1EIR LIFE AND CONVERSATION /»r Crf. CORNISH i II I I liliii I Hi I dl {{II iff! • OF THE UNIVERSITY OF UB3 XXIX. TRESPASSING ANIMALS . . ,. .212 XXX. DO ANIMALS TALK ? . , - . " . • . 219 XXXI. ANIMALS UNDERGROUND . . . . 22J XXXII. MAMMALS IN THE WATER . . . . . 235 XXXIII. CROCODILES . . . . . . 243 XXXIV. MARSUPIALS AND THEIR SKINS . . • 25J xxxv. WILD BEASTS' SKINS IN COMMERCE ,. . .258 XXXVI. EAGLES ON AN ENGLISH LAKE . , . 266 XXXVII. THE GREAT FOREST EAGLE . , . -. . 273 XXXVIII. THE PAST AND FUTURE OF BRITISH MAMMALS . 280 XXXIX. THE RETURN OF THE GREAT BUSTARD . .288 XL. BIG GAME ...... 296 XLI. GAME PRESERVATION IN THE UNITED STATES . . 304 XLII. ANIMAL ACCLIMATIZATION AT WOBURN ABBEY . 312 LIST OF PAGE A BRITISH BEAVER ..... Frontispiece GOATS IN A TIMBER-YARD . . . . .12 THE CAT AS WILD ANIMAL . . . . .36 UNWELCOME COLONISTS . . . . .50 ROB ROY'S CATTLE . . . . 1 . .74 HARD TIMES ON EXMOOR . . . . I IO BEAVER IN THE WATER . . F . . - . I 14 COOL QUARTERS - HIGHLAND CATTLE . . . .142 KITTEN'S KINDERGARTEN . . . . .174 A FIRST-CLASS CARRIAGE, BOSTOCK's MENAGERIE . . 206 A TRESPASSING PARTY . . . . . 2l6 LEAVING THE EARTH . . . . . .228 AN ANCIENT BRITON . . . . . .232 OTTER SWIMMING A STREAM . . , . 236 OTTER ON A LAKE SIDE . 284 AN ENGLISH-BRED GAZELLE . . . . .314 * * THIRTY years ago it seemed possible that the main range of animal usefulness, except as supplying food, might be covered by mechanical contrivance, guided by human intelligence. So much had been achieved by inventors that the old-fashioned animal * helpers and servers ' were at a discount, and there was a general disregard of animal life, and a waste of it, both directly and indirectly. In the last few years a reaction of feeling has taken place, both in this country and its colonies, and in the United States. The animal factor is no longer at a discount. Some of the most practical persons in the world believe, apart from any promptings of senti- ment, that it pays to make the best use of the ' machines ' patented by Nature, and the service of animals is taking a higher place in many of the intelligent combinations of modern life. Not only are highly - specialized animals, like the reindeer, the snow-camel, and others, xii INTRODUCTION in request for modern enterprise : the more delicate animal c machines ' guided by organs of sense and per- ception superior to ours are employed on a great and increasing scale for naval and military purposes — dogs, for instance, as watchers and messengers in the French, German, and Italian armies, and the pigeon-post by all the Western Powers. Recent experiments even indicate that the bloodhound will be once more used for police purposes. How some of the wild animals have managed to maintain themselves during the bad times of the nine- teenth century, their shifts and expedients, and per- sonal idiosyncrasies, and instances of their survival under difficulties, are set out in many of the following chapters. Others deal with the wonderful progress of the domesticated kinds, such as the Jersey cattle, the shire horse, pig, the goat in cities, and other breeds whose adaptation to the needs or conditions of this century has been rapid and astonishing. I.— REINDEER AND SNOW-CAMELS THE place still held by animals in the practical life of to-day is well shown by the efforts of the Governments of Canada and the United States to supply transport to Klondike during the spring of 1898. To reach an ice-beleaguered goldfield in the north-western corner of Arctic America, the Governments of two great nations, Canada and the United States, were sending agents to fetch half-wild reindeer, and Lapps, their half-wild owners, from the north-eastern corner of Arctic Europe. This astonishing adventure was under- taken, first, because the reindeer are the only draught animals which can find food on the journey to Klondike, and secondly, because in the race against time there was not an hour to spare in organizing un- trained herds. Broken reindeer, with their own Lapp owners and drivers, had to be procured, or the ex- pedition would have been too late to start from Dyea in March, when the Arctic days are lengthening. Meantime, the Canadian Government, at its wits' end to 1 i 2 REINDEER AND SNOW-CAMELS supply its own police-force on the way to Klondike, also sent an agent to Norway, who forwarded six Lapps and a hundred and fourteen deer, and was instructed to send an equal number as soon as he could get them. Everyone knows that all this trouble, expense and hurry to obtain some two thousand five hundred medium-sized deer from the uttermost parts of the earth is due solely to one physical fact in natural history — namely, that these deer can find food where no other beast of burden can. But the exact physical and local conditions which should make it possible for the deer to cross where two thousand horses were already lying dead from starvation are the following. The road lies mainly beyond the northern limit ot grass and trees. The reindeer will eat moss, and prefers it to other food. Moss, as we understand it, is rather an uncommon vegetable. It would be difficult, for instance, to find enough moss by an English road- side to feed one reindeer per diem, not to speak of hundreds. But once beyond a certain line on the Arctic fringe, moss is the one common form of vegetable life. Lichen is the more appropriate name, for it is a thick, whitish growth, springing up naturally, and often burnt by the Lapps over large tracts to produce a thicker crop for the deer, just as Scotch shepherds burn the heather. It is the natural vegetable covering of the earth, where earth, and not rock, is on REINDEER AND SNOW-CAMELS 3 the surface. And the Klondike climate is particularly favourable to this moss, which lies over the whole soil, an invisible vegetable lining, between the earth and the covering snow. It is so thick that even in summer, when the snow melts, this non-conducting layer of moss prevents the ground from thawing. Before the snow melts, the deer would be travelling over one vast carpet of snow-covered food ; and as each reindeer, male or female, has a projecting pal- mated antler, or ' snow-scraper/ with a few sidelong sweeps of which it can brush away the snow, the herds have no trouble in reaching their food. When communications with Klondike were once more open, it was found that the miners were not in such straits as was supposed. But the story is evidence that the animal factor is not yet struck out of the lists of human needs. When the purchase of these reindeer was announced, I received from Mr. Carl Hagenbeck, of Hamburg, a suggestion of another transport animal for use in the snows of Klondike. 'The best animal for the Klondike climate,' he wrote, ' is the big Siberian camel. These camels transport all merchandise from China to Russia, and can stand Siberian cold as well as the greatest heat. They never need shelter, and sleep out in the deep snow. . . . They can carry from five hundredweight to six hundredweight, and also go in harness and pull i — 2 4 REINDEER AND SNOW-CAMELS as much as a big horse. They can cross mountains as well as level country. As for the difficulty of pro- curing them, there is none. I can deliver as many as may be wanted for forty pounds apiece in London or Grimsby, or sixty pounds, duty paid, in New York.' The two-humped Bactrian camel, of which Mr. Hagen- beck speaks, is the only beast of burden, not excepting the reindeer, of which Englishmen have absolutely no practical experience. The Russians are, in fact, the only Europeans who are acquainted with this universal beast of transport of Northern Asia, while in Europe itself it has not been seen since the revolt of the Tartars in the reign of the Empress Catharine. In that memorable and blood-stained exodus, when the Tartars fled from the banks of the Volga to the Great Wall of China, their herds of snow-camels alone saved the remnant of the people ; and when, after five months, the flying horde, reduced from six hundred thousand to three hundred and fifty thousand souls, together with the pursuing Bashkirs, plunged into the waters of the Lake of Tengis, ' like a host of lunatics pursued by a host of fiends,' they were still riding on the camels on which they had started in the snows of winter, and crossed the ice of the Russian rivers. < Ox, cow, horse, mule, ass, sheep, or goat, not one survived,' writes De Quincey, ' only the camels. These arid and adust creatures, looking like the mummies of some REINDEER AND SNOW-CAMELS 5 antediluvian animals, without the affections or sensi- bilities of flesh and blood — these only lifted their speaking eyes to the Eastern heavens, and had to all appearance come out of this long tempest of trial unscathed and hardly diminished/ These ' innumerable camels' were all of the Bactrian breed, and evidence of the extremes of cold and heat endured in this enterprise of the Kalmucks may be found in the fact that, during the early stages of the flight, circles of men, women and children were found frozen stiff round the camp-fires in the morning, while in the last stage the horde passed for ten days through a waterless desert with only an eight-days' supply, and yet arrived * without sensible loss ' of these creatures on the shore of the Chinese lake. The constant references to the Bactrian camels made by De Quincey, and his careful repetition of their distinctive name, show his appreciation of the part they played. But in the end he is still under the dominion of the accepted opinion about camels in general. They are ' arid and adust ' — creatures of the sand and the hot desert, rather than of the mountain and the cold desert or steppe, and the South Siberian snows. It is this distinction of habit and habitat which gives novelty to Mr. Hagenbeck's suggestion. The physical barrier of the Himalayas and the Hindoo-Khoosh not only separates the two species with a completeness not seen 6 REINDEER AND SNOW-CAMELS in the case of any other breed of domesticated animal, but has relegated one solely to the use of the yellow men, and the other to the service of the black or brown men. The camel of the North, which can endure not only thirst, but freezing cold, long spells of hunger, and a bed of snow, is not only the stronger, but the better equipped species. Before the summer heat it sheds its coat ; but by September it grows a garment of fur almost as thick as a buffalo robe, and equally cold- resisting. It is far more strongly built than the Southern camel. It does not ' split ' when on slippery ground, though it falls on moist, wet clay, which yields to the foot. On ice and frozen snow it stands firmly, and can travel far, partly because it has developed a harder foot-pad than the Southern species, partly because it has a kind of claw-toe projecting beyond the pad of the foot. Major Leonard states that many years ago General Harlan marched two thousand Bactrian camels four hundred miles, crossed the Indian Caucasus in ice and snow, and lost only one animal, and that by an accident. The strongest proof that this is a beast made to endure not heat but cold, not the hot sands but the frozen snows, is the method of management adopted by the Mongol owners of the herds. ' Nothing will induce an experienced Mongol to undertake a journey on camels in the hot season,' writes Prejvalski. But REINDEER AND SNOW-CAMELS ^ from the end of September throughout the winter they cross deep snow, climb mountains, and perform services unequalled by any other animal. They carry tea- chests weighing from four to five hundredweight, can scale passes twelve thousand feet above the sea-level — Prejvalski's camels crossed eight of these in a journey of six hundred and sixty miles — and are driven in carts and ridden. In summer they are watered every forty- eight hours, in winter they can do without water for eight days. They are not only hardy, but long-lived. A Mongol camel begins to earn his living at four years old, and will carry the same burden until from twenty- five to thirty. Some live to be useful for some years beyond this limit. In the tea caravans from Kalgan the camels make two journeys each winter, and earn seven pounds per camel. As most of their food is picked up en route, this leaves a good profit to the Mongol owners. Though these camels are owned in hundreds of thousands by the tribes of Central Asia, and are constantly in movement by the caravan routes, the direction of them is almost universally from East to West, or West to East, and the caravans do not enter China beyond the limits of the steppe. This accounts for their being out of touch with all English trade and travel, and renders it difficult to understand whence Mr. Hagenbeck can get as many as he pleases. The answer is — at Tiflis. This is the terminus of the 8 REINDEER AND SNOW-CAMELS caravan route, and the present Western limit of the wanderings of the Bactrian camel. There they come in thousands every year, arriving in the depth of winter, and leaving before the snows melt on the southern slope of the Caucasus. There, after the caravans have unloaded, the camels can be bought cheap, and be shipped from the Black Sea coast, to which they are brought either by rail or road. II.— GOATS IN CITIES THE number of milch-goats exhibited at the last Dairy Show was larger by one-half than has been entered in former years. Many of the animals were highly bred and very handsome creatures, and the quantity and richness of their milk was greater, relatively to their size, even than that of the best Jersey cows. The larger number shown were of the English, Nubian, and Toggenberg breeds. The finest and most domesti- cated of all, the goats of Syria, were not represented ; but those from the herds of Lady Burdett-Coutts and Sir Humphrey de Trafford, President of the British Goat Association — some black and tan, others pale- fawn colour, though with very ' goaty ' yellow eyes, and others of broken colour, but with fine glossy coats — were all well adapted for modern use in England. It is claimed that the goat is now qualified to be a ' dairy animal ' as much as the cow, that in Germany five goats are kept to every hundred of the human population, and that for poor people, who in rural districts have 9 io GOATS IN CITIES the greatest difficulty in getting a supply of cow's milk for themselves and their families, or for persons living in towns who require fresh milk for children, the goat is the ideal domestic animal. It seems probable that in the course of some four thousand years we have reached a point in civilization in which the goat, for ages discredited, finds its place at last. There is nothing in the primitive history of the breed to contradict this view ; wild goats are no wilder than wild sheep. But what the old naturalists quaintly called the ' moral ' differences between sheep and goats, now known as differences of temperament surviving under domestication, are inexplicable. Both the wild goats and the wild sheep frequent by choice exactly the same regions. That uniformly unattractive and sterile belt of mountain ranges where trees and continuous herbage cease to grow, and only tufts and morsels of vegetation are found, wherever, in fact, there is the maximum of rock and the minimum of food, is the natural haunt of wild goats and wild sheep alike. There are exceptions, such as the markhoor of the Himalayas, which enters the forest belt ; but the above holds good of both species when wild, whether in Corsica, Algeria, Persia, the Taurus range, Cyprus, or the Rocky Mountains. Yet the sheep, while pre- serving its hardy habits when desired, as in the case of all the ' heather sheep ' of Exmoor, Wales and GO A TS IN CITIES 1 1 Scotland, adapts itself to rich pasture and artificial feeding, and acquires the temperament, as well as the digestion, of domestication. The goats, as a rule, acquire neither ; and though among their various breeds there are exceptions, the English goat is not among them. It remains, just as in the days of old Greece, the enemy of trees, uncontained by fences or walls, inquisitive, pugnacious, restless and omnivorous. It is so unsuited for the settled life of the English farm, that rich pasture makes it ill, and a good clay soil, on which cattle grow fat, soon kills it. But the goat is far from being disqualified for the service of modern civilization by these survivals of primitive habits. Though it cannot live comfortably in the smiling pastures of the low country, it is perfectly willing to exchange the rocks of the mountain for a stable-yard in town. Its love for stony places is amply satisfied by the granite pavement of a ' mews,' and it has been ascertained that goats fed in stalls and allowed to wander in paved yards and courts, live longer and enjoy better health than those tethered even on light pastures with frequent changes of food. In parts of New York the city-kept goats are said to flourish on the paste-daubed paper of the advertisements which they nibble from the hoardings. It is beyond doubt that these hardy creatures are exactly suited for living in large towns. Bricks and mortar and paving-stones 12 GOATS IN CITIES exhilarate them. Their spirits rise in proportion to what we should consider the depressing nature of their surroundings. They love to be tethered on a common, with scanty grass and a stock of furze-bushes to nibble. A deserted brickfield, with plenty of broken drain-tiles, rubbish-heaps and weeds, pleases them still better ; but the run of a London stable and stable- yard gives them as much satisfaction as the * liberty ' of a mountain-top. They give quantities of excel- lent milk when kept in this way, are never sick or ' sorry/ and keep the horses interested and free from ennui by