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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44422 ***
+
+[Illustration: KING PENGUINS.]
+
+
+
+
+  ECCENTRICITIES
+
+  OF
+
+  THE ANIMAL CREATION.
+
+
+  BY JOHN TIMBS.
+
+  AUTHOR OF "THINGS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN."
+
+
+  WITH EIGHT ENGRAVINGS.
+
+
+  SEELEY, JACKSON, AND HALLIDAY, 54, FLEET-STREET.
+  LONDON. MDCCCLXIX.
+
+  _The right of translation is reserved._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+  INTRODUCTORY.--CURIOSITIES OF ZOOLOGY.
+
+  Natural History in Scripture, and Egyptian Records, 11.--Origin of
+  Zoological Gardens, 12.--The Greeks and Romans, 12.--Montezuma's
+  Zoological Gardens, 13.--Menagerie in the Tower of London,
+  14.--Menagerie in St. James's Park, 14.--John Evelyn's Notes,
+  15.--Ornithological Society, 15.--Continental Gardens, 16.--Zoological
+  Society of London instituted, 16; its most remarkable Animals,
+  16.--Cost of Wild Animals, 18.--Sale of Animals, 20.--Surrey
+  Zoological Gardens, 20.--Wild-beast Shows, 21.
+
+
+  THE RHINOCEROS IN ENGLAND.
+
+  Ancient History, 22, 23.--One-horned and Two-horned, 25,
+  26.--Tractability, 25.--Bruce and Sparmann, 27.--African Rhinoceros in
+  1868, 27.--Description of, 29.--Burchell's Rhinoceros, 30.--Horn of
+  the Rhinoceros, 31, 32.
+
+
+  STORIES OF MERMAIDS.
+
+  Sirens of the Ancients, 33.--Classic Pictures of Mermaids,
+  34.--Leyden's Ballad, 35.--Ancient Evidence, 36, 37, 38.--Mermaid in
+  the West Indies, 39.--Mermaids, Seals, and Dugongs, 41.--Mermaids and
+  Manatee, 42.--Test for a Mermaid, 43.--Mermaid of 1822, 43.--Japanese
+  Mermaids, 44.--Recent Evidence, 47, 48.
+
+
+  IS THE UNICORN FABULOUS?
+
+  Ctesias and Wild Asses, 65.--Aristotle, Herodotus, and Pliny,
+  50.--Modern Unicorns, 50.--Ancient Evidence, 51.--Hunting the
+  Unicorn, 52.--Antelopes, 53, 54.--Cuvier and the Oryx, 54.--Tibetan
+  Animal, 55.--Klaproth's Evidence, 55.--Rev. John Campbell's Evidence,
+  57.--Baikie on, 58.--Factitious Horns in Museums, 59.--Unicorn in the
+  Royal Arms, 60.--Catching the Unicorn, 60.--Belief in Unicorns, 61.
+
+
+  THE MOLE AT HOME.
+
+  Economy of the Mole, 62.--Its Structure, 63.--Fairy Rings; Feeling
+  of the Mole, 64.--Le Court's Experiments, 62, 65.--Hunting-grounds,
+  67.--Loves of the Moles, 68, 69.--Persecution of Moles.--Shrew Mole,
+  70.--Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, on Moles, 71.
+
+
+  THE GREAT ANT-BEAR.
+
+  The Ant-Bear of 1853, 72, 73.--Mr. Wallace, on the Amazon, describes
+  the Ant-Bear, 73.--Food of the Ant-Bear, 74.--His Resorts, 75.--Habits
+  in Captivity, by Professor Owen, 76-80.--Fossil Ant-Bear, 80,
+  81.--Tamandua Ant-Bear, 82--Von Sack's Ant-Bear, 83.--Porcupine
+  Ant-Eater, 84.--Ant-Bears in the Zoological Gardens, 84.
+
+
+  CURIOSITIES OF BATS.
+
+  Virgil's Harpies, 85.--Pliny on the Bat, 85.--Rere-mouse and
+  Flitter-mouse, 86.--Bats, not Birds but Quadrupeds, 87.--Sir Charles
+  Bell on the Wing of the Bat, 87.--Vampire Bat from Sumatra, 88.--Lord
+  Byron and Vampire, 89.--Levant Superstition, 89.--Bat described by
+  Heber, Waterton, and Steadman, 90.--Lesson on Bats, 91.--Bat Fowling
+  or Folding, 91, 92.--Sowerby's Long-eared Bat, 92, 96.--Wing of
+  the Bat, 96.--_Nycteris_ Bat, 97.--_Kalong_ Bat of Java, 98.--Bats,
+  various, 100, 101.
+
+
+  THE HEDGEHOG.
+
+  Hedgehog Described, 102.--Habits, 103.--Eating Snakes, 105.--Poisons,
+  105, 106.--Battle with a Viper, 105.--Economy of the Hedgehog, 106,
+  107.
+
+
+  THE HIPPOPOTAMUS IN ENGLAND.
+
+  Living Hippopotamus brought to England in 1850, 108.--Capture and
+  Conveyance, 111.--Professor Owen's Account, 111-115.--Described
+  by Naturalists and Travellers, 115-118.--Utility to Man,
+  118-119.--Ancient History, 119.--In Scripture, 120.--Alleged
+  Disappearance, 121.--Fossil, 122.
+
+
+  LION-TALK.
+
+  Character, 123.--Reputed Generosity, 125.--Burchell's Account,
+  125.--Lion-Tree in the Mantatee Country, 127.--Lion-hunting,
+  128.--Disappearance of Lions, 130, 131.--Human Prey, 132.--Maneless
+  Lions of Guzerat, 134.--A Lion Family in Bengal, 135, 136.--Prickle on
+  the Lion's Tail, 137-139.--Nineveh Lions, 139.--Lions in the Tower of
+  London, 140, 141.--Feats with Lions, 142.--Lion-hunting in Algeria, by
+  Jules Gerard, 144.--The Prudhoe Lions, 144.
+
+
+  BIRD-LIFE.
+
+  Rate at which Birds fly, 145, 146.--Air in the Bones of Birds,
+  146.--Flight of the Humming-bird, 147.--Colour of Birds, 148.--Song
+  of Birds, 149.--Beauty in Animals, 150.--Insectivorous Birds,
+  151.--Sea-fowl Slaughter, 152.--Hooded Crow in Zetland, 154.--Brain of
+  Birds, 154.--Danger-signals, 155.--Addison's Love of Nature, 156, 157.
+
+
+  BIRDS' EGGS AND NESTS.
+
+  Colours of Eggs, 158.--Bird's-nesting, 159.--Mr. Wolley, the
+  Ornithologist, 159, 160.--European Birds of Prey, 161.--Large
+  Eggs, 162, 163, 164.--Baya's Nest, 164.--Oriole and Tailor-bird,
+  165, 166.--Australian Bower-bird, 167.--Cape Swallows, 168.--"Bird
+  Confinement," by Dr. Livingstone.
+
+
+  THE EPICURE'S ORTOLAN.
+
+  Origin of the Ortolan, 172; described, 173, 174; Fattening process,
+  175, 176.--Prodigal Epicurism, 177, 178.
+
+
+  TALK ABOUT TOUCANS.
+
+  Toucan family, 179.--Gould's grand Monograph, 180.--Toucans described,
+  180-182; Food, 183; Habits, 184.--Gould's Toucanet, 187.
+
+
+  ECCENTRICITIES OF PENGUINS.
+
+  Penguins on Dassent Island, 188.--Patagonian Penguins, 189.--Falkland
+  Islands, 189.--King Penguins, 190, 191.--Darwin's Account,
+  192.--Webster's Account, 193.--Swainson's Account, 194.
+
+
+  PELICANS AND CORMORANTS.
+
+  Pelicans described by various Naturalists, 195, 196.--The Pelican
+  Island, 197.--Popular Error, 199-200.--Cormorants, and Fishing with
+  Cormorants, 201-204.
+
+
+  TALKING BIRDS, INSTINCTS, ETC.
+
+  Sounds by various Birds, 204.--Umbrella Bird, 206.--Bittern,
+  207.--Butcher-bird and Parrots, 208.--Wild Swan, Laughing Goose,
+  Cuckoo, and Nightingale, 209.--Talking Canaries, 210.--Neighing Snipe,
+  213.--Trochilos and Crocodiles, 216.--Instinct. Intelligence, and
+  Reason in Birds, 217-219.--Songs of Birds and Seasons of the Day, 219.
+
+
+  OWLS.
+
+  Characteristics of the Owl, 221.--Owl in Poetry, 222.--Bischacho or
+  Coquimbo, 224.--Waterton on Owls, 225, 226.--Owls. Varieties of,
+  227-230.
+
+
+  WEATHER-WISE ANIMALS.
+
+  Atmospheric Changes, 231.--Stormy Petrel, 233.--Wild Geese and Ducks,
+  235.--Frogs and Snails, 237.--The Mole, 240.--List of Animals, by
+  Forster, the Meteorologist, 241.--Weatherproof Nests, 247.--"Signs of
+  Rain," by Darwin, 248.--Shepherd of Banbury, 249.
+
+
+  FISH-TALK.
+
+  How Fishes Swim, 250.--Fish Changing Colour, 251.--"Fish Noise,"
+  252.--Hearing of Fish, 253.--The Carp at Fontainebleau, 254,
+  255.--Affection of Fishes, 256.--Cat-fish, Anecdote of, 257.--Great
+  Number of Fishes, 258.--Little Fishes Eaten by Medusæ, 259.--Migration
+  of Fishes, 261.--Enormous Grampus, 262.--Bonita and Flying-fish,
+  263.--Jaculator Fish of Java, 264.--Port Royal, Jamaica Fish,
+  266.--The Shark, 267.--California. Fish of, 268.--Wonderful Fish,
+  269.--Vast Sun-fish, 271.--Double Fish, 272.--The Square-browed
+  Malthe, 274.--Gold Fish, 275.--The Miller's Thumb, 276.--Sea-fish
+  Observatory, 276.--Herring Question, 278.--Aristotle's History of
+  Animals, 279-280.
+
+
+  FISH IN BRITISH COLOMBIA.
+
+  Salmon-swarming, 281.--Candle-fish, 282.--Octopus, the, 283.--Sturgeon
+  and Sturgeon Fishing, 283-287.
+
+
+  THE TREE-CLIMBING CRAB.
+
+  Locomotion of Fishes, 288.--Climbing Perch, 288.--Crabs in the West
+  Indies, 289.--Crabs, Varieties of, 289-292.--Robber and Cocoa-nut
+  Crab, 292-301.--Fish of the China Seas, 301.
+
+
+  MUSICAL LIZARDS.
+
+  Lizard from Formosa Isle, 303.--Its Habits, 304-306.
+
+
+  CHAMELEONS AND THEIR CHANGES.
+
+  The Chameleon described by Aristotle and Calmet, 307, 308.--Change
+  of Colour, 309.--Reproduction of, 310, 311.--Tongue, 311.--Lives in
+  Trees, 312.--Theory of Colours, 313.--The Puzzle Solved, 315.--Mrs.
+  Belzoni's Chameleons, 317.--Lady Cust's Chameleons, 321.--Chameleon's
+  Antipathy to Black, 322.
+
+
+  RUNNING TOADS.
+
+  Dr. Husenbeth's Toads at Cossey, 327.--Frog and Toad Concerts, 327.
+
+
+  SONG OF THE CICADA.
+
+  Greeks' Love for the Song, 329.--Cicada in British Colombia,
+  329.--Tennyson and Keats on the Grasshopper, 330.
+
+
+  STORIES ABOUT THE BARNACLE GOOSE.
+
+  Baptista Porta's Account, 331.--Max Müller on, 331.--Gerarde's
+  Account, 332.--Giraldus Cambrensis, 332.--Professor Rolleston.
+  Drayton's _Poly-olbion_, 333.--Sir Kenelm Digby and Sir J. Emerson
+  Tennent, 334.--Finding the Barnacle, 334.
+
+
+  LEAVES ABOUT BOOKWORMS.
+
+  Bookworms, their Destructiveness, 336, 337.--How to Destroy, 338.--The
+  Death-watch, 339.--Lines by Swift, 340.
+
+
+  BORING MARINE ANIMALS, AND HUMAN ENGINEERS.
+
+  Life and Labours of the Pholas, 341.--Family of the Pholas,
+  342.--Curious Controversy, 343.--Boring Apparatus, 342.--Several
+  Observers, 347, 348.--Boring Annelids, 348.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+                                                                    Page
+
+  KING PENGUINS                                             Frontispiece
+
+  THE TWO-HORNED AFRICAN RHINOCEROS                                   28
+
+  SEAL AND MERMAID                                                    40
+
+  THE GREAT ANT-BEAR (ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY'S)                           76
+
+  FRASER'S EAGLE OWL, FROM FERNANDO PO                               228
+
+  SQUARE-BROWED MALTHE AND DOUBLE FISH                               274
+
+  THE TREE-CLIMBING CRAB                                             288
+
+  CHAMELEONS                                                         318
+
+
+
+
+ECCENTRICITIES
+
+OF
+
+THE ANIMAL CREATION.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY.--CURIOSITIES OF ZOOLOGY.
+
+
+Curious creatures of Animal Life have been objects of interest to
+mankind in all ages and countries; the universality of which may be
+traced to that feeling which "makes the whole world kin."
+
+It has been remarked with emphatic truth by a popular writer, that "we
+have in the Bible and in the engraven and pictorial records the earliest
+evidence of the attention paid to Natural History in general. The 'navy
+of Tarshish' contributed to the wisdom of him who not only 'spake of the
+trees from the cedar of Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth
+out of the wall,' but 'also of beasts, and of fowls, and of creeping
+things, and of fishes,'[1] to say nothing of numerous other passages
+showing the progress that zoological knowledge had already made. The
+Egyptian records bear testimony to a familiarity not only with the forms
+of a multitude of wild animals, but with their habits and geographical
+distribution."
+
+The collections of living animals, now popularly known as Zoological
+Gardens, are of considerable antiquity. We read of such gardens in China
+as far back as 2,000 years; but they consisted chiefly of some favourite
+animals, such as stags, fish, and tortoises. The Greeks, under Pericles,
+introduced peacocks in large numbers from India. The Romans had their
+elephants; and the first giraffe in Rome, under Cæsar, was as great an
+event in the history of zoological gardens at its time as the arrival in
+1849 of the Hippopotamus was in London. The first zoological garden of
+which we have any detailed account is that in the reign of the Chinese
+Emperor, Wen Wang, founded by him about 1150 A.D., and named by him "The
+Park of Intelligence;" it contained mammalia, birds, fish, and amphibia.
+The zoological gardens of former times served their masters occasionally
+as hunting-grounds. This was constantly the case in Persia; and in
+Germany, so late as 1576, the Emperor Maximilian II. kept such a park
+for different animals near his castle, Neugebah, in which he frequently
+chased.
+
+Alexander the Great possessed his zoological gardens. We find from Pliny
+that Alexander had given orders to the keepers to send all the rare and
+curious animals which died in the gardens to Aristotle.
+
+Splendid must have been the zoological gardens which the Spaniards found
+connected with the Palace of Montezuma. The letters of Ferdinand Cortez
+and other writings of the time, as well as more recently "The History
+of the Indians," by Antonio Herrera, give most interesting and detailed
+accounts of the menagerie in Montezuma's park. The buildings belonging
+to these gardens were all gorgeous, as became the grandeur of the Indian
+prince; they were supported by pillars, each of which was hewn out of
+a single piece of some precious stone. Cool, arched galleries led into
+the different parts of the garden--to the marine and fresh-water basins,
+containing innumerable water-fowl,--to the birds of prey, falcons
+and eagles, which latter especially were represented in the greatest
+variety,--to the crocodiles, alligators, and serpents, some of them
+belonging to the most venomous species. The halls of a large square
+building contained the dens of the lions, tigers, leopards, bears,
+wolves, and other wild animals. Three hundred slaves were employed in
+the gardens tending the animals, upon which great care was bestowed, and
+scrupulous attention paid to their cleanliness. To this South American
+zoological garden of the sixteenth century no other of its time could be
+compared.[2]
+
+More than six centuries ago, our Plantagenet kings kept in the Tower
+of London exotic animals for their recreation. The Lion Tower was built
+here by Henry III., who commenced assembling here a menagerie with three
+leopards sent to him by the Emperor Frederic II., "in token of his regal
+shield of arms, wherein those leopards were pictured." Here, in 1255,
+the Sheriffs built a house "for the King's elephant," brought from
+France, and the first seen in England. Our early sovereigns had a mews
+in the Tower as well as a menagerie:--
+
+    "Merry Margaret, as Midsomer flowre,
+    Gentyll as faucon and hawke of the Towre."--_Skelton._
+
+In the reign of Charles I., a sort of Royal Menagerie took the place of
+the deer with which St. James's Park was stocked in the days of Henry
+VIII, and Queen Elizabeth. Charles II. greatly enlarged and improved
+the Park; and here he might be seen playing with his dogs and feeding
+his ducks. The Bird-cage Walk, on the south side of the Park, had in
+Charles's time the cages of an aviary disposed among the trees. Near the
+east end of a canal was the Decoy, where water-fowl were kept; and here
+was Duck Island, with its salaried Governor.
+
+Evelyn, in 1664, went to "the Physique Garden in St. James's," where
+he first saw "orange trees and other fine trees." He enumerates in
+the menagerie, "an ornocratylus, or pelican; a fowle between a storke
+and a swan; a melancholy water-fowl, brought from Astracan by the
+Russian ambassador; a milk-white raven; two Balearian cranes," one of
+which, had a wooden leg "made by a soulder:" there were also "deere of
+severall countries, white, spotted like leopards; antelopes, an elk,
+red deer, roebucks, staggs, Guinea goates, Arabian sheepe, &c." There
+were "withy-potts, or nests, for the wild fowle to lay their eggs in, a
+little above y^e surface of y^e water."
+
+"25 Feb. 1664. This night I walk'd into St. James his Parke, where I saw
+many strange creatures, as divers sorts of outlandish deer, Guiny sheep,
+a white raven, a great parrot, a storke.... Here are very stately walkes
+set with lime trees on both sides, and a fine pallmall."[3]
+
+Upon the eastern island is the Swiss Cottage of the Ornithological
+Society, built in 1841 with a grant of 300l. from the Lords of
+the Treasury: it contains a council-room, keepers' apartments,
+steam-hatching apparatus; contiguous are feeding-places and decoys; and
+the aquatic fowl breed on the island, making their own nests among the
+shrubs and grasses.
+
+The majority of Zoological Gardens now in existence have been founded
+in this century, with the exception of the Jardin des Plantes, which,
+although founded in 1626, did not receive its first living animals until
+the year 1793-1794. Hitherto, it had been a Garden of Plants exclusively.
+
+We shall not be expected to enumerate the great Continental gardens,
+of which that at Berlin, half an hour's drive beyond the Brandenburg
+gates, contains the Royal Menagerie; it is open upon the payment of
+an admission fee, and generally resembles our garden at the Regent's
+Park. Berlin has also its Zoological Collection in its Museum of Natural
+History. This collection is one of the richest and most extensive in
+Europe, especially in the department of Ornithology: it includes the
+birds collected by Pallas and Wildenow, and the fishes of Bloch. The
+best specimens are those from Mexico, the Red Sea, and the Cape. The
+whole is exceedingly well arranged, and _named_ for the convenience of
+students. Still, our Zoological Collection in the British Museum (to be
+hereafter removed to South Kensington) is allowed to be the finest in
+Europe.
+
+The Zoological Society of London was instituted in 1826, and occupies
+now about seventeen acres of gardens in the Regent's Park. Among the
+earliest tenants of the Menagerie were a pair of emues from New Holland;
+two Arctic bears and a Russian bear; a herd of kangaroos; Cuban mastiffs
+and Thibet watch-dogs; two llamas from Peru; a splendid collection of
+eagles, falcons, and owls; a pair of beavers; cranes, spoonbills, and
+storks; zebras and Indian cows; Esquimaux dogs; armadilloes; and a
+collection of monkeys. To the menagerie have since been added an immense
+number of species of _Mammalia_ and _Birds_; in 1849, a collection
+of _Reptiles_; and in 1853, a collection of _Fish_, _Mollusca_,
+_Zoophytes_, and other _Aquatic Animals_. In 1830, the menagerie
+collected by George IV. at Sandpit-gate, Windsor, was removed to the
+Society's Gardens; and 1834 the last of the Tower Menagerie was received
+here. It is now the finest public Vivarium in Europe.
+
+The following are some of the more remarkable animals which the Society
+have possessed, or are now in the menagerie:--
+
+     _Antelopes_, the great family of, finely represented. The
+     beautiful _Elands_ were bequeathed by the late Earl of Derby, and
+     have bred freely since their arrival in 1851. The Leucoryx is the
+     first of her race born out of Africa. _Ant-eater. Giant_, brought
+     to England from Brazil in 1853, was exhibited in Broad-street,
+     St. Giles's, until purchased by the Zoological Society for 200l.
+     _Apteryx_, or _Kiwi_ bird, from New Zealand; the first living
+     specimen brought to England of this rare bird. The _Fish-house_,
+     built of iron and glass, in 1853, consisting of a series of glass
+     tanks, in which fish spawn, zoophytes produce young, and algæ
+     luxuriate; crustacea and mollusca live successfully, and ascidian
+     polypes are illustrated, together with sea anemones, jelly-fishes,
+     and star-fishes, rare shell-fishes, &c.: a new world of animal
+     life is here seen as in the depths of the ocean, with masses of
+     rock, sand, gravel, corallines, sea-weed, and sea-water; the
+     animals are in a state of natural restlessness, now quiescent,
+     now eating and being eaten. _Aurochs_, or _European Bisons_: a
+     pair presented by the Emperor of Russia, in 1847, from the forest
+     of Bialowitzca: the male died in 1848, the female in 1849, from
+     pleuro-pneumonia. _Bears_: the collection is one of the largest
+     ever made. _Elephants_: including an Indian elephant calf and its
+     mother. In 1847 died here the great Indian elephant Jack, having
+     been in the gardens sixteen years. Adjoining the stable is a tank
+     of water, of a depth nearly equal to the height of a full-grown
+     elephant. In 1851 the Society possessed a _herd of four elephants_,
+     besides a hippopotamus, a rhinoceros, and both species of tapir;
+     being the largest collection of pachydermata ever exhibited in
+     Europe. _Giraffes_: four received in 1836 cost the Society upwards
+     of 2,300_l._, including 1,000_l._ for steamboat passage: the female
+     produced six male fawns here between 1840 and 1851. _Hippopotamus_,
+     a young male (the first living specimen seen in England), received
+     from Egypt in May, 1850, when ten months old, seven feet long,
+     and six and a-half feet in girth; also a female hippopotamus,
+     received 1854. _Humming-birds_: Mr. Gould's matchless collection
+     of 2,000 examples was exhibited here in 1851 and 1852. _Iguanas_,
+     two from Cuba and Carthagena, closely resembling, in everything
+     but size, the fossil Iguanodon. The _Lions_ number generally from
+     eight to ten, including a pair of cubs born in the gardens in 1853.
+     _Orang-utan_ and _Chimpanzee_: the purchase-money of the latter
+     sometimes exceeds 300_l._ The orang "Darby," brought from Borneo
+     in 1851, is the finest yet seen in Europe, very intelligent, and
+     docile as a child. _Parrot-houses_: they sometimes contain from
+     sixty to seventy species. _Rapacious Birds_: so extensive a series
+     of eagles and vultures has never yet been seen at one view. _The
+     Reptile-house_ was fitted up in 1849; the creatures are placed in
+     large plate-glass cases: here are pythons and a rattle-snake, with
+     a young one born here; here is also a case of the tree-frogs of
+     Europe: a yellow snake from Jamaica has produced eight young in the
+     gardens. _Cobra de Capello_, from India: in 1852, a keeper in the
+     gardens was killed by the bite of this serpent. _A large Boa_ in
+     1850 swallowed a blanket, and disgorged it in thirty-three days.
+     A _one-horned Rhinoceros_, of continental India, was obtained in
+     1834, when it was about four years old, and weighed 26 cwt.; it
+     died in 1850: it was replaced by a female, about five years old.
+     _Satin Bower-Birds_, from Sydney: a pair have built here a bower,
+     or breeding-place. _Tapir_ of the Old World, from Mount Ophir;
+     the nearest existing form the Paleotherium. _Tigers_: a pair of
+     magnificent specimens, presented by the Guicoway of Baroda in 1851;
+     a pair of clouded tigers, 1854. _The Wapiti Deer_ breeds every year
+     in the Menagerie.
+
+The animals in the Gardens, although reduced in number, are more
+valuable and interesting than when their number was higher. The mission
+of the Society's head-keeper, to collect rare animals for the Menagerie,
+has been very profitable. The additional houses from time to time, are
+very expensive: the new monkey house, fittings, and work cost 4,842_l._;
+and in 1864, the sum of 6,604_l._ was laid out in permanent additions to
+the establishment.
+
+Very rare, and consequently expensive, animals are generally purchased.
+Thus, the first Rhinoceros cost 1,000_l._; the four Giraffes, 700_l._,
+and their carriage an additional 700_l._ The Elephant and calf were
+bought in 1851 for 500_l._; and the Hippopotamus, although a gift, was
+not brought home and housed at less than 1,000_l._--a sum which he
+more than realised in the famous Exhibition season, when the receipts
+were 10,000_l._ above the previous year. The Lion Albert was purchased
+for 140_l._; a tiger, in 1852, for 200_l._ The value of some of the
+smaller birds will appear, however, more startling: thus, the pair
+of black-necked Swans were purchased for 80_l._; a pair of crowned
+Pigeons and two Maleos, 60_l._; a pair of Victoria Pigeons, 35_l._;
+four Mandarin Ducks, 70_l._ Most of these rare birds (now in the great
+aviary) came from the Knowsley collection, at the sale of which,
+in 1851, purchases were made to the extent of 985_l._ It would be
+impossible from these prices, however, to judge of the present value
+of the animals. Take the Rhinoceros, for example: the first specimen
+cost 1,000_l._; the second, quite as fine a brute, only 350_l._ Lions
+range again from 40_l._ to 180_l._, and Tigers from 40_l._ to 200_l._
+The ignorance displayed by some persons as to the value of well-known
+objects is something marvellous.--A sea-captain demanded 600_l._ for
+a pair of Pythons, and at last took 40_l._! An American offered the
+Society a Grisly Bear for 2,000_l._, to be delivered in the United
+States; and, more laughable still, a moribund Walrus, which had been fed
+for nine weeks on salt pork and meal, was offered for the trifling sum
+of 700_l._!
+
+There is a strange notion that the Zoological Society has proposed a
+large reward for a "Tortoiseshell Tom-cat," and one was accordingly
+offered to the Society for 250_l._! But male Tortoiseshell Cats may be
+had in many quarters.[4]
+
+The Surrey Zoological Gardens were established in 1831. Thither
+Cross removed his menagerie from the King's Mews, where it had been
+transferred from Exeter Change. At Walworth a glazed circular
+building, 100 feet in diameter, was built for the cages of the
+carnivorous animals (Lions, Tigers, Leopards, &c.); and other houses
+for Mammalia, Birds, &c. Here, in 1834, was first exhibited a young
+Indian one-horned Rhinoceros, for which Cross paid 800_l._ It was the
+only specimen brought to England for twenty years. In 1836 were added
+three Giraffes, one fifteen feet high. The menagerie was dispersed in
+1856. The menagerie at Exeter Change was a poor collection, though the
+admission-charge was, at one period, half-a-crown!
+
+The collections of animals exhibited at fairs have added little to
+Zoological information; but we may mention that Wombwell, one of the
+most noted of the showfolk, bought a pair of the first Boa Constrictors
+imported into England: for these he paid 75_l._, and in three weeks
+realised considerably more than that sum by their exhibition. At the
+time of his death, in 1850, Wombwell was possessed of three huge
+menageries, the cost of maintaining which averaged at least 35_l._ per
+day; and he used to estimate that, from mortality and disease, he had
+lost, from first to last, from 12,000_l._ to 15,000_l._
+
+Our object in the following succession of sketches of the habits and
+eccentricities of the more striking animals, and their principal
+claims upon our attention, is to present, in narrative, their leading
+characteristics, and thus to secure a willing audience from old and
+young.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] 1 Kings iv. 10.
+
+[2] "Athenæum."
+
+[3] Journal of Mr. E. Browne, son of Sir Thomas Browne.
+
+[4] In April, 1842, Mr. Batty's collection of animals was sold by
+auction, when the undermentioned animals brought--Large red-faced Monkey
+(clever), 1_l._ 10_s._; fine Coatimondi, 1_l._ 4_s._; Mandril (the
+only one in England), 1_l._ 17_s._; pair of Java Hares, 1_l._ 9_s._; a
+Puma, 14_l._; handsome Senegal Lioness, 9_l._; a Hyæna, 7_l._; splendid
+Barbary Lioness, 24_l._; handsome Bengal Tigress, 90_l._; brown Bear,
+6_l._; the largest Polar Bear in Europe, 37_l._; pair of Esquimaux
+Sledge-Dogs, 3_l._ 7_s._; pair of Golden Pheasants, 3_l._ 10_s._; a
+blue-and-buff Macaw (clever talker), 2_l._ 10_s._; a horned Owl, from
+North America, 3_l._ 10_s._; a magnificent Barbary Lion, trained for
+performance, 105 guineas; a Lioness, similarly trained, 90 guineas;
+handsome Senegal performing Leopard, 34 guineas; two others, 50 guineas;
+Ursine Sloth, 12 guineas; Indian Buffalo, 10 guineas; sagacious male
+Elephant, trained for theatrical performances, 350 guineas. The above is
+stated to have been the first sale of the kind by public auction in this
+country.
+
+
+
+
+THE RHINOCEROS IN ENGLAND.
+
+
+The intellectual helps to the study of zoology are nowhere more
+strikingly evident than in the finest collection of pachyderms
+(thick-skinned animals) in the world, now possessed by our Zoological
+Society. Here we have a pair of Indian Elephants, a pair of African
+Elephants, a pair of Hippopotami, a pair of Indian Rhinoceroses, and an
+African or two-horned Rhinoceros.
+
+The specimens of the Rhinoceros which have been exhibited in Europe
+since the revival of literature have been few and far between. The
+first was of the one-horned species, sent from India to Emmanuel. King
+of Portugal, in the year 1513. The Sovereign made a present of it to
+the Pope; but the animal being seized during its passage with a fit of
+fury, occasioned the loss of the vessel in which it was transported. A
+second Rhinoceros was brought to England in 1685; a third was exhibited
+over almost the whole of Europe in 1739; and a fourth, a female, in
+1741. A fifth specimen arrived at Versailles in 1771, and it died in
+1793, at the age of about twenty-six years. The sixth was a very young
+Rhinoceros, which died in this country in the year 1800. The seventh, a
+young specimen, was in the possession of Mr. Cross, at Exeter Change,
+about 1814; and an eighth specimen was living about the same time in
+the Garden of Plants at Paris. In 1834 Mr. Cross received at the Surrey
+Gardens, from the Birman empire, a Rhinoceros, a year and a-half old,
+as already stated at page 21. In 1851 the Zoological Society purchased
+a full-grown female Rhinoceros; and in 1864 they received a male
+Rhinoceros from Calcutta. All these specimens were from India, and
+_one-horned_; so that the _two-horned_ Rhinoceros had not been brought
+to England until the arrival of an African Rhinoceros, _two-horned_, in
+September, 1868.[5]
+
+The ancient history of the Rhinoceros is interesting, but intricate. It
+seems to be mentioned in several passages of the Scriptures, in most
+of which the animal or animals intended to be designated was or were
+the _Rhinoceros unicornis_, or Great Asiatic one-horned Rhinoceros.
+M. Lesson expresses a decided opinion to this effect: indeed, the
+description in Job (chap. xxxix.) would almost forbid the conclusion
+that any animal was in the writer's mind except one of surpassing bulk
+and indomitable strength. The impotence of man is finely contrasted
+with the might of the Rhinoceros in this description, which would be
+overcharged if it applied to the less powerful animals alluded to in the
+previous passages.
+
+It has also been doubted whether accounts of the Indian Wild Ass, given
+by Ctesias, were not highly coloured and exaggerated descriptions of
+this genus; and whether the Indian Ass of Aristotle was not a Rhinoceros.
+
+Agatharchides describes the one-horned Rhinoceros by name, and speaks
+of its ripping up the belly of the Elephant. This is, probably, the
+earliest occurrence of the name _Rhinoceros_. The Rhinoceros which
+figured in the celebrated pomps of Ptolemy Philadelphus was an
+Ethiopian, and seems to have marched last in the procession of wild
+animals, probably on account of its superior rarity, and immediately
+after the Cameleopard.
+
+Dion Cassius speaks of the Rhinoceros killed in the circus with a
+Hippopotamus in the show given by Augustus to celebrate his victory over
+Cleopatra; he says that the Hippopotamus and this animal were then first
+seen and killed at Rome. The Rhinoceros then slain is thought to have
+been African, and two-horned.
+
+The Rhinoceros clearly described by Strabo, as seen by him, was
+one-horned. That noticed by Pausanias as "the Bull of Ethiopia," was
+two-horned, and he describes the relative position of the horns.
+
+Wood, in his "Zoography," gives an engraving of the coin of Domitian
+(small Roman brass), on the reverse of which is the distinct form of a
+two-horned Rhinoceros: its exhibition to the Roman people, probably of
+the very animal represented on the coin, is particularly described in
+one of the epigrams attributed to Martial, who lived in the reigns of
+Titus and Domitian. By the description of the epigram it appears that
+a combat between a Rhinoceros and a Bear was intended, but that it was
+very difficult to irritate the more unwieldy animal so as to make him
+display his usual ferocity; at length, however, he tossed the bear from
+his double horn, with as much facility as a bull tosses to the sky the
+bundles placed for the purpose of enraging him. Thus far the coin and
+the epigram perfectly agree as to the existence of the double horn; but,
+unfortunately, commentators and antiquaries were not to be convinced
+that a Rhinoceros could have more than one horn, and have at once
+displayed their sagacity and incredulity in their explanations on the
+subject.
+
+Two, at least, of the two-horned Rhinoceroses were shown at Rome in the
+reign of Domitian. The Emperors Antoninus, Heliogabalus, and Gordian
+also exhibited Rhinoceroses. Cosmas speaks expressly of the Ethiopian
+Rhinoceros as having two horns, and of its power of moving them.
+
+The tractability of the Asiatic Rhinoceros has been confirmed by
+observers in the native country of the animal. Bishop Heber saw at
+Lucknow five or six very large Rhinoceroses, of which he found that
+prints and drawings had given him a very imperfect conception. They
+were more bulky animals, and of a darker colour than the Bishop
+supposed; though the latter difference might be occasioned by oiling
+the skin. The folds of their skin also surpassed all which the Bishop
+had expected. Those at Lucknow were quiet and gentle animals, except
+that one of them had a feud with horses. They had sometimes howdahs, or
+chaise-like seats, on their backs, and were once fastened in a carriage,
+but only as an experiment, which was not followed up. The Bishop,
+however, subsequently saw a Rhinoceros (the present of Lord Amherst to
+the Guicwar), which was so tamed as to be ridden by a Mohout quite as
+patiently as an elephant.
+
+No two-horned Rhinoceros seems to have been brought alive to Europe in
+modern times. Indeed, up to a comparatively late period, their form
+was known only by the horns which were preserved in museums; nor did
+voyagers give any sufficient details to impart any clear idea of the
+form of the animal. The rude figure given by Aldrovandus, in 1639,
+leaves no doubt that, wretched as it is, it must have been taken from a
+two-horned Rhinoceros.
+
+Dr. Parsons endeavoured to show that the one-horned Rhinoceros always
+belonged to Asia, and the two-horned Rhinoceros to Africa; but there are
+two-horned Rhinoceroses in Asia, as well as in Africa. Flacourt saw one
+in the Bay of Soldaque, near the Cape of Good Hope, at a distance. Kolbe
+and others always considered the Rhinoceros of the Cape as two-horned;
+but Colonel Gordon seems to be the first who entirely detailed the
+species with any exactness. Sparrman described the Cape Rhinoceros,
+though his figure of the animal is stiff and ill-drawn. At this period
+it was well known that the Cape species was not only distinguished by
+having two horns from the Indian Rhinoceros then known, but also by an
+absence of the folds of the skin so remarkable in the latter.
+
+We should here notice the carelessness, to call it by the mildest
+name, of Bruce, who gave to the world a representation of a two-horned
+Rhinoceros from Abyssinia, with a strongly folded skin. The truth
+appears to be that the body of the animal figured by Bruce was copied
+from that of the one-horned Rhinoceros given by Buffon, to which Bruce
+added a second horn. Salt proved that the Abyssinian Rhinoceros is
+two-horned, and that it resembles that of the Cape.
+
+[Illustration: THE TWO-HORNED AFRICAN RHINOCEROS.]
+
+Sparmann exposes the errors and poetic fancies of Buffon respecting the
+impenetrable nature of the skin. He ordered one of his Hottentots to
+make a trial of this with his hassagai on a Rhinoceros which had been
+shot. Though this weapon was far from being in good order, and had no
+other sharpness than that which it had received from the forge, the
+Hottentot, at the distance of five or six paces, not only pierced with
+it the thick hide of the animal, but buried it half a foot deep in its
+body.
+
+Mr. Tegetmeier has sufficiently described in the "Field" journal the
+African Rhinoceros just received at the Zoological Society's menagerie
+in the Regent's-park, and which has been sketched by Mr. T. W. Wood
+expressly for the present volume.
+
+It was captured about a year ago in Upper Nubia by the native hunters
+in the employment of Mr. Casanova, at Kassala; and was sent, by way of
+Alexandria and Trieste, to Mr. Karl Hagenbeck, of Hamburg, a dealer in
+wild beasts, who sold it to the Zoological Society.
+
+"This animal is very distinct from its Asiatic congeners; it differs
+strikingly in the number of horns, as well as in the character of its
+skin, which is destitute of those large folds, which cause the Indian
+species to remind the observer of a gigantic 'hog in armour.'
+
+"The arrival of this animal will tend to clear up the confusion
+that prevails respecting the number of distinct species of African
+Rhinoceros. Some writers--as Sir W. C. Harris--admit the existence of
+two species only, the dark and the light, or, as they are termed, the
+'white' and the 'black.' Others, as Dr. A. Smith, describe three; some,
+as the late Mr. Anderssen, write of four; and Mr. Chapman even speaks of
+a fifth species or hybrid.
+
+"Three of these species are very distinctly defined--the ordinary dark
+animal, the _Rhinoceros bicornis_, in which the posterior horn is much
+shorter than the anterior; the _Rhinoceros keitloa_, in which the two
+horns are of equal length; and the 'white' species, _Rhinoceros simus_.
+The last, among other characters, is, according to Dr. Smith,
+distinguished by the square character of the upper lip, which is not
+prehensile.
+
+"The young animal now (October, 1868) in the Zoological Society's
+garden, appears to belong to the first-named species, the largest
+specimens of which when full grown reach a height of 6ft., and a length
+of 13ft., the tail not included. Its present height is 3-1/2ft., and
+length about 6ft. In general appearance the mature animal resembles a
+gigantic pig, the limbs being brought under the body. The feet are most
+singular in form, being very distinctly three-toed, and the remarkable
+trefoil-like _spoors_ that they make in the soil render the animal
+easy to track. The horns vary greatly in length in different animals;
+the first not unfrequently reaches a length of 2ft., the second being
+considerably shorter. These appendages differ very much from ordinary
+horns; they are, in fact, more of the nature of agglutinated hair, being
+attached to the skin only, and consequently they separate from the skull
+when the latter is preserved.
+
+"The head is not remarkable for comeliness, especially in the mature
+animal, in which the skin of the face is deeply wrinkled, and the small
+eyes are surrounded with many folds. The upper lip is elongated, and is
+used in gathering the food. The adult animals are described by Sir W. C.
+Harris, in his 'Illustrations of the Game Animals of South Africa,' as
+'swinish, cross-grained, ill-tempered, wallowing brutes.'"
+
+Mr. Burchell, during his travels in Africa, shot nine Rhinoceroses,
+besides a smaller one. The latter he presented to the British Museum.
+The animal is, however, becoming every day more and more scarce in
+Southern Africa; indeed, it is rarely to be met with in some parts.
+It appears that, in one day, two Rhinoceroses were shot by Speelman,
+the faithful Hottentot who attended Mr. Burchell. He fired off his gun
+but twice, and each time he killed a Rhinoceros! The animal's sense of
+hearing is very quick: should he be disturbed, he sometimes becomes
+furious, and pursues his enemy; and then, if once he gets sight of the
+hunter, it is scarcely possible for him to escape, unless he possesses
+extraordinary coolness and presence of mind. Yet, if he will quietly
+wait till the enraged animal makes a run at him, and will then spring
+suddenly on one side, to let it pass, he may gain time enough for
+reloading his gun before the Rhinoceros gets sight of him again, which,
+fortunately, owing to its imperfection of sight, it does slowly and with
+difficulty.
+
+Speelman, in shooting a large male Rhinoceros, used bullets cast with
+an admixture of tin, to render them harder. They were flattened and
+beat out of shape by striking against the bones, but those which were
+found lodged in the fleshy parts had preserved their proper form, a fact
+which shows how little the hardness of the creature's hide corresponds
+with the vulgar opinion of its being impenetrable to a musket-ball.
+Mr. Burchell found this Rhinoceros nearly cut up. On each side of the
+carcase the Hottentots had made a fire to warm themselves; and round a
+third fire were assembled at least twenty-four Bushmen, most of whom
+were employed the whole night long in broiling, eating, and talking.
+Their appetite seemed insatiable, for no sooner had they broiled and
+eaten one slice of meat than they turned to the carcase and cut another.
+The meat was excellent, and had much the taste of beef. "The tongue,"
+says Mr. Burchell, "is a dainty treat, even for an epicure." The hide is
+cut into strips, three feet or more in length, rounded to the thickness
+of a man's finger, and tapering to the top. This is called a _shambok_,
+and is universally used in the colony of the Cape for a horsewhip, and
+is much more durable than the whips of European manufacture. The natural
+food of the Rhinoceros, till the animal fled before the colonists, was a
+pale, bushy shrub, called the Rhinoceros-bush, which burns while green
+as freely as the driest fuel, so as readily to make a roadside fire.
+
+The horn of the Rhinoceros, single or double, has its special history by
+the way of popular tradition. From the earliest times this horn has been
+supposed to possess preservative virtues and mysterious properties--to
+be capable of curing diseases and discovering the presence of poison;
+and in all countries where the Rhinoceros exists, but especially in the
+East, such is still the opinion respecting it. In the details of the
+first voyage of the English to India, in 1591, we find Rhinoceros' horns
+monopolised by the native sovereigns on account of their reputed virtues
+in detecting the presence of poison.
+
+Thunberg observes, in his "Journey into Caffraria," that "the horns of
+the Rhinoceros were kept by some people, both in town and country, not
+only as rarities, but also as useful in diseases, and for the purpose
+of detecting poisons. As to the former of these intentions, the fine
+shavings were supposed to cure convulsions and spasms in children. With
+respect to the latter, it was generally believed that goblets made of
+these horns would discover a poisonous draught that was poured into
+them, by making the liquor ferment till it ran quite out of the goblet.
+Of these horns goblets are made, which are set in gold and silver and
+presented to kings, persons of distinction, and particular friends, or
+else sold at a high price, sometimes at the rate of fifty rix-dollars
+each." Thunberg adds:--"When I tried these horns, both wrought and
+unwrought, both old and young horns, with several sorts of poison, weak
+as well as strong, I observed not the least motion or effervescence; but
+when a solution of corrosive sublimate or other similar substance was
+poured into one of these horns, there arose only a few bubbles, produced
+by the air which had been enclosed in the pores of the horn and which
+were now disengaged."
+
+Rankin (in his "Wars and Sports") states this mode of using it: a small
+quantity of water is put into the concave part of the root, then hold it
+with the point downwards and stir the water with the point of an iron
+nail till it is discoloured, when the patient is to drink it.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[5] The conveyance of a Rhinoceros over sea is a labour of some risk. In
+1814 a full-grown specimen on his voyage from Calcutta to this country
+became so furious that he was fastened down to the ship's deck, with
+part of a chain-cable round his neck; and even then he succeeded in
+destroying a portion of the vessel, till, a heavy storm coming on, the
+Rhinoceros was thrown overboard to prevent the serious consequence of
+his getting loose in the ship.
+
+
+
+
+STORIES OF MERMAIDS.
+
+
+Less than half a century ago, a pretended Mermaid was one of the sights
+of a London season; to see which credulous persons rushed to pay
+half-crowns and shillings with a readiness which seemed to rebuke the
+record--that the existence of a Mermaid is an exploded fallacy of two
+centuries since.
+
+Mermaids have had a legendary existence from very early ages, for the
+Sirens of the ancients evidently belonged to the same remarkable family.
+Shakspeare uses the term Mermaid as synonymous with Siren:--
+
+    "O train me not, sweet Mermaid, with thy note,
+    To drown me in thy sister's flood of tears;
+    Sing, Syren, for thyself."--_Comedy of Errors_, iii. 2.
+
+Elsewhere, Shakspeare's use of the term is more applicable to the Siren
+than to the common idea of a Mermaid; as in the "Midsummer Night's
+Dream," where the "Mermaid on a dolphin's back" could not easily have
+been so placed. A Merman, the male of this imaginary species, is
+mentioned by Taylor, the water-poet:--
+
+    "A thing turmoyling in the sea we spide,
+        Like to a Meareman."
+
+An old writer has this ingenious illustration:--"Mermaids, in Homer,
+were witches, and their songs enchantments;" which reminds us of the
+invitation in Haydn's Mermaid's Song:--
+
+    "Come with me, and we will go
+    Where the rocks of coral grow."
+
+The orthodox Mermaid is half woman, half fish; and the fishy half is
+sometimes depicted as doubly tailed, such as we see in the heraldry of
+France and Germany; and in the Basle edition of Ptolemy's "Geography,"
+dated 1540, a double-tailed Mermaid figures in one of the plates. In the
+arms of the Fishmongers' Company of London, the supporters are "a Merman
+and maid, first, armed, the latter with a mirror in the left hand,
+proper." From this heraldic employment, the Mermaid became a popular
+tavern sign; and there was an old dance called the Mermaid.
+
+Sir Thomas Browne refers to the _picture_ of Mermaids, though he does
+not admit their existence. They "are conceived to answer the shape of
+the ancient Sirens that attempted upon Ulysses; which, notwithstanding,
+were of another description, containing no fishy composure, but made up
+of man and bird." Sir Thomas is inclined to refer the Mermaid to Dagon,
+the tutelary deity of the Philistines, which, according to the common
+opinion, had a human female bust and a fish-like termination; though the
+details of this fish idolatry are entirely conjectural.
+
+Leyden, the Scottish poet, has left a charming ballad, entitled "The
+Mermaid," the scene of which is laid at Corrievreckin: the opening of
+this poem Sir Walter Scott praised as exhibiting a power of numbers
+which, for mere melody of sound, has seldom been excelled in English
+poetry:--
+
+    "On Jura's heath how sweetly swell
+      The murmurs of the mountain bee!
+    How softly mourns the writhèd shell
+      Of Jura's shore its parent sea!
+
+    "But softer floating, o'er the deep,
+      The Mermaid's sweet sea-soothing lay,
+    That charmed the dancing waves to sleep
+      Before the bark of Colonsay."
+
+The ballad thus describes the wooing of the gallant chieftain:--
+
+    "Proud swells her heart! she deems at last
+      To lure him with her silver tongue,
+    And, as the shelving rocks she passed,
+      She raised her voice, and sweetly sung.
+
+    "In softer, sweeter strains she sung,
+      Slow gliding o'er the moonlight bay,
+    When light to land the chieftain sprung,
+      To hail the maid of Colonsay.
+
+    "O sad the Mermaid's gay notes fell,
+      And sadly sink remote at sea!
+    O sadly mourns the writhèd shell
+      Of Jura's shore, its parent sea
+
+    "And ever as the year returns,
+      The charm-bound sailors know the day;
+    For sadly still the Mermaid mourns
+      The lovely chief of Colonsay."
+
+Curious evidences of the existence of Mermaids are to be found in
+ancient authors. Pliny says that "the ambassadors to Augustine from Gaul
+declared that sea-women were often seen in their neighbourhood." Solinus
+and Aulus Gellius also speak of their existence. Some stories are,
+however, past credence. It is related in the "Histoire d'Angleterre"
+that, in the year 1187, a Merman was "fished up" off the coast of
+Suffolk, and kept for six months. It was like a man, but wanted speech,
+and at length escaped into the sea! In 1430, in the great tempests which
+destroyed the dykes in Holland, some women at Edam, in West Friesland,
+saw a Mermaid who had been driven by the waters into the meadows, which
+were overflowed. "They took it, dressed it in female attire, and taught
+it to spin!" It was taken to Haarlem, where it lived some years! Then we
+read of Ceylonese fishermen, in 1560, catching, at one draught, seven
+Mermen and Mermaids, which were dissected! In 1531, a Mermaid, caught in
+the Baltic, was sent to Sigismund, King of Poland, with whom she lived
+three days, and was seen by the whole court!
+
+In Merollo's "Voyage to Congo," in 1682, Mermaids are said to be
+plentiful all along the river Zaire. In the "Aberdeen Almanack" for
+1688, it is predicted that "near the place where the famous Dee
+payeth his tribute to the German Ocean," on the 1st, 13th, and 29th
+of May, and other specified times, curious observers may "undoubtedly
+see a pretty company of Mar Maids," and likewise hear their melodious
+voices. In another part of Scotland, about the same time, Brand, in his
+"Description of Orkney and Shetland," tells us that two fishermen drew
+up with a hook a Mermaid, "having face, arm, breast, shoulders, &c., of
+a woman, and long hair hanging down the neck, but the nether part, from
+below the waist, hidden in the water." One of the fishermen stabbed her
+with a knife, and she was seen no more! The evidence went thus:--Brand
+was told by a lady and gentleman, who were told by a baillie to whom the
+fishing-boat belonged, who was told by the fishers! Valentyn describes a
+Mermaid he saw in 1714, on his voyage from Batavia to Europe, "sitting
+on the surface of the water," &c. In 1758, a Mermaid is said to have
+been exhibited at the fair of St. Germain, in France. It was about two
+feet long, and sported about in a vessel of water. It was fed with bread
+and fish. It was a female, with negro features.
+
+In 1775 appeared a very circumstantial account of a Mermaid which was
+captured in the Grecian Archipelago in the preceding year, and exhibited
+in London. The account is ludicrously minute, and it ends with: "It is
+said to have an enchanting voice, which it never exerts except before
+a storm." This imposture was craftily made up out of the skin of the
+angle shark. In Mr. Morgan's "Tour to Milford Haven in the year 1795,"
+appears an equally circumstantial account of a Mermaid, said to have
+been seen by one Henry Reynolds, a farmer, of Ren-y-hold, in the parish
+of Castlemartin, in 1782. It resembled a youth of sixteen or eighteen
+years of age, with a very white skin: it was bathing. The evidence
+is very roundabout, so that there were abundant means for converting
+some peculiar kind of fish into a Merman, without imputing intentional
+dishonesty to any one. "Something akin to this kind of evidence is
+observable in the account of a Mermaid seen in Caithness in 1809, which
+attracted much attention in England as well as in Scotland, and induced
+the Philosophical Society of Glasgow to investigate the matter. The
+Editor of a newspaper, who inserted the statement, had been told by a
+gentleman, who had been shown a letter by Sir John Sinclair, who had
+obtained it from Mr. Innes, to whom it had been written by Miss Mackay,
+who had heard the story from the persons (two servant girls and a boy)
+who had seen the strange animal in the water." (Chambers's "Book of
+Days.")
+
+Then we read of a so-called Mermaid, shown in the year 1794 at No. 7,
+Broad-court, Bow-street. Covent-garden, said to have been taken in the
+North Seas by Captain Foster. It was of the usual description.
+
+Much evidence comes from Scotland. Thus, in the year 1797, a
+schoolmaster of Thurso affirmed that he had seen a Mermaid, apparently
+in the act of combing her hair with her fingers! Twelve years
+afterwards, several persons observed near the same place a like
+appearance. Dr. Chisholm, in his "Essay on Malignant Fever in the West
+Indies," in 1801, relates that, in the year 1797, happening to be at
+Governor Van Battenburg's plantation, in Berbice, "the conversation
+turned on a singular animal which had been repeatedly seen in Berbice
+river, and some smaller rivers. This animal is the famous Mermaid,
+hitherto considered as a mere creature of the imagination. It is called
+by the Indians _méné_, mamma, or mother of the waters. The description
+given of it by the Governor is as follows:--'The upper portion
+resembles the human figure, the head smaller in proportion, sometimes
+bare, but oftener covered with a copious quantity of long black hair.
+The shoulders are broad, and the breasts large and well-formed. The
+lower portion resembles the tail of a fish, is of great dimensions,
+the tail forked, and not unlike that of the dolphin, as it is usually
+represented. The colour of the skin is either black or tawny.' The
+animal is held in veneration by the Indians, who imagine that killing
+it would be attended with calamitous consequences. It is from this
+circumstance that none of these animals have been shot, and consequently
+examined but at a distance. They have been generally observed in a
+sitting posture in the water, none of the lower extremity being seen
+until they are disturbed, when, by plunging, the tail agitates the water
+to a considerable distance round. They have been always seen employed in
+smoothing their hair, and have thus been frequently taken for Indian
+women bathing." In 1811, a young man, named John M'Isaac, of Corphine,
+in Kintyre, in Scotland, made oath, on examination at Campbell-town,
+that he saw, on the 13th of October in the above year, on a rock on the
+sea-coast, an animal which generally corresponded with the form of the
+Mermaid--the upper half human shape, the other brindled or reddish grey,
+apparently covered with scales; the extremity of the tail greenish red;
+head covered with long hair, at times put back on both sides of the
+head. This statement was attested by the minister of Campbell-town and
+the Chamberlain of Mull.
+
+In August, 1812, Mr. Toupin, of Exmouth, in a sailing excursion, and
+when about a mile south-east of Exmouth Bar, heard a sound like that
+of the Æolian harp; and saw, at about one hundred yards distance, a
+creature, which was regarded as a Mermaid. The head, from the crown to
+the chin, formed a long oval, and the face seemed to resemble that of
+the seal, though with more agreeable features. The presumed hair, the
+arms, and the hand, with four fingers connected by a membrane, are then
+described, and the tail with polished scales. The entire height of the
+animal was from five feet to five and a-half feet. In 1819, a creature
+approached the coast of Ireland. It was about the size of a child ten
+years of age, with prominent bosom, long dark hair, and dark eyes. It
+was shot at, when it plunged into the sea with a loud scream.
+
+[Illustration: SEAL AND MERMAID.]
+
+In reviewing these stories of Mermaids, it may be remarked that there
+is always a fish in each tale--either a living fish of a peculiar
+kind, which a fanciful person thinks to bear some resemblance in the
+upper part to a human being, or a fish which becomes marvellous in the
+progress of its description from mouth to mouth. It is commonly thought
+the seals may often have been mistaken for Mermaids. But, of all the
+animals of the whale tribe that which approaches the nearest in form to
+man is, undoubtedly, the Dugong, which, when its head and breast are
+raised above the water, and its pectoral fins, resembling hands, are
+visible, might easily be taken by superstitious seamen for a semi-human
+being, or a Mermaid. Of this deception a remarkable instance occurred
+in 1826. The skeleton of a Mermaid, as it was called, was brought
+to Portsmouth, which had been shot in the vicinity of the Island of
+Mombass. This was submitted to the members of the Philosophical Society,
+when it proved to be the skeleton of a Dugong. To those who came to
+the examination with preconceived notions of a fabulous Mermaid, it
+presented, as it lay on the lecture-table, a singular appearance. It
+was about six feet long; the lower portion, with its broad tail-like
+extremity, suggested the idea of a powerful fish-like termination,
+whilst the fore-legs presented to the unskilful eye a resemblance to the
+bones of a small female arm; the cranium, however, had a brutal form,
+which could never have borne the lineaments of "the human face divine."
+
+The Mermaid has been traced to the Manatee as well as to the Dugong: the
+former is an aquatic animal, externally resembling a whale, and named
+from its flipper, resembling the human hand, _manus_. Again, the _mammæ_
+(teats) of the Manatees and Dugongs are pectoral; and this conformation,
+joined to the adroit use of their flippers (whose five fingers can
+easily be distinguished through the inverting membranes, four of them
+being terminated by nails) in progression, nursing their young, &c.,
+have caused them, when seen at a distance with the anterior part of
+their body out of the water, to be taken for some creature approaching
+to human shape so nearly (especially as their middle is thick set with
+hair, giving somewhat of the effect of human hair or a beard), that
+there can be little doubt that not a few of the tales of Mermen and
+Mermaids have had their origin with these animals as well as with seals
+and walruses. Thus the Portuguese and Spaniards give the _Manatee_ a
+denomination which signifies Woman-fish; and the Dutch call the Dugong
+_Baardanetjee_, or Little-bearded Man. A very little imagination and
+a memory for only the marvellous portion of the appearance sufficed,
+doubtless, to complete the metamorphosis of this half woman or man, half
+fish, into a Siren, a Mermaid, or a Merman; and the wild recital of the
+voyager was treasured up by writers who, as Cuvier well observes, have
+displayed more learning than judgment.
+
+The comb and the toilet-glass have already been incidentally mentioned
+as accessories in these Mermaid stories; and these, with the
+origin of the creature. Sir George Head thus ingeniously attempts
+to explain:--"The resemblance of the seal, or sea-calf, to the calf
+consists only in the voice, and the voice of the calf is certainly not
+dissimilar to that of a man. But the claws of the seal, as well as the
+hand, are like a lady's back-hair comb; wherefore, altogether, supposing
+the resplendence of sea-water streaming down its polished neck, on a
+sunshiny day, the substitute for a looking-glass, we arrive at once at
+the fabulous history of the marine maiden or Mermaid, and the appendages
+of her toilet."
+
+The progress of zoological science has long since destroyed the belief
+in the existence of the Mermaid. If its upper structure be human, with
+lungs resembling our own, how could such a creature live and breathe at
+the bottom of the sea, where it is stated to be? for our most expert
+divers are unable to stay under water more than half an hour. Suppose it
+to be of the cetaceous class, it could only remain under the water two
+or three minutes together without rising to the surface to take breath;
+and if this were the case with the Mermaid, would it not be oftener seen?
+
+Half a century has scarcely elapsed since a _manufactured_ Mermaid was
+shown in London with all the confidence of its being a natural creature.
+In the winter of 1822 there was exhibited at the Egyptian Hall, in
+Piccadilly, this pretended Mermaid, which was visited by from 300 to
+400 persons daily! The imposture, however, was too gross to last long;
+and it was ascertained to be the dried skin of the head and shoulders
+of a monkey attached very neatly to the dried skin of a fish of the
+salmon kind with the head cut off; the compound figure being stuffed
+and highly varnished, the better to deceive the eye. This grotesque
+object was taken by a Dutch vessel from on board a native Malacca boat;
+and from the reverence shown to it by the sailors it is supposed to
+have represented the incarnation of one of the idol gods of the Malacca
+Islands. A correspondent of the "Magazine of Natural History," 1829,
+however, avers that the above "Mermaid" was brought from the East
+Indies; for being at St. Helena in 1813 he saw it on board the ship
+which was bringing it to England. The impression on his mind was that
+it was an artificial compound of the upper part of a small ape with the
+lower half of a fish; and by aid of a powerful glass he ascertained the
+point of union between the two parts. He was somewhat staggered to find
+that this was so neatly effected that the precise line of junction was
+not satisfactorily apparent: the creature was then in its best state of
+preservation.
+
+In a volume of "Manners and Customs of the Japanese," published in
+1841, we, however, find the following version of the history of the
+above Mermaid:--"A Japanese fisherman seems to have displayed ingenuity
+for the mere purpose of making money by his countrymen's passion for
+everything odd and strange. He contrived to unite the upper half of
+a monkey to the lower half of a fish so neatly as to defy ordinary
+inspection. He then gave out that he had caught the creature in his
+net, but that it had died shortly after being taken out of the water;
+and he derived considerable pecuniary profit from his cunning in more
+ways than one. The exhibition of the sea monster to Japanese curiosity
+paid well; yet more productive was the assertion that the half-human
+fish, having spoken during the five minutes it existed out of its native
+element, had predicted a certain number of years of wonderful fertility
+and a fatal epidemic, the only remedy for which would be the possession
+of the marine prophet's likeness! The sale of these _pictured Mermaids_
+was immense. Either the composite animal, or another, the offspring of
+the success of the first, was sold to the Dutch factory and transmitted
+to Batavia, where it fell into the hands of a speculating American,
+who brought it to Europe; and here, in the year 1822-3, exhibited his
+purchase as a real Mermaid to the admiration of the ignorant, the
+perplexity of the learned, and the filling of his own purse."
+
+The Editor of the "Literary Gazette," Mr. Jerdan, was the first
+to expose the fabulous creature of the Egyptian Hall. He plainly
+said:--"Our opinion is fixed that it is a _composition_; a most
+ingenious one, we grant, but still nothing beyond the admirably
+put-together members of various animals. The extraordinary skill of
+the Chinese and Japanese in executing such deceptions is notorious,
+and we have no doubt that the Mermaid is a manufacture from the Indian
+Sea, where it has been pretended it was caught. We are not of those who
+because they happen not to have had direct proof of the existence of
+any extraordinary natural phenomenon, push scepticism to the extreme
+and deny its possibility. The depths of the sea, in all probability,
+from various chemical and philosophical causes, contain animals unknown
+to its surface-waters, rarely if ever seen by human eye. But when a
+creature is presented to us having no other organization but that which
+is suitable to a medium always open to our observation, it in the first
+instance excites suspicion that only one individual of the species
+should be discovered and obtained. When knowledge was more limited, the
+stories of Mermaids seen in distant quarters might be credited by the
+many, and not entirely disbelieved by the few; but now, when European
+and especially British commerce fills every corner of the earth with men
+of observation and science, the unique becomes the incredible, and we
+receive with far greater doubt the apparition of such anomalies as the
+present. It is curious that though medical men seem in general to regard
+the creature as a possible production of nature, no naturalist of any
+ability credits it after five minutes' observation! This may, perhaps,
+be accounted for by their acquaintance with the parts of distinct
+animals, of which it appears the Mermaid is composed. The cheeks of the
+blue-faced ape, the canine teeth, the _simia_ upper body, and the tail
+of the fish, are all familiar to them in less complex combinations,
+and they pronounce at once that the whole is an imposture. And such
+is our settled conviction." Though naturalists and journalists fully
+exposed the imposture, this did not affect the exhibition, which for a
+considerable time continued as crowded as ever; but the notoriety had
+dwindled down to "a penny show," at Bartholomew Fair, by the year 1825.
+
+After so many exposures of the absurd belief in Mermaids, it could
+scarcely be expected that any person could be found in Europe weak
+enough to report the existence of one of these creatures to an eminent
+scientific Society. Yet, on the 22d of June, 1840, the first Secretary
+of the Ottoman Embassy at Paris addressed a note to the Academy of
+Sciences, stating that his father, who was in the Admiralty department
+at Constantinople, had recently seen a Mermaid while crossing the
+Bosphorus, which communication was received with much laughter.
+
+We have still another recorded instance--and in Scotland. In the year
+1857 two fishermen on the Argyleshire coast declared that when on their
+way to the fishing-station, Lochindale, in a boat, and when about four
+miles south-west from the village of Port Charlotte, about six o'clock
+in a June evening, they distinctly saw, at about six yards distance, an
+object in the form of a woman, with comely face and fine hair hanging
+in ringlets over the neck and shoulders. It was above the surface of
+the water gazing at the fishermen for three or four minutes--and then
+vanished! Yet this declaration was officially attested!
+
+In 1863 Mermaids were supposed to abound in the ponds and ditches of
+Suffolk, where careful mothers used them as bugbears to prevent little
+children from going too near the water. Children described them as
+"nasty things that crome you (hook you) into the water;" others as "a
+great big thing like a feesh," probably a pike basking in the shallow
+water.
+
+Sometimes the Mermaid has assumed a picturesqueness in fairy tale; and
+her impersonation has been described by Dryden as "a fine woman, with a
+fish's tail." And, laying aside her scaly train, she has appeared as a
+lovely woman, with sea-green hair; and Crofton Croker relates, in his
+"Fairy Legends," a marriage between an Irish fisherman and a "Merrow,"
+as the Mermaid is called in Ireland.
+
+
+
+
+IS THE UNICORN FABULOUS?
+
+
+To this question we may reply, in the words of a writer of 1633,
+"Concerning the Unicorn, different opinions prevail among authors:
+some doubt, others deny, and a third class affirm its existence." The
+question has lasted two thousand years, and is every now and then kept
+alive by fresh evidences.
+
+Ctesias, a credulous Greek physician, who appears to have resided at
+the Court of Persia, in the time of the younger Cyrus, about 400 years
+before the birth of Christ, describes the wild asses of India as equal
+to the horse in size, and even larger, with white bodies, red heads,
+bluish eyes, and a horn on the forehead a cubit in length; the part
+from the forehead entirely white, the middle black, and the extremity
+red and pointed. Drinking-vessels were made of it, and those who used
+them were subject neither to convulsions, epilepsy, nor poison, provided
+that before taking the poison, or after, they drank from these cups
+water, wine, or any other liquor. Ctesias describes these animals as
+very swift and very strong. Naturally they were not ferocious; but when
+they found themselves and their young surrounded by horsemen, they did
+not abandon their offspring, but defended themselves by striking with
+their horns, kicking, and biting, and so slew many men and horses. This
+animal was also shot with arrows and brought down with darts; for it was
+impossible to take it alive. Its flesh was too bitter for food, but it
+was hunted for its horn and astragalus (ankle-bone), which last Ctesias
+declares he saw. Aristotle describes the Indian ass with a single horn.
+Herodotus mentions asses having horns; and Strabo refers to Unicorn
+horses, with the heads of deers. Oppian notices the Aonian bulls with
+undivided hoofs, and a single median horn between their temples. Pliny
+notices it as a very ferocious beast, similar in its body to a horse,
+with the head of a deer, the feet of an elephant, the tail of a boar,
+a deep bellowing voice, and a single black horn standing out in the
+middle of its forehead. He adds, that it cannot be taken alive; and some
+such excuse may have been necessary in those days for not producing the
+living animal upon the arena of the amphitheatre.
+
+Out of this passage most of the modern Unicorns have been described
+and figured. The body of the horse and the head of the deer appear to
+be but vague sketches; the feet of the elephant and the tail of the
+boar point at once to a pachydermatous (thick-skinned) animal; and the
+single black horn, allowing for a little exaggeration as to its length,
+well fits the two last-mentioned conditions, and will apply to the
+Indian rhinoceros, which, says the sound naturalist, Ogilby, "affords a
+remarkable instance of the obstructions which the progress of knowledge
+may suffer, and the gross absurdities which not unfrequently result from
+the wrong application of a name." Mr. Ogilby then refers to the account
+of Ctesias, which we have just quoted, and adds:--"His account, though
+mixed up with a great deal of credulous absurdity, contains a very
+valuable and perfectly recognisable description of the rhinoceros, under
+the ridiculous name, however, of the _Indian Ass_; and, as he attributed
+to it a whole hoof like the horse, and a single horn in the forehead,
+speculation required but one step further to produce the fabulous
+Unicorn."
+
+The ancient writers who have treated of the Unicorn are too numerous for
+us to specify. Some of the moderns may be referred to. Garcias describes
+this marvellous creature from one who alleges that he had seen it. The
+seer affirmed that it was endowed with a wonderful horn, which it would
+sometimes turn to the left and right, at others raise, and then again
+depress. Ludovicus Vartomanus writes, that he saw two sent to the Sultan
+from Ethiopia, and kept in a repository at Mahomet's tomb in Mecca.
+Cardan describes the Unicorn as a rare animal, the size of a horse, with
+hair very like that of a weasel, with the head of a deer, on which one
+horn grows three cubits in length (a story seldom loses anything in its
+progress) from the forehead, ample at its lowest part, and tapering to
+a point; with a short neck, a very thin mane, leaning to one side only,
+and less on the ear, as those of a young roe.
+
+In Jonston's "Historia Naturalis," 1657, we see the smooth-horned
+solipede, "Wald Esel;" and the digitated and clawed smooth-horned "Meer
+Wolff," the latter with his single horn erect in the foreground, but
+with it depressed in the background, where he is represented regaling on
+serpents. Then there are varieties, with the head, mane, and tail of a
+horse; another smooth-horned, with a horse's head and mane, a pig's-tail
+and camel-like feet; the "Meer Stenbock, Capricornus Marinus," with
+hind webbed feet, and a kind of graduated horn, like an opera-glass
+pulled out, in the foreground, and charging the fish most valiantly in
+the water in the distance. Then there is another, with a mule's head
+and two rhinoceros-like horns, one on his forehead and the other on his
+nose; and a horse's tail, with a collar round his neck; a neck entirely
+shaggy--and a twisted horn, a shaggy gorget, and curly tail, are among
+other peculiarities.
+
+The Unicorn seems to have been a sad trouble to the hunters, who hardly
+knew how to come at so valuable a piece of game. Some described the horn
+as moveable at the will of the animal--a kind of small sword, in short,
+with which no hunter who was not exceedingly cunning in fence could have
+a chance. Others told the poor foresters that all the strength lay in
+its horn, and that when pressed by them it would throw itself from the
+pinnacle of the highest rock, horn foremost, so as to pitch upon it, and
+then quietly march off not a bit the worse!
+
+Modern zoologists, disgusted as they well may be with fables, such as we
+have glanced at, disbelieve, generally, the existence of the Unicorn,
+such, at least, as we have referred to; but there is still an opinion
+that some land animal bearing a horn on the anterior part of its head,
+exists besides the rhinoceros. The nearest approach to a horn in the
+middle of the forehead of any terrestrial mammiferous animal known to us
+is the bony protuberance on the forehead of the giraffe; and though it
+would be presumptuous to deny the existence of a one-horned quadruped
+other than the rhinoceros, it may be safely stated that the insertion
+of a long and solid horn in the living forehead of a horse-like or
+deer-like cranium is as near an impossibility as anything can be.
+
+Rupell, after a long sojourn in the north-east of Africa, stated that
+in Kordofan the Unicorn exists; stated to be the size of a small horse,
+of the slender make of the gazelle, and furnished with a long straight
+horn in the male, which was wanting in the female. According to the
+statements made by various persons, it inhabits the deserts to the south
+of Koretofan, is uncommonly fleet, and comes only occasionally to the
+Koldagi Heive mountains on the borders of Kordofan.
+
+Other writers refer the Unicorn to the antelope. The origin of the name
+of antelope is traced by Cuvier to the Greek _Anthalops_, applied to a
+fabulous animal living on the banks of the Euphrates, with long jagged
+horns, with which it sawed down trees of considerable thickness! Others
+conjecture this animal to have been the _Oryx_, a species of antelope,
+which is fabulously reported to have had only one horn, and to have been
+termed _Panthalops_ in the old language of Egypt.
+
+In his "Revolutions on the Surface of the Globe." Cuvier refers the
+idea of the Unicorn to the coarse figures traced by savages on rocks.
+Ignorant of perspective, and wishing to present in profile the horned
+antelope, they could only give it one horn; and thus originated the
+_Oryx_. The oryx of the Egyptian monuments is, most probably, but the
+production of a similarly crude style, which the religion of the country
+imposed on the artist. Many of the profiles of quadrupeds have only one
+leg before and one behind: why, then, should they show two horns? It
+is possible that individual animals might be taken in the chase whom
+accident had despoiled of one horn, as it often happens to chamois and
+the Scythian antelope; and that would suffice to confirm the error which
+these pictures originally produced. It is thus, probably, that we find
+anew the Unicorn in the mountains of Thibet.
+
+The _Chiru Antelope_ is the supposed Unicorn of the Bhotians. In form
+it approaches the deer; the horns are exceedingly long, are placed
+very forward in the head, and may be popularly described as erect and
+straight. It is usually found in herds, and is extremely wild, and
+unapproachable by man. It is much addicted to salt in summer, when vast
+herds are often seen at the rock-salt beds which abound in Tibet. They
+are said to advance under the conduct of a leader, and to post sentinels
+around the beds before they attempt to feed.
+
+Major Salter is stated to have obtained information of the existence of
+an animal in Tibet closely resembling the Unicorn of the ancients, which
+revived the belief of naturalists by adducing testimonies from Oriental
+writings. Upon this statement, M. Klaproth remarks, that previous to
+Major Salter's Reports, the Catholic missionaries, who returned to
+Europe from China by way of Tibet and Nepal, in the seventeenth century,
+mentioned that the Unicorn was found in that part of the Great Desert
+which bounds China to the west, where they crossed the great wall; that
+Captain Turner, when travelling in Tibet, was informed by the Raja of
+Boutan that he had one of these animals alive; and that Bell, in his
+"Travels to Peking," describes a Unicorn which was found on the southern
+front of Siberia. He adds:--"The great 'Tibetan-Mongol Dictionary'
+mentions the Unicorn; and the 'Geographical Dictionary of Tibet and
+Central Asia,' printed at Peking, where it describes a district in the
+province of Kham, in Tibet, named Sera-zeong, explains this name by 'the
+River of Unicorns,' because," adds the author, "many of these animals
+are found there."
+
+In the "History of the Mongol-Khans," published and translated at St.
+Petersburg, we find the following statement:--Genghiz Khan, having
+subjected all Tibet in 1206, commenced his march for Hindustan. As he
+ascended Mount Jadanarung, he beheld a beast approaching him of the
+deer kind, of the species called _Seron_, which have a single horn at
+the top of the head. It fell on its knees thrice before the monarch, as
+if to pay respect to him. Every one was astonished at this incident.
+The monarch exclaimed. "The Empire of Hindustan is, we are assured, the
+country where are born the majestic Buddhas and Bodhisatwas, as well as
+the potent Bogdas and princes of antiquity: what can be the meaning,
+then, of this animal, incapable of speech, saluting me like a man?"
+Upon this, he returned to his own country. "This story," continues M.
+Klaproth, "is also related by Mahommedan authors who have written the
+life of Genghiz. Something of the kind must, therefore, have taken
+place. Possibly, some of the Mongol conqueror's suite may have taken a
+Unicorn, which Genghiz thus employed, to gain a pretext for abstaining
+from an expedition which promised no success."
+
+Upon this statement, it was observed in the "Asiatic Register," 1839,
+that "when we consider that seventeen years have elapsed since the
+account of Major Salter was given, and that, notwithstanding our
+increased opportunities of intercourse with Tibet, no fact has since
+transpired which supplies a confirmation of that account, except
+the obtaining of a supposed horn of the supposed Unicorn, we cannot
+participate in these renewed hopes."
+
+The Rev. John Campbell, in his "Travels in South Africa," describes the
+head of another animal, which, as far as the horn is concerned, seems
+to approach nearer than the common rhinoceros to the Unicorn of the
+ancients. While in the Machow territory, the Hottentots brought to Mr.
+Campbell a head differing from that of any rhinoceros that had been
+previously killed. "The common African rhinoceros has a crooked horn,
+resembling a cock's spur, which rises about nine or ten inches above
+the nose, and inclines backward; immediately behind which is a straight
+thick horn. But the head brought by the Hottentots had a straight horn
+projecting three feet from the forehead, about ten inches above the tip
+of the nose. The projection of this great horn very much resembles that
+of the fanciful Unicorn in the British arms. It has a small thick horny
+substance, eight inches long, immediately behind it, which can hardly
+be observed on the animal at the distance of a hundred yards; so that
+this species must look like an Unicorn (in the sense 'one-horned') when
+running in the field." The author adds:--"This animal is considered
+by naturalists, since the arrival of the above skull in London, to be
+the Unicorn of the ancients, and the same that is described in Job
+xxxix. 9--'Will the Unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy
+crib? 10. Canst thou bind the Unicorn with his band in the furrow? or
+will he harrow the valleys after thee? 11. Wilt thou trust him because
+his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him?' Again,
+Deuteronomy xxxiii. 17--'His horns are like the horns of Unicorns: with
+them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth.'"
+
+A fragment of the skull, with the horn, is deposited in the Museum of
+the London Missionary Society.
+
+Mr. W. B. Baikie writes to the _Athenæum_ from Bida Núpe, Central
+Africa, in 1862, the following suggestions:--"When I ascended the Niger,
+now nearly five years ago, I frequently heard allusions to an animal
+of this nature, but at that time I set it down as a myth. Since then,
+however, the amount of testimony I have received, and the universal
+belief of the natives of all the countries which I have hitherto
+visited, have partly shaken my scepticism, and at present I simply
+hold that its non-existence is not proven. A skull of this animal is
+said to be preserved in a town in the country of Bonú, through which
+I hope to pass in the course of a few weeks, when I shall make every
+possible inquiry. Two among my informants have repeatedly declared to me
+that they have seen the bones of this animal, and each made particular
+mention of the long, straight, or nearly straight, black horn. In
+countries to the east, and south-east, as Márgi and Bagirmi, where the
+one-horned rhinoceros is found, the hunters carefully distinguished
+between it and the supposed Unicorn, and give them different names. In
+the vast forests and boundless wastes which occur over Central Africa,
+especially towards the countries south and east of Lake Tsád, Bórnú,
+Bagirmi and Adamáwa, are doubtless numerous zoological curiosities as
+yet unknown to the man of science, and among them possibly may exist
+this much-talked-of, strange, one-horned animal, even though it may not
+exactly correspond with our typical English Unicorn."
+
+The factitious horn has been preserved in various Museums. The "Monocero
+Horn," in Tradescant's collection, was, probably, that which ordinarily
+has passed for the horn of the Unicorn, namely, the tooth of a narwhal.
+Old legends assert that the Unicorn, when he goes to drink, first dips
+his horn in the water to purify it, and that other beasts delay to
+quench their thirst till the Unicorn has thus sweetened the water. The
+narwhal's tooth makes a capital twisted Unicorn's horn, as represented
+in the old figures. That in the Repository of St. Denis, at Paris, was
+presented by Thevet, and was declared to have been given to him by
+the King of Monomotapa, who took him out to hunt Unicorns, which are
+frequent in that country. Some have thought that this horn was a carved
+elephant's tooth. There is one at Strasburg, some seven or eight feet in
+length, and there are several in Venice.
+
+Great medical virtues were attributed to the so-called horn, and the
+price it once bore outdoes everything in the _Tulipomania_. A Florentine
+physician has recorded that a pound of it (sixteen ounces) was sold
+in the shops for fifteen hundred and thirty-six crowns, when the same
+weight in gold would only have brought one hundred and forty-eight
+crowns.
+
+From what source we derive the stories of the animosity between the
+lion and the Unicorn is not clearly understood, although this is the
+principal medium through which the fabulous creature has been kept in
+remembrance by being constantly before us in the Royal Arms, which
+were settled at the Accession of George I. We owe the introduction of
+the Unicorn, however, to James I., who, as King of Scotland, bore two
+Unicorns, and coupled one with the English lion, when the two kingdoms
+were united.
+
+The position of the lion and Unicorn in the arms of our country seems to
+have given rise (naturally enough in the mind of one who was ignorant of
+heraldic decoration) to a nursery rhyme which most of us remember:--
+
+    "The Lion and the Unicorn
+      Were fighting for the crown;
+    The Lion beat the Unicorn
+      All round the town," &c.
+
+unless it alludes to a contest for dominion over the brute creation,
+which the "rebellious Unicorn," as Spenser calls it, seems to have waged
+with the tawny monarch.
+
+Spenser, in his "Faerie Queen," gives the following curious way of
+catching the Unicorn:--
+
+    "Like as a lyon, whose imperiall powre,
+    A prowd rebellious Unicorn defyes,
+    T'avoide the rash assault and wrathful stowre
+    Of his fiers foe, him a tree applyes,
+    And when him rousing in full course he spyes,
+
+    He slips aside; the whiles that furious beast
+    His precious home, sought of his enemyes,
+    Strikes in the stocke, ne thence can be releast.
+    But to the mighty victor yields a bounteous feast."
+
+Shakspeare, also ("Julius Cæsar," Act ii. scene 1), speaks of the
+supposed mode of entrapping them:--
+
+                    "For he loves to hear
+    That Unicorns may be betrayed with trees,
+    And bears with glasses, elephants with holes,
+    Lions with toils, and men with flatterers."
+
+We have no satisfactory reason for believing that man ever coexisted
+with Mastodons; otherwise Professor Owen's discovery of the retention of
+a single tusk only by the male gigantic Mastodon, might have afforded
+another form of Unicorn.
+
+Whatever the zoologists may have done towards extirpating the belief
+in the existence of the Unicorn, it is ever kept in sight by heraldry,
+which, with its animal absurdities, has contributed more to the
+propagation of error respecting the natural world than any other species
+of misrepresentation.
+
+
+
+
+THE MOLE AT HOME.
+
+
+The Mole, though generally a despised and persecuted animal, is
+nevertheless useful to the husbandman in being the natural drainer of
+his land and destroyer of worms. To other inferior animals he is a
+sapper and miner, forming for them their safe retreats and well-secured
+dormitories.
+
+The economy of the Mole has been much controverted among naturalists.
+It is found throughout the greater part of Europe. We are overrun with
+it in most parts of England and Wales; but it does not appear to have
+been found in the northern extremity of Scotland, and there is no record
+of its having been seen in the Orkney Isles, Zetland, or Ireland. Its
+most diligent and instructive historian is Henri Le Court, who, flying
+from the terrors that came in the train of the French Revolution,
+betook himself to the country, and from being the attendant on a Court,
+became the biographer of this humble animal. M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire,
+the celebrated French naturalist, visited Le Court for the purpose
+of testing his observations, and appears to have been charmed by the
+facility and ingenuity with which Le Court traced and demonstrated the
+subterraneous labours of this obscure worker in the dark.
+
+We shall first briefly describe the adaptation of its structure to its
+habits. The bony framework is set in motion by very powerful muscles,
+those of the chest and neck being most vigorous. The wide hand, which is
+the great instrument of action, and performs the offices of a pickaxe
+and shovel, is sharp-edged on its lower margin, and when clothed with
+the integuments the fingers are hardly distinguishable. The muzzle of
+the Mole is evidently a delicate organ of touch, as are also the large
+and broad hands and feet; and the tail has much sensitiveness to give
+notice to the animal of the approach of any attack from behind. Its
+taste and smell, especially the latter, are very sensitive. Its sight
+is almost rudimentary. The little eye is so hidden in the fur that its
+very existence was for a long time doubted. It appears to be designed
+for operating only as a warning to the animal on its emerging into the
+light; indeed, more acute vision would only have been an encumbrance.
+If the sight be imperfect, the sense of hearing is very acute, and the
+tympanum very large, though there is no external ear, perhaps because
+the earth assists considerably in vibration. The fore-feet are inclined
+sideways, so as to answer the use of hands, to scoop out the earth to
+form its habitation or pursue its prey, and to fling all the loose soil
+behind the animal. The breastbone in shape resembles a ploughshare.
+The skin is so tough as only to be cut by a very sharp knife. The hair
+is very short and close-set, and softer than the finest silk; colour
+black; some spotted and cream-coloured. This hair is yielding; had it
+been strong, as in the rat or mouse, it would doubly have retarded the
+progress of the creature; first by its resistance, and then acting as a
+brush, so as to choke up the galleries, by removing the loose earth from
+the sides and ceilings of the galleries.
+
+It is supposed that the verdant circles so often seen in grass ground,
+called by country people _fairy rings_, are owing to the operations of
+Moles: at certain seasons they perform their burrowings in circles,
+which, loosening the soil, gives the surface a greater fertility and
+rankness of grass than the other parts within or without the ring. The
+larger mole-hills denote the nests or dens of the Mole beneath.
+
+The feeling of the Mole is so acute that when casting up the earth, it
+is sensible of very gentle pressure; hence mole-catchers tread lightly
+when in quest of Moles; and unless this caution is used the Mole ceases
+its operation, and instantly retires. Again, so acute is the smell, that
+mole-catchers draw the body of a captured Mole through their traps and
+the adjoining runs and passages to remove all suspicious odours which
+might arise from the touch of their fingers.
+
+During summer the Mole runs in search of snails and worms in the
+night-time among the grass, which pursuit makes it the prey of owls. The
+Mole shows great art in skinning a worm, which it always does before it
+eats it, by stripping the skin from end to end, and squeezing out the
+contents of the body. It is doubtful whether any other animal exists
+which is obliged to eat at such short intervals as the Mole, ten or
+twelve hours appearing to be the maximum of its fasting; at the end
+of that time it dies. Cuvier tells us that if two Moles are shut up
+together without food, there will shortly be nothing left of the weakest
+but its skin, slit along the belly! Buffon accuses Moles of eating all
+the acorns of a newly-set soil. Its voracity makes the Mole a great
+drinker: a run is always formed to a pond or ditch as a reservoir; when
+it is too distant, the animal sinks little wells, which have sometimes
+been seen brimfull.
+
+We now return to Le Court's experiments with Moles, which are very
+interesting. To afford proof of the rapidity with which the Mole will
+travel along its passages, Le Court watched his opportunity, and when
+the animal was on its feed at one of the most distant points from its
+sanctuary or fortress, to which point the Mole's high road leads. Le
+Court placed along the course of that road, between the animal and
+the fortress, several little camp colours, so to speak, the staff of
+each being a straw, and the flag a bit of paper, at certain distances,
+the straws penetrating down into the passage. Near the end of this
+subterraneous road he inserted a horn, the mouthpiece of which stood
+out of the ground. When all was ready, Le Court blew a blast loud enough
+to frighten all the Moles within hearing. Down went the little flags in
+succession with astonishing velocity, as the terrified Mole, rushing
+along towards his sanctuary, came in contact with the flag-straws; and
+the spectators affirmed that the Mole's swiftness was equal to the speed
+of a horse at a good round trot.
+
+To test its amount of vision, Le Court took a spare water-pipe, or
+gutter, open at both ends. Into this pipe he introduced several Moles
+successively. Geoffroy St. Hilaire stood by to watch the result at the
+further end of the tube. As long as the spectators stood motionless the
+introduced Mole made the best of his way through the pipe and escaped;
+but if they moved, or even raised a finger, the Mole stopped, and then
+retreated. Several repetitions of this experiment produced the same
+results.
+
+In the domain of the Mole, the principal point is the habitation, or
+fortress, constructed under a considerable hillock raised in some secure
+place, often at the root of a tree, or under a bank. The dome of the
+fortress is of earth, beaten by the Mole-architect into a compact and
+solid state. Inside is formed a circular gallery at the base, which
+communicates with a smaller upper gallery by means of five passages.
+Within the lower gallery is the chamber or dormitory, which has access
+to the upper gallery by three passages. From this habitation extends
+the high road by which the proprietor reaches the opposite end of
+the encampment; the galleries open into this road, which the Mole is
+continually carrying out and extending in his search for food; this has
+been termed the _hunting-ground_. Another road extends, first downwards,
+and then up into the open road of the territory. Some eight or nine
+other passages open out from the external circular gallery. From the
+habitation a road is carried out, nearly straight, and connected with
+the encampment and the alleys leading to the hunting-ground which open
+into it on each side. In diameter the road exceeds the body of a Mole,
+but its size will not admit of two Moles passing each other. The walls,
+from the repeated pressure of the animal's sides, become smooth and
+compact. Sometimes a Mole will lay out a second or even a third road; or
+several individuals use one road in common, though they never trespass
+on each other's hunting-grounds.
+
+If two Moles should happen to meet in the same road, one must retreat
+into the nearest alley, unless they fight, when the weakest is often
+slain. In forming this tunnel the Mole's instinct drives it at a
+greater or less depth, according to the quality of the soil, or other
+circumstances. When it is carried under a road or stream, a foot and
+a-half of earth, or sometimes more, is left above it. Then does the
+little engineering Mole carry on the subterraneous works necessary for
+his support, travelling, and comfort; and his tunnels never fall in.
+The quality or humidity of the soils which regulates the abundance of
+earth-worms, determines the greater or less depth of the alleys; and
+when these are filled with stores of food the Mole works out branch
+alleys.
+
+The main road communicating with the hunting-grounds is of necessity
+passed through in the course of the day; and here the mole-catcher sets
+his traps to intercept the Mole between his habitation and the alley
+where he is carrying on his labours. Some mole-catchers will tell you
+the hours when the Moles move are nine and four; others that near the
+coast their movements are influenced by the tides. Besides the various
+traps which are set for Moles, they are sometimes taken by a man and a
+dog; when the latter indicates the presence of a Mole, the man spears
+the animal out as it moves in its run. Pointers will stop as steadily as
+at game, at the Moles, when they are straying on the surface.
+
+The Mole is a most voracious animal. Earthworms and the larvæ of insects
+are its favourite food; and it will eat mice, lizards, frogs, and even
+birds; but it rejects toads, even when pressed by hunger, deterred,
+probably, by the acrid secretions of their skin. Moles are essentially
+carnivorous; and when fed abundantly on vegetable substances they have
+died of hunger.
+
+During the season of love, at which time fierce battles are fought
+between the males, the male pursues the female with ardour through
+numerous runs wrought out with great rapidity. The attachment appears
+to be very strong in the Moles. Le Court often found a female taken in
+his trap and a male lying dead close to her. From four to five is the
+general number of young. The nest is distinct, usually distant from the
+habitation. It is constructed by enlarging and excavating the point
+where three or four passages intersect each other; and the bed of the
+nest is formed of a mass of young grass, root fibres, and herbage. In
+one nest Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Le Court counted two hundred and four
+young wheat-blades.
+
+M. St. Hilaire describes the pairings, or as he calls it, "the loves of
+the Moles." As soon as the Mole has finished the galleries he brings his
+mate along with him, and shuts her up in the bridal gallery, taking care
+to prevent the entrance of his rivals: in case of a fight they enlarge
+the part of the gallery where they are met; and the victory is decided
+in favour of him who first wounds his adversary before the ear. The
+female, during the fight, is shut up in the bridal gallery, so as to be
+unable to escape; for which purpose, however, she uses all her resources
+in digging, and attempts to get away by the side passages. Should she
+succeed the conqueror hastens to rejoin his faithless mate, and to
+bring her back into his galleries. This manoeuvre is repeated as often
+as other males enter the lists. At length the conqueror is recognised,
+and his mate becomes more docile. The pair work together and finish the
+galleries; after which the female digs alone for food. As soon as the
+galleries are formed, the male conducts his mate to a certain point, and
+from this time the female no longer digs in the solid earth, but towards
+the surface, advancing by merely separating the roots of the grass.
+
+The Mole is a great friend to the farmer; but there are places in which
+he is a public enemy. He is not a vegetable feeder, and he never roots
+up the growing corn in spring-time, except when he is after grubs,
+snails, and wire-worms. It has been calculated that two Moles destroy
+20,000 white worms in a year. He is very destructive to under drains;
+and where the land is low we are in danger of a deluge from his piercing
+holes in the drain-banks. Thus it would be madness not to extirpate
+Moles in those places where the waters, in drains or rivers, are above
+the level of the lands around, especially when the banks are made of
+sand or earth of loose texture.
+
+The persecution of Moles in cultivated countries amounts almost to a
+war of extermination. The numbers annually slaughtered are enormous.
+A mole-catcher, who had followed the craft for thirty-five years,
+destroyed from forty to fifty thousand Moles. But all Mole exterminators
+must yield to Le Court, who, in no large district, took, in five months,
+six thousand of them. Moles are good swimmers, and their bite is very
+sharp; their attacks are ferocious, and they keep their hold like a
+bull-dog.
+
+The Shrew Mole of North America resembles the European Mole in its
+habits. Dr. Goodman describes it as most active early in the morning,
+at mid-day, and in the evening; and they are well known in the country
+to have the custom of coming daily to the surface _exactly at noon_.
+We read of a captive Shrew Mole which ate meat, cooked or raw, drank
+freely, and was lively and playful, following the hand of his feeder by
+the scent, burrowing for a short distance in the loose earth, and after
+making a small circle, returning for more food. In eating he employed
+his flexible snout to thrust the food into his mouth, doubling it so as
+to force it directly backwards, as described in Dr. Richardson's "North
+American Zoology."
+
+James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, remarks, in his usual impressive
+manner:--"The most unnatural persecution that ever was raised in a
+country is that against the Mole--that innocent and blessed little
+pioneer, who enriches our pastures annually with the first top-dressing,
+dug with great pains and labour from the fattest of the soil beneath.
+The advantages of this top-dressing are so apparent that it is really
+amazing how our countrymen should have persisted, for nearly half a
+century, in the most manly and valiant endeavours to exterminate the
+Moles! If a hundred men and horses were employed on a pasture farm of
+from fifteen hundred to two thousand acres, in raising and driving
+manure for a top-dressing of that farm, they would not do it so
+effectually, so neatly, or so equally as the natural number of Moles. In
+June, July, and August, the Mole-hills are all spread by the crows and
+lambs--the former for food, and the latter in the evenings of warm days
+after a drought has set in. The late Duke of Buccleuch was the first who
+introduced Mole-catching into Scotland."
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT ANT-BEAR.
+
+
+A fine living specimen of this comparatively rare animal was first
+exhibited in the Zoological Society's gardens, in the Regent's-park,
+1853. It is stated to be the first specimen brought alive to England,
+and accordingly excited considerable attention. It was one of a pair,
+captured near the Rio Negro, in the southern province of Brazil, and
+shipped for England by some German travellers. The male died on the
+voyage; the female arrived in London in 1853, and was exhibited in
+Broad-street, St. Giles's, until purchased by the Zoological Society for
+the sum of 200_l._ The advantage of this live specimen to naturalists
+has been very great. Hitherto the examples engraved by Buffon and
+Shaw were both derived from stuffed specimens, and had the inevitable
+defects and shortcomings of such. Sir John Talbot Dillon, in his
+"Travels through Spain," published in 1780, states that a specimen of
+the Ant-Bear, from Buenos Ayres, was alive at Madrid in 1776: it is now
+stuffed and preserved in the Royal Cabinet of Natural History at Madrid.
+The persons who brought it from Buenos Ayres say it differs from the
+Ant-eater, which only feeds on emmets and other insects, whereas this
+would eat flesh, when cut in small pieces, to the amount of four or five
+pounds. From the snout to the extremity of the tail this animal is two
+yards in length, and his height is about two feet; the head very narrow,
+the nose long and slender. The tongue is so singular that it looks like
+a worm, and extends above sixteen inches. The body is covered with long
+hair of a dark brown, with white stripes on the shoulders; and when he
+sleeps, he covers his body with his tail. This account, it will be seen
+hereafter, corresponds very accurately with that of the animal purchased
+by the Zoological Society.
+
+[Illustration: THE GREAT ANT-BEAR.]
+
+Mr. Wallace, who travelled on the Amazon and Rio Negro, about the year
+1853, relates:--"The living specimen of this singular animal is a great
+rarity, even in its native country. In fact, there is not a city in
+Brazil where it would not be considered almost as much a curiosity as
+it is here. In the extensive forests of the Amazon the great Ant-eater
+is, perhaps, as abundant as in any part of South America; yet, during
+a residence there of more than four years, I never had an opportunity
+of seeing one. Once only I was nearly in at the death, finding a bunch
+of hairs from the tail of a specimen which had been killed (and eaten)
+a month previous to my arrival, at a village near the Capiquiare. In
+its native forests the creature feeds almost entirely on white ants,
+tearing open their nests with its powerful claws, and thrusting in its
+long and slender tongue, which, being probably mistaken for a worm,
+is immediately seized by scores of the inhabitants, who thus become
+an easy prey. The Indians, who also eat white ants, catch them in a
+somewhat similar manner, by pushing into the nest a grass-stalk, which
+the insects seize and hold on to most tenaciously. It may easily be
+conceived that such an animal must range over a considerable extent of
+country to obtain a plentiful supply of such food, which circumstance,
+as well as its extreme shyness and timidity, causes it to be but rarely
+met with, and still more rarely obtained alive."
+
+We have seen that the Ant-Bear lives exclusively upon ants, to procure
+which he tears open the hills, and when the ants flock out to defend
+their dwellings, draws over them his long, flexible tongue, covered
+with glutinous saliva, to which the ants consequently adhere; and he
+is said to repeat this operation twice in a second. "It seems almost
+incredible," says Azara, "that so robust and powerful an animal can
+procure sufficient sustenance from ants alone; but this circumstance has
+nothing strange in it, for those who are acquainted with the tropical
+parts of America, and have seen the enormous multitude of these insects,
+which swarm in all parts of the country to that degree that their hills
+often almost touch one another for miles together." The same author
+informs us that domestic Ant-Bears were occasionally kept by different
+persons in Paraguay, and that they had even been sent alive to Spain,
+being fed upon bread-and-milk mixed with morsels of flesh minced very
+small. Like all animals which live upon insects, the Ant-eaters are
+capable of sustaining a total deprivation of nourishment for an almost
+incredible time.
+
+The Great Ant-Bear's favourite resorts are low, swampy savannahs, along
+the banks of rivers and stagnant ponds; also frequenting humid forests,
+but never climbing trees, as falsely reported by Buffon. His pace is
+slow and heavy, though, when hard pressed, he increases his rate, yet
+his greatest velocity never half equals the ordinary running of a man.
+When pressed too hard, or urged to extremity, he turns obstinate,
+sits upon his hind-quarters like a bear, and defends himself with his
+powerful claws. Like that animal, his usual and only mode of assault is
+by seizing his adversary with his fore-paws, wrapping his arms round
+him, and endeavouring, by this means, to squeeze him to death. His great
+strength and powerful muscles would easily enable him to accomplish his
+purpose in this respect, even against the largest animals of his native
+forests, were it but guided by ordinary intelligence, or accompanied
+with a common degree of activity; but in these qualities there are
+few animals indeed who do not greatly surpass the Ant-Bear; so that
+the different stories handed down by writers on natural history from
+one to another, and copied, without question, into the histories and
+descriptions of this animal, may be regarded as pure fictions. "It is
+supposed," says Don Felix d'Azara, "that the jaguar himself dares not
+attack the Ant-Bear, and that, if pressed by hunger, or under some other
+strong excitement, he does so, the Ant-Bear embraces and hugs him so
+tightly as very soon to deprive him of life, not even relaxing his hold
+for hours after life has been extinguished in his assailant. Such is
+the manner in which the Ant-eater defends himself; but it is not to be
+believed that his utmost efforts could prevail against the jaguar, who,
+by a single bite, or blow of his paw, could kill the Ant-eater before he
+was prepared for resistance, so slow are his motions, even in an extreme
+case; and, being unable to leap or turn with ordinary rapidity, he is
+forced to act solely upon the defensive. The flesh of the Ant-eater is
+esteemed a delicacy by the Indians; and, though black, and of a strong
+musky flavour, is sometimes even met with at the tables of Europeans."
+
+The habits of the Great Ant-Bear in captivity have been described
+scientifically yet popularly, from the Zoological Society's specimen,
+by Professor Owen, who writes:--"When we were introduced to this, the
+latest novelty at the noble vivarium in the Regent's-park, we found the
+animal busy sucking and licking up--for his feeding is a combination
+of the two actions--the contents of a basin of squashed eggs. The
+singularly long and slender head, which looks more like a slightly bent
+proboscis, or some such appendage to a head, was buried in the basin,
+and the end of the lithe or flexible tongue, like a rat's tail, or a
+writhing black worm, was ever and anon seen coiling up the sides of
+the basin, as it was rapidly protruded and withdrawn. The yellow yolk
+was dripping with the abundant ropy saliva secreted during the feeding
+process from the exceedingly small terminal mouth; for the jaws are not
+slit open, as in the ordinary construction of the mouths of quadrupeds,
+and the head, viewed sideways, seems devoid of mouth; but this important
+aperture--by some deemed the essential character of an animal--is a
+small orifice or slit at the end of the tubular muzzle, just being
+enough, apparently, to let the vermiform tongue slip easily in and
+out. The tongue, the keeper told us, was sometimes protruded as far as
+fourteen inches from the mouth."
+
+By the Qjuarani Indians the beast is known by a name which is, in
+Spanish, "little mouth." The Portuguese and Spanish peons call it by a
+name equivalent to "Ant-Bear." In the Zoological Catalogue the animal
+is denominated _Myrmocophaga jubata_, or the "Maned Ant-eater." This
+appellation would very well suit the animal if, as most spectators
+commonly imagine at first sight, its head was where its tail is,
+for the tail is that part of the animal on which the hair is most
+developed, after the fashion of a mane; whilst the actual head appears
+much more like a tail, of a slender, almost naked, stiff, rounded
+kind. The body is wholly covered by long, coarse hair, resembling hay,
+rapidly lengthening from the neck backwards to six or eight inches,
+and extending on the tail from ten to eighteen inches. The colour is
+greyish brown, with an oblique black band, bordered with white, on
+each shoulder. The animal measures about four feet from the snout
+to the root of the tail; and the tail, three feet long, resembles a
+large screen of coarse hair. When the animal lies down, it bends its
+head between its fore legs, slides these forward, and crosses them in
+front of the occiput, sinks its haunches by bending its hind legs and
+bringing them close to the fore feet; then, leaning against the wall
+of its den, on one side, it lays the broad tail over the other exposed
+side of the body, by the side bend of that part, like the movement of
+a door or screen. Nothing is now visible of the animal but the long
+coarse hair of its _natural and portable blanket_. When it is enjoying
+its siesta, you cannot form any conception of its very peculiar shape
+and proportions; an oblong heap of a coarse, dry, _greyish thatch_ is
+all that is visible. When, however, the keeper enters the den with any
+new dainty, as cockroaches, crickets, maggots, or meal-worms, to tempt
+the huge insect-devourer, the quick-hearing animal unveils its form by
+a sweeping movement of the thatch outwards, the tail that supports it
+rotating, as if joined by a kind of door-hinge to the body; the head is
+drawn out from between the fore limbs; the limbs are extended, and the
+entire figure of this most grotesque of quadrupeds stalks forth. The
+limbs are short; the fore limbs grow rather thicker to their stumpy
+ends, which look as if the feet had been amputated. The four toes, with
+their claws, are bent inwards, and are of very unequal length. This is
+the most singular part of the animal: it is also the most formidable
+member, and, indeed, bears the sole weapon of defence the beast
+possesses. The innermost toe, answering to the thumb on the fore limb of
+the neighbouring chimpanzee, is the shortest. A fifth toe seems to be
+buried in the outside callosity, on which the animal rests its stumpy
+feet while walking. At the back part of the sole, or palm, of the fore
+foot, is a second large callosity, which receives the point of the great
+claw in its usual state of inward inflection. Against this callosity the
+animal presses the claw when it seizes any object therewith; and Azara,
+as we have seen, avers that nothing can make the Ant-Bear relax its
+grasp of an object so seized.
+
+With respect to the jaguar being sometimes found dead in the grasp of
+the Great Ant-eater, Professor Owen observes that its muscular force
+resembles that of the cold-blooded reptiles in the force and endurance
+of the contractile action; and, like the reptiles, the Sloths and
+Ant-Bears can endure long fasts.
+
+Woe to the unlucky or heedless aggressor whose arm or leg may be seized
+by the Ant-Bear. The strength of the grasp sometimes breaks the bone.
+The Ant-Bear never voluntarily lets go, and the limb so grasped can be
+with difficulty extricated, even after the animal has been killed. To
+put the beast, however, _hors de combat_, no other weapon is needed
+than a stout stick. "With this," says Azara. "I have killed many by
+dealing them blows on the head, and with the same security as if I had
+struck the trunk of a tree. With a mouth so small, and formed as already
+described, the Ant-Bear cannot bite; and, if it could, it would be
+useless, for it has no teeth."
+
+"Like a lawyer," says Professor Owen, "the tongue is the chief organ
+by which this animal obtains its livelihood in its natural habitat.
+The warmer latitudes of South America, to which part of the world the
+Ant-Bear is peculiar, abound in forests and luxuriant vegetation; the
+insects of the ant and termite tribes that subsist on wood, recent
+or decaying, equally abound. With one link in the chain of organic
+independencies is interlocked another; and as the surplus vegetation
+sustains the surplus insect population, so a peculiar form of mammalian
+life finds the requisite conditions of existence in the task of
+restraining the undue multiplication of the wood-consuming insects."
+
+The number of male Ant-eaters is supposed to be considerably smaller
+than that of the females, which circumstance favours the inference that
+the extinction of the species, like those of the _edentata_ in general,
+is determined upon.[6]
+
+Large as the Ant-Bear is in comparison with the animals on which it
+naturally feeds, there appear to have been still larger Ant-Bears in the
+old times of South America. Fossil remains of nearly allied quadrupeds
+have been detected in both the fresh-water deposits and bone-caves of
+the post-pliocene period in Buenos Ayres and Brazil.
+
+In examining the fossil remains has been found evidence that the nervous
+matter destined to put in action the muscular part of the tongue was
+equal to half of that nervous matter which influences the whole muscular
+system of a man. No other known living animal offers any approximation
+to the peculiar proportions of the lingual nerves of the fossil animal
+in question except the Great Ant-eater; but the size of the animal
+indicated by the fossil was three times that of our Ant-eater. For this
+strange monster, thus partially restored from the ruins of a former
+world, Professor Owen proposes the name of _Glossotherium_, which
+signifies tongue-beast.
+
+Evidence of such a creature has been given by Dr. Lund, the Danish
+naturalist, resident in Brazil: among the fossil remains here (limestone
+caves of the province Minas) he discovered traces of the Great
+Ant-eater, which, however, are too imperfect to enable us to determine
+more accurately its relation to existing species. The fragments indicate
+an animal the size of an ox! Were the insect prey of these antediluvian
+Ant-eaters correspondingly gigantic?
+
+Two circumstances very remarkable were observed in the Zoological
+Society's Great Ant-eater: the hinge-like manner in which the animal
+worked its tail when it had laid itself down, throwing it over the
+whole of its body and enveloping itself completely; and the peculiar
+vibratory motion of the long vermiform tongue when protruded from the
+mouth in search of food. The tongue is not shot forth and retracted,
+like that of the chameleon, but protruded gradually, _vibrating_ all the
+time, and in the same condition withdrawn into the mouth.
+
+Another species of Ant-eater is the _Tamandua_, much inferior in size to
+the Great Ant-Bear, being scarcely so large as a good sized cat, whilst
+the other exceeds the largest greyhound in length. The Tamandua inhabits
+the thick primæval forests of tropical America, and is never found on
+the ground, but exclusively in trees, where it lives upon termites,
+honey, and, according to Azara, even bees, which in those countries
+form their hives among the loftiest branches of the forest; and having
+no sting, they are more readily despoiled of their honey than their
+congeners of our own climate. When about to sleep it hides its muzzle in
+the fur of its breast, falls on its belly, letting its fore-feet hang
+down on each side, and wrapping the whole tightly round with its tail.
+The female, as in the Great Ant-eater, has but two pectoral mammæ, and
+produces but a single cub at a birth, which she carries about with her
+on her shoulders for the first three or four months. _Tamandua_ is the
+Portuguese name; the French and English call it _fourmiller_ and Little
+Ant-Bear.
+
+The latter are the names of a still smaller species, which does not
+exceed the size of the European squirrel. Its native country is Guayana
+and Brazil. It is called in Surinam _kissing-hand_, as the inhabitants
+pretend it will never eat, at least when caught, but that it only licks
+its paws in the same manner as the bear; that all trials to make it eat
+have proved in vain, and that it soon dies in confinement. Von Sack, in
+a voyage to Surinam, had two of these Ant-eaters which would not eat
+eggs, honey, meat, or ants; but when a wasps'-nest was brought they
+pulled out the nymphæ and ate them eagerly, sitting in the posture of a
+squirrel. Von Sack showed this phenomenon to many of the inhabitants of
+Surinam, who all assured him that it was the first time they had ever
+known that species of animal to take any nourishment.
+
+Von Sack describes his Ant-eaters as often sleeping all the day long
+curled together, and fastened by their prehensile tails to one of the
+perches of the cage. When touched they raised themselves on their
+hind-legs, and struck with their fore-paws at the object which disturbed
+them, like the hammer of a clock striking a bell, with both paws at the
+same time, and with a great deal of force. They never attempted to run
+away, but were always ready for defence when attacked.
+
+The discovery of the true nature of the food of this species is
+particularly desirable, and may enable us to have the animal brought
+alive to this country, a thing which we believe has not been attempted;
+and which, if attempted, has certainly never succeeded. To procure or
+carry ants during a long sea-voyage is impracticable, but the larvæ of
+wasps can be obtained in any quantity, and will keep for months; so that
+the most serious difficulty to the introduction of the little Ant-eater
+being thus removed, it would only require to be protected from the
+effects of a colder climate, which may be as easily done in its case as
+in that of other South America mammalia.
+
+The Porcupine Ant-eater of New Holland, now very uncommon in New South
+Wales, is regarded, of its size, the strongest quadruped in existence.
+It burrows readily. Its mode of eating is very curious, the tongue being
+used sometimes in the manner of that of the chameleon, and at other
+times in that in which a mower uses his scythe, the tongue being curved
+laterally, and the food, as it were, swept into the mouth.
+
+The original Great Ant-Bear, received at the Gardens of the Zoological
+Society on the 29th of September, 1853, died on the 6th of July, 1854.
+There are now two of these animals living in the Gardens, one of which
+is a remarkably fine specimen.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[6] Proceedings of the Zoological Society.
+
+
+
+
+CURIOSITIES OF BATS.
+
+
+These harmless and interesting little animals have not only furnished
+objects of superstitious dread to the ignorant, but have proved to the
+poet and the painter a fertile source of images of gloom and terror.
+The strange combination of character of beast and bird, which they were
+believed to possess, is supposed to have given to Virgil the idea of the
+Harpies.
+
+Aristotle says but little about the Bat; and Pliny is considered to
+have placed it among the Birds, none of which, he observes, with the
+exception of the Bat, have teeth. Again, he notices it as the only
+winged animal that suckles its young, and remarks on its embracing its
+two little ones, and flying about with them. In this arrangement he was
+followed by the older of the more modern naturalists. Belon, doubtingly,
+places it at the end of the Night-birds; and the Bat, _Attaleph_ (bird
+of darkness), was one of the unclean animals of the Hebrews; and in
+Deuteronomy xxv. 18, it is placed among the forbidden birds.
+
+Even up to a late period Bats were considered as forming a link between
+quadrupeds and birds. The common language of our own ancestors, however,
+indicates a much nearer approach to the truth in the notions entertained
+by the people than can be found in the lucubrations of the learned.
+The words _rere-mouse_ and _flitter-mouse_, the old English names for
+the Bat--the former derived from the Anglo-Saxon "aræan," to raise, or
+rear up, and mus; the latter from the Belgic, signifying "flying or
+flittering mouse,"--show that in their minds these animals were always
+associated with the idea of quadrupeds. The first of these terms is
+still used in English heraldry; though it may have ceased to belong to
+the language of the country. "The word _flitter-mouse_," says Mr. Bell,
+"sometimes corrupted into _flintymouse_, is the common term for the Bat
+in some parts of the kingdom, particularly in that part of the county
+of Kent in which the language, as well as the aspect and names of the
+inhabitants, retain more of the Saxon character than will be found,
+perhaps, in any other part of England.
+
+Ben Jonson has--
+
+    "Once a Bat, and ever a Bat! a rere-mouse,
+    And bird o'twilight, he has broken thrice.
+
+          .         .               .
+
+    Come, I will see the flicker-mouse, my fly."
+
+                    _Play._--_New Inn._
+
+The same author uses flitter-mouse also:--
+
+    "And giddy flitter-mice, with leather wings."
+
+                    _Sad Shepherd._
+
+Calmet describes the Bat as an animal having the body of a mouse and the
+wings of a bird; but he erroneously adds, "It never grows tame."
+
+Some persons are surprised at Bats being classed by naturalists, not
+with birds, but quadrupeds. They have, in fact, no other claim to be
+considered as birds than that of their being able to suspend and move
+themselves in the air, like some species of fish, but to a greater
+degree. They suckle their young, are covered with hair, and have
+no wings, but arms and lengthened fingers or toes furnished with a
+membrane, by which they are enabled to fly.
+
+Sir Charles Bell, in his valuable treatise on the "Hand," considers
+the skeleton of the Bat as one of the best examples of the moulding
+of the bones of the extremity to correspond with the condition of the
+animal. Contemplating this extraordinary application of the bones of the
+extremity, and comparing them with those of the wing of a bird, we might
+say that this is an awkward attempt--"a failure." But, before giving
+expression to such an opinion, we must understand the objects required
+in this construction. It is not a wing intended merely for flight, but
+one which, while it raises the animal, is capable of receiving a new
+sensation, or sensations, in that exquisite degree, so as almost to
+constitute a new sense. On the fine web of the Bat's wing nerves are
+distributed, which enable it to avoid objects in its flight during the
+night, when both eyes and ears fail. Could the wing of a bird, covered
+with feathers, do this? Here, then, we have another example of the
+necessity of taking every circumstance into consideration before we
+presume to criticise the ways of nature. It is a lesson of humility. In
+this animal the bones are light and delicate; and whilst they are all
+marvellously extended, the phalanges of the fingers are elongated so
+as hardly to be recognised, obviously for the purpose of sustaining a
+membranous web, and to form a wing.
+
+In 1839 there was received at the Surrey Zoological Gardens, from
+Sumatra, a specimen of the Vampire Bat. This was a young male; the body
+was black, and the membranous wing, in appearance, resembled fine black
+kid. He was rarely seen at the bottom of his cage, but suspended himself
+from the roof or bars of the cage, head downwards, his wings wrapped
+round his body; when spread, these wings extended nearly two feet.
+Although this specimen was the Vampire Bat to which so many bloodthirsty
+feats have been attributed, his appearance was by no means ferocious;
+he was active, yet docile, and the only peculiarity to favour belief in
+his blood-sucking propensity was his long pointed tongue. The species
+has popularly been accused of destroying, not only the large mammiferous
+animals, but also men, when asleep, by sucking their blood. "The truth,"
+says Cuvier, in his "Regne Animal," "appears to be, that the Vampire
+inflicts only small wounds, which may, probably, become inflammatory and
+gangrenous from the influence of climate." In this habit, however, may
+have originated the celebrated Vampire superstition. Lord Byron, in his
+beautiful poem of "The Giaour," thus symbolises the tortures that await
+the "false infidel:"--
+
+    "First, on earth as Vampire sent,
+    My corse shall from its tomb be rent;
+    Then ghastly haunt thy native place,
+    And suck the blood of all thy race;
+    There, from thy daughter, sister, wife,
+    At midnight drain the stream of life;
+    Yet loathe the banquet which perforce
+    Must feed thy livid living corse.
+    Thy victims, ere they yet expire,
+    Shall know the demon for their sire,
+    As cursing thee, thou cursing them,
+    Thy flowers are withered on the stem.
+    But one that for thy crime must fall,
+    The youngest, most beloved of all,
+    Shall bless thee with _a father's_ name--
+    That word shall wrap thy heart in flame!
+    Yet must thou end thy task, and mark
+    Her cheek's last tinge, her eye's last spark,
+    And the last glassy glance must view
+    Which freezes o'er its lifeless blue;
+    Then with unhallowed hand shall tear
+    The tresses of her yellow hair,
+    Of which in life a lock, when shorn,
+    Affection's fondest pledge was worn,
+    But now is borne away by thee,
+    Memorial of thine agony!
+    Wet with thine one best blood shall drip
+    Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip;
+    Then stalking to thy sullen grave,
+    Go, and with Gouls and Afrits rave;
+    Till there in horror shrink away
+    From spectre more accursed than they!"
+
+In a note, the noble poet tells us:--"The Vampire superstition is still
+general in the Levant." Honest Tournefort tells a long story, which Mr.
+Southey, in the notes on "Thalaba," quotes, about these Vardoulacha,
+as he calls them. "I recollect a whole family being terrified by the
+screams of a child, which they imagined must proceed from such a
+visitation. The Greeks never mention the word without horror."
+
+Bishop Heber describes the Vampire Bat of India as a very harmless
+creature, entirely different from the formidable idea entertained of it
+in England. "It only eats fruit and vegetables; indeed, its teeth are
+not indicative of carnivorous habits; and from blood it turns away when
+offered to it. During the daytime it is, of course, inert; but at night
+it is lively, affectionate, and playful, knows its keeper, but has no
+objection to the approach and touch of others."
+
+Mr. Westerton, the traveller, when speaking, in his "Wanderings," of the
+Vampire of South America, says:--"There are two species in Demerara,
+both of which suck living animals; one is rather larger than the common
+Bats, the other measures above two feet from wing to wing, extended. So
+gently does this nocturnal surgeon draw the blood, that instead of being
+roused, the patient is lulled into a profound sleep." The large Vampire
+sucks men, commonly attacking the toes; the smaller seems to confine
+itself chiefly to birds.
+
+Captain Stedman, who states that he was bitten by a Bat, thus describes
+the operation:--"Knowing by instinct that the person they intend to
+attack is in a sound slumber, they generally alight near the feet,
+where, while the creature continues fanning with its enormous wings,
+which keeps one cool, he bites a piece out of the tip of the great toe,
+so very small indeed that the head of a pin would scarcely be received
+into the wound, which is, consequently, not painful; yet through this
+orifice he continues to suck the blood until he is obliged to disgorge.
+He then begins again, and thus continues sucking and disgorging until
+he is scarcely able to fly; and the sufferer has been often known to
+sleep from time into eternity. Having applied tobacco-ashes as the best
+remedy, and washed the gore from myself and my hammock, I observed
+several small heaps of congealed blood all round the place where I had
+lain upon the ground, on examining which the surgeon judged that I had
+lost at least twelve or fourteen ounces during the night."
+
+Lesson, in 1827, says:--"The single American species of Bat is
+celebrated by the fables with which they have accompanied its history.
+That Bats suck the blood of animals as well as the juices of succulent
+fruits zoologists are agreed. The rough tongue of one genus was, I
+suppose, to be employed for abrading the skin, to enable the animal
+to suck the part abraded; but zoologists are now agreed that the
+supposition is groundless. It is more than probable that the celebrated
+Vampire superstition and the blood-sucking qualities attributed to the
+Bat have some connection with each other."
+
+Bat-fowling is mentioned by Shakspeare. This is the mode of taking
+Bats in the night-time, while they are at roost, upon perches, trees,
+or hedges. They light torches or straw, and then beat the bushes, upon
+which the Bats, flying to the flames, are caught, either with nets or
+otherwise.
+
+Bat-fowling, or Bat-folding, is effected by the use of a net, called a
+trammel-net, and is practised at night. The net should be made of the
+strongest and finest twine, and extended between two poles about ten
+feet high, tapering to a point at the top, and meeting at the top of
+the net. The larger ends are to be held by the persons who take the
+management of the net, and who, by stretching out the arms, keep the net
+extended to the utmost, opposite the hedge in which the Bats or birds
+are supposed to be. Another of the party carries a lantern upon a pole
+at a short distance behind the centre of the net. One or two others
+place themselves on the opposite side of the hedge, and by beating it
+with sticks disturb the Bats or birds, which, being alarmed, fly towards
+the light, but are interrupted in their flight by the net which is
+immediately _folded_ upon them, often fifteen or twenty in number. This
+sport cannot be followed with much success except when the night is very
+dark, or until very late in the autumn, when the trees, having lost
+their leaves, the Bats or birds are driven for shelter to the hollies,
+yews, hayricks, &c.
+
+We remember reading, in the "Philosophical Magazine," in 1836, a curious
+account of the habits of a long-eared Bat, a living specimen of which
+was given to the children of Mr. De Carle Sowerby, the naturalist. "We
+constructed," says Mr. Sowerby, "a cage for him, by covering a box with
+gauze, and making a round hole in the side, fitted with a phial cork.
+When he was awake, we fed him with flies, introduced through this hole,
+and thus kept him for several weeks. The animal soon became familiar,
+and immediately a fly was presented alive at the hole, he would run or
+fly from any part of the cage, and seize it in our fingers; but a dead
+or quiet fly he would never touch. At other times, dozens of flies and
+grasshoppers were left in his cage, and, waking him by their noise, he
+dexterously caught them as they hopped or flew about, but uniformly
+disregarded them while they were at rest. The cockroach, hard beetles,
+and caterpillars he refused.
+
+"As we became still more familiar, our new friend was invited to join
+in our evening amusements, to which he contributed his full share
+by flitting round the room, at times settling upon our persons, and
+permitting us to handle and caress him. He announced his being awake
+by a shrill chirp, which was more acute than that of the cricket. Now
+was the proper time for feeding him. I before stated that he only took
+his food alive. It was observed that not only was motion necessary, but
+that generally some noise on the part of the fly was required to induce
+him to accept it; and this fact was soon discovered by the children,
+who were entertained by his taking flies from their fingers as he flew
+by them, before he was bold enough to settle upon their hands to
+devour his victims. They quickly improved upon this discovery, and, by
+imitating the booming of a bee, induced the Bat, directed by the sound,
+to settle upon their faces, wrapping his wings round their lips, and
+searching for the expected fly. We observed that, if he took a fly while
+on the wing, he frequently settled to masticate it; and, when he had
+been flying about a long time, he would rest upon a curtain, pricking
+his ears, and turning his head in all directions, when, if a fly were
+made to buzz, or the sound imitated, he would proceed directly to the
+spot, even on the opposite side of the room, guided, it would appear,
+entirely by the ear. Sometimes he took his victim in his mouth, even
+though it was not flying; at other times he inclosed it in his wings,
+with which he formed a kind of bag-net. This was his general plan when
+in his cage, or when the fly was held in our fingers, or between our
+lips."
+
+From these observations Mr. Sowerby concludes that many of the movements
+of the Bat upon the wing are directed by his exquisite sense of hearing.
+May not the sensibility of this organ be naturally greater in these
+animals, whose organs of vision are too susceptible to bear daylight,
+when those organs, from their nature, would necessarily be of most
+service?--such as the cat, who hunts by the ear, and the mole, who,
+feeding in the dark recesses of his subterranean abode, is very sensible
+of the approach of danger, and expert in avoiding it. In the latter
+case, large external ears are not required, because sound is well
+conveyed by solids, and along narrow cavities. In the cases of many
+Bats, and of owls, the external ears are remarkably developed. Cats
+combine a quickness of sight with acute hearing. They hunt by the ear,
+but they follow their prey by the eye. Some Bats are said to feed upon
+fruits: have they the same delicacy of hearing, feeling, &c., as others?
+
+Mr. Sowerby has further described the singular mode adopted by the
+long-eared Bat in capturing his prey. The flying apparatus is extended
+from the hind legs to the tail, forming a large bag or net, not unlike
+two segments of an umbrella, the legs and tail being the ribs. The Bat,
+having caught the fly, instead of eating it at once, generally covers it
+with his body, and, by the aid of his arms, &c., forces it into his bag.
+He then puts his head down under his body, withdraws the fly from his
+bag, and leisurely devours it. Mr. Sowerby once saw an unwary bluebottle
+walk beneath the body of the apparently sleeping Bat into the sensitive
+bag, in which it was immediately imprisoned. White, of Selborne,
+speaking of a tame Bat, alludes to the above described action, which
+he compares to that of a beast of prey, but says nothing respecting
+the bag. Bell, in his "British Quadrupeds," says that the interfemoral
+membrane of Bats "is probably intended to act as a sort of rudder, in
+rapidly changing the course of the animal in the pursuit of its insect
+food. In a large group of foreign Bats, which feed on fruit or other
+vegetable substances, as well as in some of carnivorous habits, but
+whose prey is of a less active character, this part is either wholly
+wanting or much circumscribed in extent and power." May it not be, asks
+Mr. Sowerby, that they do not require an entomological bag-net?
+
+The wing of the Bat is commonly spoken of as of leather; that it is an
+insensible piece of stuff--the leather of a glove or of a lady's shoe;
+but nothing can be further from the truth. If one were to select an
+organ of the most exquisite delicacy and sensibility, it would be the
+Bat's wing. It is anything but leather, and is, perhaps, the most acute
+organ of touch that can be found.
+
+Bats are supposed to perceive external objects without coming actually
+in contact with them, because in their rapid and irregular flight,
+amidst various surrounding bodies, they never fly against them; yet, to
+some naturalists, it does not appear that the senses of hearing, seeing,
+or smelling serve them on these occasions, for they avoid any obstacles
+with equal certainty when the eye, ear, and nose are closed: hence has
+been ascribed a _sixth sense_ to these animals. The nerves of the wing
+are large and numerous, and distributed in a minute network between the
+integuments. The impulse of the air against this part may possibly be
+so modified by the objects near which the animal passes as to indicate
+their situation and nature. The Bat tribe fly by means of the fingers of
+the fore feet, the thumb excepted, being, in these animals, longer than
+the whole body; and between them is stretched a thin membrane, or web,
+for flying. It is probable that, in the action of flight, the air, when
+struck by this wing, or very sensitive hand, impresses a sensation of
+heat, cold, mobility, and resistance on that organ, which indicates to
+the animal the existence or absence of obstacles which would interrupt
+its progress. In this manner blind men discover by their hands, and
+even by the skin of their faces, the proximity of a wall, door of a
+house, or side of a street, even without the assistance of touch, and
+merely by the sensation which the difference in the resistance of the
+air occasions. Hence they are as little capable of walking on the ground
+as apes with their hands, or sloths with their hooked claws, which are
+calculated for climbing.
+
+In a certain kind of Bat, the _Nycteris_, there exists a power of
+inflation to such a degree that, when inflated, the animal looks,
+according to Geoffroy St. Hilaire, like a _little balloon_ fitted
+with wings, a head, and feet. It is filled with air through the
+cheek-pouches, which are perforated at the bottom, so as to communicate
+with the spaces of the skin to be filled. When the Bat wishes to
+inflate, it draws in its breath, closes its nostrils, and transmits the
+air through the perforations of the cheek-pouches to the spaces; and the
+air is prevented from returning by the action of a muscle which closes
+those openings, and by valves of considerable size on the neck and back.
+
+There was formerly a vulgar opinion that Bats, when down on a flat
+surface, could not get on the wing again, by rising with great ease
+from the floor; but White saw a Bat run, with more dispatch than he
+was aware of, though in a most ridiculous and grotesque manner. The
+adroitness with which this Bat sheared off the wings of flies, which
+were always rejected, was very amusing. He did not refuse raw flesh when
+offered; so that the notion that Bats go down chimneys, and gnaw men's
+bacon, seems no improbable story.
+
+Mr. George Daniell describes a female Bat, who took her food with an
+action similar to that of a dog. The animal took considerable pains
+in cleaning herself, parting the hair on either side, from head to
+tail, and forming a straight line along the middle of the back. The
+membrane of the wings was cleaned by forcing the nose through the folds,
+and thereby expanding them. This Bat fed freely, and at some times
+voraciously, the quantity exceeding half an ounce, although the weight
+of the animal itself was not more than ten drams.
+
+The _Kalong_ Bat of the Javanese is extremely abundant in the lower
+parts of Java, and uniformly lives in society. The more elevated
+districts are not visited by it. "Numerous individuals," says Dr.
+Hornfield, "select a large tree, and, suspending themselves with the
+claws of their posterior extremities to the naked branches, often in
+companies of several hundreds, afford to a stranger a very singular
+spectacle. A species of ficus (fig-tree), resembling the _ficus
+religiosa_ of India, affords them a very favourite retreat, and the
+extended branches of one of these are sometimes covered by them. They
+pass the greater portion of the day in sleep, hanging motionless, ranged
+in succession, with the head downwards, the membrane contracted about
+the body, and often in close contact. They have little resemblance to
+living beings; and, by a person not accustomed to their economy, are
+readily mistaken for a part of the tree, or for a fruit of uncommon size
+suspended from its branches."
+
+In general, these societies are silent during the day; but if they are
+disturbed, or a contention arises among them, they emit sharp, piercing
+shrieks; and their awkward attempts to extricate themselves, when
+oppressed by the light of the sun, exhibit a ludicrous spectacle. Soon
+after sunset they gradually quit their hold, and pursue their nocturnal
+flight in quest of food. They direct their course by an unerring
+instinct to the forests, villages, and plantations, attacking and
+devouring every kind of fruit, from the abundant and useful cocoa-nut,
+which surrounds the dwellings of the meanest peasantry, to the rare and
+most delicate productions which are cultivated by princes and chiefs of
+distinction. Various methods are employed to protect the orchards and
+gardens. Delicate fruits are secured by a loose net or basket, skilfully
+constructed of split bamboo, without which precaution little valuable
+fruit would escape the ravages of the _Kalong_. There are few situations
+in the lower part of Java in which this night wanderer is not constantly
+observed. As soon as the light of the sun has retired, one animal is
+seen to follow the other at a small but irregular distance, and this
+accession continues uninterrupted till dark:--
+
+            "The night came on apace,
+    And falling dews bewet around the place;
+    The bat takes airy rounds, on leathern wings,
+    And the hoarse owl his woful dirges sings."
+
+                    Gay's "_Pastoral III_."
+
+Bats of the ordinary size are very numerous in Jamaica. They are found
+in mills and old houses. They do great mischief in gardens, where they
+eat the green peas, opening the pod over each pea, and removing it very
+dexterously.
+
+Gilbert White, of Selborne, first noticed a large species of Bat, which
+he named _altivolans_, from its manner of feeding high in the air. In
+the extent of its wings it measured 14-1/2 inches; and it weighed,
+when entirely full, one ounce and one drachm. It is found in numbers
+together, so many as 185 having been taken in one night from the eaves
+of Queens' College, Cambridge. In the Northern Zoological Gallery of the
+British Museum are representatives of the several species of Bats, all
+bearing a family resemblance to each other. In England alone there are
+eighteen known species. Here is the curious leaf-nosed Bat, from Brazil,
+supposed to excel in the sense of smell; also, the Vampire, or large
+blood-sucking Bat, from the same country; and the different kinds of
+fruit-eating Bats, found in America and Australia, and sometimes called
+flying foxes, on account of their great size. The Bats of temperate
+climates remain torpid during the winter. Gay has these lines:--
+
+    "Where swallows in the winter season keep;
+    And here the drowsy bat and dormouse sleep."
+
+Young Bats have been taken, when hovering near the ground, by throwing
+handfuls of sand, but they rarely live in confinement: they often die
+within a week after their capture. A Bat, taken in Elgin, gave birth to
+a young one, which was for two days suckled by its parent. Before she
+reached the age of three days the young bat died, and the parent only
+survived another day to mourn her loss. Sometimes females, when taken,
+have young ones clinging to their breast, in the act of sucking; and the
+female can fly with ease, though two little ones are attached to her,
+which weigh nearly as much as the parent.
+
+To return to an exaggeration of a famous old traveller. In "Purchas his
+Pilgrimage," the materials for which he borrowed from above thirteen
+hundred authors, when speaking of the island of Madura, in the South of
+India, he says:--"In these partes are Battes as big as Hennes, which the
+people roast and eat."
+
+
+
+
+THE HEDGEHOG.
+
+
+Of this animal some strange things are recorded. It is placed by Cuvier
+at the head of the insect-devouring Mammifera. It is found in Europe,
+Africa, and India. Its body is covered with strong and sharp prickles,
+and by the help of a muscle it can contract itself into a ball, and so
+withdraw its whole underpart, head, belly, and legs, within this thicket
+of prickles:
+
+    "Like Hedgehogs, which
+    Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount
+    Their pricks at my foot-fall."--Shakspeare's "_Tempest_."
+
+Sir Thomas Browne, in his "Vulgar Errors," has this odd conceit:--"Few
+have belief to swallow, or hope enough to experience, the collyrium of
+Albertus; that is, to make one see in the dark: yet thus much, according
+to his receipts, will the right eye of an Hedgehog, boiled in oil, and
+preserved in a brazen vessel, effect."
+
+Hedgehog was an old term of reproach; but we have heard a well-set
+argument compared to a hedgehog--all points.
+
+The food of the Hedgehog, which is a nocturnal animal, consists
+principally of insects, worms, slugs, and snails. That it will eat
+vegetables is shown by White of Selborne, who relates how it eats the
+root of the plantain by boring beneath it, leaving the tuft of leaves
+untouched.
+
+The Hedgehog is reputed to supply itself with a winter covering of
+leaves. So far as we are aware, it has not been observed in the act of
+forming the covering of leaves, though it is supposed to roll itself
+about till its spines take up a sufficient number, in the same way as
+it is popularly believed (without proof) to do with apples. Blumenbach
+states that he was assured, "by three credible witnesses," that
+Hedgehogs so gather fruit; but Buffon, who kept several Hedgehogs for
+observation, declares they never practise any such habit.
+
+The voracity of the Hedgehog is very great. A female, with a young one,
+was placed in a kitchen, having the run of the beetles at night, besides
+having always bread and milk within their reach. One day, however, the
+servants heard a mysterious crunching sound in the kitchen, and found,
+on examination, that nothing was left of the young Hedgehog but the skin
+and prickles--the mother had devoured her little pig! A Hedgehog has
+also been known to eat a couple of rabbits which had been confined with
+it, and killing others; it has likewise been known to kill hares.
+
+A Hedgehog was placed in one hamper, a wood-pigeon in another, and two
+starlings in a third; the lid of each hamper was tied down with string,
+and the hampers were placed in a garden-house, which was fastened in the
+evening. Next morning the strings to the hampers were found severed, the
+starlings and wood-pigeon dead and eaten, feathers alone remaining in
+their hampers, and the Hedgehog alive in the wood-pigeon's hamper. As no
+other animal could have got into the garden-house it was concluded that
+the Hedgehog had killed and eaten the birds.
+
+In the "Zoological Journal," vol. ii., is an account by Mr. Broderip of
+an experiment made by Professor Buckland proving that in captivity at
+least the Hedgehog will devour snakes; but there is no good reason for
+supposing that it will not do the same in a state of nature, for frogs,
+toads, and other reptiles, and mice, have been recorded as its prey.
+From its fondness for insects it is often placed in the London kitchens
+to keep down the swarm of cockroaches with which they are infested; and
+there are generally Hedgehogs on sale at Covent Garden Market for this
+purpose.
+
+The idle story that the persecuted Hedgehog sucks cows has been thus
+quaintly refuted:--"In the case of an animal giving suck, the teat is
+embraced round by the mouth of the young one, so that no air can pass
+between; a vacuum is made, or the air is exhausted from its throat,
+by a power in the lungs; nevertheless the pressure of the air remains
+still upon the outside of the dug of the mother, and by these two
+causes together the milk is forced in the mouth of the young one. But
+a Hedgehog has no such mouth as to be able to contain the teat of a
+cow; therefore any vacuum which is caused in its own throat cannot be
+communicated to the milk in the dug. And if he is able to procure no
+other food but what he can get by sucking cows in the night, there is
+likely to be a vacuum in his stomach too." (_New Catalogue of Vulgar
+Errors._ By Stephen Fovargue, A.M., 1786.) Yet, according to Sir William
+Jardine, the Hedgehog is very fond of eggs; and is consequently very
+mischievous in the game-preserve and hen-house.
+
+One of the most interesting facts in the natural history of the Hedgehog
+is that announced in 1831 by M. Lenz, and subsequently confirmed by
+Professor Buckland: this is, that the most violent poisons have no
+effect upon it; a fact which renders it of peculiar value in forests,
+where it appears to destroy a great number of noxious reptiles. M. Lenz
+says that he had in his house a female Hedgehog, which he kept in a
+large box, and which soon became very mild and familiar. He often put
+into the box some adders, which it attacked with avidity, seizing them
+indifferently by the head, the body, and the tail, and not appearing
+alarmed or embarrassed when they coiled themselves around its body.
+On one occasion M. Lenz witnessed a fight between a Hedgehog and a
+viper. When the Hedgehog came near and smelled the snake, for with
+these animals the sense of sight is very obtuse, she seized it by the
+head, and held it fast between her teeth, but without appearing to do
+it much harm; for having disengaged its head, it assumed a furious and
+menacing attitude, and, hissing vehemently, inflicted severe bites on
+the Hedgehog. The animal did not, however, recoil from the bites of
+the viper, or indeed seem to care much about them. At last, when the
+reptile was fatigued by its efforts, she again seized it by the head,
+which she ground beneath her teeth, compressing the fangs and glands of
+poison, and then devouring every part of the body. M. Lenz says that
+battles of this sort often occurred in the presence of many persons, and
+sometimes the Hedgehog received eight or ten wounds on the ears, the
+snout, and even on the tongue, without seeming to experience any of the
+ordinary symptoms produced by the venom of the viper. Neither herself
+nor the young which she was then suckling seemed to suffer from it. This
+observation agrees with that of Pallas, who assures us that the Hedgehog
+can eat about a hundred Cantharides (Spanish Flies) without experiencing
+any of the effects which this insect, taken inwardly, produces on men,
+dogs, and cats. A German physician, who made the Hedgehog a particular
+object of study, gave it strong doses of prussic acid, of arsenic, of
+opium, and of corrosive sublimate, none of which did it any harm. The
+Hedgehog in its natural state only feeds on pears, apples, and other
+fruits when it can get nothing it likes better.
+
+The Hedgehog hybernates regularly, and early in the summer brings forth
+from two to four young ones at a birth, which, at the time of their
+production, are blind, and have the spines white, soft, and flexible.
+The nest wherein they are cradled is said to be very artificially
+constructed, the roof being rain-proof.
+
+The flesh of the Hedgehog, when it has been well fed, is sweet and well
+flavoured, and is eaten on the Continent in many places. In Britain a
+few besides gipsies partake of it. The prickly skin appears to have been
+used by the Romans for hackling hemp.
+
+Gilbert White notes that when the Hedgehog is very young it can draw
+its skin down over its face, but is not able to contract itself into a
+ball, as the creature does, for the sake of defence when full grown. The
+reason, White supposes, is because the curious muscle that enables the
+Hedgehog to roll itself up into a ball has not then arrived at its full
+tone and firmness. Hedgehogs conceal themselves for the winter in their
+warm _hybernaculum_ of leaves and moss; but White could never find that
+they stored in any winter provision, as some quadrupeds certainly do.
+
+
+
+
+THE HIPPOPOTAMUS IN ENGLAND.
+
+
+In the year 1850 there was exhibited in London a living Hippopotamus,
+for many centuries the only instance of this extraordinary animal being
+seen in Europe.
+
+There is something irresistibly striking in seeing a living animal,
+not one of whose species we have before seen, and especially when
+that animal is a large one, as in the instance before us. We had been
+wonderstruck at forms of this creature in the old British Museum, where
+were two finely-preserved specimens. The Rhinoceros alive was, until of
+late years, very rare in England. In 1834 Mr. Cross paid some 1,500_l._
+for a young Indian one-horned Rhinoceros, this being the only one
+brought to England for twenty years. He proved attractive, but slightly
+so in comparison with the expectation of a living Hippopotamus, never
+witnessed before in this country. The circumstances of his acquisition
+were as follows:--
+
+The Zoological Society of London had long been anxious to obtain
+a living Hippopotamus for their menagerie, but without success. An
+American agent at Alexandria had offered 5,000_l._ for an animal of
+this species, but in vain; no speculator could be induced to encounter
+the risk and labour of an expedition to the White Nile for the
+purpose of securing the animal. The desire of the Zoological Society
+was communicated to the Viceroy of Egypt, who saw the difficulty.
+Hasselquist states it to have been impossible to bring the living animal
+to Cairo; and the French _savans_, attached to the expedition to Egypt,
+who ascended the Nile above Syene, did not meet with one Hippopotamus.
+Caillaud, however, asserts that he saw forty Hippopotami in the Upper
+Nile, though their resort lay fifteen hundred miles or more from Cairo.
+Here they were often shot with rifle-balls, but to take one alive was
+another matter. However, by command of the Viceroy, the proper parties
+were sent in search of the animal.
+
+In August, 1849, the hunters having reached the island of Fobaysch,
+on the White Nile, about 2,000 miles above Cairo, shot a large female
+Hippopotamus in full chase up the river. The wounded creature turned
+aside and made towards some bushes on the island bank, but sank dead in
+the effort. The hunters, however, kept on towards the bushes, when a
+young Hippopotamus, supposed to have been recently brought forth, not
+much bigger than a new-born calf, but stouter and lower, rushed down
+the bank of the river, was secured by a boatman and lifted into the
+boat. The captors started with their charge down the Nile. The food of
+their young animal was their next anxiety; he liked neither fish, flesh,
+fruit, nor grass. The boat next stopped at a village; their cows were
+seized and milked, and the young charge lapped up the produce. A good
+milch cow was taken on board, and with this supply the Hippopotamus
+reached Cairo. The colour of his skin at this time was a dull reddish
+brown. He was shown to the Pasha in due form; the present created
+intense wonder and interest in Cairo; gaping crowds filled its narrow
+sandy streets, and a whale at London-bridge would scarcely excite half
+so much curiosity.
+
+It being thought safer for the animal to winter in Cairo than to proceed
+forthwith on his journey, the Consul had duly prepared to receive the
+young stranger, for whom he had engaged a sort of nurse. Hamet Safi
+Cannana. An apartment was allotted to the Hippopotamus in the court-yard
+of the Consul's house, leading to a warm or tepid bath. His milk-diet,
+however, became a troublesome affair, for the new comer never drank less
+than from twenty to thirty quarts daily.
+
+By the next mail after the arrival of the Hippopotamus, the Consul
+despatched the glad tidings to the Zoological Society. The animal was
+shipped at Alexandria, in the Ripon steamer. On the main deck was built
+a house, from which were steps down into an iron tank in the hold,
+containing 400 gallons of water, as a bath: it was filled with fresh
+water every other day.
+
+Early in May, the Hippopotamus was conveyed in the canal-boat, with
+Hamet Safi Cannana, to Alexandria, where the debarkation was witnessed
+by 10,000 spectators. The animal bore the voyage well. He lived
+exclusively on milk, of which he consumed daily about forty pints,
+yielded by the cows taken on board. He was very tame, and, like a
+faithful dog, followed his Arab attendant Hamet, who was seldom away
+more than five minutes without being summoned to return by a loud grunt.
+Hamet slept in a berth with the Hippopotamus. On May 25 they were landed
+at Southampton, and sent by railway to London. On arriving at the
+Zoological Society's Gardens, Hamet walked first out of the transport
+van, with a bag of dates over his shoulder, and the Hippopotamus trotted
+after him. Next morning he greatly enjoyed the bath which had been
+prepared for him. Although scarcely twelve months old, his massive
+proportions indicated the enormous power to be developed in his maturer
+growth; while the grotesque expression of his physiognomy far exceeded
+all that could be imagined from the stuffed specimens in museums, and
+the figures which had hitherto been published from the reminiscences of
+travellers.
+
+Among the earliest visitors was Professor Owen, who first saw the
+Hippopotamus lying on its side in the straw, with its head resting
+against the chair in which sat the swarthy attendant. It now and then
+grunted softly, and, lazily opening its thick, smooth eyelids, leered
+at its keeper with a singular protruding movement of the eyeball from
+the prominent socket, showing an unusual proportion of the white. The
+retraction of the eyeball was accompanied by a simultaneous rolling
+obliquely downwards, or inwards, or forwards. The young animal, then
+ten months' old, was seven feet long, and six and a-half in girth at
+the middle of the barrel-shaped trunk, supported, clear of the ground,
+on very short and thick legs, each terminated by four spreading hoofs,
+the two middle ones being the largest, and answering to those in the
+hog. The naked hide, covering the broad back and sides, was of a dark,
+india-rubber colour, with numerous fine wrinkles crossing each other,
+but disposed almost transversely. The beast had just left its bath, when
+a glistening secretion gave the hide, in the sunshine, a very peculiar
+aspect. When the animal was younger, the secretion had a reddish colour,
+and the whole surface of the hide became painted over with it every time
+he quitted his bath.
+
+The ears, which were very short, conical, and fringed with hairs, it
+moved about with much vivacity. The skin around them was of a light
+reddish-brown colour, and almost flesh-coloured round the eyelids,
+which defended the prominent eyes, which had a few short hairs on the
+margin of the upper lid. The colour of the iris was of a dark brown. The
+nostrils, situated on prominences, which the animal had the power of
+raising on the upper part of the broad and massive muzzle, were short
+oblique slits, guarded by two valves, which were opened and closed
+spontaneously, like the eyelids. The movements of these apertures were
+most conspicuous when the beast was in the bath.
+
+The wide mouth was chiefly remarkable for the upward curve of its angles
+towards the eyes, giving a quaintly comic expression to the massive
+countenance. The short and small milk-tusks projected a little, and the
+minute incisors appeared to be sunk in pits of the thick gums; but the
+animal would not permit any close examination of the teeth, withdrawing
+his head from the attempt, and then threatening to bite. The muzzle was
+beset with short bristles, split into tufts or pencils of hairs; and
+fine and short hairs were scattered all over the back and sides. The
+tail was not long, rather flattened and tapering to an obtuse point.
+
+We may here observe that, at certain moments, the whole aspect of the
+head suggested to one the idea of what may have been the semblance of
+some of the gigantic extinct Batrachians (as sirens), the relics of a
+former world, whose fossil bones in the galleries of Palæontology in the
+British Museum excite our special wonder.
+
+After lying about an hour, now and then raising its head, and swivelling
+its eyeballs towards the keeper, or playfully opening its huge mouth,
+and threatening to bite the leg of the chair on which the keeper sat,
+the Hippopotamus rose, and walked very slowly about its room, and
+then uttered a loud and short harsh snort four or five times in quick
+succession, reminding one of the snort of a horse, and ending with an
+explosive sound, like a bark. The keeper understood the language--the
+animal desired to return to its bath.
+
+The Hippopotamus carried its head rather depressed, reminding one of
+a large prize hog, but with a breadth of muzzle and other features
+peculiarly its own. The keeper opened the door leading into a paddock,
+and walked thence to the bath, the Hippopotamus following, like a dog,
+close to his heels. On arriving at the bath-room, the animal descended
+with some deliberation the flight of low steps leading into the water,
+stooped and drank a little, dipped his head under, and then plunged
+forwards. The creature seemed inspired with new life and activity.
+Sinking to the bottom of the bath, and moving about submerged for a
+while, it suddenly rose with a bound almost bodily out of the water.
+Splashing back, it commenced swimming and plunging about, rolling from
+side to side, taking in mouthfuls of water and spirting them out again,
+raising every now and then its huge and grotesque head, and biting the
+woodwork of the margin of the bath. The broad rounded back of the animal
+being now chiefly in view, it seemed a much larger object than when out
+of the water.
+
+After half an hour spent in this amusement, the Hippopotamus quitted
+the water at the call of its keeper, and followed him back to the
+sleeping-room, which was well bedded with straw, and where a stuffed
+sack was provided for its pillow, of which the animal, having a very
+short neck, thicker than the head, availed itself when it slept. When
+awake, it was very impatient of any absence of its favourite attendant.
+It would rise on its hind legs, and threaten to break down the wooden
+fence, by butting and pushing against it in a way very significant of
+its great muscular force. The animal appeared to be in perfect health,
+and breathed, when at rest, slowly and regularly, from three to four
+times in a minute. Its food was now a kind of porridge, of milk and
+maize-meat, it being more than half weaned from milk diet. Its appetite
+had been in no respect diminished by the confinement and inconvenience
+of the sea voyage, or by change of climate. All observers appear to
+have agreed that, to see the Hippopotamus rightly, is to see him in
+the water. There his activity is only surpassed by that of the otter
+or the seal. Such was one of the opportunities afforded to zoologists
+for "studying this most remarkable and interesting African mammal, of
+which no living specimen had been seen in Europe since the period when
+Hippopotami were last exhibited by the third Gordian in the amphitheatre
+of imperial Rome."[7]
+
+It is now time to glance at the general economy of the Hippopotamus, as
+he is seen in his native rivers and wilds. In early days, as his Roman
+name imports, it was usual to consider him as a species of horse,
+inhabiting rivers and marshy grounds, and, in a more especial manner,
+the denizen of the Nile. The genus is placed by Linnæus among his
+_belluæ_, between _equus_ and _sus_. The skeleton approaches that of the
+ox and of the hog, but it presents differences from that of any other
+animal.
+
+The Hippopotamus is found not only in the Nile, but in the rivers of
+southern Africa. In the former stream of marvels, Hasselquist relates
+that "the oftener the River Horse goes on shore, the better hope have
+the Egyptians of a sufficient swelling or increase of the Nile." Again,
+they say that the River Horse is an inveterate enemy to the crocodile,
+and kills it whenever he meets it; adding that he does much damage to
+the Egyptians in those places he frequents. He goes on shore, and, in
+a short space of time, destroys an entire field of corn or clover, not
+leaving the least verdure, for he is very voracious.
+
+Yet neither of these stories is so marvellous as that which a sailor
+related to Dampier, the old traveller:--"I have seen," says the mariner,
+"one of these animals open its jaws, and, seizing a boat between its
+teeth, at one bite sink it to the bottom. I have seen it, on another
+occasion, place itself under one of our boats, and, rising under it,
+overset it with six men who were in it, but who, however, happily
+received no other injury."
+
+Professor Smith and Captain Tuckey, in exploring the Congo River, in
+South Africa, saw in a beautiful sandy cove, at the opening of a creek,
+behind a long projecting point, an immense number of Hippopotami;
+and in the evening a number of alligators were also seen there; an
+association hardly consistent with the hostility related by Hasselquist.
+
+Captain Tuckey observed Hippopotami with their heads above the water,
+"snorting in the air." In another part of his narrative he says:--"Many
+Hippopotami were visible close to our tents at Condo Yanga. No use
+firing at these animals in the water; the only way is to wait till they
+come on shore to feed at night."
+
+Le Vaillant had an opportunity of watching the progress of a
+Hippopotamus under water at Great River, which contained many of these
+animals. On all sides he could hear them bellow and blow. Anxious to
+observe them, he mounted on the top of an elevated rock which advanced
+into the river, and he saw one walking at the bottom of the water. Le
+Vaillant killed it at the moment when it came to the surface to breathe.
+It was a very old female, and many people, in their surprise, and to
+express its size, called it the Grandmother of the River.
+
+The traveller Lander tells us that, on the Niger. Hippopotami are
+termed water-elephants. One stormy night, as they were sailing up this
+unexplored current, they fell in with great numbers of Hippopotami, who
+came plashing, snorting, and plunging all round the canoe. Thinking
+to frighten them off, the travellers fired a shot or two at them, but
+the noise only called up from the water and out of the fens about as
+many more Hippopotami, and they were more closely beset than before.
+Lander's people, who had never, in all their lives, been exposed to
+such formidable beasts, trembled with fear, and absolutely wept aloud;
+whilst peals of thunder rattled over their heads, and the most vivid
+lightning showed the terrifying scene. Hippopotami frequently upset
+canoes in the river. When the Landers fired, every one of them came
+to the surface of the water, and pursued them over to the north bank.
+A second firing was followed by a loud roaring noise. However, the
+Hippopotami did the travellers no kind of mischief whatever.
+
+Captain Gordon, when among the Bakalahari, in South Africa, bagged no
+fewer than fifteen first-rate Hippopotami; the greater number of them
+being bulls.
+
+In 1828, there was brought to England the head of a Hippopotamus, with
+all the flesh about it, in high preservation. The animal was harpooned
+while in combat with a crocodile in a lake in the interior of Africa.
+The head measured nearly four feet in length, and eight feet in
+circumference; the jaws opened two feet, and the cutting teeth, of which
+it had four in each jaw, were above a foot long, and four inches in
+circumference.
+
+The utility of this vast pachydermatous, or thick-skinned animal, to man
+is considerable. That he can be destructive has already been shown in
+his clearance of the cultivated banks of rivers. The enormous ripping,
+chisel-like teeth of the lower jaw fit him for uprooting. The ancient
+Egyptians held the animal as an emblem of power, though this may have
+arisen from his reputed destruction of the crocodile. The flesh is much
+esteemed for food, both among the natives and colonists of South Africa.
+The blood of the animal is said to have been used by the old Indian
+painters in mixing their colours. The skin is extensively employed for
+making whips.
+
+But there is no part of the Hippopotamus more in request than the great
+canine teeth, the ivory of which is so highly valued by dentists for
+making artificial teeth, on account of its keeping its colour better
+than any other kind. This superiority was not unknown to the ancients
+Pausanias mentions the statue of Dindymene, whose face was formed of the
+teeth of Hippopotami, instead of elephants' ivory. The canine teeth are
+imported in great numbers into England, and sell at a very high price.
+From the closeness of the ivory, the weight of the teeth, a part only of
+which is available for the artificial purpose above mentioned, is great
+in proportion to its bulk; and the article has fetched about thirty
+shillings per pound.
+
+The ancient history of the Hippopotamus is extremely curious, and
+we have many representations of him in coins, in sculpture, and in
+paintings, which prove, beyond question, that the artists, as well as
+the writers, had a distinct knowledge of what they intended to represent.
+
+The earliest notice which occurs in any author, and which has been
+considered by many to be a description of the Hippopotamus, is the
+celebrated account in the fortieth and forty-first chapter of the Book
+of Job of Behemoth and Leviathan. Many learned men have contended that
+"Behemoth" really means "Elephant," and thus the Zurich version of the
+Bible translates the Hebrew by "Elephas."
+
+In the edition of the English Bible, printed by Robert Barker, in 1615,
+for King James I., and since considered as the authorised version, the
+word "Behemoth" is preserved in the text, and the following annotation
+is added:--"This beast is thought to bee the Elephant, or some other
+which is unknowen." Bochart, Ludolph, and some others, have contended
+warmly in favour of the Hippopotamus. Cuvier thinks, that though this
+animal is probably intended, yet that the description is too vague for
+any one to hold a certain opinion on the subject. The theory started by
+Bochart, and in the main supported by Cuvier, is generally supposed the
+real one. The description in the Book of Job, though doubtless vague,
+and in the highest degree poetical, has yet sufficient marks to render
+the identification perfectly easy, while there are certain peculiarities
+mentioned, which even a poetical imagination could hardly apply to the
+Elephant. Thus, when it is said of him, "He lieth under the shady trees,
+in the desert of the reed and fens; ... the willows of the brook compass
+him round about," this would seem to be the description of an animal
+which frequented the water much more than Elephants are accustomed to
+do. Again, in the fuller description of "Leviathan," in the forty-first
+chapter, we think it is quite clear that a water animal is intended,
+though what is there stated might be held to apply to the crocodile
+as well as the Hippopotamus; both are animals remarkable for extreme
+toughness of skin, and both are almost equally difficult to kill or to
+take alive.
+
+Of profane authors, Herodotus is the first who notices this animal,
+but his account is far from accurate: the size he states as large as
+the biggest ox. That the animal was sacred, in some parts at least,
+appears from Herodotus, who says:--"Those which are found in the
+district of Paprennis are sacred, but in other parts of Egypt they are
+not considered in the same light." Aristotle makes it no bigger than
+an ass; Diodorus, an elephant; Pliny ascribes to it the tail and teeth
+of a boar, adding, that helmets and bucklers are made of the skin.
+Hippopotami figured in the triumphal processions of the Roman conquerors
+on their return home. M. Scaurus exhibited five crocodiles and an
+Hippopotamus; and Augustus one in his triumph over Cleopatra. Antoninus
+exhibited Hippopotami, with lions and other animals; Commodus no less
+than five, some of which he slew with his own hand. Heliogabalus, and
+the third Gordian, also exhibited Hippopotami.
+
+The Hippopotamus of the London Zoological Society was joined by his
+mate, the more juvenile "Adhela," in 1853. Two Hippopotami have lately
+been born in Europe; one in the Garden of Plants, at Paris, in 1858; and
+another in the Zoological Gardens at Amsterdam, in 1866.
+
+With regard to the alleged disappearance of the Hippopotamus from Lower
+Egypt, Cuvier remarks, that the French savans attached to the Expedition
+to Egypt, who ascended the Nile above Syene, did not meet with one.
+
+In some of the rivers of Liberia, and other parts, perhaps, of Western
+Africa, a second species of Hippopotamus exists, and is proved to be a
+very distinct animal.
+
+We have yet to glance at the Hippopotami of a former world. Many
+species are recognised in the fossil remains of Europe and Asia as
+formerly existing in England and in France. Cuvier detected bones of the
+Hippopotamus among the fossil wealth of the Great Kirkdale Cavern in
+Yorkshire, in 1821. They have also been found in France, and especially
+in the Sewatick Hills in India.
+
+In the Museum of the London Zoological Society are two skulls of
+Hippopotami--one fossil. This measures two feet three inches, and
+allowing for skin and lip, two feet six inches. Now, as the head is
+about one-fifth the length of the body, without the tail, the full-grown
+animal would be little, if any, short of fifteen feet from nose to
+tail--a size worthy the description of the Behemoth.
+
+We may here add, that Burckhardt, in his "Travels in Nubia," describes
+the voice of the Hippopotamus as a hard and heavy sound, like the
+creaking or groaning of a large wooden door. This noise, he says, is
+made when the animal raises his huge head out of the water, and when he
+retires into it again.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[7] Professor Owen.
+
+
+
+
+LION-TALK.
+
+
+The Lion has, within the present century, lost caste, and fallen
+considerably from his high estate. He has been stripped of much of his
+conventional reputation by the spirit of inquiry into the validity of
+olden notions, which characterises the present age; and it appears that
+much of his celebrity is founded upon popular error. Nor are these
+results the work of stay-at-home travellers; but they are derived from
+the observation and experience of those who, amidst scenes of perilous
+adventure, seek to enlarge and correct our views of the habit and
+character of the overrated Lion.
+
+Mr. Bennett, in his admirable work, "The Tower Menagerie," has these
+very sensible remarks:--"In speaking of the Lion we call up to our
+imaginations the splendid picture of might unmingled with ferocity, of
+courage undebased by guile, of dignity tempered by grace and ennobled by
+generosity. Such is the Lion of Buffon; who, in describing this animal,
+as in too many other instances, has suffered himself to be borne along
+by the strong tide of popular opinion; but, as the Lion appears in his
+native regions, according to the authentic accounts of those travellers
+and naturalists who have had the best means of correctly observing his
+habits, he is by no means so admirable a creature. Where the timid
+antelope and powerless monkey fall his easy and unresisting prey--or
+where the elephant and buffalo find their unwieldy bulk and strength no
+adequate protection against his impetuous agility--he stalks boldly to
+and fro in fearless majesty. But in the neighbourhood of man--even in
+that of uncultivated savages--_he skulks in treacherous ambush for his
+prey_. Of his forbearance and generosity it can merely be said, that
+when free, he destroys only what is sufficient to satiate his hunger or
+revenge; and when in captivity--his wants being provided for, and his
+feelings not irritated--he suffers smaller animals to live unmolested in
+his den, or submits to the control of a keeper by whom he is fed. But
+even this limited degree of docility is liable to fearful interruptions
+from the calls of hunger, the feelings of revenge--and these he
+frequently cherishes for a long period--with various other circumstances
+which render it dangerous to approach him in his most domesticated
+state, without ascertaining his immediate mood and temper. That an
+animal which seldom attacks by open force, but silently approaches his
+victim, and when he imagines his prey to be within his reach, bounds
+upon it with an overwhelming leap, should ever have been regarded as
+the type of courage and the emblem of magnanimity, is indeed most
+astonishing!"
+
+The generosity of disposition so liberally accorded to this powerful
+beast has been much and eloquently praised; and it seems hard to
+dissipate the glowing vision which Buffon has raised; but, if there is
+any dependence to be placed on the observations of those travellers
+who have had the best opportunities of judging, and have the highest
+character for veracity, we must be compelled to acknowledge that
+Buffon's Lion is the Lion of poetry and prejudice, and very unlike the
+cautious lurking savage that steals on its comparatively weak prey by
+surprise, overwhelms it at once by the terror, the weight, and the
+violence of the attack, and is intent only on the gratification of the
+appetite. "At the time," says Mr. Burchell, "when men first adopted the
+Lion as the emblem of courage, it would seem that they regarded great
+size and strength as indicating it; but they were greatly mistaken
+in the character they had given of the indolent animal." Indeed, Mr.
+Burchell calls the Lion an "indolent skulking animal." The fact of the
+Lion sparing the dog that was thrown to him, and making a friend of the
+little animal that was destined for his prey, has been much dwelt on;
+but these and other such acts of mercy, as they have been called, may
+be very easily accounted for. If not pressed by hunger, the Lion will
+seldom be at the trouble of killing prey; and the desire for a companion
+has created much stronger friendships between animals in confinement
+than between a Lion and a little dog. St. Pierre touchingly describes
+the Lion of Versailles, who, in 1792, lived most happily with a dog, and
+on whose death he became disconsolate and miserable; and in confinement
+the "lordly Lion," as Young calls him, has been known to be deeply
+afflicted with melancholy at similar losses.
+
+The Lion is easily tamed, and capable of attachment to man. The story of
+Androdas, frequently called Androcles, is too well known to need more
+than allusion; but in this and other stories of Lions licking men's
+hands without injuring them, there must be a stretch of fancy; for the
+Lion's tongue has sharp thorn-points, inclining backwards, so as not to
+be able to lick the hand without tearing away the skin, which any one
+will understand who has _heard_ the Lion tear the raw meat away from the
+bone of his food.
+
+Still, very different accounts are given by travellers of the cruelty or
+generosity of the Lion's nature; which results, in all probability, from
+a difference in time or circumstances, or the degree of hunger which the
+individual experienced when the respective observations were made upon
+him.
+
+Meanwhile, there are many points in the history of the Lion which are
+yet but imperfectly understood; the explanations of which, whilst
+they are interesting, add to our correct knowledge of this still
+extraordinary animal.
+
+The Lion has been styled "The King of the Forest," which is not very
+applicable to him, seeing that Mr. Burchell at least never met with
+but one Lion on the plains; nor did he ever meet with one in any of
+the forests where he had been. The low cover that creeps along the
+sides of streams, the patches that mark the springs in the rank grass
+of the valley, seem to be the shelter which the African Lion, for the
+most part, seeks. His strength is extraordinary. To carry off a man
+(and there are dismal accounts of this horrible fact, which there is no
+reason to doubt) appears a feat of no difficulty to this powerful brute.
+A Cape Lion, seizing a heifer in his mouth, has carried her off with the
+same ease as a cat does a rat; and has leaped with her over a broad dyke
+without the least difficulty. A young Lion, too, has conveyed a horse
+about a mile from the spot where he had killed it.
+
+There seems to be an idea that the Lion preserves human prey; but, be
+this as it may, the inhabitants of certain districts have been under the
+necessity of resorting to a curious expedient to get out of the Lion's
+reach. Ælian, by the way, records the extinction of a Libyan people by
+an invasion of Lions. We read of a large tree, in the country of the
+Mantatees, which has amidst its limbs fourteen conical huts. These are
+used as dormitories, being beyond the reach of the Lions, which, since
+the incursions of the Mantatees, when so many thousands of persons
+were massacred, have become very numerous in the neighbourhood, and
+destructive to human life. The branches of the above trees are supported
+by forked sticks or poles, and there are three tiers or platforms
+on which the huts are constructed. The lowest is nine feet from the
+ground, and holds ten huts; the second, about eight feet high, has
+three huts; and the upper story, if it may be so called, contains four.
+The ascent to these is made by notches cut in the poles; the huts are
+built with twigs, and thatched with straw, and will contain two persons
+conveniently. This tree stands at the base of a range of mountains due
+east of Kurrichaine, in a place called "Ongorutcie Fountain," about
+1,000 miles north-east of Cape Town. Kurrichaine is the Staffordshire as
+well as the Birmingham of that part of South Africa. There are likewise
+whole villages of huts erected on stakes, about eight feet from the
+ground; the inhabitants, it is stated, sit under the shade of these
+platforms during the day, and retire to the elevated huts at night.
+
+Though mortal accidents frequently occur in Lion-hunting, the cool
+sportsman seldom fails of using his rifle with effect. Lions, when
+roused, it seems, walk off quietly at first, and if no cover is near,
+and they are not pursued, they gradually mend their pace to a trot,
+till they have reached a good distance, and then they bound away. Their
+demeanour is careless, as if they did not want a fray, but if pressed,
+are ready to fight it out. If they are pursued closely, they turn and
+crouch, generally with their faces to the adversary: then the nerves of
+the sportsman are tried. If he is collected, and master of his craft,
+the well-directed rifle ends the scene at once; but if, in the flutter
+of the moment, the vital parts are missed, or the ball passes by,
+leaving the Lion unhurt, the infuriated beast frequently charges on his
+enemies, dealing destruction around him. This, however, is not always
+the case; and a steady, unshrinking deportment has, in some instances,
+saved the life of the hunter.
+
+There is hardly a book of African travels which does not teem with the
+dangers and hair-breadth escapes of the Lion-hunters; and hardly one
+that does not include a fatal issue to some engaged in this hazardous
+sport. The modes of destruction employed against the powerful beast are
+very various--from the poisonous arrow of the Bushman to the rifle of
+the colonist.
+
+The Lion may be safely attacked while sleeping, because of the dullness
+of his sense of hearing, the difficulty of awakening him, and his want
+of presence of mind if he be so awakened. Thus the Bushmen of Africa
+are enabled to keep the country tolerably clear of Lions, without
+encountering any great danger. The bone of the Lion's fore-leg is of
+remarkable hardness, from its containing a greater quantity of phosphate
+of lime than is found in ordinary bones, so that it may resist the
+powerful contraction of the muscles. The texture of this bone is so
+compact that the substance will strike fire with steel. He has little
+sense of taste, his lingual or tongue-nerve not being larger than that
+of a middle-sized dog.
+
+The true Lions belong to the Old World exclusively, and they were
+formerly widely and abundantly diffused; but at present they are
+confined to Asia and Africa, and they are becoming every day more and
+more scarce in those quarters of the globe. That Lions were once found
+in Europe there can be no doubt. Thus it is recorded by Herodotus that
+the baggage-camels of the army of Xerxes were attacked by Lions in the
+country of the Reonians and the Crestonæi on their march from Acanthus
+(near the peninsula of Mount Athos) to Therma, afterwards Thessalonica
+(now Saloniki); the camels alone, it is stated, were attacked, other
+beasts remaining untouched, as well as men. Pausanias copies the above
+story, and states, moreover, that Lions often descended into the plains
+at the foot of Olympus, which separate Macedonia from Thessaly, and that
+Polydamas, a celebrated athlete, slew one of the Lions, although he was
+unarmed.
+
+Nor is Europe the only part of the world from which the form of the Lion
+has disappeared. Lions are no longer to be found in Egypt, Palestine,
+or Syria, where they once were evidently far from uncommon. The
+frequent allusions to the Lion in the Holy Scriptures, and the various
+Hebrew terms there used to distinguish the different ages and sex of
+the animal, prove a familiarity with the habits of the race. Even in
+Asia generally, with the exception of some countries between India and
+Persia and some districts of Arabia, these magnificent beasts have,
+as Cuvier observes, become comparatively rare, and this is not to be
+wondered at. To say nothing of the immense draughts on the race for
+the Roman arena,--and they were not inconsiderable, for, as Zimmerman
+has shown, there were 1,000 lions killed at Rome in the space of forty
+years,--population and civilization have gradually driven them within
+narrower limits, and their destruction has been rapidly worked in
+modern times, when firearms have been used against them instead of the
+bow and the spear. Sylla gave a combat of one hundred Lions at once in
+his ædileship; but this exhibition is insignificant when compared with
+those of Pompey and Cæsar, the former of whom exhibited a fight of six
+hundred, and the latter of four hundred Lions. In Pompey's show three
+hundred and fifteen of the six hundred were males. The early Emperors
+consumed great numbers, frequently a hundred at a time, to gratify the
+people.
+
+The African Lion is annually retiring before the persecution of man
+farther and farther from the Cape. Mr. Bennett says of the Lion:--"His
+true country is Africa, in the vast and untrodden wilds of which, from
+the immense deserts of the north to the trackless forests of the south,
+he reigns supreme and uncontrolled. In the sandy deserts of Arabia,
+in some of the wild districts of Persia, and in the vast jungles of
+Hindostan, he still maintains a precarious footing; but from the classic
+soil of Greece, as well as from the whole of Asia Minor, both of which
+were once exposed to his ravages, he has been entirely dislodged and
+extirpated."
+
+Niebuhr places Lions among the animals of Arabia; but their proper
+country is Africa, where their size is the largest, their numbers
+are greatest, and their rage more tremendous, being inflamed by the
+influence of a burning sun upon a most arid soil. Dr. Fryer says that
+those of India are feeble and cowardly. In the interior parts, amidst
+the scorched and desolate deserts of Zaara or Biledugerid, they reign
+the masters; they lord it over every beast, and their courage never
+meets with a check where the climate keeps mankind at a distance. The
+nearer they approach the habitations of the human race the less their
+rage, or rather the greater is their timidity: they have often had
+experienced unequal combats, and finding that there exists a being
+superior to themselves, commit their ravages with more caution; a cooler
+climate, again, has the same effect, but in the burning deserts, where
+rivers and springs are denied, they live in a perpetual fever, a sort of
+madness fatal to every animal they meet with.
+
+The watchfulness and tenacity of the Lion for human prey are very
+extraordinary. Mr. Barrow relates that a Lion once pursued a Hottentot
+from a pool of water, where he was driving his cattle to drink, to an
+olive-tree, in which the man remained for twenty-four hours, while the
+Lion laid himself at the foot of the tree. The patience of the beast was
+at length worn out by his desire to drink, and while he satisfied his
+thirst the Hottentot fled to his house, about a mile off. The Lion,
+however, returned to the tree, and tracked the man within three hundred
+yards of his dwelling.
+
+Dr. Philip relates a horrible story of a very large Lion recorded at
+Cape Town in the year 1705. He was known to have seized a sentry at a
+tent, and was pursued and fired at by many persons without effect. Next
+morning the Lion walked up a hill _with the man in his mouth_, when
+about forty shots were fired at him without hitting him; and it was
+perceived by the blood, and a piece of the clothes of the sentry, that
+the Lion had taken him away and carried him with him. He was pursued
+by a band of Hottentots, one of whom he seized with his claws by the
+mantle, when the man stabbed him with an assagai. Other Hottentots
+adorned him with their assagais, so that he looked like a porcupine; he
+roared and leaped furiously, but was at length shot dead. He had a short
+time before carried off a Hottentot and devoured him.
+
+The Bengal or Asiatic Lion is distinguished from that of Southern Africa
+principally by the larger size, the more regular and graceful form, the
+generally darker colour, and the less extensive mane than the African.
+William Harvey, the graceful artist, drew a portrait of a very fine
+Bengal Lion, little more than five years old, and then in the Tower
+collection, and called by the keepers "the Old Lion;" the magnificent
+development of the mane is very striking in this figure.
+
+Maneless Lions have been found on the confines of Arabia, and were
+known to Aristotle and Pliny; a maneless Lion is also said to be
+represented on the monuments of Upper Egypt. The Lion of Arabia has
+neither the courage nor the stature, nor even the beauty, of the Lion of
+Africa. He uses cunning rather than force; he crouches among the reeds
+which border the Tigris and Euphrates, and springs upon all the feeble
+animals which come there to quench their thirst; but he dares not attack
+the boar, which is very common there, and flies as soon as he perceives
+a man, a woman, or even a child. If he catches a sheep he makes off
+with his prey; but he abandons it to save himself when an Arab looks
+after him. If he is hunted by horsemen, which often happens, he does
+not defend himself unless he is wounded, and has no hope of safety by
+flight. In such a case he will fly on a man and tear him to pieces with
+his claws, for it is courage more than strength that he wants. Achmed,
+Pasha of Bagdad from 1724 to 1747, would have been torn by one, after
+breaking his lance in a hunt, if his slave Suleiman, who succeeded him
+in the Pashalik, had not come promptly to his succour and pierced with a
+blow of his yataghan the Lion already wounded by his master.
+
+In December, 1833, Captain Walter Smee exhibited to the Zoological
+Society of London the skins of a Lion and Lioness killed by him in
+Guzerat, and distinguished from those previously known by the absence
+of a mane; the tail was shorter than that of the ordinary Lion, and
+furnished at its tip with a much larger brush or tuft; and in the
+tuft of the older Lion was a short horny claw or nail. The colour is
+fulvous; which in darker specimens has a tinge of red. A male maneless
+Lion, killed by Captain Smee, measured, including the tail, 8 feet
+9-1/2 inches in length; the impression of his paw on the sand 6-1/4
+inches across, and his height was 3 feet 6 inches. These maneless Lions
+are found in Guzerat, along the banks of the Sombermultee, in low,
+bushy-wooded plains, being driven out of the large adjoining tracts of
+high grass jungle by the natives annually setting fire to the grass.
+Here Captain Smee killed his finest specimens: they were so common in
+this district that he killed no fewer than eleven during a residence of
+about a month, yet scarcely any of the natives had seen them previously
+to his coming amongst them. The cattle were frequently carried off by
+these Lions: some natives attributed this to tigers, which, however,
+do not exist in this part of the country. Captain Smee could not learn
+that men had been attacked by these Lions: when struck by a ball they
+exhibited great boldness, standing as if preparing to resist their
+pursuers, and then going off slowly, and in a very sullen manner.
+
+In captivity the Lioness usually turns extremely savage when she becomes
+a mother; and, in a state of nature, both parents guard their young
+with the greatest jealousy. Early in the year 1823 General Watson, then
+on service in Bengal, being out one morning on horseback, armed with
+a double-barrelled rifle, was suddenly surprised by a large male Lion,
+which bounded out upon him from the thick jungle, at the distance of
+only a few yards. He instantly fired, and the shot taking complete
+effect, the animal fell almost dead at his feet. No sooner had the Lion
+fallen than the Lioness rushed out, which the General also shot at and
+wounded severely, so that she retired into the thicket. Thinking that
+the den could not be far distant, he traced her to her retreat, and
+there despatched her; and in the den were found two beautiful cubs, a
+male and a female, apparently not more than three months old. This is a
+very touching narrative, even of the Lion family.
+
+The General brought the cubs away; they were suckled by a goat and
+sent to England, where they arrived in September, 1823, as a present
+to George IV., and were lodged in the Tower. When young, Lions mew
+like a cat; at the age of ten or twelve months the mane begins to
+appear in the male; at the age of eighteen months this appendage is
+considerably developed, and they begin to roar. The _roar_ of the adult
+Lion is terrific, from the larynx or upper part of the wind-pipe being
+proportionately greater than in the whale or the elephant, or any other
+animal. Mr. Burchell describes the roar on some occasions to resemble
+the noise of an earthquake; and this terrific effect is produced by
+the Lion laying his head upon the ground and uttering, as it were, a
+half-stifled roar or growl, which is conveyed along the earth.
+
+The natural period of the Lion's life is generally supposed to be twenty
+or twenty-two years. Such is Buffon's limitation; but the animal will,
+it seems, live much longer. Pompey, the great Lion, which died in 1766,
+was said to have been in the Tower above seventy years; and a Lion from
+the river Gambia is stated to have since died in the Tower menagerie at
+the age of sixty-three.
+
+There had been for ages a popular belief that the Lion lashes his sides
+with his tail to stimulate himself into rage; when, in 1832, there was
+exhibited to the Zoological Society a claw obtained from the tip of
+the tail of a Barbary Lion, presented to the Society's menagerie by
+Sir Thomas Reade. It was detected on the living animal by Mr. Bennett,
+and pointed out to the keeper, in whose hands it came off while he
+was examining it. Blumenbach quotes Homer, Lucan, and Pliny, among
+others who have described the Lion (erroneously) as lashing himself
+with his tail, when angry, to provoke his rage. None of these writers,
+however, advert to any peculiarity in the Lion's tail to which so
+extraordinary a function might, however incorrectly, be attributed.
+Didymus Alexandrinus, a commentator on the "Iliad," cited by Blumenbach,
+having found a black prickle, like a horn, among the hair of the tail,
+immediately conjectured that he had ascertained the true cause of the
+stimulus when the animal flourishes his tail in defiance of his enemies,
+remarking that, when punctured by this prickle, the Lion became more
+irritable from the pain which it occasioned. The subject, however,
+appears to have slumbered till 1829, when M. Deshayes announced that
+he had found the prickle both of a Lion and Lioness, which had died
+in the French menagerie, and described it as a little nail, or horny
+production, adhering by its base only to the skin, and not to the last
+caudal vertebra. From that period Mr. Wood, the able zoologist, examined
+the tail of every Lion, living or dead, to which he could gain access;
+but in no instance had he succeeded in finding the prickle till the
+above specimen, which was placed in his hands within half an hour after
+its removal from the living animal, and while yet soft at its base,
+where it had been attached to the skin. Its shape was nearly straight,
+then slightly contracted, forming a very obtuse angle, and afterwards
+swelling out like the bulb of a bristle, to its termination. It was
+laterally flattened throughout its entire length, which did not amount
+to quite three-eighths of an inch, of horn colour, and nearly black at
+the tip. Its connexion with the skin must have been very slight, which
+accounts for its usual absence in stuffed as well as living specimens.
+This does not depend upon age, as it was found alike in the Paris Lions,
+of considerable size, as well as in the Zoological Society's Lions,
+very small and young; nor did it depend upon sex. It appears to be
+occasionally present in the Leopard; and, in both Lion and Leopard, it
+is seated at the extreme tip of the tail, and is altogether unconnected
+with the terminal caudal vertebra; not fitted on like a cap, but rather
+inserted into the skin.
+
+The use of the prickle, however, it still remained difficult to
+conjecture; but that its existence was known to the ancients is proved
+by the Nimroud sculptures in the British Museum, in an exaggerated
+representation of the claw, in support of this curious fact in natural
+history. The existence of the claw has been proved by Mr. Bennett;
+and "it is no small gratification to be able now to quote in evidence
+of the statement of Mr. Bennett, and of his predecessor. Didymus, of
+Alexandria, the original and authentic document, on the authority of the
+veritable descendants of the renowned hunter Nimroud; which any one may
+read who will take the trouble to examine the sculptured slab in the
+British Museum."[8]
+
+In the Nineveh galleries of the British Museum we also see pictured in
+stone the employment of the Lion, in the life of Assyria and Babylonia,
+three thousand years since; in the events of a succession of dynasties,
+recording the sieges of cities, the combats of warriors, the triumphs
+of Kings, the processions of victors, the chains and fetters of the
+vanquished. To the zoological observer these sculptures present drawings
+_ad naturam_ of tableaux of Lions and Lion-hunts; Lions in combat, as
+well as in moveable dens and cages, and the ferocity of the chase; and
+Lions transfixed with arrows or javelins in the arena. One of the finest
+of these sculptures is in the representation of a Lion-hunt, on a long
+slab that lined the principal chamber of the most ancient palace at
+Nimroud. The King is in his chariot, drawn by three horses, which the
+charioteer is urging forward to escape the attack of an infuriated Lion
+that has already placed its fore-paws upon the back of the chariot. At
+this critical moment, the Royal descendant of the mighty hunter aims a
+deadly shaft at the head of the roaring and wounded Lion, the position
+of whose tail and limbs is finely indicative of rage and fury. Behind
+the Lion are two of the King's attendants, fully armed, and holding
+their daggers and shields, ready to defend themselves in case the prey
+should escape the arrow of the King. Before the chariot is a wounded
+Lion, crawling from under the horses' feet. The cringing agony conveyed
+in its entire action is well contrasted with the undaunted fury of the
+former. In another slab we have the continuation of the same Lion-hunt,
+representing the triumphant return of the King from the chase. At his
+feet lies the Lion subdued, but not dead.
+
+Of the pageantry of the Lion, we read, in Bell's "Travels," that the
+monarch of Persia had, on days of audience, two great Lions chained on
+each side of the passage to the state-room, led there by keepers in
+golden chains.
+
+Our early English Sovereigns had a menagerie in the Tower from the reign
+of Henry III. (1252.) In 1370 (44 Edward III.) are entries of payments
+made to "the Keeper of the King's Lions and Leopards" there, at the
+rate of 6_d._ a-day for his wages, and 6_d._ a-day for each beast.
+The number of beasts varied from four to seven. Two young Lions are
+specially mentioned; and "a Lion lately sent by the Lord the Prince,
+from Germany to England, to our Lord the King." And we read, in Lord
+Burghley's "Diary," 1586, of the grant of the keeping of the Lions in
+the Tower, with "the Fine of 12_d._ per diem, and 6_d._ for the Meat of
+those Lions." The first menagerie-building was the Lion Tower, to which
+was added a semicircular inclosure, where Lions and Bears were baited
+with dogs, with which James I. and his court were much delighted. A
+Lion was named after the reigning King; and it was popularly believed
+that "when the King dies, the Lion of that name dies after him." The
+last of the Tower animals were transferred to the Zoological Society's
+menagerie, in the Regent's-park, in 1834. The Tower menagerie is well
+described in a handsome volume, with woodcut portraits, by William
+Harvey.
+
+The punishment of being _thrown to Lions_ is stated as common among the
+Romans of the first century; and numerous tales are extant, in which the
+fierce animals became meek and lamb-like before the holy virgins of the
+Church. This, indeed, is the origin of the superstition, nowhere more
+beautifully expressed than in Lord Byron's "Siege of Corinth":--
+
+    "'Tis said that a Lion will turn and flee
+    From a maid in the pride of her purity."
+
+Every wild beast show almost has its tame Lion, with which the keeper
+takes the greatest liberties; liberties which the beast will suffer,
+generally speaking, from none but him. Major Smith relates that he
+had seen the keeper of a Lioness stand upon the beast, drag her round
+the cage by her tail, open her jaws, and thrust his head between her
+teeth. Another keeper, at New York, had provided himself with a fur cap,
+the novelty of which attracted the notice of the Lion, which, making
+a sudden grapple, tore the cap off his head as he passed the cage;
+but, perceiving that the keeper was the person whose head he had thus
+uncovered, he immediately laid the cap down. Wombwell, in his menagerie,
+had a fine Lion, Nero, that allowed _strangers_ to enter his den, and
+even put their heads within his jaws. This tameness is not, however, to
+be trusted, since the natural ferocity of some Lions is never safely
+subdued. Lions which have been sometimes familiar, have, on other
+occasions, been known to kill their keepers, and dart at those who have
+incautiously approached too near their cage. All these exhibitions have
+been entirely eclipsed by the feats of Van Amburgh, in his exercise of
+complete control over Lions. The melancholy fate of "the Lion Queen,"
+however, tells of the fatal result of her confidence. The Lion-killing
+feats of Captain Gordon Cumming had a more legitimate object in view--to
+render us more familiar with the zoological character of the Lion.
+
+Colonization has scarcely yet extirpated the Lion in Algeria, where the
+French colonists make fine sport of "the King of the Beasts." M. Jules
+Gerard, a Nimroud in his way, has been noted for his Lion-killing feats.
+We read of his tracking a large old Lion in the Smauls country, one
+hundred leagues in ten days, without catching a glimpse of anything but
+his foot-prints. At length, accompanied by a native of the country and a
+spahi, Gerard took up his quarters at the foot of a tree upon the path
+which the old Lion had taken. It was moonlight, and Gerard made out two
+Lions sitting about one hundred paces off, and exactly in the shadow of
+the tree. The Arab lay snoring ten paces off, in the full light of the
+moon, and had, doubtless, attracted the attention of the Lions. Gerard
+expressly forbade the spahi to wake the Arab. Our Lion-hunter then got
+up the hill to reconnoitre; the boldest of the Lions came up to within
+ten paces of Gerard, and fifteen of the Arab: the Lion's eye was fixed
+on the latter, and the second Lion placed himself on a level with, and
+four or five paces from, the first. They proved to be both full-grown
+Lionesses. Gerard took aim at the first as she came rolling and roaring
+down to the foot of the tree. The Arab was scarcely awakened, when a
+second ball stretched the Lioness dead upon the spot. Gerard then looked
+out for the second Lioness, who was standing up within fifteen paces,
+looking around her. He fired, and she fell down roaring, and disappeared
+in a field of maize; she fell, but was still alive. Next morning at
+daybreak, at the spot where the Lioness had fallen, were blood marks,
+denoting her track in the direction of a wood. After sending off the
+dead Lioness. Gerard returned to his post of the preceding night. A
+little after sunset the Lion roared in his lair, and continued roaring
+all night. Convinced that the wounded Lioness was there, Gerard sent two
+Arabs to explore the cover, but they durst not. He next evening reached
+the lair, taking with him a goat, which he left with the Arabs: the
+Lioness appeared. Gerard fired, and she fell without a struggle; she was
+believed dead, but she got up again as though nothing was the matter,
+and showed all her teeth. One of the Arabs, within six paces of her,
+seeing her get up, clung to the lower branches of a tree and disappeared
+like a squirrel. The Lioness fell dead at the foot of the tree, a second
+bullet piercing her heart: the first had passed out of the nape of the
+neck without breaking the skull-bone.
+
+The Lions presented by Lord Prudhoe to the British Museum are the best
+sculptured representations of the animal in this country. Although the
+Lion is our national hieroglyphic, and there are many statues of him,
+yet not one among them all appears without a defect, which makes our
+representations of him belong to the class _canis_ instead of _felis_, a
+fault not found in any Egyptian sculpture.[9]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[8] Bonomi; "Nineveh and its Palaces," p. 249.
+
+[9] Bonomi; "Proc. Royal Soc., Literature."
+
+
+
+
+BIRD-LIFE.
+
+     "Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they
+     reap, nor gather into barns; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth
+     them."--Matthew vi. 26.
+
+    "Free tenants of land, air, and ocean,
+    Their forms all symmetry, their motions grace;
+    In plumage delicate and beautiful,
+    Thick without burthen, close as fishes' scales,
+    Or loose as full-blown poppies on the gales;
+    With wings that seem as they'd a soul within them,
+    They bear their owners with such sweet enchantment."
+
+                    _James Montgomery._
+
+
+Birds, as regards structure, are perhaps the most perfectly endowed,
+as they are certainly the most beautiful and interesting, of all the
+lower animals. In Birds there is an admirable mechanism and adaptation
+both for gliding in the air and swimming in the water. They surpass all
+other animals in the faculty of continuing their motion without resting,
+as well as in its rapidity. The fleetest courser can scarcely ever run
+more than a mile in a minute, nor support that speed beyond five or six
+such exertions. But the joyous Swallow does this tenfold for pleasure.
+In his usual way he flies at the rate of one mile in a minute; and
+Wilson, the ornithologist, ascertained that the Swallow is so engaged
+for ten hours every day. So can the Blue-bird of America, for a space of
+600 miles. Our Carrier-pigeons move with half that celerity: one flew
+from Liskeard to London, 220 miles, in six hours. The Golden Eagle is
+supposed to dart through the fiercest storm at the rate of 160 miles an
+hour; but one of our smallest Birds, the Swift, can even quadruple the
+most excited quickness of the race-horse for a distance. Spallanzani
+thought that the little Swift travelled at the rate of 250 miles an hour.
+
+Inquiries into the phenomena of the flight of Birds would lead us
+far beyond our limits. The subject is beset with error. Thus, we
+read:--"Every one has remarked the manner in which Birds of prey float,
+as it were, without any effort, and with steady expanded wings, at great
+heights in the atmosphere. This they are enabled to do from the quantity
+of air contained in the air-cells of their bodies, which air being taken
+in at a low level in the atmosphere, of course rarefies and expands as
+the Bird ascends into higher regions. Their rapidity of descent must
+be accomplished by the sudden expulsion of this air, aided by their
+muscular efforts."
+
+Now, Dr. Crisp has read to the Zoological Society a paper "On the
+Presence or Absence of Air in the Bones of Birds," for the purpose of
+showing the prevailing error upon the subject--viz., "that the bones
+of the Bird are filled with air." Of fifty-two British Birds recently
+dissected by him, only one, the Sparrow-hawk, had the bones generally
+perforated for the admission of air. In thirteen others, the humeri only
+were hollow, and among these were several Birds of short flight. In the
+remaining thirty-eight, neither the _humeri_ nor _femora_ contained
+air, although in this list were several Birds of passage and of rapid
+flight--Dr. Crisp's conclusion being, that the majority of British Birds
+have no air in their bones, and that, with the exception of the Falcons,
+but very few British Birds have hollow femora.
+
+Mr. Gould records a most remarkable instance of rapid and sustained
+flight, which he witnessed on his return from North America, whither
+he had proceeded for the purpose of studying the habits and manners of
+the species of _Trochilus_ (Humming Bird), frequenting that portion
+of America. Having remarked that he arrived just prior to the period
+of the migration of this Bird from Mexico to the north, and had ample
+opportunities for observing it in a state of nature, he noticed that
+its actions were very peculiar, and quite different from those of all
+other birds: the flight is performed by a motion of the wings so rapid
+as to be almost imperceptible; indeed, the muscular power of this little
+creature appears to be very great in every respect, as, independently of
+its rapid and sustained flight, it grasps the small twigs, flowers, &c.,
+upon which it alights with the utmost tenacity. It appears to be most
+active in the morning and evening, and to pass the middle of the day in
+a state of sleepy torpor. Occasionally it occurs in such numbers that
+fifty or sixty birds may be seen in a single tree. When captured it so
+speedily becomes tame that it will feed from the hand or mouth within
+half an hour. Mr. Gould having been successful in keeping a Humming-Bird
+alive in a gauze bag attached to his breast button for three days,
+during which it readily fed from a bottle filled with a syrup of brown
+sugar and water, he determined to make an attempt to bring some living
+examples to England, in which he succeeded; but unfortunately they did
+not long survive their arrival.
+
+The adaptation of colour in Birds to their haunts strikingly tends to
+their preservation. The small Birds which frequent hedges have backs
+of a brownish or brownish-green hue; and their bellies are generally
+whitish, or light-coloured, so as to harmonize with the sky. Thus, they
+become less visible to the hawk or cat that passes above or below them.
+The wayfarer across the fields also treads upon the Skylark before he
+sees it warbling to heaven's gate. The Goldfinch or Thistlefinch passes
+much of its time among flowers, and is vividly coloured accordingly.
+The Partridge can hardly be distinguished from the fallow or stubble
+among which it crouches; and it is considered an accomplishment among
+sportsmen to have a good eye for finding a Hare sitting. In northern
+countries the winter dress of the Hares and Ptarmigans is white, to
+prevent detection among the snows of those inclement regions.
+
+The Song of Birds is popularly explained by the author of a work,
+entitled, "The Music of Nature," in which he illustrates the vocal
+machinery of Birds as follows:--"It is difficult to account for so small
+a creature as a Bird making a tone as loud as some animal a thousand
+times its size; but a recent discovery shows that in birds the lungs
+have several openings communicating with corresponding air-bags or
+cells, which fill the whole cavity of the body from the neck downward,
+and into which the air passes and repasses in the progress of breathing.
+This is not all. The very bones are hollow, from which air-pipes are
+conveyed to the most solid parts of the body, even into the quills and
+feathers. The air being rarefied by the heat of their body, adds to
+their levity. By forcing the air out of their body, they can dart down
+from the greatest heights with astonishing velocity. No doubt the same
+machinery forms the basis of their vocal powers, and at once resolves
+the mystery into a natural ordering of parts." This is a very pretty
+story; but, unfortunately, it is not correct, as already shown.
+
+A correspondent of the "Athenæum," writing in 1866, says:--"He would be
+a bold man who should say that Birds have no delight in their own songs.
+I have been led to conclude from experiments which I have made, and from
+other observations, that certain animals, especially Birds, have not
+only an ear for fine sounds, but also a preference for the things they
+see out of respect to fine colours or other pleasing external features.
+It is chiefly among Birds, when we consider the case of animals, that
+a taste for ornament and for glittering objects, often very startling
+and human-like, is to be found. The habits of the Pheasant, Peacock,
+Turkey, Bird of Paradise, several Birds of the Pigeon and Crow kind, and
+certain Singing Birds, are evidence. The Australian Satin Bower-Bird
+is the most remarkable of that class which exhibit taste for beauty or
+for glittering objects out of themselves--that is, beauty not directly
+personal; collecting, in fact, little museums of shells, gaudy feathers,
+shining glass, or bits of coloured cloth or pottery. It will be found
+with many Birds that fine plumes, a mirror, and an admirer, are not
+altogether objects devoid of interest.
+
+"Another consideration leading me to the same conclusion, is the fact,
+that beauty in animals is placed on prominent parts, or on parts
+which by erection or expansion are easily, and at the pairing season,
+frequently rendered prominent, such as a crest or tail. A spangle of
+ruby or emerald does not exist, for instance, on the side under the
+wing, which is seldom raised, of our domestic poultry. Such jewels are
+hung where man himself wears his, on the face and forehead, or court
+attention, like our own crowns, trains, shoulder-knots, breast-knots,
+painted cheeks, or jewelled ears. I cannot account for the existence of
+these gaudy ornaments to please man, for nowhere are they more gorgeous
+than in Birds which live in the depth of the tropical forest, where man
+is rarely a visitor; I cannot account for them on the principle that
+they do good to their possessors in the battle for life, because they
+rather render them conspicuous to their enemies, or coveted by man." But
+the beauty of these beings glows most brightly at the season of their
+pairing, and the selection of their mates.
+
+Baron von Tschudi, the Swiss naturalist, has shown the important
+services of Birds in the destruction of insects. Without Birds, no
+agriculture or vegetation would be possible. They accomplish in a few
+months the profitable work of destruction which millions of human hands
+could not do half so well in as many years; and the sage, therefore,
+blamed in very severe terms the foolish practice of shooting and
+destroying Birds, which prevails more especially in Italy, recommending,
+on the contrary, the process of alluring Birds into gardens and
+corn-fields. Among the most deserving Birds he counts Swallows, Finches.
+Titmice, Redtails, &c. The naturalist then cites numerous instances in
+support of his assertion. In a flower-garden of one of his neighbours
+three rose-trees had been suddenly covered with about 2,000 tree-lice.
+At his recommendation a Marsh-Titmouse was located in the garden, which
+in a few hours consumed the whole brood, and left the roses perfectly
+clean. A Redtail in a room was observed to catch about 900 flies in an
+hour. A couple of Night-Swallows have been known to destroy a whole
+swarm of gnats in fifteen minutes. A pair of Golden-crested Wrens
+carry insects as food to their nestlings upon an average thirty-six
+times in an hour. For the protection of orchards and woods Titmice are
+of invaluable service. They consume, in particular, the eggs of the
+dangerous pine-spiders. One single female of such spiders frequently
+lays from 600 to 800 eggs twice in the summer season, while a Titmouse
+with her young ones consume daily several thousands of them. Wrens,
+Nuthatches, and Woodpeckers often dexterously fetch from the crevices of
+tree-bark numbers of insects for their nestlings.
+
+Yet, profitless and wanton Bird-murder is common. The cliffs on the
+coasts of these islands are the resort of numerous kinds of Sea-Fowl,
+and these Fowl, we are told, are slaughtered by thousands, not merely
+for the sake of their feathers, but actually for the mere savage
+pleasure of killing. What speculation can enter into such a proceeding
+it may puzzle the reader to imagine; but it seems that the wing feathers
+of the poor White Gull are now inquired for in the plume-trade, and
+we are actually told of an order given by a single house for 10,000
+of these unhappy Birds. When these facts were stated at the Meeting
+of the British Association, in August, 1868, at Norwich, a lady stood
+up boldly in defence of her sex, and declared that they sinned only
+through ignorance, and would never willingly wear the feathers of a
+Bird destroyed in the act of feeding its young. That part of the case,
+therefore, ought to be now in safe hands. In the Isle of Man a law has
+been passed, called the "Seagull Preservation Act," protecting these
+Birds by heavy penalties, on the ground of their utility in removing
+fish offal and guiding fishermen to shoals of fish. At a certain point
+of our shores a similar protection has been established. A visitor to
+the South Stack Lighthouse, on the coast of Anglesey, may see prodigious
+numbers of Sea-Fowl as tame as complete safety can make them. It has
+been ascertained that in thick weather, when neither light can be
+distinguished nor signal seen, the incessant scream of these Birds gives
+the best of all warnings to the mariner of the vicinity of the rock. The
+noise they make can be heard at a greater distance than the tolling of
+the great bell; and so valuable was this danger-signal considered, that
+an order from the Trinity House forbad even the firing of the warning
+gun, lest the colony of the Sea-Fowl should be disturbed. The signals of
+the bell and the cannon might be neglected or overpowered, but the Birds
+were always there and always audible.
+
+It is inferred that Birds possess some notion of power, and of cause and
+effect, from the various actions which they perform. "Thus," relates Dr.
+Fleming, "we have seen the Hooded Crow in Zetland, when feeding on small
+shell-fish, able to break some of the tenderer kinds by means of its
+bill, aided in some cases by beating them against a stone; but, as some
+of the larger shells, such as the buckie and the welk, cannot be broken
+by such means, the Crow employs another method, by which, in consequence
+of applying foreign power, it accomplishes its object. Seizing the
+shell with its claws, it mounts up into the air, and then loosing its
+hold, causes the shell to fall among stones (in preference to the sand,
+the water, or the soil on the ground), that it may be broken, and give
+easier access to the contained animal. Should the first attempt fail,
+a second or third is tried, with this difference, that the Crow rises
+higher in the air, in order to increase the power of the fall, and
+more effectually remove the barrier to the contained morsel. On such
+occasions we have seen a strong Bird remain an apparently inattentive
+spectator of the process of breaking the shell, but coming to the spot
+with astonishing keenness when the efforts of its neighbour had been
+successful, in order to share the spoil. Pennant mentions similar
+operations performed by Crows on mussels."
+
+The brain of Birds is, in general, large in proportion to the size of
+the body, and the instinctive powers are very perfect. A few kinds are
+rather dull and stupid; but the Parrot, Magpie, Raven, and many others,
+show great vivacity and quickness of intellect. The Raven has a great
+deal of humour in him. One, a most amusing and mischievous creature,
+would get into a well-stocked flower-garden, go to the beds where the
+gardener had sowed a great variety of seeds, with sticks put in the
+ground with labels, and then he would amuse himself with pulling up
+every stick, and laying them in heaps of ten or twelve on the path. This
+used to irritate the old gardener, who drove him away. The Raven knew
+that he ought not to do it, or he would not have done it. He would soon
+return to his mischief, and when the gardener again chased him (the old
+man could not run very fast), the Raven would just keep clear of the
+rake or the hoe in his hand, dancing before him, and singing as plainly
+as a Raven could. "Tol de rol de rol! tol de rol de rol!" with all kinds
+of mimicking gestures.
+
+The signal of danger among Birds seems to be of universal comprehension;
+because the instant it is uttered we hear the whole flock, though
+composed of various species, repeat a separate moan, and away they
+all scuttle into the bushes for safety. The sentinel Birds give the
+signal, but in some cases they are deceived by false appearances. Dr.
+Edmonstone, in his "View of the Zetland Isles," relates a very striking
+illustration of the neglect of the sentinel, in his remarks on the Shag.
+"Great numbers of this species of the Cormorant are sometimes taken
+during the night, while asleep on the rocks of easy access; but before
+they commit themselves to sleep, one or two of the number are appointed
+to watch. Until these sentinels are secured, it is impossible to make a
+successful impression on the whole body; to surprise them is, therefore,
+the first object. With this view, the leader of the expedition creeps
+cautiously and imperceptibly along the rock, until he gets within a
+short distance of the watch. He then dips a worsted glove into the sea,
+and gently throws water in the face of the guard. The unsuspecting Bird,
+either disliking the impression, or fancying, from what he considers to
+be a disagreeable state of the weather, that all is quiet and safe,
+puts his head under his wing and soon falls asleep. His neck is then
+immediately broken, and the party dispatch as many as they choose."
+
+Addison was a true lover of nature, which he shows in two letters
+written by him to the Earl of Warwick (afterwards his son-in-law),
+when that nobleman was very young. "My dear Lord," he writes, "I have
+employed the whole neighbourhood in looking after Birds'-nests, and
+not altogether without success. My man found one last night, but it
+proved a hen's, with fifteen eggs in it, covered with an old broody
+Duck, which may satisfy your Lordship's curiosity a little; though I
+am afraid the eggs will be of little use to us. This morning I have
+news brought me of a nest that has abundance of little eggs, streaked
+with red and blue veins, that, by the description they give me, must
+make a very beautiful figure in a string. My neighbours are very much
+divided in their opinions upon them: some say they are a Skylark's;
+others will have them to be a Canary-Bird's; but I am much mistaken
+in the colour and turn of the eggs if they are not full of Tomtit's."
+Again, Addison writes:--"Since I am so near your Lordship, methinks,
+after having passed the day amid more severe studies, you may often
+take a trip hither and relax yourself with these little curiosities of
+nature. I assure you no less a man than Cicero commends the two great
+friends of his age, Scipio and Lælius, for entertaining themselves
+at their country-house, which stood on the sea-shore, with picking up
+cockle-shells, and looking after Birds'-nests."
+
+In another letter Addison writes:--"The business of this is to invite
+you to a concert of music which I have found out in a neighbouring wood.
+It begins precisely at six in the evening, and consists of a Blackbird,
+a Thrush, a Robin-Redbreast, and a Bullfinch. There is a Lark, that, by
+way of overture, sings and mounts till she is almost out of hearing; and
+afterwards, falling down leisurely, drops to the ground as soon as she
+has ended her song. The whole is concluded by a Nightingale, that has a
+much better voice than Mrs. Tofts, and something of the Italian manner
+in her divisions. If your Lordship will honour me with your company, I
+will promise to entertain you with much better music, and more agreeable
+scenes, than you ever met with at the Opera; and will conclude with a
+charming description of a Nightingale out of our friend Virgil:--
+
+    "'So close, in poplar shades, her children gone,
+    The mother Nightingale laments alone;
+    Whose nest some prying churl had found, and thence
+    By stealth convey'd the unfeathered innocence:
+    But she supplies the night with mournful strains,
+    And melancholy music fills the plains.'"
+
+
+
+
+BIRDS' EGGS AND NESTS.
+
+
+The Eggs of Birds are variously tinted and mottled, and hence they
+become objects of interest to the collector. In this diversity of
+colour nature has, doubtless, some final object in view; and though not
+in every instance, yet in many, we can certainly see a design in the
+adaptation of the colours to the purpose of concealment, according to
+the habits of the various classes of Birds. Thus, as a general rule, the
+Eggs of Birds which have their nests in dark holes, or which construct
+nests that almost completely exclude the light, are white; as is also
+the case with those Birds that constantly sit on their Eggs, or leave
+them only for a short time during the night. Eggs of a light blue or
+light green tint will also be found in nests that are otherwise well
+concealed; while, on the other hand, a great proportion of those nests
+that are in exposed situations have Eggs varying in tints and spots in a
+remarkable degree, corresponding with the colours of external objects in
+their immediate neighbourhood. Thus, a dull green colour is common in
+most gallinaceous Birds that form their nests in grass, and in aquatic
+Birds among green hedges; a bright green colour is prevalent among Birds
+that nestle among trees and bushes; and a brown mottled colour is found
+in those Eggs that are deposited among furze, heath, shingle, and grey
+rocks and stones.
+
+Birds'-nesting, we need hardly remark, is a favourite pursuit of
+boyhood; but, in some cases, its attractions have induced young
+persons to take up more important branches of natural history, or the
+collection, systematic arrangement, and comparison of Birds' Eggs, which
+is, in scientific study, termed Oology; and as the study of Birds cannot
+be considered complete until they are known in every stage, it forms a
+branch of Ornithology. In this case Birds'-nesting has an useful object;
+but many persons are content to acquire collections of Eggs without
+troubling themselves about the Birds which have laid them.
+
+The late Mr. John Wolley, M.A., was one of the leading authorities
+upon the subject of European Ornithology, and was one of a number
+of University men, who, about twelve years ago, established the
+ornithological journal called "The Ibis," and who visited far-distant
+and unexplored regions, where they might hope to discover strange
+Birds and unknown Eggs. For several years Algiers and Tunis were their
+favourite resorts, and the meeting-places of many of our rarer Birds
+were hunted up in these countries, even so far as the Desert of the
+Great Sahara. Others preferred the New World as the scene of their
+labours, and collected long series of specimens in the highland of
+Guatemala, and the tropical forests of Belize. Mr. Wolley, however,
+confined his attention principally to the northern parts of Europe--that
+region being the breeding-quarters of a large number of Birds which
+are only known in this country as winter visitants. In order to be
+at his collecting-station at Muonioniska, on the frontier of Finnish
+Lapland, at the earliest commencement of the breeding-season, Mr. Wolley
+frequently passed the whole winter in that remote region. But the rigour
+of the climate under the Arctic Circle contributed to bring on a malady
+which terminated fatally in November, 1859.
+
+Upon the decease of Mr. Wolley, his large collection of Birds' Eggs,
+in accordance with his last wishes, became the property of his friend,
+Mr. Alfred Newton, who is publishing a Catalogue of Mr. Wolley's Egg
+Cabinet, with notes from the deceased naturalist's journals. The first
+part contains the Eggs of Birds of Prey (_Accipitres_), recognisable at
+once by their strongly-hooked bill, formed to assist them in tearing
+their prey, and their large feet and sharpened claws, which aid them to
+grasp it. They are divisible into two very distinct groups--the diurnal
+Birds of Prey, consisting of the Hawks, Vultures, and Eagles; and the
+nocturnal Birds of Prey, or Owls. In the latter the Eggs are invariably
+colourless; in the former they are often strongly marked, and present
+some of the most beautiful objects in the whole series of Birds' Eggs.
+
+In the most recently published list of European birds fifty-two species
+of birds of prey are given as occurring more or less frequently within
+the limits of our continent. Of the three generally-recognised species
+of European Vultures two are well represented, as regards their eggs,
+in the Wolleyan series. A few years ago the nesting of all these birds
+was utterly unknown to naturalists, and it was mainly through the
+exertions of Mr. Wolley and his friends that specimens first reached
+our collectors' cabinets. Here were found both the Egyptian Vulture
+and the Griffon breeding abundantly in the Eastern Atlas in 1857; and
+the eyries of these birds have since been visited by other collectors
+in the same country. The Eggs of the former of these Vultures are
+remarkable for their deep and rich coloration. The productions of the
+Griffon are not nearly so handsome, and are occasionally altogether
+destitute of markings. Of the Eagles of Europe the series of Eggs is
+very full, especially of the two well-known British species--the Golden
+Eagle and Sea Eagle. The Golden or Mountain Eagle is even now-a-days
+much more common in the remote parts of the British islands than is
+usually supposed to be the case. In 1852 Mr. Wolley was acquainted
+with five nests of this bird in various parts of Scotland, and there
+were undoubtedly at least as many more of which he did not learn the
+particulars. The eyrie is usually placed in some mountainous district,
+on the ledge of some "warm-looking" rock, well clothed with vegetation,
+and often by no means wild or exposed. Not unfrequently, under proper
+guidance, one can walk into the nest almost without climbing. Mr. Newton
+gives a very entertaining account of the taking of a pair of eggs from
+a nest in Argyllshire in 1861, where this seems to have been the case.
+In the whole ascent there was only one "ticklish place," where it was
+necessary to go sideways on a narrow ledge round some rocks. The Sea
+Eagle, on the other hand, generally breeds on the high cliffs upon the
+coast, often selecting the most inaccessible position for its eyrie.
+Sometimes, however, it will choose an island in the middle of an inland
+loch, and in such case places its nest upon the ground or in a tree.
+
+Mr. Wolley's well-written notes of his adventures in quest of both
+these Eagles, as also those relating to the other rapacious birds, will
+be read with much interest; as will also the details concerning the
+nesting-habits of many of the rarer species of European birds, several
+of which, such as the Rough-legged Buzzard and the Lapp Owl, were first
+tracked to their breeding-quarters in the remotest wilds of Scandinavia
+by this indefatigable naturalist.[10]
+
+Of large Eggs we are most familiar with those of the Ostrich, of which
+Mr. Burchell, when in Africa, found twenty-five Eggs in a hollow
+scratched in the sand, six feet in diameter, surrounded by a trench, but
+without grass, leaves, or sticks, as in the nests of other birds. In
+the trench were nine more Eggs, intended, as the Hottentots observed,
+as the first food of the twenty-five young Ostriches. Between sixty and
+seventy Eggs have been found in one nest; each is equal to twenty-four
+Eggs of the domestic hen, and holds five pints and a quarter of liquid.
+The shells are dirty white. The Hottentots string them together as
+belts, or garlands, and they are frequently mounted as cups. One Ostrich
+Egg is a sufficient meal for three persons. The Egg is cooked over the
+fire without either pot or water, the shell answering the purpose of the
+first, and the liquid nature of its contents that of the other.
+
+Less familiar to the reader are the gigantic Eggs of the Epyornis, a
+bird which formerly lived in Madagascar. One of these Eggs contains the
+substance of 140 hens' Eggs. Mr. Geoffroy St. Hilaire describes some
+portions of an Egg of the Epyornis which show the Egg to have been of
+such a size as to be capable of containing about ten English quarts;
+that in the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes can only contain 8-3/4
+quarts. Mr. Strickland, in some notices of the Dodo and its kindred,
+published in 1849, says that in the previous year a Mr. Dumarele, a
+French merchant at Bourbon, saw at Port Leven, Madagascar, an enormous
+Egg which held "_thirteen wine quart bottles of fluid_." The natives
+stated that the Egg was found in the jungle, and "that such Eggs were
+_very, very rarely_ met with."
+
+A word or two about the nests of such gigantic birds. Captain Cook
+found, on an island near the north-east coast of New Holland, a nest
+"of a most enormous size. It was built with sticks upon the ground, and
+was no less than six-and-twenty feet in circumference, and two feet
+eight inches high." (Kerr's "Collection of Voyages and Travels," xiii.,
+318.) Captain Flinders found two similar nests on the south coast of New
+Holland, in King George's Bay. In his "Voyage," &c., London, 1818, he
+says, "They were built upon the ground, from which they rose above two
+feet, and were of vast circumference and great interior capacity; the
+branches of trees and other matter of which each nest was composed being
+enough to fill a cart."
+
+Among the varieties of Birds'-nests are some very curious homes, of
+which we have but space to notice a few. The pendulous nest of the
+Indian Baya-bird is usually formed of the fibres of the palmyra, the
+cocoa-nut palm, and wild date of India, sometimes mixed with grass,
+neatly interlaced, and very strongly made. It consists of only one
+circular chamber, with a long tubular passage leading to it, and is
+suspended from a tree, preferred if overhanging water. The natives of
+India say the Baya lights up its nest with fire-flies. The bird lays
+from four to six white eggs. Bayas are of a very social disposition:
+numbers build on the same tree, or neighbouring trees, and singing in
+concert during the breeding season. The Baya is very docile, and taught
+to fly off the finger and return again; to dart after a ring or small
+coin, dropped into a deep well, and catch it before it reaches the
+water; to fetch and carry, and perform similar tricks.
+
+The nest of the brilliant Golden-banded Oriole is a hammock of twisted
+fibrous substances, and is suspended in a low shrub, so as to swing to
+the breeze. The twine-like fibres of which it is woven are the filaments
+of the gigantic palm. The threads break away from the leaf, and hang
+like fringe to the magnificent foliage.
+
+The Tailor-birds are the best nest-builders of all the feathered tribes.
+They interweave their nests between the twigs and branches of shrubs,
+or suspend the nests from them; and some of these birds have exercised
+arts from the creation which man has found of the greatest benefit to
+him since he discovered them. These birds, indeed, may be called the
+inventors of the several arts of the weaver, the sempstress, and the
+tailor; whence some of them have been denominated Weaver and Tailor
+Birds. The nests of the latter are, however, most remarkable. India
+produces several species of Tailor-birds that sew together leaves for
+the protection of their eggs and nestlings from the voracity of serpents
+and apes. They generally select the end of a branch or twig, and sew
+with cotton, thread, and fibres. Colonel Sykes has seen some in which
+the thread was literally knotted at the end. The inside of these nests
+is lined usually with down and cotton.
+
+Tailor-birds are not confined to India or tropical countries. Italy can
+boast a species which exercises the same art. Mr. Gould has a specimen
+of this bird in his possession, and the Zoological Society have a nest
+in their Museum. This little bird, a species of the genus _sylvia_, in
+summer and autumn frequents marshes; but in the spring it seeks the
+meadows and corn-fields, in which, at that season, the marshes being
+bare of the sedges which cover them in summer, it is compelled to
+construct its nest in tussocks of grass on the brinks of ditches; but
+the leaves of these being weak, easily split, so that it is difficult
+for our little sempstresses to unite them, and so form the skeleton
+of the fabric. From this and other circumstances, the spring nests of
+these birds differ so widely from those made in the autumn that it seems
+next to impossible that both should be the work of the same artisan.
+The latter are constructed in a thick bunch of sedge or reed: they are
+shaped like a pear, being dilated below and narrow above, so as to leave
+an aperture sufficient for the ingress and egress of the bird. The
+greatest horizontal diameter of the nest is about two inches and a half,
+and the vertical is five inches.
+
+The most wonderful thing in the construction of these nests is the
+method to which the little bird has recourse to keep united the living
+leaves of which it is composed. The sole in the weaving, more or less
+delicate, of the materials, forms the principle adopted by other birds
+to bind together the walls of their nests; but this sylvia is no weaver,
+for the leaves of the sedges or reeds are united by real stitches.
+In the edge of each leaf she makes, probably with her beak, minute
+apertures, through which she contrives to pass, perhaps by means of
+the same organ, one or more cords formed of spiders' web, particularly
+that of their egg-pouches. Those threads are not very long, and are
+sufficient to pass two or three times from one leaf to another. They
+are of unequal thickness, and have knots here and there, which, in some
+places, divide into two or three branches.
+
+This is the manner in which the exterior of the nest is formed: the
+interior consists mainly of down, chiefly from plants, a little
+spiders' web being intermixed, which helps to keep the other substances
+together. The upper part and sides of the nest, that is, the external
+and internal, are in immediate contact; but in the lower part a greater
+space intervenes, filled with the slender foliage of grasses, and other
+materials, which render soft and warm the bed on which the eggs are to
+repose. This little bird feeds on insects. Its flight is rectilinear,
+but consists of many curves, with the concavity upwards. These curves
+equal in number the strokes of the wing, and at every stroke its whistle
+is heard, the intervals of which correspond with the rapidity of its
+flight.
+
+The Australian Bower-bird, as its name implies, builds its nest
+like an arbour or bower, with twigs: in the British Museum are two
+specimens, each decorated--one with bones and fresh-water shells, and
+the other with feathers and land-shells; remarkable instances of taste
+for ornament already referred to in a preceding page. The Satin or
+Bower-bird is described by settlers in Australia as "a very troublesome
+rascal," which besets gardens; if once allowed to make a lodgment there
+it is very troublesome to get rid of him; he signalizes his arrival by
+pulling up, in his restless fussy way, everything in the garden that he
+can tug out of the ground, even to the little sticks to mark the site of
+seeds. A settler had formed a garden in the bush; there was no enclosure
+of the kind for miles in any direction: a flock of Bower-birds came; he
+got his gun and shot two or three; the flock went off, and he never saw
+another bird of the kind.
+
+The Cape Swallows build nests which show extraordinary instinct allied
+to reason. A pair of these built their nest on the outside of a house
+at Cape Town against the angle formed by the wall and the board which
+supported the eaves. The whole of this nest was covered in, and it was
+furnished with a long neck or passage, through which the birds passed in
+and out. It resembled a longitudinal section of a Florence oil flask.
+This nest having crumbled away after the young birds had quitted it, the
+same pair, or another of the same species, built on the old foundation
+again. But this time an improvement was observable in the plan of it
+that can hardly be referred to the dictates of mere instinct. The body
+of the nest was of the same shape as before, but instead of a single
+passage it was furnished with one at each side, running along the angle
+of the roof; and on watching the birds, they were seen invariably to go
+in at one passage and come out at the other. Besides saving themselves
+the trouble of turning in the nest and disturbing, perhaps, its interior
+arrangement, they were guarded by this contrivance against a surprise by
+serpents, which frequently creep up along the wall, or descend from the
+thatch, and devour both the mother and her brood.
+
+Dr. Livingstone relates a very curious instance of "Bird Confinement"
+under very strange circumstances. In passing through Mopane country, in
+South Africa, his men caught a great number of the birds called _Korwé_
+in their breeding-places, which were holes in the mopane trees. They
+passed the nest of a Korwé just ready for the female to enter; the
+orifice was plastered on both sides, but a space was left of a heart
+shape, and exactly the size of the bird's body. The hole in the tree
+was in every case found to be prolonged some distance upwards above the
+opening, and thither the Korwé always fled to escape being caught. In
+another nest that was found, one white egg, much like that of a pigeon,
+was laid, and the bird dropped another when captured: she had four
+besides in the ovarium. Dr. Livingstone first saw this bird at Kolenbeng
+in the forest: he saw a slit only, about half an inch wide and three or
+four inches long, in a slight hollow of a tree; a native broke the clay
+which surrounded the slit, put his arm into the hole, and brought out a
+red-beaked Hornbill, which he killed. He told Dr. Livingstone that when
+the female enters her nest she submits to a real confinement. The male
+plasters up the entrance, leaving only a narrow slit by which to feed
+his mate, and which exactly suits the form of his beak. The female makes
+a nest of her own feathers, lays her eggs, hatches them, and remains
+with the young till they are fully fledged. During all this time, which
+is stated to be two or three months, the male continues to feed her
+and the young family. The prisoner generally becomes quite fat, and is
+esteemed a very dainty morsel by the natives; while the poor slave of a
+husband gets so lean that, on the sudden lowering of the temperature,
+which sometimes happens after a fall of rain, he is benumbed, falls
+down, and dies.
+
+Dr. Livingstone, on passing the same tree at Kolenbeng about eight days
+afterwards, found the hole plastered up again, as if, in the short time
+that had elapsed, the disconsolate bird-husband had procured another
+wife. Dr. L. saw a nest with the plastering not quite finished, and
+others completed; he also received elsewhere, besides Kolobeng, the same
+account that the bird comes forth when the young are fully-fledged, at
+the period when the corn is ripe; indeed, her appearance abroad with
+her young is one of the signs they have for knowing when it ought to be
+so: the time is between two and three months. She is said sometimes to
+hatch two eggs, and, when the young of these are full-fledged, the other
+two are just out of the egg-shells: she then leaves the nest with the
+two elder, the orifice is again plastered up, and both male and female
+attend to the wants of the young.
+
+There is a specimen of a nest in the Gardens of the Zoological Society,
+which merits description, besides that of the Bower-bird. Such is the
+nest of the Brush Turkey, which appears more like a small haystack than
+an ordinary nest, and the methodical manner in which it is constructed
+is thus described:--Tracing a circle of considerable radius, the birds
+begin to travel round it, continually grasping with their huge feet the
+leaves and grasses and dead twigs which are lying about, and flinging
+them inwards towards the centre. Each time that they complete their
+round, they narrow their circle, so that in a short time they clear away
+a circular belt, having in its centre a low irregular mass. By repeating
+the same process, however, they decrease the diameter of the mound as
+they increase its height, and at last a large and rudely conical mound
+is formed.
+
+In this nest as many as a bushel of eggs are deposited, at regular
+intervals, long end downwards. The leaves form a fermenting mass, which
+relieves the mother of the necessity of setting upon them. The male,
+however, has to regulate the temperature of the mass, which would
+otherwise get too hot. This he does by making a central ventilating
+shaft, which carries off the superfluous heat; and, lest the temperature
+should fall too low, he is constantly engaged in covering and uncovering
+the eggs in order to hit the exact temperature to be applied until the
+egg is warmed into life.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[10] Abridged from the "Saturday Review."
+
+
+
+
+THE EPICURE'S ORTOLAN.
+
+
+We have allotted this bird to the epicure, because it is rarely heard
+of but in association with his luxurious table. Mr. Beckford describes
+the Ortolans among the delicacies which he saw in the kitchen of the
+monastery of Batalha as "lumps of celestial fatness."
+
+Ortolan is the French and English names for a species of _Fringillidæ_
+(Finches). It is the _Hortulanus_ of Gesner and other naturalists;
+_Miliaria pinguescens_ of Frisch; _Emberiza Hortulana_ of Linnæus;
+_Ortolano_ of the Italians generally; _Tordino Berluccio_ of the
+Venetians; _Garton Ammer_ and _Fetammer_ of the Germans; and _Gerste
+Keneu_ of the Netherlanders. This wide dispersion on the Continent
+bespeaks the pet character of the bird. Montagu terms it the
+Green-headed Bunting.
+
+The French have a fanciful derivation of the name: they say it is from
+the Italian word for gardener, which is from the Latin _hortus_, garden;
+because, according to Menage, in Italy, where the bird is common, it is
+quite at home in the hedges of gardens.
+
+The male bird has the throat, circle round the eyes, and a narrow band
+springing from the angle of the bill, yellow; head and neck grey, with a
+tinge of olive, and small brown spots; feathers black, edged with red;
+breast, belly, and abdomen, reddish grey, the feathers terminated with
+ash-colour; tail blackish, two external feathers, in part white; length
+rather more than six inches. There are, also, varieties marked white,
+green, blackish, and entirely black. The nest, which is constructed
+of fibres of plants and leaves, is frequently found on the ground in
+corn-fields, and sometimes in hedges and bushes.
+
+The Ortolan is not famed for its song, which is, however, soft
+and sweet. Like the Nightingale, to which it has other points of
+resemblance, the Ortolan sings after, as well as before sunset. It was
+this bird that Varro, the lyric poet, called his companion by night and
+day.
+
+The south of Europe may be considered the summer and autumnal
+head-quarters of the Ortolan, though it is a summer visitor in the
+central and northern parts. In Italy it is said to be common by Temminck
+and others. The Prince of Musignano states it to be found in the Sabine
+mountains; adding that it rarely flies in the plains of Rome, but is
+frequent in Tuscany. Lapland, Russia, Denmark. Sweden, and Norway,
+are among the countries visited by it. In the British Isles it seems
+only entitled to rank as an autumnal visitor, but it may occur more
+frequently than is generally supposed; for, especially to an unpractised
+eye, it might be mistaken for the Yellow Hammer, and in some states of
+plumage for other Buntings. It has been taken in the neighbourhood of
+London. In 1837 there was a live specimen in an aviary of the Zoological
+Society in Regent's-park; and many Ortolans are sent alive to the London
+market from Prussia. There is, however, some consolation for the rarity
+of the Ortolan in England. It is approached in delicacy by our Wheatear,
+which is termed the _English Ortolan_. Hence it has been pursued as a
+delicate morsel throughout all its island haunts. Bewick captured it at
+sea, off the coast of Yorkshire, in May, 1822. Every spring and autumn
+it may be observed at Gibraltar, on its migration. Mr. Strickland saw it
+at Smyrna in April. North Africa is its winter residence. Colonel Sykes
+notes it in his catalogue of the birds of the Deccan.
+
+Ortolans are solitary birds; they fly in pairs, rarely three together,
+and never in flocks. They are taken in traps from March or April to
+September, when they are often poor and thin; but if fed with plenty
+of millet-seed and other grain, they become sheer lumps of fat, and
+delicious morsels. They are fattened thus in large establishments in the
+south of Europe; Mr. Gould states this to be effected in Italy, and the
+south of France, in dark rooms; and the Prince of Musignano, having
+described the process, adds the relishing words. "Carne exquisita."
+
+The fattening process in Italy is one of great refinement in the manner
+of feeding. It is the fat of the Ortolan which is so delicious; but it
+has a peculiar habit of feeding which is opposed to the rapid fattening,
+this is, it feeds only at the rising of the sun. Yet this peculiarity
+has not proved an insurmountable obstacle to the Italian gourmands.
+The Ortolans are placed in a dark chamber, perfectly dark, with only
+one aperture in the wall. The food is scattered over the floor of the
+chamber. At a certain hour in the morning the keeper of the birds places
+a lantern in the orifice of the wall; when the dim light thrown from the
+lantern on the floor of the apartment induces the Ortolans to believe
+that the sun is about to rise, and they greedily consume the food upon
+the floor. More food is now scattered over it, and the lantern is
+withdrawn.
+
+The Ortolans, rather surprised at the shortness of the day, think it
+their duty to fall asleep, as night has spread her sable mantle round
+them. During sleep, little of the food being expended in the production
+of force, most of it goes to the formation of muscle and fat. After they
+have been allowed to repose for one or two hours, in order to complete
+the digestion of the food taken, their keeper again exhibits the lantern
+through the aperture. The "rising sun" a second time illumines the
+apartment, and the birds, awaking from their slumber, apply themselves
+voraciously to the food on the floor; after having discussed which,
+they are again enveloped in darkness. Thus the sun is made to shed its
+rising rays into the chamber floor four or five times every day, and
+as many nights following. The Ortolans thus treated become like little
+balls of fat in a few days. This not uninteresting process has been
+detailed by Dr. Lyon Playfair to the Royal Agricultural Society. It
+may, probably, be applied to purposes with less luxurious objects than
+fattening Ortolans.
+
+Notwithstanding its delicacy, the Ortolan fattens very fast; and it is
+this lump of fatness that is its merit, and has sometimes caused it
+to be preferred to the Becafico. According to Buffon, the Greeks and
+Romans understood fattening the Ortolan upon millet. But a lively French
+commentator doubts this statement: he maintains that had the ancients
+known the Ortolan, they would have deified it, and built altars to
+it upon Mount Hymettus and the Saniculum; adding, did they not deify
+the horse of Caligula, which was certainly not worth an Ortolan? and
+Caligula himself, who was not worth so much as his horse? However, this
+dispute belongs to the "classics of the table."
+
+The Ortolan is considered sufficiently fat when it is a handful, and
+is judged by feeling it, and not by appearance. It should not be
+killed with violence, like other birds; this might crush and bruise
+the delicate flesh, and spoil the _coup-d'oeil_, to avoid which it is
+recommended to plunge the head of the Ortolan into a glass of brandy.
+The culinary instruction is as follows: having picked the bird of its
+feathers, singe it with the flame of paper or spirits of wine; cut off
+the beak and ends of the feet; do not draw it; put it into a paper case
+soaked in olive oil, and broil it over a slow fire of slack cinders,
+like that required for a pigeon _à la crapaudine_; in a few minutes the
+Ortolan will swim in its own fat, and will be cooked. Some gourmands
+wrap each bird in a vine-leaf.
+
+A gourmand will take an Ortolan by the legs and craunch it in delicious
+mouthfuls, so as absolutely to lose none of it. More delicate feeders
+cut the bird into quarters, and lay aside the gizzard; the rest may be
+eaten, even to the bones, which are sufficiently tender for the most
+delicate mouth to masticate without inconvenience.
+
+On the Continent, Ortolans are packed in tin boxes for exportation.
+They may be bought in London for half-a-crown a-piece. A few poulterers
+import Ortolans in considerable numbers, and some have acquired the art
+of fattening these birds.[11] Alexis Soyer put into the hundred guinea
+dish which he prepared for the royal table at the grand banquet at York,
+in 1850, five pounds worth of Ortolans, which were obtained from Belgium.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[11] The Ortolan figures in a curious anecdote of individual epicurism
+in the last century. A gentleman of Gloucestershire had one son, whom he
+sent abroad to make the grand tour of the Continent, where he paid more
+attention to the cookery of nations, and luxurious living, than anything
+else. Before his return his father died and left him a large fortune.
+He now looked over his note-book to discover where the most exquisite
+dishes were to be had, and the best cooks obtained. Every servant in his
+house was a cook; his butler, footman, coachman, and grooms--all were
+cooks. He had also three Italian cooks--one from Florence, another from
+Vienna, and another from Viterbo--for dressing one Florentine dish. He
+had a messenger constantly on the road between Brittany and London to
+bring the eggs of a certain kind of plover found in the former country.
+This prodigal was known to eat a single dinner at the expense of 70_l._,
+though there were but two dishes. In nine years he found himself
+getting poor, and this made him melancholy. When totally ruined, having
+spent 150,000_l._, a friend one day gave him a guinea to keep him from
+starving, and he was found in a garret next day _broiling an Ortolan_,
+for which he had paid a portion of the alms.
+
+
+
+
+TALK ABOUT TOUCANS.
+
+
+The Toucans, a family of climbing-birds of tropical America, appear to
+have been known in Europe by the length and great size of their bills,
+long before the birds themselves found their way to England. Belon,
+in 1555, described the bill of one of the family as half a foot long,
+large as a child's arm, pointed, and black at the tip, white elsewhere,
+notched on the edges, hollow within, and so finely delicate as to be
+transparent and thin as parchment; and its beauty caused it to be kept
+in the cabinets of the curious. For more than a century after Belon's
+work, the birds themselves had not been seen in England; for, in the
+_Museum Tradescantianum_, the standard collection of the time, and
+which, from the list of contributors, appears to have been the great
+receptacle for all curiosities, we read of an "Azacari (or Toucan) of
+Brazil; has his beak four inches long, almost two thick, like a Turk's
+sword" (A.D. 1656). From this description Tradescant knew the nature of
+the bird, if he had not seen it.
+
+Mr. Swainson states, that the enormous bills give to these birds a most
+singular and uncouth appearance. Their feet are formed like those of
+the parrot, more for grasping than climbing; and as they live among
+trees, and proceed by hopping from branch to branch, their grasping
+feature is particularly adapted for such habits. They live retired in
+the deep forests, mostly in small companies. Their flight is strait and
+laborious, but not graceful; while their movements, as they glide rather
+than hop from branch to branch, are elegant.
+
+Mr. Gould, in his grand Monograph of the Toucans, or _Ramphastidæ_,
+remarks, that it was only within a few years of the time of Linnæus that
+actual specimens of the Toucan had been received in Europe. The beaks,
+however, of these birds, regarded as curiosities, had occasionally found
+their way to our shores, and had occasioned some curious conjectures.
+The earliest shape resembled a Turkish scimitar.
+
+The Toucans (a word derived from their Brazilian name, _Taca, Tucà_)
+received from Linnæus the title of _Ramphastos_, in allusion to
+the great volume of the beak ([Greek: ramphos]--Ramphos), a family
+(_Ramphastidæ_). In some respects, indeed, they resemble the Hornbills
+in the development of the beak. The Toucans may be said to represent
+in America the Hornbills in India and Africa. Large as is the beak of
+the Toucan compared with the size of the body, it is in reality very
+light. Its outer sheathing is somewhat elastic, very thin, smooth, and
+semi-transparent; and the interior consists of a maze of delicate cells,
+throughout which the olfactory nerves are multitudinously distributed.
+The nostrils are basal, the edges of each mandible are serrated, and
+the colouring of the whole beak is bright, rich, and often relieved by
+contrasted markings. But these tints begin to fade after death, and
+become ultimately dissipated. The eyes are surrounded by a considerable
+space of naked skin, often very richly tinted. The tongue is very long,
+slender, horizontally flattened, pointed, and, except at its base,
+horny; it is fringed or feathered along each side. The wings are short,
+concave, and comparatively feeble.
+
+The tail is variable, equal and squared; it is remarkable for the
+facility with which it can be retroverted or turned up, so as to lie
+upon the back. This peculiarity results from a modification of structure
+in the caudal vertebræ, which enables the tail to turn with a jerk by
+the action of certain muscles, as if it were fixed on a hinge put into
+action by means of a spring. When the retroversion is accomplished, the
+muscles which caused it become passive, and offer no resistance to their
+antagonists, which restore the tail to its ordinary direction. When they
+sleep they puff out their plumage, they retrovert the tail over the
+back, draw the head between the shoulders; the bill begins to turn over
+the right shoulder, and becomes at last buried in the plumage of the
+back; at the same time the pinions of the wings droop, and conceal the
+feet. The bird now resembles an oval ball of puffed-up feathers, and is
+well protected against the cold.
+
+Toucans utter, from time to time, harsh, clattering, and discordant
+cries. "Some," says Mr. Gould, "frequent the humid woods of the
+temperate regions, while others resort to comparatively colder
+districts, and dwell at an elevation of from six to ten thousand
+feet. Those inhabiting the lofty regions are generically different
+from those residing in the low lands, and are clothed in a more thick
+and sombre-coloured plumage. All the members of the Hill-Toucans are
+distinguished by their bills being strong, heavy, and hard, when
+compared with those of the true Toucans and Araçaris, all of which
+have their bills of a more delicate structure, and in several species
+so thin and elastic on the sides as to be compressible between the
+fingers." Their food in a state of nature consists of fruit, eggs, and
+nestling birds; to which, in domestication, are added small birds, mice,
+caterpillars, and raw flesh. They incubate in the hollows of gigantic
+trees.
+
+Faber was told by Fryer, Alaysa, and other Spaniards who had lived
+long in America, and also by the Indians, that the Toucan even hews
+out holes in trees, in which to nidify; and Oviedo adds, that it is
+from this habit of chipping the trees that the bird is called by the
+Spaniards _Carpintero_, and by the Brazilians _Tacataca_, in imitation,
+apparently, of the sound it thus makes.
+
+The larger feed upon bananas and other succulent plants; the smaller
+upon the smaller fruits and berries. Prince Maximilian de Wied states,
+that in Brazil he found only the remains of fruits in their stomachs,
+and adds, that they make sad havoc among plantations of fruit-trees. He
+was informed, however, that they steal and eat birds, but never himself
+saw them in the act. They abound in the vast forests, and are killed
+in great number in the cooler season in the year for the purposes of
+the table. In their manners the Toucans resemble the Crow tribe, and
+especially the Magpies: like them, they are very troublesome to the
+birds of prey, particularly to the Owls, which they surround, making a
+great noise, all the while jerking their tails upwards and downwards.
+Their feathers, especially from their yellow breasts, are used by the
+Indians for personal decoration.
+
+Azara states that they attack even the solid nests of the white ants,
+when the clay of which their nests are formed becomes moistened with the
+rain; they break them up with their beaks, so as to obtain the young
+ants and their eggs; and during the breeding season the Toucan feeds
+upon nothing else; during the rest of the year he subsists upon fruit,
+insects, and the buds of trees.
+
+Edwards, in his voyage up the Amazon, observes, that when a party of
+Toucans alight on a tree, one usually acts the part of a sentinel,
+uttering the loud cry of "Tucano," whence they derive their name; the
+others disperse over the branches in search of fruit. While feeding
+they keep up a hoarse chattering, and at intervals unite with the noisy
+sentry, and scream a concert that may be heard a mile. Having appeased
+their appetites, they seek the depths of a forest, and there quietly
+doze away the noon. In early morning a few of them may be seen sitting
+quietly upon the branches of some dead tree, apparently awaiting the
+coming sunlight before starting for their feeding-trees.
+
+Some species of Toucans have been seen quarrelling with monkeys over a
+nest of eggs. Their carnivorous propensity has been strikingly shown
+in the specimens which have been kept in England. On the approach of
+any small bird the Toucan becomes highly excited, raises itself up,
+erects its feathers, and utters a hollow clattering sound, the irides
+of the eyes expand, and the Toucan is ready to dart on its prey. A
+Toucan, exhibited in St. Martin's-lane in 1824, seized and devoured a
+canary-bird. Next day Mr. Broderip tried him with a live goldfinch. The
+Toucan seized it with the beak, and the poor little victim uttered a
+short weak cry, for within a second it was dead, killed by the powerful
+compression of the mandibles. The Toucan now placed the dead bird firmly
+between its foot and the perch, stripped off the feathers with its bill,
+and then broke the bones of the wings and legs, by strongly wrenching
+them, the bird being still secured by the Toucan's foot. He then
+continued to work with great dexterity till he had reduced the goldfinch
+to a shapeless mass. This he devoured piece by piece with great gusto,
+not even leaving the legs or the beak of his prey: to each morsel he
+applied his tongue as he masticated it, chattering and shivering with
+delight. He never used his foot, but his bill, for conveying his food to
+his mouth by the sides of the bill.
+
+Mr. Swainson remarks:--"The apparent disproportion of the bill is one of
+the innumerable instances of that beautiful adaptation of structure to
+use which the book of nature everywhere reveals. The food of these birds
+consists principally of the eggs and young of others, to discover which
+nature has given them the most exquisite powers of smell." Again, the
+nests in which the Toucan finds its food are often very deep and dark,
+and its bill, covered with branches of nerves, enables the bird to feel
+its way as accurately as the finest and most delicate finger could. From
+its feeding on eggs found in other birds' nests, it has been called the
+Egg-sucker. Probably there is no bird which secures her young offspring
+better from the monkeys, which are very noisome to the young of most
+birds. For when she perceives the approach of these enemies she so
+settles herself in her nest as to put her bill out at the hole, and give
+the monkeys such a welcome therewith that they presently break away, and
+are glad to escape.
+
+Professor Owen, in his minute examination of the mandibles, remarks
+that the principle of the cylinder is introduced into the elaborate
+structure; the smallest of the supporting pillars of the mandibles are
+seen to be hollow or tubular when examined with the microscope.
+
+Light and almost diaphonous as is the bill of the Toucan, its strength
+and the power of the muscles, which act upon the mandibles, are evident
+in the wrenching and masticatory processes. When taking fruit, the
+Toucan generally holds it for a short time at the extremity of his bill,
+applying to it, with apparent delight, the pointed tip of the slender
+tongue: the bird then throws it, with a sudden upward jerk, to the
+throat, where it is caught and instantly swallowed.
+
+Mr. Gould divides the Toucans into six genera. 1. The true Toucans, with
+large and gaily-coloured bills, plumage black. 2. The Araçaris, with
+smaller beaks, plumage green, yellow, and red. 3. The Banded Aracauris,
+an Amazonian genus, proposed by Prince C. L. Bonaparte. 4. Toucanets,
+small, with crescent of yellow on the back, and brilliant orange and
+yellow ear-coverts. 5. Hill Toucans of the Andes. 6. Groove-bills,
+grass-green plumage.
+
+A very fine true Toucan, figured by Mr. Gould, is remarkable for the
+splendour and size of the bill, of a fine orange-red, with a large black
+patch on each side. Powder-flasks are made of large and finely-coloured
+bills. The naked skin round the eye is bright orange. The chest is
+white, with a tinge of sulphur below, and a slight scarlet margin.
+Upper tail-coverts, white; under tail-coverts, scarlet; the rest of the
+plumage, black. Several specimens of this beautiful bird lived both in
+the menagerie of the late Earl of Derby, at Knowsley, and in the gardens
+of the Zoological Society. It is a native of Cayenne, Paraguay, &c.
+
+Toucans in their manners are gentle and confident, exhibiting no alarm
+at strangers, and are as playful as magpies or jackdaws; travellers
+assure us that they may be taught tricks and feats like parrots; and
+although they cannot imitate the human voice, they show considerable
+intelligence. One of the Toucanets is named from Mr. Gould, the plates
+in whose _monograph_, from their size, beauty, and accuracy, have all
+the air of portraits.
+
+
+
+
+ECCENTRICITIES OF PENGUINS.
+
+
+This group of amphibious birds, though powerless in the wing as an organ
+of flight, are assisted by it as a species of fin in their rapid divings
+and evolutions under water, and even as a kind of anterior of extremity
+when progressing on the land. Their lot has been wisely cast on those
+desolate southern islands and shores where man rarely intrudes, and
+in many instances where a churlish climate or a barren soil offers no
+temptations to him to invade their territory.
+
+Le Vaillant, when on Dassen Island, found that the smaller crevices
+of the rocks served as places of retreat for Penguins, which swarmed
+there. "This bird," says Le Vaillant, which is about two feet in length,
+"does not carry its body in the same manner as others: it stands
+perpendicularly on its two feet, which gives it an air of gravity, so
+much the more ridiculous as its wings, which have no feathers, hang
+carelessly down on each side; it never uses them but in swimming. As we
+advanced towards the middle of the island we met innumerable troops
+of them. Standing firm and erect on their legs, these animals never
+deranged themselves in the least to let us pass; they more particularly
+surrounded the mausoleum, and seemed as if determined to prevent us from
+approaching it. All the environs were entirely beset with them. Nature
+had done more for the plain tomb of the poor Danish captain than what
+proceeds from the imaginations of poets or the chisels of our artists.
+The hideous owl, however well sculptured in our churches, has not half
+so dead and melancholy an air as the Penguin. The mournful cries of this
+animal, mixed with those of the sea-calf, impressed on my mind a kind of
+gloom which much disposed me to tender sensations of sadness. My eyes
+were sometime fixed on the last abode of the unfortunate traveller, and
+I gave his manes the tribute of a sigh."
+
+Sir John Narborough says of the Patagonian Penguins that their erect
+attitude and bluish-black backs, contrasted with their white bellies,
+might cause them to be taken at a distance for young children with white
+pinafores on. A line of them is engraved in Webster's "Voyage of the
+Chanticleer," and reminds us of one of the woodcuts in Hood's "Comic
+Annual."
+
+The "towns, camps, and rookeries," as they have been called, of Penguins
+have been often described. At the Falkland Islands are assemblies of
+Penguins, which give a dreary desolation to the place, in the utter
+absence of the human race. In some of the towns voyagers describe a
+general stillness, and when the intruders walked among the feathered
+population to provide themselves with eggs, they were regarded with
+side-long glances, but they seemed to carry no terror with them. In many
+places the shores are covered with these birds, and three hundred have
+been taken within an hour; for they generally make no effort to escape,
+but stand quietly by whilst their companions are knocked down with
+sticks, till it comes to their turn.
+
+The rookeries are described as designed with the utmost order and
+regularity, though they are the resort of several different species.
+A regular camp, often covering three or four acres, is laid out
+and levelled, and the ground disposed in squares for the nests, as
+accurately as if a surveyor had been employed. Their marchings and
+countermarchings are said to remind the observer of the manoeuvres of
+soldiers on parade. In the midst of this apparent order there appears
+to be not very good government, for the stronger species steal the
+eggs of the weaker if they are left unguarded; and the King Penguin
+is the greatest thief of all. Three species are found in the Falkland
+Islands. Two, the _Kings_ and the _Macaroni_, deposit their eggs in
+these rookeries. The _Jackass_, which is the third, obtained its English
+name from its brayings at night. It makes its nests in burrows on downs
+and sandy plains; and Forster describes the ground as everywhere so
+much bored, that a person, in walking, often sinks up to the knees; and
+if the Penguin chance to be in her hole, she revenges herself on the
+passenger by fastening on his legs, which she bites very hard.
+
+But these rookeries are insignificant when compared with a settlement of
+King Penguins, which Mr. G. Bennett saw at the north end of Macquarrie
+Island, in the South Pacific Ocean--a colony of these birds, which
+covered some thirty or forty acres. Here, during the whole of the day
+and night, 30,000 or 40,000 Penguins are continually landing, and an
+equal number going to sea. They are ranged, when on shore, in as regular
+ranks as a regiment of soldiers, and are classed, the young birds in one
+situation, the moulting birds in another, the sitting hens in a third,
+the clean birds in a fourth, &c.; and so strictly do birds in a similar
+condition congregate, that, should a moulting bird intrude itself among
+those which are clean, it is immediately ejected from them. The females,
+if approached during incubation, move away, carrying their eggs with
+them. At this time the male bird goes to sea, and collects food for the
+female, which becomes very fat.
+
+Captain Fitzroy describes, at Noir Island, multitudes of Penguins
+swarming among the bushes and tussac-grass near the shore, for moulting
+and rearing their young. They were very valiant in self-defence, and
+ran open-mouthed by dozens at any one who invaded their territory. The
+manner of feeding their young is amusing. The old bird gets on a little
+eminence and makes a loud noise, between quacking and braying, holding
+its head up as if haranguing the Penguinnery, the young one standing
+close to it, but a little lower. The old bird then puts down its head,
+and opens its mouth widely, into which the young one thrusts its head,
+and then appears to suck from the throat of its mother; after which the
+clatter is repeated, and the young one is again fed: this continues for
+about ten minutes.
+
+Mr. Darwin, having placed himself between a Penguin, on the Falkland
+Islands, and the water, was much amused by watching its habits. "It
+was a brown bird," says Mr. Darwin, "and, till reaching the sea, it
+regularly fought and drove me backwards. Nothing less than heavy blows
+would have stopped him: every inch gained, he firmly kept standing close
+before me, erect and determined. When thus opposed, he continually
+rolled his head from side to side in a very odd manner. While at sea,
+and undisturbed, this bird's note is very deep and solemn, and is often
+heard in the night time. In diving, its little plumeless wings are used
+as fins, but on the land as front legs. When crawling (it may be said
+on four legs) through the tussacks, or on the side of a grassy cliff,
+it moved so very quickly that it might readily have been mistaken
+for a quadruped. When at sea, and fishing, it comes to the surface
+for the purpose of breathing with such a spring, and dives again so
+instantaneously, that I defy any one, at first sight, to be sure that it
+is not a fish leaping for sport."
+
+Bougainville endeavoured to bring home a Penguin alive. It became so
+tame that it followed the person who fed it; it ate bread, flesh, or
+fish; but it fell away and died. The four-footed Duck of Gesner might
+have owed its origin to an ill-preserved Penguin. The notion of its
+being four-footed might have been fortified by some voyager who had seen
+the bird making progress as Mr. Darwin has above described.
+
+Mr. Webster describes the feathers of Penguins as very different from
+those of other birds, being short, very rigid, and the roots deeply
+embedded in fat. They are, in general, flat, and bent backwards, those
+on the breast being of a satin or silky white, and those on the flippers
+so short and small as to approach the nature of scales, overlaying each
+other very closely. The skins are loaded with fat. Their feet are not
+regularly webbed, but present a broad, fleshy surface, more adapted for
+walking than swimming. Mr. Webster saw great numbers of Penguins on
+Staten Island. They are the only genus of the feathered race that are
+there, and live in the water, like seals. He saw them at the distance of
+200 miles from the land, swimming with the rapidity of the dolphin, the
+swiftest of fishes. When they come up to the surface for fresh breath,
+they make a croaking noise, dip their beaks frequently in the water, and
+play and dive about near the surface, like the bonita. Penguins have
+great powers of abstinence, and are able to live four or five months
+without food. Stones have been occasionally found in their stomachs,
+but they generally live on shrimps and crustacea, gorging themselves
+sometimes to excess. The sensations of these curious birds do not seem
+to be very acute. Sparrman stumbled over a sleeping one, and kicked it
+some yards, without disturbing its rest; and Forster left a number of
+Penguins apparently lifeless, while he went in pursuit of others, but
+they afterwards got up and marched off with their usual gravity.
+
+The bird is named from the Welsh word, _Pengwyn_. White head (_pen_,
+head; _gwyn_, white), and is thought to have been given to the
+bird by some Welsh sailors, on seeing its white breast. Davis, who
+discovered, in 1585, the straits which are named after him, was of
+Welsh parents. Might he not have given the name _Pengwyn_ to the bird?
+Swainson considers the Penguins, on the whole, as the most singular
+of all aquatic birds; and he states that they clearly point out that
+nature is about to pass from the birds to the fishes. Others consider
+Penguins more satisfactorily to represent some of the aquatic reptiles,
+especially the marine _testudinata_.
+
+
+
+
+PELICANS AND CORMORANTS.
+
+
+Pelicans are described as a large, voracious, and wandering tribe of
+birds, living for the most part on the ocean, and seldom approaching
+land but at the season of incubation. They fly with ease, and even with
+swiftness. Their bill is long, and armed at the end with an abrupt
+hook; the width of the gape is excessive; the face is generally bare
+of feathers, and the skin of the throat sometimes so extensible as to
+hang down like a bag; it will occasionally contain ten quarts. "By this
+curious organization," observes Swainson, "the Pelicans are able to
+swallow fish of a very large size; and the whole family may be termed
+_oceanic vultures_."
+
+The neighbourhood of rivers, lakes, and the sea-coast, is the haunt of
+the Pelican, and they are rarely seen more than twenty leagues from
+the land. Le Vaillant, upon visiting Dassen Island, at the entrance
+of Saldanha Bay, beheld, as he says, after wading through the surf,
+and clambering up the rocks, such a spectacle as never, perhaps,
+appeared to the eye of mortal. "All of a sudden there arose from the
+whole surface of the island an impenetrable cloud, which formed, at the
+distance of forty feet above our heads, an immense canopy, or, rather, a
+sky, composed of birds of every species and of all colours--cormorants,
+sea-gulls, sand-swallows, and, I believe, the whole winged tribe of this
+part of Africa, were here assembled." The same traveller found on the
+Klein-Brak river, whilst waiting for the ebb-tide, thousands of Pelicans
+and Flamingoes, the deep rose-colour of the one strongly contrasting
+with the white of the other.
+
+Mr. Gould says the bird is remarkable for longevity and the long period
+requisite for the completion of its plumage. The first year's dress is
+wholly brown, then fine white. The rosy tints are only acquired as the
+bird advances in age, and five years are required before the Pelican
+becomes fully mature. The expanse of wings is from twelve to thirteen
+feet. Although the bird perches on trees, it prefers rocky shores. It is
+found in the Oriental countries of Europe; and is common on the rivers
+and lakes of Hungary and Russia, and on the Danube. That the species
+exists in Asia there is no doubt. Belon, who refers to Leviticus xi.
+18, where the bird is noted as unclean, says that it is frequent on
+the lakes of Egypt and Judæa. "When he was passing the plain of Roma,
+which is only half a day's journey from Jerusalem, he saw them flying
+in pairs, like swans, as well as in a large flock. Hasselquist saw the
+Pelican at Damietta, in Egypt. "In flying, they form an acute angle,
+like the common wild geese when they migrate. They appear in some of the
+Egyptian drawings."--(_Rossellini._)
+
+Von Siebold saw the Pelican in Japan. "Pelicans," says Dr. Richardson,
+"are numerous in the interior of the fur countries, but they seldom
+come within two hundred miles of Hudson's Bay. They deposit their eggs
+usually on small rocky islands, on the brink of cascades, where they can
+scarcely be approached; but they are otherwise by no means shy birds.
+They haunt eddies under waterfalls, and devour great quantities of carp
+and other fish. When gorged with food they doze on the water, and may be
+easily captured, as they have great difficulty in taking wing at such
+times, particularly if their pouches be loaded with fish."
+
+The bird builds on rocky and desert shores: hence we read of "the
+Pelican of the wilderness," alluded to in these beautiful lines:--
+
+                    "Like the Pelicans
+    On that lone island where they built their nests,
+    Nourish'd their young, and then lay down to die."
+
+The bird lives on fish, which it darts upon from a considerable height.
+James Montgomery thus describes this mode of taking their prey:--
+
+    "Eager for food, their searching eyes they fix'd
+    On Ocean's unroll'd volume, from a height
+    That brought immensity within their scope;
+    Yet with such power of vision look'd they down,
+    As though they watch'd the shell-fish slowly gliding
+    O'er sunken rocks, or climbing trees of coral,
+    On indefatigable wing upheld,
+    Breath, pulse, existence, seem'd suspended in them;
+    They were as pictures painted on the sky;
+    Till suddenly, aslant, away they shot,
+    Like meteors chang'd from stars in gleams of lightning.
+    And struck upon the deep; where, in wild play,
+    Their quarry flounder'd, unsuspecting harm.
+    With terrible voracity they plunged
+    Their heads among the affrighted shoals, and beat
+    A tempest on the surges with their wings,
+    Till flashing clouds of foam and spray conceal'd them.
+    Nimbly they seized and secreted their prey,
+    Alive and wriggling, in th' elastic net
+    Which Nature hung beneath their grasping beaks;
+    Till, swoll'n with captures, th' unwieldy burthen
+    Clogg'd their slow flight, as heavily to land
+    These mighty hunters of the deep return'd.
+    There on the cragged cliffs they perched at ease,
+    Gorging their hapless victims one by one;
+    Then, full and weary, side by side they slept,
+    Till evening roused them to the chase again."
+
+                    _Pelican Island._
+
+Great numbers of Pelicans are killed for their pouches, which are
+converted by the native Americans into purses, &c. When carefully
+prepared, the membrane is as soft as silk, and sometimes embroidered by
+Spanish ladies for work-bags, &c. It is used in Egypt by the sailors,
+whilst attached to the two under chaps, for holding or baling water.
+
+With the Pelican has been associated an old popular error, which has not
+long disappeared from books of information: it is that of the Pelican
+feeding her young with her blood. In reference to the actual economy
+of the Pelican, we find that, in feeding the nestlings--and the male
+is said to supply the wants of the female, when sitting, in the same
+manner--the under mandible is pressed against the neck and breast, to
+assist the bird in disgorging the contents of the capacious pouch; and
+during this action the red nail of the upper mandible would appear to
+come in contact with the breast, thus laying the foundation, in all
+probability, for the fable that the Pelican nourishes her young with her
+blood, and for the attitude in which the imagination of painters has
+placed the bird in books of emblems, &c., with the blood spirting from
+the wounds made by the terminating nail of the upper mandible into the
+gaping mouths of her offspring.
+
+Sir Thomas Browne, in his "Vulgar Errors," says:--"In every place we
+meet with the picture of the Pelican opening her breast with her bill,
+and feeding her young ones with the blood distilling from her. Thus it
+is set forth, not only in common signs, but in the crest and scutcheon
+of many noble families; hath been asserted by many holy writers, and
+was an hieroglyphic of piety and pity among the Egyptians; on which
+consideration they spared them at their tables."
+
+Sir Thomas refers this popular error to an exaggerated description of
+the Pelican's fondness for her young, and is inclined to accept it as an
+emblem "in coat-armour," though with great doubt.
+
+In "A Choice of Emblems and other Devices," by Geoffrey Whitney, are
+these lines:--
+
+    "The Pelican, for to revive her younge,
+      Doth pierce her breste, and geve them of her blood.
+    Then searche your breste, and as you have with tonge,
+      With penne procede to do your countrie good:
+    Your zeal is great, your learning is profounde;
+    Then help our wantes with that you do abound."
+
+In George Wither's "Emblems," 1634, we find:--
+
+    "Our Pelican, by bleeding thus,
+    Fulfill'd the law, and cured us."
+
+Shakspeare, in "Hamlet," thus alludes to the popular notion:--
+
+    "To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms;
+    And like the kind, life-rendering Pelican,
+    Repast them with my blood."
+
+In a holier light, this symbol signifies the Saviour giving Himself up
+for the redemption of mankind. In Lord Lindsay's "Christian Art," vols.
+i., xx., xxi., we find in the text, "God the Son (is symbolized) by a
+Pelican--'I am like a Pelican of the wilderness.' (Psalm cii. 6.)" To
+which is added the following note:--"The mediæval interpretation of this
+symbol is given by Sir David Lindsay, of the Mount, Lion King, nephew of
+the poet, in his MS. 'Collectanea,' preserved in the Advocates' Library.
+Edinburgh."
+
+Sir Thomas Browne hints at the probability of the Pelican occasionally
+nibbling or biting itself on the itching part of its breast, upon
+fulness or acrimony of blood, so as to tinge the feathers in that part.
+Such an instance is recorded by Mr. G. Bennett of a Pelican living at
+Dulwich, which wounded itself just above the breast; but no such act has
+been observed among the Pelicans kept in the menagerie of the Zoological
+Society or elsewhere; and the instance just recorded was probably caused
+by local irritation.
+
+Of the same genus as the _Pelican_ is the _Cormorant_, an inhabitant
+of Europe generally and of America. It swims very deep in the water;
+even in the sea very little more than the neck and head are visible
+above the surface. It is a most expert diver, pursuing the fish which
+forms its food with great activity under water; it is said to be very
+fond of eels. It perches on trees, where it occasionally builds its
+nests, but it mostly selects rocky shores and islands. Upon the Fern
+Islands its nest is composed of a mass of sea-weed, frequently heaped
+up to the height of two feet. The species is easily domesticated; and
+its docility is shown by the use often made of Cormorants in fishing.
+Willughby, quoting Faber, says:--"They are wont in England to train up
+Cormorants to fishing. When they carry them out of the room where they
+are kept they take off their hoods, and having tied a leather thong
+round the lower part of their necks, that they may not swallow down the
+fish they catch, they throw them into the river. They presently dive
+under water, and there for a long time, with wonderful swiftness, pursue
+the fish, and when they have caught them they arise presently to the
+top of the water, and pressing the fish tightly with the bills, they
+swallow them, till each bird hath after this manner devoured five or six
+fishes. Then their keepers call them to the fish, to which they readily
+fly, and little by little, one after another, vomit up all the fish, a
+little bruised with the nip they gave them with their bills." When they
+have done fishing they loosen the string from the birds' necks, and for
+their reward they throw them part of the prey they have caught, to each,
+perchance, one or two fishes, which they catch most dexterously in their
+mouths as they are falling in the air. Pennant quotes Whitelock, who
+said that he had a cast of them, manned like hawks, and which would come
+to hand. He took much pleasure in them, and relates that the best he
+had was one presented him by Mr. Wood, master of the corvorants (as the
+older name was) to Charles I. Pennant adds, it is well known that the
+Chinese make great use of a congenerous sort in fishing, and that not
+for amusement but profit.
+
+Sir George Staunton, in his account of his Embassy to China, describes
+the place where the _Leu-tze_, or famed fishing-bird of China, is bred
+and instructed in the art and practice of supplying his owner with fish
+in great abundance. The bird, a Cormorant, is figured in Sir George's
+work, with two Chinese fishermen carrying their light boat, around the
+gunnel of which their Cormorants are perched by a pole resting on their
+shoulders between them. On a large lake are thousands of small boats
+and rafts built entirely for this species of fishery. On each boat or
+raft are ten or a dozen birds, which, on a signal from the owner, plunge
+into the water; and it is astonishing to see the enormous size of fish
+with which they return grasped between their bills. They appeared to be
+so well trained that it did not require either ring or cord about their
+throats to prevent them from swallowing any portion of their prey except
+what the master was pleased to return to them for encouragement and
+food. The boat used by these fishermen is remarkably light, and is often
+carried to the lake, together with the fishing-birds, by the men who are
+there to be supported by it.
+
+Belon gives an amusing account of the chase of this bird during calms,
+especially in the neighbourhood of Venice: the hunt is carried on in
+very light boats, each of which being rowed by five or six men, darts
+along the sea like the bolt from an arbalest, till the poor Cormorant,
+who is shot at with bows as soon as he puts his head above water, and
+cannot take flight after diving to suffocation, is taken quite tired out
+by his pursuers.
+
+Cormorant fishing has occasionally been reintroduced upon our rivers.
+In 1848 there were brought from Holland four tame Cormorants, which had
+been trained to the Chinese mode of fishing. Upon one occasion they
+fished three miles on a river, and caught a pannier-full of trout and
+eels. A ring placed round their necks to prevent them from swallowing
+large fish, but which leaves them at liberty to gulp down anything not
+exceeding the size of a gudgeon. The birds on these occasions are put
+into such parts of the river as are known to be favourite haunts of
+fish; and their activity under water in pursuit of fish can be compared
+to nothing so appropriate as a swallow darting after a fly.
+
+Blumenbach tells us the Cormorant occasionally increases in a few years
+to many thousands on coasts where it was previously unknown. It varies
+much both in size and colour. The late Joshua Brookes, the surgeon,
+possessed a Cormorant, which he presented to the Zoological Society.
+
+The Cormorant has a small sabre-shaped bone at the back of its vertex;
+which bone may serve as a lever in throwing back the head, when the
+animal tosses the fishes into the air and catches them in its open
+mouth. The same motion is, however, performed by some piscivorous birds,
+which are not provided with this particular bone.
+
+Aubrey, in his "Natural History of Wilts," quotes the following weather
+presage from May's "Virgil's Georgics":--
+
+    "The seas are ill to sailors evermore
+    When Cormorants fly crying to the shore."
+
+
+
+
+TALKING BIRDS, ETC.
+
+
+Certain birds are known to utter strange sounds, the origin of which
+has much puzzled the ornithologists. The Brown Owl which hoots, is
+hence called the Screech Owl: a musical friend of Gilbert White tried
+all the Owls that were his near neighbours with a pitch-pipe set at a
+concert pitch, and found they all hooted in B flat; and he subsequently
+found that neither Owls nor Cuckoos keep to one note. The Whidah Bird,
+one of the most costly of cage-birds, rattles its tail-feathers with a
+noise somewhat resembling that made by the rattle-snake. The Chinese
+Starling, in China called _Longuoy_, in captivity is very teachable,
+imitating words, and even whistling tunes: we all remember Sterne's
+Starling. The Piping Crow, to be seen in troops in the Blue Mountains,
+is named from its ready mimicry of other birds: its imitation of the
+chucking and cackling of a hen and the crowing of a cock, as well as
+its whistling of tunes, are described as very perfect: its native note
+is said to be a loud whistle. The Blue Jay turns his imitative faculty
+to treacherous account: he so closely imitates the St. Domingo Falcon
+as to deceive even those acquainted with both birds; and the Falcon no
+sooner appears in their neighbourhood than the jays swarm around him and
+insult him with their imitative cries; for which they frequently fall
+victims to his appetite. The Bullfinch, according to Blumenbach, learns
+to whistle tunes, to sing in parts, and even to pronounce words. The
+note of the Crowned Crane has been compared by Buffon to the hoarseness
+of a trumpet; it also clucks like a hen. Mr. Wallace, in his "Travels on
+the Amazon," saw a bird about the size and colour of the Raven, which
+uttered a loud, hoarse cry, like some deep musical instrument, whence
+its Indian name, _Ueramioube_, Trumpet Bird: it inhabits the flooded
+islands of the Rio Negro and the Solimoes, never appearing on the
+mainland.[12] The only sound produced by Storks is by snapping their
+bills. The Night Heron is called the Qua Bird; from its note _Qua_.
+
+The Bittern, the English provincial names of which are the Mire-drum,
+Bull of the Bog, &c., is so called for the bellowing or drumming noise
+or booming for which the bird is so famous. This deep note of the
+"hollow-sounding Bittern" is exerted on the ground at the breeding
+season, about February or March. As the day declines he leaves his
+haunt, and, rising spirally, soars to a great height in the twilight.
+Willughby says that it performs this last-mentioned feat in the autumn,
+"making a singular kind of noise, nothing like to lowing." Bewick
+says that it soars as above described when it changes its haunts.
+Ordinarily it flies heavily, like the Heron, uttering from time to time
+a resounding cry, not bellowing; and then Willughby, who well describes
+the bellowing noise of the breeding season, supposes it to be the Night
+Raven, at whose "deadly voice" the superstitious wayfarer of the night
+turned pale and trembled. "This, without doubt," writes Willughby, "is
+that bird our common people call the Night Raven, and have such a dread
+of, imagining its cry portends no less than their death or the death of
+some of their near relations; for it flies in the night, answers their
+description of being like a flagging collar, and hath such a kind of
+hooping cry as they talk of." Others, with some reason, consider the
+Qua Bird already mentioned (which utters a loud and most disagreeable
+noise when on the wing, conveying the idea of the agonies of a person
+attempting to vomit) to be the true Night Raven. The Bittern was well
+known to the ancients, and Aristotle mentions the fable of its origin
+from staves metamorphosed into birds. The long claw of the hind toe is
+much prized as a toothpick, and in the olden times it was thought to
+have the property of preserving the teeth.
+
+The Greater-billed Butcher Bird, from New Holland, has extraordinary
+powers of voice: it is trained for catching small birds, and it is said
+to imitate the notes of some other birds by way of decoying them to
+their destruction.
+
+The mere imitative sounds of Parrots are of little interest compared
+with the instances of instinct, apparently allied to reason, which are
+related of individuals. Of this tribe the distinguishing characteristics
+are a hooked bill, the upper mandible of which is moveable as well as
+the lower, and not in one piece with the skull, as in most other birds,
+but joined to the head by a strong membrane, with which the bird lifts
+it or lets it fall at pleasure. The bill is also round on the outside
+and hollow within, and has, in some degree, the capacity of a mouth,
+allowing the tongue, which is thick and fleshy, to play freely; while
+the sound, striking against the circular border of the lower mandible,
+reflects it like a palate: hence the animal does not utter a whistling
+sound, but a full articulation. The tongue, which modulates all sounds,
+is proportionally larger than in man.
+
+The Wild Swan has a very loud call, and utters a melancholy cry when one
+of the flock is killed; hence it was said by the poets to sing its own
+dying dirge. Such was the popular belief in olden times; and, looking to
+the anatomical characteristics of the species, it was, in some degree,
+supported by the more inflated wind-pipe of the wild when compared
+with that of the tame species. The _Song of the Swan_ is, however,
+irreconcileable with sober belief, the only noise of the Wild Swan of
+our times being unmelodious, and an unpleasing monotony.
+
+The Laughing Goose is named from its note having some resemblance to the
+laugh of man; and not, as Wilson supposes, from the grinning appearance
+of its mandibles. The Indians imitate its cry by moving the hand quickly
+against the lips, whilst they repeat the syllable _wah_.
+
+The Cuckoo may be said to have done much for musical science, because
+from that bird has been derived the _minor scale_, the origin of which
+has puzzled so many; the Cuckoo's couplet being the _minor third_ sung
+downwards.
+
+The Germans are the finest appreciators of the Nightingale; and it is a
+fact, that when the Prussian authorities, under pecuniary pressure, were
+about to cut down certain trees near Cologne, which were frequented by
+Nightingales, the alarmed citizens purchased the trees in order to save
+the birds and keep their music. Yet one would think the music hardly
+worth having, if it really sounded as it looks upon paper, transcribed
+thus by Bechstein, from whom it is quoted by Broderip:--
+
+    Zozozozozozozozozozozozo zirrhading
+    Hezezezezezezezezezezezezezezeze cowar ho dze hoi
+    Higaigaigaigaigaigaigaigaigaigai, guaiagai coricor dzio dzio pi.[13]
+
+M. Wichterich, of Bonn, remarks:--"It is a vulgar error to suppose that
+the song of the Nightingale is melancholy, and that it only sings by
+night. There are two varieties of the Nightingale; one which sings both
+in the night and the day, and one which sings in the day only."
+
+In the year 1858, Mr. Leigh Sotheby, in a letter to Dr. Gray, of the
+British Museum, described a marvellous little specimen of the feathered
+tribe--a Talking Canary. Its parents had previously and successfully
+reared many young ones, but three years before they hatched only _one_
+out of four eggs, the which they immediately neglected, by commencing
+the rebuilding of a nest on the top of it. Upon this discovery, the
+unfledged and forsaken bird, all but dead, was taken away and placed in
+flannel by the fire, when, after much attention, it was restored, and
+then brought up by hand. Thus treated, and away from all other birds, it
+became familiarised only with those who fed it; consequently, its first
+singing notes were of a character totally different to those usual with
+the Canary.
+
+Constantly being talked to, the bird, when about three months old,
+astonished its mistress by repeating the endearing terms used in talking
+to it, such as "Kissie, kissie," with its significant sounds. This
+went on, and from time to time the little bird repeated other words;
+and then, for hours together, except during the moulting season, it
+astonished by _ringing the changes_, according to its own fancy, and as
+plainly as any human voice could articulate them, on the several words,
+"Dear sweet Titchie" (its name), "kiss Minnie," "Kiss me, then, dear
+Minnie." "Sweet pretty little Titchie," "Kissie, kissie, kissie." "Dear
+Titchie," "Titchie wee, gee, gee, gee, Titchie. Titchie."
+
+The usual singing-notes of the bird were more of the character of the
+Nightingale, mingled occasionally with the sound of the dog-whistle used
+about the house. It is hardly necessary to add, that the bird was by
+nature remarkably tame.
+
+In 1839, a Canary-bird, capable of distinct articulation, was exhibited
+in Regent-street. The following were some of its sentences:--"Sweet
+pretty dear," "Sweet pretty dear Dicky," "Mary," "Sweet pretty little
+Dicky dear;" and often in the course of the day, "Sweet pretty Queen."
+The bird also imitated the jarring of a wire, the ringing of a bell; it
+was three years old, and was reared by a lady who never allowed it to
+be in the company of other birds. This Canary died in October, 1839; it
+was, it is believed, the only other talking instance publicly known.
+
+We read of some experiments made in the rearing of birds at Kendal
+by a bird-fancier, the result of which was, that upwards of 20
+birds--Canaries. Greenfinches, Linnets, Chaffinches, Titlarks,
+and Whitethroats--were reared in one cage by a pair of Canaries.
+The experiments were continued until the extraordinary number of
+thirty-eight birds had been brought up within two months by the
+Canaries. It may be worth while to enumerate them.
+
+In the month of June the Canaries--the male green, and the female
+piebald--were caged for the purpose of breeding. The female laid five
+eggs, and while she was sitting a Greenfinch egg was introduced into
+the nest. All of these were hatched, and the day after incubation was
+completed five Grey Linnets, also newly hatched, were put into the cage,
+in their own nest. Next day a newly-hatched nest of four Chaffinches was
+also introduced; and afterwards five different nests, consisting of six
+Titlarks, six Whitethroats, three Skylarks, three Winchars, and three
+Blackcaps. While rearing the last of these nests, the female Canary
+again laid and hatched four eggs, thus making thirty-eight young birds
+brought up by the pair of Canaries. It will be noticed that most of
+these birds are soft-billed, whose natural food is small insects; but
+they took quite kindly to the seeds upon which they were fed by their
+step-parents. The pair of Canaries fed at one time twenty-one young
+birds, and never had less than sixteen making demands upon their care;
+and while the female was hatching her second nest she continued to feed
+the birds that occupied the other nest.
+
+Of the origin of the _neighing sound_ which accompanies the single
+Snipe's play-flight during pairing-time, opinions are various. Bechstein
+thought it was produced by means of the beak; Naumann and others, again,
+that it originated in powerful strokes of the wing. Pratt, in Hanover,
+observing that the bird makes heard its well-known song or cry, which he
+expresses with the words, "gick jack, gick jack!" at the same time with
+the _neighing sound_, it seemed to be settled that the latter is not
+produced through the throat. In the meantime, M. Meves, of Stockholm,
+remarked with surprise, that the humming sound could never be observed
+whilst the bird was flying upwards, at which time the tail is closed;
+but only when it was casting itself downwards in a slanting direction,
+with the tail strongly spread out.
+
+M. Meves has written for the Zoological Society a paper upon the origin
+of this sound, which all the field-naturalists and sportsmen of England
+and other countries had, for the previous century, been trying to make
+out, but had failed to discover. Of this paper the following is an
+abstract:--
+
+     The peculiar form of the tail-feathers in some foreign
+     species nearly allied to our Snipe encouraged the notion that the
+     tail conduced to the production of the sound. M. Meves found the
+     tail-feathers of our common Snipe, in the first feather especially,
+     very peculiarly constructed; the shaft uncommonly stiff and
+     sabre-shaped; the rays of the web strongly bound together and very
+     long, the longest reaching nearly three-fourths of the whole length
+     of the web, these rays lying along or spanning from end to end of
+     the curve of the shaft, _like the strings of a musical instrument_.
+     If you blow from the outer side upon the broad web, it comes into
+     vibration, and a sound is heard, which, though fainter, resembles
+     very closely the well-known _neighing_.
+
+     But to convince yourself fully that it is the first feather
+     which produces the peculiar sound, it is only necessary carefully
+     to pluck out such an one, to fasten its shaft with fine thread to
+     a piece of steel wire a tenth of an inch in diameter, and a foot
+     long, and then to fix this at the end of a four-foot stick. If
+     now you draw the feather, with this outer side forward, sharply
+     through the air, at the same time making some short movements or
+     shakings of the arm, so as to represent the shivering motion of the
+     wings during flight, you produce the neighing sound with the most
+     astonishing exactness.
+
+     If you wish to hear the humming of both feathers at once, as
+     must be the case from the flying bird, this also can be managed by
+     a simple contrivance. Take a small stick, and fasten at the side of
+     the smaller end a piece of burnt steel wire in the form of a fork;
+     bind to each point a side tail-feather; bend the wire so that the
+     feathers receive the same direction which they do in the spreading
+     of the tail as the bird sinks itself in flight; and then, with this
+     apparatus, draw the feathers through the air as before. Such a
+     sound, but in another tone, is produced when we experiment with the
+     tail-feathers of other kinds of Snipe.
+
+     Since in both sexes these feathers have the same form, it is
+     clear that both can produce the same humming noise; but as the
+     feathers of the hen are generally less than those of the cock-bird,
+     the noise made by them is not so deep as in the other case.
+
+     Besides the significance which these tail-feathers have as a
+     kind of musical instrument, their form may give a weighty character
+     in the determination of a species standing very near one another,
+     which have been looked upon as varieties.
+
+This interesting discovery was first announced by M. Meves in an account
+of the birds observed by himself during a visit to the Island of
+Gottland, in the summer of the year 1856, which narrative was published
+at Stockholm in the following winter. In the succeeding summer, M. Meves
+showed his experiments to Mr. Wolley, whose services to Ornithology
+we have already noticed. The mysterious noise of the wilderness was
+reproduced in a little room in the middle of Stockholm: first, the deep
+bleat, now shown to proceed from the male Snipe, and then the fainter
+bleat of the female, both most strikingly true to nature, neither
+producible with any other feathers than the outer ones of the tail.
+
+Mr. Wolley inquired of Mr. Meves how, issuing forth from the town on
+a summer ramble, he came to discover what had puzzled the wits and
+strained the eyes of so many observers. He freely explained how, in a
+number of "Naumannia," an accidental misprint of the word representing
+tail-feathers instead of wing-feathers,--a mistake which another author
+ridiculed--first led him to think on the subject. He subsequently
+examined in the Museum at Stockholm the tail-feathers of various species
+of Snipe, remarked their structure, and reasoned upon it. Then he
+blew upon them, and fixed them on levers that he might wave them with
+greater force through the air; and at the same time he made more careful
+observation than he had hitherto done in the living birds. In short,
+in him the obscure hint was thrown upon fruitful ground, whilst in a
+hundred other minds it had failed to come to light.
+
+Dr. Walsh saw at Constantinople a Woodpecker, about the size of a
+Thrush, which was very active in devouring flies, and tapped woodwork
+with his bill with a noise _as loud as that of a hammer_, to disturb the
+insects concealed therein, so as to seize upon them when they appeared.
+
+Among remarkable bird services should not be forgotten those of the
+Trochilos to the Crocodile. "When the Crocodile," says Herodotus, "feeds
+in the Nile, the inside of his mouth is always covered with _bdella_
+(a term which the translators have rendered by that of _leech_). All
+birds, _except one_, fly from the Crocodile; but this one bird, the
+_Trochilos_, on the contrary, flies towards him with the greatest
+eagerness, and renders him a very great service; for every time that the
+Crocodile comes to the land to sleep, and when he lies stretched out
+with his jaws open, the Trochilos enters and establishes himself in his
+mouth, and frees him from the bdella which he finds there. The Crocodile
+is grateful, and never does any harm to the little bird who performs for
+him this office."
+
+This passage was long looked upon as a pleasant story, and nothing more;
+until M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, during his long residence in Egypt,
+ascertained the story of Herodotus to be correct in substance, but
+inexact in details. It is perfectly true that a little bird does exist,
+which flies incessantly from place to place, searching everywhere, even
+in the Crocodile's mouth, for the insects which form the principal
+part of its nourishment. This bird is seen everywhere on the banks of
+the Nile, and M. Geoffroy has proved it to be of a species already
+described by Hasselquist, and very like the small winged Plover. If
+the Trochilos be in reality the little Plover, the bdella cannot be
+leeches, (which do not exist in the running waters of the Nile) but the
+small insects known as _gnats_ in Europe. Myriads of these insects dance
+upon the Nile: they attack the Crocodile upon the inner surface of his
+palate, and sting the orifice of the glands, which are numerous in the
+Crocodile's mouth. Then the little Plover, who follows him everywhere,
+delivers him from these troublesome enemies; and that without any danger
+to himself, for the Crocodile is always careful, when he is going to
+shut his mouth, to make some motion which warns the little bird to fly
+away. At St. Domingo there is a Crocodile which very nearly resembles
+that of Egypt. This Crocodile is attacked by gnats, from which he would
+have no means of delivering himself (his tongue, like that of the
+Crocodile, being fixed) if a bird of a particular species did not give
+him the same assistance that the Crocodile of the Nile receives from
+the little Plover. These facts explain the passage in Herodotus, and
+demonstrate that the animal, there called bdella, is not a leech, but a
+flying insect similar to our gnat.
+
+Exemplifications of instinct, intelligence, and reason in Birds are by
+no means rare, but this distinction must be made: instinctive actions
+are dependent on the nerves, intelligence on the brain; but that which
+constitutes peculiar qualities of the mind in man has no material
+organ. The Rev. Mr. Statham has referred to the theory of the facial
+angle as indicative of the amount of sagacity observable in the animal
+race, but has expressed his opinion that the theory is utterly at
+fault in the case of Birds; many of these having a very acute facial
+angle being considerably more intelligent than others having scarcely
+any facial angle at all. Size also seems to present another anomaly
+between the two races of Beasts and Birds; for while the Elephant and
+the Horse are among the most distinguished of quadrupeds for sagacity
+and instinct, the larger Birds seem scarcely comparable to the smaller
+ones in the possession of these attributes. The writer instances this
+by comparing the Ostrich and the Goose with the Wren, the Robin, the
+Canary, the Pigeon, and the Crow; and amusingly alludes to the holding
+of parliaments or convocations of birds of the last species, while the
+Ostrich is characterised in Scripture as the type of folly.
+
+The author then refers to the poisoning of two young Blackbirds by the
+parent birds, when they found that they could neither liberate them
+nor permanently share their captivity. The two fledglings had been
+taken from a Blackbirds' nest in Surrey-square, and had been placed in
+a room looking over a garden, in a wicker cage. For some time the old
+birds attended to their wants, visited them regularly, and fed them
+with appropriate food; but, at last, getting wearied of the task, or
+despairing of effecting their liberation, they appear to have poisoned
+them. They were both found suddenly dead one morning, shortly after
+having been seen in good health; and on opening their bodies a small
+leaf, supposed to be that of _Solanum Nigrum_, was found in the stomach
+of each. The old birds immediately deserted the spot, as though aware of
+the nefarious deed befitting their name.
+
+As an exemplification of instinct Dr. Horner states that Rooks built
+on the Infirmary trees at Hull, but never over the street. One year,
+however, a young couple ventured to build here: for eight mornings in
+succession the old Rooks proceeded to destroy the nest, when at last the
+young ones chose a more fitting place.
+
+Mr. A. Strickland, having referred to the tendency of birds to build
+their nests of materials of a colour resembling that around such nests,
+relates an instance in which the Fly-catcher built in a red brick wall,
+and used for the nest mahogany shavings. Referring to the meeting of
+Rooks for judicial purposes. Mr. Strickland states that he once saw a
+Rook tried in this way, and ultimately killed by the rest.
+
+
+SONGS OF BIRDS AND SEASONS OF THE DAY.
+
+Although nearly half a century has elapsed since the following
+observations were communicated to the Royal Society by Dr. Jenner, their
+expressive character is as charming as ever, and their accuracy as
+valuable:--
+
+     "There is a beautiful propriety in the order in which Singing
+     Birds fill up the day with their pleasing harmony. The accordance
+     between their songs, and the aspect of nature at the successive
+     periods of the day at which they sing, is so remarkable that one
+     cannot but suppose it to be the result of benevolent design.
+
+     "From the _Robin_ (not the _Lark_, as has been generally
+     imagined), as soon as twilight has drawn its imperceptible line
+     between night and day, begins his artless song. How sweetly does
+     this harmonize with the soft dawning of the day! He goes on till
+     the twinkling sunbeams begin to tell him that his notes no longer
+     accord with the rising sun. Up starts the _Lark_, and with him a
+     variety of sprightly songsters, whose lively notes are in perfect
+     correspondence with the gaiety of the morning. The general warbling
+     continues, with now and then an interruption by the transient croak
+     of the _Raven_, the scream of the _Jay_, or the pert chattering of
+     the _Daw_. The _Nightingale_, unwearied by the vocal exertions of
+     the night, joins his inferiors in sound in the general harmony. The
+     _Thrush_ is wisely placed on the summit of some lofty tree, that
+     its piercing notes may be softened by distance before it reaches
+     the ear, while the mellow _Blackbird_ seeks the lower branches.
+
+     "Should the sun, having been eclipsed by a cloud, shine forth
+     with fresh effulgence, how frequently we see the _Goldfinch_ perch
+     on some blossomed bough, and hear his song poured forth in a strain
+     peculiarly energetic; while the sun, full shining on his beautiful
+     plumes, displays his golden wings and crimson crest to charming
+     advantage. Indeed, a burst of sunshine in a cloudy day, or after a
+     heavy shower, seems always to wake up a new gladness in the little
+     musicians, and invite them to an answering burst of minstrelsy.
+
+     "As evening advances, the performers gradually retire, and the
+     concert softly dies away. At sunset the _Robin_ again sends up his
+     twilight song, till the still more serene hour of night sends him
+     to his bower of rest. And now, in unison with the darkened earth
+     and sky, no sooner is the voice of the _Robin_ hushed, than the
+     _Owl_ sends forth his slow and solemn tones, well adapted to the
+     serious hour."
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[12] The popular name of this bird is the _Umbrella Bird_. On its head
+it bears a crest, different from that of any other bird. It is formed
+of feathers more than two inches long, very thickly set, and with hairy
+plumes curving over at the end. These can be laid back so as to be
+hardly visible, or can be erected and spread out on every side, forming
+a dome completely covering the head, and even reaching beyond the point
+of the beak; the individual feathers then stand out something like the
+down-bearing seeds of the dandelion. Besides this, there is another
+ornamental appendage on the breast, formed by a fleshy tubercle, as
+thick as a quill and an inch and a-half long, which hangs down from
+the neck, and is thickly covered with glossy feathers, forming a large
+pendent plume or tassel. This, also, the bird can either press to its
+breast, so as to be scarcely visible, or can swell out so as almost to
+conceal the forepart of its body.
+
+[13] "Athenæum," No. 1467.
+
+
+
+
+OWLS.
+
+
+These nocturnal birds of prey have large heads and great projecting
+eyes, directing forwards, and surrounded with a circle of loose and
+delicate feathers, more or less developed, according to the nocturnal or
+comparatively diurnal habits of the species. The position of the eyes,
+giving a particular fulness and breadth to the head, has gained for the
+Owl the intellectual character so universally awarded to it. The concave
+facial disc of feathers with which they are surrounded materially aids
+vision by concentrating the rays of light to an intensity better suited
+to the opacity of the medium in which power is required to be exercised.
+"They may be compared," says Mr. Yarrell, "to a person near-sighted,
+who sees objects with superior magnitude and brilliancy when within the
+prescribed limits of his natural powers of vision, from the increased
+angle these objects subtend." Their beaks are completely curved,
+or raptorial; they have the power of turning the outer toe either
+backwards or forwards; they fly weakly, and near the ground; but, from
+their soft plumage, stealthily, stretching out their hind legs that they
+may balance their large and heavy heads. Their sense of hearing is very
+acute: they not only look, but listen for prey.
+
+The Owl is a bird of mystery and gloom, and a special favourite with
+plaintive poets. We find him with Ariel:--
+
+    "There I couch when Owls do cry."
+
+He figures in the nursery rhyme of "Cock Robin." In reply to "Who dug
+his grave?"--
+
+    "I, says the Owl, with my little shovel--
+        I dug his grave."
+
+He hoots over graves, and his dismal note adds to the terror of
+darkness:--
+
+    "'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,
+    And the Owls have awakened the crowing cock;
+          Tu-whit! tu-whoo!
+    And hark again the crowing cock,
+          How drowsily it crew.
+
+    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+    "When blood is nipt, and ways be foul,
+    Then nightly sings the staring Owl,
+          Tu-whoo!
+    Tu-whit! tu-whoo! _a merry note_,
+    While greasy Joan doth keel the pot!"
+
+Titania sings of
+
+    "The clamorous Owl, that nightly hoots and wonders
+    At our quaint spirits."
+
+Bishop Hall has this "Occasional Meditation" upon the sight of an Owl in
+the twilight:--"What a strange melancholic life doth this creature lead;
+to hide her head all the day long in an ivy-bush, and at night, when all
+other birds are at rest, to fly abroad and vent her harsh notes. I know
+not why the ancients have _sacred_ this bird to wisdom, except it be for
+her safe closeness and singular perspicuity; that when other domestrial
+and airy creatures are blind, she only hath insured light to discern the
+least objects for her own advantage." We may here note that Linnæus,
+with many other naturalists and antiquaries, have supposed the Horned
+Owl to have been the bird of Minerva; but Blumenbach has shown, from
+the ancient works of Grecian art, that it was not this, but rather some
+smooth-headed species, probably the _Passerina_, or Little Owl.
+
+The divine has, in the above passage, overstated the melancholy of the
+Owl; as has also the poet, who sings:--
+
+        "From yonder ivy-mantled tower
+    The moping Owl does to the moon complain
+    Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
+    Molest her ancient solitary reign."
+
+Shakspeare more accurately terms her "the mousing Owl," for her nights
+are spent in barns, or in hunting and devouring sparrows in the
+churchyard elms. "Moping, indeed!" says a pleasing observer. "So far
+from this, she is a sprightly, active ranger of the night, who had as
+lief sit on a grave as a rose-bush; who is as valiant a hunter as
+Nimroud, chasing all sorts of game, from the dormouse to the hare and
+the young lamb, and devouring them, while her mate hoots to her from
+some picturesque ruin, and invites her, when supper is over, to return
+to him and her babes."
+
+But the tricks of the Owl by night render her the terror of all other
+birds, great and small. In Northern Italy, persons in rustic districts
+which are well wooded, catch and tame an Owl, put a light chain upon her
+legs, and then place her on a small cross-bar on the top of a high pole,
+which is fixed in the earth. Half-blinded by the light, the defenceless
+captive has to endure patiently the jeers and insults of the dastardly
+tribes from the surrounding groves and thickets, who issue in clouds
+to scream, chirp, and flit about their enemy. Some, trusting to the
+swiftness of their wings, sweep close by, and peck at her feathers as
+they pass, and are sometimes punished by the Owl with her formidable
+beak for their audacity. Meanwhile, from darkened windows, sportsmen,
+with fowling-pieces well charged with shot, fire at the hosts of birds,
+wheeling, shrieking, screaming, and thickening around the Owl. All the
+guns are fired at once, and the grass is strewn for many yards round
+with the slain; while the Owl, whom they have been careful not to hit,
+utters a joyous whoo! whoo! at the fate of her persecutors.
+
+Major Head thus describes the _Biscacho_, or Coquimbo, a curious species
+of Owl, found all over the pampas of South America:--"Like rabbits,
+they live in holes, which are in groups in every direction. These
+animals are never seen in the day, but as soon as the lower limb of
+the sun reaches the horizon, they are seen issuing from the holes. The
+Biscachos, when full-grown, are nearly as big as badgers, but their
+head resembles a rabbit's, except that they have large bushy whiskers.
+In the evening they sit outside the holes, and they all appear to be
+moralizing. They are the most serious-looking animals I ever saw;
+and even the young ones are grey-headed, wear moustachios, and look
+thoughtful and grave. In the daytime their holes are guarded by two
+little owls, which are never an instant away from their posts. As one
+gallops by these owls, they always stand looking at the stranger, and
+then at each other, moving their old-fashioned heads in a manner which
+is quite ridiculous, until one rushes by them, when they get the better
+of their dignified looks, and they both run into the Biscacho's hole."
+
+Of all birds of prey, Owls are the most useful to man, by protecting his
+corn-fields, or granaried provision, from mice and numberless vermin.
+Yet, prejudice has perverted these birds into objects of superstition
+and consequent hate. The kind-hearted Mr. Waterton says:--"I wish that
+any little thing I could write or say might cause this bird to stand
+better with the world at large than it has hitherto done; but I have
+slender hope on this score, because old and deep-rooted prejudices are
+seldom overcome; and when I look back into annals of remote antiquity,
+I see too clearly that defamation has done its worst to ruin the whole
+family, in all its branches, of this poor, harmless, useful friend of
+mine."
+
+The Barn Owl is common throughout Europe, known in Tartary, and rare in
+the United States of America. In England it is called the Barn Owl, the
+Church Owl, Gillihowlet, and Screech Owl; the last name is improperly
+applied, as it is believed not to hoot, though Sir William Jardine
+asserts that he has shot it in the act of hooting. To the screech
+superstition has annexed ideas of fatal portent; "but," says Charlotte
+Smith, "it has, of course, no more foreknowledge of approaching evil to
+man than the Lark: its cry is a signal to its absent mate."
+
+"If," says Mr. Waterton, "this useful bird caught its food by day
+instead of hunting for it by night, mankind would have ocular
+demonstration of its utility in thinning the country of mice; and it
+would be protected and encouraged everywhere. It would be with us what
+the Ibis was with the Egyptians. When it has young, it will bring a
+mouse to the nest every twelve or fifteen minutes." Mr. Waterton saw his
+Barn Owl fly away with a rat which he had just shot; he also saw her
+drop perpendicularly into the water, and presently rise out of it with a
+fish in her claws, which she took to her nest.
+
+Birds and quadrupeds, and even fish, are the food of Owls, according to
+the size of the species. Hares, partridges, grouse, and even the turkey,
+are attacked by the larger Horned Owls of Europe and America; while
+mice, shrews, small birds, and crabs suffice for the inferior strength
+of the smaller Owls. Mr. Yarrell states that the Short-eared Owl is the
+only bird of prey in which he ever found the remains of a bat.
+
+William Bullock reports that a large Snowy Owl, wounded on the Isle of
+Baltoc, disgorged a young rabbit; and that one in his possession had in
+its stomach a sandpiper with its feathers entire. It preys on lemmings,
+hares, and birds, particularly the willow-grouse and ptarmigan. It is
+a dexterous fisher, grasping the fish with an instantaneous stroke of
+the foot as it sails along near the surface of the water, or sits on
+a stone in a shallow stream. It has been seen on the wing pursuing an
+American hare, making repeated strokes at the animal with its foot. In
+winter, when this Owl is fat, the Indians and white residents in the Fur
+Countries esteem it to be good eating; its flesh is delicately white.
+Small snakes are the common prey of this Owl during the daytime. And to
+show on what various kinds of food Owls subsist, Mr. Darwin states that
+a species that was killed among the islets of the Chonos Archipelago had
+its stomach full of good-sized crabs. Such are a few of the facts which
+attest the almost omnivorous appetite of the Owl.
+
+The flight of the Snowy Owl is stronger and swifter than any other
+bird of the family; its ears are very large; its voice (says Pennant)
+adds horror even to the regions of Greenland by its hideous cries,
+resembling those of a man in deep distress. The eye is very curious,
+being immovably fixed in its socket, so that the bird, to view different
+objects, must always turn its head; and so excellently is the neck
+adapted to this purpose, that it can with ease turn the head round
+in almost a complete circle, without moving the body. The Virginian
+Eagle-Owl, amidst the forests of Indiana, utters a loud and sudden
+_Wough O! wough O!_ sufficient to alarm a whole garrison; another of its
+nocturnal cries resembles the half-suppressed screams of a person being
+suffocated or throttled.
+
+The Javanese Owl is found in the closest forests, and occasionally near
+villages and dwellings. Dr. Horsfield says:--"It is not, however, a
+favourite with the natives; various superstitious notions are also in
+Java associated with its visits; and it is considered in many parts of
+the island as portending evil." One of this species never visits the
+villages, but resides in the dense forests, which are the usual resort
+of the tiger. The natives even assert that the _Wowo-wiwi_ approaches
+the animal with the same familiarity with which the jallack approaches
+the buffalo, and that it has no dread to alight on the tiger's back. Dr.
+Horsfield adds, that it has never been seen in confinement.
+
+The Boobook Owl has the native name of Buck-buck, and it may be heard
+in Australia every night during winter, uttering a cry corresponding
+with that word. The note is somewhat similar to that of the European
+_Cuckoo_, and the colonists have given it that name. The lower order of
+settlers in New South Wales are led away by the idea that everything
+is the reverse in that country to what it is in England; and the
+_Cuckoo_, as they call this bird, singing by night, is one of the
+instances which they point out.
+
+Tame Owls are described as nearly as playful, and quite as affectionate,
+as kittens; they will perch upon your wrist, touch your lips with their
+beak, and hoot to order; and they are less inclined to leave their
+friends than other tame birds. A writer in "Chambers's Journal" relates,
+that a friend lost his favourite Owl, which flew away, and was absent
+many days. In time, however, he came back, and resumed his habits and
+duties, which, for a while, went on uninterruptedly. At length, one
+severe autumn, he disappeared; weeks, months passed, and he returned
+not. One snowy night, however, as his master sat by the blazing fire,
+some heavy thing came bump against the shutters. "Whoo, whoo, whoo."
+The window was opened, and in flew the Owl, shaking the thick snow from
+his wings, and settling lovingly on his master's wrist, the bird's eyes
+dilating with delight.
+
+The Owls at Arundel Castle have a sort of historic interest; they
+are kept within the circuit of the keep-tower, the most ancient and
+picturesque portion of the castle. Among the Australian Owls here we
+read of one larger than a turkey, measuring four feet across the wings
+when expanded. The Owl named "Lord Thurlow," from his resemblance to
+that Judge, is a striking specimen.
+
+The accompanying illustration shows a fine specimen of Fraser's
+Eagle-Owl, brought from Fernando Po. It is the size of an ordinary
+fowl; colour, very dark reddish-brown mottling; back and wings passing
+through all shades of the same colour into nearly white on the under
+parts, where the feathers are barred; bill, pale greenish; eyes, nearly
+black.
+
+[Illustration: FRASER'S EAGLE-OWL, FROM FERNANDO PO.]
+
+Among the Owls but recently described is the Masked Owl of New Holland,
+named from the markings of the disk of the face, somewhat grotesque;
+the colours are brown variegated with white. A fine specimen of the
+Abyssinian Owl is possessed by Mr. R. Good, of Yeovil: the bird,
+although quite young, is of immense size.
+
+Lastly, the Owl is thought to be of the same sympathy or kindred likings
+as the Cat: a young Owl will feed well, and thrive upon fish. Cats, too,
+it is well known, like fish. Both the Cat and the Owl, too, feed upon
+mice. The sight of Owls, also, similar to that of Cats, appears to serve
+them best in the dark.
+
+
+
+
+WEATHER-WISE ANIMALS.
