opinion which is frequently expressed, that animals are machines, musical instruments, if you please, whence these sounds are elicited by some external skill, while they themselves, like the flute are unconscious of the music thus produced. Discard them both; they are unworthy of you.

There is nothing in the physical structure of many individuals in the brute creation, which presents the slightest ob*jection to their having ideas, but on the contrary, much to confirm such an opinion; there is nothing in the relations which they sustain to each other, or the world around them, which precludes the exercise of thought, or something verily like it; of reason, or something which closely resembles it; but on the contrary, much that renders such capabilities highly necessary to their happiness, if not absolutely essential to

their continued existence.

Entertaining suchviews, I do not however, attribute to the dog orthe insect, a human mind, but a brute intelligence, and the difference between these is as strongly marked, as the difference between the animals themselves; as distinct as the sphere of a dog is from that of a man, or as the ends which they are respectively designed to compass; as distinct, as a being, to whose susceptibility of improvement, we know no limit, and an existence, upon which the sentence is pronounced: "hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther;" as distinct as a mind, whose duration, at whatever period in its existence you contemplate it, is yet, almost all in the future, and a power of knowing, which will perish with the physical frame, for whose guidance merely, it was created.

No, that being, into whose nostrils 'God breathed the breath of life, and he became a living soul,' must be forever distinguished from his fellow tenants of the earth, both by creation and by destiny. The brute creation are exactly fitted, in

every respect, for their stations, and it is as illogical to conclude, that, because they have ideas, and something like thought and something like reflection, they must have human minds, as it would be to infer, that, as man is possessed of an immortal spirit, he must have an angelic one. Upon the ground of adaptation then, I might safely base this view, without entertaining any apprehension, even the slightest, that you will so grossly mistake me, when I talk of a thinking or a reasoning brute, as to suppose that I mean human thought or human reason, when I only refer to that, whatever it may be, which corresponds to these powers in the human mind, and which, as I have before remarked, differ precisely as the beings that possess them.

From these susceptibilities and powers, springs the necessity for language among brutes; a necessity equally peremptory with that which renders it so indispensable to the happiness of man, and of which, if you deprive him, from a social, he would be transformed into a solitary being; as he would know nothing of the sufferings or pleasures of others, so he would be a stranger to sympathy; all the better feelings of his nature would lie dormant, and he would wander about, the unconscious, miserable possessor of a world of happiness, which language only, could reveal.

Deprive brutes of language, and the consequences would be no less disastrous to them, no less fatal to their well-being.

Entertaining the opinions which I have expressed, when you listen to the bird on the bough and the bird in the bush, uttering their notes of joy; when the Bobilink rings a merry peal from the meadow, and the cricket's “cree-cree, cree-cree," issues from the grass, as if they were vying with one another, which should express must, of the joy of its lit tle heart, and then, all at once, birds and insects burst forth

together; when the faithful dog meets you at the gate, “with bark and bound;" when the cat rubs backward and forward against your foot, purring all the while, her pleasure; when, the day's perils escaped, the day's wanderings done, you hear the happy home-note of the chickens, as they gather close under the brooding wing; when you hear the lambs of the folded flock, bleat now and then, as if in some happy dream; when even the swine salutes you with a complacent "ough," from his bed of straw, how can you help exclaiming, "what a happy world this is, after all!”’

Turning from the vegetable world, we are about to contemplate animated nature, opening up a new, and if possible, nobler field for admiration; in brilliancy of plumage, in symmetry of form, in elegance of movement, in nobleness of mien, in power of voice, and in melody of song. The language of the flowers was a lovely language, but it was not their own; they were, as if so many fair characters which God had traced, and of which He gives a new and beautiful edition each returning year. But animals have a language of their own; now elevated with joy, now tremulous with sorrow, now tuned by care; a language, that, more faithful than the painter's canvas, takes on every shade of thought, every tinge of emotion, and the deep, live coloring of passion.

The questions may arise in your mind, "what belongs peculiarly to the animate world, whence springs the necessity for a medium of communication? Is it a difference in the nature of the living principle, or is it, that they possess the power of locomotion?" To these inquiries, I answer in the negative. The principle of life, so far as we are able to com prehend it, is the same in the vegetable, that it is in the animal kingdom. In the one, we have the coral and the sponge attached to rocks; in the other, the Gulf-weed and the Tape

grass sailing from shore to shore, wafted by winds and waves. In the one, we see the hydra or the leech propagated by slips or cuttings; in the other, we observe the russet grafted upon the greening, and the peach and the quince deriving their nourishment from the same root. In the one, the pigeon flies from clime to clime, and the herring swims from the Arctic ocean to the line; in the other, the strawberry travels from field to field. In the one, we see the beaver, now felling timber upon the land, and now catching fish in the water; in the other, we behold the rush flourishing in the swamp, or thriving upon the hill. In the one, the blood rolls its tide of life through the veins; in the other, the sap courses to every slender twig and swelling bud. Impede the circulation in the one, and life is destroyed; girdle the tallest oak in the other, and it withers and dies. Air is essential to life in the one, so it is in the other. It is not here, then, that we are to look for that peculiarity, which renders language necessary to the brute as a social being; if it cannot be found, my labor is more than half done; if it is all an idle fancy, and brutes possess nothing upon which to predicate language, then it were better, omitting the second part of this little book, to pass on directly to the third. But let us linger here, and determine, if we can, what this peculiarity is; Linnæus, the eminent naturalist, in classifying the works of nature, remarked, "stones grow, vegetables grow and live, animals grow, live and feel.” However correct this may be, it is not sufficiently definite for my present purpose; and in proposing another view, allow me to direct your attention to a fact or two. Deprive a man of his eyes or amputate his limbs, and you take from him the power of seeing or of walking; so, if you deprive a living being of the nerves or the brain, as the former are the organs of sensation, and the latter is the seat

of intelligence, we may safely infer, that with the one or the other, the corresponding power of knowing or feeling, is gone also. When you pluck a rose from its stem, you do not imagine that it suffers pain from the disrupture; how can it? Vegetables are destitute of nerves; but wound a bird and you see its little frame writhe with anguish; the bird possesses the organs of sensation. We never attribute to the lowest order of animals anything like intelligence, while it is with an ill grace, that we can deny its possession to the elephant, the dog, or the horse; these animals have a cerebral organization, or a brain.

Something called instinct characterizes every living thing; sensation distinguishes the animal from the vegetable; intelligence distinguishes some animals from others; and the possession of all these, with reason and a living soul, renders man what he is-lord of this lower world, and "the noblest work of God."

Vegetables have instinct;

Nervous* Animals have instinct and sensation;

Cerebral† animals have instinct, sensation and intelligence; Man possesses instinct, sensation, intelligence, reason, and

& LIVING SOUL.

Thus having placed distinctly before you, the classification which I have made, let us examine the nature of instinct, and learn how far the actions of the brute creation are attributable to its promptings; then determine the extent of intelligence in animals, after which we can confidently talk of an intelligible language among brutes. First, then, I will speak of instinct.

When corn is planted in the field, or seeds sown in the gar

* Having nerves.

+ Those animals possessing a brain.

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