118 UTILIZATION OF MINUTE LIFE. 



section becomes a new worm. Ascending still 

 higher to lobsters and fish, for instance the ex- 

 terior parts of the body can alone be thus regene- 

 rated; and Spallanzani has shown that when the 

 tails of lizards a class still higher are cnt off, the 

 new tail does not always possess the whole number 

 of vertebral bones ; in other terms, the regeneration 

 is incomplete. In animals with warm blood, this 

 regenerative faculty is greatly diminished, but still 

 exists, even in man himself. But the same force 

 which in man forms the scar of a wound, or heals 

 the stump after amputation, will with lizards re- 

 produce a tail, with lobsters a claw, with polyps 

 the whole body ! 



The mouth of the lobster, like that of insects, 

 " opens," says Buffon, " the long way of the body, 

 not crossways, as in man. It is furnished with two 

 teeth ; but as these are not sufficient, it has three 

 more in its stomach/' The latter were formerly 

 used in medicine under the pompous names of 

 oculi cancorum, the yeux d'ecrevisses of the French, 

 instead of carbonate of magnesia. The lobster 

 sheds its shell, in all probability once in a year, 

 and then retires under a rock or into a hole until 

 the new skin is again covered with a solid crust. 

 Whilst thus deprived of its hard covering, the 

 lobster becomes an easy prey to most of the in- 

 habitants of the deep, and even to his own species j 



