the caterpillar and
the maggot gain not only more perfect powers of motion on the earth in
their new state, but acquire organs by which they inhabit a new element.
This animal, I dare say, is much larger than we now see it when mature in
its native place; but its comparative anatomy is exceedingly hostile to
the idea that it is an animal in a state of transition. It has been
found of various sizes, from that of the thickness of a quill to that of
the thumb, but its form of organs has been always the same. It is surely
a perfect animal of a peculiar species. And it adds one instance more to
the number already known of the wonderful manner in which life is
produced and perpetuated in every part of our globe, even in places which
seem the least suited to organised existences. And the same infinite
power and wisdom which has fitted the camel and the ostrich for the
deserts of Africa, the swallow that secretes its own nest for the caves
of Java, the whale for the Polar seas, and the morse and white bear for
the Arctic ice, has given the proteus to the deep and dark subterraneous
lakes of Illyria--an animal to whom the presence of light is not
essential, and who can live indifferently in air and in water, on the
surface of the rock, or in the depths of the mud.

_Phil_.--It is now ten years since I first visited this spot. I was
exceedingly anxious to see the proteus, and came here with the guide in
the evening of the day I arrived at Adelsberg; but though we examined the
bottom of the cave with the greatest care, we could find no specimens. We
returned the next morning and were more fortunate, for we discovered five
close to the bank on the mud covering the bottom of the lake; the mud was
smooth and perfectly undisturbed, and the water quite clear. This fact
of their appearance during the night seemed to me so extraordinary, that
I could hardly avoid the fancy that they were new creations. I saw no
cavities through which they could have entered, and the undisturbed state
of the lake seemed to give weight to my notion. My reveries became
discursive; I was carried in imagination back to the primitive state of
the globe, when the great animals of the sauri kind were created under
the pressure of a heavy atmosphere; and my notion on this subject was not
destroyed when I heard from a celebrated anatomist, to whom I sent the
specimens I had collected, that the organisation of the spine of the
proteus was analogous to that