where there are no marine plants there | The first of these is mentioned in the Anmust be few animals. From these and nals of Rochelle; and Chatelaillon was other causes, the fauna of our shores must once a fortified town, with a fine harbor, depend on the mineralogical composition defended by lofty walls and deep fosses, of the strata and the geological structure not a trace of which remains. In 1660, of the district. seven towns which had commanded the bay were carried away by the storms of one winter; and a fort, erected early in the present century, has shared the same fate. The two towns we have mentioned, and the road which joined them, are now replaced by an arm of the sea about four miles wide, the work of the Mer Sauvage, the name which is here justly given to the Atlantic. The Oolitic limestone of Rochelle, therefore, and the mud which pervades the coast, and which is hostile to the ova as well as to the adult animal, afforded almost no subjects for experiment. He was fortunate, however, in procuring the very curious animal whose existence in the seas of La Rochelle had been the chief inducement to make him visit the locality. This animal was the Branchellion, a worm, an inch or an inch and a half long, which lives as a parasite upon the Torpedo, a fish whose electrical discharges shake even the strongest man. Like the leech, it has at each extremity a sucker for fixing itself; but its body, instead of being a single piece, as in all the allied animals, is divided into two distinct portions-a round and spindle-shaped neck one third of its whole length, while the other two thirds resemble a dark violet-colored leech, having on each side a series of thin laminæ of a fan shape, and plaited on the edges. The organization of the animal was very peculiar. He discovered ramified canals, giving origin to a net-work permeated by a perfectly colorless liquid loaded with moving granules. These lamina proved to be lympathic branchia, and the colorless liquid a nutrient fluid different from the blood, and requiring to be vivified by being brought into contact with air. In his zoological excursions, our author was struck with the remarkable encroachments which the sea had long been making on the coasts of Saintonge. This erosive action is in some cases compensated by the formation of Deltas at the mouths of rivers, which tend to fill up gulfs, as well as to wear away advancing promontories. The formation of the Bay of Mont St. Michael since the Roman epoch, and the separation of the island of Sesambre, now six miles from St. Malo, are facts proved only by tradition; but on the coast of Saintonge we have the testimony of history for the singular erosion of its rocky coast. Important towns have crumbled with the cliffs that overhung them. In the middle ages a high road passed from the point of Chatelaillon to the island of Aix, and on this road were built the towns of Montmeillan and Chatelaillon. Having failed both at Angoulin and Chatelaillon in obtaining marine animals, our naturalist directed his attention to the curious spectacle presented by the adjoining coast. Between the isle of Aix and the shore lies the plateau of Chatelaillon, a plain of accumulated mud, which does not entirely replace the district on which Montmeillan and Chatelaillon were built. Driven back by currents, this mud has been distributed along the coast so as to fill up every calm bay and sheltered creek. So great, indeed, is the extent of these accumulations, that the embouchure of the Sevre has successively advanced behind many islands once far in front of it, so that they are now so many hills scattered over the plain, as they were islands upon the sea. Maillezais, Marans, Velluire, Triaise, Maillé, Vildoux, and a dozen other villages, now on the shore, were surrounded by water in the thirteenth century. Only a hundred years ago La Dive was an island of steep rocks, and it is now standing in the midst of fields. From some facts respecting the condition of the Gulf of Poitou, M. Quatrefages is of opinion that the retreat of the sea may not be produced solely by the accumulation of soil, but may be the result of those interior forces which are now regularly and slowly raising up the coasts of Scandinavia. After giving an interesting account of the Salt Marshes of Saintonge, our author describes the gigantic Bouchots or artiticial Mussel beds of the communes of Esnandes, Charron, and Marsilly, with a population of 3000 souls. In 1834 these bouchots were 340 in number. Their original cost was 696,660 francs; their annual expense, 386,240; and their produce, a revenue of 123,760 francs. The bouchots, then arranged in four rows, now their nests larvas, nymphs, and perfect insects, with great numbers of neuters, which perform the duties of soldiers and policemen. The larvas and nymphs build their houses, dig the mines, collect provisions, and encircle the common mother, whose eggs they receive and protect. The workers of the Termes bellicosus are only about th of an inch long, and the occupy seven rows, some of them measuring more than 1000 yards from their base to their summit. These bouchots now extend without interruption from Marsilly far beyond Charron, and form a gigantic stockade six miles long and two and a half broad. They are also a sort of fish-preserves. The fishes which frequent them are generally small species, like the Sardines. The common shrimp, the Cran-th of a grain in weight. Though deligon vulgaris, which is smaller than the common prawn, the Palamon