and fishes, as the owl, the finch of Hudson's Bay, the white-throat, the goat-sucker, the eel, the turtle, and the moth. With these we may associate those flowers which expand their blossoms during the evening and the night, as the Pomeridian pink, nocturnal catchfly, several species of moss, the nightshade of Peru, the nightingale flower of the Cape, the cereus grandiflorus, and the tree of melancholy, growing in the Moluccas; the numerous family of the confervæ, charas, many kinds of ranunculi, and almost every species of aquatic plant. The Trieste geranium, also (first brought into this country in 1632), has little or no scent in the middle of the day; but in the night it sheds an exquisite perfume.

Some insects form nests for their young; others have methods still more curious for their protection. The ichneumon fly deposits its eggs in the body of a caterpillar with the point of its sting. These become maggots, and feed upon the live body of the caterpillar that matured them. The sphinx genus of insects are less cruel ; for they deposit theirs only in spiders and caterpillars that are already dead. The ox-fly lays its eggs in the skins of oxen ; another species in the nostrils of sheep, and another upon the manes and hair of horses, which the horse, licking, takes into its stomach, where they become bots, and not unfrequently cause the horse's death. The chegoe of the West Indies lays its eggs even under the skin of men's legs, and unless the bag is removed a mortification frequently ensues.

Some animals bear resemblances to each other in having olfactory partialities, and antipathies. The olfactory power of reindeer is so great that they can ascertain where

the lichen rangiferinus lies buried under the snow. When they come to a spot where it is concealed they smell it and dig for it. The Polar bear has a great antipathy to the smell of burnt feathers. Several ostriches lay eggs in one nest; if they are touched by any one they discover it on their return by the smell; they break the eggs, and never again lay in the same nest. Even insects enjoy the Bees and flies love the perfume of flowers; ants hate cajeput oil, and cockroaches hate camphor.

olfactory sense.

Some animals are peculiarly sensitive to particular sounds; horses become animated at the sound of trumpets, and at the cry of dogs in the chase. Elephants delight in music; the camel when fatigued with a long journey over the deserts will revive in an instant if its master sing loudly, or play upon any musical instrument. Bees are soothed by timbrels, and mullets are attracted to the hooks of the African negroes by clappers, which the waves knock against pieces of wood, to which they are attached. The chamois, bounding among the snowy mountains of the Caucasus, are indebted for their safety, in some degree, to a peculiar species of pheasant. This bird acts as their sentinel; for as soon as it gets sight of a man, it whistles, upon hearing which the chamois, knowing that the hunter is not far distant, sets off with the greatest speed, and seeks the highest precipices or the deepest recesses of the mountains.

In the menagerie of the Jardin des Plantes, at Paris, was a crane, which Mons. Valentin brought from Senegal. This bird was attended by that merchant during the

voyage with the most assiduous care, but, upon landing in France, it was sold or given to the Museum of Natural History. Several months after its introduction, Valentin, arriving at Paris, went to the menagerie, and walked up to the cage in which the bird was confined. The crane instantly recognized him, and when Valentin went into its cage, lavished upon him every mark of affectionate attachment. That animals possess parental and filial affections, friendly dispositions, and generous sympathies, is known even to superficial observers. The artifices which partridges and plovers employ to draw their enemies from the nests of their young are equally known. The hind, when she hears the sound of dogs, puts herself in the way of her hunters; and, choosing her ground, takes an opposite direction to that in which she left her fawns. The love of this animal, too, for its native haunts, is not unfrequently exemplified. A farmer at Mount Vernon, in the state of Kentucky, having domesticated a female deer, lost her during the whole spring and summer. After an absence of several months, however, she returned with a young fawn by her side, and on her arrival seemed to take great pleasure in showing her young.

Grief, too, works in a lively manner upon animals. Lord Kaims relates an instance of a canary which in singing to his mate, hatching her eggs in a cage, fell dead. The female quitted her nest, and, finding him dead, rejected all food, and died by his side. Homer was not so extravagant as some may be inclined to esteem him, when he makes the proud horses of the proud Achilles weep for the loss of their master; for horses can regret, and their countenances frequently exhibit evident marks

of melancholy. The seal weeps and the turtle mourns Democritus contended that men learned music and architecture from birds, and weaving from spiders. The hippopotamus is said to have taught the art of bleeding; goats the uses of dittany; snakes the properties of fennel, and the ibis the use of clysters. The wild hog of the West Indies when wounded repairs to the balsam-tree, and, rubbing itself till the turpentine exudes, soon cures itself. To this animal therefore the natives esteem themselves indebted for a knowledge of the healing powers of balsam.

Animals have many of their faculties superior to men. Birds, in general, have a quicker sight; dogs, camels, and storks a livelier scent, and fishes a more acute sense 'of touch, though some blind men are said to have the faculty of feeling colors. Frogs and bees perceive the approach of rain long before it comes. The bee has also a very peculiar instinct, in returning from the distance of several miles to its own hive, though it can see only three inches before it. And the nautilus, too, it is said, will quit its shell in the deep and return to it again.

CHAPTER XV.

The

66

Old Ruin, and what it said to me."

S the Abbey of Tintern is the most beautiful and picturesque of all our gothic monuments, so is its situation one of the most delightful. One more abounding in that kind of scenery which excites the mingled feelings of content, religion, and enthusiasm it is impossible to conceive. Every arch seems to infuse a solemnity and a power, as it were, into inanimate nature; a sublime and hoary silence seems to reign around; the very atmosphere seems laden with the dust of former ages, and its murmurings seem but as the sighs of antiquity. To sit among its broken columns and behold its mutilated fragments, its arches and pillars decorated with festoons of ivy, is to have melt into the soul that calm sense of pure and passionless tranquillity which is the perfection of every earthly wish.

The valley in which Tintern Abbey is situated, like that of Cwm Dyr, answers to the idea of what Milton calls a "bosky bourn," meaning, as Wharton justly describes, a narrow, deep, and woody valley, with a river, or rivulet, winding in the midst.