All this is accomplished in a very simple manner-in a manner which affords the most striking evidence of design, and adaptation of means to a specific end-all in unison with the character and condition of cold-blooded animals. The aorta, or large vessel which conveys the blood from the heart to be distributed to every part of the body, conveys also the blood which goes to the lungs. And whilst the animal remains upon the land breathing air, a portion of the blood constantly circulates through the lungs to be purified and prepared for the nourishment of the body. But the moment the animal descends into the water, the function of respiration is suspended-the animal ceases to breathe, and the blood, instead of flowing to the lungs, continues its course onwards, and goes to be distributed to every part of the body. In this manner the blood circulates till the animal comes to the surface of the water to breathe, and then a quantity of fresh air being inhaled, the blood flows to the lungs to be purified, and the circulation of the blood is maintained as before. But if all the blood in the animal's body had circulated through the lungs, instead of a portion of it, the animal could not have remained many minutes under the water without certain suffocation. When the air ceased to enter the lungs, the blood would have ceased to flow-that would have transmitted its influence backwards to the heart, and averted its motion; and the general circulation would immediately have been brought to a stand, and death the inevitable result. In short, the animal would have died trom the want of air to the chest-the same as an animal that is drowned. For in drowning, neither man nor animal dies because water enters the chest, and arrests the action of the lungs-there being seldom any water found there at the moment of death. For the epiglottis shuts immediately upon the mouth of the windpipe, and prevents the entrance of the water. But they die because air has been excluded from the lungs, and the function of respiration arrested-the same as in an animal that has been strangulated. But by the mode adopted in the respiration of reptiles all these effects are prevented, and the animals have the power of descending into the water, and of making that element their abode for a considerable period, till the wants of the system demand a supply of fresh air, and then they come to the surface to breathe; hence these reptiles are, properly speaking, land animals, formed to breathe air, but by the peculiar construction of their repiratory organs, they have the power of descending into the water, and continuing there for some time without injurious effects to their system. A very remarkable phenomenon connected with the life of reptiles, as the frog, salamander or water-newt, &c., is, that in the early period of their existence, and during their tadpole state, they assume the character of a fish, and breathe by gills, and are totally destitute of lungs and unable to live on the land. But as they continue to grow, the lungs are gradually developed, and the gills shrivel up; and then the whole body of the animal undergoes a complete metamorphosis, to adapt it to the new element, air, for which it is destined. The tail disappears, the four limbs are formed, the heart undergoes a great change in its structure. The stomach and intestinal canal become shortened in adaptation to the food on which the animal is to subsist, and the vertebral column loses the type of the fish and assumes that of the reptile. But should the animal be excluded from the influence of solar light and heat, whilst it is undergoing this metamorphosis the process is arrested? The animal continues to grow as a tadpole, but is no longer changed into the character of a frog. Dr. Edwards of Paris performed some interesting experiments on this subject. He took tadpoles, and supplied them with food and a constant renewal of fresh water, but excluded them from the influence of solar light. The animals continued to grow, but it was as tadpoles; their metamorphosis into frogs was arrested, and did not again proceed till exposed to the rays of the sun-showing, in a remarkable degree, the influence of light upon the animal economy. We perceive, then, how admirably adapted the structure of every creature is to the circumstances insthich it is placed, and the element in which mofes, and that, however great may be the modifications which particular organs may undergo to the attainment of specific ends, they are all accomplished in accordance with the grand general laws of the animal economy. Which shows how superior the works of nature are to the loftiest productions of human skill and human ingenuity. A piece of mechanism, as a watch constructed by man, however beautiful the workmanship and valuable the materials, is designed for one important purpose, which it subserves and that alone, and cannot be appropriated to a different purpose without a total change of the whole materials. But in the structure of the animal economy, by a slight modification of the organs, various and important ends are attained, and the animal is adapted to the air, to the land, or to the waters, and yet the principle is one and indivi dually the same-which demonstrates that the TIE PAGOTA.