Serratus, is caught in enormous quantities. In three or four minutes after plunging the net into the water, the hauls almost broke the poles of the net; and in less than half an hour they caught 200 lbs., which brought only three francs, or about a centime per pound! cate in structure, they attack the hardest bodies, excepting metals and stones, with their horns and serrated mandibles. The soldiers are about half an inch long, and 3ds of a grain in weight. Their enormous horny head, larger than their body, is armed with sharp pincers. The perfect insect is nearly 4ths of an inch long, weighs about 14 grain, and its wings, which it possesses only for a few hours, are about 2 inches from tip to tip. Some of the species build, round the branches of trees, nests as large as a sugar-barrel, composed of small pieces of wood, cemented by the gums of the locality and their own secretions; while the greater number construct above their subterranean galleries edifices that inclose their storehouse and nurseries. The two species, Termes Atrox and T. Mordax, thus erect true columns, surmounted by a projecting roof or dome. These columns are about nine inches high, and equally wide, and are made of clay, which becomes extremely hard. The interior consists of cells; and, when needed, new columns. are built, so that the nest often resembles a group of monstrous toadstools. A nest of the T. Bellicosus at first consists of one or two conical towers, which soon multiply and rise to the height of five feet. These towers at last touch each other, and become cemented together, resembling an irregularly dome-shaped hillock five or six yards high, and nearly as much in diameter. The great pyramid of Cheops is 480 feet high, about ninety-six times the height of a man, while the pyramid of the Termites is about a thousand times higher than the insect! Their subterranean cities, of which the pyramid is as it were the capital, have their streets, squares, storehouses of gums and the inMore social in their character, the Ter- durated juices of plants, foundling hospimites, like bees and ants, associate in nu- tals, and a palace-the residence of the merous communities, where individuals of actual father and mother of the communidifferent forms represent different castes, ty. They have also quarries, and arand discharge different functions. Devel- rangements for ventilation, and for mainoped from eggs, the Termites present intaining a uniform temperature in different In his search for marine animals, our author had little success at Esnandes and at Chatelaillon. He had obtained only five Branchellions; but the storms from the south-west brought into the waters of Saintonge some of the strange animals which swarm in the tropical seas; and he every day met with colonies of those insects, the Termites, which appear expressly created to recall to man sentiments of humility by the power of undermining his habitations. The Termites approximate to the Libellulæ, or dragon-flies, although they are widely different in their habits. The dragon-flies are carniverous. In the larva state, they live at the bottom of ponds imbedded in mud. When an insect, mollusc, or even fish, is in their way, they uncoil a weapon like the spring of a watch, which is a sort of lower lip and arm, furnished with serrated and strong pincers, with which it seizes its prey, and takes it into its mouth. After being a year in water, it climbs some plant, where it suspends itself with its head downwards. As soon as the sun has dried and hardened its skin, it suddenly splits and bursts, throwing away its useless garment, and emerging a dragon-fly, which becomes perfect in a few hours. It then sets out in search of its prey, hovers like an eagle above its native pools, and rapidly describing circles, it seizes the first insect that it meets. seasons. In the large and oblong royal chamber is found only the royal pair. In the center is the queen, without wings, with an abdomen nearly six inches long, and between 1500 and 2000 times larger than the rest of the body, equaling in weight 30,000 workers. The king, which is of the usual size, is generally concealed under one of the sides of the queen's abdomen. The workers and soldiers surround the queen with the most devout attention, feeding her, and removing to the nurseries the 80,000 eggs which she lays every day of the year! These eggs very soon issue from the nurseries as larvas similar to the workers, but smaller, and are the objects of the most attentive care. They subsequently assume the form of active laborers or soldiers; but the former alone become perfect insects. Early in the rainy season, when their wings are developed, the males and females, on some stormy evening, issue by millions from their subterranean retreats. After a few hours, their wings wither and fall, and the next day the earth is strewn with their bodies. The Termites are used as food by the Indians and natives of Africa. Smeathman considers them as delicate and wholesome food, and superior even to the famous palm grubs which, in the West-Indies, form an exquisite dish at the tables of the rich. Linnæus regarded the Termites as the greatest scourge of the Indies. They of ten destroy inhabited buildings and storehouses, attacking the wood-work and every thing within their reach. The Prefecture and the Arsenal of La Rochelle have suffered from these insects the most destructive ravages. The archives of the department were almost totally destroyed, and the hardest wood of the rooms excavated