34 OBJECTS, ADVANTAGES, AND 



most part a tasteless, clear, and seemingly a very simple liquor, it never- 

 theless possesses extraordinary powers of dissolving substances which 

 it touches or mixes with ; and it varies in different classes of animals. 

 In one particular it is the same in all animals: it will not attack living 

 matter, but only dead ; the consequence of which is, that its powers 

 of eating- away and dissolving are perfectly safe to the animals them- 

 selves, in whose stomachs it remains without ever hurting them. This 

 juice differs in different animals according to the food on which they 

 subsist: thus, in birds of prey, as kites, hawks, owls, it only acts upon 

 animal matter, and does not dissolve vegetables. In other birds, and 

 in all animals feeding on grass, as oxen, sheep, hares, it dissolves 

 vegetable matter, as grass, but will not touch flesh of any kind. This 

 has been ascertained by making them swallow balls with meat in them, 

 and several holes drilled through, to let the gastric juice reach the 

 meat : no effect was produced upon it. We may further observe, that 

 there is a most curious and beautiful correspondence between this 

 juice in the stomach of different animals and the other parts of their 

 bodies, connected with the important operations of eating and digesting 

 their food. The use of the juice is plainly to convert what they eat 

 into a fluid, from which, by various other processes, all their parts, 

 blood, bones, muscles, &c. are afterwards formed. But the food is 

 first of all to be obtained, and then prepared by bruising, for the action 

 of the juice. Now birds of prey have instruments, their claws and 

 beak, for tearing and devouring their food, (that is animals of different 

 kinds,) but those instruments are useless for picking up and crushing 

 seeds : accordingly, they have a gastric juice which dissolves the 

 animals they eat, ; while birds which have only a beak fit for pecking', 

 drinking, and eating seeds, have a juice that dissolves seeds, and not 

 flesh. Nay more, it is found that the seeds must be bruised before the 

 juice will dissolve them : this you find by trying the experiment in a 

 vessel with the juice ; and accordingly the birds have a gizzard, and 

 animals which graze have flat teeth, which grind and bruise their food, 

 before the gastric juice is to act upon it. 



We have seen how wonderfully the Bee works, according to rules 

 discovered by man thousands of years after the insect had followed 

 them with perfect accuracy. The same little animal seems to be 

 acquainted with principles of which we are still ignorant. We can, by 

 crossing, vary the forms of cattle with astonishing nicety ; but we have 

 no means of altering the nature of an animal once born, by means of 

 treatment and feeding. This power, however, is undeniably possessed 

 by the bees. When the queen bee is lost, by death or otherwise, they 

 choose a grub from among those which are born for workers ; they 

 make three cells into one, and placing the grub there, they build a tube 

 round it ; they afterwards build another cell of a pyramidal form, into 

 which the grub grows: they feed it with peculiar food, and tend it 

 with extreme care. It becomes, when transformed from the worm to 

 the fly, not a worker, but a queen bee. 



These singular insects resemble our own species, in one of our worst 

 propensities, the disposition to war ; but their attention to their 

 sovereign is equally extraordinary, though of a somewhat capricious 

 kind. In a few hours after their queen is lost, the whole hive is in a 



