NO TWO ANIMALS ALIKE. 363 



would but be attentive and mark the disclosure. 

 The general characters of the animal world, are as 

 numerous as the races, and the particular ones 

 are as varied as the individuals, so that the tran- 

 sition from any one to any other one, has the 

 charm of novelty. Animals, from the greater 

 number of functions that they perform, and the 

 greater energy and celerity of their performance, 

 have far more character than plants ; and though 

 the character does not perhaps admit of so great 

 a change in the individual, it is far more rapid in 

 the succession. In those animals with which we 

 have been so long familiar as to know their ap- 

 pearances and habits intimately, we never find 

 two that are exactly alike in any one particular. 

 We know them by their form, their look, their 

 gait, their voice, the sound of their feet, or any 

 one particular which could be mentioned ; and we 

 do so with ease, even in cases where the greatest 

 master of language would find it very difficult to 

 say in words, in what the difference consisted. And 

 in making up a picture of an animal, if the artist 

 takes with perfect fidelity those parts of several 

 different animals which are deemed the most hand- 

 some in them, the compound is always a patch- 

 work, wanting entireness and symmetry, and 

 really less handsome than if he had been faithful 

 to one of his models only. Each individual part, 

 taken in itself, may be more handsome, but an eye 

 accustomed to examine closely will soon find out 

 that they do not belong to each other. It is usu- 

 ally said that the Grecian artist compiled for his 

 Venus the charms of all the beauties in Greece ; 

 but, if so, the work must have been a motley and 

 meaningless thing something like those " best 



