PHYSIOLOGY OF LIFE. 83 



absent, but it is only to recollect herself with additional, 

 as well as recruited vigour, in some after and higher state; 

 as if the sleep of powers, as well as of bodies, were the 

 season and condition of their growth. Accordingly, we 

 find these instincts again, and with them a wonderful 

 synthesis of fish and insect, as a higher third, in the 

 feathered inhabitants of the air. Nay, she seems to have 

 gone yet further back, and having given B -(- c = D in 

 the birds, so to have sported with one solitary instance of 

 B -|- D = A in that curious animal the dragon, the ana- 

 tomy of which has been recently given to the public by 

 Tiedemann ; from whose work it appears, that this creature 

 presents itself to us with the wings of the insect, and with 

 the nervous system, the brain, and the cranium of the 

 bird, in their several rudiments. 



The synthesis of fish and insect in the birds, might be 

 illustrated equally in detail with the former ; but it will be 

 sufficient for our purpose, that as in both the former cases, 

 the insect and the fish, so here in that of the birds, the 

 powers are under the predominance of irritability; the 

 sensibility being dormant in the first, awakening in the 

 second, and awake, but still subordinate, in the third. Of 

 this my limits confine me to a single presumptive proof, 

 viz., the superiority in strength and courage of the female 

 in the birds of prey. For herein, indeed, does the dif- 

 ference of the sexes universally consist, wherever both the 

 forces are developed, that the female is characterised by 

 quicker irritability, and the male by deeper sensibility. 

 How large a stride has been now made by Nature in the 

 progress of individuation, what ornithologist does not 

 know ? From a multitude of instances we select the most 



