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The oxygen in the air was slowly killing him, and yet his swan song was possible because of an inner atmosphere so rich in this gas that it would be unbreathable by a creature of the land. Nerve and muscle, special expanse of circling bones, swim-bladder and its tenuous gas all these combined to produce the aquatic harmony.

I am passionately fond of the water: of the sea, though it is too vast, too full of movement, impossi-ble to hold; of the rivers which are so beautiful, but which pass on, and flee away and above all of the marshes, where the whole unknown existence of aquatic animals palpitates.

The slug, called Succinea, is not strictly aquatic, but lives in damp places, and may be seen in full activity far from rivers, in meadows where the grass is wet with rain or dew; but shells of the genera Limnaea, Planorbis, Paludina, Cyclas, and others, requiring to be constantly in the water, are extremely exceptional in the loess, occurring only at the bottom of the deposit where it begins to alternate with ancient river-gravel on which it usually reposes.

Between these two extremes is every conceivable gradation, embracing aquatic and terrestrial herbs, creeping, erect or climbing in habit, shrubs and trees, and representing a much greater variety than is to be found in the other subdivision of seed-plants, the Gymnosperms. Internal structure.

A tall aquatic plant, that is termed wild rice, and which we suppose to be the ordinary rice-plant, unimproved by tillage, grows spontaneously about the mouths and on the flats of most of the rivers of the part of Michigan of which we are writing; as, indeed, it is to be found in nearly all the shallow waters of those regions.

Imagine a large sheet of water, some fifteen miles in breadth and twenty-five in length, taken up by islands of every size and shape, from the lofty naked rock of red granite to the rounded hill, covered with oak-leaves to its summit; while others were level with the waters, and of a rich emerald green, only fringed with a growth of aquatic shrubs and flowers.

After a careful search for well-authenticated instances of burial, aquatic and semi-aquatic, but two have been found, which are here given. "Skull Valley, which is a part of the Great Salt Lake Desert, and which we have crossed to-day, Mr.

But if we consider the flipper or paddle of a whale, we see that it is homologous with the fore-leg of a terrestrial mammal, and we are in the habit of saying that in the whale the fore-limb is modified into a paddle and has become adapted for aquatic locomotion. This, of course, assumes that it has become so adapted in the course of descent.

Hunting, bear baiting, fireworks, tilting, Morris dances, a rustic marriage, a fight between Danes and English, curious aquatic sports, all succeeded each other, interspersed with brilliant feasts. Poems founded on the legends of Arthur, or drawn from the inexhaustible sources of mythology, were recited in the pauses of festivity, or sung beneath the windows of the queen.

This bird is the largest of the aquatic tribe; and its plumage is of a most delicate white, excepting the back and the tops of its wings, which are grey: they lay but one egg, on the ground, where they form a kind of nest, by scraping the earth round it.