HABITS OF ANIMALS. 89 



been thoroughly investigated, but because so much fewer 

 still have been watched during their earlier periods of life, 

 when their faculties are first developing ; and yet how 

 attractive and instructive tin's growing age is in every 

 living being ! Who, for instance, could believe for a mo- 

 ment longer that the habits of animals are in any degree 

 determined by the circumstances under which they live, 

 after having seen a little turtle of the genus Chelydra, still 

 enclosed in its egg-shell, which it hardly fills half-way, 

 with a yolk bag as large as itself hanging from its lower 

 surface and enveloped in its amnios and in its allantois, 

 with the eyes shut, snapping as fiercely as if it could bite 

 without killing itself? 1 Who can watch the Sunfish (Po- 

 motis vulgaris) hovering over its eggs and protecting 

 them for weeks, or the Catfish (Piinelodus Catus) moving 

 about with its young, like a hen with her brood, without 

 remaining satisfied that the feeling which prompts them 

 in these acts is of the same kind as that which attaches 

 the Cow to her suckling, or the child to its mother ? Is 

 there an investigator, who having once recognized such a 

 similarity between certain faculties of Man and those of 

 the higher animals, can feel prepared, in the present stage 

 of our knowledge, to trace the limit where this commu- 

 nity of nature ceases 1 And yet, to ascertain the character 

 of all these faculties there is but one road ; the study of 

 the habits of animals, and a comparison between them and 

 the earlier stages of the development of Man. I confess 

 I could not say in what the mental faculties of a child 

 differ from those of a young Chimpanzee. 



Now that we have physical maps of almost every part 



ique des observations sur I'instinct et J See Contributions to the Natural 



1'intelligence des animaux, par R. History of the United States., Part 



Flourens; Ann. Sc. Nat., 2de ser., Ill, which is devoted to the Enibry- 



vol. 12. ology of the Turtles. 



