Caribbee islands, so named from its form. It was discovered in 1650, by the English. In 1745, the militia defended it against the French. Some sugar is raised here. Lon. 63° 10′ W.; lat. 18° 15′ N.-There is a rocky island of the same name, one of the smaller Bahama or Lucayos islands; 20 miles long, 5 broad; lon. 78° 50′ W.; lat. 23° 36′ N.-Anguilla bay lies on the north side of the island of St. John's, in the gulf of St. Lawrence, opposite the Magdalen isles.-Anguilla cape; a promontory on the west side of Newfoundland, in the gulf of St. Lawrence.

ANGUINUM OVUM, the adder-stone; a fabulous kind of egg, said to be produced by the saliva of a cluster of serpents, and possessed of certain magical virtues. The superstition in respect to these was very prevalent among the ancient Britons, and there still remains a tradition of it in Wales. This wondrous egg seems to have been nothing more than a bead of glass, used by the Druids as a charm to impose on the people, whom they taught to believe that the possessor of it would be fortunate in all attempts. The method of ascertaining its genuineness was no less extraordinary than the powers attributed to it. It was to be enchased in gold, and thrown into a river; and, if it was genuine, it would swim against the stream. Pliny gives a similar account of it, lib. xix. c. 3.

ANHALT. Under this name, the possessions of three different dukes—those of Anhalt-Bernburg, Anhalt-Cőthen and Anhalt-Dessau-are comprehended. Before the right of primogeniture was introduced, in the succession of the German princes, this little country was divided into 4 hereditary sovereignties, but was afterwards reduced to the above-mentioned 3. In April, 1807, the princes of A. took the title of duke. The house has, at present, joined the German confederation, and, together with Oldenburg and Schwarzburg, has the 15th vote in the diet; in the general assembly (plenum), however, each of the 3 houses has a separate vote. Each enjoys sovereign power in its own division, yet the 3 together form a confederation, by the terms of which the right of mutual succession is secured to the lines respectively, and the assembly of the states, as well as the public debt of the family, put under the direction of the senior member of the house for the time being, at present the duke of Bernburg. The ducal house bears a common title and arms, and professes the Calvinistic faith. The greater 22

VOL. I.

part of the inhabitants, also, are of the same persuasion. Towards the close of 1825, however, the duke and duchess of Cöthen went over to the Catholic church at Paris. There are also among the in habitants many Lutherans and a few Jews. The lands of the house of A., comprising about 1030 square miles, with 128,100 inhabitants, are mostly situated between the Hartz and the river Elbe, and are surrounded by the Prussian province of Saxony; they are fertile. The inhabitants are wealthy, and live partly by agriculture and grazing; but, in the vicinity of Bernburg, also by mining. The manufactures are unimportant.

ANHYDRITE; a dry sulphate of lime, found in the salt-mines of Austria and Salzburg, and in limestone at Lockport, New York. It presents several varieties of structure and color. The vulpinite of Italy is the only one used in the arts. This possesses a granular structure, resembling a coarse-grained marble. Its color is grayish-white intermingled with blue. It is cut and polished for various ornamental purposes, under the name of marmo bardiglio di Bergamo.

ANICH, Peter; a Tyrolese peasant, astronomer and geographer; born in 1723, at Oberporfess, near Inspruck; died in 1766. Till 28 years old, he was, like his father, a farmer, but very early became an admirer of the sciences. The Jesuits in Inspruck perceived his talents, and gave him instruction in mechanics and mathematics. This was sufficient to induce the young man to undertake the making of a celestial globe, of a terrestrial globe, and of many mathematical instruments. When his teacher, a Jesuit, observed the success of his labors, he recommended him to the empress Maria Theresa, who ordered him to draw a map of the northern Tyrol. The superstition of his countrymen made his labors difficult, and even endangered his life. Finally, the map was finished; but it was found, in Vienna, that it had been executed on too large a scale, and he was commanded to reduce it to 9 sheets. This reduction cost him much labor, and he died before completing it, Sept. 1, 1766. In 1774, the map finally appeared, under the title Tyrolis geographice delineata a Petro Anich et Blasio Huever, curante Ign. Weinhart.

