LOG-BOOK

OF A

FISHEEMAN AND ZOOLOGIST.

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in 2015

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LOG-BOOK

OF A

FISHERMAN AND ZOOLOGIST

BY

FRANK BUCKLAND, M.A.,

LATE STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD ;
INSPECTOR OF SALMON FISHERIES FOR ENGLAND AND WALES,
ETC., ETC.

ILLUSTRATED.

LONDON :

CHAPMAN & HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
1875.

[All rights reserved.]

LONDON :

BRADBURY, AONEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

THE AUTHOE

DEDICATES BY PERMISSIOX
TO

HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE CHRISTIAN,

OP SCHLESWIG-HOIiSTEIN, K.G.,
RANGER OF WINDSOR GREAT PARK, ETC.,

IN TOKEN OF GRATEFUL APPEECIATION OF THE EFFORTS OF
HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS

TO

ENCOURAGE KINDNESS TO ANIMALS

AND TO ADVANCE THE

SCIENCE OF PRACTICAL NATURAL HISTORY.

1

PEEFACE.

At all times the faculty which is most useful is that
of quick and accurate observation of truths both small
and great.

Inanimate objects, though voiceless, are, in my experi-
ence, most valuable witnesses to truths both cun-ent and
past.

My good Father and Mother trained me well in ob-
servation, note-taking, and reflection ; it has therefore
become my habit to observe, record, and reflect upon
eveiything I see in town or country, out of doors or
indoors ; and, as a Philosopher of old wrote of himself, so
I am thankful to say I can write of myself, " Nunquam
minus solus quam solus." The results of some of my
observations are recorded in the following pages.

An immense amount of valuable practical knowledge
lies imutilized in the minds of those of the humbler
classes who have neither the ability nor the opportunity

Vlll PREFACE.

of expressing it in writing or in print. Good folks of this
class have often a quaint mode of diction and a store of
good old English words, which it is my delight not only
to listen to, but also "paper" — as they have it. It is
therefore with glee that I delight to talk to my friends
" Kobinson Crusoe," p. 62 ; " Charley Hill," of the smack
Hurricane, p. 79 ; " Old Tom," the custodian of the Duke
of Marlborough's Emus and Kangaroos, p. 47 ; the
" Whitstable Diver," p. 132; the "Blind Man," owner of
Puss, p. 110 ; " Mother Pook," p. 181 ; &c.

I write most of my articles (especially the long ones),
in railway trains. My Official duties as Inspector of
Salmon fisheries, with my friend and colleague Mr.
Spencer Walpole, necessitate frequent and long journeys,
as we have to look after thirty- eight fishery districts,
from the Coquet in the North to the Fowey in the South.
During the otherwise tedious railway journeys I always
do a great deal of writing. Going north I post my MS., —
begun at Euston or King's Cross, and written during the
journey — at York, Newcastle, or Carlisle ; and when going
in other directions I post at Salisbury, Exeter, Gloucester,
Worcester, Shrewsbury, Canterbury, or Chester.

Thus, a railway carriage to me becomes a most agree-
able studio where I can write without fear of being

PREFACE.

ix

called upon to attend to other matters, while the cold-
air bath, as the Express rushes along, invigorates the
memory and renovates the mental powers. The articles
which my friends tell me are my best are generally
written in the railway train.

My Father taught me to wi'ite in a railway carriage, .
and the late lamented Bishop of Winchester (then Bishop
of Oxford) taught him ; and I have passed on this valuable
mode of saving time to many friends and acquaintances,
as well as to fellow-passengers during my journeys.

Most of the articles in this book have been publislied
in " Land and Water," and, holding the copyright, I now
repubhsh a selection from them in a collected form. I
am indebted to " Land and Water " for the loan of several
of the blocks. I have to thank "Temple Bar" for allow-
ing me to republish " My Monkeys," * and to Sir W.
Fergusson and Messrs. Churchill I am obliged for the

* It is but fair to my monkeys, " The Hag" and " Tiney," to state that
many stories I have written about them in this book refer to times
past, when Tiney was young, and the Hag amenable to discipline. I
can now give them their liberty no longer, as the Hag has in her old
age become very cross and inclined to bite, and Tiney must not be
trusted out loose alone. I have lately found out by accident that my
study, where I and the monkeys have sat together so many years, which
was formerly called by the servants the " Master's room," is now
designated by them as the "Monkeys' room." This is Darwin going
backwards.

X PREFACE.

loan of the blocks of the cocks with spurs in their
combs.

" Land and Water " was originated nine years ago by
the late Mr. W. rfennell,Mr. Chapman, Mr. Higford Burr,
other gentlemen, and myself; Mr. Henry Lee, and other
valued correspondents speedily joined us. Since its origin,
I have been and still am Editor of the " Fishery " and
"Natural History" columns.

It is a difficult task, month after month, year after
year, to find a fresh .subject for every Saturday's paper.
I have, however, the satisfaction of knowing that many
fishery and natural history subjects, first started by myself,
have led to debate and the diffusion of otherwise latent
knowledge. See especially the correspondence in my
articles, "Bore on the Severn," "Eagle and Child," "Tar-
tarian Lamb," &c. I here beg to thank my numerous
correspondents for the trouble they have taken to j(5tn
my ranks. My private secretary, Mr. Searle, has been of
great service to me in all matters relating to my writings,
as well as casting and painting salmon and other fish for
my " Museum of Economic Fish Culture " at South Ken-
sington, of which Mr. Edon takes eveiy care.

As an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford, and also

PREFACE. xi

when in my Father's house at the Deanery, Westminster,
the pleasant and learned society which I had the privilege
of enjoying trained me up in the good old school of the
Bridgewater Treatises, the seven volumes of which were
written by the most eminent men of that day to show the

mmtifesieb- m i\t Cnatbtt."