their constant visits to the stalls in search of food. Not even the pig has so varied a diet as the goat. It consumes and converts into milk not only great quan- tities of garden stuff which would otherwise be wasted, but also, thanks to its love for eating twigs and shoots, it enjoys the prunings and loppings of bushes and trees, which would not be offered to other domestic animals, but which the goat looks upon as exquisite dainties. In old Greece it destroyed the vines, and in modern Greece it has killed off every young tree and bush on the hills till it has disforested the greater part of the Peloponnesus. But the same appetite can be satisfied from an English garden by giving to the goats all the hedge-trimmings, even those of the thorn fences of which cyclists complain so bitterly, and all the prunings of the apple, pear and GOATS IN CITIES 13 plum trees. Feeding goats in their stall or yard is as amusing as feeding the wild ibexes at the Zoo. They will stand on their hind-legs and beg, and when they do obtain the coveted morsel, eat it in a very dainty and well-bred manner. The list of their ordinary food when stall-fed includes potatoes, mangolds, turnips, cabbage-stumps, which they like particularly, as being woody and tough, artichokes, beans, lettuces run to seed, and even dead leaves swept up in autumn, horse-chestnuts and acorns, especially after they have sprouted. Most weeds are eaten by goats, while ivy, and even the long-leaved water- hemlock, which will kill a cow, do not hurt them. When kept in towns, they give large quantities of milk if fed on oats, hay and bean-meal ; and in the Mont d'Or district in France they are supplied with oatmeal porridge. With this varied range of diet and plenty of salt, the goat is scarcely ever ill, never suffers from tuberculosis (so that young children are far safer from risk of contracting consumption when fed on goats' milk than on that of cows), and will often give of this milk ten times its own weight in a year. In our temperate climate, and on the growing quantity of small ' parcels ' of land spoilt by building and town areas, there is probably room for as many goats as the patrons of the British Goat Society could desire, even i4 GOATS IN CITIES though the conditions are not the same as those in Switzerland, Italy and Greece, where they form an im- portant part of the livestock. That they would have been used here in very early times, had really good breeds been obtainable, as a c second string ' to the dairy, seems evident from the old custom of milking ewes, practised as late as Camden's time on Canvey Island at the mouth of the Thames. Mr. Lockwood Kipling considers that the goat is a thoroughly Mahommedan beast, and quotes a saying of Mahomet : * There is no house possessing a goat but a blessing abideth therein ; and there is no house possess- ing three goats but the angels pass the night praying there.' The British Goat Society are right in desiring that these advantages shall not be limited to Moslems. But far the best breeds belong to the East, and it is strange that the Crusaders never brought back some of the really first-class goats of Palestine and Syria to this country. The difference between the best breeds ot sheep and goats of Palestine is far less than might be supposed from the wording of the New Testament. Both have pendulous ears, both are often black in colour, and both follow the shepherd in place of being driven. The goats of Syria are the best of all. The hair is long, with good close under-wool ; they are perfectly domesticated, and are excellent milkers. Instead of sending his milk round to customers in a GOATS IN CITIES 15 can or cart, the Syrian dairyman leads his obedient flock of goats down the street, and after receiving an affirma- tive answer to the Syriac equivalent for the call of * Milk-ho ?' selects his goat, and milks it in the street before the customer's door. If the purchaser fancies milk from one animal more than another he has only to mention his preference. The Cashmere shawls made of the finest goat's hair are not manufactured from that of Cashmere goats pastured, as is often believed, near the rose- gardens * where the nightingales sing by the calm Bendemeer.' The precious wool is the under-fur of a breed kept in Thibet, and by the Khirgiz in Central Asia, from the slopes of the Alatau Mountains to the bend of the Ural north of the Caspian. Only a small quantity, averaging three ounces, of the precious wool is produced yearly by each goat, and the material is collected by middlemen, taken to Cashmere and sold in the bazaars, where it is purchased by the makers of the shawls. M. Jaubert in 1819 imported some of these animals into France, and after crossing them with the Angora breed, obtained an average of thirty ounces instead of three ounces of equally fine wool. Recent experiments in acclimatizing the vicuna in France have met with considerable success, and both the Cashmere and Angora goats were found to do well on the Swiss Alps, though as they gave no milk they were not 16 GOATS IN CITIES popular with the farmer. Welcome as a new form of butcher's meat would be in England, the flesh of the goat, or even of kids, has never been highly praised ; but there is a future for the goat as a minor dairy animal both in villages and towns. III.— THE < NEW ' PIG RECENT Agricultural Returns, encouraging in other respects, disclose a very sad falling-off in the pig popula- tion of the United Kingdom. In 1897 there was a decrease of more than half a million, and though it is maintained that the figures do not include those kept on ' occupations ' of less than half an acre, and should not be taken to heart too seriously by the great number of persons interested in pigs, either as objects of pleasure or profit, there is no doubt that they are temporarily under a cloud. In the phrase of the market, ' pigs are quiet/ and unless the price of grain continues to drop they are likely to remain so for some time. Nothing could be more timely, in this partial eclipse of an animal so long and justly prized, than the appear- ance of Mr. Saunders Spencer's treatise on modern pigs,* which not only does full justice to their many admirable qualities, but also gives a very interesting account of their recent history and development, and treats their * t Pigs : their Breeds and Management.' By Saunders Spencer. London : Vinton and Co. 17 2 i8 THE 'NEW PIG idiosyncrasies, whether in health or disease, with a sober and serious sympathy which is highly practical and, incidentally, most entertaining. The history and im- provement of our famous breeds of cattle is a grander theme ; it deals with archaic types, ancestral herds, and the efforts and expenditure of great landed proprietors. The story of our pigs runs on a humbler level. The peasant, and not the great proprietor, has raised the modern pig to its present perfection. Its recent de- velopment limits its interest to the naturalist. There is a lack of individuality in the appearance of different breeds of British pigs. Any stranger who visits the Smithfield Cattle Show is struck with the great variety of shape, colour, and size in the cattle * classes/ But to appreciate the differences in pigs one must be * in the fancy,' except in the case of a few breeds which retain traces of colour or form due to ancient environment. Thus Mr. Spencer mentions with disapproval an aquatic and detrimental pig which formerly haunted the Fens and the valley of the Ouse. Some of these may still be found in parts of the Fens ' far removed from railways or the beneficial influence of a good herd of pure-bred pigs.' The ' Tarn worths ' are the offspring of what are commonly believed to be the original forest pigs which Gurth the swineherd fed for Cedric the Saxon. They hailed originally from the * Ivanhoe ' country near Sherwood Forest, whither they were sent in droves in THE PIG 19 autumn from the country round, just as they were in the New Forest. These pigs were rufous, sandy, or mahogany coloured animals, just matching the dead leaves of beech and oak in autumn and early winter. In the beginning of the century the Forest was rapidly enclosed, and the farmers found that the independent pig, who expected his autumn holiday regularly, and ' saw that he got it/ by breaking out of his sty and taking to the woods, was rather troublesome. So they crossed him most appropriately with the Neapolitan pig, who is the laziest of all pigs, and produced the Tamworth, a * golden ' pig, resembling the forest swine in shape and colour, but having the love for the dolce far niente inherited from his Neapolitan ancestors. Berkshire pigs, the Marge white pigs/ originally bred in Yorkshire, middle whites, and small whites, complete the pedigree list, and it is interesting to note that, though few in number, they are unequalled in quality. England has provided Berkshire pigs for the model farms of the Austrian Government in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It has exported Tamworths and * large whites ' to Argentina, Illinois, and the Sandwich Islands, and reclaimed by intermixture many relapsed and im- perfect breeds of pigs in Germany and Austria. In England, during recent years, the great ham question has much enhanced the difficulties of breeders. To produce an animal from whose body good bacon 2 — 2 20 THE ' NEW PIG can be made, and whose legs are perfect for hams, has been found almost beyond the resources of art. Even Mr. Saunders Spencer admits that to adumbrate the proportions of the ' perfect pig ' is beyond the scope of his imagination, and to hope to produce one in the concrete is to strive after the unattainable. The omission of all the half-acre plots from the Agricultural Returns casts a slur on a very highly esteemed and numerous class, the ' backyard ' pigs. There are, it is believed, more pigs kept in cottage-gardens and back- yards in the North than in farms. But after making every allowance for omissions, the United Kingdom makes a poor figure compared with the United States. One year with another, we rear three million pigs. In the maize-growing States of the Union the present number is estimated at forty millions, and this is thirteen millions less than the highest figure reached by the pig population of the States. The number of pigs kept by the colliers and artisans of the North fluctuates with the price of coal and yarn. In good times every collier keeps a live animal of some sort, and, though dogs, guinea-pigs, cage-birds, and homing- pigeons are attractive, his ' fancy animal ' is usually a pig. He admires this on Sunday afternoons, and groups of friends go round to smoke their pipes and compare pigs, and bet on their ultimate weight. They have private pig-shows, with subscription prizes. Each THE *NEW PIG 21 animal is judged in its own sty, and it is interesting to know that the evolution of an almost perfect pig was due to the innate sagacity of the Yorkshire pit-hand. The sties in which these animals live are very rough affairs, often made of a few boards nailed over railway-sleepers ; but it is interesting to learn that the young pigs are ' as blooming and healthy as possible,' and that, small though the collier's back- yard is, he always contrives that his pig-sty shall be thoroughly ventilated and look towards the south. Architects of costly home-farms often house the un- happy pigs under north walls, and condemn them to rheumatism, cold, and sunlessness. Yorkshire produces not only the best pork, but has long been famous for the best cured hams in the world. But elsewhere it is curious to note the dislike of the farming class to any form of manufacture other than that of raw material. One-fourth of the English pigs are kept in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex. Yet Mr. Saunders Spencer doubts whether there is now a bacon-curing factory in Suffolk, and relates the failure of one established in Norfolk. In the former case, the people would not rear the precise kind of animal wanted ; in the latter, the dealers made a ring, and put up prices beyond the margin of profit. Our Illinois is Somersetshire and Wiltshire, and our little Chicago the ' sausage town ' of Calne. As almost everyone who has a country house, large or small, 22 THE 'MEW PIG is 'interested,' to use the city phrase, in pigs, whether he be squire, parson, farmer, labourer, gardener, police- man, or postman (I believe the village schoolmasters are the only class who scorn to keep a pig), the methods of the Calne factories ought to be more widely known than they are. The animals, in lots of not less than ten, can be sent by rail directly to the factory without extra charge, if the paid distance be less than 100 miles. There they are weighed and classified, and the price calculated directly, with a bonus of two shillings and sixpence on each pig which comes up to a certain standard of merit. This canon of perfection was evolved at Calne, the result of a wide experience of the needs of the curers, and the shortcomings of 1 fashionable ' pigs. Since then it has become a standard — the rule of Pigdom — to which all its members must conform, or become pork instead of bacon, and end their lives as failures. Mr. Spencer suggests one further interesting question in connection with his subject, but he does not pursue it. ' When wages are lower, the price of pigs is higher/ he remarks, * because the farm-labourers and artisans consume a greater quantity of pork, and less beef and mutton/ What would Cobbett, who saw the maximum of a labourer's well-being in a plentiful supply of pork, bread, and beer, say to this advance, by which that sound, and then all too scarce, fare now takes the THE ^ NEW PIG 23 second or third place in the scale of the workman's diet ? * Salt pork,' which was for centuries the staple food of the mariners of England, is almost erased from the bill of fare on passenger ships, and is only served twice a week to the bluejackets in the navy. Before long mere salted pig will be as antiquated as stock fish or < poor John.' It only holds its place as a humble necessary of life among American backwoodsmen. Even they have recently ' struck' against the quality of that supplied from Chicago, and demanded a more 1 matured ' article for winter diet. But the English-reared pig is no longer the poor man's food-animal. On the contrary, it is a luxury. New Zealand mutton, La Plata beef, Columbian salmon, and Australian rabbits, are the cheap form of fresh meat, and by many classes, notably respectable domestic servants, home-grown pork is preferred to any of these. It is dearer actually and relatively, for more is eaten at a meal. Nearly all the fresh pig sold in this country may be considered to be the flesh of highly- bred and highly-fed animals. But the English bacon and English hams are the product of highly-skilled manufacture. It is not long since bacon was con- sidered only fit for ploughmen ; it never appeared at a gentleman's breakfast-table ; even in farmhouses it was only eaten as a domestic duty. This was no prejudice ; the pigs were bad, and the bacon worse : 24 THE 'MEW PIG it was salt, strong, and often rancid. Now it is more difficult to buy bad bacon or ill- cured hams than it was formerly to buy them of good quality. The best is found on the breakfast-tables of all classes, while the Bradenham and Yorkshire hams figure on their merits in city banquets. IV.— THE STORY OF THE JERSEY HERD AMONG the highest prices made for Jersey cattle during the last two years were those at the sale of a herd at New Park, in the New Forest.* These island cattle made an average of £2 8 each, though some of those sold were only calves a few weeks old, and one heifer was purchased for fifty-one guineas. Though nothing could be more thoroughly English than the scene under the New Forest oaks, as the little cattle left their beds of fern and strolled one by one into the ' ring/ it was remarked that of all our domestic cattle, these are the only creatures in this country which are in all respects comparable in temper and beauty with the best domestic breeds of India. The resemblance consists not in form, which is different from the ' humped ' Oriental breeds, but in the satin fineness of their coats, the golden bronze, silver gray, and other ' Quaker ' hues common also to the smaller Indian cow, and the perfect friendliness with man which these petted * A Jersey cow sold very recently at a sale near Brighton for a hundred and twenty guineas. 