresh and abundant. They generally hollow out their burrows between the stones and in the clefts of the rocks, and sometimes in the holes of trees. Sometimes they live in solitude and sometimes in small societies, according to the nature of the mountains they inhabit.

About the middle of the month of August these little animals collect with admirable precaution their winter's provender, which is formed of select herbs, which they bring near their habitation and spread out to dry like hay. In September, they form heaps or stacks of the fodder they have collected under the rocks or in other places sheltered from the rain or snow. Where many of them have laboured together their stacks are sometimes as high as a man, and more than eight feet in diameter. A subterranean gallery leads from the burrow, below the mass of hay, so that neither frost nor snow can intercept their communication with it. Pallas had the patience to examine their provision of hay piece by piece, and found it to consist chiefly of the choicest grasses, and the sweetest herbs,

1 Lagomys.

2 Mr. Daines Barrington presented to the Royal Society an animal resem. bling the Pika found in Scotland, but probably a different species.

all cut when most vigorous, and dried so slowly as to form a green and succulent fodder; he found in it scarcely any ears, or blossoms, or hard and woody stems, but some mixture of bitter herbs, probably useful to render the rest more wholesome. These stacks of excellent forage are sought out by the sablehunters to feed their harassed horses, and the (Jakutes) natives of that part of Siberia, pilfer them, if I may so call it, for the subsistence of their cattle. Instead of imitating the foresight and industry of the Pika, they rob it of its means of support, and so devote the animals that set them so good an example to famine and death. How much better would it be if instead of robbing and starving these interesting animals, they learned from them to provide in the proper season a supply of hay for the winter provender of their horses.

But no animals in this, or indeed any other Order of Mammalians, are so admirable for their instincts and their results as the beavers.

1 have more than once alluded to some proceedings of these, seemingly, half-reasoning animals, and shall now as briefly as possible give some account of those fabrics in which their wonderful instinct is principally manifested. There are two writers who had great opportunities of gaining information. concerning them; Samuel Hearne, during his journey to the Northern Ocean, in the years 1769, 1770, 1771, and 1772; and Captain Cartwright, who resided nearly sixteen years on the coast of Labrador. To them I am principally indebted for the particulars of the history here given.

From the breaking up of the frost to the fall of the leaf, the beavers desert their lodges, and roam about unhoused, and unoccupied by their usual labours, except that they have the foresight to begin felling their timber early in the summer. They set about building some time in the month of August. Those that erect their habitations in small rivers or creeks, in which the water is liable to be drained off, with wonderful sagacity provide against that evil by forming a dike across the stream, almost straight where the current is weak, but where it is more rapid, curving more or less, with the convex side opposed to the stream. They construct these dikes or dams of the same materials as they do their lodges, namely, of pieces of wood of any kind, of stones, mud, and sand. These causeways oppose a sufficient barrier to the force, both of water and ice; and as the willows, poplars, &c. employed in constructing them, often strike root in it, it becomes in time a green hedge,

1 N. D. D'H, N. xxvi, 407-410.

in which the birds build their nests. Cartwright says that he occasionally used them as bridges, but as they are level with the water, not without wetting his feet. By means of these erections the water is kept at a sufficient height, for it is absolutely necessary that there should be at least three feet of water above the extremity of the entry into their lodges, without which in the hard frosts, it would be entirely closed. This entry is not on the land side, because such an opening might let in the wolverene, and other fierce beasts, but towards the water. Cuvier in his table above alluded to, assigns only four pectoral teats to the female beaver; but Dr. Richardson states that she has eight, and the maximum of her young ones at eight or nine. The number inhabiting one lodge seldom exceeds four old and six or eight young ones; the size of their houses, therefore, is regulated by the number of the family. Though built of the same materials, they are of much ruder structure than their causeways, and the only object of their erection appears to be a dry apartment to repose in, and where they can eat the food they occasionally get out of the water. It frequently happens, says Hearne, that some of the large houses have one or more partitions, but these are merely part of the building left to support the roof. He had seen one beaver lodge that had nearly a dozen apartments under the same roof, and, two or three excepted, none had any communication but by water. Cartwright says, that when they build, their first step is to make choice of a natural basin, of a certain depth, near the bank where there is no rock; they then begin to excavate under water, at the base of the bank, which they enlarge upwards gradually, so as to form a declivity, till they reach the surface; and of the earth which comes out of this cavity they form a hillock, with which they mix small pieces of wood, and even stones: they give this hillock the form of a dome, from four to seven feet high, from ten to twelve long, and from eight to nine wide. As they proceed in heightening, they hollow it out below, so as to form the lodge which is to receive the family. At the anterior part of this dwelling, they form a gentle declivity terminating at the water: so that they enter and go out under water. The hunters name this entrance the angle. The interior forms only a single chamber resembling an oven. At a little distance is the magazine for provisions. Here they keep in store the roots of the yel low water-lily, and the branches of the black spruce,' the

