ANATOMY. 267
caught. In order to surprise their prey while asleep in the night, owls fly out provided with enormous pupils which enable them to see in the dark, and with very soft feathers to make their flight noiseless and thus permit them to fall unawares upon their sleeping prey without awakening it by their movements. Silurus (catfish), gymnotus electric eel, and torpedo electric ray bring a complete electric apparatus into the world with them, in order to stun their prey before they can reach it; and also as a defence against their own pursuers. For wherever anything living breathed, there immediately came another to devour it, 1 and every animal is in a way designed and calculated throughout, down to the minutest detail, for the purpose of destroying some other animal. Ichneumons (wasps), for instance, among insects, lay their eggs in the bodies of certain caterpillars and similar larvae, in which they bore holes with their stings, in order to ensure nourishment for their future brood. Now those kinds which feed on larvae that crawl about freely, have short stings not more than about one-third of an inch long, whereas pimpla manifestator (wasp), which feeds upon chelostoma maxillosa bee), whose larvae lie hidden in old trees at great depth and are not accessible to it, has a sting two inches long; and the sting of the ichneumon strobillae (wasp) which lays its eggs in larvae, dwelling in fir-cones, is nearly as long. With these stings they penetrate to the larva in which they bore a hole and deposit one egg, whose product subsequently devours
1 Animated by the feeling of this truth, Richard Owen, after passing in review the numerous and often very large Australian fossil marsupialia —sometimes as big as the rhinoceros—came as early as 1842 to the conclusion, that a large beast of prey must have contemporaneously existed. This conclusion was afterwards confirmed, for in 1846 he received part of the fossil skull of a beast of prey of the size of the lion, which he named thylacoleo, i.e. lion with a pouch, since it is also a marsupial. (See the Times of the 19th of May, 1860, where there is an article on "Palaeontology," with an account of Owen's lecture at the Government School of Mines.) [Add. to 3rd ed.]
268