ANICHINI, Luigi; a famous seal-engraver, in the time of Michael Angelo. He was a native of Ferrara. His Interview of Alexander the Great with a High-priest at Jerusalem was declared by Michael Angelo to be the perfection of his art.

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ANIMA MUNDI; the soul of the world or universe; a certain pure, ethereal substance or spirit, which was said, by some ancient philosophers, to be diffused throughout all nature-the living principle of the world, the god of the Pantheists. Plato treats at large of the yux Tou zoopov, the soul of the world, in his Timæus. He is considered, by some, the originator of this idea, but this is not at all probable; on the contrary, it is an ancient idea, prevailing in the systems of certain Eastern philosophers. The Egyptians also adopted it. Many philosophical and philosophico-religious sects entertained the same notion, under a considerable diversity of forms. Many of the first Christian sects believed in the anima mundi; and at all times there have existed estimable and religious men and philosophers, who could not believe in a God who exists without the material world, but pervades it every where. Of the most recent philosophers, Schelling has dwelt most on this idea, and incorporated it into his whole system. He calls it Die Weltseele. (See Philosophy.)

ANIMAL, ANIMAL LIFE. Life, in the earlier periods of natural history, was attributed only to animals. With the progress of science, however, it was extended to plants; and man, who had been hitherto regarded as a distinct order of being, was now considered as but a higher animal, intimately connected with the whole chain of the organized world. The great discoveries in chemistry, magnetism, electricity and galvanism, have shown that those elements and principles, on which rest the laws of life, pervade nature in the most various forms and combinations; that there is no harsh and abrupt distinction between the animate world and the inanimate, but, on the contrary, an intimate connexion between the energy which makes the crystallizing mineral follow the law of the strictest regularity, or the stone fall from the height, and that which makes the heart of man beat.—The difficulty of defining animal life has, therefore, been greatly increased. What is animal life? What constitutes an animal? Since mankind began to cultivate philosophy, they have sought in vain for a definition of life. It would require much more metaphysical discussion, to enter at all satisfactorily into this subject, than the character of the present work allows; and we are constrained to offer the reader only the following remarks on this most interesting subject.-Linnæus defines an animal an organized, living

and sentient being. An animal is indeed organized; but are not vegetables organized also? Animals are endowed with sensation; but are all, without exception? and do not some plants possess this faculty? Locomotion is not a more certain characteristic of animals than life or irritability, for many animals are destitute of this power, and vegetate like plants, the images of torpidity and insensibility. Neither are the chemical characters of animal substances more distinct; animals are chiefly composed of azote, and vegetables of carbon; but, among the latter, some are, like the former, composed principally of azote. In whatever point of view we consider these two kingdoms of nature, we find them blended in so many ways, and separated from each other by such imperceptible gradations, that it is impossible to draw a line, at which we can affirm that animal life ends and the vegetable begins. We cannot, therefore, give a rigorous definition of the animal kingdom, but we may point out certain general characteristics, which clearly distinguish this from the other kingdoms of nature. There are two kinds of motion in animals, one of which is voluntary, and the other mechanical. The latter is involuntary, and belongs to the vegetative life of the animal. By this the vital actions are carried on independently of volition. By this the heart beats, the blood circulates, the food is assimilated. The former is voluntary, and is peculiar to animal life; it cannot exist without a nervous system, or something equivalent, by which the animal perceives and wills. However feeble the manifestations of this will may be, it nevertheless exists in proportion to the simplicity or complexity of the organization of the creature which perceives and wills. Thus the vibrio and the monas, although apparently destitute of viscera, organs and locomotive apparatus, when they avoid or pursue surrounding objects, act by virtue of the will as completely as the highest orders of organized creatures. One sense is sufficient to produce voluntary motion, and, therefore, to constitute animal life; the vibrio and the monas have at least one sense analogous to that of touch. This kind of motion may exist without locomotion, as in the oyster.-There is no one organ which characterizes the animal kingdom; there is none which is found in all animals. The head, the stomach, the system of circulation, in a word, all the complicated apparatus of the mammalia, for example, disappears in other

