M A M .MALI A. 



113 



Whatever may be the specific process, and the im- 

 mediate means by which muscular contraction is pro- 

 duced or excited, it evidently has some connexion with 

 electric action, and indeed with merely rapid motion 

 of anything' which is fatal to life. Persons who 

 are killed by lightning have all the muscles relaxed, 

 and the body rendered as loose and feeble as though 

 the whole soft parts were deprived of their cohesive 

 power. It is nearly the same with those who are 

 killed in battle by gun-shot wounds, for they also are 

 relaxed, and have no expression of any strong passion 

 on their countenances after death ; whereas the 

 countenances of those who are killed by wounds with 

 cutting instruments, set rigidly in death with that 

 expression of rage, agony, or whatever strong passion 

 under the influence of which they cease to live. Those 

 results of the rapid concussion of the lightning, and 

 the rapid stroke of the bullet, have been too frequently 

 noticed for leaving any doubt of their truth ; and as 

 the lightning and the leaden bullet have nothing in 

 common but the rapidity of their motion ; for the one 

 produces its effects by a mere shock, and the other 

 by a mechanical wound, it is difficult to avoid con- 

 cluding that it is from this sudden assailment of the 

 system, that two causes, apparently so different, pro- 

 duce the same effect upon the muscles. 



This, by the way, is one strong ground for conclud- 

 ing that they have a general connexion in this rapidity 

 of motion ; and that the animal life which they destroy 

 belongs to the same general class, although, as it acts 

 through the medium of a very different apparatus, its 

 displays are correspondingly different. What is 

 called the wind of a spent cannon ball, which often 

 stuns for a time, and not (infrequently destroys life alto- 

 gether, must be regarded as acting in nearly a similar 

 manner upon the sensibility of the whole living struc- 

 ture of the body ; and in the case of man, we have 

 results very similar, produced by sudden and violent 

 mental exeitements. Every one must have heard of 

 ho\v effectually a sudden panic turns the bravest men 

 into perfect cowards, or how sudden fear, even when 

 the ground of it is purely imaginary, will unnerve the 

 arm, strike the tongue dumb, and hold the individual 

 rivetted to the spot, and powerless against even the 

 feeblest enemy, and very often when there is no real 

 enemy in the case at all. We cannot suppose that, 

 in the case of human beings, these are primary affec- 

 tions of the mind ; because it should seem that the 

 mind can be affected by external nature only through 

 the instrumentality of the senses : and therefore we 

 might be prepared to expect that similar cases of the 

 influence of intimidation might be found among the 

 other animals. Something of this sort occurs in what is 

 usually termed fascination. The accounts which have 

 been given upon this subject must be all received 

 with some degree of caution, because, generally 

 speaking, they bear the stamp of extreme credulity 

 upon them. But still they are so many, and a num- 

 ber of them are given with such apparent claims to 

 probability in many parts, that it would be perhaps 

 carrying scepticism to an excess to deny the whole, 

 though it would be equally wrong to give the whole 

 implicit credit. All the facts, however, seem to point 

 to the general conclusion, that there is a remarkable 

 agreement in many particulars, among all the various 

 modifications of action, the effects of which present 

 themselves in the material world. 



But though the muscular action of animals may be 

 the same in kind with every other denomination of 

 NAT. HIST. VOL. 111. 



action, the effect of which is to produce motion, this 

 does not lead us one jot nearer to the origin of the 

 animal action than we were before. We know that 

 the first rudiment which we have of every animal 

 capable of awakening into life, and growing by proper 

 nourishment into the general resemblance of a species, 

 is the result of an act on the part of animals of the 

 same species ; and we know farther, that if we endea- 

 vour to extend the performance of this act beyond the 

 species, there is a limit at which it fails, not only in its 

 effect, but in the tendency towards its performance ; 

 and therefore how much soever we may have reason 

 to conclude that the action of animals is in principle 

 the same with all other kinds of action in matter, we 

 are utterly unable to say why the result should be an 

 animal of one species and not of another, or indeed 

 why it should be an animal at all. 



OTHER ORGANS OF ANIMALS. The other organs of 

 animals, besides the external ones which we have 

 mentioned, and the general structure upon which the 

 external action and adaptation in nature of animals, 

 and especially the mammalia, depend, maybe referred 

 to certain classes, each class being more immediately 

 fitted for the performance of some one particular part 

 of the animal's economy, though they all harmonise 

 with, and support each other in such a manner as to 

 show that how complicated soever the organisation 

 may be, the animal is still one, and that not one of 

 the functions performed by those different systems of 

 organs which belong to it could be carried on without 

 the others ; though there is still that play of the sys- 

 tem and adaptation to contingencies here, which we 

 find to run through the whole. 



Those systems of organs need not detain us long, 

 for some of them have been alluded to in previous 

 articles of the present work, and others can be more 

 conveniently taken along with the notices of those 

 divisions of the mammalia of which they form charac- 

 teristic features. The organs of nourishment have 

 received sufficient illustration in the general article 

 ASSIMILATION, and the variations can be better ap- 

 preciated in contrasting the animals wherein they 

 appear. A mouth for receiving the food, a gullet for 

 transmitting it, a stomach more or less complicated 

 according to the species for its digestion, an intestinal 

 canal, certain separate glands for preparing liquids 

 which promote action in that canal, absorbents to take 

 up the food from the canal, and leave the impurities, 

 and an apparatus for further elaborating the new mat- 

 ter so taken up, and conveying it, along probably with 

 part of the exhausted matter brought back by the 

 lymphatics, into the mass of the blood, are common 

 to the whole of the mammalia. In like manner, there 

 is a common mode of respiration, or of applying the 

 blood which has been mixed with the new matter and the 

 matter of the lymphatics, to the action of atmospheric 

 air, in order that it may deliver out a certain portion 

 of carbon to the oxygen of the atmosphere, which is 

 common to all the mammalia, and is in every case 

 performed by receiving atmospheric air into cellular 

 lungs, along the walls and passages of which blood 

 vessels are ramified with an extreme degree of minute- 

 ness. The quantity of respiration, and the rapidity 

 of circulation, vary a good deal in different species, 

 and in the same species, and even the same individual 

 under different circumstances ; but still the general 

 mode is the same throughout the whole class ; and 

 both in their increase and their decrease, to what 

 cause soever the one or the other may be owing, 

 H 



