EEPTILES. 359 



horrence, and, by all nations, either despised for their 

 stupidity or dreaded for their malignity. 



The naturalist, however, finds that the power of 

 the Almighty is manifested with as much glory in 

 these vile objects of universal detestation, as in the 

 more favoured races of Creation. He sees nothing 

 in the class of Reptiles but animals singular in their 

 forms, curious in their structure, marvellous in their 

 metamorphoses, and admirably adapted, by their 

 habits, to the duties imposed upon their different 

 races. Few beings, indeed, are more worthy of 

 the attention of the thinking observer, than these 

 proscribed and persecuted creatures ; and, as the 

 reader need not fear to accompany us into their 

 gloomy haunts, we may at least peep behind the 

 broken masses of rock where they hide, display them 

 coiled up beneath the rotting vegetation of the forest, 

 see them swimming in the streams or wallowing in 

 the marshes, and observe the mechanism by which 

 they have been enabled to creep, or climb, or walk, 

 or run, or leap, or even fly. Neither are they ill 

 adapted for their appointed localities, or inharmonious 

 with the scene around them. It is in the dismal 

 swamps of tropical regions that we must see the 

 Reptile races in their full luxuriance where the 

 rivers slowly roll along their sluggish waves, or 

 spread out in broad swamps, which, far and wide, 

 cover the alluvial slime they have deposited. These 

 vast morasses, steaming with fetid fogs and pestiferous 

 exhalations, alternately inundated and left dry, where 

 earth and water appear to contend for undefined 

 possessions, are peopled only by the Eeptile forms 

 indigenous to such localities. Enormous serpents, 

 trailing their length along, impress the miry soil with 

 tortuous tracks. Crocodiles and Toads knead with 

 their sprawling feet the yielding clay ; huge Alli- 

 gators lurk in ambush, and a thousand hideous things 

 withdraw themselves from observation. The Reptile 

 occupying this intermediate domain, between the 

 waters and the land, is neither a perfect quadruped 