I therefore hereby declare myself to be a staunch
upholder of the school, instituted by these good and
learned men.

The so-called education of the present day is, in my
opinion, too much confined to book-learning, and taking
for granted the ideas and opinions of others. If I had
my will I would educate the eyes of all — adults even
more than youths and girls — to observe and to photo-
graph objects in their head. I would also teach them
to' use their fingers to analyze and draw, and above all
to dissect. Beasts, Birds, and Fishes, so as to be able to
understand their wonderful structure and mechanism,
and the handiwork of the gi-eat Designer of all things.
Horace never wrote a truer thing than

" Segnids irritant animos dcmissa per aures,
Quam qaso sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus."

I do not bow to many of the teachings of the modern

xii PREFACE.

school of science, which often, by hard words and unneces-
sary mystifications, frequently seems to puzzle rather than
enlarge the mind. I wish, on the contrary, to throw the
portals of Science, (i.e. knowledge,) wide open, and let all
enter who will ; we want as many recruits as possible in
our ranks. It is hardly necessary to say that I am not a
disciple of Darwin or the development theory. I believe
in the doctrine — I am sorry to say now old fashioned —
that the great Creator made all things in the beginning,
and that he made them good.

FRANK BUCKLAND.

37, Albany Street, Regent's Park, London,
April, 1875.

•CONTENTS.

— t —

PAGE

AT THE EOTAL ACADEMY WITHOUT A CATALOGUE ... 1

SIK EDWIN LANDSEEK's FAVOURITE BED SPOT 13

EXHIBITIONS OUTSIDE THE CATTLE SHOW '17

KING CHABLES THE FIKST'S PAEROT 29

FOOTSTEPS IN THE SNOW AT THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS . . .32

ICE ACCIDENT TO THE RHINOCEROS 39

MOUSE BURR FROM HORSE's TAIL 42

EMUS AND KANGAROOS AT BLENHEIM PALACE 47

HEAD OF INDIAN FEOM SOUTH AMEEICA 57

AN OLD MAN OF WAR'S MAN, BOBINSON CEUSOE 62

HORSE-FLESH DINNER AT THE LANGHAM HOTEL . . . .72

FOOT OF napoleon's CHARGER 76

FISH AT GREAT GRIMSBY DOCKS : EXPERIENCES OF A NORTH SEA

TRAWLER .... 79

"little jemmy" THE SURICATE 96

RAT WITH HAM-BONE ON HIS NECK 101

SINGING MICE ' 103

LEADEN PIPE GNAWED BY KATS 105

" PUSS," THE BLIND MAN'S DOG 110

USE OF THE GULAB POUCH OF THE BUSTARD 118

DINNER OF AMERICAN GAME AT THE LANGHAM HOTEL . . . 123

EXPERIENCES OF A WHITSTABLE DIVER 132

FIGHT BETWEEN A SCORPION AND A MOUSE 139

THE WOODPECKER AND THE BITTERN . . . . . .14-1:

NETTING THE FISH IN THE SERPEJJTINE 151

TARTARIAN LAMB 163

OUT SNAKING 168

SNAKE WITH TWO HEADS . . . . ■ . . 178
HOW I SPENT WHIT-MONDAY AT HABTINO 181

XIV

CONTENTS.

PAGE

THE BRIGHTON AQUARIUM 193

REMINISCEKCES OF NATURAL HISTORY IN SCOTLAND : —

SCOTCH RED DEER 219

SCOTCH WILD CATS 243

WILD CATTLE FROM HAMILTON PALACE . ... 255

GOLDEN EAGLE FROM SUTHERLANDSHIRE . . . 261

WILD GOATS IN SCOTLAND 270

SCOTCH RIVEE PEARLS 272

INJURY TO A SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH CABLE BY A FISH, IN THIRTY

FATHOMS OF WATER 275

" JEMMY" THE WALRUS 280

THE "eclipse" whaling AND SEALING SHIP 295

BARNACLES FROM A WHALE 302

THE GREENLAND SEAL FISHERIES 306

THE BLADDER-NOSED SEAL OF THE ARCTIC SEAS .... 315

HABITS OF THE FUR SEAL 318

MY MONKEYS :— "THE HAG " AND " TINY " 324

' ' THE HAG " ON DARWIN 336

THE ANDAMAN MONKEY 341

MONKEY TRAINING 345

THE BORE ON THE SEVERN 346

TITLES OF DUMMY BOOKS FOR A LIBRARY 369

ANTIQUITIES : — KING ALFRED'S JEWEL 372

EXECUTION AXE 374

COLLAR OF BLACK PAGE 377

JOHN HUNTER REVIVED 378

LIST OF ILLUSTEATTONS.

— ♦ —

BORE ON THE SEVERN Frontispicce.

SKELETON OF KING CHARLES THE FIRST's FAVOURITE PARROT . . 30

MOUSE BURR FROM HORSE's TAIL 43

HEAD OF INDIAN FROM SOUTH AMERICA 58

bear's FOOT 75

LEADEN PIPE GNAWED BY RATS 106

bustard with POUCH EXTENDED 120

TERRAPIN WITH OYSTER SHELL ATTACHED . . . . . . 125

FOSSIL elephant's TUSK FROM OYSTER BED . . . tO face p. 137

OLD SWORD FOUND IN THE SERPENTINE 161

TARTARIAN LAMB 163

DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE 179

CROMMY ANTLERS FROM JURA 228, 229

TELEGRAPH CABLE AND TOOTH OF SAW-FISH 275

"jemmy" the WALRUS to face p. 289

CLUB FOR KILLING ARCTIC SEALS 296

HEAD OF PIKE WHALE 301

PARASITIC BARNACLES FROM HEAD OF WHALE 303

HEAD OF BLADDER-NOSED SEAL 317

"jenny" the ANDAMAN MONKEY 343

SALMON PUTCHER AS USED IN THE ESTUARY OF THE SEVERN . 'S67

SALMON PUTT 368

KINO ALFRED'S JEWEL to face p. 373

EXECUTION AXE 375

slave's COLLAR 377

cock's spur transplanted INTO HIS COMB 389

COOK WITH SPURS GROWING IN HIS COMB 390

LOG-BOOK

OF A

FISHERMAN AKD ZOOLOGIST.