—A VENETIAN STORY. whole system is divine, and has been constructed by one great Architect, the Creator and Governor of all; which should lead us in studying the structure and investigating the laws of the animal economy, one of the most interesting and, at the same time, most instructive subjects that the human mind can contemplate-to advance a step further, and “look from nature up to nature's God."-P**** Bowmanville. THE WITCH HAZEL. "The singularity or witchery of this plant consists in putting forth its blossoms at the same time that its leaves are falling, and when the germens of its neighbors have turned into pericarps. It flowers in October and November, the fruit being produced the next year; thus the ripe fruit and fresh blossoms are frequently commingled on the same trees.-Comstock's Botany. When the frost hath dyed the forest With the constant pine's deep green, And each sight and sound bespeaketh Blooms a mystic shrub serenely When each summer flower is gone, While its leaves fall one by one;- Or the icy frosts' keen breath, 'Mid the sad remains of death, And still finds the ravens focd. True and faithful plant, the lesson Thou impartest all should learn, Not to droop before misfortune, But with calmness face the storm. Let the Hazel be our emblem! Yes! no other badge display! With its blossoms shining brightly 'Mid the passing years decay. R. N. (FROM THE FRENCH.) CHAPTER I. No tourist in Italy can have failed to observe with pleasure the female water carriers of Venice, running at a gymnastic step, and with an air of haste and business, over the flags which pave the causeways of the great square of St. Mark. Although they speak a dialect but little different from that of the Venetians, it is evident, from their smaller stature, their more picturesque costume, and their more delicate features, that they are not of the same race. They bear the name of Bigolante and Pagote; the first of them appertaining to their trade, the second to the country whence island in the Adriatic, situated near the slothey come-viz., Pago-a small and sterile ping shores of Croatia. In all the large cities of the Continent, there are certain species of industry which are never exercised except by foreigners, and the pursuit of which long use and custom have rendered the peculiar privilege of aliens. After this fashion, the nurses of Paris are all Normans, and all its coal-venders are natives of Auvergne; and in the same way, at Venice the water-carriers all come from Pago. From the far end of the Dalmatian Archipelago, they come-for they are mostly females-to Venice to gain their dowries by carrying water for the bourgeois of the city in the sea.' These gained, by means of heavy labor and frugality, they return to their own country, where their fiances are awaiting them, and marry upon the fruits of their industry. They only receive a Venetian sou for a jug of water, so they must carry a vast number of them before they can amass a sum of money sufficient to enable them to set up house-keeping; but their brazen jugs are not of the largest kind, so they can make many journeys to and from the cisterns in the day, and the young men of Pago do not look for quite such dowries with their brides, as are expected by Parisians with the belles of the salons. During the summer of 1845, which in France was one of the wettest and coldest upon record, the heat at Venice was intolerable. The atmosphere was filled with heavy and suffocating vapours, which gave to the heavens such a sombre and gloomy hue, as to seem to announce the near approach of some of those wonderful events which are predicted in the Apocalypse. The water of the lagoons being of little depth and but seldom renewed by the feeble tides of the Adriatic, attained a degree of heat so elevated, that baths became for the time an impossibility. It was in the nights alone that the air was at all respirable, and the consequence was, that the whole of the inhabitants of the city were ever, had then only just commenced, but, as I remained for the whole of the ensuing year in Venice, I had opportunities of watching to the end the progress of the drama in which she was the chief actor, and the first few scenes of which had then as yet alone been I out-of-doors, from sunset till three or four hours after midnight. One day, my padrona di casa, to use the Venetian expression, compassionating my state of physical prostration, proposed that I should have a bath in my own lodgings, made principally of well-water. I eagerly accepted the proposal, and accord- represented. ingly there was brought up into my room a Digia was the Christian name of the Palarge wooden bathing-tub; and when this had gota, and she was the second daughter of a been filled about one-third full of lagoon wa-poor tavern-keeper of Pago, who was burdenter, a Pagota was hired to add thereto a somewhat larger quantity of fresh water, and the result was, that a bath was formed into which I could manage to plunge without fear of scalding. The Pagota employed