with organs that fit it for a more extended range. Sometimes from being purely aquatic, it becomes a denizen of the earth and the air-or of earth, air, and water at once--and, with this change of character and organs, its Creator wills it to undertake a new charge in the general arrangement of functions and duties.

It will be recollected that a very considerable portion of the food of the higher creatures, especially the birds, is derived from animals that undergo a metamorphosis; and, that the majority of these in their first state, are more bulky, and contain more nutritive substance than they do when arrived at their last, and, therefore, even in this view, circumstances important to the general welfare may arise from this disposition, and variety of food may also be produced, and more enjoyment to the various animals who are destined to live by the myriad forms of the insect world.

Whether the higher Orders of Crustaceans undergo a real metamorphosis has not been satisfactorily proved. They are known to change their shells annually, but it has not been observed that this moult is attended by any change of form, or by the acquisition of new locomotive or other organs. Insects, we know, after their last change do not increase in size; the Crustaceans are found, however, to vary very much in this respect. Whether a different law obtains amongst

them, from what takes place in insects, and they follow the Batrachian reptiles, which, after they have exchanged the tadpole for the frog, grow till they have arrived at the standard of their respective species, I cannot certainly affirm; but reasoning from analogy, it seems more probable that the crustaceans should follow the law of animals most nearly related to them, and belonging to the same primary group, than that they should copy the reptiles, animals far removed from them, and of a completely different organization.

There is another point in which this subject of animal metamorphoses may be viewed. Do not these successive changes in the outward form, functions, and locomotions of so many animals, preach a doctrine to the attentive and duly impressed student of animal forms, and their history-do they not symbolically declare to him, that the same individual may be clothed with different forms, in different states of existence, that he may be advanced, after certain preparatory changes, and an intermediate interval of rest and repose, to a much more exalted rank; with organs, whether sensiferous or locomotive, of a much wider range; with tastes more refined; with an intellect more developed, and employed upon higher objects; with affections more spiritualized, and further removed from gross matter?

The multiplication of these creatures, which, like the Aphides, are oviparous at one time, and viviparous at another, is sometimes prodigious, and only exceeded by that of the Infusories. A female Cyclops, the animal before alluded to, in the space of three months, after one fecundation which serves for several successive generations, lays her eggs ten times, and it has been calculated that from only eight of these ovipositions, allowing forty for each, she might be the progenitrix, incredible as it may seem, of four milliards and a half, or four thousand five hundred millions!! Another animal belonging to a genus of the present order, was observed by Captain Kotzebue in such myriads that the sea exhibited a red stripe, a mile long, and a fathom broad, produced by a species, individually viewed, scarcely visible to the naked eye. How astonishing is the reflection, that in so short a space, in the case of the Cyclops, a single individual should be gifted by its Creator to fill the waters with myriads of animated beings, supposing a single impregnated female at first to have been the surviving inhabitant of any given pool or ditch. Conjecture is lost when we meditate upon the mysterious subject. How can life, as originally imparted, at the interval of a few months be so multiplied and subdivided, as, that

'Latreille Cours D'Entomologie, i. 421.

2 Calanus.

such infinite shoals of beings shall each have a share in the wonderful bequest. But, when we reflect that an Omnipresent Deity is every where mighty in operation, working all in all, and that he guideth all the powers of nature, as the rider guideth the horse upon which he sitteth, to answer the purposes of his providence; we may easily conceive, that under his superintendence the thing may be accomplished, though how it is accomplished, must always remain an unfathomable mystery.

These powers of multiplication are, however, given to these creatures for a wise and beneficent purpose. They themselves afford a supply of food to a variety of creatures-to numerous aquatic insects, even polypes and worms; and to many fishes and birds, by whom their numbers are hourly and greatly diminished. As the stagnant waters likewise, in which they abound, are apt to be dried up in the summer season, many of them probably perish; but, in some, animation may be suspended till the places they inhabit are again filled with water. I have found the little animal described by Dr. Shaw, in the Linnean Transactions, as the Cancer stagnalis of Linné, in horse-hoof prints, in the spring, then filled with water, but which had been previously quite dry.

1 1 Cor. xii. 6. Ps. lxviii. 4, 33.

The finny tribes of the world of waters seem more particularly exposed to the invasion of parasitic foes; as far as they are known there is scarcely a fish that swims that is not infested by more than one of these enemies; even the mightiest monsters of the ocean, the gigantic whale, the sagacious dolphin, the terrific and all-devouring shark, cannot defend themselves from them. Where they abound they doubtless generate diseases, and are amongst the means employed by a watchful Providence to keep within proper limits the inhabitants of the waters; and probably there are other benefits which our imperfect knowledge of their history prevents us from duly appreciating, that are conferred, through these animals, upon the oceanic population. Their prevalence upon the predaceous fishes, as was before observed, may tend to diminish their ravages by lessening their actitivity; while to those of a milder character, within certain bounds and under certain circumstances, they may be beneficial rather than injurious.

Of this description is the tribe of Lerneans, above alluded to as intermediate between the Branchiopod and Poecilopod Entomostracans; of which I cannot select a more interesting species to exemplify the adaptation of the structure to the instinct and functions, than one described and figured by Dr. Nordmann, under the appro