Mysteries of Nature, who can sound your depths? Secrets of the moral world, what being but God has the privilege of comprehending you? A large species of Star-fish (_Luidia fragillissima_), which inhabits the English seas, has this instinct of suicide to a great extent. The following account by Professor Edward Forbes of an attempt to capture a Luidia gives a good illustration of its powers. "The first time that I took one of these creatures," the professor says, "I succeeded in placing it entire in my boat. Not having seen one before, and being ignorant of its suicidal powers, I spread it out on a rowing bench, the better to admire its form and colours. On attempting to remove it for preservation, to my horror and disappointment I found only an assemblage of detached members. My conservative endeavours were all neutralised by its destructive exertions; and the animal is now badly represented in my cabinet by a diskless arm and an armless disk. Next time I went to dredge at the same spot I determined not to be cheated out of my specimen a second time. I carried with me a bucket of fresh water, for which the star-fishes evince a great antipathy. As I hoped, a Luidia soon came up in the dredge--a most gorgeous specimen. As the animal does not generally break up until it is raised to the surface of the sea, I carefully and anxiously plunged my bucket to a level with the dredge's mouth, and softly introduced the Luidia into the fresh water. Whether the cold was too much for it, or the sight of the bucket was too terrific, I do not know; but in a moment it began to dissolve its corporation, and I saw its limbs escaping through every mesh of the dredge. In my despair I seized the largest piece, and brought up the extremity of an arm with its terminal eye, the spinous eyelid of which opened and closed with something exceedingly like a wink of derision." The mind remains confounded before such spectacles, and we can only say, with Mallebranche, "It is well to comprehend clearly that there are some things which are absolutely incomprehensible."