classes, or undergoes a thousand various combinations of form and proportion. The organ, of which the slightest injury in one animal produces instant death, may be wounded or even extracted from another without fatal consequences whilst some are killed by the loss of some parts of the body, others may be cut in pieces, and each fragment becomes a perfect animal.-M. de Lamarck lays down the 9 following characteristics, as common to all animals, and peculiar to them, and constituting, therefore, the distinction between the animal and vegetable kingdoms:-1, that they have parts susceptible of contraction of themselves, and thus the power of moving themselves suddenly and repeatedly; 2, that they have the power of changing place, and of acting at will, if not completely, at least to a great extent; 3, that they perform no motion, total or partial, unless in consequence of certain motives, and that they are able to repeat the motion as often as the exciting cause operates; 4, that they betray no perceptible relation between the motions they perform and the exciting cause; 5, that their solid as well as fluid parts partake of the vital motions; 6, that they nourish themselves with compound substances of a different nature from themselves, and that they digest these substances in order to assimilate them;, 7, that they differ from each other in their organization, and in the faculties resulting from this organization, from the most simple to the most complicated, so that their parts cannot be mutually transformed into each other; 8, that they are able to act for their own preservation; 9, that they have no predominant tendency in the developement of their bodies to grow perpendicularly to the plane of the horizon, or to preserve a parallel direction in the vessels which contain their fluids.-Linnæus was the first who ventured to include man in the systematic classification of animals; and, though he was violently assailed for thus degrading the dignity of the human race, he has been followed, in this arrangement, by succeeding philosophers. Cuvier has, however, assigned him a distinct order, bimana, by which means he is separated from monkeys, with whom Linnæus had classed him. Linnæus divided the animal kingdom into 6 classes, as follows:-*. Such as have the blood warm and red; the heart with two auricles and two ventricles.-I. Mammalia; viviparous; suckle their young.II. Aves, birds; oviparous; have neither teats nor milk.-**. Such as have the

blood red and cold; single heart, with one auricle.-III. Amphibia; oviparous; without teats, milk, hair or feathers.-IV. Pisces, fishes; breathe by gills, a sort of external lungs; oviparous; their organs of locomotion, fins; their covering, scales; they emit no sound, and inhabit the water.-***. Such as have a single heart, without auricles; blood cold and white, consisting of a sort of transparent lymph. (These characters have since been found to be incorrect; for some of these animals have red blood, and some have no heart at all.)-V. Insects; provided with antennæ; breathe by lateral stigmata; all have feet, most have wings, and undergo transformations.-VI. Vermes, worms; provided with tentacula; no feet or fins.

The progress of natural history has revealed some defects in the system of Linnæus. Cuvier has corrected its errors and supplied its deficiencies. His system is as follows:-*. Vertebral animals. They have an internal skeleton, composed of a series of bones attached to each other, and called the vertebral column. It is perforated by a canal containing the substance from which the nerves, or organs of sensation, take their rise. This column is terminated at one end by the head, (which is, perhaps, only a vertebra fully developed), and at the other by the os coccygis, or tail. Two cavities, the chest and the abdomen, contain the principal organs of life. The sexes are two, male and female; testicles belong to the former, ovaries to the latter; a spleen, liver, pancreas, jaws incumbent, transversal, and provided with teeth (which are imperfectly developed in the beak of birds), not more than four limbs, constitute the character of this class. The organization of the vertebral animals presents a striking analogy throughout.-I. Mammalia; producing their young alive, which they suckle by teats; having warm blood; a heart with two ventricles; lungs; a convoluted brain, with a corpus callosum; five senses; a muscular diaphragm between the chest and the abdominal cavity; seven cervical vertebræ (one species excepted, which has nine). The mammalia, among which man is included, are generally the most intelligent of animals : they are divided into orders, according to the structure of their teeth and their feet, which organs determine the habits and manner of life in animals.-II. Birds, aves; oviparous; the eggs covered with a calcareous shell; without milk or teats; heart and blood like those of the mammalia; lungs; no diaphragm; no teeth

