43 
prey to the lion or leopard perhaps in the first in- 
stance, and the hyzna in the next. The tail of the 
hyena is short, but his general covering a better 
protection against insects than that of the lion; that 
of the bear is still shorter: few of our ladies are un- 
acquainted with the abundance of his fur. Amongst 
ruminants, the bull has a long tail, the sheep of mo- 
derate length, the deer tribes short. So amongst 
birds; many of the humming birds, the paradisee, 
the muscicapz, hirundines, the tropic birds, the 
pheasants, the common cock, &c. exhibit a great 
elongation of tail-feathers; perhaps in this general 
contrasted view the peacock may be included, al- 
though his grand train be not the real tail. On the 
other hand, many hawks and owls have short tails; 
wrens, the cinclus, the tringa, the scolopax, chara- 
drius, &c. still shorter; in the colymbus, grebe, Mor- 
mon puffin, and aptenodytes or penguin, it is scarcely 
visible. The contrast in amphibia is yet more con- 
spicuous: we have only to compare lizards and ser- 
pents in general with tortoises and toads. Amongst 
fish the length of tail* is remarkable in those which 
nearly approach in form to serpents, as eels, the gar 
or pipe, the trichiurus, the sturgeon; the shortness 
x Some species of ray are furnished with a very long and slen- 
der tail, having a sharp serrated and prickled spine extending 
along it, which it uses as a weapon of defence and offence. In 
Brewster's Journal, April 1828, is a paper by Dr. Harwood, de- 
scribing a fish from Davis’s Straits, which he proposes to call 
ophiognathus ampullaceus, It has an oval smooth bladder-like 
body, with a slender thong-like tail, nearly twice the length of the 
body, See Loudon’s Mag. Nat. Hist. No. II. July 1828. 
