water, are the gills and the air-bladder. The gills, placed on each side of the neck, are the organs by which they breathe. In this operation they fill their mouth with water, which they throw backward with so much force as to lift open the great flap, and force the water out behind; and in the passage of this water, all or at least the greater part of the air contained in it is left behind, and carried into the body to perform its part in the animal economy. The air-bladder, which lies in the abdomen, along the course of the backbone, enables them to increase or diminish their specific gravity, and thus sink or rise in the water. If they want to sink, they compress this bladder by means of their abdominal muscles; so that the bulk of their body is diminished. If they want to rise, they relax the pressure of the muscles, the air-bladder again acquires its natural size, the body is rendered more bulky, and they ascend towards the surface. Some fishes are destitute of air-bladders; but this is because they do not need any,—their habitat being at the bottom of the water.

Insects are so denominated from their bodies appearing as if they were intersected or cut into pieces. They have three principal parts-the head, the thorax, and the abdomen; and they have also legs, wings, eyes, and antennae or instruments of touch.

Some insects proceed in nearly a perfect state from the egg; but the greater number undergo a metamorphosis at three different periods of their existence. From the eggs they come forth as larvae, grubs, or caterpillars. These consist of a long body, covered with a soft, tender skin, divided into segments or rings. In this larva state some of them remain for many months; and in this state they are, in general, exceedingly voracious, oftentimes devouring more than their own weight in the course of a day. As soon as their parts become perfected, they fix upon some convenient place for undergoing the change into what is called pupa, aurelia, or chrysalis. Some of them spin webs or cocoons, in which they enclose themselves; others wrap themselves up in leaves of vegetables; and many conceal themselves beneath

the surface of the earth. Preparatory to the transformation, they cease to take any food; and when the change is at hand, many of them may be observed alternately extending and contracting their bodies, as if disengaging themselves from the caterpillar skin.

main for some time

apparently

inani

In their chrysalid state they re

mate, though actu

ally in possession of

life; and as soon as they have acquired strength sufficient to break the bonds that surround them, they

exert their power, and appear in their imago or perfect state. For a little time they continue humid and weak; but as the humidity evaporates, their wings and shell become hardened, and they soon afterwards commit themselves with safety to their new element.

"How surprising," says Messrs Kirby and Spence, "are the metamorphoses of the insect world! That butterfly, which amuses you with its aërial excursions, did not come into the world as you now behold it. At its first exclusion from the egg, and for some months afterwards, it was a worm-like caterpillar, crawling upon sixteen short legs, greedily devouring leaves with two jaws, and seeing by means of twelve eyes so minute as to be nearly inperceptible. You view it now furnished with wings capable of rapid and extensive flights; of its sixteen feet, ten have disappeared, and the remaining six are wholly unlike those to which they have succeeded; its jaws have vanished, and are replaced by a curled-up proboscis suited only for sipping liquid sweets; the form of its head is entirely changed; two long horns project from its upper surface; and instead of twelve invisible eyes, you behold two, very large, and composed of at least 20,000 convex lenses, each supposed to be a distinct and effective eye. Dissect the animal, and you will witness changes still more extraordinary. Nearly the whole body of the caterpillar was occupied by a capacious

M

stomach; the butterfly has only an almost imperceptible thread-like viscus, while the abdomen is now filled by two large packets of eggs. In the former, two spirally-convoluted tubes were filled with a silky gum; in the latter, both tubes and silk have almost totally vanished. What a surprising transformation! Nor is this all. The change from one form to another was not direct: a state not less singular intervened. After casting its skin, even to its very jaws, several times, and attaining its full growth, the caterpillar attached itself to a leaf by a silken girth. Its body greatly contracted, its skin once more split asunder, and disclosed an oviform mass, without exterior mouth, eyes, or limbs, and exhibiting no other symptom of life than a slight motion when touched. In this state of torpor the insect existed for many months, until at length the tomb burst; and out of a case not more than an inch long, and a quarter of an inch in diameter, proceeded the butterfly before you, which covers a surface of nearly four inches square.”

