The Sun.
London, England, 1834-10-02 00:00:00

MAN AND ANIMALS.

Man can accomplish more indirectly than any
other animal.can ; but many beasts are much stronger
than men. The lion, the tiger, the buffalo, and the
elephant, oblige the lord of the creation to acknowledge
his physical inferiority. Even the turtle will carry as
many men as can sit on his back ; and an ant-eater of
the Cape, as Thunberg relates, will fix itself so firmly
in his hole, that many oxen cannot draw it out. In
regard to swiftness, how inferior is man to the race-
' horse and the ostrich ! As a mere meteor, these ani-
mals dart along, and pass quickly beyond the reach of
human vision. In regard to agility, how inferior is
man to many of the tenants of the forest I The lion
and the tiger make astonishing bounds. The Indian
antelopes leap sometimes ten or twelve feet from the
ground, and pass to a distance of thirty feet. The ibex
springs, on some occasions, over terrific gulphs. Sonic
kinds of monkeys are astonishingly nimble : in most
cases they avoid the arrows of the Indians. Indeed,
they always avoid them when they see them. If there
be any rocks, behind which these creatures can shelter
themselves, they always do so between the explosion of
a gun and the arrival of a ball. Some of the baboon
species, that were tied up in the Dutch settlement of
the Cape, were so nimble, that no one, at a moderate
distance, could strike them with a stone : they would
.generally catch the stone in their hands. Some ani-
mals avoid their enemies by one curious contrivance,
and others by another. Nature in this respect, seems
to have endowed brutes with what is necessary, but she
has left man to his ingenuity. Among the more sin-
gular methods of disappointing the expectations of an
enemy is that of the torpedo, in producing paralyza-
tion ; that of the opossum, in exhaling an odour which
is insufferable to every other animal ; and that of the
sloth, which, by piteous and unnatural cries, startles
and horrifies other beasts. Some animals, if they be
thrown into water, although they have been little ac-
customed to it, will live there a long time : the sala-
mander, when it is surrounded by flames, exudes a
milky substance which counteracts the violence of the
fire. Nature has wonderfully favoured brute animals,
by endowing them with a faculty of instinct. By in-
nate sagacity, insects and larger animals are sometimes
capable of exceeding the utmost ingenuity of man. We
have an instance of this sort in the curiously-con-
structed dwelling of the wasp. The solitary wasp
builds an intricate nest, in which it deposits its eggs
from each of these is produced a worm, which seems to
be incapable even of locomotion ; but, as soon as it is
transformed into a wasp, it begins to construct a nest
of the same kind as its parent had done. This little
creature had not only never witnessed the process of
building, but it had probably never seen its parent.
Young crocodiles, which are just emerged from the
egg, attempt to defend themselves from the attack of
their enemies ; and many sorts of animals, as soon as
they are brought into existence, begin to perform their
part on the theatre of life, as
if they were attended by
a prompter, or as if they had been previously schooled.

Gangs of fellows parade the streets, generally in.
parties of three, singing inflammatory songs, couched in lan-
guage of the most disgusting description. They are also
spreading themselves over the provinces, and are said to have
much better means of living than their voices seem capable of
providing them.—Morning Paper.