+
+
+Whatever may be the worth of weather prognostications, it is from the
+animal kingdom that we obtain the majority. How these creatures become
+so acutely sensible of the approach of particular kinds of weather is
+not at present well understood. That in many cases the appearance of
+the heavens is not the source from which their information is derived
+is proved by the signs of uneasiness frequently expressed by them when,
+as yet, the most attentive observer can detect no signs of change,
+and even when they are placed in such circumstances as preclude the
+possibility of any instruction from this quarter. For instance. Dogs,
+closely confined in a room, often become very drowsy and stupid before
+rain; and a leech, confined in a glass of water, has been found, by
+its rapid motions or its quiescence, to indicate the approach of wet
+or the return of fair weather. Probably the altered condition of the
+atmosphere with regard to its electricity, which generally accompanies
+change of weather, may so affect their constitution as to excite in
+them pleasurable or uneasy sensations; though man is far from insensible
+to atmospheric changes, as the feelings of utter listlessness which
+many persons experience before rain, and the aggravated severity of
+toothache, headache, and rheumatism abundantly testify. The Cat licking
+itself is a special influence of the above electric influence, which
+denotes the approach of rain.
+
+Birds, as "denizens of the air," are the surest indicators of weather
+changes. Thus, when swallows fly high, fine weather is to be expected
+or continued; but when they fly low, or close to the ground, rain is
+almost surely approaching; for swallows follow the flies and gnats,
+which delight in warm strata of air. Now, as warm air is lighter, and
+usually moister than cold air, when the warm strata of air are high
+there is less chance of moisture being thrown down from them by their
+mixture with cold air; but when the warm and moist air is close to the
+surface, it is almost certain that, as the cold air flows down into it,
+a deposition of water will take place.
+
+When Seagulls assemble on the land, very stormy and rainy weather is
+approaching. The cause of this migration to the land is the security of
+these birds finding food; and they may be observed at this time feeding
+greedily on the earth-worms and larvæ driven out of the ground by severe
+floods; whilst the fish on which they prey in fine weather in the sea,
+leave the surface, and go deeper in storms. The search after food is
+the principal cause why animals change their places. The different
+tribes of the wading birds always migrate when rain is about to take
+place.
+
+There is a bird which takes its name from its apparent agency in
+tempests. Such is the Stormy Petrel, which name Hawkesworth, in his
+"Voyages," mentions the sailors give to the bird, but explains no
+further. Navigators meet with the Little Petrel, or Storm Finch, in
+every part of the ocean, diving, running on foot, or skimming over the
+highest waves. It seems to foresee the coming storm long ere the seamen
+can discover any signs of its approach. The Petrels make this known by
+congregating together under the wake of the vessel, as if to shelter
+themselves, and they thus warn the mariner of the coming danger. At
+night they set up a piercing cry. This usefulness of the bird to the
+sailor is the obvious cause of the latter having such an objection to
+their being killed.
+
+Mr. Knapp, the naturalist, thus pictures gulls, describing the Petrel's
+action:--"They seem to repose in a common breeze, but upon the approach
+or during the continuation of a gale, they surround the ship, and catch
+up the small animals which the agitated ocean brings near the surface,
+or any food that may be dropped from the vessel. Whisking like an arrow
+through the deep valleys of the abyss, and darting away over the foaming
+crest of some mountain-wave, they attend the labouring barque in all
+her perilous course. When the storm subsides they retire to rest, and
+are seen no more."
+
+Our sailors have, from very early times, called these birds "Mother
+Carey's Chickens," originally bestowed on them, Mr. Yarrell tells us, by
+Captain Cartaret's sailors, probably from some celebrated ideal hag of
+the above name. Mr. Yarrell adds:--"As these birds are supposed to be
+seen only before stormy weather, they are not welcome visitors," a view
+at variance with that already suggested.
+
+The Editor of "Notes and Queries" considers the Petrels to have been
+called _chickens_ from their diminutive size. The largest sort, "the
+Giant Petrel," is "Mother Carey's _Goose_;" its length is forty
+inches, and it expands seven feet. The common kind are about the size
+of a swallow, and weigh something over an ounce; length, six inches;
+expansion, thirteen inches; these are Mother Carey's _chickens_
+(_Latham_). It should be borne in mind that our language does not
+restrict the term chickens to young birds of the gallinaceous class.
+
+The Missel-bird is another bird of this kind: in Hampshire and Sussex
+it is called the _Storm Cock_, because it sings early in the spring, in
+blowing, showery weather.
+
+Petrels, by the way, are used by the inhabitants of the Faroe Islands as
+lamps: they pass a wick through their bodies which, when lighted, burns
+a long time from the quantity of fat they contain.
+
+The Fulmar Petrel, in Boothia, follows the whale-ships, availing itself
+of the labours of the fishermen by feeding on the carcases of the
+whales when stripped of their blubber. In return the bird is exceedingly
+useful to the whalers by guiding them to the places where whales are
+most numerous, and crowding to the spots where they first appear on the
+surface of the water.
+
+Wild Geese and Ducks are unquestionably weather-wise, for their early
+arrival from the north in the winter portends that a severe season is
+approaching; because their early appearance is most likely caused by
+severe frost having already set in at their usual summer residence. The
+Rev. F. O. Morris, the well-known writer on natural history, records
+from Nunburnholme, Yorkshire. December 5, 1864:--"This season, for the
+first time I have lived here, I have missed seeing the flocks of Wild
+Geese which in the autumnal months have heretofore wended their way
+overhead, year after year, as regularly as the dusk of the evening came
+on. Almost to the minute, and almost in the same exact course, they
+have flown over aloft from the feeding-places on the Wolds to their
+resting-places for the night; some, perhaps, to extensive commons, while
+others have turned off to the mud-banks of the Humber, whence they have
+returned with equal regularity in the morning.
+
+"But this year I have seen not only not a single flock, but not even
+a single bird. One evening one of my daughters did indeed see a small
+flock of six, but even that small number only once. Whether it portends
+a very hard winter, or what the cause of it may be, I am utterly at a
+loss to know or even to guess. I quite miss this year the well-known
+cackle of the old gander as he has led the van of the flock that has
+followed him; now in a wide, now in a narrow, now in a short, now in a
+long wedge, over head, diverging just from the father of the family, or
+separating from time to time further back in the line.
+
+"I may add, as a possible prognostication of future weather, that
+fieldfares have, I think, been unusually numerous this year, as last
+year they were the contrary. I have also remarked that swallows took
+their departure this year more than ordinarily in a body, very few
+stragglers being subsequently seen."
+
+It will be sufficient to state that the mean temperature of January and
+February was below that of the same month in the preceding year, and
+that of March had not been so low for twenty years.
+
+The opinion that sea-birds come to land in order to avoid an approaching
+storm is stated to be erroneous; and the cause assigned is, that as the
+fish upon which the birds prey go deep into the water during storms, the
+birds come to land merely on account of the greater certainty of finding
+food there than out at sea.
+
+We add a few notes on Bird naturalists. The Redbreast has been called
+_the Naturalist's Barometer_. When on a summer evening, though it be
+unsettled and rainy, he sings cheerfully and sweetly on a lofty twig or
+housetop, it is an unerring promise of succeeding fine days. Sometimes,
+though the atmosphere be dry and warm, he may be seen melancholy
+chirping and brooding in a bush or low in a hedge; this promises the
+reverse. In the luxuriant forests of Brazil the Toucan may be heard
+rattling with his large hollow beak, as he sits on the outermost
+branches, calling in plaintive notes for rain.
+
+When Mr. Loudon was at Schwetzingen, Rhenish Bavaria, in 1829, he
+witnessed in the post-house there for the first time what he afterwards
+frequently saw--an amusing application of zoological knowledge for the
+purpose of prognosticating the weather. Two tree-frogs were kept in
+a crystal jar about eighteen inches high and six inches in diameter,
+with a depth of three or four inches of water at the bottom, and a
+small ladder reaching to the top of the jar. On the approach of dry
+weather the frogs mounted the ladder, but when moisture was expected
+they descended into the water. These animals are of a bright green, and
+in their wild state climb the trees in search of insects, and make a
+peculiar singing noise before rain. In the jar they got no other food
+than now and then a fly; one of which, Mr. Loudon was assured, would
+serve a frog for a week, though it would eat from six to twelve flies in
+a day if it could get them. In catching the flies put alive into the jar
+the frogs displayed great adroitness.
+
+Snails are extraordinary indicators of changes in the weather.
+Several years ago, Mr. Thomas, of Cincinnati, known as an accredited
+observer of natural phenomena, published some interesting accounts
+of Weather-wise Snails. They do not drink (he observes), but imbibe
+moisture in their bodies during rain, and exude it at regular periods
+afterwards. Then a certain snail first exudes the pure liquid; when
+this is exhausted, a light red succeeds, then a deep red, next yellow,
+and lastly a dark brown. The snail is very careful not to exude more
+of its moisture than is necessary. It is never seen abroad _except
+before rain_, when we find it ascending the bark of trees and getting
+on the leaves. The tree-snail is also seen ascending the stems of
+plants _two days before rain_: if it be a long and hard rain they get
+on the sheltered side of the leaf, but if a short rain the outside
+of the leaf. Another snail has the same habits, but differs only in
+colour: before rain it is yellow, and after it blue. Others show signs
+of rain, not only by means of exuding fluids, but by means of pores and
+protuberances; and the bodies of some snails have large tubercles rising
+from them _before rain_. These tubercles commence showing themselves
+ten days previous to the fall of rain they indicate; at the end of each
+of these tubercles is a pore; and at the time of the fall of rain these
+tubercles, with their pores opened, are stretched to their utmost to
+receive the water. In another kind of snail, a few days before rain
+appears a large and deep indentation, beginning at the head between
+the horns, and ending with the jointure at the shells. Other snails,
+a few days before the rain, crawl to the most exposed hill-side,
+where, if they arrive before the rain descends, they seek some crevice
+in the rocks, and then close the aperture of the shell with glutinous
+substance; this, when the rain approaches, they dissolve, and are then
+seen crawling about.
+
+Our Cincinnati observer mentions three kinds of snails which move along
+at the rate of a mile in forty-four hours; they inhabit the most dense
+forests, and it is regarded as a sure indication of rain to observe them
+moving towards an exposed situation. Others indicate the weather not
+only by exuding fluids, but by the colour of the animal. After rain the
+snail has a very dark appearance, but it grows of a bright colour as
+the water is expended; whilst just before rain it is of yellowish white
+colour, also just before rain streaks appear from the point of the head
+to the jointure of the shell. These snails move at the rate of a mile in
+fourteen days and sixteen hours. If they are observed ascending a cliff
+it is a sure indication of rain: they live in the cavities of the sides
+of cliffs. There is also a snail which is brown, tinged with blue on the
+edges before rain, but black after rain: a few days before appears an
+indentation, which grows deeper as the rain approaches.
+
+The leaves of trees are even good barometers: most of them for a short,
+light rain, will turn up so as to receive their fill of water; but for
+a long rain they are doubled, so as to conduct the water away. The
+Frog and Toad are sure indicators of rain; for, as they do not drink
+water but absorb it into their bodies, they are sure to be found out
+at the time they expect rain. The Locust and Grasshopper are also good
+indicators of a storm; a few hours before rain they are to be found
+under the leaves of trees and in the hollow trunks.
+
+The Mole has long been recorded as a prognosticator of change of
+weather, before which it becomes very active. The temperature or dryness
+of the air governs its motions as to the depth at which it lives or
+works. This is partly from its inability to bear cold or thirst, but
+chiefly from its being necessitated to follow its natural food, the
+earth-worm, which always descends as the cold or drought increases.
+In frosty weather both worms and moles are deeper in the ground than
+at other times; and both seem to be sensible of an approaching change
+to warmer weather before there are any perceptible signs of it in the
+atmosphere. When it is observed, therefore, that Moles are casting hills
+through openings in the frozen turf or through a thin covering of snow,
+a change to open weather may be shortly expected. The cause of this
+appears to be--the natural heat of the earth being for a time pent in
+by the frozen surface accumulates below it; first incites to action the
+animals, thaws the frozen surface, and at length escapes into the air,
+which is warm, and softens; and if not counterbalanced by a greater
+degree of cold in the atmosphere brings about a change, such as from
+frosty to mild weather. The Mole is most active and casts up most earth
+immediately before rain, and in the winter before a thaw, because at
+those times the worms and insects begin to be in motion, and approach
+the surface.
+
+Forster, the indefatigable meteorologist, has assembled some curious
+observations on certain animals, who, by some peculiar sensibility to
+electrical or other atmospheric influence, often indicate changes of the
+weather by their peculiar motions and habits. Thus:--
+
+_Ants._--An universal bustle and activity observed in ant-hills may be
+generally regarded as a sign of rain: the Ants frequently appear all in
+motion together, and carry their eggs about from place to place. This is
+remarked by Virgil, Pliny, and others.
+
+_Asses._--When donkeys bray more than ordinarily, especially should
+they shake their ears, as if uneasy, it is said to predict rain, and
+particularly showers. Forster noticed that in showery weather a donkey
+brayed before every shower, and generally some minutes before the rain
+fell, as if some electrical influence, produced by the concentrating
+power of the approaching rain-cloud, caused a tickling in the wind-pipe
+of the animal just before the shower came on. Whatever this electric
+state of the air preceding a shower may be, it seems to be the same
+that causes in other animals some peculiar sensations, which makes the
+peacock squall, the pintado call "come back," &c. An expressive adage
+says:--
+
+    "When that the ass begins to bray,
+    Be sure we shall have rain that day."
+
+Haymakers may derive useful admonitions from the braying of the ass:
+thus the proverb:--
+
+    "Be sure to cock your hay and corn
+    When the old donkey blows his horn."
+
+_Bats_ flitting about late in the evening in spring and autumn foretel a
+fine day on the morrow; as do Dorbeetles and some other insects. On the
+contrary, when Bats return soon to their hiding-places, and send forth
+loud cries, bad weather may be expected.
+
+_Beetles_ flying about late in the evening often foretel a fine day on
+the morrow.
+
+_Butterflies_, when they appear early, are sometimes forerunners of fine
+weather. Moths and Sphinxes also foretel fine weather when they are
+common in the evening.
+
+_Cats_, when they "wash their faces," or when they seem sleepy and dull,
+foretel rain.
+
+_Chickens_, when they pick up small stones and pebbles, and are more
+noisy than usual, afford a sign of rain; as do fowls rubbing in the
+dust, and clapping their wings; but this applies to several kinds of
+fowls, as well as to the gallinaceous kinds. Cocks, when they crow at
+unwonted hours, often foretel rain; when they crow all day, in summer
+particularly, a change to rain frequently follows.
+
+_Cranes_ were said of old to foretel rain when they retreated to the
+valleys, and returned from their aërial flight. The high flight of
+cranes in silence indicates fine weather.
+
+_Dolphins_ as well as _Porpoises_, when they come about a ship, and
+sport and gambol on the surface of the water, betoken a storm.
+
+_Dogs_, before rain, grow sleepy and dull, lie drowsily before the fire,
+and are not easily aroused. They also often eat grass, which indicates
+that their stomachs, like ours, are apt to be disturbed before change
+of weather. It is also said to be a sign of change of weather when Dogs
+howl and bark much in the night. Dogs also dig in the earth with their
+feet before rain, and often make deep holes in the ground.
+
+_Ducks._--The loud and clamorous quacking of Ducks, Geese, and other
+water-fowl, is a sign of rain; as also when they wash themselves, and
+flutter about in the water more than usual. Virgil has well described
+all these habits of aquatic birds.
+
+_Fieldfares_, when they arrive early, and in great numbers, in autumn,
+foreshow a hard winter, which has probably set in in the regions from
+which they have come.
+
+_Fishes_, when they bite more readily, and gambol near the surface of
+streams or pools, foreshow rain.
+
+_Flies_, and various sorts of insects, become more troublesome, and
+sting and bite more than usual, before, as well as in the intervals of
+rainy weather, particularly in autumn.
+
+_Frogs_, by their clamorous croaking, indicate rainy weather, as does
+likewise their coming about in great numbers in the evening; but this
+last sign applies more obviously to toads.
+
+_Geese_ washing, or taking wing with a clamorous noise, and flying to
+the water, portend rain.
+
+_Gnats_ afford several indications. When they fly in a vortex in the
+beams of the setting sun they forebode fair weather; when they frisk
+about more widely in the open air at eventide they foreshow heat; and
+when they assemble under trees, and bite more than usual, they indicate
+rain.
+
+_Hogs_, when they shake the stalks of corn, and spoil them, often
+indicate rain. When they run squeaking about, and jerk up their heads,
+windy weather is about to commence; hence the Wiltshire proverb, that
+"Pigs can see the wind."
+
+_Horses_ foretel the coming of rain by starting more than ordinarily,
+and by restlessness on the road.
+
+_Jackdaws_ are unusually clamorous before rain, as are also _Starlings_.
+Sometimes before change of weather the daws make a great noise in the
+chamber wherein they build.
+
+_Kine_ (cattle) are said to foreshow rain when they lick their
+fore-feet, or lie on their right side. Some say oxen licking themselves
+against the hair is a sign of wet.
+
+_Kites_, when they soar very high in the air, denote fair weather, as do
+also _Larks_.
+
+_Magpies_, in windy weather, often fly in small flocks of three or four
+together, uttering a strong harsh cry.
+
+_Mice_ when they squeak much, and gambol in the house, foretel a change
+of weather, and often rain.
+
+_Owls._--When an owl hoots or screeches, sitting on the top of a house,
+or by the side of a window, it is said to foretel death. "The fact,"
+says Forster, "seems to be this: the Owl, as Virgil justly observes,
+is more noisy at the change of weather, and as it often happens that
+patients with lingering diseases die at the change of weather, so the
+Owl seems, by a mistaken association of ideas, to forebode the calamity."
+
+_Peacocks_ squalling by night often foretel a rainy day. Forster adds,
+"This prognostic does not often fail; and the indication is made more
+certain by the crowing of Cocks all day, the braying of the Donkey, the
+low flight of Swallows, the aching of rheumatic persons, and by the
+frequent appearance of spiders on the walls of the house."
+
+_Pigeons._--It is a sign of rain when Pigeons return slowly to the
+dove-houses before the usual time of day.
+
+_Ravens_, when observed early in the morning, at a great height in the
+air, soaring round and round, and uttering a hoarse, croaking sound,
+indicate that the day will be fine. On the contrary, this bird affords
+us a sign of coming rain by another sort of cry; the difference between
+these two voices being more easily learned from nature than described.
+The Raven frequenting the shore and dipping himself in the water is also
+a sign of rain.
+
+_Redbreasts_, when they, with more than usual familiarity, lodge on our
+window-frames, and peck against the glass with their bills, indicate
+severe weather, of which they have a presentiment, which brings them
+nearer to the habitations of man.
+
+_Rooks_ gathering together, and returning home from their pastures
+early, and at unwonted hours, forebode rain. When Rooks whirl round in
+the air rapidly, and come down in small flocks, making a roaring noise
+with their wings, rough weather invariably follows. On the contrary,
+when Rooks are very noisy about their trees, and fly about as if
+rejoicing, Virgil assures us they foresee a return of fine weather, and
+an end of the showers.
+
+_Spiders_, when seen crawling on the walls more than usual, indicate
+rain. "This prognostic," says Forster, "seldom fails, I have noticed it
+for many years, particularly in winter, but more or less at all times of
+the year. In summer the quantity of webs of the garden spiders denote
+fair weather."
+
+_Swallows_, in fine and settled weather, fly higher in the air than they
+do just before or during a showery or rainy time. Then, also, Swallows
+flying low, and skimming over the surface of a meadow where there is
+tolerably long grass, frequently stop, and hang about the blades, as if
+they were gathering insects lodged there.
+
+_Swans_, when they fly against the wind, portend rain, a sign frequently
+fulfilled.
+
+_Toads_, when they come from their holes in an unusual number in the
+evening, although the ground be still dry, foreshow the coming rain,
+which will generally fall more or less during the night.
+
+_Urchins of the Sea_, a sort of fish, when they thrust themselves into
+the mud, and try to cover their bodies with sand, foreshow a storm.
+
+_Vultures_, when they scent carrion at a great distance, indicate that
+state of the atmosphere which is favourable to the perception of smells,
+and this often forebodes rain.
+
+_Willow Wrens_ are frequently seen, in mild and still rainy weather,
+flitting about the willows, pines, and other trees, in quest of insects.
+
+_Woodcocks_ appear in autumn earlier, and in greater numbers, previous
+to severe winters; as do Snipes and other winter birds.
+
+_Worms_ come forth more abundantly before rain, as do snails, slugs, and
+almost all limaceous animals.
+
+Some birds build their nests weather-proof, as ascertained by careful
+observation of Mr. M. W. B. Thomas, of Cincinnati, Ohio. Thus, when a
+pair of migratory birds have arrived in the spring, they prepare to
+build their nest, making a careful reconnaissance of the place, and
+observing the character of the season. If it be a windy one, they thatch
+the straw and leaves on the inside of the nest, between the twigs and
+the lining; if it be very windy, they get pliant twigs, and bind the
+nest firmly to the limb of the tree, securing all the small twigs with
+their saliva. If they fear the approach of a rainy season, they build
+their nests so as to be sheltered from the weather; but if a pleasant
+one, they build in a fair open place, without taking any of these extra
+precautions.
+
+Of all writers, Dr. Darwin has given us the most correct account of
+the "Signs of Rain," in a poetical description of the approach of foul
+weather, as follows. This passage has been often quoted, but, perhaps,
+never exceeded in the accuracy of its phenomenal observation:--
+
+    "The hollow winds begin to blow;
+    The clouds look black, the glass is low;
+    The soot falls down, the spaniels sleep;
+    And spiders from their cobwebs peep.
+    Last night the sun went pale to bed;
+    The moon in haloes hid her head;
+    The boding shepherd heaves a sigh,
+    For, see, a rainbow spans the sky.
+    The walls are damp, the ditches smell,
+    Clos'd is the light red pimpernel.
+    Hark! how the chairs and tables crack,
+    Old Betty's joints are on the rack;
+    Her corns with shooting pains torment her,
+    And to her bed untimely send her.
+    Loud quack the ducks, the sea-fowls cry,
+    The distant hills are looking nigh.
+    How restless are the snorting swine!
+    The busy flies disturb the kine.
+    Low o'er the grass the swallow wings,
+    The cricket, too, how sharp he sings!
+    Puss on the hearth, with velvet paws,
+    Sits wiping o'er her whisker'd jaws.
+    The smoke from chimneys right ascends;
+    Then spreading back, to earth it bends.
+    The wind unsteady veers around,
+    Or settling in the South is found.
+    Through the clear stream the fishes rise,
+    And nimbly catch th' incautious flies.
+    The glowworms num'rous, clear, and bright,
+    Illum'd the dewy hill last night.
+    At dusk, the squalid toad was seen,
+    Like quadruped, stalk o'er the green.
+    The whirling wind the dust obeys,
+    And in the rapid eddy plays.
+    The frog has chang'd his yellow vest,
+    And in a russet coat is drest.
+    The sky is green, the air is still,
+    The mellow blackbird's voice is shrill.
+    The dog, so altered is his taste,
+    Quits mutton-bones on grass to feast.
+    Behold the rooks, how odd their flight,
+    They imitate the gliding kite,
+    And seem precipitate to fall,
+    As if they felt the piercing ball.
+    The tender colts on banks do lie,
+    Nor heed the traveller passing by.
+    In fiery red the sun doth rise,
+    Then wades through clouds to mount the skies.
+    ''Twill surely rain, we see 't with sorrow,
+    No working in the fields to-morrow.'"
+
+The Shepherd of Banbury says:--"The surest and most certain sign of
+rain is taken from Bees, which are more incommoded by rain than almost
+any other creatures; and, therefore, as soon as the air begins to
+grow heavy, and the vapours to condense, they will not fly from their
+hives, but either remain in them all day, or else fly but to a small
+distance." Yet Bees are not always right in their prognostics, for
+Réaumur witnessed a swarm which, after leaving the hive at half-past one
+o'clock, were overtaken by a heavy shower at three.
+
+
+
+
+FISH-TALK.
+
+
+"Man favours wonders;" and this delight is almost endlessly exemplified
+in the stories of strange Fishes--of preternatural size and odd forms,
+which are to be found in their early history. In our present Talk we do
+not aim at re-assembling these olden tales, but propose rather to glance
+at recent accessions to our acquaintance with the study of Fish-life,
+and a few modern instances of the class of wonders.
+
+Fishes, like all other animals, have a very delicate sense of the
+equilibrial position of their bodies. They endeavour to counteract all
+change in their position by means of movements partly voluntary and
+partly instinctive. These latter appear in a very remarkable manner in
+the eye; and they are so constant and evident in fishes while alive,
+that their absence is sufficient to indicate the death of the animal.
+The equilibrium of the fish, its horizontal position, with the back
+upwards, depends solely on the action of the fins, and principally
+that of the vertical fins. The swimming-bladder may enable a fish
+to increase or diminish its specific gravity. By compressing the air
+contained in it, the fish descends in the water; it rises by releasing
+the muscles which produced the compression. By compressing more or
+less the posterior or anterior portion of the bladder, the animal, at
+pleasure, can make the anterior or posterior half of its body lighter;
+it can also assume an oblique position, which permits an ascending or
+descending movement in the water.
+
+There is a small fish found in the rivers of the Burmese Empire, which,
+on being taken out of the water, has the power of blowing itself up to
+the shape of a small round ball, but its original shape is resumed as
+soon as it is returned to the river.
+
+Mr. St. John, in his "Tour in Eastern Lanarkshire," gives some curious
+instances of fish changing colour, which takes place with surprising
+rapidity. Put a living black burn Trout into a white basin of water,
+and it becomes, within half an hour, of a light colour. Keep the fish
+living in a white jar for some days, and it becomes absolutely white;
+but put it into a dark-coloured or black vessel, and although on first
+being placed there the white-coloured fish shows most conspicuously on
+the black ground, in a quarter of an hour it becomes as dark-coloured
+as the bottom of the jar, and consequently difficult to be seen. No
+doubt this facility of adapting its colour to the bottom of the water
+in which it lives, is of the greatest service to the fish in protecting
+it from its numerous enemies. All anglers must have observed, that in
+every stream the Trout are very much of the same colour as the gravel or
+sand on which they live: whether this change of colour is a voluntary or
+involuntary act on the part of the fish, the scientific must determine.
+
+Anglers of our time have proved that Tench croak like frogs; Herrings
+cry like mice; Gurnards grunt like hogs; and some say the Gurnard makes
+a noise like a cuckoo, from which he takes one of his country names. The
+Maigre, a large sea-fish, when swimming in shoals, utters a grunting or
+piercing noise, that may be heard from a depth of twenty fathoms.
+
+M. Dufossé asserts that facts prove that nature has not refused to all
+fishes the power of expressing their instinctive sensations by sounds,
+but has not conferred on them the unity of mechanism in the formation
+of sonorous vibrations as in other classes of vertebrated animals.
+Some fishes, he says, are able to emit musical tones, engendered by a
+mechanism in which the muscular vibration is the principal motive power;
+others possess the faculty of making blowing sounds, like those of
+certain reptiles; and others can produce the creaking noise resembling
+that of many insects. These phenomena M. Dufossé has named "Fish-noise."
+
+The River Plate swarms with fish, and is the _habitat_ of one possessed
+of a very sonorous voice, like that found in the River Borneo--the
+account of which is quoted by Dr. Buist from the Journal of the
+Samarang; and there is similar testimony of a loud piscatory chorus
+being heard on board H.M.S. Eagle, anchored, in 1845-6, about three
+miles from Monte Video, during the night.
+
+That fishes hear has been doubted, although John Hunter was of this
+opinion, and has been followed by many observers. When standing beside
+a person angling, how often is the request made not to make a noise,
+as that would _alarm_ the fish. On the other hand, the Chinese drive
+the fish up to that part of the river where their nets are ready to
+capture them by loud yells and shouts, and the sound of gongs; but old
+Æsop writes of a fisherman who caught no fish because he alarmed them
+by playing on his flute while fishing. In Germany the Shad is taken
+by means of nets, to which bows of wood, hung with a number of little
+bells, are attached in such a manner as to chime in harmony when the
+nets are moved. The Shad, when once attracted by the sound, will not
+attempt to escape while the bells continue to ring. Ælian says the
+Shad is allured by castanets. Macdiarmid, who declares that fishes
+hear as well as see, relates that an old Codfish, the patriarch of the
+celebrated fish-pond at Logan, "answered to his name; and not only
+drew near, but turned up his snout most beseechingly when he heard the
+monosyllable 'Tom;' and that he evidently could distinguish the voice of
+the fisherman who superintended the pond, and fed the fish, from that
+of any other fisherman." In the "Kaleidoscope" mention is made of three
+Trout in a pond near the powder-mills at Faversham, who were so tame
+as to come at the call of the person accustomed to feed them. Izaak
+Walton tells of a Carp coming to a certain part of a pond to be fed "at
+the ringing of a bell, or the beating of a drum;" and Sir John Hawkins
+was assured by a clergyman, a friend of his, that at the Abbey of St.
+Bernard, near Antwerp, he saw a Carp come to the edge of the water to be
+fed, at the whistle of the person who fed it. The Carp at Fontainebleau,
+inhabiting the lake adjoining the Imperial Palace, are of great size,
+and manifest a curious instinct. A Correspondent of the "Athenæum"
+remarks:--
+
+     "Enjoying entire immunity from all angling arts and lures, the
+     Fontainebleau Carp live a life of great enjoyment, marred only, we
+     imagine, by their immense numbers causing the supply of food to be
+     somewhat below their requirements. It is not, however, very easy to
+     define what a Carp's requirements in the form of pabulum are, as he
+     is a voracious member of the ichthyological family, eating whenever
+     he has an opportunity until absolutely surfeited. His favourite
+     food consists of vegetable substances masticated by means of flat
+     striated teeth, which work with a millstone kind of motion against
+     a singular process of the lower part of the skull covered with
+     horny plates. When this fish obtains an abundant supply of food it
+     grows to an enormous size. Several continental rivers and lakes
+     are very congenial to Carp, and especially the Oder, where this
+     fish occasionally attains the enormous weight of 60 lb. It is not
+     probable that any Carp in the lake at Fontainebleau are so large as
+     this; but there are certainly many weighing 50 lb., patriarchs of
+     their kind, which, though olive-hued in their tender years, are now
+     white with age. That the great size of these fish is due to ample
+     feeding is, we think, evident, and, as we shall see presently, it
+     is the large fish that are the best fed. During many years the
+     feeding of the Carp at Fontainebleau has been a favourite Court
+     pastime. But it is from the visitors who frequent Fontainebleau
+     during a great part of the year that the Carp receive their
+     most bountiful rations. For big Carp have an enormous swallow,
+     soft penny rolls being mere mouthfuls, bolted with ostrich-like
+     celerity. So to prevent the immediate disappearance of these
+     _bonnes bouches_, bread, in the form of larger balls than the most
+     capacious Carp can take into his gullet, is baked until it becomes
+     as hard as biscuit, and with these balls the Carp are regailed.
+     Throw one into the lake, and you will quickly have an idea of the
+     enormous Carp population it contains. For no sooner does the bread
+     touch the water than it is surrounded by hundreds of these fish,
+     which dart to it from all sides. And now, if you look attentively,
+     you will witness a curious display of instinct, which might almost
+     take a higher name. Conscious, apparently, of their inability to
+     crush these extremely hard balls, the Carp combine with surprising
+     unanimity to push them to that part of the lake with their noses
+     where it is bounded by a wall, and when there they butt at them,
+     until at last their repeated blows and the softening effect of the
+     water causes them to yield and open. And now you will see another
+     curious sight. While shoals of Carp have been pounding away at
+     the bread-balls, preparing them for being swallowed, some dozen
+     monsters hover round, indifferent, apparently, to what is passing.
+     But not so, for no sooner is the bread ready for eating, than two
+     or three of these giants, but more generally one--the tyrant,
+     probably, of the lake--rush to the prize, cleaving the shoals of
+     smaller Carp, and shouldering them to the right and left, seize the
+     bread with open jaws, between which it quickly disappears."
+
+Some of the finest and oldest Carp are found in the windings of the
+Spree, in the tavern-gardens of Charlottenburg, the great resort of
+strollers from Berlin. Visitors are in the habit of feeding them with
+bread, and collect them together by ringing a bell, at the sound of
+which shoals of the fish may be seen popping their noses upwards from
+the water.
+
+The affection of fishes has only been properly understood of late years.
+It might be supposed that little natural affection existed in this
+cold-blooded race; and, in fact, fishes constantly devour their own
+eggs, and, at a later period, their own young, without compunction or
+discrimination. Some few species bear their eggs about with them until
+hatched. This was long thought to be the utmost extent of care which
+fishes lavished on their young; but Dr. Hancock has stepped in to rescue
+at least one species from this unmerited charge. "It is asserted," he
+says, "by naturalists, that no fishes are known to take any care of
+their offspring. Both species of _Hassar_ mentioned below, however, make
+a regular nest, in which they lay their eggs in a flattened cluster,
+and cover them over most carefully. Their care does not end here; they
+remain by the side of the nest till the spawn is hatched, with as much
+solicitude as a hen guards her eggs, both the male and female Hassar,
+for they are monogamous, steadily watching the spawn and courageously
+attacking the assailant. Hence the negroes frequently take them by
+putting their hands into the water close to the nest, on agitating which
+the male Hassar springs furiously at them, and is thus captured. The
+_roundhead_ forms its nest of grass, the _flathead_ of leaves. Both,
+at certain seasons, burrow in the bank. They lay their eggs only in
+wet weather. I have been surprised to observe the sudden appearance of
+numerous nests in a morning after rain occurs, the spot being indicated
+by a bunch of froth which appears on the surface of the water over
+the nest. Below this are the eggs, placed on a bunch of fallen leaves
+or grass, which they cut and collect together. By what means this is
+effected seems rather mysterious, as the species are destitute of
+cutting-teeth. It may, possibly, be by the use of their arms, which form
+the first ray of the pectoral fin."
+
+There is another operation by fishes, which seems to require almost
+equal experience. Professor Agassiz, while collecting insects along the
+shores of Lake Sebago, in Maine, observed a couple of Cat-fish, which,
+at his approach, left the shore suddenly, and returned to the deeper
+water. Examining the place which the fishes had left, he discovered
+a _nest_ among the water-plants, with a number of little tadpoles.
+In a few moments the two fishes returned, looking anxiously towards
+the nest, and approached within six or eight feet of where Professor
+Agassiz stood. They were evidently not in search of food, and he became
+convinced that they were seeking the protection of their young. Large
+stones, thrown repeatedly into the middle of the nest after the fishes
+had returned to it, only frightened them away for a brief period, and
+they returned to the spot within ten or fifteen minutes. This was
+repeated four or five times with the same result. This negatives the
+assertion made by some naturalists--that no fishes are known to take any
+care of their offspring.
+
+But affection is scarcely to be looked for where the offspring is so
+very numerous as to put all attempts at even recognising them out of
+the question. How could the fondest mother love 100,000 little ones at
+once? Yet the number is far exceeded by some of the matrons of the deep.
+Petit found 300,000 eggs in a single carp; Lenwenhoeck 9,000,000 in a
+single cod; Mr. Harmer found in a sole 100,000; in a tench 300,000;
+in a mackerel 500,000; and in a flounder 1,357,000.[14] M. Rousseau
+disburthened a pike of 160,000, and a sturgeon of 1,567,000, while from
+this latter class has been gotten 119 pounds weight of eggs, which, at
+the rate of 7 to a grain, would give a total amount of 7,653,200 eggs!
+If all these came to maturity the world would be in a short time nothing
+but fish: means, however, amply sufficient to keep down this unwelcome
+superabundance have been provided. Fish themselves, men, birds, other
+marine animals, to say nothing of the dispersions produced by storms
+and currents, the destruction consequent on their being thrown on the
+beach and left there to dry up, all combine to diminish this excessive
+supply over demand. Yet, on the other hand (so wonderfully are all
+the contrivances of nature so harmonized and balanced), one of these
+apparent modes of destruction becomes an actual means of extending the
+species. The eggs of the pike, barbel, and many other fish, says M.
+Virey, are rendered indigestible by an acid oil which they contain, and
+in consequence of which they are passed in the same condition as they
+were swallowed; the result of which is, that being taken in by ducks,
+grebes, or other water-fowls, they are thus transported to situations,
+such as inland lakes, which otherwise they could never have attained;
+and in this way only can we account for the fact, now well ascertained,
+that several lakes in the Alps, formed by the thawing of the glaciers,
+are now abundantly stocked with excellent fish.
+
+Little fishes are ordinarily the food of larger marine animals; but a
+remarkable exception occurs in the case of the larger Medusæ, which
+are stated in various works to prey upon fishes for sustenance. Mr.
+Peach, the naturalist, has, however, by observations at Peterhead, in
+Aberdeenshire, thus corrected this statement. He observed several small
+fishes playing round the larger Medusæ in the harbour and bay. When
+alarmed, they would rush under the umbrella, and remain sheltered in
+its large folds till the danger had passed, when they would emerge,
+and sport and play about their sheltering friend. When beneath the
+umbrella they lay so close that they were frequently taken into a bucket
+with the Medusæ. They proved to be young whitings, varying from 1-1/2
+to 2 inches long. These little creatures, so far from becoming the
+prey of the Medusæ, experienced from them protection; and, moreover,
+they preferred the _stinging_ one. In no instance did Mr. Peach see a
+fish in the stomach of the Medusæ, but all could liberate themselves
+when they pleased. In one case, Mr. Peach witnessed a small whiting,
+in the first instance chased by a single young pollack, whose assault
+the little fellow easily evaded by dodging about; but the chaser being
+joined by others, the whiting was driven from its imperfect shelter, and
+after being much bitten and dashed about by its assailants, became at
+length completely exhausted, and lay to all appearance dead. Recovering,
+however, after action, it swam slowly to the Medusæ, and took refuge as
+before; but its movements being soon observed, it was again attacked,
+after a very brief respite, driven into open water, and speedily
+despatched.
+
+Fishes appear to execute annually two great migrations. By one of these
+shiftings they forsake the deep water for a time, and approach the
+shallow shores, and by the other they return to their more concealed
+haunts. These movements are connected with the purposes of spawning,
+the fry requiring to come into life, and to spend a certain portion
+of their youth in situations different from those which are suited
+to the period of maturity. It is in obedience to these arrangements
+that the Cod and Haddock, the Mackerel, and others, annually leave
+the deeper and less accessible parts of the ocean, the region of the
+zoophytic tribes, and deposit their spawn within that zone of marine
+vegetation which fringes our coasts, extending from near the high-water
+mark of neap-tides to a short distance beyond the low-water mark of
+spring-tides. Amidst the shelter in this region afforded by the groves
+of arborescent fuci, the young fish were wont in comfort to spend
+their infancy, but since these plants have been so frequently cut down
+to procure materials for the manufacture of kelp, and the requisite
+protection withdrawn, the fisheries have greatly suffered. Many species
+of fish, as the Salmon, Smelt, and others, in forsaking the deep water,
+and approaching a suitable spawning station, leave the sea altogether
+for a time, ascend the rivers and their tributary streams, and, having
+deposited their eggs, return again to their usual haunts. Even a certain
+species of fish, inhabiting lakes, as the Roach, betake themselves to
+the tributary streams, as the most suitable places for spawning.
+
+The Goramy, of India, are stated by General Hardwicke to watch most
+actively the margins of the spot which they select and prepare for
+depositing their spawn, driving away with violence every other fish
+which approaches their cover. The General adds that from the time he
+first noticed this circumstance about one month had elapsed, when one
+day he saw numerous minute fishes close to the margin of the grass, on
+the outer side of which the parent fishes continued to pass to and fro.
+
+There is a species of Grampus from two to three tons weight, and about
+sixteen feet in length, that amuses itself with jumping, or rather
+springing its ponderous body entirely out of the water, in a vertical
+position, and falling upon its back. This effort of so large a fish is
+almost incredible, and informs us how surprisingly great the power of
+muscle must be in this class of animal. A Correspondent writes to the
+"United Service Journal":--"I have seen them spring out of the water
+within ten yards of the ship's side, generally in the evening, after
+having swam all the former part of the day in the ship's wake, or on
+either quarter. When several of these fish take it into their heads to
+'dance a hornpipe,' as the sailors term their gambols, at the distance
+of half a mile, they, especially at or just after sundown, may easily
+be mistaken for the sharp points of rocks sticking up out of the water,
+and the splashing and foam they make and produce have the appearance
+of the action of waves upon rocks. An officer of the navy informed me
+that, after sunset, when near the equator, he was not a little alarmed
+and surprised at the cry of 'rocks on the starboard bow!' Looking
+forward, he indistinctly saw objects which he and all on board took
+to be pinnacles of several rocks of a black and white colour. In a
+short time, however, he discovered this formidable danger to be nothing
+more than a company of dancing Grampuses with white bellies. As one
+disappeared, another rose; so that there were at least five or six
+constantly above the surface."
+
+Captain Owen relates that "the Bonita has the power of throwing itself
+out of the water to an almost incredible distance when in pursuit of
+its prey, the Flying Fish; and, the day previous to our arrival at
+Mozambique, one of these fish rose close under our bow, and passed under
+the vessel's side, and struck with such force against the poop, that,
+had any one received the blow, it must have been fatal. Stunned by the
+violence of the contact, it fell motionless at the helmsman's feet; but,
+soon recovering, its struggles were so furious that it became necessary
+to inflict several blows with an axe before it could be approached
+with safety. The greatest elevation it attained above the surface of
+water was eighteen feet, and the length of the leap, had no opposition
+occurred, would have exceeded 180."
+
+Of winged or Flying Fish we find this extravagant account in a
+philosophical romance, entitled, "Telliamed," by M. Maillet, an
+ingenious Frenchman, of the days of Louis XV.:--
+
+     He believed, like Lamarck, that the whole family of birds had
+     existed one time as fishes, which, on being thrown ashore by the
+     waves, had got feathers by accident; and that men themselves are
+     but the descendants of a tribe of sea-monsters, who, tiring of
+     their proper element, crawled upon the beach one sunny morning,
+     and, taking a fancy to the land, forgot to return. The account
+     is as amusing as a fairy tale. "Winged or Flying Fish," says
+     Maillet, "stimulated by the desire of prey, or the fear of death,
+     or pushed near the shore by the billows, have fallen among the
+     reeds or herbage, whence it was not possible for them to resume
+     their flight to the sea, by means of which they had contracted
+     their first facility of flying. Then their fins, being no longer
+     bathed in the sea-water, were split and became warped by their
+     dryness. While they found among the reeds and herbage among which
+     they fell many aliments to support them, the vessels of their fins
+     being separated, were lengthened, or clothed with beards, or, to
+     speak more justly, the membranes which before kept them adherent
+     to each other were metamorphosed. The beard formed of these warped
+     membranes was lengthened. The skin of these animals was insensibly
+     covered with a down of the same colour with the skin, and this
+     down gradually increased. The little wings they had under their
+     belly, and which, like their wings, helped them to walk into the
+     sea, became feet, and helped them to walk on the land. There were
+     also other small changes in their figure. The beak and neck of some
+     were lengthened, and of others shortened. The conformity, however,
+     of the first figure subsists in the whole, and it will be always
+     easy to know it. Examine all the species of fowl, even those of the
+     Indies, those which are tufted or not, those whose feathers are
+     reversed--such as we see at Damietta, that is to say, whose plumage
+     runs from the tail to the head--and you will see fine species
+     of fish quite similar, scaly or without scales. All species of
+     Parrots, whose plumages are different, the rarest and most singular
+     marked birds, are, conformable to fact, painted, like them, black,
+     brown, grey, yellow, green, red, violet colour, and those of gold
+     and azure; and all this precisely in the same parts, where the
+     plumages of these birds are diversified in so curious a manner."
+
+The Jaculator Fish, of Java, has been called "a sporting fish," from the
+precision with which it takes aim at its prey. In 1828 Mr. Mitchell
+saw several of these fishes in the possession of a Javanese chief; and
+here is the account of the curious manner in which these Jaculators were
+employed. They were placed in a small circular pond, from the centre
+of which projected a pole upwards of two feet in height. At the top of
+the pole were inserted small pieces of wood, sharp-pointed, and on each
+of these were placed insects of the beetle tribe. When the slaves had
+placed the beetles, the fish came out of their holes, and swam round the
+pond. One of them came to the surface of the water, rested there, and
+after steadily fixing its eyes for some time on an insect, it discharged
+from its mouth a small quantity of watery fluid, with such force, and
+precision of aim, as to strike it off the twig into the water, and in
+an instant swallowed it. After this, another fish came, and performed
+a similar feat, and was followed by the others, until they had secured
+all the insects. If a fish failed in bringing down its prey at the first
+shot, it swam round the pond till it came opposite the same object, and
+fired again. In one instance, a fish returned three times to the attack
+before it secured its prey; but in general the fish seemed very expert
+gunners, bringing down the beetle at the first shot. The fish, in a
+state of nature, frequents the shores and sides of the rivers in search
+of food. When it spies a fly sitting on the plants that grow on shallow
+water, it swims on to the distance of five or six feet from them, and
+then, with surprising dexterity, it ejects out of its tubular mouth a
+single drop of water, which rarely fails to strike the fly into the
+sea, where it soon becomes its prey.
+
+Curious fish, in great numbers, may be seen in the Harbour of Port
+Royal, Jamaica, on the surface of the water, and are ranked among the
+peculiarities of the place. They are the Guardo, or Guard-Fish; the Jack
+(Sword-Fish); and the Ballahou. The Jack is the largest, and appears to
+be always at war with the two others; it is armed with formidable teeth;
+it basks on the surface of the water during the heat of the day, in a
+sort of indolent, unguarded state; but this is assumed, the better to
+ensnare the other fish, and to catch the floating bodies that may happen
+to pass near it; for the moment anything is thrown into the sea from
+the ship, the Jack darts with the rapidity of lightning upon it, and
+seizing it as quickly, retreats. This Warrior-fish possesses a foresight
+or instinctive quality which we see sometimes exemplified in different
+animals, almost amounting to second reason, such as the sagacity it
+displays in avoiding the hook when baited; although extremely voracious,
+it seems aware of the lure held out for its destruction, and avoids
+it with as much cunning as the generality of fishes show eagerness to
+devour it. The situation it takes, immediately in the wake of the ship
+at anchor, is another instance of its sagacity; as whatever is thrown
+overboard passes astern, where the fish is ever on the alert for the
+articles thrown over. No other fish of equal size dare approach. The
+Jack is, however, sometimes enticed with the bait; but he is more
+frequently struck with a barbed lance, or entrapped in a net. The
+Guardo has similar habits with the Jack, but is generally beaten by
+him; yet the former tyrannizes with unrelenting rigour over the weaker
+associate, the Ballahou.
+
+The tiger of the ocean, the Shark, is often cruising about Port Royal,
+but rarely injures human life. At Kingston, however, such distressing
+events often occur. There was a pet Shark known as "Old Tom of Port
+Royal;" it was fed whenever it approached any of the ships, but was at
+last killed by the father of a child which it had devoured. Whilst it
+remained here, no other of the Shark tribe dare venture on his domain;
+he reigned lord paramount in his watery empire, and never committed any
+depredation but that for which he suffered.
+
+Attending the Shark is seen the beautiful little Pilot Fish, who, first
+approaching the bait, returns as if to give notice, when, immediately
+after, the Shark approaches to seize it. It is a curious circumstance,
+that this elegant little fish is seen in attendance only upon the Shark.
+After the Shark is hooked, the Pilot Fish still swims about, and for
+some time after he has been hauled on deck; it then swims very near the
+surface of the water. When the Shark has been hooked, and afterwards
+escapes, he generally returns, and renews the attack with increased
+ferocity, irritated often by the wound he has received.
+
+Sharks appear to have become of late years much more numerous in Faroe,
+as they have also in other parts of the North Seas, especially on the
+coast of Norway.
+
+The reader may, probably, have found on the sea-shore certain cases,
+which are fancifully called sea-purses, Mermaids' purses, &c. Now,
+some Sharks bring forth their young alive, whilst others are enclosed
+in oblong semi-transparent, horny cases, at each extremity of which
+are two long tendrils. These cases are the above _purses_, which the
+parent Shark deposits near the shore in the winter months. The twisting
+tendrils hang to sea-weed, or other fixed bodies, to prevent the cases
+being washed away into deep water. Two fissures, one at each end, allow
+the admission of sea-water; and here the young Shark remains until it
+has acquired the power of taking food by the mouth, when it leaves what
+resembles its cradle. The young fish ultimately escapes by an opening at
+the end, near which the head is situated.
+
+California has yielded an extraordinary novelty in fish history. In 1854
+Mr. Jackson, while fishing in San Salita Bay, caught with a hook and
+line a fish of the perch family _containing living young_. These were
+supposed to be the prey which the fish had swallowed, but on opening
+the belly was found next to the back of the fish, and slightly attached
+to it, a long very light violet bag, so clear and transparent that
+there could already be distinguished through it the shape, colour, and
+formation of a multitude of small fish (all facsimiles of each other),
+with which the bag was filled. They were in all respects like the
+mother, and like each other; and there cannot remain a single doubt that
+these young were the offspring of the fish from whose body they were
+taken; and that this species of fish gives birth to her young alive
+and perfectly formed, and adapted to seek its own livelihood in the
+water. Professor Agassiz has confirmed the truth of this extraordinary
+statement by a careful examination of the specimens, and has ascertained
+that there are two very distinct species of this remarkable type of
+fishes.
+
+Tales of "Wonderful Fish" are common in the works of the old
+naturalists, whence they are quoted from generation to generation.
+Sir John Richardson has lately demolished one queer fish, which was
+as certain to reappear whenever opportunity offered, as the elephant
+pricked with the tailor's needle does in books of stories of the animal
+world. We allude to that monstrous myth, the great Manheim Pike, with
+a collar round his neck, put into a lake by the Emperor Frederick II.
+in the year 1230; and taken out in the 276th year of his age, the 17th
+foot of his length, and the 350th pound of his weight. M. Valenciennes,
+a naturalist of repute, has entered into a critical history of this
+monster, and has found him to be apocryphal. The creature was, at any
+rate, taken in several places at once, the legends written on his
+brass collar do not agree, and his alleged skeleton has been found
+to be made up of various bones of various fishes; while the vertebræ
+are, unfortunately, so many, that Professor Owen would order him out
+of Court in an instant as a rank impostor. Probably some specimen of
+the _Mecho_, the monstrous fish of the Danube--which has even now been
+scarcely described, and which has only recently been identified as one
+of the salmon tribe--having been called a pike, may be at the bottom of
+the legend of the great Manheim fish. But Sir John Richardson produces
+another big pike, killed by an intrepid "angler seventy years of age,
+with a single rod and bait"--an observation which leads to the inquiry
+of the possibility of catching a single fish with more than one rod
+and bait--"that weighed seventy-eight pounds." This is stated to have
+happened in the county of Clare; the angler's name was O'Flanagan.
+
+Here is another wonderful story:--The Bohemians have a proverb--"Every
+fish has another for prey:" that named the Wels has them all. This is
+the largest fresh-water fish found in the rivers of Europe, except the
+sturgeon; it often reaches five or six feet in length. It destroys many
+aquatic birds, and we are assured that it does not spare the human
+species. On the 3d of July, 1700, a peasant took one near Thorn, that
+had an infant entire in its stomach! They tell in Hungary of children
+and young girls being devoured on going to draw water; and they even
+relate that, on the frontiers of Turkey, a poor fisherman took one that
+had in its stomach the body of a woman, her purse full of gold, and
+a _ring_! The fish is even reported to have been taken sixteen feet
+long. The old stories of rings found in the stomachs of fishes will be
+remembered; as well as here and there a _book_ found in the stomach of a
+fish!
+
+The Sun-fish is exceedingly rare. A large specimen was captured off
+Start Point in 1864. Attention was first drawn to a huge dark object on
+the water. On a boat being sent out, it was soon discovered to be the
+back fin of a very large fish, apparently asleep. A very exciting chase
+commenced, extending over an hour, the crew meanwhile battling with
+harpoons, boat-hooks, &c.; the fish trying several times to upset the
+boat by getting his back under it. At length a line was thrown over its
+head, and the fish, being weakened by the struggle, was towed alongside
+the yacht, hoisted on board, and slaughtered. Yarrell, in his work on
+British Fishes, states the largest Sun-fish to be about 3 cwt., but the
+above specimen weighed nearly 6 cwt. Sun-fish are found occasionally in
+the tropical seas of large dimensions, but those found in the Channel
+seldom if ever exceed from 1 cwt. to 2 cwt. The peculiarities in regard
+to this fish are, that it has no bones, but the whole of the formation
+is of cartilage, which can easily be cut with a knife. The skin is
+cartilage of about an inch and a-half thick, under which there is no
+backbone or ribs. This specimen was of extraordinary dimensions--5 ft.
+10 in. in length, and 7 ft. from the tip of the dorsal to the point of
+the anal fin.
+
+The "Courrier de Sagon" brings, as a contribution to Natural History,
+the not very credible-sounding description of a fish called "Ca-oug"
+in the Anamite tongue, which is said to have saved the lives already
+of several Anamites; for which reason the King of Anam has invested it
+with the name of "Nam hai dui bnong gnan" (Great General of the South
+Sea). This fish is said to swim round ships near the coast, and, when it
+sees a man in the water, to seize him with his mouth, and to carry him
+ashore. A skeleton of this singular inhabitant of the deep is to be seen
+at Wung-tau, near Cape St. James. It is reported to be thirty-five feet
+in length, to have tusks "almost like an elephant," very large eyes, a
+black and smooth skin, a tail like a lobster, and two "wings" on its
+back.[15]
+
+The Grouper must be a voracious fish, for we read of a specimen being
+caught off the coast of Queensland, which is thus described:--"It was
+7 ft. long, 6 ft. in circumference at its thickest part, and its head
+weighed 80 lb. When opened, there were found in its stomach two broken
+bottles, a quart pot, a preserved milk tin, seven medium-sized crabs; a
+piece of earthenware, triangular in shape, and three inches in length,
+incrusted with oyster shells, a sheep's head, some mutton and beef
+bones, and some loose oyster shells. The spine of a skate was imbedded
+in the Grouper's liver."
+
+The Double-fish, here represented, is a pair of Cat-fish, which were
+taken alive in a shrimp-net, at the mouth of Cape Fear River, near
+Fort Johnston. North Carolina, in 1833, and presented to Professor
+Silliman. One of them is three and a-half, and the other two and a-half
+inches long, including the tail--the smallest emaciated, and of sickly
+appearance. They are connected in the manner of the Siamese Twins, by
+the skin at the breast, which is marked by a dark streak at the line of
+union. The texture and colour otherwise of this skin is the same as that
+of the belly. The mouth, viscera, &c., were entire and perfect in each
+fish; but, on withdrawing the entrails, through an incision made on one
+side of the abdomen, the connecting integument was found to be hollow.
+A flexible probe was passed through from one to the other, with the
+tender and soft end of a spear of grass, drawn from a green plant. But
+there was no appearance of the entrails of one having come in contact
+with those of the other, for the integument was less than one-tenth of
+an inch in its whole thickness; in length, from the body or trunk of
+one fish to the other, it was three-tenths; and in the water, when the
+largest fish was in its natural position, the small one could, by the
+length and pliancy of this skin, swim in nearly the same position. When
+these fish came into existence it is probable they were of almost equal
+size and strength, but one "born to better fortune," or exercising more
+ingenuity and industry than the other, gained a trifling ascendency,
+which he improved to increase the disparity, and, by pushing his
+extended mouth in advance of the other, seized the choicest and most of
+the food for himself.
+
+From the northern parts of British America we have received
+extraordinary contributions to our fish collections. One of these is
+the Square-browed Malthe, obtained in one of the land expeditions under
+the command of Captain Sir John Franklin. R.N. It was taken on the
+Labrador coast, and then belonged to a species hitherto undescribed.
+Its intestines were filled with small crabs and univalve shells. The
+extreme length of the fish is 7 inches 11 lines. The upper surface
+is greyish white, with brown blotches, and the fins are whitish. The
+head is much depressed and greatly widened; the eyes far forward; the
+snout projecting like a small horn. Most of the fish of this family
+can live long out of water, in consequence of the smallness of their
+gill-openings; indeed, those of one of the genera are able, even in warm
+countries, to pass two or three days in creeping over the land. All the
+family conceal themselves in the mud or sand, and lie in wait to take
+their prey by surprise. The accompanying engraving is from the very
+able work of Dr. Richardson, F.R.S., published by the munificence of
+Government.
+
+[Illustration: SQUARE-BROWED MALTHE AND DOUBLE FISH.]
+
+Gold Fish (of the Carp family) have been made to distinguish a
+particular sound made by those from whom they receive their food; they
+recognise their footsteps at a distance, and come at their call. Captain
+Brown says Gold Fish, when kept in ponds, are "frequently taught to rise
+to the surface of the water at the sound of a bell to be fed;" and Mr.
+Jesse was assured that Gold Fish evince much pleasure on being whistled
+to. Hakewill, in his "Apology for God's Power and Providence," cites
+Pliny to show that a certain emperor had ponds containing fish, which,
+when called by their respective _names_ that were bestowed upon them,
+came to the spot whence the voice proceeded. Bernier, in his "History
+of Hindustan," states a like circumstance of the fish belonging to the
+Great Mogul. The old poet, Martial, also mentions fish coming at the
+call, as will be seen by the following translation from one of his
+epigrams:--
+
+    "Angler! could'st thou be guiltless? Then forbear:
+    For these are sacred fishes that swim here;
+    Who know their Sovereign, and will lick his hand.
+    Than which none's greater in the world's command;
+    Nay, more; they've names, and when they called are.
+    Do to their several owners' call repair."
+
+Who, after reading so many instances, can doubt that fish hear?
+
+It has been found that the water from steam-engines, which is thrown
+into dams or ponds for the purpose of being cooled, conduces much to
+the nutriment of Gold Fish. In these dams, the average temperature
+of which is about eighty degrees, it is common to keep Gold Fish; in
+which situation they multiply much more rapidly than in ponds of lower
+temperature exposed to variations of the climate. Three pair of fish
+were put into one of these dams, where they increased so rapidly that at
+the end of three years their progeny, which was accidentally poisoned
+by verdigris mixed with the refuse tallow from the engine, were taken
+out by wheel-barrow-fuls. Gold Fish are by no means useless inhabitants
+of these dams, as they consume the refuse grease which would otherwise
+impede the cooling of the water by accumulating on its surface. It is
+not improbable that this unusual supply of aliment may co-operate with
+increase of temperature in promoting the fecundity of the fishes.
+
+Most of our readers have heard of the fish popularly known as the
+Miller's Thumb, the origin of the name of which Mr. Yarrell has thus
+explained:--"It is well known that all the science and tact of a miller
+is directed so to regulate the machinery of his mill that the meal
+produced shall be of the most valuable description that the operation
+of grinding will permit, when performed under the most advantageous
+circumstances. His ear is constantly directed to the note made by the
+running stone in its circular course over the bedstone, the exact
+parallelism of their two surfaces, indicated by a particular sound,
+being a matter of the first consequence; and his hand is constantly
+placed under the meal-spout to ascertain, by actual contact, the
+character and quality of the meal produced, which he does by a
+particular movement of his thumb in spreading the sample over his
+fingers. By this incessant action of the miller's thumb, a peculiarity
+in its shape is produced, which is said to resemble exactly the shape of
+the _river bull-head_, a fish constantly found in the mill-stream, and
+which has obtained for it the name of the Miller's Thumb."
+
+M. Coste has constructed a kind of marine observatory at Concarneau
+(Finisterre) for the purpose of studying the habits and instincts of
+various Sea-fish. A terrace has been formed on the top of a house on the
+quay, with reservoirs arranged like a flight of steps. The sea-water is
+pumped up to the topmost reservoir, and thence flows down slowly, after
+the manner of a rivulet. The length is divided into 95 cells by wire
+net partitions, which, allowing free passage to the water, yet prevent
+the different species of fish from mingling together. By this ingenious
+contrivance each kind lives separate, enjoying its peculiar food and
+habits, unconscious of its state of captivity. Some species, such as the
+Mullet, the Stickleback, &c., grow perfectly tame, will follow the hand
+that offers them food, and will even allow themselves to be taken out of
+the water. The Goby and Bull-head are less familiar. The Turbot, which
+looks so unintelligent, will, nevertheless, take food from the hand;
+it changes colour when irritated, the spots with which it is covered
+growing pale or dark, according to the emotions excited in it. But
+the most curious circumstance concerning it is, that it swallows fish
+of a much larger size than would appear compatible with the apparent
+smallness of its mouth. Thus, a young Turbot, not more than ten inches
+in length, has been seen to swallow Pilchards of the largest size. The
+Pipe-Fish has two peculiarities. These fish form groups, entwining their
+tails together, and remaining immoveable in a vertical position, with
+their heads upwards. When food is offered them, they perform a curious
+evolution--they turn round on their backs to receive it. This is owing
+to the peculiar position of the mouth, which is placed under a kind of
+beak, and perpendicular to its axis.
+
+The crustaceous tribes have also furnished much matter of observation.
+The Prawn and Crab, for instance, exercises the virtue of conjugal
+fidelity to the highest degree; for the male takes hold of his mate,
+and never lets her go; he swims with her, crawls about with her, and if
+she is forcibly taken away from him, he seizes hold of her again. The
+metamorphoses to which various crustaceous tribes are subject have also
+been studied with much attention.[16]
+
+Much as the nature and habits of fish have been studied of late years,
+the economy of some is to this day involved in obscurity. The Herring
+is one of these fishes. The Swedish Herring Fisheries were, at one
+time, the largest in Europe, but at present, during the temporary
+disappearance of the fish, they have dwindled away. The causes which
+influence the movements of the Herring--one of the most capricious of
+fish--are a puzzle which naturalists have as yet failed to solve. They
+are not migratory, as was at one time believed--that is, they seldom
+wander far from the place where they were bred; but they are influenced
+by certain hidden and unexplained causes at one time to remain for years
+in the deep sea, and at another to come close in to land in enormous
+numbers. During the first half of the sixteenth century, Herrings
+entirely deserted the Swedish coasts. In 1556 they reappeared, and
+remained for thirty-one years in the shallow waters. Throughout this
+period they were taken in incalculable numbers; "thousands of ships came
+annually from Denmark, Germany, Friesland, Holland, England, and France,
+to purchase the fish, of which sufficient were always found for them
+to carry away to their own or other countries.... From the small town
+of Marstrand alone some two million four hundred thousand bushels were
+yearly exported." In 1587 the Herrings disappeared, and remained absent
+for seventy-three years, till 1660. In 1727 they returned, and again in
+1747, remaining till 1808, and during this last period the fisheries
+were prosecuted with extraordinary zeal, industry, and success. The
+Government gave every encouragement to settlers, and it was computed
+that during some years as many as fifty thousand strangers took part
+in them. In 1808 the Herrings once more disappeared, and have never
+returned since. The cause must still be considered as quite unknown; but
+we may fairly assume, according to historical precedents, that after a
+certain period of absence, the Herrings will again return.[17]
+
+Aristotle, in his "History of Animals," makes some extremely curious
+observations on Fish and Cetaceous Animals, as might be expected from
+the variety of these animals in the Grecian seas. In Spratt and Forbes's
+"Travels in Syria" the account of the habits and structure of the
+Cuttle-fish in Aristotle's work is ranked amongst the most admirable
+natural history essays ever written. It is, moreover, remarkable for its
+anticipation.
+
+Dr. Osborne, in 1840, read to the Royal Society a short analysis of
+this work, in which he showed that Aristotle anticipated Dr. Jenner's
+researches respecting the cuckoo; as also some discoveries respecting
+the incubated egg, which were published as new in the above year.
+Aristotle describes the economy of bees as we have it at present; but
+mistakes the sex of the queen. The various organs are described as
+modified throughout the different classes of animals (beginning with
+man) in nearly the same order as that afterwards adopted by Cuvier.
+
+The chief value of this body of knowledge, which has been buried for
+above 2,000 years, is, that it is a collection of facts observed under
+peculiar advantages, such as never since occurred, and that _it is at
+the present day to be consulted for new discoveries_.
+
+According to Pliny, for the above work some thousands of men were placed
+at Aristotle's disposal throughout Greece and Asia, comprising persons
+connected with hunting and fishing, or who had the care of cattle,
+fish-ponds, and apiaries, in order that he might obtain information from
+all quarters, _ne quid usquam gentium ignoretur ab eo_. According to
+Athenæus, Aristotle received from the prince, on account of the expenses
+of the work, 800 talents, or upwards of 79,000_l._
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[14] A tench was brought to Mr. Harmer so full of spawn that the skin
+was burst by a slight knock, and many thousands of the eggs were lost;
+yet even after this misfortune he found the remainder to amount to
+383,252! Of other marine animals, which he includes under the general
+term fish, the fecundity, though sufficiently great, is by no means
+enormous. A lobster yielded 7,227 eggs; a prawn 3,806; and a shrimp
+3,057. See Mr. Harmer's paper, "Philosophical Transactions," 1767.
+
+[15] "Athenæum."
+
+[16] See "The Tree-climbing Crab," pp. 282-302.
+
+[17] "Saturday Review."
+
+
+
+
+FISH IN BRITISH COLOMBIA.
+
+
+In this bitterly cold country, where the snow lies deep six months out
+of the twelve, the natives subsist principally on fish, of which there
+is an extraordinary abundance generally, and of salmon particularly.
+Salmon swarm in such numbers that the rivers cannot hold them. In June
+and July every rivulet, no matter how shallow, is so crammed with salmon
+that, from sheer want of room, they push one another high and dry upon
+the pebbles; and Mr. Lord[18] tells us that each salmon, with its head
+up, struggles, fights, and scuffles for precedence. With one's hands
+only, or more easily by employing a gaff or a crook-stick, tons of
+salmon have been procured by the simple process of hooking them out.
+Once started on their journey, the salmon never turn back. As fast as
+those in front die, fresh arrivals crowd on to take their places, and
+share their fate. "It is a strange and novel sight to see three moving
+lines of fish--the dead and dying in the eddies and slack water along
+the bank, the living breasting the current in the centre, blindly
+pressing on to perish like their kindred." For two months this great
+_salmon army_ proceeds on its way up stream, furnishing a supply of food
+without which the Indians must perish miserably. The winters are too
+severe for them to venture out in search of food, even if there was any
+to be obtained. From being destitute of salt, they are unable to cure
+meat in the summer for winter provisions, and hence for six months in
+the year they depend upon salmon, which they preserve by drying in the
+sun.
+
+But the Indian has another source of provision for the winter, fully
+as important as the salmon. The Candle-fish supplies him at once with
+light, butter, and oil.[19] When dried, and perforated with a rush,
+or strip of cypress-bark, it can be lighted, and burns steadily until
+consumed. Strung up, and hung for a time in the smoke of a wood fire,
+it is preserved as a fatty morsel to warm him when pinched with cold;
+and, by heat and pressure, it is easily converted into liquid oil, and
+drunk with avidity. That nothing may be wanting, the hollow stalk of the
+sea-wrack, which at the root is expanded into a complete flask, makes an
+admirable bottle; and so, when the Indian buries himself for long dreary
+months in his winter quarters, neither his larder nor his cellar are
+empty, and he has a lamp to lighten the darkness. The steamers have,
+however, frightened away the Candle-fish and the Indian from their old
+haunts, and they have both retreated to the north of the Colombia River.
+
+Amongst the other inhabitants of the salt and fresh waters of these
+regions are the Halibut and the Sturgeon, both of which attain to an
+immense size. The bays and inlets along the coast abound with marine
+wonders. There feasts and fattens the Clam, a bivalve so gigantic that
+no oyster-knife can force an entrance, and only when his shell is almost
+red-hot will he be at last constrained to open his dwelling.
+
+And there lies in wait the awful Octopus, a monster of insatiable
+voracity, of untameable ferocity, and of consummate craft; of sleepless
+vigilance, shrouded amidst the forest of sea-weed, and from the touch of
+whose terrible arms no living thing escapes. It attains to an enormous
+size in those seas, the arms being sometimes five feet in length, and as
+thick at the base as a man's wrist. No bather would have a chance if he
+once got within the grasp of such a monster, nor could a canoe resist
+the strength of its pull; but the Indian, who devours the Octopus with
+great relish, has all the cunning created by necessity, and takes care
+that none of the eight sucker-dotted arms ever gain a hold on his frail
+bark.
+
+Professor Owen has figured a species of Octopus, the Eight-armed Cuttle
+of the European seas, representing it in the act of creeping on shore,
+its body being carried vertically in the reverse position, with its head
+downwards, and its back being turned towards the spectator, upon whom it
+is supposed to be advancing. This animal is said to be luminous in the
+dark. Linnæus quotes Bartholinus for the statement that one gave so much
+light that when the candle was taken away, it illuminated the room.
+
+The Sturgeon is one of the finest fishes of the country, and Mr. Lord's
+account of the Indian mode of taking them is a very graphic picture of
+this river sport.
+
+     "The spearman stands in the bow, armed with a most formidable
+     spear. The handle, from seventy to eighty feet long, is made of
+     white pine-wood; fitted on the spear-haft is a barbed point,
+     in shape very much like a shuttlecock, supposing each feather
+     represented by a piece of bone, thickly barbed, and very sharp
+     at the end. This is so contrived that it can be easily detached
+     from the long handle by a sharp, dexterous jerk. To this barbed
+     contrivance a long line is made fast, which is carefully coiled
+     away close to the spearman, like a harpoon-line in a whale-boat.
+     The four canoes, alike equipped, are paddled into the centre of
+     the stream, and side by side drift slowly down with the current,
+     each spearman carefully feeling along the bottom with his spear,
+     constant practice having taught the crafty savages to know a
+     Sturgeon's back when the spear comes in contact with it. The
+     spear-head touches the drowsy fish; a sharp plunge, and the
+     redskin sends the notched points through armour and cartilage,
+     deep into the leather-like muscles. A skilful jerk frees the long
+     handle from the barbed end, which remains inextricably fixed in
+     the fish; the handle is thrown aside, the line seized, and the
+     struggle begins. The first impulse is to resist this objectionable
+     intrusion, so the angry Sturgeon comes up to see what it all
+     means. This curiosity is generally repaid by having a second spear
+     sent crashing into him. He then takes a header, seeking safety in
+     flight, and the real excitement commences. With might and main the
+     bowman plies the paddle, and the spearman pays out the line, the
+     canoe flying through the water. The slightest tangle, the least
+     hitch, and over it goes; it becomes, in fact, a sheer trial of
+     paddle _versus_ fin. Twist and turn as the Sturgeon may, all the
+     canoes are with him. He flings himself out of the water, dashes
+     through it, under it, and skims along the surface; but all is in
+     vain, the canoes and their dusky oarsmen follow all his efforts
+     to escape, as a cat follows a mouse. Gradually the Sturgeon
+     grows sulky and tired, obstinately floating on the surface. The
+     savage knows he is not vanquished, but only biding a chance for
+     revenge; so he shortens up the line, and gathers quietly on him
+     to get another spear in. It is done,--and down viciously dives
+     the Sturgeon; but pain and weariness begin to tell, the struggles
+     grow weaker and weaker as life ebbs slowly away, until the mighty
+     armour-plated monarch of the river yields himself a captive to the
+     dusky native in his frail canoe."
+
+There is a very rare Spoonbill Sturgeon found in the western waters
+of North America: its popular name is Paddle-fish. One, five feet in
+length, weighed forty pounds; the nose, resembling a spatula, was
+thirteen inches in length. It was of a light slate colour, spotted with
+black; belly white; skin smooth, like an eel; the flesh compact and
+firm, and hard when boiled--not very enticing to the epicure. The jaws
+are without teeth, but the fauces are lined with several tissues of the
+most beautiful network, evidently for the purpose of collecting its food
+from the water by straining, or passing it through these membranes in
+the same manner as practised by the spermaceti whale. Near the top of
+the head are two small holes, through which it is possible the Sturgeon
+may discharge water in the manner practised by cetaceous animals. It is
+conjectured that the long "Spoonbill" nose of this fish is for digging
+up or moving the soft mud in the bottom of the river, and when the water
+is fully saturated, draw it through the filamentory strainers in search
+of food.
+
+Sturgeons resemble sharks in their general form, but their bodies are
+defended by bony shields, disposed in longitudinal rows; and their head
+is also well curiassed externally. The Sturgeons of North America are of
+little benefit to the natives. A few speared in the summer-time suffice
+for the temporary support of some Indian hordes; but none are preserved
+for winter use, and the roe and sounds are utterly wasted.
+
+The northern limit of the Sturgeon in America is probably between the
+55th and 56th parallels of latitude. Dr. Richardson did not meet with
+any account of its existence to the north of Stewart's Lake, on the west
+side of the Rocky Mountains; and on the east side it does not go higher
+than the Saskatchewan and its tributaries. It is not found in Churchill
+River, nor in any of the branches of the Mackenzie or other streams that
+fall into the Arctic Seas--a remarkable circumstance when we consider
+that some species swarm in the Asiatic rivers which flow into the Icy
+Sea. Sturgeons occur in all the great lakes communicating with the
+St. Lawrence, and also along the whole Atlantic coast of the United
+States down to Florida. Peculiar species inhabit the Mississippi; it is,
+therefore, probable that the range of the genus extends to the Gulf of
+Mexico.
+
+The great rapid which forms the discharge of the Saskatchewan into Lake
+Winnipeg appears quite alive with these fish in the month of June; and
+some families of the natives resort thither at that time to spear them
+with a harpoon, or grapple them with a strong hook tied to a pole.
+Notwithstanding the great muscular power of the Sturgeon, it is timid;
+and Dr. Richardson saw one so frightened at the paddling of a canoe,
+that it ran its nose into a muddy bank, and was taken by a _voyageur_,
+who leaped upon its back.
+
+In Colombia River, a small species of Sturgeon attains eleven feet in
+length, and a weight of six hundred pounds.[20] It is caught as high up
+as Fort Colville, notwithstanding the numerous intervening cataracts and
+rapids which seem to be insuperable barriers to a fish so sluggish in
+its movements.
+
+The Sturgeon is styled a Royal Fish in England, because, by a statute
+of Edward II. it is enacted, "the King shall have Sturgeon taken in the
+sea, or elsewhere, within the realm."
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[18] "The Naturalist in Vancouver Island and British Columbia." By John
+Keast Lord, F.Z.S., Naturalist to the British North American Boundary
+Commission.
+
+[19] The Petrel is similarly used in the Faroe Islands. (See _ante_, p.
+234.) It may, therefore, be called the Candle Bird.
+
+[20] Dr. Richardson. The _Huro_ is reported by Pallas to attain a weight
+of nearly three thousand pounds, and a length exceeding thirty feet.
+
+
+
+
+THE TREE-CLIMBING CRAB.
+
+
+The transition from the ordinary mode of the locomotion of fishes by
+swimming to that of climbing has been ably illustrated by the Rev. Dr.
+Buckland, who showed, in a communication to the Ashmolean Society, in
+1843, that the fins in certain genera perform the functions of feet
+and wings. Thus, "fishing-frogs" have the fins converted into feet, or
+paddles, by means of which they have the power of crawling or hopping
+on sand and mud; and another species can live three days out of the
+water, and walk upon dry land. The climbing perch of the Indian rivers
+is known to live a long time in the air, and to climb up the stems of
+palm-trees in pursuit of flies, by means of spinous projections on its
+gill-covers. Fishes of the _silurus_ family have a bony enlargement of
+the first ray of the pectoral fin, which is also armed with spines;
+and this is not only an offensive and defensive weapon, but enables
+the fish to walk along the bottom of the fresh waters which it
+inhabits. The flying-fishes are notorious examples of the conversion
+of fins into an organ of movement in the air. M. Deslongchamps has
+published, in the "Transactions of the Linnæan Society of Normandy,"
+1842, a curious account of the movements of the gurnard at the bottom of
+the sea. In 1839, he observed these movements in one of the artificial
+fishing-ponds, or fishing-traps, surrounded by nets, on the shore of
+Normandy. He saw a score of gurnards closing their fins against their
+sides, like the wing of a fly in repose, and without any movement of
+their tails, walking along the bottom by means of six free rays, three
+on each pectoral fin, which they placed successively on the ground.
+They moved rapidly forwards, backwards, to the right and left, groping
+in all directions with these rays, as if in search of small crabs.
+Their great heads and bodies seemed to throw hardly any weight on the
+slender rays, or feet, being suspended in water, and having their weight
+further diminished by their swimming-bladder. During these movements the
+gurnards resembled insects moving along the sand. When M. Deslongchamps
+moved in the water, the fish swam away rapidly to the extremity of the
+pond; when he stood still, they resumed their ambulatory movement, and
+came between his legs. On dissection, we find these three anterior rays
+of the pectoral fins to be supported each with strong muscular apparatus
+to direct their movements, apart from the muscles that are connected
+with the smaller rays of the pectoral fin.
+
+Dr. Buckland states that Miss Potts, of Chester, had sent to him a
+flagstone from a coalshaft at Mostyn, bearing impressions which he
+supposed to be the trackway of some fish crawling along the bottom
+by means of the anterior rays of its pectoral fins. There were no
+indications of feet, but only scratches, symmetrically disposed on each
+side of a space that may have been covered by the body of the fish
+whilst making progress, by pressing its fin-bones on the bottom. As yet,
+no footsteps of reptiles, or of any animals more highly organized than
+fishes, have been found in strata older than those which belong to the
+new red sandstone. The abundant remains of fossil fishes, armed with
+strong bony spines, and of other fishes allied to the gurnard, in strata
+of the carboniferous and old red sandstone series, would lead us to
+expect the frequent occurrence of impressions made by their locomotive
+organs on the bottoms of the ancient waters in which they lived. Dr.
+Buckland proposed to designate these petrified traces or trackways of
+ancient fishes by the term of fish-tracks.
+
+Crabs and Lobsters are strange creatures: strange in their
+configurations; strange in the transmutations which they exhibit from
+the egg to maturity; strange in the process they undergo of casting off,
+not only their shell, but the covering of their eyes, of their long
+horns, and even the lining of their tooth-furnished stomach; strange,
+also, are they in their manners and habits. Many a reader, in wandering
+along the sea-shore, may have disturbed little colonies of Crabs
+quietly nestling in fancied security amidst banks of slimy sea-weed; and
+in the nooks and recesses of the coast, the shallows, and strips of land
+left dry at ebb-tide, may be seen numbers of little, or perchance large,
+Crabs, some concealed in snug lurking-places, others tripping, with a
+quick _side-long_ movement, over the beach, alarmed by the advance of an
+unwelcome intruder. Some are exclusively tenants of the water, have feet
+formed like paddles for swimming, and never venture on land; others seem
+to love the air and sunshine, and enjoy an excursion, not without hopes
+of finding an acceptable repast, over the oozy sands; some, equally fond
+of the shore and shallow water, appropriate to themselves the shells of
+periwinkles, whelks, &c., and there live in a sort of castle, which they
+drag about with them on their excursions, changing it for a larger as
+they increase in measure of growth. They vary in size from microscopic
+animalcules to the gigantic King Crab:[21] to the former, the luminosity
+of the ocean, or of the foam before the prows of vessels, is, to a
+great extent, attributable, each minute creature glowing with phosphoric
+light.
+
+The Bernhard Crab has been proved to have the power of dissolving
+shells, it not being unusual to find the long fusiform shells which are
+inhabited by these animals with the inner lip, and the greater part of
+the pillar on the inside of the mouth, destroyed, so as to render the
+aperture much larger than usual. Dr. Gray is quite convinced that these
+Crabs have the above power, some to a much greater degree than others.
+
+Certain Crabs, especially in the West Indies, are almost exclusively
+terrestrial, visiting the sea only at given periods, for the deposition
+of their eggs. These Crabs carry in their gill-chambers sufficient water
+for the purpose of respiration; they live in burrows, and traverse
+considerable tracts of land in the performance of their migratory
+journeys. Of these, some, as the Violet Crab, are exquisite delicacies.
+
+Of a great Crab migration we find these details in the "Jamaica Royal
+Gazette:"--In 1811 there was a very extraordinary production of Black
+Crabs in the eastern part of Jamaica. In June or July the whole district
+of Manchidneed was covered with countless numbers, swarming from the sea
+to the mountains. Of this the writer was an eye-witness. On ascending
+Over Hill from the vale of Plantain Garden River, the road appeared of a
+reddish colour, as if strewed with brick-dust. It was owing to myriads
+of young Black Crabs, about the size of the nail of a man's finger,
+moving at a pretty quick pace, direct for the mountains. "I rode along
+the coast," says the writer, "a distance of about fifteen miles, and
+found it nearly the same the whole way. Returning the following day, I
+found the road still covered with them, the same as the day before. How
+have they been produced, and where do they come from? were questions
+everybody asked, and nobody could answer. It is well known that Crabs
+deposit their eggs once a year, in May; but, except on this occasion,
+though living on the coast, I had never seen above a dozen young Crabs
+together; and here were myriads. No unusual number of old Crabs had been
+observed in that season; and it is worthy of note, that they were moving
+from a rock-bound coast of inaccessible cliffs, the abode of sea-birds,
+and exposed to the constant influence of the trade winds. No person, as
+far as I know, ever saw the like, except on that occasion; and I have
+understood that since 1811 Black Crabs have been more abundant further
+in to the interior of the island than they were ever known before."
+
+Cuvier describes the Burrowing Crab as displaying wonderful
+instinct:--"The animal closes the entrance of its burrow, which is
+situated near the margin of the sea, or in marshy grounds, with its
+largest claw. These burrows are cylindrical, oblique, very deep, and
+very close to each other; but generally each burrow is the exclusive
+habitation of a single individual. The habit which these crabs have of
+holding their large claw elevated in advance of the body, as if making a
+sign of beckoning to some one, has obtained for them the name of Calling
+Crabs. There is a species observed by Mr. Bosc in South Carolina,
+which passes the three months of the winter in its retreat without
+once quitting it, and which never goes to the sea except at the epoch
+of egg-laying." The same observations apply to the Chevalier Crabs (so
+called from the celerity with which they traverse the ground). These are
+found in Africa, and along the borders of the Mediterranean.
+
+Some Crabs, truly aquatic, as the Vaulted Crab of the Moluccas, have
+the power of drawing back their limbs, and concealing them in a furrow,
+which they closely fit; and thus, in imitation of a tortoise, which
+retracts its feet and head within its shell, they secure themselves,
+when alarmed. Other aquatic species have their limbs adapted for
+clinging to weeds and other marine objects. Of these some have the
+two or four hind pairs of limbs so placed as to appear to spring from
+the back; they terminate in a sharp hook, by means of which the Crab
+attaches itself to the valves of shells, fragments of coral, &c.,
+which it draws over its body, and thus lurks in concealment. Allied,
+in some respects, to the Hermit or Soldier Crabs, which tenant empty
+shells, is one which, from its manners and habits, is one of the most
+extraordinary of its race. The Hermit Crabs are voracious, and feed
+on animal substances. The Hermit, or Bernhard Crab, is so called from
+its habit of taking up its solitary residence in deserted shells, thus
+seeking a protection for its tail, which is long and naked. It is found
+in shells of different dimensions, and from time to time leaves its
+abode, as it feels a necessity, for a more commodious dwelling. It is
+said to present, on such occasions, an amusing instinct as it inserts
+the tail successively into several empty shells until one is found to
+fit. We learn from Professor Bell, however, that it does not always wait
+until the home is vacant, but occasionally rejects the rightful occupant
+with some violence. On the contrary, the Crab, or rather Lobster-Crab
+(for it takes an intermediate place between them), is more delicate in
+its appetite, and feeds upon fruits, to obtain which it is said to climb
+up certain trees, at the feet of which it makes a burrow. This species
+is the Purse Crab, or Robber Crab, of Amboyna and other islands in the
+South Pacific Ocean.
+
+"According to popular belief among the Indians," says Cuvier, "the
+Robber Crab feeds on the nuts of the cocoa-tree, and it makes its
+excursions during the night; its places of retreat are fissures in the
+rocks, or holes in the ground." The accounts of the early writers and
+travellers, as well as of the natives, were disbelieved; but their truth
+has since been abundantly confirmed. MM. Quoy and Guimard assure us that
+several Robber Crabs were fed by them for many months on cocoa-nuts
+alone; and a specimen of this Crab was submitted to the Zoological
+Society, with additional information from Mr. Cuming, in whose fine
+collection from the islands of the South Pacific several specimens were
+preserved. Mr. Cuming states these Crabs to be found in great numbers in
+Lord Hood's Island, in the Pacific. He there frequently met with them on
+the road. On being disturbed, the Crabs instantly assumed a defensive
+attitude, making a loud snapping with their powerful claws, or pincers,
+which continued as they retreated backwards. They climb a species of
+palm to gather a small kind of cocoa-nut that grows thereon. They live
+at the roots of trees, and not in the holes of rocks; and they form a
+favourite food among the natives. Such is the substance of Mr. Cuming's
+account. Mr. Darwin, in his "Researches in Geology and Natural History,"
+saw several of these Crabs in the Keeling Islands, or Cocos Islands, in
+the Indian Ocean, about 600 miles distant from the coast of Sumatra. In
+these islands, of coral formation, the cocoa-nut tree is so abundant as
+to appear, at first glance, to compose the whole wood of the islands.
+
+Here the great Purse Crab is abundant. Mr. Darwin describes it as a Crab
+which lives on the cocoa-nut, is common on all parts of the dry land,
+and grows to a monstrous size. This Crab has its front pair of legs
+terminated by very strong and heavy pincers, and the last pair by others
+which are narrow and weak. It would at first be thought quite impossible
+for a Crab to open a strong cocoa-nut, covered with the husk; but Mr.
+Liesk assures me that he has repeatedly seen the operation effected.
+The Crab begins by tearing away the husk, fibre by fibre, and always
+from that end under which the three eye-holes are situated. When this
+is completed the Crab commences hammering with its heavy claws on one
+of these eye-holes till an opening is made. Then, turning its body, by
+the aid of its posterior and narrow pair of pincers, it extracts the
+white albuminous substance. I think this as curious a case as I ever
+heard of, and likewise of adaptation in structure between two objects
+apparently so remote from each other in the scheme of nature as a Crab
+and a cocoa-nut tree. The Crab is diurnal in its habits; but it is said
+to pay every night a visit to the sea for the purpose of moistening its
+gills. These gills are very peculiar, and scarcely fill up more than a
+tenth of the chamber in which they are placed: it doubtless acts as a
+reservoir for water, to serve the Crab in its passage over the dry and
+heated land. The young are hatched and live for some time on the coast;
+at this period of existence we cannot suppose that cocoa-nuts form any
+part of their diet; most probably soft saccharine grasses, fruits, and
+certain animal matters, serve as their food until they attain a certain
+size and strength.
+
+The adult Crabs, Mr. Darwin tells us, inhabit deep burrows, which they
+excavate beneath the roots of trees; and here they accumulate great
+quantities of the picked fibres of the cocoa-nut husk, on which they
+rest as on a bed. The Malays sometimes take advantage of the labours of
+the Crab by collecting the coarse fibrous substance, and using it as
+junk. These Crabs are very good to eat; moreover, under the tail of the
+larger ones there is a great mass of fat, which, when melted, yields as
+much as a quart bottleful of limpid oil.
+
+The Crab's means of obtaining the cocoa-nuts have, however, been much
+disputed. It is stated by some authors to crawl up the trees for the
+purpose of stealing the nuts. This is doubted; though in the kind of
+palm to which Mr. Cuming refers as being ascended by this Crab, the
+task would be much easier. Now, Mr. Darwin states, that in the Keeling
+Islands the Crab lives only on the nuts which fall to the ground. It
+may thus appear that Mr. Cuming's and Mr. Darwin's respective accounts
+of the _non-climbing_ of this Crab on the one side, and its _actually
+climbing trees_ on the other, are contradictory. The height of the stem
+of the cocoa-nut tree, its circumference, and comparative external
+smoothness, would prove insurmountable, or at least very serious
+obstacles, to the most greedy Crab, however large and strong it might
+be. But these difficulties are by no means so formidable in the tree
+specified by Mr. Cuming: this is arborescent, or bushy, with long, thin,
+rigid, sword-shaped leaves, resembling those of the pineapple, usually
+arranged spirally, so that they are commonly called Screw Pines. They
+are of the genus _Pandanus_, a word derived from the Malay _Pandang_.
+The ascent of these arborescent plants, having the stem furnished
+with a rigging of cord-like roots, and bearing a multitude of firm,
+long, and spirally-arranged leaves, would be by no means a work of
+difficulty, as would necessarily be that of the tall feathery-topped
+cocoa-tree, destitute of all available points of aid or support. Hence
+the contradiction in the two accounts referred to is seeming, and not
+real, and the two statements are reconciled.
+
+To sum up, Mr. Cuming fully testifies to the Crab climbing the Screw
+Pines; and he has told Professor Owen that he has actually seen the Crab
+climbing the cocoa-nut tree. The Crab has been kept on cocoa-nuts for
+months; and is universally reported by the natives to climb the trees at
+night.
+
+[Illustration: THE TREE-CLIMBING CRAB.]
+
+We may here, too, observe, that fine specimens of the Climbing Crab are
+to be seen in the British Museum. Here, too, arranged in cases, are
+Spider Crabs; Crabs with oysters growing on their backs, thus showing
+that Crabs do not shed their shells every year, or that the oyster
+increases very rapidly in bulk; Oval-bodied Crabs; and Fin-footed or
+Swimming Crabs. Here are also Telescope, or Long-eyed Crabs, and Land
+Crabs, found in India 4,000 feet above the sea-level; another of similar
+habits in the plains of the Deccan, that may be seen swarming in the
+fields, some cutting and nipping the green rice-stalks, and others
+waddling off backwards with sheaves bigger than themselves. To these
+may be added Square-bodied Crabs, Crested Crabs; Porcelain Crabs, with
+delicate, china-like shells; and Death's-head Crabs, which usually form
+cases for themselves from pieces of sponge and shells.
+
+Certain species of Crabs are remarkably tenacious of life, and have been
+known to live for weeks buried, and without food. It is in the Crab
+tribe that the fact of the metamorphosis of _crustacea_ has been most
+distinctly perceived; a small, peculiar crustacean animal, that had
+long passed for a distinct species, under the name of _Zoea_, having at
+length been identified with the young of the common Crab before it had
+attained its full development.
+
+That among the Crab tribes a tree-climbing species is to be found is
+certainly curious, but it is not without a parallel among fishes. Many
+of the latter leave the water, some even for a long time, and perform
+overland journeys, aided in their progress by the structure of their
+fins. In these fishes the gills and gill-chambers are constructed for
+the retention of water for a considerable time, so as to suffice for the
+necessary degree of respiration. In our country, we may mention the eel,
+which often voluntarily quits the river or lake, and wanders during the
+night over the adjacent meadows, probably in quest of dew-worms. But the
+marshes of India and China present us with fishes much more decidedly
+terrestrial, and some of which were known to the ancients. Among these
+are several fishes of a snake-like form: they have an elongated,
+cylindrical body, and creep on land to great distances from their native
+waters. The boatmen of India often keep these fishes for a long time
+out of water, for the sake of diverting themselves and others by their
+terrestrial movements, and children may often be seen enjoying this
+sport.
+
+Of these land-haunting fishes, the most remarkable is the tree-climber,
+so called in Tranquebar. This fish inhabits India, the Indian islands,
+and various parts of China, as Chusan, &c., living in marshes, and
+feeding on aquatic insects, worms, &c. According to Daldorf, a Danish
+gentleman, who, in 1797, communicated an account of the habits of this
+fish to the Linnæan Society, it _mounts up_ the bushes or low palms
+to some elevation. This gentleman states that he had himself observed
+it in the act of ascending palm-trees near the marshes, and had taken
+it at a height of no less than five feet, measured from the level of
+the adjacent water. It effects its ascent by means of its pectoral and
+under fins, aided by the action of the tail and the spines which border
+the gill covers. It is by the same agency that it traverses the land.
+The statement of M. Daldorf is corroborated by M. John, also a Danish
+observer, to whom we are indebted for the knowledge of its name in
+Tranquebar, which alludes to its arboreal proceedings.
+
+It is true that many other naturalists who have observed the habits
+of this fish in its native regions, while they concur in describing
+its terrestrial journeys, and its living for a long time out of water,
+either omit to mention, or mention with doubt, its reputed attempts at
+_tree-climbing_.
+
+The habits and instincts of certain Crawfishes are very extraordinary.
+Thus, the _Astaci_ are migratory, and in their travels are capable of
+doing much damage to dams and embankments. On the Little Genesee River
+they have, within a few years, compelled the owner of a dam to rebuild
+it. The former dam was built after the manner of dykes, _i.e._, with
+upright posts, supporting sleepers, laid inclining up the stream. On
+these were laid planks, and the planks were covered with dirt. The
+_Astacus_ proceeding up the stream would burrow under the planks where
+they rested on the bottom of the stream, removing bushels of dirt and
+gravel in the course of a night. They travel over the dam in their
+migrations, _often climbing posts_ two or three feet high to gain the
+pond above.[22]
+
+We have to add a new and eccentric variety of nature--the Pill-making
+Crab, which abounds at Labuan, Singapore, and Lahore, and is described
+in Mr. Collingwood's "Rambles of a Naturalist." When the tide is down,
+this little creature, if stealthily watched, may be seen creeping up
+a hole in the sandy shore, taking up rapidly particles of the loose
+powdery sand in its claws, and depositing them in a groove beneath the
+thorax. A little ball of sand, about the size of a filbert, is forthwith
+projected, though whether it passes actually through the mouth is not
+made clear. Pill after pill is seized with one claw, and laid aside,
+until the beach is covered with these queer little pellets. This is
+evidently the creature's mode of extracting particles of food from the
+sand.
+
+Mr. Collingwood also describes, as met with on the shores and waters of
+the China seas, Glass Crabs, whose flat, transparent, leaf-like bodies
+seem made of fine plates of mica. The dredge brings up many a rich
+haul of sponges, corals, and gorgoniæ, of the most splendid colours,
+certain of the sponges harbouring within their cells minute crabs of a
+new genus. Between Aden and Galle the sea is of a pinkish colour, owing
+to the immense accumulation of minute kinds of medusæ, in solid masses
+of red jelly. Over Fiery Cross Reef, the mirror-like sea reveals, at
+the depth of sixty or seventy feet, this wealth of natural treasures.
+"Glorious masses of living coral strew the bottom: immense globular
+madrepores--vast overhanging mushroom-shaped expansions, complicated
+ramifications of interweaving branches, mingled with smaller and more
+delicate species--round, finger-shaped, horn-like and umbrella-form--lie
+in wondrous confusion. Here and there is a large clam-shell, wedged
+in between masses of coral, the gaping, zigzag mouth covered with the
+projecting mantle of the deepest Prussian blue; beds of dark purple,
+long-spined Echini, and the thick black bodies of sea-cucumbers vary the
+aspect of the sea bottom."[23]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[21] This Crab has an elongated spine-like tail, the use of which was
+long misunderstood. Dr. J. Gray was shown at the Liverpool Museum some
+living King Crabs, and the use they made of the tail-like appendages.
+When turned over on their backs, he saw them bend down the tail until
+they could reach some point of resistance, and then employ it to
+elevate the body, and regain their normal position. Dr. Gray states
+that they never have been seen to use this tail for the purpose which
+has been often assigned to it--that is, for leaping from place to place
+by bending it under the body, like the toy called a "spring-jack," or
+"leaping frog."
+
+[22] American Journal of Science and Art.
+
+[23] W. C. Linnæus Martin, F.L.S.
+
+
+
+
+MUSICAL LIZARDS.
+
+
+A small Lizard, lately brought home from the Isle of Formosa by Mr.
+Swinhoe, is decided to be a new species by Dr. Günther, of the British
+Museum. Mr. Swinhoe found the eggs of this Gecko, or Lizard, in holes of
+walls or among mortar rubbish. They are round, and usually lie several
+together, resembling eggs of ordinary Lizards. The young, when first
+hatched, keep much under stones in dark cellars, where they remain
+until they attain about two-thirds of the adult size, when they begin
+to appear in public to catch insects, but evincing great shyness of
+their seniors. Mr. Swinhoe states that on the plaster-washed sides of
+his bedroom, close to the angle of the roof, every evening when the lamp
+was placed on the table below, four little Musical Lizards used to make
+their appearance and watch patiently for insects attracted by the light.
+A sphinx or a beetle buzzing into the room would put them into great
+excitement, and they would run with celerity from one part of the wall
+to the other after the deluded insect as it fluttered in vain, buffeting
+its head, up and down the wall. Two or three would run after the same
+insect, but as soon as one had succeeded in securing it, the rest would
+prudently draw aloof. In running over the perpendicular face of the wall
+they keep so close, and their movements are made so quickly, with one
+leg in advance of the other, that they have the appearance at a distance
+of gliding rather than running. The tail is somewhat writhed as the body
+is jerked along, and much so when the animal is alarmed and doing its
+utmost to escape; but its progress even then is in short runs, stopping
+at intervals and raising its head to look about. If a fly perch on the
+wall it cautiously approaches to within a short distance, then suddenly
+darts forwards, and with its quickly-protruded, glutinous tongue, fixes
+it. Apart from watching its curious manoeuvres after its insect-food,
+the attention of the most listless would be attracted by the singular
+series of loud notes these creatures utter at all hours of the day and
+night, more especially during cloudy and rainy weather. These notes
+resemble the syllables "chuck-chuck," several times repeated; and, from
+their more frequent occurrence during July and August, they are thought
+to be the call notes of the male to the female.
+
+During the greater part of the day, the little creature lies quiescent
+in some cranny among the beams of the roof or in the wall of the house,
+where, however, it is ever watchful for the incautious fly that
+approaches its den, upon whom it darts forth with but little notice. But
+it is by no means confined to the habitations of men. Every old wall,
+and almost every tree, possesses a tenant or two of this species. It is
+excessively lively, and even when found quietly ensconced in a hole,
+generally manages to escape--its glittering little eyes (black, with
+yellow ochre iris) appearing to know no sleep; and an attempt to capture
+the runaway seldom results in more than the seizure of an animated tail,
+wrenched off with a jerk by the little fellow as it slips away, without
+loss of blood. The younger individuals are much darker than the larger
+and older animals, which are sometimes almost albinoes. In ordinary
+fly-catching habits, as they stick to the sides of a lamp, there is much
+similarity between this gecko and the little papehoo, or wall-lizard
+of China; but this is decidedly a larger and much more active animal,
+and often engages in a struggle with insects of very large size. The
+Chinese colonists of Formosa greatly respect the geckos, in consequence
+of a legend which attributes to them the honour of having once poisoned
+the supplies of an invading rebellious army, which was thereby totally
+cut to pieces. The geckos were raised to the rank of generals by the
+grateful Emperor of China; which honour, the legend states, they greatly
+appreciated, and henceforth devoted their energies to the extermination
+of mosquitoes and other injurious insects.
+
+
+
+
+CHAMELEONS, AND THEIR CHANGES.
+
+      "Nil fuit unquam
+    Sic impar sibi."--_Horat._
+
+    "Sure such a various creature ne'er was seen."
+
+                    _Francis, in imit._
+
+
+The Chameleon tribe is a well-defined family of lizard-like reptiles,
+whose characters may be summed up as existing in the form of their feet;
+the toes, which are joined together or bound up together in two packets
+or bundles, opposed to each other; in their shagreen-like skin; in their
+prehensile tail; and in their extensile and retractile vermiform tongue.
+
+That the Chameleon was known to the ancients there is no doubt. Its
+name we derive directly from the _Chamelæo_ of the Latins. Aristotle's
+history of the animal proves the acute observation of that great
+zoologist--the absence of a sternum, the disposition of the ribs, the
+mechanism of the tail, the motion of the eyes, the toes bound up in
+opposable bundles, &c.--though he is not entirely correct on some
+points. Pliny mentions it, but his account is for the most part a
+compilation from Aristotle.
+
+Calmet's description of the Chameleon is curiously minute:--"It has
+four feet, and on each foot three claws. Its tail is long: with this,
+as well as with his feet, it fastens itself to the branches of trees.
+Its tail is flat, its nose long, ending in an obtuse point; its back is
+sharp, its skin plaited, and jagged like a saw, from the neck to the
+last joint of the tail, and upon its head it has something like a comb;
+like a fish, it has no neck. Some have asserted that it lives only upon
+air, but it has been observed to feed on flies, catched with its tongue,
+which is about ten inches long and three thick, made of white flesh,
+round, but flat at the end, or hollow and open, resembling an elephant's
+trunk. It also shrinks, and grows longer. This animal is said to assume
+the colour of those things to which it is applied; but our modern
+observers assure us that its natural colour, when at rest, and in the
+shade, is a bluish-grey; though some are yellow, others green, but both
+of a smaller kind. When it is exposed to the sun, the grey changes into
+a darker grey, inclining to a dun colour, and its parts which have least
+of the light upon them are changed into spots of different colours.
+Sometimes, when it is handled, it seems speckled with dark spots,
+inclining to green. If it be put upon a black hat, it appears to be of a
+violet colour; and sometimes, if it be wrapped up in linen, it is white;
+but it changes colour only in some parts of the body."
+
+Its changes of colour have been commemorated by the poets. Shakspeare
+has--
+
+    "I can add colours ev'n to the Chameleon:
+    Change shapes with Proteus, for advantage."
+
+Dryden has--
+
+    "The thin Chameleon, fed with air, receives
+    The colour of the thing to which it cleaves."
+
+Prior has--
+
+    "As the Chameleon, which is known
+    To have no colours of his own,
+    But borrows from his neighbour's hue
+    His white or black, his green or blue."
+
+Gay, in his charming fable of the Spaniel and the Chameleon, "scarce
+distinguished from the green," makes the latter thus reply to the taunts
+of the pampered spaniel:--
+
+    "'Sir,' says the sycophant, 'like you,
+    Of old, politer life I knew:
+    Like you, a courtier born and bred,
+    Kings lean'd their ear to what I said:
+    My whisper always met success;
+    The ladies prais'd me for address;
+    I knew to hit each courtier's passion,
+    And flatter'd every vice in fashion:
+    But Jove, who hates the liar's ways,
+    At once cut short my prosperous days,
+    And, sentenced to retain my nature,
+    Transform'd me to this crawling creature.
+    Doom'd to a life obscure and mean,
+    I wander'd in the silvan scene:
+    For Jove the heart alone regards;
+    He punishes what man rewards.
+    How different is thy case and mine!
+    With men at least you sup and dine;
+    While I, condemned to thinnest fare,
+    Like those I flatter'd, fed on air.'"
+
+Upon this fable a commentator acutely notes:--"The raillery at court
+sycophants naturally pervades our poet's writings, who had suffered so
+much from them. Here, however, he intimates something more, namely, the
+apposite dispensations to man's acts, even in this world. The crafty is
+taken in by his own guile, the courtier falls by his own arts, and the
+ladder of ambition only prepares for the aspirant a further fall."[24]
+
+With respect to the air-food of the Chameleon. Cuvier observes that
+its lung is so large that, when it is filled with air, it imparts a
+transparency to the body, which made the ancients say that it lived
+upon air; and he inclines to think that to its size the Chameleon owes
+the property of changing its colour; but, with regard to this last
+speculation, he was wrong, as we shall presently see.
+
+It was long thought that the Chameleon, like most of the lizard tribe,
+was produced from an egg. The little animal is, however, most clearly
+viviparous, and not oviparous, although the tales told of the lizard
+tribe in the story books are most perplexing. To name a few of them:--1.
+The crocodile, which is the largest of the lizard tribe, and has even
+attained the size of 18-1/2 ft. in length, is confidently stated as
+laying eggs, which she covers with sand and leaves, to be hatched by the
+sun; and these have been met with in the rivers Nile, Niger, and Ganges.
+2. _Lacerta Gangetica_, unknown to Linnæus, but brought to this country
+from Bengal in 1747 by the late Dr. Mead, is said to be furnished
+with a false belly, like the opossum, where the young can be received
+for protection in time of danger. In this case the egg must have been
+hatched in the belly of the animal, like the viper. 3. The alligator,
+or American crocodile, lays a vast quantity of eggs in the sand, near
+the banks of lakes and rivers, and leaves them to be hatched by the sun;
+and the young are seldom seen. 4. The cayman, or Antilles crocodile, has
+furnished its eggs to many collections. 5. A salamander was opened by M.
+Maupertuis, and its belly was found full of eggs; but in "Les Mémoires
+de l'Académie Royale des Sciences" it is stated that, after a similar
+operation of the kind, "fifty young ones, resembling the parent animal,
+were found in its womb all alive, and actively running about the room."
+
+The tongue is the chief organ for taking the insects on which the
+Chameleon lives. By a curious mechanism, of which the tongue-bone is a
+principal agent, the Chameleon can protrude this cylindrical tongue,
+which has its tip covered with a glutinous secretion from the sheath
+at the lower part of the mouth, to the length of six inches. When the
+Chameleon is about to seize an insect, it rolls round its extraordinary
+eyeballs so as to bring them to bear on the doomed object; as soon
+as it arrives within the range of the tongue, that organ is projected
+with unerring precision, and returns into the mouth with the prey
+adhering to the viscous tip. The wonderful activity with which this
+feat is performed, forms a strong contrast to the almost ridiculously
+slow motions of the animal. Their operation of taking meal-worms, of
+which they are fond, though comparatively rapid, is not remarkable for
+its quickness, but done with an act of deliberation, and so that the
+projection and retraction of the tongue can be very distinctly followed
+with the eye.
+
+The eyes of the Chameleon are remarkable objects; large, projecting, and
+almost entirely covered with the shagreen-like skin, with the exception
+of a small aperture opposite the pupil; their motions are completely
+independent of each other. It adds to the strange and grotesque
+appearance of this creature to see it roll one of its eye-globes
+backwards, while the other is directed forwards, as if making two
+distinct surveys at one time. Its sight must be acute, from the unerring
+certainty with which it marks and strikes its prey.
+
+The Chameleons spend their lives in trees, for clinging to the branches
+of which their organization is admirably adapted. There they lie in
+wait for the insects which may come within their reach; and it has been
+thought that, in such situations, their faculty of changing colour
+becomes highly important in aiding them to conceal themselves. The
+powers of abstinence possessed by this singular race are very great;
+and hence, most probably, arose the old fable of their _living on
+air_, which was for a long time considered to be "the Chameleon's
+dish." One has been known to fast upwards of six weeks without taking
+any sustenance, though meat-food and insects were procured for it.
+Notwithstanding this fast, it did not appear to fall away much. It would
+fix itself by the feet and tail to the bars of the fender, and there
+remain motionless, enjoying the warmth of the fire for hours together.
+Hasselquist describes one, that he kept for nearly a month, as climbing
+up and down the bars of its cage in a very lively manner.
+
+The power of the Chameleon's changing colour long exercised the
+ingenuity of the old naturalists. Hasselquist thought that the changes
+of colour depended on a kind of disease, more especially a sort of
+jaundice, to which the animal was subject, particularly when it was put
+in a rage. M. D'Obsonville thought that he had discovered the secret in
+the blood, and that the change of colour depended upon a mixture of blue
+and yellow, whence the different shades of green were derived; and these
+colours he obtains from the blood and the blood-vessels. Thus he says
+that the blood is of a violet hue, and will retain its colour on linen
+or paper for some minutes if previously steeped in a solution of alum,
+and that the coats of the vessels are yellow; consequently, he argues,
+that the mixture of the two will produce green. He further traces the
+change of colour to the passions of the animal. Thus, when a healthy
+Chameleon is provoked, the circulation is accelerated, the vessels that
+are spread over the skin are distended, and a superficial blue-green
+colour is produced. When, on the contrary, the animal is imprisoned,
+impoverished, and deprived of free air, the circulation becomes languid,
+the vessels are not filled, the colour of their coats prevails, and the
+Chameleon changes to a yellow-green, which lasts during its confinement.
+
+Barrow, in his "Travels in Africa," declares that previously to the
+Chameleon's assuming a change of colour, it makes a long inspiration,
+the body swelling out to twice its usual size; and as the inflation
+subsides, the change of colour gradually takes place, the only permanent
+marks being two small dark lines passing along the sides. Mr. Wood
+conceives from this account that the animal is principally indebted for
+these varied tints to the influence of oxygen. Mr. Spittal also regards
+these changes as connected with the state of the lungs; and Mr. Houston
+considers this phenomenon as dependent on the turgescency of the skin.
+Dr. Weissenborn thinks it not unlikely that the nervous currents may
+directly co-operate in effecting the changes of colour in the Chameleon.
+
+Mr. H. N. Turner, writing from personal observation of the phenomenon
+in a live Chameleon in his possession, says:--"It has been generally
+imagined that the purpose of the singular faculty accorded to the
+Chameleon is to enable it to accommodate its appearance to that of
+surrounding objects." Mr. Turner's observations do not, however, favour
+the idea, but seem rather to negative it. The box in which Mr. Turner's
+Chameleon was kept was of deal, with glass at the top, and a piece of
+flannel laid at the bottom, a small branching stick being placed there
+by way of a perch. He introduced, at various times, pieces of coloured
+paper, covering the bottom of the box, of blue, yellow, and scarlet,
+but without the slightest effect upon the appearance of the animal.
+Considering that these primary colours were not such as it would be
+likely to be placed in contact with in a state of nature, he next tried
+a piece of green calico, but equally without result. The animal went
+through all its usual changes without their being in any way modified by
+the colour placed underneath it. The general tint approximated, as may
+be readily observed, to those of the branches of trees, just as those of
+most animals do to the places in which they dwell; but Mr. Turner did
+not observe the faculty of changing called into play with any apparent
+object. It is only when the light is removed that the animal assumes a
+colour which absorbs but little of it.
+
+Not to go further into the numerous treatises which have been published
+on this intricate subject without arriving at a just conclusion, we
+refer to the able and interesting paper of Mr. Milne Edwards, for whose
+acuteness the solution of this puzzling phenomenon was reserved. The
+steps by which he first overthrew the received theories on the subject,
+and then arrived at the cause of the change of colour, is shown in the
+following results, derived from observing two Chameleons living, and
+researches after the animals had died, on the structure of their skin,
+and the parts immediately beneath it.
+
+1. That the change in the colour of the Chameleon does not depend
+essentially either on the more or less considerable swelling of their
+bodies, or the changes which might hence result to the condition of
+their blood or circulation; nor does it depend on the greater or less
+distance which may exist between the several cutaneous tubercles;
+although it is not to be denied that these circumstances probably
+exercise some influence upon the phenomenon.
+
+2. That there exist in the skin of these animals two layers of
+membranous pigment, placed the one above the other, but disposed in such
+a way as to appear simultaneously under the cuticle, and sometimes in
+such a manner that the one may hide the other.
+
+3. That everything remarkable in the changes of colour in the Chameleon
+may be explained by the appearance of the pigment of the deeper layer to
+an extent more or less considerable, in the midst of the pigment of the
+superficial layer, or from its disappearance beneath this layer.
+
+4. That these displacements of the deeper pigment do in reality occur;
+and it is a probable consequence that the Chameleon's colour changes
+during life, and may continue to change even after death.
+
+5. That there exists a close analogy between the mechanism by the help
+of which the change of colour appears to take place in these reptiles,
+and that which determines the successive appearance and disappearance of
+coloured spots in the mantles of several of the cephalopods.
+
+Chameleons are found in warm climates of the old world, South of Spain,
+Africa, East Indies. Isles of Sechelles, Bourbon, France, Moluccas.
+Madagascar (where it is said there are seven of the species which belong
+to Africa), Fernando Po, and New South Wales. In the year 1860, a new
+and curiously formed species of Chameleon was brought from the interior
+of the Old Calabar district of West Africa, by one of the natives. It is
+characterised by three horny processes on the head. Many Lizards have
+singular spiny projections on all parts of the body; but this very well
+marked species had not been hitherto recorded.
+
+Mrs. Belzoni, the wife of the celebrated traveller in the East, made
+some careful observations upon the habits of Chameleons, which are worth
+quoting. The Arabs in Lower Egypt catch Chameleons by jumping upon them,
+flinging stones at them, or striking them with sticks, which hurts them
+very much. The Nubians lay them down gently on the ground, and when
+they come down from the date-trees, they catch hold of the tail of the
+animal, and fix a string to it; therefore the body does not get injured.
+Mrs. Belzoni had some Chameleons for several months in her house, and
+her observations are as follows:--
+
+"In the first place they are very inveterate towards each other, and
+must not be shut up together, else they will bite each other's tails and
+legs off.
+
+[Illustration: CHAMELEONS.]
+
+"There are three species of Chameleons, whose colours are peculiar
+to themselves: for instance, the commonest sort are those which are
+generally green, that is to say, the body all green, and, when content,
+beautifully marked on each side regularly on the green with black and
+yellow, not in a confused manner, but as if drawn. This kind is in great
+plenty; they never have any other colour except a light green when they
+sleep, and when ill, a very pale yellow. Out of near forty I had the
+first year when in Nubia, I had but one, and that a very small one of
+the second sort, which had red marks. One Chameleon lived with me eight
+months, and most of that time I had it fixed to the button of my coat:
+it used to rest on my shoulder or on my head. I have observed, when I
+have kept it shut up in a room for some time, that on bringing it out
+in the air it would begin drawing the air in, and on putting it on some
+marjorum it has had a wonderful effect on it immediately: its colour
+became most brilliant. I believe it will puzzle a good many to say what
+cause it proceeds from. If they did not change when shut up in a house,
+but only on taking them in a garden, it might be supposed the change
+of the colours was in consequence of the smell of the plants; but when
+in a house, if it is watched, it will change every ten minutes: some
+moments a plain green, at others all its beautiful colours will come
+out, and when in a passion it becomes of a deep black, and will swell
+itself up like a balloon, and, from being one of the most beautiful
+animals, it becomes one of the most ugly. It is true that Chameleons
+are extremely fond of the fresh air, and on taking them to a window
+when there is nothing to be seen, it is easy to observe the pleasure
+they certainly take in it: they begin to gulp down the air, and their
+colour becomes brighter. I think it proceeds, in a great degree, from
+the temper they are in: a little thing will put them in a bad humour: if
+in crossing a table, for instance, you stop them, and attempt to turn
+them another road, they will not stir, and are extremely obstinate: on
+opening the mouth at them, it will set them in a passion: they begin to
+arm themselves by swelling and turning black, and will sometimes hiss a
+little, but not much.
+
+"The third I brought from Jerusalem was the most singular of all the
+Chameleons I ever had: its temper, if it can be so called, was extremely
+sagacious and cunning. This one was not of the order of the green kind,
+but a disagreeable drab, and it never once varied in its colour in two
+months. On my arrival in Cairo. I used to let it crawl about the room on
+the furniture. Sometimes it would get down, if it could, and hide itself
+away from me, but in a place where it could see me; and sometimes,
+on my leaving the room and on entering it, would draw itself so thin
+as to make itself nearly on a level with whatever it might be on, so
+that I might not see it. It had often deceived me so. One day having
+missed it for some time, I concluded it was hid about the room; after
+looking for it in vain, I thought it had got out of the room and made
+its escape: in the course of the evening, after the candle was lighted,
+I went to a basket that had got a handle across it: I saw my Chameleon,
+but its colour entirely changed, and different to any I ever had seen
+before: the whole body, head and tail, a brown with black spots, and
+beautiful deep orange-coloured spots round the black. I certainly was
+much gratified. On being disturbed, its colours vanished, unlike the
+others; but after this I used to observe it the first thing in the
+morning, when it would have the same colours. Some time after, it made
+its escape out of my room, and I suppose got into the garden close by.
+I was much vexed, and would have given twenty dollars to have recovered
+it again, though it only cost me threepence, knowing I could not get
+another like it; for, afterwards being in Rosetta, I had between fifty
+and sixty; but all those were green, yellow, and black; and the Arabs,
+in catching them, had bruised them so much, that after a month or six
+weeks they died. It is an animal extremely hard to die. I had prepared
+two cages with separate divisions, with the intention of bringing them
+to England; but though I desired the Arabs that used to get them for me
+to catch them by the tail, they used to hurt them much with their hands;
+and if once the body is squeezed, it will never live longer than two
+months. When they used to sleep at night, it was easy to see where they
+had been bruised; for being of a very light colour when sleeping, the
+part that had been bruised, either on the body or the head, which was
+bone, was extremely black, though when green it would not show itself so
+clear. Their chief food was flies: the fly does not die immediately on
+being swallowed, for upon taking the Chameleon up in my hands, it was
+easy to feel the fly buzzing, chiefly on account of the air they draw in
+their inside: they swell much, and particularly when they want to fling
+themselves off a great height, by filling themselves up like a balloon:
+on falling, they get no hurt, except on the mouth, which they bruise a
+little, as that comes first to the ground. Sometimes they will not drink
+for three or four days, and when they begin they are about half an hour
+drinking. I have held a glass in one hand while the Chameleon rested its
+two fore-paws on the edge of it, the two hind ones resting on my other
+hand. It stood upright while drinking, holding its head up like a fowl.
+By flinging its tongue out of its mouth the length of its body, and
+instantaneously catching the fly, it would go back like a spring. They
+will drink mutton broth: how I came to know this was, one day having a
+plate of broth and rice on the table where it was: it went to the plate
+and got half into it, and began drinking, and trying to take up some of
+the rice, by pushing it with its mouth towards the side of the plate,
+which kept it from moving, and in a very awkward way taking it into its
+mouth."
+
+In the autumn of 1868, a pair of Chameleons, in the possession of the
+Hon. Lady Cust, of Leasowe Castle, Cheshire, produced nine active young
+ones, like little alligators, less than an inch long. Such a birth has
+been, it is believed, very rare in this country. It was remarked, in the
+above case, that the male and female appeared altogether indifferent
+about their progeny.
+
+Whatever may be the cause, the fact seems to be certain, that the
+Chameleon has an antipathy to objects of a black colour. One, which
+Forbes kept, uniformly avoided a black board which was hung up in the
+chamber; and, what is most remarkable, when the Chameleon was held
+forcibly before the black board, it trembled violently and assumed a
+_black colour_.[25]
+
+It may be something of the same kind which makes Bulls and Turkey-cocks
+dislike the colour of scarlet, a fact of which there can be no doubt.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[24] The Fables of John Gay. Illustrated. With Original Memoir,
+Introduction, and Annotations. By Octavius Freire Owen, M.A., F.S.A.
+1854.
+
+[25] This, it will be seen by referring to page 307, does not correspond
+with Calmet's statement.
+
+
+
+
+RUNNING TOADS.
+
+
+That the Toad, by common repute "ugly and venomous," should be made a
+parlour pet, is passing strange; yet such is the case, and we find in a
+letter from Dr. Husenbeth, of Cossey, the following curious instances.
+Thus he describes a species, there often met with, the eyes of which
+have the pupil surrounded with bright golden-yellow, whereas in the
+common toad the circle is red or orange. This remarkable peculiarity
+Dr. H. has not seen anywhere noticed. The head is like that of the
+common sort, but much more blunt, and rounded off at the nose and mouth,
+and the arches over the eyes are more prominent. The most remarkable
+difference is a line of yellow running all down the back. Also down each
+side this Toad has a row of red pimples, like small beads, which are
+tolerably regular, but appear more in some specimens than in others.
+The general colour is a yellowish-olive, but the animal is beautifully
+marked with black spots, very regularly disposed, and exactly
+corresponding on each side of the yellow line down the back. Like all
+other Toads, this one occasionally changes its colour, becoming more
+brown, or ash-colour, or reddish at times, probably in certain states
+of the weather. This species is much more active than the common Toad.
+It never leaps, and very seldom crawls, but makes a short run, stops a
+little, and then runs on again. If frightened or pursued, it will run
+along much quicker than one would suppose.
+
+During the previous summer Dr. H. kept three Toads of this kind in
+succession. "The first (says Dr. H.) I procured in July; but after a
+few days, when I let him have a run on the carpet of my parlour, he
+got into a hole in a corner of the floor, of which I was not aware,
+and fell, as I suppose, underneath the floor, into the hollow space
+below. I concluded that he could never get up again, and gave him up to
+his fate. I then began to keep another Running Toad, which fed well at
+first, but after three weeks refused food, and evidently wasted; so I
+turned him out into the garden, and have not met with him since. After
+more than three weeks, the former Toad reappeared, but how he came up
+from beneath the floor I never could conceive, or how he had picked
+up a living in the meantime. He was, however, in good condition, and
+seemed to have lived well, probably on spiders and woodlice. He had been
+seen by a servant running about the carpet, but I knew nothing of his
+having come forth again, till in the evening, when he had got near the
+door, and it was suddenly opened so as to pass over the poor creature,
+and crush it terribly. I took it up apparently dead. It showed no sign
+of life; the eyes were closed, it did not breathe, and the backbone
+seemed quite broken, and the animal was crushed almost flat. I found a
+very curious milky secretion exuding from it, where it had been most
+injured and the skin was most broken. This was perfectly white, and had
+exactly the appearance of milk thrown over the toad. It did not bleed,
+though much lacerated; but instead of blood appeared this milky fluid,
+which had an odour of a most singular kind, different from anything I
+ever smelt. It is impossible to describe it. It was not fetid, but of
+a sickly, disgusting, and overpowering character, so that I could not
+endure to inhale it for a moment. I had read and seen a good deal of the
+extraordinary powers of revivification in toads, but was not prepared
+for what I witnessed on this occasion. I laid this poor animal, crushed,
+flattened, motionless, and to all appearance dead, upon a cold iron
+plate of the fireplace. He fell over on one side, and showed no sign of
+life for a full hour. After that he had slightly moved one leg, and so
+remained for about another half-hour. Then he began to breathe feebly,
+and gathered up his legs, and his back began to rise up into its usual
+form. In about two hours from the time of the accident, he had so far
+recovered as to crawl about, though with difficulty. The milky liquor
+was reabsorbed, and gradually disappeared as the toad recovered. The
+next morning it was all gone, and no mark of injury could be seen,
+except a small hole in his back, which soon closed. He recovered so far
+as to move about pretty well, but his back appeared to have been broken,
+and one fore-leg crippled. I therefore thought it best to give him his
+liberty in the garden. But so wonderful and speedy a recovery I could
+never have believed without ocular testimony.
+
+"I then tried my third and last Running Toad. I began to keep him on
+Sept. 13th. He was a very fine specimen, and larger than the two former.
+He fed well, and amused me exceedingly. He was very tame, and would sit
+on my hand quite quiet, and enjoy my stroking him gently down his head
+and back. Soon after I got him he began to cast his skin. I helped him
+to get rid of it by stripping it down each side, which he seemed to
+like much, and sat very quiet during the operation. The new skin was
+quite beautiful, and shone as if varnished. This Toad lived in a crystal
+palace, or glass jar, where I had kept all the others before him. He
+took food freely, and his appetite was so good that in one day he ate
+seven large flies and three bees without stings. He was particularly
+fond of woodlice and earwigs, but would take centipedes, moths, and
+even butterflies. Being more active than common Toads, he often made
+great efforts to get out of his glass jar. I used to let him run about
+the room nearly every day for a short time, and often treated him to a
+run in the garden. Toads make a slight noise sometimes in the evenings,
+uttering a short sound like 'coo,' but I never heard them croak. Before
+wet weather, and during its continuance, my Toad was disinclined for
+food, and took no notice of flies even walking over his nose. He would
+then burrow and hide himself in the moss at the bottom of his glass
+palace. Thus I kept him, and found him very tame and amusing. But after
+about two months he became more impatient of confinement, and refused
+to take any food. I did not perceive that he fell away, though his feet
+and toes turned of a dark colour, which I knew was a sign of being out
+of condition; and, on the 10th of November, I found him dead. I have
+now tried three of this sort, and have come to the conclusion that the
+Running Toad will not live in captivity. This I much regret, as its
+habits are interesting, and its ways very amusing.
+
+                    "F. C. Husenbeth, D.D."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FROG AND TOAD CONCERTS.
+
+It would be hard to believe the stories of the vocal powers of Frogs
+and Toads were they not related by trustworthy travellers, who tell of
+animal concerts,
+
+  "Wild as the marsh, and tuneful as the harp."
+
+Mr. Priest, the traveller in America, who was himself a musician,
+records:--"Prepared as I was to hear something extraordinary from these
+animals, I confess the first _Frog Concert_ I heard in America was so
+much beyond anything I could conceive of the power of these musicians,
+that I was truly astonished. This performance was _al fresco_, and took
+place on the eighteenth of April, in a large swamp, where there were at
+least 10,000 performers; and I really believe not two exactly in the
+same pitch, if the octave can possibly admit of so many divisions, or
+shades of semitones."
+
+Professor and Mrs. Louis Agassiz, in their recent "Journey in Brazil,"
+record:--"We must not leave Parà without alluding to our evening
+concerts from the adjoining woods and swamps. When I first heard this
+strange confusion of sounds, I thought it came from a crowd of men
+shouting loudly, though at a little distance. To my surprise. I found
+that the rioters were the frogs and toads in the neighbourhood. I hardly
+know how to describe this Babel of woodland noises; and, if I could do
+it justice, I am afraid my account would hardly be believed. At moments
+it seems like the barking of dogs, then like the calling of many voices
+on different keys; but all loud, rapid, excited, full of emphasis and
+variety. I think these frogs, like ours, must be silent at certain
+seasons of the year, for on our first visit to Parà we were not struck
+by this singular music, with which the woods now resound at nightfall."
+
+
+
+
+SONG OF THE CICADA.
+
+
+The Greeks have been scoffed at for rendering in deathless verse the
+song of so insignificant an insect as the Cicada; and hence it has
+been asserted that their love for such slender music must have been
+either exaggerated or simulated. It is pleasant, however, to hear an
+independent observer in the other hemisphere confirm their testimony.
+Mr. Lord tells us that in British Colombia there is one sound or song
+which is clearer, shriller, and _more singularly tuneful than any
+other_. It never appears to cease, and it comes from everywhere--from
+the tops of the trees, from the trembling leaves of the cotton-wood,
+from the stunted under-brush, from the flowers, the grass, the rocks and
+boulders--nay, the very stream itself seems vocal with hidden minstrels,
+all chanting the same refrain.
+
+An especial feature of the Cicada's song is, that it increases in
+intensity when the sun is hottest; and one of the later Latin poets
+mentions the time when its music is at its highest, as an alternative
+expression for noon. Mr. Tennyson, inadvertently, speaks in "Ænone" of
+the Grasshopper being silent in the grass, and of the Cicada sleeping
+when the noonday quiet holds the hill. Keats sings more truly:--
+
+  "When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
+  And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
+  From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead:
+  That is the Grasshopper's."
+
+Then the Greek poets show us how intimately the song of the Cicada is
+associated with the hottest hours of the day. Aristophanes describes it
+as mad for the love of the sun; and Theocritus, as scorched by the sun.
+When all things are parched with the heat (says Alcæus), then from among
+the leaves issues the song of the sweet Cicada. His shrill melody is
+heard in the full glow of noontide, and the vertical rays of a torrid
+sun fire him to sing. Over and over again Mr. Lord met with allusions to
+the same peculiarity.
+
+Cicadæ are regularly sold for food in the markets of South America. They
+are not eaten now, like they were at Athens, as a whet to the appetite;
+but they are dried in the sun, powdered, and made into a cake.
+
+
+
+
+STORIES ABOUT THE BARNACLE GOOSE.
+
+    "As barnacles turn Poland geese
+    In th' islands of the Orcades."--_Hudibras._
+
+
+One of the earliest references to this popular error is in the "Natural
+Magic" of Baptista Porta, who says:--"Late writers report that not only
+in Scotland, but also in the river of Thames by London, there is a kind
+of shell-fish in a two-leaved shell, that hath a foot full of plaits
+and wrinkles.... They commonly stick to the keel of some old ship. Some
+say they come of worms, some of the boughs of trees which fall into the
+sea; if any of them be cast upon shore, they die; but they which are
+swallowed still into the sea, live and get out of their shells, and grow
+to be ducks, or such-like birds."
+
+Professor Max Müller, in a learned lecture, enters fully into the origin
+of the different stories about the Barnacle Goose. He quotes from the
+"Philosophical Transactions" of 1678 a full account by Sir Robert Moray,
+who declared that he had seen within the barnacle shell, as through a
+concave or diminishing glass, the bill, eyes, head, neck, breast, wings,
+tail, feet, and feathers of the Barnacle Goose. The next witness was
+John Gerarde, Master in Chirurgerie, who, in 1597, declared that he had
+seen the actual metamorphosis of the muscle into the bird, describing
+how--
+
+"The shell gapeth open, and the first thing that appeareth is the fore
+said lace or string; next come the leg of the birde hanging out, and
+as it groweth greater, it openeth the shell by degrees, till at length
+it is all come forth, and hangeth only by the bill, and falleth into
+the sea, when it gathereth feathers and groweth to a foule, bigger than
+a mallart; for the truth hereof, if any doubt, may it please them to
+repair unto me, and I shall satisfie them by the testimonies of good
+witnesses."
+
+As far back as the thirteenth century, the same story is traced in the
+writings of Giraldus Cambrensis. This great divine does not deny the
+truth of the miraculous origin of the Barnacle Geese, but he warns the
+Irish priests against dining off them during Lent on the plea that they
+were not flesh, but fish. For, he writes, "If a man during Lent were
+to dine off a leg of Adam, who was not born of flesh either, we should
+not consider him innocent of having eaten what is flesh." This modern
+myth, which, in spite of the protests of such men as Albertus Magnus,
+Æneas Sylvius, and others, maintained its ground for many centuries, and
+was defended, as late as 1629, in a book by Count Maier, "De volucri
+arborea," with arguments, physical, metaphysical, and theological, owed
+its origin to a play of words. The muscle shells are called _Bernaculæ_
+from the Latin _perna_, the mediæval Latin _berna_; the birds are called
+_Hibernicæ_ or _Hiberniculæ_, abbreviated to _Berniculæ_. As their names
+seem one, the creatures are supposed to be one, and everything conspires
+to confirm the first mistake, and to invest what was originally a good
+Irish story--a mere _canard_--with all the dignity of scientific, and
+all the solemnity of theological truth. The myth continued to live
+until the age of Newton. Specimens of _Lepadidæ_, prepared by Professor
+Rolleston of Oxford, show how the outward appearance of the _Anatifera_
+could have supported the popular superstition which derived the
+_Bernicla_, the goose, from the _Bernicula_, the shell.
+
+Drayton (1613), in his "Poly-olbion," iii., in connexion with the river
+Lee, speaks of
+
+    "Th' anatomised fish and fowls from planchers sprung;"
+
+to which a note is appended in Southey's edition, p. 609, that such
+fowls were "Barnacles, a bird breeding upon old ships." A bunch of the
+shells attached to the ship, or to a piece of floating timber, at a
+distance appears like flowers in bloom; the foot of the animal has a
+similitude to the stalk of a plant growing from the ship's sides, the
+shell resembles a calyx, and the flower consists of the tentacula, or
+fingers, of the shell-fish. The ancient error was to mistake the foot
+for the neck of a goose, the shell for its head, and the tentacula for
+feathers. As to the body, _non est inventus_.
+
+Sir Kenelm Digby was soundly laughed at for relating to a party at
+the castle of the Governor of Calais, that "the Barnacle, a bird in
+Jersey, was first a shell-fish to appearance, and, from that striking
+upon old wood, became in time a bird." In 1807, there was exhibited in
+Spring-gardens, London, a "Wonderful natural curiosity, called the Goose
+Tree, Barnacle Tree, or Tree bearing Geese," taken up at sea on January
+12th, and more than twenty men could raise out of the water.[26]
+
+Sir J. Emerson Tennent asks whether the ready acceptance and general
+credence given to so obvious a fable may not have been derived from
+giving too literal a construction to the text of the passage in the
+first chapter of Genesis:--
+
+     "And God said, Let the _waters bring forth abundantly_ the
+     moving creature that hath life, and the _fowl_ that may fly in the
+     open firmament of heaven."
+
+The Barnacle Goose is a well-known bird, and is eaten on fast-days in
+France, by virtue of this old belief in its marine origin. The belief
+in the barnacle origin of the bird still prevails on the west coast of
+Ireland, and in the Western Highlands of Scotland.
+
+The finding of the Barnacle is thus described by Mr. Sidebotham, to
+the Microscopical and Natural History Section of the Literary and
+Philosophical Society:--"In September, I was at Lytham with my family.
+The day was very stormy, and the previous night there had been a strong
+south-west wind, and evidences of a very stormy sea outside the
+banks. Two of my children came running to tell me of a very strange
+creature that had been washed up on the shore. They had seen it from
+the pier, and pointed it out to a sailor, thinking it was a large dog
+with long hair. On reaching the shore I found a fine mass of Barnacles,
+_Pentalasinus anatifera_, attached to some staves of a cask, the whole
+being between four and five feet long. Several sailors had secured the
+prize, and were getting it on a truck to carry it away. The appearance
+was most remarkable, the hundreds of long tubes with their curious
+shells looking like what one would fancy the fabled Gorgon's head with
+its snaky locks. The curiosity was carried to a yard where it was to be
+exhibited, and the bellman went round to announce it under the name of
+the sea-lioness, or the great sea-serpent. Another mass of Barnacles
+was washed up at Lytham, and also one at Blackpool, the same day or the
+day following. This mass of Barnacles was evidently just such a one as
+that seen by Gerard at the Pile of Foulders. It is rare to have such a
+specimen on our coasts. The sailors at Lytham had never seen anything
+like it, although some of them were old men who had spent all their
+lives on the coast."
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[26] "Notes and Queries," No. 201.
+
+
+
+
+LEAVES ABOUT BOOKWORMS.
+
+
+On paper, leather, and parchment are found various animals, popularly
+known as "Bookworms." Johnson describes it as a worm or mite that eats
+holes in books, chiefly when damp; and in the "Guardian" we find this
+reference to its habits:--"My lion, like a moth or bookworm, feeds upon
+nothing but paper."
+
+Many years ago an experienced keeper of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford
+collected these interesting details of Bookworms:--"The larvæ of
+_Crambus pinguinalis_ will establish themselves upon the binding of a
+book, and spinning a robe will do it little injury. A mite, _Acarus
+eruditus_, eats the paste that fastens the paper over the edges of the
+binding and so loosens it. The caterpillar of another little moth takes
+its station in damp old books, between the leaves, and there commits
+great ravages. The little boring wood-beetle, who attacks books and
+will even bore through several volumes. An instance is mentioned of
+twenty-seven folio volumes being perforated in a straight line, by the
+same insect, in such a manner that by passing a cord through the perfect
+round hole made by it the twenty-seven volumes could be raised at once.
+The wood-beetle also destroys prints and drawings, whether framed or
+kept in a portfolio."
+
+There is another "Bookworm," which is often confounded with the
+Death-watch of the vulgar; but is smaller, and instead of beating
+at intervals, as does the Death-watch, continues its noise for a
+considerable length of time without intermission. It is usually found
+in old wood, decayed furniture, museums, and neglected books. The
+female lays her eggs, which are exceedingly small, in dry, dusty
+places, where they are least likely to meet with disturbance. They are
+generally hatched about the beginning of March, a little sooner or
+later, according to the weather. After leaving the eggs, the insects are
+so small as to be scarcely discerned without the use of a glass. They
+remain in this state about two months, somewhat resembling in appearance
+the mites in cheese, after which they undergo their change into the
+perfect insect. They feed on dead flies and other insects; and often,
+from their numbers and voracity, very much deface cabinets of natural
+history. They subsist on various other substances, and may often be
+observed carefully hunting for nutritious particles amongst the dust in
+which they are found, turning it over with their heads, and searching
+about in the manner of swine. Many live through the winter buried deep
+in the dust to avoid the frost.
+
+The best mode of destroying the insects which infest books and MSS.
+has often occupied the attention of the possessors of valuable
+libraries. Sir Thomas Phillips found the wood of his book-case attacked,
+particularly where beech had been introduced, and appeared to think
+that the insect was much attracted by the paste employed in binding.
+He recommended as preservatives against their attacks spirits of
+turpentine and a solution of corrosive sublimate, and also the latter
+substance mixed with paste. In some instances he found the produce of
+a single impregnated female sufficient to destroy a book. Turpentine
+and spirit of tar are also recommended for their destruction; but the
+method pursued in the collections of the British Museum is an abundant
+supply of camphor, with attention to keeping the rooms dry, warm, and
+ventilated. Mr. Macleay states it is the _acari_ only which feed on the
+paste employed in binding books, and the larvæ of the Coleoptera only
+which pierce the boards and leaves.
+
+The ravages of the Bookworm would be much more destructive had there
+not been a sort of guardian to the literary treasures in the shape of
+a spider, who, when examined through a microscope, resembles a knight
+in armour. This champion of the library follows the Worm into the
+book-case, discovers the pit he has digged, rushes on his victim, which
+is about his own size, and devours him. His repast finished, he rests
+for about a fortnight, and when his digestion is completed, he sets out
+to break another lance with the enemy.
+
+The Death-watch, already referred to, and which must be acquitted of
+destroying books, is chiefly known by the noise which he makes behind
+the wainscoting, where he ticks like a clock or watch. How so loud
+a noise is produced by so small an insect has never been properly
+explained; and the ticking has led to many legends. The naturalist
+Degeer relates that one night, in the autumn of 1809, during an
+entomological excursion in Brittany, where travellers were scarce and
+accommodation bad, he sought hospitality at the house of a friend. He
+was from home, and Degeer found a great deal of trouble in gaining
+admittance; but at last the peasant who had charge of the house told
+Degeer that he would give him "the chamber of death," if he liked. As
+Degeer was much fatigued, he accepted the offer. "The bed is there,"
+said the man, "but no one has slept in it for some time. Every night the
+spirit of the officer, who was surprised and killed in this room by some
+chouans, comes back. When the officer was dead, the peasants divided
+what he had about him, and the officer's watch fell to my uncle, who was
+delighted with the prize, and brought it home to examine it. However,
+he soon found out that the watch was broken, and would not go. He then
+placed it under his pillow, and went to sleep; he awoke in the night,
+and to his terror heard the ticking of a watch. In vain he sold the
+watch, and gave the money for masses to be said for the officer's soul,
+the ticking continued, and has never ceased." Degeer said that he would
+exorcise the chamber, and the peasant left him, after making the sign of
+the cross. The naturalist at once guessed the riddle, and, accustomed to
+the pursuit of insects, soon had a couple of Death-watches shut up in a
+tin case, and the ticking was reproduced.
+
+Swift has prescribed this destructive remedy by way of ridicule:--
+
+                                    "A Wood-worm
+    That lies in old wood, like a hare in her form:
+    With teeth or with claws it will bite, or will scratch;
+    And chambermaids christen this worm a Death-watch,
+    Because like a watch it always cries click:
+    Then woe be to those in the house that are sick!
+    For, sure as a gun, they will give up the ghost
+    If the maggot cries click when it scratches the post.
+    But a kettle of scalding hot water ejected,
+    Infallibly cures the timber affected:
+    The omen is broken, the danger is over;
+    The maggot will die, the sick will recover."
+
+
+
+
+BORING MARINE ANIMALS, AND HUMAN ENGINEERS.
+
+
+Were a young naturalist asked to exemplify what man has learned from the
+lower animals, he could scarcely adduce a more striking instance than
+that of a submarine shelly worker teaching him how to execute some of
+his noblest works. This we have learned from the life and labours of the
+_Pholas_, of which it has been emphatically said:--"Numerous accounts
+have been published during the last fourteen years in every civilized
+country and language of the boring process of the _Pholas_; and machines
+formed on the model of its mechanism have for years been tunnelling Mont
+Cenis."
+
+In the Eastern Zoological Gallery of the British Museum, cases 35 and
+36, as well as in the Museum of Economic Geology in Piccadilly, may be
+seen specimens of the above very curious order of _Conchifers_, most
+of the members of which are distinguished by their habits of boring or
+digging, a process in which they are assisted by the peculiar formation
+of the foot, from which they derive their name. Of these ten families
+one of the most characteristic is that of the Razor-shells, which,
+when the valves are shut, are of a long, flattened, cylindrical shape,
+and open at both ends. Projecting its strong pointed foot at one of
+these ends, the _solen_ can work itself down into the sand with great
+rapidity, while at the upper end its respiratory tubes are shot out to
+bring the water to its gills. Of the _Pholadæ_, the shells of which
+are sometimes called multivalve, because, in addition to the two chief
+portions, they have a number of smaller accessory pieces, some bore
+in hard mud, others in wood, and others in rocks. They fix themselves
+firmly by the powerful foot, and then make the shell revolve; the sharp
+edges of this commence the perforation, which is afterwards enlarged by
+the rasp-like action of the rough exterior; and though the shell must
+be constantly worn down, yet it is replaced by a new formation from the
+animal, so as never to be unfit for its purpose. The typical bivalve of
+this family is the _Pholas_, which bores into limestone-rock and other
+hard material, and commits ravages on the piers, breakwaters, &c., that
+it selects for a home.
+
+In the same family as the above Dr. Gray ranks the _Teredo_,[27] or
+wood-boring mollusc, whose ravages on ships, piles, wooden piers, &c.,
+at sea resemble those of the white ant on furniture, joints of houses,
+&c., on shore. Perforating the timber by exactly the same process as
+that by which the Pholas perforates the stones, the Teredo advances
+continually, eating out a contorted tube or gallery, which it lines
+behind it with calcareous matter, and through which it continues to
+breathe the water.
+
+The priority of the demonstration of the Pholas and its "boring habits"
+has been much disputed. The evidence is full of curious details. It
+appears that Mr. Harper, of Edinburgh, author of "The Sea-side and
+Aquarium," having claimed the lead. Mr. Robertson, of Brighton, writes
+to dispute the originality; adding that he publicly exhibited Pholades
+in the Pavilion at Brighton in July, 1851, perforating chalk rocks by
+the raspings of their valves and squirtings of their syphons. Professor
+Flourens (says Mr. Robertson) taught my observations to his class in
+Paris in 1853; I published them in 1851, and again more fully in the
+"Journal de Conchyliologie," in 1853; and M. Emile Blanchard illustrated
+them in the same year in his "Organisation du Règne Animal." I published
+a popular account of the perforating processes in "Household Words"
+in 1856. After obtaining the suffrages of the French authorities, I
+have been recently honoured with those of the British naturalist. (See
+Woodward's "Recent and Fossil Shells," p. 327. Family, Pholadidæ.) On
+returning to England last autumn I exhibited perforating Pholades to
+all the naturalists who cared to watch them. An intelligent lady whom I
+supplied with Pholades has made a really new and original observation,
+which I may take this opportunity of communicating to the public. She
+observed two Pholades whose perforations were bringing them nearer and
+nearer to each other. Their mutual raspings were wearing away the thin
+partition which separated their crypts. She was curious to know what
+they would do when they met, and watched them closely. When the two
+perforating shell-fish met and found themselves in each other's way, the
+stronger just bored right through the weaker Pholas.[28]
+
+Mr. Robertson has communicated to "Jameson's Journal," No. 101, the
+results of his opportunities of studying the Pholas, during six months,
+to discover how this mollusc makes its hole or crypt in the chalk: by
+a chemical solvent? by absorption? by ciliary currents? or by rotatory
+motions? Between twenty and thirty of these creatures were at work
+in lumps of chalk, in sea-water, in a finger-glass, and open for
+three months; and by watching their operations. Mr. Robertson became
+convinced that the Pholas makes its hole by grating the chalk with its
+rasp-like valves, licking it up when pulverized with its foot, forcing
+it up through its principal orbrambial syphon, and squirting it out in
+oblong nodules. The crypt protects the Pholas from _confervæ_, which,
+when they get at it, grow not merely outside, but even with the lips
+of the valves, preventing the action of the syphons. In the foot there
+is a gelatinous spring or style, which, even when taken out, has great
+elasticity, and which seems the mainspring of the motions of the Pholas.
+
+Upon this Dr. James Stark, of Edinburgh, writes:
+
+--"Mr. Robertson, of Brighton, claims the merit of teaching that
+Pholades perforate rocks by 'the rasping of their valves and the
+squirting of their syphons.' His observations only appear to reach
+back to 1851. But the late Mr. John Stark, of Edinburgh, author of the
+'Elements of Natural History,' read a paper before the Royal Society of
+Edinburgh, in 1826, which was printed in the Society's 'Transactions'
+of that year, in which he demonstrated that the Pholades perforate the
+shale rocks in which they occur on this coast, by means of the rasping
+of their valves, and not by acids or other secretions. From also finding
+that their shells scratched limestone without injury to the fine rasping
+rugosities, he inferred that it was by the same agency they perforated
+the hard limestone rocks."
+
+To this Mr. Robertson replies, that Mr. Osler also, in 1826,
+demonstrated that the Pholades "perforate the shale rocks by means of
+the rasping of their valves; and more, for he actually witnessed a
+rotatory movement. But Réaumur and Poli had done as much as this in the
+eighteenth and Sibbald in the seventeenth century: and yet I found the
+solvent hypothesis in the ascendant among naturalists in 1835, when I
+first interested myself in the controversy. What I did in 1851 was, I
+exhibited Pholades at work perforating rocks, and explained how they did
+it. What I have done is, I have made future controversy impossible, by
+exhibiting the animals at work, and by discovering the anatomy and the
+physiology of the perforating instruments. In the words of M. Flourens,
+'I made the animals work before my eyes,' and I 'made known their
+mechanism.' The discovery of the function of the hyaline stylet is not
+merely a new discovery, it is the discovery of a kind of instrument as
+yet unique in physiology."
+
+Mr. Harper having termed the boring organ of the Pholas the "hyaline
+stylet," found it to have puzzled some of the disputants, whereupon Mr.
+Harper writes:--"Its use up to the present time has been a mystery,
+but the general opinion of authors seems to be, that it is the gizzard
+of the Pholas. This I very much doubt, for it is my belief that the
+presence of such an important muscle is solely for the purpose of
+aiding the animal's boring operations. Being situated in the centre
+of the foot, we can readily conceive the great increase of strength
+thus conveyed to the latter member, which is made to act as a powerful
+fulcrum, by the exercise of which the animal rotates--and at the same
+time presses its shell against and rasps the surface of the rock.
+The question being asked, 'How can the stylet be procured to satisfy
+curiosity?' I answer, by adopting the following extremely simple plan.
+Having disentombed a specimen, with the point of a sharp instrument
+cut a slit in the base of its foot, and the object of your search will
+be distinctly visible in the shape of, if I may so term it, an opal
+cylinder. Sometimes I have seen the point of this organ spring out
+beyond the incision, made as above described."
+
+Lastly, Mr. Harper presented the Editor of the "Athenæum" with a
+piece of bored rock, of which he has several specimens. He adds, "On
+examination, you will perceive that the larger Pholas must have bored
+through its smaller and weaker neighbour (how suggestive!), the shell of
+the latter, most fortunately, remaining in its own cavity."
+
+Now, Mr. Robertson claimed for his observation of this phenomenon
+novelty and originality; but Mr. Harper stoutly maintained it to be
+"as common to the eye of the practised geologist as rain or sunshine."
+The details are curious; though some impatient, and not very grateful
+reader, may imagine himself in the condition of the shell of the smaller
+Pholas, and will be, as he deserves to remain, in the minority.[29]
+
+It may be interesting to sum up a few of the opinions of the mode by
+which these boring operations are performed. Professor Forbes states
+the mode by which Molluscs bore into wood and other materials is as
+follows:--"Some of the Gauterspods have tongues covered with silica to
+enable them to bore, and it was probably by some process of this kind
+that all the Molluscs bored."
+
+Mr. Peach never observed the species of Pholas to turn round in their
+holes, as stated by some observers, although he had watched them with
+great attention. Mr. Charlesworth refers to the fact that, in one
+species of shell, not only does the hole in the rock which the animal
+occupies increase in size, but also the hole through which it projects
+its syphons.
+
+Professor John Phillips, alluding to the theories which have been
+given of the mode in which Molluscs bore into the rocks in which they
+live, believes that an exclusively mechanical theory will not account
+for the phenomenon; and he is inclined to adopt the view of Dr. T.
+Williams--that the boring of the Pholades can only be explained on the
+principle which involves a chemical as well as a mechanical agency.
+
+Mr. E. Ray Lankester notices that the boring of Annelids seems quite
+unknown; and he mentions two cases, one by a worm called Leucadore, the
+other by a Sabella. Leucadore is very abundant on some shores, where
+boulders and pebbles may be found worm-eaten and riddled by them. Only
+stones composed of carbonate of lime are bored by them. On coasts where
+such stones are rare, they are selected, and others are left. The worms
+are _quite soft_, and armed only with horny bristles. _How, then, do
+they bore?_ Mr. Lankester maintains that it is by carbonic acid and
+other acid excretions of their bodies, _aided_ by the mechanical action
+of their bristles. The selection of a material soluble in these acids
+is most noticeable, since the softest chalk and the hardest limestone
+are bored with the same facility. This can only be by chemical action.
+If, then, we have a case of chemical boring in these worms, is it not
+probable that many Molluscs are similarly assisted in their excavations?
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[27] How Brunel took his construction of the Thames Tunnel from
+observing the bore of the _Teredo navalis_ in the keel of a ship, in
+1814, is well known.
+
+[28] "Athenæum," No. 1640.
+
+[29] See also "Life in the Sea," in "Strange Stories of the Animal
+World," by the author of the present volume. Second Edition. 1868.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+  ANCIENT Zoological Gardens, 12
+
+  Animals, Rare, of London Zoological Society, 16, 17, 18
+
+  Annelids, boring, 348
+
+  Annelids and Molluscs, Boring Habits of, 348
+
+  Ant-Bear in captivity, 76
+
+  Ant-Bear, the Great, 72
+
+  Ant-Bear at Madrid, 72
+
+  Ant-Bear described, 77
+
+  Ant-Bear, Domestic, in Paraguay, 75
+
+  Ant-Bear, Economy of, 76
+
+  Ant-Bear and its Food, 74
+
+  Ant-Bears, Fossil, 80, 81
+
+  Ant-Bear, Muscular Force of, 79
+
+  Ant-Bear, Wallace's Account of, 73
+
+  Ant-Bear, Zoological Society's, 76, 82, 84
+
+  Ant-Eater, Porcupine, 84
+
+  Ant-Bear, Professor Owen on, 80
+
+  Ant-Eaters, scarcity of, 80
+
+  Ant-Eater, Tamandua, 82
+
+  Ant-Eaters, Von Saek's Account of, 83
+
+  Aristotle's History of Animals, 279, 280
+
+
+  BARNACLE GEESE, finding of the, 334
+
+  Barnacle Goose, Gerarde on, 332
+
+  Barnacle Goose, Giraldus Cambrensis on, 332
+
+  Barnacle Goose, Max Müller on, 331
+
+  Barnacle Goose, name of, 332
+
+  Barnacle Goose, Sir E. Tennent on, 334
+
+  Barnacle Goose, Sir Kenelm Digby on, 334
+
+  Barnacle Goose, Sir R. Moray on, 331
+
+  Barnacle Goose, Stories of the, 331-335
+
+  Barnacles breeding upon old ships, 333
+
+  Barnacle Geese in the Thames, 331
+
+  Bat, altivolans, by Gilbert White, 100
+
+  Bat, American, by Lesson, 91
+
+  Bat, Aristotle on, 85
+
+  Bat, Mr. Bell on, 86
+
+  Bats, Curiosities of, 85
+
+  Bat, described by Calmet, 87
+
+  Bat, Flight and Wing of, 96
+
+  Bats, in England, 100
+
+  Bat, Heber, Stedman, and Waterton on, 91
+
+  Bats in Jamaica, 100
+
+  Bat, Kalong, of Java, 98
+
+  Bat, Long-Eared, by Sowerby, 92, 93-96
+
+  Bat, Nycteris, 97
+
+  Bat, Rere-mouse and Flitter-mouse, 86
+
+  Bat Skeleton, Sir C. Bell on, 87
+
+  Bat in Scripture, 85
+
+  Bat, Vampire, from Sumatra, 88
+
+  Bat, Vampire, Lines on, by Byron, 89
+
+  Bat, vulgar errors respecting, 97
+
+  Bat-Fowling or Bat-Folding, 92
+
+  Berlin Zoological Gardens and Museum, 16
+
+  Bible Natural History, 11
+
+  Birds, Addison on their Nests and Music, 156, 157
+
+  Bird, Australian Bower, Nest of, 167
+
+  Bird, Baya, Indian, Nest of, 164
+
+  Birds and Animals, Beauty in, 150
+
+  Birds, Brain of, 154
+
+  Birds, Characteristics of, 145
+
+  Birds, Colour of, 148
+
+  Bird Confinement, Dr. Livingstone on, 169
+
+  Birds' Eggs, large, 162
+
+  Birds' Eggs, Colours of, 158
+
+  Birds' Eggs and Nests, 158
+
+  Birds, European, list of, 161
+
+  Birds, Flight of, 146, 147
+
+  Birds, Insectivorous, 151;
+    Instinct, Intelligence, and Reason, 217
+
+  Bird-Life, 145
+
+  Bird-Murder, wanton, 152
+
+  Birds' Nesting, 159
+
+  Birds' Nests--Cape Swallows, 168
+
+  Birds' Nests--Brush Turkey, 171
+
+  Birds' Nests, large, 164
+
+  Birds' Eggs--Ostrich and Epyornis, 162, 163
+
+  Birds' Nests--Tailor Birds, 165-167
+
+  Birds, Rapid Flight of, 147
+
+  Birds, Signal of Danger among, 155
+
+  Birds, Song of, 149
+
+  Birds, Mr. Wolley's Collections, 159, 160
+
+  Bookworms, Leaves about, 336
+
+  Bookworms and Death-watch, 337
+
+  Boring Marine Animals, and Human Engineers, 341
+
+
+  CHAMELEON of the Ancients, 306
+
+  Chameleon's antipathy to black, 322
+
+  Chameleons, Mrs. Belzoni's, 316-320
+
+  Chameleons, Birth of, in England, 321
+
+  Chameleon changing Colour, 311, 316
+
+  Chameleon, Cuvier on, 309
+
+  Chameleon, described by Calmet, 307
+
+  Chameleon Family, 307
+
+  Chameleon, Air-food of, 309
+
+  Chameleon, Milne Edwards on its Change of Colour, 314-316
+
+  Chameleons, Native Countries of, 316
+
+  Chameleon of the Poets, 308
+
+  Chameleons, Reproduction of, 309
+
+  Chameleon, Tongue and Eyes of, 310, 311
+
+  Chinese Zoological Gardens, 12
+
+  Cicada, Song of the, 329
+
+  Cormorant's Bone, curious, 204
+
+  Cormorants, Chase of, 203
+
+  Cormorant Fishery in China, 202
+
+  Cormorant, Habits of the, 201
+
+  Cormorant trained for Fishing, 201
+
+  Curiosities of Zoology, 11
+
+
+  ECCENTRICITIES of Penguins, 188:
+    Darwin, Mr., his account of Falkland Islands Penguin, 192;
+    Dassent Island Penguins, 188;
+    Death-watch and Bookworm, 337, 338;
+    Falkland Islands Penguins, 189;
+    King Penguins, 191;
+    Patagonian Penguins, 189;
+    Penguin, the name, 194;
+    Webster, Mr., his Account of Penguins, 193
+
+  Epicure's Ortolan, the, 172
+
+  Epicurism Extravagant, 177
+
+  Evelyn and St. James's Physique Garden, 15
+
+
+  FISH in British Colombia, 280:
+    Candle-fish, 282;
+    Octopus, 283;
+    Salmon Army, 281;
+    Spoonbill Sturgeon, 285;
+    Sturgeons, and Sturgeon Fishing, 284-287
+
+  Fish-Talk, 250:
+    Affection of Fishes, 256;
+    Bohemian Wels Fish, 270;
+    Bonita and Flying Fish, 263;
+    Californian Fish, 268;
+    Carp at Fontainebleau, 254;
+    Cat-fish, curious Account of, 257;
+    Double Fish, 272;
+    Fish changing Colour, 251;
+    Fish Noise, 252;
+    Gold Fish, 274;
+    Grampus, gambols of, 262;
+    Great General of the South Sea, 272;
+    Grouper, the, 272;
+    Hassar, the, 256;
+    Hearing of Fishes, 253;
+    Herring Puzzle, 278;
+    Jaculator Fish of Java, 264;
+    Jamaica, Curious Fish at, 266;
+    Little Fishes the Food of Larger, 259;
+    Marine Observatory, 276;
+    Mecho of the Danube, 270;
+    Migration of Fishes, 260;
+    Miller's Thumb, 276;
+    Numbers, vast, of Fishes, 258;
+    Pike, Wonderful, 269;
+    Pilot Fish, 267;
+    Sharks, 267;
+    Singing Fish,252;
+    Square-browed Malthe, 274;
+    Strange Fishes, 251;
+    Sun-fish, 271;
+    Swimming of Fishes, 250;
+    Sword-fish, 266;
+    Warrior Fish, 266
+
+  Frog and Toad Concerts, 327
+
+
+  HEDGEHOG, the, 102
+
+  Hedgehog devouring Snakes, 104
+
+  Hedgehog, Food of, 103
+
+  Hedgehogs, Gilbert White on, 107
+
+  Hedgehog and Poisons, 105
+
+  Hedgehogs, Sir T. Browne on, 102
+
+  Hedgehog Sucking Cows, 104
+
+  Hedgehog and Viper, Fight between, 106, 107
+
+  Hedgehog, Voracity of, 103
+
+  Hippopotamus, Ancient History of, 119
+
+  Hippopotamus, described by Aristotle and Herodotus, 121
+
+  Hippopotamus, Economy of the, 115
+
+  Hippopotamus, the, in England, 108
+
+  Hippopotami, Fossil, 122
+
+  Hippopotami on the Niger, 117
+
+  Hippopotamus, Professor Owen's Description of, 111-115
+
+  Hippopotamus and River Horse, 116
+
+  Hippopotamus in Scripture, 120
+
+  Hippopotamus, Utility of, 118
+
+  Hippopotamus from the White Nile, 109
+
+  Hippopotamus, Zoological Society's, in 1850, 108-111
+
+
+  LEAVES about Bookworms, 336
+
+  Lions in Algeria, and Jules Gerard, 143
+
+  Lion, African, 131
+
+  Lion, Bengal, 133
+
+  Lion described by Bennett, 123
+
+  Lion described by Buffon, 123-125
+
+  Lion described by Burchell, 125
+
+  Lion, disappearance of, 130
+
+  Lion and Hottentots, 132, 133-136
+
+  Lion-hunting Feats, 128
+
+  Lion, "King of the Forest," 126
+
+  Lion, Longevity of, 137
+
+  Lion, Maneless, 133-135
+
+  Lion, Niebuhr on, 131
+
+  Lion in the Nineveh Sculptures, 139, 140
+
+  Lions, the Drudhoe, 144
+
+  Lions, Popular Errors respecting, 123
+
+  Lion, Prickle or Claw in the Tail, 137-139
+
+  Lion, Roar of, 136
+
+  Lions in the Tower of London, 140
+
+  "Lion Tree" in the Mantatee Country, 127
+
+  Lion Stories of the Shows, 142
+
+  Lion-Talk, 123
+
+  Lioness and her Young, 135
+
+
+  MERMAID of 1822, 43-47
+
+  Mermaid in Berbice, 39
+
+  Mermaid in the Bosphorus, 47
+
+  Mermaid and Dugong, 41
+
+  Mermaids, Evidences of, 36
+
+  Mermaid at Exmouth, 40
+
+  Mermaid, Leyden's Ballad, 35
+
+  Mermaid and Manatee, 42
+
+  Mermaid at Milford Haven, 37
+
+  Mermaid, Japanese, 44
+
+  Mermaid, Scottish, 36, 38
+
+  Mermaids and Sirens, 33
+
+  Mermaid's Song, Haydn's, 34
+
+  Mermaids, Stories of, 33
+
+  Mermaid, Structure of, 43
+
+  Mermaids in Suffolk, 48
+
+  Mole, its Economy controverted, 62
+
+  Mole, the Ettrick Shepherd on, 71
+
+  Mole, Le Court on, 62, 65
+
+  Mole and Fairy Rings, 64
+
+  Mole and Farming, 70
+
+  Mole, Feeling of, 64
+
+  Mole at Home, 62
+
+  Mole, its Hunting-ground, 67
+
+  Moles, Loves of the, 68
+
+  Mole, structure of the, 63
+
+  Mole, St. Hilaire on, 69
+
+  Mole, Shrew, of North America, 70
+
+  Mole, Voracity of, 68
+
+  Montezuma's Zoological Gardens, 13
+
+  Musical Lizard, 303:
+    Climbing Walls, 303, 304;
+    Formosa Isle, 303;
+    Gecko ennobled, 306
+
+
+  ORNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY, 15
+
+  Ortolan described, 172, 173
+
+  Ortolans, how fattened, 174
+
+  Ortolan, Mr. Gould on, 174, 175
+
+  Owls, 221:
+    Abyssinian Owl, 230;
+    Barn Owl, 226;
+    Bischaco, or Coquimbo, 224;
+    Boobook Owl, 228;
+    Cats and Owls, 230;
+    Fraser's Eagle Owl, from Fernando Po, 229;
+    Food of Owls, 226;
+    Javanese Owl, 228;
+    Snowy Owl, 227;
+    Tricks by Night, 224;
+    Utility of, 225;
+    Waterton on the Owl, 225
+
+
+  PELICANS and Cormorants, 195
+
+  Pelicans described by Gould, 195
+
+  Pelican in Japan, 197
+
+  Pelican Popular Error, 198, 199
+
+  Pelican Pouches, 198
+
+  Pelican Symbol, 200
+
+  "Pelican of the wilderness," 197
+
+  Pholas, Life and Labours of, 341
+
+  Pholades, Charlesworth and Peach on, 347
+
+  Pholades, Harper on, 346
+
+  Pholades, Robertson on, 343
+
+
+  RHINOCEROS in England, 22:
+    African Rhinoceros in 1858, 27;
+    Ancient History, 23;
+    Bruce and Sparmann, 27;
+    Burchell's shooting, 30;
+    Horn of the Rhinoceros, 31, 32;
+    Indian Wild Ass, 24;
+    One-horned and Two-horned, 23-26;
+    Scripture, Rhinoceros of, 23;
+    Speehnan's Rhinoceros Shooting, 30;
+    Tegetmeir describes the African Rhinoceros, 27;
+    Tractability, 25;
+    Varieties of Rhinoceros, 22;
+    Zoological Society's Rhinoceros, 23, 29
+
+
+  SALE of Wild Animals, 20
+
+  Sentinel Birds, 183
+
+  Song of the Cicada, 329
+
+  Songs of Birds and Seasons of the Day, 219
+
+  St. James's Park Menagerie, 14
+
+  Stories of the Barnacle Goose, 331-335
+
+  Stories of Mermaids, 33
+
+  Surrey Zoological Gardens, 20
+
+
+  TALKING birds, 205:
+    Bittern and Night Raven, 207;
+    Blue Jay, 206;
+    Canaries, Talking, 210-212;
+    Chinese Starling, 205;
+    Crowned Crane, 206;
+    Cuckoo, 209;
+    Laughing Goose, 209;
+    Nightingale, 209;
+    Piping Crow, 205;
+    Snipe, Neighing, 213;
+    Trochilos and Crocodile, 216;
+    Umbrella Bird, 206;
+    Whidaw Bird, 205;
+    Wild Swan, 209;
+    Woodpecker at Constantinople, 215
+
+  Talk about Toucans, 179:
+    Bills of Toucans, 180;
+    Carnivorous propensity, 184;
+    Economy of, 182;
+    Food of, 183;
+    Gould, Mr., his Grand Monograph, 180, 186;
+    Owen, Professor, on the Mandibles, 185;
+    Swainson, Mr., on Toucans, 185
+    Toucan Family, 179, 180;
+    White Ants' Nests, 183;
+    Toucanet, Gould's, 184
+
+  Toad and Frog Concerts, 327-328
+
+  Toads, Running, Dr. Husenbeth's, 323-327
+
+  Tower of London Menagerie, 14
+
+  Tree-climbing Crab, the, 288:
+    Bernhard, Hermit, and Soldier Crab, 291;
+    Climbing Perch, 288;
+    Crab, Burrowing, 290;
+    Crab Migration in Jamaica, 292;
+    Fishing-frogs, 288;
+    Glass Crabs, 301;
+    Pill-making Crabs, 301;
+    Purse Crab feeding on Cocoa-nuts, 296;
+    Robber Crab, 292;
+    Screw-pines, Crab climbing, 298;
+    Vaulted Crab of the Moluccas, 291
+
+
+  UNICORNS, ancient, 51
+
+  Unicorn and Antelope, 53
+
+  Unicorn in Central Africa, 58
+
+  Unicorn described by Ctesias, 49, 50
+
+  Unicorn, Cuvier on, 54
+
+  Unicorn, Is it Fabulous? 49
+
+  Unicorn, Klaproth on, 55
+
+  Unicorn in Kordofan, 53
+
+  Unicorn and its Horn, 53, 59
+
+  Unicorn, modern, 50
+
+  Unicorn, Ogilby on, 51
+
+  Unicorn, Rev. J. Campbell on, 57
+
+  Unicorn in the Royal Arms, 60
+
+
+  WEATHER-WISE ANIMALS, 231:
+    Ants, Asses, 241;
+    Darwin's Signs of Rain, 248;
+    Frogs and Snails, 237-240;
+    List of Animals, 241-247;
+    Mole, 240;
+    Mother Carey's Chickens and Goose, 234;
+    Redbreast, 236;
+    Seagulls, 232;
+    Signs of Rain, 232;
+    Stormy Petrels, 233;
+    Shepherd of Banbury, 249;
+    Toucans, 237;
+    Weatherproof Birds' Nests, 247;
+    Wild Geese and Ducks, 235
+
+  Wild Animals, Cost of, 19
+
+  Wild Beast Shows, 21
+
+
+  ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS, Origin of, 12
+
+  Zoological Society of London, 16
+
+  Zoology, Curiosities of, 11
+
+
+
+
+C. A. Macintosh, Printer, Great New-street, London.
+
+
+
+
+  +----------------------------------------------------------------- +
+  | Transcriber's Note:                                              |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Obvious punctuation and spelling errors repaired.                |
+  | Word combinations that appeared with and without hyphens         |
+  | were changed to the predominant hyphenated form.                 |
+  | Original spelling and its variations were not standardized.      |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Corrections in the spelling of names were made when those        |
+  | could be verified.  Otherwise the variations were left as they   |
+  | were.                                                            |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Page 18: "Parrot-houses, the, sometimes...." changed to          |
+  |   "Parrot-houses: they sometimes contain...."                    |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Page 170 and others: Kolobeng and Kolenbeng. Both spellings were |
+  |   retained.                                                      |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Page 191 and others: Tussa, tussack and tussock. All spellings   |
+  |   were retained.                                                 |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Page 276: Finisterre changed to Finistère.                       |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Page 333: cennexion changed to connexion "... in connexion with  |
+  |   the river Lee...."                                             |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Page 352:  Screw-pines, Crab climbing, 295;  pagination changed  |
+  |   to 298.                                                        |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | The name of Shakespeare appears with varying spellings.  All     |
+  |   variants were kept.                                            |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Some index entries are not in alphabetical order.  They were not |
+  |   corrected.                                                     |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Footnotes were moved to the ends of the chapters in which they   |
+  | belonged and numbered in one continuous sequence.  The           |
+  | pagination in index entries which referred to these footnotes    |
+  | was not changed to match their new locations and is therefore    |
+  | incorrect.                                                       |
+  +----------------------------------------------------------------- +
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Eccentricities of the Animal Creation., by 
+John Timbs
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44422 ***
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+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44422 ***</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="i_cover" id="i_cover"></a>
+<img src="images/i_cover.jpg" alt="Cover" /></div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<div class="figcenter bord"><a name="i_002.jpg" id="i_002.jpg"></a>
+  <img src="images/i_002.jpg" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">KING PENGUINS</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<h1><big>ECCENTRICITIES</big><br /><br />
+
+<span class="f1">OF</span><br /><br />
+
+<big>THE ANIMAL CREATION</big>.</h1>
+
+<p class="center p6">BY JOHN TIMBS.</p>
+
+<p class="center p2 f1">AUTHOR OF "THINGS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN."</p>
+
+<p class="center p6 f4">WITH EIGHT ENGRAVINGS.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center p6">SEELEY, JACKSON, AND HALLIDAY, 54, FLEET-STREET.<br />
+LONDON. MDCCCLXIX.</p>
+
+<p class="center p4"><i>The right of translation is reserved.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#INTRODUCTORY_CURIOSITIES_OF_ZOOLOGY" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  INTRODUCTORY.&mdash;CURIOSITIES OF ZOOLOGY.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Natural History in Scripture, and Egyptian Records, 11.&mdash;Origin of
+  Zoological Gardens, 12.&mdash;The Greeks and Romans, 12.&mdash;Montezuma's
+  Zoological Gardens, 13.&mdash;Menagerie in the Tower of London,
+  14.&mdash;Menagerie in St. James's Park, 14.&mdash;John Evelyn's Notes,
+  15.&mdash;Ornithological Society, 15.&mdash;Continental Gardens, 16.&mdash;Zoological
+  Society of London instituted, 16; its most remarkable Animals,
+  16.&mdash;Cost of Wild Animals, 18.&mdash;Sale of Animals, 20.&mdash;Surrey
+  Zoological Gardens, 20.&mdash;Wild-beast Shows, 21.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#THE_RHINOCEROS_IN_ENGLAND" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  THE RHINOCEROS IN ENGLAND.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Ancient History, 22, 23.&mdash;One-horned and Two-horned, 25,
+  26.&mdash;Tractability, 25.&mdash;Bruce and Sparmann, 27.&mdash;African Rhinoceros in
+  1868, 27.&mdash;Description of, 29.&mdash;Burchell's Rhinoceros, 30.&mdash;Horn of
+  the Rhinoceros, 31, 32.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#STORIES_OF_MERMAIDS" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  STORIES OF MERMAIDS.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Sirens of the Ancients, 33.&mdash;Classic Pictures of Mermaids,
+  34.&mdash;Leyden's Ballad, 35.&mdash;Ancient Evidence, 36, 37, 38.&mdash;Mermaid in
+  the West Indies, 39.&mdash;Mermaids, Seals, and Dugongs, 41.&mdash;Mermaids and
+  Manatee, 42.&mdash;Test for a Mermaid, 43.&mdash;Mermaid
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+  of 1822, 43.&mdash;Japanese Mermaids, 44.&mdash;Recent Evidence, 47, 48.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#IS_THE_UNICORN_FABULOUS" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  IS THE UNICORN FABULOUS?</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Ctesias and Wild Asses, 65.&mdash;Aristotle, Herodotus, and Pliny,
+50.&mdash;Modern Unicorns, 50.&mdash;Ancient Evidence, 51.&mdash;Hunting the
+Unicorn, 52.&mdash;Antelopes, 53, 54.&mdash;Cuvier and the Oryx, 54.&mdash;Tibetan
+Animal, 55.&mdash;Klaproth's Evidence, 55.&mdash;Rev. John Campbell's Evidence,
+57.&mdash;Baikie on, 58.&mdash;Factitious Horns in Museums, 59.&mdash;Unicorn in the
+Royal Arms, 60.&mdash;Catching the Unicorn, 60.&mdash;Belief in Unicorns, 61.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#THE_MOLE_AT_HOME" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  THE MOLE AT HOME.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Economy of the Mole, 62.&mdash;Its Structure, 63.&mdash;Fairy Rings; Feeling
+of the Mole, 64.&mdash;Le Court's Experiments, 62, 65.&mdash;Hunting-grounds,
+67.&mdash;Loves of the Moles, 68, 69.&mdash;Persecution of Moles.&mdash;Shrew Mole,
+70.&mdash;Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, on Moles, 71.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#THE_GREAT_ANT-BEAR" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  THE GREAT ANT-BEAR.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">The Ant-Bear of 1853, 72, 73.&mdash;Mr. Wallace, on the Amazon, describes
+the Ant-Bear, 73.&mdash;Food of the Ant-Bear, 74.&mdash;His Resorts, 75.&mdash;Habits
+in Captivity, by Professor Owen, 76-80.&mdash;Fossil Ant-Bear, 80,
+81.&mdash;Tamandua Ant-Bear, 82&mdash;Von Sack's Ant-Bear, 83.&mdash;Porcupine
+Ant-Eater, 84.&mdash;Ant-Bears in the Zoological Gardens, 84.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#CURIOSITIES_OF_BATS" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  CURIOSITIES OF BATS.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Virgil's Harpies, 85.&mdash;Pliny on the Bat, 85.&mdash;Rere-mouse and
+Flitter-mouse, 86.&mdash;Bats, not Birds but Quadrupeds, 87.&mdash;Sir Charles
+Bell on the Wing of the Bat, 87.&mdash;Vampire Bat from Sumatra, 88.&mdash;Lord
+Byron and Vampire, 89.&mdash;Levant Superstition, 89.&mdash;Bat described by
+Heber, Waterton, and Steadman, 90.&mdash;Lesson on Bats, 91.&mdash;Bat Fowling
+or Folding, 91, 92.&mdash;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
+Sowerby's Long-eared Bat, 92, 96.&mdash;Wing of
+the Bat, 96.&mdash;<i>Nycteris</i> Bat, 97.&mdash;<i>Kalong</i> Bat of Java, 98.&mdash;Bats,
+various, 100, 101.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#THE_HEDGEHOG" style="text-decoration: none;">THE HEDGEHOG.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Hedgehog Described, 102.&mdash;Habits, 103.&mdash;Eating Snakes,
+105.&mdash;Poisons, 105, 106.&mdash;Battle with a Viper, 105.&mdash;Economy of the
+Hedgehog, 106, 107.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#THE_HIPPOPOTAMUS_IN_ENGLAND" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  THE HIPPOPOTAMUS IN ENGLAND.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Living Hippopotamus brought to England in 1850, 108.&mdash;Capture and
+Conveyance, 111.&mdash;Professor Owen's Account, 111-115.&mdash;Described
+by Naturalists and Travellers, 115-118.&mdash;Utility to Man,
+118-119.&mdash;Ancient History, 119.&mdash;In Scripture, 120.&mdash;Alleged
+Disappearance, 121.&mdash;Fossil, 122.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#LION-TALK" style="text-decoration: none;">LION-TALK.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Character, 123.&mdash;Reputed Generosity, 125.&mdash;Burchell's Account,
+125.&mdash;Lion-Tree in the Mantatee Country, 127.&mdash;Lion-hunting,
+128.&mdash;Disappearance of Lions, 130, 131.&mdash;Human Prey, 132.&mdash;Maneless
+Lions of Guzerat, 134.&mdash;A Lion Family in Bengal, 135, 136.&mdash;Prickle on
+the Lion's Tail, 137-139.&mdash;Nineveh Lions, 139.&mdash;Lions in the Tower of
+London, 140, 141.&mdash;Feats with Lions, 142.&mdash;Lion-hunting in Algeria, by
+Jules Gerard, 144.&mdash;The Prudhoe Lions, 144.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#BIRD-LIFE" style="text-decoration: none;">BIRD-LIFE.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Rate at which Birds fly, 145, 146.&mdash;Air in the Bones of Birds,
+146.&mdash;Flight of the Humming-bird, 147.&mdash;Colour of Birds, 148.&mdash;Song
+of Birds, 149.&mdash;Beauty in Animals, 150.&mdash;Insectivorous Birds,
+151.&mdash;Sea-fowl Slaughter, 152.&mdash;Hooded Crow in Zetland, 154.&mdash;Brain of
+Birds, 154.&mdash;Danger-signals, 155.&mdash;Addison's Love of Nature, 156, 157.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#BIRDS_EGGS_AND_NESTS" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  BIRDS' EGGS AND NESTS.</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Colours of Eggs, 158.&mdash;Bird's-nesting, 159.&mdash;Mr. Wolley, the
+Ornithologist, 159, 160.&mdash;European Birds of Prey, 161.&mdash;Large
+Eggs, 162, 163, 164.&mdash;Baya's Nest, 164.&mdash;Oriole and Tailor-bird,
+165, 166.&mdash;Australian Bower-bird, 167.&mdash;Cape Swallows, 168.&mdash;"Bird
+Confinement," by Dr. Livingstone.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#THE_EPICURES_ORTOLAN" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  THE EPICURE'S ORTOLAN.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Origin of the Ortolan, 172; described, 173, 174; Fattening process,
+175, 176.&mdash;Prodigal Epicurism, 177, 178.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#TALK_ABOUT_TOUCANS" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  TALK ABOUT TOUCANS.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Toucan family, 179.&mdash;Gould's grand Monograph, 180.&mdash;
+  Toucans described, 180-182; Food, 183; Habits, 184.&mdash;Gould's Toucanet, 187.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#ECCENTRICITIES_OF_PENGUINS" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  ECCENTRICITIES OF PENGUINS.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Penguins on Dassent Island, 188.&mdash;Patagonian Penguins, 189.&mdash;Falkland
+Islands, 189.&mdash;King Penguins, 190, 191.&mdash;Darwin's Account,
+192.&mdash;Webster's Account, 193.&mdash;Swainson's Account, 194.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#PELICANS_AND_CORMORANTS" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  PELICANS AND CORMORANTS.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Pelicans described by various Naturalists, 195, 196.&mdash;The Pelican
+Island, 197.&mdash;Popular Error, 199-200.&mdash;Cormorants, and Fishing with
+Cormorants, 201-204.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#TALKING_BIRDS_ETC" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  TALKING BIRDS, INSTINCTS, ETC.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Sounds by various Birds, 204.&mdash;Umbrella Bird, 206.&mdash;Bittern,
+207.&mdash;Butcher-bird and Parrots, 208.&mdash;Wild Swan, Laughing Goose,
+Cuckoo, and Nightingale, 209.&mdash;Talking Canaries, 210.&mdash;Neighing Snipe,
+213.&mdash;Trochilos and Crocodiles, 216.&mdash;Instinct. Intelligence, and
+Reason in Birds, 217-219.&mdash;Songs of Birds and Seasons of the Day, 219.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#OWLS" style="text-decoration: none;">OWLS.</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Characteristics of the Owl, 221.&mdash;Owl in Poetry, 222.&mdash;Bischacho or
+Coquimbo, 224.&mdash;Waterton on Owls, 225, 226.&mdash;Owls. Varieties of,
+227-230.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#WEATHER-WISE_ANIMALS" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  WEATHER-WISE ANIMALS.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Atmospheric Changes, 231.&mdash;Stormy Petrel, 233.&mdash;Wild Geese and Ducks,
+235.&mdash;Frogs and Snails, 237.&mdash;The Mole, 240.&mdash;List of Animals, by
+Forster, the Meteorologist, 241.&mdash;Weatherproof Nests, 247.&mdash;"Signs of
+Rain," by Darwin, 248.&mdash;Shepherd of Banbury, 249.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#FISH-TALK" style="text-decoration: none;">FISH-TALK.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">How Fishes Swim, 250.&mdash;Fish Changing Colour, 251.&mdash;"Fish Noise,"
+252.&mdash;Hearing of Fish, 253.&mdash;The Carp at Fontainebleau, 254,
+255.&mdash;Affection of Fishes, 256.&mdash;Cat-fish, Anecdote of, 257.&mdash;Great
+Number of Fishes, 258.&mdash;Little Fishes Eaten by Medusæ, 259.&mdash;Migration
+of Fishes, 261.&mdash;Enormous Grampus, 262.&mdash;Bonita and Flying-fish,
+263.&mdash;Jaculator Fish of Java, 264.&mdash;Port Royal, Jamaica Fish,
+266.&mdash;The Shark, 267.&mdash;California. Fish of, 268.&mdash;Wonderful Fish,
+269.&mdash;Vast Sun-fish, 271.&mdash;Double Fish, 272.&mdash;The Square-browed
+Malthe, 274.&mdash;Gold Fish, 275.&mdash;The Miller's Thumb, 276.&mdash;Sea-fish
+Observatory, 276.&mdash;Herring Question, 278.&mdash;Aristotle's History of
+Animals, 279-280.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#FISH_IN_BRITISH_COLOMBIA" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  FISH IN BRITISH COLOMBIA.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Salmon-swarming, 281.&mdash;Candle-fish, 282.&mdash;Octopus, the, 283.&mdash;Sturgeon
+and Sturgeon Fishing, 283-287.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#THE_TREE-CLIMBING_CRAB" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  THE TREE-CLIMBING CRAB.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Locomotion of Fishes, 288.&mdash;Climbing Perch, 288.&mdash;Crabs in the West
+Indies, 289.&mdash;Crabs, Varieties of, 289-292.&mdash;Robber and Cocoa-nut
+Crab, 292-301.&mdash;Fish of the China Seas, 301.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#MUSICAL_LIZARDS" style="text-decoration: none;">MUSICAL LIZARDS.</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Lizard from Formosa Isle, 303.&mdash;Its Habits, 304-306.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#CHAMELEONS_AND_THEIR_CHANGES" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  CHAMELEONS AND THEIR CHANGES.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">The Chameleon described by Aristotle and Calmet, 307, 308.&mdash;Change
+of Colour, 309.&mdash;Reproduction of, 310, 311.&mdash;Tongue, 311.&mdash;Lives in
+Trees, 312.&mdash;Theory of Colours, 313.&mdash;The Puzzle Solved, 315.&mdash;Mrs.
+Belzoni's Chameleons, 317.&mdash;Lady Cust's Chameleons, 321.&mdash;Chameleon's
+Antipathy to Black, 322.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#RUNNING_TOADS" style="text-decoration: none;">RUNNING TOADS.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Dr. Husenbeth's Toads at Cossey, 327.&mdash;Frog and Toad Concerts, 327.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#SONG_OF_THE_CICADA" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  SONG OF THE CICADA.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Greeks' Love for the Song, 329.&mdash;Cicada in British Colombia,
+329.&mdash;Tennyson and Keats on the Grasshopper, 330.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#STORIES_ABOUT_THE_BARNACLE_GOOSE" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  STORIES ABOUT THE BARNACLE GOOSE.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Baptista Porta's Account, 331.&mdash;Max Müller on, 331.&mdash;Gerarde's
+Account, 332.&mdash;Giraldus Cambrensis, 332.&mdash;Professor Rolleston.
+Drayton's <i>Poly-olbion</i>, 333.&mdash;Sir Kenelm Digby and Sir J. Emerson
+Tennent, 334.&mdash;Finding the Barnacle, 334.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#LEAVES_ABOUT_BOOKWORMS" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  LEAVES ABOUT BOOKWORMS</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Bookworms, their Destructiveness, 336, 337.&mdash;How to Destroy, 338.&mdash;The
+Death-watch, 339.&mdash;Lines by Swift, 340.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#BORING_MARINE_ANIMALS_AND_HUMAN_ENGINEERS" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  BORING MARINE ANIMALS, AND HUMAN ENGINEERS.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Life and Labours of the Pholas, 341.&mdash;Family of the Pholas,
+342.&mdash;Curious Controversy, 343.&mdash;Boring Apparatus, 342.&mdash;Several
+Observers, 347, 348.&mdash;Boring Annelids, 348.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<h2><a name="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS" id="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
+
+<table class="illo-table" id="TOI" summary="ILLUSTRATIONS">
+  <tr>
+    <td class="c1">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="c2">Page</td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td class="c1">
+	  <a href="#i_002.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;">KING PENGUINS</a></td>
+    <td class="c2">Frontispiece</td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td class="c1">
+	  <a href="#i_031.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;">THE TWO-HORNED AFRICAN RHINOCEROS</a></td>
+    <td class="c2">28</td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td class="c1">
+	  <a href="#i_045.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;">SEAL AND MERMAID</a></td>
+    <td class="c2">40</td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td class="c1">
+	  <a href="#i_083.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;">THE GREAT ANT-BEAR (ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY'S)</a></td>
+    <td class="c2">76</td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td class="c1">
+	  <a href="#i_237.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;">FRASER'S EAGLE OWL, FROM FERNANDO PO</a></td>
+    <td class="c2">228</td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td class="c1">
+	  <a href="#i_285.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;">SQUARE-BROWED MALTHE AND DOUBLE FISH</a></td>
+    <td class="c2">274</td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td class="c1">
+	  <a href="#i_301.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;">THE TREE-CLIMBING CRAB</a></td>
+    <td class="c2">288</td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td class="c1">
+	  <a href="#i_333.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;">CHAMELEONS</a></td>
+    <td class="c2">318</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center f2">ECCENTRICITIES</p>
+<p class="center f1">OF</p>
+<p class="center f2">THE ANIMAL CREATION.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<h2><a name="INTRODUCTORY_CURIOSITIES_OF_ZOOLOGY"
+  id="INTRODUCTORY_CURIOSITIES_OF_ZOOLOGY"></a>INTRODUCTORY.&mdash;CURIOSITIES OF ZOOLOGY.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_013.jpg" alt="Letter C"/>
+</div>
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>CURIOUS</b>
+creatures of Animal Life have been objects of interest to
+mankind in all ages and countries; the universality of which may be
+traced to that feeling which "makes the whole world kin."</p>
+
+<p>It has been remarked with emphatic truth by a popular writer, that "we
+have in the Bible and in the engraven and pictorial records the earliest
+evidence of the attention paid to Natural History in general. The 'navy
+of Tarshish' contributed to the wisdom of him who not only 'spake of the
+trees from the cedar of Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth
+out of the wall,' but 'also of beasts, and of fowls, and of creeping
+things, and of fishes,'<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+say nothing of numerous other passages
+showing the progress that zoological knowledge had already made. The
+Egyptian records bear testimony to a familiarity not only with the forms
+of a multitude of wild animals, but with their habits and geographical
+distribution."</p>
+
+<p>The collections of living animals, now popularly known as Zoological
+Gardens, are of considerable antiquity. We read of such gardens in China
+as far back as 2,000 years; but they consisted chiefly of some favourite
+animals, such as stags, fish, and tortoises. The Greeks, under Pericles,
+introduced peacocks in large numbers from India. The Romans had their
+elephants; and the first giraffe in Rome, under Cæsar, was as great an
+event in the history of zoological gardens at its time as the arrival in
+1849 of the Hippopotamus was in London. The first zoological garden of
+which we have any detailed account is that in the reign of the Chinese
+Emperor, Wen Wang, founded by him about 1150 A.D., and named by him "The
+Park of Intelligence;" it contained mammalia, birds, fish, and amphibia.
+The zoological gardens of former times served their masters occasionally
+as hunting-grounds. This was constantly the case in Persia; and in
+Germany, so late as 1576, the Emperor Maximilian II. kept such a park
+for different animals near his castle, Neugebah, in which he frequently
+chased.</p>
+
+<p>Alexander the Great possessed his zoological gardens. We find from Pliny
+that Alexander had given orders to the keepers to send all the rare
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> and
+curious animals which died in the gardens to Aristotle.</p>
+
+<p>Splendid must have been the zoological gardens which the Spaniards found
+connected with the Palace of Montezuma. The letters of Ferdinand Cortez
+and other writings of the time, as well as more recently "The History
+of the Indians," by Antonio Herrera, give most interesting and detailed
+accounts of the menagerie in Montezuma's park. The buildings belonging
+to these gardens were all gorgeous, as became the grandeur of the Indian
+prince; they were supported by pillars, each of which was hewn out of
+a single piece of some precious stone. Cool, arched galleries led into
+the different parts of the garden&mdash;to the marine and fresh-water basins,
+containing innumerable water-fowl,&mdash;to the birds of prey, falcons
+and eagles, which latter especially were represented in the greatest
+variety,&mdash;to the crocodiles, alligators, and serpents, some of them
+belonging to the most venomous species. The halls of a large square
+building contained the dens of the lions, tigers, leopards, bears,
+wolves, and other wild animals. Three hundred slaves were employed in
+the gardens tending the animals, upon which great care was bestowed, and
+scrupulous attention paid to their cleanliness. To this South American
+zoological garden of the sixteenth century no other of its time could be
+compared.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<p>More than six centuries ago, our Plantagenet<span class="pagenum">
+<a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> kings kept in the Tower
+of London exotic animals for their recreation. The Lion Tower was built
+here by Henry III., who commenced assembling here a menagerie with three
+leopards sent to him by the Emperor Frederic II., "in token of his regal
+shield of arms, wherein those leopards were pictured." Here, in 1255,
+the Sheriffs built a house "for the King's elephant," brought from
+France, and the first seen in England. Our early sovereigns had a mews
+in the Tower as well as a menagerie:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="verse">"Merry Margaret, as Midsomer flowre,</div>
+    <div class="verse">Gentyll as faucon and hawke of the Towre."&mdash;<i>Skelton.</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the reign of Charles I., a sort of Royal Menagerie took the place of
+the deer with which St. James's Park was stocked in the days of Henry
+VIII, and Queen Elizabeth. Charles II. greatly enlarged and improved
+the Park; and here he might be seen playing with his dogs and feeding
+his ducks. The Bird-cage Walk, on the south side of the Park, had in
+Charles's time the cages of an aviary disposed among the trees. Near the
+east end of a canal was the Decoy, where water-fowl were kept; and here
+was Duck Island, with its salaried Governor.</p>
+
+<p>Evelyn, in 1664, went to "the Physique Garden in St. James's," where
+he first saw "orange trees and other fine trees." He enumerates in
+the menagerie, "an ornocratylus, or pelican; a fowle between a storke
+and a swan; a melancholy water-fowl, brought from Astracan by the
+Russian ambassador; a milk-white raven; two Balearian cranes," one of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+which, had a wooden leg "made by a soulder:" there were also "deere of
+severall countries, white, spotted like leopards; antelopes, an elk,
+red deer, roebucks, staggs, Guinea goates, Arabian sheepe, &amp;c." There
+were "withy-potts, or nests, for the wild fowle to lay their eggs in, a
+little above y<sup>e</sup> surface of y<sup>e</sup> water."</p>
+
+<p>"25 Feb. 1664. This night I walk'd into St. James his Parke, where I saw
+many strange creatures, as divers sorts of outlandish deer, Guiny sheep,
+a white raven, a great parrot, a storke.... Here are very stately walkes
+set with lime trees on both sides, and a fine pallmall."<a name="FNanchor_3_3"
+id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<p>Upon the eastern island is the Swiss Cottage of the Ornithological
+Society, built in 1841 with a grant of 300l. from the Lords of
+the Treasury: it contains a council-room, keepers' apartments,
+steam-hatching apparatus; contiguous are feeding-places and decoys; and
+the aquatic fowl breed on the island, making their own nests among the
+shrubs and grasses.</p>
+
+<p>The majority of Zoological Gardens now in existence have been founded
+in this century, with the exception of the Jardin des Plantes, which,
+although founded in 1626, did not receive its first living animals until
+the year 1793-1794. Hitherto, it had been a Garden of Plants exclusively.</p>
+
+<p>We shall not be expected to enumerate the great Continental gardens,
+of which that at Berlin, half an hour's drive beyond the Brandenburg
+gates, contains the Royal Menagerie; it is open upon the payment of
+an admission fee, and generally resembles
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
+our garden at the Regent's
+Park. Berlin has also its Zoological Collection in its Museum of Natural
+History. This collection is one of the richest and most extensive in
+Europe, especially in the department of Ornithology: it includes the
+birds collected by Pallas and Wildenow, and the fishes of Bloch. The
+best specimens are those from Mexico, the Red Sea, and the Cape. The
+whole is exceedingly well arranged, and <i>named</i> for the convenience of
+students. Still, our Zoological Collection in the British Museum (to be
+hereafter removed to South Kensington) is allowed to be the finest in
+Europe.</p>
+
+<p>The Zoological Society of London was instituted in 1826, and occupies
+now about seventeen acres of gardens in the Regent's Park. Among the
+earliest tenants of the Menagerie were a pair of emues from New Holland;
+two Arctic bears and a Russian bear; a herd of kangaroos; Cuban mastiffs
+and Thibet watch-dogs; two llamas from Peru; a splendid collection of
+eagles, falcons, and owls; a pair of beavers; cranes, spoonbills, and
+storks; zebras and Indian cows; Esquimaux dogs; armadilloes; and a
+collection of monkeys. To the menagerie have since been added an immense
+number of species of <i>Mammalia</i> and <i>Birds</i>; in 1849, a collection
+of <i>Reptiles</i>; and in 1853, a collection of <i>Fish</i>, <i>Mollusca</i>,
+<i>Zoophytes</i>, and other <i>Aquatic Animals</i>. In 1830, the menagerie
+collected by George IV. at Sandpit-gate, Windsor, was removed to the
+Society's Gardens; and 1834 the last of the Tower Menagerie was received
+here. It is now the finest public Vivarium in Europe.</p>
+
+<p>The following are some of the more remarkable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+animals which the Society
+have possessed, or are now in the menagerie:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<i>Antelopes</i>, the great family of, finely represented. The
+beautiful <i>Elands</i> were bequeathed by the late Earl of Derby, and
+have bred freely since their arrival in 1851. The Leucoryx is the
+first of her race born out of Africa. <i>Ant-eater. Giant</i>, brought
+to England from Brazil in 1853, was exhibited in Broad-street,
+St. Giles's, until purchased by the Zoological Society for 200l.
+<i>Apteryx</i>, or <i>Kiwi</i> bird, from New Zealand; the first living
+specimen brought to England of this rare bird. The <i>Fish-house</i>,
+built of iron and glass, in 1853, consisting of a series of glass
+tanks, in which fish spawn, zoophytes produce young, and algæ
+luxuriate; crustacea and mollusca live successfully, and ascidian
+polypes are illustrated, together with sea anemones, jelly-fishes,
+and star-fishes, rare shell-fishes, &amp;c.: a new world of animal
+life is here seen as in the depths of the ocean, with masses of
+rock, sand, gravel, corallines, sea-weed, and sea-water; the
+animals are in a state of natural restlessness, now quiescent,
+now eating and being eaten. <i>Aurochs</i>, or <i>European Bisons</i>: a
+pair presented by the Emperor of Russia, in 1847, from the forest
+of Bialowitzca: the male died in 1848, the female in 1849, from
+pleuro-pneumonia. <i>Bears</i>: the collection is one of the largest
+ever made. <i>Elephants</i>: including an Indian elephant calf and its
+mother. In 1847 died here the great Indian elephant Jack, having
+been in the gardens sixteen years. Adjoining the stable is a tank
+of water, of a depth nearly equal to the height of a full-grown
+elephant. In 1851 the Society possessed a <i>herd of four elephants</i>,
+besides a hippopotamus, a rhinoceros, and both species of tapir;
+being the largest collection of pachydermata ever exhibited in
+Europe. <i>Giraffes</i>: four received in 1836 cost the Society upwards
+of 2,300<i>l.</i>, including 1,000<i>l.</i> for steamboat passage: the female
+produced six male fawns here between 1840 and 1851. <i>Hippopotamus</i>,
+a young male (the first living specimen seen in England), received
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+from Egypt in May, 1850, when ten months old, seven feet long,
+and six and a-half feet in girth; also a female hippopotamus,
+received 1854. <i>Humming-birds</i>: Mr. Gould's matchless collection
+of 2,000 examples was exhibited here in 1851 and 1852. <i>Iguanas</i>,
+two from Cuba and Carthagena, closely resembling, in everything
+but size, the fossil Iguanodon. The <i>Lions</i> number generally from
+eight to ten, including a pair of cubs born in the gardens in 1853.
+<i>Orang-utan</i> and <i>Chimpanzee</i>: the purchase-money of the latter
+sometimes exceeds 300<i>l.</i> The orang "Darby," brought from Borneo
+in 1851, is the finest yet seen in Europe, very intelligent, and
+docile as a child. <i>Parrot-houses</i>: they sometimes contain from
+sixty to seventy species. <i>Rapacious Birds</i>: so extensive a series
+of eagles and vultures has never yet been seen at one view. <i>The</i>
+<i>Reptile-house</i> was fitted up in 1849; the creatures are placed in
+large plate-glass cases: here are pythons and a rattle-snake, with
+a young one born here; here is also a case of the tree-frogs of
+Europe: a yellow snake from Jamaica has produced eight young in the
+gardens. <i>Cobra de Capello</i>, from India: in 1852, a keeper in the
+gardens was killed by the bite of this serpent. <i>A large Boa</i> in
+1850 swallowed a blanket, and disgorged it in thirty-three days.
+A <i>one-horned Rhinoceros</i>, of continental India, was obtained in
+1834, when it was about four years old, and weighed 26 cwt.; it
+died in 1850: it was replaced by a female, about five years old.
+<i>Satin Bower-Birds</i>, from Sydney: a pair have built here a bower,
+or breeding-place. <i>Tapir</i> of the Old World, from Mount Ophir;
+the nearest existing form the Paleotherium. <i>Tigers</i>: a pair of
+magnificent specimens, presented by the Guicoway of Baroda in 1851;
+a pair of clouded tigers, 1854. <i>The Wapiti Deer</i> breeds every year
+in the Menagerie.</div>
+
+<p>The animals in the Gardens, although reduced in number, are more
+valuable and interesting than when their number was higher. The mission
+of the Society's head-keeper, to collect rare animals for the Menagerie,
+has been very profitable. The additional
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+houses from time to time, are
+very expensive: the new monkey house, fittings, and work cost 4,842<i>l.</i>;
+and in 1864, the sum of 6,604<i>l.</i> was laid out in permanent additions to
+the establishment.</p>
+
+<p>Very rare, and consequently expensive, animals are generally purchased.
+Thus, the first Rhinoceros cost 1,000<i>l.</i>; the four Giraffes, 700<i>l.</i>,
+and their carriage an additional 700<i>l.</i> The Elephant and calf were
+bought in 1851 for 500<i>l.</i>; and the Hippopotamus, although a gift, was
+not brought home and housed at less than 1,000<i>l.</i>&mdash;a sum which he
+more than realised in the famous Exhibition season, when the receipts
+were 10,000<i>l.</i> above the previous year. The Lion Albert was purchased
+for 140<i>l.</i>; a tiger, in 1852, for 200<i>l.</i> The value of some of the
+smaller birds will appear, however, more startling: thus, the pair
+of black-necked Swans were purchased for 80<i>l.</i>; a pair of crowned
+Pigeons and two Maleos, 60<i>l.</i>; a pair of Victoria Pigeons, 35<i>l.</i>;
+four Mandarin Ducks, 70<i>l.</i> Most of these rare birds (now in the great
+aviary) came from the Knowsley collection, at the sale of which,
+in 1851, purchases were made to the extent of 985<i>l.</i> It would be
+impossible from these prices, however, to judge of the present value
+of the animals. Take the Rhinoceros, for example: the first specimen
+cost 1,000<i>l.</i>; the second, quite as fine a brute, only 350<i>l.</i> Lions
+range again from 40<i>l.</i> to 180<i>l.</i>, and Tigers from 40<i>l.</i> to 200<i>l.</i>
+The ignorance displayed by some persons as to the value of well-known
+objects is something marvellous.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+&mdash;A sea-captain demanded 600<i>l.</i> for
+a pair of Pythons, and at last took 40<i>l.</i>! An American offered the
+Society a Grisly Bear for 2,000<i>l.</i>, to be delivered in the United
+States; and, more laughable still, a moribund Walrus, which had been fed
+for nine weeks on salt pork and meal, was offered for the trifling sum
+of 700<i>l.</i>!</p>
+
+<p>There is a strange notion that the Zoological Society has proposed a
+large reward for a "Tortoiseshell Tom-cat," and one was accordingly
+offered to the Society for 250<i>l.</i>! But male Tortoiseshell Cats may be
+had in many quarters.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+<p>The Surrey Zoological Gardens were established in 1831. Thither
+Cross removed his menagerie from the King's Mews, where it had been
+transferred from
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+Exeter Change. At Walworth a glazed circular
+building, 100 feet in diameter, was built for the cages of the
+carnivorous animals (Lions, Tigers, Leopards, &amp;c.); and other houses
+for Mammalia, Birds, &amp;c. Here, in 1834, was first exhibited a young
+Indian one-horned Rhinoceros, for which Cross paid 800<i>l.</i> It was the
+only specimen brought to England for twenty years. In 1836 were added
+three Giraffes, one fifteen feet high. The menagerie was dispersed in
+1856. The menagerie at Exeter Change was a poor collection, though the
+admission-charge was, at one period, half-a-crown!</p>
+
+<p>The collections of animals exhibited at fairs have added little to
+Zoological information; but we may mention that Wombwell, one of the
+most noted of the showfolk, bought a pair of the first Boa Constrictors
+imported into England: for these he paid 75<i>l.</i>, and in three weeks
+realised considerably more than that sum by their exhibition. At the
+time of his death, in 1850, Wombwell was possessed of three huge
+menageries, the cost of maintaining which averaged at least 35<i>l.</i> per
+day; and he used to estimate that, from mortality and disease, he had
+lost, from first to last, from 12,000<i>l.</i> to 15,000<i>l.</i></p>
+
+<p>Our object in the following succession of sketches of the habits and
+eccentricities of the more striking animals, and their principal
+claims upon our attention, is to present, in narrative, their leading
+characteristics, and thus to secure a willing audience from old and
+young.</p>
+
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> 1 Kings iv. 10.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> "Athenæum."</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Journal of Mr. E. Browne,
+son of Sir Thomas Browne.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> In April, 1842, Mr. Batty's
+collection of animals was sold by
+auction, when the undermentioned animals brought&mdash;Large red-faced Monkey
+(clever), 1<i>l.</i> 10<i>s.</i>; fine Coatimondi, 1<i>l.</i> 4<i>s.</i>; Mandril (the
+only one in England), 1<i>l.</i> 17<i>s.</i>; pair of Java Hares, 1<i>l.</i> 9<i>s.</i>; a
+Puma, 14<i>l.</i>; handsome Senegal Lioness, 9<i>l.</i>; a Hyæna, 7<i>l.</i>; splendid
+Barbary Lioness, 24<i>l.</i>; handsome Bengal Tigress, 90<i>l.</i>; brown Bear,
+6<i>l.</i>; the largest Polar Bear in Europe, 37<i>l.</i>; pair of Esquimaux
+Sledge-Dogs, 3<i>l.</i> 7<i>s.</i>; pair of Golden Pheasants, 3<i>l.</i> 10<i>s.</i>; a
+blue-and-buff Macaw (clever talker), 2<i>l.</i> 10<i>s.</i>; a horned Owl, from
+North America, 3<i>l.</i> 10<i>s.</i>; a magnificent Barbary Lion, trained for
+performance, 105 guineas; a Lioness, similarly trained, 90 guineas;
+handsome Senegal performing Leopard, 34 guineas; two others, 50 guineas;
+Ursine Sloth, 12 guineas; Indian Buffalo, 10 guineas; sagacious male
+Elephant, trained for theatrical performances, 350 guineas. The above is
+stated to have been the first sale of the kind by public auction in this
+country.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_RHINOCEROS_IN_ENGLAND" id="THE_RHINOCEROS_IN_ENGLAND"></a>THE RHINOCEROS IN ENGLAND.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>THE</b> intellectual helps to the study of zoology are nowhere more
+strikingly evident than in the finest collection of pachyderms
+(thick-skinned animals) in the world, now possessed by our Zoological
+Society. Here we have a pair of Indian Elephants, a pair of African
+Elephants, a pair of Hippopotami, a pair of Indian Rhinoceroses, and an
+African or two-horned Rhinoceros.</p>
+
+<p>The specimens of the Rhinoceros which have been exhibited in Europe
+since the revival of literature have been few and far between. The
+first was of the one-horned species, sent from India to Emmanuel. King
+of Portugal, in the year 1513. The Sovereign made a present of it to
+the Pope; but the animal being seized during its passage with a fit of
+fury, occasioned the loss of the vessel in which it was transported. A
+second Rhinoceros was brought to England in 1685; a third was exhibited
+over almost the whole of Europe in 1739; and a fourth, a female, in
+1741. A fifth specimen arrived at Versailles in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> 1771, and it died in
+1793, at the age of about twenty-six years. The sixth was a very young
+Rhinoceros, which died in this country in the year 1800. The seventh, a
+young specimen, was in the possession of Mr. Cross, at Exeter Change,
+about 1814; and an eighth specimen was living about the same time in
+the Garden of Plants at Paris. In 1834 Mr. Cross received at the Surrey
+Gardens, from the Birman empire, a Rhinoceros, a year and a-half old,
+as already stated at page 21. In 1851 the Zoological Society purchased
+a full-grown female Rhinoceros; and in 1864 they received a male
+Rhinoceros from Calcutta. All these specimens were from India, and
+<i>one-horned</i>; so that the <i>two-horned</i> Rhinoceros had not been brought
+to England until the arrival of an African Rhinoceros, <i>two-horned</i>, in
+September, 1868.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>
+
+<p>The ancient history of the Rhinoceros is interesting, but intricate. It
+seems to be mentioned in several passages of the Scriptures, in most
+of which the animal or animals intended to be designated was or were
+the <i>Rhinoceros unicornis</i>, or Great Asiatic one-horned Rhinoceros.
+M. Lesson expresses a decided opinion to this effect: indeed, the
+description in Job (chap. xxxix.) would almost forbid the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> conclusion
+that any animal was in the writer's mind except one of surpassing bulk
+and indomitable strength. The impotence of man is finely contrasted
+with the might of the Rhinoceros in this description, which would be
+overcharged if it applied to the less powerful animals alluded to in the
+previous passages.</p>
+
+<p>It has also been doubted whether accounts of the Indian Wild Ass, given
+by Ctesias, were not highly coloured and exaggerated descriptions of
+this genus; and whether the Indian Ass of Aristotle was not a Rhinoceros.</p>
+
+<p>Agatharchides describes the one-horned Rhinoceros by name, and speaks
+of its ripping up the belly of the Elephant. This is, probably, the
+earliest occurrence of the name <i>Rhinoceros</i>. The Rhinoceros which
+figured in the celebrated pomps of Ptolemy Philadelphus was an
+Ethiopian, and seems to have marched last in the procession of wild
+animals, probably on account of its superior rarity, and immediately
+after the Cameleopard.</p>
+
+<p>Dion Cassius speaks of the Rhinoceros killed in the circus with a
+Hippopotamus in the show given by Augustus to celebrate his victory over
+Cleopatra; he says that the Hippopotamus and this animal were then first
+seen and killed at Rome. The Rhinoceros then slain is thought to have
+been African, and two-horned.</p>
+
+<p>The Rhinoceros clearly described by Strabo, as seen by him, was
+one-horned. That noticed by Pausanias as "the Bull of Ethiopia," was
+two-horned, and he describes the relative position of the horns.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Wood, in his "Zoography," gives an engraving of the coin of Domitian
+(small Roman brass), on the reverse of which is the distinct form of a
+two-horned Rhinoceros: its exhibition to the Roman people, probably of
+the very animal represented on the coin, is particularly described in
+one of the epigrams attributed to Martial, who lived in the reigns of
+Titus and Domitian. By the description of the epigram it appears that
+a combat between a Rhinoceros and a Bear was intended, but that it was
+very difficult to irritate the more unwieldy animal so as to make him
+display his usual ferocity; at length, however, he tossed the bear from
+his double horn, with as much facility as a bull tosses to the sky the
+bundles placed for the purpose of enraging him. Thus far the coin and
+the epigram perfectly agree as to the existence of the double horn; but,
+unfortunately, commentators and antiquaries were not to be convinced
+that a Rhinoceros could have more than one horn, and have at once
+displayed their sagacity and incredulity in their explanations on the
+subject.</p>
+
+<p>Two, at least, of the two-horned Rhinoceroses were shown at Rome in the
+reign of Domitian. The Emperors Antoninus, Heliogabalus, and Gordian
+also exhibited Rhinoceroses. Cosmas speaks expressly of the Ethiopian
+Rhinoceros as having two horns, and of its power of moving them.</p>
+
+<p>The tractability of the Asiatic Rhinoceros has been confirmed by
+observers in the native country of the animal. Bishop Heber saw at
+Lucknow five or six very large Rhinoceroses, of which he found that
+prints<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+and drawings had given him a very imperfect conception. They
+were more bulky animals, and of a darker colour than the Bishop
+supposed; though the latter difference might be occasioned by oiling
+the skin. The folds of their skin also surpassed all which the Bishop
+had expected. Those at Lucknow were quiet and gentle animals, except
+that one of them had a feud with horses. They had sometimes howdahs, or
+chaise-like seats, on their backs, and were once fastened in a carriage,
+but only as an experiment, which was not followed up. The Bishop,
+however, subsequently saw a Rhinoceros (the present of Lord Amherst to
+the Guicwar), which was so tamed as to be ridden by a Mohout quite as
+patiently as an elephant.</p>
+
+<p>No two-horned Rhinoceros seems to have been brought alive to Europe in
+modern times. Indeed, up to a comparatively late period, their form
+was known only by the horns which were preserved in museums; nor did
+voyagers give any sufficient details to impart any clear idea of the
+form of the animal. The rude figure given by Aldrovandus, in 1639,
+leaves no doubt that, wretched as it is, it must have been taken from a
+two-horned Rhinoceros.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Parsons endeavoured to show that the one-horned Rhinoceros always
+belonged to Asia, and the two-horned Rhinoceros to Africa; but there are
+two-horned Rhinoceroses in Asia, as well as in Africa. Flacourt saw one
+in the Bay of Soldaque, near the Cape of Good Hope, at a distance. Kolbe
+and others always considered the Rhinoceros of the Cape as two-horned;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
+but Colonel Gordon seems to be the first who entirely detailed the
+species with any exactness. Sparrman described the Cape Rhinoceros,
+though his figure of the animal is stiff and ill-drawn. At this period
+it was well known that the Cape species was not only distinguished by
+having two horns from the Indian Rhinoceros then known, but also by an
+absence of the folds of the skin so remarkable in the latter.</p>
+
+<p>We should here notice the carelessness, to call it by the mildest
+name, of Bruce, who gave to the world a representation of a two-horned
+Rhinoceros from Abyssinia, with a strongly folded skin. The truth
+appears to be that the body of the animal figured by Bruce was copied
+from that of the one-horned Rhinoceros given by Buffon, to which Bruce
+added a second horn. Salt proved that the Abyssinian Rhinoceros is
+two-horned, and that it resembles that of the Cape.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter bord"><a name="i_031.jpg" id="i_031.jpg"></a>
+  <img src="images/i_031.jpg" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">KING THE TWO-HORNED AFRICAN RHINOCEROS.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Sparmann exposes the errors and poetic fancies of Buffon respecting the
+impenetrable nature of the skin. He ordered one of his Hottentots to
+make a trial of this with his hassagai on a Rhinoceros which had been
+shot. Though this weapon was far from being in good order, and had no
+other sharpness than that which it had received from the forge, the
+Hottentot, at the distance of five or six paces, not only pierced with
+it the thick hide of the animal, but buried it half a foot deep in its
+body.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Tegetmeier has sufficiently described in the "Field" journal the
+African Rhinoceros just received
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+at the Zoological Society's menagerie
+in the Regent's-park, and which has been sketched by Mr. T. W. Wood
+expressly for the present volume.</p>
+
+<p>It was captured about a year ago in Upper Nubia by the native hunters
+in the employment of Mr. Casanova, at Kassala; and was sent, by way of
+Alexandria and Trieste, to Mr. Karl Hagenbeck, of Hamburg, a dealer in
+wild beasts, who sold it to the Zoological Society.</p>
+
+<p>"This animal is very distinct from its Asiatic congeners; it differs
+strikingly in the number of horns, as well as in the character of its
+skin, which is destitute of those large folds, which cause the Indian
+species to remind the observer of a gigantic 'hog in armour.'</p>
+
+<p>"The arrival of this animal will tend to clear up the confusion
+that prevails respecting the number of distinct species of African
+Rhinoceros. Some writers&mdash;as Sir W. C. Harris&mdash;admit the existence of
+two species only, the dark and the light, or, as they are termed, the
+'white' and the 'black.' Others, as Dr. A. Smith, describe three; some,
+as the late Mr. Anderssen, write of four; and Mr. Chapman even speaks of
+a fifth species or hybrid.</p>
+
+<p>"Three of these species are very distinctly defined&mdash;the ordinary dark
+animal, the <i>Rhinoceros bicornis</i>, in which the posterior horn is much
+shorter than the anterior; the <i>Rhinoceros keitloa</i>, in which the two
+horns are of equal length; and the 'white' species, <i>Rhinoceros simus</i>.
+The last, among other characters, is, according to Dr. Smith,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+distinguished by the square character of the upper lip, which is not
+prehensile.</p>
+
+<p>"The young animal now (October, 1868) in the Zoological Society's
+garden, appears to belong to the first-named species, the largest
+specimens of which when full grown reach a height of 6ft., and a length
+of 13ft., the tail not included. Its present height is 3-1/2ft., and
+length about 6ft. In general appearance the mature animal resembles a
+gigantic pig, the limbs being brought under the body. The feet are most
+singular in form, being very distinctly three-toed, and the remarkable
+trefoil-like <i>spoors</i> that they make in the soil render the animal
+easy to track. The horns vary greatly in length in different animals;
+the first not unfrequently reaches a length of 2ft., the second being
+considerably shorter. These appendages differ very much from ordinary
+horns; they are, in fact, more of the nature of agglutinated hair, being
+attached to the skin only, and consequently they separate from the skull
+when the latter is preserved.</p>
+
+<p>"The head is not remarkable for comeliness, especially in the mature
+animal, in which the skin of the face is deeply wrinkled, and the small
+eyes are surrounded with many folds. The upper lip is elongated, and is
+used in gathering the food. The adult animals are described by Sir W. C.
+Harris, in his 'Illustrations of the Game Animals of South Africa,' as
+'swinish, cross-grained, ill-tempered, wallowing brutes.'"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Burchell, during his travels in Africa, shot
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> nine Rhinoceroses,
+besides a smaller one. The latter he presented to the British Museum.
+The animal is, however, becoming every day more and more scarce in
+Southern Africa; indeed, it is rarely to be met with in some parts.
+It appears that, in one day, two Rhinoceroses were shot by Speelman,
+the faithful Hottentot who attended Mr. Burchell. He fired off his gun
+but twice, and each time he killed a Rhinoceros! The animal's sense of
+hearing is very quick: should he be disturbed, he sometimes becomes
+furious, and pursues his enemy; and then, if once he gets sight of the
+hunter, it is scarcely possible for him to escape, unless he possesses
+extraordinary coolness and presence of mind. Yet, if he will quietly
+wait till the enraged animal makes a run at him, and will then spring
+suddenly on one side, to let it pass, he may gain time enough for
+reloading his gun before the Rhinoceros gets sight of him again, which,
+fortunately, owing to its imperfection of sight, it does slowly and with
+difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>Speelman, in shooting a large male Rhinoceros, used bullets cast with
+an admixture of tin, to render them harder. They were flattened and
+beat out of shape by striking against the bones, but those which were
+found lodged in the fleshy parts had preserved their proper form, a fact
+which shows how little the hardness of the creature's hide corresponds
+with the vulgar opinion of its being impenetrable to a musket-ball.
+Mr. Burchell found this Rhinoceros nearly cut up. On each side of the
+carcase the Hottentots had made a fire to warm themselves; and round a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+third fire were assembled at least twenty-four Bushmen, most of whom
+were employed the whole night long in broiling, eating, and talking.
+Their appetite seemed insatiable, for no sooner had they broiled and
+eaten one slice of meat than they turned to the carcase and cut another.
+The meat was excellent, and had much the taste of beef. "The tongue,"
+says Mr. Burchell, "is a dainty treat, even for an epicure." The hide is
+cut into strips, three feet or more in length, rounded to the thickness
+of a man's finger, and tapering to the top. This is called a <i>shambok</i>,
+and is universally used in the colony of the Cape for a horsewhip, and
+is much more durable than the whips of European manufacture. The natural
+food of the Rhinoceros, till the animal fled before the colonists, was a
+pale, bushy shrub, called the Rhinoceros-bush, which burns while green
+as freely as the driest fuel, so as readily to make a roadside fire.</p>
+
+<p>The horn of the Rhinoceros, single or double, has its special history by
+the way of popular tradition. From the earliest times this horn has been
+supposed to possess preservative virtues and mysterious properties&mdash;to
+be capable of curing diseases and discovering the presence of poison;
+and in all countries where the Rhinoceros exists, but especially in the
+East, such is still the opinion respecting it. In the details of the
+first voyage of the English to India, in 1591, we find Rhinoceros' horns
+monopolised by the native sovereigns on account of their reputed virtues
+in detecting the presence of poison.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Thunberg observes, in his "Journey into Caffraria," that "the horns of
+the Rhinoceros were kept by some people, both in town and country, not
+only as rarities, but also as useful in diseases, and for the purpose
+of detecting poisons. As to the former of these intentions, the fine
+shavings were supposed to cure convulsions and spasms in children. With
+respect to the latter, it was generally believed that goblets made of
+these horns would discover a poisonous draught that was poured into
+them, by making the liquor ferment till it ran quite out of the goblet.
+Of these horns goblets are made, which are set in gold and silver and
+presented to kings, persons of distinction, and particular friends, or
+else sold at a high price, sometimes at the rate of fifty rix-dollars
+each." Thunberg adds:&mdash;"When I tried these horns, both wrought and
+unwrought, both old and young horns, with several sorts of poison, weak
+as well as strong, I observed not the least motion or effervescence; but
+when a solution of corrosive sublimate or other similar substance was
+poured into one of these horns, there arose only a few bubbles, produced
+by the air which had been enclosed in the pores of the horn and which
+were now disengaged."</p>
+
+<p>Rankin (in his "Wars and Sports") states this mode of using it: a small
+quantity of water is put into the concave part of the root, then hold it
+with the point downwards and stir the water with the point of an iron
+nail till it is discoloured, when the patient is to drink it.</p>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a>
+The conveyance of a Rhinoceros over sea is a labour of some risk. In
+1814 a full-grown specimen on his voyage from Calcutta to this country
+became so furious that he was fastened down to the ship's deck, with
+part of a chain-cable round his neck; and even then he succeeded in
+destroying a portion of the vessel, till, a heavy storm coming on, the
+Rhinoceros was thrown overboard to prevent the serious consequence of
+his getting loose in the ship.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="STORIES_OF_MERMAIDS" id="STORIES_OF_MERMAIDS"></a>STORIES OF MERMAIDS.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_037.jpg" alt="Letter L"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>LESS</b> than half a century ago, a pretended
+Mermaid was one of the sights
+of a London season; to see which credulous persons rushed to pay
+half-crowns and shillings with a readiness which seemed to rebuke the
+record&mdash;that the existence of a Mermaid is an exploded fallacy of two
+centuries since.</p>
+
+<p>Mermaids have had a legendary existence from very early ages, for the
+Sirens of the ancients evidently belonged to the same remarkable family.
+Shakspeare uses the term Mermaid as synonymous with Siren:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="verse">"O train me not, sweet Mermaid, with thy note,</div>
+    <div class="verse">To drown me in thy sister's flood of tears;</div>
+    <div class="verse">Sing, Syren, for thyself."&mdash;<i>Comedy of Errors</i>, iii. 2.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Elsewhere, Shakspeare's use of the term is more applicable to the Siren
+than to the common idea of a Mermaid; as in the "Midsummer Night's
+Dream," where the "Mermaid on a dolphin's back" could not easily have
+been so placed. A Merman, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> male of this imaginary species, is
+mentioned by Taylor, the water-poet:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="verse">"A thing turmoyling in the sea we spide,</div>
+    <div class="verse2">Like to a Meareman."</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>An old writer has this ingenious illustration:&mdash;"Mermaids, in Homer,
+were witches, and their songs enchantments;" which reminds us of the
+invitation in Haydn's Mermaid's Song:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="verse">"Come with me, and we will go</div>
+	<div class="verse3">Where the rocks of coral grow."</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The orthodox Mermaid is half woman, half fish; and the fishy half is
+sometimes depicted as doubly tailed, such as we see in the heraldry of
+France and Germany; and in the Basle edition of Ptolemy's "Geography,"
+dated 1540, a double-tailed Mermaid figures in one of the plates. In the
+arms of the Fishmongers' Company of London, the supporters are "a Merman
+and maid, first, armed, the latter with a mirror in the left hand,
+proper." From this heraldic employment, the Mermaid became a popular
+tavern sign; and there was an old dance called the Mermaid.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Thomas Browne refers to the <i>picture</i> of Mermaids, though he does
+not admit their existence. They "are conceived to answer the shape of
+the ancient Sirens that attempted upon Ulysses; which, notwithstanding,
+were of another description, containing no fishy composure, but made up
+of man and bird." Sir Thomas is inclined to refer the Mermaid to Dagon,
+the tutelary deity of the Philistines,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> which, according to the common
+opinion, had a human female bust and a fish-like termination; though the
+details of this fish idolatry are entirely conjectural.</p>
+
+<p>Leyden, the Scottish poet, has left a charming ballad, entitled "The
+Mermaid," the scene of which is laid at Corrievreckin: the opening of
+this poem Sir Walter Scott praised as exhibiting a power of numbers
+which, for mere melody of sound, has seldom been excelled in English
+poetry:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse">"On Jura's heath how sweetly swell</div>
+    <div class="verse2">The murmurs of the mountain bee!</div>
+    <div class="verse">How softly mourns the writhèd shell</div>
+    <div class="verse2">Of Jura's shore its parent sea!</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse">"But softer floating, o'er the deep,</div>
+    <div class="verse2">The Mermaid's sweet sea-soothing lay,</div>
+    <div class="verse">That charmed the dancing waves to sleep</div>
+    <div class="verse2">Before the bark of Colonsay."</div>
+  </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The ballad thus describes the wooing of the gallant chieftain:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse">"Proud swells her heart! she deems at last</div>
+    <div class="verse2">To lure him with her silver tongue,</div>
+    <div class="verse">And, as the shelving rocks she passed,</div>
+    <div class="verse2">She raised her voice, and sweetly sung.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse">"In softer, sweeter strains she sung.</div>
+    <div class="verse2">Slow gliding o'er the moonlight bay.</div>
+    <div class="verse">When light to land the chieftain sprung.</div>
+    <div class="verse2">To hail the maid of Colonsay.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse">"O sad the Mermaid's gay notes fell,</div>
+    <div class="verse2">And sadly sink remote at sea!</div>
+    <div class="verse">O sadly mourns the writhèd shell</div>
+    <div class="verse2">Of Jura's shore, its parent sea.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse">"And ever as the year returns,
+	<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></div>
+    <div class="verse2">The charm-bound sailors know the day;</div>
+    <div class="verse">For sadly still the Mermaid mourns</div>
+    <div class="verse2">The lovely chief of Colonsay."</div>
+  </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Curious evidences of the existence of Mermaids are to be found in
+ancient authors. Pliny says that "the ambassadors to Augustine from Gaul
+declared that sea-women were often seen in their neighbourhood." Solinus
+and Aulus Gellius also speak of their existence. Some stories are,
+however, past credence. It is related in the "Histoire d'Angleterre"
+that, in the year 1187, a Merman was "fished up" off the coast of
+Suffolk, and kept for six months. It was like a man, but wanted speech,
+and at length escaped into the sea! In 1430, in the great tempests which
+destroyed the dykes in Holland, some women at Edam, in West Friesland,
+saw a Mermaid who had been driven by the waters into the meadows, which
+were overflowed. "They took it, dressed it in female attire, and taught
+it to spin!" It was taken to Haarlem, where it lived some years! Then we
+read of Ceylonese fishermen, in 1560, catching, at one draught, seven
+Mermen and Mermaids, which were dissected! In 1531, a Mermaid, caught in
+the Baltic, was sent to Sigismund, King of Poland, with whom she lived
+three days, and was seen by the whole court!</p>
+
+<p>In Merollo's "Voyage to Congo," in 1682, Mermaids are said to be
+plentiful all along the river Zaire. In the "Aberdeen Almanack" for
+1688, it is predicted that "near the place where the famous
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> Dee
+payeth his tribute to the German Ocean," on the 1st, 13th, and 29th
+of May, and other specified times, curious observers may "undoubtedly
+see a pretty company of Mar Maids," and likewise hear their melodious
+voices. In another part of Scotland, about the same time, Brand, in his
+"Description of Orkney and Shetland," tells us that two fishermen drew
+up with a hook a Mermaid, "having face, arm, breast, shoulders, &amp;c., of
+a woman, and long hair hanging down the neck, but the nether part, from
+below the waist, hidden in the water." One of the fishermen stabbed her
+with a knife, and she was seen no more! The evidence went thus:&mdash;Brand
+was told by a lady and gentleman, who were told by a baillie to whom the
+fishing-boat belonged, who was told by the fishers! Valentyn describes a
+Mermaid he saw in 1714, on his voyage from Batavia to Europe, "sitting
+on the surface of the water," &amp;c. In 1758, a Mermaid is said to have
+been exhibited at the fair of St. Germain, in France. It was about two
+feet long, and sported about in a vessel of water. It was fed with bread
+and fish. It was a female, with negro features.</p>
+
+<p>In 1775 appeared a very circumstantial account of a Mermaid which was
+captured in the Grecian Archipelago in the preceding year, and exhibited
+in London. The account is ludicrously minute, and it ends with: "It is
+said to have an enchanting voice, which it never exerts except before
+a storm." This imposture was craftily made up out of the skin of the
+angle shark. In Mr. Morgan's "Tour to Milford
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+Haven in the year 1795,"
+appears an equally circumstantial account of a Mermaid, said to have
+been seen by one Henry Reynolds, a farmer, of Ren-y-hold, in the parish
+of Castlemartin, in 1782. It resembled a youth of sixteen or eighteen
+years of age, with a very white skin: it was bathing. The evidence
+is very roundabout, so that there were abundant means for converting
+some peculiar kind of fish into a Merman, without imputing intentional
+dishonesty to any one. "Something akin to this kind of evidence is
+observable in the account of a Mermaid seen in Caithness in 1809, which
+attracted much attention in England as well as in Scotland, and induced
+the Philosophical Society of Glasgow to investigate the matter. The
+Editor of a newspaper, who inserted the statement, had been told by a
+gentleman, who had been shown a letter by Sir John Sinclair, who had
+obtained it from Mr. Innes, to whom it had been written by Miss Mackay,
+who had heard the story from the persons (two servant girls and a boy)
+who had seen the strange animal in the water." (Chambers's "Book of
+Days.")</p>
+
+<p>Then we read of a so-called Mermaid, shown in the year 1794 at No. 7,
+Broad-court, Bow-street. Covent-garden, said to have been taken in the
+North Seas by Captain Foster. It was of the usual description.</p>
+
+<p>Much evidence comes from Scotland. Thus, in the year 1797, a
+schoolmaster of Thurso affirmed that he had seen a Mermaid, apparently
+in the act of combing her hair with her fingers! Twelve years
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
+afterwards, several persons observed near the same place a like
+appearance. Dr. Chisholm, in his "Essay on Malignant Fever in the West
+Indies," in 1801, relates that, in the year 1797, happening to be at
+Governor Van Battenburg's plantation, in Berbice, "the conversation
+turned on a singular animal which had been repeatedly seen in Berbice
+river, and some smaller rivers. This animal is the famous Mermaid,
+hitherto considered as a mere creature of the imagination. It is called
+by the Indians <i>méné</i>, mamma, or mother of the waters. The description
+given of it by the Governor is as follows:&mdash;'The upper portion
+resembles the human figure, the head smaller in proportion, sometimes
+bare, but oftener covered with a copious quantity of long black hair.
+The shoulders are broad, and the breasts large and well-formed. The
+lower portion resembles the tail of a fish, is of great dimensions,
+the tail forked, and not unlike that of the dolphin, as it is usually
+represented. The colour of the skin is either black or tawny.' The
+animal is held in veneration by the Indians, who imagine that killing
+it would be attended with calamitous consequences. It is from this
+circumstance that none of these animals have been shot, and consequently
+examined but at a distance. They have been generally observed in a
+sitting posture in the water, none of the lower extremity being seen
+until they are disturbed, when, by plunging, the tail agitates the water
+to a considerable distance round. They have been always seen employed in
+smoothing their hair, and have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
+thus been frequently taken for Indian
+women bathing." In 1811, a young man, named John M'Isaac, of Corphine,
+in Kintyre, in Scotland, made oath, on examination at Campbell-town,
+that he saw, on the 13th of October in the above year, on a rock on the
+sea-coast, an animal which generally corresponded with the form of the
+Mermaid&mdash;the upper half human shape, the other brindled or reddish grey,
+apparently covered with scales; the extremity of the tail greenish red;
+head covered with long hair, at times put back on both sides of the
+head. This statement was attested by the minister of Campbell-town and
+the Chamberlain of Mull.</p>
+
+<p>In August, 1812, Mr. Toupin, of Exmouth, in a sailing excursion, and
+when about a mile south-east of Exmouth Bar, heard a sound like that
+of the Æolian harp; and saw, at about one hundred yards distance, a
+creature, which was regarded as a Mermaid. The head, from the crown to
+the chin, formed a long oval, and the face seemed to resemble that of
+the seal, though with more agreeable features. The presumed hair, the
+arms, and the hand, with four fingers connected by a membrane, are then
+described, and the tail with polished scales. The entire height of the
+animal was from five feet to five and a-half feet. In 1819, a creature
+approached the coast of Ireland. It was about the size of a child ten
+years of age, with prominent bosom, long dark hair, and dark eyes. It
+was shot at, when it plunged into the sea with a loud scream.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter bord"><a name="i_045.jpg" id="i_045.jpg"></a>
+  <img src="images/i_045.jpg" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">SEAL AND MERMAID.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In reviewing these stories of Mermaids, it may be remarked that there
+is always a fish in each tale&mdash;either a living fish of a peculiar
+kind, which a fanciful person thinks to bear some resemblance in the
+upper part to a human being, or a fish which becomes marvellous in the
+progress of its description from mouth to mouth. It is commonly thought
+the seals may often have been mistaken for Mermaids. But, of all the
+animals of the whale tribe that which approaches the nearest in form to
+man is, undoubtedly, the Dugong, which, when its head and breast are
+raised above the water, and its pectoral fins, resembling hands, are
+visible, might easily be taken by superstitious seamen for a semi-human
+being, or a Mermaid. Of this deception a remarkable instance occurred
+in 1826. The skeleton of a Mermaid, as it was called, was brought
+to Portsmouth, which had been shot in the vicinity of the Island of
+Mombass. This was submitted to the members of the Philosophical Society,
+when it proved to be the skeleton of a Dugong. To those who came to
+the examination with preconceived notions of a fabulous Mermaid, it
+presented, as it lay on the lecture-table, a singular appearance. It
+was about six feet long; the lower portion, with its broad tail-like
+extremity, suggested the idea of a powerful fish-like termination,
+whilst the fore-legs presented to the unskilful eye a resemblance to the
+bones of a small female arm; the cranium, however, had a brutal form,
+which could never have borne the lineaments of "the human face divine."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Mermaid has been traced to the Manatee as well as to the Dugong: the
+former is an aquatic animal, externally resembling a whale, and named
+from its flipper, resembling the human hand, <i>manus</i>. Again, the <i>mammæ</i>
+(teats) of the Manatees and Dugongs are pectoral; and this conformation,
+joined to the adroit use of their flippers (whose five fingers can
+easily be distinguished through the inverting membranes, four of them
+being terminated by nails) in progression, nursing their young, &amp;c.,
+have caused them, when seen at a distance with the anterior part of
+their body out of the water, to be taken for some creature approaching
+to human shape so nearly (especially as their middle is thick set with
+hair, giving somewhat of the effect of human hair or a beard), that
+there can be little doubt that not a few of the tales of Mermen and
+Mermaids have had their origin with these animals as well as with seals
+and walruses. Thus the Portuguese and Spaniards give the <i>Manatee</i> a
+denomination which signifies Woman-fish; and the Dutch call the Dugong
+<i>Baardanetjee</i>, or Little-bearded Man. A very little imagination and
+a memory for only the marvellous portion of the appearance sufficed,
+doubtless, to complete the metamorphosis of this half woman or man, half
+fish, into a Siren, a Mermaid, or a Merman; and the wild recital of the
+voyager was treasured up by writers who, as Cuvier well observes, have
+displayed more learning than judgment.</p>
+
+<p>The comb and the toilet-glass have already been incidentally mentioned
+as accessories in these Mermaid
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
+stories; and these, with the
+origin of the creature. Sir George Head thus ingeniously attempts
+to explain:&mdash;"The resemblance of the seal, or sea-calf, to the calf
+consists only in the voice, and the voice of the calf is certainly not
+dissimilar to that of a man. But the claws of the seal, as well as the
+hand, are like a lady's back-hair comb; wherefore, altogether, supposing
+the resplendence of sea-water streaming down its polished neck, on a
+sunshiny day, the substitute for a looking-glass, we arrive at once at
+the fabulous history of the marine maiden or Mermaid, and the appendages
+of her toilet."</p>
+
+<p>The progress of zoological science has long since destroyed the belief
+in the existence of the Mermaid. If its upper structure be human, with
+lungs resembling our own, how could such a creature live and breathe at
+the bottom of the sea, where it is stated to be? for our most expert
+divers are unable to stay under water more than half an hour. Suppose it
+to be of the cetaceous class, it could only remain under the water two
+or three minutes together without rising to the surface to take breath;
+and if this were the case with the Mermaid, would it not be oftener seen?</p>
+
+<p>Half a century has scarcely elapsed since a <i>manufactured</i> Mermaid was
+shown in London with all the confidence of its being a natural creature.
+In the winter of 1822 there was exhibited at the Egyptian Hall, in
+Piccadilly, this pretended Mermaid, which was visited by from 300 to
+400 persons daily! The imposture, however, was too gross to last
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> long;
+and it was ascertained to be the dried skin of the head and shoulders
+of a monkey attached very neatly to the dried skin of a fish of the
+salmon kind with the head cut off; the compound figure being stuffed
+and highly varnished, the better to deceive the eye. This grotesque
+object was taken by a Dutch vessel from on board a native Malacca boat;
+and from the reverence shown to it by the sailors it is supposed to
+have represented the incarnation of one of the idol gods of the Malacca
+Islands. A correspondent of the "Magazine of Natural History," 1829,
+however, avers that the above "Mermaid" was brought from the East
+Indies; for being at St. Helena in 1813 he saw it on board the ship
+which was bringing it to England. The impression on his mind was that
+it was an artificial compound of the upper part of a small ape with the
+lower half of a fish; and by aid of a powerful glass he ascertained the
+point of union between the two parts. He was somewhat staggered to find
+that this was so neatly effected that the precise line of junction was
+not satisfactorily apparent: the creature was then in its best state of
+preservation.</p>
+
+<p>In a volume of "Manners and Customs of the Japanese," published in
+1841, we, however, find the following version of the history of the
+above Mermaid:&mdash;"A Japanese fisherman seems to have displayed ingenuity
+for the mere purpose of making money by his countrymen's passion for
+everything odd and strange. He contrived to unite the upper
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> half of
+a monkey to the lower half of a fish so neatly as to defy ordinary
+inspection. He then gave out that he had caught the creature in his
+net, but that it had died shortly after being taken out of the water;
+and he derived considerable pecuniary profit from his cunning in more
+ways than one. The exhibition of the sea monster to Japanese curiosity
+paid well; yet more productive was the assertion that the half-human
+fish, having spoken during the five minutes it existed out of its native
+element, had predicted a certain number of years of wonderful fertility
+and a fatal epidemic, the only remedy for which would be the possession
+of the marine prophet's likeness! The sale of these <i>pictured Mermaids</i>
+was immense. Either the composite animal, or another, the offspring of
+the success of the first, was sold to the Dutch factory and transmitted
+to Batavia, where it fell into the hands of a speculating American,
+who brought it to Europe; and here, in the year 1822-3, exhibited his
+purchase as a real Mermaid to the admiration of the ignorant, the
+perplexity of the learned, and the filling of his own purse."</p>
+
+<p>The Editor of the "Literary Gazette," Mr. Jerdan, was the first
+to expose the fabulous creature of the Egyptian Hall. He plainly
+said:&mdash;"Our opinion is fixed that it is a <i>composition</i>; a most
+ingenious one, we grant, but still nothing beyond the admirably
+put-together members of various animals. The extraordinary skill of
+the Chinese and Japanese in executing such deceptions is notorious,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>
+and we have no doubt that the Mermaid is a manufacture from the Indian
+Sea, where it has been pretended it was caught. We are not of those who
+because they happen not to have had direct proof of the existence of
+any extraordinary natural phenomenon, push scepticism to the extreme
+and deny its possibility. The depths of the sea, in all probability,
+from various chemical and philosophical causes, contain animals unknown
+to its surface-waters, rarely if ever seen by human eye. But when a
+creature is presented to us having no other organization but that which
+is suitable to a medium always open to our observation, it in the first
+instance excites suspicion that only one individual of the species
+should be discovered and obtained. When knowledge was more limited, the
+stories of Mermaids seen in distant quarters might be credited by the
+many, and not entirely disbelieved by the few; but now, when European
+and especially British commerce fills every corner of the earth with men
+of observation and science, the unique becomes the incredible, and we
+receive with far greater doubt the apparition of such anomalies as the
+present. It is curious that though medical men seem in general to regard
+the creature as a possible production of nature, no naturalist of any
+ability credits it after five minutes' observation! This may, perhaps,
+be accounted for by their acquaintance with the parts of distinct
+animals, of which it appears the Mermaid is composed. The cheeks of the
+blue-faced ape, the canine teeth, the <i>simia</i> upper body,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> and the tail
+of the fish, are all familiar to them in less complex combinations,
+and they pronounce at once that the whole is an imposture. And such
+is our settled conviction." Though naturalists and journalists fully
+exposed the imposture, this did not affect the exhibition, which for a
+considerable time continued as crowded as ever; but the notoriety had
+dwindled down to "a penny show," at Bartholomew Fair, by the year 1825.</p>
+
+<p>After so many exposures of the absurd belief in Mermaids, it could
+scarcely be expected that any person could be found in Europe weak
+enough to report the existence of one of these creatures to an eminent
+scientific Society. Yet, on the 22d of June, 1840, the first Secretary
+of the Ottoman Embassy at Paris addressed a note to the Academy of
+Sciences, stating that his father, who was in the Admiralty department
+at Constantinople, had recently seen a Mermaid while crossing the
+Bosphorus, which communication was received with much laughter.</p>
+
+<p>We have still another recorded instance&mdash;and in Scotland. In the year
+1857 two fishermen on the Argyleshire coast declared that when on their
+way to the fishing-station, Lochindale, in a boat, and when about four
+miles south-west from the village of Port Charlotte, about six o'clock
+in a June evening, they distinctly saw, at about six yards distance, an
+object in the form of a woman, with comely face and fine hair hanging
+in ringlets over the neck and shoulders. It was above the surface of
+the water gazing at the fishermen for three or four minutes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>&mdash;and then
+vanished! Yet this declaration was officially attested!</p>
+
+<p>In 1863 Mermaids were supposed to abound in the ponds and ditches of
+Suffolk, where careful mothers used them as bugbears to prevent little
+children from going too near the water. Children described them as
+"nasty things that crome you (hook you) into the water;" others as "a
+great big thing like a feesh," probably a pike basking in the shallow
+water.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the Mermaid has assumed a picturesqueness in fairy tale; and
+her impersonation has been described by Dryden as "a fine woman, with a
+fish's tail." And, laying aside her scaly train, she has appeared as a
+lovely woman, with sea-green hair; and Crofton Croker relates, in his
+"Fairy Legends," a marriage between an Irish fisherman and a "Merrow,"
+as the Mermaid is called in Ireland.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="IS_THE_UNICORN_FABULOUS" id="IS_THE_UNICORN_FABULOUS"></a>IS THE UNICORN FABULOUS?</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>TO</b> this question we may reply, in the words of a writer of 1633,
+"Concerning the Unicorn, different opinions prevail among authors:
+some doubt, others deny, and a third class affirm its existence." The
+question has lasted two thousand years, and is every now and then kept
+alive by fresh evidences.</p>
+
+<p>Ctesias, a credulous Greek physician, who appears to have resided at
+the Court of Persia, in the time of the younger Cyrus, about 400 years
+before the birth of Christ, describes the wild asses of India as equal
+to the horse in size, and even larger, with white bodies, red heads,
+bluish eyes, and a horn on the forehead a cubit in length; the part
+from the forehead entirely white, the middle black, and the extremity
+red and pointed. Drinking-vessels were made of it, and those who used
+them were subject neither to convulsions, epilepsy, nor poison, provided
+that before taking the poison, or after, they drank from these cups
+water, wine, or any other liquor. Ctesias
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+describes these animals as
+very swift and very strong. Naturally they were not ferocious; but when
+they found themselves and their young surrounded by horsemen, they did
+not abandon their offspring, but defended themselves by striking with
+their horns, kicking, and biting, and so slew many men and horses. This
+animal was also shot with arrows and brought down with darts; for it was
+impossible to take it alive. Its flesh was too bitter for food, but it
+was hunted for its horn and astragalus (ankle-bone), which last Ctesias
+declares he saw. Aristotle describes the Indian ass with a single horn.
+Herodotus mentions asses having horns; and Strabo refers to Unicorn
+horses, with the heads of deers. Oppian notices the Aonian bulls with
+undivided hoofs, and a single median horn between their temples. Pliny
+notices it as a very ferocious beast, similar in its body to a horse,
+with the head of a deer, the feet of an elephant, the tail of a boar,
+a deep bellowing voice, and a single black horn standing out in the
+middle of its forehead. He adds, that it cannot be taken alive; and some
+such excuse may have been necessary in those days for not producing the
+living animal upon the arena of the amphitheatre.</p>
+
+<p>Out of this passage most of the modern Unicorns have been described
+and figured. The body of the horse and the head of the deer appear to
+be but vague sketches; the feet of the elephant and the tail of the
+boar point at once to a pachydermatous (thick-skinned) animal; and the
+single black horn, allowing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+for a little exaggeration as to its length,
+well fits the two last-mentioned conditions, and will apply to the
+Indian rhinoceros, which, says the sound naturalist, Ogilby, "affords a
+remarkable instance of the obstructions which the progress of knowledge
+may suffer, and the gross absurdities which not unfrequently result from
+the wrong application of a name." Mr. Ogilby then refers to the account
+of Ctesias, which we have just quoted, and adds:&mdash;"His account, though
+mixed up with a great deal of credulous absurdity, contains a very
+valuable and perfectly recognisable description of the rhinoceros, under
+the ridiculous name, however, of the <i>Indian Ass</i>; and, as he attributed
+to it a whole hoof like the horse, and a single horn in the forehead,
+speculation required but one step further to produce the fabulous
+Unicorn."</p>
+
+<p>The ancient writers who have treated of the Unicorn are too numerous for
+us to specify. Some of the moderns may be referred to. Garcias describes
+this marvellous creature from one who alleges that he had seen it. The
+seer affirmed that it was endowed with a wonderful horn, which it would
+sometimes turn to the left and right, at others raise, and then again
+depress. Ludovicus Vartomanus writes, that he saw two sent to the Sultan
+from Ethiopia, and kept in a repository at Mahomet's tomb in Mecca.
+Cardan describes the Unicorn as a rare animal, the size of a horse, with
+hair very like that of a weasel, with the head of a deer, on which one
+horn grows three cubits in length (a story seldom
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+loses anything in its
+progress) from the forehead, ample at its lowest part, and tapering to
+a point; with a short neck, a very thin mane, leaning to one side only,
+and less on the ear, as those of a young roe.</p>
+
+<p>In Jonston's "Historia Naturalis," 1657, we see the smooth-horned
+solipede, "Wald Esel;" and the digitated and clawed smooth-horned "Meer
+Wolff," the latter with his single horn erect in the foreground, but
+with it depressed in the background, where he is represented regaling on
+serpents. Then there are varieties, with the head, mane, and tail of a
+horse; another smooth-horned, with a horse's head and mane, a pig's-tail
+and camel-like feet; the "Meer Stenbock, Capricornus Marinus," with
+hind webbed feet, and a kind of graduated horn, like an opera-glass
+pulled out, in the foreground, and charging the fish most valiantly in
+the water in the distance. Then there is another, with a mule's head
+and two rhinoceros-like horns, one on his forehead and the other on his
+nose; and a horse's tail, with a collar round his neck; a neck entirely
+shaggy&mdash;and a twisted horn, a shaggy gorget, and curly tail, are among
+other peculiarities.</p>
+
+<p>The Unicorn seems to have been a sad trouble to the hunters, who hardly
+knew how to come at so valuable a piece of game. Some described the horn
+as moveable at the will of the animal&mdash;a kind of small sword, in short,
+with which no hunter who was not exceedingly cunning in fence could have
+a chance. Others told the poor foresters that all the strength lay in
+its horn, and that when pressed by them it
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>
+would throw itself from the
+pinnacle of the highest rock, horn foremost, so as to pitch upon it, and
+then quietly march off not a bit the worse!</p>
+
+<p>Modern zoologists, disgusted as they well may be with fables, such as we
+have glanced at, disbelieve, generally, the existence of the Unicorn,
+such, at least, as we have referred to; but there is still an opinion
+that some land animal bearing a horn on the anterior part of its head,
+exists besides the rhinoceros. The nearest approach to a horn in the
+middle of the forehead of any terrestrial mammiferous animal known to us
+is the bony protuberance on the forehead of the giraffe; and though it
+would be presumptuous to deny the existence of a one-horned quadruped
+other than the rhinoceros, it may be safely stated that the insertion
+of a long and solid horn in the living forehead of a horse-like or
+deer-like cranium is as near an impossibility as anything can be.</p>
+
+<p>Rupell, after a long sojourn in the north-east of Africa, stated that
+in Kordofan the Unicorn exists; stated to be the size of a small horse,
+of the slender make of the gazelle, and furnished with a long straight
+horn in the male, which was wanting in the female. According to the
+statements made by various persons, it inhabits the deserts to the south
+of Koretofan, is uncommonly fleet, and comes only occasionally to the
+Koldagi Heive mountains on the borders of Kordofan.</p>
+
+<p>Other writers refer the Unicorn to the antelope. The origin of the name
+of antelope is traced by
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+Cuvier to the Greek <i>Anthalops</i>, applied to a
+fabulous animal living on the banks of the Euphrates, with long jagged
+horns, with which it sawed down trees of considerable thickness! Others
+conjecture this animal to have been the <i>Oryx</i>, a species of antelope,
+which is fabulously reported to have had only one horn, and to have been
+termed <i>Panthalops</i> in the old language of Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>In his "Revolutions on the Surface of the Globe." Cuvier refers the
+idea of the Unicorn to the coarse figures traced by savages on rocks.
+Ignorant of perspective, and wishing to present in profile the horned
+antelope, they could only give it one horn; and thus originated the
+<i>Oryx</i>. The oryx of the Egyptian monuments is, most probably, but the
+production of a similarly crude style, which the religion of the country
+imposed on the artist. Many of the profiles of quadrupeds have only one
+leg before and one behind: why, then, should they show two horns? It
+is possible that individual animals might be taken in the chase whom
+accident had despoiled of one horn, as it often happens to chamois and
+the Scythian antelope; and that would suffice to confirm the error which
+these pictures originally produced. It is thus, probably, that we find
+anew the Unicorn in the mountains of Thibet.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Chiru Antelope</i> is the supposed Unicorn of the Bhotians. In form
+it approaches the deer; the horns are exceedingly long, are placed
+very forward in the head, and may be popularly described as erect and
+straight. It is usually found in herds,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+and is extremely wild, and
+unapproachable by man. It is much addicted to salt in summer, when vast
+herds are often seen at the rock-salt beds which abound in Tibet. They
+are said to advance under the conduct of a leader, and to post sentinels
+around the beds before they attempt to feed.</p>
+
+<p>Major Salter is stated to have obtained information of the existence of
+an animal in Tibet closely resembling the Unicorn of the ancients, which
+revived the belief of naturalists by adducing testimonies from Oriental
+writings. Upon this statement, M. Klaproth remarks, that previous to
+Major Salter's Reports, the Catholic missionaries, who returned to
+Europe from China by way of Tibet and Nepal, in the seventeenth century,
+mentioned that the Unicorn was found in that part of the Great Desert
+which bounds China to the west, where they crossed the great wall; that
+Captain Turner, when travelling in Tibet, was informed by the Raja of
+Boutan that he had one of these animals alive; and that Bell, in his
+"Travels to Peking," describes a Unicorn which was found on the southern
+front of Siberia. He adds:&mdash;"The great 'Tibetan-Mongol Dictionary'
+mentions the Unicorn; and the 'Geographical Dictionary of Tibet and
+Central Asia,' printed at Peking, where it describes a district in the
+province of Kham, in Tibet, named Sera-zeong, explains this name by 'the
+River of Unicorns,' because," adds the author, "many of these animals
+are found there."</p>
+
+<p>In the "History of the Mongol-Khans," published and translated at St.
+Petersburg, we find the following
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+statement:&mdash;Genghiz Khan, having
+subjected all Tibet in 1206, commenced his march for Hindustan. As he
+ascended Mount Jadanarung, he beheld a beast approaching him of the
+deer kind, of the species called <i>Seron</i>, which have a single horn at
+the top of the head. It fell on its knees thrice before the monarch, as
+if to pay respect to him. Every one was astonished at this incident.
+The monarch exclaimed. "The Empire of Hindustan is, we are assured, the
+country where are born the majestic Buddhas and Bodhisatwas, as well as
+the potent Bogdas and princes of antiquity: what can be the meaning,
+then, of this animal, incapable of speech, saluting me like a man?"
+Upon this, he returned to his own country. "This story," continues M.
+Klaproth, "is also related by Mahommedan authors who have written the
+life of Genghiz. Something of the kind must, therefore, have taken
+place. Possibly, some of the Mongol conqueror's suite may have taken a
+Unicorn, which Genghiz thus employed, to gain a pretext for abstaining
+from an expedition which promised no success."</p>
+
+<p>Upon this statement, it was observed in the "Asiatic Register," 1839,
+that "when we consider that seventeen years have elapsed since the
+account of Major Salter was given, and that, notwithstanding our
+increased opportunities of intercourse with Tibet, no fact has since
+transpired which supplies a confirmation of that account, except
+the obtaining of a supposed horn of the supposed Unicorn, we cannot
+participate in these renewed hopes."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Rev. John Campbell, in his "Travels in South Africa," describes the
+head of another animal, which, as far as the horn is concerned, seems
+to approach nearer than the common rhinoceros to the Unicorn of the
+ancients. While in the Machow territory, the Hottentots brought to Mr.
+Campbell a head differing from that of any rhinoceros that had been
+previously killed. "The common African rhinoceros has a crooked horn,
+resembling a cock's spur, which rises about nine or ten inches above
+the nose, and inclines backward; immediately behind which is a straight
+thick horn. But the head brought by the Hottentots had a straight horn
+projecting three feet from the forehead, about ten inches above the tip
+of the nose. The projection of this great horn very much resembles that
+of the fanciful Unicorn in the British arms. It has a small thick horny
+substance, eight inches long, immediately behind it, which can hardly
+be observed on the animal at the distance of a hundred yards; so that
+this species must look like an Unicorn (in the sense 'one-horned') when
+running in the field." The author adds:&mdash;"This animal is considered
+by naturalists, since the arrival of the above skull in London, to be
+the Unicorn of the ancients, and the same that is described in Job
+xxxix. 9&mdash;'Will the Unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy
+crib? 10. Canst thou bind the Unicorn with his band in the furrow? or
+will he harrow the valleys after thee? 11. Wilt thou trust him because
+his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him?' Again,
+Deuteronomy xxxiii. 17&mdash;'His
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>
+horns are like the horns of Unicorns: with
+them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth.'"</p>
+
+<p>A fragment of the skull, with the horn, is deposited in the Museum of
+the London Missionary Society.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. W. B. Baikie writes to the <i>Athenæum</i> from Bida Núpe, Central
+Africa, in 1862, the following suggestions:&mdash;"When I ascended the Niger,
+now nearly five years ago, I frequently heard allusions to an animal
+of this nature, but at that time I set it down as a myth. Since then,
+however, the amount of testimony I have received, and the universal
+belief of the natives of all the countries which I have hitherto
+visited, have partly shaken my scepticism, and at present I simply
+hold that its non-existence is not proven. A skull of this animal is
+said to be preserved in a town in the country of Bonú, through which
+I hope to pass in the course of a few weeks, when I shall make every
+possible inquiry. Two among my informants have repeatedly declared to me
+that they have seen the bones of this animal, and each made particular
+mention of the long, straight, or nearly straight, black horn. In
+countries to the east, and south-east, as Márgi and Bagirmi, where the
+one-horned rhinoceros is found, the hunters carefully distinguished
+between it and the supposed Unicorn, and give them different names. In
+the vast forests and boundless wastes which occur over Central Africa,
+especially towards the countries south and east of Lake Tsád, Bórnú,
+Bagirmi and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+Adamáwa, are doubtless numerous zoological curiosities as
+yet unknown to the man of science, and among them possibly may exist
+this much-talked-of, strange, one-horned animal, even though it may not
+exactly correspond with our typical English Unicorn."</p>
+
+<p>The factitious horn has been preserved in various Museums. The "Monocero
+Horn," in Tradescant's collection, was, probably, that which ordinarily
+has passed for the horn of the Unicorn, namely, the tooth of a narwhal.
+Old legends assert that the Unicorn, when he goes to drink, first dips
+his horn in the water to purify it, and that other beasts delay to
+quench their thirst till the Unicorn has thus sweetened the water. The
+narwhal's tooth makes a capital twisted Unicorn's horn, as represented
+in the old figures. That in the Repository of St. Denis, at Paris, was
+presented by Thevet, and was declared to have been given to him by
+the King of Monomotapa, who took him out to hunt Unicorns, which are
+frequent in that country. Some have thought that this horn was a carved
+elephant's tooth. There is one at Strasburg, some seven or eight feet in
+length, and there are several in Venice.</p>
+
+<p>Great medical virtues were attributed to the so-called horn, and the
+price it once bore outdoes everything in the <i>Tulipomania</i>. A Florentine
+physician has recorded that a pound of it (sixteen ounces) was sold
+in the shops for fifteen hundred and thirty-six crowns, when the same
+weight in gold would only have brought one hundred and forty-eight
+crowns.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>From what source we derive the stories of the animosity between the
+lion and the Unicorn is not clearly understood, although this is the
+principal medium through which the fabulous creature has been kept in
+remembrance by being constantly before us in the Royal Arms, which
+were settled at the Accession of George I. We owe the introduction of
+the Unicorn, however, to James I., who, as King of Scotland, bore two
+Unicorns, and coupled one with the English lion, when the two kingdoms
+were united.</p>
+
+<p>The position of the lion and Unicorn in the arms of our country seems to
+have given rise (naturally enough in the mind of one who was ignorant of
+heraldic decoration) to a nursery rhyme which most of us remember:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="verse">"The Lion and the Unicorn</div>
+    <div class="verse2">Were fighting for the crown;</div>
+    <div class="verse">The Lion beat the Unicorn</div>
+    <div class="verse2">All round the town," &amp;c.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+<p>unless it alludes to a contest for dominion over the brute creation,
+which the "rebellious Unicorn," as Spenser calls it, seems to have waged
+with the tawny monarch.</p>
+
+<p>Spenser, in his "Faerie Queen," gives the following curious way of
+catching the Unicorn:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="verse">"Like as a lyon, whose imperiall powre,</div>
+    <div class="verse">A prowd rebellious Unicorn defyes,</div>
+    <div class="verse">T'avoide the rash assault and wrathful stowre</div>
+    <div class="verse">Of his fiers foe, him a tree applyes,</div>
+    <div class="verse">And when him rousing in full course he spyes,</div>
+    <div class="verse">He slips aside; the whiles that furious beast
+	<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></div>
+    <div class="verse">His precious home, sought of his enemyes,</div>
+    <div class="verse">Strikes in the stocke, ne thence can be releast.</div>
+    <div class="verse">But to the mighty victor yields a bounteous feast."</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Shakspeare, also ("Julius Cæsar," Act ii. scene 1), speaks of the
+supposed mode of entrapping them:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="verse4">"For he loves to hear</div>
+    <div class="verse">That Unicorns may be betrayed with trees,</div>
+    <div class="verse">And bears with glasses, elephants with holes,</div>
+    <div class="verse">Lions with toils, and men with flatterers."</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>We have no satisfactory reason for believing that man ever coexisted
+with Mastodons; otherwise Professor Owen's discovery of the retention of
+a single tusk only by the male gigantic Mastodon, might have afforded
+another form of Unicorn.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever the zoologists may have done towards extirpating the belief
+in the existence of the Unicorn, it is ever kept in sight by heraldry,
+which, with its animal absurdities, has contributed more to the
+propagation of error respecting the natural world than any other species
+of misrepresentation.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_MOLE_AT_HOME" id="THE_MOLE_AT_HOME"></a>THE MOLE AT HOME.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>THE</b> Mole, though generally a despised and persecuted animal, is
+nevertheless useful to the husbandman in being the natural drainer of
+his land and destroyer of worms. To other inferior animals he is a
+sapper and miner, forming for them their safe retreats and well-secured
+dormitories.</p>
+
+<p>The economy of the Mole has been much controverted among naturalists.
+It is found throughout the greater part of Europe. We are overrun with
+it in most parts of England and Wales; but it does not appear to have
+been found in the northern extremity of Scotland, and there is no record
+of its having been seen in the Orkney Isles, Zetland, or Ireland. Its
+most diligent and instructive historian is Henri Le Court, who, flying
+from the terrors that came in the train of the French Revolution,
+betook himself to the country, and from being the attendant on a Court,
+became the biographer of this humble animal. M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire,
+the celebrated French naturalist, visited Le Court for the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> purpose
+of testing his observations, and appears to have been charmed by the
+facility and ingenuity with which Le Court traced and demonstrated the
+subterraneous labours of this obscure worker in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>We shall first briefly describe the adaptation of its structure to its
+habits. The bony framework is set in motion by very powerful muscles,
+those of the chest and neck being most vigorous. The wide hand, which is
+the great instrument of action, and performs the offices of a pickaxe
+and shovel, is sharp-edged on its lower margin, and when clothed with
+the integuments the fingers are hardly distinguishable. The muzzle of
+the Mole is evidently a delicate organ of touch, as are also the large
+and broad hands and feet; and the tail has much sensitiveness to give
+notice to the animal of the approach of any attack from behind. Its
+taste and smell, especially the latter, are very sensitive. Its sight
+is almost rudimentary. The little eye is so hidden in the fur that its
+very existence was for a long time doubted. It appears to be designed
+for operating only as a warning to the animal on its emerging into the
+light; indeed, more acute vision would only have been an encumbrance.
+If the sight be imperfect, the sense of hearing is very acute, and the
+tympanum very large, though there is no external ear, perhaps because
+the earth assists considerably in vibration. The fore-feet are inclined
+sideways, so as to answer the use of hands, to scoop out the earth to
+form its habitation or pursue its prey, and to fling all the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> loose soil
+behind the animal. The breastbone in shape resembles a ploughshare.
+The skin is so tough as only to be cut by a very sharp knife. The hair
+is very short and close-set, and softer than the finest silk; colour
+black; some spotted and cream-coloured. This hair is yielding; had it
+been strong, as in the rat or mouse, it would doubly have retarded the
+progress of the creature; first by its resistance, and then acting as a
+brush, so as to choke up the galleries, by removing the loose earth from
+the sides and ceilings of the galleries.</p>
+
+<p>It is supposed that the verdant circles so often seen in grass ground,
+called by country people <i>fairy rings</i>, are owing to the operations of
+Moles: at certain seasons they perform their burrowings in circles,
+which, loosening the soil, gives the surface a greater fertility and
+rankness of grass than the other parts within or without the ring. The
+larger mole-hills denote the nests or dens of the Mole beneath.</p>
+
+<p>The feeling of the Mole is so acute that when casting up the earth, it
+is sensible of very gentle pressure; hence mole-catchers tread lightly
+when in quest of Moles; and unless this caution is used the Mole ceases
+its operation, and instantly retires. Again, so acute is the smell, that
+mole-catchers draw the body of a captured Mole through their traps and
+the adjoining runs and passages to remove all suspicious odours which
+might arise from the touch of their fingers.</p>
+
+<p>During summer the Mole runs in search of snails
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> and worms in the
+night-time among the grass, which pursuit makes it the prey of owls. The
+Mole shows great art in skinning a worm, which it always does before it
+eats it, by stripping the skin from end to end, and squeezing out the
+contents of the body. It is doubtful whether any other animal exists
+which is obliged to eat at such short intervals as the Mole, ten or
+twelve hours appearing to be the maximum of its fasting; at the end
+of that time it dies. Cuvier tells us that if two Moles are shut up
+together without food, there will shortly be nothing left of the weakest
+but its skin, slit along the belly! Buffon accuses Moles of eating all
+the acorns of a newly-set soil. Its voracity makes the Mole a great
+drinker: a run is always formed to a pond or ditch as a reservoir; when
+it is too distant, the animal sinks little wells, which have sometimes
+been seen brimfull.</p>
+
+<p>We now return to Le Court's experiments with Moles, which are very
+interesting. To afford proof of the rapidity with which the Mole will
+travel along its passages, Le Court watched his opportunity, and when
+the animal was on its feed at one of the most distant points from its
+sanctuary or fortress, to which point the Mole's high road leads. Le
+Court placed along the course of that road, between the animal and
+the fortress, several little camp colours, so to speak, the staff of
+each being a straw, and the flag a bit of paper, at certain distances,
+the straws penetrating down into the passage. Near the end of this
+subterraneous road he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+inserted a horn, the mouthpiece of which stood
+out of the ground. When all was ready, Le Court blew a blast loud enough
+to frighten all the Moles within hearing. Down went the little flags in
+succession with astonishing velocity, as the terrified Mole, rushing
+along towards his sanctuary, came in contact with the flag-straws; and
+the spectators affirmed that the Mole's swiftness was equal to the speed
+of a horse at a good round trot.</p>
+
+<p>To test its amount of vision, Le Court took a spare water-pipe, or
+gutter, open at both ends. Into this pipe he introduced several Moles
+successively. Geoffroy St. Hilaire stood by to watch the result at the
+further end of the tube. As long as the spectators stood motionless the
+introduced Mole made the best of his way through the pipe and escaped;
+but if they moved, or even raised a finger, the Mole stopped, and then
+retreated. Several repetitions of this experiment produced the same
+results.</p>
+
+<p>In the domain of the Mole, the principal point is the habitation, or
+fortress, constructed under a considerable hillock raised in some secure
+place, often at the root of a tree, or under a bank. The dome of the
+fortress is of earth, beaten by the Mole-architect into a compact and
+solid state. Inside is formed a circular gallery at the base, which
+communicates with a smaller upper gallery by means of five passages.
+Within the lower gallery is the chamber or dormitory, which has access
+to the upper gallery by three passages. From this habitation extends
+the high road by which the proprietor
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+reaches the opposite end of
+the encampment; the galleries open into this road, which the Mole is
+continually carrying out and extending in his search for food; this has
+been termed the <i>hunting-ground</i>. Another road extends, first downwards,
+and then up into the open road of the territory. Some eight or nine
+other passages open out from the external circular gallery. From the
+habitation a road is carried out, nearly straight, and connected with
+the encampment and the alleys leading to the hunting-ground which open
+into it on each side. In diameter the road exceeds the body of a Mole,
+but its size will not admit of two Moles passing each other. The walls,
+from the repeated pressure of the animal's sides, become smooth and
+compact. Sometimes a Mole will lay out a second or even a third road; or
+several individuals use one road in common, though they never trespass
+on each other's hunting-grounds.</p>
+
+<p>If two Moles should happen to meet in the same road, one must retreat
+into the nearest alley, unless they fight, when the weakest is often
+slain. In forming this tunnel the Mole's instinct drives it at a
+greater or less depth, according to the quality of the soil, or other
+circumstances. When it is carried under a road or stream, a foot and
+a-half of earth, or sometimes more, is left above it. Then does the
+little engineering Mole carry on the subterraneous works necessary for
+his support, travelling, and comfort; and his tunnels never fall in.
+The quality or humidity of the soils which regulates the abundance of
+earth-worms, determines the greater or less
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+depth of the alleys; and
+when these are filled with stores of food the Mole works out branch
+alleys.</p>
+
+<p>The main road communicating with the hunting-grounds is of necessity
+passed through in the course of the day; and here the mole-catcher sets
+his traps to intercept the Mole between his habitation and the alley
+where he is carrying on his labours. Some mole-catchers will tell you
+the hours when the Moles move are nine and four; others that near the
+coast their movements are influenced by the tides. Besides the various
+traps which are set for Moles, they are sometimes taken by a man and a
+dog; when the latter indicates the presence of a Mole, the man spears
+the animal out as it moves in its run. Pointers will stop as steadily as
+at game, at the Moles, when they are straying on the surface.</p>
+
+<p>The Mole is a most voracious animal. Earthworms and the larvæ of insects
+are its favourite food; and it will eat mice, lizards, frogs, and even
+birds; but it rejects toads, even when pressed by hunger, deterred,
+probably, by the acrid secretions of their skin. Moles are essentially
+carnivorous; and when fed abundantly on vegetable substances they have
+died of hunger.</p>
+
+<p>During the season of love, at which time fierce battles are fought
+between the males, the male pursues the female with ardour through
+numerous runs wrought out with great rapidity. The attachment appears
+to be very strong in the Moles. Le Court often found a female taken in
+his trap and a male lying dead close to her. From four to five is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> the
+general number of young. The nest is distinct, usually distant from the
+habitation. It is constructed by enlarging and excavating the point
+where three or four passages intersect each other; and the bed of the
+nest is formed of a mass of young grass, root fibres, and herbage. In
+one nest Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Le Court counted two hundred and four
+young wheat-blades.</p>
+
+<p>M. St. Hilaire describes the pairings, or as he calls it, "the loves of
+the Moles." As soon as the Mole has finished the galleries he brings his
+mate along with him, and shuts her up in the bridal gallery, taking care
+to prevent the entrance of his rivals: in case of a fight they enlarge
+the part of the gallery where they are met; and the victory is decided
+in favour of him who first wounds his adversary before the ear. The
+female, during the fight, is shut up in the bridal gallery, so as to be
+unable to escape; for which purpose, however, she uses all her resources
+in digging, and attempts to get away by the side passages. Should she
+succeed the conqueror hastens to rejoin his faithless mate, and to
+bring her back into his galleries. This man&oelig;uvre is repeated as often
+as other males enter the lists. At length the conqueror is recognised,
+and his mate becomes more docile. The pair work together and finish the
+galleries; after which the female digs alone for food. As soon as the
+galleries are formed, the male conducts his mate to a certain point, and
+from this time the female no longer digs in the solid earth, but towards
+the surface, advancing by merely separating the roots of the grass.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Mole is a great friend to the farmer; but there are places in which
+he is a public enemy. He is not a vegetable feeder, and he never roots
+up the growing corn in spring-time, except when he is after grubs,
+snails, and wire-worms. It has been calculated that two Moles destroy
+20,000 white worms in a year. He is very destructive to under drains;
+and where the land is low we are in danger of a deluge from his piercing
+holes in the drain-banks. Thus it would be madness not to extirpate
+Moles in those places where the waters, in drains or rivers, are above
+the level of the lands around, especially when the banks are made of
+sand or earth of loose texture.</p>
+
+<p>The persecution of Moles in cultivated countries amounts almost to a
+war of extermination. The numbers annually slaughtered are enormous.
+A mole-catcher, who had followed the craft for thirty-five years,
+destroyed from forty to fifty thousand Moles. But all Mole exterminators
+must yield to Le Court, who, in no large district, took, in five months,
+six thousand of them. Moles are good swimmers, and their bite is very
+sharp; their attacks are ferocious, and they keep their hold like a
+bull-dog.</p>
+
+<p>The Shrew Mole of North America resembles the European Mole in its
+habits. Dr. Goodman describes it as most active early in the morning,
+at mid-day, and in the evening; and they are well known in the country
+to have the custom of coming daily to the surface <i>exactly at noon</i>.
+We read of a captive Shrew Mole which ate meat, cooked or raw, drank
+freely, and was lively and playful, following the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+hand of his feeder by
+the scent, burrowing for a short distance in the loose earth, and after
+making a small circle, returning for more food. In eating he employed
+his flexible snout to thrust the food into his mouth, doubling it so as
+to force it directly backwards, as described in Dr. Richardson's "North
+American Zoology."</p>
+
+<p>James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, remarks, in his usual impressive
+manner:&mdash;"The most unnatural persecution that ever was raised in a
+country is that against the Mole&mdash;that innocent and blessed little
+pioneer, who enriches our pastures annually with the first top-dressing,
+dug with great pains and labour from the fattest of the soil beneath.
+The advantages of this top-dressing are so apparent that it is really
+amazing how our countrymen should have persisted, for nearly half a
+century, in the most manly and valiant endeavours to exterminate the
+Moles! If a hundred men and horses were employed on a pasture farm of
+from fifteen hundred to two thousand acres, in raising and driving
+manure for a top-dressing of that farm, they would not do it so
+effectually, so neatly, or so equally as the natural number of Moles. In
+June, July, and August, the Mole-hills are all spread by the crows and
+lambs&mdash;the former for food, and the latter in the evenings of warm days
+after a drought has set in. The late Duke of Buccleuch was the first who
+introduced Mole-catching into Scotland."</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_GREAT_ANT-BEAR" id="THE_GREAT_ANT-BEAR"></a>THE GREAT ANT-BEAR.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_078.jpg" alt="Letter A"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>A FINE</b> living specimen of this comparatively rare animal was first
+exhibited in the Zoological Society's gardens, in the Regent's-park,
+1853. It is stated to be the first specimen brought alive to England,
+and accordingly excited considerable attention. It was one of a pair,
+captured near the Rio Negro, in the southern province of Brazil, and
+shipped for England by some German travellers. The male died on the
+voyage; the female arrived in London in 1853, and was exhibited in
+Broad-street, St. Giles's, until purchased by the Zoological Society for
+the sum of 200<i>l.</i> The advantage of this live specimen to naturalists
+has been very great. Hitherto the examples engraved by Buffon and
+Shaw were both derived from stuffed specimens, and had the inevitable
+defects and shortcomings of such. Sir John Talbot Dillon, in his
+"Travels through Spain," published in 1780, states that a specimen of
+the Ant-Bear, from Buenos Ayres, was alive at Madrid in 1776: it is now
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+stuffed and preserved in the Royal Cabinet of Natural History at Madrid.
+The persons who brought it from Buenos Ayres say it differs from the
+Ant-eater, which only feeds on emmets and other insects, whereas this
+would eat flesh, when cut in small pieces, to the amount of four or five
+pounds. From the snout to the extremity of the tail this animal is two
+yards in length, and his height is about two feet; the head very narrow,
+the nose long and slender. The tongue is so singular that it looks like
+a worm, and extends above sixteen inches. The body is covered with long
+hair of a dark brown, with white stripes on the shoulders; and when he
+sleeps, he covers his body with his tail. This account, it will be seen
+hereafter, corresponds very accurately with that of the animal purchased
+by the Zoological Society.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter bord"><a name="i_083.jpg" id="i_083.jpg"></a>
+  <img src="images/i_083.jpg" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">THE GREAT ANT-BEAR.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Mr. Wallace, who travelled on the Amazon and Rio Negro, about the year
+1853, relates:&mdash;"The living specimen of this singular animal is a great
+rarity, even in its native country. In fact, there is not a city in
+Brazil where it would not be considered almost as much a curiosity as
+it is here. In the extensive forests of the Amazon the great Ant-eater
+is, perhaps, as abundant as in any part of South America; yet, during
+a residence there of more than four years, I never had an opportunity
+of seeing one. Once only I was nearly in at the death, finding a bunch
+of hairs from the tail of a specimen which had been killed (and eaten)
+a month previous to my arrival, at a village near the Capiquiare. In
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+its native forests the creature feeds almost entirely on white ants,
+tearing open their nests with its powerful claws, and thrusting in its
+long and slender tongue, which, being probably mistaken for a worm,
+is immediately seized by scores of the inhabitants, who thus become
+an easy prey. The Indians, who also eat white ants, catch them in a
+somewhat similar manner, by pushing into the nest a grass-stalk, which
+the insects seize and hold on to most tenaciously. It may easily be
+conceived that such an animal must range over a considerable extent of
+country to obtain a plentiful supply of such food, which circumstance,
+as well as its extreme shyness and timidity, causes it to be but rarely
+met with, and still more rarely obtained alive."</p>
+
+<p>We have seen that the Ant-Bear lives exclusively upon ants, to procure
+which he tears open the hills, and when the ants flock out to defend
+their dwellings, draws over them his long, flexible tongue, covered
+with glutinous saliva, to which the ants consequently adhere; and he
+is said to repeat this operation twice in a second. "It seems almost
+incredible," says Azara, "that so robust and powerful an animal can
+procure sufficient sustenance from ants alone; but this circumstance has
+nothing strange in it, for those who are acquainted with the tropical
+parts of America, and have seen the enormous multitude of these insects,
+which swarm in all parts of the country to that degree that their hills
+often almost touch one another for miles together." The same author
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+informs us that domestic Ant-Bears were occasionally kept by different
+persons in Paraguay, and that they had even been sent alive to Spain,
+being fed upon bread-and-milk mixed with morsels of flesh minced very
+small. Like all animals which live upon insects, the Ant-eaters are
+capable of sustaining a total deprivation of nourishment for an almost
+incredible time.</p>
+
+<p>The Great Ant-Bear's favourite resorts are low, swampy savannahs, along
+the banks of rivers and stagnant ponds; also frequenting humid forests,
+but never climbing trees, as falsely reported by Buffon. His pace is
+slow and heavy, though, when hard pressed, he increases his rate, yet
+his greatest velocity never half equals the ordinary running of a man.
+When pressed too hard, or urged to extremity, he turns obstinate,
+sits upon his hind-quarters like a bear, and defends himself with his
+powerful claws. Like that animal, his usual and only mode of assault is
+by seizing his adversary with his fore-paws, wrapping his arms round
+him, and endeavouring, by this means, to squeeze him to death. His great
+strength and powerful muscles would easily enable him to accomplish his
+purpose in this respect, even against the largest animals of his native
+forests, were it but guided by ordinary intelligence, or accompanied
+with a common degree of activity; but in these qualities there are
+few animals indeed who do not greatly surpass the Ant-Bear; so that
+the different stories handed down by writers on natural history from
+one to another, and copied, without
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+question, into the histories and
+descriptions of this animal, may be regarded as pure fictions. "It is
+supposed," says Don Felix d'Azara, "that the jaguar himself dares not
+attack the Ant-Bear, and that, if pressed by hunger, or under some other
+strong excitement, he does so, the Ant-Bear embraces and hugs him so
+tightly as very soon to deprive him of life, not even relaxing his hold
+for hours after life has been extinguished in his assailant. Such is
+the manner in which the Ant-eater defends himself; but it is not to be
+believed that his utmost efforts could prevail against the jaguar, who,
+by a single bite, or blow of his paw, could kill the Ant-eater before he
+was prepared for resistance, so slow are his motions, even in an extreme
+case; and, being unable to leap or turn with ordinary rapidity, he is
+forced to act solely upon the defensive. The flesh of the Ant-eater is
+esteemed a delicacy by the Indians; and, though black, and of a strong
+musky flavour, is sometimes even met with at the tables of Europeans."</p>
+
+<p>The habits of the Great Ant-Bear in captivity have been described
+scientifically yet popularly, from the Zoological Society's specimen,
+by Professor Owen, who writes:&mdash;"When we were introduced to this, the
+latest novelty at the noble vivarium in the Regent's-park, we found the
+animal busy sucking and licking up&mdash;for his feeding is a combination
+of the two actions&mdash;the contents of a basin of squashed eggs. The
+singularly long and slender head, which looks more like a slightly bent
+proboscis, or some <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+such appendage to a head, was buried in the basin,
+and the end of the lithe or flexible tongue, like a rat's tail, or a
+writhing black worm, was ever and anon seen coiling up the sides of
+the basin, as it was rapidly protruded and withdrawn. The yellow yolk
+was dripping with the abundant ropy saliva secreted during the feeding
+process from the exceedingly small terminal mouth; for the jaws are not
+slit open, as in the ordinary construction of the mouths of quadrupeds,
+and the head, viewed sideways, seems devoid of mouth; but this important
+aperture&mdash;by some deemed the essential character of an animal&mdash;is a
+small orifice or slit at the end of the tubular muzzle, just being
+enough, apparently, to let the vermiform tongue slip easily in and
+out. The tongue, the keeper told us, was sometimes protruded as far as
+fourteen inches from the mouth."</p>
+
+<p>By the Qjuarani Indians the beast is known by a name which is, in
+Spanish, "little mouth." The Portuguese and Spanish peons call it by a
+name equivalent to "Ant-Bear." In the Zoological Catalogue the animal
+is denominated <i>Myrmocophaga jubata</i>, or the "Maned Ant-eater." This
+appellation would very well suit the animal if, as most spectators
+commonly imagine at first sight, its head was where its tail is,
+for the tail is that part of the animal on which the hair is most
+developed, after the fashion of a mane; whilst the actual head appears
+much more like a tail, of a slender, almost naked, stiff, rounded
+kind. The body is wholly covered by long, coarse hair, resembling hay,
+rapidly lengthening<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+from the neck backwards to six or eight inches,
+and extending on the tail from ten to eighteen inches. The colour is
+greyish brown, with an oblique black band, bordered with white, on
+each shoulder. The animal measures about four feet from the snout
+to the root of the tail; and the tail, three feet long, resembles a
+large screen of coarse hair. When the animal lies down, it bends its
+head between its fore legs, slides these forward, and crosses them in
+front of the occiput, sinks its haunches by bending its hind legs and
+bringing them close to the fore feet; then, leaning against the wall
+of its den, on one side, it lays the broad tail over the other exposed
+side of the body, by the side bend of that part, like the movement of
+a door or screen. Nothing is now visible of the animal but the long
+coarse hair of its <i>natural and portable blanket</i>. When it is enjoying
+its siesta, you cannot form any conception of its very peculiar shape
+and proportions; an oblong heap of a coarse, dry, <i>greyish thatch</i> is
+all that is visible. When, however, the keeper enters the den with any
+new dainty, as cockroaches, crickets, maggots, or meal-worms, to tempt
+the huge insect-devourer, the quick-hearing animal unveils its form by
+a sweeping movement of the thatch outwards, the tail that supports it
+rotating, as if joined by a kind of door-hinge to the body; the head is
+drawn out from between the fore limbs; the limbs are extended, and the
+entire figure of this most grotesque of quadrupeds stalks forth. The
+limbs are short; the fore limbs grow rather thicker to their stumpy
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+ends, which look as if the feet had been amputated. The four toes, with
+their claws, are bent inwards, and are of very unequal length. This is
+the most singular part of the animal: it is also the most formidable
+member, and, indeed, bears the sole weapon of defence the beast
+possesses. The innermost toe, answering to the thumb on the fore limb of
+the neighbouring chimpanzee, is the shortest. A fifth toe seems to be
+buried in the outside callosity, on which the animal rests its stumpy
+feet while walking. At the back part of the sole, or palm, of the fore
+foot, is a second large callosity, which receives the point of the great
+claw in its usual state of inward inflection. Against this callosity the
+animal presses the claw when it seizes any object therewith; and Azara,
+as we have seen, avers that nothing can make the Ant-Bear relax its
+grasp of an object so seized.</p>
+
+<p>With respect to the jaguar being sometimes found dead in the grasp of
+the Great Ant-eater, Professor Owen observes that its muscular force
+resembles that of the cold-blooded reptiles in the force and endurance
+of the contractile action; and, like the reptiles, the Sloths and
+Ant-Bears can endure long fasts.</p>
+
+<p>Woe to the unlucky or heedless aggressor whose arm or leg may be seized
+by the Ant-Bear. The strength of the grasp sometimes breaks the bone.
+The Ant-Bear never voluntarily lets go, and the limb so grasped can be
+with difficulty extricated, even after the animal has been killed. To
+put the beast, however, <i>hors de combat</i>, no other weapon is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> needed
+than a stout stick. "With this," says Azara. "I have killed many by
+dealing them blows on the head, and with the same security as if I had
+struck the trunk of a tree. With a mouth so small, and formed as already
+described, the Ant-Bear cannot bite; and, if it could, it would be
+useless, for it has no teeth."</p>
+
+<p>"Like a lawyer," says Professor Owen, "the tongue is the chief organ
+by which this animal obtains its livelihood in its natural habitat.
+The warmer latitudes of South America, to which part of the world the
+Ant-Bear is peculiar, abound in forests and luxuriant vegetation; the
+insects of the ant and termite tribes that subsist on wood, recent
+or decaying, equally abound. With one link in the chain of organic
+independencies is interlocked another; and as the surplus vegetation
+sustains the surplus insect population, so a peculiar form of mammalian
+life finds the requisite conditions of existence in the task of
+restraining the undue multiplication of the wood-consuming insects."</p>
+
+<p>The number of male Ant-eaters is supposed to be considerably smaller
+than that of the females, which circumstance favours the inference that
+the extinction of the species, like those of the <i>edentata</i> in general,
+is determined upon.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>Large as the Ant-Bear is in comparison with the animals on which it
+naturally feeds, there appear to have been still larger Ant-Bears in the
+old times of South America. Fossil remains of nearly allied
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> quadrupeds
+have been detected in both the fresh-water deposits and bone-caves of
+the post-pliocene period in Buenos Ayres and Brazil.</p>
+
+<p>In examining the fossil remains has been found evidence that the nervous
+matter destined to put in action the muscular part of the tongue was
+equal to half of that nervous matter which influences the whole muscular
+system of a man. No other known living animal offers any approximation
+to the peculiar proportions of the lingual nerves of the fossil animal
+in question except the Great Ant-eater; but the size of the animal
+indicated by the fossil was three times that of our Ant-eater. For this
+strange monster, thus partially restored from the ruins of a former
+world, Professor Owen proposes the name of <i>Glossotherium</i>, which
+signifies tongue-beast.</p>
+
+<p>Evidence of such a creature has been given by Dr. Lund, the Danish
+naturalist, resident in Brazil: among the fossil remains here (limestone
+caves of the province Minas) he discovered traces of the Great
+Ant-eater, which, however, are too imperfect to enable us to determine
+more accurately its relation to existing species. The fragments indicate
+an animal the size of an ox! Were the insect prey of these antediluvian
+Ant-eaters correspondingly gigantic?</p>
+
+<p>Two circumstances very remarkable were observed in the Zoological
+Society's Great Ant-eater: the hinge-like manner in which the animal
+worked its tail when it had laid itself down, throwing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> it over the
+whole of its body and enveloping itself completely; and the peculiar
+vibratory motion of the long vermiform tongue when protruded from the
+mouth in search of food. The tongue is not shot forth and retracted,
+like that of the chameleon, but protruded gradually, <i>vibrating</i> all the
+time, and in the same condition withdrawn into the mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Another species of Ant-eater is the <i>Tamandua</i>, much inferior in size to
+the Great Ant-Bear, being scarcely so large as a good sized cat, whilst
+the other exceeds the largest greyhound in length. The Tamandua inhabits
+the thick primæval forests of tropical America, and is never found on
+the ground, but exclusively in trees, where it lives upon termites,
+honey, and, according to Azara, even bees, which in those countries
+form their hives among the loftiest branches of the forest; and having
+no sting, they are more readily despoiled of their honey than their
+congeners of our own climate. When about to sleep it hides its muzzle in
+the fur of its breast, falls on its belly, letting its fore-feet hang
+down on each side, and wrapping the whole tightly round with its tail.
+The female, as in the Great Ant-eater, has but two pectoral mammæ, and
+produces but a single cub at a birth, which she carries about with her
+on her shoulders for the first three or four months. <i>Tamandua</i> is the
+Portuguese name; the French and English call it <i>fourmiller</i> and Little
+Ant-Bear.</p>
+
+<p>The latter are the names of a still smaller species,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> which does not
+exceed the size of the European squirrel. Its native country is Guayana
+and Brazil. It is called in Surinam <i>kissing-hand</i>, as the inhabitants
+pretend it will never eat, at least when caught, but that it only licks
+its paws in the same manner as the bear; that all trials to make it eat
+have proved in vain, and that it soon dies in confinement. Von Sack, in
+a voyage to Surinam, had two of these Ant-eaters which would not eat
+eggs, honey, meat, or ants; but when a wasps'-nest was brought they
+pulled out the nymphæ and ate them eagerly, sitting in the posture of a
+squirrel. Von Sack showed this phenomenon to many of the inhabitants of
+Surinam, who all assured him that it was the first time they had ever
+known that species of animal to take any nourishment.</p>
+
+<p>Von Sack describes his Ant-eaters as often sleeping all the day long
+curled together, and fastened by their prehensile tails to one of the
+perches of the cage. When touched they raised themselves on their
+hind-legs, and struck with their fore-paws at the object which disturbed
+them, like the hammer of a clock striking a bell, with both paws at the
+same time, and with a great deal of force. They never attempted to run
+away, but were always ready for defence when attacked.</p>
+
+<p>The discovery of the true nature of the food of this species is
+particularly desirable, and may enable us to have the animal brought
+alive to this country, a thing which we believe has not been attempted;
+and which, if attempted, has certainly never succeeded.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> To procure or
+carry ants during a long sea-voyage is impracticable, but the larvæ of
+wasps can be obtained in any quantity, and will keep for months; so that
+the most serious difficulty to the introduction of the little Ant-eater
+being thus removed, it would only require to be protected from the
+effects of a colder climate, which may be as easily done in its case as
+in that of other South America mammalia.</p>
+
+<p>The Porcupine Ant-eater of New Holland, now very uncommon in New South
+Wales, is regarded, of its size, the strongest quadruped in existence.
+It burrows readily. Its mode of eating is very curious, the tongue being
+used sometimes in the manner of that of the chameleon, and at other
+times in that in which a mower uses his scythe, the tongue being curved
+laterally, and the food, as it were, swept into the mouth.</p>
+
+<p>The original Great Ant-Bear, received at the Gardens of the Zoological
+Society on the 29th of September, 1853, died on the 6th of July, 1854.
+There are now two of these animals living in the Gardens, one of which
+is a remarkably fine specimen.</p>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a>
+Proceedings of the Zoological Society.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CURIOSITIES_OF_BATS" id="CURIOSITIES_OF_BATS"></a>CURIOSITIES OF BATS.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>THESE</b> harmless and interesting little animals have not only furnished
+objects of superstitious dread to the ignorant, but have proved to the
+poet and the painter a fertile source of images of gloom and terror.
+The strange combination of character of beast and bird, which they were
+believed to possess, is supposed to have given to Virgil the idea of the
+Harpies.</p>
+
+<p>Aristotle says but little about the Bat; and Pliny is considered to
+have placed it among the Birds, none of which, he observes, with the
+exception of the Bat, have teeth. Again, he notices it as the only
+winged animal that suckles its young, and remarks on its embracing its
+two little ones, and flying about with them. In this arrangement he was
+followed by the older of the more modern naturalists. Belon, doubtingly,
+places it at the end of the Night-birds; and the Bat, <i>Attaleph</i> (bird
+of darkness), was one of the unclean animals of the Hebrews; and in
+Deuteronomy xxv. 18, it is placed among the forbidden birds.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Even up to a late period Bats were considered as forming a link between
+quadrupeds and birds. The common language of our own ancestors, however,
+indicates a much nearer approach to the truth in the notions entertained
+by the people than can be found in the lucubrations of the learned.
+The words <i>rere-mouse</i> and <i>flitter-mouse</i>, the old English names for
+the Bat&mdash;the former derived from the Anglo-Saxon "aræan," to raise, or
+rear up, and mus; the latter from the Belgic, signifying "flying or
+flittering mouse,"&mdash;show that in their minds these animals were always
+associated with the idea of quadrupeds. The first of these terms is
+still used in English heraldry; though it may have ceased to belong to
+the language of the country. "The word <i>flitter-mouse</i>," says Mr. Bell,
+"sometimes corrupted into <i>flintymouse</i>, is the common term for the Bat
+in some parts of the kingdom, particularly in that part of the county
+of Kent in which the language, as well as the aspect and names of the
+inhabitants, retain more of the Saxon character than will be found,
+perhaps, in any other part of England.</p>
+
+<p>Ben Jonson has&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"Once a Bat, and ever a Bat! a rere-mouse,</div>
+<div class="verse">And bird o'twilight, he has broken thrice.</div>
+<div class="verse5">.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
+&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .</div>
+<div class="verse">Come, I will see the flicker-mouse, my fly."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="right1"><i>Play.</i>&mdash;<i>New Inn.</i></div>
+
+<p>The same author uses flitter-mouse also:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"And giddy flitter-mice, with leather wings."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="right1"><i>Sad Shepherd.</i></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Calmet describes the Bat as an animal having the body of a mouse and the
+wings of a bird; but he erroneously adds, "It never grows tame."</p>
+
+<p>Some persons are surprised at Bats being classed by naturalists, not
+with birds, but quadrupeds. They have, in fact, no other claim to be
+considered as birds than that of their being able to suspend and move
+themselves in the air, like some species of fish, but to a greater
+degree. They suckle their young, are covered with hair, and have
+no wings, but arms and lengthened fingers or toes furnished with a
+membrane, by which they are enabled to fly.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles Bell, in his valuable treatise on the "Hand," considers
+the skeleton of the Bat as one of the best examples of the moulding
+of the bones of the extremity to correspond with the condition of the
+animal. Contemplating this extraordinary application of the bones of the
+extremity, and comparing them with those of the wing of a bird, we might
+say that this is an awkward attempt&mdash;"a failure." But, before giving
+expression to such an opinion, we must understand the objects required
+in this construction. It is not a wing intended merely for flight, but
+one which, while it raises the animal, is capable of receiving a new
+sensation, or sensations, in that exquisite degree, so as almost to
+constitute a new sense. On the fine web of the Bat's wing nerves are
+distributed, which enable it to avoid objects in its flight during the
+night, when both eyes and ears fail. Could the wing of a bird, covered
+with feathers, do this? Here, then, we have another
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> example of the
+necessity of taking every circumstance into consideration before we
+presume to criticise the ways of nature. It is a lesson of humility. In
+this animal the bones are light and delicate; and whilst they are all
+marvellously extended, the phalanges of the fingers are elongated so
+as hardly to be recognised, obviously for the purpose of sustaining a
+membranous web, and to form a wing.</p>
+
+<p>In 1839 there was received at the Surrey Zoological Gardens, from
+Sumatra, a specimen of the Vampire Bat. This was a young male; the body
+was black, and the membranous wing, in appearance, resembled fine black
+kid. He was rarely seen at the bottom of his cage, but suspended himself
+from the roof or bars of the cage, head downwards, his wings wrapped
+round his body; when spread, these wings extended nearly two feet.
+Although this specimen was the Vampire Bat to which so many bloodthirsty
+feats have been attributed, his appearance was by no means ferocious;
+he was active, yet docile, and the only peculiarity to favour belief in
+his blood-sucking propensity was his long pointed tongue. The species
+has popularly been accused of destroying, not only the large mammiferous
+animals, but also men, when asleep, by sucking their blood. "The truth,"
+says Cuvier, in his "Regne Animal," "appears to be, that the Vampire
+inflicts only small wounds, which may, probably, become inflammatory and
+gangrenous from the influence of climate." In this habit, however, may
+have originated the celebrated Vampire superstition. Lord Byron, in his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
+beautiful poem of "The Giaour," thus symbolises the tortures that await
+the "false infidel:"&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"First, on earth as Vampire sent,</div>
+<div class="verse">My corse shall from its tomb be rent;</div>
+<div class="verse">Then ghastly haunt thy native place,</div>
+<div class="verse">And suck the blood of all thy race;</div>
+<div class="verse">There, from thy daughter, sister, wife,</div>
+<div class="verse">At midnight drain the stream of life;</div>
+<div class="verse">Yet loathe the banquet which perforce</div>
+<div class="verse">Must feed thy livid living corse.</div>
+<div class="verse">Thy victims, ere they yet expire,</div>
+<div class="verse">Shall know the demon for their sire,</div>
+<div class="verse">As cursing thee, thou cursing them,</div>
+<div class="verse">Thy flowers are withered on the stem.</div>
+<div class="verse">But one that for thy crime must fall,</div>
+<div class="verse">The youngest, most beloved of all,</div>
+<div class="verse">Shall bless thee with <i>a father's</i> name&mdash;</div>
+<div class="verse">That word shall wrap thy heart in flame!</div>
+<div class="verse">Yet must thou end thy task, and mark</div>
+<div class="verse">Her cheek's last tinge, her eye's last spark,</div>
+<div class="verse">And the last glassy glance must view</div>
+<div class="verse">Which freezes o'er its lifeless blue;</div>
+<div class="verse">Then with unhallowed hand shall tear</div>
+<div class="verse">The tresses of her yellow hair,</div>
+<div class="verse">Of which in life a lock, when shorn,</div>
+<div class="verse">Affection's fondest pledge was worn,</div>
+<div class="verse">But now is borne away by thee,</div>
+<div class="verse">Memorial of thine agony!</div>
+<div class="verse">Wet with thine one best blood shall drip</div>
+<div class="verse">Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip;</div>
+<div class="verse">Then stalking to thy sullen grave,</div>
+<div class="verse">Go, and with Gouls and Afrits rave;</div>
+<div class="verse">Till there in horror shrink away</div>
+<div class="verse">From spectre more accursed than they!"</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In a note, the noble poet tells us:&mdash;"The Vampire superstition is still
+general in the Levant." Honest
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+Tournefort tells a long story, which Mr.
