Part 8

But these invisible vapors, bred of decay, were not intended to be breathed by living creatures; and indeed, can not be breathed by them without mischief. We are able to stand near the manure-heap for some time without taking any particular harm, because the vapors are scattered as fast as they are formed, and are mingled in small quantities with large quantities of pure air. We thus breathe air tainted with these vapors, rather than the vapors themselves. But suppose all the air were taken away, and you were left standing with nothing around you but these vapors, what do you think would happen to you? You would be dead in less than three minutes, killed by their poisonous power. The vapors which are bred in decaying substances are poison vapors.

You would like to know why it is, as these poison vapors are poured out in such quantities from all decaying substances, that you do not see people dying all around from breathing them. Did I not tell you, in the case of the poison vapors of the manure-heap, that you could breathe them because they were freely scattered into the fresh air? Now just come a few yards this way. You observe the smell of the manure grows less and less. Here you can not any longer perceive it, although the wind is actually blowing over the manure-heap toward us. The fact is, these poison vapors can not bear the presence of pure air. Pure air is the natural _antidote_ or remedy for their poison. The instant it mingles with them it begins to destroy their hurtfulness, and in a few moments it has so thoroughly accomplished this good work that no single trace of mischievous power remains.

Has it ever occurred to you to ask yourself why the pleasant wind blows over hills and fields, and through lanes and streets? You know very well that the wind always is blowing, more or less. Go out when you will, you find it, if you turn the right way. It is the most uncommon thing in the world for the air to be altogether still. The fresh wind blows so constantly over hill and plain, because God sends it to sweep away and destroy the poison vapors that steam out from decaying substances. The breeze is God’s invisible antidote to the invisible poison. The pleasant wind blows in order that the air may be kept fresh and pure.

In the open air the fresh wind very soon scatters and destroys all poison vapors. But civilized men do not dwell always in the open air. The wind sometimes makes them feel cold, so they build themselves houses to shut out the wind. To-night, before you go to bed in your small sleeping room, you will close the windows and the door; and you will think, when you have done so, that you have shut out everything which could harm you, with the cold. But what will you say to me if I show you that after you have closed the windows and the door, poison vapors are bred in great quantities in the room where you are lying? and that so long as you remain in it, they keep gathering more and more strength, and becoming more and more dangerous. Just come back with me to the cottage, and let us look at the room in which you were sleeping last night. The beds, you believe, are not yet made. Never mind that. I often go into rooms under such circumstances, and perhaps upon this occasion it may be even better for the purpose I have in view, if I find the chamber in disorder. At any rate let us go upstairs and take our chance.

Sure enough you have been at great pains here to keep the cold from getting in. There is only one casement in this low small room, and that casement has not been unbarred since yesterday. I do not need to be told this. I make the discovery myself; for you have also kept something from getting out, which had better have been away. I feel at once this is not the same kind of air which we were breathing just now in the open garden. Indeed, I can not remain in the room without opening the window. There; I throw open the casement, and in a few minutes the air will be as fresh here as it is outside of the house.

Now what do you think it was that made the air of this room so unpleasant? It was the poison-vapor with which it was laden, and which had steamed out of your body mixed with your breath during the night. Poison-vapors are bred in the bodies and in the blood of all living animals, just as they are in manure-heaps. All the working organs of your frame being exhausted by use, undergo decay and are turned into vapor, and that vapor, being _bred_ of decay, is _poison-vapor_, which must be got rid of out of the body as quickly as it is formed. Living bodies are worn away into vapor by working just as mill-stones are worn away into dust by grinding. You would see them waste under work, if it were not that they are repaired by food. You wonder, then, that as this vapor is poisonous, living creatures do not destroy themselves by the poison they form in their blood? Occasionally human creatures do so destroy themselves, as I shall presently show you. But the merciful Designer of the animal frame has furnished a means by which, in a general way, the poison is removed as fast as it is formed. Can you not guess what this means is?

