wherever they could be found, and whenever they met to dispute the title of possession, or of sovereignty.

For want of taking enlarged and general views, authors occasionally write absurdly. WOOD, in his Zoography, when detailing some interesting particulars in the Natural History of scorpions, observes"They will attack each other with fury if confined in the same glass, and the survivors will devour the conquered. They carry their unnatural temper to a still greater length, and even devour their young, if confined during the time of bringing forth. This unnatural propensity was observed by a celebrated French philosopher, who kept one of these animals enclosed in a glass, and saw the young ones devoted to destruction, one after another, till they were all reduced to a single scorpion, which would certainly have shared the same fate, if it had not fortunately taken refuge on the back of the mother, where it increased in size till it was strong enough to become the aggressor in its turn, and kill the old one."

This is a curious and an interesting anecdote, and worth preserving, as a striking illustration of the manner in which one of the checks on the increase of this tribe of animals is allowed to operate, being of a similar nature to what I have already described in respect to the common rat. But, for a Fellow of the Linnean Society to call a propensity given by Nature for the wisest purposes, and over which the animal itself has, probably, little or or no control, unnatural, is most preposterous! It is the cant of a nursery, rather than the language of philosophy!

The strong law of necessity may occasion animals to do many things, from which in their natural state they would refrain. On such ground alone can the assertion of BOSWELL be proved or accounted for, when he declares that he has, in Italy, several times seen scorpions, when surrounded with fire, so as to be prevented from all escape, retire into the centre of the circle,

*See his Life of Johnson, vol. i. p. 513,

and put an end to their existence, by committing suicide with their own stings. If this bold assertion is to be believed, it can only be accounted for on the ground of necessity, or that sudden despair and desperation so frightful a situation might be supposed to occasion. But the fact of scorpions devouring their own offspring is to be accounted for by one of the wisest and most beneficial laws of Nature: and no animal has greater reason to be thankful for the operation of such checks on the increase of creatures that are personally obnoxious, than man himself.

Thus may it be shewn, by a few of the numberless illustrations which might be taken from the Natural History of Animals, in what manner some of the checks on the superabundant increase of locomotive, living, creatures, operate. Another of these checks, and scarcely less active or powerful, must be sought for in the manners and propensities of all animals of prey, or those which support existence by the destruction of others not of their own specics.

It is the great duty, and the sublime pleasure, of Natural Philosophy, to read the designs and profit by the wisdom of the CREATOR, as displayed in His works; and one of the results of such an employment of our time will certainly be the conviction that there is no animal, at present known to man, which is not subject to the operation of very powerful checks on its increase, that are established either by some inherent quality, or propensity, or by the destiny of some other animal which continually leads to its destruction. In general, the more harmless or what we call harmless, because not ferocious-and useful animals are the most numerous; and those whose nature is carnivorous, or wholly destructive, are less plentiful.

It has already been observed by an enlightened writer, that the germs of existence which are contained in this earth, if allowed freely to develop themselves, "would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years." It is by this profuse distribution of the seeds of life, and

L

the unwearied activity of the populative principle, that the innumerable families of living beings we behold are maintained on the surface of the earth; but it must be evident to the meanest capacity, that the most horrid uproar, confusion, and famine, would soon prevail, if no bounds were put to the increase of animal life; and he who attentively examines the relations which animals bear to each other, will not only be able to discover the nature of those bounds, and the various checks which mark them out, but will attain the most valuable and interesting knowledge which the study of Natural History can impart, the uses of different animals in the creation; a subject on which I shall briefly touch in the following chapter.