112 



ON THE PRINCIPLE OF LIFE, &c. 



it demands it receives. In the mere larve or caterpillar of a cossus, or insect 

 approaching to the butterfly, Lyonet has detected not less than four thousand 

 and sixty-one distinct muscles, which is about ten times the number that be- 

 long: to the whole human body ; and yet it is probable that these do not con- 

 stitute any thing like the number that appertain to the same insect in its 

 perfect state. The elator noctilvcus, or phosphorescent springer, is a winged 

 insect ; but it has also a set of elastic muscles, which enable it, when laid on 

 its back, to spring up nearly half a foot at a bound, in order to recover its 

 position. This insect is also entitled to notice in consequence of its secreting 

 a light, w^hich is so much beyond that of our own glow-worm, that a person 

 may see to read the smallest print by it at midnight. The cicada spumaria^ 

 or spumous grasshopper, is in like manner endowed with a double power of 

 motion ; and when attempted to be caught will either fly completely off, at its 

 option, or bound away at the distance of two or three yards at every leap. 

 This insect is indigenous to our own country, and is one of those which in 

 their larve and pupe states discharge, from the numerous pores about the tail, 

 that frothy material upon plants which is commonly known by the name of 

 cuckow-spit. 



Crabs and spiders have a strong muscular power of throwing off an entire 

 limb whenever seized by it, in order to extricate themselves from confine- 

 ment; and most of them throw off also, once a year, their skin or crusta- 

 ceous covering, and secrete a new one. The muscular elasticity of the 

 young spider gives it, moreover, the power of wings ; whence it is often seen, 

 in the autumn, ascending to a considerable elevation, wafted about by the 

 breeze, and filling the atmosphere with its fine threads. The land-crab (cancer 

 ruricola) inhabits the woods and mountains of a country ; but its muscular 

 structure enables it to travel once a year to the seacoast to wash off its 

 spawn in the waters. The spawn or eggs thus deposited sink into the sands 

 at the bottom of the sea, and are soon hatched ; after which millions of little 

 crabs are seen quitting their native element for a new and untried one, and 

 roving instinctively towards the woodlands. 



The hinge of the common oyster is a single muscle ; and it is no more than 

 a single muscle in the chama gigas, or great clamp-fish, an animal of the oyster 

 form, but the largest testaceous worm we are acquainted with. It has been 

 taken in the Indian Ocean of a weight not less than 532 pounds ; the fish, or 

 inhabitant, being large enough to furnish 120 men with a meal, and strong 

 enough to lop off a hand with ease, and to cut asunder the cable of a large 

 ship. 



Nor is the muscular power allotted to the worm tribes less wonderful than 

 that of insects, or its variety less striking and appropriate. The leech and 

 other sucker-worms are as well acquainted with the nature of a vacuum as 

 Torricelli; and move from place to place by alternately converting the mus- 

 cular disks of their head and tail into air-pumps. 



The sucker of the cyclopterus, a genus of fishes denominated suckers 

 from their wonderfully adhesive property, is perhaps the most powerful, for 

 the size of the fish, of any we are acquainted with; and is formed at will, 

 by merely uniting the peculiar muscles of its ventral fins into an oval con- 

 cavity. In this state, if pulled by the tail, it will raise a pailful of water 

 rather than resign its hold. 



The teredo navalis, or ship-worm, is seldom six inches in length, but the 

 muscles and armour with which its head is provided enables it to penetrate 

 readily into the stoutest oak planks of a vessel, committing dreadful havoc 

 among her timbers, and chiefly producing the necessity for her being copper- 

 bottomed. This animal is a native of India; it is gregarious, and always 

 commences its attack in innumerable multitudes ; every worm, in labouring, 

 confining itself to its own cell, which is divided from that of the next by a 

 partition not thicker than a piece of writing-paper. The seaman, as he be- 

 holds the ruin before him, vents his spleen against the little tribes that have 

 produced it, and denounces them as the most mischievous vermin in the ocean. 

 But a tornado arises — the strength of the whirlwind is abroad — the clouds 



