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 in creation than either, are longer lived than birds: it has been said of some species, and of certain snakes also, that they grow as long as they live, and as far as we know, live till some accident puts an end to their indefinite term of life. And the toad! it cannot indeed be said that the toad lives for ever, but many of these animals who were cased up at the general deluge, are likely to live till they are baked in their cells at the general conflagration.

I have said that birds seem to rank higher than beasts in the scale of being, because the, which in beasts is confined to the female, extends in birds to both sexes; and because they have the connubial affection, to which there seems no nearer approach among beasts than the Turk-like polygamy of some of the gregarious species.

 

I have somewhere read of an odd 