in this work was a young girl, whose countenance, unless exceedingly deceitful, bore witness to a heart at once pure, innocent and good; whilst a look of simplicity, and yet deep mel ancholy, with which the observer could not but be struck, threw around her a charm entirely inexpressible. As for her costume, it was the general one of her class, thongh rather neater and more elegant than common, and at the same time less coquettish. Two large clusters of rich brown hair hung over her ears, from which were suspended two large pendants of real gold, whilst upon her head was a felt hat, of elegant shape, but without brim, and ornamented by a sprig of evergreen. She had no shoes on her feet, which was not because of poverty, but merely that she might the better keep her footing when treading upon the banks of the lagoons, upon which is often deposited by the water a green slime. 9 ed with a heavy family. For the last three months, she had exercised in Venice the profession of water-carrier. Her elder sister had preceded her there by some months, and had left her on her return to Pago, a considerable clientila amongst the inhabitants of the 8c8tiere of St. Mark. Already she had been enabled to forward succours to her father, and in a corner of the little chamber in the Canareggio which she inhabited, she had hidden a little treasure, the fruit of her frugality. It was all in copper pieces, and would not have weighed upon even one hand very heavily, supposing it to have been converted into silver. Digia always left her dwelling at the break of day, and many of the most industrious servants were still asleep when she knocked gently at their doors with her jug upon her shoulder. It was a long way from her dwelling to St. Mark's, and on her way thither in the mornings she had to pass twenty bridges, and amongst others that which touches upon the vestibule of the palace of the Faliero, whose facade recalls so eloquently the rigour of the laws of the middle ages. Somewhat beyond this bridge, in a rio which describes a number of capricious curves, two boatmen were generally cleaning and preparing their gondola. Both wore the belts and the black bonnets of the nicolitti-those inveterate night-rovers and contrabandists, and mortal enemies of the red-capped gondoliers, or castellani, as well as the green-habited officers of customs. The eldest seemed about twenty years of age, the youngest about fourteen. * Whilst the Pagota was passing to and fro, from the wells to the bathing-tub, and from the bathing-tub to the wells again, I perceived that tears, which from time to time she wiped away with the back of her hand, were constantly trickling down her cheeks in silence, and I seized the first opportunity which pre sented itself to inquire of her the cause of her subdued grief. She fixed upon me, thereupon, her large blue eyes, as though endeavoring to discover whether my question were dictated The nicolitti believe themselves to be of noby mere curiosity or not; and then replied, ble descent, and are as proud now of their 'You are free to think of my sorrow what oars as their ancestors were of their swords. you will, excepting one thing, and that is,that Too independent to suffer themselves to enter any ill conduct of my own has brought it into any conti act which shall bind them to give their labor to one employer for any This proud response augmented my inter-lengthened period, they will willingly bind est, and I wished to insist upon her taking themselves by the year or by the month, prome into her confidence, but she had by this vided their patron be any ancient Seigneur of time emptied her last secchia, and she has the Golden Book. As for foreigners, the nitened away, saying only, Bagno pronto!' colitto never offers his services to them, exHappily, however, my padrona had learned, cept with the intention of duping them. To by snatches at various times, all that I was see and observe him in his native element, it desirous of knowing respecting the Pagota, is necessary to go and seek him in the Canand I had only to speak one word to call forth areggio, an inextricable labyrinth from which as full and prolix an account thereof, as any he rarely departs, and in which even Venetians one could possibly be wishful to obtain. Love, as I had conjectured, was the cause of the young maidens sorrow. Her griefs, how- from the 13th century. upon me.' The war of the nicolitti and the castellani dates are very apt to loose themselves. Without an inability to procure employment for his knowing anything correctly of the history of robust arms during the day. One morning his country, the nicolitto regrets vaguely those as she passed the rio at her customary step, old Gothic institutions which are impossible the nicolitto apostrophised the young girl in to-day, and of which he is incapable of judg- a more serious tone than ordinary, and beging. It is sufficient for him to know that du- ged her to stay a moment, and render him & ring five centuries they made the glory and service. Instead of fleeing as fast as she the fortune of the Venetians. His character could, as she did usually when he accosted