+Southey, in the notes on "Thalaba," quotes, about these Vardoulacha,
+as he calls them. "I recollect a whole family being terrified by the
+screams of a child, which they imagined must proceed from such a
+visitation. The Greeks never mention the word without horror."</p>
+
+<p>Bishop Heber describes the Vampire Bat of India as a very harmless
+creature, entirely different from the formidable idea entertained of it
+in England. "It only eats fruit and vegetables; indeed, its teeth are
+not indicative of carnivorous habits; and from blood it turns away when
+offered to it. During the daytime it is, of course, inert; but at night
+it is lively, affectionate, and playful, knows its keeper, but has no
+objection to the approach and touch of others."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Westerton, the traveller, when speaking, in his "Wanderings," of the
+Vampire of South America, says:&mdash;"There are two species in Demerara,
+both of which suck living animals; one is rather larger than the common
+Bats, the other measures above two feet from wing to wing, extended. So
+gently does this nocturnal surgeon draw the blood, that instead of being
+roused, the patient is lulled into a profound sleep." The large Vampire
+sucks men, commonly attacking the toes; the smaller seems to confine
+itself chiefly to birds.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Stedman, who states that he was bitten by a Bat, thus describes
+the operation:&mdash;"Knowing by instinct that the person they intend to
+attack is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
+in a sound slumber, they generally alight near the feet,
+where, while the creature continues fanning with its enormous wings,
+which keeps one cool, he bites a piece out of the tip of the great toe,
+so very small indeed that the head of a pin would scarcely be received
+into the wound, which is, consequently, not painful; yet through this
+orifice he continues to suck the blood until he is obliged to disgorge.
+He then begins again, and thus continues sucking and disgorging until
+he is scarcely able to fly; and the sufferer has been often known to
+sleep from time into eternity. Having applied tobacco-ashes as the best
+remedy, and washed the gore from myself and my hammock, I observed
+several small heaps of congealed blood all round the place where I had
+lain upon the ground, on examining which the surgeon judged that I had
+lost at least twelve or fourteen ounces during the night."</p>
+
+<p>Lesson, in 1827, says:&mdash;"The single American species of Bat is
+celebrated by the fables with which they have accompanied its history.
+That Bats suck the blood of animals as well as the juices of succulent
+fruits zoologists are agreed. The rough tongue of one genus was, I
+suppose, to be employed for abrading the skin, to enable the animal
+to suck the part abraded; but zoologists are now agreed that the
+supposition is groundless. It is more than probable that the celebrated
+Vampire superstition and the blood-sucking qualities attributed to the
+Bat have some connection with each other."</p>
+
+<p>Bat-fowling is mentioned by Shakspeare. This is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> the mode of taking
+Bats in the night-time, while they are at roost, upon perches, trees,
+or hedges. They light torches or straw, and then beat the bushes, upon
+which the Bats, flying to the flames, are caught, either with nets or
+otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>Bat-fowling, or Bat-folding, is effected by the use of a net, called a
+trammel-net, and is practised at night. The net should be made of the
+strongest and finest twine, and extended between two poles about ten
+feet high, tapering to a point at the top, and meeting at the top of
+the net. The larger ends are to be held by the persons who take the
+management of the net, and who, by stretching out the arms, keep the net
+extended to the utmost, opposite the hedge in which the Bats or birds
+are supposed to be. Another of the party carries a lantern upon a pole
+at a short distance behind the centre of the net. One or two others
+place themselves on the opposite side of the hedge, and by beating it
+with sticks disturb the Bats or birds, which, being alarmed, fly towards
+the light, but are interrupted in their flight by the net which is
+immediately <i>folded</i> upon them, often fifteen or twenty in number. This
+sport cannot be followed with much success except when the night is very
+dark, or until very late in the autumn, when the trees, having lost
+their leaves, the Bats or birds are driven for shelter to the hollies,
+yews, hayricks, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>We remember reading, in the "Philosophical Magazine," in 1836, a curious
+account of the habits of a long-eared Bat, a living specimen of which
+was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+given to the children of Mr. De Carle Sowerby, the naturalist. "We
+constructed," says Mr. Sowerby, "a cage for him, by covering a box with
+gauze, and making a round hole in the side, fitted with a phial cork.
+When he was awake, we fed him with flies, introduced through this hole,
+and thus kept him for several weeks. The animal soon became familiar,
+and immediately a fly was presented alive at the hole, he would run or
+fly from any part of the cage, and seize it in our fingers; but a dead
+or quiet fly he would never touch. At other times, dozens of flies and
+grasshoppers were left in his cage, and, waking him by their noise, he
+dexterously caught them as they hopped or flew about, but uniformly
+disregarded them while they were at rest. The cockroach, hard beetles,
+and caterpillars he refused.</p>
+
+<p>"As we became still more familiar, our new friend was invited to join
+in our evening amusements, to which he contributed his full share
+by flitting round the room, at times settling upon our persons, and
+permitting us to handle and caress him. He announced his being awake
+by a shrill chirp, which was more acute than that of the cricket. Now
+was the proper time for feeding him. I before stated that he only took
+his food alive. It was observed that not only was motion necessary, but
+that generally some noise on the part of the fly was required to induce
+him to accept it; and this fact was soon discovered by the children,
+who were entertained by his taking flies from their fingers as he flew
+by them, before he was bold enough to settle
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> upon their hands to
+devour his victims. They quickly improved upon this discovery, and, by
+imitating the booming of a bee, induced the Bat, directed by the sound,
+to settle upon their faces, wrapping his wings round their lips, and
+searching for the expected fly. We observed that, if he took a fly while
+on the wing, he frequently settled to masticate it; and, when he had
+been flying about a long time, he would rest upon a curtain, pricking
+his ears, and turning his head in all directions, when, if a fly were
+made to buzz, or the sound imitated, he would proceed directly to the
+spot, even on the opposite side of the room, guided, it would appear,
+entirely by the ear. Sometimes he took his victim in his mouth, even
+though it was not flying; at other times he inclosed it in his wings,
+with which he formed a kind of bag-net. This was his general plan when
+in his cage, or when the fly was held in our fingers, or between our
+lips."</p>
+
+<p>From these observations Mr. Sowerby concludes that many of the movements
+of the Bat upon the wing are directed by his exquisite sense of hearing.
+May not the sensibility of this organ be naturally greater in these
+animals, whose organs of vision are too susceptible to bear daylight,
+when those organs, from their nature, would necessarily be of most
+service?&mdash;such as the cat, who hunts by the ear, and the mole, who,
+feeding in the dark recesses of his subterranean abode, is very sensible
+of the approach of danger, and expert in avoiding it. In the latter
+case, large external ears are not required,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> because sound is well
+conveyed by solids, and along narrow cavities. In the cases of many
+Bats, and of owls, the external ears are remarkably developed. Cats
+combine a quickness of sight with acute hearing. They hunt by the ear,
+but they follow their prey by the eye. Some Bats are said to feed upon
+fruits: have they the same delicacy of hearing, feeling, &amp;c., as others?</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sowerby has further described the singular mode adopted by the
+long-eared Bat in capturing his prey. The flying apparatus is extended
+from the hind legs to the tail, forming a large bag or net, not unlike
+two segments of an umbrella, the legs and tail being the ribs. The Bat,
+having caught the fly, instead of eating it at once, generally covers it
+with his body, and, by the aid of his arms, &amp;c., forces it into his bag.
+He then puts his head down under his body, withdraws the fly from his
+bag, and leisurely devours it. Mr. Sowerby once saw an unwary bluebottle
+walk beneath the body of the apparently sleeping Bat into the sensitive
+bag, in which it was immediately imprisoned. White, of Selborne,
+speaking of a tame Bat, alludes to the above described action, which
+he compares to that of a beast of prey, but says nothing respecting
+the bag. Bell, in his "British Quadrupeds," says that the interfemoral
+membrane of Bats "is probably intended to act as a sort of rudder, in
+rapidly changing the course of the animal in the pursuit of its insect
+food. In a large group of foreign Bats, which feed on fruit or other
+vegetable substances, as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
+well as in some of carnivorous habits, but
+whose prey is of a less active character, this part is either wholly
+wanting or much circumscribed in extent and power." May it not be, asks
+Mr. Sowerby, that they do not require an entomological bag-net?</p>
+
+<p>The wing of the Bat is commonly spoken of as of leather; that it is an
+insensible piece of stuff&mdash;the leather of a glove or of a lady's shoe;
+but nothing can be further from the truth. If one were to select an
+organ of the most exquisite delicacy and sensibility, it would be the
+Bat's wing. It is anything but leather, and is, perhaps, the most acute
+organ of touch that can be found.</p>
+
+<p>Bats are supposed to perceive external objects without coming actually
+in contact with them, because in their rapid and irregular flight,
+amidst various surrounding bodies, they never fly against them; yet, to
+some naturalists, it does not appear that the senses of hearing, seeing,
+or smelling serve them on these occasions, for they avoid any obstacles
+with equal certainty when the eye, ear, and nose are closed: hence has
+been ascribed a <i>sixth sense</i> to these animals. The nerves of the wing
+are large and numerous, and distributed in a minute network between the
+integuments. The impulse of the air against this part may possibly be
+so modified by the objects near which the animal passes as to indicate
+their situation and nature. The Bat tribe fly by means of the fingers of
+the fore feet, the thumb excepted, being, in these animals, longer than
+the whole body; and between them is stretched a thin
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> membrane, or web,
+for flying. It is probable that, in the action of flight, the air, when
+struck by this wing, or very sensitive hand, impresses a sensation of
+heat, cold, mobility, and resistance on that organ, which indicates to
+the animal the existence or absence of obstacles which would interrupt
+its progress. In this manner blind men discover by their hands, and
+even by the skin of their faces, the proximity of a wall, door of a
+house, or side of a street, even without the assistance of touch, and
+merely by the sensation which the difference in the resistance of the
+air occasions. Hence they are as little capable of walking on the ground
+as apes with their hands, or sloths with their hooked claws, which are
+calculated for climbing.</p>
+
+<p>In a certain kind of Bat, the <i>Nycteris</i>, there exists a power of
+inflation to such a degree that, when inflated, the animal looks,
+according to Geoffroy St. Hilaire, like a <i>little balloon</i> fitted
+with wings, a head, and feet. It is filled with air through the
+cheek-pouches, which are perforated at the bottom, so as to communicate
+with the spaces of the skin to be filled. When the Bat wishes to
+inflate, it draws in its breath, closes its nostrils, and transmits the
+air through the perforations of the cheek-pouches to the spaces; and the
+air is prevented from returning by the action of a muscle which closes
+those openings, and by valves of considerable size on the neck and back.</p>
+
+<p>There was formerly a vulgar opinion that Bats, when down on a flat
+surface, could not get on the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+wing again, by rising with great ease
+from the floor; but White saw a Bat run, with more dispatch than he
+was aware of, though in a most ridiculous and grotesque manner. The
+adroitness with which this Bat sheared off the wings of flies, which
+were always rejected, was very amusing. He did not refuse raw flesh when
+offered; so that the notion that Bats go down chimneys, and gnaw men's
+bacon, seems no improbable story.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. George Daniell describes a female Bat, who took her food with an
+action similar to that of a dog. The animal took considerable pains
+in cleaning herself, parting the hair on either side, from head to
+tail, and forming a straight line along the middle of the back. The
+membrane of the wings was cleaned by forcing the nose through the folds,
+and thereby expanding them. This Bat fed freely, and at some times
+voraciously, the quantity exceeding half an ounce, although the weight
+of the animal itself was not more than ten drams.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Kalong</i> Bat of the Javanese is extremely abundant in the lower
+parts of Java, and uniformly lives in society. The more elevated
+districts are not visited by it. "Numerous individuals," says Dr.
+Hornfield, "select a large tree, and, suspending themselves with the
+claws of their posterior extremities to the naked branches, often in
+companies of several hundreds, afford to a stranger a very singular
+spectacle. A species of ficus (fig-tree), resembling the <i>ficus
+religiosa</i> of India, affords them a very favourite retreat, and the
+extended branches<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>
+of one of these are sometimes covered by them. They
+pass the greater portion of the day in sleep, hanging motionless, ranged
+in succession, with the head downwards, the membrane contracted about
+the body, and often in close contact. They have little resemblance to
+living beings; and, by a person not accustomed to their economy, are
+readily mistaken for a part of the tree, or for a fruit of uncommon size
+suspended from its branches."</p>
+
+<p>In general, these societies are silent during the day; but if they are
+disturbed, or a contention arises among them, they emit sharp, piercing
+shrieks; and their awkward attempts to extricate themselves, when
+oppressed by the light of the sun, exhibit a ludicrous spectacle. Soon
+after sunset they gradually quit their hold, and pursue their nocturnal
+flight in quest of food. They direct their course by an unerring
+instinct to the forests, villages, and plantations, attacking and
+devouring every kind of fruit, from the abundant and useful cocoa-nut,
+which surrounds the dwellings of the meanest peasantry, to the rare and
+most delicate productions which are cultivated by princes and chiefs of
+distinction. Various methods are employed to protect the orchards and
+gardens. Delicate fruits are secured by a loose net or basket, skilfully
+constructed of split bamboo, without which precaution little valuable
+fruit would escape the ravages of the <i>Kalong</i>. There are few situations
+in the lower part of Java in which this night wanderer is not constantly
+observed. As soon as the light of the sun has retired, one animal is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+seen to follow the other at a small but irregular distance, and this
+accession continues uninterrupted till dark:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse5">"The night came on apace,</div>
+<div class="verse">And falling dews bewet around the place;</div>
+<div class="verse">The bat takes airy rounds, on leathern wings,</div>
+<div class="verse">And the hoarse owl his woful dirges sings."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="right1">"Gay's "<i>Pastoral III</i>."</div>
+
+<p>Bats of the ordinary size are very numerous in Jamaica. They are found
+in mills and old houses. They do great mischief in gardens, where they
+eat the green peas, opening the pod over each pea, and removing it very
+dexterously.</p>
+
+<p>Gilbert White, of Selborne, first noticed a large species of Bat, which
+he named <i>altivolans</i>, from its manner of feeding high in the air. In
+the extent of its wings it measured 14-1/2 inches; and it weighed,
+when entirely full, one ounce and one drachm. It is found in numbers
+together, so many as 185 having been taken in one night from the eaves
+of Queens' College, Cambridge. In the Northern Zoological Gallery of the
+British Museum are representatives of the several species of Bats, all
+bearing a family resemblance to each other. In England alone there are
+eighteen known species. Here is the curious leaf-nosed Bat, from Brazil,
+supposed to excel in the sense of smell; also, the Vampire, or large
+blood-sucking Bat, from the same country; and the different kinds of
+fruit-eating Bats, found in America and Australia, and sometimes called
+flying foxes, on account of their great size. The
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> Bats of temperate
+climates remain torpid during the winter. Gay has these lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"Where swallows in the winter season keep;</div>
+<div class="verse">And here the drowsy bat and dormouse sleep."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Young Bats have been taken, when hovering near the ground, by throwing
+handfuls of sand, but they rarely live in confinement: they often die
+within a week after their capture. A Bat, taken in Elgin, gave birth to
+a young one, which was for two days suckled by its parent. Before she
+reached the age of three days the young bat died, and the parent only
+survived another day to mourn her loss. Sometimes females, when taken,
+have young ones clinging to their breast, in the act of sucking; and the
+female can fly with ease, though two little ones are attached to her,
+which weigh nearly as much as the parent.</p>
+
+<p>To return to an exaggeration of a famous old traveller. In "Purchas his
+Pilgrimage," the materials for which he borrowed from above thirteen
+hundred authors, when speaking of the island of Madura, in the South of
+India, he says:&mdash;"In these partes are Battes as big as Hennes, which the
+people roast and eat."</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_HEDGEHOG" id="THE_HEDGEHOG"></a>THE HEDGEHOG.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_110.jpg" alt="Letter O"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>OF</b> this animal some strange things are recorded.
+It is placed by Cuvier
+at the head of the insect-devouring Mammifera. It is found in Europe,
+Africa, and India. Its body is covered with strong and sharp prickles,
+and by the help of a muscle it can contract itself into a ball, and so
+withdraw its whole underpart, head, belly, and legs, within this thicket
+of prickles:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"Like Hedgehogs, which</div>
+<div class="verse">Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount</div>
+<div class="verse">Their pricks at my foot-fall."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="right1">&mdash;Shakspeare's "<i>Tempest</i>."</div>
+
+<p>Sir Thomas Browne, in his "Vulgar Errors," has this odd conceit:&mdash;"Few
+have belief to swallow, or hope enough to experience, the collyrium of
+Albertus; that is, to make one see in the dark: yet thus much, according
+to his receipts, will the right eye of an Hedgehog, boiled in oil, and
+preserved in a brazen vessel, effect."</p>
+
+<p>Hedgehog was an old term of reproach; but we have heard a well-set
+argument compared to a hedgehog&mdash;all points.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The food of the Hedgehog, which is a nocturnal animal, consists
+principally of insects, worms, slugs, and snails. That it will eat
+vegetables is shown by White of Selborne, who relates how it eats the
+root of the plantain by boring beneath it, leaving the tuft of leaves
+untouched.</p>
+
+<p>The Hedgehog is reputed to supply itself with a winter covering of
+leaves. So far as we are aware, it has not been observed in the act of
+forming the covering of leaves, though it is supposed to roll itself
+about till its spines take up a sufficient number, in the same way as
+it is popularly believed (without proof) to do with apples. Blumenbach
+states that he was assured, "by three credible witnesses," that
+Hedgehogs so gather fruit; but Buffon, who kept several Hedgehogs for
+observation, declares they never practise any such habit.</p>
+
+<p>The voracity of the Hedgehog is very great. A female, with a young one,
+was placed in a kitchen, having the run of the beetles at night, besides
+having always bread and milk within their reach. One day, however, the
+servants heard a mysterious crunching sound in the kitchen, and found,
+on examination, that nothing was left of the young Hedgehog but the skin
+and prickles&mdash;the mother had devoured her little pig! A Hedgehog has
+also been known to eat a couple of rabbits which had been confined with
+it, and killing others; it has likewise been known to kill hares.</p>
+
+<p>A Hedgehog was placed in one hamper, a wood-pigeon in another, and two
+starlings in a third;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+the lid of each hamper was tied down with string,
+and the hampers were placed in a garden-house, which was fastened in the
+evening. Next morning the strings to the hampers were found severed, the
+starlings and wood-pigeon dead and eaten, feathers alone remaining in
+their hampers, and the Hedgehog alive in the wood-pigeon's hamper. As no
+other animal could have got into the garden-house it was concluded that
+the Hedgehog had killed and eaten the birds.</p>
+
+<p>In the "Zoological Journal," vol. ii., is an account by Mr. Broderip of
+an experiment made by Professor Buckland proving that in captivity at
+least the Hedgehog will devour snakes; but there is no good reason for
+supposing that it will not do the same in a state of nature, for frogs,
+toads, and other reptiles, and mice, have been recorded as its prey.
+From its fondness for insects it is often placed in the London kitchens
+to keep down the swarm of cockroaches with which they are infested; and
+there are generally Hedgehogs on sale at Covent Garden Market for this
+purpose.</p>
+
+<p>The idle story that the persecuted Hedgehog sucks cows has been thus
+quaintly refuted:&mdash;"In the case of an animal giving suck, the teat is
+embraced round by the mouth of the young one, so that no air can pass
+between; a vacuum is made, or the air is exhausted from its throat,
+by a power in the lungs; nevertheless the pressure of the air remains
+still upon the outside of the dug of the mother, and by these two
+causes together the milk
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+is forced in the mouth of the young one. But
+a Hedgehog has no such mouth as to be able to contain the teat of a
+cow; therefore any vacuum which is caused in its own throat cannot be
+communicated to the milk in the dug. And if he is able to procure no
+other food but what he can get by sucking cows in the night, there is
+likely to be a vacuum in his stomach too." (<i>New Catalogue of Vulgar
+Errors.</i> By Stephen Fovargue, A.M., 1786.) Yet, according to Sir William
+Jardine, the Hedgehog is very fond of eggs; and is consequently very
+mischievous in the game-preserve and hen-house.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most interesting facts in the natural history of the Hedgehog
+is that announced in 1831 by M. Lenz, and subsequently confirmed by
+Professor Buckland: this is, that the most violent poisons have no
+effect upon it; a fact which renders it of peculiar value in forests,
+where it appears to destroy a great number of noxious reptiles. M. Lenz
+says that he had in his house a female Hedgehog, which he kept in a
+large box, and which soon became very mild and familiar. He often put
+into the box some adders, which it attacked with avidity, seizing them
+indifferently by the head, the body, and the tail, and not appearing
+alarmed or embarrassed when they coiled themselves around its body.
+On one occasion M. Lenz witnessed a fight between a Hedgehog and a
+viper. When the Hedgehog came near and smelled the snake, for with
+these animals the sense of sight is very obtuse, she seized it by the
+head, and held it fast between
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+her teeth, but without appearing to do
+it much harm; for having disengaged its head, it assumed a furious and
+menacing attitude, and, hissing vehemently, inflicted severe bites on
+the Hedgehog. The animal did not, however, recoil from the bites of
+the viper, or indeed seem to care much about them. At last, when the
+reptile was fatigued by its efforts, she again seized it by the head,
+which she ground beneath her teeth, compressing the fangs and glands of
+poison, and then devouring every part of the body. M. Lenz says that
+battles of this sort often occurred in the presence of many persons, and
+sometimes the Hedgehog received eight or ten wounds on the ears, the
+snout, and even on the tongue, without seeming to experience any of the
+ordinary symptoms produced by the venom of the viper. Neither herself
+nor the young which she was then suckling seemed to suffer from it. This
+observation agrees with that of Pallas, who assures us that the Hedgehog
+can eat about a hundred Cantharides (Spanish Flies) without experiencing
+any of the effects which this insect, taken inwardly, produces on men,
+dogs, and cats. A German physician, who made the Hedgehog a particular
+object of study, gave it strong doses of prussic acid, of arsenic, of
+opium, and of corrosive sublimate, none of which did it any harm. The
+Hedgehog in its natural state only feeds on pears, apples, and other
+fruits when it can get nothing it likes better.</p>
+
+<p>The Hedgehog hybernates regularly, and early in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
+the summer brings forth
+from two to four young ones at a birth, which, at the time of their
+production, are blind, and have the spines white, soft, and flexible.
+The nest wherein they are cradled is said to be very artificially
+constructed, the roof being rain-proof.</p>
+
+<p>The flesh of the Hedgehog, when it has been well fed, is sweet and well
+flavoured, and is eaten on the Continent in many places. In Britain a
+few besides gipsies partake of it. The prickly skin appears to have been
+used by the Romans for hackling hemp.</p>
+
+<p>Gilbert White notes that when the Hedgehog is very young it can draw
+its skin down over its face, but is not able to contract itself into a
+ball, as the creature does, for the sake of defence when full grown. The
+reason, White supposes, is because the curious muscle that enables the
+Hedgehog to roll itself up into a ball has not then arrived at its full
+tone and firmness. Hedgehogs conceal themselves for the winter in their
+warm <i>hybernaculum</i> of leaves and moss; but White could never find that
+they stored in any winter provision, as some quadrupeds certainly do.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_HIPPOPOTAMUS_IN_ENGLAND" id="THE_HIPPOPOTAMUS_IN_ENGLAND"></a>THE HIPPOPOTAMUS IN ENGLAND.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_116.jpg" alt="Letter I"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>IN</b> the year 1850 there was exhibited in London
+a living Hippopotamus,
+for many centuries the only instance of this extraordinary animal being
+seen in Europe.</p>
+
+<p>There is something irresistibly striking in seeing a living animal,
+not one of whose species we have before seen, and especially when
+that animal is a large one, as in the instance before us. We had been
+wonderstruck at forms of this creature in the old British Museum, where
+were two finely-preserved specimens. The Rhinoceros alive was, until of
+late years, very rare in England. In 1834 Mr. Cross paid some 1,500<i>l.</i>
+for a young Indian one-horned Rhinoceros, this being the only one
+brought to England for twenty years. He proved attractive, but slightly
+so in comparison with the expectation of a living Hippopotamus, never
+witnessed before in this country. The circumstances of his acquisition
+were as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The Zoological Society of London had long been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> anxious to obtain
+a living Hippopotamus for their menagerie, but without success. An
+American agent at Alexandria had offered 5,000<i>l.</i> for an animal of
+this species, but in vain; no speculator could be induced to encounter
+the risk and labour of an expedition to the White Nile for the
+purpose of securing the animal. The desire of the Zoological Society
+was communicated to the Viceroy of Egypt, who saw the difficulty.
+Hasselquist states it to have been impossible to bring the living animal
+to Cairo; and the French <i>savans</i>, attached to the expedition to Egypt,
+who ascended the Nile above Syene, did not meet with one Hippopotamus.
+Caillaud, however, asserts that he saw forty Hippopotami in the Upper
+Nile, though their resort lay fifteen hundred miles or more from Cairo.
+Here they were often shot with rifle-balls, but to take one alive was
+another matter. However, by command of the Viceroy, the proper parties
+were sent in search of the animal.</p>
+
+<p>In August, 1849, the hunters having reached the island of Fobaysch,
+on the White Nile, about 2,000 miles above Cairo, shot a large female
+Hippopotamus in full chase up the river. The wounded creature turned
+aside and made towards some bushes on the island bank, but sank dead in
+the effort. The hunters, however, kept on towards the bushes, when a
+young Hippopotamus, supposed to have been recently brought forth, not
+much bigger than a new-born calf, but stouter and lower, rushed down
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+the bank of the river, was secured by a boatman and lifted into the
+boat. The captors started with their charge down the Nile. The food of
+their young animal was their next anxiety; he liked neither fish, flesh,
+fruit, nor grass. The boat next stopped at a village; their cows were
+seized and milked, and the young charge lapped up the produce. A good
+milch cow was taken on board, and with this supply the Hippopotamus
+reached Cairo. The colour of his skin at this time was a dull reddish
+brown. He was shown to the Pasha in due form; the present created
+intense wonder and interest in Cairo; gaping crowds filled its narrow
+sandy streets, and a whale at London-bridge would scarcely excite half
+so much curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>It being thought safer for the animal to winter in Cairo than to proceed
+forthwith on his journey, the Consul had duly prepared to receive the
+young stranger, for whom he had engaged a sort of nurse. Hamet Safi
+Cannana. An apartment was allotted to the Hippopotamus in the court-yard
+of the Consul's house, leading to a warm or tepid bath. His milk-diet,
+however, became a troublesome affair, for the new comer never drank less
+than from twenty to thirty quarts daily.</p>
+
+<p>By the next mail after the arrival of the Hippopotamus, the Consul
+despatched the glad tidings to the Zoological Society. The animal was
+shipped at Alexandria, in the Ripon steamer. On the main deck was built
+a house, from which were steps down
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+into an iron tank in the hold,
+containing 400 gallons of water, as a bath: it was filled with fresh
+water every other day.</p>
+
+<p>Early in May, the Hippopotamus was conveyed in the canal-boat, with
+Hamet Safi Cannana, to Alexandria, where the debarkation was witnessed
+by 10,000 spectators. The animal bore the voyage well. He lived
+exclusively on milk, of which he consumed daily about forty pints,
+yielded by the cows taken on board. He was very tame, and, like a
+faithful dog, followed his Arab attendant Hamet, who was seldom away
+more than five minutes without being summoned to return by a loud grunt.
+Hamet slept in a berth with the Hippopotamus. On May 25 they were landed
+at Southampton, and sent by railway to London. On arriving at the
+Zoological Society's Gardens, Hamet walked first out of the transport
+van, with a bag of dates over his shoulder, and the Hippopotamus trotted
+after him. Next morning he greatly enjoyed the bath which had been
+prepared for him. Although scarcely twelve months old, his massive
+proportions indicated the enormous power to be developed in his maturer
+growth; while the grotesque expression of his physiognomy far exceeded
+all that could be imagined from the stuffed specimens in museums, and
+the figures which had hitherto been published from the reminiscences of
+travellers.</p>
+
+<p>Among the earliest visitors was Professor Owen, who first saw the
+Hippopotamus lying on its side in the straw, with its head resting
+against the chair in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+which sat the swarthy attendant. It now and then
+grunted softly, and, lazily opening its thick, smooth eyelids, leered
+at its keeper with a singular protruding movement of the eyeball from
+the prominent socket, showing an unusual proportion of the white. The
+retraction of the eyeball was accompanied by a simultaneous rolling
+obliquely downwards, or inwards, or forwards. The young animal, then
+ten months' old, was seven feet long, and six and a-half in girth at
+the middle of the barrel-shaped trunk, supported, clear of the ground,
+on very short and thick legs, each terminated by four spreading hoofs,
+the two middle ones being the largest, and answering to those in the
+hog. The naked hide, covering the broad back and sides, was of a dark,
+india-rubber colour, with numerous fine wrinkles crossing each other,
+but disposed almost transversely. The beast had just left its bath, when
+a glistening secretion gave the hide, in the sunshine, a very peculiar
+aspect. When the animal was younger, the secretion had a reddish colour,
+and the whole surface of the hide became painted over with it every time
+he quitted his bath.</p>
+
+<p>The ears, which were very short, conical, and fringed with hairs, it
+moved about with much vivacity. The skin around them was of a light
+reddish-brown colour, and almost flesh-coloured round the eyelids,
+which defended the prominent eyes, which had a few short hairs on the
+margin of the upper lid. The colour of the iris was of a dark brown. The
+nostrils, situated on prominences, which
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+the animal had the power of
+raising on the upper part of the broad and massive muzzle, were short
+oblique slits, guarded by two valves, which were opened and closed
+spontaneously, like the eyelids. The movements of these apertures were
+most conspicuous when the beast was in the bath.</p>
+
+<p>The wide mouth was chiefly remarkable for the upward curve of its angles
+towards the eyes, giving a quaintly comic expression to the massive
+countenance. The short and small milk-tusks projected a little, and the
+minute incisors appeared to be sunk in pits of the thick gums; but the
+animal would not permit any close examination of the teeth, withdrawing
+his head from the attempt, and then threatening to bite. The muzzle was
+beset with short bristles, split into tufts or pencils of hairs; and
+fine and short hairs were scattered all over the back and sides. The
+tail was not long, rather flattened and tapering to an obtuse point.</p>
+
+<p>We may here observe that, at certain moments, the whole aspect of the
+head suggested to one the idea of what may have been the semblance of
+some of the gigantic extinct Batrachians (as sirens), the relics of a
+former world, whose fossil bones in the galleries of Palæontology in the
+British Museum excite our special wonder.</p>
+
+<p>After lying about an hour, now and then raising its head, and swivelling
+its eyeballs towards the keeper, or playfully opening its huge mouth,
+and threatening to bite the leg of the chair on which the keeper sat,
+the Hippopotamus rose, and walked very
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+slowly about its room, and
+then uttered a loud and short harsh snort four or five times in quick
+succession, reminding one of the snort of a horse, and ending with an
+explosive sound, like a bark. The keeper understood the language&mdash;the
+animal desired to return to its bath.</p>
+
+<p>The Hippopotamus carried its head rather depressed, reminding one of
+a large prize hog, but with a breadth of muzzle and other features
+peculiarly its own. The keeper opened the door leading into a paddock,
+and walked thence to the bath, the Hippopotamus following, like a dog,
+close to his heels. On arriving at the bath-room, the animal descended
+with some deliberation the flight of low steps leading into the water,
+stooped and drank a little, dipped his head under, and then plunged
+forwards. The creature seemed inspired with new life and activity.
+Sinking to the bottom of the bath, and moving about submerged for a
+while, it suddenly rose with a bound almost bodily out of the water.
+Splashing back, it commenced swimming and plunging about, rolling from
+side to side, taking in mouthfuls of water and spirting them out again,
+raising every now and then its huge and grotesque head, and biting the
+woodwork of the margin of the bath. The broad rounded back of the animal
+being now chiefly in view, it seemed a much larger object than when out
+of the water.</p>
+
+<p>After half an hour spent in this amusement, the Hippopotamus quitted
+the water at the call of its keeper, and followed him back to the
+sleeping-room,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+which was well bedded with straw, and where a stuffed
+sack was provided for its pillow, of which the animal, having a very
+short neck, thicker than the head, availed itself when it slept. When
+awake, it was very impatient of any absence of its favourite attendant.
+It would rise on its hind legs, and threaten to break down the wooden
+fence, by butting and pushing against it in a way very significant of
+its great muscular force. The animal appeared to be in perfect health,
+and breathed, when at rest, slowly and regularly, from three to four
+times in a minute. Its food was now a kind of porridge, of milk and
+maize-meat, it being more than half weaned from milk diet. Its appetite
+had been in no respect diminished by the confinement and inconvenience
+of the sea voyage, or by change of climate. All observers appear to
+have agreed that, to see the Hippopotamus rightly, is to see him in
+the water. There his activity is only surpassed by that of the otter
+or the seal. Such was one of the opportunities afforded to zoologists
+for "studying this most remarkable and interesting African mammal, of
+which no living specimen had been seen in Europe since the period when
+Hippopotami were last exhibited by the third Gordian in the amphitheatre
+of imperial Rome."<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is now time to glance at the general economy of the Hippopotamus, as
+he is seen in his native rivers and wilds. In early days, as his Roman
+name imports, it was usual to consider him as a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> species of horse,
+inhabiting rivers and marshy grounds, and, in a more especial manner,
+the denizen of the Nile. The genus is placed by Linnæus among his
+<i>belluæ</i>, between <i>equus</i> and <i>sus</i>. The skeleton approaches that of the
+ox and of the hog, but it presents differences from that of any other
+animal.</p>
+
+<p>The Hippopotamus is found not only in the Nile, but in the rivers of
+southern Africa. In the former stream of marvels, Hasselquist relates
+that "the oftener the River Horse goes on shore, the better hope have
+the Egyptians of a sufficient swelling or increase of the Nile." Again,
+they say that the River Horse is an inveterate enemy to the crocodile,
+and kills it whenever he meets it; adding that he does much damage to
+the Egyptians in those places he frequents. He goes on shore, and, in
+a short space of time, destroys an entire field of corn or clover, not
+leaving the least verdure, for he is very voracious.</p>
+
+<p>Yet neither of these stories is so marvellous as that which a sailor
+related to Dampier, the old traveller:&mdash;"I have seen," says the mariner,
+"one of these animals open its jaws, and, seizing a boat between its
+teeth, at one bite sink it to the bottom. I have seen it, on another
+occasion, place itself under one of our boats, and, rising under it,
+overset it with six men who were in it, but who, however, happily
+received no other injury."</p>
+
+<p>Professor Smith and Captain Tuckey, in exploring the Congo River, in
+South Africa, saw in a beautiful sandy cove, at the opening of a creek,
+behind a long projecting point, an immense number of Hippopotami;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>
+and in the evening a number of alligators were also seen there; an
+association hardly consistent with the hostility related by Hasselquist.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Tuckey observed Hippopotami with their heads above the water,
+"snorting in the air." In another part of his narrative he says:&mdash;"Many
+Hippopotami were visible close to our tents at Condo Yanga. No use
+firing at these animals in the water; the only way is to wait till they
+come on shore to feed at night."</p>
+
+<p>Le Vaillant had an opportunity of watching the progress of a
+Hippopotamus under water at Great River, which contained many of these
+animals. On all sides he could hear them bellow and blow. Anxious to
+observe them, he mounted on the top of an elevated rock which advanced
+into the river, and he saw one walking at the bottom of the water. Le
+Vaillant killed it at the moment when it came to the surface to breathe.
+It was a very old female, and many people, in their surprise, and to
+express its size, called it the Grandmother of the River.</p>
+
+<p>The traveller Lander tells us that, on the Niger. Hippopotami are
+termed water-elephants. One stormy night, as they were sailing up this
+unexplored current, they fell in with great numbers of Hippopotami, who
+came plashing, snorting, and plunging all round the canoe. Thinking
+to frighten them off, the travellers fired a shot or two at them, but
+the noise only called up from the water and out of the fens about as
+many more Hippopotami, and they were more closely beset than before.
+Lander's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
+people, who had never, in all their lives, been exposed to
+such formidable beasts, trembled with fear, and absolutely wept aloud;
+whilst peals of thunder rattled over their heads, and the most vivid
+lightning showed the terrifying scene. Hippopotami frequently upset
+canoes in the river. When the Landers fired, every one of them came
+to the surface of the water, and pursued them over to the north bank.
+A second firing was followed by a loud roaring noise. However, the
+Hippopotami did the travellers no kind of mischief whatever.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Gordon, when among the Bakalahari, in South Africa, bagged no
+fewer than fifteen first-rate Hippopotami; the greater number of them
+being bulls.</p>
+
+<p>In 1828, there was brought to England the head of a Hippopotamus, with
+all the flesh about it, in high preservation. The animal was harpooned
+while in combat with a crocodile in a lake in the interior of Africa.
+The head measured nearly four feet in length, and eight feet in
+circumference; the jaws opened two feet, and the cutting teeth, of which
+it had four in each jaw, were above a foot long, and four inches in
+circumference.</p>
+
+<p>The utility of this vast pachydermatous, or thick-skinned animal, to man
+is considerable. That he can be destructive has already been shown in
+his clearance of the cultivated banks of rivers. The enormous ripping,
+chisel-like teeth of the lower jaw fit him for uprooting. The ancient
+Egyptians held the animal as an emblem of power, though this may
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> have
+arisen from his reputed destruction of the crocodile. The flesh is much
+esteemed for food, both among the natives and colonists of South Africa.
+The blood of the animal is said to have been used by the old Indian
+painters in mixing their colours. The skin is extensively employed for
+making whips.</p>
+
+<p>But there is no part of the Hippopotamus more in request than the great
+canine teeth, the ivory of which is so highly valued by dentists for
+making artificial teeth, on account of its keeping its colour better
+than any other kind. This superiority was not unknown to the ancients
+Pausanias mentions the statue of Dindymene, whose face was formed of the
+teeth of Hippopotami, instead of elephants' ivory. The canine teeth are
+imported in great numbers into England, and sell at a very high price.
+From the closeness of the ivory, the weight of the teeth, a part only of
+which is available for the artificial purpose above mentioned, is great
+in proportion to its bulk; and the article has fetched about thirty
+shillings per pound.</p>
+
+<p>The ancient history of the Hippopotamus is extremely curious, and
+we have many representations of him in coins, in sculpture, and in
+paintings, which prove, beyond question, that the artists, as well as
+the writers, had a distinct knowledge of what they intended to represent.</p>
+
+<p>The earliest notice which occurs in any author, and which has been
+considered by many to be a description of the Hippopotamus, is the
+celebrated account in the fortieth and forty-first chapter of the Book
+of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+Job of Behemoth and Leviathan. Many learned men have contended that
+"Behemoth" really means "Elephant," and thus the Zurich version of the
+Bible translates the Hebrew by "Elephas."</p>
+
+<p>In the edition of the English Bible, printed by Robert Barker, in 1615,
+for King James I., and since considered as the authorised version, the
+word "Behemoth" is preserved in the text, and the following annotation
+is added:&mdash;"This beast is thought to bee the Elephant, or some other
+which is unknowen." Bochart, Ludolph, and some others, have contended
+warmly in favour of the Hippopotamus. Cuvier thinks, that though this
+animal is probably intended, yet that the description is too vague for
+any one to hold a certain opinion on the subject. The theory started by
+Bochart, and in the main supported by Cuvier, is generally supposed the
+real one. The description in the Book of Job, though doubtless vague,
+and in the highest degree poetical, has yet sufficient marks to render
+the identification perfectly easy, while there are certain peculiarities
+mentioned, which even a poetical imagination could hardly apply to the
+Elephant. Thus, when it is said of him, "He lieth under the shady trees,
+in the desert of the reed and fens; ... the willows of the brook compass
+him round about," this would seem to be the description of an animal
+which frequented the water much more than Elephants are accustomed to
+do. Again, in the fuller description of "Leviathan," in the forty-first
+chapter, we think it is quite clear that a water animal is intended,
+though what is there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>
+stated might be held to apply to the crocodile
+as well as the Hippopotamus; both are animals remarkable for extreme
+toughness of skin, and both are almost equally difficult to kill or to
+take alive.</p>
+
+<p>Of profane authors, Herodotus is the first who notices this animal,
+but his account is far from accurate: the size he states as large as
+the biggest ox. That the animal was sacred, in some parts at least,
+appears from Herodotus, who says:&mdash;"Those which are found in the
+district of Paprennis are sacred, but in other parts of Egypt they are
+not considered in the same light." Aristotle makes it no bigger than
+an ass; Diodorus, an elephant; Pliny ascribes to it the tail and teeth
+of a boar, adding, that helmets and bucklers are made of the skin.
+Hippopotami figured in the triumphal processions of the Roman conquerors
+on their return home. M. Scaurus exhibited five crocodiles and an
+Hippopotamus; and Augustus one in his triumph over Cleopatra. Antoninus
+exhibited Hippopotami, with lions and other animals; Commodus no less
+than five, some of which he slew with his own hand. Heliogabalus, and
+the third Gordian, also exhibited Hippopotami.</p>
+
+<p>The Hippopotamus of the London Zoological Society was joined by his
+mate, the more juvenile "Adhela," in 1853. Two Hippopotami have lately
+been born in Europe; one in the Garden of Plants, at Paris, in 1858; and
+another in the Zoological Gardens at Amsterdam, in 1866.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to the alleged disappearance of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+Hippopotamus from Lower
+Egypt, Cuvier remarks, that the French savans attached to the Expedition
+to Egypt, who ascended the Nile above Syene, did not meet with one.</p>
+
+<p>In some of the rivers of Liberia, and other parts, perhaps, of Western
+Africa, a second species of Hippopotamus exists, and is proved to be a
+very distinct animal.</p>
+
+<p>We have yet to glance at the Hippopotami of a former world. Many
+species are recognised in the fossil remains of Europe and Asia as
+formerly existing in England and in France. Cuvier detected bones of the
+Hippopotamus among the fossil wealth of the Great Kirkdale Cavern in
+Yorkshire, in 1821. They have also been found in France, and especially
+in the Sewatick Hills in India.</p>
+
+<p>In the Museum of the London Zoological Society are two skulls of
+Hippopotami&mdash;one fossil. This measures two feet three inches, and
+allowing for skin and lip, two feet six inches. Now, as the head is
+about one-fifth the length of the body, without the tail, the full-grown
+animal would be little, if any, short of fifteen feet from nose to
+tail&mdash;a size worthy the description of the Behemoth.</p>
+
+<p>We may here add, that Burckhardt, in his "Travels in Nubia," describes
+the voice of the Hippopotamus as a hard and heavy sound, like the
+creaking or groaning of a large wooden door. This noise, he says, is
+made when the animal raises his huge head out of the water, and when he
+retires into it again.</p>
+
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Professor Owen.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="LION-TALK" id="LION-TALK"></a>LION-TALK.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>THE</b> Lion has, within the present century, lost caste, and fallen
+considerably from his high estate. He has been stripped of much of his
+conventional reputation by the spirit of inquiry into the validity of
+olden notions, which characterises the present age; and it appears that
+much of his celebrity is founded upon popular error. Nor are these
+results the work of stay-at-home travellers; but they are derived from
+the observation and experience of those who, amidst scenes of perilous
+adventure, seek to enlarge and correct our views of the habit and
+character of the overrated Lion.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bennett, in his admirable work, "The Tower Menagerie," has these
+very sensible remarks:&mdash;"In speaking of the Lion we call up to our
+imaginations the splendid picture of might unmingled with ferocity, of
+courage undebased by guile, of dignity tempered by grace and ennobled by
+generosity. Such is the Lion of Buffon; who, in describing this animal,
+as in too many other instances, has suffered
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
+himself to be borne along
+by the strong tide of popular opinion; but, as the Lion appears in his
+native regions, according to the authentic accounts of those travellers
+and naturalists who have had the best means of correctly observing his
+habits, he is by no means so admirable a creature. Where the timid
+antelope and powerless monkey fall his easy and unresisting prey&mdash;or
+where the elephant and buffalo find their unwieldy bulk and strength no
+adequate protection against his impetuous agility&mdash;he stalks boldly to
+and fro in fearless majesty. But in the neighbourhood of man&mdash;even in
+that of uncultivated savages&mdash;<i>he skulks in treacherous ambush for his
+prey</i>. Of his forbearance and generosity it can merely be said, that
+when free, he destroys only what is sufficient to satiate his hunger or
+revenge; and when in captivity&mdash;his wants being provided for, and his
+feelings not irritated&mdash;he suffers smaller animals to live unmolested in
+his den, or submits to the control of a keeper by whom he is fed. But
+even this limited degree of docility is liable to fearful interruptions
+from the calls of hunger, the feelings of revenge&mdash;and these he
+frequently cherishes for a long period&mdash;with various other circumstances
+which render it dangerous to approach him in his most domesticated
+state, without ascertaining his immediate mood and temper. That an
+animal which seldom attacks by open force, but silently approaches his
+victim, and when he imagines his prey to be within his reach, bounds
+upon it with an overwhelming leap, should ever have been regarded as
+the type<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
+of courage and the emblem of magnanimity, is indeed most
+astonishing!"</p>
+
+<p>The generosity of disposition so liberally accorded to this powerful
+beast has been much and eloquently praised; and it seems hard to
+dissipate the glowing vision which Buffon has raised; but, if there is
+any dependence to be placed on the observations of those travellers
+who have had the best opportunities of judging, and have the highest
+character for veracity, we must be compelled to acknowledge that
+Buffon's Lion is the Lion of poetry and prejudice, and very unlike the
+cautious lurking savage that steals on its comparatively weak prey by
+surprise, overwhelms it at once by the terror, the weight, and the
+violence of the attack, and is intent only on the gratification of the
+appetite. "At the time," says Mr. Burchell, "when men first adopted the
+Lion as the emblem of courage, it would seem that they regarded great
+size and strength as indicating it; but they were greatly mistaken
+in the character they had given of the indolent animal." Indeed, Mr.
+Burchell calls the Lion an "indolent skulking animal." The fact of the
+Lion sparing the dog that was thrown to him, and making a friend of the
+little animal that was destined for his prey, has been much dwelt on;
+but these and other such acts of mercy, as they have been called, may
+be very easily accounted for. If not pressed by hunger, the Lion will
+seldom be at the trouble of killing prey; and the desire for a companion
+has created much stronger friendships between animals in confinement
+than between a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+Lion and a little dog. St. Pierre touchingly describes
+the Lion of Versailles, who, in 1792, lived most happily with a dog, and
+on whose death he became disconsolate and miserable; and in confinement
+the "lordly Lion," as Young calls him, has been known to be deeply
+afflicted with melancholy at similar losses.</p>
+
+<p>The Lion is easily tamed, and capable of attachment to man. The story of
+Androdas, frequently called Androcles, is too well known to need more
+than allusion; but in this and other stories of Lions licking men's
+hands without injuring them, there must be a stretch of fancy; for the
+Lion's tongue has sharp thorn-points, inclining backwards, so as not to
+be able to lick the hand without tearing away the skin, which any one
+will understand who has <i>heard</i> the Lion tear the raw meat away from the
+bone of his food.</p>
+
+<p>Still, very different accounts are given by travellers of the cruelty or
+generosity of the Lion's nature; which results, in all probability, from
+a difference in time or circumstances, or the degree of hunger which the
+individual experienced when the respective observations were made upon
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, there are many points in the history of the Lion which are
+yet but imperfectly understood; the explanations of which, whilst
+they are interesting, add to our correct knowledge of this still
+extraordinary animal.</p>
+
+<p>The Lion has been styled "The King of the Forest," which is not very
+applicable to him, seeing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
+that Mr. Burchell at least never met with
+but one Lion on the plains; nor did he ever meet with one in any of
+the forests where he had been. The low cover that creeps along the
+sides of streams, the patches that mark the springs in the rank grass
+of the valley, seem to be the shelter which the African Lion, for the
+most part, seeks. His strength is extraordinary. To carry off a man
+(and there are dismal accounts of this horrible fact, which there is no
+reason to doubt) appears a feat of no difficulty to this powerful brute.
+A Cape Lion, seizing a heifer in his mouth, has carried her off with the
+same ease as a cat does a rat; and has leaped with her over a broad dyke
+without the least difficulty. A young Lion, too, has conveyed a horse
+about a mile from the spot where he had killed it.</p>
+
+<p>There seems to be an idea that the Lion preserves human prey; but, be
+this as it may, the inhabitants of certain districts have been under the
+necessity of resorting to a curious expedient to get out of the Lion's
+reach. Ælian, by the way, records the extinction of a Libyan people by
+an invasion of Lions. We read of a large tree, in the country of the
+Mantatees, which has amidst its limbs fourteen conical huts. These are
+used as dormitories, being beyond the reach of the Lions, which, since
+the incursions of the Mantatees, when so many thousands of persons
+were massacred, have become very numerous in the neighbourhood, and
+destructive to human life. The branches of the above trees are supported
+by forked sticks or poles, and there are three tiers or platforms
+on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+which the huts are constructed. The lowest is nine feet from the
+ground, and holds ten huts; the second, about eight feet high, has
+three huts; and the upper story, if it may be so called, contains four.
+The ascent to these is made by notches cut in the poles; the huts are
+built with twigs, and thatched with straw, and will contain two persons
+conveniently. This tree stands at the base of a range of mountains due
+east of Kurrichaine, in a place called "Ongorutcie Fountain," about
+1,000 miles north-east of Cape Town. Kurrichaine is the Staffordshire as
+well as the Birmingham of that part of South Africa. There are likewise
+whole villages of huts erected on stakes, about eight feet from the
+ground; the inhabitants, it is stated, sit under the shade of these
+platforms during the day, and retire to the elevated huts at night.</p>
+
+<p>Though mortal accidents frequently occur in Lion-hunting, the cool
+sportsman seldom fails of using his rifle with effect. Lions, when
+roused, it seems, walk off quietly at first, and if no cover is near,
+and they are not pursued, they gradually mend their pace to a trot,
+till they have reached a good distance, and then they bound away. Their
+demeanour is careless, as if they did not want a fray, but if pressed,
+are ready to fight it out. If they are pursued closely, they turn and
+crouch, generally with their faces to the adversary: then the nerves of
+the sportsman are tried. If he is collected, and master of his craft,
+the well-directed rifle ends the scene at once; but if, in the flutter
+of the moment, the vital parts are
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
+missed, or the ball passes by,
+leaving the Lion unhurt, the infuriated beast frequently charges on his
+enemies, dealing destruction around him. This, however, is not always
+the case; and a steady, unshrinking deportment has, in some instances,
+saved the life of the hunter.</p>
+
+<p>There is hardly a book of African travels which does not teem with the
+dangers and hair-breadth escapes of the Lion-hunters; and hardly one
+that does not include a fatal issue to some engaged in this hazardous
+sport. The modes of destruction employed against the powerful beast are
+very various&mdash;from the poisonous arrow of the Bushman to the rifle of
+the colonist.</p>
+
+<p>The Lion may be safely attacked while sleeping, because of the dullness
+of his sense of hearing, the difficulty of awakening him, and his want
+of presence of mind if he be so awakened. Thus the Bushmen of Africa
+are enabled to keep the country tolerably clear of Lions, without
+encountering any great danger. The bone of the Lion's fore-leg is of
+remarkable hardness, from its containing a greater quantity of phosphate
+of lime than is found in ordinary bones, so that it may resist the
+powerful contraction of the muscles. The texture of this bone is so
+compact that the substance will strike fire with steel. He has little
+sense of taste, his lingual or tongue-nerve not being larger than that
+of a middle-sized dog.</p>
+
+<p>The true Lions belong to the Old World exclusively, and they were
+formerly widely and abundantly diffused; but at present they are
+confined to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
+Asia and Africa, and they are becoming every day more and
+more scarce in those quarters of the globe. That Lions were once found
+in Europe there can be no doubt. Thus it is recorded by Herodotus that
+the baggage-camels of the army of Xerxes were attacked by Lions in the
+country of the Reonians and the Crestonæi on their march from Acanthus
+(near the peninsula of Mount Athos) to Therma, afterwards Thessalonica
+(now Saloniki); the camels alone, it is stated, were attacked, other
+beasts remaining untouched, as well as men. Pausanias copies the above
+story, and states, moreover, that Lions often descended into the plains
+at the foot of Olympus, which separate Macedonia from Thessaly, and that
+Polydamas, a celebrated athlete, slew one of the Lions, although he was
+unarmed.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is Europe the only part of the world from which the form of the Lion
+has disappeared. Lions are no longer to be found in Egypt, Palestine,
+or Syria, where they once were evidently far from uncommon. The
+frequent allusions to the Lion in the Holy Scriptures, and the various
+Hebrew terms there used to distinguish the different ages and sex of
+the animal, prove a familiarity with the habits of the race. Even in
+Asia generally, with the exception of some countries between India and
+Persia and some districts of Arabia, these magnificent beasts have,
+as Cuvier observes, become comparatively rare, and this is not to be
+wondered at. To say nothing of the immense draughts on the race for
+the Roman arena,&mdash;and they were not
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+inconsiderable, for, as Zimmerman
+has shown, there were 1,000 lions killed at Rome in the space of forty
+years,&mdash;population and civilization have gradually driven them within
+narrower limits, and their destruction has been rapidly worked in
+modern times, when firearms have been used against them instead of the
+bow and the spear. Sylla gave a combat of one hundred Lions at once in
+his ædileship; but this exhibition is insignificant when compared with
+those of Pompey and Cæsar, the former of whom exhibited a fight of six
+hundred, and the latter of four hundred Lions. In Pompey's show three
+hundred and fifteen of the six hundred were males. The early Emperors
+consumed great numbers, frequently a hundred at a time, to gratify the
+people.</p>
+
+<p>The African Lion is annually retiring before the persecution of man
+farther and farther from the Cape. Mr. Bennett says of the Lion:&mdash;"His
+true country is Africa, in the vast and untrodden wilds of which, from
+the immense deserts of the north to the trackless forests of the south,
+he reigns supreme and uncontrolled. In the sandy deserts of Arabia,
+in some of the wild districts of Persia, and in the vast jungles of
+Hindostan, he still maintains a precarious footing; but from the classic
+soil of Greece, as well as from the whole of Asia Minor, both of which
+were once exposed to his ravages, he has been entirely dislodged and
+extirpated."</p>
+
+<p>Niebuhr places Lions among the animals of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+Arabia; but their proper
+country is Africa, where their size is the largest, their numbers
+are greatest, and their rage more tremendous, being inflamed by the
+influence of a burning sun upon a most arid soil. Dr. Fryer says that
+those of India are feeble and cowardly. In the interior parts, amidst
+the scorched and desolate deserts of Zaara or Biledugerid, they reign
+the masters; they lord it over every beast, and their courage never
+meets with a check where the climate keeps mankind at a distance. The
+nearer they approach the habitations of the human race the less their
+rage, or rather the greater is their timidity: they have often had
+experienced unequal combats, and finding that there exists a being
+superior to themselves, commit their ravages with more caution; a cooler
+climate, again, has the same effect, but in the burning deserts, where
+rivers and springs are denied, they live in a perpetual fever, a sort of
+madness fatal to every animal they meet with.</p>
+
+<p>The watchfulness and tenacity of the Lion for human prey are very
+extraordinary. Mr. Barrow relates that a Lion once pursued a Hottentot
+from a pool of water, where he was driving his cattle to drink, to an
+olive-tree, in which the man remained for twenty-four hours, while the
+Lion laid himself at the foot of the tree. The patience of the beast was
+at length worn out by his desire to drink, and while he satisfied his
+thirst the Hottentot fled to his house, about a mile off.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> The Lion,
+however, returned to the tree, and tracked the man within three hundred
+yards of his dwelling.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Philip relates a horrible story of a very large Lion recorded at
+Cape Town in the year 1705. He was known to have seized a sentry at a
+tent, and was pursued and fired at by many persons without effect. Next
+morning the Lion walked up a hill <i>with the man in his mouth</i>, when
+about forty shots were fired at him without hitting him; and it was
+perceived by the blood, and a piece of the clothes of the sentry, that
+the Lion had taken him away and carried him with him. He was pursued
+by a band of Hottentots, one of whom he seized with his claws by the
+mantle, when the man stabbed him with an assagai. Other Hottentots
+adorned him with their assagais, so that he looked like a porcupine; he
+roared and leaped furiously, but was at length shot dead. He had a short
+time before carried off a Hottentot and devoured him.</p>
+
+<p>The Bengal or Asiatic Lion is distinguished from that of Southern Africa
+principally by the larger size, the more regular and graceful form, the
+generally darker colour, and the less extensive mane than the African.
+William Harvey, the graceful artist, drew a portrait of a very fine
+Bengal Lion, little more than five years old, and then in the Tower
+collection, and called by the keepers "the Old Lion;" the magnificent
+development of the mane is very striking in this figure.</p>
+
+<p>Maneless Lions have been found on the confines
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> of Arabia, and were
+known to Aristotle and Pliny; a maneless Lion is also said to be
+represented on the monuments of Upper Egypt. The Lion of Arabia has
+neither the courage nor the stature, nor even the beauty, of the Lion of
+Africa. He uses cunning rather than force; he crouches among the reeds
+which border the Tigris and Euphrates, and springs upon all the feeble
+animals which come there to quench their thirst; but he dares not attack
+the boar, which is very common there, and flies as soon as he perceives
+a man, a woman, or even a child. If he catches a sheep he makes off
+with his prey; but he abandons it to save himself when an Arab looks
+after him. If he is hunted by horsemen, which often happens, he does
+not defend himself unless he is wounded, and has no hope of safety by
+flight. In such a case he will fly on a man and tear him to pieces with
+his claws, for it is courage more than strength that he wants. Achmed,
+Pasha of Bagdad from 1724 to 1747, would have been torn by one, after
+breaking his lance in a hunt, if his slave Suleiman, who succeeded him
+in the Pashalik, had not come promptly to his succour and pierced with a
+blow of his yataghan the Lion already wounded by his master.</p>
+
+<p>In December, 1833, Captain Walter Smee exhibited to the Zoological
+Society of London the skins of a Lion and Lioness killed by him in
+Guzerat, and distinguished from those previously known by the absence
+of a mane; the tail was shorter than that of the ordinary Lion, and
+furnished<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
+at its tip with a much larger brush or tuft; and in the
+tuft of the older Lion was a short horny claw or nail. The colour is
+fulvous; which in darker specimens has a tinge of red. A male maneless
+Lion, killed by Captain Smee, measured, including the tail, 8 feet
+9-1/2 inches in length; the impression of his paw on the sand 6-1/4
+inches across, and his height was 3 feet 6 inches. These maneless Lions
+are found in Guzerat, along the banks of the Sombermultee, in low,
+bushy-wooded plains, being driven out of the large adjoining tracts of
+high grass jungle by the natives annually setting fire to the grass.
+Here Captain Smee killed his finest specimens: they were so common in
+this district that he killed no fewer than eleven during a residence of
+about a month, yet scarcely any of the natives had seen them previously
+to his coming amongst them. The cattle were frequently carried off by
+these Lions: some natives attributed this to tigers, which, however,
+do not exist in this part of the country. Captain Smee could not learn
+that men had been attacked by these Lions: when struck by a ball they
+exhibited great boldness, standing as if preparing to resist their
+pursuers, and then going off slowly, and in a very sullen manner.</p>
+
+<p>In captivity the Lioness usually turns extremely savage when she becomes
+a mother; and, in a state of nature, both parents guard their young
+with the greatest jealousy. Early in the year 1823 General Watson, then
+on service in Bengal, being out one morning on horseback, armed with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
+a double-barrelled rifle, was suddenly surprised by a large male Lion,
+which bounded out upon him from the thick jungle, at the distance of
+only a few yards. He instantly fired, and the shot taking complete
+effect, the animal fell almost dead at his feet. No sooner had the Lion
+fallen than the Lioness rushed out, which the General also shot at and
+wounded severely, so that she retired into the thicket. Thinking that
+the den could not be far distant, he traced her to her retreat, and
+there despatched her; and in the den were found two beautiful cubs, a
+male and a female, apparently not more than three months old. This is a
+very touching narrative, even of the Lion family.</p>
+
+<p>The General brought the cubs away; they were suckled by a goat and
+sent to England, where they arrived in September, 1823, as a present
+to George IV., and were lodged in the Tower. When young, Lions mew
+like a cat; at the age of ten or twelve months the mane begins to
+appear in the male; at the age of eighteen months this appendage is
+considerably developed, and they begin to roar. The <i>roar</i> of the adult
+Lion is terrific, from the larynx or upper part of the wind-pipe being
+proportionately greater than in the whale or the elephant, or any other
+animal. Mr. Burchell describes the roar on some occasions to resemble
+the noise of an earthquake; and this terrific effect is produced by
+the Lion laying his head upon the ground and uttering, as it were, a
+half-stifled roar or growl, which is conveyed along the earth.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The natural period of the Lion's life is generally supposed to be twenty
+or twenty-two years. Such is Buffon's limitation; but the animal will,
+it seems, live much longer. Pompey, the great Lion, which died in 1766,
+was said to have been in the Tower above seventy years; and a Lion from
+the river Gambia is stated to have since died in the Tower menagerie at
+the age of sixty-three.</p>
+
+<p>There had been for ages a popular belief that the Lion lashes his sides
+with his tail to stimulate himself into rage; when, in 1832, there was
+exhibited to the Zoological Society a claw obtained from the tip of
+the tail of a Barbary Lion, presented to the Society's menagerie by
+Sir Thomas Reade. It was detected on the living animal by Mr. Bennett,
+and pointed out to the keeper, in whose hands it came off while he
+was examining it. Blumenbach quotes Homer, Lucan, and Pliny, among
+others who have described the Lion (erroneously) as lashing himself
+with his tail, when angry, to provoke his rage. None of these writers,
+however, advert to any peculiarity in the Lion's tail to which so
+extraordinary a function might, however incorrectly, be attributed.
+Didymus Alexandrinus, a commentator on the "Iliad," cited by Blumenbach,
+having found a black prickle, like a horn, among the hair of the tail,
+immediately conjectured that he had ascertained the true cause of the
+stimulus when the animal flourishes his tail in defiance of his enemies,
+remarking that, when punctured by this prickle, the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> Lion became more
+irritable from the pain which it occasioned. The subject, however,
+appears to have slumbered till 1829, when M. Deshayes announced that
+he had found the prickle both of a Lion and Lioness, which had died
+in the French menagerie, and described it as a little nail, or horny
+production, adhering by its base only to the skin, and not to the last
+caudal vertebra. From that period Mr. Wood, the able zoologist, examined
+the tail of every Lion, living or dead, to which he could gain access;
+but in no instance had he succeeded in finding the prickle till the
+above specimen, which was placed in his hands within half an hour after
+its removal from the living animal, and while yet soft at its base,
+where it had been attached to the skin. Its shape was nearly straight,
+then slightly contracted, forming a very obtuse angle, and afterwards
+swelling out like the bulb of a bristle, to its termination. It was
+laterally flattened throughout its entire length, which did not amount
+to quite three-eighths of an inch, of horn colour, and nearly black at
+the tip. Its connexion with the skin must have been very slight, which
+accounts for its usual absence in stuffed as well as living specimens.
+This does not depend upon age, as it was found alike in the Paris Lions,
+of considerable size, as well as in the Zoological Society's Lions,
+very small and young; nor did it depend upon sex. It appears to be
+occasionally present in the Leopard; and, in both Lion and Leopard, it
+is seated at the extreme tip of the tail,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+and is altogether unconnected
+with the terminal caudal vertebra; not fitted on like a cap, but rather
+inserted into the skin.</p>
+
+<p>The use of the prickle, however, it still remained difficult to
+conjecture; but that its existence was known to the ancients is proved
+by the Nimroud sculptures in the British Museum, in an exaggerated
+representation of the claw, in support of this curious fact in natural
+history. The existence of the claw has been proved by Mr. Bennett;
+and "it is no small gratification to be able now to quote in evidence
+of the statement of Mr. Bennett, and of his predecessor. Didymus, of
+Alexandria, the original and authentic document, on the authority of the
+veritable descendants of the renowned hunter Nimroud; which any one may
+read who will take the trouble to examine the sculptured slab in the
+British Museum."<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>
+
+<p>In the Nineveh galleries of the British Museum we also see pictured in
+stone the employment of the Lion, in the life of Assyria and Babylonia,
+three thousand years since; in the events of a succession of dynasties,
+recording the sieges of cities, the combats of warriors, the triumphs
+of Kings, the processions of victors, the chains and fetters of the
+vanquished. To the zoological observer these sculptures present drawings
+<i>ad naturam</i> of tableaux of Lions and Lion-hunts; Lions in combat, as
+well as in moveable dens and cages, and the ferocity of the chase; and
+Lions transfixed with arrows or javelins in the arena. One of the finest
+of these sculptures<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
+is in the representation of a Lion-hunt, on a long
+slab that lined the principal chamber of the most ancient palace at
+Nimroud. The King is in his chariot, drawn by three horses, which the
+charioteer is urging forward to escape the attack of an infuriated Lion
+that has already placed its fore-paws upon the back of the chariot. At
+this critical moment, the Royal descendant of the mighty hunter aims a
+deadly shaft at the head of the roaring and wounded Lion, the position
+of whose tail and limbs is finely indicative of rage and fury. Behind
+the Lion are two of the King's attendants, fully armed, and holding
+their daggers and shields, ready to defend themselves in case the prey
+should escape the arrow of the King. Before the chariot is a wounded
+Lion, crawling from under the horses' feet. The cringing agony conveyed
+in its entire action is well contrasted with the undaunted fury of the
+former. In another slab we have the continuation of the same Lion-hunt,
+representing the triumphant return of the King from the chase. At his
+feet lies the Lion subdued, but not dead.</p>
+
+<p>Of the pageantry of the Lion, we read, in Bell's "Travels," that the
+monarch of Persia had, on days of audience, two great Lions chained on
+each side of the passage to the state-room, led there by keepers in
+golden chains.</p>
+
+<p>Our early English Sovereigns had a menagerie in the Tower from the reign
+of Henry III. (1252.) In 1370 (44 Edward III.) are entries of payments
+made to "the Keeper of the King's Lions and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+Leopards" there, at the
+rate of 6<i>d.</i> a-day for his wages, and 6<i>d.</i> a-day for each beast.
+The number of beasts varied from four to seven. Two young Lions are
+specially mentioned; and "a Lion lately sent by the Lord the Prince,
+from Germany to England, to our Lord the King." And we read, in Lord
+Burghley's "Diary," 1586, of the grant of the keeping of the Lions in
+the Tower, with "the Fine of 12<i>d.</i> per diem, and 6<i>d.</i> for the Meat of
+those Lions." The first menagerie-building was the Lion Tower, to which
+was added a semicircular inclosure, where Lions and Bears were baited
+with dogs, with which James I. and his court were much delighted. A
+Lion was named after the reigning King; and it was popularly believed
+that "when the King dies, the Lion of that name dies after him." The
+last of the Tower animals were transferred to the Zoological Society's
+menagerie, in the Regent's-park, in 1834. The Tower menagerie is well
+described in a handsome volume, with woodcut portraits, by William
+Harvey.</p>
+
+<p>The punishment of being <i>thrown to Lions</i> is stated as common among the
+Romans of the first century; and numerous tales are extant, in which the
+fierce animals became meek and lamb-like before the holy virgins of the
+Church. This, indeed, is the origin of the superstition, nowhere more
+beautifully expressed than in Lord Byron's "Siege of Corinth":&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"'Tis said that a Lion will turn and flee</div>
+<div class="verse">From a maid in the pride of her purity."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Every wild beast show almost has its tame Lion, with which the keeper
+takes the greatest liberties; liberties which the beast will suffer,
+generally speaking, from none but him. Major Smith relates that he
+had seen the keeper of a Lioness stand upon the beast, drag her round
+the cage by her tail, open her jaws, and thrust his head between her
+teeth. Another keeper, at New York, had provided himself with a fur cap,
+the novelty of which attracted the notice of the Lion, which, making
+a sudden grapple, tore the cap off his head as he passed the cage;
+but, perceiving that the keeper was the person whose head he had thus
+uncovered, he immediately laid the cap down. Wombwell, in his menagerie,
+had a fine Lion, Nero, that allowed <i>strangers</i> to enter his den, and
+even put their heads within his jaws. This tameness is not, however, to
+be trusted, since the natural ferocity of some Lions is never safely
+subdued. Lions which have been sometimes familiar, have, on other
+occasions, been known to kill their keepers, and dart at those who have
+incautiously approached too near their cage. All these exhibitions have
+been entirely eclipsed by the feats of Van Amburgh, in his exercise of
+complete control over Lions. The melancholy fate of "the Lion Queen,"
+however, tells of the fatal result of her confidence. The Lion-killing
+feats of Captain Gordon Cumming had a more legitimate object in view&mdash;to
+render us more familiar with the zoological character of the Lion.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Colonization has scarcely yet extirpated the Lion in Algeria, where the
+French colonists make fine sport of "the King of the Beasts." M. Jules
+Gerard, a Nimroud in his way, has been noted for his Lion-killing feats.
+We read of his tracking a large old Lion in the Smauls country, one
+hundred leagues in ten days, without catching a glimpse of anything but
+his foot-prints. At length, accompanied by a native of the country and a
+spahi, Gerard took up his quarters at the foot of a tree upon the path
+which the old Lion had taken. It was moonlight, and Gerard made out two
+Lions sitting about one hundred paces off, and exactly in the shadow of
+the tree. The Arab lay snoring ten paces off, in the full light of the
+moon, and had, doubtless, attracted the attention of the Lions. Gerard
+expressly forbade the spahi to wake the Arab. Our Lion-hunter then got
+up the hill to reconnoitre; the boldest of the Lions came up to within
+ten paces of Gerard, and fifteen of the Arab: the Lion's eye was fixed
+on the latter, and the second Lion placed himself on a level with, and
+four or five paces from, the first. They proved to be both full-grown
+Lionesses. Gerard took aim at the first as she came rolling and roaring
+down to the foot of the tree. The Arab was scarcely awakened, when a
+second ball stretched the Lioness dead upon the spot. Gerard then looked
+out for the second Lioness, who was standing up within fifteen paces,
+looking around her. He fired, and she fell down roaring, and disappeared
+in a field of maize; she
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+fell, but was still alive. Next morning at
+daybreak, at the spot where the Lioness had fallen, were blood marks,
+denoting her track in the direction of a wood. After sending off the
+dead Lioness. Gerard returned to his post of the preceding night. A
+little after sunset the Lion roared in his lair, and continued roaring
+all night. Convinced that the wounded Lioness was there, Gerard sent two
+Arabs to explore the cover, but they durst not. He next evening reached
+the lair, taking with him a goat, which he left with the Arabs: the
+Lioness appeared. Gerard fired, and she fell without a struggle; she was
+believed dead, but she got up again as though nothing was the matter,
+and showed all her teeth. One of the Arabs, within six paces of her,
+seeing her get up, clung to the lower branches of a tree and disappeared
+like a squirrel. The Lioness fell dead at the foot of the tree, a second
+bullet piercing her heart: the first had passed out of the nape of the
+neck without breaking the skull-bone.</p>
+
+<p>The Lions presented by Lord Prudhoe to the British Museum are the best
+sculptured representations of the animal in this country. Although the
+Lion is our national hieroglyphic, and there are many statues of him,
+yet not one among them all appears without a defect, which makes our
+representations of him belong to the class <i>canis</i> instead of <i>felis</i>, a
+fault not found in any Egyptian sculpture.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>
+
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a>
+Bonomi; "Nineveh and its Palaces," p. 249.</p>
+<p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a>
+Bonomi; "Proc. Royal Soc., Literature."</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="BIRD-LIFE" id="BIRD-LIFE"></a>BIRD-LIFE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>"Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they
+reap, nor gather into barns; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them."&mdash;Matthew vi. 26.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"Free tenants of land, air, and ocean,</div>
+<div class="verse">Their forms all symmetry, their motions grace;</div>
+<div class="verse">In plumage delicate and beautiful,</div>
+<div class="verse">Thick without burthen, close as fishes' scales,</div>
+<div class="verse">Or loose as full-blown poppies on the gales;</div>
+<div class="verse">With wings that seem as they'd a soul within them,</div>
+<div class="verse">They bear their owners with such sweet enchantment."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="right1"><i>James Montgomery.</i></div>
+
+<div class="margin-top1">
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_153.jpg" alt="Letter B"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>BIRDS</b>, as regards structure, are perhaps the most perfectly endowed,
+as they are certainly the most beautiful and interesting, of all the
+lower animals. In Birds there is an admirable mechanism and adaptation
+both for gliding in the air and swimming in the water. They surpass all
+other animals in the faculty of continuing their motion without resting,
+as well as in its rapidity. The fleetest courser can scarcely ever run
+more than a mile in a minute, nor support that speed beyond five or six
+such exertions. But the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
+joyous Swallow does this tenfold for pleasure.
+In his usual way he flies at the rate of one mile in a minute; and
+Wilson, the ornithologist, ascertained that the Swallow is so engaged
+for ten hours every day. So can the Blue-bird of America, for a space of
+600 miles. Our Carrier-pigeons move with half that celerity: one flew
+from Liskeard to London, 220 miles, in six hours. The Golden Eagle is
+supposed to dart through the fiercest storm at the rate of 160 miles an
+hour; but one of our smallest Birds, the Swift, can even quadruple the
+most excited quickness of the race-horse for a distance. Spallanzani
+thought that the little Swift travelled at the rate of 250 miles an hour.</p>
+
+<p>Inquiries into the phenomena of the flight of Birds would lead us
+far beyond our limits. The subject is beset with error. Thus, we
+read:&mdash;"Every one has remarked the manner in which Birds of prey float,
+as it were, without any effort, and with steady expanded wings, at great
+heights in the atmosphere. This they are enabled to do from the quantity
+of air contained in the air-cells of their bodies, which air being taken
+in at a low level in the atmosphere, of course rarefies and expands as
+the Bird ascends into higher regions. Their rapidity of descent must
+be accomplished by the sudden expulsion of this air, aided by their
+muscular efforts."</p>
+
+<p>Now, Dr. Crisp has read to the Zoological Society a paper "On the
+Presence or Absence of Air in the Bones of Birds," for the purpose of
+showing the prevailing error upon the subject&mdash;viz., "that the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> bones
+of the Bird are filled with air." Of fifty-two British Birds recently
+dissected by him, only one, the Sparrow-hawk, had the bones generally
+perforated for the admission of air. In thirteen others, the humeri only
+were hollow, and among these were several Birds of short flight. In the
+remaining thirty-eight, neither the <i>humeri</i> nor <i>femora</i> contained
+air, although in this list were several Birds of passage and of rapid
+flight&mdash;Dr. Crisp's conclusion being, that the majority of British Birds
+have no air in their bones, and that, with the exception of the Falcons,
+but very few British Birds have hollow femora.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gould records a most remarkable instance of rapid and sustained
+flight, which he witnessed on his return from North America, whither
+he had proceeded for the purpose of studying the habits and manners of
+the species of <i>Trochilus</i> (Humming Bird), frequenting that portion
+of America. Having remarked that he arrived just prior to the period
+of the migration of this Bird from Mexico to the north, and had ample
+opportunities for observing it in a state of nature, he noticed that
+its actions were very peculiar, and quite different from those of all
+other birds: the flight is performed by a motion of the wings so rapid
+as to be almost imperceptible; indeed, the muscular power of this little
+creature appears to be very great in every respect, as, independently of
+its rapid and sustained flight, it grasps the small twigs, flowers, &amp;c.,
+upon which it alights
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
+with the utmost tenacity. It appears to be most
+active in the morning and evening, and to pass the middle of the day in
+a state of sleepy torpor. Occasionally it occurs in such numbers that
+fifty or sixty birds may be seen in a single tree. When captured it so
+speedily becomes tame that it will feed from the hand or mouth within
+half an hour. Mr. Gould having been successful in keeping a Humming-Bird
+alive in a gauze bag attached to his breast button for three days,
+during which it readily fed from a bottle filled with a syrup of brown
+sugar and water, he determined to make an attempt to bring some living
+examples to England, in which he succeeded; but unfortunately they did
+not long survive their arrival.</p>
+
+<p>The adaptation of colour in Birds to their haunts strikingly tends to
+their preservation. The small Birds which frequent hedges have backs
+of a brownish or brownish-green hue; and their bellies are generally
+whitish, or light-coloured, so as to harmonize with the sky. Thus, they
+become less visible to the hawk or cat that passes above or below them.
+The wayfarer across the fields also treads upon the Skylark before he
+sees it warbling to heaven's gate. The Goldfinch or Thistlefinch passes
+much of its time among flowers, and is vividly coloured accordingly.
+The Partridge can hardly be distinguished from the fallow or stubble
+among which it crouches; and it is considered an accomplishment among
+sportsmen to have a good eye for finding a Hare sitting. In northern
+countries the winter dress
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
+of the Hares and Ptarmigans is white, to
+prevent detection among the snows of those inclement regions.</p>
+
+<p>The Song of Birds is popularly explained by the author of a work,
+entitled, "The Music of Nature," in which he illustrates the vocal
+machinery of Birds as follows:&mdash;"It is difficult to account for so small
+a creature as a Bird making a tone as loud as some animal a thousand
+times its size; but a recent discovery shows that in birds the lungs
+have several openings communicating with corresponding air-bags or
+cells, which fill the whole cavity of the body from the neck downward,
+and into which the air passes and repasses in the progress of breathing.
+This is not all. The very bones are hollow, from which air-pipes are
+conveyed to the most solid parts of the body, even into the quills and
+feathers. The air being rarefied by the heat of their body, adds to
+their levity. By forcing the air out of their body, they can dart down
+from the greatest heights with astonishing velocity. No doubt the same
+machinery forms the basis of their vocal powers, and at once resolves
+the mystery into a natural ordering of parts." This is a very pretty
+story; but, unfortunately, it is not correct, as already shown.</p>
+
+<p>A correspondent of the "Athenæum," writing in 1866, says:&mdash;"He would be
+a bold man who should say that Birds have no delight in their own songs.
+I have been led to conclude from experiments which I have made, and from
+other observations, that certain animals, especially Birds, have not
+only an ear<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+for fine sounds, but also a preference for the things they
+see out of respect to fine colours or other pleasing external features.
+It is chiefly among Birds, when we consider the case of animals, that
+a taste for ornament and for glittering objects, often very startling
+and human-like, is to be found. The habits of the Pheasant, Peacock,
+Turkey, Bird of Paradise, several Birds of the Pigeon and Crow kind, and
+certain Singing Birds, are evidence. The Australian Satin Bower-Bird
+is the most remarkable of that class which exhibit taste for beauty or
+for glittering objects out of themselves&mdash;that is, beauty not directly
+personal; collecting, in fact, little museums of shells, gaudy feathers,
+shining glass, or bits of coloured cloth or pottery. It will be found
+with many Birds that fine plumes, a mirror, and an admirer, are not
+altogether objects devoid of interest.</p>
+
+<p>"Another consideration leading me to the same conclusion, is the fact,
+that beauty in animals is placed on prominent parts, or on parts
+which by erection or expansion are easily, and at the pairing season,
+frequently rendered prominent, such as a crest or tail. A spangle of
+ruby or emerald does not exist, for instance, on the side under the
+wing, which is seldom raised, of our domestic poultry. Such jewels are
+hung where man himself wears his, on the face and forehead, or court
+attention, like our own crowns, trains, shoulder-knots, breast-knots,
+painted cheeks, or jewelled ears. I cannot account for the existence of
+these gaudy ornaments to please man, for nowhere are they more gorgeous
+than in Birds<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+which live in the depth of the tropical forest, where man
+is rarely a visitor; I cannot account for them on the principle that
+they do good to their possessors in the battle for life, because they
+rather render them conspicuous to their enemies, or coveted by man." But
+the beauty of these beings glows most brightly at the season of their
+pairing, and the selection of their mates.</p>
+
+<p>Baron von Tschudi, the Swiss naturalist, has shown the important
+services of Birds in the destruction of insects. Without Birds, no
+agriculture or vegetation would be possible. They accomplish in a few
+months the profitable work of destruction which millions of human hands
+could not do half so well in as many years; and the sage, therefore,
+blamed in very severe terms the foolish practice of shooting and
+destroying Birds, which prevails more especially in Italy, recommending,
+on the contrary, the process of alluring Birds into gardens and
+corn-fields. Among the most deserving Birds he counts Swallows, Finches.
+Titmice, Redtails, &amp;c. The naturalist then cites numerous instances in
+support of his assertion. In a flower-garden of one of his neighbours
+three rose-trees had been suddenly covered with about 2,000 tree-lice.
+At his recommendation a Marsh-Titmouse was located in the garden, which
+in a few hours consumed the whole brood, and left the roses perfectly
+clean. A Redtail in a room was observed to catch about 900 flies in an
+hour. A couple of Night-Swallows have been known to destroy a whole
+swarm of gnats in fifteen minutes. A pair of Golden-crested
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> Wrens
+carry insects as food to their nestlings upon an average thirty-six
+times in an hour. For the protection of orchards and woods Titmice are
+of invaluable service. They consume, in particular, the eggs of the
+dangerous pine-spiders. One single female of such spiders frequently
+lays from 600 to 800 eggs twice in the summer season, while a Titmouse
+with her young ones consume daily several thousands of them. Wrens,
+Nuthatches, and Woodpeckers often dexterously fetch from the crevices of
+tree-bark numbers of insects for their nestlings.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, profitless and wanton Bird-murder is common. The cliffs on the
+coasts of these islands are the resort of numerous kinds of Sea-Fowl,
+and these Fowl, we are told, are slaughtered by thousands, not merely
+for the sake of their feathers, but actually for the mere savage
+pleasure of killing. What speculation can enter into such a proceeding
+it may puzzle the reader to imagine; but it seems that the wing feathers
+of the poor White Gull are now inquired for in the plume-trade, and
+we are actually told of an order given by a single house for 10,000
+of these unhappy Birds. When these facts were stated at the Meeting
+of the British Association, in August, 1868, at Norwich, a lady stood
+up boldly in defence of her sex, and declared that they sinned only
+through ignorance, and would never willingly wear the feathers of a
+Bird destroyed in the act of feeding its young. That part of the case,
+therefore, ought to be now in safe hands. In the Isle of Man a law has
+been passed, called the "Seagull Preservation Act," protecting
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> these
+Birds by heavy penalties, on the ground of their utility in removing
+fish offal and guiding fishermen to shoals of fish. At a certain point
+of our shores a similar protection has been established. A visitor to
+the South Stack Lighthouse, on the coast of Anglesey, may see prodigious
+numbers of Sea-Fowl as tame as complete safety can make them. It has
+been ascertained that in thick weather, when neither light can be
+distinguished nor signal seen, the incessant scream of these Birds gives
+the best of all warnings to the mariner of the vicinity of the rock. The
+noise they make can be heard at a greater distance than the tolling of
+the great bell; and so valuable was this danger-signal considered, that
+an order from the Trinity House forbad even the firing of the warning
+gun, lest the colony of the Sea-Fowl should be disturbed. The signals of
+the bell and the cannon might be neglected or overpowered, but the Birds
+were always there and always audible.</p>
+
+<p>It is inferred that Birds possess some notion of power, and of cause and
+effect, from the various actions which they perform. "Thus," relates Dr.
+Fleming, "we have seen the Hooded Crow in Zetland, when feeding on small
+shell-fish, able to break some of the tenderer kinds by means of its
+bill, aided in some cases by beating them against a stone; but, as some
+of the larger shells, such as the buckie and the welk, cannot be broken
+by such means, the Crow employs another method, by which, in consequence
+of applying foreign power, it accomplishes its object. Seizing the
+shell with its claws, it mounts up into
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+the air, and then loosing its
+hold, causes the shell to fall among stones (in preference to the sand,
+the water, or the soil on the ground), that it may be broken, and give
+easier access to the contained animal. Should the first attempt fail,
+a second or third is tried, with this difference, that the Crow rises
+higher in the air, in order to increase the power of the fall, and
+more effectually remove the barrier to the contained morsel. On such
+occasions we have seen a strong Bird remain an apparently inattentive
+spectator of the process of breaking the shell, but coming to the spot
+with astonishing keenness when the efforts of its neighbour had been
+successful, in order to share the spoil. Pennant mentions similar
+operations performed by Crows on mussels."</p>
+
+<p>The brain of Birds is, in general, large in proportion to the size of
+the body, and the instinctive powers are very perfect. A few kinds are
+rather dull and stupid; but the Parrot, Magpie, Raven, and many others,
+show great vivacity and quickness of intellect. The Raven has a great
+deal of humour in him. One, a most amusing and mischievous creature,
+would get into a well-stocked flower-garden, go to the beds where the
+gardener had sowed a great variety of seeds, with sticks put in the
+ground with labels, and then he would amuse himself with pulling up
+every stick, and laying them in heaps of ten or twelve on the path. This
+used to irritate the old gardener, who drove him away. The Raven knew
+that he ought not to do it, or he would not have done it. He would soon
+return to his mischief, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+when the gardener again chased him (the old
+man could not run very fast), the Raven would just keep clear of the
+rake or the hoe in his hand, dancing before him, and singing as plainly
+as a Raven could. "Tol de rol de rol! tol de rol de rol!" with all kinds
+of mimicking gestures.</p>
+
+<p>The signal of danger among Birds seems to be of universal comprehension;
+because the instant it is uttered we hear the whole flock, though
+composed of various species, repeat a separate moan, and away they
+all scuttle into the bushes for safety. The sentinel Birds give the
+signal, but in some cases they are deceived by false appearances. Dr.
+Edmonstone, in his "View of the Zetland Isles," relates a very striking
+illustration of the neglect of the sentinel, in his remarks on the Shag.
+"Great numbers of this species of the Cormorant are sometimes taken
+during the night, while asleep on the rocks of easy access; but before
+they commit themselves to sleep, one or two of the number are appointed
+to watch. Until these sentinels are secured, it is impossible to make a
+successful impression on the whole body; to surprise them is, therefore,
+the first object. With this view, the leader of the expedition creeps
+cautiously and imperceptibly along the rock, until he gets within a
+short distance of the watch. He then dips a worsted glove into the sea,
+and gently throws water in the face of the guard. The unsuspecting Bird,
+either disliking the impression, or fancying, from what he considers to
+be a disagreeable state of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>
+weather, that all is quiet and safe,
+puts his head under his wing and soon falls asleep. His neck is then
+immediately broken, and the party dispatch as many as they choose."</p>
+
+<p>Addison was a true lover of nature, which he shows in two letters
+written by him to the Earl of Warwick (afterwards his son-in-law),
+when that nobleman was very young. "My dear Lord," he writes, "I have
+employed the whole neighbourhood in looking after Birds'-nests, and
+not altogether without success. My man found one last night, but it
+proved a hen's, with fifteen eggs in it, covered with an old broody
+Duck, which may satisfy your Lordship's curiosity a little; though I
+am afraid the eggs will be of little use to us. This morning I have
+news brought me of a nest that has abundance of little eggs, streaked
+with red and blue veins, that, by the description they give me, must
+make a very beautiful figure in a string. My neighbours are very much
+divided in their opinions upon them: some say they are a Skylark's;
+others will have them to be a Canary-Bird's; but I am much mistaken
+in the colour and turn of the eggs if they are not full of Tomtit's."
+Again, Addison writes:&mdash;"Since I am so near your Lordship, methinks,
+after having passed the day amid more severe studies, you may often
+take a trip hither and relax yourself with these little curiosities of
+nature. I assure you no less a man than Cicero commends the two great
+friends of his age, Scipio and Lælius, for entertaining themselves
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
+at their country-house, which stood on the sea-shore, with picking up
+cockle-shells, and looking after Birds'-nests."</p>
+
+<p>In another letter Addison writes:&mdash;"The business of this is to invite
+you to a concert of music which I have found out in a neighbouring wood.
+It begins precisely at six in the evening, and consists of a Blackbird,
+a Thrush, a Robin-Redbreast, and a Bullfinch. There is a Lark, that, by
+way of overture, sings and mounts till she is almost out of hearing; and
+afterwards, falling down leisurely, drops to the ground as soon as she
+has ended her song. The whole is concluded by a Nightingale, that has a
+much better voice than Mrs. Tofts, and something of the Italian manner
+in her divisions. If your Lordship will honour me with your company, I
+will promise to entertain you with much better music, and more agreeable
+scenes, than you ever met with at the Opera; and will conclude with a
+charming description of a Nightingale out of our friend Virgil:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"'So close, in poplar shades, her children gone,</div>
+<div class="verse">The mother Nightingale laments alone;</div>
+<div class="verse">Whose nest some prying churl had found, and thence</div>
+<div class="verse">By stealth convey'd the unfeathered innocence:</div>
+<div class="verse">But she supplies the night with mournful strains,</div>
+<div class="verse">And melancholy music fills the plains.'"</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="BIRDS_EGGS_AND_NESTS" id="BIRDS_EGGS_AND_NESTS"></a>BIRDS' EGGS AND NESTS.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>THE</b> Eggs of Birds are variously tinted and mottled, and hence they
+become objects of interest to the collector. In this diversity of
+colour nature has, doubtless, some final object in view; and though not
+in every instance, yet in many, we can certainly see a design in the
+adaptation of the colours to the purpose of concealment, according to
+the habits of the various classes of Birds. Thus, as a general rule, the
+Eggs of Birds which have their nests in dark holes, or which construct
+nests that almost completely exclude the light, are white; as is also
+the case with those Birds that constantly sit on their Eggs, or leave
+them only for a short time during the night. Eggs of a light blue or
+light green tint will also be found in nests that are otherwise well
+concealed; while, on the other hand, a great proportion of those nests
+that are in exposed situations have Eggs varying in tints and spots in a
+remarkable degree, corresponding with the colours of external objects in
+their immediate neighbourhood.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
+Thus, a dull green colour is common in
+most gallinaceous Birds that form their nests in grass, and in aquatic
+Birds among green hedges; a bright green colour is prevalent among Birds
+that nestle among trees and bushes; and a brown mottled colour is found
+in those Eggs that are deposited among furze, heath, shingle, and grey
+rocks and stones.</p>
+
+<p>Birds'-nesting, we need hardly remark, is a favourite pursuit of
+boyhood; but, in some cases, its attractions have induced young
+persons to take up more important branches of natural history, or the
+collection, systematic arrangement, and comparison of Birds' Eggs, which
+is, in scientific study, termed Oology; and as the study of Birds cannot
+be considered complete until they are known in every stage, it forms a
+branch of Ornithology. In this case Birds'-nesting has an useful object;
+but many persons are content to acquire collections of Eggs without
+troubling themselves about the Birds which have laid them.</p>
+
+<p>The late Mr. John Wolley, M.A., was one of the leading authorities
+upon the subject of European Ornithology, and was one of a number
+of University men, who, about twelve years ago, established the
+ornithological journal called "The Ibis," and who visited far-distant
+and unexplored regions, where they might hope to discover strange
+Birds and unknown Eggs. For several years Algiers and Tunis were their
+favourite resorts, and the meeting-places of many of our rarer Birds
+were hunted up in these
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>
+countries, even so far as the Desert of the
+Great Sahara. Others preferred the New World as the scene of their
+labours, and collected long series of specimens in the highland of
+Guatemala, and the tropical forests of Belize. Mr. Wolley, however,
+confined his attention principally to the northern parts of Europe&mdash;that
+region being the breeding-quarters of a large number of Birds which
+are only known in this country as winter visitants. In order to be
+at his collecting-station at Muonioniska, on the frontier of Finnish
+Lapland, at the earliest commencement of the breeding-season, Mr. Wolley
+frequently passed the whole winter in that remote region. But the rigour
+of the climate under the Arctic Circle contributed to bring on a malady
+which terminated fatally in November, 1859.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the decease of Mr. Wolley, his large collection of Birds' Eggs,
+in accordance with his last wishes, became the property of his friend,
+Mr. Alfred Newton, who is publishing a Catalogue of Mr. Wolley's Egg
+Cabinet, with notes from the deceased naturalist's journals. The first
+part contains the Eggs of Birds of Prey (<i>Accipitres</i>), recognisable at
+once by their strongly-hooked bill, formed to assist them in tearing
+their prey, and their large feet and sharpened claws, which aid them to
+grasp it. They are divisible into two very distinct groups&mdash;the diurnal
+Birds of Prey, consisting of the Hawks, Vultures, and Eagles; and the
+nocturnal Birds of Prey, or Owls. In the latter the Eggs are invariably
+colourless; in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
+the former they are often strongly marked, and present
+some of the most beautiful objects in the whole series of Birds' Eggs.</p>
+
+<p>In the most recently published list of European birds fifty-two species
+of birds of prey are given as occurring more or less frequently within
+the limits of our continent. Of the three generally-recognised species
+of European Vultures two are well represented, as regards their eggs,
+in the Wolleyan series. A few years ago the nesting of all these birds
+was utterly unknown to naturalists, and it was mainly through the
+exertions of Mr. Wolley and his friends that specimens first reached
+our collectors' cabinets. Here were found both the Egyptian Vulture
+and the Griffon breeding abundantly in the Eastern Atlas in 1857; and
+the eyries of these birds have since been visited by other collectors
+in the same country. The Eggs of the former of these Vultures are
+remarkable for their deep and rich coloration. The productions of the
+Griffon are not nearly so handsome, and are occasionally altogether
+destitute of markings. Of the Eagles of Europe the series of Eggs is
+very full, especially of the two well-known British species&mdash;the Golden
+Eagle and Sea Eagle. The Golden or Mountain Eagle is even now-a-days
+much more common in the remote parts of the British islands than is
+usually supposed to be the case. In 1852 Mr. Wolley was acquainted
+with five nests of this bird in various parts of Scotland, and there
+were undoubtedly at least as many more of which he did
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> not learn the
+particulars. The eyrie is usually placed in some mountainous district,
+on the ledge of some "warm-looking" rock, well clothed with vegetation,
+and often by no means wild or exposed. Not unfrequently, under proper
+guidance, one can walk into the nest almost without climbing. Mr. Newton
+gives a very entertaining account of the taking of a pair of eggs from
+a nest in Argyllshire in 1861, where this seems to have been the case.
+In the whole ascent there was only one "ticklish place," where it was
+necessary to go sideways on a narrow ledge round some rocks. The Sea
+Eagle, on the other hand, generally breeds on the high cliffs upon the
+coast, often selecting the most inaccessible position for its eyrie.
+Sometimes, however, it will choose an island in the middle of an inland
+loch, and in such case places its nest upon the ground or in a tree.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wolley's well-written notes of his adventures in quest of both
+these Eagles, as also those relating to the other rapacious birds, will
+be read with much interest; as will also the details concerning the
+nesting-habits of many of the rarer species of European birds, several
+of which, such as the Rough-legged Buzzard and the Lapp Owl, were first
+tracked to their breeding-quarters in the remotest wilds of Scandinavia
+by this indefatigable naturalist.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>
+
+<p>Of large Eggs we are most familiar with those of the Ostrich, of which
+Mr. Burchell, when in Africa,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+found twenty-five Eggs in a hollow
+scratched in the sand, six feet in diameter, surrounded by a trench, but
+without grass, leaves, or sticks, as in the nests of other birds. In
+the trench were nine more Eggs, intended, as the Hottentots observed,
+as the first food of the twenty-five young Ostriches. Between sixty and
+seventy Eggs have been found in one nest; each is equal to twenty-four
+Eggs of the domestic hen, and holds five pints and a quarter of liquid.
+The shells are dirty white. The Hottentots string them together as
+belts, or garlands, and they are frequently mounted as cups. One Ostrich
+Egg is a sufficient meal for three persons. The Egg is cooked over the
+fire without either pot or water, the shell answering the purpose of the
+first, and the liquid nature of its contents that of the other.</p>
+
+<p>Less familiar to the reader are the gigantic Eggs of the Epyornis, a
+bird which formerly lived in Madagascar. One of these Eggs contains the
+substance of 140 hens' Eggs. Mr. Geoffroy St. Hilaire describes some
+portions of an Egg of the Epyornis which show the Egg to have been of
+such a size as to be capable of containing about ten English quarts;
+that in the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes can only contain 8-3/4
+quarts. Mr. Strickland, in some notices of the Dodo and its kindred,
+published in 1849, says that in the previous year a Mr. Dumarele, a
+French merchant at Bourbon, saw at Port Leven, Madagascar, an enormous
+Egg which held "<i>thirteen wine quart bottles of fluid</i>." The natives
+stated that the Egg was found in the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+jungle, and "that such Eggs were
+<i>very, very rarely</i> met with."</p>
+
+<p>A word or two about the nests of such gigantic birds. Captain Cook
+found, on an island near the north-east coast of New Holland, a nest
+"of a most enormous size. It was built with sticks upon the ground, and
+was no less than six-and-twenty feet in circumference, and two feet
+eight inches high." (Kerr's "Collection of Voyages and Travels," xiii.,
+318.) Captain Flinders found two similar nests on the south coast of New
+Holland, in King George's Bay. In his "Voyage," &amp;c., London, 1818, he
+says, "They were built upon the ground, from which they rose above two
+feet, and were of vast circumference and great interior capacity; the
+branches of trees and other matter of which each nest was composed being
+enough to fill a cart."</p>
+
+<p>Among the varieties of Birds'-nests are some very curious homes, of
+which we have but space to notice a few. The pendulous nest of the
+Indian Baya-bird is usually formed of the fibres of the palmyra, the
+cocoa-nut palm, and wild date of India, sometimes mixed with grass,
+neatly interlaced, and very strongly made. It consists of only one
+circular chamber, with a long tubular passage leading to it, and is
+suspended from a tree, preferred if overhanging water. The natives of
+India say the Baya lights up its nest with fire-flies. The bird lays
+from four to six white eggs. Bayas are of a very social disposition:
+numbers build on the same tree, or neighbouring trees, and singing in
+concert during<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
+the breeding season. The Baya is very docile, and taught
+to fly off the finger and return again; to dart after a ring or small
+coin, dropped into a deep well, and catch it before it reaches the
+water; to fetch and carry, and perform similar tricks.</p>
+
+<p>The nest of the brilliant Golden-banded Oriole is a hammock of twisted
+fibrous substances, and is suspended in a low shrub, so as to swing to
+the breeze. The twine-like fibres of which it is woven are the filaments
+of the gigantic palm. The threads break away from the leaf, and hang
+like fringe to the magnificent foliage.</p>
+
+<p>The Tailor-birds are the best nest-builders of all the feathered tribes.
+They interweave their nests between the twigs and branches of shrubs,
+or suspend the nests from them; and some of these birds have exercised
+arts from the creation which man has found of the greatest benefit to
+him since he discovered them. These birds, indeed, may be called the
+inventors of the several arts of the weaver, the sempstress, and the
+tailor; whence some of them have been denominated Weaver and Tailor
+Birds. The nests of the latter are, however, most remarkable. India
+produces several species of Tailor-birds that sew together leaves for
+the protection of their eggs and nestlings from the voracity of serpents
+and apes. They generally select the end of a branch or twig, and sew
+with cotton, thread, and fibres. Colonel Sykes has seen some in which
+the thread was literally knotted at the end. The inside of these nests
+is lined usually with down and cotton.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Tailor-birds are not confined to India or tropical countries. Italy can
+boast a species which exercises the same art. Mr. Gould has a specimen
+of this bird in his possession, and the Zoological Society have a nest
+in their Museum. This little bird, a species of the genus <i>sylvia</i>, in
+summer and autumn frequents marshes; but in the spring it seeks the
+meadows and corn-fields, in which, at that season, the marshes being
+bare of the sedges which cover them in summer, it is compelled to
+construct its nest in tussocks of grass on the brinks of ditches; but
+the leaves of these being weak, easily split, so that it is difficult
+for our little sempstresses to unite them, and so form the skeleton
+of the fabric. From this and other circumstances, the spring nests of
+these birds differ so widely from those made in the autumn that it seems
+next to impossible that both should be the work of the same artisan.
+The latter are constructed in a thick bunch of sedge or reed: they are
+shaped like a pear, being dilated below and narrow above, so as to leave
+an aperture sufficient for the ingress and egress of the bird. The
+greatest horizontal diameter of the nest is about two inches and a half,
+and the vertical is five inches.</p>
+
+<p>The most wonderful thing in the construction of these nests is the
+method to which the little bird has recourse to keep united the living
+leaves of which it is composed. The sole in the weaving, more or less
+delicate, of the materials, forms the principle adopted by other birds
+to bind together the walls of their nests; but this sylvia is no weaver,
+for the leaves<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
+of the sedges or reeds are united by real stitches.
+In the edge of each leaf she makes, probably with her beak, minute
+apertures, through which she contrives to pass, perhaps by means of
+the same organ, one or more cords formed of spiders' web, particularly
+that of their egg-pouches. Those threads are not very long, and are
+sufficient to pass two or three times from one leaf to another. They
+are of unequal thickness, and have knots here and there, which, in some
+places, divide into two or three branches.</p>
+
+<p>This is the manner in which the exterior of the nest is formed: the
+interior consists mainly of down, chiefly from plants, a little
+spiders' web being intermixed, which helps to keep the other substances
+together. The upper part and sides of the nest, that is, the external
+and internal, are in immediate contact; but in the lower part a greater
+space intervenes, filled with the slender foliage of grasses, and other
+materials, which render soft and warm the bed on which the eggs are to
+repose. This little bird feeds on insects. Its flight is rectilinear,
+but consists of many curves, with the concavity upwards. These curves
+equal in number the strokes of the wing, and at every stroke its whistle
+is heard, the intervals of which correspond with the rapidity of its
+flight.</p>
+
+<p>The Australian Bower-bird, as its name implies, builds its nest
+like an arbour or bower, with twigs: in the British Museum are two
+specimens, each decorated&mdash;one with bones and fresh-water shells, and
+the other with feathers and land-shells; remarkable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
+instances of taste
+for ornament already referred to in a preceding page. The Satin or
+Bower-bird is described by settlers in Australia as "a very troublesome
+rascal," which besets gardens; if once allowed to make a lodgment there
+it is very troublesome to get rid of him; he signalizes his arrival by
+pulling up, in his restless fussy way, everything in the garden that he
+can tug out of the ground, even to the little sticks to mark the site of
+seeds. A settler had formed a garden in the bush; there was no enclosure
+of the kind for miles in any direction: a flock of Bower-birds came; he
+got his gun and shot two or three; the flock went off, and he never saw
+another bird of the kind.</p>
+
+<p>The Cape Swallows build nests which show extraordinary instinct allied
+to reason. A pair of these built their nest on the outside of a house
+at Cape Town against the angle formed by the wall and the board which
+supported the eaves. The whole of this nest was covered in, and it was
+furnished with a long neck or passage, through which the birds passed in
+and out. It resembled a longitudinal section of a Florence oil flask.
+This nest having crumbled away after the young birds had quitted it, the
+same pair, or another of the same species, built on the old foundation
+again. But this time an improvement was observable in the plan of it
+that can hardly be referred to the dictates of mere instinct. The body
+of the nest was of the same shape as before, but instead of a single
+passage it was furnished with one at each side, running along
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> the angle
+of the roof; and on watching the birds, they were seen invariably to go
+in at one passage and come out at the other. Besides saving themselves
+the trouble of turning in the nest and disturbing, perhaps, its interior
+arrangement, they were guarded by this contrivance against a surprise by
+serpents, which frequently creep up along the wall, or descend from the
+thatch, and devour both the mother and her brood.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Livingstone relates a very curious instance of "Bird Confinement"
+under very strange circumstances. In passing through Mopane country, in
+South Africa, his men caught a great number of the birds called <i>Korwé</i>
+in their breeding-places, which were holes in the mopane trees. They
+passed the nest of a Korwé just ready for the female to enter; the
+orifice was plastered on both sides, but a space was left of a heart
+shape, and exactly the size of the bird's body. The hole in the tree
+was in every case found to be prolonged some distance upwards above the
+opening, and thither the Korwé always fled to escape being caught. In
+another nest that was found, one white egg, much like that of a pigeon,
+was laid, and the bird dropped another when captured: she had four
+besides in the ovarium. Dr. Livingstone first saw this bird at Kolenbeng
+in the forest: he saw a slit only, about half an inch wide and three or
+four inches long, in a slight hollow of a tree; a native broke the clay
+which surrounded the slit, put his arm into the hole, and brought out a
+red-beaked Hornbill, which he killed. He told Dr. Livingstone that when
+the female enters
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+her nest she submits to a real confinement. The male
+plasters up the entrance, leaving only a narrow slit by which to feed
+his mate, and which exactly suits the form of his beak. The female makes
+a nest of her own feathers, lays her eggs, hatches them, and remains
+with the young till they are fully fledged. During all this time, which
+is stated to be two or three months, the male continues to feed her
+and the young family. The prisoner generally becomes quite fat, and is
+esteemed a very dainty morsel by the natives; while the poor slave of a
+husband gets so lean that, on the sudden lowering of the temperature,
+which sometimes happens after a fall of rain, he is benumbed, falls
+down, and dies.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Livingstone, on passing the same tree at Kolenbeng about eight days
+afterwards, found the hole plastered up again, as if, in the short time
+that had elapsed, the disconsolate bird-husband had procured another
+wife. Dr. L. saw a nest with the plastering not quite finished, and
+others completed; he also received elsewhere, besides Kolobeng, the same
+account that the bird comes forth when the young are fully-fledged, at
+the period when the corn is ripe; indeed, her appearance abroad with
+her young is one of the signs they have for knowing when it ought to be
+so: the time is between two and three months. She is said sometimes to
+hatch two eggs, and, when the young of these are full-fledged, the other
+two are just out of the egg-shells: she then leaves the nest with the
+two elder, the orifice is again plastered up, and both male and female
+attend to the wants of the young.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There is a specimen of a nest in the Gardens of the Zoological Society,
+which merits description, besides that of the Bower-bird. Such is the
+nest of the Brush Turkey, which appears more like a small haystack than
+an ordinary nest, and the methodical manner in which it is constructed
+is thus described:&mdash;Tracing a circle of considerable radius, the birds
+begin to travel round it, continually grasping with their huge feet the
+leaves and grasses and dead twigs which are lying about, and flinging
+them inwards towards the centre. Each time that they complete their
+round, they narrow their circle, so that in a short time they clear away
+a circular belt, having in its centre a low irregular mass. By repeating
+the same process, however, they decrease the diameter of the mound as
+they increase its height, and at last a large and rudely conical mound
+is formed.</p>
+
+<p>In this nest as many as a bushel of eggs are deposited, at regular
+intervals, long end downwards. The leaves form a fermenting mass, which
+relieves the mother of the necessity of setting upon them. The male,
+however, has to regulate the temperature of the mass, which would
+otherwise get too hot. This he does by making a central ventilating
+shaft, which carries off the superfluous heat; and, lest the temperature
+should fall too low, he is constantly engaged in covering and uncovering
+the eggs in order to hit the exact temperature to be applied until the
+egg is warmed into life.</p>
+
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a>
+Abridged from the "Saturday Review."</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_EPICURES_ORTOLAN" id="THE_EPICURES_ORTOLAN"></a>THE EPICURE'S ORTOLAN.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_180.jpg" alt="Letter W"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>WE</b> have allotted this bird to the epicure,
+because it is rarely heard
+of but in association with his luxurious table. Mr. Beckford describes
+the Ortolans among the delicacies which he saw in the kitchen of the
+monastery of Batalha as "lumps of celestial fatness."</p>
+
+<p>Ortolan is the French and English names for a species of <i>Fringillidæ</i>
+(Finches). It is the <i>Hortulanus</i> of Gesner and other naturalists;
+<i>Miliaria pinguescens</i> of Frisch; <i>Emberiza Hortulana</i> of Linnæus;
+<i>Ortolano</i> of the Italians generally; <i>Tordino Berluccio</i> of the
+Venetians; <i>Garton Ammer</i> and <i>Fetammer</i> of the Germans; and <i>Gerste
+Keneu</i> of the Netherlanders. This wide dispersion on the Continent
+bespeaks the pet character of the bird. Montagu terms it the
+Green-headed Bunting.</p>
+
+<p>The French have a fanciful derivation of the name: they say it is from
+the Italian word for gardener, which is from the Latin <i>hortus</i>, garden;
+because, according to Menage, in Italy, where the bird is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> common, it is
+quite at home in the hedges of gardens.</p>
+
+<p>The male bird has the throat, circle round the eyes, and a narrow band
+springing from the angle of the bill, yellow; head and neck grey, with a
+tinge of olive, and small brown spots; feathers black, edged with red;
+breast, belly, and abdomen, reddish grey, the feathers terminated with
+ash-colour; tail blackish, two external feathers, in part white; length
+rather more than six inches. There are, also, varieties marked white,
+green, blackish, and entirely black. The nest, which is constructed
+of fibres of plants and leaves, is frequently found on the ground in
+corn-fields, and sometimes in hedges and bushes.</p>
+
+<p>The Ortolan is not famed for its song, which is, however, soft
+and sweet. Like the Nightingale, to which it has other points of
+resemblance, the Ortolan sings after, as well as before sunset. It was
+this bird that Varro, the lyric poet, called his companion by night and
+day.</p>
+
+<p>The south of Europe may be considered the summer and autumnal
+head-quarters of the Ortolan, though it is a summer visitor in the
+central and northern parts. In Italy it is said to be common by Temminck
+and others. The Prince of Musignano states it to be found in the Sabine
+mountains; adding that it rarely flies in the plains of Rome, but is
+frequent in Tuscany. Lapland, Russia, Denmark. Sweden, and Norway,
+are among the countries visited by it. In the British Isles it seems
+only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
+entitled to rank as an autumnal visitor, but it may occur more
+frequently than is generally supposed; for, especially to an unpractised
+eye, it might be mistaken for the Yellow Hammer, and in some states of
+plumage for other Buntings. It has been taken in the neighbourhood of
+London. In 1837 there was a live specimen in an aviary of the Zoological
+Society in Regent's-park; and many Ortolans are sent alive to the London
+market from Prussia. There is, however, some consolation for the rarity
+of the Ortolan in England. It is approached in delicacy by our Wheatear,
+which is termed the <i>English Ortolan</i>. Hence it has been pursued as a
+delicate morsel throughout all its island haunts. Bewick captured it at
+sea, off the coast of Yorkshire, in May, 1822. Every spring and autumn
+it may be observed at Gibraltar, on its migration. Mr. Strickland saw it
+at Smyrna in April. North Africa is its winter residence. Colonel Sykes
+notes it in his catalogue of the birds of the Deccan.</p>
+
+<p>Ortolans are solitary birds; they fly in pairs, rarely three together,
+and never in flocks. They are taken in traps from March or April to
+September, when they are often poor and thin; but if fed with plenty
+of millet-seed and other grain, they become sheer lumps of fat, and
+delicious morsels. They are fattened thus in large establishments in the
+south of Europe; Mr. Gould states this to be effected in Italy, and the
+south of France, in dark rooms; and the Prince of Musignano, having
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
+described the process, adds the relishing words. "Carne exquisita."</p>
+
+<p>The fattening process in Italy is one of great refinement in the manner
+of feeding. It is the fat of the Ortolan which is so delicious; but it
+has a peculiar habit of feeding which is opposed to the rapid fattening,
+this is, it feeds only at the rising of the sun. Yet this peculiarity
+has not proved an insurmountable obstacle to the Italian gourmands.
+The Ortolans are placed in a dark chamber, perfectly dark, with only
+one aperture in the wall. The food is scattered over the floor of the
+chamber. At a certain hour in the morning the keeper of the birds places
+a lantern in the orifice of the wall; when the dim light thrown from the
+lantern on the floor of the apartment induces the Ortolans to believe
+that the sun is about to rise, and they greedily consume the food upon
+the floor. More food is now scattered over it, and the lantern is
+withdrawn.</p>
+
+<p>The Ortolans, rather surprised at the shortness of the day, think it
+their duty to fall asleep, as night has spread her sable mantle round
+them. During sleep, little of the food being expended in the production
+of force, most of it goes to the formation of muscle and fat. After they
+have been allowed to repose for one or two hours, in order to complete
+the digestion of the food taken, their keeper again exhibits the lantern
+through the aperture. The "rising sun" a second time illumines the
+apartment, and the birds, awaking from their slumber, apply themselves
+voraciously to the food on the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
+floor; after having discussed which,
+they are again enveloped in darkness. Thus the sun is made to shed its
+rising rays into the chamber floor four or five times every day, and
+as many nights following. The Ortolans thus treated become like little
+balls of fat in a few days. This not uninteresting process has been
+detailed by Dr. Lyon Playfair to the Royal Agricultural Society. It
+may, probably, be applied to purposes with less luxurious objects than
+fattening Ortolans.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding its delicacy, the Ortolan fattens very fast; and it is
+this lump of fatness that is its merit, and has sometimes caused it
+to be preferred to the Becafico. According to Buffon, the Greeks and
+Romans understood fattening the Ortolan upon millet. But a lively French
+commentator doubts this statement: he maintains that had the ancients
+known the Ortolan, they would have deified it, and built altars to
+it upon Mount Hymettus and the Saniculum; adding, did they not deify
+the horse of Caligula, which was certainly not worth an Ortolan? and
+Caligula himself, who was not worth so much as his horse? However, this
+dispute belongs to the "classics of the table."</p>
+
+<p>The Ortolan is considered sufficiently fat when it is a handful, and
+is judged by feeling it, and not by appearance. It should not be
+killed with violence, like other birds; this might crush and bruise
+the delicate flesh, and spoil the <i>coup-d'&oelig;il</i>, to avoid which it is
+recommended to plunge the head of the Ortolan into a glass of brandy.
+The culinary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
+instruction is as follows: having picked the bird of its
+feathers, singe it with the flame of paper or spirits of wine; cut off
+the beak and ends of the feet; do not draw it; put it into a paper case
+soaked in olive oil, and broil it over a slow fire of slack cinders,
+like that required for a pigeon <i>à la crapaudine</i>; in a few minutes the
+Ortolan will swim in its own fat, and will be cooked. Some gourmands
+wrap each bird in a vine-leaf.</p>
+
+<p>A gourmand will take an Ortolan by the legs and craunch it in delicious
+mouthfuls, so as absolutely to lose none of it. More delicate feeders
+cut the bird into quarters, and lay aside the gizzard; the rest may be
+eaten, even to the bones, which are sufficiently tender for the most
+delicate mouth to masticate without inconvenience.</p>
+
+<p>On the Continent, Ortolans are packed in tin boxes for exportation.
+They may be bought in London for half-a-crown a-piece. A few poulterers
+import Ortolans in considerable numbers, and some have acquired the art
+of fattening these birds.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+Alexis Soyer put into the hundred guinea
+dish which he prepared for the royal table at the grand banquet at York,
+in 1850, five pounds worth of Ortolans, which were obtained from Belgium.</p>
+
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTE</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a>
+The Ortolan figures in a curious anecdote of individual epicurism
+in the last century. A gentleman of Gloucestershire had one son, whom he
+sent abroad to make the grand tour of the Continent, where he paid more
+attention to the cookery of nations, and luxurious living, than anything
+else. Before his return his father died and left him a large fortune.
+He now looked over his note-book to discover where the most exquisite
+dishes were to be had, and the best cooks obtained. Every servant in his
+house was a cook; his butler, footman, coachman, and grooms&mdash;all were
+cooks. He had also three Italian cooks&mdash;one from Florence, another from
+Vienna, and another from Viterbo&mdash;for dressing one Florentine dish. He
+had a messenger constantly on the road between Brittany and London to
+bring the eggs of a certain kind of plover found in the former country.
+This prodigal was known to eat a single dinner at the expense of 70<i>l.</i>,
+though there were but two dishes. In nine years he found himself
+getting poor, and this made him melancholy. When totally ruined, having
+spent 150,000<i>l.</i>, a friend one day gave him a guinea to keep him from
+starving, and he was found in a garret next day <i>broiling an Ortolan</i>,
+for which he had paid a portion of the alms.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="TALK_ABOUT_TOUCANS" id="TALK_ABOUT_TOUCANS"></a>TALK ABOUT TOUCANS.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>THE</b> Toucans, a family of climbing-birds of
+tropical America, appear to
+have been known in Europe by the length and great size of their bills,
+long before the birds themselves found their way to England. Belon,
+in 1555, described the bill of one of the family as half a foot long,
+large as a child's arm, pointed, and black at the tip, white elsewhere,
+notched on the edges, hollow within, and so finely delicate as to be
+transparent and thin as parchment; and its beauty caused it to be kept
+in the cabinets of the curious. For more than a century after Belon's
+work, the birds themselves had not been seen in England; for, in the
+<i>Museum Tradescantianum</i>, the standard collection of the time, and
+which, from the list of contributors, appears to have been the great
+receptacle for all curiosities, we read of an "Azacari (or Toucan) of
+Brazil; has his beak four inches long, almost two thick, like a Turk's
+sword" (A.D. 1656). From this description Tradescant
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
+knew the nature of
+the bird, if he had not seen it.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Swainson states, that the enormous bills give to these birds a most
+singular and uncouth appearance. Their feet are formed like those of
+the parrot, more for grasping than climbing; and as they live among
+trees, and proceed by hopping from branch to branch, their grasping
+feature is particularly adapted for such habits. They live retired in
+the deep forests, mostly in small companies. Their flight is strait and
+laborious, but not graceful; while their movements, as they glide rather
+than hop from branch to branch, are elegant.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gould, in his grand Monograph of the Toucans, or <i>Ramphastidæ</i>,
+remarks, that it was only within a few years of the time of Linnæus that
+actual specimens of the Toucan had been received in Europe. The beaks,
+however, of these birds, regarded as curiosities, had occasionally found
+their way to our shores, and had occasioned some curious conjectures.
+The earliest shape resembled a Turkish scimitar.</p>
+
+<p>The Toucans (a word derived from their Brazilian name, <i>Taca, Tucà</i>)
+received from Linnæus the title of <i>Ramphastos</i>, in allusion to
+the great volume of the beak (&#929;&#945;&#956;&#966;&#959;&#962;), a family
+(<i>Ramphastidæ</i>). In some respects, indeed, they resemble the Hornbills
+in the development of the beak. The Toucans may be said to represent
+in America the Hornbills in India and Africa. Large as is the beak of
+the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+Toucan compared with the size of the body, it is in reality very
+light. Its outer sheathing is somewhat elastic, very thin, smooth, and
+semi-transparent; and the interior consists of a maze of delicate cells,
+throughout which the olfactory nerves are multitudinously distributed.
+The nostrils are basal, the edges of each mandible are serrated, and
+the colouring of the whole beak is bright, rich, and often relieved by
+contrasted markings. But these tints begin to fade after death, and
+become ultimately dissipated. The eyes are surrounded by a considerable
+space of naked skin, often very richly tinted. The tongue is very long,
+slender, horizontally flattened, pointed, and, except at its base,
+horny; it is fringed or feathered along each side. The wings are short,
+concave, and comparatively feeble.</p>
+
+<p>The tail is variable, equal and squared; it is remarkable for the
+facility with which it can be retroverted or turned up, so as to lie
+upon the back. This peculiarity results from a modification of structure
+in the caudal vertebræ, which enables the tail to turn with a jerk by
+the action of certain muscles, as if it were fixed on a hinge put into
+action by means of a spring. When the retroversion is accomplished, the
+muscles which caused it become passive, and offer no resistance to their
+antagonists, which restore the tail to its ordinary direction. When they
+sleep they puff out their plumage, they retrovert the tail over the
+back, draw the head between the shoulders; the bill begins to turn over
+the right shoulder, and becomes at last buried in the plumage of the
+back; at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
+same time the pinions of the wings droop, and conceal the
+feet. The bird now resembles an oval ball of puffed-up feathers, and is
+well protected against the cold.</p>
+
+<p>Toucans utter, from time to time, harsh, clattering, and discordant
+cries. "Some," says Mr. Gould, "frequent the humid woods of the
+temperate regions, while others resort to comparatively colder
+districts, and dwell at an elevation of from six to ten thousand
+feet. Those inhabiting the lofty regions are generically different
+from those residing in the low lands, and are clothed in a more thick
+and sombre-coloured plumage. All the members of the Hill-Toucans are
+distinguished by their bills being strong, heavy, and hard, when
+compared with those of the true Toucans and Araçaris, all of which
+have their bills of a more delicate structure, and in several species
+so thin and elastic on the sides as to be compressible between the
+fingers." Their food in a state of nature consists of fruit, eggs, and
+nestling birds; to which, in domestication, are added small birds, mice,
+caterpillars, and raw flesh. They incubate in the hollows of gigantic
+trees.</p>
+
+<p>Faber was told by Fryer, Alaysa, and other Spaniards who had lived
+long in America, and also by the Indians, that the Toucan even hews
+out holes in trees, in which to nidify; and Oviedo adds, that it is
+from this habit of chipping the trees that the bird is called by the
+Spaniards <i>Carpintero</i>, and by the Brazilians <i>Tacataca</i>, in imitation,
+apparently, of the sound it thus makes.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The larger feed upon bananas and other succulent plants; the smaller
+upon the smaller fruits and berries. Prince Maximilian de Wied states,
+that in Brazil he found only the remains of fruits in their stomachs,
+and adds, that they make sad havoc among plantations of fruit-trees. He
+was informed, however, that they steal and eat birds, but never himself
+saw them in the act. They abound in the vast forests, and are killed
+in great number in the cooler season in the year for the purposes of
+the table. In their manners the Toucans resemble the Crow tribe, and
+especially the Magpies: like them, they are very troublesome to the
+birds of prey, particularly to the Owls, which they surround, making a
+great noise, all the while jerking their tails upwards and downwards.
+Their feathers, especially from their yellow breasts, are used by the
+Indians for personal decoration.</p>
+
+<p>Azara states that they attack even the solid nests of the white ants,
+when the clay of which their nests are formed becomes moistened with the
+rain; they break them up with their beaks, so as to obtain the young
+ants and their eggs; and during the breeding season the Toucan feeds
+upon nothing else; during the rest of the year he subsists upon fruit,
+insects, and the buds of trees.</p>
+
+<p>Edwards, in his voyage up the Amazon, observes, that when a party of
+Toucans alight on a tree, one usually acts the part of a sentinel,
+uttering the loud cry of "Tucano," whence they derive their name; the
+others disperse over the branches in search of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+fruit. While feeding
+they keep up a hoarse chattering, and at intervals unite with the noisy
+sentry, and scream a concert that may be heard a mile. Having appeased
+their appetites, they seek the depths of a forest, and there quietly
+doze away the noon. In early morning a few of them may be seen sitting
+quietly upon the branches of some dead tree, apparently awaiting the
+coming sunlight before starting for their feeding-trees.</p>
+
+<p>Some species of Toucans have been seen quarrelling with monkeys over a
+nest of eggs. Their carnivorous propensity has been strikingly shown
+in the specimens which have been kept in England. On the approach of
+any small bird the Toucan becomes highly excited, raises itself up,
+erects its feathers, and utters a hollow clattering sound, the irides
+of the eyes expand, and the Toucan is ready to dart on its prey. A
+Toucan, exhibited in St. Martin's-lane in 1824, seized and devoured a
+canary-bird. Next day Mr. Broderip tried him with a live goldfinch. The
+Toucan seized it with the beak, and the poor little victim uttered a
+short weak cry, for within a second it was dead, killed by the powerful
+compression of the mandibles. The Toucan now placed the dead bird firmly
+between its foot and the perch, stripped off the feathers with its bill,
+and then broke the bones of the wings and legs, by strongly wrenching
+them, the bird being still secured by the Toucan's foot. He then
+continued to work with great dexterity till he had reduced the goldfinch
+to a shapeless mass. This he devoured
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>
+piece by piece with great gusto,
+not even leaving the legs or the beak of his prey: to each morsel he
+applied his tongue as he masticated it, chattering and shivering with
+delight. He never used his foot, but his bill, for conveying his food to
+his mouth by the sides of the bill.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Swainson remarks:&mdash;"The apparent disproportion of the bill is one of
+the innumerable instances of that beautiful adaptation of structure to
+use which the book of nature everywhere reveals. The food of these birds
+consists principally of the eggs and young of others, to discover which
+nature has given them the most exquisite powers of smell." Again, the
+nests in which the Toucan finds its food are often very deep and dark,
+and its bill, covered with branches of nerves, enables the bird to feel
+its way as accurately as the finest and most delicate finger could. From
+its feeding on eggs found in other birds' nests, it has been called the
+Egg-sucker. Probably there is no bird which secures her young offspring
+better from the monkeys, which are very noisome to the young of most
+birds. For when she perceives the approach of these enemies she so
+settles herself in her nest as to put her bill out at the hole, and give
+the monkeys such a welcome therewith that they presently break away, and
+are glad to escape.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Owen, in his minute examination of the mandibles, remarks
+that the principle of the cylinder is introduced into the elaborate
+structure; the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+smallest of the supporting pillars of the mandibles are
+seen to be hollow or tubular when examined with the microscope.</p>
+
+<p>Light and almost diaphonous as is the bill of the Toucan, its strength
+and the power of the muscles, which act upon the mandibles, are evident
+in the wrenching and masticatory processes. When taking fruit, the
+Toucan generally holds it for a short time at the extremity of his bill,
+applying to it, with apparent delight, the pointed tip of the slender
+tongue: the bird then throws it, with a sudden upward jerk, to the
+throat, where it is caught and instantly swallowed.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gould divides the Toucans into six genera. 1. The true Toucans, with
+large and gaily-coloured bills, plumage black. 2. The Araçaris, with
+smaller beaks, plumage green, yellow, and red. 3. The Banded Aracauris,
+an Amazonian genus, proposed by Prince C. L. Bonaparte. 4. Toucanets,
+small, with crescent of yellow on the back, and brilliant orange and
+yellow ear-coverts. 5. Hill Toucans of the Andes. 6. Groove-bills,
+grass-green plumage.</p>
+
+<p>A very fine true Toucan, figured by Mr. Gould, is remarkable for the
+splendour and size of the bill, of a fine orange-red, with a large black
+patch on each side. Powder-flasks are made of large and finely-coloured
+bills. The naked skin round the eye is bright orange. The chest is
+white, with a tinge of sulphur below, and a slight scarlet margin.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
+Upper tail-coverts, white; under tail-coverts, scarlet; the rest of the
+plumage, black. Several specimens of this beautiful bird lived both in
+the menagerie of the late Earl of Derby, at Knowsley, and in the gardens
+of the Zoological Society. It is a native of Cayenne, Paraguay, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>Toucans in their manners are gentle and confident, exhibiting no alarm
+at strangers, and are as playful as magpies or jackdaws; travellers
+assure us that they may be taught tricks and feats like parrots; and
+although they cannot imitate the human voice, they show considerable
+intelligence. One of the Toucanets is named from Mr. Gould, the plates
+in whose <i>monograph</i>, from their size, beauty, and accuracy, have all
+the air of portraits.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="ECCENTRICITIES_OF_PENGUINS" id="ECCENTRICITIES_OF_PENGUINS"></a>ECCENTRICITIES OF PENGUINS.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>THIS</b> group of amphibious birds,
+though powerless in the wing as an organ
+of flight, are assisted by it as a species of fin in their rapid divings
+and evolutions under water, and even as a kind of anterior of extremity
+when progressing on the land. Their lot has been wisely cast on those
+desolate southern islands and shores where man rarely intrudes, and
+in many instances where a churlish climate or a barren soil offers no
+temptations to him to invade their territory.</p>
+
+<p>Le Vaillant, when on Dassen Island, found that the smaller crevices
+of the rocks served as places of retreat for Penguins, which swarmed
+there. "This bird," says Le Vaillant, which is about two feet in length,
+"does not carry its body in the same manner as others: it stands
+perpendicularly on its two feet, which gives it an air of gravity, so
+much the more ridiculous as its wings, which have no feathers, hang
+carelessly down on each side; it never uses them but in swimming. As we
+advanced towards<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
+the middle of the island we met innumerable troops
+of them. Standing firm and erect on their legs, these animals never
+deranged themselves in the least to let us pass; they more particularly
+surrounded the mausoleum, and seemed as if determined to prevent us from
+approaching it. All the environs were entirely beset with them. Nature
+had done more for the plain tomb of the poor Danish captain than what
+proceeds from the imaginations of poets or the chisels of our artists.
+The hideous owl, however well sculptured in our churches, has not half
+so dead and melancholy an air as the Penguin. The mournful cries of this
+animal, mixed with those of the sea-calf, impressed on my mind a kind of
+gloom which much disposed me to tender sensations of sadness. My eyes
+were sometime fixed on the last abode of the unfortunate traveller, and
+I gave his manes the tribute of a sigh."</p>
+
+<p>Sir John Narborough says of the Patagonian Penguins that their erect
+attitude and bluish-black backs, contrasted with their white bellies,
+might cause them to be taken at a distance for young children with white
+pinafores on. A line of them is engraved in Webster's "Voyage of the
+Chanticleer," and reminds us of one of the woodcuts in Hood's "Comic
+Annual."</p>
+
+<p>The "towns, camps, and rookeries," as they have been called, of Penguins
+have been often described. At the Falkland Islands are assemblies of
+Penguins, which give a dreary desolation to the place, in the utter
+absence of the human race. In some of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>
+towns voyagers describe a
+general stillness, and when the intruders walked among the feathered
+population to provide themselves with eggs, they were regarded with
+side-long glances, but they seemed to carry no terror with them. In many
+places the shores are covered with these birds, and three hundred have
+been taken within an hour; for they generally make no effort to escape,
+but stand quietly by whilst their companions are knocked down with
+sticks, till it comes to their turn.</p>
+
+<p>The rookeries are described as designed with the utmost order and
+regularity, though they are the resort of several different species.
+A regular camp, often covering three or four acres, is laid out
+and levelled, and the ground disposed in squares for the nests, as
+accurately as if a surveyor had been employed. Their marchings and
+countermarchings are said to remind the observer of the man&oelig;uvres of
+soldiers on parade. In the midst of this apparent order there appears
+to be not very good government, for the stronger species steal the
+eggs of the weaker if they are left unguarded; and the King Penguin
+is the greatest thief of all. Three species are found in the Falkland
+Islands. Two, the <i>Kings</i> and the <i>Macaroni</i>, deposit their eggs in
+these rookeries. The <i>Jackass</i>, which is the third, obtained its English
+name from its brayings at night. It makes its nests in burrows on downs
+and sandy plains; and Forster describes the ground as everywhere so
+much bored, that a person, in walking, often sinks up to the knees; and
+if the Penguin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>
+chance to be in her hole, she revenges herself on the
+passenger by fastening on his legs, which she bites very hard.</p>
+
+<p>But these rookeries are insignificant when compared with a settlement of
+King Penguins, which Mr. G. Bennett saw at the north end of Macquarrie
+Island, in the South Pacific Ocean&mdash;a colony of these birds, which
+covered some thirty or forty acres. Here, during the whole of the day
+and night, 30,000 or 40,000 Penguins are continually landing, and an
+equal number going to sea. They are ranged, when on shore, in as regular
+ranks as a regiment of soldiers, and are classed, the young birds in one
+situation, the moulting birds in another, the sitting hens in a third,
+the clean birds in a fourth, &amp;c.; and so strictly do birds in a similar
+condition congregate, that, should a moulting bird intrude itself among
+those which are clean, it is immediately ejected from them. The females,
+if approached during incubation, move away, carrying their eggs with
+them. At this time the male bird goes to sea, and collects food for the
+female, which becomes very fat.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Fitzroy describes, at Noir Island, multitudes of Penguins
+swarming among the bushes and tussac-grass near the shore, for moulting
+and rearing their young. They were very valiant in self-defence, and
+ran open-mouthed by dozens at any one who invaded their territory. The
+manner of feeding their young is amusing. The old bird gets on a little
+eminence and makes a loud noise, between
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>
+quacking and braying, holding
+its head up as if haranguing the Penguinnery, the young one standing
+close to it, but a little lower. The old bird then puts down its head,
+and opens its mouth widely, into which the young one thrusts its head,
+and then appears to suck from the throat of its mother; after which the
+clatter is repeated, and the young one is again fed: this continues for
+about ten minutes.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Darwin, having placed himself between a Penguin, on the Falkland
+Islands, and the water, was much amused by watching its habits. "It
+was a brown bird," says Mr. Darwin, "and, till reaching the sea, it
+regularly fought and drove me backwards. Nothing less than heavy blows
+would have stopped him: every inch gained, he firmly kept standing close
+before me, erect and determined. When thus opposed, he continually
+rolled his head from side to side in a very odd manner. While at sea,
+and undisturbed, this bird's note is very deep and solemn, and is often
+heard in the night time. In diving, its little plumeless wings are used
+as fins, but on the land as front legs. When crawling (it may be said
+on four legs) through the tussacks, or on the side of a grassy cliff,
+it moved so very quickly that it might readily have been mistaken
+for a quadruped. When at sea, and fishing, it comes to the surface
+for the purpose of breathing with such a spring, and dives again so
+instantaneously, that I defy any one, at first sight, to be sure that it
+is not a fish leaping for sport."</p>
+
+<p>Bougainville endeavoured to bring home a Penguin
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> alive. It became so
+tame that it followed the person who fed it; it ate bread, flesh, or
+fish; but it fell away and died. The four-footed Duck of Gesner might
+have owed its origin to an ill-preserved Penguin. The notion of its
+being four-footed might have been fortified by some voyager who had seen
+the bird making progress as Mr. Darwin has above described.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Webster describes the feathers of Penguins as very different from
+those of other birds, being short, very rigid, and the roots deeply
+embedded in fat. They are, in general, flat, and bent backwards, those
+on the breast being of a satin or silky white, and those on the flippers
+so short and small as to approach the nature of scales, overlaying each
+other very closely. The skins are loaded with fat. Their feet are not
+regularly webbed, but present a broad, fleshy surface, more adapted for
+walking than swimming. Mr. Webster saw great numbers of Penguins on
+Staten Island. They are the only genus of the feathered race that are
+there, and live in the water, like seals. He saw them at the distance of
+200 miles from the land, swimming with the rapidity of the dolphin, the
+swiftest of fishes. When they come up to the surface for fresh breath,
+they make a croaking noise, dip their beaks frequently in the water, and
+play and dive about near the surface, like the bonita. Penguins have
+great powers of abstinence, and are able to live four or five months
+without food. Stones have been occasionally found in their stomachs,
+but they generally live on shrimps
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+and crustacea, gorging themselves
+sometimes to excess. The sensations of these curious birds do not seem
+to be very acute. Sparrman stumbled over a sleeping one, and kicked it
+some yards, without disturbing its rest; and Forster left a number of
+Penguins apparently lifeless, while he went in pursuit of others, but
+they afterwards got up and marched off with their usual gravity.</p>
+
+<p>The bird is named from the Welsh word, <i>Pengwyn</i>. White head (<i>pen</i>,
+head; <i>gwyn</i>, white), and is thought to have been given to the
+bird by some Welsh sailors, on seeing its white breast. Davis, who
+discovered, in 1585, the straits which are named after him, was of
+Welsh parents. Might he not have given the name <i>Pengwyn</i> to the bird?
+Swainson considers the Penguins, on the whole, as the most singular
+of all aquatic birds; and he states that they clearly point out that
+nature is about to pass from the birds to the fishes. Others consider
+Penguins more satisfactorily to represent some of the aquatic reptiles,
+especially the marine <i>testudinata</i>.</p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="PELICANS_AND_CORMORANTS" id="PELICANS_AND_CORMORANTS"></a>PELICANS AND CORMORANTS.</h2>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_203.jpg" alt="Letter P"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>PELICANS</b> Pelicans are described as a large,
+voracious, and wandering tribe of
+birds, living for the most part on the ocean, and seldom approaching
+land but at the season of incubation. They fly with ease, and even with
+swiftness. Their bill is long, and armed at the end with an abrupt
+hook; the width of the gape is excessive; the face is generally bare
+of feathers, and the skin of the throat sometimes so extensible as to
+hang down like a bag; it will occasionally contain ten quarts. "By this
+curious organization," observes Swainson, "the Pelicans are able to
+swallow fish of a very large size; and the whole family may be termed
+<i>oceanic vultures</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The neighbourhood of rivers, lakes, and the sea-coast, is the haunt of
+the Pelican, and they are rarely seen more than twenty leagues from
+the land. Le Vaillant, upon visiting Dassen Island, at the entrance
+of Saldanha Bay, beheld, as he says, after wading through the surf,
+and clambering up the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
+rocks, such a spectacle as never, perhaps,
+appeared to the eye of mortal. "All of a sudden there arose from the
+whole surface of the island an impenetrable cloud, which formed, at the
+distance of forty feet above our heads, an immense canopy, or, rather, a
+sky, composed of birds of every species and of all colours&mdash;cormorants,
+sea-gulls, sand-swallows, and, I believe, the whole winged tribe of this
+part of Africa, were here assembled." The same traveller found on the
+Klein-Brak river, whilst waiting for the ebb-tide, thousands of Pelicans
+and Flamingoes, the deep rose-colour of the one strongly contrasting
+with the white of the other.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gould says the bird is remarkable for longevity and the long period
+requisite for the completion of its plumage. The first year's dress is
+wholly brown, then fine white. The rosy tints are only acquired as the
+bird advances in age, and five years are required before the Pelican
+becomes fully mature. The expanse of wings is from twelve to thirteen
+feet. Although the bird perches on trees, it prefers rocky shores. It is
+found in the Oriental countries of Europe; and is common on the rivers
+and lakes of Hungary and Russia, and on the Danube. That the species
+exists in Asia there is no doubt. Belon, who refers to Leviticus xi.
+18, where the bird is noted as unclean, says that it is frequent on
+the lakes of Egypt and Judæa. "When he was passing the plain of Roma,
+which is only half a day's journey from Jerusalem, he saw them flying
+in pairs, like swans, as well as in a large flock. Hasselquist saw the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+Pelican at Damietta, in Egypt. "In flying, they form an acute angle,
+like the common wild geese when they migrate. They appear in some of the
+Egyptian drawings."&mdash;(<i>Rossellini.</i>)</p>
+
+<p>Von Siebold saw the Pelican in Japan. "Pelicans," says Dr. Richardson,
+"are numerous in the interior of the fur countries, but they seldom
+come within two hundred miles of Hudson's Bay. They deposit their eggs
+usually on small rocky islands, on the brink of cascades, where they can
+scarcely be approached; but they are otherwise by no means shy birds.
+They haunt eddies under waterfalls, and devour great quantities of carp
+and other fish. When gorged with food they doze on the water, and may be
+easily captured, as they have great difficulty in taking wing at such
+times, particularly if their pouches be loaded with fish."</p>
+
+<p>The bird builds on rocky and desert shores: hence we read of "the
+Pelican of the wilderness," alluded to in these beautiful lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse6">"Like the Pelicans</div>
+<div class="verse">On that lone island where they built their nests,</div>
+<div class="verse">Nourish'd their young, and then lay down to die."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The bird lives on fish, which it darts upon from a considerable height.
+James Montgomery thus describes this mode of taking their prey:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"Eager for food, their searching eyes they fix'd</div>
+<div class="verse">On Ocean's unroll'd volume, from a height</div>
+<div class="verse">That brought immensity within their scope;</div>
+<div class="verse">Yet with such power of vision look'd they down,</div>
+<div class="verse">As though they watch'd the shell-fish slowly gliding</div>
+<div class="verse">O'er sunken rocks, or climbing trees of coral.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></div>
+<div class="verse">On indefatigable wing upheld,</div>
+<div class="verse">Breath, pulse, existence, seem'd suspended in them;</div>
+<div class="verse">They were as pictures painted on the sky;</div>
+<div class="verse">Till suddenly, aslant, away they shot,</div>
+<div class="verse">Like meteors chang'd from stars in gleams of lightning,</div>
+<div class="verse">And struck upon the deep; where, in wild play,</div>
+<div class="verse">Their quarry flounder'd, unsuspecting harm.</div>
+<div class="verse">With terrible voracity they plunged</div>
+<div class="verse">Their heads among the affrighted shoals, and beat</div>
+<div class="verse">A tempest on the surges with their wings,</div>
+<div class="verse">Till flashing clouds of foam and spray conceal'd them.</div>
+<div class="verse">Nimbly they seized and secreted their prey,</div>
+<div class="verse">Alive and wriggling, in th' elastic net</div>
+<div class="verse">Which Nature hung beneath their grasping beaks;</div>
+<div class="verse">Till, swoll'n with captures, th' unwieldy burthen</div>
+<div class="verse">Clogg'd their slow flight, as heavily to land</div>
+<div class="verse">These mighty hunters of the deep return'd.</div>
+<div class="verse">There on the cragged cliffs they perched at ease,</div>
+<div class="verse">Gorging their hapless victims one by one;</div>
+<div class="verse">Then, full and weary, side by side they slept,</div>
+<div class="verse">Till evening roused them to the chase again."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="right1"><i>Pelican Island.</i></div>
+
+<p>Great numbers of Pelicans are killed for their pouches, which are
+converted by the native Americans into purses, &amp;c. When carefully
+prepared, the membrane is as soft as silk, and sometimes embroidered by
+Spanish ladies for work-bags, &amp;c. It is used in Egypt by the sailors,
+whilst attached to the two under chaps, for holding or baling water.</p>
+
+<p>With the Pelican has been associated an old popular error, which has not
+long disappeared from books of information: it is that of the Pelican
+feeding her young with her blood. In reference to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
+the actual economy
+of the Pelican, we find that, in feeding the nestlings&mdash;and the male
+is said to supply the wants of the female, when sitting, in the same
+manner&mdash;the under mandible is pressed against the neck and breast, to
+assist the bird in disgorging the contents of the capacious pouch; and
+during this action the red nail of the upper mandible would appear to
+come in contact with the breast, thus laying the foundation, in all
+probability, for the fable that the Pelican nourishes her young with her
+blood, and for the attitude in which the imagination of painters has
+placed the bird in books of emblems, &amp;c., with the blood spirting from
+the wounds made by the terminating nail of the upper mandible into the
+gaping mouths of her offspring.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Thomas Browne, in his "Vulgar Errors," says:&mdash;"In every place we
+meet with the picture of the Pelican opening her breast with her bill,
+and feeding her young ones with the blood distilling from her. Thus it
+is set forth, not only in common signs, but in the crest and scutcheon
+of many noble families; hath been asserted by many holy writers, and
+was an hieroglyphic of piety and pity among the Egyptians; on which
+consideration they spared them at their tables."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Thomas refers this popular error to an exaggerated description of
+the Pelican's fondness for her young, and is inclined to accept it as an
+emblem "in coat-armour," though with great doubt.</p>
+
+<p>In "A Choice of Emblems and other Devices," by Geoffrey Whitney, are
+these lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"The Pelican, for to revive her younge,</div>
+    <div class="verse2">Doth pierce her breste, and geve them of her blood.</div>
+<div class="verse">Then searche your breste, and as you have with tonge,</div>
+    <div class="verse2">With penne procede to do your countrie good:</div>
+<div class="verse">Your zeal is great, your learning is profounde;</div>
+<div class="verse">Then help our wantes with that you do abound."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In George Wither's "Emblems," 1634, we find:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"Our Pelican, by bleeding thus,</div>
+<div class="verse">Fulfill'd the law, and cured us."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Shakspeare, in "Hamlet," thus alludes to the popular notion:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms;</div>
+<div class="verse">And like the kind, life-rendering Pelican,</div>
+<div class="verse">Repast them with my blood."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In a holier light, this symbol signifies the Saviour giving Himself up
+for the redemption of mankind. In Lord Lindsay's "Christian Art," vols.
+i., xx., xxi., we find in the text, "God the Son (is symbolized) by a
+Pelican&mdash;'I am like a Pelican of the wilderness.' (Psalm cii. 6.)" To
+which is added the following note:&mdash;"The mediæval interpretation of this
+symbol is given by Sir David Lindsay, of the Mount, Lion King, nephew of
+the poet, in his MS. 'Collectanea,' preserved in the Advocates' Library.
+Edinburgh."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Thomas Browne hints at the probability of the Pelican occasionally
+nibbling or biting itself on the itching part of its breast, upon
+fulness or acrimony of blood, so as to tinge the feathers in that part.
+Such an instance is recorded by Mr. G. Bennett of a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> Pelican living at
+Dulwich, which wounded itself just above the breast; but no such act has
+been observed among the Pelicans kept in the menagerie of the Zoological
+Society or elsewhere; and the instance just recorded was probably caused
+by local irritation.</p>
+
+<p>Of the same genus as the <i>Pelican</i> is the <i>Cormorant</i>, an inhabitant
+of Europe generally and of America. It swims very deep in the water;
+even in the sea very little more than the neck and head are visible
+above the surface. It is a most expert diver, pursuing the fish which
+forms its food with great activity under water; it is said to be very
+fond of eels. It perches on trees, where it occasionally builds its
+nests, but it mostly selects rocky shores and islands. Upon the Fern
+Islands its nest is composed of a mass of sea-weed, frequently heaped
+up to the height of two feet. The species is easily domesticated; and
+its docility is shown by the use often made of Cormorants in fishing.
+Willughby, quoting Faber, says:&mdash;"They are wont in England to train up
+Cormorants to fishing. When they carry them out of the room where they
+are kept they take off their hoods, and having tied a leather thong
+round the lower part of their necks, that they may not swallow down the
+fish they catch, they throw them into the river. They presently dive
+under water, and there for a long time, with wonderful swiftness, pursue
+the fish, and when they have caught them they arise presently to the
+top of the water, and pressing the fish tightly with the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> bills, they
+swallow them, till each bird hath after this manner devoured five or six
+fishes. Then their keepers call them to the fish, to which they readily
+fly, and little by little, one after another, vomit up all the fish, a
+little bruised with the nip they gave them with their bills." When they
+have done fishing they loosen the string from the birds' necks, and for
+their reward they throw them part of the prey they have caught, to each,
+perchance, one or two fishes, which they catch most dexterously in their
+mouths as they are falling in the air. Pennant quotes Whitelock, who
+said that he had a cast of them, manned like hawks, and which would come
+to hand. He took much pleasure in them, and relates that the best he
+had was one presented him by Mr. Wood, master of the corvorants (as the
+older name was) to Charles I. Pennant adds, it is well known that the
+Chinese make great use of a congenerous sort in fishing, and that not
+for amusement but profit.</p>
+
+<p>Sir George Staunton, in his account of his Embassy to China, describes
+the place where the <i>Leu-tze</i>, or famed fishing-bird of China, is bred
+and instructed in the art and practice of supplying his owner with fish
+in great abundance. The bird, a Cormorant, is figured in Sir George's
+work, with two Chinese fishermen carrying their light boat, around the
+gunnel of which their Cormorants are perched by a pole resting on their
+shoulders between them. On a large lake are thousands of small boats
+and rafts built entirely for this species
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
+of fishery. On each boat or
+raft are ten or a dozen birds, which, on a signal from the owner, plunge
+into the water; and it is astonishing to see the enormous size of fish
+with which they return grasped between their bills. They appeared to be
+so well trained that it did not require either ring or cord about their
+throats to prevent them from swallowing any portion of their prey except
+what the master was pleased to return to them for encouragement and
+food. The boat used by these fishermen is remarkably light, and is often
+carried to the lake, together with the fishing-birds, by the men who are
+there to be supported by it.</p>
+
+<p>Belon gives an amusing account of the chase of this bird during calms,
+especially in the neighbourhood of Venice: the hunt is carried on in
+very light boats, each of which being rowed by five or six men, darts
+along the sea like the bolt from an arbalest, till the poor Cormorant,
+who is shot at with bows as soon as he puts his head above water, and
+cannot take flight after diving to suffocation, is taken quite tired out
+by his pursuers.</p>
+
+<p>Cormorant fishing has occasionally been reintroduced upon our rivers.
+In 1848 there were brought from Holland four tame Cormorants, which had
+been trained to the Chinese mode of fishing. Upon one occasion they
+fished three miles on a river, and caught a pannier-full of trout and
+eels. A ring placed round their necks to prevent them from swallowing
+large fish, but which leaves them at liberty to gulp down anything not
+exceeding the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+size of a gudgeon. The birds on these occasions are put
+into such parts of the river as are known to be favourite haunts of
+fish; and their activity under water in pursuit of fish can be compared
+to nothing so appropriate as a swallow darting after a fly.</p>
+
+<p>Blumenbach tells us the Cormorant occasionally increases in a few years
+to many thousands on coasts where it was previously unknown. It varies
+much both in size and colour. The late Joshua Brookes, the surgeon,
+possessed a Cormorant, which he presented to the Zoological Society.</p>
+
+<p>The Cormorant has a small sabre-shaped bone at the back of its vertex;
+which bone may serve as a lever in throwing back the head, when the
+animal tosses the fishes into the air and catches them in its open
+mouth. The same motion is, however, performed by some piscivorous birds,
+which are not provided with this particular bone.</p>
+
+<p>Aubrey, in his "Natural History of Wilts," quotes the following weather
+presage from May's "Virgil's Georgics":&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"The seas are ill to sailors evermore</div>
+<div class="verse">When Cormorants fly crying to the shore."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="TALKING_BIRDS_ETC" id="TALKING_BIRDS_ETC"></a>TALKING BIRDS, ETC.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_013.jpg" alt="Letter C"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>CERTAIN</b> birds are known to utter strange sounds, the origin of which
+has much puzzled the ornithologists. The Brown Owl which hoots, is
+hence called the Screech Owl: a musical friend of Gilbert White tried
+all the Owls that were his near neighbours with a pitch-pipe set at a
+concert pitch, and found they all hooted in B flat; and he subsequently
+found that neither Owls nor Cuckoos keep to one note. The Whidah Bird,
+one of the most costly of cage-birds, rattles its tail-feathers with a
+noise somewhat resembling that made by the rattle-snake. The Chinese
+Starling, in China called <i>Longuoy</i>, in captivity is very teachable,
+imitating words, and even whistling tunes: we all remember Sterne's
+Starling. The Piping Crow, to be seen in troops in the Blue Mountains,
+is named from its ready mimicry of other birds: its imitation of the
+chucking and cackling of a hen and the crowing of a cock, as well as
+its whistling of tunes, are described as very perfect: its native
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> note
+is said to be a loud whistle. The Blue Jay turns his imitative faculty
+to treacherous account: he so closely imitates the St. Domingo Falcon
+as to deceive even those acquainted with both birds; and the Falcon no
+sooner appears in their neighbourhood than the jays swarm around him and
+insult him with their imitative cries; for which they frequently fall
+victims to his appetite. The Bullfinch, according to Blumenbach, learns
+to whistle tunes, to sing in parts, and even to pronounce words. The
+note of the Crowned Crane has been compared by Buffon to the hoarseness
+of a trumpet; it also clucks like a hen. Mr. Wallace, in his "Travels on
+the Amazon," saw a bird about the size and colour of the Raven, which
+uttered a loud, hoarse cry, like some deep musical instrument, whence
+its Indian name, <i>Ueramioube</i>, Trumpet Bird: it inhabits the flooded
+islands of the Rio Negro and the Solimoes, never appearing on the
+mainland.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a>
+The only sound produced by Storks
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> is by snapping their
+bills. The Night Heron is called the Qua Bird; from its note <i>Qua</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The Bittern, the English provincial names of which are the Mire-drum,
+Bull of the Bog, &amp;c., is so called for the bellowing or drumming noise
+or booming for which the bird is so famous. This deep note of the
+"hollow-sounding Bittern" is exerted on the ground at the breeding
+season, about February or March. As the day declines he leaves his
+haunt, and, rising spirally, soars to a great height in the twilight.
+Willughby says that it performs this last-mentioned feat in the autumn,
+"making a singular kind of noise, nothing like to lowing." Bewick
+says that it soars as above described when it changes its haunts.
+Ordinarily it flies heavily, like the Heron, uttering from time to time
+a resounding cry, not bellowing; and then Willughby, who well describes
+the bellowing noise of the breeding season, supposes it to be the Night
+Raven, at whose "deadly voice" the superstitious wayfarer of the night
+turned pale and trembled. "This, without doubt," writes Willughby, "is
+that bird our common people call the Night Raven, and have such a dread
+of, imagining its cry portends no less than their death or the death of
+some of their near relations; for it flies in the night, answers their
+description of being like a flagging collar, and hath such a kind of
+hooping<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
+cry as they talk of." Others, with some reason, consider the
+Qua Bird already mentioned (which utters a loud and most disagreeable
+noise when on the wing, conveying the idea of the agonies of a person
+attempting to vomit) to be the true Night Raven. The Bittern was well
+known to the ancients, and Aristotle mentions the fable of its origin
+from staves metamorphosed into birds. The long claw of the hind toe is
+much prized as a toothpick, and in the olden times it was thought to
+have the property of preserving the teeth.</p>
+
+<p>The Greater-billed Butcher Bird, from New Holland, has extraordinary
+powers of voice: it is trained for catching small birds, and it is said
+to imitate the notes of some other birds by way of decoying them to
+their destruction.</p>
+
+<p>The mere imitative sounds of Parrots are of little interest compared
+with the instances of instinct, apparently allied to reason, which are
+related of individuals. Of this tribe the distinguishing characteristics
+are a hooked bill, the upper mandible of which is moveable as well as
+the lower, and not in one piece with the skull, as in most other birds,
+but joined to the head by a strong membrane, with which the bird lifts
+it or lets it fall at pleasure. The bill is also round on the outside
+and hollow within, and has, in some degree, the capacity of a mouth,
+allowing the tongue, which is thick and fleshy, to play freely; while
+the sound, striking against the circular border of the lower mandible,
+reflects it like a palate: hence the animal does not utter a whistling
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>
+sound, but a full articulation. The tongue, which modulates all sounds,
+is proportionally larger than in man.</p>
+
+<p>The Wild Swan has a very loud call, and utters a melancholy cry when one
+of the flock is killed; hence it was said by the poets to sing its own
+dying dirge. Such was the popular belief in olden times; and, looking to
+the anatomical characteristics of the species, it was, in some degree,
+supported by the more inflated wind-pipe of the wild when compared
+with that of the tame species. The <i>Song of the Swan</i> is, however,
+irreconcileable with sober belief, the only noise of the Wild Swan of
+our times being unmelodious, and an unpleasing monotony.</p>
+
+<p>The Laughing Goose is named from its note having some resemblance to the
+laugh of man; and not, as Wilson supposes, from the grinning appearance
+of its mandibles. The Indians imitate its cry by moving the hand quickly
+against the lips, whilst they repeat the syllable <i>wah</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The Cuckoo may be said to have done much for musical science, because
+from that bird has been derived the <i>minor scale</i>, the origin of which
+has puzzled so many; the Cuckoo's couplet being the <i>minor third</i> sung
+downwards.</p>
+
+<p>The Germans are the finest appreciators of the Nightingale; and it is a
+fact, that when the Prussian authorities, under pecuniary pressure, were
+about to cut down certain trees near Cologne, which were frequented by
+Nightingales, the alarmed citizens purchased the trees in order to save
+the birds and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
+keep their music. Yet one would think the music hardly
+worth having, if it really sounded as it looks upon paper, transcribed
+thus by Bechstein, from whom it is quoted by Broderip:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+Zozozozozozozozozozozozo zirrhading<br/>
+Hezezezezezezezezezezezezezezeze cowar ho dze hoi<br/>
+Higaigaigaigaigaigaigaigaigaigai, guaiagai coricor dzio dzio pi.
+<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a>
+</div>
+<p>M. Wichterich, of Bonn, remarks:&mdash;"It is a vulgar error to suppose that
+the song of the Nightingale is melancholy, and that it only sings by
+night. There are two varieties of the Nightingale; one which sings both
+in the night and the day, and one which sings in the day only."</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1858, Mr. Leigh Sotheby, in a letter to Dr. Gray, of the
+British Museum, described a marvellous little specimen of the feathered
+tribe&mdash;a Talking Canary. Its parents had previously and successfully
+reared many young ones, but three years before they hatched only <i>one</i>
+out of four eggs, the which they immediately neglected, by commencing
+the rebuilding of a nest on the top of it. Upon this discovery, the
+unfledged and forsaken bird, all but dead, was taken away and placed in
+flannel by the fire, when, after much attention, it was restored, and
+then brought up by hand. Thus treated, and away from all other birds, it
+became familiarised only with those who fed it; consequently, its first
+singing notes were of a character totally different to those usual with
+the Canary.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Constantly being talked to, the bird, when about three months old,
+astonished its mistress by repeating the endearing terms used in talking
+to it, such as "Kissie, kissie," with its significant sounds. This
+went on, and from time to time the little bird repeated other words;
+and then, for hours together, except during the moulting season, it
+astonished by <i>ringing the changes</i>, according to its own fancy, and as
+plainly as any human voice could articulate them, on the several words,
+"Dear sweet Titchie" (its name), "kiss Minnie," "Kiss me, then, dear
+Minnie." "Sweet pretty little Titchie," "Kissie, kissie, kissie." "Dear
+Titchie," "Titchie wee, gee, gee, gee, Titchie. Titchie."</p>
+
+<p>The usual singing-notes of the bird were more of the character of the
+Nightingale, mingled occasionally with the sound of the dog-whistle used
+about the house. It is hardly necessary to add, that the bird was by
+nature remarkably tame.</p>
+
+<p>In 1839, a Canary-bird, capable of distinct articulation, was exhibited
+in Regent-street. The following were some of its sentences:&mdash;"Sweet
+pretty dear," "Sweet pretty dear Dicky," "Mary," "Sweet pretty little
+Dicky dear;" and often in the course of the day, "Sweet pretty Queen."
+The bird also imitated the jarring of a wire, the ringing of a bell; it
+was three years old, and was reared by a lady who never allowed it to
+be in the company of other birds. This Canary died in October, 1839; it
+was, it is believed, the only other talking instance publicly known.</p>
+
+<p>We read of some experiments made in the rearing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>
+of birds at Kendal
+by a bird-fancier, the result of which was, that upwards of 20
+birds&mdash;Canaries. Greenfinches, Linnets, Chaffinches, Titlarks,
+and Whitethroats&mdash;were reared in one cage by a pair of Canaries.
+The experiments were continued until the extraordinary number of
+thirty-eight birds had been brought up within two months by the
+Canaries. It may be worth while to enumerate them.</p>
+
+<p>In the month of June the Canaries&mdash;the male green, and the female
+piebald&mdash;were caged for the purpose of breeding. The female laid five
+eggs, and while she was sitting a Greenfinch egg was introduced into
+the nest. All of these were hatched, and the day after incubation was
+completed five Grey Linnets, also newly hatched, were put into the cage,
+in their own nest. Next day a newly-hatched nest of four Chaffinches was
+also introduced; and afterwards five different nests, consisting of six
+Titlarks, six Whitethroats, three Skylarks, three Winchars, and three
+Blackcaps. While rearing the last of these nests, the female Canary
+again laid and hatched four eggs, thus making thirty-eight young birds
+brought up by the pair of Canaries. It will be noticed that most of
+these birds are soft-billed, whose natural food is small insects; but
+they took quite kindly to the seeds upon which they were fed by their
+step-parents. The pair of Canaries fed at one time twenty-one young
+birds, and never had less than sixteen making demands upon their care;
+and while the female was hatching her second nest she continued to feed
+the birds that occupied the other nest.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Of the origin of the <i>neighing sound</i> which accompanies the single
+Snipe's play-flight during pairing-time, opinions are various. Bechstein
+thought it was produced by means of the beak; Naumann and others, again,
+that it originated in powerful strokes of the wing. Pratt, in Hanover,
+observing that the bird makes heard its well-known song or cry, which he
+expresses with the words, "gick jack, gick jack!" at the same time with
+the <i>neighing sound</i>, it seemed to be settled that the latter is not
+produced through the throat. In the meantime, M. Meves, of Stockholm,
+remarked with surprise, that the humming sound could never be observed
+whilst the bird was flying upwards, at which time the tail is closed;
+but only when it was casting itself downwards in a slanting direction,
+with the tail strongly spread out.</p>
+
+<p>M. Meves has written for the Zoological Society a paper upon the origin
+of this sound, which all the field-naturalists and sportsmen of England
+and other countries had, for the previous century, been trying to make
+out, but had failed to discover. Of this paper the following is an
+abstract:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>The peculiar form of the tail-feathers in some foreign
+species nearly allied to our Snipe encouraged the notion that the
+tail conduced to the production of the sound. M. Meves found the
+tail-feathers of our common Snipe, in the first feather especially,
+very peculiarly constructed; the shaft uncommonly stiff and
+sabre-shaped; the rays of the web strongly bound together and very
+long, the longest reaching nearly three-fourths of the whole length
+of the web, these rays lying along or spanning from end to end of
+the curve of the shaft, <i>like the strings of a musical instrument</i>.
+If you blow <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
+from the outer side upon the broad web, it comes into
+vibration, and a sound is heard, which, though fainter, resembles
+very closely the well-known <i>neighing</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But to convince yourself fully that it is the first feather
+which produces the peculiar sound, it is only necessary carefully
+to pluck out such an one, to fasten its shaft with fine thread to
+a piece of steel wire a tenth of an inch in diameter, and a foot
+long, and then to fix this at the end of a four-foot stick. If
+now you draw the feather, with this outer side forward, sharply
+through the air, at the same time making some short movements or
+shakings of the arm, so as to represent the shivering motion of the
+wings during flight, you produce the neighing sound with the most
+astonishing exactness.</p>
+
+<p>If you wish to hear the humming of both feathers at once, as
+must be the case from the flying bird, this also can be managed by
+a simple contrivance. Take a small stick, and fasten at the side of
+the smaller end a piece of burnt steel wire in the form of a fork;
+bind to each point a side tail-feather; bend the wire so that the
+feathers receive the same direction which they do in the spreading
+of the tail as the bird sinks itself in flight; and then, with this
+apparatus, draw the feathers through the air as before. Such a
+sound, but in another tone, is produced when we experiment with the
+tail-feathers of other kinds of Snipe.</p>
+
+<p>Since in both sexes these feathers have the same form, it is
+clear that both can produce the same humming noise; but as the
+feathers of the hen are generally less than those of the cock-bird,
+the noise made by them is not so deep as in the other case.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the significance which these tail-feathers have as a
+kind of musical instrument, their form may give a weighty character
+in the determination of a species standing very near one another,
+which have been looked upon as varieties.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>This interesting discovery was first announced by M. Meves in an account
+of the birds observed by himself during a visit to the Island of
+Gottland, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>
+the summer of the year 1856, which narrative was published
+at Stockholm in the following winter. In the succeeding summer, M. Meves
+showed his experiments to Mr. Wolley, whose services to Ornithology
+we have already noticed. The mysterious noise of the wilderness was
+reproduced in a little room in the middle of Stockholm: first, the deep
+bleat, now shown to proceed from the male Snipe, and then the fainter
+bleat of the female, both most strikingly true to nature, neither
+producible with any other feathers than the outer ones of the tail.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wolley inquired of Mr. Meves how, issuing forth from the town on
+a summer ramble, he came to discover what had puzzled the wits and
+strained the eyes of so many observers. He freely explained how, in a
+number of "Naumannia," an accidental misprint of the word representing
+tail-feathers instead of wing-feathers,&mdash;a mistake which another author
+ridiculed&mdash;first led him to think on the subject. He subsequently
+examined in the Museum at Stockholm the tail-feathers of various species
+of Snipe, remarked their structure, and reasoned upon it. Then he
+blew upon them, and fixed them on levers that he might wave them with
+greater force through the air; and at the same time he made more careful
+observation than he had hitherto done in the living birds. In short,
+in him the obscure hint was thrown upon fruitful ground, whilst in a
+hundred other minds it had failed to come to light.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Walsh saw at Constantinople a Woodpecker, about the size of a
+Thrush, which was very active
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+in devouring flies, and tapped woodwork
+with his bill with a noise <i>as loud as that of a hammer</i>, to disturb the
+insects concealed therein, so as to seize upon them when they appeared.</p>
+
+<p>Among remarkable bird services should not be forgotten those of the
+Trochilos to the Crocodile. "When the Crocodile," says Herodotus, "feeds
+in the Nile, the inside of his mouth is always covered with <i>bdella</i>
+(a term which the translators have rendered by that of <i>leech</i>). All
+birds, <i>except one</i>, fly from the Crocodile; but this one bird, the
+<i>Trochilos</i>, on the contrary, flies towards him with the greatest
+eagerness, and renders him a very great service; for every time that the
+Crocodile comes to the land to sleep, and when he lies stretched out
+with his jaws open, the Trochilos enters and establishes himself in his
+mouth, and frees him from the bdella which he finds there. The Crocodile
+is grateful, and never does any harm to the little bird who performs for
+him this office."</p>
+
+<p>This passage was long looked upon as a pleasant story, and nothing more;
+until M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, during his long residence in Egypt,
+ascertained the story of Herodotus to be correct in substance, but
+inexact in details. It is perfectly true that a little bird does exist,
+which flies incessantly from place to place, searching everywhere, even
+in the Crocodile's mouth, for the insects which form the principal
+part of its nourishment. This bird is seen everywhere on the banks of
+the Nile, and M. Geoffroy has proved it to be of a species already
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
+described by Hasselquist, and very like the small winged Plover. If
+the Trochilos be in reality the little Plover, the bdella cannot be
+leeches, (which do not exist in the running waters of the Nile) but the
+small insects known as <i>gnats</i> in Europe. Myriads of these insects dance
+upon the Nile: they attack the Crocodile upon the inner surface of his
+palate, and sting the orifice of the glands, which are numerous in the
+Crocodile's mouth. Then the little Plover, who follows him everywhere,
+delivers him from these troublesome enemies; and that without any danger
+to himself, for the Crocodile is always careful, when he is going to
+shut his mouth, to make some motion which warns the little bird to fly
+away. At St. Domingo there is a Crocodile which very nearly resembles
+that of Egypt. This Crocodile is attacked by gnats, from which he would
+have no means of delivering himself (his tongue, like that of the
+Crocodile, being fixed) if a bird of a particular species did not give
+him the same assistance that the Crocodile of the Nile receives from
+the little Plover. These facts explain the passage in Herodotus, and
+demonstrate that the animal, there called bdella, is not a leech, but a
+flying insect similar to our gnat.</p>
+
+<p>Exemplifications of instinct, intelligence, and reason in Birds are by
+no means rare, but this distinction must be made: instinctive actions
+are dependent on the nerves, intelligence on the brain; but that which
+constitutes peculiar qualities of the mind in man has no material
+organ. The Rev. Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
+Statham has referred to the theory of the facial
+angle as indicative of the amount of sagacity observable in the animal
+race, but has expressed his opinion that the theory is utterly at
+fault in the case of Birds; many of these having a very acute facial
+angle being considerably more intelligent than others having scarcely
+any facial angle at all. Size also seems to present another anomaly
+between the two races of Beasts and Birds; for while the Elephant and
+the Horse are among the most distinguished of quadrupeds for sagacity
+and instinct, the larger Birds seem scarcely comparable to the smaller
+ones in the possession of these attributes. The writer instances this
+by comparing the Ostrich and the Goose with the Wren, the Robin, the
+Canary, the Pigeon, and the Crow; and amusingly alludes to the holding
+of parliaments or convocations of birds of the last species, while the
+Ostrich is characterised in Scripture as the type of folly.</p>
+
+<p>The author then refers to the poisoning of two young Blackbirds by the
+parent birds, when they found that they could neither liberate them
+nor permanently share their captivity. The two fledglings had been
+taken from a Blackbirds' nest in Surrey-square, and had been placed in
+a room looking over a garden, in a wicker cage. For some time the old
+birds attended to their wants, visited them regularly, and fed them
+with appropriate food; but, at last, getting wearied of the task, or
+despairing of effecting their liberation, they appear to have poisoned
+them. They were both found suddenly dead one
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
+morning, shortly after
+having been seen in good health; and on opening their bodies a small
+leaf, supposed to be that of <i>Solanum Nigrum</i>, was found in the stomach
+of each. The old birds immediately deserted the spot, as though aware of
+the nefarious deed befitting their name.</p>
+
+<p>As an exemplification of instinct Dr. Horner states that Rooks built
+on the Infirmary trees at Hull, but never over the street. One year,
+however, a young couple ventured to build here: for eight mornings in
+succession the old Rooks proceeded to destroy the nest, when at last the
+young ones chose a more fitting place.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. A. Strickland, having referred to the tendency of birds to build
+their nests of materials of a colour resembling that around such nests,
+relates an instance in which the Fly-catcher built in a red brick wall,
+and used for the nest mahogany shavings. Referring to the meeting of
+Rooks for judicial purposes. Mr. Strickland states that he once saw a
+Rook tried in this way, and ultimately killed by the rest.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SONGS OF BIRDS AND SEASONS OF THE DAY.</h3>
+
+<p>Although nearly half a century has elapsed since the following
+observations were communicated to the Royal Society by Dr. Jenner, their
+expressive character is as charming as ever, and their accuracy as
+valuable:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>
+"There is a beautiful propriety in the order in which Singing
+Birds fill up the day with their pleasing harmony. The accordance
+between their songs, and the aspect of nature
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> at the successive
+periods of the day at which they sing, is so remarkable that one
+cannot but suppose it to be the result of benevolent design.</p>
+
+<p>"From the <i>Robin</i> (not the <i>Lark</i>, as has been generally
+imagined), as soon as twilight has drawn its imperceptible line
+between night and day, begins his artless song. How sweetly does
+this harmonize with the soft dawning of the day! He goes on till
+the twinkling sunbeams begin to tell him that his notes no longer
+accord with the rising sun. Up starts the <i>Lark</i>, and with him a
+variety of sprightly songsters, whose lively notes are in perfect
+correspondence with the gaiety of the morning. The general warbling
+continues, with now and then an interruption by the transient croak
+of the <i>Raven</i>, the scream of the <i>Jay</i>, or the pert chattering of
+the <i>Daw</i>. The <i>Nightingale</i>, unwearied by the vocal exertions of
+the night, joins his inferiors in sound in the general harmony. The
+<i>Thrush</i> is wisely placed on the summit of some lofty tree, that
+its piercing notes may be softened by distance before it reaches
+the ear, while the mellow <i>Blackbird</i> seeks the lower branches.</p>
+
+<p>"Should the sun, having been eclipsed by a cloud, shine forth
+with fresh effulgence, how frequently we see the <i>Goldfinch</i> perch
+on some blossomed bough, and hear his song poured forth in a strain
+peculiarly energetic; while the sun, full shining on his beautiful
+plumes, displays his golden wings and crimson crest to charming
+advantage. Indeed, a burst of sunshine in a cloudy day, or after a
+heavy shower, seems always to wake up a new gladness in the little
+musicians, and invite them to an answering burst of minstrelsy.</p>
+
+<p>"As evening advances, the performers gradually retire, and the
+concert softly dies away. At sunset the <i>Robin</i> again sends up his
+twilight song, till the still more serene hour of night sends him
+to his bower of rest. And now, in unison with the darkened earth
+and sky, no sooner is the voice of the <i>Robin</i> hushed, than the
+<i>Owl</i> sends forth his slow and solemn tones, well adapted to the
+serious hour."</p>
+</div>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a>
+The popular name of this bird is the <i>Umbrella Bird</i>. On its head
+it bears a crest, different from that of any other bird. It is formed
+of feathers more than two inches long, very thickly set, and with hairy
+plumes curving over at the end. These can be laid back so as to be
+hardly visible, or can be erected and spread out on every side, forming
+a dome completely covering the head, and even reaching beyond the point
+of the beak; the individual feathers then stand out something like the
+down-bearing seeds of the dandelion. Besides this, there is another
+ornamental appendage on the breast, formed by a fleshy tubercle, as
+thick as a quill and an inch and a-half long, which hangs down from
+the neck, and is thickly covered with glossy feathers, forming a large
+pendent plume or tassel. This, also, the bird can either press to its
+breast, so as to be scarcely visible, or can swell out so as almost to
+conceal the forepart of its body.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> "Athenæum," No. 1467.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="OWLS" id="OWLS"></a>OWLS.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>THESE</b> nocturnal birds of prey have large heads and great projecting
+eyes, directing forwards, and surrounded with a circle of loose and
+delicate feathers, more or less developed, according to the nocturnal or
+comparatively diurnal habits of the species. The position of the eyes,
+giving a particular fulness and breadth to the head, has gained for the
+Owl the intellectual character so universally awarded to it. The concave
+facial disc of feathers with which they are surrounded materially aids
+vision by concentrating the rays of light to an intensity better suited
+to the opacity of the medium in which power is required to be exercised.
+"They may be compared," says Mr. Yarrell, "to a person near-sighted,
+who sees objects with superior magnitude and brilliancy when within the
+prescribed limits of his natural powers of vision, from the increased
+angle these objects subtend." Their beaks are completely curved,
+or raptorial; they have the power of turning the outer toe either
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
+backwards or forwards; they fly weakly, and near the ground; but, from
+their soft plumage, stealthily, stretching out their hind legs that they
+may balance their large and heavy heads. Their sense of hearing is very
+acute: they not only look, but listen for prey.</p>
+
+<p>The Owl is a bird of mystery and gloom, and a special favourite with
+plaintive poets. We find him with Ariel:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"There I couch when Owls do cry."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>He figures in the nursery rhyme of "Cock Robin." In reply to "Who dug
+his grave?"&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"I, says the Owl, with my little shovel&mdash;</div>
+<div class="verse2">I dug his grave."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>He hoots over graves, and his dismal note adds to the terror of
+darkness:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,</div>
+<div class="verse">And the Owls have awakened the crowing cock;</div>
+<div class="verse5">Tu-whit! tu-whoo!</div>
+<div class="verse">And hark again the crowing cock,</div>
+<div class="verse5">How drowsily it crew.</div>
+<div class="verse">&nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
+&nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
+&nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
+&nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .</div>
+<div class="verse">"When blood is nipt, and ways be foul,</div>
+<div class="verse">Then nightly sings the staring Owl,</div>
+<div class="verse5">Tu-whoo!</div>
+<div class="verse">Tu-whit! tu-whoo! <i>a merry note</i>,</div>
+<div class="verse">While greasy Joan doth keel the pot!"</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Titania sings of</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"The clamorous Owl, that nightly hoots and wonders</div>
+<div class="verse">At our quaint spirits."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Bishop Hall has this "Occasional Meditation" upon the sight of an Owl in
+the twilight:&mdash;"What a strange melancholic life doth this creature lead;
+to hide her head all the day long in an ivy-bush, and at night, when all
+other birds are at rest, to fly abroad and vent her harsh notes. I know
+not why the ancients have <i>sacred</i> this bird to wisdom, except it be for
+her safe closeness and singular perspicuity; that when other domestrial
+and airy creatures are blind, she only hath insured light to discern the
+least objects for her own advantage." We may here note that Linnæus,
+with many other naturalists and antiquaries, have supposed the Horned
+Owl to have been the bird of Minerva; but Blumenbach has shown, from
+the ancient works of Grecian art, that it was not this, but rather some
+smooth-headed species, probably the <i>Passerina</i>, or Little Owl.</p>
+
+<p>The divine has, in the above passage, overstated the melancholy of the
+Owl; as has also the poet, who sings:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse2">"From yonder ivy-mantled tower</div>
+<div class="verse">The moping Owl does to the moon complain</div>
+<div class="verse">Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,</div>
+<div class="verse">Molest her ancient solitary reign."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Shakspeare more accurately terms her "the mousing Owl," for her nights
+are spent in barns, or in hunting and devouring sparrows in the
+churchyard elms. "Moping, indeed!" says a pleasing observer. "So far
+from this, she is a sprightly, active ranger of the night, who had as
+lief sit on a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>
+grave as a rose-bush; who is as valiant a hunter as
+Nimroud, chasing all sorts of game, from the dormouse to the hare and
+the young lamb, and devouring them, while her mate hoots to her from
+some picturesque ruin, and invites her, when supper is over, to return
+to him and her babes."</p>
+
+<p>But the tricks of the Owl by night render her the terror of all other
+birds, great and small. In Northern Italy, persons in rustic districts
+which are well wooded, catch and tame an Owl, put a light chain upon her
+legs, and then place her on a small cross-bar on the top of a high pole,
+which is fixed in the earth. Half-blinded by the light, the defenceless
+captive has to endure patiently the jeers and insults of the dastardly
+tribes from the surrounding groves and thickets, who issue in clouds
+to scream, chirp, and flit about their enemy. Some, trusting to the
+swiftness of their wings, sweep close by, and peck at her feathers as
+they pass, and are sometimes punished by the Owl with her formidable
+beak for their audacity. Meanwhile, from darkened windows, sportsmen,
+with fowling-pieces well charged with shot, fire at the hosts of birds,
+wheeling, shrieking, screaming, and thickening around the Owl. All the
+guns are fired at once, and the grass is strewn for many yards round
+with the slain; while the Owl, whom they have been careful not to hit,
+utters a joyous whoo! whoo! at the fate of her persecutors.</p>
+
+<p>Major Head thus describes the <i>Biscacho</i>, or Coquimbo, a curious species
+of Owl, found all over the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
+pampas of South America:&mdash;"Like rabbits,
+they live in holes, which are in groups in every direction. These
+animals are never seen in the day, but as soon as the lower limb of
+the sun reaches the horizon, they are seen issuing from the holes. The
+Biscachos, when full-grown, are nearly as big as badgers, but their
+head resembles a rabbit's, except that they have large bushy whiskers.
+In the evening they sit outside the holes, and they all appear to be
+moralizing. They are the most serious-looking animals I ever saw;
+and even the young ones are grey-headed, wear moustachios, and look
+thoughtful and grave. In the daytime their holes are guarded by two
+little owls, which are never an instant away from their posts. As one
+gallops by these owls, they always stand looking at the stranger, and
+then at each other, moving their old-fashioned heads in a manner which
+is quite ridiculous, until one rushes by them, when they get the better
+of their dignified looks, and they both run into the Biscacho's hole."</p>
+
+<p>Of all birds of prey, Owls are the most useful to man, by protecting his
+corn-fields, or granaried provision, from mice and numberless vermin.
+Yet, prejudice has perverted these birds into objects of superstition
+and consequent hate. The kind-hearted Mr. Waterton says:&mdash;"I wish that
+any little thing I could write or say might cause this bird to stand
+better with the world at large than it has hitherto done; but I have
+slender hope on this score, because old and deep-rooted prejudices are
+seldom overcome; and when I look back into annals of remote antiquity,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
+I see too clearly that defamation has done its worst to ruin the whole
+family, in all its branches, of this poor, harmless, useful friend of
+mine."</p>
+
+<p>The Barn Owl is common throughout Europe, known in Tartary, and rare in
+the United States of America. In England it is called the Barn Owl, the
+Church Owl, Gillihowlet, and Screech Owl; the last name is improperly
+applied, as it is believed not to hoot, though Sir William Jardine
+asserts that he has shot it in the act of hooting. To the screech
+superstition has annexed ideas of fatal portent; "but," says Charlotte
+Smith, "it has, of course, no more foreknowledge of approaching evil to
+man than the Lark: its cry is a signal to its absent mate."</p>
+
+<p>"If," says Mr. Waterton, "this useful bird caught its food by day
+instead of hunting for it by night, mankind would have ocular
+demonstration of its utility in thinning the country of mice; and it
+would be protected and encouraged everywhere. It would be with us what
+the Ibis was with the Egyptians. When it has young, it will bring a
+mouse to the nest every twelve or fifteen minutes." Mr. Waterton saw his
+Barn Owl fly away with a rat which he had just shot; he also saw her
+drop perpendicularly into the water, and presently rise out of it with a
+fish in her claws, which she took to her nest.</p>
+
+<p>Birds and quadrupeds, and even fish, are the food of Owls, according to
+the size of the species. Hares, partridges, grouse, and even the turkey,
+are attacked by the larger Horned Owls of Europe and America; while
+mice, shrews, small birds, and crabs suffice for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
+the inferior strength
+of the smaller Owls. Mr. Yarrell states that the Short-eared Owl is the
+only bird of prey in which he ever found the remains of a bat.</p>
+
+<p>William Bullock reports that a large Snowy Owl, wounded on the Isle of
+Baltoc, disgorged a young rabbit; and that one in his possession had in
+its stomach a sandpiper with its feathers entire. It preys on lemmings,
+hares, and birds, particularly the willow-grouse and ptarmigan. It is
+a dexterous fisher, grasping the fish with an instantaneous stroke of
+the foot as it sails along near the surface of the water, or sits on
+a stone in a shallow stream. It has been seen on the wing pursuing an
+American hare, making repeated strokes at the animal with its foot. In
+winter, when this Owl is fat, the Indians and white residents in the Fur
+Countries esteem it to be good eating; its flesh is delicately white.
+Small snakes are the common prey of this Owl during the daytime. And to
+show on what various kinds of food Owls subsist, Mr. Darwin states that
+a species that was killed among the islets of the Chonos Archipelago had
+its stomach full of good-sized crabs. Such are a few of the facts which
+attest the almost omnivorous appetite of the Owl.</p>
+
+<p>The flight of the Snowy Owl is stronger and swifter than any other
+bird of the family; its ears are very large; its voice (says Pennant)
+adds horror even to the regions of Greenland by its hideous cries,
+resembling those of a man in deep distress. The eye is very curious,
+being immovably fixed in its socket, so that the bird, to view different
+objects, must<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
+always turn its head; and so excellently is the neck
+adapted to this purpose, that it can with ease turn the head round
+in almost a complete circle, without moving the body. The Virginian
+Eagle-Owl, amidst the forests of Indiana, utters a loud and sudden
+<i>Wough O! wough O!</i> sufficient to alarm a whole garrison; another of its
+nocturnal cries resembles the half-suppressed screams of a person being
+suffocated or throttled.</p>
+
+<p>The Javanese Owl is found in the closest forests, and occasionally near
+villages and dwellings. Dr. Horsfield says:&mdash;"It is not, however, a
+favourite with the natives; various superstitious notions are also in
+Java associated with its visits; and it is considered in many parts of
+the island as portending evil." One of this species never visits the
+villages, but resides in the dense forests, which are the usual resort
+of the tiger. The natives even assert that the <i>Wowo-wiwi</i> approaches
+the animal with the same familiarity with which the jallack approaches
+the buffalo, and that it has no dread to alight on the tiger's back. Dr.
+Horsfield adds, that it has never been seen in confinement.</p>
+
+<p>The Boobook Owl has the native name of Buck-buck, and it may be heard
+in Australia every night during winter, uttering a cry corresponding
+with that word. The note is somewhat similar to that of the European
+<i>Cuckoo</i>, and the colonists have given it that name. The lower order of
+settlers in New South Wales are led away by the idea that everything
+is the reverse in that country to what it is in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> England; and the
+<i>Cuckoo</i>, as they call this bird, singing by night, is one of the
+instances which they point out.</p>
+
+<p>Tame Owls are described as nearly as playful, and quite as affectionate,
+as kittens; they will perch upon your wrist, touch your lips with their
+beak, and hoot to order; and they are less inclined to leave their
+friends than other tame birds. A writer in "Chambers's Journal" relates,
+that a friend lost his favourite Owl, which flew away, and was absent
+many days. In time, however, he came back, and resumed his habits and
+duties, which, for a while, went on uninterruptedly. At length, one
+severe autumn, he disappeared; weeks, months passed, and he returned
+not. One snowy night, however, as his master sat by the blazing fire,
+some heavy thing came bump against the shutters. "Whoo, whoo, whoo."
+The window was opened, and in flew the Owl, shaking the thick snow from
+his wings, and settling lovingly on his master's wrist, the bird's eyes
+dilating with delight.</p>
+
+<p>The Owls at Arundel Castle have a sort of historic interest; they
+are kept within the circuit of the keep-tower, the most ancient and
+picturesque portion of the castle. Among the Australian Owls here we
+read of one larger than a turkey, measuring four feet across the wings
+when expanded. The Owl named "Lord Thurlow," from his resemblance to
+that Judge, is a striking specimen.</p>
+
+<p>The accompanying illustration shows a fine specimen of Fraser's
+Eagle-Owl, brought from Fernando
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>
+Po. It is the size of an ordinary
+fowl; colour, very dark reddish-brown mottling; back and wings passing
+through all shades of the same colour into nearly white on the under
+parts, where the feathers are barred; bill, pale greenish; eyes, nearly
+black.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter bord"><a name="i_237.jpg" id="i_237.jpg"></a>
+  <img src="images/i_237.jpg" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">FRASER'S EAGLE-OWL, FROM FERNANDO PO.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Among the Owls but recently described is the Masked Owl of New Holland,
+named from the markings of the disk of the face, somewhat grotesque;
+the colours are brown variegated with white. A fine specimen of the
+Abyssinian Owl is possessed by Mr. R. Good, of Yeovil: the bird,
+although quite young, is of immense size.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, the Owl is thought to be of the same sympathy or kindred likings
+as the Cat: a young Owl will feed well, and thrive upon fish. Cats, too,
+it is well known, like fish. Both the Cat and the Owl, too, feed upon
+mice. The sight of Owls, also, similar to that of Cats, appears to serve
+them best in the dark.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="WEATHER-WISE_ANIMALS" id="WEATHER-WISE_ANIMALS"></a>WEATHER-WISE ANIMALS.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_180.jpg" alt="Letter W"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>WHATEVER</b> may be the worth of weather prognostications, it is from the
+animal kingdom that we obtain the majority. How these creatures become
+so acutely sensible of the approach of particular kinds of weather is
+not at present well understood. That in many cases the appearance of
+the heavens is not the source from which their information is derived
+is proved by the signs of uneasiness frequently expressed by them when,
+as yet, the most attentive observer can detect no signs of change,
+and even when they are placed in such circumstances as preclude the
+possibility of any instruction from this quarter. For instance. Dogs,
+closely confined in a room, often become very drowsy and stupid before
+rain; and a leech, confined in a glass of water, has been found, by
+its rapid motions or its quiescence, to indicate the approach of wet
+or the return of fair weather. Probably the altered condition of the
+atmosphere with regard to its electricity, which generally accompanies
+change<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+of weather, may so affect their constitution as to excite in
+them pleasurable or uneasy sensations; though man is far from insensible
+to atmospheric changes, as the feelings of utter listlessness which
+many persons experience before rain, and the aggravated severity of
+toothache, headache, and rheumatism abundantly testify. The Cat licking
+itself is a special influence of the above electric influence, which
+denotes the approach of rain.</p>
+
+<p>Birds, as "denizens of the air," are the surest indicators of weather
+changes. Thus, when swallows fly high, fine weather is to be expected
+or continued; but when they fly low, or close to the ground, rain is
+almost surely approaching; for swallows follow the flies and gnats,
+which delight in warm strata of air. Now, as warm air is lighter, and
+usually moister than cold air, when the warm strata of air are high
+there is less chance of moisture being thrown down from them by their
+mixture with cold air; but when the warm and moist air is close to the
+surface, it is almost certain that, as the cold air flows down into it,
+a deposition of water will take place.</p>
+
+<p>When Seagulls assemble on the land, very stormy and rainy weather is
+approaching. The cause of this migration to the land is the security of
+these birds finding food; and they may be observed at this time feeding
+greedily on the earth-worms and larvæ driven out of the ground by severe
+floods; whilst the fish on which they prey in fine weather in the sea,
+leave the surface, and go deeper in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
+storms. The search after food is
+the principal cause why animals change their places. The different
+tribes of the wading birds always migrate when rain is about to take
+place.</p>
+
+<p>There is a bird which takes its name from its apparent agency in
+tempests. Such is the Stormy Petrel, which name Hawkesworth, in his
+"Voyages," mentions the sailors give to the bird, but explains no
+further. Navigators meet with the Little Petrel, or Storm Finch, in
+every part of the ocean, diving, running on foot, or skimming over the
+highest waves. It seems to foresee the coming storm long ere the seamen
+can discover any signs of its approach. The Petrels make this known by
+congregating together under the wake of the vessel, as if to shelter
+themselves, and they thus warn the mariner of the coming danger. At
+night they set up a piercing cry. This usefulness of the bird to the
+sailor is the obvious cause of the latter having such an objection to
+their being killed.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Knapp, the naturalist, thus pictures gulls, describing the Petrel's
+action:&mdash;"They seem to repose in a common breeze, but upon the approach
+or during the continuation of a gale, they surround the ship, and catch
+up the small animals which the agitated ocean brings near the surface,
+or any food that may be dropped from the vessel. Whisking like an arrow
+through the deep valleys of the abyss, and darting away over the foaming
+crest of some mountain-wave, they attend the labouring barque in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> all
+her perilous course. When the storm subsides they retire to rest, and
+are seen no more."</p>
+
+<p>Our sailors have, from very early times, called these birds "Mother
+Carey's Chickens," originally bestowed on them, Mr. Yarrell tells us, by
+Captain Cartaret's sailors, probably from some celebrated ideal hag of
+the above name. Mr. Yarrell adds:&mdash;"As these birds are supposed to be
+seen only before stormy weather, they are not welcome visitors," a view
+at variance with that already suggested.</p>
+
+<p>The Editor of "Notes and Queries" considers the Petrels to have been
+called <i>chickens</i> from their diminutive size. The largest sort, "the
+Giant Petrel," is "Mother Carey's <i>Goose</i>;" its length is forty
+inches, and it expands seven feet. The common kind are about the size
+of a swallow, and weigh something over an ounce; length, six inches;
+expansion, thirteen inches; these are Mother Carey's <i>chickens</i>
+(<i>Latham</i>). It should be borne in mind that our language does not
+restrict the term chickens to young birds of the gallinaceous class.</p>
+
+<p>The Missel-bird is another bird of this kind: in Hampshire and Sussex
+it is called the <i>Storm Cock</i>, because it sings early in the spring, in
+blowing, showery weather.</p>
+
+<p>Petrels, by the way, are used by the inhabitants of the Faroe Islands as
+lamps: they pass a wick through their bodies which, when lighted, burns
+a long time from the quantity of fat they contain.</p>
+
+<p>The Fulmar Petrel, in Boothia, follows the whale-ships, availing itself
+of the labours of the fishermen
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
+by feeding on the carcases of the
+whales when stripped of their blubber. In return the bird is exceedingly
+useful to the whalers by guiding them to the places where whales are
+most numerous, and crowding to the spots where they first appear on the
+surface of the water.</p>
+
+<p>Wild Geese and Ducks are unquestionably weather-wise, for their early
+arrival from the north in the winter portends that a severe season is
+approaching; because their early appearance is most likely caused by
+severe frost having already set in at their usual summer residence. The
+Rev. F. O. Morris, the well-known writer on natural history, records
+from Nunburnholme, Yorkshire. December 5, 1864:&mdash;"This season, for the
+first time I have lived here, I have missed seeing the flocks of Wild
+Geese which in the autumnal months have heretofore wended their way
+overhead, year after year, as regularly as the dusk of the evening came
+on. Almost to the minute, and almost in the same exact course, they
+have flown over aloft from the feeding-places on the Wolds to their
+resting-places for the night; some, perhaps, to extensive commons, while
+others have turned off to the mud-banks of the Humber, whence they have
+returned with equal regularity in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>"But this year I have seen not only not a single flock, but not even
+a single bird. One evening one of my daughters did indeed see a small
+flock of six, but even that small number only once. Whether it portends
+a very hard winter, or what the cause of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>
+it may be, I am utterly at a
+loss to know or even to guess. I quite miss this year the well-known
+cackle of the old gander as he has led the van of the flock that has
+followed him; now in a wide, now in a narrow, now in a short, now in a
+long wedge, over head, diverging just from the father of the family, or
+separating from time to time further back in the line.</p>
+
+<p>"I may add, as a possible prognostication of future weather, that
+fieldfares have, I think, been unusually numerous this year, as last
+year they were the contrary. I have also remarked that swallows took
+their departure this year more than ordinarily in a body, very few
+stragglers being subsequently seen."</p>
+
+<p>It will be sufficient to state that the mean temperature of January and
+February was below that of the same month in the preceding year, and
+that of March had not been so low for twenty years.</p>
+
+<p>The opinion that sea-birds come to land in order to avoid an approaching
+storm is stated to be erroneous; and the cause assigned is, that as the
+fish upon which the birds prey go deep into the water during storms, the
+birds come to land merely on account of the greater certainty of finding
+food there than out at sea.</p>
+
+<p>We add a few notes on Bird naturalists. The Redbreast has been called
+<i>the Naturalist's Barometer</i>. When on a summer evening, though it be
+unsettled and rainy, he sings cheerfully and sweetly on a lofty twig or
+housetop, it is an unerring promise of succeeding
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>
+fine days. Sometimes,
+though the atmosphere be dry and warm, he may be seen melancholy
+chirping and brooding in a bush or low in a hedge; this promises the
+reverse. In the luxuriant forests of Brazil the Toucan may be heard
+rattling with his large hollow beak, as he sits on the outermost
+branches, calling in plaintive notes for rain.</p>
+
+<p>When Mr. Loudon was at Schwetzingen, Rhenish Bavaria, in 1829, he
+witnessed in the post-house there for the first time what he afterwards
+frequently saw&mdash;an amusing application of zoological knowledge for the
+purpose of prognosticating the weather. Two tree-frogs were kept in
+a crystal jar about eighteen inches high and six inches in diameter,
+with a depth of three or four inches of water at the bottom, and a
+small ladder reaching to the top of the jar. On the approach of dry
+weather the frogs mounted the ladder, but when moisture was expected
+they descended into the water. These animals are of a bright green, and
+in their wild state climb the trees in search of insects, and make a
+peculiar singing noise before rain. In the jar they got no other food
+than now and then a fly; one of which, Mr. Loudon was assured, would
+serve a frog for a week, though it would eat from six to twelve flies in
+a day if it could get them. In catching the flies put alive into the jar
+the frogs displayed great adroitness.</p>
+
+<p>Snails are extraordinary indicators of changes in the weather.
+Several years ago, Mr. Thomas, of Cincinnati, known as an accredited
+observer of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+natural phenomena, published some interesting accounts
+of Weather-wise Snails. They do not drink (he observes), but imbibe
+moisture in their bodies during rain, and exude it at regular periods
+afterwards. Then a certain snail first exudes the pure liquid; when
+this is exhausted, a light red succeeds, then a deep red, next yellow,
+and lastly a dark brown. The snail is very careful not to exude more
+of its moisture than is necessary. It is never seen abroad <i>except
+before rain</i>, when we find it ascending the bark of trees and getting
+on the leaves. The tree-snail is also seen ascending the stems of
+plants <i>two days before rain</i>: if it be a long and hard rain they get
+on the sheltered side of the leaf, but if a short rain the outside
+of the leaf. Another snail has the same habits, but differs only in
+colour: before rain it is yellow, and after it blue. Others show signs
+of rain, not only by means of exuding fluids, but by means of pores and
+protuberances; and the bodies of some snails have large tubercles rising
+from them <i>before rain</i>. These tubercles commence showing themselves
+ten days previous to the fall of rain they indicate; at the end of each
+of these tubercles is a pore; and at the time of the fall of rain these
+tubercles, with their pores opened, are stretched to their utmost to
+receive the water. In another kind of snail, a few days before rain
+appears a large and deep indentation, beginning at the head between
+the horns, and ending with the jointure at the shells. Other snails,
+a few days before the rain, crawl to the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>
+most exposed hill-side,
+where, if they arrive before the rain descends, they seek some crevice
+in the rocks, and then close the aperture of the shell with glutinous
+substance; this, when the rain approaches, they dissolve, and are then
+seen crawling about.</p>
+
+<p>Our Cincinnati observer mentions three kinds of snails which move along
+at the rate of a mile in forty-four hours; they inhabit the most dense
+forests, and it is regarded as a sure indication of rain to observe them
+moving towards an exposed situation. Others indicate the weather not
+only by exuding fluids, but by the colour of the animal. After rain the
+snail has a very dark appearance, but it grows of a bright colour as
+the water is expended; whilst just before rain it is of yellowish white
+colour, also just before rain streaks appear from the point of the head
+to the jointure of the shell. These snails move at the rate of a mile in
+fourteen days and sixteen hours. If they are observed ascending a cliff
+it is a sure indication of rain: they live in the cavities of the sides
+of cliffs. There is also a snail which is brown, tinged with blue on the
+edges before rain, but black after rain: a few days before appears an
+indentation, which grows deeper as the rain approaches.</p>
+
+<p>The leaves of trees are even good barometers: most of them for a short,
+light rain, will turn up so as to receive their fill of water; but for
+a long rain they are doubled, so as to conduct the water away. The
+Frog and Toad are sure indicators of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
+rain; for, as they do not drink
+water but absorb it into their bodies, they are sure to be found out
+at the time they expect rain. The Locust and Grasshopper are also good
+indicators of a storm; a few hours before rain they are to be found
+under the leaves of trees and in the hollow trunks.</p>
+
+<p>The Mole has long been recorded as a prognosticator of change of
+weather, before which it becomes very active. The temperature or dryness
+of the air governs its motions as to the depth at which it lives or
+works. This is partly from its inability to bear cold or thirst, but
+chiefly from its being necessitated to follow its natural food, the
+earth-worm, which always descends as the cold or drought increases.
+In frosty weather both worms and moles are deeper in the ground than
+at other times; and both seem to be sensible of an approaching change
+to warmer weather before there are any perceptible signs of it in the
+atmosphere. When it is observed, therefore, that Moles are casting hills
+through openings in the frozen turf or through a thin covering of snow,
+a change to open weather may be shortly expected. The cause of this
+appears to be&mdash;the natural heat of the earth being for a time pent in
+by the frozen surface accumulates below it; first incites to action the
+animals, thaws the frozen surface, and at length escapes into the air,
+which is warm, and softens; and if not counterbalanced by a greater
+degree of cold in the atmosphere brings about a change, such as from
+frosty to mild weather. The Mole is most active and casts up most earth
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
+immediately before rain, and in the winter before a thaw, because at
+those times the worms and insects begin to be in motion, and approach
+the surface.</p>
+
+<p>Forster, the indefatigable meteorologist, has assembled some curious
+observations on certain animals, who, by some peculiar sensibility to
+electrical or other atmospheric influence, often indicate changes of the
+weather by their peculiar motions and habits. Thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Ants.</i>&mdash;An universal bustle and activity observed in ant-hills may be
+generally regarded as a sign of rain: the Ants frequently appear all in
+motion together, and carry their eggs about from place to place. This is
+remarked by Virgil, Pliny, and others.</p>
+
+<p><i>Asses.</i>&mdash;When donkeys bray more than ordinarily, especially should
+they shake their ears, as if uneasy, it is said to predict rain, and
+particularly showers. Forster noticed that in showery weather a donkey
+brayed before every shower, and generally some minutes before the rain
+fell, as if some electrical influence, produced by the concentrating
+power of the approaching rain-cloud, caused a tickling in the wind-pipe
+of the animal just before the shower came on. Whatever this electric
+state of the air preceding a shower may be, it seems to be the same
+that causes in other animals some peculiar sensations, which makes the
+peacock squall, the pintado call "come back," &amp;c. An expressive adage
+says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"When that the ass begins to bray,</div>
+<div class="verse">Be sure we shall have rain that day."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Haymakers may derive useful admonitions from the braying of the ass:
+thus the proverb:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"Be sure to cock your hay and corn</div>
+<div class="verse">When the old donkey blows his horn."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Bats</i> flitting about late in the evening in spring and autumn foretel a
+fine day on the morrow; as do Dorbeetles and some other insects. On the
+contrary, when Bats return soon to their hiding-places, and send forth
+loud cries, bad weather may be expected.</p>
+
+<p><i>Beetles</i> flying about late in the evening often foretel a fine day on
+the morrow.</p>
+
+<p><i>Butterflies</i>, when they appear early, are sometimes forerunners of fine
+weather. Moths and Sphinxes also foretel fine weather when they are
+common in the evening.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cats</i>, when they "wash their faces," or when they seem sleepy and dull,
+foretel rain.</p>
+
+<p><i>Chickens</i>, when they pick up small stones and pebbles, and are more
+noisy than usual, afford a sign of rain; as do fowls rubbing in the
+dust, and clapping their wings; but this applies to several kinds of
+fowls, as well as to the gallinaceous kinds. Cocks, when they crow at
+unwonted hours, often foretel rain; when they crow all day, in summer
+particularly, a change to rain frequently follows.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cranes</i> were said of old to foretel rain when they retreated to the
+valleys, and returned from their aërial flight. The high flight of
+cranes in silence indicates fine weather.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>Dolphins</i> as well as <i>Porpoises</i>, when they come about a ship, and
+sport and gambol on the surface of the water, betoken a storm.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dogs</i>, before rain, grow sleepy and dull, lie drowsily before the fire,
+and are not easily aroused. They also often eat grass, which indicates
+that their stomachs, like ours, are apt to be disturbed before change
+of weather. It is also said to be a sign of change of weather when Dogs
+howl and bark much in the night. Dogs also dig in the earth with their
+feet before rain, and often make deep holes in the ground.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ducks.</i>&mdash;The loud and clamorous quacking of Ducks, Geese, and other
+water-fowl, is a sign of rain; as also when they wash themselves, and
+flutter about in the water more than usual. Virgil has well described
+all these habits of aquatic birds.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fieldfares</i>, when they arrive early, and in great numbers, in autumn,
+foreshow a hard winter, which has probably set in in the regions from
+which they have come.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fishes</i>, when they bite more readily, and gambol near the surface of
+streams or pools, foreshow rain.</p>
+
+<p><i>Flies</i>, and various sorts of insects, become more troublesome, and
+sting and bite more than usual, before, as well as in the intervals of
+rainy weather, particularly in autumn.</p>
+
+<p><i>Frogs</i>, by their clamorous croaking, indicate rainy weather, as does
+likewise their coming about in great numbers in the evening; but this
+last sign applies more obviously to toads.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>Geese</i> washing, or taking wing with a clamorous noise, and flying to
+the water, portend rain.</p>
+
+<p><i>Gnats</i> afford several indications. When they fly in a vortex in the
+beams of the setting sun they forebode fair weather; when they frisk
+about more widely in the open air at eventide they foreshow heat; and
+when they assemble under trees, and bite more than usual, they indicate
+rain.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hogs</i>, when they shake the stalks of corn, and spoil them, often
+indicate rain. When they run squeaking about, and jerk up their heads,
+windy weather is about to commence; hence the Wiltshire proverb, that
+"Pigs can see the wind."</p>
+
+<p><i>Horses</i> foretel the coming of rain by starting more than ordinarily,
+and by restlessness on the road.</p>
+
+<p><i>Jackdaws</i> are unusually clamorous before rain, as are also <i>Starlings</i>.
+Sometimes before change of weather the daws make a great noise in the
+chamber wherein they build.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kine</i> (cattle) are said to foreshow rain when they lick their
+fore-feet, or lie on their right side. Some say oxen licking themselves
+against the hair is a sign of wet.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kites</i>, when they soar very high in the air, denote fair weather, as do
+also <i>Larks</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Magpies</i>, in windy weather, often fly in small flocks of three or four
+together, uttering a strong harsh cry.</p>
+
+<p><i>Mice</i> when they squeak much, and gambol in the house, foretel a change
+of weather, and often rain.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>Owls.</i>&mdash;When an owl hoots or screeches, sitting on the top of a house,
+or by the side of a window, it is said to foretel death. "The fact,"
+says Forster, "seems to be this: the Owl, as Virgil justly observes,
+is more noisy at the change of weather, and as it often happens that
+patients with lingering diseases die at the change of weather, so the
+Owl seems, by a mistaken association of ideas, to forebode the calamity."</p>
+
+<p><i>Peacocks</i> squalling by night often foretel a rainy day. Forster adds,
+"This prognostic does not often fail; and the indication is made more
+certain by the crowing of Cocks all day, the braying of the Donkey, the
+low flight of Swallows, the aching of rheumatic persons, and by the
+frequent appearance of spiders on the walls of the house."</p>
+
+<p><i>Pigeons.</i>&mdash;It is a sign of rain when Pigeons return slowly to the
+dove-houses before the usual time of day.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ravens</i>, when observed early in the morning, at a great height in the
+air, soaring round and round, and uttering a hoarse, croaking sound,
+indicate that the day will be fine. On the contrary, this bird affords
+us a sign of coming rain by another sort of cry; the difference between
+these two voices being more easily learned from nature than described.
+The Raven frequenting the shore and dipping himself in the water is also
+a sign of rain.</p>
+
+<p><i>Redbreasts</i>, when they, with more than usual familiarity, lodge on our
+window-frames, and peck against the glass with their bills, indicate
+severe<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+weather, of which they have a presentiment, which brings them
+nearer to the habitations of man.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rooks</i> gathering together, and returning home from their pastures
+early, and at unwonted hours, forebode rain. When Rooks whirl round in
+the air rapidly, and come down in small flocks, making a roaring noise
+with their wings, rough weather invariably follows. On the contrary,
+when Rooks are very noisy about their trees, and fly about as if
+rejoicing, Virgil assures us they foresee a return of fine weather, and
+an end of the showers.</p>
+
+<p><i>Spiders</i>, when seen crawling on the walls more than usual, indicate
+rain. "This prognostic," says Forster, "seldom fails, I have noticed it
+for many years, particularly in winter, but more or less at all times of
+the year. In summer the quantity of webs of the garden spiders denote
+fair weather."</p>
+
+<p><i>Swallows</i>, in fine and settled weather, fly higher in the air than they
+do just before or during a showery or rainy time. Then, also, Swallows
+flying low, and skimming over the surface of a meadow where there is
+tolerably long grass, frequently stop, and hang about the blades, as if
+they were gathering insects lodged there.</p>
+
+<p><i>Swans</i>, when they fly against the wind, portend rain, a sign frequently
+fulfilled.</p>
+
+<p><i>Toads</i>, when they come from their holes in an unusual number in the
+evening, although the ground be still dry, foreshow the coming rain,
+which will generally fall more or less during the night.</p>
+
+<p><i>Urchins of the Sea</i>, a sort of fish, when they
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
+thrust themselves into
+the mud, and try to cover their bodies with sand, foreshow a storm.</p>
+
+<p><i>Vultures</i>, when they scent carrion at a great distance, indicate that
+state of the atmosphere which is favourable to the perception of smells,
+and this often forebodes rain.</p>
+
+<p><i>Willow Wrens</i> are frequently seen, in mild and still rainy weather,
+flitting about the willows, pines, and other trees, in quest of insects.</p>
+
+<p><i>Woodcocks</i> appear in autumn earlier, and in greater numbers, previous
+to severe winters; as do Snipes and other winter birds.</p>
+
+<p><i>Worms</i> come forth more abundantly before rain, as do snails, slugs, and
+almost all limaceous animals.</p>
+
+<p>Some birds build their nests weather-proof, as ascertained by careful
+observation of Mr. M. W. B. Thomas, of Cincinnati, Ohio. Thus, when a
+pair of migratory birds have arrived in the spring, they prepare to
+build their nest, making a careful reconnaissance of the place, and
+observing the character of the season. If it be a windy one, they thatch
+the straw and leaves on the inside of the nest, between the twigs and
+the lining; if it be very windy, they get pliant twigs, and bind the
+nest firmly to the limb of the tree, securing all the small twigs with
+their saliva. If they fear the approach of a rainy season, they build
+their nests so as to be sheltered from the weather; but if a pleasant
+one, they build in a fair open place, without taking any of these extra
+precautions.</p>
+
+<p>Of all writers, Dr. Darwin has given us the most
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> correct account of
+the "Signs of Rain," in a poetical description of the approach of foul
+weather, as follows. This passage has been often quoted, but, perhaps,
+never exceeded in the accuracy of its phenomenal observation:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"The hollow winds begin to blow;</div>
+<div class="verse">The clouds look black, the glass is low;</div>
+<div class="verse">The soot falls down, the spaniels sleep;</div>
+<div class="verse">And spiders from their cobwebs peep.</div>
+<div class="verse">Last night the sun went pale to bed;</div>
+<div class="verse">The moon in haloes hid her head;</div>
+<div class="verse">The boding shepherd heaves a sigh,</div>
+<div class="verse">For, see, a rainbow spans the sky.</div>
+<div class="verse">The walls are damp, the ditches smell,</div>
+<div class="verse">Clos'd is the light red pimpernel.</div>
+<div class="verse">Hark! how the chairs and tables crack,</div>
+<div class="verse">Old Betty's joints are on the rack;</div>
+<div class="verse">Her corns with shooting pains torment her,</div>
+<div class="verse">And to her bed untimely send her.</div>
+<div class="verse">Loud quack the ducks, the sea-fowls cry,</div>
+<div class="verse">The distant hills are looking nigh.</div>
+<div class="verse">How restless are the snorting swine!</div>
+<div class="verse">The busy flies disturb the kine.</div>
+<div class="verse">Low o'er the grass the swallow wings,</div>
+<div class="verse">The cricket, too, how sharp he sings!</div>
+<div class="verse">Puss on the hearth, with velvet paws,</div>
+<div class="verse">Sits wiping o'er her whisker'd jaws.</div>
+<div class="verse">The smoke from chimneys right ascends;</div>
+<div class="verse">Then spreading back, to earth it bends.</div>
+<div class="verse">The wind unsteady veers around,</div>
+<div class="verse">Or settling in the South is found.</div>
+<div class="verse">Through the clear stream the fishes rise,</div>
+<div class="verse">And nimbly catch th' incautious flies.</div>
+<div class="verse">The glowworms num'rous, clear, and bright,</div>
+<div class="verse">Illum'd the dewy hill last night.</div>
+<div class="verse">At dusk, the squalid toad was seen,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></div>
+<div class="verse">Like quadruped, stalk o'er the green.</div>
+<div class="verse">The whirling wind the dust obeys,</div>
+<div class="verse">And in the rapid eddy plays.</div>
+<div class="verse">The frog has chang'd his yellow vest,</div>
+<div class="verse">And in a russet coat is drest.</div>
+<div class="verse">The sky is green, the air is still,</div>
+<div class="verse">The mellow blackbird's voice is shrill.</div>
+<div class="verse">The dog, so altered is his taste,</div>
+<div class="verse">Quits mutton-bones on grass to feast.</div>
+<div class="verse">Behold the rooks, how odd their flight,</div>
+<div class="verse">They imitate the gliding kite,</div>
+<div class="verse">And seem precipitate to fall.</div>
+<div class="verse">As if they felt the piercing ball.</div>
+<div class="verse">The tender colts on banks do lie,</div>
+<div class="verse">Nor heed the traveller passing by.</div>
+<div class="verse">In fiery red the sun doth rise,</div>
+<div class="verse">Then wades through clouds to mount the skies.</div>
+<div class="verse">''Twill surely rain, we see 't with sorrow,</div>
+<div class="verse">No working in the fields to-morrow.'"</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Shepherd of Banbury says:&mdash;"The surest and most certain sign of
+rain is taken from Bees, which are more incommoded by rain than almost
+any other creatures; and, therefore, as soon as the air begins to
+grow heavy, and the vapours to condense, they will not fly from their
+hives, but either remain in them all day, or else fly but to a small
+distance." Yet Bees are not always right in their prognostics, for
+Réaumur witnessed a swarm which, after leaving the hive at half-past one
+o'clock, were overtaken by a heavy shower at three.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="FISH-TALK" id="FISH-TALK"></a>FISH-TALK.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_260.jpg" alt="Letter M"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>MAN</b> favours wonders;" and this delight is almost endlessly exemplified
+in the stories of strange Fishes&mdash;of preternatural size and odd forms,
+which are to be found in their early history. In our present Talk we do
+not aim at re-assembling these olden tales, but propose rather to glance
+at recent accessions to our acquaintance with the study of Fish-life,
+and a few modern instances of the class of wonders.</p>
+
+<p>Fishes, like all other animals, have a very delicate sense of the
+equilibrial position of their bodies. They endeavour to counteract all
+change in their position by means of movements partly voluntary and
+partly instinctive. These latter appear in a very remarkable manner in
+the eye; and they are so constant and evident in fishes while alive,
+that their absence is sufficient to indicate the death of the animal.
+The equilibrium of the fish, its horizontal position, with the back
+upwards, depends solely on the action of the fins, and principally
+that of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>
+vertical fins. The swimming-bladder may enable a fish
+to increase or diminish its specific gravity. By compressing the air
+contained in it, the fish descends in the water; it rises by releasing
+the muscles which produced the compression. By compressing more or
+less the posterior or anterior portion of the bladder, the animal, at
+pleasure, can make the anterior or posterior half of its body lighter;
+it can also assume an oblique position, which permits an ascending or
+descending movement in the water.</p>
+
+<p>There is a small fish found in the rivers of the Burmese Empire, which,
+on being taken out of the water, has the power of blowing itself up to
+the shape of a small round ball, but its original shape is resumed as
+soon as it is returned to the river.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. St. John, in his "Tour in Eastern Lanarkshire," gives some curious
+instances of fish changing colour, which takes place with surprising
+rapidity. Put a living black burn Trout into a white basin of water,
+and it becomes, within half an hour, of a light colour. Keep the fish
+living in a white jar for some days, and it becomes absolutely white;
+but put it into a dark-coloured or black vessel, and although on first
+being placed there the white-coloured fish shows most conspicuously on
+the black ground, in a quarter of an hour it becomes as dark-coloured
+as the bottom of the jar, and consequently difficult to be seen. No
+doubt this facility of adapting its colour to the bottom of the water
+in which it lives, is of the greatest service to the fish in protecting
+it from its numerous enemies. All anglers must have observed, that in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>
+every stream the Trout are very much of the same colour as the gravel or
+sand on which they live: whether this change of colour is a voluntary or
+involuntary act on the part of the fish, the scientific must determine.</p>
+
+<p>Anglers of our time have proved that Tench croak like frogs; Herrings
+cry like mice; Gurnards grunt like hogs; and some say the Gurnard makes
+a noise like a cuckoo, from which he takes one of his country names. The
+Maigre, a large sea-fish, when swimming in shoals, utters a grunting or
+piercing noise, that may be heard from a depth of twenty fathoms.</p>
+
+<p>M. Dufossé asserts that facts prove that nature has not refused to all
+fishes the power of expressing their instinctive sensations by sounds,
+but has not conferred on them the unity of mechanism in the formation
+of sonorous vibrations as in other classes of vertebrated animals.
+Some fishes, he says, are able to emit musical tones, engendered by a
+mechanism in which the muscular vibration is the principal motive power;
+others possess the faculty of making blowing sounds, like those of
+certain reptiles; and others can produce the creaking noise resembling
+that of many insects. These phenomena M. Dufossé has named "Fish-noise."</p>
+
+<p>The River Plate swarms with fish, and is the <i>habitat</i> of one possessed
+of a very sonorous voice, like that found in the River Borneo&mdash;the
+account of which is quoted by Dr. Buist from the Journal of the
+Samarang; and there is similar testimony of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>
+a loud piscatory chorus
+being heard on board H.M.S. Eagle, anchored, in 1845-6, about three
+miles from Monte Video, during the night.</p>
+
+<p>That fishes hear has been doubted, although John Hunter was of this
+opinion, and has been followed by many observers. When standing beside
+a person angling, how often is the request made not to make a noise,
+as that would <i>alarm</i> the fish. On the other hand, the Chinese drive
+the fish up to that part of the river where their nets are ready to
+capture them by loud yells and shouts, and the sound of gongs; but old
+Æsop writes of a fisherman who caught no fish because he alarmed them
+by playing on his flute while fishing. In Germany the Shad is taken
+by means of nets, to which bows of wood, hung with a number of little
+bells, are attached in such a manner as to chime in harmony when the
+nets are moved. The Shad, when once attracted by the sound, will not
+attempt to escape while the bells continue to ring. Ælian says the
+Shad is allured by castanets. Macdiarmid, who declares that fishes
+hear as well as see, relates that an old Codfish, the patriarch of the
+celebrated fish-pond at Logan, "answered to his name; and not only
+drew near, but turned up his snout most beseechingly when he heard the
+monosyllable 'Tom;' and that he evidently could distinguish the voice of
+the fisherman who superintended the pond, and fed the fish, from that
+of any other fisherman." In the "Kaleidoscope" mention is made of three
+Trout in a pond near the powder-mills at Faversham, who were so tame
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>
+as to come at the call of the person accustomed to feed them. Izaak
+Walton tells of a Carp coming to a certain part of a pond to be fed "at
+the ringing of a bell, or the beating of a drum;" and Sir John Hawkins
+was assured by a clergyman, a friend of his, that at the Abbey of St.
+Bernard, near Antwerp, he saw a Carp come to the edge of the water to be
+fed, at the whistle of the person who fed it. The Carp at Fontainebleau,
+inhabiting the lake adjoining the Imperial Palace, are of great size,
+and manifest a curious instinct. A Correspondent of the "Athenæum"
+remarks:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">
+"Enjoying entire immunity from all angling arts and lures, the
+Fontainebleau Carp live a life of great enjoyment, marred only, we
+imagine, by their immense numbers causing the supply of food to be
+somewhat below their requirements. It is not, however, very easy to
+define what a Carp's requirements in the form of pabulum are, as he
+is a voracious member of the ichthyological family, eating whenever
+he has an opportunity until absolutely surfeited. His favourite
+food consists of vegetable substances masticated by means of flat
+striated teeth, which work with a millstone kind of motion against
+a singular process of the lower part of the skull covered with
+horny plates. When this fish obtains an abundant supply of food it
+grows to an enormous size. Several continental rivers and lakes
+are very congenial to Carp, and especially the Oder, where this
+fish occasionally attains the enormous weight of 60 lb. It is not
+probable that any Carp in the lake at Fontainebleau are so large as
+this; but there are certainly many weighing 50 lb., patriarchs of
+their kind, which, though olive-hued in their tender years, are now
+white with age. That the great size of these fish is due to ample
+feeding is, we think, evident, and, as we shall see presently, it
+is the large fish that are the best
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
+fed. During many years the
+feeding of the Carp at Fontainebleau has been a favourite Court
+pastime. But it is from the visitors who frequent Fontainebleau
+during a great part of the year that the Carp receive their
+most bountiful rations. For big Carp have an enormous swallow,
+soft penny rolls being mere mouthfuls, bolted with ostrich-like
+celerity. So to prevent the immediate disappearance of these
+<i>bonnes bouches</i>, bread, in the form of larger balls than the most
+capacious Carp can take into his gullet, is baked until it becomes
+as hard as biscuit, and with these balls the Carp are regailed.
+Throw one into the lake, and you will quickly have an idea of the
+enormous Carp population it contains. For no sooner does the bread
+touch the water than it is surrounded by hundreds of these fish,
+which dart to it from all sides. And now, if you look attentively,
+you will witness a curious display of instinct, which might almost
+take a higher name. Conscious, apparently, of their inability to
+crush these extremely hard balls, the Carp combine with surprising
+unanimity to push them to that part of the lake with their noses
+where it is bounded by a wall, and when there they butt at them,
+until at last their repeated blows and the softening effect of the
+water causes them to yield and open. And now you will see another
+curious sight. While shoals of Carp have been pounding away at
+the bread-balls, preparing them for being swallowed, some dozen
+monsters hover round, indifferent, apparently, to what is passing.
+But not so, for no sooner is the bread ready for eating, than two
+or three of these giants, but more generally one&mdash;the tyrant,
+probably, of the lake&mdash;rush to the prize, cleaving the shoals of
+smaller Carp, and shouldering them to the right and left, seize the
+bread with open jaws, between which it quickly disappears."</p>
+
+<p>Some of the finest and oldest Carp are found in the windings of the
+Spree, in the tavern-gardens of Charlottenburg, the great resort of
+strollers from Berlin. Visitors are in the habit of feeding them
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> with
+bread, and collect them together by ringing a bell, at the sound of
+which shoals of the fish may be seen popping their noses upwards from
+the water.</p>
+
+<p>The affection of fishes has only been properly understood of late years.
+It might be supposed that little natural affection existed in this
+cold-blooded race; and, in fact, fishes constantly devour their own
+eggs, and, at a later period, their own young, without compunction or
+discrimination. Some few species bear their eggs about with them until
+hatched. This was long thought to be the utmost extent of care which
+fishes lavished on their young; but Dr. Hancock has stepped in to rescue
+at least one species from this unmerited charge. "It is asserted," he
+says, "by naturalists, that no fishes are known to take any care of
+their offspring. Both species of <i>Hassar</i> mentioned below, however, make
+a regular nest, in which they lay their eggs in a flattened cluster,
+and cover them over most carefully. Their care does not end here; they
+remain by the side of the nest till the spawn is hatched, with as much
+solicitude as a hen guards her eggs, both the male and female Hassar,
+for they are monogamous, steadily watching the spawn and courageously
+attacking the assailant. Hence the negroes frequently take them by
+putting their hands into the water close to the nest, on agitating which
+the male Hassar springs furiously at them, and is thus captured. The
+<i>roundhead</i> forms its nest of grass, the <i>flathead</i> of leaves. Both,
+at certain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>
+seasons, burrow in the bank. They lay their eggs only in
+wet weather. I have been surprised to observe the sudden appearance of
+numerous nests in a morning after rain occurs, the spot being indicated
+by a bunch of froth which appears on the surface of the water over
+the nest. Below this are the eggs, placed on a bunch of fallen leaves
+or grass, which they cut and collect together. By what means this is
+effected seems rather mysterious, as the species are destitute of
+cutting-teeth. It may, possibly, be by the use of their arms, which form
+the first ray of the pectoral fin."</p>
+
+<p>There is another operation by fishes, which seems to require almost
+equal experience. Professor Agassiz, while collecting insects along the
+shores of Lake Sebago, in Maine, observed a couple of Cat-fish, which,
+at his approach, left the shore suddenly, and returned to the deeper
+water. Examining the place which the fishes had left, he discovered
+a <i>nest</i> among the water-plants, with a number of little tadpoles.
+In a few moments the two fishes returned, looking anxiously towards
+the nest, and approached within six or eight feet of where Professor
+Agassiz stood. They were evidently not in search of food, and he became
+convinced that they were seeking the protection of their young. Large
+stones, thrown repeatedly into the middle of the nest after the fishes
+had returned to it, only frightened them away for a brief period, and
+they returned to the spot within ten or fifteen minutes. This was
+repeated four or five times with the same result. This negatives
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> the
+assertion made by some naturalists&mdash;that no fishes are known to take any
+care of their offspring.</p>
+
+<p>But affection is scarcely to be looked for where the offspring is so
+very numerous as to put all attempts at even recognising them out of
+the question. How could the fondest mother love 100,000 little ones at
+once? Yet the number is far exceeded by some of the matrons of the deep.
+Petit found 300,000 eggs in a single carp; Lenwenhoeck 9,000,000 in a
+single cod; Mr. Harmer found in a sole 100,000; in a tench 300,000;
+in a mackerel 500,000; and in a flounder 1,357,000.
+<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> M. Rousseau
+disburthened a pike of 160,000, and a sturgeon of 1,567,000, while from
+this latter class has been gotten 119 pounds weight of eggs, which, at
+the rate of 7 to a grain, would give a total amount of 7,653,200 eggs!
+If all these came to maturity the world would be in a short time nothing
+but fish: means, however, amply sufficient to keep down this unwelcome
+superabundance have been provided. Fish themselves, men, birds, other
+marine animals,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
+to say nothing of the dispersions produced by storms
+and currents, the destruction consequent on their being thrown on the
+beach and left there to dry up, all combine to diminish this excessive
+supply over demand. Yet, on the other hand (so wonderfully are all
+the contrivances of nature so harmonized and balanced), one of these
+apparent modes of destruction becomes an actual means of extending the
+species. The eggs of the pike, barbel, and many other fish, says M.
+Virey, are rendered indigestible by an acid oil which they contain, and
+in consequence of which they are passed in the same condition as they
+were swallowed; the result of which is, that being taken in by ducks,
+grebes, or other water-fowls, they are thus transported to situations,
+such as inland lakes, which otherwise they could never have attained;
+and in this way only can we account for the fact, now well ascertained,
+that several lakes in the Alps, formed by the thawing of the glaciers,
+are now abundantly stocked with excellent fish.</p>
+
+<p>Little fishes are ordinarily the food of larger marine animals; but a
+remarkable exception occurs in the case of the larger Medusæ, which
+are stated in various works to prey upon fishes for sustenance. Mr.
+Peach, the naturalist, has, however, by observations at Peterhead, in
+Aberdeenshire, thus corrected this statement. He observed several small
+fishes playing round the larger Medusæ in the harbour and bay. When
+alarmed, they would rush under the umbrella, and remain sheltered in
+its large<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>
+folds till the danger had passed, when they would emerge,
+and sport and play about their sheltering friend. When beneath the
+umbrella they lay so close that they were frequently taken into a bucket
+with the Medusæ. They proved to be young whitings, varying from 1-1/2
+to 2 inches long. These little creatures, so far from becoming the
+prey of the Medusæ, experienced from them protection; and, moreover,
+they preferred the <i>stinging</i> one. In no instance did Mr. Peach see a
+fish in the stomach of the Medusæ, but all could liberate themselves
+when they pleased. In one case, Mr. Peach witnessed a small whiting,
+in the first instance chased by a single young pollack, whose assault
+the little fellow easily evaded by dodging about; but the chaser being
+joined by others, the whiting was driven from its imperfect shelter, and
+after being much bitten and dashed about by its assailants, became at
+length completely exhausted, and lay to all appearance dead. Recovering,
+however, after action, it swam slowly to the Medusæ, and took refuge as
+before; but its movements being soon observed, it was again attacked,
+after a very brief respite, driven into open water, and speedily
+despatched.</p>
+
+<p>Fishes appear to execute annually two great migrations. By one of these
+shiftings they forsake the deep water for a time, and approach the
+shallow shores, and by the other they return to their more concealed
+haunts. These movements are connected with the purposes of spawning,
+the fry requiring<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>
+to come into life, and to spend a certain portion
+of their youth in situations different from those which are suited
+to the period of maturity. It is in obedience to these arrangements
+that the Cod and Haddock, the Mackerel, and others, annually leave
+the deeper and less accessible parts of the ocean, the region of the
+zoophytic tribes, and deposit their spawn within that zone of marine
+vegetation which fringes our coasts, extending from near the high-water
+mark of neap-tides to a short distance beyond the low-water mark of
+spring-tides. Amidst the shelter in this region afforded by the groves
+of arborescent fuci, the young fish were wont in comfort to spend
+their infancy, but since these plants have been so frequently cut down
+to procure materials for the manufacture of kelp, and the requisite
+protection withdrawn, the fisheries have greatly suffered. Many species
+of fish, as the Salmon, Smelt, and others, in forsaking the deep water,
+and approaching a suitable spawning station, leave the sea altogether
+for a time, ascend the rivers and their tributary streams, and, having
+deposited their eggs, return again to their usual haunts. Even a certain
+species of fish, inhabiting lakes, as the Roach, betake themselves to
+the tributary streams, as the most suitable places for spawning.</p>
+
+<p>The Goramy, of India, are stated by General Hardwicke to watch most
+actively the margins of the spot which they select and prepare for
+depositing their spawn, driving away with violence every other fish
+which approaches their cover. The General adds
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>
+that from the time he
+first noticed this circumstance about one month had elapsed, when one
+day he saw numerous minute fishes close to the margin of the grass, on
+the outer side of which the parent fishes continued to pass to and fro.</p>
+
+<p>There is a species of Grampus from two to three tons weight, and about
+sixteen feet in length, that amuses itself with jumping, or rather
+springing its ponderous body entirely out of the water, in a vertical
+position, and falling upon its back. This effort of so large a fish is
+almost incredible, and informs us how surprisingly great the power of
+muscle must be in this class of animal. A Correspondent writes to the
+"United Service Journal":&mdash;"I have seen them spring out of the water
+within ten yards of the ship's side, generally in the evening, after
+having swam all the former part of the day in the ship's wake, or on
+either quarter. When several of these fish take it into their heads to
+'dance a hornpipe,' as the sailors term their gambols, at the distance
+of half a mile, they, especially at or just after sundown, may easily
+be mistaken for the sharp points of rocks sticking up out of the water,
+and the splashing and foam they make and produce have the appearance
+of the action of waves upon rocks. An officer of the navy informed me
+that, after sunset, when near the equator, he was not a little alarmed
+and surprised at the cry of 'rocks on the starboard bow!' Looking
+forward, he indistinctly saw objects which he and all on board took
+to be pinnacles of several rocks of a black and white
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> colour. In a
+short time, however, he discovered this formidable danger to be nothing
+more than a company of dancing Grampuses with white bellies. As one
+disappeared, another rose; so that there were at least five or six
+constantly above the surface."</p>
+
+<p>Captain Owen relates that "the Bonita has the power of throwing itself
+out of the water to an almost incredible distance when in pursuit of
+its prey, the Flying Fish; and, the day previous to our arrival at
+Mozambique, one of these fish rose close under our bow, and passed under
+the vessel's side, and struck with such force against the poop, that,
+had any one received the blow, it must have been fatal. Stunned by the
+violence of the contact, it fell motionless at the helmsman's feet; but,
+soon recovering, its struggles were so furious that it became necessary
+to inflict several blows with an axe before it could be approached
+with safety. The greatest elevation it attained above the surface of
+water was eighteen feet, and the length of the leap, had no opposition
+occurred, would have exceeded 180."</p>
+
+<p>Of winged or Flying Fish we find this extravagant account in a
+philosophical romance, entitled, "Telliamed," by M. Maillet, an
+ingenious Frenchman, of the days of Louis XV.:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">
+He believed, like Lamarck, that the whole family of birds had
+existed one time as fishes, which, on being thrown ashore by the
+waves, had got feathers by accident; and that men themselves are
+but the descendants of a tribe of sea-monsters, who, tiring of
+their proper element, crawled upon the beach one sunny morning,
+and, taking a fancy to the land, forgot to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
+return. The account
+is as amusing as a fairy tale. "Winged or Flying Fish," says
+Maillet, "stimulated by the desire of prey, or the fear of death,
+or pushed near the shore by the billows, have fallen among the
+reeds or herbage, whence it was not possible for them to resume
+their flight to the sea, by means of which they had contracted
+their first facility of flying. Then their fins, being no longer
+bathed in the sea-water, were split and became warped by their
+dryness. While they found among the reeds and herbage among which
+they fell many aliments to support them, the vessels of their fins
+being separated, were lengthened, or clothed with beards, or, to
+speak more justly, the membranes which before kept them adherent
+to each other were metamorphosed. The beard formed of these warped
+membranes was lengthened. The skin of these animals was insensibly
+covered with a down of the same colour with the skin, and this
+down gradually increased. The little wings they had under their
+belly, and which, like their wings, helped them to walk into the
+sea, became feet, and helped them to walk on the land. There were
+also other small changes in their figure. The beak and neck of some
+were lengthened, and of others shortened. The conformity, however,
+of the first figure subsists in the whole, and it will be always
+easy to know it. Examine all the species of fowl, even those of the
+Indies, those which are tufted or not, those whose feathers are
+reversed&mdash;such as we see at Damietta, that is to say, whose plumage
+runs from the tail to the head&mdash;and you will see fine species
+of fish quite similar, scaly or without scales. All species of
+Parrots, whose plumages are different, the rarest and most singular
+marked birds, are, conformable to fact, painted, like them, black,
+brown, grey, yellow, green, red, violet colour, and those of gold
+and azure; and all this precisely in the same parts, where the
+plumages of these birds are diversified in so curious a manner."</p>
+
+<p>The Jaculator Fish, of Java, has been called "a sporting fish," from the
+precision with which it takes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>
+aim at its prey. In 1828 Mr. Mitchell
+saw several of these fishes in the possession of a Javanese chief; and
+here is the account of the curious manner in which these Jaculators were
+employed. They were placed in a small circular pond, from the centre
+of which projected a pole upwards of two feet in height. At the top of
+the pole were inserted small pieces of wood, sharp-pointed, and on each
+of these were placed insects of the beetle tribe. When the slaves had
+placed the beetles, the fish came out of their holes, and swam round the
+pond. One of them came to the surface of the water, rested there, and
+after steadily fixing its eyes for some time on an insect, it discharged
+from its mouth a small quantity of watery fluid, with such force, and
+precision of aim, as to strike it off the twig into the water, and in
+an instant swallowed it. After this, another fish came, and performed
+a similar feat, and was followed by the others, until they had secured
+all the insects. If a fish failed in bringing down its prey at the first
+shot, it swam round the pond till it came opposite the same object, and
+fired again. In one instance, a fish returned three times to the attack
+before it secured its prey; but in general the fish seemed very expert
+gunners, bringing down the beetle at the first shot. The fish, in a
+state of nature, frequents the shores and sides of the rivers in search
+of food. When it spies a fly sitting on the plants that grow on shallow
+water, it swims on to the distance of five or six feet from them, and
+then, with surprising dexterity, it ejects out of its tubular mouth a
+single drop of water,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>
+which rarely fails to strike the fly into the
+sea, where it soon becomes its prey.</p>
+
+<p>Curious fish, in great numbers, may be seen in the Harbour of Port
+Royal, Jamaica, on the surface of the water, and are ranked among the
+peculiarities of the place. They are the Guardo, or Guard-Fish; the Jack
+(Sword-Fish); and the Ballahou. The Jack is the largest, and appears to
+be always at war with the two others; it is armed with formidable teeth;
+it basks on the surface of the water during the heat of the day, in a
+sort of indolent, unguarded state; but this is assumed, the better to
+ensnare the other fish, and to catch the floating bodies that may happen
+to pass near it; for the moment anything is thrown into the sea from
+the ship, the Jack darts with the rapidity of lightning upon it, and
+seizing it as quickly, retreats. This Warrior-fish possesses a foresight
+or instinctive quality which we see sometimes exemplified in different
+animals, almost amounting to second reason, such as the sagacity it
+displays in avoiding the hook when baited; although extremely voracious,
+it seems aware of the lure held out for its destruction, and avoids
+it with as much cunning as the generality of fishes show eagerness to
+devour it. The situation it takes, immediately in the wake of the ship
+at anchor, is another instance of its sagacity; as whatever is thrown
+overboard passes astern, where the fish is ever on the alert for the
+articles thrown over. No other fish of equal size dare approach. The
+Jack is, however, sometimes enticed with the bait; but he is more
+frequently struck with a barbed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
+lance, or entrapped in a net. The
+Guardo has similar habits with the Jack, but is generally beaten by
+him; yet the former tyrannizes with unrelenting rigour over the weaker
+associate, the Ballahou.</p>
+
+<p>The tiger of the ocean, the Shark, is often cruising about Port Royal,
+but rarely injures human life. At Kingston, however, such distressing
+events often occur. There was a pet Shark known as "Old Tom of Port
+Royal;" it was fed whenever it approached any of the ships, but was at
+last killed by the father of a child which it had devoured. Whilst it
+remained here, no other of the Shark tribe dare venture on his domain;
+he reigned lord paramount in his watery empire, and never committed any
+depredation but that for which he suffered.</p>
+
+<p>Attending the Shark is seen the beautiful little Pilot Fish, who, first
+approaching the bait, returns as if to give notice, when, immediately
+after, the Shark approaches to seize it. It is a curious circumstance,
+that this elegant little fish is seen in attendance only upon the Shark.
+After the Shark is hooked, the Pilot Fish still swims about, and for
+some time after he has been hauled on deck; it then swims very near the
+surface of the water. When the Shark has been hooked, and afterwards
+escapes, he generally returns, and renews the attack with increased
+ferocity, irritated often by the wound he has received.</p>
+
+<p>Sharks appear to have become of late years much more numerous in Faroe,
+as they have also in other
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
+parts of the North Seas, especially on the
+coast of Norway.</p>
+
+<p>The reader may, probably, have found on the sea-shore certain cases,
+which are fancifully called sea-purses, Mermaids' purses, &amp;c. Now,
+some Sharks bring forth their young alive, whilst others are enclosed
+in oblong semi-transparent, horny cases, at each extremity of which
+are two long tendrils. These cases are the above <i>purses</i>, which the
+parent Shark deposits near the shore in the winter months. The twisting
+tendrils hang to sea-weed, or other fixed bodies, to prevent the cases
+being washed away into deep water. Two fissures, one at each end, allow
+the admission of sea-water; and here the young Shark remains until it
+has acquired the power of taking food by the mouth, when it leaves what
+resembles its cradle. The young fish ultimately escapes by an opening at
+the end, near which the head is situated.</p>
+
+<p>California has yielded an extraordinary novelty in fish history. In 1854
+Mr. Jackson, while fishing in San Salita Bay, caught with a hook and
+line a fish of the perch family <i>containing living young</i>. These were
+supposed to be the prey which the fish had swallowed, but on opening
+the belly was found next to the back of the fish, and slightly attached
+to it, a long very light violet bag, so clear and transparent that
+there could already be distinguished through it the shape, colour, and
+formation of a multitude of small fish (all facsimiles of each other),
+with which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>
+the bag was filled. They were in all respects like the
+mother, and like each other; and there cannot remain a single doubt that
+these young were the offspring of the fish from whose body they were
+taken; and that this species of fish gives birth to her young alive
+and perfectly formed, and adapted to seek its own livelihood in the
+water. Professor Agassiz has confirmed the truth of this extraordinary
+statement by a careful examination of the specimens, and has ascertained
+that there are two very distinct species of this remarkable type of
+fishes.</p>
+
+<p>Tales of "Wonderful Fish" are common in the works of the old
+naturalists, whence they are quoted from generation to generation.
+Sir John Richardson has lately demolished one queer fish, which was
+as certain to reappear whenever opportunity offered, as the elephant
+pricked with the tailor's needle does in books of stories of the animal
+world. We allude to that monstrous myth, the great Manheim Pike, with
+a collar round his neck, put into a lake by the Emperor Frederick II.
+in the year 1230; and taken out in the 276th year of his age, the 17th
+foot of his length, and the 350th pound of his weight. M. Valenciennes,
+a naturalist of repute, has entered into a critical history of this
+monster, and has found him to be apocryphal. The creature was, at any
+rate, taken in several places at once, the legends written on his
+brass collar do not agree, and his alleged skeleton has been found
+to be made up of various bones of various fishes; while the vertebræ
+are, unfortunately, so many, that Professor Owen
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>
+would order him out
+of Court in an instant as a rank impostor. Probably some specimen of
+the <i>Mecho</i>, the monstrous fish of the Danube&mdash;which has even now been
+scarcely described, and which has only recently been identified as one
+of the salmon tribe&mdash;having been called a pike, may be at the bottom of
+the legend of the great Manheim fish. But Sir John Richardson produces
+another big pike, killed by an intrepid "angler seventy years of age,
+with a single rod and bait"&mdash;an observation which leads to the inquiry
+of the possibility of catching a single fish with more than one rod
+and bait&mdash;"that weighed seventy-eight pounds." This is stated to have
+happened in the county of Clare; the angler's name was O'Flanagan.</p>
+
+<p>Here is another wonderful story:&mdash;The Bohemians have a proverb&mdash;"Every
+fish has another for prey:" that named the Wels has them all. This is
+the largest fresh-water fish found in the rivers of Europe, except the
+sturgeon; it often reaches five or six feet in length. It destroys many
+aquatic birds, and we are assured that it does not spare the human
+species. On the 3d of July, 1700, a peasant took one near Thorn, that
+had an infant entire in its stomach! They tell in Hungary of children
+and young girls being devoured on going to draw water; and they even
+relate that, on the frontiers of Turkey, a poor fisherman took one that
+had in its stomach the body of a woman, her purse full of gold, and
+a <i>ring</i>! The fish is even reported to have been taken sixteen feet
+long. The old stories of rings found
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>
+in the stomachs of fishes will be
+remembered; as well as here and there a <i>book</i> found in the stomach of a
+fish!</p>
+
+<p>The Sun-fish is exceedingly rare. A large specimen was captured off
+Start Point in 1864. Attention was first drawn to a huge dark object on
+the water. On a boat being sent out, it was soon discovered to be the
+back fin of a very large fish, apparently asleep. A very exciting chase
+commenced, extending over an hour, the crew meanwhile battling with
+harpoons, boat-hooks, &amp;c.; the fish trying several times to upset the
+boat by getting his back under it. At length a line was thrown over its
+head, and the fish, being weakened by the struggle, was towed alongside
+the yacht, hoisted on board, and slaughtered. Yarrell, in his work on
+British Fishes, states the largest Sun-fish to be about 3 cwt., but the
+above specimen weighed nearly 6 cwt. Sun-fish are found occasionally in
+the tropical seas of large dimensions, but those found in the Channel
+seldom if ever exceed from 1 cwt. to 2 cwt. The peculiarities in regard
+to this fish are, that it has no bones, but the whole of the formation
+is of cartilage, which can easily be cut with a knife. The skin is
+cartilage of about an inch and a-half thick, under which there is no
+backbone or ribs. This specimen was of extraordinary dimensions&mdash;5 ft.
+10 in. in length, and 7 ft. from the tip of the dorsal to the point of
+the anal fin.</p>
+
+<p>The "Courrier de Sagon" brings, as a contribution to Natural History,
+the not very credible-sounding description of a fish called "Ca-oug"
+in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>
+the Anamite tongue, which is said to have saved the lives already
+of several Anamites; for which reason the King of Anam has invested it
+with the name of "Nam hai dui bnong gnan" (Great General of the South
+Sea). This fish is said to swim round ships near the coast, and, when it
+sees a man in the water, to seize him with his mouth, and to carry him
+ashore. A skeleton of this singular inhabitant of the deep is to be seen
+at Wung-tau, near Cape St. James. It is reported to be thirty-five feet
+in length, to have tusks "almost like an elephant," very large eyes, a
+black and smooth skin, a tail like a lobster, and two "wings" on its
+back.<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p>
+
+<p>The Grouper must be a voracious fish, for we read of a specimen being
+caught off the coast of Queensland, which is thus described:&mdash;"It was
+7 ft. long, 6 ft. in circumference at its thickest part, and its head
+weighed 80 lb. When opened, there were found in its stomach two broken
+bottles, a quart pot, a preserved milk tin, seven medium-sized crabs; a
+piece of earthenware, triangular in shape, and three inches in length,
+incrusted with oyster shells, a sheep's head, some mutton and beef
+bones, and some loose oyster shells. The spine of a skate was imbedded
+in the Grouper's liver."</p>
+
+<p>The Double-fish, here represented, is a pair of Cat-fish, which were
+taken alive in a shrimp-net, at the mouth of Cape Fear River, near
+Fort Johnston. North Carolina, in 1833, and presented to Professor
+Silliman. One of them is three and a-half, and the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>
+other two and a-half
+inches long, including the tail&mdash;the smallest emaciated, and of sickly
+appearance. They are connected in the manner of the Siamese Twins, by
+the skin at the breast, which is marked by a dark streak at the line of
+union. The texture and colour otherwise of this skin is the same as that
+of the belly. The mouth, viscera, &amp;c., were entire and perfect in each
+fish; but, on withdrawing the entrails, through an incision made on one
+side of the abdomen, the connecting integument was found to be hollow.
+A flexible probe was passed through from one to the other, with the
+tender and soft end of a spear of grass, drawn from a green plant. But
+there was no appearance of the entrails of one having come in contact
+with those of the other, for the integument was less than one-tenth of
+an inch in its whole thickness; in length, from the body or trunk of
+one fish to the other, it was three-tenths; and in the water, when the
+largest fish was in its natural position, the small one could, by the
+length and pliancy of this skin, swim in nearly the same position. When
+these fish came into existence it is probable they were of almost equal
+size and strength, but one "born to better fortune," or exercising more
+ingenuity and industry than the other, gained a trifling ascendency,
+which he improved to increase the disparity, and, by pushing his
+extended mouth in advance of the other, seized the choicest and most of
+the food for himself.</p>
+
+<p>From the northern parts of British America we have received
+extraordinary contributions to our fish
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>
+collections. One of these is
+the Square-browed Malthe, obtained in one of the land expeditions under
+the command of Captain Sir John Franklin. R.N. It was taken on the
+Labrador coast, and then belonged to a species hitherto undescribed.
+Its intestines were filled with small crabs and univalve shells. The
+extreme length of the fish is 7 inches 11 lines. The upper surface
+is greyish white, with brown blotches, and the fins are whitish. The
+head is much depressed and greatly widened; the eyes far forward; the
+snout projecting like a small horn. Most of the fish of this family
+can live long out of water, in consequence of the smallness of their
+gill-openings; indeed, those of one of the genera are able, even in warm
+countries, to pass two or three days in creeping over the land. All the
+family conceal themselves in the mud or sand, and lie in wait to take
+their prey by surprise. The accompanying engraving is from the very
+able work of Dr. Richardson, F.R.S., published by the munificence of
+Government.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter bord"><a name="i_285.jpg" id="i_285.jpg"></a>
+  <img src="images/i_285.jpg" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">SQUARE-BROWED MALTHE AND DOUBLE FISH.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Gold Fish (of the Carp family) have been made to distinguish a
+particular sound made by those from whom they receive their food; they
+recognise their footsteps at a distance, and come at their call. Captain
+Brown says Gold Fish, when kept in ponds, are "frequently taught to rise
+to the surface of the water at the sound of a bell to be fed;" and Mr.
+Jesse was assured that Gold Fish evince much pleasure on being whistled
+to. Hakewill, in his "Apology for God's Power and Providence,"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> cites
+Pliny to show that a certain emperor had ponds containing fish, which,
+when called by their respective <i>names</i> that were bestowed upon them,
+came to the spot whence the voice proceeded. Bernier, in his "History
+of Hindustan," states a like circumstance of the fish belonging to the
+Great Mogul. The old poet, Martial, also mentions fish coming at the
+call, as will be seen by the following translation from one of his
+epigrams:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"Angler! could'st thou be guiltless? Then forbear:</div>
+<div class="verse">For these are sacred fishes that swim here;</div>
+<div class="verse">Who know their Sovereign, and will lick his hand.</div>
+<div class="verse">Than which none's greater in the world's command;</div>
+<div class="verse">Nay, more; they've names, and when they called are.</div>
+<div class="verse">Do to their several owners' call repair."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Who, after reading so many instances, can doubt that fish hear?</p>
+
+<p>It has been found that the water from steam-engines, which is thrown
+into dams or ponds for the purpose of being cooled, conduces much to
+the nutriment of Gold Fish. In these dams, the average temperature
+of which is about eighty degrees, it is common to keep Gold Fish; in
+which situation they multiply much more rapidly than in ponds of lower
+temperature exposed to variations of the climate. Three pair of fish
+were put into one of these dams, where they increased so rapidly that at
+the end of three years their progeny, which was accidentally poisoned
+by verdigris mixed with the refuse tallow from the engine, were taken
+out by wheel-barrow-fuls. Gold Fish are by no means useless inhabitants
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>
+of these dams, as they consume the refuse grease which would otherwise
+impede the cooling of the water by accumulating on its surface. It is
+not improbable that this unusual supply of aliment may co-operate with
+increase of temperature in promoting the fecundity of the fishes.</p>
+
+<p>Most of our readers have heard of the fish popularly known as the
+Miller's Thumb, the origin of the name of which Mr. Yarrell has thus
+explained:&mdash;"It is well known that all the science and tact of a miller
+is directed so to regulate the machinery of his mill that the meal
+produced shall be of the most valuable description that the operation
+of grinding will permit, when performed under the most advantageous
+circumstances. His ear is constantly directed to the note made by the
+running stone in its circular course over the bedstone, the exact
+parallelism of their two surfaces, indicated by a particular sound,
+being a matter of the first consequence; and his hand is constantly
+placed under the meal-spout to ascertain, by actual contact, the
+character and quality of the meal produced, which he does by a
+particular movement of his thumb in spreading the sample over his
+fingers. By this incessant action of the miller's thumb, a peculiarity
+in its shape is produced, which is said to resemble exactly the shape of
+the <i>river bull-head</i>, a fish constantly found in the mill-stream, and
+which has obtained for it the name of the Miller's Thumb."</p>
+
+<p>M. Coste has constructed a kind of marine observatory at Concarneau
+(Finisterre) for the purpose
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>
+of studying the habits and instincts of
+various Sea-fish. A terrace has been formed on the top of a house on the
+quay, with reservoirs arranged like a flight of steps. The sea-water is
+pumped up to the topmost reservoir, and thence flows down slowly, after
+the manner of a rivulet. The length is divided into 95 cells by wire
+net partitions, which, allowing free passage to the water, yet prevent
+the different species of fish from mingling together. By this ingenious
+contrivance each kind lives separate, enjoying its peculiar food and
+habits, unconscious of its state of captivity. Some species, such as the
+Mullet, the Stickleback, &amp;c., grow perfectly tame, will follow the hand
+that offers them food, and will even allow themselves to be taken out of
+the water. The Goby and Bull-head are less familiar. The Turbot, which
+looks so unintelligent, will, nevertheless, take food from the hand;
+it changes colour when irritated, the spots with which it is covered
+growing pale or dark, according to the emotions excited in it. But
+the most curious circumstance concerning it is, that it swallows fish
+of a much larger size than would appear compatible with the apparent
+smallness of its mouth. Thus, a young Turbot, not more than ten inches
+in length, has been seen to swallow Pilchards of the largest size. The
+Pipe-Fish has two peculiarities. These fish form groups, entwining their
+tails together, and remaining immoveable in a vertical position, with
+their heads upwards. When food is offered them, they perform a curious
+evolution&mdash;they turn round on their backs to receive
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> it. This is owing
+to the peculiar position of the mouth, which is placed under a kind of
+beak, and perpendicular to its axis.</p>
+
+<p>The crustaceous tribes have also furnished much matter of observation.
+The Prawn and Crab, for instance, exercises the virtue of conjugal
+fidelity to the highest degree; for the male takes hold of his mate,
+and never lets her go; he swims with her, crawls about with her, and if
+she is forcibly taken away from him, he seizes hold of her again. The
+metamorphoses to which various crustaceous tribes are subject have also
+been studied with much attention.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>
+
+<p>Much as the nature and habits of fish have been studied of late years,
+the economy of some is to this day involved in obscurity. The Herring
+is one of these fishes. The Swedish Herring Fisheries were, at one
+time, the largest in Europe, but at present, during the temporary
+disappearance of the fish, they have dwindled away. The causes which
+influence the movements of the Herring&mdash;one of the most capricious of
+fish&mdash;are a puzzle which naturalists have as yet failed to solve. They
+are not migratory, as was at one time believed&mdash;that is, they seldom
+wander far from the place where they were bred; but they are influenced
+by certain hidden and unexplained causes at one time to remain for years
+in the deep sea, and at another to come close in to land in enormous
+numbers. During the first half of the sixteenth century, Herrings
+entirely deserted the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>
+Swedish coasts. In 1556 they reappeared, and
+remained for thirty-one years in the shallow waters. Throughout this
+period they were taken in incalculable numbers; "thousands of ships came
+annually from Denmark, Germany, Friesland, Holland, England, and France,
+to purchase the fish, of which sufficient were always found for them
+to carry away to their own or other countries.... From the small town
+of Marstrand alone some two million four hundred thousand bushels were
+yearly exported." In 1587 the Herrings disappeared, and remained absent
+for seventy-three years, till 1660. In 1727 they returned, and again in
+1747, remaining till 1808, and during this last period the fisheries
+were prosecuted with extraordinary zeal, industry, and success. The
+Government gave every encouragement to settlers, and it was computed
+that during some years as many as fifty thousand strangers took part
+in them. In 1808 the Herrings once more disappeared, and have never
+returned since. The cause must still be considered as quite unknown; but
+we may fairly assume, according to historical precedents, that after a
+certain period of absence, the Herrings will again return.
+<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>
+
+<p>Aristotle, in his "History of Animals," makes some extremely curious
+observations on Fish and Cetaceous Animals, as might be expected from
+the variety of these animals in the Grecian seas. In Spratt and Forbes's
+"Travels in Syria" the account of the habits and structure of the
+Cuttle-fish in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>
+Aristotle's work is ranked amongst the most admirable
+natural history essays ever written. It is, moreover, remarkable for its
+anticipation.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Osborne, in 1840, read to the Royal Society a short analysis of
+this work, in which he showed that Aristotle anticipated Dr. Jenner's
+researches respecting the cuckoo; as also some discoveries respecting
+the incubated egg, which were published as new in the above year.
+Aristotle describes the economy of bees as we have it at present; but
+mistakes the sex of the queen. The various organs are described as
+modified throughout the different classes of animals (beginning with
+man) in nearly the same order as that afterwards adopted by Cuvier.</p>
+
+<p>The chief value of this body of knowledge, which has been buried for
+above 2,000 years, is, that it is a collection of facts observed under
+peculiar advantages, such as never since occurred, and that <i>it is at
+the present day to be consulted for new discoveries</i>.</p>
+
+<p>According to Pliny, for the above work some thousands of men were placed
+at Aristotle's disposal throughout Greece and Asia, comprising persons
+connected with hunting and fishing, or who had the care of cattle,
+fish-ponds, and apiaries, in order that he might obtain information from
+all quarters, <i>ne quid usquam gentium ignoretur ab eo</i>. According to
+Athenæus, Aristotle received from the prince, on account of the expenses
+of the work, 800 talents, or upwards of 79,000<i>l.</i></p>
+
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> A tench was brought to
+Mr. Harmer so full of spawn that the skin
+was burst by a slight knock, and many thousands of the eggs were lost;
+yet even after this misfortune he found the remainder to amount to
+383,252! Of other marine animals, which he includes under the general
+term fish, the fecundity, though sufficiently great, is by no means
+enormous. A lobster yielded 7,227 eggs; a prawn 3,806; and a shrimp
+3,057. See Mr. Harmer's paper, "Philosophical Transactions," 1767.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> "Athenæum."</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a>
+See "The Tree-climbing Crab," pp. 282-302.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> "Saturday Review."</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="FISH_IN_BRITISH_COLOMBIA" id="FISH_IN_BRITISH_COLOMBIA"></a>FISH IN BRITISH COLOMBIA.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_116.jpg" alt="Letter I"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>IN</b> this bitterly cold country, where the snow lies deep six months out
+of the twelve, the natives subsist principally on fish, of which there
+is an extraordinary abundance generally, and of salmon particularly.
+Salmon swarm in such numbers that the rivers cannot hold them. In June
+and July every rivulet, no matter how shallow, is so crammed with salmon
+that, from sheer want of room, they push one another high and dry upon
+the pebbles; and Mr. Lord<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> tells us that each salmon, with its head
+up, struggles, fights, and scuffles for precedence. With one's hands
+only, or more easily by employing a gaff or a crook-stick, tons of
+salmon have been procured by the simple process of hooking them out.
+Once started on their journey, the salmon never turn back. As fast as
+those in front die, fresh arrivals crowd on to take their places,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> and
+share their fate. "It is a strange and novel sight to see three moving
+lines of fish&mdash;the dead and dying in the eddies and slack water along
+the bank, the living breasting the current in the centre, blindly
+pressing on to perish like their kindred." For two months this great
+<i>salmon army</i> proceeds on its way up stream, furnishing a supply of food
+without which the Indians must perish miserably. The winters are too
+severe for them to venture out in search of food, even if there was any
+to be obtained. From being destitute of salt, they are unable to cure
+meat in the summer for winter provisions, and hence for six months in
+the year they depend upon salmon, which they preserve by drying in the
+sun.</p>
+
+<p>But the Indian has another source of provision for the winter, fully
+as important as the salmon. The Candle-fish supplies him at once with
+light, butter, and oil.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> When dried, and perforated with a rush,
+or strip of cypress-bark, it can be lighted, and burns steadily until
+consumed. Strung up, and hung for a time in the smoke of a wood fire,
+it is preserved as a fatty morsel to warm him when pinched with cold;
+and, by heat and pressure, it is easily converted into liquid oil, and
+drunk with avidity. That nothing may be wanting, the hollow stalk of the
+sea-wrack, which at the root is expanded into a complete flask, makes an
+admirable bottle; and so, when the Indian buries himself for long dreary
+months in his winter quarters, neither his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>
+larder nor his cellar are
+empty, and he has a lamp to lighten the darkness. The steamers have,
+however, frightened away the Candle-fish and the Indian from their old
+haunts, and they have both retreated to the north of the Colombia River.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst the other inhabitants of the salt and fresh waters of these
+regions are the Halibut and the Sturgeon, both of which attain to an
+immense size. The bays and inlets along the coast abound with marine
+wonders. There feasts and fattens the Clam, a bivalve so gigantic that
+no oyster-knife can force an entrance, and only when his shell is almost
+red-hot will he be at last constrained to open his dwelling.</p>
+
+<p>And there lies in wait the awful Octopus, a monster of insatiable
+voracity, of untameable ferocity, and of consummate craft; of sleepless
+vigilance, shrouded amidst the forest of sea-weed, and from the touch of
+whose terrible arms no living thing escapes. It attains to an enormous
+size in those seas, the arms being sometimes five feet in length, and as
+thick at the base as a man's wrist. No bather would have a chance if he
+once got within the grasp of such a monster, nor could a canoe resist
+the strength of its pull; but the Indian, who devours the Octopus with
+great relish, has all the cunning created by necessity, and takes care
+that none of the eight sucker-dotted arms ever gain a hold on his frail
+bark.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Owen has figured a species of Octopus, the Eight-armed Cuttle
+of the European seas, representing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>
+it in the act of creeping on shore,
+its body being carried vertically in the reverse position, with its head
+downwards, and its back being turned towards the spectator, upon whom it
+is supposed to be advancing. This animal is said to be luminous in the
+dark. Linnæus quotes Bartholinus for the statement that one gave so much
+light that when the candle was taken away, it illuminated the room.</p>
+
+<p>The Sturgeon is one of the finest fishes of the country, and Mr. Lord's
+account of the Indian mode of taking them is a very graphic picture of
+this river sport.</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">
+"The spearman stands in the bow, armed with a most formidable
+spear. The handle, from seventy to eighty feet long, is made of
+white pine-wood; fitted on the spear-haft is a barbed point,
+in shape very much like a shuttlecock, supposing each feather
+represented by a piece of bone, thickly barbed, and very sharp
+at the end. This is so contrived that it can be easily detached
+from the long handle by a sharp, dexterous jerk. To this barbed
+contrivance a long line is made fast, which is carefully coiled
+away close to the spearman, like a harpoon-line in a whale-boat.
+The four canoes, alike equipped, are paddled into the centre of
+the stream, and side by side drift slowly down with the current,
+each spearman carefully feeling along the bottom with his spear,
+constant practice having taught the crafty savages to know a
+Sturgeon's back when the spear comes in contact with it. The
+spear-head touches the drowsy fish; a sharp plunge, and the
+redskin sends the notched points through armour and cartilage,
+deep into the leather-like muscles. A skilful jerk frees the long
+handle from the barbed end, which remains inextricably fixed in
+the fish; the handle is thrown aside, the line seized, and the
+struggle begins. The first impulse is to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>
+resist this objectionable
+intrusion, so the angry Sturgeon comes up to see what it all
+means. This curiosity is generally repaid by having a second spear
+sent crashing into him. He then takes a header, seeking safety in
+flight, and the real excitement commences. With might and main the
+bowman plies the paddle, and the spearman pays out the line, the
+canoe flying through the water. The slightest tangle, the least
+hitch, and over it goes; it becomes, in fact, a sheer trial of
+paddle <i>versus</i> fin. Twist and turn as the Sturgeon may, all the
+canoes are with him. He flings himself out of the water, dashes
+through it, under it, and skims along the surface; but all is in
+vain, the canoes and their dusky oarsmen follow all his efforts
+to escape, as a cat follows a mouse. Gradually the Sturgeon
+grows sulky and tired, obstinately floating on the surface. The
+savage knows he is not vanquished, but only biding a chance for
+revenge; so he shortens up the line, and gathers quietly on him
+to get another spear in. It is done,&mdash;and down viciously dives
+the Sturgeon; but pain and weariness begin to tell, the struggles
+grow weaker and weaker as life ebbs slowly away, until the mighty
+armour-plated monarch of the river yields himself a captive to the
+dusky native in his frail canoe."</p>
+
+<p>There is a very rare Spoonbill Sturgeon found in the western waters
+of North America: its popular name is Paddle-fish. One, five feet in
+length, weighed forty pounds; the nose, resembling a spatula, was
+thirteen inches in length. It was of a light slate colour, spotted with
+black; belly white; skin smooth, like an eel; the flesh compact and
+firm, and hard when boiled&mdash;not very enticing to the epicure. The jaws
+are without teeth, but the fauces are lined with several tissues of the
+most beautiful network, evidently for the purpose of collecting its food
+from the water by straining, or passing it
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>
+through these membranes in
+the same manner as practised by the spermaceti whale. Near the top of
+the head are two small holes, through which it is possible the Sturgeon
+may discharge water in the manner practised by cetaceous animals. It is
+conjectured that the long "Spoonbill" nose of this fish is for digging
+up or moving the soft mud in the bottom of the river, and when the water
+is fully saturated, draw it through the filamentory strainers in search
+of food.</p>
+
+<p>Sturgeons resemble sharks in their general form, but their bodies are
+defended by bony shields, disposed in longitudinal rows; and their head
+is also well curiassed externally. The Sturgeons of North America are of
+little benefit to the natives. A few speared in the summer-time suffice
+for the temporary support of some Indian hordes; but none are preserved
+for winter use, and the roe and sounds are utterly wasted.</p>
+
+<p>The northern limit of the Sturgeon in America is probably between the
+55th and 56th parallels of latitude. Dr. Richardson did not meet with
+any account of its existence to the north of Stewart's Lake, on the west
+side of the Rocky Mountains; and on the east side it does not go higher
+than the Saskatchewan and its tributaries. It is not found in Churchill
+River, nor in any of the branches of the Mackenzie or other streams that
+fall into the Arctic Seas&mdash;a remarkable circumstance when we consider
+that some species swarm in the Asiatic rivers which flow into the Icy
+Sea. Sturgeons occur in all the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>
+great lakes communicating with the
+St. Lawrence, and also along the whole Atlantic coast of the United
+States down to Florida. Peculiar species inhabit the Mississippi; it is,
+therefore, probable that the range of the genus extends to the Gulf of
+Mexico.</p>
+
+<p>The great rapid which forms the discharge of the Saskatchewan into Lake
+Winnipeg appears quite alive with these fish in the month of June; and
+some families of the natives resort thither at that time to spear them
+with a harpoon, or grapple them with a strong hook tied to a pole.
+Notwithstanding the great muscular power of the Sturgeon, it is timid;
+and Dr. Richardson saw one so frightened at the paddling of a canoe,
+that it ran its nose into a muddy bank, and was taken by a <i>voyageur</i>,
+who leaped upon its back.</p>
+
+<p>In Colombia River, a small species of Sturgeon attains eleven feet in
+length, and a weight of six hundred pounds.
+<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> It is caught as high up
+as Fort Colville, notwithstanding the numerous intervening cataracts and
+rapids which seem to be insuperable barriers to a fish so sluggish in
+its movements.</p>
+
+<p>The Sturgeon is styled a Royal Fish in England, because, by a statute
+of Edward II. it is enacted, "the King shall have Sturgeon taken in the
+sea, or elsewhere, within the realm."</p>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a>
+"The Naturalist in Vancouver Island and British Columbia." By John
+Keast Lord, F.Z.S., Naturalist to the British North American Boundary
+Commission.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a>
+The Petrel is similarly used in the Faroe Islands. (See <i>ante</i>, p.
+234.) It may, therefore, be called the Candle Bird.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a>
+Dr. Richardson. The <i>Huro</i> is reported by Pallas to attain a weight
+of nearly three thousand pounds, and a length exceeding thirty feet.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_TREE-CLIMBING_CRAB" id="THE_TREE-CLIMBING_CRAB"></a>THE TREE-CLIMBING CRAB.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>THE</b> transition from the ordinary mode of the locomotion of fishes by
+swimming to that of climbing has been ably illustrated by the Rev. Dr.
+Buckland, who showed, in a communication to the Ashmolean Society, in
+1843, that the fins in certain genera perform the functions of feet
+and wings. Thus, "fishing-frogs" have the fins converted into feet, or
+paddles, by means of which they have the power of crawling or hopping
+on sand and mud; and another species can live three days out of the
+water, and walk upon dry land. The climbing perch of the Indian rivers
+is known to live a long time in the air, and to climb up the stems of
+palm-trees in pursuit of flies, by means of spinous projections on its
+gill-covers. Fishes of the <i>silurus</i> family have a bony enlargement of
+the first ray of the pectoral fin, which is also armed with spines;
+and this is not only an offensive and defensive weapon, but enables
+the fish to walk along the bottom of the fresh waters
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> which it
+inhabits. The flying-fishes are notorious examples of the conversion
+of fins into an organ of movement in the air. M. Deslongchamps has
+published, in the "Transactions of the Linnæan Society of Normandy,"
+1842, a curious account of the movements of the gurnard at the bottom of
+the sea. In 1839, he observed these movements in one of the artificial
+fishing-ponds, or fishing-traps, surrounded by nets, on the shore of
+Normandy. He saw a score of gurnards closing their fins against their
+sides, like the wing of a fly in repose, and without any movement of
+their tails, walking along the bottom by means of six free rays, three
+on each pectoral fin, which they placed successively on the ground.
+They moved rapidly forwards, backwards, to the right and left, groping
+in all directions with these rays, as if in search of small crabs.
+Their great heads and bodies seemed to throw hardly any weight on the
+slender rays, or feet, being suspended in water, and having their weight
+further diminished by their swimming-bladder. During these movements the
+gurnards resembled insects moving along the sand. When M. Deslongchamps
+moved in the water, the fish swam away rapidly to the extremity of the
+pond; when he stood still, they resumed their ambulatory movement, and
+came between his legs. On dissection, we find these three anterior rays
+of the pectoral fins to be supported each with strong muscular apparatus
+to direct their movements, apart from the muscles that are connected
+with the smaller rays of the pectoral fin.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Dr. Buckland states that Miss Potts, of Chester, had sent to him a
+flagstone from a coalshaft at Mostyn, bearing impressions which he
+supposed to be the trackway of some fish crawling along the bottom
+by means of the anterior rays of its pectoral fins. There were no
+indications of feet, but only scratches, symmetrically disposed on each
+side of a space that may have been covered by the body of the fish
+whilst making progress, by pressing its fin-bones on the bottom. As yet,
+no footsteps of reptiles, or of any animals more highly organized than
+fishes, have been found in strata older than those which belong to the
+new red sandstone. The abundant remains of fossil fishes, armed with
+strong bony spines, and of other fishes allied to the gurnard, in strata
+of the carboniferous and old red sandstone series, would lead us to
+expect the frequent occurrence of impressions made by their locomotive
+organs on the bottoms of the ancient waters in which they lived. Dr.
+Buckland proposed to designate these petrified traces or trackways of
+ancient fishes by the term of fish-tracks.</p>
+
+<p>Crabs and Lobsters are strange creatures: strange in their
+configurations; strange in the transmutations which they exhibit from
+the egg to maturity; strange in the process they undergo of casting off,
+not only their shell, but the covering of their eyes, of their long
+horns, and even the lining of their tooth-furnished stomach; strange,
+also, are they in their manners and habits. Many a reader, in wandering
+along the sea-shore, may have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>
+disturbed little colonies of Crabs
+quietly nestling in fancied security amidst banks of slimy sea-weed; and
+in the nooks and recesses of the coast, the shallows, and strips of land
+left dry at ebb-tide, may be seen numbers of little, or perchance large,
+Crabs, some concealed in snug lurking-places, others tripping, with a
+quick <i>side-long</i> movement, over the beach, alarmed by the advance of an
+unwelcome intruder. Some are exclusively tenants of the water, have feet
+formed like paddles for swimming, and never venture on land; others seem
+to love the air and sunshine, and enjoy an excursion, not without hopes
+of finding an acceptable repast, over the oozy sands; some, equally fond
+of the shore and shallow water, appropriate to themselves the shells of
+periwinkles, whelks, &amp;c., and there live in a sort of castle, which they
+drag about with them on their excursions, changing it for a larger as
+they increase in measure of growth. They vary in size from microscopic
+animalcules to the gigantic King Crab:<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> to the former, the luminosity
+of the ocean, or of the foam
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>
+before the prows of vessels, is, to a
+great extent, attributable, each minute creature glowing with phosphoric
+light.</p>
+
+<p>The Bernhard Crab has been proved to have the power of dissolving
+shells, it not being unusual to find the long fusiform shells which are
+inhabited by these animals with the inner lip, and the greater part of
+the pillar on the inside of the mouth, destroyed, so as to render the
+aperture much larger than usual. Dr. Gray is quite convinced that these
+Crabs have the above power, some to a much greater degree than others.</p>
+
+<p>Certain Crabs, especially in the West Indies, are almost exclusively
+terrestrial, visiting the sea only at given periods, for the deposition
+of their eggs. These Crabs carry in their gill-chambers sufficient water
+for the purpose of respiration; they live in burrows, and traverse
+considerable tracts of land in the performance of their migratory
+journeys. Of these, some, as the Violet Crab, are exquisite delicacies.</p>
+
+<p>Of a great Crab migration we find these details in the "Jamaica Royal
+Gazette:"&mdash;In 1811 there was a very extraordinary production of Black
+Crabs in the eastern part of Jamaica. In June or July the whole district
+of Manchidneed was covered with countless numbers, swarming from the sea
+to the mountains. Of this the writer was an eye-witness. On ascending
+Over Hill from the vale of Plantain Garden River, the road appeared of a
+reddish colour, as if strewed with brick-dust. It was owing to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> myriads
+of young Black Crabs, about the size of the nail of a man's finger,
+moving at a pretty quick pace, direct for the mountains. "I rode along
+the coast," says the writer, "a distance of about fifteen miles, and
+found it nearly the same the whole way. Returning the following day, I
+found the road still covered with them, the same as the day before. How
+have they been produced, and where do they come from? were questions
+everybody asked, and nobody could answer. It is well known that Crabs
+deposit their eggs once a year, in May; but, except on this occasion,
+though living on the coast, I had never seen above a dozen young Crabs
+together; and here were myriads. No unusual number of old Crabs had been
+observed in that season; and it is worthy of note, that they were moving
+from a rock-bound coast of inaccessible cliffs, the abode of sea-birds,
+and exposed to the constant influence of the trade winds. No person, as
+far as I know, ever saw the like, except on that occasion; and I have
+understood that since 1811 Black Crabs have been more abundant further
+in to the interior of the island than they were ever known before."</p>
+
+<p>Cuvier describes the Burrowing Crab as displaying wonderful
+instinct:&mdash;"The animal closes the entrance of its burrow, which is
+situated near the margin of the sea, or in marshy grounds, with its
+largest claw. These burrows are cylindrical, oblique, very deep, and
+very close to each other; but generally each burrow is the exclusive
+habitation of a single individual. The habit which these crabs have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> of
+holding their large claw elevated in advance of the body, as if making a
+sign of beckoning to some one, has obtained for them the name of Calling
+Crabs. There is a species observed by Mr. Bosc in South Carolina,
+which passes the three months of the winter in its retreat without
+once quitting it, and which never goes to the sea except at the epoch
+of egg-laying." The same observations apply to the Chevalier Crabs (so
+called from the celerity with which they traverse the ground). These are
+found in Africa, and along the borders of the Mediterranean.</p>
+
+<p>Some Crabs, truly aquatic, as the Vaulted Crab of the Moluccas, have
+the power of drawing back their limbs, and concealing them in a furrow,
+which they closely fit; and thus, in imitation of a tortoise, which
+retracts its feet and head within its shell, they secure themselves,
+when alarmed. Other aquatic species have their limbs adapted for
+clinging to weeds and other marine objects. Of these some have the
+two or four hind pairs of limbs so placed as to appear to spring from
+the back; they terminate in a sharp hook, by means of which the Crab
+attaches itself to the valves of shells, fragments of coral, &amp;c.,
+which it draws over its body, and thus lurks in concealment. Allied,
+in some respects, to the Hermit or Soldier Crabs, which tenant empty
+shells, is one which, from its manners and habits, is one of the most
+extraordinary of its race. The Hermit Crabs are voracious, and feed
+on animal substances. The Hermit, or Bernhard Crab, is so called from
+its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>
+habit of taking up its solitary residence in deserted shells, thus
+seeking a protection for its tail, which is long and naked. It is found
+in shells of different dimensions, and from time to time leaves its
+abode, as it feels a necessity, for a more commodious dwelling. It is
+said to present, on such occasions, an amusing instinct as it inserts
+the tail successively into several empty shells until one is found to
+fit. We learn from Professor Bell, however, that it does not always wait
+until the home is vacant, but occasionally rejects the rightful occupant
+with some violence. On the contrary, the Crab, or rather Lobster-Crab
+(for it takes an intermediate place between them), is more delicate in
+its appetite, and feeds upon fruits, to obtain which it is said to climb
+up certain trees, at the feet of which it makes a burrow. This species
+is the Purse Crab, or Robber Crab, of Amboyna and other islands in the
+South Pacific Ocean.</p>
+
+<p>"According to popular belief among the Indians," says Cuvier, "the
+Robber Crab feeds on the nuts of the cocoa-tree, and it makes its
+excursions during the night; its places of retreat are fissures in the
+rocks, or holes in the ground." The accounts of the early writers and
+travellers, as well as of the natives, were disbelieved; but their truth
+has since been abundantly confirmed. MM. Quoy and Guimard assure us that
+several Robber Crabs were fed by them for many months on cocoa-nuts
+alone; and a specimen of this Crab was submitted to the Zoological
+Society, with additional information from
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>
+Mr. Cuming, in whose fine
+collection from the islands of the South Pacific several specimens were
+preserved. Mr. Cuming states these Crabs to be found in great numbers in
+Lord Hood's Island, in the Pacific. He there frequently met with them on
+the road. On being disturbed, the Crabs instantly assumed a defensive
+attitude, making a loud snapping with their powerful claws, or pincers,
+which continued as they retreated backwards. They climb a species of
+palm to gather a small kind of cocoa-nut that grows thereon. They live
+at the roots of trees, and not in the holes of rocks; and they form a
+favourite food among the natives. Such is the substance of Mr. Cuming's
+account. Mr. Darwin, in his "Researches in Geology and Natural History,"
+saw several of these Crabs in the Keeling Islands, or Cocos Islands, in
+the Indian Ocean, about 600 miles distant from the coast of Sumatra. In
+these islands, of coral formation, the cocoa-nut tree is so abundant as
+to appear, at first glance, to compose the whole wood of the islands.</p>
+
+<p>Here the great Purse Crab is abundant. Mr. Darwin describes it as a Crab
+which lives on the cocoa-nut, is common on all parts of the dry land,
+and grows to a monstrous size. This Crab has its front pair of legs
+terminated by very strong and heavy pincers, and the last pair by others
+which are narrow and weak. It would at first be thought quite impossible
+for a Crab to open a strong cocoa-nut, covered with the husk; but Mr.
+Liesk assures me that he has repeatedly seen the operation effected.
+The Crab<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>
+begins by tearing away the husk, fibre by fibre, and always
+from that end under which the three eye-holes are situated. When this
+is completed the Crab commences hammering with its heavy claws on one
+of these eye-holes till an opening is made. Then, turning its body, by
+the aid of its posterior and narrow pair of pincers, it extracts the
+white albuminous substance. I think this as curious a case as I ever
+heard of, and likewise of adaptation in structure between two objects
+apparently so remote from each other in the scheme of nature as a Crab
+and a cocoa-nut tree. The Crab is diurnal in its habits; but it is said
+to pay every night a visit to the sea for the purpose of moistening its
+gills. These gills are very peculiar, and scarcely fill up more than a
+tenth of the chamber in which they are placed: it doubtless acts as a
+reservoir for water, to serve the Crab in its passage over the dry and
+heated land. The young are hatched and live for some time on the coast;
+at this period of existence we cannot suppose that cocoa-nuts form any
+part of their diet; most probably soft saccharine grasses, fruits, and
+certain animal matters, serve as their food until they attain a certain
+size and strength.</p>
+
+<p>The adult Crabs, Mr. Darwin tells us, inhabit deep burrows, which they
+excavate beneath the roots of trees; and here they accumulate great
+quantities of the picked fibres of the cocoa-nut husk, on which they
+rest as on a bed. The Malays sometimes take advantage of the labours of
+the Crab by collecting the coarse fibrous substance, and using it as
+junk.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>
+These Crabs are very good to eat; moreover, under the tail of the
+larger ones there is a great mass of fat, which, when melted, yields as
+much as a quart bottleful of limpid oil.</p>
+
+<p>The Crab's means of obtaining the cocoa-nuts have, however, been much
+disputed. It is stated by some authors to crawl up the trees for the
+purpose of stealing the nuts. This is doubted; though in the kind of
+palm to which Mr. Cuming refers as being ascended by this Crab, the
+task would be much easier. Now, Mr. Darwin states, that in the Keeling
+Islands the Crab lives only on the nuts which fall to the ground. It
+may thus appear that Mr. Cuming's and Mr. Darwin's respective accounts
+of the <i>non-climbing</i> of this Crab on the one side, and its <i>actually
+climbing trees</i> on the other, are contradictory. The height of the stem
+of the cocoa-nut tree, its circumference, and comparative external
+smoothness, would prove insurmountable, or at least very serious
+obstacles, to the most greedy Crab, however large and strong it might
+be. But these difficulties are by no means so formidable in the tree
+specified by Mr. Cuming: this is arborescent, or bushy, with long, thin,
+rigid, sword-shaped leaves, resembling those of the pineapple, usually
+arranged spirally, so that they are commonly called Screw Pines. They
+are of the genus <i>Pandanus</i>, a word derived from the Malay <i>Pandang</i>.
+The ascent of these arborescent plants, having the stem furnished
+with a rigging of cord-like roots, and bearing a multitude of firm,
+long, and spirally-arranged leaves, would be by no means
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> a work of
+difficulty, as would necessarily be that of the tall feathery-topped
+cocoa-tree, destitute of all available points of aid or support. Hence
+the contradiction in the two accounts referred to is seeming, and not
+real, and the two statements are reconciled.</p>
+
+<p>To sum up, Mr. Cuming fully testifies to the Crab climbing the Screw
+Pines; and he has told Professor Owen that he has actually seen the Crab
+climbing the cocoa-nut tree. The Crab has been kept on cocoa-nuts for
+months; and is universally reported by the natives to climb the trees at
+night.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter bord"><a name="i_301.jpg" id="i_301.jpg"></a>
+  <img src="images/i_301.jpg" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">THE TREE-CLIMBING CRAB.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>We may here, too, observe, that fine specimens of the Climbing Crab are
+to be seen in the British Museum. Here, too, arranged in cases, are
+Spider Crabs; Crabs with oysters growing on their backs, thus showing
+that Crabs do not shed their shells every year, or that the oyster
+increases very rapidly in bulk; Oval-bodied Crabs; and Fin-footed or
+Swimming Crabs. Here are also Telescope, or Long-eyed Crabs, and Land
+Crabs, found in India 4,000 feet above the sea-level; another of similar
+habits in the plains of the Deccan, that may be seen swarming in the
+fields, some cutting and nipping the green rice-stalks, and others
+waddling off backwards with sheaves bigger than themselves. To these
+may be added Square-bodied Crabs, Crested Crabs; Porcelain Crabs, with
+delicate, china-like shells; and Death's-head Crabs, which usually form
+cases for themselves from pieces of sponge and shells.</p>
+
+<p>Certain species of Crabs are remarkably tenacious of life, and have been
+known to live for weeks
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>
+buried, and without food. It is in the Crab
+tribe that the fact of the metamorphosis of <i>crustacea</i> has been most
+distinctly perceived; a small, peculiar crustacean animal, that had
+long passed for a distinct species, under the name of <i>Zoea</i>, having at
+length been identified with the young of the common Crab before it had
+attained its full development.</p>
+
+<p>That among the Crab tribes a tree-climbing species is to be found is
+certainly curious, but it is not without a parallel among fishes. Many
+of the latter leave the water, some even for a long time, and perform
+overland journeys, aided in their progress by the structure of their
+fins. In these fishes the gills and gill-chambers are constructed for
+the retention of water for a considerable time, so as to suffice for the
+necessary degree of respiration. In our country, we may mention the eel,
+which often voluntarily quits the river or lake, and wanders during the
+night over the adjacent meadows, probably in quest of dew-worms. But the
+marshes of India and China present us with fishes much more decidedly
+terrestrial, and some of which were known to the ancients. Among these
+are several fishes of a snake-like form: they have an elongated,
+cylindrical body, and creep on land to great distances from their native
+waters. The boatmen of India often keep these fishes for a long time
+out of water, for the sake of diverting themselves and others by their
+terrestrial movements, and children may often be seen enjoying this
+sport.</p>
+
+<p>Of these land-haunting fishes, the most remarkable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>
+is the tree-climber,
+so called in Tranquebar. This fish inhabits India, the Indian islands,
+and various parts of China, as Chusan, &amp;c., living in marshes, and
+feeding on aquatic insects, worms, &amp;c. According to Daldorf, a Danish
+gentleman, who, in 1797, communicated an account of the habits of this
+fish to the Linnæan Society, it <i>mounts up</i> the bushes or low palms
+to some elevation. This gentleman states that he had himself observed
+it in the act of ascending palm-trees near the marshes, and had taken
+it at a height of no less than five feet, measured from the level of
+the adjacent water. It effects its ascent by means of its pectoral and
+under fins, aided by the action of the tail and the spines which border
+the gill covers. It is by the same agency that it traverses the land.
+The statement of M. Daldorf is corroborated by M. John, also a Danish
+observer, to whom we are indebted for the knowledge of its name in
+Tranquebar, which alludes to its arboreal proceedings.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that many other naturalists who have observed the habits
+of this fish in its native regions, while they concur in describing
+its terrestrial journeys, and its living for a long time out of water,
+either omit to mention, or mention with doubt, its reputed attempts at
+<i>tree-climbing</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The habits and instincts of certain Crawfishes are very extraordinary.
+Thus, the <i>Astaci</i> are migratory, and in their travels are capable of
+doing much damage to dams and embankments. On the Little Genesee River
+they have, within a few years, compelled
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>
+the owner of a dam to rebuild
+it. The former dam was built after the manner of dykes, <i>i.e.</i>, with
+upright posts, supporting sleepers, laid inclining up the stream. On
+these were laid planks, and the planks were covered with dirt. The
+<i>Astacus</i> proceeding up the stream would burrow under the planks where
+they rested on the bottom of the stream, removing bushels of dirt and
+gravel in the course of a night. They travel over the dam in their
+migrations, <i>often climbing posts</i> two or three feet high to gain the
+pond above.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p>
+
+<p>We have to add a new and eccentric variety of nature&mdash;the Pill-making
+Crab, which abounds at Labuan, Singapore, and Lahore, and is described
+in Mr. Collingwood's "Rambles of a Naturalist." When the tide is down,
+this little creature, if stealthily watched, may be seen creeping up
+a hole in the sandy shore, taking up rapidly particles of the loose
+powdery sand in its claws, and depositing them in a groove beneath the
+thorax. A little ball of sand, about the size of a filbert, is forthwith
+projected, though whether it passes actually through the mouth is not
+made clear. Pill after pill is seized with one claw, and laid aside,
+until the beach is covered with these queer little pellets. This is
+evidently the creature's mode of extracting particles of food from the
+sand.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Collingwood also describes, as met with on the shores and waters of
+the China seas, Glass Crabs, whose flat, transparent, leaf-like bodies
+seem made<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>
+of fine plates of mica. The dredge brings up many a rich
+haul of sponges, corals, and gorgoniæ, of the most splendid colours,
+certain of the sponges harbouring within their cells minute crabs of a
+new genus. Between Aden and Galle the sea is of a pinkish colour, owing
+to the immense accumulation of minute kinds of medusæ, in solid masses
+of red jelly. Over Fiery Cross Reef, the mirror-like sea reveals, at
+the depth of sixty or seventy feet, this wealth of natural treasures.
+"Glorious masses of living coral strew the bottom: immense globular
+madrepores&mdash;vast overhanging mushroom-shaped expansions, complicated
+ramifications of interweaving branches, mingled with smaller and more
+delicate species&mdash;round, finger-shaped, horn-like and umbrella-form&mdash;lie
+in wondrous confusion. Here and there is a large clam-shell, wedged
+in between masses of coral, the gaping, zigzag mouth covered with the
+projecting mantle of the deepest Prussian blue; beds of dark purple,
+long-spined Echini, and the thick black bodies of sea-cucumbers vary the
+aspect of the sea bottom."<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a>
+This Crab has an elongated spine-like tail, the use of which was
+long misunderstood. Dr. J. Gray was shown at the Liverpool Museum some
+living King Crabs, and the use they made of the tail-like appendages.
+When turned over on their backs, he saw them bend down the tail until
+they could reach some point of resistance, and then employ it to
+elevate the body, and regain their normal position. Dr. Gray states
+that they never have been seen to use this tail for the purpose which
+has been often assigned to it&mdash;that is, for leaping from place to place
+by bending it under the body, like the toy called a "spring-jack," or
+"leaping frog."</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a>
+American Journal of Science and Art.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a>
+W. C. Linnæus Martin, F.L.S.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="MUSICAL_LIZARDS" id="MUSICAL_LIZARDS"></a>MUSICAL LIZARDS.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_078.jpg" alt="Letter A"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>A SMALL</b> Lizard, lately brought home from the Isle of Formosa by Mr.
+Swinhoe, is decided to be a new species by Dr. Günther, of the British
+Museum. Mr. Swinhoe found the eggs of this Gecko, or Lizard, in holes of
+walls or among mortar rubbish. They are round, and usually lie several
+together, resembling eggs of ordinary Lizards. The young, when first
+hatched, keep much under stones in dark cellars, where they remain
+until they attain about two-thirds of the adult size, when they begin
+to appear in public to catch insects, but evincing great shyness of
+their seniors. Mr. Swinhoe states that on the plaster-washed sides of
+his bedroom, close to the angle of the roof, every evening when the lamp
+was placed on the table below, four little Musical Lizards used to make
+their appearance and watch patiently for insects attracted by the light.
+A sphinx or a beetle buzzing into the room would put them into great
+excitement, and they would run with celerity from one part of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> wall
+to the other after the deluded insect as it fluttered in vain, buffeting
+its head, up and down the wall. Two or three would run after the same
+insect, but as soon as one had succeeded in securing it, the rest would
+prudently draw aloof. In running over the perpendicular face of the wall
+they keep so close, and their movements are made so quickly, with one
+leg in advance of the other, that they have the appearance at a distance
+of gliding rather than running. The tail is somewhat writhed as the body
+is jerked along, and much so when the animal is alarmed and doing its
+utmost to escape; but its progress even then is in short runs, stopping
+at intervals and raising its head to look about. If a fly perch on the
+wall it cautiously approaches to within a short distance, then suddenly
+darts forwards, and with its quickly-protruded, glutinous tongue, fixes
+it. Apart from watching its curious man&oelig;uvres after its insect-food,
+the attention of the most listless would be attracted by the singular
+series of loud notes these creatures utter at all hours of the day and
+night, more especially during cloudy and rainy weather. These notes
+resemble the syllables "chuck-chuck," several times repeated; and, from
+their more frequent occurrence during July and August, they are thought
+to be the call notes of the male to the female.</p>
+
+<p>During the greater part of the day, the little creature lies quiescent
+in some cranny among the beams of the roof or in the wall of the house,
+where, however, it is ever watchful for the incautious fly
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> that
+approaches its den, upon whom it darts forth with but little notice. But
+it is by no means confined to the habitations of men. Every old wall,
+and almost every tree, possesses a tenant or two of this species. It is
+excessively lively, and even when found quietly ensconced in a hole,
+generally manages to escape&mdash;its glittering little eyes (black, with
+yellow ochre iris) appearing to know no sleep; and an attempt to capture
+the runaway seldom results in more than the seizure of an animated tail,
+wrenched off with a jerk by the little fellow as it slips away, without
+loss of blood. The younger individuals are much darker than the larger
+and older animals, which are sometimes almost albinoes. In ordinary
+fly-catching habits, as they stick to the sides of a lamp, there is much
+similarity between this gecko and the little papehoo, or wall-lizard
+of China; but this is decidedly a larger and much more active animal,
+and often engages in a struggle with insects of very large size. The
+Chinese colonists of Formosa greatly respect the geckos, in consequence
+of a legend which attributes to them the honour of having once poisoned
+the supplies of an invading rebellious army, which was thereby totally
+cut to pieces. The geckos were raised to the rank of generals by the
+grateful Emperor of China; which honour, the legend states, they greatly
+appreciated, and henceforth devoted their energies to the extermination
+of mosquitoes and other injurious insects.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAMELEONS_AND_THEIR_CHANGES" id="CHAMELEONS_AND_THEIR_CHANGES"></a>
+CHAMELEONS, AND THEIR CHANGES.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse3">"Nil fuit unquam</div>
+<div class="verse">Sic impar sibi."&mdash;<i>Horat.</i></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="center margin-top1">"Sure such a various creature ne'er was seen."</div>
+<div class="right1"><i>Francis, in imit.</i></div>
+
+<div class="margin-top1">
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>THE</b> Chameleon tribe is a well-defined family of lizard-like reptiles,
+whose characters may be summed up as existing in the form of their feet;
+the toes, which are joined together or bound up together in two packets
+or bundles, opposed to each other; in their shagreen-like skin; in their
+prehensile tail; and in their extensile and retractile vermiform tongue.</p>
+
+<p>That the Chameleon was known to the ancients there is no doubt. Its
+name we derive directly from the <i>Chamelæo</i> of the Latins. Aristotle's
+history of the animal proves the acute observation of that great
+zoologist&mdash;the absence of a sternum, the disposition of the ribs, the
+mechanism of the tail, the motion of the eyes, the toes bound up in
+opposable bundles, &amp;c.&mdash;though he is not entirely correct on some
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>
+points. Pliny mentions it, but his account is for the most part a
+compilation from Aristotle.</p>
+
+<p>Calmet's description of the Chameleon is curiously minute:&mdash;"It has
+four feet, and on each foot three claws. Its tail is long: with this,
+as well as with his feet, it fastens itself to the branches of trees.
+Its tail is flat, its nose long, ending in an obtuse point; its back is
+sharp, its skin plaited, and jagged like a saw, from the neck to the
+last joint of the tail, and upon its head it has something like a comb;
+like a fish, it has no neck. Some have asserted that it lives only upon
+air, but it has been observed to feed on flies, catched with its tongue,
+which is about ten inches long and three thick, made of white flesh,
+round, but flat at the end, or hollow and open, resembling an elephant's
+trunk. It also shrinks, and grows longer. This animal is said to assume
+the colour of those things to which it is applied; but our modern
+observers assure us that its natural colour, when at rest, and in the
+shade, is a bluish-grey; though some are yellow, others green, but both
+of a smaller kind. When it is exposed to the sun, the grey changes into
+a darker grey, inclining to a dun colour, and its parts which have least
+of the light upon them are changed into spots of different colours.
+Sometimes, when it is handled, it seems speckled with dark spots,
+inclining to green. If it be put upon a black hat, it appears to be of a
+violet colour; and sometimes, if it be wrapped up in linen, it is white;
+but it changes colour only in some parts of the body."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Its changes of colour have been commemorated by the poets. Shakspeare
+has&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"I can add colours ev'n to the Chameleon:</div>
+<div class="verse">Change shapes with Proteus, for advantage."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Dryden has&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"The thin Chameleon, fed with air, receives</div>
+<div class="verse">The colour of the thing to which it cleaves."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Prior has&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"As the Chameleon, which is known</div>
+<div class="verse">To have no colours of his own,</div>
+<div class="verse">But borrows from his neighbour's hue</div>
+<div class="verse">His white or black, his green or blue."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Gay, in his charming fable of the Spaniel and the Chameleon, "scarce
+distinguished from the green," makes the latter thus reply to the taunts
+of the pampered spaniel:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"'Sir,' says the sycophant, 'like you,</div>
+<div class="verse">Of old, politer life I knew:</div>
+<div class="verse">Like you, a courtier born and bred,</div>
+<div class="verse">Kings lean'd their ear to what I said:</div>
+<div class="verse">My whisper always met success;</div>
+<div class="verse">The ladies prais'd me for address;</div>
+<div class="verse">I knew to hit each courtier's passion,</div>
+<div class="verse">And flatter'd every vice in fashion:</div>
+<div class="verse">But Jove, who hates the liar's ways,</div>
+<div class="verse">At once cut short my prosperous days,</div>
+<div class="verse">And, sentenced to retain my nature,</div>
+<div class="verse">Transform'd me to this crawling creature.</div>
+<div class="verse">Doom'd to a life obscure and mean,</div>
+<div class="verse">I wander'd in the silvan scene:</div>
+<div class="verse">For Jove the heart alone regards;</div>
+<div class="verse">He punishes what man rewards.</div>
+<div class="verse">How different is thy case and mine!
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span></div>
+<div class="verse">With men at least you sup and dine;</div>
+<div class="verse">While I, condemned to thinnest fare,</div>
+<div class="verse">Like those I flatter'd, fed on air.'"</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Upon this fable a commentator acutely notes:&mdash;"The raillery at court
+sycophants naturally pervades our poet's writings, who had suffered so
+much from them. Here, however, he intimates something more, namely, the
+apposite dispensations to man's acts, even in this world. The crafty is
+taken in by his own guile, the courtier falls by his own arts, and the
+ladder of ambition only prepares for the aspirant a further fall."
+<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a></p>
+
+<p>With respect to the air-food of the Chameleon. Cuvier observes that
+its lung is so large that, when it is filled with air, it imparts a
+transparency to the body, which made the ancients say that it lived
+upon air; and he inclines to think that to its size the Chameleon owes
+the property of changing its colour; but, with regard to this last
+speculation, he was wrong, as we shall presently see.</p>
+
+<p>It was long thought that the Chameleon, like most of the lizard tribe,
+was produced from an egg. The little animal is, however, most clearly
+viviparous, and not oviparous, although the tales told of the lizard
+tribe in the story books are most perplexing. To name a few of them:&mdash;1.
+The crocodile, which is the largest of the lizard tribe, and has even
+attained<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>
+the size of 18-1/2 ft. in length, is confidently stated as
+laying eggs, which she covers with sand and leaves, to be hatched by the
+sun; and these have been met with in the rivers Nile, Niger, and Ganges.
+2. <i>Lacerta Gangetica</i>, unknown to Linnæus, but brought to this country
+from Bengal in 1747 by the late Dr. Mead, is said to be furnished
+with a false belly, like the opossum, where the young can be received
+for protection in time of danger. In this case the egg must have been
+hatched in the belly of the animal, like the viper. 3. The alligator,
+or American crocodile, lays a vast quantity of eggs in the sand, near
+the banks of lakes and rivers, and leaves them to be hatched by the sun;
+and the young are seldom seen. 4. The cayman, or Antilles crocodile, has
+furnished its eggs to many collections. 5. A salamander was opened by M.