and reduced to powder. Various attempts have been made, but in vain, to destroy them. Powdered arsenic has in some cases succeeded. M. Quatrefages has found chlorine efficacious, and an attempt has been made to attack the Termites by ants; but in an experiment made with this view, the Termites cut the ants in two by their terrible forceps, and completely exterminated them. We can not close our notice of these interesting volumes without congratulating their author, not only on the many valuable and important contributions which he has made to the philosophy of Natural History, but on the general tone of his work, and on the high moral and religious sentiment which pervades it. The marvels of animal and animalcular life now disclosed by the microscope, stamp a high importance upon Zoology, and justify us in regarding it as the most progressive of the sciences. The study of the living world-of the hitherto unrecognized tenants of the earth, the ocean, and the air, must, for centuries to come, call forth all the resources of science, and summon to the microscope intellects of the highest order. We can hardly look for discoveries of great novelty in the planetary and siderial systems. Telescopes have nearly reached their limits in point of size, if not in point of perfection; and it would be presumptuous to hope that we shall ever acquire any knowledge of the structure, or of the inhabitants of the worlds above us. The sciences of Optics, Mechanics, Hydrostatics, and Pneumatics, have assumed, more or less, a stationary character, and it must therefore be from the other departments of knowledge that a rich harvest of discovery is to be reaped. The science of life, however, the abode of instinct and intelligence, has a character essentially nobler than them all. Its objects are infinite in number, and exciting in interest; and it will require ages to discover and to develop the countless organizations of being, aud the strange functions of life, yet concealed from our view. The microscope, imperfect though it be, is the instrument by which these great results will be achieved; and when it has acquired new powers of penetration and enlargement, it can not fail to reveal to us marvelous secrets, lifting the vail which shrouds the mysteries of our intellectual nature, and throwing light on questions which human reason has not ventured to approach. In the more imposing creations of planets and stars, which appeal to us chiefly by their magnitude and the precise movements which they perform, men of little faith see only the operation of general laws, and overlook the beneficent power which creates and sustains. It is otherwise in the world of life and instinct. Every structure, and every function similar in purpose, though unlike in character to our own, excite our sympathy and call forth our love and admiration. It is when the Divine arm is at work before our eyes, and under our hands, that reason recognizes its presence, and the affections feel its power. From the Dublin University Magazine. POETRY: MATTHEW ARNOLD AND MACCARTHY.* POETRY was in other times classified the sense which includes a relation to a exclusively according to the mould body politic, a civil constitution, and pein which it was cast, and the external culiar obligations is, by Cowley at least, shape which it assumed-dramatic or invariably written countrey; while in the lyric, didactic, idyllic, or satirical. The less complex meaning, opposed to the more reflective turn of modern thought, town, it appears in its modern spelling. and the progress of mental analysis, have in- But the tendency of language is to grow troduced a new principle of division. The more and more subtle, to edge off its powers of mind predominant in the com- words more sharply, to desynonymize. position of various poems have formed the basis of classification. These divisions often savor of a pedantic and affected accuracy; but the dichotomy of the chief poetic faculties into imagination and fancy has become especially prominent since Wordsworth's famous preface to the edition of his works, published in 1815. The two poets whose names, which may now without exaggeration be termed celebrated, are placed at the head of the present article, fit into the pigeon-holes of this theory with sufficient exactness-Mr. Arnold standing for imagination, Mr. McCarthy for fancy. We may appropriately introduce our remarks on the Grecian muse of the Oxford professor of poetry, and on the musical and elegant genius of our own gifted countryman, by some account of the history of these words, and of the distinction which now seems to be attached to them by our best critics. In the history of language, there are some few instances in which refinements of distinction perish. The keen edge of the razor of language may be stropped into bluntness. Thus, (to cite an example which may be new to some,) country, in A remarkable illustration is supplied in the words imagination and fancy. These terms were at one period employed almost indiscriminately by the most accurate masters of language. We have no disposition to lose ourselves in a cloud of oldworld metaphysics; or like him in the Dunciad, "Dash through thin and thick; With the French Cronsaz, and Dutch Burgersdyk." But the latter is an exquisitely acute thinker; and we almost suppose that a selection might be made from his writings to be placed in the hands of ingenuous youth, more edifying, and not less philosophical than the positivism and fatalism which Mr. Mill drops like