2S 26 THE STOR Y OF THE JERSE Y HERD creatures have inherited from generations of kind treat- ment. As each strolled into the sale-ring, it walked up to any spectator who took its fancy, and pushed its muzzle out to be patted, or put its head up to be stroked, with a confidence which scarcely any other breed of domesticated animal would show if suddenly brought into the company of a crowd of unknown human beings. Their eyes were black, their eyelashes long and silky, all their noses were fringed with a narrow silver edging of satin hair, and their skin, where it showed elsewhere, was covered with a yellow bloom, of the correct * butter-pat ' tint, which suffused the very hollows of their high-bred ears. The story of the Jersey herd should have belonged to an earlier age. They are, as an island race, the modern equivalent of the cattle of the Sun, the earliest of all pedigree herds, which fed on sea-washed Trinacria ; and there is something so contrary to probability in their first beginnings, that it seems to need a setting in legend. Treated as a fact in natural history, it will be allowed that conditions less likely to develop a species to perfection could scarcely be found than those on a small island, eleven and a half miles long and five miles wide, set in a stormy, narrow sea. Limited space, exposure to sea gales, and the tendency to interbreed, together with the absence of any surplus of natural food, and the difficulty of THE STOR Y OF THE JERSE Y HERD 27 importing it when steamers were unknown, and the usual means of access was by small cutters crossing a dangerous sea, were all natural difficulties in the way of such a result. Had the nucleus of the herd been formed by some accidental deposit of cattle of marked excellence on these Channel islets, their isolation would doubtless have helped to preserve the breed pure. But there is reason to believe that the Jersey cattle were, in their origin, of the same kind as those on the neigh- bouring mainland of Brittany. Mr. John Thornton, the compiler of the ' English Herd-Book of Jersey Cattle/ has some very interesting speculations on the wider question of the descent of the small breed, originally black and white, or black, to which they have most affinity. This breed is noted as being best known and most numerous in those parts of France and the British Islands where the population is of Celtic origin and Druidical remains are most common. Such a race is found in Brittany, near Carnac, in Kerry, and was formerly common in Cornwall. With these may be compared the ancient British cattle kept in Badminton Park ; and in Anglesea, ' that ancient and peculiar seat of Druidical superstition,' Youatt noted that the old breed of cattle was ' small and black.' On this Mr. Thornton founds the very ingenious conclusion that ' if the shorthorns represent the improved type of the " bos urus," or wild white cattle of Chillingham, so the Jersey 28 THE STOR Y OF THE JERSEY HERD cattle and their relations are the most improved type of the "bos longifrons," or smaller domesticated race.' It remains to be shown how little * Druidical ' cows bred on an islet have not deteriorated like Shetland ponies or Iceland cows, but have developed into the creatures now eagerly bought not only by English gentlemen and English country ladies, for the Jerseys are pre-eminently * ladies' cows,' but in North America, Germany, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and recently in Brazil, where some, lately imported, walked two hundred miles through the forest, and arrived in good condition at their destination. The history of the breed in the Jersey Herd-Book gives no a 'priori theory for this process, but we incline to think that it has a natural explanation. The people were industrious and intensely practical. The area which they inhabited was very small, and though the population was large, every part of the little island, and every cow on it, might well be familiar, either in fact or by reputation, to every possible purchaser of cattle on the spot. Being all neighbours, and knowing the merits or failings of each other's cattle, a bad cow had no chance of finding a purchaser, and its calves went to the butcher. ' Natural selection ' was at work in this case through the agency of man. Then the inhabitants of the island caught, quite early in the last century, a violent fit of the ' cow- fancying ' mania, which Hindoos have magnified into a THE STORY OF THE JERSEY HERD 29 form of worship, though its broad basis is their passion for the animal itself. Early in this century this exclusive devotion moved the wrath of Thomas Quayle. * The treatment of sheep and horses/ he wrote, ' is almost a disgrace to Jersey agriculture. The treasure highest in a Jersey man's estimation is his cow. She seems to be the constant object of his thoughts and attention ; and that attention she certainly deserves. . . . In summer she must submit to be staked to the ground. But five or six times a day her station is shifted. In winter she is warmly housed by night, and fed with the precious parsnip. When she calves she is regaled with toast and cider, the nectar of the island, to which powdered ginger is added.' The Jerseymen, who had only twenty-nine thousand acres of arable land in their whole island, had been clever enough to discover the root which of all others is most suitable for milch cows; and their parsnip- growing made possible for them as great strides in the development of their breed as that of the turnip did for the general stock of English cattle. Next to improving their own cattle they were most eager to keep out all others. Their indignation when they suspected that inferior Brittany animals were about to be imported, or might be sold as the produce of the island, finds ex- pression in various old statutes. An Act passed in 1789 condemned anyone importing cattle from France I 30 THE STOR Y OF THE JERSE Y HERD to a fine of ^£200 per head ; the ship was to be con- fiscated, the cattle killed, and the meat sold for the poor of the parish where it was seized. In 1826, when the great and valuable export trade was established, the fine was raised to ^1,000 per head of cattle introduced, with confiscation of the vessel, and this might be seized, and the fine imposed, if it were within two leagues of the shore. The motive for this intense vigilance will be found in the great profits drawn by the island from the English ' discovery ' of Channel Island cattle. The first im- ported came from Alder ney, where there was a garrison. The little cows came over as ' camp followers,' and attracted little notice. They were called ' Alderneys,' and later, 'Alderney Jerseys.' The first person to note them as qualified for the highest circles of bovine society was a Yorkshireman, Mr. Fowler, the travelling partner in a large London dairy. In 1 8 1 1 he saw one coming home unsold from a fair, and bought it for his wife, and took it to his home at Little Bushey. The despised little cow gave such enormous quantities of butter and cream that her new master inquired her origin, and soon began to import the breed wholesale from the islands. His son managed the transit, had the herds shod with thin iron plates when they reached Southampton, and sold them mainly in the home counties. It was no easy matter to ship them, though t • THE STOR Y OF THE JERSEY HERD 31 the cattle, as tame as dogs from their daily handling and feeding fastened to the chain, gave no trouble. They were brought over in the Channel cutters, the other cargo usually consisting of cider. One boat was thirteen days out, and the captain, running short of water, tapped the cider casks. The cows enjoyed it so much that for three days they would drink nothing else. The steps by which system and method have been introduced into the cult of the Jersey herd belong to the history of the English Jersey Herd Society and the Royal Jersey Agricultural Society. The pedi- gree herds have multiplied until there is not a county in England where they may not be found, and the produce are scattered in twos and threes in the paddocks of half the country houses in England. But it is in Jersey itself, not in the 'adjacent island* of Great Britain, that the most suggestive results of the posses- sion of the Jersey herd are to be noted. Note the cultivated area : twenty-nine thousand acres, or eleven thousand acres less than is owned by one nobleman in Norfolk. Add the same amount of uncultivated ground, and we have the total available raw material for agriculture in the island. This maintained in 1880 nearly eleven thousand Jersey cattle, two thousand two hundred and sixty-one horses, three hundred and forty- six sheep, five thousand eight hundred and forty-four pigs. The total population was sixty thousand, half of 32 THE STOR Y OF THE JERSE Y HERD whom live in St. Heliers. But the total value of the cattle and potatoes exported in the one year of 1879 was somewhat above £350,000. No doubt the early spring gives the Jersey men an advantage in the vegetable market. But the value of the cattle is not due to chance. The two most prosperous agricultural areas in Great Britain are both islands — Jersey and Anglesea. Why cannot the Isle of Wight be a rival ? V.— THE CAT ABOUT TOWN THAT the cat still maintains its position as the best mouse-catching machine procurable is shown by its increase in great towns. The number of London cats, according to a writer in the Daily Mail, is 400,000, of which half are * unattached,' and live largely on refuse, ' because London is the most wasteful city in the world.' As London is also one of the cleanest cities in the world, it is very doubtful if the waste food comes much in the way of the unattached London cat, who, like other Metropolitan paupers, levies handsome contri- butions on kind-hearted people, whose doorsteps and areas it besets, and also catches numbers of pigeons, sparrows, rats, and mice, the three last of which do live on London refuse, which the cat eats in the more convenient form of cold sparrow or mouse. Evidence quoted by the writer shows that this is so, for he states that in most parts of London the rats have been driven underground into the sewers by the warfare of the cats. He also holds that the latter are somewhat changing in 33 3 34 THE CAT ABOUT TOWN character, are losing their dislike of water and wet, and prefer to be out in the rain. We rather doubt these conclusions, and believe that if the London cat differs at all from his country cousin, it is in selecting different hours for his sport and amusements. The country cat is more or less lively all day, and hunts regularly in the evening. The London cat is sleepy and quiet all day, because circumstances make him a very early riser, or, at any rate, prevent him having his morning sleep. The explanation of the languor and ennui of the London cat is to be found in the fact that long before he appears at the breakfast-table, with a jaded appetite and a general air of aloofness from the world and its pleasures, he has had a long morning's sport, often in delightful society, and then breakfasted comfortably in the kitchen. The scenes of these early-morning hunts are various, and the hour during half the year is one before even the earliest of early risers are about. In winter the London cats often seek their sport under cover. In one district near a very large and famous brewery the sporting cats go regularly as soon as the brewery gates are open to hunt rats in the brewery ' stores.' This is capital fun, as there are hundreds of barrels, either stored or * work- ing,' with little patches of yeasty froth oozing from the bungholes and plenty of dropped corn and ' grains ' in the neighbourhood to attract all the rats from else- where. Under and among these barrels they may be THE CAT ABOUT TOWN 35 hunted with success for an hour or more. Besides the brewery rats, which are said to drink beer when they can get it, there are ' temperance rats/ which live by the river, and, so far as we know, only drink water. These form the grand objects of summer sport to all London cats in range of the Thames, from the docks in the east to Chiswick in the west, and all along the old muddy foreshore on the Surrey side, where no em- bankment intervenes to spoil sport. We have never heard of an instance of London cats catching fish by the river, probably because until very recently there have been so few fish to catch. But the keenness of the cats for this riverside hunting by the tidal Thames is such that they often return covered and clotted with mud from the foreshore, where they have either fallen in from the wharves, or have pursued a rat escaping across the leavings of the river ebb. In summer mornings, from 4 a.m. to about 5 a.m., London ceases for the moment to belong to the world of men, and for the moment is given up to the sole enjoyment of the London birds and the London cats. At this really bewitching hour, for the town is quite beautiful then, the cats may be seen, as at no other time, monarchs of all they survey — rerum domini, masters of the town. Then it may be seen that it is not for nothing that the race have for generations maintained their independence, and asserted their right 3—2 36 THE CAT ABOUT TOWN to roam. For at that hour all the dogs are shut up; all the boys and grown-up people, too, are asleep. There is not even a milkman about, or an amalga- mated engineer going to his before-breakfast work. The city is theirs. Their demeanour at this time is absolutely changed. They stroll about the streets and gardens with an air. They converse in the centre of highways. They walk with a certain feline abandon and momentary magnificence over gardens and squares. For the time they are not cats, but lions and tigers ; or, to change the simile, they are no longer domestics, but gentlemen at large. Before sunrise one midsummer morning the writer was watching the early birds by the side of the London river, and wondering at the abund- ance and variety of life in the silver-gray light of the dawn. A pair of water-hens were running on the mud left by the ebb, sedge-warblers singing, as they had done all night, and a pair of turtle-doves flew down to drink before sunrise. When the first beams of the sun sent long shafts of light down the river, the sedge- warblers were instantly silent ; and almost immediately the blackbirds and sparrows and starlings appeared upon the grass. At this moment another ornithologist ap- peared upon the scene in the person of an elegant young female cat. She made great efforts to stalk the fat blackbirds and cock-sparrows, flattening herself till her whole body seemed almost as level as a mat, yet THE CAT ABOUT TOWN 37 capable of a rush forward whenever the birds looked in another direction. But the birds were perfectly equal to the game. One blackbird in particular sidled off each time the cat came within distance, until he sat at last on the edge of the wooden cam-shedding, where, if the cat made her spring, she must fall into the river. He, too, flew off, and at this moment of disappoint- ment another and an older cat leapt lightly from the privet hedge close by and playfully cuffed the head of the disappointed one. This cat had probably been waiting on the chance of a * drive ' while the more impetuous one tried a stalk in the open. The latter seemed half inclined to resent the humorous turn which the older cat gave to her hunting; but the two soon made it up, and, after strolling ostentatiously across the lawn with their tails up, separated, and the young one adjourned to hunt ' ground-game ' in the cam-shedding. The quarry were either mice or rats, but were attacked by storm, and not by waiting. The cat dived her paws into the cracks of the boards, reaching in as far as her shoulders, and soon bolted something, which she reached after head downwards so far that nothing but her tail and one hind-paw were visible. After hanging almost head downwards for some time, she scrambled back, just as the first cat came darting past like a wild animal with an enormous rat in its mouth, It is doubtful whether the London cat is in the least 38 THE CAT ABOUT TO WN degree more docile or biddable than his country cousin. He is more dependent on man, for no one ever hears of a London cat going off to live a wild life willingly, though country cats do this frequently. It has been observed of the whole race, at least in this country, that though they will often obey the order ' Come/ they absolutely refuse to entertain the command * Go ;' and as most useful service involves this as the initial idea, the animal which refuses obedience to it is practically useless except as a volunteer. The admirable sporting qualities, even of the London cat, should make him a most useful and amusing aid in sport, if he could be induced to co-operate with his owner. There is only one piece of evidence that in ancient times the cat was so trained — an Egyptian painting showing a cat bringing wild-fowl to its master from a papyrus bed — and very few instances are on record even of its being trained to retrieve in our day. A visitor to one of the monasteries on Mount Carmel states that when several of the monks went out, gun on shoulder, to shoot game for the pot, he saw their cats marching out after them, to aid as retrievers ; but he did not witness the sport. There is no doubt that cats can be trained to follow, like dogs. A working-man in the North Midlands recently owned a small cat which followed him all day, and when tired was carried in a large pocket in its master's coat. So also a navvy some years ago owned THE CA T ABO UT TO WN 39 a cat which had followed or accompanied him to work in most parts of North and Western England, some- times following him on foot and sometimes carried in the white washable bag in which navvies keep their Sunday clothes. But as a rule it is much easier to teach them not to do things than to do them. Recently in a large London engineering works there was some regret that the * best foundry cat ' was dead. The sand used for making casts in the foundry is mixed with flour. Mice come to eat the flour and spoil the ' moulds.' It is not desirable that rats and mice should be about in this loft, so cats are kept there. The cats have to be taught not to walk about on the moulds or scratch them up, and this ' best foundry cat ' was absolutely perfect in this respect. In these works most departments have a special cat. There is even one in the galvanizing shop which knows quite well that the hot metal spirts when plates are dipped in, and has learnt to get under cover at that juncture. It need scarcely be said that the London cat is a worse enemy to caged birds even than the country pussy, as in the day- time it lives more indoors. Whether it ever catches gold-fish out of a bowl we do not know, but there are no complaints of its robbing fishmongers' shops to gratify its taste in that line. On the whole, we imagine that the cat is happy in London, far happier, for instance, than the dog. Even if lost, he has much 40 THE CAT ABOUT TOWN more savoir faire than the latter. The stray dog attaches himself to someone in the street, who has at once the uncomfortable feeling that the dog is trying to make out that he has stolen him. The lost cat comes to a house and asks relief where it can most readily be given. VI.