+Maupertuis, and its belly was found full of eggs; but in "Les Mémoires
+de l'Académie Royale des Sciences" it is stated that, after a similar
+operation of the kind, "fifty young ones, resembling the parent animal,
+were found in its womb all alive, and actively running about the room."</p>
+
+<p>The tongue is the chief organ for taking the insects on which the
+Chameleon lives. By a curious mechanism, of which the tongue-bone is a
+principal agent, the Chameleon can protrude this cylindrical tongue,
+which has its tip covered with a glutinous secretion from the sheath
+at the lower part of the mouth, to the length of six inches. When the
+Chameleon is about to seize an insect, it rolls round its extraordinary
+eyeballs so as to bring them to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>
+bear on the doomed object; as soon
+as it arrives within the range of the tongue, that organ is projected
+with unerring precision, and returns into the mouth with the prey
+adhering to the viscous tip. The wonderful activity with which this
+feat is performed, forms a strong contrast to the almost ridiculously
+slow motions of the animal. Their operation of taking meal-worms, of
+which they are fond, though comparatively rapid, is not remarkable for
+its quickness, but done with an act of deliberation, and so that the
+projection and retraction of the tongue can be very distinctly followed
+with the eye.</p>
+
+<p>The eyes of the Chameleon are remarkable objects; large, projecting, and
+almost entirely covered with the shagreen-like skin, with the exception
+of a small aperture opposite the pupil; their motions are completely
+independent of each other. It adds to the strange and grotesque
+appearance of this creature to see it roll one of its eye-globes
+backwards, while the other is directed forwards, as if making two
+distinct surveys at one time. Its sight must be acute, from the unerring
+certainty with which it marks and strikes its prey.</p>
+
+<p>The Chameleons spend their lives in trees, for clinging to the branches
+of which their organization is admirably adapted. There they lie in
+wait for the insects which may come within their reach; and it has been
+thought that, in such situations, their faculty of changing colour
+becomes highly important in aiding them to conceal themselves.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> The
+powers of abstinence possessed by this singular race are very great;
+and hence, most probably, arose the old fable of their <i>living on
+air</i>, which was for a long time considered to be "the Chameleon's
+dish." One has been known to fast upwards of six weeks without taking
+any sustenance, though meat-food and insects were procured for it.
+Notwithstanding this fast, it did not appear to fall away much. It would
+fix itself by the feet and tail to the bars of the fender, and there
+remain motionless, enjoying the warmth of the fire for hours together.
+Hasselquist describes one, that he kept for nearly a month, as climbing
+up and down the bars of its cage in a very lively manner.</p>
+
+<p>The power of the Chameleon's changing colour long exercised the
+ingenuity of the old naturalists. Hasselquist thought that the changes
+of colour depended on a kind of disease, more especially a sort of
+jaundice, to which the animal was subject, particularly when it was put
+in a rage. M. D'Obsonville thought that he had discovered the secret in
+the blood, and that the change of colour depended upon a mixture of blue
+and yellow, whence the different shades of green were derived; and these
+colours he obtains from the blood and the blood-vessels. Thus he says
+that the blood is of a violet hue, and will retain its colour on linen
+or paper for some minutes if previously steeped in a solution of alum,
+and that the coats of the vessels are yellow; consequently, he argues,
+that the mixture of the two will produce green. He further traces the
+change<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>
+of colour to the passions of the animal. Thus, when a healthy
+Chameleon is provoked, the circulation is accelerated, the vessels that
+are spread over the skin are distended, and a superficial blue-green
+colour is produced. When, on the contrary, the animal is imprisoned,
+impoverished, and deprived of free air, the circulation becomes languid,
+the vessels are not filled, the colour of their coats prevails, and the
+Chameleon changes to a yellow-green, which lasts during its confinement.</p>
+
+<p>Barrow, in his "Travels in Africa," declares that previously to the
+Chameleon's assuming a change of colour, it makes a long inspiration,
+the body swelling out to twice its usual size; and as the inflation
+subsides, the change of colour gradually takes place, the only permanent
+marks being two small dark lines passing along the sides. Mr. Wood
+conceives from this account that the animal is principally indebted for
+these varied tints to the influence of oxygen. Mr. Spittal also regards
+these changes as connected with the state of the lungs; and Mr. Houston
+considers this phenomenon as dependent on the turgescency of the skin.
+Dr. Weissenborn thinks it not unlikely that the nervous currents may
+directly co-operate in effecting the changes of colour in the Chameleon.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. H. N. Turner, writing from personal observation of the phenomenon
+in a live Chameleon in his possession, says:&mdash;"It has been generally
+imagined that the purpose of the singular faculty accorded to the
+Chameleon is to enable it to accommodate
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span>
+its appearance to that of
+surrounding objects." Mr. Turner's observations do not, however, favour
+the idea, but seem rather to negative it. The box in which Mr. Turner's
+Chameleon was kept was of deal, with glass at the top, and a piece of
+flannel laid at the bottom, a small branching stick being placed there
+by way of a perch. He introduced, at various times, pieces of coloured
+paper, covering the bottom of the box, of blue, yellow, and scarlet,
+but without the slightest effect upon the appearance of the animal.
+Considering that these primary colours were not such as it would be
+likely to be placed in contact with in a state of nature, he next tried
+a piece of green calico, but equally without result. The animal went
+through all its usual changes without their being in any way modified by
+the colour placed underneath it. The general tint approximated, as may
+be readily observed, to those of the branches of trees, just as those of
+most animals do to the places in which they dwell; but Mr. Turner did
+not observe the faculty of changing called into play with any apparent
+object. It is only when the light is removed that the animal assumes a
+colour which absorbs but little of it.</p>
+
+<p>Not to go further into the numerous treatises which have been published
+on this intricate subject without arriving at a just conclusion, we
+refer to the able and interesting paper of Mr. Milne Edwards, for whose
+acuteness the solution of this puzzling phenomenon was reserved. The
+steps by which he first overthrew the received theories on the subject,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>
+and then arrived at the cause of the change of colour, is shown in the
+following results, derived from observing two Chameleons living, and
+researches after the animals had died, on the structure of their skin,
+and the parts immediately beneath it.</p>
+
+<p>1. That the change in the colour of the Chameleon does not depend
+essentially either on the more or less considerable swelling of their
+bodies, or the changes which might hence result to the condition of
+their blood or circulation; nor does it depend on the greater or less
+distance which may exist between the several cutaneous tubercles;
+although it is not to be denied that these circumstances probably
+exercise some influence upon the phenomenon.</p>
+
+<p>2. That there exist in the skin of these animals two layers of
+membranous pigment, placed the one above the other, but disposed in such
+a way as to appear simultaneously under the cuticle, and sometimes in
+such a manner that the one may hide the other.</p>
+
+<p>3. That everything remarkable in the changes of colour in the Chameleon
+may be explained by the appearance of the pigment of the deeper layer to
+an extent more or less considerable, in the midst of the pigment of the
+superficial layer, or from its disappearance beneath this layer.</p>
+
+<p>4. That these displacements of the deeper pigment do in reality occur;
+and it is a probable consequence that the Chameleon's colour changes
+during life, and may continue to change even after death.</p>
+
+<p>5. That there exists a close analogy between the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>
+mechanism by the help
+of which the change of colour appears to take place in these reptiles,
+and that which determines the successive appearance and disappearance of
+coloured spots in the mantles of several of the cephalopods.</p>
+
+<p>Chameleons are found in warm climates of the old world, South of Spain,
+Africa, East Indies. Isles of Sechelles, Bourbon, France, Moluccas.
+Madagascar (where it is said there are seven of the species which belong
+to Africa), Fernando Po, and New South Wales. In the year 1860, a new
+and curiously formed species of Chameleon was brought from the interior
+of the Old Calabar district of West Africa, by one of the natives. It is
+characterised by three horny processes on the head. Many Lizards have
+singular spiny projections on all parts of the body; but this very well
+marked species had not been hitherto recorded.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Belzoni, the wife of the celebrated traveller in the East, made
+some careful observations upon the habits of Chameleons, which are worth
+quoting. The Arabs in Lower Egypt catch Chameleons by jumping upon them,
+flinging stones at them, or striking them with sticks, which hurts them
+very much. The Nubians lay them down gently on the ground, and when
+they come down from the date-trees, they catch hold of the tail of the
+animal, and fix a string to it; therefore the body does not get injured.
+Mrs. Belzoni had some Chameleons for several months in her house, and
+her observations are as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"In the first place they are very inveterate towards each other, and
+must not be shut up together, else they will bite each other's tails and
+legs off.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter bord"><a name="i_333.jpg" id="i_333.jpg"></a>
+  <img src="images/i_333.jpg" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">CHAMELEONS.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>"There are three species of Chameleons, whose colours are peculiar
+to themselves: for instance, the commonest sort are those which are
+generally green, that is to say, the body all green, and, when content,
+beautifully marked on each side regularly on the green with black and
+yellow, not in a confused manner, but as if drawn. This kind is in great
+plenty; they never have any other colour except a light green when they
+sleep, and when ill, a very pale yellow. Out of near forty I had the
+first year when in Nubia, I had but one, and that a very small one of
+the second sort, which had red marks. One Chameleon lived with me eight
+months, and most of that time I had it fixed to the button of my coat:
+it used to rest on my shoulder or on my head. I have observed, when I
+have kept it shut up in a room for some time, that on bringing it out
+in the air it would begin drawing the air in, and on putting it on some
+marjorum it has had a wonderful effect on it immediately: its colour
+became most brilliant. I believe it will puzzle a good many to say what
+cause it proceeds from. If they did not change when shut up in a house,
+but only on taking them in a garden, it might be supposed the change
+of the colours was in consequence of the smell of the plants; but when
+in a house, if it is watched, it will change every ten minutes: some
+moments a plain green, at others all its beautiful colours will
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> come
+out, and when in a passion it becomes of a deep black, and will swell
+itself up like a balloon, and, from being one of the most beautiful
+animals, it becomes one of the most ugly. It is true that Chameleons
+are extremely fond of the fresh air, and on taking them to a window
+when there is nothing to be seen, it is easy to observe the pleasure
+they certainly take in it: they begin to gulp down the air, and their
+colour becomes brighter. I think it proceeds, in a great degree, from
+the temper they are in: a little thing will put them in a bad humour: if
+in crossing a table, for instance, you stop them, and attempt to turn
+them another road, they will not stir, and are extremely obstinate: on
+opening the mouth at them, it will set them in a passion: they begin to
+arm themselves by swelling and turning black, and will sometimes hiss a
+little, but not much.</p>
+
+<p>"The third I brought from Jerusalem was the most singular of all the
+Chameleons I ever had: its temper, if it can be so called, was extremely
+sagacious and cunning. This one was not of the order of the green kind,
+but a disagreeable drab, and it never once varied in its colour in two
+months. On my arrival in Cairo. I used to let it crawl about the room on
+the furniture. Sometimes it would get down, if it could, and hide itself
+away from me, but in a place where it could see me; and sometimes,
+on my leaving the room and on entering it, would draw itself so thin
+as to make itself nearly on a level with whatever it might be on, so
+that I might not see it. It had often deceived me
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>
+so. One day having
+missed it for some time, I concluded it was hid about the room; after
+looking for it in vain, I thought it had got out of the room and made
+its escape: in the course of the evening, after the candle was lighted,
+I went to a basket that had got a handle across it: I saw my Chameleon,
+but its colour entirely changed, and different to any I ever had seen
+before: the whole body, head and tail, a brown with black spots, and
+beautiful deep orange-coloured spots round the black. I certainly was
+much gratified. On being disturbed, its colours vanished, unlike the
+others; but after this I used to observe it the first thing in the
+morning, when it would have the same colours. Some time after, it made
+its escape out of my room, and I suppose got into the garden close by.
+I was much vexed, and would have given twenty dollars to have recovered
+it again, though it only cost me threepence, knowing I could not get
+another like it; for, afterwards being in Rosetta, I had between fifty
+and sixty; but all those were green, yellow, and black; and the Arabs,
+in catching them, had bruised them so much, that after a month or six
+weeks they died. It is an animal extremely hard to die. I had prepared
+two cages with separate divisions, with the intention of bringing them
+to England; but though I desired the Arabs that used to get them for me
+to catch them by the tail, they used to hurt them much with their hands;
+and if once the body is squeezed, it will never live longer than two
+months. When they used to sleep at night, it was easy to see where they
+had been bruised; for being
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>
+of a very light colour when sleeping, the
+part that had been bruised, either on the body or the head, which was
+bone, was extremely black, though when green it would not show itself so
+clear. Their chief food was flies: the fly does not die immediately on
+being swallowed, for upon taking the Chameleon up in my hands, it was
+easy to feel the fly buzzing, chiefly on account of the air they draw in
+their inside: they swell much, and particularly when they want to fling
+themselves off a great height, by filling themselves up like a balloon:
+on falling, they get no hurt, except on the mouth, which they bruise a
+little, as that comes first to the ground. Sometimes they will not drink
+for three or four days, and when they begin they are about half an hour
+drinking. I have held a glass in one hand while the Chameleon rested its
+two fore-paws on the edge of it, the two hind ones resting on my other
+hand. It stood upright while drinking, holding its head up like a fowl.
+By flinging its tongue out of its mouth the length of its body, and
+instantaneously catching the fly, it would go back like a spring. They
+will drink mutton broth: how I came to know this was, one day having a
+plate of broth and rice on the table where it was: it went to the plate
+and got half into it, and began drinking, and trying to take up some of
+the rice, by pushing it with its mouth towards the side of the plate,
+which kept it from moving, and in a very awkward way taking it into its
+mouth."</p>
+
+<p>In the autumn of 1868, a pair of Chameleons, in the possession of the
+Hon. Lady Cust, of Leasowe
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span>
+Castle, Cheshire, produced nine active young
+ones, like little alligators, less than an inch long. Such a birth has
+been, it is believed, very rare in this country. It was remarked, in the
+above case, that the male and female appeared altogether indifferent
+about their progeny.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever may be the cause, the fact seems to be certain, that the
+Chameleon has an antipathy to objects of a black colour. One, which
+Forbes kept, uniformly avoided a black board which was hung up in the
+chamber; and, what is most remarkable, when the Chameleon was held
+forcibly before the black board, it trembled violently and assumed a
+<i>black colour</i>.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p>
+
+<p>It may be something of the same kind which makes Bulls and Turkey-cocks
+dislike the colour of scarlet, a fact of which there can be no doubt.</p>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a>
+The Fables of John Gay. Illustrated. With Original Memoir,
+Introduction, and Annotations. By Octavius Freire Owen, M.A., F.S.A.
+1854.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a>
+This, it will be seen by referring to page 307, does not correspond
+with Calmet's statement.</p>
+</div>
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="RUNNING_TOADS" id="RUNNING_TOADS"></a>RUNNING TOADS.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>THAT</b> the Toad, by common repute "ugly and venomous," should be made a
+parlour pet, is passing strange; yet such is the case, and we find in a
+letter from Dr. Husenbeth, of Cossey, the following curious instances.
+Thus he describes a species, there often met with, the eyes of which
+have the pupil surrounded with bright golden-yellow, whereas in the
+common toad the circle is red or orange. This remarkable peculiarity
+Dr. H. has not seen anywhere noticed. The head is like that of the
+common sort, but much more blunt, and rounded off at the nose and mouth,
+and the arches over the eyes are more prominent. The most remarkable
+difference is a line of yellow running all down the back. Also down each
+side this Toad has a row of red pimples, like small beads, which are
+tolerably regular, but appear more in some specimens than in others.
+The general colour is a yellowish-olive, but the animal is beautifully
+marked with black spots, very regularly disposed, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> exactly
+corresponding on each side of the yellow line down the back. Like all
+other Toads, this one occasionally changes its colour, becoming more
+brown, or ash-colour, or reddish at times, probably in certain states
+of the weather. This species is much more active than the common Toad.
+It never leaps, and very seldom crawls, but makes a short run, stops a
+little, and then runs on again. If frightened or pursued, it will run
+along much quicker than one would suppose.</p>
+
+<p>During the previous summer Dr. H. kept three Toads of this kind in
+succession. "The first (says Dr. H.) I procured in July; but after a
+few days, when I let him have a run on the carpet of my parlour, he
+got into a hole in a corner of the floor, of which I was not aware,
+and fell, as I suppose, underneath the floor, into the hollow space
+below. I concluded that he could never get up again, and gave him up to
+his fate. I then began to keep another Running Toad, which fed well at
+first, but after three weeks refused food, and evidently wasted; so I
+turned him out into the garden, and have not met with him since. After
+more than three weeks, the former Toad reappeared, but how he came up
+from beneath the floor I never could conceive, or how he had picked
+up a living in the meantime. He was, however, in good condition, and
+seemed to have lived well, probably on spiders and woodlice. He had been
+seen by a servant running about the carpet, but I knew nothing of his
+having come forth again, till in the evening, when he had got
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> near the
+door, and it was suddenly opened so as to pass over the poor creature,
+and crush it terribly. I took it up apparently dead. It showed no sign
+of life; the eyes were closed, it did not breathe, and the backbone
+seemed quite broken, and the animal was crushed almost flat. I found a
+very curious milky secretion exuding from it, where it had been most
+injured and the skin was most broken. This was perfectly white, and had
+exactly the appearance of milk thrown over the toad. It did not bleed,
+though much lacerated; but instead of blood appeared this milky fluid,
+which had an odour of a most singular kind, different from anything I
+ever smelt. It is impossible to describe it. It was not fetid, but of
+a sickly, disgusting, and overpowering character, so that I could not
+endure to inhale it for a moment. I had read and seen a good deal of the
+extraordinary powers of revivification in toads, but was not prepared
+for what I witnessed on this occasion. I laid this poor animal, crushed,
+flattened, motionless, and to all appearance dead, upon a cold iron
+plate of the fireplace. He fell over on one side, and showed no sign of
+life for a full hour. After that he had slightly moved one leg, and so
+remained for about another half-hour. Then he began to breathe feebly,
+and gathered up his legs, and his back began to rise up into its usual
+form. In about two hours from the time of the accident, he had so far
+recovered as to crawl about, though with difficulty. The milky liquor
+was reabsorbed, and gradually disappeared as the toad recovered. The
+next<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>
+morning it was all gone, and no mark of injury could be seen,
+except a small hole in his back, which soon closed. He recovered so far
+as to move about pretty well, but his back appeared to have been broken,
+and one fore-leg crippled. I therefore thought it best to give him his
+liberty in the garden. But so wonderful and speedy a recovery I could
+never have believed without ocular testimony.</p>
+
+<p>"I then tried my third and last Running Toad. I began to keep him on
+Sept. 13th. He was a very fine specimen, and larger than the two former.
+He fed well, and amused me exceedingly. He was very tame, and would sit
+on my hand quite quiet, and enjoy my stroking him gently down his head
+and back. Soon after I got him he began to cast his skin. I helped him
+to get rid of it by stripping it down each side, which he seemed to
+like much, and sat very quiet during the operation. The new skin was
+quite beautiful, and shone as if varnished. This Toad lived in a crystal
+palace, or glass jar, where I had kept all the others before him. He
+took food freely, and his appetite was so good that in one day he ate
+seven large flies and three bees without stings. He was particularly
+fond of woodlice and earwigs, but would take centipedes, moths, and
+even butterflies. Being more active than common Toads, he often made
+great efforts to get out of his glass jar. I used to let him run about
+the room nearly every day for a short time, and often treated him to a
+run in the garden. Toads make a slight noise sometimes in the evenings,
+uttering a short sound
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span>
+like 'coo,' but I never heard them croak. Before
+wet weather, and during its continuance, my Toad was disinclined for
+food, and took no notice of flies even walking over his nose. He would
+then burrow and hide himself in the moss at the bottom of his glass
+palace. Thus I kept him, and found him very tame and amusing. But after
+about two months he became more impatient of confinement, and refused
+to take any food. I did not perceive that he fell away, though his feet
+and toes turned of a dark colour, which I knew was a sign of being out
+of condition; and, on the 10th of November, I found him dead. I have
+now tried three of this sort, and have come to the conclusion that the
+Running Toad will not live in captivity. This I much regret, as its
+habits are interesting, and its ways very amusing.</p>
+
+<p class="right1">"<span class="smcap">F. C. Husenbeth, D.D.</span>"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<h3>FROG AND TOAD CONCERTS.</h3>
+
+<p>It would be hard to believe the stories of the vocal powers of Frogs
+and Toads were they not related by trustworthy travellers, who tell of
+animal concerts,</p>
+
+<p class="center blockquot">"Wild as the marsh, and tuneful as the harp."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Priest, the traveller in America, who was himself a musician,
+records:&mdash;"Prepared as I was to hear something extraordinary from these
+animals,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span>
+I confess the first <i>Frog Concert</i> I heard in America was so
+much beyond anything I could conceive of the power of these musicians,
+that I was truly astonished. This performance was <i>al fresco</i>, and took
+place on the eighteenth of April, in a large swamp, where there were at
+least 10,000 performers; and I really believe not two exactly in the
+same pitch, if the octave can possibly admit of so many divisions, or
+shades of semitones."</p>
+
+<p>Professor and Mrs. Louis Agassiz, in their recent "Journey in Brazil,"
+record:&mdash;"We must not leave Parà without alluding to our evening
+concerts from the adjoining woods and swamps. When I first heard this
+strange confusion of sounds, I thought it came from a crowd of men
+shouting loudly, though at a little distance. To my surprise. I found
+that the rioters were the frogs and toads in the neighbourhood. I hardly
+know how to describe this Babel of woodland noises; and, if I could do
+it justice, I am afraid my account would hardly be believed. At moments
+it seems like the barking of dogs, then like the calling of many voices
+on different keys; but all loud, rapid, excited, full of emphasis and
+variety. I think these frogs, like ours, must be silent at certain
+seasons of the year, for on our first visit to Parà we were not struck
+by this singular music, with which the woods now resound at nightfall."</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="SONG_OF_THE_CICADA" id="SONG_OF_THE_CICADA"></a>SONG OF THE CICADA.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>THE</b> Greeks have been scoffed at for rendering in deathless verse the
+song of so insignificant an insect as the Cicada; and hence it has
+been asserted that their love for such slender music must have been
+either exaggerated or simulated. It is pleasant, however, to hear an
+independent observer in the other hemisphere confirm their testimony.
+Mr. Lord tells us that in British Colombia there is one sound or song
+which is clearer, shriller, and <i>more singularly tuneful than any
+other</i>. It never appears to cease, and it comes from everywhere&mdash;from
+the tops of the trees, from the trembling leaves of the cotton-wood,
+from the stunted under-brush, from the flowers, the grass, the rocks and
+boulders&mdash;nay, the very stream itself seems vocal with hidden minstrels,
+all chanting the same refrain.</p>
+
+<p>An especial feature of the Cicada's song is, that it increases in
+intensity when the sun is hottest; and one of the later Latin poets
+mentions the time when its music is at its highest, as an alternative
+expression<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span>
+for noon. Mr. Tennyson, inadvertently, speaks in "Ænone" of
+the Grasshopper being silent in the grass, and of the Cicada sleeping
+when the noonday quiet holds the hill. Keats sings more truly:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,</div>
+<div class="verse">And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run</div>
+<div class="verse">From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead:</div>
+<div class="verse">That is the Grasshopper's."</div>
+</div><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Then the Greek poets show us how intimately the song of the Cicada is
+associated with the hottest hours of the day. Aristophanes describes it
+as mad for the love of the sun; and Theocritus, as scorched by the sun.
+When all things are parched with the heat (says Alcæus), then from among
+the leaves issues the song of the sweet Cicada. His shrill melody is
+heard in the full glow of noontide, and the vertical rays of a torrid
+sun fire him to sing. Over and over again Mr. Lord met with allusions to
+the same peculiarity.</p>
+
+<p>Cicadæ are regularly sold for food in the markets of South America. They
+are not eaten now, like they were at Athens, as a whet to the appetite;
+but they are dried in the sun, powdered, and made into a cake.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="STORIES_ABOUT_THE_BARNACLE_GOOSE" id="STORIES_ABOUT_THE_BARNACLE_GOOSE"></a>STORIES ABOUT THE BARNACLE GOOSE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"As barnacles turn Poland geese</div>
+<div class="verse">In th' islands of the Orcades."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="right1">&mdash;<i>Hudibras.</i></div>
+
+<div class="margin-top1">
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_110.jpg" alt="Letter O"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>ONE</b> of the earliest references to this
+popular error is in the "Natural
+Magic" of Baptista Porta, who says:&mdash;"Late writers report that not only
+in Scotland, but also in the river of Thames by London, there is a kind
+of shell-fish in a two-leaved shell, that hath a foot full of plaits
+and wrinkles.... They commonly stick to the keel of some old ship. Some
+say they come of worms, some of the boughs of trees which fall into the
+sea; if any of them be cast upon shore, they die; but they which are
+swallowed still into the sea, live and get out of their shells, and grow
+to be ducks, or such-like birds."</p>
+
+<p>Professor Max Müller, in a learned lecture, enters fully into the origin
+of the different stories about the Barnacle Goose. He quotes from the
+"Philosophical Transactions" of 1678 a full account by Sir Robert Moray,
+who declared that he had seen
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span>
+within the barnacle shell, as through a
+concave or diminishing glass, the bill, eyes, head, neck, breast, wings,
+tail, feet, and feathers of the Barnacle Goose. The next witness was
+John Gerarde, Master in Chirurgerie, who, in 1597, declared that he had
+seen the actual metamorphosis of the muscle into the bird, describing
+how&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The shell gapeth open, and the first thing that appeareth is the fore
+said lace or string; next come the leg of the birde hanging out, and
+as it groweth greater, it openeth the shell by degrees, till at length
+it is all come forth, and hangeth only by the bill, and falleth into
+the sea, when it gathereth feathers and groweth to a foule, bigger than
+a mallart; for the truth hereof, if any doubt, may it please them to
+repair unto me, and I shall satisfie them by the testimonies of good
+witnesses."</p>
+
+<p>As far back as the thirteenth century, the same story is traced in the
+writings of Giraldus Cambrensis. This great divine does not deny the
+truth of the miraculous origin of the Barnacle Geese, but he warns the
+Irish priests against dining off them during Lent on the plea that they
+were not flesh, but fish. For, he writes, "If a man during Lent were
+to dine off a leg of Adam, who was not born of flesh either, we should
+not consider him innocent of having eaten what is flesh." This modern
+myth, which, in spite of the protests of such men as Albertus Magnus,
+Æneas Sylvius, and others, maintained its ground for many centuries, and
+was defended, as late as 1629, in a book by Count Maier, "De volucri
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span>
+arborea," with arguments, physical, metaphysical, and theological, owed
+its origin to a play of words. The muscle shells are called <i>Bernaculæ</i>
+from the Latin <i>perna</i>, the mediæval Latin <i>berna</i>; the birds are called
+<i>Hibernicæ</i> or <i>Hiberniculæ</i>, abbreviated to <i>Berniculæ</i>. As their names
+seem one, the creatures are supposed to be one, and everything conspires
+to confirm the first mistake, and to invest what was originally a good
+Irish story&mdash;a mere <i>canard</i>&mdash;with all the dignity of scientific, and
+all the solemnity of theological truth. The myth continued to live
+until the age of Newton. Specimens of <i>Lepadidæ</i>, prepared by Professor
+Rolleston of Oxford, show how the outward appearance of the <i>Anatifera</i>
+could have supported the popular superstition which derived the
+<i>Bernicla</i>, the goose, from the <i>Bernicula</i>, the shell.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton (1613), in his "Poly-olbion," iii., in connexion with the river
+Lee, speaks of</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot center">"Th' anatomised fish and fowls from planchers sprung;"</p>
+
+<p>to which a note is appended in Southey's edition, p. 609, that such
+fowls were "Barnacles, a bird breeding upon old ships." A bunch of the
+shells attached to the ship, or to a piece of floating timber, at a
+distance appears like flowers in bloom; the foot of the animal has a
+similitude to the stalk of a plant growing from the ship's sides, the
+shell resembles a calyx, and the flower consists of the tentacula, or
+fingers, of the shell-fish. The ancient error was to mistake the foot
+for the neck of a goose, the shell for its head, and the tentacula for
+feathers. As to the body, <i>non est inventus</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Sir Kenelm Digby was soundly laughed at for relating to a party at
+the castle of the Governor of Calais, that "the Barnacle, a bird in
+Jersey, was first a shell-fish to appearance, and, from that striking
+upon old wood, became in time a bird." In 1807, there was exhibited in
+Spring-gardens, London, a "Wonderful natural curiosity, called the Goose
+Tree, Barnacle Tree, or Tree bearing Geese," taken up at sea on January
+12th, and more than twenty men could raise out of the water.
+<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></p>
+
+<p>Sir J. Emerson Tennent asks whether the ready acceptance and general
+credence given to so obvious a fable may not have been derived from
+giving too literal a construction to the text of the passage in the
+first chapter of Genesis:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">"And God said, Let the <i>waters bring forth abundantly</i> the
+moving creature that hath life, and the <i>fowl</i> that may fly in the
+open firmament of heaven."</p>
+
+<p>The Barnacle Goose is a well-known bird, and is eaten on fast-days in
+France, by virtue of this old belief in its marine origin. The belief
+in the barnacle origin of the bird still prevails on the west coast of
+Ireland, and in the Western Highlands of Scotland.</p>
+
+<p>The finding of the Barnacle is thus described by Mr. Sidebotham, to
+the Microscopical and Natural History Section of the Literary and
+Philosophical Society:&mdash;"In September, I was at Lytham with my family.
+The day was very stormy, and the previous night there had been a strong
+south-west wind,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span>
+and evidences of a very stormy sea outside the
+banks. Two of my children came running to tell me of a very strange
+creature that had been washed up on the shore. They had seen it from
+the pier, and pointed it out to a sailor, thinking it was a large dog
+with long hair. On reaching the shore I found a fine mass of Barnacles,
+<i>Pentalasinus anatifera</i>, attached to some staves of a cask, the whole
+being between four and five feet long. Several sailors had secured the
+prize, and were getting it on a truck to carry it away. The appearance
+was most remarkable, the hundreds of long tubes with their curious
+shells looking like what one would fancy the fabled Gorgon's head with
+its snaky locks. The curiosity was carried to a yard where it was to be
+exhibited, and the bellman went round to announce it under the name of
+the sea-lioness, or the great sea-serpent. Another mass of Barnacles
+was washed up at Lytham, and also one at Blackpool, the same day or the
+day following. This mass of Barnacles was evidently just such a one as
+that seen by Gerard at the Pile of Foulders. It is rare to have such a
+specimen on our coasts. The sailors at Lytham had never seen anything
+like it, although some of them were old men who had spent all their
+lives on the coast."</p>
+
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a>
+"Notes and Queries," No. 201.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="LEAVES_ABOUT_BOOKWORMS" id="LEAVES_ABOUT_BOOKWORMS"></a>LEAVES ABOUT BOOKWORMS.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_110.jpg" alt="Letter O"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>ON</b> paper, leather, and parchment are found various animals, popularly
+known as "Bookworms." Johnson describes it as a worm or mite that eats
+holes in books, chiefly when damp; and in the "Guardian" we find this
+reference to its habits:&mdash;"My lion, like a moth or bookworm, feeds upon
+nothing but paper."</p>
+
+<p>Many years ago an experienced keeper of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford
+collected these interesting details of Bookworms:&mdash;"The larvæ of
+<i>Crambus pinguinalis</i> will establish themselves upon the binding of a
+book, and spinning a robe will do it little injury. A mite, <i>Acarus
+eruditus</i>, eats the paste that fastens the paper over the edges of the
+binding and so loosens it. The caterpillar of another little moth takes
+its station in damp old books, between the leaves, and there commits
+great ravages. The little boring wood-beetle, who attacks books and
+will even bore through several volumes. An instance is mentioned of
+twenty-seven folio volumes being perforated
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span>
+in a straight line, by the
+same insect, in such a manner that by passing a cord through the perfect
+round hole made by it the twenty-seven volumes could be raised at once.
+The wood-beetle also destroys prints and drawings, whether framed or
+kept in a portfolio."</p>
+
+<p>There is another "Bookworm," which is often confounded with the
+Death-watch of the vulgar; but is smaller, and instead of beating
+at intervals, as does the Death-watch, continues its noise for a
+considerable length of time without intermission. It is usually found
+in old wood, decayed furniture, museums, and neglected books. The
+female lays her eggs, which are exceedingly small, in dry, dusty
+places, where they are least likely to meet with disturbance. They are
+generally hatched about the beginning of March, a little sooner or
+later, according to the weather. After leaving the eggs, the insects are
+so small as to be scarcely discerned without the use of a glass. They
+remain in this state about two months, somewhat resembling in appearance
+the mites in cheese, after which they undergo their change into the
+perfect insect. They feed on dead flies and other insects; and often,
+from their numbers and voracity, very much deface cabinets of natural
+history. They subsist on various other substances, and may often be
+observed carefully hunting for nutritious particles amongst the dust in
+which they are found, turning it over with their heads, and searching
+about in the manner of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span>
+swine. Many live through the winter buried deep
+in the dust to avoid the frost.</p>
+
+<p>The best mode of destroying the insects which infest books and MSS.
+has often occupied the attention of the possessors of valuable
+libraries. Sir Thomas Phillips found the wood of his book-case attacked,
+particularly where beech had been introduced, and appeared to think
+that the insect was much attracted by the paste employed in binding.
+He recommended as preservatives against their attacks spirits of
+turpentine and a solution of corrosive sublimate, and also the latter
+substance mixed with paste. In some instances he found the produce of
+a single impregnated female sufficient to destroy a book. Turpentine
+and spirit of tar are also recommended for their destruction; but the
+method pursued in the collections of the British Museum is an abundant
+supply of camphor, with attention to keeping the rooms dry, warm, and
+ventilated. Mr. Macleay states it is the <i>acari</i> only which feed on the
+paste employed in binding books, and the larvæ of the Coleoptera only
+which pierce the boards and leaves.</p>
+
+<p>The ravages of the Bookworm would be much more destructive had there
+not been a sort of guardian to the literary treasures in the shape of
+a spider, who, when examined through a microscope, resembles a knight
+in armour. This champion of the library follows the Worm into the
+book-case, discovers the pit he has digged, rushes on his victim, which
+is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span>
+about his own size, and devours him. His repast finished, he rests
+for about a fortnight, and when his digestion is completed, he sets out
+to break another lance with the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>The Death-watch, already referred to, and which must be acquitted of
+destroying books, is chiefly known by the noise which he makes behind
+the wainscoting, where he ticks like a clock or watch. How so loud
+a noise is produced by so small an insect has never been properly
+explained; and the ticking has led to many legends. The naturalist
+Degeer relates that one night, in the autumn of 1809, during an
+entomological excursion in Brittany, where travellers were scarce and
+accommodation bad, he sought hospitality at the house of a friend. He
+was from home, and Degeer found a great deal of trouble in gaining
+admittance; but at last the peasant who had charge of the house told
+Degeer that he would give him "the chamber of death," if he liked. As
+Degeer was much fatigued, he accepted the offer. "The bed is there,"
+said the man, "but no one has slept in it for some time. Every night the
+spirit of the officer, who was surprised and killed in this room by some
+chouans, comes back. When the officer was dead, the peasants divided
+what he had about him, and the officer's watch fell to my uncle, who was
+delighted with the prize, and brought it home to examine it. However,
+he soon found out that the watch was broken, and would not go. He then
+placed it under his pillow, and went to sleep; he awoke in the night,
+and to his terror heard the ticking of a watch. In
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> vain he sold the
+watch, and gave the money for masses to be said for the officer's soul,
+the ticking continued, and has never ceased." Degeer said that he would
+exorcise the chamber, and the peasant left him, after making the sign of
+the cross. The naturalist at once guessed the riddle, and, accustomed to
+the pursuit of insects, soon had a couple of Death-watches shut up in a
+tin case, and the ticking was reproduced.</p>
+
+<p>Swift has prescribed this destructive remedy by way of ridicule:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse7">"A Wood-worm</div>
+<div class="verse">That lies in old wood, like a hare in her form:</div>
+<div class="verse">With teeth or with claws it will bite, or will scratch;</div>
+<div class="verse">And chambermaids christen this worm a Death-watch,</div>
+<div class="verse">Because like a watch it always cries click:</div>
+<div class="verse">Then woe be to those in the house that are sick!</div>
+<div class="verse">For, sure as a gun, they will give up the ghost</div>
+<div class="verse">If the maggot cries click when it scratches the post.</div>
+<div class="verse">But a kettle of scalding hot water ejected,</div>
+<div class="verse">Infallibly cures the timber affected:</div>
+<div class="verse">The omen is broken, the danger is over;</div>
+<div class="verse">The maggot will die, the sick will recover."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="BORING_MARINE_ANIMALS_AND_HUMAN_ENGINEERS" id="BORING_MARINE_ANIMALS_AND_HUMAN_ENGINEERS"></a>
+BORING MARINE ANIMALS, AND HUMAN ENGINEERS.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_180.jpg" alt="Letter W"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>WERE</b> a young naturalist asked to exemplify
+what man has learned from the
+lower animals, he could scarcely adduce a more striking instance than
+that of a submarine shelly worker teaching him how to execute some of
+his noblest works. This we have learned from the life and labours of the
+<i>Pholas</i>, of which it has been emphatically said:&mdash;"Numerous accounts
+have been published during the last fourteen years in every civilized
+country and language of the boring process of the <i>Pholas</i>; and machines
+formed on the model of its mechanism have for years been tunnelling Mont
+Cenis."</p>
+
+<p>In the Eastern Zoological Gallery of the British Museum, cases 35 and
+36, as well as in the Museum of Economic Geology in Piccadilly, may be
+seen specimens of the above very curious order of <i>Conchifers</i>, most
+of the members of which are distinguished by their habits of boring or
+digging, a process in which they are assisted by the peculiar formation
+of the foot, from which they derive their name. Of these ten families
+one of the most characteristic
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span>
+is that of the Razor-shells, which,
+when the valves are shut, are of a long, flattened, cylindrical shape,
+and open at both ends. Projecting its strong pointed foot at one of
+these ends, the <i>solen</i> can work itself down into the sand with great
+rapidity, while at the upper end its respiratory tubes are shot out to
+bring the water to its gills. Of the <i>Pholadæ</i>, the shells of which
+are sometimes called multivalve, because, in addition to the two chief
+portions, they have a number of smaller accessory pieces, some bore
+in hard mud, others in wood, and others in rocks. They fix themselves
+firmly by the powerful foot, and then make the shell revolve; the sharp
+edges of this commence the perforation, which is afterwards enlarged by
+the rasp-like action of the rough exterior; and though the shell must
+be constantly worn down, yet it is replaced by a new formation from the
+animal, so as never to be unfit for its purpose. The typical bivalve of
+this family is the <i>Pholas</i>, which bores into limestone-rock and other
+hard material, and commits ravages on the piers, breakwaters, &amp;c., that
+it selects for a home.</p>
+
+<p>In the same family as the above Dr. Gray ranks the <i>Teredo</i>,
+<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> or
+wood-boring mollusc, whose ravages on ships, piles, wooden piers, &amp;c.,
+at sea resemble those of the white ant on furniture, joints of houses,
+&amp;c., on shore. Perforating the timber by exactly the same process as
+that by which the Pholas perforates
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span>
+the stones, the Teredo advances
+continually, eating out a contorted tube or gallery, which it lines
+behind it with calcareous matter, and through which it continues to
+breathe the water.</p>
+
+<p>The priority of the demonstration of the Pholas and its "boring habits"
+has been much disputed. The evidence is full of curious details. It
+appears that Mr. Harper, of Edinburgh, author of "The Sea-side and
+Aquarium," having claimed the lead. Mr. Robertson, of Brighton, writes
+to dispute the originality; adding that he publicly exhibited Pholades
+in the Pavilion at Brighton in July, 1851, perforating chalk rocks by
+the raspings of their valves and squirtings of their syphons. Professor
+Flourens (says Mr. Robertson) taught my observations to his class in
+Paris in 1853; I published them in 1851, and again more fully in the
+"Journal de Conchyliologie," in 1853; and M. Emile Blanchard illustrated
+them in the same year in his "Organisation du Règne Animal." I published
+a popular account of the perforating processes in "Household Words"
+in 1856. After obtaining the suffrages of the French authorities, I
+have been recently honoured with those of the British naturalist. (See
+Woodward's "Recent and Fossil Shells," p. 327. Family, Pholadidæ.) On
+returning to England last autumn I exhibited perforating Pholades to
+all the naturalists who cared to watch them. An intelligent lady whom I
+supplied with Pholades has made a really new and original observation,
+which I may take this opportunity of communicating to the public. She
+observed two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span>
+Pholades whose perforations were bringing them nearer and
+nearer to each other. Their mutual raspings were wearing away the thin
+partition which separated their crypts. She was curious to know what
+they would do when they met, and watched them closely. When the two
+perforating shell-fish met and found themselves in each other's way, the
+stronger just bored right through the weaker Pholas.
+<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Robertson has communicated to "Jameson's Journal," No. 101, the
+results of his opportunities of studying the Pholas, during six months,
+to discover how this mollusc makes its hole or crypt in the chalk: by
+a chemical solvent? by absorption? by ciliary currents? or by rotatory
+motions? Between twenty and thirty of these creatures were at work
+in lumps of chalk, in sea-water, in a finger-glass, and open for
+three months; and by watching their operations. Mr. Robertson became
+convinced that the Pholas makes its hole by grating the chalk with its
+rasp-like valves, licking it up when pulverized with its foot, forcing
+it up through its principal orbrambial syphon, and squirting it out in
+oblong nodules. The crypt protects the Pholas from <i>confervæ</i>, which,
+when they get at it, grow not merely outside, but even with the lips
+of the valves, preventing the action of the syphons. In the foot there
+is a gelatinous spring or style, which, even when taken out, has great
+elasticity, and which seems the mainspring of the motions of the Pholas.</p>
+
+<p>Upon this Dr. James Stark, of Edinburgh, writes:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Mr. Robertson, of Brighton, claims the merit of teaching that
+Pholades perforate rocks by 'the rasping of their valves and the
+squirting of their syphons.' His observations only appear to reach
+back to 1851. But the late Mr. John Stark, of Edinburgh, author of the
+'Elements of Natural History,' read a paper before the Royal Society of
+Edinburgh, in 1826, which was printed in the Society's 'Transactions'
+of that year, in which he demonstrated that the Pholades perforate the
+shale rocks in which they occur on this coast, by means of the rasping
+of their valves, and not by acids or other secretions. From also finding
+that their shells scratched limestone without injury to the fine rasping
+rugosities, he inferred that it was by the same agency they perforated
+the hard limestone rocks."</p>
+
+<p>To this Mr. Robertson replies, that Mr. Osler also, in 1826,
+demonstrated that the Pholades "perforate the shale rocks by means of
+the rasping of their valves; and more, for he actually witnessed a
+rotatory movement. But Réaumur and Poli had done as much as this in the
+eighteenth and Sibbald in the seventeenth century: and yet I found the
+solvent hypothesis in the ascendant among naturalists in 1835, when I
+first interested myself in the controversy. What I did in 1851 was, I
+exhibited Pholades at work perforating rocks, and explained how they did
+it. What I have done is, I have made future controversy impossible, by
+exhibiting the animals at work, and by discovering the anatomy and the
+physiology of the perforating instruments.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span>
+In the words of M. Flourens,
+'I made the animals work before my eyes,' and I 'made known their
+mechanism.' The discovery of the function of the hyaline stylet is not
+merely a new discovery, it is the discovery of a kind of instrument as
+yet unique in physiology."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Harper having termed the boring organ of the Pholas the "hyaline
+stylet," found it to have puzzled some of the disputants, whereupon Mr.
+Harper writes:&mdash;"Its use up to the present time has been a mystery,
+but the general opinion of authors seems to be, that it is the gizzard
+of the Pholas. This I very much doubt, for it is my belief that the
+presence of such an important muscle is solely for the purpose of
+aiding the animal's boring operations. Being situated in the centre
+of the foot, we can readily conceive the great increase of strength
+thus conveyed to the latter member, which is made to act as a powerful
+fulcrum, by the exercise of which the animal rotates&mdash;and at the same
+time presses its shell against and rasps the surface of the rock.
+The question being asked, 'How can the stylet be procured to satisfy
+curiosity?' I answer, by adopting the following extremely simple plan.
+Having disentombed a specimen, with the point of a sharp instrument
+cut a slit in the base of its foot, and the object of your search will
+be distinctly visible in the shape of, if I may so term it, an opal
+cylinder. Sometimes I have seen the point of this organ spring out
+beyond the incision, made as above described."</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, Mr. Harper presented the Editor of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> "Athenæum" with a
+piece of bored rock, of which he has several specimens. He adds, "On
+examination, you will perceive that the larger Pholas must have bored
+through its smaller and weaker neighbour (how suggestive!), the shell of
+the latter, most fortunately, remaining in its own cavity."</p>
+
+<p>Now, Mr. Robertson claimed for his observation of this phenomenon
+novelty and originality; but Mr. Harper stoutly maintained it to be
+"as common to the eye of the practised geologist as rain or sunshine."
+The details are curious; though some impatient, and not very grateful
+reader, may imagine himself in the condition of the shell of the smaller
+Pholas, and will be, as he deserves to remain, in the minority.
+<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a></p>
+
+<p>It may be interesting to sum up a few of the opinions of the mode by
+which these boring operations are performed. Professor Forbes states
+the mode by which Molluscs bore into wood and other materials is as
+follows:&mdash;"Some of the Gauterspods have tongues covered with silica to
+enable them to bore, and it was probably by some process of this kind
+that all the Molluscs bored."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Peach never observed the species of Pholas to turn round in their
+holes, as stated by some observers, although he had watched them with
+great attention. Mr. Charlesworth refers to the fact that, in one
+species of shell, not only does the hole in the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span>
+rock which the animal
+occupies increase in size, but also the hole through which it projects
+its syphons.</p>
+
+<p>Professor John Phillips, alluding to the theories which have been
+given of the mode in which Molluscs bore into the rocks in which they
+live, believes that an exclusively mechanical theory will not account
+for the phenomenon; and he is inclined to adopt the view of Dr. T.
+Williams&mdash;that the boring of the Pholades can only be explained on the
+principle which involves a chemical as well as a mechanical agency.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. E. Ray Lankester notices that the boring of Annelids seems quite
+unknown; and he mentions two cases, one by a worm called Leucadore, the
+other by a Sabella. Leucadore is very abundant on some shores, where
+boulders and pebbles may be found worm-eaten and riddled by them. Only
+stones composed of carbonate of lime are bored by them. On coasts where
+such stones are rare, they are selected, and others are left. The worms
+are <i>quite soft</i>, and armed only with horny bristles. <i>How, then, do
+they bore?</i> Mr. Lankester maintains that it is by carbonic acid and
+other acid excretions of their bodies, <i>aided</i> by the mechanical action
+of their bristles. The selection of a material soluble in these acids
+is most noticeable, since the softest chalk and the hardest limestone
+are bored with the same facility. This can only be by chemical action.
+If, then, we have a case of chemical boring in these worms, is it not
+probable that many Molluscs are similarly assisted in their excavations?</p>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a>
+How Brunel took his construction of the Thames Tunnel from
+observing the bore of the <i>Teredo navalis</i> in the keel of a ship, in
+1814, is well known.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> "Athenæum," No. 1640.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a>
+See also "Life in the Sea," in "Strange Stories of the Animal
+World," by the author of the present volume. Second Edition. 1868.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX.</h2>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">A</span>NCIENT Zoological Gardens, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Animals, Rare, of London Zoological Society, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>,
+<a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Annelids, boring, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Annelids and Molluscs, Boring Habits of, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Bear in captivity, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Bear, the Great, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Bear at Madrid, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Bear described, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Bear, Domestic, in Paraguay, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Bear, Economy of, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Bear and its Food, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Bears, Fossil, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Bear, Muscular Force of, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Bear, Wallace's Account of, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Bear, Zoological Society's, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>,
+<a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Eater, Porcupine, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Bear, Professor Owen on, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Eaters, scarcity of, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Eater, Tamandua, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Eaters, Von Saek's Account of, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Aristotle's History of Animals, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>,
+<a href="#Page_280">280</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">B</span>ARNACLE GEESE, finding of the, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Barnacle Goose, Gerarde on, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Barnacle Goose, Giraldus Cambrensis on, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Barnacle Goose, Max Müller on, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Barnacle Goose, name of, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Barnacle Goose, Sir E. Tennent on, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Barnacle Goose, Sir Kenelm Digby on, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Barnacle Goose, Sir R. Moray on, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Barnacle Goose, Stories of the, <a href="#Page_331">331-335</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Barnacles breeding upon old ships, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Barnacle Geese in the Thames, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, altivolans, by Gilbert White, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, American, by Lesson, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, Aristotle on, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, Mr. Bell on, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bats, Curiosities of, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, described by Calmet, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, Flight and Wing of, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bats, in England, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, Heber, Stedman, and Waterton on, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bats in Jamaica, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, Kalong, of Java, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, Long-Eared, by Sowerby, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>,
+<a href="#Page_93">93-96</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, Nycteris, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, Rere-mouse and Flitter-mouse, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat Skeleton, Sir C. Bell on, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat in Scripture, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, Vampire, from Sumatra, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, Vampire, Lines on, by Byron, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, vulgar errors respecting, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat-Fowling or Bat-Folding, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Berlin Zoological Gardens and Museum, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bible Natural History, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds, Addison on their Nests and Music, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>,
+<a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bird, Australian Bower, Nest of, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bird, Baya, Indian, Nest of, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds and Animals, Beauty in, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds, Brain of, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds, Characteristics of, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds, Colour of, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bird Confinement, Dr. Livingstone on, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds' Eggs, large, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds' Eggs, Colours of, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds' Eggs and Nests, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds, European, list of, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds, Flight of, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>,
+<a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds, Insectivorous, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Instinct, Intelligence, and Reason, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bird-Life, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bird-Murder, wanton, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds' Nesting, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds' Nests&mdash;Cape Swallows, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds' Nests&mdash;Brush Turkey, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds' Nests, large, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds' Eggs&mdash;Ostrich and Epyornis, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>,
+<a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds' Nests&mdash;Tailor Birds, <a href="#Page_165">165-167</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds, Rapid Flight of, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds, Signal of Danger among, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds, Song of, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds, Mr. Wolley's Collections, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>,
+<a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bookworms, Leaves about, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span>
+</li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bookworms and Death-watch, <a href="#Page_337">337</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Boring Marine Animals, and Human Engineers, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">C</span>HAMELEON of the Ancients, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleon's antipathy to black, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleons, Mrs. Belzoni's, <a href="#Page_316">316-320</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleons, Birth of, in England, <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleon changing Colour, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>,
+<a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleon, Cuvier on, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleon, described by Calmet, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleon Family, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleon, Air-food of, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleon, Milne Edwards on its Change of Colour,
+<a href="#Page_314">314-316</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleons, Native Countries of, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleon of the Poets, <a href="#Page_308">308</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleons, Reproduction of, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleon, Tongue and Eyes of, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>,
+<a href="#Page_311">311</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chinese Zoological Gardens, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Cicada, Song of the, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Cormorant's Bone, curious, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Cormorants, Chase of, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Cormorant Fishery in China, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Cormorant, Habits of the, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Cormorant trained for Fishing, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Curiosities of Zoology, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">E</span>CCENTRICITIES of Penguins, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>
+<ul class="ndx-ul2">
+<li class="ndx-li">Darwin, Mr., his account of Falkland Islands Penguin,
+<a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Dassent Island Penguins, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Death-watch and Bookworm, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>,
+<a href="#Page_338">338</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Falkland Islands Penguins, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">King Penguins, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Patagonian Penguins, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Penguin, the name, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Webster, Mr., his Account of Penguins, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Epicure's Ortolan, the, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Epicurism Extravagant, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Evelyn and St. James's Physique Garden, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">F</span>ISH in British Colombia, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>
+<ul class="ndx-ul2">
+<li class="ndx-li">Candle-fish, <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Octopus, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Salmon Army, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Spoonbill Sturgeon, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Sturgeons, and Sturgeon Fishing, <a href="#Page_284">284-287</a></li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Fish-Talk, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>
+<ul class="ndx-ul2">
+<li class="ndx-li">Affection of Fishes, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Bohemian Wels Fish, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Bonita and Flying Fish, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Californian Fish, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Carp at Fontainebleau, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Cat-fish, curious Account of, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Double Fish, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Fish changing Colour, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Fish Noise, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Gold Fish, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Grampus, gambols of, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Great General of the South Sea, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Grouper, the, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Hassar, the, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Hearing of Fishes, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Herring Puzzle, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Jaculator Fish of Java, <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Jamaica, Curious Fish at, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Little Fishes the Food of Larger, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Marine Observatory, <a href="#Page_276">276</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Mecho of the Danube, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Migration of Fishes, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Miller's Thumb, <a href="#Page_276">276</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Numbers, vast, of Fishes, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Pike, Wonderful, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Pilot Fish, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Sharks, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Singing Fish, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Square-browed Malthe, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Strange Fishes, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Sun-fish, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Swimming of Fishes, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Sword-fish, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Warrior Fish, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Frog and Toad Concerts, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">H</span>EDGEHOG, the, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hedgehog devouring Snakes, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hedgehog, Food of, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hedgehogs, Gilbert White on, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hedgehog and Poisons, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hedgehogs, Sir T. Browne on, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hedgehog Sucking Cows, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hedgehog and Viper, Fight between, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>,
+<a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hedgehog, Voracity of, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hippopotamus, Ancient History of, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hippopotamus, described by Aristotle and Herodotus,
+<a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hippopotamus, Economy of the, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hippopotamus, the, in England, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hippopotami, Fossil, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hippopotami on the Niger, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hippopotamus, Professor Owen's Description of,
+<a href="#Page_111">111-115</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hippopotamus and River Horse, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hippopotamus in Scripture, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hippopotamus, Utility of, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hippopotamus from the White Nile, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hippopotamus, Zoological Society's, in 1850,
+<a href="#Page_108">108-111</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">L</span>EAVES about Bookworms, <a href="#Page_336">336</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lions in Algeria, and Jules Gerard, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion, African, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion, Bengal, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion described by Bennett, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion described by Buffon, <a href="#Page_123">123-125</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion described by Burchell, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion, disappearance of, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion and Hottentots, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>,
+<a href="#Page_133">133-136</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion-hunting Feats, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion, "King of the Forest," <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion, Longevity of, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion, Maneless, <a href="#Page_133">133-135</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion, Niebuhr on, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion in the Nineveh Sculptures, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>,
+<a href="#Page_140">140</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lions, the Drudhoe, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lions, Popular Errors respecting, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion, Prickle or Claw in the Tail, <a href="#Page_137">137-139</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion, Roar of, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lions in the Tower of London, <a href="#Page_140">140</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">"Lion Tree" in the Mantatee Country, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion Stories of the Shows, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion-Talk, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lioness and her Young, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">M</span>ERMAID of 1822, <a href="#Page_43">43-47</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaid in Berbice, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaid in the Bosphorus, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaid and Dugong, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaids, Evidences of, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaid at Exmouth, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaid, Leyden's Ballad, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaid and Manatee, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaid at Milford Haven, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaid, Japanese, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaid, Scottish, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaids and Sirens, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaid's Song, Haydn's, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaids, Stories of, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaid, Structure of, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaids in Suffolk, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole, its Economy controverted, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole, the Ettrick Shepherd on, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole, Le Court on, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole and Fairy Rings, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole and Farming, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole, Feeling of, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole at Home, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole, its Hunting-ground, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Moles, Loves of the, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole, structure of the, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole, St. Hilaire on, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole, Shrew, of North America, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole, Voracity of, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Montezuma's Zoological Gardens, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Musical Lizard, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>
+<ul class="ndx-ul2">
+<li class="ndx-li">Climbing Walls, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Formosa Isle, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Gecko ennobled, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">O</span>RNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ortolan described, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>,
+<a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ortolans, how fattened, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ortolan, Mr. Gould on, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>,
+<a href="#Page_175">175</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Owls, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>
+<ul class="ndx-ul2">
+<li class="ndx-li">Abyssinian Owl, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Barn Owl, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Bischaco, or Coquimbo, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Boobook Owl, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Cats and Owls, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Fraser's Eagle Owl, from Fernando Po, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Food of Owls, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Javanese Owl, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Snowy Owl, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Tricks by Night, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Utility of, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Waterton on the Owl, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">P</span>ELICANS and Cormorants, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Pelicans described by Gould, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Pelican in Japan, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Pelican Popular Error, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>,
+<a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Pelican Pouches, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Pelican Symbol, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">"Pelican of the wilderness," <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Pholas, Life and Labours of, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Pholades, Charlesworth and Peach on, <a href="#Page_347">347</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Pholades, Harper on, <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Pholades, Robertson on, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">R</span>HINOCEROS in England, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>
+<ul class="ndx-ul2">
+<li class="ndx-li">African Rhinoceros in 1858, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Ancient History, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Bruce and Sparmann, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Burchell's shooting, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Horn of the Rhinoceros, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>,
+<a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Indian Wild Ass, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">One-horned and Two-horned, <a href="#Page_23">23-26</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Scripture, Rhinoceros of, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Speehnan's Rhinoceros Shooting, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Tegetmeir describes the African Rhinoceros, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Tractability, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Varieties of Rhinoceros, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Zoological Society's Rhinoceros, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>,
+<a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">S</span>ALE of Wild Animals, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Sentinel Birds, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Song of the Cicada, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Songs of Birds and Seasons of the Day, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">St. James's Park Menagerie, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Stories of the Barnacle Goose, <a href="#Page_331">331-335</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Stories of Mermaids, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Surrey Zoological Gardens, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">T</span>ALKING birds, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>
+<ul class="ndx-ul2">
+<li class="ndx-li">Bittern and Night Raven, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Blue Jay, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Canaries, Talking, <a href="#Page_210">210-212</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Chinese Starling, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Crowned Crane, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Cuckoo, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Laughing Goose, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Nightingale, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Piping Crow, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Snipe, Neighing, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Trochilos and Crocodile, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Umbrella Bird, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Whidaw Bird, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Wild Swan, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Woodpecker at Constantinople, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Talk about Toucans, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>
+<ul class="ndx-ul2">
+<li class="ndx-li">Bills of Toucans, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Carnivorous propensity, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Economy of, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Food of, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Gould, Mr., his Grand Monograph, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>,
+<a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Owen, Professor, on the Mandibles, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Swainson, Mr., on Toucans, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Toucan Family, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">White Ants' Nests, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Toucanet, Gould's, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Toad and Frog Concerts, <a href="#Page_327">327-328</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Toads, Running, Dr. Husenbeth's, <a href="#Page_323">323-327</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Tower of London Menagerie, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Tree-climbing Crab, the, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>
+<ul class="ndx-ul2">
+<li class="ndx-li">Bernhard, Hermit, and Soldier Crab, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Climbing Perch, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Crab, Burrowing, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Crab Migration in Jamaica, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Fishing-frogs, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Glass Crabs, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Pill-making Crabs, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Purse Crab feeding on Cocoa-nuts, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Robber Crab, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Screw-pines, Crab climbing, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Vaulted Crab of the Moluccas, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">U</span>NICORNS, ancient, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Unicorn and Antelope, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Unicorn in Central Africa, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Unicorn described by Ctesias, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>,
+<a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Unicorn, Cuvier on, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Unicorn, Is it Fabulous? <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Unicorn, Klaproth on, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Unicorn in Kordofan, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Unicorn and its Horn, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>,
+<a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Unicorn, modern, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Unicorn, Ogilby on, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Unicorn, Rev. J. Campbell on, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Unicorn in the Royal Arms, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">W</span>EATHER-WISE ANIMALS, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>
+<ul class="ndx-ul2">
+<li class="ndx-li">Ants, Asses, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Darwin's Signs of Rain, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Frogs and Snails, <a href="#Page_237">237-240</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">List of Animals, <a href="#Page_241">241-247</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Mother Carey's Chickens and Goose, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Redbreast, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Seagulls, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Signs of Rain, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Stormy Petrels, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Shepherd of Banbury, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Toucans, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Weatherproof Birds' Nests, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Wild Geese and Ducks, <a href="#Page_255">235</a></li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Wild Animals, Cost of, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Wild Beast Shows, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">Z</span>OOLOGICAL GARDENS, Origin of, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Zoological Society of London, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Zoology, Curiosities of, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p class="center">C. A. Macintosh, Printer, Great New-street, London.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<div class="transnote margin-top3">
+
+<h3>Transcriber's Note:</h3>
+<ul>
+<li class="margin-bottom5">
+Obvious punctuation and spelling errors repaired.
+</li>
+<li class= "margin-bottom5">
+Word combinations that appeared with and without hyphens were changed to the
+predominant hyphenated form.
+</li>
+<li class= "margin-bottom5">
+Original spelling and its variations were not standardized.
+</li>
+<li class= "margin-bottom5">
+Corrections in the spelling of names were made when those could be verified.
+Otherwise the variations were left as they were.
+</li>
+<li class= "margin-bottom5">
+Footnotes were moved to the ends of the chapters in which they they belonged
+and numbered in one continuous sequence. The pagination in index entries which
+referred to these footnotes was not changed to match their new locations and
+is therefore incorrect.
+</li>
+<li class= "margin-bottom5">
+Some index entries are not in alphabetical order.  They were not corrected.
+</li>
+<li class= "margin-bottom5">
+  Variant forms retained and errors corrected:
+  <ul>
+  <li>Page 18: "Parrot-houses, the, sometimes...." changed to "Parrot-houses:
+    they sometimes changed...."</li>
+  <li>Page 170 and others: Kolobeng and Kolenbeng. Both spellings were retained.</li>
+  <li>Page 191 and others: Tussa, tussack and tussock.  All spellings were retained.</li>
+  <li>Page 276: Finisterre changed to Finistère.</li>
+  <li>Page 333: cennexion changed to connexion "... in connexion with the river Lee...."</li>
+  <li>Page 352:  Screw-pines, Crab climbing, 295;  pagination changed to 298.</li>
+  <li>The name of Shakespeare appears with varying spellings.  All variants were kept.</li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44422 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #44422 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/44422)
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+Project Gutenberg's Eccentricities of the Animal Creation., by John Timbs
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: Eccentricities of the Animal Creation.
+
+Author: John Timbs
+
+Release Date: December 14, 2013 [EBook #44422]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ECCENTRICITIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow, Christian Boissonnas and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: KING PENGUINS.]
+
+
+
+
+  ECCENTRICITIES
+
+  OF
+
+  THE ANIMAL CREATION.
+
+
+  BY JOHN TIMBS.
+
+  AUTHOR OF "THINGS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN."
+
+
+  WITH EIGHT ENGRAVINGS.
+
+
+  SEELEY, JACKSON, AND HALLIDAY, 54, FLEET-STREET.
+  LONDON. MDCCCLXIX.
+
+  _The right of translation is reserved._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+  INTRODUCTORY.--CURIOSITIES OF ZOOLOGY.
+
+  Natural History in Scripture, and Egyptian Records, 11.--Origin of
+  Zoological Gardens, 12.--The Greeks and Romans, 12.--Montezuma's
+  Zoological Gardens, 13.--Menagerie in the Tower of London,
+  14.--Menagerie in St. James's Park, 14.--John Evelyn's Notes,
+  15.--Ornithological Society, 15.--Continental Gardens, 16.--Zoological
+  Society of London instituted, 16; its most remarkable Animals,
+  16.--Cost of Wild Animals, 18.--Sale of Animals, 20.--Surrey
+  Zoological Gardens, 20.--Wild-beast Shows, 21.
+
+
+  THE RHINOCEROS IN ENGLAND.
+
+  Ancient History, 22, 23.--One-horned and Two-horned, 25,
+  26.--Tractability, 25.--Bruce and Sparmann, 27.--African Rhinoceros in
+  1868, 27.--Description of, 29.--Burchell's Rhinoceros, 30.--Horn of
+  the Rhinoceros, 31, 32.
+
+
+  STORIES OF MERMAIDS.
+
+  Sirens of the Ancients, 33.--Classic Pictures of Mermaids,
+  34.--Leyden's Ballad, 35.--Ancient Evidence, 36, 37, 38.--Mermaid in
+  the West Indies, 39.--Mermaids, Seals, and Dugongs, 41.--Mermaids and
+  Manatee, 42.--Test for a Mermaid, 43.--Mermaid of 1822, 43.--Japanese
+  Mermaids, 44.--Recent Evidence, 47, 48.
+
+
+  IS THE UNICORN FABULOUS?
+
+  Ctesias and Wild Asses, 65.--Aristotle, Herodotus, and Pliny,
+  50.--Modern Unicorns, 50.--Ancient Evidence, 51.--Hunting the
+  Unicorn, 52.--Antelopes, 53, 54.--Cuvier and the Oryx, 54.--Tibetan
+  Animal, 55.--Klaproth's Evidence, 55.--Rev. John Campbell's Evidence,
+  57.--Baikie on, 58.--Factitious Horns in Museums, 59.--Unicorn in the
+  Royal Arms, 60.--Catching the Unicorn, 60.--Belief in Unicorns, 61.
+
+
+  THE MOLE AT HOME.
+
+  Economy of the Mole, 62.--Its Structure, 63.--Fairy Rings; Feeling
+  of the Mole, 64.--Le Court's Experiments, 62, 65.--Hunting-grounds,
+  67.--Loves of the Moles, 68, 69.--Persecution of Moles.--Shrew Mole,
+  70.--Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, on Moles, 71.
+
+
+  THE GREAT ANT-BEAR.
+
+  The Ant-Bear of 1853, 72, 73.--Mr. Wallace, on the Amazon, describes
+  the Ant-Bear, 73.--Food of the Ant-Bear, 74.--His Resorts, 75.--Habits
+  in Captivity, by Professor Owen, 76-80.--Fossil Ant-Bear, 80,
+  81.--Tamandua Ant-Bear, 82--Von Sack's Ant-Bear, 83.--Porcupine
+  Ant-Eater, 84.--Ant-Bears in the Zoological Gardens, 84.
+
+
+  CURIOSITIES OF BATS.
+
+  Virgil's Harpies, 85.--Pliny on the Bat, 85.--Rere-mouse and
+  Flitter-mouse, 86.--Bats, not Birds but Quadrupeds, 87.--Sir Charles
+  Bell on the Wing of the Bat, 87.--Vampire Bat from Sumatra, 88.--Lord
+  Byron and Vampire, 89.--Levant Superstition, 89.--Bat described by
+  Heber, Waterton, and Steadman, 90.--Lesson on Bats, 91.--Bat Fowling
+  or Folding, 91, 92.--Sowerby's Long-eared Bat, 92, 96.--Wing of
+  the Bat, 96.--_Nycteris_ Bat, 97.--_Kalong_ Bat of Java, 98.--Bats,
+  various, 100, 101.
+
+
+  THE HEDGEHOG.
+
+  Hedgehog Described, 102.--Habits, 103.--Eating Snakes, 105.--Poisons,
+  105, 106.--Battle with a Viper, 105.--Economy of the Hedgehog, 106,
+  107.
+
+
+  THE HIPPOPOTAMUS IN ENGLAND.
+
+  Living Hippopotamus brought to England in 1850, 108.--Capture and
+  Conveyance, 111.--Professor Owen's Account, 111-115.--Described
+  by Naturalists and Travellers, 115-118.--Utility to Man,
+  118-119.--Ancient History, 119.--In Scripture, 120.--Alleged
+  Disappearance, 121.--Fossil, 122.
+
+
+  LION-TALK.
+
+  Character, 123.--Reputed Generosity, 125.--Burchell's Account,
+  125.--Lion-Tree in the Mantatee Country, 127.--Lion-hunting,
+  128.--Disappearance of Lions, 130, 131.--Human Prey, 132.--Maneless
+  Lions of Guzerat, 134.--A Lion Family in Bengal, 135, 136.--Prickle on
+  the Lion's Tail, 137-139.--Nineveh Lions, 139.--Lions in the Tower of
+  London, 140, 141.--Feats with Lions, 142.--Lion-hunting in Algeria, by
+  Jules Gerard, 144.--The Prudhoe Lions, 144.
+
+
+  BIRD-LIFE.
+
+  Rate at which Birds fly, 145, 146.--Air in the Bones of Birds,
+  146.--Flight of the Humming-bird, 147.--Colour of Birds, 148.--Song
+  of Birds, 149.--Beauty in Animals, 150.--Insectivorous Birds,
+  151.--Sea-fowl Slaughter, 152.--Hooded Crow in Zetland, 154.--Brain of
+  Birds, 154.--Danger-signals, 155.--Addison's Love of Nature, 156, 157.
+
+
+  BIRDS' EGGS AND NESTS.
+
+  Colours of Eggs, 158.--Bird's-nesting, 159.--Mr. Wolley, the
+  Ornithologist, 159, 160.--European Birds of Prey, 161.--Large
+  Eggs, 162, 163, 164.--Baya's Nest, 164.--Oriole and Tailor-bird,
+  165, 166.--Australian Bower-bird, 167.--Cape Swallows, 168.--"Bird
+  Confinement," by Dr. Livingstone.
+
+
+  THE EPICURE'S ORTOLAN.
+
+  Origin of the Ortolan, 172; described, 173, 174; Fattening process,
+  175, 176.--Prodigal Epicurism, 177, 178.
+
+
+  TALK ABOUT TOUCANS.
+
+  Toucan family, 179.--Gould's grand Monograph, 180.--Toucans described,
+  180-182; Food, 183; Habits, 184.--Gould's Toucanet, 187.
+
+
+  ECCENTRICITIES OF PENGUINS.
+
+  Penguins on Dassent Island, 188.--Patagonian Penguins, 189.--Falkland
+  Islands, 189.--King Penguins, 190, 191.--Darwin's Account,
+  192.--Webster's Account, 193.--Swainson's Account, 194.
+
+
+  PELICANS AND CORMORANTS.
+
+  Pelicans described by various Naturalists, 195, 196.--The Pelican
+  Island, 197.--Popular Error, 199-200.--Cormorants, and Fishing with
+  Cormorants, 201-204.
+
+
+  TALKING BIRDS, INSTINCTS, ETC.
+
+  Sounds by various Birds, 204.--Umbrella Bird, 206.--Bittern,
+  207.--Butcher-bird and Parrots, 208.--Wild Swan, Laughing Goose,
+  Cuckoo, and Nightingale, 209.--Talking Canaries, 210.--Neighing Snipe,
+  213.--Trochilos and Crocodiles, 216.--Instinct. Intelligence, and
+  Reason in Birds, 217-219.--Songs of Birds and Seasons of the Day, 219.
+
+
+  OWLS.
+
+  Characteristics of the Owl, 221.--Owl in Poetry, 222.--Bischacho or
+  Coquimbo, 224.--Waterton on Owls, 225, 226.--Owls. Varieties of,
+  227-230.
+
+
+  WEATHER-WISE ANIMALS.
+
+  Atmospheric Changes, 231.--Stormy Petrel, 233.--Wild Geese and Ducks,
+  235.--Frogs and Snails, 237.--The Mole, 240.--List of Animals, by
+  Forster, the Meteorologist, 241.--Weatherproof Nests, 247.--"Signs of
+  Rain," by Darwin, 248.--Shepherd of Banbury, 249.
+
+
+  FISH-TALK.
+
+  How Fishes Swim, 250.--Fish Changing Colour, 251.--"Fish Noise,"
+  252.--Hearing of Fish, 253.--The Carp at Fontainebleau, 254,
+  255.--Affection of Fishes, 256.--Cat-fish, Anecdote of, 257.--Great
+  Number of Fishes, 258.--Little Fishes Eaten by Medusæ, 259.--Migration
+  of Fishes, 261.--Enormous Grampus, 262.--Bonita and Flying-fish,
+  263.--Jaculator Fish of Java, 264.--Port Royal, Jamaica Fish,
+  266.--The Shark, 267.--California. Fish of, 268.--Wonderful Fish,
+  269.--Vast Sun-fish, 271.--Double Fish, 272.--The Square-browed
+  Malthe, 274.--Gold Fish, 275.--The Miller's Thumb, 276.--Sea-fish
+  Observatory, 276.--Herring Question, 278.--Aristotle's History of
+  Animals, 279-280.
+
+
+  FISH IN BRITISH COLOMBIA.
+
+  Salmon-swarming, 281.--Candle-fish, 282.--Octopus, the, 283.--Sturgeon
+  and Sturgeon Fishing, 283-287.
+
+
+  THE TREE-CLIMBING CRAB.
+
+  Locomotion of Fishes, 288.--Climbing Perch, 288.--Crabs in the West
+  Indies, 289.--Crabs, Varieties of, 289-292.--Robber and Cocoa-nut
+  Crab, 292-301.--Fish of the China Seas, 301.
+
+
+  MUSICAL LIZARDS.
+
+  Lizard from Formosa Isle, 303.--Its Habits, 304-306.
+
+
+  CHAMELEONS AND THEIR CHANGES.
+
+  The Chameleon described by Aristotle and Calmet, 307, 308.--Change
+  of Colour, 309.--Reproduction of, 310, 311.--Tongue, 311.--Lives in
+  Trees, 312.--Theory of Colours, 313.--The Puzzle Solved, 315.--Mrs.
+  Belzoni's Chameleons, 317.--Lady Cust's Chameleons, 321.--Chameleon's
+  Antipathy to Black, 322.
+
+
+  RUNNING TOADS.
+
+  Dr. Husenbeth's Toads at Cossey, 327.--Frog and Toad Concerts, 327.
+
+
+  SONG OF THE CICADA.
+
+  Greeks' Love for the Song, 329.--Cicada in British Colombia,
+  329.--Tennyson and Keats on the Grasshopper, 330.
+
+
+  STORIES ABOUT THE BARNACLE GOOSE.
+
+  Baptista Porta's Account, 331.--Max Müller on, 331.--Gerarde's
+  Account, 332.--Giraldus Cambrensis, 332.--Professor Rolleston.
+  Drayton's _Poly-olbion_, 333.--Sir Kenelm Digby and Sir J. Emerson
+  Tennent, 334.--Finding the Barnacle, 334.
+
+
+  LEAVES ABOUT BOOKWORMS.
+
+  Bookworms, their Destructiveness, 336, 337.--How to Destroy, 338.--The
+  Death-watch, 339.--Lines by Swift, 340.
+
+
+  BORING MARINE ANIMALS, AND HUMAN ENGINEERS.
+
+  Life and Labours of the Pholas, 341.--Family of the Pholas,
+  342.--Curious Controversy, 343.--Boring Apparatus, 342.--Several
+  Observers, 347, 348.--Boring Annelids, 348.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+                                                                    Page
+
+  KING PENGUINS                                             Frontispiece
+
+  THE TWO-HORNED AFRICAN RHINOCEROS                                   28
+
+  SEAL AND MERMAID                                                    40
+
+  THE GREAT ANT-BEAR (ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY'S)                           76
+
+  FRASER'S EAGLE OWL, FROM FERNANDO PO                               228
+
+  SQUARE-BROWED MALTHE AND DOUBLE FISH                               274
+
+  THE TREE-CLIMBING CRAB                                             288
+
+  CHAMELEONS                                                         318
+
+
+
+
+ECCENTRICITIES
+
+OF
+
+THE ANIMAL CREATION.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY.--CURIOSITIES OF ZOOLOGY.
+
+
+Curious creatures of Animal Life have been objects of interest to
+mankind in all ages and countries; the universality of which may be
+traced to that feeling which "makes the whole world kin."
+
+It has been remarked with emphatic truth by a popular writer, that "we
+have in the Bible and in the engraven and pictorial records the earliest
+evidence of the attention paid to Natural History in general. The 'navy
+of Tarshish' contributed to the wisdom of him who not only 'spake of the
+trees from the cedar of Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth
+out of the wall,' but 'also of beasts, and of fowls, and of creeping
+things, and of fishes,'[1] to say nothing of numerous other passages
+showing the progress that zoological knowledge had already made. The
+Egyptian records bear testimony to a familiarity not only with the forms
+of a multitude of wild animals, but with their habits and geographical
+distribution."
+
+The collections of living animals, now popularly known as Zoological
+Gardens, are of considerable antiquity. We read of such gardens in China
+as far back as 2,000 years; but they consisted chiefly of some favourite
+animals, such as stags, fish, and tortoises. The Greeks, under Pericles,
+introduced peacocks in large numbers from India. The Romans had their
+elephants; and the first giraffe in Rome, under Cæsar, was as great an
+event in the history of zoological gardens at its time as the arrival in
+1849 of the Hippopotamus was in London. The first zoological garden of
+which we have any detailed account is that in the reign of the Chinese
+Emperor, Wen Wang, founded by him about 1150 A.D., and named by him "The
+Park of Intelligence;" it contained mammalia, birds, fish, and amphibia.
+The zoological gardens of former times served their masters occasionally
+as hunting-grounds. This was constantly the case in Persia; and in
+Germany, so late as 1576, the Emperor Maximilian II. kept such a park
+for different animals near his castle, Neugebah, in which he frequently
+chased.
+
+Alexander the Great possessed his zoological gardens. We find from Pliny
+that Alexander had given orders to the keepers to send all the rare and
+curious animals which died in the gardens to Aristotle.
+
+Splendid must have been the zoological gardens which the Spaniards found
+connected with the Palace of Montezuma. The letters of Ferdinand Cortez
+and other writings of the time, as well as more recently "The History
+of the Indians," by Antonio Herrera, give most interesting and detailed
+accounts of the menagerie in Montezuma's park. The buildings belonging
+to these gardens were all gorgeous, as became the grandeur of the Indian
+prince; they were supported by pillars, each of which was hewn out of
+a single piece of some precious stone. Cool, arched galleries led into
+the different parts of the garden--to the marine and fresh-water basins,
+containing innumerable water-fowl,--to the birds of prey, falcons
+and eagles, which latter especially were represented in the greatest
+variety,--to the crocodiles, alligators, and serpents, some of them
+belonging to the most venomous species. The halls of a large square
+building contained the dens of the lions, tigers, leopards, bears,
+wolves, and other wild animals. Three hundred slaves were employed in
+the gardens tending the animals, upon which great care was bestowed, and
+scrupulous attention paid to their cleanliness. To this South American
+zoological garden of the sixteenth century no other of its time could be
+compared.[2]
+
+More than six centuries ago, our Plantagenet kings kept in the Tower
+of London exotic animals for their recreation. The Lion Tower was built
+here by Henry III., who commenced assembling here a menagerie with three
+leopards sent to him by the Emperor Frederic II., "in token of his regal
+shield of arms, wherein those leopards were pictured." Here, in 1255,
+the Sheriffs built a house "for the King's elephant," brought from
+France, and the first seen in England. Our early sovereigns had a mews
+in the Tower as well as a menagerie:--
+
+    "Merry Margaret, as Midsomer flowre,
+    Gentyll as faucon and hawke of the Towre."--_Skelton._
+
+In the reign of Charles I., a sort of Royal Menagerie took the place of
+the deer with which St. James's Park was stocked in the days of Henry
+VIII, and Queen Elizabeth. Charles II. greatly enlarged and improved
+the Park; and here he might be seen playing with his dogs and feeding
+his ducks. The Bird-cage Walk, on the south side of the Park, had in
+Charles's time the cages of an aviary disposed among the trees. Near the
+east end of a canal was the Decoy, where water-fowl were kept; and here
+was Duck Island, with its salaried Governor.
+
+Evelyn, in 1664, went to "the Physique Garden in St. James's," where
+he first saw "orange trees and other fine trees." He enumerates in
+the menagerie, "an ornocratylus, or pelican; a fowle between a storke
+and a swan; a melancholy water-fowl, brought from Astracan by the
+Russian ambassador; a milk-white raven; two Balearian cranes," one of
+which, had a wooden leg "made by a soulder:" there were also "deere of
+severall countries, white, spotted like leopards; antelopes, an elk,
+red deer, roebucks, staggs, Guinea goates, Arabian sheepe, &c." There
+were "withy-potts, or nests, for the wild fowle to lay their eggs in, a
+little above y^e surface of y^e water."
+
+"25 Feb. 1664. This night I walk'd into St. James his Parke, where I saw
+many strange creatures, as divers sorts of outlandish deer, Guiny sheep,
+a white raven, a great parrot, a storke.... Here are very stately walkes
+set with lime trees on both sides, and a fine pallmall."[3]
+
+Upon the eastern island is the Swiss Cottage of the Ornithological
+Society, built in 1841 with a grant of 300l. from the Lords of
+the Treasury: it contains a council-room, keepers' apartments,
+steam-hatching apparatus; contiguous are feeding-places and decoys; and
+the aquatic fowl breed on the island, making their own nests among the
+shrubs and grasses.
+
+The majority of Zoological Gardens now in existence have been founded
+in this century, with the exception of the Jardin des Plantes, which,
+although founded in 1626, did not receive its first living animals until
+the year 1793-1794. Hitherto, it had been a Garden of Plants exclusively.
+
+We shall not be expected to enumerate the great Continental gardens,
+of which that at Berlin, half an hour's drive beyond the Brandenburg
+gates, contains the Royal Menagerie; it is open upon the payment of
+an admission fee, and generally resembles our garden at the Regent's
+Park. Berlin has also its Zoological Collection in its Museum of Natural
+History. This collection is one of the richest and most extensive in
+Europe, especially in the department of Ornithology: it includes the
+birds collected by Pallas and Wildenow, and the fishes of Bloch. The
+best specimens are those from Mexico, the Red Sea, and the Cape. The
+whole is exceedingly well arranged, and _named_ for the convenience of
+students. Still, our Zoological Collection in the British Museum (to be
+hereafter removed to South Kensington) is allowed to be the finest in
+Europe.
+
+The Zoological Society of London was instituted in 1826, and occupies
+now about seventeen acres of gardens in the Regent's Park. Among the
+earliest tenants of the Menagerie were a pair of emues from New Holland;
+two Arctic bears and a Russian bear; a herd of kangaroos; Cuban mastiffs
+and Thibet watch-dogs; two llamas from Peru; a splendid collection of
+eagles, falcons, and owls; a pair of beavers; cranes, spoonbills, and
+storks; zebras and Indian cows; Esquimaux dogs; armadilloes; and a
+collection of monkeys. To the menagerie have since been added an immense
+number of species of _Mammalia_ and _Birds_; in 1849, a collection
+of _Reptiles_; and in 1853, a collection of _Fish_, _Mollusca_,
+_Zoophytes_, and other _Aquatic Animals_. In 1830, the menagerie
+collected by George IV. at Sandpit-gate, Windsor, was removed to the
+Society's Gardens; and 1834 the last of the Tower Menagerie was received
+here. It is now the finest public Vivarium in Europe.
+
+The following are some of the more remarkable animals which the Society
+have possessed, or are now in the menagerie:--
+
+     _Antelopes_, the great family of, finely represented. The
+     beautiful _Elands_ were bequeathed by the late Earl of Derby, and
+     have bred freely since their arrival in 1851. The Leucoryx is the
+     first of her race born out of Africa. _Ant-eater. Giant_, brought
+     to England from Brazil in 1853, was exhibited in Broad-street,
+     St. Giles's, until purchased by the Zoological Society for 200l.
+     _Apteryx_, or _Kiwi_ bird, from New Zealand; the first living
+     specimen brought to England of this rare bird. The _Fish-house_,
+     built of iron and glass, in 1853, consisting of a series of glass
+     tanks, in which fish spawn, zoophytes produce young, and algæ
+     luxuriate; crustacea and mollusca live successfully, and ascidian
+     polypes are illustrated, together with sea anemones, jelly-fishes,
+     and star-fishes, rare shell-fishes, &c.: a new world of animal
+     life is here seen as in the depths of the ocean, with masses of
+     rock, sand, gravel, corallines, sea-weed, and sea-water; the
+     animals are in a state of natural restlessness, now quiescent,
+     now eating and being eaten. _Aurochs_, or _European Bisons_: a
+     pair presented by the Emperor of Russia, in 1847, from the forest
+     of Bialowitzca: the male died in 1848, the female in 1849, from
+     pleuro-pneumonia. _Bears_: the collection is one of the largest
+     ever made. _Elephants_: including an Indian elephant calf and its
+     mother. In 1847 died here the great Indian elephant Jack, having
+     been in the gardens sixteen years. Adjoining the stable is a tank
+     of water, of a depth nearly equal to the height of a full-grown
+     elephant. In 1851 the Society possessed a _herd of four elephants_,
+     besides a hippopotamus, a rhinoceros, and both species of tapir;
+     being the largest collection of pachydermata ever exhibited in
+     Europe. _Giraffes_: four received in 1836 cost the Society upwards
+     of 2,300_l._, including 1,000_l._ for steamboat passage: the female
+     produced six male fawns here between 1840 and 1851. _Hippopotamus_,
+     a young male (the first living specimen seen in England), received
+     from Egypt in May, 1850, when ten months old, seven feet long,
+     and six and a-half feet in girth; also a female hippopotamus,
+     received 1854. _Humming-birds_: Mr. Gould's matchless collection
+     of 2,000 examples was exhibited here in 1851 and 1852. _Iguanas_,
+     two from Cuba and Carthagena, closely resembling, in everything
+     but size, the fossil Iguanodon. The _Lions_ number generally from
+     eight to ten, including a pair of cubs born in the gardens in 1853.
+     _Orang-utan_ and _Chimpanzee_: the purchase-money of the latter
+     sometimes exceeds 300_l._ The orang "Darby," brought from Borneo
+     in 1851, is the finest yet seen in Europe, very intelligent, and
+     docile as a child. _Parrot-houses_: they sometimes contain from
+     sixty to seventy species. _Rapacious Birds_: so extensive a series
+     of eagles and vultures has never yet been seen at one view. _The
+     Reptile-house_ was fitted up in 1849; the creatures are placed in
+     large plate-glass cases: here are pythons and a rattle-snake, with
+     a young one born here; here is also a case of the tree-frogs of
+     Europe: a yellow snake from Jamaica has produced eight young in the
+     gardens. _Cobra de Capello_, from India: in 1852, a keeper in the
+     gardens was killed by the bite of this serpent. _A large Boa_ in
+     1850 swallowed a blanket, and disgorged it in thirty-three days.
+     A _one-horned Rhinoceros_, of continental India, was obtained in
+     1834, when it was about four years old, and weighed 26 cwt.; it
+     died in 1850: it was replaced by a female, about five years old.
+     _Satin Bower-Birds_, from Sydney: a pair have built here a bower,
+     or breeding-place. _Tapir_ of the Old World, from Mount Ophir;
+     the nearest existing form the Paleotherium. _Tigers_: a pair of
+     magnificent specimens, presented by the Guicoway of Baroda in 1851;
+     a pair of clouded tigers, 1854. _The Wapiti Deer_ breeds every year
+     in the Menagerie.
+
+The animals in the Gardens, although reduced in number, are more
+valuable and interesting than when their number was higher. The mission
+of the Society's head-keeper, to collect rare animals for the Menagerie,
+has been very profitable. The additional houses from time to time, are
+very expensive: the new monkey house, fittings, and work cost 4,842_l._;
+and in 1864, the sum of 6,604_l._ was laid out in permanent additions to
+the establishment.
+
+Very rare, and consequently expensive, animals are generally purchased.
+Thus, the first Rhinoceros cost 1,000_l._; the four Giraffes, 700_l._,
+and their carriage an additional 700_l._ The Elephant and calf were
+bought in 1851 for 500_l._; and the Hippopotamus, although a gift, was
+not brought home and housed at less than 1,000_l._--a sum which he
+more than realised in the famous Exhibition season, when the receipts
+were 10,000_l._ above the previous year. The Lion Albert was purchased
+for 140_l._; a tiger, in 1852, for 200_l._ The value of some of the
+smaller birds will appear, however, more startling: thus, the pair
+of black-necked Swans were purchased for 80_l._; a pair of crowned
+Pigeons and two Maleos, 60_l._; a pair of Victoria Pigeons, 35_l._;
+four Mandarin Ducks, 70_l._ Most of these rare birds (now in the great
+aviary) came from the Knowsley collection, at the sale of which,
+in 1851, purchases were made to the extent of 985_l._ It would be
+impossible from these prices, however, to judge of the present value
+of the animals. Take the Rhinoceros, for example: the first specimen
+cost 1,000_l._; the second, quite as fine a brute, only 350_l._ Lions
+range again from 40_l._ to 180_l._, and Tigers from 40_l._ to 200_l._
+The ignorance displayed by some persons as to the value of well-known
+objects is something marvellous.--A sea-captain demanded 600_l._ for
+a pair of Pythons, and at last took 40_l._! An American offered the
+Society a Grisly Bear for 2,000_l._, to be delivered in the United
+States; and, more laughable still, a moribund Walrus, which had been fed
+for nine weeks on salt pork and meal, was offered for the trifling sum
+of 700_l._!
+
+There is a strange notion that the Zoological Society has proposed a
+large reward for a "Tortoiseshell Tom-cat," and one was accordingly
+offered to the Society for 250_l._! But male Tortoiseshell Cats may be
+had in many quarters.[4]
+
+The Surrey Zoological Gardens were established in 1831. Thither
+Cross removed his menagerie from the King's Mews, where it had been
+transferred from Exeter Change. At Walworth a glazed circular
+building, 100 feet in diameter, was built for the cages of the
+carnivorous animals (Lions, Tigers, Leopards, &c.); and other houses
+for Mammalia, Birds, &c. Here, in 1834, was first exhibited a young
+Indian one-horned Rhinoceros, for which Cross paid 800_l._ It was the
+only specimen brought to England for twenty years. In 1836 were added
+three Giraffes, one fifteen feet high. The menagerie was dispersed in
+1856. The menagerie at Exeter Change was a poor collection, though the
+admission-charge was, at one period, half-a-crown!
+
+The collections of animals exhibited at fairs have added little to
+Zoological information; but we may mention that Wombwell, one of the
+most noted of the showfolk, bought a pair of the first Boa Constrictors
+imported into England: for these he paid 75_l._, and in three weeks
+realised considerably more than that sum by their exhibition. At the
+time of his death, in 1850, Wombwell was possessed of three huge
+menageries, the cost of maintaining which averaged at least 35_l._ per
+day; and he used to estimate that, from mortality and disease, he had
+lost, from first to last, from 12,000_l._ to 15,000_l._
+
+Our object in the following succession of sketches of the habits and
+eccentricities of the more striking animals, and their principal
+claims upon our attention, is to present, in narrative, their leading
+characteristics, and thus to secure a willing audience from old and
+young.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] 1 Kings iv. 10.
+
+[2] "Athenæum."
+
+[3] Journal of Mr. E. Browne, son of Sir Thomas Browne.
+
+[4] In April, 1842, Mr. Batty's collection of animals was sold by
+auction, when the undermentioned animals brought--Large red-faced Monkey
+(clever), 1_l._ 10_s._; fine Coatimondi, 1_l._ 4_s._; Mandril (the
+only one in England), 1_l._ 17_s._; pair of Java Hares, 1_l._ 9_s._; a
+Puma, 14_l._; handsome Senegal Lioness, 9_l._; a Hyæna, 7_l._; splendid
+Barbary Lioness, 24_l._; handsome Bengal Tigress, 90_l._; brown Bear,
+6_l._; the largest Polar Bear in Europe, 37_l._; pair of Esquimaux
+Sledge-Dogs, 3_l._ 7_s._; pair of Golden Pheasants, 3_l._ 10_s._; a
+blue-and-buff Macaw (clever talker), 2_l._ 10_s._; a horned Owl, from
+North America, 3_l._ 10_s._; a magnificent Barbary Lion, trained for
+performance, 105 guineas; a Lioness, similarly trained, 90 guineas;
+handsome Senegal performing Leopard, 34 guineas; two others, 50 guineas;
+Ursine Sloth, 12 guineas; Indian Buffalo, 10 guineas; sagacious male
+Elephant, trained for theatrical performances, 350 guineas. The above is
+stated to have been the first sale of the kind by public auction in this
+country.
+
+
+
+
+THE RHINOCEROS IN ENGLAND.
+
+
+The intellectual helps to the study of zoology are nowhere more
+strikingly evident than in the finest collection of pachyderms
+(thick-skinned animals) in the world, now possessed by our Zoological
+Society. Here we have a pair of Indian Elephants, a pair of African
+Elephants, a pair of Hippopotami, a pair of Indian Rhinoceroses, and an
+African or two-horned Rhinoceros.
+
+The specimens of the Rhinoceros which have been exhibited in Europe
+since the revival of literature have been few and far between. The
+first was of the one-horned species, sent from India to Emmanuel. King
+of Portugal, in the year 1513. The Sovereign made a present of it to
+the Pope; but the animal being seized during its passage with a fit of
+fury, occasioned the loss of the vessel in which it was transported. A
+second Rhinoceros was brought to England in 1685; a third was exhibited
+over almost the whole of Europe in 1739; and a fourth, a female, in
+1741. A fifth specimen arrived at Versailles in 1771, and it died in
+1793, at the age of about twenty-six years. The sixth was a very young
+Rhinoceros, which died in this country in the year 1800. The seventh, a
+young specimen, was in the possession of Mr. Cross, at Exeter Change,
+about 1814; and an eighth specimen was living about the same time in
+the Garden of Plants at Paris. In 1834 Mr. Cross received at the Surrey
+Gardens, from the Birman empire, a Rhinoceros, a year and a-half old,
+as already stated at page 21. In 1851 the Zoological Society purchased
+a full-grown female Rhinoceros; and in 1864 they received a male
+Rhinoceros from Calcutta. All these specimens were from India, and
+_one-horned_; so that the _two-horned_ Rhinoceros had not been brought
+to England until the arrival of an African Rhinoceros, _two-horned_, in
+September, 1868.[5]
+
+The ancient history of the Rhinoceros is interesting, but intricate. It
+seems to be mentioned in several passages of the Scriptures, in most
+of which the animal or animals intended to be designated was or were
+the _Rhinoceros unicornis_, or Great Asiatic one-horned Rhinoceros.
+M. Lesson expresses a decided opinion to this effect: indeed, the
+description in Job (chap. xxxix.) would almost forbid the conclusion
+that any animal was in the writer's mind except one of surpassing bulk
+and indomitable strength. The impotence of man is finely contrasted
+with the might of the Rhinoceros in this description, which would be
+overcharged if it applied to the less powerful animals alluded to in the
+previous passages.
+
+It has also been doubted whether accounts of the Indian Wild Ass, given
+by Ctesias, were not highly coloured and exaggerated descriptions of
+this genus; and whether the Indian Ass of Aristotle was not a Rhinoceros.
+
+Agatharchides describes the one-horned Rhinoceros by name, and speaks
+of its ripping up the belly of the Elephant. This is, probably, the
+earliest occurrence of the name _Rhinoceros_. The Rhinoceros which
+figured in the celebrated pomps of Ptolemy Philadelphus was an
+Ethiopian, and seems to have marched last in the procession of wild
+animals, probably on account of its superior rarity, and immediately
+after the Cameleopard.
+
+Dion Cassius speaks of the Rhinoceros killed in the circus with a
+Hippopotamus in the show given by Augustus to celebrate his victory over
+Cleopatra; he says that the Hippopotamus and this animal were then first
+seen and killed at Rome. The Rhinoceros then slain is thought to have
+been African, and two-horned.
+
+The Rhinoceros clearly described by Strabo, as seen by him, was
+one-horned. That noticed by Pausanias as "the Bull of Ethiopia," was
+two-horned, and he describes the relative position of the horns.
+
+Wood, in his "Zoography," gives an engraving of the coin of Domitian
+(small Roman brass), on the reverse of which is the distinct form of a
+two-horned Rhinoceros: its exhibition to the Roman people, probably of
+the very animal represented on the coin, is particularly described in
+one of the epigrams attributed to Martial, who lived in the reigns of
+Titus and Domitian. By the description of the epigram it appears that
+a combat between a Rhinoceros and a Bear was intended, but that it was
+very difficult to irritate the more unwieldy animal so as to make him
+display his usual ferocity; at length, however, he tossed the bear from
+his double horn, with as much facility as a bull tosses to the sky the
+bundles placed for the purpose of enraging him. Thus far the coin and
+the epigram perfectly agree as to the existence of the double horn; but,
+unfortunately, commentators and antiquaries were not to be convinced
+that a Rhinoceros could have more than one horn, and have at once
+displayed their sagacity and incredulity in their explanations on the
+subject.
+
+Two, at least, of the two-horned Rhinoceroses were shown at Rome in the
+reign of Domitian. The Emperors Antoninus, Heliogabalus, and Gordian
+also exhibited Rhinoceroses. Cosmas speaks expressly of the Ethiopian
+Rhinoceros as having two horns, and of its power of moving them.
+
+The tractability of the Asiatic Rhinoceros has been confirmed by
+observers in the native country of the animal. Bishop Heber saw at
+Lucknow five or six very large Rhinoceroses, of which he found that
+prints and drawings had given him a very imperfect conception. They
+were more bulky animals, and of a darker colour than the Bishop
+supposed; though the latter difference might be occasioned by oiling
+the skin. The folds of their skin also surpassed all which the Bishop
+had expected. Those at Lucknow were quiet and gentle animals, except
+that one of them had a feud with horses. They had sometimes howdahs, or
+chaise-like seats, on their backs, and were once fastened in a carriage,
+but only as an experiment, which was not followed up. The Bishop,
+however, subsequently saw a Rhinoceros (the present of Lord Amherst to
+the Guicwar), which was so tamed as to be ridden by a Mohout quite as
+patiently as an elephant.
+
+No two-horned Rhinoceros seems to have been brought alive to Europe in
+modern times. Indeed, up to a comparatively late period, their form
+was known only by the horns which were preserved in museums; nor did
+voyagers give any sufficient details to impart any clear idea of the
+form of the animal. The rude figure given by Aldrovandus, in 1639,
+leaves no doubt that, wretched as it is, it must have been taken from a
+two-horned Rhinoceros.
+
+Dr. Parsons endeavoured to show that the one-horned Rhinoceros always
+belonged to Asia, and the two-horned Rhinoceros to Africa; but there are
+two-horned Rhinoceroses in Asia, as well as in Africa. Flacourt saw one
+in the Bay of Soldaque, near the Cape of Good Hope, at a distance. Kolbe
+and others always considered the Rhinoceros of the Cape as two-horned;
+but Colonel Gordon seems to be the first who entirely detailed the
+species with any exactness. Sparrman described the Cape Rhinoceros,
+though his figure of the animal is stiff and ill-drawn. At this period
+it was well known that the Cape species was not only distinguished by
+having two horns from the Indian Rhinoceros then known, but also by an
+absence of the folds of the skin so remarkable in the latter.
+
+We should here notice the carelessness, to call it by the mildest
+name, of Bruce, who gave to the world a representation of a two-horned
+Rhinoceros from Abyssinia, with a strongly folded skin. The truth
+appears to be that the body of the animal figured by Bruce was copied
+from that of the one-horned Rhinoceros given by Buffon, to which Bruce
+added a second horn. Salt proved that the Abyssinian Rhinoceros is
+two-horned, and that it resembles that of the Cape.
+
+[Illustration: THE TWO-HORNED AFRICAN RHINOCEROS.]
+
+Sparmann exposes the errors and poetic fancies of Buffon respecting the
+impenetrable nature of the skin. He ordered one of his Hottentots to
+make a trial of this with his hassagai on a Rhinoceros which had been
+shot. Though this weapon was far from being in good order, and had no
+other sharpness than that which it had received from the forge, the
+Hottentot, at the distance of five or six paces, not only pierced with
+it the thick hide of the animal, but buried it half a foot deep in its
+body.
+
+Mr. Tegetmeier has sufficiently described in the "Field" journal the
+African Rhinoceros just received at the Zoological Society's menagerie
+in the Regent's-park, and which has been sketched by Mr. T. W. Wood
+expressly for the present volume.
+
+It was captured about a year ago in Upper Nubia by the native hunters
+in the employment of Mr. Casanova, at Kassala; and was sent, by way of
+Alexandria and Trieste, to Mr. Karl Hagenbeck, of Hamburg, a dealer in
+wild beasts, who sold it to the Zoological Society.
+
+"This animal is very distinct from its Asiatic congeners; it differs
+strikingly in the number of horns, as well as in the character of its
+skin, which is destitute of those large folds, which cause the Indian
+species to remind the observer of a gigantic 'hog in armour.'
+
+"The arrival of this animal will tend to clear up the confusion
+that prevails respecting the number of distinct species of African
+Rhinoceros. Some writers--as Sir W. C. Harris--admit the existence of
+two species only, the dark and the light, or, as they are termed, the
+'white' and the 'black.' Others, as Dr. A. Smith, describe three; some,
+as the late Mr. Anderssen, write of four; and Mr. Chapman even speaks of
+a fifth species or hybrid.
+
+"Three of these species are very distinctly defined--the ordinary dark
+animal, the _Rhinoceros bicornis_, in which the posterior horn is much
+shorter than the anterior; the _Rhinoceros keitloa_, in which the two
+horns are of equal length; and the 'white' species, _Rhinoceros simus_.
+The last, among other characters, is, according to Dr. Smith,
+distinguished by the square character of the upper lip, which is not
+prehensile.
+
+"The young animal now (October, 1868) in the Zoological Society's
+garden, appears to belong to the first-named species, the largest
+specimens of which when full grown reach a height of 6ft., and a length
+of 13ft., the tail not included. Its present height is 3-1/2ft., and
+length about 6ft. In general appearance the mature animal resembles a
+gigantic pig, the limbs being brought under the body. The feet are most
+singular in form, being very distinctly three-toed, and the remarkable
+trefoil-like _spoors_ that they make in the soil render the animal
+easy to track. The horns vary greatly in length in different animals;
+the first not unfrequently reaches a length of 2ft., the second being
+considerably shorter. These appendages differ very much from ordinary
+horns; they are, in fact, more of the nature of agglutinated hair, being
+attached to the skin only, and consequently they separate from the skull
+when the latter is preserved.
+
+"The head is not remarkable for comeliness, especially in the mature
+animal, in which the skin of the face is deeply wrinkled, and the small
+eyes are surrounded with many folds. The upper lip is elongated, and is
+used in gathering the food. The adult animals are described by Sir W. C.
+Harris, in his 'Illustrations of the Game Animals of South Africa,' as
+'swinish, cross-grained, ill-tempered, wallowing brutes.'"
+
+Mr. Burchell, during his travels in Africa, shot nine Rhinoceroses,
+besides a smaller one. The latter he presented to the British Museum.
+The animal is, however, becoming every day more and more scarce in
+Southern Africa; indeed, it is rarely to be met with in some parts.
+It appears that, in one day, two Rhinoceroses were shot by Speelman,
+the faithful Hottentot who attended Mr. Burchell. He fired off his gun
+but twice, and each time he killed a Rhinoceros! The animal's sense of
+hearing is very quick: should he be disturbed, he sometimes becomes
+furious, and pursues his enemy; and then, if once he gets sight of the
+hunter, it is scarcely possible for him to escape, unless he possesses
+extraordinary coolness and presence of mind. Yet, if he will quietly
+wait till the enraged animal makes a run at him, and will then spring
+suddenly on one side, to let it pass, he may gain time enough for
+reloading his gun before the Rhinoceros gets sight of him again, which,
+fortunately, owing to its imperfection of sight, it does slowly and with
+difficulty.
+
+Speelman, in shooting a large male Rhinoceros, used bullets cast with
+an admixture of tin, to render them harder. They were flattened and
+beat out of shape by striking against the bones, but those which were
+found lodged in the fleshy parts had preserved their proper form, a fact
+which shows how little the hardness of the creature's hide corresponds
+with the vulgar opinion of its being impenetrable to a musket-ball.
+Mr. Burchell found this Rhinoceros nearly cut up. On each side of the
+carcase the Hottentots had made a fire to warm themselves; and round a
+third fire were assembled at least twenty-four Bushmen, most of whom
+were employed the whole night long in broiling, eating, and talking.
+Their appetite seemed insatiable, for no sooner had they broiled and
+eaten one slice of meat than they turned to the carcase and cut another.
+The meat was excellent, and had much the taste of beef. "The tongue,"
+says Mr. Burchell, "is a dainty treat, even for an epicure." The hide is
+cut into strips, three feet or more in length, rounded to the thickness
+of a man's finger, and tapering to the top. This is called a _shambok_,
+and is universally used in the colony of the Cape for a horsewhip, and
+is much more durable than the whips of European manufacture. The natural
+food of the Rhinoceros, till the animal fled before the colonists, was a
+pale, bushy shrub, called the Rhinoceros-bush, which burns while green
+as freely as the driest fuel, so as readily to make a roadside fire.
+
+The horn of the Rhinoceros, single or double, has its special history by
+the way of popular tradition. From the earliest times this horn has been
+supposed to possess preservative virtues and mysterious properties--to
+be capable of curing diseases and discovering the presence of poison;
+and in all countries where the Rhinoceros exists, but especially in the
+East, such is still the opinion respecting it. In the details of the
+first voyage of the English to India, in 1591, we find Rhinoceros' horns
+monopolised by the native sovereigns on account of their reputed virtues
+in detecting the presence of poison.
+
+Thunberg observes, in his "Journey into Caffraria," that "the horns of
+the Rhinoceros were kept by some people, both in town and country, not
+only as rarities, but also as useful in diseases, and for the purpose
+of detecting poisons. As to the former of these intentions, the fine
+shavings were supposed to cure convulsions and spasms in children. With
+respect to the latter, it was generally believed that goblets made of
+these horns would discover a poisonous draught that was poured into
+them, by making the liquor ferment till it ran quite out of the goblet.
+Of these horns goblets are made, which are set in gold and silver and
+presented to kings, persons of distinction, and particular friends, or
+else sold at a high price, sometimes at the rate of fifty rix-dollars
+each." Thunberg adds:--"When I tried these horns, both wrought and
+unwrought, both old and young horns, with several sorts of poison, weak
+as well as strong, I observed not the least motion or effervescence; but
+when a solution of corrosive sublimate or other similar substance was
+poured into one of these horns, there arose only a few bubbles, produced
+by the air which had been enclosed in the pores of the horn and which
+were now disengaged."
+
+Rankin (in his "Wars and Sports") states this mode of using it: a small
+quantity of water is put into the concave part of the root, then hold it
+with the point downwards and stir the water with the point of an iron
+nail till it is discoloured, when the patient is to drink it.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[5] The conveyance of a Rhinoceros over sea is a labour of some risk. In
+1814 a full-grown specimen on his voyage from Calcutta to this country
+became so furious that he was fastened down to the ship's deck, with
+part of a chain-cable round his neck; and even then he succeeded in
+destroying a portion of the vessel, till, a heavy storm coming on, the
+Rhinoceros was thrown overboard to prevent the serious consequence of
+his getting loose in the ship.
+
+
+
+
+STORIES OF MERMAIDS.
+
+
+Less than half a century ago, a pretended Mermaid was one of the sights
+of a London season; to see which credulous persons rushed to pay
+half-crowns and shillings with a readiness which seemed to rebuke the
+record--that the existence of a Mermaid is an exploded fallacy of two
+centuries since.
+
+Mermaids have had a legendary existence from very early ages, for the
+Sirens of the ancients evidently belonged to the same remarkable family.
+Shakspeare uses the term Mermaid as synonymous with Siren:--
+
+    "O train me not, sweet Mermaid, with thy note,
+    To drown me in thy sister's flood of tears;
+    Sing, Syren, for thyself."--_Comedy of Errors_, iii. 2.
+
+Elsewhere, Shakspeare's use of the term is more applicable to the Siren
+than to the common idea of a Mermaid; as in the "Midsummer Night's
+Dream," where the "Mermaid on a dolphin's back" could not easily have
+been so placed. A Merman, the male of this imaginary species, is
+mentioned by Taylor, the water-poet:--
+
+    "A thing turmoyling in the sea we spide,
+        Like to a Meareman."
+
+An old writer has this ingenious illustration:--"Mermaids, in Homer,
+were witches, and their songs enchantments;" which reminds us of the
+invitation in Haydn's Mermaid's Song:--
+
+    "Come with me, and we will go
+    Where the rocks of coral grow."
+
+The orthodox Mermaid is half woman, half fish; and the fishy half is
+sometimes depicted as doubly tailed, such as we see in the heraldry of
+France and Germany; and in the Basle edition of Ptolemy's "Geography,"
+dated 1540, a double-tailed Mermaid figures in one of the plates. In the
+arms of the Fishmongers' Company of London, the supporters are "a Merman
+and maid, first, armed, the latter with a mirror in the left hand,
+proper." From this heraldic employment, the Mermaid became a popular
+tavern sign; and there was an old dance called the Mermaid.
+
+Sir Thomas Browne refers to the _picture_ of Mermaids, though he does
+not admit their existence. They "are conceived to answer the shape of
+the ancient Sirens that attempted upon Ulysses; which, notwithstanding,
+were of another description, containing no fishy composure, but made up
+of man and bird." Sir Thomas is inclined to refer the Mermaid to Dagon,
+the tutelary deity of the Philistines, which, according to the common
+opinion, had a human female bust and a fish-like termination; though the
+details of this fish idolatry are entirely conjectural.
+
+Leyden, the Scottish poet, has left a charming ballad, entitled "The
+Mermaid," the scene of which is laid at Corrievreckin: the opening of
+this poem Sir Walter Scott praised as exhibiting a power of numbers
+which, for mere melody of sound, has seldom been excelled in English
+poetry:--
+
+    "On Jura's heath how sweetly swell
+      The murmurs of the mountain bee!
+    How softly mourns the writhèd shell
+      Of Jura's shore its parent sea!
+
+    "But softer floating, o'er the deep,
+      The Mermaid's sweet sea-soothing lay,
+    That charmed the dancing waves to sleep
+      Before the bark of Colonsay."
+
+The ballad thus describes the wooing of the gallant chieftain:--
+
+    "Proud swells her heart! she deems at last
+      To lure him with her silver tongue,
+    And, as the shelving rocks she passed,
+      She raised her voice, and sweetly sung.
+
+    "In softer, sweeter strains she sung,
+      Slow gliding o'er the moonlight bay,
+    When light to land the chieftain sprung,
+      To hail the maid of Colonsay.
+
+    "O sad the Mermaid's gay notes fell,
+      And sadly sink remote at sea!
+    O sadly mourns the writhèd shell
+      Of Jura's shore, its parent sea
+
+    "And ever as the year returns,
+      The charm-bound sailors know the day;
+    For sadly still the Mermaid mourns
+      The lovely chief of Colonsay."
+
+Curious evidences of the existence of Mermaids are to be found in
+ancient authors. Pliny says that "the ambassadors to Augustine from Gaul
+declared that sea-women were often seen in their neighbourhood." Solinus
+and Aulus Gellius also speak of their existence. Some stories are,
+however, past credence. It is related in the "Histoire d'Angleterre"
+that, in the year 1187, a Merman was "fished up" off the coast of
+Suffolk, and kept for six months. It was like a man, but wanted speech,
+and at length escaped into the sea! In 1430, in the great tempests which
+destroyed the dykes in Holland, some women at Edam, in West Friesland,
+saw a Mermaid who had been driven by the waters into the meadows, which
+were overflowed. "They took it, dressed it in female attire, and taught
+it to spin!" It was taken to Haarlem, where it lived some years! Then we
+read of Ceylonese fishermen, in 1560, catching, at one draught, seven
+Mermen and Mermaids, which were dissected! In 1531, a Mermaid, caught in
+the Baltic, was sent to Sigismund, King of Poland, with whom she lived
+three days, and was seen by the whole court!
+
+In Merollo's "Voyage to Congo," in 1682, Mermaids are said to be
+plentiful all along the river Zaire. In the "Aberdeen Almanack" for
+1688, it is predicted that "near the place where the famous Dee
+payeth his tribute to the German Ocean," on the 1st, 13th, and 29th
+of May, and other specified times, curious observers may "undoubtedly
+see a pretty company of Mar Maids," and likewise hear their melodious
+voices. In another part of Scotland, about the same time, Brand, in his
+"Description of Orkney and Shetland," tells us that two fishermen drew
+up with a hook a Mermaid, "having face, arm, breast, shoulders, &c., of
+a woman, and long hair hanging down the neck, but the nether part, from
+below the waist, hidden in the water." One of the fishermen stabbed her
+with a knife, and she was seen no more! The evidence went thus:--Brand
+was told by a lady and gentleman, who were told by a baillie to whom the
+fishing-boat belonged, who was told by the fishers! Valentyn describes a
+Mermaid he saw in 1714, on his voyage from Batavia to Europe, "sitting
+on the surface of the water," &c. In 1758, a Mermaid is said to have
+been exhibited at the fair of St. Germain, in France. It was about two
+feet long, and sported about in a vessel of water. It was fed with bread
+and fish. It was a female, with negro features.
+
+In 1775 appeared a very circumstantial account of a Mermaid which was
+captured in the Grecian Archipelago in the preceding year, and exhibited
+in London. The account is ludicrously minute, and it ends with: "It is
+said to have an enchanting voice, which it never exerts except before
+a storm." This imposture was craftily made up out of the skin of the
+angle shark. In Mr. Morgan's "Tour to Milford Haven in the year 1795,"
+appears an equally circumstantial account of a Mermaid, said to have
+been seen by one Henry Reynolds, a farmer, of Ren-y-hold, in the parish
+of Castlemartin, in 1782. It resembled a youth of sixteen or eighteen
+years of age, with a very white skin: it was bathing. The evidence
+is very roundabout, so that there were abundant means for converting
+some peculiar kind of fish into a Merman, without imputing intentional
+dishonesty to any one. "Something akin to this kind of evidence is
+observable in the account of a Mermaid seen in Caithness in 1809, which
+attracted much attention in England as well as in Scotland, and induced
+the Philosophical Society of Glasgow to investigate the matter. The
+Editor of a newspaper, who inserted the statement, had been told by a
+gentleman, who had been shown a letter by Sir John Sinclair, who had
+obtained it from Mr. Innes, to whom it had been written by Miss Mackay,
+who had heard the story from the persons (two servant girls and a boy)
+who had seen the strange animal in the water." (Chambers's "Book of
+Days.")
+
+Then we read of a so-called Mermaid, shown in the year 1794 at No. 7,
+Broad-court, Bow-street. Covent-garden, said to have been taken in the
+North Seas by Captain Foster. It was of the usual description.
+
+Much evidence comes from Scotland. Thus, in the year 1797, a
+schoolmaster of Thurso affirmed that he had seen a Mermaid, apparently
+in the act of combing her hair with her fingers! Twelve years
+afterwards, several persons observed near the same place a like
+appearance. Dr. Chisholm, in his "Essay on Malignant Fever in the West
+Indies," in 1801, relates that, in the year 1797, happening to be at
+Governor Van Battenburg's plantation, in Berbice, "the conversation
+turned on a singular animal which had been repeatedly seen in Berbice
+river, and some smaller rivers. This animal is the famous Mermaid,
+hitherto considered as a mere creature of the imagination. It is called
+by the Indians _méné_, mamma, or mother of the waters. The description
+given of it by the Governor is as follows:--'The upper portion
+resembles the human figure, the head smaller in proportion, sometimes
+bare, but oftener covered with a copious quantity of long black hair.
+The shoulders are broad, and the breasts large and well-formed. The
+lower portion resembles the tail of a fish, is of great dimensions,
+the tail forked, and not unlike that of the dolphin, as it is usually
+represented. The colour of the skin is either black or tawny.' The
+animal is held in veneration by the Indians, who imagine that killing
+it would be attended with calamitous consequences. It is from this
+circumstance that none of these animals have been shot, and consequently
+examined but at a distance. They have been generally observed in a
+sitting posture in the water, none of the lower extremity being seen
+until they are disturbed, when, by plunging, the tail agitates the water
+to a considerable distance round. They have been always seen employed in
+smoothing their hair, and have thus been frequently taken for Indian
+women bathing." In 1811, a young man, named John M'Isaac, of Corphine,
+in Kintyre, in Scotland, made oath, on examination at Campbell-town,
+that he saw, on the 13th of October in the above year, on a rock on the
+sea-coast, an animal which generally corresponded with the form of the
+Mermaid--the upper half human shape, the other brindled or reddish grey,
+apparently covered with scales; the extremity of the tail greenish red;
+head covered with long hair, at times put back on both sides of the
+head. This statement was attested by the minister of Campbell-town and
+the Chamberlain of Mull.
+
+In August, 1812, Mr. Toupin, of Exmouth, in a sailing excursion, and
+when about a mile south-east of Exmouth Bar, heard a sound like that
+of the Æolian harp; and saw, at about one hundred yards distance, a
+creature, which was regarded as a Mermaid. The head, from the crown to
+the chin, formed a long oval, and the face seemed to resemble that of
+the seal, though with more agreeable features. The presumed hair, the
+arms, and the hand, with four fingers connected by a membrane, are then
+described, and the tail with polished scales. The entire height of the
+animal was from five feet to five and a-half feet. In 1819, a creature
+approached the coast of Ireland. It was about the size of a child ten
+years of age, with prominent bosom, long dark hair, and dark eyes. It
+was shot at, when it plunged into the sea with a loud scream.
+
+[Illustration: SEAL AND MERMAID.]
+
+In reviewing these stories of Mermaids, it may be remarked that there
+is always a fish in each tale--either a living fish of a peculiar
+kind, which a fanciful person thinks to bear some resemblance in the
+upper part to a human being, or a fish which becomes marvellous in the
+progress of its description from mouth to mouth. It is commonly thought
+the seals may often have been mistaken for Mermaids. But, of all the
+animals of the whale tribe that which approaches the nearest in form to
+man is, undoubtedly, the Dugong, which, when its head and breast are
+raised above the water, and its pectoral fins, resembling hands, are
+visible, might easily be taken by superstitious seamen for a semi-human
+being, or a Mermaid. Of this deception a remarkable instance occurred
+in 1826. The skeleton of a Mermaid, as it was called, was brought
+to Portsmouth, which had been shot in the vicinity of the Island of
+Mombass. This was submitted to the members of the Philosophical Society,
+when it proved to be the skeleton of a Dugong. To those who came to
+the examination with preconceived notions of a fabulous Mermaid, it
+presented, as it lay on the lecture-table, a singular appearance. It
+was about six feet long; the lower portion, with its broad tail-like
+extremity, suggested the idea of a powerful fish-like termination,
+whilst the fore-legs presented to the unskilful eye a resemblance to the
+bones of a small female arm; the cranium, however, had a brutal form,
+which could never have borne the lineaments of "the human face divine."
+
+The Mermaid has been traced to the Manatee as well as to the Dugong: the
+former is an aquatic animal, externally resembling a whale, and named
+from its flipper, resembling the human hand, _manus_. Again, the _mammæ_
+(teats) of the Manatees and Dugongs are pectoral; and this conformation,
+joined to the adroit use of their flippers (whose five fingers can
+easily be distinguished through the inverting membranes, four of them
+being terminated by nails) in progression, nursing their young, &c.,
+have caused them, when seen at a distance with the anterior part of
+their body out of the water, to be taken for some creature approaching
+to human shape so nearly (especially as their middle is thick set with
+hair, giving somewhat of the effect of human hair or a beard), that
+there can be little doubt that not a few of the tales of Mermen and
+Mermaids have had their origin with these animals as well as with seals
+and walruses. Thus the Portuguese and Spaniards give the _Manatee_ a
+denomination which signifies Woman-fish; and the Dutch call the Dugong
+_Baardanetjee_, or Little-bearded Man. A very little imagination and
+a memory for only the marvellous portion of the appearance sufficed,
+doubtless, to complete the metamorphosis of this half woman or man, half
+fish, into a Siren, a Mermaid, or a Merman; and the wild recital of the
+voyager was treasured up by writers who, as Cuvier well observes, have
+displayed more learning than judgment.
+
+The comb and the toilet-glass have already been incidentally mentioned
+as accessories in these Mermaid stories; and these, with the
+origin of the creature. Sir George Head thus ingeniously attempts
+to explain:--"The resemblance of the seal, or sea-calf, to the calf
+consists only in the voice, and the voice of the calf is certainly not
+dissimilar to that of a man. But the claws of the seal, as well as the
+hand, are like a lady's back-hair comb; wherefore, altogether, supposing
+the resplendence of sea-water streaming down its polished neck, on a
+sunshiny day, the substitute for a looking-glass, we arrive at once at
+the fabulous history of the marine maiden or Mermaid, and the appendages
+of her toilet."
+
+The progress of zoological science has long since destroyed the belief
+in the existence of the Mermaid. If its upper structure be human, with
+lungs resembling our own, how could such a creature live and breathe at
+the bottom of the sea, where it is stated to be? for our most expert
+divers are unable to stay under water more than half an hour. Suppose it
+to be of the cetaceous class, it could only remain under the water two
+or three minutes together without rising to the surface to take breath;
+and if this were the case with the Mermaid, would it not be oftener seen?
+
+Half a century has scarcely elapsed since a _manufactured_ Mermaid was
+shown in London with all the confidence of its being a natural creature.
+In the winter of 1822 there was exhibited at the Egyptian Hall, in
+Piccadilly, this pretended Mermaid, which was visited by from 300 to
+400 persons daily! The imposture, however, was too gross to last long;
+and it was ascertained to be the dried skin of the head and shoulders
+of a monkey attached very neatly to the dried skin of a fish of the
+salmon kind with the head cut off; the compound figure being stuffed
+and highly varnished, the better to deceive the eye. This grotesque
+object was taken by a Dutch vessel from on board a native Malacca boat;
+and from the reverence shown to it by the sailors it is supposed to
+have represented the incarnation of one of the idol gods of the Malacca
+Islands. A correspondent of the "Magazine of Natural History," 1829,
+however, avers that the above "Mermaid" was brought from the East
+Indies; for being at St. Helena in 1813 he saw it on board the ship
+which was bringing it to England. The impression on his mind was that
+it was an artificial compound of the upper part of a small ape with the
+lower half of a fish; and by aid of a powerful glass he ascertained the
+point of union between the two parts. He was somewhat staggered to find
+that this was so neatly effected that the precise line of junction was
+not satisfactorily apparent: the creature was then in its best state of
+preservation.
+
+In a volume of "Manners and Customs of the Japanese," published in
+1841, we, however, find the following version of the history of the
+above Mermaid:--"A Japanese fisherman seems to have displayed ingenuity
+for the mere purpose of making money by his countrymen's passion for
+everything odd and strange. He contrived to unite the upper half of
+a monkey to the lower half of a fish so neatly as to defy ordinary
+inspection. He then gave out that he had caught the creature in his
+net, but that it had died shortly after being taken out of the water;
+and he derived considerable pecuniary profit from his cunning in more
+ways than one. The exhibition of the sea monster to Japanese curiosity
+paid well; yet more productive was the assertion that the half-human
+fish, having spoken during the five minutes it existed out of its native
+element, had predicted a certain number of years of wonderful fertility
+and a fatal epidemic, the only remedy for which would be the possession
+of the marine prophet's likeness! The sale of these _pictured Mermaids_
+was immense. Either the composite animal, or another, the offspring of
+the success of the first, was sold to the Dutch factory and transmitted
+to Batavia, where it fell into the hands of a speculating American,
+who brought it to Europe; and here, in the year 1822-3, exhibited his
+purchase as a real Mermaid to the admiration of the ignorant, the
+perplexity of the learned, and the filling of his own purse."
+
+The Editor of the "Literary Gazette," Mr. Jerdan, was the first
+to expose the fabulous creature of the Egyptian Hall. He plainly
+said:--"Our opinion is fixed that it is a _composition_; a most
+ingenious one, we grant, but still nothing beyond the admirably
+put-together members of various animals. The extraordinary skill of
+the Chinese and Japanese in executing such deceptions is notorious,
+and we have no doubt that the Mermaid is a manufacture from the Indian
+Sea, where it has been pretended it was caught. We are not of those who
+because they happen not to have had direct proof of the existence of
+any extraordinary natural phenomenon, push scepticism to the extreme
+and deny its possibility. The depths of the sea, in all probability,
+from various chemical and philosophical causes, contain animals unknown
+to its surface-waters, rarely if ever seen by human eye. But when a
+creature is presented to us having no other organization but that which
+is suitable to a medium always open to our observation, it in the first
+instance excites suspicion that only one individual of the species
+should be discovered and obtained. When knowledge was more limited, the
+stories of Mermaids seen in distant quarters might be credited by the
+many, and not entirely disbelieved by the few; but now, when European
+and especially British commerce fills every corner of the earth with men
+of observation and science, the unique becomes the incredible, and we
+receive with far greater doubt the apparition of such anomalies as the
+present. It is curious that though medical men seem in general to regard
+the creature as a possible production of nature, no naturalist of any
+ability credits it after five minutes' observation! This may, perhaps,
+be accounted for by their acquaintance with the parts of distinct
+animals, of which it appears the Mermaid is composed. The cheeks of the
+blue-faced ape, the canine teeth, the _simia_ upper body, and the tail
+of the fish, are all familiar to them in less complex combinations,
+and they pronounce at once that the whole is an imposture. And such
+is our settled conviction." Though naturalists and journalists fully
+exposed the imposture, this did not affect the exhibition, which for a
+considerable time continued as crowded as ever; but the notoriety had
+dwindled down to "a penny show," at Bartholomew Fair, by the year 1825.
+
+After so many exposures of the absurd belief in Mermaids, it could
+scarcely be expected that any person could be found in Europe weak
+enough to report the existence of one of these creatures to an eminent
+scientific Society. Yet, on the 22d of June, 1840, the first Secretary
+of the Ottoman Embassy at Paris addressed a note to the Academy of
+Sciences, stating that his father, who was in the Admiralty department
+at Constantinople, had recently seen a Mermaid while crossing the
+Bosphorus, which communication was received with much laughter.
+
+We have still another recorded instance--and in Scotland. In the year
+1857 two fishermen on the Argyleshire coast declared that when on their
+way to the fishing-station, Lochindale, in a boat, and when about four
+miles south-west from the village of Port Charlotte, about six o'clock
+in a June evening, they distinctly saw, at about six yards distance, an
+object in the form of a woman, with comely face and fine hair hanging
+in ringlets over the neck and shoulders. It was above the surface of
+the water gazing at the fishermen for three or four minutes--and then
+vanished! Yet this declaration was officially attested!
+
+In 1863 Mermaids were supposed to abound in the ponds and ditches of
+Suffolk, where careful mothers used them as bugbears to prevent little
+children from going too near the water. Children described them as
+"nasty things that crome you (hook you) into the water;" others as "a
+great big thing like a feesh," probably a pike basking in the shallow
+water.
+
+Sometimes the Mermaid has assumed a picturesqueness in fairy tale; and
+her impersonation has been described by Dryden as "a fine woman, with a
+fish's tail." And, laying aside her scaly train, she has appeared as a
+lovely woman, with sea-green hair; and Crofton Croker relates, in his
+"Fairy Legends," a marriage between an Irish fisherman and a "Merrow,"
+as the Mermaid is called in Ireland.
+
+
+
+
+IS THE UNICORN FABULOUS?
+
+
+To this question we may reply, in the words of a writer of 1633,
+"Concerning the Unicorn, different opinions prevail among authors:
+some doubt, others deny, and a third class affirm its existence." The
+question has lasted two thousand years, and is every now and then kept
+alive by fresh evidences.
+
+Ctesias, a credulous Greek physician, who appears to have resided at
+the Court of Persia, in the time of the younger Cyrus, about 400 years
+before the birth of Christ, describes the wild asses of India as equal
+to the horse in size, and even larger, with white bodies, red heads,
+bluish eyes, and a horn on the forehead a cubit in length; the part
+from the forehead entirely white, the middle black, and the extremity
+red and pointed. Drinking-vessels were made of it, and those who used
+them were subject neither to convulsions, epilepsy, nor poison, provided
+that before taking the poison, or after, they drank from these cups
+water, wine, or any other liquor. Ctesias describes these animals as
+very swift and very strong. Naturally they were not ferocious; but when
+they found themselves and their young surrounded by horsemen, they did
+not abandon their offspring, but defended themselves by striking with
+their horns, kicking, and biting, and so slew many men and horses. This
+animal was also shot with arrows and brought down with darts; for it was
+impossible to take it alive. Its flesh was too bitter for food, but it
+was hunted for its horn and astragalus (ankle-bone), which last Ctesias
+declares he saw. Aristotle describes the Indian ass with a single horn.
+Herodotus mentions asses having horns; and Strabo refers to Unicorn
+horses, with the heads of deers. Oppian notices the Aonian bulls with
+undivided hoofs, and a single median horn between their temples. Pliny
+notices it as a very ferocious beast, similar in its body to a horse,
+with the head of a deer, the feet of an elephant, the tail of a boar,
+a deep bellowing voice, and a single black horn standing out in the
+middle of its forehead. He adds, that it cannot be taken alive; and some
+such excuse may have been necessary in those days for not producing the
+living animal upon the arena of the amphitheatre.
+
+Out of this passage most of the modern Unicorns have been described
+and figured. The body of the horse and the head of the deer appear to
+be but vague sketches; the feet of the elephant and the tail of the
+boar point at once to a pachydermatous (thick-skinned) animal; and the
+single black horn, allowing for a little exaggeration as to its length,
+well fits the two last-mentioned conditions, and will apply to the
+Indian rhinoceros, which, says the sound naturalist, Ogilby, "affords a
+remarkable instance of the obstructions which the progress of knowledge
+may suffer, and the gross absurdities which not unfrequently result from
+the wrong application of a name." Mr. Ogilby then refers to the account
+of Ctesias, which we have just quoted, and adds:--"His account, though
+mixed up with a great deal of credulous absurdity, contains a very
+valuable and perfectly recognisable description of the rhinoceros, under
+the ridiculous name, however, of the _Indian Ass_; and, as he attributed
+to it a whole hoof like the horse, and a single horn in the forehead,
+speculation required but one step further to produce the fabulous
+Unicorn."
+
+The ancient writers who have treated of the Unicorn are too numerous for
+us to specify. Some of the moderns may be referred to. Garcias describes
+this marvellous creature from one who alleges that he had seen it. The
+seer affirmed that it was endowed with a wonderful horn, which it would
+sometimes turn to the left and right, at others raise, and then again
+depress. Ludovicus Vartomanus writes, that he saw two sent to the Sultan
+from Ethiopia, and kept in a repository at Mahomet's tomb in Mecca.
+Cardan describes the Unicorn as a rare animal, the size of a horse, with
+hair very like that of a weasel, with the head of a deer, on which one
+horn grows three cubits in length (a story seldom loses anything in its
+progress) from the forehead, ample at its lowest part, and tapering to
+a point; with a short neck, a very thin mane, leaning to one side only,
+and less on the ear, as those of a young roe.
+
+In Jonston's "Historia Naturalis," 1657, we see the smooth-horned
+solipede, "Wald Esel;" and the digitated and clawed smooth-horned "Meer
+Wolff," the latter with his single horn erect in the foreground, but
+with it depressed in the background, where he is represented regaling on
+serpents. Then there are varieties, with the head, mane, and tail of a
+horse; another smooth-horned, with a horse's head and mane, a pig's-tail
+and camel-like feet; the "Meer Stenbock, Capricornus Marinus," with
+hind webbed feet, and a kind of graduated horn, like an opera-glass
+pulled out, in the foreground, and charging the fish most valiantly in
+the water in the distance. Then there is another, with a mule's head
+and two rhinoceros-like horns, one on his forehead and the other on his
+nose; and a horse's tail, with a collar round his neck; a neck entirely
+shaggy--and a twisted horn, a shaggy gorget, and curly tail, are among
+other peculiarities.
+
+The Unicorn seems to have been a sad trouble to the hunters, who hardly
+knew how to come at so valuable a piece of game. Some described the horn
+as moveable at the will of the animal--a kind of small sword, in short,
+with which no hunter who was not exceedingly cunning in fence could have
+a chance. Others told the poor foresters that all the strength lay in
+its horn, and that when pressed by them it would throw itself from the
+pinnacle of the highest rock, horn foremost, so as to pitch upon it, and
+then quietly march off not a bit the worse!
+
+Modern zoologists, disgusted as they well may be with fables, such as we
+have glanced at, disbelieve, generally, the existence of the Unicorn,
+such, at least, as we have referred to; but there is still an opinion
+that some land animal bearing a horn on the anterior part of its head,
+exists besides the rhinoceros. The nearest approach to a horn in the
+middle of the forehead of any terrestrial mammiferous animal known to us
+is the bony protuberance on the forehead of the giraffe; and though it
+would be presumptuous to deny the existence of a one-horned quadruped
+other than the rhinoceros, it may be safely stated that the insertion
+of a long and solid horn in the living forehead of a horse-like or
+deer-like cranium is as near an impossibility as anything can be.
+
+Rupell, after a long sojourn in the north-east of Africa, stated that
+in Kordofan the Unicorn exists; stated to be the size of a small horse,
+of the slender make of the gazelle, and furnished with a long straight
+horn in the male, which was wanting in the female. According to the
+statements made by various persons, it inhabits the deserts to the south
+of Koretofan, is uncommonly fleet, and comes only occasionally to the
+Koldagi Heive mountains on the borders of Kordofan.
+
+Other writers refer the Unicorn to the antelope. The origin of the name
+of antelope is traced by Cuvier to the Greek _Anthalops_, applied to a
+fabulous animal living on the banks of the Euphrates, with long jagged
+horns, with which it sawed down trees of considerable thickness! Others
+conjecture this animal to have been the _Oryx_, a species of antelope,
+which is fabulously reported to have had only one horn, and to have been
+termed _Panthalops_ in the old language of Egypt.
+
+In his "Revolutions on the Surface of the Globe." Cuvier refers the
+idea of the Unicorn to the coarse figures traced by savages on rocks.
+Ignorant of perspective, and wishing to present in profile the horned
+antelope, they could only give it one horn; and thus originated the
+_Oryx_. The oryx of the Egyptian monuments is, most probably, but the
+production of a similarly crude style, which the religion of the country
+imposed on the artist. Many of the profiles of quadrupeds have only one
+leg before and one behind: why, then, should they show two horns? It
+is possible that individual animals might be taken in the chase whom
+accident had despoiled of one horn, as it often happens to chamois and
+the Scythian antelope; and that would suffice to confirm the error which
+these pictures originally produced. It is thus, probably, that we find
+anew the Unicorn in the mountains of Thibet.
+
+The _Chiru Antelope_ is the supposed Unicorn of the Bhotians. In form
+it approaches the deer; the horns are exceedingly long, are placed
+very forward in the head, and may be popularly described as erect and
+straight. It is usually found in herds, and is extremely wild, and
+unapproachable by man. It is much addicted to salt in summer, when vast
+herds are often seen at the rock-salt beds which abound in Tibet. They
+are said to advance under the conduct of a leader, and to post sentinels
+around the beds before they attempt to feed.
+
+Major Salter is stated to have obtained information of the existence of
+an animal in Tibet closely resembling the Unicorn of the ancients, which
+revived the belief of naturalists by adducing testimonies from Oriental
+writings. Upon this statement, M. Klaproth remarks, that previous to
+Major Salter's Reports, the Catholic missionaries, who returned to
+Europe from China by way of Tibet and Nepal, in the seventeenth century,
+mentioned that the Unicorn was found in that part of the Great Desert
+which bounds China to the west, where they crossed the great wall; that
+Captain Turner, when travelling in Tibet, was informed by the Raja of
+Boutan that he had one of these animals alive; and that Bell, in his
+"Travels to Peking," describes a Unicorn which was found on the southern
+front of Siberia. He adds:--"The great 'Tibetan-Mongol Dictionary'
+mentions the Unicorn; and the 'Geographical Dictionary of Tibet and
+Central Asia,' printed at Peking, where it describes a district in the
+province of Kham, in Tibet, named Sera-zeong, explains this name by 'the
+River of Unicorns,' because," adds the author, "many of these animals
+are found there."
+
+In the "History of the Mongol-Khans," published and translated at St.
+Petersburg, we find the following statement:--Genghiz Khan, having
+subjected all Tibet in 1206, commenced his march for Hindustan. As he
+ascended Mount Jadanarung, he beheld a beast approaching him of the
+deer kind, of the species called _Seron_, which have a single horn at
+the top of the head. It fell on its knees thrice before the monarch, as
+if to pay respect to him. Every one was astonished at this incident.
+The monarch exclaimed. "The Empire of Hindustan is, we are assured, the
+country where are born the majestic Buddhas and Bodhisatwas, as well as
+the potent Bogdas and princes of antiquity: what can be the meaning,
+then, of this animal, incapable of speech, saluting me like a man?"
+Upon this, he returned to his own country. "This story," continues M.
+Klaproth, "is also related by Mahommedan authors who have written the
+life of Genghiz. Something of the kind must, therefore, have taken
+place. Possibly, some of the Mongol conqueror's suite may have taken a
+Unicorn, which Genghiz thus employed, to gain a pretext for abstaining
+from an expedition which promised no success."
+
+Upon this statement, it was observed in the "Asiatic Register," 1839,
+that "when we consider that seventeen years have elapsed since the
+account of Major Salter was given, and that, notwithstanding our
+increased opportunities of intercourse with Tibet, no fact has since
+transpired which supplies a confirmation of that account, except
+the obtaining of a supposed horn of the supposed Unicorn, we cannot
+participate in these renewed hopes."
+
+The Rev. John Campbell, in his "Travels in South Africa," describes the
+head of another animal, which, as far as the horn is concerned, seems
+to approach nearer than the common rhinoceros to the Unicorn of the
+ancients. While in the Machow territory, the Hottentots brought to Mr.
+Campbell a head differing from that of any rhinoceros that had been
+previously killed. "The common African rhinoceros has a crooked horn,
+resembling a cock's spur, which rises about nine or ten inches above
+the nose, and inclines backward; immediately behind which is a straight
+thick horn. But the head brought by the Hottentots had a straight horn
+projecting three feet from the forehead, about ten inches above the tip
+of the nose. The projection of this great horn very much resembles that
+of the fanciful Unicorn in the British arms. It has a small thick horny
+substance, eight inches long, immediately behind it, which can hardly
+be observed on the animal at the distance of a hundred yards; so that
+this species must look like an Unicorn (in the sense 'one-horned') when
+running in the field." The author adds:--"This animal is considered
+by naturalists, since the arrival of the above skull in London, to be
+the Unicorn of the ancients, and the same that is described in Job
+xxxix. 9--'Will the Unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy
+crib? 10. Canst thou bind the Unicorn with his band in the furrow? or
+will he harrow the valleys after thee? 11. Wilt thou trust him because
+his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him?' Again,
+Deuteronomy xxxiii. 17--'His horns are like the horns of Unicorns: with
+them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth.'"
+
+A fragment of the skull, with the horn, is deposited in the Museum of
+the London Missionary Society.
+
+Mr. W. B. Baikie writes to the _Athenæum_ from Bida Núpe, Central
+Africa, in 1862, the following suggestions:--"When I ascended the Niger,
+now nearly five years ago, I frequently heard allusions to an animal
+of this nature, but at that time I set it down as a myth. Since then,
+however, the amount of testimony I have received, and the universal
+belief of the natives of all the countries which I have hitherto
+visited, have partly shaken my scepticism, and at present I simply
+hold that its non-existence is not proven. A skull of this animal is
+said to be preserved in a town in the country of Bonú, through which
+I hope to pass in the course of a few weeks, when I shall make every
+possible inquiry. Two among my informants have repeatedly declared to me
+that they have seen the bones of this animal, and each made particular
+mention of the long, straight, or nearly straight, black horn. In
+countries to the east, and south-east, as Márgi and Bagirmi, where the
+one-horned rhinoceros is found, the hunters carefully distinguished
+between it and the supposed Unicorn, and give them different names. In
+the vast forests and boundless wastes which occur over Central Africa,
+especially towards the countries south and east of Lake Tsád, Bórnú,
+Bagirmi and Adamáwa, are doubtless numerous zoological curiosities as
+yet unknown to the man of science, and among them possibly may exist
+this much-talked-of, strange, one-horned animal, even though it may not
+exactly correspond with our typical English Unicorn."
+
+The factitious horn has been preserved in various Museums. The "Monocero
+Horn," in Tradescant's collection, was, probably, that which ordinarily
+has passed for the horn of the Unicorn, namely, the tooth of a narwhal.
+Old legends assert that the Unicorn, when he goes to drink, first dips
+his horn in the water to purify it, and that other beasts delay to
+quench their thirst till the Unicorn has thus sweetened the water. The
+narwhal's tooth makes a capital twisted Unicorn's horn, as represented
+in the old figures. That in the Repository of St. Denis, at Paris, was
+presented by Thevet, and was declared to have been given to him by
+the King of Monomotapa, who took him out to hunt Unicorns, which are
+frequent in that country. Some have thought that this horn was a carved
+elephant's tooth. There is one at Strasburg, some seven or eight feet in
+length, and there are several in Venice.
+
+Great medical virtues were attributed to the so-called horn, and the
+price it once bore outdoes everything in the _Tulipomania_. A Florentine
+physician has recorded that a pound of it (sixteen ounces) was sold
+in the shops for fifteen hundred and thirty-six crowns, when the same
+weight in gold would only have brought one hundred and forty-eight
+crowns.
+
+From what source we derive the stories of the animosity between the
+lion and the Unicorn is not clearly understood, although this is the
+principal medium through which the fabulous creature has been kept in
+remembrance by being constantly before us in the Royal Arms, which
+were settled at the Accession of George I. We owe the introduction of
+the Unicorn, however, to James I., who, as King of Scotland, bore two
+Unicorns, and coupled one with the English lion, when the two kingdoms
+were united.
+
+The position of the lion and Unicorn in the arms of our country seems to
+have given rise (naturally enough in the mind of one who was ignorant of
+heraldic decoration) to a nursery rhyme which most of us remember:--
+
+    "The Lion and the Unicorn
+      Were fighting for the crown;
+    The Lion beat the Unicorn
+      All round the town," &c.
+
+unless it alludes to a contest for dominion over the brute creation,
+which the "rebellious Unicorn," as Spenser calls it, seems to have waged
+with the tawny monarch.
+
+Spenser, in his "Faerie Queen," gives the following curious way of
+catching the Unicorn:--
+
+    "Like as a lyon, whose imperiall powre,
+    A prowd rebellious Unicorn defyes,
+    T'avoide the rash assault and wrathful stowre
+    Of his fiers foe, him a tree applyes,
+    And when him rousing in full course he spyes,
+
+    He slips aside; the whiles that furious beast
+    His precious home, sought of his enemyes,
+    Strikes in the stocke, ne thence can be releast.
+    But to the mighty victor yields a bounteous feast."
+
+Shakspeare, also ("Julius Cæsar," Act ii. scene 1), speaks of the
+supposed mode of entrapping them:--
+
+                    "For he loves to hear
+    That Unicorns may be betrayed with trees,
+    And bears with glasses, elephants with holes,
+    Lions with toils, and men with flatterers."
+
+We have no satisfactory reason for believing that man ever coexisted
+with Mastodons; otherwise Professor Owen's discovery of the retention of
+a single tusk only by the male gigantic Mastodon, might have afforded
+another form of Unicorn.
+
+Whatever the zoologists may have done towards extirpating the belief
+in the existence of the Unicorn, it is ever kept in sight by heraldry,
+which, with its animal absurdities, has contributed more to the
+propagation of error respecting the natural world than any other species
+of misrepresentation.
+
+
+
+
+THE MOLE AT HOME.
+
+
+The Mole, though generally a despised and persecuted animal, is
+nevertheless useful to the husbandman in being the natural drainer of
+his land and destroyer of worms. To other inferior animals he is a
+sapper and miner, forming for them their safe retreats and well-secured
+dormitories.
+
+The economy of the Mole has been much controverted among naturalists.
+It is found throughout the greater part of Europe. We are overrun with
+it in most parts of England and Wales; but it does not appear to have
+been found in the northern extremity of Scotland, and there is no record
+of its having been seen in the Orkney Isles, Zetland, or Ireland. Its
+most diligent and instructive historian is Henri Le Court, who, flying
+from the terrors that came in the train of the French Revolution,
+betook himself to the country, and from being the attendant on a Court,
+became the biographer of this humble animal. M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire,
+the celebrated French naturalist, visited Le Court for the purpose
+of testing his observations, and appears to have been charmed by the
+facility and ingenuity with which Le Court traced and demonstrated the
+subterraneous labours of this obscure worker in the dark.
+
+We shall first briefly describe the adaptation of its structure to its
+habits. The bony framework is set in motion by very powerful muscles,
+those of the chest and neck being most vigorous. The wide hand, which is
+the great instrument of action, and performs the offices of a pickaxe
+and shovel, is sharp-edged on its lower margin, and when clothed with
+the integuments the fingers are hardly distinguishable. The muzzle of
+the Mole is evidently a delicate organ of touch, as are also the large
+and broad hands and feet; and the tail has much sensitiveness to give
+notice to the animal of the approach of any attack from behind. Its
+taste and smell, especially the latter, are very sensitive. Its sight
+is almost rudimentary. The little eye is so hidden in the fur that its
+very existence was for a long time doubted. It appears to be designed
+for operating only as a warning to the animal on its emerging into the
+light; indeed, more acute vision would only have been an encumbrance.
+If the sight be imperfect, the sense of hearing is very acute, and the
+tympanum very large, though there is no external ear, perhaps because
+the earth assists considerably in vibration. The fore-feet are inclined
+sideways, so as to answer the use of hands, to scoop out the earth to
+form its habitation or pursue its prey, and to fling all the loose soil
+behind the animal. The breastbone in shape resembles a ploughshare.
+The skin is so tough as only to be cut by a very sharp knife. The hair
+is very short and close-set, and softer than the finest silk; colour
+black; some spotted and cream-coloured. This hair is yielding; had it
+been strong, as in the rat or mouse, it would doubly have retarded the
+progress of the creature; first by its resistance, and then acting as a
+brush, so as to choke up the galleries, by removing the loose earth from
+the sides and ceilings of the galleries.
+
+It is supposed that the verdant circles so often seen in grass ground,
+called by country people _fairy rings_, are owing to the operations of
+Moles: at certain seasons they perform their burrowings in circles,
+which, loosening the soil, gives the surface a greater fertility and
+rankness of grass than the other parts within or without the ring. The
+larger mole-hills denote the nests or dens of the Mole beneath.
+
+The feeling of the Mole is so acute that when casting up the earth, it
+is sensible of very gentle pressure; hence mole-catchers tread lightly
+when in quest of Moles; and unless this caution is used the Mole ceases
+its operation, and instantly retires. Again, so acute is the smell, that
+mole-catchers draw the body of a captured Mole through their traps and
+the adjoining runs and passages to remove all suspicious odours which
+might arise from the touch of their fingers.
+
+During summer the Mole runs in search of snails and worms in the
+night-time among the grass, which pursuit makes it the prey of owls. The
+Mole shows great art in skinning a worm, which it always does before it
+eats it, by stripping the skin from end to end, and squeezing out the
+contents of the body. It is doubtful whether any other animal exists
+which is obliged to eat at such short intervals as the Mole, ten or
+twelve hours appearing to be the maximum of its fasting; at the end
+of that time it dies. Cuvier tells us that if two Moles are shut up
+together without food, there will shortly be nothing left of the weakest
+but its skin, slit along the belly! Buffon accuses Moles of eating all
+the acorns of a newly-set soil. Its voracity makes the Mole a great
+drinker: a run is always formed to a pond or ditch as a reservoir; when
+it is too distant, the animal sinks little wells, which have sometimes
+been seen brimfull.
+
+We now return to Le Court's experiments with Moles, which are very
+interesting. To afford proof of the rapidity with which the Mole will
+travel along its passages, Le Court watched his opportunity, and when
+the animal was on its feed at one of the most distant points from its
+sanctuary or fortress, to which point the Mole's high road leads. Le
+Court placed along the course of that road, between the animal and
+the fortress, several little camp colours, so to speak, the staff of
+each being a straw, and the flag a bit of paper, at certain distances,
+the straws penetrating down into the passage. Near the end of this
+subterraneous road he inserted a horn, the mouthpiece of which stood
+out of the ground. When all was ready, Le Court blew a blast loud enough
+to frighten all the Moles within hearing. Down went the little flags in
+succession with astonishing velocity, as the terrified Mole, rushing
+along towards his sanctuary, came in contact with the flag-straws; and
+the spectators affirmed that the Mole's swiftness was equal to the speed
+of a horse at a good round trot.
+
+To test its amount of vision, Le Court took a spare water-pipe, or
+gutter, open at both ends. Into this pipe he introduced several Moles
+successively. Geoffroy St. Hilaire stood by to watch the result at the
+further end of the tube. As long as the spectators stood motionless the
+introduced Mole made the best of his way through the pipe and escaped;
+but if they moved, or even raised a finger, the Mole stopped, and then
+retreated. Several repetitions of this experiment produced the same
+results.
+
+In the domain of the Mole, the principal point is the habitation, or
+fortress, constructed under a considerable hillock raised in some secure
+place, often at the root of a tree, or under a bank. The dome of the
+fortress is of earth, beaten by the Mole-architect into a compact and
+solid state. Inside is formed a circular gallery at the base, which
+communicates with a smaller upper gallery by means of five passages.
+Within the lower gallery is the chamber or dormitory, which has access
+to the upper gallery by three passages. From this habitation extends
+the high road by which the proprietor reaches the opposite end of
+the encampment; the galleries open into this road, which the Mole is
+continually carrying out and extending in his search for food; this has
+been termed the _hunting-ground_. Another road extends, first downwards,
+and then up into the open road of the territory. Some eight or nine
+other passages open out from the external circular gallery. From the
+habitation a road is carried out, nearly straight, and connected with
+the encampment and the alleys leading to the hunting-ground which open
+into it on each side. In diameter the road exceeds the body of a Mole,
+but its size will not admit of two Moles passing each other. The walls,
+from the repeated pressure of the animal's sides, become smooth and
+compact. Sometimes a Mole will lay out a second or even a third road; or
+several individuals use one road in common, though they never trespass
+on each other's hunting-grounds.
+
+If two Moles should happen to meet in the same road, one must retreat
+into the nearest alley, unless they fight, when the weakest is often
+slain. In forming this tunnel the Mole's instinct drives it at a
+greater or less depth, according to the quality of the soil, or other
+circumstances. When it is carried under a road or stream, a foot and
+a-half of earth, or sometimes more, is left above it. Then does the
+little engineering Mole carry on the subterraneous works necessary for
+his support, travelling, and comfort; and his tunnels never fall in.
+The quality or humidity of the soils which regulates the abundance of
+earth-worms, determines the greater or less depth of the alleys; and
+when these are filled with stores of food the Mole works out branch
+alleys.
+
+The main road communicating with the hunting-grounds is of necessity
+passed through in the course of the day; and here the mole-catcher sets
+his traps to intercept the Mole between his habitation and the alley
+where he is carrying on his labours. Some mole-catchers will tell you
+the hours when the Moles move are nine and four; others that near the
+coast their movements are influenced by the tides. Besides the various
+traps which are set for Moles, they are sometimes taken by a man and a
+dog; when the latter indicates the presence of a Mole, the man spears
+the animal out as it moves in its run. Pointers will stop as steadily as
+at game, at the Moles, when they are straying on the surface.
+
+The Mole is a most voracious animal. Earthworms and the larvæ of insects
+are its favourite food; and it will eat mice, lizards, frogs, and even
+birds; but it rejects toads, even when pressed by hunger, deterred,
+probably, by the acrid secretions of their skin. Moles are essentially
+carnivorous; and when fed abundantly on vegetable substances they have
+died of hunger.
+
+During the season of love, at which time fierce battles are fought
+between the males, the male pursues the female with ardour through
+numerous runs wrought out with great rapidity. The attachment appears
+to be very strong in the Moles. Le Court often found a female taken in
+his trap and a male lying dead close to her. From four to five is the
+general number of young. The nest is distinct, usually distant from the
+habitation. It is constructed by enlarging and excavating the point
+where three or four passages intersect each other; and the bed of the
+nest is formed of a mass of young grass, root fibres, and herbage. In
+one nest Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Le Court counted two hundred and four
+young wheat-blades.
+
+M. St. Hilaire describes the pairings, or as he calls it, "the loves of
+the Moles." As soon as the Mole has finished the galleries he brings his
+mate along with him, and shuts her up in the bridal gallery, taking care
+to prevent the entrance of his rivals: in case of a fight they enlarge
+the part of the gallery where they are met; and the victory is decided
+in favour of him who first wounds his adversary before the ear. The
+female, during the fight, is shut up in the bridal gallery, so as to be
+unable to escape; for which purpose, however, she uses all her resources
+in digging, and attempts to get away by the side passages. Should she
+succeed the conqueror hastens to rejoin his faithless mate, and to
+bring her back into his galleries. This manoeuvre is repeated as often
+as other males enter the lists. At length the conqueror is recognised,
+and his mate becomes more docile. The pair work together and finish the
+galleries; after which the female digs alone for food. As soon as the
+galleries are formed, the male conducts his mate to a certain point, and
+from this time the female no longer digs in the solid earth, but towards
+the surface, advancing by merely separating the roots of the grass.
+
+The Mole is a great friend to the farmer; but there are places in which
+he is a public enemy. He is not a vegetable feeder, and he never roots
+up the growing corn in spring-time, except when he is after grubs,
+snails, and wire-worms. It has been calculated that two Moles destroy
+20,000 white worms in a year. He is very destructive to under drains;
+and where the land is low we are in danger of a deluge from his piercing
+holes in the drain-banks. Thus it would be madness not to extirpate
+Moles in those places where the waters, in drains or rivers, are above
+the level of the lands around, especially when the banks are made of
+sand or earth of loose texture.
+
+The persecution of Moles in cultivated countries amounts almost to a
+war of extermination. The numbers annually slaughtered are enormous.
+A mole-catcher, who had followed the craft for thirty-five years,
+destroyed from forty to fifty thousand Moles. But all Mole exterminators
+must yield to Le Court, who, in no large district, took, in five months,
+six thousand of them. Moles are good swimmers, and their bite is very
+sharp; their attacks are ferocious, and they keep their hold like a
+bull-dog.
+
+The Shrew Mole of North America resembles the European Mole in its
+habits. Dr. Goodman describes it as most active early in the morning,
+at mid-day, and in the evening; and they are well known in the country
+to have the custom of coming daily to the surface _exactly at noon_.
+We read of a captive Shrew Mole which ate meat, cooked or raw, drank
+freely, and was lively and playful, following the hand of his feeder by
+the scent, burrowing for a short distance in the loose earth, and after
+making a small circle, returning for more food. In eating he employed
+his flexible snout to thrust the food into his mouth, doubling it so as
+to force it directly backwards, as described in Dr. Richardson's "North
+American Zoology."
+
+James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, remarks, in his usual impressive
+manner:--"The most unnatural persecution that ever was raised in a
+country is that against the Mole--that innocent and blessed little
+pioneer, who enriches our pastures annually with the first top-dressing,
+dug with great pains and labour from the fattest of the soil beneath.
+The advantages of this top-dressing are so apparent that it is really
+amazing how our countrymen should have persisted, for nearly half a
+century, in the most manly and valiant endeavours to exterminate the
+Moles! If a hundred men and horses were employed on a pasture farm of
+from fifteen hundred to two thousand acres, in raising and driving
+manure for a top-dressing of that farm, they would not do it so
+effectually, so neatly, or so equally as the natural number of Moles. In
+June, July, and August, the Mole-hills are all spread by the crows and
+lambs--the former for food, and the latter in the evenings of warm days
+after a drought has set in. The late Duke of Buccleuch was the first who
+introduced Mole-catching into Scotland."
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT ANT-BEAR.
+
+
+A fine living specimen of this comparatively rare animal was first
+exhibited in the Zoological Society's gardens, in the Regent's-park,
+1853. It is stated to be the first specimen brought alive to England,
+and accordingly excited considerable attention. It was one of a pair,
+captured near the Rio Negro, in the southern province of Brazil, and
+shipped for England by some German travellers. The male died on the
+voyage; the female arrived in London in 1853, and was exhibited in
+Broad-street, St. Giles's, until purchased by the Zoological Society for
+the sum of 200_l._ The advantage of this live specimen to naturalists
+has been very great. Hitherto the examples engraved by Buffon and
+Shaw were both derived from stuffed specimens, and had the inevitable
+defects and shortcomings of such. Sir John Talbot Dillon, in his
+"Travels through Spain," published in 1780, states that a specimen of
+the Ant-Bear, from Buenos Ayres, was alive at Madrid in 1776: it is now
+stuffed and preserved in the Royal Cabinet of Natural History at Madrid.
+The persons who brought it from Buenos Ayres say it differs from the
+Ant-eater, which only feeds on emmets and other insects, whereas this
+would eat flesh, when cut in small pieces, to the amount of four or five
+pounds. From the snout to the extremity of the tail this animal is two
+yards in length, and his height is about two feet; the head very narrow,
+the nose long and slender. The tongue is so singular that it looks like
+a worm, and extends above sixteen inches. The body is covered with long
+hair of a dark brown, with white stripes on the shoulders; and when he
+sleeps, he covers his body with his tail. This account, it will be seen
+hereafter, corresponds very accurately with that of the animal purchased
+by the Zoological Society.
+
+[Illustration: THE GREAT ANT-BEAR.]
+
+Mr. Wallace, who travelled on the Amazon and Rio Negro, about the year
+1853, relates:--"The living specimen of this singular animal is a great
+rarity, even in its native country. In fact, there is not a city in
+Brazil where it would not be considered almost as much a curiosity as
+it is here. In the extensive forests of the Amazon the great Ant-eater
+is, perhaps, as abundant as in any part of South America; yet, during
+a residence there of more than four years, I never had an opportunity
+of seeing one. Once only I was nearly in at the death, finding a bunch
+of hairs from the tail of a specimen which had been killed (and eaten)
+a month previous to my arrival, at a village near the Capiquiare. In
+its native forests the creature feeds almost entirely on white ants,
+tearing open their nests with its powerful claws, and thrusting in its
+long and slender tongue, which, being probably mistaken for a worm,
+is immediately seized by scores of the inhabitants, who thus become
+an easy prey. The Indians, who also eat white ants, catch them in a
+somewhat similar manner, by pushing into the nest a grass-stalk, which
+the insects seize and hold on to most tenaciously. It may easily be
+conceived that such an animal must range over a considerable extent of
+country to obtain a plentiful supply of such food, which circumstance,
+as well as its extreme shyness and timidity, causes it to be but rarely
+met with, and still more rarely obtained alive."
+
+We have seen that the Ant-Bear lives exclusively upon ants, to procure
+which he tears open the hills, and when the ants flock out to defend
+their dwellings, draws over them his long, flexible tongue, covered
+with glutinous saliva, to which the ants consequently adhere; and he
+is said to repeat this operation twice in a second. "It seems almost
+incredible," says Azara, "that so robust and powerful an animal can
+procure sufficient sustenance from ants alone; but this circumstance has
+nothing strange in it, for those who are acquainted with the tropical
+parts of America, and have seen the enormous multitude of these insects,
+which swarm in all parts of the country to that degree that their hills
+often almost touch one another for miles together." The same author
+informs us that domestic Ant-Bears were occasionally kept by different
+persons in Paraguay, and that they had even been sent alive to Spain,
+being fed upon bread-and-milk mixed with morsels of flesh minced very
+small. Like all animals which live upon insects, the Ant-eaters are
+capable of sustaining a total deprivation of nourishment for an almost
+incredible time.
+
+The Great Ant-Bear's favourite resorts are low, swampy savannahs, along
+the banks of rivers and stagnant ponds; also frequenting humid forests,
+but never climbing trees, as falsely reported by Buffon. His pace is
+slow and heavy, though, when hard pressed, he increases his rate, yet
+his greatest velocity never half equals the ordinary running of a man.
+When pressed too hard, or urged to extremity, he turns obstinate,
+sits upon his hind-quarters like a bear, and defends himself with his
+powerful claws. Like that animal, his usual and only mode of assault is
+by seizing his adversary with his fore-paws, wrapping his arms round
+him, and endeavouring, by this means, to squeeze him to death. His great
+strength and powerful muscles would easily enable him to accomplish his
+purpose in this respect, even against the largest animals of his native
+forests, were it but guided by ordinary intelligence, or accompanied
+with a common degree of activity; but in these qualities there are
+few animals indeed who do not greatly surpass the Ant-Bear; so that
+the different stories handed down by writers on natural history from
+one to another, and copied, without question, into the histories and
+descriptions of this animal, may be regarded as pure fictions. "It is
+supposed," says Don Felix d'Azara, "that the jaguar himself dares not
+attack the Ant-Bear, and that, if pressed by hunger, or under some other
+strong excitement, he does so, the Ant-Bear embraces and hugs him so
+tightly as very soon to deprive him of life, not even relaxing his hold
+for hours after life has been extinguished in his assailant. Such is
+the manner in which the Ant-eater defends himself; but it is not to be
+believed that his utmost efforts could prevail against the jaguar, who,
+by a single bite, or blow of his paw, could kill the Ant-eater before he
+was prepared for resistance, so slow are his motions, even in an extreme
+case; and, being unable to leap or turn with ordinary rapidity, he is
+forced to act solely upon the defensive. The flesh of the Ant-eater is
+esteemed a delicacy by the Indians; and, though black, and of a strong
+musky flavour, is sometimes even met with at the tables of Europeans."
+
+The habits of the Great Ant-Bear in captivity have been described
+scientifically yet popularly, from the Zoological Society's specimen,
+by Professor Owen, who writes:--"When we were introduced to this, the
+latest novelty at the noble vivarium in the Regent's-park, we found the
+animal busy sucking and licking up--for his feeding is a combination
+of the two actions--the contents of a basin of squashed eggs. The
+singularly long and slender head, which looks more like a slightly bent
+proboscis, or some such appendage to a head, was buried in the basin,
+and the end of the lithe or flexible tongue, like a rat's tail, or a
+writhing black worm, was ever and anon seen coiling up the sides of
+the basin, as it was rapidly protruded and withdrawn. The yellow yolk
+was dripping with the abundant ropy saliva secreted during the feeding
+process from the exceedingly small terminal mouth; for the jaws are not
+slit open, as in the ordinary construction of the mouths of quadrupeds,
+and the head, viewed sideways, seems devoid of mouth; but this important
+aperture--by some deemed the essential character of an animal--is a
+small orifice or slit at the end of the tubular muzzle, just being
+enough, apparently, to let the vermiform tongue slip easily in and
+out. The tongue, the keeper told us, was sometimes protruded as far as
+fourteen inches from the mouth."
+
+By the Qjuarani Indians the beast is known by a name which is, in
+Spanish, "little mouth." The Portuguese and Spanish peons call it by a
+name equivalent to "Ant-Bear." In the Zoological Catalogue the animal
+is denominated _Myrmocophaga jubata_, or the "Maned Ant-eater." This
+appellation would very well suit the animal if, as most spectators
+commonly imagine at first sight, its head was where its tail is,
+for the tail is that part of the animal on which the hair is most
+developed, after the fashion of a mane; whilst the actual head appears
+much more like a tail, of a slender, almost naked, stiff, rounded
+kind. The body is wholly covered by long, coarse hair, resembling hay,
+rapidly lengthening from the neck backwards to six or eight inches,
+and extending on the tail from ten to eighteen inches. The colour is
+greyish brown, with an oblique black band, bordered with white, on
+each shoulder. The animal measures about four feet from the snout
+to the root of the tail; and the tail, three feet long, resembles a
+large screen of coarse hair. When the animal lies down, it bends its
+head between its fore legs, slides these forward, and crosses them in
+front of the occiput, sinks its haunches by bending its hind legs and
+bringing them close to the fore feet; then, leaning against the wall
+of its den, on one side, it lays the broad tail over the other exposed
+side of the body, by the side bend of that part, like the movement of
+a door or screen. Nothing is now visible of the animal but the long
+coarse hair of its _natural and portable blanket_. When it is enjoying
+its siesta, you cannot form any conception of its very peculiar shape
+and proportions; an oblong heap of a coarse, dry, _greyish thatch_ is
+all that is visible. When, however, the keeper enters the den with any
+new dainty, as cockroaches, crickets, maggots, or meal-worms, to tempt
+the huge insect-devourer, the quick-hearing animal unveils its form by
+a sweeping movement of the thatch outwards, the tail that supports it
+rotating, as if joined by a kind of door-hinge to the body; the head is
+drawn out from between the fore limbs; the limbs are extended, and the
+entire figure of this most grotesque of quadrupeds stalks forth. The
+limbs are short; the fore limbs grow rather thicker to their stumpy
+ends, which look as if the feet had been amputated. The four toes, with
+their claws, are bent inwards, and are of very unequal length. This is
+the most singular part of the animal: it is also the most formidable
+member, and, indeed, bears the sole weapon of defence the beast
+possesses. The innermost toe, answering to the thumb on the fore limb of
+the neighbouring chimpanzee, is the shortest. A fifth toe seems to be
+buried in the outside callosity, on which the animal rests its stumpy
+feet while walking. At the back part of the sole, or palm, of the fore
+foot, is a second large callosity, which receives the point of the great
+claw in its usual state of inward inflection. Against this callosity the
+animal presses the claw when it seizes any object therewith; and Azara,
+as we have seen, avers that nothing can make the Ant-Bear relax its
+grasp of an object so seized.
+
+With respect to the jaguar being sometimes found dead in the grasp of
+the Great Ant-eater, Professor Owen observes that its muscular force
+resembles that of the cold-blooded reptiles in the force and endurance
+of the contractile action; and, like the reptiles, the Sloths and
+Ant-Bears can endure long fasts.
+
+Woe to the unlucky or heedless aggressor whose arm or leg may be seized
+by the Ant-Bear. The strength of the grasp sometimes breaks the bone.
+The Ant-Bear never voluntarily lets go, and the limb so grasped can be
+with difficulty extricated, even after the animal has been killed. To
+put the beast, however, _hors de combat_, no other weapon is needed
+than a stout stick. "With this," says Azara. "I have killed many by
+dealing them blows on the head, and with the same security as if I had
+struck the trunk of a tree. With a mouth so small, and formed as already
+described, the Ant-Bear cannot bite; and, if it could, it would be
+useless, for it has no teeth."
+
+"Like a lawyer," says Professor Owen, "the tongue is the chief organ
+by which this animal obtains its livelihood in its natural habitat.
+The warmer latitudes of South America, to which part of the world the
+Ant-Bear is peculiar, abound in forests and luxuriant vegetation; the
+insects of the ant and termite tribes that subsist on wood, recent
+or decaying, equally abound. With one link in the chain of organic
+independencies is interlocked another; and as the surplus vegetation
+sustains the surplus insect population, so a peculiar form of mammalian
+life finds the requisite conditions of existence in the task of
+restraining the undue multiplication of the wood-consuming insects."
+
+The number of male Ant-eaters is supposed to be considerably smaller
+than that of the females, which circumstance favours the inference that
+the extinction of the species, like those of the _edentata_ in general,
+is determined upon.[6]
+
+Large as the Ant-Bear is in comparison with the animals on which it
+naturally feeds, there appear to have been still larger Ant-Bears in the
+old times of South America. Fossil remains of nearly allied quadrupeds
+have been detected in both the fresh-water deposits and bone-caves of
+the post-pliocene period in Buenos Ayres and Brazil.
+
+In examining the fossil remains has been found evidence that the nervous
+matter destined to put in action the muscular part of the tongue was
+equal to half of that nervous matter which influences the whole muscular
+system of a man. No other known living animal offers any approximation
+to the peculiar proportions of the lingual nerves of the fossil animal
+in question except the Great Ant-eater; but the size of the animal
+indicated by the fossil was three times that of our Ant-eater. For this
+strange monster, thus partially restored from the ruins of a former
+world, Professor Owen proposes the name of _Glossotherium_, which
+signifies tongue-beast.
+
+Evidence of such a creature has been given by Dr. Lund, the Danish
+naturalist, resident in Brazil: among the fossil remains here (limestone
+caves of the province Minas) he discovered traces of the Great
+Ant-eater, which, however, are too imperfect to enable us to determine
+more accurately its relation to existing species. The fragments indicate
+an animal the size of an ox! Were the insect prey of these antediluvian
+Ant-eaters correspondingly gigantic?
+
+Two circumstances very remarkable were observed in the Zoological
+Society's Great Ant-eater: the hinge-like manner in which the animal
+worked its tail when it had laid itself down, throwing it over the
+whole of its body and enveloping itself completely; and the peculiar
+vibratory motion of the long vermiform tongue when protruded from the
+mouth in search of food. The tongue is not shot forth and retracted,
+like that of the chameleon, but protruded gradually, _vibrating_ all the
+time, and in the same condition withdrawn into the mouth.
+
+Another species of Ant-eater is the _Tamandua_, much inferior in size to
+the Great Ant-Bear, being scarcely so large as a good sized cat, whilst
+the other exceeds the largest greyhound in length. The Tamandua inhabits
+the thick primæval forests of tropical America, and is never found on
+the ground, but exclusively in trees, where it lives upon termites,
+honey, and, according to Azara, even bees, which in those countries
+form their hives among the loftiest branches of the forest; and having
+no sting, they are more readily despoiled of their honey than their
+congeners of our own climate. When about to sleep it hides its muzzle in
+the fur of its breast, falls on its belly, letting its fore-feet hang
+down on each side, and wrapping the whole tightly round with its tail.
+The female, as in the Great Ant-eater, has but two pectoral mammæ, and
+produces but a single cub at a birth, which she carries about with her
+on her shoulders for the first three or four months. _Tamandua_ is the
+Portuguese name; the French and English call it _fourmiller_ and Little
+Ant-Bear.
+
+The latter are the names of a still smaller species, which does not
+exceed the size of the European squirrel. Its native country is Guayana
+and Brazil. It is called in Surinam _kissing-hand_, as the inhabitants
+pretend it will never eat, at least when caught, but that it only licks
+its paws in the same manner as the bear; that all trials to make it eat
+have proved in vain, and that it soon dies in confinement. Von Sack, in
+a voyage to Surinam, had two of these Ant-eaters which would not eat
+eggs, honey, meat, or ants; but when a wasps'-nest was brought they
+pulled out the nymphæ and ate them eagerly, sitting in the posture of a
+squirrel. Von Sack showed this phenomenon to many of the inhabitants of
+Surinam, who all assured him that it was the first time they had ever
+known that species of animal to take any nourishment.
+
+Von Sack describes his Ant-eaters as often sleeping all the day long
+curled together, and fastened by their prehensile tails to one of the
+perches of the cage. When touched they raised themselves on their
+hind-legs, and struck with their fore-paws at the object which disturbed
+them, like the hammer of a clock striking a bell, with both paws at the
+same time, and with a great deal of force. They never attempted to run
+away, but were always ready for defence when attacked.
+
+The discovery of the true nature of the food of this species is
+particularly desirable, and may enable us to have the animal brought
+alive to this country, a thing which we believe has not been attempted;
+and which, if attempted, has certainly never succeeded. To procure or
+carry ants during a long sea-voyage is impracticable, but the larvæ of
+wasps can be obtained in any quantity, and will keep for months; so that
+the most serious difficulty to the introduction of the little Ant-eater
+being thus removed, it would only require to be protected from the
+effects of a colder climate, which may be as easily done in its case as
+in that of other South America mammalia.
+
+The Porcupine Ant-eater of New Holland, now very uncommon in New South
+Wales, is regarded, of its size, the strongest quadruped in existence.
+It burrows readily. Its mode of eating is very curious, the tongue being
+used sometimes in the manner of that of the chameleon, and at other
+times in that in which a mower uses his scythe, the tongue being curved
+laterally, and the food, as it were, swept into the mouth.
+
+The original Great Ant-Bear, received at the Gardens of the Zoological
+Society on the 29th of September, 1853, died on the 6th of July, 1854.
+There are now two of these animals living in the Gardens, one of which
+is a remarkably fine specimen.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[6] Proceedings of the Zoological Society.
+
+
+
+
+CURIOSITIES OF BATS.
+
+
+These harmless and interesting little animals have not only furnished
+objects of superstitious dread to the ignorant, but have proved to the
+poet and the painter a fertile source of images of gloom and terror.
+The strange combination of character of beast and bird, which they were
+believed to possess, is supposed to have given to Virgil the idea of the
+Harpies.
+
+Aristotle says but little about the Bat; and Pliny is considered to
+have placed it among the Birds, none of which, he observes, with the
+exception of the Bat, have teeth. Again, he notices it as the only
+winged animal that suckles its young, and remarks on its embracing its
+two little ones, and flying about with them. In this arrangement he was
+followed by the older of the more modern naturalists. Belon, doubtingly,
+places it at the end of the Night-birds; and the Bat, _Attaleph_ (bird
+of darkness), was one of the unclean animals of the Hebrews; and in
+Deuteronomy xxv. 18, it is placed among the forbidden birds.
+
+Even up to a late period Bats were considered as forming a link between
+quadrupeds and birds. The common language of our own ancestors, however,
+indicates a much nearer approach to the truth in the notions entertained
+by the people than can be found in the lucubrations of the learned.
+The words _rere-mouse_ and _flitter-mouse_, the old English names for
+the Bat--the former derived from the Anglo-Saxon "aræan," to raise, or
+rear up, and mus; the latter from the Belgic, signifying "flying or
+flittering mouse,"--show that in their minds these animals were always
+associated with the idea of quadrupeds. The first of these terms is
+still used in English heraldry; though it may have ceased to belong to
+the language of the country. "The word _flitter-mouse_," says Mr. Bell,
+"sometimes corrupted into _flintymouse_, is the common term for the Bat
+in some parts of the kingdom, particularly in that part of the county
+of Kent in which the language, as well as the aspect and names of the
+inhabitants, retain more of the Saxon character than will be found,
+perhaps, in any other part of England.
+
+Ben Jonson has--
+
+    "Once a Bat, and ever a Bat! a rere-mouse,
+    And bird o'twilight, he has broken thrice.
+
+          .         .               .
+
+    Come, I will see the flicker-mouse, my fly."
+
+                    _Play._--_New Inn._
+
+The same author uses flitter-mouse also:--
+
+    "And giddy flitter-mice, with leather wings."
+
+                    _Sad Shepherd._
+
+Calmet describes the Bat as an animal having the body of a mouse and the
+wings of a bird; but he erroneously adds, "It never grows tame."
+
+Some persons are surprised at Bats being classed by naturalists, not
+with birds, but quadrupeds. They have, in fact, no other claim to be
+considered as birds than that of their being able to suspend and move
+themselves in the air, like some species of fish, but to a greater
+degree. They suckle their young, are covered with hair, and have
+no wings, but arms and lengthened fingers or toes furnished with a
+membrane, by which they are enabled to fly.
+
+Sir Charles Bell, in his valuable treatise on the "Hand," considers
+the skeleton of the Bat as one of the best examples of the moulding
+of the bones of the extremity to correspond with the condition of the
+animal. Contemplating this extraordinary application of the bones of the
+extremity, and comparing them with those of the wing of a bird, we might
+say that this is an awkward attempt--"a failure." But, before giving
+expression to such an opinion, we must understand the objects required
+in this construction. It is not a wing intended merely for flight, but
+one which, while it raises the animal, is capable of receiving a new
+sensation, or sensations, in that exquisite degree, so as almost to
+constitute a new sense. On the fine web of the Bat's wing nerves are
+distributed, which enable it to avoid objects in its flight during the
+night, when both eyes and ears fail. Could the wing of a bird, covered
+with feathers, do this? Here, then, we have another example of the
+necessity of taking every circumstance into consideration before we
+presume to criticise the ways of nature. It is a lesson of humility. In
+this animal the bones are light and delicate; and whilst they are all
+marvellously extended, the phalanges of the fingers are elongated so
+as hardly to be recognised, obviously for the purpose of sustaining a
+membranous web, and to form a wing.
+
+In 1839 there was received at the Surrey Zoological Gardens, from
+Sumatra, a specimen of the Vampire Bat. This was a young male; the body
+was black, and the membranous wing, in appearance, resembled fine black
+kid. He was rarely seen at the bottom of his cage, but suspended himself
+from the roof or bars of the cage, head downwards, his wings wrapped
+round his body; when spread, these wings extended nearly two feet.
+Although this specimen was the Vampire Bat to which so many bloodthirsty
+feats have been attributed, his appearance was by no means ferocious;
+he was active, yet docile, and the only peculiarity to favour belief in
+his blood-sucking propensity was his long pointed tongue. The species
+has popularly been accused of destroying, not only the large mammiferous
+animals, but also men, when asleep, by sucking their blood. "The truth,"
+says Cuvier, in his "Regne Animal," "appears to be, that the Vampire
+inflicts only small wounds, which may, probably, become inflammatory and
+gangrenous from the influence of climate." In this habit, however, may
+have originated the celebrated Vampire superstition. Lord Byron, in his
+beautiful poem of "The Giaour," thus symbolises the tortures that await
+the "false infidel:"--
+
+    "First, on earth as Vampire sent,
+    My corse shall from its tomb be rent;
+    Then ghastly haunt thy native place,
+    And suck the blood of all thy race;
+    There, from thy daughter, sister, wife,
+    At midnight drain the stream of life;
+    Yet loathe the banquet which perforce
+    Must feed thy livid living corse.
+    Thy victims, ere they yet expire,
+    Shall know the demon for their sire,
+    As cursing thee, thou cursing them,
+    Thy flowers are withered on the stem.
+    But one that for thy crime must fall,
+    The youngest, most beloved of all,
+    Shall bless thee with _a father's_ name--
+    That word shall wrap thy heart in flame!
+    Yet must thou end thy task, and mark
+    Her cheek's last tinge, her eye's last spark,
+    And the last glassy glance must view
+    Which freezes o'er its lifeless blue;
+    Then with unhallowed hand shall tear
+    The tresses of her yellow hair,
+    Of which in life a lock, when shorn,
+    Affection's fondest pledge was worn,
+    But now is borne away by thee,
+    Memorial of thine agony!
+    Wet with thine one best blood shall drip
+    Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip;
+    Then stalking to thy sullen grave,
+    Go, and with Gouls and Afrits rave;
+    Till there in horror shrink away
+    From spectre more accursed than they!"
+
+In a note, the noble poet tells us:--"The Vampire superstition is still
+general in the Levant." Honest Tournefort tells a long story, which Mr.
+Southey, in the notes on "Thalaba," quotes, about these Vardoulacha,
+as he calls them. "I recollect a whole family being terrified by the
+screams of a child, which they imagined must proceed from such a
+visitation. The Greeks never mention the word without horror."
+
+Bishop Heber describes the Vampire Bat of India as a very harmless
+creature, entirely different from the formidable idea entertained of it
+in England. "It only eats fruit and vegetables; indeed, its teeth are
+not indicative of carnivorous habits; and from blood it turns away when
+offered to it. During the daytime it is, of course, inert; but at night
+it is lively, affectionate, and playful, knows its keeper, but has no
+objection to the approach and touch of others."
+
+Mr. Westerton, the traveller, when speaking, in his "Wanderings," of the
+Vampire of South America, says:--"There are two species in Demerara,
+both of which suck living animals; one is rather larger than the common
+Bats, the other measures above two feet from wing to wing, extended. So
+gently does this nocturnal surgeon draw the blood, that instead of being
+roused, the patient is lulled into a profound sleep." The large Vampire
+sucks men, commonly attacking the toes; the smaller seems to confine
+itself chiefly to birds.
+
+Captain Stedman, who states that he was bitten by a Bat, thus describes
+the operation:--"Knowing by instinct that the person they intend to
+attack is in a sound slumber, they generally alight near the feet,
+where, while the creature continues fanning with its enormous wings,
+which keeps one cool, he bites a piece out of the tip of the great toe,
+so very small indeed that the head of a pin would scarcely be received
+into the wound, which is, consequently, not painful; yet through this
+orifice he continues to suck the blood until he is obliged to disgorge.
+He then begins again, and thus continues sucking and disgorging until
+he is scarcely able to fly; and the sufferer has been often known to
+sleep from time into eternity. Having applied tobacco-ashes as the best
+remedy, and washed the gore from myself and my hammock, I observed
+several small heaps of congealed blood all round the place where I had
+lain upon the ground, on examining which the surgeon judged that I had
+lost at least twelve or fourteen ounces during the night."
+
+Lesson, in 1827, says:--"The single American species of Bat is
+celebrated by the fables with which they have accompanied its history.
+That Bats suck the blood of animals as well as the juices of succulent
+fruits zoologists are agreed. The rough tongue of one genus was, I
+suppose, to be employed for abrading the skin, to enable the animal
+to suck the part abraded; but zoologists are now agreed that the
+supposition is groundless. It is more than probable that the celebrated
+Vampire superstition and the blood-sucking qualities attributed to the
+Bat have some connection with each other."
+
+Bat-fowling is mentioned by Shakspeare. This is the mode of taking
+Bats in the night-time, while they are at roost, upon perches, trees,
+or hedges. They light torches or straw, and then beat the bushes, upon
+which the Bats, flying to the flames, are caught, either with nets or
+otherwise.
+
+Bat-fowling, or Bat-folding, is effected by the use of a net, called a
+trammel-net, and is practised at night. The net should be made of the
+strongest and finest twine, and extended between two poles about ten
+feet high, tapering to a point at the top, and meeting at the top of
+the net. The larger ends are to be held by the persons who take the
+management of the net, and who, by stretching out the arms, keep the net
+extended to the utmost, opposite the hedge in which the Bats or birds
+are supposed to be. Another of the party carries a lantern upon a pole
+at a short distance behind the centre of the net. One or two others
+place themselves on the opposite side of the hedge, and by beating it
+with sticks disturb the Bats or birds, which, being alarmed, fly towards
+the light, but are interrupted in their flight by the net which is
+immediately _folded_ upon them, often fifteen or twenty in number. This
+sport cannot be followed with much success except when the night is very
+dark, or until very late in the autumn, when the trees, having lost
+their leaves, the Bats or birds are driven for shelter to the hollies,
+yews, hayricks, &c.
+
+We remember reading, in the "Philosophical Magazine," in 1836, a curious
+account of the habits of a long-eared Bat, a living specimen of which
+was given to the children of Mr. De Carle Sowerby, the naturalist. "We
+constructed," says Mr. Sowerby, "a cage for him, by covering a box with
+gauze, and making a round hole in the side, fitted with a phial cork.
+When he was awake, we fed him with flies, introduced through this hole,
+and thus kept him for several weeks. The animal soon became familiar,
+and immediately a fly was presented alive at the hole, he would run or
+fly from any part of the cage, and seize it in our fingers; but a dead
+or quiet fly he would never touch. At other times, dozens of flies and
+grasshoppers were left in his cage, and, waking him by their noise, he
+dexterously caught them as they hopped or flew about, but uniformly
+disregarded them while they were at rest. The cockroach, hard beetles,
+and caterpillars he refused.
+
+"As we became still more familiar, our new friend was invited to join
+in our evening amusements, to which he contributed his full share
+by flitting round the room, at times settling upon our persons, and
+permitting us to handle and caress him. He announced his being awake
+by a shrill chirp, which was more acute than that of the cricket. Now
+was the proper time for feeding him. I before stated that he only took
+his food alive. It was observed that not only was motion necessary, but
+that generally some noise on the part of the fly was required to induce
+him to accept it; and this fact was soon discovered by the children,
+who were entertained by his taking flies from their fingers as he flew
+by them, before he was bold enough to settle upon their hands to
+devour his victims. They quickly improved upon this discovery, and, by
+imitating the booming of a bee, induced the Bat, directed by the sound,
+to settle upon their faces, wrapping his wings round their lips, and
+searching for the expected fly. We observed that, if he took a fly while
+on the wing, he frequently settled to masticate it; and, when he had
+been flying about a long time, he would rest upon a curtain, pricking
+his ears, and turning his head in all directions, when, if a fly were
+made to buzz, or the sound imitated, he would proceed directly to the
+spot, even on the opposite side of the room, guided, it would appear,
+entirely by the ear. Sometimes he took his victim in his mouth, even
+though it was not flying; at other times he inclosed it in his wings,
+with which he formed a kind of bag-net. This was his general plan when
+in his cage, or when the fly was held in our fingers, or between our
+lips."
+
+From these observations Mr. Sowerby concludes that many of the movements
+of the Bat upon the wing are directed by his exquisite sense of hearing.
+May not the sensibility of this organ be naturally greater in these
+animals, whose organs of vision are too susceptible to bear daylight,
+when those organs, from their nature, would necessarily be of most
+service?--such as the cat, who hunts by the ear, and the mole, who,
+feeding in the dark recesses of his subterranean abode, is very sensible
+of the approach of danger, and expert in avoiding it. In the latter
+case, large external ears are not required, because sound is well
+conveyed by solids, and along narrow cavities. In the cases of many
+Bats, and of owls, the external ears are remarkably developed. Cats
+combine a quickness of sight with acute hearing. They hunt by the ear,
+but they follow their prey by the eye. Some Bats are said to feed upon
+fruits: have they the same delicacy of hearing, feeling, &c., as others?
+
+Mr. Sowerby has further described the singular mode adopted by the
+long-eared Bat in capturing his prey. The flying apparatus is extended
+from the hind legs to the tail, forming a large bag or net, not unlike
+two segments of an umbrella, the legs and tail being the ribs. The Bat,
+having caught the fly, instead of eating it at once, generally covers it
+with his body, and, by the aid of his arms, &c., forces it into his bag.
+He then puts his head down under his body, withdraws the fly from his
+bag, and leisurely devours it. Mr. Sowerby once saw an unwary bluebottle
+walk beneath the body of the apparently sleeping Bat into the sensitive
+bag, in which it was immediately imprisoned. White, of Selborne,
+speaking of a tame Bat, alludes to the above described action, which
+he compares to that of a beast of prey, but says nothing respecting
+the bag. Bell, in his "British Quadrupeds," says that the interfemoral
+membrane of Bats "is probably intended to act as a sort of rudder, in
+rapidly changing the course of the animal in the pursuit of its insect
+food. In a large group of foreign Bats, which feed on fruit or other
+vegetable substances, as well as in some of carnivorous habits, but
+whose prey is of a less active character, this part is either wholly
+wanting or much circumscribed in extent and power." May it not be, asks
+Mr. Sowerby, that they do not require an entomological bag-net?
+
+The wing of the Bat is commonly spoken of as of leather; that it is an
+insensible piece of stuff--the leather of a glove or of a lady's shoe;
+but nothing can be further from the truth. If one were to select an
+organ of the most exquisite delicacy and sensibility, it would be the
+Bat's wing. It is anything but leather, and is, perhaps, the most acute
+organ of touch that can be found.
+
+Bats are supposed to perceive external objects without coming actually
+in contact with them, because in their rapid and irregular flight,
+amidst various surrounding bodies, they never fly against them; yet, to
+some naturalists, it does not appear that the senses of hearing, seeing,
+or smelling serve them on these occasions, for they avoid any obstacles
+with equal certainty when the eye, ear, and nose are closed: hence has
+been ascribed a _sixth sense_ to these animals. The nerves of the wing
+are large and numerous, and distributed in a minute network between the
+integuments. The impulse of the air against this part may possibly be
+so modified by the objects near which the animal passes as to indicate
+their situation and nature. The Bat tribe fly by means of the fingers of
+the fore feet, the thumb excepted, being, in these animals, longer than
+the whole body; and between them is stretched a thin membrane, or web,
+for flying. It is probable that, in the action of flight, the air, when
+struck by this wing, or very sensitive hand, impresses a sensation of
+heat, cold, mobility, and resistance on that organ, which indicates to
+the animal the existence or absence of obstacles which would interrupt
+its progress. In this manner blind men discover by their hands, and
+even by the skin of their faces, the proximity of a wall, door of a
+house, or side of a street, even without the assistance of touch, and
+merely by the sensation which the difference in the resistance of the
+air occasions. Hence they are as little capable of walking on the ground
+as apes with their hands, or sloths with their hooked claws, which are
+calculated for climbing.
+
+In a certain kind of Bat, the _Nycteris_, there exists a power of
+inflation to such a degree that, when inflated, the animal looks,
+according to Geoffroy St. Hilaire, like a _little balloon_ fitted
+with wings, a head, and feet. It is filled with air through the
+cheek-pouches, which are perforated at the bottom, so as to communicate
+with the spaces of the skin to be filled. When the Bat wishes to
+inflate, it draws in its breath, closes its nostrils, and transmits the
+air through the perforations of the cheek-pouches to the spaces; and the
+air is prevented from returning by the action of a muscle which closes
+those openings, and by valves of considerable size on the neck and back.
+
+There was formerly a vulgar opinion that Bats, when down on a flat
+surface, could not get on the wing again, by rising with great ease
+from the floor; but White saw a Bat run, with more dispatch than he
+was aware of, though in a most ridiculous and grotesque manner. The
+adroitness with which this Bat sheared off the wings of flies, which
+were always rejected, was very amusing. He did not refuse raw flesh when
+offered; so that the notion that Bats go down chimneys, and gnaw men's
+bacon, seems no improbable story.
+
+Mr. George Daniell describes a female Bat, who took her food with an
+action similar to that of a dog. The animal took considerable pains
+in cleaning herself, parting the hair on either side, from head to
+tail, and forming a straight line along the middle of the back. The
+membrane of the wings was cleaned by forcing the nose through the folds,
+and thereby expanding them. This Bat fed freely, and at some times
+voraciously, the quantity exceeding half an ounce, although the weight
+of the animal itself was not more than ten drams.
+
+The _Kalong_ Bat of the Javanese is extremely abundant in the lower
+parts of Java, and uniformly lives in society. The more elevated
+districts are not visited by it. "Numerous individuals," says Dr.
+Hornfield, "select a large tree, and, suspending themselves with the
+claws of their posterior extremities to the naked branches, often in
+companies of several hundreds, afford to a stranger a very singular
+spectacle. A species of ficus (fig-tree), resembling the _ficus
+religiosa_ of India, affords them a very favourite retreat, and the
+extended branches of one of these are sometimes covered by them. They
+pass the greater portion of the day in sleep, hanging motionless, ranged
+in succession, with the head downwards, the membrane contracted about
+the body, and often in close contact. They have little resemblance to
+living beings; and, by a person not accustomed to their economy, are
+readily mistaken for a part of the tree, or for a fruit of uncommon size
+suspended from its branches."
+
+In general, these societies are silent during the day; but if they are
+disturbed, or a contention arises among them, they emit sharp, piercing
+shrieks; and their awkward attempts to extricate themselves, when
+oppressed by the light of the sun, exhibit a ludicrous spectacle. Soon
+after sunset they gradually quit their hold, and pursue their nocturnal
+flight in quest of food. They direct their course by an unerring
+instinct to the forests, villages, and plantations, attacking and
+devouring every kind of fruit, from the abundant and useful cocoa-nut,
+which surrounds the dwellings of the meanest peasantry, to the rare and
+most delicate productions which are cultivated by princes and chiefs of
+distinction. Various methods are employed to protect the orchards and
+gardens. Delicate fruits are secured by a loose net or basket, skilfully
+constructed of split bamboo, without which precaution little valuable
+fruit would escape the ravages of the _Kalong_. There are few situations
+in the lower part of Java in which this night wanderer is not constantly
+observed. As soon as the light of the sun has retired, one animal is
+seen to follow the other at a small but irregular distance, and this
+accession continues uninterrupted till dark:--
+
+            "The night came on apace,
+    And falling dews bewet around the place;
+    The bat takes airy rounds, on leathern wings,
+    And the hoarse owl his woful dirges sings."
+
+                    Gay's "_Pastoral III_."
+
+Bats of the ordinary size are very numerous in Jamaica. They are found
+in mills and old houses. They do great mischief in gardens, where they
+eat the green peas, opening the pod over each pea, and removing it very
+dexterously.
+
+Gilbert White, of Selborne, first noticed a large species of Bat, which
+he named _altivolans_, from its manner of feeding high in the air. In
+the extent of its wings it measured 14-1/2 inches; and it weighed,
+when entirely full, one ounce and one drachm. It is found in numbers
+together, so many as 185 having been taken in one night from the eaves
+of Queens' College, Cambridge. In the Northern Zoological Gallery of the
+British Museum are representatives of the several species of Bats, all
+bearing a family resemblance to each other. In England alone there are
+eighteen known species. Here is the curious leaf-nosed Bat, from Brazil,
+supposed to excel in the sense of smell; also, the Vampire, or large
+blood-sucking Bat, from the same country; and the different kinds of
+fruit-eating Bats, found in America and Australia, and sometimes called
+flying foxes, on account of their great size. The Bats of temperate
+climates remain torpid during the winter. Gay has these lines:--
+
+    "Where swallows in the winter season keep;
+    And here the drowsy bat and dormouse sleep."
+
+Young Bats have been taken, when hovering near the ground, by throwing
+handfuls of sand, but they rarely live in confinement: they often die
+within a week after their capture. A Bat, taken in Elgin, gave birth to
+a young one, which was for two days suckled by its parent. Before she
+reached the age of three days the young bat died, and the parent only
+survived another day to mourn her loss. Sometimes females, when taken,
+have young ones clinging to their breast, in the act of sucking; and the
+female can fly with ease, though two little ones are attached to her,
+which weigh nearly as much as the parent.
+
+To return to an exaggeration of a famous old traveller. In "Purchas his
+Pilgrimage," the materials for which he borrowed from above thirteen
+hundred authors, when speaking of the island of Madura, in the South of
+India, he says:--"In these partes are Battes as big as Hennes, which the
+people roast and eat."
+
+
+
+
+THE HEDGEHOG.
+
+
+Of this animal some strange things are recorded. It is placed by Cuvier
+at the head of the insect-devouring Mammifera. It is found in Europe,
+Africa, and India. Its body is covered with strong and sharp prickles,
+and by the help of a muscle it can contract itself into a ball, and so
+withdraw its whole underpart, head, belly, and legs, within this thicket
+of prickles:
+
+    "Like Hedgehogs, which
+    Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount
+    Their pricks at my foot-fall."--Shakspeare's "_Tempest_."
+
+Sir Thomas Browne, in his "Vulgar Errors," has this odd conceit:--"Few
+have belief to swallow, or hope enough to experience, the collyrium of
+Albertus; that is, to make one see in the dark: yet thus much, according
+to his receipts, will the right eye of an Hedgehog, boiled in oil, and
+preserved in a brazen vessel, effect."
+
+Hedgehog was an old term of reproach; but we have heard a well-set
+argument compared to a hedgehog--all points.
+
+The food of the Hedgehog, which is a nocturnal animal, consists
+principally of insects, worms, slugs, and snails. That it will eat
+vegetables is shown by White of Selborne, who relates how it eats the
+root of the plantain by boring beneath it, leaving the tuft of leaves
+untouched.
+
+The Hedgehog is reputed to supply itself with a winter covering of
+leaves. So far as we are aware, it has not been observed in the act of
+forming the covering of leaves, though it is supposed to roll itself
+about till its spines take up a sufficient number, in the same way as
+it is popularly believed (without proof) to do with apples. Blumenbach
+states that he was assured, "by three credible witnesses," that
+Hedgehogs so gather fruit; but Buffon, who kept several Hedgehogs for
+observation, declares they never practise any such habit.
+
+The voracity of the Hedgehog is very great. A female, with a young one,
+was placed in a kitchen, having the run of the beetles at night, besides
+having always bread and milk within their reach. One day, however, the
+servants heard a mysterious crunching sound in the kitchen, and found,
+on examination, that nothing was left of the young Hedgehog but the skin
+and prickles--the mother had devoured her little pig! A Hedgehog has
+also been known to eat a couple of rabbits which had been confined with
+it, and killing others; it has likewise been known to kill hares.
+
+A Hedgehog was placed in one hamper, a wood-pigeon in another, and two
+starlings in a third; the lid of each hamper was tied down with string,
+and the hampers were placed in a garden-house, which was fastened in the
+evening. Next morning the strings to the hampers were found severed, the
+starlings and wood-pigeon dead and eaten, feathers alone remaining in
+their hampers, and the Hedgehog alive in the wood-pigeon's hamper. As no
+other animal could have got into the garden-house it was concluded that
+the Hedgehog had killed and eaten the birds.
+
+In the "Zoological Journal," vol. ii., is an account by Mr. Broderip of
+an experiment made by Professor Buckland proving that in captivity at
+least the Hedgehog will devour snakes; but there is no good reason for
+supposing that it will not do the same in a state of nature, for frogs,
+toads, and other reptiles, and mice, have been recorded as its prey.
+From its fondness for insects it is often placed in the London kitchens
+to keep down the swarm of cockroaches with which they are infested; and
+there are generally Hedgehogs on sale at Covent Garden Market for this
+purpose.
+
+The idle story that the persecuted Hedgehog sucks cows has been thus
+quaintly refuted:--"In the case of an animal giving suck, the teat is
+embraced round by the mouth of the young one, so that no air can pass
+between; a vacuum is made, or the air is exhausted from its throat,
+by a power in the lungs; nevertheless the pressure of the air remains
+still upon the outside of the dug of the mother, and by these two
+causes together the milk is forced in the mouth of the young one. But
+a Hedgehog has no such mouth as to be able to contain the teat of a
+cow; therefore any vacuum which is caused in its own throat cannot be
+communicated to the milk in the dug. And if he is able to procure no
+other food but what he can get by sucking cows in the night, there is
+likely to be a vacuum in his stomach too." (_New Catalogue of Vulgar
+Errors._ By Stephen Fovargue, A.M., 1786.) Yet, according to Sir William
+Jardine, the Hedgehog is very fond of eggs; and is consequently very
+mischievous in the game-preserve and hen-house.
+
+One of the most interesting facts in the natural history of the Hedgehog
+is that announced in 1831 by M. Lenz, and subsequently confirmed by
+Professor Buckland: this is, that the most violent poisons have no
+effect upon it; a fact which renders it of peculiar value in forests,
+where it appears to destroy a great number of noxious reptiles. M. Lenz
+says that he had in his house a female Hedgehog, which he kept in a
+large box, and which soon became very mild and familiar. He often put
+into the box some adders, which it attacked with avidity, seizing them
+indifferently by the head, the body, and the tail, and not appearing
+alarmed or embarrassed when they coiled themselves around its body.
+On one occasion M. Lenz witnessed a fight between a Hedgehog and a
+viper. When the Hedgehog came near and smelled the snake, for with
+these animals the sense of sight is very obtuse, she seized it by the
+head, and held it fast between her teeth, but without appearing to do
+it much harm; for having disengaged its head, it assumed a furious and
+menacing attitude, and, hissing vehemently, inflicted severe bites on
+the Hedgehog. The animal did not, however, recoil from the bites of
+the viper, or indeed seem to care much about them. At last, when the
+reptile was fatigued by its efforts, she again seized it by the head,
+which she ground beneath her teeth, compressing the fangs and glands of
+poison, and then devouring every part of the body. M. Lenz says that
+battles of this sort often occurred in the presence of many persons, and
+sometimes the Hedgehog received eight or ten wounds on the ears, the
+snout, and even on the tongue, without seeming to experience any of the
+ordinary symptoms produced by the venom of the viper. Neither herself
+nor the young which she was then suckling seemed to suffer from it. This
+observation agrees with that of Pallas, who assures us that the Hedgehog
+can eat about a hundred Cantharides (Spanish Flies) without experiencing
+any of the effects which this insect, taken inwardly, produces on men,
+dogs, and cats. A German physician, who made the Hedgehog a particular
+object of study, gave it strong doses of prussic acid, of arsenic, of
+opium, and of corrosive sublimate, none of which did it any harm. The
+Hedgehog in its natural state only feeds on pears, apples, and other
+fruits when it can get nothing it likes better.
+
+The Hedgehog hybernates regularly, and early in the summer brings forth
+from two to four young ones at a birth, which, at the time of their
+production, are blind, and have the spines white, soft, and flexible.
+The nest wherein they are cradled is said to be very artificially
+constructed, the roof being rain-proof.
+
+The flesh of the Hedgehog, when it has been well fed, is sweet and well
+flavoured, and is eaten on the Continent in many places. In Britain a
+few besides gipsies partake of it. The prickly skin appears to have been
+used by the Romans for hackling hemp.
+
+Gilbert White notes that when the Hedgehog is very young it can draw
+its skin down over its face, but is not able to contract itself into a
+ball, as the creature does, for the sake of defence when full grown. The
+reason, White supposes, is because the curious muscle that enables the
+Hedgehog to roll itself up into a ball has not then arrived at its full
+tone and firmness. Hedgehogs conceal themselves for the winter in their
+warm _hybernaculum_ of leaves and moss; but White could never find that
+they stored in any winter provision, as some quadrupeds certainly do.
+
+
+
+
+THE HIPPOPOTAMUS IN ENGLAND.
+
+
+In the year 1850 there was exhibited in London a living Hippopotamus,
+for many centuries the only instance of this extraordinary animal being
+seen in Europe.
+
+There is something irresistibly striking in seeing a living animal,
+not one of whose species we have before seen, and especially when
+that animal is a large one, as in the instance before us. We had been
+wonderstruck at forms of this creature in the old British Museum, where
+were two finely-preserved specimens. The Rhinoceros alive was, until of
+late years, very rare in England. In 1834 Mr. Cross paid some 1,500_l._
+for a young Indian one-horned Rhinoceros, this being the only one
+brought to England for twenty years. He proved attractive, but slightly
+so in comparison with the expectation of a living Hippopotamus, never
+witnessed before in this country. The circumstances of his acquisition
+were as follows:--
+
+The Zoological Society of London had long been anxious to obtain
+a living Hippopotamus for their menagerie, but without success. An
+American agent at Alexandria had offered 5,000_l._ for an animal of
+this species, but in vain; no speculator could be induced to encounter
+the risk and labour of an expedition to the White Nile for the
+purpose of securing the animal. The desire of the Zoological Society
+was communicated to the Viceroy of Egypt, who saw the difficulty.
+Hasselquist states it to have been impossible to bring the living animal
+to Cairo; and the French _savans_, attached to the expedition to Egypt,
+who ascended the Nile above Syene, did not meet with one Hippopotamus.
+Caillaud, however, asserts that he saw forty Hippopotami in the Upper
+Nile, though their resort lay fifteen hundred miles or more from Cairo.
+Here they were often shot with rifle-balls, but to take one alive was
+another matter. However, by command of the Viceroy, the proper parties
+were sent in search of the animal.
+
+In August, 1849, the hunters having reached the island of Fobaysch,
+on the White Nile, about 2,000 miles above Cairo, shot a large female
+Hippopotamus in full chase up the river. The wounded creature turned
+aside and made towards some bushes on the island bank, but sank dead in
+the effort. The hunters, however, kept on towards the bushes, when a
+young Hippopotamus, supposed to have been recently brought forth, not
+much bigger than a new-born calf, but stouter and lower, rushed down
+the bank of the river, was secured by a boatman and lifted into the
+boat. The captors started with their charge down the Nile. The food of
+their young animal was their next anxiety; he liked neither fish, flesh,
+fruit, nor grass. The boat next stopped at a village; their cows were
+seized and milked, and the young charge lapped up the produce. A good
+milch cow was taken on board, and with this supply the Hippopotamus
+reached Cairo. The colour of his skin at this time was a dull reddish
+brown. He was shown to the Pasha in due form; the present created
+intense wonder and interest in Cairo; gaping crowds filled its narrow
+sandy streets, and a whale at London-bridge would scarcely excite half
+so much curiosity.
+
+It being thought safer for the animal to winter in Cairo than to proceed
+forthwith on his journey, the Consul had duly prepared to receive the
+young stranger, for whom he had engaged a sort of nurse. Hamet Safi
+Cannana. An apartment was allotted to the Hippopotamus in the court-yard
+of the Consul's house, leading to a warm or tepid bath. His milk-diet,
+however, became a troublesome affair, for the new comer never drank less
+than from twenty to thirty quarts daily.
+
+By the next mail after the arrival of the Hippopotamus, the Consul
+despatched the glad tidings to the Zoological Society. The animal was
+shipped at Alexandria, in the Ripon steamer. On the main deck was built
+a house, from which were steps down into an iron tank in the hold,
+containing 400 gallons of water, as a bath: it was filled with fresh
+water every other day.
+
+Early in May, the Hippopotamus was conveyed in the canal-boat, with
+Hamet Safi Cannana, to Alexandria, where the debarkation was witnessed
+by 10,000 spectators. The animal bore the voyage well. He lived
+exclusively on milk, of which he consumed daily about forty pints,
+yielded by the cows taken on board. He was very tame, and, like a
+faithful dog, followed his Arab attendant Hamet, who was seldom away
+more than five minutes without being summoned to return by a loud grunt.
+Hamet slept in a berth with the Hippopotamus. On May 25 they were landed
+at Southampton, and sent by railway to London. On arriving at the
+Zoological Society's Gardens, Hamet walked first out of the transport
+van, with a bag of dates over his shoulder, and the Hippopotamus trotted
+after him. Next morning he greatly enjoyed the bath which had been
+prepared for him. Although scarcely twelve months old, his massive
+proportions indicated the enormous power to be developed in his maturer
+growth; while the grotesque expression of his physiognomy far exceeded
+all that could be imagined from the stuffed specimens in museums, and
+the figures which had hitherto been published from the reminiscences of
+travellers.
+
+Among the earliest visitors was Professor Owen, who first saw the
+Hippopotamus lying on its side in the straw, with its head resting
+against the chair in which sat the swarthy attendant. It now and then
+grunted softly, and, lazily opening its thick, smooth eyelids, leered
+at its keeper with a singular protruding movement of the eyeball from
+the prominent socket, showing an unusual proportion of the white. The
+retraction of the eyeball was accompanied by a simultaneous rolling
+obliquely downwards, or inwards, or forwards. The young animal, then
+ten months' old, was seven feet long, and six and a-half in girth at
+the middle of the barrel-shaped trunk, supported, clear of the ground,
+on very short and thick legs, each terminated by four spreading hoofs,
+the two middle ones being the largest, and answering to those in the
+hog. The naked hide, covering the broad back and sides, was of a dark,
+india-rubber colour, with numerous fine wrinkles crossing each other,
+but disposed almost transversely. The beast had just left its bath, when
+a glistening secretion gave the hide, in the sunshine, a very peculiar
+aspect. When the animal was younger, the secretion had a reddish colour,
+and the whole surface of the hide became painted over with it every time
+he quitted his bath.
+
+The ears, which were very short, conical, and fringed with hairs, it
+moved about with much vivacity. The skin around them was of a light
+reddish-brown colour, and almost flesh-coloured round the eyelids,
+which defended the prominent eyes, which had a few short hairs on the
+margin of the upper lid. The colour of the iris was of a dark brown. The
+nostrils, situated on prominences, which the animal had the power of
+raising on the upper part of the broad and massive muzzle, were short
+oblique slits, guarded by two valves, which were opened and closed
+spontaneously, like the eyelids. The movements of these apertures were
+most conspicuous when the beast was in the bath.
+
+The wide mouth was chiefly remarkable for the upward curve of its angles
+towards the eyes, giving a quaintly comic expression to the massive
+countenance. The short and small milk-tusks projected a little, and the
+minute incisors appeared to be sunk in pits of the thick gums; but the
+animal would not permit any close examination of the teeth, withdrawing
+his head from the attempt, and then threatening to bite. The muzzle was
+beset with short bristles, split into tufts or pencils of hairs; and
+fine and short hairs were scattered all over the back and sides. The
+tail was not long, rather flattened and tapering to an obtuse point.
+
+We may here observe that, at certain moments, the whole aspect of the
+head suggested to one the idea of what may have been the semblance of
+some of the gigantic extinct Batrachians (as sirens), the relics of a
+former world, whose fossil bones in the galleries of Palæontology in the
+British Museum excite our special wonder.
+
+After lying about an hour, now and then raising its head, and swivelling
+its eyeballs towards the keeper, or playfully opening its huge mouth,
+and threatening to bite the leg of the chair on which the keeper sat,
+the Hippopotamus rose, and walked very slowly about its room, and
+then uttered a loud and short harsh snort four or five times in quick
+succession, reminding one of the snort of a horse, and ending with an
+explosive sound, like a bark. The keeper understood the language--the
+animal desired to return to its bath.
+
+The Hippopotamus carried its head rather depressed, reminding one of
+a large prize hog, but with a breadth of muzzle and other features
+peculiarly its own. The keeper opened the door leading into a paddock,
+and walked thence to the bath, the Hippopotamus following, like a dog,
+close to his heels. On arriving at the bath-room, the animal descended
+with some deliberation the flight of low steps leading into the water,
+stooped and drank a little, dipped his head under, and then plunged
+forwards. The creature seemed inspired with new life and activity.
+Sinking to the bottom of the bath, and moving about submerged for a
+while, it suddenly rose with a bound almost bodily out of the water.
+Splashing back, it commenced swimming and plunging about, rolling from
+side to side, taking in mouthfuls of water and spirting them out again,
+raising every now and then its huge and grotesque head, and biting the
+woodwork of the margin of the bath. The broad rounded back of the animal
+being now chiefly in view, it seemed a much larger object than when out
+of the water.
+
+After half an hour spent in this amusement, the Hippopotamus quitted
+the water at the call of its keeper, and followed him back to the
+sleeping-room, which was well bedded with straw, and where a stuffed
+sack was provided for its pillow, of which the animal, having a very
+short neck, thicker than the head, availed itself when it slept. When
+awake, it was very impatient of any absence of its favourite attendant.
+It would rise on its hind legs, and threaten to break down the wooden
+fence, by butting and pushing against it in a way very significant of
+its great muscular force. The animal appeared to be in perfect health,
+and breathed, when at rest, slowly and regularly, from three to four
+times in a minute. Its food was now a kind of porridge, of milk and
+maize-meat, it being more than half weaned from milk diet. Its appetite
+had been in no respect diminished by the confinement and inconvenience
+of the sea voyage, or by change of climate. All observers appear to
+have agreed that, to see the Hippopotamus rightly, is to see him in
+the water. There his activity is only surpassed by that of the otter
+or the seal. Such was one of the opportunities afforded to zoologists
+for "studying this most remarkable and interesting African mammal, of
+which no living specimen had been seen in Europe since the period when
+Hippopotami were last exhibited by the third Gordian in the amphitheatre
+of imperial Rome."[7]
+
+It is now time to glance at the general economy of the Hippopotamus, as
+he is seen in his native rivers and wilds. In early days, as his Roman
+name imports, it was usual to consider him as a species of horse,
+inhabiting rivers and marshy grounds, and, in a more especial manner,
+the denizen of the Nile. The genus is placed by Linnæus among his
+_belluæ_, between _equus_ and _sus_. The skeleton approaches that of the
+ox and of the hog, but it presents differences from that of any other
+animal.
+
+The Hippopotamus is found not only in the Nile, but in the rivers of
+southern Africa. In the former stream of marvels, Hasselquist relates
+that "the oftener the River Horse goes on shore, the better hope have
+the Egyptians of a sufficient swelling or increase of the Nile." Again,
+they say that the River Horse is an inveterate enemy to the crocodile,
+and kills it whenever he meets it; adding that he does much damage to
+the Egyptians in those places he frequents. He goes on shore, and, in
+a short space of time, destroys an entire field of corn or clover, not
+leaving the least verdure, for he is very voracious.
+
+Yet neither of these stories is so marvellous as that which a sailor
+related to Dampier, the old traveller:--"I have seen," says the mariner,
+"one of these animals open its jaws, and, seizing a boat between its
+teeth, at one bite sink it to the bottom. I have seen it, on another
+occasion, place itself under one of our boats, and, rising under it,
+overset it with six men who were in it, but who, however, happily
+received no other injury."
+
+Professor Smith and Captain Tuckey, in exploring the Congo River, in
+South Africa, saw in a beautiful sandy cove, at the opening of a creek,
+behind a long projecting point, an immense number of Hippopotami;
+and in the evening a number of alligators were also seen there; an
+association hardly consistent with the hostility related by Hasselquist.
+
+Captain Tuckey observed Hippopotami with their heads above the water,
+"snorting in the air." In another part of his narrative he says:--"Many
+Hippopotami were visible close to our tents at Condo Yanga. No use
+firing at these animals in the water; the only way is to wait till they
+come on shore to feed at night."
+
+Le Vaillant had an opportunity of watching the progress of a
+Hippopotamus under water at Great River, which contained many of these
+animals. On all sides he could hear them bellow and blow. Anxious to
+observe them, he mounted on the top of an elevated rock which advanced
+into the river, and he saw one walking at the bottom of the water. Le
+Vaillant killed it at the moment when it came to the surface to breathe.
+It was a very old female, and many people, in their surprise, and to
+express its size, called it the Grandmother of the River.
+
+The traveller Lander tells us that, on the Niger. Hippopotami are
+termed water-elephants. One stormy night, as they were sailing up this
+unexplored current, they fell in with great numbers of Hippopotami, who
+came plashing, snorting, and plunging all round the canoe. Thinking
+to frighten them off, the travellers fired a shot or two at them, but
+the noise only called up from the water and out of the fens about as
+many more Hippopotami, and they were more closely beset than before.
+Lander's people, who had never, in all their lives, been exposed to
+such formidable beasts, trembled with fear, and absolutely wept aloud;
+whilst peals of thunder rattled over their heads, and the most vivid
+lightning showed the terrifying scene. Hippopotami frequently upset
+canoes in the river. When the Landers fired, every one of them came
+to the surface of the water, and pursued them over to the north bank.
+A second firing was followed by a loud roaring noise. However, the
+Hippopotami did the travellers no kind of mischief whatever.
+
+Captain Gordon, when among the Bakalahari, in South Africa, bagged no
+fewer than fifteen first-rate Hippopotami; the greater number of them
+being bulls.
+
+In 1828, there was brought to England the head of a Hippopotamus, with
+all the flesh about it, in high preservation. The animal was harpooned
+while in combat with a crocodile in a lake in the interior of Africa.
+The head measured nearly four feet in length, and eight feet in
+circumference; the jaws opened two feet, and the cutting teeth, of which
+it had four in each jaw, were above a foot long, and four inches in
+circumference.
+
+The utility of this vast pachydermatous, or thick-skinned animal, to man
+is considerable. That he can be destructive has already been shown in
+his clearance of the cultivated banks of rivers. The enormous ripping,
+chisel-like teeth of the lower jaw fit him for uprooting. The ancient
+Egyptians held the animal as an emblem of power, though this may have
+arisen from his reputed destruction of the crocodile. The flesh is much
+esteemed for food, both among the natives and colonists of South Africa.
+The blood of the animal is said to have been used by the old Indian
+painters in mixing their colours. The skin is extensively employed for
+making whips.
+
+But there is no part of the Hippopotamus more in request than the great
+canine teeth, the ivory of which is so highly valued by dentists for
+making artificial teeth, on account of its keeping its colour better
+than any other kind. This superiority was not unknown to the ancients
+Pausanias mentions the statue of Dindymene, whose face was formed of the
+teeth of Hippopotami, instead of elephants' ivory. The canine teeth are
+imported in great numbers into England, and sell at a very high price.
+From the closeness of the ivory, the weight of the teeth, a part only of
+which is available for the artificial purpose above mentioned, is great
+in proportion to its bulk; and the article has fetched about thirty
+shillings per pound.
+
+The ancient history of the Hippopotamus is extremely curious, and
+we have many representations of him in coins, in sculpture, and in
+paintings, which prove, beyond question, that the artists, as well as
+the writers, had a distinct knowledge of what they intended to represent.
+
+The earliest notice which occurs in any author, and which has been
+considered by many to be a description of the Hippopotamus, is the
+celebrated account in the fortieth and forty-first chapter of the Book
+of Job of Behemoth and Leviathan. Many learned men have contended that
+"Behemoth" really means "Elephant," and thus the Zurich version of the
+Bible translates the Hebrew by "Elephas."
+
+In the edition of the English Bible, printed by Robert Barker, in 1615,
+for King James I., and since considered as the authorised version, the
+word "Behemoth" is preserved in the text, and the following annotation
+is added:--"This beast is thought to bee the Elephant, or some other
+which is unknowen." Bochart, Ludolph, and some others, have contended
+warmly in favour of the Hippopotamus. Cuvier thinks, that though this
+animal is probably intended, yet that the description is too vague for
+any one to hold a certain opinion on the subject. The theory started by
+Bochart, and in the main supported by Cuvier, is generally supposed the
+real one. The description in the Book of Job, though doubtless vague,
+and in the highest degree poetical, has yet sufficient marks to render
+the identification perfectly easy, while there are certain peculiarities
+mentioned, which even a poetical imagination could hardly apply to the
+Elephant. Thus, when it is said of him, "He lieth under the shady trees,
+in the desert of the reed and fens; ... the willows of the brook compass
+him round about," this would seem to be the description of an animal
+which frequented the water much more than Elephants are accustomed to
+do. Again, in the fuller description of "Leviathan," in the forty-first
+chapter, we think it is quite clear that a water animal is intended,
+though what is there stated might be held to apply to the crocodile
+as well as the Hippopotamus; both are animals remarkable for extreme
+toughness of skin, and both are almost equally difficult to kill or to
+take alive.
+
+Of profane authors, Herodotus is the first who notices this animal,
+but his account is far from accurate: the size he states as large as
+the biggest ox. That the animal was sacred, in some parts at least,
+appears from Herodotus, who says:--"Those which are found in the
+district of Paprennis are sacred, but in other parts of Egypt they are
+not considered in the same light." Aristotle makes it no bigger than
+an ass; Diodorus, an elephant; Pliny ascribes to it the tail and teeth
+of a boar, adding, that helmets and bucklers are made of the skin.
+Hippopotami figured in the triumphal processions of the Roman conquerors
+on their return home. M. Scaurus exhibited five crocodiles and an
+Hippopotamus; and Augustus one in his triumph over Cleopatra. Antoninus
+exhibited Hippopotami, with lions and other animals; Commodus no less
+than five, some of which he slew with his own hand. Heliogabalus, and
+the third Gordian, also exhibited Hippopotami.
+
+The Hippopotamus of the London Zoological Society was joined by his
+mate, the more juvenile "Adhela," in 1853. Two Hippopotami have lately
+been born in Europe; one in the Garden of Plants, at Paris, in 1858; and
+another in the Zoological Gardens at Amsterdam, in 1866.
+
+With regard to the alleged disappearance of the Hippopotamus from Lower
+Egypt, Cuvier remarks, that the French savans attached to the Expedition
+to Egypt, who ascended the Nile above Syene, did not meet with one.
+
+In some of the rivers of Liberia, and other parts, perhaps, of Western
+Africa, a second species of Hippopotamus exists, and is proved to be a
+very distinct animal.
+
+We have yet to glance at the Hippopotami of a former world. Many
+species are recognised in the fossil remains of Europe and Asia as
+formerly existing in England and in France. Cuvier detected bones of the
+Hippopotamus among the fossil wealth of the Great Kirkdale Cavern in
+Yorkshire, in 1821. They have also been found in France, and especially
+in the Sewatick Hills in India.
+
+In the Museum of the London Zoological Society are two skulls of
+Hippopotami--one fossil. This measures two feet three inches, and
+allowing for skin and lip, two feet six inches. Now, as the head is
+about one-fifth the length of the body, without the tail, the full-grown
+animal would be little, if any, short of fifteen feet from nose to
+tail--a size worthy the description of the Behemoth.
+
+We may here add, that Burckhardt, in his "Travels in Nubia," describes
+the voice of the Hippopotamus as a hard and heavy sound, like the
+creaking or groaning of a large wooden door. This noise, he says, is
+made when the animal raises his huge head out of the water, and when he
+retires into it again.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[7] Professor Owen.
+
+
+
+
+LION-TALK.
+
+
+The Lion has, within the present century, lost caste, and fallen
+considerably from his high estate. He has been stripped of much of his
+conventional reputation by the spirit of inquiry into the validity of
+olden notions, which characterises the present age; and it appears that
+much of his celebrity is founded upon popular error. Nor are these
+results the work of stay-at-home travellers; but they are derived from
+the observation and experience of those who, amidst scenes of perilous
+adventure, seek to enlarge and correct our views of the habit and
+character of the overrated Lion.
+
+Mr. Bennett, in his admirable work, "The Tower Menagerie," has these
+very sensible remarks:--"In speaking of the Lion we call up to our
+imaginations the splendid picture of might unmingled with ferocity, of
+courage undebased by guile, of dignity tempered by grace and ennobled by
+generosity. Such is the Lion of Buffon; who, in describing this animal,
+as in too many other instances, has suffered himself to be borne along
+by the strong tide of popular opinion; but, as the Lion appears in his
+native regions, according to the authentic accounts of those travellers
+and naturalists who have had the best means of correctly observing his
+habits, he is by no means so admirable a creature. Where the timid
+antelope and powerless monkey fall his easy and unresisting prey--or
+where the elephant and buffalo find their unwieldy bulk and strength no
+adequate protection against his impetuous agility--he stalks boldly to
+and fro in fearless majesty. But in the neighbourhood of man--even in
+that of uncultivated savages--_he skulks in treacherous ambush for his
+prey_. Of his forbearance and generosity it can merely be said, that
+when free, he destroys only what is sufficient to satiate his hunger or
+revenge; and when in captivity--his wants being provided for, and his
+feelings not irritated--he suffers smaller animals to live unmolested in
+his den, or submits to the control of a keeper by whom he is fed. But
+even this limited degree of docility is liable to fearful interruptions
+from the calls of hunger, the feelings of revenge--and these he
+frequently cherishes for a long period--with various other circumstances
+which render it dangerous to approach him in his most domesticated
+state, without ascertaining his immediate mood and temper. That an
+animal which seldom attacks by open force, but silently approaches his
+victim, and when he imagines his prey to be within his reach, bounds
+upon it with an overwhelming leap, should ever have been regarded as
+the type of courage and the emblem of magnanimity, is indeed most
+astonishing!"
+
+The generosity of disposition so liberally accorded to this powerful
+beast has been much and eloquently praised; and it seems hard to
+dissipate the glowing vision which Buffon has raised; but, if there is
+any dependence to be placed on the observations of those travellers
+who have had the best opportunities of judging, and have the highest
+character for veracity, we must be compelled to acknowledge that
+Buffon's Lion is the Lion of poetry and prejudice, and very unlike the
+cautious lurking savage that steals on its comparatively weak prey by
+surprise, overwhelms it at once by the terror, the weight, and the
+violence of the attack, and is intent only on the gratification of the
+appetite. "At the time," says Mr. Burchell, "when men first adopted the
+Lion as the emblem of courage, it would seem that they regarded great
+size and strength as indicating it; but they were greatly mistaken
+in the character they had given of the indolent animal." Indeed, Mr.
+Burchell calls the Lion an "indolent skulking animal." The fact of the
+Lion sparing the dog that was thrown to him, and making a friend of the
+little animal that was destined for his prey, has been much dwelt on;
+but these and other such acts of mercy, as they have been called, may
+be very easily accounted for. If not pressed by hunger, the Lion will
+seldom be at the trouble of killing prey; and the desire for a companion
+has created much stronger friendships between animals in confinement
+than between a Lion and a little dog. St. Pierre touchingly describes
+the Lion of Versailles, who, in 1792, lived most happily with a dog, and
+on whose death he became disconsolate and miserable; and in confinement
+the "lordly Lion," as Young calls him, has been known to be deeply
+afflicted with melancholy at similar losses.
+
+The Lion is easily tamed, and capable of attachment to man. The story of
+Androdas, frequently called Androcles, is too well known to need more
+than allusion; but in this and other stories of Lions licking men's
+hands without injuring them, there must be a stretch of fancy; for the
+Lion's tongue has sharp thorn-points, inclining backwards, so as not to
+be able to lick the hand without tearing away the skin, which any one
+will understand who has _heard_ the Lion tear the raw meat away from the
+bone of his food.
+
+Still, very different accounts are given by travellers of the cruelty or
+generosity of the Lion's nature; which results, in all probability, from
+a difference in time or circumstances, or the degree of hunger which the
+individual experienced when the respective observations were made upon
+him.
+
+Meanwhile, there are many points in the history of the Lion which are
+yet but imperfectly understood; the explanations of which, whilst
+they are interesting, add to our correct knowledge of this still
+extraordinary animal.
+
+The Lion has been styled "The King of the Forest," which is not very
+applicable to him, seeing that Mr. Burchell at least never met with
+but one Lion on the plains; nor did he ever meet with one in any of
+the forests where he had been. The low cover that creeps along the
+sides of streams, the patches that mark the springs in the rank grass
+of the valley, seem to be the shelter which the African Lion, for the
+most part, seeks. His strength is extraordinary. To carry off a man
+(and there are dismal accounts of this horrible fact, which there is no
+reason to doubt) appears a feat of no difficulty to this powerful brute.
+A Cape Lion, seizing a heifer in his mouth, has carried her off with the
+same ease as a cat does a rat; and has leaped with her over a broad dyke
+without the least difficulty. A young Lion, too, has conveyed a horse
+about a mile from the spot where he had killed it.
+
+There seems to be an idea that the Lion preserves human prey; but, be
+this as it may, the inhabitants of certain districts have been under the
+necessity of resorting to a curious expedient to get out of the Lion's
+reach. Ælian, by the way, records the extinction of a Libyan people by
+an invasion of Lions. We read of a large tree, in the country of the
+Mantatees, which has amidst its limbs fourteen conical huts. These are
+used as dormitories, being beyond the reach of the Lions, which, since
+the incursions of the Mantatees, when so many thousands of persons
+were massacred, have become very numerous in the neighbourhood, and
+destructive to human life. The branches of the above trees are supported
+by forked sticks or poles, and there are three tiers or platforms
+on which the huts are constructed. The lowest is nine feet from the
+ground, and holds ten huts; the second, about eight feet high, has
+three huts; and the upper story, if it may be so called, contains four.
+The ascent to these is made by notches cut in the poles; the huts are
+built with twigs, and thatched with straw, and will contain two persons
+conveniently. This tree stands at the base of a range of mountains due
+east of Kurrichaine, in a place called "Ongorutcie Fountain," about
+1,000 miles north-east of Cape Town. Kurrichaine is the Staffordshire as
+well as the Birmingham of that part of South Africa. There are likewise
+whole villages of huts erected on stakes, about eight feet from the
+ground; the inhabitants, it is stated, sit under the shade of these
+platforms during the day, and retire to the elevated huts at night.
+
+Though mortal accidents frequently occur in Lion-hunting, the cool
+sportsman seldom fails of using his rifle with effect. Lions, when
+roused, it seems, walk off quietly at first, and if no cover is near,
+and they are not pursued, they gradually mend their pace to a trot,
+till they have reached a good distance, and then they bound away. Their
+demeanour is careless, as if they did not want a fray, but if pressed,
+are ready to fight it out. If they are pursued closely, they turn and
+crouch, generally with their faces to the adversary: then the nerves of
+the sportsman are tried. If he is collected, and master of his craft,
+the well-directed rifle ends the scene at once; but if, in the flutter
+of the moment, the vital parts are missed, or the ball passes by,
+leaving the Lion unhurt, the infuriated beast frequently charges on his
+enemies, dealing destruction around him. This, however, is not always
+the case; and a steady, unshrinking deportment has, in some instances,
+saved the life of the hunter.
+
+There is hardly a book of African travels which does not teem with the
+dangers and hair-breadth escapes of the Lion-hunters; and hardly one
+that does not include a fatal issue to some engaged in this hazardous
+sport. The modes of destruction employed against the powerful beast are
+very various--from the poisonous arrow of the Bushman to the rifle of
+the colonist.
+
+The Lion may be safely attacked while sleeping, because of the dullness
+of his sense of hearing, the difficulty of awakening him, and his want
+of presence of mind if he be so awakened. Thus the Bushmen of Africa
+are enabled to keep the country tolerably clear of Lions, without
+encountering any great danger. The bone of the Lion's fore-leg is of
+remarkable hardness, from its containing a greater quantity of phosphate
+of lime than is found in ordinary bones, so that it may resist the
+powerful contraction of the muscles. The texture of this bone is so
+compact that the substance will strike fire with steel. He has little
+sense of taste, his lingual or tongue-nerve not being larger than that
+of a middle-sized dog.
+
+The true Lions belong to the Old World exclusively, and they were
+formerly widely and abundantly diffused; but at present they are
+confined to Asia and Africa, and they are becoming every day more and
+more scarce in those quarters of the globe. That Lions were once found
+in Europe there can be no doubt. Thus it is recorded by Herodotus that
+the baggage-camels of the army of Xerxes were attacked by Lions in the
+country of the Reonians and the Crestonæi on their march from Acanthus
+(near the peninsula of Mount Athos) to Therma, afterwards Thessalonica
+(now Saloniki); the camels alone, it is stated, were attacked, other
+beasts remaining untouched, as well as men. Pausanias copies the above
+story, and states, moreover, that Lions often descended into the plains
+at the foot of Olympus, which separate Macedonia from Thessaly, and that
+Polydamas, a celebrated athlete, slew one of the Lions, although he was
+unarmed.
+
+Nor is Europe the only part of the world from which the form of the Lion
+has disappeared. Lions are no longer to be found in Egypt, Palestine,
+or Syria, where they once were evidently far from uncommon. The
+frequent allusions to the Lion in the Holy Scriptures, and the various
+Hebrew terms there used to distinguish the different ages and sex of
+the animal, prove a familiarity with the habits of the race. Even in
+Asia generally, with the exception of some countries between India and
+Persia and some districts of Arabia, these magnificent beasts have,
+as Cuvier observes, become comparatively rare, and this is not to be
+wondered at. To say nothing of the immense draughts on the race for
+the Roman arena,--and they were not inconsiderable, for, as Zimmerman
+has shown, there were 1,000 lions killed at Rome in the space of forty
+years,--population and civilization have gradually driven them within
+narrower limits, and their destruction has been rapidly worked in
+modern times, when firearms have been used against them instead of the
+bow and the spear. Sylla gave a combat of one hundred Lions at once in
+his ædileship; but this exhibition is insignificant when compared with
+those of Pompey and Cæsar, the former of whom exhibited a fight of six
+hundred, and the latter of four hundred Lions. In Pompey's show three
+hundred and fifteen of the six hundred were males. The early Emperors
+consumed great numbers, frequently a hundred at a time, to gratify the
+people.
+
+The African Lion is annually retiring before the persecution of man
+farther and farther from the Cape. Mr. Bennett says of the Lion:--"His
+true country is Africa, in the vast and untrodden wilds of which, from
+the immense deserts of the north to the trackless forests of the south,
+he reigns supreme and uncontrolled. In the sandy deserts of Arabia,
+in some of the wild districts of Persia, and in the vast jungles of
+Hindostan, he still maintains a precarious footing; but from the classic
+soil of Greece, as well as from the whole of Asia Minor, both of which
+were once exposed to his ravages, he has been entirely dislodged and
+extirpated."
+
+Niebuhr places Lions among the animals of Arabia; but their proper
+country is Africa, where their size is the largest, their numbers
+are greatest, and their rage more tremendous, being inflamed by the
+influence of a burning sun upon a most arid soil. Dr. Fryer says that
+those of India are feeble and cowardly. In the interior parts, amidst
+the scorched and desolate deserts of Zaara or Biledugerid, they reign
+the masters; they lord it over every beast, and their courage never
+meets with a check where the climate keeps mankind at a distance. The
+nearer they approach the habitations of the human race the less their
+rage, or rather the greater is their timidity: they have often had
+experienced unequal combats, and finding that there exists a being
+superior to themselves, commit their ravages with more caution; a cooler
+climate, again, has the same effect, but in the burning deserts, where
+rivers and springs are denied, they live in a perpetual fever, a sort of
+madness fatal to every animal they meet with.
+
+The watchfulness and tenacity of the Lion for human prey are very
+extraordinary. Mr. Barrow relates that a Lion once pursued a Hottentot
+from a pool of water, where he was driving his cattle to drink, to an
+olive-tree, in which the man remained for twenty-four hours, while the
+Lion laid himself at the foot of the tree. The patience of the beast was
+at length worn out by his desire to drink, and while he satisfied his
+thirst the Hottentot fled to his house, about a mile off. The Lion,
+however, returned to the tree, and tracked the man within three hundred
+yards of his dwelling.
+
+Dr. Philip relates a horrible story of a very large Lion recorded at
+Cape Town in the year 1705. He was known to have seized a sentry at a
+tent, and was pursued and fired at by many persons without effect. Next
+morning the Lion walked up a hill _with the man in his mouth_, when
+about forty shots were fired at him without hitting him; and it was
+perceived by the blood, and a piece of the clothes of the sentry, that
+the Lion had taken him away and carried him with him. He was pursued
+by a band of Hottentots, one of whom he seized with his claws by the
+mantle, when the man stabbed him with an assagai. Other Hottentots
+adorned him with their assagais, so that he looked like a porcupine; he
+roared and leaped furiously, but was at length shot dead. He had a short
+time before carried off a Hottentot and devoured him.
+
+The Bengal or Asiatic Lion is distinguished from that of Southern Africa
+principally by the larger size, the more regular and graceful form, the
+generally darker colour, and the less extensive mane than the African.
+William Harvey, the graceful artist, drew a portrait of a very fine
+Bengal Lion, little more than five years old, and then in the Tower
+collection, and called by the keepers "the Old Lion;" the magnificent
+development of the mane is very striking in this figure.
+
+Maneless Lions have been found on the confines of Arabia, and were
+known to Aristotle and Pliny; a maneless Lion is also said to be
+represented on the monuments of Upper Egypt. The Lion of Arabia has
+neither the courage nor the stature, nor even the beauty, of the Lion of
+Africa. He uses cunning rather than force; he crouches among the reeds
+which border the Tigris and Euphrates, and springs upon all the feeble
+animals which come there to quench their thirst; but he dares not attack
+the boar, which is very common there, and flies as soon as he perceives
+a man, a woman, or even a child. If he catches a sheep he makes off
+with his prey; but he abandons it to save himself when an Arab looks
+after him. If he is hunted by horsemen, which often happens, he does
+not defend himself unless he is wounded, and has no hope of safety by
+flight. In such a case he will fly on a man and tear him to pieces with
+his claws, for it is courage more than strength that he wants. Achmed,
+Pasha of Bagdad from 1724 to 1747, would have been torn by one, after
+breaking his lance in a hunt, if his slave Suleiman, who succeeded him
+in the Pashalik, had not come promptly to his succour and pierced with a
+blow of his yataghan the Lion already wounded by his master.
+
+In December, 1833, Captain Walter Smee exhibited to the Zoological
+Society of London the skins of a Lion and Lioness killed by him in
+Guzerat, and distinguished from those previously known by the absence
+of a mane; the tail was shorter than that of the ordinary Lion, and
+furnished at its tip with a much larger brush or tuft; and in the
+tuft of the older Lion was a short horny claw or nail. The colour is
+fulvous; which in darker specimens has a tinge of red. A male maneless
+Lion, killed by Captain Smee, measured, including the tail, 8 feet
+9-1/2 inches in length; the impression of his paw on the sand 6-1/4
+inches across, and his height was 3 feet 6 inches. These maneless Lions
+are found in Guzerat, along the banks of the Sombermultee, in low,
+bushy-wooded plains, being driven out of the large adjoining tracts of
+high grass jungle by the natives annually setting fire to the grass.
+Here Captain Smee killed his finest specimens: they were so common in
+this district that he killed no fewer than eleven during a residence of
+about a month, yet scarcely any of the natives had seen them previously
+to his coming amongst them. The cattle were frequently carried off by
+these Lions: some natives attributed this to tigers, which, however,
+do not exist in this part of the country. Captain Smee could not learn
+that men had been attacked by these Lions: when struck by a ball they
+exhibited great boldness, standing as if preparing to resist their
+pursuers, and then going off slowly, and in a very sullen manner.
+
+In captivity the Lioness usually turns extremely savage when she becomes
+a mother; and, in a state of nature, both parents guard their young
+with the greatest jealousy. Early in the year 1823 General Watson, then
+on service in Bengal, being out one morning on horseback, armed with
+a double-barrelled rifle, was suddenly surprised by a large male Lion,
+which bounded out upon him from the thick jungle, at the distance of
+only a few yards. He instantly fired, and the shot taking complete
+effect, the animal fell almost dead at his feet. No sooner had the Lion
+fallen than the Lioness rushed out, which the General also shot at and
+wounded severely, so that she retired into the thicket. Thinking that
+the den could not be far distant, he traced her to her retreat, and
+there despatched her; and in the den were found two beautiful cubs, a
+male and a female, apparently not more than three months old. This is a
+very touching narrative, even of the Lion family.
+
+The General brought the cubs away; they were suckled by a goat and
+sent to England, where they arrived in September, 1823, as a present
+to George IV., and were lodged in the Tower. When young, Lions mew
+like a cat; at the age of ten or twelve months the mane begins to
+appear in the male; at the age of eighteen months this appendage is
+considerably developed, and they begin to roar. The _roar_ of the adult
+Lion is terrific, from the larynx or upper part of the wind-pipe being
+proportionately greater than in the whale or the elephant, or any other
+animal. Mr. Burchell describes the roar on some occasions to resemble
+the noise of an earthquake; and this terrific effect is produced by
+the Lion laying his head upon the ground and uttering, as it were, a
+half-stifled roar or growl, which is conveyed along the earth.
+
+The natural period of the Lion's life is generally supposed to be twenty
+or twenty-two years. Such is Buffon's limitation; but the animal will,
+it seems, live much longer. Pompey, the great Lion, which died in 1766,
+was said to have been in the Tower above seventy years; and a Lion from
+the river Gambia is stated to have since died in the Tower menagerie at
+the age of sixty-three.
+
+There had been for ages a popular belief that the Lion lashes his sides
+with his tail to stimulate himself into rage; when, in 1832, there was
+exhibited to the Zoological Society a claw obtained from the tip of
+the tail of a Barbary Lion, presented to the Society's menagerie by
+Sir Thomas Reade. It was detected on the living animal by Mr. Bennett,
+and pointed out to the keeper, in whose hands it came off while he
+was examining it. Blumenbach quotes Homer, Lucan, and Pliny, among
+others who have described the Lion (erroneously) as lashing himself
+with his tail, when angry, to provoke his rage. None of these writers,
+however, advert to any peculiarity in the Lion's tail to which so
+extraordinary a function might, however incorrectly, be attributed.
+Didymus Alexandrinus, a commentator on the "Iliad," cited by Blumenbach,
+having found a black prickle, like a horn, among the hair of the tail,
+immediately conjectured that he had ascertained the true cause of the
+stimulus when the animal flourishes his tail in defiance of his enemies,
+remarking that, when punctured by this prickle, the Lion became more
+irritable from the pain which it occasioned. The subject, however,
+appears to have slumbered till 1829, when M. Deshayes announced that
+he had found the prickle both of a Lion and Lioness, which had died
+in the French menagerie, and described it as a little nail, or horny
+production, adhering by its base only to the skin, and not to the last
+caudal vertebra. From that period Mr. Wood, the able zoologist, examined
+the tail of every Lion, living or dead, to which he could gain access;
+but in no instance had he succeeded in finding the prickle till the
+above specimen, which was placed in his hands within half an hour after
+its removal from the living animal, and while yet soft at its base,
+where it had been attached to the skin. Its shape was nearly straight,
+then slightly contracted, forming a very obtuse angle, and afterwards
+swelling out like the bulb of a bristle, to its termination. It was
+laterally flattened throughout its entire length, which did not amount
+to quite three-eighths of an inch, of horn colour, and nearly black at
+the tip. Its connexion with the skin must have been very slight, which
+accounts for its usual absence in stuffed as well as living specimens.
+This does not depend upon age, as it was found alike in the Paris Lions,
+of considerable size, as well as in the Zoological Society's Lions,
+very small and young; nor did it depend upon sex. It appears to be
+occasionally present in the Leopard; and, in both Lion and Leopard, it
+is seated at the extreme tip of the tail, and is altogether unconnected
+with the terminal caudal vertebra; not fitted on like a cap, but rather
+inserted into the skin.
+
+The use of the prickle, however, it still remained difficult to
+conjecture; but that its existence was known to the ancients is proved
+by the Nimroud sculptures in the British Museum, in an exaggerated
+representation of the claw, in support of this curious fact in natural
+history. The existence of the claw has been proved by Mr. Bennett;
+and "it is no small gratification to be able now to quote in evidence
+of the statement of Mr. Bennett, and of his predecessor. Didymus, of
+Alexandria, the original and authentic document, on the authority of the
+veritable descendants of the renowned hunter Nimroud; which any one may
+read who will take the trouble to examine the sculptured slab in the
+British Museum."[8]
+
+In the Nineveh galleries of the British Museum we also see pictured in
+stone the employment of the Lion, in the life of Assyria and Babylonia,
+three thousand years since; in the events of a succession of dynasties,
+recording the sieges of cities, the combats of warriors, the triumphs
+of Kings, the processions of victors, the chains and fetters of the
+vanquished. To the zoological observer these sculptures present drawings
+_ad naturam_ of tableaux of Lions and Lion-hunts; Lions in combat, as
+well as in moveable dens and cages, and the ferocity of the chase; and
+Lions transfixed with arrows or javelins in the arena. One of the finest
+of these sculptures is in the representation of a Lion-hunt, on a long
+slab that lined the principal chamber of the most ancient palace at
+Nimroud. The King is in his chariot, drawn by three horses, which the
+charioteer is urging forward to escape the attack of an infuriated Lion
+that has already placed its fore-paws upon the back of the chariot. At
+this critical moment, the Royal descendant of the mighty hunter aims a
+deadly shaft at the head of the roaring and wounded Lion, the position
+of whose tail and limbs is finely indicative of rage and fury. Behind
+the Lion are two of the King's attendants, fully armed, and holding
+their daggers and shields, ready to defend themselves in case the prey
+should escape the arrow of the King. Before the chariot is a wounded
+Lion, crawling from under the horses' feet. The cringing agony conveyed
+in its entire action is well contrasted with the undaunted fury of the
+former. In another slab we have the continuation of the same Lion-hunt,
+representing the triumphant return of the King from the chase. At his
+feet lies the Lion subdued, but not dead.
+
+Of the pageantry of the Lion, we read, in Bell's "Travels," that the
+monarch of Persia had, on days of audience, two great Lions chained on
+each side of the passage to the state-room, led there by keepers in
+golden chains.
+
+Our early English Sovereigns had a menagerie in the Tower from the reign
+of Henry III. (1252.) In 1370 (44 Edward III.) are entries of payments
+made to "the Keeper of the King's Lions and Leopards" there, at the
+rate of 6_d._ a-day for his wages, and 6_d._ a-day for each beast.
+The number of beasts varied from four to seven. Two young Lions are
+specially mentioned; and "a Lion lately sent by the Lord the Prince,
+from Germany to England, to our Lord the King." And we read, in Lord
+Burghley's "Diary," 1586, of the grant of the keeping of the Lions in
+the Tower, with "the Fine of 12_d._ per diem, and 6_d._ for the Meat of
+those Lions." The first menagerie-building was the Lion Tower, to which
+was added a semicircular inclosure, where Lions and Bears were baited
+with dogs, with which James I. and his court were much delighted. A
+Lion was named after the reigning King; and it was popularly believed
+that "when the King dies, the Lion of that name dies after him." The
+last of the Tower animals were transferred to the Zoological Society's
+menagerie, in the Regent's-park, in 1834. The Tower menagerie is well
+described in a handsome volume, with woodcut portraits, by William
+Harvey.
+
+The punishment of being _thrown to Lions_ is stated as common among the
+Romans of the first century; and numerous tales are extant, in which the
+fierce animals became meek and lamb-like before the holy virgins of the
+Church. This, indeed, is the origin of the superstition, nowhere more
+beautifully expressed than in Lord Byron's "Siege of Corinth":--
+
+    "'Tis said that a Lion will turn and flee
+    From a maid in the pride of her purity."
+
+Every wild beast show almost has its tame Lion, with which the keeper
+takes the greatest liberties; liberties which the beast will suffer,
+generally speaking, from none but him. Major Smith relates that he
+had seen the keeper of a Lioness stand upon the beast, drag her round
+the cage by her tail, open her jaws, and thrust his head between her
+teeth. Another keeper, at New York, had provided himself with a fur cap,
+the novelty of which attracted the notice of the Lion, which, making
+a sudden grapple, tore the cap off his head as he passed the cage;
+but, perceiving that the keeper was the person whose head he had thus
+uncovered, he immediately laid the cap down. Wombwell, in his menagerie,
+had a fine Lion, Nero, that allowed _strangers_ to enter his den, and
+even put their heads within his jaws. This tameness is not, however, to
+be trusted, since the natural ferocity of some Lions is never safely
+subdued. Lions which have been sometimes familiar, have, on other
+occasions, been known to kill their keepers, and dart at those who have
+incautiously approached too near their cage. All these exhibitions have
+been entirely eclipsed by the feats of Van Amburgh, in his exercise of
+complete control over Lions. The melancholy fate of "the Lion Queen,"
+however, tells of the fatal result of her confidence. The Lion-killing
+feats of Captain Gordon Cumming had a more legitimate object in view--to
+render us more familiar with the zoological character of the Lion.
+
+Colonization has scarcely yet extirpated the Lion in Algeria, where the
+French colonists make fine sport of "the King of the Beasts." M. Jules
+Gerard, a Nimroud in his way, has been noted for his Lion-killing feats.
+We read of his tracking a large old Lion in the Smauls country, one
+hundred leagues in ten days, without catching a glimpse of anything but
+his foot-prints. At length, accompanied by a native of the country and a
+spahi, Gerard took up his quarters at the foot of a tree upon the path
+which the old Lion had taken. It was moonlight, and Gerard made out two
+Lions sitting about one hundred paces off, and exactly in the shadow of
+the tree. The Arab lay snoring ten paces off, in the full light of the
+moon, and had, doubtless, attracted the attention of the Lions. Gerard
+expressly forbade the spahi to wake the Arab. Our Lion-hunter then got
+up the hill to reconnoitre; the boldest of the Lions came up to within
+ten paces of Gerard, and fifteen of the Arab: the Lion's eye was fixed
+on the latter, and the second Lion placed himself on a level with, and
+four or five paces from, the first. They proved to be both full-grown
+Lionesses. Gerard took aim at the first as she came rolling and roaring
+down to the foot of the tree. The Arab was scarcely awakened, when a
+second ball stretched the Lioness dead upon the spot. Gerard then looked
+out for the second Lioness, who was standing up within fifteen paces,
+looking around her. He fired, and she fell down roaring, and disappeared
+in a field of maize; she fell, but was still alive. Next morning at
+daybreak, at the spot where the Lioness had fallen, were blood marks,
+denoting her track in the direction of a wood. After sending off the
+dead Lioness. Gerard returned to his post of the preceding night. A
+little after sunset the Lion roared in his lair, and continued roaring
+all night. Convinced that the wounded Lioness was there, Gerard sent two
+Arabs to explore the cover, but they durst not. He next evening reached
+the lair, taking with him a goat, which he left with the Arabs: the
+Lioness appeared. Gerard fired, and she fell without a struggle; she was
+believed dead, but she got up again as though nothing was the matter,
+and showed all her teeth. One of the Arabs, within six paces of her,
+seeing her get up, clung to the lower branches of a tree and disappeared
+like a squirrel. The Lioness fell dead at the foot of the tree, a second
+bullet piercing her heart: the first had passed out of the nape of the
+neck without breaking the skull-bone.
+
+The Lions presented by Lord Prudhoe to the British Museum are the best
+sculptured representations of the animal in this country. Although the
+Lion is our national hieroglyphic, and there are many statues of him,
+yet not one among them all appears without a defect, which makes our
+representations of him belong to the class _canis_ instead of _felis_, a
+fault not found in any Egyptian sculpture.[9]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[8] Bonomi; "Nineveh and its Palaces," p. 249.
+
+[9] Bonomi; "Proc. Royal Soc., Literature."
+
+
+
+
+BIRD-LIFE.
+
+     "Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they
+     reap, nor gather into barns; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth
+     them."--Matthew vi. 26.
+
+    "Free tenants of land, air, and ocean,
+    Their forms all symmetry, their motions grace;
+    In plumage delicate and beautiful,
+    Thick without burthen, close as fishes' scales,
+    Or loose as full-blown poppies on the gales;
+    With wings that seem as they'd a soul within them,
+    They bear their owners with such sweet enchantment."
+
+                    _James Montgomery._
+
+
+Birds, as regards structure, are perhaps the most perfectly endowed,
+as they are certainly the most beautiful and interesting, of all the
+lower animals. In Birds there is an admirable mechanism and adaptation
+both for gliding in the air and swimming in the water. They surpass all
+other animals in the faculty of continuing their motion without resting,
+as well as in its rapidity. The fleetest courser can scarcely ever run
+more than a mile in a minute, nor support that speed beyond five or six
+such exertions. But the joyous Swallow does this tenfold for pleasure.
+In his usual way he flies at the rate of one mile in a minute; and
+Wilson, the ornithologist, ascertained that the Swallow is so engaged
+for ten hours every day. So can the Blue-bird of America, for a space of
+600 miles. Our Carrier-pigeons move with half that celerity: one flew
+from Liskeard to London, 220 miles, in six hours. The Golden Eagle is
+supposed to dart through the fiercest storm at the rate of 160 miles an
+hour; but one of our smallest Birds, the Swift, can even quadruple the
+most excited quickness of the race-horse for a distance. Spallanzani
+thought that the little Swift travelled at the rate of 250 miles an hour.
+
+Inquiries into the phenomena of the flight of Birds would lead us
+far beyond our limits. The subject is beset with error. Thus, we
+read:--"Every one has remarked the manner in which Birds of prey float,
+as it were, without any effort, and with steady expanded wings, at great
+heights in the atmosphere. This they are enabled to do from the quantity
+of air contained in the air-cells of their bodies, which air being taken
+in at a low level in the atmosphere, of course rarefies and expands as
+the Bird ascends into higher regions. Their rapidity of descent must
+be accomplished by the sudden expulsion of this air, aided by their
+muscular efforts."
+
+Now, Dr. Crisp has read to the Zoological Society a paper "On the
+Presence or Absence of Air in the Bones of Birds," for the purpose of
+showing the prevailing error upon the subject--viz., "that the bones
+of the Bird are filled with air." Of fifty-two British Birds recently
+dissected by him, only one, the Sparrow-hawk, had the bones generally
+perforated for the admission of air. In thirteen others, the humeri only
+were hollow, and among these were several Birds of short flight. In the
+remaining thirty-eight, neither the _humeri_ nor _femora_ contained
+air, although in this list were several Birds of passage and of rapid
+flight--Dr. Crisp's conclusion being, that the majority of British Birds
+have no air in their bones, and that, with the exception of the Falcons,
+but very few British Birds have hollow femora.
+
+Mr. Gould records a most remarkable instance of rapid and sustained
+flight, which he witnessed on his return from North America, whither
+he had proceeded for the purpose of studying the habits and manners of
+the species of _Trochilus_ (Humming Bird), frequenting that portion
+of America. Having remarked that he arrived just prior to the period
+of the migration of this Bird from Mexico to the north, and had ample
+opportunities for observing it in a state of nature, he noticed that
+its actions were very peculiar, and quite different from those of all
+other birds: the flight is performed by a motion of the wings so rapid
+as to be almost imperceptible; indeed, the muscular power of this little
+creature appears to be very great in every respect, as, independently of
+its rapid and sustained flight, it grasps the small twigs, flowers, &c.,
+upon which it alights with the utmost tenacity. It appears to be most
+active in the morning and evening, and to pass the middle of the day in
+a state of sleepy torpor. Occasionally it occurs in such numbers that
+fifty or sixty birds may be seen in a single tree. When captured it so
+speedily becomes tame that it will feed from the hand or mouth within
+half an hour. Mr. Gould having been successful in keeping a Humming-Bird
+alive in a gauze bag attached to his breast button for three days,
+during which it readily fed from a bottle filled with a syrup of brown
+sugar and water, he determined to make an attempt to bring some living
+examples to England, in which he succeeded; but unfortunately they did
+not long survive their arrival.
+
+The adaptation of colour in Birds to their haunts strikingly tends to
+their preservation. The small Birds which frequent hedges have backs
+of a brownish or brownish-green hue; and their bellies are generally
+whitish, or light-coloured, so as to harmonize with the sky. Thus, they
+become less visible to the hawk or cat that passes above or below them.
+The wayfarer across the fields also treads upon the Skylark before he
+sees it warbling to heaven's gate. The Goldfinch or Thistlefinch passes
+much of its time among flowers, and is vividly coloured accordingly.
+The Partridge can hardly be distinguished from the fallow or stubble
+among which it crouches; and it is considered an accomplishment among
+sportsmen to have a good eye for finding a Hare sitting. In northern
+countries the winter dress of the Hares and Ptarmigans is white, to
+prevent detection among the snows of those inclement regions.
+
+The Song of Birds is popularly explained by the author of a work,
+entitled, "The Music of Nature," in which he illustrates the vocal
+machinery of Birds as follows:--"It is difficult to account for so small
+a creature as a Bird making a tone as loud as some animal a thousand
+times its size; but a recent discovery shows that in birds the lungs
+have several openings communicating with corresponding air-bags or
+cells, which fill the whole cavity of the body from the neck downward,
+and into which the air passes and repasses in the progress of breathing.
+This is not all. The very bones are hollow, from which air-pipes are
+conveyed to the most solid parts of the body, even into the quills and
+feathers. The air being rarefied by the heat of their body, adds to
+their levity. By forcing the air out of their body, they can dart down
+from the greatest heights with astonishing velocity. No doubt the same
+machinery forms the basis of their vocal powers, and at once resolves
+the mystery into a natural ordering of parts." This is a very pretty
+story; but, unfortunately, it is not correct, as already shown.
+
+A correspondent of the "Athenæum," writing in 1866, says:--"He would be
+a bold man who should say that Birds have no delight in their own songs.
+I have been led to conclude from experiments which I have made, and from
+other observations, that certain animals, especially Birds, have not
+only an ear for fine sounds, but also a preference for the things they
+see out of respect to fine colours or other pleasing external features.
+It is chiefly among Birds, when we consider the case of animals, that
+a taste for ornament and for glittering objects, often very startling
+and human-like, is to be found. The habits of the Pheasant, Peacock,
+Turkey, Bird of Paradise, several Birds of the Pigeon and Crow kind, and
+certain Singing Birds, are evidence. The Australian Satin Bower-Bird
+is the most remarkable of that class which exhibit taste for beauty or
+for glittering objects out of themselves--that is, beauty not directly
+personal; collecting, in fact, little museums of shells, gaudy feathers,
+shining glass, or bits of coloured cloth or pottery. It will be found
+with many Birds that fine plumes, a mirror, and an admirer, are not
+altogether objects devoid of interest.
+
+"Another consideration leading me to the same conclusion, is the fact,
+that beauty in animals is placed on prominent parts, or on parts
+which by erection or expansion are easily, and at the pairing season,
+frequently rendered prominent, such as a crest or tail. A spangle of
+ruby or emerald does not exist, for instance, on the side under the
+wing, which is seldom raised, of our domestic poultry. Such jewels are
+hung where man himself wears his, on the face and forehead, or court
+attention, like our own crowns, trains, shoulder-knots, breast-knots,
+painted cheeks, or jewelled ears. I cannot account for the existence of
+these gaudy ornaments to please man, for nowhere are they more gorgeous
+than in Birds which live in the depth of the tropical forest, where man
+is rarely a visitor; I cannot account for them on the principle that
+they do good to their possessors in the battle for life, because they
+rather render them conspicuous to their enemies, or coveted by man." But
+the beauty of these beings glows most brightly at the season of their
+pairing, and the selection of their mates.
+
+Baron von Tschudi, the Swiss naturalist, has shown the important
+services of Birds in the destruction of insects. Without Birds, no
+agriculture or vegetation would be possible. They accomplish in a few
+months the profitable work of destruction which millions of human hands
+could not do half so well in as many years; and the sage, therefore,
+blamed in very severe terms the foolish practice of shooting and
+destroying Birds, which prevails more especially in Italy, recommending,
+on the contrary, the process of alluring Birds into gardens and
+corn-fields. Among the most deserving Birds he counts Swallows, Finches.
+Titmice, Redtails, &c. The naturalist then cites numerous instances in
+support of his assertion. In a flower-garden of one of his neighbours
+three rose-trees had been suddenly covered with about 2,000 tree-lice.
+At his recommendation a Marsh-Titmouse was located in the garden, which
+in a few hours consumed the whole brood, and left the roses perfectly
+clean. A Redtail in a room was observed to catch about 900 flies in an
+hour. A couple of Night-Swallows have been known to destroy a whole
+swarm of gnats in fifteen minutes. A pair of Golden-crested Wrens
+carry insects as food to their nestlings upon an average thirty-six
+times in an hour. For the protection of orchards and woods Titmice are
+of invaluable service. They consume, in particular, the eggs of the
+dangerous pine-spiders. One single female of such spiders frequently
+lays from 600 to 800 eggs twice in the summer season, while a Titmouse
+with her young ones consume daily several thousands of them. Wrens,
+Nuthatches, and Woodpeckers often dexterously fetch from the crevices of
+tree-bark numbers of insects for their nestlings.
+
+Yet, profitless and wanton Bird-murder is common. The cliffs on the
+coasts of these islands are the resort of numerous kinds of Sea-Fowl,
+and these Fowl, we are told, are slaughtered by thousands, not merely
+for the sake of their feathers, but actually for the mere savage
+pleasure of killing. What speculation can enter into such a proceeding
+it may puzzle the reader to imagine; but it seems that the wing feathers
+of the poor White Gull are now inquired for in the plume-trade, and
+we are actually told of an order given by a single house for 10,000
+of these unhappy Birds. When these facts were stated at the Meeting
+of the British Association, in August, 1868, at Norwich, a lady stood
+up boldly in defence of her sex, and declared that they sinned only
+through ignorance, and would never willingly wear the feathers of a
+Bird destroyed in the act of feeding its young. That part of the case,
+therefore, ought to be now in safe hands. In the Isle of Man a law has
+been passed, called the "Seagull Preservation Act," protecting these
+Birds by heavy penalties, on the ground of their utility in removing
+fish offal and guiding fishermen to shoals of fish. At a certain point
+of our shores a similar protection has been established. A visitor to
+the South Stack Lighthouse, on the coast of Anglesey, may see prodigious
+numbers of Sea-Fowl as tame as complete safety can make them. It has
+been ascertained that in thick weather, when neither light can be
+distinguished nor signal seen, the incessant scream of these Birds gives
+the best of all warnings to the mariner of the vicinity of the rock. The
+noise they make can be heard at a greater distance than the tolling of
+the great bell; and so valuable was this danger-signal considered, that
+an order from the Trinity House forbad even the firing of the warning
+gun, lest the colony of the Sea-Fowl should be disturbed. The signals of
+the bell and the cannon might be neglected or overpowered, but the Birds
+were always there and always audible.
+
+It is inferred that Birds possess some notion of power, and of cause and
+effect, from the various actions which they perform. "Thus," relates Dr.
+Fleming, "we have seen the Hooded Crow in Zetland, when feeding on small
+shell-fish, able to break some of the tenderer kinds by means of its
+bill, aided in some cases by beating them against a stone; but, as some
+of the larger shells, such as the buckie and the welk, cannot be broken
+by such means, the Crow employs another method, by which, in consequence
+of applying foreign power, it accomplishes its object. Seizing the
+shell with its claws, it mounts up into the air, and then loosing its
+hold, causes the shell to fall among stones (in preference to the sand,
+the water, or the soil on the ground), that it may be broken, and give
+easier access to the contained animal. Should the first attempt fail,
+a second or third is tried, with this difference, that the Crow rises
+higher in the air, in order to increase the power of the fall, and
+more effectually remove the barrier to the contained morsel. On such
+occasions we have seen a strong Bird remain an apparently inattentive
+spectator of the process of breaking the shell, but coming to the spot
+with astonishing keenness when the efforts of its neighbour had been
+successful, in order to share the spoil. Pennant mentions similar
+operations performed by Crows on mussels."
+
+The brain of Birds is, in general, large in proportion to the size of
+the body, and the instinctive powers are very perfect. A few kinds are
+rather dull and stupid; but the Parrot, Magpie, Raven, and many others,
+show great vivacity and quickness of intellect. The Raven has a great
+deal of humour in him. One, a most amusing and mischievous creature,
+would get into a well-stocked flower-garden, go to the beds where the
+gardener had sowed a great variety of seeds, with sticks put in the
+ground with labels, and then he would amuse himself with pulling up
+every stick, and laying them in heaps of ten or twelve on the path. This
+used to irritate the old gardener, who drove him away. The Raven knew
+that he ought not to do it, or he would not have done it. He would soon
+return to his mischief, and when the gardener again chased him (the old
+man could not run very fast), the Raven would just keep clear of the
+rake or the hoe in his hand, dancing before him, and singing as plainly
+as a Raven could. "Tol de rol de rol! tol de rol de rol!" with all kinds
+of mimicking gestures.
+
+The signal of danger among Birds seems to be of universal comprehension;
+because the instant it is uttered we hear the whole flock, though
+composed of various species, repeat a separate moan, and away they
+all scuttle into the bushes for safety. The sentinel Birds give the
+signal, but in some cases they are deceived by false appearances. Dr.
+Edmonstone, in his "View of the Zetland Isles," relates a very striking
+illustration of the neglect of the sentinel, in his remarks on the Shag.
+"Great numbers of this species of the Cormorant are sometimes taken
+during the night, while asleep on the rocks of easy access; but before
+they commit themselves to sleep, one or two of the number are appointed
+to watch. Until these sentinels are secured, it is impossible to make a
+successful impression on the whole body; to surprise them is, therefore,
+the first object. With this view, the leader of the expedition creeps
+cautiously and imperceptibly along the rock, until he gets within a
+short distance of the watch. He then dips a worsted glove into the sea,
+and gently throws water in the face of the guard. The unsuspecting Bird,
+either disliking the impression, or fancying, from what he considers to
+be a disagreeable state of the weather, that all is quiet and safe,
+puts his head under his wing and soon falls asleep. His neck is then
+immediately broken, and the party dispatch as many as they choose."
+
+Addison was a true lover of nature, which he shows in two letters
+written by him to the Earl of Warwick (afterwards his son-in-law),
+when that nobleman was very young. "My dear Lord," he writes, "I have
+employed the whole neighbourhood in looking after Birds'-nests, and
+not altogether without success. My man found one last night, but it
+proved a hen's, with fifteen eggs in it, covered with an old broody
+Duck, which may satisfy your Lordship's curiosity a little; though I
+am afraid the eggs will be of little use to us. This morning I have
+news brought me of a nest that has abundance of little eggs, streaked
+with red and blue veins, that, by the description they give me, must
+make a very beautiful figure in a string. My neighbours are very much
+divided in their opinions upon them: some say they are a Skylark's;
+others will have them to be a Canary-Bird's; but I am much mistaken
+in the colour and turn of the eggs if they are not full of Tomtit's."
+Again, Addison writes:--"Since I am so near your Lordship, methinks,
+after having passed the day amid more severe studies, you may often
+take a trip hither and relax yourself with these little curiosities of
+nature. I assure you no less a man than Cicero commends the two great
+friends of his age, Scipio and Lælius, for entertaining themselves
+at their country-house, which stood on the sea-shore, with picking up
+cockle-shells, and looking after Birds'-nests."
+
+In another letter Addison writes:--"The business of this is to invite
+you to a concert of music which I have found out in a neighbouring wood.
+It begins precisely at six in the evening, and consists of a Blackbird,
+a Thrush, a Robin-Redbreast, and a Bullfinch. There is a Lark, that, by
+way of overture, sings and mounts till she is almost out of hearing; and
+afterwards, falling down leisurely, drops to the ground as soon as she
+has ended her song. The whole is concluded by a Nightingale, that has a
+much better voice than Mrs. Tofts, and something of the Italian manner
+in her divisions. If your Lordship will honour me with your company, I
+will promise to entertain you with much better music, and more agreeable
+scenes, than you ever met with at the Opera; and will conclude with a
+charming description of a Nightingale out of our friend Virgil:--
+
+    "'So close, in poplar shades, her children gone,
+    The mother Nightingale laments alone;
+    Whose nest some prying churl had found, and thence
+    By stealth convey'd the unfeathered innocence:
+    But she supplies the night with mournful strains,
+    And melancholy music fills the plains.'"
+
+
+
+
+BIRDS' EGGS AND NESTS.
+
+
+The Eggs of Birds are variously tinted and mottled, and hence they
+become objects of interest to the collector. In this diversity of
+colour nature has, doubtless, some final object in view; and though not
+in every instance, yet in many, we can certainly see a design in the
+adaptation of the colours to the purpose of concealment, according to
+the habits of the various classes of Birds. Thus, as a general rule, the
+Eggs of Birds which have their nests in dark holes, or which construct
+nests that almost completely exclude the light, are white; as is also
+the case with those Birds that constantly sit on their Eggs, or leave
+them only for a short time during the night. Eggs of a light blue or
+light green tint will also be found in nests that are otherwise well
+concealed; while, on the other hand, a great proportion of those nests
+that are in exposed situations have Eggs varying in tints and spots in a
+remarkable degree, corresponding with the colours of external objects in
+their immediate neighbourhood. Thus, a dull green colour is common in
+most gallinaceous Birds that form their nests in grass, and in aquatic
+Birds among green hedges; a bright green colour is prevalent among Birds
+that nestle among trees and bushes; and a brown mottled colour is found
+in those Eggs that are deposited among furze, heath, shingle, and grey
+rocks and stones.
+
+Birds'-nesting, we need hardly remark, is a favourite pursuit of
+boyhood; but, in some cases, its attractions have induced young
+persons to take up more important branches of natural history, or the
+collection, systematic arrangement, and comparison of Birds' Eggs, which
+is, in scientific study, termed Oology; and as the study of Birds cannot
+be considered complete until they are known in every stage, it forms a
+branch of Ornithology. In this case Birds'-nesting has an useful object;
+but many persons are content to acquire collections of Eggs without
+troubling themselves about the Birds which have laid them.
+
+The late Mr. John Wolley, M.A., was one of the leading authorities
+upon the subject of European Ornithology, and was one of a number
+of University men, who, about twelve years ago, established the
+ornithological journal called "The Ibis," and who visited far-distant
+and unexplored regions, where they might hope to discover strange
+Birds and unknown Eggs. For several years Algiers and Tunis were their
+favourite resorts, and the meeting-places of many of our rarer Birds
+were hunted up in these countries, even so far as the Desert of the
+Great Sahara. Others preferred the New World as the scene of their
+labours, and collected long series of specimens in the highland of
+Guatemala, and the tropical forests of Belize. Mr. Wolley, however,
+confined his attention principally to the northern parts of Europe--that
+region being the breeding-quarters of a large number of Birds which
+are only known in this country as winter visitants. In order to be
+at his collecting-station at Muonioniska, on the frontier of Finnish
+Lapland, at the earliest commencement of the breeding-season, Mr. Wolley
+frequently passed the whole winter in that remote region. But the rigour
+of the climate under the Arctic Circle contributed to bring on a malady
+which terminated fatally in November, 1859.
+
+Upon the decease of Mr. Wolley, his large collection of Birds' Eggs,
+in accordance with his last wishes, became the property of his friend,
+Mr. Alfred Newton, who is publishing a Catalogue of Mr. Wolley's Egg
+Cabinet, with notes from the deceased naturalist's journals. The first
+part contains the Eggs of Birds of Prey (_Accipitres_), recognisable at
+once by their strongly-hooked bill, formed to assist them in tearing
+their prey, and their large feet and sharpened claws, which aid them to
+grasp it. They are divisible into two very distinct groups--the diurnal
+Birds of Prey, consisting of the Hawks, Vultures, and Eagles; and the
+nocturnal Birds of Prey, or Owls. In the latter the Eggs are invariably
+colourless; in the former they are often strongly marked, and present
+some of the most beautiful objects in the whole series of Birds' Eggs.
+
+In the most recently published list of European birds fifty-two species
+of birds of prey are given as occurring more or less frequently within
+the limits of our continent. Of the three generally-recognised species
+of European Vultures two are well represented, as regards their eggs,
+in the Wolleyan series. A few years ago the nesting of all these birds
+was utterly unknown to naturalists, and it was mainly through the
+exertions of Mr. Wolley and his friends that specimens first reached
+our collectors' cabinets. Here were found both the Egyptian Vulture
+and the Griffon breeding abundantly in the Eastern Atlas in 1857; and
+the eyries of these birds have since been visited by other collectors
+in the same country. The Eggs of the former of these Vultures are
+remarkable for their deep and rich coloration. The productions of the
+Griffon are not nearly so handsome, and are occasionally altogether
+destitute of markings. Of the Eagles of Europe the series of Eggs is
+very full, especially of the two well-known British species--the Golden
+Eagle and Sea Eagle. The Golden or Mountain Eagle is even now-a-days
+much more common in the remote parts of the British islands than is
+usually supposed to be the case. In 1852 Mr. Wolley was acquainted
+with five nests of this bird in various parts of Scotland, and there
+were undoubtedly at least as many more of which he did not learn the
+particulars. The eyrie is usually placed in some mountainous district,
+on the ledge of some "warm-looking" rock, well clothed with vegetation,
+and often by no means wild or exposed. Not unfrequently, under proper
+guidance, one can walk into the nest almost without climbing. Mr. Newton
+gives a very entertaining account of the taking of a pair of eggs from
+a nest in Argyllshire in 1861, where this seems to have been the case.
+In the whole ascent there was only one "ticklish place," where it was
+necessary to go sideways on a narrow ledge round some rocks. The Sea
+Eagle, on the other hand, generally breeds on the high cliffs upon the
+coast, often selecting the most inaccessible position for its eyrie.
+Sometimes, however, it will choose an island in the middle of an inland
+loch, and in such case places its nest upon the ground or in a tree.
+
+Mr. Wolley's well-written notes of his adventures in quest of both
+these Eagles, as also those relating to the other rapacious birds, will
+be read with much interest; as will also the details concerning the
+nesting-habits of many of the rarer species of European birds, several
+of which, such as the Rough-legged Buzzard and the Lapp Owl, were first
+tracked to their breeding-quarters in the remotest wilds of Scandinavia
+by this indefatigable naturalist.[10]
+
+Of large Eggs we are most familiar with those of the Ostrich, of which
+Mr. Burchell, when in Africa, found twenty-five Eggs in a hollow
+scratched in the sand, six feet in diameter, surrounded by a trench, but
+without grass, leaves, or sticks, as in the nests of other birds. In
+the trench were nine more Eggs, intended, as the Hottentots observed,
+as the first food of the twenty-five young Ostriches. Between sixty and
+seventy Eggs have been found in one nest; each is equal to twenty-four
+Eggs of the domestic hen, and holds five pints and a quarter of liquid.
+The shells are dirty white. The Hottentots string them together as
+belts, or garlands, and they are frequently mounted as cups. One Ostrich
+Egg is a sufficient meal for three persons. The Egg is cooked over the
+fire without either pot or water, the shell answering the purpose of the
+first, and the liquid nature of its contents that of the other.
+
+Less familiar to the reader are the gigantic Eggs of the Epyornis, a
+bird which formerly lived in Madagascar. One of these Eggs contains the
+substance of 140 hens' Eggs. Mr. Geoffroy St. Hilaire describes some
+portions of an Egg of the Epyornis which show the Egg to have been of
+such a size as to be capable of containing about ten English quarts;
+that in the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes can only contain 8-3/4
+quarts. Mr. Strickland, in some notices of the Dodo and its kindred,
+published in 1849, says that in the previous year a Mr. Dumarele, a
+French merchant at Bourbon, saw at Port Leven, Madagascar, an enormous
+Egg which held "_thirteen wine quart bottles of fluid_." The natives
+stated that the Egg was found in the jungle, and "that such Eggs were
+_very, very rarely_ met with."
+
+A word or two about the nests of such gigantic birds. Captain Cook
+found, on an island near the north-east coast of New Holland, a nest
+"of a most enormous size. It was built with sticks upon the ground, and
+was no less than six-and-twenty feet in circumference, and two feet
+eight inches high." (Kerr's "Collection of Voyages and Travels," xiii.,
+318.) Captain Flinders found two similar nests on the south coast of New
+Holland, in King George's Bay. In his "Voyage," &c., London, 1818, he
+says, "They were built upon the ground, from which they rose above two
+feet, and were of vast circumference and great interior capacity; the
+branches of trees and other matter of which each nest was composed being
+enough to fill a cart."
+
+Among the varieties of Birds'-nests are some very curious homes, of
+which we have but space to notice a few. The pendulous nest of the
+Indian Baya-bird is usually formed of the fibres of the palmyra, the
+cocoa-nut palm, and wild date of India, sometimes mixed with grass,
+neatly interlaced, and very strongly made. It consists of only one
+circular chamber, with a long tubular passage leading to it, and is
+suspended from a tree, preferred if overhanging water. The natives of
+India say the Baya lights up its nest with fire-flies. The bird lays
+from four to six white eggs. Bayas are of a very social disposition:
+numbers build on the same tree, or neighbouring trees, and singing in
+concert during the breeding season. The Baya is very docile, and taught
+to fly off the finger and return again; to dart after a ring or small
+coin, dropped into a deep well, and catch it before it reaches the
+water; to fetch and carry, and perform similar tricks.
+
+The nest of the brilliant Golden-banded Oriole is a hammock of twisted
+fibrous substances, and is suspended in a low shrub, so as to swing to
+the breeze. The twine-like fibres of which it is woven are the filaments
+of the gigantic palm. The threads break away from the leaf, and hang
+like fringe to the magnificent foliage.
+
+The Tailor-birds are the best nest-builders of all the feathered tribes.
+They interweave their nests between the twigs and branches of shrubs,
+or suspend the nests from them; and some of these birds have exercised
+arts from the creation which man has found of the greatest benefit to
+him since he discovered them. These birds, indeed, may be called the
+inventors of the several arts of the weaver, the sempstress, and the
+tailor; whence some of them have been denominated Weaver and Tailor
+Birds. The nests of the latter are, however, most remarkable. India
+produces several species of Tailor-birds that sew together leaves for
+the protection of their eggs and nestlings from the voracity of serpents
+and apes. They generally select the end of a branch or twig, and sew
+with cotton, thread, and fibres. Colonel Sykes has seen some in which
+the thread was literally knotted at the end. The inside of these nests
+is lined usually with down and cotton.
+
+Tailor-birds are not confined to India or tropical countries. Italy can
+boast a species which exercises the same art. Mr. Gould has a specimen
+of this bird in his possession, and the Zoological Society have a nest
+in their Museum. This little bird, a species of the genus _sylvia_, in
+summer and autumn frequents marshes; but in the spring it seeks the
+meadows and corn-fields, in which, at that season, the marshes being
+bare of the sedges which cover them in summer, it is compelled to
+construct its nest in tussocks of grass on the brinks of ditches; but
+the leaves of these being weak, easily split, so that it is difficult
+for our little sempstresses to unite them, and so form the skeleton
+of the fabric. From this and other circumstances, the spring nests of
+these birds differ so widely from those made in the autumn that it seems
+next to impossible that both should be the work of the same artisan.
+The latter are constructed in a thick bunch of sedge or reed: they are
+shaped like a pear, being dilated below and narrow above, so as to leave
+an aperture sufficient for the ingress and egress of the bird. The
+greatest horizontal diameter of the nest is about two inches and a half,
+and the vertical is five inches.
+
+The most wonderful thing in the construction of these nests is the
+method to which the little bird has recourse to keep united the living
+leaves of which it is composed. The sole in the weaving, more or less
+delicate, of the materials, forms the principle adopted by other birds
+to bind together the walls of their nests; but this sylvia is no weaver,
+for the leaves of the sedges or reeds are united by real stitches.
+In the edge of each leaf she makes, probably with her beak, minute
+apertures, through which she contrives to pass, perhaps by means of
+the same organ, one or more cords formed of spiders' web, particularly
+that of their egg-pouches. Those threads are not very long, and are
+sufficient to pass two or three times from one leaf to another. They
+are of unequal thickness, and have knots here and there, which, in some
+places, divide into two or three branches.
+
+This is the manner in which the exterior of the nest is formed: the
+interior consists mainly of down, chiefly from plants, a little
+spiders' web being intermixed, which helps to keep the other substances
+together. The upper part and sides of the nest, that is, the external
+and internal, are in immediate contact; but in the lower part a greater
+space intervenes, filled with the slender foliage of grasses, and other
+materials, which render soft and warm the bed on which the eggs are to
+repose. This little bird feeds on insects. Its flight is rectilinear,
+but consists of many curves, with the concavity upwards. These curves
+equal in number the strokes of the wing, and at every stroke its whistle
+is heard, the intervals of which correspond with the rapidity of its
+flight.
+
+The Australian Bower-bird, as its name implies, builds its nest
+like an arbour or bower, with twigs: in the British Museum are two
+specimens, each decorated--one with bones and fresh-water shells, and
+the other with feathers and land-shells; remarkable instances of taste
+for ornament already referred to in a preceding page. The Satin or
+Bower-bird is described by settlers in Australia as "a very troublesome
+rascal," which besets gardens; if once allowed to make a lodgment there
+it is very troublesome to get rid of him; he signalizes his arrival by
+pulling up, in his restless fussy way, everything in the garden that he
+can tug out of the ground, even to the little sticks to mark the site of
+seeds. A settler had formed a garden in the bush; there was no enclosure
+of the kind for miles in any direction: a flock of Bower-birds came; he
+got his gun and shot two or three; the flock went off, and he never saw
+another bird of the kind.
+
+The Cape Swallows build nests which show extraordinary instinct allied
+to reason. A pair of these built their nest on the outside of a house
+at Cape Town against the angle formed by the wall and the board which
+supported the eaves. The whole of this nest was covered in, and it was
+furnished with a long neck or passage, through which the birds passed in
+and out. It resembled a longitudinal section of a Florence oil flask.
+This nest having crumbled away after the young birds had quitted it, the
+same pair, or another of the same species, built on the old foundation
+again. But this time an improvement was observable in the plan of it
+that can hardly be referred to the dictates of mere instinct. The body
+of the nest was of the same shape as before, but instead of a single
+passage it was furnished with one at each side, running along the angle
+of the roof; and on watching the birds, they were seen invariably to go
+in at one passage and come out at the other. Besides saving themselves
+the trouble of turning in the nest and disturbing, perhaps, its interior
+arrangement, they were guarded by this contrivance against a surprise by
+serpents, which frequently creep up along the wall, or descend from the
+thatch, and devour both the mother and her brood.
+
+Dr. Livingstone relates a very curious instance of "Bird Confinement"
+under very strange circumstances. In passing through Mopane country, in
+South Africa, his men caught a great number of the birds called _Korwé_
+in their breeding-places, which were holes in the mopane trees. They
+passed the nest of a Korwé just ready for the female to enter; the
+orifice was plastered on both sides, but a space was left of a heart
+shape, and exactly the size of the bird's body. The hole in the tree
+was in every case found to be prolonged some distance upwards above the
+opening, and thither the Korwé always fled to escape being caught. In
+another nest that was found, one white egg, much like that of a pigeon,
+was laid, and the bird dropped another when captured: she had four
+besides in the ovarium. Dr. Livingstone first saw this bird at Kolenbeng
+in the forest: he saw a slit only, about half an inch wide and three or
+four inches long, in a slight hollow of a tree; a native broke the clay
+which surrounded the slit, put his arm into the hole, and brought out a
+red-beaked Hornbill, which he killed. He told Dr. Livingstone that when
+the female enters her nest she submits to a real confinement. The male
+plasters up the entrance, leaving only a narrow slit by which to feed
+his mate, and which exactly suits the form of his beak. The female makes
+a nest of her own feathers, lays her eggs, hatches them, and remains
+with the young till they are fully fledged. During all this time, which
+is stated to be two or three months, the male continues to feed her
+and the young family. The prisoner generally becomes quite fat, and is
+esteemed a very dainty morsel by the natives; while the poor slave of a
+husband gets so lean that, on the sudden lowering of the temperature,
+which sometimes happens after a fall of rain, he is benumbed, falls
+down, and dies.
+
+Dr. Livingstone, on passing the same tree at Kolenbeng about eight days
+afterwards, found the hole plastered up again, as if, in the short time
+that had elapsed, the disconsolate bird-husband had procured another
+wife. Dr. L. saw a nest with the plastering not quite finished, and
+others completed; he also received elsewhere, besides Kolobeng, the same
+account that the bird comes forth when the young are fully-fledged, at
+the period when the corn is ripe; indeed, her appearance abroad with
+her young is one of the signs they have for knowing when it ought to be
+so: the time is between two and three months. She is said sometimes to
+hatch two eggs, and, when the young of these are full-fledged, the other
+two are just out of the egg-shells: she then leaves the nest with the
+two elder, the orifice is again plastered up, and both male and female
+attend to the wants of the young.
+
+There is a specimen of a nest in the Gardens of the Zoological Society,
+which merits description, besides that of the Bower-bird. Such is the
+nest of the Brush Turkey, which appears more like a small haystack than
+an ordinary nest, and the methodical manner in which it is constructed
+is thus described:--Tracing a circle of considerable radius, the birds
+begin to travel round it, continually grasping with their huge feet the
+leaves and grasses and dead twigs which are lying about, and flinging
+them inwards towards the centre. Each time that they complete their
+round, they narrow their circle, so that in a short time they clear away
+a circular belt, having in its centre a low irregular mass. By repeating
+the same process, however, they decrease the diameter of the mound as
+they increase its height, and at last a large and rudely conical mound
+is formed.
+
+In this nest as many as a bushel of eggs are deposited, at regular
+intervals, long end downwards. The leaves form a fermenting mass, which
+relieves the mother of the necessity of setting upon them. The male,
+however, has to regulate the temperature of the mass, which would
+otherwise get too hot. This he does by making a central ventilating
+shaft, which carries off the superfluous heat; and, lest the temperature
+should fall too low, he is constantly engaged in covering and uncovering
+the eggs in order to hit the exact temperature to be applied until the
+egg is warmed into life.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[10] Abridged from the "Saturday Review."
+
+
+
+
+THE EPICURE'S ORTOLAN.
+
+
+We have allotted this bird to the epicure, because it is rarely heard
+of but in association with his luxurious table. Mr. Beckford describes
+the Ortolans among the delicacies which he saw in the kitchen of the
+monastery of Batalha as "lumps of celestial fatness."
+
+Ortolan is the French and English names for a species of _Fringillidæ_
+(Finches). It is the _Hortulanus_ of Gesner and other naturalists;
+_Miliaria pinguescens_ of Frisch; _Emberiza Hortulana_ of Linnæus;
+_Ortolano_ of the Italians generally; _Tordino Berluccio_ of the
+Venetians; _Garton Ammer_ and _Fetammer_ of the Germans; and _Gerste
+Keneu_ of the Netherlanders. This wide dispersion on the Continent
+bespeaks the pet character of the bird. Montagu terms it the
+Green-headed Bunting.
+
+The French have a fanciful derivation of the name: they say it is from
+the Italian word for gardener, which is from the Latin _hortus_, garden;
+because, according to Menage, in Italy, where the bird is common, it is
+quite at home in the hedges of gardens.
+
+The male bird has the throat, circle round the eyes, and a narrow band
+springing from the angle of the bill, yellow; head and neck grey, with a
+tinge of olive, and small brown spots; feathers black, edged with red;
+breast, belly, and abdomen, reddish grey, the feathers terminated with
+ash-colour; tail blackish, two external feathers, in part white; length
+rather more than six inches. There are, also, varieties marked white,
+green, blackish, and entirely black. The nest, which is constructed
+of fibres of plants and leaves, is frequently found on the ground in
+corn-fields, and sometimes in hedges and bushes.
+
+The Ortolan is not famed for its song, which is, however, soft
+and sweet. Like the Nightingale, to which it has other points of
+resemblance, the Ortolan sings after, as well as before sunset. It was
+this bird that Varro, the lyric poet, called his companion by night and
+day.
+
+The south of Europe may be considered the summer and autumnal
+head-quarters of the Ortolan, though it is a summer visitor in the
+central and northern parts. In Italy it is said to be common by Temminck
+and others. The Prince of Musignano states it to be found in the Sabine
+mountains; adding that it rarely flies in the plains of Rome, but is
+frequent in Tuscany. Lapland, Russia, Denmark. Sweden, and Norway,
+are among the countries visited by it. In the British Isles it seems
+only entitled to rank as an autumnal visitor, but it may occur more
+frequently than is generally supposed; for, especially to an unpractised
+eye, it might be mistaken for the Yellow Hammer, and in some states of
+plumage for other Buntings. It has been taken in the neighbourhood of
+London. In 1837 there was a live specimen in an aviary of the Zoological
+Society in Regent's-park; and many Ortolans are sent alive to the London
+market from Prussia. There is, however, some consolation for the rarity
+of the Ortolan in England. It is approached in delicacy by our Wheatear,
+which is termed the _English Ortolan_. Hence it has been pursued as a
+delicate morsel throughout all its island haunts. Bewick captured it at
+sea, off the coast of Yorkshire, in May, 1822. Every spring and autumn
+it may be observed at Gibraltar, on its migration. Mr. Strickland saw it
+at Smyrna in April. North Africa is its winter residence. Colonel Sykes
+notes it in his catalogue of the birds of the Deccan.
+
+Ortolans are solitary birds; they fly in pairs, rarely three together,
+and never in flocks. They are taken in traps from March or April to
+September, when they are often poor and thin; but if fed with plenty
+of millet-seed and other grain, they become sheer lumps of fat, and
+delicious morsels. They are fattened thus in large establishments in the
+south of Europe; Mr. Gould states this to be effected in Italy, and the
+south of France, in dark rooms; and the Prince of Musignano, having
+described the process, adds the relishing words. "Carne exquisita."
+
+The fattening process in Italy is one of great refinement in the manner
+of feeding. It is the fat of the Ortolan which is so delicious; but it
+has a peculiar habit of feeding which is opposed to the rapid fattening,
+this is, it feeds only at the rising of the sun. Yet this peculiarity
+has not proved an insurmountable obstacle to the Italian gourmands.
+The Ortolans are placed in a dark chamber, perfectly dark, with only
+one aperture in the wall. The food is scattered over the floor of the
+chamber. At a certain hour in the morning the keeper of the birds places
+a lantern in the orifice of the wall; when the dim light thrown from the
+lantern on the floor of the apartment induces the Ortolans to believe
+that the sun is about to rise, and they greedily consume the food upon
+the floor. More food is now scattered over it, and the lantern is
+withdrawn.
+
+The Ortolans, rather surprised at the shortness of the day, think it
+their duty to fall asleep, as night has spread her sable mantle round
+them. During sleep, little of the food being expended in the production
+of force, most of it goes to the formation of muscle and fat. After they
+have been allowed to repose for one or two hours, in order to complete
+the digestion of the food taken, their keeper again exhibits the lantern
+through the aperture. The "rising sun" a second time illumines the
+apartment, and the birds, awaking from their slumber, apply themselves
+voraciously to the food on the floor; after having discussed which,
+they are again enveloped in darkness. Thus the sun is made to shed its
+rising rays into the chamber floor four or five times every day, and
+as many nights following. The Ortolans thus treated become like little
+balls of fat in a few days. This not uninteresting process has been
+detailed by Dr. Lyon Playfair to the Royal Agricultural Society. It
+may, probably, be applied to purposes with less luxurious objects than
+fattening Ortolans.
+
+Notwithstanding its delicacy, the Ortolan fattens very fast; and it is
+this lump of fatness that is its merit, and has sometimes caused it
+to be preferred to the Becafico. According to Buffon, the Greeks and
+Romans understood fattening the Ortolan upon millet. But a lively French
+commentator doubts this statement: he maintains that had the ancients
+known the Ortolan, they would have deified it, and built altars to
+it upon Mount Hymettus and the Saniculum; adding, did they not deify
+the horse of Caligula, which was certainly not worth an Ortolan? and
+Caligula himself, who was not worth so much as his horse? However, this
+dispute belongs to the "classics of the table."
+
+The Ortolan is considered sufficiently fat when it is a handful, and
+is judged by feeling it, and not by appearance. It should not be
+killed with violence, like other birds; this might crush and bruise
+the delicate flesh, and spoil the _coup-d'oeil_, to avoid which it is
+recommended to plunge the head of the Ortolan into a glass of brandy.
+The culinary instruction is as follows: having picked the bird of its
+feathers, singe it with the flame of paper or spirits of wine; cut off
+the beak and ends of the feet; do not draw it; put it into a paper case
+soaked in olive oil, and broil it over a slow fire of slack cinders,
+like that required for a pigeon _à la crapaudine_; in a few minutes the
+Ortolan will swim in its own fat, and will be cooked. Some gourmands
+wrap each bird in a vine-leaf.
+
+A gourmand will take an Ortolan by the legs and craunch it in delicious
+mouthfuls, so as absolutely to lose none of it. More delicate feeders
+cut the bird into quarters, and lay aside the gizzard; the rest may be
+eaten, even to the bones, which are sufficiently tender for the most
+delicate mouth to masticate without inconvenience.
+
+On the Continent, Ortolans are packed in tin boxes for exportation.
+They may be bought in London for half-a-crown a-piece. A few poulterers
+import Ortolans in considerable numbers, and some have acquired the art
+of fattening these birds.[11] Alexis Soyer put into the hundred guinea
+dish which he prepared for the royal table at the grand banquet at York,
+in 1850, five pounds worth of Ortolans, which were obtained from Belgium.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[11] The Ortolan figures in a curious anecdote of individual epicurism
+in the last century. A gentleman of Gloucestershire had one son, whom he
+sent abroad to make the grand tour of the Continent, where he paid more
+attention to the cookery of nations, and luxurious living, than anything
+else. Before his return his father died and left him a large fortune.
+He now looked over his note-book to discover where the most exquisite
+dishes were to be had, and the best cooks obtained. Every servant in his
+house was a cook; his butler, footman, coachman, and grooms--all were
+cooks. He had also three Italian cooks--one from Florence, another from
+Vienna, and another from Viterbo--for dressing one Florentine dish. He
+had a messenger constantly on the road between Brittany and London to
+bring the eggs of a certain kind of plover found in the former country.
+This prodigal was known to eat a single dinner at the expense of 70_l._,
+though there were but two dishes. In nine years he found himself
+getting poor, and this made him melancholy. When totally ruined, having
+spent 150,000_l._, a friend one day gave him a guinea to keep him from
+starving, and he was found in a garret next day _broiling an Ortolan_,
+for which he had paid a portion of the alms.
+
+
+
+
+TALK ABOUT TOUCANS.
+
+
+The Toucans, a family of climbing-birds of tropical America, appear to
+have been known in Europe by the length and great size of their bills,
+long before the birds themselves found their way to England. Belon,
+in 1555, described the bill of one of the family as half a foot long,
+large as a child's arm, pointed, and black at the tip, white elsewhere,
+notched on the edges, hollow within, and so finely delicate as to be
+transparent and thin as parchment; and its beauty caused it to be kept
+in the cabinets of the curious. For more than a century after Belon's
+work, the birds themselves had not been seen in England; for, in the
+_Museum Tradescantianum_, the standard collection of the time, and
+which, from the list of contributors, appears to have been the great
+receptacle for all curiosities, we read of an "Azacari (or Toucan) of
+Brazil; has his beak four inches long, almost two thick, like a Turk's
+sword" (A.D. 1656). From this description Tradescant knew the nature of
+the bird, if he had not seen it.
+
+Mr. Swainson states, that the enormous bills give to these birds a most
+singular and uncouth appearance. Their feet are formed like those of
+the parrot, more for grasping than climbing; and as they live among
+trees, and proceed by hopping from branch to branch, their grasping
+feature is particularly adapted for such habits. They live retired in
+the deep forests, mostly in small companies. Their flight is strait and
+laborious, but not graceful; while their movements, as they glide rather
+than hop from branch to branch, are elegant.
+
+Mr. Gould, in his grand Monograph of the Toucans, or _Ramphastidæ_,
+remarks, that it was only within a few years of the time of Linnæus that
+actual specimens of the Toucan had been received in Europe. The beaks,
+however, of these birds, regarded as curiosities, had occasionally found
+their way to our shores, and had occasioned some curious conjectures.
+The earliest shape resembled a Turkish scimitar.
+
+The Toucans (a word derived from their Brazilian name, _Taca, Tucà_)
+received from Linnæus the title of _Ramphastos_, in allusion to
+the great volume of the beak ([Greek: ramphos]--Ramphos), a family
+(_Ramphastidæ_). In some respects, indeed, they resemble the Hornbills
+in the development of the beak. The Toucans may be said to represent
+in America the Hornbills in India and Africa. Large as is the beak of
+the Toucan compared with the size of the body, it is in reality very
+light. Its outer sheathing is somewhat elastic, very thin, smooth, and
+semi-transparent; and the interior consists of a maze of delicate cells,
+throughout which the olfactory nerves are multitudinously distributed.
+The nostrils are basal, the edges of each mandible are serrated, and
+the colouring of the whole beak is bright, rich, and often relieved by
+contrasted markings. But these tints begin to fade after death, and
+become ultimately dissipated. The eyes are surrounded by a considerable
+space of naked skin, often very richly tinted. The tongue is very long,
+slender, horizontally flattened, pointed, and, except at its base,
+horny; it is fringed or feathered along each side. The wings are short,
+concave, and comparatively feeble.
+
+The tail is variable, equal and squared; it is remarkable for the
+facility with which it can be retroverted or turned up, so as to lie
+upon the back. This peculiarity results from a modification of structure
+in the caudal vertebræ, which enables the tail to turn with a jerk by
+the action of certain muscles, as if it were fixed on a hinge put into
+action by means of a spring. When the retroversion is accomplished, the
+muscles which caused it become passive, and offer no resistance to their
+antagonists, which restore the tail to its ordinary direction. When they
+sleep they puff out their plumage, they retrovert the tail over the
+back, draw the head between the shoulders; the bill begins to turn over
+the right shoulder, and becomes at last buried in the plumage of the
+back; at the same time the pinions of the wings droop, and conceal the
+feet. The bird now resembles an oval ball of puffed-up feathers, and is
+well protected against the cold.
