It has been observed of those fishes which travel overland on the evaporation of the ponds in which they live, that they invariably march in the direction of the nearest water, and even when captured, and placed on the floor of a room, their efforts to escape are always made towards the same point. Is the sense of smell sufficient to account for this display of instinct in them? or is it aided by special organs in the case of the others? Dr. MCGEE, formerly of the ROYAL NAVY, writing to me on the subject of the instant appearance of flies in the vicinity of dead bodies, says: “In warm climates they do not wait for death to invite them to the banquet. In Jamaica I have again and again seen them settle on a patient, and hardly to be driven away by the nurse, the patient himself saying, ‘Here are these flies coming to eat me ere I am dead.’ At times they have enabled the doctor, when otherwise he would have been in doubt as to his prognosis, to determine whether the strange apyretic interval occasionally present in the last stage of yellow fever was the fatal lull or the lull of recovery; and ‘What say the flies?’ has been the settling question. Among many, many cases during a long period I have seen but one recovery after the assembling of the flies. I consider the foregoing as a confirmation of smell being the guide even to the attendants, a cadaverous smell has been perceived to arise from the body of a patient twenty-four hours before death.” [134] This is precisely the action ascribed by ARISTOTLE to the elephant, when levelling palm trees. _De Anim. Hist._ 1. ix. c. 2. [135] ARMANDI, _Hist. Milit. des Eléphants_, liv. i. ch. i. p. 2. It is an interesting fact, noticed by ARMANDI, that the elephants figured on the coins of Alexander and the Seleucidæ invariably exhibit the characteristics of the Indian type, whilst those on Roman medals can at once be pronounced African, from the peculiarities of the convex forehead and expansive ears.—_Ibid._ liv. i. cap. i. p. 3. [Illustration] ARMANDI has, with infinite industry, collected from original sources a mass of curious information relative to the employment of elephants in ancient warfare, which he has published under the title of _Histoire Militaire des Eléphants depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à l’introduction des armes à feu_. Paris, 1843. [136] ÆLIAN, lib. ii. cap. ii.