The dragoon pigeon has flown from Bury to London, 72 miles, in 2 1/2 hours.

Spallanzani states that two swallows flew from Milan to Pavia, 18 miles, in 13 minutes. The precision and rapidity of muscular action of some animals is also remarkable. The elephant can pick up a pin with its huge trunk. The chamois goat leaps with the greatest precision from point to point on the mountain rocks alighting on surfaces scarcely large enough for its feet to rest upon. A bird called the wryneck, having a long tongue like the woodpecker, darts forth and retracts this organ with such rapidity that the eye is unable to follow it. The frog also catches flies by movements scarcely less rapid. - No animal possesses more than five senses, and some are probably endowed with not more than one, the sense of touch. But we find each sense manifested in the animal scale, in all grades of perfection. Of intelligence, also, we find great varieties in birds and mammalia, while below the former we hardly find any higher attributes than mere instinct. This, indeed, predominates in most birds, and in the mammalia often assumes the appearance of cunning, artifice, or sagacity. The Egyptian ichneumon, being fond of poultry, feigns itself dead till the birds come within its reach, when it springs upon and strangles them, usually contenting itself with sucking their blood.

There is a species of musk which also feigns death when caught in the noose set for it, but escapes the moment it is untied. The European cuckoo neither builds a nest for itself nor hatches its own eggs. It deposits a single egg in the nest of the hedge sparrow (and sometimes of the wagtail or the titlark), while the other bird is laying her eggs. This addition to her charge disturbs her arrangements, and during incubation she throws out her own eggs, or so disturbs as to addle them, to make room for the cuckoo's; but, according to Dr. Jenner's observations, she never displaces the latter. When some of her own eggs and that of the cuckoo are hatched, the young cuckoo manages to throw out the young sparrows and the remaining eggs, and thus gets the whole nest to itself. The ostrich surrounds her nest with a trench, in which she deposits some of her eggs as the first food of the young ones to be hatched from the eggs in the nest. - To an animal capable of being educated, though to a slight extent, we cannot deny the possession of intelligence; and judged by this criterion, most of the mammals and some birds must be regarded as possessing this attribute. The adaptation of means to ends, in entirely new circumstances, must also generally be attributed to it rather than to mere instinct.

Swallows club together to repel a common enemy, many closing round a hawk. A martin being caught in a noose of packthread, fastened at the other end to a gutter, all the martins in the vicinity were attracted by its cries, and, striking the thread with their bills, succeeded in setting him at liberty. The superior intelligence of the elephant is often asserted; but this animal is really less intelligent than the dog, and about equal in this respect to the horse. As tested by educability, as well as by acquired tastes, the quadrumana are far the most intelligent of the lower animals. - Carnivorous animals are mostly solitary in their habits, while many of the herbivorous are socially inclined and gregarious. This is the case with the llama and the horse in the wild state. Camelopards herd together usually in companies of 16. Antelopes are found in herds of 2,000 or 8,000, or in small parties of only five or six individuals. The males also of antelopes and deer frequently consort together, independently of the females. On the other hand, the conjugal attachment of the stellerine (allied to the dugong) is so great that if the female be taken, the male will dash on shore to her in spite of blows, with the swiftness of an arrow. Some animals are docile and yielding, others obstinate.

The mule is proverbial for the last attribute, but the llama is still more remarkable in this respect. Some animals are grave or morose, while others are playful, and even have their peculiar amusements. The mocking-bird amuses itself in frightening other small birds by imitating the screams of the sparrow hawk. - The particular classes and orders of animals will be described under the appropriate heads; the four classes of the vertebrata forming the articles Amphibia, Herpetology, Ichthyology, Mammalia, and Ornithology; while the invertebrata will be found described under the heads Animalcules, Arachnida, Articulata, Crustacea, Echinoderma, Entomology, entozoa, epizoa, Mollusca, Protozoa, and Radiata.