INDEX. 



its tribe : its residence : its eggs : it is easily taught to speak : 

 its food, iv. 262. 



Star-fish, general description of the tribe : substance of their 

 bodies almost as soft as water: no way injured by swallow- 

 ing shells almost of a stony hardness : float upon the sur- 

 face of the sea, and in the dark send forth a shining light, 

 resembling that of phosphorus : called sea-nettles : the pas- 

 sage for devouring fish serves to eject excrements : taken 

 and put into spirits of wine, continue many years entire : 

 but left to influence of air, in four-and-twenty hours melted 

 down into a limpid offensive water ; cut in pieces, every 

 part survives the operation, becoming a perfect animal, 

 endued with its natural rapacity, vi. 181. 



Starling, time of migration, iv. 26. Often lays eggs in holes 

 deserted by the woodpecker, 200. Slender billed bird of 

 the sparrow kind, living upon insects, 255. 



Stars (fixed), supposed by philosophers suns resembling that 

 which enlivens our system, i. 5. 



Stars (falling), meteors, or unctuous vapours raised from the 

 earth, kindled and supported in the air, until they fall back 

 extinguished, i. 331. 



Stature, middle in men, from five feet five to five feet eight 

 inches, i. 434. Ordinary of men, Mr Derham observes, 

 probably the same now as at the beginning : many corro- 

 borating proofs of this, ii. 115. 



Steno, his opinion about the formation of the incipient animal, 

 i. 359. 



Stickleback, the gasterosteus of the prickly-finned thoracic sort; 

 description of this fish, v. 122. This fish appears in quan- 

 tities every seventh or eighth year in the river Welland, 

 near Spalding; a man employed by a farmer to take them, 

 for manuring his grounds, got, for a considerable time, four 

 shillings a-day, selling them at a halfpenny a bushel, 142. 



Stigmata, holes through which caterpillars breathe : famous 

 experiment of Malpighi to verify this, vi. 54. 



Stinkards, name given by our sailors to one or two animals of 

 the weasel kind, chiefly found in America, iii. 94. And 

 by the savages of Canada to the musk-rat, 187. 



Stint, smaller and shorter billed water bird of the crane kind, 

 iv. 340. 



Stoat, the ermine, its description, iii. 71. 



Stomach, nature has contracted the stomachs of animals of the 

 forest suitable to their precarious way of living, ii. 2. Pro- 

 portioned to the quality of the animal's food, or the ease of 

 obtaining it : those who chew the cud have four stomachs : 

 yet several of those have but two in Africa, 157. Names 

 of the four stomachs: stomachs of carnivorous animals 

 small : those of ruminating, strong and muscular : of insects, 

 composed of muscular fibres, 223. The camel has a fifth 