is fickle and inconstant as the old Athenian's, her, she stopped as requested, and looking the his intellect lively but frivolous, his language black gondolier full in the face, replied, 'I of somewhat more than usual elegance, and his hope, for your own honor, that you are not aptitude for repartee almost incredible. A mocking me; and if you are not, I will wilbon-mot, a pun, or a witty tale, amuse him lingly do anything I can for you, on condiabove all things; and everything graceful and tion that you cease to annoy me when I pass clever, from a turn of cards to an opera tune, you.' excites his enthusiasm, whilst the sight of a fair girl especially elates him. All his tastes are those of the man of civilization, but a nameless malady saddens and consumes him -a malady which resembles more than any thing else nostalgia, and the accesses of which, taking place as they do mostly in the night, inspire those songs imprinted with a gloomy sadness which proceed in the darkness from the gondolas of the nicolitti, and to some of which, upon an ever memorable evening, the mortally wounded heart of the unfortunate Desdemona responded with a melancholy and plaintive echo. It is the gondolier of the present day-whom Rossini listened to-who is accustomed to sing thus, and not the gondolier of the time of Othello. The Miguno of Goethe was born in the land of the sun, and transported to the cold clime of Germany, she wept her far off country; the songs of the ni- Digia, upon this, took the vest of the little colitto weep the death of Venice. Interrogate Coletto, whose clothes seemed to have been him sympathetically, and he will forget his inade of an old curtain, or of the cover of an hunger, to complain of weariness. Thence arm chair, and having threaded her needle, arises his insubordination, his penchant for in-seated herself on the edge of the bank, that fringing the regulations of the police, and his she might sew the more at ease. taste for contrabandist enterprises. "Do not fear, gentle Pagota," replied the nicolitto, "I will not jest with you, but will speak to you like an archbishop I want you to repair the vest of my little brother, Coletto. This noble signor whom you see here will hire our gondola for the entire day, on condition that its rowers appear in decent trim: but this condition is imperative, since we are wanted to conduct the ladies of his family to the salt-wells of St. Felix. But Coletto's vest is torn right down the back, and I am but a poor hand with the needle; therefore I would beg you, since you have risen before the sun, to come for a few moments to the aid of the poor gondolier. Take this needle and thread and repair the rent, and you will render us a great service. If you refuse, Colletto and I will miss an important engage ment, and lose our day." "Although shy," the nicolitto continued, When Digia,risen from her nest at the same after a while, "I knew that the fair Pagotine hour as the birds from theirs, and running, as was a brave girl. And now," he added, turnher custom always was, came up to the but-ing to a fourth person who was present, "if tresses of the palace of Faliero, the eldest of agreeable to your lordship, we can make our the two gondoliers seldom failed to accost her. contract." Sometimes he offered to take her to the place of her destination in his gondola, sometimes he inquired whether she were not on her way to some rendezvous, and whether the gallant she was going to meet was a merchant of the Merceria or the Rialto. The Pagota, well knowing that such skirmishes with the gondoliers of Venice were very apt to end in unpleasant scenes, always quickened her pace and lowered her eyes as she passed by the two nicolitti; but in the evenings, as she passed by the same spot again, she sometimes cast a stealthy look upon the elder of them, for at such seasons she often saw him lying with his back upward and his head buried in his hands, in the attitude of a man sunk in despair; and in such cases her heart was filled with compassion for him, for she doubted not that his sadness was caused principally by The individual thus addressed was a little man, of about fifty years of age, with a grey head, a pale countenance, and a slender frame, together with winking eyes, and an open mouth, which spoke of but little intellect, and still less character. One would have said that he was stupid, had it not been an expres sion of cunning which lighted up his features every now and then into animation. His black coat, with the shanks of its buttons all plainly visible; his hat almost napless, but brushed with extreme care, with his gloves a dozen times darned, and his shoes as many times mended, all bore witness to desperate resistance to the assaults of the most cruel of miseries-that of the man well born, but without riches, whose education, name, and station in society oblige to endeavor, at all hazards, to "keep up appearance," and preserve doge saw in a moment that it might still more tighten his bargain. I will place your wife amongst the followers of mine," he answered, "as soon as the schemes we have contrived succeed, on condition that you