— A « WOULD-BE ' HELPER: THE FRIENDLY PUMA RECENT inquiry presents the puma, the ' lion ' of the New World, in a very pleasing light. It is claimed that the puma is positively friendly to man, hostile to other large carnivora, and that alone of the great cats it desires of its free will to be a * helper and server ' of man. This belief, very strongly asserted by Mr. Hudson in his ' Naturalist in La Plata/ which rests both on the local belief of the inhabitants of a great part of South America, and on the records of the naturalists and historians of the old Spanish colonies, receives some support from an incident recently com- municated to the writer by a gentleman on a visit to this country in connection with the Venezuela Boundary Commission, after a long residence in British Guiana. He was going up one of the rivers in a steam- launch, and gave a passage to a Cornish miner who was going up to the gold-fields. The passenger, who was an elderly man, usually slung his hammock on 41 42 THE FRIENDLY PUMA shore. One morning, being asked how he had slept, he complained that the frogs had wakened him by croaking near his hammock. Some Indians, who had been taking down the hammock, laughed, and, being asked the reason, still laughing, said, ' Oh, " tiger " sleep with old man last night/ They had satisfied themselves that a puma had been lying just under the hammock, which was slung low down, and it was probably the satisfied purring of the puma, which had enjoyed the pleasure of sleeping in the ' next berth' below a man, that had wakened the occupant of the hammock. The beliefs to the credit of the puma, recorded both by ordinary observers and by naturalists — the earliest being Don Felix d'Azara, and the latest Mr. Hudson — fall under three divisions. It is believed to be the friend of man : the Spanish Indians call it amigo del Christiano, a nice distinction which cannot be conceded, because the Indians of North California considered the puma a friendly god before the missionaries arrived, and would not molest it. It was also alleged to protect men from other wild animals, particularly from the jaguar, to attack this stronger and more ferocious animal and drive it away, and under no provocation to attack man himself. All three stories so much resemble the medieval fictions about animals, especially the ' feud ' between the puma and the jaguar, which is exactly analogous to the myths of the feud between the THE FRIENDLY PUMA 43 elephant and the dragon, the deer and the serpent, with many others, that we should hardly expect to see them survive the period of early Jesuit conversion. But, on the contrary, these beliefs, which the Indians held long before they were converted, are now restated in a much more positive form, and with abundance of corroborative evidence. Views only tentatively held, or set down as current, but not confirmed, by Azara, are fully confirmed by Mr. Hudson. Meantime, it is interesting to see exactly what Azara did say, as he is a very intelligent and honourable Spanish gentleman, and * spent twenty years alone with the birds and wild beasts.' When Don Felix d' Azara was making his notes on the natural history of Paraguay, between 1782 and 1 80 1, he received a copy of Buffon's * Natural History/ then a new book, and in the acme of its fame. The Spaniard, not dazzled by Buffon's brilliant generalizations, found that his facts as to South American animals were much amiss. ' Vulgar, false, and mistaken,' was Azara's outspoken criticism. He therefore determined to show what a Spaniard could do, working in the field of facts, to do justice to the South American species, or, as he naively calls them, * my animals — my cats, my monkeys, my otters/ The puma, * my second species of cat,' then very common in many districts with which Azara was acquainted, though it was almost killed off in Paraguay, was the 44 THE FRIENDLY PUMA subject of a very careful essay. This carefulness is the mark of all his work, which, as we have said, was intended to set Buffon right, and to give facts only. He knew that the young were spotted c like a female jaguar,' and he notes that he had ' never heard that they have assaulted or attempted to attack man, nor boys, nor dogs, even when they encounter them asleep ; on the contrary, they run away or conceal themselves, showing fear ; and as their speed is inferior to that of a horse, a mounted man easily overtakes them/ He is mistaken as to the dogs, for pumas are sometimes particularly hostile to them. A tame puma, when following its master obediently, has been known to rush through a crowd in chase of a dog. The instances of its tameness in captivity cited by Azara are interesting. A village priest had one raised from a cub, which ran loose like a dog. It was given to Azara, who kept it on a chain, but it ' was as tame as a dog, and very playful/ It played with everyone, and took great delight in licking the skin of his negroes. ' On presenting it with an orange or any other thing, it handled it with its fore- paws, playing with it in the same way as a cat does with a mouse. It caught fowls (its one form of mischief) with the same stratagems and cunning as a cat, not omitting the movement of the extremity of its tail. ... I never saw it irritated. When rubbed or tickled it lay down and purred like a cat. My negroes THE FRIEND L Y PUMA A 5 one day loosed it, and it followed them to the river, traversing the city without even meddling with the dogs in the street.' To these notes of Azara's, his translator, Mr. W. Perceval Hunter, added in 1837 other evidence of its docility. He mentions the puma kept by Kean the tragedian, the skeleton of which is now in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. This used to follow Kean loose in his garden and in his house, and was * introduced to company in his drawing-room.' He also quotes an account of another tame puma kept in Edinburgh, ' which rejoices greatly in the company of those to whom it is accustomed, lies down upon its back between their feet, and plays with the skirts of their garments entirely after the manner of a kitten/ It got loose in London, but most properly allowed itself to be captured by the watchman — a thing which no animal of spirit ought to have permitted. The corroborative evidence as to the feud between the puma and the jaguar is most interesting. Azara himself, though he mentions the story, doubts it. He has a sound critical faculty, and pitched at once on a weak point in the belief. The Indians alleged that the female pumas were carried off by jaguars. Hence the ill-feeling. This, he says, is clearly nonsense. But this 'gloss' can, we think, be accounted for. The puma cubs are spotted, some more distinctly than others, at birth, though the puma, felis concolor^ is 46 THE FRIEND L Y PUMA without spots. Hence the story of the jaguar cross. The main belief appears constantly. A Spanish girl who was tied to a tree by the Spanish Governor of Buenos Ayres for visiting the Indians avowed that a puma had sat by her all night, and driven the other beasts (jaguars) away. This was regarded as a miracle ; but Mr. Hudson declares that it would not now excite surprise. ' It is well known that where the two species inhabit the same district they are at enmity, the puma being the persistent persecutor of the jaguar, following and harassing it as the " tyrant bird " does the eagle, and, when an opportunity occurs, springing upon its back and inflicting terrible wounds with its teeth and claws. Jaguars with scarred backs are frequently killed, and others not long escaped from their tormentors have been found greatly lacerated.' This might have been done by fights with other jaguars, but in support of the general belief of the gauchos, who spend their lives on the pampas where these species are common, two pieces of evidence are quoted. One, that a similar dislike for other carnivora on the part of the puma is current in a far-distant region — North California — where it is said to attack the grizzly bear. The second was communicated to Mr. Hudson, after a hunt in which one of the very rare instances of a puma trying to defend itself from a man occurred. A gaucho had tried to kill a puma, as if it were a sheep, with his THE FRIENDL Y PUMA 47 knife, and the animal, after dodging the first blow, had struck him in the face with his paw. In a previous hunt (after game and ostriches) one of their company had fallen from his horse and broken his leg. He lay on the pampa all night, and when found next morning told the following story. An hour after it became dark a puma came and sat by him. After frequently going and returning, it left him for a long time. About midnight he heard the roar of a jaguar, and gave him- self up for lost. But the jaguar was watching something else. It moved out of sight, and he then heard snarls and growls, and the sharp cry of a puma, and knew that the two beasts were fighting. The jaguar returned several times, and the puma renewed the contest every time until morning, when both disappeared. Mr. Hudson had ' already met with many anecdotes of a similar kind in various parts of the country, some vastly more interesting than this. But he gave this account because it was at first hand/ Many instances are given by Mr. Hudson of the puma's confidence in man. He also gives three cases of its refusal to defend itself, and another in which four pumas played round a sleeping man for several hours at night without disturbing him. The Southern puma is the animal credited with these friendly instincts. In North America it has been much persecuted by man, and bears a different character. But in Argentina, in ' places where the puma is the only 48 THE FRIENDL Y PUMA large beast of prey, it is notorious that it is perfectly safe for even a small child to go out and sleep on the plain/ Yet among other animals the puma is coura- geous and destructive. It is a desperate sheep-killer, a destroyer of foals, ' a peregrine falcon among mammals.' Such an instinct of friendliness in a big cat, unique, and the more surprising because even when domesticated the race rarely exhibits more than an equable and distant tolerance of man's existence, will no doubt attract the attention of those who have the opportunity of collecting information at first hand in the plains of South America. No one but reliable ' field-naturalists,' ranch-owners, and sportsmen can do so, and for these it should form an interesting object of inquiry. VII.— ANIMAL COLONISTS AMONG instances of successful acclimatization of English animals in the Antipodes must be reckoned the importa- tion of red deer into New Zealand. They were first introduced in 1862, when Prince Albert, to oblige the Government Agent of New Zealand in London, caused four stags and two hinds to be shipped to Wellington. Only one stag and two hinds arrived alive, and were set free on Taratahi Plains. They selected for their haunt a range of limestone hills, covered with good English grasses, and there they have flourished and multiplied abundantly. During the last four years the effects of this increase have been noted in the appearance of the deer in every locality near which wood, water, and grass are plentiful. Licenses for deer-shooting, limited to three stags a season, have been issued for the last ten years. The stags grow faster than in England, bearing antlers with ten points in three years, and some of the numerous calves are being captured and transferred to other 49 4 50 ANIMAL COLONISTS districts as stock. Other red deer are also about to be imported, not from England, but from Australia, these being of English stock ' once removed.' This is only a minor and recent instance of what we may term the colonizing faculty of English animals. They seem to share the physical, and in some degree the mental, capacity of the British for ' getting on ' in new countries, and to make more of their opportunities than the indigenous creatures, without possessing such marked advantages as their masters often have over the human inhabitants. If a census could be taken of the creatures of British descent making up the animal population in the vast new territories peopled by men of English blood, the world would contemplate with astonishment the facts of this double migration and dual increase of man and beast alike from two small islands in the West Atlantic. Nor do our animal colonists confine themselves to the new Anglo-Saxon countries. Whatever unkindly criticisms are levelled at the Englishman abroad, the English animals, domesticated and wild, are everywhere welcome. The sparrow and the rabbit are the two exceptions which prove the rule ; but for almost every other British animal, from Derby winners and pedigree shorthorns to Norfolk pheasants and Loch Leven trout, the men of the New World, the colonists of Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, and even of Holland — for the Boers are now ANIMAL COLONISTS 51 purchasing British cattle — compete in lavish expenditure in their zeal for an inheritance in the beasts, birds, and fishes of our good country. This colonization by animals has had a settled order of time, corresponding fairly closely with the social evolution of the British and foreign possessions to which they have been involuntary migrants. The ' pioneer animals/ like the first colonists, have often been rather a ' rough lot.' Times were bad after the great war, and our farmers did not own one-twentieth part of the fine pedigree stock now so plentiful in this country. But the first colonizing animals had to be of the useful sort, beasts of burden or for food, if not the best, then the best which could be got. So the settlers in Australia, the backwoods of Canada, and Cape Colony and Natal, had for their first animal population a prolific and hardy, but not a high-bred class of English stock. There were abundance of sheep, of cattle, of fowls, and some British horses. The ancestors of the animal colonists of New Zealand, now represented by twenty millions of sheep and cattle alone, were imported later, and from more carefully selected stock, than those first taken to the older colonies. Meantime, the latter had reached the stage of prosperity in which it pays not only to possess many flocks and herds, but also to have them of high quality. Sheep, cattle, and horses were improved by the best English blood that money could 4—2 52 ANIMAL COLONISTS buy, as well as by the importation of the merino sheep from Spain, with which the English breeds were crossed ; and, by a fortunate coincidence, the time at which Australasia desired an accession of quality to quantity in her British -descended stock corresponded with a period of extraordinary activity and success in the breeding and development of pedigree cattle, sheep, horses, and swine by the ' landed interest,' owners and tenants alike, in this country. We need not follow this, the greatest and most obvious invasion of the New World by the host of British animals, beyond the facts conveyed in the sum-total of the numbers of the three most necessary, and therefore most numerous, classes — the sheep, cattle, and horses, the two latter being mainly, if not entirely, of British descent — owned by the colonies of Australia and New Zealand. The figures are, in round numbers, one hundred and eleven millions of sheep, nine millions of cattle, and one million three hundred thousand horses. Except the merino sheep, the Angora goat, and the camel, recently intro- duced into West Australia, we believe that there is no domesticated animal in Australia which is not of English stock. Numbers must be considered first, if justice is to be done to the magnitude of this animal movement from West to East ; but, apart from count- ing heads, the list of British species entirely omitted from the totals given above, but now firmly established ANIMAL COLONISTS 53 in the New World, is no less striking. All other domesticated forms — pigs, all breeds of English dogs, prize poultry, and pigeons, in as great variety and perfection as they attain in this country — are equally established in Australasia, and with them the red deer, the pheasant, the trout, and, unfortunately, the rabbit and the sparrow. In Australia, and still more notice- ably in New Zealand, the new-comers, the most vigorous representatives of the later types of animal, had a clear advantage over the ancient marsupial forms and the wingless birds. The pheasant, which can both run and fly, displaces the New Zealand apteryx, and the rabbit gets the better of the wallaby and smaller kangaroos. But while the British animals, with the aid of their owners, were displacing the native creatures of Austra- lasia, they were achieving a parallel success in another continent, and among a population who cannot be sus- pected of any preferential leanings towards the animals of these islands. The Spanish Republics of South America were rapidly ' Anglicizing ' their flocks and herds, originally descended and inherited from pure Spanish stock. In Argentina the demand for British- bred animals first arose among the flockmasters, though cattle-raising was the earlier and national occupation. But the improvement in wool effected by introducing the best English breeds was rapid and obvious, while 54 ANIMAL COLONISTS that in the form and quality of the cattle was a slower process. But during the last few