TION. 



AN inquiry into the animate creation excites the 

 interest of mankind in many points of view, some- 

 times on account of some striking peculiarity in a 

 particular species of animals, at others, from the 

 dread or the pleasure they inspire. That interest 

 is, in some measure, regulated by their size, even 

 more than by the proximity in station which they 

 hold to us. We think but transitorily of bees, 

 though they supply us with honey ; or of silkworms, 

 notwithstanding that they spin raiment for us ; still 

 less of locusts, albeit they commit enormous devas- 

 tations, and gather together in armies, that have 

 been considered sufficiently numerous to form a 

 continuous circle round the globe. Fishes share 

 somewhat more in our regard, on account of the 

 food we derive from them, and of the multitudes 

 who subsist entirely on taking, curing, and carrying 

 this produce to distant lands. With birds, our affec- 

 tions first begin to be excited ; the elegance of their 

 form, the beauty of their plumage, the faculty of 



