T. GILL.
Cogent Reasons.—Dr. Arbuthnot first began his practice at Dorchester, a situation where the air is salubrious, and the environs beautiful; but he staid no length of time there. A neighbour met him galloping to London, and asked him why he went thither? “To leave your confounded place, where I can neither live nor die.”
T. GILL.
The Foot.—Man is the only animal, in which the whole surface of the foot rests on the ground; and this circumstance arises from the erect stature which belongs exclusively to him.
The Brain.—The cavity containing the brain of a crocodile measuring thirteen or fourteen feet, will hardly admit the thumb; and the brain of the chamelion is not, according to the description of the Paris dissectors, larger than a pea.
The Tongue does not appear to be an indispensable organ of taste. Blumenbach saw an adult, and, in other respects, a well-formed man, who was born without a tongue. He could distinguish, nevertheless, very easily the tastes of solutions of salt, sugar, and aloes, rubbed on his palate, and would express the taste of each in writing.
Vulgar Error.—In Mr. Crabb’s Dictionary of General Knowledge, article, Pelican, we find it stated that the bird “has a peculiar tenderness for its young, and has been supposed to draw blood from its breast for their support.” We thought this error had long since been expunged from natural history, and lament to find it credulously quoted in a book of the year 1830.
Eyes.—Large animals have small eye-balls in proportion to their size: this is very remarkably the case with the whales, as might be seen in the skeleton of the gigantic whale lately exhibited in London. Those animals which are much under ground have the globe of the eye also very small, as the mole and shrew: in the former of these instances its existence was long altogether denied, and it is not, in fact, larger than a pin’s head.
Teeth.—The numerous teeth of crocodiles have this peculiarity of structure, that in order to facilitate their change, there are always two, (or sometimes three,) of which one is contained within the other.
Bills of Birds.—Of all bills the most extraordinary is that of the cross-bill, in which the two mandibles cross each other at a considerable angle, for this formation seems to be directly opposed to the natural purposes of a bill. The bird, however, contrives to pick out the seeds from the cones of the fir, and it is limited to that species of nourishment.