years the demand for pedigree English cattle for Argentina has been enormous. Shorthorns, Herefords, and Devons have been imported weekly, and a cross-bred English stock now fills the ' corrals ' of the great beef and bovril companies of the River Plate. In North America this Anglicizing process has spread to all the States of the Union. Half-bred Herefords and shorthorns are taking the place of the common cattle of the States on nearly all the ranches of the beef-producing districts, and the colonizing capacity of different English breeds is recommending them for special districts. Thus the Devon bulls are purchased for ranches where the search for pasture and water needs special activity and endurance, and red ' polled ' or hornless Suffolks are used where cattle are being bred for transit by rail or ship, because the absence of horns is then convenient. Even tropical Brazil follows the fashion, and English Jersey cows are seen demurely walking through the forest-paths by the coffee-planta- tions, and English terriers and pug-dogs sit on the laps of Brazilian ladies. Whether the Jersey cattle will multiply on the planters' estates time will show ; but the spread of our colonizing animals, which are now invading simultaneously the plains of Patagonia and the North Canadian territory, does not limit its progress to the direction of the Poles. In India the English ANIMAL COLONISTS 55 horse becomes a colonist by second intention, in the form of the ' Waler.' His value, as compared with the native breeds of Asia, is still undetermined, but we must accept his presence and survival as a fact. Close on the heels of the purely useful British domesticated animals follow those carried across seas and deserts from motives of sentiment and love of sport. Every week brings news of fresh and successful enter- prises of this kind. In Connecticut the beginnings of a most anti-republican system of game-preserving are seen in the success with which pheasants are now being reared. The Connecticut woods are being stocked with these birds, and the State Legislature has passed an Act protecting them for three years. In Texas, according to the American Field, there is a Texas State pheasantry, and, in addition, private pheasant-rearing establishments are being opened, ' with a view to the firm establish- ment of the pheasant as an American game-bird/ Fish are usually the last British creatures to be established in new countries ; the means of transport of the ova is a comparatively modern discovery. But a * new country ' must be already in process of becoming an old one if such a contemplative pursuit as fishing is desired. The most recent ' State-aided migration ' of English fish has been to Cape Colony. There Mr. E. Latour has been engaged since 1892 in hatching out salmo fario. Loch Leven trout, and brook-trout for 56 ANIMAL COLONISTS stocking the Buffalo River and other South African streams. The work was begun at a large brewery, the cool spring which suited the manufacture of British beer being also adapted for the British fish. Later the work was carried on with great success at the hatchery of the King William's Town Acclimatization Society, six hundred miles from Cape Town. The eggs mainly came from Guildford and Haslemere, and hatched well, tens of thousands of fry being reared. The only doubt is whether the fish which can live as fry in the cool upper waters of these rivers will endure the higher temperature of the lower reaches. *', VIII.— IRISH DONKEYS FOR SOUTH AFRICA THE St. James's Gazette thinks that there is a brilliant future before the Irish donkey. He is the future beast of burden of South Africa, where he defies the tsetse-fly in some districts, and is everywhere proof against the climate. English and Dutch dealers have been buying thousands of them for shipment to South Africa, and £5,000 has recently been spent in this way in Clare, Limerick and Tipperary alone. Ireland is at present the main home of the donkey in the British Islands. Two hundred thousand are annually thence exported to England. They are small, stunted animals, with plenty of endurance, which the donkey never loses, but showing all the worst results of neglect in breeding. As this is the only domestic animal which we have neglected to improve, the results are useful as a scientific example of what happens when domestic animals are c left to themselves/ Improved animals — sheep, cattle, or horses, down to cats — are full of ' excellent differences.' Our neglected donkeys, 57 58 IRISH DONKEYS FOR SOUTH AFRICA never c bred for points/ have sunk to a dead and dull uniformity of colour, size, shape and even of demeanour.* How different from the gay thirteen-hand ' station ' donkey whom your English host puts at your disposal at Ramleh. He meets you at the station, starts off at full gallop, rushes in at the home-gate, and pulls up unasked at the mounting-block by the house. Next day he meets you there, gallops off to the station, and pulls up at a mounting-block of the same kind under the veranda. Authority states the reign of Elizabeth as the period at which the use of donkeys first became general in England. The fact was observed then, but their introduction was, we imagine, due to the connec- tion with Spain, established in the reign of Queen Mary. The Spanish ladies and Spanish priests who visited the Court brought with them their fine donkeys and mules, the proper animals for ladies and ecclesiastics to ride or drive. When the social ascendancy of Spanish fashions ended with the accession of Elizabeth, the rigid social lines drawn between the life of men, ladies and ecclesiastics in Spain, and temporarily intro- duced here, were broken down. One side-feature of this social revolution, and the elimination of what was * In Norfolk, where some attention is paid to breeding donkeys, it is noticeable that their colour varies considerably, and an average Norfolk donkey stands quite a hand higher than most of those seen in London. IRISH DONKEYS FOR SOUTH AFRICA 59 almost a sumptuary law, was the advance of the horse to the first place for the use of all three ' estates/ lords, ladies, and bishops, and the total eclipse of the ass. The fine animals kept for the purpose of breeding mules were only mated with other donkeys, for mule- breeding ceased. In the pictures of the procession of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, Cardinal Wolsey rides on a mule beside his King. Our donkeys have never recovered from the social results of the Reformation. From that time till the end of the last century the black-coated, full-wigged ecclesiastic on his cob figures in all pictures of equestrian gatherings and State functions, from the caricatures of Bunbury to the Court processions of the Georges. Spenser, with intentional archaism, represents Una riding beside the red-cross knight on a white ass. It is the last poetical tribute to the donkey paid in the Tudor period, and is more than counterbalanced by the part he plays in Midsummer Night's Dream. No one who reads the metamorphosis of Bottom can deny that Shakespeare makes a * true generalization of character ' in this study of the true inwardness of donkeys, and that the poor man's animal of that time must have been already much the same as he is now. There must have been plenty of good male donkeys in the country for mule- breeding, but the stock has never been replenished or improved. They have steadily dwindled in size until 60 IRISH DONKEYS FOR SOUTH AFRICA they have reached the limit set by bad food, want of shelter, and neglect in selection, in the tiny, half-wild donkeys of the New Forest. The sole luxury in life which the New Forest donkey enjoys is the privilege of rolling in the dust on the fenceless roads on a hot day. Yet he is not ill-tempered, and will draw a forest cart with a couple of women in it at a trot for four or five miles very comfortably. In Wales the small tenants do improve their donkeys by giving them better food than common, and often make a high price for them. Both in Somersetshire, near the coal measures, and in Norfolk, by the coast, the animals are in request, and are recognised as a useful help to the poor man ; but they are as far removed from the prize sixteen-hand animal of Kentucky agricultural shows as the Shetland pony is from the Shire horse. Donkeys are just the kind of animals which the peasant-proprietor finds useful. A proof of it is seen in the number already reared in Ireland and the surplus available for export. But a little organization and intelligent direction would increase the size and double the value of the breed. The means by which general improvements of this kind are effected are quite familiar from previous experience. If a twentieth part of the pains taken to improve the stock of Irish horses, disclosed in the recent Commission on Irish Horse-breeding, were taken to improve the race of Irish donkeys, the peasant- IRISH DONKE YS FOR SOUTH AFRICA 61 farmer would have a ' second string ' available, most valuable whenever a war or pestilence caused a demand for other than the ordinary transport animals. The needs of South Africa which have sent buyers to Ireland are exceptional, and unlikely to recur on such a scale. The rinderpest has destroyed the ox transports, and scarcity of grain has starved the horses. But there are two factors which may always be relied on to make a good donkey worth a good price in Rhodesia. These are ' horse sickness ' and the tsetse-fly. The astonishing constitution of the donkey makes him less liable to the first, and usually proof against the last of these pests of the new country. As a beast for army transport the donkey is not a mere * emergency ' animal. * The estab- lishment of breeding-studs, and the greater employment of the donkey as a transport animal, is well worthy of the attention of the military authorities,' writes Major Leonard, after sixteen years' experience as a transport officer. He finds that, used as a pack animal, the smallest donkey will carry an average weight of a hundred and thirty pounds, and the larger ones a hundred and fifty pounds. It can be taken through deserts for journeys of from fifty to sixty hours without water, and pick up food on the way. It has no nerves, and there- fore is a first-class animal to take ammunition-boxes to the fighting line. It is small, and less likely to be hit by bullets than a horse, and gets over more difficult 62 IRISFf DONKEYS FOR SOUTH AFRICA ground with less leading. One man can drive ten donkeys on the march, and they need little rations, grooming, or protection from cold. This being the case for the donkey as he is, it is worth while considering the value of the donkey as he might be. We must assume that under no circum- stances will the ass ever bring money ' for show ' or fashion, and that none of the increment which improvers of nearly all breeds of high-class animals may expect from this source may be expected in this case. Solid merit will be the only measure of value. This must be obtained by first forming a clear idea of what the different breeds of donkey are capable of doing, and how far they will suit the wants of particular classes. In Syria, where the animal is at its best, there are four breeds of donkey used for work as distinct as that of the different classes of English horse. There are a large rough donkey, standing thirteen and a half hands high, for drawing carts ; a heavier kind, used on the farms ; a ' gentleman's ' riding donkey, standing as high as fourteen hands, comfortable to ride and quick ; and a lighter class used for ladies. No one in this country would ride a donkey, except children. His place is in minor traffic here, and for transport by means of packs if exported. The object of the breeder should be to level up the animals all round, just as the standard of Irish cattle has been raised all round. IRISH DONKEYS FOR SOUTH AFRICA 63 If anything practical is done in this matter, it will come from above, not from the peasants. If the Dublin Agricultural Society, whose splendid Horse Show and fine buildings are one of the best institutions of the kind in the United Kingdom, could be induced to interest themselves, the movement would have the best chance of success. It might be considered infra dig. to include donkeys in the show, but that is only a question of custom, and of the quality of the animals exhibited. In the great agricultural shows of Kentucky one day is always reserved for judging donkeys, and the price of a thousand pounds has been paid for a donkey sire. * "*- * •***'! - ;•' , * '* - ** IX.— SHIRE HORSES AT ISLINGTON THE Londoner's comment on the * English elephants ' shown at the Agricultural Hall is that they are ' all alike.' So they are in general form and appearance ; and as, unlike the distinct and varied breeds of pedigree cattle, they are all intended for the same purpose, the result is a triumph for those who, since the Shire Horse Society was formed, have spent time and money in producing them. The total number exhibited has risen to five hundred and fifty-three. In 1 880, when the show was first held, it was one hundred and sixty-five, and the increase of numbers shown is a measure of the rise and growth of the latest of the great English industries of breeding pedigree stock, for which this century has been so remarkable. The show, though the entries are so large, is not impres- sive as a spectacle. All the stallions are shut up in high loose-boxes, and can only be visited separately. The mares are in stalls, and though both are in high condi- tion, the back views so obtained suggest little but the fact 64 SHIRE HORSES AT ISLINGTON 65 of enormous propulsive powers, and the use of a pair of steps for getting on their backs. When alongside them in the stalls and boxes, the impression of bulk is equally great, and the meekness with which they ' get over ' when smacked is almost as surprising as the obedience of an elephant. When taken out some new discovery has dictated that their backs and loins shall be thickly covered with sawdust to prevent their catching cold. Consequently a group of a dozen in the ring suggest recollections of magnums of tawny port in a wine- merchant's window. As an unconventional index of their size, the following figures, taken from the measure- ments of a prize mare and prize stallion, are somewhat interesting. Feet and inches give a clearer idea of dimensions to most minds, so we substitute them for hands. Taking the lady shire horse first, we find that she measures 5 feet 6 inches at the shoulder, 8 inches across the hollow of her front foot, 8 feet 2 inches — 98 inches — round her 'waist.' She weighs 18^ cwt. and is not fat. Her * hair,' which is 5 feet long, is plaited, so that its beauties do not show ; but her complexion, dappled brown and glossy, is perfection. At the other end of the hall a ' prize stallion, ten years old, and therefore fully mature, was measured with the following results : Height at the shoulder, 5 feet 8 inches, with a * waist ' measurement of 5 66 SHIRE HORSES AT ISLINGTON 8-J feet ; his weight, i ton i^ cwt. His shoe measured 21 inches round from heel to heel, to which the space between the calkins must be added. The stallion's height sometimes runs to 18 hands, and a mane 6 feet long is not uncommon. The average shire horse begins work in the country at four years old, and at five and a half years old goes to town, where two do the work of three ordinary draught- horses, and save the cost of stabling for one. The pedigrees of 16,480 stallions and 22,768 mares are recorded in the ' Shire Horse Stud Book/ This is not a mere catalogue, but has a practical object. Though 'like breeds like/ it is found by experience that the animals of oldest descent, when a breed is once established, produce the most uniform stock. This rule is what the foreign buyer relies on, and it is the world outside England on whom our breeders mainly rely to make the demand for our shire horses keep pace with the supply. Ten years ago three hundred foals were bought for Germany, six hundred 'certificates' of exported sires were issued for America, and it was in evidence that many hundreds of farmers in the worst times of the agricultural depression paid their rents from the produce of pedigree mares working on their farms. Since then the demand has risen by leaps and bounds, and the value of the animals has steadily increased. In no long time the prices must fall, SHIRE HORSES AT ISLINGTON 67 because the number of pedigree animals will be beyond measure increased. But the financial result, spread over a wider field, will be even more satisfactory than at present, just as the broad improvement of shorthorn cattle has added to the wealth not of individuals, but of the country — it has raised the value of Irish exported cattle, for instance, by some three pounds per head. At present the prices for shire horses are steadily rising, both for actual work and for breeding. Mr. Freeman Mitford, President of the Society, obtained seven hundred and twenty guineas for a six-year-old stallion, three hundred and twenty guineas for a three-year-old mare, and two hundred and ten guineas for a yearling filly. At Lord Wantage's sale no less than eight hundred guineas was paid for a six-year-old mare. Messrs. Clark and Griffin, farmers, were as successful in a recent sale as their wealthier competitors, making an average of £150 for their shire horses. The 'man in the street ' would scarcely believe that the big, slow horses in the railway-van are often more valuable than the showy animals in the landau which passes them ; but this is often the case, and the former justify their price by work done. In developing the size of these horses, only one