AT THE EOYAL ACADEMY WITHOUT A
CATALOGUE.

After giving evidence before the Committee of the
House of Commons on the Salmon Bill— now happily
become law— I went one fine afternoon in May, 1872, to
the Eoyal Academy, as I thought I would try an experi-
ment to see how far the Painter's art could convey what
he really meant tvitliout the interposition of a printed
description. So I bought no catalogue, and thoroughly
enjoyed myself examining the pictures, especially as I am
teaching myself to paint my fish casts, and like to learn.

Not many of the pictures— I am sorry to say very
few— tell their own story; but some do. The gem of
the collection, in my idea, was a picture representing an
old grey-haired man, with his hands tied behind his
back, standing in front of three Lions and four Lionesses.
The beasts are evidently very hungry, and they have
slain and eaten a man not very long ago. There is a
blood-stained spot on the ground, and I see a human

B

2

THE lion's den.

femur aeft side), a right tibia, a left humerus, and a bit
of the pelvis, lying about. A bit of a scapula has flesh
stiU upon it. All the bones are human. Why don't
these savage and starved beasts instantly fly upon and
kill this poor old man ? Look at that three-year-old
lion coming round from behind the others ; a sneaking,
cat-like, but magnificent beast, worth £200 at least to
our friend Jamrach, the animal- dealer. Look at that old
Lioness snarling and showing her awful teeth and spine-
covered tongue, and the old Lion licking his quivering
be-whiskered lips. What is that curious light falling full
and glorious upon the man ? It is not natural, it is not
the light of the sun or the moon, nor is it the electric light.
By Jove! I see. It is "Daniel in the Lion's Den."
Splendid— grand. I congratulate the artist.

A great big picture, representing a very thin, tall lady
in the costume of Eve, chained to a rock by her wrists.
How in the world could this come about ? I don't see
ladies in this garb tied to rocks in my Salmon inspection
expeditions. A nondescript beast, meant, I suppose, for a
Dragon, and an idiotic-looking young man stabbing the
dragon. The dragon very bad indeed-head with scales
something like a turtle, and teeth in its mouth that are
neither those of lion, tiger, hyaena, wolf, bear, or seal.

The young man must be an idiot. Fancy gomg out to
fight a dragon with pigeons' wings tied to one's ankles-
see picture-and with bare legs, like a Highlander Ihe
young man*-he is neither an anatomist nor a butcher-

* This saxne young man re-appeared in the ^^^'^^f '/^X:*
hunting again. This time he had gone home and put on
armour.

AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY WITHOUT A CATALOGUE. 3

^ has thrust his sword — not a scientific-looking weapon at
all — a few inches into the dragon's mouth, just inside the
ramus of the left lower jaw. The wound would not hurt
the dragon a bit. It would simply transfix his parotid
gland, if a dragon has a parotid gland. The sword would
run well clear of the carotid arteries, and certainly would
not touch the beast's aorta, or heart. This is not the
way to kill a dragon, I wish somebody ivoulcl kill a
dragon and let me cast it.

If I wanted to kill a Dragon, I would set a Scotch
" stake " or " fly " salmon net for him, or else get my
friend Captain Gray, of Peterhead, to come with his
whale steamship Eclipse and a boat's crew, or two or
three of his Peterhead whale-harpooners. We would
soon polish off Master Dragon, I know. I must not
forget the dragon's blood in the picture. I long to dip a
microscope slide into it. I wonder what the corpuscles
would be like.

Another big picture, a huntsman holding up a fox
among his hounds— not painted by a sportsman. The
hounds are not— in the picture— kicking up that delightful
" tapage infernal" so dear to the fox-hunter; nor is the
huntsman crying out " Yoicks ! tear him, my beauties ! "
The huntsman's boots are covered with mud; the Master's
boots are quite clean, or nearly so ; the huntsman's horse
ought to be covered with foam, and just shaking himself
with the peculiar shiver due to his having that curious
subcutaneous skin muscle— the paniculus carnosiis. He
is doing nothing of the kind. The fox is a Billingsgate
or tame kennel fox. Who ever saw a hunted and beateii
fox with clean fur like a lady's muff? Two or three of

B 2

4 KING HENRY THE EIGHTH.

the hounds have hlood on the tip of the tail. They have
heen drawing a gorse cover, I suppose. A gentleman
riding up in the distance, and the " whip " behind him,
both with solemn faces and clean horses, and not the
least in a huxTy. They ought to be wild with excite-
ment.

As contrast, good hounds in full cry-one can hear
them-racing across a ploughed field, the huntsman this
time at work, and one hears " Forrard ! Hark forrard
und the ringing cry, " Gone away ! " A pair of plough-
horses running away with a plough to which they are
harnessed and getting amor^g the hounds-good, in
another second the plough, now jumping about on its
sides like an india-rubber ball, will stick with its pointed
end into the "ridge and furrow," and the horses will
come a terrific smasher on to the ground.

An aristocratic-looking, intelligent-faced man, standing
behmd a tree with a cross-bow in his right hand ; his
left hand keeps back some boughs so as to allow a
very pretty young woman indeed to shoot at some-
thing that is coming. The lady also has a crossbow.
I see it's King Harry the Eighth. I know him from his
portrait in the hall at Christ Church, Oxford. Bless h^
memory ! I owe my education to his noble foundation.
Who is the Lady? I don't know. I have forgotten my
Hstory, and even if I had not I should not know, the
"eat king had so many wives. At all events, he has
S::d an 'awfully pretty one this tim. I hope she wU
shoot the stag for which she is evidently — j^^^^^
looks too kind-hearted to want to shoot a stag^ Ihe
king has evidently brought her out to please her with

AT THE EOYAL ACADEMY WITHOUT A CATALOGUK 5

sport. He thinks she enjoys it, but I don't think she
cares much about it, and if I read her face right, she
wants to go home to her four o'clock cup of tea — only tea
was not invented in the glorious Harry's time.