+
+Toucans utter, from time to time, harsh, clattering, and discordant
+cries. "Some," says Mr. Gould, "frequent the humid woods of the
+temperate regions, while others resort to comparatively colder
+districts, and dwell at an elevation of from six to ten thousand
+feet. Those inhabiting the lofty regions are generically different
+from those residing in the low lands, and are clothed in a more thick
+and sombre-coloured plumage. All the members of the Hill-Toucans are
+distinguished by their bills being strong, heavy, and hard, when
+compared with those of the true Toucans and Araçaris, all of which
+have their bills of a more delicate structure, and in several species
+so thin and elastic on the sides as to be compressible between the
+fingers." Their food in a state of nature consists of fruit, eggs, and
+nestling birds; to which, in domestication, are added small birds, mice,
+caterpillars, and raw flesh. They incubate in the hollows of gigantic
+trees.
+
+Faber was told by Fryer, Alaysa, and other Spaniards who had lived
+long in America, and also by the Indians, that the Toucan even hews
+out holes in trees, in which to nidify; and Oviedo adds, that it is
+from this habit of chipping the trees that the bird is called by the
+Spaniards _Carpintero_, and by the Brazilians _Tacataca_, in imitation,
+apparently, of the sound it thus makes.
+
+The larger feed upon bananas and other succulent plants; the smaller
+upon the smaller fruits and berries. Prince Maximilian de Wied states,
+that in Brazil he found only the remains of fruits in their stomachs,
+and adds, that they make sad havoc among plantations of fruit-trees. He
+was informed, however, that they steal and eat birds, but never himself
+saw them in the act. They abound in the vast forests, and are killed
+in great number in the cooler season in the year for the purposes of
+the table. In their manners the Toucans resemble the Crow tribe, and
+especially the Magpies: like them, they are very troublesome to the
+birds of prey, particularly to the Owls, which they surround, making a
+great noise, all the while jerking their tails upwards and downwards.
+Their feathers, especially from their yellow breasts, are used by the
+Indians for personal decoration.
+
+Azara states that they attack even the solid nests of the white ants,
+when the clay of which their nests are formed becomes moistened with the
+rain; they break them up with their beaks, so as to obtain the young
+ants and their eggs; and during the breeding season the Toucan feeds
+upon nothing else; during the rest of the year he subsists upon fruit,
+insects, and the buds of trees.
+
+Edwards, in his voyage up the Amazon, observes, that when a party of
+Toucans alight on a tree, one usually acts the part of a sentinel,
+uttering the loud cry of "Tucano," whence they derive their name; the
+others disperse over the branches in search of fruit. While feeding
+they keep up a hoarse chattering, and at intervals unite with the noisy
+sentry, and scream a concert that may be heard a mile. Having appeased
+their appetites, they seek the depths of a forest, and there quietly
+doze away the noon. In early morning a few of them may be seen sitting
+quietly upon the branches of some dead tree, apparently awaiting the
+coming sunlight before starting for their feeding-trees.
+
+Some species of Toucans have been seen quarrelling with monkeys over a
+nest of eggs. Their carnivorous propensity has been strikingly shown
+in the specimens which have been kept in England. On the approach of
+any small bird the Toucan becomes highly excited, raises itself up,
+erects its feathers, and utters a hollow clattering sound, the irides
+of the eyes expand, and the Toucan is ready to dart on its prey. A
+Toucan, exhibited in St. Martin's-lane in 1824, seized and devoured a
+canary-bird. Next day Mr. Broderip tried him with a live goldfinch. The
+Toucan seized it with the beak, and the poor little victim uttered a
+short weak cry, for within a second it was dead, killed by the powerful
+compression of the mandibles. The Toucan now placed the dead bird firmly
+between its foot and the perch, stripped off the feathers with its bill,
+and then broke the bones of the wings and legs, by strongly wrenching
+them, the bird being still secured by the Toucan's foot. He then
+continued to work with great dexterity till he had reduced the goldfinch
+to a shapeless mass. This he devoured piece by piece with great gusto,
+not even leaving the legs or the beak of his prey: to each morsel he
+applied his tongue as he masticated it, chattering and shivering with
+delight. He never used his foot, but his bill, for conveying his food to
+his mouth by the sides of the bill.
+
+Mr. Swainson remarks:--"The apparent disproportion of the bill is one of
+the innumerable instances of that beautiful adaptation of structure to
+use which the book of nature everywhere reveals. The food of these birds
+consists principally of the eggs and young of others, to discover which
+nature has given them the most exquisite powers of smell." Again, the
+nests in which the Toucan finds its food are often very deep and dark,
+and its bill, covered with branches of nerves, enables the bird to feel
+its way as accurately as the finest and most delicate finger could. From
+its feeding on eggs found in other birds' nests, it has been called the
+Egg-sucker. Probably there is no bird which secures her young offspring
+better from the monkeys, which are very noisome to the young of most
+birds. For when she perceives the approach of these enemies she so
+settles herself in her nest as to put her bill out at the hole, and give
+the monkeys such a welcome therewith that they presently break away, and
+are glad to escape.
+
+Professor Owen, in his minute examination of the mandibles, remarks
+that the principle of the cylinder is introduced into the elaborate
+structure; the smallest of the supporting pillars of the mandibles are
+seen to be hollow or tubular when examined with the microscope.
+
+Light and almost diaphonous as is the bill of the Toucan, its strength
+and the power of the muscles, which act upon the mandibles, are evident
+in the wrenching and masticatory processes. When taking fruit, the
+Toucan generally holds it for a short time at the extremity of his bill,
+applying to it, with apparent delight, the pointed tip of the slender
+tongue: the bird then throws it, with a sudden upward jerk, to the
+throat, where it is caught and instantly swallowed.
+
+Mr. Gould divides the Toucans into six genera. 1. The true Toucans, with
+large and gaily-coloured bills, plumage black. 2. The Araçaris, with
+smaller beaks, plumage green, yellow, and red. 3. The Banded Aracauris,
+an Amazonian genus, proposed by Prince C. L. Bonaparte. 4. Toucanets,
+small, with crescent of yellow on the back, and brilliant orange and
+yellow ear-coverts. 5. Hill Toucans of the Andes. 6. Groove-bills,
+grass-green plumage.
+
+A very fine true Toucan, figured by Mr. Gould, is remarkable for the
+splendour and size of the bill, of a fine orange-red, with a large black
+patch on each side. Powder-flasks are made of large and finely-coloured
+bills. The naked skin round the eye is bright orange. The chest is
+white, with a tinge of sulphur below, and a slight scarlet margin.
+Upper tail-coverts, white; under tail-coverts, scarlet; the rest of the
+plumage, black. Several specimens of this beautiful bird lived both in
+the menagerie of the late Earl of Derby, at Knowsley, and in the gardens
+of the Zoological Society. It is a native of Cayenne, Paraguay, &c.
+
+Toucans in their manners are gentle and confident, exhibiting no alarm
+at strangers, and are as playful as magpies or jackdaws; travellers
+assure us that they may be taught tricks and feats like parrots; and
+although they cannot imitate the human voice, they show considerable
+intelligence. One of the Toucanets is named from Mr. Gould, the plates
+in whose _monograph_, from their size, beauty, and accuracy, have all
+the air of portraits.
+
+
+
+
+ECCENTRICITIES OF PENGUINS.
+
+
+This group of amphibious birds, though powerless in the wing as an organ
+of flight, are assisted by it as a species of fin in their rapid divings
+and evolutions under water, and even as a kind of anterior of extremity
+when progressing on the land. Their lot has been wisely cast on those
+desolate southern islands and shores where man rarely intrudes, and
+in many instances where a churlish climate or a barren soil offers no
+temptations to him to invade their territory.
+
+Le Vaillant, when on Dassen Island, found that the smaller crevices
+of the rocks served as places of retreat for Penguins, which swarmed
+there. "This bird," says Le Vaillant, which is about two feet in length,
+"does not carry its body in the same manner as others: it stands
+perpendicularly on its two feet, which gives it an air of gravity, so
+much the more ridiculous as its wings, which have no feathers, hang
+carelessly down on each side; it never uses them but in swimming. As we
+advanced towards the middle of the island we met innumerable troops
+of them. Standing firm and erect on their legs, these animals never
+deranged themselves in the least to let us pass; they more particularly
+surrounded the mausoleum, and seemed as if determined to prevent us from
+approaching it. All the environs were entirely beset with them. Nature
+had done more for the plain tomb of the poor Danish captain than what
+proceeds from the imaginations of poets or the chisels of our artists.
+The hideous owl, however well sculptured in our churches, has not half
+so dead and melancholy an air as the Penguin. The mournful cries of this
+animal, mixed with those of the sea-calf, impressed on my mind a kind of
+gloom which much disposed me to tender sensations of sadness. My eyes
+were sometime fixed on the last abode of the unfortunate traveller, and
+I gave his manes the tribute of a sigh."
+
+Sir John Narborough says of the Patagonian Penguins that their erect
+attitude and bluish-black backs, contrasted with their white bellies,
+might cause them to be taken at a distance for young children with white
+pinafores on. A line of them is engraved in Webster's "Voyage of the
+Chanticleer," and reminds us of one of the woodcuts in Hood's "Comic
+Annual."
+
+The "towns, camps, and rookeries," as they have been called, of Penguins
+have been often described. At the Falkland Islands are assemblies of
+Penguins, which give a dreary desolation to the place, in the utter
+absence of the human race. In some of the towns voyagers describe a
+general stillness, and when the intruders walked among the feathered
+population to provide themselves with eggs, they were regarded with
+side-long glances, but they seemed to carry no terror with them. In many
+places the shores are covered with these birds, and three hundred have
+been taken within an hour; for they generally make no effort to escape,
+but stand quietly by whilst their companions are knocked down with
+sticks, till it comes to their turn.
+
+The rookeries are described as designed with the utmost order and
+regularity, though they are the resort of several different species.
+A regular camp, often covering three or four acres, is laid out
+and levelled, and the ground disposed in squares for the nests, as
+accurately as if a surveyor had been employed. Their marchings and
+countermarchings are said to remind the observer of the manoeuvres of
+soldiers on parade. In the midst of this apparent order there appears
+to be not very good government, for the stronger species steal the
+eggs of the weaker if they are left unguarded; and the King Penguin
+is the greatest thief of all. Three species are found in the Falkland
+Islands. Two, the _Kings_ and the _Macaroni_, deposit their eggs in
+these rookeries. The _Jackass_, which is the third, obtained its English
+name from its brayings at night. It makes its nests in burrows on downs
+and sandy plains; and Forster describes the ground as everywhere so
+much bored, that a person, in walking, often sinks up to the knees; and
+if the Penguin chance to be in her hole, she revenges herself on the
+passenger by fastening on his legs, which she bites very hard.
+
+But these rookeries are insignificant when compared with a settlement of
+King Penguins, which Mr. G. Bennett saw at the north end of Macquarrie
+Island, in the South Pacific Ocean--a colony of these birds, which
+covered some thirty or forty acres. Here, during the whole of the day
+and night, 30,000 or 40,000 Penguins are continually landing, and an
+equal number going to sea. They are ranged, when on shore, in as regular
+ranks as a regiment of soldiers, and are classed, the young birds in one
+situation, the moulting birds in another, the sitting hens in a third,
+the clean birds in a fourth, &c.; and so strictly do birds in a similar
+condition congregate, that, should a moulting bird intrude itself among
+those which are clean, it is immediately ejected from them. The females,
+if approached during incubation, move away, carrying their eggs with
+them. At this time the male bird goes to sea, and collects food for the
+female, which becomes very fat.
+
+Captain Fitzroy describes, at Noir Island, multitudes of Penguins
+swarming among the bushes and tussac-grass near the shore, for moulting
+and rearing their young. They were very valiant in self-defence, and
+ran open-mouthed by dozens at any one who invaded their territory. The
+manner of feeding their young is amusing. The old bird gets on a little
+eminence and makes a loud noise, between quacking and braying, holding
+its head up as if haranguing the Penguinnery, the young one standing
+close to it, but a little lower. The old bird then puts down its head,
+and opens its mouth widely, into which the young one thrusts its head,
+and then appears to suck from the throat of its mother; after which the
+clatter is repeated, and the young one is again fed: this continues for
+about ten minutes.
+
+Mr. Darwin, having placed himself between a Penguin, on the Falkland
+Islands, and the water, was much amused by watching its habits. "It
+was a brown bird," says Mr. Darwin, "and, till reaching the sea, it
+regularly fought and drove me backwards. Nothing less than heavy blows
+would have stopped him: every inch gained, he firmly kept standing close
+before me, erect and determined. When thus opposed, he continually
+rolled his head from side to side in a very odd manner. While at sea,
+and undisturbed, this bird's note is very deep and solemn, and is often
+heard in the night time. In diving, its little plumeless wings are used
+as fins, but on the land as front legs. When crawling (it may be said
+on four legs) through the tussacks, or on the side of a grassy cliff,
+it moved so very quickly that it might readily have been mistaken
+for a quadruped. When at sea, and fishing, it comes to the surface
+for the purpose of breathing with such a spring, and dives again so
+instantaneously, that I defy any one, at first sight, to be sure that it
+is not a fish leaping for sport."
+
+Bougainville endeavoured to bring home a Penguin alive. It became so
+tame that it followed the person who fed it; it ate bread, flesh, or
+fish; but it fell away and died. The four-footed Duck of Gesner might
+have owed its origin to an ill-preserved Penguin. The notion of its
+being four-footed might have been fortified by some voyager who had seen
+the bird making progress as Mr. Darwin has above described.
+
+Mr. Webster describes the feathers of Penguins as very different from
+those of other birds, being short, very rigid, and the roots deeply
+embedded in fat. They are, in general, flat, and bent backwards, those
+on the breast being of a satin or silky white, and those on the flippers
+so short and small as to approach the nature of scales, overlaying each
+other very closely. The skins are loaded with fat. Their feet are not
+regularly webbed, but present a broad, fleshy surface, more adapted for
+walking than swimming. Mr. Webster saw great numbers of Penguins on
+Staten Island. They are the only genus of the feathered race that are
+there, and live in the water, like seals. He saw them at the distance of
+200 miles from the land, swimming with the rapidity of the dolphin, the
+swiftest of fishes. When they come up to the surface for fresh breath,
+they make a croaking noise, dip their beaks frequently in the water, and
+play and dive about near the surface, like the bonita. Penguins have
+great powers of abstinence, and are able to live four or five months
+without food. Stones have been occasionally found in their stomachs,
+but they generally live on shrimps and crustacea, gorging themselves
+sometimes to excess. The sensations of these curious birds do not seem
+to be very acute. Sparrman stumbled over a sleeping one, and kicked it
+some yards, without disturbing its rest; and Forster left a number of
+Penguins apparently lifeless, while he went in pursuit of others, but
+they afterwards got up and marched off with their usual gravity.
+
+The bird is named from the Welsh word, _Pengwyn_. White head (_pen_,
+head; _gwyn_, white), and is thought to have been given to the
+bird by some Welsh sailors, on seeing its white breast. Davis, who
+discovered, in 1585, the straits which are named after him, was of
+Welsh parents. Might he not have given the name _Pengwyn_ to the bird?
+Swainson considers the Penguins, on the whole, as the most singular
+of all aquatic birds; and he states that they clearly point out that
+nature is about to pass from the birds to the fishes. Others consider
+Penguins more satisfactorily to represent some of the aquatic reptiles,
+especially the marine _testudinata_.
+
+
+
+
+PELICANS AND CORMORANTS.
+
+
+Pelicans are described as a large, voracious, and wandering tribe of
+birds, living for the most part on the ocean, and seldom approaching
+land but at the season of incubation. They fly with ease, and even with
+swiftness. Their bill is long, and armed at the end with an abrupt
+hook; the width of the gape is excessive; the face is generally bare
+of feathers, and the skin of the throat sometimes so extensible as to
+hang down like a bag; it will occasionally contain ten quarts. "By this
+curious organization," observes Swainson, "the Pelicans are able to
+swallow fish of a very large size; and the whole family may be termed
+_oceanic vultures_."
+
+The neighbourhood of rivers, lakes, and the sea-coast, is the haunt of
+the Pelican, and they are rarely seen more than twenty leagues from
+the land. Le Vaillant, upon visiting Dassen Island, at the entrance
+of Saldanha Bay, beheld, as he says, after wading through the surf,
+and clambering up the rocks, such a spectacle as never, perhaps,
+appeared to the eye of mortal. "All of a sudden there arose from the
+whole surface of the island an impenetrable cloud, which formed, at the
+distance of forty feet above our heads, an immense canopy, or, rather, a
+sky, composed of birds of every species and of all colours--cormorants,
+sea-gulls, sand-swallows, and, I believe, the whole winged tribe of this
+part of Africa, were here assembled." The same traveller found on the
+Klein-Brak river, whilst waiting for the ebb-tide, thousands of Pelicans
+and Flamingoes, the deep rose-colour of the one strongly contrasting
+with the white of the other.
+
+Mr. Gould says the bird is remarkable for longevity and the long period
+requisite for the completion of its plumage. The first year's dress is
+wholly brown, then fine white. The rosy tints are only acquired as the
+bird advances in age, and five years are required before the Pelican
+becomes fully mature. The expanse of wings is from twelve to thirteen
+feet. Although the bird perches on trees, it prefers rocky shores. It is
+found in the Oriental countries of Europe; and is common on the rivers
+and lakes of Hungary and Russia, and on the Danube. That the species
+exists in Asia there is no doubt. Belon, who refers to Leviticus xi.
+18, where the bird is noted as unclean, says that it is frequent on
+the lakes of Egypt and Judæa. "When he was passing the plain of Roma,
+which is only half a day's journey from Jerusalem, he saw them flying
+in pairs, like swans, as well as in a large flock. Hasselquist saw the
+Pelican at Damietta, in Egypt. "In flying, they form an acute angle,
+like the common wild geese when they migrate. They appear in some of the
+Egyptian drawings."--(_Rossellini._)
+
+Von Siebold saw the Pelican in Japan. "Pelicans," says Dr. Richardson,
+"are numerous in the interior of the fur countries, but they seldom
+come within two hundred miles of Hudson's Bay. They deposit their eggs
+usually on small rocky islands, on the brink of cascades, where they can
+scarcely be approached; but they are otherwise by no means shy birds.
+They haunt eddies under waterfalls, and devour great quantities of carp
+and other fish. When gorged with food they doze on the water, and may be
+easily captured, as they have great difficulty in taking wing at such
+times, particularly if their pouches be loaded with fish."
+
+The bird builds on rocky and desert shores: hence we read of "the
+Pelican of the wilderness," alluded to in these beautiful lines:--
+
+                    "Like the Pelicans
+    On that lone island where they built their nests,
+    Nourish'd their young, and then lay down to die."
+
+The bird lives on fish, which it darts upon from a considerable height.
+James Montgomery thus describes this mode of taking their prey:--
+
+    "Eager for food, their searching eyes they fix'd
+    On Ocean's unroll'd volume, from a height
+    That brought immensity within their scope;
+    Yet with such power of vision look'd they down,
+    As though they watch'd the shell-fish slowly gliding
+    O'er sunken rocks, or climbing trees of coral,
+    On indefatigable wing upheld,
+    Breath, pulse, existence, seem'd suspended in them;
+    They were as pictures painted on the sky;
+    Till suddenly, aslant, away they shot,
+    Like meteors chang'd from stars in gleams of lightning.
+    And struck upon the deep; where, in wild play,
+    Their quarry flounder'd, unsuspecting harm.
+    With terrible voracity they plunged
+    Their heads among the affrighted shoals, and beat
+    A tempest on the surges with their wings,
+    Till flashing clouds of foam and spray conceal'd them.
+    Nimbly they seized and secreted their prey,
+    Alive and wriggling, in th' elastic net
+    Which Nature hung beneath their grasping beaks;
+    Till, swoll'n with captures, th' unwieldy burthen
+    Clogg'd their slow flight, as heavily to land
+    These mighty hunters of the deep return'd.
+    There on the cragged cliffs they perched at ease,
+    Gorging their hapless victims one by one;
+    Then, full and weary, side by side they slept,
+    Till evening roused them to the chase again."
+
+                    _Pelican Island._
+
+Great numbers of Pelicans are killed for their pouches, which are
+converted by the native Americans into purses, &c. When carefully
+prepared, the membrane is as soft as silk, and sometimes embroidered by
+Spanish ladies for work-bags, &c. It is used in Egypt by the sailors,
+whilst attached to the two under chaps, for holding or baling water.
+
+With the Pelican has been associated an old popular error, which has not
+long disappeared from books of information: it is that of the Pelican
+feeding her young with her blood. In reference to the actual economy
+of the Pelican, we find that, in feeding the nestlings--and the male
+is said to supply the wants of the female, when sitting, in the same
+manner--the under mandible is pressed against the neck and breast, to
+assist the bird in disgorging the contents of the capacious pouch; and
+during this action the red nail of the upper mandible would appear to
+come in contact with the breast, thus laying the foundation, in all
+probability, for the fable that the Pelican nourishes her young with her
+blood, and for the attitude in which the imagination of painters has
+placed the bird in books of emblems, &c., with the blood spirting from
+the wounds made by the terminating nail of the upper mandible into the
+gaping mouths of her offspring.
+
+Sir Thomas Browne, in his "Vulgar Errors," says:--"In every place we
+meet with the picture of the Pelican opening her breast with her bill,
+and feeding her young ones with the blood distilling from her. Thus it
+is set forth, not only in common signs, but in the crest and scutcheon
+of many noble families; hath been asserted by many holy writers, and
+was an hieroglyphic of piety and pity among the Egyptians; on which
+consideration they spared them at their tables."
+
+Sir Thomas refers this popular error to an exaggerated description of
+the Pelican's fondness for her young, and is inclined to accept it as an
+emblem "in coat-armour," though with great doubt.
+
+In "A Choice of Emblems and other Devices," by Geoffrey Whitney, are
+these lines:--
+
+    "The Pelican, for to revive her younge,
+      Doth pierce her breste, and geve them of her blood.
+    Then searche your breste, and as you have with tonge,
+      With penne procede to do your countrie good:
+    Your zeal is great, your learning is profounde;
+    Then help our wantes with that you do abound."
+
+In George Wither's "Emblems," 1634, we find:--
+
+    "Our Pelican, by bleeding thus,
+    Fulfill'd the law, and cured us."
+
+Shakspeare, in "Hamlet," thus alludes to the popular notion:--
+
+    "To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms;
+    And like the kind, life-rendering Pelican,
+    Repast them with my blood."
+
+In a holier light, this symbol signifies the Saviour giving Himself up
+for the redemption of mankind. In Lord Lindsay's "Christian Art," vols.
+i., xx., xxi., we find in the text, "God the Son (is symbolized) by a
+Pelican--'I am like a Pelican of the wilderness.' (Psalm cii. 6.)" To
+which is added the following note:--"The mediæval interpretation of this
+symbol is given by Sir David Lindsay, of the Mount, Lion King, nephew of
+the poet, in his MS. 'Collectanea,' preserved in the Advocates' Library.
+Edinburgh."
+
+Sir Thomas Browne hints at the probability of the Pelican occasionally
+nibbling or biting itself on the itching part of its breast, upon
+fulness or acrimony of blood, so as to tinge the feathers in that part.
+Such an instance is recorded by Mr. G. Bennett of a Pelican living at
+Dulwich, which wounded itself just above the breast; but no such act has
+been observed among the Pelicans kept in the menagerie of the Zoological
+Society or elsewhere; and the instance just recorded was probably caused
+by local irritation.
+
+Of the same genus as the _Pelican_ is the _Cormorant_, an inhabitant
+of Europe generally and of America. It swims very deep in the water;
+even in the sea very little more than the neck and head are visible
+above the surface. It is a most expert diver, pursuing the fish which
+forms its food with great activity under water; it is said to be very
+fond of eels. It perches on trees, where it occasionally builds its
+nests, but it mostly selects rocky shores and islands. Upon the Fern
+Islands its nest is composed of a mass of sea-weed, frequently heaped
+up to the height of two feet. The species is easily domesticated; and
+its docility is shown by the use often made of Cormorants in fishing.
+Willughby, quoting Faber, says:--"They are wont in England to train up
+Cormorants to fishing. When they carry them out of the room where they
+are kept they take off their hoods, and having tied a leather thong
+round the lower part of their necks, that they may not swallow down the
+fish they catch, they throw them into the river. They presently dive
+under water, and there for a long time, with wonderful swiftness, pursue
+the fish, and when they have caught them they arise presently to the
+top of the water, and pressing the fish tightly with the bills, they
+swallow them, till each bird hath after this manner devoured five or six
+fishes. Then their keepers call them to the fish, to which they readily
+fly, and little by little, one after another, vomit up all the fish, a
+little bruised with the nip they gave them with their bills." When they
+have done fishing they loosen the string from the birds' necks, and for
+their reward they throw them part of the prey they have caught, to each,
+perchance, one or two fishes, which they catch most dexterously in their
+mouths as they are falling in the air. Pennant quotes Whitelock, who
+said that he had a cast of them, manned like hawks, and which would come
+to hand. He took much pleasure in them, and relates that the best he
+had was one presented him by Mr. Wood, master of the corvorants (as the
+older name was) to Charles I. Pennant adds, it is well known that the
+Chinese make great use of a congenerous sort in fishing, and that not
+for amusement but profit.
+
+Sir George Staunton, in his account of his Embassy to China, describes
+the place where the _Leu-tze_, or famed fishing-bird of China, is bred
+and instructed in the art and practice of supplying his owner with fish
+in great abundance. The bird, a Cormorant, is figured in Sir George's
+work, with two Chinese fishermen carrying their light boat, around the
+gunnel of which their Cormorants are perched by a pole resting on their
+shoulders between them. On a large lake are thousands of small boats
+and rafts built entirely for this species of fishery. On each boat or
+raft are ten or a dozen birds, which, on a signal from the owner, plunge
+into the water; and it is astonishing to see the enormous size of fish
+with which they return grasped between their bills. They appeared to be
+so well trained that it did not require either ring or cord about their
+throats to prevent them from swallowing any portion of their prey except
+what the master was pleased to return to them for encouragement and
+food. The boat used by these fishermen is remarkably light, and is often
+carried to the lake, together with the fishing-birds, by the men who are
+there to be supported by it.
+
+Belon gives an amusing account of the chase of this bird during calms,
+especially in the neighbourhood of Venice: the hunt is carried on in
+very light boats, each of which being rowed by five or six men, darts
+along the sea like the bolt from an arbalest, till the poor Cormorant,
+who is shot at with bows as soon as he puts his head above water, and
+cannot take flight after diving to suffocation, is taken quite tired out
+by his pursuers.
+
+Cormorant fishing has occasionally been reintroduced upon our rivers.
+In 1848 there were brought from Holland four tame Cormorants, which had
+been trained to the Chinese mode of fishing. Upon one occasion they
+fished three miles on a river, and caught a pannier-full of trout and
+eels. A ring placed round their necks to prevent them from swallowing
+large fish, but which leaves them at liberty to gulp down anything not
+exceeding the size of a gudgeon. The birds on these occasions are put
+into such parts of the river as are known to be favourite haunts of
+fish; and their activity under water in pursuit of fish can be compared
+to nothing so appropriate as a swallow darting after a fly.
+
+Blumenbach tells us the Cormorant occasionally increases in a few years
+to many thousands on coasts where it was previously unknown. It varies
+much both in size and colour. The late Joshua Brookes, the surgeon,
+possessed a Cormorant, which he presented to the Zoological Society.
+
+The Cormorant has a small sabre-shaped bone at the back of its vertex;
+which bone may serve as a lever in throwing back the head, when the
+animal tosses the fishes into the air and catches them in its open
+mouth. The same motion is, however, performed by some piscivorous birds,
+which are not provided with this particular bone.
+
+Aubrey, in his "Natural History of Wilts," quotes the following weather
+presage from May's "Virgil's Georgics":--
+
+    "The seas are ill to sailors evermore
+    When Cormorants fly crying to the shore."
+
+
+
+
+TALKING BIRDS, ETC.
+
+
+Certain birds are known to utter strange sounds, the origin of which
+has much puzzled the ornithologists. The Brown Owl which hoots, is
+hence called the Screech Owl: a musical friend of Gilbert White tried
+all the Owls that were his near neighbours with a pitch-pipe set at a
+concert pitch, and found they all hooted in B flat; and he subsequently
+found that neither Owls nor Cuckoos keep to one note. The Whidah Bird,
+one of the most costly of cage-birds, rattles its tail-feathers with a
+noise somewhat resembling that made by the rattle-snake. The Chinese
+Starling, in China called _Longuoy_, in captivity is very teachable,
+imitating words, and even whistling tunes: we all remember Sterne's
+Starling. The Piping Crow, to be seen in troops in the Blue Mountains,
+is named from its ready mimicry of other birds: its imitation of the
+chucking and cackling of a hen and the crowing of a cock, as well as
+its whistling of tunes, are described as very perfect: its native note
+is said to be a loud whistle. The Blue Jay turns his imitative faculty
+to treacherous account: he so closely imitates the St. Domingo Falcon
+as to deceive even those acquainted with both birds; and the Falcon no
+sooner appears in their neighbourhood than the jays swarm around him and
+insult him with their imitative cries; for which they frequently fall
+victims to his appetite. The Bullfinch, according to Blumenbach, learns
+to whistle tunes, to sing in parts, and even to pronounce words. The
+note of the Crowned Crane has been compared by Buffon to the hoarseness
+of a trumpet; it also clucks like a hen. Mr. Wallace, in his "Travels on
+the Amazon," saw a bird about the size and colour of the Raven, which
+uttered a loud, hoarse cry, like some deep musical instrument, whence
+its Indian name, _Ueramioube_, Trumpet Bird: it inhabits the flooded
+islands of the Rio Negro and the Solimoes, never appearing on the
+mainland.[12] The only sound produced by Storks is by snapping their
+bills. The Night Heron is called the Qua Bird; from its note _Qua_.
+
+The Bittern, the English provincial names of which are the Mire-drum,
+Bull of the Bog, &c., is so called for the bellowing or drumming noise
+or booming for which the bird is so famous. This deep note of the
+"hollow-sounding Bittern" is exerted on the ground at the breeding
+season, about February or March. As the day declines he leaves his
+haunt, and, rising spirally, soars to a great height in the twilight.
+Willughby says that it performs this last-mentioned feat in the autumn,
+"making a singular kind of noise, nothing like to lowing." Bewick
+says that it soars as above described when it changes its haunts.
+Ordinarily it flies heavily, like the Heron, uttering from time to time
+a resounding cry, not bellowing; and then Willughby, who well describes
+the bellowing noise of the breeding season, supposes it to be the Night
+Raven, at whose "deadly voice" the superstitious wayfarer of the night
+turned pale and trembled. "This, without doubt," writes Willughby, "is
+that bird our common people call the Night Raven, and have such a dread
+of, imagining its cry portends no less than their death or the death of
+some of their near relations; for it flies in the night, answers their
+description of being like a flagging collar, and hath such a kind of
+hooping cry as they talk of." Others, with some reason, consider the
+Qua Bird already mentioned (which utters a loud and most disagreeable
+noise when on the wing, conveying the idea of the agonies of a person
+attempting to vomit) to be the true Night Raven. The Bittern was well
+known to the ancients, and Aristotle mentions the fable of its origin
+from staves metamorphosed into birds. The long claw of the hind toe is
+much prized as a toothpick, and in the olden times it was thought to
+have the property of preserving the teeth.
+
+The Greater-billed Butcher Bird, from New Holland, has extraordinary
+powers of voice: it is trained for catching small birds, and it is said
+to imitate the notes of some other birds by way of decoying them to
+their destruction.
+
+The mere imitative sounds of Parrots are of little interest compared
+with the instances of instinct, apparently allied to reason, which are
+related of individuals. Of this tribe the distinguishing characteristics
+are a hooked bill, the upper mandible of which is moveable as well as
+the lower, and not in one piece with the skull, as in most other birds,
+but joined to the head by a strong membrane, with which the bird lifts
+it or lets it fall at pleasure. The bill is also round on the outside
+and hollow within, and has, in some degree, the capacity of a mouth,
+allowing the tongue, which is thick and fleshy, to play freely; while
+the sound, striking against the circular border of the lower mandible,
+reflects it like a palate: hence the animal does not utter a whistling
+sound, but a full articulation. The tongue, which modulates all sounds,
+is proportionally larger than in man.
+
+The Wild Swan has a very loud call, and utters a melancholy cry when one
+of the flock is killed; hence it was said by the poets to sing its own
+dying dirge. Such was the popular belief in olden times; and, looking to
+the anatomical characteristics of the species, it was, in some degree,
+supported by the more inflated wind-pipe of the wild when compared
+with that of the tame species. The _Song of the Swan_ is, however,
+irreconcileable with sober belief, the only noise of the Wild Swan of
+our times being unmelodious, and an unpleasing monotony.
+
+The Laughing Goose is named from its note having some resemblance to the
+laugh of man; and not, as Wilson supposes, from the grinning appearance
+of its mandibles. The Indians imitate its cry by moving the hand quickly
+against the lips, whilst they repeat the syllable _wah_.
+
+The Cuckoo may be said to have done much for musical science, because
+from that bird has been derived the _minor scale_, the origin of which
+has puzzled so many; the Cuckoo's couplet being the _minor third_ sung
+downwards.
+
+The Germans are the finest appreciators of the Nightingale; and it is a
+fact, that when the Prussian authorities, under pecuniary pressure, were
+about to cut down certain trees near Cologne, which were frequented by
+Nightingales, the alarmed citizens purchased the trees in order to save
+the birds and keep their music. Yet one would think the music hardly
+worth having, if it really sounded as it looks upon paper, transcribed
+thus by Bechstein, from whom it is quoted by Broderip:--
+
+    Zozozozozozozozozozozozo zirrhading
+    Hezezezezezezezezezezezezezezeze cowar ho dze hoi
+    Higaigaigaigaigaigaigaigaigaigai, guaiagai coricor dzio dzio pi.[13]
+
+M. Wichterich, of Bonn, remarks:--"It is a vulgar error to suppose that
+the song of the Nightingale is melancholy, and that it only sings by
+night. There are two varieties of the Nightingale; one which sings both
+in the night and the day, and one which sings in the day only."
+
+In the year 1858, Mr. Leigh Sotheby, in a letter to Dr. Gray, of the
+British Museum, described a marvellous little specimen of the feathered
+tribe--a Talking Canary. Its parents had previously and successfully
+reared many young ones, but three years before they hatched only _one_
+out of four eggs, the which they immediately neglected, by commencing
+the rebuilding of a nest on the top of it. Upon this discovery, the
+unfledged and forsaken bird, all but dead, was taken away and placed in
+flannel by the fire, when, after much attention, it was restored, and
+then brought up by hand. Thus treated, and away from all other birds, it
+became familiarised only with those who fed it; consequently, its first
+singing notes were of a character totally different to those usual with
+the Canary.
+
+Constantly being talked to, the bird, when about three months old,
+astonished its mistress by repeating the endearing terms used in talking
+to it, such as "Kissie, kissie," with its significant sounds. This
+went on, and from time to time the little bird repeated other words;
+and then, for hours together, except during the moulting season, it
+astonished by _ringing the changes_, according to its own fancy, and as
+plainly as any human voice could articulate them, on the several words,
+"Dear sweet Titchie" (its name), "kiss Minnie," "Kiss me, then, dear
+Minnie." "Sweet pretty little Titchie," "Kissie, kissie, kissie." "Dear
+Titchie," "Titchie wee, gee, gee, gee, Titchie. Titchie."
+
+The usual singing-notes of the bird were more of the character of the
+Nightingale, mingled occasionally with the sound of the dog-whistle used
+about the house. It is hardly necessary to add, that the bird was by
+nature remarkably tame.
+
+In 1839, a Canary-bird, capable of distinct articulation, was exhibited
+in Regent-street. The following were some of its sentences:--"Sweet
+pretty dear," "Sweet pretty dear Dicky," "Mary," "Sweet pretty little
+Dicky dear;" and often in the course of the day, "Sweet pretty Queen."
+The bird also imitated the jarring of a wire, the ringing of a bell; it
+was three years old, and was reared by a lady who never allowed it to
+be in the company of other birds. This Canary died in October, 1839; it
+was, it is believed, the only other talking instance publicly known.
+
+We read of some experiments made in the rearing of birds at Kendal
+by a bird-fancier, the result of which was, that upwards of 20
+birds--Canaries. Greenfinches, Linnets, Chaffinches, Titlarks,
+and Whitethroats--were reared in one cage by a pair of Canaries.
+The experiments were continued until the extraordinary number of
+thirty-eight birds had been brought up within two months by the
+Canaries. It may be worth while to enumerate them.
+
+In the month of June the Canaries--the male green, and the female
+piebald--were caged for the purpose of breeding. The female laid five
+eggs, and while she was sitting a Greenfinch egg was introduced into
+the nest. All of these were hatched, and the day after incubation was
+completed five Grey Linnets, also newly hatched, were put into the cage,
+in their own nest. Next day a newly-hatched nest of four Chaffinches was
+also introduced; and afterwards five different nests, consisting of six
+Titlarks, six Whitethroats, three Skylarks, three Winchars, and three
+Blackcaps. While rearing the last of these nests, the female Canary
+again laid and hatched four eggs, thus making thirty-eight young birds
+brought up by the pair of Canaries. It will be noticed that most of
+these birds are soft-billed, whose natural food is small insects; but
+they took quite kindly to the seeds upon which they were fed by their
+step-parents. The pair of Canaries fed at one time twenty-one young
+birds, and never had less than sixteen making demands upon their care;
+and while the female was hatching her second nest she continued to feed
+the birds that occupied the other nest.
+
+Of the origin of the _neighing sound_ which accompanies the single
+Snipe's play-flight during pairing-time, opinions are various. Bechstein
+thought it was produced by means of the beak; Naumann and others, again,
+that it originated in powerful strokes of the wing. Pratt, in Hanover,
+observing that the bird makes heard its well-known song or cry, which he
+expresses with the words, "gick jack, gick jack!" at the same time with
+the _neighing sound_, it seemed to be settled that the latter is not
+produced through the throat. In the meantime, M. Meves, of Stockholm,
+remarked with surprise, that the humming sound could never be observed
+whilst the bird was flying upwards, at which time the tail is closed;
+but only when it was casting itself downwards in a slanting direction,
+with the tail strongly spread out.
+
+M. Meves has written for the Zoological Society a paper upon the origin
+of this sound, which all the field-naturalists and sportsmen of England
+and other countries had, for the previous century, been trying to make
+out, but had failed to discover. Of this paper the following is an
+abstract:--
+
+     The peculiar form of the tail-feathers in some foreign
+     species nearly allied to our Snipe encouraged the notion that the
+     tail conduced to the production of the sound. M. Meves found the
+     tail-feathers of our common Snipe, in the first feather especially,
+     very peculiarly constructed; the shaft uncommonly stiff and
+     sabre-shaped; the rays of the web strongly bound together and very
+     long, the longest reaching nearly three-fourths of the whole length
+     of the web, these rays lying along or spanning from end to end of
+     the curve of the shaft, _like the strings of a musical instrument_.
+     If you blow from the outer side upon the broad web, it comes into
+     vibration, and a sound is heard, which, though fainter, resembles
+     very closely the well-known _neighing_.
+
+     But to convince yourself fully that it is the first feather
+     which produces the peculiar sound, it is only necessary carefully
+     to pluck out such an one, to fasten its shaft with fine thread to
+     a piece of steel wire a tenth of an inch in diameter, and a foot
+     long, and then to fix this at the end of a four-foot stick. If
+     now you draw the feather, with this outer side forward, sharply
+     through the air, at the same time making some short movements or
+     shakings of the arm, so as to represent the shivering motion of the
+     wings during flight, you produce the neighing sound with the most
+     astonishing exactness.
+
+     If you wish to hear the humming of both feathers at once, as
+     must be the case from the flying bird, this also can be managed by
+     a simple contrivance. Take a small stick, and fasten at the side of
+     the smaller end a piece of burnt steel wire in the form of a fork;
+     bind to each point a side tail-feather; bend the wire so that the
+     feathers receive the same direction which they do in the spreading
+     of the tail as the bird sinks itself in flight; and then, with this
+     apparatus, draw the feathers through the air as before. Such a
+     sound, but in another tone, is produced when we experiment with the
+     tail-feathers of other kinds of Snipe.
+
+     Since in both sexes these feathers have the same form, it is
+     clear that both can produce the same humming noise; but as the
+     feathers of the hen are generally less than those of the cock-bird,
+     the noise made by them is not so deep as in the other case.
+
+     Besides the significance which these tail-feathers have as a
+     kind of musical instrument, their form may give a weighty character
+     in the determination of a species standing very near one another,
+     which have been looked upon as varieties.
+
+This interesting discovery was first announced by M. Meves in an account
+of the birds observed by himself during a visit to the Island of
+Gottland, in the summer of the year 1856, which narrative was published
+at Stockholm in the following winter. In the succeeding summer, M. Meves
+showed his experiments to Mr. Wolley, whose services to Ornithology
+we have already noticed. The mysterious noise of the wilderness was
+reproduced in a little room in the middle of Stockholm: first, the deep
+bleat, now shown to proceed from the male Snipe, and then the fainter
+bleat of the female, both most strikingly true to nature, neither
+producible with any other feathers than the outer ones of the tail.
+
+Mr. Wolley inquired of Mr. Meves how, issuing forth from the town on
+a summer ramble, he came to discover what had puzzled the wits and
+strained the eyes of so many observers. He freely explained how, in a
+number of "Naumannia," an accidental misprint of the word representing
+tail-feathers instead of wing-feathers,--a mistake which another author
+ridiculed--first led him to think on the subject. He subsequently
+examined in the Museum at Stockholm the tail-feathers of various species
+of Snipe, remarked their structure, and reasoned upon it. Then he
+blew upon them, and fixed them on levers that he might wave them with
+greater force through the air; and at the same time he made more careful
+observation than he had hitherto done in the living birds. In short,
+in him the obscure hint was thrown upon fruitful ground, whilst in a
+hundred other minds it had failed to come to light.
+
+Dr. Walsh saw at Constantinople a Woodpecker, about the size of a
+Thrush, which was very active in devouring flies, and tapped woodwork
+with his bill with a noise _as loud as that of a hammer_, to disturb the
+insects concealed therein, so as to seize upon them when they appeared.
+
+Among remarkable bird services should not be forgotten those of the
+Trochilos to the Crocodile. "When the Crocodile," says Herodotus, "feeds
+in the Nile, the inside of his mouth is always covered with _bdella_
+(a term which the translators have rendered by that of _leech_). All
+birds, _except one_, fly from the Crocodile; but this one bird, the
+_Trochilos_, on the contrary, flies towards him with the greatest
+eagerness, and renders him a very great service; for every time that the
+Crocodile comes to the land to sleep, and when he lies stretched out
+with his jaws open, the Trochilos enters and establishes himself in his
+mouth, and frees him from the bdella which he finds there. The Crocodile
+is grateful, and never does any harm to the little bird who performs for
+him this office."
+
+This passage was long looked upon as a pleasant story, and nothing more;
+until M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, during his long residence in Egypt,
+ascertained the story of Herodotus to be correct in substance, but
+inexact in details. It is perfectly true that a little bird does exist,
+which flies incessantly from place to place, searching everywhere, even
+in the Crocodile's mouth, for the insects which form the principal
+part of its nourishment. This bird is seen everywhere on the banks of
+the Nile, and M. Geoffroy has proved it to be of a species already
+described by Hasselquist, and very like the small winged Plover. If
+the Trochilos be in reality the little Plover, the bdella cannot be
+leeches, (which do not exist in the running waters of the Nile) but the
+small insects known as _gnats_ in Europe. Myriads of these insects dance
+upon the Nile: they attack the Crocodile upon the inner surface of his
+palate, and sting the orifice of the glands, which are numerous in the
+Crocodile's mouth. Then the little Plover, who follows him everywhere,
+delivers him from these troublesome enemies; and that without any danger
+to himself, for the Crocodile is always careful, when he is going to
+shut his mouth, to make some motion which warns the little bird to fly
+away. At St. Domingo there is a Crocodile which very nearly resembles
+that of Egypt. This Crocodile is attacked by gnats, from which he would
+have no means of delivering himself (his tongue, like that of the
+Crocodile, being fixed) if a bird of a particular species did not give
+him the same assistance that the Crocodile of the Nile receives from
+the little Plover. These facts explain the passage in Herodotus, and
+demonstrate that the animal, there called bdella, is not a leech, but a
+flying insect similar to our gnat.
+
+Exemplifications of instinct, intelligence, and reason in Birds are by
+no means rare, but this distinction must be made: instinctive actions
+are dependent on the nerves, intelligence on the brain; but that which
+constitutes peculiar qualities of the mind in man has no material
+organ. The Rev. Mr. Statham has referred to the theory of the facial
+angle as indicative of the amount of sagacity observable in the animal
+race, but has expressed his opinion that the theory is utterly at
+fault in the case of Birds; many of these having a very acute facial
+angle being considerably more intelligent than others having scarcely
+any facial angle at all. Size also seems to present another anomaly
+between the two races of Beasts and Birds; for while the Elephant and
+the Horse are among the most distinguished of quadrupeds for sagacity
+and instinct, the larger Birds seem scarcely comparable to the smaller
+ones in the possession of these attributes. The writer instances this
+by comparing the Ostrich and the Goose with the Wren, the Robin, the
+Canary, the Pigeon, and the Crow; and amusingly alludes to the holding
+of parliaments or convocations of birds of the last species, while the
+Ostrich is characterised in Scripture as the type of folly.
+
+The author then refers to the poisoning of two young Blackbirds by the
+parent birds, when they found that they could neither liberate them
+nor permanently share their captivity. The two fledglings had been
+taken from a Blackbirds' nest in Surrey-square, and had been placed in
+a room looking over a garden, in a wicker cage. For some time the old
+birds attended to their wants, visited them regularly, and fed them
+with appropriate food; but, at last, getting wearied of the task, or
+despairing of effecting their liberation, they appear to have poisoned
+them. They were both found suddenly dead one morning, shortly after
+having been seen in good health; and on opening their bodies a small
+leaf, supposed to be that of _Solanum Nigrum_, was found in the stomach
+of each. The old birds immediately deserted the spot, as though aware of
+the nefarious deed befitting their name.
+
+As an exemplification of instinct Dr. Horner states that Rooks built
+on the Infirmary trees at Hull, but never over the street. One year,
+however, a young couple ventured to build here: for eight mornings in
+succession the old Rooks proceeded to destroy the nest, when at last the
+young ones chose a more fitting place.
+
+Mr. A. Strickland, having referred to the tendency of birds to build
+their nests of materials of a colour resembling that around such nests,
+relates an instance in which the Fly-catcher built in a red brick wall,
+and used for the nest mahogany shavings. Referring to the meeting of
+Rooks for judicial purposes. Mr. Strickland states that he once saw a
+Rook tried in this way, and ultimately killed by the rest.
+
+
+SONGS OF BIRDS AND SEASONS OF THE DAY.
+
+Although nearly half a century has elapsed since the following
+observations were communicated to the Royal Society by Dr. Jenner, their
+expressive character is as charming as ever, and their accuracy as
+valuable:--
+
+     "There is a beautiful propriety in the order in which Singing
+     Birds fill up the day with their pleasing harmony. The accordance
+     between their songs, and the aspect of nature at the successive
+     periods of the day at which they sing, is so remarkable that one
+     cannot but suppose it to be the result of benevolent design.
+
+     "From the _Robin_ (not the _Lark_, as has been generally
+     imagined), as soon as twilight has drawn its imperceptible line
+     between night and day, begins his artless song. How sweetly does
+     this harmonize with the soft dawning of the day! He goes on till
+     the twinkling sunbeams begin to tell him that his notes no longer
+     accord with the rising sun. Up starts the _Lark_, and with him a
+     variety of sprightly songsters, whose lively notes are in perfect
+     correspondence with the gaiety of the morning. The general warbling
+     continues, with now and then an interruption by the transient croak
+     of the _Raven_, the scream of the _Jay_, or the pert chattering of
+     the _Daw_. The _Nightingale_, unwearied by the vocal exertions of
+     the night, joins his inferiors in sound in the general harmony. The
+     _Thrush_ is wisely placed on the summit of some lofty tree, that
+     its piercing notes may be softened by distance before it reaches
+     the ear, while the mellow _Blackbird_ seeks the lower branches.
+
+     "Should the sun, having been eclipsed by a cloud, shine forth
+     with fresh effulgence, how frequently we see the _Goldfinch_ perch
+     on some blossomed bough, and hear his song poured forth in a strain
+     peculiarly energetic; while the sun, full shining on his beautiful
+     plumes, displays his golden wings and crimson crest to charming
+     advantage. Indeed, a burst of sunshine in a cloudy day, or after a
+     heavy shower, seems always to wake up a new gladness in the little
+     musicians, and invite them to an answering burst of minstrelsy.
+
+     "As evening advances, the performers gradually retire, and the
+     concert softly dies away. At sunset the _Robin_ again sends up his
+     twilight song, till the still more serene hour of night sends him
+     to his bower of rest. And now, in unison with the darkened earth
+     and sky, no sooner is the voice of the _Robin_ hushed, than the
+     _Owl_ sends forth his slow and solemn tones, well adapted to the
+     serious hour."
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[12] The popular name of this bird is the _Umbrella Bird_. On its head
+it bears a crest, different from that of any other bird. It is formed
+of feathers more than two inches long, very thickly set, and with hairy
+plumes curving over at the end. These can be laid back so as to be
+hardly visible, or can be erected and spread out on every side, forming
+a dome completely covering the head, and even reaching beyond the point
+of the beak; the individual feathers then stand out something like the
+down-bearing seeds of the dandelion. Besides this, there is another
+ornamental appendage on the breast, formed by a fleshy tubercle, as
+thick as a quill and an inch and a-half long, which hangs down from
+the neck, and is thickly covered with glossy feathers, forming a large
+pendent plume or tassel. This, also, the bird can either press to its
+breast, so as to be scarcely visible, or can swell out so as almost to
+conceal the forepart of its body.
+
+[13] "Athenæum," No. 1467.
+
+
+
+
+OWLS.
+
+
+These nocturnal birds of prey have large heads and great projecting
+eyes, directing forwards, and surrounded with a circle of loose and
+delicate feathers, more or less developed, according to the nocturnal or
+comparatively diurnal habits of the species. The position of the eyes,
+giving a particular fulness and breadth to the head, has gained for the
+Owl the intellectual character so universally awarded to it. The concave
+facial disc of feathers with which they are surrounded materially aids
+vision by concentrating the rays of light to an intensity better suited
+to the opacity of the medium in which power is required to be exercised.
+"They may be compared," says Mr. Yarrell, "to a person near-sighted,
+who sees objects with superior magnitude and brilliancy when within the
+prescribed limits of his natural powers of vision, from the increased
+angle these objects subtend." Their beaks are completely curved,
+or raptorial; they have the power of turning the outer toe either
+backwards or forwards; they fly weakly, and near the ground; but, from
+their soft plumage, stealthily, stretching out their hind legs that they
+may balance their large and heavy heads. Their sense of hearing is very
+acute: they not only look, but listen for prey.
+
+The Owl is a bird of mystery and gloom, and a special favourite with
+plaintive poets. We find him with Ariel:--
+
+    "There I couch when Owls do cry."
+
+He figures in the nursery rhyme of "Cock Robin." In reply to "Who dug
+his grave?"--
+
+    "I, says the Owl, with my little shovel--
+        I dug his grave."
+
+He hoots over graves, and his dismal note adds to the terror of
+darkness:--
+
+    "'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,
+    And the Owls have awakened the crowing cock;
+          Tu-whit! tu-whoo!
+    And hark again the crowing cock,
+          How drowsily it crew.
+
+    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+    "When blood is nipt, and ways be foul,
+    Then nightly sings the staring Owl,
+          Tu-whoo!
+    Tu-whit! tu-whoo! _a merry note_,
+    While greasy Joan doth keel the pot!"
+
+Titania sings of
+
+    "The clamorous Owl, that nightly hoots and wonders
+    At our quaint spirits."
+
+Bishop Hall has this "Occasional Meditation" upon the sight of an Owl in
+the twilight:--"What a strange melancholic life doth this creature lead;
+to hide her head all the day long in an ivy-bush, and at night, when all
+other birds are at rest, to fly abroad and vent her harsh notes. I know
+not why the ancients have _sacred_ this bird to wisdom, except it be for
+her safe closeness and singular perspicuity; that when other domestrial
+and airy creatures are blind, she only hath insured light to discern the
+least objects for her own advantage." We may here note that Linnæus,
+with many other naturalists and antiquaries, have supposed the Horned
+Owl to have been the bird of Minerva; but Blumenbach has shown, from
+the ancient works of Grecian art, that it was not this, but rather some
+smooth-headed species, probably the _Passerina_, or Little Owl.
+
+The divine has, in the above passage, overstated the melancholy of the
+Owl; as has also the poet, who sings:--
+
+        "From yonder ivy-mantled tower
+    The moping Owl does to the moon complain
+    Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
+    Molest her ancient solitary reign."
+
+Shakspeare more accurately terms her "the mousing Owl," for her nights
+are spent in barns, or in hunting and devouring sparrows in the
+churchyard elms. "Moping, indeed!" says a pleasing observer. "So far
+from this, she is a sprightly, active ranger of the night, who had as
+lief sit on a grave as a rose-bush; who is as valiant a hunter as
+Nimroud, chasing all sorts of game, from the dormouse to the hare and
+the young lamb, and devouring them, while her mate hoots to her from
+some picturesque ruin, and invites her, when supper is over, to return
+to him and her babes."
+
+But the tricks of the Owl by night render her the terror of all other
+birds, great and small. In Northern Italy, persons in rustic districts
+which are well wooded, catch and tame an Owl, put a light chain upon her
+legs, and then place her on a small cross-bar on the top of a high pole,
+which is fixed in the earth. Half-blinded by the light, the defenceless
+captive has to endure patiently the jeers and insults of the dastardly
+tribes from the surrounding groves and thickets, who issue in clouds
+to scream, chirp, and flit about their enemy. Some, trusting to the
+swiftness of their wings, sweep close by, and peck at her feathers as
+they pass, and are sometimes punished by the Owl with her formidable
+beak for their audacity. Meanwhile, from darkened windows, sportsmen,
+with fowling-pieces well charged with shot, fire at the hosts of birds,
+wheeling, shrieking, screaming, and thickening around the Owl. All the
+guns are fired at once, and the grass is strewn for many yards round
+with the slain; while the Owl, whom they have been careful not to hit,
+utters a joyous whoo! whoo! at the fate of her persecutors.
+
+Major Head thus describes the _Biscacho_, or Coquimbo, a curious species
+of Owl, found all over the pampas of South America:--"Like rabbits,
+they live in holes, which are in groups in every direction. These
+animals are never seen in the day, but as soon as the lower limb of
+the sun reaches the horizon, they are seen issuing from the holes. The
+Biscachos, when full-grown, are nearly as big as badgers, but their
+head resembles a rabbit's, except that they have large bushy whiskers.
+In the evening they sit outside the holes, and they all appear to be
+moralizing. They are the most serious-looking animals I ever saw;
+and even the young ones are grey-headed, wear moustachios, and look
+thoughtful and grave. In the daytime their holes are guarded by two
+little owls, which are never an instant away from their posts. As one
+gallops by these owls, they always stand looking at the stranger, and
+then at each other, moving their old-fashioned heads in a manner which
+is quite ridiculous, until one rushes by them, when they get the better
+of their dignified looks, and they both run into the Biscacho's hole."
+
+Of all birds of prey, Owls are the most useful to man, by protecting his
+corn-fields, or granaried provision, from mice and numberless vermin.
+Yet, prejudice has perverted these birds into objects of superstition
+and consequent hate. The kind-hearted Mr. Waterton says:--"I wish that
+any little thing I could write or say might cause this bird to stand
+better with the world at large than it has hitherto done; but I have
+slender hope on this score, because old and deep-rooted prejudices are
+seldom overcome; and when I look back into annals of remote antiquity,
+I see too clearly that defamation has done its worst to ruin the whole
+family, in all its branches, of this poor, harmless, useful friend of
+mine."
+
+The Barn Owl is common throughout Europe, known in Tartary, and rare in
+the United States of America. In England it is called the Barn Owl, the
+Church Owl, Gillihowlet, and Screech Owl; the last name is improperly
+applied, as it is believed not to hoot, though Sir William Jardine
+asserts that he has shot it in the act of hooting. To the screech
+superstition has annexed ideas of fatal portent; "but," says Charlotte
+Smith, "it has, of course, no more foreknowledge of approaching evil to
+man than the Lark: its cry is a signal to its absent mate."
+
+"If," says Mr. Waterton, "this useful bird caught its food by day
+instead of hunting for it by night, mankind would have ocular
+demonstration of its utility in thinning the country of mice; and it
+would be protected and encouraged everywhere. It would be with us what
+the Ibis was with the Egyptians. When it has young, it will bring a
+mouse to the nest every twelve or fifteen minutes." Mr. Waterton saw his
+Barn Owl fly away with a rat which he had just shot; he also saw her
+drop perpendicularly into the water, and presently rise out of it with a
+fish in her claws, which she took to her nest.
+
+Birds and quadrupeds, and even fish, are the food of Owls, according to
+the size of the species. Hares, partridges, grouse, and even the turkey,
+are attacked by the larger Horned Owls of Europe and America; while
+mice, shrews, small birds, and crabs suffice for the inferior strength
+of the smaller Owls. Mr. Yarrell states that the Short-eared Owl is the
+only bird of prey in which he ever found the remains of a bat.
+
+William Bullock reports that a large Snowy Owl, wounded on the Isle of
+Baltoc, disgorged a young rabbit; and that one in his possession had in
+its stomach a sandpiper with its feathers entire. It preys on lemmings,
+hares, and birds, particularly the willow-grouse and ptarmigan. It is
+a dexterous fisher, grasping the fish with an instantaneous stroke of
+the foot as it sails along near the surface of the water, or sits on
+a stone in a shallow stream. It has been seen on the wing pursuing an
+American hare, making repeated strokes at the animal with its foot. In
+winter, when this Owl is fat, the Indians and white residents in the Fur
+Countries esteem it to be good eating; its flesh is delicately white.
+Small snakes are the common prey of this Owl during the daytime. And to
+show on what various kinds of food Owls subsist, Mr. Darwin states that
+a species that was killed among the islets of the Chonos Archipelago had
+its stomach full of good-sized crabs. Such are a few of the facts which
+attest the almost omnivorous appetite of the Owl.
+
+The flight of the Snowy Owl is stronger and swifter than any other
+bird of the family; its ears are very large; its voice (says Pennant)
+adds horror even to the regions of Greenland by its hideous cries,
+resembling those of a man in deep distress. The eye is very curious,
+being immovably fixed in its socket, so that the bird, to view different
+objects, must always turn its head; and so excellently is the neck
+adapted to this purpose, that it can with ease turn the head round
+in almost a complete circle, without moving the body. The Virginian
+Eagle-Owl, amidst the forests of Indiana, utters a loud and sudden
+_Wough O! wough O!_ sufficient to alarm a whole garrison; another of its
+nocturnal cries resembles the half-suppressed screams of a person being
+suffocated or throttled.
+
+The Javanese Owl is found in the closest forests, and occasionally near
+villages and dwellings. Dr. Horsfield says:--"It is not, however, a
+favourite with the natives; various superstitious notions are also in
+Java associated with its visits; and it is considered in many parts of
+the island as portending evil." One of this species never visits the
+villages, but resides in the dense forests, which are the usual resort
+of the tiger. The natives even assert that the _Wowo-wiwi_ approaches
+the animal with the same familiarity with which the jallack approaches
+the buffalo, and that it has no dread to alight on the tiger's back. Dr.
+Horsfield adds, that it has never been seen in confinement.
+
+The Boobook Owl has the native name of Buck-buck, and it may be heard
+in Australia every night during winter, uttering a cry corresponding
+with that word. The note is somewhat similar to that of the European
+_Cuckoo_, and the colonists have given it that name. The lower order of
+settlers in New South Wales are led away by the idea that everything
+is the reverse in that country to what it is in England; and the
+_Cuckoo_, as they call this bird, singing by night, is one of the
+instances which they point out.
+
+Tame Owls are described as nearly as playful, and quite as affectionate,
+as kittens; they will perch upon your wrist, touch your lips with their
+beak, and hoot to order; and they are less inclined to leave their
+friends than other tame birds. A writer in "Chambers's Journal" relates,
+that a friend lost his favourite Owl, which flew away, and was absent
+many days. In time, however, he came back, and resumed his habits and
+duties, which, for a while, went on uninterruptedly. At length, one
+severe autumn, he disappeared; weeks, months passed, and he returned
+not. One snowy night, however, as his master sat by the blazing fire,
+some heavy thing came bump against the shutters. "Whoo, whoo, whoo."
+The window was opened, and in flew the Owl, shaking the thick snow from
+his wings, and settling lovingly on his master's wrist, the bird's eyes
+dilating with delight.
+
+The Owls at Arundel Castle have a sort of historic interest; they
+are kept within the circuit of the keep-tower, the most ancient and
+picturesque portion of the castle. Among the Australian Owls here we
+read of one larger than a turkey, measuring four feet across the wings
+when expanded. The Owl named "Lord Thurlow," from his resemblance to
+that Judge, is a striking specimen.
+
+The accompanying illustration shows a fine specimen of Fraser's
+Eagle-Owl, brought from Fernando Po. It is the size of an ordinary
+fowl; colour, very dark reddish-brown mottling; back and wings passing
+through all shades of the same colour into nearly white on the under
+parts, where the feathers are barred; bill, pale greenish; eyes, nearly
+black.
+
+[Illustration: FRASER'S EAGLE-OWL, FROM FERNANDO PO.]
+
+Among the Owls but recently described is the Masked Owl of New Holland,
+named from the markings of the disk of the face, somewhat grotesque;
+the colours are brown variegated with white. A fine specimen of the
+Abyssinian Owl is possessed by Mr. R. Good, of Yeovil: the bird,
+although quite young, is of immense size.
+
+Lastly, the Owl is thought to be of the same sympathy or kindred likings
+as the Cat: a young Owl will feed well, and thrive upon fish. Cats, too,
+it is well known, like fish. Both the Cat and the Owl, too, feed upon
+mice. The sight of Owls, also, similar to that of Cats, appears to serve
+them best in the dark.
+
+
+
+
+WEATHER-WISE ANIMALS.
+
+
+Whatever may be the worth of weather prognostications, it is from the
+animal kingdom that we obtain the majority. How these creatures become
+so acutely sensible of the approach of particular kinds of weather is
+not at present well understood. That in many cases the appearance of
+the heavens is not the source from which their information is derived
+is proved by the signs of uneasiness frequently expressed by them when,
+as yet, the most attentive observer can detect no signs of change,
+and even when they are placed in such circumstances as preclude the
+possibility of any instruction from this quarter. For instance. Dogs,
+closely confined in a room, often become very drowsy and stupid before
+rain; and a leech, confined in a glass of water, has been found, by
+its rapid motions or its quiescence, to indicate the approach of wet
+or the return of fair weather. Probably the altered condition of the
+atmosphere with regard to its electricity, which generally accompanies
+change of weather, may so affect their constitution as to excite in
+them pleasurable or uneasy sensations; though man is far from insensible
+to atmospheric changes, as the feelings of utter listlessness which
+many persons experience before rain, and the aggravated severity of
+toothache, headache, and rheumatism abundantly testify. The Cat licking
+itself is a special influence of the above electric influence, which
+denotes the approach of rain.
+
+Birds, as "denizens of the air," are the surest indicators of weather
+changes. Thus, when swallows fly high, fine weather is to be expected
+or continued; but when they fly low, or close to the ground, rain is
+almost surely approaching; for swallows follow the flies and gnats,
+which delight in warm strata of air. Now, as warm air is lighter, and
+usually moister than cold air, when the warm strata of air are high
+there is less chance of moisture being thrown down from them by their
+mixture with cold air; but when the warm and moist air is close to the
+surface, it is almost certain that, as the cold air flows down into it,
+a deposition of water will take place.
+
+When Seagulls assemble on the land, very stormy and rainy weather is
+approaching. The cause of this migration to the land is the security of
+these birds finding food; and they may be observed at this time feeding
+greedily on the earth-worms and larvæ driven out of the ground by severe
+floods; whilst the fish on which they prey in fine weather in the sea,
+leave the surface, and go deeper in storms. The search after food is
+the principal cause why animals change their places. The different
+tribes of the wading birds always migrate when rain is about to take
+place.
+
+There is a bird which takes its name from its apparent agency in
+tempests. Such is the Stormy Petrel, which name Hawkesworth, in his
+"Voyages," mentions the sailors give to the bird, but explains no
+further. Navigators meet with the Little Petrel, or Storm Finch, in
+every part of the ocean, diving, running on foot, or skimming over the
+highest waves. It seems to foresee the coming storm long ere the seamen
+can discover any signs of its approach. The Petrels make this known by
+congregating together under the wake of the vessel, as if to shelter
+themselves, and they thus warn the mariner of the coming danger. At
+night they set up a piercing cry. This usefulness of the bird to the
+sailor is the obvious cause of the latter having such an objection to
+their being killed.
+
+Mr. Knapp, the naturalist, thus pictures gulls, describing the Petrel's
+action:--"They seem to repose in a common breeze, but upon the approach
+or during the continuation of a gale, they surround the ship, and catch
+up the small animals which the agitated ocean brings near the surface,
+or any food that may be dropped from the vessel. Whisking like an arrow
+through the deep valleys of the abyss, and darting away over the foaming
+crest of some mountain-wave, they attend the labouring barque in all
+her perilous course. When the storm subsides they retire to rest, and
+are seen no more."
+
+Our sailors have, from very early times, called these birds "Mother
+Carey's Chickens," originally bestowed on them, Mr. Yarrell tells us, by
+Captain Cartaret's sailors, probably from some celebrated ideal hag of
+the above name. Mr. Yarrell adds:--"As these birds are supposed to be
+seen only before stormy weather, they are not welcome visitors," a view
+at variance with that already suggested.
+
+The Editor of "Notes and Queries" considers the Petrels to have been
+called _chickens_ from their diminutive size. The largest sort, "the
+Giant Petrel," is "Mother Carey's _Goose_;" its length is forty
+inches, and it expands seven feet. The common kind are about the size
+of a swallow, and weigh something over an ounce; length, six inches;
+expansion, thirteen inches; these are Mother Carey's _chickens_
+(_Latham_). It should be borne in mind that our language does not
+restrict the term chickens to young birds of the gallinaceous class.
+
+The Missel-bird is another bird of this kind: in Hampshire and Sussex
+it is called the _Storm Cock_, because it sings early in the spring, in
+blowing, showery weather.
+
+Petrels, by the way, are used by the inhabitants of the Faroe Islands as
+lamps: they pass a wick through their bodies which, when lighted, burns
+a long time from the quantity of fat they contain.
+
+The Fulmar Petrel, in Boothia, follows the whale-ships, availing itself
+of the labours of the fishermen by feeding on the carcases of the
+whales when stripped of their blubber. In return the bird is exceedingly
+useful to the whalers by guiding them to the places where whales are
+most numerous, and crowding to the spots where they first appear on the
+surface of the water.
+
+Wild Geese and Ducks are unquestionably weather-wise, for their early
+arrival from the north in the winter portends that a severe season is
+approaching; because their early appearance is most likely caused by
+severe frost having already set in at their usual summer residence. The
+Rev. F. O. Morris, the well-known writer on natural history, records
+from Nunburnholme, Yorkshire. December 5, 1864:--"This season, for the
+first time I have lived here, I have missed seeing the flocks of Wild
+Geese which in the autumnal months have heretofore wended their way
+overhead, year after year, as regularly as the dusk of the evening came
+on. Almost to the minute, and almost in the same exact course, they
+have flown over aloft from the feeding-places on the Wolds to their
+resting-places for the night; some, perhaps, to extensive commons, while
+others have turned off to the mud-banks of the Humber, whence they have
+returned with equal regularity in the morning.
+
+"But this year I have seen not only not a single flock, but not even
+a single bird. One evening one of my daughters did indeed see a small
+flock of six, but even that small number only once. Whether it portends
+a very hard winter, or what the cause of it may be, I am utterly at a
+loss to know or even to guess. I quite miss this year the well-known
+cackle of the old gander as he has led the van of the flock that has
+followed him; now in a wide, now in a narrow, now in a short, now in a
+long wedge, over head, diverging just from the father of the family, or
+separating from time to time further back in the line.
+
+"I may add, as a possible prognostication of future weather, that
+fieldfares have, I think, been unusually numerous this year, as last
+year they were the contrary. I have also remarked that swallows took
+their departure this year more than ordinarily in a body, very few
+stragglers being subsequently seen."
+
+It will be sufficient to state that the mean temperature of January and
+February was below that of the same month in the preceding year, and
+that of March had not been so low for twenty years.
+
+The opinion that sea-birds come to land in order to avoid an approaching
+storm is stated to be erroneous; and the cause assigned is, that as the
+fish upon which the birds prey go deep into the water during storms, the
+birds come to land merely on account of the greater certainty of finding
+food there than out at sea.
+
+We add a few notes on Bird naturalists. The Redbreast has been called
+_the Naturalist's Barometer_. When on a summer evening, though it be
+unsettled and rainy, he sings cheerfully and sweetly on a lofty twig or
+housetop, it is an unerring promise of succeeding fine days. Sometimes,
+though the atmosphere be dry and warm, he may be seen melancholy
+chirping and brooding in a bush or low in a hedge; this promises the
+reverse. In the luxuriant forests of Brazil the Toucan may be heard
+rattling with his large hollow beak, as he sits on the outermost
+branches, calling in plaintive notes for rain.
+
+When Mr. Loudon was at Schwetzingen, Rhenish Bavaria, in 1829, he
+witnessed in the post-house there for the first time what he afterwards
+frequently saw--an amusing application of zoological knowledge for the
+purpose of prognosticating the weather. Two tree-frogs were kept in
+a crystal jar about eighteen inches high and six inches in diameter,
+with a depth of three or four inches of water at the bottom, and a
+small ladder reaching to the top of the jar. On the approach of dry
+weather the frogs mounted the ladder, but when moisture was expected
+they descended into the water. These animals are of a bright green, and
+in their wild state climb the trees in search of insects, and make a
+peculiar singing noise before rain. In the jar they got no other food
+than now and then a fly; one of which, Mr. Loudon was assured, would
+serve a frog for a week, though it would eat from six to twelve flies in
+a day if it could get them. In catching the flies put alive into the jar
+the frogs displayed great adroitness.
+
+Snails are extraordinary indicators of changes in the weather.
+Several years ago, Mr. Thomas, of Cincinnati, known as an accredited
+observer of natural phenomena, published some interesting accounts
+of Weather-wise Snails. They do not drink (he observes), but imbibe
+moisture in their bodies during rain, and exude it at regular periods
+afterwards. Then a certain snail first exudes the pure liquid; when
+this is exhausted, a light red succeeds, then a deep red, next yellow,
+and lastly a dark brown. The snail is very careful not to exude more
+of its moisture than is necessary. It is never seen abroad _except
+before rain_, when we find it ascending the bark of trees and getting
+on the leaves. The tree-snail is also seen ascending the stems of
+plants _two days before rain_: if it be a long and hard rain they get
+on the sheltered side of the leaf, but if a short rain the outside
+of the leaf. Another snail has the same habits, but differs only in
+colour: before rain it is yellow, and after it blue. Others show signs
+of rain, not only by means of exuding fluids, but by means of pores and
+protuberances; and the bodies of some snails have large tubercles rising
+from them _before rain_. These tubercles commence showing themselves
+ten days previous to the fall of rain they indicate; at the end of each
+of these tubercles is a pore; and at the time of the fall of rain these
+tubercles, with their pores opened, are stretched to their utmost to
+receive the water. In another kind of snail, a few days before rain
+appears a large and deep indentation, beginning at the head between
+the horns, and ending with the jointure at the shells. Other snails,
+a few days before the rain, crawl to the most exposed hill-side,
+where, if they arrive before the rain descends, they seek some crevice
+in the rocks, and then close the aperture of the shell with glutinous
+substance; this, when the rain approaches, they dissolve, and are then
+seen crawling about.
+
+Our Cincinnati observer mentions three kinds of snails which move along
+at the rate of a mile in forty-four hours; they inhabit the most dense
+forests, and it is regarded as a sure indication of rain to observe them
+moving towards an exposed situation. Others indicate the weather not
+only by exuding fluids, but by the colour of the animal. After rain the
+snail has a very dark appearance, but it grows of a bright colour as
+the water is expended; whilst just before rain it is of yellowish white
+colour, also just before rain streaks appear from the point of the head
+to the jointure of the shell. These snails move at the rate of a mile in
+fourteen days and sixteen hours. If they are observed ascending a cliff
+it is a sure indication of rain: they live in the cavities of the sides
+of cliffs. There is also a snail which is brown, tinged with blue on the
+edges before rain, but black after rain: a few days before appears an
+indentation, which grows deeper as the rain approaches.
+
+The leaves of trees are even good barometers: most of them for a short,
+light rain, will turn up so as to receive their fill of water; but for
+a long rain they are doubled, so as to conduct the water away. The
+Frog and Toad are sure indicators of rain; for, as they do not drink
+water but absorb it into their bodies, they are sure to be found out
+at the time they expect rain. The Locust and Grasshopper are also good
+indicators of a storm; a few hours before rain they are to be found
+under the leaves of trees and in the hollow trunks.
+
+The Mole has long been recorded as a prognosticator of change of
+weather, before which it becomes very active. The temperature or dryness
+of the air governs its motions as to the depth at which it lives or
+works. This is partly from its inability to bear cold or thirst, but
+chiefly from its being necessitated to follow its natural food, the
+earth-worm, which always descends as the cold or drought increases.
+In frosty weather both worms and moles are deeper in the ground than
+at other times; and both seem to be sensible of an approaching change
+to warmer weather before there are any perceptible signs of it in the
+atmosphere. When it is observed, therefore, that Moles are casting hills
+through openings in the frozen turf or through a thin covering of snow,
+a change to open weather may be shortly expected. The cause of this
+appears to be--the natural heat of the earth being for a time pent in
+by the frozen surface accumulates below it; first incites to action the
+animals, thaws the frozen surface, and at length escapes into the air,
+which is warm, and softens; and if not counterbalanced by a greater
+degree of cold in the atmosphere brings about a change, such as from
+frosty to mild weather. The Mole is most active and casts up most earth
+immediately before rain, and in the winter before a thaw, because at
+those times the worms and insects begin to be in motion, and approach
+the surface.
+
+Forster, the indefatigable meteorologist, has assembled some curious
+observations on certain animals, who, by some peculiar sensibility to
+electrical or other atmospheric influence, often indicate changes of the
+weather by their peculiar motions and habits. Thus:--
+
+_Ants._--An universal bustle and activity observed in ant-hills may be
+generally regarded as a sign of rain: the Ants frequently appear all in
+motion together, and carry their eggs about from place to place. This is
+remarked by Virgil, Pliny, and others.
+
+_Asses._--When donkeys bray more than ordinarily, especially should
+they shake their ears, as if uneasy, it is said to predict rain, and
+particularly showers. Forster noticed that in showery weather a donkey
+brayed before every shower, and generally some minutes before the rain
+fell, as if some electrical influence, produced by the concentrating
+power of the approaching rain-cloud, caused a tickling in the wind-pipe
+of the animal just before the shower came on. Whatever this electric
+state of the air preceding a shower may be, it seems to be the same
+that causes in other animals some peculiar sensations, which makes the
+peacock squall, the pintado call "come back," &c. An expressive adage
+says:--
+
+    "When that the ass begins to bray,
+    Be sure we shall have rain that day."
+
+Haymakers may derive useful admonitions from the braying of the ass:
+thus the proverb:--
+
+    "Be sure to cock your hay and corn
+    When the old donkey blows his horn."
+
+_Bats_ flitting about late in the evening in spring and autumn foretel a
+fine day on the morrow; as do Dorbeetles and some other insects. On the
+contrary, when Bats return soon to their hiding-places, and send forth
+loud cries, bad weather may be expected.
+
+_Beetles_ flying about late in the evening often foretel a fine day on
+the morrow.
+
+_Butterflies_, when they appear early, are sometimes forerunners of fine
+weather. Moths and Sphinxes also foretel fine weather when they are
+common in the evening.
+
+_Cats_, when they "wash their faces," or when they seem sleepy and dull,
+foretel rain.
+
+_Chickens_, when they pick up small stones and pebbles, and are more
+noisy than usual, afford a sign of rain; as do fowls rubbing in the
+dust, and clapping their wings; but this applies to several kinds of
+fowls, as well as to the gallinaceous kinds. Cocks, when they crow at
+unwonted hours, often foretel rain; when they crow all day, in summer
+particularly, a change to rain frequently follows.
+
+_Cranes_ were said of old to foretel rain when they retreated to the
+valleys, and returned from their aërial flight. The high flight of
+cranes in silence indicates fine weather.
+
+_Dolphins_ as well as _Porpoises_, when they come about a ship, and
+sport and gambol on the surface of the water, betoken a storm.
+
+_Dogs_, before rain, grow sleepy and dull, lie drowsily before the fire,
+and are not easily aroused. They also often eat grass, which indicates
+that their stomachs, like ours, are apt to be disturbed before change
+of weather. It is also said to be a sign of change of weather when Dogs
+howl and bark much in the night. Dogs also dig in the earth with their
+feet before rain, and often make deep holes in the ground.
+
+_Ducks._--The loud and clamorous quacking of Ducks, Geese, and other
+water-fowl, is a sign of rain; as also when they wash themselves, and
+flutter about in the water more than usual. Virgil has well described
+all these habits of aquatic birds.
+
+_Fieldfares_, when they arrive early, and in great numbers, in autumn,
+foreshow a hard winter, which has probably set in in the regions from
+which they have come.
+
+_Fishes_, when they bite more readily, and gambol near the surface of
+streams or pools, foreshow rain.
+
+_Flies_, and various sorts of insects, become more troublesome, and
+sting and bite more than usual, before, as well as in the intervals of
+rainy weather, particularly in autumn.
+
+_Frogs_, by their clamorous croaking, indicate rainy weather, as does
+likewise their coming about in great numbers in the evening; but this
+last sign applies more obviously to toads.
+
+_Geese_ washing, or taking wing with a clamorous noise, and flying to
+the water, portend rain.
+
+_Gnats_ afford several indications. When they fly in a vortex in the
+beams of the setting sun they forebode fair weather; when they frisk
+about more widely in the open air at eventide they foreshow heat; and
+when they assemble under trees, and bite more than usual, they indicate
+rain.
+
+_Hogs_, when they shake the stalks of corn, and spoil them, often
+indicate rain. When they run squeaking about, and jerk up their heads,
+windy weather is about to commence; hence the Wiltshire proverb, that
+"Pigs can see the wind."
+
+_Horses_ foretel the coming of rain by starting more than ordinarily,
+and by restlessness on the road.
+
+_Jackdaws_ are unusually clamorous before rain, as are also _Starlings_.
+Sometimes before change of weather the daws make a great noise in the
+chamber wherein they build.
+
+_Kine_ (cattle) are said to foreshow rain when they lick their
+fore-feet, or lie on their right side. Some say oxen licking themselves
+against the hair is a sign of wet.
+
+_Kites_, when they soar very high in the air, denote fair weather, as do
+also _Larks_.
+
+_Magpies_, in windy weather, often fly in small flocks of three or four
+together, uttering a strong harsh cry.
+
+_Mice_ when they squeak much, and gambol in the house, foretel a change
+of weather, and often rain.
+
+_Owls._--When an owl hoots or screeches, sitting on the top of a house,
+or by the side of a window, it is said to foretel death. "The fact,"
+says Forster, "seems to be this: the Owl, as Virgil justly observes,
+is more noisy at the change of weather, and as it often happens that
+patients with lingering diseases die at the change of weather, so the
+Owl seems, by a mistaken association of ideas, to forebode the calamity."
+
+_Peacocks_ squalling by night often foretel a rainy day. Forster adds,
+"This prognostic does not often fail; and the indication is made more
+certain by the crowing of Cocks all day, the braying of the Donkey, the
+low flight of Swallows, the aching of rheumatic persons, and by the
+frequent appearance of spiders on the walls of the house."
+
+_Pigeons._--It is a sign of rain when Pigeons return slowly to the
+dove-houses before the usual time of day.
+
+_Ravens_, when observed early in the morning, at a great height in the
+air, soaring round and round, and uttering a hoarse, croaking sound,
+indicate that the day will be fine. On the contrary, this bird affords
+us a sign of coming rain by another sort of cry; the difference between
+these two voices being more easily learned from nature than described.
+The Raven frequenting the shore and dipping himself in the water is also
+a sign of rain.
+
+_Redbreasts_, when they, with more than usual familiarity, lodge on our
+window-frames, and peck against the glass with their bills, indicate
+severe weather, of which they have a presentiment, which brings them
+nearer to the habitations of man.
+
+_Rooks_ gathering together, and returning home from their pastures
+early, and at unwonted hours, forebode rain. When Rooks whirl round in
+the air rapidly, and come down in small flocks, making a roaring noise
+with their wings, rough weather invariably follows. On the contrary,
+when Rooks are very noisy about their trees, and fly about as if
+rejoicing, Virgil assures us they foresee a return of fine weather, and
+an end of the showers.
+
+_Spiders_, when seen crawling on the walls more than usual, indicate
+rain. "This prognostic," says Forster, "seldom fails, I have noticed it
+for many years, particularly in winter, but more or less at all times of
+the year. In summer the quantity of webs of the garden spiders denote
+fair weather."
+
+_Swallows_, in fine and settled weather, fly higher in the air than they
+do just before or during a showery or rainy time. Then, also, Swallows
+flying low, and skimming over the surface of a meadow where there is
+tolerably long grass, frequently stop, and hang about the blades, as if
+they were gathering insects lodged there.
+
+_Swans_, when they fly against the wind, portend rain, a sign frequently
+fulfilled.
+
+_Toads_, when they come from their holes in an unusual number in the
+evening, although the ground be still dry, foreshow the coming rain,
+which will generally fall more or less during the night.
+
+_Urchins of the Sea_, a sort of fish, when they thrust themselves into
+the mud, and try to cover their bodies with sand, foreshow a storm.
+
+_Vultures_, when they scent carrion at a great distance, indicate that
+state of the atmosphere which is favourable to the perception of smells,
+and this often forebodes rain.
+
+_Willow Wrens_ are frequently seen, in mild and still rainy weather,
+flitting about the willows, pines, and other trees, in quest of insects.
+
+_Woodcocks_ appear in autumn earlier, and in greater numbers, previous
+to severe winters; as do Snipes and other winter birds.
+
+_Worms_ come forth more abundantly before rain, as do snails, slugs, and
+almost all limaceous animals.
+
+Some birds build their nests weather-proof, as ascertained by careful
+observation of Mr. M. W. B. Thomas, of Cincinnati, Ohio. Thus, when a
+pair of migratory birds have arrived in the spring, they prepare to
+build their nest, making a careful reconnaissance of the place, and
+observing the character of the season. If it be a windy one, they thatch
+the straw and leaves on the inside of the nest, between the twigs and
+the lining; if it be very windy, they get pliant twigs, and bind the
+nest firmly to the limb of the tree, securing all the small twigs with
+their saliva. If they fear the approach of a rainy season, they build
+their nests so as to be sheltered from the weather; but if a pleasant
+one, they build in a fair open place, without taking any of these extra
+precautions.
+
+Of all writers, Dr. Darwin has given us the most correct account of
+the "Signs of Rain," in a poetical description of the approach of foul
+weather, as follows. This passage has been often quoted, but, perhaps,
+never exceeded in the accuracy of its phenomenal observation:--
+
+    "The hollow winds begin to blow;
+    The clouds look black, the glass is low;
+    The soot falls down, the spaniels sleep;
+    And spiders from their cobwebs peep.
+    Last night the sun went pale to bed;
+    The moon in haloes hid her head;
+    The boding shepherd heaves a sigh,
+    For, see, a rainbow spans the sky.
+    The walls are damp, the ditches smell,
+    Clos'd is the light red pimpernel.
+    Hark! how the chairs and tables crack,
+    Old Betty's joints are on the rack;
+    Her corns with shooting pains torment her,
+    And to her bed untimely send her.
+    Loud quack the ducks, the sea-fowls cry,
+    The distant hills are looking nigh.
+    How restless are the snorting swine!
+    The busy flies disturb the kine.
+    Low o'er the grass the swallow wings,
+    The cricket, too, how sharp he sings!
+    Puss on the hearth, with velvet paws,
+    Sits wiping o'er her whisker'd jaws.
+    The smoke from chimneys right ascends;
+    Then spreading back, to earth it bends.
+    The wind unsteady veers around,
+    Or settling in the South is found.
+    Through the clear stream the fishes rise,
+    And nimbly catch th' incautious flies.
+    The glowworms num'rous, clear, and bright,
+    Illum'd the dewy hill last night.
+    At dusk, the squalid toad was seen,
+    Like quadruped, stalk o'er the green.
+    The whirling wind the dust obeys,
+    And in the rapid eddy plays.
+    The frog has chang'd his yellow vest,
+    And in a russet coat is drest.
+    The sky is green, the air is still,
+    The mellow blackbird's voice is shrill.
+    The dog, so altered is his taste,
+    Quits mutton-bones on grass to feast.
+    Behold the rooks, how odd their flight,
+    They imitate the gliding kite,
+    And seem precipitate to fall,
+    As if they felt the piercing ball.
+    The tender colts on banks do lie,
+    Nor heed the traveller passing by.
+    In fiery red the sun doth rise,
+    Then wades through clouds to mount the skies.
+    ''Twill surely rain, we see 't with sorrow,
+    No working in the fields to-morrow.'"
+
+The Shepherd of Banbury says:--"The surest and most certain sign of
+rain is taken from Bees, which are more incommoded by rain than almost
+any other creatures; and, therefore, as soon as the air begins to
+grow heavy, and the vapours to condense, they will not fly from their
+hives, but either remain in them all day, or else fly but to a small
+distance." Yet Bees are not always right in their prognostics, for
+Réaumur witnessed a swarm which, after leaving the hive at half-past one
+o'clock, were overtaken by a heavy shower at three.
+
+
+
+
+FISH-TALK.
+
+
+"Man favours wonders;" and this delight is almost endlessly exemplified
+in the stories of strange Fishes--of preternatural size and odd forms,
+which are to be found in their early history. In our present Talk we do
+not aim at re-assembling these olden tales, but propose rather to glance
+at recent accessions to our acquaintance with the study of Fish-life,
+and a few modern instances of the class of wonders.
+
+Fishes, like all other animals, have a very delicate sense of the
+equilibrial position of their bodies. They endeavour to counteract all
+change in their position by means of movements partly voluntary and
+partly instinctive. These latter appear in a very remarkable manner in
+the eye; and they are so constant and evident in fishes while alive,
+that their absence is sufficient to indicate the death of the animal.
+The equilibrium of the fish, its horizontal position, with the back
+upwards, depends solely on the action of the fins, and principally
+that of the vertical fins. The swimming-bladder may enable a fish
+to increase or diminish its specific gravity. By compressing the air
+contained in it, the fish descends in the water; it rises by releasing
+the muscles which produced the compression. By compressing more or
+less the posterior or anterior portion of the bladder, the animal, at
+pleasure, can make the anterior or posterior half of its body lighter;
+it can also assume an oblique position, which permits an ascending or
+descending movement in the water.
+
+There is a small fish found in the rivers of the Burmese Empire, which,
+on being taken out of the water, has the power of blowing itself up to
+the shape of a small round ball, but its original shape is resumed as
+soon as it is returned to the river.
+
+Mr. St. John, in his "Tour in Eastern Lanarkshire," gives some curious
+instances of fish changing colour, which takes place with surprising
+rapidity. Put a living black burn Trout into a white basin of water,
+and it becomes, within half an hour, of a light colour. Keep the fish
+living in a white jar for some days, and it becomes absolutely white;
+but put it into a dark-coloured or black vessel, and although on first
+being placed there the white-coloured fish shows most conspicuously on
+the black ground, in a quarter of an hour it becomes as dark-coloured
+as the bottom of the jar, and consequently difficult to be seen. No
+doubt this facility of adapting its colour to the bottom of the water
+in which it lives, is of the greatest service to the fish in protecting
+it from its numerous enemies. All anglers must have observed, that in
+every stream the Trout are very much of the same colour as the gravel or
+sand on which they live: whether this change of colour is a voluntary or
+involuntary act on the part of the fish, the scientific must determine.
+
+Anglers of our time have proved that Tench croak like frogs; Herrings
+cry like mice; Gurnards grunt like hogs; and some say the Gurnard makes
+a noise like a cuckoo, from which he takes one of his country names. The
+Maigre, a large sea-fish, when swimming in shoals, utters a grunting or
+piercing noise, that may be heard from a depth of twenty fathoms.
+
+M. Dufossé asserts that facts prove that nature has not refused to all
+fishes the power of expressing their instinctive sensations by sounds,
+but has not conferred on them the unity of mechanism in the formation
+of sonorous vibrations as in other classes of vertebrated animals.
+Some fishes, he says, are able to emit musical tones, engendered by a
+mechanism in which the muscular vibration is the principal motive power;
+others possess the faculty of making blowing sounds, like those of
+certain reptiles; and others can produce the creaking noise resembling
+that of many insects. These phenomena M. Dufossé has named "Fish-noise."
+
+The River Plate swarms with fish, and is the _habitat_ of one possessed
+of a very sonorous voice, like that found in the River Borneo--the
+account of which is quoted by Dr. Buist from the Journal of the
+Samarang; and there is similar testimony of a loud piscatory chorus
+being heard on board H.M.S. Eagle, anchored, in 1845-6, about three
+miles from Monte Video, during the night.
+
+That fishes hear has been doubted, although John Hunter was of this
+opinion, and has been followed by many observers. When standing beside
+a person angling, how often is the request made not to make a noise,
+as that would _alarm_ the fish. On the other hand, the Chinese drive
+the fish up to that part of the river where their nets are ready to
+capture them by loud yells and shouts, and the sound of gongs; but old
+Æsop writes of a fisherman who caught no fish because he alarmed them
+by playing on his flute while fishing. In Germany the Shad is taken
+by means of nets, to which bows of wood, hung with a number of little
+bells, are attached in such a manner as to chime in harmony when the
+nets are moved. The Shad, when once attracted by the sound, will not
+attempt to escape while the bells continue to ring. Ælian says the
+Shad is allured by castanets. Macdiarmid, who declares that fishes
+hear as well as see, relates that an old Codfish, the patriarch of the
+celebrated fish-pond at Logan, "answered to his name; and not only
+drew near, but turned up his snout most beseechingly when he heard the
+monosyllable 'Tom;' and that he evidently could distinguish the voice of
+the fisherman who superintended the pond, and fed the fish, from that
+of any other fisherman." In the "Kaleidoscope" mention is made of three
+Trout in a pond near the powder-mills at Faversham, who were so tame
+as to come at the call of the person accustomed to feed them. Izaak
+Walton tells of a Carp coming to a certain part of a pond to be fed "at
+the ringing of a bell, or the beating of a drum;" and Sir John Hawkins
+was assured by a clergyman, a friend of his, that at the Abbey of St.
+Bernard, near Antwerp, he saw a Carp come to the edge of the water to be
+fed, at the whistle of the person who fed it. The Carp at Fontainebleau,
+inhabiting the lake adjoining the Imperial Palace, are of great size,
+and manifest a curious instinct. A Correspondent of the "Athenæum"
+remarks:--
+
+     "Enjoying entire immunity from all angling arts and lures, the
+     Fontainebleau Carp live a life of great enjoyment, marred only, we
+     imagine, by their immense numbers causing the supply of food to be
+     somewhat below their requirements. It is not, however, very easy to
+     define what a Carp's requirements in the form of pabulum are, as he
+     is a voracious member of the ichthyological family, eating whenever
+     he has an opportunity until absolutely surfeited. His favourite
+     food consists of vegetable substances masticated by means of flat
+     striated teeth, which work with a millstone kind of motion against
+     a singular process of the lower part of the skull covered with
+     horny plates. When this fish obtains an abundant supply of food it
+     grows to an enormous size. Several continental rivers and lakes
+     are very congenial to Carp, and especially the Oder, where this
+     fish occasionally attains the enormous weight of 60 lb. It is not
+     probable that any Carp in the lake at Fontainebleau are so large as
+     this; but there are certainly many weighing 50 lb., patriarchs of
+     their kind, which, though olive-hued in their tender years, are now
+     white with age. That the great size of these fish is due to ample
+     feeding is, we think, evident, and, as we shall see presently, it
+     is the large fish that are the best fed. During many years the
+     feeding of the Carp at Fontainebleau has been a favourite Court
+     pastime. But it is from the visitors who frequent Fontainebleau
+     during a great part of the year that the Carp receive their
+     most bountiful rations. For big Carp have an enormous swallow,
+     soft penny rolls being mere mouthfuls, bolted with ostrich-like
+     celerity. So to prevent the immediate disappearance of these
+     _bonnes bouches_, bread, in the form of larger balls than the most
+     capacious Carp can take into his gullet, is baked until it becomes
+     as hard as biscuit, and with these balls the Carp are regailed.
+     Throw one into the lake, and you will quickly have an idea of the
+     enormous Carp population it contains. For no sooner does the bread
+     touch the water than it is surrounded by hundreds of these fish,
+     which dart to it from all sides. And now, if you look attentively,
+     you will witness a curious display of instinct, which might almost
+     take a higher name. Conscious, apparently, of their inability to
+     crush these extremely hard balls, the Carp combine with surprising
+     unanimity to push them to that part of the lake with their noses
+     where it is bounded by a wall, and when there they butt at them,
+     until at last their repeated blows and the softening effect of the
+     water causes them to yield and open. And now you will see another
+     curious sight. While shoals of Carp have been pounding away at
+     the bread-balls, preparing them for being swallowed, some dozen
+     monsters hover round, indifferent, apparently, to what is passing.
+     But not so, for no sooner is the bread ready for eating, than two
+     or three of these giants, but more generally one--the tyrant,
+     probably, of the lake--rush to the prize, cleaving the shoals of
+     smaller Carp, and shouldering them to the right and left, seize the
+     bread with open jaws, between which it quickly disappears."
+
+Some of the finest and oldest Carp are found in the windings of the
+Spree, in the tavern-gardens of Charlottenburg, the great resort of
+strollers from Berlin. Visitors are in the habit of feeding them with
+bread, and collect them together by ringing a bell, at the sound of
+which shoals of the fish may be seen popping their noses upwards from
+the water.
+
+The affection of fishes has only been properly understood of late years.
+It might be supposed that little natural affection existed in this
+cold-blooded race; and, in fact, fishes constantly devour their own
+eggs, and, at a later period, their own young, without compunction or
+discrimination. Some few species bear their eggs about with them until
+hatched. This was long thought to be the utmost extent of care which
+fishes lavished on their young; but Dr. Hancock has stepped in to rescue
+at least one species from this unmerited charge. "It is asserted," he
+says, "by naturalists, that no fishes are known to take any care of
+their offspring. Both species of _Hassar_ mentioned below, however, make
+a regular nest, in which they lay their eggs in a flattened cluster,
+and cover them over most carefully. Their care does not end here; they
+remain by the side of the nest till the spawn is hatched, with as much
+solicitude as a hen guards her eggs, both the male and female Hassar,
+for they are monogamous, steadily watching the spawn and courageously
+attacking the assailant. Hence the negroes frequently take them by
+putting their hands into the water close to the nest, on agitating which
+the male Hassar springs furiously at them, and is thus captured. The
+_roundhead_ forms its nest of grass, the _flathead_ of leaves. Both,
+at certain seasons, burrow in the bank. They lay their eggs only in
+wet weather. I have been surprised to observe the sudden appearance of
+numerous nests in a morning after rain occurs, the spot being indicated
+by a bunch of froth which appears on the surface of the water over
+the nest. Below this are the eggs, placed on a bunch of fallen leaves
+or grass, which they cut and collect together. By what means this is
+effected seems rather mysterious, as the species are destitute of
+cutting-teeth. It may, possibly, be by the use of their arms, which form
+the first ray of the pectoral fin."
+
+There is another operation by fishes, which seems to require almost
+equal experience. Professor Agassiz, while collecting insects along the
+shores of Lake Sebago, in Maine, observed a couple of Cat-fish, which,
+at his approach, left the shore suddenly, and returned to the deeper
+water. Examining the place which the fishes had left, he discovered
+a _nest_ among the water-plants, with a number of little tadpoles.
+In a few moments the two fishes returned, looking anxiously towards
+the nest, and approached within six or eight feet of where Professor
+Agassiz stood. They were evidently not in search of food, and he became
+convinced that they were seeking the protection of their young. Large
+stones, thrown repeatedly into the middle of the nest after the fishes
+had returned to it, only frightened them away for a brief period, and
+they returned to the spot within ten or fifteen minutes. This was
+repeated four or five times with the same result. This negatives the
+assertion made by some naturalists--that no fishes are known to take any
+care of their offspring.
+
+But affection is scarcely to be looked for where the offspring is so
+very numerous as to put all attempts at even recognising them out of
+the question. How could the fondest mother love 100,000 little ones at
+once? Yet the number is far exceeded by some of the matrons of the deep.
+Petit found 300,000 eggs in a single carp; Lenwenhoeck 9,000,000 in a
+single cod; Mr. Harmer found in a sole 100,000; in a tench 300,000;
+in a mackerel 500,000; and in a flounder 1,357,000.[14] M. Rousseau
+disburthened a pike of 160,000, and a sturgeon of 1,567,000, while from
+this latter class has been gotten 119 pounds weight of eggs, which, at
+the rate of 7 to a grain, would give a total amount of 7,653,200 eggs!
+If all these came to maturity the world would be in a short time nothing
+but fish: means, however, amply sufficient to keep down this unwelcome
+superabundance have been provided. Fish themselves, men, birds, other
+marine animals, to say nothing of the dispersions produced by storms
+and currents, the destruction consequent on their being thrown on the
+beach and left there to dry up, all combine to diminish this excessive
+supply over demand. Yet, on the other hand (so wonderfully are all
+the contrivances of nature so harmonized and balanced), one of these
+apparent modes of destruction becomes an actual means of extending the
+species. The eggs of the pike, barbel, and many other fish, says M.
+Virey, are rendered indigestible by an acid oil which they contain, and
+in consequence of which they are passed in the same condition as they
+were swallowed; the result of which is, that being taken in by ducks,
+grebes, or other water-fowls, they are thus transported to situations,
+such as inland lakes, which otherwise they could never have attained;
+and in this way only can we account for the fact, now well ascertained,
+that several lakes in the Alps, formed by the thawing of the glaciers,
+are now abundantly stocked with excellent fish.
+
+Little fishes are ordinarily the food of larger marine animals; but a
+remarkable exception occurs in the case of the larger Medusæ, which
+are stated in various works to prey upon fishes for sustenance. Mr.
+Peach, the naturalist, has, however, by observations at Peterhead, in
+Aberdeenshire, thus corrected this statement. He observed several small
+fishes playing round the larger Medusæ in the harbour and bay. When
+alarmed, they would rush under the umbrella, and remain sheltered in
+its large folds till the danger had passed, when they would emerge,
+and sport and play about their sheltering friend. When beneath the
+umbrella they lay so close that they were frequently taken into a bucket
+with the Medusæ. They proved to be young whitings, varying from 1-1/2
+to 2 inches long. These little creatures, so far from becoming the
+prey of the Medusæ, experienced from them protection; and, moreover,
+they preferred the _stinging_ one. In no instance did Mr. Peach see a
+fish in the stomach of the Medusæ, but all could liberate themselves
+when they pleased. In one case, Mr. Peach witnessed a small whiting,
+in the first instance chased by a single young pollack, whose assault
+the little fellow easily evaded by dodging about; but the chaser being
+joined by others, the whiting was driven from its imperfect shelter, and
+after being much bitten and dashed about by its assailants, became at
+length completely exhausted, and lay to all appearance dead. Recovering,
+however, after action, it swam slowly to the Medusæ, and took refuge as
+before; but its movements being soon observed, it was again attacked,
+after a very brief respite, driven into open water, and speedily
+despatched.
+
+Fishes appear to execute annually two great migrations. By one of these
+shiftings they forsake the deep water for a time, and approach the
+shallow shores, and by the other they return to their more concealed
+haunts. These movements are connected with the purposes of spawning,
+the fry requiring to come into life, and to spend a certain portion
+of their youth in situations different from those which are suited
+to the period of maturity. It is in obedience to these arrangements
+that the Cod and Haddock, the Mackerel, and others, annually leave
+the deeper and less accessible parts of the ocean, the region of the
+zoophytic tribes, and deposit their spawn within that zone of marine
+vegetation which fringes our coasts, extending from near the high-water
+mark of neap-tides to a short distance beyond the low-water mark of
+spring-tides. Amidst the shelter in this region afforded by the groves
+of arborescent fuci, the young fish were wont in comfort to spend
+their infancy, but since these plants have been so frequently cut down
+to procure materials for the manufacture of kelp, and the requisite
+protection withdrawn, the fisheries have greatly suffered. Many species
+of fish, as the Salmon, Smelt, and others, in forsaking the deep water,
+and approaching a suitable spawning station, leave the sea altogether
+for a time, ascend the rivers and their tributary streams, and, having
+deposited their eggs, return again to their usual haunts. Even a certain
+species of fish, inhabiting lakes, as the Roach, betake themselves to
+the tributary streams, as the most suitable places for spawning.
+
+The Goramy, of India, are stated by General Hardwicke to watch most
+actively the margins of the spot which they select and prepare for
+depositing their spawn, driving away with violence every other fish
+which approaches their cover. The General adds that from the time he
+first noticed this circumstance about one month had elapsed, when one
+day he saw numerous minute fishes close to the margin of the grass, on
+the outer side of which the parent fishes continued to pass to and fro.
+
+There is a species of Grampus from two to three tons weight, and about
+sixteen feet in length, that amuses itself with jumping, or rather
+springing its ponderous body entirely out of the water, in a vertical
+position, and falling upon its back. This effort of so large a fish is
+almost incredible, and informs us how surprisingly great the power of
+muscle must be in this class of animal. A Correspondent writes to the
+"United Service Journal":--"I have seen them spring out of the water
+within ten yards of the ship's side, generally in the evening, after
+having swam all the former part of the day in the ship's wake, or on
+either quarter. When several of these fish take it into their heads to
+'dance a hornpipe,' as the sailors term their gambols, at the distance
+of half a mile, they, especially at or just after sundown, may easily
+be mistaken for the sharp points of rocks sticking up out of the water,
+and the splashing and foam they make and produce have the appearance
+of the action of waves upon rocks. An officer of the navy informed me
+that, after sunset, when near the equator, he was not a little alarmed
+and surprised at the cry of 'rocks on the starboard bow!' Looking
+forward, he indistinctly saw objects which he and all on board took
+to be pinnacles of several rocks of a black and white colour. In a
+short time, however, he discovered this formidable danger to be nothing
+more than a company of dancing Grampuses with white bellies. As one
+disappeared, another rose; so that there were at least five or six
+constantly above the surface."
+
+Captain Owen relates that "the Bonita has the power of throwing itself
+out of the water to an almost incredible distance when in pursuit of
+its prey, the Flying Fish; and, the day previous to our arrival at
+Mozambique, one of these fish rose close under our bow, and passed under
+the vessel's side, and struck with such force against the poop, that,
+had any one received the blow, it must have been fatal. Stunned by the
+violence of the contact, it fell motionless at the helmsman's feet; but,
+soon recovering, its struggles were so furious that it became necessary
+to inflict several blows with an axe before it could be approached
+with safety. The greatest elevation it attained above the surface of
+water was eighteen feet, and the length of the leap, had no opposition
+occurred, would have exceeded 180."
+
+Of winged or Flying Fish we find this extravagant account in a
+philosophical romance, entitled, "Telliamed," by M. Maillet, an
+ingenious Frenchman, of the days of Louis XV.:--
+
+     He believed, like Lamarck, that the whole family of birds had
+     existed one time as fishes, which, on being thrown ashore by the
+     waves, had got feathers by accident; and that men themselves are
+     but the descendants of a tribe of sea-monsters, who, tiring of
+     their proper element, crawled upon the beach one sunny morning,
+     and, taking a fancy to the land, forgot to return. The account
+     is as amusing as a fairy tale. "Winged or Flying Fish," says
+     Maillet, "stimulated by the desire of prey, or the fear of death,
+     or pushed near the shore by the billows, have fallen among the
+     reeds or herbage, whence it was not possible for them to resume
+     their flight to the sea, by means of which they had contracted
+     their first facility of flying. Then their fins, being no longer
+     bathed in the sea-water, were split and became warped by their
+     dryness. While they found among the reeds and herbage among which
+     they fell many aliments to support them, the vessels of their fins
+     being separated, were lengthened, or clothed with beards, or, to
+     speak more justly, the membranes which before kept them adherent
+     to each other were metamorphosed. The beard formed of these warped
+     membranes was lengthened. The skin of these animals was insensibly
+     covered with a down of the same colour with the skin, and this
+     down gradually increased. The little wings they had under their
+     belly, and which, like their wings, helped them to walk into the
+     sea, became feet, and helped them to walk on the land. There were
+     also other small changes in their figure. The beak and neck of some
+     were lengthened, and of others shortened. The conformity, however,
+     of the first figure subsists in the whole, and it will be always
+     easy to know it. Examine all the species of fowl, even those of the
+     Indies, those which are tufted or not, those whose feathers are
+     reversed--such as we see at Damietta, that is to say, whose plumage
+     runs from the tail to the head--and you will see fine species
+     of fish quite similar, scaly or without scales. All species of
+     Parrots, whose plumages are different, the rarest and most singular
+     marked birds, are, conformable to fact, painted, like them, black,
+     brown, grey, yellow, green, red, violet colour, and those of gold
+     and azure; and all this precisely in the same parts, where the
+     plumages of these birds are diversified in so curious a manner."
+
+The Jaculator Fish, of Java, has been called "a sporting fish," from the
+precision with which it takes aim at its prey. In 1828 Mr. Mitchell
+saw several of these fishes in the possession of a Javanese chief; and
+here is the account of the curious manner in which these Jaculators were
+employed. They were placed in a small circular pond, from the centre
+of which projected a pole upwards of two feet in height. At the top of
+the pole were inserted small pieces of wood, sharp-pointed, and on each
+of these were placed insects of the beetle tribe. When the slaves had
+placed the beetles, the fish came out of their holes, and swam round the
+pond. One of them came to the surface of the water, rested there, and
+after steadily fixing its eyes for some time on an insect, it discharged
+from its mouth a small quantity of watery fluid, with such force, and
+precision of aim, as to strike it off the twig into the water, and in
+an instant swallowed it. After this, another fish came, and performed
+a similar feat, and was followed by the others, until they had secured
+all the insects. If a fish failed in bringing down its prey at the first
+shot, it swam round the pond till it came opposite the same object, and
+fired again. In one instance, a fish returned three times to the attack
+before it secured its prey; but in general the fish seemed very expert
+gunners, bringing down the beetle at the first shot. The fish, in a
+state of nature, frequents the shores and sides of the rivers in search
+of food. When it spies a fly sitting on the plants that grow on shallow
+water, it swims on to the distance of five or six feet from them, and
+then, with surprising dexterity, it ejects out of its tubular mouth a
+single drop of water, which rarely fails to strike the fly into the
+sea, where it soon becomes its prey.
+
+Curious fish, in great numbers, may be seen in the Harbour of Port
+Royal, Jamaica, on the surface of the water, and are ranked among the
+peculiarities of the place. They are the Guardo, or Guard-Fish; the Jack
+(Sword-Fish); and the Ballahou. The Jack is the largest, and appears to
+be always at war with the two others; it is armed with formidable teeth;
+it basks on the surface of the water during the heat of the day, in a
+sort of indolent, unguarded state; but this is assumed, the better to
+ensnare the other fish, and to catch the floating bodies that may happen
+to pass near it; for the moment anything is thrown into the sea from
+the ship, the Jack darts with the rapidity of lightning upon it, and
+seizing it as quickly, retreats. This Warrior-fish possesses a foresight
+or instinctive quality which we see sometimes exemplified in different
+animals, almost amounting to second reason, such as the sagacity it
+displays in avoiding the hook when baited; although extremely voracious,
+it seems aware of the lure held out for its destruction, and avoids
+it with as much cunning as the generality of fishes show eagerness to
+devour it. The situation it takes, immediately in the wake of the ship
+at anchor, is another instance of its sagacity; as whatever is thrown
+overboard passes astern, where the fish is ever on the alert for the
+articles thrown over. No other fish of equal size dare approach. The
+Jack is, however, sometimes enticed with the bait; but he is more
+frequently struck with a barbed lance, or entrapped in a net. The
+Guardo has similar habits with the Jack, but is generally beaten by
+him; yet the former tyrannizes with unrelenting rigour over the weaker
+associate, the Ballahou.
+
+The tiger of the ocean, the Shark, is often cruising about Port Royal,
+but rarely injures human life. At Kingston, however, such distressing
+events often occur. There was a pet Shark known as "Old Tom of Port
+Royal;" it was fed whenever it approached any of the ships, but was at
+last killed by the father of a child which it had devoured. Whilst it
+remained here, no other of the Shark tribe dare venture on his domain;
+he reigned lord paramount in his watery empire, and never committed any
+depredation but that for which he suffered.
+
+Attending the Shark is seen the beautiful little Pilot Fish, who, first
+approaching the bait, returns as if to give notice, when, immediately
+after, the Shark approaches to seize it. It is a curious circumstance,
+that this elegant little fish is seen in attendance only upon the Shark.
+After the Shark is hooked, the Pilot Fish still swims about, and for
+some time after he has been hauled on deck; it then swims very near the
+surface of the water. When the Shark has been hooked, and afterwards
+escapes, he generally returns, and renews the attack with increased
+ferocity, irritated often by the wound he has received.
+
+Sharks appear to have become of late years much more numerous in Faroe,
+as they have also in other parts of the North Seas, especially on the
+coast of Norway.
+
+The reader may, probably, have found on the sea-shore certain cases,
+which are fancifully called sea-purses, Mermaids' purses, &c. Now,
+some Sharks bring forth their young alive, whilst others are enclosed
+in oblong semi-transparent, horny cases, at each extremity of which
+are two long tendrils. These cases are the above _purses_, which the
+parent Shark deposits near the shore in the winter months. The twisting
+tendrils hang to sea-weed, or other fixed bodies, to prevent the cases
+being washed away into deep water. Two fissures, one at each end, allow
+the admission of sea-water; and here the young Shark remains until it
+has acquired the power of taking food by the mouth, when it leaves what
+resembles its cradle. The young fish ultimately escapes by an opening at
+the end, near which the head is situated.
+
+California has yielded an extraordinary novelty in fish history. In 1854
+Mr. Jackson, while fishing in San Salita Bay, caught with a hook and
+line a fish of the perch family _containing living young_. These were
+supposed to be the prey which the fish had swallowed, but on opening
+the belly was found next to the back of the fish, and slightly attached
+to it, a long very light violet bag, so clear and transparent that
+there could already be distinguished through it the shape, colour, and
+formation of a multitude of small fish (all facsimiles of each other),
+with which the bag was filled. They were in all respects like the
+mother, and like each other; and there cannot remain a single doubt that
+these young were the offspring of the fish from whose body they were
+taken; and that this species of fish gives birth to her young alive
+and perfectly formed, and adapted to seek its own livelihood in the
+water. Professor Agassiz has confirmed the truth of this extraordinary
+statement by a careful examination of the specimens, and has ascertained
+that there are two very distinct species of this remarkable type of
+fishes.
+
+Tales of "Wonderful Fish" are common in the works of the old
+naturalists, whence they are quoted from generation to generation.
+Sir John Richardson has lately demolished one queer fish, which was
+as certain to reappear whenever opportunity offered, as the elephant
+pricked with the tailor's needle does in books of stories of the animal
+world. We allude to that monstrous myth, the great Manheim Pike, with
+a collar round his neck, put into a lake by the Emperor Frederick II.
+in the year 1230; and taken out in the 276th year of his age, the 17th
+foot of his length, and the 350th pound of his weight. M. Valenciennes,
+a naturalist of repute, has entered into a critical history of this
+monster, and has found him to be apocryphal. The creature was, at any
+rate, taken in several places at once, the legends written on his
+brass collar do not agree, and his alleged skeleton has been found
+to be made up of various bones of various fishes; while the vertebræ
+are, unfortunately, so many, that Professor Owen would order him out
+of Court in an instant as a rank impostor. Probably some specimen of
+the _Mecho_, the monstrous fish of the Danube--which has even now been
+scarcely described, and which has only recently been identified as one
+of the salmon tribe--having been called a pike, may be at the bottom of
+the legend of the great Manheim fish. But Sir John Richardson produces
+another big pike, killed by an intrepid "angler seventy years of age,
+with a single rod and bait"--an observation which leads to the inquiry
+of the possibility of catching a single fish with more than one rod
+and bait--"that weighed seventy-eight pounds." This is stated to have
+happened in the county of Clare; the angler's name was O'Flanagan.
+
+Here is another wonderful story:--The Bohemians have a proverb--"Every
+fish has another for prey:" that named the Wels has them all. This is
+the largest fresh-water fish found in the rivers of Europe, except the
+sturgeon; it often reaches five or six feet in length. It destroys many
+aquatic birds, and we are assured that it does not spare the human
+species. On the 3d of July, 1700, a peasant took one near Thorn, that
+had an infant entire in its stomach! They tell in Hungary of children
+and young girls being devoured on going to draw water; and they even
+relate that, on the frontiers of Turkey, a poor fisherman took one that
+had in its stomach the body of a woman, her purse full of gold, and
+a _ring_! The fish is even reported to have been taken sixteen feet
+long. The old stories of rings found in the stomachs of fishes will be
+remembered; as well as here and there a _book_ found in the stomach of a
+fish!
+
+The Sun-fish is exceedingly rare. A large specimen was captured off
+Start Point in 1864. Attention was first drawn to a huge dark object on
+the water. On a boat being sent out, it was soon discovered to be the
+back fin of a very large fish, apparently asleep. A very exciting chase
+commenced, extending over an hour, the crew meanwhile battling with
+harpoons, boat-hooks, &c.; the fish trying several times to upset the
+boat by getting his back under it. At length a line was thrown over its
+head, and the fish, being weakened by the struggle, was towed alongside
+the yacht, hoisted on board, and slaughtered. Yarrell, in his work on
+British Fishes, states the largest Sun-fish to be about 3 cwt., but the
+above specimen weighed nearly 6 cwt. Sun-fish are found occasionally in
+the tropical seas of large dimensions, but those found in the Channel
+seldom if ever exceed from 1 cwt. to 2 cwt. The peculiarities in regard
+to this fish are, that it has no bones, but the whole of the formation
+is of cartilage, which can easily be cut with a knife. The skin is
+cartilage of about an inch and a-half thick, under which there is no
+backbone or ribs. This specimen was of extraordinary dimensions--5 ft.
+10 in. in length, and 7 ft. from the tip of the dorsal to the point of
+the anal fin.
+
+The "Courrier de Sagon" brings, as a contribution to Natural History,
+the not very credible-sounding description of a fish called "Ca-oug"
+in the Anamite tongue, which is said to have saved the lives already
+of several Anamites; for which reason the King of Anam has invested it
+with the name of "Nam hai dui bnong gnan" (Great General of the South
+Sea). This fish is said to swim round ships near the coast, and, when it
+sees a man in the water, to seize him with his mouth, and to carry him
+ashore. A skeleton of this singular inhabitant of the deep is to be seen
+at Wung-tau, near Cape St. James. It is reported to be thirty-five feet
+in length, to have tusks "almost like an elephant," very large eyes, a
+black and smooth skin, a tail like a lobster, and two "wings" on its
+back.[15]
+
+The Grouper must be a voracious fish, for we read of a specimen being
+caught off the coast of Queensland, which is thus described:--"It was
+7 ft. long, 6 ft. in circumference at its thickest part, and its head
+weighed 80 lb. When opened, there were found in its stomach two broken
+bottles, a quart pot, a preserved milk tin, seven medium-sized crabs; a
+piece of earthenware, triangular in shape, and three inches in length,
+incrusted with oyster shells, a sheep's head, some mutton and beef
+bones, and some loose oyster shells. The spine of a skate was imbedded
+in the Grouper's liver."
+
+The Double-fish, here represented, is a pair of Cat-fish, which were
+taken alive in a shrimp-net, at the mouth of Cape Fear River, near
+Fort Johnston. North Carolina, in 1833, and presented to Professor
+Silliman. One of them is three and a-half, and the other two and a-half
+inches long, including the tail--the smallest emaciated, and of sickly
+appearance. They are connected in the manner of the Siamese Twins, by
+the skin at the breast, which is marked by a dark streak at the line of
+union. The texture and colour otherwise of this skin is the same as that
+of the belly. The mouth, viscera, &c., were entire and perfect in each
+fish; but, on withdrawing the entrails, through an incision made on one
+side of the abdomen, the connecting integument was found to be hollow.
+A flexible probe was passed through from one to the other, with the
+tender and soft end of a spear of grass, drawn from a green plant. But
+there was no appearance of the entrails of one having come in contact
+with those of the other, for the integument was less than one-tenth of
+an inch in its whole thickness; in length, from the body or trunk of
+one fish to the other, it was three-tenths; and in the water, when the
+largest fish was in its natural position, the small one could, by the
+length and pliancy of this skin, swim in nearly the same position. When
+these fish came into existence it is probable they were of almost equal
+size and strength, but one "born to better fortune," or exercising more
+ingenuity and industry than the other, gained a trifling ascendency,
+which he improved to increase the disparity, and, by pushing his
+extended mouth in advance of the other, seized the choicest and most of
+the food for himself.
+
+From the northern parts of British America we have received
+extraordinary contributions to our fish collections. One of these is
+the Square-browed Malthe, obtained in one of the land expeditions under
+the command of Captain Sir John Franklin. R.N. It was taken on the
+Labrador coast, and then belonged to a species hitherto undescribed.
+Its intestines were filled with small crabs and univalve shells. The
+extreme length of the fish is 7 inches 11 lines. The upper surface
+is greyish white, with brown blotches, and the fins are whitish. The
+head is much depressed and greatly widened; the eyes far forward; the
+snout projecting like a small horn. Most of the fish of this family
+can live long out of water, in consequence of the smallness of their
+gill-openings; indeed, those of one of the genera are able, even in warm
+countries, to pass two or three days in creeping over the land. All the
+family conceal themselves in the mud or sand, and lie in wait to take
+their prey by surprise. The accompanying engraving is from the very
+able work of Dr. Richardson, F.R.S., published by the munificence of
+Government.
+
+[Illustration: SQUARE-BROWED MALTHE AND DOUBLE FISH.]
+
+Gold Fish (of the Carp family) have been made to distinguish a
+particular sound made by those from whom they receive their food; they
+recognise their footsteps at a distance, and come at their call. Captain
+Brown says Gold Fish, when kept in ponds, are "frequently taught to rise
+to the surface of the water at the sound of a bell to be fed;" and Mr.
+Jesse was assured that Gold Fish evince much pleasure on being whistled
+to. Hakewill, in his "Apology for God's Power and Providence," cites
+Pliny to show that a certain emperor had ponds containing fish, which,
+when called by their respective _names_ that were bestowed upon them,
+came to the spot whence the voice proceeded. Bernier, in his "History
+of Hindustan," states a like circumstance of the fish belonging to the
+Great Mogul. The old poet, Martial, also mentions fish coming at the
+call, as will be seen by the following translation from one of his
+epigrams:--
+
+    "Angler! could'st thou be guiltless? Then forbear:
+    For these are sacred fishes that swim here;
+    Who know their Sovereign, and will lick his hand.
+    Than which none's greater in the world's command;
+    Nay, more; they've names, and when they called are.
+    Do to their several owners' call repair."
+
+Who, after reading so many instances, can doubt that fish hear?
+
+It has been found that the water from steam-engines, which is thrown
+into dams or ponds for the purpose of being cooled, conduces much to
+the nutriment of Gold Fish. In these dams, the average temperature
+of which is about eighty degrees, it is common to keep Gold Fish; in
+which situation they multiply much more rapidly than in ponds of lower
+temperature exposed to variations of the climate. Three pair of fish
+were put into one of these dams, where they increased so rapidly that at
+the end of three years their progeny, which was accidentally poisoned
+by verdigris mixed with the refuse tallow from the engine, were taken
+out by wheel-barrow-fuls. Gold Fish are by no means useless inhabitants
+of these dams, as they consume the refuse grease which would otherwise
+impede the cooling of the water by accumulating on its surface. It is
+not improbable that this unusual supply of aliment may co-operate with
+increase of temperature in promoting the fecundity of the fishes.
+
+Most of our readers have heard of the fish popularly known as the
+Miller's Thumb, the origin of the name of which Mr. Yarrell has thus
+explained:--"It is well known that all the science and tact of a miller
+is directed so to regulate the machinery of his mill that the meal
+produced shall be of the most valuable description that the operation
+of grinding will permit, when performed under the most advantageous
+circumstances. His ear is constantly directed to the note made by the
+running stone in its circular course over the bedstone, the exact
+parallelism of their two surfaces, indicated by a particular sound,
+being a matter of the first consequence; and his hand is constantly
+placed under the meal-spout to ascertain, by actual contact, the
+character and quality of the meal produced, which he does by a
+particular movement of his thumb in spreading the sample over his
+fingers. By this incessant action of the miller's thumb, a peculiarity
+in its shape is produced, which is said to resemble exactly the shape of
+the _river bull-head_, a fish constantly found in the mill-stream, and
+which has obtained for it the name of the Miller's Thumb."
+
+M. Coste has constructed a kind of marine observatory at Concarneau
+(Finisterre) for the purpose of studying the habits and instincts of
+various Sea-fish. A terrace has been formed on the top of a house on the
+quay, with reservoirs arranged like a flight of steps. The sea-water is
+pumped up to the topmost reservoir, and thence flows down slowly, after
+the manner of a rivulet. The length is divided into 95 cells by wire
+net partitions, which, allowing free passage to the water, yet prevent
+the different species of fish from mingling together. By this ingenious
+contrivance each kind lives separate, enjoying its peculiar food and
+habits, unconscious of its state of captivity. Some species, such as the
+Mullet, the Stickleback, &c., grow perfectly tame, will follow the hand
+that offers them food, and will even allow themselves to be taken out of
+the water. The Goby and Bull-head are less familiar. The Turbot, which
+looks so unintelligent, will, nevertheless, take food from the hand;
+it changes colour when irritated, the spots with which it is covered
+growing pale or dark, according to the emotions excited in it. But
+the most curious circumstance concerning it is, that it swallows fish
+of a much larger size than would appear compatible with the apparent
+smallness of its mouth. Thus, a young Turbot, not more than ten inches
+in length, has been seen to swallow Pilchards of the largest size. The
+Pipe-Fish has two peculiarities. These fish form groups, entwining their
+tails together, and remaining immoveable in a vertical position, with
+their heads upwards. When food is offered them, they perform a curious
+evolution--they turn round on their backs to receive it. This is owing
+to the peculiar position of the mouth, which is placed under a kind of
+beak, and perpendicular to its axis.
+
+The crustaceous tribes have also furnished much matter of observation.
+The Prawn and Crab, for instance, exercises the virtue of conjugal
+fidelity to the highest degree; for the male takes hold of his mate,
+and never lets her go; he swims with her, crawls about with her, and if
+she is forcibly taken away from him, he seizes hold of her again. The
+metamorphoses to which various crustaceous tribes are subject have also
+been studied with much attention.[16]
+
+Much as the nature and habits of fish have been studied of late years,
+the economy of some is to this day involved in obscurity. The Herring
+is one of these fishes. The Swedish Herring Fisheries were, at one
+time, the largest in Europe, but at present, during the temporary
+disappearance of the fish, they have dwindled away. The causes which
+influence the movements of the Herring--one of the most capricious of
+fish--are a puzzle which naturalists have as yet failed to solve. They
+are not migratory, as was at one time believed--that is, they seldom
+wander far from the place where they were bred; but they are influenced
+by certain hidden and unexplained causes at one time to remain for years
+in the deep sea, and at another to come close in to land in enormous
+numbers. During the first half of the sixteenth century, Herrings
+entirely deserted the Swedish coasts. In 1556 they reappeared, and
+remained for thirty-one years in the shallow waters. Throughout this
+period they were taken in incalculable numbers; "thousands of ships came
+annually from Denmark, Germany, Friesland, Holland, England, and France,
+to purchase the fish, of which sufficient were always found for them
+to carry away to their own or other countries.... From the small town
+of Marstrand alone some two million four hundred thousand bushels were
+yearly exported." In 1587 the Herrings disappeared, and remained absent
+for seventy-three years, till 1660. In 1727 they returned, and again in
+1747, remaining till 1808, and during this last period the fisheries
+were prosecuted with extraordinary zeal, industry, and success. The
+Government gave every encouragement to settlers, and it was computed
+that during some years as many as fifty thousand strangers took part
+in them. In 1808 the Herrings once more disappeared, and have never
+returned since. The cause must still be considered as quite unknown; but
+we may fairly assume, according to historical precedents, that after a
+certain period of absence, the Herrings will again return.[17]
+
+Aristotle, in his "History of Animals," makes some extremely curious
+observations on Fish and Cetaceous Animals, as might be expected from
+the variety of these animals in the Grecian seas. In Spratt and Forbes's
+"Travels in Syria" the account of the habits and structure of the
+Cuttle-fish in Aristotle's work is ranked amongst the most admirable
+natural history essays ever written. It is, moreover, remarkable for its
+anticipation.
+
+Dr. Osborne, in 1840, read to the Royal Society a short analysis of
+this work, in which he showed that Aristotle anticipated Dr. Jenner's
+researches respecting the cuckoo; as also some discoveries respecting
+the incubated egg, which were published as new in the above year.
+Aristotle describes the economy of bees as we have it at present; but
+mistakes the sex of the queen. The various organs are described as
+modified throughout the different classes of animals (beginning with
+man) in nearly the same order as that afterwards adopted by Cuvier.
+
+The chief value of this body of knowledge, which has been buried for
+above 2,000 years, is, that it is a collection of facts observed under
+peculiar advantages, such as never since occurred, and that _it is at
+the present day to be consulted for new discoveries_.
+
+According to Pliny, for the above work some thousands of men were placed
+at Aristotle's disposal throughout Greece and Asia, comprising persons
+connected with hunting and fishing, or who had the care of cattle,
+fish-ponds, and apiaries, in order that he might obtain information from
+all quarters, _ne quid usquam gentium ignoretur ab eo_. According to
+Athenæus, Aristotle received from the prince, on account of the expenses
+of the work, 800 talents, or upwards of 79,000_l._
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[14] A tench was brought to Mr. Harmer so full of spawn that the skin
+was burst by a slight knock, and many thousands of the eggs were lost;
+yet even after this misfortune he found the remainder to amount to
+383,252! Of other marine animals, which he includes under the general
+term fish, the fecundity, though sufficiently great, is by no means
+enormous. A lobster yielded 7,227 eggs; a prawn 3,806; and a shrimp
+3,057. See Mr. Harmer's paper, "Philosophical Transactions," 1767.
+
+[15] "Athenæum."
+
+[16] See "The Tree-climbing Crab," pp. 282-302.
+
+[17] "Saturday Review."
+
+
+
+
+FISH IN BRITISH COLOMBIA.
+
+
+In this bitterly cold country, where the snow lies deep six months out
+of the twelve, the natives subsist principally on fish, of which there
+is an extraordinary abundance generally, and of salmon particularly.
+Salmon swarm in such numbers that the rivers cannot hold them. In June
+and July every rivulet, no matter how shallow, is so crammed with salmon
+that, from sheer want of room, they push one another high and dry upon
+the pebbles; and Mr. Lord[18] tells us that each salmon, with its head
+up, struggles, fights, and scuffles for precedence. With one's hands
+only, or more easily by employing a gaff or a crook-stick, tons of
+salmon have been procured by the simple process of hooking them out.
+Once started on their journey, the salmon never turn back. As fast as
+those in front die, fresh arrivals crowd on to take their places, and
+share their fate. "It is a strange and novel sight to see three moving
+lines of fish--the dead and dying in the eddies and slack water along
+the bank, the living breasting the current in the centre, blindly
+pressing on to perish like their kindred." For two months this great
+_salmon army_ proceeds on its way up stream, furnishing a supply of food
+without which the Indians must perish miserably. The winters are too
+severe for them to venture out in search of food, even if there was any
+to be obtained. From being destitute of salt, they are unable to cure
+meat in the summer for winter provisions, and hence for six months in
+the year they depend upon salmon, which they preserve by drying in the
+sun.
+
+But the Indian has another source of provision for the winter, fully
+as important as the salmon. The Candle-fish supplies him at once with
+light, butter, and oil.[19] When dried, and perforated with a rush,
+or strip of cypress-bark, it can be lighted, and burns steadily until
+consumed. Strung up, and hung for a time in the smoke of a wood fire,
+it is preserved as a fatty morsel to warm him when pinched with cold;
+and, by heat and pressure, it is easily converted into liquid oil, and
+drunk with avidity. That nothing may be wanting, the hollow stalk of the
+sea-wrack, which at the root is expanded into a complete flask, makes an
+admirable bottle; and so, when the Indian buries himself for long dreary
+months in his winter quarters, neither his larder nor his cellar are
+empty, and he has a lamp to lighten the darkness. The steamers have,
+however, frightened away the Candle-fish and the Indian from their old
+haunts, and they have both retreated to the north of the Colombia River.
+
+Amongst the other inhabitants of the salt and fresh waters of these
+regions are the Halibut and the Sturgeon, both of which attain to an
+immense size. The bays and inlets along the coast abound with marine
+wonders. There feasts and fattens the Clam, a bivalve so gigantic that
+no oyster-knife can force an entrance, and only when his shell is almost
+red-hot will he be at last constrained to open his dwelling.
+
+And there lies in wait the awful Octopus, a monster of insatiable
+voracity, of untameable ferocity, and of consummate craft; of sleepless
+vigilance, shrouded amidst the forest of sea-weed, and from the touch of
+whose terrible arms no living thing escapes. It attains to an enormous
+size in those seas, the arms being sometimes five feet in length, and as
+thick at the base as a man's wrist. No bather would have a chance if he
+once got within the grasp of such a monster, nor could a canoe resist
+the strength of its pull; but the Indian, who devours the Octopus with
+great relish, has all the cunning created by necessity, and takes care
+that none of the eight sucker-dotted arms ever gain a hold on his frail
+bark.
+
+Professor Owen has figured a species of Octopus, the Eight-armed Cuttle
+of the European seas, representing it in the act of creeping on shore,
+its body being carried vertically in the reverse position, with its head
+downwards, and its back being turned towards the spectator, upon whom it
+is supposed to be advancing. This animal is said to be luminous in the
+dark. Linnæus quotes Bartholinus for the statement that one gave so much
+light that when the candle was taken away, it illuminated the room.
+
+The Sturgeon is one of the finest fishes of the country, and Mr. Lord's
+account of the Indian mode of taking them is a very graphic picture of
+this river sport.
+
+     "The spearman stands in the bow, armed with a most formidable
+     spear. The handle, from seventy to eighty feet long, is made of
+     white pine-wood; fitted on the spear-haft is a barbed point,
+     in shape very much like a shuttlecock, supposing each feather
+     represented by a piece of bone, thickly barbed, and very sharp
+     at the end. This is so contrived that it can be easily detached
+     from the long handle by a sharp, dexterous jerk. To this barbed
+     contrivance a long line is made fast, which is carefully coiled
+     away close to the spearman, like a harpoon-line in a whale-boat.
+     The four canoes, alike equipped, are paddled into the centre of
+     the stream, and side by side drift slowly down with the current,
+     each spearman carefully feeling along the bottom with his spear,
+     constant practice having taught the crafty savages to know a
+     Sturgeon's back when the spear comes in contact with it. The
+     spear-head touches the drowsy fish; a sharp plunge, and the
+     redskin sends the notched points through armour and cartilage,
+     deep into the leather-like muscles. A skilful jerk frees the long
+     handle from the barbed end, which remains inextricably fixed in
+     the fish; the handle is thrown aside, the line seized, and the
+     struggle begins. The first impulse is to resist this objectionable
+     intrusion, so the angry Sturgeon comes up to see what it all
+     means. This curiosity is generally repaid by having a second spear
+     sent crashing into him. He then takes a header, seeking safety in
+     flight, and the real excitement commences. With might and main the
+     bowman plies the paddle, and the spearman pays out the line, the
+     canoe flying through the water. The slightest tangle, the least
+     hitch, and over it goes; it becomes, in fact, a sheer trial of
+     paddle _versus_ fin. Twist and turn as the Sturgeon may, all the
+     canoes are with him. He flings himself out of the water, dashes
+     through it, under it, and skims along the surface; but all is in
+     vain, the canoes and their dusky oarsmen follow all his efforts
+     to escape, as a cat follows a mouse. Gradually the Sturgeon
+     grows sulky and tired, obstinately floating on the surface. The
+     savage knows he is not vanquished, but only biding a chance for
+     revenge; so he shortens up the line, and gathers quietly on him
+     to get another spear in. It is done,--and down viciously dives
+     the Sturgeon; but pain and weariness begin to tell, the struggles
+     grow weaker and weaker as life ebbs slowly away, until the mighty
+     armour-plated monarch of the river yields himself a captive to the
+     dusky native in his frail canoe."
+
+There is a very rare Spoonbill Sturgeon found in the western waters
+of North America: its popular name is Paddle-fish. One, five feet in
+length, weighed forty pounds; the nose, resembling a spatula, was
+thirteen inches in length. It was of a light slate colour, spotted with
+black; belly white; skin smooth, like an eel; the flesh compact and
+firm, and hard when boiled--not very enticing to the epicure. The jaws
+are without teeth, but the fauces are lined with several tissues of the
+most beautiful network, evidently for the purpose of collecting its food
+from the water by straining, or passing it through these membranes in
+the same manner as practised by the spermaceti whale. Near the top of
+the head are two small holes, through which it is possible the Sturgeon
+may discharge water in the manner practised by cetaceous animals. It is
+conjectured that the long "Spoonbill" nose of this fish is for digging
+up or moving the soft mud in the bottom of the river, and when the water
+is fully saturated, draw it through the filamentory strainers in search
+of food.
+
+Sturgeons resemble sharks in their general form, but their bodies are
+defended by bony shields, disposed in longitudinal rows; and their head
+is also well curiassed externally. The Sturgeons of North America are of
+little benefit to the natives. A few speared in the summer-time suffice
+for the temporary support of some Indian hordes; but none are preserved
+for winter use, and the roe and sounds are utterly wasted.
+
+The northern limit of the Sturgeon in America is probably between the
+55th and 56th parallels of latitude. Dr. Richardson did not meet with
+any account of its existence to the north of Stewart's Lake, on the west
+side of the Rocky Mountains; and on the east side it does not go higher
+than the Saskatchewan and its tributaries. It is not found in Churchill
+River, nor in any of the branches of the Mackenzie or other streams that
+fall into the Arctic Seas--a remarkable circumstance when we consider
+that some species swarm in the Asiatic rivers which flow into the Icy
+Sea. Sturgeons occur in all the great lakes communicating with the
+St. Lawrence, and also along the whole Atlantic coast of the United
+States down to Florida. Peculiar species inhabit the Mississippi; it is,
+therefore, probable that the range of the genus extends to the Gulf of
+Mexico.
+
+The great rapid which forms the discharge of the Saskatchewan into Lake
+Winnipeg appears quite alive with these fish in the month of June; and
+some families of the natives resort thither at that time to spear them
+with a harpoon, or grapple them with a strong hook tied to a pole.
+Notwithstanding the great muscular power of the Sturgeon, it is timid;
+and Dr. Richardson saw one so frightened at the paddling of a canoe,
+that it ran its nose into a muddy bank, and was taken by a _voyageur_,
+who leaped upon its back.
+
+In Colombia River, a small species of Sturgeon attains eleven feet in
+length, and a weight of six hundred pounds.[20] It is caught as high up
+as Fort Colville, notwithstanding the numerous intervening cataracts and
+rapids which seem to be insuperable barriers to a fish so sluggish in
+its movements.
+
+The Sturgeon is styled a Royal Fish in England, because, by a statute
+of Edward II. it is enacted, "the King shall have Sturgeon taken in the
+sea, or elsewhere, within the realm."
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[18] "The Naturalist in Vancouver Island and British Columbia." By John
+Keast Lord, F.Z.S., Naturalist to the British North American Boundary
+Commission.
+
+[19] The Petrel is similarly used in the Faroe Islands. (See _ante_, p.
+234.) It may, therefore, be called the Candle Bird.
+
+[20] Dr. Richardson. The _Huro_ is reported by Pallas to attain a weight
+of nearly three thousand pounds, and a length exceeding thirty feet.
+
+
+
+
+THE TREE-CLIMBING CRAB.
+
+
+The transition from the ordinary mode of the locomotion of fishes by
+swimming to that of climbing has been ably illustrated by the Rev. Dr.
+Buckland, who showed, in a communication to the Ashmolean Society, in
+1843, that the fins in certain genera perform the functions of feet
+and wings. Thus, "fishing-frogs" have the fins converted into feet, or
+paddles, by means of which they have the power of crawling or hopping
+on sand and mud; and another species can live three days out of the
+water, and walk upon dry land. The climbing perch of the Indian rivers
+is known to live a long time in the air, and to climb up the stems of
+palm-trees in pursuit of flies, by means of spinous projections on its
+gill-covers. Fishes of the _silurus_ family have a bony enlargement of
+the first ray of the pectoral fin, which is also armed with spines;
+and this is not only an offensive and defensive weapon, but enables
+the fish to walk along the bottom of the fresh waters which it
+inhabits. The flying-fishes are notorious examples of the conversion
+of fins into an organ of movement in the air. M. Deslongchamps has
+published, in the "Transactions of the Linnæan Society of Normandy,"
+1842, a curious account of the movements of the gurnard at the bottom of
+the sea. In 1839, he observed these movements in one of the artificial
+fishing-ponds, or fishing-traps, surrounded by nets, on the shore of
+Normandy. He saw a score of gurnards closing their fins against their
+sides, like the wing of a fly in repose, and without any movement of
+their tails, walking along the bottom by means of six free rays, three
+on each pectoral fin, which they placed successively on the ground.
+They moved rapidly forwards, backwards, to the right and left, groping
+in all directions with these rays, as if in search of small crabs.
+Their great heads and bodies seemed to throw hardly any weight on the
+slender rays, or feet, being suspended in water, and having their weight
+further diminished by their swimming-bladder. During these movements the
+gurnards resembled insects moving along the sand. When M. Deslongchamps
+moved in the water, the fish swam away rapidly to the extremity of the
+pond; when he stood still, they resumed their ambulatory movement, and
+came between his legs. On dissection, we find these three anterior rays
+of the pectoral fins to be supported each with strong muscular apparatus
+to direct their movements, apart from the muscles that are connected
+with the smaller rays of the pectoral fin.
+
+Dr. Buckland states that Miss Potts, of Chester, had sent to him a
+flagstone from a coalshaft at Mostyn, bearing impressions which he
+supposed to be the trackway of some fish crawling along the bottom
+by means of the anterior rays of its pectoral fins. There were no
+indications of feet, but only scratches, symmetrically disposed on each
+side of a space that may have been covered by the body of the fish
+whilst making progress, by pressing its fin-bones on the bottom. As yet,
+no footsteps of reptiles, or of any animals more highly organized than
+fishes, have been found in strata older than those which belong to the
+new red sandstone. The abundant remains of fossil fishes, armed with
+strong bony spines, and of other fishes allied to the gurnard, in strata
+of the carboniferous and old red sandstone series, would lead us to
+expect the frequent occurrence of impressions made by their locomotive
+organs on the bottoms of the ancient waters in which they lived. Dr.
+Buckland proposed to designate these petrified traces or trackways of
+ancient fishes by the term of fish-tracks.
+
+Crabs and Lobsters are strange creatures: strange in their
+configurations; strange in the transmutations which they exhibit from
+the egg to maturity; strange in the process they undergo of casting off,
+not only their shell, but the covering of their eyes, of their long
+horns, and even the lining of their tooth-furnished stomach; strange,
+also, are they in their manners and habits. Many a reader, in wandering
+along the sea-shore, may have disturbed little colonies of Crabs
+quietly nestling in fancied security amidst banks of slimy sea-weed; and
+in the nooks and recesses of the coast, the shallows, and strips of land
+left dry at ebb-tide, may be seen numbers of little, or perchance large,
+Crabs, some concealed in snug lurking-places, others tripping, with a
+quick _side-long_ movement, over the beach, alarmed by the advance of an
+unwelcome intruder. Some are exclusively tenants of the water, have feet
+formed like paddles for swimming, and never venture on land; others seem
+to love the air and sunshine, and enjoy an excursion, not without hopes
+of finding an acceptable repast, over the oozy sands; some, equally fond
+of the shore and shallow water, appropriate to themselves the shells of
+periwinkles, whelks, &c., and there live in a sort of castle, which they
+drag about with them on their excursions, changing it for a larger as
+they increase in measure of growth. They vary in size from microscopic
+animalcules to the gigantic King Crab:[21] to the former, the luminosity
+of the ocean, or of the foam before the prows of vessels, is, to a
+great extent, attributable, each minute creature glowing with phosphoric
+light.
+
+The Bernhard Crab has been proved to have the power of dissolving
+shells, it not being unusual to find the long fusiform shells which are
+inhabited by these animals with the inner lip, and the greater part of
+the pillar on the inside of the mouth, destroyed, so as to render the
+aperture much larger than usual. Dr. Gray is quite convinced that these
+Crabs have the above power, some to a much greater degree than others.
+
+Certain Crabs, especially in the West Indies, are almost exclusively
+terrestrial, visiting the sea only at given periods, for the deposition
+of their eggs. These Crabs carry in their gill-chambers sufficient water
+for the purpose of respiration; they live in burrows, and traverse
+considerable tracts of land in the performance of their migratory
+journeys. Of these, some, as the Violet Crab, are exquisite delicacies.
+
+Of a great Crab migration we find these details in the "Jamaica Royal
+Gazette:"--In 1811 there was a very extraordinary production of Black
+Crabs in the eastern part of Jamaica. In June or July the whole district
+of Manchidneed was covered with countless numbers, swarming from the sea
+to the mountains. Of this the writer was an eye-witness. On ascending
+Over Hill from the vale of Plantain Garden River, the road appeared of a
+reddish colour, as if strewed with brick-dust. It was owing to myriads
+of young Black Crabs, about the size of the nail of a man's finger,
+moving at a pretty quick pace, direct for the mountains. "I rode along
+the coast," says the writer, "a distance of about fifteen miles, and
+found it nearly the same the whole way. Returning the following day, I
+found the road still covered with them, the same as the day before. How
+have they been produced, and where do they come from? were questions
+everybody asked, and nobody could answer. It is well known that Crabs
+deposit their eggs once a year, in May; but, except on this occasion,
+though living on the coast, I had never seen above a dozen young Crabs
+together; and here were myriads. No unusual number of old Crabs had been
+observed in that season; and it is worthy of note, that they were moving
+from a rock-bound coast of inaccessible cliffs, the abode of sea-birds,
+and exposed to the constant influence of the trade winds. No person, as
+far as I know, ever saw the like, except on that occasion; and I have
+understood that since 1811 Black Crabs have been more abundant further
+in to the interior of the island than they were ever known before."
+
+Cuvier describes the Burrowing Crab as displaying wonderful
+instinct:--"The animal closes the entrance of its burrow, which is
+situated near the margin of the sea, or in marshy grounds, with its
+largest claw. These burrows are cylindrical, oblique, very deep, and
+very close to each other; but generally each burrow is the exclusive
+habitation of a single individual. The habit which these crabs have of
+holding their large claw elevated in advance of the body, as if making a
+sign of beckoning to some one, has obtained for them the name of Calling
+Crabs. There is a species observed by Mr. Bosc in South Carolina,
+which passes the three months of the winter in its retreat without
+once quitting it, and which never goes to the sea except at the epoch
+of egg-laying." The same observations apply to the Chevalier Crabs (so
+called from the celerity with which they traverse the ground). These are
+found in Africa, and along the borders of the Mediterranean.
+
+Some Crabs, truly aquatic, as the Vaulted Crab of the Moluccas, have
+the power of drawing back their limbs, and concealing them in a furrow,
+which they closely fit; and thus, in imitation of a tortoise, which
+retracts its feet and head within its shell, they secure themselves,
+when alarmed. Other aquatic species have their limbs adapted for
+clinging to weeds and other marine objects. Of these some have the
+two or four hind pairs of limbs so placed as to appear to spring from
+the back; they terminate in a sharp hook, by means of which the Crab
+attaches itself to the valves of shells, fragments of coral, &c.,
+which it draws over its body, and thus lurks in concealment. Allied,
+in some respects, to the Hermit or Soldier Crabs, which tenant empty
+shells, is one which, from its manners and habits, is one of the most
+extraordinary of its race. The Hermit Crabs are voracious, and feed
+on animal substances. The Hermit, or Bernhard Crab, is so called from
+its habit of taking up its solitary residence in deserted shells, thus
+seeking a protection for its tail, which is long and naked. It is found
+in shells of different dimensions, and from time to time leaves its
+abode, as it feels a necessity, for a more commodious dwelling. It is
+said to present, on such occasions, an amusing instinct as it inserts
+the tail successively into several empty shells until one is found to
+fit. We learn from Professor Bell, however, that it does not always wait
+until the home is vacant, but occasionally rejects the rightful occupant
+with some violence. On the contrary, the Crab, or rather Lobster-Crab
+(for it takes an intermediate place between them), is more delicate in
+its appetite, and feeds upon fruits, to obtain which it is said to climb
+up certain trees, at the feet of which it makes a burrow. This species
+is the Purse Crab, or Robber Crab, of Amboyna and other islands in the
+South Pacific Ocean.
+
+"According to popular belief among the Indians," says Cuvier, "the
+Robber Crab feeds on the nuts of the cocoa-tree, and it makes its
+excursions during the night; its places of retreat are fissures in the
+rocks, or holes in the ground." The accounts of the early writers and
+travellers, as well as of the natives, were disbelieved; but their truth
+has since been abundantly confirmed. MM. Quoy and Guimard assure us that
+several Robber Crabs were fed by them for many months on cocoa-nuts
+alone; and a specimen of this Crab was submitted to the Zoological
+Society, with additional information from Mr. Cuming, in whose fine
+collection from the islands of the South Pacific several specimens were
+preserved. Mr. Cuming states these Crabs to be found in great numbers in
+Lord Hood's Island, in the Pacific. He there frequently met with them on
+the road. On being disturbed, the Crabs instantly assumed a defensive
+attitude, making a loud snapping with their powerful claws, or pincers,
+which continued as they retreated backwards. They climb a species of
+palm to gather a small kind of cocoa-nut that grows thereon. They live
+at the roots of trees, and not in the holes of rocks; and they form a
+favourite food among the natives. Such is the substance of Mr. Cuming's
+account. Mr. Darwin, in his "Researches in Geology and Natural History,"
+saw several of these Crabs in the Keeling Islands, or Cocos Islands, in
+the Indian Ocean, about 600 miles distant from the coast of Sumatra. In
+these islands, of coral formation, the cocoa-nut tree is so abundant as
+to appear, at first glance, to compose the whole wood of the islands.
+
+Here the great Purse Crab is abundant. Mr. Darwin describes it as a Crab
+which lives on the cocoa-nut, is common on all parts of the dry land,
+and grows to a monstrous size. This Crab has its front pair of legs
+terminated by very strong and heavy pincers, and the last pair by others
+which are narrow and weak. It would at first be thought quite impossible
+for a Crab to open a strong cocoa-nut, covered with the husk; but Mr.
+Liesk assures me that he has repeatedly seen the operation effected.
+The Crab begins by tearing away the husk, fibre by fibre, and always
+from that end under which the three eye-holes are situated. When this
+is completed the Crab commences hammering with its heavy claws on one
+of these eye-holes till an opening is made. Then, turning its body, by
+the aid of its posterior and narrow pair of pincers, it extracts the
+white albuminous substance. I think this as curious a case as I ever
+heard of, and likewise of adaptation in structure between two objects
+apparently so remote from each other in the scheme of nature as a Crab
+and a cocoa-nut tree. The Crab is diurnal in its habits; but it is said
+to pay every night a visit to the sea for the purpose of moistening its
+gills. These gills are very peculiar, and scarcely fill up more than a
+tenth of the chamber in which they are placed: it doubtless acts as a
+reservoir for water, to serve the Crab in its passage over the dry and
+heated land. The young are hatched and live for some time on the coast;
+at this period of existence we cannot suppose that cocoa-nuts form any
+part of their diet; most probably soft saccharine grasses, fruits, and
+certain animal matters, serve as their food until they attain a certain
+size and strength.
+
+The adult Crabs, Mr. Darwin tells us, inhabit deep burrows, which they
+excavate beneath the roots of trees; and here they accumulate great
+quantities of the picked fibres of the cocoa-nut husk, on which they
+rest as on a bed. The Malays sometimes take advantage of the labours of
+the Crab by collecting the coarse fibrous substance, and using it as
+junk. These Crabs are very good to eat; moreover, under the tail of the
+larger ones there is a great mass of fat, which, when melted, yields as
+much as a quart bottleful of limpid oil.
+
+The Crab's means of obtaining the cocoa-nuts have, however, been much
+disputed. It is stated by some authors to crawl up the trees for the
+purpose of stealing the nuts. This is doubted; though in the kind of
+palm to which Mr. Cuming refers as being ascended by this Crab, the
+task would be much easier. Now, Mr. Darwin states, that in the Keeling
+Islands the Crab lives only on the nuts which fall to the ground. It
+may thus appear that Mr. Cuming's and Mr. Darwin's respective accounts
+of the _non-climbing_ of this Crab on the one side, and its _actually
+climbing trees_ on the other, are contradictory. The height of the stem
+of the cocoa-nut tree, its circumference, and comparative external
+smoothness, would prove insurmountable, or at least very serious
+obstacles, to the most greedy Crab, however large and strong it might
+be. But these difficulties are by no means so formidable in the tree
+specified by Mr. Cuming: this is arborescent, or bushy, with long, thin,
+rigid, sword-shaped leaves, resembling those of the pineapple, usually
+arranged spirally, so that they are commonly called Screw Pines. They
+are of the genus _Pandanus_, a word derived from the Malay _Pandang_.
+The ascent of these arborescent plants, having the stem furnished
+with a rigging of cord-like roots, and bearing a multitude of firm,
+long, and spirally-arranged leaves, would be by no means a work of
+difficulty, as would necessarily be that of the tall feathery-topped
+cocoa-tree, destitute of all available points of aid or support. Hence
+the contradiction in the two accounts referred to is seeming, and not
+real, and the two statements are reconciled.
+
+To sum up, Mr. Cuming fully testifies to the Crab climbing the Screw
+Pines; and he has told Professor Owen that he has actually seen the Crab
+climbing the cocoa-nut tree. The Crab has been kept on cocoa-nuts for
+months; and is universally reported by the natives to climb the trees at
+night.
+
+[Illustration: THE TREE-CLIMBING CRAB.]
+
+We may here, too, observe, that fine specimens of the Climbing Crab are
+to be seen in the British Museum. Here, too, arranged in cases, are
+Spider Crabs; Crabs with oysters growing on their backs, thus showing
+that Crabs do not shed their shells every year, or that the oyster
+increases very rapidly in bulk; Oval-bodied Crabs; and Fin-footed or
+Swimming Crabs. Here are also Telescope, or Long-eyed Crabs, and Land
+Crabs, found in India 4,000 feet above the sea-level; another of similar
+habits in the plains of the Deccan, that may be seen swarming in the
+fields, some cutting and nipping the green rice-stalks, and others
+waddling off backwards with sheaves bigger than themselves. To these
+may be added Square-bodied Crabs, Crested Crabs; Porcelain Crabs, with
+delicate, china-like shells; and Death's-head Crabs, which usually form
+cases for themselves from pieces of sponge and shells.
+
+Certain species of Crabs are remarkably tenacious of life, and have been
+known to live for weeks buried, and without food. It is in the Crab
+tribe that the fact of the metamorphosis of _crustacea_ has been most
+distinctly perceived; a small, peculiar crustacean animal, that had
+long passed for a distinct species, under the name of _Zoea_, having at
+length been identified with the young of the common Crab before it had
+attained its full development.
+
+That among the Crab tribes a tree-climbing species is to be found is
+certainly curious, but it is not without a parallel among fishes. Many
+of the latter leave the water, some even for a long time, and perform
+overland journeys, aided in their progress by the structure of their
+fins. In these fishes the gills and gill-chambers are constructed for
+the retention of water for a considerable time, so as to suffice for the
+necessary degree of respiration. In our country, we may mention the eel,
+which often voluntarily quits the river or lake, and wanders during the
+night over the adjacent meadows, probably in quest of dew-worms. But the
+marshes of India and China present us with fishes much more decidedly
+terrestrial, and some of which were known to the ancients. Among these
+are several fishes of a snake-like form: they have an elongated,
+cylindrical body, and creep on land to great distances from their native
+waters. The boatmen of India often keep these fishes for a long time
+out of water, for the sake of diverting themselves and others by their
+terrestrial movements, and children may often be seen enjoying this
+sport.
+
+Of these land-haunting fishes, the most remarkable is the tree-climber,
+so called in Tranquebar. This fish inhabits India, the Indian islands,
+and various parts of China, as Chusan, &c., living in marshes, and
+feeding on aquatic insects, worms, &c. According to Daldorf, a Danish
+gentleman, who, in 1797, communicated an account of the habits of this
+fish to the Linnæan Society, it _mounts up_ the bushes or low palms
+to some elevation. This gentleman states that he had himself observed
+it in the act of ascending palm-trees near the marshes, and had taken
+it at a height of no less than five feet, measured from the level of
+the adjacent water. It effects its ascent by means of its pectoral and
+under fins, aided by the action of the tail and the spines which border
+the gill covers. It is by the same agency that it traverses the land.
+The statement of M. Daldorf is corroborated by M. John, also a Danish
+observer, to whom we are indebted for the knowledge of its name in
+Tranquebar, which alludes to its arboreal proceedings.
+
+It is true that many other naturalists who have observed the habits
+of this fish in its native regions, while they concur in describing
+its terrestrial journeys, and its living for a long time out of water,
+either omit to mention, or mention with doubt, its reputed attempts at
+_tree-climbing_.
+
+The habits and instincts of certain Crawfishes are very extraordinary.
+Thus, the _Astaci_ are migratory, and in their travels are capable of
+doing much damage to dams and embankments. On the Little Genesee River
+they have, within a few years, compelled the owner of a dam to rebuild
+it. The former dam was built after the manner of dykes, _i.e._, with
+upright posts, supporting sleepers, laid inclining up the stream. On
+these were laid planks, and the planks were covered with dirt. The
+_Astacus_ proceeding up the stream would burrow under the planks where
+they rested on the bottom of the stream, removing bushels of dirt and
+gravel in the course of a night. They travel over the dam in their
+migrations, _often climbing posts_ two or three feet high to gain the
+pond above.[22]
+
+We have to add a new and eccentric variety of nature--the Pill-making
+Crab, which abounds at Labuan, Singapore, and Lahore, and is described
+in Mr. Collingwood's "Rambles of a Naturalist." When the tide is down,
+this little creature, if stealthily watched, may be seen creeping up
+a hole in the sandy shore, taking up rapidly particles of the loose
+powdery sand in its claws, and depositing them in a groove beneath the
+thorax. A little ball of sand, about the size of a filbert, is forthwith
+projected, though whether it passes actually through the mouth is not
+made clear. Pill after pill is seized with one claw, and laid aside,
+until the beach is covered with these queer little pellets. This is
+evidently the creature's mode of extracting particles of food from the
+sand.
+
+Mr. Collingwood also describes, as met with on the shores and waters of
+the China seas, Glass Crabs, whose flat, transparent, leaf-like bodies
+seem made of fine plates of mica. The dredge brings up many a rich
+haul of sponges, corals, and gorgoniæ, of the most splendid colours,
+certain of the sponges harbouring within their cells minute crabs of a
+new genus. Between Aden and Galle the sea is of a pinkish colour, owing
+to the immense accumulation of minute kinds of medusæ, in solid masses
+of red jelly. Over Fiery Cross Reef, the mirror-like sea reveals, at
+the depth of sixty or seventy feet, this wealth of natural treasures.
+"Glorious masses of living coral strew the bottom: immense globular
+madrepores--vast overhanging mushroom-shaped expansions, complicated
+ramifications of interweaving branches, mingled with smaller and more
+delicate species--round, finger-shaped, horn-like and umbrella-form--lie
+in wondrous confusion. Here and there is a large clam-shell, wedged
+in between masses of coral, the gaping, zigzag mouth covered with the
+projecting mantle of the deepest Prussian blue; beds of dark purple,
+long-spined Echini, and the thick black bodies of sea-cucumbers vary the
+aspect of the sea bottom."[23]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[21] This Crab has an elongated spine-like tail, the use of which was
+long misunderstood. Dr. J. Gray was shown at the Liverpool Museum some
+living King Crabs, and the use they made of the tail-like appendages.
+When turned over on their backs, he saw them bend down the tail until
+they could reach some point of resistance, and then employ it to
+elevate the body, and regain their normal position. Dr. Gray states
+that they never have been seen to use this tail for the purpose which
+has been often assigned to it--that is, for leaping from place to place
+by bending it under the body, like the toy called a "spring-jack," or
+"leaping frog."
+
+[22] American Journal of Science and Art.
+
+[23] W. C. Linnæus Martin, F.L.S.
+
+
+
+
+MUSICAL LIZARDS.
+
+
+A small Lizard, lately brought home from the Isle of Formosa by Mr.
+Swinhoe, is decided to be a new species by Dr. Günther, of the British
+Museum. Mr. Swinhoe found the eggs of this Gecko, or Lizard, in holes of
+walls or among mortar rubbish. They are round, and usually lie several
+together, resembling eggs of ordinary Lizards. The young, when first
+hatched, keep much under stones in dark cellars, where they remain
+until they attain about two-thirds of the adult size, when they begin
+to appear in public to catch insects, but evincing great shyness of
+their seniors. Mr. Swinhoe states that on the plaster-washed sides of
+his bedroom, close to the angle of the roof, every evening when the lamp
+was placed on the table below, four little Musical Lizards used to make
+their appearance and watch patiently for insects attracted by the light.
+A sphinx or a beetle buzzing into the room would put them into great
+excitement, and they would run with celerity from one part of the wall
+to the other after the deluded insect as it fluttered in vain, buffeting
+its head, up and down the wall. Two or three would run after the same
+insect, but as soon as one had succeeded in securing it, the rest would
+prudently draw aloof. In running over the perpendicular face of the wall
+they keep so close, and their movements are made so quickly, with one
+leg in advance of the other, that they have the appearance at a distance
+of gliding rather than running. The tail is somewhat writhed as the body
+is jerked along, and much so when the animal is alarmed and doing its
+utmost to escape; but its progress even then is in short runs, stopping
+at intervals and raising its head to look about. If a fly perch on the
+wall it cautiously approaches to within a short distance, then suddenly
+darts forwards, and with its quickly-protruded, glutinous tongue, fixes
+it. Apart from watching its curious manoeuvres after its insect-food,
+the attention of the most listless would be attracted by the singular
+series of loud notes these creatures utter at all hours of the day and
+night, more especially during cloudy and rainy weather. These notes
+resemble the syllables "chuck-chuck," several times repeated; and, from
+their more frequent occurrence during July and August, they are thought
+to be the call notes of the male to the female.
+
+During the greater part of the day, the little creature lies quiescent
+in some cranny among the beams of the roof or in the wall of the house,
+where, however, it is ever watchful for the incautious fly that
+approaches its den, upon whom it darts forth with but little notice. But
+it is by no means confined to the habitations of men. Every old wall,
+and almost every tree, possesses a tenant or two of this species. It is
+excessively lively, and even when found quietly ensconced in a hole,
+generally manages to escape--its glittering little eyes (black, with
+yellow ochre iris) appearing to know no sleep; and an attempt to capture
+the runaway seldom results in more than the seizure of an animated tail,
+wrenched off with a jerk by the little fellow as it slips away, without
+loss of blood. The younger individuals are much darker than the larger
+and older animals, which are sometimes almost albinoes. In ordinary
+fly-catching habits, as they stick to the sides of a lamp, there is much
+similarity between this gecko and the little papehoo, or wall-lizard
+of China; but this is decidedly a larger and much more active animal,
+and often engages in a struggle with insects of very large size. The
+Chinese colonists of Formosa greatly respect the geckos, in consequence
+of a legend which attributes to them the honour of having once poisoned
+the supplies of an invading rebellious army, which was thereby totally
+cut to pieces. The geckos were raised to the rank of generals by the
+grateful Emperor of China; which honour, the legend states, they greatly
+appreciated, and henceforth devoted their energies to the extermination
+of mosquitoes and other injurious insects.
+
+
+
+
+CHAMELEONS, AND THEIR CHANGES.
+
+      "Nil fuit unquam
+    Sic impar sibi."--_Horat._
+
+    "Sure such a various creature ne'er was seen."
+
+                    _Francis, in imit._
+
+
+The Chameleon tribe is a well-defined family of lizard-like reptiles,
+whose characters may be summed up as existing in the form of their feet;
+the toes, which are joined together or bound up together in two packets
+or bundles, opposed to each other; in their shagreen-like skin; in their
+prehensile tail; and in their extensile and retractile vermiform tongue.
+
+That the Chameleon was known to the ancients there is no doubt. Its
+name we derive directly from the _Chamelæo_ of the Latins. Aristotle's
+history of the animal proves the acute observation of that great
+zoologist--the absence of a sternum, the disposition of the ribs, the
+mechanism of the tail, the motion of the eyes, the toes bound up in
+opposable bundles, &c.--though he is not entirely correct on some
+points. Pliny mentions it, but his account is for the most part a
+compilation from Aristotle.
+
+Calmet's description of the Chameleon is curiously minute:--"It has
+four feet, and on each foot three claws. Its tail is long: with this,
+as well as with his feet, it fastens itself to the branches of trees.
+Its tail is flat, its nose long, ending in an obtuse point; its back is
+sharp, its skin plaited, and jagged like a saw, from the neck to the
+last joint of the tail, and upon its head it has something like a comb;
+like a fish, it has no neck. Some have asserted that it lives only upon
+air, but it has been observed to feed on flies, catched with its tongue,
+which is about ten inches long and three thick, made of white flesh,
+round, but flat at the end, or hollow and open, resembling an elephant's
+trunk. It also shrinks, and grows longer. This animal is said to assume
+the colour of those things to which it is applied; but our modern
+observers assure us that its natural colour, when at rest, and in the
+shade, is a bluish-grey; though some are yellow, others green, but both
+of a smaller kind. When it is exposed to the sun, the grey changes into
+a darker grey, inclining to a dun colour, and its parts which have least
+of the light upon them are changed into spots of different colours.
+Sometimes, when it is handled, it seems speckled with dark spots,
+inclining to green. If it be put upon a black hat, it appears to be of a
+violet colour; and sometimes, if it be wrapped up in linen, it is white;
+but it changes colour only in some parts of the body."
+
+Its changes of colour have been commemorated by the poets. Shakspeare
+has--
+
+    "I can add colours ev'n to the Chameleon:
+    Change shapes with Proteus, for advantage."
+
+Dryden has--
+
+    "The thin Chameleon, fed with air, receives
+    The colour of the thing to which it cleaves."
+
+Prior has--
+
+    "As the Chameleon, which is known
+    To have no colours of his own,
+    But borrows from his neighbour's hue
+    His white or black, his green or blue."
+
+Gay, in his charming fable of the Spaniel and the Chameleon, "scarce
+distinguished from the green," makes the latter thus reply to the taunts
+of the pampered spaniel:--
+
+    "'Sir,' says the sycophant, 'like you,
+    Of old, politer life I knew:
+    Like you, a courtier born and bred,
+    Kings lean'd their ear to what I said:
+    My whisper always met success;
+    The ladies prais'd me for address;
+    I knew to hit each courtier's passion,
+    And flatter'd every vice in fashion:
+    But Jove, who hates the liar's ways,
+    At once cut short my prosperous days,
+    And, sentenced to retain my nature,
+    Transform'd me to this crawling creature.
+    Doom'd to a life obscure and mean,
+    I wander'd in the silvan scene:
+    For Jove the heart alone regards;
+    He punishes what man rewards.
+    How different is thy case and mine!
+    With men at least you sup and dine;
+    While I, condemned to thinnest fare,
+    Like those I flatter'd, fed on air.'"
+
+Upon this fable a commentator acutely notes:--"The raillery at court
+sycophants naturally pervades our poet's writings, who had suffered so
+much from them. Here, however, he intimates something more, namely, the
+apposite dispensations to man's acts, even in this world. The crafty is
+taken in by his own guile, the courtier falls by his own arts, and the
+ladder of ambition only prepares for the aspirant a further fall."[24]
+
+With respect to the air-food of the Chameleon. Cuvier observes that
+its lung is so large that, when it is filled with air, it imparts a
+transparency to the body, which made the ancients say that it lived
+upon air; and he inclines to think that to its size the Chameleon owes
+the property of changing its colour; but, with regard to this last
+speculation, he was wrong, as we shall presently see.
+
+It was long thought that the Chameleon, like most of the lizard tribe,
+was produced from an egg. The little animal is, however, most clearly
+viviparous, and not oviparous, although the tales told of the lizard
+tribe in the story books are most perplexing. To name a few of them:--1.
+The crocodile, which is the largest of the lizard tribe, and has even
+attained the size of 18-1/2 ft. in length, is confidently stated as
+laying eggs, which she covers with sand and leaves, to be hatched by the
+sun; and these have been met with in the rivers Nile, Niger, and Ganges.
+2. _Lacerta Gangetica_, unknown to Linnæus, but brought to this country
+from Bengal in 1747 by the late Dr. Mead, is said to be furnished
+with a false belly, like the opossum, where the young can be received
+for protection in time of danger. In this case the egg must have been
+hatched in the belly of the animal, like the viper. 3. The alligator,
+or American crocodile, lays a vast quantity of eggs in the sand, near
+the banks of lakes and rivers, and leaves them to be hatched by the sun;
+and the young are seldom seen. 4. The cayman, or Antilles crocodile, has
+furnished its eggs to many collections. 5. A salamander was opened by M.
+Maupertuis, and its belly was found full of eggs; but in "Les Mémoires
+de l'Académie Royale des Sciences" it is stated that, after a similar
+operation of the kind, "fifty young ones, resembling the parent animal,
+were found in its womb all alive, and actively running about the room."
+
+The tongue is the chief organ for taking the insects on which the
+Chameleon lives. By a curious mechanism, of which the tongue-bone is a
+principal agent, the Chameleon can protrude this cylindrical tongue,
+which has its tip covered with a glutinous secretion from the sheath
+at the lower part of the mouth, to the length of six inches. When the
+Chameleon is about to seize an insect, it rolls round its extraordinary
+eyeballs so as to bring them to bear on the doomed object; as soon
+as it arrives within the range of the tongue, that organ is projected
+with unerring precision, and returns into the mouth with the prey
+adhering to the viscous tip. The wonderful activity with which this
+feat is performed, forms a strong contrast to the almost ridiculously
+slow motions of the animal. Their operation of taking meal-worms, of
+which they are fond, though comparatively rapid, is not remarkable for
+its quickness, but done with an act of deliberation, and so that the
+projection and retraction of the tongue can be very distinctly followed
+with the eye.
+
+The eyes of the Chameleon are remarkable objects; large, projecting, and
+almost entirely covered with the shagreen-like skin, with the exception
+of a small aperture opposite the pupil; their motions are completely
+independent of each other. It adds to the strange and grotesque
+appearance of this creature to see it roll one of its eye-globes
+backwards, while the other is directed forwards, as if making two
+distinct surveys at one time. Its sight must be acute, from the unerring
+certainty with which it marks and strikes its prey.
+
+The Chameleons spend their lives in trees, for clinging to the branches
+of which their organization is admirably adapted. There they lie in
+wait for the insects which may come within their reach; and it has been
+thought that, in such situations, their faculty of changing colour
+becomes highly important in aiding them to conceal themselves. The
+powers of abstinence possessed by this singular race are very great;
+and hence, most probably, arose the old fable of their _living on
+air_, which was for a long time considered to be "the Chameleon's
+dish." One has been known to fast upwards of six weeks without taking
+any sustenance, though meat-food and insects were procured for it.
+Notwithstanding this fast, it did not appear to fall away much. It would
+fix itself by the feet and tail to the bars of the fender, and there
+remain motionless, enjoying the warmth of the fire for hours together.
+Hasselquist describes one, that he kept for nearly a month, as climbing
+up and down the bars of its cage in a very lively manner.
+
+The power of the Chameleon's changing colour long exercised the
+ingenuity of the old naturalists. Hasselquist thought that the changes
+of colour depended on a kind of disease, more especially a sort of
+jaundice, to which the animal was subject, particularly when it was put
+in a rage. M. D'Obsonville thought that he had discovered the secret in
+the blood, and that the change of colour depended upon a mixture of blue
+and yellow, whence the different shades of green were derived; and these
+colours he obtains from the blood and the blood-vessels. Thus he says
+that the blood is of a violet hue, and will retain its colour on linen
+or paper for some minutes if previously steeped in a solution of alum,
+and that the coats of the vessels are yellow; consequently, he argues,
+that the mixture of the two will produce green. He further traces the
+change of colour to the passions of the animal. Thus, when a healthy
+Chameleon is provoked, the circulation is accelerated, the vessels that
+are spread over the skin are distended, and a superficial blue-green
+colour is produced. When, on the contrary, the animal is imprisoned,
+impoverished, and deprived of free air, the circulation becomes languid,
+the vessels are not filled, the colour of their coats prevails, and the
+Chameleon changes to a yellow-green, which lasts during its confinement.
+
+Barrow, in his "Travels in Africa," declares that previously to the
+Chameleon's assuming a change of colour, it makes a long inspiration,
+the body swelling out to twice its usual size; and as the inflation
+subsides, the change of colour gradually takes place, the only permanent
+marks being two small dark lines passing along the sides. Mr. Wood
+conceives from this account that the animal is principally indebted for
+these varied tints to the influence of oxygen. Mr. Spittal also regards
+these changes as connected with the state of the lungs; and Mr. Houston
+considers this phenomenon as dependent on the turgescency of the skin.
+Dr. Weissenborn thinks it not unlikely that the nervous currents may
+directly co-operate in effecting the changes of colour in the Chameleon.
+
+Mr. H. N. Turner, writing from personal observation of the phenomenon
+in a live Chameleon in his possession, says:--"It has been generally
+imagined that the purpose of the singular faculty accorded to the
+Chameleon is to enable it to accommodate its appearance to that of
+surrounding objects." Mr. Turner's observations do not, however, favour
+the idea, but seem rather to negative it. The box in which Mr. Turner's
+Chameleon was kept was of deal, with glass at the top, and a piece of
+flannel laid at the bottom, a small branching stick being placed there
+by way of a perch. He introduced, at various times, pieces of coloured
+paper, covering the bottom of the box, of blue, yellow, and scarlet,
+but without the slightest effect upon the appearance of the animal.
+Considering that these primary colours were not such as it would be
+likely to be placed in contact with in a state of nature, he next tried
+a piece of green calico, but equally without result. The animal went
+through all its usual changes without their being in any way modified by
+the colour placed underneath it. The general tint approximated, as may
+be readily observed, to those of the branches of trees, just as those of
+most animals do to the places in which they dwell; but Mr. Turner did
+not observe the faculty of changing called into play with any apparent
+object. It is only when the light is removed that the animal assumes a
+colour which absorbs but little of it.
+
+Not to go further into the numerous treatises which have been published
+on this intricate subject without arriving at a just conclusion, we
+refer to the able and interesting paper of Mr. Milne Edwards, for whose
+acuteness the solution of this puzzling phenomenon was reserved. The
+steps by which he first overthrew the received theories on the subject,
+and then arrived at the cause of the change of colour, is shown in the
+following results, derived from observing two Chameleons living, and
+researches after the animals had died, on the structure of their skin,
+and the parts immediately beneath it.
+
+1. That the change in the colour of the Chameleon does not depend
+essentially either on the more or less considerable swelling of their
+bodies, or the changes which might hence result to the condition of
+their blood or circulation; nor does it depend on the greater or less
+distance which may exist between the several cutaneous tubercles;
+although it is not to be denied that these circumstances probably
+exercise some influence upon the phenomenon.
+
+2. That there exist in the skin of these animals two layers of
+membranous pigment, placed the one above the other, but disposed in such
+a way as to appear simultaneously under the cuticle, and sometimes in
+such a manner that the one may hide the other.
+
+3. That everything remarkable in the changes of colour in the Chameleon
+may be explained by the appearance of the pigment of the deeper layer to
+an extent more or less considerable, in the midst of the pigment of the
+superficial layer, or from its disappearance beneath this layer.
+
+4. That these displacements of the deeper pigment do in reality occur;
+and it is a probable consequence that the Chameleon's colour changes
+during life, and may continue to change even after death.
+
+5. That there exists a close analogy between the mechanism by the help
+of which the change of colour appears to take place in these reptiles,
+and that which determines the successive appearance and disappearance of
+coloured spots in the mantles of several of the cephalopods.
+
+Chameleons are found in warm climates of the old world, South of Spain,
+Africa, East Indies. Isles of Sechelles, Bourbon, France, Moluccas.
+Madagascar (where it is said there are seven of the species which belong
+to Africa), Fernando Po, and New South Wales. In the year 1860, a new
+and curiously formed species of Chameleon was brought from the interior
+of the Old Calabar district of West Africa, by one of the natives. It is
+characterised by three horny processes on the head. Many Lizards have
+singular spiny projections on all parts of the body; but this very well
+marked species had not been hitherto recorded.
+
+Mrs. Belzoni, the wife of the celebrated traveller in the East, made
+some careful observations upon the habits of Chameleons, which are worth
+quoting. The Arabs in Lower Egypt catch Chameleons by jumping upon them,
+flinging stones at them, or striking them with sticks, which hurts them
+very much. The Nubians lay them down gently on the ground, and when
+they come down from the date-trees, they catch hold of the tail of the
+animal, and fix a string to it; therefore the body does not get injured.
+Mrs. Belzoni had some Chameleons for several months in her house, and
+her observations are as follows:--
+
+"In the first place they are very inveterate towards each other, and
+must not be shut up together, else they will bite each other's tails and
+legs off.
+
+[Illustration: CHAMELEONS.]
+
+"There are three species of Chameleons, whose colours are peculiar
+to themselves: for instance, the commonest sort are those which are
+generally green, that is to say, the body all green, and, when content,
+beautifully marked on each side regularly on the green with black and
+yellow, not in a confused manner, but as if drawn. This kind is in great
+plenty; they never have any other colour except a light green when they
+sleep, and when ill, a very pale yellow. Out of near forty I had the
+first year when in Nubia, I had but one, and that a very small one of
+the second sort, which had red marks. One Chameleon lived with me eight
+months, and most of that time I had it fixed to the button of my coat:
+it used to rest on my shoulder or on my head. I have observed, when I
+have kept it shut up in a room for some time, that on bringing it out
+in the air it would begin drawing the air in, and on putting it on some
+marjorum it has had a wonderful effect on it immediately: its colour
+became most brilliant. I believe it will puzzle a good many to say what
+cause it proceeds from. If they did not change when shut up in a house,
+but only on taking them in a garden, it might be supposed the change
+of the colours was in consequence of the smell of the plants; but when
+in a house, if it is watched, it will change every ten minutes: some
+moments a plain green, at others all its beautiful colours will come
+out, and when in a passion it becomes of a deep black, and will swell
+itself up like a balloon, and, from being one of the most beautiful
+animals, it becomes one of the most ugly. It is true that Chameleons
+are extremely fond of the fresh air, and on taking them to a window
+when there is nothing to be seen, it is easy to observe the pleasure
+they certainly take in it: they begin to gulp down the air, and their
+colour becomes brighter. I think it proceeds, in a great degree, from
+the temper they are in: a little thing will put them in a bad humour: if
+in crossing a table, for instance, you stop them, and attempt to turn
+them another road, they will not stir, and are extremely obstinate: on
+opening the mouth at them, it will set them in a passion: they begin to
+arm themselves by swelling and turning black, and will sometimes hiss a
+little, but not much.
+
+"The third I brought from Jerusalem was the most singular of all the
+Chameleons I ever had: its temper, if it can be so called, was extremely
+sagacious and cunning. This one was not of the order of the green kind,
+but a disagreeable drab, and it never once varied in its colour in two
+months. On my arrival in Cairo. I used to let it crawl about the room on
+the furniture. Sometimes it would get down, if it could, and hide itself
+away from me, but in a place where it could see me; and sometimes,
+on my leaving the room and on entering it, would draw itself so thin
+as to make itself nearly on a level with whatever it might be on, so
+that I might not see it. It had often deceived me so. One day having
+missed it for some time, I concluded it was hid about the room; after
+looking for it in vain, I thought it had got out of the room and made
+its escape: in the course of the evening, after the candle was lighted,
+I went to a basket that had got a handle across it: I saw my Chameleon,
+but its colour entirely changed, and different to any I ever had seen
+before: the whole body, head and tail, a brown with black spots, and
+beautiful deep orange-coloured spots round the black. I certainly was
+much gratified. On being disturbed, its colours vanished, unlike the
+others; but after this I used to observe it the first thing in the
+morning, when it would have the same colours. Some time after, it made
+its escape out of my room, and I suppose got into the garden close by.
+I was much vexed, and would have given twenty dollars to have recovered
+it again, though it only cost me threepence, knowing I could not get
+another like it; for, afterwards being in Rosetta, I had between fifty
+and sixty; but all those were green, yellow, and black; and the Arabs,
+in catching them, had bruised them so much, that after a month or six
+weeks they died. It is an animal extremely hard to die. I had prepared
+two cages with separate divisions, with the intention of bringing them
+to England; but though I desired the Arabs that used to get them for me
+to catch them by the tail, they used to hurt them much with their hands;
+and if once the body is squeezed, it will never live longer than two
+months. When they used to sleep at night, it was easy to see where they
+had been bruised; for being of a very light colour when sleeping, the
+part that had been bruised, either on the body or the head, which was
+bone, was extremely black, though when green it would not show itself so
+clear. Their chief food was flies: the fly does not die immediately on
+being swallowed, for upon taking the Chameleon up in my hands, it was
+easy to feel the fly buzzing, chiefly on account of the air they draw in
+their inside: they swell much, and particularly when they want to fling
+themselves off a great height, by filling themselves up like a balloon:
+on falling, they get no hurt, except on the mouth, which they bruise a
+little, as that comes first to the ground. Sometimes they will not drink
+for three or four days, and when they begin they are about half an hour
+drinking. I have held a glass in one hand while the Chameleon rested its
+two fore-paws on the edge of it, the two hind ones resting on my other
+hand. It stood upright while drinking, holding its head up like a fowl.
+By flinging its tongue out of its mouth the length of its body, and
+instantaneously catching the fly, it would go back like a spring. They
+will drink mutton broth: how I came to know this was, one day having a
+plate of broth and rice on the table where it was: it went to the plate
+and got half into it, and began drinking, and trying to take up some of
+the rice, by pushing it with its mouth towards the side of the plate,
+which kept it from moving, and in a very awkward way taking it into its
+mouth."
+
+In the autumn of 1868, a pair of Chameleons, in the possession of the
+Hon. Lady Cust, of Leasowe Castle, Cheshire, produced nine active young
+ones, like little alligators, less than an inch long. Such a birth has
+been, it is believed, very rare in this country. It was remarked, in the
+above case, that the male and female appeared altogether indifferent
+about their progeny.
+
+Whatever may be the cause, the fact seems to be certain, that the
+Chameleon has an antipathy to objects of a black colour. One, which
+Forbes kept, uniformly avoided a black board which was hung up in the
+chamber; and, what is most remarkable, when the Chameleon was held
+forcibly before the black board, it trembled violently and assumed a
+_black colour_.[25]
+
+It may be something of the same kind which makes Bulls and Turkey-cocks
+dislike the colour of scarlet, a fact of which there can be no doubt.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[24] The Fables of John Gay. Illustrated. With Original Memoir,
+Introduction, and Annotations. By Octavius Freire Owen, M.A., F.S.A.
+1854.
+
+[25] This, it will be seen by referring to page 307, does not correspond
+with Calmet's statement.
+
+
+
+
+RUNNING TOADS.
+
+
+That the Toad, by common repute "ugly and venomous," should be made a
+parlour pet, is passing strange; yet such is the case, and we find in a
+letter from Dr. Husenbeth, of Cossey, the following curious instances.
+Thus he describes a species, there often met with, the eyes of which
+have the pupil surrounded with bright golden-yellow, whereas in the
+common toad the circle is red or orange. This remarkable peculiarity
+Dr. H. has not seen anywhere noticed. The head is like that of the
+common sort, but much more blunt, and rounded off at the nose and mouth,
+and the arches over the eyes are more prominent. The most remarkable
+difference is a line of yellow running all down the back. Also down each
+side this Toad has a row of red pimples, like small beads, which are
+tolerably regular, but appear more in some specimens than in others.
+The general colour is a yellowish-olive, but the animal is beautifully
+marked with black spots, very regularly disposed, and exactly
+corresponding on each side of the yellow line down the back. Like all
+other Toads, this one occasionally changes its colour, becoming more
+brown, or ash-colour, or reddish at times, probably in certain states
+of the weather. This species is much more active than the common Toad.
+It never leaps, and very seldom crawls, but makes a short run, stops a
+little, and then runs on again. If frightened or pursued, it will run
+along much quicker than one would suppose.
+
+During the previous summer Dr. H. kept three Toads of this kind in
+succession. "The first (says Dr. H.) I procured in July; but after a
+few days, when I let him have a run on the carpet of my parlour, he
+got into a hole in a corner of the floor, of which I was not aware,
+and fell, as I suppose, underneath the floor, into the hollow space
+below. I concluded that he could never get up again, and gave him up to
+his fate. I then began to keep another Running Toad, which fed well at
+first, but after three weeks refused food, and evidently wasted; so I
+turned him out into the garden, and have not met with him since. After
+more than three weeks, the former Toad reappeared, but how he came up
+from beneath the floor I never could conceive, or how he had picked
+up a living in the meantime. He was, however, in good condition, and
+seemed to have lived well, probably on spiders and woodlice. He had been
+seen by a servant running about the carpet, but I knew nothing of his
+having come forth again, till in the evening, when he had got near the
+door, and it was suddenly opened so as to pass over the poor creature,
+and crush it terribly. I took it up apparently dead. It showed no sign
+of life; the eyes were closed, it did not breathe, and the backbone
+seemed quite broken, and the animal was crushed almost flat. I found a
+very curious milky secretion exuding from it, where it had been most
+injured and the skin was most broken. This was perfectly white, and had
+exactly the appearance of milk thrown over the toad. It did not bleed,
+though much lacerated; but instead of blood appeared this milky fluid,
+which had an odour of a most singular kind, different from anything I
+ever smelt. It is impossible to describe it. It was not fetid, but of
+a sickly, disgusting, and overpowering character, so that I could not
+endure to inhale it for a moment. I had read and seen a good deal of the
+extraordinary powers of revivification in toads, but was not prepared
+for what I witnessed on this occasion. I laid this poor animal, crushed,
+flattened, motionless, and to all appearance dead, upon a cold iron
+plate of the fireplace. He fell over on one side, and showed no sign of
+life for a full hour. After that he had slightly moved one leg, and so
+remained for about another half-hour. Then he began to breathe feebly,
+and gathered up his legs, and his back began to rise up into its usual
+form. In about two hours from the time of the accident, he had so far
+recovered as to crawl about, though with difficulty. The milky liquor
+was reabsorbed, and gradually disappeared as the toad recovered. The
+next morning it was all gone, and no mark of injury could be seen,
+except a small hole in his back, which soon closed. He recovered so far
+as to move about pretty well, but his back appeared to have been broken,
+and one fore-leg crippled. I therefore thought it best to give him his
+liberty in the garden. But so wonderful and speedy a recovery I could
+never have believed without ocular testimony.
+
+"I then tried my third and last Running Toad. I began to keep him on
+Sept. 13th. He was a very fine specimen, and larger than the two former.
+He fed well, and amused me exceedingly. He was very tame, and would sit
+on my hand quite quiet, and enjoy my stroking him gently down his head
+and back. Soon after I got him he began to cast his skin. I helped him
+to get rid of it by stripping it down each side, which he seemed to
+like much, and sat very quiet during the operation. The new skin was
+quite beautiful, and shone as if varnished. This Toad lived in a crystal
+palace, or glass jar, where I had kept all the others before him. He
+took food freely, and his appetite was so good that in one day he ate
+seven large flies and three bees without stings. He was particularly
+fond of woodlice and earwigs, but would take centipedes, moths, and
+even butterflies. Being more active than common Toads, he often made
+great efforts to get out of his glass jar. I used to let him run about
+the room nearly every day for a short time, and often treated him to a
+run in the garden. Toads make a slight noise sometimes in the evenings,
+uttering a short sound like 'coo,' but I never heard them croak. Before
+wet weather, and during its continuance, my Toad was disinclined for
+food, and took no notice of flies even walking over his nose. He would
+then burrow and hide himself in the moss at the bottom of his glass
+palace. Thus I kept him, and found him very tame and amusing. But after
+about two months he became more impatient of confinement, and refused
+to take any food. I did not perceive that he fell away, though his feet
+and toes turned of a dark colour, which I knew was a sign of being out
+of condition; and, on the 10th of November, I found him dead. I have
+now tried three of this sort, and have come to the conclusion that the
+Running Toad will not live in captivity. This I much regret, as its
+habits are interesting, and its ways very amusing.
+
+                    "F. C. Husenbeth, D.D."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FROG AND TOAD CONCERTS.
+
+It would be hard to believe the stories of the vocal powers of Frogs
+and Toads were they not related by trustworthy travellers, who tell of
+animal concerts,
+
+  "Wild as the marsh, and tuneful as the harp."
+
+Mr. Priest, the traveller in America, who was himself a musician,
+records:--"Prepared as I was to hear something extraordinary from these
+animals, I confess the first _Frog Concert_ I heard in America was so
+much beyond anything I could conceive of the power of these musicians,
+that I was truly astonished. This performance was _al fresco_, and took
+place on the eighteenth of April, in a large swamp, where there were at
+least 10,000 performers; and I really believe not two exactly in the
+same pitch, if the octave can possibly admit of so many divisions, or
+shades of semitones."
+
+Professor and Mrs. Louis Agassiz, in their recent "Journey in Brazil,"
+record:--"We must not leave Parà without alluding to our evening
+concerts from the adjoining woods and swamps. When I first heard this
+strange confusion of sounds, I thought it came from a crowd of men
+shouting loudly, though at a little distance. To my surprise. I found
+that the rioters were the frogs and toads in the neighbourhood. I hardly
+know how to describe this Babel of woodland noises; and, if I could do
+it justice, I am afraid my account would hardly be believed. At moments
+it seems like the barking of dogs, then like the calling of many voices
+on different keys; but all loud, rapid, excited, full of emphasis and
+variety. I think these frogs, like ours, must be silent at certain
+seasons of the year, for on our first visit to Parà we were not struck
+by this singular music, with which the woods now resound at nightfall."
+
+
+
+
+SONG OF THE CICADA.
+
+
+The Greeks have been scoffed at for rendering in deathless verse the
+song of so insignificant an insect as the Cicada; and hence it has
+been asserted that their love for such slender music must have been
+either exaggerated or simulated. It is pleasant, however, to hear an
+independent observer in the other hemisphere confirm their testimony.
+Mr. Lord tells us that in British Colombia there is one sound or song
+which is clearer, shriller, and _more singularly tuneful than any
+other_. It never appears to cease, and it comes from everywhere--from
+the tops of the trees, from the trembling leaves of the cotton-wood,
+from the stunted under-brush, from the flowers, the grass, the rocks and
+boulders--nay, the very stream itself seems vocal with hidden minstrels,
+all chanting the same refrain.
+
+An especial feature of the Cicada's song is, that it increases in
+intensity when the sun is hottest; and one of the later Latin poets
+mentions the time when its music is at its highest, as an alternative
+expression for noon. Mr. Tennyson, inadvertently, speaks in "Ænone" of
+the Grasshopper being silent in the grass, and of the Cicada sleeping
+when the noonday quiet holds the hill. Keats sings more truly:--
+
+  "When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
+  And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
+  From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead:
+  That is the Grasshopper's."
+
+Then the Greek poets show us how intimately the song of the Cicada is
+associated with the hottest hours of the day. Aristophanes describes it
+as mad for the love of the sun; and Theocritus, as scorched by the sun.
+When all things are parched with the heat (says Alcæus), then from among
+the leaves issues the song of the sweet Cicada. His shrill melody is
+heard in the full glow of noontide, and the vertical rays of a torrid
+sun fire him to sing. Over and over again Mr. Lord met with allusions to
+the same peculiarity.
+
+Cicadæ are regularly sold for food in the markets of South America. They
+are not eaten now, like they were at Athens, as a whet to the appetite;
+but they are dried in the sun, powdered, and made into a cake.
+
+
+
+
+STORIES ABOUT THE BARNACLE GOOSE.
+
+    "As barnacles turn Poland geese
+    In th' islands of the Orcades."--_Hudibras._
+
+
+One of the earliest references to this popular error is in the "Natural
+Magic" of Baptista Porta, who says:--"Late writers report that not only
+in Scotland, but also in the river of Thames by London, there is a kind
+of shell-fish in a two-leaved shell, that hath a foot full of plaits
+and wrinkles.... They commonly stick to the keel of some old ship. Some
+say they come of worms, some of the boughs of trees which fall into the
+sea; if any of them be cast upon shore, they die; but they which are
+swallowed still into the sea, live and get out of their shells, and grow
+to be ducks, or such-like birds."
+
+Professor Max Müller, in a learned lecture, enters fully into the origin
+of the different stories about the Barnacle Goose. He quotes from the
+"Philosophical Transactions" of 1678 a full account by Sir Robert Moray,
+who declared that he had seen within the barnacle shell, as through a
+concave or diminishing glass, the bill, eyes, head, neck, breast, wings,
+tail, feet, and feathers of the Barnacle Goose. The next witness was
+John Gerarde, Master in Chirurgerie, who, in 1597, declared that he had
+seen the actual metamorphosis of the muscle into the bird, describing
+how--
+
+"The shell gapeth open, and the first thing that appeareth is the fore
+said lace or string; next come the leg of the birde hanging out, and
+as it groweth greater, it openeth the shell by degrees, till at length
+it is all come forth, and hangeth only by the bill, and falleth into
+the sea, when it gathereth feathers and groweth to a foule, bigger than
+a mallart; for the truth hereof, if any doubt, may it please them to
+repair unto me, and I shall satisfie them by the testimonies of good
+witnesses."
+
+As far back as the thirteenth century, the same story is traced in the
+writings of Giraldus Cambrensis. This great divine does not deny the
+truth of the miraculous origin of the Barnacle Geese, but he warns the
+Irish priests against dining off them during Lent on the plea that they
+were not flesh, but fish. For, he writes, "If a man during Lent were
+to dine off a leg of Adam, who was not born of flesh either, we should
+not consider him innocent of having eaten what is flesh." This modern
+myth, which, in spite of the protests of such men as Albertus Magnus,
+Æneas Sylvius, and others, maintained its ground for many centuries, and
+was defended, as late as 1629, in a book by Count Maier, "De volucri
+arborea," with arguments, physical, metaphysical, and theological, owed
+its origin to a play of words. The muscle shells are called _Bernaculæ_
+from the Latin _perna_, the mediæval Latin _berna_; the birds are called
+_Hibernicæ_ or _Hiberniculæ_, abbreviated to _Berniculæ_. As their names
+seem one, the creatures are supposed to be one, and everything conspires
+to confirm the first mistake, and to invest what was originally a good
+Irish story--a mere _canard_--with all the dignity of scientific, and
+all the solemnity of theological truth. The myth continued to live
+until the age of Newton. Specimens of _Lepadidæ_, prepared by Professor
+Rolleston of Oxford, show how the outward appearance of the _Anatifera_
+could have supported the popular superstition which derived the
+_Bernicla_, the goose, from the _Bernicula_, the shell.
+
+Drayton (1613), in his "Poly-olbion," iii., in connexion with the river
+Lee, speaks of
+
+    "Th' anatomised fish and fowls from planchers sprung;"
+
+to which a note is appended in Southey's edition, p. 609, that such
+fowls were "Barnacles, a bird breeding upon old ships." A bunch of the
+shells attached to the ship, or to a piece of floating timber, at a
+distance appears like flowers in bloom; the foot of the animal has a
+similitude to the stalk of a plant growing from the ship's sides, the
+shell resembles a calyx, and the flower consists of the tentacula, or
+fingers, of the shell-fish. The ancient error was to mistake the foot
+for the neck of a goose, the shell for its head, and the tentacula for
+feathers. As to the body, _non est inventus_.
+
+Sir Kenelm Digby was soundly laughed at for relating to a party at
+the castle of the Governor of Calais, that "the Barnacle, a bird in
+Jersey, was first a shell-fish to appearance, and, from that striking
+upon old wood, became in time a bird." In 1807, there was exhibited in
+Spring-gardens, London, a "Wonderful natural curiosity, called the Goose
+Tree, Barnacle Tree, or Tree bearing Geese," taken up at sea on January
+12th, and more than twenty men could raise out of the water.[26]
+
+Sir J. Emerson Tennent asks whether the ready acceptance and general
+credence given to so obvious a fable may not have been derived from
+giving too literal a construction to the text of the passage in the
+first chapter of Genesis:--
+
+     "And God said, Let the _waters bring forth abundantly_ the
+     moving creature that hath life, and the _fowl_ that may fly in the
+     open firmament of heaven."
+
+The Barnacle Goose is a well-known bird, and is eaten on fast-days in
+France, by virtue of this old belief in its marine origin. The belief
+in the barnacle origin of the bird still prevails on the west coast of
+Ireland, and in the Western Highlands of Scotland.
+
+The finding of the Barnacle is thus described by Mr. Sidebotham, to
+the Microscopical and Natural History Section of the Literary and
+Philosophical Society:--"In September, I was at Lytham with my family.
+The day was very stormy, and the previous night there had been a strong
+south-west wind, and evidences of a very stormy sea outside the
+banks. Two of my children came running to tell me of a very strange
+creature that had been washed up on the shore. They had seen it from
+the pier, and pointed it out to a sailor, thinking it was a large dog
+with long hair. On reaching the shore I found a fine mass of Barnacles,
+_Pentalasinus anatifera_, attached to some staves of a cask, the whole
+being between four and five feet long. Several sailors had secured the
+prize, and were getting it on a truck to carry it away. The appearance
+was most remarkable, the hundreds of long tubes with their curious
+shells looking like what one would fancy the fabled Gorgon's head with
+its snaky locks. The curiosity was carried to a yard where it was to be
+exhibited, and the bellman went round to announce it under the name of
+the sea-lioness, or the great sea-serpent. Another mass of Barnacles
+was washed up at Lytham, and also one at Blackpool, the same day or the
+day following. This mass of Barnacles was evidently just such a one as
+that seen by Gerard at the Pile of Foulders. It is rare to have such a
+specimen on our coasts. The sailors at Lytham had never seen anything
+like it, although some of them were old men who had spent all their
+lives on the coast."
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[26] "Notes and Queries," No. 201.
+
+
+
+
+LEAVES ABOUT BOOKWORMS.
+
+
+On paper, leather, and parchment are found various animals, popularly
+known as "Bookworms." Johnson describes it as a worm or mite that eats
+holes in books, chiefly when damp; and in the "Guardian" we find this
+reference to its habits:--"My lion, like a moth or bookworm, feeds upon
+nothing but paper."
+
+Many years ago an experienced keeper of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford
+collected these interesting details of Bookworms:--"The larvæ of
+_Crambus pinguinalis_ will establish themselves upon the binding of a
+book, and spinning a robe will do it little injury. A mite, _Acarus
+eruditus_, eats the paste that fastens the paper over the edges of the
+binding and so loosens it. The caterpillar of another little moth takes
+its station in damp old books, between the leaves, and there commits
+great ravages. The little boring wood-beetle, who attacks books and
+will even bore through several volumes. An instance is mentioned of
+twenty-seven folio volumes being perforated in a straight line, by the
+same insect, in such a manner that by passing a cord through the perfect
+round hole made by it the twenty-seven volumes could be raised at once.
+The wood-beetle also destroys prints and drawings, whether framed or
+kept in a portfolio."
+
+There is another "Bookworm," which is often confounded with the
+Death-watch of the vulgar; but is smaller, and instead of beating
+at intervals, as does the Death-watch, continues its noise for a
+considerable length of time without intermission. It is usually found
+in old wood, decayed furniture, museums, and neglected books. The
+female lays her eggs, which are exceedingly small, in dry, dusty
+places, where they are least likely to meet with disturbance. They are
+generally hatched about the beginning of March, a little sooner or
+later, according to the weather. After leaving the eggs, the insects are
+so small as to be scarcely discerned without the use of a glass. They
+remain in this state about two months, somewhat resembling in appearance
+the mites in cheese, after which they undergo their change into the
+perfect insect. They feed on dead flies and other insects; and often,
+from their numbers and voracity, very much deface cabinets of natural
+history. They subsist on various other substances, and may often be
+observed carefully hunting for nutritious particles amongst the dust in
+which they are found, turning it over with their heads, and searching
+about in the manner of swine. Many live through the winter buried deep
+in the dust to avoid the frost.
+
+The best mode of destroying the insects which infest books and MSS.
+has often occupied the attention of the possessors of valuable
+libraries. Sir Thomas Phillips found the wood of his book-case attacked,
+particularly where beech had been introduced, and appeared to think
+that the insect was much attracted by the paste employed in binding.
+He recommended as preservatives against their attacks spirits of
+turpentine and a solution of corrosive sublimate, and also the latter
+substance mixed with paste. In some instances he found the produce of
+a single impregnated female sufficient to destroy a book. Turpentine
+and spirit of tar are also recommended for their destruction; but the
+method pursued in the collections of the British Museum is an abundant
+supply of camphor, with attention to keeping the rooms dry, warm, and
+ventilated. Mr. Macleay states it is the _acari_ only which feed on the
+paste employed in binding books, and the larvæ of the Coleoptera only
+which pierce the boards and leaves.
+
+The ravages of the Bookworm would be much more destructive had there
+not been a sort of guardian to the literary treasures in the shape of
+a spider, who, when examined through a microscope, resembles a knight
+in armour. This champion of the library follows the Worm into the
+book-case, discovers the pit he has digged, rushes on his victim, which
+is about his own size, and devours him. His repast finished, he rests
+for about a fortnight, and when his digestion is completed, he sets out
+to break another lance with the enemy.
+
+The Death-watch, already referred to, and which must be acquitted of
+destroying books, is chiefly known by the noise which he makes behind
+the wainscoting, where he ticks like a clock or watch. How so loud
+a noise is produced by so small an insect has never been properly
+explained; and the ticking has led to many legends. The naturalist
+Degeer relates that one night, in the autumn of 1809, during an
+entomological excursion in Brittany, where travellers were scarce and
+accommodation bad, he sought hospitality at the house of a friend. He
+was from home, and Degeer found a great deal of trouble in gaining
+admittance; but at last the peasant who had charge of the house told
+Degeer that he would give him "the chamber of death," if he liked. As
+Degeer was much fatigued, he accepted the offer. "The bed is there,"
+said the man, "but no one has slept in it for some time. Every night the
+spirit of the officer, who was surprised and killed in this room by some
+chouans, comes back. When the officer was dead, the peasants divided
+what he had about him, and the officer's watch fell to my uncle, who was
+delighted with the prize, and brought it home to examine it. However,
+he soon found out that the watch was broken, and would not go. He then
+placed it under his pillow, and went to sleep; he awoke in the night,
+and to his terror heard the ticking of a watch. In vain he sold the
+watch, and gave the money for masses to be said for the officer's soul,
+the ticking continued, and has never ceased." Degeer said that he would
+exorcise the chamber, and the peasant left him, after making the sign of
+the cross. The naturalist at once guessed the riddle, and, accustomed to
+the pursuit of insects, soon had a couple of Death-watches shut up in a
+tin case, and the ticking was reproduced.
+
+Swift has prescribed this destructive remedy by way of ridicule:--
+
+                                    "A Wood-worm
+    That lies in old wood, like a hare in her form:
+    With teeth or with claws it will bite, or will scratch;
+    And chambermaids christen this worm a Death-watch,
+    Because like a watch it always cries click:
+    Then woe be to those in the house that are sick!
+    For, sure as a gun, they will give up the ghost
+    If the maggot cries click when it scratches the post.
+    But a kettle of scalding hot water ejected,
+    Infallibly cures the timber affected:
+    The omen is broken, the danger is over;
+    The maggot will die, the sick will recover."
+
+
+
+
+BORING MARINE ANIMALS, AND HUMAN ENGINEERS.
+
+
+Were a young naturalist asked to exemplify what man has learned from the
+lower animals, he could scarcely adduce a more striking instance than
+that of a submarine shelly worker teaching him how to execute some of
+his noblest works. This we have learned from the life and labours of the
+_Pholas_, of which it has been emphatically said:--"Numerous accounts
+have been published during the last fourteen years in every civilized
+country and language of the boring process of the _Pholas_; and machines
+formed on the model of its mechanism have for years been tunnelling Mont
+Cenis."
+
+In the Eastern Zoological Gallery of the British Museum, cases 35 and
+36, as well as in the Museum of Economic Geology in Piccadilly, may be
+seen specimens of the above very curious order of _Conchifers_, most
+of the members of which are distinguished by their habits of boring or
+digging, a process in which they are assisted by the peculiar formation
+of the foot, from which they derive their name. Of these ten families
+one of the most characteristic is that of the Razor-shells, which,
+when the valves are shut, are of a long, flattened, cylindrical shape,
+and open at both ends. Projecting its strong pointed foot at one of
+these ends, the _solen_ can work itself down into the sand with great
+rapidity, while at the upper end its respiratory tubes are shot out to
+bring the water to its gills. Of the _Pholadæ_, the shells of which
+are sometimes called multivalve, because, in addition to the two chief
+portions, they have a number of smaller accessory pieces, some bore
+in hard mud, others in wood, and others in rocks. They fix themselves
+firmly by the powerful foot, and then make the shell revolve; the sharp
+edges of this commence the perforation, which is afterwards enlarged by
+the rasp-like action of the rough exterior; and though the shell must
+be constantly worn down, yet it is replaced by a new formation from the
+animal, so as never to be unfit for its purpose. The typical bivalve of
+this family is the _Pholas_, which bores into limestone-rock and other
+hard material, and commits ravages on the piers, breakwaters, &c., that
+it selects for a home.
+
+In the same family as the above Dr. Gray ranks the _Teredo_,[27] or
+wood-boring mollusc, whose ravages on ships, piles, wooden piers, &c.,
+at sea resemble those of the white ant on furniture, joints of houses,
+&c., on shore. Perforating the timber by exactly the same process as
+that by which the Pholas perforates the stones, the Teredo advances
+continually, eating out a contorted tube or gallery, which it lines
+behind it with calcareous matter, and through which it continues to
+breathe the water.
+
+The priority of the demonstration of the Pholas and its "boring habits"
+has been much disputed. The evidence is full of curious details. It
+appears that Mr. Harper, of Edinburgh, author of "The Sea-side and
+Aquarium," having claimed the lead. Mr. Robertson, of Brighton, writes
+to dispute the originality; adding that he publicly exhibited Pholades
+in the Pavilion at Brighton in July, 1851, perforating chalk rocks by
+the raspings of their valves and squirtings of their syphons. Professor
+Flourens (says Mr. Robertson) taught my observations to his class in
+Paris in 1853; I published them in 1851, and again more fully in the
+"Journal de Conchyliologie," in 1853; and M. Emile Blanchard illustrated
+them in the same year in his "Organisation du Règne Animal." I published
+a popular account of the perforating processes in "Household Words"
+in 1856. After obtaining the suffrages of the French authorities, I
+have been recently honoured with those of the British naturalist. (See
+Woodward's "Recent and Fossil Shells," p. 327. Family, Pholadidæ.) On
+returning to England last autumn I exhibited perforating Pholades to
+all the naturalists who cared to watch them. An intelligent lady whom I
+supplied with Pholades has made a really new and original observation,
+which I may take this opportunity of communicating to the public. She
+observed two Pholades whose perforations were bringing them nearer and
+nearer to each other. Their mutual raspings were wearing away the thin
+partition which separated their crypts. She was curious to know what
+they would do when they met, and watched them closely. When the two
+perforating shell-fish met and found themselves in each other's way, the
+stronger just bored right through the weaker Pholas.[28]
+
+Mr. Robertson has communicated to "Jameson's Journal," No. 101, the
+results of his opportunities of studying the Pholas, during six months,
+to discover how this mollusc makes its hole or crypt in the chalk: by
+a chemical solvent? by absorption? by ciliary currents? or by rotatory
+motions? Between twenty and thirty of these creatures were at work
+in lumps of chalk, in sea-water, in a finger-glass, and open for
+three months; and by watching their operations. Mr. Robertson became
+convinced that the Pholas makes its hole by grating the chalk with its
+rasp-like valves, licking it up when pulverized with its foot, forcing
+it up through its principal orbrambial syphon, and squirting it out in
+oblong nodules. The crypt protects the Pholas from _confervæ_, which,
+when they get at it, grow not merely outside, but even with the lips
+of the valves, preventing the action of the syphons. In the foot there
+is a gelatinous spring or style, which, even when taken out, has great
+elasticity, and which seems the mainspring of the motions of the Pholas.
+
+Upon this Dr. James Stark, of Edinburgh, writes:
+
+--"Mr. Robertson, of Brighton, claims the merit of teaching that
+Pholades perforate rocks by 'the rasping of their valves and the
+squirting of their syphons.' His observations only appear to reach
+back to 1851. But the late Mr. John Stark, of Edinburgh, author of the
+'Elements of Natural History,' read a paper before the Royal Society of
+Edinburgh, in 1826, which was printed in the Society's 'Transactions'
+of that year, in which he demonstrated that the Pholades perforate the
+shale rocks in which they occur on this coast, by means of the rasping
+of their valves, and not by acids or other secretions. From also finding
+that their shells scratched limestone without injury to the fine rasping
+rugosities, he inferred that it was by the same agency they perforated
+the hard limestone rocks."
+
+To this Mr. Robertson replies, that Mr. Osler also, in 1826,
+demonstrated that the Pholades "perforate the shale rocks by means of
+the rasping of their valves; and more, for he actually witnessed a
+rotatory movement. But Réaumur and Poli had done as much as this in the
+eighteenth and Sibbald in the seventeenth century: and yet I found the
+solvent hypothesis in the ascendant among naturalists in 1835, when I
+first interested myself in the controversy. What I did in 1851 was, I
+exhibited Pholades at work perforating rocks, and explained how they did
+it. What I have done is, I have made future controversy impossible, by
+exhibiting the animals at work, and by discovering the anatomy and the
+physiology of the perforating instruments. In the words of M. Flourens,
+'I made the animals work before my eyes,' and I 'made known their
+mechanism.' The discovery of the function of the hyaline stylet is not
+merely a new discovery, it is the discovery of a kind of instrument as
+yet unique in physiology."
+
+Mr. Harper having termed the boring organ of the Pholas the "hyaline
+stylet," found it to have puzzled some of the disputants, whereupon Mr.
+Harper writes:--"Its use up to the present time has been a mystery,
+but the general opinion of authors seems to be, that it is the gizzard
+of the Pholas. This I very much doubt, for it is my belief that the
+presence of such an important muscle is solely for the purpose of
+aiding the animal's boring operations. Being situated in the centre
+of the foot, we can readily conceive the great increase of strength
+thus conveyed to the latter member, which is made to act as a powerful
+fulcrum, by the exercise of which the animal rotates--and at the same
+time presses its shell against and rasps the surface of the rock.
+The question being asked, 'How can the stylet be procured to satisfy
+curiosity?' I answer, by adopting the following extremely simple plan.
+Having disentombed a specimen, with the point of a sharp instrument
+cut a slit in the base of its foot, and the object of your search will
+be distinctly visible in the shape of, if I may so term it, an opal
+cylinder. Sometimes I have seen the point of this organ spring out
+beyond the incision, made as above described."
+
+Lastly, Mr. Harper presented the Editor of the "Athenæum" with a
+piece of bored rock, of which he has several specimens. He adds, "On
+examination, you will perceive that the larger Pholas must have bored
+through its smaller and weaker neighbour (how suggestive!), the shell of
+the latter, most fortunately, remaining in its own cavity."
+
+Now, Mr. Robertson claimed for his observation of this phenomenon
+novelty and originality; but Mr. Harper stoutly maintained it to be
+"as common to the eye of the practised geologist as rain or sunshine."
+The details are curious; though some impatient, and not very grateful
+reader, may imagine himself in the condition of the shell of the smaller
+Pholas, and will be, as he deserves to remain, in the minority.[29]
+
+It may be interesting to sum up a few of the opinions of the mode by
+which these boring operations are performed. Professor Forbes states
+the mode by which Molluscs bore into wood and other materials is as
+follows:--"Some of the Gauterspods have tongues covered with silica to
+enable them to bore, and it was probably by some process of this kind
+that all the Molluscs bored."
+
+Mr. Peach never observed the species of Pholas to turn round in their
+holes, as stated by some observers, although he had watched them with
+great attention. Mr. Charlesworth refers to the fact that, in one
+species of shell, not only does the hole in the rock which the animal
+occupies increase in size, but also the hole through which it projects
+its syphons.
+
+Professor John Phillips, alluding to the theories which have been
+given of the mode in which Molluscs bore into the rocks in which they
+live, believes that an exclusively mechanical theory will not account
+for the phenomenon; and he is inclined to adopt the view of Dr. T.
+Williams--that the boring of the Pholades can only be explained on the
+principle which involves a chemical as well as a mechanical agency.
+
+Mr. E. Ray Lankester notices that the boring of Annelids seems quite
+unknown; and he mentions two cases, one by a worm called Leucadore, the
+other by a Sabella. Leucadore is very abundant on some shores, where
+boulders and pebbles may be found worm-eaten and riddled by them. Only
+stones composed of carbonate of lime are bored by them. On coasts where
+such stones are rare, they are selected, and others are left. The worms
+are _quite soft_, and armed only with horny bristles. _How, then, do
+they bore?_ Mr. Lankester maintains that it is by carbonic acid and
+other acid excretions of their bodies, _aided_ by the mechanical action
+of their bristles. The selection of a material soluble in these acids
+is most noticeable, since the softest chalk and the hardest limestone
+are bored with the same facility. This can only be by chemical action.
+If, then, we have a case of chemical boring in these worms, is it not
+probable that many Molluscs are similarly assisted in their excavations?
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[27] How Brunel took his construction of the Thames Tunnel from
+observing the bore of the _Teredo navalis_ in the keel of a ship, in
+1814, is well known.
+
+[28] "Athenæum," No. 1640.
+
+[29] See also "Life in the Sea," in "Strange Stories of the Animal
+World," by the author of the present volume. Second Edition. 1868.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+  ANCIENT Zoological Gardens, 12
+
+  Animals, Rare, of London Zoological Society, 16, 17, 18
+
+  Annelids, boring, 348
+
+  Annelids and Molluscs, Boring Habits of, 348
+
+  Ant-Bear in captivity, 76
+
+  Ant-Bear, the Great, 72
+
+  Ant-Bear at Madrid, 72
+
+  Ant-Bear described, 77
+
+  Ant-Bear, Domestic, in Paraguay, 75
+
+  Ant-Bear, Economy of, 76
+
+  Ant-Bear and its Food, 74
+
+  Ant-Bears, Fossil, 80, 81
+
+  Ant-Bear, Muscular Force of, 79
+
+  Ant-Bear, Wallace's Account of, 73
+
+  Ant-Bear, Zoological Society's, 76, 82, 84
+
+  Ant-Eater, Porcupine, 84
+
+  Ant-Bear, Professor Owen on, 80
+
+  Ant-Eaters, scarcity of, 80
+
+  Ant-Eater, Tamandua, 82
+
+  Ant-Eaters, Von Saek's Account of, 83
+
+  Aristotle's History of Animals, 279, 280
+
+
+  BARNACLE GEESE, finding of the, 334
+
+  Barnacle Goose, Gerarde on, 332
+
+  Barnacle Goose, Giraldus Cambrensis on, 332
+
+  Barnacle Goose, Max Müller on, 331
+
+  Barnacle Goose, name of, 332
+
+  Barnacle Goose, Sir E. Tennent on, 334
+
+  Barnacle Goose, Sir Kenelm Digby on, 334
+
+  Barnacle Goose, Sir R. Moray on, 331
+
+  Barnacle Goose, Stories of the, 331-335
+
+  Barnacles breeding upon old ships, 333
+
+  Barnacle Geese in the Thames, 331
+
+  Bat, altivolans, by Gilbert White, 100
+
+  Bat, American, by Lesson, 91
+
+  Bat, Aristotle on, 85
+
+  Bat, Mr. Bell on, 86
+
+  Bats, Curiosities of, 85
+
+  Bat, described by Calmet, 87
+
+  Bat, Flight and Wing of, 96
+
+  Bats, in England, 100
+
+  Bat, Heber, Stedman, and Waterton on, 91
+
+  Bats in Jamaica, 100
+
+  Bat, Kalong, of Java, 98
+
+  Bat, Long-Eared, by Sowerby, 92, 93-96
+
+  Bat, Nycteris, 97
+
+  Bat, Rere-mouse and Flitter-mouse, 86
+
+  Bat Skeleton, Sir C. Bell on, 87
+
+  Bat in Scripture, 85
+
+  Bat, Vampire, from Sumatra, 88
+
+  Bat, Vampire, Lines on, by Byron, 89
+
+  Bat, vulgar errors respecting, 97
+
+  Bat-Fowling or Bat-Folding, 92
+
+  Berlin Zoological Gardens and Museum, 16
+
+  Bible Natural History, 11
+
+  Birds, Addison on their Nests and Music, 156, 157
+
+  Bird, Australian Bower, Nest of, 167
+
+  Bird, Baya, Indian, Nest of, 164
+
+  Birds and Animals, Beauty in, 150
+
+  Birds, Brain of, 154
+
+  Birds, Characteristics of, 145
+
+  Birds, Colour of, 148
+
+  Bird Confinement, Dr. Livingstone on, 169
+
+  Birds' Eggs, large, 162
+
+  Birds' Eggs, Colours of, 158
+
+  Birds' Eggs and Nests, 158
+
+  Birds, European, list of, 161
+
+  Birds, Flight of, 146, 147
+
+  Birds, Insectivorous, 151;
+    Instinct, Intelligence, and Reason, 217
+
+  Bird-Life, 145
+
+  Bird-Murder, wanton, 152
+
+  Birds' Nesting, 159
+
+  Birds' Nests--Cape Swallows, 168
+
+  Birds' Nests--Brush Turkey, 171
+
+  Birds' Nests, large, 164
+
+  Birds' Eggs--Ostrich and Epyornis, 162, 163
+
+  Birds' Nests--Tailor Birds, 165-167
+
+  Birds, Rapid Flight of, 147
+
+  Birds, Signal of Danger among, 155
+
+  Birds, Song of, 149
+
+  Birds, Mr. Wolley's Collections, 159, 160
+
+  Bookworms, Leaves about, 336
+
+  Bookworms and Death-watch, 337
+
+  Boring Marine Animals, and Human Engineers, 341
+
+
+  CHAMELEON of the Ancients, 306
+
+  Chameleon's antipathy to black, 322
+
+  Chameleons, Mrs. Belzoni's, 316-320
+
+  Chameleons, Birth of, in England, 321
+
+  Chameleon changing Colour, 311, 316
+
+  Chameleon, Cuvier on, 309
+
+  Chameleon, described by Calmet, 307
+
+  Chameleon Family, 307
+
+  Chameleon, Air-food of, 309
+
+  Chameleon, Milne Edwards on its Change of Colour, 314-316
+
+  Chameleons, Native Countries of, 316
+
+  Chameleon of the Poets, 308
+
+  Chameleons, Reproduction of, 309
+
+  Chameleon, Tongue and Eyes of, 310, 311
+
+  Chinese Zoological Gardens, 12
+
+  Cicada, Song of the, 329
+
+  Cormorant's Bone, curious, 204
+
+  Cormorants, Chase of, 203
+
+  Cormorant Fishery in China, 202
+
+  Cormorant, Habits of the, 201
+
+  Cormorant trained for Fishing, 201
+
+  Curiosities of Zoology, 11
+
+
+  ECCENTRICITIES of Penguins, 188:
+    Darwin, Mr., his account of Falkland Islands Penguin, 192;
+    Dassent Island Penguins, 188;
+    Death-watch and Bookworm, 337, 338;
+    Falkland Islands Penguins, 189;
+    King Penguins, 191;
+    Patagonian Penguins, 189;
+    Penguin, the name, 194;
+    Webster, Mr., his Account of Penguins, 193
+
+  Epicure's Ortolan, the, 172
+
+  Epicurism Extravagant, 177
+
+  Evelyn and St. James's Physique Garden, 15
+
+
+  FISH in British Colombia, 280:
+    Candle-fish, 282;
+    Octopus, 283;
+    Salmon Army, 281;
+    Spoonbill Sturgeon, 285;
+    Sturgeons, and Sturgeon Fishing, 284-287
+
+  Fish-Talk, 250:
+    Affection of Fishes, 256;
+    Bohemian Wels Fish, 270;
+    Bonita and Flying Fish, 263;
+    Californian Fish, 268;
+    Carp at Fontainebleau, 254;
+    Cat-fish, curious Account of, 257;
+    Double Fish, 272;
+    Fish changing Colour, 251;
+    Fish Noise, 252;
+    Gold Fish, 274;
+    Grampus, gambols of, 262;
+    Great General of the South Sea, 272;
+    Grouper, the, 272;
+    Hassar, the, 256;
+    Hearing of Fishes, 253;
+    Herring Puzzle, 278;
+    Jaculator Fish of Java, 264;
+    Jamaica, Curious Fish at, 266;
+    Little Fishes the Food of Larger, 259;
+    Marine Observatory, 276;
+    Mecho of the Danube, 270;
+    Migration of Fishes, 260;
+    Miller's Thumb, 276;
+    Numbers, vast, of Fishes, 258;
+    Pike, Wonderful, 269;
+    Pilot Fish, 267;
+    Sharks, 267;
+    Singing Fish,252;
+    Square-browed Malthe, 274;
+    Strange Fishes, 251;
+    Sun-fish, 271;
+    Swimming of Fishes, 250;
+    Sword-fish, 266;
+    Warrior Fish, 266
+
+  Frog and Toad Concerts, 327
+
+
+  HEDGEHOG, the, 102
+
+  Hedgehog devouring Snakes, 104
+
+  Hedgehog, Food of, 103
+
+  Hedgehogs, Gilbert White on, 107
+
+  Hedgehog and Poisons, 105
+
+  Hedgehogs, Sir T. Browne on, 102
+
+  Hedgehog Sucking Cows, 104
+
+  Hedgehog and Viper, Fight between, 106, 107
+
+  Hedgehog, Voracity of, 103
+
+  Hippopotamus, Ancient History of, 119
+
+  Hippopotamus, described by Aristotle and Herodotus, 121
+
+  Hippopotamus, Economy of the, 115
+
+  Hippopotamus, the, in England, 108
+
+  Hippopotami, Fossil, 122
+
+  Hippopotami on the Niger, 117
+
+  Hippopotamus, Professor Owen's Description of, 111-115
+
+  Hippopotamus and River Horse, 116
+
+  Hippopotamus in Scripture, 120
+
+  Hippopotamus, Utility of, 118
+
+  Hippopotamus from the White Nile, 109
+
+  Hippopotamus, Zoological Society's, in 1850, 108-111
+
+
+  LEAVES about Bookworms, 336
+
+  Lions in Algeria, and Jules Gerard, 143
+
+  Lion, African, 131
+
+  Lion, Bengal, 133
+
+  Lion described by Bennett, 123
+
+  Lion described by Buffon, 123-125
+
+  Lion described by Burchell, 125
+
+  Lion, disappearance of, 130
+
+  Lion and Hottentots, 132, 133-136
+
+  Lion-hunting Feats, 128
+
+  Lion, "King of the Forest," 126
+
+  Lion, Longevity of, 137
+
+  Lion, Maneless, 133-135
+
+  Lion, Niebuhr on, 131
+
+  Lion in the Nineveh Sculptures, 139, 140
+
+  Lions, the Drudhoe, 144
+
+  Lions, Popular Errors respecting, 123
+
+  Lion, Prickle or Claw in the Tail, 137-139
+
+  Lion, Roar of, 136
+
+  Lions in the Tower of London, 140
+
+  "Lion Tree" in the Mantatee Country, 127
+
+  Lion Stories of the Shows, 142
+
+  Lion-Talk, 123
+
+  Lioness and her Young, 135
+
+
+  MERMAID of 1822, 43-47
+
+  Mermaid in Berbice, 39
+
+  Mermaid in the Bosphorus, 47
+
+  Mermaid and Dugong, 41
+
+  Mermaids, Evidences of, 36
+
+  Mermaid at Exmouth, 40
+
+  Mermaid, Leyden's Ballad, 35
+
+  Mermaid and Manatee, 42
+
+  Mermaid at Milford Haven, 37
+
+  Mermaid, Japanese, 44
+
+  Mermaid, Scottish, 36, 38
+
+  Mermaids and Sirens, 33
+
+  Mermaid's Song, Haydn's, 34
+
+  Mermaids, Stories of, 33
+
+  Mermaid, Structure of, 43
+
+  Mermaids in Suffolk, 48
+
+  Mole, its Economy controverted, 62
+
+  Mole, the Ettrick Shepherd on, 71
+
+  Mole, Le Court on, 62, 65
+
+  Mole and Fairy Rings, 64
+
+  Mole and Farming, 70
+
+  Mole, Feeling of, 64
+
+  Mole at Home, 62
+
+  Mole, its Hunting-ground, 67
+
+  Moles, Loves of the, 68
+
+  Mole, structure of the, 63
+
+  Mole, St. Hilaire on, 69
+
+  Mole, Shrew, of North America, 70
+
+  Mole, Voracity of, 68
+
+  Montezuma's Zoological Gardens, 13
+
+  Musical Lizard, 303:
+    Climbing Walls, 303, 304;
+    Formosa Isle, 303;
+    Gecko ennobled, 306
+
+
+  ORNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY, 15
+
+  Ortolan described, 172, 173
+
+  Ortolans, how fattened, 174
+
+  Ortolan, Mr. Gould on, 174, 175
+
+  Owls, 221:
+    Abyssinian Owl, 230;
+    Barn Owl, 226;
+    Bischaco, or Coquimbo, 224;
+    Boobook Owl, 228;
+    Cats and Owls, 230;
+    Fraser's Eagle Owl, from Fernando Po, 229;
+    Food of Owls, 226;
+    Javanese Owl, 228;
+    Snowy Owl, 227;
+    Tricks by Night, 224;
+    Utility of, 225;
+    Waterton on the Owl, 225
+
+
+  PELICANS and Cormorants, 195
+
+  Pelicans described by Gould, 195
+
+  Pelican in Japan, 197
+
+  Pelican Popular Error, 198, 199
+
+  Pelican Pouches, 198
+
+  Pelican Symbol, 200
+
+  "Pelican of the wilderness," 197
+
+  Pholas, Life and Labours of, 341
+
+  Pholades, Charlesworth and Peach on, 347
+
+  Pholades, Harper on, 346
+
+  Pholades, Robertson on, 343
+
+
+  RHINOCEROS in England, 22:
+    African Rhinoceros in 1858, 27;
+    Ancient History, 23;
+    Bruce and Sparmann, 27;
+    Burchell's shooting, 30;
+    Horn of the Rhinoceros, 31, 32;
+    Indian Wild Ass, 24;
+    One-horned and Two-horned, 23-26;
+    Scripture, Rhinoceros of, 23;
+    Speehnan's Rhinoceros Shooting, 30;
+    Tegetmeir describes the African Rhinoceros, 27;
+    Tractability, 25;
+    Varieties of Rhinoceros, 22;
+    Zoological Society's Rhinoceros, 23, 29
+
+
+  SALE of Wild Animals, 20
+
+  Sentinel Birds, 183
+
+  Song of the Cicada, 329
+
+  Songs of Birds and Seasons of the Day, 219
+
+  St. James's Park Menagerie, 14
+
+  Stories of the Barnacle Goose, 331-335
+
+  Stories of Mermaids, 33
+
+  Surrey Zoological Gardens, 20
+
+
+  TALKING birds, 205:
+    Bittern and Night Raven, 207;
+    Blue Jay, 206;
+    Canaries, Talking, 210-212;
+    Chinese Starling, 205;
+    Crowned Crane, 206;
+    Cuckoo, 209;
+    Laughing Goose, 209;
+    Nightingale, 209;
+    Piping Crow, 205;
+    Snipe, Neighing, 213;
+    Trochilos and Crocodile, 216;
+    Umbrella Bird, 206;
+    Whidaw Bird, 205;
+    Wild Swan, 209;
+    Woodpecker at Constantinople, 215
+
+  Talk about Toucans, 179:
+    Bills of Toucans, 180;
+    Carnivorous propensity, 184;
+    Economy of, 182;
+    Food of, 183;
+    Gould, Mr., his Grand Monograph, 180, 186;
+    Owen, Professor, on the Mandibles, 185;
+    Swainson, Mr., on Toucans, 185
+    Toucan Family, 179, 180;
+    White Ants' Nests, 183;
+    Toucanet, Gould's, 184
+
+  Toad and Frog Concerts, 327-328
+
+  Toads, Running, Dr. Husenbeth's, 323-327
+
+  Tower of London Menagerie, 14
+
+  Tree-climbing Crab, the, 288:
+    Bernhard, Hermit, and Soldier Crab, 291;
+    Climbing Perch, 288;
+    Crab, Burrowing, 290;
+    Crab Migration in Jamaica, 292;
+    Fishing-frogs, 288;
+    Glass Crabs, 301;
+    Pill-making Crabs, 301;
+    Purse Crab feeding on Cocoa-nuts, 296;
+    Robber Crab, 292;
+    Screw-pines, Crab climbing, 298;
+    Vaulted Crab of the Moluccas, 291
+
+
+  UNICORNS, ancient, 51
+
+  Unicorn and Antelope, 53
+
+  Unicorn in Central Africa, 58
+
+  Unicorn described by Ctesias, 49, 50
+
+  Unicorn, Cuvier on, 54
+
+  Unicorn, Is it Fabulous? 49
+
+  Unicorn, Klaproth on, 55
+
+  Unicorn in Kordofan, 53
+
+  Unicorn and its Horn, 53, 59
+
+  Unicorn, modern, 50
+
+  Unicorn, Ogilby on, 51
+
+  Unicorn, Rev. J. Campbell on, 57
+
+  Unicorn in the Royal Arms, 60
+
+
+  WEATHER-WISE ANIMALS, 231:
+    Ants, Asses, 241;
+    Darwin's Signs of Rain, 248;
+    Frogs and Snails, 237-240;
+    List of Animals, 241-247;
+    Mole, 240;
+    Mother Carey's Chickens and Goose, 234;
+    Redbreast, 236;
+    Seagulls, 232;
+    Signs of Rain, 232;
+    Stormy Petrels, 233;
+    Shepherd of Banbury, 249;
+    Toucans, 237;
+    Weatherproof Birds' Nests, 247;
+    Wild Geese and Ducks, 235
+
+  Wild Animals, Cost of, 19
+
+  Wild Beast Shows, 21
+
+
+  ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS, Origin of, 12
+
+  Zoological Society of London, 16
+
+  Zoology, Curiosities of, 11
+
+
+
+
+C. A. Macintosh, Printer, Great New-street, London.
+
+
+
+
+  +----------------------------------------------------------------- +
+  | Transcriber's Note:                                              |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Obvious punctuation and spelling errors repaired.                |
+  | Word combinations that appeared with and without hyphens         |
+  | were changed to the predominant hyphenated form.                 |
+  | Original spelling and its variations were not standardized.      |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Corrections in the spelling of names were made when those        |
+  | could be verified.  Otherwise the variations were left as they   |
+  | were.                                                            |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Page 18: "Parrot-houses, the, sometimes...." changed to          |
+  |   "Parrot-houses: they sometimes contain...."                    |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Page 170 and others: Kolobeng and Kolenbeng. Both spellings were |
+  |   retained.                                                      |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Page 191 and others: Tussa, tussack and tussock. All spellings   |
+  |   were retained.                                                 |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Page 276: Finisterre changed to Finistère.                       |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Page 333: cennexion changed to connexion "... in connexion with  |
+  |   the river Lee...."                                             |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Page 352:  Screw-pines, Crab climbing, 295;  pagination changed  |
+  |   to 298.                                                        |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | The name of Shakespeare appears with varying spellings.  All     |
+  |   variants were kept.                                            |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Some index entries are not in alphabetical order.  They were not |
+  |   corrected.                                                     |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Footnotes were moved to the ends of the chapters in which they   |
+  | belonged and numbered in one continuous sequence.  The           |
+  | pagination in index entries which referred to these footnotes    |
+  | was not changed to match their new locations and is therefore    |
+  | incorrect.                                                       |
+  +----------------------------------------------------------------- +
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Eccentricities of the Animal Creation., by 
+John Timbs
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+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's Eccentricities of the Animal Creation., by John Timbs
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+Title: Eccentricities of the Animal Creation.
+
+Author: John Timbs
+
+Release Date: December 14, 2013 [EBook #44422]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ECCENTRICITIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow, Christian Boissonnas and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><a name="i_cover" id="i_cover"></a>
+<img src="images/i_cover.jpg" alt="Cover" /></div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<div class="figcenter bord"><a name="i_002.jpg" id="i_002.jpg"></a>
+  <img src="images/i_002.jpg" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">KING PENGUINS</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<h1><big>ECCENTRICITIES</big><br /><br />
+
+<span class="f1">OF</span><br /><br />
+
+<big>THE ANIMAL CREATION</big>.</h1>
+
+<p class="center p6">BY JOHN TIMBS.</p>
+
+<p class="center p2 f1">AUTHOR OF "THINGS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN."</p>
+
+<p class="center p6 f4">WITH EIGHT ENGRAVINGS.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center p6">SEELEY, JACKSON, AND HALLIDAY, 54, FLEET-STREET.<br />
+LONDON. MDCCCLXIX.</p>
+
+<p class="center p4"><i>The right of translation is reserved.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><a href="#INTRODUCTORY_CURIOSITIES_OF_ZOOLOGY" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  INTRODUCTORY.&mdash;CURIOSITIES OF ZOOLOGY.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Natural History in Scripture, and Egyptian Records, 11.&mdash;Origin of
+  Zoological Gardens, 12.&mdash;The Greeks and Romans, 12.&mdash;Montezuma's
+  Zoological Gardens, 13.&mdash;Menagerie in the Tower of London,
+  14.&mdash;Menagerie in St. James's Park, 14.&mdash;John Evelyn's Notes,
+  15.&mdash;Ornithological Society, 15.&mdash;Continental Gardens, 16.&mdash;Zoological
+  Society of London instituted, 16; its most remarkable Animals,
+  16.&mdash;Cost of Wild Animals, 18.&mdash;Sale of Animals, 20.&mdash;Surrey
+  Zoological Gardens, 20.&mdash;Wild-beast Shows, 21.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#THE_RHINOCEROS_IN_ENGLAND" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  THE RHINOCEROS IN ENGLAND.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Ancient History, 22, 23.&mdash;One-horned and Two-horned, 25,
+  26.&mdash;Tractability, 25.&mdash;Bruce and Sparmann, 27.&mdash;African Rhinoceros in
+  1868, 27.&mdash;Description of, 29.&mdash;Burchell's Rhinoceros, 30.&mdash;Horn of
+  the Rhinoceros, 31, 32.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#STORIES_OF_MERMAIDS" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  STORIES OF MERMAIDS.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Sirens of the Ancients, 33.&mdash;Classic Pictures of Mermaids,
+  34.&mdash;Leyden's Ballad, 35.&mdash;Ancient Evidence, 36, 37, 38.&mdash;Mermaid in
+  the West Indies, 39.&mdash;Mermaids, Seals, and Dugongs, 41.&mdash;Mermaids and
+  Manatee, 42.&mdash;Test for a Mermaid, 43.&mdash;Mermaid
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+  of 1822, 43.&mdash;Japanese Mermaids, 44.&mdash;Recent Evidence, 47, 48.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#IS_THE_UNICORN_FABULOUS" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  IS THE UNICORN FABULOUS?</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Ctesias and Wild Asses, 65.&mdash;Aristotle, Herodotus, and Pliny,
+50.&mdash;Modern Unicorns, 50.&mdash;Ancient Evidence, 51.&mdash;Hunting the
+Unicorn, 52.&mdash;Antelopes, 53, 54.&mdash;Cuvier and the Oryx, 54.&mdash;Tibetan
+Animal, 55.&mdash;Klaproth's Evidence, 55.&mdash;Rev. John Campbell's Evidence,
+57.&mdash;Baikie on, 58.&mdash;Factitious Horns in Museums, 59.&mdash;Unicorn in the
+Royal Arms, 60.&mdash;Catching the Unicorn, 60.&mdash;Belief in Unicorns, 61.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#THE_MOLE_AT_HOME" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  THE MOLE AT HOME.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Economy of the Mole, 62.&mdash;Its Structure, 63.&mdash;Fairy Rings; Feeling
+of the Mole, 64.&mdash;Le Court's Experiments, 62, 65.&mdash;Hunting-grounds,
+67.&mdash;Loves of the Moles, 68, 69.&mdash;Persecution of Moles.&mdash;Shrew Mole,
+70.&mdash;Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, on Moles, 71.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#THE_GREAT_ANT-BEAR" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  THE GREAT ANT-BEAR.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">The Ant-Bear of 1853, 72, 73.&mdash;Mr. Wallace, on the Amazon, describes
+the Ant-Bear, 73.&mdash;Food of the Ant-Bear, 74.&mdash;His Resorts, 75.&mdash;Habits
+in Captivity, by Professor Owen, 76-80.&mdash;Fossil Ant-Bear, 80,
+81.&mdash;Tamandua Ant-Bear, 82&mdash;Von Sack's Ant-Bear, 83.&mdash;Porcupine
+Ant-Eater, 84.&mdash;Ant-Bears in the Zoological Gardens, 84.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#CURIOSITIES_OF_BATS" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  CURIOSITIES OF BATS.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Virgil's Harpies, 85.&mdash;Pliny on the Bat, 85.&mdash;Rere-mouse and
+Flitter-mouse, 86.&mdash;Bats, not Birds but Quadrupeds, 87.&mdash;Sir Charles
+Bell on the Wing of the Bat, 87.&mdash;Vampire Bat from Sumatra, 88.&mdash;Lord
+Byron and Vampire, 89.&mdash;Levant Superstition, 89.&mdash;Bat described by
+Heber, Waterton, and Steadman, 90.&mdash;Lesson on Bats, 91.&mdash;Bat Fowling
+or Folding, 91, 92.&mdash;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
+Sowerby's Long-eared Bat, 92, 96.&mdash;Wing of
+the Bat, 96.&mdash;<i>Nycteris</i> Bat, 97.&mdash;<i>Kalong</i> Bat of Java, 98.&mdash;Bats,
+various, 100, 101.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#THE_HEDGEHOG" style="text-decoration: none;">THE HEDGEHOG.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Hedgehog Described, 102.&mdash;Habits, 103.&mdash;Eating Snakes,
+105.&mdash;Poisons, 105, 106.&mdash;Battle with a Viper, 105.&mdash;Economy of the
+Hedgehog, 106, 107.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#THE_HIPPOPOTAMUS_IN_ENGLAND" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  THE HIPPOPOTAMUS IN ENGLAND.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Living Hippopotamus brought to England in 1850, 108.&mdash;Capture and
+Conveyance, 111.&mdash;Professor Owen's Account, 111-115.&mdash;Described
+by Naturalists and Travellers, 115-118.&mdash;Utility to Man,
+118-119.&mdash;Ancient History, 119.&mdash;In Scripture, 120.&mdash;Alleged
+Disappearance, 121.&mdash;Fossil, 122.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#LION-TALK" style="text-decoration: none;">LION-TALK.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Character, 123.&mdash;Reputed Generosity, 125.&mdash;Burchell's Account,
+125.&mdash;Lion-Tree in the Mantatee Country, 127.&mdash;Lion-hunting,
+128.&mdash;Disappearance of Lions, 130, 131.&mdash;Human Prey, 132.&mdash;Maneless
+Lions of Guzerat, 134.&mdash;A Lion Family in Bengal, 135, 136.&mdash;Prickle on
+the Lion's Tail, 137-139.&mdash;Nineveh Lions, 139.&mdash;Lions in the Tower of
+London, 140, 141.&mdash;Feats with Lions, 142.&mdash;Lion-hunting in Algeria, by
+Jules Gerard, 144.&mdash;The Prudhoe Lions, 144.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#BIRD-LIFE" style="text-decoration: none;">BIRD-LIFE.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Rate at which Birds fly, 145, 146.&mdash;Air in the Bones of Birds,
+146.&mdash;Flight of the Humming-bird, 147.&mdash;Colour of Birds, 148.&mdash;Song
+of Birds, 149.&mdash;Beauty in Animals, 150.&mdash;Insectivorous Birds,
+151.&mdash;Sea-fowl Slaughter, 152.&mdash;Hooded Crow in Zetland, 154.&mdash;Brain of
+Birds, 154.&mdash;Danger-signals, 155.&mdash;Addison's Love of Nature, 156, 157.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#BIRDS_EGGS_AND_NESTS" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  BIRDS' EGGS AND NESTS.</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Colours of Eggs, 158.&mdash;Bird's-nesting, 159.&mdash;Mr. Wolley, the
+Ornithologist, 159, 160.&mdash;European Birds of Prey, 161.&mdash;Large
+Eggs, 162, 163, 164.&mdash;Baya's Nest, 164.&mdash;Oriole and Tailor-bird,
+165, 166.&mdash;Australian Bower-bird, 167.&mdash;Cape Swallows, 168.&mdash;"Bird
+Confinement," by Dr. Livingstone.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#THE_EPICURES_ORTOLAN" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  THE EPICURE'S ORTOLAN.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Origin of the Ortolan, 172; described, 173, 174; Fattening process,
+175, 176.&mdash;Prodigal Epicurism, 177, 178.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#TALK_ABOUT_TOUCANS" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  TALK ABOUT TOUCANS.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Toucan family, 179.&mdash;Gould's grand Monograph, 180.&mdash;
+  Toucans described, 180-182; Food, 183; Habits, 184.&mdash;Gould's Toucanet, 187.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#ECCENTRICITIES_OF_PENGUINS" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  ECCENTRICITIES OF PENGUINS.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Penguins on Dassent Island, 188.&mdash;Patagonian Penguins, 189.&mdash;Falkland
+Islands, 189.&mdash;King Penguins, 190, 191.&mdash;Darwin's Account,
+192.&mdash;Webster's Account, 193.&mdash;Swainson's Account, 194.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#PELICANS_AND_CORMORANTS" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  PELICANS AND CORMORANTS.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Pelicans described by various Naturalists, 195, 196.&mdash;The Pelican
+Island, 197.&mdash;Popular Error, 199-200.&mdash;Cormorants, and Fishing with
+Cormorants, 201-204.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#TALKING_BIRDS_ETC" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  TALKING BIRDS, INSTINCTS, ETC.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Sounds by various Birds, 204.&mdash;Umbrella Bird, 206.&mdash;Bittern,
+207.&mdash;Butcher-bird and Parrots, 208.&mdash;Wild Swan, Laughing Goose,
+Cuckoo, and Nightingale, 209.&mdash;Talking Canaries, 210.&mdash;Neighing Snipe,
+213.&mdash;Trochilos and Crocodiles, 216.&mdash;Instinct. Intelligence, and
+Reason in Birds, 217-219.&mdash;Songs of Birds and Seasons of the Day, 219.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#OWLS" style="text-decoration: none;">OWLS.</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Characteristics of the Owl, 221.&mdash;Owl in Poetry, 222.&mdash;Bischacho or
+Coquimbo, 224.&mdash;Waterton on Owls, 225, 226.&mdash;Owls. Varieties of,
+227-230.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#WEATHER-WISE_ANIMALS" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  WEATHER-WISE ANIMALS.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Atmospheric Changes, 231.&mdash;Stormy Petrel, 233.&mdash;Wild Geese and Ducks,
+235.&mdash;Frogs and Snails, 237.&mdash;The Mole, 240.&mdash;List of Animals, by
+Forster, the Meteorologist, 241.&mdash;Weatherproof Nests, 247.&mdash;"Signs of
+Rain," by Darwin, 248.&mdash;Shepherd of Banbury, 249.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#FISH-TALK" style="text-decoration: none;">FISH-TALK.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">How Fishes Swim, 250.&mdash;Fish Changing Colour, 251.&mdash;"Fish Noise,"
+252.&mdash;Hearing of Fish, 253.&mdash;The Carp at Fontainebleau, 254,
+255.&mdash;Affection of Fishes, 256.&mdash;Cat-fish, Anecdote of, 257.&mdash;Great
+Number of Fishes, 258.&mdash;Little Fishes Eaten by Medusæ, 259.&mdash;Migration
+of Fishes, 261.&mdash;Enormous Grampus, 262.&mdash;Bonita and Flying-fish,
+263.&mdash;Jaculator Fish of Java, 264.&mdash;Port Royal, Jamaica Fish,
+266.&mdash;The Shark, 267.&mdash;California. Fish of, 268.&mdash;Wonderful Fish,
+269.&mdash;Vast Sun-fish, 271.&mdash;Double Fish, 272.&mdash;The Square-browed
+Malthe, 274.&mdash;Gold Fish, 275.&mdash;The Miller's Thumb, 276.&mdash;Sea-fish
+Observatory, 276.&mdash;Herring Question, 278.&mdash;Aristotle's History of
+Animals, 279-280.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#FISH_IN_BRITISH_COLOMBIA" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  FISH IN BRITISH COLOMBIA.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Salmon-swarming, 281.&mdash;Candle-fish, 282.&mdash;Octopus, the, 283.&mdash;Sturgeon
+and Sturgeon Fishing, 283-287.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#THE_TREE-CLIMBING_CRAB" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  THE TREE-CLIMBING CRAB.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Locomotion of Fishes, 288.&mdash;Climbing Perch, 288.&mdash;Crabs in the West
+Indies, 289.&mdash;Crabs, Varieties of, 289-292.&mdash;Robber and Cocoa-nut
+Crab, 292-301.&mdash;Fish of the China Seas, 301.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#MUSICAL_LIZARDS" style="text-decoration: none;">MUSICAL LIZARDS.</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Lizard from Formosa Isle, 303.&mdash;Its Habits, 304-306.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#CHAMELEONS_AND_THEIR_CHANGES" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  CHAMELEONS AND THEIR CHANGES.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">The Chameleon described by Aristotle and Calmet, 307, 308.&mdash;Change
+of Colour, 309.&mdash;Reproduction of, 310, 311.&mdash;Tongue, 311.&mdash;Lives in
+Trees, 312.&mdash;Theory of Colours, 313.&mdash;The Puzzle Solved, 315.&mdash;Mrs.
+Belzoni's Chameleons, 317.&mdash;Lady Cust's Chameleons, 321.&mdash;Chameleon's
+Antipathy to Black, 322.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#RUNNING_TOADS" style="text-decoration: none;">RUNNING TOADS.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Dr. Husenbeth's Toads at Cossey, 327.&mdash;Frog and Toad Concerts, 327.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#SONG_OF_THE_CICADA" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  SONG OF THE CICADA.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Greeks' Love for the Song, 329.&mdash;Cicada in British Colombia,
+329.&mdash;Tennyson and Keats on the Grasshopper, 330.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#STORIES_ABOUT_THE_BARNACLE_GOOSE" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  STORIES ABOUT THE BARNACLE GOOSE.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Baptista Porta's Account, 331.&mdash;Max Müller on, 331.&mdash;Gerarde's
+Account, 332.&mdash;Giraldus Cambrensis, 332.&mdash;Professor Rolleston.
+Drayton's <i>Poly-olbion</i>, 333.&mdash;Sir Kenelm Digby and Sir J. Emerson
+Tennent, 334.&mdash;Finding the Barnacle, 334.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#LEAVES_ABOUT_BOOKWORMS" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  LEAVES ABOUT BOOKWORMS</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Bookworms, their Destructiveness, 336, 337.&mdash;How to Destroy, 338.&mdash;The
+Death-watch, 339.&mdash;Lines by Swift, 340.</p>
+
+<p class="center1"><a href="#BORING_MARINE_ANIMALS_AND_HUMAN_ENGINEERS" style="text-decoration: none;">
+  BORING MARINE ANIMALS, AND HUMAN ENGINEERS.</a></p>
+<p class="tocsum">Life and Labours of the Pholas, 341.&mdash;Family of the Pholas,
+342.&mdash;Curious Controversy, 343.&mdash;Boring Apparatus, 342.&mdash;Several
+Observers, 347, 348.&mdash;Boring Annelids, 348.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<h2><a name="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS" id="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
+
+<table class="illo-table" id="TOI" summary="ILLUSTRATIONS">
+  <tr>
+    <td class="c1">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="c2">Page</td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td class="c1">
+	  <a href="#i_002.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;">KING PENGUINS</a></td>
+    <td class="c2">Frontispiece</td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td class="c1">
+	  <a href="#i_031.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;">THE TWO-HORNED AFRICAN RHINOCEROS</a></td>
+    <td class="c2">28</td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td class="c1">
+	  <a href="#i_045.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;">SEAL AND MERMAID</a></td>
+    <td class="c2">40</td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td class="c1">
+	  <a href="#i_083.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;">THE GREAT ANT-BEAR (ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY'S)</a></td>
+    <td class="c2">76</td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td class="c1">
+	  <a href="#i_237.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;">FRASER'S EAGLE OWL, FROM FERNANDO PO</a></td>
+    <td class="c2">228</td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td class="c1">
+	  <a href="#i_285.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;">SQUARE-BROWED MALTHE AND DOUBLE FISH</a></td>
+    <td class="c2">274</td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td class="c1">
+	  <a href="#i_301.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;">THE TREE-CLIMBING CRAB</a></td>
+    <td class="c2">288</td>
+  </tr>
+
+  <tr>
+    <td class="c1">
+	  <a href="#i_333.jpg" style="text-decoration: none;">CHAMELEONS</a></td>
+    <td class="c2">318</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center f2">ECCENTRICITIES</p>
+<p class="center f1">OF</p>
+<p class="center f2">THE ANIMAL CREATION.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<h2><a name="INTRODUCTORY_CURIOSITIES_OF_ZOOLOGY"
+  id="INTRODUCTORY_CURIOSITIES_OF_ZOOLOGY"></a>INTRODUCTORY.&mdash;CURIOSITIES OF ZOOLOGY.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_013.jpg" alt="Letter C"/>
+</div>
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>CURIOUS</b>
+creatures of Animal Life have been objects of interest to
+mankind in all ages and countries; the universality of which may be
+traced to that feeling which "makes the whole world kin."</p>
+
+<p>It has been remarked with emphatic truth by a popular writer, that "we
+have in the Bible and in the engraven and pictorial records the earliest
+evidence of the attention paid to Natural History in general. The 'navy
+of Tarshish' contributed to the wisdom of him who not only 'spake of the
+trees from the cedar of Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth
+out of the wall,' but 'also of beasts, and of fowls, and of creeping
+things, and of fishes,'<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+say nothing of numerous other passages
+showing the progress that zoological knowledge had already made. The
+Egyptian records bear testimony to a familiarity not only with the forms
+of a multitude of wild animals, but with their habits and geographical
+distribution."</p>
+
+<p>The collections of living animals, now popularly known as Zoological
+Gardens, are of considerable antiquity. We read of such gardens in China
+as far back as 2,000 years; but they consisted chiefly of some favourite
+animals, such as stags, fish, and tortoises. The Greeks, under Pericles,
+introduced peacocks in large numbers from India. The Romans had their
+elephants; and the first giraffe in Rome, under Cæsar, was as great an
+event in the history of zoological gardens at its time as the arrival in
+1849 of the Hippopotamus was in London. The first zoological garden of
+which we have any detailed account is that in the reign of the Chinese
+Emperor, Wen Wang, founded by him about 1150 A.D., and named by him "The
+Park of Intelligence;" it contained mammalia, birds, fish, and amphibia.
+The zoological gardens of former times served their masters occasionally
+as hunting-grounds. This was constantly the case in Persia; and in
+Germany, so late as 1576, the Emperor Maximilian II. kept such a park
+for different animals near his castle, Neugebah, in which he frequently
+chased.</p>
+
+<p>Alexander the Great possessed his zoological gardens. We find from Pliny
+that Alexander had given orders to the keepers to send all the rare
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> and
+curious animals which died in the gardens to Aristotle.</p>
+
+<p>Splendid must have been the zoological gardens which the Spaniards found
+connected with the Palace of Montezuma. The letters of Ferdinand Cortez
+and other writings of the time, as well as more recently "The History
+of the Indians," by Antonio Herrera, give most interesting and detailed
+accounts of the menagerie in Montezuma's park. The buildings belonging
+to these gardens were all gorgeous, as became the grandeur of the Indian
+prince; they were supported by pillars, each of which was hewn out of
+a single piece of some precious stone. Cool, arched galleries led into
+the different parts of the garden&mdash;to the marine and fresh-water basins,
+containing innumerable water-fowl,&mdash;to the birds of prey, falcons
+and eagles, which latter especially were represented in the greatest
+variety,&mdash;to the crocodiles, alligators, and serpents, some of them
+belonging to the most venomous species. The halls of a large square
+building contained the dens of the lions, tigers, leopards, bears,
+wolves, and other wild animals. Three hundred slaves were employed in
+the gardens tending the animals, upon which great care was bestowed, and
+scrupulous attention paid to their cleanliness. To this South American
+zoological garden of the sixteenth century no other of its time could be
+compared.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<p>More than six centuries ago, our Plantagenet<span class="pagenum">
+<a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> kings kept in the Tower
+of London exotic animals for their recreation. The Lion Tower was built
+here by Henry III., who commenced assembling here a menagerie with three
+leopards sent to him by the Emperor Frederic II., "in token of his regal
+shield of arms, wherein those leopards were pictured." Here, in 1255,
+the Sheriffs built a house "for the King's elephant," brought from
+France, and the first seen in England. Our early sovereigns had a mews
+in the Tower as well as a menagerie:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="verse">"Merry Margaret, as Midsomer flowre,</div>
+    <div class="verse">Gentyll as faucon and hawke of the Towre."&mdash;<i>Skelton.</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the reign of Charles I., a sort of Royal Menagerie took the place of
+the deer with which St. James's Park was stocked in the days of Henry
+VIII, and Queen Elizabeth. Charles II. greatly enlarged and improved
+the Park; and here he might be seen playing with his dogs and feeding
+his ducks. The Bird-cage Walk, on the south side of the Park, had in
+Charles's time the cages of an aviary disposed among the trees. Near the
+east end of a canal was the Decoy, where water-fowl were kept; and here
+was Duck Island, with its salaried Governor.</p>
+
+<p>Evelyn, in 1664, went to "the Physique Garden in St. James's," where
+he first saw "orange trees and other fine trees." He enumerates in
+the menagerie, "an ornocratylus, or pelican; a fowle between a storke
+and a swan; a melancholy water-fowl, brought from Astracan by the
+Russian ambassador; a milk-white raven; two Balearian cranes," one of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+which, had a wooden leg "made by a soulder:" there were also "deere of
+severall countries, white, spotted like leopards; antelopes, an elk,
+red deer, roebucks, staggs, Guinea goates, Arabian sheepe, &amp;c." There
+were "withy-potts, or nests, for the wild fowle to lay their eggs in, a
+little above y<sup>e</sup> surface of y<sup>e</sup> water."</p>
+
+<p>"25 Feb. 1664. This night I walk'd into St. James his Parke, where I saw
+many strange creatures, as divers sorts of outlandish deer, Guiny sheep,
+a white raven, a great parrot, a storke.... Here are very stately walkes
+set with lime trees on both sides, and a fine pallmall."<a name="FNanchor_3_3"
+id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<p>Upon the eastern island is the Swiss Cottage of the Ornithological
+Society, built in 1841 with a grant of 300l. from the Lords of
+the Treasury: it contains a council-room, keepers' apartments,
+steam-hatching apparatus; contiguous are feeding-places and decoys; and
+the aquatic fowl breed on the island, making their own nests among the
+shrubs and grasses.</p>
+
+<p>The majority of Zoological Gardens now in existence have been founded
+in this century, with the exception of the Jardin des Plantes, which,
+although founded in 1626, did not receive its first living animals until
+the year 1793-1794. Hitherto, it had been a Garden of Plants exclusively.</p>
+
+<p>We shall not be expected to enumerate the great Continental gardens,
+of which that at Berlin, half an hour's drive beyond the Brandenburg
+gates, contains the Royal Menagerie; it is open upon the payment of
+an admission fee, and generally resembles
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
+our garden at the Regent's
+Park. Berlin has also its Zoological Collection in its Museum of Natural
+History. This collection is one of the richest and most extensive in
+Europe, especially in the department of Ornithology: it includes the
+birds collected by Pallas and Wildenow, and the fishes of Bloch. The
+best specimens are those from Mexico, the Red Sea, and the Cape. The
+whole is exceedingly well arranged, and <i>named</i> for the convenience of
+students. Still, our Zoological Collection in the British Museum (to be
+hereafter removed to South Kensington) is allowed to be the finest in
+Europe.</p>
+
+<p>The Zoological Society of London was instituted in 1826, and occupies
+now about seventeen acres of gardens in the Regent's Park. Among the
+earliest tenants of the Menagerie were a pair of emues from New Holland;
+two Arctic bears and a Russian bear; a herd of kangaroos; Cuban mastiffs
+and Thibet watch-dogs; two llamas from Peru; a splendid collection of
+eagles, falcons, and owls; a pair of beavers; cranes, spoonbills, and
+storks; zebras and Indian cows; Esquimaux dogs; armadilloes; and a
+collection of monkeys. To the menagerie have since been added an immense
+number of species of <i>Mammalia</i> and <i>Birds</i>; in 1849, a collection
+of <i>Reptiles</i>; and in 1853, a collection of <i>Fish</i>, <i>Mollusca</i>,
+<i>Zoophytes</i>, and other <i>Aquatic Animals</i>. In 1830, the menagerie
+collected by George IV. at Sandpit-gate, Windsor, was removed to the
+Society's Gardens; and 1834 the last of the Tower Menagerie was received
+here. It is now the finest public Vivarium in Europe.</p>
+
+<p>The following are some of the more remarkable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+animals which the Society
+have possessed, or are now in the menagerie:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<i>Antelopes</i>, the great family of, finely represented. The
+beautiful <i>Elands</i> were bequeathed by the late Earl of Derby, and
+have bred freely since their arrival in 1851. The Leucoryx is the
+first of her race born out of Africa. <i>Ant-eater. Giant</i>, brought
+to England from Brazil in 1853, was exhibited in Broad-street,
+St. Giles's, until purchased by the Zoological Society for 200l.
+<i>Apteryx</i>, or <i>Kiwi</i> bird, from New Zealand; the first living
+specimen brought to England of this rare bird. The <i>Fish-house</i>,
+built of iron and glass, in 1853, consisting of a series of glass
+tanks, in which fish spawn, zoophytes produce young, and algæ
+luxuriate; crustacea and mollusca live successfully, and ascidian
+polypes are illustrated, together with sea anemones, jelly-fishes,
+and star-fishes, rare shell-fishes, &amp;c.: a new world of animal
+life is here seen as in the depths of the ocean, with masses of
+rock, sand, gravel, corallines, sea-weed, and sea-water; the
+animals are in a state of natural restlessness, now quiescent,
+now eating and being eaten. <i>Aurochs</i>, or <i>European Bisons</i>: a
+pair presented by the Emperor of Russia, in 1847, from the forest
+of Bialowitzca: the male died in 1848, the female in 1849, from
+pleuro-pneumonia. <i>Bears</i>: the collection is one of the largest
+ever made. <i>Elephants</i>: including an Indian elephant calf and its
+mother. In 1847 died here the great Indian elephant Jack, having
+been in the gardens sixteen years. Adjoining the stable is a tank
+of water, of a depth nearly equal to the height of a full-grown
+elephant. In 1851 the Society possessed a <i>herd of four elephants</i>,
+besides a hippopotamus, a rhinoceros, and both species of tapir;
+being the largest collection of pachydermata ever exhibited in
+Europe. <i>Giraffes</i>: four received in 1836 cost the Society upwards
+of 2,300<i>l.</i>, including 1,000<i>l.</i> for steamboat passage: the female
+produced six male fawns here between 1840 and 1851. <i>Hippopotamus</i>,
+a young male (the first living specimen seen in England), received
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+from Egypt in May, 1850, when ten months old, seven feet long,
+and six and a-half feet in girth; also a female hippopotamus,
+received 1854. <i>Humming-birds</i>: Mr. Gould's matchless collection
+of 2,000 examples was exhibited here in 1851 and 1852. <i>Iguanas</i>,
+two from Cuba and Carthagena, closely resembling, in everything
+but size, the fossil Iguanodon. The <i>Lions</i> number generally from
+eight to ten, including a pair of cubs born in the gardens in 1853.
+<i>Orang-utan</i> and <i>Chimpanzee</i>: the purchase-money of the latter
+sometimes exceeds 300<i>l.</i> The orang "Darby," brought from Borneo
+in 1851, is the finest yet seen in Europe, very intelligent, and
+docile as a child. <i>Parrot-houses</i>: they sometimes contain from
+sixty to seventy species. <i>Rapacious Birds</i>: so extensive a series
+of eagles and vultures has never yet been seen at one view. <i>The</i>
+<i>Reptile-house</i> was fitted up in 1849; the creatures are placed in
+large plate-glass cases: here are pythons and a rattle-snake, with
+a young one born here; here is also a case of the tree-frogs of
+Europe: a yellow snake from Jamaica has produced eight young in the
+gardens. <i>Cobra de Capello</i>, from India: in 1852, a keeper in the
+gardens was killed by the bite of this serpent. <i>A large Boa</i> in
+1850 swallowed a blanket, and disgorged it in thirty-three days.
+A <i>one-horned Rhinoceros</i>, of continental India, was obtained in
+1834, when it was about four years old, and weighed 26 cwt.; it
+died in 1850: it was replaced by a female, about five years old.
+<i>Satin Bower-Birds</i>, from Sydney: a pair have built here a bower,
+or breeding-place. <i>Tapir</i> of the Old World, from Mount Ophir;
+the nearest existing form the Paleotherium. <i>Tigers</i>: a pair of
+magnificent specimens, presented by the Guicoway of Baroda in 1851;
+a pair of clouded tigers, 1854. <i>The Wapiti Deer</i> breeds every year
+in the Menagerie.</div>
+
+<p>The animals in the Gardens, although reduced in number, are more
+valuable and interesting than when their number was higher. The mission
+of the Society's head-keeper, to collect rare animals for the Menagerie,
+has been very profitable. The additional
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+houses from time to time, are
+very expensive: the new monkey house, fittings, and work cost 4,842<i>l.</i>;
+and in 1864, the sum of 6,604<i>l.</i> was laid out in permanent additions to
+the establishment.</p>
+
+<p>Very rare, and consequently expensive, animals are generally purchased.
+Thus, the first Rhinoceros cost 1,000<i>l.</i>; the four Giraffes, 700<i>l.</i>,
+and their carriage an additional 700<i>l.</i> The Elephant and calf were
+bought in 1851 for 500<i>l.</i>; and the Hippopotamus, although a gift, was
+not brought home and housed at less than 1,000<i>l.</i>&mdash;a sum which he
+more than realised in the famous Exhibition season, when the receipts
+were 10,000<i>l.</i> above the previous year. The Lion Albert was purchased
+for 140<i>l.</i>; a tiger, in 1852, for 200<i>l.</i> The value of some of the
+smaller birds will appear, however, more startling: thus, the pair
+of black-necked Swans were purchased for 80<i>l.</i>; a pair of crowned
+Pigeons and two Maleos, 60<i>l.</i>; a pair of Victoria Pigeons, 35<i>l.</i>;
+four Mandarin Ducks, 70<i>l.</i> Most of these rare birds (now in the great
+aviary) came from the Knowsley collection, at the sale of which,
+in 1851, purchases were made to the extent of 985<i>l.</i> It would be
+impossible from these prices, however, to judge of the present value
+of the animals. Take the Rhinoceros, for example: the first specimen
+cost 1,000<i>l.</i>; the second, quite as fine a brute, only 350<i>l.</i> Lions
+range again from 40<i>l.</i> to 180<i>l.</i>, and Tigers from 40<i>l.</i> to 200<i>l.</i>
+The ignorance displayed by some persons as to the value of well-known
+objects is something marvellous.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+&mdash;A sea-captain demanded 600<i>l.</i> for
+a pair of Pythons, and at last took 40<i>l.</i>! An American offered the
+Society a Grisly Bear for 2,000<i>l.</i>, to be delivered in the United
+States; and, more laughable still, a moribund Walrus, which had been fed
+for nine weeks on salt pork and meal, was offered for the trifling sum
+of 700<i>l.</i>!</p>
+
+<p>There is a strange notion that the Zoological Society has proposed a
+large reward for a "Tortoiseshell Tom-cat," and one was accordingly
+offered to the Society for 250<i>l.</i>! But male Tortoiseshell Cats may be
+had in many quarters.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+<p>The Surrey Zoological Gardens were established in 1831. Thither
+Cross removed his menagerie from the King's Mews, where it had been
+transferred from
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+Exeter Change. At Walworth a glazed circular
+building, 100 feet in diameter, was built for the cages of the
+carnivorous animals (Lions, Tigers, Leopards, &amp;c.); and other houses
+for Mammalia, Birds, &amp;c. Here, in 1834, was first exhibited a young
+Indian one-horned Rhinoceros, for which Cross paid 800<i>l.</i> It was the
+only specimen brought to England for twenty years. In 1836 were added
+three Giraffes, one fifteen feet high. The menagerie was dispersed in
+1856. The menagerie at Exeter Change was a poor collection, though the
+admission-charge was, at one period, half-a-crown!</p>
+
+<p>The collections of animals exhibited at fairs have added little to
+Zoological information; but we may mention that Wombwell, one of the
+most noted of the showfolk, bought a pair of the first Boa Constrictors
+imported into England: for these he paid 75<i>l.</i>, and in three weeks
+realised considerably more than that sum by their exhibition. At the
+time of his death, in 1850, Wombwell was possessed of three huge
+menageries, the cost of maintaining which averaged at least 35<i>l.</i> per
+day; and he used to estimate that, from mortality and disease, he had
+lost, from first to last, from 12,000<i>l.</i> to 15,000<i>l.</i></p>
+
+<p>Our object in the following succession of sketches of the habits and
+eccentricities of the more striking animals, and their principal
+claims upon our attention, is to present, in narrative, their leading
+characteristics, and thus to secure a willing audience from old and
+young.</p>
+
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> 1 Kings iv. 10.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> "Athenæum."</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Journal of Mr. E. Browne,
+son of Sir Thomas Browne.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> In April, 1842, Mr. Batty's
+collection of animals was sold by
+auction, when the undermentioned animals brought&mdash;Large red-faced Monkey
+(clever), 1<i>l.</i> 10<i>s.</i>; fine Coatimondi, 1<i>l.</i> 4<i>s.</i>; Mandril (the
+only one in England), 1<i>l.</i> 17<i>s.</i>; pair of Java Hares, 1<i>l.</i> 9<i>s.</i>; a
+Puma, 14<i>l.</i>; handsome Senegal Lioness, 9<i>l.</i>; a Hyæna, 7<i>l.</i>; splendid
+Barbary Lioness, 24<i>l.</i>; handsome Bengal Tigress, 90<i>l.</i>; brown Bear,
+6<i>l.</i>; the largest Polar Bear in Europe, 37<i>l.</i>; pair of Esquimaux
+Sledge-Dogs, 3<i>l.</i> 7<i>s.</i>; pair of Golden Pheasants, 3<i>l.</i> 10<i>s.</i>; a
+blue-and-buff Macaw (clever talker), 2<i>l.</i> 10<i>s.</i>; a horned Owl, from
+North America, 3<i>l.</i> 10<i>s.</i>; a magnificent Barbary Lion, trained for
+performance, 105 guineas; a Lioness, similarly trained, 90 guineas;
+handsome Senegal performing Leopard, 34 guineas; two others, 50 guineas;
+Ursine Sloth, 12 guineas; Indian Buffalo, 10 guineas; sagacious male
+Elephant, trained for theatrical performances, 350 guineas. The above is
+stated to have been the first sale of the kind by public auction in this
+country.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_RHINOCEROS_IN_ENGLAND" id="THE_RHINOCEROS_IN_ENGLAND"></a>THE RHINOCEROS IN ENGLAND.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>THE</b> intellectual helps to the study of zoology are nowhere more
+strikingly evident than in the finest collection of pachyderms
+(thick-skinned animals) in the world, now possessed by our Zoological
+Society. Here we have a pair of Indian Elephants, a pair of African
+Elephants, a pair of Hippopotami, a pair of Indian Rhinoceroses, and an
+African or two-horned Rhinoceros.</p>
+
+<p>The specimens of the Rhinoceros which have been exhibited in Europe
+since the revival of literature have been few and far between. The
+first was of the one-horned species, sent from India to Emmanuel. King
+of Portugal, in the year 1513. The Sovereign made a present of it to
+the Pope; but the animal being seized during its passage with a fit of
+fury, occasioned the loss of the vessel in which it was transported. A
+second Rhinoceros was brought to England in 1685; a third was exhibited
+over almost the whole of Europe in 1739; and a fourth, a female, in
+1741. A fifth specimen arrived at Versailles in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> 1771, and it died in
+1793, at the age of about twenty-six years. The sixth was a very young
+Rhinoceros, which died in this country in the year 1800. The seventh, a
+young specimen, was in the possession of Mr. Cross, at Exeter Change,
+about 1814; and an eighth specimen was living about the same time in
+the Garden of Plants at Paris. In 1834 Mr. Cross received at the Surrey
+Gardens, from the Birman empire, a Rhinoceros, a year and a-half old,
+as already stated at page 21. In 1851 the Zoological Society purchased
+a full-grown female Rhinoceros; and in 1864 they received a male
+Rhinoceros from Calcutta. All these specimens were from India, and
+<i>one-horned</i>; so that the <i>two-horned</i> Rhinoceros had not been brought
+to England until the arrival of an African Rhinoceros, <i>two-horned</i>, in
+September, 1868.<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>
+
+<p>The ancient history of the Rhinoceros is interesting, but intricate. It
+seems to be mentioned in several passages of the Scriptures, in most
+of which the animal or animals intended to be designated was or were
+the <i>Rhinoceros unicornis</i>, or Great Asiatic one-horned Rhinoceros.
+M. Lesson expresses a decided opinion to this effect: indeed, the
+description in Job (chap. xxxix.) would almost forbid the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> conclusion
+that any animal was in the writer's mind except one of surpassing bulk
+and indomitable strength. The impotence of man is finely contrasted
+with the might of the Rhinoceros in this description, which would be
+overcharged if it applied to the less powerful animals alluded to in the
+previous passages.</p>
+
+<p>It has also been doubted whether accounts of the Indian Wild Ass, given
+by Ctesias, were not highly coloured and exaggerated descriptions of
+this genus; and whether the Indian Ass of Aristotle was not a Rhinoceros.</p>
+
+<p>Agatharchides describes the one-horned Rhinoceros by name, and speaks
+of its ripping up the belly of the Elephant. This is, probably, the
+earliest occurrence of the name <i>Rhinoceros</i>. The Rhinoceros which
+figured in the celebrated pomps of Ptolemy Philadelphus was an
+Ethiopian, and seems to have marched last in the procession of wild
+animals, probably on account of its superior rarity, and immediately
+after the Cameleopard.</p>
+
+<p>Dion Cassius speaks of the Rhinoceros killed in the circus with a
+Hippopotamus in the show given by Augustus to celebrate his victory over
+Cleopatra; he says that the Hippopotamus and this animal were then first
+seen and killed at Rome. The Rhinoceros then slain is thought to have
+been African, and two-horned.</p>
+
+<p>The Rhinoceros clearly described by Strabo, as seen by him, was
+one-horned. That noticed by Pausanias as "the Bull of Ethiopia," was
+two-horned, and he describes the relative position of the horns.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Wood, in his "Zoography," gives an engraving of the coin of Domitian
+(small Roman brass), on the reverse of which is the distinct form of a
+two-horned Rhinoceros: its exhibition to the Roman people, probably of
+the very animal represented on the coin, is particularly described in
+one of the epigrams attributed to Martial, who lived in the reigns of
+Titus and Domitian. By the description of the epigram it appears that
+a combat between a Rhinoceros and a Bear was intended, but that it was
+very difficult to irritate the more unwieldy animal so as to make him
+display his usual ferocity; at length, however, he tossed the bear from
+his double horn, with as much facility as a bull tosses to the sky the
+bundles placed for the purpose of enraging him. Thus far the coin and
+the epigram perfectly agree as to the existence of the double horn; but,
+unfortunately, commentators and antiquaries were not to be convinced
+that a Rhinoceros could have more than one horn, and have at once
+displayed their sagacity and incredulity in their explanations on the
+subject.</p>
+
+<p>Two, at least, of the two-horned Rhinoceroses were shown at Rome in the
+reign of Domitian. The Emperors Antoninus, Heliogabalus, and Gordian
+also exhibited Rhinoceroses. Cosmas speaks expressly of the Ethiopian
+Rhinoceros as having two horns, and of its power of moving them.</p>
+
+<p>The tractability of the Asiatic Rhinoceros has been confirmed by
+observers in the native country of the animal. Bishop Heber saw at
+Lucknow five or six very large Rhinoceroses, of which he found that
+prints<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+and drawings had given him a very imperfect conception. They
+were more bulky animals, and of a darker colour than the Bishop
+supposed; though the latter difference might be occasioned by oiling
+the skin. The folds of their skin also surpassed all which the Bishop
+had expected. Those at Lucknow were quiet and gentle animals, except
+that one of them had a feud with horses. They had sometimes howdahs, or
+chaise-like seats, on their backs, and were once fastened in a carriage,
+but only as an experiment, which was not followed up. The Bishop,
+however, subsequently saw a Rhinoceros (the present of Lord Amherst to
+the Guicwar), which was so tamed as to be ridden by a Mohout quite as
+patiently as an elephant.</p>
+
+<p>No two-horned Rhinoceros seems to have been brought alive to Europe in
+modern times. Indeed, up to a comparatively late period, their form
+was known only by the horns which were preserved in museums; nor did
+voyagers give any sufficient details to impart any clear idea of the
+form of the animal. The rude figure given by Aldrovandus, in 1639,
+leaves no doubt that, wretched as it is, it must have been taken from a
+two-horned Rhinoceros.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Parsons endeavoured to show that the one-horned Rhinoceros always
+belonged to Asia, and the two-horned Rhinoceros to Africa; but there are
+two-horned Rhinoceroses in Asia, as well as in Africa. Flacourt saw one
+in the Bay of Soldaque, near the Cape of Good Hope, at a distance. Kolbe
+and others always considered the Rhinoceros of the Cape as two-horned;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
+but Colonel Gordon seems to be the first who entirely detailed the
+species with any exactness. Sparrman described the Cape Rhinoceros,
+though his figure of the animal is stiff and ill-drawn. At this period
+it was well known that the Cape species was not only distinguished by
+having two horns from the Indian Rhinoceros then known, but also by an
+absence of the folds of the skin so remarkable in the latter.</p>
+
+<p>We should here notice the carelessness, to call it by the mildest
+name, of Bruce, who gave to the world a representation of a two-horned
+Rhinoceros from Abyssinia, with a strongly folded skin. The truth
+appears to be that the body of the animal figured by Bruce was copied
+from that of the one-horned Rhinoceros given by Buffon, to which Bruce
+added a second horn. Salt proved that the Abyssinian Rhinoceros is
+two-horned, and that it resembles that of the Cape.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter bord"><a name="i_031.jpg" id="i_031.jpg"></a>
+  <img src="images/i_031.jpg" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">KING THE TWO-HORNED AFRICAN RHINOCEROS.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Sparmann exposes the errors and poetic fancies of Buffon respecting the
+impenetrable nature of the skin. He ordered one of his Hottentots to
+make a trial of this with his hassagai on a Rhinoceros which had been
+shot. Though this weapon was far from being in good order, and had no
+other sharpness than that which it had received from the forge, the
+Hottentot, at the distance of five or six paces, not only pierced with
+it the thick hide of the animal, but buried it half a foot deep in its
+body.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Tegetmeier has sufficiently described in the "Field" journal the
+African Rhinoceros just received
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+at the Zoological Society's menagerie
+in the Regent's-park, and which has been sketched by Mr. T. W. Wood
+expressly for the present volume.</p>
+
+<p>It was captured about a year ago in Upper Nubia by the native hunters
+in the employment of Mr. Casanova, at Kassala; and was sent, by way of
+Alexandria and Trieste, to Mr. Karl Hagenbeck, of Hamburg, a dealer in
+wild beasts, who sold it to the Zoological Society.</p>
+
+<p>"This animal is very distinct from its Asiatic congeners; it differs
+strikingly in the number of horns, as well as in the character of its
+skin, which is destitute of those large folds, which cause the Indian
+species to remind the observer of a gigantic 'hog in armour.'</p>
+
+<p>"The arrival of this animal will tend to clear up the confusion
+that prevails respecting the number of distinct species of African
+Rhinoceros. Some writers&mdash;as Sir W. C. Harris&mdash;admit the existence of
+two species only, the dark and the light, or, as they are termed, the
+'white' and the 'black.' Others, as Dr. A. Smith, describe three; some,
+as the late Mr. Anderssen, write of four; and Mr. Chapman even speaks of
+a fifth species or hybrid.</p>
+
+<p>"Three of these species are very distinctly defined&mdash;the ordinary dark
+animal, the <i>Rhinoceros bicornis</i>, in which the posterior horn is much
+shorter than the anterior; the <i>Rhinoceros keitloa</i>, in which the two
+horns are of equal length; and the 'white' species, <i>Rhinoceros simus</i>.
+The last, among other characters, is, according to Dr. Smith,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+distinguished by the square character of the upper lip, which is not
+prehensile.</p>
+
+<p>"The young animal now (October, 1868) in the Zoological Society's
+garden, appears to belong to the first-named species, the largest
+specimens of which when full grown reach a height of 6ft., and a length
+of 13ft., the tail not included. Its present height is 3-1/2ft., and
+length about 6ft. In general appearance the mature animal resembles a
+gigantic pig, the limbs being brought under the body. The feet are most
+singular in form, being very distinctly three-toed, and the remarkable
+trefoil-like <i>spoors</i> that they make in the soil render the animal
+easy to track. The horns vary greatly in length in different animals;
+the first not unfrequently reaches a length of 2ft., the second being
+considerably shorter. These appendages differ very much from ordinary
+horns; they are, in fact, more of the nature of agglutinated hair, being
+attached to the skin only, and consequently they separate from the skull
+when the latter is preserved.</p>
+
+<p>"The head is not remarkable for comeliness, especially in the mature
+animal, in which the skin of the face is deeply wrinkled, and the small
+eyes are surrounded with many folds. The upper lip is elongated, and is
+used in gathering the food. The adult animals are described by Sir W. C.
+Harris, in his 'Illustrations of the Game Animals of South Africa,' as
+'swinish, cross-grained, ill-tempered, wallowing brutes.'"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Burchell, during his travels in Africa, shot
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> nine Rhinoceroses,
+besides a smaller one. The latter he presented to the British Museum.
+The animal is, however, becoming every day more and more scarce in
+Southern Africa; indeed, it is rarely to be met with in some parts.
+It appears that, in one day, two Rhinoceroses were shot by Speelman,
+the faithful Hottentot who attended Mr. Burchell. He fired off his gun
+but twice, and each time he killed a Rhinoceros! The animal's sense of
+hearing is very quick: should he be disturbed, he sometimes becomes
+furious, and pursues his enemy; and then, if once he gets sight of the
+hunter, it is scarcely possible for him to escape, unless he possesses
+extraordinary coolness and presence of mind. Yet, if he will quietly
+wait till the enraged animal makes a run at him, and will then spring
+suddenly on one side, to let it pass, he may gain time enough for
+reloading his gun before the Rhinoceros gets sight of him again, which,
+fortunately, owing to its imperfection of sight, it does slowly and with
+difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>Speelman, in shooting a large male Rhinoceros, used bullets cast with
+an admixture of tin, to render them harder. They were flattened and
+beat out of shape by striking against the bones, but those which were
+found lodged in the fleshy parts had preserved their proper form, a fact
+which shows how little the hardness of the creature's hide corresponds
+with the vulgar opinion of its being impenetrable to a musket-ball.
+Mr. Burchell found this Rhinoceros nearly cut up. On each side of the
+carcase the Hottentots had made a fire to warm themselves; and round a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+third fire were assembled at least twenty-four Bushmen, most of whom
+were employed the whole night long in broiling, eating, and talking.
+Their appetite seemed insatiable, for no sooner had they broiled and
+eaten one slice of meat than they turned to the carcase and cut another.
+The meat was excellent, and had much the taste of beef. "The tongue,"
+says Mr. Burchell, "is a dainty treat, even for an epicure." The hide is
+cut into strips, three feet or more in length, rounded to the thickness
+of a man's finger, and tapering to the top. This is called a <i>shambok</i>,
+and is universally used in the colony of the Cape for a horsewhip, and
+is much more durable than the whips of European manufacture. The natural
+food of the Rhinoceros, till the animal fled before the colonists, was a
+pale, bushy shrub, called the Rhinoceros-bush, which burns while green
+as freely as the driest fuel, so as readily to make a roadside fire.</p>
+
+<p>The horn of the Rhinoceros, single or double, has its special history by
+the way of popular tradition. From the earliest times this horn has been
+supposed to possess preservative virtues and mysterious properties&mdash;to
+be capable of curing diseases and discovering the presence of poison;
+and in all countries where the Rhinoceros exists, but especially in the
+East, such is still the opinion respecting it. In the details of the
+first voyage of the English to India, in 1591, we find Rhinoceros' horns
+monopolised by the native sovereigns on account of their reputed virtues
+in detecting the presence of poison.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Thunberg observes, in his "Journey into Caffraria," that "the horns of
+the Rhinoceros were kept by some people, both in town and country, not
+only as rarities, but also as useful in diseases, and for the purpose
+of detecting poisons. As to the former of these intentions, the fine
+shavings were supposed to cure convulsions and spasms in children. With
+respect to the latter, it was generally believed that goblets made of
+these horns would discover a poisonous draught that was poured into
+them, by making the liquor ferment till it ran quite out of the goblet.
+Of these horns goblets are made, which are set in gold and silver and
+presented to kings, persons of distinction, and particular friends, or
+else sold at a high price, sometimes at the rate of fifty rix-dollars
+each." Thunberg adds:&mdash;"When I tried these horns, both wrought and
+unwrought, both old and young horns, with several sorts of poison, weak
+as well as strong, I observed not the least motion or effervescence; but
+when a solution of corrosive sublimate or other similar substance was
+poured into one of these horns, there arose only a few bubbles, produced
+by the air which had been enclosed in the pores of the horn and which
+were now disengaged."</p>
+
+<p>Rankin (in his "Wars and Sports") states this mode of using it: a small
+quantity of water is put into the concave part of the root, then hold it
+with the point downwards and stir the water with the point of an iron
+nail till it is discoloured, when the patient is to drink it.</p>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a>
+The conveyance of a Rhinoceros over sea is a labour of some risk. In
+1814 a full-grown specimen on his voyage from Calcutta to this country
+became so furious that he was fastened down to the ship's deck, with
+part of a chain-cable round his neck; and even then he succeeded in
+destroying a portion of the vessel, till, a heavy storm coming on, the
+Rhinoceros was thrown overboard to prevent the serious consequence of
+his getting loose in the ship.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="STORIES_OF_MERMAIDS" id="STORIES_OF_MERMAIDS"></a>STORIES OF MERMAIDS.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_037.jpg" alt="Letter L"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>LESS</b> than half a century ago, a pretended
+Mermaid was one of the sights
+of a London season; to see which credulous persons rushed to pay
+half-crowns and shillings with a readiness which seemed to rebuke the
+record&mdash;that the existence of a Mermaid is an exploded fallacy of two
+centuries since.</p>
+
+<p>Mermaids have had a legendary existence from very early ages, for the
+Sirens of the ancients evidently belonged to the same remarkable family.
+Shakspeare uses the term Mermaid as synonymous with Siren:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="verse">"O train me not, sweet Mermaid, with thy note,</div>
+    <div class="verse">To drown me in thy sister's flood of tears;</div>
+    <div class="verse">Sing, Syren, for thyself."&mdash;<i>Comedy of Errors</i>, iii. 2.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Elsewhere, Shakspeare's use of the term is more applicable to the Siren
+than to the common idea of a Mermaid; as in the "Midsummer Night's
+Dream," where the "Mermaid on a dolphin's back" could not easily have
+been so placed. A Merman, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> male of this imaginary species, is
+mentioned by Taylor, the water-poet:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="verse">"A thing turmoyling in the sea we spide,</div>
+    <div class="verse2">Like to a Meareman."</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>An old writer has this ingenious illustration:&mdash;"Mermaids, in Homer,
+were witches, and their songs enchantments;" which reminds us of the
+invitation in Haydn's Mermaid's Song:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="verse">"Come with me, and we will go</div>
+	<div class="verse3">Where the rocks of coral grow."</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The orthodox Mermaid is half woman, half fish; and the fishy half is
+sometimes depicted as doubly tailed, such as we see in the heraldry of
+France and Germany; and in the Basle edition of Ptolemy's "Geography,"
+dated 1540, a double-tailed Mermaid figures in one of the plates. In the
+arms of the Fishmongers' Company of London, the supporters are "a Merman
+and maid, first, armed, the latter with a mirror in the left hand,
+proper." From this heraldic employment, the Mermaid became a popular
+tavern sign; and there was an old dance called the Mermaid.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Thomas Browne refers to the <i>picture</i> of Mermaids, though he does
+not admit their existence. They "are conceived to answer the shape of
+the ancient Sirens that attempted upon Ulysses; which, notwithstanding,
+were of another description, containing no fishy composure, but made up
+of man and bird." Sir Thomas is inclined to refer the Mermaid to Dagon,
+the tutelary deity of the Philistines,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> which, according to the common
+opinion, had a human female bust and a fish-like termination; though the
+details of this fish idolatry are entirely conjectural.</p>
+
+<p>Leyden, the Scottish poet, has left a charming ballad, entitled "The
+Mermaid," the scene of which is laid at Corrievreckin: the opening of
+this poem Sir Walter Scott praised as exhibiting a power of numbers
+which, for mere melody of sound, has seldom been excelled in English
+poetry:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse">"On Jura's heath how sweetly swell</div>
+    <div class="verse2">The murmurs of the mountain bee!</div>
+    <div class="verse">How softly mourns the writhèd shell</div>
+    <div class="verse2">Of Jura's shore its parent sea!</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse">"But softer floating, o'er the deep,</div>
+    <div class="verse2">The Mermaid's sweet sea-soothing lay,</div>
+    <div class="verse">That charmed the dancing waves to sleep</div>
+    <div class="verse2">Before the bark of Colonsay."</div>
+  </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The ballad thus describes the wooing of the gallant chieftain:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse">"Proud swells her heart! she deems at last</div>
+    <div class="verse2">To lure him with her silver tongue,</div>
+    <div class="verse">And, as the shelving rocks she passed,</div>
+    <div class="verse2">She raised her voice, and sweetly sung.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse">"In softer, sweeter strains she sung.</div>
+    <div class="verse2">Slow gliding o'er the moonlight bay.</div>
+    <div class="verse">When light to land the chieftain sprung.</div>
+    <div class="verse2">To hail the maid of Colonsay.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse">"O sad the Mermaid's gay notes fell,</div>
+    <div class="verse2">And sadly sink remote at sea!</div>
+    <div class="verse">O sadly mourns the writhèd shell</div>
+    <div class="verse2">Of Jura's shore, its parent sea.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse">"And ever as the year returns,
+	<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></div>
+    <div class="verse2">The charm-bound sailors know the day;</div>
+    <div class="verse">For sadly still the Mermaid mourns</div>
+    <div class="verse2">The lovely chief of Colonsay."</div>
+  </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Curious evidences of the existence of Mermaids are to be found in
+ancient authors. Pliny says that "the ambassadors to Augustine from Gaul
+declared that sea-women were often seen in their neighbourhood." Solinus
+and Aulus Gellius also speak of their existence. Some stories are,
+however, past credence. It is related in the "Histoire d'Angleterre"
+that, in the year 1187, a Merman was "fished up" off the coast of
+Suffolk, and kept for six months. It was like a man, but wanted speech,
+and at length escaped into the sea! In 1430, in the great tempests which
+destroyed the dykes in Holland, some women at Edam, in West Friesland,
+saw a Mermaid who had been driven by the waters into the meadows, which
+were overflowed. "They took it, dressed it in female attire, and taught
+it to spin!" It was taken to Haarlem, where it lived some years! Then we
+read of Ceylonese fishermen, in 1560, catching, at one draught, seven
+Mermen and Mermaids, which were dissected! In 1531, a Mermaid, caught in
+the Baltic, was sent to Sigismund, King of Poland, with whom she lived
+three days, and was seen by the whole court!</p>
+
+<p>In Merollo's "Voyage to Congo," in 1682, Mermaids are said to be
+plentiful all along the river Zaire. In the "Aberdeen Almanack" for
+1688, it is predicted that "near the place where the famous
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> Dee
+payeth his tribute to the German Ocean," on the 1st, 13th, and 29th
+of May, and other specified times, curious observers may "undoubtedly
+see a pretty company of Mar Maids," and likewise hear their melodious
+voices. In another part of Scotland, about the same time, Brand, in his
+"Description of Orkney and Shetland," tells us that two fishermen drew
+up with a hook a Mermaid, "having face, arm, breast, shoulders, &amp;c., of
+a woman, and long hair hanging down the neck, but the nether part, from
+below the waist, hidden in the water." One of the fishermen stabbed her
+with a knife, and she was seen no more! The evidence went thus:&mdash;Brand
+was told by a lady and gentleman, who were told by a baillie to whom the
+fishing-boat belonged, who was told by the fishers! Valentyn describes a
+Mermaid he saw in 1714, on his voyage from Batavia to Europe, "sitting
+on the surface of the water," &amp;c. In 1758, a Mermaid is said to have
+been exhibited at the fair of St. Germain, in France. It was about two
+feet long, and sported about in a vessel of water. It was fed with bread
+and fish. It was a female, with negro features.</p>
+
+<p>In 1775 appeared a very circumstantial account of a Mermaid which was
+captured in the Grecian Archipelago in the preceding year, and exhibited
+in London. The account is ludicrously minute, and it ends with: "It is
+said to have an enchanting voice, which it never exerts except before
+a storm." This imposture was craftily made up out of the skin of the
+angle shark. In Mr. Morgan's "Tour to Milford
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+Haven in the year 1795,"
+appears an equally circumstantial account of a Mermaid, said to have
+been seen by one Henry Reynolds, a farmer, of Ren-y-hold, in the parish
+of Castlemartin, in 1782. It resembled a youth of sixteen or eighteen
+years of age, with a very white skin: it was bathing. The evidence
+is very roundabout, so that there were abundant means for converting
+some peculiar kind of fish into a Merman, without imputing intentional
+dishonesty to any one. "Something akin to this kind of evidence is
+observable in the account of a Mermaid seen in Caithness in 1809, which
+attracted much attention in England as well as in Scotland, and induced
+the Philosophical Society of Glasgow to investigate the matter. The
+Editor of a newspaper, who inserted the statement, had been told by a
+gentleman, who had been shown a letter by Sir John Sinclair, who had
+obtained it from Mr. Innes, to whom it had been written by Miss Mackay,
+who had heard the story from the persons (two servant girls and a boy)
+who had seen the strange animal in the water." (Chambers's "Book of
+Days.")</p>
+
+<p>Then we read of a so-called Mermaid, shown in the year 1794 at No. 7,
+Broad-court, Bow-street. Covent-garden, said to have been taken in the
+North Seas by Captain Foster. It was of the usual description.</p>
+
+<p>Much evidence comes from Scotland. Thus, in the year 1797, a
+schoolmaster of Thurso affirmed that he had seen a Mermaid, apparently
+in the act of combing her hair with her fingers! Twelve years
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
+afterwards, several persons observed near the same place a like
+appearance. Dr. Chisholm, in his "Essay on Malignant Fever in the West
+Indies," in 1801, relates that, in the year 1797, happening to be at
+Governor Van Battenburg's plantation, in Berbice, "the conversation
+turned on a singular animal which had been repeatedly seen in Berbice
+river, and some smaller rivers. This animal is the famous Mermaid,
+hitherto considered as a mere creature of the imagination. It is called
+by the Indians <i>méné</i>, mamma, or mother of the waters. The description
+given of it by the Governor is as follows:&mdash;'The upper portion
+resembles the human figure, the head smaller in proportion, sometimes
+bare, but oftener covered with a copious quantity of long black hair.
+The shoulders are broad, and the breasts large and well-formed. The
+lower portion resembles the tail of a fish, is of great dimensions,
+the tail forked, and not unlike that of the dolphin, as it is usually
+represented. The colour of the skin is either black or tawny.' The
+animal is held in veneration by the Indians, who imagine that killing
+it would be attended with calamitous consequences. It is from this
+circumstance that none of these animals have been shot, and consequently
+examined but at a distance. They have been generally observed in a
+sitting posture in the water, none of the lower extremity being seen
+until they are disturbed, when, by plunging, the tail agitates the water
+to a considerable distance round. They have been always seen employed in
+smoothing their hair, and have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
+thus been frequently taken for Indian
+women bathing." In 1811, a young man, named John M'Isaac, of Corphine,
+in Kintyre, in Scotland, made oath, on examination at Campbell-town,
+that he saw, on the 13th of October in the above year, on a rock on the
+sea-coast, an animal which generally corresponded with the form of the
+Mermaid&mdash;the upper half human shape, the other brindled or reddish grey,
+apparently covered with scales; the extremity of the tail greenish red;
+head covered with long hair, at times put back on both sides of the
+head. This statement was attested by the minister of Campbell-town and
+the Chamberlain of Mull.</p>
+
+<p>In August, 1812, Mr. Toupin, of Exmouth, in a sailing excursion, and
+when about a mile south-east of Exmouth Bar, heard a sound like that
+of the Æolian harp; and saw, at about one hundred yards distance, a
+creature, which was regarded as a Mermaid. The head, from the crown to
+the chin, formed a long oval, and the face seemed to resemble that of
+the seal, though with more agreeable features. The presumed hair, the
+arms, and the hand, with four fingers connected by a membrane, are then
+described, and the tail with polished scales. The entire height of the
+animal was from five feet to five and a-half feet. In 1819, a creature
+approached the coast of Ireland. It was about the size of a child ten
+years of age, with prominent bosom, long dark hair, and dark eyes. It
+was shot at, when it plunged into the sea with a loud scream.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter bord"><a name="i_045.jpg" id="i_045.jpg"></a>
+  <img src="images/i_045.jpg" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">SEAL AND MERMAID.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In reviewing these stories of Mermaids, it may be remarked that there
+is always a fish in each tale&mdash;either a living fish of a peculiar
+kind, which a fanciful person thinks to bear some resemblance in the
+upper part to a human being, or a fish which becomes marvellous in the
+progress of its description from mouth to mouth. It is commonly thought
+the seals may often have been mistaken for Mermaids. But, of all the
+animals of the whale tribe that which approaches the nearest in form to
+man is, undoubtedly, the Dugong, which, when its head and breast are
+raised above the water, and its pectoral fins, resembling hands, are
+visible, might easily be taken by superstitious seamen for a semi-human
+being, or a Mermaid. Of this deception a remarkable instance occurred
+in 1826. The skeleton of a Mermaid, as it was called, was brought
+to Portsmouth, which had been shot in the vicinity of the Island of
+Mombass. This was submitted to the members of the Philosophical Society,
+when it proved to be the skeleton of a Dugong. To those who came to
+the examination with preconceived notions of a fabulous Mermaid, it
+presented, as it lay on the lecture-table, a singular appearance. It
+was about six feet long; the lower portion, with its broad tail-like
+extremity, suggested the idea of a powerful fish-like termination,
+whilst the fore-legs presented to the unskilful eye a resemblance to the
+bones of a small female arm; the cranium, however, had a brutal form,
+which could never have borne the lineaments of "the human face divine."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Mermaid has been traced to the Manatee as well as to the Dugong: the
+former is an aquatic animal, externally resembling a whale, and named
+from its flipper, resembling the human hand, <i>manus</i>. Again, the <i>mammæ</i>
+(teats) of the Manatees and Dugongs are pectoral; and this conformation,
+joined to the adroit use of their flippers (whose five fingers can
+easily be distinguished through the inverting membranes, four of them
+being terminated by nails) in progression, nursing their young, &amp;c.,
+have caused them, when seen at a distance with the anterior part of
+their body out of the water, to be taken for some creature approaching
+to human shape so nearly (especially as their middle is thick set with
+hair, giving somewhat of the effect of human hair or a beard), that
+there can be little doubt that not a few of the tales of Mermen and
+Mermaids have had their origin with these animals as well as with seals
+and walruses. Thus the Portuguese and Spaniards give the <i>Manatee</i> a
+denomination which signifies Woman-fish; and the Dutch call the Dugong
+<i>Baardanetjee</i>, or Little-bearded Man. A very little imagination and
+a memory for only the marvellous portion of the appearance sufficed,
+doubtless, to complete the metamorphosis of this half woman or man, half
+fish, into a Siren, a Mermaid, or a Merman; and the wild recital of the
+voyager was treasured up by writers who, as Cuvier well observes, have
+displayed more learning than judgment.</p>
+
+<p>The comb and the toilet-glass have already been incidentally mentioned
+as accessories in these Mermaid
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
+stories; and these, with the
+origin of the creature. Sir George Head thus ingeniously attempts
+to explain:&mdash;"The resemblance of the seal, or sea-calf, to the calf
+consists only in the voice, and the voice of the calf is certainly not
+dissimilar to that of a man. But the claws of the seal, as well as the
+hand, are like a lady's back-hair comb; wherefore, altogether, supposing
+the resplendence of sea-water streaming down its polished neck, on a
+sunshiny day, the substitute for a looking-glass, we arrive at once at
+the fabulous history of the marine maiden or Mermaid, and the appendages
+of her toilet."</p>
+
+<p>The progress of zoological science has long since destroyed the belief
+in the existence of the Mermaid. If its upper structure be human, with
+lungs resembling our own, how could such a creature live and breathe at
+the bottom of the sea, where it is stated to be? for our most expert
+divers are unable to stay under water more than half an hour. Suppose it
+to be of the cetaceous class, it could only remain under the water two
+or three minutes together without rising to the surface to take breath;
+and if this were the case with the Mermaid, would it not be oftener seen?</p>
+
+<p>Half a century has scarcely elapsed since a <i>manufactured</i> Mermaid was
+shown in London with all the confidence of its being a natural creature.
