intervenes between the various segments of which the shell consists. It is the office of this membrane to add to the size of the shell as the animal within it grows in bulk. It performs, therefore, the function of the mantle' in the bivalve and other molluscs, as already described, by secreting carbonate of lime, and applying it to add to the thickness of the shell generally, while it increases its circumference by gradual additions to each of the sides of the segments composing it. So, in the full-grown urchin, the number. and form of the divisions in its shelly covering are the same as in the young animal, and they differ only in size. By this beautiful provision, the gradual enlargement of the sphere takes place without any alteration in its form, or in the relative size or position of its various compartments. Were we to suppose that there existed a necessity for a bridge gradually to increase its dimensions up to a certain point, we could imagine no other available plan than this:- either the whole structure must be taken to pieces, and built with stones either larger in bulk or more numerous, or the stones originally employed must increase in breadth and length by the addition of new matter at their sides and ends—a process, however, far beyond the limits of human contrivance.

Other parts of the structure of this creature are no less striking and interesting than those now described. The shell, when denuded of its spines, appears marked out on its surface from top to bottom by five double rows of small holes, into ten spaces, shaped somewhat like the gores employed in forming a paper balloon. Each of these spaces is studded with rows of minute hemispheres. These little points, which appear merely as ornaments when the shell is cleared of the spines, are a portion of an admirable piece of mechanism. To each of them is fixed one of the spines, furnished with a socket, into which the little point fits so that the spine revolves on it precisely in the manner of what engineers call a universal joint, formed with a ball and socket-a structure exemplified in that of the human shoulder-joint; with this difference only, that in the latter the socket is stationary, and the ball of the humerus revolves in it, whereas in the urchin the ball is at rest, and the socket of the spine plays round it. The spines are moved by muscles put into action by motor nerves, and serve as VOL. XXIII.

organs of locomotion, and, perhaps, also as weapons of defence. From each pair of the minute holes already spoken of issues a sucker like those of the star-fish, by which the animal attaches itself to any surface, and assists itself in changing its place. Among the spines, moreover, are numbers of minute pincers, called by naturalists pedicellaria, consisting of a stalk or column, with a knob at the end furnished with three hard teeth, some obtuse, and others elongated in shape. The use of these pincers is altogether unknown; but enough has been said to exhibit the complexity of structure for which even the external organs of the urchin are remarkable. If we examine the mouth, its mechanism will be found much more elaborate than that of the whelk, as previously described. It is scarcely possible, indeed, to convey a suitable notion of it, without pointing out the parts in a living specimen; but sufficient may be said to incite the reader to examine for himself. The teeth, or rather the jaws, of the urchin consist of five pieces of a triangular shape, fitting together, and forming a cone, in the centre of which there is an additional tooth. This cone occupies the middle of the orifice in the base of the shell, and the teeth or jaws of which it consists are attached to the arches around that orifice by powerful muscles, and are furnished with others, enabling them to work upon each other so as to triturate and grind the substances on which the animal preys; for which purpose the surfaces of the jaws are so completely adapted, that very hard substances exposed to their action must be speedily bruised into a pulp.

Like the urchin, the star-fish may be considered the representative of a very ancient race of beings inhabiting the earliest seas. These creatures, known to the geologist as Encrinites, consisted of a stalk by which they were attached, like other zoophytes, or like sea-plants, to a particular spot, and having the body of the animal on the other end, formed of arms or rays diverging from the centre. These animals, which, from the immense masses of encrinital marble formed by their remains, must have existed in inconceivable multitudes, have all become extinct, and are represented by a very few species, attached, like them, to one spot. The star-fishes, or Asteriadæ, have their bodies divided generally into five lobes or rays, more or less elongated. In

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some instances the rays form the points of five angles into which the body is divided. These rays are covered with a tender skin on their upper surface, which to the touch appears as if filled with a soft pulp. The lower surface, however, exhibits a very complex structure. A channel or groove runs along that surface from the centre to the point of the ray, between two walls of shelly matter, constituting part of the skeleton. This channel or groove contains a multitude of suckers placed on the ends of transparent footstalks, and serving for the threefold purpose of attaching the star to a particular spot, enabling it to seize upon its food, and to move from place to place. Each of these feet thus terminated by a sucker issues from a hole in the channel already spoken of, and is a tube filled with liquid, which is injected into it from a gland at its base by means of muscular pressure, on the withdrawal of which pressure, the liquid retreats into the gland, and the feet collapse. Thus a simple, but effective mechanical arrangement enables the star-fish either to retract or extend his feet as he will. The degree of force with which any individual of these suckers acts is inconsiderable, bnt the number of them compensates for this, and by their united action a power fully equal to all the requirements of the animal is obtained. The Ophiurida are a kind of star-fishes very common along our coasts. The generic term adopted by the late distinguished naturalist, Professor Edward Forbes, accurately describes their general form. Their bodies are small and round, and furnished with five long and slender arms, which, instead of having a very sluggish motion, as in the ordinary starfish, move and twist about with great activity, and, by their resemblance to the tails of small serpents, suggest the generic term. The rapidity of motion possessed by these arms enables the creature to crawl with considerable celerity.