1 See above, p. 442,

3 Abies nigra,

2 Fn, Boreal, A:ner, i. p. 107,

2

aspin,1 and birch, which they are careful to plant in the mud. These form their subsistence. Their magazines sometimes contain a cart-load of these articles; and the beavers are so industrious, that they are always adding to their store.

There is a species of beaver found in the great rivers in Europe-the Danube, the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Weser,which has been regarded as synonymous with the beaver of Canada, but which, though it forms burrows or holes in the banks of those rivers which it frequents, does not, like them, erect any lodges, as above described. Does this instinct sleep in them, and require a certain degree of cold to awaken it, or are they a distinct species? Linné mentions one in Lapland, where the cold is sufficiently intense. Cuvier seems uncertain whether they ought to be considered as distinct. Beavers seem formerly to have existed in England; the town of Beverley, (Beaver-field,) in Yorkshire, seems to have taken its name from them, and its arms are three beavers.

Such are the principal operations that these wonderful animals, probably by the mixture of intellect with instinct, are instructed and adapted by their Creator to execute, that man, by studying them and their ways, may acknowledge the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness, that formed and guides them.

The functions of the numerous tribes of this Order are various. The great majority may be said to be granivorous, or nucivorous, or even graminivorous; but many live upon dried vegetable substances, and wood. The aye aye, which approaches the Quadrumanes, appears to be insectivorous. Though many of them are great plagues to man, yet, by exciting his vigilance, they are useful to him, and they form the food of many of the lesser predaceous animals.

out.

Order 6.-The connection between the animals of which this Order consists, and the Rodents, seems not easily made The lowest tribe, the Amphibians, which Cuvier has placed immediately before the Marsupians, appears to have no connection with that Order, or any of the Rodents; and the morse, which forms his last genus of the tribe in question, appears evidently to look more towards the herbivorous cetaceans, the manatee, &c., than to any other animals; the seals, indeed, may be regarded as tending towards the feline tribe. Amongst the other Predaceans, the hedgehog and tenrec present, I apprehend, something more than an analogy to the

3

1 Populus tremula.

2 Betula alba.

3 Cheiromys.

porcupines and some of the rats. The bear seems to look to wards the sloth: and the feline race, in their whiskers and feet, look to the hares and rats.

The general functions of this Order are to check the tendency to increase not only in their own Class, the Mammalians, but in most of the other Classes of animals, more particularly those which man has taken into alliance with him, as cattle, and poultry, and game of every description. But where his action is greatest, theirs is usually least; and the most powerful devastators of the animal kingdom, the lions and the tigers, are found in the warmest climates, where nature is most prolific, and where man has not fully established his dominion, in the trackless and burning deserts of Libya, and in the impenetrable forests and jungles of India.

In more northern regions, the bears, the foxes, and other Mammalians, are employed in this department, though the former also eat roots and other vegetable substances,1 and thus in the wild countries of the north supply the place of man, and keep the animal population under, and at a certain level, so that one may not encroach upon another. If the matter is closely investigated, we shall find that God has distributed and divided these predaceous animals to every country, in measure and momentum, as every one had need.

The necrophagous Mammalians also, or those that devour dead carcasses, such as the hyænas, dogs, and similar animals, are equally useful in removing infectious substances, which in hot climates soon generate disease, and are always disgusting objects, and exercise a very important and beneficial function, devolved upon them by their Creator; for if all the animals exercising this function were removed from the earth, it would soon be depopulated, and a universal pestilence would destroy man, and all his subject animals.

Order 7.-The animals of this Order, though evidently leading towards the Quadrumanes, seems less nearly connected with the insectivorous Predaceans of Cuvier, the hedgehog, mole, &c., and to approach nearer to some Marsupians, as the flying squirrel and the flying opossum. I therefore consider them as forming an Osculant Order, distinguished by their powers and organs of flight, before sufficiently noticed. They are nocturnal animals, and live entirely upon insects. In the winter, they become torpid, and suspend themselves by the

1 Fn. Boreal. Americ. i. 15, 23, 28,

3 See above, p. 272.

2 Carnivora. Cur.