ANIMAL KINGDOM. Ringed Animals and Crustacea. RINGED ANIMALS, or red-blooded worms, compose the first class of the third great division or sub-kingdom of animals. In having red blood, they differ from all other animals not having a back-bone. The body is, in general, long, and always divided into numerous rings, the first of which, called the head, scarcely differs from the rest, except in having the mouth and the principal organs of the senses. They have no jointed limbs, but most of them have a number of protuberances arranged in two rows along the sides of the body, each of which has a bundle of stiff hairs, which assist the animal in moving. With the exception of the earth-worm, they all live in the water, and breathe by gills, placed sometimes within and sometimes without the body. Some are provided with jaws, others with a sucker merely. Some have a number of black spots on the head, supposed to be eyes, but it is not certain that they are such. This class is divided into three tribes. The first inhabit tubes, and have gills in the form of plumes, proceeding from the head and fore part of the body. The second tribe have the gills, some of which resemble tufts and trees, disposed along the body. The third tribe have not visible breathing organs, and it is probable that they breathe by the surface of the skin. Earth-worms and leeches belong to this tribe. The former are composed of a great number of rings, some of upwards of one hundred and twenty, by the contraction and extension of which, they crawl. Of the latter there are twelve or fifteen kinds, two only of which are used medicinally. CRUST-COVERED ANIMALS compose the second class. They are provided with jointed and more or less complex limbs attached to the sides of the body. The first pair of many are longer than the others, and the last joint of them resembles a pair of pincers. These animals have the power of re-producing a limb in greater perfection than reptiles; and what is still more remarkable, when any part of a limb has been severely injured, they can by a sudden jerk, force it off at the next joint. The jaws, of which some have three pairs, are placed so as to act sideways. They have, generally, four antennæ or feelers, placed on the fore part of the head. The eyes, with few exceptions, are two in number, and compound. In a few only, is a distinct ear found. All have gills, and breathe in water. The hard crusts with which they are covered, differ from the shells of pulpy animals and the tubes of the red-blooded worms, not only in chemical composition, but in being a part of the animal, and not its house. This class is divided into seven orders. 1. Ten-footed animals, some of which have short tails, as the various kinds of crabs; and others have long tails, as lobsters, craw-fish, prawns, and shrimps. 2. Hard edge-footed animals, as the squills. 3. Round-footed animals, as the sand-hoppers, which are exceedingly numerous on the sea beach in some places, and are very destructive to various kinds of red-blooded worms, which inhabit the same locality. 4. Throat-footed animals, having the first pair of feet connected with the head. 5. Equal-footed animals, all of which have fourteen feet. Most of these inhabit the water; a few, however, as the wood-louse, inhabit retired and obscure places, cellars, fissures in walls, old buildings, and under stones. They feed on decaying vegetable and animal matter. 6. Gill-footed animals. Many of these have but one eye. 7. Various footed animals, of which the Molucca crab and the fishlouse are examples. 1. Vide Rost. See page 17, notes, third sub-kingdom. ASSYRIA-(concluded). AFTER Ninias murdered his mother, he became king of Assyria. His reign began about the year 2000 в.c. or about three hundred and fifty years after the deluge. He was a wicked and a slothful king: he shut himself up in his palace, and thought of nothing but how to enjoy himself. He knew that his people hated him, and therefore he kept guards in his palace; but he was afraid to trust even his guards. Whether he was murdered at last, is uncertain. After the reign of Ninias, there was an interval of eight hundred years, during which it is impossible to say what happened in the kingdom of Assyria. It is probable that most of the kings were like Ninias, that they wasted their time in idle pleasures, and never did any thing worthy of remembrance. Subsequently, there was a king upon the throne of Assyria whose name was Sardanapalus. He is said to have been a beautiful young man, but he was slothful, and took no care of his kingdom, and made no attempt to promote the welfare of his people. He never went outside his palace, but lived all the time among the women. And in order to make himself more fit for their company, he painted his face, and sometimes put on a woman's dress. In this ridiculous guise, the great king Sardanapalus used to sit down with the women, and help them to spin. But while Sardanapalus was feasting, and dancing, and painting his face, and dressing himself like a woman, and 1. Vide Root. 2. The only sovereigns of the first Assyrian empire mentioned in history, are Ninus, Semiramis, Ninias, and Sardanapalus. 3. It existed 1390 years. 4. Pul, 2 Kings xv. 19, 20. 5. 2 Kings xvi. 7-9. 6. 2 Kings xvii. 3-6. helping the women to spin, a terrible destruction was impending over his head. Arbaces, governor of the Medes, made war against this unworthy monarch, and besieged him in the city of Babylon. Sardanapalus saw that he could not escape, and that if he lived any longer, he should probably become a slave; so, rather than be a slave, he resolved to die. He therefore collected his treasures, and heaped them into one great pile in a splendid hall of his palace, and then set fire to the pile. The palace was speedily in a blaze, and Sardanapalus, with his favourite officers, and a multitude of beautiful women, were burnt to death in the flames. Thus 'ended the great Assyrian monarchy, the country being conquered by Arbaces. Nearly half a century after the death of Sardanapalus, "Pul restored freedom to his country, and made considerable conquests. He invaded the kingdom of Israel, and his successors, "Tiglath Pileser, and Shalmaneser, conquered it, and took the ten tribes into a captivity from which they never returned. 6 Pul is supposed to have been the king of Nineveh to whom the prophet Jonah was sent to preach repentance, about 860 years B. C. In the time of Esar-haddon, son of Sennacherib, who succeeded Shalmaneser, Nineveh, the capital, was taken by the Medes and Babylonians, from which time it formed part of the Babylonian empire GEOGRAPHICAL.-At the death of Sardanapalus, the Assyrian empire was divided into the three kingdoms of Media, Babylonia, and Nineveh. How were they situated? What places of note stood on the rivers Euphrates and Tigris? Write the names of the states and principal cities which now occupy the site of the ancient Assyrian empire. CHRONOLOGICAL. Sardanapalus overcome, and the first Assyrian empire destroyed 820 B.C. .787 B.C. .606 B.C CHEMISTRY. Animal and Vegetable Chemistry. THE same primary elements already spoken of, enter into the composition of animals and vegetables. The chief components of animal matter are nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon; of vegetable chiefly the three la ter; and out of these elements, with additions of minor importance, are all animals and vegetables produced. There is a 'principle in animals and vegetables which regulates chemical affinity; it is called vitality, the principle of life. In living animals, chemical actions go forward which are peculiar; thus food taken into the stomach is minutely divided, is 1 macerated in a fluid formed in the stomach, called the gastric juice, fitted to act upon and dissolve almost all kinds of food. The stomach itself, being animal matter, would be dissolved by this fluid, did not the vital principle restrain, for after death it is occasionally found to have done so. Other vital and chemical actions go forward, by which ultimately all that was put into the stomach becomes distributed, so as to furnish nutriment of the same kind as the part thus nourished, that is, bone receives bony matter-muscle, muscular matter. By chemical agency the air we breathe is made to act upon the impure blood which is carried to the lungs, to be by this process purified, that is 'decarbonated; the carbon of the impure blood becomes by its chemical affinity mixed with the oxygen, and forms carbonic acid, which is then breathed out or expired. This may be seen by breathing into lime water, for the carbonic acid expired makes it 3 turbid. This vital principle has the same controlling power in vegetables: the fibrils of the root take up the rich juices of the ground, and what appeared before as a dirty |