There are many varieties of star-fishes, including those now referred to, and several of them possess much elegance. The 'feather-star' is a very beautiful species. The body is small, and covered with jointed filaments; it has five long and slender arms, feathered along their sides with numerous pinnæ, furnished with hooks or claws, by which it is enabled to adhere with great tenacity to the rocks or sea-weed. Its anatomy exhibits

a structure of a most elaborate character, but difficult to describe, without having recourse to very minute detail. The body is generally of a fine rose colour, and in some instances it is ornamented with bands of crimson and yellow. The sun-star is also a beautiful species; the disk being surrounded by twelve broad rays. The colour of this species is variable. In some instances, the whole animal is a brilliant red; in others, the disk alone is red and the rays white; and occasionally the entire surface is purple.

Several species of these remarkable creatures are called 'brittle stars,' from their peculiarity of falling to pieces on being removed from their native element. The feather-star' above mentioned is extremely fragile, and when taken at sea, can rarely be kept entire. This power of self-destruction may perhaps be altogether involuntary, but in some instances it seems as if an act of will on the part of the star-fish. Professor Edward Forbes having taken a fine specimen of the lingthorn (Luidia fragilissima), the largest of our star-fishes, measuring about two feet in diameter, gives the following graphic account of its suicidal propensities, written with much humour:-'Never having seen one before, and quite unconscious of its suicidal powers, I spread it out on a rowing-bencli, the better to admire its form and colours. On attempting to remove it for preservation, I found only an assemblage of rejected members. My conservative endeavours were all neutralised by its destructive exertions, and it is now badly represented in my cabinet by an armless disk and a diskless arm. Next time I went to dredge on the same spot, determined not to be cheated out of a specimen in such a way a second time, I brought with me a bucket of cold fresh water, to which article star-fishes have a great antipathy. As I expected, a Luidia came up in the dredge-a most gorgeous specimen. As it does not generally break up before it is raised above the surface of the sea, cautiously and anxiously I sunk my bucket to a level with the dredge's mouth, and proceeded in the most gentle manner to introduce Luidia to the purer element. Whether the cold air was too much for him, or the sight of the bucket too terrific, I know not, but in a moment he proceeded to dissolve his corporation, and at every mesh of the dredge his fragments were seen escaping. In despair, I grasped at the largest, and brought up

the extremity of an arm, with its terminating eye, the spinous eyelid of which opened and closed with something exceedingly like a wink of derision.' This entertaining extract suggests some considerations with which we shall close our paper, and for a time bid farewell to our readers. As mentioned in a preceding number, various species of crustaceans, such as crabs and lobsters, possess the power of voluntary dismemberment- -a faculty which they share, not only with the brittle stars, but with many other creatures, terrestrial as well as aquatic. These, and a great many analogous phenomena, seem to afford very conclusive evidence, that in an extensive class of animated creatures bodily injury is not accompanied, as in the case of man and the higher orders of the mammalia, by what we call pain. If this be so (and there is little reason to doubt it), the fact presents us with a very beautiful and very striking illustration of the beneficent wisdom of that Great Being whose 'tender mercies are over all his works.' Pain is to man an admonitory intimation of physical injury received or threatened; it is a provision absolutely essential to his security; without such warning, he might sustain irreparable personal damage without being aware of it. It is a warning, too, strictly consistent with man's intellectual superiority, and furnishes a powerful stimulus to the exercise of prudence, caution, foresight, as the means of escaping it, while it acts likewise as an impulse to his skill and ingenuity in remedying those evils by which it is occasioned. Bodily pain would be a very gratuitous and an almost unnecessary infliction, if man were not highly endowed as he is with intellectual powers, by the exercise of which physical evils may be avoided or obviated; or if the very effort to avoid those evils did not tend directly to minister to the strength and the activity of his mental faculties. We may truly observe, that among the means devised by Supreme Wisdom for human advancement both in a moral and intellectual point of view, pain (employing the term in its widest sense) is one of the most appropriate as well as efficient. But, in the case of the lower animals, to what purpose could pain tend, if suffered acutely upon bodily injury? It is, indeed, inconceivable that Infinite Goodness and Wisdom should in vain, or to little purpose, expose a vast multitude of helpless creatures to physical agony. Hence the insensibility they exhibit on being seriously mutilated.

