38 



NAR 



INDEX. 



NIL 



wardly, and a layer of asphaltura without, suffice to make a mum- 

 my, 198. 



Murtena, the eel, its description, 649. 



Murena of the ancients, not our lamprey, 637. 



Muralto. See Lam/trey, 638. 



Muscardin, name of the lesser dormouse, by Mr. Buffon, 36G. 



Muscles, if we compare the largeness and thickness of our mus- 

 cles with those of any other animal, we shall find that we have 

 the advantage ; to judge of the strength of animals by the thick- 

 ness of their muscles, inconclusive, 152; those of the hare are 

 strong and without fat, 345 ; the pectoral muscles of quadrupeds 

 trifling in comparison to those of birds ; in quadrupeds, as in man, 

 the muscles moving the thighs and hinder parts are strongest, 

 while those of the arms are feeble ; in birds the contrary obtains, 

 450 ; those of the shark preserve their motion after being separat- 

 ed from the body, 631. 



Mussel, the shell-fish, its description ; its organs of generation 

 are what most deserve to excite our curiosity ; the crab, and the 

 cray-fish, are seen to devour them, but the trochus is their most 

 formidable enemy; it endeavours to become stationary, and to 

 attacli itself to any fixed object it happens to be near ; its ene- 

 mies ; it is supposed that those threads, which are usually called 

 the beard of the mussel, are the natural growth of the animal's 

 body, and by no means produced at pleasure, as Reaumur sup- 

 poses ; its instrument of motion, by which it contrives to reach 

 the object it wants to bind itself to ; its food ; some of this kind 

 have been found a foot long ; the natives of Palermo sometimes 

 make gloves and stockings of its beards ; the places where found , 

 it requires a year for the peopling a mussel bed, 087, 088. 



Muscovy duck, or mast duck, so called from a supposed musky 

 smell, 598. 



Music, said by the ancients to have been invented from the 

 blows of different hammers on an anvil ; in all countries, where 

 music is in its infancy, the half tones are rejected ; the Chinese 

 have neither flats nor sharps in their music ; many barbarous 

 nations have their instruments of music ; and the proportion 

 between their notes is the same as in ours ; all countries pleased 

 with music, and where they have no skill to produce harmony, 

 they substitute noise ; its effects ; the ancients give us many 

 strange instances of them upon men and animals ; and the mo- 

 derns likewise ; madness cured by it ; and also excited by it ; re- 

 makable instance in Henry IV. of Denmark ; fishes are allured by 

 music; horses and cows likewise, 164, 105 ; the elephant appears 

 delighted with music, 418 ; Father Kircher has set the voices of 

 birds to music, 490. 



Musk, among the numerous medicines procurable from quadrupeds, 

 none, except the musk and hartshorn, have preserved a degree of 

 reputation, 250 ; a doubt whether the animal producing it be a hog, 

 an ox, a aoat, or a deer ; no animal so justly the reproach of natu- 

 ral historians as that which bears the musk ; it has been various!}' 

 described, and is known very imperfectly ; the description given by 

 Grew ; formerly in high request as a perfume ; has for more than 

 a century been imported from the East ; is a dusky reddish sub- 

 stance, like coagulated blood ; a grain of it perfumes a whole room ; 

 its odour continues for days, without diminution, and no substance 

 known has a stronger or more permanent smell ; in larger quanti- 

 ties it continues for years, and scarce wasted in weight, although it 

 has filled the atmosphere to a great distance with its parts ; the 

 most powerful remedy now in use, in nervous and hysteric disorders ; 

 the bags of musk from abroad supposed to belong to some other 

 animal, or taken from some part of the same, filled with its blood, 

 and enough of the perfume to impregnate the rest; it conies from 

 China, Tonquin, Bengal, and often from Muscovy ; that of Thibet 

 reckoned the best, and of Muscovy the worst, 255, 2ot>. 



Musk-rat, three distinctions of it, 307. 



Musky-smell docs not properly make the characteristic marks of 

 any kind of animals, 240. 



Musmon or mcufflon, resembles a ram ; its description. 244. 



Myoides, a broad thin skin, covering the whole upper fore-part of 

 the body, its effect in women with child, 147. 



N. 



Wails, how formed in man; those of some of the learned men in 

 China longer than their fingers ; savages that let them grow long, 

 use them in flaying animals, 147, 148. 



Nanquin, a river in Asia, receives thirty rivers, 64. 



Narwhal, the sea unicorn ; its description ; errors concerning the 

 teeth of this animal ; the most harmless and peaceful inhabitant of 

 the ocean ; the Greenlanders call it the fore-runner of the whale, 



and why : its food : is a gregarious animal ; a cenfury acrn, its teeth 

 considered Hie greatest rarity in the world ; they far surpass ivory 

 in its qualities, 621, 622. 