blackened oil, from the iron engine-wheels of his logic. Burgersdyk, then, may stand for the older school of logical metaphysicians, just about to disappear before the advance of Leibnitz and Locke. According to him, the office of fancy is to imagine, or in Aristotelian phrase, to form phantasies, that is, images and likenesses, representative of things which have been perceived by the external senses. These images of fancy represent either single objects which have been previously presented, as gold, mountain, horse, man; or two or more centaur. He states that the faculty of objects compounded, as golden mountain, imagination is, in fact and signification, identical with fancy. It would be easy to show that this is the view of Henry More, the great Platonist. In Hobbes, imagination and fancy begin to part company, and split asunder. The philosopher of Malmesbury repeats the current doctrine of imagination with much affectation of originality; and originality there is, not in the doctrine itself, which is simply that just stated, but in the exquisite illustrations which envelop it. But in his letter to Sir William Davenant, he discriminates fancy as emphatically the faculty which produces the ornaments of a poem, as the poetic element in human nature generally. We shall easily obtain pardon for quoting this admirable passage: 66 Judgment begets the strength and structure, and fancy begets the ornaments of a poem. Memory is the world (though not really, yet so as in a looking-glass) in which the judgment, the severer sister, busieth herself in a grave and rigid examination, whereby the fancy, when any work of art is to be performed, finds her materials at hand and prepared for use; so that when she seems to fly from one Indies to the other, and from heaven to earth, and to penetrate into the future, and into herself, and all this in a point of time, the voyage is not very great, herself being all the search; and her wonderful celerity consisteth not so much in motion, as in copious imagery discreetly ordered and perfectly registered in the memory. So far forth as the fancy of man has traced the ways of true philosophy, so far it hath produced marvelous effects to the benefit of mankind. All that is beautiful or defensible in building, or marvelous in engines and instruments of motion; whatsoever commodity men receive from the observation of the heavens, from the description of the earth, from the account of time, from walking on the sea, and whatsoever distinguisheth the civility of Europe from the barbarity of the American savages, is the workmanship of fancy, but guided by the precepts of true philosophy." But imagination was in process of time to lose the dominion which had been conceded to her even by the scholastic philosophy. The superior liveliness of perception by sight is painted on the very face of the Greek language. Of verbs signifying sensation, those which denote this sense govern an accusative; those which denote others, a genitive; as if the sight acted upon its objects, while the other senses were rather patients of them. This may explain to us the curtailment of the domain of imagination in some writers. Thus, Reid says that "imagination, in its proper sense, signifies a lively conception of objects of sight." Addison remarks: "It is the sense of sight which furnishes the imagination with its ideas; so that by the pleasures of imagination I mean such as arise from visible And objects. We can not have a single image in the fancy that did not make its first entrance through the sight." Meanwhile, imagination had come to be employed as a term of contempt. Bishop Butler, in the Analogy, uses it to express the mistake of poetic resemblance for logical analogy. With that grave writer, it is "that forward delusive faculty, ever obtruding beyond its sphere of some assistance, indeed, to apprehension, but the author of all error; "the delusive custom of substituting imagination in the room of experience." Butler's philosophic editor, Bishop Fitzgerald, seems to inherit his master's contemptuous usage of imaunder imagination, we find this notice: In his Index to the Analogy, gination. "Men of warm imagination, apt to fancy coïncidences." And the place referred to is this: "Such as are fanciful in any one certain way, will make out a thousand coïncidences which seem to favor their peculiar follies." Thus imagination had passed through three phases. In the older psychology, it was the faculty representative of the "sensible ideas" which are presented by the objects of the senses. În later philosophical usage, it was the repository of images by the lively channel of sight. And then it was pretty generally used as an expression of grave banter. We have already seen that Hobbes had begun to discriminate fancy from imagination. If even his fine prose has been un able to throw a charm over this dull disquisition, let us obtain pardon by turning to a passage of somewhat earlier date, in Ben Jonson's "Vision of Delight." Let us see Delight coming afar off, accompanied with Grace, Love, Harmony, Revel, Laughter; and followed by Wonder. Rise slowly, O Night! in thy chariot bespangled with stars, take thy crown and scepter of flame, "and from thy gown, A train of light come waving down." Let the moon rise over the shoulder of the hill, and then silence, while Night sings her rarest song. Here it is: "Break, Phant'sy, from thy cave of cloud, And various shapes of things; It must have blood, and naught of phlegm; And though it be a waking dream, |