+In the winter of 1822 there was exhibited at the Egyptian Hall, in
+Piccadilly, this pretended Mermaid, which was visited by from 300 to
+400 persons daily! The imposture, however, was too gross to last
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> long;
+and it was ascertained to be the dried skin of the head and shoulders
+of a monkey attached very neatly to the dried skin of a fish of the
+salmon kind with the head cut off; the compound figure being stuffed
+and highly varnished, the better to deceive the eye. This grotesque
+object was taken by a Dutch vessel from on board a native Malacca boat;
+and from the reverence shown to it by the sailors it is supposed to
+have represented the incarnation of one of the idol gods of the Malacca
+Islands. A correspondent of the "Magazine of Natural History," 1829,
+however, avers that the above "Mermaid" was brought from the East
+Indies; for being at St. Helena in 1813 he saw it on board the ship
+which was bringing it to England. The impression on his mind was that
+it was an artificial compound of the upper part of a small ape with the
+lower half of a fish; and by aid of a powerful glass he ascertained the
+point of union between the two parts. He was somewhat staggered to find
+that this was so neatly effected that the precise line of junction was
+not satisfactorily apparent: the creature was then in its best state of
+preservation.</p>
+
+<p>In a volume of "Manners and Customs of the Japanese," published in
+1841, we, however, find the following version of the history of the
+above Mermaid:&mdash;"A Japanese fisherman seems to have displayed ingenuity
+for the mere purpose of making money by his countrymen's passion for
+everything odd and strange. He contrived to unite the upper
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> half of
+a monkey to the lower half of a fish so neatly as to defy ordinary
+inspection. He then gave out that he had caught the creature in his
+net, but that it had died shortly after being taken out of the water;
+and he derived considerable pecuniary profit from his cunning in more
+ways than one. The exhibition of the sea monster to Japanese curiosity
+paid well; yet more productive was the assertion that the half-human
+fish, having spoken during the five minutes it existed out of its native
+element, had predicted a certain number of years of wonderful fertility
+and a fatal epidemic, the only remedy for which would be the possession
+of the marine prophet's likeness! The sale of these <i>pictured Mermaids</i>
+was immense. Either the composite animal, or another, the offspring of
+the success of the first, was sold to the Dutch factory and transmitted
+to Batavia, where it fell into the hands of a speculating American,
+who brought it to Europe; and here, in the year 1822-3, exhibited his
+purchase as a real Mermaid to the admiration of the ignorant, the
+perplexity of the learned, and the filling of his own purse."</p>
+
+<p>The Editor of the "Literary Gazette," Mr. Jerdan, was the first
+to expose the fabulous creature of the Egyptian Hall. He plainly
+said:&mdash;"Our opinion is fixed that it is a <i>composition</i>; a most
+ingenious one, we grant, but still nothing beyond the admirably
+put-together members of various animals. The extraordinary skill of
+the Chinese and Japanese in executing such deceptions is notorious,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>
+and we have no doubt that the Mermaid is a manufacture from the Indian
+Sea, where it has been pretended it was caught. We are not of those who
+because they happen not to have had direct proof of the existence of
+any extraordinary natural phenomenon, push scepticism to the extreme
+and deny its possibility. The depths of the sea, in all probability,
+from various chemical and philosophical causes, contain animals unknown
+to its surface-waters, rarely if ever seen by human eye. But when a
+creature is presented to us having no other organization but that which
+is suitable to a medium always open to our observation, it in the first
+instance excites suspicion that only one individual of the species
+should be discovered and obtained. When knowledge was more limited, the
+stories of Mermaids seen in distant quarters might be credited by the
+many, and not entirely disbelieved by the few; but now, when European
+and especially British commerce fills every corner of the earth with men
+of observation and science, the unique becomes the incredible, and we
+receive with far greater doubt the apparition of such anomalies as the
+present. It is curious that though medical men seem in general to regard
+the creature as a possible production of nature, no naturalist of any
+ability credits it after five minutes' observation! This may, perhaps,
+be accounted for by their acquaintance with the parts of distinct
+animals, of which it appears the Mermaid is composed. The cheeks of the
+blue-faced ape, the canine teeth, the <i>simia</i> upper body,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> and the tail
+of the fish, are all familiar to them in less complex combinations,
+and they pronounce at once that the whole is an imposture. And such
+is our settled conviction." Though naturalists and journalists fully
+exposed the imposture, this did not affect the exhibition, which for a
+considerable time continued as crowded as ever; but the notoriety had
+dwindled down to "a penny show," at Bartholomew Fair, by the year 1825.</p>
+
+<p>After so many exposures of the absurd belief in Mermaids, it could
+scarcely be expected that any person could be found in Europe weak
+enough to report the existence of one of these creatures to an eminent
+scientific Society. Yet, on the 22d of June, 1840, the first Secretary
+of the Ottoman Embassy at Paris addressed a note to the Academy of
+Sciences, stating that his father, who was in the Admiralty department
+at Constantinople, had recently seen a Mermaid while crossing the
+Bosphorus, which communication was received with much laughter.</p>
+
+<p>We have still another recorded instance&mdash;and in Scotland. In the year
+1857 two fishermen on the Argyleshire coast declared that when on their
+way to the fishing-station, Lochindale, in a boat, and when about four
+miles south-west from the village of Port Charlotte, about six o'clock
+in a June evening, they distinctly saw, at about six yards distance, an
+object in the form of a woman, with comely face and fine hair hanging
+in ringlets over the neck and shoulders. It was above the surface of
+the water gazing at the fishermen for three or four minutes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>&mdash;and then
+vanished! Yet this declaration was officially attested!</p>
+
+<p>In 1863 Mermaids were supposed to abound in the ponds and ditches of
+Suffolk, where careful mothers used them as bugbears to prevent little
+children from going too near the water. Children described them as
+"nasty things that crome you (hook you) into the water;" others as "a
+great big thing like a feesh," probably a pike basking in the shallow
+water.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the Mermaid has assumed a picturesqueness in fairy tale; and
+her impersonation has been described by Dryden as "a fine woman, with a
+fish's tail." And, laying aside her scaly train, she has appeared as a
+lovely woman, with sea-green hair; and Crofton Croker relates, in his
+"Fairy Legends," a marriage between an Irish fisherman and a "Merrow,"
+as the Mermaid is called in Ireland.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="IS_THE_UNICORN_FABULOUS" id="IS_THE_UNICORN_FABULOUS"></a>IS THE UNICORN FABULOUS?</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>TO</b> this question we may reply, in the words of a writer of 1633,
+"Concerning the Unicorn, different opinions prevail among authors:
+some doubt, others deny, and a third class affirm its existence." The
+question has lasted two thousand years, and is every now and then kept
+alive by fresh evidences.</p>
+
+<p>Ctesias, a credulous Greek physician, who appears to have resided at
+the Court of Persia, in the time of the younger Cyrus, about 400 years
+before the birth of Christ, describes the wild asses of India as equal
+to the horse in size, and even larger, with white bodies, red heads,
+bluish eyes, and a horn on the forehead a cubit in length; the part
+from the forehead entirely white, the middle black, and the extremity
+red and pointed. Drinking-vessels were made of it, and those who used
+them were subject neither to convulsions, epilepsy, nor poison, provided
+that before taking the poison, or after, they drank from these cups
+water, wine, or any other liquor. Ctesias
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+describes these animals as
+very swift and very strong. Naturally they were not ferocious; but when
+they found themselves and their young surrounded by horsemen, they did
+not abandon their offspring, but defended themselves by striking with
+their horns, kicking, and biting, and so slew many men and horses. This
+animal was also shot with arrows and brought down with darts; for it was
+impossible to take it alive. Its flesh was too bitter for food, but it
+was hunted for its horn and astragalus (ankle-bone), which last Ctesias
+declares he saw. Aristotle describes the Indian ass with a single horn.
+Herodotus mentions asses having horns; and Strabo refers to Unicorn
+horses, with the heads of deers. Oppian notices the Aonian bulls with
+undivided hoofs, and a single median horn between their temples. Pliny
+notices it as a very ferocious beast, similar in its body to a horse,
+with the head of a deer, the feet of an elephant, the tail of a boar,
+a deep bellowing voice, and a single black horn standing out in the
+middle of its forehead. He adds, that it cannot be taken alive; and some
+such excuse may have been necessary in those days for not producing the
+living animal upon the arena of the amphitheatre.</p>
+
+<p>Out of this passage most of the modern Unicorns have been described
+and figured. The body of the horse and the head of the deer appear to
+be but vague sketches; the feet of the elephant and the tail of the
+boar point at once to a pachydermatous (thick-skinned) animal; and the
+single black horn, allowing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+for a little exaggeration as to its length,
+well fits the two last-mentioned conditions, and will apply to the
+Indian rhinoceros, which, says the sound naturalist, Ogilby, "affords a
+remarkable instance of the obstructions which the progress of knowledge
+may suffer, and the gross absurdities which not unfrequently result from
+the wrong application of a name." Mr. Ogilby then refers to the account
+of Ctesias, which we have just quoted, and adds:&mdash;"His account, though
+mixed up with a great deal of credulous absurdity, contains a very
+valuable and perfectly recognisable description of the rhinoceros, under
+the ridiculous name, however, of the <i>Indian Ass</i>; and, as he attributed
+to it a whole hoof like the horse, and a single horn in the forehead,
+speculation required but one step further to produce the fabulous
+Unicorn."</p>
+
+<p>The ancient writers who have treated of the Unicorn are too numerous for
+us to specify. Some of the moderns may be referred to. Garcias describes
+this marvellous creature from one who alleges that he had seen it. The
+seer affirmed that it was endowed with a wonderful horn, which it would
+sometimes turn to the left and right, at others raise, and then again
+depress. Ludovicus Vartomanus writes, that he saw two sent to the Sultan
+from Ethiopia, and kept in a repository at Mahomet's tomb in Mecca.
+Cardan describes the Unicorn as a rare animal, the size of a horse, with
+hair very like that of a weasel, with the head of a deer, on which one
+horn grows three cubits in length (a story seldom
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+loses anything in its
+progress) from the forehead, ample at its lowest part, and tapering to
+a point; with a short neck, a very thin mane, leaning to one side only,
+and less on the ear, as those of a young roe.</p>
+
+<p>In Jonston's "Historia Naturalis," 1657, we see the smooth-horned
+solipede, "Wald Esel;" and the digitated and clawed smooth-horned "Meer
+Wolff," the latter with his single horn erect in the foreground, but
+with it depressed in the background, where he is represented regaling on
+serpents. Then there are varieties, with the head, mane, and tail of a
+horse; another smooth-horned, with a horse's head and mane, a pig's-tail
+and camel-like feet; the "Meer Stenbock, Capricornus Marinus," with
+hind webbed feet, and a kind of graduated horn, like an opera-glass
+pulled out, in the foreground, and charging the fish most valiantly in
+the water in the distance. Then there is another, with a mule's head
+and two rhinoceros-like horns, one on his forehead and the other on his
+nose; and a horse's tail, with a collar round his neck; a neck entirely
+shaggy&mdash;and a twisted horn, a shaggy gorget, and curly tail, are among
+other peculiarities.</p>
+
+<p>The Unicorn seems to have been a sad trouble to the hunters, who hardly
+knew how to come at so valuable a piece of game. Some described the horn
+as moveable at the will of the animal&mdash;a kind of small sword, in short,
+with which no hunter who was not exceedingly cunning in fence could have
+a chance. Others told the poor foresters that all the strength lay in
+its horn, and that when pressed by them it
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>
+would throw itself from the
+pinnacle of the highest rock, horn foremost, so as to pitch upon it, and
+then quietly march off not a bit the worse!</p>
+
+<p>Modern zoologists, disgusted as they well may be with fables, such as we
+have glanced at, disbelieve, generally, the existence of the Unicorn,
+such, at least, as we have referred to; but there is still an opinion
+that some land animal bearing a horn on the anterior part of its head,
+exists besides the rhinoceros. The nearest approach to a horn in the
+middle of the forehead of any terrestrial mammiferous animal known to us
+is the bony protuberance on the forehead of the giraffe; and though it
+would be presumptuous to deny the existence of a one-horned quadruped
+other than the rhinoceros, it may be safely stated that the insertion
+of a long and solid horn in the living forehead of a horse-like or
+deer-like cranium is as near an impossibility as anything can be.</p>
+
+<p>Rupell, after a long sojourn in the north-east of Africa, stated that
+in Kordofan the Unicorn exists; stated to be the size of a small horse,
+of the slender make of the gazelle, and furnished with a long straight
+horn in the male, which was wanting in the female. According to the
+statements made by various persons, it inhabits the deserts to the south
+of Koretofan, is uncommonly fleet, and comes only occasionally to the
+Koldagi Heive mountains on the borders of Kordofan.</p>
+
+<p>Other writers refer the Unicorn to the antelope. The origin of the name
+of antelope is traced by
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+Cuvier to the Greek <i>Anthalops</i>, applied to a
+fabulous animal living on the banks of the Euphrates, with long jagged
+horns, with which it sawed down trees of considerable thickness! Others
+conjecture this animal to have been the <i>Oryx</i>, a species of antelope,
+which is fabulously reported to have had only one horn, and to have been
+termed <i>Panthalops</i> in the old language of Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>In his "Revolutions on the Surface of the Globe." Cuvier refers the
+idea of the Unicorn to the coarse figures traced by savages on rocks.
+Ignorant of perspective, and wishing to present in profile the horned
+antelope, they could only give it one horn; and thus originated the
+<i>Oryx</i>. The oryx of the Egyptian monuments is, most probably, but the
+production of a similarly crude style, which the religion of the country
+imposed on the artist. Many of the profiles of quadrupeds have only one
+leg before and one behind: why, then, should they show two horns? It
+is possible that individual animals might be taken in the chase whom
+accident had despoiled of one horn, as it often happens to chamois and
+the Scythian antelope; and that would suffice to confirm the error which
+these pictures originally produced. It is thus, probably, that we find
+anew the Unicorn in the mountains of Thibet.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Chiru Antelope</i> is the supposed Unicorn of the Bhotians. In form
+it approaches the deer; the horns are exceedingly long, are placed
+very forward in the head, and may be popularly described as erect and
+straight. It is usually found in herds,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+and is extremely wild, and
+unapproachable by man. It is much addicted to salt in summer, when vast
+herds are often seen at the rock-salt beds which abound in Tibet. They
+are said to advance under the conduct of a leader, and to post sentinels
+around the beds before they attempt to feed.</p>
+
+<p>Major Salter is stated to have obtained information of the existence of
+an animal in Tibet closely resembling the Unicorn of the ancients, which
+revived the belief of naturalists by adducing testimonies from Oriental
+writings. Upon this statement, M. Klaproth remarks, that previous to
+Major Salter's Reports, the Catholic missionaries, who returned to
+Europe from China by way of Tibet and Nepal, in the seventeenth century,
+mentioned that the Unicorn was found in that part of the Great Desert
+which bounds China to the west, where they crossed the great wall; that
+Captain Turner, when travelling in Tibet, was informed by the Raja of
+Boutan that he had one of these animals alive; and that Bell, in his
+"Travels to Peking," describes a Unicorn which was found on the southern
+front of Siberia. He adds:&mdash;"The great 'Tibetan-Mongol Dictionary'
+mentions the Unicorn; and the 'Geographical Dictionary of Tibet and
+Central Asia,' printed at Peking, where it describes a district in the
+province of Kham, in Tibet, named Sera-zeong, explains this name by 'the
+River of Unicorns,' because," adds the author, "many of these animals
+are found there."</p>
+
+<p>In the "History of the Mongol-Khans," published and translated at St.
+Petersburg, we find the following
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+statement:&mdash;Genghiz Khan, having
+subjected all Tibet in 1206, commenced his march for Hindustan. As he
+ascended Mount Jadanarung, he beheld a beast approaching him of the
+deer kind, of the species called <i>Seron</i>, which have a single horn at
+the top of the head. It fell on its knees thrice before the monarch, as
+if to pay respect to him. Every one was astonished at this incident.
+The monarch exclaimed. "The Empire of Hindustan is, we are assured, the
+country where are born the majestic Buddhas and Bodhisatwas, as well as
+the potent Bogdas and princes of antiquity: what can be the meaning,
+then, of this animal, incapable of speech, saluting me like a man?"
+Upon this, he returned to his own country. "This story," continues M.
+Klaproth, "is also related by Mahommedan authors who have written the
+life of Genghiz. Something of the kind must, therefore, have taken
+place. Possibly, some of the Mongol conqueror's suite may have taken a
+Unicorn, which Genghiz thus employed, to gain a pretext for abstaining
+from an expedition which promised no success."</p>
+
+<p>Upon this statement, it was observed in the "Asiatic Register," 1839,
+that "when we consider that seventeen years have elapsed since the
+account of Major Salter was given, and that, notwithstanding our
+increased opportunities of intercourse with Tibet, no fact has since
+transpired which supplies a confirmation of that account, except
+the obtaining of a supposed horn of the supposed Unicorn, we cannot
+participate in these renewed hopes."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Rev. John Campbell, in his "Travels in South Africa," describes the
+head of another animal, which, as far as the horn is concerned, seems
+to approach nearer than the common rhinoceros to the Unicorn of the
+ancients. While in the Machow territory, the Hottentots brought to Mr.
+Campbell a head differing from that of any rhinoceros that had been
+previously killed. "The common African rhinoceros has a crooked horn,
+resembling a cock's spur, which rises about nine or ten inches above
+the nose, and inclines backward; immediately behind which is a straight
+thick horn. But the head brought by the Hottentots had a straight horn
+projecting three feet from the forehead, about ten inches above the tip
+of the nose. The projection of this great horn very much resembles that
+of the fanciful Unicorn in the British arms. It has a small thick horny
+substance, eight inches long, immediately behind it, which can hardly
+be observed on the animal at the distance of a hundred yards; so that
+this species must look like an Unicorn (in the sense 'one-horned') when
+running in the field." The author adds:&mdash;"This animal is considered
+by naturalists, since the arrival of the above skull in London, to be
+the Unicorn of the ancients, and the same that is described in Job
+xxxix. 9&mdash;'Will the Unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy
+crib? 10. Canst thou bind the Unicorn with his band in the furrow? or
+will he harrow the valleys after thee? 11. Wilt thou trust him because
+his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him?' Again,
+Deuteronomy xxxiii. 17&mdash;'His
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>
+horns are like the horns of Unicorns: with
+them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth.'"</p>
+
+<p>A fragment of the skull, with the horn, is deposited in the Museum of
+the London Missionary Society.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. W. B. Baikie writes to the <i>Athenæum</i> from Bida Núpe, Central
+Africa, in 1862, the following suggestions:&mdash;"When I ascended the Niger,
+now nearly five years ago, I frequently heard allusions to an animal
+of this nature, but at that time I set it down as a myth. Since then,
+however, the amount of testimony I have received, and the universal
+belief of the natives of all the countries which I have hitherto
+visited, have partly shaken my scepticism, and at present I simply
+hold that its non-existence is not proven. A skull of this animal is
+said to be preserved in a town in the country of Bonú, through which
+I hope to pass in the course of a few weeks, when I shall make every
+possible inquiry. Two among my informants have repeatedly declared to me
+that they have seen the bones of this animal, and each made particular
+mention of the long, straight, or nearly straight, black horn. In
+countries to the east, and south-east, as Márgi and Bagirmi, where the
+one-horned rhinoceros is found, the hunters carefully distinguished
+between it and the supposed Unicorn, and give them different names. In
+the vast forests and boundless wastes which occur over Central Africa,
+especially towards the countries south and east of Lake Tsád, Bórnú,
+Bagirmi and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+Adamáwa, are doubtless numerous zoological curiosities as
+yet unknown to the man of science, and among them possibly may exist
+this much-talked-of, strange, one-horned animal, even though it may not
+exactly correspond with our typical English Unicorn."</p>
+
+<p>The factitious horn has been preserved in various Museums. The "Monocero
+Horn," in Tradescant's collection, was, probably, that which ordinarily
+has passed for the horn of the Unicorn, namely, the tooth of a narwhal.
+Old legends assert that the Unicorn, when he goes to drink, first dips
+his horn in the water to purify it, and that other beasts delay to
+quench their thirst till the Unicorn has thus sweetened the water. The
+narwhal's tooth makes a capital twisted Unicorn's horn, as represented
+in the old figures. That in the Repository of St. Denis, at Paris, was
+presented by Thevet, and was declared to have been given to him by
+the King of Monomotapa, who took him out to hunt Unicorns, which are
+frequent in that country. Some have thought that this horn was a carved
+elephant's tooth. There is one at Strasburg, some seven or eight feet in
+length, and there are several in Venice.</p>
+
+<p>Great medical virtues were attributed to the so-called horn, and the
+price it once bore outdoes everything in the <i>Tulipomania</i>. A Florentine
+physician has recorded that a pound of it (sixteen ounces) was sold
+in the shops for fifteen hundred and thirty-six crowns, when the same
+weight in gold would only have brought one hundred and forty-eight
+crowns.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>From what source we derive the stories of the animosity between the
+lion and the Unicorn is not clearly understood, although this is the
+principal medium through which the fabulous creature has been kept in
+remembrance by being constantly before us in the Royal Arms, which
+were settled at the Accession of George I. We owe the introduction of
+the Unicorn, however, to James I., who, as King of Scotland, bore two
+Unicorns, and coupled one with the English lion, when the two kingdoms
+were united.</p>
+
+<p>The position of the lion and Unicorn in the arms of our country seems to
+have given rise (naturally enough in the mind of one who was ignorant of
+heraldic decoration) to a nursery rhyme which most of us remember:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="verse">"The Lion and the Unicorn</div>
+    <div class="verse2">Were fighting for the crown;</div>
+    <div class="verse">The Lion beat the Unicorn</div>
+    <div class="verse2">All round the town," &amp;c.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+<p>unless it alludes to a contest for dominion over the brute creation,
+which the "rebellious Unicorn," as Spenser calls it, seems to have waged
+with the tawny monarch.</p>
+
+<p>Spenser, in his "Faerie Queen," gives the following curious way of
+catching the Unicorn:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="verse">"Like as a lyon, whose imperiall powre,</div>
+    <div class="verse">A prowd rebellious Unicorn defyes,</div>
+    <div class="verse">T'avoide the rash assault and wrathful stowre</div>
+    <div class="verse">Of his fiers foe, him a tree applyes,</div>
+    <div class="verse">And when him rousing in full course he spyes,</div>
+    <div class="verse">He slips aside; the whiles that furious beast
+	<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></div>
+    <div class="verse">His precious home, sought of his enemyes,</div>
+    <div class="verse">Strikes in the stocke, ne thence can be releast.</div>
+    <div class="verse">But to the mighty victor yields a bounteous feast."</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Shakspeare, also ("Julius Cæsar," Act ii. scene 1), speaks of the
+supposed mode of entrapping them:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="verse4">"For he loves to hear</div>
+    <div class="verse">That Unicorns may be betrayed with trees,</div>
+    <div class="verse">And bears with glasses, elephants with holes,</div>
+    <div class="verse">Lions with toils, and men with flatterers."</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>We have no satisfactory reason for believing that man ever coexisted
+with Mastodons; otherwise Professor Owen's discovery of the retention of
+a single tusk only by the male gigantic Mastodon, might have afforded
+another form of Unicorn.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever the zoologists may have done towards extirpating the belief
+in the existence of the Unicorn, it is ever kept in sight by heraldry,
+which, with its animal absurdities, has contributed more to the
+propagation of error respecting the natural world than any other species
+of misrepresentation.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_MOLE_AT_HOME" id="THE_MOLE_AT_HOME"></a>THE MOLE AT HOME.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>THE</b> Mole, though generally a despised and persecuted animal, is
+nevertheless useful to the husbandman in being the natural drainer of
+his land and destroyer of worms. To other inferior animals he is a
+sapper and miner, forming for them their safe retreats and well-secured
+dormitories.</p>
+
+<p>The economy of the Mole has been much controverted among naturalists.
+It is found throughout the greater part of Europe. We are overrun with
+it in most parts of England and Wales; but it does not appear to have
+been found in the northern extremity of Scotland, and there is no record
+of its having been seen in the Orkney Isles, Zetland, or Ireland. Its
+most diligent and instructive historian is Henri Le Court, who, flying
+from the terrors that came in the train of the French Revolution,
+betook himself to the country, and from being the attendant on a Court,
+became the biographer of this humble animal. M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire,
+the celebrated French naturalist, visited Le Court for the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> purpose
+of testing his observations, and appears to have been charmed by the
+facility and ingenuity with which Le Court traced and demonstrated the
+subterraneous labours of this obscure worker in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>We shall first briefly describe the adaptation of its structure to its
+habits. The bony framework is set in motion by very powerful muscles,
+those of the chest and neck being most vigorous. The wide hand, which is
+the great instrument of action, and performs the offices of a pickaxe
+and shovel, is sharp-edged on its lower margin, and when clothed with
+the integuments the fingers are hardly distinguishable. The muzzle of
+the Mole is evidently a delicate organ of touch, as are also the large
+and broad hands and feet; and the tail has much sensitiveness to give
+notice to the animal of the approach of any attack from behind. Its
+taste and smell, especially the latter, are very sensitive. Its sight
+is almost rudimentary. The little eye is so hidden in the fur that its
+very existence was for a long time doubted. It appears to be designed
+for operating only as a warning to the animal on its emerging into the
+light; indeed, more acute vision would only have been an encumbrance.
+If the sight be imperfect, the sense of hearing is very acute, and the
+tympanum very large, though there is no external ear, perhaps because
+the earth assists considerably in vibration. The fore-feet are inclined
+sideways, so as to answer the use of hands, to scoop out the earth to
+form its habitation or pursue its prey, and to fling all the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> loose soil
+behind the animal. The breastbone in shape resembles a ploughshare.
+The skin is so tough as only to be cut by a very sharp knife. The hair
+is very short and close-set, and softer than the finest silk; colour
+black; some spotted and cream-coloured. This hair is yielding; had it
+been strong, as in the rat or mouse, it would doubly have retarded the
+progress of the creature; first by its resistance, and then acting as a
+brush, so as to choke up the galleries, by removing the loose earth from
+the sides and ceilings of the galleries.</p>
+
+<p>It is supposed that the verdant circles so often seen in grass ground,
+called by country people <i>fairy rings</i>, are owing to the operations of
+Moles: at certain seasons they perform their burrowings in circles,
+which, loosening the soil, gives the surface a greater fertility and
+rankness of grass than the other parts within or without the ring. The
+larger mole-hills denote the nests or dens of the Mole beneath.</p>
+
+<p>The feeling of the Mole is so acute that when casting up the earth, it
+is sensible of very gentle pressure; hence mole-catchers tread lightly
+when in quest of Moles; and unless this caution is used the Mole ceases
+its operation, and instantly retires. Again, so acute is the smell, that
+mole-catchers draw the body of a captured Mole through their traps and
+the adjoining runs and passages to remove all suspicious odours which
+might arise from the touch of their fingers.</p>
+
+<p>During summer the Mole runs in search of snails
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> and worms in the
+night-time among the grass, which pursuit makes it the prey of owls. The
+Mole shows great art in skinning a worm, which it always does before it
+eats it, by stripping the skin from end to end, and squeezing out the
+contents of the body. It is doubtful whether any other animal exists
+which is obliged to eat at such short intervals as the Mole, ten or
+twelve hours appearing to be the maximum of its fasting; at the end
+of that time it dies. Cuvier tells us that if two Moles are shut up
+together without food, there will shortly be nothing left of the weakest
+but its skin, slit along the belly! Buffon accuses Moles of eating all
+the acorns of a newly-set soil. Its voracity makes the Mole a great
+drinker: a run is always formed to a pond or ditch as a reservoir; when
+it is too distant, the animal sinks little wells, which have sometimes
+been seen brimfull.</p>
+
+<p>We now return to Le Court's experiments with Moles, which are very
+interesting. To afford proof of the rapidity with which the Mole will
+travel along its passages, Le Court watched his opportunity, and when
+the animal was on its feed at one of the most distant points from its
+sanctuary or fortress, to which point the Mole's high road leads. Le
+Court placed along the course of that road, between the animal and
+the fortress, several little camp colours, so to speak, the staff of
+each being a straw, and the flag a bit of paper, at certain distances,
+the straws penetrating down into the passage. Near the end of this
+subterraneous road he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+inserted a horn, the mouthpiece of which stood
+out of the ground. When all was ready, Le Court blew a blast loud enough
+to frighten all the Moles within hearing. Down went the little flags in
+succession with astonishing velocity, as the terrified Mole, rushing
+along towards his sanctuary, came in contact with the flag-straws; and
+the spectators affirmed that the Mole's swiftness was equal to the speed
+of a horse at a good round trot.</p>
+
+<p>To test its amount of vision, Le Court took a spare water-pipe, or
+gutter, open at both ends. Into this pipe he introduced several Moles
+successively. Geoffroy St. Hilaire stood by to watch the result at the
+further end of the tube. As long as the spectators stood motionless the
+introduced Mole made the best of his way through the pipe and escaped;
+but if they moved, or even raised a finger, the Mole stopped, and then
+retreated. Several repetitions of this experiment produced the same
+results.</p>
+
+<p>In the domain of the Mole, the principal point is the habitation, or
+fortress, constructed under a considerable hillock raised in some secure
+place, often at the root of a tree, or under a bank. The dome of the
+fortress is of earth, beaten by the Mole-architect into a compact and
+solid state. Inside is formed a circular gallery at the base, which
+communicates with a smaller upper gallery by means of five passages.
+Within the lower gallery is the chamber or dormitory, which has access
+to the upper gallery by three passages. From this habitation extends
+the high road by which the proprietor
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+reaches the opposite end of
+the encampment; the galleries open into this road, which the Mole is
+continually carrying out and extending in his search for food; this has
+been termed the <i>hunting-ground</i>. Another road extends, first downwards,
+and then up into the open road of the territory. Some eight or nine
+other passages open out from the external circular gallery. From the
+habitation a road is carried out, nearly straight, and connected with
+the encampment and the alleys leading to the hunting-ground which open
+into it on each side. In diameter the road exceeds the body of a Mole,
+but its size will not admit of two Moles passing each other. The walls,
+from the repeated pressure of the animal's sides, become smooth and
+compact. Sometimes a Mole will lay out a second or even a third road; or
+several individuals use one road in common, though they never trespass
+on each other's hunting-grounds.</p>
+
+<p>If two Moles should happen to meet in the same road, one must retreat
+into the nearest alley, unless they fight, when the weakest is often
+slain. In forming this tunnel the Mole's instinct drives it at a
+greater or less depth, according to the quality of the soil, or other
+circumstances. When it is carried under a road or stream, a foot and
+a-half of earth, or sometimes more, is left above it. Then does the
+little engineering Mole carry on the subterraneous works necessary for
+his support, travelling, and comfort; and his tunnels never fall in.
+The quality or humidity of the soils which regulates the abundance of
+earth-worms, determines the greater or less
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+depth of the alleys; and
+when these are filled with stores of food the Mole works out branch
+alleys.</p>
+
+<p>The main road communicating with the hunting-grounds is of necessity
+passed through in the course of the day; and here the mole-catcher sets
+his traps to intercept the Mole between his habitation and the alley
+where he is carrying on his labours. Some mole-catchers will tell you
+the hours when the Moles move are nine and four; others that near the
+coast their movements are influenced by the tides. Besides the various
+traps which are set for Moles, they are sometimes taken by a man and a
+dog; when the latter indicates the presence of a Mole, the man spears
+the animal out as it moves in its run. Pointers will stop as steadily as
+at game, at the Moles, when they are straying on the surface.</p>
+
+<p>The Mole is a most voracious animal. Earthworms and the larvæ of insects
+are its favourite food; and it will eat mice, lizards, frogs, and even
+birds; but it rejects toads, even when pressed by hunger, deterred,
+probably, by the acrid secretions of their skin. Moles are essentially
+carnivorous; and when fed abundantly on vegetable substances they have
+died of hunger.</p>
+
+<p>During the season of love, at which time fierce battles are fought
+between the males, the male pursues the female with ardour through
+numerous runs wrought out with great rapidity. The attachment appears
+to be very strong in the Moles. Le Court often found a female taken in
+his trap and a male lying dead close to her. From four to five is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> the
+general number of young. The nest is distinct, usually distant from the
+habitation. It is constructed by enlarging and excavating the point
+where three or four passages intersect each other; and the bed of the
+nest is formed of a mass of young grass, root fibres, and herbage. In
+one nest Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Le Court counted two hundred and four
+young wheat-blades.</p>
+
+<p>M. St. Hilaire describes the pairings, or as he calls it, "the loves of
+the Moles." As soon as the Mole has finished the galleries he brings his
+mate along with him, and shuts her up in the bridal gallery, taking care
+to prevent the entrance of his rivals: in case of a fight they enlarge
+the part of the gallery where they are met; and the victory is decided
+in favour of him who first wounds his adversary before the ear. The
+female, during the fight, is shut up in the bridal gallery, so as to be
+unable to escape; for which purpose, however, she uses all her resources
+in digging, and attempts to get away by the side passages. Should she
+succeed the conqueror hastens to rejoin his faithless mate, and to
+bring her back into his galleries. This man&oelig;uvre is repeated as often
+as other males enter the lists. At length the conqueror is recognised,
+and his mate becomes more docile. The pair work together and finish the
+galleries; after which the female digs alone for food. As soon as the
+galleries are formed, the male conducts his mate to a certain point, and
+from this time the female no longer digs in the solid earth, but towards
+the surface, advancing by merely separating the roots of the grass.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The Mole is a great friend to the farmer; but there are places in which
+he is a public enemy. He is not a vegetable feeder, and he never roots
+up the growing corn in spring-time, except when he is after grubs,
+snails, and wire-worms. It has been calculated that two Moles destroy
+20,000 white worms in a year. He is very destructive to under drains;
+and where the land is low we are in danger of a deluge from his piercing
+holes in the drain-banks. Thus it would be madness not to extirpate
+Moles in those places where the waters, in drains or rivers, are above
+the level of the lands around, especially when the banks are made of
+sand or earth of loose texture.</p>
+
+<p>The persecution of Moles in cultivated countries amounts almost to a
+war of extermination. The numbers annually slaughtered are enormous.
+A mole-catcher, who had followed the craft for thirty-five years,
+destroyed from forty to fifty thousand Moles. But all Mole exterminators
+must yield to Le Court, who, in no large district, took, in five months,
+six thousand of them. Moles are good swimmers, and their bite is very
+sharp; their attacks are ferocious, and they keep their hold like a
+bull-dog.</p>
+
+<p>The Shrew Mole of North America resembles the European Mole in its
+habits. Dr. Goodman describes it as most active early in the morning,
+at mid-day, and in the evening; and they are well known in the country
+to have the custom of coming daily to the surface <i>exactly at noon</i>.
+We read of a captive Shrew Mole which ate meat, cooked or raw, drank
+freely, and was lively and playful, following the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+hand of his feeder by
+the scent, burrowing for a short distance in the loose earth, and after
+making a small circle, returning for more food. In eating he employed
+his flexible snout to thrust the food into his mouth, doubling it so as
+to force it directly backwards, as described in Dr. Richardson's "North
+American Zoology."</p>
+
+<p>James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, remarks, in his usual impressive
+manner:&mdash;"The most unnatural persecution that ever was raised in a
+country is that against the Mole&mdash;that innocent and blessed little
+pioneer, who enriches our pastures annually with the first top-dressing,
+dug with great pains and labour from the fattest of the soil beneath.
+The advantages of this top-dressing are so apparent that it is really
+amazing how our countrymen should have persisted, for nearly half a
+century, in the most manly and valiant endeavours to exterminate the
+Moles! If a hundred men and horses were employed on a pasture farm of
+from fifteen hundred to two thousand acres, in raising and driving
+manure for a top-dressing of that farm, they would not do it so
+effectually, so neatly, or so equally as the natural number of Moles. In
+June, July, and August, the Mole-hills are all spread by the crows and
+lambs&mdash;the former for food, and the latter in the evenings of warm days
+after a drought has set in. The late Duke of Buccleuch was the first who
+introduced Mole-catching into Scotland."</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_GREAT_ANT-BEAR" id="THE_GREAT_ANT-BEAR"></a>THE GREAT ANT-BEAR.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_078.jpg" alt="Letter A"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>A FINE</b> living specimen of this comparatively rare animal was first
+exhibited in the Zoological Society's gardens, in the Regent's-park,
+1853. It is stated to be the first specimen brought alive to England,
+and accordingly excited considerable attention. It was one of a pair,
+captured near the Rio Negro, in the southern province of Brazil, and
+shipped for England by some German travellers. The male died on the
+voyage; the female arrived in London in 1853, and was exhibited in
+Broad-street, St. Giles's, until purchased by the Zoological Society for
+the sum of 200<i>l.</i> The advantage of this live specimen to naturalists
+has been very great. Hitherto the examples engraved by Buffon and
+Shaw were both derived from stuffed specimens, and had the inevitable
+defects and shortcomings of such. Sir John Talbot Dillon, in his
+"Travels through Spain," published in 1780, states that a specimen of
+the Ant-Bear, from Buenos Ayres, was alive at Madrid in 1776: it is now
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+stuffed and preserved in the Royal Cabinet of Natural History at Madrid.
+The persons who brought it from Buenos Ayres say it differs from the
+Ant-eater, which only feeds on emmets and other insects, whereas this
+would eat flesh, when cut in small pieces, to the amount of four or five
+pounds. From the snout to the extremity of the tail this animal is two
+yards in length, and his height is about two feet; the head very narrow,
+the nose long and slender. The tongue is so singular that it looks like
+a worm, and extends above sixteen inches. The body is covered with long
+hair of a dark brown, with white stripes on the shoulders; and when he
+sleeps, he covers his body with his tail. This account, it will be seen
+hereafter, corresponds very accurately with that of the animal purchased
+by the Zoological Society.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter bord"><a name="i_083.jpg" id="i_083.jpg"></a>
+  <img src="images/i_083.jpg" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">THE GREAT ANT-BEAR.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Mr. Wallace, who travelled on the Amazon and Rio Negro, about the year
+1853, relates:&mdash;"The living specimen of this singular animal is a great
+rarity, even in its native country. In fact, there is not a city in
+Brazil where it would not be considered almost as much a curiosity as
+it is here. In the extensive forests of the Amazon the great Ant-eater
+is, perhaps, as abundant as in any part of South America; yet, during
+a residence there of more than four years, I never had an opportunity
+of seeing one. Once only I was nearly in at the death, finding a bunch
+of hairs from the tail of a specimen which had been killed (and eaten)
+a month previous to my arrival, at a village near the Capiquiare. In
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+its native forests the creature feeds almost entirely on white ants,
+tearing open their nests with its powerful claws, and thrusting in its
+long and slender tongue, which, being probably mistaken for a worm,
+is immediately seized by scores of the inhabitants, who thus become
+an easy prey. The Indians, who also eat white ants, catch them in a
+somewhat similar manner, by pushing into the nest a grass-stalk, which
+the insects seize and hold on to most tenaciously. It may easily be
+conceived that such an animal must range over a considerable extent of
+country to obtain a plentiful supply of such food, which circumstance,
+as well as its extreme shyness and timidity, causes it to be but rarely
+met with, and still more rarely obtained alive."</p>
+
+<p>We have seen that the Ant-Bear lives exclusively upon ants, to procure
+which he tears open the hills, and when the ants flock out to defend
+their dwellings, draws over them his long, flexible tongue, covered
+with glutinous saliva, to which the ants consequently adhere; and he
+is said to repeat this operation twice in a second. "It seems almost
+incredible," says Azara, "that so robust and powerful an animal can
+procure sufficient sustenance from ants alone; but this circumstance has
+nothing strange in it, for those who are acquainted with the tropical
+parts of America, and have seen the enormous multitude of these insects,
+which swarm in all parts of the country to that degree that their hills
+often almost touch one another for miles together." The same author
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+informs us that domestic Ant-Bears were occasionally kept by different
+persons in Paraguay, and that they had even been sent alive to Spain,
+being fed upon bread-and-milk mixed with morsels of flesh minced very
+small. Like all animals which live upon insects, the Ant-eaters are
+capable of sustaining a total deprivation of nourishment for an almost
+incredible time.</p>
+
+<p>The Great Ant-Bear's favourite resorts are low, swampy savannahs, along
+the banks of rivers and stagnant ponds; also frequenting humid forests,
+but never climbing trees, as falsely reported by Buffon. His pace is
+slow and heavy, though, when hard pressed, he increases his rate, yet
+his greatest velocity never half equals the ordinary running of a man.
+When pressed too hard, or urged to extremity, he turns obstinate,
+sits upon his hind-quarters like a bear, and defends himself with his
+powerful claws. Like that animal, his usual and only mode of assault is
+by seizing his adversary with his fore-paws, wrapping his arms round
+him, and endeavouring, by this means, to squeeze him to death. His great
+strength and powerful muscles would easily enable him to accomplish his
+purpose in this respect, even against the largest animals of his native
+forests, were it but guided by ordinary intelligence, or accompanied
+with a common degree of activity; but in these qualities there are
+few animals indeed who do not greatly surpass the Ant-Bear; so that
+the different stories handed down by writers on natural history from
+one to another, and copied, without
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+question, into the histories and
+descriptions of this animal, may be regarded as pure fictions. "It is
+supposed," says Don Felix d'Azara, "that the jaguar himself dares not
+attack the Ant-Bear, and that, if pressed by hunger, or under some other
+strong excitement, he does so, the Ant-Bear embraces and hugs him so
+tightly as very soon to deprive him of life, not even relaxing his hold
+for hours after life has been extinguished in his assailant. Such is
+the manner in which the Ant-eater defends himself; but it is not to be
+believed that his utmost efforts could prevail against the jaguar, who,
+by a single bite, or blow of his paw, could kill the Ant-eater before he
+was prepared for resistance, so slow are his motions, even in an extreme
+case; and, being unable to leap or turn with ordinary rapidity, he is
+forced to act solely upon the defensive. The flesh of the Ant-eater is
+esteemed a delicacy by the Indians; and, though black, and of a strong
+musky flavour, is sometimes even met with at the tables of Europeans."</p>
+
+<p>The habits of the Great Ant-Bear in captivity have been described
+scientifically yet popularly, from the Zoological Society's specimen,
+by Professor Owen, who writes:&mdash;"When we were introduced to this, the
+latest novelty at the noble vivarium in the Regent's-park, we found the
+animal busy sucking and licking up&mdash;for his feeding is a combination
+of the two actions&mdash;the contents of a basin of squashed eggs. The
+singularly long and slender head, which looks more like a slightly bent
+proboscis, or some <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+such appendage to a head, was buried in the basin,
+and the end of the lithe or flexible tongue, like a rat's tail, or a
+writhing black worm, was ever and anon seen coiling up the sides of
+the basin, as it was rapidly protruded and withdrawn. The yellow yolk
+was dripping with the abundant ropy saliva secreted during the feeding
+process from the exceedingly small terminal mouth; for the jaws are not
+slit open, as in the ordinary construction of the mouths of quadrupeds,
+and the head, viewed sideways, seems devoid of mouth; but this important
+aperture&mdash;by some deemed the essential character of an animal&mdash;is a
+small orifice or slit at the end of the tubular muzzle, just being
+enough, apparently, to let the vermiform tongue slip easily in and
+out. The tongue, the keeper told us, was sometimes protruded as far as
+fourteen inches from the mouth."</p>
+
+<p>By the Qjuarani Indians the beast is known by a name which is, in
+Spanish, "little mouth." The Portuguese and Spanish peons call it by a
+name equivalent to "Ant-Bear." In the Zoological Catalogue the animal
+is denominated <i>Myrmocophaga jubata</i>, or the "Maned Ant-eater." This
+appellation would very well suit the animal if, as most spectators
+commonly imagine at first sight, its head was where its tail is,
+for the tail is that part of the animal on which the hair is most
+developed, after the fashion of a mane; whilst the actual head appears
+much more like a tail, of a slender, almost naked, stiff, rounded
+kind. The body is wholly covered by long, coarse hair, resembling hay,
+rapidly lengthening<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+from the neck backwards to six or eight inches,
+and extending on the tail from ten to eighteen inches. The colour is
+greyish brown, with an oblique black band, bordered with white, on
+each shoulder. The animal measures about four feet from the snout
+to the root of the tail; and the tail, three feet long, resembles a
+large screen of coarse hair. When the animal lies down, it bends its
+head between its fore legs, slides these forward, and crosses them in
+front of the occiput, sinks its haunches by bending its hind legs and
+bringing them close to the fore feet; then, leaning against the wall
+of its den, on one side, it lays the broad tail over the other exposed
+side of the body, by the side bend of that part, like the movement of
+a door or screen. Nothing is now visible of the animal but the long
+coarse hair of its <i>natural and portable blanket</i>. When it is enjoying
+its siesta, you cannot form any conception of its very peculiar shape
+and proportions; an oblong heap of a coarse, dry, <i>greyish thatch</i> is
+all that is visible. When, however, the keeper enters the den with any
+new dainty, as cockroaches, crickets, maggots, or meal-worms, to tempt
+the huge insect-devourer, the quick-hearing animal unveils its form by
+a sweeping movement of the thatch outwards, the tail that supports it
+rotating, as if joined by a kind of door-hinge to the body; the head is
+drawn out from between the fore limbs; the limbs are extended, and the
+entire figure of this most grotesque of quadrupeds stalks forth. The
+limbs are short; the fore limbs grow rather thicker to their stumpy
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+ends, which look as if the feet had been amputated. The four toes, with
+their claws, are bent inwards, and are of very unequal length. This is
+the most singular part of the animal: it is also the most formidable
+member, and, indeed, bears the sole weapon of defence the beast
+possesses. The innermost toe, answering to the thumb on the fore limb of
+the neighbouring chimpanzee, is the shortest. A fifth toe seems to be
+buried in the outside callosity, on which the animal rests its stumpy
+feet while walking. At the back part of the sole, or palm, of the fore
+foot, is a second large callosity, which receives the point of the great
+claw in its usual state of inward inflection. Against this callosity the
+animal presses the claw when it seizes any object therewith; and Azara,
+as we have seen, avers that nothing can make the Ant-Bear relax its
+grasp of an object so seized.</p>
+
+<p>With respect to the jaguar being sometimes found dead in the grasp of
+the Great Ant-eater, Professor Owen observes that its muscular force
+resembles that of the cold-blooded reptiles in the force and endurance
+of the contractile action; and, like the reptiles, the Sloths and
+Ant-Bears can endure long fasts.</p>
+
+<p>Woe to the unlucky or heedless aggressor whose arm or leg may be seized
+by the Ant-Bear. The strength of the grasp sometimes breaks the bone.
+The Ant-Bear never voluntarily lets go, and the limb so grasped can be
+with difficulty extricated, even after the animal has been killed. To
+put the beast, however, <i>hors de combat</i>, no other weapon is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> needed
+than a stout stick. "With this," says Azara. "I have killed many by
+dealing them blows on the head, and with the same security as if I had
+struck the trunk of a tree. With a mouth so small, and formed as already
+described, the Ant-Bear cannot bite; and, if it could, it would be
+useless, for it has no teeth."</p>
+
+<p>"Like a lawyer," says Professor Owen, "the tongue is the chief organ
+by which this animal obtains its livelihood in its natural habitat.
+The warmer latitudes of South America, to which part of the world the
+Ant-Bear is peculiar, abound in forests and luxuriant vegetation; the
+insects of the ant and termite tribes that subsist on wood, recent
+or decaying, equally abound. With one link in the chain of organic
+independencies is interlocked another; and as the surplus vegetation
+sustains the surplus insect population, so a peculiar form of mammalian
+life finds the requisite conditions of existence in the task of
+restraining the undue multiplication of the wood-consuming insects."</p>
+
+<p>The number of male Ant-eaters is supposed to be considerably smaller
+than that of the females, which circumstance favours the inference that
+the extinction of the species, like those of the <i>edentata</i> in general,
+is determined upon.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>Large as the Ant-Bear is in comparison with the animals on which it
+naturally feeds, there appear to have been still larger Ant-Bears in the
+old times of South America. Fossil remains of nearly allied
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> quadrupeds
+have been detected in both the fresh-water deposits and bone-caves of
+the post-pliocene period in Buenos Ayres and Brazil.</p>
+
+<p>In examining the fossil remains has been found evidence that the nervous
+matter destined to put in action the muscular part of the tongue was
+equal to half of that nervous matter which influences the whole muscular
+system of a man. No other known living animal offers any approximation
+to the peculiar proportions of the lingual nerves of the fossil animal
+in question except the Great Ant-eater; but the size of the animal
+indicated by the fossil was three times that of our Ant-eater. For this
+strange monster, thus partially restored from the ruins of a former
+world, Professor Owen proposes the name of <i>Glossotherium</i>, which
+signifies tongue-beast.</p>
+
+<p>Evidence of such a creature has been given by Dr. Lund, the Danish
+naturalist, resident in Brazil: among the fossil remains here (limestone
+caves of the province Minas) he discovered traces of the Great
+Ant-eater, which, however, are too imperfect to enable us to determine
+more accurately its relation to existing species. The fragments indicate
+an animal the size of an ox! Were the insect prey of these antediluvian
+Ant-eaters correspondingly gigantic?</p>
+
+<p>Two circumstances very remarkable were observed in the Zoological
+Society's Great Ant-eater: the hinge-like manner in which the animal
+worked its tail when it had laid itself down, throwing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> it over the
+whole of its body and enveloping itself completely; and the peculiar
+vibratory motion of the long vermiform tongue when protruded from the
+mouth in search of food. The tongue is not shot forth and retracted,
+like that of the chameleon, but protruded gradually, <i>vibrating</i> all the
+time, and in the same condition withdrawn into the mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Another species of Ant-eater is the <i>Tamandua</i>, much inferior in size to
+the Great Ant-Bear, being scarcely so large as a good sized cat, whilst
+the other exceeds the largest greyhound in length. The Tamandua inhabits
+the thick primæval forests of tropical America, and is never found on
+the ground, but exclusively in trees, where it lives upon termites,
+honey, and, according to Azara, even bees, which in those countries
+form their hives among the loftiest branches of the forest; and having
+no sting, they are more readily despoiled of their honey than their
+congeners of our own climate. When about to sleep it hides its muzzle in
+the fur of its breast, falls on its belly, letting its fore-feet hang
+down on each side, and wrapping the whole tightly round with its tail.
+The female, as in the Great Ant-eater, has but two pectoral mammæ, and
+produces but a single cub at a birth, which she carries about with her
+on her shoulders for the first three or four months. <i>Tamandua</i> is the
+Portuguese name; the French and English call it <i>fourmiller</i> and Little
+Ant-Bear.</p>
+
+<p>The latter are the names of a still smaller species,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> which does not
+exceed the size of the European squirrel. Its native country is Guayana
+and Brazil. It is called in Surinam <i>kissing-hand</i>, as the inhabitants
+pretend it will never eat, at least when caught, but that it only licks
+its paws in the same manner as the bear; that all trials to make it eat
+have proved in vain, and that it soon dies in confinement. Von Sack, in
+a voyage to Surinam, had two of these Ant-eaters which would not eat
+eggs, honey, meat, or ants; but when a wasps'-nest was brought they
+pulled out the nymphæ and ate them eagerly, sitting in the posture of a
+squirrel. Von Sack showed this phenomenon to many of the inhabitants of
+Surinam, who all assured him that it was the first time they had ever
+known that species of animal to take any nourishment.</p>
+
+<p>Von Sack describes his Ant-eaters as often sleeping all the day long
+curled together, and fastened by their prehensile tails to one of the
+perches of the cage. When touched they raised themselves on their
+hind-legs, and struck with their fore-paws at the object which disturbed
+them, like the hammer of a clock striking a bell, with both paws at the
+same time, and with a great deal of force. They never attempted to run
+away, but were always ready for defence when attacked.</p>
+
+<p>The discovery of the true nature of the food of this species is
+particularly desirable, and may enable us to have the animal brought
+alive to this country, a thing which we believe has not been attempted;
+and which, if attempted, has certainly never succeeded.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> To procure or
+carry ants during a long sea-voyage is impracticable, but the larvæ of
+wasps can be obtained in any quantity, and will keep for months; so that
+the most serious difficulty to the introduction of the little Ant-eater
+being thus removed, it would only require to be protected from the
+effects of a colder climate, which may be as easily done in its case as
+in that of other South America mammalia.</p>
+
+<p>The Porcupine Ant-eater of New Holland, now very uncommon in New South
+Wales, is regarded, of its size, the strongest quadruped in existence.
+It burrows readily. Its mode of eating is very curious, the tongue being
+used sometimes in the manner of that of the chameleon, and at other
+times in that in which a mower uses his scythe, the tongue being curved
+laterally, and the food, as it were, swept into the mouth.</p>
+
+<p>The original Great Ant-Bear, received at the Gardens of the Zoological
+Society on the 29th of September, 1853, died on the 6th of July, 1854.
+There are now two of these animals living in the Gardens, one of which
+is a remarkably fine specimen.</p>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a>
+Proceedings of the Zoological Society.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CURIOSITIES_OF_BATS" id="CURIOSITIES_OF_BATS"></a>CURIOSITIES OF BATS.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>THESE</b> harmless and interesting little animals have not only furnished
+objects of superstitious dread to the ignorant, but have proved to the
+poet and the painter a fertile source of images of gloom and terror.
+The strange combination of character of beast and bird, which they were
+believed to possess, is supposed to have given to Virgil the idea of the
+Harpies.</p>
+
+<p>Aristotle says but little about the Bat; and Pliny is considered to
+have placed it among the Birds, none of which, he observes, with the
+exception of the Bat, have teeth. Again, he notices it as the only
+winged animal that suckles its young, and remarks on its embracing its
+two little ones, and flying about with them. In this arrangement he was
+followed by the older of the more modern naturalists. Belon, doubtingly,
+places it at the end of the Night-birds; and the Bat, <i>Attaleph</i> (bird
+of darkness), was one of the unclean animals of the Hebrews; and in
+Deuteronomy xxv. 18, it is placed among the forbidden birds.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Even up to a late period Bats were considered as forming a link between
+quadrupeds and birds. The common language of our own ancestors, however,
+indicates a much nearer approach to the truth in the notions entertained
+by the people than can be found in the lucubrations of the learned.
+The words <i>rere-mouse</i> and <i>flitter-mouse</i>, the old English names for
+the Bat&mdash;the former derived from the Anglo-Saxon "aræan," to raise, or
+rear up, and mus; the latter from the Belgic, signifying "flying or
+flittering mouse,"&mdash;show that in their minds these animals were always
+associated with the idea of quadrupeds. The first of these terms is
+still used in English heraldry; though it may have ceased to belong to
+the language of the country. "The word <i>flitter-mouse</i>," says Mr. Bell,
+"sometimes corrupted into <i>flintymouse</i>, is the common term for the Bat
+in some parts of the kingdom, particularly in that part of the county
+of Kent in which the language, as well as the aspect and names of the
+inhabitants, retain more of the Saxon character than will be found,
+perhaps, in any other part of England.</p>
+
+<p>Ben Jonson has&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"Once a Bat, and ever a Bat! a rere-mouse,</div>
+<div class="verse">And bird o'twilight, he has broken thrice.</div>
+<div class="verse5">.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;  .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
+&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .</div>
+<div class="verse">Come, I will see the flicker-mouse, my fly."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="right1"><i>Play.</i>&mdash;<i>New Inn.</i></div>
+
+<p>The same author uses flitter-mouse also:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"And giddy flitter-mice, with leather wings."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="right1"><i>Sad Shepherd.</i></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Calmet describes the Bat as an animal having the body of a mouse and the
+wings of a bird; but he erroneously adds, "It never grows tame."</p>
+
+<p>Some persons are surprised at Bats being classed by naturalists, not
+with birds, but quadrupeds. They have, in fact, no other claim to be
+considered as birds than that of their being able to suspend and move
+themselves in the air, like some species of fish, but to a greater
+degree. They suckle their young, are covered with hair, and have
+no wings, but arms and lengthened fingers or toes furnished with a
+membrane, by which they are enabled to fly.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles Bell, in his valuable treatise on the "Hand," considers
+the skeleton of the Bat as one of the best examples of the moulding
+of the bones of the extremity to correspond with the condition of the
+animal. Contemplating this extraordinary application of the bones of the
+extremity, and comparing them with those of the wing of a bird, we might
+say that this is an awkward attempt&mdash;"a failure." But, before giving
+expression to such an opinion, we must understand the objects required
+in this construction. It is not a wing intended merely for flight, but
+one which, while it raises the animal, is capable of receiving a new
+sensation, or sensations, in that exquisite degree, so as almost to
+constitute a new sense. On the fine web of the Bat's wing nerves are
+distributed, which enable it to avoid objects in its flight during the
+night, when both eyes and ears fail. Could the wing of a bird, covered
+with feathers, do this? Here, then, we have another
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> example of the
+necessity of taking every circumstance into consideration before we
+presume to criticise the ways of nature. It is a lesson of humility. In
+this animal the bones are light and delicate; and whilst they are all
+marvellously extended, the phalanges of the fingers are elongated so
+as hardly to be recognised, obviously for the purpose of sustaining a
+membranous web, and to form a wing.</p>
+
+<p>In 1839 there was received at the Surrey Zoological Gardens, from
+Sumatra, a specimen of the Vampire Bat. This was a young male; the body
+was black, and the membranous wing, in appearance, resembled fine black
+kid. He was rarely seen at the bottom of his cage, but suspended himself
+from the roof or bars of the cage, head downwards, his wings wrapped
+round his body; when spread, these wings extended nearly two feet.
+Although this specimen was the Vampire Bat to which so many bloodthirsty
+feats have been attributed, his appearance was by no means ferocious;
+he was active, yet docile, and the only peculiarity to favour belief in
+his blood-sucking propensity was his long pointed tongue. The species
+has popularly been accused of destroying, not only the large mammiferous
+animals, but also men, when asleep, by sucking their blood. "The truth,"
+says Cuvier, in his "Regne Animal," "appears to be, that the Vampire
+inflicts only small wounds, which may, probably, become inflammatory and
+gangrenous from the influence of climate." In this habit, however, may
+have originated the celebrated Vampire superstition. Lord Byron, in his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
+beautiful poem of "The Giaour," thus symbolises the tortures that await
+the "false infidel:"&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"First, on earth as Vampire sent,</div>
+<div class="verse">My corse shall from its tomb be rent;</div>
+<div class="verse">Then ghastly haunt thy native place,</div>
+<div class="verse">And suck the blood of all thy race;</div>
+<div class="verse">There, from thy daughter, sister, wife,</div>
+<div class="verse">At midnight drain the stream of life;</div>
+<div class="verse">Yet loathe the banquet which perforce</div>
+<div class="verse">Must feed thy livid living corse.</div>
+<div class="verse">Thy victims, ere they yet expire,</div>
+<div class="verse">Shall know the demon for their sire,</div>
+<div class="verse">As cursing thee, thou cursing them,</div>
+<div class="verse">Thy flowers are withered on the stem.</div>
+<div class="verse">But one that for thy crime must fall,</div>
+<div class="verse">The youngest, most beloved of all,</div>
+<div class="verse">Shall bless thee with <i>a father's</i> name&mdash;</div>
+<div class="verse">That word shall wrap thy heart in flame!</div>
+<div class="verse">Yet must thou end thy task, and mark</div>
+<div class="verse">Her cheek's last tinge, her eye's last spark,</div>
+<div class="verse">And the last glassy glance must view</div>
+<div class="verse">Which freezes o'er its lifeless blue;</div>
+<div class="verse">Then with unhallowed hand shall tear</div>
+<div class="verse">The tresses of her yellow hair,</div>
+<div class="verse">Of which in life a lock, when shorn,</div>
+<div class="verse">Affection's fondest pledge was worn,</div>
+<div class="verse">But now is borne away by thee,</div>
+<div class="verse">Memorial of thine agony!</div>
+<div class="verse">Wet with thine one best blood shall drip</div>
+<div class="verse">Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip;</div>
+<div class="verse">Then stalking to thy sullen grave,</div>
+<div class="verse">Go, and with Gouls and Afrits rave;</div>
+<div class="verse">Till there in horror shrink away</div>
+<div class="verse">From spectre more accursed than they!"</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In a note, the noble poet tells us:&mdash;"The Vampire superstition is still
+general in the Levant." Honest
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+Tournefort tells a long story, which Mr.
+Southey, in the notes on "Thalaba," quotes, about these Vardoulacha,
+as he calls them. "I recollect a whole family being terrified by the
+screams of a child, which they imagined must proceed from such a
+visitation. The Greeks never mention the word without horror."</p>
+
+<p>Bishop Heber describes the Vampire Bat of India as a very harmless
+creature, entirely different from the formidable idea entertained of it
+in England. "It only eats fruit and vegetables; indeed, its teeth are
+not indicative of carnivorous habits; and from blood it turns away when
+offered to it. During the daytime it is, of course, inert; but at night
+it is lively, affectionate, and playful, knows its keeper, but has no
+objection to the approach and touch of others."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Westerton, the traveller, when speaking, in his "Wanderings," of the
+Vampire of South America, says:&mdash;"There are two species in Demerara,
+both of which suck living animals; one is rather larger than the common
+Bats, the other measures above two feet from wing to wing, extended. So
+gently does this nocturnal surgeon draw the blood, that instead of being
+roused, the patient is lulled into a profound sleep." The large Vampire
+sucks men, commonly attacking the toes; the smaller seems to confine
+itself chiefly to birds.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Stedman, who states that he was bitten by a Bat, thus describes
+the operation:&mdash;"Knowing by instinct that the person they intend to
+attack is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
+in a sound slumber, they generally alight near the feet,
+where, while the creature continues fanning with its enormous wings,
+which keeps one cool, he bites a piece out of the tip of the great toe,
+so very small indeed that the head of a pin would scarcely be received
+into the wound, which is, consequently, not painful; yet through this
+orifice he continues to suck the blood until he is obliged to disgorge.
+He then begins again, and thus continues sucking and disgorging until
+he is scarcely able to fly; and the sufferer has been often known to
+sleep from time into eternity. Having applied tobacco-ashes as the best
+remedy, and washed the gore from myself and my hammock, I observed
+several small heaps of congealed blood all round the place where I had
+lain upon the ground, on examining which the surgeon judged that I had
+lost at least twelve or fourteen ounces during the night."</p>
+
+<p>Lesson, in 1827, says:&mdash;"The single American species of Bat is
+celebrated by the fables with which they have accompanied its history.
+That Bats suck the blood of animals as well as the juices of succulent
+fruits zoologists are agreed. The rough tongue of one genus was, I
+suppose, to be employed for abrading the skin, to enable the animal
+to suck the part abraded; but zoologists are now agreed that the
+supposition is groundless. It is more than probable that the celebrated
+Vampire superstition and the blood-sucking qualities attributed to the
+Bat have some connection with each other."</p>
+
+<p>Bat-fowling is mentioned by Shakspeare. This is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> the mode of taking
+Bats in the night-time, while they are at roost, upon perches, trees,
+or hedges. They light torches or straw, and then beat the bushes, upon
+which the Bats, flying to the flames, are caught, either with nets or
+otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>Bat-fowling, or Bat-folding, is effected by the use of a net, called a
+trammel-net, and is practised at night. The net should be made of the
+strongest and finest twine, and extended between two poles about ten
+feet high, tapering to a point at the top, and meeting at the top of
+the net. The larger ends are to be held by the persons who take the
+management of the net, and who, by stretching out the arms, keep the net
+extended to the utmost, opposite the hedge in which the Bats or birds
+are supposed to be. Another of the party carries a lantern upon a pole
+at a short distance behind the centre of the net. One or two others
+place themselves on the opposite side of the hedge, and by beating it
+with sticks disturb the Bats or birds, which, being alarmed, fly towards
+the light, but are interrupted in their flight by the net which is
+immediately <i>folded</i> upon them, often fifteen or twenty in number. This
+sport cannot be followed with much success except when the night is very
+dark, or until very late in the autumn, when the trees, having lost
+their leaves, the Bats or birds are driven for shelter to the hollies,
+yews, hayricks, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>We remember reading, in the "Philosophical Magazine," in 1836, a curious
+account of the habits of a long-eared Bat, a living specimen of which
+was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+given to the children of Mr. De Carle Sowerby, the naturalist. "We
+constructed," says Mr. Sowerby, "a cage for him, by covering a box with
+gauze, and making a round hole in the side, fitted with a phial cork.
+When he was awake, we fed him with flies, introduced through this hole,
+and thus kept him for several weeks. The animal soon became familiar,
+and immediately a fly was presented alive at the hole, he would run or
+fly from any part of the cage, and seize it in our fingers; but a dead
+or quiet fly he would never touch. At other times, dozens of flies and
+grasshoppers were left in his cage, and, waking him by their noise, he
+dexterously caught them as they hopped or flew about, but uniformly
+disregarded them while they were at rest. The cockroach, hard beetles,
+and caterpillars he refused.</p>
+
+<p>"As we became still more familiar, our new friend was invited to join
+in our evening amusements, to which he contributed his full share
+by flitting round the room, at times settling upon our persons, and
+permitting us to handle and caress him. He announced his being awake
+by a shrill chirp, which was more acute than that of the cricket. Now
+was the proper time for feeding him. I before stated that he only took
+his food alive. It was observed that not only was motion necessary, but
+that generally some noise on the part of the fly was required to induce
+him to accept it; and this fact was soon discovered by the children,
+who were entertained by his taking flies from their fingers as he flew
+by them, before he was bold enough to settle
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> upon their hands to
+devour his victims. They quickly improved upon this discovery, and, by
+imitating the booming of a bee, induced the Bat, directed by the sound,
+to settle upon their faces, wrapping his wings round their lips, and
+searching for the expected fly. We observed that, if he took a fly while
+on the wing, he frequently settled to masticate it; and, when he had
+been flying about a long time, he would rest upon a curtain, pricking
+his ears, and turning his head in all directions, when, if a fly were
+made to buzz, or the sound imitated, he would proceed directly to the
+spot, even on the opposite side of the room, guided, it would appear,
+entirely by the ear. Sometimes he took his victim in his mouth, even
+though it was not flying; at other times he inclosed it in his wings,
+with which he formed a kind of bag-net. This was his general plan when
+in his cage, or when the fly was held in our fingers, or between our
+lips."</p>
+
+<p>From these observations Mr. Sowerby concludes that many of the movements
+of the Bat upon the wing are directed by his exquisite sense of hearing.
+May not the sensibility of this organ be naturally greater in these
+animals, whose organs of vision are too susceptible to bear daylight,
+when those organs, from their nature, would necessarily be of most
+service?&mdash;such as the cat, who hunts by the ear, and the mole, who,
+feeding in the dark recesses of his subterranean abode, is very sensible
+of the approach of danger, and expert in avoiding it. In the latter
+case, large external ears are not required,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> because sound is well
+conveyed by solids, and along narrow cavities. In the cases of many
+Bats, and of owls, the external ears are remarkably developed. Cats
+combine a quickness of sight with acute hearing. They hunt by the ear,
+but they follow their prey by the eye. Some Bats are said to feed upon
+fruits: have they the same delicacy of hearing, feeling, &amp;c., as others?</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sowerby has further described the singular mode adopted by the
+long-eared Bat in capturing his prey. The flying apparatus is extended
+from the hind legs to the tail, forming a large bag or net, not unlike
+two segments of an umbrella, the legs and tail being the ribs. The Bat,
+having caught the fly, instead of eating it at once, generally covers it
+with his body, and, by the aid of his arms, &amp;c., forces it into his bag.
+He then puts his head down under his body, withdraws the fly from his
+bag, and leisurely devours it. Mr. Sowerby once saw an unwary bluebottle
+walk beneath the body of the apparently sleeping Bat into the sensitive
+bag, in which it was immediately imprisoned. White, of Selborne,
+speaking of a tame Bat, alludes to the above described action, which
+he compares to that of a beast of prey, but says nothing respecting
+the bag. Bell, in his "British Quadrupeds," says that the interfemoral
+membrane of Bats "is probably intended to act as a sort of rudder, in
+rapidly changing the course of the animal in the pursuit of its insect
+food. In a large group of foreign Bats, which feed on fruit or other
+vegetable substances, as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
+well as in some of carnivorous habits, but
+whose prey is of a less active character, this part is either wholly
+wanting or much circumscribed in extent and power." May it not be, asks
+Mr. Sowerby, that they do not require an entomological bag-net?</p>
+
+<p>The wing of the Bat is commonly spoken of as of leather; that it is an
+insensible piece of stuff&mdash;the leather of a glove or of a lady's shoe;
+but nothing can be further from the truth. If one were to select an
+organ of the most exquisite delicacy and sensibility, it would be the
+Bat's wing. It is anything but leather, and is, perhaps, the most acute
+organ of touch that can be found.</p>
+
+<p>Bats are supposed to perceive external objects without coming actually
+in contact with them, because in their rapid and irregular flight,
+amidst various surrounding bodies, they never fly against them; yet, to
+some naturalists, it does not appear that the senses of hearing, seeing,
+or smelling serve them on these occasions, for they avoid any obstacles
+with equal certainty when the eye, ear, and nose are closed: hence has
+been ascribed a <i>sixth sense</i> to these animals. The nerves of the wing
+are large and numerous, and distributed in a minute network between the
+integuments. The impulse of the air against this part may possibly be
+so modified by the objects near which the animal passes as to indicate
+their situation and nature. The Bat tribe fly by means of the fingers of
+the fore feet, the thumb excepted, being, in these animals, longer than
+the whole body; and between them is stretched a thin
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> membrane, or web,
+for flying. It is probable that, in the action of flight, the air, when
+struck by this wing, or very sensitive hand, impresses a sensation of
+heat, cold, mobility, and resistance on that organ, which indicates to
+the animal the existence or absence of obstacles which would interrupt
+its progress. In this manner blind men discover by their hands, and
+even by the skin of their faces, the proximity of a wall, door of a
+house, or side of a street, even without the assistance of touch, and
+merely by the sensation which the difference in the resistance of the
+air occasions. Hence they are as little capable of walking on the ground
+as apes with their hands, or sloths with their hooked claws, which are
+calculated for climbing.</p>
+
+<p>In a certain kind of Bat, the <i>Nycteris</i>, there exists a power of
+inflation to such a degree that, when inflated, the animal looks,
+according to Geoffroy St. Hilaire, like a <i>little balloon</i> fitted
+with wings, a head, and feet. It is filled with air through the
+cheek-pouches, which are perforated at the bottom, so as to communicate
+with the spaces of the skin to be filled. When the Bat wishes to
+inflate, it draws in its breath, closes its nostrils, and transmits the
+air through the perforations of the cheek-pouches to the spaces; and the
+air is prevented from returning by the action of a muscle which closes
+those openings, and by valves of considerable size on the neck and back.</p>
+
+<p>There was formerly a vulgar opinion that Bats, when down on a flat
+surface, could not get on the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+wing again, by rising with great ease
+from the floor; but White saw a Bat run, with more dispatch than he
+was aware of, though in a most ridiculous and grotesque manner. The
+adroitness with which this Bat sheared off the wings of flies, which
+were always rejected, was very amusing. He did not refuse raw flesh when
+offered; so that the notion that Bats go down chimneys, and gnaw men's
+bacon, seems no improbable story.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. George Daniell describes a female Bat, who took her food with an
+action similar to that of a dog. The animal took considerable pains
+in cleaning herself, parting the hair on either side, from head to
+tail, and forming a straight line along the middle of the back. The
+membrane of the wings was cleaned by forcing the nose through the folds,
+and thereby expanding them. This Bat fed freely, and at some times
+voraciously, the quantity exceeding half an ounce, although the weight
+of the animal itself was not more than ten drams.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Kalong</i> Bat of the Javanese is extremely abundant in the lower
+parts of Java, and uniformly lives in society. The more elevated
+districts are not visited by it. "Numerous individuals," says Dr.
+Hornfield, "select a large tree, and, suspending themselves with the
+claws of their posterior extremities to the naked branches, often in
+companies of several hundreds, afford to a stranger a very singular
+spectacle. A species of ficus (fig-tree), resembling the <i>ficus
+religiosa</i> of India, affords them a very favourite retreat, and the
+extended branches<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>
+of one of these are sometimes covered by them. They
+pass the greater portion of the day in sleep, hanging motionless, ranged
+in succession, with the head downwards, the membrane contracted about
+the body, and often in close contact. They have little resemblance to
+living beings; and, by a person not accustomed to their economy, are
+readily mistaken for a part of the tree, or for a fruit of uncommon size
+suspended from its branches."</p>
+
+<p>In general, these societies are silent during the day; but if they are
+disturbed, or a contention arises among them, they emit sharp, piercing
+shrieks; and their awkward attempts to extricate themselves, when
+oppressed by the light of the sun, exhibit a ludicrous spectacle. Soon
+after sunset they gradually quit their hold, and pursue their nocturnal
+flight in quest of food. They direct their course by an unerring
+instinct to the forests, villages, and plantations, attacking and
+devouring every kind of fruit, from the abundant and useful cocoa-nut,
+which surrounds the dwellings of the meanest peasantry, to the rare and
+most delicate productions which are cultivated by princes and chiefs of
+distinction. Various methods are employed to protect the orchards and
+gardens. Delicate fruits are secured by a loose net or basket, skilfully
+constructed of split bamboo, without which precaution little valuable
+fruit would escape the ravages of the <i>Kalong</i>. There are few situations
+in the lower part of Java in which this night wanderer is not constantly
+observed. As soon as the light of the sun has retired, one animal is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+seen to follow the other at a small but irregular distance, and this
+accession continues uninterrupted till dark:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse5">"The night came on apace,</div>
+<div class="verse">And falling dews bewet around the place;</div>
+<div class="verse">The bat takes airy rounds, on leathern wings,</div>
+<div class="verse">And the hoarse owl his woful dirges sings."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="right1">"Gay's "<i>Pastoral III</i>."</div>
+
+<p>Bats of the ordinary size are very numerous in Jamaica. They are found
+in mills and old houses. They do great mischief in gardens, where they
+eat the green peas, opening the pod over each pea, and removing it very
+dexterously.</p>
+
+<p>Gilbert White, of Selborne, first noticed a large species of Bat, which
+he named <i>altivolans</i>, from its manner of feeding high in the air. In
+the extent of its wings it measured 14-1/2 inches; and it weighed,
+when entirely full, one ounce and one drachm. It is found in numbers
+together, so many as 185 having been taken in one night from the eaves
+of Queens' College, Cambridge. In the Northern Zoological Gallery of the
+British Museum are representatives of the several species of Bats, all
+bearing a family resemblance to each other. In England alone there are
+eighteen known species. Here is the curious leaf-nosed Bat, from Brazil,
+supposed to excel in the sense of smell; also, the Vampire, or large
+blood-sucking Bat, from the same country; and the different kinds of
+fruit-eating Bats, found in America and Australia, and sometimes called
+flying foxes, on account of their great size. The
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> Bats of temperate
+climates remain torpid during the winter. Gay has these lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"Where swallows in the winter season keep;</div>
+<div class="verse">And here the drowsy bat and dormouse sleep."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Young Bats have been taken, when hovering near the ground, by throwing
+handfuls of sand, but they rarely live in confinement: they often die
+within a week after their capture. A Bat, taken in Elgin, gave birth to
+a young one, which was for two days suckled by its parent. Before she
+reached the age of three days the young bat died, and the parent only
+survived another day to mourn her loss. Sometimes females, when taken,
+have young ones clinging to their breast, in the act of sucking; and the
+female can fly with ease, though two little ones are attached to her,
+which weigh nearly as much as the parent.</p>
+
+<p>To return to an exaggeration of a famous old traveller. In "Purchas his
+Pilgrimage," the materials for which he borrowed from above thirteen
+hundred authors, when speaking of the island of Madura, in the South of
+India, he says:&mdash;"In these partes are Battes as big as Hennes, which the
+people roast and eat."</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_HEDGEHOG" id="THE_HEDGEHOG"></a>THE HEDGEHOG.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_110.jpg" alt="Letter O"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>OF</b> this animal some strange things are recorded.
+It is placed by Cuvier
+at the head of the insect-devouring Mammifera. It is found in Europe,
+Africa, and India. Its body is covered with strong and sharp prickles,
+and by the help of a muscle it can contract itself into a ball, and so
+withdraw its whole underpart, head, belly, and legs, within this thicket
+of prickles:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"Like Hedgehogs, which</div>
+<div class="verse">Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount</div>
+<div class="verse">Their pricks at my foot-fall."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="right1">&mdash;Shakspeare's "<i>Tempest</i>."</div>
+
+<p>Sir Thomas Browne, in his "Vulgar Errors," has this odd conceit:&mdash;"Few
+have belief to swallow, or hope enough to experience, the collyrium of
+Albertus; that is, to make one see in the dark: yet thus much, according
+to his receipts, will the right eye of an Hedgehog, boiled in oil, and
+preserved in a brazen vessel, effect."</p>
+
+<p>Hedgehog was an old term of reproach; but we have heard a well-set
+argument compared to a hedgehog&mdash;all points.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The food of the Hedgehog, which is a nocturnal animal, consists
+principally of insects, worms, slugs, and snails. That it will eat
+vegetables is shown by White of Selborne, who relates how it eats the
+root of the plantain by boring beneath it, leaving the tuft of leaves
+untouched.</p>
+
+<p>The Hedgehog is reputed to supply itself with a winter covering of
+leaves. So far as we are aware, it has not been observed in the act of
+forming the covering of leaves, though it is supposed to roll itself
+about till its spines take up a sufficient number, in the same way as
+it is popularly believed (without proof) to do with apples. Blumenbach
+states that he was assured, "by three credible witnesses," that
+Hedgehogs so gather fruit; but Buffon, who kept several Hedgehogs for
+observation, declares they never practise any such habit.</p>
+
+<p>The voracity of the Hedgehog is very great. A female, with a young one,
+was placed in a kitchen, having the run of the beetles at night, besides
+having always bread and milk within their reach. One day, however, the
+servants heard a mysterious crunching sound in the kitchen, and found,
+on examination, that nothing was left of the young Hedgehog but the skin
+and prickles&mdash;the mother had devoured her little pig! A Hedgehog has
+also been known to eat a couple of rabbits which had been confined with
+it, and killing others; it has likewise been known to kill hares.</p>
+
+<p>A Hedgehog was placed in one hamper, a wood-pigeon in another, and two
+starlings in a third;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+the lid of each hamper was tied down with string,
+and the hampers were placed in a garden-house, which was fastened in the
+evening. Next morning the strings to the hampers were found severed, the
+starlings and wood-pigeon dead and eaten, feathers alone remaining in
+their hampers, and the Hedgehog alive in the wood-pigeon's hamper. As no
+other animal could have got into the garden-house it was concluded that
+the Hedgehog had killed and eaten the birds.</p>
+
+<p>In the "Zoological Journal," vol. ii., is an account by Mr. Broderip of
+an experiment made by Professor Buckland proving that in captivity at
+least the Hedgehog will devour snakes; but there is no good reason for
+supposing that it will not do the same in a state of nature, for frogs,
+toads, and other reptiles, and mice, have been recorded as its prey.
+From its fondness for insects it is often placed in the London kitchens
+to keep down the swarm of cockroaches with which they are infested; and
+there are generally Hedgehogs on sale at Covent Garden Market for this
+purpose.</p>
+
+<p>The idle story that the persecuted Hedgehog sucks cows has been thus
+quaintly refuted:&mdash;"In the case of an animal giving suck, the teat is
+embraced round by the mouth of the young one, so that no air can pass
+between; a vacuum is made, or the air is exhausted from its throat,
+by a power in the lungs; nevertheless the pressure of the air remains
+still upon the outside of the dug of the mother, and by these two
+causes together the milk
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+is forced in the mouth of the young one. But
+a Hedgehog has no such mouth as to be able to contain the teat of a
+cow; therefore any vacuum which is caused in its own throat cannot be
+communicated to the milk in the dug. And if he is able to procure no
+other food but what he can get by sucking cows in the night, there is
+likely to be a vacuum in his stomach too." (<i>New Catalogue of Vulgar
+Errors.</i> By Stephen Fovargue, A.M., 1786.) Yet, according to Sir William
+Jardine, the Hedgehog is very fond of eggs; and is consequently very
+mischievous in the game-preserve and hen-house.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most interesting facts in the natural history of the Hedgehog
+is that announced in 1831 by M. Lenz, and subsequently confirmed by
+Professor Buckland: this is, that the most violent poisons have no
+effect upon it; a fact which renders it of peculiar value in forests,
+where it appears to destroy a great number of noxious reptiles. M. Lenz
+says that he had in his house a female Hedgehog, which he kept in a
+large box, and which soon became very mild and familiar. He often put
+into the box some adders, which it attacked with avidity, seizing them
+indifferently by the head, the body, and the tail, and not appearing
+alarmed or embarrassed when they coiled themselves around its body.
+On one occasion M. Lenz witnessed a fight between a Hedgehog and a
+viper. When the Hedgehog came near and smelled the snake, for with
+these animals the sense of sight is very obtuse, she seized it by the
+head, and held it fast between
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+her teeth, but without appearing to do
+it much harm; for having disengaged its head, it assumed a furious and
+menacing attitude, and, hissing vehemently, inflicted severe bites on
+the Hedgehog. The animal did not, however, recoil from the bites of
+the viper, or indeed seem to care much about them. At last, when the
+reptile was fatigued by its efforts, she again seized it by the head,
+which she ground beneath her teeth, compressing the fangs and glands of
+poison, and then devouring every part of the body. M. Lenz says that
+battles of this sort often occurred in the presence of many persons, and
+sometimes the Hedgehog received eight or ten wounds on the ears, the
+snout, and even on the tongue, without seeming to experience any of the
+ordinary symptoms produced by the venom of the viper. Neither herself
+nor the young which she was then suckling seemed to suffer from it. This
+observation agrees with that of Pallas, who assures us that the Hedgehog
+can eat about a hundred Cantharides (Spanish Flies) without experiencing
+any of the effects which this insect, taken inwardly, produces on men,
+dogs, and cats. A German physician, who made the Hedgehog a particular
+object of study, gave it strong doses of prussic acid, of arsenic, of
+opium, and of corrosive sublimate, none of which did it any harm. The
+Hedgehog in its natural state only feeds on pears, apples, and other
+fruits when it can get nothing it likes better.</p>
+
+<p>The Hedgehog hybernates regularly, and early in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
+the summer brings forth
+from two to four young ones at a birth, which, at the time of their
+production, are blind, and have the spines white, soft, and flexible.
+The nest wherein they are cradled is said to be very artificially
+constructed, the roof being rain-proof.</p>
+
+<p>The flesh of the Hedgehog, when it has been well fed, is sweet and well
+flavoured, and is eaten on the Continent in many places. In Britain a
+few besides gipsies partake of it. The prickly skin appears to have been
+used by the Romans for hackling hemp.</p>
+
+<p>Gilbert White notes that when the Hedgehog is very young it can draw
+its skin down over its face, but is not able to contract itself into a
+ball, as the creature does, for the sake of defence when full grown. The
+reason, White supposes, is because the curious muscle that enables the
+Hedgehog to roll itself up into a ball has not then arrived at its full
+tone and firmness. Hedgehogs conceal themselves for the winter in their
+warm <i>hybernaculum</i> of leaves and moss; but White could never find that
+they stored in any winter provision, as some quadrupeds certainly do.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_HIPPOPOTAMUS_IN_ENGLAND" id="THE_HIPPOPOTAMUS_IN_ENGLAND"></a>THE HIPPOPOTAMUS IN ENGLAND.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_116.jpg" alt="Letter I"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>IN</b> the year 1850 there was exhibited in London
+a living Hippopotamus,
+for many centuries the only instance of this extraordinary animal being
+seen in Europe.</p>
+
+<p>There is something irresistibly striking in seeing a living animal,
+not one of whose species we have before seen, and especially when
+that animal is a large one, as in the instance before us. We had been
+wonderstruck at forms of this creature in the old British Museum, where
+were two finely-preserved specimens. The Rhinoceros alive was, until of
+late years, very rare in England. In 1834 Mr. Cross paid some 1,500<i>l.</i>
+for a young Indian one-horned Rhinoceros, this being the only one
+brought to England for twenty years. He proved attractive, but slightly
+so in comparison with the expectation of a living Hippopotamus, never
+witnessed before in this country. The circumstances of his acquisition
+were as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The Zoological Society of London had long been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> anxious to obtain
+a living Hippopotamus for their menagerie, but without success. An
+American agent at Alexandria had offered 5,000<i>l.</i> for an animal of
+this species, but in vain; no speculator could be induced to encounter
+the risk and labour of an expedition to the White Nile for the
+purpose of securing the animal. The desire of the Zoological Society
+was communicated to the Viceroy of Egypt, who saw the difficulty.
+Hasselquist states it to have been impossible to bring the living animal
+to Cairo; and the French <i>savans</i>, attached to the expedition to Egypt,
+who ascended the Nile above Syene, did not meet with one Hippopotamus.
+Caillaud, however, asserts that he saw forty Hippopotami in the Upper
+Nile, though their resort lay fifteen hundred miles or more from Cairo.
+Here they were often shot with rifle-balls, but to take one alive was
+another matter. However, by command of the Viceroy, the proper parties
+were sent in search of the animal.</p>
+
+<p>In August, 1849, the hunters having reached the island of Fobaysch,
+on the White Nile, about 2,000 miles above Cairo, shot a large female
+Hippopotamus in full chase up the river. The wounded creature turned
+aside and made towards some bushes on the island bank, but sank dead in
+the effort. The hunters, however, kept on towards the bushes, when a
+young Hippopotamus, supposed to have been recently brought forth, not
+much bigger than a new-born calf, but stouter and lower, rushed down
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+the bank of the river, was secured by a boatman and lifted into the
+boat. The captors started with their charge down the Nile. The food of
+their young animal was their next anxiety; he liked neither fish, flesh,
+fruit, nor grass. The boat next stopped at a village; their cows were
+seized and milked, and the young charge lapped up the produce. A good
+milch cow was taken on board, and with this supply the Hippopotamus
+reached Cairo. The colour of his skin at this time was a dull reddish
+brown. He was shown to the Pasha in due form; the present created
+intense wonder and interest in Cairo; gaping crowds filled its narrow
+sandy streets, and a whale at London-bridge would scarcely excite half
+so much curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>It being thought safer for the animal to winter in Cairo than to proceed
+forthwith on his journey, the Consul had duly prepared to receive the
+young stranger, for whom he had engaged a sort of nurse. Hamet Safi
+Cannana. An apartment was allotted to the Hippopotamus in the court-yard
+of the Consul's house, leading to a warm or tepid bath. His milk-diet,
+however, became a troublesome affair, for the new comer never drank less
+than from twenty to thirty quarts daily.</p>
+
+<p>By the next mail after the arrival of the Hippopotamus, the Consul
+despatched the glad tidings to the Zoological Society. The animal was
+shipped at Alexandria, in the Ripon steamer. On the main deck was built
+a house, from which were steps down
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+into an iron tank in the hold,
+containing 400 gallons of water, as a bath: it was filled with fresh
+water every other day.</p>
+
+<p>Early in May, the Hippopotamus was conveyed in the canal-boat, with
+Hamet Safi Cannana, to Alexandria, where the debarkation was witnessed
+by 10,000 spectators. The animal bore the voyage well. He lived
+exclusively on milk, of which he consumed daily about forty pints,
+yielded by the cows taken on board. He was very tame, and, like a
+faithful dog, followed his Arab attendant Hamet, who was seldom away
+more than five minutes without being summoned to return by a loud grunt.
+Hamet slept in a berth with the Hippopotamus. On May 25 they were landed
+at Southampton, and sent by railway to London. On arriving at the
+Zoological Society's Gardens, Hamet walked first out of the transport
+van, with a bag of dates over his shoulder, and the Hippopotamus trotted
+after him. Next morning he greatly enjoyed the bath which had been
+prepared for him. Although scarcely twelve months old, his massive
+proportions indicated the enormous power to be developed in his maturer
+growth; while the grotesque expression of his physiognomy far exceeded
+all that could be imagined from the stuffed specimens in museums, and
+the figures which had hitherto been published from the reminiscences of
+travellers.</p>
+
+<p>Among the earliest visitors was Professor Owen, who first saw the
+Hippopotamus lying on its side in the straw, with its head resting
+against the chair in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+which sat the swarthy attendant. It now and then
+grunted softly, and, lazily opening its thick, smooth eyelids, leered
+at its keeper with a singular protruding movement of the eyeball from
+the prominent socket, showing an unusual proportion of the white. The
+retraction of the eyeball was accompanied by a simultaneous rolling
+obliquely downwards, or inwards, or forwards. The young animal, then
+ten months' old, was seven feet long, and six and a-half in girth at
+the middle of the barrel-shaped trunk, supported, clear of the ground,
+on very short and thick legs, each terminated by four spreading hoofs,
+the two middle ones being the largest, and answering to those in the
+hog. The naked hide, covering the broad back and sides, was of a dark,
+india-rubber colour, with numerous fine wrinkles crossing each other,
+but disposed almost transversely. The beast had just left its bath, when
+a glistening secretion gave the hide, in the sunshine, a very peculiar
+aspect. When the animal was younger, the secretion had a reddish colour,
+and the whole surface of the hide became painted over with it every time
+he quitted his bath.</p>
+
+<p>The ears, which were very short, conical, and fringed with hairs, it
+moved about with much vivacity. The skin around them was of a light
+reddish-brown colour, and almost flesh-coloured round the eyelids,
+which defended the prominent eyes, which had a few short hairs on the
+margin of the upper lid. The colour of the iris was of a dark brown. The
+nostrils, situated on prominences, which
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+the animal had the power of
+raising on the upper part of the broad and massive muzzle, were short
+oblique slits, guarded by two valves, which were opened and closed
+spontaneously, like the eyelids. The movements of these apertures were
+most conspicuous when the beast was in the bath.</p>
+
+<p>The wide mouth was chiefly remarkable for the upward curve of its angles
+towards the eyes, giving a quaintly comic expression to the massive
+countenance. The short and small milk-tusks projected a little, and the
+minute incisors appeared to be sunk in pits of the thick gums; but the
+animal would not permit any close examination of the teeth, withdrawing
+his head from the attempt, and then threatening to bite. The muzzle was
+beset with short bristles, split into tufts or pencils of hairs; and
+fine and short hairs were scattered all over the back and sides. The
+tail was not long, rather flattened and tapering to an obtuse point.</p>
+
+<p>We may here observe that, at certain moments, the whole aspect of the
+head suggested to one the idea of what may have been the semblance of
+some of the gigantic extinct Batrachians (as sirens), the relics of a
+former world, whose fossil bones in the galleries of Palæontology in the
+British Museum excite our special wonder.</p>
+
+<p>After lying about an hour, now and then raising its head, and swivelling
+its eyeballs towards the keeper, or playfully opening its huge mouth,
+and threatening to bite the leg of the chair on which the keeper sat,
+the Hippopotamus rose, and walked very
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+slowly about its room, and
+then uttered a loud and short harsh snort four or five times in quick
+succession, reminding one of the snort of a horse, and ending with an
+explosive sound, like a bark. The keeper understood the language&mdash;the
+animal desired to return to its bath.</p>
+
+<p>The Hippopotamus carried its head rather depressed, reminding one of
+a large prize hog, but with a breadth of muzzle and other features
+peculiarly its own. The keeper opened the door leading into a paddock,
+and walked thence to the bath, the Hippopotamus following, like a dog,
+close to his heels. On arriving at the bath-room, the animal descended
+with some deliberation the flight of low steps leading into the water,
+stooped and drank a little, dipped his head under, and then plunged
+forwards. The creature seemed inspired with new life and activity.
+Sinking to the bottom of the bath, and moving about submerged for a
+while, it suddenly rose with a bound almost bodily out of the water.
+Splashing back, it commenced swimming and plunging about, rolling from
+side to side, taking in mouthfuls of water and spirting them out again,
+raising every now and then its huge and grotesque head, and biting the
+woodwork of the margin of the bath. The broad rounded back of the animal
+being now chiefly in view, it seemed a much larger object than when out
+of the water.</p>
+
+<p>After half an hour spent in this amusement, the Hippopotamus quitted
+the water at the call of its keeper, and followed him back to the
+sleeping-room,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+which was well bedded with straw, and where a stuffed
+sack was provided for its pillow, of which the animal, having a very
+short neck, thicker than the head, availed itself when it slept. When
+awake, it was very impatient of any absence of its favourite attendant.
+It would rise on its hind legs, and threaten to break down the wooden
+fence, by butting and pushing against it in a way very significant of
+its great muscular force. The animal appeared to be in perfect health,
+and breathed, when at rest, slowly and regularly, from three to four
+times in a minute. Its food was now a kind of porridge, of milk and
+maize-meat, it being more than half weaned from milk diet. Its appetite
+had been in no respect diminished by the confinement and inconvenience
+of the sea voyage, or by change of climate. All observers appear to
+have agreed that, to see the Hippopotamus rightly, is to see him in
+the water. There his activity is only surpassed by that of the otter
+or the seal. Such was one of the opportunities afforded to zoologists
+for "studying this most remarkable and interesting African mammal, of
+which no living specimen had been seen in Europe since the period when
+Hippopotami were last exhibited by the third Gordian in the amphitheatre
+of imperial Rome."<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is now time to glance at the general economy of the Hippopotamus, as
+he is seen in his native rivers and wilds. In early days, as his Roman
+name imports, it was usual to consider him as a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> species of horse,
+inhabiting rivers and marshy grounds, and, in a more especial manner,
+the denizen of the Nile. The genus is placed by Linnæus among his
+<i>belluæ</i>, between <i>equus</i> and <i>sus</i>. The skeleton approaches that of the
+ox and of the hog, but it presents differences from that of any other
+animal.</p>
+
+<p>The Hippopotamus is found not only in the Nile, but in the rivers of
+southern Africa. In the former stream of marvels, Hasselquist relates
+that "the oftener the River Horse goes on shore, the better hope have
+the Egyptians of a sufficient swelling or increase of the Nile." Again,
+they say that the River Horse is an inveterate enemy to the crocodile,
+and kills it whenever he meets it; adding that he does much damage to
+the Egyptians in those places he frequents. He goes on shore, and, in
+a short space of time, destroys an entire field of corn or clover, not
+leaving the least verdure, for he is very voracious.</p>
+
+<p>Yet neither of these stories is so marvellous as that which a sailor
+related to Dampier, the old traveller:&mdash;"I have seen," says the mariner,
+"one of these animals open its jaws, and, seizing a boat between its
+teeth, at one bite sink it to the bottom. I have seen it, on another
+occasion, place itself under one of our boats, and, rising under it,
+overset it with six men who were in it, but who, however, happily
+received no other injury."</p>
+
+<p>Professor Smith and Captain Tuckey, in exploring the Congo River, in
+South Africa, saw in a beautiful sandy cove, at the opening of a creek,
+behind a long projecting point, an immense number of Hippopotami;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>
+and in the evening a number of alligators were also seen there; an
+association hardly consistent with the hostility related by Hasselquist.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Tuckey observed Hippopotami with their heads above the water,
+"snorting in the air." In another part of his narrative he says:&mdash;"Many
+Hippopotami were visible close to our tents at Condo Yanga. No use
+firing at these animals in the water; the only way is to wait till they
+come on shore to feed at night."</p>
+
+<p>Le Vaillant had an opportunity of watching the progress of a
+Hippopotamus under water at Great River, which contained many of these
+animals. On all sides he could hear them bellow and blow. Anxious to
+observe them, he mounted on the top of an elevated rock which advanced
+into the river, and he saw one walking at the bottom of the water. Le
+Vaillant killed it at the moment when it came to the surface to breathe.
+It was a very old female, and many people, in their surprise, and to
+express its size, called it the Grandmother of the River.</p>
+
+<p>The traveller Lander tells us that, on the Niger. Hippopotami are
+termed water-elephants. One stormy night, as they were sailing up this
+unexplored current, they fell in with great numbers of Hippopotami, who
+came plashing, snorting, and plunging all round the canoe. Thinking
+to frighten them off, the travellers fired a shot or two at them, but
+the noise only called up from the water and out of the fens about as
+many more Hippopotami, and they were more closely beset than before.
+Lander's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
+people, who had never, in all their lives, been exposed to
+such formidable beasts, trembled with fear, and absolutely wept aloud;
+whilst peals of thunder rattled over their heads, and the most vivid
+lightning showed the terrifying scene. Hippopotami frequently upset
+canoes in the river. When the Landers fired, every one of them came
+to the surface of the water, and pursued them over to the north bank.
+A second firing was followed by a loud roaring noise. However, the
+Hippopotami did the travellers no kind of mischief whatever.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Gordon, when among the Bakalahari, in South Africa, bagged no
+fewer than fifteen first-rate Hippopotami; the greater number of them
+being bulls.</p>
+
+<p>In 1828, there was brought to England the head of a Hippopotamus, with
+all the flesh about it, in high preservation. The animal was harpooned
+while in combat with a crocodile in a lake in the interior of Africa.
+The head measured nearly four feet in length, and eight feet in
+circumference; the jaws opened two feet, and the cutting teeth, of which
+it had four in each jaw, were above a foot long, and four inches in
+circumference.</p>
+
+<p>The utility of this vast pachydermatous, or thick-skinned animal, to man
+is considerable. That he can be destructive has already been shown in
+his clearance of the cultivated banks of rivers. The enormous ripping,
+chisel-like teeth of the lower jaw fit him for uprooting. The ancient
+Egyptians held the animal as an emblem of power, though this may
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> have
+arisen from his reputed destruction of the crocodile. The flesh is much
+esteemed for food, both among the natives and colonists of South Africa.
+The blood of the animal is said to have been used by the old Indian
+painters in mixing their colours. The skin is extensively employed for
+making whips.</p>
+
+<p>But there is no part of the Hippopotamus more in request than the great
+canine teeth, the ivory of which is so highly valued by dentists for
+making artificial teeth, on account of its keeping its colour better
+than any other kind. This superiority was not unknown to the ancients
+Pausanias mentions the statue of Dindymene, whose face was formed of the
+teeth of Hippopotami, instead of elephants' ivory. The canine teeth are
+imported in great numbers into England, and sell at a very high price.
+From the closeness of the ivory, the weight of the teeth, a part only of
+which is available for the artificial purpose above mentioned, is great
+in proportion to its bulk; and the article has fetched about thirty
+shillings per pound.</p>
+
+<p>The ancient history of the Hippopotamus is extremely curious, and
+we have many representations of him in coins, in sculpture, and in
+paintings, which prove, beyond question, that the artists, as well as
+the writers, had a distinct knowledge of what they intended to represent.</p>
+
+<p>The earliest notice which occurs in any author, and which has been
+considered by many to be a description of the Hippopotamus, is the
+celebrated account in the fortieth and forty-first chapter of the Book
+of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+Job of Behemoth and Leviathan. Many learned men have contended that
+"Behemoth" really means "Elephant," and thus the Zurich version of the
+Bible translates the Hebrew by "Elephas."</p>
+
+<p>In the edition of the English Bible, printed by Robert Barker, in 1615,
+for King James I., and since considered as the authorised version, the
+word "Behemoth" is preserved in the text, and the following annotation
+is added:&mdash;"This beast is thought to bee the Elephant, or some other
+which is unknowen." Bochart, Ludolph, and some others, have contended
+warmly in favour of the Hippopotamus. Cuvier thinks, that though this
+animal is probably intended, yet that the description is too vague for
+any one to hold a certain opinion on the subject. The theory started by
+Bochart, and in the main supported by Cuvier, is generally supposed the
+real one. The description in the Book of Job, though doubtless vague,
+and in the highest degree poetical, has yet sufficient marks to render
+the identification perfectly easy, while there are certain peculiarities
+mentioned, which even a poetical imagination could hardly apply to the
+Elephant. Thus, when it is said of him, "He lieth under the shady trees,
+in the desert of the reed and fens; ... the willows of the brook compass
+him round about," this would seem to be the description of an animal
+which frequented the water much more than Elephants are accustomed to
+do. Again, in the fuller description of "Leviathan," in the forty-first
+chapter, we think it is quite clear that a water animal is intended,
+though what is there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>
+stated might be held to apply to the crocodile
+as well as the Hippopotamus; both are animals remarkable for extreme
+toughness of skin, and both are almost equally difficult to kill or to
+take alive.</p>
+
+<p>Of profane authors, Herodotus is the first who notices this animal,
+but his account is far from accurate: the size he states as large as
+the biggest ox. That the animal was sacred, in some parts at least,
+appears from Herodotus, who says:&mdash;"Those which are found in the
+district of Paprennis are sacred, but in other parts of Egypt they are
+not considered in the same light." Aristotle makes it no bigger than
+an ass; Diodorus, an elephant; Pliny ascribes to it the tail and teeth
+of a boar, adding, that helmets and bucklers are made of the skin.
+Hippopotami figured in the triumphal processions of the Roman conquerors
+on their return home. M. Scaurus exhibited five crocodiles and an
+Hippopotamus; and Augustus one in his triumph over Cleopatra. Antoninus
+exhibited Hippopotami, with lions and other animals; Commodus no less
+than five, some of which he slew with his own hand. Heliogabalus, and
+the third Gordian, also exhibited Hippopotami.</p>
+
+<p>The Hippopotamus of the London Zoological Society was joined by his
+mate, the more juvenile "Adhela," in 1853. Two Hippopotami have lately
+been born in Europe; one in the Garden of Plants, at Paris, in 1858; and
+another in the Zoological Gardens at Amsterdam, in 1866.</p>
+
+<p>With regard to the alleged disappearance of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+Hippopotamus from Lower
+Egypt, Cuvier remarks, that the French savans attached to the Expedition
+to Egypt, who ascended the Nile above Syene, did not meet with one.</p>
+
+<p>In some of the rivers of Liberia, and other parts, perhaps, of Western
+Africa, a second species of Hippopotamus exists, and is proved to be a
+very distinct animal.</p>
+
+<p>We have yet to glance at the Hippopotami of a former world. Many
+species are recognised in the fossil remains of Europe and Asia as
+formerly existing in England and in France. Cuvier detected bones of the
+Hippopotamus among the fossil wealth of the Great Kirkdale Cavern in
+Yorkshire, in 1821. They have also been found in France, and especially
+in the Sewatick Hills in India.</p>
+
+<p>In the Museum of the London Zoological Society are two skulls of
+Hippopotami&mdash;one fossil. This measures two feet three inches, and
+allowing for skin and lip, two feet six inches. Now, as the head is
+about one-fifth the length of the body, without the tail, the full-grown
+animal would be little, if any, short of fifteen feet from nose to
+tail&mdash;a size worthy the description of the Behemoth.</p>
+
+<p>We may here add, that Burckhardt, in his "Travels in Nubia," describes
+the voice of the Hippopotamus as a hard and heavy sound, like the
+creaking or groaning of a large wooden door. This noise, he says, is
+made when the animal raises his huge head out of the water, and when he
+retires into it again.</p>
+
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Professor Owen.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="LION-TALK" id="LION-TALK"></a>LION-TALK.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>THE</b> Lion has, within the present century, lost caste, and fallen
+considerably from his high estate. He has been stripped of much of his
+conventional reputation by the spirit of inquiry into the validity of
+olden notions, which characterises the present age; and it appears that
+much of his celebrity is founded upon popular error. Nor are these
+results the work of stay-at-home travellers; but they are derived from
+the observation and experience of those who, amidst scenes of perilous
+adventure, seek to enlarge and correct our views of the habit and
+character of the overrated Lion.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bennett, in his admirable work, "The Tower Menagerie," has these
+very sensible remarks:&mdash;"In speaking of the Lion we call up to our
+imaginations the splendid picture of might unmingled with ferocity, of
+courage undebased by guile, of dignity tempered by grace and ennobled by
+generosity. Such is the Lion of Buffon; who, in describing this animal,
+as in too many other instances, has suffered
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
+himself to be borne along
+by the strong tide of popular opinion; but, as the Lion appears in his
+native regions, according to the authentic accounts of those travellers
+and naturalists who have had the best means of correctly observing his
+habits, he is by no means so admirable a creature. Where the timid
+antelope and powerless monkey fall his easy and unresisting prey&mdash;or
+where the elephant and buffalo find their unwieldy bulk and strength no
+adequate protection against his impetuous agility&mdash;he stalks boldly to
+and fro in fearless majesty. But in the neighbourhood of man&mdash;even in
+that of uncultivated savages&mdash;<i>he skulks in treacherous ambush for his
+prey</i>. Of his forbearance and generosity it can merely be said, that
+when free, he destroys only what is sufficient to satiate his hunger or
+revenge; and when in captivity&mdash;his wants being provided for, and his
+feelings not irritated&mdash;he suffers smaller animals to live unmolested in
+his den, or submits to the control of a keeper by whom he is fed. But
+even this limited degree of docility is liable to fearful interruptions
+from the calls of hunger, the feelings of revenge&mdash;and these he
+frequently cherishes for a long period&mdash;with various other circumstances
+which render it dangerous to approach him in his most domesticated
+state, without ascertaining his immediate mood and temper. That an
+animal which seldom attacks by open force, but silently approaches his
+victim, and when he imagines his prey to be within his reach, bounds
+upon it with an overwhelming leap, should ever have been regarded as
+the type<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
+of courage and the emblem of magnanimity, is indeed most
+astonishing!"</p>
+
+<p>The generosity of disposition so liberally accorded to this powerful
+beast has been much and eloquently praised; and it seems hard to
+dissipate the glowing vision which Buffon has raised; but, if there is
+any dependence to be placed on the observations of those travellers
+who have had the best opportunities of judging, and have the highest
+character for veracity, we must be compelled to acknowledge that
+Buffon's Lion is the Lion of poetry and prejudice, and very unlike the
+cautious lurking savage that steals on its comparatively weak prey by
+surprise, overwhelms it at once by the terror, the weight, and the
+violence of the attack, and is intent only on the gratification of the
+appetite. "At the time," says Mr. Burchell, "when men first adopted the
+Lion as the emblem of courage, it would seem that they regarded great
+size and strength as indicating it; but they were greatly mistaken
+in the character they had given of the indolent animal." Indeed, Mr.
+Burchell calls the Lion an "indolent skulking animal." The fact of the
+Lion sparing the dog that was thrown to him, and making a friend of the
+little animal that was destined for his prey, has been much dwelt on;
+but these and other such acts of mercy, as they have been called, may
+be very easily accounted for. If not pressed by hunger, the Lion will
+seldom be at the trouble of killing prey; and the desire for a companion
+has created much stronger friendships between animals in confinement
+than between a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+Lion and a little dog. St. Pierre touchingly describes
+the Lion of Versailles, who, in 1792, lived most happily with a dog, and
+on whose death he became disconsolate and miserable; and in confinement
+the "lordly Lion," as Young calls him, has been known to be deeply
+afflicted with melancholy at similar losses.</p>
+
+<p>The Lion is easily tamed, and capable of attachment to man. The story of
+Androdas, frequently called Androcles, is too well known to need more
+than allusion; but in this and other stories of Lions licking men's
+hands without injuring them, there must be a stretch of fancy; for the
+Lion's tongue has sharp thorn-points, inclining backwards, so as not to
+be able to lick the hand without tearing away the skin, which any one
+will understand who has <i>heard</i> the Lion tear the raw meat away from the
+bone of his food.</p>
+
+<p>Still, very different accounts are given by travellers of the cruelty or
+generosity of the Lion's nature; which results, in all probability, from
+a difference in time or circumstances, or the degree of hunger which the
+individual experienced when the respective observations were made upon
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, there are many points in the history of the Lion which are
+yet but imperfectly understood; the explanations of which, whilst
+they are interesting, add to our correct knowledge of this still
+extraordinary animal.</p>
+
+<p>The Lion has been styled "The King of the Forest," which is not very
+applicable to him, seeing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
+that Mr. Burchell at least never met with
+but one Lion on the plains; nor did he ever meet with one in any of
+the forests where he had been. The low cover that creeps along the
+sides of streams, the patches that mark the springs in the rank grass
+of the valley, seem to be the shelter which the African Lion, for the
+most part, seeks. His strength is extraordinary. To carry off a man
+(and there are dismal accounts of this horrible fact, which there is no
+reason to doubt) appears a feat of no difficulty to this powerful brute.
+A Cape Lion, seizing a heifer in his mouth, has carried her off with the
+same ease as a cat does a rat; and has leaped with her over a broad dyke
+without the least difficulty. A young Lion, too, has conveyed a horse
+about a mile from the spot where he had killed it.</p>
+
+<p>There seems to be an idea that the Lion preserves human prey; but, be
+this as it may, the inhabitants of certain districts have been under the
+necessity of resorting to a curious expedient to get out of the Lion's
+reach. Ælian, by the way, records the extinction of a Libyan people by
+an invasion of Lions. We read of a large tree, in the country of the
+Mantatees, which has amidst its limbs fourteen conical huts. These are
+used as dormitories, being beyond the reach of the Lions, which, since
+the incursions of the Mantatees, when so many thousands of persons
+were massacred, have become very numerous in the neighbourhood, and
+destructive to human life. The branches of the above trees are supported
+by forked sticks or poles, and there are three tiers or platforms
+on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+which the huts are constructed. The lowest is nine feet from the
+ground, and holds ten huts; the second, about eight feet high, has
+three huts; and the upper story, if it may be so called, contains four.
+The ascent to these is made by notches cut in the poles; the huts are
+built with twigs, and thatched with straw, and will contain two persons
+conveniently. This tree stands at the base of a range of mountains due
+east of Kurrichaine, in a place called "Ongorutcie Fountain," about
+1,000 miles north-east of Cape Town. Kurrichaine is the Staffordshire as
+well as the Birmingham of that part of South Africa. There are likewise
+whole villages of huts erected on stakes, about eight feet from the
+ground; the inhabitants, it is stated, sit under the shade of these
+platforms during the day, and retire to the elevated huts at night.</p>
+
+<p>Though mortal accidents frequently occur in Lion-hunting, the cool
+sportsman seldom fails of using his rifle with effect. Lions, when
+roused, it seems, walk off quietly at first, and if no cover is near,
+and they are not pursued, they gradually mend their pace to a trot,
+till they have reached a good distance, and then they bound away. Their
+demeanour is careless, as if they did not want a fray, but if pressed,
+are ready to fight it out. If they are pursued closely, they turn and
+crouch, generally with their faces to the adversary: then the nerves of
+the sportsman are tried. If he is collected, and master of his craft,
+the well-directed rifle ends the scene at once; but if, in the flutter
+of the moment, the vital parts are
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
+missed, or the ball passes by,
+leaving the Lion unhurt, the infuriated beast frequently charges on his
+enemies, dealing destruction around him. This, however, is not always
+the case; and a steady, unshrinking deportment has, in some instances,
+saved the life of the hunter.</p>
+
+<p>There is hardly a book of African travels which does not teem with the
+dangers and hair-breadth escapes of the Lion-hunters; and hardly one
+that does not include a fatal issue to some engaged in this hazardous
+sport. The modes of destruction employed against the powerful beast are
+very various&mdash;from the poisonous arrow of the Bushman to the rifle of
+the colonist.</p>
+
+<p>The Lion may be safely attacked while sleeping, because of the dullness
+of his sense of hearing, the difficulty of awakening him, and his want
+of presence of mind if he be so awakened. Thus the Bushmen of Africa
+are enabled to keep the country tolerably clear of Lions, without
+encountering any great danger. The bone of the Lion's fore-leg is of
+remarkable hardness, from its containing a greater quantity of phosphate
+of lime than is found in ordinary bones, so that it may resist the
+powerful contraction of the muscles. The texture of this bone is so
+compact that the substance will strike fire with steel. He has little
+sense of taste, his lingual or tongue-nerve not being larger than that
+of a middle-sized dog.</p>
+
+<p>The true Lions belong to the Old World exclusively, and they were
+formerly widely and abundantly diffused; but at present they are
+confined to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
+Asia and Africa, and they are becoming every day more and
+more scarce in those quarters of the globe. That Lions were once found
+in Europe there can be no doubt. Thus it is recorded by Herodotus that
+the baggage-camels of the army of Xerxes were attacked by Lions in the
+country of the Reonians and the Crestonæi on their march from Acanthus
+(near the peninsula of Mount Athos) to Therma, afterwards Thessalonica
+(now Saloniki); the camels alone, it is stated, were attacked, other
+beasts remaining untouched, as well as men. Pausanias copies the above
+story, and states, moreover, that Lions often descended into the plains
+at the foot of Olympus, which separate Macedonia from Thessaly, and that
+Polydamas, a celebrated athlete, slew one of the Lions, although he was
+unarmed.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is Europe the only part of the world from which the form of the Lion
+has disappeared. Lions are no longer to be found in Egypt, Palestine,
+or Syria, where they once were evidently far from uncommon. The
+frequent allusions to the Lion in the Holy Scriptures, and the various
+Hebrew terms there used to distinguish the different ages and sex of
+the animal, prove a familiarity with the habits of the race. Even in
+Asia generally, with the exception of some countries between India and
+Persia and some districts of Arabia, these magnificent beasts have,
+as Cuvier observes, become comparatively rare, and this is not to be
+wondered at. To say nothing of the immense draughts on the race for
+the Roman arena,&mdash;and they were not
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+inconsiderable, for, as Zimmerman
+has shown, there were 1,000 lions killed at Rome in the space of forty
+years,&mdash;population and civilization have gradually driven them within
+narrower limits, and their destruction has been rapidly worked in
+modern times, when firearms have been used against them instead of the
+bow and the spear. Sylla gave a combat of one hundred Lions at once in
+his ædileship; but this exhibition is insignificant when compared with
+those of Pompey and Cæsar, the former of whom exhibited a fight of six
+hundred, and the latter of four hundred Lions. In Pompey's show three
+hundred and fifteen of the six hundred were males. The early Emperors
+consumed great numbers, frequently a hundred at a time, to gratify the
+people.</p>
+
+<p>The African Lion is annually retiring before the persecution of man
+farther and farther from the Cape. Mr. Bennett says of the Lion:&mdash;"His
+true country is Africa, in the vast and untrodden wilds of which, from
+the immense deserts of the north to the trackless forests of the south,
+he reigns supreme and uncontrolled. In the sandy deserts of Arabia,
+in some of the wild districts of Persia, and in the vast jungles of
+Hindostan, he still maintains a precarious footing; but from the classic
+soil of Greece, as well as from the whole of Asia Minor, both of which
+were once exposed to his ravages, he has been entirely dislodged and
+extirpated."</p>
+
+<p>Niebuhr places Lions among the animals of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+Arabia; but their proper
+country is Africa, where their size is the largest, their numbers
+are greatest, and their rage more tremendous, being inflamed by the
+influence of a burning sun upon a most arid soil. Dr. Fryer says that
+those of India are feeble and cowardly. In the interior parts, amidst
+the scorched and desolate deserts of Zaara or Biledugerid, they reign
+the masters; they lord it over every beast, and their courage never
+meets with a check where the climate keeps mankind at a distance. The
+nearer they approach the habitations of the human race the less their
+rage, or rather the greater is their timidity: they have often had
+experienced unequal combats, and finding that there exists a being
+superior to themselves, commit their ravages with more caution; a cooler
+climate, again, has the same effect, but in the burning deserts, where
+rivers and springs are denied, they live in a perpetual fever, a sort of
+madness fatal to every animal they meet with.</p>
+
+<p>The watchfulness and tenacity of the Lion for human prey are very
+extraordinary. Mr. Barrow relates that a Lion once pursued a Hottentot
+from a pool of water, where he was driving his cattle to drink, to an
+olive-tree, in which the man remained for twenty-four hours, while the
+Lion laid himself at the foot of the tree. The patience of the beast was
+at length worn out by his desire to drink, and while he satisfied his
+thirst the Hottentot fled to his house, about a mile off.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> The Lion,
+however, returned to the tree, and tracked the man within three hundred
+yards of his dwelling.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Philip relates a horrible story of a very large Lion recorded at
+Cape Town in the year 1705. He was known to have seized a sentry at a
+tent, and was pursued and fired at by many persons without effect. Next
+morning the Lion walked up a hill <i>with the man in his mouth</i>, when
+about forty shots were fired at him without hitting him; and it was
+perceived by the blood, and a piece of the clothes of the sentry, that
+the Lion had taken him away and carried him with him. He was pursued
+by a band of Hottentots, one of whom he seized with his claws by the
+mantle, when the man stabbed him with an assagai. Other Hottentots
+adorned him with their assagais, so that he looked like a porcupine; he
+roared and leaped furiously, but was at length shot dead. He had a short
+time before carried off a Hottentot and devoured him.</p>
+
+<p>The Bengal or Asiatic Lion is distinguished from that of Southern Africa
+principally by the larger size, the more regular and graceful form, the
+generally darker colour, and the less extensive mane than the African.
+William Harvey, the graceful artist, drew a portrait of a very fine
+Bengal Lion, little more than five years old, and then in the Tower
+collection, and called by the keepers "the Old Lion;" the magnificent
+development of the mane is very striking in this figure.</p>
+
+<p>Maneless Lions have been found on the confines
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> of Arabia, and were
+known to Aristotle and Pliny; a maneless Lion is also said to be
+represented on the monuments of Upper Egypt. The Lion of Arabia has
+neither the courage nor the stature, nor even the beauty, of the Lion of
+Africa. He uses cunning rather than force; he crouches among the reeds
+which border the Tigris and Euphrates, and springs upon all the feeble
+animals which come there to quench their thirst; but he dares not attack
+the boar, which is very common there, and flies as soon as he perceives
+a man, a woman, or even a child. If he catches a sheep he makes off
+with his prey; but he abandons it to save himself when an Arab looks
+after him. If he is hunted by horsemen, which often happens, he does
+not defend himself unless he is wounded, and has no hope of safety by
+flight. In such a case he will fly on a man and tear him to pieces with
+his claws, for it is courage more than strength that he wants. Achmed,
+Pasha of Bagdad from 1724 to 1747, would have been torn by one, after
+breaking his lance in a hunt, if his slave Suleiman, who succeeded him
+in the Pashalik, had not come promptly to his succour and pierced with a
+blow of his yataghan the Lion already wounded by his master.</p>
+
+<p>In December, 1833, Captain Walter Smee exhibited to the Zoological
+Society of London the skins of a Lion and Lioness killed by him in
+Guzerat, and distinguished from those previously known by the absence
+of a mane; the tail was shorter than that of the ordinary Lion, and
+furnished<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
+at its tip with a much larger brush or tuft; and in the
+tuft of the older Lion was a short horny claw or nail. The colour is
+fulvous; which in darker specimens has a tinge of red. A male maneless
+Lion, killed by Captain Smee, measured, including the tail, 8 feet
+9-1/2 inches in length; the impression of his paw on the sand 6-1/4
+inches across, and his height was 3 feet 6 inches. These maneless Lions
+are found in Guzerat, along the banks of the Sombermultee, in low,
+bushy-wooded plains, being driven out of the large adjoining tracts of
+high grass jungle by the natives annually setting fire to the grass.
+Here Captain Smee killed his finest specimens: they were so common in
+this district that he killed no fewer than eleven during a residence of
+about a month, yet scarcely any of the natives had seen them previously
+to his coming amongst them. The cattle were frequently carried off by
+these Lions: some natives attributed this to tigers, which, however,
+do not exist in this part of the country. Captain Smee could not learn
+that men had been attacked by these Lions: when struck by a ball they
+exhibited great boldness, standing as if preparing to resist their
+pursuers, and then going off slowly, and in a very sullen manner.</p>
+
+<p>In captivity the Lioness usually turns extremely savage when she becomes
+a mother; and, in a state of nature, both parents guard their young
+with the greatest jealousy. Early in the year 1823 General Watson, then
+on service in Bengal, being out one morning on horseback, armed with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
+a double-barrelled rifle, was suddenly surprised by a large male Lion,
+which bounded out upon him from the thick jungle, at the distance of
+only a few yards. He instantly fired, and the shot taking complete
+effect, the animal fell almost dead at his feet. No sooner had the Lion
+fallen than the Lioness rushed out, which the General also shot at and
+wounded severely, so that she retired into the thicket. Thinking that
+the den could not be far distant, he traced her to her retreat, and
+there despatched her; and in the den were found two beautiful cubs, a
+male and a female, apparently not more than three months old. This is a
+very touching narrative, even of the Lion family.</p>
+
+<p>The General brought the cubs away; they were suckled by a goat and
+sent to England, where they arrived in September, 1823, as a present
+to George IV., and were lodged in the Tower. When young, Lions mew
+like a cat; at the age of ten or twelve months the mane begins to
+appear in the male; at the age of eighteen months this appendage is
+considerably developed, and they begin to roar. The <i>roar</i> of the adult
+Lion is terrific, from the larynx or upper part of the wind-pipe being
+proportionately greater than in the whale or the elephant, or any other
+animal. Mr. Burchell describes the roar on some occasions to resemble
+the noise of an earthquake; and this terrific effect is produced by
+the Lion laying his head upon the ground and uttering, as it were, a
+half-stifled roar or growl, which is conveyed along the earth.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The natural period of the Lion's life is generally supposed to be twenty
+or twenty-two years. Such is Buffon's limitation; but the animal will,
+it seems, live much longer. Pompey, the great Lion, which died in 1766,
+was said to have been in the Tower above seventy years; and a Lion from
+the river Gambia is stated to have since died in the Tower menagerie at
+the age of sixty-three.</p>
+
+<p>There had been for ages a popular belief that the Lion lashes his sides
+with his tail to stimulate himself into rage; when, in 1832, there was
+exhibited to the Zoological Society a claw obtained from the tip of
+the tail of a Barbary Lion, presented to the Society's menagerie by
+Sir Thomas Reade. It was detected on the living animal by Mr. Bennett,
+and pointed out to the keeper, in whose hands it came off while he
+was examining it. Blumenbach quotes Homer, Lucan, and Pliny, among
+others who have described the Lion (erroneously) as lashing himself
+with his tail, when angry, to provoke his rage. None of these writers,
+however, advert to any peculiarity in the Lion's tail to which so
+extraordinary a function might, however incorrectly, be attributed.
+Didymus Alexandrinus, a commentator on the "Iliad," cited by Blumenbach,
+having found a black prickle, like a horn, among the hair of the tail,
+immediately conjectured that he had ascertained the true cause of the
+stimulus when the animal flourishes his tail in defiance of his enemies,
+remarking that, when punctured by this prickle, the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> Lion became more
+irritable from the pain which it occasioned. The subject, however,
+appears to have slumbered till 1829, when M. Deshayes announced that
+he had found the prickle both of a Lion and Lioness, which had died
+in the French menagerie, and described it as a little nail, or horny
+production, adhering by its base only to the skin, and not to the last
+caudal vertebra. From that period Mr. Wood, the able zoologist, examined
+the tail of every Lion, living or dead, to which he could gain access;
+but in no instance had he succeeded in finding the prickle till the
+above specimen, which was placed in his hands within half an hour after
+its removal from the living animal, and while yet soft at its base,
+where it had been attached to the skin. Its shape was nearly straight,
+then slightly contracted, forming a very obtuse angle, and afterwards
+swelling out like the bulb of a bristle, to its termination. It was
+laterally flattened throughout its entire length, which did not amount
+to quite three-eighths of an inch, of horn colour, and nearly black at
+the tip. Its connexion with the skin must have been very slight, which
+accounts for its usual absence in stuffed as well as living specimens.
+This does not depend upon age, as it was found alike in the Paris Lions,
+of considerable size, as well as in the Zoological Society's Lions,
+very small and young; nor did it depend upon sex. It appears to be
+occasionally present in the Leopard; and, in both Lion and Leopard, it
+is seated at the extreme tip of the tail,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+and is altogether unconnected
+with the terminal caudal vertebra; not fitted on like a cap, but rather
+inserted into the skin.</p>
+
+<p>The use of the prickle, however, it still remained difficult to
+conjecture; but that its existence was known to the ancients is proved
+by the Nimroud sculptures in the British Museum, in an exaggerated
+representation of the claw, in support of this curious fact in natural
+history. The existence of the claw has been proved by Mr. Bennett;
+and "it is no small gratification to be able now to quote in evidence
+of the statement of Mr. Bennett, and of his predecessor. Didymus, of
+Alexandria, the original and authentic document, on the authority of the
+veritable descendants of the renowned hunter Nimroud; which any one may
+read who will take the trouble to examine the sculptured slab in the
+British Museum."<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>
+
+<p>In the Nineveh galleries of the British Museum we also see pictured in
+stone the employment of the Lion, in the life of Assyria and Babylonia,
+three thousand years since; in the events of a succession of dynasties,
+recording the sieges of cities, the combats of warriors, the triumphs
+of Kings, the processions of victors, the chains and fetters of the
+vanquished. To the zoological observer these sculptures present drawings
+<i>ad naturam</i> of tableaux of Lions and Lion-hunts; Lions in combat, as
+well as in moveable dens and cages, and the ferocity of the chase; and
+Lions transfixed with arrows or javelins in the arena. One of the finest
+of these sculptures<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
+is in the representation of a Lion-hunt, on a long
+slab that lined the principal chamber of the most ancient palace at
+Nimroud. The King is in his chariot, drawn by three horses, which the
+charioteer is urging forward to escape the attack of an infuriated Lion
+that has already placed its fore-paws upon the back of the chariot. At
+this critical moment, the Royal descendant of the mighty hunter aims a
+deadly shaft at the head of the roaring and wounded Lion, the position
+of whose tail and limbs is finely indicative of rage and fury. Behind
+the Lion are two of the King's attendants, fully armed, and holding
+their daggers and shields, ready to defend themselves in case the prey
+should escape the arrow of the King. Before the chariot is a wounded
+Lion, crawling from under the horses' feet. The cringing agony conveyed
+in its entire action is well contrasted with the undaunted fury of the
+former. In another slab we have the continuation of the same Lion-hunt,
+representing the triumphant return of the King from the chase. At his
+feet lies the Lion subdued, but not dead.</p>
+
+<p>Of the pageantry of the Lion, we read, in Bell's "Travels," that the
+monarch of Persia had, on days of audience, two great Lions chained on
+each side of the passage to the state-room, led there by keepers in
+golden chains.</p>
+
+<p>Our early English Sovereigns had a menagerie in the Tower from the reign
+of Henry III. (1252.) In 1370 (44 Edward III.) are entries of payments
+made to "the Keeper of the King's Lions and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+Leopards" there, at the
+rate of 6<i>d.</i> a-day for his wages, and 6<i>d.</i> a-day for each beast.
+The number of beasts varied from four to seven. Two young Lions are
+specially mentioned; and "a Lion lately sent by the Lord the Prince,
+from Germany to England, to our Lord the King." And we read, in Lord
+Burghley's "Diary," 1586, of the grant of the keeping of the Lions in
+the Tower, with "the Fine of 12<i>d.</i> per diem, and 6<i>d.</i> for the Meat of
+those Lions." The first menagerie-building was the Lion Tower, to which
+was added a semicircular inclosure, where Lions and Bears were baited
+with dogs, with which James I. and his court were much delighted. A
+Lion was named after the reigning King; and it was popularly believed
+that "when the King dies, the Lion of that name dies after him." The
+last of the Tower animals were transferred to the Zoological Society's
+menagerie, in the Regent's-park, in 1834. The Tower menagerie is well
+described in a handsome volume, with woodcut portraits, by William
+Harvey.</p>
+
+<p>The punishment of being <i>thrown to Lions</i> is stated as common among the
+Romans of the first century; and numerous tales are extant, in which the
+fierce animals became meek and lamb-like before the holy virgins of the
+Church. This, indeed, is the origin of the superstition, nowhere more
+beautifully expressed than in Lord Byron's "Siege of Corinth":&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"'Tis said that a Lion will turn and flee</div>
+<div class="verse">From a maid in the pride of her purity."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Every wild beast show almost has its tame Lion, with which the keeper
+takes the greatest liberties; liberties which the beast will suffer,
+generally speaking, from none but him. Major Smith relates that he
+had seen the keeper of a Lioness stand upon the beast, drag her round
+the cage by her tail, open her jaws, and thrust his head between her
+teeth. Another keeper, at New York, had provided himself with a fur cap,
+the novelty of which attracted the notice of the Lion, which, making
+a sudden grapple, tore the cap off his head as he passed the cage;
+but, perceiving that the keeper was the person whose head he had thus
+uncovered, he immediately laid the cap down. Wombwell, in his menagerie,
+had a fine Lion, Nero, that allowed <i>strangers</i> to enter his den, and
+even put their heads within his jaws. This tameness is not, however, to
+be trusted, since the natural ferocity of some Lions is never safely
+subdued. Lions which have been sometimes familiar, have, on other
+occasions, been known to kill their keepers, and dart at those who have
+incautiously approached too near their cage. All these exhibitions have
+been entirely eclipsed by the feats of Van Amburgh, in his exercise of
+complete control over Lions. The melancholy fate of "the Lion Queen,"
+however, tells of the fatal result of her confidence. The Lion-killing
+feats of Captain Gordon Cumming had a more legitimate object in view&mdash;to
+render us more familiar with the zoological character of the Lion.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Colonization has scarcely yet extirpated the Lion in Algeria, where the
+French colonists make fine sport of "the King of the Beasts." M. Jules
+Gerard, a Nimroud in his way, has been noted for his Lion-killing feats.
+We read of his tracking a large old Lion in the Smauls country, one
+hundred leagues in ten days, without catching a glimpse of anything but
+his foot-prints. At length, accompanied by a native of the country and a
+spahi, Gerard took up his quarters at the foot of a tree upon the path
+which the old Lion had taken. It was moonlight, and Gerard made out two
+Lions sitting about one hundred paces off, and exactly in the shadow of
+the tree. The Arab lay snoring ten paces off, in the full light of the
+moon, and had, doubtless, attracted the attention of the Lions. Gerard
+expressly forbade the spahi to wake the Arab. Our Lion-hunter then got
+up the hill to reconnoitre; the boldest of the Lions came up to within
+ten paces of Gerard, and fifteen of the Arab: the Lion's eye was fixed
+on the latter, and the second Lion placed himself on a level with, and
+four or five paces from, the first. They proved to be both full-grown
+Lionesses. Gerard took aim at the first as she came rolling and roaring
+down to the foot of the tree. The Arab was scarcely awakened, when a
+second ball stretched the Lioness dead upon the spot. Gerard then looked
+out for the second Lioness, who was standing up within fifteen paces,
+looking around her. He fired, and she fell down roaring, and disappeared
+in a field of maize; she
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+fell, but was still alive. Next morning at
+daybreak, at the spot where the Lioness had fallen, were blood marks,
+denoting her track in the direction of a wood. After sending off the
+dead Lioness. Gerard returned to his post of the preceding night. A
+little after sunset the Lion roared in his lair, and continued roaring
+all night. Convinced that the wounded Lioness was there, Gerard sent two
+Arabs to explore the cover, but they durst not. He next evening reached
+the lair, taking with him a goat, which he left with the Arabs: the
+Lioness appeared. Gerard fired, and she fell without a struggle; she was
+believed dead, but she got up again as though nothing was the matter,
+and showed all her teeth. One of the Arabs, within six paces of her,
+seeing her get up, clung to the lower branches of a tree and disappeared
+like a squirrel. The Lioness fell dead at the foot of the tree, a second
+bullet piercing her heart: the first had passed out of the nape of the
+neck without breaking the skull-bone.</p>
+
+<p>The Lions presented by Lord Prudhoe to the British Museum are the best
+sculptured representations of the animal in this country. Although the
+Lion is our national hieroglyphic, and there are many statues of him,
+yet not one among them all appears without a defect, which makes our
+representations of him belong to the class <i>canis</i> instead of <i>felis</i>, a
+fault not found in any Egyptian sculpture.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>
+
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a>
+Bonomi; "Nineveh and its Palaces," p. 249.</p>
+<p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a>
+Bonomi; "Proc. Royal Soc., Literature."</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="BIRD-LIFE" id="BIRD-LIFE"></a>BIRD-LIFE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>"Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they
+reap, nor gather into barns; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them."&mdash;Matthew vi. 26.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"Free tenants of land, air, and ocean,</div>
+<div class="verse">Their forms all symmetry, their motions grace;</div>
+<div class="verse">In plumage delicate and beautiful,</div>
+<div class="verse">Thick without burthen, close as fishes' scales,</div>
+<div class="verse">Or loose as full-blown poppies on the gales;</div>
+<div class="verse">With wings that seem as they'd a soul within them,</div>
+<div class="verse">They bear their owners with such sweet enchantment."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="right1"><i>James Montgomery.</i></div>
+
+<div class="margin-top1">
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_153.jpg" alt="Letter B"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>BIRDS</b>, as regards structure, are perhaps the most perfectly endowed,
+as they are certainly the most beautiful and interesting, of all the
+lower animals. In Birds there is an admirable mechanism and adaptation
+both for gliding in the air and swimming in the water. They surpass all
+other animals in the faculty of continuing their motion without resting,
+as well as in its rapidity. The fleetest courser can scarcely ever run
+more than a mile in a minute, nor support that speed beyond five or six
+such exertions. But the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
+joyous Swallow does this tenfold for pleasure.
+In his usual way he flies at the rate of one mile in a minute; and
+Wilson, the ornithologist, ascertained that the Swallow is so engaged
+for ten hours every day. So can the Blue-bird of America, for a space of
+600 miles. Our Carrier-pigeons move with half that celerity: one flew
+from Liskeard to London, 220 miles, in six hours. The Golden Eagle is
+supposed to dart through the fiercest storm at the rate of 160 miles an
+hour; but one of our smallest Birds, the Swift, can even quadruple the
+most excited quickness of the race-horse for a distance. Spallanzani
+thought that the little Swift travelled at the rate of 250 miles an hour.</p>
+
+<p>Inquiries into the phenomena of the flight of Birds would lead us
+far beyond our limits. The subject is beset with error. Thus, we
+read:&mdash;"Every one has remarked the manner in which Birds of prey float,
+as it were, without any effort, and with steady expanded wings, at great
+heights in the atmosphere. This they are enabled to do from the quantity
+of air contained in the air-cells of their bodies, which air being taken
+in at a low level in the atmosphere, of course rarefies and expands as
+the Bird ascends into higher regions. Their rapidity of descent must
+be accomplished by the sudden expulsion of this air, aided by their
+muscular efforts."</p>
+
+<p>Now, Dr. Crisp has read to the Zoological Society a paper "On the
+Presence or Absence of Air in the Bones of Birds," for the purpose of
+showing the prevailing error upon the subject&mdash;viz., "that the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> bones
+of the Bird are filled with air." Of fifty-two British Birds recently
+dissected by him, only one, the Sparrow-hawk, had the bones generally
+perforated for the admission of air. In thirteen others, the humeri only
+were hollow, and among these were several Birds of short flight. In the
+remaining thirty-eight, neither the <i>humeri</i> nor <i>femora</i> contained
+air, although in this list were several Birds of passage and of rapid
+flight&mdash;Dr. Crisp's conclusion being, that the majority of British Birds
+have no air in their bones, and that, with the exception of the Falcons,
+but very few British Birds have hollow femora.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gould records a most remarkable instance of rapid and sustained
+flight, which he witnessed on his return from North America, whither
+he had proceeded for the purpose of studying the habits and manners of
+the species of <i>Trochilus</i> (Humming Bird), frequenting that portion
+of America. Having remarked that he arrived just prior to the period
+of the migration of this Bird from Mexico to the north, and had ample
+opportunities for observing it in a state of nature, he noticed that
+its actions were very peculiar, and quite different from those of all
+other birds: the flight is performed by a motion of the wings so rapid
+as to be almost imperceptible; indeed, the muscular power of this little
+creature appears to be very great in every respect, as, independently of
+its rapid and sustained flight, it grasps the small twigs, flowers, &amp;c.,
+upon which it alights
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
+with the utmost tenacity. It appears to be most
+active in the morning and evening, and to pass the middle of the day in
+a state of sleepy torpor. Occasionally it occurs in such numbers that
+fifty or sixty birds may be seen in a single tree. When captured it so
+speedily becomes tame that it will feed from the hand or mouth within
+half an hour. Mr. Gould having been successful in keeping a Humming-Bird
+alive in a gauze bag attached to his breast button for three days,
+during which it readily fed from a bottle filled with a syrup of brown
+sugar and water, he determined to make an attempt to bring some living
+examples to England, in which he succeeded; but unfortunately they did
+not long survive their arrival.</p>
+
+<p>The adaptation of colour in Birds to their haunts strikingly tends to
+their preservation. The small Birds which frequent hedges have backs
+of a brownish or brownish-green hue; and their bellies are generally
+whitish, or light-coloured, so as to harmonize with the sky. Thus, they
+become less visible to the hawk or cat that passes above or below them.
+The wayfarer across the fields also treads upon the Skylark before he
+sees it warbling to heaven's gate. The Goldfinch or Thistlefinch passes
+much of its time among flowers, and is vividly coloured accordingly.
+The Partridge can hardly be distinguished from the fallow or stubble
+among which it crouches; and it is considered an accomplishment among
+sportsmen to have a good eye for finding a Hare sitting. In northern
+countries the winter dress
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
+of the Hares and Ptarmigans is white, to
+prevent detection among the snows of those inclement regions.</p>
+
+<p>The Song of Birds is popularly explained by the author of a work,
+entitled, "The Music of Nature," in which he illustrates the vocal
+machinery of Birds as follows:&mdash;"It is difficult to account for so small
+a creature as a Bird making a tone as loud as some animal a thousand
+times its size; but a recent discovery shows that in birds the lungs
+have several openings communicating with corresponding air-bags or
+cells, which fill the whole cavity of the body from the neck downward,
+and into which the air passes and repasses in the progress of breathing.
+This is not all. The very bones are hollow, from which air-pipes are
+conveyed to the most solid parts of the body, even into the quills and
+feathers. The air being rarefied by the heat of their body, adds to
+their levity. By forcing the air out of their body, they can dart down
+from the greatest heights with astonishing velocity. No doubt the same
+machinery forms the basis of their vocal powers, and at once resolves
+the mystery into a natural ordering of parts." This is a very pretty
+story; but, unfortunately, it is not correct, as already shown.</p>
+
+<p>A correspondent of the "Athenæum," writing in 1866, says:&mdash;"He would be
+a bold man who should say that Birds have no delight in their own songs.
+I have been led to conclude from experiments which I have made, and from
+other observations, that certain animals, especially Birds, have not
+only an ear<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+for fine sounds, but also a preference for the things they
+see out of respect to fine colours or other pleasing external features.
+It is chiefly among Birds, when we consider the case of animals, that
+a taste for ornament and for glittering objects, often very startling
+and human-like, is to be found. The habits of the Pheasant, Peacock,
+Turkey, Bird of Paradise, several Birds of the Pigeon and Crow kind, and
+certain Singing Birds, are evidence. The Australian Satin Bower-Bird
+is the most remarkable of that class which exhibit taste for beauty or
+for glittering objects out of themselves&mdash;that is, beauty not directly
+personal; collecting, in fact, little museums of shells, gaudy feathers,
+shining glass, or bits of coloured cloth or pottery. It will be found
+with many Birds that fine plumes, a mirror, and an admirer, are not
+altogether objects devoid of interest.</p>
+
+<p>"Another consideration leading me to the same conclusion, is the fact,
+that beauty in animals is placed on prominent parts, or on parts
+which by erection or expansion are easily, and at the pairing season,
+frequently rendered prominent, such as a crest or tail. A spangle of
+ruby or emerald does not exist, for instance, on the side under the
+wing, which is seldom raised, of our domestic poultry. Such jewels are
+hung where man himself wears his, on the face and forehead, or court
+attention, like our own crowns, trains, shoulder-knots, breast-knots,
+painted cheeks, or jewelled ears. I cannot account for the existence of
+these gaudy ornaments to please man, for nowhere are they more gorgeous
+than in Birds<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+which live in the depth of the tropical forest, where man
+is rarely a visitor; I cannot account for them on the principle that
+they do good to their possessors in the battle for life, because they
+rather render them conspicuous to their enemies, or coveted by man." But
+the beauty of these beings glows most brightly at the season of their
+pairing, and the selection of their mates.</p>
+
+<p>Baron von Tschudi, the Swiss naturalist, has shown the important
+services of Birds in the destruction of insects. Without Birds, no
+agriculture or vegetation would be possible. They accomplish in a few
+months the profitable work of destruction which millions of human hands
+could not do half so well in as many years; and the sage, therefore,
+blamed in very severe terms the foolish practice of shooting and
+destroying Birds, which prevails more especially in Italy, recommending,
+on the contrary, the process of alluring Birds into gardens and
+corn-fields. Among the most deserving Birds he counts Swallows, Finches.
+Titmice, Redtails, &amp;c. The naturalist then cites numerous instances in
+support of his assertion. In a flower-garden of one of his neighbours
+three rose-trees had been suddenly covered with about 2,000 tree-lice.
+At his recommendation a Marsh-Titmouse was located in the garden, which
+in a few hours consumed the whole brood, and left the roses perfectly
+clean. A Redtail in a room was observed to catch about 900 flies in an
+hour. A couple of Night-Swallows have been known to destroy a whole
+swarm of gnats in fifteen minutes. A pair of Golden-crested
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> Wrens
+carry insects as food to their nestlings upon an average thirty-six
+times in an hour. For the protection of orchards and woods Titmice are
+of invaluable service. They consume, in particular, the eggs of the
+dangerous pine-spiders. One single female of such spiders frequently
+lays from 600 to 800 eggs twice in the summer season, while a Titmouse
+with her young ones consume daily several thousands of them. Wrens,
+Nuthatches, and Woodpeckers often dexterously fetch from the crevices of
+tree-bark numbers of insects for their nestlings.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, profitless and wanton Bird-murder is common. The cliffs on the
+coasts of these islands are the resort of numerous kinds of Sea-Fowl,
+and these Fowl, we are told, are slaughtered by thousands, not merely
+for the sake of their feathers, but actually for the mere savage
+pleasure of killing. What speculation can enter into such a proceeding
+it may puzzle the reader to imagine; but it seems that the wing feathers
+of the poor White Gull are now inquired for in the plume-trade, and
+we are actually told of an order given by a single house for 10,000
+of these unhappy Birds. When these facts were stated at the Meeting
+of the British Association, in August, 1868, at Norwich, a lady stood
+up boldly in defence of her sex, and declared that they sinned only
+through ignorance, and would never willingly wear the feathers of a
+Bird destroyed in the act of feeding its young. That part of the case,
+therefore, ought to be now in safe hands. In the Isle of Man a law has
+been passed, called the "Seagull Preservation Act," protecting
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> these
+Birds by heavy penalties, on the ground of their utility in removing
+fish offal and guiding fishermen to shoals of fish. At a certain point
+of our shores a similar protection has been established. A visitor to
+the South Stack Lighthouse, on the coast of Anglesey, may see prodigious
+numbers of Sea-Fowl as tame as complete safety can make them. It has
+been ascertained that in thick weather, when neither light can be
+distinguished nor signal seen, the incessant scream of these Birds gives
+the best of all warnings to the mariner of the vicinity of the rock. The
+noise they make can be heard at a greater distance than the tolling of
+the great bell; and so valuable was this danger-signal considered, that
+an order from the Trinity House forbad even the firing of the warning
+gun, lest the colony of the Sea-Fowl should be disturbed. The signals of
+the bell and the cannon might be neglected or overpowered, but the Birds
+were always there and always audible.</p>
+
+<p>It is inferred that Birds possess some notion of power, and of cause and
+effect, from the various actions which they perform. "Thus," relates Dr.
+Fleming, "we have seen the Hooded Crow in Zetland, when feeding on small
+shell-fish, able to break some of the tenderer kinds by means of its
+bill, aided in some cases by beating them against a stone; but, as some
+of the larger shells, such as the buckie and the welk, cannot be broken
+by such means, the Crow employs another method, by which, in consequence
+of applying foreign power, it accomplishes its object. Seizing the
+shell with its claws, it mounts up into
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+the air, and then loosing its
+hold, causes the shell to fall among stones (in preference to the sand,
+the water, or the soil on the ground), that it may be broken, and give
+easier access to the contained animal. Should the first attempt fail,
+a second or third is tried, with this difference, that the Crow rises
+higher in the air, in order to increase the power of the fall, and
+more effectually remove the barrier to the contained morsel. On such
+occasions we have seen a strong Bird remain an apparently inattentive
+spectator of the process of breaking the shell, but coming to the spot
+with astonishing keenness when the efforts of its neighbour had been
+successful, in order to share the spoil. Pennant mentions similar
+operations performed by Crows on mussels."</p>
+
+<p>The brain of Birds is, in general, large in proportion to the size of
+the body, and the instinctive powers are very perfect. A few kinds are
+rather dull and stupid; but the Parrot, Magpie, Raven, and many others,
+show great vivacity and quickness of intellect. The Raven has a great
+deal of humour in him. One, a most amusing and mischievous creature,
+would get into a well-stocked flower-garden, go to the beds where the
+gardener had sowed a great variety of seeds, with sticks put in the
+ground with labels, and then he would amuse himself with pulling up
+every stick, and laying them in heaps of ten or twelve on the path. This
+used to irritate the old gardener, who drove him away. The Raven knew
+that he ought not to do it, or he would not have done it. He would soon
+return to his mischief, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+when the gardener again chased him (the old
+man could not run very fast), the Raven would just keep clear of the
+rake or the hoe in his hand, dancing before him, and singing as plainly
+as a Raven could. "Tol de rol de rol! tol de rol de rol!" with all kinds
+of mimicking gestures.</p>
+
+<p>The signal of danger among Birds seems to be of universal comprehension;
+because the instant it is uttered we hear the whole flock, though
+composed of various species, repeat a separate moan, and away they
+all scuttle into the bushes for safety. The sentinel Birds give the
+signal, but in some cases they are deceived by false appearances. Dr.
+Edmonstone, in his "View of the Zetland Isles," relates a very striking
+illustration of the neglect of the sentinel, in his remarks on the Shag.
+"Great numbers of this species of the Cormorant are sometimes taken
+during the night, while asleep on the rocks of easy access; but before
+they commit themselves to sleep, one or two of the number are appointed
+to watch. Until these sentinels are secured, it is impossible to make a
+successful impression on the whole body; to surprise them is, therefore,
+the first object. With this view, the leader of the expedition creeps
+cautiously and imperceptibly along the rock, until he gets within a
+short distance of the watch. He then dips a worsted glove into the sea,
+and gently throws water in the face of the guard. The unsuspecting Bird,
+either disliking the impression, or fancying, from what he considers to
+be a disagreeable state of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>
+weather, that all is quiet and safe,
+puts his head under his wing and soon falls asleep. His neck is then
+immediately broken, and the party dispatch as many as they choose."</p>
+
+<p>Addison was a true lover of nature, which he shows in two letters
+written by him to the Earl of Warwick (afterwards his son-in-law),
+when that nobleman was very young. "My dear Lord," he writes, "I have
+employed the whole neighbourhood in looking after Birds'-nests, and
+not altogether without success. My man found one last night, but it
+proved a hen's, with fifteen eggs in it, covered with an old broody
+Duck, which may satisfy your Lordship's curiosity a little; though I
+am afraid the eggs will be of little use to us. This morning I have
+news brought me of a nest that has abundance of little eggs, streaked
+with red and blue veins, that, by the description they give me, must
+make a very beautiful figure in a string. My neighbours are very much
+divided in their opinions upon them: some say they are a Skylark's;
+others will have them to be a Canary-Bird's; but I am much mistaken
+in the colour and turn of the eggs if they are not full of Tomtit's."
+Again, Addison writes:&mdash;"Since I am so near your Lordship, methinks,
+after having passed the day amid more severe studies, you may often
+take a trip hither and relax yourself with these little curiosities of
+nature. I assure you no less a man than Cicero commends the two great
+friends of his age, Scipio and Lælius, for entertaining themselves
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
+at their country-house, which stood on the sea-shore, with picking up
+cockle-shells, and looking after Birds'-nests."</p>
+
+<p>In another letter Addison writes:&mdash;"The business of this is to invite
+you to a concert of music which I have found out in a neighbouring wood.
+It begins precisely at six in the evening, and consists of a Blackbird,
+a Thrush, a Robin-Redbreast, and a Bullfinch. There is a Lark, that, by
+way of overture, sings and mounts till she is almost out of hearing; and
+afterwards, falling down leisurely, drops to the ground as soon as she
+has ended her song. The whole is concluded by a Nightingale, that has a
+much better voice than Mrs. Tofts, and something of the Italian manner
+in her divisions. If your Lordship will honour me with your company, I
+will promise to entertain you with much better music, and more agreeable
+scenes, than you ever met with at the Opera; and will conclude with a
+charming description of a Nightingale out of our friend Virgil:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"'So close, in poplar shades, her children gone,</div>
+<div class="verse">The mother Nightingale laments alone;</div>
+<div class="verse">Whose nest some prying churl had found, and thence</div>
+<div class="verse">By stealth convey'd the unfeathered innocence:</div>
+<div class="verse">But she supplies the night with mournful strains,</div>
+<div class="verse">And melancholy music fills the plains.'"</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="BIRDS_EGGS_AND_NESTS" id="BIRDS_EGGS_AND_NESTS"></a>BIRDS' EGGS AND NESTS.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>THE</b> Eggs of Birds are variously tinted and mottled, and hence they
+become objects of interest to the collector. In this diversity of
+colour nature has, doubtless, some final object in view; and though not
+in every instance, yet in many, we can certainly see a design in the
+adaptation of the colours to the purpose of concealment, according to
+the habits of the various classes of Birds. Thus, as a general rule, the
+Eggs of Birds which have their nests in dark holes, or which construct
+nests that almost completely exclude the light, are white; as is also
+the case with those Birds that constantly sit on their Eggs, or leave
+them only for a short time during the night. Eggs of a light blue or
+light green tint will also be found in nests that are otherwise well
+concealed; while, on the other hand, a great proportion of those nests
+that are in exposed situations have Eggs varying in tints and spots in a
+remarkable degree, corresponding with the colours of external objects in
+their immediate neighbourhood.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
+Thus, a dull green colour is common in
+most gallinaceous Birds that form their nests in grass, and in aquatic
+Birds among green hedges; a bright green colour is prevalent among Birds
+that nestle among trees and bushes; and a brown mottled colour is found
+in those Eggs that are deposited among furze, heath, shingle, and grey
+rocks and stones.</p>
+
+<p>Birds'-nesting, we need hardly remark, is a favourite pursuit of
+boyhood; but, in some cases, its attractions have induced young
+persons to take up more important branches of natural history, or the
+collection, systematic arrangement, and comparison of Birds' Eggs, which
+is, in scientific study, termed Oology; and as the study of Birds cannot
+be considered complete until they are known in every stage, it forms a
+branch of Ornithology. In this case Birds'-nesting has an useful object;
+but many persons are content to acquire collections of Eggs without
+troubling themselves about the Birds which have laid them.</p>
+
+<p>The late Mr. John Wolley, M.A., was one of the leading authorities
+upon the subject of European Ornithology, and was one of a number
+of University men, who, about twelve years ago, established the
+ornithological journal called "The Ibis," and who visited far-distant
+and unexplored regions, where they might hope to discover strange
+Birds and unknown Eggs. For several years Algiers and Tunis were their
+favourite resorts, and the meeting-places of many of our rarer Birds
+were hunted up in these
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>
+countries, even so far as the Desert of the
+Great Sahara. Others preferred the New World as the scene of their
+labours, and collected long series of specimens in the highland of
+Guatemala, and the tropical forests of Belize. Mr. Wolley, however,
+confined his attention principally to the northern parts of Europe&mdash;that
+region being the breeding-quarters of a large number of Birds which
+are only known in this country as winter visitants. In order to be
+at his collecting-station at Muonioniska, on the frontier of Finnish
+Lapland, at the earliest commencement of the breeding-season, Mr. Wolley
+frequently passed the whole winter in that remote region. But the rigour
+of the climate under the Arctic Circle contributed to bring on a malady
+which terminated fatally in November, 1859.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the decease of Mr. Wolley, his large collection of Birds' Eggs,
+in accordance with his last wishes, became the property of his friend,
+Mr. Alfred Newton, who is publishing a Catalogue of Mr. Wolley's Egg
+Cabinet, with notes from the deceased naturalist's journals. The first
+part contains the Eggs of Birds of Prey (<i>Accipitres</i>), recognisable at
+once by their strongly-hooked bill, formed to assist them in tearing
+their prey, and their large feet and sharpened claws, which aid them to
+grasp it. They are divisible into two very distinct groups&mdash;the diurnal
+Birds of Prey, consisting of the Hawks, Vultures, and Eagles; and the
+nocturnal Birds of Prey, or Owls. In the latter the Eggs are invariably
+colourless; in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
+the former they are often strongly marked, and present
+some of the most beautiful objects in the whole series of Birds' Eggs.</p>
+
+<p>In the most recently published list of European birds fifty-two species
+of birds of prey are given as occurring more or less frequently within
+the limits of our continent. Of the three generally-recognised species
+of European Vultures two are well represented, as regards their eggs,
+in the Wolleyan series. A few years ago the nesting of all these birds
+was utterly unknown to naturalists, and it was mainly through the
+exertions of Mr. Wolley and his friends that specimens first reached
+our collectors' cabinets. Here were found both the Egyptian Vulture
+and the Griffon breeding abundantly in the Eastern Atlas in 1857; and
+the eyries of these birds have since been visited by other collectors
+in the same country. The Eggs of the former of these Vultures are
+remarkable for their deep and rich coloration. The productions of the
+Griffon are not nearly so handsome, and are occasionally altogether
+destitute of markings. Of the Eagles of Europe the series of Eggs is
+very full, especially of the two well-known British species&mdash;the Golden
+Eagle and Sea Eagle. The Golden or Mountain Eagle is even now-a-days
+much more common in the remote parts of the British islands than is
+usually supposed to be the case. In 1852 Mr. Wolley was acquainted
+with five nests of this bird in various parts of Scotland, and there
+were undoubtedly at least as many more of which he did
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> not learn the
+particulars. The eyrie is usually placed in some mountainous district,
+on the ledge of some "warm-looking" rock, well clothed with vegetation,
+and often by no means wild or exposed. Not unfrequently, under proper
+guidance, one can walk into the nest almost without climbing. Mr. Newton
+gives a very entertaining account of the taking of a pair of eggs from
+a nest in Argyllshire in 1861, where this seems to have been the case.
+In the whole ascent there was only one "ticklish place," where it was
+necessary to go sideways on a narrow ledge round some rocks. The Sea
+Eagle, on the other hand, generally breeds on the high cliffs upon the
+coast, often selecting the most inaccessible position for its eyrie.
+Sometimes, however, it will choose an island in the middle of an inland
+loch, and in such case places its nest upon the ground or in a tree.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wolley's well-written notes of his adventures in quest of both
+these Eagles, as also those relating to the other rapacious birds, will
+be read with much interest; as will also the details concerning the
+nesting-habits of many of the rarer species of European birds, several
+of which, such as the Rough-legged Buzzard and the Lapp Owl, were first
+tracked to their breeding-quarters in the remotest wilds of Scandinavia
+by this indefatigable naturalist.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>
+
+<p>Of large Eggs we are most familiar with those of the Ostrich, of which
+Mr. Burchell, when in Africa,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+found twenty-five Eggs in a hollow
+scratched in the sand, six feet in diameter, surrounded by a trench, but
+without grass, leaves, or sticks, as in the nests of other birds. In
+the trench were nine more Eggs, intended, as the Hottentots observed,
+as the first food of the twenty-five young Ostriches. Between sixty and
+seventy Eggs have been found in one nest; each is equal to twenty-four
+Eggs of the domestic hen, and holds five pints and a quarter of liquid.
+The shells are dirty white. The Hottentots string them together as
+belts, or garlands, and they are frequently mounted as cups. One Ostrich
+Egg is a sufficient meal for three persons. The Egg is cooked over the
+fire without either pot or water, the shell answering the purpose of the
+first, and the liquid nature of its contents that of the other.</p>
+
+<p>Less familiar to the reader are the gigantic Eggs of the Epyornis, a
+bird which formerly lived in Madagascar. One of these Eggs contains the
+substance of 140 hens' Eggs. Mr. Geoffroy St. Hilaire describes some
+portions of an Egg of the Epyornis which show the Egg to have been of
+such a size as to be capable of containing about ten English quarts;
+that in the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes can only contain 8-3/4
+quarts. Mr. Strickland, in some notices of the Dodo and its kindred,
+published in 1849, says that in the previous year a Mr. Dumarele, a
+French merchant at Bourbon, saw at Port Leven, Madagascar, an enormous
+Egg which held "<i>thirteen wine quart bottles of fluid</i>." The natives
+stated that the Egg was found in the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+jungle, and "that such Eggs were
+<i>very, very rarely</i> met with."</p>
+
+<p>A word or two about the nests of such gigantic birds. Captain Cook
+found, on an island near the north-east coast of New Holland, a nest
+"of a most enormous size. It was built with sticks upon the ground, and
+was no less than six-and-twenty feet in circumference, and two feet
+eight inches high." (Kerr's "Collection of Voyages and Travels," xiii.,
+318.) Captain Flinders found two similar nests on the south coast of New
+Holland, in King George's Bay. In his "Voyage," &amp;c., London, 1818, he
+says, "They were built upon the ground, from which they rose above two
+feet, and were of vast circumference and great interior capacity; the
+branches of trees and other matter of which each nest was composed being
+enough to fill a cart."</p>
+
+<p>Among the varieties of Birds'-nests are some very curious homes, of
+which we have but space to notice a few. The pendulous nest of the
+Indian Baya-bird is usually formed of the fibres of the palmyra, the
+cocoa-nut palm, and wild date of India, sometimes mixed with grass,
+neatly interlaced, and very strongly made. It consists of only one
+circular chamber, with a long tubular passage leading to it, and is
+suspended from a tree, preferred if overhanging water. The natives of
+India say the Baya lights up its nest with fire-flies. The bird lays
+from four to six white eggs. Bayas are of a very social disposition:
+numbers build on the same tree, or neighbouring trees, and singing in
+concert during<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
+the breeding season. The Baya is very docile, and taught
+to fly off the finger and return again; to dart after a ring or small
+coin, dropped into a deep well, and catch it before it reaches the
+water; to fetch and carry, and perform similar tricks.</p>
+
+<p>The nest of the brilliant Golden-banded Oriole is a hammock of twisted
+fibrous substances, and is suspended in a low shrub, so as to swing to
+the breeze. The twine-like fibres of which it is woven are the filaments
+of the gigantic palm. The threads break away from the leaf, and hang
+like fringe to the magnificent foliage.</p>
+
+<p>The Tailor-birds are the best nest-builders of all the feathered tribes.
+They interweave their nests between the twigs and branches of shrubs,
+or suspend the nests from them; and some of these birds have exercised
+arts from the creation which man has found of the greatest benefit to
+him since he discovered them. These birds, indeed, may be called the
+inventors of the several arts of the weaver, the sempstress, and the
+tailor; whence some of them have been denominated Weaver and Tailor
+Birds. The nests of the latter are, however, most remarkable. India
+produces several species of Tailor-birds that sew together leaves for
+the protection of their eggs and nestlings from the voracity of serpents
+and apes. They generally select the end of a branch or twig, and sew
+with cotton, thread, and fibres. Colonel Sykes has seen some in which
+the thread was literally knotted at the end. The inside of these nests
+is lined usually with down and cotton.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Tailor-birds are not confined to India or tropical countries. Italy can
+boast a species which exercises the same art. Mr. Gould has a specimen
+of this bird in his possession, and the Zoological Society have a nest
+in their Museum. This little bird, a species of the genus <i>sylvia</i>, in
+summer and autumn frequents marshes; but in the spring it seeks the
+meadows and corn-fields, in which, at that season, the marshes being
+bare of the sedges which cover them in summer, it is compelled to
+construct its nest in tussocks of grass on the brinks of ditches; but
+the leaves of these being weak, easily split, so that it is difficult
+for our little sempstresses to unite them, and so form the skeleton
+of the fabric. From this and other circumstances, the spring nests of
+these birds differ so widely from those made in the autumn that it seems
+next to impossible that both should be the work of the same artisan.
+The latter are constructed in a thick bunch of sedge or reed: they are
+shaped like a pear, being dilated below and narrow above, so as to leave
+an aperture sufficient for the ingress and egress of the bird. The
+greatest horizontal diameter of the nest is about two inches and a half,
+and the vertical is five inches.</p>
+
+<p>The most wonderful thing in the construction of these nests is the
+method to which the little bird has recourse to keep united the living
+leaves of which it is composed. The sole in the weaving, more or less
+delicate, of the materials, forms the principle adopted by other birds
+to bind together the walls of their nests; but this sylvia is no weaver,
+for the leaves<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
+of the sedges or reeds are united by real stitches.
+In the edge of each leaf she makes, probably with her beak, minute
+apertures, through which she contrives to pass, perhaps by means of
+the same organ, one or more cords formed of spiders' web, particularly
+that of their egg-pouches. Those threads are not very long, and are
+sufficient to pass two or three times from one leaf to another. They
+are of unequal thickness, and have knots here and there, which, in some
+places, divide into two or three branches.</p>
+
+<p>This is the manner in which the exterior of the nest is formed: the
+interior consists mainly of down, chiefly from plants, a little
+spiders' web being intermixed, which helps to keep the other substances
+together. The upper part and sides of the nest, that is, the external
+and internal, are in immediate contact; but in the lower part a greater
+space intervenes, filled with the slender foliage of grasses, and other
+materials, which render soft and warm the bed on which the eggs are to
+repose. This little bird feeds on insects. Its flight is rectilinear,
+but consists of many curves, with the concavity upwards. These curves
+equal in number the strokes of the wing, and at every stroke its whistle
+is heard, the intervals of which correspond with the rapidity of its
+flight.</p>
+
+<p>The Australian Bower-bird, as its name implies, builds its nest
+like an arbour or bower, with twigs: in the British Museum are two
+specimens, each decorated&mdash;one with bones and fresh-water shells, and
+the other with feathers and land-shells; remarkable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
+instances of taste
+for ornament already referred to in a preceding page. The Satin or
+Bower-bird is described by settlers in Australia as "a very troublesome
+rascal," which besets gardens; if once allowed to make a lodgment there
+it is very troublesome to get rid of him; he signalizes his arrival by
+pulling up, in his restless fussy way, everything in the garden that he
+can tug out of the ground, even to the little sticks to mark the site of
+seeds. A settler had formed a garden in the bush; there was no enclosure
+of the kind for miles in any direction: a flock of Bower-birds came; he
+got his gun and shot two or three; the flock went off, and he never saw
+another bird of the kind.</p>
+
+<p>The Cape Swallows build nests which show extraordinary instinct allied
+to reason. A pair of these built their nest on the outside of a house
+at Cape Town against the angle formed by the wall and the board which
+supported the eaves. The whole of this nest was covered in, and it was
+furnished with a long neck or passage, through which the birds passed in
+and out. It resembled a longitudinal section of a Florence oil flask.
+This nest having crumbled away after the young birds had quitted it, the
+same pair, or another of the same species, built on the old foundation
+again. But this time an improvement was observable in the plan of it
+that can hardly be referred to the dictates of mere instinct. The body
+of the nest was of the same shape as before, but instead of a single
+passage it was furnished with one at each side, running along
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> the angle
+of the roof; and on watching the birds, they were seen invariably to go
+in at one passage and come out at the other. Besides saving themselves
+the trouble of turning in the nest and disturbing, perhaps, its interior
+arrangement, they were guarded by this contrivance against a surprise by
+serpents, which frequently creep up along the wall, or descend from the
+thatch, and devour both the mother and her brood.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Livingstone relates a very curious instance of "Bird Confinement"
+under very strange circumstances. In passing through Mopane country, in
+South Africa, his men caught a great number of the birds called <i>Korwé</i>
+in their breeding-places, which were holes in the mopane trees. They
+passed the nest of a Korwé just ready for the female to enter; the
+orifice was plastered on both sides, but a space was left of a heart
+shape, and exactly the size of the bird's body. The hole in the tree
+was in every case found to be prolonged some distance upwards above the
+opening, and thither the Korwé always fled to escape being caught. In
+another nest that was found, one white egg, much like that of a pigeon,
+was laid, and the bird dropped another when captured: she had four
+besides in the ovarium. Dr. Livingstone first saw this bird at Kolenbeng
+in the forest: he saw a slit only, about half an inch wide and three or
+four inches long, in a slight hollow of a tree; a native broke the clay
+which surrounded the slit, put his arm into the hole, and brought out a
+red-beaked Hornbill, which he killed. He told Dr. Livingstone that when
+the female enters
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+her nest she submits to a real confinement. The male
+plasters up the entrance, leaving only a narrow slit by which to feed
+his mate, and which exactly suits the form of his beak. The female makes
+a nest of her own feathers, lays her eggs, hatches them, and remains
+with the young till they are fully fledged. During all this time, which
+is stated to be two or three months, the male continues to feed her
+and the young family. The prisoner generally becomes quite fat, and is
+esteemed a very dainty morsel by the natives; while the poor slave of a
+husband gets so lean that, on the sudden lowering of the temperature,
+which sometimes happens after a fall of rain, he is benumbed, falls
+down, and dies.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Livingstone, on passing the same tree at Kolenbeng about eight days
+afterwards, found the hole plastered up again, as if, in the short time
+that had elapsed, the disconsolate bird-husband had procured another
+wife. Dr. L. saw a nest with the plastering not quite finished, and
+others completed; he also received elsewhere, besides Kolobeng, the same
+account that the bird comes forth when the young are fully-fledged, at
+the period when the corn is ripe; indeed, her appearance abroad with
+her young is one of the signs they have for knowing when it ought to be
+so: the time is between two and three months. She is said sometimes to
+hatch two eggs, and, when the young of these are full-fledged, the other
+two are just out of the egg-shells: she then leaves the nest with the
+two elder, the orifice is again plastered up, and both male and female
+attend to the wants of the young.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There is a specimen of a nest in the Gardens of the Zoological Society,
+which merits description, besides that of the Bower-bird. Such is the
+nest of the Brush Turkey, which appears more like a small haystack than
+an ordinary nest, and the methodical manner in which it is constructed
+is thus described:&mdash;Tracing a circle of considerable radius, the birds
+begin to travel round it, continually grasping with their huge feet the
+leaves and grasses and dead twigs which are lying about, and flinging
+them inwards towards the centre. Each time that they complete their
+round, they narrow their circle, so that in a short time they clear away
+a circular belt, having in its centre a low irregular mass. By repeating
+the same process, however, they decrease the diameter of the mound as
+they increase its height, and at last a large and rudely conical mound
+is formed.</p>
+
+<p>In this nest as many as a bushel of eggs are deposited, at regular
+intervals, long end downwards. The leaves form a fermenting mass, which
+relieves the mother of the necessity of setting upon them. The male,
+however, has to regulate the temperature of the mass, which would
+otherwise get too hot. This he does by making a central ventilating
+shaft, which carries off the superfluous heat; and, lest the temperature
+should fall too low, he is constantly engaged in covering and uncovering
+the eggs in order to hit the exact temperature to be applied until the
+egg is warmed into life.</p>
+
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a>
+Abridged from the "Saturday Review."</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_EPICURES_ORTOLAN" id="THE_EPICURES_ORTOLAN"></a>THE EPICURE'S ORTOLAN.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_180.jpg" alt="Letter W"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>WE</b> have allotted this bird to the epicure,
+because it is rarely heard
+of but in association with his luxurious table. Mr. Beckford describes
+the Ortolans among the delicacies which he saw in the kitchen of the
+monastery of Batalha as "lumps of celestial fatness."</p>
+
+<p>Ortolan is the French and English names for a species of <i>Fringillidæ</i>
+(Finches). It is the <i>Hortulanus</i> of Gesner and other naturalists;
+<i>Miliaria pinguescens</i> of Frisch; <i>Emberiza Hortulana</i> of Linnæus;
+<i>Ortolano</i> of the Italians generally; <i>Tordino Berluccio</i> of the
+Venetians; <i>Garton Ammer</i> and <i>Fetammer</i> of the Germans; and <i>Gerste
+Keneu</i> of the Netherlanders. This wide dispersion on the Continent
+bespeaks the pet character of the bird. Montagu terms it the
+Green-headed Bunting.</p>
+
+<p>The French have a fanciful derivation of the name: they say it is from
+the Italian word for gardener, which is from the Latin <i>hortus</i>, garden;
+because, according to Menage, in Italy, where the bird is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> common, it is
+quite at home in the hedges of gardens.</p>
+
+<p>The male bird has the throat, circle round the eyes, and a narrow band
+springing from the angle of the bill, yellow; head and neck grey, with a
+tinge of olive, and small brown spots; feathers black, edged with red;
+breast, belly, and abdomen, reddish grey, the feathers terminated with
+ash-colour; tail blackish, two external feathers, in part white; length
+rather more than six inches. There are, also, varieties marked white,
+green, blackish, and entirely black. The nest, which is constructed
+of fibres of plants and leaves, is frequently found on the ground in
+corn-fields, and sometimes in hedges and bushes.</p>
+
+<p>The Ortolan is not famed for its song, which is, however, soft
+and sweet. Like the Nightingale, to which it has other points of
+resemblance, the Ortolan sings after, as well as before sunset. It was
+this bird that Varro, the lyric poet, called his companion by night and
+day.</p>
+
+<p>The south of Europe may be considered the summer and autumnal
+head-quarters of the Ortolan, though it is a summer visitor in the
+central and northern parts. In Italy it is said to be common by Temminck
+and others. The Prince of Musignano states it to be found in the Sabine
+mountains; adding that it rarely flies in the plains of Rome, but is
+frequent in Tuscany. Lapland, Russia, Denmark. Sweden, and Norway,
+are among the countries visited by it. In the British Isles it seems
+only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
+entitled to rank as an autumnal visitor, but it may occur more
+frequently than is generally supposed; for, especially to an unpractised
+eye, it might be mistaken for the Yellow Hammer, and in some states of
+plumage for other Buntings. It has been taken in the neighbourhood of
+London. In 1837 there was a live specimen in an aviary of the Zoological
+Society in Regent's-park; and many Ortolans are sent alive to the London
+market from Prussia. There is, however, some consolation for the rarity
+of the Ortolan in England. It is approached in delicacy by our Wheatear,
+which is termed the <i>English Ortolan</i>. Hence it has been pursued as a
+delicate morsel throughout all its island haunts. Bewick captured it at
+sea, off the coast of Yorkshire, in May, 1822. Every spring and autumn
+it may be observed at Gibraltar, on its migration. Mr. Strickland saw it
+at Smyrna in April. North Africa is its winter residence. Colonel Sykes
+notes it in his catalogue of the birds of the Deccan.</p>
+
+<p>Ortolans are solitary birds; they fly in pairs, rarely three together,
+and never in flocks. They are taken in traps from March or April to
+September, when they are often poor and thin; but if fed with plenty
+of millet-seed and other grain, they become sheer lumps of fat, and
+delicious morsels. They are fattened thus in large establishments in the
+south of Europe; Mr. Gould states this to be effected in Italy, and the
+south of France, in dark rooms; and the Prince of Musignano, having
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
+described the process, adds the relishing words. "Carne exquisita."</p>
+
+<p>The fattening process in Italy is one of great refinement in the manner
+of feeding. It is the fat of the Ortolan which is so delicious; but it
+has a peculiar habit of feeding which is opposed to the rapid fattening,
+this is, it feeds only at the rising of the sun. Yet this peculiarity
+has not proved an insurmountable obstacle to the Italian gourmands.
+The Ortolans are placed in a dark chamber, perfectly dark, with only
+one aperture in the wall. The food is scattered over the floor of the
+chamber. At a certain hour in the morning the keeper of the birds places
+a lantern in the orifice of the wall; when the dim light thrown from the
+lantern on the floor of the apartment induces the Ortolans to believe
+that the sun is about to rise, and they greedily consume the food upon
+the floor. More food is now scattered over it, and the lantern is
+withdrawn.</p>
+
+<p>The Ortolans, rather surprised at the shortness of the day, think it
+their duty to fall asleep, as night has spread her sable mantle round
+them. During sleep, little of the food being expended in the production
+of force, most of it goes to the formation of muscle and fat. After they
+have been allowed to repose for one or two hours, in order to complete
+the digestion of the food taken, their keeper again exhibits the lantern
+through the aperture. The "rising sun" a second time illumines the
+apartment, and the birds, awaking from their slumber, apply themselves
+voraciously to the food on the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
+floor; after having discussed which,
+they are again enveloped in darkness. Thus the sun is made to shed its
+rising rays into the chamber floor four or five times every day, and
+as many nights following. The Ortolans thus treated become like little
+balls of fat in a few days. This not uninteresting process has been
+detailed by Dr. Lyon Playfair to the Royal Agricultural Society. It
+may, probably, be applied to purposes with less luxurious objects than
+fattening Ortolans.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding its delicacy, the Ortolan fattens very fast; and it is
+this lump of fatness that is its merit, and has sometimes caused it
+to be preferred to the Becafico. According to Buffon, the Greeks and
+Romans understood fattening the Ortolan upon millet. But a lively French
+commentator doubts this statement: he maintains that had the ancients
+known the Ortolan, they would have deified it, and built altars to
+it upon Mount Hymettus and the Saniculum; adding, did they not deify
+the horse of Caligula, which was certainly not worth an Ortolan? and
+Caligula himself, who was not worth so much as his horse? However, this
+dispute belongs to the "classics of the table."</p>
+
+<p>The Ortolan is considered sufficiently fat when it is a handful, and
+is judged by feeling it, and not by appearance. It should not be
+killed with violence, like other birds; this might crush and bruise
+the delicate flesh, and spoil the <i>coup-d'&oelig;il</i>, to avoid which it is
+recommended to plunge the head of the Ortolan into a glass of brandy.
+The culinary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
+instruction is as follows: having picked the bird of its
+feathers, singe it with the flame of paper or spirits of wine; cut off
+the beak and ends of the feet; do not draw it; put it into a paper case
+soaked in olive oil, and broil it over a slow fire of slack cinders,
+like that required for a pigeon <i>à la crapaudine</i>; in a few minutes the
+Ortolan will swim in its own fat, and will be cooked. Some gourmands
+wrap each bird in a vine-leaf.</p>
+
+<p>A gourmand will take an Ortolan by the legs and craunch it in delicious
+mouthfuls, so as absolutely to lose none of it. More delicate feeders
+cut the bird into quarters, and lay aside the gizzard; the rest may be
+eaten, even to the bones, which are sufficiently tender for the most
+delicate mouth to masticate without inconvenience.</p>
+
+<p>On the Continent, Ortolans are packed in tin boxes for exportation.
+They may be bought in London for half-a-crown a-piece. A few poulterers
+import Ortolans in considerable numbers, and some have acquired the art
+of fattening these birds.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+Alexis Soyer put into the hundred guinea
+dish which he prepared for the royal table at the grand banquet at York,
+in 1850, five pounds worth of Ortolans, which were obtained from Belgium.</p>
+
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTE</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a>
+The Ortolan figures in a curious anecdote of individual epicurism
+in the last century. A gentleman of Gloucestershire had one son, whom he
+sent abroad to make the grand tour of the Continent, where he paid more
+attention to the cookery of nations, and luxurious living, than anything
+else. Before his return his father died and left him a large fortune.
+He now looked over his note-book to discover where the most exquisite
+dishes were to be had, and the best cooks obtained. Every servant in his
+house was a cook; his butler, footman, coachman, and grooms&mdash;all were
+cooks. He had also three Italian cooks&mdash;one from Florence, another from
+Vienna, and another from Viterbo&mdash;for dressing one Florentine dish. He
+had a messenger constantly on the road between Brittany and London to
+bring the eggs of a certain kind of plover found in the former country.
+This prodigal was known to eat a single dinner at the expense of 70<i>l.</i>,
+though there were but two dishes. In nine years he found himself
+getting poor, and this made him melancholy. When totally ruined, having
+spent 150,000<i>l.</i>, a friend one day gave him a guinea to keep him from
+starving, and he was found in a garret next day <i>broiling an Ortolan</i>,
+for which he had paid a portion of the alms.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="TALK_ABOUT_TOUCANS" id="TALK_ABOUT_TOUCANS"></a>TALK ABOUT TOUCANS.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>THE</b> Toucans, a family of climbing-birds of
+tropical America, appear to
+have been known in Europe by the length and great size of their bills,
+long before the birds themselves found their way to England. Belon,
+in 1555, described the bill of one of the family as half a foot long,
+large as a child's arm, pointed, and black at the tip, white elsewhere,
+notched on the edges, hollow within, and so finely delicate as to be
+transparent and thin as parchment; and its beauty caused it to be kept
+in the cabinets of the curious. For more than a century after Belon's
+work, the birds themselves had not been seen in England; for, in the
+<i>Museum Tradescantianum</i>, the standard collection of the time, and
+which, from the list of contributors, appears to have been the great
+receptacle for all curiosities, we read of an "Azacari (or Toucan) of
+Brazil; has his beak four inches long, almost two thick, like a Turk's
+sword" (A.D. 1656). From this description Tradescant
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
+knew the nature of
+the bird, if he had not seen it.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Swainson states, that the enormous bills give to these birds a most
+singular and uncouth appearance. Their feet are formed like those of
+the parrot, more for grasping than climbing; and as they live among
+trees, and proceed by hopping from branch to branch, their grasping
+feature is particularly adapted for such habits. They live retired in
+the deep forests, mostly in small companies. Their flight is strait and
+laborious, but not graceful; while their movements, as they glide rather
+than hop from branch to branch, are elegant.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gould, in his grand Monograph of the Toucans, or <i>Ramphastidæ</i>,
+remarks, that it was only within a few years of the time of Linnæus that
+actual specimens of the Toucan had been received in Europe. The beaks,
+however, of these birds, regarded as curiosities, had occasionally found
+their way to our shores, and had occasioned some curious conjectures.
+The earliest shape resembled a Turkish scimitar.</p>
+
+<p>The Toucans (a word derived from their Brazilian name, <i>Taca, Tucà</i>)
+received from Linnæus the title of <i>Ramphastos</i>, in allusion to
+the great volume of the beak (&#929;&#945;&#956;&#966;&#959;&#962;), a family
+(<i>Ramphastidæ</i>). In some respects, indeed, they resemble the Hornbills
+in the development of the beak. The Toucans may be said to represent
+in America the Hornbills in India and Africa. Large as is the beak of
+the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+Toucan compared with the size of the body, it is in reality very
+light. Its outer sheathing is somewhat elastic, very thin, smooth, and
+semi-transparent; and the interior consists of a maze of delicate cells,
+throughout which the olfactory nerves are multitudinously distributed.
+The nostrils are basal, the edges of each mandible are serrated, and
+the colouring of the whole beak is bright, rich, and often relieved by
+contrasted markings. But these tints begin to fade after death, and
+become ultimately dissipated. The eyes are surrounded by a considerable
+space of naked skin, often very richly tinted. The tongue is very long,
+slender, horizontally flattened, pointed, and, except at its base,
+horny; it is fringed or feathered along each side. The wings are short,
+concave, and comparatively feeble.</p>
+
+<p>The tail is variable, equal and squared; it is remarkable for the
+facility with which it can be retroverted or turned up, so as to lie
+upon the back. This peculiarity results from a modification of structure
+in the caudal vertebræ, which enables the tail to turn with a jerk by
+the action of certain muscles, as if it were fixed on a hinge put into
+action by means of a spring. When the retroversion is accomplished, the
+muscles which caused it become passive, and offer no resistance to their
+antagonists, which restore the tail to its ordinary direction. When they
+sleep they puff out their plumage, they retrovert the tail over the
+back, draw the head between the shoulders; the bill begins to turn over
+the right shoulder, and becomes at last buried in the plumage of the
+back; at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
+same time the pinions of the wings droop, and conceal the
+feet. The bird now resembles an oval ball of puffed-up feathers, and is
+well protected against the cold.</p>
+
+<p>Toucans utter, from time to time, harsh, clattering, and discordant
+cries. "Some," says Mr. Gould, "frequent the humid woods of the
+temperate regions, while others resort to comparatively colder
+districts, and dwell at an elevation of from six to ten thousand
+feet. Those inhabiting the lofty regions are generically different
+from those residing in the low lands, and are clothed in a more thick
+and sombre-coloured plumage. All the members of the Hill-Toucans are
+distinguished by their bills being strong, heavy, and hard, when
+compared with those of the true Toucans and Araçaris, all of which
+have their bills of a more delicate structure, and in several species
+so thin and elastic on the sides as to be compressible between the
+fingers." Their food in a state of nature consists of fruit, eggs, and
+nestling birds; to which, in domestication, are added small birds, mice,
+caterpillars, and raw flesh. They incubate in the hollows of gigantic
+trees.</p>
+
+<p>Faber was told by Fryer, Alaysa, and other Spaniards who had lived
+long in America, and also by the Indians, that the Toucan even hews
+out holes in trees, in which to nidify; and Oviedo adds, that it is
+from this habit of chipping the trees that the bird is called by the
+Spaniards <i>Carpintero</i>, and by the Brazilians <i>Tacataca</i>, in imitation,
+apparently, of the sound it thus makes.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The larger feed upon bananas and other succulent plants; the smaller
+upon the smaller fruits and berries. Prince Maximilian de Wied states,
+that in Brazil he found only the remains of fruits in their stomachs,
+and adds, that they make sad havoc among plantations of fruit-trees. He
+was informed, however, that they steal and eat birds, but never himself
+saw them in the act. They abound in the vast forests, and are killed
+in great number in the cooler season in the year for the purposes of
+the table. In their manners the Toucans resemble the Crow tribe, and
+especially the Magpies: like them, they are very troublesome to the
+birds of prey, particularly to the Owls, which they surround, making a
+great noise, all the while jerking their tails upwards and downwards.
+Their feathers, especially from their yellow breasts, are used by the
+Indians for personal decoration.</p>
+
+<p>Azara states that they attack even the solid nests of the white ants,
+when the clay of which their nests are formed becomes moistened with the
+rain; they break them up with their beaks, so as to obtain the young
+ants and their eggs; and during the breeding season the Toucan feeds
+upon nothing else; during the rest of the year he subsists upon fruit,
+insects, and the buds of trees.</p>
+
+<p>Edwards, in his voyage up the Amazon, observes, that when a party of
+Toucans alight on a tree, one usually acts the part of a sentinel,
+uttering the loud cry of "Tucano," whence they derive their name; the
+others disperse over the branches in search of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+fruit. While feeding
+they keep up a hoarse chattering, and at intervals unite with the noisy
+sentry, and scream a concert that may be heard a mile. Having appeased
+their appetites, they seek the depths of a forest, and there quietly
+doze away the noon. In early morning a few of them may be seen sitting
+quietly upon the branches of some dead tree, apparently awaiting the
+coming sunlight before starting for their feeding-trees.</p>
+
+<p>Some species of Toucans have been seen quarrelling with monkeys over a
+nest of eggs. Their carnivorous propensity has been strikingly shown
+in the specimens which have been kept in England. On the approach of
+any small bird the Toucan becomes highly excited, raises itself up,
+erects its feathers, and utters a hollow clattering sound, the irides
+of the eyes expand, and the Toucan is ready to dart on its prey. A
+Toucan, exhibited in St. Martin's-lane in 1824, seized and devoured a
+canary-bird. Next day Mr. Broderip tried him with a live goldfinch. The
+Toucan seized it with the beak, and the poor little victim uttered a
+short weak cry, for within a second it was dead, killed by the powerful
+compression of the mandibles. The Toucan now placed the dead bird firmly
+between its foot and the perch, stripped off the feathers with its bill,
+and then broke the bones of the wings and legs, by strongly wrenching
+them, the bird being still secured by the Toucan's foot. He then
+continued to work with great dexterity till he had reduced the goldfinch
+to a shapeless mass. This he devoured
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>
+piece by piece with great gusto,
+not even leaving the legs or the beak of his prey: to each morsel he
+applied his tongue as he masticated it, chattering and shivering with
+delight. He never used his foot, but his bill, for conveying his food to
+his mouth by the sides of the bill.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Swainson remarks:&mdash;"The apparent disproportion of the bill is one of
+the innumerable instances of that beautiful adaptation of structure to
+use which the book of nature everywhere reveals. The food of these birds
+consists principally of the eggs and young of others, to discover which
+nature has given them the most exquisite powers of smell." Again, the
+nests in which the Toucan finds its food are often very deep and dark,
+and its bill, covered with branches of nerves, enables the bird to feel
+its way as accurately as the finest and most delicate finger could. From
+its feeding on eggs found in other birds' nests, it has been called the
+Egg-sucker. Probably there is no bird which secures her young offspring
+better from the monkeys, which are very noisome to the young of most
+birds. For when she perceives the approach of these enemies she so
+settles herself in her nest as to put her bill out at the hole, and give
+the monkeys such a welcome therewith that they presently break away, and
+are glad to escape.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Owen, in his minute examination of the mandibles, remarks
+that the principle of the cylinder is introduced into the elaborate
+structure; the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+smallest of the supporting pillars of the mandibles are
+seen to be hollow or tubular when examined with the microscope.</p>
+
+<p>Light and almost diaphonous as is the bill of the Toucan, its strength
+and the power of the muscles, which act upon the mandibles, are evident
+in the wrenching and masticatory processes. When taking fruit, the
+Toucan generally holds it for a short time at the extremity of his bill,
+applying to it, with apparent delight, the pointed tip of the slender
+tongue: the bird then throws it, with a sudden upward jerk, to the
+throat, where it is caught and instantly swallowed.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gould divides the Toucans into six genera. 1. The true Toucans, with
+large and gaily-coloured bills, plumage black. 2. The Araçaris, with
+smaller beaks, plumage green, yellow, and red. 3. The Banded Aracauris,
+an Amazonian genus, proposed by Prince C. L. Bonaparte. 4. Toucanets,
+small, with crescent of yellow on the back, and brilliant orange and
+yellow ear-coverts. 5. Hill Toucans of the Andes. 6. Groove-bills,
+grass-green plumage.</p>
+
+<p>A very fine true Toucan, figured by Mr. Gould, is remarkable for the
+splendour and size of the bill, of a fine orange-red, with a large black
+patch on each side. Powder-flasks are made of large and finely-coloured
+bills. The naked skin round the eye is bright orange. The chest is
+white, with a tinge of sulphur below, and a slight scarlet margin.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
+Upper tail-coverts, white; under tail-coverts, scarlet; the rest of the
+plumage, black. Several specimens of this beautiful bird lived both in
+the menagerie of the late Earl of Derby, at Knowsley, and in the gardens
+of the Zoological Society. It is a native of Cayenne, Paraguay, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>Toucans in their manners are gentle and confident, exhibiting no alarm
+at strangers, and are as playful as magpies or jackdaws; travellers
+assure us that they may be taught tricks and feats like parrots; and
+although they cannot imitate the human voice, they show considerable
+intelligence. One of the Toucanets is named from Mr. Gould, the plates
+in whose <i>monograph</i>, from their size, beauty, and accuracy, have all
+the air of portraits.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="ECCENTRICITIES_OF_PENGUINS" id="ECCENTRICITIES_OF_PENGUINS"></a>ECCENTRICITIES OF PENGUINS.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>THIS</b> group of amphibious birds,
+though powerless in the wing as an organ
+of flight, are assisted by it as a species of fin in their rapid divings
+and evolutions under water, and even as a kind of anterior of extremity
+when progressing on the land. Their lot has been wisely cast on those
+desolate southern islands and shores where man rarely intrudes, and
+in many instances where a churlish climate or a barren soil offers no
+temptations to him to invade their territory.</p>
+
+<p>Le Vaillant, when on Dassen Island, found that the smaller crevices
+of the rocks served as places of retreat for Penguins, which swarmed
+there. "This bird," says Le Vaillant, which is about two feet in length,
+"does not carry its body in the same manner as others: it stands
+perpendicularly on its two feet, which gives it an air of gravity, so
+much the more ridiculous as its wings, which have no feathers, hang
+carelessly down on each side; it never uses them but in swimming. As we
+advanced towards<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
+the middle of the island we met innumerable troops
+of them. Standing firm and erect on their legs, these animals never
+deranged themselves in the least to let us pass; they more particularly
+surrounded the mausoleum, and seemed as if determined to prevent us from
+approaching it. All the environs were entirely beset with them. Nature
+had done more for the plain tomb of the poor Danish captain than what
+proceeds from the imaginations of poets or the chisels of our artists.
+The hideous owl, however well sculptured in our churches, has not half
+so dead and melancholy an air as the Penguin. The mournful cries of this
+animal, mixed with those of the sea-calf, impressed on my mind a kind of
+gloom which much disposed me to tender sensations of sadness. My eyes
+were sometime fixed on the last abode of the unfortunate traveller, and
+I gave his manes the tribute of a sigh."</p>
+
+<p>Sir John Narborough says of the Patagonian Penguins that their erect
+attitude and bluish-black backs, contrasted with their white bellies,
+might cause them to be taken at a distance for young children with white
+pinafores on. A line of them is engraved in Webster's "Voyage of the
+Chanticleer," and reminds us of one of the woodcuts in Hood's "Comic
+Annual."</p>
+
+<p>The "towns, camps, and rookeries," as they have been called, of Penguins
+have been often described. At the Falkland Islands are assemblies of
+Penguins, which give a dreary desolation to the place, in the utter
+absence of the human race. In some of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>
+towns voyagers describe a
+general stillness, and when the intruders walked among the feathered
+population to provide themselves with eggs, they were regarded with
+side-long glances, but they seemed to carry no terror with them. In many
+places the shores are covered with these birds, and three hundred have
+been taken within an hour; for they generally make no effort to escape,
+but stand quietly by whilst their companions are knocked down with
+sticks, till it comes to their turn.</p>
+
+<p>The rookeries are described as designed with the utmost order and
+regularity, though they are the resort of several different species.
+A regular camp, often covering three or four acres, is laid out
+and levelled, and the ground disposed in squares for the nests, as
+accurately as if a surveyor had been employed. Their marchings and
+countermarchings are said to remind the observer of the man&oelig;uvres of
+soldiers on parade. In the midst of this apparent order there appears
+to be not very good government, for the stronger species steal the
+eggs of the weaker if they are left unguarded; and the King Penguin
+is the greatest thief of all. Three species are found in the Falkland
+Islands. Two, the <i>Kings</i> and the <i>Macaroni</i>, deposit their eggs in
+these rookeries. The <i>Jackass</i>, which is the third, obtained its English
+name from its brayings at night. It makes its nests in burrows on downs
+and sandy plains; and Forster describes the ground as everywhere so
+much bored, that a person, in walking, often sinks up to the knees; and
+if the Penguin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>
+chance to be in her hole, she revenges herself on the
+passenger by fastening on his legs, which she bites very hard.</p>
+
+<p>But these rookeries are insignificant when compared with a settlement of
+King Penguins, which Mr. G. Bennett saw at the north end of Macquarrie
+Island, in the South Pacific Ocean&mdash;a colony of these birds, which
+covered some thirty or forty acres. Here, during the whole of the day
+and night, 30,000 or 40,000 Penguins are continually landing, and an
+equal number going to sea. They are ranged, when on shore, in as regular
+ranks as a regiment of soldiers, and are classed, the young birds in one
+situation, the moulting birds in another, the sitting hens in a third,
+the clean birds in a fourth, &amp;c.; and so strictly do birds in a similar
+condition congregate, that, should a moulting bird intrude itself among
+those which are clean, it is immediately ejected from them. The females,
+if approached during incubation, move away, carrying their eggs with
+them. At this time the male bird goes to sea, and collects food for the
+female, which becomes very fat.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Fitzroy describes, at Noir Island, multitudes of Penguins
+swarming among the bushes and tussac-grass near the shore, for moulting
+and rearing their young. They were very valiant in self-defence, and
+ran open-mouthed by dozens at any one who invaded their territory. The
+manner of feeding their young is amusing. The old bird gets on a little
+eminence and makes a loud noise, between
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>
+quacking and braying, holding
+its head up as if haranguing the Penguinnery, the young one standing
+close to it, but a little lower. The old bird then puts down its head,
+and opens its mouth widely, into which the young one thrusts its head,
+and then appears to suck from the throat of its mother; after which the
+clatter is repeated, and the young one is again fed: this continues for
+about ten minutes.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Darwin, having placed himself between a Penguin, on the Falkland
+Islands, and the water, was much amused by watching its habits. "It
+was a brown bird," says Mr. Darwin, "and, till reaching the sea, it
+regularly fought and drove me backwards. Nothing less than heavy blows
+would have stopped him: every inch gained, he firmly kept standing close
+before me, erect and determined. When thus opposed, he continually
+rolled his head from side to side in a very odd manner. While at sea,
+and undisturbed, this bird's note is very deep and solemn, and is often
+heard in the night time. In diving, its little plumeless wings are used
+as fins, but on the land as front legs. When crawling (it may be said
+on four legs) through the tussacks, or on the side of a grassy cliff,
+it moved so very quickly that it might readily have been mistaken
+for a quadruped. When at sea, and fishing, it comes to the surface
+for the purpose of breathing with such a spring, and dives again so
+instantaneously, that I defy any one, at first sight, to be sure that it
+is not a fish leaping for sport."</p>
+
+<p>Bougainville endeavoured to bring home a Penguin
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> alive. It became so
+tame that it followed the person who fed it; it ate bread, flesh, or
+fish; but it fell away and died. The four-footed Duck of Gesner might
+have owed its origin to an ill-preserved Penguin. The notion of its
+being four-footed might have been fortified by some voyager who had seen
+the bird making progress as Mr. Darwin has above described.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Webster describes the feathers of Penguins as very different from
+those of other birds, being short, very rigid, and the roots deeply
+embedded in fat. They are, in general, flat, and bent backwards, those
+on the breast being of a satin or silky white, and those on the flippers
+so short and small as to approach the nature of scales, overlaying each
+other very closely. The skins are loaded with fat. Their feet are not
+regularly webbed, but present a broad, fleshy surface, more adapted for
+walking than swimming. Mr. Webster saw great numbers of Penguins on
+Staten Island. They are the only genus of the feathered race that are
+there, and live in the water, like seals. He saw them at the distance of
+200 miles from the land, swimming with the rapidity of the dolphin, the
+swiftest of fishes. When they come up to the surface for fresh breath,
+they make a croaking noise, dip their beaks frequently in the water, and
+play and dive about near the surface, like the bonita. Penguins have
+great powers of abstinence, and are able to live four or five months
+without food. Stones have been occasionally found in their stomachs,
+but they generally live on shrimps
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+and crustacea, gorging themselves
+sometimes to excess. The sensations of these curious birds do not seem
+to be very acute. Sparrman stumbled over a sleeping one, and kicked it
+some yards, without disturbing its rest; and Forster left a number of
+Penguins apparently lifeless, while he went in pursuit of others, but
+they afterwards got up and marched off with their usual gravity.</p>
+
+<p>The bird is named from the Welsh word, <i>Pengwyn</i>. White head (<i>pen</i>,
+head; <i>gwyn</i>, white), and is thought to have been given to the
+bird by some Welsh sailors, on seeing its white breast. Davis, who
+discovered, in 1585, the straits which are named after him, was of
+Welsh parents. Might he not have given the name <i>Pengwyn</i> to the bird?
+Swainson considers the Penguins, on the whole, as the most singular
+of all aquatic birds; and he states that they clearly point out that
+nature is about to pass from the birds to the fishes. Others consider
+Penguins more satisfactorily to represent some of the aquatic reptiles,
+especially the marine <i>testudinata</i>.</p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="PELICANS_AND_CORMORANTS" id="PELICANS_AND_CORMORANTS"></a>PELICANS AND CORMORANTS.</h2>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_203.jpg" alt="Letter P"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>PELICANS</b> Pelicans are described as a large,
+voracious, and wandering tribe of
+birds, living for the most part on the ocean, and seldom approaching
+land but at the season of incubation. They fly with ease, and even with
+swiftness. Their bill is long, and armed at the end with an abrupt
+hook; the width of the gape is excessive; the face is generally bare
+of feathers, and the skin of the throat sometimes so extensible as to
+hang down like a bag; it will occasionally contain ten quarts. "By this
+curious organization," observes Swainson, "the Pelicans are able to
+swallow fish of a very large size; and the whole family may be termed
+<i>oceanic vultures</i>."</p>
+
+<p>The neighbourhood of rivers, lakes, and the sea-coast, is the haunt of
+the Pelican, and they are rarely seen more than twenty leagues from
+the land. Le Vaillant, upon visiting Dassen Island, at the entrance
+of Saldanha Bay, beheld, as he says, after wading through the surf,
+and clambering up the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
+rocks, such a spectacle as never, perhaps,
+appeared to the eye of mortal. "All of a sudden there arose from the
+whole surface of the island an impenetrable cloud, which formed, at the
+distance of forty feet above our heads, an immense canopy, or, rather, a
+sky, composed of birds of every species and of all colours&mdash;cormorants,
+sea-gulls, sand-swallows, and, I believe, the whole winged tribe of this
+part of Africa, were here assembled." The same traveller found on the
+Klein-Brak river, whilst waiting for the ebb-tide, thousands of Pelicans
+and Flamingoes, the deep rose-colour of the one strongly contrasting
+with the white of the other.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gould says the bird is remarkable for longevity and the long period
+requisite for the completion of its plumage. The first year's dress is
+wholly brown, then fine white. The rosy tints are only acquired as the
+bird advances in age, and five years are required before the Pelican
+becomes fully mature. The expanse of wings is from twelve to thirteen
+feet. Although the bird perches on trees, it prefers rocky shores. It is
+found in the Oriental countries of Europe; and is common on the rivers
+and lakes of Hungary and Russia, and on the Danube. That the species
+exists in Asia there is no doubt. Belon, who refers to Leviticus xi.
+18, where the bird is noted as unclean, says that it is frequent on
+the lakes of Egypt and Judæa. "When he was passing the plain of Roma,
+which is only half a day's journey from Jerusalem, he saw them flying
+in pairs, like swans, as well as in a large flock. Hasselquist saw the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+Pelican at Damietta, in Egypt. "In flying, they form an acute angle,
+like the common wild geese when they migrate. They appear in some of the
+Egyptian drawings."&mdash;(<i>Rossellini.</i>)</p>
+
+<p>Von Siebold saw the Pelican in Japan. "Pelicans," says Dr. Richardson,
+"are numerous in the interior of the fur countries, but they seldom
+come within two hundred miles of Hudson's Bay. They deposit their eggs
+usually on small rocky islands, on the brink of cascades, where they can
+scarcely be approached; but they are otherwise by no means shy birds.
+They haunt eddies under waterfalls, and devour great quantities of carp
+and other fish. When gorged with food they doze on the water, and may be
+easily captured, as they have great difficulty in taking wing at such
+times, particularly if their pouches be loaded with fish."</p>
+
+<p>The bird builds on rocky and desert shores: hence we read of "the
+Pelican of the wilderness," alluded to in these beautiful lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse6">"Like the Pelicans</div>
+<div class="verse">On that lone island where they built their nests,</div>
+<div class="verse">Nourish'd their young, and then lay down to die."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The bird lives on fish, which it darts upon from a considerable height.
+James Montgomery thus describes this mode of taking their prey:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"Eager for food, their searching eyes they fix'd</div>
+<div class="verse">On Ocean's unroll'd volume, from a height</div>
+<div class="verse">That brought immensity within their scope;</div>
+<div class="verse">Yet with such power of vision look'd they down,</div>
+<div class="verse">As though they watch'd the shell-fish slowly gliding</div>
+<div class="verse">O'er sunken rocks, or climbing trees of coral.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></div>
+<div class="verse">On indefatigable wing upheld,</div>
+<div class="verse">Breath, pulse, existence, seem'd suspended in them;</div>
+<div class="verse">They were as pictures painted on the sky;</div>
+<div class="verse">Till suddenly, aslant, away they shot,</div>
+<div class="verse">Like meteors chang'd from stars in gleams of lightning,</div>
+<div class="verse">And struck upon the deep; where, in wild play,</div>
+<div class="verse">Their quarry flounder'd, unsuspecting harm.</div>
+<div class="verse">With terrible voracity they plunged</div>
+<div class="verse">Their heads among the affrighted shoals, and beat</div>
+<div class="verse">A tempest on the surges with their wings,</div>
+<div class="verse">Till flashing clouds of foam and spray conceal'd them.</div>
+<div class="verse">Nimbly they seized and secreted their prey,</div>
+<div class="verse">Alive and wriggling, in th' elastic net</div>
+<div class="verse">Which Nature hung beneath their grasping beaks;</div>
+<div class="verse">Till, swoll'n with captures, th' unwieldy burthen</div>
+<div class="verse">Clogg'd their slow flight, as heavily to land</div>
+<div class="verse">These mighty hunters of the deep return'd.</div>
+<div class="verse">There on the cragged cliffs they perched at ease,</div>
+<div class="verse">Gorging their hapless victims one by one;</div>
+<div class="verse">Then, full and weary, side by side they slept,</div>
+<div class="verse">Till evening roused them to the chase again."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="right1"><i>Pelican Island.</i></div>
+
+<p>Great numbers of Pelicans are killed for their pouches, which are
+converted by the native Americans into purses, &amp;c. When carefully
+prepared, the membrane is as soft as silk, and sometimes embroidered by
+Spanish ladies for work-bags, &amp;c. It is used in Egypt by the sailors,
+whilst attached to the two under chaps, for holding or baling water.</p>
+
+<p>With the Pelican has been associated an old popular error, which has not
+long disappeared from books of information: it is that of the Pelican
+feeding her young with her blood. In reference to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
+the actual economy
+of the Pelican, we find that, in feeding the nestlings&mdash;and the male
+is said to supply the wants of the female, when sitting, in the same
+manner&mdash;the under mandible is pressed against the neck and breast, to
+assist the bird in disgorging the contents of the capacious pouch; and
+during this action the red nail of the upper mandible would appear to
+come in contact with the breast, thus laying the foundation, in all
+probability, for the fable that the Pelican nourishes her young with her
+blood, and for the attitude in which the imagination of painters has
+placed the bird in books of emblems, &amp;c., with the blood spirting from
+the wounds made by the terminating nail of the upper mandible into the
+gaping mouths of her offspring.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Thomas Browne, in his "Vulgar Errors," says:&mdash;"In every place we
+meet with the picture of the Pelican opening her breast with her bill,
+and feeding her young ones with the blood distilling from her. Thus it
+is set forth, not only in common signs, but in the crest and scutcheon
+of many noble families; hath been asserted by many holy writers, and
+was an hieroglyphic of piety and pity among the Egyptians; on which
+consideration they spared them at their tables."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Thomas refers this popular error to an exaggerated description of
+the Pelican's fondness for her young, and is inclined to accept it as an
+emblem "in coat-armour," though with great doubt.</p>
+
+<p>In "A Choice of Emblems and other Devices," by Geoffrey Whitney, are
+these lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"The Pelican, for to revive her younge,</div>
+    <div class="verse2">Doth pierce her breste, and geve them of her blood.</div>
+<div class="verse">Then searche your breste, and as you have with tonge,</div>
+    <div class="verse2">With penne procede to do your countrie good:</div>
+<div class="verse">Your zeal is great, your learning is profounde;</div>
+<div class="verse">Then help our wantes with that you do abound."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In George Wither's "Emblems," 1634, we find:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"Our Pelican, by bleeding thus,</div>
+<div class="verse">Fulfill'd the law, and cured us."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Shakspeare, in "Hamlet," thus alludes to the popular notion:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms;</div>
+<div class="verse">And like the kind, life-rendering Pelican,</div>
+<div class="verse">Repast them with my blood."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>In a holier light, this symbol signifies the Saviour giving Himself up
+for the redemption of mankind. In Lord Lindsay's "Christian Art," vols.
+i., xx., xxi., we find in the text, "God the Son (is symbolized) by a
+Pelican&mdash;'I am like a Pelican of the wilderness.' (Psalm cii. 6.)" To
+which is added the following note:&mdash;"The mediæval interpretation of this
+symbol is given by Sir David Lindsay, of the Mount, Lion King, nephew of
+the poet, in his MS. 'Collectanea,' preserved in the Advocates' Library.
+Edinburgh."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Thomas Browne hints at the probability of the Pelican occasionally
+nibbling or biting itself on the itching part of its breast, upon
+fulness or acrimony of blood, so as to tinge the feathers in that part.
+Such an instance is recorded by Mr. G. Bennett of a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> Pelican living at
+Dulwich, which wounded itself just above the breast; but no such act has
+been observed among the Pelicans kept in the menagerie of the Zoological
+Society or elsewhere; and the instance just recorded was probably caused
+by local irritation.</p>
+
+<p>Of the same genus as the <i>Pelican</i> is the <i>Cormorant</i>, an inhabitant
+of Europe generally and of America. It swims very deep in the water;
+even in the sea very little more than the neck and head are visible
+above the surface. It is a most expert diver, pursuing the fish which
+forms its food with great activity under water; it is said to be very
+fond of eels. It perches on trees, where it occasionally builds its
+nests, but it mostly selects rocky shores and islands. Upon the Fern
+Islands its nest is composed of a mass of sea-weed, frequently heaped
+up to the height of two feet. The species is easily domesticated; and
+its docility is shown by the use often made of Cormorants in fishing.
+Willughby, quoting Faber, says:&mdash;"They are wont in England to train up
+Cormorants to fishing. When they carry them out of the room where they
+are kept they take off their hoods, and having tied a leather thong
+round the lower part of their necks, that they may not swallow down the
+fish they catch, they throw them into the river. They presently dive
+under water, and there for a long time, with wonderful swiftness, pursue
+the fish, and when they have caught them they arise presently to the
+top of the water, and pressing the fish tightly with the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> bills, they
+swallow them, till each bird hath after this manner devoured five or six
+fishes. Then their keepers call them to the fish, to which they readily
+fly, and little by little, one after another, vomit up all the fish, a
+little bruised with the nip they gave them with their bills." When they
+have done fishing they loosen the string from the birds' necks, and for
+their reward they throw them part of the prey they have caught, to each,
+perchance, one or two fishes, which they catch most dexterously in their
+mouths as they are falling in the air. Pennant quotes Whitelock, who
+said that he had a cast of them, manned like hawks, and which would come
+to hand. He took much pleasure in them, and relates that the best he
+had was one presented him by Mr. Wood, master of the corvorants (as the
+older name was) to Charles I. Pennant adds, it is well known that the
+Chinese make great use of a congenerous sort in fishing, and that not
+for amusement but profit.</p>
+
+<p>Sir George Staunton, in his account of his Embassy to China, describes
+the place where the <i>Leu-tze</i>, or famed fishing-bird of China, is bred
+and instructed in the art and practice of supplying his owner with fish
+in great abundance. The bird, a Cormorant, is figured in Sir George's
+work, with two Chinese fishermen carrying their light boat, around the
+gunnel of which their Cormorants are perched by a pole resting on their
+shoulders between them. On a large lake are thousands of small boats
+and rafts built entirely for this species
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
+of fishery. On each boat or
+raft are ten or a dozen birds, which, on a signal from the owner, plunge
+into the water; and it is astonishing to see the enormous size of fish
+with which they return grasped between their bills. They appeared to be
+so well trained that it did not require either ring or cord about their
+throats to prevent them from swallowing any portion of their prey except
+what the master was pleased to return to them for encouragement and
+food. The boat used by these fishermen is remarkably light, and is often
+carried to the lake, together with the fishing-birds, by the men who are
+there to be supported by it.</p>
+
+<p>Belon gives an amusing account of the chase of this bird during calms,
+especially in the neighbourhood of Venice: the hunt is carried on in
+very light boats, each of which being rowed by five or six men, darts
+along the sea like the bolt from an arbalest, till the poor Cormorant,
+who is shot at with bows as soon as he puts his head above water, and
+cannot take flight after diving to suffocation, is taken quite tired out
+by his pursuers.</p>
+
+<p>Cormorant fishing has occasionally been reintroduced upon our rivers.
+In 1848 there were brought from Holland four tame Cormorants, which had
+been trained to the Chinese mode of fishing. Upon one occasion they
+fished three miles on a river, and caught a pannier-full of trout and
+eels. A ring placed round their necks to prevent them from swallowing
+large fish, but which leaves them at liberty to gulp down anything not
+exceeding the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+size of a gudgeon. The birds on these occasions are put
+into such parts of the river as are known to be favourite haunts of
+fish; and their activity under water in pursuit of fish can be compared
+to nothing so appropriate as a swallow darting after a fly.</p>
+
+<p>Blumenbach tells us the Cormorant occasionally increases in a few years
+to many thousands on coasts where it was previously unknown. It varies
+much both in size and colour. The late Joshua Brookes, the surgeon,
+possessed a Cormorant, which he presented to the Zoological Society.</p>
+
+<p>The Cormorant has a small sabre-shaped bone at the back of its vertex;
+which bone may serve as a lever in throwing back the head, when the
+animal tosses the fishes into the air and catches them in its open
+mouth. The same motion is, however, performed by some piscivorous birds,
+which are not provided with this particular bone.</p>
+
+<p>Aubrey, in his "Natural History of Wilts," quotes the following weather
+presage from May's "Virgil's Georgics":&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"The seas are ill to sailors evermore</div>
+<div class="verse">When Cormorants fly crying to the shore."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="TALKING_BIRDS_ETC" id="TALKING_BIRDS_ETC"></a>TALKING BIRDS, ETC.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_013.jpg" alt="Letter C"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>CERTAIN</b> birds are known to utter strange sounds, the origin of which
+has much puzzled the ornithologists. The Brown Owl which hoots, is
+hence called the Screech Owl: a musical friend of Gilbert White tried
+all the Owls that were his near neighbours with a pitch-pipe set at a
+concert pitch, and found they all hooted in B flat; and he subsequently
+found that neither Owls nor Cuckoos keep to one note. The Whidah Bird,
+one of the most costly of cage-birds, rattles its tail-feathers with a
+noise somewhat resembling that made by the rattle-snake. The Chinese
+Starling, in China called <i>Longuoy</i>, in captivity is very teachable,
+imitating words, and even whistling tunes: we all remember Sterne's
+Starling. The Piping Crow, to be seen in troops in the Blue Mountains,
+is named from its ready mimicry of other birds: its imitation of the
+chucking and cackling of a hen and the crowing of a cock, as well as
+its whistling of tunes, are described as very perfect: its native
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> note
+is said to be a loud whistle. The Blue Jay turns his imitative faculty
+to treacherous account: he so closely imitates the St. Domingo Falcon
+as to deceive even those acquainted with both birds; and the Falcon no
+sooner appears in their neighbourhood than the jays swarm around him and
+insult him with their imitative cries; for which they frequently fall
+victims to his appetite. The Bullfinch, according to Blumenbach, learns
+to whistle tunes, to sing in parts, and even to pronounce words. The
+note of the Crowned Crane has been compared by Buffon to the hoarseness
+of a trumpet; it also clucks like a hen. Mr. Wallace, in his "Travels on
+the Amazon," saw a bird about the size and colour of the Raven, which
+uttered a loud, hoarse cry, like some deep musical instrument, whence
+its Indian name, <i>Ueramioube</i>, Trumpet Bird: it inhabits the flooded
+islands of the Rio Negro and the Solimoes, never appearing on the
+mainland.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a>
+The only sound produced by Storks
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> is by snapping their
+bills. The Night Heron is called the Qua Bird; from its note <i>Qua</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The Bittern, the English provincial names of which are the Mire-drum,
+Bull of the Bog, &amp;c., is so called for the bellowing or drumming noise
+or booming for which the bird is so famous. This deep note of the
+"hollow-sounding Bittern" is exerted on the ground at the breeding
+season, about February or March. As the day declines he leaves his
+haunt, and, rising spirally, soars to a great height in the twilight.
+Willughby says that it performs this last-mentioned feat in the autumn,
+"making a singular kind of noise, nothing like to lowing." Bewick
+says that it soars as above described when it changes its haunts.
+Ordinarily it flies heavily, like the Heron, uttering from time to time
+a resounding cry, not bellowing; and then Willughby, who well describes
+the bellowing noise of the breeding season, supposes it to be the Night
+Raven, at whose "deadly voice" the superstitious wayfarer of the night
+turned pale and trembled. "This, without doubt," writes Willughby, "is
+that bird our common people call the Night Raven, and have such a dread
+of, imagining its cry portends no less than their death or the death of
+some of their near relations; for it flies in the night, answers their
+description of being like a flagging collar, and hath such a kind of
+hooping<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
+cry as they talk of." Others, with some reason, consider the
+Qua Bird already mentioned (which utters a loud and most disagreeable
+noise when on the wing, conveying the idea of the agonies of a person
+attempting to vomit) to be the true Night Raven. The Bittern was well
+known to the ancients, and Aristotle mentions the fable of its origin
+from staves metamorphosed into birds. The long claw of the hind toe is
+much prized as a toothpick, and in the olden times it was thought to
+have the property of preserving the teeth.</p>
+
+<p>The Greater-billed Butcher Bird, from New Holland, has extraordinary
+powers of voice: it is trained for catching small birds, and it is said
+to imitate the notes of some other birds by way of decoying them to
+their destruction.</p>
+
+<p>The mere imitative sounds of Parrots are of little interest compared
+with the instances of instinct, apparently allied to reason, which are
+related of individuals. Of this tribe the distinguishing characteristics
+are a hooked bill, the upper mandible of which is moveable as well as
+the lower, and not in one piece with the skull, as in most other birds,
+but joined to the head by a strong membrane, with which the bird lifts
+it or lets it fall at pleasure. The bill is also round on the outside
+and hollow within, and has, in some degree, the capacity of a mouth,
+allowing the tongue, which is thick and fleshy, to play freely; while
+the sound, striking against the circular border of the lower mandible,
+reflects it like a palate: hence the animal does not utter a whistling
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>
+sound, but a full articulation. The tongue, which modulates all sounds,
+is proportionally larger than in man.</p>
+
+<p>The Wild Swan has a very loud call, and utters a melancholy cry when one
+of the flock is killed; hence it was said by the poets to sing its own
+dying dirge. Such was the popular belief in olden times; and, looking to
+the anatomical characteristics of the species, it was, in some degree,
+supported by the more inflated wind-pipe of the wild when compared
+with that of the tame species. The <i>Song of the Swan</i> is, however,
+irreconcileable with sober belief, the only noise of the Wild Swan of
+our times being unmelodious, and an unpleasing monotony.</p>
+
+<p>The Laughing Goose is named from its note having some resemblance to the
+laugh of man; and not, as Wilson supposes, from the grinning appearance
+of its mandibles. The Indians imitate its cry by moving the hand quickly
+against the lips, whilst they repeat the syllable <i>wah</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The Cuckoo may be said to have done much for musical science, because
+from that bird has been derived the <i>minor scale</i>, the origin of which
+has puzzled so many; the Cuckoo's couplet being the <i>minor third</i> sung
+downwards.</p>
+
+<p>The Germans are the finest appreciators of the Nightingale; and it is a
+fact, that when the Prussian authorities, under pecuniary pressure, were
+about to cut down certain trees near Cologne, which were frequented by
+Nightingales, the alarmed citizens purchased the trees in order to save
+the birds and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
+keep their music. Yet one would think the music hardly
+worth having, if it really sounded as it looks upon paper, transcribed
+thus by Bechstein, from whom it is quoted by Broderip:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+Zozozozozozozozozozozozo zirrhading<br/>
+Hezezezezezezezezezezezezezezeze cowar ho dze hoi<br/>
+Higaigaigaigaigaigaigaigaigaigai, guaiagai coricor dzio dzio pi.
+<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a>
+</div>
+<p>M. Wichterich, of Bonn, remarks:&mdash;"It is a vulgar error to suppose that
+the song of the Nightingale is melancholy, and that it only sings by
+night. There are two varieties of the Nightingale; one which sings both
+in the night and the day, and one which sings in the day only."</p>
+
+<p>In the year 1858, Mr. Leigh Sotheby, in a letter to Dr. Gray, of the
+British Museum, described a marvellous little specimen of the feathered
+tribe&mdash;a Talking Canary. Its parents had previously and successfully
+reared many young ones, but three years before they hatched only <i>one</i>
+out of four eggs, the which they immediately neglected, by commencing
+the rebuilding of a nest on the top of it. Upon this discovery, the
+unfledged and forsaken bird, all but dead, was taken away and placed in
+flannel by the fire, when, after much attention, it was restored, and
+then brought up by hand. Thus treated, and away from all other birds, it
+became familiarised only with those who fed it; consequently, its first
+singing notes were of a character totally different to those usual with
+the Canary.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Constantly being talked to, the bird, when about three months old,
+astonished its mistress by repeating the endearing terms used in talking
+to it, such as "Kissie, kissie," with its significant sounds. This
+went on, and from time to time the little bird repeated other words;
+and then, for hours together, except during the moulting season, it
+astonished by <i>ringing the changes</i>, according to its own fancy, and as
+plainly as any human voice could articulate them, on the several words,
+"Dear sweet Titchie" (its name), "kiss Minnie," "Kiss me, then, dear
+Minnie." "Sweet pretty little Titchie," "Kissie, kissie, kissie." "Dear
+Titchie," "Titchie wee, gee, gee, gee, Titchie. Titchie."</p>
+
+<p>The usual singing-notes of the bird were more of the character of the
+Nightingale, mingled occasionally with the sound of the dog-whistle used
+about the house. It is hardly necessary to add, that the bird was by
+nature remarkably tame.</p>
+
+<p>In 1839, a Canary-bird, capable of distinct articulation, was exhibited
+in Regent-street. The following were some of its sentences:&mdash;"Sweet
+pretty dear," "Sweet pretty dear Dicky," "Mary," "Sweet pretty little
+Dicky dear;" and often in the course of the day, "Sweet pretty Queen."
+The bird also imitated the jarring of a wire, the ringing of a bell; it
+was three years old, and was reared by a lady who never allowed it to
+be in the company of other birds. This Canary died in October, 1839; it
+was, it is believed, the only other talking instance publicly known.</p>
+
+<p>We read of some experiments made in the rearing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>
+of birds at Kendal
+by a bird-fancier, the result of which was, that upwards of 20
+birds&mdash;Canaries. Greenfinches, Linnets, Chaffinches, Titlarks,
+and Whitethroats&mdash;were reared in one cage by a pair of Canaries.
+The experiments were continued until the extraordinary number of
+thirty-eight birds had been brought up within two months by the
+Canaries. It may be worth while to enumerate them.</p>
+
+<p>In the month of June the Canaries&mdash;the male green, and the female
+piebald&mdash;were caged for the purpose of breeding. The female laid five
+eggs, and while she was sitting a Greenfinch egg was introduced into
+the nest. All of these were hatched, and the day after incubation was
+completed five Grey Linnets, also newly hatched, were put into the cage,
+in their own nest. Next day a newly-hatched nest of four Chaffinches was
+also introduced; and afterwards five different nests, consisting of six
+Titlarks, six Whitethroats, three Skylarks, three Winchars, and three
+Blackcaps. While rearing the last of these nests, the female Canary
+again laid and hatched four eggs, thus making thirty-eight young birds
+brought up by the pair of Canaries. It will be noticed that most of
+these birds are soft-billed, whose natural food is small insects; but
+they took quite kindly to the seeds upon which they were fed by their
+step-parents. The pair of Canaries fed at one time twenty-one young
+birds, and never had less than sixteen making demands upon their care;
+and while the female was hatching her second nest she continued to feed
+the birds that occupied the other nest.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Of the origin of the <i>neighing sound</i> which accompanies the single
+Snipe's play-flight during pairing-time, opinions are various. Bechstein
+thought it was produced by means of the beak; Naumann and others, again,
+that it originated in powerful strokes of the wing. Pratt, in Hanover,
+observing that the bird makes heard its well-known song or cry, which he
+expresses with the words, "gick jack, gick jack!" at the same time with
+the <i>neighing sound</i>, it seemed to be settled that the latter is not
+produced through the throat. In the meantime, M. Meves, of Stockholm,
+remarked with surprise, that the humming sound could never be observed
+whilst the bird was flying upwards, at which time the tail is closed;
+but only when it was casting itself downwards in a slanting direction,
+with the tail strongly spread out.</p>
+
+<p>M. Meves has written for the Zoological Society a paper upon the origin
+of this sound, which all the field-naturalists and sportsmen of England
+and other countries had, for the previous century, been trying to make
+out, but had failed to discover. Of this paper the following is an
+abstract:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>The peculiar form of the tail-feathers in some foreign
+species nearly allied to our Snipe encouraged the notion that the
+tail conduced to the production of the sound. M. Meves found the
+tail-feathers of our common Snipe, in the first feather especially,
+very peculiarly constructed; the shaft uncommonly stiff and
+sabre-shaped; the rays of the web strongly bound together and very
+long, the longest reaching nearly three-fourths of the whole length
+of the web, these rays lying along or spanning from end to end of
+the curve of the shaft, <i>like the strings of a musical instrument</i>.
+If you blow <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
+from the outer side upon the broad web, it comes into
+vibration, and a sound is heard, which, though fainter, resembles
+very closely the well-known <i>neighing</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But to convince yourself fully that it is the first feather
+which produces the peculiar sound, it is only necessary carefully
+to pluck out such an one, to fasten its shaft with fine thread to
+a piece of steel wire a tenth of an inch in diameter, and a foot
+long, and then to fix this at the end of a four-foot stick. If
+now you draw the feather, with this outer side forward, sharply
+through the air, at the same time making some short movements or
+shakings of the arm, so as to represent the shivering motion of the
+wings during flight, you produce the neighing sound with the most
+astonishing exactness.</p>
+
+<p>If you wish to hear the humming of both feathers at once, as
+must be the case from the flying bird, this also can be managed by
+a simple contrivance. Take a small stick, and fasten at the side of
+the smaller end a piece of burnt steel wire in the form of a fork;
+bind to each point a side tail-feather; bend the wire so that the
+feathers receive the same direction which they do in the spreading
+of the tail as the bird sinks itself in flight; and then, with this
+apparatus, draw the feathers through the air as before. Such a
+sound, but in another tone, is produced when we experiment with the
+tail-feathers of other kinds of Snipe.</p>
+
+<p>Since in both sexes these feathers have the same form, it is
+clear that both can produce the same humming noise; but as the
+feathers of the hen are generally less than those of the cock-bird,
+the noise made by them is not so deep as in the other case.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the significance which these tail-feathers have as a
+kind of musical instrument, their form may give a weighty character
+in the determination of a species standing very near one another,
+which have been looked upon as varieties.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>This interesting discovery was first announced by M. Meves in an account
+of the birds observed by himself during a visit to the Island of
+Gottland, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>
+the summer of the year 1856, which narrative was published
+at Stockholm in the following winter. In the succeeding summer, M. Meves
+showed his experiments to Mr. Wolley, whose services to Ornithology
+we have already noticed. The mysterious noise of the wilderness was
+reproduced in a little room in the middle of Stockholm: first, the deep
+bleat, now shown to proceed from the male Snipe, and then the fainter
+bleat of the female, both most strikingly true to nature, neither
+producible with any other feathers than the outer ones of the tail.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wolley inquired of Mr. Meves how, issuing forth from the town on
+a summer ramble, he came to discover what had puzzled the wits and
+strained the eyes of so many observers. He freely explained how, in a
+number of "Naumannia," an accidental misprint of the word representing
+tail-feathers instead of wing-feathers,&mdash;a mistake which another author
+ridiculed&mdash;first led him to think on the subject. He subsequently
+examined in the Museum at Stockholm the tail-feathers of various species
+of Snipe, remarked their structure, and reasoned upon it. Then he
+blew upon them, and fixed them on levers that he might wave them with
+greater force through the air; and at the same time he made more careful
+observation than he had hitherto done in the living birds. In short,
+in him the obscure hint was thrown upon fruitful ground, whilst in a
+hundred other minds it had failed to come to light.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Walsh saw at Constantinople a Woodpecker, about the size of a
+Thrush, which was very active
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+in devouring flies, and tapped woodwork
+with his bill with a noise <i>as loud as that of a hammer</i>, to disturb the
+insects concealed therein, so as to seize upon them when they appeared.</p>
+
+<p>Among remarkable bird services should not be forgotten those of the
+Trochilos to the Crocodile. "When the Crocodile," says Herodotus, "feeds
+in the Nile, the inside of his mouth is always covered with <i>bdella</i>
+(a term which the translators have rendered by that of <i>leech</i>). All
+birds, <i>except one</i>, fly from the Crocodile; but this one bird, the
+<i>Trochilos</i>, on the contrary, flies towards him with the greatest
+eagerness, and renders him a very great service; for every time that the
+Crocodile comes to the land to sleep, and when he lies stretched out
+with his jaws open, the Trochilos enters and establishes himself in his
+mouth, and frees him from the bdella which he finds there. The Crocodile
+is grateful, and never does any harm to the little bird who performs for
+him this office."</p>
+
+<p>This passage was long looked upon as a pleasant story, and nothing more;
+until M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, during his long residence in Egypt,
+ascertained the story of Herodotus to be correct in substance, but
+inexact in details. It is perfectly true that a little bird does exist,
+which flies incessantly from place to place, searching everywhere, even
+in the Crocodile's mouth, for the insects which form the principal
+part of its nourishment. This bird is seen everywhere on the banks of
+the Nile, and M. Geoffroy has proved it to be of a species already
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
+described by Hasselquist, and very like the small winged Plover. If
+the Trochilos be in reality the little Plover, the bdella cannot be
+leeches, (which do not exist in the running waters of the Nile) but the
+small insects known as <i>gnats</i> in Europe. Myriads of these insects dance
+upon the Nile: they attack the Crocodile upon the inner surface of his
+palate, and sting the orifice of the glands, which are numerous in the
+Crocodile's mouth. Then the little Plover, who follows him everywhere,
+delivers him from these troublesome enemies; and that without any danger
+to himself, for the Crocodile is always careful, when he is going to
+shut his mouth, to make some motion which warns the little bird to fly
+away. At St. Domingo there is a Crocodile which very nearly resembles
+that of Egypt. This Crocodile is attacked by gnats, from which he would
+have no means of delivering himself (his tongue, like that of the
+Crocodile, being fixed) if a bird of a particular species did not give
+him the same assistance that the Crocodile of the Nile receives from
+the little Plover. These facts explain the passage in Herodotus, and
+demonstrate that the animal, there called bdella, is not a leech, but a
+flying insect similar to our gnat.</p>
+
+<p>Exemplifications of instinct, intelligence, and reason in Birds are by
+no means rare, but this distinction must be made: instinctive actions
+are dependent on the nerves, intelligence on the brain; but that which
+constitutes peculiar qualities of the mind in man has no material
+organ. The Rev. Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
+Statham has referred to the theory of the facial
+angle as indicative of the amount of sagacity observable in the animal
+race, but has expressed his opinion that the theory is utterly at
+fault in the case of Birds; many of these having a very acute facial
+angle being considerably more intelligent than others having scarcely
+any facial angle at all. Size also seems to present another anomaly
+between the two races of Beasts and Birds; for while the Elephant and
+the Horse are among the most distinguished of quadrupeds for sagacity
+and instinct, the larger Birds seem scarcely comparable to the smaller
+ones in the possession of these attributes. The writer instances this
+by comparing the Ostrich and the Goose with the Wren, the Robin, the
+Canary, the Pigeon, and the Crow; and amusingly alludes to the holding
+of parliaments or convocations of birds of the last species, while the
+Ostrich is characterised in Scripture as the type of folly.</p>
+
+<p>The author then refers to the poisoning of two young Blackbirds by the
+parent birds, when they found that they could neither liberate them
+nor permanently share their captivity. The two fledglings had been
+taken from a Blackbirds' nest in Surrey-square, and had been placed in
+a room looking over a garden, in a wicker cage. For some time the old
+birds attended to their wants, visited them regularly, and fed them
+with appropriate food; but, at last, getting wearied of the task, or
+despairing of effecting their liberation, they appear to have poisoned
+them. They were both found suddenly dead one
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
+morning, shortly after
+having been seen in good health; and on opening their bodies a small
+leaf, supposed to be that of <i>Solanum Nigrum</i>, was found in the stomach
+of each. The old birds immediately deserted the spot, as though aware of
+the nefarious deed befitting their name.</p>
+
+<p>As an exemplification of instinct Dr. Horner states that Rooks built
+on the Infirmary trees at Hull, but never over the street. One year,
+however, a young couple ventured to build here: for eight mornings in
+succession the old Rooks proceeded to destroy the nest, when at last the
+young ones chose a more fitting place.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. A. Strickland, having referred to the tendency of birds to build
+their nests of materials of a colour resembling that around such nests,
+relates an instance in which the Fly-catcher built in a red brick wall,
+and used for the nest mahogany shavings. Referring to the meeting of
+Rooks for judicial purposes. Mr. Strickland states that he once saw a
+Rook tried in this way, and ultimately killed by the rest.</p>
+
+
+<h3>SONGS OF BIRDS AND SEASONS OF THE DAY.</h3>
+
+<p>Although nearly half a century has elapsed since the following
+observations were communicated to the Royal Society by Dr. Jenner, their
+expressive character is as charming as ever, and their accuracy as
+valuable:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>
+"There is a beautiful propriety in the order in which Singing
+Birds fill up the day with their pleasing harmony. The accordance
+between their songs, and the aspect of nature
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> at the successive
+periods of the day at which they sing, is so remarkable that one
+cannot but suppose it to be the result of benevolent design.</p>
+
+<p>"From the <i>Robin</i> (not the <i>Lark</i>, as has been generally
+imagined), as soon as twilight has drawn its imperceptible line
+between night and day, begins his artless song. How sweetly does
+this harmonize with the soft dawning of the day! He goes on till
+the twinkling sunbeams begin to tell him that his notes no longer
+accord with the rising sun. Up starts the <i>Lark</i>, and with him a
+variety of sprightly songsters, whose lively notes are in perfect
+correspondence with the gaiety of the morning. The general warbling
+continues, with now and then an interruption by the transient croak
+of the <i>Raven</i>, the scream of the <i>Jay</i>, or the pert chattering of
+the <i>Daw</i>. The <i>Nightingale</i>, unwearied by the vocal exertions of
+the night, joins his inferiors in sound in the general harmony. The
+<i>Thrush</i> is wisely placed on the summit of some lofty tree, that
+its piercing notes may be softened by distance before it reaches
+the ear, while the mellow <i>Blackbird</i> seeks the lower branches.</p>
+
+<p>"Should the sun, having been eclipsed by a cloud, shine forth
+with fresh effulgence, how frequently we see the <i>Goldfinch</i> perch
+on some blossomed bough, and hear his song poured forth in a strain
+peculiarly energetic; while the sun, full shining on his beautiful
+plumes, displays his golden wings and crimson crest to charming
+advantage. Indeed, a burst of sunshine in a cloudy day, or after a
+heavy shower, seems always to wake up a new gladness in the little
+musicians, and invite them to an answering burst of minstrelsy.</p>
+
+<p>"As evening advances, the performers gradually retire, and the
+concert softly dies away. At sunset the <i>Robin</i> again sends up his
+twilight song, till the still more serene hour of night sends him
+to his bower of rest. And now, in unison with the darkened earth
+and sky, no sooner is the voice of the <i>Robin</i> hushed, than the
+<i>Owl</i> sends forth his slow and solemn tones, well adapted to the
+serious hour."</p>
+</div>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a>
+The popular name of this bird is the <i>Umbrella Bird</i>. On its head
+it bears a crest, different from that of any other bird. It is formed
+of feathers more than two inches long, very thickly set, and with hairy
+plumes curving over at the end. These can be laid back so as to be
+hardly visible, or can be erected and spread out on every side, forming
+a dome completely covering the head, and even reaching beyond the point
+of the beak; the individual feathers then stand out something like the
+down-bearing seeds of the dandelion. Besides this, there is another
+ornamental appendage on the breast, formed by a fleshy tubercle, as
+thick as a quill and an inch and a-half long, which hangs down from
+the neck, and is thickly covered with glossy feathers, forming a large
+pendent plume or tassel. This, also, the bird can either press to its
+breast, so as to be scarcely visible, or can swell out so as almost to
+conceal the forepart of its body.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> "Athenæum," No. 1467.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="OWLS" id="OWLS"></a>OWLS.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>THESE</b> nocturnal birds of prey have large heads and great projecting
+eyes, directing forwards, and surrounded with a circle of loose and
+delicate feathers, more or less developed, according to the nocturnal or
+comparatively diurnal habits of the species. The position of the eyes,
+giving a particular fulness and breadth to the head, has gained for the
+Owl the intellectual character so universally awarded to it. The concave
+facial disc of feathers with which they are surrounded materially aids
+vision by concentrating the rays of light to an intensity better suited
+to the opacity of the medium in which power is required to be exercised.
+"They may be compared," says Mr. Yarrell, "to a person near-sighted,
+who sees objects with superior magnitude and brilliancy when within the
+prescribed limits of his natural powers of vision, from the increased
+angle these objects subtend." Their beaks are completely curved,
+or raptorial; they have the power of turning the outer toe either
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
+backwards or forwards; they fly weakly, and near the ground; but, from
+their soft plumage, stealthily, stretching out their hind legs that they
+may balance their large and heavy heads. Their sense of hearing is very
+acute: they not only look, but listen for prey.</p>
+
+<p>The Owl is a bird of mystery and gloom, and a special favourite with
+plaintive poets. We find him with Ariel:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"There I couch when Owls do cry."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>He figures in the nursery rhyme of "Cock Robin." In reply to "Who dug
+his grave?"&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"I, says the Owl, with my little shovel&mdash;</div>
+<div class="verse2">I dug his grave."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>He hoots over graves, and his dismal note adds to the terror of
+darkness:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,</div>
+<div class="verse">And the Owls have awakened the crowing cock;</div>
+<div class="verse5">Tu-whit! tu-whoo!</div>
+<div class="verse">And hark again the crowing cock,</div>
+<div class="verse5">How drowsily it crew.</div>
+<div class="verse">&nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
+&nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
+&nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
+&nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .</div>
+<div class="verse">"When blood is nipt, and ways be foul,</div>
+<div class="verse">Then nightly sings the staring Owl,</div>
+<div class="verse5">Tu-whoo!</div>
+<div class="verse">Tu-whit! tu-whoo! <i>a merry note</i>,</div>
+<div class="verse">While greasy Joan doth keel the pot!"</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Titania sings of</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"The clamorous Owl, that nightly hoots and wonders</div>
+<div class="verse">At our quaint spirits."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Bishop Hall has this "Occasional Meditation" upon the sight of an Owl in
+the twilight:&mdash;"What a strange melancholic life doth this creature lead;
+to hide her head all the day long in an ivy-bush, and at night, when all
+other birds are at rest, to fly abroad and vent her harsh notes. I know
+not why the ancients have <i>sacred</i> this bird to wisdom, except it be for
+her safe closeness and singular perspicuity; that when other domestrial
+and airy creatures are blind, she only hath insured light to discern the
+least objects for her own advantage." We may here note that Linnæus,
+with many other naturalists and antiquaries, have supposed the Horned
+Owl to have been the bird of Minerva; but Blumenbach has shown, from
+the ancient works of Grecian art, that it was not this, but rather some
+smooth-headed species, probably the <i>Passerina</i>, or Little Owl.</p>
+
+<p>The divine has, in the above passage, overstated the melancholy of the
+Owl; as has also the poet, who sings:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse2">"From yonder ivy-mantled tower</div>
+<div class="verse">The moping Owl does to the moon complain</div>
+<div class="verse">Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,</div>
+<div class="verse">Molest her ancient solitary reign."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Shakspeare more accurately terms her "the mousing Owl," for her nights
+are spent in barns, or in hunting and devouring sparrows in the
+churchyard elms. "Moping, indeed!" says a pleasing observer. "So far
+from this, she is a sprightly, active ranger of the night, who had as
+lief sit on a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>
+grave as a rose-bush; who is as valiant a hunter as
+Nimroud, chasing all sorts of game, from the dormouse to the hare and
+the young lamb, and devouring them, while her mate hoots to her from
+some picturesque ruin, and invites her, when supper is over, to return
+to him and her babes."</p>
+
+<p>But the tricks of the Owl by night render her the terror of all other
+birds, great and small. In Northern Italy, persons in rustic districts
+which are well wooded, catch and tame an Owl, put a light chain upon her
+legs, and then place her on a small cross-bar on the top of a high pole,
+which is fixed in the earth. Half-blinded by the light, the defenceless
+captive has to endure patiently the jeers and insults of the dastardly
+tribes from the surrounding groves and thickets, who issue in clouds
+to scream, chirp, and flit about their enemy. Some, trusting to the
+swiftness of their wings, sweep close by, and peck at her feathers as
+they pass, and are sometimes punished by the Owl with her formidable
+beak for their audacity. Meanwhile, from darkened windows, sportsmen,
+with fowling-pieces well charged with shot, fire at the hosts of birds,
+wheeling, shrieking, screaming, and thickening around the Owl. All the
+guns are fired at once, and the grass is strewn for many yards round
+with the slain; while the Owl, whom they have been careful not to hit,
+utters a joyous whoo! whoo! at the fate of her persecutors.</p>
+
+<p>Major Head thus describes the <i>Biscacho</i>, or Coquimbo, a curious species
+of Owl, found all over the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
+pampas of South America:&mdash;"Like rabbits,
+they live in holes, which are in groups in every direction. These
+animals are never seen in the day, but as soon as the lower limb of
+the sun reaches the horizon, they are seen issuing from the holes. The
+Biscachos, when full-grown, are nearly as big as badgers, but their
+head resembles a rabbit's, except that they have large bushy whiskers.
+In the evening they sit outside the holes, and they all appear to be
+moralizing. They are the most serious-looking animals I ever saw;
+and even the young ones are grey-headed, wear moustachios, and look
+thoughtful and grave. In the daytime their holes are guarded by two
+little owls, which are never an instant away from their posts. As one
+gallops by these owls, they always stand looking at the stranger, and
+then at each other, moving their old-fashioned heads in a manner which
+is quite ridiculous, until one rushes by them, when they get the better
+of their dignified looks, and they both run into the Biscacho's hole."</p>
+
+<p>Of all birds of prey, Owls are the most useful to man, by protecting his
+corn-fields, or granaried provision, from mice and numberless vermin.
+Yet, prejudice has perverted these birds into objects of superstition
+and consequent hate. The kind-hearted Mr. Waterton says:&mdash;"I wish that
+any little thing I could write or say might cause this bird to stand
+better with the world at large than it has hitherto done; but I have
+slender hope on this score, because old and deep-rooted prejudices are
+seldom overcome; and when I look back into annals of remote antiquity,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
+I see too clearly that defamation has done its worst to ruin the whole
+family, in all its branches, of this poor, harmless, useful friend of
+mine."</p>
+
+<p>The Barn Owl is common throughout Europe, known in Tartary, and rare in
+the United States of America. In England it is called the Barn Owl, the
+Church Owl, Gillihowlet, and Screech Owl; the last name is improperly
+applied, as it is believed not to hoot, though Sir William Jardine
+asserts that he has shot it in the act of hooting. To the screech
+superstition has annexed ideas of fatal portent; "but," says Charlotte
+Smith, "it has, of course, no more foreknowledge of approaching evil to
+man than the Lark: its cry is a signal to its absent mate."</p>
+
+<p>"If," says Mr. Waterton, "this useful bird caught its food by day
+instead of hunting for it by night, mankind would have ocular
+demonstration of its utility in thinning the country of mice; and it
+would be protected and encouraged everywhere. It would be with us what
+the Ibis was with the Egyptians. When it has young, it will bring a
+mouse to the nest every twelve or fifteen minutes." Mr. Waterton saw his
+Barn Owl fly away with a rat which he had just shot; he also saw her
+drop perpendicularly into the water, and presently rise out of it with a
+fish in her claws, which she took to her nest.</p>
+
+<p>Birds and quadrupeds, and even fish, are the food of Owls, according to
+the size of the species. Hares, partridges, grouse, and even the turkey,
+are attacked by the larger Horned Owls of Europe and America; while
+mice, shrews, small birds, and crabs suffice for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
+the inferior strength
+of the smaller Owls. Mr. Yarrell states that the Short-eared Owl is the
+only bird of prey in which he ever found the remains of a bat.</p>
+
+<p>William Bullock reports that a large Snowy Owl, wounded on the Isle of
+Baltoc, disgorged a young rabbit; and that one in his possession had in
+its stomach a sandpiper with its feathers entire. It preys on lemmings,
+hares, and birds, particularly the willow-grouse and ptarmigan. It is
+a dexterous fisher, grasping the fish with an instantaneous stroke of
+the foot as it sails along near the surface of the water, or sits on
+a stone in a shallow stream. It has been seen on the wing pursuing an
+American hare, making repeated strokes at the animal with its foot. In
+winter, when this Owl is fat, the Indians and white residents in the Fur
+Countries esteem it to be good eating; its flesh is delicately white.
+Small snakes are the common prey of this Owl during the daytime. And to
+show on what various kinds of food Owls subsist, Mr. Darwin states that
+a species that was killed among the islets of the Chonos Archipelago had
+its stomach full of good-sized crabs. Such are a few of the facts which
+attest the almost omnivorous appetite of the Owl.</p>
+
+<p>The flight of the Snowy Owl is stronger and swifter than any other
+bird of the family; its ears are very large; its voice (says Pennant)
+adds horror even to the regions of Greenland by its hideous cries,
+resembling those of a man in deep distress. The eye is very curious,
+being immovably fixed in its socket, so that the bird, to view different
+objects, must<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
+always turn its head; and so excellently is the neck
+adapted to this purpose, that it can with ease turn the head round
+in almost a complete circle, without moving the body. The Virginian
+Eagle-Owl, amidst the forests of Indiana, utters a loud and sudden
+<i>Wough O! wough O!</i> sufficient to alarm a whole garrison; another of its
+nocturnal cries resembles the half-suppressed screams of a person being
+suffocated or throttled.</p>
+
+<p>The Javanese Owl is found in the closest forests, and occasionally near
+villages and dwellings. Dr. Horsfield says:&mdash;"It is not, however, a
+favourite with the natives; various superstitious notions are also in
+Java associated with its visits; and it is considered in many parts of
+the island as portending evil." One of this species never visits the
+villages, but resides in the dense forests, which are the usual resort
+of the tiger. The natives even assert that the <i>Wowo-wiwi</i> approaches
+the animal with the same familiarity with which the jallack approaches
+the buffalo, and that it has no dread to alight on the tiger's back. Dr.
+Horsfield adds, that it has never been seen in confinement.</p>
+
+<p>The Boobook Owl has the native name of Buck-buck, and it may be heard
+in Australia every night during winter, uttering a cry corresponding
+with that word. The note is somewhat similar to that of the European
+<i>Cuckoo</i>, and the colonists have given it that name. The lower order of
+settlers in New South Wales are led away by the idea that everything
+is the reverse in that country to what it is in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> England; and the
+<i>Cuckoo</i>, as they call this bird, singing by night, is one of the
+instances which they point out.</p>
+
+<p>Tame Owls are described as nearly as playful, and quite as affectionate,
+as kittens; they will perch upon your wrist, touch your lips with their
+beak, and hoot to order; and they are less inclined to leave their
+friends than other tame birds. A writer in "Chambers's Journal" relates,
+that a friend lost his favourite Owl, which flew away, and was absent
+many days. In time, however, he came back, and resumed his habits and
+duties, which, for a while, went on uninterruptedly. At length, one
+severe autumn, he disappeared; weeks, months passed, and he returned
+not. One snowy night, however, as his master sat by the blazing fire,
+some heavy thing came bump against the shutters. "Whoo, whoo, whoo."
+The window was opened, and in flew the Owl, shaking the thick snow from
+his wings, and settling lovingly on his master's wrist, the bird's eyes
+dilating with delight.</p>
+
+<p>The Owls at Arundel Castle have a sort of historic interest; they
+are kept within the circuit of the keep-tower, the most ancient and
+picturesque portion of the castle. Among the Australian Owls here we
+read of one larger than a turkey, measuring four feet across the wings
+when expanded. The Owl named "Lord Thurlow," from his resemblance to
+that Judge, is a striking specimen.</p>
+
+<p>The accompanying illustration shows a fine specimen of Fraser's
+Eagle-Owl, brought from Fernando
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>
+Po. It is the size of an ordinary
+fowl; colour, very dark reddish-brown mottling; back and wings passing
+through all shades of the same colour into nearly white on the under
+parts, where the feathers are barred; bill, pale greenish; eyes, nearly
+black.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter bord"><a name="i_237.jpg" id="i_237.jpg"></a>
+  <img src="images/i_237.jpg" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">FRASER'S EAGLE-OWL, FROM FERNANDO PO.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Among the Owls but recently described is the Masked Owl of New Holland,
+named from the markings of the disk of the face, somewhat grotesque;
+the colours are brown variegated with white. A fine specimen of the
+Abyssinian Owl is possessed by Mr. R. Good, of Yeovil: the bird,
+although quite young, is of immense size.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, the Owl is thought to be of the same sympathy or kindred likings
+as the Cat: a young Owl will feed well, and thrive upon fish. Cats, too,
+it is well known, like fish. Both the Cat and the Owl, too, feed upon
+mice. The sight of Owls, also, similar to that of Cats, appears to serve
+them best in the dark.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="WEATHER-WISE_ANIMALS" id="WEATHER-WISE_ANIMALS"></a>WEATHER-WISE ANIMALS.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_180.jpg" alt="Letter W"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>WHATEVER</b> may be the worth of weather prognostications, it is from the
+animal kingdom that we obtain the majority. How these creatures become
+so acutely sensible of the approach of particular kinds of weather is
+not at present well understood. That in many cases the appearance of
+the heavens is not the source from which their information is derived
+is proved by the signs of uneasiness frequently expressed by them when,
+as yet, the most attentive observer can detect no signs of change,
+and even when they are placed in such circumstances as preclude the
+possibility of any instruction from this quarter. For instance. Dogs,
+closely confined in a room, often become very drowsy and stupid before
+rain; and a leech, confined in a glass of water, has been found, by
+its rapid motions or its quiescence, to indicate the approach of wet
+or the return of fair weather. Probably the altered condition of the
+atmosphere with regard to its electricity, which generally accompanies
+change<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+of weather, may so affect their constitution as to excite in
+them pleasurable or uneasy sensations; though man is far from insensible
+to atmospheric changes, as the feelings of utter listlessness which
+many persons experience before rain, and the aggravated severity of
+toothache, headache, and rheumatism abundantly testify. The Cat licking
+itself is a special influence of the above electric influence, which
+denotes the approach of rain.</p>
+
+<p>Birds, as "denizens of the air," are the surest indicators of weather
+changes. Thus, when swallows fly high, fine weather is to be expected
+or continued; but when they fly low, or close to the ground, rain is
+almost surely approaching; for swallows follow the flies and gnats,
+which delight in warm strata of air. Now, as warm air is lighter, and
+usually moister than cold air, when the warm strata of air are high
+there is less chance of moisture being thrown down from them by their
+mixture with cold air; but when the warm and moist air is close to the
+surface, it is almost certain that, as the cold air flows down into it,
+a deposition of water will take place.</p>
+
+<p>When Seagulls assemble on the land, very stormy and rainy weather is
+approaching. The cause of this migration to the land is the security of
+these birds finding food; and they may be observed at this time feeding
+greedily on the earth-worms and larvæ driven out of the ground by severe
+floods; whilst the fish on which they prey in fine weather in the sea,
+leave the surface, and go deeper in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
+storms. The search after food is
+the principal cause why animals change their places. The different
+tribes of the wading birds always migrate when rain is about to take
+place.</p>
+
+<p>There is a bird which takes its name from its apparent agency in
+tempests. Such is the Stormy Petrel, which name Hawkesworth, in his
+"Voyages," mentions the sailors give to the bird, but explains no
+further. Navigators meet with the Little Petrel, or Storm Finch, in
+every part of the ocean, diving, running on foot, or skimming over the
+highest waves. It seems to foresee the coming storm long ere the seamen
+can discover any signs of its approach. The Petrels make this known by
+congregating together under the wake of the vessel, as if to shelter
+themselves, and they thus warn the mariner of the coming danger. At
+night they set up a piercing cry. This usefulness of the bird to the
+sailor is the obvious cause of the latter having such an objection to
+their being killed.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Knapp, the naturalist, thus pictures gulls, describing the Petrel's
+action:&mdash;"They seem to repose in a common breeze, but upon the approach
+or during the continuation of a gale, they surround the ship, and catch
+up the small animals which the agitated ocean brings near the surface,
+or any food that may be dropped from the vessel. Whisking like an arrow
+through the deep valleys of the abyss, and darting away over the foaming
+crest of some mountain-wave, they attend the labouring barque in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> all
+her perilous course. When the storm subsides they retire to rest, and
+are seen no more."</p>
+
+<p>Our sailors have, from very early times, called these birds "Mother
+Carey's Chickens," originally bestowed on them, Mr. Yarrell tells us, by
+Captain Cartaret's sailors, probably from some celebrated ideal hag of
+the above name. Mr. Yarrell adds:&mdash;"As these birds are supposed to be
+seen only before stormy weather, they are not welcome visitors," a view
+at variance with that already suggested.</p>
+
+<p>The Editor of "Notes and Queries" considers the Petrels to have been
+called <i>chickens</i> from their diminutive size. The largest sort, "the
+Giant Petrel," is "Mother Carey's <i>Goose</i>;" its length is forty
+inches, and it expands seven feet. The common kind are about the size
+of a swallow, and weigh something over an ounce; length, six inches;
+expansion, thirteen inches; these are Mother Carey's <i>chickens</i>
+(<i>Latham</i>). It should be borne in mind that our language does not
+restrict the term chickens to young birds of the gallinaceous class.</p>
+
+<p>The Missel-bird is another bird of this kind: in Hampshire and Sussex
+it is called the <i>Storm Cock</i>, because it sings early in the spring, in
+blowing, showery weather.</p>
+
+<p>Petrels, by the way, are used by the inhabitants of the Faroe Islands as
+lamps: they pass a wick through their bodies which, when lighted, burns
+a long time from the quantity of fat they contain.</p>
+
+<p>The Fulmar Petrel, in Boothia, follows the whale-ships, availing itself
+of the labours of the fishermen
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
+by feeding on the carcases of the
+whales when stripped of their blubber. In return the bird is exceedingly
+useful to the whalers by guiding them to the places where whales are
+most numerous, and crowding to the spots where they first appear on the
+surface of the water.</p>
+
+<p>Wild Geese and Ducks are unquestionably weather-wise, for their early
+arrival from the north in the winter portends that a severe season is
+approaching; because their early appearance is most likely caused by
+severe frost having already set in at their usual summer residence. The
+Rev. F. O. Morris, the well-known writer on natural history, records
+from Nunburnholme, Yorkshire. December 5, 1864:&mdash;"This season, for the
+first time I have lived here, I have missed seeing the flocks of Wild
+Geese which in the autumnal months have heretofore wended their way
+overhead, year after year, as regularly as the dusk of the evening came
+on. Almost to the minute, and almost in the same exact course, they
+have flown over aloft from the feeding-places on the Wolds to their
+resting-places for the night; some, perhaps, to extensive commons, while
+others have turned off to the mud-banks of the Humber, whence they have
+returned with equal regularity in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>"But this year I have seen not only not a single flock, but not even
+a single bird. One evening one of my daughters did indeed see a small
+flock of six, but even that small number only once. Whether it portends
+a very hard winter, or what the cause of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>
+it may be, I am utterly at a
+loss to know or even to guess. I quite miss this year the well-known
+cackle of the old gander as he has led the van of the flock that has
+followed him; now in a wide, now in a narrow, now in a short, now in a
+long wedge, over head, diverging just from the father of the family, or
+separating from time to time further back in the line.</p>
+
+<p>"I may add, as a possible prognostication of future weather, that
+fieldfares have, I think, been unusually numerous this year, as last
+year they were the contrary. I have also remarked that swallows took
+their departure this year more than ordinarily in a body, very few
+stragglers being subsequently seen."</p>
+
+<p>It will be sufficient to state that the mean temperature of January and
+February was below that of the same month in the preceding year, and
+that of March had not been so low for twenty years.</p>
+
+<p>The opinion that sea-birds come to land in order to avoid an approaching
+storm is stated to be erroneous; and the cause assigned is, that as the
+fish upon which the birds prey go deep into the water during storms, the
+birds come to land merely on account of the greater certainty of finding
+food there than out at sea.</p>
+
+<p>We add a few notes on Bird naturalists. The Redbreast has been called
+<i>the Naturalist's Barometer</i>. When on a summer evening, though it be
+unsettled and rainy, he sings cheerfully and sweetly on a lofty twig or
+housetop, it is an unerring promise of succeeding
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>
+fine days. Sometimes,
+though the atmosphere be dry and warm, he may be seen melancholy
+chirping and brooding in a bush or low in a hedge; this promises the
+reverse. In the luxuriant forests of Brazil the Toucan may be heard
+rattling with his large hollow beak, as he sits on the outermost
+branches, calling in plaintive notes for rain.</p>
+
+<p>When Mr. Loudon was at Schwetzingen, Rhenish Bavaria, in 1829, he
+witnessed in the post-house there for the first time what he afterwards
+frequently saw&mdash;an amusing application of zoological knowledge for the
+purpose of prognosticating the weather. Two tree-frogs were kept in
+a crystal jar about eighteen inches high and six inches in diameter,
+with a depth of three or four inches of water at the bottom, and a
+small ladder reaching to the top of the jar. On the approach of dry
+weather the frogs mounted the ladder, but when moisture was expected
+they descended into the water. These animals are of a bright green, and
+in their wild state climb the trees in search of insects, and make a
+peculiar singing noise before rain. In the jar they got no other food
+than now and then a fly; one of which, Mr. Loudon was assured, would
+serve a frog for a week, though it would eat from six to twelve flies in
+a day if it could get them. In catching the flies put alive into the jar
+the frogs displayed great adroitness.</p>
+
+<p>Snails are extraordinary indicators of changes in the weather.
+Several years ago, Mr. Thomas, of Cincinnati, known as an accredited
+observer of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+natural phenomena, published some interesting accounts
+of Weather-wise Snails. They do not drink (he observes), but imbibe
+moisture in their bodies during rain, and exude it at regular periods
+afterwards. Then a certain snail first exudes the pure liquid; when
+this is exhausted, a light red succeeds, then a deep red, next yellow,
+and lastly a dark brown. The snail is very careful not to exude more
+of its moisture than is necessary. It is never seen abroad <i>except
+before rain</i>, when we find it ascending the bark of trees and getting
+on the leaves. The tree-snail is also seen ascending the stems of
+plants <i>two days before rain</i>: if it be a long and hard rain they get
+on the sheltered side of the leaf, but if a short rain the outside
+of the leaf. Another snail has the same habits, but differs only in
+colour: before rain it is yellow, and after it blue. Others show signs
+of rain, not only by means of exuding fluids, but by means of pores and
+protuberances; and the bodies of some snails have large tubercles rising
+from them <i>before rain</i>. These tubercles commence showing themselves
+ten days previous to the fall of rain they indicate; at the end of each
+of these tubercles is a pore; and at the time of the fall of rain these
+tubercles, with their pores opened, are stretched to their utmost to
+receive the water. In another kind of snail, a few days before rain
+appears a large and deep indentation, beginning at the head between
+the horns, and ending with the jointure at the shells. Other snails,
+a few days before the rain, crawl to the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>
+most exposed hill-side,
+where, if they arrive before the rain descends, they seek some crevice
+in the rocks, and then close the aperture of the shell with glutinous
+substance; this, when the rain approaches, they dissolve, and are then
+seen crawling about.</p>
+
+<p>Our Cincinnati observer mentions three kinds of snails which move along
+at the rate of a mile in forty-four hours; they inhabit the most dense
+forests, and it is regarded as a sure indication of rain to observe them
+moving towards an exposed situation. Others indicate the weather not
+only by exuding fluids, but by the colour of the animal. After rain the
+snail has a very dark appearance, but it grows of a bright colour as
+the water is expended; whilst just before rain it is of yellowish white
+colour, also just before rain streaks appear from the point of the head
+to the jointure of the shell. These snails move at the rate of a mile in
+fourteen days and sixteen hours. If they are observed ascending a cliff
+it is a sure indication of rain: they live in the cavities of the sides
+of cliffs. There is also a snail which is brown, tinged with blue on the
+edges before rain, but black after rain: a few days before appears an
+indentation, which grows deeper as the rain approaches.</p>
+
+<p>The leaves of trees are even good barometers: most of them for a short,
+light rain, will turn up so as to receive their fill of water; but for
+a long rain they are doubled, so as to conduct the water away. The
+Frog and Toad are sure indicators of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
+rain; for, as they do not drink
+water but absorb it into their bodies, they are sure to be found out
+at the time they expect rain. The Locust and Grasshopper are also good
+indicators of a storm; a few hours before rain they are to be found
+under the leaves of trees and in the hollow trunks.</p>
+
+<p>The Mole has long been recorded as a prognosticator of change of
+weather, before which it becomes very active. The temperature or dryness
+of the air governs its motions as to the depth at which it lives or
+works. This is partly from its inability to bear cold or thirst, but
+chiefly from its being necessitated to follow its natural food, the
+earth-worm, which always descends as the cold or drought increases.
+In frosty weather both worms and moles are deeper in the ground than
+at other times; and both seem to be sensible of an approaching change
+to warmer weather before there are any perceptible signs of it in the
+atmosphere. When it is observed, therefore, that Moles are casting hills
+through openings in the frozen turf or through a thin covering of snow,
+a change to open weather may be shortly expected. The cause of this
+appears to be&mdash;the natural heat of the earth being for a time pent in
+by the frozen surface accumulates below it; first incites to action the
+animals, thaws the frozen surface, and at length escapes into the air,
+which is warm, and softens; and if not counterbalanced by a greater
+degree of cold in the atmosphere brings about a change, such as from
+frosty to mild weather. The Mole is most active and casts up most earth
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
+immediately before rain, and in the winter before a thaw, because at
+those times the worms and insects begin to be in motion, and approach
+the surface.</p>
+
+<p>Forster, the indefatigable meteorologist, has assembled some curious
+observations on certain animals, who, by some peculiar sensibility to
+electrical or other atmospheric influence, often indicate changes of the
+weather by their peculiar motions and habits. Thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Ants.</i>&mdash;An universal bustle and activity observed in ant-hills may be
+generally regarded as a sign of rain: the Ants frequently appear all in
+motion together, and carry their eggs about from place to place. This is
+remarked by Virgil, Pliny, and others.</p>
+
+<p><i>Asses.</i>&mdash;When donkeys bray more than ordinarily, especially should
+they shake their ears, as if uneasy, it is said to predict rain, and
+particularly showers. Forster noticed that in showery weather a donkey
+brayed before every shower, and generally some minutes before the rain
+fell, as if some electrical influence, produced by the concentrating
+power of the approaching rain-cloud, caused a tickling in the wind-pipe
+of the animal just before the shower came on. Whatever this electric
+state of the air preceding a shower may be, it seems to be the same
+that causes in other animals some peculiar sensations, which makes the
+peacock squall, the pintado call "come back," &amp;c. An expressive adage
+says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"When that the ass begins to bray,</div>
+<div class="verse">Be sure we shall have rain that day."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Haymakers may derive useful admonitions from the braying of the ass:
+thus the proverb:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"Be sure to cock your hay and corn</div>
+<div class="verse">When the old donkey blows his horn."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><i>Bats</i> flitting about late in the evening in spring and autumn foretel a
+fine day on the morrow; as do Dorbeetles and some other insects. On the
+contrary, when Bats return soon to their hiding-places, and send forth
+loud cries, bad weather may be expected.</p>
+
+<p><i>Beetles</i> flying about late in the evening often foretel a fine day on
+the morrow.</p>
+
+<p><i>Butterflies</i>, when they appear early, are sometimes forerunners of fine
+weather. Moths and Sphinxes also foretel fine weather when they are
+common in the evening.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cats</i>, when they "wash their faces," or when they seem sleepy and dull,
+foretel rain.</p>
+
+<p><i>Chickens</i>, when they pick up small stones and pebbles, and are more
+noisy than usual, afford a sign of rain; as do fowls rubbing in the
+dust, and clapping their wings; but this applies to several kinds of
+fowls, as well as to the gallinaceous kinds. Cocks, when they crow at
+unwonted hours, often foretel rain; when they crow all day, in summer
+particularly, a change to rain frequently follows.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cranes</i> were said of old to foretel rain when they retreated to the
+valleys, and returned from their aërial flight. The high flight of
+cranes in silence indicates fine weather.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>Dolphins</i> as well as <i>Porpoises</i>, when they come about a ship, and
+sport and gambol on the surface of the water, betoken a storm.</p>
+
+<p><i>Dogs</i>, before rain, grow sleepy and dull, lie drowsily before the fire,
+and are not easily aroused. They also often eat grass, which indicates
+that their stomachs, like ours, are apt to be disturbed before change
+of weather. It is also said to be a sign of change of weather when Dogs
+howl and bark much in the night. Dogs also dig in the earth with their
+feet before rain, and often make deep holes in the ground.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ducks.</i>&mdash;The loud and clamorous quacking of Ducks, Geese, and other
+water-fowl, is a sign of rain; as also when they wash themselves, and
+flutter about in the water more than usual. Virgil has well described
+all these habits of aquatic birds.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fieldfares</i>, when they arrive early, and in great numbers, in autumn,
+foreshow a hard winter, which has probably set in in the regions from
+which they have come.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fishes</i>, when they bite more readily, and gambol near the surface of
+streams or pools, foreshow rain.</p>
+
+<p><i>Flies</i>, and various sorts of insects, become more troublesome, and
+sting and bite more than usual, before, as well as in the intervals of
+rainy weather, particularly in autumn.</p>
+
+<p><i>Frogs</i>, by their clamorous croaking, indicate rainy weather, as does
+likewise their coming about in great numbers in the evening; but this
+last sign applies more obviously to toads.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>Geese</i> washing, or taking wing with a clamorous noise, and flying to
+the water, portend rain.</p>
+
+<p><i>Gnats</i> afford several indications. When they fly in a vortex in the
+beams of the setting sun they forebode fair weather; when they frisk
+about more widely in the open air at eventide they foreshow heat; and
+when they assemble under trees, and bite more than usual, they indicate
+rain.</p>
+
+<p><i>Hogs</i>, when they shake the stalks of corn, and spoil them, often
+indicate rain. When they run squeaking about, and jerk up their heads,
+windy weather is about to commence; hence the Wiltshire proverb, that
+"Pigs can see the wind."</p>
+
+<p><i>Horses</i> foretel the coming of rain by starting more than ordinarily,
+and by restlessness on the road.</p>
+
+<p><i>Jackdaws</i> are unusually clamorous before rain, as are also <i>Starlings</i>.
+Sometimes before change of weather the daws make a great noise in the
+chamber wherein they build.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kine</i> (cattle) are said to foreshow rain when they lick their
+fore-feet, or lie on their right side. Some say oxen licking themselves
+against the hair is a sign of wet.</p>
+
+<p><i>Kites</i>, when they soar very high in the air, denote fair weather, as do
+also <i>Larks</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Magpies</i>, in windy weather, often fly in small flocks of three or four
+together, uttering a strong harsh cry.</p>
+
+<p><i>Mice</i> when they squeak much, and gambol in the house, foretel a change
+of weather, and often rain.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>Owls.</i>&mdash;When an owl hoots or screeches, sitting on the top of a house,
+or by the side of a window, it is said to foretel death. "The fact,"
+says Forster, "seems to be this: the Owl, as Virgil justly observes,
+is more noisy at the change of weather, and as it often happens that
+patients with lingering diseases die at the change of weather, so the
+Owl seems, by a mistaken association of ideas, to forebode the calamity."</p>
+
+<p><i>Peacocks</i> squalling by night often foretel a rainy day. Forster adds,
+"This prognostic does not often fail; and the indication is made more
+certain by the crowing of Cocks all day, the braying of the Donkey, the
+low flight of Swallows, the aching of rheumatic persons, and by the
+frequent appearance of spiders on the walls of the house."</p>
+
+<p><i>Pigeons.</i>&mdash;It is a sign of rain when Pigeons return slowly to the
+dove-houses before the usual time of day.</p>
+
+<p><i>Ravens</i>, when observed early in the morning, at a great height in the
+air, soaring round and round, and uttering a hoarse, croaking sound,
+indicate that the day will be fine. On the contrary, this bird affords
+us a sign of coming rain by another sort of cry; the difference between
+these two voices being more easily learned from nature than described.
+The Raven frequenting the shore and dipping himself in the water is also
+a sign of rain.</p>
+
+<p><i>Redbreasts</i>, when they, with more than usual familiarity, lodge on our
+window-frames, and peck against the glass with their bills, indicate
+severe<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+weather, of which they have a presentiment, which brings them
+nearer to the habitations of man.</p>
+
+<p><i>Rooks</i> gathering together, and returning home from their pastures
+early, and at unwonted hours, forebode rain. When Rooks whirl round in
+the air rapidly, and come down in small flocks, making a roaring noise
+with their wings, rough weather invariably follows. On the contrary,
+when Rooks are very noisy about their trees, and fly about as if
+rejoicing, Virgil assures us they foresee a return of fine weather, and
+an end of the showers.</p>
+
+<p><i>Spiders</i>, when seen crawling on the walls more than usual, indicate
+rain. "This prognostic," says Forster, "seldom fails, I have noticed it
+for many years, particularly in winter, but more or less at all times of
+the year. In summer the quantity of webs of the garden spiders denote
+fair weather."</p>
+
+<p><i>Swallows</i>, in fine and settled weather, fly higher in the air than they
+do just before or during a showery or rainy time. Then, also, Swallows
+flying low, and skimming over the surface of a meadow where there is
+tolerably long grass, frequently stop, and hang about the blades, as if
+they were gathering insects lodged there.</p>
+
+<p><i>Swans</i>, when they fly against the wind, portend rain, a sign frequently
+fulfilled.</p>
+
+<p><i>Toads</i>, when they come from their holes in an unusual number in the
+evening, although the ground be still dry, foreshow the coming rain,
+which will generally fall more or less during the night.</p>
+
+<p><i>Urchins of the Sea</i>, a sort of fish, when they
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
+thrust themselves into
+the mud, and try to cover their bodies with sand, foreshow a storm.</p>
+
+<p><i>Vultures</i>, when they scent carrion at a great distance, indicate that
+state of the atmosphere which is favourable to the perception of smells,
+and this often forebodes rain.</p>
+
+<p><i>Willow Wrens</i> are frequently seen, in mild and still rainy weather,
+flitting about the willows, pines, and other trees, in quest of insects.</p>
+
+<p><i>Woodcocks</i> appear in autumn earlier, and in greater numbers, previous
+to severe winters; as do Snipes and other winter birds.</p>
+
+<p><i>Worms</i> come forth more abundantly before rain, as do snails, slugs, and
+almost all limaceous animals.</p>
+
+<p>Some birds build their nests weather-proof, as ascertained by careful
+observation of Mr. M. W. B. Thomas, of Cincinnati, Ohio. Thus, when a
+pair of migratory birds have arrived in the spring, they prepare to
+build their nest, making a careful reconnaissance of the place, and
+observing the character of the season. If it be a windy one, they thatch
+the straw and leaves on the inside of the nest, between the twigs and
+the lining; if it be very windy, they get pliant twigs, and bind the
+nest firmly to the limb of the tree, securing all the small twigs with
+their saliva. If they fear the approach of a rainy season, they build
+their nests so as to be sheltered from the weather; but if a pleasant
+one, they build in a fair open place, without taking any of these extra
+precautions.</p>
+
+<p>Of all writers, Dr. Darwin has given us the most
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> correct account of
+the "Signs of Rain," in a poetical description of the approach of foul
+weather, as follows. This passage has been often quoted, but, perhaps,
+never exceeded in the accuracy of its phenomenal observation:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"The hollow winds begin to blow;</div>
+<div class="verse">The clouds look black, the glass is low;</div>
+<div class="verse">The soot falls down, the spaniels sleep;</div>
+<div class="verse">And spiders from their cobwebs peep.</div>
+<div class="verse">Last night the sun went pale to bed;</div>
+<div class="verse">The moon in haloes hid her head;</div>
+<div class="verse">The boding shepherd heaves a sigh,</div>
+<div class="verse">For, see, a rainbow spans the sky.</div>
+<div class="verse">The walls are damp, the ditches smell,</div>
+<div class="verse">Clos'd is the light red pimpernel.</div>
+<div class="verse">Hark! how the chairs and tables crack,</div>
+<div class="verse">Old Betty's joints are on the rack;</div>
+<div class="verse">Her corns with shooting pains torment her,</div>
+<div class="verse">And to her bed untimely send her.</div>
+<div class="verse">Loud quack the ducks, the sea-fowls cry,</div>
+<div class="verse">The distant hills are looking nigh.</div>
+<div class="verse">How restless are the snorting swine!</div>
+<div class="verse">The busy flies disturb the kine.</div>
+<div class="verse">Low o'er the grass the swallow wings,</div>
+<div class="verse">The cricket, too, how sharp he sings!</div>
+<div class="verse">Puss on the hearth, with velvet paws,</div>
+<div class="verse">Sits wiping o'er her whisker'd jaws.</div>
+<div class="verse">The smoke from chimneys right ascends;</div>
+<div class="verse">Then spreading back, to earth it bends.</div>
+<div class="verse">The wind unsteady veers around,</div>
+<div class="verse">Or settling in the South is found.</div>
+<div class="verse">Through the clear stream the fishes rise,</div>
+<div class="verse">And nimbly catch th' incautious flies.</div>
+<div class="verse">The glowworms num'rous, clear, and bright,</div>
+<div class="verse">Illum'd the dewy hill last night.</div>
+<div class="verse">At dusk, the squalid toad was seen,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></div>
+<div class="verse">Like quadruped, stalk o'er the green.</div>
+<div class="verse">The whirling wind the dust obeys,</div>
+<div class="verse">And in the rapid eddy plays.</div>
+<div class="verse">The frog has chang'd his yellow vest,</div>
+<div class="verse">And in a russet coat is drest.</div>
+<div class="verse">The sky is green, the air is still,</div>
+<div class="verse">The mellow blackbird's voice is shrill.</div>
+<div class="verse">The dog, so altered is his taste,</div>
+<div class="verse">Quits mutton-bones on grass to feast.</div>
+<div class="verse">Behold the rooks, how odd their flight,</div>
+<div class="verse">They imitate the gliding kite,</div>
+<div class="verse">And seem precipitate to fall.</div>
+<div class="verse">As if they felt the piercing ball.</div>
+<div class="verse">The tender colts on banks do lie,</div>
+<div class="verse">Nor heed the traveller passing by.</div>
+<div class="verse">In fiery red the sun doth rise,</div>
+<div class="verse">Then wades through clouds to mount the skies.</div>
+<div class="verse">''Twill surely rain, we see 't with sorrow,</div>
+<div class="verse">No working in the fields to-morrow.'"</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Shepherd of Banbury says:&mdash;"The surest and most certain sign of
+rain is taken from Bees, which are more incommoded by rain than almost
+any other creatures; and, therefore, as soon as the air begins to
+grow heavy, and the vapours to condense, they will not fly from their
+hives, but either remain in them all day, or else fly but to a small
+distance." Yet Bees are not always right in their prognostics, for
+Réaumur witnessed a swarm which, after leaving the hive at half-past one
+o'clock, were overtaken by a heavy shower at three.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="FISH-TALK" id="FISH-TALK"></a>FISH-TALK.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_260.jpg" alt="Letter M"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>MAN</b> favours wonders;" and this delight is almost endlessly exemplified
+in the stories of strange Fishes&mdash;of preternatural size and odd forms,
+which are to be found in their early history. In our present Talk we do
+not aim at re-assembling these olden tales, but propose rather to glance
+at recent accessions to our acquaintance with the study of Fish-life,
+and a few modern instances of the class of wonders.</p>
+
+<p>Fishes, like all other animals, have a very delicate sense of the
+equilibrial position of their bodies. They endeavour to counteract all
+change in their position by means of movements partly voluntary and
+partly instinctive. These latter appear in a very remarkable manner in
+the eye; and they are so constant and evident in fishes while alive,
+that their absence is sufficient to indicate the death of the animal.
+The equilibrium of the fish, its horizontal position, with the back
+upwards, depends solely on the action of the fins, and principally
+that of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>
+vertical fins. The swimming-bladder may enable a fish
+to increase or diminish its specific gravity. By compressing the air
+contained in it, the fish descends in the water; it rises by releasing
+the muscles which produced the compression. By compressing more or
+less the posterior or anterior portion of the bladder, the animal, at
+pleasure, can make the anterior or posterior half of its body lighter;
+it can also assume an oblique position, which permits an ascending or
+descending movement in the water.</p>
+
+<p>There is a small fish found in the rivers of the Burmese Empire, which,
+on being taken out of the water, has the power of blowing itself up to
+the shape of a small round ball, but its original shape is resumed as
+soon as it is returned to the river.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. St. John, in his "Tour in Eastern Lanarkshire," gives some curious
+instances of fish changing colour, which takes place with surprising
+rapidity. Put a living black burn Trout into a white basin of water,
+and it becomes, within half an hour, of a light colour. Keep the fish
+living in a white jar for some days, and it becomes absolutely white;
+but put it into a dark-coloured or black vessel, and although on first
+being placed there the white-coloured fish shows most conspicuously on
+the black ground, in a quarter of an hour it becomes as dark-coloured
+as the bottom of the jar, and consequently difficult to be seen. No
+doubt this facility of adapting its colour to the bottom of the water
+in which it lives, is of the greatest service to the fish in protecting
+it from its numerous enemies. All anglers must have observed, that in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>
+every stream the Trout are very much of the same colour as the gravel or
+sand on which they live: whether this change of colour is a voluntary or
+involuntary act on the part of the fish, the scientific must determine.</p>
+
+<p>Anglers of our time have proved that Tench croak like frogs; Herrings
+cry like mice; Gurnards grunt like hogs; and some say the Gurnard makes
+a noise like a cuckoo, from which he takes one of his country names. The
+Maigre, a large sea-fish, when swimming in shoals, utters a grunting or
+piercing noise, that may be heard from a depth of twenty fathoms.</p>
+
+<p>M. Dufossé asserts that facts prove that nature has not refused to all
+fishes the power of expressing their instinctive sensations by sounds,
+but has not conferred on them the unity of mechanism in the formation
+of sonorous vibrations as in other classes of vertebrated animals.
+Some fishes, he says, are able to emit musical tones, engendered by a
+mechanism in which the muscular vibration is the principal motive power;
+others possess the faculty of making blowing sounds, like those of
+certain reptiles; and others can produce the creaking noise resembling
+that of many insects. These phenomena M. Dufossé has named "Fish-noise."</p>
+
+<p>The River Plate swarms with fish, and is the <i>habitat</i> of one possessed
+of a very sonorous voice, like that found in the River Borneo&mdash;the
+account of which is quoted by Dr. Buist from the Journal of the
+Samarang; and there is similar testimony of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>
+a loud piscatory chorus
+being heard on board H.M.S. Eagle, anchored, in 1845-6, about three
+miles from Monte Video, during the night.</p>
+
+<p>That fishes hear has been doubted, although John Hunter was of this
+opinion, and has been followed by many observers. When standing beside
+a person angling, how often is the request made not to make a noise,
+as that would <i>alarm</i> the fish. On the other hand, the Chinese drive
+the fish up to that part of the river where their nets are ready to
+capture them by loud yells and shouts, and the sound of gongs; but old
+Æsop writes of a fisherman who caught no fish because he alarmed them
+by playing on his flute while fishing. In Germany the Shad is taken
+by means of nets, to which bows of wood, hung with a number of little
+bells, are attached in such a manner as to chime in harmony when the
+nets are moved. The Shad, when once attracted by the sound, will not
+attempt to escape while the bells continue to ring. Ælian says the
+Shad is allured by castanets. Macdiarmid, who declares that fishes
+hear as well as see, relates that an old Codfish, the patriarch of the
+celebrated fish-pond at Logan, "answered to his name; and not only
+drew near, but turned up his snout most beseechingly when he heard the
+monosyllable 'Tom;' and that he evidently could distinguish the voice of
+the fisherman who superintended the pond, and fed the fish, from that
+of any other fisherman." In the "Kaleidoscope" mention is made of three
+Trout in a pond near the powder-mills at Faversham, who were so tame
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>
+as to come at the call of the person accustomed to feed them. Izaak
+Walton tells of a Carp coming to a certain part of a pond to be fed "at
+the ringing of a bell, or the beating of a drum;" and Sir John Hawkins
+was assured by a clergyman, a friend of his, that at the Abbey of St.
+Bernard, near Antwerp, he saw a Carp come to the edge of the water to be
+fed, at the whistle of the person who fed it. The Carp at Fontainebleau,
+inhabiting the lake adjoining the Imperial Palace, are of great size,
+and manifest a curious instinct. A Correspondent of the "Athenæum"
+remarks:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">
+"Enjoying entire immunity from all angling arts and lures, the
+Fontainebleau Carp live a life of great enjoyment, marred only, we
+imagine, by their immense numbers causing the supply of food to be
+somewhat below their requirements. It is not, however, very easy to
+define what a Carp's requirements in the form of pabulum are, as he
+is a voracious member of the ichthyological family, eating whenever
+he has an opportunity until absolutely surfeited. His favourite
+food consists of vegetable substances masticated by means of flat
+striated teeth, which work with a millstone kind of motion against
+a singular process of the lower part of the skull covered with
+horny plates. When this fish obtains an abundant supply of food it
+grows to an enormous size. Several continental rivers and lakes
+are very congenial to Carp, and especially the Oder, where this
+fish occasionally attains the enormous weight of 60 lb. It is not
+probable that any Carp in the lake at Fontainebleau are so large as
+this; but there are certainly many weighing 50 lb., patriarchs of
+their kind, which, though olive-hued in their tender years, are now
+white with age. That the great size of these fish is due to ample
+feeding is, we think, evident, and, as we shall see presently, it
+is the large fish that are the best
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
+fed. During many years the
+feeding of the Carp at Fontainebleau has been a favourite Court
+pastime. But it is from the visitors who frequent Fontainebleau
+during a great part of the year that the Carp receive their
+most bountiful rations. For big Carp have an enormous swallow,
+soft penny rolls being mere mouthfuls, bolted with ostrich-like
+celerity. So to prevent the immediate disappearance of these
+<i>bonnes bouches</i>, bread, in the form of larger balls than the most
+capacious Carp can take into his gullet, is baked until it becomes
+as hard as biscuit, and with these balls the Carp are regailed.
+Throw one into the lake, and you will quickly have an idea of the
+enormous Carp population it contains. For no sooner does the bread
+touch the water than it is surrounded by hundreds of these fish,
+which dart to it from all sides. And now, if you look attentively,
+you will witness a curious display of instinct, which might almost
+take a higher name. Conscious, apparently, of their inability to
+crush these extremely hard balls, the Carp combine with surprising
+unanimity to push them to that part of the lake with their noses
+where it is bounded by a wall, and when there they butt at them,
+until at last their repeated blows and the softening effect of the
+water causes them to yield and open. And now you will see another
+curious sight. While shoals of Carp have been pounding away at
+the bread-balls, preparing them for being swallowed, some dozen
+monsters hover round, indifferent, apparently, to what is passing.
+But not so, for no sooner is the bread ready for eating, than two
+or three of these giants, but more generally one&mdash;the tyrant,
+probably, of the lake&mdash;rush to the prize, cleaving the shoals of
+smaller Carp, and shouldering them to the right and left, seize the
+bread with open jaws, between which it quickly disappears."</p>
+
+<p>Some of the finest and oldest Carp are found in the windings of the
+Spree, in the tavern-gardens of Charlottenburg, the great resort of
+strollers from Berlin. Visitors are in the habit of feeding them
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> with
+bread, and collect them together by ringing a bell, at the sound of
+which shoals of the fish may be seen popping their noses upwards from
+the water.</p>
+
+<p>The affection of fishes has only been properly understood of late years.
+It might be supposed that little natural affection existed in this
+cold-blooded race; and, in fact, fishes constantly devour their own
+eggs, and, at a later period, their own young, without compunction or
+discrimination. Some few species bear their eggs about with them until
+hatched. This was long thought to be the utmost extent of care which
+fishes lavished on their young; but Dr. Hancock has stepped in to rescue
+at least one species from this unmerited charge. "It is asserted," he
+says, "by naturalists, that no fishes are known to take any care of
+their offspring. Both species of <i>Hassar</i> mentioned below, however, make
+a regular nest, in which they lay their eggs in a flattened cluster,
+and cover them over most carefully. Their care does not end here; they
+remain by the side of the nest till the spawn is hatched, with as much
+solicitude as a hen guards her eggs, both the male and female Hassar,
+for they are monogamous, steadily watching the spawn and courageously
+attacking the assailant. Hence the negroes frequently take them by
+putting their hands into the water close to the nest, on agitating which
+the male Hassar springs furiously at them, and is thus captured. The
+<i>roundhead</i> forms its nest of grass, the <i>flathead</i> of leaves. Both,
+at certain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>
+seasons, burrow in the bank. They lay their eggs only in
+wet weather. I have been surprised to observe the sudden appearance of
+numerous nests in a morning after rain occurs, the spot being indicated
+by a bunch of froth which appears on the surface of the water over
+the nest. Below this are the eggs, placed on a bunch of fallen leaves
+or grass, which they cut and collect together. By what means this is
+effected seems rather mysterious, as the species are destitute of
+cutting-teeth. It may, possibly, be by the use of their arms, which form
+the first ray of the pectoral fin."</p>
+
+<p>There is another operation by fishes, which seems to require almost
+equal experience. Professor Agassiz, while collecting insects along the
+shores of Lake Sebago, in Maine, observed a couple of Cat-fish, which,
+at his approach, left the shore suddenly, and returned to the deeper
+water. Examining the place which the fishes had left, he discovered
+a <i>nest</i> among the water-plants, with a number of little tadpoles.
+In a few moments the two fishes returned, looking anxiously towards
+the nest, and approached within six or eight feet of where Professor
+Agassiz stood. They were evidently not in search of food, and he became
+convinced that they were seeking the protection of their young. Large
+stones, thrown repeatedly into the middle of the nest after the fishes
+had returned to it, only frightened them away for a brief period, and
+they returned to the spot within ten or fifteen minutes. This was
+repeated four or five times with the same result. This negatives
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> the
+assertion made by some naturalists&mdash;that no fishes are known to take any
+care of their offspring.</p>
+
+<p>But affection is scarcely to be looked for where the offspring is so
+very numerous as to put all attempts at even recognising them out of
+the question. How could the fondest mother love 100,000 little ones at
+once? Yet the number is far exceeded by some of the matrons of the deep.
+Petit found 300,000 eggs in a single carp; Lenwenhoeck 9,000,000 in a
+single cod; Mr. Harmer found in a sole 100,000; in a tench 300,000;
+in a mackerel 500,000; and in a flounder 1,357,000.
+<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> M. Rousseau
+disburthened a pike of 160,000, and a sturgeon of 1,567,000, while from
+this latter class has been gotten 119 pounds weight of eggs, which, at
+the rate of 7 to a grain, would give a total amount of 7,653,200 eggs!
+If all these came to maturity the world would be in a short time nothing
+but fish: means, however, amply sufficient to keep down this unwelcome
+superabundance have been provided. Fish themselves, men, birds, other
+marine animals,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
+to say nothing of the dispersions produced by storms
+and currents, the destruction consequent on their being thrown on the
+beach and left there to dry up, all combine to diminish this excessive
+supply over demand. Yet, on the other hand (so wonderfully are all
+the contrivances of nature so harmonized and balanced), one of these
+apparent modes of destruction becomes an actual means of extending the
+species. The eggs of the pike, barbel, and many other fish, says M.
+Virey, are rendered indigestible by an acid oil which they contain, and
+in consequence of which they are passed in the same condition as they
+were swallowed; the result of which is, that being taken in by ducks,
+grebes, or other water-fowls, they are thus transported to situations,
+such as inland lakes, which otherwise they could never have attained;
+and in this way only can we account for the fact, now well ascertained,
+that several lakes in the Alps, formed by the thawing of the glaciers,
+are now abundantly stocked with excellent fish.</p>
+
+<p>Little fishes are ordinarily the food of larger marine animals; but a
+remarkable exception occurs in the case of the larger Medusæ, which
+are stated in various works to prey upon fishes for sustenance. Mr.
+Peach, the naturalist, has, however, by observations at Peterhead, in
+Aberdeenshire, thus corrected this statement. He observed several small
+fishes playing round the larger Medusæ in the harbour and bay. When
+alarmed, they would rush under the umbrella, and remain sheltered in
+its large<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>
+folds till the danger had passed, when they would emerge,
+and sport and play about their sheltering friend. When beneath the
+umbrella they lay so close that they were frequently taken into a bucket
+with the Medusæ. They proved to be young whitings, varying from 1-1/2
+to 2 inches long. These little creatures, so far from becoming the
+prey of the Medusæ, experienced from them protection; and, moreover,
+they preferred the <i>stinging</i> one. In no instance did Mr. Peach see a
+fish in the stomach of the Medusæ, but all could liberate themselves
+when they pleased. In one case, Mr. Peach witnessed a small whiting,
+in the first instance chased by a single young pollack, whose assault
+the little fellow easily evaded by dodging about; but the chaser being
+joined by others, the whiting was driven from its imperfect shelter, and
+after being much bitten and dashed about by its assailants, became at
+length completely exhausted, and lay to all appearance dead. Recovering,
+however, after action, it swam slowly to the Medusæ, and took refuge as
+before; but its movements being soon observed, it was again attacked,
+after a very brief respite, driven into open water, and speedily
+despatched.</p>
+
+<p>Fishes appear to execute annually two great migrations. By one of these
+shiftings they forsake the deep water for a time, and approach the
+shallow shores, and by the other they return to their more concealed
+haunts. These movements are connected with the purposes of spawning,
+the fry requiring<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>
+to come into life, and to spend a certain portion
+of their youth in situations different from those which are suited
+to the period of maturity. It is in obedience to these arrangements
+that the Cod and Haddock, the Mackerel, and others, annually leave
+the deeper and less accessible parts of the ocean, the region of the
+zoophytic tribes, and deposit their spawn within that zone of marine
+vegetation which fringes our coasts, extending from near the high-water
+mark of neap-tides to a short distance beyond the low-water mark of
+spring-tides. Amidst the shelter in this region afforded by the groves
+of arborescent fuci, the young fish were wont in comfort to spend
+their infancy, but since these plants have been so frequently cut down
+to procure materials for the manufacture of kelp, and the requisite
+protection withdrawn, the fisheries have greatly suffered. Many species
+of fish, as the Salmon, Smelt, and others, in forsaking the deep water,
+and approaching a suitable spawning station, leave the sea altogether
+for a time, ascend the rivers and their tributary streams, and, having
+deposited their eggs, return again to their usual haunts. Even a certain
+species of fish, inhabiting lakes, as the Roach, betake themselves to
+the tributary streams, as the most suitable places for spawning.</p>
+
+<p>The Goramy, of India, are stated by General Hardwicke to watch most
+actively the margins of the spot which they select and prepare for
+depositing their spawn, driving away with violence every other fish
+which approaches their cover. The General adds
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>
+that from the time he
+first noticed this circumstance about one month had elapsed, when one
+day he saw numerous minute fishes close to the margin of the grass, on
+the outer side of which the parent fishes continued to pass to and fro.</p>
+
+<p>There is a species of Grampus from two to three tons weight, and about
+sixteen feet in length, that amuses itself with jumping, or rather
+springing its ponderous body entirely out of the water, in a vertical
+position, and falling upon its back. This effort of so large a fish is
+almost incredible, and informs us how surprisingly great the power of
+muscle must be in this class of animal. A Correspondent writes to the
+"United Service Journal":&mdash;"I have seen them spring out of the water
+within ten yards of the ship's side, generally in the evening, after
+having swam all the former part of the day in the ship's wake, or on
+either quarter. When several of these fish take it into their heads to
+'dance a hornpipe,' as the sailors term their gambols, at the distance
+of half a mile, they, especially at or just after sundown, may easily
+be mistaken for the sharp points of rocks sticking up out of the water,
+and the splashing and foam they make and produce have the appearance
+of the action of waves upon rocks. An officer of the navy informed me
+that, after sunset, when near the equator, he was not a little alarmed
+and surprised at the cry of 'rocks on the starboard bow!' Looking
+forward, he indistinctly saw objects which he and all on board took
+to be pinnacles of several rocks of a black and white
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> colour. In a
+short time, however, he discovered this formidable danger to be nothing
+more than a company of dancing Grampuses with white bellies. As one
+disappeared, another rose; so that there were at least five or six
+constantly above the surface."</p>
+
+<p>Captain Owen relates that "the Bonita has the power of throwing itself
+out of the water to an almost incredible distance when in pursuit of
+its prey, the Flying Fish; and, the day previous to our arrival at
+Mozambique, one of these fish rose close under our bow, and passed under
+the vessel's side, and struck with such force against the poop, that,
+had any one received the blow, it must have been fatal. Stunned by the
+violence of the contact, it fell motionless at the helmsman's feet; but,
+soon recovering, its struggles were so furious that it became necessary
+to inflict several blows with an axe before it could be approached
+with safety. The greatest elevation it attained above the surface of
+water was eighteen feet, and the length of the leap, had no opposition
+occurred, would have exceeded 180."</p>
+
+<p>Of winged or Flying Fish we find this extravagant account in a
+philosophical romance, entitled, "Telliamed," by M. Maillet, an
+ingenious Frenchman, of the days of Louis XV.:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">
+He believed, like Lamarck, that the whole family of birds had
+existed one time as fishes, which, on being thrown ashore by the
+waves, had got feathers by accident; and that men themselves are
+but the descendants of a tribe of sea-monsters, who, tiring of
+their proper element, crawled upon the beach one sunny morning,
+and, taking a fancy to the land, forgot to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
+return. The account
+is as amusing as a fairy tale. "Winged or Flying Fish," says
+Maillet, "stimulated by the desire of prey, or the fear of death,
+or pushed near the shore by the billows, have fallen among the
+reeds or herbage, whence it was not possible for them to resume
+their flight to the sea, by means of which they had contracted
+their first facility of flying. Then their fins, being no longer
+bathed in the sea-water, were split and became warped by their
+dryness. While they found among the reeds and herbage among which
+they fell many aliments to support them, the vessels of their fins
+being separated, were lengthened, or clothed with beards, or, to
+speak more justly, the membranes which before kept them adherent
+to each other were metamorphosed. The beard formed of these warped
+membranes was lengthened. The skin of these animals was insensibly
+covered with a down of the same colour with the skin, and this
+down gradually increased. The little wings they had under their
+belly, and which, like their wings, helped them to walk into the
+sea, became feet, and helped them to walk on the land. There were
+also other small changes in their figure. The beak and neck of some
+were lengthened, and of others shortened. The conformity, however,
+of the first figure subsists in the whole, and it will be always
+easy to know it. Examine all the species of fowl, even those of the
+Indies, those which are tufted or not, those whose feathers are
+reversed&mdash;such as we see at Damietta, that is to say, whose plumage
+runs from the tail to the head&mdash;and you will see fine species
+of fish quite similar, scaly or without scales. All species of
+Parrots, whose plumages are different, the rarest and most singular
+marked birds, are, conformable to fact, painted, like them, black,
+brown, grey, yellow, green, red, violet colour, and those of gold
+and azure; and all this precisely in the same parts, where the
+plumages of these birds are diversified in so curious a manner."</p>
+
+<p>The Jaculator Fish, of Java, has been called "a sporting fish," from the
+precision with which it takes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>
+aim at its prey. In 1828 Mr. Mitchell
+saw several of these fishes in the possession of a Javanese chief; and
+here is the account of the curious manner in which these Jaculators were
+employed. They were placed in a small circular pond, from the centre
+of which projected a pole upwards of two feet in height. At the top of
+the pole were inserted small pieces of wood, sharp-pointed, and on each
+of these were placed insects of the beetle tribe. When the slaves had
+placed the beetles, the fish came out of their holes, and swam round the
+pond. One of them came to the surface of the water, rested there, and
+after steadily fixing its eyes for some time on an insect, it discharged
+from its mouth a small quantity of watery fluid, with such force, and
+precision of aim, as to strike it off the twig into the water, and in
+an instant swallowed it. After this, another fish came, and performed
+a similar feat, and was followed by the others, until they had secured
+all the insects. If a fish failed in bringing down its prey at the first
+shot, it swam round the pond till it came opposite the same object, and
+fired again. In one instance, a fish returned three times to the attack
+before it secured its prey; but in general the fish seemed very expert
+gunners, bringing down the beetle at the first shot. The fish, in a
+state of nature, frequents the shores and sides of the rivers in search
+of food. When it spies a fly sitting on the plants that grow on shallow
+water, it swims on to the distance of five or six feet from them, and
+then, with surprising dexterity, it ejects out of its tubular mouth a
+single drop of water,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>
+which rarely fails to strike the fly into the
+sea, where it soon becomes its prey.</p>
+
+<p>Curious fish, in great numbers, may be seen in the Harbour of Port
+Royal, Jamaica, on the surface of the water, and are ranked among the
+peculiarities of the place. They are the Guardo, or Guard-Fish; the Jack
+(Sword-Fish); and the Ballahou. The Jack is the largest, and appears to
+be always at war with the two others; it is armed with formidable teeth;
+it basks on the surface of the water during the heat of the day, in a
+sort of indolent, unguarded state; but this is assumed, the better to
+ensnare the other fish, and to catch the floating bodies that may happen
+to pass near it; for the moment anything is thrown into the sea from
+the ship, the Jack darts with the rapidity of lightning upon it, and
+seizing it as quickly, retreats. This Warrior-fish possesses a foresight
+or instinctive quality which we see sometimes exemplified in different
+animals, almost amounting to second reason, such as the sagacity it
+displays in avoiding the hook when baited; although extremely voracious,
+it seems aware of the lure held out for its destruction, and avoids
+it with as much cunning as the generality of fishes show eagerness to
+devour it. The situation it takes, immediately in the wake of the ship
+at anchor, is another instance of its sagacity; as whatever is thrown
+overboard passes astern, where the fish is ever on the alert for the
+articles thrown over. No other fish of equal size dare approach. The
+Jack is, however, sometimes enticed with the bait; but he is more
+frequently struck with a barbed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
+lance, or entrapped in a net. The
+Guardo has similar habits with the Jack, but is generally beaten by
+him; yet the former tyrannizes with unrelenting rigour over the weaker
+associate, the Ballahou.</p>
+
+<p>The tiger of the ocean, the Shark, is often cruising about Port Royal,
+but rarely injures human life. At Kingston, however, such distressing
+events often occur. There was a pet Shark known as "Old Tom of Port
+Royal;" it was fed whenever it approached any of the ships, but was at
+last killed by the father of a child which it had devoured. Whilst it
+remained here, no other of the Shark tribe dare venture on his domain;
+he reigned lord paramount in his watery empire, and never committed any
+depredation but that for which he suffered.</p>
+
+<p>Attending the Shark is seen the beautiful little Pilot Fish, who, first
+approaching the bait, returns as if to give notice, when, immediately
+after, the Shark approaches to seize it. It is a curious circumstance,
+that this elegant little fish is seen in attendance only upon the Shark.
