MORMON PREACHERS. 97 



But it is not in Zoology only that logic is courageously 

 assaulted by our " large discourse of reason." If " reason- 

 ing correctly on false premises " is the true definition of 

 madness, we are all more or less madmen ; although we are 

 " astonished " at the insanity which we do not share. Last 

 evening this was brought before me in half-sad, half-ludi- 

 crous aspect. We were smoking, in the indolent beati- 

 tude of digestion, when a choral howl disturbed the quiet 

 of the evening air. P., lolling over the balcony, and 

 allowing the " demure travel of his regard " to sweep 

 the horizon in search of the yacht which was to fetch him 

 away, informed us that the howling came from three 

 itinerant preachers about to edify a group of fishermen on 

 the quay. I begged him to shut the window ; this being 

 my protection against the outrage of a German Band, which 



Sicilia Citerioi e, i. p. 15, says that the expansion of these colour-specs i3 due to 

 an expansile liquid, allied to blood — espansile umore {ematosina ?) which is con- 

 tained in the vesicles, and which is probably in relation with the blood-vessels 

 and the rele Malpighi ; and ho suggests that its contractions and expansions 

 may depend on respiration. But the fact, recorded in the text, of a strip of 

 skin taken from the dead animal exhibiting the same contractions and expan- 

 sions as those exhibited by the skin of the living animal, shows that tho con- 

 tractility of these vesicles is independent of any such cause. Kiillikcr has 

 shown that the contractions are produced by pale muscular fibres. Some doubt, 

 however, is permissible respecting their muscular nature. As Charles Robin 

 says, they are perfectly homogeneous and extremely fine ; moreover, they are 

 not capable of being isolated as fibres, " en sorte qu'il serait plus juste de dire 

 que les chromatophores (coloured specs) sont entourSs d'une substance homo- 

 gene contractile, fibroide ; les fibres non isolables, et dont par suite le diam^tre 

 exact ne pcut ctrc donn6, sont disjjosiJes par faisceaux." * No one has explained 

 how these retain their contractility so long after all the other muscles. 



* Note coniniunicated by Lf.bkut in Iiis " Mt-moii'e sur la Formation des Muscles " — An- 

 nales ilcs Sciences, 1850, p. 172. 



I 