serious drawback has been encountered by the breeders. Their enormous weight causes a tendency to an ossification of the side cartilage of the foot, which is called * side-bone.' 5—2 68 SHIRE HORSES AT ISLINGTON One of the main objects of the Shire Horse Society is to c breed away from side-bone,' and it is to their success in this that the popularity of the breed is largely due. Hence the importance of pedigree, and incident- ally the delay in awarding prizes in the show ; for every animal has to pass a rigorous ' medical examina- tion ' before its merits are considered. A second, and not less important, form of soundness in these animals is temper. { Temperament ' is perhaps the truer word. In combining this mental characteristic with modifi- cations in size and strength, the breeders have met with little resistance from Nature. If the ' nerves ' of the ordinary thoroughbred or hackney were possessed by the giant shire horse, it would be as unsafe to use for traffic as a Highland bull, and almost as dangerous as a stampeding elephant. If its nerves did not occasionally cause it to bolt with a two-ton van behind it, the everyday fidgeting, stamping and trotting which ordinary equine temperament demands in the lighter horses would strain the legs and ruin the hoofs which have to bear the burden of its bulk. As things are, the temper of the great horse has grown milder and easier as its size has increased. This is largely due to nature, for the shire horse is descended, without Arab or thoroughbred crosses, from the heavy war-horse of the days of armour. But the avoidance of repeating any cross from which temper has resulted must SHIRE HORSES AT ISLINGTON 69 also be credited to the breeders' experience. The nature of the shire horse's work does not ordinarily disturb this innate equanimity. They are never urged to speed. On the other hand, they are constantly required to make sudden exertions in pulling and hauling great weights, exertions which require as much resolution on the part of the horse, and urging by the * driver,' as efforts of speed. Yet the shire horse works entirely by the voice. He is never struck with the whip ; a hand on the reins by his mouth, a friendly pull, and a word or two, are enough to make him exert a muscular power greater than that of any other domesticated animal but the elephant. This docility has been acquired without loss of courage or intelligence. Men who have been employed for twenty years in super- intending the shire horse at work say that he never knows when he is beaten. The most trying work he is employed in is that of carting earth from excavations, or loads of stone and material to line cuttings and reservoirs. To do so he draws his loads, not over roads of macadam or stone, but over yielding earth or clay. The load has usually to be started up an incline, yet the horse obeys orders, and will renew the effort again and again at the word of command. The camel, which often refuses to move if overloaded, is perhaps wiser in its generation. The intelligence of the shire horse is not only not less, but greater, than that of 70 SHIRE HORSES AT ISLINGTON most breeds. This is partly due to its constant associa- tion with its carter in work other than mere monotonous driving. The cleverness of the shire horses on the railway is matter of common observation. But the quiet wits of the contractors' horses are less well known. An instance, noticed while a new reservoir was being dug above the grounds of the Ranelagh Club, gives some idea of the intelligence which ' informs ' these colossal horses. Heavy loads of earth from an excava- tion were being raised in a ' hopper ' and dropped into a * tipping-cart.' This was run violently along some rough rails, and at the last moment a pin was loosened, and the earth shot over the end of the embankment. Instead of being pushed by an engine, the cart was pulled, at the highest speed that could be raised, by a young shire horse. To * work the machine,' it had first to start the cart full of earth, to rush it along at a half-trot, half-canter, and at the last moment to jump on one side off the line, to have its hauling-chain detached by an automatic slip jerked by the driver, and to let the one and a quarter tons of earth and the truck rush past it and bang against the chocks at the end of the rail, spilling the earth from the hopper. If he failed to spring aside at the last moment, he would be jammed between the trolly and the blocks, or thrown over the slope of the embankment. The side-spring had to be made when going fast and using great SHIRE HORSES AT ISLINGTON 71 exertion. The horse was very excited, but never ' lost its head/ or showed the least inclination to shirk the work. Its driver, or rather attendant, had taught it to do this in four days, and the horse, though very large, was only a four-year-old. But Lord Herbert of Cherbury wrote the character of the ' great horse ' of England more than two hundred years ago, and noted that he was a creature ' made above all others for the service of man/ Among other accomplishments, he taught him to run at a figure dressed in bright armour, and knock it over ' in the midst of a field.' X.— THE BEAUTY OF CATTLE A VISIT to the Cattle Show at the Agricultural Hall should reconcile the English mind to the Indian worship of the cow. Considered as a gathering of the most beautiful animals of their kind which the art of man can aid Nature to produce, it has only one drawback — the excess of flesh which a * fat-stock ' show demands. But the richness and colour of the cattle, and the noble lines of heads, dark-eyed and massive-browed, with curling locks upon their foreheads and shining crescent horns, make a study of form and colour which the most uninstructed sight-seer must admire. Our im- pression of the show, from the point of view of the animals' comfort or suffering, was, on the whole, favour- able. The atmosphere was beautifully sweet and clean, with a pleasant smell of hay and clover and clean straw — scents that must suggest to the cattle's mind visions of a glorified rickyard. It is, perhaps, too hot for the comfort of the fatter beasts, some of whom pant and show signs of malaise. But others were lying down 72 THE BE A UTY OF CATTLE 73 and chewing the cud placidly, or licking their own coats or those of their neighbours — attentions to toilet which are a certain sign of contentment in cattle. The least tranquil was the splendid steer which had won the highest honours of the show. Size, shape, and colour would have qualified it for a place among the Oxen of the Sun. Almost as tall as an Indian bison, with a back as straight and level as a table, it had the char- acteristic colour and proportions of the finest domestic breed. The blue-roan mottling of its wavy coat gradually increased in closeness, until on its neck and head nothing but the dark tint, like ' blued ' steel, pre- vailed. Its eyes were large and black, its eyelashes long and curling, its muzzle fine and sensitive. But its whole aspect was melancholy, as it waved its head wearily from side to side. As we watched it, it lay down, for the first time since entering the show, and before long was no doubt reconciled to its surroundings. This steer weighed i ton i cwt,, and was barely three and a half years old. But the weariness of the champion was by no means shared by its fellows. A lovely steer from Norwich, next door, was dipping its nose alternately into its water-pail and supper-tray ; and a beautiful young blue-gray bullock, from Lord Elles- mere's park near Newmarket, was angrily protesting at being kept waiting while his neighbours were fed. His groom, a bright Suffolk lad who had ' known him ever 74 THE BEAUTY OF CATTLE since he was a baby,' treated this young giant as if he were a Newfoundland dog. * Come, kiss me, then,' he said, pulling the halter, as his pet was busy munching bran and turnips, and the animal actually raised its bran-covered muzzle from the tray to give the required salute. The c cross-breds ' — cattle produced from parents of first-class merit, but of different stocks — are always the most interesting class in the show. There is no saying what new beauties may be produced from the mating of the finest specimens of different pure- bred cattle. The champion of the show was the son of a shorthorn bull and a Galloway cow ; in others of almost equal merit the strain of Suffolk, or Devon, or Welsh blood was to be traced. Great variety of colour results from this mixture of strains ; black, blue-roan, iron-gray, and deep chestnut-red being the favourite tints. These long-haired, richly-tinted hides should make admirable rugs for halls. The Herefords are, perhaps, the most distinct in appearance of any breed, except the Highlanders. Their coats are crisp and curly, their bodies a rich, deep red, and the face pure white, with a white line up the nape of the neck. Very different to these easy-going English cattle are the wild Highlanders tethered opposite. Purity of blood only brings out their Celtic constitution in the greatest per- fection. Their shaggy coats hang in mops and eif- locks over their eyes, and their eyes are restless and THE BEAUTY OF CATTLE 75 angry. Some have enormous horns, bent like the bow of Ulysses ; in others, one horn curls up and the other down, lending a disreputable jauntiness to their unkempt heads. Some are orange-yellow ; others the colour of old dead wood or smoky glass. Others are tawny and shaggy like a water-spaniel. Even the railway journey and the show does not subdue their irascible Celtic minds ; and one rugged Highlander, after being hauled in by a dozen reluctant drovers, was, in order to secure peace, blindfolded with a sack, beneath which he sulked like a Skye-terrier in disgrace. No greater contrast could be imagined than that presented by these lineal descendants of the great bos urus of the Caledonian forest, and the placid, silky -coated shorthorns, the latest triumphs of domestication. The prize shorthorn heifer was, perhaps, the ideal of a nice, good-tempered * cushy ' cow. The white coat shone like ivory satin on her back ; her black eyes and eyelashes set off her shapely head ; her ears just brushed her pink horns, and her forehead was starred with little velvet curls. The neat, white, cotton-plaited headstall which con- fined her did not prevent her pushing her muzzle into every extended hand to seek for food, and she tossed her head, when they were without a gift, in the keenest disappointment and mortification. Compared with her, the tiny black Kerry cows looked mere pigmies. Yet their form was equally perfect, and their quick vivacious 76 THE BEAUTY OF CATTLE movements proclaimed their race as clearly as their robbery of their neighbours' hay showed their hereditary capacity for taking care of themselves in good times or in bad. These small Kerry cows are perhaps the best cattle which can be kept in the grounds of a moderate country house. They are too small to damage fences, are capital milkers, and most affectionate and intelli- gent pets. They are naturally friendly creatures, and, like cows in general, have, perhaps, longer memories for people than any other animal. For the farm, the choice will naturally fall among the larger breeds. The difficulty must be, not to choose well where all are so good, but to make a choice at all. In addition to the specific breeds we have mentioned, there are towering black Welsh cattle, curly and horned ; and the deep-red steers of Sussex, small and compact, with crescent horns; black, polled Galloways, with coats shining like astrachan wool ; and lovely Devons, redder than their native marl, and matched in colour to a hair. These are the herds that have stocked the ranches of the Argentine and the runs of New South Wales, the hills of New Zealand, and the plains of Uruguay. It is for their protection that the breeder demands a check on the importation of cattle diseases from abroad ; and the Cattle Show is the most convincing argument which his cause has yet produced. The naturalist who is not too proud to know the THE BEAUTY OF CATTLE 77 history of the domesticated animals which are now as native to the soil as any of the ancient wild races could name any district in which he found himself by a glance at the sheep upon the hills. Not even the cattle exhibit such marked differences as are to be found in the flocks which a century of careful selection has fitted to thrive best in the varied soils of England. The big Leicester sheep, with long gray wool and white faces, are as different from the ' Cotswolds ' as a New- foundland from a white poodle. In the ' Cotswolds ' will be found the original of the c baa-lamb ' of the nursery. These sheep are tall, with white wool in locks, and with tufts upon the head and forehead. The Lincolnshire sheep are more like those of Leicester, but heavier in the fleece, coarser, and more fitted for life in the marshes. They have, perhaps, the most intelligent faces of any sheep but the refined South Downs. We noticed a Lincoln ewe endeavouring to open a sack of cakes by putting her foot into the mouth, and drawing out the contents, as it lay on the ground in the next pen. Romney Marsh has its own breed of sheep, somewhat like the Lincolns. But of all the flocks of England, the South Downs must win the palm. Their short-clipped and delicate wool is felted together like moss. The hand sinks into it with difficulty. The form is beautiful and rounded, and though apparently so finely built, their weight is great. 78 THE BEAUTY OF CATTLE The close, yellow-gray fleece fits over the head like a cap, disclosing the face and nose, covered with short, gray hair — not wool. The features are extremely dainty, and the movements of the mouth, as the sheep nibbles its fragrant supper of trefoil and clover, resemble those of some delicate foreign rodent. Their heads are far prettier than those of many deer — almost as refined as that of the gazelle. These sheep undergo an elaborate toilet every morning. Clipping them is an art in which few excel. Their coats are trimmed, brushed, and damped, and pressed flat with a setting- board, and finally tinted for the day. The Hampshires, black-faced and Roman-nosed, are also rouged. It would be interesting to trace the development of these fine creatures from their primitive ancestors ; but even in the earliest instance the sheep seems not to have been indigenous in England. Geologically speak- ing, it is a very modern animal. Oddly enough, the chief difference between the tame and the wild sheep seems to be in the length of its tail, which is short in all the wild breeds, and will grow long in domesti- cated sheep, though severely discouraged in this country. The wool in the tame sheep has also gained that power of ' felting ' on which its value mainly depends. The wild cattle of Chillingham are this year not represented at the Show. The animal shown last year, which was the result of a. cross with a pure-bred THE BEAUTY OF CATTLE 79 shorthorn, retained the characteristic colour and shape of the original herd, even in the horns and tip of the ear, a proof of the strength of the wild blood which has been observed in several previous experiments. It took a good place among the best cross-breds exhibited, and made excellent beef when killed. Swine have probably made the widest departure from the wild state. A bird's-eye view of the piggery, taken from the top of a corn-bin, showed nothing but round and placid-breathing masses of animated pork, shapeless and unpleasing, excellent, no doubt, for food; but how unlike the old rusty-coloured, vivacious, sagacious English woodland pig ! Professor Flower says that the young of all wild kinds of pig present a uniform color- ation, being dark brown with longitudinal stripes of a paler colour. This marking, according to our own observation, is very rare in the domesticated pig, which seems to have lost with civilization all distinguishing marks of its wild parentage. It would be a pity, how- ever, if the poor piggies at Islington were made into ' burnt pig/ after the manner invented by Charles Lamb's Chinaman. That, however, may well be the case unless the rules against smoking in the Cattle Show are more strictly enforced. We saw one visitor knock the ashes off his cigar into a pen. A fire so kindled might run the length of the hall in ten minutes, and not leave a single beast surviving. XI.