God employs the same plan for driving away poison vapors from the inside of living animal bodies, that he uses for the purification of the air in the open country. He causes a current of air to circulate through them. Notice how, while we are talking together, our chests heave up and down. You know this is what we term breathing. Now, when we breathe, we first make the insides of our chests larger by drawing their walls and floors further asunder. Then we make them smaller by drawing their walls and floors once more nearer together. When the chest is made larger, fresh air rushes in through the mouth and wind-pipe, and through the twig-like branches of this pipe, until it fills a quantity of little round chambers which form the ends of those branches. The wind-pipe branches out into several millions of fine twig-like tubes, and then each tube ends in a blind extremity, or chamber exactly like this.

The air-chamber in the body is covered by a sort of net-work, stretched tightly over it. That net-work is formed of blood-vessels, through which the blood is constantly streaming, driven on by the action of the heart. This blood sucks air from the air-chambers into itself, and carries that air onward to all parts of the living frame. But the blood-streams in the net-work of vessels also steam out into the air-chambers poison-vapors, which are then driven out through the windpipe and the mouth. Thus the breath which goes into the mouth is _fresh_ air; but the breath which comes out of the mouth is _foul_ air. Air is spoiled, and, as it were, converted to poison, by being breathed; but the body is purified by the breathing, because it is its poison-vapors that are carried away, mingled with the spoiled air.

This, then, is why men breathe. Breathing is the blowing of a fresh wind through the living body for the cleansing away of its impurities. The purifying part of the air which is breathed actually circulates with the blood through all parts of the frame.

Exercise quickens and exalts the cleansing powers of the breathing—and this is why it is of such great importance to the health. When you go and take a brisk walk in the open air, you increase the force of the internal breeze. The exertion makes your chest expand to a larger size, so that it can admit more fresh air, and it also causes your blood-streams to course along more rapidly, so that a greater abundance of the air is carried on through your frame.

[To be concluded.]

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I could never find out more than three ways to become happier (not happy). The first, rather a high one, is this: to soar so far above the clouds of life that one sees the whole external world, with its wolf-dens, charnel-houses, and thunder-rods, down far beneath us, shrunk into a child’s little garden. The second is—merely to sink down into this little garden, and there to nestle yourself so snugly in some little furrow, that when you look out of your warm lark-nest you likewise can perceive no wolf-dens, charnel-houses, and poles, but only blades, every one of which, for the nest-bird, is a tree, and sun-screen, and rain-screen. The third, finally, which I regard as the hardest and cunningest, is that of alternating with the other two.—_Jean Paul F. Richter._

THE MAMMALIA.

From the French of ERNEST MENAULT.

This is a class of animals which, by their organization and intelligence, approach nearest to man. The mammalia have a bony skeleton, the center of which is the spine, to which the other organs are attached, and whence they all radiate. They possess, also, a brain, in which the hemispheres are well developed; a heart with two ventricles and two auricles; lungs for inhaling air to oxydize the blood and stimulate all the organs, the brain especially. The thoracic cavity contains the lungs and the heart, which are always separated from the abdominal cavity by a complete diaphragm.

In this class the organs of sense acquire great perfection, even in their accessory parts. For instance, the greater number of each species have distinct eyelids, an external ear, and other peculiarities which are not found amongst the oviparous animals. The mouth is furnished with fleshy lips (except the monotrematous animals[K]), and the body is habitually protected with a specially adapted covering.

All the mammalia have five senses, but in different degrees. Thus, one species, such as the chamois and wild goats, that live upon the mountains, have long sight, and can see better far away than near. On the contrary, the heavy races which inhabit the valleys, such as the hog and rhinoceros, can see objects best when near them. Those whose eyes are too sensitive to bear the bright light of day, only go out during the night, like bats, or even hide themselves under the earth, as the armadillo and hedgehog. Those creatures which are the weakest, being on that account the more timid, are gifted with a keen sense of hearing. This enables them to avoid danger. The hare, the rabbit, the jerboa, the mouse, and other rodentia, on hearing the slightest noise prepare for flight. The more powerful or courageous races, the lion, tiger, cat, and lynx, whose sight is keen, even at night, have short ears and weak hearing, the strength of one sense generally compensating for the weakness of others.

