In my aunt’s garden there is a tree of the Yulan Magnolia just opening its large tulip-shaped blossoms, which are so fragrant, and of so pure a white. It is nearly twenty feet high, and it is so hardy, that she wonders this beautiful shrub is not more common in all gardens.
What a peculiar character the hawthorn gives the hedges in this country! It is called May, and indeed it is so pretty, that I think it deserves that honour.
“For thee, sweet month, the groves green liveries wear,
If not the first, the fairest of the year.
For thee the Graces lead the dancing Hours,
And Nature’s ready pencil paints the flowers.”
I have been examining with my aunt the tendrils of the sweet pea; they are so generally found just in the right places for attaching themselves to some convenient support, that one would almost imagine they knew exactly where to put out; but she pointed out some that were idle and useless. She then shewed me the beautiful arrangement of nature by which the honeysuckle supports itself: when a straight shoot becomes long and weak, it curls into a spiral figure which gives it great additional strength, even if alone, and enables it to take a firm grasp of any twig that it meets. But if two or more shoots should touch, they immediately twine or screw themselves round each other, like the strands of a rope, for mutual support.
Another fact my aunt told me on this subject is, that the claspers of briony always shoot forward in a spiral, in search of support; but if they meet with nothing, after completing a spiral of about three turns, they alter their course, and proceed in some other direction.
9th.—Caroline and I had a nice walk this morning with my uncle, and I hasten to write down the additional facts that we learned from him on the subject of fossil remains.
Shells, he told us, are generally found entire, and the skeletons of fishes are frequently discovered in such a perfect state, that both their families and species can be easily ascertained. But the fossil remains of quadrupeds are very rarely complete; some of the parts are wanting; the bones are either scattered at a distance from each other, or else lying confused together, and generally broken. Yet these misplaced fragments are the only means left for naturalists to determine the species of the animal to which they had belonged; and in frequent cases a single bone has been sufficient for that purpose. This is effected by the science of Comparative Anatomy, or, in other words, a comparison of the construction and the functions of the corresponding parts of the inferior animals, with those which belong to the human body; and perhaps no science furnishes more instances of ingenious observation and beautiful reasoning.
Every organized being forms an entire system of its own; all its parts have a mutual relation to each other; and each of them, taken separately, will, therefore, clearly point out the other parts to which it must have belonged. Suppose a ploughman turns up in a field a few bones, the only conclusion he can draw is, that some unknown animal had died near that spot; but the comparative anatomist can tell the size of the whole animal, its general form, the structure of its jaws and teeth, and, consequently, whether it belonged to the herbivorous or carnivorous tribes. None of these separate parts can vary their forms without a corresponding variation in the other parts of the animal; and, consequently, each of those parts, taken separately, indicates all the others to which it had belonged.
If the stomach of an animal is organized so as to digest only flesh, then the jaws and the incisive teeth must be constructed for devouring flesh; the claws for seizing the prey; and the entire system of the limbs for pursuing and catching it. Every one of those organs is indispensable in the structure of carnivorous animals; so that by the bones of the paw, or the arm, or the shoulder-blade, or the leg, the construction and disposition of all the rest may be determined; and, consequently, the whole form, species, genus, and class of animal must necessarily be discovered by the examination of a single bone.
The hoofed animals, it is plain, must be herbivorous, because they are possessed of no means of seizing their prey; it is also evident that their fore-legs, being only necessary to support their bodies and to assist their progressive movement, they have no occasion for any rotary motion in that joint that corresponds to the human wrist; and their food being herbaceous, their teeth must have flat surfaces; but at the same time, in order to bruise seeds and tough plants, the teeth are composed of alternate layers of hard enamel and soft bone; and a horizontal or grinding motion is given to the lower jaw, which for that purpose has a peculiar conformation of its joint. Again, we know that ruminating animals alone are provided with cloven hoofs, so that, from a simple foot-mark we can be perfectly certain that the animal possessed such and such teeth, jaws, legs, shoulders and horns; and that it fed on herbage.