apparent on the jaws, which are called the beak; feathers and wings; projecting sternum, which completes the apparatus for flying; a gizzard for a stomach; no external ear. These animals are the only ones which sleep standing; they are divided into orders, according to the structure of the beak and feet.-III. Reptiles; oviparous; the eggs without shells, and sometimes fecundated without coition; single heart; blood almost cold, and red. The reptiles indisputably form a separate class, but they have few common characters peculiar to them; some are enclosed in a bony shell; others are naked; and others are covered with plates, scales, or rings. There are some which have limbs; others, without the least trace of them; and others, in which the number and structure of the limbs vary. Some undergo transformations, like insects, and are, at one period of their life, real fish, and for the rest of their days, little quadrupeds.-IV. Pisces, fish; oviparous; eggs without shell or albuminous envelope, and fecundated without coition; single heart; blood cold and red; no real limbs, their place being supplied by vertical fins: this vertical disposition of the fins is sufficient to distinguish, at the first glance, fishes from the cetaceous animals, which have horizontal fins; the body is naked, when not covered with scales; the skeleton is destitute of solidity, and, in the lower species, is reduced to a mere cartilaginous vertebral column.-**. Mollusca; no skeleton; the muscles attached to a soft skin, which is sometimes naked, and sometimes covered with shells of very various forms. The nervous system, in these animals, is confounded with the other parts; none of the organs is protected by a bony case; the nervous system is composed of several ganglia, a sort of little brain, connected by sensitive filaments. The organs of nutrition and generation are very complicated in some; they appear to have but two senses, touch and taste, but some have also sight; they breathe by gills, and have sometimes three hearts. Cuvier divides the mollusca into six orders: the cephalopoda, pteropoda, gasteropoda, acephala, branchiopoda, and cirrhopoda.***. Articulated. Their nervous system is composed of two long cords, running the whole length of the body, interrupted, at intervals, by knots, or ganglia, the first of which is always the largest; the blood is cold, generally a white lymph, except in the first order, the annelides, in which it is red. The body and limbs, when

they have any, are composed of rings. This great division will probably undergo some modifications hereafter.-I. Annelides; heart fleshy, visible; blood red; breathe by gills, the position of which is various; body composed of articulated rings; no feet, sometimes thread-like members in their stead. The annelides are hermaphrodites, and probably oviparous.-II. Crustaceous; heart composed of one fleshy ventricle; blood white, circulates; breathe by gills; provided with antennæ, commonly with four, and several transverse jaws; they are oviparous, and the sexes are distinct.-III. Arachnides, spiders; head and thorax united; no antennæ, nor gills; breathing by tracheæ, or by pulmonary bags; distinct sexes; eggs; the young undergo no complete transformation after they are hatched; number of eyes and feet variable.IV. Insects; no heart; lymph instead of blood; breathe by tracheæ; body divided into three important parts, the head, which supports the antennæ, and compound eyes, consisting of numerous facets; the thorax, to which are attached the feet, to the number of six, and the wings, to the number of four or two; finally, the abdomen, containing the principal viscera: sexes distinct; oviparous; generate by copulation; the young undergo wonderful transformations. Insects propagate but once during their life. They are divided into orders, according to the structure of the mouth, of the tarsus or foot, of the antennæ, and of the wings.-**** Radiated. This class is distinguished from the 3 preceding almost entirely by negative characters, the animals included in it having few characters in common. Abortions of nature, provided only with the incipient forms of organization, they show no traces of circulation, no organs of sense, no distinct nervous system; the organs of respiration are indistinct; those of digestion sometimes complicated, sometimes consisting only of a sack without an outlet; sometimes exhibiting organs, of which the action is visible, but the functions unknown; some of them manifest a tendency to the radiated formation, and many are composed of rays, that is, of tentacula diverging regularly from the centre to the_circumference; but this character is far from being universal, since many of this class are perfectly spherical or membranous, without the least tendency to the radiated structure. They all inhabit the water.— I. Echinodermata; distinct organs of respiration and circulation; the viscera con