A river — the Tay I swear, from the scenery ; a love
scene — I don't admire the Highlander's taste; might have
found a prettier Scotch lassie ; a mill leat — don't see the
weir nor the " byewash" of the mill ; a coble anchored — no
net in it, not " travelling water " for Salmon. The High-
lander, smoking — if a fisherman — would tell me, " She 'ill
na fash the day, sir." Sir Eobert and the Duke and
other " Upper proprietors " above will do nothing with
the rod to-day, but the " stake" and " bag" nets in the
sea will "fish well" if there comes on the proper wind
at sundown. I wish the artist would draw us a salmon-
fishing scene. I could give him lots of subjects.

Another water scene — by the same hand, I think. A
miller's lad, white with flour, going to angle. He will
catch nothing here but small trout, and I think he must
be baiting with a worm. I should, if I were he. This
lad will gaff and spear spawning salmon next November..
I know he will from the look of him. The Salmon will
spawn or attempt to spawn in the mill tail, where there
is no salmon pass, but yon lad will take the salmon
spear from behind the sacks in the mill, and ignore the
17th section of the Salmon Act 1808, of which probably he
has never heard, but with which he would soon become
acquainted, if some of my friends the Scotch water-bailills
came about. "Flowing to the River," says somebody
near me. A very pretty picture.

A young man holding a wolf's head high up in the air ;

6

WOLF HUNTEES.

an old man carrying five wolves' heads slung over his back.
I cannot see in the picture how the wolves' heads are
fastened together. If I had the job, I should have passed
a rope through the bones of the lower jaw at the tip of
the tongue. A third man leading two hounds. I doubt
if they are the right kind of wolf-hound, but the painter
may have authority for the kind of dog. In -a picture
which I saw at Beddgelert, North Wales, illustrating the
old legend of the poor baby saved from wolves by a hound,
the hound is the same as in this picture. The hounds
are much too clean : they don't look as if they have been
fighting with wolves. If I had painted this picture I
should have made the hounds with blood about their
chaps, and one of them certainly going on three legs from
a bite in the fore paw. When hyenas fight they- always
tuck their paws under their bodies, if possible, and know-
ing dogs will do the same— a dog's paw, like a nigger's
shin, is the tenderest part. The country is like that
seen from the end of the Long Walk at Windsor— a very
likely place to find a wolf. A hunted anxious-eyed wolf
in the distance looking out of the cover, and thanking his
stars that the hounds and huntsmen were gone away,
would have been an improvement to the picture. I think
the painter means to indicate the time when one of the
Kings of England demanded the taxes should be paid in
wolves' heads. There is a corner of an old wall which
I well remember, part of the outskirts of Winchester
Cathedral, that once formed a portion of the buildings
of Wolvesey Castle. When a boy at Winchester School,
I always had a longing to go and dig up this place
—this longing still remains— as there was a legend

AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY WITHOUT A CATALOGUE. 7

that the wolves' heads paid as taxes were all buried at
this spot. Eemembermg this legend, I at once pro-
nounced the picture to represent our ancestors collecting
wolves for the taxes. Very good ; the painter shows in
his drawing what he means.

A North American Indian sitting quite alone on the
prairie. If the painter has not actually been on an
American prairie himself, he has taken the scene from a
wonderfully efiective plate in Catlin's " North American
Indians." Something wanting to interpret the picture.
Let's see the details. A pair of deer-horns behind the
man (deer horns right for a wonder — Cervus Virginianus) ;
a quiver full of arrows — the man had not been hunting, or
there would have been fewer arrows in the quiver ; bow,
I believe right; a fire three parts out ; logs of wood much
too big — I don't see where the Indian could have got such
big logs of wood on a prairie. The man is ill — I don't
think he has had an accident, certainly not a fracture of
a bone, or he would be looking at, or attempting to sup-
port, the fractured limb. He has some internal disease,
])Ossibly peritonitis — a man with peritonitis could certainly
not ride. Other Indians in the distance are going away
at a pretty fast pace. I suppose they are going for the
doctor. The man's loose horse following after the Indians.
It would have been more poetical if the painter had made
the horse appear unwilling to leave his master, thus
shaming the men. I peep at a catalogue of some one
near, "Left to Die" is the name of the picture. Poor
Indian ! I wish I was there with my medicine chest or
surgical instruments, I would try to cure him. He can't
be so very bad after all, or he would be lying down.

8

CAED PARTY — FISHING SMACKS.

Three j'oung Ladies plajdng at cards, one young lady
showing the cards she has in her hand. I don't under-
stand cards, but I suppose this means something intel-
ligible to card-players. Dresses wonderfully painted, also
the heavy gilt metal handles of the card table. I looked
to see how it's done. I find the paint is put on very
thick, in, as it were, little knobs — a fine hint for me.
At a proper distance, I seemed inclined to take hold of
the handles and open the drawers ; I wonder what's
inside them. Evidently three sisters, very much alike,
but not one sister I see has earrings. How am I to know
them apart, as their dresses are perfectly alike ? I see —
one has on a necklet, with two rows of pearls ; a second
a red velvet, and the third a black velvet necklet. I
believe the hansom cab I was in the other day going to
my Office, nearly ran over these very three young lassies
— I beg your pardons, pretty Ladylike creatures ! To get
the full effect of the fine picture, the spectator must stand
about eight yards away, and the effect is magnificent. I
expect the artist must have painted with a brush about
eight feet long, working upon a swivel like a duck-gun.
I wonder what he would think of this idea. It's not a
bad one, I am sure. I shall try it myself.