With the carnivora the sense of taste becomes an eager, sanguinary appetite, while the herbivorous animals require a delicacy of taste to enable them to distinguish the nourishing plant from that which would poison them. “Thus,” says Virey, “nature adapts the constitution of each individual to its destiny on earth.” In depriving the armadillo and pangolins of teeth, she covers them with a coat of mail or scales. In making the hedgehog and porcupine weak and defenseless, she enables them to raise at pleasure a forest of sharp quills, and these animals have only to roll themselves up and become a prickly ball, which is quite impregnable. In denying to the herbivorous animals strong teeth and hooked claws, nature has armed the head of the ruminants with formidable horns; finally, she gives to the timid animals, such as the rodentia, either the industry to hide themselves in the earth, like the marmot, the rabbit, and the rat; the agility to jump from tree to tree, like the squirrel; or great quickness in running, and power to take immense leaps in fleeing from danger, as the kangaroo, which bounds along like a grasshopper. The llama is quite defenceless, but, if attacked, it covers its enemies with a disgusting and bitter saliva. The pole-cats, and all of that species, when pursued, throw off such execrable odors that their most ferocious enemies are obliged to give up the pursuit.

Some animals frighten their persecutor by frightful cries, like the howling monkey; others mislead their foes by a number of tricks and careful precautions, and know where to obtain safe shelter and seek obscure retreats.

The smallest species, besides being more numerous and multiplying more abundantly, are also more lively in proportion to their size than the larger animals. Before an elephant or a whale could turn round, a dormouse or a mouse would have made a hundred movements, the smallness of the limbs giving more unity and more control over the body; the shorter muscles contract more easily, and each movement is more rapid than amongst larger creatures. The mammalia form the intermediate class by which the other animals approach to us, and by which the inferior species are grouped around man. In fact, the family of the apes seems to come very near to the human race. On the other hand, the bats, the flying squirrel of Siberia, and other like species, appear to link the birds to the mammalia; while the armadillo and the pangolin, quadrupeds covered either with a cuirass or with scales placed one over the other, seem related to the reptile, such as tortoises and lizards. The amphibious mammalia, such as the seal, sea-cow, and other cetacea, which _apparently_ partake of the nature of fishes, are linked to the large and numerous classes of aquatic animals.

“Thus,” says Virey, “the mammalia form the nucleus round which are grouped the different superior classes of the animal kingdom as being the most perfect type of creation, and the first link in the chain of animated nature next to man.” Let us compare the various other classes with the mammalia. The bird, inhabitant of the air, has received a temperament warm and lively, delicate and sensitive; always gay, full of fire and inconstancy, like the variable region he traverses. The fishes again, the cold creatures of the waters, are more apathetic, and occupy themselves chiefly with material wants; their scaly covering seems to steel them against gentle impressions, and hinder them from feeling acutely, or bringing their intelligence to anything like perfection. The quadrupeds, on the contrary, existing in a medium state, equally below the airy heights, as above the deep abyss of the waters—sharing with man the possession and sovereignty of the earth—seem to hold the middle place between two extremes. They have neither the ardor nor petulance of the bird, the lower sensibility of the fish, nor the apathy of the reptile; but, living as they do on a dry and firm soil, their nature has received more consistency, and their frame more solidity. The locomotion of the quadruped has not the rapidity of flight, nor the nimbleness of swimming; but it has not the painful slowness of the tortoise and other reptiles.

All the series of these mammalia represent a long succession of inferior structures below that of man. The monkey, considered either with regard to his external form of internal organization, seems but a man degenerated. Skeleton, members, muscles, veins, nerves, brain, stomach, and principal viscera resemble ours almost entirely, not only in general structure, but in the ramifications of the lesser vessels. In comparison with us it appears an imperfectly formed being, although it is perfect as regards its own species.

The same scale of graduated inferiority is observed in descending from the monkey to the bat; from the latter to the sloth, to the carnivora, and through all the series.

The smaller the extent of the brain, especially the hemispheres, and the fewer the number of its circumvolutions, the more brutal or more animal do we find the creature. In fact, in the monkey itself, and the quadrupeds with long snouts, which bend toward the earth, everything tends to the growth of the appetites and the development of the senses. They think only of satisfying their physical wants. Of all animals the quadrupeds are the most capable of understanding us; not only on account of their organization, but also because they are the more susceptible of being domesticated. The bird has less relationship with us; for, whatever familiarity or intelligence may be attributed to the parrot or tame canary, the qualities of the dog, the beaver, and the elephant always surpass those of the most clever birds. The more closely a well-organized animal approaches to us, the more it can comprehend us, and we can more easily aid in developing its intelligence. This is especially the case with the mammalia.

