chines. When they catch their salmon they string them and suspend them, at first, in the river. The women are employed in preparing and curing these fish; for this purpose they appear to roast them first, and then suspend them on the poles that run along the beams of their houses, in which there are usually from three to five hearths, the heat and smoke from which contribute, no doubt, to their proper curing.

The salmon, indeed, frequents every sea, the arctic as well as the equatorial; it is found even in great lakes and inland seas, as the Caspian, into which it is even affirmed to make its way by a subterranean channel from the Persian Gulf-it goes as far south as New Holland and the Australian scas; but, it is said never to have been found in the Mediterranean, and appears to have been unknown to Aristotle. Pliny mentions it as a river fish, preferred to all marine ones by the inhabitants of Gaul. It traverses the whole length of the largest rivers. It reaches Bohemia by the Elbe, Switzerland by the Rhine, and the Cordilleras of America by the mighty Maragnon, or River of Amazons, whose course is more than three thousand miles. In temperate climates the salinon quits the sea early in the spring, when the waves are driven by a strong wind against the river currents. It enters the rivers of France in the beginning of the autumn, in September; and in Kamtschatka and North America still later. In some countries this is called the salmon wind. They rush into rivers that are freest from ice, or where they are carried by the highest tide, favoured by the wind; they prefer those streams that are most shaded. They leave the sea in numerous bands, formed with great regularity. The largest individual, which is usually a female, takes the lead, and is followed by others of the same sex, two and two, each pair being at the distance of from three to six feet from the preceding one; next come the old, and after them the young males in the same order.

The noise they make in their transit, heard from a distance, sounds like a far off storm. In the heat of the sun and in tempests, they keep near the bottom; at other times they swim a little below the surface. In fair weather they move slowly, sporting as they go at the surface, and wandering again and again from their direct route; but when alarmed they dart forward with such rapidity that the eye can scarcely follow them. They employ only three months in ascending to the sources of the Maragnon, the current of which is remarkably rapid, which is at the rate of nearly forty miles a day; in a smooth stream or lake, their progress would increase in a fourfold ratio. Their tail is a very powerful organ, and its mus

cles have wonderful energy; by placing it in their mouth they make of it a very elastic spring, for letting it go with violence they raise themselves in the air to the height of from twelve to fifteen feet, and so clear the cataract that impedes their course; if they fail in their first attempt, they continue their efforts till they have accomplished it. The female is stated to hollow out a long and deep excavation in the gravelly bed of the river to receive her spawn, and when deposited, to cover it up, but this admits of some doubt.

Amongst the migrations of fishes, I must not neglect those that take place in consequence of the water in the ponds or pools that they inhabit being dried up: some of these are very extraordinary, and prove that when the Creator gave being to these animals, he foresaw the circumstances in which they would be placed, and mercifully provided them with means of escape from dangers to which they were necessarily exposed.

In very dry summers, the fishes that inhabit the above situations, are reduced often to the last extremities, and endeavour to relieve themselves by plunging, first their heads, and afterwards their whole bodies into the mud to a considerable depth; and so, though many in such seasons perish, some are preserved till a rainy one again supplies them with the element so indispensable to their life. Carp, it is known, may be kept and fed a very long time in nets in a damp cellar, a faculty which fits them for retaining their vitality when they bury themselves at such a depth as to shelter them from the heat.

But others, when reduced to this extremity, desert their native pool, and travel in search of another that is better supplied with water. This has long been known of eels, which wind, by night, through the grass in search of water, when so circumstanced. Dr. Hancock, in the Zoological Journal, gives an account of a species of fish, called, by the Indians, the Flathead Hassar, and belonging to a genus of the family of the Siluridans, which is instructed by its Creator, when the pools, in which they commonly reside, in very dry seasons, lose their water, to take the resolution of marching by land in search of others in which the water is not evaporated. These fish grow to about the length of a foot, and travel in large droves with this view; they move by night, and their motion is said to be like that of the two-footed lizard.2 A strong serrated arm constitutes the first ray of its pectoral fin. Using this as a kind 2 Bipes.

1 Doras.

3 PLATE XII. Fig. 1. is a species of Callicthys, a fish of the same habits with the Boras. Fio. 2. is the pectoral ray of another Siluridan; which was dug up in a village near Barham, but which is not a fossil bone.

of foot, it should secm, they push themselves forwards, by means of their elastic tail, moving nearly as fast as a man will leisurely walk. The strong plates which envelop their body, probably facilitate their progress, in the same manner as those under the body of serpents, which in some degree perform the office of fect. It is affirmed by the Indians, that they are furnished with an internal supply of water sufficient for their journey, which seems confirmed by the circumstance that their bodies when taken out of the water, even if wiped dry with a cloth, become instantly moist again. Mr. Campbell, a friend of Dr. Hancock's, resident in Essequibo, once fell in with a drove of these animals, which were so numerous, that the Indians filled several baskets with them.

