60 
THE CABINET OF NATURAL HISTORY, 
whiskers with any surrounding object is thus felt most 
distinctly by the animal, although the hairs are themselves 
insensible. They stand out on each side, in the Lion, as 
well as in the common cat, so that, from point to point, 
they are equal to the width of the animal’s body. If we 
imagine, therefore, a Lion stealing through a covert of 
wood in an imperfect light, we shall at once see the use of 
these long hairs. They indicate to him, through the nicest 
feeling, any obstacle which may present itself to the pas- 
sage of his body; they prevent the rustle of boughs and 
leaves, which would give warning to his prey if he were 
to attempt to pass through too close a bush; and thus, in 
conjunction with the soft cushions of his feet, and the fur 
upon which he treads, (the retractile claws never coming 
in contact with the ground,) they enable him to move 
towards his victim with a stillness greater even than that of 
the snake, who creeps along the grass, and is not perceived 
till he has coiled round his prey.-: —Lib. Ent. Knowl. 
DRIFTING OF ANIMALS ON FLOATING 
ISLANDS. 
The power of the terrestrial mammalia to cross the sea 
is very limited, and we have already stated that the same 
species is scarcely ever common to districts widely sepa- 
rated by the ocean. If there be some exceptions to this 
rule they generally admit of explanation, for there are na- 
tural means whereby some animals may be floated across 
the water, and the sea sometimes wears a passage through a 
neck of land, leaving individuals of a species on each side 
of the new channel. Polar bears are known to have been 
frequently drifted on the ice from Greenland to Iceland; 
they can also swim to considerable distances, for Captain 
Parry, on the return of his ships through Barrow’s Strait, 
met with a bear swimming in the water about midway be- 
tween the shores, which were about forty miles apart, and 
where no ice was in sight. “ Near the east coast of Green- 
land,” observes Scoresby, “ they have been seen on the ice in 
such quantities, that they were compared to flocks of sheep 
on a common — and they are often found on field ice above 
two hundred miles from the shore.” Wolves, in the arc- 
tic regions, often venture upon the ice near the shore, for 
the purpose of preying upon young seals, which they sur- 
prise when asleep. When these ice-floes get detached, the 
wolves are often carried out to sea, and though some may 
be drifted to islands or continents, the greater part of them 
perish, and have been often heard in this situation howling 
dreadfully, as they die by famine. 
During the short summer which visits Melville Island, 
various plants push forth their leaves and flowers the mo- 
ment the snow is off the ground, and form a carpet span- 
gled with the most lively colours. These secluded spots 
are reached annually by herds of musk-oxen and rein-deer, 
which travel immense distances over dreary and desolate 
regions, to graze undisturbed on these luxuriant pastures. 
The rein-deer often pass along in the same manner, by the 
chain of the Aleutian Islands, from Behring’s Straits to 
Kamtschatka, subsisting on the moss found in these islands 
during their passage. 
Within the tropics there are no ice-floes; but, as if to 
compensate for that mode of transportation, there are float- 
ing isles of matted trees, which are often borne along 
through considerable spaces. These are sometimes seen 
sailing at the distance of fifty or one hundred miles from 
the mouth of the Ganges, with living trees standing erect 
upon them. The Amazon, the Congo, and the Orinoco, 
also produce these verdant rafts, which are formed in the 
manner already described when speaking of the great raft 
of the Atchafalaya, an arm of the Mississippi, where a natu- 
ral bridge of timber, ten miles long, and more than two 
hundred yards wide, has existed for more than forty years, 
supporting a luxuriant vegetation, and rising and sinking 
with the water which flows beneath. That this enormous 
mass will one day break up and send down a multitude of 
floating islands to the gulf of Mexico, is the hope and well- 
founded expectation of the inhabitants of Louisiana. 
On these green isles of the Mississippi, observes Malte- 
Brun, young treestake root, and the pisliar and nenuphar dis- 
play their yellow flowers; there serpents, birds, and the 
cayman alligator, come to repose, and all are sometimes 
carried to the sea, and engulphed in its waters. 
In a memoir lately published, a naval officer informs us, 
that as he returned from China by the eastern passage, he 
fell in, among the Moluccas, with several small floating 
islands of this kind, covered with mangrove trees, inter- 
woven with underwood. The trees and shrubs retained 
their verdure, receiving nourishment from a stratum of 
soil which formed a white beach round the margin of each 
raft, where it was exposed to the washing of the waves and 
the rays of the sun. The occurrence of soil in such situa- 
tions, may easily be explained, for all the natural bridges 
of timber which occasionally connect the islands of the 
Ganges, Mississippi, and other rivers, with their banks, 
are exposed to floods of water densely charged with sedi- 
ment. 
Captain W. H. Smyth informs us, that when cruizing 
in the Cornwallis amidst the Philippine Islands, he has more 
than once seen, after those dreadful hurricanes called ty- 
phoens, floating islands of wood, with trees growing upon 
