46 



MEMOIRS OF 



at the room iip-stairs, which is forthest from the entrance, 

 and which communicates with M. Cuvier's house. In this 

 are the Mollusca, and at once assuming the character of a 

 person wholly ignorant of anatomy, I cannot do better than 

 describe the probable impressions of this person, as he fol- 

 lows the suit of rooms. His astonishment will be first ex- 

 cited by finding, that such mis-shapen masses as the com- 

 mon oyster possess liver, heart, lungs, &c. : he will wonder 

 at the various peculiarities presented by the inhabitants of 

 the shells he has been accustomed to find on the sea- shore, 

 and to consider as mere toys ; he will be surprised at the 

 number of those insects which exist only on hving bodies, 

 and all disgust will be lost, in contemplating the variety of 

 their forms. The two next rooms will present to him that 

 complicated machinery which is contained in beings of a 

 higher order, by which they re-animate their strength ; by 

 which, in fact, they live. A step farther, and he will see 

 tlie muscles fortified and brought into action by that very 

 machinery; which he has been examining. But the or- 

 gans of the senses will have previously arrested his atten- 

 tion ; for he there beholds in the eye the very powers he is 

 exercising, and which are affording him such infinite grati- 

 fication. The ear, which gives so much pleasure, and fre- 

 quently so much pain; the voice,* by which we impart our 

 own feelings ; the reason why the power of uttering those 

 delicious tones which captivate and soothe us into harmo- 

 ny, those impassioned sounds which cheat us into an en- 

 tire forgetfulness of aught but ourselves ; those accents of 

 fury which frightens us to agony, or those grave and calm 

 communications of the mind, are only given to man ; are 

 all there, and wonder succeeds to wonder, leaving it difficult 

 for the stranger to decide in which room he finds most in- 

 terest. That part of the human frame from which we suf- 



_ * After reading a very interesting Memoir on tlie organs of tlie voice in 

 birds, before tlie Institute, in 1798; a very celebrated anatomist present 

 exclaimed, that j\I. Cuviet had been Avrong in stating, that physiologists 

 had not yet agreed concerning the mechanism of the human voice, which 

 some compared to a wind, and others to a stringed instrument; for that 

 this question was now decided in favour of the wind instrument. "You 

 are deceived," involuntarily cried another equally learned anatomist; it is 

 a stringed instrument." This second observation caused a general smile^ 

 for it proved, most unexpectedly, the truth of M, Cuvier^s assertion, 