Niitotian Goat, a remarkable variety in the goat kind. 246. 



Nature, lavish of life in the lower orders of the creation, 132 ; has 

 brought man into life with more wants and infirmities than the 

 rest of her creatures, 153; in a course of ages shapes herself to 

 constraint, and assumes hereditary deformity ; instances of it, 185 ; 

 has contracted the stomachs of animals of the forest, suitable to 

 tlieir precarious way of living, 153 ; has left no part of her fabric 

 destitute of inhabitants, 448 ; what might have led some late philoso- 

 phers into the opinion that all nature was animated. 839. 



Nautilus, a sea-snail, most frequently seen swimming ; its shell 

 very thin, and easily pierced ; its description, 086. 



Nazareth bird, whether the dodo or not is uncertain, 470. 



Neck, fishes and other animals that want lungs have none : 

 birds, in general, have it longer than any other kind of animals, 148 ; 

 in women it is prciportionably longer than in men, ib. 



Nectartum, that part of a flower from which the honey is ex- 

 tracted, 803. 



Negroes of the Leeward Islands, by the smell alone distinguish 

 the footsteps of a Frenchman from those of a Negro, 169 ; several 

 of them have white beards and black hair ; described ; their fea- 

 tures not deformed by art ; they are in general found to be stupid, 

 indolent, and mischievous ; tho women's breasts, after bearing one 

 child, hang down below the navel, and are thrown over the shoul- 

 ders to suckle the child at their backs, 181, 182 ; the jet black claim 

 the honour of hereditary resemblance to our common parent; an 

 argument sufficient to prove the contrary ; two white Negroes the 

 issue of black parents, 185, 180; show their terror and surprise 

 when they first see a horse, 21 5; of the African coasts regard the 

 bat with horror, and will not eat it though ready to starve, 385 ; 

 happy to see numbers of monkeys destroyed, because they dread 

 their devastations, and love their flesh ; cannot comprehend advan- 

 tages arising to Kuropeans from educating or keeping monkeys ; 

 and having seen young and tame monkeys bought, have offered 

 rats for pale to our factors, and been greatly disappointed at finding 

 no purchaser, 408 ; tlieir manner of killing the shark ; are distract- 

 edly fond of its flesh, 631, 032. 



Negrolmd, or Nigritia, the plague not known in it, 96. 



Nerves, wherever they go, or send their branches in number, 

 these parts are soonest begun, and must completely finished, 159. 



Ness, or Nttke. a river near Bruges, in Flanders ; great quanti- 

 ties of trees found in its mouth, at the depth of fifty feet ; in such 

 perfect preservation, that the particular kind of each tree may be 

 instantly known, 82. 



Nest of every species of birds has a peculiar architecture ; Where 

 eggs are numerous, the nest must be warm, 454 ; different places 

 which birds choose for their nests, 435 ; description of the nest of an 

 eagle found in the Peak of Derby shire, 475 ; of the bald eagle, large 

 enough to fill the body of a cart, 476; hanging nests in Brazil, 16o; 

 nests in the Philippine islands ; made in such a manner, as to have 

 no opening but at the bottom, 520 ; the Chinese get those of the 

 swallows from the rocks, and sell them in great numbers in the East 

 Indies, where they are esteemed great delicacies, and eat dissolved 

 in chicken or mutton broth, 447 ; that of the wasp one of the most 

 curious objects in natural history ; its description, 409, 410. 



Netherlands, their inhabitants greatly improved us in the woollen 

 manufacture, 243. 



Nettles, how used to teach capons to clutch a fresh brood of 

 chickens throughout the year, 49o. 



Nettles of the sea. name given by some to the star-fish, 832. 



Nicota Pesce, a celebrated diver ; his performances related by 

 Kircher ; he often swam over from Sicily into Calabria, carrying 

 letters from the king ; frequently known to spend five days in the 

 midst of the waves, dO. 



Nieper, or Boristhr.ncs, a river rising in the middle of Muscovy, 

 and running three hundred and fifty leagues to empty itself in the 

 Black Sea. 61. 



Niger, this river has a course of several hundred miles from its 

 source, at the Mountains of the Moon, 42 ; confidently asserted that 

 it is lost before it reaches the ocean, 66. 



Nightingale, a bird of the sparrow kind, 538 ; description of its 

 melody by Pliny ; its residence ; for weeks together undisturbed, it 

 sits upon the same tree ; its nest and eggs ; its song in captivity 

 not so alluring ; Gesner says it is possessed of a faculty of talking; 

 story related by him in proof of this assertion ; its food, and in what 

 manner they must be kept ; manner of catching the nightingale, 

 and of managing when caught, 540 to 544. 



Nile, its course ; its sources ascertained by missionaries ; takes its 

 rise in the kingdom of Gojani ; receives many lesser rivers ; PJiny 



