A M E H I M N U M A M E T H Y S T. 



91 



torcsl*. Two out of the seven rodentiu are some- 

 what doubtful. These are the common nit and 

 mouse, which, from the rapidity with which they 

 multiply, and the chance of their being landed by 

 every ship, are not very easily determined as natives 

 of any country. The forests, with their undergrowth 

 of moss and lichen, and their alternating swamps and 

 barrens still covered with coarse vegetation, affording 

 cover to many small animals, and resting places and 

 abundant food to innumerable herds in the summer, 

 are the head quarters of the northern mammalia, 

 in ire especially of the carnivorous tribes and the 

 rodentia. The greater number of these are fur 

 animals; and the quantity of their skins which is 

 brought from the cold country to the westward of 

 Hudson's Bay is immense. They are races, too, 

 which all the exertions of the hunters (and their 

 lives arc no sinecure) do not tend so rapidly to 

 diminish as the exertions of hunters do the ani- 

 mals of some other parts of the world. It is the 

 interest of the hunters themselves that close time in 

 the forests should.be a time of peace ; because then, 

 and during the whole of the hot season, the skins of 

 the animals arc of comparatively little value. 



Of the carnivora of the northern parts the bear is 

 the most formidable, just as is the case on the eastern 

 continent; but in the southern latitudes he becomes 

 more feeble. The grisly bear of the Stony Mountains 

 (Ursus fcro.v) is the most powerful animal of this 

 genus ; and the spectacled bear ( Ursus ornatmi) of 

 the southern Andes is the least formidable. As the 

 forests yield to the progress of cultivation or the 

 hand of time (and there seems to be a curious sym- 

 pathy, or rather reciprocal preservation in forests, so 

 that if man cuts down those that are on the better 

 land, those on the inferior land waste away), the bears 

 and all the other tenants of the woods will of course 

 disappear, as they have disappeared from the British 

 islands, and from many other parts .of the eastern 

 continent : and the elk and the reindeer will share 

 the same fate. See BEAR. The canine race are 

 numerous, and some of them peculiar ; but all of 

 them are confined to North America, and the greater 

 number also to the extreme north. There are among 

 them no species answering to the wild dogs of 

 southern Asia, to the jackal or the hyaena. Of the 

 feline race there are considerable numbers; but, 

 with the exception of the jaguar of North America, 

 none of them are very formidable, cither in size or in 

 disposition. There is not naturally in the southern 

 parts of the country any prey requiring the strength 

 and spring of a very large predatory beast ; in the her- 

 bivorous animals they are either of the slow-moving 

 pachydcrmata, or the small and timid rodentia. There 

 are no swift-bounding antelopes, no wild asses, no 

 wild oxen, and no giraffes, which, in one or another of 

 their species, form the principal food of the lion in 

 Africa and the tiger in Asia. The larger prey, and 

 the only known American species of antelope, are in 

 the north, and that is the dominion of the more pow- 

 erful bears. The inhabitants of the tropical forests, 

 the sloths, the monkeys with their thumbless hands, 

 and, in many instances, their prehensile tails, and the 

 chinchillas and other herbivorous animals which in- 

 habit the wide plains, are the most characteristic of 

 the southern parts of the American continent. 

 - It is not a little singular that, though the greah'M 

 breadth of the Pacific liesbctween Australia, on the one 

 -idc, and that of the Atlantic, Africa, and the Indian 



Ocean, on the other, there .should be a correspondence 

 in the possession of marsupial animals. Of these there 

 arc at least eighteen known species in America ; and, 

 out of Australia, there arc few, not above two or three, 

 species in any other part of the world, and these are 

 met with in the south-east of Asia. It is true that the 

 American marsupialia have very little resemblance in 

 species to the Australian ones ; but it is remarkable 

 that these two countries, wide as they are from each 

 other, and different as they are in many of their natu- 

 ral as well as their geographical features, should yet 

 be the places which, as it were, share between them 

 these irregularly constructed animals. See MARSU- 

 PJALIA. 



We have felt it necessary to give this very im- 

 perfect sketch of the leading points in American 

 natural history, because there is not upon that conti- 

 nent any important and commanding animal, indige- 

 nous to the climate and characteristic of it, that will 

 carry us over the range. With the rest of the world 

 it is different, in all cases where a general connexion 

 is desirable. The antelopes form a key to those medial 

 or southern parts of the eastern continent, which are 

 still (or now) in a great measure in a state of nature ; 

 and the kangaroos may be made to answer the same 

 purpose in Australia, in so far as that singular conti- 

 nent is known or can be judged of. But there is no 

 such animal which we can connect with the general 

 natural history of America ; and therefore some such 

 article as the present seemed necessary, as a vinculum 

 to bind the disjointed parts. 



AMERIMNUM ( Willdenow). A genus of two 

 species : one an evergreen shrub, the other a tree ; 

 both stove plants. They belong to the natural order 

 Lcguminosce ; and the generic character may be 

 described thus : calyx two-lipped, the upper one 

 divided, the lower three-toothed ; standard. reversely 

 heart-shaped, keel of two petals ; pods on a footstalk, 

 and membranous, flatted, upper suture straight, the 

 lower one convex. The A. cbcnus is common in 

 Jamaica, and other West India islands ; the timber 

 being of a beautiful colour, and having a close hard 

 grain, capable of taking a fine polish, it is imported 

 into Europe under the name of Jamaica ebony, for 

 the use of instrument and machine makers. 



AMETABOLIA (Leach). In entomology, a 

 sub class of insects embracing the Linnaean genera, 

 Lepisma, Podura, &nAPedicultu; by all modern writers 

 and entomologists these views of Dr. Leach have been 

 adopted ; the characters of the two orders are as 

 follows, and the genera will be given under the names 

 of the respective families. 



The great leading distinction of this sub-class is, 

 that it consists of insects undergoing no metamor- 

 phosis. 



ORDER I. Thysanura, Tail furnished with setae 

 or filaments ; mouth with mandibles, palpi, labrum, or 

 upper lip ; and labium or lower lip. 



ORDER II. Anoplura. Tail without seta) or fila- 

 ments ; mouth in some species furnished with two 

 teeth and an opening beneath ; in others with a tubular 

 very short haustellum. 



The first order contains two families, Lepismada: 

 and Poduradee. 



The second order has also two families, Pedicidida; 

 and Nirmidte: these will be treated of under the 

 respective heads. 



AMETHYST. A mineral belonging to the quartz 

 family. It is of a reddish or yellowish violet blue 