A fishing smack just come to an anchor. An old
fisherman landing his fish— scenery like the coast at the
north of Berwick-on-Tweed. The fisherman has got a
very miscellaneous lot of deep-sea fish— skate, john-dory,
ling, conger, plaice, gurnard, &c. He must have been
working both " long lines" and " trawl-net," as some of
these fish are caught onhj by the trawl, others only by the
long line. The painter is not a deep-sea fisherman. The

AT THE HOYAL ACADEMY WITHOUT A CATALOGUE. 9

basket of fish is put into scales. They don't sell sea fish
like this by weight. Fish nicely done. I wish the painter
would touch up some of the casts which I have painted.

An animal, I suppose meant for a red deer, wounded-
a bullet-wound on the left side. A wound at this part
would not bleed much, because the scapula would act as
a valve to keep the blood inside the thorax; and yet
there is no end of blood. A miserable production, and as
far as the animal goes not fit for a public-house sign.
The rest of the scenery good.

A magnificent lion— Sir Edwin of course. But lambs
like this do not live. in countries where lions are found,
except menagerie lions. An eland, giraffe, or quagga,
would have been better company for a wild Hon. It is
evidently a lamb, for his tail has not yet been docked.
The attitude of the hon's paws is a great improvement on
the Charing Cross lions. These lions have their paws
stretched straight out like a greyhound dog. Cats and
lions (lions are nothing but big cats) turn their paws
inward when lying down quiet. A fine picture. Sir
Edwin can paint animals, and no mistake ; but why so
much red inside the lamb's ears ?*

My friend, Mr. T. Sopwith, tells a good story.
An artist received a commission to paint a scene of a
shipwreck, and painted some red lobsters among the rocks
on the shore ; as everyone knows, lobsters do not turn
red till they are boiled. The same painter received an
order to paint a river-scene ; not being able to get on
without a bit of red somewhere in the foreground of his

• See article " Sir Edwin Landseer's favourite Red Spot," p. 13.

10

IS THERE " DEATH IN THE POT 1 "

picture, he painted a bunch of carrots floating down the
river — but carrots don't float.

And now I must wind up with a description of prize
picture No. 2, in my humble opinion. Time of Napo-
leon's wars — the uniform tells us that ; a half-burnt and
deserted Tillage ; an old peasant — probably the mayor of
the village — sitting by the side of a well with a mug in
his hand ; a cavalry ofiScer with a flint pistol, cocked, and
pointed at the old man's head. The officer very like

Colonel , a friend of mine, and a determined fellow.

The officer says to the old man, " Drink instantly, or I
will shoot you dead." The old man does not really know
whether the well has been poisoned or not, but he strongly
suspects his son, or some one else, has put poison into it.
A regiment of French soldiers are coming up to drink.
They look thirsty. A blood-stained cavalry soldier is
drawing again from the well. The old man does not
know what to do or say; he has one eye on the glass, the
other is looking up the pistol-barrel, so close, so very close
to his venerable head. Spare the poor old man. Officer !
Spare him ; do, pray ! If the well is poisoned, the old
man did not do it. Never mind, let's paint a second
picture ! The old man bravely drinks the well-water. It
is not poisoned — no such dastardly tricks. The tired
soldiers quench their thirst, and the Officer marries the
old man's pretty daughter, and all is happy.

I cannot resist republishing the following criticism on
the pictures at the Eoyal Academy, from the pen of my
friend George Eooper, Author of " Flood, Field, and
Forest," and a great sportsman.

*' Walking through the Burlington Arcade I stumbled

AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY WITHOUT A CATALOGUE. U

on a notebook from which the following extracts are
taken. They are evidently the work of a penny-a-lmer,
intended for pnbhcation in some country newspaper, and
betray the most lamentable ignorance of art on the part
of the writer. As you will observe, there is not even a
reference to light, shade, depth, breadth, tone, colourmg,
composition, or effect throughout, and I am convinced he
has no more pretensions to the name of a critic than has.
Sir, your most obedient servant,

" Paul Pey.

" 'Perseus and Andromeda.' The artist forgot that
Perseus was invisible at this particular juncture. We
could have wished he had remembered, and acted on, the
knowledge, and left Perseus to imagination.

" ' Wanted, a Partner.' We are not sure we have got
the title of this picture, or the number, exactly correct,
but it is that of which Mr. Buckland remarked that ' the
further you were off it the better it looked.'

" A creature crawUng up a rock. Is it a lizard ? No !
A weasel? Guess again. Aphalanger? We have seen
one in the Zoo. No ! give it up, and refer to the cata-
logue. Lo, it is a fox ! It was the first time, we are
told, the fox had ever seen a lion, and was much asto-
nished. The astonishment is mutual, it was the first time
the lion had seen such a fox— we trust it may have been
the last.

"'The Huntsman' is plainly throwing himself to
the dogs, as well as the fox ; we defy him to recover his
balance and save himself. We are utterly unacquainted
with hunting minutite, but we have read somewhere, iu

12

ALLEGORICAL ANIMALS.

one of Mr. Freeman's sporting works, perhaps, that the
fox, before he is thrown to the hounds, is ' divested of
brush, pads, and mask,' but perhaps that author, although
an enthusiastic sportsman, is in error. Will some of our
hunting correspondents enlighten us ?

" We know no more of racing than of hunting, but we
had no notion that jockeys took the matter so easily.
' Bkie Wins' — no doubt he will. The artist says so, and
he ought to know ; there is no reason on earth why he
should not — or should.

" ' Allegorical animals.' Some one near us suggested
that the ' lang-nebbit' creatures were intended for Lambs.
We would not do the artist the discredit of supposing so."