Nevertheless, the influence of man upon the domestication of the animals is limited by their fitness for sociability. There is not a single domesticated species which does not, naturally, live in society. Of all the solitary species, there is not a single one which has become domesticated; and sociability does not in the least depend on their intelligence, for the sheep lives in companionship, while the lion, fox, and bear live solitarily. Neither does it depend on habit; for the long continuance of the young ones with their parents does not produce it. The bear cherishes its young ones with as much tenderness and for as long a time as the dog, and yet the bear is amongst the most solitary animals.

Frederic Cuvier has observed three distinct conditions amongst animals:—The solitary species, such as cats, martens, bears, and hyenas; those which live in families, such as wolves, roebucks, etc.; those which live in societies, such as beavers, elephants, monkeys, dogs, seals, etc.

Cuvier has devoted himself to the study of these societies. He follows the progress of the animal, which, born in the midst of the flock, is there developed, and which, at each epoch of its life, learns from all which surrounds it to place its new existence in harmony with that of the old ones. The feebleness of the young animals is the cause of their obedience to the old, which possess strength; and the habit of obeying once adopted by the young, is the reason why the power still remains with the most aged, although he has become in turn the most feeble. Whenever a society is under the direction of a chief, that chief is nearly always the most aged of the troop. Mons. Flourens thinks that this order may, perhaps, be disturbed by violent passions. If this be the case, the authority passes to another: and, having commenced anew by reason of strength, they preserve the same by habit. There are, therefore, amongst the mammalia, species which form real societies; and it is from these alone that man takes all domesticated animals. The horse becomes, by domestication, the companion of man; and of all animals of his species is the most naturally so.

The sheep, which we have reared, follows us, but he also follows the flock, in the midst of which he was born. According to Cuvier, he looks upon man as the leader of the flock. Man, says M. Flourens, is to the animals only a member of their society; all his art is reduced to making himself acceptable to them as an associate; for, let him once become their associate, he soon becomes their chief, being superior to them in intelligence. Man does not, therefore, change the natural state of these animals, as Buffon says; on the contrary, he profits by it. In other terms, having found the animals sociable, he renders them domesticated; and thus domestication is not a singular case, but a simple modification, a natural consequence, of animal sociability. Nearly all our domestic animals are _naturally_ sociable. The ox, goat, pig, dog, rabbit, etc., live, by nature, in society; that is, in herds or flocks.

The cat is not really a domesticated animal—it is not subdued, only tamed; in the same way the bear, lion, and tiger even might be tamed, but not domesticated. Man’s influence will make a sociable animal domesticated, but a solitary animal he can only tame.

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When a thought is too weak to be simply expressed, it is a proof that it should be rejected.—_Vauvenargues._

WASHINGTON IRVING.[L]

By PROF. WALLACE BRUCE.

The record of Washington Irving rests like a ray of sunlight upon the pages of our early history. Born in 1783, at the close of the great struggle for independence, his life of seventy-six years circles a period of growth and material progress, the pages of which this centennial generation has just been turning. And perhaps it is not unfitting to consider at this time the life and services of our sweetest writer, the best representative of our earliest culture. On the other hand, I am well aware that the great mass of mankind are absorbed in business, and like the Athenian of old continually asking for something new; that the initials of our nation were long ago condensed into a plain monogram of dollars, and this our nineteenth century represented and symbolized by a large interrogation point. We question the stars, the rocks and our Darwinian ancestors; and we are thoroughly occupied in looking after our own personal interest and the prosperity of the republic; yet I may hope that this lecture will call up some pleasure in the hearts of those who read and re-read the writings of Washington Irving, and will help to renew your acquaintance with the incidents of his life, and perhaps awaken the attention of some who are asking what to read—the one question which more than any other decides their individual happiness and the education of the rising generation. It is my purpose this afternoon to consider his writings, his associations and his life; and I take up his works in the order in which they were written, as in this way we trace the natural development of the writer and the man.