In early life, we ourselves were greatly smitten with a love of entomology, and our taste for the charms of that charming department of science has not yet abated. Many a summer evening have we spent, in years gone by, roving among sweet rural places, collecting with high enthusiasm specimens for our little cabinet. On the borders of an old wood-ah! how well do we remember the quiet spot!— there was a pool of clear water fringed with the lovely blossoms of the waterlily, and the delicate pink flowers of the Hottonia palustris. The pool swarmed with aquatic insects, and was to us a never-failing source of delight. Seated on the moss-covered trunk of a fallen tree which lay along its brink, we angled for these active little denizens of the pool with a willow wand and a worm tied to a thread at the end of it. Many of them seized on our bait with prodigious avidity, and were quickly pulled out of their element, and placed in durance vile in our tin box. Among our captives on one occasion was a huge water-beetle, which we had long regarded with the cupidity of a true naturalist, as it rowed itself hither and thither among the bright green sedges. It was an immense fellow, more than an inch in length, nearly as broad, of a dark brown or black colour, a fine specimen of the Dytiscus, although not so large as the Hydrophilus piceus, the largest of the British water-beetles. Carrying him home in triumph, we gave him as we presumed his 'quietus with a bare bodkin,' and proceeded to preserve him secundum artem. Sticking the pin on which he was impaled into a piece of cork, we fastened the said cork by means of a little glue to the bottom of a box of card, and covered the top of the box with a glass, for the greater convenience of inspecting our scarabæus, and to our own vast delectation at the skill and address we had manifested from first to last. Six weeks now passed before we again inspected our apparently preserved Dytiscus.

What was our consternation! He was moving his legs with wonderful celerity, as if busily engaged in swimming, and was manifesting altogether the utmost vitality. Our conscience smote us for our cruelty. We tore open the box, pulled out the pin by which our beetle was transfixed, threw on our cap, and bolted off to the pool to restore the unhappy captive, we cannot say sufferer, to his native element; we reached the spot,

and replaced him in the water. He lay a moment on the surface, as if rendered motionless by excessive joy and surprise, and then darted off as if nothing had happened, and was out of sight in a moment. We confess that we were somewhat mortified, so strange are the revulsions of human feeling, at this display of stoical indifference, and at the scorn with which the beetle evidently regarded our entomological skill in the preservation of water insects. On another occasion we remember pursuing a huge dragon-fly (Libellula), and having struck him down with a switch as he was devouring a wasp, found we had decapitated him. Headless as he was, he lived a whole fortnight, all the time working his four large wings as if in the act of hovering in the air. We have seen a Libellula, although deprived of the posterior half of its body, and transfixed with a needle, devour flies as greedily as if a stomach were a very unnecessary appendage. We have seen a cockchafer spin upon a needle without being apparently the worse for its unwonted exhibition of agility. We have been stung

by the abdomen of a wasp, although it was separated from the thorax, and we have observed its head endeavour to bite after being removed from its body; a feat only equalled by that of the head of the sage Doobán, which conversed with the king after its owner's decollation; or by the exploit of Queen Oswitha, who, after her head was struck off, thought proper to carry it under her arm the distance of three furlongs. From all these particulars, our readers may form their own opinions as to the exposure of invertebrate animals to pain. We think the result will be favourable to the views we have expressed.

As to our subject generally, we doubt not that the few instances recorded of the marvellous perfection of structure exhibited in the various tribes of beings we have referred to, will tend to exalt our readers' views as to the skill, the wisdom, the foresight, the beneficence manifested even in these 'lower works' of the Divine Hand, and indicate how numerous and how valuable are the lessons derivable from 'Seaside Divinity.'