If I have offended any artists, I hope they will forgive
me, but they really should observe nature more. After
all, what I have written is only fun, you know.

SIE EDWIN LANDSEEK'S FAVOURITE EED

SPOT.

It will be recollected that a question has been raised
in the columns of Land and Water whether our great
l^ainter, Sir Edwin Landseer, was or was not correct in
painting a drop of blood on the broken brow-antler of a
red deer in his celebrated picture of " Deer Fighting,"
which is now at Dunrobin Castle. My opinion is that
although an old horn would not bleed, and a young
horn (from which the velvet had lately been absprbed)
might bleed, yet Sir Edwin put on this bit of red at
the tip of the broken horn simply to set off the rest of the
picture.

In March, 1874, I went to see the collection of Sir
Edwin's pictures at Burlington House, and while
examining them, it all at once struck me to find out
whether the artist had put his " bit of red colour " into
any of his other pictures. I went rather hastily round
the galleries first, and then, thinking I had found what I
wanted, I made a more careful inspection, with, I think,
the satisfactory result— that Sir Edwin purposely intro-
duced "his favourite bit of red" into nearly all his
pictures ; and it will be seen from what follows to what

SAMPLES OF RED SPOTS.

curious shifts and contrivances he has been sometimes
put for the sake of this. Thus we find, " Charles Sheri-
dan " — red pattern on a child's drum, and red sealing-wax
on a letter on the floor. " Shepherd's Home " — baby's
lips abnormally red. "Prosperity" — red roses. "Ad-
versity " — red flowerpot. " Dash and Lion" — red tuft to
hawk's hood. " Dandie and the Hedgehog " — red poppies.
" H. E. H. the Princess Eoyal with Pony and Dog " — red
halter to pony. " Brazilian Monkeys " — a pineapple.
" The Twins " — red cloth. " Highland Cairn " — red coal
in the fire. " Pair of Nutcrackers " — breast of bullfinch
red. " Sick Monkey " — an orange. " Otter Hunt "—
red huntsman's coat and tongue of otter. " Laying Down
the Law" — red back to chair on which dog is sitting.
"Van Amburgh and his Lion" — ^Van Amburgh's red
velvet cap and foot-soldier's coat in the distance. " Van
Amburgh and his Lions" (another picture) — play-bill
Ijrinted in red letters, and bouquet with red flowers.
" Chillingham Bull " — red inside nostrils. " Bolton
Abbey in Olden Time " — red spots on trout, red wine in
bottle, and a red coat. " Eefreshment," and also " Horses
and Dogs " — red carrots. " Dead Game "—red markings
over pheasant's eye. " Eandom Shot " — blood on snow.
" Polar Bears Discovering Eelics of Sir John Franklin "
— ^bears tearing at a red flag half-buried in snow. " Life
in the Old Dog yet "—dog's tongue red. " Hunted Stag "
— blood in mouth. " Godolphin Arabian "—red bricks of
stable wall, and red hoops to stable -bucket. " Titauia
and Bottom " — red wreath on ass's head. " Flood in
Highlands" — duck's legs, cow's nostril, ribbon round
man's cap all red. "Arab Tent" — stick ends burning

SIE EDWIN LANDSEER's FAVOTJEITE I?ED SPOT. 15

red. " Cover Hack " — red handle to scraper, and red
flower pot. " Sutherland Children "—red flowers in gar-
land, hoy with plaid stockings with red markings. " Boz "
— hlood in rabbit's mouth. "Earl and Countess of Sefton "
—red riding-habit. " Dogs and Parrot " — red feathers of
bird, and sealing wax. " H.M. the Queen "—red handle
to riding whip. " H.M. the Queen at Loch Muir "—red
flag, red on gills of fish. This fish is neither grilse,
salmon, nor trout : if meant for either, the fins are wrongly
placed, and there is no adipose fin. If poor Sir Edwin
had been alive I would have chaffed him over this.
" Ptarmigan " — red eye contrasted with snow. " Lion
and the Lamb "—inside of lamb's ears red. " Sir Francis
Chantrey's Studio "—red cloth on table. " Horses at
Fountain " — groom's red coat, woman's stockings. " Little
Doggie and Looking-glass " — red paint in saucer and
painter's brush by it. " Fairy, a White Horse "—edge
of blanket red. " Partridges " — blood from broken wing.
" Not caught yet " — blood near rabbit-trap. " Baptismal
Yont" — red inside lamb's ear. " Otter and Salmon " —
blood on salmon's gills and on wounds of white skin
between pectoral and abdominal fins. I don't think this
part of the salmon (being mostly fat) would bleed much.
" Sin Offering " — lighted ashes blown upwards from fire
about to burn up the scapegoat. " Travelled Monkey "
— monkey has a red coat. " Deer Family " — red inside
deer's nose. "Highland Nurses" — stag's tongue red.
" Badger, Dog and Monkey " — orange-peel and red coat.
" Loch Laggan " — Highlander's red kilt. " Donkey and
Thistle " — red about donkey-bridle. " No Hunting till
Weather Breaks " — huntsman's coat, and red feathers on

16

THE RED CRAYON.

breast of a robin. "Sir Walter Scott"— red pocket-
liandkerchief, red on cap and in corner of dog's eye.
" Voltigeur, winner of the Derby "—red binding to horse-
cloth, horse's nose red, cat's nose pink. "Beauty's
Bath " — red sofa, and red rose floating in the bath. " The
Dog Countess " — red feathers on cock's neck, and dead
rat's wound bleeding. " Highlander with Eagle " — the
man's face and hair are red. "A Trophy" — hawk's hood
red. " Duke of Devonshire as a Knight " — red plume to
helmet. " Grouse" — blood from broken wing. " Skye "
and " Saved " — red on stones apropos to nil. " Swannery
Invaded by Eagles " — lots of red blood everywhere,
showing up white plumage of swans. Last, but not
least, " The Connoisseurs " — Portrait of Sir Edwin
Landseer himself, presented by him to the Prince of
Wales. Here we have the great animal painter with
canvas before him ; two noble dogs are looking over his
shoulder in the attitude of criticising the growing picture ;
and now mark. Sir Edivin has a crayon-holder in his hand,
and in the reverse end, which is not in use, is inserted a
red crayon.