— WAR-HORSES WAR and the chase are the ultimate objects for which the Commission on Irish Horse-breeding has lately been hearing the evidence of experts on both sides of the Channel. The Irish owners desire to raise a class of horses the best of which can be sold at a high price for hunting, while the rest pay their way as cavalry remounts. How best to combine these objects the Com- mission will have to decide. Thoroughbred sires, it is agreed, produce the stock most likely to make good hunters ; and though the ' hackney ' is much in favour with some breeders of cavalry horses, we have very little doubt that the better bred these are the more likely they are to stand the rough work of war. The modern heavy cavalry horse has to carry a total weight, made up of man, harness, and equipment, of 20 st. — 280 Ib. — and the light cavalry horse a weight of 1 7 st. He is expected, if required, to march thirty miles in one day, and to be able to do his work on the next. Bought in Ireland at three years old, he is two 80 WAR-HORSES 81 years in training, and spends four years in the ranks as his average time of active service. It is very possible that if the type of cavalry horse were bigger it would last longer. But the modern animal is a compromise between the needs of the Service and the price which Government can afford. There is no such contrast now as formerly between the great war-horse, specially bred to carry the man in armour, and the ' natural ' war-horse, bred for speed, endurance, and to carry a man armed only with sword, spear, and shield. The difference has never been presented so vividly as in the battles of the Crusaders, especially those in which they were opposed to the Saracen cavalry. Sir Walter Scott's representation of the single combat in the desert between Sir Kenneth and Saladin is a very probable account of what would happen in such an encounter. When the mail-clad Knights on their heavy horses were able to charge knee to knee they must have swept away any force of Saracen cavalry ; but there is evidence in the accounts of the Templars that they modified their equipment in some degree to suit the Eastern modes of warfare and the climate. It is, however, less well known that the Saracens did the same, and that the changes they made in the days of the Crusades endured a hundred years ago, and in some parts of the Soudan are still observable. They adopted a light chain armour, the steel cap, and the two-handed sword of the 6 82 WAR-HORSES Crusaders, and to carry the increased weight must have bred their horses of a larger size. This appears in an account by Bruce in his ' Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile/ published exactly one hundred years ago. He visited, near Sennaar, the Sheik Adelan, round whose house were stabled four hundred horses, with quarters for four hundred men, all alike the ' property ' of Sheik Adelan. ' It was one of the finest sights I ever saw of the kind,' he wrote. ' The horses were all above sixteen hands high, of the breed of the old Saracen horses, all finely made and as strong as our coach-horses, but exceedingly nimble in their motion ; rather thick and short in the fore-hand, but with the most beautiful eyes, ears, and heads in the world. They were mostly black, some of them black and white, some of them milk-white (foaled so, not white by age).' The size and character of these horses dis- tinguish them from the ordinary light Arab. Sir William Broadwood questions Bruce's accuracy, saying that he is evidently mistaken when he describes Sheik Adelan's troop-horses as all above sixteen hands, because Arab horses now rarely exceed fifteen hands. Bruce's accuracy has survived the questioning of his contemporary critics, but the context supplies a probable answer to Sir W. Broadwood's doubts. All the riders wore armour, and the horses were not the modern Arab, but bred to carry the extra weight. c A steel shirt of mail WAR-HORSES 83 hung over each man's quarters opposite his horse, and by it an antelope's skin, made as soft as chamois, with which it was covered from the dew of night. A head- piece of copper, without crest or plume, was suspended by a lace above this shirt of mail, and was the most picturesque part of the trophy. To these was added an enormous broadsword, in a red leather scabbard, and upon the pommel hung two thick gloves, like hedger's gloves, their fingers in one poke/ To carry this panoply the Sheik's horses were modified from the natural Arab type. The size of the English war-horse reached its maxi- mum in the reign of Henry VIII., when the relations of body-armour to ' hand-guns ' were analogous to those of the early ship-armour and cannon before the ' high velocities * were obtained at Elswick. There was good reason to believe that by adding a little to the thickness of the coat of steel the soft low- velocity bullet of the day could be kept out. So it was for a time. But the additional weight required a still larger horse to carry it. The charger had to be armoured as well as his rider, and the collection in the Tower of London shows the actual weight which it carried. The panoply of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, the brother-in-law of Henry VIII., still exists. That of the horse covers the whole of the hind-quarters, the back of the neck, forehead, muzzle, ears, shoulders, and chest. It is 6—2 84 WAR-HORSES exactly like a piece of boiler-plating, and fastened by rivets. The rider sat in a saddle the front of which was a steel shield ten inches high, covering the stomach and thighs as the ' breast-work ' on an ironclad's deck covers the base of the turret. The total weight is 80 Ib. 15 oz. To this add the weight of the rider's armour, 99 Ib. 9 oz., and of the rider himself, say, 1 6 st. — 224 Ib. — and the total is 28 st. 12 Ib. 8 oz., or 404 Ib. 8 oz. This bears out Holinshed's statement that in the days of Henry VIII. , ' who erected a noble studderie for breeding horses, especially the greatest sort,' such as were kept for burden, would bear 4 cwt. commonly. As the gun prevailed, personal armour, just as in the modern ships, was concentrated over the vital parts. Breastplates remained bullet-proof, thigh- pieces were only sword-proof. But till the days of James II. complete armour seems to have been commonly worn by commanding officers in battle. The statue of Admiral Lord Holmes in Yarmouth Church shows him in full armour. Charles I., Cromwell, Maurice of Nassau, and William III. at the Boyne, are painted in the same equipment, except that leather boots have superseded greaves. The horse becomes lighter, but is in most respects the same animal. His points are well shown in the fine equestrian statue of Charles II. at the top of Whitehall Place. But before the date of the battle of Blenheim a change had begun. The * great WAR-HORSES 85 horse ' of war was being bred as a beast of draught, to develop into the modern shire horse, and his place as a war-horse was in process of being taken by the 4 dragooner,' which carried a soldier with only as much defensive armour as our modern Lifeguards. Crom- well's ' dragooners ' carried rather more weight ; but from a letter quoted by Sir Walter Gilbey in ' The Old English War-Horse/* it may be inferred that they were not of the old heavy breed. < Buy those horses,' he writes to Auditor Squire, * but do not give more than eighteen or twenty pieces each for them. That is enough for dragooners.' Then, * I will give you sixty pieces for that black you won (in battle) at Horncastle, for my son has a mind to him.' The ' black ' was one of the old war-horses, the colour having become synonymous with the breed ; and Oliver was so keen on getting it, that as Mr. Auditor Squire would not part at the price offered, he wrote later : * I will give you all you ask for that black you won last fight.' By the accession of the Hanoverian Kings the * great horse ' had disappeared, even for the use of officers and com- manders. Then the equipment of regular cavalry became uniform throughout the whole of Europe, and has remained so until the present day. The only difference in the horses is that between an animal able * < The Old English War-Horse.' By Walter Gilbey. London : Vinton and Co. 86 WAR-HORSES to carry a 1 2 st. man and his equipment, and that which carries a 10 st. man, and except in some French regi- ments of Chasseurs which use Arab horses, the breed is almost identical. Even the Cossacks are now regular troopers and mounted on big horses, instead of the twelve-hand ponies on which they rode from the Don to the Seine. In the Graeco-Turkish War the Greek army encamped on the plain where Bucephalus was reared ; but the famous Thessalian horses have now dwindled to the size of ponies, which were ridden by the irregular and local levies of the Greeks. Bucephalus was the most costly war-horse ever bought. The animal came out of a noted stud owned by a Thessalian chief ; and even before its celebrated taming by Alexander, this gentle- man asked Philip ^2,51 8 155. as his lowest price. Pliny says that Philip gave ^435 more than this. It now appears that, contrary to general belief, Bucephalus was a mare. This accounts for the high price paid. Compared with the prices asked for Arab mares of great descent in much later times, the sum demanded is not excessive. But Bucephalus was a good bargain even as a war-horse. She was ridden until she was thirty years old, and then died of wounds received in a battle with Porus, and left her bones in the Punjab. XII.— THE SPEED OF THE PIGEON-POST IT seems probable that current estimates of the speed of birds' flight must be modified. In a recent race a number of carrier-pigeons were flown from the Shet- land Islands to London. This is a great distance even for trained birds, the total length of the journey being 591-^ miles. The date being only a week after the longest day of the year, the birds had the advantage of daylight during their whole flight, and the winner reached the house of its owner, Mr. Clutterbuck, of Stanmore, in eight minutes under sixteen hours. They had been liberated at Lerwick at 3.30 a.m. The official weather-chart of the Meteorological Office gave, not for the first time, information of the utmost value for esti- mating the conditions of wind under which the flight was made. Every < arrow ' from Kirkwall to London pointed due south. In other words, the birds had the wind behind them throughout their journey. The result is that, in what is very nearly an approach to a migration flight, the pigeons travelled at a speed of 87 THE SPEED OF THE PIGEON-POST 37 miles an hour. An interesting correspondence in the Field) following the announcement of this fact, showed how widely observers differ on this most inter- esting question, but the records approach more nearly to the lower estimate in each case in which accuracy has been possible ; and in any case the surmises of the late Dr. Gatke that migrating birds travelled occasionally at speeds reaching 180 miles an hour cannot now be seriously defended. Yet such a good observer as Mr. Frohawk, one of our best painters of birds and animals, is convinced that a godwit can fly at a speed or 150 miles per hour; and Sir Ralph Payne Gallwey reckons the flight of a teal as sometimes reaching 140 miles an hour. But it has been calculated that if the godwit were flying at 150 miles an hour, it would have to overcome a resistance of air equal to a pressure of 1 1 2 Ib. per square foot, or considerably more than the force of a hundred-mile hurricane. Other corre- spondents give instances which leave little doubt that shore birds do travel at speeds considerably above 50 miles an hour ; but as regards the flight of the pigeon, some experiments carried out by the proprietors of the Field many years ago leave little doubt that the speed shown in the Shetland flight is normal. Twelve records with the chronograph gave a highest speed to the ' blue rock ' pigeon of from 33 to 38 miles an hour. Pheasants and partridges were also subjected to r ^ THE SPEED OF THE PIGEON-POST 89 experiment. The former made a record of 38 miles an hour, and the partridges, when well on the wing, of 32 miles. The correspondents of the Field have endeavoured to settle the question of the speed of birds solely by observation. In the absence of any mechanical aids such observations are most difficult to make, and in the nature of things they fall short of the certainty which would be desirable. The chief value of such contri- butions to the discussion is that up to the present date first-hand observations of any kind are scarce, meagre, and contradictory. Everyone has been struck by the phenomena of flight ; almost no one has found time to take the necessary thought and trouble to collect data on a subject so uncertain and elusive. When M. Marey published his monumental work, ' Le Vol des Oiseaux,' in 1890, such records as he was able to collect, though eminently suggestive, were only calculated to give uncertain notions ; moreover, the conclusions of dif- ferent writers did not agree. M. Van Roosebeck, a leading Belgian pigeon-flyer, assigned to homing pigeons a maximum speed of from 100 to 120 miles an hour. Wilbers quoted a case of a pigeon which had flown nearly 20 miles in as many minutes. Here is a difference of one half between two authorities. One of the standard references was an observed flight of pigeons from Paris to Spa, at the rate of 50 miles an hour. 90 THE SPEED OF THE PIGEON-POST The distance between the two points is 250 miles. Some of the so-called tables of birds' speed must have been drawn up on pure conjecture. Thus, according to one authority, the quail flies at 17 metres per second, the pigeon at 27 metres, the falcon at 28 metres (what falcon?), the swallow at 67 metres, and the martin at 88 metres, or about 95 yards per second. Such comparisons are useless without stating what kind of flight is meant. The only flight which is open to comparison in the sense desired, or rather which can be compared with the means at our disposal, is the sustained flight of birds from point to point. Not, for example, the downward rush of a falcon after prey, or the dash of a partridge into cover. But there are cases in which even these can be compared, as when a bird of prey pursues another bird. In this connection this table of speeds is ridiculously inaccurate ; the writer has seen a small falcon, the hobby, pursue and catch a swallow on the wing, though the speed of the latter is set down as four times greater than that of the falcon. Audubon's notes are more interesting, and probably nearer the truth. He found in the crops of pigeons which he shot some rice, which they could not have gathered nearer than Carolina, about 350 miles from the place where they were shot. From the state of digestion in which he found the rice, he concluded that it had been six hours in the birds' crops, and that THE SPEED OF THE PIGEON-POST 91 they must therefore have flown the distance at a speed of about a mile a minute. He also estimated that the eider-duck flies at the speed of 40 miles an hour, and the wild duck at about 45 miles an hour in sustained flights. One obvious chance of error in his calculation of the speed of the pigeons is the possibility that diges- tion may have been partly arrested while the birds were flying so long a distance. Another statement dealing with the frigate-bird depends on the assumption that it neither flies by night nor sleeps on the water. If this is correct, the distances travelled by these ocean-birds in a single day must amount to as much as 1,800 miles, for they have been seen at a distance of more than 900 miles from any coast or island. But no one can prove that they do not fly by night, and the effort- less soaring of these ocean-birds suggests that their power to remain on the wing is certainly not limited to a period of twelve hours. It seems contrary to all reasonable conjecture that any bird should make a daily flight of hundreds of miles from its roosting-place. But there are means available for discovering the real rate of flight of the frigate-bird not less accurately than that of the carrier- pigeon. According to the Rev. S. G. Whitmee, the frigate-birds are domesticated by the natives of the Ellice Islands. In 1870 he saw numbers of them sitting about on perches erected for them near the 92 THE SPEED OF THE PIGEON-POST beach. The natives catch the young birds, tie them by the leg, and feed them till they become tame. Then they let them loose, when they regularly go out to sea to obtain food, and come back to roost. Ad- vantage was taken of this by some of the missionaries to establish a ' pigeon-post,' conducted by frigate-birds, between the islands, and Mr. Whitmee himself saw more than one letter arrive in a quill attached to the wing of a frigate-bird. Here there is a perfect oppor- tunity, ready made, for determining the speed of one of the finest fliers among the whole nation of birds. It is not likely that the natives of these islands, or, rather, islets, north of Fiji and east of Samoa, have ceased to tame the birds, and the missionaries now on the islands might renew the experiment of the past, and make a trustworthy record. A very ingenious means of observing the speed of flight was suggested by MM. Liais and Mouillard. This was to fly a bird across some open area of sand, and measure the time at which the shadow crossed lines marked upon it. But the photographic gun of M. Marey gives excellent results. If the bird is crossing the spectator, it will show on a spinning disc images at the rate of ten in a second. When the space between the images is measured, and compared with the length of the bird's body on the plate, the speed at which it is travelling can be calculated at once. Observations made from THE SPEED OF THE PIGEON-POST 93 railway-carriage windows give a rough means of com- paring bird-speed. The writer has often done this, and has found that a train running at thirty-five miles an hour travels faster than the rook, the heron, the pheasant, and all small birds commonly seen inland except swallows and martins. A covey of partridges flying parallel with the train sometimes exceeds the speed of the engine at between thirty-five and forty miles per hour. Accurate observations of the flight of cormorants might be made, if anyone would take the necessary trouble, when returning to roost in the cliffs. They fly perfectly straight along shore in certain places just before dusk every evening, and a few marks set up and a measurement on the ordnance map would give accurate results, especially if two persons marked the flight at different angles. The writer has found the speed of these heavy birds, on still evenings, to approxi- mate to a mile in one minute and ten seconds. ' A mile a minute ' is less rapid when the flight is watched from a distance than might be imagined. It must be something less than half the speed at which a swift dashes past on a summer evening, though allowances must be made for appearances when comparing the flight of large birds with that of small ones. A bee seems to fly by like a flash, yet it only makes thirty miles an hour, or half the speed at which the heavy cormorants fly home to bed. XIII.