conduct me to-day to St. Felix for three francs." a decent exterior. The black gondolier was not in error in treating this personage as a signor di qualita, for he was in reality the last scion of the most illustrious of all the families belonging to the ranks of the Venetian aristocracy. He counted several doges amongst his ancestors, one of them being the author of the celebrated coup d'etat, known "Done, cried the gondolier, and then turnas the serraz del consiglio, which reduced to ing towards Digia, he continued, "Gentle Paseven hundred the number of Venetian fami- gota, you have heard the words of the maglies whose members could exercise any pub-nifico signor, will you not partake with me lic functions. From time immemorial the the benefits which he will bestow upon me? ancestors of this man had occupied the highest offices in the state, and fulfilled the most difficult employments in a government, by turns, so supple and so inflexible, which held itself at the head of Europe during the whole half of the sixteenth century. the great You know wages are "Our contract !" responded personage; "it is already made well enough what your day's worth." "Yes, signor," replied the nicolitti; Napoleone d' Argento." "ha Ha Napoleone!" exclaimed the man of quality; "but you are joking without doubt! Think you I have risen so early to make a bargain such as that? But let us talk of Venetian moneys and not foreign coins, so please you." Well, then, how much is it that your excellency will choose to give us?" asked the gondolier in answer; but the grand signor replied only by a gesture, raising four of his fingers in the air, and when he had done this, suddenly closing his hand. "It is very little," said the gondolier, when he had in this way named the sum. "But he who only gives little ought at least to promise. I have an idea that your excellency will ere long become a senator, perhaps even doge: or, more still, the state inquisitor. Promise me this, that you will in that day recompense me further when I prostrate myself in your path, and that you will place me in your house, when the republic is accorded to us, and then I will willingly serve you for four francs." You are handsome, and I am not ugly; we are both of the same condition in life, and are both industrious. Accept me for your husband, and let his excellency give us the benediction of the first magistrate of the republic. My name is Marco; are you agreed, fair little Pagotine?" Digia was not much acquainted with political affairs. She knew nothing of the treaties of 1815, and was ignorant of the country to which belonged the canon upon the Piazetta. The isle of Pago, which had always belonged to Venice, had ever been attached to its metropolis; and though the Pagotes were accustomed to drink to the success of the Venetian borghese this only proved that they considered them as their patrons and their masters. The Pagotes, were aware, it is true, that the ducal palace was deserted, and that the affairs of the city were administered by soldiers in white habits, who came there from a distance; but this state of things seemed to them evidently only provisional. This being the case, the proposal of the gondolier to Digia appeared to the latter both courteous and sage, thanks to the protection of the generous patrician. That which there was absurd and chimerical in the hopes and dreams of Marco, did not appear so in any wise to Digia, and was indeed just that which the most struck her imagination. "Marco," she replied to the nicolitto, "your language appears that of an honest man; but one cannot marry, you know, in this way at first sight. And, besides, I am hindered by other and graver motives. Before quitting The patrician, seeing to what class of Pago, I contracted a species of engagement dreamers the gondolier belonged, jumped at with a young Croat, the son of a friend of my the chance of striking a bargain. By my father, who has demanded me in marriage.ancestors, the conquerors of Cyprus," ex- Francois Knapen is a violent youth, whose claimed he, "I will promise you. You shall humor very little agrees with mine, and I did be, when we have succeeded, my first gon-not suffer myself to be regularly betrothed.--dolier, or, if it pleases you better, that of my I have only promised him that I will not enwife." courage another lover without giving him no"No, yours, yours, magnifico signor," said | tice. At the bottom, I am not very fond of the gondolier; "I know the signora by repu- him, and so I will tell him of your proposition tation, and it is said she is somewhat difficult and of our providential encounter with the to please. I have the promise of your pro- thrice magnifico signor, who condescends to tection, and it suffices me. But may I claim interest himself in us; and if Francois, astonfurther that of the dogaressa for my wife.ished by so many extraordinary circumstanFor, if the republic comes quickly, it will not be long before I marry." This was still a new idea, and the future ces, gives me my liberty, and if my father does not require me to return to Pago, I will willingly become your wife, as true as my name |