I trust that this crowning fact, together with those
above mentioned, will induce my readers to agree with
me, that the " red spot " in Sir Edwin Landseer's pictures
is no accident, but rather a favourite device, frequently,
nay, almost always, used by him, the value of which, to
set off a picture, no one knew better than himself.

EXHIBITIONS OUTSIDE THE CATTLE SHOW.

— i —

The Cattle show annually attracts large numbers of
visitors, and the presence of a vast multitude of sightseers
is a great temptation for poor people who are proprietors
of minor exhibitions to try and turn an honest penny. In
consequence of the crowd and confusion which always
occur on an evening round the cattle show, many visitors
are not aware of the stock of extra fun which may be had
by a visit to the penny shows which generally swarm in
the small streets close to both entrances, and especially
near the eastern one. The proper time to visit these shows
is in the evening, after dark, when the performances are
in full swing. On the last day but one of the cattle
show, 1871, 1 enlisted my curiosity -loving friends Messrs.
H. Lee and Bartlett to go the round of the shows with
me.

A little way down a dark lane, we heard a tremendous
beating of gongs, and saw a blazing light; pushing
through the dense crowd, we managed to get near the
door. There were, outside the door, two enormous pictures
of black men with feathers on their heads, and clubs in
their hands dancing round a fire ; and a human skull and
a drinking jug were lying on the ground close to the fire,

0

18 THE CAFFRES' SUPPER OP RATS.

evidently to give an idea that some cannibals had just
finished their dinner, and were taking " curaQoa and
maraschino" after the fashion of cannibals. A fellow
with a cap made of cat's skin, a whip in his hand, and a
kind of feather cloak on his shoulders was at the door
shouting, " Come and see them eat 'em alive o ! eat 'em
alive 0 ! "Walk in, walk in, we've now got a respectable
company, admission only one penny. The wonderful
black fellows is just agoing to take their supper. Jim,
bring out the rats." He then held up a wire cage con-
taining about a dozen common rats alive. " This is
their supper, and they're just a-going to begin." Of
course we at once went in, and found ourselves in a
blacksmith's shop. One corner of the forge was curtained
off: and from behind the curtain I could see four black
hands protruding so as to catch the heat of the fire. The
room being full of visitors, the master gave a crack with
his whip, and made a kind of savage yell. Immediately
from behind the curtain there started out with a terrible
spring two Caffres— short, but exceedingly powerful men,
with very little clothes but plenty of beads and feathers
on them. They first of all gave us a war dance, and
then showed us how they hunted, speared, and killed
the Lion, which beast, the proprietor informed us, " they
could smell thirty miles off." The wild men, we were
then informed, had the privilege of going round to collect
coppers before they had their supper. I gave one fellow
half a cigar ; he put the lighted end inside his mouth and
smoked it in this fashion. I then gave him another
lighted cigar, the pointed end of which he stuck in his
nose and smoked it.

EXHIBITIONS OUTSIDE THE CATTLE SHOW. ]9

The money being collected, the cage full of rats was
brought in and handed round to shew that there was
" no deception." One of the Caffres then thrust his hand
into the cage, yelling all the time and acting signs of
famishing hunger. He quickly seized a rat and, almost
quicker than the eye could follow, put the rat's head in
his mouth and bit it clean o&. This was certainly not a
drawing-room exhibition, but I stood very close to the
Caffre and could not help wondering at his remarkable
agility in executing the unfortunate rat without getting
bitten. I have no doubt that these two Caflfres (or their
master, which is more probable) gain a good deal of money
by killing and eating rats, for in the Caffre's wolf's-skin
cap there was certainly two shillings' worth of coppers,
and I suppose there were thirty people (at a penny ahead)
in the room.

The next exhibition we visited was that of a " Fossil
human skeleton." Outside the door again was a cartoon.
This time it was a picture of a stalactite cave ; a man
was represented as digging a hole in the floor of the cave
while three other people with huge planters' hats on
were pourtrayed as standing round in mute astonishment
at " the discovery of the skeleton." The skeleton itself
was laid out on a board in the middle of a little stick and
umbrella shop, and the exhibitor told us a wonderful
story— of course perfectly untrue— about its discovery.
I at once examined it very closely, and in a few minutes
came to the conclusion that the skeleton had never been in
the earth at all. There is a certain humble friend of mine
in London who gets his living by preparing human skele-
tons and bones, which he sells to medical students. This

0 2

20

THE FIRE-EATEE.

individual, wishing to profit by the cattle show, had
cunningly set some old museum human skeleton, which
he could not sell, to do duty outside the cattle show.
He had covered it over with a mixture of plaster of Paris
and common earth, leaving the bones here and there ex-
posed so that they could be seen through the pseudo-
stalagmite. The skull was exceedingly well disguised,
and I confess that I should not have been so certain of
what I now state had I not found an iron wire pro-
truding from the top of the vertebrae, to which the skull
was affixed when the skeleton was in proper saleable
order for anatomical purposes. There were also traces of
iron wire and iron hinges at the joints. Fossil skeletons
are not set up with wire, thus fully proving to me that
this skeleton once had been what we call an " articulated
skeleton," and was now made an exhibition of under
another term. I have since ascertained that my theory
as regards the history of this skeleton is perfectly
correct.