— THE LONDON HORSE AT HOME LONDON horses are the result of the completest form of ' urban immigration ' known. Probably not thirty of the three hundred thousand which live within the Metropolitan area were born there. Yet such is the natural intelligence of their kind that, after a training lasting not more than eight months, even at the longest, they are as much at home in London streets, and as healthy in London stables, as if they had never known the freedom of a Suffolk strawyard or an Irish hillside. Even in manners and appearance the London horse differs from his country cousin. Even the street - arab detects the latter. * Hullo, here's a country 'orse ; let's take a rise out of him !' was the amiable comment of a street-urchin on seeing a rustic Dobbin which had brought a load of hay into town during the summer droughts munching from its nose-bag outside a Chelsea ' public/ In c The Horse World of London,' published by the Religious Tract Society, Mr. W. J. Gordon has given 94 THE LONDON HORSE AT HOME 95 not a sketch, but an exhaustive and brightly written account of the varied lives and work of the animals them- selves, and of the organized system of collective owner- ship which mainly governs the employment and purchase of London horses. There is hardly a page in the book which is not full of facts, mainly new, and always interesting. As we read, the mixed and bewildering equine crowd which pours along the streets in carriages and four-wheeled cabs, tradesmen's carts and parcel- vans, brewers' drays and road-carts, dust-cars and coal- carts, hansoms and hearses, is resolved into classes, nations and callings, destined for separate uses, with reasonable purpose. The immense scale on which horses are now 'jobbed ' from large proprietors, and the steady decline of private ownership, is perhaps the most interesting fact, from an economic point of view, on which Mr. Gordon dwells. Tilling, of Peckham, owns a stud of 2,500 of all kinds, and these are hired for work in every part of the kingdom, from the heavy cart-horse to the riding-cob. They are to be found in Sunderland, in Cornwall and at Brighton. They are hired by every class of customer, from the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs to the laundry company. Peak and Frean hire a hundred for their biscuit vans ; a great brewer ( jobs ' as many more. Even some of the tram-lines are thus horsed ; so is the Fire Brigade, the Salvage Corps, and now the mounted police. The advantage of these 96 THE LONDON HORSE AT HOME large establishments is plain. If a horse turns out unfit for the use for which it is bought, it can be trans- ferred to another. If unsuited for a smart carriage, it can be hired out to the doctor, and if troublesome, can be put to hard labour for a season in an omnibus, and thence transferred, after a course of discipline, to the luxurious life of private service. This is an old device ; but hitherto the transfer could not be made without the sale and repurchase of the animal at a loss, until the horseowner increased his stock to a size which made such change of employment possible. One small owner, the possessor of four or five light * vanners,' was wont to boast that he had bought a horse for five pounds and sold it for fifty pounds, a story which he never varied when relating it to the present writer. The animal, purchased at an equine ' rubbish ' sale, was a confirmed bolter. No sooner was it harnessed than it set off at full gallop, a career which generally ended in a smash, and the immediate resale of the culprit. But the new purchaser, far from trying to check this propensity, resolved, as he said, to ' humour him a bit/ and generously * lent him to a fire-engine.' The horse soon found that he was encouraged not only to bolt at starting, but to keep up the pace, and in six months was quite ready either to stand in harness or to start at any speed wished by his driver. Besides the great 'jobbers,' the omnibus companies, the railways, the London THE LONDON HORSE AT HOME 97 vestries, and the large breweries and distilleries own troops and regiments of horses, and the combination of capital and high organization with proper economic management in these great establishments has set a standard of good and humane treatment by which the London horse has greatly benefited. Better and larger stables, good food and litter, and steady work, with regular days of rest, have lengthened the life and improved the physique of the London horse. A good brewer's horse, standing 17*2, was weighed by Mr. Gordon, and tipped the beam at just over the ton. The driver weighed 20 stone 12 Ib. ! the van, fully loaded, 6 tons 15 cwt., to which must be added the harness, making a total with the driver of nearly 8 tons. Three horses drew the whole ; and it was stated that, on the average, three horses now do the work which four did twenty years ago. 'The vans have improved, the roads have improved, and the horses have improved — especially the horses/ We agree with Mr. Gordon in thinking that steady attention to the breeding of draught-horses all over the country has probably increased their size and power, just as it has increased the average size of the thoroughbred. The latter gains one hand in a century. In 1700 he stood, on the average, at 1 3*2 ; he now stands 1 5*3. We might suggest a rough test of the growth of the draught- horse. The shafts of the 'tumbril,' or country two- 7 ' - 98 THE LONDON HORSE AT HOME wheeled farm-cart, have probably been set on at their present height by the tradition of one hundred years in wheelwrights' shops. If compared with the height of the shafts in the ' tumbrils ' used for the monster horses of the London vestries, a clue might be gained as to the proportionate increase in the height of the best draught- horses. The main conditions of health for the London horse, when once acclimatized, seem to be the Sunday's rest, and proper care of his feet. Experience only proves the truth of the evidence given by Bianconi, when the whole mail traffic of Ireland was run on his cars. He owned more horses than any man of his time, and declared that he got far more work out of them when he ran them only six days a week than when he ran them seven. Mr. Gordon cites Lord Erskine's speech when introducing a Bill dealing with cruelty to animals : ' Man's dominion is not absolute, but is limited by the obligations of justice and mercy ;' and, except in the case of certain unfortunate hackneys, which can be used in carts on week-days, and serve in a cab on Sundays, most owners seem now to recognise both the Justice and utility of allowing their horses a Sabbath of rest. Hard work is terribly aggravated by any mischief in the horses' feet, most of the cases of * cruelty ' being due to working them in that condition. The ponderous hoof of the dray-horse crushes down upon iron or sharp stone, and at once drives the object deep into the THE LONDON HORSE AT HOME 99 foot. Iron nails inflict the worst injuries, and when * demolitions ' are going on, or masses of broken material are being carted through the streets, drags and vans are often sent by circuitous routes in order to avoid the nail-studded roadway. Proper shoeing is almost as important as daily foot examination for these bulky horses. * There is no animal more carefully shod than a brewer's horse,' writes Mr. Gordon. ' At Courage's, for instance, no such things as standard sizes are known. Many have a different make and shape of shoe on each hoof. The shoe is always made specially to fit the foot, and these are never thrown away, but are mended — soled and heeled, in fact — by having pieces of iron welded into them again and again. Some of the shoes are steel-faced ; some are barred, the shoe going all round the foot ; some have heels, some toes ; some one clip, some two. In fact, there are almost as many makes of shoes as in a Northampton shoe-factory.' Mr. Gordon has a separate and amusing treatise on nearly every branch of the London horse- world, from the Queen's c Creams ' to the funeral steed and the typical cab-horse. His story of the request that King William IV. would delay hastening to the House to dissolve Parliament in 1831, in order to give time for the cream-coloured State horses to have their manes plaited, and the King's reply, < Plait the manes ! Til 7—2 ioo THE LONDON HORSE AT HOME go in a hackney coach,' is part of the tradition of the Buckingham Palace stables. But the sequel of the indignant coachman swearing at the guard of honour, and having to descend from the box and apologize after conveying his Majesty to the House, gives greater finish to the episode. The funeral horses are State steeds in their way also, and, like the Queen's cream- colours, are foreigners, or of foreign extraction. But the creams are of Hanoverian descent. The * Black Brigade ' are all Flemish, and come to London by way of Rotterdam and Harwich. There are nearly seven hundred in London, and these are mainly the pro- perty of one or two large owners. ' The jobmaster is at the back of the burying world/ One of these speaks very pleasantly of his black stud. * I am not a horsey man,' says the undertaker, ' but I have known this class of horse all my life, and I say they are quite affectionate and good-natured, and seem to know in- stinctively what you say to them and what you want. One thing, they have an immense amount of self- esteem, and that you have to humour. Of course, I have to choose the horses, and I do not choose the vicious ones. I can tell them by the glance they give as they look round at me.' They are very fanciful as to their company, and if a coloured horse is put in the stalls among them, the blacks at once turn fretful and miserable. Mr. Gordon has a fund of stories and THE LONDON HORSE AT HOME 101 experiences of the sale-rooms, the donkey-mart at Islington, and the export and import trade. In spite of the imports from Poland, Finland, Holland, and even America, and the pony trade with the Baltic, our export of horses enormously exceeds the import in value. A three years' total gives £2,532,000 of exports, as against £804,000 of imports, and the quality and price of English horses rise steadily. The imports do not in- clude those from Ireland, which until recently supplied the entire Belgian Army with remounts, and at present largely fill the ranks of London cab-horses. They fetch on the average about £30 a-piece ; and as a new hansom-cab costs £100, the hirer enjoys the temporary use of a capital of £130, and the services of the driver. But the number of cabs steadily decreases, and, from the horses' point of view, this decline is hardly to be deplored. XIV.— MENAGERIE ANIMALS TRAVELLING wild-beast shows are still among the most popular entertainments in the world, and, contrary to general opinion, the animals are usually both healthy and happy in these peripatetic companies. The late Mr. A. D. Bartlett stated that in his experience animals of the cat tribe in travelling wild-beast shows far more often had litters of cubs than those kept in the com- parative comfort of the Zoological Gardens, and that they were also more healthy, probably on account of the change of air and excitement. But though animals on tour are seldom sick or ' sorry,' experience shows that they must have periods of rest. This is especially the case with the elephants, camels, zebras, and other creatures which not only travel on foot in all weathers during the greater part of the year, but also take part in performances, and often have to aid in drawing heavy caravans. When they arrive at the town where the show is to be exhibited in the evening, they are stabled and fed ; but an afternoon performance, and at least 102 MENAGERIE ANIMALS 103 three hours of light, noise, and excitement every evening, though very much enjoyed by the elephants, try their nerves and make quiet necessary. Most of the big wild-beast shows and circuses own a kind of dockyard and hospital, to which both live stock and dead stock are brought to ' refit/ This establishment is the permanent headquarters of the show. Here the animals which need training are educated by the per- manent trainer, who, if he is really clever at his work, can often pass his pupils on to other hands for actual exhibition in the show. One of these ' repositories ' in North London is well worth a visit. Round the central hall runs a wide gallery, full of scenery, fittings, and appliances for shows past and future. With these are various deceased animals of note, stuffed, embalmed, or bottled in spirits of wine, according to size. This seems customary in foreign menageries. At the wedding of Pezon — the famous French menagerie owner and lion tamer — all the stuffed animals were brought in to decorate the breakfast salon. In Sanger's repository one or two skeletons of particular favourites are mounted for exhibition, more c Jumbo's ' bones. Below are the reserve of triumphal cars. Others are ' in dock,' being repainted and regilded. The artists who paint the cars are usually educated in the service of menageries, and by the united force of talent and the traditions of the profession have long been famous for their power of 104 MENAGERIE ANIMALS painting on the panels the most dreadful roaring, bound- ing, all-devouring lions which ever caught negroes under a palm-tree. Below on the ground-floor are the stalls and stables for the animals in hospital, on sick-leave, or simply needing rest and quiet. These quarters are kept in half-darkness, as the dim light suits animal invalids. The elephants are picketed by the leg. Other animals — zebras, llamas, goats, and camels — are kept in loose-boxes or pens made of high hurdles. Every morning all the animals on furlough are taken out for long walks, each being led by a lad or a keeper. It was when out for one of these constitutionals from the hospital that Sanger's big elephant ran away through Islington some years ago, and met with such remarkable adventures. The old-fashioned ' wild-beast shows ' like Wombwell's, Maunder's, and others which delighted the country towns and villages thirty years ago by simply exhibiting animals in caravans, with a few elephants and camels to carry visitors, are now usually merged in circuses, in which the performances of trained animals have the first place. This demands a great number of horses and ponies. These have very hard work in the arena, especially those which are trained to jump over flights of hurdles. The regularity with which menagerie horses will ' come to the scratch/ sometimes twice daily, for a long series of gallops, broad jumps, and high jumps would surprise many owners of MENAGERIE ANIMALS 105 hunters whose mounts often knock up after very mild and occasional spells of work. Jumping four to six hurdles in and out, with two held one above the other to finish with, was a feat performed by one circus horse up to the age of sixteen. A week or two in the repository every six months was all the rest he required even at the end of his career. The number of animals travelling in a single troop without accident or sickness is surprising. During a recent summer one hundred and sixty-three horses, with six elephants, several camels, ostriches, and emus, in Sanger's menagerie, travelled almost daily through the South - Midland and Southern counties, often spending the night, and giving an exhibition at by no means large provincial towns with considerable financial success. In one week they travelled by road — menageries do not patronize railways — from Newbury, along the Kennett Valley, to Reading ; thence up the Thames Valley to Windsor, Staines, Kingston, and Epsom. At each place they gave two performances, in the morning and evening, besides making the journey. All the scenery, vans, and material of a huge tent, large enough to hold ten thousand people, were packed and transported, the draught-power being furnished by the animals attached to the show. For six weeks this show was certified to have earned an average of one thousand pounds a week, during which io6 MENAGERIE ANIMALS time it visited thirty-four different towns ! If variety and change of scene are good for the animals' constitu- tions, they must have been in rude health at the end of this period. Most of the marching is done in the early morning. The elephants, camels, and other beasts of draught are taken, if possible, to a stream to drink ; and nothing could well be more strangely in contrast to its surroundings than the group of camels and elephants drinking from a wayside stream, the former browsing on the hawthorn branches full of May blossom. With the rise of the circus element in menageries has come an additional demand for the ' taming ' and training of wild and domestic animals. The trainer is not always the performer. There is no better proof of his success than when someone else can enter the cage and take his place, as when Madame Baptistine Pezon, when her husband fell ill, put on the costume he used in performances, and put the lions through their tricks. The demeanour of the animals themselves, when lions, tigers, or leopards perform, is often evidence of the method, whether cruel or kind, employed first in taming and later in teaching them. A correspondent of the Globe, recounting the history of the famous dompteur, states that lions are often tamed, like hawks, by deprivation of sleep, accom- panied by plentiful feeding. It is very doubtful whether English trainers are cruel to animals. Mr. MENAGERIE ANIMALS 107 Sanger makes the following ingenuous defence of his profession.