+After the Shark is hooked, the Pilot Fish still swims about, and for
+some time after he has been hauled on deck; it then swims very near the
+surface of the water. When the Shark has been hooked, and afterwards
+escapes, he generally returns, and renews the attack with increased
+ferocity, irritated often by the wound he has received.</p>
+
+<p>Sharks appear to have become of late years much more numerous in Faroe,
+as they have also in other
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
+parts of the North Seas, especially on the
+coast of Norway.</p>
+
+<p>The reader may, probably, have found on the sea-shore certain cases,
+which are fancifully called sea-purses, Mermaids' purses, &amp;c. Now,
+some Sharks bring forth their young alive, whilst others are enclosed
+in oblong semi-transparent, horny cases, at each extremity of which
+are two long tendrils. These cases are the above <i>purses</i>, which the
+parent Shark deposits near the shore in the winter months. The twisting
+tendrils hang to sea-weed, or other fixed bodies, to prevent the cases
+being washed away into deep water. Two fissures, one at each end, allow
+the admission of sea-water; and here the young Shark remains until it
+has acquired the power of taking food by the mouth, when it leaves what
+resembles its cradle. The young fish ultimately escapes by an opening at
+the end, near which the head is situated.</p>
+
+<p>California has yielded an extraordinary novelty in fish history. In 1854
+Mr. Jackson, while fishing in San Salita Bay, caught with a hook and
+line a fish of the perch family <i>containing living young</i>. These were
+supposed to be the prey which the fish had swallowed, but on opening
+the belly was found next to the back of the fish, and slightly attached
+to it, a long very light violet bag, so clear and transparent that
+there could already be distinguished through it the shape, colour, and
+formation of a multitude of small fish (all facsimiles of each other),
+with which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>
+the bag was filled. They were in all respects like the
+mother, and like each other; and there cannot remain a single doubt that
+these young were the offspring of the fish from whose body they were
+taken; and that this species of fish gives birth to her young alive
+and perfectly formed, and adapted to seek its own livelihood in the
+water. Professor Agassiz has confirmed the truth of this extraordinary
+statement by a careful examination of the specimens, and has ascertained
+that there are two very distinct species of this remarkable type of
+fishes.</p>
+
+<p>Tales of "Wonderful Fish" are common in the works of the old
+naturalists, whence they are quoted from generation to generation.
+Sir John Richardson has lately demolished one queer fish, which was
+as certain to reappear whenever opportunity offered, as the elephant
+pricked with the tailor's needle does in books of stories of the animal
+world. We allude to that monstrous myth, the great Manheim Pike, with
+a collar round his neck, put into a lake by the Emperor Frederick II.
+in the year 1230; and taken out in the 276th year of his age, the 17th
+foot of his length, and the 350th pound of his weight. M. Valenciennes,
+a naturalist of repute, has entered into a critical history of this
+monster, and has found him to be apocryphal. The creature was, at any
+rate, taken in several places at once, the legends written on his
+brass collar do not agree, and his alleged skeleton has been found
+to be made up of various bones of various fishes; while the vertebræ
+are, unfortunately, so many, that Professor Owen
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>
+would order him out
+of Court in an instant as a rank impostor. Probably some specimen of
+the <i>Mecho</i>, the monstrous fish of the Danube&mdash;which has even now been
+scarcely described, and which has only recently been identified as one
+of the salmon tribe&mdash;having been called a pike, may be at the bottom of
+the legend of the great Manheim fish. But Sir John Richardson produces
+another big pike, killed by an intrepid "angler seventy years of age,
+with a single rod and bait"&mdash;an observation which leads to the inquiry
+of the possibility of catching a single fish with more than one rod
+and bait&mdash;"that weighed seventy-eight pounds." This is stated to have
+happened in the county of Clare; the angler's name was O'Flanagan.</p>
+
+<p>Here is another wonderful story:&mdash;The Bohemians have a proverb&mdash;"Every
+fish has another for prey:" that named the Wels has them all. This is
+the largest fresh-water fish found in the rivers of Europe, except the
+sturgeon; it often reaches five or six feet in length. It destroys many
+aquatic birds, and we are assured that it does not spare the human
+species. On the 3d of July, 1700, a peasant took one near Thorn, that
+had an infant entire in its stomach! They tell in Hungary of children
+and young girls being devoured on going to draw water; and they even
+relate that, on the frontiers of Turkey, a poor fisherman took one that
+had in its stomach the body of a woman, her purse full of gold, and
+a <i>ring</i>! The fish is even reported to have been taken sixteen feet
+long. The old stories of rings found
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>
+in the stomachs of fishes will be
+remembered; as well as here and there a <i>book</i> found in the stomach of a
+fish!</p>
+
+<p>The Sun-fish is exceedingly rare. A large specimen was captured off
+Start Point in 1864. Attention was first drawn to a huge dark object on
+the water. On a boat being sent out, it was soon discovered to be the
+back fin of a very large fish, apparently asleep. A very exciting chase
+commenced, extending over an hour, the crew meanwhile battling with
+harpoons, boat-hooks, &amp;c.; the fish trying several times to upset the
+boat by getting his back under it. At length a line was thrown over its
+head, and the fish, being weakened by the struggle, was towed alongside
+the yacht, hoisted on board, and slaughtered. Yarrell, in his work on
+British Fishes, states the largest Sun-fish to be about 3 cwt., but the
+above specimen weighed nearly 6 cwt. Sun-fish are found occasionally in
+the tropical seas of large dimensions, but those found in the Channel
+seldom if ever exceed from 1 cwt. to 2 cwt. The peculiarities in regard
+to this fish are, that it has no bones, but the whole of the formation
+is of cartilage, which can easily be cut with a knife. The skin is
+cartilage of about an inch and a-half thick, under which there is no
+backbone or ribs. This specimen was of extraordinary dimensions&mdash;5 ft.
+10 in. in length, and 7 ft. from the tip of the dorsal to the point of
+the anal fin.</p>
+
+<p>The "Courrier de Sagon" brings, as a contribution to Natural History,
+the not very credible-sounding description of a fish called "Ca-oug"
+in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>
+the Anamite tongue, which is said to have saved the lives already
+of several Anamites; for which reason the King of Anam has invested it
+with the name of "Nam hai dui bnong gnan" (Great General of the South
+Sea). This fish is said to swim round ships near the coast, and, when it
+sees a man in the water, to seize him with his mouth, and to carry him
+ashore. A skeleton of this singular inhabitant of the deep is to be seen
+at Wung-tau, near Cape St. James. It is reported to be thirty-five feet
+in length, to have tusks "almost like an elephant," very large eyes, a
+black and smooth skin, a tail like a lobster, and two "wings" on its
+back.<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p>
+
+<p>The Grouper must be a voracious fish, for we read of a specimen being
+caught off the coast of Queensland, which is thus described:&mdash;"It was
+7 ft. long, 6 ft. in circumference at its thickest part, and its head
+weighed 80 lb. When opened, there were found in its stomach two broken
+bottles, a quart pot, a preserved milk tin, seven medium-sized crabs; a
+piece of earthenware, triangular in shape, and three inches in length,
+incrusted with oyster shells, a sheep's head, some mutton and beef
+bones, and some loose oyster shells. The spine of a skate was imbedded
+in the Grouper's liver."</p>
+
+<p>The Double-fish, here represented, is a pair of Cat-fish, which were
+taken alive in a shrimp-net, at the mouth of Cape Fear River, near
+Fort Johnston. North Carolina, in 1833, and presented to Professor
+Silliman. One of them is three and a-half, and the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>
+other two and a-half
+inches long, including the tail&mdash;the smallest emaciated, and of sickly
+appearance. They are connected in the manner of the Siamese Twins, by
+the skin at the breast, which is marked by a dark streak at the line of
+union. The texture and colour otherwise of this skin is the same as that
+of the belly. The mouth, viscera, &amp;c., were entire and perfect in each
+fish; but, on withdrawing the entrails, through an incision made on one
+side of the abdomen, the connecting integument was found to be hollow.
+A flexible probe was passed through from one to the other, with the
+tender and soft end of a spear of grass, drawn from a green plant. But
+there was no appearance of the entrails of one having come in contact
+with those of the other, for the integument was less than one-tenth of
+an inch in its whole thickness; in length, from the body or trunk of
+one fish to the other, it was three-tenths; and in the water, when the
+largest fish was in its natural position, the small one could, by the
+length and pliancy of this skin, swim in nearly the same position. When
+these fish came into existence it is probable they were of almost equal
+size and strength, but one "born to better fortune," or exercising more
+ingenuity and industry than the other, gained a trifling ascendency,
+which he improved to increase the disparity, and, by pushing his
+extended mouth in advance of the other, seized the choicest and most of
+the food for himself.</p>
+
+<p>From the northern parts of British America we have received
+extraordinary contributions to our fish
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>
+collections. One of these is
+the Square-browed Malthe, obtained in one of the land expeditions under
+the command of Captain Sir John Franklin. R.N. It was taken on the
+Labrador coast, and then belonged to a species hitherto undescribed.
+Its intestines were filled with small crabs and univalve shells. The
+extreme length of the fish is 7 inches 11 lines. The upper surface
+is greyish white, with brown blotches, and the fins are whitish. The
+head is much depressed and greatly widened; the eyes far forward; the
+snout projecting like a small horn. Most of the fish of this family
+can live long out of water, in consequence of the smallness of their
+gill-openings; indeed, those of one of the genera are able, even in warm
+countries, to pass two or three days in creeping over the land. All the
+family conceal themselves in the mud or sand, and lie in wait to take
+their prey by surprise. The accompanying engraving is from the very
+able work of Dr. Richardson, F.R.S., published by the munificence of
+Government.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter bord"><a name="i_285.jpg" id="i_285.jpg"></a>
+  <img src="images/i_285.jpg" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">SQUARE-BROWED MALTHE AND DOUBLE FISH.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Gold Fish (of the Carp family) have been made to distinguish a
+particular sound made by those from whom they receive their food; they
+recognise their footsteps at a distance, and come at their call. Captain
+Brown says Gold Fish, when kept in ponds, are "frequently taught to rise
+to the surface of the water at the sound of a bell to be fed;" and Mr.
+Jesse was assured that Gold Fish evince much pleasure on being whistled
+to. Hakewill, in his "Apology for God's Power and Providence,"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> cites
+Pliny to show that a certain emperor had ponds containing fish, which,
+when called by their respective <i>names</i> that were bestowed upon them,
+came to the spot whence the voice proceeded. Bernier, in his "History
+of Hindustan," states a like circumstance of the fish belonging to the
+Great Mogul. The old poet, Martial, also mentions fish coming at the
+call, as will be seen by the following translation from one of his
+epigrams:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"Angler! could'st thou be guiltless? Then forbear:</div>
+<div class="verse">For these are sacred fishes that swim here;</div>
+<div class="verse">Who know their Sovereign, and will lick his hand.</div>
+<div class="verse">Than which none's greater in the world's command;</div>
+<div class="verse">Nay, more; they've names, and when they called are.</div>
+<div class="verse">Do to their several owners' call repair."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Who, after reading so many instances, can doubt that fish hear?</p>
+
+<p>It has been found that the water from steam-engines, which is thrown
+into dams or ponds for the purpose of being cooled, conduces much to
+the nutriment of Gold Fish. In these dams, the average temperature
+of which is about eighty degrees, it is common to keep Gold Fish; in
+which situation they multiply much more rapidly than in ponds of lower
+temperature exposed to variations of the climate. Three pair of fish
+were put into one of these dams, where they increased so rapidly that at
+the end of three years their progeny, which was accidentally poisoned
+by verdigris mixed with the refuse tallow from the engine, were taken
+out by wheel-barrow-fuls. Gold Fish are by no means useless inhabitants
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>
+of these dams, as they consume the refuse grease which would otherwise
+impede the cooling of the water by accumulating on its surface. It is
+not improbable that this unusual supply of aliment may co-operate with
+increase of temperature in promoting the fecundity of the fishes.</p>
+
+<p>Most of our readers have heard of the fish popularly known as the
+Miller's Thumb, the origin of the name of which Mr. Yarrell has thus
+explained:&mdash;"It is well known that all the science and tact of a miller
+is directed so to regulate the machinery of his mill that the meal
+produced shall be of the most valuable description that the operation
+of grinding will permit, when performed under the most advantageous
+circumstances. His ear is constantly directed to the note made by the
+running stone in its circular course over the bedstone, the exact
+parallelism of their two surfaces, indicated by a particular sound,
+being a matter of the first consequence; and his hand is constantly
+placed under the meal-spout to ascertain, by actual contact, the
+character and quality of the meal produced, which he does by a
+particular movement of his thumb in spreading the sample over his
+fingers. By this incessant action of the miller's thumb, a peculiarity
+in its shape is produced, which is said to resemble exactly the shape of
+the <i>river bull-head</i>, a fish constantly found in the mill-stream, and
+which has obtained for it the name of the Miller's Thumb."</p>
+
+<p>M. Coste has constructed a kind of marine observatory at Concarneau
+(Finisterre) for the purpose
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>
+of studying the habits and instincts of
+various Sea-fish. A terrace has been formed on the top of a house on the
+quay, with reservoirs arranged like a flight of steps. The sea-water is
+pumped up to the topmost reservoir, and thence flows down slowly, after
+the manner of a rivulet. The length is divided into 95 cells by wire
+net partitions, which, allowing free passage to the water, yet prevent
+the different species of fish from mingling together. By this ingenious
+contrivance each kind lives separate, enjoying its peculiar food and
+habits, unconscious of its state of captivity. Some species, such as the
+Mullet, the Stickleback, &amp;c., grow perfectly tame, will follow the hand
+that offers them food, and will even allow themselves to be taken out of
+the water. The Goby and Bull-head are less familiar. The Turbot, which
+looks so unintelligent, will, nevertheless, take food from the hand;
+it changes colour when irritated, the spots with which it is covered
+growing pale or dark, according to the emotions excited in it. But
+the most curious circumstance concerning it is, that it swallows fish
+of a much larger size than would appear compatible with the apparent
+smallness of its mouth. Thus, a young Turbot, not more than ten inches
+in length, has been seen to swallow Pilchards of the largest size. The
+Pipe-Fish has two peculiarities. These fish form groups, entwining their
+tails together, and remaining immoveable in a vertical position, with
+their heads upwards. When food is offered them, they perform a curious
+evolution&mdash;they turn round on their backs to receive
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> it. This is owing
+to the peculiar position of the mouth, which is placed under a kind of
+beak, and perpendicular to its axis.</p>
+
+<p>The crustaceous tribes have also furnished much matter of observation.
+The Prawn and Crab, for instance, exercises the virtue of conjugal
+fidelity to the highest degree; for the male takes hold of his mate,
+and never lets her go; he swims with her, crawls about with her, and if
+she is forcibly taken away from him, he seizes hold of her again. The
+metamorphoses to which various crustaceous tribes are subject have also
+been studied with much attention.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>
+
+<p>Much as the nature and habits of fish have been studied of late years,
+the economy of some is to this day involved in obscurity. The Herring
+is one of these fishes. The Swedish Herring Fisheries were, at one
+time, the largest in Europe, but at present, during the temporary
+disappearance of the fish, they have dwindled away. The causes which
+influence the movements of the Herring&mdash;one of the most capricious of
+fish&mdash;are a puzzle which naturalists have as yet failed to solve. They
+are not migratory, as was at one time believed&mdash;that is, they seldom
+wander far from the place where they were bred; but they are influenced
+by certain hidden and unexplained causes at one time to remain for years
+in the deep sea, and at another to come close in to land in enormous
+numbers. During the first half of the sixteenth century, Herrings
+entirely deserted the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>
+Swedish coasts. In 1556 they reappeared, and
+remained for thirty-one years in the shallow waters. Throughout this
+period they were taken in incalculable numbers; "thousands of ships came
+annually from Denmark, Germany, Friesland, Holland, England, and France,
+to purchase the fish, of which sufficient were always found for them
+to carry away to their own or other countries.... From the small town
+of Marstrand alone some two million four hundred thousand bushels were
+yearly exported." In 1587 the Herrings disappeared, and remained absent
+for seventy-three years, till 1660. In 1727 they returned, and again in
+1747, remaining till 1808, and during this last period the fisheries
+were prosecuted with extraordinary zeal, industry, and success. The
+Government gave every encouragement to settlers, and it was computed
+that during some years as many as fifty thousand strangers took part
+in them. In 1808 the Herrings once more disappeared, and have never
+returned since. The cause must still be considered as quite unknown; but
+we may fairly assume, according to historical precedents, that after a
+certain period of absence, the Herrings will again return.
+<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>
+
+<p>Aristotle, in his "History of Animals," makes some extremely curious
+observations on Fish and Cetaceous Animals, as might be expected from
+the variety of these animals in the Grecian seas. In Spratt and Forbes's
+"Travels in Syria" the account of the habits and structure of the
+Cuttle-fish in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>
+Aristotle's work is ranked amongst the most admirable
+natural history essays ever written. It is, moreover, remarkable for its
+anticipation.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Osborne, in 1840, read to the Royal Society a short analysis of
+this work, in which he showed that Aristotle anticipated Dr. Jenner's
+researches respecting the cuckoo; as also some discoveries respecting
+the incubated egg, which were published as new in the above year.
+Aristotle describes the economy of bees as we have it at present; but
+mistakes the sex of the queen. The various organs are described as
+modified throughout the different classes of animals (beginning with
+man) in nearly the same order as that afterwards adopted by Cuvier.</p>
+
+<p>The chief value of this body of knowledge, which has been buried for
+above 2,000 years, is, that it is a collection of facts observed under
+peculiar advantages, such as never since occurred, and that <i>it is at
+the present day to be consulted for new discoveries</i>.</p>
+
+<p>According to Pliny, for the above work some thousands of men were placed
+at Aristotle's disposal throughout Greece and Asia, comprising persons
+connected with hunting and fishing, or who had the care of cattle,
+fish-ponds, and apiaries, in order that he might obtain information from
+all quarters, <i>ne quid usquam gentium ignoretur ab eo</i>. According to
+Athenæus, Aristotle received from the prince, on account of the expenses
+of the work, 800 talents, or upwards of 79,000<i>l.</i></p>
+
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> A tench was brought to
+Mr. Harmer so full of spawn that the skin
+was burst by a slight knock, and many thousands of the eggs were lost;
+yet even after this misfortune he found the remainder to amount to
+383,252! Of other marine animals, which he includes under the general
+term fish, the fecundity, though sufficiently great, is by no means
+enormous. A lobster yielded 7,227 eggs; a prawn 3,806; and a shrimp
+3,057. See Mr. Harmer's paper, "Philosophical Transactions," 1767.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> "Athenæum."</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a>
+See "The Tree-climbing Crab," pp. 282-302.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> "Saturday Review."</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="FISH_IN_BRITISH_COLOMBIA" id="FISH_IN_BRITISH_COLOMBIA"></a>FISH IN BRITISH COLOMBIA.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_116.jpg" alt="Letter I"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>IN</b> this bitterly cold country, where the snow lies deep six months out
+of the twelve, the natives subsist principally on fish, of which there
+is an extraordinary abundance generally, and of salmon particularly.
+Salmon swarm in such numbers that the rivers cannot hold them. In June
+and July every rivulet, no matter how shallow, is so crammed with salmon
+that, from sheer want of room, they push one another high and dry upon
+the pebbles; and Mr. Lord<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> tells us that each salmon, with its head
+up, struggles, fights, and scuffles for precedence. With one's hands
+only, or more easily by employing a gaff or a crook-stick, tons of
+salmon have been procured by the simple process of hooking them out.
+Once started on their journey, the salmon never turn back. As fast as
+those in front die, fresh arrivals crowd on to take their places,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> and
+share their fate. "It is a strange and novel sight to see three moving
+lines of fish&mdash;the dead and dying in the eddies and slack water along
+the bank, the living breasting the current in the centre, blindly
+pressing on to perish like their kindred." For two months this great
+<i>salmon army</i> proceeds on its way up stream, furnishing a supply of food
+without which the Indians must perish miserably. The winters are too
+severe for them to venture out in search of food, even if there was any
+to be obtained. From being destitute of salt, they are unable to cure
+meat in the summer for winter provisions, and hence for six months in
+the year they depend upon salmon, which they preserve by drying in the
+sun.</p>
+
+<p>But the Indian has another source of provision for the winter, fully
+as important as the salmon. The Candle-fish supplies him at once with
+light, butter, and oil.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> When dried, and perforated with a rush,
+or strip of cypress-bark, it can be lighted, and burns steadily until
+consumed. Strung up, and hung for a time in the smoke of a wood fire,
+it is preserved as a fatty morsel to warm him when pinched with cold;
+and, by heat and pressure, it is easily converted into liquid oil, and
+drunk with avidity. That nothing may be wanting, the hollow stalk of the
+sea-wrack, which at the root is expanded into a complete flask, makes an
+admirable bottle; and so, when the Indian buries himself for long dreary
+months in his winter quarters, neither his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>
+larder nor his cellar are
+empty, and he has a lamp to lighten the darkness. The steamers have,
+however, frightened away the Candle-fish and the Indian from their old
+haunts, and they have both retreated to the north of the Colombia River.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst the other inhabitants of the salt and fresh waters of these
+regions are the Halibut and the Sturgeon, both of which attain to an
+immense size. The bays and inlets along the coast abound with marine
+wonders. There feasts and fattens the Clam, a bivalve so gigantic that
+no oyster-knife can force an entrance, and only when his shell is almost
+red-hot will he be at last constrained to open his dwelling.</p>
+
+<p>And there lies in wait the awful Octopus, a monster of insatiable
+voracity, of untameable ferocity, and of consummate craft; of sleepless
+vigilance, shrouded amidst the forest of sea-weed, and from the touch of
+whose terrible arms no living thing escapes. It attains to an enormous
+size in those seas, the arms being sometimes five feet in length, and as
+thick at the base as a man's wrist. No bather would have a chance if he
+once got within the grasp of such a monster, nor could a canoe resist
+the strength of its pull; but the Indian, who devours the Octopus with
+great relish, has all the cunning created by necessity, and takes care
+that none of the eight sucker-dotted arms ever gain a hold on his frail
+bark.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Owen has figured a species of Octopus, the Eight-armed Cuttle
+of the European seas, representing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>
+it in the act of creeping on shore,
+its body being carried vertically in the reverse position, with its head
+downwards, and its back being turned towards the spectator, upon whom it
+is supposed to be advancing. This animal is said to be luminous in the
+dark. Linnæus quotes Bartholinus for the statement that one gave so much
+light that when the candle was taken away, it illuminated the room.</p>
+
+<p>The Sturgeon is one of the finest fishes of the country, and Mr. Lord's
+account of the Indian mode of taking them is a very graphic picture of
+this river sport.</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">
+"The spearman stands in the bow, armed with a most formidable
+spear. The handle, from seventy to eighty feet long, is made of
+white pine-wood; fitted on the spear-haft is a barbed point,
+in shape very much like a shuttlecock, supposing each feather
+represented by a piece of bone, thickly barbed, and very sharp
+at the end. This is so contrived that it can be easily detached
+from the long handle by a sharp, dexterous jerk. To this barbed
+contrivance a long line is made fast, which is carefully coiled
+away close to the spearman, like a harpoon-line in a whale-boat.
+The four canoes, alike equipped, are paddled into the centre of
+the stream, and side by side drift slowly down with the current,
+each spearman carefully feeling along the bottom with his spear,
+constant practice having taught the crafty savages to know a
+Sturgeon's back when the spear comes in contact with it. The
+spear-head touches the drowsy fish; a sharp plunge, and the
+redskin sends the notched points through armour and cartilage,
+deep into the leather-like muscles. A skilful jerk frees the long
+handle from the barbed end, which remains inextricably fixed in
+the fish; the handle is thrown aside, the line seized, and the
+struggle begins. The first impulse is to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>
+resist this objectionable
+intrusion, so the angry Sturgeon comes up to see what it all
+means. This curiosity is generally repaid by having a second spear
+sent crashing into him. He then takes a header, seeking safety in
+flight, and the real excitement commences. With might and main the
+bowman plies the paddle, and the spearman pays out the line, the
+canoe flying through the water. The slightest tangle, the least
+hitch, and over it goes; it becomes, in fact, a sheer trial of
+paddle <i>versus</i> fin. Twist and turn as the Sturgeon may, all the
+canoes are with him. He flings himself out of the water, dashes
+through it, under it, and skims along the surface; but all is in
+vain, the canoes and their dusky oarsmen follow all his efforts
+to escape, as a cat follows a mouse. Gradually the Sturgeon
+grows sulky and tired, obstinately floating on the surface. The
+savage knows he is not vanquished, but only biding a chance for
+revenge; so he shortens up the line, and gathers quietly on him
+to get another spear in. It is done,&mdash;and down viciously dives
+the Sturgeon; but pain and weariness begin to tell, the struggles
+grow weaker and weaker as life ebbs slowly away, until the mighty
+armour-plated monarch of the river yields himself a captive to the
+dusky native in his frail canoe."</p>
+
+<p>There is a very rare Spoonbill Sturgeon found in the western waters
+of North America: its popular name is Paddle-fish. One, five feet in
+length, weighed forty pounds; the nose, resembling a spatula, was
+thirteen inches in length. It was of a light slate colour, spotted with
+black; belly white; skin smooth, like an eel; the flesh compact and
+firm, and hard when boiled&mdash;not very enticing to the epicure. The jaws
+are without teeth, but the fauces are lined with several tissues of the
+most beautiful network, evidently for the purpose of collecting its food
+from the water by straining, or passing it
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span>
+through these membranes in
+the same manner as practised by the spermaceti whale. Near the top of
+the head are two small holes, through which it is possible the Sturgeon
+may discharge water in the manner practised by cetaceous animals. It is
+conjectured that the long "Spoonbill" nose of this fish is for digging
+up or moving the soft mud in the bottom of the river, and when the water
+is fully saturated, draw it through the filamentory strainers in search
+of food.</p>
+
+<p>Sturgeons resemble sharks in their general form, but their bodies are
+defended by bony shields, disposed in longitudinal rows; and their head
+is also well curiassed externally. The Sturgeons of North America are of
+little benefit to the natives. A few speared in the summer-time suffice
+for the temporary support of some Indian hordes; but none are preserved
+for winter use, and the roe and sounds are utterly wasted.</p>
+
+<p>The northern limit of the Sturgeon in America is probably between the
+55th and 56th parallels of latitude. Dr. Richardson did not meet with
+any account of its existence to the north of Stewart's Lake, on the west
+side of the Rocky Mountains; and on the east side it does not go higher
+than the Saskatchewan and its tributaries. It is not found in Churchill
+River, nor in any of the branches of the Mackenzie or other streams that
+fall into the Arctic Seas&mdash;a remarkable circumstance when we consider
+that some species swarm in the Asiatic rivers which flow into the Icy
+Sea. Sturgeons occur in all the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>
+great lakes communicating with the
+St. Lawrence, and also along the whole Atlantic coast of the United
+States down to Florida. Peculiar species inhabit the Mississippi; it is,
+therefore, probable that the range of the genus extends to the Gulf of
+Mexico.</p>
+
+<p>The great rapid which forms the discharge of the Saskatchewan into Lake
+Winnipeg appears quite alive with these fish in the month of June; and
+some families of the natives resort thither at that time to spear them
+with a harpoon, or grapple them with a strong hook tied to a pole.
+Notwithstanding the great muscular power of the Sturgeon, it is timid;
+and Dr. Richardson saw one so frightened at the paddling of a canoe,
+that it ran its nose into a muddy bank, and was taken by a <i>voyageur</i>,
+who leaped upon its back.</p>
+
+<p>In Colombia River, a small species of Sturgeon attains eleven feet in
+length, and a weight of six hundred pounds.
+<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> It is caught as high up
+as Fort Colville, notwithstanding the numerous intervening cataracts and
+rapids which seem to be insuperable barriers to a fish so sluggish in
+its movements.</p>
+
+<p>The Sturgeon is styled a Royal Fish in England, because, by a statute
+of Edward II. it is enacted, "the King shall have Sturgeon taken in the
+sea, or elsewhere, within the realm."</p>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a>
+"The Naturalist in Vancouver Island and British Columbia." By John
+Keast Lord, F.Z.S., Naturalist to the British North American Boundary
+Commission.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a>
+The Petrel is similarly used in the Faroe Islands. (See <i>ante</i>, p.
+234.) It may, therefore, be called the Candle Bird.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a>
+Dr. Richardson. The <i>Huro</i> is reported by Pallas to attain a weight
+of nearly three thousand pounds, and a length exceeding thirty feet.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="THE_TREE-CLIMBING_CRAB" id="THE_TREE-CLIMBING_CRAB"></a>THE TREE-CLIMBING CRAB.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>THE</b> transition from the ordinary mode of the locomotion of fishes by
+swimming to that of climbing has been ably illustrated by the Rev. Dr.
+Buckland, who showed, in a communication to the Ashmolean Society, in
+1843, that the fins in certain genera perform the functions of feet
+and wings. Thus, "fishing-frogs" have the fins converted into feet, or
+paddles, by means of which they have the power of crawling or hopping
+on sand and mud; and another species can live three days out of the
+water, and walk upon dry land. The climbing perch of the Indian rivers
+is known to live a long time in the air, and to climb up the stems of
+palm-trees in pursuit of flies, by means of spinous projections on its
+gill-covers. Fishes of the <i>silurus</i> family have a bony enlargement of
+the first ray of the pectoral fin, which is also armed with spines;
+and this is not only an offensive and defensive weapon, but enables
+the fish to walk along the bottom of the fresh waters
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> which it
+inhabits. The flying-fishes are notorious examples of the conversion
+of fins into an organ of movement in the air. M. Deslongchamps has
+published, in the "Transactions of the Linnæan Society of Normandy,"
+1842, a curious account of the movements of the gurnard at the bottom of
+the sea. In 1839, he observed these movements in one of the artificial
+fishing-ponds, or fishing-traps, surrounded by nets, on the shore of
+Normandy. He saw a score of gurnards closing their fins against their
+sides, like the wing of a fly in repose, and without any movement of
+their tails, walking along the bottom by means of six free rays, three
+on each pectoral fin, which they placed successively on the ground.
+They moved rapidly forwards, backwards, to the right and left, groping
+in all directions with these rays, as if in search of small crabs.
+Their great heads and bodies seemed to throw hardly any weight on the
+slender rays, or feet, being suspended in water, and having their weight
+further diminished by their swimming-bladder. During these movements the
+gurnards resembled insects moving along the sand. When M. Deslongchamps
+moved in the water, the fish swam away rapidly to the extremity of the
+pond; when he stood still, they resumed their ambulatory movement, and
+came between his legs. On dissection, we find these three anterior rays
+of the pectoral fins to be supported each with strong muscular apparatus
+to direct their movements, apart from the muscles that are connected
+with the smaller rays of the pectoral fin.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Dr. Buckland states that Miss Potts, of Chester, had sent to him a
+flagstone from a coalshaft at Mostyn, bearing impressions which he
+supposed to be the trackway of some fish crawling along the bottom
+by means of the anterior rays of its pectoral fins. There were no
+indications of feet, but only scratches, symmetrically disposed on each
+side of a space that may have been covered by the body of the fish
+whilst making progress, by pressing its fin-bones on the bottom. As yet,
+no footsteps of reptiles, or of any animals more highly organized than
+fishes, have been found in strata older than those which belong to the
+new red sandstone. The abundant remains of fossil fishes, armed with
+strong bony spines, and of other fishes allied to the gurnard, in strata
+of the carboniferous and old red sandstone series, would lead us to
+expect the frequent occurrence of impressions made by their locomotive
+organs on the bottoms of the ancient waters in which they lived. Dr.
+Buckland proposed to designate these petrified traces or trackways of
+ancient fishes by the term of fish-tracks.</p>
+
+<p>Crabs and Lobsters are strange creatures: strange in their
+configurations; strange in the transmutations which they exhibit from
+the egg to maturity; strange in the process they undergo of casting off,
+not only their shell, but the covering of their eyes, of their long
+horns, and even the lining of their tooth-furnished stomach; strange,
+also, are they in their manners and habits. Many a reader, in wandering
+along the sea-shore, may have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>
+disturbed little colonies of Crabs
+quietly nestling in fancied security amidst banks of slimy sea-weed; and
+in the nooks and recesses of the coast, the shallows, and strips of land
+left dry at ebb-tide, may be seen numbers of little, or perchance large,
+Crabs, some concealed in snug lurking-places, others tripping, with a
+quick <i>side-long</i> movement, over the beach, alarmed by the advance of an
+unwelcome intruder. Some are exclusively tenants of the water, have feet
+formed like paddles for swimming, and never venture on land; others seem
+to love the air and sunshine, and enjoy an excursion, not without hopes
+of finding an acceptable repast, over the oozy sands; some, equally fond
+of the shore and shallow water, appropriate to themselves the shells of
+periwinkles, whelks, &amp;c., and there live in a sort of castle, which they
+drag about with them on their excursions, changing it for a larger as
+they increase in measure of growth. They vary in size from microscopic
+animalcules to the gigantic King Crab:<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> to the former, the luminosity
+of the ocean, or of the foam
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>
+before the prows of vessels, is, to a
+great extent, attributable, each minute creature glowing with phosphoric
+light.</p>
+
+<p>The Bernhard Crab has been proved to have the power of dissolving
+shells, it not being unusual to find the long fusiform shells which are
+inhabited by these animals with the inner lip, and the greater part of
+the pillar on the inside of the mouth, destroyed, so as to render the
+aperture much larger than usual. Dr. Gray is quite convinced that these
+Crabs have the above power, some to a much greater degree than others.</p>
+
+<p>Certain Crabs, especially in the West Indies, are almost exclusively
+terrestrial, visiting the sea only at given periods, for the deposition
+of their eggs. These Crabs carry in their gill-chambers sufficient water
+for the purpose of respiration; they live in burrows, and traverse
+considerable tracts of land in the performance of their migratory
+journeys. Of these, some, as the Violet Crab, are exquisite delicacies.</p>
+
+<p>Of a great Crab migration we find these details in the "Jamaica Royal
+Gazette:"&mdash;In 1811 there was a very extraordinary production of Black
+Crabs in the eastern part of Jamaica. In June or July the whole district
+of Manchidneed was covered with countless numbers, swarming from the sea
+to the mountains. Of this the writer was an eye-witness. On ascending
+Over Hill from the vale of Plantain Garden River, the road appeared of a
+reddish colour, as if strewed with brick-dust. It was owing to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> myriads
+of young Black Crabs, about the size of the nail of a man's finger,
+moving at a pretty quick pace, direct for the mountains. "I rode along
+the coast," says the writer, "a distance of about fifteen miles, and
+found it nearly the same the whole way. Returning the following day, I
+found the road still covered with them, the same as the day before. How
+have they been produced, and where do they come from? were questions
+everybody asked, and nobody could answer. It is well known that Crabs
+deposit their eggs once a year, in May; but, except on this occasion,
+though living on the coast, I had never seen above a dozen young Crabs
+together; and here were myriads. No unusual number of old Crabs had been
+observed in that season; and it is worthy of note, that they were moving
+from a rock-bound coast of inaccessible cliffs, the abode of sea-birds,
+and exposed to the constant influence of the trade winds. No person, as
+far as I know, ever saw the like, except on that occasion; and I have
+understood that since 1811 Black Crabs have been more abundant further
+in to the interior of the island than they were ever known before."</p>
+
+<p>Cuvier describes the Burrowing Crab as displaying wonderful
+instinct:&mdash;"The animal closes the entrance of its burrow, which is
+situated near the margin of the sea, or in marshy grounds, with its
+largest claw. These burrows are cylindrical, oblique, very deep, and
+very close to each other; but generally each burrow is the exclusive
+habitation of a single individual. The habit which these crabs have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> of
+holding their large claw elevated in advance of the body, as if making a
+sign of beckoning to some one, has obtained for them the name of Calling
+Crabs. There is a species observed by Mr. Bosc in South Carolina,
+which passes the three months of the winter in its retreat without
+once quitting it, and which never goes to the sea except at the epoch
+of egg-laying." The same observations apply to the Chevalier Crabs (so
+called from the celerity with which they traverse the ground). These are
+found in Africa, and along the borders of the Mediterranean.</p>
+
+<p>Some Crabs, truly aquatic, as the Vaulted Crab of the Moluccas, have
+the power of drawing back their limbs, and concealing them in a furrow,
+which they closely fit; and thus, in imitation of a tortoise, which
+retracts its feet and head within its shell, they secure themselves,
+when alarmed. Other aquatic species have their limbs adapted for
+clinging to weeds and other marine objects. Of these some have the
+two or four hind pairs of limbs so placed as to appear to spring from
+the back; they terminate in a sharp hook, by means of which the Crab
+attaches itself to the valves of shells, fragments of coral, &amp;c.,
+which it draws over its body, and thus lurks in concealment. Allied,
+in some respects, to the Hermit or Soldier Crabs, which tenant empty
+shells, is one which, from its manners and habits, is one of the most
+extraordinary of its race. The Hermit Crabs are voracious, and feed
+on animal substances. The Hermit, or Bernhard Crab, is so called from
+its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>
+habit of taking up its solitary residence in deserted shells, thus
+seeking a protection for its tail, which is long and naked. It is found
+in shells of different dimensions, and from time to time leaves its
+abode, as it feels a necessity, for a more commodious dwelling. It is
+said to present, on such occasions, an amusing instinct as it inserts
+the tail successively into several empty shells until one is found to
+fit. We learn from Professor Bell, however, that it does not always wait
+until the home is vacant, but occasionally rejects the rightful occupant
+with some violence. On the contrary, the Crab, or rather Lobster-Crab
+(for it takes an intermediate place between them), is more delicate in
+its appetite, and feeds upon fruits, to obtain which it is said to climb
+up certain trees, at the feet of which it makes a burrow. This species
+is the Purse Crab, or Robber Crab, of Amboyna and other islands in the
+South Pacific Ocean.</p>
+
+<p>"According to popular belief among the Indians," says Cuvier, "the
+Robber Crab feeds on the nuts of the cocoa-tree, and it makes its
+excursions during the night; its places of retreat are fissures in the
+rocks, or holes in the ground." The accounts of the early writers and
+travellers, as well as of the natives, were disbelieved; but their truth
+has since been abundantly confirmed. MM. Quoy and Guimard assure us that
+several Robber Crabs were fed by them for many months on cocoa-nuts
+alone; and a specimen of this Crab was submitted to the Zoological
+Society, with additional information from
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>
+Mr. Cuming, in whose fine
+collection from the islands of the South Pacific several specimens were
+preserved. Mr. Cuming states these Crabs to be found in great numbers in
+Lord Hood's Island, in the Pacific. He there frequently met with them on
+the road. On being disturbed, the Crabs instantly assumed a defensive
+attitude, making a loud snapping with their powerful claws, or pincers,
+which continued as they retreated backwards. They climb a species of
+palm to gather a small kind of cocoa-nut that grows thereon. They live
+at the roots of trees, and not in the holes of rocks; and they form a
+favourite food among the natives. Such is the substance of Mr. Cuming's
+account. Mr. Darwin, in his "Researches in Geology and Natural History,"
+saw several of these Crabs in the Keeling Islands, or Cocos Islands, in
+the Indian Ocean, about 600 miles distant from the coast of Sumatra. In
+these islands, of coral formation, the cocoa-nut tree is so abundant as
+to appear, at first glance, to compose the whole wood of the islands.</p>
+
+<p>Here the great Purse Crab is abundant. Mr. Darwin describes it as a Crab
+which lives on the cocoa-nut, is common on all parts of the dry land,
+and grows to a monstrous size. This Crab has its front pair of legs
+terminated by very strong and heavy pincers, and the last pair by others
+which are narrow and weak. It would at first be thought quite impossible
+for a Crab to open a strong cocoa-nut, covered with the husk; but Mr.
+Liesk assures me that he has repeatedly seen the operation effected.
+The Crab<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>
+begins by tearing away the husk, fibre by fibre, and always
+from that end under which the three eye-holes are situated. When this
+is completed the Crab commences hammering with its heavy claws on one
+of these eye-holes till an opening is made. Then, turning its body, by
+the aid of its posterior and narrow pair of pincers, it extracts the
+white albuminous substance. I think this as curious a case as I ever
+heard of, and likewise of adaptation in structure between two objects
+apparently so remote from each other in the scheme of nature as a Crab
+and a cocoa-nut tree. The Crab is diurnal in its habits; but it is said
+to pay every night a visit to the sea for the purpose of moistening its
+gills. These gills are very peculiar, and scarcely fill up more than a
+tenth of the chamber in which they are placed: it doubtless acts as a
+reservoir for water, to serve the Crab in its passage over the dry and
+heated land. The young are hatched and live for some time on the coast;
+at this period of existence we cannot suppose that cocoa-nuts form any
+part of their diet; most probably soft saccharine grasses, fruits, and
+certain animal matters, serve as their food until they attain a certain
+size and strength.</p>
+
+<p>The adult Crabs, Mr. Darwin tells us, inhabit deep burrows, which they
+excavate beneath the roots of trees; and here they accumulate great
+quantities of the picked fibres of the cocoa-nut husk, on which they
+rest as on a bed. The Malays sometimes take advantage of the labours of
+the Crab by collecting the coarse fibrous substance, and using it as
+junk.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>
+These Crabs are very good to eat; moreover, under the tail of the
+larger ones there is a great mass of fat, which, when melted, yields as
+much as a quart bottleful of limpid oil.</p>
+
+<p>The Crab's means of obtaining the cocoa-nuts have, however, been much
+disputed. It is stated by some authors to crawl up the trees for the
+purpose of stealing the nuts. This is doubted; though in the kind of
+palm to which Mr. Cuming refers as being ascended by this Crab, the
+task would be much easier. Now, Mr. Darwin states, that in the Keeling
+Islands the Crab lives only on the nuts which fall to the ground. It
+may thus appear that Mr. Cuming's and Mr. Darwin's respective accounts
+of the <i>non-climbing</i> of this Crab on the one side, and its <i>actually
+climbing trees</i> on the other, are contradictory. The height of the stem
+of the cocoa-nut tree, its circumference, and comparative external
+smoothness, would prove insurmountable, or at least very serious
+obstacles, to the most greedy Crab, however large and strong it might
+be. But these difficulties are by no means so formidable in the tree
+specified by Mr. Cuming: this is arborescent, or bushy, with long, thin,
+rigid, sword-shaped leaves, resembling those of the pineapple, usually
+arranged spirally, so that they are commonly called Screw Pines. They
+are of the genus <i>Pandanus</i>, a word derived from the Malay <i>Pandang</i>.
+The ascent of these arborescent plants, having the stem furnished
+with a rigging of cord-like roots, and bearing a multitude of firm,
+long, and spirally-arranged leaves, would be by no means
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> a work of
+difficulty, as would necessarily be that of the tall feathery-topped
+cocoa-tree, destitute of all available points of aid or support. Hence
+the contradiction in the two accounts referred to is seeming, and not
+real, and the two statements are reconciled.</p>
+
+<p>To sum up, Mr. Cuming fully testifies to the Crab climbing the Screw
+Pines; and he has told Professor Owen that he has actually seen the Crab
+climbing the cocoa-nut tree. The Crab has been kept on cocoa-nuts for
+months; and is universally reported by the natives to climb the trees at
+night.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter bord"><a name="i_301.jpg" id="i_301.jpg"></a>
+  <img src="images/i_301.jpg" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">THE TREE-CLIMBING CRAB.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>We may here, too, observe, that fine specimens of the Climbing Crab are
+to be seen in the British Museum. Here, too, arranged in cases, are
+Spider Crabs; Crabs with oysters growing on their backs, thus showing
+that Crabs do not shed their shells every year, or that the oyster
+increases very rapidly in bulk; Oval-bodied Crabs; and Fin-footed or
+Swimming Crabs. Here are also Telescope, or Long-eyed Crabs, and Land
+Crabs, found in India 4,000 feet above the sea-level; another of similar
+habits in the plains of the Deccan, that may be seen swarming in the
+fields, some cutting and nipping the green rice-stalks, and others
+waddling off backwards with sheaves bigger than themselves. To these
+may be added Square-bodied Crabs, Crested Crabs; Porcelain Crabs, with
+delicate, china-like shells; and Death's-head Crabs, which usually form
+cases for themselves from pieces of sponge and shells.</p>
+
+<p>Certain species of Crabs are remarkably tenacious of life, and have been
+known to live for weeks
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>
+buried, and without food. It is in the Crab
+tribe that the fact of the metamorphosis of <i>crustacea</i> has been most
+distinctly perceived; a small, peculiar crustacean animal, that had
+long passed for a distinct species, under the name of <i>Zoea</i>, having at
+length been identified with the young of the common Crab before it had
+attained its full development.</p>
+
+<p>That among the Crab tribes a tree-climbing species is to be found is
+certainly curious, but it is not without a parallel among fishes. Many
+of the latter leave the water, some even for a long time, and perform
+overland journeys, aided in their progress by the structure of their
+fins. In these fishes the gills and gill-chambers are constructed for
+the retention of water for a considerable time, so as to suffice for the
+necessary degree of respiration. In our country, we may mention the eel,
+which often voluntarily quits the river or lake, and wanders during the
+night over the adjacent meadows, probably in quest of dew-worms. But the
+marshes of India and China present us with fishes much more decidedly
+terrestrial, and some of which were known to the ancients. Among these
+are several fishes of a snake-like form: they have an elongated,
+cylindrical body, and creep on land to great distances from their native
+waters. The boatmen of India often keep these fishes for a long time
+out of water, for the sake of diverting themselves and others by their
+terrestrial movements, and children may often be seen enjoying this
+sport.</p>
+
+<p>Of these land-haunting fishes, the most remarkable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>
+is the tree-climber,
+so called in Tranquebar. This fish inhabits India, the Indian islands,
+and various parts of China, as Chusan, &amp;c., living in marshes, and
+feeding on aquatic insects, worms, &amp;c. According to Daldorf, a Danish
+gentleman, who, in 1797, communicated an account of the habits of this
+fish to the Linnæan Society, it <i>mounts up</i> the bushes or low palms
+to some elevation. This gentleman states that he had himself observed
+it in the act of ascending palm-trees near the marshes, and had taken
+it at a height of no less than five feet, measured from the level of
+the adjacent water. It effects its ascent by means of its pectoral and
+under fins, aided by the action of the tail and the spines which border
+the gill covers. It is by the same agency that it traverses the land.
+The statement of M. Daldorf is corroborated by M. John, also a Danish
+observer, to whom we are indebted for the knowledge of its name in
+Tranquebar, which alludes to its arboreal proceedings.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that many other naturalists who have observed the habits
+of this fish in its native regions, while they concur in describing
+its terrestrial journeys, and its living for a long time out of water,
+either omit to mention, or mention with doubt, its reputed attempts at
+<i>tree-climbing</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The habits and instincts of certain Crawfishes are very extraordinary.
+Thus, the <i>Astaci</i> are migratory, and in their travels are capable of
+doing much damage to dams and embankments. On the Little Genesee River
+they have, within a few years, compelled
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>
+the owner of a dam to rebuild
+it. The former dam was built after the manner of dykes, <i>i.e.</i>, with
+upright posts, supporting sleepers, laid inclining up the stream. On
+these were laid planks, and the planks were covered with dirt. The
+<i>Astacus</i> proceeding up the stream would burrow under the planks where
+they rested on the bottom of the stream, removing bushels of dirt and
+gravel in the course of a night. They travel over the dam in their
+migrations, <i>often climbing posts</i> two or three feet high to gain the
+pond above.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p>
+
+<p>We have to add a new and eccentric variety of nature&mdash;the Pill-making
+Crab, which abounds at Labuan, Singapore, and Lahore, and is described
+in Mr. Collingwood's "Rambles of a Naturalist." When the tide is down,
+this little creature, if stealthily watched, may be seen creeping up
+a hole in the sandy shore, taking up rapidly particles of the loose
+powdery sand in its claws, and depositing them in a groove beneath the
+thorax. A little ball of sand, about the size of a filbert, is forthwith
+projected, though whether it passes actually through the mouth is not
+made clear. Pill after pill is seized with one claw, and laid aside,
+until the beach is covered with these queer little pellets. This is
+evidently the creature's mode of extracting particles of food from the
+sand.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Collingwood also describes, as met with on the shores and waters of
+the China seas, Glass Crabs, whose flat, transparent, leaf-like bodies
+seem made<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>
+of fine plates of mica. The dredge brings up many a rich
+haul of sponges, corals, and gorgoniæ, of the most splendid colours,
+certain of the sponges harbouring within their cells minute crabs of a
+new genus. Between Aden and Galle the sea is of a pinkish colour, owing
+to the immense accumulation of minute kinds of medusæ, in solid masses
+of red jelly. Over Fiery Cross Reef, the mirror-like sea reveals, at
+the depth of sixty or seventy feet, this wealth of natural treasures.
+"Glorious masses of living coral strew the bottom: immense globular
+madrepores&mdash;vast overhanging mushroom-shaped expansions, complicated
+ramifications of interweaving branches, mingled with smaller and more
+delicate species&mdash;round, finger-shaped, horn-like and umbrella-form&mdash;lie
+in wondrous confusion. Here and there is a large clam-shell, wedged
+in between masses of coral, the gaping, zigzag mouth covered with the
+projecting mantle of the deepest Prussian blue; beds of dark purple,
+long-spined Echini, and the thick black bodies of sea-cucumbers vary the
+aspect of the sea bottom."<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a>
+This Crab has an elongated spine-like tail, the use of which was
+long misunderstood. Dr. J. Gray was shown at the Liverpool Museum some
+living King Crabs, and the use they made of the tail-like appendages.
+When turned over on their backs, he saw them bend down the tail until
+they could reach some point of resistance, and then employ it to
+elevate the body, and regain their normal position. Dr. Gray states
+that they never have been seen to use this tail for the purpose which
+has been often assigned to it&mdash;that is, for leaping from place to place
+by bending it under the body, like the toy called a "spring-jack," or
+"leaping frog."</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a>
+American Journal of Science and Art.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a>
+W. C. Linnæus Martin, F.L.S.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="MUSICAL_LIZARDS" id="MUSICAL_LIZARDS"></a>MUSICAL LIZARDS.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_078.jpg" alt="Letter A"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>A SMALL</b> Lizard, lately brought home from the Isle of Formosa by Mr.
+Swinhoe, is decided to be a new species by Dr. Günther, of the British
+Museum. Mr. Swinhoe found the eggs of this Gecko, or Lizard, in holes of
+walls or among mortar rubbish. They are round, and usually lie several
+together, resembling eggs of ordinary Lizards. The young, when first
+hatched, keep much under stones in dark cellars, where they remain
+until they attain about two-thirds of the adult size, when they begin
+to appear in public to catch insects, but evincing great shyness of
+their seniors. Mr. Swinhoe states that on the plaster-washed sides of
+his bedroom, close to the angle of the roof, every evening when the lamp
+was placed on the table below, four little Musical Lizards used to make
+their appearance and watch patiently for insects attracted by the light.
+A sphinx or a beetle buzzing into the room would put them into great
+excitement, and they would run with celerity from one part of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> wall
+to the other after the deluded insect as it fluttered in vain, buffeting
+its head, up and down the wall. Two or three would run after the same
+insect, but as soon as one had succeeded in securing it, the rest would
+prudently draw aloof. In running over the perpendicular face of the wall
+they keep so close, and their movements are made so quickly, with one
+leg in advance of the other, that they have the appearance at a distance
+of gliding rather than running. The tail is somewhat writhed as the body
+is jerked along, and much so when the animal is alarmed and doing its
+utmost to escape; but its progress even then is in short runs, stopping
+at intervals and raising its head to look about. If a fly perch on the
+wall it cautiously approaches to within a short distance, then suddenly
+darts forwards, and with its quickly-protruded, glutinous tongue, fixes
+it. Apart from watching its curious man&oelig;uvres after its insect-food,
+the attention of the most listless would be attracted by the singular
+series of loud notes these creatures utter at all hours of the day and
+night, more especially during cloudy and rainy weather. These notes
+resemble the syllables "chuck-chuck," several times repeated; and, from
+their more frequent occurrence during July and August, they are thought
+to be the call notes of the male to the female.</p>
+
+<p>During the greater part of the day, the little creature lies quiescent
+in some cranny among the beams of the roof or in the wall of the house,
+where, however, it is ever watchful for the incautious fly
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> that
+approaches its den, upon whom it darts forth with but little notice. But
+it is by no means confined to the habitations of men. Every old wall,
+and almost every tree, possesses a tenant or two of this species. It is
+excessively lively, and even when found quietly ensconced in a hole,
+generally manages to escape&mdash;its glittering little eyes (black, with
+yellow ochre iris) appearing to know no sleep; and an attempt to capture
+the runaway seldom results in more than the seizure of an animated tail,
+wrenched off with a jerk by the little fellow as it slips away, without
+loss of blood. The younger individuals are much darker than the larger
+and older animals, which are sometimes almost albinoes. In ordinary
+fly-catching habits, as they stick to the sides of a lamp, there is much
+similarity between this gecko and the little papehoo, or wall-lizard
+of China; but this is decidedly a larger and much more active animal,
+and often engages in a struggle with insects of very large size. The
+Chinese colonists of Formosa greatly respect the geckos, in consequence
+of a legend which attributes to them the honour of having once poisoned
+the supplies of an invading rebellious army, which was thereby totally
+cut to pieces. The geckos were raised to the rank of generals by the
+grateful Emperor of China; which honour, the legend states, they greatly
+appreciated, and henceforth devoted their energies to the extermination
+of mosquitoes and other injurious insects.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="CHAMELEONS_AND_THEIR_CHANGES" id="CHAMELEONS_AND_THEIR_CHANGES"></a>
+CHAMELEONS, AND THEIR CHANGES.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse3">"Nil fuit unquam</div>
+<div class="verse">Sic impar sibi."&mdash;<i>Horat.</i></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="center margin-top1">"Sure such a various creature ne'er was seen."</div>
+<div class="right1"><i>Francis, in imit.</i></div>
+
+<div class="margin-top1">
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>THE</b> Chameleon tribe is a well-defined family of lizard-like reptiles,
+whose characters may be summed up as existing in the form of their feet;
+the toes, which are joined together or bound up together in two packets
+or bundles, opposed to each other; in their shagreen-like skin; in their
+prehensile tail; and in their extensile and retractile vermiform tongue.</p>
+
+<p>That the Chameleon was known to the ancients there is no doubt. Its
+name we derive directly from the <i>Chamelæo</i> of the Latins. Aristotle's
+history of the animal proves the acute observation of that great
+zoologist&mdash;the absence of a sternum, the disposition of the ribs, the
+mechanism of the tail, the motion of the eyes, the toes bound up in
+opposable bundles, &amp;c.&mdash;though he is not entirely correct on some
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>
+points. Pliny mentions it, but his account is for the most part a
+compilation from Aristotle.</p>
+
+<p>Calmet's description of the Chameleon is curiously minute:&mdash;"It has
+four feet, and on each foot three claws. Its tail is long: with this,
+as well as with his feet, it fastens itself to the branches of trees.
+Its tail is flat, its nose long, ending in an obtuse point; its back is
+sharp, its skin plaited, and jagged like a saw, from the neck to the
+last joint of the tail, and upon its head it has something like a comb;
+like a fish, it has no neck. Some have asserted that it lives only upon
+air, but it has been observed to feed on flies, catched with its tongue,
+which is about ten inches long and three thick, made of white flesh,
+round, but flat at the end, or hollow and open, resembling an elephant's
+trunk. It also shrinks, and grows longer. This animal is said to assume
+the colour of those things to which it is applied; but our modern
+observers assure us that its natural colour, when at rest, and in the
+shade, is a bluish-grey; though some are yellow, others green, but both
+of a smaller kind. When it is exposed to the sun, the grey changes into
+a darker grey, inclining to a dun colour, and its parts which have least
+of the light upon them are changed into spots of different colours.
+Sometimes, when it is handled, it seems speckled with dark spots,
+inclining to green. If it be put upon a black hat, it appears to be of a
+violet colour; and sometimes, if it be wrapped up in linen, it is white;
+but it changes colour only in some parts of the body."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Its changes of colour have been commemorated by the poets. Shakspeare
+has&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"I can add colours ev'n to the Chameleon:</div>
+<div class="verse">Change shapes with Proteus, for advantage."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Dryden has&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"The thin Chameleon, fed with air, receives</div>
+<div class="verse">The colour of the thing to which it cleaves."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Prior has&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"As the Chameleon, which is known</div>
+<div class="verse">To have no colours of his own,</div>
+<div class="verse">But borrows from his neighbour's hue</div>
+<div class="verse">His white or black, his green or blue."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Gay, in his charming fable of the Spaniel and the Chameleon, "scarce
+distinguished from the green," makes the latter thus reply to the taunts
+of the pampered spaniel:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"'Sir,' says the sycophant, 'like you,</div>
+<div class="verse">Of old, politer life I knew:</div>
+<div class="verse">Like you, a courtier born and bred,</div>
+<div class="verse">Kings lean'd their ear to what I said:</div>
+<div class="verse">My whisper always met success;</div>
+<div class="verse">The ladies prais'd me for address;</div>
+<div class="verse">I knew to hit each courtier's passion,</div>
+<div class="verse">And flatter'd every vice in fashion:</div>
+<div class="verse">But Jove, who hates the liar's ways,</div>
+<div class="verse">At once cut short my prosperous days,</div>
+<div class="verse">And, sentenced to retain my nature,</div>
+<div class="verse">Transform'd me to this crawling creature.</div>
+<div class="verse">Doom'd to a life obscure and mean,</div>
+<div class="verse">I wander'd in the silvan scene:</div>
+<div class="verse">For Jove the heart alone regards;</div>
+<div class="verse">He punishes what man rewards.</div>
+<div class="verse">How different is thy case and mine!
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span></div>
+<div class="verse">With men at least you sup and dine;</div>
+<div class="verse">While I, condemned to thinnest fare,</div>
+<div class="verse">Like those I flatter'd, fed on air.'"</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Upon this fable a commentator acutely notes:&mdash;"The raillery at court
+sycophants naturally pervades our poet's writings, who had suffered so
+much from them. Here, however, he intimates something more, namely, the
+apposite dispensations to man's acts, even in this world. The crafty is
+taken in by his own guile, the courtier falls by his own arts, and the
+ladder of ambition only prepares for the aspirant a further fall."
+<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a></p>
+
+<p>With respect to the air-food of the Chameleon. Cuvier observes that
+its lung is so large that, when it is filled with air, it imparts a
+transparency to the body, which made the ancients say that it lived
+upon air; and he inclines to think that to its size the Chameleon owes
+the property of changing its colour; but, with regard to this last
+speculation, he was wrong, as we shall presently see.</p>
+
+<p>It was long thought that the Chameleon, like most of the lizard tribe,
+was produced from an egg. The little animal is, however, most clearly
+viviparous, and not oviparous, although the tales told of the lizard
+tribe in the story books are most perplexing. To name a few of them:&mdash;1.
+The crocodile, which is the largest of the lizard tribe, and has even
+attained<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>
+the size of 18-1/2 ft. in length, is confidently stated as
+laying eggs, which she covers with sand and leaves, to be hatched by the
+sun; and these have been met with in the rivers Nile, Niger, and Ganges.
+2. <i>Lacerta Gangetica</i>, unknown to Linnæus, but brought to this country
+from Bengal in 1747 by the late Dr. Mead, is said to be furnished
+with a false belly, like the opossum, where the young can be received
+for protection in time of danger. In this case the egg must have been
+hatched in the belly of the animal, like the viper. 3. The alligator,
+or American crocodile, lays a vast quantity of eggs in the sand, near
+the banks of lakes and rivers, and leaves them to be hatched by the sun;
+and the young are seldom seen. 4. The cayman, or Antilles crocodile, has
+furnished its eggs to many collections. 5. A salamander was opened by M.
+Maupertuis, and its belly was found full of eggs; but in "Les Mémoires
+de l'Académie Royale des Sciences" it is stated that, after a similar
+operation of the kind, "fifty young ones, resembling the parent animal,
+were found in its womb all alive, and actively running about the room."</p>
+
+<p>The tongue is the chief organ for taking the insects on which the
+Chameleon lives. By a curious mechanism, of which the tongue-bone is a
+principal agent, the Chameleon can protrude this cylindrical tongue,
+which has its tip covered with a glutinous secretion from the sheath
+at the lower part of the mouth, to the length of six inches. When the
+Chameleon is about to seize an insect, it rolls round its extraordinary
+eyeballs so as to bring them to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>
+bear on the doomed object; as soon
+as it arrives within the range of the tongue, that organ is projected
+with unerring precision, and returns into the mouth with the prey
+adhering to the viscous tip. The wonderful activity with which this
+feat is performed, forms a strong contrast to the almost ridiculously
+slow motions of the animal. Their operation of taking meal-worms, of
+which they are fond, though comparatively rapid, is not remarkable for
+its quickness, but done with an act of deliberation, and so that the
+projection and retraction of the tongue can be very distinctly followed
+with the eye.</p>
+
+<p>The eyes of the Chameleon are remarkable objects; large, projecting, and
+almost entirely covered with the shagreen-like skin, with the exception
+of a small aperture opposite the pupil; their motions are completely
+independent of each other. It adds to the strange and grotesque
+appearance of this creature to see it roll one of its eye-globes
+backwards, while the other is directed forwards, as if making two
+distinct surveys at one time. Its sight must be acute, from the unerring
+certainty with which it marks and strikes its prey.</p>
+
+<p>The Chameleons spend their lives in trees, for clinging to the branches
+of which their organization is admirably adapted. There they lie in
+wait for the insects which may come within their reach; and it has been
+thought that, in such situations, their faculty of changing colour
+becomes highly important in aiding them to conceal themselves.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> The
+powers of abstinence possessed by this singular race are very great;
+and hence, most probably, arose the old fable of their <i>living on
+air</i>, which was for a long time considered to be "the Chameleon's
+dish." One has been known to fast upwards of six weeks without taking
+any sustenance, though meat-food and insects were procured for it.
+Notwithstanding this fast, it did not appear to fall away much. It would
+fix itself by the feet and tail to the bars of the fender, and there
+remain motionless, enjoying the warmth of the fire for hours together.
+Hasselquist describes one, that he kept for nearly a month, as climbing
+up and down the bars of its cage in a very lively manner.</p>
+
+<p>The power of the Chameleon's changing colour long exercised the
+ingenuity of the old naturalists. Hasselquist thought that the changes
+of colour depended on a kind of disease, more especially a sort of
+jaundice, to which the animal was subject, particularly when it was put
+in a rage. M. D'Obsonville thought that he had discovered the secret in
+the blood, and that the change of colour depended upon a mixture of blue
+and yellow, whence the different shades of green were derived; and these
+colours he obtains from the blood and the blood-vessels. Thus he says
+that the blood is of a violet hue, and will retain its colour on linen
+or paper for some minutes if previously steeped in a solution of alum,
+and that the coats of the vessels are yellow; consequently, he argues,
+that the mixture of the two will produce green. He further traces the
+change<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>
+of colour to the passions of the animal. Thus, when a healthy
+Chameleon is provoked, the circulation is accelerated, the vessels that
+are spread over the skin are distended, and a superficial blue-green
+colour is produced. When, on the contrary, the animal is imprisoned,
+impoverished, and deprived of free air, the circulation becomes languid,
+the vessels are not filled, the colour of their coats prevails, and the
+Chameleon changes to a yellow-green, which lasts during its confinement.</p>
+
+<p>Barrow, in his "Travels in Africa," declares that previously to the
+Chameleon's assuming a change of colour, it makes a long inspiration,
+the body swelling out to twice its usual size; and as the inflation
+subsides, the change of colour gradually takes place, the only permanent
+marks being two small dark lines passing along the sides. Mr. Wood
+conceives from this account that the animal is principally indebted for
+these varied tints to the influence of oxygen. Mr. Spittal also regards
+these changes as connected with the state of the lungs; and Mr. Houston
+considers this phenomenon as dependent on the turgescency of the skin.
+Dr. Weissenborn thinks it not unlikely that the nervous currents may
+directly co-operate in effecting the changes of colour in the Chameleon.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. H. N. Turner, writing from personal observation of the phenomenon
+in a live Chameleon in his possession, says:&mdash;"It has been generally
+imagined that the purpose of the singular faculty accorded to the
+Chameleon is to enable it to accommodate
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span>
+its appearance to that of
+surrounding objects." Mr. Turner's observations do not, however, favour
+the idea, but seem rather to negative it. The box in which Mr. Turner's
+Chameleon was kept was of deal, with glass at the top, and a piece of
+flannel laid at the bottom, a small branching stick being placed there
+by way of a perch. He introduced, at various times, pieces of coloured
+paper, covering the bottom of the box, of blue, yellow, and scarlet,
+but without the slightest effect upon the appearance of the animal.
+Considering that these primary colours were not such as it would be
+likely to be placed in contact with in a state of nature, he next tried
+a piece of green calico, but equally without result. The animal went
+through all its usual changes without their being in any way modified by
+the colour placed underneath it. The general tint approximated, as may
+be readily observed, to those of the branches of trees, just as those of
+most animals do to the places in which they dwell; but Mr. Turner did
+not observe the faculty of changing called into play with any apparent
+object. It is only when the light is removed that the animal assumes a
+colour which absorbs but little of it.</p>
+
+<p>Not to go further into the numerous treatises which have been published
+on this intricate subject without arriving at a just conclusion, we
+refer to the able and interesting paper of Mr. Milne Edwards, for whose
+acuteness the solution of this puzzling phenomenon was reserved. The
+steps by which he first overthrew the received theories on the subject,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>
+and then arrived at the cause of the change of colour, is shown in the
+following results, derived from observing two Chameleons living, and
+researches after the animals had died, on the structure of their skin,
+and the parts immediately beneath it.</p>
+
+<p>1. That the change in the colour of the Chameleon does not depend
+essentially either on the more or less considerable swelling of their
+bodies, or the changes which might hence result to the condition of
+their blood or circulation; nor does it depend on the greater or less
+distance which may exist between the several cutaneous tubercles;
+although it is not to be denied that these circumstances probably
+exercise some influence upon the phenomenon.</p>
+
+<p>2. That there exist in the skin of these animals two layers of
+membranous pigment, placed the one above the other, but disposed in such
+a way as to appear simultaneously under the cuticle, and sometimes in
+such a manner that the one may hide the other.</p>
+
+<p>3. That everything remarkable in the changes of colour in the Chameleon
+may be explained by the appearance of the pigment of the deeper layer to
+an extent more or less considerable, in the midst of the pigment of the
+superficial layer, or from its disappearance beneath this layer.</p>
+
+<p>4. That these displacements of the deeper pigment do in reality occur;
+and it is a probable consequence that the Chameleon's colour changes
+during life, and may continue to change even after death.</p>
+
+<p>5. That there exists a close analogy between the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>
+mechanism by the help
+of which the change of colour appears to take place in these reptiles,
+and that which determines the successive appearance and disappearance of
+coloured spots in the mantles of several of the cephalopods.</p>
+
+<p>Chameleons are found in warm climates of the old world, South of Spain,
+Africa, East Indies. Isles of Sechelles, Bourbon, France, Moluccas.
+Madagascar (where it is said there are seven of the species which belong
+to Africa), Fernando Po, and New South Wales. In the year 1860, a new
+and curiously formed species of Chameleon was brought from the interior
+of the Old Calabar district of West Africa, by one of the natives. It is
+characterised by three horny processes on the head. Many Lizards have
+singular spiny projections on all parts of the body; but this very well
+marked species had not been hitherto recorded.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Belzoni, the wife of the celebrated traveller in the East, made
+some careful observations upon the habits of Chameleons, which are worth
+quoting. The Arabs in Lower Egypt catch Chameleons by jumping upon them,
+flinging stones at them, or striking them with sticks, which hurts them
+very much. The Nubians lay them down gently on the ground, and when
+they come down from the date-trees, they catch hold of the tail of the
+animal, and fix a string to it; therefore the body does not get injured.
+Mrs. Belzoni had some Chameleons for several months in her house, and
+her observations are as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"In the first place they are very inveterate towards each other, and
+must not be shut up together, else they will bite each other's tails and
+legs off.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter bord"><a name="i_333.jpg" id="i_333.jpg"></a>
+  <img src="images/i_333.jpg" alt="" />
+  <div class="caption">CHAMELEONS.</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>"There are three species of Chameleons, whose colours are peculiar
+to themselves: for instance, the commonest sort are those which are
+generally green, that is to say, the body all green, and, when content,
+beautifully marked on each side regularly on the green with black and
+yellow, not in a confused manner, but as if drawn. This kind is in great
+plenty; they never have any other colour except a light green when they
+sleep, and when ill, a very pale yellow. Out of near forty I had the
+first year when in Nubia, I had but one, and that a very small one of
+the second sort, which had red marks. One Chameleon lived with me eight
+months, and most of that time I had it fixed to the button of my coat:
+it used to rest on my shoulder or on my head. I have observed, when I
+have kept it shut up in a room for some time, that on bringing it out
+in the air it would begin drawing the air in, and on putting it on some
+marjorum it has had a wonderful effect on it immediately: its colour
+became most brilliant. I believe it will puzzle a good many to say what
+cause it proceeds from. If they did not change when shut up in a house,
+but only on taking them in a garden, it might be supposed the change
+of the colours was in consequence of the smell of the plants; but when
+in a house, if it is watched, it will change every ten minutes: some
+moments a plain green, at others all its beautiful colours will
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> come
+out, and when in a passion it becomes of a deep black, and will swell
+itself up like a balloon, and, from being one of the most beautiful
+animals, it becomes one of the most ugly. It is true that Chameleons
+are extremely fond of the fresh air, and on taking them to a window
+when there is nothing to be seen, it is easy to observe the pleasure
+they certainly take in it: they begin to gulp down the air, and their
+colour becomes brighter. I think it proceeds, in a great degree, from
+the temper they are in: a little thing will put them in a bad humour: if
+in crossing a table, for instance, you stop them, and attempt to turn
+them another road, they will not stir, and are extremely obstinate: on
+opening the mouth at them, it will set them in a passion: they begin to
+arm themselves by swelling and turning black, and will sometimes hiss a
+little, but not much.</p>
+
+<p>"The third I brought from Jerusalem was the most singular of all the
+Chameleons I ever had: its temper, if it can be so called, was extremely
+sagacious and cunning. This one was not of the order of the green kind,
+but a disagreeable drab, and it never once varied in its colour in two
+months. On my arrival in Cairo. I used to let it crawl about the room on
+the furniture. Sometimes it would get down, if it could, and hide itself
+away from me, but in a place where it could see me; and sometimes,
+on my leaving the room and on entering it, would draw itself so thin
+as to make itself nearly on a level with whatever it might be on, so
+that I might not see it. It had often deceived me
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>
+so. One day having
+missed it for some time, I concluded it was hid about the room; after
+looking for it in vain, I thought it had got out of the room and made
+its escape: in the course of the evening, after the candle was lighted,
+I went to a basket that had got a handle across it: I saw my Chameleon,
+but its colour entirely changed, and different to any I ever had seen
+before: the whole body, head and tail, a brown with black spots, and
+beautiful deep orange-coloured spots round the black. I certainly was
+much gratified. On being disturbed, its colours vanished, unlike the
+others; but after this I used to observe it the first thing in the
+morning, when it would have the same colours. Some time after, it made
+its escape out of my room, and I suppose got into the garden close by.
+I was much vexed, and would have given twenty dollars to have recovered
+it again, though it only cost me threepence, knowing I could not get
+another like it; for, afterwards being in Rosetta, I had between fifty
+and sixty; but all those were green, yellow, and black; and the Arabs,
+in catching them, had bruised them so much, that after a month or six
+weeks they died. It is an animal extremely hard to die. I had prepared
+two cages with separate divisions, with the intention of bringing them
+to England; but though I desired the Arabs that used to get them for me
+to catch them by the tail, they used to hurt them much with their hands;
+and if once the body is squeezed, it will never live longer than two
+months. When they used to sleep at night, it was easy to see where they
+had been bruised; for being
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>
+of a very light colour when sleeping, the
+part that had been bruised, either on the body or the head, which was
+bone, was extremely black, though when green it would not show itself so
+clear. Their chief food was flies: the fly does not die immediately on
+being swallowed, for upon taking the Chameleon up in my hands, it was
+easy to feel the fly buzzing, chiefly on account of the air they draw in
+their inside: they swell much, and particularly when they want to fling
+themselves off a great height, by filling themselves up like a balloon:
+on falling, they get no hurt, except on the mouth, which they bruise a
+little, as that comes first to the ground. Sometimes they will not drink
+for three or four days, and when they begin they are about half an hour
+drinking. I have held a glass in one hand while the Chameleon rested its
+two fore-paws on the edge of it, the two hind ones resting on my other
+hand. It stood upright while drinking, holding its head up like a fowl.
+By flinging its tongue out of its mouth the length of its body, and
+instantaneously catching the fly, it would go back like a spring. They
+will drink mutton broth: how I came to know this was, one day having a
+plate of broth and rice on the table where it was: it went to the plate
+and got half into it, and began drinking, and trying to take up some of
+the rice, by pushing it with its mouth towards the side of the plate,
+which kept it from moving, and in a very awkward way taking it into its
+mouth."</p>
+
+<p>In the autumn of 1868, a pair of Chameleons, in the possession of the
+Hon. Lady Cust, of Leasowe
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span>
+Castle, Cheshire, produced nine active young
+ones, like little alligators, less than an inch long. Such a birth has
+been, it is believed, very rare in this country. It was remarked, in the
+above case, that the male and female appeared altogether indifferent
+about their progeny.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever may be the cause, the fact seems to be certain, that the
+Chameleon has an antipathy to objects of a black colour. One, which
+Forbes kept, uniformly avoided a black board which was hung up in the
+chamber; and, what is most remarkable, when the Chameleon was held
+forcibly before the black board, it trembled violently and assumed a
+<i>black colour</i>.<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p>
+
+<p>It may be something of the same kind which makes Bulls and Turkey-cocks
+dislike the colour of scarlet, a fact of which there can be no doubt.</p>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a>
+The Fables of John Gay. Illustrated. With Original Memoir,
+Introduction, and Annotations. By Octavius Freire Owen, M.A., F.S.A.
+1854.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a>
+This, it will be seen by referring to page 307, does not correspond
+with Calmet's statement.</p>
+</div>
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="RUNNING_TOADS" id="RUNNING_TOADS"></a>RUNNING TOADS.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>THAT</b> the Toad, by common repute "ugly and venomous," should be made a
+parlour pet, is passing strange; yet such is the case, and we find in a
+letter from Dr. Husenbeth, of Cossey, the following curious instances.
+Thus he describes a species, there often met with, the eyes of which
+have the pupil surrounded with bright golden-yellow, whereas in the
+common toad the circle is red or orange. This remarkable peculiarity
+Dr. H. has not seen anywhere noticed. The head is like that of the
+common sort, but much more blunt, and rounded off at the nose and mouth,
+and the arches over the eyes are more prominent. The most remarkable
+difference is a line of yellow running all down the back. Also down each
+side this Toad has a row of red pimples, like small beads, which are
+tolerably regular, but appear more in some specimens than in others.
+The general colour is a yellowish-olive, but the animal is beautifully
+marked with black spots, very regularly disposed, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> exactly
+corresponding on each side of the yellow line down the back. Like all
+other Toads, this one occasionally changes its colour, becoming more
+brown, or ash-colour, or reddish at times, probably in certain states
+of the weather. This species is much more active than the common Toad.
+It never leaps, and very seldom crawls, but makes a short run, stops a
+little, and then runs on again. If frightened or pursued, it will run
+along much quicker than one would suppose.</p>
+
+<p>During the previous summer Dr. H. kept three Toads of this kind in
+succession. "The first (says Dr. H.) I procured in July; but after a
+few days, when I let him have a run on the carpet of my parlour, he
+got into a hole in a corner of the floor, of which I was not aware,
+and fell, as I suppose, underneath the floor, into the hollow space
+below. I concluded that he could never get up again, and gave him up to
+his fate. I then began to keep another Running Toad, which fed well at
+first, but after three weeks refused food, and evidently wasted; so I
+turned him out into the garden, and have not met with him since. After
+more than three weeks, the former Toad reappeared, but how he came up
+from beneath the floor I never could conceive, or how he had picked
+up a living in the meantime. He was, however, in good condition, and
+seemed to have lived well, probably on spiders and woodlice. He had been
+seen by a servant running about the carpet, but I knew nothing of his
+having come forth again, till in the evening, when he had got
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> near the
+door, and it was suddenly opened so as to pass over the poor creature,
+and crush it terribly. I took it up apparently dead. It showed no sign
+of life; the eyes were closed, it did not breathe, and the backbone
+seemed quite broken, and the animal was crushed almost flat. I found a
+very curious milky secretion exuding from it, where it had been most
+injured and the skin was most broken. This was perfectly white, and had
+exactly the appearance of milk thrown over the toad. It did not bleed,
+though much lacerated; but instead of blood appeared this milky fluid,
+which had an odour of a most singular kind, different from anything I
+ever smelt. It is impossible to describe it. It was not fetid, but of
+a sickly, disgusting, and overpowering character, so that I could not
+endure to inhale it for a moment. I had read and seen a good deal of the
+extraordinary powers of revivification in toads, but was not prepared
+for what I witnessed on this occasion. I laid this poor animal, crushed,
+flattened, motionless, and to all appearance dead, upon a cold iron
+plate of the fireplace. He fell over on one side, and showed no sign of
+life for a full hour. After that he had slightly moved one leg, and so
+remained for about another half-hour. Then he began to breathe feebly,
+and gathered up his legs, and his back began to rise up into its usual
+form. In about two hours from the time of the accident, he had so far
+recovered as to crawl about, though with difficulty. The milky liquor
+was reabsorbed, and gradually disappeared as the toad recovered. The
+next<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>
+morning it was all gone, and no mark of injury could be seen,
+except a small hole in his back, which soon closed. He recovered so far
+as to move about pretty well, but his back appeared to have been broken,
+and one fore-leg crippled. I therefore thought it best to give him his
+liberty in the garden. But so wonderful and speedy a recovery I could
+never have believed without ocular testimony.</p>
+
+<p>"I then tried my third and last Running Toad. I began to keep him on
+Sept. 13th. He was a very fine specimen, and larger than the two former.
+He fed well, and amused me exceedingly. He was very tame, and would sit
+on my hand quite quiet, and enjoy my stroking him gently down his head
+and back. Soon after I got him he began to cast his skin. I helped him
+to get rid of it by stripping it down each side, which he seemed to
+like much, and sat very quiet during the operation. The new skin was
+quite beautiful, and shone as if varnished. This Toad lived in a crystal
+palace, or glass jar, where I had kept all the others before him. He
+took food freely, and his appetite was so good that in one day he ate
+seven large flies and three bees without stings. He was particularly
+fond of woodlice and earwigs, but would take centipedes, moths, and
+even butterflies. Being more active than common Toads, he often made
+great efforts to get out of his glass jar. I used to let him run about
+the room nearly every day for a short time, and often treated him to a
+run in the garden. Toads make a slight noise sometimes in the evenings,
+uttering a short sound
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span>
+like 'coo,' but I never heard them croak. Before
+wet weather, and during its continuance, my Toad was disinclined for
+food, and took no notice of flies even walking over his nose. He would
+then burrow and hide himself in the moss at the bottom of his glass
+palace. Thus I kept him, and found him very tame and amusing. But after
+about two months he became more impatient of confinement, and refused
+to take any food. I did not perceive that he fell away, though his feet
+and toes turned of a dark colour, which I knew was a sign of being out
+of condition; and, on the 10th of November, I found him dead. I have
+now tried three of this sort, and have come to the conclusion that the
+Running Toad will not live in captivity. This I much regret, as its
+habits are interesting, and its ways very amusing.</p>
+
+<p class="right1">"<span class="smcap">F. C. Husenbeth, D.D.</span>"</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<h3>FROG AND TOAD CONCERTS.</h3>
+
+<p>It would be hard to believe the stories of the vocal powers of Frogs
+and Toads were they not related by trustworthy travellers, who tell of
+animal concerts,</p>
+
+<p class="center blockquot">"Wild as the marsh, and tuneful as the harp."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Priest, the traveller in America, who was himself a musician,
+records:&mdash;"Prepared as I was to hear something extraordinary from these
+animals,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span>
+I confess the first <i>Frog Concert</i> I heard in America was so
+much beyond anything I could conceive of the power of these musicians,
+that I was truly astonished. This performance was <i>al fresco</i>, and took
+place on the eighteenth of April, in a large swamp, where there were at
+least 10,000 performers; and I really believe not two exactly in the
+same pitch, if the octave can possibly admit of so many divisions, or
+shades of semitones."</p>
+
+<p>Professor and Mrs. Louis Agassiz, in their recent "Journey in Brazil,"
+record:&mdash;"We must not leave Parà without alluding to our evening
+concerts from the adjoining woods and swamps. When I first heard this
+strange confusion of sounds, I thought it came from a crowd of men
+shouting loudly, though at a little distance. To my surprise. I found
+that the rioters were the frogs and toads in the neighbourhood. I hardly
+know how to describe this Babel of woodland noises; and, if I could do
+it justice, I am afraid my account would hardly be believed. At moments
+it seems like the barking of dogs, then like the calling of many voices
+on different keys; but all loud, rapid, excited, full of emphasis and
+variety. I think these frogs, like ours, must be silent at certain
+seasons of the year, for on our first visit to Parà we were not struck
+by this singular music, with which the woods now resound at nightfall."</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="SONG_OF_THE_CICADA" id="SONG_OF_THE_CICADA"></a>SONG OF THE CICADA.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_024.jpg" alt="Letter T"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>THE</b> Greeks have been scoffed at for rendering in deathless verse the
+song of so insignificant an insect as the Cicada; and hence it has
+been asserted that their love for such slender music must have been
+either exaggerated or simulated. It is pleasant, however, to hear an
+independent observer in the other hemisphere confirm their testimony.
+Mr. Lord tells us that in British Colombia there is one sound or song
+which is clearer, shriller, and <i>more singularly tuneful than any
+other</i>. It never appears to cease, and it comes from everywhere&mdash;from
+the tops of the trees, from the trembling leaves of the cotton-wood,
+from the stunted under-brush, from the flowers, the grass, the rocks and
+boulders&mdash;nay, the very stream itself seems vocal with hidden minstrels,
+all chanting the same refrain.</p>
+
+<p>An especial feature of the Cicada's song is, that it increases in
+intensity when the sun is hottest; and one of the later Latin poets
+mentions the time when its music is at its highest, as an alternative
+expression<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span>
+for noon. Mr. Tennyson, inadvertently, speaks in "Ænone" of
+the Grasshopper being silent in the grass, and of the Cicada sleeping
+when the noonday quiet holds the hill. Keats sings more truly:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,</div>
+<div class="verse">And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run</div>
+<div class="verse">From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead:</div>
+<div class="verse">That is the Grasshopper's."</div>
+</div><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Then the Greek poets show us how intimately the song of the Cicada is
+associated with the hottest hours of the day. Aristophanes describes it
+as mad for the love of the sun; and Theocritus, as scorched by the sun.
+When all things are parched with the heat (says Alcæus), then from among
+the leaves issues the song of the sweet Cicada. His shrill melody is
+heard in the full glow of noontide, and the vertical rays of a torrid
+sun fire him to sing. Over and over again Mr. Lord met with allusions to
+the same peculiarity.</p>
+
+<p>Cicadæ are regularly sold for food in the markets of South America. They
+are not eaten now, like they were at Athens, as a whet to the appetite;
+but they are dried in the sun, powdered, and made into a cake.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="STORIES_ABOUT_THE_BARNACLE_GOOSE" id="STORIES_ABOUT_THE_BARNACLE_GOOSE"></a>STORIES ABOUT THE BARNACLE GOOSE.</h2>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse">"As barnacles turn Poland geese</div>
+<div class="verse">In th' islands of the Orcades."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<div class="right1">&mdash;<i>Hudibras.</i></div>
+
+<div class="margin-top1">
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_110.jpg" alt="Letter O"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>ONE</b> of the earliest references to this
+popular error is in the "Natural
+Magic" of Baptista Porta, who says:&mdash;"Late writers report that not only
+in Scotland, but also in the river of Thames by London, there is a kind
+of shell-fish in a two-leaved shell, that hath a foot full of plaits
+and wrinkles.... They commonly stick to the keel of some old ship. Some
+say they come of worms, some of the boughs of trees which fall into the
+sea; if any of them be cast upon shore, they die; but they which are
+swallowed still into the sea, live and get out of their shells, and grow
+to be ducks, or such-like birds."</p>
+
+<p>Professor Max Müller, in a learned lecture, enters fully into the origin
+of the different stories about the Barnacle Goose. He quotes from the
+"Philosophical Transactions" of 1678 a full account by Sir Robert Moray,
+who declared that he had seen
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span>
+within the barnacle shell, as through a
+concave or diminishing glass, the bill, eyes, head, neck, breast, wings,
+tail, feet, and feathers of the Barnacle Goose. The next witness was
+John Gerarde, Master in Chirurgerie, who, in 1597, declared that he had
+seen the actual metamorphosis of the muscle into the bird, describing
+how&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The shell gapeth open, and the first thing that appeareth is the fore
+said lace or string; next come the leg of the birde hanging out, and
+as it groweth greater, it openeth the shell by degrees, till at length
+it is all come forth, and hangeth only by the bill, and falleth into
+the sea, when it gathereth feathers and groweth to a foule, bigger than
+a mallart; for the truth hereof, if any doubt, may it please them to
+repair unto me, and I shall satisfie them by the testimonies of good
+witnesses."</p>
+
+<p>As far back as the thirteenth century, the same story is traced in the
+writings of Giraldus Cambrensis. This great divine does not deny the
+truth of the miraculous origin of the Barnacle Geese, but he warns the
+Irish priests against dining off them during Lent on the plea that they
+were not flesh, but fish. For, he writes, "If a man during Lent were
+to dine off a leg of Adam, who was not born of flesh either, we should
+not consider him innocent of having eaten what is flesh." This modern
+myth, which, in spite of the protests of such men as Albertus Magnus,
+Æneas Sylvius, and others, maintained its ground for many centuries, and
+was defended, as late as 1629, in a book by Count Maier, "De volucri
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span>
+arborea," with arguments, physical, metaphysical, and theological, owed
+its origin to a play of words. The muscle shells are called <i>Bernaculæ</i>
+from the Latin <i>perna</i>, the mediæval Latin <i>berna</i>; the birds are called
+<i>Hibernicæ</i> or <i>Hiberniculæ</i>, abbreviated to <i>Berniculæ</i>. As their names
+seem one, the creatures are supposed to be one, and everything conspires
+to confirm the first mistake, and to invest what was originally a good
+Irish story&mdash;a mere <i>canard</i>&mdash;with all the dignity of scientific, and
+all the solemnity of theological truth. The myth continued to live
+until the age of Newton. Specimens of <i>Lepadidæ</i>, prepared by Professor
+Rolleston of Oxford, show how the outward appearance of the <i>Anatifera</i>
+could have supported the popular superstition which derived the
+<i>Bernicla</i>, the goose, from the <i>Bernicula</i>, the shell.</p>
+
+<p>Drayton (1613), in his "Poly-olbion," iii., in connexion with the river
+Lee, speaks of</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot center">"Th' anatomised fish and fowls from planchers sprung;"</p>
+
+<p>to which a note is appended in Southey's edition, p. 609, that such
+fowls were "Barnacles, a bird breeding upon old ships." A bunch of the
+shells attached to the ship, or to a piece of floating timber, at a
+distance appears like flowers in bloom; the foot of the animal has a
+similitude to the stalk of a plant growing from the ship's sides, the
+shell resembles a calyx, and the flower consists of the tentacula, or
+fingers, of the shell-fish. The ancient error was to mistake the foot
+for the neck of a goose, the shell for its head, and the tentacula for
+feathers. As to the body, <i>non est inventus</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Sir Kenelm Digby was soundly laughed at for relating to a party at
+the castle of the Governor of Calais, that "the Barnacle, a bird in
+Jersey, was first a shell-fish to appearance, and, from that striking
+upon old wood, became in time a bird." In 1807, there was exhibited in
+Spring-gardens, London, a "Wonderful natural curiosity, called the Goose
+Tree, Barnacle Tree, or Tree bearing Geese," taken up at sea on January
+12th, and more than twenty men could raise out of the water.
+<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></p>
+
+<p>Sir J. Emerson Tennent asks whether the ready acceptance and general
+credence given to so obvious a fable may not have been derived from
+giving too literal a construction to the text of the passage in the
+first chapter of Genesis:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">"And God said, Let the <i>waters bring forth abundantly</i> the
+moving creature that hath life, and the <i>fowl</i> that may fly in the
+open firmament of heaven."</p>
+
+<p>The Barnacle Goose is a well-known bird, and is eaten on fast-days in
+France, by virtue of this old belief in its marine origin. The belief
+in the barnacle origin of the bird still prevails on the west coast of
+Ireland, and in the Western Highlands of Scotland.</p>
+
+<p>The finding of the Barnacle is thus described by Mr. Sidebotham, to
+the Microscopical and Natural History Section of the Literary and
+Philosophical Society:&mdash;"In September, I was at Lytham with my family.
+The day was very stormy, and the previous night there had been a strong
+south-west wind,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span>
+and evidences of a very stormy sea outside the
+banks. Two of my children came running to tell me of a very strange
+creature that had been washed up on the shore. They had seen it from
+the pier, and pointed it out to a sailor, thinking it was a large dog
+with long hair. On reaching the shore I found a fine mass of Barnacles,
+<i>Pentalasinus anatifera</i>, attached to some staves of a cask, the whole
+being between four and five feet long. Several sailors had secured the
+prize, and were getting it on a truck to carry it away. The appearance
+was most remarkable, the hundreds of long tubes with their curious
+shells looking like what one would fancy the fabled Gorgon's head with
+its snaky locks. The curiosity was carried to a yard where it was to be
+exhibited, and the bellman went round to announce it under the name of
+the sea-lioness, or the great sea-serpent. Another mass of Barnacles
+was washed up at Lytham, and also one at Blackpool, the same day or the
+day following. This mass of Barnacles was evidently just such a one as
+that seen by Gerard at the Pile of Foulders. It is rare to have such a
+specimen on our coasts. The sailors at Lytham had never seen anything
+like it, although some of them were old men who had spent all their
+lives on the coast."</p>
+
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a>
+"Notes and Queries," No. 201.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="LEAVES_ABOUT_BOOKWORMS" id="LEAVES_ABOUT_BOOKWORMS"></a>LEAVES ABOUT BOOKWORMS.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_110.jpg" alt="Letter O"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>ON</b> paper, leather, and parchment are found various animals, popularly
+known as "Bookworms." Johnson describes it as a worm or mite that eats
+holes in books, chiefly when damp; and in the "Guardian" we find this
+reference to its habits:&mdash;"My lion, like a moth or bookworm, feeds upon
+nothing but paper."</p>
+
+<p>Many years ago an experienced keeper of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford
+collected these interesting details of Bookworms:&mdash;"The larvæ of
+<i>Crambus pinguinalis</i> will establish themselves upon the binding of a
+book, and spinning a robe will do it little injury. A mite, <i>Acarus
+eruditus</i>, eats the paste that fastens the paper over the edges of the
+binding and so loosens it. The caterpillar of another little moth takes
+its station in damp old books, between the leaves, and there commits
+great ravages. The little boring wood-beetle, who attacks books and
+will even bore through several volumes. An instance is mentioned of
+twenty-seven folio volumes being perforated
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span>
+in a straight line, by the
+same insect, in such a manner that by passing a cord through the perfect
+round hole made by it the twenty-seven volumes could be raised at once.
+The wood-beetle also destroys prints and drawings, whether framed or
+kept in a portfolio."</p>
+
+<p>There is another "Bookworm," which is often confounded with the
+Death-watch of the vulgar; but is smaller, and instead of beating
+at intervals, as does the Death-watch, continues its noise for a
+considerable length of time without intermission. It is usually found
+in old wood, decayed furniture, museums, and neglected books. The
+female lays her eggs, which are exceedingly small, in dry, dusty
+places, where they are least likely to meet with disturbance. They are
+generally hatched about the beginning of March, a little sooner or
+later, according to the weather. After leaving the eggs, the insects are
+so small as to be scarcely discerned without the use of a glass. They
+remain in this state about two months, somewhat resembling in appearance
+the mites in cheese, after which they undergo their change into the
+perfect insect. They feed on dead flies and other insects; and often,
+from their numbers and voracity, very much deface cabinets of natural
+history. They subsist on various other substances, and may often be
+observed carefully hunting for nutritious particles amongst the dust in
+which they are found, turning it over with their heads, and searching
+about in the manner of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span>
+swine. Many live through the winter buried deep
+in the dust to avoid the frost.</p>
+
+<p>The best mode of destroying the insects which infest books and MSS.
+has often occupied the attention of the possessors of valuable
+libraries. Sir Thomas Phillips found the wood of his book-case attacked,
+particularly where beech had been introduced, and appeared to think
+that the insect was much attracted by the paste employed in binding.
+He recommended as preservatives against their attacks spirits of
+turpentine and a solution of corrosive sublimate, and also the latter
+substance mixed with paste. In some instances he found the produce of
+a single impregnated female sufficient to destroy a book. Turpentine
+and spirit of tar are also recommended for their destruction; but the
+method pursued in the collections of the British Museum is an abundant
+supply of camphor, with attention to keeping the rooms dry, warm, and
+ventilated. Mr. Macleay states it is the <i>acari</i> only which feed on the
+paste employed in binding books, and the larvæ of the Coleoptera only
+which pierce the boards and leaves.</p>
+
+<p>The ravages of the Bookworm would be much more destructive had there
+not been a sort of guardian to the literary treasures in the shape of
+a spider, who, when examined through a microscope, resembles a knight
+in armour. This champion of the library follows the Worm into the
+book-case, discovers the pit he has digged, rushes on his victim, which
+is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span>
+about his own size, and devours him. His repast finished, he rests
+for about a fortnight, and when his digestion is completed, he sets out
+to break another lance with the enemy.</p>
+
+<p>The Death-watch, already referred to, and which must be acquitted of
+destroying books, is chiefly known by the noise which he makes behind
+the wainscoting, where he ticks like a clock or watch. How so loud
+a noise is produced by so small an insect has never been properly
+explained; and the ticking has led to many legends. The naturalist
+Degeer relates that one night, in the autumn of 1809, during an
+entomological excursion in Brittany, where travellers were scarce and
+accommodation bad, he sought hospitality at the house of a friend. He
+was from home, and Degeer found a great deal of trouble in gaining
+admittance; but at last the peasant who had charge of the house told
+Degeer that he would give him "the chamber of death," if he liked. As
+Degeer was much fatigued, he accepted the offer. "The bed is there,"
+said the man, "but no one has slept in it for some time. Every night the
+spirit of the officer, who was surprised and killed in this room by some
+chouans, comes back. When the officer was dead, the peasants divided
+what he had about him, and the officer's watch fell to my uncle, who was
+delighted with the prize, and brought it home to examine it. However,
+he soon found out that the watch was broken, and would not go. He then
+placed it under his pillow, and went to sleep; he awoke in the night,
+and to his terror heard the ticking of a watch. In
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> vain he sold the
+watch, and gave the money for masses to be said for the officer's soul,
+the ticking continued, and has never ceased." Degeer said that he would
+exorcise the chamber, and the peasant left him, after making the sign of
+the cross. The naturalist at once guessed the riddle, and, accustomed to
+the pursuit of insects, soon had a couple of Death-watches shut up in a
+tin case, and the ticking was reproduced.</p>
+
+<p>Swift has prescribed this destructive remedy by way of ridicule:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="verse7">"A Wood-worm</div>
+<div class="verse">That lies in old wood, like a hare in her form:</div>
+<div class="verse">With teeth or with claws it will bite, or will scratch;</div>
+<div class="verse">And chambermaids christen this worm a Death-watch,</div>
+<div class="verse">Because like a watch it always cries click:</div>
+<div class="verse">Then woe be to those in the house that are sick!</div>
+<div class="verse">For, sure as a gun, they will give up the ghost</div>
+<div class="verse">If the maggot cries click when it scratches the post.</div>
+<div class="verse">But a kettle of scalding hot water ejected,</div>
+<div class="verse">Infallibly cures the timber affected:</div>
+<div class="verse">The omen is broken, the danger is over;</div>
+<div class="verse">The maggot will die, the sick will recover."</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="BORING_MARINE_ANIMALS_AND_HUMAN_ENGINEERS" id="BORING_MARINE_ANIMALS_AND_HUMAN_ENGINEERS"></a>
+BORING MARINE ANIMALS, AND HUMAN ENGINEERS.</h2>
+
+<div>
+  <img class="drop-cap" src="images/i_180.jpg" alt="Letter W"/>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><b>WERE</b> a young naturalist asked to exemplify
+what man has learned from the
+lower animals, he could scarcely adduce a more striking instance than
+that of a submarine shelly worker teaching him how to execute some of
+his noblest works. This we have learned from the life and labours of the
+<i>Pholas</i>, of which it has been emphatically said:&mdash;"Numerous accounts
+have been published during the last fourteen years in every civilized
+country and language of the boring process of the <i>Pholas</i>; and machines
+formed on the model of its mechanism have for years been tunnelling Mont
+Cenis."</p>
+
+<p>In the Eastern Zoological Gallery of the British Museum, cases 35 and
+36, as well as in the Museum of Economic Geology in Piccadilly, may be
+seen specimens of the above very curious order of <i>Conchifers</i>, most
+of the members of which are distinguished by their habits of boring or
+digging, a process in which they are assisted by the peculiar formation
+of the foot, from which they derive their name. Of these ten families
+one of the most characteristic
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span>
+is that of the Razor-shells, which,
+when the valves are shut, are of a long, flattened, cylindrical shape,
+and open at both ends. Projecting its strong pointed foot at one of
+these ends, the <i>solen</i> can work itself down into the sand with great
+rapidity, while at the upper end its respiratory tubes are shot out to
+bring the water to its gills. Of the <i>Pholadæ</i>, the shells of which
+are sometimes called multivalve, because, in addition to the two chief
+portions, they have a number of smaller accessory pieces, some bore
+in hard mud, others in wood, and others in rocks. They fix themselves
+firmly by the powerful foot, and then make the shell revolve; the sharp
+edges of this commence the perforation, which is afterwards enlarged by
+the rasp-like action of the rough exterior; and though the shell must
+be constantly worn down, yet it is replaced by a new formation from the
+animal, so as never to be unfit for its purpose. The typical bivalve of
+this family is the <i>Pholas</i>, which bores into limestone-rock and other
+hard material, and commits ravages on the piers, breakwaters, &amp;c., that
+it selects for a home.</p>
+
+<p>In the same family as the above Dr. Gray ranks the <i>Teredo</i>,
+<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> or
+wood-boring mollusc, whose ravages on ships, piles, wooden piers, &amp;c.,
+at sea resemble those of the white ant on furniture, joints of houses,
+&amp;c., on shore. Perforating the timber by exactly the same process as
+that by which the Pholas perforates
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span>
+the stones, the Teredo advances
+continually, eating out a contorted tube or gallery, which it lines
+behind it with calcareous matter, and through which it continues to
+breathe the water.</p>
+
+<p>The priority of the demonstration of the Pholas and its "boring habits"
+has been much disputed. The evidence is full of curious details. It
+appears that Mr. Harper, of Edinburgh, author of "The Sea-side and
+Aquarium," having claimed the lead. Mr. Robertson, of Brighton, writes
+to dispute the originality; adding that he publicly exhibited Pholades
+in the Pavilion at Brighton in July, 1851, perforating chalk rocks by
+the raspings of their valves and squirtings of their syphons. Professor
+Flourens (says Mr. Robertson) taught my observations to his class in
+Paris in 1853; I published them in 1851, and again more fully in the
+"Journal de Conchyliologie," in 1853; and M. Emile Blanchard illustrated
+them in the same year in his "Organisation du Règne Animal." I published
+a popular account of the perforating processes in "Household Words"
+in 1856. After obtaining the suffrages of the French authorities, I
+have been recently honoured with those of the British naturalist. (See
+Woodward's "Recent and Fossil Shells," p. 327. Family, Pholadidæ.) On
+returning to England last autumn I exhibited perforating Pholades to
+all the naturalists who cared to watch them. An intelligent lady whom I
+supplied with Pholades has made a really new and original observation,
+which I may take this opportunity of communicating to the public. She
+observed two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span>
+Pholades whose perforations were bringing them nearer and
+nearer to each other. Their mutual raspings were wearing away the thin
+partition which separated their crypts. She was curious to know what
+they would do when they met, and watched them closely. When the two
+perforating shell-fish met and found themselves in each other's way, the
+stronger just bored right through the weaker Pholas.
+<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Robertson has communicated to "Jameson's Journal," No. 101, the
+results of his opportunities of studying the Pholas, during six months,
+to discover how this mollusc makes its hole or crypt in the chalk: by
+a chemical solvent? by absorption? by ciliary currents? or by rotatory
+motions? Between twenty and thirty of these creatures were at work
+in lumps of chalk, in sea-water, in a finger-glass, and open for
+three months; and by watching their operations. Mr. Robertson became
+convinced that the Pholas makes its hole by grating the chalk with its
+rasp-like valves, licking it up when pulverized with its foot, forcing
+it up through its principal orbrambial syphon, and squirting it out in
+oblong nodules. The crypt protects the Pholas from <i>confervæ</i>, which,
+when they get at it, grow not merely outside, but even with the lips
+of the valves, preventing the action of the syphons. In the foot there
+is a gelatinous spring or style, which, even when taken out, has great
+elasticity, and which seems the mainspring of the motions of the Pholas.</p>
+
+<p>Upon this Dr. James Stark, of Edinburgh, writes:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&mdash;"Mr. Robertson, of Brighton, claims the merit of teaching that
+Pholades perforate rocks by 'the rasping of their valves and the
+squirting of their syphons.' His observations only appear to reach
+back to 1851. But the late Mr. John Stark, of Edinburgh, author of the
+'Elements of Natural History,' read a paper before the Royal Society of
+Edinburgh, in 1826, which was printed in the Society's 'Transactions'
+of that year, in which he demonstrated that the Pholades perforate the
+shale rocks in which they occur on this coast, by means of the rasping
+of their valves, and not by acids or other secretions. From also finding
+that their shells scratched limestone without injury to the fine rasping
+rugosities, he inferred that it was by the same agency they perforated
+the hard limestone rocks."</p>
+
+<p>To this Mr. Robertson replies, that Mr. Osler also, in 1826,
+demonstrated that the Pholades "perforate the shale rocks by means of
+the rasping of their valves; and more, for he actually witnessed a
+rotatory movement. But Réaumur and Poli had done as much as this in the
+eighteenth and Sibbald in the seventeenth century: and yet I found the
+solvent hypothesis in the ascendant among naturalists in 1835, when I
+first interested myself in the controversy. What I did in 1851 was, I
+exhibited Pholades at work perforating rocks, and explained how they did
+it. What I have done is, I have made future controversy impossible, by
+exhibiting the animals at work, and by discovering the anatomy and the
+physiology of the perforating instruments.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span>
+In the words of M. Flourens,
+'I made the animals work before my eyes,' and I 'made known their
+mechanism.' The discovery of the function of the hyaline stylet is not
+merely a new discovery, it is the discovery of a kind of instrument as
+yet unique in physiology."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Harper having termed the boring organ of the Pholas the "hyaline
+stylet," found it to have puzzled some of the disputants, whereupon Mr.
+Harper writes:&mdash;"Its use up to the present time has been a mystery,
+but the general opinion of authors seems to be, that it is the gizzard
+of the Pholas. This I very much doubt, for it is my belief that the
+presence of such an important muscle is solely for the purpose of
+aiding the animal's boring operations. Being situated in the centre
+of the foot, we can readily conceive the great increase of strength
+thus conveyed to the latter member, which is made to act as a powerful
+fulcrum, by the exercise of which the animal rotates&mdash;and at the same
+time presses its shell against and rasps the surface of the rock.
+The question being asked, 'How can the stylet be procured to satisfy
+curiosity?' I answer, by adopting the following extremely simple plan.
+Having disentombed a specimen, with the point of a sharp instrument
+cut a slit in the base of its foot, and the object of your search will
+be distinctly visible in the shape of, if I may so term it, an opal
+cylinder. Sometimes I have seen the point of this organ spring out
+beyond the incision, made as above described."</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, Mr. Harper presented the Editor of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span> "Athenæum" with a
+piece of bored rock, of which he has several specimens. He adds, "On
+examination, you will perceive that the larger Pholas must have bored
+through its smaller and weaker neighbour (how suggestive!), the shell of
+the latter, most fortunately, remaining in its own cavity."</p>
+
+<p>Now, Mr. Robertson claimed for his observation of this phenomenon
+novelty and originality; but Mr. Harper stoutly maintained it to be
+"as common to the eye of the practised geologist as rain or sunshine."
+The details are curious; though some impatient, and not very grateful
+reader, may imagine himself in the condition of the shell of the smaller
+Pholas, and will be, as he deserves to remain, in the minority.
+<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a></p>
+
+<p>It may be interesting to sum up a few of the opinions of the mode by
+which these boring operations are performed. Professor Forbes states
+the mode by which Molluscs bore into wood and other materials is as
+follows:&mdash;"Some of the Gauterspods have tongues covered with silica to
+enable them to bore, and it was probably by some process of this kind
+that all the Molluscs bored."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Peach never observed the species of Pholas to turn round in their
+holes, as stated by some observers, although he had watched them with
+great attention. Mr. Charlesworth refers to the fact that, in one
+species of shell, not only does the hole in the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span>
+rock which the animal
+occupies increase in size, but also the hole through which it projects
+its syphons.</p>
+
+<p>Professor John Phillips, alluding to the theories which have been
+given of the mode in which Molluscs bore into the rocks in which they
+live, believes that an exclusively mechanical theory will not account
+for the phenomenon; and he is inclined to adopt the view of Dr. T.
+Williams&mdash;that the boring of the Pholades can only be explained on the
+principle which involves a chemical as well as a mechanical agency.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. E. Ray Lankester notices that the boring of Annelids seems quite
+unknown; and he mentions two cases, one by a worm called Leucadore, the
+other by a Sabella. Leucadore is very abundant on some shores, where
+boulders and pebbles may be found worm-eaten and riddled by them. Only
+stones composed of carbonate of lime are bored by them. On coasts where
+such stones are rare, they are selected, and others are left. The worms
+are <i>quite soft</i>, and armed only with horny bristles. <i>How, then, do
+they bore?</i> Mr. Lankester maintains that it is by carbonic acid and
+other acid excretions of their bodies, <i>aided</i> by the mechanical action
+of their bristles. The selection of a material soluble in these acids
+is most noticeable, since the softest chalk and the hardest limestone
+are bored with the same facility. This can only be by chemical action.
+If, then, we have a case of chemical boring in these worms, is it not
+probable that many Molluscs are similarly assisted in their excavations?</p>
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a>
+How Brunel took his construction of the Thames Tunnel from
+observing the bore of the <i>Teredo navalis</i> in the keel of a ship, in
+1814, is well known.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> "Athenæum," No. 1640.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a>
+See also "Life in the Sea," in "Strange Stories of the Animal
+World," by the author of the present volume. Second Edition. 1868.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX.</h2>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">A</span>NCIENT Zoological Gardens, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Animals, Rare, of London Zoological Society, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>,
+<a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Annelids, boring, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Annelids and Molluscs, Boring Habits of, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Bear in captivity, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Bear, the Great, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Bear at Madrid, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Bear described, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Bear, Domestic, in Paraguay, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Bear, Economy of, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Bear and its Food, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Bears, Fossil, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Bear, Muscular Force of, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Bear, Wallace's Account of, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Bear, Zoological Society's, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>,
+<a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Eater, Porcupine, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Bear, Professor Owen on, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Eaters, scarcity of, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Eater, Tamandua, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ant-Eaters, Von Saek's Account of, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Aristotle's History of Animals, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>,
+<a href="#Page_280">280</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">B</span>ARNACLE GEESE, finding of the, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Barnacle Goose, Gerarde on, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Barnacle Goose, Giraldus Cambrensis on, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Barnacle Goose, Max Müller on, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Barnacle Goose, name of, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Barnacle Goose, Sir E. Tennent on, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Barnacle Goose, Sir Kenelm Digby on, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Barnacle Goose, Sir R. Moray on, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Barnacle Goose, Stories of the, <a href="#Page_331">331-335</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Barnacles breeding upon old ships, <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Barnacle Geese in the Thames, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, altivolans, by Gilbert White, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, American, by Lesson, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, Aristotle on, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, Mr. Bell on, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bats, Curiosities of, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, described by Calmet, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, Flight and Wing of, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bats, in England, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, Heber, Stedman, and Waterton on, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bats in Jamaica, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, Kalong, of Java, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, Long-Eared, by Sowerby, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>,
+<a href="#Page_93">93-96</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, Nycteris, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, Rere-mouse and Flitter-mouse, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat Skeleton, Sir C. Bell on, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat in Scripture, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, Vampire, from Sumatra, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, Vampire, Lines on, by Byron, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat, vulgar errors respecting, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bat-Fowling or Bat-Folding, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Berlin Zoological Gardens and Museum, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bible Natural History, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds, Addison on their Nests and Music, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>,
+<a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bird, Australian Bower, Nest of, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bird, Baya, Indian, Nest of, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds and Animals, Beauty in, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds, Brain of, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds, Characteristics of, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds, Colour of, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bird Confinement, Dr. Livingstone on, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds' Eggs, large, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds' Eggs, Colours of, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds' Eggs and Nests, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds, European, list of, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds, Flight of, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>,
+<a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds, Insectivorous, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Instinct, Intelligence, and Reason, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bird-Life, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bird-Murder, wanton, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds' Nesting, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds' Nests&mdash;Cape Swallows, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds' Nests&mdash;Brush Turkey, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds' Nests, large, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds' Eggs&mdash;Ostrich and Epyornis, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>,
+<a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds' Nests&mdash;Tailor Birds, <a href="#Page_165">165-167</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds, Rapid Flight of, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds, Signal of Danger among, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds, Song of, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Birds, Mr. Wolley's Collections, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>,
+<a href="#Page_160">160</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bookworms, Leaves about, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span>
+</li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Bookworms and Death-watch, <a href="#Page_337">337</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Boring Marine Animals, and Human Engineers, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">C</span>HAMELEON of the Ancients, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleon's antipathy to black, <a href="#Page_322">322</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleons, Mrs. Belzoni's, <a href="#Page_316">316-320</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleons, Birth of, in England, <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleon changing Colour, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>,
+<a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleon, Cuvier on, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleon, described by Calmet, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleon Family, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleon, Air-food of, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleon, Milne Edwards on its Change of Colour,
+<a href="#Page_314">314-316</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleons, Native Countries of, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleon of the Poets, <a href="#Page_308">308</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleons, Reproduction of, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chameleon, Tongue and Eyes of, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>,
+<a href="#Page_311">311</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Chinese Zoological Gardens, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Cicada, Song of the, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Cormorant's Bone, curious, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Cormorants, Chase of, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Cormorant Fishery in China, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Cormorant, Habits of the, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Cormorant trained for Fishing, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Curiosities of Zoology, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">E</span>CCENTRICITIES of Penguins, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>
+<ul class="ndx-ul2">
+<li class="ndx-li">Darwin, Mr., his account of Falkland Islands Penguin,
+<a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Dassent Island Penguins, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Death-watch and Bookworm, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>,
+<a href="#Page_338">338</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Falkland Islands Penguins, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">King Penguins, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Patagonian Penguins, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Penguin, the name, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Webster, Mr., his Account of Penguins, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Epicure's Ortolan, the, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Epicurism Extravagant, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Evelyn and St. James's Physique Garden, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">F</span>ISH in British Colombia, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>
+<ul class="ndx-ul2">
+<li class="ndx-li">Candle-fish, <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Octopus, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Salmon Army, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Spoonbill Sturgeon, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Sturgeons, and Sturgeon Fishing, <a href="#Page_284">284-287</a></li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Fish-Talk, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>
+<ul class="ndx-ul2">
+<li class="ndx-li">Affection of Fishes, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Bohemian Wels Fish, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Bonita and Flying Fish, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Californian Fish, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Carp at Fontainebleau, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Cat-fish, curious Account of, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Double Fish, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Fish changing Colour, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Fish Noise, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Gold Fish, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Grampus, gambols of, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Great General of the South Sea, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Grouper, the, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Hassar, the, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Hearing of Fishes, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Herring Puzzle, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Jaculator Fish of Java, <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Jamaica, Curious Fish at, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Little Fishes the Food of Larger, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Marine Observatory, <a href="#Page_276">276</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Mecho of the Danube, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Migration of Fishes, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Miller's Thumb, <a href="#Page_276">276</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Numbers, vast, of Fishes, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Pike, Wonderful, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Pilot Fish, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Sharks, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Singing Fish, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Square-browed Malthe, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Strange Fishes, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Sun-fish, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Swimming of Fishes, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Sword-fish, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Warrior Fish, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Frog and Toad Concerts, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">H</span>EDGEHOG, the, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hedgehog devouring Snakes, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hedgehog, Food of, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hedgehogs, Gilbert White on, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hedgehog and Poisons, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hedgehogs, Sir T. Browne on, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hedgehog Sucking Cows, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hedgehog and Viper, Fight between, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>,
+<a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hedgehog, Voracity of, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hippopotamus, Ancient History of, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hippopotamus, described by Aristotle and Herodotus,
+<a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hippopotamus, Economy of the, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hippopotamus, the, in England, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hippopotami, Fossil, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hippopotami on the Niger, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hippopotamus, Professor Owen's Description of,
+<a href="#Page_111">111-115</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hippopotamus and River Horse, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hippopotamus in Scripture, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hippopotamus, Utility of, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hippopotamus from the White Nile, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Hippopotamus, Zoological Society's, in 1850,
+<a href="#Page_108">108-111</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">L</span>EAVES about Bookworms, <a href="#Page_336">336</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lions in Algeria, and Jules Gerard, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion, African, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion, Bengal, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion described by Bennett, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion described by Buffon, <a href="#Page_123">123-125</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion described by Burchell, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion, disappearance of, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion and Hottentots, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>,
+<a href="#Page_133">133-136</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion-hunting Feats, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion, "King of the Forest," <a href="#Page_126">126</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion, Longevity of, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion, Maneless, <a href="#Page_133">133-135</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion, Niebuhr on, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion in the Nineveh Sculptures, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>,
+<a href="#Page_140">140</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lions, the Drudhoe, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lions, Popular Errors respecting, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion, Prickle or Claw in the Tail, <a href="#Page_137">137-139</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion, Roar of, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lions in the Tower of London, <a href="#Page_140">140</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">"Lion Tree" in the Mantatee Country, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion Stories of the Shows, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lion-Talk, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Lioness and her Young, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">M</span>ERMAID of 1822, <a href="#Page_43">43-47</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaid in Berbice, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaid in the Bosphorus, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaid and Dugong, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaids, Evidences of, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaid at Exmouth, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaid, Leyden's Ballad, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaid and Manatee, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaid at Milford Haven, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaid, Japanese, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaid, Scottish, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaids and Sirens, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaid's Song, Haydn's, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaids, Stories of, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaid, Structure of, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mermaids in Suffolk, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole, its Economy controverted, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole, the Ettrick Shepherd on, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole, Le Court on, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole and Fairy Rings, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole and Farming, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole, Feeling of, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole at Home, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole, its Hunting-ground, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Moles, Loves of the, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole, structure of the, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole, St. Hilaire on, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole, Shrew, of North America, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole, Voracity of, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Montezuma's Zoological Gardens, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Musical Lizard, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>
+<ul class="ndx-ul2">
+<li class="ndx-li">Climbing Walls, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Formosa Isle, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Gecko ennobled, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+</ul>
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">O</span>RNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ortolan described, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>,
+<a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ortolans, how fattened, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Ortolan, Mr. Gould on, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>,
+<a href="#Page_175">175</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Owls, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>
+<ul class="ndx-ul2">
+<li class="ndx-li">Abyssinian Owl, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Barn Owl, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Bischaco, or Coquimbo, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Boobook Owl, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Cats and Owls, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Fraser's Eagle Owl, from Fernando Po, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Food of Owls, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Javanese Owl, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Snowy Owl, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Tricks by Night, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Utility of, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Waterton on the Owl, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">P</span>ELICANS and Cormorants, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Pelicans described by Gould, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Pelican in Japan, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Pelican Popular Error, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>,
+<a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Pelican Pouches, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Pelican Symbol, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">"Pelican of the wilderness," <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Pholas, Life and Labours of, <a href="#Page_341">341</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Pholades, Charlesworth and Peach on, <a href="#Page_347">347</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Pholades, Harper on, <a href="#Page_346">346</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Pholades, Robertson on, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">R</span>HINOCEROS in England, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>
+<ul class="ndx-ul2">
+<li class="ndx-li">African Rhinoceros in 1858, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Ancient History, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Bruce and Sparmann, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Burchell's shooting, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Horn of the Rhinoceros, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>,
+<a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Indian Wild Ass, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">One-horned and Two-horned, <a href="#Page_23">23-26</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Scripture, Rhinoceros of, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Speehnan's Rhinoceros Shooting, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Tegetmeir describes the African Rhinoceros, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Tractability, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Varieties of Rhinoceros, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Zoological Society's Rhinoceros, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>,
+<a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">S</span>ALE of Wild Animals, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Sentinel Birds, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Song of the Cicada, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Songs of Birds and Seasons of the Day, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">St. James's Park Menagerie, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Stories of the Barnacle Goose, <a href="#Page_331">331-335</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Stories of Mermaids, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Surrey Zoological Gardens, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">T</span>ALKING birds, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>
+<ul class="ndx-ul2">
+<li class="ndx-li">Bittern and Night Raven, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Blue Jay, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Canaries, Talking, <a href="#Page_210">210-212</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Chinese Starling, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Crowned Crane, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Cuckoo, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Laughing Goose, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Nightingale, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Piping Crow, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Snipe, Neighing, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Trochilos and Crocodile, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Umbrella Bird, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Whidaw Bird, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Wild Swan, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Woodpecker at Constantinople, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Talk about Toucans, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>
+<ul class="ndx-ul2">
+<li class="ndx-li">Bills of Toucans, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Carnivorous propensity, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Economy of, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Food of, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Gould, Mr., his Grand Monograph, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>,
+<a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Owen, Professor, on the Mandibles, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Swainson, Mr., on Toucans, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Toucan Family, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">White Ants' Nests, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Toucanet, Gould's, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Toad and Frog Concerts, <a href="#Page_327">327-328</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Toads, Running, Dr. Husenbeth's, <a href="#Page_323">323-327</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Tower of London Menagerie, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Tree-climbing Crab, the, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>
+<ul class="ndx-ul2">
+<li class="ndx-li">Bernhard, Hermit, and Soldier Crab, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Climbing Perch, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Crab, Burrowing, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Crab Migration in Jamaica, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Fishing-frogs, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Glass Crabs, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Pill-making Crabs, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Purse Crab feeding on Cocoa-nuts, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Robber Crab, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Screw-pines, Crab climbing, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Vaulted Crab of the Moluccas, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">U</span>NICORNS, ancient, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Unicorn and Antelope, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Unicorn in Central Africa, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Unicorn described by Ctesias, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>,
+<a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Unicorn, Cuvier on, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Unicorn, Is it Fabulous? <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Unicorn, Klaproth on, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Unicorn in Kordofan, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Unicorn and its Horn, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>,
+<a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Unicorn, modern, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Unicorn, Ogilby on, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Unicorn, Rev. J. Campbell on, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Unicorn in the Royal Arms, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">W</span>EATHER-WISE ANIMALS, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>
+<ul class="ndx-ul2">
+<li class="ndx-li">Ants, Asses, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Darwin's Signs of Rain, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Frogs and Snails, <a href="#Page_237">237-240</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">List of Animals, <a href="#Page_241">241-247</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Mole, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Mother Carey's Chickens and Goose, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Redbreast, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Seagulls, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Signs of Rain, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Stormy Petrels, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Shepherd of Banbury, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Toucans, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Weatherproof Birds' Nests, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li>
+<li class="ndx-li">Wild Geese and Ducks, <a href="#Page_255">235</a></li>
+</ul>
+</li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Wild Animals, Cost of, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Wild Beast Shows, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul class="ndx-ul">
+<li class="ndx-li">
+<span class="f2">Z</span>OOLOGICAL GARDENS, Origin of, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Zoological Society of London, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li>
+
+<li class="ndx-li">Zoology, Curiosities of, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<p class="center">C. A. Macintosh, Printer, Great New-street, London.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<div class="transnote margin-top3">
+
+<h3>Transcriber's Note:</h3>
+<ul>
+<li class="margin-bottom5">
+Obvious punctuation and spelling errors repaired.
+</li>
+<li class= "margin-bottom5">
+Word combinations that appeared with and without hyphens were changed to the
+predominant hyphenated form.
+</li>
+<li class= "margin-bottom5">
+Original spelling and its variations were not standardized.
+</li>
+<li class= "margin-bottom5">
+Corrections in the spelling of names were made when those could be verified.
+Otherwise the variations were left as they were.
+</li>
+<li class= "margin-bottom5">
+Footnotes were moved to the ends of the chapters in which they they belonged
+and numbered in one continuous sequence. The pagination in index entries which
+referred to these footnotes was not changed to match their new locations and
+is therefore incorrect.
+</li>
+<li class= "margin-bottom5">
+Some index entries are not in alphabetical order.  They were not corrected.
+</li>
+<li class= "margin-bottom5">
+  Variant forms retained and errors corrected:
+  <ul>
+  <li>Page 18: "Parrot-houses, the, sometimes...." changed to "Parrot-houses:
+    they sometimes changed...."</li>
+  <li>Page 170 and others: Kolobeng and Kolenbeng. Both spellings were retained.</li>
+  <li>Page 191 and others: Tussa, tussack and tussock.  All spellings were retained.</li>
+  <li>Page 276: Finisterre changed to Finistère.</li>
+  <li>Page 333: cennexion changed to connexion "... in connexion with the river Lee...."</li>
+  <li>Page 352:  Screw-pines, Crab climbing, 295;  pagination changed to 298.</li>
+  <li>The name of Shakespeare appears with varying spellings.  All variants were kept.</li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Eccentricities of the Animal Creation., by 
+John Timbs
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+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg's Eccentricities of the Animal Creation., by John Timbs
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
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+
+Title: Eccentricities of the Animal Creation.
+
+Author: John Timbs
+
+Release Date: December 14, 2013 [EBook #44422]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ECCENTRICITIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow, Christian Boissonnas and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: KING PENGUINS.]
+
+
+
+
+  ECCENTRICITIES
+
+  OF
+
+  THE ANIMAL CREATION.
+
+
+  BY JOHN TIMBS.
+
+  AUTHOR OF "THINGS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN."
+
+
+  WITH EIGHT ENGRAVINGS.
+
+
+  SEELEY, JACKSON, AND HALLIDAY, 54, FLEET-STREET.
+  LONDON. MDCCCLXIX.
+
+  _The right of translation is reserved._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+  INTRODUCTORY.--CURIOSITIES OF ZOOLOGY.
+
+  Natural History in Scripture, and Egyptian Records, 11.--Origin of
+  Zoological Gardens, 12.--The Greeks and Romans, 12.--Montezuma's
+  Zoological Gardens, 13.--Menagerie in the Tower of London,
+  14.--Menagerie in St. James's Park, 14.--John Evelyn's Notes,
+  15.--Ornithological Society, 15.--Continental Gardens, 16.--Zoological
+  Society of London instituted, 16; its most remarkable Animals,
+  16.--Cost of Wild Animals, 18.--Sale of Animals, 20.--Surrey
+  Zoological Gardens, 20.--Wild-beast Shows, 21.
+
+
+  THE RHINOCEROS IN ENGLAND.
+
+  Ancient History, 22, 23.--One-horned and Two-horned, 25,
+  26.--Tractability, 25.--Bruce and Sparmann, 27.--African Rhinoceros in
+  1868, 27.--Description of, 29.--Burchell's Rhinoceros, 30.--Horn of
+  the Rhinoceros, 31, 32.
+
+
+  STORIES OF MERMAIDS.
+
+  Sirens of the Ancients, 33.--Classic Pictures of Mermaids,
+  34.--Leyden's Ballad, 35.--Ancient Evidence, 36, 37, 38.--Mermaid in
+  the West Indies, 39.--Mermaids, Seals, and Dugongs, 41.--Mermaids and
+  Manatee, 42.--Test for a Mermaid, 43.--Mermaid of 1822, 43.--Japanese
+  Mermaids, 44.--Recent Evidence, 47, 48.
+
+
+  IS THE UNICORN FABULOUS?
+
+  Ctesias and Wild Asses, 65.--Aristotle, Herodotus, and Pliny,
+  50.--Modern Unicorns, 50.--Ancient Evidence, 51.--Hunting the
+  Unicorn, 52.--Antelopes, 53, 54.--Cuvier and the Oryx, 54.--Tibetan
+  Animal, 55.--Klaproth's Evidence, 55.--Rev. John Campbell's Evidence,
+  57.--Baikie on, 58.--Factitious Horns in Museums, 59.--Unicorn in the
+  Royal Arms, 60.--Catching the Unicorn, 60.--Belief in Unicorns, 61.
+
+
+  THE MOLE AT HOME.
+
+  Economy of the Mole, 62.--Its Structure, 63.--Fairy Rings; Feeling
+  of the Mole, 64.--Le Court's Experiments, 62, 65.--Hunting-grounds,
+  67.--Loves of the Moles, 68, 69.--Persecution of Moles.--Shrew Mole,
+  70.--Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, on Moles, 71.
+
+
+  THE GREAT ANT-BEAR.
+
+  The Ant-Bear of 1853, 72, 73.--Mr. Wallace, on the Amazon, describes
+  the Ant-Bear, 73.--Food of the Ant-Bear, 74.--His Resorts, 75.--Habits
+  in Captivity, by Professor Owen, 76-80.--Fossil Ant-Bear, 80,
+  81.--Tamandua Ant-Bear, 82--Von Sack's Ant-Bear, 83.--Porcupine
+  Ant-Eater, 84.--Ant-Bears in the Zoological Gardens, 84.
+
+
+  CURIOSITIES OF BATS.
+
+  Virgil's Harpies, 85.--Pliny on the Bat, 85.--Rere-mouse and
+  Flitter-mouse, 86.--Bats, not Birds but Quadrupeds, 87.--Sir Charles
+  Bell on the Wing of the Bat, 87.--Vampire Bat from Sumatra, 88.--Lord
+  Byron and Vampire, 89.--Levant Superstition, 89.--Bat described by
+  Heber, Waterton, and Steadman, 90.--Lesson on Bats, 91.--Bat Fowling
+  or Folding, 91, 92.--Sowerby's Long-eared Bat, 92, 96.--Wing of
+  the Bat, 96.--_Nycteris_ Bat, 97.--_Kalong_ Bat of Java, 98.--Bats,
+  various, 100, 101.
+
+
+  THE HEDGEHOG.
+
+  Hedgehog Described, 102.--Habits, 103.--Eating Snakes, 105.--Poisons,
+  105, 106.--Battle with a Viper, 105.--Economy of the Hedgehog, 106,
+  107.
+
+
+  THE HIPPOPOTAMUS IN ENGLAND.
+
+  Living Hippopotamus brought to England in 1850, 108.--Capture and
+  Conveyance, 111.--Professor Owen's Account, 111-115.--Described
+  by Naturalists and Travellers, 115-118.--Utility to Man,
+  118-119.--Ancient History, 119.--In Scripture, 120.--Alleged
+  Disappearance, 121.--Fossil, 122.
+
+
+  LION-TALK.
+
+  Character, 123.--Reputed Generosity, 125.--Burchell's Account,
+  125.--Lion-Tree in the Mantatee Country, 127.--Lion-hunting,
+  128.--Disappearance of Lions, 130, 131.--Human Prey, 132.--Maneless
+  Lions of Guzerat, 134.--A Lion Family in Bengal, 135, 136.--Prickle on
+  the Lion's Tail, 137-139.--Nineveh Lions, 139.--Lions in the Tower of
+  London, 140, 141.--Feats with Lions, 142.--Lion-hunting in Algeria, by
+  Jules Gerard, 144.--The Prudhoe Lions, 144.
+
+
+  BIRD-LIFE.
+
+  Rate at which Birds fly, 145, 146.--Air in the Bones of Birds,
+  146.--Flight of the Humming-bird, 147.--Colour of Birds, 148.--Song
+  of Birds, 149.--Beauty in Animals, 150.--Insectivorous Birds,
+  151.--Sea-fowl Slaughter, 152.--Hooded Crow in Zetland, 154.--Brain of
+  Birds, 154.--Danger-signals, 155.--Addison's Love of Nature, 156, 157.
+
+
+  BIRDS' EGGS AND NESTS.
+
+  Colours of Eggs, 158.--Bird's-nesting, 159.--Mr. Wolley, the
+  Ornithologist, 159, 160.--European Birds of Prey, 161.--Large
+  Eggs, 162, 163, 164.--Baya's Nest, 164.--Oriole and Tailor-bird,
+  165, 166.--Australian Bower-bird, 167.--Cape Swallows, 168.--"Bird
+  Confinement," by Dr. Livingstone.
+
+
+  THE EPICURE'S ORTOLAN.
+
+  Origin of the Ortolan, 172; described, 173, 174; Fattening process,
+  175, 176.--Prodigal Epicurism, 177, 178.
+
+
+  TALK ABOUT TOUCANS.
+
+  Toucan family, 179.--Gould's grand Monograph, 180.--Toucans described,
+  180-182; Food, 183; Habits, 184.--Gould's Toucanet, 187.
+
+
+  ECCENTRICITIES OF PENGUINS.
+
+  Penguins on Dassent Island, 188.--Patagonian Penguins, 189.--Falkland
+  Islands, 189.--King Penguins, 190, 191.--Darwin's Account,
+  192.--Webster's Account, 193.--Swainson's Account, 194.
+
+
+  PELICANS AND CORMORANTS.
+
+  Pelicans described by various Naturalists, 195, 196.--The Pelican
+  Island, 197.--Popular Error, 199-200.--Cormorants, and Fishing with
+  Cormorants, 201-204.
+
+
+  TALKING BIRDS, INSTINCTS, ETC.
+
+  Sounds by various Birds, 204.--Umbrella Bird, 206.--Bittern,
+  207.--Butcher-bird and Parrots, 208.--Wild Swan, Laughing Goose,
+  Cuckoo, and Nightingale, 209.--Talking Canaries, 210.--Neighing Snipe,
+  213.--Trochilos and Crocodiles, 216.--Instinct. Intelligence, and
+  Reason in Birds, 217-219.--Songs of Birds and Seasons of the Day, 219.
+
+
+  OWLS.
+
+  Characteristics of the Owl, 221.--Owl in Poetry, 222.--Bischacho or
+  Coquimbo, 224.--Waterton on Owls, 225, 226.--Owls. Varieties of,
+  227-230.
+
+
+  WEATHER-WISE ANIMALS.
+
+  Atmospheric Changes, 231.--Stormy Petrel, 233.--Wild Geese and Ducks,
+  235.--Frogs and Snails, 237.--The Mole, 240.--List of Animals, by
+  Forster, the Meteorologist, 241.--Weatherproof Nests, 247.--"Signs of
+  Rain," by Darwin, 248.--Shepherd of Banbury, 249.
+
+
+  FISH-TALK.
+
+  How Fishes Swim, 250.--Fish Changing Colour, 251.--"Fish Noise,"
+  252.--Hearing of Fish, 253.--The Carp at Fontainebleau, 254,
+  255.--Affection of Fishes, 256.--Cat-fish, Anecdote of, 257.--Great
+  Number of Fishes, 258.--Little Fishes Eaten by Medusae, 259.--Migration
+  of Fishes, 261.--Enormous Grampus, 262.--Bonita and Flying-fish,
+  263.--Jaculator Fish of Java, 264.--Port Royal, Jamaica Fish,
+  266.--The Shark, 267.--California. Fish of, 268.--Wonderful Fish,
+  269.--Vast Sun-fish, 271.--Double Fish, 272.--The Square-browed
+  Malthe, 274.--Gold Fish, 275.--The Miller's Thumb, 276.--Sea-fish
+  Observatory, 276.--Herring Question, 278.--Aristotle's History of
+  Animals, 279-280.
+
+
+  FISH IN BRITISH COLOMBIA.
+
+  Salmon-swarming, 281.--Candle-fish, 282.--Octopus, the, 283.--Sturgeon
+  and Sturgeon Fishing, 283-287.
+
+
+  THE TREE-CLIMBING CRAB.
+
+  Locomotion of Fishes, 288.--Climbing Perch, 288.--Crabs in the West
+  Indies, 289.--Crabs, Varieties of, 289-292.--Robber and Cocoa-nut
+  Crab, 292-301.--Fish of the China Seas, 301.
+
+
+  MUSICAL LIZARDS.
+
+  Lizard from Formosa Isle, 303.--Its Habits, 304-306.
+
+
+  CHAMELEONS AND THEIR CHANGES.
+
+  The Chameleon described by Aristotle and Calmet, 307, 308.--Change
+  of Colour, 309.--Reproduction of, 310, 311.--Tongue, 311.--Lives in
+  Trees, 312.--Theory of Colours, 313.--The Puzzle Solved, 315.--Mrs.
+  Belzoni's Chameleons, 317.--Lady Cust's Chameleons, 321.--Chameleon's
+  Antipathy to Black, 322.
+
+
+  RUNNING TOADS.
+
+  Dr. Husenbeth's Toads at Cossey, 327.--Frog and Toad Concerts, 327.
+
+
+  SONG OF THE CICADA.
+
+  Greeks' Love for the Song, 329.--Cicada in British Colombia,
+  329.--Tennyson and Keats on the Grasshopper, 330.
+
+
+  STORIES ABOUT THE BARNACLE GOOSE.
+
+  Baptista Porta's Account, 331.--Max Mueller on, 331.--Gerarde's
+  Account, 332.--Giraldus Cambrensis, 332.--Professor Rolleston.
+  Drayton's _Poly-olbion_, 333.--Sir Kenelm Digby and Sir J. Emerson
+  Tennent, 334.--Finding the Barnacle, 334.
+
+
+  LEAVES ABOUT BOOKWORMS.
+
+  Bookworms, their Destructiveness, 336, 337.--How to Destroy, 338.--The
+  Death-watch, 339.--Lines by Swift, 340.
+
+
+  BORING MARINE ANIMALS, AND HUMAN ENGINEERS.
+
+  Life and Labours of the Pholas, 341.--Family of the Pholas,
+  342.--Curious Controversy, 343.--Boring Apparatus, 342.--Several
+  Observers, 347, 348.--Boring Annelids, 348.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+                                                                    Page
+
+  KING PENGUINS                                             Frontispiece
+
+  THE TWO-HORNED AFRICAN RHINOCEROS                                   28
+
+  SEAL AND MERMAID                                                    40
+
+  THE GREAT ANT-BEAR (ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY'S)                           76
+
+  FRASER'S EAGLE OWL, FROM FERNANDO PO                               228
+
+  SQUARE-BROWED MALTHE AND DOUBLE FISH                               274
+
+  THE TREE-CLIMBING CRAB                                             288
+
+  CHAMELEONS                                                         318
+
+
+
+
+ECCENTRICITIES
+
+OF
+
+THE ANIMAL CREATION.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY.--CURIOSITIES OF ZOOLOGY.
+
+
+Curious creatures of Animal Life have been objects of interest to
+mankind in all ages and countries; the universality of which may be
+traced to that feeling which "makes the whole world kin."
+
+It has been remarked with emphatic truth by a popular writer, that "we
+have in the Bible and in the engraven and pictorial records the earliest
+evidence of the attention paid to Natural History in general. The 'navy
+of Tarshish' contributed to the wisdom of him who not only 'spake of the
+trees from the cedar of Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth
+out of the wall,' but 'also of beasts, and of fowls, and of creeping
+things, and of fishes,'[1] to say nothing of numerous other passages
+showing the progress that zoological knowledge had already made. The
+Egyptian records bear testimony to a familiarity not only with the forms
+of a multitude of wild animals, but with their habits and geographical
+distribution."
+
+The collections of living animals, now popularly known as Zoological
+Gardens, are of considerable antiquity. We read of such gardens in China
+as far back as 2,000 years; but they consisted chiefly of some favourite
+animals, such as stags, fish, and tortoises. The Greeks, under Pericles,
+introduced peacocks in large numbers from India. The Romans had their
+elephants; and the first giraffe in Rome, under Caesar, was as great an
+event in the history of zoological gardens at its time as the arrival in
+1849 of the Hippopotamus was in London. The first zoological garden of
+which we have any detailed account is that in the reign of the Chinese
+Emperor, Wen Wang, founded by him about 1150 A.D., and named by him "The
+Park of Intelligence;" it contained mammalia, birds, fish, and amphibia.
+The zoological gardens of former times served their masters occasionally
+as hunting-grounds. This was constantly the case in Persia; and in
+Germany, so late as 1576, the Emperor Maximilian II. kept such a park
+for different animals near his castle, Neugebah, in which he frequently
+chased.
+
+Alexander the Great possessed his zoological gardens. We find from Pliny
+that Alexander had given orders to the keepers to send all the rare and
+curious animals which died in the gardens to Aristotle.
+
+Splendid must have been the zoological gardens which the Spaniards found
+connected with the Palace of Montezuma. The letters of Ferdinand Cortez
+and other writings of the time, as well as more recently "The History
+of the Indians," by Antonio Herrera, give most interesting and detailed
+accounts of the menagerie in Montezuma's park. The buildings belonging
+to these gardens were all gorgeous, as became the grandeur of the Indian
+prince; they were supported by pillars, each of which was hewn out of
+a single piece of some precious stone. Cool, arched galleries led into
+the different parts of the garden--to the marine and fresh-water basins,
+containing innumerable water-fowl,--to the birds of prey, falcons
+and eagles, which latter especially were represented in the greatest
+variety,--to the crocodiles, alligators, and serpents, some of them
+belonging to the most venomous species. The halls of a large square
+building contained the dens of the lions, tigers, leopards, bears,
+wolves, and other wild animals. Three hundred slaves were employed in
+the gardens tending the animals, upon which great care was bestowed, and
+scrupulous attention paid to their cleanliness. To this South American
+zoological garden of the sixteenth century no other of its time could be
+compared.[2]
+
+More than six centuries ago, our Plantagenet kings kept in the Tower
+of London exotic animals for their recreation. The Lion Tower was built
+here by Henry III., who commenced assembling here a menagerie with three
+leopards sent to him by the Emperor Frederic II., "in token of his regal
+shield of arms, wherein those leopards were pictured." Here, in 1255,
+the Sheriffs built a house "for the King's elephant," brought from
+France, and the first seen in England. Our early sovereigns had a mews
+in the Tower as well as a menagerie:--
+
+    "Merry Margaret, as Midsomer flowre,
+    Gentyll as faucon and hawke of the Towre."--_Skelton._
+
+In the reign of Charles I., a sort of Royal Menagerie took the place of
+the deer with which St. James's Park was stocked in the days of Henry
+VIII, and Queen Elizabeth. Charles II. greatly enlarged and improved
+the Park; and here he might be seen playing with his dogs and feeding
+his ducks. The Bird-cage Walk, on the south side of the Park, had in
+Charles's time the cages of an aviary disposed among the trees. Near the
+east end of a canal was the Decoy, where water-fowl were kept; and here
+was Duck Island, with its salaried Governor.
+
+Evelyn, in 1664, went to "the Physique Garden in St. James's," where
+he first saw "orange trees and other fine trees." He enumerates in
+the menagerie, "an ornocratylus, or pelican; a fowle between a storke
+and a swan; a melancholy water-fowl, brought from Astracan by the
+Russian ambassador; a milk-white raven; two Balearian cranes," one of
+which, had a wooden leg "made by a soulder:" there were also "deere of
+severall countries, white, spotted like leopards; antelopes, an elk,
+red deer, roebucks, staggs, Guinea goates, Arabian sheepe, &c." There
+were "withy-potts, or nests, for the wild fowle to lay their eggs in, a
+little above y^e surface of y^e water."
+
+"25 Feb. 1664. This night I walk'd into St. James his Parke, where I saw
+many strange creatures, as divers sorts of outlandish deer, Guiny sheep,
+a white raven, a great parrot, a storke.... Here are very stately walkes
+set with lime trees on both sides, and a fine pallmall."[3]
+
+Upon the eastern island is the Swiss Cottage of the Ornithological
+Society, built in 1841 with a grant of 300l. from the Lords of
+the Treasury: it contains a council-room, keepers' apartments,
+steam-hatching apparatus; contiguous are feeding-places and decoys; and
+the aquatic fowl breed on the island, making their own nests among the
+shrubs and grasses.
+
+The majority of Zoological Gardens now in existence have been founded
+in this century, with the exception of the Jardin des Plantes, which,
+although founded in 1626, did not receive its first living animals until
+the year 1793-1794. Hitherto, it had been a Garden of Plants exclusively.
+
+We shall not be expected to enumerate the great Continental gardens,
+of which that at Berlin, half an hour's drive beyond the Brandenburg
+gates, contains the Royal Menagerie; it is open upon the payment of
+an admission fee, and generally resembles our garden at the Regent's
+Park. Berlin has also its Zoological Collection in its Museum of Natural
+History. This collection is one of the richest and most extensive in
+Europe, especially in the department of Ornithology: it includes the
+birds collected by Pallas and Wildenow, and the fishes of Bloch. The
+best specimens are those from Mexico, the Red Sea, and the Cape. The
+whole is exceedingly well arranged, and _named_ for the convenience of
+students. Still, our Zoological Collection in the British Museum (to be
+hereafter removed to South Kensington) is allowed to be the finest in
+Europe.
+
+The Zoological Society of London was instituted in 1826, and occupies
+now about seventeen acres of gardens in the Regent's Park. Among the
+earliest tenants of the Menagerie were a pair of emues from New Holland;
+two Arctic bears and a Russian bear; a herd of kangaroos; Cuban mastiffs
+and Thibet watch-dogs; two llamas from Peru; a splendid collection of
+eagles, falcons, and owls; a pair of beavers; cranes, spoonbills, and
+storks; zebras and Indian cows; Esquimaux dogs; armadilloes; and a
+collection of monkeys. To the menagerie have since been added an immense
+number of species of _Mammalia_ and _Birds_; in 1849, a collection
+of _Reptiles_; and in 1853, a collection of _Fish_, _Mollusca_,
+_Zoophytes_, and other _Aquatic Animals_. In 1830, the menagerie
+collected by George IV. at Sandpit-gate, Windsor, was removed to the
+Society's Gardens; and 1834 the last of the Tower Menagerie was received
+here. It is now the finest public Vivarium in Europe.
+
+The following are some of the more remarkable animals which the Society
+have possessed, or are now in the menagerie:--
+
+     _Antelopes_, the great family of, finely represented. The
+     beautiful _Elands_ were bequeathed by the late Earl of Derby, and
+     have bred freely since their arrival in 1851. The Leucoryx is the
+     first of her race born out of Africa. _Ant-eater. Giant_, brought
+     to England from Brazil in 1853, was exhibited in Broad-street,
+     St. Giles's, until purchased by the Zoological Society for 200l.
+     _Apteryx_, or _Kiwi_ bird, from New Zealand; the first living
+     specimen brought to England of this rare bird. The _Fish-house_,
+     built of iron and glass, in 1853, consisting of a series of glass
+     tanks, in which fish spawn, zoophytes produce young, and algae
+     luxuriate; crustacea and mollusca live successfully, and ascidian
+     polypes are illustrated, together with sea anemones, jelly-fishes,
+     and star-fishes, rare shell-fishes, &c.: a new world of animal
+     life is here seen as in the depths of the ocean, with masses of
+     rock, sand, gravel, corallines, sea-weed, and sea-water; the
+     animals are in a state of natural restlessness, now quiescent,
+     now eating and being eaten. _Aurochs_, or _European Bisons_: a
+     pair presented by the Emperor of Russia, in 1847, from the forest
+     of Bialowitzca: the male died in 1848, the female in 1849, from
+     pleuro-pneumonia. _Bears_: the collection is one of the largest
+     ever made. _Elephants_: including an Indian elephant calf and its
+     mother. In 1847 died here the great Indian elephant Jack, having
+     been in the gardens sixteen years. Adjoining the stable is a tank
+     of water, of a depth nearly equal to the height of a full-grown
+     elephant. In 1851 the Society possessed a _herd of four elephants_,
+     besides a hippopotamus, a rhinoceros, and both species of tapir;
+     being the largest collection of pachydermata ever exhibited in
+     Europe. _Giraffes_: four received in 1836 cost the Society upwards
+     of 2,300_l._, including 1,000_l._ for steamboat passage: the female
+     produced six male fawns here between 1840 and 1851. _Hippopotamus_,
+     a young male (the first living specimen seen in England), received
+     from Egypt in May, 1850, when ten months old, seven feet long,
+     and six and a-half feet in girth; also a female hippopotamus,
+     received 1854. _Humming-birds_: Mr. Gould's matchless collection
+     of 2,000 examples was exhibited here in 1851 and 1852. _Iguanas_,
+     two from Cuba and Carthagena, closely resembling, in everything
+     but size, the fossil Iguanodon. The _Lions_ number generally from
+     eight to ten, including a pair of cubs born in the gardens in 1853.
+     _Orang-utan_ and _Chimpanzee_: the purchase-money of the latter
+     sometimes exceeds 300_l._ The orang "Darby," brought from Borneo
+     in 1851, is the finest yet seen in Europe, very intelligent, and
+     docile as a child. _Parrot-houses_: they sometimes contain from
+     sixty to seventy species. _Rapacious Birds_: so extensive a series
+     of eagles and vultures has never yet been seen at one view. _The
+     Reptile-house_ was fitted up in 1849; the creatures are placed in
+     large plate-glass cases: here are pythons and a rattle-snake, with
+     a young one born here; here is also a case of the tree-frogs of
+     Europe: a yellow snake from Jamaica has produced eight young in the
+     gardens. _Cobra de Capello_, from India: in 1852, a keeper in the
+     gardens was killed by the bite of this serpent. _A large Boa_ in
+     1850 swallowed a blanket, and disgorged it in thirty-three days.
+     A _one-horned Rhinoceros_, of continental India, was obtained in
+     1834, when it was about four years old, and weighed 26 cwt.; it
+     died in 1850: it was replaced by a female, about five years old.
+     _Satin Bower-Birds_, from Sydney: a pair have built here a bower,
+     or breeding-place. _Tapir_ of the Old World, from Mount Ophir;
+     the nearest existing form the Paleotherium. _Tigers_: a pair of
+     magnificent specimens, presented by the Guicoway of Baroda in 1851;
+     a pair of clouded tigers, 1854. _The Wapiti Deer_ breeds every year
+     in the Menagerie.
+
+The animals in the Gardens, although reduced in number, are more
+valuable and interesting than when their number was higher. The mission
+of the Society's head-keeper, to collect rare animals for the Menagerie,
+has been very profitable. The additional houses from time to time, are
+very expensive: the new monkey house, fittings, and work cost 4,842_l._;
+and in 1864, the sum of 6,604_l._ was laid out in permanent additions to
+the establishment.
+
+Very rare, and consequently expensive, animals are generally purchased.
+Thus, the first Rhinoceros cost 1,000_l._; the four Giraffes, 700_l._,
+and their carriage an additional 700_l._ The Elephant and calf were
+bought in 1851 for 500_l._; and the Hippopotamus, although a gift, was
+not brought home and housed at less than 1,000_l._--a sum which he
+more than realised in the famous Exhibition season, when the receipts
+were 10,000_l._ above the previous year. The Lion Albert was purchased
+for 140_l._; a tiger, in 1852, for 200_l._ The value of some of the
+smaller birds will appear, however, more startling: thus, the pair
+of black-necked Swans were purchased for 80_l._; a pair of crowned
+Pigeons and two Maleos, 60_l._; a pair of Victoria Pigeons, 35_l._;
+four Mandarin Ducks, 70_l._ Most of these rare birds (now in the great
+aviary) came from the Knowsley collection, at the sale of which,
+in 1851, purchases were made to the extent of 985_l._ It would be
+impossible from these prices, however, to judge of the present value
+of the animals. Take the Rhinoceros, for example: the first specimen
+cost 1,000_l._; the second, quite as fine a brute, only 350_l._ Lions
+range again from 40_l._ to 180_l._, and Tigers from 40_l._ to 200_l._
+The ignorance displayed by some persons as to the value of well-known
+objects is something marvellous.--A sea-captain demanded 600_l._ for
+a pair of Pythons, and at last took 40_l._! An American offered the
+Society a Grisly Bear for 2,000_l._, to be delivered in the United
+States; and, more laughable still, a moribund Walrus, which had been fed
+for nine weeks on salt pork and meal, was offered for the trifling sum
+of 700_l._!
+
+There is a strange notion that the Zoological Society has proposed a
+large reward for a "Tortoiseshell Tom-cat," and one was accordingly
+offered to the Society for 250_l._! But male Tortoiseshell Cats may be
+had in many quarters.[4]
+
+The Surrey Zoological Gardens were established in 1831. Thither
+Cross removed his menagerie from the King's Mews, where it had been
+transferred from Exeter Change. At Walworth a glazed circular
+building, 100 feet in diameter, was built for the cages of the
+carnivorous animals (Lions, Tigers, Leopards, &c.); and other houses
+for Mammalia, Birds, &c. Here, in 1834, was first exhibited a young
+Indian one-horned Rhinoceros, for which Cross paid 800_l._ It was the
+only specimen brought to England for twenty years. In 1836 were added
+three Giraffes, one fifteen feet high. The menagerie was dispersed in
+1856. The menagerie at Exeter Change was a poor collection, though the
+admission-charge was, at one period, half-a-crown!
+
+The collections of animals exhibited at fairs have added little to
+Zoological information; but we may mention that Wombwell, one of the
+most noted of the showfolk, bought a pair of the first Boa Constrictors
+imported into England: for these he paid 75_l._, and in three weeks
+realised considerably more than that sum by their exhibition. At the
+time of his death, in 1850, Wombwell was possessed of three huge
+menageries, the cost of maintaining which averaged at least 35_l._ per
+day; and he used to estimate that, from mortality and disease, he had
+lost, from first to last, from 12,000_l._ to 15,000_l._
+
+Our object in the following succession of sketches of the habits and
+eccentricities of the more striking animals, and their principal
+claims upon our attention, is to present, in narrative, their leading
+characteristics, and thus to secure a willing audience from old and
+young.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] 1 Kings iv. 10.
+
+[2] "Athenaeum."
+
+[3] Journal of Mr. E. Browne, son of Sir Thomas Browne.
+
+[4] In April, 1842, Mr. Batty's collection of animals was sold by
+auction, when the undermentioned animals brought--Large red-faced Monkey
+(clever), 1_l._ 10_s._; fine Coatimondi, 1_l._ 4_s._; Mandril (the
+only one in England), 1_l._ 17_s._; pair of Java Hares, 1_l._ 9_s._; a
+Puma, 14_l._; handsome Senegal Lioness, 9_l._; a Hyaena, 7_l._; splendid
+Barbary Lioness, 24_l._; handsome Bengal Tigress, 90_l._; brown Bear,
+6_l._; the largest Polar Bear in Europe, 37_l._; pair of Esquimaux
+Sledge-Dogs, 3_l._ 7_s._; pair of Golden Pheasants, 3_l._ 10_s._; a
+blue-and-buff Macaw (clever talker), 2_l._ 10_s._; a horned Owl, from
+North America, 3_l._ 10_s._; a magnificent Barbary Lion, trained for
+performance, 105 guineas; a Lioness, similarly trained, 90 guineas;
+handsome Senegal performing Leopard, 34 guineas; two others, 50 guineas;
+Ursine Sloth, 12 guineas; Indian Buffalo, 10 guineas; sagacious male
+Elephant, trained for theatrical performances, 350 guineas. The above is
+stated to have been the first sale of the kind by public auction in this
+country.
+
+
+
+
+THE RHINOCEROS IN ENGLAND.
+
+
+The intellectual helps to the study of zoology are nowhere more
+strikingly evident than in the finest collection of pachyderms
+(thick-skinned animals) in the world, now possessed by our Zoological
+Society. Here we have a pair of Indian Elephants, a pair of African
+Elephants, a pair of Hippopotami, a pair of Indian Rhinoceroses, and an
+African or two-horned Rhinoceros.
+
+The specimens of the Rhinoceros which have been exhibited in Europe
+since the revival of literature have been few and far between. The
+first was of the one-horned species, sent from India to Emmanuel. King
+of Portugal, in the year 1513. The Sovereign made a present of it to
+the Pope; but the animal being seized during its passage with a fit of
+fury, occasioned the loss of the vessel in which it was transported. A
+second Rhinoceros was brought to England in 1685; a third was exhibited
+over almost the whole of Europe in 1739; and a fourth, a female, in
+1741. A fifth specimen arrived at Versailles in 1771, and it died in
+1793, at the age of about twenty-six years. The sixth was a very young
+Rhinoceros, which died in this country in the year 1800. The seventh, a
+young specimen, was in the possession of Mr. Cross, at Exeter Change,
+about 1814; and an eighth specimen was living about the same time in
+the Garden of Plants at Paris. In 1834 Mr. Cross received at the Surrey
+Gardens, from the Birman empire, a Rhinoceros, a year and a-half old,
+as already stated at page 21. In 1851 the Zoological Society purchased
+a full-grown female Rhinoceros; and in 1864 they received a male
+Rhinoceros from Calcutta. All these specimens were from India, and
+_one-horned_; so that the _two-horned_ Rhinoceros had not been brought
+to England until the arrival of an African Rhinoceros, _two-horned_, in
+September, 1868.[5]
+
+The ancient history of the Rhinoceros is interesting, but intricate. It
+seems to be mentioned in several passages of the Scriptures, in most
+of which the animal or animals intended to be designated was or were
+the _Rhinoceros unicornis_, or Great Asiatic one-horned Rhinoceros.
+M. Lesson expresses a decided opinion to this effect: indeed, the
+description in Job (chap. xxxix.) would almost forbid the conclusion
+that any animal was in the writer's mind except one of surpassing bulk
+and indomitable strength. The impotence of man is finely contrasted
+with the might of the Rhinoceros in this description, which would be
+overcharged if it applied to the less powerful animals alluded to in the
+previous passages.
+
+It has also been doubted whether accounts of the Indian Wild Ass, given
+by Ctesias, were not highly coloured and exaggerated descriptions of
+this genus; and whether the Indian Ass of Aristotle was not a Rhinoceros.
+
+Agatharchides describes the one-horned Rhinoceros by name, and speaks
+of its ripping up the belly of the Elephant. This is, probably, the
+earliest occurrence of the name _Rhinoceros_. The Rhinoceros which
+figured in the celebrated pomps of Ptolemy Philadelphus was an
+Ethiopian, and seems to have marched last in the procession of wild
+animals, probably on account of its superior rarity, and immediately
+after the Cameleopard.
+
+Dion Cassius speaks of the Rhinoceros killed in the circus with a
+Hippopotamus in the show given by Augustus to celebrate his victory over
+Cleopatra; he says that the Hippopotamus and this animal were then first
+seen and killed at Rome. The Rhinoceros then slain is thought to have
+been African, and two-horned.
+
+The Rhinoceros clearly described by Strabo, as seen by him, was
+one-horned. That noticed by Pausanias as "the Bull of Ethiopia," was
+two-horned, and he describes the relative position of the horns.
+
+Wood, in his "Zoography," gives an engraving of the coin of Domitian
+(small Roman brass), on the reverse of which is the distinct form of a
+two-horned Rhinoceros: its exhibition to the Roman people, probably of
+the very animal represented on the coin, is particularly described in
+one of the epigrams attributed to Martial, who lived in the reigns of
+Titus and Domitian. By the description of the epigram it appears that
+a combat between a Rhinoceros and a Bear was intended, but that it was
+very difficult to irritate the more unwieldy animal so as to make him
+display his usual ferocity; at length, however, he tossed the bear from
+his double horn, with as much facility as a bull tosses to the sky the
+bundles placed for the purpose of enraging him. Thus far the coin and
+the epigram perfectly agree as to the existence of the double horn; but,
+unfortunately, commentators and antiquaries were not to be convinced
+that a Rhinoceros could have more than one horn, and have at once
+displayed their sagacity and incredulity in their explanations on the
+subject.
+
+Two, at least, of the two-horned Rhinoceroses were shown at Rome in the
+reign of Domitian. The Emperors Antoninus, Heliogabalus, and Gordian
+also exhibited Rhinoceroses. Cosmas speaks expressly of the Ethiopian
+Rhinoceros as having two horns, and of its power of moving them.
+
+The tractability of the Asiatic Rhinoceros has been confirmed by
+observers in the native country of the animal. Bishop Heber saw at
+Lucknow five or six very large Rhinoceroses, of which he found that
+prints and drawings had given him a very imperfect conception. They
+were more bulky animals, and of a darker colour than the Bishop
+supposed; though the latter difference might be occasioned by oiling
+the skin. The folds of their skin also surpassed all which the Bishop
+had expected. Those at Lucknow were quiet and gentle animals, except
+that one of them had a feud with horses. They had sometimes howdahs, or
+chaise-like seats, on their backs, and were once fastened in a carriage,
+but only as an experiment, which was not followed up. The Bishop,
+however, subsequently saw a Rhinoceros (the present of Lord Amherst to
+the Guicwar), which was so tamed as to be ridden by a Mohout quite as
+patiently as an elephant.
+
+No two-horned Rhinoceros seems to have been brought alive to Europe in
+modern times. Indeed, up to a comparatively late period, their form
+was known only by the horns which were preserved in museums; nor did
+voyagers give any sufficient details to impart any clear idea of the
+form of the animal. The rude figure given by Aldrovandus, in 1639,
+leaves no doubt that, wretched as it is, it must have been taken from a
+two-horned Rhinoceros.
+
+Dr. Parsons endeavoured to show that the one-horned Rhinoceros always
+belonged to Asia, and the two-horned Rhinoceros to Africa; but there are
+two-horned Rhinoceroses in Asia, as well as in Africa. Flacourt saw one
+in the Bay of Soldaque, near the Cape of Good Hope, at a distance. Kolbe
+and others always considered the Rhinoceros of the Cape as two-horned;
+but Colonel Gordon seems to be the first who entirely detailed the
+species with any exactness. Sparrman described the Cape Rhinoceros,
+though his figure of the animal is stiff and ill-drawn. At this period
+it was well known that the Cape species was not only distinguished by
+having two horns from the Indian Rhinoceros then known, but also by an
+absence of the folds of the skin so remarkable in the latter.
+
+We should here notice the carelessness, to call it by the mildest
+name, of Bruce, who gave to the world a representation of a two-horned
+Rhinoceros from Abyssinia, with a strongly folded skin. The truth
+appears to be that the body of the animal figured by Bruce was copied
+from that of the one-horned Rhinoceros given by Buffon, to which Bruce
+added a second horn. Salt proved that the Abyssinian Rhinoceros is
+two-horned, and that it resembles that of the Cape.
+
+[Illustration: THE TWO-HORNED AFRICAN RHINOCEROS.]
+
+Sparmann exposes the errors and poetic fancies of Buffon respecting the
+impenetrable nature of the skin. He ordered one of his Hottentots to
+make a trial of this with his hassagai on a Rhinoceros which had been
+shot. Though this weapon was far from being in good order, and had no
+other sharpness than that which it had received from the forge, the
+Hottentot, at the distance of five or six paces, not only pierced with
+it the thick hide of the animal, but buried it half a foot deep in its
+body.
+
+Mr. Tegetmeier has sufficiently described in the "Field" journal the
+African Rhinoceros just received at the Zoological Society's menagerie
+in the Regent's-park, and which has been sketched by Mr. T. W. Wood
+expressly for the present volume.
+
+It was captured about a year ago in Upper Nubia by the native hunters
+in the employment of Mr. Casanova, at Kassala; and was sent, by way of
+Alexandria and Trieste, to Mr. Karl Hagenbeck, of Hamburg, a dealer in
+wild beasts, who sold it to the Zoological Society.
+
+"This animal is very distinct from its Asiatic congeners; it differs
+strikingly in the number of horns, as well as in the character of its
+skin, which is destitute of those large folds, which cause the Indian
+species to remind the observer of a gigantic 'hog in armour.'
+
+"The arrival of this animal will tend to clear up the confusion
+that prevails respecting the number of distinct species of African
+Rhinoceros. Some writers--as Sir W. C. Harris--admit the existence of
+two species only, the dark and the light, or, as they are termed, the
+'white' and the 'black.' Others, as Dr. A. Smith, describe three; some,
+as the late Mr. Anderssen, write of four; and Mr. Chapman even speaks of
+a fifth species or hybrid.
+
+"Three of these species are very distinctly defined--the ordinary dark
+animal, the _Rhinoceros bicornis_, in which the posterior horn is much
+shorter than the anterior; the _Rhinoceros keitloa_, in which the two
+horns are of equal length; and the 'white' species, _Rhinoceros simus_.
+The last, among other characters, is, according to Dr. Smith,
+distinguished by the square character of the upper lip, which is not
+prehensile.
+
+"The young animal now (October, 1868) in the Zoological Society's
+garden, appears to belong to the first-named species, the largest
+specimens of which when full grown reach a height of 6ft., and a length
+of 13ft., the tail not included. Its present height is 3-1/2ft., and
+length about 6ft. In general appearance the mature animal resembles a
+gigantic pig, the limbs being brought under the body. The feet are most
+singular in form, being very distinctly three-toed, and the remarkable
+trefoil-like _spoors_ that they make in the soil render the animal
+easy to track. The horns vary greatly in length in different animals;
+the first not unfrequently reaches a length of 2ft., the second being
+considerably shorter. These appendages differ very much from ordinary
+horns; they are, in fact, more of the nature of agglutinated hair, being
+attached to the skin only, and consequently they separate from the skull
+when the latter is preserved.
+
+"The head is not remarkable for comeliness, especially in the mature
+animal, in which the skin of the face is deeply wrinkled, and the small
+eyes are surrounded with many folds. The upper lip is elongated, and is
+used in gathering the food. The adult animals are described by Sir W. C.
+Harris, in his 'Illustrations of the Game Animals of South Africa,' as
+'swinish, cross-grained, ill-tempered, wallowing brutes.'"
+
+Mr. Burchell, during his travels in Africa, shot nine Rhinoceroses,
+besides a smaller one. The latter he presented to the British Museum.
+The animal is, however, becoming every day more and more scarce in
+Southern Africa; indeed, it is rarely to be met with in some parts.
+It appears that, in one day, two Rhinoceroses were shot by Speelman,
+the faithful Hottentot who attended Mr. Burchell. He fired off his gun
+but twice, and each time he killed a Rhinoceros! The animal's sense of
+hearing is very quick: should he be disturbed, he sometimes becomes
+furious, and pursues his enemy; and then, if once he gets sight of the
+hunter, it is scarcely possible for him to escape, unless he possesses
+extraordinary coolness and presence of mind. Yet, if he will quietly
+wait till the enraged animal makes a run at him, and will then spring
+suddenly on one side, to let it pass, he may gain time enough for
+reloading his gun before the Rhinoceros gets sight of him again, which,
+fortunately, owing to its imperfection of sight, it does slowly and with
+difficulty.
+
+Speelman, in shooting a large male Rhinoceros, used bullets cast with
+an admixture of tin, to render them harder. They were flattened and
+beat out of shape by striking against the bones, but those which were
+found lodged in the fleshy parts had preserved their proper form, a fact
+which shows how little the hardness of the creature's hide corresponds
+with the vulgar opinion of its being impenetrable to a musket-ball.
+Mr. Burchell found this Rhinoceros nearly cut up. On each side of the
+carcase the Hottentots had made a fire to warm themselves; and round a
+third fire were assembled at least twenty-four Bushmen, most of whom
+were employed the whole night long in broiling, eating, and talking.
+Their appetite seemed insatiable, for no sooner had they broiled and
+eaten one slice of meat than they turned to the carcase and cut another.
+The meat was excellent, and had much the taste of beef. "The tongue,"
+says Mr. Burchell, "is a dainty treat, even for an epicure." The hide is
+cut into strips, three feet or more in length, rounded to the thickness
+of a man's finger, and tapering to the top. This is called a _shambok_,
+and is universally used in the colony of the Cape for a horsewhip, and
+is much more durable than the whips of European manufacture. The natural
+food of the Rhinoceros, till the animal fled before the colonists, was a
+pale, bushy shrub, called the Rhinoceros-bush, which burns while green
+as freely as the driest fuel, so as readily to make a roadside fire.
+
+The horn of the Rhinoceros, single or double, has its special history by
+the way of popular tradition. From the earliest times this horn has been
+supposed to possess preservative virtues and mysterious properties--to
+be capable of curing diseases and discovering the presence of poison;
+and in all countries where the Rhinoceros exists, but especially in the
+East, such is still the opinion respecting it. In the details of the
+first voyage of the English to India, in 1591, we find Rhinoceros' horns
+monopolised by the native sovereigns on account of their reputed virtues
+in detecting the presence of poison.
+
+Thunberg observes, in his "Journey into Caffraria," that "the horns of
+the Rhinoceros were kept by some people, both in town and country, not
+only as rarities, but also as useful in diseases, and for the purpose
+of detecting poisons. As to the former of these intentions, the fine
+shavings were supposed to cure convulsions and spasms in children. With
+respect to the latter, it was generally believed that goblets made of
+these horns would discover a poisonous draught that was poured into
+them, by making the liquor ferment till it ran quite out of the goblet.
+Of these horns goblets are made, which are set in gold and silver and
+presented to kings, persons of distinction, and particular friends, or
+else sold at a high price, sometimes at the rate of fifty rix-dollars
+each." Thunberg adds:--"When I tried these horns, both wrought and
+unwrought, both old and young horns, with several sorts of poison, weak
+as well as strong, I observed not the least motion or effervescence; but
+when a solution of corrosive sublimate or other similar substance was
+poured into one of these horns, there arose only a few bubbles, produced
+by the air which had been enclosed in the pores of the horn and which
+were now disengaged."
+
+Rankin (in his "Wars and Sports") states this mode of using it: a small
+quantity of water is put into the concave part of the root, then hold it
+with the point downwards and stir the water with the point of an iron
+nail till it is discoloured, when the patient is to drink it.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[5] The conveyance of a Rhinoceros over sea is a labour of some risk. In
+1814 a full-grown specimen on his voyage from Calcutta to this country
+became so furious that he was fastened down to the ship's deck, with
+part of a chain-cable round his neck; and even then he succeeded in
+destroying a portion of the vessel, till, a heavy storm coming on, the
+Rhinoceros was thrown overboard to prevent the serious consequence of
+his getting loose in the ship.
+
+
+
+
+STORIES OF MERMAIDS.
+
+
+Less than half a century ago, a pretended Mermaid was one of the sights
+of a London season; to see which credulous persons rushed to pay
+half-crowns and shillings with a readiness which seemed to rebuke the
+record--that the existence of a Mermaid is an exploded fallacy of two
+centuries since.
+
+Mermaids have had a legendary existence from very early ages, for the
+Sirens of the ancients evidently belonged to the same remarkable family.
+Shakspeare uses the term Mermaid as synonymous with Siren:--
+
+    "O train me not, sweet Mermaid, with thy note,
+    To drown me in thy sister's flood of tears;
+    Sing, Syren, for thyself."--_Comedy of Errors_, iii. 2.
+
+Elsewhere, Shakspeare's use of the term is more applicable to the Siren
+than to the common idea of a Mermaid; as in the "Midsummer Night's
+Dream," where the "Mermaid on a dolphin's back" could not easily have
+been so placed. A Merman, the male of this imaginary species, is
+mentioned by Taylor, the water-poet:--
+
+    "A thing turmoyling in the sea we spide,
+        Like to a Meareman."
+
+An old writer has this ingenious illustration:--"Mermaids, in Homer,
+were witches, and their songs enchantments;" which reminds us of the
+invitation in Haydn's Mermaid's Song:--
+
+    "Come with me, and we will go
+    Where the rocks of coral grow."
+
+The orthodox Mermaid is half woman, half fish; and the fishy half is
+sometimes depicted as doubly tailed, such as we see in the heraldry of
+France and Germany; and in the Basle edition of Ptolemy's "Geography,"
+dated 1540, a double-tailed Mermaid figures in one of the plates. In the
+arms of the Fishmongers' Company of London, the supporters are "a Merman
+and maid, first, armed, the latter with a mirror in the left hand,
+proper." From this heraldic employment, the Mermaid became a popular
+tavern sign; and there was an old dance called the Mermaid.
+
+Sir Thomas Browne refers to the _picture_ of Mermaids, though he does
+not admit their existence. They "are conceived to answer the shape of
+the ancient Sirens that attempted upon Ulysses; which, notwithstanding,
+were of another description, containing no fishy composure, but made up
+of man and bird." Sir Thomas is inclined to refer the Mermaid to Dagon,
+the tutelary deity of the Philistines, which, according to the common
+opinion, had a human female bust and a fish-like termination; though the
+details of this fish idolatry are entirely conjectural.
+
+Leyden, the Scottish poet, has left a charming ballad, entitled "The
+Mermaid," the scene of which is laid at Corrievreckin: the opening of
+this poem Sir Walter Scott praised as exhibiting a power of numbers
+which, for mere melody of sound, has seldom been excelled in English
+poetry:--
+
+    "On Jura's heath how sweetly swell
+      The murmurs of the mountain bee!
+    How softly mourns the writhed shell
+      Of Jura's shore its parent sea!
+
+    "But softer floating, o'er the deep,
+      The Mermaid's sweet sea-soothing lay,
+    That charmed the dancing waves to sleep
+      Before the bark of Colonsay."
+
+The ballad thus describes the wooing of the gallant chieftain:--
+
+    "Proud swells her heart! she deems at last
+      To lure him with her silver tongue,
+    And, as the shelving rocks she passed,
+      She raised her voice, and sweetly sung.
+
+    "In softer, sweeter strains she sung,
+      Slow gliding o'er the moonlight bay,
+    When light to land the chieftain sprung,
+      To hail the maid of Colonsay.
+
+    "O sad the Mermaid's gay notes fell,
+      And sadly sink remote at sea!
+    O sadly mourns the writhed shell
+      Of Jura's shore, its parent sea
+
+    "And ever as the year returns,
+      The charm-bound sailors know the day;
+    For sadly still the Mermaid mourns
+      The lovely chief of Colonsay."
+
+Curious evidences of the existence of Mermaids are to be found in
+ancient authors. Pliny says that "the ambassadors to Augustine from Gaul
+declared that sea-women were often seen in their neighbourhood." Solinus
+and Aulus Gellius also speak of their existence. Some stories are,
+however, past credence. It is related in the "Histoire d'Angleterre"
+that, in the year 1187, a Merman was "fished up" off the coast of
+Suffolk, and kept for six months. It was like a man, but wanted speech,
+and at length escaped into the sea! In 1430, in the great tempests which
+destroyed the dykes in Holland, some women at Edam, in West Friesland,
+saw a Mermaid who had been driven by the waters into the meadows, which
+were overflowed. "They took it, dressed it in female attire, and taught
+it to spin!" It was taken to Haarlem, where it lived some years! Then we
+read of Ceylonese fishermen, in 1560, catching, at one draught, seven
+Mermen and Mermaids, which were dissected! In 1531, a Mermaid, caught in
+the Baltic, was sent to Sigismund, King of Poland, with whom she lived
+three days, and was seen by the whole court!
+
+In Merollo's "Voyage to Congo," in 1682, Mermaids are said to be
+plentiful all along the river Zaire. In the "Aberdeen Almanack" for
+1688, it is predicted that "near the place where the famous Dee
+payeth his tribute to the German Ocean," on the 1st, 13th, and 29th
+of May, and other specified times, curious observers may "undoubtedly
+see a pretty company of Mar Maids," and likewise hear their melodious
+voices. In another part of Scotland, about the same time, Brand, in his
+"Description of Orkney and Shetland," tells us that two fishermen drew
+up with a hook a Mermaid, "having face, arm, breast, shoulders, &c., of
+a woman, and long hair hanging down the neck, but the nether part, from
+below the waist, hidden in the water." One of the fishermen stabbed her
+with a knife, and she was seen no more! The evidence went thus:--Brand
+was told by a lady and gentleman, who were told by a baillie to whom the
+fishing-boat belonged, who was told by the fishers! Valentyn describes a
+Mermaid he saw in 1714, on his voyage from Batavia to Europe, "sitting
+on the surface of the water," &c. In 1758, a Mermaid is said to have
+been exhibited at the fair of St. Germain, in France. It was about two
+feet long, and sported about in a vessel of water. It was fed with bread
+and fish. It was a female, with negro features.
+
+In 1775 appeared a very circumstantial account of a Mermaid which was
+captured in the Grecian Archipelago in the preceding year, and exhibited
+in London. The account is ludicrously minute, and it ends with: "It is
+said to have an enchanting voice, which it never exerts except before
+a storm." This imposture was craftily made up out of the skin of the
+angle shark. In Mr. Morgan's "Tour to Milford Haven in the year 1795,"
+appears an equally circumstantial account of a Mermaid, said to have
+been seen by one Henry Reynolds, a farmer, of Ren-y-hold, in the parish
+of Castlemartin, in 1782. It resembled a youth of sixteen or eighteen
+years of age, with a very white skin: it was bathing. The evidence
+is very roundabout, so that there were abundant means for converting
+some peculiar kind of fish into a Merman, without imputing intentional
+dishonesty to any one. "Something akin to this kind of evidence is
+observable in the account of a Mermaid seen in Caithness in 1809, which
+attracted much attention in England as well as in Scotland, and induced
+the Philosophical Society of Glasgow to investigate the matter. The
+Editor of a newspaper, who inserted the statement, had been told by a
+gentleman, who had been shown a letter by Sir John Sinclair, who had
+obtained it from Mr. Innes, to whom it had been written by Miss Mackay,
+who had heard the story from the persons (two servant girls and a boy)
+who had seen the strange animal in the water." (Chambers's "Book of
+Days.")
+
+Then we read of a so-called Mermaid, shown in the year 1794 at No. 7,
+Broad-court, Bow-street. Covent-garden, said to have been taken in the
+North Seas by Captain Foster. It was of the usual description.
+
+Much evidence comes from Scotland. Thus, in the year 1797, a
+schoolmaster of Thurso affirmed that he had seen a Mermaid, apparently
+in the act of combing her hair with her fingers! Twelve years
+afterwards, several persons observed near the same place a like
+appearance. Dr. Chisholm, in his "Essay on Malignant Fever in the West
+Indies," in 1801, relates that, in the year 1797, happening to be at
+Governor Van Battenburg's plantation, in Berbice, "the conversation
+turned on a singular animal which had been repeatedly seen in Berbice
+river, and some smaller rivers. This animal is the famous Mermaid,
+hitherto considered as a mere creature of the imagination. It is called
+by the Indians _mene_, mamma, or mother of the waters. The description
+given of it by the Governor is as follows:--'The upper portion
+resembles the human figure, the head smaller in proportion, sometimes
+bare, but oftener covered with a copious quantity of long black hair.
+The shoulders are broad, and the breasts large and well-formed. The
+lower portion resembles the tail of a fish, is of great dimensions,
+the tail forked, and not unlike that of the dolphin, as it is usually
+represented. The colour of the skin is either black or tawny.' The
+animal is held in veneration by the Indians, who imagine that killing
+it would be attended with calamitous consequences. It is from this
+circumstance that none of these animals have been shot, and consequently
+examined but at a distance. They have been generally observed in a
+sitting posture in the water, none of the lower extremity being seen
+until they are disturbed, when, by plunging, the tail agitates the water
+to a considerable distance round. They have been always seen employed in
+smoothing their hair, and have thus been frequently taken for Indian
+women bathing." In 1811, a young man, named John M'Isaac, of Corphine,
+in Kintyre, in Scotland, made oath, on examination at Campbell-town,
+that he saw, on the 13th of October in the above year, on a rock on the
+sea-coast, an animal which generally corresponded with the form of the
+Mermaid--the upper half human shape, the other brindled or reddish grey,
+apparently covered with scales; the extremity of the tail greenish red;
+head covered with long hair, at times put back on both sides of the
+head. This statement was attested by the minister of Campbell-town and
+the Chamberlain of Mull.
+
+In August, 1812, Mr. Toupin, of Exmouth, in a sailing excursion, and
+when about a mile south-east of Exmouth Bar, heard a sound like that
+of the AEolian harp; and saw, at about one hundred yards distance, a
+creature, which was regarded as a Mermaid. The head, from the crown to
+the chin, formed a long oval, and the face seemed to resemble that of
+the seal, though with more agreeable features. The presumed hair, the
+arms, and the hand, with four fingers connected by a membrane, are then
+described, and the tail with polished scales. The entire height of the
+animal was from five feet to five and a-half feet. In 1819, a creature
+approached the coast of Ireland. It was about the size of a child ten
+years of age, with prominent bosom, long dark hair, and dark eyes. It
+was shot at, when it plunged into the sea with a loud scream.
+
+[Illustration: SEAL AND MERMAID.]
+
+In reviewing these stories of Mermaids, it may be remarked that there
+is always a fish in each tale--either a living fish of a peculiar
+kind, which a fanciful person thinks to bear some resemblance in the
+upper part to a human being, or a fish which becomes marvellous in the
+progress of its description from mouth to mouth. It is commonly thought
+the seals may often have been mistaken for Mermaids. But, of all the
+animals of the whale tribe that which approaches the nearest in form to
+man is, undoubtedly, the Dugong, which, when its head and breast are
+raised above the water, and its pectoral fins, resembling hands, are
+visible, might easily be taken by superstitious seamen for a semi-human
+being, or a Mermaid. Of this deception a remarkable instance occurred
+in 1826. The skeleton of a Mermaid, as it was called, was brought
+to Portsmouth, which had been shot in the vicinity of the Island of
+Mombass. This was submitted to the members of the Philosophical Society,
+when it proved to be the skeleton of a Dugong. To those who came to
+the examination with preconceived notions of a fabulous Mermaid, it
+presented, as it lay on the lecture-table, a singular appearance. It
+was about six feet long; the lower portion, with its broad tail-like
+extremity, suggested the idea of a powerful fish-like termination,
+whilst the fore-legs presented to the unskilful eye a resemblance to the
+bones of a small female arm; the cranium, however, had a brutal form,
+which could never have borne the lineaments of "the human face divine."
+
+The Mermaid has been traced to the Manatee as well as to the Dugong: the
+former is an aquatic animal, externally resembling a whale, and named
+from its flipper, resembling the human hand, _manus_. Again, the _mammae_
+(teats) of the Manatees and Dugongs are pectoral; and this conformation,
+joined to the adroit use of their flippers (whose five fingers can
+easily be distinguished through the inverting membranes, four of them
+being terminated by nails) in progression, nursing their young, &c.,
+have caused them, when seen at a distance with the anterior part of
+their body out of the water, to be taken for some creature approaching
+to human shape so nearly (especially as their middle is thick set with
+hair, giving somewhat of the effect of human hair or a beard), that
+there can be little doubt that not a few of the tales of Mermen and
+Mermaids have had their origin with these animals as well as with seals
+and walruses. Thus the Portuguese and Spaniards give the _Manatee_ a
+denomination which signifies Woman-fish; and the Dutch call the Dugong
+_Baardanetjee_, or Little-bearded Man. A very little imagination and
+a memory for only the marvellous portion of the appearance sufficed,
+doubtless, to complete the metamorphosis of this half woman or man, half
+fish, into a Siren, a Mermaid, or a Merman; and the wild recital of the
+voyager was treasured up by writers who, as Cuvier well observes, have
+displayed more learning than judgment.
+
+The comb and the toilet-glass have already been incidentally mentioned
+as accessories in these Mermaid stories; and these, with the
+origin of the creature. Sir George Head thus ingeniously attempts
+to explain:--"The resemblance of the seal, or sea-calf, to the calf
+consists only in the voice, and the voice of the calf is certainly not
+dissimilar to that of a man. But the claws of the seal, as well as the
+hand, are like a lady's back-hair comb; wherefore, altogether, supposing
+the resplendence of sea-water streaming down its polished neck, on a
+sunshiny day, the substitute for a looking-glass, we arrive at once at
+the fabulous history of the marine maiden or Mermaid, and the appendages
+of her toilet."
+
+The progress of zoological science has long since destroyed the belief
+in the existence of the Mermaid. If its upper structure be human, with
+lungs resembling our own, how could such a creature live and breathe at
+the bottom of the sea, where it is stated to be? for our most expert
+divers are unable to stay under water more than half an hour. Suppose it
+to be of the cetaceous class, it could only remain under the water two
+or three minutes together without rising to the surface to take breath;
+and if this were the case with the Mermaid, would it not be oftener seen?
+
+Half a century has scarcely elapsed since a _manufactured_ Mermaid was
+shown in London with all the confidence of its being a natural creature.
+In the winter of 1822 there was exhibited at the Egyptian Hall, in
+Piccadilly, this pretended Mermaid, which was visited by from 300 to
+400 persons daily! The imposture, however, was too gross to last long;
+and it was ascertained to be the dried skin of the head and shoulders
+of a monkey attached very neatly to the dried skin of a fish of the
+salmon kind with the head cut off; the compound figure being stuffed
+and highly varnished, the better to deceive the eye. This grotesque
+object was taken by a Dutch vessel from on board a native Malacca boat;
+and from the reverence shown to it by the sailors it is supposed to
+have represented the incarnation of one of the idol gods of the Malacca
+Islands. A correspondent of the "Magazine of Natural History," 1829,
+however, avers that the above "Mermaid" was brought from the East
+Indies; for being at St. Helena in 1813 he saw it on board the ship
+which was bringing it to England. The impression on his mind was that
+it was an artificial compound of the upper part of a small ape with the
+lower half of a fish; and by aid of a powerful glass he ascertained the
+point of union between the two parts. He was somewhat staggered to find
+that this was so neatly effected that the precise line of junction was
+not satisfactorily apparent: the creature was then in its best state of
+preservation.
+
+In a volume of "Manners and Customs of the Japanese," published in
+1841, we, however, find the following version of the history of the
+above Mermaid:--"A Japanese fisherman seems to have displayed ingenuity
+for the mere purpose of making money by his countrymen's passion for
+everything odd and strange. He contrived to unite the upper half of
+a monkey to the lower half of a fish so neatly as to defy ordinary
+inspection. He then gave out that he had caught the creature in his
+net, but that it had died shortly after being taken out of the water;
+and he derived considerable pecuniary profit from his cunning in more
+ways than one. The exhibition of the sea monster to Japanese curiosity
+paid well; yet more productive was the assertion that the half-human
+fish, having spoken during the five minutes it existed out of its native
+element, had predicted a certain number of years of wonderful fertility
+and a fatal epidemic, the only remedy for which would be the possession
+of the marine prophet's likeness! The sale of these _pictured Mermaids_
+was immense. Either the composite animal, or another, the offspring of
+the success of the first, was sold to the Dutch factory and transmitted
+to Batavia, where it fell into the hands of a speculating American,
+who brought it to Europe; and here, in the year 1822-3, exhibited his
+purchase as a real Mermaid to the admiration of the ignorant, the
+perplexity of the learned, and the filling of his own purse."
+
+The Editor of the "Literary Gazette," Mr. Jerdan, was the first
+to expose the fabulous creature of the Egyptian Hall. He plainly
+said:--"Our opinion is fixed that it is a _composition_; a most
+ingenious one, we grant, but still nothing beyond the admirably
+put-together members of various animals. The extraordinary skill of
+the Chinese and Japanese in executing such deceptions is notorious,
+and we have no doubt that the Mermaid is a manufacture from the Indian
+Sea, where it has been pretended it was caught. We are not of those who
+because they happen not to have had direct proof of the existence of
+any extraordinary natural phenomenon, push scepticism to the extreme
+and deny its possibility. The depths of the sea, in all probability,
+from various chemical and philosophical causes, contain animals unknown
+to its surface-waters, rarely if ever seen by human eye. But when a
+creature is presented to us having no other organization but that which
+is suitable to a medium always open to our observation, it in the first
+instance excites suspicion that only one individual of the species
+should be discovered and obtained. When knowledge was more limited, the
+stories of Mermaids seen in distant quarters might be credited by the
+many, and not entirely disbelieved by the few; but now, when European
+and especially British commerce fills every corner of the earth with men
+of observation and science, the unique becomes the incredible, and we
+receive with far greater doubt the apparition of such anomalies as the
+present. It is curious that though medical men seem in general to regard
+the creature as a possible production of nature, no naturalist of any
+ability credits it after five minutes' observation! This may, perhaps,
+be accounted for by their acquaintance with the parts of distinct
+animals, of which it appears the Mermaid is composed. The cheeks of the
+blue-faced ape, the canine teeth, the _simia_ upper body, and the tail
+of the fish, are all familiar to them in less complex combinations,
+and they pronounce at once that the whole is an imposture. And such
+is our settled conviction." Though naturalists and journalists fully
+exposed the imposture, this did not affect the exhibition, which for a
+considerable time continued as crowded as ever; but the notoriety had
+dwindled down to "a penny show," at Bartholomew Fair, by the year 1825.
+
+After so many exposures of the absurd belief in Mermaids, it could
+scarcely be expected that any person could be found in Europe weak
+enough to report the existence of one of these creatures to an eminent
+scientific Society. Yet, on the 22d of June, 1840, the first Secretary
+of the Ottoman Embassy at Paris addressed a note to the Academy of
+Sciences, stating that his father, who was in the Admiralty department
+at Constantinople, had recently seen a Mermaid while crossing the
+Bosphorus, which communication was received with much laughter.
+
+We have still another recorded instance--and in Scotland. In the year
+1857 two fishermen on the Argyleshire coast declared that when on their
+way to the fishing-station, Lochindale, in a boat, and when about four
+miles south-west from the village of Port Charlotte, about six o'clock
+in a June evening, they distinctly saw, at about six yards distance, an
+object in the form of a woman, with comely face and fine hair hanging
+in ringlets over the neck and shoulders. It was above the surface of
+the water gazing at the fishermen for three or four minutes--and then
+vanished! Yet this declaration was officially attested!
+
+In 1863 Mermaids were supposed to abound in the ponds and ditches of
+Suffolk, where careful mothers used them as bugbears to prevent little
+children from going too near the water. Children described them as
+"nasty things that crome you (hook you) into the water;" others as "a
+great big thing like a feesh," probably a pike basking in the shallow
+water.
+
+Sometimes the Mermaid has assumed a picturesqueness in fairy tale; and
+her impersonation has been described by Dryden as "a fine woman, with a
+fish's tail." And, laying aside her scaly train, she has appeared as a
+lovely woman, with sea-green hair; and Crofton Croker relates, in his
+"Fairy Legends," a marriage between an Irish fisherman and a "Merrow,"
+as the Mermaid is called in Ireland.
+
+
+
+
+IS THE UNICORN FABULOUS?
+
+
+To this question we may reply, in the words of a writer of 1633,
+"Concerning the Unicorn, different opinions prevail among authors:
+some doubt, others deny, and a third class affirm its existence." The
+question has lasted two thousand years, and is every now and then kept
+alive by fresh evidences.
+
+Ctesias, a credulous Greek physician, who appears to have resided at
+the Court of Persia, in the time of the younger Cyrus, about 400 years
+before the birth of Christ, describes the wild asses of India as equal
+to the horse in size, and even larger, with white bodies, red heads,
+bluish eyes, and a horn on the forehead a cubit in length; the part
+from the forehead entirely white, the middle black, and the extremity
+red and pointed. Drinking-vessels were made of it, and those who used
+them were subject neither to convulsions, epilepsy, nor poison, provided
+that before taking the poison, or after, they drank from these cups
+water, wine, or any other liquor. Ctesias describes these animals as
+very swift and very strong. Naturally they were not ferocious; but when
+they found themselves and their young surrounded by horsemen, they did
+not abandon their offspring, but defended themselves by striking with
+their horns, kicking, and biting, and so slew many men and horses. This
+animal was also shot with arrows and brought down with darts; for it was
+impossible to take it alive. Its flesh was too bitter for food, but it
+was hunted for its horn and astragalus (ankle-bone), which last Ctesias
+declares he saw. Aristotle describes the Indian ass with a single horn.
+Herodotus mentions asses having horns; and Strabo refers to Unicorn
+horses, with the heads of deers. Oppian notices the Aonian bulls with
+undivided hoofs, and a single median horn between their temples. Pliny
+notices it as a very ferocious beast, similar in its body to a horse,
+with the head of a deer, the feet of an elephant, the tail of a boar,
+a deep bellowing voice, and a single black horn standing out in the
+middle of its forehead. He adds, that it cannot be taken alive; and some
+such excuse may have been necessary in those days for not producing the
+living animal upon the arena of the amphitheatre.
+
+Out of this passage most of the modern Unicorns have been described
+and figured. The body of the horse and the head of the deer appear to
+be but vague sketches; the feet of the elephant and the tail of the
+boar point at once to a pachydermatous (thick-skinned) animal; and the
+single black horn, allowing for a little exaggeration as to its length,
+well fits the two last-mentioned conditions, and will apply to the
+Indian rhinoceros, which, says the sound naturalist, Ogilby, "affords a
+remarkable instance of the obstructions which the progress of knowledge
+may suffer, and the gross absurdities which not unfrequently result from
+the wrong application of a name." Mr. Ogilby then refers to the account
+of Ctesias, which we have just quoted, and adds:--"His account, though
+mixed up with a great deal of credulous absurdity, contains a very
+valuable and perfectly recognisable description of the rhinoceros, under
+the ridiculous name, however, of the _Indian Ass_; and, as he attributed
+to it a whole hoof like the horse, and a single horn in the forehead,
+speculation required but one step further to produce the fabulous
+Unicorn."
+
+The ancient writers who have treated of the Unicorn are too numerous for
+us to specify. Some of the moderns may be referred to. Garcias describes
+this marvellous creature from one who alleges that he had seen it. The
+seer affirmed that it was endowed with a wonderful horn, which it would
+sometimes turn to the left and right, at others raise, and then again
+depress. Ludovicus Vartomanus writes, that he saw two sent to the Sultan
+from Ethiopia, and kept in a repository at Mahomet's tomb in Mecca.
+Cardan describes the Unicorn as a rare animal, the size of a horse, with
+hair very like that of a weasel, with the head of a deer, on which one
+horn grows three cubits in length (a story seldom loses anything in its
+progress) from the forehead, ample at its lowest part, and tapering to
+a point; with a short neck, a very thin mane, leaning to one side only,
+and less on the ear, as those of a young roe.
+
+In Jonston's "Historia Naturalis," 1657, we see the smooth-horned
+solipede, "Wald Esel;" and the digitated and clawed smooth-horned "Meer
+Wolff," the latter with his single horn erect in the foreground, but
+with it depressed in the background, where he is represented regaling on
+serpents. Then there are varieties, with the head, mane, and tail of a
+horse; another smooth-horned, with a horse's head and mane, a pig's-tail
+and camel-like feet; the "Meer Stenbock, Capricornus Marinus," with
+hind webbed feet, and a kind of graduated horn, like an opera-glass
+pulled out, in the foreground, and charging the fish most valiantly in
+the water in the distance. Then there is another, with a mule's head
+and two rhinoceros-like horns, one on his forehead and the other on his
+nose; and a horse's tail, with a collar round his neck; a neck entirely
+shaggy--and a twisted horn, a shaggy gorget, and curly tail, are among
+other peculiarities.
+
+The Unicorn seems to have been a sad trouble to the hunters, who hardly
+knew how to come at so valuable a piece of game. Some described the horn
+as moveable at the will of the animal--a kind of small sword, in short,
+with which no hunter who was not exceedingly cunning in fence could have
+a chance. Others told the poor foresters that all the strength lay in
+its horn, and that when pressed by them it would throw itself from the
+pinnacle of the highest rock, horn foremost, so as to pitch upon it, and
+then quietly march off not a bit the worse!
+
+Modern zoologists, disgusted as they well may be with fables, such as we
+have glanced at, disbelieve, generally, the existence of the Unicorn,
+such, at least, as we have referred to; but there is still an opinion
+that some land animal bearing a horn on the anterior part of its head,
+exists besides the rhinoceros. The nearest approach to a horn in the
+middle of the forehead of any terrestrial mammiferous animal known to us
+is the bony protuberance on the forehead of the giraffe; and though it
+would be presumptuous to deny the existence of a one-horned quadruped
+other than the rhinoceros, it may be safely stated that the insertion
+of a long and solid horn in the living forehead of a horse-like or
+deer-like cranium is as near an impossibility as anything can be.
+
+Rupell, after a long sojourn in the north-east of Africa, stated that
+in Kordofan the Unicorn exists; stated to be the size of a small horse,
+of the slender make of the gazelle, and furnished with a long straight
+horn in the male, which was wanting in the female. According to the
+statements made by various persons, it inhabits the deserts to the south
+of Koretofan, is uncommonly fleet, and comes only occasionally to the
+Koldagi Heive mountains on the borders of Kordofan.
+
+Other writers refer the Unicorn to the antelope. The origin of the name
+of antelope is traced by Cuvier to the Greek _Anthalops_, applied to a
+fabulous animal living on the banks of the Euphrates, with long jagged
+horns, with which it sawed down trees of considerable thickness! Others
+conjecture this animal to have been the _Oryx_, a species of antelope,
+which is fabulously reported to have had only one horn, and to have been
+termed _Panthalops_ in the old language of Egypt.
+
+In his "Revolutions on the Surface of the Globe." Cuvier refers the
+idea of the Unicorn to the coarse figures traced by savages on rocks.
+Ignorant of perspective, and wishing to present in profile the horned
+antelope, they could only give it one horn; and thus originated the
+_Oryx_. The oryx of the Egyptian monuments is, most probably, but the
+production of a similarly crude style, which the religion of the country
+imposed on the artist. Many of the profiles of quadrupeds have only one
+leg before and one behind: why, then, should they show two horns? It
+is possible that individual animals might be taken in the chase whom
+accident had despoiled of one horn, as it often happens to chamois and
+the Scythian antelope; and that would suffice to confirm the error which
+these pictures originally produced. It is thus, probably, that we find
+anew the Unicorn in the mountains of Thibet.
+
+The _Chiru Antelope_ is the supposed Unicorn of the Bhotians. In form
+it approaches the deer; the horns are exceedingly long, are placed
+very forward in the head, and may be popularly described as erect and
+straight. It is usually found in herds, and is extremely wild, and
+unapproachable by man. It is much addicted to salt in summer, when vast
+herds are often seen at the rock-salt beds which abound in Tibet. They
+are said to advance under the conduct of a leader, and to post sentinels
+around the beds before they attempt to feed.
+
+Major Salter is stated to have obtained information of the existence of
+an animal in Tibet closely resembling the Unicorn of the ancients, which
+revived the belief of naturalists by adducing testimonies from Oriental
+writings. Upon this statement, M. Klaproth remarks, that previous to
+Major Salter's Reports, the Catholic missionaries, who returned to
+Europe from China by way of Tibet and Nepal, in the seventeenth century,
+mentioned that the Unicorn was found in that part of the Great Desert
+which bounds China to the west, where they crossed the great wall; that
+Captain Turner, when travelling in Tibet, was informed by the Raja of
+Boutan that he had one of these animals alive; and that Bell, in his
+"Travels to Peking," describes a Unicorn which was found on the southern
+front of Siberia. He adds:--"The great 'Tibetan-Mongol Dictionary'
+mentions the Unicorn; and the 'Geographical Dictionary of Tibet and
+Central Asia,' printed at Peking, where it describes a district in the
+province of Kham, in Tibet, named Sera-zeong, explains this name by 'the
+River of Unicorns,' because," adds the author, "many of these animals
+are found there."
+
+In the "History of the Mongol-Khans," published and translated at St.
+Petersburg, we find the following statement:--Genghiz Khan, having
+subjected all Tibet in 1206, commenced his march for Hindustan. As he
+ascended Mount Jadanarung, he beheld a beast approaching him of the
+deer kind, of the species called _Seron_, which have a single horn at
+the top of the head. It fell on its knees thrice before the monarch, as
+if to pay respect to him. Every one was astonished at this incident.
+The monarch exclaimed. "The Empire of Hindustan is, we are assured, the
+country where are born the majestic Buddhas and Bodhisatwas, as well as
+the potent Bogdas and princes of antiquity: what can be the meaning,
+then, of this animal, incapable of speech, saluting me like a man?"
+Upon this, he returned to his own country. "This story," continues M.
+Klaproth, "is also related by Mahommedan authors who have written the
+life of Genghiz. Something of the kind must, therefore, have taken
+place. Possibly, some of the Mongol conqueror's suite may have taken a
+Unicorn, which Genghiz thus employed, to gain a pretext for abstaining
+from an expedition which promised no success."
+
+Upon this statement, it was observed in the "Asiatic Register," 1839,
+that "when we consider that seventeen years have elapsed since the
+account of Major Salter was given, and that, notwithstanding our
+increased opportunities of intercourse with Tibet, no fact has since
+transpired which supplies a confirmation of that account, except
+the obtaining of a supposed horn of the supposed Unicorn, we cannot
+participate in these renewed hopes."
+
+The Rev. John Campbell, in his "Travels in South Africa," describes the
+head of another animal, which, as far as the horn is concerned, seems
+to approach nearer than the common rhinoceros to the Unicorn of the
+ancients. While in the Machow territory, the Hottentots brought to Mr.
+Campbell a head differing from that of any rhinoceros that had been
+previously killed. "The common African rhinoceros has a crooked horn,
+resembling a cock's spur, which rises about nine or ten inches above
+the nose, and inclines backward; immediately behind which is a straight
+thick horn. But the head brought by the Hottentots had a straight horn
+projecting three feet from the forehead, about ten inches above the tip
+of the nose. The projection of this great horn very much resembles that
+of the fanciful Unicorn in the British arms. It has a small thick horny
+substance, eight inches long, immediately behind it, which can hardly
+be observed on the animal at the distance of a hundred yards; so that
+this species must look like an Unicorn (in the sense 'one-horned') when
+running in the field." The author adds:--"This animal is considered
+by naturalists, since the arrival of the above skull in London, to be
+the Unicorn of the ancients, and the same that is described in Job
+xxxix. 9--'Will the Unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy
+crib? 10. Canst thou bind the Unicorn with his band in the furrow? or
+will he harrow the valleys after thee? 11. Wilt thou trust him because
+his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him?' Again,
+Deuteronomy xxxiii. 17--'His horns are like the horns of Unicorns: with
+them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth.'"
+
+A fragment of the skull, with the horn, is deposited in the Museum of
+the London Missionary Society.
+
+Mr. W. B. Baikie writes to the _Athenaeum_ from Bida Nupe, Central
+Africa, in 1862, the following suggestions:--"When I ascended the Niger,
+now nearly five years ago, I frequently heard allusions to an animal
+of this nature, but at that time I set it down as a myth. Since then,
+however, the amount of testimony I have received, and the universal
+belief of the natives of all the countries which I have hitherto
+visited, have partly shaken my scepticism, and at present I simply
+hold that its non-existence is not proven. A skull of this animal is
+said to be preserved in a town in the country of Bonu, through which
+I hope to pass in the course of a few weeks, when I shall make every
+possible inquiry. Two among my informants have repeatedly declared to me
+that they have seen the bones of this animal, and each made particular
+mention of the long, straight, or nearly straight, black horn. In
+countries to the east, and south-east, as Margi and Bagirmi, where the
+one-horned rhinoceros is found, the hunters carefully distinguished
+between it and the supposed Unicorn, and give them different names. In
+the vast forests and boundless wastes which occur over Central Africa,
+especially towards the countries south and east of Lake Tsad, Bornu,
+Bagirmi and Adamawa, are doubtless numerous zoological curiosities as
+yet unknown to the man of science, and among them possibly may exist
+this much-talked-of, strange, one-horned animal, even though it may not
+exactly correspond with our typical English Unicorn."
+
+The factitious horn has been preserved in various Museums. The "Monocero
+Horn," in Tradescant's collection, was, probably, that which ordinarily
+has passed for the horn of the Unicorn, namely, the tooth of a narwhal.
+Old legends assert that the Unicorn, when he goes to drink, first dips
+his horn in the water to purify it, and that other beasts delay to
+quench their thirst till the Unicorn has thus sweetened the water. The
+narwhal's tooth makes a capital twisted Unicorn's horn, as represented
+in the old figures. That in the Repository of St. Denis, at Paris, was
+presented by Thevet, and was declared to have been given to him by
+the King of Monomotapa, who took him out to hunt Unicorns, which are
+frequent in that country. Some have thought that this horn was a carved
+elephant's tooth. There is one at Strasburg, some seven or eight feet in
+length, and there are several in Venice.
+
+Great medical virtues were attributed to the so-called horn, and the
+price it once bore outdoes everything in the _Tulipomania_. A Florentine
+physician has recorded that a pound of it (sixteen ounces) was sold
+in the shops for fifteen hundred and thirty-six crowns, when the same
+weight in gold would only have brought one hundred and forty-eight
+crowns.
+
+From what source we derive the stories of the animosity between the
+lion and the Unicorn is not clearly understood, although this is the
+principal medium through which the fabulous creature has been kept in
+remembrance by being constantly before us in the Royal Arms, which
+were settled at the Accession of George I. We owe the introduction of
+the Unicorn, however, to James I., who, as King of Scotland, bore two
+Unicorns, and coupled one with the English lion, when the two kingdoms
+were united.
+
+The position of the lion and Unicorn in the arms of our country seems to
+have given rise (naturally enough in the mind of one who was ignorant of
+heraldic decoration) to a nursery rhyme which most of us remember:--
+
+    "The Lion and the Unicorn
+      Were fighting for the crown;
+    The Lion beat the Unicorn
+      All round the town," &c.
+
+unless it alludes to a contest for dominion over the brute creation,
+which the "rebellious Unicorn," as Spenser calls it, seems to have waged
+with the tawny monarch.
+
+Spenser, in his "Faerie Queen," gives the following curious way of
+catching the Unicorn:--
+
+    "Like as a lyon, whose imperiall powre,
+    A prowd rebellious Unicorn defyes,
+    T'avoide the rash assault and wrathful stowre
+    Of his fiers foe, him a tree applyes,
+    And when him rousing in full course he spyes,
+
+    He slips aside; the whiles that furious beast
+    His precious home, sought of his enemyes,
+    Strikes in the stocke, ne thence can be releast.
+    But to the mighty victor yields a bounteous feast."
+
+Shakspeare, also ("Julius Caesar," Act ii. scene 1), speaks of the
+supposed mode of entrapping them:--
+
+                    "For he loves to hear
+    That Unicorns may be betrayed with trees,
+    And bears with glasses, elephants with holes,
+    Lions with toils, and men with flatterers."
+
+We have no satisfactory reason for believing that man ever coexisted
+with Mastodons; otherwise Professor Owen's discovery of the retention of
+a single tusk only by the male gigantic Mastodon, might have afforded
+another form of Unicorn.
+
+Whatever the zoologists may have done towards extirpating the belief
+in the existence of the Unicorn, it is ever kept in sight by heraldry,
+which, with its animal absurdities, has contributed more to the
+propagation of error respecting the natural world than any other species
+of misrepresentation.
+
+
+
+
+THE MOLE AT HOME.
+
+
+The Mole, though generally a despised and persecuted animal, is
+nevertheless useful to the husbandman in being the natural drainer of
+his land and destroyer of worms. To other inferior animals he is a
+sapper and miner, forming for them their safe retreats and well-secured
+dormitories.
+
+The economy of the Mole has been much controverted among naturalists.
+It is found throughout the greater part of Europe. We are overrun with
+it in most parts of England and Wales; but it does not appear to have
+been found in the northern extremity of Scotland, and there is no record
+of its having been seen in the Orkney Isles, Zetland, or Ireland. Its
+most diligent and instructive historian is Henri Le Court, who, flying
+from the terrors that came in the train of the French Revolution,
+betook himself to the country, and from being the attendant on a Court,
+became the biographer of this humble animal. M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire,
+the celebrated French naturalist, visited Le Court for the purpose
+of testing his observations, and appears to have been charmed by the
+facility and ingenuity with which Le Court traced and demonstrated the
+subterraneous labours of this obscure worker in the dark.
+
+We shall first briefly describe the adaptation of its structure to its
+habits. The bony framework is set in motion by very powerful muscles,
+those of the chest and neck being most vigorous. The wide hand, which is
+the great instrument of action, and performs the offices of a pickaxe
+and shovel, is sharp-edged on its lower margin, and when clothed with
+the integuments the fingers are hardly distinguishable. The muzzle of
+the Mole is evidently a delicate organ of touch, as are also the large
+and broad hands and feet; and the tail has much sensitiveness to give
+notice to the animal of the approach of any attack from behind. Its
+taste and smell, especially the latter, are very sensitive. Its sight
+is almost rudimentary. The little eye is so hidden in the fur that its
+very existence was for a long time doubted. It appears to be designed
+for operating only as a warning to the animal on its emerging into the
+light; indeed, more acute vision would only have been an encumbrance.
+If the sight be imperfect, the sense of hearing is very acute, and the
+tympanum very large, though there is no external ear, perhaps because
+the earth assists considerably in vibration. The fore-feet are inclined
+sideways, so as to answer the use of hands, to scoop out the earth to
+form its habitation or pursue its prey, and to fling all the loose soil
+behind the animal. The breastbone in shape resembles a ploughshare.
+The skin is so tough as only to be cut by a very sharp knife. The hair
+is very short and close-set, and softer than the finest silk; colour
+black; some spotted and cream-coloured. This hair is yielding; had it
+been strong, as in the rat or mouse, it would doubly have retarded the
+progress of the creature; first by its resistance, and then acting as a
+brush, so as to choke up the galleries, by removing the loose earth from
+the sides and ceilings of the galleries.
+
+It is supposed that the verdant circles so often seen in grass ground,
+called by country people _fairy rings_, are owing to the operations of
+Moles: at certain seasons they perform their burrowings in circles,
+which, loosening the soil, gives the surface a greater fertility and
+rankness of grass than the other parts within or without the ring. The
+larger mole-hills denote the nests or dens of the Mole beneath.
+
+The feeling of the Mole is so acute that when casting up the earth, it
+is sensible of very gentle pressure; hence mole-catchers tread lightly
+when in quest of Moles; and unless this caution is used the Mole ceases
+its operation, and instantly retires. Again, so acute is the smell, that
+mole-catchers draw the body of a captured Mole through their traps and
+the adjoining runs and passages to remove all suspicious odours which
+might arise from the touch of their fingers.
+
+During summer the Mole runs in search of snails and worms in the
+night-time among the grass, which pursuit makes it the prey of owls. The
+Mole shows great art in skinning a worm, which it always does before it
+eats it, by stripping the skin from end to end, and squeezing out the
+contents of the body. It is doubtful whether any other animal exists
+which is obliged to eat at such short intervals as the Mole, ten or
+twelve hours appearing to be the maximum of its fasting; at the end
+of that time it dies. Cuvier tells us that if two Moles are shut up
+together without food, there will shortly be nothing left of the weakest
+but its skin, slit along the belly! Buffon accuses Moles of eating all
+the acorns of a newly-set soil. Its voracity makes the Mole a great
+drinker: a run is always formed to a pond or ditch as a reservoir; when
+it is too distant, the animal sinks little wells, which have sometimes
+been seen brimfull.
+
+We now return to Le Court's experiments with Moles, which are very
+interesting. To afford proof of the rapidity with which the Mole will
+travel along its passages, Le Court watched his opportunity, and when
+the animal was on its feed at one of the most distant points from its
+sanctuary or fortress, to which point the Mole's high road leads. Le
+Court placed along the course of that road, between the animal and
+the fortress, several little camp colours, so to speak, the staff of
+each being a straw, and the flag a bit of paper, at certain distances,
+the straws penetrating down into the passage. Near the end of this
+subterraneous road he inserted a horn, the mouthpiece of which stood
+out of the ground. When all was ready, Le Court blew a blast loud enough
+to frighten all the Moles within hearing. Down went the little flags in
+succession with astonishing velocity, as the terrified Mole, rushing
+along towards his sanctuary, came in contact with the flag-straws; and
+the spectators affirmed that the Mole's swiftness was equal to the speed
+of a horse at a good round trot.
+
+To test its amount of vision, Le Court took a spare water-pipe, or
+gutter, open at both ends. Into this pipe he introduced several Moles
+successively. Geoffroy St. Hilaire stood by to watch the result at the
+further end of the tube. As long as the spectators stood motionless the
+introduced Mole made the best of his way through the pipe and escaped;
+but if they moved, or even raised a finger, the Mole stopped, and then
+retreated. Several repetitions of this experiment produced the same
+results.
+
+In the domain of the Mole, the principal point is the habitation, or
+fortress, constructed under a considerable hillock raised in some secure
+place, often at the root of a tree, or under a bank. The dome of the
+fortress is of earth, beaten by the Mole-architect into a compact and
+solid state. Inside is formed a circular gallery at the base, which
+communicates with a smaller upper gallery by means of five passages.
+Within the lower gallery is the chamber or dormitory, which has access
+to the upper gallery by three passages. From this habitation extends
+the high road by which the proprietor reaches the opposite end of
+the encampment; the galleries open into this road, which the Mole is
+continually carrying out and extending in his search for food; this has
+been termed the _hunting-ground_. Another road extends, first downwards,
+and then up into the open road of the territory. Some eight or nine
+other passages open out from the external circular gallery. From the
+habitation a road is carried out, nearly straight, and connected with
+the encampment and the alleys leading to the hunting-ground which open
+into it on each side. In diameter the road exceeds the body of a Mole,
+but its size will not admit of two Moles passing each other. The walls,
+from the repeated pressure of the animal's sides, become smooth and
+compact. Sometimes a Mole will lay out a second or even a third road; or
+several individuals use one road in common, though they never trespass
+on each other's hunting-grounds.
+
+If two Moles should happen to meet in the same road, one must retreat
+into the nearest alley, unless they fight, when the weakest is often
+slain. In forming this tunnel the Mole's instinct drives it at a
+greater or less depth, according to the quality of the soil, or other
+circumstances. When it is carried under a road or stream, a foot and
+a-half of earth, or sometimes more, is left above it. Then does the
+little engineering Mole carry on the subterraneous works necessary for
+his support, travelling, and comfort; and his tunnels never fall in.
+The quality or humidity of the soils which regulates the abundance of
+earth-worms, determines the greater or less depth of the alleys; and
+when these are filled with stores of food the Mole works out branch
+alleys.
+
+The main road communicating with the hunting-grounds is of necessity
+passed through in the course of the day; and here the mole-catcher sets
+his traps to intercept the Mole between his habitation and the alley
+where he is carrying on his labours. Some mole-catchers will tell you
+the hours when the Moles move are nine and four; others that near the
+coast their movements are influenced by the tides. Besides the various
+traps which are set for Moles, they are sometimes taken by a man and a
+dog; when the latter indicates the presence of a Mole, the man spears
+the animal out as it moves in its run. Pointers will stop as steadily as
+at game, at the Moles, when they are straying on the surface.
+
+The Mole is a most voracious animal. Earthworms and the larvae of insects
+are its favourite food; and it will eat mice, lizards, frogs, and even
+birds; but it rejects toads, even when pressed by hunger, deterred,
+probably, by the acrid secretions of their skin. Moles are essentially
+carnivorous; and when fed abundantly on vegetable substances they have
+died of hunger.
+
+During the season of love, at which time fierce battles are fought
+between the males, the male pursues the female with ardour through
+numerous runs wrought out with great rapidity. The attachment appears
+to be very strong in the Moles. Le Court often found a female taken in
+his trap and a male lying dead close to her. From four to five is the
+general number of young. The nest is distinct, usually distant from the
+habitation. It is constructed by enlarging and excavating the point
+where three or four passages intersect each other; and the bed of the
+nest is formed of a mass of young grass, root fibres, and herbage. In
+one nest Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Le Court counted two hundred and four
+young wheat-blades.
+
+M. St. Hilaire describes the pairings, or as he calls it, "the loves of
+the Moles." As soon as the Mole has finished the galleries he brings his
+mate along with him, and shuts her up in the bridal gallery, taking care
+to prevent the entrance of his rivals: in case of a fight they enlarge
+the part of the gallery where they are met; and the victory is decided
+in favour of him who first wounds his adversary before the ear. The
+female, during the fight, is shut up in the bridal gallery, so as to be
+unable to escape; for which purpose, however, she uses all her resources
+in digging, and attempts to get away by the side passages. Should she
+succeed the conqueror hastens to rejoin his faithless mate, and to
+bring her back into his galleries. This manoeuvre is repeated as often
+as other males enter the lists. At length the conqueror is recognised,
+and his mate becomes more docile. The pair work together and finish the
+galleries; after which the female digs alone for food. As soon as the
+galleries are formed, the male conducts his mate to a certain point, and
+from this time the female no longer digs in the solid earth, but towards
+the surface, advancing by merely separating the roots of the grass.
+
+The Mole is a great friend to the farmer; but there are places in which
+he is a public enemy. He is not a vegetable feeder, and he never roots
+up the growing corn in spring-time, except when he is after grubs,
+snails, and wire-worms. It has been calculated that two Moles destroy
+20,000 white worms in a year. He is very destructive to under drains;
+and where the land is low we are in danger of a deluge from his piercing
+holes in the drain-banks. Thus it would be madness not to extirpate
+Moles in those places where the waters, in drains or rivers, are above
+the level of the lands around, especially when the banks are made of
+sand or earth of loose texture.
+
+The persecution of Moles in cultivated countries amounts almost to a
+war of extermination. The numbers annually slaughtered are enormous.
+A mole-catcher, who had followed the craft for thirty-five years,
+destroyed from forty to fifty thousand Moles. But all Mole exterminators
+must yield to Le Court, who, in no large district, took, in five months,
+six thousand of them. Moles are good swimmers, and their bite is very
+sharp; their attacks are ferocious, and they keep their hold like a
+bull-dog.
+
+The Shrew Mole of North America resembles the European Mole in its
+habits. Dr. Goodman describes it as most active early in the morning,
+at mid-day, and in the evening; and they are well known in the country
+to have the custom of coming daily to the surface _exactly at noon_.
+We read of a captive Shrew Mole which ate meat, cooked or raw, drank
+freely, and was lively and playful, following the hand of his feeder by
+the scent, burrowing for a short distance in the loose earth, and after
+making a small circle, returning for more food. In eating he employed
+his flexible snout to thrust the food into his mouth, doubling it so as
+to force it directly backwards, as described in Dr. Richardson's "North
+American Zoology."
+
+James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, remarks, in his usual impressive
+manner:--"The most unnatural persecution that ever was raised in a
+country is that against the Mole--that innocent and blessed little
+pioneer, who enriches our pastures annually with the first top-dressing,
+dug with great pains and labour from the fattest of the soil beneath.
+The advantages of this top-dressing are so apparent that it is really
+amazing how our countrymen should have persisted, for nearly half a
+century, in the most manly and valiant endeavours to exterminate the
+Moles! If a hundred men and horses were employed on a pasture farm of
+from fifteen hundred to two thousand acres, in raising and driving
+manure for a top-dressing of that farm, they would not do it so
+effectually, so neatly, or so equally as the natural number of Moles. In
+June, July, and August, the Mole-hills are all spread by the crows and
+lambs--the former for food, and the latter in the evenings of warm days
+after a drought has set in. The late Duke of Buccleuch was the first who
+introduced Mole-catching into Scotland."
+
+
+
+
+THE GREAT ANT-BEAR.
+
+
+A fine living specimen of this comparatively rare animal was first
+exhibited in the Zoological Society's gardens, in the Regent's-park,
+1853. It is stated to be the first specimen brought alive to England,
+and accordingly excited considerable attention. It was one of a pair,
+captured near the Rio Negro, in the southern province of Brazil, and
+shipped for England by some German travellers. The male died on the
+voyage; the female arrived in London in 1853, and was exhibited in
+Broad-street, St. Giles's, until purchased by the Zoological Society for
+the sum of 200_l._ The advantage of this live specimen to naturalists
+has been very great. Hitherto the examples engraved by Buffon and
+Shaw were both derived from stuffed specimens, and had the inevitable
+defects and shortcomings of such. Sir John Talbot Dillon, in his
+"Travels through Spain," published in 1780, states that a specimen of
+the Ant-Bear, from Buenos Ayres, was alive at Madrid in 1776: it is now
+stuffed and preserved in the Royal Cabinet of Natural History at Madrid.
+The persons who brought it from Buenos Ayres say it differs from the
+Ant-eater, which only feeds on emmets and other insects, whereas this
+would eat flesh, when cut in small pieces, to the amount of four or five
+pounds. From the snout to the extremity of the tail this animal is two
+yards in length, and his height is about two feet; the head very narrow,
+the nose long and slender. The tongue is so singular that it looks like
+a worm, and extends above sixteen inches. The body is covered with long
+hair of a dark brown, with white stripes on the shoulders; and when he
+sleeps, he covers his body with his tail. This account, it will be seen
+hereafter, corresponds very accurately with that of the animal purchased
+by the Zoological Society.
+
+[Illustration: THE GREAT ANT-BEAR.]
+
+Mr. Wallace, who travelled on the Amazon and Rio Negro, about the year
+1853, relates:--"The living specimen of this singular animal is a great
+rarity, even in its native country. In fact, there is not a city in
+Brazil where it would not be considered almost as much a curiosity as
+it is here. In the extensive forests of the Amazon the great Ant-eater
+is, perhaps, as abundant as in any part of South America; yet, during
+a residence there of more than four years, I never had an opportunity
+of seeing one. Once only I was nearly in at the death, finding a bunch
+of hairs from the tail of a specimen which had been killed (and eaten)
+a month previous to my arrival, at a village near the Capiquiare. In
+its native forests the creature feeds almost entirely on white ants,
+tearing open their nests with its powerful claws, and thrusting in its
+long and slender tongue, which, being probably mistaken for a worm,
+is immediately seized by scores of the inhabitants, who thus become
+an easy prey. The Indians, who also eat white ants, catch them in a
+somewhat similar manner, by pushing into the nest a grass-stalk, which
+the insects seize and hold on to most tenaciously. It may easily be
+conceived that such an animal must range over a considerable extent of
+country to obtain a plentiful supply of such food, which circumstance,
+as well as its extreme shyness and timidity, causes it to be but rarely
+met with, and still more rarely obtained alive."
+
+We have seen that the Ant-Bear lives exclusively upon ants, to procure
+which he tears open the hills, and when the ants flock out to defend
+their dwellings, draws over them his long, flexible tongue, covered
+with glutinous saliva, to which the ants consequently adhere; and he
+is said to repeat this operation twice in a second. "It seems almost
+incredible," says Azara, "that so robust and powerful an animal can
+procure sufficient sustenance from ants alone; but this circumstance has
+nothing strange in it, for those who are acquainted with the tropical
+parts of America, and have seen the enormous multitude of these insects,
+which swarm in all parts of the country to that degree that their hills
+often almost touch one another for miles together." The same author
+informs us that domestic Ant-Bears were occasionally kept by different
+persons in Paraguay, and that they had even been sent alive to Spain,
+being fed upon bread-and-milk mixed with morsels of flesh minced very
+small. Like all animals which live upon insects, the Ant-eaters are
+capable of sustaining a total deprivation of nourishment for an almost
+incredible time.
+
+The Great Ant-Bear's favourite resorts are low, swampy savannahs, along
+the banks of rivers and stagnant ponds; also frequenting humid forests,
+but never climbing trees, as falsely reported by Buffon. His pace is
+slow and heavy, though, when hard pressed, he increases his rate, yet
+his greatest velocity never half equals the ordinary running of a man.
+When pressed too hard, or urged to extremity, he turns obstinate,
+sits upon his hind-quarters like a bear, and defends himself with his
+powerful claws. Like that animal, his usual and only mode of assault is
+by seizing his adversary with his fore-paws, wrapping his arms round
+him, and endeavouring, by this means, to squeeze him to death. His great
+strength and powerful muscles would easily enable him to accomplish his
+purpose in this respect, even against the largest animals of his native
+forests, were it but guided by ordinary intelligence, or accompanied
+with a common degree of activity; but in these qualities there are
+few animals indeed who do not greatly surpass the Ant-Bear; so that
+the different stories handed down by writers on natural history from
+one to another, and copied, without question, into the histories and
+descriptions of this animal, may be regarded as pure fictions. "It is
+supposed," says Don Felix d'Azara, "that the jaguar himself dares not
+attack the Ant-Bear, and that, if pressed by hunger, or under some other
+strong excitement, he does so, the Ant-Bear embraces and hugs him so
+tightly as very soon to deprive him of life, not even relaxing his hold
+for hours after life has been extinguished in his assailant. Such is
+the manner in which the Ant-eater defends himself; but it is not to be
+believed that his utmost efforts could prevail against the jaguar, who,
+by a single bite, or blow of his paw, could kill the Ant-eater before he
+was prepared for resistance, so slow are his motions, even in an extreme
+case; and, being unable to leap or turn with ordinary rapidity, he is
+forced to act solely upon the defensive. The flesh of the Ant-eater is
+esteemed a delicacy by the Indians; and, though black, and of a strong
+musky flavour, is sometimes even met with at the tables of Europeans."
+
+The habits of the Great Ant-Bear in captivity have been described
+scientifically yet popularly, from the Zoological Society's specimen,
+by Professor Owen, who writes:--"When we were introduced to this, the
+latest novelty at the noble vivarium in the Regent's-park, we found the
+animal busy sucking and licking up--for his feeding is a combination
+of the two actions--the contents of a basin of squashed eggs. The
+singularly long and slender head, which looks more like a slightly bent
+proboscis, or some such appendage to a head, was buried in the basin,
+and the end of the lithe or flexible tongue, like a rat's tail, or a
+writhing black worm, was ever and anon seen coiling up the sides of
+the basin, as it was rapidly protruded and withdrawn. The yellow yolk
+was dripping with the abundant ropy saliva secreted during the feeding
+process from the exceedingly small terminal mouth; for the jaws are not
+slit open, as in the ordinary construction of the mouths of quadrupeds,
+and the head, viewed sideways, seems devoid of mouth; but this important
+aperture--by some deemed the essential character of an animal--is a
+small orifice or slit at the end of the tubular muzzle, just being
+enough, apparently, to let the vermiform tongue slip easily in and
+out. The tongue, the keeper told us, was sometimes protruded as far as
+fourteen inches from the mouth."
+
+By the Qjuarani Indians the beast is known by a name which is, in
+Spanish, "little mouth." The Portuguese and Spanish peons call it by a
+name equivalent to "Ant-Bear." In the Zoological Catalogue the animal
+is denominated _Myrmocophaga jubata_, or the "Maned Ant-eater." This
+appellation would very well suit the animal if, as most spectators
+commonly imagine at first sight, its head was where its tail is,
+for the tail is that part of the animal on which the hair is most
+developed, after the fashion of a mane; whilst the actual head appears
+much more like a tail, of a slender, almost naked, stiff, rounded
+kind. The body is wholly covered by long, coarse hair, resembling hay,
+rapidly lengthening from the neck backwards to six or eight inches,
+and extending on the tail from ten to eighteen inches. The colour is
+greyish brown, with an oblique black band, bordered with white, on
+each shoulder. The animal measures about four feet from the snout
+to the root of the tail; and the tail, three feet long, resembles a
+large screen of coarse hair. When the animal lies down, it bends its
+head between its fore legs, slides these forward, and crosses them in
+front of the occiput, sinks its haunches by bending its hind legs and
+bringing them close to the fore feet; then, leaning against the wall
+of its den, on one side, it lays the broad tail over the other exposed
+side of the body, by the side bend of that part, like the movement of
+a door or screen. Nothing is now visible of the animal but the long
+coarse hair of its _natural and portable blanket_. When it is enjoying
+its siesta, you cannot form any conception of its very peculiar shape
+and proportions; an oblong heap of a coarse, dry, _greyish thatch_ is
+all that is visible. When, however, the keeper enters the den with any
+new dainty, as cockroaches, crickets, maggots, or meal-worms, to tempt
+the huge insect-devourer, the quick-hearing animal unveils its form by
+a sweeping movement of the thatch outwards, the tail that supports it
+rotating, as if joined by a kind of door-hinge to the body; the head is
+drawn out from between the fore limbs; the limbs are extended, and the
+entire figure of this most grotesque of quadrupeds stalks forth. The
+limbs are short; the fore limbs grow rather thicker to their stumpy
+ends, which look as if the feet had been amputated. The four toes, with
+their claws, are bent inwards, and are of very unequal length. This is
+the most singular part of the animal: it is also the most formidable
+member, and, indeed, bears the sole weapon of defence the beast
+possesses. The innermost toe, answering to the thumb on the fore limb of
+the neighbouring chimpanzee, is the shortest. A fifth toe seems to be
+buried in the outside callosity, on which the animal rests its stumpy
+feet while walking. At the back part of the sole, or palm, of the fore
+foot, is a second large callosity, which receives the point of the great
+claw in its usual state of inward inflection. Against this callosity the
+animal presses the claw when it seizes any object therewith; and Azara,
+as we have seen, avers that nothing can make the Ant-Bear relax its
+grasp of an object so seized.
+
+With respect to the jaguar being sometimes found dead in the grasp of
+the Great Ant-eater, Professor Owen observes that its muscular force
+resembles that of the cold-blooded reptiles in the force and endurance
+of the contractile action; and, like the reptiles, the Sloths and
+Ant-Bears can endure long fasts.
+
+Woe to the unlucky or heedless aggressor whose arm or leg may be seized
+by the Ant-Bear. The strength of the grasp sometimes breaks the bone.
+The Ant-Bear never voluntarily lets go, and the limb so grasped can be
+with difficulty extricated, even after the animal has been killed. To
+put the beast, however, _hors de combat_, no other weapon is needed
+than a stout stick. "With this," says Azara. "I have killed many by
+dealing them blows on the head, and with the same security as if I had
+struck the trunk of a tree. With a mouth so small, and formed as already
+described, the Ant-Bear cannot bite; and, if it could, it would be
+useless, for it has no teeth."
+
+"Like a lawyer," says Professor Owen, "the tongue is the chief organ
+by which this animal obtains its livelihood in its natural habitat.
+The warmer latitudes of South America, to which part of the world the
+Ant-Bear is peculiar, abound in forests and luxuriant vegetation; the
+insects of the ant and termite tribes that subsist on wood, recent
+or decaying, equally abound. With one link in the chain of organic
+independencies is interlocked another; and as the surplus vegetation
+sustains the surplus insect population, so a peculiar form of mammalian
+life finds the requisite conditions of existence in the task of
+restraining the undue multiplication of the wood-consuming insects."
+
+The number of male Ant-eaters is supposed to be considerably smaller
+than that of the females, which circumstance favours the inference that
+the extinction of the species, like those of the _edentata_ in general,
+is determined upon.[6]
+
+Large as the Ant-Bear is in comparison with the animals on which it
+naturally feeds, there appear to have been still larger Ant-Bears in the
+old times of South America. Fossil remains of nearly allied quadrupeds
+have been detected in both the fresh-water deposits and bone-caves of
+the post-pliocene period in Buenos Ayres and Brazil.
+
+In examining the fossil remains has been found evidence that the nervous
+matter destined to put in action the muscular part of the tongue was
+equal to half of that nervous matter which influences the whole muscular
+system of a man. No other known living animal offers any approximation
+to the peculiar proportions of the lingual nerves of the fossil animal
+in question except the Great Ant-eater; but the size of the animal
+indicated by the fossil was three times that of our Ant-eater. For this
+strange monster, thus partially restored from the ruins of a former
+world, Professor Owen proposes the name of _Glossotherium_, which
+signifies tongue-beast.
+
+Evidence of such a creature has been given by Dr. Lund, the Danish
+naturalist, resident in Brazil: among the fossil remains here (limestone
+caves of the province Minas) he discovered traces of the Great
+Ant-eater, which, however, are too imperfect to enable us to determine
+more accurately its relation to existing species. The fragments indicate
+an animal the size of an ox! Were the insect prey of these antediluvian
+Ant-eaters correspondingly gigantic?
+
+Two circumstances very remarkable were observed in the Zoological
+Society's Great Ant-eater: the hinge-like manner in which the animal
+worked its tail when it had laid itself down, throwing it over the
+whole of its body and enveloping itself completely; and the peculiar
+vibratory motion of the long vermiform tongue when protruded from the
+mouth in search of food. The tongue is not shot forth and retracted,
+like that of the chameleon, but protruded gradually, _vibrating_ all the
+time, and in the same condition withdrawn into the mouth.
+
+Another species of Ant-eater is the _Tamandua_, much inferior in size to
+the Great Ant-Bear, being scarcely so large as a good sized cat, whilst
+the other exceeds the largest greyhound in length. The Tamandua inhabits
+the thick primaeval forests of tropical America, and is never found on
+the ground, but exclusively in trees, where it lives upon termites,
+honey, and, according to Azara, even bees, which in those countries
+form their hives among the loftiest branches of the forest; and having
+no sting, they are more readily despoiled of their honey than their
+congeners of our own climate. When about to sleep it hides its muzzle in
+the fur of its breast, falls on its belly, letting its fore-feet hang
+down on each side, and wrapping the whole tightly round with its tail.
+The female, as in the Great Ant-eater, has but two pectoral mammae, and
+produces but a single cub at a birth, which she carries about with her
+on her shoulders for the first three or four months. _Tamandua_ is the
+Portuguese name; the French and English call it _fourmiller_ and Little
+Ant-Bear.
+
+The latter are the names of a still smaller species, which does not
+exceed the size of the European squirrel. Its native country is Guayana
+and Brazil. It is called in Surinam _kissing-hand_, as the inhabitants
+pretend it will never eat, at least when caught, but that it only licks
+its paws in the same manner as the bear; that all trials to make it eat
+have proved in vain, and that it soon dies in confinement. Von Sack, in
+a voyage to Surinam, had two of these Ant-eaters which would not eat
+eggs, honey, meat, or ants; but when a wasps'-nest was brought they
+pulled out the nymphae and ate them eagerly, sitting in the posture of a
+squirrel. Von Sack showed this phenomenon to many of the inhabitants of
+Surinam, who all assured him that it was the first time they had ever
+known that species of animal to take any nourishment.
+
+Von Sack describes his Ant-eaters as often sleeping all the day long
+curled together, and fastened by their prehensile tails to one of the
+perches of the cage. When touched they raised themselves on their
+hind-legs, and struck with their fore-paws at the object which disturbed
+them, like the hammer of a clock striking a bell, with both paws at the
+same time, and with a great deal of force. They never attempted to run
+away, but were always ready for defence when attacked.
+
+The discovery of the true nature of the food of this species is
+particularly desirable, and may enable us to have the animal brought
+alive to this country, a thing which we believe has not been attempted;
+and which, if attempted, has certainly never succeeded. To procure or
+carry ants during a long sea-voyage is impracticable, but the larvae of
+wasps can be obtained in any quantity, and will keep for months; so that
+the most serious difficulty to the introduction of the little Ant-eater
+being thus removed, it would only require to be protected from the
+effects of a colder climate, which may be as easily done in its case as
+in that of other South America mammalia.
+
+The Porcupine Ant-eater of New Holland, now very uncommon in New South
+Wales, is regarded, of its size, the strongest quadruped in existence.
+It burrows readily. Its mode of eating is very curious, the tongue being
+used sometimes in the manner of that of the chameleon, and at other
+times in that in which a mower uses his scythe, the tongue being curved
+laterally, and the food, as it were, swept into the mouth.
+
+The original Great Ant-Bear, received at the Gardens of the Zoological
+Society on the 29th of September, 1853, died on the 6th of July, 1854.
+There are now two of these animals living in the Gardens, one of which
+is a remarkably fine specimen.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[6] Proceedings of the Zoological Society.
+
+
+
+
+CURIOSITIES OF BATS.
+
+
+These harmless and interesting little animals have not only furnished
+objects of superstitious dread to the ignorant, but have proved to the
+poet and the painter a fertile source of images of gloom and terror.
+The strange combination of character of beast and bird, which they were
+believed to possess, is supposed to have given to Virgil the idea of the
+Harpies.
+
+Aristotle says but little about the Bat; and Pliny is considered to
+have placed it among the Birds, none of which, he observes, with the
+exception of the Bat, have teeth. Again, he notices it as the only
+winged animal that suckles its young, and remarks on its embracing its
+two little ones, and flying about with them. In this arrangement he was
+followed by the older of the more modern naturalists. Belon, doubtingly,
+places it at the end of the Night-birds; and the Bat, _Attaleph_ (bird
+of darkness), was one of the unclean animals of the Hebrews; and in
+Deuteronomy xxv. 18, it is placed among the forbidden birds.
+
+Even up to a late period Bats were considered as forming a link between
+quadrupeds and birds. The common language of our own ancestors, however,
+indicates a much nearer approach to the truth in the notions entertained
+by the people than can be found in the lucubrations of the learned.
+The words _rere-mouse_ and _flitter-mouse_, the old English names for
+the Bat--the former derived from the Anglo-Saxon "araean," to raise, or
+rear up, and mus; the latter from the Belgic, signifying "flying or
+flittering mouse,"--show that in their minds these animals were always
+associated with the idea of quadrupeds. The first of these terms is
+still used in English heraldry; though it may have ceased to belong to
+the language of the country. "The word _flitter-mouse_," says Mr. Bell,
+"sometimes corrupted into _flintymouse_, is the common term for the Bat
+in some parts of the kingdom, particularly in that part of the county
+of Kent in which the language, as well as the aspect and names of the
+inhabitants, retain more of the Saxon character than will be found,
+perhaps, in any other part of England.
+
+Ben Jonson has--
+
+    "Once a Bat, and ever a Bat! a rere-mouse,
+    And bird o'twilight, he has broken thrice.
+
+          .         .               .
+
+    Come, I will see the flicker-mouse, my fly."
+
+                    _Play._--_New Inn._
+
+The same author uses flitter-mouse also:--
+
+    "And giddy flitter-mice, with leather wings."
+
+                    _Sad Shepherd._
+
+Calmet describes the Bat as an animal having the body of a mouse and the
+wings of a bird; but he erroneously adds, "It never grows tame."
+
+Some persons are surprised at Bats being classed by naturalists, not
+with birds, but quadrupeds. They have, in fact, no other claim to be
+considered as birds than that of their being able to suspend and move
+themselves in the air, like some species of fish, but to a greater
+degree. They suckle their young, are covered with hair, and have
+no wings, but arms and lengthened fingers or toes furnished with a
+membrane, by which they are enabled to fly.
+
+Sir Charles Bell, in his valuable treatise on the "Hand," considers
+the skeleton of the Bat as one of the best examples of the moulding
+of the bones of the extremity to correspond with the condition of the
+animal. Contemplating this extraordinary application of the bones of the
+extremity, and comparing them with those of the wing of a bird, we might
+say that this is an awkward attempt--"a failure." But, before giving
+expression to such an opinion, we must understand the objects required
+in this construction. It is not a wing intended merely for flight, but
+one which, while it raises the animal, is capable of receiving a new
+sensation, or sensations, in that exquisite degree, so as almost to
+constitute a new sense. On the fine web of the Bat's wing nerves are
+distributed, which enable it to avoid objects in its flight during the
+night, when both eyes and ears fail. Could the wing of a bird, covered
+with feathers, do this? Here, then, we have another example of the
+necessity of taking every circumstance into consideration before we
+presume to criticise the ways of nature. It is a lesson of humility. In
+this animal the bones are light and delicate; and whilst they are all
+marvellously extended, the phalanges of the fingers are elongated so
+as hardly to be recognised, obviously for the purpose of sustaining a
+membranous web, and to form a wing.
+
+In 1839 there was received at the Surrey Zoological Gardens, from
+Sumatra, a specimen of the Vampire Bat. This was a young male; the body
+was black, and the membranous wing, in appearance, resembled fine black
+kid. He was rarely seen at the bottom of his cage, but suspended himself
+from the roof or bars of the cage, head downwards, his wings wrapped
+round his body; when spread, these wings extended nearly two feet.
+Although this specimen was the Vampire Bat to which so many bloodthirsty
+feats have been attributed, his appearance was by no means ferocious;
+he was active, yet docile, and the only peculiarity to favour belief in
+his blood-sucking propensity was his long pointed tongue. The species
+has popularly been accused of destroying, not only the large mammiferous
+animals, but also men, when asleep, by sucking their blood. "The truth,"
+says Cuvier, in his "Regne Animal," "appears to be, that the Vampire
+inflicts only small wounds, which may, probably, become inflammatory and
+gangrenous from the influence of climate." In this habit, however, may
+have originated the celebrated Vampire superstition. Lord Byron, in his
+beautiful poem of "The Giaour," thus symbolises the tortures that await
+the "false infidel:"--
+
+    "First, on earth as Vampire sent,
+    My corse shall from its tomb be rent;
+    Then ghastly haunt thy native place,
+    And suck the blood of all thy race;
+    There, from thy daughter, sister, wife,
+    At midnight drain the stream of life;
+    Yet loathe the banquet which perforce
+    Must feed thy livid living corse.
+    Thy victims, ere they yet expire,
+    Shall know the demon for their sire,
+    As cursing thee, thou cursing them,
+    Thy flowers are withered on the stem.
+    But one that for thy crime must fall,
+    The youngest, most beloved of all,
+    Shall bless thee with _a father's_ name--
+    That word shall wrap thy heart in flame!
+    Yet must thou end thy task, and mark
+    Her cheek's last tinge, her eye's last spark,
+    And the last glassy glance must view
+    Which freezes o'er its lifeless blue;
+    Then with unhallowed hand shall tear
+    The tresses of her yellow hair,
+    Of which in life a lock, when shorn,
+    Affection's fondest pledge was worn,
+    But now is borne away by thee,
+    Memorial of thine agony!
+    Wet with thine one best blood shall drip
+    Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip;
+    Then stalking to thy sullen grave,
+    Go, and with Gouls and Afrits rave;
+    Till there in horror shrink away
+    From spectre more accursed than they!"
+
+In a note, the noble poet tells us:--"The Vampire superstition is still
+general in the Levant." Honest Tournefort tells a long story, which Mr.
+Southey, in the notes on "Thalaba," quotes, about these Vardoulacha,
+as he calls them. "I recollect a whole family being terrified by the
+screams of a child, which they imagined must proceed from such a
+visitation. The Greeks never mention the word without horror."
+
+Bishop Heber describes the Vampire Bat of India as a very harmless
+creature, entirely different from the formidable idea entertained of it
+in England. "It only eats fruit and vegetables; indeed, its teeth are
+not indicative of carnivorous habits; and from blood it turns away when
+offered to it. During the daytime it is, of course, inert; but at night
+it is lively, affectionate, and playful, knows its keeper, but has no
+objection to the approach and touch of others."
+
+Mr. Westerton, the traveller, when speaking, in his "Wanderings," of the
+Vampire of South America, says:--"There are two species in Demerara,
+both of which suck living animals; one is rather larger than the common
+Bats, the other measures above two feet from wing to wing, extended. So
+gently does this nocturnal surgeon draw the blood, that instead of being
+roused, the patient is lulled into a profound sleep." The large Vampire
+sucks men, commonly attacking the toes; the smaller seems to confine
+itself chiefly to birds.
+
+Captain Stedman, who states that he was bitten by a Bat, thus describes
+the operation:--"Knowing by instinct that the person they intend to
+attack is in a sound slumber, they generally alight near the feet,
+where, while the creature continues fanning with its enormous wings,
+which keeps one cool, he bites a piece out of the tip of the great toe,
+so very small indeed that the head of a pin would scarcely be received
+into the wound, which is, consequently, not painful; yet through this
+orifice he continues to suck the blood until he is obliged to disgorge.
+He then begins again, and thus continues sucking and disgorging until
+he is scarcely able to fly; and the sufferer has been often known to
+sleep from time into eternity. Having applied tobacco-ashes as the best
+remedy, and washed the gore from myself and my hammock, I observed
+several small heaps of congealed blood all round the place where I had
+lain upon the ground, on examining which the surgeon judged that I had
+lost at least twelve or fourteen ounces during the night."
+
+Lesson, in 1827, says:--"The single American species of Bat is
+celebrated by the fables with which they have accompanied its history.
+That Bats suck the blood of animals as well as the juices of succulent
+fruits zoologists are agreed. The rough tongue of one genus was, I
+suppose, to be employed for abrading the skin, to enable the animal
+to suck the part abraded; but zoologists are now agreed that the
+supposition is groundless. It is more than probable that the celebrated
+Vampire superstition and the blood-sucking qualities attributed to the
+Bat have some connection with each other."
+
+Bat-fowling is mentioned by Shakspeare. This is the mode of taking
+Bats in the night-time, while they are at roost, upon perches, trees,
+or hedges. They light torches or straw, and then beat the bushes, upon
+which the Bats, flying to the flames, are caught, either with nets or
+otherwise.
+
+Bat-fowling, or Bat-folding, is effected by the use of a net, called a
+trammel-net, and is practised at night. The net should be made of the
+strongest and finest twine, and extended between two poles about ten
+feet high, tapering to a point at the top, and meeting at the top of
+the net. The larger ends are to be held by the persons who take the
+management of the net, and who, by stretching out the arms, keep the net
+extended to the utmost, opposite the hedge in which the Bats or birds
+are supposed to be. Another of the party carries a lantern upon a pole
+at a short distance behind the centre of the net. One or two others
+place themselves on the opposite side of the hedge, and by beating it
+with sticks disturb the Bats or birds, which, being alarmed, fly towards
+the light, but are interrupted in their flight by the net which is
+immediately _folded_ upon them, often fifteen or twenty in number. This
+sport cannot be followed with much success except when the night is very
+dark, or until very late in the autumn, when the trees, having lost
+their leaves, the Bats or birds are driven for shelter to the hollies,
+yews, hayricks, &c.
+
+We remember reading, in the "Philosophical Magazine," in 1836, a curious
+account of the habits of a long-eared Bat, a living specimen of which
+was given to the children of Mr. De Carle Sowerby, the naturalist. "We
+constructed," says Mr. Sowerby, "a cage for him, by covering a box with
+gauze, and making a round hole in the side, fitted with a phial cork.
+When he was awake, we fed him with flies, introduced through this hole,
+and thus kept him for several weeks. The animal soon became familiar,
+and immediately a fly was presented alive at the hole, he would run or
+fly from any part of the cage, and seize it in our fingers; but a dead
+or quiet fly he would never touch. At other times, dozens of flies and
+grasshoppers were left in his cage, and, waking him by their noise, he
+dexterously caught them as they hopped or flew about, but uniformly
+disregarded them while they were at rest. The cockroach, hard beetles,
+and caterpillars he refused.
+
+"As we became still more familiar, our new friend was invited to join
+in our evening amusements, to which he contributed his full share
+by flitting round the room, at times settling upon our persons, and
+permitting us to handle and caress him. He announced his being awake
+by a shrill chirp, which was more acute than that of the cricket. Now
+was the proper time for feeding him. I before stated that he only took
+his food alive. It was observed that not only was motion necessary, but
+that generally some noise on the part of the fly was required to induce
+him to accept it; and this fact was soon discovered by the children,
+who were entertained by his taking flies from their fingers as he flew
+by them, before he was bold enough to settle upon their hands to
+devour his victims. They quickly improved upon this discovery, and, by
+imitating the booming of a bee, induced the Bat, directed by the sound,
+to settle upon their faces, wrapping his wings round their lips, and
+searching for the expected fly. We observed that, if he took a fly while
+on the wing, he frequently settled to masticate it; and, when he had
+been flying about a long time, he would rest upon a curtain, pricking
+his ears, and turning his head in all directions, when, if a fly were
+made to buzz, or the sound imitated, he would proceed directly to the
+spot, even on the opposite side of the room, guided, it would appear,
+entirely by the ear. Sometimes he took his victim in his mouth, even
+though it was not flying; at other times he inclosed it in his wings,
+with which he formed a kind of bag-net. This was his general plan when
+in his cage, or when the fly was held in our fingers, or between our
+lips."
+
+From these observations Mr. Sowerby concludes that many of the movements
+of the Bat upon the wing are directed by his exquisite sense of hearing.
+May not the sensibility of this organ be naturally greater in these
+animals, whose organs of vision are too susceptible to bear daylight,
+when those organs, from their nature, would necessarily be of most
+service?--such as the cat, who hunts by the ear, and the mole, who,
+feeding in the dark recesses of his subterranean abode, is very sensible
+of the approach of danger, and expert in avoiding it. In the latter
+case, large external ears are not required, because sound is well
+conveyed by solids, and along narrow cavities. In the cases of many
+Bats, and of owls, the external ears are remarkably developed. Cats
+combine a quickness of sight with acute hearing. They hunt by the ear,
+but they follow their prey by the eye. Some Bats are said to feed upon
+fruits: have they the same delicacy of hearing, feeling, &c., as others?
+
+Mr. Sowerby has further described the singular mode adopted by the
+long-eared Bat in capturing his prey. The flying apparatus is extended
+from the hind legs to the tail, forming a large bag or net, not unlike
+two segments of an umbrella, the legs and tail being the ribs. The Bat,
+having caught the fly, instead of eating it at once, generally covers it
+with his body, and, by the aid of his arms, &c., forces it into his bag.
+He then puts his head down under his body, withdraws the fly from his
+bag, and leisurely devours it. Mr. Sowerby once saw an unwary bluebottle
+walk beneath the body of the apparently sleeping Bat into the sensitive
+bag, in which it was immediately imprisoned. White, of Selborne,
+speaking of a tame Bat, alludes to the above described action, which
+he compares to that of a beast of prey, but says nothing respecting
+the bag. Bell, in his "British Quadrupeds," says that the interfemoral
+membrane of Bats "is probably intended to act as a sort of rudder, in
+rapidly changing the course of the animal in the pursuit of its insect
+food. In a large group of foreign Bats, which feed on fruit or other
+vegetable substances, as well as in some of carnivorous habits, but
+whose prey is of a less active character, this part is either wholly
+wanting or much circumscribed in extent and power." May it not be, asks
+Mr. Sowerby, that they do not require an entomological bag-net?
+
+The wing of the Bat is commonly spoken of as of leather; that it is an
+insensible piece of stuff--the leather of a glove or of a lady's shoe;
+but nothing can be further from the truth. If one were to select an
+organ of the most exquisite delicacy and sensibility, it would be the
+Bat's wing. It is anything but leather, and is, perhaps, the most acute
+organ of touch that can be found.
+
+Bats are supposed to perceive external objects without coming actually
+in contact with them, because in their rapid and irregular flight,
+amidst various surrounding bodies, they never fly against them; yet, to
+some naturalists, it does not appear that the senses of hearing, seeing,
+or smelling serve them on these occasions, for they avoid any obstacles
+with equal certainty when the eye, ear, and nose are closed: hence has
+been ascribed a _sixth sense_ to these animals. The nerves of the wing
+are large and numerous, and distributed in a minute network between the
+integuments. The impulse of the air against this part may possibly be
+so modified by the objects near which the animal passes as to indicate
+their situation and nature. The Bat tribe fly by means of the fingers of
+the fore feet, the thumb excepted, being, in these animals, longer than
+the whole body; and between them is stretched a thin membrane, or web,
+for flying. It is probable that, in the action of flight, the air, when
+struck by this wing, or very sensitive hand, impresses a sensation of
+heat, cold, mobility, and resistance on that organ, which indicates to
+the animal the existence or absence of obstacles which would interrupt
+its progress. In this manner blind men discover by their hands, and
+even by the skin of their faces, the proximity of a wall, door of a
+house, or side of a street, even without the assistance of touch, and
+merely by the sensation which the difference in the resistance of the
+air occasions. Hence they are as little capable of walking on the ground
+as apes with their hands, or sloths with their hooked claws, which are
+calculated for climbing.
+
+In a certain kind of Bat, the _Nycteris_, there exists a power of
+inflation to such a degree that, when inflated, the animal looks,
+according to Geoffroy St. Hilaire, like a _little balloon_ fitted
+with wings, a head, and feet. It is filled with air through the
+cheek-pouches, which are perforated at the bottom, so as to communicate
+with the spaces of the skin to be filled. When the Bat wishes to
+inflate, it draws in its breath, closes its nostrils, and transmits the
+air through the perforations of the cheek-pouches to the spaces; and the
+air is prevented from returning by the action of a muscle which closes
+those openings, and by valves of considerable size on the neck and back.
+
+There was formerly a vulgar opinion that Bats, when down on a flat
+surface, could not get on the wing again, by rising with great ease
+from the floor; but White saw a Bat run, with more dispatch than he
+was aware of, though in a most ridiculous and grotesque manner. The
+adroitness with which this Bat sheared off the wings of flies, which
+were always rejected, was very amusing. He did not refuse raw flesh when
+offered; so that the notion that Bats go down chimneys, and gnaw men's
+bacon, seems no improbable story.
+
+Mr. George Daniell describes a female Bat, who took her food with an
+action similar to that of a dog. The animal took considerable pains
+in cleaning herself, parting the hair on either side, from head to
+tail, and forming a straight line along the middle of the back. The
+membrane of the wings was cleaned by forcing the nose through the folds,
+and thereby expanding them. This Bat fed freely, and at some times
+voraciously, the quantity exceeding half an ounce, although the weight
+of the animal itself was not more than ten drams.
+
+The _Kalong_ Bat of the Javanese is extremely abundant in the lower
+parts of Java, and uniformly lives in society. The more elevated
+districts are not visited by it. "Numerous individuals," says Dr.
+Hornfield, "select a large tree, and, suspending themselves with the
+claws of their posterior extremities to the naked branches, often in
+companies of several hundreds, afford to a stranger a very singular
+spectacle. A species of ficus (fig-tree), resembling the _ficus
+religiosa_ of India, affords them a very favourite retreat, and the
+extended branches of one of these are sometimes covered by them. They
+pass the greater portion of the day in sleep, hanging motionless, ranged
+in succession, with the head downwards, the membrane contracted about
+the body, and often in close contact. They have little resemblance to
+living beings; and, by a person not accustomed to their economy, are
+readily mistaken for a part of the tree, or for a fruit of uncommon size
+suspended from its branches."
+
+In general, these societies are silent during the day; but if they are
+disturbed, or a contention arises among them, they emit sharp, piercing
+shrieks; and their awkward attempts to extricate themselves, when
+oppressed by the light of the sun, exhibit a ludicrous spectacle. Soon
+after sunset they gradually quit their hold, and pursue their nocturnal
+flight in quest of food. They direct their course by an unerring
+instinct to the forests, villages, and plantations, attacking and
+devouring every kind of fruit, from the abundant and useful cocoa-nut,
+which surrounds the dwellings of the meanest peasantry, to the rare and
+most delicate productions which are cultivated by princes and chiefs of
+distinction. Various methods are employed to protect the orchards and
+gardens. Delicate fruits are secured by a loose net or basket, skilfully
+constructed of split bamboo, without which precaution little valuable
+fruit would escape the ravages of the _Kalong_. There are few situations
+in the lower part of Java in which this night wanderer is not constantly
+observed. As soon as the light of the sun has retired, one animal is
+seen to follow the other at a small but irregular distance, and this
+accession continues uninterrupted till dark:--
+
+            "The night came on apace,
+    And falling dews bewet around the place;
+    The bat takes airy rounds, on leathern wings,
+    And the hoarse owl his woful dirges sings."
+
+                    Gay's "_Pastoral III_."
+
+Bats of the ordinary size are very numerous in Jamaica. They are found
+in mills and old houses. They do great mischief in gardens, where they
+eat the green peas, opening the pod over each pea, and removing it very
+dexterously.
+
+Gilbert White, of Selborne, first noticed a large species of Bat, which
+he named _altivolans_, from its manner of feeding high in the air. In
+the extent of its wings it measured 14-1/2 inches; and it weighed,
+when entirely full, one ounce and one drachm. It is found in numbers
+together, so many as 185 having been taken in one night from the eaves
+of Queens' College, Cambridge. In the Northern Zoological Gallery of the
+British Museum are representatives of the several species of Bats, all
+bearing a family resemblance to each other. In England alone there are
+eighteen known species. Here is the curious leaf-nosed Bat, from Brazil,
+supposed to excel in the sense of smell; also, the Vampire, or large
+blood-sucking Bat, from the same country; and the different kinds of
+fruit-eating Bats, found in America and Australia, and sometimes called
+flying foxes, on account of their great size. The Bats of temperate
+climates remain torpid during the winter. Gay has these lines:--
+
+    "Where swallows in the winter season keep;
+    And here the drowsy bat and dormouse sleep."
+
+Young Bats have been taken, when hovering near the ground, by throwing
+handfuls of sand, but they rarely live in confinement: they often die
+within a week after their capture. A Bat, taken in Elgin, gave birth to
+a young one, which was for two days suckled by its parent. Before she
+reached the age of three days the young bat died, and the parent only
+survived another day to mourn her loss. Sometimes females, when taken,
+have young ones clinging to their breast, in the act of sucking; and the
+female can fly with ease, though two little ones are attached to her,
+which weigh nearly as much as the parent.
+
+To return to an exaggeration of a famous old traveller. In "Purchas his
+Pilgrimage," the materials for which he borrowed from above thirteen
+hundred authors, when speaking of the island of Madura, in the South of
+India, he says:--"In these partes are Battes as big as Hennes, which the
+people roast and eat."
+
+
+
+
+THE HEDGEHOG.
+
+
+Of this animal some strange things are recorded. It is placed by Cuvier
+at the head of the insect-devouring Mammifera. It is found in Europe,
+Africa, and India. Its body is covered with strong and sharp prickles,
+and by the help of a muscle it can contract itself into a ball, and so
+withdraw its whole underpart, head, belly, and legs, within this thicket
+of prickles:
+
+    "Like Hedgehogs, which
+    Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount
+    Their pricks at my foot-fall."--Shakspeare's "_Tempest_."
+
+Sir Thomas Browne, in his "Vulgar Errors," has this odd conceit:--"Few
+have belief to swallow, or hope enough to experience, the collyrium of
+Albertus; that is, to make one see in the dark: yet thus much, according
+to his receipts, will the right eye of an Hedgehog, boiled in oil, and
+preserved in a brazen vessel, effect."
+
+Hedgehog was an old term of reproach; but we have heard a well-set
+argument compared to a hedgehog--all points.
+
+The food of the Hedgehog, which is a nocturnal animal, consists
+principally of insects, worms, slugs, and snails. That it will eat
+vegetables is shown by White of Selborne, who relates how it eats the
+root of the plantain by boring beneath it, leaving the tuft of leaves
+untouched.
+
+The Hedgehog is reputed to supply itself with a winter covering of
+leaves. So far as we are aware, it has not been observed in the act of
+forming the covering of leaves, though it is supposed to roll itself
+about till its spines take up a sufficient number, in the same way as
+it is popularly believed (without proof) to do with apples. Blumenbach
+states that he was assured, "by three credible witnesses," that
+Hedgehogs so gather fruit; but Buffon, who kept several Hedgehogs for
+observation, declares they never practise any such habit.
+
+The voracity of the Hedgehog is very great. A female, with a young one,
+was placed in a kitchen, having the run of the beetles at night, besides
+having always bread and milk within their reach. One day, however, the
+servants heard a mysterious crunching sound in the kitchen, and found,
+on examination, that nothing was left of the young Hedgehog but the skin
+and prickles--the mother had devoured her little pig! A Hedgehog has
+also been known to eat a couple of rabbits which had been confined with
+it, and killing others; it has likewise been known to kill hares.
+
+A Hedgehog was placed in one hamper, a wood-pigeon in another, and two
+starlings in a third; the lid of each hamper was tied down with string,
+and the hampers were placed in a garden-house, which was fastened in the
+evening. Next morning the strings to the hampers were found severed, the
+starlings and wood-pigeon dead and eaten, feathers alone remaining in
+their hampers, and the Hedgehog alive in the wood-pigeon's hamper. As no
+other animal could have got into the garden-house it was concluded that
+the Hedgehog had killed and eaten the birds.
+
+In the "Zoological Journal," vol. ii., is an account by Mr. Broderip of
+an experiment made by Professor Buckland proving that in captivity at
+least the Hedgehog will devour snakes; but there is no good reason for
+supposing that it will not do the same in a state of nature, for frogs,
+toads, and other reptiles, and mice, have been recorded as its prey.
+From its fondness for insects it is often placed in the London kitchens
+to keep down the swarm of cockroaches with which they are infested; and
+there are generally Hedgehogs on sale at Covent Garden Market for this
+purpose.
+
+The idle story that the persecuted Hedgehog sucks cows has been thus
+quaintly refuted:--"In the case of an animal giving suck, the teat is
+embraced round by the mouth of the young one, so that no air can pass
+between; a vacuum is made, or the air is exhausted from its throat,
+by a power in the lungs; nevertheless the pressure of the air remains
+still upon the outside of the dug of the mother, and by these two
+causes together the milk is forced in the mouth of the young one. But
+a Hedgehog has no such mouth as to be able to contain the teat of a
+cow; therefore any vacuum which is caused in its own throat cannot be
+communicated to the milk in the dug. And if he is able to procure no
+other food but what he can get by sucking cows in the night, there is
+likely to be a vacuum in his stomach too." (_New Catalogue of Vulgar
+Errors._ By Stephen Fovargue, A.M., 1786.) Yet, according to Sir William
+Jardine, the Hedgehog is very fond of eggs; and is consequently very
+mischievous in the game-preserve and hen-house.
+
+One of the most interesting facts in the natural history of the Hedgehog
+is that announced in 1831 by M. Lenz, and subsequently confirmed by
+Professor Buckland: this is, that the most violent poisons have no
+effect upon it; a fact which renders it of peculiar value in forests,
+where it appears to destroy a great number of noxious reptiles. M. Lenz
+says that he had in his house a female Hedgehog, which he kept in a
+large box, and which soon became very mild and familiar. He often put
+into the box some adders, which it attacked with avidity, seizing them
+indifferently by the head, the body, and the tail, and not appearing
+alarmed or embarrassed when they coiled themselves around its body.
+On one occasion M. Lenz witnessed a fight between a Hedgehog and a
+viper. When the Hedgehog came near and smelled the snake, for with
+these animals the sense of sight is very obtuse, she seized it by the
+head, and held it fast between her teeth, but without appearing to do
+it much harm; for having disengaged its head, it assumed a furious and
+menacing attitude, and, hissing vehemently, inflicted severe bites on
+the Hedgehog. The animal did not, however, recoil from the bites of
+the viper, or indeed seem to care much about them. At last, when the
+reptile was fatigued by its efforts, she again seized it by the head,
+which she ground beneath her teeth, compressing the fangs and glands of
+poison, and then devouring every part of the body. M. Lenz says that
+battles of this sort often occurred in the presence of many persons, and
+sometimes the Hedgehog received eight or ten wounds on the ears, the
+snout, and even on the tongue, without seeming to experience any of the
+ordinary symptoms produced by the venom of the viper. Neither herself
+nor the young which she was then suckling seemed to suffer from it. This
+observation agrees with that of Pallas, who assures us that the Hedgehog
+can eat about a hundred Cantharides (Spanish Flies) without experiencing
+any of the effects which this insect, taken inwardly, produces on men,
+dogs, and cats. A German physician, who made the Hedgehog a particular
+object of study, gave it strong doses of prussic acid, of arsenic, of
+opium, and of corrosive sublimate, none of which did it any harm. The
+Hedgehog in its natural state only feeds on pears, apples, and other
+fruits when it can get nothing it likes better.
+
+The Hedgehog hybernates regularly, and early in the summer brings forth
+from two to four young ones at a birth, which, at the time of their
+production, are blind, and have the spines white, soft, and flexible.
+The nest wherein they are cradled is said to be very artificially
+constructed, the roof being rain-proof.
+
+The flesh of the Hedgehog, when it has been well fed, is sweet and well
+flavoured, and is eaten on the Continent in many places. In Britain a
+few besides gipsies partake of it. The prickly skin appears to have been
+used by the Romans for hackling hemp.
+
+Gilbert White notes that when the Hedgehog is very young it can draw
+its skin down over its face, but is not able to contract itself into a
+ball, as the creature does, for the sake of defence when full grown. The
+reason, White supposes, is because the curious muscle that enables the
+Hedgehog to roll itself up into a ball has not then arrived at its full
+tone and firmness. Hedgehogs conceal themselves for the winter in their
+warm _hybernaculum_ of leaves and moss; but White could never find that
+they stored in any winter provision, as some quadrupeds certainly do.
+
+
+
+
+THE HIPPOPOTAMUS IN ENGLAND.
+
+
+In the year 1850 there was exhibited in London a living Hippopotamus,
+for many centuries the only instance of this extraordinary animal being
+seen in Europe.
+
+There is something irresistibly striking in seeing a living animal,
+not one of whose species we have before seen, and especially when
+that animal is a large one, as in the instance before us. We had been
+wonderstruck at forms of this creature in the old British Museum, where
+were two finely-preserved specimens. The Rhinoceros alive was, until of
+late years, very rare in England. In 1834 Mr. Cross paid some 1,500_l._
+for a young Indian one-horned Rhinoceros, this being the only one
+brought to England for twenty years. He proved attractive, but slightly
+so in comparison with the expectation of a living Hippopotamus, never
+witnessed before in this country. The circumstances of his acquisition
+were as follows:--
+
+The Zoological Society of London had long been anxious to obtain
+a living Hippopotamus for their menagerie, but without success. An
+American agent at Alexandria had offered 5,000_l._ for an animal of
+this species, but in vain; no speculator could be induced to encounter
+the risk and labour of an expedition to the White Nile for the
+purpose of securing the animal. The desire of the Zoological Society
+was communicated to the Viceroy of Egypt, who saw the difficulty.
+Hasselquist states it to have been impossible to bring the living animal
+to Cairo; and the French _savans_, attached to the expedition to Egypt,
+who ascended the Nile above Syene, did not meet with one Hippopotamus.
+Caillaud, however, asserts that he saw forty Hippopotami in the Upper
+Nile, though their resort lay fifteen hundred miles or more from Cairo.
+Here they were often shot with rifle-balls, but to take one alive was
+another matter. However, by command of the Viceroy, the proper parties
+were sent in search of the animal.
+
+In August, 1849, the hunters having reached the island of Fobaysch,
+on the White Nile, about 2,000 miles above Cairo, shot a large female
+Hippopotamus in full chase up the river. The wounded creature turned
+aside and made towards some bushes on the island bank, but sank dead in
+the effort. The hunters, however, kept on towards the bushes, when a
+young Hippopotamus, supposed to have been recently brought forth, not
+much bigger than a new-born calf, but stouter and lower, rushed down
+the bank of the river, was secured by a boatman and lifted into the
+boat. The captors started with their charge down the Nile. The food of
+their young animal was their next anxiety; he liked neither fish, flesh,
+fruit, nor grass. The boat next stopped at a village; their cows were
+seized and milked, and the young charge lapped up the produce. A good
+milch cow was taken on board, and with this supply the Hippopotamus
+reached Cairo. The colour of his skin at this time was a dull reddish
+brown. He was shown to the Pasha in due form; the present created
+intense wonder and interest in Cairo; gaping crowds filled its narrow
+sandy streets, and a whale at London-bridge would scarcely excite half
+so much curiosity.
+
+It being thought safer for the animal to winter in Cairo than to proceed
+forthwith on his journey, the Consul had duly prepared to receive the
+young stranger, for whom he had engaged a sort of nurse. Hamet Safi
+Cannana. An apartment was allotted to the Hippopotamus in the court-yard
+of the Consul's house, leading to a warm or tepid bath. His milk-diet,
+however, became a troublesome affair, for the new comer never drank less
+than from twenty to thirty quarts daily.
+
+By the next mail after the arrival of the Hippopotamus, the Consul
+despatched the glad tidings to the Zoological Society. The animal was
+shipped at Alexandria, in the Ripon steamer. On the main deck was built
+a house, from which were steps down into an iron tank in the hold,
+containing 400 gallons of water, as a bath: it was filled with fresh
+water every other day.
+
+Early in May, the Hippopotamus was conveyed in the canal-boat, with
+Hamet Safi Cannana, to Alexandria, where the debarkation was witnessed
+by 10,000 spectators. The animal bore the voyage well. He lived
+exclusively on milk, of which he consumed daily about forty pints,
+yielded by the cows taken on board. He was very tame, and, like a
+faithful dog, followed his Arab attendant Hamet, who was seldom away
+more than five minutes without being summoned to return by a loud grunt.
+Hamet slept in a berth with the Hippopotamus. On May 25 they were landed
+at Southampton, and sent by railway to London. On arriving at the
+Zoological Society's Gardens, Hamet walked first out of the transport
+van, with a bag of dates over his shoulder, and the Hippopotamus trotted
+after him. Next morning he greatly enjoyed the bath which had been
+prepared for him. Although scarcely twelve months old, his massive
+proportions indicated the enormous power to be developed in his maturer
+growth; while the grotesque expression of his physiognomy far exceeded
+all that could be imagined from the stuffed specimens in museums, and
+the figures which had hitherto been published from the reminiscences of
+travellers.
+
+Among the earliest visitors was Professor Owen, who first saw the
+Hippopotamus lying on its side in the straw, with its head resting
+against the chair in which sat the swarthy attendant. It now and then
+grunted softly, and, lazily opening its thick, smooth eyelids, leered
+at its keeper with a singular protruding movement of the eyeball from
+the prominent socket, showing an unusual proportion of the white. The
+retraction of the eyeball was accompanied by a simultaneous rolling
+obliquely downwards, or inwards, or forwards. The young animal, then
+ten months' old, was seven feet long, and six and a-half in girth at
+the middle of the barrel-shaped trunk, supported, clear of the ground,
+on very short and thick legs, each terminated by four spreading hoofs,
+the two middle ones being the largest, and answering to those in the
+hog. The naked hide, covering the broad back and sides, was of a dark,
+india-rubber colour, with numerous fine wrinkles crossing each other,
+but disposed almost transversely. The beast had just left its bath, when
+a glistening secretion gave the hide, in the sunshine, a very peculiar
+aspect. When the animal was younger, the secretion had a reddish colour,
+and the whole surface of the hide became painted over with it every time
+he quitted his bath.
+
+The ears, which were very short, conical, and fringed with hairs, it
+moved about with much vivacity. The skin around them was of a light
+reddish-brown colour, and almost flesh-coloured round the eyelids,
+which defended the prominent eyes, which had a few short hairs on the
+margin of the upper lid. The colour of the iris was of a dark brown. The
+nostrils, situated on prominences, which the animal had the power of
+raising on the upper part of the broad and massive muzzle, were short
+oblique slits, guarded by two valves, which were opened and closed
+spontaneously, like the eyelids. The movements of these apertures were
+most conspicuous when the beast was in the bath.
+
+The wide mouth was chiefly remarkable for the upward curve of its angles
+towards the eyes, giving a quaintly comic expression to the massive
+countenance. The short and small milk-tusks projected a little, and the
+minute incisors appeared to be sunk in pits of the thick gums; but the
+animal would not permit any close examination of the teeth, withdrawing
+his head from the attempt, and then threatening to bite. The muzzle was
+beset with short bristles, split into tufts or pencils of hairs; and
+fine and short hairs were scattered all over the back and sides. The
+tail was not long, rather flattened and tapering to an obtuse point.
+
+We may here observe that, at certain moments, the whole aspect of the
+head suggested to one the idea of what may have been the semblance of
+some of the gigantic extinct Batrachians (as sirens), the relics of a
+former world, whose fossil bones in the galleries of Palaeontology in the
+British Museum excite our special wonder.
+
+After lying about an hour, now and then raising its head, and swivelling
+its eyeballs towards the keeper, or playfully opening its huge mouth,
+and threatening to bite the leg of the chair on which the keeper sat,
+the Hippopotamus rose, and walked very slowly about its room, and
+then uttered a loud and short harsh snort four or five times in quick
+succession, reminding one of the snort of a horse, and ending with an
+explosive sound, like a bark. The keeper understood the language--the
+animal desired to return to its bath.
+
+The Hippopotamus carried its head rather depressed, reminding one of
+a large prize hog, but with a breadth of muzzle and other features
+peculiarly its own. The keeper opened the door leading into a paddock,
+and walked thence to the bath, the Hippopotamus following, like a dog,
+close to his heels. On arriving at the bath-room, the animal descended
+with some deliberation the flight of low steps leading into the water,
+stooped and drank a little, dipped his head under, and then plunged
+forwards. The creature seemed inspired with new life and activity.
+Sinking to the bottom of the bath, and moving about submerged for a
+while, it suddenly rose with a bound almost bodily out of the water.
+Splashing back, it commenced swimming and plunging about, rolling from
+side to side, taking in mouthfuls of water and spirting them out again,
+raising every now and then its huge and grotesque head, and biting the
+woodwork of the margin of the bath. The broad rounded back of the animal
+being now chiefly in view, it seemed a much larger object than when out
+of the water.
+
+After half an hour spent in this amusement, the Hippopotamus quitted
+the water at the call of its keeper, and followed him back to the
+sleeping-room, which was well bedded with straw, and where a stuffed
+sack was provided for its pillow, of which the animal, having a very
+short neck, thicker than the head, availed itself when it slept. When
+awake, it was very impatient of any absence of its favourite attendant.
+It would rise on its hind legs, and threaten to break down the wooden
+fence, by butting and pushing against it in a way very significant of
+its great muscular force. The animal appeared to be in perfect health,
+and breathed, when at rest, slowly and regularly, from three to four
+times in a minute. Its food was now a kind of porridge, of milk and
+maize-meat, it being more than half weaned from milk diet. Its appetite
+had been in no respect diminished by the confinement and inconvenience
+of the sea voyage, or by change of climate. All observers appear to
+have agreed that, to see the Hippopotamus rightly, is to see him in
+the water. There his activity is only surpassed by that of the otter
+or the seal. Such was one of the opportunities afforded to zoologists
+for "studying this most remarkable and interesting African mammal, of
+which no living specimen had been seen in Europe since the period when
+Hippopotami were last exhibited by the third Gordian in the amphitheatre
+of imperial Rome."[7]
+
+It is now time to glance at the general economy of the Hippopotamus, as
+he is seen in his native rivers and wilds. In early days, as his Roman
+name imports, it was usual to consider him as a species of horse,
+inhabiting rivers and marshy grounds, and, in a more especial manner,
+the denizen of the Nile. The genus is placed by Linnaeus among his
+_belluae_, between _equus_ and _sus_. The skeleton approaches that of the
+ox and of the hog, but it presents differences from that of any other
+animal.
+
+The Hippopotamus is found not only in the Nile, but in the rivers of
+southern Africa. In the former stream of marvels, Hasselquist relates
+that "the oftener the River Horse goes on shore, the better hope have
+the Egyptians of a sufficient swelling or increase of the Nile." Again,
+they say that the River Horse is an inveterate enemy to the crocodile,
+and kills it whenever he meets it; adding that he does much damage to
+the Egyptians in those places he frequents. He goes on shore, and, in
+a short space of time, destroys an entire field of corn or clover, not
+leaving the least verdure, for he is very voracious.
+
+Yet neither of these stories is so marvellous as that which a sailor
+related to Dampier, the old traveller:--"I have seen," says the mariner,
+"one of these animals open its jaws, and, seizing a boat between its
+teeth, at one bite sink it to the bottom. I have seen it, on another
+occasion, place itself under one of our boats, and, rising under it,
+overset it with six men who were in it, but who, however, happily
+received no other injury."
+
+Professor Smith and Captain Tuckey, in exploring the Congo River, in
+South Africa, saw in a beautiful sandy cove, at the opening of a creek,
+behind a long projecting point, an immense number of Hippopotami;
+and in the evening a number of alligators were also seen there; an
+association hardly consistent with the hostility related by Hasselquist.
+
+Captain Tuckey observed Hippopotami with their heads above the water,
+"snorting in the air." In another part of his narrative he says:--"Many
+Hippopotami were visible close to our tents at Condo Yanga. No use
+firing at these animals in the water; the only way is to wait till they
+come on shore to feed at night."
+
+Le Vaillant had an opportunity of watching the progress of a
+Hippopotamus under water at Great River, which contained many of these
+animals. On all sides he could hear them bellow and blow. Anxious to
+observe them, he mounted on the top of an elevated rock which advanced
+into the river, and he saw one walking at the bottom of the water. Le
+Vaillant killed it at the moment when it came to the surface to breathe.
+It was a very old female, and many people, in their surprise, and to
+express its size, called it the Grandmother of the River.
+
+The traveller Lander tells us that, on the Niger. Hippopotami are
+termed water-elephants. One stormy night, as they were sailing up this
+unexplored current, they fell in with great numbers of Hippopotami, who
+came plashing, snorting, and plunging all round the canoe. Thinking
+to frighten them off, the travellers fired a shot or two at them, but
+the noise only called up from the water and out of the fens about as
+many more Hippopotami, and they were more closely beset than before.
+Lander's people, who had never, in all their lives, been exposed to
+such formidable beasts, trembled with fear, and absolutely wept aloud;
+whilst peals of thunder rattled over their heads, and the most vivid
+lightning showed the terrifying scene. Hippopotami frequently upset
+canoes in the river. When the Landers fired, every one of them came
+to the surface of the water, and pursued them over to the north bank.
+A second firing was followed by a loud roaring noise. However, the
+Hippopotami did the travellers no kind of mischief whatever.
+
+Captain Gordon, when among the Bakalahari, in South Africa, bagged no
+fewer than fifteen first-rate Hippopotami; the greater number of them
+being bulls.
+
+In 1828, there was brought to England the head of a Hippopotamus, with
+all the flesh about it, in high preservation. The animal was harpooned
+while in combat with a crocodile in a lake in the interior of Africa.
+The head measured nearly four feet in length, and eight feet in
+circumference; the jaws opened two feet, and the cutting teeth, of which
+it had four in each jaw, were above a foot long, and four inches in
+circumference.
+
+The utility of this vast pachydermatous, or thick-skinned animal, to man
+is considerable. That he can be destructive has already been shown in
+his clearance of the cultivated banks of rivers. The enormous ripping,
+chisel-like teeth of the lower jaw fit him for uprooting. The ancient
+Egyptians held the animal as an emblem of power, though this may have
+arisen from his reputed destruction of the crocodile. The flesh is much
+esteemed for food, both among the natives and colonists of South Africa.
+The blood of the animal is said to have been used by the old Indian
+painters in mixing their colours. The skin is extensively employed for
+making whips.
+
+But there is no part of the Hippopotamus more in request than the great
+canine teeth, the ivory of which is so highly valued by dentists for
+making artificial teeth, on account of its keeping its colour better
+than any other kind. This superiority was not unknown to the ancients
+Pausanias mentions the statue of Dindymene, whose face was formed of the
+teeth of Hippopotami, instead of elephants' ivory. The canine teeth are
+imported in great numbers into England, and sell at a very high price.
+From the closeness of the ivory, the weight of the teeth, a part only of
+which is available for the artificial purpose above mentioned, is great
+in proportion to its bulk; and the article has fetched about thirty
+shillings per pound.
+
+The ancient history of the Hippopotamus is extremely curious, and
+we have many representations of him in coins, in sculpture, and in
+paintings, which prove, beyond question, that the artists, as well as
+the writers, had a distinct knowledge of what they intended to represent.
+
+The earliest notice which occurs in any author, and which has been
+considered by many to be a description of the Hippopotamus, is the
+celebrated account in the fortieth and forty-first chapter of the Book
+of Job of Behemoth and Leviathan. Many learned men have contended that
+"Behemoth" really means "Elephant," and thus the Zurich version of the
+Bible translates the Hebrew by "Elephas."
+
+In the edition of the English Bible, printed by Robert Barker, in 1615,
+for King James I., and since considered as the authorised version, the
+word "Behemoth" is preserved in the text, and the following annotation
+is added:--"This beast is thought to bee the Elephant, or some other
+which is unknowen." Bochart, Ludolph, and some others, have contended
+warmly in favour of the Hippopotamus. Cuvier thinks, that though this
+animal is probably intended, yet that the description is too vague for
+any one to hold a certain opinion on the subject. The theory started by
+Bochart, and in the main supported by Cuvier, is generally supposed the
+real one. The description in the Book of Job, though doubtless vague,
+and in the highest degree poetical, has yet sufficient marks to render
+the identification perfectly easy, while there are certain peculiarities
+mentioned, which even a poetical imagination could hardly apply to the
+Elephant. Thus, when it is said of him, "He lieth under the shady trees,
+in the desert of the reed and fens; ... the willows of the brook compass
+him round about," this would seem to be the description of an animal
+which frequented the water much more than Elephants are accustomed to
+do. Again, in the fuller description of "Leviathan," in the forty-first
+chapter, we think it is quite clear that a water animal is intended,
+though what is there stated might be held to apply to the crocodile
+as well as the Hippopotamus; both are animals remarkable for extreme
+toughness of skin, and both are almost equally difficult to kill or to
+take alive.
+
+Of profane authors, Herodotus is the first who notices this animal,
+but his account is far from accurate: the size he states as large as
+the biggest ox. That the animal was sacred, in some parts at least,
+appears from Herodotus, who says:--"Those which are found in the
+district of Paprennis are sacred, but in other parts of Egypt they are
+not considered in the same light." Aristotle makes it no bigger than
+an ass; Diodorus, an elephant; Pliny ascribes to it the tail and teeth
+of a boar, adding, that helmets and bucklers are made of the skin.
+Hippopotami figured in the triumphal processions of the Roman conquerors
+on their return home. M. Scaurus exhibited five crocodiles and an
+Hippopotamus; and Augustus one in his triumph over Cleopatra. Antoninus
+exhibited Hippopotami, with lions and other animals; Commodus no less
+than five, some of which he slew with his own hand. Heliogabalus, and
+the third Gordian, also exhibited Hippopotami.
+
+The Hippopotamus of the London Zoological Society was joined by his
+mate, the more juvenile "Adhela," in 1853. Two Hippopotami have lately
+been born in Europe; one in the Garden of Plants, at Paris, in 1858; and
+another in the Zoological Gardens at Amsterdam, in 1866.
+
+With regard to the alleged disappearance of the Hippopotamus from Lower
+Egypt, Cuvier remarks, that the French savans attached to the Expedition
+to Egypt, who ascended the Nile above Syene, did not meet with one.
+
+In some of the rivers of Liberia, and other parts, perhaps, of Western
+Africa, a second species of Hippopotamus exists, and is proved to be a
+very distinct animal.
+
+We have yet to glance at the Hippopotami of a former world. Many
+species are recognised in the fossil remains of Europe and Asia as
+formerly existing in England and in France. Cuvier detected bones of the
+Hippopotamus among the fossil wealth of the Great Kirkdale Cavern in
+Yorkshire, in 1821. They have also been found in France, and especially
+in the Sewatick Hills in India.
+
+In the Museum of the London Zoological Society are two skulls of
+Hippopotami--one fossil. This measures two feet three inches, and
+allowing for skin and lip, two feet six inches. Now, as the head is
+about one-fifth the length of the body, without the tail, the full-grown
+animal would be little, if any, short of fifteen feet from nose to
+tail--a size worthy the description of the Behemoth.
+
+We may here add, that Burckhardt, in his "Travels in Nubia," describes
+the voice of the Hippopotamus as a hard and heavy sound, like the
+creaking or groaning of a large wooden door. This noise, he says, is
+made when the animal raises his huge head out of the water, and when he
+retires into it again.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[7] Professor Owen.
+
+
+
+
+LION-TALK.
+
+
+The Lion has, within the present century, lost caste, and fallen
+considerably from his high estate. He has been stripped of much of his
+conventional reputation by the spirit of inquiry into the validity of
+olden notions, which characterises the present age; and it appears that
+much of his celebrity is founded upon popular error. Nor are these
+results the work of stay-at-home travellers; but they are derived from
+the observation and experience of those who, amidst scenes of perilous
+adventure, seek to enlarge and correct our views of the habit and
+character of the overrated Lion.
+
+Mr. Bennett, in his admirable work, "The Tower Menagerie," has these
+very sensible remarks:--"In speaking of the Lion we call up to our
+imaginations the splendid picture of might unmingled with ferocity, of
+courage undebased by guile, of dignity tempered by grace and ennobled by
+generosity. Such is the Lion of Buffon; who, in describing this animal,
+as in too many other instances, has suffered himself to be borne along
+by the strong tide of popular opinion; but, as the Lion appears in his
+native regions, according to the authentic accounts of those travellers
+and naturalists who have had the best means of correctly observing his
+habits, he is by no means so admirable a creature. Where the timid
+antelope and powerless monkey fall his easy and unresisting prey--or
+where the elephant and buffalo find their unwieldy bulk and strength no
+adequate protection against his impetuous agility--he stalks boldly to
+and fro in fearless majesty. But in the neighbourhood of man--even in
+that of uncultivated savages--_he skulks in treacherous ambush for his
+prey_. Of his forbearance and generosity it can merely be said, that
+when free, he destroys only what is sufficient to satiate his hunger or
+revenge; and when in captivity--his wants being provided for, and his
+feelings not irritated--he suffers smaller animals to live unmolested in
+his den, or submits to the control of a keeper by whom he is fed. But
+even this limited degree of docility is liable to fearful interruptions
+from the calls of hunger, the feelings of revenge--and these he
+frequently cherishes for a long period--with various other circumstances
+which render it dangerous to approach him in his most domesticated
+state, without ascertaining his immediate mood and temper. That an
+animal which seldom attacks by open force, but silently approaches his
+victim, and when he imagines his prey to be within his reach, bounds
+upon it with an overwhelming leap, should ever have been regarded as
+the type of courage and the emblem of magnanimity, is indeed most
+astonishing!"
+
+The generosity of disposition so liberally accorded to this powerful
+beast has been much and eloquently praised; and it seems hard to
+dissipate the glowing vision which Buffon has raised; but, if there is
+any dependence to be placed on the observations of those travellers
+who have had the best opportunities of judging, and have the highest
+character for veracity, we must be compelled to acknowledge that
+Buffon's Lion is the Lion of poetry and prejudice, and very unlike the
+cautious lurking savage that steals on its comparatively weak prey by
+surprise, overwhelms it at once by the terror, the weight, and the
+violence of the attack, and is intent only on the gratification of the
+appetite. "At the time," says Mr. Burchell, "when men first adopted the
+Lion as the emblem of courage, it would seem that they regarded great
+size and strength as indicating it; but they were greatly mistaken
+in the character they had given of the indolent animal." Indeed, Mr.
+Burchell calls the Lion an "indolent skulking animal." The fact of the
+Lion sparing the dog that was thrown to him, and making a friend of the
+little animal that was destined for his prey, has been much dwelt on;
+but these and other such acts of mercy, as they have been called, may
+be very easily accounted for. If not pressed by hunger, the Lion will
+seldom be at the trouble of killing prey; and the desire for a companion
+has created much stronger friendships between animals in confinement
+than between a Lion and a little dog. St. Pierre touchingly describes
+the Lion of Versailles, who, in 1792, lived most happily with a dog, and
+on whose death he became disconsolate and miserable; and in confinement
+the "lordly Lion," as Young calls him, has been known to be deeply
+afflicted with melancholy at similar losses.
+
+The Lion is easily tamed, and capable of attachment to man. The story of
+Androdas, frequently called Androcles, is too well known to need more
+than allusion; but in this and other stories of Lions licking men's
+hands without injuring them, there must be a stretch of fancy; for the
+Lion's tongue has sharp thorn-points, inclining backwards, so as not to
+be able to lick the hand without tearing away the skin, which any one
+will understand who has _heard_ the Lion tear the raw meat away from the
+bone of his food.
+
+Still, very different accounts are given by travellers of the cruelty or
+generosity of the Lion's nature; which results, in all probability, from
+a difference in time or circumstances, or the degree of hunger which the
+individual experienced when the respective observations were made upon
+him.
+
+Meanwhile, there are many points in the history of the Lion which are
+yet but imperfectly understood; the explanations of which, whilst
+they are interesting, add to our correct knowledge of this still
+extraordinary animal.
+
+The Lion has been styled "The King of the Forest," which is not very
+applicable to him, seeing that Mr. Burchell at least never met with
+but one Lion on the plains; nor did he ever meet with one in any of
+the forests where he had been. The low cover that creeps along the
+sides of streams, the patches that mark the springs in the rank grass
+of the valley, seem to be the shelter which the African Lion, for the
+most part, seeks. His strength is extraordinary. To carry off a man
+(and there are dismal accounts of this horrible fact, which there is no
+reason to doubt) appears a feat of no difficulty to this powerful brute.
+A Cape Lion, seizing a heifer in his mouth, has carried her off with the
+same ease as a cat does a rat; and has leaped with her over a broad dyke
+without the least difficulty. A young Lion, too, has conveyed a horse
+about a mile from the spot where he had killed it.
+
+There seems to be an idea that the Lion preserves human prey; but, be
+this as it may, the inhabitants of certain districts have been under the
+necessity of resorting to a curious expedient to get out of the Lion's
+reach. AElian, by the way, records the extinction of a Libyan people by
+an invasion of Lions. We read of a large tree, in the country of the
+Mantatees, which has amidst its limbs fourteen conical huts. These are
+used as dormitories, being beyond the reach of the Lions, which, since
+the incursions of the Mantatees, when so many thousands of persons
+were massacred, have become very numerous in the neighbourhood, and
+destructive to human life. The branches of the above trees are supported
+by forked sticks or poles, and there are three tiers or platforms
+on which the huts are constructed. The lowest is nine feet from the
+ground, and holds ten huts; the second, about eight feet high, has
+three huts; and the upper story, if it may be so called, contains four.
+The ascent to these is made by notches cut in the poles; the huts are
+built with twigs, and thatched with straw, and will contain two persons
+conveniently. This tree stands at the base of a range of mountains due
+east of Kurrichaine, in a place called "Ongorutcie Fountain," about
+1,000 miles north-east of Cape Town. Kurrichaine is the Staffordshire as
+well as the Birmingham of that part of South Africa. There are likewise
+whole villages of huts erected on stakes, about eight feet from the
+ground; the inhabitants, it is stated, sit under the shade of these
+platforms during the day, and retire to the elevated huts at night.
+
+Though mortal accidents frequently occur in Lion-hunting, the cool
+sportsman seldom fails of using his rifle with effect. Lions, when
+roused, it seems, walk off quietly at first, and if no cover is near,
+and they are not pursued, they gradually mend their pace to a trot,
+till they have reached a good distance, and then they bound away. Their
+demeanour is careless, as if they did not want a fray, but if pressed,
+are ready to fight it out. If they are pursued closely, they turn and
+crouch, generally with their faces to the adversary: then the nerves of
+the sportsman are tried. If he is collected, and master of his craft,
+the well-directed rifle ends the scene at once; but if, in the flutter
+of the moment, the vital parts are missed, or the ball passes by,
+leaving the Lion unhurt, the infuriated beast frequently charges on his
+enemies, dealing destruction around him. This, however, is not always
+the case; and a steady, unshrinking deportment has, in some instances,
+saved the life of the hunter.
+
+There is hardly a book of African travels which does not teem with the
+dangers and hair-breadth escapes of the Lion-hunters; and hardly one
+that does not include a fatal issue to some engaged in this hazardous
+sport. The modes of destruction employed against the powerful beast are
+very various--from the poisonous arrow of the Bushman to the rifle of
+the colonist.
+
+The Lion may be safely attacked while sleeping, because of the dullness
+of his sense of hearing, the difficulty of awakening him, and his want
+of presence of mind if he be so awakened. Thus the Bushmen of Africa
+are enabled to keep the country tolerably clear of Lions, without
+encountering any great danger. The bone of the Lion's fore-leg is of
+remarkable hardness, from its containing a greater quantity of phosphate
+of lime than is found in ordinary bones, so that it may resist the
+powerful contraction of the muscles. The texture of this bone is so
+compact that the substance will strike fire with steel. He has little
+sense of taste, his lingual or tongue-nerve not being larger than that
+of a middle-sized dog.
+
+The true Lions belong to the Old World exclusively, and they were
+formerly widely and abundantly diffused; but at present they are
+confined to Asia and Africa, and they are becoming every day more and
+more scarce in those quarters of the globe. That Lions were once found
+in Europe there can be no doubt. Thus it is recorded by Herodotus that
+the baggage-camels of the army of Xerxes were attacked by Lions in the
+country of the Reonians and the Crestonaei on their march from Acanthus
+(near the peninsula of Mount Athos) to Therma, afterwards Thessalonica
+(now Saloniki); the camels alone, it is stated, were attacked, other
+beasts remaining untouched, as well as men. Pausanias copies the above
+story, and states, moreover, that Lions often descended into the plains
+at the foot of Olympus, which separate Macedonia from Thessaly, and that
+Polydamas, a celebrated athlete, slew one of the Lions, although he was
+unarmed.
+
+Nor is Europe the only part of the world from which the form of the Lion
+has disappeared. Lions are no longer to be found in Egypt, Palestine,
+or Syria, where they once were evidently far from uncommon. The
+frequent allusions to the Lion in the Holy Scriptures, and the various
+Hebrew terms there used to distinguish the different ages and sex of
+the animal, prove a familiarity with the habits of the race. Even in
+Asia generally, with the exception of some countries between India and
+Persia and some districts of Arabia, these magnificent beasts have,
+as Cuvier observes, become comparatively rare, and this is not to be
+wondered at. To say nothing of the immense draughts on the race for
+the Roman arena,--and they were not inconsiderable, for, as Zimmerman
+has shown, there were 1,000 lions killed at Rome in the space of forty
+years,--population and civilization have gradually driven them within
+narrower limits, and their destruction has been rapidly worked in
+modern times, when firearms have been used against them instead of the
+bow and the spear. Sylla gave a combat of one hundred Lions at once in
+his aedileship; but this exhibition is insignificant when compared with
+those of Pompey and Caesar, the former of whom exhibited a fight of six
+hundred, and the latter of four hundred Lions. In Pompey's show three
+hundred and fifteen of the six hundred were males. The early Emperors
+consumed great numbers, frequently a hundred at a time, to gratify the
+people.
