390 Reflections on some Mineralogical Systems, 



hlue and lighter than sapphire ; but harder, more brilliant, 

 bluer and heavier than alumina of Halle. Ii will represent 

 to us what should be understood by a passage from alu- 

 mina of Halle to sapphire. It is in this manner that 

 they have given a very great number of passages ; too 

 great, indeed, to cite them. Let us take some analogous 

 cases in another kingdom. 



A great naturalist has told us that the paw of a bat brings 

 it near to man; and that every one may see the organ of 

 flight, which merits it a place among birds. Here then is 

 a passage from a bird to man. But what is meant by 

 that? Is it understood that nature, having succeeded in 

 making a bird, conceived the project of forming a more 

 perfect being, but that her first essay produced nothing 

 better than the image of a hand and a horrible grimace ? Or, 

 is it pretended that, if in the metempsychosis/ the lord of 

 the earth should become a bird, he must pass under the 

 form of this hideous animal ? 



Of all that we can consider as passage, there is nothing; 

 so marked as an animal engendered between two indivi- 

 duals of different species. Such is the mule ; every mem- 

 ber of which participates in the qua! 1 lies of one or other 

 of its parents. In the capital of the beautiful kingdom 

 of Valencia I learned the following facts from eye-wit- 

 nesses. A silk weaver kept a stallion and a mule in the 

 same stable. One night in winter the mule was taken ill, 

 rolled on the ground, and appeared ready to die. At 

 last it brought forth a foal, so well formed that the finest 

 marecould not have produced^ better. The stallion and 

 mule were left together during eight years, in whieh 

 time the latter brought forth five male and two female 

 foals*. Now the mule was half horse half ass; its off- 

 spring were half horse half mule. But, will it be said 

 that the latter, which were perfect horses, contained a 

 portion of the ass, which portion of ass might have 

 passed by the mule to become horse ? Most assuredly 

 no sensible person will say so. Nature has not instituted 

 the mule species ; and when in successive generations all 

 traces of the ass are effaced in the foals of the mule, 



* A9 this fact has been questioned by some French theorists, from the 

 forced and miniature experiments of BufFon, it is not foreign to the pre- 

 sent subject to say that the writer of this note has also heard it from unim- 

 peachable eye-witnesses who were well acquainted with the whole circum- 

 stances, and that he knew a gentleman, an amateur mineralogist in Valen- 

 cia, who found one of the offspring of the mule the most serviceable horse 

 that he ever possessed. — Trans. 



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