80 MEMOIRS OF 



of this person, as he follows the suite of rooms. 

 His astonishment will be first excited by finding, 

 that such mis-shapen masses as the conmion 

 oyster possess liver, heart, lungs, &c. ; he will 

 wonder at the various peculiarities presented by 

 the inhabitants of the shells he has been ac- 

 customed to find on the sea-shore, and to con- 

 sider as mei'e toys ; he will be surprised at the 

 number of those insects which exist only on 

 living bodies, and all disgust will be lost, in con- 

 templating 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 reanimate their 

 strength ; by which, in fact, they live. A step 

 farther, and he will see the muscles fortified and 

 brought into action by that very machinery 

 which he has been examining. But the organs 

 of the senses will have previously arrested his 

 attention ; for he there beholds in the eye the 

 very powers he is exercising, and which are af- 

 fording him such infinite gratification. The ear, 

 which gives so much pleasure, and frequently so 

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



* After reading a very interesting Memoir on the organs' 

 of the voice in birds, before the Institute, in 1798 ; a very 