+
+The African Lion is annually retiring before the persecution of man
+farther and farther from the Cape. Mr. Bennett says of the Lion:--"His
+true country is Africa, in the vast and untrodden wilds of which, from
+the immense deserts of the north to the trackless forests of the south,
+he reigns supreme and uncontrolled. In the sandy deserts of Arabia,
+in some of the wild districts of Persia, and in the vast jungles of
+Hindostan, he still maintains a precarious footing; but from the classic
+soil of Greece, as well as from the whole of Asia Minor, both of which
+were once exposed to his ravages, he has been entirely dislodged and
+extirpated."
+
+Niebuhr places Lions among the animals of Arabia; but their proper
+country is Africa, where their size is the largest, their numbers
+are greatest, and their rage more tremendous, being inflamed by the
+influence of a burning sun upon a most arid soil. Dr. Fryer says that
+those of India are feeble and cowardly. In the interior parts, amidst
+the scorched and desolate deserts of Zaara or Biledugerid, they reign
+the masters; they lord it over every beast, and their courage never
+meets with a check where the climate keeps mankind at a distance. The
+nearer they approach the habitations of the human race the less their
+rage, or rather the greater is their timidity: they have often had
+experienced unequal combats, and finding that there exists a being
+superior to themselves, commit their ravages with more caution; a cooler
+climate, again, has the same effect, but in the burning deserts, where
+rivers and springs are denied, they live in a perpetual fever, a sort of
+madness fatal to every animal they meet with.
+
+The watchfulness and tenacity of the Lion for human prey are very
+extraordinary. Mr. Barrow relates that a Lion once pursued a Hottentot
+from a pool of water, where he was driving his cattle to drink, to an
+olive-tree, in which the man remained for twenty-four hours, while the
+Lion laid himself at the foot of the tree. The patience of the beast was
+at length worn out by his desire to drink, and while he satisfied his
+thirst the Hottentot fled to his house, about a mile off. The Lion,
+however, returned to the tree, and tracked the man within three hundred
+yards of his dwelling.
+
+Dr. Philip relates a horrible story of a very large Lion recorded at
+Cape Town in the year 1705. He was known to have seized a sentry at a
+tent, and was pursued and fired at by many persons without effect. Next
+morning the Lion walked up a hill _with the man in his mouth_, when
+about forty shots were fired at him without hitting him; and it was
+perceived by the blood, and a piece of the clothes of the sentry, that
+the Lion had taken him away and carried him with him. He was pursued
+by a band of Hottentots, one of whom he seized with his claws by the
+mantle, when the man stabbed him with an assagai. Other Hottentots
+adorned him with their assagais, so that he looked like a porcupine; he
+roared and leaped furiously, but was at length shot dead. He had a short
+time before carried off a Hottentot and devoured him.
+
+The Bengal or Asiatic Lion is distinguished from that of Southern Africa
+principally by the larger size, the more regular and graceful form, the
+generally darker colour, and the less extensive mane than the African.
+William Harvey, the graceful artist, drew a portrait of a very fine
+Bengal Lion, little more than five years old, and then in the Tower
+collection, and called by the keepers "the Old Lion;" the magnificent
+development of the mane is very striking in this figure.
+
+Maneless Lions have been found on the confines of Arabia, and were
+known to Aristotle and Pliny; a maneless Lion is also said to be
+represented on the monuments of Upper Egypt. The Lion of Arabia has
+neither the courage nor the stature, nor even the beauty, of the Lion of
+Africa. He uses cunning rather than force; he crouches among the reeds
+which border the Tigris and Euphrates, and springs upon all the feeble
+animals which come there to quench their thirst; but he dares not attack
+the boar, which is very common there, and flies as soon as he perceives
+a man, a woman, or even a child. If he catches a sheep he makes off
+with his prey; but he abandons it to save himself when an Arab looks
+after him. If he is hunted by horsemen, which often happens, he does
+not defend himself unless he is wounded, and has no hope of safety by
+flight. In such a case he will fly on a man and tear him to pieces with
+his claws, for it is courage more than strength that he wants. Achmed,
+Pasha of Bagdad from 1724 to 1747, would have been torn by one, after
+breaking his lance in a hunt, if his slave Suleiman, who succeeded him
+in the Pashalik, had not come promptly to his succour and pierced with a
+blow of his yataghan the Lion already wounded by his master.
+
+In December, 1833, Captain Walter Smee exhibited to the Zoological
+Society of London the skins of a Lion and Lioness killed by him in
+Guzerat, and distinguished from those previously known by the absence
+of a mane; the tail was shorter than that of the ordinary Lion, and
+furnished at its tip with a much larger brush or tuft; and in the
+tuft of the older Lion was a short horny claw or nail. The colour is
+fulvous; which in darker specimens has a tinge of red. A male maneless
+Lion, killed by Captain Smee, measured, including the tail, 8 feet
+9-1/2 inches in length; the impression of his paw on the sand 6-1/4
+inches across, and his height was 3 feet 6 inches. These maneless Lions
+are found in Guzerat, along the banks of the Sombermultee, in low,
+bushy-wooded plains, being driven out of the large adjoining tracts of
+high grass jungle by the natives annually setting fire to the grass.
+Here Captain Smee killed his finest specimens: they were so common in
+this district that he killed no fewer than eleven during a residence of
+about a month, yet scarcely any of the natives had seen them previously
+to his coming amongst them. The cattle were frequently carried off by
+these Lions: some natives attributed this to tigers, which, however,
+do not exist in this part of the country. Captain Smee could not learn
+that men had been attacked by these Lions: when struck by a ball they
+exhibited great boldness, standing as if preparing to resist their
+pursuers, and then going off slowly, and in a very sullen manner.
+
+In captivity the Lioness usually turns extremely savage when she becomes
+a mother; and, in a state of nature, both parents guard their young
+with the greatest jealousy. Early in the year 1823 General Watson, then
+on service in Bengal, being out one morning on horseback, armed with
+a double-barrelled rifle, was suddenly surprised by a large male Lion,
+which bounded out upon him from the thick jungle, at the distance of
+only a few yards. He instantly fired, and the shot taking complete
+effect, the animal fell almost dead at his feet. No sooner had the Lion
+fallen than the Lioness rushed out, which the General also shot at and
+wounded severely, so that she retired into the thicket. Thinking that
+the den could not be far distant, he traced her to her retreat, and
+there despatched her; and in the den were found two beautiful cubs, a
+male and a female, apparently not more than three months old. This is a
+very touching narrative, even of the Lion family.
+
+The General brought the cubs away; they were suckled by a goat and
+sent to England, where they arrived in September, 1823, as a present
+to George IV., and were lodged in the Tower. When young, Lions mew
+like a cat; at the age of ten or twelve months the mane begins to
+appear in the male; at the age of eighteen months this appendage is
+considerably developed, and they begin to roar. The _roar_ of the adult
+Lion is terrific, from the larynx or upper part of the wind-pipe being
+proportionately greater than in the whale or the elephant, or any other
+animal. Mr. Burchell describes the roar on some occasions to resemble
+the noise of an earthquake; and this terrific effect is produced by
+the Lion laying his head upon the ground and uttering, as it were, a
+half-stifled roar or growl, which is conveyed along the earth.
+
+The natural period of the Lion's life is generally supposed to be twenty
+or twenty-two years. Such is Buffon's limitation; but the animal will,
+it seems, live much longer. Pompey, the great Lion, which died in 1766,
+was said to have been in the Tower above seventy years; and a Lion from
+the river Gambia is stated to have since died in the Tower menagerie at
+the age of sixty-three.
+
+There had been for ages a popular belief that the Lion lashes his sides
+with his tail to stimulate himself into rage; when, in 1832, there was
+exhibited to the Zoological Society a claw obtained from the tip of
+the tail of a Barbary Lion, presented to the Society's menagerie by
+Sir Thomas Reade. It was detected on the living animal by Mr. Bennett,
+and pointed out to the keeper, in whose hands it came off while he
+was examining it. Blumenbach quotes Homer, Lucan, and Pliny, among
+others who have described the Lion (erroneously) as lashing himself
+with his tail, when angry, to provoke his rage. None of these writers,
+however, advert to any peculiarity in the Lion's tail to which so
+extraordinary a function might, however incorrectly, be attributed.
+Didymus Alexandrinus, a commentator on the "Iliad," cited by Blumenbach,
+having found a black prickle, like a horn, among the hair of the tail,
+immediately conjectured that he had ascertained the true cause of the
+stimulus when the animal flourishes his tail in defiance of his enemies,
+remarking that, when punctured by this prickle, the Lion became more
+irritable from the pain which it occasioned. The subject, however,
+appears to have slumbered till 1829, when M. Deshayes announced that
+he had found the prickle both of a Lion and Lioness, which had died
+in the French menagerie, and described it as a little nail, or horny
+production, adhering by its base only to the skin, and not to the last
+caudal vertebra. From that period Mr. Wood, the able zoologist, examined
+the tail of every Lion, living or dead, to which he could gain access;
+but in no instance had he succeeded in finding the prickle till the
+above specimen, which was placed in his hands within half an hour after
+its removal from the living animal, and while yet soft at its base,
+where it had been attached to the skin. Its shape was nearly straight,
+then slightly contracted, forming a very obtuse angle, and afterwards
+swelling out like the bulb of a bristle, to its termination. It was
+laterally flattened throughout its entire length, which did not amount
+to quite three-eighths of an inch, of horn colour, and nearly black at
+the tip. Its connexion with the skin must have been very slight, which
+accounts for its usual absence in stuffed as well as living specimens.
+This does not depend upon age, as it was found alike in the Paris Lions,
+of considerable size, as well as in the Zoological Society's Lions,
+very small and young; nor did it depend upon sex. It appears to be
+occasionally present in the Leopard; and, in both Lion and Leopard, it
+is seated at the extreme tip of the tail, and is altogether unconnected
+with the terminal caudal vertebra; not fitted on like a cap, but rather
+inserted into the skin.
+
+The use of the prickle, however, it still remained difficult to
+conjecture; but that its existence was known to the ancients is proved
+by the Nimroud sculptures in the British Museum, in an exaggerated
+representation of the claw, in support of this curious fact in natural
+history. The existence of the claw has been proved by Mr. Bennett;
+and "it is no small gratification to be able now to quote in evidence
+of the statement of Mr. Bennett, and of his predecessor. Didymus, of
+Alexandria, the original and authentic document, on the authority of the
+veritable descendants of the renowned hunter Nimroud; which any one may
+read who will take the trouble to examine the sculptured slab in the
+British Museum."[8]
+
+In the Nineveh galleries of the British Museum we also see pictured in
+stone the employment of the Lion, in the life of Assyria and Babylonia,
+three thousand years since; in the events of a succession of dynasties,
+recording the sieges of cities, the combats of warriors, the triumphs
+of Kings, the processions of victors, the chains and fetters of the
+vanquished. To the zoological observer these sculptures present drawings
+_ad naturam_ of tableaux of Lions and Lion-hunts; Lions in combat, as
+well as in moveable dens and cages, and the ferocity of the chase; and
+Lions transfixed with arrows or javelins in the arena. One of the finest
+of these sculptures is in the representation of a Lion-hunt, on a long
+slab that lined the principal chamber of the most ancient palace at
+Nimroud. The King is in his chariot, drawn by three horses, which the
+charioteer is urging forward to escape the attack of an infuriated Lion
+that has already placed its fore-paws upon the back of the chariot. At
+this critical moment, the Royal descendant of the mighty hunter aims a
+deadly shaft at the head of the roaring and wounded Lion, the position
+of whose tail and limbs is finely indicative of rage and fury. Behind
+the Lion are two of the King's attendants, fully armed, and holding
+their daggers and shields, ready to defend themselves in case the prey
+should escape the arrow of the King. Before the chariot is a wounded
+Lion, crawling from under the horses' feet. The cringing agony conveyed
+in its entire action is well contrasted with the undaunted fury of the
+former. In another slab we have the continuation of the same Lion-hunt,
+representing the triumphant return of the King from the chase. At his
+feet lies the Lion subdued, but not dead.
+
+Of the pageantry of the Lion, we read, in Bell's "Travels," that the
+monarch of Persia had, on days of audience, two great Lions chained on
+each side of the passage to the state-room, led there by keepers in
+golden chains.
+
+Our early English Sovereigns had a menagerie in the Tower from the reign
+of Henry III. (1252.) In 1370 (44 Edward III.) are entries of payments
+made to "the Keeper of the King's Lions and Leopards" there, at the
+rate of 6_d._ a-day for his wages, and 6_d._ a-day for each beast.
+The number of beasts varied from four to seven. Two young Lions are
+specially mentioned; and "a Lion lately sent by the Lord the Prince,
+from Germany to England, to our Lord the King." And we read, in Lord
+Burghley's "Diary," 1586, of the grant of the keeping of the Lions in
+the Tower, with "the Fine of 12_d._ per diem, and 6_d._ for the Meat of
+those Lions." The first menagerie-building was the Lion Tower, to which
+was added a semicircular inclosure, where Lions and Bears were baited
+with dogs, with which James I. and his court were much delighted. A
+Lion was named after the reigning King; and it was popularly believed
+that "when the King dies, the Lion of that name dies after him." The
+last of the Tower animals were transferred to the Zoological Society's
+menagerie, in the Regent's-park, in 1834. The Tower menagerie is well
+described in a handsome volume, with woodcut portraits, by William
+Harvey.
+
+The punishment of being _thrown to Lions_ is stated as common among the
+Romans of the first century; and numerous tales are extant, in which the
+fierce animals became meek and lamb-like before the holy virgins of the
+Church. This, indeed, is the origin of the superstition, nowhere more
+beautifully expressed than in Lord Byron's "Siege of Corinth":--
+
+    "'Tis said that a Lion will turn and flee
+    From a maid in the pride of her purity."
+
+Every wild beast show almost has its tame Lion, with which the keeper
+takes the greatest liberties; liberties which the beast will suffer,
+generally speaking, from none but him. Major Smith relates that he
+had seen the keeper of a Lioness stand upon the beast, drag her round
+the cage by her tail, open her jaws, and thrust his head between her
+teeth. Another keeper, at New York, had provided himself with a fur cap,
+the novelty of which attracted the notice of the Lion, which, making
+a sudden grapple, tore the cap off his head as he passed the cage;
+but, perceiving that the keeper was the person whose head he had thus
+uncovered, he immediately laid the cap down. Wombwell, in his menagerie,
+had a fine Lion, Nero, that allowed _strangers_ to enter his den, and
+even put their heads within his jaws. This tameness is not, however, to
+be trusted, since the natural ferocity of some Lions is never safely
+subdued. Lions which have been sometimes familiar, have, on other
+occasions, been known to kill their keepers, and dart at those who have
+incautiously approached too near their cage. All these exhibitions have
+been entirely eclipsed by the feats of Van Amburgh, in his exercise of
+complete control over Lions. The melancholy fate of "the Lion Queen,"
+however, tells of the fatal result of her confidence. The Lion-killing
+feats of Captain Gordon Cumming had a more legitimate object in view--to
+render us more familiar with the zoological character of the Lion.
+
+Colonization has scarcely yet extirpated the Lion in Algeria, where the
+French colonists make fine sport of "the King of the Beasts." M. Jules
+Gerard, a Nimroud in his way, has been noted for his Lion-killing feats.
+We read of his tracking a large old Lion in the Smauls country, one
+hundred leagues in ten days, without catching a glimpse of anything but
+his foot-prints. At length, accompanied by a native of the country and a
+spahi, Gerard took up his quarters at the foot of a tree upon the path
+which the old Lion had taken. It was moonlight, and Gerard made out two
+Lions sitting about one hundred paces off, and exactly in the shadow of
+the tree. The Arab lay snoring ten paces off, in the full light of the
+moon, and had, doubtless, attracted the attention of the Lions. Gerard
+expressly forbade the spahi to wake the Arab. Our Lion-hunter then got
+up the hill to reconnoitre; the boldest of the Lions came up to within
+ten paces of Gerard, and fifteen of the Arab: the Lion's eye was fixed
+on the latter, and the second Lion placed himself on a level with, and
+four or five paces from, the first. They proved to be both full-grown
+Lionesses. Gerard took aim at the first as she came rolling and roaring
+down to the foot of the tree. The Arab was scarcely awakened, when a
+second ball stretched the Lioness dead upon the spot. Gerard then looked
+out for the second Lioness, who was standing up within fifteen paces,
+looking around her. He fired, and she fell down roaring, and disappeared
+in a field of maize; she fell, but was still alive. Next morning at
+daybreak, at the spot where the Lioness had fallen, were blood marks,
+denoting her track in the direction of a wood. After sending off the
+dead Lioness. Gerard returned to his post of the preceding night. A
+little after sunset the Lion roared in his lair, and continued roaring
+all night. Convinced that the wounded Lioness was there, Gerard sent two
+Arabs to explore the cover, but they durst not. He next evening reached
+the lair, taking with him a goat, which he left with the Arabs: the
+Lioness appeared. Gerard fired, and she fell without a struggle; she was
+believed dead, but she got up again as though nothing was the matter,
+and showed all her teeth. One of the Arabs, within six paces of her,
+seeing her get up, clung to the lower branches of a tree and disappeared
+like a squirrel. The Lioness fell dead at the foot of the tree, a second
+bullet piercing her heart: the first had passed out of the nape of the
+neck without breaking the skull-bone.
+
+The Lions presented by Lord Prudhoe to the British Museum are the best
+sculptured representations of the animal in this country. Although the
+Lion is our national hieroglyphic, and there are many statues of him,
+yet not one among them all appears without a defect, which makes our
+representations of him belong to the class _canis_ instead of _felis_, a
+fault not found in any Egyptian sculpture.[9]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[8] Bonomi; "Nineveh and its Palaces," p. 249.
+
+[9] Bonomi; "Proc. Royal Soc., Literature."
+
+
+
+
+BIRD-LIFE.
+
+     "Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they
+     reap, nor gather into barns; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth
+     them."--Matthew vi. 26.
+
+    "Free tenants of land, air, and ocean,
+    Their forms all symmetry, their motions grace;
+    In plumage delicate and beautiful,
+    Thick without burthen, close as fishes' scales,
+    Or loose as full-blown poppies on the gales;
+    With wings that seem as they'd a soul within them,
+    They bear their owners with such sweet enchantment."
+
+                    _James Montgomery._
+
+
+Birds, as regards structure, are perhaps the most perfectly endowed,
+as they are certainly the most beautiful and interesting, of all the
+lower animals. In Birds there is an admirable mechanism and adaptation
+both for gliding in the air and swimming in the water. They surpass all
+other animals in the faculty of continuing their motion without resting,
+as well as in its rapidity. The fleetest courser can scarcely ever run
+more than a mile in a minute, nor support that speed beyond five or six
+such exertions. But the joyous Swallow does this tenfold for pleasure.
+In his usual way he flies at the rate of one mile in a minute; and
+Wilson, the ornithologist, ascertained that the Swallow is so engaged
+for ten hours every day. So can the Blue-bird of America, for a space of
+600 miles. Our Carrier-pigeons move with half that celerity: one flew
+from Liskeard to London, 220 miles, in six hours. The Golden Eagle is
+supposed to dart through the fiercest storm at the rate of 160 miles an
+hour; but one of our smallest Birds, the Swift, can even quadruple the
+most excited quickness of the race-horse for a distance. Spallanzani
+thought that the little Swift travelled at the rate of 250 miles an hour.
+
+Inquiries into the phenomena of the flight of Birds would lead us
+far beyond our limits. The subject is beset with error. Thus, we
+read:--"Every one has remarked the manner in which Birds of prey float,
+as it were, without any effort, and with steady expanded wings, at great
+heights in the atmosphere. This they are enabled to do from the quantity
+of air contained in the air-cells of their bodies, which air being taken
+in at a low level in the atmosphere, of course rarefies and expands as
+the Bird ascends into higher regions. Their rapidity of descent must
+be accomplished by the sudden expulsion of this air, aided by their
+muscular efforts."
+
+Now, Dr. Crisp has read to the Zoological Society a paper "On the
+Presence or Absence of Air in the Bones of Birds," for the purpose of
+showing the prevailing error upon the subject--viz., "that the bones
+of the Bird are filled with air." Of fifty-two British Birds recently
+dissected by him, only one, the Sparrow-hawk, had the bones generally
+perforated for the admission of air. In thirteen others, the humeri only
+were hollow, and among these were several Birds of short flight. In the
+remaining thirty-eight, neither the _humeri_ nor _femora_ contained
+air, although in this list were several Birds of passage and of rapid
+flight--Dr. Crisp's conclusion being, that the majority of British Birds
+have no air in their bones, and that, with the exception of the Falcons,
+but very few British Birds have hollow femora.
+
+Mr. Gould records a most remarkable instance of rapid and sustained
+flight, which he witnessed on his return from North America, whither
+he had proceeded for the purpose of studying the habits and manners of
+the species of _Trochilus_ (Humming Bird), frequenting that portion
+of America. Having remarked that he arrived just prior to the period
+of the migration of this Bird from Mexico to the north, and had ample
+opportunities for observing it in a state of nature, he noticed that
+its actions were very peculiar, and quite different from those of all
+other birds: the flight is performed by a motion of the wings so rapid
+as to be almost imperceptible; indeed, the muscular power of this little
+creature appears to be very great in every respect, as, independently of
+its rapid and sustained flight, it grasps the small twigs, flowers, &c.,
+upon which it alights with the utmost tenacity. It appears to be most
+active in the morning and evening, and to pass the middle of the day in
+a state of sleepy torpor. Occasionally it occurs in such numbers that
+fifty or sixty birds may be seen in a single tree. When captured it so
+speedily becomes tame that it will feed from the hand or mouth within
+half an hour. Mr. Gould having been successful in keeping a Humming-Bird
+alive in a gauze bag attached to his breast button for three days,
+during which it readily fed from a bottle filled with a syrup of brown
+sugar and water, he determined to make an attempt to bring some living
+examples to England, in which he succeeded; but unfortunately they did
+not long survive their arrival.
+
+The adaptation of colour in Birds to their haunts strikingly tends to
+their preservation. The small Birds which frequent hedges have backs
+of a brownish or brownish-green hue; and their bellies are generally
+whitish, or light-coloured, so as to harmonize with the sky. Thus, they
+become less visible to the hawk or cat that passes above or below them.
+The wayfarer across the fields also treads upon the Skylark before he
+sees it warbling to heaven's gate. The Goldfinch or Thistlefinch passes
+much of its time among flowers, and is vividly coloured accordingly.
+The Partridge can hardly be distinguished from the fallow or stubble
+among which it crouches; and it is considered an accomplishment among
+sportsmen to have a good eye for finding a Hare sitting. In northern
+countries the winter dress of the Hares and Ptarmigans is white, to
+prevent detection among the snows of those inclement regions.
+
+The Song of Birds is popularly explained by the author of a work,
+entitled, "The Music of Nature," in which he illustrates the vocal
+machinery of Birds as follows:--"It is difficult to account for so small
+a creature as a Bird making a tone as loud as some animal a thousand
+times its size; but a recent discovery shows that in birds the lungs
+have several openings communicating with corresponding air-bags or
+cells, which fill the whole cavity of the body from the neck downward,
+and into which the air passes and repasses in the progress of breathing.
+This is not all. The very bones are hollow, from which air-pipes are
+conveyed to the most solid parts of the body, even into the quills and
+feathers. The air being rarefied by the heat of their body, adds to
+their levity. By forcing the air out of their body, they can dart down
+from the greatest heights with astonishing velocity. No doubt the same
+machinery forms the basis of their vocal powers, and at once resolves
+the mystery into a natural ordering of parts." This is a very pretty
+story; but, unfortunately, it is not correct, as already shown.
+
+A correspondent of the "Athenaeum," writing in 1866, says:--"He would be
+a bold man who should say that Birds have no delight in their own songs.
+I have been led to conclude from experiments which I have made, and from
+other observations, that certain animals, especially Birds, have not
+only an ear for fine sounds, but also a preference for the things they
+see out of respect to fine colours or other pleasing external features.
+It is chiefly among Birds, when we consider the case of animals, that
+a taste for ornament and for glittering objects, often very startling
+and human-like, is to be found. The habits of the Pheasant, Peacock,
+Turkey, Bird of Paradise, several Birds of the Pigeon and Crow kind, and
+certain Singing Birds, are evidence. The Australian Satin Bower-Bird
+is the most remarkable of that class which exhibit taste for beauty or
+for glittering objects out of themselves--that is, beauty not directly
+personal; collecting, in fact, little museums of shells, gaudy feathers,
+shining glass, or bits of coloured cloth or pottery. It will be found
+with many Birds that fine plumes, a mirror, and an admirer, are not
+altogether objects devoid of interest.
+
+"Another consideration leading me to the same conclusion, is the fact,
+that beauty in animals is placed on prominent parts, or on parts
+which by erection or expansion are easily, and at the pairing season,
+frequently rendered prominent, such as a crest or tail. A spangle of
+ruby or emerald does not exist, for instance, on the side under the
+wing, which is seldom raised, of our domestic poultry. Such jewels are
+hung where man himself wears his, on the face and forehead, or court
+attention, like our own crowns, trains, shoulder-knots, breast-knots,
+painted cheeks, or jewelled ears. I cannot account for the existence of
+these gaudy ornaments to please man, for nowhere are they more gorgeous
+than in Birds which live in the depth of the tropical forest, where man
+is rarely a visitor; I cannot account for them on the principle that
+they do good to their possessors in the battle for life, because they
+rather render them conspicuous to their enemies, or coveted by man." But
+the beauty of these beings glows most brightly at the season of their
+pairing, and the selection of their mates.
+
+Baron von Tschudi, the Swiss naturalist, has shown the important
+services of Birds in the destruction of insects. Without Birds, no
+agriculture or vegetation would be possible. They accomplish in a few
+months the profitable work of destruction which millions of human hands
+could not do half so well in as many years; and the sage, therefore,
+blamed in very severe terms the foolish practice of shooting and
+destroying Birds, which prevails more especially in Italy, recommending,
+on the contrary, the process of alluring Birds into gardens and
+corn-fields. Among the most deserving Birds he counts Swallows, Finches.
+Titmice, Redtails, &c. The naturalist then cites numerous instances in
+support of his assertion. In a flower-garden of one of his neighbours
+three rose-trees had been suddenly covered with about 2,000 tree-lice.
+At his recommendation a Marsh-Titmouse was located in the garden, which
+in a few hours consumed the whole brood, and left the roses perfectly
+clean. A Redtail in a room was observed to catch about 900 flies in an
+hour. A couple of Night-Swallows have been known to destroy a whole
+swarm of gnats in fifteen minutes. A pair of Golden-crested Wrens
+carry insects as food to their nestlings upon an average thirty-six
+times in an hour. For the protection of orchards and woods Titmice are
+of invaluable service. They consume, in particular, the eggs of the
+dangerous pine-spiders. One single female of such spiders frequently
+lays from 600 to 800 eggs twice in the summer season, while a Titmouse
+with her young ones consume daily several thousands of them. Wrens,
+Nuthatches, and Woodpeckers often dexterously fetch from the crevices of
+tree-bark numbers of insects for their nestlings.
+
+Yet, profitless and wanton Bird-murder is common. The cliffs on the
+coasts of these islands are the resort of numerous kinds of Sea-Fowl,
+and these Fowl, we are told, are slaughtered by thousands, not merely
+for the sake of their feathers, but actually for the mere savage
+pleasure of killing. What speculation can enter into such a proceeding
+it may puzzle the reader to imagine; but it seems that the wing feathers
+of the poor White Gull are now inquired for in the plume-trade, and
+we are actually told of an order given by a single house for 10,000
+of these unhappy Birds. When these facts were stated at the Meeting
+of the British Association, in August, 1868, at Norwich, a lady stood
+up boldly in defence of her sex, and declared that they sinned only
+through ignorance, and would never willingly wear the feathers of a
+Bird destroyed in the act of feeding its young. That part of the case,
+therefore, ought to be now in safe hands. In the Isle of Man a law has
+been passed, called the "Seagull Preservation Act," protecting these
+Birds by heavy penalties, on the ground of their utility in removing
+fish offal and guiding fishermen to shoals of fish. At a certain point
+of our shores a similar protection has been established. A visitor to
+the South Stack Lighthouse, on the coast of Anglesey, may see prodigious
+numbers of Sea-Fowl as tame as complete safety can make them. It has
+been ascertained that in thick weather, when neither light can be
+distinguished nor signal seen, the incessant scream of these Birds gives
+the best of all warnings to the mariner of the vicinity of the rock. The
+noise they make can be heard at a greater distance than the tolling of
+the great bell; and so valuable was this danger-signal considered, that
+an order from the Trinity House forbad even the firing of the warning
+gun, lest the colony of the Sea-Fowl should be disturbed. The signals of
+the bell and the cannon might be neglected or overpowered, but the Birds
+were always there and always audible.
+
+It is inferred that Birds possess some notion of power, and of cause and
+effect, from the various actions which they perform. "Thus," relates Dr.
+Fleming, "we have seen the Hooded Crow in Zetland, when feeding on small
+shell-fish, able to break some of the tenderer kinds by means of its
+bill, aided in some cases by beating them against a stone; but, as some
+of the larger shells, such as the buckie and the welk, cannot be broken
+by such means, the Crow employs another method, by which, in consequence
+of applying foreign power, it accomplishes its object. Seizing the
+shell with its claws, it mounts up into the air, and then loosing its
+hold, causes the shell to fall among stones (in preference to the sand,
+the water, or the soil on the ground), that it may be broken, and give
+easier access to the contained animal. Should the first attempt fail,
+a second or third is tried, with this difference, that the Crow rises
+higher in the air, in order to increase the power of the fall, and
+more effectually remove the barrier to the contained morsel. On such
+occasions we have seen a strong Bird remain an apparently inattentive
+spectator of the process of breaking the shell, but coming to the spot
+with astonishing keenness when the efforts of its neighbour had been
+successful, in order to share the spoil. Pennant mentions similar
+operations performed by Crows on mussels."
+
+The brain of Birds is, in general, large in proportion to the size of
+the body, and the instinctive powers are very perfect. A few kinds are
+rather dull and stupid; but the Parrot, Magpie, Raven, and many others,
+show great vivacity and quickness of intellect. The Raven has a great
+deal of humour in him. One, a most amusing and mischievous creature,
+would get into a well-stocked flower-garden, go to the beds where the
+gardener had sowed a great variety of seeds, with sticks put in the
+ground with labels, and then he would amuse himself with pulling up
+every stick, and laying them in heaps of ten or twelve on the path. This
+used to irritate the old gardener, who drove him away. The Raven knew
+that he ought not to do it, or he would not have done it. He would soon
+return to his mischief, and when the gardener again chased him (the old
+man could not run very fast), the Raven would just keep clear of the
+rake or the hoe in his hand, dancing before him, and singing as plainly
+as a Raven could. "Tol de rol de rol! tol de rol de rol!" with all kinds
+of mimicking gestures.
+
+The signal of danger among Birds seems to be of universal comprehension;
+because the instant it is uttered we hear the whole flock, though
+composed of various species, repeat a separate moan, and away they
+all scuttle into the bushes for safety. The sentinel Birds give the
+signal, but in some cases they are deceived by false appearances. Dr.
+Edmonstone, in his "View of the Zetland Isles," relates a very striking
+illustration of the neglect of the sentinel, in his remarks on the Shag.
+"Great numbers of this species of the Cormorant are sometimes taken
+during the night, while asleep on the rocks of easy access; but before
+they commit themselves to sleep, one or two of the number are appointed
+to watch. Until these sentinels are secured, it is impossible to make a
+successful impression on the whole body; to surprise them is, therefore,
+the first object. With this view, the leader of the expedition creeps
+cautiously and imperceptibly along the rock, until he gets within a
+short distance of the watch. He then dips a worsted glove into the sea,
+and gently throws water in the face of the guard. The unsuspecting Bird,
+either disliking the impression, or fancying, from what he considers to
+be a disagreeable state of the weather, that all is quiet and safe,
+puts his head under his wing and soon falls asleep. His neck is then
+immediately broken, and the party dispatch as many as they choose."
+
+Addison was a true lover of nature, which he shows in two letters
+written by him to the Earl of Warwick (afterwards his son-in-law),
+when that nobleman was very young. "My dear Lord," he writes, "I have
+employed the whole neighbourhood in looking after Birds'-nests, and
+not altogether without success. My man found one last night, but it
+proved a hen's, with fifteen eggs in it, covered with an old broody
+Duck, which may satisfy your Lordship's curiosity a little; though I
+am afraid the eggs will be of little use to us. This morning I have
+news brought me of a nest that has abundance of little eggs, streaked
+with red and blue veins, that, by the description they give me, must
+make a very beautiful figure in a string. My neighbours are very much
+divided in their opinions upon them: some say they are a Skylark's;
+others will have them to be a Canary-Bird's; but I am much mistaken
+in the colour and turn of the eggs if they are not full of Tomtit's."
+Again, Addison writes:--"Since I am so near your Lordship, methinks,
+after having passed the day amid more severe studies, you may often
+take a trip hither and relax yourself with these little curiosities of
+nature. I assure you no less a man than Cicero commends the two great
+friends of his age, Scipio and Laelius, for entertaining themselves
+at their country-house, which stood on the sea-shore, with picking up
+cockle-shells, and looking after Birds'-nests."
+
+In another letter Addison writes:--"The business of this is to invite
+you to a concert of music which I have found out in a neighbouring wood.
+It begins precisely at six in the evening, and consists of a Blackbird,
+a Thrush, a Robin-Redbreast, and a Bullfinch. There is a Lark, that, by
+way of overture, sings and mounts till she is almost out of hearing; and
+afterwards, falling down leisurely, drops to the ground as soon as she
+has ended her song. The whole is concluded by a Nightingale, that has a
+much better voice than Mrs. Tofts, and something of the Italian manner
+in her divisions. If your Lordship will honour me with your company, I
+will promise to entertain you with much better music, and more agreeable
+scenes, than you ever met with at the Opera; and will conclude with a
+charming description of a Nightingale out of our friend Virgil:--
+
+    "'So close, in poplar shades, her children gone,
+    The mother Nightingale laments alone;
+    Whose nest some prying churl had found, and thence
+    By stealth convey'd the unfeathered innocence:
+    But she supplies the night with mournful strains,
+    And melancholy music fills the plains.'"
+
+
+
+
+BIRDS' EGGS AND NESTS.
+
+
+The Eggs of Birds are variously tinted and mottled, and hence they
+become objects of interest to the collector. In this diversity of
+colour nature has, doubtless, some final object in view; and though not
+in every instance, yet in many, we can certainly see a design in the
+adaptation of the colours to the purpose of concealment, according to
+the habits of the various classes of Birds. Thus, as a general rule, the
+Eggs of Birds which have their nests in dark holes, or which construct
+nests that almost completely exclude the light, are white; as is also
+the case with those Birds that constantly sit on their Eggs, or leave
+them only for a short time during the night. Eggs of a light blue or
+light green tint will also be found in nests that are otherwise well
+concealed; while, on the other hand, a great proportion of those nests
+that are in exposed situations have Eggs varying in tints and spots in a
+remarkable degree, corresponding with the colours of external objects in
+their immediate neighbourhood. Thus, a dull green colour is common in
+most gallinaceous Birds that form their nests in grass, and in aquatic
+Birds among green hedges; a bright green colour is prevalent among Birds
+that nestle among trees and bushes; and a brown mottled colour is found
+in those Eggs that are deposited among furze, heath, shingle, and grey
+rocks and stones.
+
+Birds'-nesting, we need hardly remark, is a favourite pursuit of
+boyhood; but, in some cases, its attractions have induced young
+persons to take up more important branches of natural history, or the
+collection, systematic arrangement, and comparison of Birds' Eggs, which
+is, in scientific study, termed Oology; and as the study of Birds cannot
+be considered complete until they are known in every stage, it forms a
+branch of Ornithology. In this case Birds'-nesting has an useful object;
+but many persons are content to acquire collections of Eggs without
+troubling themselves about the Birds which have laid them.
+
+The late Mr. John Wolley, M.A., was one of the leading authorities
+upon the subject of European Ornithology, and was one of a number
+of University men, who, about twelve years ago, established the
+ornithological journal called "The Ibis," and who visited far-distant
+and unexplored regions, where they might hope to discover strange
+Birds and unknown Eggs. For several years Algiers and Tunis were their
+favourite resorts, and the meeting-places of many of our rarer Birds
+were hunted up in these countries, even so far as the Desert of the
+Great Sahara. Others preferred the New World as the scene of their
+labours, and collected long series of specimens in the highland of
+Guatemala, and the tropical forests of Belize. Mr. Wolley, however,
+confined his attention principally to the northern parts of Europe--that
+region being the breeding-quarters of a large number of Birds which
+are only known in this country as winter visitants. In order to be
+at his collecting-station at Muonioniska, on the frontier of Finnish
+Lapland, at the earliest commencement of the breeding-season, Mr. Wolley
+frequently passed the whole winter in that remote region. But the rigour
+of the climate under the Arctic Circle contributed to bring on a malady
+which terminated fatally in November, 1859.
+
+Upon the decease of Mr. Wolley, his large collection of Birds' Eggs,
+in accordance with his last wishes, became the property of his friend,
+Mr. Alfred Newton, who is publishing a Catalogue of Mr. Wolley's Egg
+Cabinet, with notes from the deceased naturalist's journals. The first
+part contains the Eggs of Birds of Prey (_Accipitres_), recognisable at
+once by their strongly-hooked bill, formed to assist them in tearing
+their prey, and their large feet and sharpened claws, which aid them to
+grasp it. They are divisible into two very distinct groups--the diurnal
+Birds of Prey, consisting of the Hawks, Vultures, and Eagles; and the
+nocturnal Birds of Prey, or Owls. In the latter the Eggs are invariably
+colourless; in the former they are often strongly marked, and present
+some of the most beautiful objects in the whole series of Birds' Eggs.
+
+In the most recently published list of European birds fifty-two species
+of birds of prey are given as occurring more or less frequently within
+the limits of our continent. Of the three generally-recognised species
+of European Vultures two are well represented, as regards their eggs,
+in the Wolleyan series. A few years ago the nesting of all these birds
+was utterly unknown to naturalists, and it was mainly through the
+exertions of Mr. Wolley and his friends that specimens first reached
+our collectors' cabinets. Here were found both the Egyptian Vulture
+and the Griffon breeding abundantly in the Eastern Atlas in 1857; and
+the eyries of these birds have since been visited by other collectors
+in the same country. The Eggs of the former of these Vultures are
+remarkable for their deep and rich coloration. The productions of the
+Griffon are not nearly so handsome, and are occasionally altogether
+destitute of markings. Of the Eagles of Europe the series of Eggs is
+very full, especially of the two well-known British species--the Golden
+Eagle and Sea Eagle. The Golden or Mountain Eagle is even now-a-days
+much more common in the remote parts of the British islands than is
+usually supposed to be the case. In 1852 Mr. Wolley was acquainted
+with five nests of this bird in various parts of Scotland, and there
+were undoubtedly at least as many more of which he did not learn the
+particulars. The eyrie is usually placed in some mountainous district,
+on the ledge of some "warm-looking" rock, well clothed with vegetation,
+and often by no means wild or exposed. Not unfrequently, under proper
+guidance, one can walk into the nest almost without climbing. Mr. Newton
+gives a very entertaining account of the taking of a pair of eggs from
+a nest in Argyllshire in 1861, where this seems to have been the case.
+In the whole ascent there was only one "ticklish place," where it was
+necessary to go sideways on a narrow ledge round some rocks. The Sea
+Eagle, on the other hand, generally breeds on the high cliffs upon the
+coast, often selecting the most inaccessible position for its eyrie.
+Sometimes, however, it will choose an island in the middle of an inland
+loch, and in such case places its nest upon the ground or in a tree.
+
+Mr. Wolley's well-written notes of his adventures in quest of both
+these Eagles, as also those relating to the other rapacious birds, will
+be read with much interest; as will also the details concerning the
+nesting-habits of many of the rarer species of European birds, several
+of which, such as the Rough-legged Buzzard and the Lapp Owl, were first
+tracked to their breeding-quarters in the remotest wilds of Scandinavia
+by this indefatigable naturalist.[10]
+
+Of large Eggs we are most familiar with those of the Ostrich, of which
+Mr. Burchell, when in Africa, found twenty-five Eggs in a hollow
+scratched in the sand, six feet in diameter, surrounded by a trench, but
+without grass, leaves, or sticks, as in the nests of other birds. In
+the trench were nine more Eggs, intended, as the Hottentots observed,
+as the first food of the twenty-five young Ostriches. Between sixty and
+seventy Eggs have been found in one nest; each is equal to twenty-four
+Eggs of the domestic hen, and holds five pints and a quarter of liquid.
+The shells are dirty white. The Hottentots string them together as
+belts, or garlands, and they are frequently mounted as cups. One Ostrich
+Egg is a sufficient meal for three persons. The Egg is cooked over the
+fire without either pot or water, the shell answering the purpose of the
+first, and the liquid nature of its contents that of the other.
+
+Less familiar to the reader are the gigantic Eggs of the Epyornis, a
+bird which formerly lived in Madagascar. One of these Eggs contains the
+substance of 140 hens' Eggs. Mr. Geoffroy St. Hilaire describes some
+portions of an Egg of the Epyornis which show the Egg to have been of
+such a size as to be capable of containing about ten English quarts;
+that in the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes can only contain 8-3/4
+quarts. Mr. Strickland, in some notices of the Dodo and its kindred,
+published in 1849, says that in the previous year a Mr. Dumarele, a
+French merchant at Bourbon, saw at Port Leven, Madagascar, an enormous
+Egg which held "_thirteen wine quart bottles of fluid_." The natives
+stated that the Egg was found in the jungle, and "that such Eggs were
+_very, very rarely_ met with."
+
+A word or two about the nests of such gigantic birds. Captain Cook
+found, on an island near the north-east coast of New Holland, a nest
+"of a most enormous size. It was built with sticks upon the ground, and
+was no less than six-and-twenty feet in circumference, and two feet
+eight inches high." (Kerr's "Collection of Voyages and Travels," xiii.,
+318.) Captain Flinders found two similar nests on the south coast of New
+Holland, in King George's Bay. In his "Voyage," &c., London, 1818, he
+says, "They were built upon the ground, from which they rose above two
+feet, and were of vast circumference and great interior capacity; the
+branches of trees and other matter of which each nest was composed being
+enough to fill a cart."
+
+Among the varieties of Birds'-nests are some very curious homes, of
+which we have but space to notice a few. The pendulous nest of the
+Indian Baya-bird is usually formed of the fibres of the palmyra, the
+cocoa-nut palm, and wild date of India, sometimes mixed with grass,
+neatly interlaced, and very strongly made. It consists of only one
+circular chamber, with a long tubular passage leading to it, and is
+suspended from a tree, preferred if overhanging water. The natives of
+India say the Baya lights up its nest with fire-flies. The bird lays
+from four to six white eggs. Bayas are of a very social disposition:
+numbers build on the same tree, or neighbouring trees, and singing in
+concert during the breeding season. The Baya is very docile, and taught
+to fly off the finger and return again; to dart after a ring or small
+coin, dropped into a deep well, and catch it before it reaches the
+water; to fetch and carry, and perform similar tricks.
+
+The nest of the brilliant Golden-banded Oriole is a hammock of twisted
+fibrous substances, and is suspended in a low shrub, so as to swing to
+the breeze. The twine-like fibres of which it is woven are the filaments
+of the gigantic palm. The threads break away from the leaf, and hang
+like fringe to the magnificent foliage.
+
+The Tailor-birds are the best nest-builders of all the feathered tribes.
+They interweave their nests between the twigs and branches of shrubs,
+or suspend the nests from them; and some of these birds have exercised
+arts from the creation which man has found of the greatest benefit to
+him since he discovered them. These birds, indeed, may be called the
+inventors of the several arts of the weaver, the sempstress, and the
+tailor; whence some of them have been denominated Weaver and Tailor
+Birds. The nests of the latter are, however, most remarkable. India
+produces several species of Tailor-birds that sew together leaves for
+the protection of their eggs and nestlings from the voracity of serpents
+and apes. They generally select the end of a branch or twig, and sew
+with cotton, thread, and fibres. Colonel Sykes has seen some in which
+the thread was literally knotted at the end. The inside of these nests
+is lined usually with down and cotton.
+
+Tailor-birds are not confined to India or tropical countries. Italy can
+boast a species which exercises the same art. Mr. Gould has a specimen
+of this bird in his possession, and the Zoological Society have a nest
+in their Museum. This little bird, a species of the genus _sylvia_, in
+summer and autumn frequents marshes; but in the spring it seeks the
+meadows and corn-fields, in which, at that season, the marshes being
+bare of the sedges which cover them in summer, it is compelled to
+construct its nest in tussocks of grass on the brinks of ditches; but
+the leaves of these being weak, easily split, so that it is difficult
+for our little sempstresses to unite them, and so form the skeleton
+of the fabric. From this and other circumstances, the spring nests of
+these birds differ so widely from those made in the autumn that it seems
+next to impossible that both should be the work of the same artisan.
+The latter are constructed in a thick bunch of sedge or reed: they are
+shaped like a pear, being dilated below and narrow above, so as to leave
+an aperture sufficient for the ingress and egress of the bird. The
+greatest horizontal diameter of the nest is about two inches and a half,
+and the vertical is five inches.
+
+The most wonderful thing in the construction of these nests is the
+method to which the little bird has recourse to keep united the living
+leaves of which it is composed. The sole in the weaving, more or less
+delicate, of the materials, forms the principle adopted by other birds
+to bind together the walls of their nests; but this sylvia is no weaver,
+for the leaves of the sedges or reeds are united by real stitches.
+In the edge of each leaf she makes, probably with her beak, minute
+apertures, through which she contrives to pass, perhaps by means of
+the same organ, one or more cords formed of spiders' web, particularly
+that of their egg-pouches. Those threads are not very long, and are
+sufficient to pass two or three times from one leaf to another. They
+are of unequal thickness, and have knots here and there, which, in some
+places, divide into two or three branches.
+
+This is the manner in which the exterior of the nest is formed: the
+interior consists mainly of down, chiefly from plants, a little
+spiders' web being intermixed, which helps to keep the other substances
+together. The upper part and sides of the nest, that is, the external
+and internal, are in immediate contact; but in the lower part a greater
+space intervenes, filled with the slender foliage of grasses, and other
+materials, which render soft and warm the bed on which the eggs are to
+repose. This little bird feeds on insects. Its flight is rectilinear,
+but consists of many curves, with the concavity upwards. These curves
+equal in number the strokes of the wing, and at every stroke its whistle
+is heard, the intervals of which correspond with the rapidity of its
+flight.
+
+The Australian Bower-bird, as its name implies, builds its nest
+like an arbour or bower, with twigs: in the British Museum are two
+specimens, each decorated--one with bones and fresh-water shells, and
+the other with feathers and land-shells; remarkable instances of taste
+for ornament already referred to in a preceding page. The Satin or
+Bower-bird is described by settlers in Australia as "a very troublesome
+rascal," which besets gardens; if once allowed to make a lodgment there
+it is very troublesome to get rid of him; he signalizes his arrival by
+pulling up, in his restless fussy way, everything in the garden that he
+can tug out of the ground, even to the little sticks to mark the site of
+seeds. A settler had formed a garden in the bush; there was no enclosure
+of the kind for miles in any direction: a flock of Bower-birds came; he
+got his gun and shot two or three; the flock went off, and he never saw
+another bird of the kind.
+
+The Cape Swallows build nests which show extraordinary instinct allied
+to reason. A pair of these built their nest on the outside of a house
+at Cape Town against the angle formed by the wall and the board which
+supported the eaves. The whole of this nest was covered in, and it was
+furnished with a long neck or passage, through which the birds passed in
+and out. It resembled a longitudinal section of a Florence oil flask.
+This nest having crumbled away after the young birds had quitted it, the
+same pair, or another of the same species, built on the old foundation
+again. But this time an improvement was observable in the plan of it
+that can hardly be referred to the dictates of mere instinct. The body
+of the nest was of the same shape as before, but instead of a single
+passage it was furnished with one at each side, running along the angle
+of the roof; and on watching the birds, they were seen invariably to go
+in at one passage and come out at the other. Besides saving themselves
+the trouble of turning in the nest and disturbing, perhaps, its interior
+arrangement, they were guarded by this contrivance against a surprise by
+serpents, which frequently creep up along the wall, or descend from the
+thatch, and devour both the mother and her brood.
+
+Dr. Livingstone relates a very curious instance of "Bird Confinement"
+under very strange circumstances. In passing through Mopane country, in
+South Africa, his men caught a great number of the birds called _Korwe_
+in their breeding-places, which were holes in the mopane trees. They
+passed the nest of a Korwe just ready for the female to enter; the
+orifice was plastered on both sides, but a space was left of a heart
+shape, and exactly the size of the bird's body. The hole in the tree
+was in every case found to be prolonged some distance upwards above the
+opening, and thither the Korwe always fled to escape being caught. In
+another nest that was found, one white egg, much like that of a pigeon,
+was laid, and the bird dropped another when captured: she had four
+besides in the ovarium. Dr. Livingstone first saw this bird at Kolenbeng
+in the forest: he saw a slit only, about half an inch wide and three or
+four inches long, in a slight hollow of a tree; a native broke the clay
+which surrounded the slit, put his arm into the hole, and brought out a
+red-beaked Hornbill, which he killed. He told Dr. Livingstone that when
+the female enters her nest she submits to a real confinement. The male
+plasters up the entrance, leaving only a narrow slit by which to feed
+his mate, and which exactly suits the form of his beak. The female makes
+a nest of her own feathers, lays her eggs, hatches them, and remains
+with the young till they are fully fledged. During all this time, which
+is stated to be two or three months, the male continues to feed her
+and the young family. The prisoner generally becomes quite fat, and is
+esteemed a very dainty morsel by the natives; while the poor slave of a
+husband gets so lean that, on the sudden lowering of the temperature,
+which sometimes happens after a fall of rain, he is benumbed, falls
+down, and dies.
+
+Dr. Livingstone, on passing the same tree at Kolenbeng about eight days
+afterwards, found the hole plastered up again, as if, in the short time
+that had elapsed, the disconsolate bird-husband had procured another
+wife. Dr. L. saw a nest with the plastering not quite finished, and
+others completed; he also received elsewhere, besides Kolobeng, the same
+account that the bird comes forth when the young are fully-fledged, at
+the period when the corn is ripe; indeed, her appearance abroad with
+her young is one of the signs they have for knowing when it ought to be
+so: the time is between two and three months. She is said sometimes to
+hatch two eggs, and, when the young of these are full-fledged, the other
+two are just out of the egg-shells: she then leaves the nest with the
+two elder, the orifice is again plastered up, and both male and female
+attend to the wants of the young.
+
+There is a specimen of a nest in the Gardens of the Zoological Society,
+which merits description, besides that of the Bower-bird. Such is the
+nest of the Brush Turkey, which appears more like a small haystack than
+an ordinary nest, and the methodical manner in which it is constructed
+is thus described:--Tracing a circle of considerable radius, the birds
+begin to travel round it, continually grasping with their huge feet the
+leaves and grasses and dead twigs which are lying about, and flinging
+them inwards towards the centre. Each time that they complete their
+round, they narrow their circle, so that in a short time they clear away
+a circular belt, having in its centre a low irregular mass. By repeating
+the same process, however, they decrease the diameter of the mound as
+they increase its height, and at last a large and rudely conical mound
+is formed.
+
+In this nest as many as a bushel of eggs are deposited, at regular
+intervals, long end downwards. The leaves form a fermenting mass, which
+relieves the mother of the necessity of setting upon them. The male,
+however, has to regulate the temperature of the mass, which would
+otherwise get too hot. This he does by making a central ventilating
+shaft, which carries off the superfluous heat; and, lest the temperature
+should fall too low, he is constantly engaged in covering and uncovering
+the eggs in order to hit the exact temperature to be applied until the
+egg is warmed into life.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[10] Abridged from the "Saturday Review."
+
+
+
+
+THE EPICURE'S ORTOLAN.
+
+
+We have allotted this bird to the epicure, because it is rarely heard
+of but in association with his luxurious table. Mr. Beckford describes
+the Ortolans among the delicacies which he saw in the kitchen of the
+monastery of Batalha as "lumps of celestial fatness."
+
+Ortolan is the French and English names for a species of _Fringillidae_
+(Finches). It is the _Hortulanus_ of Gesner and other naturalists;
+_Miliaria pinguescens_ of Frisch; _Emberiza Hortulana_ of Linnaeus;
+_Ortolano_ of the Italians generally; _Tordino Berluccio_ of the
+Venetians; _Garton Ammer_ and _Fetammer_ of the Germans; and _Gerste
+Keneu_ of the Netherlanders. This wide dispersion on the Continent
+bespeaks the pet character of the bird. Montagu terms it the
+Green-headed Bunting.
+
+The French have a fanciful derivation of the name: they say it is from
+the Italian word for gardener, which is from the Latin _hortus_, garden;
+because, according to Menage, in Italy, where the bird is common, it is
+quite at home in the hedges of gardens.
+
+The male bird has the throat, circle round the eyes, and a narrow band
+springing from the angle of the bill, yellow; head and neck grey, with a
+tinge of olive, and small brown spots; feathers black, edged with red;
+breast, belly, and abdomen, reddish grey, the feathers terminated with
+ash-colour; tail blackish, two external feathers, in part white; length
+rather more than six inches. There are, also, varieties marked white,
+green, blackish, and entirely black. The nest, which is constructed
+of fibres of plants and leaves, is frequently found on the ground in
+corn-fields, and sometimes in hedges and bushes.
+
+The Ortolan is not famed for its song, which is, however, soft
+and sweet. Like the Nightingale, to which it has other points of
+resemblance, the Ortolan sings after, as well as before sunset. It was
+this bird that Varro, the lyric poet, called his companion by night and
+day.
+
+The south of Europe may be considered the summer and autumnal
+head-quarters of the Ortolan, though it is a summer visitor in the
+central and northern parts. In Italy it is said to be common by Temminck
+and others. The Prince of Musignano states it to be found in the Sabine
+mountains; adding that it rarely flies in the plains of Rome, but is
+frequent in Tuscany. Lapland, Russia, Denmark. Sweden, and Norway,
+are among the countries visited by it. In the British Isles it seems
+only entitled to rank as an autumnal visitor, but it may occur more
+frequently than is generally supposed; for, especially to an unpractised
+eye, it might be mistaken for the Yellow Hammer, and in some states of
+plumage for other Buntings. It has been taken in the neighbourhood of
+London. In 1837 there was a live specimen in an aviary of the Zoological
+Society in Regent's-park; and many Ortolans are sent alive to the London
+market from Prussia. There is, however, some consolation for the rarity
+of the Ortolan in England. It is approached in delicacy by our Wheatear,
+which is termed the _English Ortolan_. Hence it has been pursued as a
+delicate morsel throughout all its island haunts. Bewick captured it at
+sea, off the coast of Yorkshire, in May, 1822. Every spring and autumn
+it may be observed at Gibraltar, on its migration. Mr. Strickland saw it
+at Smyrna in April. North Africa is its winter residence. Colonel Sykes
+notes it in his catalogue of the birds of the Deccan.
+
+Ortolans are solitary birds; they fly in pairs, rarely three together,
+and never in flocks. They are taken in traps from March or April to
+September, when they are often poor and thin; but if fed with plenty
+of millet-seed and other grain, they become sheer lumps of fat, and
+delicious morsels. They are fattened thus in large establishments in the
+south of Europe; Mr. Gould states this to be effected in Italy, and the
+south of France, in dark rooms; and the Prince of Musignano, having
+described the process, adds the relishing words. "Carne exquisita."
+
+The fattening process in Italy is one of great refinement in the manner
+of feeding. It is the fat of the Ortolan which is so delicious; but it
+has a peculiar habit of feeding which is opposed to the rapid fattening,
+this is, it feeds only at the rising of the sun. Yet this peculiarity
+has not proved an insurmountable obstacle to the Italian gourmands.
+The Ortolans are placed in a dark chamber, perfectly dark, with only
+one aperture in the wall. The food is scattered over the floor of the
+chamber. At a certain hour in the morning the keeper of the birds places
+a lantern in the orifice of the wall; when the dim light thrown from the
+lantern on the floor of the apartment induces the Ortolans to believe
+that the sun is about to rise, and they greedily consume the food upon
+the floor. More food is now scattered over it, and the lantern is
+withdrawn.
+
+The Ortolans, rather surprised at the shortness of the day, think it
+their duty to fall asleep, as night has spread her sable mantle round
+them. During sleep, little of the food being expended in the production
+of force, most of it goes to the formation of muscle and fat. After they
+have been allowed to repose for one or two hours, in order to complete
+the digestion of the food taken, their keeper again exhibits the lantern
+through the aperture. The "rising sun" a second time illumines the
+apartment, and the birds, awaking from their slumber, apply themselves
+voraciously to the food on the floor; after having discussed which,
+they are again enveloped in darkness. Thus the sun is made to shed its
+rising rays into the chamber floor four or five times every day, and
+as many nights following. The Ortolans thus treated become like little
+balls of fat in a few days. This not uninteresting process has been
+detailed by Dr. Lyon Playfair to the Royal Agricultural Society. It
+may, probably, be applied to purposes with less luxurious objects than
+fattening Ortolans.
+
+Notwithstanding its delicacy, the Ortolan fattens very fast; and it is
+this lump of fatness that is its merit, and has sometimes caused it
+to be preferred to the Becafico. According to Buffon, the Greeks and
+Romans understood fattening the Ortolan upon millet. But a lively French
+commentator doubts this statement: he maintains that had the ancients
+known the Ortolan, they would have deified it, and built altars to
+it upon Mount Hymettus and the Saniculum; adding, did they not deify
+the horse of Caligula, which was certainly not worth an Ortolan? and
+Caligula himself, who was not worth so much as his horse? However, this
+dispute belongs to the "classics of the table."
+
+The Ortolan is considered sufficiently fat when it is a handful, and
+is judged by feeling it, and not by appearance. It should not be
+killed with violence, like other birds; this might crush and bruise
+the delicate flesh, and spoil the _coup-d'oeil_, to avoid which it is
+recommended to plunge the head of the Ortolan into a glass of brandy.
+The culinary instruction is as follows: having picked the bird of its
+feathers, singe it with the flame of paper or spirits of wine; cut off
+the beak and ends of the feet; do not draw it; put it into a paper case
+soaked in olive oil, and broil it over a slow fire of slack cinders,
+like that required for a pigeon _a la crapaudine_; in a few minutes the
+Ortolan will swim in its own fat, and will be cooked. Some gourmands
+wrap each bird in a vine-leaf.
+
+A gourmand will take an Ortolan by the legs and craunch it in delicious
+mouthfuls, so as absolutely to lose none of it. More delicate feeders
+cut the bird into quarters, and lay aside the gizzard; the rest may be
+eaten, even to the bones, which are sufficiently tender for the most
+delicate mouth to masticate without inconvenience.
+
+On the Continent, Ortolans are packed in tin boxes for exportation.
+They may be bought in London for half-a-crown a-piece. A few poulterers
+import Ortolans in considerable numbers, and some have acquired the art
+of fattening these birds.[11] Alexis Soyer put into the hundred guinea
+dish which he prepared for the royal table at the grand banquet at York,
+in 1850, five pounds worth of Ortolans, which were obtained from Belgium.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[11] The Ortolan figures in a curious anecdote of individual epicurism
+in the last century. A gentleman of Gloucestershire had one son, whom he
+sent abroad to make the grand tour of the Continent, where he paid more
+attention to the cookery of nations, and luxurious living, than anything
+else. Before his return his father died and left him a large fortune.
+He now looked over his note-book to discover where the most exquisite
+dishes were to be had, and the best cooks obtained. Every servant in his
+house was a cook; his butler, footman, coachman, and grooms--all were
+cooks. He had also three Italian cooks--one from Florence, another from
+Vienna, and another from Viterbo--for dressing one Florentine dish. He
+had a messenger constantly on the road between Brittany and London to
+bring the eggs of a certain kind of plover found in the former country.
+This prodigal was known to eat a single dinner at the expense of 70_l._,
+though there were but two dishes. In nine years he found himself
+getting poor, and this made him melancholy. When totally ruined, having
+spent 150,000_l._, a friend one day gave him a guinea to keep him from
+starving, and he was found in a garret next day _broiling an Ortolan_,
+for which he had paid a portion of the alms.
+
+
+
+
+TALK ABOUT TOUCANS.
+
+
+The Toucans, a family of climbing-birds of tropical America, appear to
+have been known in Europe by the length and great size of their bills,
+long before the birds themselves found their way to England. Belon,
+in 1555, described the bill of one of the family as half a foot long,
+large as a child's arm, pointed, and black at the tip, white elsewhere,
+notched on the edges, hollow within, and so finely delicate as to be
+transparent and thin as parchment; and its beauty caused it to be kept
+in the cabinets of the curious. For more than a century after Belon's
+work, the birds themselves had not been seen in England; for, in the
+_Museum Tradescantianum_, the standard collection of the time, and
+which, from the list of contributors, appears to have been the great
+receptacle for all curiosities, we read of an "Azacari (or Toucan) of
+Brazil; has his beak four inches long, almost two thick, like a Turk's
+sword" (A.D. 1656). From this description Tradescant knew the nature of
+the bird, if he had not seen it.
+
+Mr. Swainson states, that the enormous bills give to these birds a most
+singular and uncouth appearance. Their feet are formed like those of
+the parrot, more for grasping than climbing; and as they live among
+trees, and proceed by hopping from branch to branch, their grasping
+feature is particularly adapted for such habits. They live retired in
+the deep forests, mostly in small companies. Their flight is strait and
+laborious, but not graceful; while their movements, as they glide rather
+than hop from branch to branch, are elegant.
+
+Mr. Gould, in his grand Monograph of the Toucans, or _Ramphastidae_,
+remarks, that it was only within a few years of the time of Linnaeus that
+actual specimens of the Toucan had been received in Europe. The beaks,
+however, of these birds, regarded as curiosities, had occasionally found
+their way to our shores, and had occasioned some curious conjectures.
+The earliest shape resembled a Turkish scimitar.
+
+The Toucans (a word derived from their Brazilian name, _Taca, Tuca_)
+received from Linnaeus the title of _Ramphastos_, in allusion to
+the great volume of the beak ([Greek: ramphos]--Ramphos), a family
+(_Ramphastidae_). In some respects, indeed, they resemble the Hornbills
+in the development of the beak. The Toucans may be said to represent
+in America the Hornbills in India and Africa. Large as is the beak of
+the Toucan compared with the size of the body, it is in reality very
+light. Its outer sheathing is somewhat elastic, very thin, smooth, and
+semi-transparent; and the interior consists of a maze of delicate cells,
+throughout which the olfactory nerves are multitudinously distributed.
+The nostrils are basal, the edges of each mandible are serrated, and
+the colouring of the whole beak is bright, rich, and often relieved by
+contrasted markings. But these tints begin to fade after death, and
+become ultimately dissipated. The eyes are surrounded by a considerable
+space of naked skin, often very richly tinted. The tongue is very long,
+slender, horizontally flattened, pointed, and, except at its base,
+horny; it is fringed or feathered along each side. The wings are short,
+concave, and comparatively feeble.
+
+The tail is variable, equal and squared; it is remarkable for the
+facility with which it can be retroverted or turned up, so as to lie
+upon the back. This peculiarity results from a modification of structure
+in the caudal vertebrae, which enables the tail to turn with a jerk by
+the action of certain muscles, as if it were fixed on a hinge put into
+action by means of a spring. When the retroversion is accomplished, the
+muscles which caused it become passive, and offer no resistance to their
+antagonists, which restore the tail to its ordinary direction. When they
+sleep they puff out their plumage, they retrovert the tail over the
+back, draw the head between the shoulders; the bill begins to turn over
+the right shoulder, and becomes at last buried in the plumage of the
+back; at the same time the pinions of the wings droop, and conceal the
+feet. The bird now resembles an oval ball of puffed-up feathers, and is
+well protected against the cold.
+
+Toucans utter, from time to time, harsh, clattering, and discordant
+cries. "Some," says Mr. Gould, "frequent the humid woods of the
+temperate regions, while others resort to comparatively colder
+districts, and dwell at an elevation of from six to ten thousand
+feet. Those inhabiting the lofty regions are generically different
+from those residing in the low lands, and are clothed in a more thick
+and sombre-coloured plumage. All the members of the Hill-Toucans are
+distinguished by their bills being strong, heavy, and hard, when
+compared with those of the true Toucans and Aracaris, all of which
+have their bills of a more delicate structure, and in several species
+so thin and elastic on the sides as to be compressible between the
+fingers." Their food in a state of nature consists of fruit, eggs, and
+nestling birds; to which, in domestication, are added small birds, mice,
+caterpillars, and raw flesh. They incubate in the hollows of gigantic
+trees.
+
+Faber was told by Fryer, Alaysa, and other Spaniards who had lived
+long in America, and also by the Indians, that the Toucan even hews
+out holes in trees, in which to nidify; and Oviedo adds, that it is
+from this habit of chipping the trees that the bird is called by the
+Spaniards _Carpintero_, and by the Brazilians _Tacataca_, in imitation,
+apparently, of the sound it thus makes.
+
+The larger feed upon bananas and other succulent plants; the smaller
+upon the smaller fruits and berries. Prince Maximilian de Wied states,
+that in Brazil he found only the remains of fruits in their stomachs,
+and adds, that they make sad havoc among plantations of fruit-trees. He
+was informed, however, that they steal and eat birds, but never himself
+saw them in the act. They abound in the vast forests, and are killed
+in great number in the cooler season in the year for the purposes of
+the table. In their manners the Toucans resemble the Crow tribe, and
+especially the Magpies: like them, they are very troublesome to the
+birds of prey, particularly to the Owls, which they surround, making a
+great noise, all the while jerking their tails upwards and downwards.
+Their feathers, especially from their yellow breasts, are used by the
+Indians for personal decoration.
+
+Azara states that they attack even the solid nests of the white ants,
+when the clay of which their nests are formed becomes moistened with the
+rain; they break them up with their beaks, so as to obtain the young
+ants and their eggs; and during the breeding season the Toucan feeds
+upon nothing else; during the rest of the year he subsists upon fruit,
+insects, and the buds of trees.
+
+Edwards, in his voyage up the Amazon, observes, that when a party of
+Toucans alight on a tree, one usually acts the part of a sentinel,
+uttering the loud cry of "Tucano," whence they derive their name; the
+others disperse over the branches in search of fruit. While feeding
+they keep up a hoarse chattering, and at intervals unite with the noisy
+sentry, and scream a concert that may be heard a mile. Having appeased
+their appetites, they seek the depths of a forest, and there quietly
+doze away the noon. In early morning a few of them may be seen sitting
+quietly upon the branches of some dead tree, apparently awaiting the
+coming sunlight before starting for their feeding-trees.
+
+Some species of Toucans have been seen quarrelling with monkeys over a
+nest of eggs. Their carnivorous propensity has been strikingly shown
+in the specimens which have been kept in England. On the approach of
+any small bird the Toucan becomes highly excited, raises itself up,
+erects its feathers, and utters a hollow clattering sound, the irides
+of the eyes expand, and the Toucan is ready to dart on its prey. A
+Toucan, exhibited in St. Martin's-lane in 1824, seized and devoured a
+canary-bird. Next day Mr. Broderip tried him with a live goldfinch. The
+Toucan seized it with the beak, and the poor little victim uttered a
+short weak cry, for within a second it was dead, killed by the powerful
+compression of the mandibles. The Toucan now placed the dead bird firmly
+between its foot and the perch, stripped off the feathers with its bill,
+and then broke the bones of the wings and legs, by strongly wrenching
+them, the bird being still secured by the Toucan's foot. He then
+continued to work with great dexterity till he had reduced the goldfinch
+to a shapeless mass. This he devoured piece by piece with great gusto,
+not even leaving the legs or the beak of his prey: to each morsel he
+applied his tongue as he masticated it, chattering and shivering with
+delight. He never used his foot, but his bill, for conveying his food to
+his mouth by the sides of the bill.
+
+Mr. Swainson remarks:--"The apparent disproportion of the bill is one of
+the innumerable instances of that beautiful adaptation of structure to
+use which the book of nature everywhere reveals. The food of these birds
+consists principally of the eggs and young of others, to discover which
+nature has given them the most exquisite powers of smell." Again, the
+nests in which the Toucan finds its food are often very deep and dark,
+and its bill, covered with branches of nerves, enables the bird to feel
+its way as accurately as the finest and most delicate finger could. From
+its feeding on eggs found in other birds' nests, it has been called the
+Egg-sucker. Probably there is no bird which secures her young offspring
+better from the monkeys, which are very noisome to the young of most
+birds. For when she perceives the approach of these enemies she so
+settles herself in her nest as to put her bill out at the hole, and give
+the monkeys such a welcome therewith that they presently break away, and
+are glad to escape.
+
+Professor Owen, in his minute examination of the mandibles, remarks
+that the principle of the cylinder is introduced into the elaborate
+structure; the smallest of the supporting pillars of the mandibles are
+seen to be hollow or tubular when examined with the microscope.
+
+Light and almost diaphonous as is the bill of the Toucan, its strength
+and the power of the muscles, which act upon the mandibles, are evident
+in the wrenching and masticatory processes. When taking fruit, the
+Toucan generally holds it for a short time at the extremity of his bill,
+applying to it, with apparent delight, the pointed tip of the slender
+tongue: the bird then throws it, with a sudden upward jerk, to the
+throat, where it is caught and instantly swallowed.
+
+Mr. Gould divides the Toucans into six genera. 1. The true Toucans, with
+large and gaily-coloured bills, plumage black. 2. The Aracaris, with
+smaller beaks, plumage green, yellow, and red. 3. The Banded Aracauris,
+an Amazonian genus, proposed by Prince C. L. Bonaparte. 4. Toucanets,
+small, with crescent of yellow on the back, and brilliant orange and
+yellow ear-coverts. 5. Hill Toucans of the Andes. 6. Groove-bills,
+grass-green plumage.
+
+A very fine true Toucan, figured by Mr. Gould, is remarkable for the
+splendour and size of the bill, of a fine orange-red, with a large black
+patch on each side. Powder-flasks are made of large and finely-coloured
+bills. The naked skin round the eye is bright orange. The chest is
+white, with a tinge of sulphur below, and a slight scarlet margin.
+Upper tail-coverts, white; under tail-coverts, scarlet; the rest of the
+plumage, black. Several specimens of this beautiful bird lived both in
+the menagerie of the late Earl of Derby, at Knowsley, and in the gardens
+of the Zoological Society. It is a native of Cayenne, Paraguay, &c.
+
+Toucans in their manners are gentle and confident, exhibiting no alarm
+at strangers, and are as playful as magpies or jackdaws; travellers
+assure us that they may be taught tricks and feats like parrots; and
+although they cannot imitate the human voice, they show considerable
+intelligence. One of the Toucanets is named from Mr. Gould, the plates
+in whose _monograph_, from their size, beauty, and accuracy, have all
+the air of portraits.
+
+
+
+
+ECCENTRICITIES OF PENGUINS.
+
+
+This group of amphibious birds, though powerless in the wing as an organ
+of flight, are assisted by it as a species of fin in their rapid divings
+and evolutions under water, and even as a kind of anterior of extremity
+when progressing on the land. Their lot has been wisely cast on those
+desolate southern islands and shores where man rarely intrudes, and
+in many instances where a churlish climate or a barren soil offers no
+temptations to him to invade their territory.
+
+Le Vaillant, when on Dassen Island, found that the smaller crevices
+of the rocks served as places of retreat for Penguins, which swarmed
+there. "This bird," says Le Vaillant, which is about two feet in length,
+"does not carry its body in the same manner as others: it stands
+perpendicularly on its two feet, which gives it an air of gravity, so
+much the more ridiculous as its wings, which have no feathers, hang
+carelessly down on each side; it never uses them but in swimming. As we
+advanced towards the middle of the island we met innumerable troops
+of them. Standing firm and erect on their legs, these animals never
+deranged themselves in the least to let us pass; they more particularly
+surrounded the mausoleum, and seemed as if determined to prevent us from
+approaching it. All the environs were entirely beset with them. Nature
+had done more for the plain tomb of the poor Danish captain than what
+proceeds from the imaginations of poets or the chisels of our artists.
+The hideous owl, however well sculptured in our churches, has not half
+so dead and melancholy an air as the Penguin. The mournful cries of this
+animal, mixed with those of the sea-calf, impressed on my mind a kind of
+gloom which much disposed me to tender sensations of sadness. My eyes
+were sometime fixed on the last abode of the unfortunate traveller, and
+I gave his manes the tribute of a sigh."
+
+Sir John Narborough says of the Patagonian Penguins that their erect
+attitude and bluish-black backs, contrasted with their white bellies,
+might cause them to be taken at a distance for young children with white
+pinafores on. A line of them is engraved in Webster's "Voyage of the
+Chanticleer," and reminds us of one of the woodcuts in Hood's "Comic
+Annual."
+
+The "towns, camps, and rookeries," as they have been called, of Penguins
+have been often described. At the Falkland Islands are assemblies of
+Penguins, which give a dreary desolation to the place, in the utter
+absence of the human race. In some of the towns voyagers describe a
+general stillness, and when the intruders walked among the feathered
+population to provide themselves with eggs, they were regarded with
+side-long glances, but they seemed to carry no terror with them. In many
+places the shores are covered with these birds, and three hundred have
+been taken within an hour; for they generally make no effort to escape,
+but stand quietly by whilst their companions are knocked down with
+sticks, till it comes to their turn.
+
+The rookeries are described as designed with the utmost order and
+regularity, though they are the resort of several different species.
+A regular camp, often covering three or four acres, is laid out
+and levelled, and the ground disposed in squares for the nests, as
+accurately as if a surveyor had been employed. Their marchings and
+countermarchings are said to remind the observer of the manoeuvres of
+soldiers on parade. In the midst of this apparent order there appears
+to be not very good government, for the stronger species steal the
+eggs of the weaker if they are left unguarded; and the King Penguin
+is the greatest thief of all. Three species are found in the Falkland
+Islands. Two, the _Kings_ and the _Macaroni_, deposit their eggs in
+these rookeries. The _Jackass_, which is the third, obtained its English
+name from its brayings at night. It makes its nests in burrows on downs
+and sandy plains; and Forster describes the ground as everywhere so
+much bored, that a person, in walking, often sinks up to the knees; and
+if the Penguin chance to be in her hole, she revenges herself on the
+passenger by fastening on his legs, which she bites very hard.
+
+But these rookeries are insignificant when compared with a settlement of
+King Penguins, which Mr. G. Bennett saw at the north end of Macquarrie
+Island, in the South Pacific Ocean--a colony of these birds, which
+covered some thirty or forty acres. Here, during the whole of the day
+and night, 30,000 or 40,000 Penguins are continually landing, and an
+equal number going to sea. They are ranged, when on shore, in as regular
+ranks as a regiment of soldiers, and are classed, the young birds in one
+situation, the moulting birds in another, the sitting hens in a third,
+the clean birds in a fourth, &c.; and so strictly do birds in a similar
+condition congregate, that, should a moulting bird intrude itself among
+those which are clean, it is immediately ejected from them. The females,
+if approached during incubation, move away, carrying their eggs with
+them. At this time the male bird goes to sea, and collects food for the
+female, which becomes very fat.
+
+Captain Fitzroy describes, at Noir Island, multitudes of Penguins
+swarming among the bushes and tussac-grass near the shore, for moulting
+and rearing their young. They were very valiant in self-defence, and
+ran open-mouthed by dozens at any one who invaded their territory. The
+manner of feeding their young is amusing. The old bird gets on a little
+eminence and makes a loud noise, between quacking and braying, holding
+its head up as if haranguing the Penguinnery, the young one standing
+close to it, but a little lower. The old bird then puts down its head,
+and opens its mouth widely, into which the young one thrusts its head,
+and then appears to suck from the throat of its mother; after which the
+clatter is repeated, and the young one is again fed: this continues for
+about ten minutes.
+
+Mr. Darwin, having placed himself between a Penguin, on the Falkland
+Islands, and the water, was much amused by watching its habits. "It
+was a brown bird," says Mr. Darwin, "and, till reaching the sea, it
+regularly fought and drove me backwards. Nothing less than heavy blows
+would have stopped him: every inch gained, he firmly kept standing close
+before me, erect and determined. When thus opposed, he continually
+rolled his head from side to side in a very odd manner. While at sea,
+and undisturbed, this bird's note is very deep and solemn, and is often
+heard in the night time. In diving, its little plumeless wings are used
+as fins, but on the land as front legs. When crawling (it may be said
+on four legs) through the tussacks, or on the side of a grassy cliff,
+it moved so very quickly that it might readily have been mistaken
+for a quadruped. When at sea, and fishing, it comes to the surface
+for the purpose of breathing with such a spring, and dives again so
+instantaneously, that I defy any one, at first sight, to be sure that it
+is not a fish leaping for sport."
+
+Bougainville endeavoured to bring home a Penguin alive. It became so
+tame that it followed the person who fed it; it ate bread, flesh, or
+fish; but it fell away and died. The four-footed Duck of Gesner might
+have owed its origin to an ill-preserved Penguin. The notion of its
+being four-footed might have been fortified by some voyager who had seen
+the bird making progress as Mr. Darwin has above described.
+
+Mr. Webster describes the feathers of Penguins as very different from
+those of other birds, being short, very rigid, and the roots deeply
+embedded in fat. They are, in general, flat, and bent backwards, those
+on the breast being of a satin or silky white, and those on the flippers
+so short and small as to approach the nature of scales, overlaying each
+other very closely. The skins are loaded with fat. Their feet are not
+regularly webbed, but present a broad, fleshy surface, more adapted for
+walking than swimming. Mr. Webster saw great numbers of Penguins on
+Staten Island. They are the only genus of the feathered race that are
+there, and live in the water, like seals. He saw them at the distance of
+200 miles from the land, swimming with the rapidity of the dolphin, the
+swiftest of fishes. When they come up to the surface for fresh breath,
+they make a croaking noise, dip their beaks frequently in the water, and
+play and dive about near the surface, like the bonita. Penguins have
+great powers of abstinence, and are able to live four or five months
+without food. Stones have been occasionally found in their stomachs,
+but they generally live on shrimps and crustacea, gorging themselves
+sometimes to excess. The sensations of these curious birds do not seem
+to be very acute. Sparrman stumbled over a sleeping one, and kicked it
+some yards, without disturbing its rest; and Forster left a number of
+Penguins apparently lifeless, while he went in pursuit of others, but
+they afterwards got up and marched off with their usual gravity.
+
+The bird is named from the Welsh word, _Pengwyn_. White head (_pen_,
+head; _gwyn_, white), and is thought to have been given to the
+bird by some Welsh sailors, on seeing its white breast. Davis, who
+discovered, in 1585, the straits which are named after him, was of
+Welsh parents. Might he not have given the name _Pengwyn_ to the bird?
+Swainson considers the Penguins, on the whole, as the most singular
+of all aquatic birds; and he states that they clearly point out that
+nature is about to pass from the birds to the fishes. Others consider
+Penguins more satisfactorily to represent some of the aquatic reptiles,
+especially the marine _testudinata_.
+
+
+
+
+PELICANS AND CORMORANTS.
+
+
+Pelicans are described as a large, voracious, and wandering tribe of
+birds, living for the most part on the ocean, and seldom approaching
+land but at the season of incubation. They fly with ease, and even with
+swiftness. Their bill is long, and armed at the end with an abrupt
+hook; the width of the gape is excessive; the face is generally bare
+of feathers, and the skin of the throat sometimes so extensible as to
+hang down like a bag; it will occasionally contain ten quarts. "By this
+curious organization," observes Swainson, "the Pelicans are able to
+swallow fish of a very large size; and the whole family may be termed
+_oceanic vultures_."
+
+The neighbourhood of rivers, lakes, and the sea-coast, is the haunt of
+the Pelican, and they are rarely seen more than twenty leagues from
+the land. Le Vaillant, upon visiting Dassen Island, at the entrance
+of Saldanha Bay, beheld, as he says, after wading through the surf,
+and clambering up the rocks, such a spectacle as never, perhaps,
+appeared to the eye of mortal. "All of a sudden there arose from the
+whole surface of the island an impenetrable cloud, which formed, at the
+distance of forty feet above our heads, an immense canopy, or, rather, a
+sky, composed of birds of every species and of all colours--cormorants,
+sea-gulls, sand-swallows, and, I believe, the whole winged tribe of this
+part of Africa, were here assembled." The same traveller found on the
+Klein-Brak river, whilst waiting for the ebb-tide, thousands of Pelicans
+and Flamingoes, the deep rose-colour of the one strongly contrasting
+with the white of the other.
+
+Mr. Gould says the bird is remarkable for longevity and the long period
+requisite for the completion of its plumage. The first year's dress is
+wholly brown, then fine white. The rosy tints are only acquired as the
+bird advances in age, and five years are required before the Pelican
+becomes fully mature. The expanse of wings is from twelve to thirteen
+feet. Although the bird perches on trees, it prefers rocky shores. It is
+found in the Oriental countries of Europe; and is common on the rivers
+and lakes of Hungary and Russia, and on the Danube. That the species
+exists in Asia there is no doubt. Belon, who refers to Leviticus xi.
+18, where the bird is noted as unclean, says that it is frequent on
+the lakes of Egypt and Judaea. "When he was passing the plain of Roma,
+which is only half a day's journey from Jerusalem, he saw them flying
+in pairs, like swans, as well as in a large flock. Hasselquist saw the
+Pelican at Damietta, in Egypt. "In flying, they form an acute angle,
+like the common wild geese when they migrate. They appear in some of the
+Egyptian drawings."--(_Rossellini._)
+
+Von Siebold saw the Pelican in Japan. "Pelicans," says Dr. Richardson,
+"are numerous in the interior of the fur countries, but they seldom
+come within two hundred miles of Hudson's Bay. They deposit their eggs
+usually on small rocky islands, on the brink of cascades, where they can
+scarcely be approached; but they are otherwise by no means shy birds.
+They haunt eddies under waterfalls, and devour great quantities of carp
+and other fish. When gorged with food they doze on the water, and may be
+easily captured, as they have great difficulty in taking wing at such
+times, particularly if their pouches be loaded with fish."
+
+The bird builds on rocky and desert shores: hence we read of "the
+Pelican of the wilderness," alluded to in these beautiful lines:--
+
+                    "Like the Pelicans
+    On that lone island where they built their nests,
+    Nourish'd their young, and then lay down to die."
+
+The bird lives on fish, which it darts upon from a considerable height.
+James Montgomery thus describes this mode of taking their prey:--
+
+    "Eager for food, their searching eyes they fix'd
+    On Ocean's unroll'd volume, from a height
+    That brought immensity within their scope;
+    Yet with such power of vision look'd they down,
+    As though they watch'd the shell-fish slowly gliding
+    O'er sunken rocks, or climbing trees of coral,
+    On indefatigable wing upheld,
+    Breath, pulse, existence, seem'd suspended in them;
+    They were as pictures painted on the sky;
+    Till suddenly, aslant, away they shot,
+    Like meteors chang'd from stars in gleams of lightning.
+    And struck upon the deep; where, in wild play,
+    Their quarry flounder'd, unsuspecting harm.
+    With terrible voracity they plunged
+    Their heads among the affrighted shoals, and beat
+    A tempest on the surges with their wings,
+    Till flashing clouds of foam and spray conceal'd them.
+    Nimbly they seized and secreted their prey,
+    Alive and wriggling, in th' elastic net
+    Which Nature hung beneath their grasping beaks;
+    Till, swoll'n with captures, th' unwieldy burthen
+    Clogg'd their slow flight, as heavily to land
+    These mighty hunters of the deep return'd.
+    There on the cragged cliffs they perched at ease,
+    Gorging their hapless victims one by one;
+    Then, full and weary, side by side they slept,
+    Till evening roused them to the chase again."
+
+                    _Pelican Island._
+
+Great numbers of Pelicans are killed for their pouches, which are
+converted by the native Americans into purses, &c. When carefully
+prepared, the membrane is as soft as silk, and sometimes embroidered by
+Spanish ladies for work-bags, &c. It is used in Egypt by the sailors,
+whilst attached to the two under chaps, for holding or baling water.
+
+With the Pelican has been associated an old popular error, which has not
+long disappeared from books of information: it is that of the Pelican
+feeding her young with her blood. In reference to the actual economy
+of the Pelican, we find that, in feeding the nestlings--and the male
+is said to supply the wants of the female, when sitting, in the same
+manner--the under mandible is pressed against the neck and breast, to
+assist the bird in disgorging the contents of the capacious pouch; and
+during this action the red nail of the upper mandible would appear to
+come in contact with the breast, thus laying the foundation, in all
+probability, for the fable that the Pelican nourishes her young with her
+blood, and for the attitude in which the imagination of painters has
+placed the bird in books of emblems, &c., with the blood spirting from
+the wounds made by the terminating nail of the upper mandible into the
+gaping mouths of her offspring.
+
+Sir Thomas Browne, in his "Vulgar Errors," says:--"In every place we
+meet with the picture of the Pelican opening her breast with her bill,
+and feeding her young ones with the blood distilling from her. Thus it
+is set forth, not only in common signs, but in the crest and scutcheon
+of many noble families; hath been asserted by many holy writers, and
+was an hieroglyphic of piety and pity among the Egyptians; on which
+consideration they spared them at their tables."
+
+Sir Thomas refers this popular error to an exaggerated description of
+the Pelican's fondness for her young, and is inclined to accept it as an
+emblem "in coat-armour," though with great doubt.
+
+In "A Choice of Emblems and other Devices," by Geoffrey Whitney, are
+these lines:--
+
+    "The Pelican, for to revive her younge,
+      Doth pierce her breste, and geve them of her blood.
+    Then searche your breste, and as you have with tonge,
+      With penne procede to do your countrie good:
+    Your zeal is great, your learning is profounde;
+    Then help our wantes with that you do abound."
+
+In George Wither's "Emblems," 1634, we find:--
+
+    "Our Pelican, by bleeding thus,
+    Fulfill'd the law, and cured us."
+
+Shakspeare, in "Hamlet," thus alludes to the popular notion:--
+
+    "To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms;
+    And like the kind, life-rendering Pelican,
+    Repast them with my blood."
+
+In a holier light, this symbol signifies the Saviour giving Himself up
+for the redemption of mankind. In Lord Lindsay's "Christian Art," vols.
+i., xx., xxi., we find in the text, "God the Son (is symbolized) by a
+Pelican--'I am like a Pelican of the wilderness.' (Psalm cii. 6.)" To
+which is added the following note:--"The mediaeval interpretation of this
+symbol is given by Sir David Lindsay, of the Mount, Lion King, nephew of
+the poet, in his MS. 'Collectanea,' preserved in the Advocates' Library.
+Edinburgh."
+
+Sir Thomas Browne hints at the probability of the Pelican occasionally
+nibbling or biting itself on the itching part of its breast, upon
+fulness or acrimony of blood, so as to tinge the feathers in that part.
+Such an instance is recorded by Mr. G. Bennett of a Pelican living at
+Dulwich, which wounded itself just above the breast; but no such act has
+been observed among the Pelicans kept in the menagerie of the Zoological
+Society or elsewhere; and the instance just recorded was probably caused
+by local irritation.
+
+Of the same genus as the _Pelican_ is the _Cormorant_, an inhabitant
+of Europe generally and of America. It swims very deep in the water;
+even in the sea very little more than the neck and head are visible
+above the surface. It is a most expert diver, pursuing the fish which
+forms its food with great activity under water; it is said to be very
+fond of eels. It perches on trees, where it occasionally builds its
+nests, but it mostly selects rocky shores and islands. Upon the Fern
+Islands its nest is composed of a mass of sea-weed, frequently heaped
+up to the height of two feet. The species is easily domesticated; and
+its docility is shown by the use often made of Cormorants in fishing.
+Willughby, quoting Faber, says:--"They are wont in England to train up
+Cormorants to fishing. When they carry them out of the room where they
+are kept they take off their hoods, and having tied a leather thong
+round the lower part of their necks, that they may not swallow down the
+fish they catch, they throw them into the river. They presently dive
+under water, and there for a long time, with wonderful swiftness, pursue
+the fish, and when they have caught them they arise presently to the
+top of the water, and pressing the fish tightly with the bills, they
+swallow them, till each bird hath after this manner devoured five or six
+fishes. Then their keepers call them to the fish, to which they readily
+fly, and little by little, one after another, vomit up all the fish, a
+little bruised with the nip they gave them with their bills." When they
+have done fishing they loosen the string from the birds' necks, and for
+their reward they throw them part of the prey they have caught, to each,
+perchance, one or two fishes, which they catch most dexterously in their
+mouths as they are falling in the air. Pennant quotes Whitelock, who
+said that he had a cast of them, manned like hawks, and which would come
+to hand. He took much pleasure in them, and relates that the best he
+had was one presented him by Mr. Wood, master of the corvorants (as the
+older name was) to Charles I. Pennant adds, it is well known that the
+Chinese make great use of a congenerous sort in fishing, and that not
+for amusement but profit.
+
+Sir George Staunton, in his account of his Embassy to China, describes
+the place where the _Leu-tze_, or famed fishing-bird of China, is bred
+and instructed in the art and practice of supplying his owner with fish
+in great abundance. The bird, a Cormorant, is figured in Sir George's
+work, with two Chinese fishermen carrying their light boat, around the
+gunnel of which their Cormorants are perched by a pole resting on their
+shoulders between them. On a large lake are thousands of small boats
+and rafts built entirely for this species of fishery. On each boat or
+raft are ten or a dozen birds, which, on a signal from the owner, plunge
+into the water; and it is astonishing to see the enormous size of fish
+with which they return grasped between their bills. They appeared to be
+so well trained that it did not require either ring or cord about their
+throats to prevent them from swallowing any portion of their prey except
+what the master was pleased to return to them for encouragement and
+food. The boat used by these fishermen is remarkably light, and is often
+carried to the lake, together with the fishing-birds, by the men who are
+there to be supported by it.
+
+Belon gives an amusing account of the chase of this bird during calms,
+especially in the neighbourhood of Venice: the hunt is carried on in
+very light boats, each of which being rowed by five or six men, darts
+along the sea like the bolt from an arbalest, till the poor Cormorant,
+who is shot at with bows as soon as he puts his head above water, and
+cannot take flight after diving to suffocation, is taken quite tired out
+by his pursuers.
+
+Cormorant fishing has occasionally been reintroduced upon our rivers.
+In 1848 there were brought from Holland four tame Cormorants, which had
+been trained to the Chinese mode of fishing. Upon one occasion they
+fished three miles on a river, and caught a pannier-full of trout and
+eels. A ring placed round their necks to prevent them from swallowing
+large fish, but which leaves them at liberty to gulp down anything not
+exceeding the size of a gudgeon. The birds on these occasions are put
+into such parts of the river as are known to be favourite haunts of
+fish; and their activity under water in pursuit of fish can be compared
+to nothing so appropriate as a swallow darting after a fly.
+
+Blumenbach tells us the Cormorant occasionally increases in a few years
+to many thousands on coasts where it was previously unknown. It varies
+much both in size and colour. The late Joshua Brookes, the surgeon,
+possessed a Cormorant, which he presented to the Zoological Society.
+
+The Cormorant has a small sabre-shaped bone at the back of its vertex;
+which bone may serve as a lever in throwing back the head, when the
+animal tosses the fishes into the air and catches them in its open
+mouth. The same motion is, however, performed by some piscivorous birds,
+which are not provided with this particular bone.
+
+Aubrey, in his "Natural History of Wilts," quotes the following weather
+presage from May's "Virgil's Georgics":--
+
+    "The seas are ill to sailors evermore
+    When Cormorants fly crying to the shore."
+
+
+
+
+TALKING BIRDS, ETC.
+
+
+Certain birds are known to utter strange sounds, the origin of which
+has much puzzled the ornithologists. The Brown Owl which hoots, is
+hence called the Screech Owl: a musical friend of Gilbert White tried
+all the Owls that were his near neighbours with a pitch-pipe set at a
+concert pitch, and found they all hooted in B flat; and he subsequently
+found that neither Owls nor Cuckoos keep to one note. The Whidah Bird,
+one of the most costly of cage-birds, rattles its tail-feathers with a
+noise somewhat resembling that made by the rattle-snake. The Chinese
+Starling, in China called _Longuoy_, in captivity is very teachable,
+imitating words, and even whistling tunes: we all remember Sterne's
+Starling. The Piping Crow, to be seen in troops in the Blue Mountains,
+is named from its ready mimicry of other birds: its imitation of the
+chucking and cackling of a hen and the crowing of a cock, as well as
+its whistling of tunes, are described as very perfect: its native note
+is said to be a loud whistle. The Blue Jay turns his imitative faculty
+to treacherous account: he so closely imitates the St. Domingo Falcon
+as to deceive even those acquainted with both birds; and the Falcon no
+sooner appears in their neighbourhood than the jays swarm around him and
+insult him with their imitative cries; for which they frequently fall
+victims to his appetite. The Bullfinch, according to Blumenbach, learns
+to whistle tunes, to sing in parts, and even to pronounce words. The
+note of the Crowned Crane has been compared by Buffon to the hoarseness
+of a trumpet; it also clucks like a hen. Mr. Wallace, in his "Travels on
+the Amazon," saw a bird about the size and colour of the Raven, which
+uttered a loud, hoarse cry, like some deep musical instrument, whence
+its Indian name, _Ueramioube_, Trumpet Bird: it inhabits the flooded
+islands of the Rio Negro and the Solimoes, never appearing on the
+mainland.[12] The only sound produced by Storks is by snapping their
+bills. The Night Heron is called the Qua Bird; from its note _Qua_.
+
+The Bittern, the English provincial names of which are the Mire-drum,
+Bull of the Bog, &c., is so called for the bellowing or drumming noise
+or booming for which the bird is so famous. This deep note of the
+"hollow-sounding Bittern" is exerted on the ground at the breeding
+season, about February or March. As the day declines he leaves his
+haunt, and, rising spirally, soars to a great height in the twilight.
+Willughby says that it performs this last-mentioned feat in the autumn,
+"making a singular kind of noise, nothing like to lowing." Bewick
+says that it soars as above described when it changes its haunts.
+Ordinarily it flies heavily, like the Heron, uttering from time to time
+a resounding cry, not bellowing; and then Willughby, who well describes
+the bellowing noise of the breeding season, supposes it to be the Night
+Raven, at whose "deadly voice" the superstitious wayfarer of the night
+turned pale and trembled. "This, without doubt," writes Willughby, "is
+that bird our common people call the Night Raven, and have such a dread
+of, imagining its cry portends no less than their death or the death of
+some of their near relations; for it flies in the night, answers their
+description of being like a flagging collar, and hath such a kind of
+hooping cry as they talk of." Others, with some reason, consider the
+Qua Bird already mentioned (which utters a loud and most disagreeable
+noise when on the wing, conveying the idea of the agonies of a person
+attempting to vomit) to be the true Night Raven. The Bittern was well
+known to the ancients, and Aristotle mentions the fable of its origin
+from staves metamorphosed into birds. The long claw of the hind toe is
+much prized as a toothpick, and in the olden times it was thought to
+have the property of preserving the teeth.
+
+The Greater-billed Butcher Bird, from New Holland, has extraordinary
+powers of voice: it is trained for catching small birds, and it is said
+to imitate the notes of some other birds by way of decoying them to
+their destruction.
+
+The mere imitative sounds of Parrots are of little interest compared
+with the instances of instinct, apparently allied to reason, which are
+related of individuals. Of this tribe the distinguishing characteristics
+are a hooked bill, the upper mandible of which is moveable as well as
+the lower, and not in one piece with the skull, as in most other birds,
+but joined to the head by a strong membrane, with which the bird lifts
+it or lets it fall at pleasure. The bill is also round on the outside
+and hollow within, and has, in some degree, the capacity of a mouth,
+allowing the tongue, which is thick and fleshy, to play freely; while
+the sound, striking against the circular border of the lower mandible,
+reflects it like a palate: hence the animal does not utter a whistling
+sound, but a full articulation. The tongue, which modulates all sounds,
+is proportionally larger than in man.
+
+The Wild Swan has a very loud call, and utters a melancholy cry when one
+of the flock is killed; hence it was said by the poets to sing its own
+dying dirge. Such was the popular belief in olden times; and, looking to
+the anatomical characteristics of the species, it was, in some degree,
+supported by the more inflated wind-pipe of the wild when compared
+with that of the tame species. The _Song of the Swan_ is, however,
+irreconcileable with sober belief, the only noise of the Wild Swan of
+our times being unmelodious, and an unpleasing monotony.
+
+The Laughing Goose is named from its note having some resemblance to the
+laugh of man; and not, as Wilson supposes, from the grinning appearance
+of its mandibles. The Indians imitate its cry by moving the hand quickly
+against the lips, whilst they repeat the syllable _wah_.
+
+The Cuckoo may be said to have done much for musical science, because
+from that bird has been derived the _minor scale_, the origin of which
+has puzzled so many; the Cuckoo's couplet being the _minor third_ sung
+downwards.
+
+The Germans are the finest appreciators of the Nightingale; and it is a
+fact, that when the Prussian authorities, under pecuniary pressure, were
+about to cut down certain trees near Cologne, which were frequented by
+Nightingales, the alarmed citizens purchased the trees in order to save
+the birds and keep their music. Yet one would think the music hardly
+worth having, if it really sounded as it looks upon paper, transcribed
+thus by Bechstein, from whom it is quoted by Broderip:--
+
+    Zozozozozozozozozozozozo zirrhading
+    Hezezezezezezezezezezezezezezeze cowar ho dze hoi
+    Higaigaigaigaigaigaigaigaigaigai, guaiagai coricor dzio dzio pi.[13]
+
+M. Wichterich, of Bonn, remarks:--"It is a vulgar error to suppose that
+the song of the Nightingale is melancholy, and that it only sings by
+night. There are two varieties of the Nightingale; one which sings both
+in the night and the day, and one which sings in the day only."
+
+In the year 1858, Mr. Leigh Sotheby, in a letter to Dr. Gray, of the
+British Museum, described a marvellous little specimen of the feathered
+tribe--a Talking Canary. Its parents had previously and successfully
+reared many young ones, but three years before they hatched only _one_
+out of four eggs, the which they immediately neglected, by commencing
+the rebuilding of a nest on the top of it. Upon this discovery, the
+unfledged and forsaken bird, all but dead, was taken away and placed in
+flannel by the fire, when, after much attention, it was restored, and
+then brought up by hand. Thus treated, and away from all other birds, it
+became familiarised only with those who fed it; consequently, its first
+singing notes were of a character totally different to those usual with
+the Canary.
+
+Constantly being talked to, the bird, when about three months old,
+astonished its mistress by repeating the endearing terms used in talking
+to it, such as "Kissie, kissie," with its significant sounds. This
+went on, and from time to time the little bird repeated other words;
+and then, for hours together, except during the moulting season, it
+astonished by _ringing the changes_, according to its own fancy, and as
+plainly as any human voice could articulate them, on the several words,
+"Dear sweet Titchie" (its name), "kiss Minnie," "Kiss me, then, dear
+Minnie." "Sweet pretty little Titchie," "Kissie, kissie, kissie." "Dear
+Titchie," "Titchie wee, gee, gee, gee, Titchie. Titchie."
+
+The usual singing-notes of the bird were more of the character of the
+Nightingale, mingled occasionally with the sound of the dog-whistle used
+about the house. It is hardly necessary to add, that the bird was by
+nature remarkably tame.
+
+In 1839, a Canary-bird, capable of distinct articulation, was exhibited
+in Regent-street. The following were some of its sentences:--"Sweet
+pretty dear," "Sweet pretty dear Dicky," "Mary," "Sweet pretty little
+Dicky dear;" and often in the course of the day, "Sweet pretty Queen."
+The bird also imitated the jarring of a wire, the ringing of a bell; it
+was three years old, and was reared by a lady who never allowed it to
+be in the company of other birds. This Canary died in October, 1839; it
+was, it is believed, the only other talking instance publicly known.
+
+We read of some experiments made in the rearing of birds at Kendal
+by a bird-fancier, the result of which was, that upwards of 20
+birds--Canaries. Greenfinches, Linnets, Chaffinches, Titlarks,
+and Whitethroats--were reared in one cage by a pair of Canaries.
+The experiments were continued until the extraordinary number of
+thirty-eight birds had been brought up within two months by the
+Canaries. It may be worth while to enumerate them.
+
+In the month of June the Canaries--the male green, and the female
+piebald--were caged for the purpose of breeding. The female laid five
+eggs, and while she was sitting a Greenfinch egg was introduced into
+the nest. All of these were hatched, and the day after incubation was
+completed five Grey Linnets, also newly hatched, were put into the cage,
+in their own nest. Next day a newly-hatched nest of four Chaffinches was
+also introduced; and afterwards five different nests, consisting of six
+Titlarks, six Whitethroats, three Skylarks, three Winchars, and three
+Blackcaps. While rearing the last of these nests, the female Canary
+again laid and hatched four eggs, thus making thirty-eight young birds
+brought up by the pair of Canaries. It will be noticed that most of
+these birds are soft-billed, whose natural food is small insects; but
+they took quite kindly to the seeds upon which they were fed by their
+step-parents. The pair of Canaries fed at one time twenty-one young
+birds, and never had less than sixteen making demands upon their care;
+and while the female was hatching her second nest she continued to feed
+the birds that occupied the other nest.
+
+Of the origin of the _neighing sound_ which accompanies the single
+Snipe's play-flight during pairing-time, opinions are various. Bechstein
+thought it was produced by means of the beak; Naumann and others, again,
+that it originated in powerful strokes of the wing. Pratt, in Hanover,
+observing that the bird makes heard its well-known song or cry, which he
+expresses with the words, "gick jack, gick jack!" at the same time with
+the _neighing sound_, it seemed to be settled that the latter is not
+produced through the throat. In the meantime, M. Meves, of Stockholm,
+remarked with surprise, that the humming sound could never be observed
+whilst the bird was flying upwards, at which time the tail is closed;
+but only when it was casting itself downwards in a slanting direction,
+with the tail strongly spread out.
+
+M. Meves has written for the Zoological Society a paper upon the origin
+of this sound, which all the field-naturalists and sportsmen of England
+and other countries had, for the previous century, been trying to make
+out, but had failed to discover. Of this paper the following is an
+abstract:--
+
+     The peculiar form of the tail-feathers in some foreign
+     species nearly allied to our Snipe encouraged the notion that the
+     tail conduced to the production of the sound. M. Meves found the
+     tail-feathers of our common Snipe, in the first feather especially,
+     very peculiarly constructed; the shaft uncommonly stiff and
+     sabre-shaped; the rays of the web strongly bound together and very
+     long, the longest reaching nearly three-fourths of the whole length
+     of the web, these rays lying along or spanning from end to end of
+     the curve of the shaft, _like the strings of a musical instrument_.
+     If you blow from the outer side upon the broad web, it comes into
+     vibration, and a sound is heard, which, though fainter, resembles
+     very closely the well-known _neighing_.
+
+     But to convince yourself fully that it is the first feather
+     which produces the peculiar sound, it is only necessary carefully
+     to pluck out such an one, to fasten its shaft with fine thread to
+     a piece of steel wire a tenth of an inch in diameter, and a foot
+     long, and then to fix this at the end of a four-foot stick. If
+     now you draw the feather, with this outer side forward, sharply
+     through the air, at the same time making some short movements or
+     shakings of the arm, so as to represent the shivering motion of the
+     wings during flight, you produce the neighing sound with the most
+     astonishing exactness.
+
+     If you wish to hear the humming of both feathers at once, as
+     must be the case from the flying bird, this also can be managed by
+     a simple contrivance. Take a small stick, and fasten at the side of
+     the smaller end a piece of burnt steel wire in the form of a fork;
+     bind to each point a side tail-feather; bend the wire so that the
+     feathers receive the same direction which they do in the spreading
+     of the tail as the bird sinks itself in flight; and then, with this
+     apparatus, draw the feathers through the air as before. Such a
+     sound, but in another tone, is produced when we experiment with the
+     tail-feathers of other kinds of Snipe.
+
+     Since in both sexes these feathers have the same form, it is
+     clear that both can produce the same humming noise; but as the
+     feathers of the hen are generally less than those of the cock-bird,
+     the noise made by them is not so deep as in the other case.
+
+     Besides the significance which these tail-feathers have as a
+     kind of musical instrument, their form may give a weighty character
+     in the determination of a species standing very near one another,
+     which have been looked upon as varieties.
+
+This interesting discovery was first announced by M. Meves in an account
+of the birds observed by himself during a visit to the Island of
+Gottland, in the summer of the year 1856, which narrative was published
+at Stockholm in the following winter. In the succeeding summer, M. Meves
+showed his experiments to Mr. Wolley, whose services to Ornithology
+we have already noticed. The mysterious noise of the wilderness was
+reproduced in a little room in the middle of Stockholm: first, the deep
+bleat, now shown to proceed from the male Snipe, and then the fainter
+bleat of the female, both most strikingly true to nature, neither
+producible with any other feathers than the outer ones of the tail.
+
+Mr. Wolley inquired of Mr. Meves how, issuing forth from the town on
+a summer ramble, he came to discover what had puzzled the wits and
+strained the eyes of so many observers. He freely explained how, in a
+number of "Naumannia," an accidental misprint of the word representing
+tail-feathers instead of wing-feathers,--a mistake which another author
+ridiculed--first led him to think on the subject. He subsequently
+examined in the Museum at Stockholm the tail-feathers of various species
+of Snipe, remarked their structure, and reasoned upon it. Then he
+blew upon them, and fixed them on levers that he might wave them with
+greater force through the air; and at the same time he made more careful
+observation than he had hitherto done in the living birds. In short,
+in him the obscure hint was thrown upon fruitful ground, whilst in a
+hundred other minds it had failed to come to light.
+
+Dr. Walsh saw at Constantinople a Woodpecker, about the size of a
+Thrush, which was very active in devouring flies, and tapped woodwork
+with his bill with a noise _as loud as that of a hammer_, to disturb the
+insects concealed therein, so as to seize upon them when they appeared.
+
+Among remarkable bird services should not be forgotten those of the
+Trochilos to the Crocodile. "When the Crocodile," says Herodotus, "feeds
+in the Nile, the inside of his mouth is always covered with _bdella_
+(a term which the translators have rendered by that of _leech_). All
+birds, _except one_, fly from the Crocodile; but this one bird, the
+_Trochilos_, on the contrary, flies towards him with the greatest
+eagerness, and renders him a very great service; for every time that the
+Crocodile comes to the land to sleep, and when he lies stretched out
+with his jaws open, the Trochilos enters and establishes himself in his
+mouth, and frees him from the bdella which he finds there. The Crocodile
+is grateful, and never does any harm to the little bird who performs for
+him this office."
+
+This passage was long looked upon as a pleasant story, and nothing more;
+until M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, during his long residence in Egypt,
+ascertained the story of Herodotus to be correct in substance, but
+inexact in details. It is perfectly true that a little bird does exist,
+which flies incessantly from place to place, searching everywhere, even
+in the Crocodile's mouth, for the insects which form the principal
+part of its nourishment. This bird is seen everywhere on the banks of
+the Nile, and M. Geoffroy has proved it to be of a species already
+described by Hasselquist, and very like the small winged Plover. If
+the Trochilos be in reality the little Plover, the bdella cannot be
+leeches, (which do not exist in the running waters of the Nile) but the
+small insects known as _gnats_ in Europe. Myriads of these insects dance
+upon the Nile: they attack the Crocodile upon the inner surface of his
+palate, and sting the orifice of the glands, which are numerous in the
+Crocodile's mouth. Then the little Plover, who follows him everywhere,
+delivers him from these troublesome enemies; and that without any danger
+to himself, for the Crocodile is always careful, when he is going to
+shut his mouth, to make some motion which warns the little bird to fly
+away. At St. Domingo there is a Crocodile which very nearly resembles
+that of Egypt. This Crocodile is attacked by gnats, from which he would
+have no means of delivering himself (his tongue, like that of the
+Crocodile, being fixed) if a bird of a particular species did not give
+him the same assistance that the Crocodile of the Nile receives from
+the little Plover. These facts explain the passage in Herodotus, and
+demonstrate that the animal, there called bdella, is not a leech, but a
+flying insect similar to our gnat.
+
+Exemplifications of instinct, intelligence, and reason in Birds are by
+no means rare, but this distinction must be made: instinctive actions
+are dependent on the nerves, intelligence on the brain; but that which
+constitutes peculiar qualities of the mind in man has no material
+organ. The Rev. Mr. Statham has referred to the theory of the facial
+angle as indicative of the amount of sagacity observable in the animal
+race, but has expressed his opinion that the theory is utterly at
+fault in the case of Birds; many of these having a very acute facial
+angle being considerably more intelligent than others having scarcely
+any facial angle at all. Size also seems to present another anomaly
+between the two races of Beasts and Birds; for while the Elephant and
+the Horse are among the most distinguished of quadrupeds for sagacity
+and instinct, the larger Birds seem scarcely comparable to the smaller
+ones in the possession of these attributes. The writer instances this
+by comparing the Ostrich and the Goose with the Wren, the Robin, the
+Canary, the Pigeon, and the Crow; and amusingly alludes to the holding
+of parliaments or convocations of birds of the last species, while the
+Ostrich is characterised in Scripture as the type of folly.
+
+The author then refers to the poisoning of two young Blackbirds by the
+parent birds, when they found that they could neither liberate them
+nor permanently share their captivity. The two fledglings had been
+taken from a Blackbirds' nest in Surrey-square, and had been placed in
+a room looking over a garden, in a wicker cage. For some time the old
+birds attended to their wants, visited them regularly, and fed them
+with appropriate food; but, at last, getting wearied of the task, or
+despairing of effecting their liberation, they appear to have poisoned
+them. They were both found suddenly dead one morning, shortly after
+having been seen in good health; and on opening their bodies a small
+leaf, supposed to be that of _Solanum Nigrum_, was found in the stomach
+of each. The old birds immediately deserted the spot, as though aware of
+the nefarious deed befitting their name.
+
+As an exemplification of instinct Dr. Horner states that Rooks built
+on the Infirmary trees at Hull, but never over the street. One year,
+however, a young couple ventured to build here: for eight mornings in
+succession the old Rooks proceeded to destroy the nest, when at last the
+young ones chose a more fitting place.
+
+Mr. A. Strickland, having referred to the tendency of birds to build
+their nests of materials of a colour resembling that around such nests,
+relates an instance in which the Fly-catcher built in a red brick wall,
+and used for the nest mahogany shavings. Referring to the meeting of
+Rooks for judicial purposes. Mr. Strickland states that he once saw a
+Rook tried in this way, and ultimately killed by the rest.
+
+
+SONGS OF BIRDS AND SEASONS OF THE DAY.
+
+Although nearly half a century has elapsed since the following
+observations were communicated to the Royal Society by Dr. Jenner, their
+expressive character is as charming as ever, and their accuracy as
+valuable:--
+
+     "There is a beautiful propriety in the order in which Singing
+     Birds fill up the day with their pleasing harmony. The accordance
+     between their songs, and the aspect of nature at the successive
+     periods of the day at which they sing, is so remarkable that one
+     cannot but suppose it to be the result of benevolent design.
+
+     "From the _Robin_ (not the _Lark_, as has been generally
+     imagined), as soon as twilight has drawn its imperceptible line
+     between night and day, begins his artless song. How sweetly does
+     this harmonize with the soft dawning of the day! He goes on till
+     the twinkling sunbeams begin to tell him that his notes no longer
+     accord with the rising sun. Up starts the _Lark_, and with him a
+     variety of sprightly songsters, whose lively notes are in perfect
+     correspondence with the gaiety of the morning. The general warbling
+     continues, with now and then an interruption by the transient croak
+     of the _Raven_, the scream of the _Jay_, or the pert chattering of
+     the _Daw_. The _Nightingale_, unwearied by the vocal exertions of
+     the night, joins his inferiors in sound in the general harmony. The
+     _Thrush_ is wisely placed on the summit of some lofty tree, that
+     its piercing notes may be softened by distance before it reaches
+     the ear, while the mellow _Blackbird_ seeks the lower branches.
+
+     "Should the sun, having been eclipsed by a cloud, shine forth
+     with fresh effulgence, how frequently we see the _Goldfinch_ perch
+     on some blossomed bough, and hear his song poured forth in a strain
+     peculiarly energetic; while the sun, full shining on his beautiful
+     plumes, displays his golden wings and crimson crest to charming
+     advantage. Indeed, a burst of sunshine in a cloudy day, or after a
+     heavy shower, seems always to wake up a new gladness in the little
+     musicians, and invite them to an answering burst of minstrelsy.
+
+     "As evening advances, the performers gradually retire, and the
+     concert softly dies away. At sunset the _Robin_ again sends up his
+     twilight song, till the still more serene hour of night sends him
+     to his bower of rest. And now, in unison with the darkened earth
+     and sky, no sooner is the voice of the _Robin_ hushed, than the
+     _Owl_ sends forth his slow and solemn tones, well adapted to the
+     serious hour."
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[12] The popular name of this bird is the _Umbrella Bird_. On its head
+it bears a crest, different from that of any other bird. It is formed
+of feathers more than two inches long, very thickly set, and with hairy
+plumes curving over at the end. These can be laid back so as to be
+hardly visible, or can be erected and spread out on every side, forming
+a dome completely covering the head, and even reaching beyond the point
+of the beak; the individual feathers then stand out something like the
+down-bearing seeds of the dandelion. Besides this, there is another
+ornamental appendage on the breast, formed by a fleshy tubercle, as
+thick as a quill and an inch and a-half long, which hangs down from
+the neck, and is thickly covered with glossy feathers, forming a large
+pendent plume or tassel. This, also, the bird can either press to its
+breast, so as to be scarcely visible, or can swell out so as almost to
+conceal the forepart of its body.
+
+[13] "Athenaeum," No. 1467.
+
+
+
+
+OWLS.
+
+
+These nocturnal birds of prey have large heads and great projecting
+eyes, directing forwards, and surrounded with a circle of loose and
+delicate feathers, more or less developed, according to the nocturnal or
+comparatively diurnal habits of the species. The position of the eyes,
+giving a particular fulness and breadth to the head, has gained for the
+Owl the intellectual character so universally awarded to it. The concave
+facial disc of feathers with which they are surrounded materially aids
+vision by concentrating the rays of light to an intensity better suited
+to the opacity of the medium in which power is required to be exercised.
+"They may be compared," says Mr. Yarrell, "to a person near-sighted,
+who sees objects with superior magnitude and brilliancy when within the
+prescribed limits of his natural powers of vision, from the increased
+angle these objects subtend." Their beaks are completely curved,
+or raptorial; they have the power of turning the outer toe either
+backwards or forwards; they fly weakly, and near the ground; but, from
+their soft plumage, stealthily, stretching out their hind legs that they
+may balance their large and heavy heads. Their sense of hearing is very
+acute: they not only look, but listen for prey.
+
+The Owl is a bird of mystery and gloom, and a special favourite with
+plaintive poets. We find him with Ariel:--
+
+    "There I couch when Owls do cry."
+
+He figures in the nursery rhyme of "Cock Robin." In reply to "Who dug
+his grave?"--
+
+    "I, says the Owl, with my little shovel--
+        I dug his grave."
+
+He hoots over graves, and his dismal note adds to the terror of
+darkness:--
+
+    "'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,
+    And the Owls have awakened the crowing cock;
+          Tu-whit! tu-whoo!
+    And hark again the crowing cock,
+          How drowsily it crew.
+
+    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+    "When blood is nipt, and ways be foul,
+    Then nightly sings the staring Owl,
+          Tu-whoo!
+    Tu-whit! tu-whoo! _a merry note_,
+    While greasy Joan doth keel the pot!"
+
+Titania sings of
+
+    "The clamorous Owl, that nightly hoots and wonders
+    At our quaint spirits."
+
+Bishop Hall has this "Occasional Meditation" upon the sight of an Owl in
+the twilight:--"What a strange melancholic life doth this creature lead;
+to hide her head all the day long in an ivy-bush, and at night, when all
+other birds are at rest, to fly abroad and vent her harsh notes. I know
+not why the ancients have _sacred_ this bird to wisdom, except it be for
+her safe closeness and singular perspicuity; that when other domestrial
+and airy creatures are blind, she only hath insured light to discern the
+least objects for her own advantage." We may here note that Linnaeus,
+with many other naturalists and antiquaries, have supposed the Horned
+Owl to have been the bird of Minerva; but Blumenbach has shown, from
+the ancient works of Grecian art, that it was not this, but rather some
+smooth-headed species, probably the _Passerina_, or Little Owl.
+
+The divine has, in the above passage, overstated the melancholy of the
+Owl; as has also the poet, who sings:--
+
+        "From yonder ivy-mantled tower
+    The moping Owl does to the moon complain
+    Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
+    Molest her ancient solitary reign."
+
+Shakspeare more accurately terms her "the mousing Owl," for her nights
+are spent in barns, or in hunting and devouring sparrows in the
+churchyard elms. "Moping, indeed!" says a pleasing observer. "So far
+from this, she is a sprightly, active ranger of the night, who had as
+lief sit on a grave as a rose-bush; who is as valiant a hunter as
+Nimroud, chasing all sorts of game, from the dormouse to the hare and
+the young lamb, and devouring them, while her mate hoots to her from
+some picturesque ruin, and invites her, when supper is over, to return
+to him and her babes."
+
+But the tricks of the Owl by night render her the terror of all other
+birds, great and small. In Northern Italy, persons in rustic districts
+which are well wooded, catch and tame an Owl, put a light chain upon her
+legs, and then place her on a small cross-bar on the top of a high pole,
+which is fixed in the earth. Half-blinded by the light, the defenceless
+captive has to endure patiently the jeers and insults of the dastardly
+tribes from the surrounding groves and thickets, who issue in clouds
+to scream, chirp, and flit about their enemy. Some, trusting to the
+swiftness of their wings, sweep close by, and peck at her feathers as
+they pass, and are sometimes punished by the Owl with her formidable
+beak for their audacity. Meanwhile, from darkened windows, sportsmen,
+with fowling-pieces well charged with shot, fire at the hosts of birds,
+wheeling, shrieking, screaming, and thickening around the Owl. All the
+guns are fired at once, and the grass is strewn for many yards round
+with the slain; while the Owl, whom they have been careful not to hit,
+utters a joyous whoo! whoo! at the fate of her persecutors.
+
+Major Head thus describes the _Biscacho_, or Coquimbo, a curious species
+of Owl, found all over the pampas of South America:--"Like rabbits,
+they live in holes, which are in groups in every direction. These
+animals are never seen in the day, but as soon as the lower limb of
+the sun reaches the horizon, they are seen issuing from the holes. The
+Biscachos, when full-grown, are nearly as big as badgers, but their
+head resembles a rabbit's, except that they have large bushy whiskers.
+In the evening they sit outside the holes, and they all appear to be
+moralizing. They are the most serious-looking animals I ever saw;
+and even the young ones are grey-headed, wear moustachios, and look
+thoughtful and grave. In the daytime their holes are guarded by two
+little owls, which are never an instant away from their posts. As one
+gallops by these owls, they always stand looking at the stranger, and
+then at each other, moving their old-fashioned heads in a manner which
+is quite ridiculous, until one rushes by them, when they get the better
+of their dignified looks, and they both run into the Biscacho's hole."
+
+Of all birds of prey, Owls are the most useful to man, by protecting his
+corn-fields, or granaried provision, from mice and numberless vermin.
+Yet, prejudice has perverted these birds into objects of superstition
+and consequent hate. The kind-hearted Mr. Waterton says:--"I wish that
+any little thing I could write or say might cause this bird to stand
+better with the world at large than it has hitherto done; but I have
+slender hope on this score, because old and deep-rooted prejudices are
+seldom overcome; and when I look back into annals of remote antiquity,
+I see too clearly that defamation has done its worst to ruin the whole
+family, in all its branches, of this poor, harmless, useful friend of
+mine."
+
+The Barn Owl is common throughout Europe, known in Tartary, and rare in
+the United States of America. In England it is called the Barn Owl, the
+Church Owl, Gillihowlet, and Screech Owl; the last name is improperly
+applied, as it is believed not to hoot, though Sir William Jardine
+asserts that he has shot it in the act of hooting. To the screech
+superstition has annexed ideas of fatal portent; "but," says Charlotte
+Smith, "it has, of course, no more foreknowledge of approaching evil to
+man than the Lark: its cry is a signal to its absent mate."
+
+"If," says Mr. Waterton, "this useful bird caught its food by day
+instead of hunting for it by night, mankind would have ocular
+demonstration of its utility in thinning the country of mice; and it
+would be protected and encouraged everywhere. It would be with us what
+the Ibis was with the Egyptians. When it has young, it will bring a
+mouse to the nest every twelve or fifteen minutes." Mr. Waterton saw his
+Barn Owl fly away with a rat which he had just shot; he also saw her
+drop perpendicularly into the water, and presently rise out of it with a
+fish in her claws, which she took to her nest.
+
+Birds and quadrupeds, and even fish, are the food of Owls, according to
+the size of the species. Hares, partridges, grouse, and even the turkey,
+are attacked by the larger Horned Owls of Europe and America; while
+mice, shrews, small birds, and crabs suffice for the inferior strength
+of the smaller Owls. Mr. Yarrell states that the Short-eared Owl is the
+only bird of prey in which he ever found the remains of a bat.
+
+William Bullock reports that a large Snowy Owl, wounded on the Isle of
+Baltoc, disgorged a young rabbit; and that one in his possession had in
+its stomach a sandpiper with its feathers entire. It preys on lemmings,
+hares, and birds, particularly the willow-grouse and ptarmigan. It is
+a dexterous fisher, grasping the fish with an instantaneous stroke of
+the foot as it sails along near the surface of the water, or sits on
+a stone in a shallow stream. It has been seen on the wing pursuing an
+American hare, making repeated strokes at the animal with its foot. In
+winter, when this Owl is fat, the Indians and white residents in the Fur
+Countries esteem it to be good eating; its flesh is delicately white.
+Small snakes are the common prey of this Owl during the daytime. And to
+show on what various kinds of food Owls subsist, Mr. Darwin states that
+a species that was killed among the islets of the Chonos Archipelago had
+its stomach full of good-sized crabs. Such are a few of the facts which
+attest the almost omnivorous appetite of the Owl.
+
+The flight of the Snowy Owl is stronger and swifter than any other
+bird of the family; its ears are very large; its voice (says Pennant)
+adds horror even to the regions of Greenland by its hideous cries,
+resembling those of a man in deep distress. The eye is very curious,
+being immovably fixed in its socket, so that the bird, to view different
+objects, must always turn its head; and so excellently is the neck
+adapted to this purpose, that it can with ease turn the head round
+in almost a complete circle, without moving the body. The Virginian
+Eagle-Owl, amidst the forests of Indiana, utters a loud and sudden
+_Wough O! wough O!_ sufficient to alarm a whole garrison; another of its
+nocturnal cries resembles the half-suppressed screams of a person being
+suffocated or throttled.
+
+The Javanese Owl is found in the closest forests, and occasionally near
+villages and dwellings. Dr. Horsfield says:--"It is not, however, a
+favourite with the natives; various superstitious notions are also in
+Java associated with its visits; and it is considered in many parts of
+the island as portending evil." One of this species never visits the
+villages, but resides in the dense forests, which are the usual resort
+of the tiger. The natives even assert that the _Wowo-wiwi_ approaches
+the animal with the same familiarity with which the jallack approaches
+the buffalo, and that it has no dread to alight on the tiger's back. Dr.
+Horsfield adds, that it has never been seen in confinement.
+
+The Boobook Owl has the native name of Buck-buck, and it may be heard
+in Australia every night during winter, uttering a cry corresponding
+with that word. The note is somewhat similar to that of the European
+_Cuckoo_, and the colonists have given it that name. The lower order of
+settlers in New South Wales are led away by the idea that everything
+is the reverse in that country to what it is in England; and the
+_Cuckoo_, as they call this bird, singing by night, is one of the
+instances which they point out.
+
+Tame Owls are described as nearly as playful, and quite as affectionate,
+as kittens; they will perch upon your wrist, touch your lips with their
+beak, and hoot to order; and they are less inclined to leave their
+friends than other tame birds. A writer in "Chambers's Journal" relates,
+that a friend lost his favourite Owl, which flew away, and was absent
+many days. In time, however, he came back, and resumed his habits and
+duties, which, for a while, went on uninterruptedly. At length, one
+severe autumn, he disappeared; weeks, months passed, and he returned
+not. One snowy night, however, as his master sat by the blazing fire,
+some heavy thing came bump against the shutters. "Whoo, whoo, whoo."
+The window was opened, and in flew the Owl, shaking the thick snow from
+his wings, and settling lovingly on his master's wrist, the bird's eyes
+dilating with delight.
+
+The Owls at Arundel Castle have a sort of historic interest; they
+are kept within the circuit of the keep-tower, the most ancient and
+picturesque portion of the castle. Among the Australian Owls here we
+read of one larger than a turkey, measuring four feet across the wings
+when expanded. The Owl named "Lord Thurlow," from his resemblance to
+that Judge, is a striking specimen.
+
+The accompanying illustration shows a fine specimen of Fraser's
+Eagle-Owl, brought from Fernando Po. It is the size of an ordinary
+fowl; colour, very dark reddish-brown mottling; back and wings passing
+through all shades of the same colour into nearly white on the under
+parts, where the feathers are barred; bill, pale greenish; eyes, nearly
+black.
+
+[Illustration: FRASER'S EAGLE-OWL, FROM FERNANDO PO.]
+
+Among the Owls but recently described is the Masked Owl of New Holland,
+named from the markings of the disk of the face, somewhat grotesque;
+the colours are brown variegated with white. A fine specimen of the
+Abyssinian Owl is possessed by Mr. R. Good, of Yeovil: the bird,
+although quite young, is of immense size.
+
+Lastly, the Owl is thought to be of the same sympathy or kindred likings
+as the Cat: a young Owl will feed well, and thrive upon fish. Cats, too,
+it is well known, like fish. Both the Cat and the Owl, too, feed upon
+mice. The sight of Owls, also, similar to that of Cats, appears to serve
+them best in the dark.
+
+
+
+
+WEATHER-WISE ANIMALS.
+
+
+Whatever may be the worth of weather prognostications, it is from the
+animal kingdom that we obtain the majority. How these creatures become
+so acutely sensible of the approach of particular kinds of weather is
+not at present well understood. That in many cases the appearance of
+the heavens is not the source from which their information is derived
+is proved by the signs of uneasiness frequently expressed by them when,
+as yet, the most attentive observer can detect no signs of change,
+and even when they are placed in such circumstances as preclude the
+possibility of any instruction from this quarter. For instance. Dogs,
+closely confined in a room, often become very drowsy and stupid before
+rain; and a leech, confined in a glass of water, has been found, by
+its rapid motions or its quiescence, to indicate the approach of wet
+or the return of fair weather. Probably the altered condition of the
+atmosphere with regard to its electricity, which generally accompanies
+change of weather, may so affect their constitution as to excite in
+them pleasurable or uneasy sensations; though man is far from insensible
+to atmospheric changes, as the feelings of utter listlessness which
+many persons experience before rain, and the aggravated severity of
+toothache, headache, and rheumatism abundantly testify. The Cat licking
+itself is a special influence of the above electric influence, which
+denotes the approach of rain.
+
+Birds, as "denizens of the air," are the surest indicators of weather
+changes. Thus, when swallows fly high, fine weather is to be expected
+or continued; but when they fly low, or close to the ground, rain is
+almost surely approaching; for swallows follow the flies and gnats,
+which delight in warm strata of air. Now, as warm air is lighter, and
+usually moister than cold air, when the warm strata of air are high
+there is less chance of moisture being thrown down from them by their
+mixture with cold air; but when the warm and moist air is close to the
+surface, it is almost certain that, as the cold air flows down into it,
+a deposition of water will take place.
+
+When Seagulls assemble on the land, very stormy and rainy weather is
+approaching. The cause of this migration to the land is the security of
+these birds finding food; and they may be observed at this time feeding
+greedily on the earth-worms and larvae driven out of the ground by severe
+floods; whilst the fish on which they prey in fine weather in the sea,
+leave the surface, and go deeper in storms. The search after food is
+the principal cause why animals change their places. The different
+tribes of the wading birds always migrate when rain is about to take
+place.
+
+There is a bird which takes its name from its apparent agency in
+tempests. Such is the Stormy Petrel, which name Hawkesworth, in his
+"Voyages," mentions the sailors give to the bird, but explains no
+further. Navigators meet with the Little Petrel, or Storm Finch, in
+every part of the ocean, diving, running on foot, or skimming over the
+highest waves. It seems to foresee the coming storm long ere the seamen
+can discover any signs of its approach. The Petrels make this known by
+congregating together under the wake of the vessel, as if to shelter
+themselves, and they thus warn the mariner of the coming danger. At
+night they set up a piercing cry. This usefulness of the bird to the
+sailor is the obvious cause of the latter having such an objection to
+their being killed.
+
+Mr. Knapp, the naturalist, thus pictures gulls, describing the Petrel's
+action:--"They seem to repose in a common breeze, but upon the approach
+or during the continuation of a gale, they surround the ship, and catch
+up the small animals which the agitated ocean brings near the surface,
+or any food that may be dropped from the vessel. Whisking like an arrow
+through the deep valleys of the abyss, and darting away over the foaming
+crest of some mountain-wave, they attend the labouring barque in all
+her perilous course. When the storm subsides they retire to rest, and
+are seen no more."
+
+Our sailors have, from very early times, called these birds "Mother
+Carey's Chickens," originally bestowed on them, Mr. Yarrell tells us, by
+Captain Cartaret's sailors, probably from some celebrated ideal hag of
+the above name. Mr. Yarrell adds:--"As these birds are supposed to be
+seen only before stormy weather, they are not welcome visitors," a view
+at variance with that already suggested.
+
+The Editor of "Notes and Queries" considers the Petrels to have been
+called _chickens_ from their diminutive size. The largest sort, "the
+Giant Petrel," is "Mother Carey's _Goose_;" its length is forty
+inches, and it expands seven feet. The common kind are about the size
+of a swallow, and weigh something over an ounce; length, six inches;
+expansion, thirteen inches; these are Mother Carey's _chickens_
+(_Latham_). It should be borne in mind that our language does not
+restrict the term chickens to young birds of the gallinaceous class.
+
+The Missel-bird is another bird of this kind: in Hampshire and Sussex
+it is called the _Storm Cock_, because it sings early in the spring, in
+blowing, showery weather.
+
+Petrels, by the way, are used by the inhabitants of the Faroe Islands as
+lamps: they pass a wick through their bodies which, when lighted, burns
+a long time from the quantity of fat they contain.
+
+The Fulmar Petrel, in Boothia, follows the whale-ships, availing itself
+of the labours of the fishermen by feeding on the carcases of the
+whales when stripped of their blubber. In return the bird is exceedingly
+useful to the whalers by guiding them to the places where whales are
+most numerous, and crowding to the spots where they first appear on the
+surface of the water.
+
+Wild Geese and Ducks are unquestionably weather-wise, for their early
+arrival from the north in the winter portends that a severe season is
+approaching; because their early appearance is most likely caused by
+severe frost having already set in at their usual summer residence. The
+Rev. F. O. Morris, the well-known writer on natural history, records
+from Nunburnholme, Yorkshire. December 5, 1864:--"This season, for the
+first time I have lived here, I have missed seeing the flocks of Wild
+Geese which in the autumnal months have heretofore wended their way
+overhead, year after year, as regularly as the dusk of the evening came
+on. Almost to the minute, and almost in the same exact course, they
+have flown over aloft from the feeding-places on the Wolds to their
+resting-places for the night; some, perhaps, to extensive commons, while
+others have turned off to the mud-banks of the Humber, whence they have
+returned with equal regularity in the morning.
+
+"But this year I have seen not only not a single flock, but not even
+a single bird. One evening one of my daughters did indeed see a small
+flock of six, but even that small number only once. Whether it portends
+a very hard winter, or what the cause of it may be, I am utterly at a
+loss to know or even to guess. I quite miss this year the well-known
+cackle of the old gander as he has led the van of the flock that has
+followed him; now in a wide, now in a narrow, now in a short, now in a
+long wedge, over head, diverging just from the father of the family, or
+separating from time to time further back in the line.
+
+"I may add, as a possible prognostication of future weather, that
+fieldfares have, I think, been unusually numerous this year, as last
+year they were the contrary. I have also remarked that swallows took
+their departure this year more than ordinarily in a body, very few
+stragglers being subsequently seen."
+
+It will be sufficient to state that the mean temperature of January and
+February was below that of the same month in the preceding year, and
+that of March had not been so low for twenty years.
+
+The opinion that sea-birds come to land in order to avoid an approaching
+storm is stated to be erroneous; and the cause assigned is, that as the
+fish upon which the birds prey go deep into the water during storms, the
+birds come to land merely on account of the greater certainty of finding
+food there than out at sea.
+
+We add a few notes on Bird naturalists. The Redbreast has been called
+_the Naturalist's Barometer_. When on a summer evening, though it be
+unsettled and rainy, he sings cheerfully and sweetly on a lofty twig or
+housetop, it is an unerring promise of succeeding fine days. Sometimes,
+though the atmosphere be dry and warm, he may be seen melancholy
+chirping and brooding in a bush or low in a hedge; this promises the
+reverse. In the luxuriant forests of Brazil the Toucan may be heard
+rattling with his large hollow beak, as he sits on the outermost
+branches, calling in plaintive notes for rain.
+
+When Mr. Loudon was at Schwetzingen, Rhenish Bavaria, in 1829, he
+witnessed in the post-house there for the first time what he afterwards
+frequently saw--an amusing application of zoological knowledge for the
+purpose of prognosticating the weather. Two tree-frogs were kept in
+a crystal jar about eighteen inches high and six inches in diameter,
+with a depth of three or four inches of water at the bottom, and a
+small ladder reaching to the top of the jar. On the approach of dry
+weather the frogs mounted the ladder, but when moisture was expected
+they descended into the water. These animals are of a bright green, and
+in their wild state climb the trees in search of insects, and make a
+peculiar singing noise before rain. In the jar they got no other food
+than now and then a fly; one of which, Mr. Loudon was assured, would
+serve a frog for a week, though it would eat from six to twelve flies in
+a day if it could get them. In catching the flies put alive into the jar
+the frogs displayed great adroitness.
+
+Snails are extraordinary indicators of changes in the weather.
+Several years ago, Mr. Thomas, of Cincinnati, known as an accredited
+observer of natural phenomena, published some interesting accounts
+of Weather-wise Snails. They do not drink (he observes), but imbibe
+moisture in their bodies during rain, and exude it at regular periods
+afterwards. Then a certain snail first exudes the pure liquid; when
+this is exhausted, a light red succeeds, then a deep red, next yellow,
+and lastly a dark brown. The snail is very careful not to exude more
+of its moisture than is necessary. It is never seen abroad _except
+before rain_, when we find it ascending the bark of trees and getting
+on the leaves. The tree-snail is also seen ascending the stems of
+plants _two days before rain_: if it be a long and hard rain they get
+on the sheltered side of the leaf, but if a short rain the outside
+of the leaf. Another snail has the same habits, but differs only in
+colour: before rain it is yellow, and after it blue. Others show signs
+of rain, not only by means of exuding fluids, but by means of pores and
+protuberances; and the bodies of some snails have large tubercles rising
+from them _before rain_. These tubercles commence showing themselves
+ten days previous to the fall of rain they indicate; at the end of each
+of these tubercles is a pore; and at the time of the fall of rain these
+tubercles, with their pores opened, are stretched to their utmost to
+receive the water. In another kind of snail, a few days before rain
+appears a large and deep indentation, beginning at the head between
+the horns, and ending with the jointure at the shells. Other snails,
+a few days before the rain, crawl to the most exposed hill-side,
+where, if they arrive before the rain descends, they seek some crevice
+in the rocks, and then close the aperture of the shell with glutinous
+substance; this, when the rain approaches, they dissolve, and are then
+seen crawling about.
+
+Our Cincinnati observer mentions three kinds of snails which move along
+at the rate of a mile in forty-four hours; they inhabit the most dense
+forests, and it is regarded as a sure indication of rain to observe them
+moving towards an exposed situation. Others indicate the weather not
+only by exuding fluids, but by the colour of the animal. After rain the
+snail has a very dark appearance, but it grows of a bright colour as
+the water is expended; whilst just before rain it is of yellowish white
+colour, also just before rain streaks appear from the point of the head
+to the jointure of the shell. These snails move at the rate of a mile in
+fourteen days and sixteen hours. If they are observed ascending a cliff
+it is a sure indication of rain: they live in the cavities of the sides
+of cliffs. There is also a snail which is brown, tinged with blue on the
+edges before rain, but black after rain: a few days before appears an
+indentation, which grows deeper as the rain approaches.
+
+The leaves of trees are even good barometers: most of them for a short,
+light rain, will turn up so as to receive their fill of water; but for
+a long rain they are doubled, so as to conduct the water away. The
+Frog and Toad are sure indicators of rain; for, as they do not drink
+water but absorb it into their bodies, they are sure to be found out
+at the time they expect rain. The Locust and Grasshopper are also good
+indicators of a storm; a few hours before rain they are to be found
+under the leaves of trees and in the hollow trunks.
+
+The Mole has long been recorded as a prognosticator of change of
+weather, before which it becomes very active. The temperature or dryness
+of the air governs its motions as to the depth at which it lives or
+works. This is partly from its inability to bear cold or thirst, but
+chiefly from its being necessitated to follow its natural food, the
+earth-worm, which always descends as the cold or drought increases.
+In frosty weather both worms and moles are deeper in the ground than
+at other times; and both seem to be sensible of an approaching change
+to warmer weather before there are any perceptible signs of it in the
+atmosphere. When it is observed, therefore, that Moles are casting hills
+through openings in the frozen turf or through a thin covering of snow,
+a change to open weather may be shortly expected. The cause of this
+appears to be--the natural heat of the earth being for a time pent in
+by the frozen surface accumulates below it; first incites to action the
+animals, thaws the frozen surface, and at length escapes into the air,
+which is warm, and softens; and if not counterbalanced by a greater
+degree of cold in the atmosphere brings about a change, such as from
+frosty to mild weather. The Mole is most active and casts up most earth
+immediately before rain, and in the winter before a thaw, because at
+those times the worms and insects begin to be in motion, and approach
+the surface.
+
+Forster, the indefatigable meteorologist, has assembled some curious
+observations on certain animals, who, by some peculiar sensibility to
+electrical or other atmospheric influence, often indicate changes of the
+weather by their peculiar motions and habits. Thus:--
+
+_Ants._--An universal bustle and activity observed in ant-hills may be
+generally regarded as a sign of rain: the Ants frequently appear all in
+motion together, and carry their eggs about from place to place. This is
+remarked by Virgil, Pliny, and others.
+
+_Asses._--When donkeys bray more than ordinarily, especially should
+they shake their ears, as if uneasy, it is said to predict rain, and
+particularly showers. Forster noticed that in showery weather a donkey
+brayed before every shower, and generally some minutes before the rain
+fell, as if some electrical influence, produced by the concentrating
+power of the approaching rain-cloud, caused a tickling in the wind-pipe
+of the animal just before the shower came on. Whatever this electric
+state of the air preceding a shower may be, it seems to be the same
+that causes in other animals some peculiar sensations, which makes the
+peacock squall, the pintado call "come back," &c. An expressive adage
+says:--
+
+    "When that the ass begins to bray,
+    Be sure we shall have rain that day."
+
+Haymakers may derive useful admonitions from the braying of the ass:
+thus the proverb:--
+
+    "Be sure to cock your hay and corn
+    When the old donkey blows his horn."
+
+_Bats_ flitting about late in the evening in spring and autumn foretel a
+fine day on the morrow; as do Dorbeetles and some other insects. On the
+contrary, when Bats return soon to their hiding-places, and send forth
+loud cries, bad weather may be expected.
+
+_Beetles_ flying about late in the evening often foretel a fine day on
+the morrow.
+
+_Butterflies_, when they appear early, are sometimes forerunners of fine
+weather. Moths and Sphinxes also foretel fine weather when they are
+common in the evening.
+
+_Cats_, when they "wash their faces," or when they seem sleepy and dull,
+foretel rain.
+
+_Chickens_, when they pick up small stones and pebbles, and are more
+noisy than usual, afford a sign of rain; as do fowls rubbing in the
+dust, and clapping their wings; but this applies to several kinds of
+fowls, as well as to the gallinaceous kinds. Cocks, when they crow at
+unwonted hours, often foretel rain; when they crow all day, in summer
+particularly, a change to rain frequently follows.
+
+_Cranes_ were said of old to foretel rain when they retreated to the
+valleys, and returned from their aerial flight. The high flight of
+cranes in silence indicates fine weather.
+
+_Dolphins_ as well as _Porpoises_, when they come about a ship, and
+sport and gambol on the surface of the water, betoken a storm.
+
+_Dogs_, before rain, grow sleepy and dull, lie drowsily before the fire,
+and are not easily aroused. They also often eat grass, which indicates
+that their stomachs, like ours, are apt to be disturbed before change
+of weather. It is also said to be a sign of change of weather when Dogs
+howl and bark much in the night. Dogs also dig in the earth with their
+feet before rain, and often make deep holes in the ground.
+
+_Ducks._--The loud and clamorous quacking of Ducks, Geese, and other
+water-fowl, is a sign of rain; as also when they wash themselves, and
+flutter about in the water more than usual. Virgil has well described
+all these habits of aquatic birds.
+
+_Fieldfares_, when they arrive early, and in great numbers, in autumn,
+foreshow a hard winter, which has probably set in in the regions from
+which they have come.
+
+_Fishes_, when they bite more readily, and gambol near the surface of
+streams or pools, foreshow rain.
+
+_Flies_, and various sorts of insects, become more troublesome, and
+sting and bite more than usual, before, as well as in the intervals of
+rainy weather, particularly in autumn.
+
+_Frogs_, by their clamorous croaking, indicate rainy weather, as does
+likewise their coming about in great numbers in the evening; but this
+last sign applies more obviously to toads.
+
+_Geese_ washing, or taking wing with a clamorous noise, and flying to
+the water, portend rain.
+
+_Gnats_ afford several indications. When they fly in a vortex in the
+beams of the setting sun they forebode fair weather; when they frisk
+about more widely in the open air at eventide they foreshow heat; and
+when they assemble under trees, and bite more than usual, they indicate
+rain.
+
+_Hogs_, when they shake the stalks of corn, and spoil them, often
+indicate rain. When they run squeaking about, and jerk up their heads,
+windy weather is about to commence; hence the Wiltshire proverb, that
+"Pigs can see the wind."
+
+_Horses_ foretel the coming of rain by starting more than ordinarily,
+and by restlessness on the road.
+
+_Jackdaws_ are unusually clamorous before rain, as are also _Starlings_.
+Sometimes before change of weather the daws make a great noise in the
+chamber wherein they build.
+
+_Kine_ (cattle) are said to foreshow rain when they lick their
+fore-feet, or lie on their right side. Some say oxen licking themselves
+against the hair is a sign of wet.
+
+_Kites_, when they soar very high in the air, denote fair weather, as do
+also _Larks_.
+
+_Magpies_, in windy weather, often fly in small flocks of three or four
+together, uttering a strong harsh cry.
+
+_Mice_ when they squeak much, and gambol in the house, foretel a change
+of weather, and often rain.
+
+_Owls._--When an owl hoots or screeches, sitting on the top of a house,
+or by the side of a window, it is said to foretel death. "The fact,"
+says Forster, "seems to be this: the Owl, as Virgil justly observes,
+is more noisy at the change of weather, and as it often happens that
+patients with lingering diseases die at the change of weather, so the
+Owl seems, by a mistaken association of ideas, to forebode the calamity."
+
+_Peacocks_ squalling by night often foretel a rainy day. Forster adds,
+"This prognostic does not often fail; and the indication is made more
+certain by the crowing of Cocks all day, the braying of the Donkey, the
+low flight of Swallows, the aching of rheumatic persons, and by the
+frequent appearance of spiders on the walls of the house."
+
+_Pigeons._--It is a sign of rain when Pigeons return slowly to the
+dove-houses before the usual time of day.
+
+_Ravens_, when observed early in the morning, at a great height in the
+air, soaring round and round, and uttering a hoarse, croaking sound,
+indicate that the day will be fine. On the contrary, this bird affords
+us a sign of coming rain by another sort of cry; the difference between
+these two voices being more easily learned from nature than described.
+The Raven frequenting the shore and dipping himself in the water is also
+a sign of rain.
+
+_Redbreasts_, when they, with more than usual familiarity, lodge on our
+window-frames, and peck against the glass with their bills, indicate
+severe weather, of which they have a presentiment, which brings them
+nearer to the habitations of man.
+
+_Rooks_ gathering together, and returning home from their pastures
+early, and at unwonted hours, forebode rain. When Rooks whirl round in
+the air rapidly, and come down in small flocks, making a roaring noise
+with their wings, rough weather invariably follows. On the contrary,
+when Rooks are very noisy about their trees, and fly about as if
+rejoicing, Virgil assures us they foresee a return of fine weather, and
+an end of the showers.
+
+_Spiders_, when seen crawling on the walls more than usual, indicate
+rain. "This prognostic," says Forster, "seldom fails, I have noticed it
+for many years, particularly in winter, but more or less at all times of
+the year. In summer the quantity of webs of the garden spiders denote
+fair weather."
+
+_Swallows_, in fine and settled weather, fly higher in the air than they
+do just before or during a showery or rainy time. Then, also, Swallows
+flying low, and skimming over the surface of a meadow where there is
+tolerably long grass, frequently stop, and hang about the blades, as if
+they were gathering insects lodged there.
+
+_Swans_, when they fly against the wind, portend rain, a sign frequently
+fulfilled.
+
+_Toads_, when they come from their holes in an unusual number in the
+evening, although the ground be still dry, foreshow the coming rain,
+which will generally fall more or less during the night.
+
+_Urchins of the Sea_, a sort of fish, when they thrust themselves into
+the mud, and try to cover their bodies with sand, foreshow a storm.
+
+_Vultures_, when they scent carrion at a great distance, indicate that
+state of the atmosphere which is favourable to the perception of smells,
+and this often forebodes rain.
+
+_Willow Wrens_ are frequently seen, in mild and still rainy weather,
+flitting about the willows, pines, and other trees, in quest of insects.
+
+_Woodcocks_ appear in autumn earlier, and in greater numbers, previous
+to severe winters; as do Snipes and other winter birds.
+
+_Worms_ come forth more abundantly before rain, as do snails, slugs, and
+almost all limaceous animals.
+
+Some birds build their nests weather-proof, as ascertained by careful
+observation of Mr. M. W. B. Thomas, of Cincinnati, Ohio. Thus, when a
+pair of migratory birds have arrived in the spring, they prepare to
+build their nest, making a careful reconnaissance of the place, and
+observing the character of the season. If it be a windy one, they thatch
+the straw and leaves on the inside of the nest, between the twigs and
+the lining; if it be very windy, they get pliant twigs, and bind the
+nest firmly to the limb of the tree, securing all the small twigs with
+their saliva. If they fear the approach of a rainy season, they build
+their nests so as to be sheltered from the weather; but if a pleasant
+one, they build in a fair open place, without taking any of these extra
+precautions.
+
+Of all writers, Dr. Darwin has given us the most correct account of
+the "Signs of Rain," in a poetical description of the approach of foul
+weather, as follows. This passage has been often quoted, but, perhaps,
+never exceeded in the accuracy of its phenomenal observation:--
+
+    "The hollow winds begin to blow;
+    The clouds look black, the glass is low;
+    The soot falls down, the spaniels sleep;
+    And spiders from their cobwebs peep.
+    Last night the sun went pale to bed;
+    The moon in haloes hid her head;
+    The boding shepherd heaves a sigh,
+    For, see, a rainbow spans the sky.
+    The walls are damp, the ditches smell,
+    Clos'd is the light red pimpernel.
+    Hark! how the chairs and tables crack,
+    Old Betty's joints are on the rack;
+    Her corns with shooting pains torment her,
+    And to her bed untimely send her.
+    Loud quack the ducks, the sea-fowls cry,
+    The distant hills are looking nigh.
+    How restless are the snorting swine!
+    The busy flies disturb the kine.
+    Low o'er the grass the swallow wings,
+    The cricket, too, how sharp he sings!
+    Puss on the hearth, with velvet paws,
+    Sits wiping o'er her whisker'd jaws.
+    The smoke from chimneys right ascends;
+    Then spreading back, to earth it bends.
+    The wind unsteady veers around,
+    Or settling in the South is found.
+    Through the clear stream the fishes rise,
+    And nimbly catch th' incautious flies.
+    The glowworms num'rous, clear, and bright,
+    Illum'd the dewy hill last night.
+    At dusk, the squalid toad was seen,
+    Like quadruped, stalk o'er the green.
+    The whirling wind the dust obeys,
+    And in the rapid eddy plays.
+    The frog has chang'd his yellow vest,
+    And in a russet coat is drest.
+    The sky is green, the air is still,
+    The mellow blackbird's voice is shrill.
+    The dog, so altered is his taste,
+    Quits mutton-bones on grass to feast.
+    Behold the rooks, how odd their flight,
+    They imitate the gliding kite,
+    And seem precipitate to fall,
+    As if they felt the piercing ball.
+    The tender colts on banks do lie,
+    Nor heed the traveller passing by.
+    In fiery red the sun doth rise,
+    Then wades through clouds to mount the skies.
+    ''Twill surely rain, we see 't with sorrow,
+    No working in the fields to-morrow.'"
+
+The Shepherd of Banbury says:--"The surest and most certain sign of
+rain is taken from Bees, which are more incommoded by rain than almost
+any other creatures; and, therefore, as soon as the air begins to
+grow heavy, and the vapours to condense, they will not fly from their
+hives, but either remain in them all day, or else fly but to a small
+distance." Yet Bees are not always right in their prognostics, for
+Reaumur witnessed a swarm which, after leaving the hive at half-past one
+o'clock, were overtaken by a heavy shower at three.
+
+
+
+
+FISH-TALK.
+
+
+"Man favours wonders;" and this delight is almost endlessly exemplified
+in the stories of strange Fishes--of preternatural size and odd forms,
+which are to be found in their early history. In our present Talk we do
+not aim at re-assembling these olden tales, but propose rather to glance
+at recent accessions to our acquaintance with the study of Fish-life,
+and a few modern instances of the class of wonders.
+
+Fishes, like all other animals, have a very delicate sense of the
+equilibrial position of their bodies. They endeavour to counteract all
+change in their position by means of movements partly voluntary and
+partly instinctive. These latter appear in a very remarkable manner in
+the eye; and they are so constant and evident in fishes while alive,
+that their absence is sufficient to indicate the death of the animal.
+The equilibrium of the fish, its horizontal position, with the back
+upwards, depends solely on the action of the fins, and principally
+that of the vertical fins. The swimming-bladder may enable a fish
+to increase or diminish its specific gravity. By compressing the air
+contained in it, the fish descends in the water; it rises by releasing
+the muscles which produced the compression. By compressing more or
+less the posterior or anterior portion of the bladder, the animal, at
+pleasure, can make the anterior or posterior half of its body lighter;
+it can also assume an oblique position, which permits an ascending or
+descending movement in the water.
+
+There is a small fish found in the rivers of the Burmese Empire, which,
+on being taken out of the water, has the power of blowing itself up to
+the shape of a small round ball, but its original shape is resumed as
+soon as it is returned to the river.
+
+Mr. St. John, in his "Tour in Eastern Lanarkshire," gives some curious
+instances of fish changing colour, which takes place with surprising
+rapidity. Put a living black burn Trout into a white basin of water,
+and it becomes, within half an hour, of a light colour. Keep the fish
+living in a white jar for some days, and it becomes absolutely white;
+but put it into a dark-coloured or black vessel, and although on first
+being placed there the white-coloured fish shows most conspicuously on
+the black ground, in a quarter of an hour it becomes as dark-coloured
+as the bottom of the jar, and consequently difficult to be seen. No
+doubt this facility of adapting its colour to the bottom of the water
+in which it lives, is of the greatest service to the fish in protecting
+it from its numerous enemies. All anglers must have observed, that in
+every stream the Trout are very much of the same colour as the gravel or
+sand on which they live: whether this change of colour is a voluntary or
+involuntary act on the part of the fish, the scientific must determine.
+
+Anglers of our time have proved that Tench croak like frogs; Herrings
+cry like mice; Gurnards grunt like hogs; and some say the Gurnard makes
+a noise like a cuckoo, from which he takes one of his country names. The
+Maigre, a large sea-fish, when swimming in shoals, utters a grunting or
+piercing noise, that may be heard from a depth of twenty fathoms.
+
+M. Dufosse asserts that facts prove that nature has not refused to all
+fishes the power of expressing their instinctive sensations by sounds,
+but has not conferred on them the unity of mechanism in the formation
+of sonorous vibrations as in other classes of vertebrated animals.
+Some fishes, he says, are able to emit musical tones, engendered by a
+mechanism in which the muscular vibration is the principal motive power;
+others possess the faculty of making blowing sounds, like those of
+certain reptiles; and others can produce the creaking noise resembling
+that of many insects. These phenomena M. Dufosse has named "Fish-noise."
+
+The River Plate swarms with fish, and is the _habitat_ of one possessed
+of a very sonorous voice, like that found in the River Borneo--the
+account of which is quoted by Dr. Buist from the Journal of the
+Samarang; and there is similar testimony of a loud piscatory chorus
+being heard on board H.M.S. Eagle, anchored, in 1845-6, about three
+miles from Monte Video, during the night.
+
+That fishes hear has been doubted, although John Hunter was of this
+opinion, and has been followed by many observers. When standing beside
+a person angling, how often is the request made not to make a noise,
+as that would _alarm_ the fish. On the other hand, the Chinese drive
+the fish up to that part of the river where their nets are ready to
+capture them by loud yells and shouts, and the sound of gongs; but old
+AEsop writes of a fisherman who caught no fish because he alarmed them
+by playing on his flute while fishing. In Germany the Shad is taken
+by means of nets, to which bows of wood, hung with a number of little
+bells, are attached in such a manner as to chime in harmony when the
+nets are moved. The Shad, when once attracted by the sound, will not
+attempt to escape while the bells continue to ring. AElian says the
+Shad is allured by castanets. Macdiarmid, who declares that fishes
+hear as well as see, relates that an old Codfish, the patriarch of the
+celebrated fish-pond at Logan, "answered to his name; and not only
+drew near, but turned up his snout most beseechingly when he heard the
+monosyllable 'Tom;' and that he evidently could distinguish the voice of
+the fisherman who superintended the pond, and fed the fish, from that
+of any other fisherman." In the "Kaleidoscope" mention is made of three
+Trout in a pond near the powder-mills at Faversham, who were so tame
+as to come at the call of the person accustomed to feed them. Izaak
+Walton tells of a Carp coming to a certain part of a pond to be fed "at
+the ringing of a bell, or the beating of a drum;" and Sir John Hawkins
+was assured by a clergyman, a friend of his, that at the Abbey of St.
+Bernard, near Antwerp, he saw a Carp come to the edge of the water to be
+fed, at the whistle of the person who fed it. The Carp at Fontainebleau,
+inhabiting the lake adjoining the Imperial Palace, are of great size,
+and manifest a curious instinct. A Correspondent of the "Athenaeum"
+remarks:--
+
+     "Enjoying entire immunity from all angling arts and lures, the
+     Fontainebleau Carp live a life of great enjoyment, marred only, we
+     imagine, by their immense numbers causing the supply of food to be
+     somewhat below their requirements. It is not, however, very easy to
+     define what a Carp's requirements in the form of pabulum are, as he
+     is a voracious member of the ichthyological family, eating whenever
+     he has an opportunity until absolutely surfeited. His favourite
+     food consists of vegetable substances masticated by means of flat
+     striated teeth, which work with a millstone kind of motion against
+     a singular process of the lower part of the skull covered with
+     horny plates. When this fish obtains an abundant supply of food it
+     grows to an enormous size. Several continental rivers and lakes
+     are very congenial to Carp, and especially the Oder, where this
+     fish occasionally attains the enormous weight of 60 lb. It is not
+     probable that any Carp in the lake at Fontainebleau are so large as
+     this; but there are certainly many weighing 50 lb., patriarchs of
+     their kind, which, though olive-hued in their tender years, are now
+     white with age. That the great size of these fish is due to ample
+     feeding is, we think, evident, and, as we shall see presently, it
+     is the large fish that are the best fed. During many years the
+     feeding of the Carp at Fontainebleau has been a favourite Court
+     pastime. But it is from the visitors who frequent Fontainebleau
+     during a great part of the year that the Carp receive their
+     most bountiful rations. For big Carp have an enormous swallow,
+     soft penny rolls being mere mouthfuls, bolted with ostrich-like
+     celerity. So to prevent the immediate disappearance of these
+     _bonnes bouches_, bread, in the form of larger balls than the most
+     capacious Carp can take into his gullet, is baked until it becomes
+     as hard as biscuit, and with these balls the Carp are regailed.
+     Throw one into the lake, and you will quickly have an idea of the
+     enormous Carp population it contains. For no sooner does the bread
+     touch the water than it is surrounded by hundreds of these fish,
+     which dart to it from all sides. And now, if you look attentively,
+     you will witness a curious display of instinct, which might almost
+     take a higher name. Conscious, apparently, of their inability to
+     crush these extremely hard balls, the Carp combine with surprising
+     unanimity to push them to that part of the lake with their noses
+     where it is bounded by a wall, and when there they butt at them,
+     until at last their repeated blows and the softening effect of the
+     water causes them to yield and open. And now you will see another
+     curious sight. While shoals of Carp have been pounding away at
+     the bread-balls, preparing them for being swallowed, some dozen
+     monsters hover round, indifferent, apparently, to what is passing.
+     But not so, for no sooner is the bread ready for eating, than two
+     or three of these giants, but more generally one--the tyrant,
+     probably, of the lake--rush to the prize, cleaving the shoals of
+     smaller Carp, and shouldering them to the right and left, seize the
+     bread with open jaws, between which it quickly disappears."
+
+Some of the finest and oldest Carp are found in the windings of the
+Spree, in the tavern-gardens of Charlottenburg, the great resort of
+strollers from Berlin. Visitors are in the habit of feeding them with
+bread, and collect them together by ringing a bell, at the sound of
+which shoals of the fish may be seen popping their noses upwards from
+the water.
+
+The affection of fishes has only been properly understood of late years.
+It might be supposed that little natural affection existed in this
+cold-blooded race; and, in fact, fishes constantly devour their own
+eggs, and, at a later period, their own young, without compunction or
+discrimination. Some few species bear their eggs about with them until
+hatched. This was long thought to be the utmost extent of care which
+fishes lavished on their young; but Dr. Hancock has stepped in to rescue
+at least one species from this unmerited charge. "It is asserted," he
+says, "by naturalists, that no fishes are known to take any care of
+their offspring. Both species of _Hassar_ mentioned below, however, make
+a regular nest, in which they lay their eggs in a flattened cluster,
+and cover them over most carefully. Their care does not end here; they
+remain by the side of the nest till the spawn is hatched, with as much
+solicitude as a hen guards her eggs, both the male and female Hassar,
+for they are monogamous, steadily watching the spawn and courageously
+attacking the assailant. Hence the negroes frequently take them by
+putting their hands into the water close to the nest, on agitating which
+the male Hassar springs furiously at them, and is thus captured. The
+_roundhead_ forms its nest of grass, the _flathead_ of leaves. Both,
+at certain seasons, burrow in the bank. They lay their eggs only in
+wet weather. I have been surprised to observe the sudden appearance of
+numerous nests in a morning after rain occurs, the spot being indicated
+by a bunch of froth which appears on the surface of the water over
+the nest. Below this are the eggs, placed on a bunch of fallen leaves
+or grass, which they cut and collect together. By what means this is
+effected seems rather mysterious, as the species are destitute of
+cutting-teeth. It may, possibly, be by the use of their arms, which form
+the first ray of the pectoral fin."
+
+There is another operation by fishes, which seems to require almost
+equal experience. Professor Agassiz, while collecting insects along the
+shores of Lake Sebago, in Maine, observed a couple of Cat-fish, which,
+at his approach, left the shore suddenly, and returned to the deeper
+water. Examining the place which the fishes had left, he discovered
+a _nest_ among the water-plants, with a number of little tadpoles.
+In a few moments the two fishes returned, looking anxiously towards
+the nest, and approached within six or eight feet of where Professor
+Agassiz stood. They were evidently not in search of food, and he became
+convinced that they were seeking the protection of their young. Large
+stones, thrown repeatedly into the middle of the nest after the fishes
+had returned to it, only frightened them away for a brief period, and
+they returned to the spot within ten or fifteen minutes. This was
+repeated four or five times with the same result. This negatives the
+assertion made by some naturalists--that no fishes are known to take any
+care of their offspring.
+
+But affection is scarcely to be looked for where the offspring is so
+very numerous as to put all attempts at even recognising them out of
+the question. How could the fondest mother love 100,000 little ones at
+once? Yet the number is far exceeded by some of the matrons of the deep.
+Petit found 300,000 eggs in a single carp; Lenwenhoeck 9,000,000 in a
+single cod; Mr. Harmer found in a sole 100,000; in a tench 300,000;
+in a mackerel 500,000; and in a flounder 1,357,000.[14] M. Rousseau
+disburthened a pike of 160,000, and a sturgeon of 1,567,000, while from
+this latter class has been gotten 119 pounds weight of eggs, which, at
+the rate of 7 to a grain, would give a total amount of 7,653,200 eggs!
+If all these came to maturity the world would be in a short time nothing
+but fish: means, however, amply sufficient to keep down this unwelcome
+superabundance have been provided. Fish themselves, men, birds, other
+marine animals, to say nothing of the dispersions produced by storms
+and currents, the destruction consequent on their being thrown on the
+beach and left there to dry up, all combine to diminish this excessive
+supply over demand. Yet, on the other hand (so wonderfully are all
+the contrivances of nature so harmonized and balanced), one of these
+apparent modes of destruction becomes an actual means of extending the
+species. The eggs of the pike, barbel, and many other fish, says M.
+Virey, are rendered indigestible by an acid oil which they contain, and
+in consequence of which they are passed in the same condition as they
+were swallowed; the result of which is, that being taken in by ducks,
+grebes, or other water-fowls, they are thus transported to situations,
+such as inland lakes, which otherwise they could never have attained;
+and in this way only can we account for the fact, now well ascertained,
+that several lakes in the Alps, formed by the thawing of the glaciers,
+are now abundantly stocked with excellent fish.
+
+Little fishes are ordinarily the food of larger marine animals; but a
+remarkable exception occurs in the case of the larger Medusae, which
+are stated in various works to prey upon fishes for sustenance. Mr.
+Peach, the naturalist, has, however, by observations at Peterhead, in
+Aberdeenshire, thus corrected this statement. He observed several small
+fishes playing round the larger Medusae in the harbour and bay. When
+alarmed, they would rush under the umbrella, and remain sheltered in
+its large folds till the danger had passed, when they would emerge,
+and sport and play about their sheltering friend. When beneath the
+umbrella they lay so close that they were frequently taken into a bucket
+with the Medusae. They proved to be young whitings, varying from 1-1/2
+to 2 inches long. These little creatures, so far from becoming the
+prey of the Medusae, experienced from them protection; and, moreover,
+they preferred the _stinging_ one. In no instance did Mr. Peach see a
+fish in the stomach of the Medusae, but all could liberate themselves
+when they pleased. In one case, Mr. Peach witnessed a small whiting,
+in the first instance chased by a single young pollack, whose assault
+the little fellow easily evaded by dodging about; but the chaser being
+joined by others, the whiting was driven from its imperfect shelter, and
+after being much bitten and dashed about by its assailants, became at
+length completely exhausted, and lay to all appearance dead. Recovering,
+however, after action, it swam slowly to the Medusae, and took refuge as
+before; but its movements being soon observed, it was again attacked,
+after a very brief respite, driven into open water, and speedily
+despatched.
+
+Fishes appear to execute annually two great migrations. By one of these
+shiftings they forsake the deep water for a time, and approach the
+shallow shores, and by the other they return to their more concealed
+haunts. These movements are connected with the purposes of spawning,
+the fry requiring to come into life, and to spend a certain portion
+of their youth in situations different from those which are suited
+to the period of maturity. It is in obedience to these arrangements
+that the Cod and Haddock, the Mackerel, and others, annually leave
+the deeper and less accessible parts of the ocean, the region of the
+zoophytic tribes, and deposit their spawn within that zone of marine
+vegetation which fringes our coasts, extending from near the high-water
+mark of neap-tides to a short distance beyond the low-water mark of
+spring-tides. Amidst the shelter in this region afforded by the groves
+of arborescent fuci, the young fish were wont in comfort to spend
+their infancy, but since these plants have been so frequently cut down
+to procure materials for the manufacture of kelp, and the requisite
+protection withdrawn, the fisheries have greatly suffered. Many species
+of fish, as the Salmon, Smelt, and others, in forsaking the deep water,
+and approaching a suitable spawning station, leave the sea altogether
+for a time, ascend the rivers and their tributary streams, and, having
+deposited their eggs, return again to their usual haunts. Even a certain
+species of fish, inhabiting lakes, as the Roach, betake themselves to
+the tributary streams, as the most suitable places for spawning.
+
+The Goramy, of India, are stated by General Hardwicke to watch most
+actively the margins of the spot which they select and prepare for
+depositing their spawn, driving away with violence every other fish
+which approaches their cover. The General adds that from the time he
+first noticed this circumstance about one month had elapsed, when one
+day he saw numerous minute fishes close to the margin of the grass, on
+the outer side of which the parent fishes continued to pass to and fro.
+
+There is a species of Grampus from two to three tons weight, and about
+sixteen feet in length, that amuses itself with jumping, or rather
+springing its ponderous body entirely out of the water, in a vertical
+position, and falling upon its back. This effort of so large a fish is
+almost incredible, and informs us how surprisingly great the power of
+muscle must be in this class of animal. A Correspondent writes to the
+"United Service Journal":--"I have seen them spring out of the water
+within ten yards of the ship's side, generally in the evening, after
+having swam all the former part of the day in the ship's wake, or on
+either quarter. When several of these fish take it into their heads to
+'dance a hornpipe,' as the sailors term their gambols, at the distance
+of half a mile, they, especially at or just after sundown, may easily
+be mistaken for the sharp points of rocks sticking up out of the water,
+and the splashing and foam they make and produce have the appearance
+of the action of waves upon rocks. An officer of the navy informed me
+that, after sunset, when near the equator, he was not a little alarmed
+and surprised at the cry of 'rocks on the starboard bow!' Looking
+forward, he indistinctly saw objects which he and all on board took
+to be pinnacles of several rocks of a black and white colour. In a
+short time, however, he discovered this formidable danger to be nothing
+more than a company of dancing Grampuses with white bellies. As one
+disappeared, another rose; so that there were at least five or six
+constantly above the surface."
+
+Captain Owen relates that "the Bonita has the power of throwing itself
+out of the water to an almost incredible distance when in pursuit of
+its prey, the Flying Fish; and, the day previous to our arrival at
+Mozambique, one of these fish rose close under our bow, and passed under
+the vessel's side, and struck with such force against the poop, that,
+had any one received the blow, it must have been fatal. Stunned by the
+violence of the contact, it fell motionless at the helmsman's feet; but,
+soon recovering, its struggles were so furious that it became necessary
+to inflict several blows with an axe before it could be approached
+with safety. The greatest elevation it attained above the surface of
+water was eighteen feet, and the length of the leap, had no opposition
+occurred, would have exceeded 180."
+
+Of winged or Flying Fish we find this extravagant account in a
+philosophical romance, entitled, "Telliamed," by M. Maillet, an
+ingenious Frenchman, of the days of Louis XV.:--
+
+     He believed, like Lamarck, that the whole family of birds had
+     existed one time as fishes, which, on being thrown ashore by the
+     waves, had got feathers by accident; and that men themselves are
+     but the descendants of a tribe of sea-monsters, who, tiring of
+     their proper element, crawled upon the beach one sunny morning,
+     and, taking a fancy to the land, forgot to return. The account
+     is as amusing as a fairy tale. "Winged or Flying Fish," says
+     Maillet, "stimulated by the desire of prey, or the fear of death,
+     or pushed near the shore by the billows, have fallen among the
+     reeds or herbage, whence it was not possible for them to resume
+     their flight to the sea, by means of which they had contracted
+     their first facility of flying. Then their fins, being no longer
+     bathed in the sea-water, were split and became warped by their
+     dryness. While they found among the reeds and herbage among which
+     they fell many aliments to support them, the vessels of their fins
+     being separated, were lengthened, or clothed with beards, or, to
+     speak more justly, the membranes which before kept them adherent
+     to each other were metamorphosed. The beard formed of these warped
+     membranes was lengthened. The skin of these animals was insensibly
+     covered with a down of the same colour with the skin, and this
+     down gradually increased. The little wings they had under their
+     belly, and which, like their wings, helped them to walk into the
+     sea, became feet, and helped them to walk on the land. There were
+     also other small changes in their figure. The beak and neck of some
+     were lengthened, and of others shortened. The conformity, however,
+     of the first figure subsists in the whole, and it will be always
+     easy to know it. Examine all the species of fowl, even those of the
+     Indies, those which are tufted or not, those whose feathers are
+     reversed--such as we see at Damietta, that is to say, whose plumage
+     runs from the tail to the head--and you will see fine species
+     of fish quite similar, scaly or without scales. All species of
+     Parrots, whose plumages are different, the rarest and most singular
+     marked birds, are, conformable to fact, painted, like them, black,
+     brown, grey, yellow, green, red, violet colour, and those of gold
+     and azure; and all this precisely in the same parts, where the
+     plumages of these birds are diversified in so curious a manner."
+
+The Jaculator Fish, of Java, has been called "a sporting fish," from the
+precision with which it takes aim at its prey. In 1828 Mr. Mitchell
+saw several of these fishes in the possession of a Javanese chief; and
+here is the account of the curious manner in which these Jaculators were
+employed. They were placed in a small circular pond, from the centre
+of which projected a pole upwards of two feet in height. At the top of
+the pole were inserted small pieces of wood, sharp-pointed, and on each
+of these were placed insects of the beetle tribe. When the slaves had
+placed the beetles, the fish came out of their holes, and swam round the
+pond. One of them came to the surface of the water, rested there, and
+after steadily fixing its eyes for some time on an insect, it discharged
+from its mouth a small quantity of watery fluid, with such force, and
+precision of aim, as to strike it off the twig into the water, and in
+an instant swallowed it. After this, another fish came, and performed
+a similar feat, and was followed by the others, until they had secured
+all the insects. If a fish failed in bringing down its prey at the first
+shot, it swam round the pond till it came opposite the same object, and
+fired again. In one instance, a fish returned three times to the attack
+before it secured its prey; but in general the fish seemed very expert
+gunners, bringing down the beetle at the first shot. The fish, in a
+state of nature, frequents the shores and sides of the rivers in search
+of food. When it spies a fly sitting on the plants that grow on shallow
+water, it swims on to the distance of five or six feet from them, and
+then, with surprising dexterity, it ejects out of its tubular mouth a
+single drop of water, which rarely fails to strike the fly into the
+sea, where it soon becomes its prey.
+
+Curious fish, in great numbers, may be seen in the Harbour of Port
+Royal, Jamaica, on the surface of the water, and are ranked among the
+peculiarities of the place. They are the Guardo, or Guard-Fish; the Jack
+(Sword-Fish); and the Ballahou. The Jack is the largest, and appears to
+be always at war with the two others; it is armed with formidable teeth;
+it basks on the surface of the water during the heat of the day, in a
+sort of indolent, unguarded state; but this is assumed, the better to
+ensnare the other fish, and to catch the floating bodies that may happen
+to pass near it; for the moment anything is thrown into the sea from
+the ship, the Jack darts with the rapidity of lightning upon it, and
+seizing it as quickly, retreats. This Warrior-fish possesses a foresight
+or instinctive quality which we see sometimes exemplified in different
+animals, almost amounting to second reason, such as the sagacity it
+displays in avoiding the hook when baited; although extremely voracious,
+it seems aware of the lure held out for its destruction, and avoids
+it with as much cunning as the generality of fishes show eagerness to
+devour it. The situation it takes, immediately in the wake of the ship
+at anchor, is another instance of its sagacity; as whatever is thrown
+overboard passes astern, where the fish is ever on the alert for the
+articles thrown over. No other fish of equal size dare approach. The
+Jack is, however, sometimes enticed with the bait; but he is more
+frequently struck with a barbed lance, or entrapped in a net. The
+Guardo has similar habits with the Jack, but is generally beaten by
+him; yet the former tyrannizes with unrelenting rigour over the weaker
+associate, the Ballahou.
+
+The tiger of the ocean, the Shark, is often cruising about Port Royal,
+but rarely injures human life. At Kingston, however, such distressing
+events often occur. There was a pet Shark known as "Old Tom of Port
+Royal;" it was fed whenever it approached any of the ships, but was at
+last killed by the father of a child which it had devoured. Whilst it
+remained here, no other of the Shark tribe dare venture on his domain;
+he reigned lord paramount in his watery empire, and never committed any
+depredation but that for which he suffered.
+
+Attending the Shark is seen the beautiful little Pilot Fish, who, first
+approaching the bait, returns as if to give notice, when, immediately
+after, the Shark approaches to seize it. It is a curious circumstance,
+that this elegant little fish is seen in attendance only upon the Shark.
+After the Shark is hooked, the Pilot Fish still swims about, and for
+some time after he has been hauled on deck; it then swims very near the
+surface of the water. When the Shark has been hooked, and afterwards
+escapes, he generally returns, and renews the attack with increased
+ferocity, irritated often by the wound he has received.
+
+Sharks appear to have become of late years much more numerous in Faroe,
+as they have also in other parts of the North Seas, especially on the
+coast of Norway.
+
+The reader may, probably, have found on the sea-shore certain cases,
+which are fancifully called sea-purses, Mermaids' purses, &c. Now,
+some Sharks bring forth their young alive, whilst others are enclosed
+in oblong semi-transparent, horny cases, at each extremity of which
+are two long tendrils. These cases are the above _purses_, which the
+parent Shark deposits near the shore in the winter months. The twisting
+tendrils hang to sea-weed, or other fixed bodies, to prevent the cases
+being washed away into deep water. Two fissures, one at each end, allow
+the admission of sea-water; and here the young Shark remains until it
+has acquired the power of taking food by the mouth, when it leaves what
+resembles its cradle. The young fish ultimately escapes by an opening at
+the end, near which the head is situated.
+
+California has yielded an extraordinary novelty in fish history. In 1854
+Mr. Jackson, while fishing in San Salita Bay, caught with a hook and
+line a fish of the perch family _containing living young_. These were
+supposed to be the prey which the fish had swallowed, but on opening
+the belly was found next to the back of the fish, and slightly attached
+to it, a long very light violet bag, so clear and transparent that
+there could already be distinguished through it the shape, colour, and
+formation of a multitude of small fish (all facsimiles of each other),
+with which the bag was filled. They were in all respects like the
+mother, and like each other; and there cannot remain a single doubt that
+these young were the offspring of the fish from whose body they were
+taken; and that this species of fish gives birth to her young alive
+and perfectly formed, and adapted to seek its own livelihood in the
+water. Professor Agassiz has confirmed the truth of this extraordinary
+statement by a careful examination of the specimens, and has ascertained
+that there are two very distinct species of this remarkable type of
+fishes.
+
+Tales of "Wonderful Fish" are common in the works of the old
+naturalists, whence they are quoted from generation to generation.
+Sir John Richardson has lately demolished one queer fish, which was
+as certain to reappear whenever opportunity offered, as the elephant
+pricked with the tailor's needle does in books of stories of the animal
+world. We allude to that monstrous myth, the great Manheim Pike, with
+a collar round his neck, put into a lake by the Emperor Frederick II.
+in the year 1230; and taken out in the 276th year of his age, the 17th
+foot of his length, and the 350th pound of his weight. M. Valenciennes,
+a naturalist of repute, has entered into a critical history of this
+monster, and has found him to be apocryphal. The creature was, at any
+rate, taken in several places at once, the legends written on his
+brass collar do not agree, and his alleged skeleton has been found
+to be made up of various bones of various fishes; while the vertebrae
+are, unfortunately, so many, that Professor Owen would order him out
+of Court in an instant as a rank impostor. Probably some specimen of
+the _Mecho_, the monstrous fish of the Danube--which has even now been
+scarcely described, and which has only recently been identified as one
+of the salmon tribe--having been called a pike, may be at the bottom of
+the legend of the great Manheim fish. But Sir John Richardson produces
+another big pike, killed by an intrepid "angler seventy years of age,
+with a single rod and bait"--an observation which leads to the inquiry
+of the possibility of catching a single fish with more than one rod
+and bait--"that weighed seventy-eight pounds." This is stated to have
+happened in the county of Clare; the angler's name was O'Flanagan.
+
+Here is another wonderful story:--The Bohemians have a proverb--"Every
+fish has another for prey:" that named the Wels has them all. This is
+the largest fresh-water fish found in the rivers of Europe, except the
+sturgeon; it often reaches five or six feet in length. It destroys many
+aquatic birds, and we are assured that it does not spare the human
+species. On the 3d of July, 1700, a peasant took one near Thorn, that
+had an infant entire in its stomach! They tell in Hungary of children
+and young girls being devoured on going to draw water; and they even
+relate that, on the frontiers of Turkey, a poor fisherman took one that
+had in its stomach the body of a woman, her purse full of gold, and
+a _ring_! The fish is even reported to have been taken sixteen feet
+long. The old stories of rings found in the stomachs of fishes will be
+remembered; as well as here and there a _book_ found in the stomach of a
+fish!
+
+The Sun-fish is exceedingly rare. A large specimen was captured off
+Start Point in 1864. Attention was first drawn to a huge dark object on
+the water. On a boat being sent out, it was soon discovered to be the
+back fin of a very large fish, apparently asleep. A very exciting chase
+commenced, extending over an hour, the crew meanwhile battling with
+harpoons, boat-hooks, &c.; the fish trying several times to upset the
+boat by getting his back under it. At length a line was thrown over its
+head, and the fish, being weakened by the struggle, was towed alongside
+the yacht, hoisted on board, and slaughtered. Yarrell, in his work on
+British Fishes, states the largest Sun-fish to be about 3 cwt., but the
+above specimen weighed nearly 6 cwt. Sun-fish are found occasionally in
+the tropical seas of large dimensions, but those found in the Channel
+seldom if ever exceed from 1 cwt. to 2 cwt. The peculiarities in regard
+to this fish are, that it has no bones, but the whole of the formation
+is of cartilage, which can easily be cut with a knife. The skin is
+cartilage of about an inch and a-half thick, under which there is no
+backbone or ribs. This specimen was of extraordinary dimensions--5 ft.
+10 in. in length, and 7 ft. from the tip of the dorsal to the point of
+the anal fin.
+
+The "Courrier de Sagon" brings, as a contribution to Natural History,
+the not very credible-sounding description of a fish called "Ca-oug"
+in the Anamite tongue, which is said to have saved the lives already
+of several Anamites; for which reason the King of Anam has invested it
+with the name of "Nam hai dui bnong gnan" (Great General of the South
+Sea). This fish is said to swim round ships near the coast, and, when it
+sees a man in the water, to seize him with his mouth, and to carry him
+ashore. A skeleton of this singular inhabitant of the deep is to be seen
+at Wung-tau, near Cape St. James. It is reported to be thirty-five feet
+in length, to have tusks "almost like an elephant," very large eyes, a
+black and smooth skin, a tail like a lobster, and two "wings" on its
+back.[15]
+
+The Grouper must be a voracious fish, for we read of a specimen being
+caught off the coast of Queensland, which is thus described:--"It was
+7 ft. long, 6 ft. in circumference at its thickest part, and its head
+weighed 80 lb. When opened, there were found in its stomach two broken
+bottles, a quart pot, a preserved milk tin, seven medium-sized crabs; a
+piece of earthenware, triangular in shape, and three inches in length,
+incrusted with oyster shells, a sheep's head, some mutton and beef
+bones, and some loose oyster shells. The spine of a skate was imbedded
+in the Grouper's liver."
+
+The Double-fish, here represented, is a pair of Cat-fish, which were
+taken alive in a shrimp-net, at the mouth of Cape Fear River, near
+Fort Johnston. North Carolina, in 1833, and presented to Professor
+Silliman. One of them is three and a-half, and the other two and a-half
+inches long, including the tail--the smallest emaciated, and of sickly
+appearance. They are connected in the manner of the Siamese Twins, by
+the skin at the breast, which is marked by a dark streak at the line of
+union. The texture and colour otherwise of this skin is the same as that
+of the belly. The mouth, viscera, &c., were entire and perfect in each
+fish; but, on withdrawing the entrails, through an incision made on one
+side of the abdomen, the connecting integument was found to be hollow.
+A flexible probe was passed through from one to the other, with the
+tender and soft end of a spear of grass, drawn from a green plant. But
+there was no appearance of the entrails of one having come in contact
+with those of the other, for the integument was less than one-tenth of
+an inch in its whole thickness; in length, from the body or trunk of
+one fish to the other, it was three-tenths; and in the water, when the
+largest fish was in its natural position, the small one could, by the
+length and pliancy of this skin, swim in nearly the same position. When
+these fish came into existence it is probable they were of almost equal
+size and strength, but one "born to better fortune," or exercising more
+ingenuity and industry than the other, gained a trifling ascendency,
+which he improved to increase the disparity, and, by pushing his
+extended mouth in advance of the other, seized the choicest and most of
+the food for himself.
+
+From the northern parts of British America we have received
+extraordinary contributions to our fish collections. One of these is
+the Square-browed Malthe, obtained in one of the land expeditions under
+the command of Captain Sir John Franklin. R.N. It was taken on the
+Labrador coast, and then belonged to a species hitherto undescribed.
+Its intestines were filled with small crabs and univalve shells. The
+extreme length of the fish is 7 inches 11 lines. The upper surface
+is greyish white, with brown blotches, and the fins are whitish. The
+head is much depressed and greatly widened; the eyes far forward; the
+snout projecting like a small horn. Most of the fish of this family
+can live long out of water, in consequence of the smallness of their
+gill-openings; indeed, those of one of the genera are able, even in warm
+countries, to pass two or three days in creeping over the land. All the
+family conceal themselves in the mud or sand, and lie in wait to take
+their prey by surprise. The accompanying engraving is from the very
+able work of Dr. Richardson, F.R.S., published by the munificence of
+Government.
+
+[Illustration: SQUARE-BROWED MALTHE AND DOUBLE FISH.]
+
+Gold Fish (of the Carp family) have been made to distinguish a
+particular sound made by those from whom they receive their food; they
+recognise their footsteps at a distance, and come at their call. Captain
+Brown says Gold Fish, when kept in ponds, are "frequently taught to rise
+to the surface of the water at the sound of a bell to be fed;" and Mr.
+Jesse was assured that Gold Fish evince much pleasure on being whistled
+to. Hakewill, in his "Apology for God's Power and Providence," cites
+Pliny to show that a certain emperor had ponds containing fish, which,
+when called by their respective _names_ that were bestowed upon them,
+came to the spot whence the voice proceeded. Bernier, in his "History
+of Hindustan," states a like circumstance of the fish belonging to the
+Great Mogul. The old poet, Martial, also mentions fish coming at the
+call, as will be seen by the following translation from one of his
+epigrams:--
+
+    "Angler! could'st thou be guiltless? Then forbear:
+    For these are sacred fishes that swim here;
+    Who know their Sovereign, and will lick his hand.
+    Than which none's greater in the world's command;
+    Nay, more; they've names, and when they called are.
+    Do to their several owners' call repair."
+
+Who, after reading so many instances, can doubt that fish hear?
+
+It has been found that the water from steam-engines, which is thrown
+into dams or ponds for the purpose of being cooled, conduces much to
+the nutriment of Gold Fish. In these dams, the average temperature
+of which is about eighty degrees, it is common to keep Gold Fish; in
+which situation they multiply much more rapidly than in ponds of lower
+temperature exposed to variations of the climate. Three pair of fish
+were put into one of these dams, where they increased so rapidly that at
+the end of three years their progeny, which was accidentally poisoned
+by verdigris mixed with the refuse tallow from the engine, were taken
+out by wheel-barrow-fuls. Gold Fish are by no means useless inhabitants
+of these dams, as they consume the refuse grease which would otherwise
+impede the cooling of the water by accumulating on its surface. It is
+not improbable that this unusual supply of aliment may co-operate with
+increase of temperature in promoting the fecundity of the fishes.
+
+Most of our readers have heard of the fish popularly known as the
+Miller's Thumb, the origin of the name of which Mr. Yarrell has thus
+explained:--"It is well known that all the science and tact of a miller
+is directed so to regulate the machinery of his mill that the meal
+produced shall be of the most valuable description that the operation
+of grinding will permit, when performed under the most advantageous
+circumstances. His ear is constantly directed to the note made by the
+running stone in its circular course over the bedstone, the exact
+parallelism of their two surfaces, indicated by a particular sound,
+being a matter of the first consequence; and his hand is constantly
+placed under the meal-spout to ascertain, by actual contact, the
+character and quality of the meal produced, which he does by a
+particular movement of his thumb in spreading the sample over his
+fingers. By this incessant action of the miller's thumb, a peculiarity
+in its shape is produced, which is said to resemble exactly the shape of
+the _river bull-head_, a fish constantly found in the mill-stream, and
+which has obtained for it the name of the Miller's Thumb."
+
+M. Coste has constructed a kind of marine observatory at Concarneau
+(Finisterre) for the purpose of studying the habits and instincts of
+various Sea-fish. A terrace has been formed on the top of a house on the
+quay, with reservoirs arranged like a flight of steps. The sea-water is
+pumped up to the topmost reservoir, and thence flows down slowly, after
+the manner of a rivulet. The length is divided into 95 cells by wire
+net partitions, which, allowing free passage to the water, yet prevent
+the different species of fish from mingling together. By this ingenious
+contrivance each kind lives separate, enjoying its peculiar food and
+habits, unconscious of its state of captivity. Some species, such as the
+Mullet, the Stickleback, &c., grow perfectly tame, will follow the hand
+that offers them food, and will even allow themselves to be taken out of
+the water. The Goby and Bull-head are less familiar. The Turbot, which
+looks so unintelligent, will, nevertheless, take food from the hand;
+it changes colour when irritated, the spots with which it is covered
+growing pale or dark, according to the emotions excited in it. But
+the most curious circumstance concerning it is, that it swallows fish
+of a much larger size than would appear compatible with the apparent
+smallness of its mouth. Thus, a young Turbot, not more than ten inches
+in length, has been seen to swallow Pilchards of the largest size. The
+Pipe-Fish has two peculiarities. These fish form groups, entwining their
+tails together, and remaining immoveable in a vertical position, with
+their heads upwards. When food is offered them, they perform a curious
+evolution--they turn round on their backs to receive it. This is owing
+to the peculiar position of the mouth, which is placed under a kind of
+beak, and perpendicular to its axis.
+
+The crustaceous tribes have also furnished much matter of observation.
+The Prawn and Crab, for instance, exercises the virtue of conjugal
+fidelity to the highest degree; for the male takes hold of his mate,
+and never lets her go; he swims with her, crawls about with her, and if
+she is forcibly taken away from him, he seizes hold of her again. The
+metamorphoses to which various crustaceous tribes are subject have also
+been studied with much attention.[16]
+
+Much as the nature and habits of fish have been studied of late years,
+the economy of some is to this day involved in obscurity. The Herring
+is one of these fishes. The Swedish Herring Fisheries were, at one
+time, the largest in Europe, but at present, during the temporary
+disappearance of the fish, they have dwindled away. The causes which
+influence the movements of the Herring--one of the most capricious of
+fish--are a puzzle which naturalists have as yet failed to solve. They
+are not migratory, as was at one time believed--that is, they seldom
+wander far from the place where they were bred; but they are influenced
+by certain hidden and unexplained causes at one time to remain for years
+in the deep sea, and at another to come close in to land in enormous
+numbers. During the first half of the sixteenth century, Herrings
+entirely deserted the Swedish coasts. In 1556 they reappeared, and
+remained for thirty-one years in the shallow waters. Throughout this
+period they were taken in incalculable numbers; "thousands of ships came
+annually from Denmark, Germany, Friesland, Holland, England, and France,
+to purchase the fish, of which sufficient were always found for them
+to carry away to their own or other countries.... From the small town
+of Marstrand alone some two million four hundred thousand bushels were
+yearly exported." In 1587 the Herrings disappeared, and remained absent
+for seventy-three years, till 1660. In 1727 they returned, and again in
+1747, remaining till 1808, and during this last period the fisheries
+were prosecuted with extraordinary zeal, industry, and success. The
+Government gave every encouragement to settlers, and it was computed
+that during some years as many as fifty thousand strangers took part
+in them. In 1808 the Herrings once more disappeared, and have never
+returned since. The cause must still be considered as quite unknown; but
+we may fairly assume, according to historical precedents, that after a
+certain period of absence, the Herrings will again return.[17]
+
+Aristotle, in his "History of Animals," makes some extremely curious
+observations on Fish and Cetaceous Animals, as might be expected from
+the variety of these animals in the Grecian seas. In Spratt and Forbes's
+"Travels in Syria" the account of the habits and structure of the
+Cuttle-fish in Aristotle's work is ranked amongst the most admirable
+natural history essays ever written. It is, moreover, remarkable for its
+anticipation.
+
+Dr. Osborne, in 1840, read to the Royal Society a short analysis of
+this work, in which he showed that Aristotle anticipated Dr. Jenner's
+researches respecting the cuckoo; as also some discoveries respecting
+the incubated egg, which were published as new in the above year.
+Aristotle describes the economy of bees as we have it at present; but
+mistakes the sex of the queen. The various organs are described as
+modified throughout the different classes of animals (beginning with
+man) in nearly the same order as that afterwards adopted by Cuvier.
+
+The chief value of this body of knowledge, which has been buried for
+above 2,000 years, is, that it is a collection of facts observed under
+peculiar advantages, such as never since occurred, and that _it is at
+the present day to be consulted for new discoveries_.
+
+According to Pliny, for the above work some thousands of men were placed
+at Aristotle's disposal throughout Greece and Asia, comprising persons
+connected with hunting and fishing, or who had the care of cattle,
+fish-ponds, and apiaries, in order that he might obtain information from
+all quarters, _ne quid usquam gentium ignoretur ab eo_. According to
+Athenaeus, Aristotle received from the prince, on account of the expenses
+of the work, 800 talents, or upwards of 79,000_l._
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[14] A tench was brought to Mr. Harmer so full of spawn that the skin
+was burst by a slight knock, and many thousands of the eggs were lost;
+yet even after this misfortune he found the remainder to amount to
+383,252! Of other marine animals, which he includes under the general
+term fish, the fecundity, though sufficiently great, is by no means
+enormous. A lobster yielded 7,227 eggs; a prawn 3,806; and a shrimp
+3,057. See Mr. Harmer's paper, "Philosophical Transactions," 1767.
+
+[15] "Athenaeum."
+
+[16] See "The Tree-climbing Crab," pp. 282-302.
+
+[17] "Saturday Review."
+
+
+
+
+FISH IN BRITISH COLOMBIA.
+
+
+In this bitterly cold country, where the snow lies deep six months out
+of the twelve, the natives subsist principally on fish, of which there
+is an extraordinary abundance generally, and of salmon particularly.
+Salmon swarm in such numbers that the rivers cannot hold them. In June
+and July every rivulet, no matter how shallow, is so crammed with salmon
+that, from sheer want of room, they push one another high and dry upon
+the pebbles; and Mr. Lord[18] tells us that each salmon, with its head
+up, struggles, fights, and scuffles for precedence. With one's hands
+only, or more easily by employing a gaff or a crook-stick, tons of
+salmon have been procured by the simple process of hooking them out.
+Once started on their journey, the salmon never turn back. As fast as
+those in front die, fresh arrivals crowd on to take their places, and
+share their fate. "It is a strange and novel sight to see three moving
+lines of fish--the dead and dying in the eddies and slack water along
+the bank, the living breasting the current in the centre, blindly
+pressing on to perish like their kindred." For two months this great
+_salmon army_ proceeds on its way up stream, furnishing a supply of food
+without which the Indians must perish miserably. The winters are too
+severe for them to venture out in search of food, even if there was any
+to be obtained. From being destitute of salt, they are unable to cure
+meat in the summer for winter provisions, and hence for six months in
+the year they depend upon salmon, which they preserve by drying in the
+sun.
+
+But the Indian has another source of provision for the winter, fully
+as important as the salmon. The Candle-fish supplies him at once with
+light, butter, and oil.[19] When dried, and perforated with a rush,
+or strip of cypress-bark, it can be lighted, and burns steadily until
+consumed. Strung up, and hung for a time in the smoke of a wood fire,
+it is preserved as a fatty morsel to warm him when pinched with cold;
+and, by heat and pressure, it is easily converted into liquid oil, and
+drunk with avidity. That nothing may be wanting, the hollow stalk of the
+sea-wrack, which at the root is expanded into a complete flask, makes an
+admirable bottle; and so, when the Indian buries himself for long dreary
+months in his winter quarters, neither his larder nor his cellar are
+empty, and he has a lamp to lighten the darkness. The steamers have,
+however, frightened away the Candle-fish and the Indian from their old
+haunts, and they have both retreated to the north of the Colombia River.
+
+Amongst the other inhabitants of the salt and fresh waters of these
+regions are the Halibut and the Sturgeon, both of which attain to an
+immense size. The bays and inlets along the coast abound with marine
+wonders. There feasts and fattens the Clam, a bivalve so gigantic that
+no oyster-knife can force an entrance, and only when his shell is almost
+red-hot will he be at last constrained to open his dwelling.
+
+And there lies in wait the awful Octopus, a monster of insatiable
+voracity, of untameable ferocity, and of consummate craft; of sleepless
+vigilance, shrouded amidst the forest of sea-weed, and from the touch of
+whose terrible arms no living thing escapes. It attains to an enormous
+size in those seas, the arms being sometimes five feet in length, and as
+thick at the base as a man's wrist. No bather would have a chance if he
+once got within the grasp of such a monster, nor could a canoe resist
+the strength of its pull; but the Indian, who devours the Octopus with
+great relish, has all the cunning created by necessity, and takes care
+that none of the eight sucker-dotted arms ever gain a hold on his frail
+bark.
+
+Professor Owen has figured a species of Octopus, the Eight-armed Cuttle
+of the European seas, representing it in the act of creeping on shore,
+its body being carried vertically in the reverse position, with its head
+downwards, and its back being turned towards the spectator, upon whom it
+is supposed to be advancing. This animal is said to be luminous in the
+dark. Linnaeus quotes Bartholinus for the statement that one gave so much
+light that when the candle was taken away, it illuminated the room.
+
+The Sturgeon is one of the finest fishes of the country, and Mr. Lord's
+account of the Indian mode of taking them is a very graphic picture of
+this river sport.
+
+     "The spearman stands in the bow, armed with a most formidable
+     spear. The handle, from seventy to eighty feet long, is made of
+     white pine-wood; fitted on the spear-haft is a barbed point,
+     in shape very much like a shuttlecock, supposing each feather
+     represented by a piece of bone, thickly barbed, and very sharp
+     at the end. This is so contrived that it can be easily detached
+     from the long handle by a sharp, dexterous jerk. To this barbed
+     contrivance a long line is made fast, which is carefully coiled
+     away close to the spearman, like a harpoon-line in a whale-boat.
+     The four canoes, alike equipped, are paddled into the centre of
+     the stream, and side by side drift slowly down with the current,
+     each spearman carefully feeling along the bottom with his spear,
+     constant practice having taught the crafty savages to know a
+     Sturgeon's back when the spear comes in contact with it. The
+     spear-head touches the drowsy fish; a sharp plunge, and the
+     redskin sends the notched points through armour and cartilage,
+     deep into the leather-like muscles. A skilful jerk frees the long
+     handle from the barbed end, which remains inextricably fixed in
+     the fish; the handle is thrown aside, the line seized, and the
+     struggle begins. The first impulse is to resist this objectionable
+     intrusion, so the angry Sturgeon comes up to see what it all
+     means. This curiosity is generally repaid by having a second spear
+     sent crashing into him. He then takes a header, seeking safety in
+     flight, and the real excitement commences. With might and main the
+     bowman plies the paddle, and the spearman pays out the line, the
+     canoe flying through the water. The slightest tangle, the least
+     hitch, and over it goes; it becomes, in fact, a sheer trial of
+     paddle _versus_ fin. Twist and turn as the Sturgeon may, all the
+     canoes are with him. He flings himself out of the water, dashes
+     through it, under it, and skims along the surface; but all is in
+     vain, the canoes and their dusky oarsmen follow all his efforts
+     to escape, as a cat follows a mouse. Gradually the Sturgeon
+     grows sulky and tired, obstinately floating on the surface. The
+     savage knows he is not vanquished, but only biding a chance for
+     revenge; so he shortens up the line, and gathers quietly on him
+     to get another spear in. It is done,--and down viciously dives
+     the Sturgeon; but pain and weariness begin to tell, the struggles
+     grow weaker and weaker as life ebbs slowly away, until the mighty
+     armour-plated monarch of the river yields himself a captive to the
+     dusky native in his frail canoe."
+
+There is a very rare Spoonbill Sturgeon found in the western waters
+of North America: its popular name is Paddle-fish. One, five feet in
+length, weighed forty pounds; the nose, resembling a spatula, was
+thirteen inches in length. It was of a light slate colour, spotted with
+black; belly white; skin smooth, like an eel; the flesh compact and
+firm, and hard when boiled--not very enticing to the epicure. The jaws
+are without teeth, but the fauces are lined with several tissues of the
+most beautiful network, evidently for the purpose of collecting its food
+from the water by straining, or passing it through these membranes in
+the same manner as practised by the spermaceti whale. Near the top of
+the head are two small holes, through which it is possible the Sturgeon
+may discharge water in the manner practised by cetaceous animals. It is
+conjectured that the long "Spoonbill" nose of this fish is for digging
+up or moving the soft mud in the bottom of the river, and when the water
+is fully saturated, draw it through the filamentory strainers in search
+of food.
+
+Sturgeons resemble sharks in their general form, but their bodies are
+defended by bony shields, disposed in longitudinal rows; and their head
+is also well curiassed externally. The Sturgeons of North America are of
+little benefit to the natives. A few speared in the summer-time suffice
+for the temporary support of some Indian hordes; but none are preserved
+for winter use, and the roe and sounds are utterly wasted.
+
+The northern limit of the Sturgeon in America is probably between the
+55th and 56th parallels of latitude. Dr. Richardson did not meet with
+any account of its existence to the north of Stewart's Lake, on the west
+side of the Rocky Mountains; and on the east side it does not go higher
+than the Saskatchewan and its tributaries. It is not found in Churchill
+River, nor in any of the branches of the Mackenzie or other streams that
+fall into the Arctic Seas--a remarkable circumstance when we consider
+that some species swarm in the Asiatic rivers which flow into the Icy
+Sea. Sturgeons occur in all the great lakes communicating with the
+St. Lawrence, and also along the whole Atlantic coast of the United
+States down to Florida. Peculiar species inhabit the Mississippi; it is,
+therefore, probable that the range of the genus extends to the Gulf of
+Mexico.
+
+The great rapid which forms the discharge of the Saskatchewan into Lake
+Winnipeg appears quite alive with these fish in the month of June; and
+some families of the natives resort thither at that time to spear them
+with a harpoon, or grapple them with a strong hook tied to a pole.
+Notwithstanding the great muscular power of the Sturgeon, it is timid;
+and Dr. Richardson saw one so frightened at the paddling of a canoe,
+that it ran its nose into a muddy bank, and was taken by a _voyageur_,
+who leaped upon its back.
+
+In Colombia River, a small species of Sturgeon attains eleven feet in
+length, and a weight of six hundred pounds.[20] It is caught as high up
+as Fort Colville, notwithstanding the numerous intervening cataracts and
+rapids which seem to be insuperable barriers to a fish so sluggish in
+its movements.
+
+The Sturgeon is styled a Royal Fish in England, because, by a statute
+of Edward II. it is enacted, "the King shall have Sturgeon taken in the
+sea, or elsewhere, within the realm."
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[18] "The Naturalist in Vancouver Island and British Columbia." By John
+Keast Lord, F.Z.S., Naturalist to the British North American Boundary
+Commission.
+
+[19] The Petrel is similarly used in the Faroe Islands. (See _ante_, p.
+234.) It may, therefore, be called the Candle Bird.
+
+[20] Dr. Richardson. The _Huro_ is reported by Pallas to attain a weight
+of nearly three thousand pounds, and a length exceeding thirty feet.
+
+
+
+
+THE TREE-CLIMBING CRAB.
+
+
+The transition from the ordinary mode of the locomotion of fishes by
+swimming to that of climbing has been ably illustrated by the Rev. Dr.
+Buckland, who showed, in a communication to the Ashmolean Society, in
+1843, that the fins in certain genera perform the functions of feet
+and wings. Thus, "fishing-frogs" have the fins converted into feet, or
+paddles, by means of which they have the power of crawling or hopping
+on sand and mud; and another species can live three days out of the
+water, and walk upon dry land. The climbing perch of the Indian rivers
+is known to live a long time in the air, and to climb up the stems of
+palm-trees in pursuit of flies, by means of spinous projections on its
+gill-covers. Fishes of the _silurus_ family have a bony enlargement of
+the first ray of the pectoral fin, which is also armed with spines;
+and this is not only an offensive and defensive weapon, but enables
+the fish to walk along the bottom of the fresh waters which it
+inhabits. The flying-fishes are notorious examples of the conversion
+of fins into an organ of movement in the air. M. Deslongchamps has
+published, in the "Transactions of the Linnaean Society of Normandy,"
+1842, a curious account of the movements of the gurnard at the bottom of
+the sea. In 1839, he observed these movements in one of the artificial
+fishing-ponds, or fishing-traps, surrounded by nets, on the shore of
+Normandy. He saw a score of gurnards closing their fins against their
+sides, like the wing of a fly in repose, and without any movement of
+their tails, walking along the bottom by means of six free rays, three
+on each pectoral fin, which they placed successively on the ground.
+They moved rapidly forwards, backwards, to the right and left, groping
+in all directions with these rays, as if in search of small crabs.
+Their great heads and bodies seemed to throw hardly any weight on the
+slender rays, or feet, being suspended in water, and having their weight
+further diminished by their swimming-bladder. During these movements the
+gurnards resembled insects moving along the sand. When M. Deslongchamps
+moved in the water, the fish swam away rapidly to the extremity of the
+pond; when he stood still, they resumed their ambulatory movement, and
+came between his legs. On dissection, we find these three anterior rays
+of the pectoral fins to be supported each with strong muscular apparatus
+to direct their movements, apart from the muscles that are connected
+with the smaller rays of the pectoral fin.
+
+Dr. Buckland states that Miss Potts, of Chester, had sent to him a
+flagstone from a coalshaft at Mostyn, bearing impressions which he
+supposed to be the trackway of some fish crawling along the bottom
+by means of the anterior rays of its pectoral fins. There were no
+indications of feet, but only scratches, symmetrically disposed on each
+side of a space that may have been covered by the body of the fish
+whilst making progress, by pressing its fin-bones on the bottom. As yet,
+no footsteps of reptiles, or of any animals more highly organized than
+fishes, have been found in strata older than those which belong to the
+new red sandstone. The abundant remains of fossil fishes, armed with
+strong bony spines, and of other fishes allied to the gurnard, in strata
+of the carboniferous and old red sandstone series, would lead us to
+expect the frequent occurrence of impressions made by their locomotive
+organs on the bottoms of the ancient waters in which they lived. Dr.
+Buckland proposed to designate these petrified traces or trackways of
+ancient fishes by the term of fish-tracks.
+
+Crabs and Lobsters are strange creatures: strange in their
+configurations; strange in the transmutations which they exhibit from
+the egg to maturity; strange in the process they undergo of casting off,
+not only their shell, but the covering of their eyes, of their long
+horns, and even the lining of their tooth-furnished stomach; strange,
+also, are they in their manners and habits. Many a reader, in wandering
+along the sea-shore, may have disturbed little colonies of Crabs
+quietly nestling in fancied security amidst banks of slimy sea-weed; and
+in the nooks and recesses of the coast, the shallows, and strips of land
+left dry at ebb-tide, may be seen numbers of little, or perchance large,
+Crabs, some concealed in snug lurking-places, others tripping, with a
+quick _side-long_ movement, over the beach, alarmed by the advance of an
+unwelcome intruder. Some are exclusively tenants of the water, have feet
+formed like paddles for swimming, and never venture on land; others seem
+to love the air and sunshine, and enjoy an excursion, not without hopes
+of finding an acceptable repast, over the oozy sands; some, equally fond
+of the shore and shallow water, appropriate to themselves the shells of
+periwinkles, whelks, &c., and there live in a sort of castle, which they
+drag about with them on their excursions, changing it for a larger as
+they increase in measure of growth. They vary in size from microscopic
+animalcules to the gigantic King Crab:[21] to the former, the luminosity
+of the ocean, or of the foam before the prows of vessels, is, to a
+great extent, attributable, each minute creature glowing with phosphoric
+light.
+
+The Bernhard Crab has been proved to have the power of dissolving
+shells, it not being unusual to find the long fusiform shells which are
+inhabited by these animals with the inner lip, and the greater part of
+the pillar on the inside of the mouth, destroyed, so as to render the
+aperture much larger than usual. Dr. Gray is quite convinced that these
+Crabs have the above power, some to a much greater degree than others.
+
+Certain Crabs, especially in the West Indies, are almost exclusively
+terrestrial, visiting the sea only at given periods, for the deposition
+of their eggs. These Crabs carry in their gill-chambers sufficient water
+for the purpose of respiration; they live in burrows, and traverse
+considerable tracts of land in the performance of their migratory
+journeys. Of these, some, as the Violet Crab, are exquisite delicacies.
+
+Of a great Crab migration we find these details in the "Jamaica Royal
+Gazette:"--In 1811 there was a very extraordinary production of Black
+Crabs in the eastern part of Jamaica. In June or July the whole district
+of Manchidneed was covered with countless numbers, swarming from the sea
+to the mountains. Of this the writer was an eye-witness. On ascending
+Over Hill from the vale of Plantain Garden River, the road appeared of a
+reddish colour, as if strewed with brick-dust. It was owing to myriads
+of young Black Crabs, about the size of the nail of a man's finger,
+moving at a pretty quick pace, direct for the mountains. "I rode along
+the coast," says the writer, "a distance of about fifteen miles, and
+found it nearly the same the whole way. Returning the following day, I
+found the road still covered with them, the same as the day before. How
+have they been produced, and where do they come from? were questions
+everybody asked, and nobody could answer. It is well known that Crabs
+deposit their eggs once a year, in May; but, except on this occasion,
+though living on the coast, I had never seen above a dozen young Crabs
+together; and here were myriads. No unusual number of old Crabs had been
+observed in that season; and it is worthy of note, that they were moving
+from a rock-bound coast of inaccessible cliffs, the abode of sea-birds,
+and exposed to the constant influence of the trade winds. No person, as
+far as I know, ever saw the like, except on that occasion; and I have
+understood that since 1811 Black Crabs have been more abundant further
+in to the interior of the island than they were ever known before."
+
+Cuvier describes the Burrowing Crab as displaying wonderful
+instinct:--"The animal closes the entrance of its burrow, which is
+situated near the margin of the sea, or in marshy grounds, with its
+largest claw. These burrows are cylindrical, oblique, very deep, and
+very close to each other; but generally each burrow is the exclusive
+habitation of a single individual. The habit which these crabs have of
+holding their large claw elevated in advance of the body, as if making a
+sign of beckoning to some one, has obtained for them the name of Calling
+Crabs. There is a species observed by Mr. Bosc in South Carolina,
+which passes the three months of the winter in its retreat without
+once quitting it, and which never goes to the sea except at the epoch
+of egg-laying." The same observations apply to the Chevalier Crabs (so
+called from the celerity with which they traverse the ground). These are
+found in Africa, and along the borders of the Mediterranean.
+
+Some Crabs, truly aquatic, as the Vaulted Crab of the Moluccas, have
+the power of drawing back their limbs, and concealing them in a furrow,
+which they closely fit; and thus, in imitation of a tortoise, which
+retracts its feet and head within its shell, they secure themselves,
+when alarmed. Other aquatic species have their limbs adapted for
+clinging to weeds and other marine objects. Of these some have the
+two or four hind pairs of limbs so placed as to appear to spring from
+the back; they terminate in a sharp hook, by means of which the Crab
+attaches itself to the valves of shells, fragments of coral, &c.,
+which it draws over its body, and thus lurks in concealment. Allied,
+in some respects, to the Hermit or Soldier Crabs, which tenant empty
+shells, is one which, from its manners and habits, is one of the most
+extraordinary of its race. The Hermit Crabs are voracious, and feed
+on animal substances. The Hermit, or Bernhard Crab, is so called from
+its habit of taking up its solitary residence in deserted shells, thus
+seeking a protection for its tail, which is long and naked. It is found
+in shells of different dimensions, and from time to time leaves its
+abode, as it feels a necessity, for a more commodious dwelling. It is
+said to present, on such occasions, an amusing instinct as it inserts
+the tail successively into several empty shells until one is found to
+fit. We learn from Professor Bell, however, that it does not always wait
+until the home is vacant, but occasionally rejects the rightful occupant
+with some violence. On the contrary, the Crab, or rather Lobster-Crab
+(for it takes an intermediate place between them), is more delicate in
+its appetite, and feeds upon fruits, to obtain which it is said to climb
+up certain trees, at the feet of which it makes a burrow. This species
+is the Purse Crab, or Robber Crab, of Amboyna and other islands in the
+South Pacific Ocean.
+
+"According to popular belief among the Indians," says Cuvier, "the
+Robber Crab feeds on the nuts of the cocoa-tree, and it makes its
+excursions during the night; its places of retreat are fissures in the
+rocks, or holes in the ground." The accounts of the early writers and
+travellers, as well as of the natives, were disbelieved; but their truth
+has since been abundantly confirmed. MM. Quoy and Guimard assure us that
+several Robber Crabs were fed by them for many months on cocoa-nuts
+alone; and a specimen of this Crab was submitted to the Zoological
+Society, with additional information from Mr. Cuming, in whose fine
+collection from the islands of the South Pacific several specimens were
+preserved. Mr. Cuming states these Crabs to be found in great numbers in
+Lord Hood's Island, in the Pacific. He there frequently met with them on
+the road. On being disturbed, the Crabs instantly assumed a defensive
+attitude, making a loud snapping with their powerful claws, or pincers,
+which continued as they retreated backwards. They climb a species of
+palm to gather a small kind of cocoa-nut that grows thereon. They live
+at the roots of trees, and not in the holes of rocks; and they form a
+favourite food among the natives. Such is the substance of Mr. Cuming's
+account. Mr. Darwin, in his "Researches in Geology and Natural History,"
+saw several of these Crabs in the Keeling Islands, or Cocos Islands, in
+the Indian Ocean, about 600 miles distant from the coast of Sumatra. In
+these islands, of coral formation, the cocoa-nut tree is so abundant as
+to appear, at first glance, to compose the whole wood of the islands.
+
+Here the great Purse Crab is abundant. Mr. Darwin describes it as a Crab
+which lives on the cocoa-nut, is common on all parts of the dry land,
+and grows to a monstrous size. This Crab has its front pair of legs
+terminated by very strong and heavy pincers, and the last pair by others
+which are narrow and weak. It would at first be thought quite impossible
+for a Crab to open a strong cocoa-nut, covered with the husk; but Mr.
+Liesk assures me that he has repeatedly seen the operation effected.
+The Crab begins by tearing away the husk, fibre by fibre, and always
+from that end under which the three eye-holes are situated. When this
+is completed the Crab commences hammering with its heavy claws on one
+of these eye-holes till an opening is made. Then, turning its body, by
+the aid of its posterior and narrow pair of pincers, it extracts the
+white albuminous substance. I think this as curious a case as I ever
+heard of, and likewise of adaptation in structure between two objects
+apparently so remote from each other in the scheme of nature as a Crab
+and a cocoa-nut tree. The Crab is diurnal in its habits; but it is said
+to pay every night a visit to the sea for the purpose of moistening its
+gills. These gills are very peculiar, and scarcely fill up more than a
+tenth of the chamber in which they are placed: it doubtless acts as a
+reservoir for water, to serve the Crab in its passage over the dry and
+heated land. The young are hatched and live for some time on the coast;
+at this period of existence we cannot suppose that cocoa-nuts form any
+part of their diet; most probably soft saccharine grasses, fruits, and
+certain animal matters, serve as their food until they attain a certain
+size and strength.
+
+The adult Crabs, Mr. Darwin tells us, inhabit deep burrows, which they
+excavate beneath the roots of trees; and here they accumulate great
+quantities of the picked fibres of the cocoa-nut husk, on which they
+rest as on a bed. The Malays sometimes take advantage of the labours of
+the Crab by collecting the coarse fibrous substance, and using it as
+junk. These Crabs are very good to eat; moreover, under the tail of the
+larger ones there is a great mass of fat, which, when melted, yields as
+much as a quart bottleful of limpid oil.
+
+The Crab's means of obtaining the cocoa-nuts have, however, been much
+disputed. It is stated by some authors to crawl up the trees for the
+purpose of stealing the nuts. This is doubted; though in the kind of
+palm to which Mr. Cuming refers as being ascended by this Crab, the
+task would be much easier. Now, Mr. Darwin states, that in the Keeling
+Islands the Crab lives only on the nuts which fall to the ground. It
+may thus appear that Mr. Cuming's and Mr. Darwin's respective accounts
+of the _non-climbing_ of this Crab on the one side, and its _actually
+climbing trees_ on the other, are contradictory. The height of the stem
+of the cocoa-nut tree, its circumference, and comparative external
+smoothness, would prove insurmountable, or at least very serious
+obstacles, to the most greedy Crab, however large and strong it might
+be. But these difficulties are by no means so formidable in the tree
+specified by Mr. Cuming: this is arborescent, or bushy, with long, thin,
+rigid, sword-shaped leaves, resembling those of the pineapple, usually
+arranged spirally, so that they are commonly called Screw Pines. They
+are of the genus _Pandanus_, a word derived from the Malay _Pandang_.
+The ascent of these arborescent plants, having the stem furnished
+with a rigging of cord-like roots, and bearing a multitude of firm,
+long, and spirally-arranged leaves, would be by no means a work of
+difficulty, as would necessarily be that of the tall feathery-topped
+cocoa-tree, destitute of all available points of aid or support. Hence
+the contradiction in the two accounts referred to is seeming, and not
+real, and the two statements are reconciled.
+
+To sum up, Mr. Cuming fully testifies to the Crab climbing the Screw
+Pines; and he has told Professor Owen that he has actually seen the Crab
+climbing the cocoa-nut tree. The Crab has been kept on cocoa-nuts for
+months; and is universally reported by the natives to climb the trees at
+night.
+
+[Illustration: THE TREE-CLIMBING CRAB.]
+
+We may here, too, observe, that fine specimens of the Climbing Crab are
+to be seen in the British Museum. Here, too, arranged in cases, are
+Spider Crabs; Crabs with oysters growing on their backs, thus showing
+that Crabs do not shed their shells every year, or that the oyster
+increases very rapidly in bulk; Oval-bodied Crabs; and Fin-footed or
+Swimming Crabs. Here are also Telescope, or Long-eyed Crabs, and Land
+Crabs, found in India 4,000 feet above the sea-level; another of similar
+habits in the plains of the Deccan, that may be seen swarming in the
+fields, some cutting and nipping the green rice-stalks, and others
+waddling off backwards with sheaves bigger than themselves. To these
+may be added Square-bodied Crabs, Crested Crabs; Porcelain Crabs, with
+delicate, china-like shells; and Death's-head Crabs, which usually form
+cases for themselves from pieces of sponge and shells.
+
+Certain species of Crabs are remarkably tenacious of life, and have been
+known to live for weeks buried, and without food. It is in the Crab
+tribe that the fact of the metamorphosis of _crustacea_ has been most
+distinctly perceived; a small, peculiar crustacean animal, that had
+long passed for a distinct species, under the name of _Zoea_, having at
+length been identified with the young of the common Crab before it had
+attained its full development.
+
+That among the Crab tribes a tree-climbing species is to be found is
+certainly curious, but it is not without a parallel among fishes. Many
+of the latter leave the water, some even for a long time, and perform
+overland journeys, aided in their progress by the structure of their
+fins. In these fishes the gills and gill-chambers are constructed for
+the retention of water for a considerable time, so as to suffice for the
+necessary degree of respiration. In our country, we may mention the eel,
+which often voluntarily quits the river or lake, and wanders during the
+night over the adjacent meadows, probably in quest of dew-worms. But the
+marshes of India and China present us with fishes much more decidedly
+terrestrial, and some of which were known to the ancients. Among these
+are several fishes of a snake-like form: they have an elongated,
+cylindrical body, and creep on land to great distances from their native
+waters. The boatmen of India often keep these fishes for a long time
+out of water, for the sake of diverting themselves and others by their
+terrestrial movements, and children may often be seen enjoying this
+sport.
+
+Of these land-haunting fishes, the most remarkable is the tree-climber,
+so called in Tranquebar. This fish inhabits India, the Indian islands,
+and various parts of China, as Chusan, &c., living in marshes, and
+feeding on aquatic insects, worms, &c. According to Daldorf, a Danish
+gentleman, who, in 1797, communicated an account of the habits of this
+fish to the Linnaean Society, it _mounts up_ the bushes or low palms
+to some elevation. This gentleman states that he had himself observed
+it in the act of ascending palm-trees near the marshes, and had taken
+it at a height of no less than five feet, measured from the level of
+the adjacent water. It effects its ascent by means of its pectoral and
+under fins, aided by the action of the tail and the spines which border
+the gill covers. It is by the same agency that it traverses the land.
+The statement of M. Daldorf is corroborated by M. John, also a Danish
+observer, to whom we are indebted for the knowledge of its name in
+Tranquebar, which alludes to its arboreal proceedings.
+
+It is true that many other naturalists who have observed the habits
+of this fish in its native regions, while they concur in describing
+its terrestrial journeys, and its living for a long time out of water,
+either omit to mention, or mention with doubt, its reputed attempts at
+_tree-climbing_.
+
+The habits and instincts of certain Crawfishes are very extraordinary.
+Thus, the _Astaci_ are migratory, and in their travels are capable of
+doing much damage to dams and embankments. On the Little Genesee River
+they have, within a few years, compelled the owner of a dam to rebuild
+it. The former dam was built after the manner of dykes, _i.e._, with
+upright posts, supporting sleepers, laid inclining up the stream. On
+these were laid planks, and the planks were covered with dirt. The
+_Astacus_ proceeding up the stream would burrow under the planks where
+they rested on the bottom of the stream, removing bushels of dirt and
+gravel in the course of a night. They travel over the dam in their
+migrations, _often climbing posts_ two or three feet high to gain the
+pond above.[22]
+
+We have to add a new and eccentric variety of nature--the Pill-making
+Crab, which abounds at Labuan, Singapore, and Lahore, and is described
+in Mr. Collingwood's "Rambles of a Naturalist." When the tide is down,
+this little creature, if stealthily watched, may be seen creeping up
+a hole in the sandy shore, taking up rapidly particles of the loose
+powdery sand in its claws, and depositing them in a groove beneath the
+thorax. A little ball of sand, about the size of a filbert, is forthwith
+projected, though whether it passes actually through the mouth is not
+made clear. Pill after pill is seized with one claw, and laid aside,
+until the beach is covered with these queer little pellets. This is
+evidently the creature's mode of extracting particles of food from the
+sand.
+
+Mr. Collingwood also describes, as met with on the shores and waters of
+the China seas, Glass Crabs, whose flat, transparent, leaf-like bodies
+seem made of fine plates of mica. The dredge brings up many a rich
+haul of sponges, corals, and gorgoniae, of the most splendid colours,
+certain of the sponges harbouring within their cells minute crabs of a
+new genus. Between Aden and Galle the sea is of a pinkish colour, owing
+to the immense accumulation of minute kinds of medusae, in solid masses
+of red jelly. Over Fiery Cross Reef, the mirror-like sea reveals, at
+the depth of sixty or seventy feet, this wealth of natural treasures.
+"Glorious masses of living coral strew the bottom: immense globular
+madrepores--vast overhanging mushroom-shaped expansions, complicated
+ramifications of interweaving branches, mingled with smaller and more
+delicate species--round, finger-shaped, horn-like and umbrella-form--lie
+in wondrous confusion. Here and there is a large clam-shell, wedged
+in between masses of coral, the gaping, zigzag mouth covered with the
+projecting mantle of the deepest Prussian blue; beds of dark purple,
+long-spined Echini, and the thick black bodies of sea-cucumbers vary the
+aspect of the sea bottom."[23]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[21] This Crab has an elongated spine-like tail, the use of which was
+long misunderstood. Dr. J. Gray was shown at the Liverpool Museum some
+living King Crabs, and the use they made of the tail-like appendages.
+When turned over on their backs, he saw them bend down the tail until
+they could reach some point of resistance, and then employ it to
+elevate the body, and regain their normal position. Dr. Gray states
+that they never have been seen to use this tail for the purpose which
+has been often assigned to it--that is, for leaping from place to place
+by bending it under the body, like the toy called a "spring-jack," or
+"leaping frog."
+
+[22] American Journal of Science and Art.
+
+[23] W. C. Linnaeus Martin, F.L.S.
+
+
+
+
+MUSICAL LIZARDS.
+
+
+A small Lizard, lately brought home from the Isle of Formosa by Mr.
+Swinhoe, is decided to be a new species by Dr. Guenther, of the British
+Museum. Mr. Swinhoe found the eggs of this Gecko, or Lizard, in holes of
+walls or among mortar rubbish. They are round, and usually lie several
+together, resembling eggs of ordinary Lizards. The young, when first
+hatched, keep much under stones in dark cellars, where they remain
+until they attain about two-thirds of the adult size, when they begin
+to appear in public to catch insects, but evincing great shyness of
+their seniors. Mr. Swinhoe states that on the plaster-washed sides of
+his bedroom, close to the angle of the roof, every evening when the lamp
+was placed on the table below, four little Musical Lizards used to make
+their appearance and watch patiently for insects attracted by the light.
+A sphinx or a beetle buzzing into the room would put them into great
+excitement, and they would run with celerity from one part of the wall
+to the other after the deluded insect as it fluttered in vain, buffeting
+its head, up and down the wall. Two or three would run after the same
+insect, but as soon as one had succeeded in securing it, the rest would
+prudently draw aloof. In running over the perpendicular face of the wall
+they keep so close, and their movements are made so quickly, with one
+leg in advance of the other, that they have the appearance at a distance
+of gliding rather than running. The tail is somewhat writhed as the body
+is jerked along, and much so when the animal is alarmed and doing its
+utmost to escape; but its progress even then is in short runs, stopping
+at intervals and raising its head to look about. If a fly perch on the
+wall it cautiously approaches to within a short distance, then suddenly
+darts forwards, and with its quickly-protruded, glutinous tongue, fixes
+it. Apart from watching its curious manoeuvres after its insect-food,
+the attention of the most listless would be attracted by the singular
+series of loud notes these creatures utter at all hours of the day and
+night, more especially during cloudy and rainy weather. These notes
+resemble the syllables "chuck-chuck," several times repeated; and, from
+their more frequent occurrence during July and August, they are thought
+to be the call notes of the male to the female.
+
+During the greater part of the day, the little creature lies quiescent
+in some cranny among the beams of the roof or in the wall of the house,
+where, however, it is ever watchful for the incautious fly that
+approaches its den, upon whom it darts forth with but little notice. But
+it is by no means confined to the habitations of men. Every old wall,
+and almost every tree, possesses a tenant or two of this species. It is
+excessively lively, and even when found quietly ensconced in a hole,
+generally manages to escape--its glittering little eyes (black, with
+yellow ochre iris) appearing to know no sleep; and an attempt to capture
+the runaway seldom results in more than the seizure of an animated tail,
+wrenched off with a jerk by the little fellow as it slips away, without
+loss of blood. The younger individuals are much darker than the larger
+and older animals, which are sometimes almost albinoes. In ordinary
+fly-catching habits, as they stick to the sides of a lamp, there is much
+similarity between this gecko and the little papehoo, or wall-lizard
+of China; but this is decidedly a larger and much more active animal,
+and often engages in a struggle with insects of very large size. The
+Chinese colonists of Formosa greatly respect the geckos, in consequence
+of a legend which attributes to them the honour of having once poisoned
+the supplies of an invading rebellious army, which was thereby totally
+cut to pieces. The geckos were raised to the rank of generals by the
+grateful Emperor of China; which honour, the legend states, they greatly
+appreciated, and henceforth devoted their energies to the extermination
+of mosquitoes and other injurious insects.
+
+
+
+
+CHAMELEONS, AND THEIR CHANGES.
+
+      "Nil fuit unquam
+    Sic impar sibi."--_Horat._
+
+    "Sure such a various creature ne'er was seen."
+
+                    _Francis, in imit._
+
+
+The Chameleon tribe is a well-defined family of lizard-like reptiles,
+whose characters may be summed up as existing in the form of their feet;
+the toes, which are joined together or bound up together in two packets
+or bundles, opposed to each other; in their shagreen-like skin; in their
+prehensile tail; and in their extensile and retractile vermiform tongue.
+
+That the Chameleon was known to the ancients there is no doubt. Its
+name we derive directly from the _Chamelaeo_ of the Latins. Aristotle's
+history of the animal proves the acute observation of that great
+zoologist--the absence of a sternum, the disposition of the ribs, the
+mechanism of the tail, the motion of the eyes, the toes bound up in
+opposable bundles, &c.--though he is not entirely correct on some
+points. Pliny mentions it, but his account is for the most part a
+compilation from Aristotle.
+
+Calmet's description of the Chameleon is curiously minute:--"It has
+four feet, and on each foot three claws. Its tail is long: with this,
+as well as with his feet, it fastens itself to the branches of trees.
+Its tail is flat, its nose long, ending in an obtuse point; its back is
+sharp, its skin plaited, and jagged like a saw, from the neck to the
+last joint of the tail, and upon its head it has something like a comb;
+like a fish, it has no neck. Some have asserted that it lives only upon
+air, but it has been observed to feed on flies, catched with its tongue,
+which is about ten inches long and three thick, made of white flesh,
+round, but flat at the end, or hollow and open, resembling an elephant's
+trunk. It also shrinks, and grows longer. This animal is said to assume
+the colour of those things to which it is applied; but our modern
+observers assure us that its natural colour, when at rest, and in the
+shade, is a bluish-grey; though some are yellow, others green, but both
+of a smaller kind. When it is exposed to the sun, the grey changes into
+a darker grey, inclining to a dun colour, and its parts which have least
+of the light upon them are changed into spots of different colours.
+Sometimes, when it is handled, it seems speckled with dark spots,
+inclining to green. If it be put upon a black hat, it appears to be of a
+violet colour; and sometimes, if it be wrapped up in linen, it is white;
+but it changes colour only in some parts of the body."
+
+Its changes of colour have been commemorated by the poets. Shakspeare
+has--
+
+    "I can add colours ev'n to the Chameleon:
+    Change shapes with Proteus, for advantage."
+
+Dryden has--
+
+    "The thin Chameleon, fed with air, receives
+    The colour of the thing to which it cleaves."
+
+Prior has--
+
+    "As the Chameleon, which is known
+    To have no colours of his own,
+    But borrows from his neighbour's hue
+    His white or black, his green or blue."
+
+Gay, in his charming fable of the Spaniel and the Chameleon, "scarce
+distinguished from the green," makes the latter thus reply to the taunts
+of the pampered spaniel:--
+
+    "'Sir,' says the sycophant, 'like you,
+    Of old, politer life I knew:
+    Like you, a courtier born and bred,
+    Kings lean'd their ear to what I said:
+    My whisper always met success;
+    The ladies prais'd me for address;
+    I knew to hit each courtier's passion,
+    And flatter'd every vice in fashion:
+    But Jove, who hates the liar's ways,
+    At once cut short my prosperous days,
+    And, sentenced to retain my nature,
+    Transform'd me to this crawling creature.
+    Doom'd to a life obscure and mean,
+    I wander'd in the silvan scene:
+    For Jove the heart alone regards;
+    He punishes what man rewards.
+    How different is thy case and mine!
+    With men at least you sup and dine;
+    While I, condemned to thinnest fare,
+    Like those I flatter'd, fed on air.'"
+
+Upon this fable a commentator acutely notes:--"The raillery at court
+sycophants naturally pervades our poet's writings, who had suffered so
+much from them. Here, however, he intimates something more, namely, the
+apposite dispensations to man's acts, even in this world. The crafty is
+taken in by his own guile, the courtier falls by his own arts, and the
+ladder of ambition only prepares for the aspirant a further fall."[24]
+
+With respect to the air-food of the Chameleon. Cuvier observes that
+its lung is so large that, when it is filled with air, it imparts a
+transparency to the body, which made the ancients say that it lived
+upon air; and he inclines to think that to its size the Chameleon owes
+the property of changing its colour; but, with regard to this last
+speculation, he was wrong, as we shall presently see.
+
+It was long thought that the Chameleon, like most of the lizard tribe,
+was produced from an egg. The little animal is, however, most clearly
+viviparous, and not oviparous, although the tales told of the lizard
+tribe in the story books are most perplexing. To name a few of them:--1.
+The crocodile, which is the largest of the lizard tribe, and has even
+attained the size of 18-1/2 ft. in length, is confidently stated as
+laying eggs, which she covers with sand and leaves, to be hatched by the
+sun; and these have been met with in the rivers Nile, Niger, and Ganges.
+2. _Lacerta Gangetica_, unknown to Linnaeus, but brought to this country
+from Bengal in 1747 by the late Dr. Mead, is said to be furnished
+with a false belly, like the opossum, where the young can be received
+for protection in time of danger. In this case the egg must have been
+hatched in the belly of the animal, like the viper. 3. The alligator,
+or American crocodile, lays a vast quantity of eggs in the sand, near
+the banks of lakes and rivers, and leaves them to be hatched by the sun;
+and the young are seldom seen. 4. The cayman, or Antilles crocodile, has
+furnished its eggs to many collections. 5. A salamander was opened by M.
+Maupertuis, and its belly was found full of eggs; but in "Les Memoires
+de l'Academie Royale des Sciences" it is stated that, after a similar
+operation of the kind, "fifty young ones, resembling the parent animal,
+were found in its womb all alive, and actively running about the room."
+
+The tongue is the chief organ for taking the insects on which the
+Chameleon lives. By a curious mechanism, of which the tongue-bone is a
+principal agent, the Chameleon can protrude this cylindrical tongue,
+which has its tip covered with a glutinous secretion from the sheath
+at the lower part of the mouth, to the length of six inches. When the
+Chameleon is about to seize an insect, it rolls round its extraordinary
+eyeballs so as to bring them to bear on the doomed object; as soon
+as it arrives within the range of the tongue, that organ is projected
+with unerring precision, and returns into the mouth with the prey
+adhering to the viscous tip. The wonderful activity with which this
+feat is performed, forms a strong contrast to the almost ridiculously
+slow motions of the animal. Their operation of taking meal-worms, of
+which they are fond, though comparatively rapid, is not remarkable for
+its quickness, but done with an act of deliberation, and so that the
+projection and retraction of the tongue can be very distinctly followed
+with the eye.
+
+The eyes of the Chameleon are remarkable objects; large, projecting, and
+almost entirely covered with the shagreen-like skin, with the exception
+of a small aperture opposite the pupil; their motions are completely
+independent of each other. It adds to the strange and grotesque
+appearance of this creature to see it roll one of its eye-globes
+backwards, while the other is directed forwards, as if making two
+distinct surveys at one time. Its sight must be acute, from the unerring
+certainty with which it marks and strikes its prey.
+
+The Chameleons spend their lives in trees, for clinging to the branches
+of which their organization is admirably adapted. There they lie in
+wait for the insects which may come within their reach; and it has been
+thought that, in such situations, their faculty of changing colour
+becomes highly important in aiding them to conceal themselves. The
+powers of abstinence possessed by this singular race are very great;
+and hence, most probably, arose the old fable of their _living on
+air_, which was for a long time considered to be "the Chameleon's
+dish." One has been known to fast upwards of six weeks without taking
+any sustenance, though meat-food and insects were procured for it.
+Notwithstanding this fast, it did not appear to fall away much. It would
+fix itself by the feet and tail to the bars of the fender, and there
+remain motionless, enjoying the warmth of the fire for hours together.
+Hasselquist describes one, that he kept for nearly a month, as climbing
+up and down the bars of its cage in a very lively manner.
+
+The power of the Chameleon's changing colour long exercised the
+ingenuity of the old naturalists. Hasselquist thought that the changes
+of colour depended on a kind of disease, more especially a sort of
+jaundice, to which the animal was subject, particularly when it was put
+in a rage. M. D'Obsonville thought that he had discovered the secret in
+the blood, and that the change of colour depended upon a mixture of blue
+and yellow, whence the different shades of green were derived; and these
+colours he obtains from the blood and the blood-vessels. Thus he says
+that the blood is of a violet hue, and will retain its colour on linen
+or paper for some minutes if previously steeped in a solution of alum,
+and that the coats of the vessels are yellow; consequently, he argues,
+that the mixture of the two will produce green. He further traces the
+change of colour to the passions of the animal. Thus, when a healthy
+Chameleon is provoked, the circulation is accelerated, the vessels that
+are spread over the skin are distended, and a superficial blue-green
+colour is produced. When, on the contrary, the animal is imprisoned,
+impoverished, and deprived of free air, the circulation becomes languid,
+the vessels are not filled, the colour of their coats prevails, and the
+Chameleon changes to a yellow-green, which lasts during its confinement.
+
+Barrow, in his "Travels in Africa," declares that previously to the
+Chameleon's assuming a change of colour, it makes a long inspiration,
+the body swelling out to twice its usual size; and as the inflation
+subsides, the change of colour gradually takes place, the only permanent
+marks being two small dark lines passing along the sides. Mr. Wood
+conceives from this account that the animal is principally indebted for
+these varied tints to the influence of oxygen. Mr. Spittal also regards
+these changes as connected with the state of the lungs; and Mr. Houston
+considers this phenomenon as dependent on the turgescency of the skin.
+Dr. Weissenborn thinks it not unlikely that the nervous currents may
+directly co-operate in effecting the changes of colour in the Chameleon.
+
+Mr. H. N. Turner, writing from personal observation of the phenomenon
+in a live Chameleon in his possession, says:--"It has been generally
+imagined that the purpose of the singular faculty accorded to the
+Chameleon is to enable it to accommodate its appearance to that of
+surrounding objects." Mr. Turner's observations do not, however, favour
+the idea, but seem rather to negative it. The box in which Mr. Turner's
+Chameleon was kept was of deal, with glass at the top, and a piece of
+flannel laid at the bottom, a small branching stick being placed there
+by way of a perch. He introduced, at various times, pieces of coloured
+paper, covering the bottom of the box, of blue, yellow, and scarlet,
+but without the slightest effect upon the appearance of the animal.
+Considering that these primary colours were not such as it would be
+likely to be placed in contact with in a state of nature, he next tried
+a piece of green calico, but equally without result. The animal went
+through all its usual changes without their being in any way modified by
+the colour placed underneath it. The general tint approximated, as may
+be readily observed, to those of the branches of trees, just as those of
+most animals do to the places in which they dwell; but Mr. Turner did
+not observe the faculty of changing called into play with any apparent
+object. It is only when the light is removed that the animal assumes a
+colour which absorbs but little of it.
+
+Not to go further into the numerous treatises which have been published
+on this intricate subject without arriving at a just conclusion, we
+refer to the able and interesting paper of Mr. Milne Edwards, for whose
+acuteness the solution of this puzzling phenomenon was reserved. The
+steps by which he first overthrew the received theories on the subject,
+and then arrived at the cause of the change of colour, is shown in the
+following results, derived from observing two Chameleons living, and
+researches after the animals had died, on the structure of their skin,
+and the parts immediately beneath it.
+
+1. That the change in the colour of the Chameleon does not depend
+essentially either on the more or less considerable swelling of their
+bodies, or the changes which might hence result to the condition of
+their blood or circulation; nor does it depend on the greater or less
+distance which may exist between the several cutaneous tubercles;
+although it is not to be denied that these circumstances probably
+exercise some influence upon the phenomenon.
+
+2. That there exist in the skin of these animals two layers of
+membranous pigment, placed the one above the other, but disposed in such
+a way as to appear simultaneously under the cuticle, and sometimes in
+such a manner that the one may hide the other.
+
+3. That everything remarkable in the changes of colour in the Chameleon
+may be explained by the appearance of the pigment of the deeper layer to
+an extent more or less considerable, in the midst of the pigment of the
+superficial layer, or from its disappearance beneath this layer.
+
+4. That these displacements of the deeper pigment do in reality occur;
+and it is a probable consequence that the Chameleon's colour changes
+during life, and may continue to change even after death.
+
+5. That there exists a close analogy between the mechanism by the help
+of which the change of colour appears to take place in these reptiles,
+and that which determines the successive appearance and disappearance of
+coloured spots in the mantles of several of the cephalopods.
+
+Chameleons are found in warm climates of the old world, South of Spain,
+Africa, East Indies. Isles of Sechelles, Bourbon, France, Moluccas.
+Madagascar (where it is said there are seven of the species which belong
+to Africa), Fernando Po, and New South Wales. In the year 1860, a new
+and curiously formed species of Chameleon was brought from the interior
+of the Old Calabar district of West Africa, by one of the natives. It is
+characterised by three horny processes on the head. Many Lizards have
+singular spiny projections on all parts of the body; but this very well
+marked species had not been hitherto recorded.
+
+Mrs. Belzoni, the wife of the celebrated traveller in the East, made
+some careful observations upon the habits of Chameleons, which are worth
+quoting. The Arabs in Lower Egypt catch Chameleons by jumping upon them,
+flinging stones at them, or striking them with sticks, which hurts them
+very much. The Nubians lay them down gently on the ground, and when
+they come down from the date-trees, they catch hold of the tail of the
+animal, and fix a string to it; therefore the body does not get injured.
+Mrs. Belzoni had some Chameleons for several months in her house, and
+her observations are as follows:--
+
+"In the first place they are very inveterate towards each other, and
+must not be shut up together, else they will bite each other's tails and
+legs off.
+
+[Illustration: CHAMELEONS.]
+
+"There are three species of Chameleons, whose colours are peculiar
+to themselves: for instance, the commonest sort are those which are
+generally green, that is to say, the body all green, and, when content,
+beautifully marked on each side regularly on the green with black and
+yellow, not in a confused manner, but as if drawn. This kind is in great
+plenty; they never have any other colour except a light green when they
+sleep, and when ill, a very pale yellow. Out of near forty I had the
+first year when in Nubia, I had but one, and that a very small one of
+the second sort, which had red marks. One Chameleon lived with me eight
+months, and most of that time I had it fixed to the button of my coat:
+it used to rest on my shoulder or on my head. I have observed, when I
+have kept it shut up in a room for some time, that on bringing it out
+in the air it would begin drawing the air in, and on putting it on some
+marjorum it has had a wonderful effect on it immediately: its colour
+became most brilliant. I believe it will puzzle a good many to say what
+cause it proceeds from. If they did not change when shut up in a house,
+but only on taking them in a garden, it might be supposed the change
+of the colours was in consequence of the smell of the plants; but when
+in a house, if it is watched, it will change every ten minutes: some
+moments a plain green, at others all its beautiful colours will come
+out, and when in a passion it becomes of a deep black, and will swell
+itself up like a balloon, and, from being one of the most beautiful
+animals, it becomes one of the most ugly. It is true that Chameleons
+are extremely fond of the fresh air, and on taking them to a window
+when there is nothing to be seen, it is easy to observe the pleasure
+they certainly take in it: they begin to gulp down the air, and their
+colour becomes brighter. I think it proceeds, in a great degree, from
+the temper they are in: a little thing will put them in a bad humour: if
+in crossing a table, for instance, you stop them, and attempt to turn
+them another road, they will not stir, and are extremely obstinate: on
+opening the mouth at them, it will set them in a passion: they begin to
+arm themselves by swelling and turning black, and will sometimes hiss a
+little, but not much.
+
+"The third I brought from Jerusalem was the most singular of all the
+Chameleons I ever had: its temper, if it can be so called, was extremely
+sagacious and cunning. This one was not of the order of the green kind,
+but a disagreeable drab, and it never once varied in its colour in two
+months. On my arrival in Cairo. I used to let it crawl about the room on
+the furniture. Sometimes it would get down, if it could, and hide itself
+away from me, but in a place where it could see me; and sometimes,
+on my leaving the room and on entering it, would draw itself so thin
+as to make itself nearly on a level with whatever it might be on, so
+that I might not see it. It had often deceived me so. One day having
+missed it for some time, I concluded it was hid about the room; after
+looking for it in vain, I thought it had got out of the room and made
+its escape: in the course of the evening, after the candle was lighted,
+I went to a basket that had got a handle across it: I saw my Chameleon,
+but its colour entirely changed, and different to any I ever had seen
+before: the whole body, head and tail, a brown with black spots, and
+beautiful deep orange-coloured spots round the black. I certainly was
+much gratified. On being disturbed, its colours vanished, unlike the
+others; but after this I used to observe it the first thing in the
+morning, when it would have the same colours. Some time after, it made
+its escape out of my room, and I suppose got into the garden close by.
+I was much vexed, and would have given twenty dollars to have recovered
+it again, though it only cost me threepence, knowing I could not get
+another like it; for, afterwards being in Rosetta, I had between fifty
+and sixty; but all those were green, yellow, and black; and the Arabs,
+in catching them, had bruised them so much, that after a month or six
+weeks they died. It is an animal extremely hard to die. I had prepared
+two cages with separate divisions, with the intention of bringing them
+to England; but though I desired the Arabs that used to get them for me
+to catch them by the tail, they used to hurt them much with their hands;
+and if once the body is squeezed, it will never live longer than two
+months. When they used to sleep at night, it was easy to see where they
+had been bruised; for being of a very light colour when sleeping, the
+part that had been bruised, either on the body or the head, which was
+bone, was extremely black, though when green it would not show itself so
+clear. Their chief food was flies: the fly does not die immediately on
+being swallowed, for upon taking the Chameleon up in my hands, it was
+easy to feel the fly buzzing, chiefly on account of the air they draw in
+their inside: they swell much, and particularly when they want to fling
+themselves off a great height, by filling themselves up like a balloon:
+on falling, they get no hurt, except on the mouth, which they bruise a
+little, as that comes first to the ground. Sometimes they will not drink
+for three or four days, and when they begin they are about half an hour
+drinking. I have held a glass in one hand while the Chameleon rested its
+two fore-paws on the edge of it, the two hind ones resting on my other
+hand. It stood upright while drinking, holding its head up like a fowl.
+By flinging its tongue out of its mouth the length of its body, and
+instantaneously catching the fly, it would go back like a spring. They
+will drink mutton broth: how I came to know this was, one day having a
+plate of broth and rice on the table where it was: it went to the plate
+and got half into it, and began drinking, and trying to take up some of
+the rice, by pushing it with its mouth towards the side of the plate,
+which kept it from moving, and in a very awkward way taking it into its
+mouth."
+
+In the autumn of 1868, a pair of Chameleons, in the possession of the
+Hon. Lady Cust, of Leasowe Castle, Cheshire, produced nine active young
+ones, like little alligators, less than an inch long. Such a birth has
+been, it is believed, very rare in this country. It was remarked, in the
+above case, that the male and female appeared altogether indifferent
+about their progeny.
+
+Whatever may be the cause, the fact seems to be certain, that the
+Chameleon has an antipathy to objects of a black colour. One, which
+Forbes kept, uniformly avoided a black board which was hung up in the
+chamber; and, what is most remarkable, when the Chameleon was held
+forcibly before the black board, it trembled violently and assumed a
+_black colour_.[25]
+
+It may be something of the same kind which makes Bulls and Turkey-cocks
+dislike the colour of scarlet, a fact of which there can be no doubt.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[24] The Fables of John Gay. Illustrated. With Original Memoir,
+Introduction, and Annotations. By Octavius Freire Owen, M.A., F.S.A.
+1854.
+
+[25] This, it will be seen by referring to page 307, does not correspond
+with Calmet's statement.
+
+
+
+
+RUNNING TOADS.
+
+
+That the Toad, by common repute "ugly and venomous," should be made a
+parlour pet, is passing strange; yet such is the case, and we find in a
+letter from Dr. Husenbeth, of Cossey, the following curious instances.
+Thus he describes a species, there often met with, the eyes of which
+have the pupil surrounded with bright golden-yellow, whereas in the
+common toad the circle is red or orange. This remarkable peculiarity
+Dr. H. has not seen anywhere noticed. The head is like that of the
+common sort, but much more blunt, and rounded off at the nose and mouth,
+and the arches over the eyes are more prominent. The most remarkable
+difference is a line of yellow running all down the back. Also down each
+side this Toad has a row of red pimples, like small beads, which are
+tolerably regular, but appear more in some specimens than in others.
+The general colour is a yellowish-olive, but the animal is beautifully
+marked with black spots, very regularly disposed, and exactly
+corresponding on each side of the yellow line down the back. Like all
+other Toads, this one occasionally changes its colour, becoming more
+brown, or ash-colour, or reddish at times, probably in certain states
+of the weather. This species is much more active than the common Toad.
+It never leaps, and very seldom crawls, but makes a short run, stops a
+little, and then runs on again. If frightened or pursued, it will run
+along much quicker than one would suppose.
+
+During the previous summer Dr. H. kept three Toads of this kind in
+succession. "The first (says Dr. H.) I procured in July; but after a
+few days, when I let him have a run on the carpet of my parlour, he
+got into a hole in a corner of the floor, of which I was not aware,
+and fell, as I suppose, underneath the floor, into the hollow space
+below. I concluded that he could never get up again, and gave him up to
+his fate. I then began to keep another Running Toad, which fed well at
+first, but after three weeks refused food, and evidently wasted; so I
+turned him out into the garden, and have not met with him since. After
+more than three weeks, the former Toad reappeared, but how he came up
+from beneath the floor I never could conceive, or how he had picked
+up a living in the meantime. He was, however, in good condition, and
+seemed to have lived well, probably on spiders and woodlice. He had been
+seen by a servant running about the carpet, but I knew nothing of his
+having come forth again, till in the evening, when he had got near the
+door, and it was suddenly opened so as to pass over the poor creature,
+and crush it terribly. I took it up apparently dead. It showed no sign
+of life; the eyes were closed, it did not breathe, and the backbone
+seemed quite broken, and the animal was crushed almost flat. I found a
+very curious milky secretion exuding from it, where it had been most
+injured and the skin was most broken. This was perfectly white, and had
+exactly the appearance of milk thrown over the toad. It did not bleed,
+though much lacerated; but instead of blood appeared this milky fluid,
+which had an odour of a most singular kind, different from anything I
+ever smelt. It is impossible to describe it. It was not fetid, but of
+a sickly, disgusting, and overpowering character, so that I could not
+endure to inhale it for a moment. I had read and seen a good deal of the
+extraordinary powers of revivification in toads, but was not prepared
+for what I witnessed on this occasion. I laid this poor animal, crushed,
+flattened, motionless, and to all appearance dead, upon a cold iron
+plate of the fireplace. He fell over on one side, and showed no sign of
+life for a full hour. After that he had slightly moved one leg, and so
+remained for about another half-hour. Then he began to breathe feebly,
+and gathered up his legs, and his back began to rise up into its usual
+form. In about two hours from the time of the accident, he had so far
+recovered as to crawl about, though with difficulty. The milky liquor
+was reabsorbed, and gradually disappeared as the toad recovered. The
+next morning it was all gone, and no mark of injury could be seen,
+except a small hole in his back, which soon closed. He recovered so far
+as to move about pretty well, but his back appeared to have been broken,
+and one fore-leg crippled. I therefore thought it best to give him his
+liberty in the garden. But so wonderful and speedy a recovery I could
+never have believed without ocular testimony.
+
+"I then tried my third and last Running Toad. I began to keep him on
+Sept. 13th. He was a very fine specimen, and larger than the two former.
+He fed well, and amused me exceedingly. He was very tame, and would sit
+on my hand quite quiet, and enjoy my stroking him gently down his head
+and back. Soon after I got him he began to cast his skin. I helped him
+to get rid of it by stripping it down each side, which he seemed to
+like much, and sat very quiet during the operation. The new skin was
+quite beautiful, and shone as if varnished. This Toad lived in a crystal
+palace, or glass jar, where I had kept all the others before him. He
+took food freely, and his appetite was so good that in one day he ate
+seven large flies and three bees without stings. He was particularly
+fond of woodlice and earwigs, but would take centipedes, moths, and
+even butterflies. Being more active than common Toads, he often made
+great efforts to get out of his glass jar. I used to let him run about
+the room nearly every day for a short time, and often treated him to a
+run in the garden. Toads make a slight noise sometimes in the evenings,
+uttering a short sound like 'coo,' but I never heard them croak. Before
+wet weather, and during its continuance, my Toad was disinclined for
+food, and took no notice of flies even walking over his nose. He would
+then burrow and hide himself in the moss at the bottom of his glass
+palace. Thus I kept him, and found him very tame and amusing. But after
+about two months he became more impatient of confinement, and refused
+to take any food. I did not perceive that he fell away, though his feet
+and toes turned of a dark colour, which I knew was a sign of being out
+of condition; and, on the 10th of November, I found him dead. I have
+now tried three of this sort, and have come to the conclusion that the
+Running Toad will not live in captivity. This I much regret, as its
+habits are interesting, and its ways very amusing.
+
+                    "F. C. Husenbeth, D.D."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+FROG AND TOAD CONCERTS.
+
+It would be hard to believe the stories of the vocal powers of Frogs
+and Toads were they not related by trustworthy travellers, who tell of
+animal concerts,
+
+  "Wild as the marsh, and tuneful as the harp."
+
+Mr. Priest, the traveller in America, who was himself a musician,
+records:--"Prepared as I was to hear something extraordinary from these
+animals, I confess the first _Frog Concert_ I heard in America was so
+much beyond anything I could conceive of the power of these musicians,
+that I was truly astonished. This performance was _al fresco_, and took
+place on the eighteenth of April, in a large swamp, where there were at
+least 10,000 performers; and I really believe not two exactly in the
+same pitch, if the octave can possibly admit of so many divisions, or
+shades of semitones."
+
+Professor and Mrs. Louis Agassiz, in their recent "Journey in Brazil,"
+record:--"We must not leave Para without alluding to our evening
+concerts from the adjoining woods and swamps. When I first heard this
+strange confusion of sounds, I thought it came from a crowd of men
+shouting loudly, though at a little distance. To my surprise. I found
+that the rioters were the frogs and toads in the neighbourhood. I hardly
+know how to describe this Babel of woodland noises; and, if I could do
+it justice, I am afraid my account would hardly be believed. At moments
+it seems like the barking of dogs, then like the calling of many voices
+on different keys; but all loud, rapid, excited, full of emphasis and
+variety. I think these frogs, like ours, must be silent at certain
+seasons of the year, for on our first visit to Para we were not struck
+by this singular music, with which the woods now resound at nightfall."
+
+
+
+
+SONG OF THE CICADA.
+
+
+The Greeks have been scoffed at for rendering in deathless verse the
+song of so insignificant an insect as the Cicada; and hence it has
+been asserted that their love for such slender music must have been
+either exaggerated or simulated. It is pleasant, however, to hear an
+independent observer in the other hemisphere confirm their testimony.
+Mr. Lord tells us that in British Colombia there is one sound or song
+which is clearer, shriller, and _more singularly tuneful than any
+other_. It never appears to cease, and it comes from everywhere--from
+the tops of the trees, from the trembling leaves of the cotton-wood,
+from the stunted under-brush, from the flowers, the grass, the rocks and
+boulders--nay, the very stream itself seems vocal with hidden minstrels,
+all chanting the same refrain.
+
+An especial feature of the Cicada's song is, that it increases in
+intensity when the sun is hottest; and one of the later Latin poets
+mentions the time when its music is at its highest, as an alternative
+expression for noon. Mr. Tennyson, inadvertently, speaks in "AEnone" of
+the Grasshopper being silent in the grass, and of the Cicada sleeping
+when the noonday quiet holds the hill. Keats sings more truly:--
+
+  "When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
+  And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
+  From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead:
+  That is the Grasshopper's."
+
+Then the Greek poets show us how intimately the song of the Cicada is
+associated with the hottest hours of the day. Aristophanes describes it
+as mad for the love of the sun; and Theocritus, as scorched by the sun.
+When all things are parched with the heat (says Alcaeus), then from among
+the leaves issues the song of the sweet Cicada. His shrill melody is
+heard in the full glow of noontide, and the vertical rays of a torrid
+sun fire him to sing. Over and over again Mr. Lord met with allusions to
+the same peculiarity.
+
+Cicadae are regularly sold for food in the markets of South America. They
+are not eaten now, like they were at Athens, as a whet to the appetite;
+but they are dried in the sun, powdered, and made into a cake.
+
+
+
+
+STORIES ABOUT THE BARNACLE GOOSE.
+
+    "As barnacles turn Poland geese
+    In th' islands of the Orcades."--_Hudibras._
+
+
+One of the earliest references to this popular error is in the "Natural
+Magic" of Baptista Porta, who says:--"Late writers report that not only
+in Scotland, but also in the river of Thames by London, there is a kind
+of shell-fish in a two-leaved shell, that hath a foot full of plaits
+and wrinkles.... They commonly stick to the keel of some old ship. Some
+say they come of worms, some of the boughs of trees which fall into the
+sea; if any of them be cast upon shore, they die; but they which are
+swallowed still into the sea, live and get out of their shells, and grow
+to be ducks, or such-like birds."
+
+Professor Max Mueller, in a learned lecture, enters fully into the origin
+of the different stories about the Barnacle Goose. He quotes from the
+"Philosophical Transactions" of 1678 a full account by Sir Robert Moray,
+who declared that he had seen within the barnacle shell, as through a
+concave or diminishing glass, the bill, eyes, head, neck, breast, wings,
+tail, feet, and feathers of the Barnacle Goose. The next witness was
+John Gerarde, Master in Chirurgerie, who, in 1597, declared that he had
+seen the actual metamorphosis of the muscle into the bird, describing
+how--
+
+"The shell gapeth open, and the first thing that appeareth is the fore
+said lace or string; next come the leg of the birde hanging out, and
+as it groweth greater, it openeth the shell by degrees, till at length
+it is all come forth, and hangeth only by the bill, and falleth into
+the sea, when it gathereth feathers and groweth to a foule, bigger than
+a mallart; for the truth hereof, if any doubt, may it please them to
+repair unto me, and I shall satisfie them by the testimonies of good
+witnesses."
+
+As far back as the thirteenth century, the same story is traced in the
+writings of Giraldus Cambrensis. This great divine does not deny the
+truth of the miraculous origin of the Barnacle Geese, but he warns the
+Irish priests against dining off them during Lent on the plea that they
+were not flesh, but fish. For, he writes, "If a man during Lent were
+to dine off a leg of Adam, who was not born of flesh either, we should
+not consider him innocent of having eaten what is flesh." This modern
+myth, which, in spite of the protests of such men as Albertus Magnus,
+AEneas Sylvius, and others, maintained its ground for many centuries, and
+was defended, as late as 1629, in a book by Count Maier, "De volucri
+arborea," with arguments, physical, metaphysical, and theological, owed
+its origin to a play of words. The muscle shells are called _Bernaculae_
+from the Latin _perna_, the mediaeval Latin _berna_; the birds are called
+_Hibernicae_ or _Hiberniculae_, abbreviated to _Berniculae_. As their names
+seem one, the creatures are supposed to be one, and everything conspires
+to confirm the first mistake, and to invest what was originally a good
+Irish story--a mere _canard_--with all the dignity of scientific, and
+all the solemnity of theological truth. The myth continued to live
+until the age of Newton. Specimens of _Lepadidae_, prepared by Professor
+Rolleston of Oxford, show how the outward appearance of the _Anatifera_
+could have supported the popular superstition which derived the
+_Bernicla_, the goose, from the _Bernicula_, the shell.
+
+Drayton (1613), in his "Poly-olbion," iii., in connexion with the river
+Lee, speaks of
+
+    "Th' anatomised fish and fowls from planchers sprung;"
+
+to which a note is appended in Southey's edition, p. 609, that such
+fowls were "Barnacles, a bird breeding upon old ships." A bunch of the
+shells attached to the ship, or to a piece of floating timber, at a
+distance appears like flowers in bloom; the foot of the animal has a
+similitude to the stalk of a plant growing from the ship's sides, the
+shell resembles a calyx, and the flower consists of the tentacula, or
+fingers, of the shell-fish. The ancient error was to mistake the foot
+for the neck of a goose, the shell for its head, and the tentacula for
+feathers. As to the body, _non est inventus_.
+
+Sir Kenelm Digby was soundly laughed at for relating to a party at
+the castle of the Governor of Calais, that "the Barnacle, a bird in
+Jersey, was first a shell-fish to appearance, and, from that striking
+upon old wood, became in time a bird." In 1807, there was exhibited in
+Spring-gardens, London, a "Wonderful natural curiosity, called the Goose
+Tree, Barnacle Tree, or Tree bearing Geese," taken up at sea on January
+12th, and more than twenty men could raise out of the water.[26]
+
+Sir J. Emerson Tennent asks whether the ready acceptance and general
+credence given to so obvious a fable may not have been derived from
+giving too literal a construction to the text of the passage in the
+first chapter of Genesis:--
+
+     "And God said, Let the _waters bring forth abundantly_ the
+     moving creature that hath life, and the _fowl_ that may fly in the
+     open firmament of heaven."
+
+The Barnacle Goose is a well-known bird, and is eaten on fast-days in
+France, by virtue of this old belief in its marine origin. The belief
+in the barnacle origin of the bird still prevails on the west coast of
+Ireland, and in the Western Highlands of Scotland.
+
+The finding of the Barnacle is thus described by Mr. Sidebotham, to
+the Microscopical and Natural History Section of the Literary and
+Philosophical Society:--"In September, I was at Lytham with my family.
+The day was very stormy, and the previous night there had been a strong
+south-west wind, and evidences of a very stormy sea outside the
+banks. Two of my children came running to tell me of a very strange
+creature that had been washed up on the shore. They had seen it from
+the pier, and pointed it out to a sailor, thinking it was a large dog
+with long hair. On reaching the shore I found a fine mass of Barnacles,
+_Pentalasinus anatifera_, attached to some staves of a cask, the whole
+being between four and five feet long. Several sailors had secured the
+prize, and were getting it on a truck to carry it away. The appearance
+was most remarkable, the hundreds of long tubes with their curious
+shells looking like what one would fancy the fabled Gorgon's head with
+its snaky locks. The curiosity was carried to a yard where it was to be
+exhibited, and the bellman went round to announce it under the name of
+the sea-lioness, or the great sea-serpent. Another mass of Barnacles
+was washed up at Lytham, and also one at Blackpool, the same day or the
+day following. This mass of Barnacles was evidently just such a one as
+that seen by Gerard at the Pile of Foulders. It is rare to have such a
+specimen on our coasts. The sailors at Lytham had never seen anything
+like it, although some of them were old men who had spent all their
+lives on the coast."
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[26] "Notes and Queries," No. 201.
+
+
+
+
+LEAVES ABOUT BOOKWORMS.
+
+
+On paper, leather, and parchment are found various animals, popularly
+known as "Bookworms." Johnson describes it as a worm or mite that eats
+holes in books, chiefly when damp; and in the "Guardian" we find this
+reference to its habits:--"My lion, like a moth or bookworm, feeds upon
+nothing but paper."
+
+Many years ago an experienced keeper of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford
+collected these interesting details of Bookworms:--"The larvae of
+_Crambus pinguinalis_ will establish themselves upon the binding of a
+book, and spinning a robe will do it little injury. A mite, _Acarus
+eruditus_, eats the paste that fastens the paper over the edges of the
+binding and so loosens it. The caterpillar of another little moth takes
+its station in damp old books, between the leaves, and there commits
+great ravages. The little boring wood-beetle, who attacks books and
+will even bore through several volumes. An instance is mentioned of
+twenty-seven folio volumes being perforated in a straight line, by the
+same insect, in such a manner that by passing a cord through the perfect
+round hole made by it the twenty-seven volumes could be raised at once.
+The wood-beetle also destroys prints and drawings, whether framed or
+kept in a portfolio."
+
+There is another "Bookworm," which is often confounded with the
+Death-watch of the vulgar; but is smaller, and instead of beating
+at intervals, as does the Death-watch, continues its noise for a
+considerable length of time without intermission. It is usually found
+in old wood, decayed furniture, museums, and neglected books. The
+female lays her eggs, which are exceedingly small, in dry, dusty
+places, where they are least likely to meet with disturbance. They are
+generally hatched about the beginning of March, a little sooner or
+later, according to the weather. After leaving the eggs, the insects are
+so small as to be scarcely discerned without the use of a glass. They
+remain in this state about two months, somewhat resembling in appearance
+the mites in cheese, after which they undergo their change into the
+perfect insect. They feed on dead flies and other insects; and often,
+from their numbers and voracity, very much deface cabinets of natural
+history. They subsist on various other substances, and may often be
+observed carefully hunting for nutritious particles amongst the dust in
+which they are found, turning it over with their heads, and searching
+about in the manner of swine. Many live through the winter buried deep
+in the dust to avoid the frost.
+
+The best mode of destroying the insects which infest books and MSS.
+has often occupied the attention of the possessors of valuable
+libraries. Sir Thomas Phillips found the wood of his book-case attacked,
+particularly where beech had been introduced, and appeared to think
+that the insect was much attracted by the paste employed in binding.
+He recommended as preservatives against their attacks spirits of
+turpentine and a solution of corrosive sublimate, and also the latter
+substance mixed with paste. In some instances he found the produce of
+a single impregnated female sufficient to destroy a book. Turpentine
+and spirit of tar are also recommended for their destruction; but the
+method pursued in the collections of the British Museum is an abundant
+supply of camphor, with attention to keeping the rooms dry, warm, and
+ventilated. Mr. Macleay states it is the _acari_ only which feed on the
+paste employed in binding books, and the larvae of the Coleoptera only
+which pierce the boards and leaves.
+
+The ravages of the Bookworm would be much more destructive had there
+not been a sort of guardian to the literary treasures in the shape of
+a spider, who, when examined through a microscope, resembles a knight
+in armour. This champion of the library follows the Worm into the
+book-case, discovers the pit he has digged, rushes on his victim, which
+is about his own size, and devours him. His repast finished, he rests
+for about a fortnight, and when his digestion is completed, he sets out
+to break another lance with the enemy.
+
+The Death-watch, already referred to, and which must be acquitted of
+destroying books, is chiefly known by the noise which he makes behind
+the wainscoting, where he ticks like a clock or watch. How so loud
+a noise is produced by so small an insect has never been properly
+explained; and the ticking has led to many legends. The naturalist
+Degeer relates that one night, in the autumn of 1809, during an
+entomological excursion in Brittany, where travellers were scarce and
+accommodation bad, he sought hospitality at the house of a friend. He
+was from home, and Degeer found a great deal of trouble in gaining
+admittance; but at last the peasant who had charge of the house told
+Degeer that he would give him "the chamber of death," if he liked. As
+Degeer was much fatigued, he accepted the offer. "The bed is there,"
+said the man, "but no one has slept in it for some time. Every night the
+spirit of the officer, who was surprised and killed in this room by some
+chouans, comes back. When the officer was dead, the peasants divided
+what he had about him, and the officer's watch fell to my uncle, who was
+delighted with the prize, and brought it home to examine it. However,
+he soon found out that the watch was broken, and would not go. He then
+placed it under his pillow, and went to sleep; he awoke in the night,
+and to his terror heard the ticking of a watch. In vain he sold the
+watch, and gave the money for masses to be said for the officer's soul,
+the ticking continued, and has never ceased." Degeer said that he would
+exorcise the chamber, and the peasant left him, after making the sign of
+the cross. The naturalist at once guessed the riddle, and, accustomed to
+the pursuit of insects, soon had a couple of Death-watches shut up in a
+tin case, and the ticking was reproduced.
+
+Swift has prescribed this destructive remedy by way of ridicule:--
+
+                                    "A Wood-worm
+    That lies in old wood, like a hare in her form:
+    With teeth or with claws it will bite, or will scratch;
+    And chambermaids christen this worm a Death-watch,
+    Because like a watch it always cries click:
+    Then woe be to those in the house that are sick!
+    For, sure as a gun, they will give up the ghost
+    If the maggot cries click when it scratches the post.
+    But a kettle of scalding hot water ejected,
+    Infallibly cures the timber affected:
+    The omen is broken, the danger is over;
+    The maggot will die, the sick will recover."
+
+
+
+
+BORING MARINE ANIMALS, AND HUMAN ENGINEERS.
+
+
+Were a young naturalist asked to exemplify what man has learned from the
+lower animals, he could scarcely adduce a more striking instance than
+that of a submarine shelly worker teaching him how to execute some of
+his noblest works. This we have learned from the life and labours of the
+_Pholas_, of which it has been emphatically said:--"Numerous accounts
+have been published during the last fourteen years in every civilized
+country and language of the boring process of the _Pholas_; and machines
+formed on the model of its mechanism have for years been tunnelling Mont
+Cenis."
+
+In the Eastern Zoological Gallery of the British Museum, cases 35 and
+36, as well as in the Museum of Economic Geology in Piccadilly, may be
+seen specimens of the above very curious order of _Conchifers_, most
+of the members of which are distinguished by their habits of boring or
+digging, a process in which they are assisted by the peculiar formation
+of the foot, from which they derive their name. Of these ten families
+one of the most characteristic is that of the Razor-shells, which,
+when the valves are shut, are of a long, flattened, cylindrical shape,
+and open at both ends. Projecting its strong pointed foot at one of
+these ends, the _solen_ can work itself down into the sand with great
+rapidity, while at the upper end its respiratory tubes are shot out to
+bring the water to its gills. Of the _Pholadae_, the shells of which
+are sometimes called multivalve, because, in addition to the two chief
+portions, they have a number of smaller accessory pieces, some bore
+in hard mud, others in wood, and others in rocks. They fix themselves
+firmly by the powerful foot, and then make the shell revolve; the sharp
+edges of this commence the perforation, which is afterwards enlarged by
+the rasp-like action of the rough exterior; and though the shell must
+be constantly worn down, yet it is replaced by a new formation from the
+animal, so as never to be unfit for its purpose. The typical bivalve of
+this family is the _Pholas_, which bores into limestone-rock and other
+hard material, and commits ravages on the piers, breakwaters, &c., that
+it selects for a home.
+
+In the same family as the above Dr. Gray ranks the _Teredo_,[27] or
+wood-boring mollusc, whose ravages on ships, piles, wooden piers, &c.,
+at sea resemble those of the white ant on furniture, joints of houses,
+&c., on shore. Perforating the timber by exactly the same process as
+that by which the Pholas perforates the stones, the Teredo advances
+continually, eating out a contorted tube or gallery, which it lines
+behind it with calcareous matter, and through which it continues to
+breathe the water.
+
+The priority of the demonstration of the Pholas and its "boring habits"
+has been much disputed. The evidence is full of curious details. It
+appears that Mr. Harper, of Edinburgh, author of "The Sea-side and
+Aquarium," having claimed the lead. Mr. Robertson, of Brighton, writes
+to dispute the originality; adding that he publicly exhibited Pholades
+in the Pavilion at Brighton in July, 1851, perforating chalk rocks by
+the raspings of their valves and squirtings of their syphons. Professor
+Flourens (says Mr. Robertson) taught my observations to his class in
+Paris in 1853; I published them in 1851, and again more fully in the
+"Journal de Conchyliologie," in 1853; and M. Emile Blanchard illustrated
+them in the same year in his "Organisation du Regne Animal." I published
+a popular account of the perforating processes in "Household Words"
+in 1856. After obtaining the suffrages of the French authorities, I
+have been recently honoured with those of the British naturalist. (See
+Woodward's "Recent and Fossil Shells," p. 327. Family, Pholadidae.) On
+returning to England last autumn I exhibited perforating Pholades to
+all the naturalists who cared to watch them. An intelligent lady whom I
+supplied with Pholades has made a really new and original observation,
+which I may take this opportunity of communicating to the public. She
+observed two Pholades whose perforations were bringing them nearer and
+nearer to each other. Their mutual raspings were wearing away the thin
+partition which separated their crypts. She was curious to know what
+they would do when they met, and watched them closely. When the two
+perforating shell-fish met and found themselves in each other's way, the
+stronger just bored right through the weaker Pholas.[28]
+
+Mr. Robertson has communicated to "Jameson's Journal," No. 101, the
+results of his opportunities of studying the Pholas, during six months,
+to discover how this mollusc makes its hole or crypt in the chalk: by
+a chemical solvent? by absorption? by ciliary currents? or by rotatory
+motions? Between twenty and thirty of these creatures were at work
+in lumps of chalk, in sea-water, in a finger-glass, and open for
+three months; and by watching their operations. Mr. Robertson became
+convinced that the Pholas makes its hole by grating the chalk with its
+rasp-like valves, licking it up when pulverized with its foot, forcing
+it up through its principal orbrambial syphon, and squirting it out in
+oblong nodules. The crypt protects the Pholas from _confervae_, which,
+when they get at it, grow not merely outside, but even with the lips
+of the valves, preventing the action of the syphons. In the foot there
+is a gelatinous spring or style, which, even when taken out, has great
+elasticity, and which seems the mainspring of the motions of the Pholas.
+
+Upon this Dr. James Stark, of Edinburgh, writes:
+
+--"Mr. Robertson, of Brighton, claims the merit of teaching that
+Pholades perforate rocks by 'the rasping of their valves and the
+squirting of their syphons.' His observations only appear to reach
+back to 1851. But the late Mr. John Stark, of Edinburgh, author of the
+'Elements of Natural History,' read a paper before the Royal Society of
+Edinburgh, in 1826, which was printed in the Society's 'Transactions'
+of that year, in which he demonstrated that the Pholades perforate the
+shale rocks in which they occur on this coast, by means of the rasping
+of their valves, and not by acids or other secretions. From also finding
+that their shells scratched limestone without injury to the fine rasping
+rugosities, he inferred that it was by the same agency they perforated
+the hard limestone rocks."
+
+To this Mr. Robertson replies, that Mr. Osler also, in 1826,
+demonstrated that the Pholades "perforate the shale rocks by means of
+the rasping of their valves; and more, for he actually witnessed a
+rotatory movement. But Reaumur and Poli had done as much as this in the
+eighteenth and Sibbald in the seventeenth century: and yet I found the
+solvent hypothesis in the ascendant among naturalists in 1835, when I
+first interested myself in the controversy. What I did in 1851 was, I
+exhibited Pholades at work perforating rocks, and explained how they did
+it. What I have done is, I have made future controversy impossible, by
+exhibiting the animals at work, and by discovering the anatomy and the
+physiology of the perforating instruments. In the words of M. Flourens,
+'I made the animals work before my eyes,' and I 'made known their
+mechanism.' The discovery of the function of the hyaline stylet is not
+merely a new discovery, it is the discovery of a kind of instrument as
+yet unique in physiology."
+
+Mr. Harper having termed the boring organ of the Pholas the "hyaline
+stylet," found it to have puzzled some of the disputants, whereupon Mr.
+Harper writes:--"Its use up to the present time has been a mystery,
+but the general opinion of authors seems to be, that it is the gizzard
+of the Pholas. This I very much doubt, for it is my belief that the
+presence of such an important muscle is solely for the purpose of
+aiding the animal's boring operations. Being situated in the centre
+of the foot, we can readily conceive the great increase of strength
+thus conveyed to the latter member, which is made to act as a powerful
+fulcrum, by the exercise of which the animal rotates--and at the same
+time presses its shell against and rasps the surface of the rock.
+The question being asked, 'How can the stylet be procured to satisfy
+curiosity?' I answer, by adopting the following extremely simple plan.
+Having disentombed a specimen, with the point of a sharp instrument
+cut a slit in the base of its foot, and the object of your search will
+be distinctly visible in the shape of, if I may so term it, an opal
+cylinder. Sometimes I have seen the point of this organ spring out
+beyond the incision, made as above described."
+
+Lastly, Mr. Harper presented the Editor of the "Athenaeum" with a
+piece of bored rock, of which he has several specimens. He adds, "On
+examination, you will perceive that the larger Pholas must have bored
+through its smaller and weaker neighbour (how suggestive!), the shell of
+the latter, most fortunately, remaining in its own cavity."
+
+Now, Mr. Robertson claimed for his observation of this phenomenon
+novelty and originality; but Mr. Harper stoutly maintained it to be
+"as common to the eye of the practised geologist as rain or sunshine."
+The details are curious; though some impatient, and not very grateful
+reader, may imagine himself in the condition of the shell of the smaller
+Pholas, and will be, as he deserves to remain, in the minority.[29]
+
+It may be interesting to sum up a few of the opinions of the mode by
+which these boring operations are performed. Professor Forbes states
+the mode by which Molluscs bore into wood and other materials is as
+follows:--"Some of the Gauterspods have tongues covered with silica to
+enable them to bore, and it was probably by some process of this kind
+that all the Molluscs bored."
+
+Mr. Peach never observed the species of Pholas to turn round in their
+holes, as stated by some observers, although he had watched them with
+great attention. Mr. Charlesworth refers to the fact that, in one
+species of shell, not only does the hole in the rock which the animal
+occupies increase in size, but also the hole through which it projects
+its syphons.
+
+Professor John Phillips, alluding to the theories which have been
+given of the mode in which Molluscs bore into the rocks in which they
+live, believes that an exclusively mechanical theory will not account
+for the phenomenon; and he is inclined to adopt the view of Dr. T.
+Williams--that the boring of the Pholades can only be explained on the
+principle which involves a chemical as well as a mechanical agency.
+
+Mr. E. Ray Lankester notices that the boring of Annelids seems quite
+unknown; and he mentions two cases, one by a worm called Leucadore, the
+other by a Sabella. Leucadore is very abundant on some shores, where
+boulders and pebbles may be found worm-eaten and riddled by them. Only
+stones composed of carbonate of lime are bored by them. On coasts where
+such stones are rare, they are selected, and others are left. The worms
+are _quite soft_, and armed only with horny bristles. _How, then, do
+they bore?_ Mr. Lankester maintains that it is by carbonic acid and
+other acid excretions of their bodies, _aided_ by the mechanical action
+of their bristles. The selection of a material soluble in these acids
+is most noticeable, since the softest chalk and the hardest limestone
+are bored with the same facility. This can only be by chemical action.
+If, then, we have a case of chemical boring in these worms, is it not
+probable that many Molluscs are similarly assisted in their excavations?
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[27] How Brunel took his construction of the Thames Tunnel from
+observing the bore of the _Teredo navalis_ in the keel of a ship, in
+1814, is well known.
+
+[28] "Athenaeum," No. 1640.
+
+[29] See also "Life in the Sea," in "Strange Stories of the Animal
+World," by the author of the present volume. Second Edition. 1868.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+  ANCIENT Zoological Gardens, 12
+
+  Animals, Rare, of London Zoological Society, 16, 17, 18
+
+  Annelids, boring, 348
+
+  Annelids and Molluscs, Boring Habits of, 348
+
+  Ant-Bear in captivity, 76
+
+  Ant-Bear, the Great, 72
+
+  Ant-Bear at Madrid, 72
+
+  Ant-Bear described, 77
+
+  Ant-Bear, Domestic, in Paraguay, 75
+
+  Ant-Bear, Economy of, 76
+
+  Ant-Bear and its Food, 74
+
+  Ant-Bears, Fossil, 80, 81
+
+  Ant-Bear, Muscular Force of, 79
+
+  Ant-Bear, Wallace's Account of, 73
+
+  Ant-Bear, Zoological Society's, 76, 82, 84
+
+  Ant-Eater, Porcupine, 84
+
+  Ant-Bear, Professor Owen on, 80
+
+  Ant-Eaters, scarcity of, 80
+
+  Ant-Eater, Tamandua, 82
+
+  Ant-Eaters, Von Saek's Account of, 83
+
+  Aristotle's History of Animals, 279, 280
+
+
+  BARNACLE GEESE, finding of the, 334
+
+  Barnacle Goose, Gerarde on, 332
+
+  Barnacle Goose, Giraldus Cambrensis on, 332
+
+  Barnacle Goose, Max Mueller on, 331
+
+  Barnacle Goose, name of, 332
+
+  Barnacle Goose, Sir E. Tennent on, 334
+
+  Barnacle Goose, Sir Kenelm Digby on, 334
+
+  Barnacle Goose, Sir R. Moray on, 331
+
+  Barnacle Goose, Stories of the, 331-335
+
+  Barnacles breeding upon old ships, 333
+
+  Barnacle Geese in the Thames, 331
+
+  Bat, altivolans, by Gilbert White, 100
+
+  Bat, American, by Lesson, 91
+
+  Bat, Aristotle on, 85
+
+  Bat, Mr. Bell on, 86
+
+  Bats, Curiosities of, 85
+
+  Bat, described by Calmet, 87
+
+  Bat, Flight and Wing of, 96
+
+  Bats, in England, 100
+
+  Bat, Heber, Stedman, and Waterton on, 91
+
+  Bats in Jamaica, 100
+
+  Bat, Kalong, of Java, 98
+
+  Bat, Long-Eared, by Sowerby, 92, 93-96
+
+  Bat, Nycteris, 97
+
+  Bat, Rere-mouse and Flitter-mouse, 86
+
+  Bat Skeleton, Sir C. Bell on, 87
+
+  Bat in Scripture, 85
+
+  Bat, Vampire, from Sumatra, 88
+
+  Bat, Vampire, Lines on, by Byron, 89
+
+  Bat, vulgar errors respecting, 97
+
+  Bat-Fowling or Bat-Folding, 92
+
+  Berlin Zoological Gardens and Museum, 16
+
+  Bible Natural History, 11
+
+  Birds, Addison on their Nests and Music, 156, 157
+
+  Bird, Australian Bower, Nest of, 167
+
+  Bird, Baya, Indian, Nest of, 164
+
+  Birds and Animals, Beauty in, 150
+
+  Birds, Brain of, 154
+
+  Birds, Characteristics of, 145
+
+  Birds, Colour of, 148
+
+  Bird Confinement, Dr. Livingstone on, 169
+
+  Birds' Eggs, large, 162
+
+  Birds' Eggs, Colours of, 158
+
+  Birds' Eggs and Nests, 158
+
+  Birds, European, list of, 161
+
+  Birds, Flight of, 146, 147
+
+  Birds, Insectivorous, 151;
+    Instinct, Intelligence, and Reason, 217
+
+  Bird-Life, 145
+
+  Bird-Murder, wanton, 152
+
+  Birds' Nesting, 159
+
+  Birds' Nests--Cape Swallows, 168
+
+  Birds' Nests--Brush Turkey, 171
+
+  Birds' Nests, large, 164
+
+  Birds' Eggs--Ostrich and Epyornis, 162, 163
+
+  Birds' Nests--Tailor Birds, 165-167
+
+  Birds, Rapid Flight of, 147
+
+  Birds, Signal of Danger among, 155
+
+  Birds, Song of, 149
+
+  Birds, Mr. Wolley's Collections, 159, 160
+
+  Bookworms, Leaves about, 336
+
+  Bookworms and Death-watch, 337
+
+  Boring Marine Animals, and Human Engineers, 341
+
+
+  CHAMELEON of the Ancients, 306
+
+  Chameleon's antipathy to black, 322
+
+  Chameleons, Mrs. Belzoni's, 316-320
+
+  Chameleons, Birth of, in England, 321
+
+  Chameleon changing Colour, 311, 316
+
+  Chameleon, Cuvier on, 309
+
+  Chameleon, described by Calmet, 307
+
+  Chameleon Family, 307
+
+  Chameleon, Air-food of, 309
+
+  Chameleon, Milne Edwards on its Change of Colour, 314-316
+
+  Chameleons, Native Countries of, 316
+
+  Chameleon of the Poets, 308
+
+  Chameleons, Reproduction of, 309
+
+  Chameleon, Tongue and Eyes of, 310, 311
+
+  Chinese Zoological Gardens, 12
+
+  Cicada, Song of the, 329
+
+  Cormorant's Bone, curious, 204
+
+  Cormorants, Chase of, 203
+
+  Cormorant Fishery in China, 202
+
+  Cormorant, Habits of the, 201
+
+  Cormorant trained for Fishing, 201
+
+  Curiosities of Zoology, 11
+
+
+  ECCENTRICITIES of Penguins, 188:
+    Darwin, Mr., his account of Falkland Islands Penguin, 192;
+    Dassent Island Penguins, 188;
+    Death-watch and Bookworm, 337, 338;
+    Falkland Islands Penguins, 189;
+    King Penguins, 191;
+    Patagonian Penguins, 189;
+    Penguin, the name, 194;
+    Webster, Mr., his Account of Penguins, 193
+
+  Epicure's Ortolan, the, 172
+
+  Epicurism Extravagant, 177
+
+  Evelyn and St. James's Physique Garden, 15
+
+
+  FISH in British Colombia, 280:
+    Candle-fish, 282;
+    Octopus, 283;
+    Salmon Army, 281;
+    Spoonbill Sturgeon, 285;
+    Sturgeons, and Sturgeon Fishing, 284-287
+
+  Fish-Talk, 250:
+    Affection of Fishes, 256;
+    Bohemian Wels Fish, 270;
+    Bonita and Flying Fish, 263;
+    Californian Fish, 268;
+    Carp at Fontainebleau, 254;
+    Cat-fish, curious Account of, 257;
+    Double Fish, 272;
+    Fish changing Colour, 251;
+    Fish Noise, 252;
+    Gold Fish, 274;
+    Grampus, gambols of, 262;
+    Great General of the South Sea, 272;
+    Grouper, the, 272;
+    Hassar, the, 256;
+    Hearing of Fishes, 253;
+    Herring Puzzle, 278;
+    Jaculator Fish of Java, 264;
+    Jamaica, Curious Fish at, 266;
+    Little Fishes the Food of Larger, 259;
+    Marine Observatory, 276;
+    Mecho of the Danube, 270;
+    Migration of Fishes, 260;
+    Miller's Thumb, 276;
+    Numbers, vast, of Fishes, 258;
+    Pike, Wonderful, 269;
+    Pilot Fish, 267;
+    Sharks, 267;
+    Singing Fish,252;
+    Square-browed Malthe, 274;
+    Strange Fishes, 251;
+    Sun-fish, 271;
+    Swimming of Fishes, 250;
+    Sword-fish, 266;
+    Warrior Fish, 266
+
+  Frog and Toad Concerts, 327
+
+
+  HEDGEHOG, the, 102
+
+  Hedgehog devouring Snakes, 104
+
+  Hedgehog, Food of, 103
+
+  Hedgehogs, Gilbert White on, 107
+
+  Hedgehog and Poisons, 105
+
+  Hedgehogs, Sir T. Browne on, 102
+
+  Hedgehog Sucking Cows, 104
+
+  Hedgehog and Viper, Fight between, 106, 107
+
+  Hedgehog, Voracity of, 103
+
+  Hippopotamus, Ancient History of, 119
+
+  Hippopotamus, described by Aristotle and Herodotus, 121
+
+  Hippopotamus, Economy of the, 115
+
+  Hippopotamus, the, in England, 108
+
+  Hippopotami, Fossil, 122
+
+  Hippopotami on the Niger, 117
+
+  Hippopotamus, Professor Owen's Description of, 111-115
+
+  Hippopotamus and River Horse, 116
+
+  Hippopotamus in Scripture, 120
+
+  Hippopotamus, Utility of, 118
+
+  Hippopotamus from the White Nile, 109
+
+  Hippopotamus, Zoological Society's, in 1850, 108-111
+
+
+  LEAVES about Bookworms, 336
+
+  Lions in Algeria, and Jules Gerard, 143
+
+  Lion, African, 131
+
+  Lion, Bengal, 133
+
+  Lion described by Bennett, 123
+
+  Lion described by Buffon, 123-125
+
+  Lion described by Burchell, 125
+
+  Lion, disappearance of, 130
+
+  Lion and Hottentots, 132, 133-136
+
+  Lion-hunting Feats, 128
+
+  Lion, "King of the Forest," 126
+
+  Lion, Longevity of, 137
+
+  Lion, Maneless, 133-135
+
+  Lion, Niebuhr on, 131
+
+  Lion in the Nineveh Sculptures, 139, 140
+
+  Lions, the Drudhoe, 144
+
+  Lions, Popular Errors respecting, 123
+
+  Lion, Prickle or Claw in the Tail, 137-139
+
+  Lion, Roar of, 136
+
+  Lions in the Tower of London, 140
+
+  "Lion Tree" in the Mantatee Country, 127
+
+  Lion Stories of the Shows, 142
+
+  Lion-Talk, 123
+
+  Lioness and her Young, 135
+
+
+  MERMAID of 1822, 43-47
+
+  Mermaid in Berbice, 39
+
+  Mermaid in the Bosphorus, 47
+
+  Mermaid and Dugong, 41
+
+  Mermaids, Evidences of, 36
+
+  Mermaid at Exmouth, 40
+
+  Mermaid, Leyden's Ballad, 35
+
+  Mermaid and Manatee, 42
+
+  Mermaid at Milford Haven, 37
+
+  Mermaid, Japanese, 44
+
+  Mermaid, Scottish, 36, 38
+
+  Mermaids and Sirens, 33
+
+  Mermaid's Song, Haydn's, 34
+
+  Mermaids, Stories of, 33
+
+  Mermaid, Structure of, 43
+
+  Mermaids in Suffolk, 48
+
+  Mole, its Economy controverted, 62
+
+  Mole, the Ettrick Shepherd on, 71
+
+  Mole, Le Court on, 62, 65
+
+  Mole and Fairy Rings, 64
+
+  Mole and Farming, 70
+
+  Mole, Feeling of, 64
+
+  Mole at Home, 62
+
+  Mole, its Hunting-ground, 67
+
+  Moles, Loves of the, 68
+
+  Mole, structure of the, 63
+
+  Mole, St. Hilaire on, 69
+
+  Mole, Shrew, of North America, 70
+
+  Mole, Voracity of, 68
+
+  Montezuma's Zoological Gardens, 13
+
+  Musical Lizard, 303:
+    Climbing Walls, 303, 304;
+    Formosa Isle, 303;
+    Gecko ennobled, 306
+
+
+  ORNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY, 15
+
+  Ortolan described, 172, 173
+
+  Ortolans, how fattened, 174
+
+  Ortolan, Mr. Gould on, 174, 175
+
+  Owls, 221:
+    Abyssinian Owl, 230;
+    Barn Owl, 226;
+    Bischaco, or Coquimbo, 224;
+    Boobook Owl, 228;
+    Cats and Owls, 230;
+    Fraser's Eagle Owl, from Fernando Po, 229;
+    Food of Owls, 226;
+    Javanese Owl, 228;
+    Snowy Owl, 227;
+    Tricks by Night, 224;
+    Utility of, 225;
+    Waterton on the Owl, 225
+
+
+  PELICANS and Cormorants, 195
+
+  Pelicans described by Gould, 195
+
+  Pelican in Japan, 197
+
+  Pelican Popular Error, 198, 199
+
+  Pelican Pouches, 198
+
+  Pelican Symbol, 200
+
+  "Pelican of the wilderness," 197
+
+  Pholas, Life and Labours of, 341
+
+  Pholades, Charlesworth and Peach on, 347
+
+  Pholades, Harper on, 346
+
+  Pholades, Robertson on, 343
+
+
+  RHINOCEROS in England, 22:
+    African Rhinoceros in 1858, 27;
+    Ancient History, 23;
+    Bruce and Sparmann, 27;
+    Burchell's shooting, 30;
+    Horn of the Rhinoceros, 31, 32;
+    Indian Wild Ass, 24;
+    One-horned and Two-horned, 23-26;
+    Scripture, Rhinoceros of, 23;
+    Speehnan's Rhinoceros Shooting, 30;
+    Tegetmeir describes the African Rhinoceros, 27;
+    Tractability, 25;
+    Varieties of Rhinoceros, 22;
+    Zoological Society's Rhinoceros, 23, 29
+
+
+  SALE of Wild Animals, 20
+
+  Sentinel Birds, 183
+
+  Song of the Cicada, 329
+
+  Songs of Birds and Seasons of the Day, 219
+
+  St. James's Park Menagerie, 14
+
+  Stories of the Barnacle Goose, 331-335
+
+  Stories of Mermaids, 33
+
+  Surrey Zoological Gardens, 20
+
+
+  TALKING birds, 205:
+    Bittern and Night Raven, 207;
+    Blue Jay, 206;
+    Canaries, Talking, 210-212;
+    Chinese Starling, 205;
+    Crowned Crane, 206;
+    Cuckoo, 209;
+    Laughing Goose, 209;
+    Nightingale, 209;
+    Piping Crow, 205;
+    Snipe, Neighing, 213;
+    Trochilos and Crocodile, 216;
+    Umbrella Bird, 206;
+    Whidaw Bird, 205;
+    Wild Swan, 209;
+    Woodpecker at Constantinople, 215
+
+  Talk about Toucans, 179:
+    Bills of Toucans, 180;
+    Carnivorous propensity, 184;
+    Economy of, 182;
+    Food of, 183;
+    Gould, Mr., his Grand Monograph, 180, 186;
+    Owen, Professor, on the Mandibles, 185;
+    Swainson, Mr., on Toucans, 185
+    Toucan Family, 179, 180;
+    White Ants' Nests, 183;
+    Toucanet, Gould's, 184
+
+  Toad and Frog Concerts, 327-328
+
+  Toads, Running, Dr. Husenbeth's, 323-327
+
+  Tower of London Menagerie, 14
+
+  Tree-climbing Crab, the, 288:
+    Bernhard, Hermit, and Soldier Crab, 291;
+    Climbing Perch, 288;
+    Crab, Burrowing, 290;
+    Crab Migration in Jamaica, 292;
+    Fishing-frogs, 288;
+    Glass Crabs, 301;
+    Pill-making Crabs, 301;
+    Purse Crab feeding on Cocoa-nuts, 296;
+    Robber Crab, 292;
+    Screw-pines, Crab climbing, 298;
+    Vaulted Crab of the Moluccas, 291
+
+
+  UNICORNS, ancient, 51
+
+  Unicorn and Antelope, 53
+
+  Unicorn in Central Africa, 58
+
+  Unicorn described by Ctesias, 49, 50
+
+  Unicorn, Cuvier on, 54
+
+  Unicorn, Is it Fabulous? 49
+
+  Unicorn, Klaproth on, 55
+
+  Unicorn in Kordofan, 53
+
+  Unicorn and its Horn, 53, 59
+
+  Unicorn, modern, 50
+
+  Unicorn, Ogilby on, 51
+
+  Unicorn, Rev. J. Campbell on, 57
+
+  Unicorn in the Royal Arms, 60
+
+
+  WEATHER-WISE ANIMALS, 231:
+    Ants, Asses, 241;
+    Darwin's Signs of Rain, 248;
+    Frogs and Snails, 237-240;
+    List of Animals, 241-247;
+    Mole, 240;
+    Mother Carey's Chickens and Goose, 234;
+    Redbreast, 236;
+    Seagulls, 232;
+    Signs of Rain, 232;
+    Stormy Petrels, 233;
+    Shepherd of Banbury, 249;
+    Toucans, 237;
+    Weatherproof Birds' Nests, 247;
+    Wild Geese and Ducks, 235
+
+  Wild Animals, Cost of, 19
+
+  Wild Beast Shows, 21
+
+
+  ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS, Origin of, 12
+
+  Zoological Society of London, 16
+
+  Zoology, Curiosities of, 11
+
+
+
+
+C. A. Macintosh, Printer, Great New-street, London.
+
+
+
+
+  +----------------------------------------------------------------- +
+  | Transcriber's Note:                                              |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Obvious punctuation and spelling errors repaired.                |
+  | Word combinations that appeared with and without hyphens         |
+  | were changed to the predominant hyphenated form.                 |
+  | Original spelling and its variations were not standardized.      |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Corrections in the spelling of names were made when those        |
+  | could be verified.  Otherwise the variations were left as they   |
+  | were.                                                            |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Page 18: "Parrot-houses, the, sometimes...." changed to          |
+  |   "Parrot-houses: they sometimes contain...."                    |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Page 170 and others: Kolobeng and Kolenbeng. Both spellings were |
+  |   retained.                                                      |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Page 191 and others: Tussa, tussack and tussock. All spellings   |
+  |   were retained.                                                 |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Page 276: Finisterre changed to Finistere.                       |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Page 333: cennexion changed to connexion "... in connexion with  |
+  |   the river Lee...."                                             |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Page 352:  Screw-pines, Crab climbing, 295;  pagination changed  |
+  |   to 298.                                                        |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | The name of Shakespeare appears with varying spellings.  All     |
+  |   variants were kept.                                            |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Some index entries are not in alphabetical order.  They were not |
+  |   corrected.                                                     |
+  |                                                                  |
+  | Footnotes were moved to the ends of the chapters in which they   |
+  | belonged and numbered in one continuous sequence.  The           |
+  | pagination in index entries which referred to these footnotes    |
+  | was not changed to match their new locations and is therefore    |
+  | incorrect.                                                       |
+  +----------------------------------------------------------------- +
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Eccentricities of the Animal Creation., by
+John Timbs
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