The same authors have drawn a beautiful analogy between the different states of insects and those of the human soul. The butterfly-the representative of the soul-is prepared in the larva for its future state of glory; and if it be not destroyed by the ichneumons and other enemies to which it is exposed,―symbolical of the sins which destroy the spiritual life of the soul,-it will come to its state of repose in the aurelia, which is its Hades; and at length, when it assumes the imago, which is its heavenly existence, break forth with new power and beauty to its final glory. Compiled.

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

OUR modern English is a composite tongue, formed by the intermixture of the languages of the various races that have successively inhabited the British Isles.

Britain appears to have been first peopled by the Celts, Cymry, or Britons, as they are variously styled; and the aboriginal language was consequently the Celtic, of which at least two dialects were in use-the Cymriac and the

Gaelic. This continued to be the national language until the invasion of Britain by the Romans under Julius Cæsar, when many of the ancient inhabitants were driven from the southern and central parts of the island to the fastnesses of the mountains in the west and north. To these mountain retreats the Celts carried their ancient tongue; and to this day their descendants in Wales and in the Highlands of Scotland still speak either Cymriac or Gaelic in comparative purity. On our modern speech, the aboriginal Celtic has exerted but slight influence. The names of places, indeed, all over Britain, are still to a great extent Celtic-having passed down almost unchanged from the time of the ancient Britons. But with this exception, there are few Celtic words in our modern English; and even those few-such as cairn, cromlech, clan—are mostly of recent transplantation.

During the long occupation of Britain by the Romansan occupation which extended from 60 B.c. to A.d. 410— it might have been expected that the Latin tongue would have displaced or at least have greatly modified the aboriginal Celtic and doubtless, had the Romans established themselves permanently in the island, and freely intermixed with the natives, the result would have been a race and language very different from what we now find in this country. In process of time there would have arisen a mixed population, combining the blood and qualities of both Roman and Celt; · and the language of this creole race would have resembled the French or the Spanish; that is, it would have been a language similar to what are called the Romanz languages, all of which have sprung from the efforts of a rude Celtic or Gaulish nation to speak the Latin. But such a species of corrupt Latinity was not destined to become the language of Englishmen. The Romans removed from our island without leaving behind them almost any trace of their noble tongue; and though it be true that a very large portion of modern English is derived from the Latin, yet this element of our speech has not descended to us as a legacy from our Roman invaders, but is an importation of much later date.

Soon after the departure of the Romans, Britain was sub

jugated by two kindred tribes from the shores of the Baltic. These were the Angles and Saxons-Angles being probably the general name of the race or stock, of which the Saxons were only a branch. With this new race came a new language; and as this new race came not as mere sojourners like the Romans, but as permanent settlers, so their language soon displaced every other in at least the lowlands of the country, to which they gave the new name of Angle-land or Engle-land. The Anglo-Saxon tongue, thus introduced. into Britain, belonged to the Gothic or Teutonic class of languages; and in its written form (of its spoken form we know nothing) it exhibited no small complexity of grammatical structure. It possessed its declensions, its cases, its numbers, and in particular its genders of nouns and adjectives, indicated by terminations as in Latin and Greek. To this fact the fragments of Anglo-Saxon literature which are still extant bear incontestable witness; and had the AngloSaxons continued to rule England, it is not improbable that our modern English, instead of being nearly uninflected and full of prepositions, would have been as regular in its forms, and as elaborate in its inflectional apparatus, as the Latin or the Greek. But the tongue of our Teutonic ancestors was not to retain its complex grammatical structure. After four centuries of undisputed possession of the country, the AngloSaxon social system began to decay, and the language to degenerate. The reign of Ethelred the Unready, which commenced in the year 975, was a succession of national calamities. A quarter of a century of subjection to the Danish invaders followed. The feeble reign of Edward the Confessor only served to make bad worse; and at last the conquest of England by the Normans gave the finishing stroke to Anglo-Saxondom, by subjecting almost all ranks and classes of the population to the yoke of slavery. When the political and social system of a nation is broken up-when the class possessing leisure and wealth and learning is reduced to poverty and subjection—when schools are closed, and the juvenile population left to grow up without any opportunity of learning to read and write their native tongue -it is impossible that the national language, especially if it