WE are so familiar with the idea of a play, with all its accompaniments and apparatus-its stage and footlights, its green-room and 'properties,' its noisy carpenters, bullying manager, and its meek walking gentleman at five shillings a-night, who will put on a tinsel crown and a robe of worsted ermine, and be as much at home in the character of a monarch as if he had passed his life at the Tuileries or the Escurial-that we rarely stop to ask how the drama, how all this highly-wrought imitation of real life, this huge mirror, got up with so much expenditure of pains and money, for us to see ourselves aped in, could first have been called into existence. Undoubtedly the drama has had a parentage, which in some countries is clearly traceable; and some will be surprised to learn that its source has almost universally been the practice of religion. But what is really remarkable about the matter is, that it should have sprung into life in each several country spontaneously and separately,

and have assumed in each a similar form, one not borrowed from another, but all of independent origin. Modern Europe and ancient Rome would seem to form exceptions to this rule, but they only do so in appearance. Undoubtedly modern Europe, and even more than the rest the countries of Racine and Shakspere, borrowed the form of their drama, and the rules of their dramatic composition, from the ancients, at least to a certain extent. The French stage owed most of its plots and much of its treatment to Greece and Rome; the English stage was deeply indebted to Italy of the middle ages. But this was the case only when the drama became a branch of literature, when the taste of the people had been prepared to receive it in a classical form, and when the public mind had risen almost to the level of the then educated classes. But an earlier drama—if it deserves the name

preceded the classical one in all countries of Europe. In Italy it commenced with the Improvisatori. At public fêtes,

on great occasions, these men were in the habit of improvising a story, accompanied by the lute; in the course of which a little dialogue might be introduced. Presently this dialogue was undertaken by two people, each of whom assumed a character in the story. Later it would be accompanied by some attempt at scenic effect, with the addition of mimic action, some endeavour being made to realise the story to the eye as well as to the ear of the audience, and for greater convenience the talkers, now become actors, were placed on a raised platform, the primitive stage. This early form of the drama is found in the Intromezzo of Italian literature, previous to Goldoni, where the plot and scenic action only are the work of the author, and the dialogue is left to the actors themselves to supply. In the Tyrol, again, these improvised dialogues, accompanied, however, with a great deal of raillery and satire between the talkers, are still most popular at the many village festivals, while we have something analogous to them even in England, in our common acted charades.

In France, again, we must refer to the Troubadours, and their grand literary tournaments, for the origin of the drama; while in England and Germany we have the 'Sacred Mysteries,' which probably began in the attempt of the priesthood to realise to the minds of their flock the principal events in the life of our Saviour. These mysteries still exist in the Tyrol, and the rude acting of the Passion and Judgment of our Lord by sturdy illiterate mountaineers is repeated once a-year in the lovely valley of the Ammer-gau. We ourselves have seen a coarse imitation of this in a village fair in France.

It is true, however, that the Roman drama, such as we know it, was transmitted wholesale from Greece. The new comedy, with Menander and Philemon at its head, was translated, adapted, and paraphrased by Terence, Plautus, and Caecilius Statius, as much, and more than our modern farce is from the French vaudeville. But this, again, was the drama of the educated, and we have no reason to deny the existence of earlier representations introduced at country festivals (as, for instance, the well-known 'Fabulæ Attellana'), though the staid and practical character of the Romans at that period was not calculated to encourage or develop them.

Thus there seems little doubt that the

drama has had a fresh birth in each several country, and that it originated everywhere in village festivals, generally of a religious nature, more or less; a fact of which the Greek, both comedy and tragedy, is a well-known instance.

As such, then, the earlier representations would be accompanied with music and dancing, the constituent elements of all religious worship in the less civilised ages of nations. Of this earlier dramaproperly so called, since a play, as its very name indicates, is rather a piece of action than a literary production-we have but very slight traces in India. The dramatic literature of that country is very small; Wilson estimates the extant pieces at not more than sixty. The earliest productions are perfect works of literary art in their way, and we have no remains nor any notices of their ruder foregoers. But these must undoubtedly have existed, and the very names applied to the drama indicate that they were originally representations consisting of song, music, and dancing. The Hindoo writers on the subject are numerous and prolix. They divide the drama into three classes: Nátya, Nrittya, and Nritta, each of which words is derived from a root meaning 'to dance;' while pieces in which music and dancing were introduced have been popular since the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

But, whatever the Hindoo drama may have once been, the earliest form in which we find it is as a luxury of the great and rich. No theatres ever existed-nor, as far as we know, do any native ones now exist-in this vast country, though the drama has been known there for at least two thousand years, and probably longer. As we find them, plays were written expressly for particular occasions, such as a marriage, or a grand entertainment by the command of a monarch, or a wealthy man of the Kshatriya or warrior caste, and were enacted once only at the same place. Whether they could be acted again at another place, seems doubtful; for, as the audience probably consisted only of the great man and his guests, and as the expense of each representation would be considerable, there was no chance of their excellence procuring them a repetition. We wonder what an Indian dramatist's feelings would be, when he heard of the 'unprecedented run' of 'Henry VIII.' at the Princess's, or the one hundred and something nights of the 'Dame aux Camélias' in Paris.