290 FUNCTIONS AND INSTINCTS. 



dead and putrescent. At the season of the 

 year, therefore, when the former are in full 

 vigour, forth issue from their various retreats the 

 innumerable tribes that make them their food, 

 but when they cease to grow and flourish these 

 services are not wanted, and the animals who 

 perform them disappear from the face of nature. 

 Again, when dead animals, or the excrements of 

 living ones, or the sweets issuing from innume- 

 rable flowers, would clog the air that we breathe 

 with effluvia unfriendly to health and life; 

 countless armies are every where upon the wing, 

 or on the alert, to prey upon such substances, 

 and prevent their miasmata from breeding a 

 pestilence amongst us but when the cold season 

 returns, the flowers lose their leaves and blos- 

 soms, and exhale no longer their sweets, and the 

 scents arising from putrescent and other fetid 

 substances become no longer annoying then 

 the whole army employed in this department 

 disappears, and the face of nature seems to 

 lose the most busy part of its population, gone 

 to a long repose. 



It is worthy of remark, with respect to the 

 terrestrial animals of the tribe we are consider- 

 ing, that they all delight in shady and moist 

 places, and that during hot and dry weather 

 they seldom make their appearance, but no 

 sooner comes a shower, than they are all in mo- 

 tion. It is probable that their power of motion 