tained in an interior cavity formed by the spines disposed in rays, and sometimes star-formed; they inhabit the sea.-II. Intestini, intestinal worms; long body, without limbs; no distinct viscera, except a long digestive canal; parasites of other animals, in whose bodies they are found; it is not known how they enter them, nor is any thing known of their manner of respiration and generation.-III. Acalepha, sea-nettles; body orbicular or radiated, containing a digestive sack; no organs of circulation, respiration or generation distinguishable; some of them, however, emit a substance, which might be taken for eggs, and which, when touched, excites a tingling sensation in the skin, similar to that produced by nettles; the mouth serves as an anus; they inhabit the sea.-IV. Polypi; body soft, contractible, forming an intestinal sack, which presents the appearance of an orifice surrounded by tentacula; no appearance of organization which would lead us to suppose them endowed with any sense except that of touch; they are found only in the water, but inhabit both salt and fresh.-V. Infusoria; bodies transparent, contractible, microscopic; no organ discernible. For the mental powers of animals, see the article Understanding.

ANIMAL HEAT is that property of all animals, by means of which they preserve a certain temperature, which is quite independent of that of the medium by which they are surrounded, and appears rather to be in proportion to the degree of sensibility and irritability possessed by them. It is greatest in birds. The more free and independent the animal is, the more uniform is its temperature. On this account, the human species preserves a temperature nearly equal, about 96-100° Fahr., in the frozen regions at the pole, and beneath the equator; and on this account, too, the heat of the human body remains the same when exposed to the most extreme degrees of temperature; in fact, cold at first rather elevates, and extreme heat rather depresses the temperature of the human body. Fordyce and Blagden endured the temperature of an oven heated almost to redness, and two girls in France entered a baker's oven heated to 269° Fahr., in which fruits were soon dried up, and water boiled. A Spaniard, Francisco Martinez by name, exhibited himself, a short time since, at Paris, in a stove heated to 279° of Fahr., and threw himself, immediately after, into cold water. Blagden was exposed in an oven to a heat of 257°, in which water

boiled, though covered with oil. There is also a remarkable instance of a similar endurance of heat by the convulsionnaires, as they were called, upon the grave of St. Medardus, in France. A certificate signed by several eye-witnesses, among whom were Armand, Arouet, the brother of Voltaire, and a Protestant nobleman from Perth, states that a woman named la Sonet, surnamed the salamander, lay upon a fire 9 minutes at a time, which was repeated four times within two hours, making, in all, 36 minutes, during which time fifteen sticks of wood were consumed. The correctness of the fact stated is allowed even by those opposed to the abuses in which it originated. The flames sometimes united over the woman, who seemed to sleep; and the whole miracle is to be attributed to the insensibility of the skin and nerves, occasioned by a fit of religious insanity. These facts are the results of a law of all living substances, viz., that the temperature of the living body cannot be raised above certain limits, which nature has fixed. There is also an increased flow of perspiration, by means of which the heat of the body is carried off. The extreme degrees of cold which are constantly endured by the human frame without injury are well known, and are to be explained only by this power in the living body to generate and preserve its own heat. The greater the irritability of individuals, whether from age, sex, or peculiarity of constitution, the greater the warmth of the body: it seems also to depend, in part, upon the quickness of the circulation of the blood: thus children and small animals, whose circulation is lively, feel the cold least. The heat and the power of preserving it differ also in the different parts of the body; those appearing to be warmest in which there is the most copious supply of blood, as the brain, the head and neck, the lungs and central parts of the body. We see, also, that when the irritability of the body, or of any part of it, is particularly increased, the heat of the part undergoes a similar change. Increased activity and motion of the body, as in walking, running, &c., and diseases of increased excitement, as fever and inflammation, produce a similar increase in the temperature of the body. All this justifies the conclusion, that animal heat depends chiefly upon the irritability of the body, and is thus most intimately connected with the state of the nervous system. This view is confirmed by the late experiments of Brodie, who