Another migrating fish was found by thousands in the ponds and all the fresh waters of Carolina, by Bosc; and as these pools are subject to be dry in summer, the Creator has furnished this fish, as well as one of the flying ones, by means of a membrane which closes its mouth, with the faculty of living out of water, and of travelling by leaps, to discover other pools. Bosc often amused himself with their motions when he had placed them on the ground, and he found that they always direct themselves towards the nearest water, which they could not possibly see, and which they must have discovered by some internal index; during their migrations they furnish food to numerous birds and reptiles. They belong to a genus of abdominal fishes, and are called swampines. It is evident from this statement that these fishes are both fitted by their Creator not only to exist, but also move along out of the water, and are directed by the instinct implanted by Him, to seek the nearest pool that contains that element; thus furnishing a strong proof of what are called compensating contrivances; neither of these fishes have legs, yet the one can walk and the other leap without them, by other means with which the Supreme Intelligence has endowed it. I may here observe that the serrated bone, or first ray of the pectoral fin, by the assistance of which the flat-head appears to move, is found in other Siluridans, which leads to a conjecture that these may sometimes also move upon land.

Another fish, found by Daldorff, in Tranquebar, not only creeps upon the shore, but even climbs the Fan palm in pursuit of certain Crustaceans which form its food. The structure of this fish peculiarly fits it for the exercise of this re

1 Exocælus.

3 Perca scandens.

2 Hydrargyra,
4 Borassus flabelliformis.

markable instinct. Its body is lubricated with slime which facilitates its progress over the bark, and amongst its chinks; its gill-covers are armed with numerous spines, by which, used as hands, it appears to suspend itself; turning its tail to the left, and standing as it were, on the little spines of its anal fin, it endeavours to push itself upwards by the expansion of its body, closing at the same time the gill-covers, that they may not prevent its progress; then expanding them again, it reaches a higher point; thus, and by bending the spiny rays of its dorsal fins to right and left, and fixing them in the bark, it continues its journey upwards. The dorsal and anal fins can be folded up and received into a cavity of the body.

How exactly does this structure fit it for this extraordinary instinct. These fins assist it in certain parts of its route, and, when not employed, can be packed up so as not to hinder its progress. The lobes of its gill-covers are so divided and armed as to be employed together or separately, as hands, for the suspension of the animal, till by fixing the dorsal and anal fins, it prepares itself to take another step; all showing the Supreme Intelligence and Almighty hand that had planned and fabricated its structure, causing so many organs each in its own way, to assist in promoting a common purpose. The fan-palm, in which this animal was taken by Daldorff, grew near the pool inhabited by these fishes. He makes no mention, however, of their object in these terrestrial excursions; but Dr. Virey observes that it is for the sake of small Crustaceans, on which they feed.

I shall name only one more animal that migrates for the great purpose of reproduction, and this is not the least interesting of them; and, though it does not furnish so large a supply of food to the countries it passes through, as the migratory fishes, still it is useful in that respect: the animal I allude to is the land-crab.

Several, indeed, of the crabs forsake the waters for a time, and return to them to cast their spawn; but the most celebrated of all that is known by the above appellation, and alluded to by Dr. Paley, under the name of the violet crab, and which is called by the French the tourlourou. These crabs are natives of the West Indies and South America. In May and June, when the rainy season takes place, their instinet impels them to seek the sea, that they may fulfil the great law of their Creator, and cast their spawn.

They descend the mountains, which are their usual abode, in such numbers, that the roads and woods are covered with

1 Gecarcinus carnifex.

them. They feel an impulse so to steer their course, that they may travel by the easiest descent, and arrive most readily at the sea, the great object at which they aim. They resemble a vast army marching in battle array, without breaking their ranks, following always a right line; they scale the houses, and surmount every other obstacle that lies in their way. They sometimes even get into the houses, making a noise like that of rats, and when they enter the gardens they commit great devastations, destroying all their produce with their claws. They are said to halt twice every day, and to travel chiefly in the night. Arrived at the sea-shore, they are there reported to bathe three or four different times; when retiring to the neighbouring plains, or woods, they repose for some time, and then the females return to the water, and commit their eggs to the waves. This business despatched, they endeavour to regain, in the same order, the country they had left, and by the same route, but only the most vigorous can reach the mountains. The greater part are so weak and lean, that they are forced to stop to recruit their strength in the first country they reach. When arrived again at their habitations, they have a new labour to undergo, for now is the time of their moult. They hide themselves in their subterranean retreats for this purpose, so that not a single one can be seen: they even stop up the mouth of their burrows. Some writers, however, affirm that they change their shells immediately after their oviposition.

The respiration of these land-crabs, for a long time, had puzzled comparative anatomists.-They could not explain how animals, breathing by gills, could subsist so long out of the water without these organs becoming useless. M. M. Audouin, however, and Milne Edwards, cleared up the mystery by the discovery of a kind of trough, formed by the folds which line and constitute the parietes of the branchial cavity, and destined to contain and preserve a certain quantity of water proper to moisten the gills. One species' has more than one pocket, or vesicle, filled with that fluid. This trough exists in the horsemen land-crabs, but it is smaller, and a spongy mass furnishes the requisite moisture. The gills of the land-crabs, in other respects, do not differ from those of the tribe in general. God, when he formed these animals, would not separate them from their kind by a different mode of respiration, but by this compensating contrivance he fitted them for the circumstances in which he decreed to place them, and for a long sojourn out of the water.

1 Gecarcinus Ucu

2 Ocypode.