Besides the skeleton we got a sight of another exhibi-
tion in this room, all included for a penny. This was
" the fire-eater." Again from behind a curtain there came
out a black man ; once more a Caffre ; having made a
sort of salaam, the proprietor handed to him a saucer
containing some burning naphtha. This the Caffre showed
us, and then producing a spoon he filled it with the burn-
ing naphtha, which he put into his mouth, and swallowed.
He continued taking up spoonful after spoonful till the
saucer was empty. I suppose altogether he took half a
wine-glassful of burning naphtha. He then brought out a
bar of red-hot iron, and this he licked with his tongue five

EXHIBITIONS OUTSIDE THE CATTLE SHOW. 21

or six times. After the people were gone out I gave the
Caffre a shilling to allow me to look down his throat.
The inside of his mouth and the fauces were in a state of
considerable redness and inflammation. I do not, how-
ever, think the CafFre actually swallowed the naphtha,
but allowed it to burn itself almost entirely away before
he put the spoon in his mouth. The inflammation caused
by the heated material was not sufficient to do him any real
harm. I have before seen the trick of licking a red-hot
poker performed in private ; the reason why it does not
burn the tongue is, I believe, that there is a film of steam,
a non-conductor of heat, between the tongue and the
iron, which prevents the heat taking effect ; still I should
imagine that the first trial of this feat would be exces-
sively difficult and dangerous to a person who was not
very alert and very careful.

After leaving the fire-eating Cafire we paid our ad-
mission fee of one penny to see " the One-legged girl. '
This funny creature was sitting like a Chinese idol on a
foot-stool, which was placed in the middle of a small tea-
table, covered with green baize. She appeared to be
about sixteen years old, and was in excellent health,
rather nice featured, and always laughing; she had no
arms whatever, and apparently but one leg. When the
proper complement of people were assembled in the room
she began her performance by stretching out her one leg,
and picking up an ordinary quill pen between the great
toe and the toe next to it. She then dipped the pen in
the ink, and wrote her name with her foot ; the autograph
was a great deal better than that of many young ladies
and gentlemen who write with their fingers, and not with

THE ONE-LEGGED GIEL.

their toes. It was very funny to see her tear off the half
sheet of paper on which she had written. In order to test
the delicacy of the touch of her toes I asked her to
turn over some leaves of note paper with her toes. It was
marvellous to see how she never missed a page. She
then carefully took a needle from a pincushion with her
only foot ; unwinding some cotton from a reel, she next bit
off a length of it after the manner of females, and passed
the thread through the eye of the needle with the greatest
exactitude and promptness, not once taking a bad shot.
Reaching out her foot she then pulled towards her a set
of tea things, and went through the motions of making
tea and pouring it out into the cups, and lifting it to her
mouth. The last two performances were the combing
and brushing her hair, and then showing how she could
use the scissors ; with the toes she put the scissors on
the table, and then passed the great toe and the next one
into the rings, holding some writing paper with her left
foot, and twisting it about, she set to work cutting out
in paper imaginary portraits of people present, which she
sold for what she could get. Some years since, I have
been told, a man used to exhibit himself in London who
had neither arms nor legs, being simply egg-shaped : he
used to fix a pen into a socket which he fastened round
his chest, and with this he used to write, and, I believe,
even paint pictures.

The great power of the human thumb depends upon the
presence of a certain large muscle which forms the ball of
the thumb, it is called the opponens polUcis. By means
of this muscle we are enabled to " oppose" the top of the
thumb to the tops of all the other fingers. The monkey

EXHIBITIONS OUTSIDE THE CATTLE SHOW. 23

has not got this muscle in his hand, which is more like the
human foot, and his foot is more like the hand. It was
very interesting to observe how this poor one-legged girl
had managed to train the muscles of her foot to do the
duty of the opponens pollicis. These muscles of her foot
were very strong and much developed. I think it is a
great mistake to shut up the feet of children in tight
shoes. When running about the house they should go
barefooted ; there is no fear of their catching cold, and
they may as well be taught to use their feet as well as
their hands. The Lascar sailors, I hear, can grasp a rope
between their great toes; they never wear shoes. In
Mitchell's Australia there is a picture of a native
Australian stealing a hammer with his toes. The black-
smith then, according to the story, put a bit of hot iron
(not white hot), on the ground, and when Mr. Australian
tried to steal it, he was considerably astonished.

The next show was that of a " Learned and Musical
Fish." The master of the fish was particularly attentive
to me, and himself undertook to make the fish go through
his performances. The "Learned Fish" was of course
a seal, an exceedingly pretty and intelligent little
thing, which lived in a large aquarium containing about
four inches of water. The master gave us an introductory
lecture : — " The fish was captured four years since, and it
had cost upwards of one. thousand pounds to train him.
In order to prove there was no collusion he would stand
at a distance, when the fish would obey the word of com-
mand. There was no deception, the fish was alive, and
was not as an old woman said publicly, ' a boy sewn up
in a seal skin ; ' nor was it as another person had stated,

24

"the musical fish."

' a tamed imp of the d — 1.' The fish would now play a
tune." An apparatus consisting of two bells was now
brought forward; hammers were attached to these bells,
and they were worked with levers ; a man came to the front
and played " Tommy Dodd " on the fiddle, "the Fish"
came out of water and beat his fin rapidly upon the
levers so as to cause the hammers to make a jingle upon
the bells and create a kind of rough accompaniment to
the fiddle. The fish then returned to the water, and the
master asked him " how many days a week he would like
to work,^' the fish made no sign whatever ; as much as
to say he did not want to work at all. The question was
then asked " how many days a week he would like his
master to work ;" the creature rolled himself round seven
times deliberately, to indicate that his master should be
obliged to work seven days. Sundry other questions of
this character were put by the master and answered by
the fish. We all watched very closely to see what sign
passed between the man and the intelligent animal, so
that the latter might know when to cease rolling, but we
were unable to detect any communication, although some
sign viust have passed between them. I imagine the
means adopted to teach the fish to roll are somewhat the
same as those by which the " learned pig " is made to stop
at certain cards spread out before him.

In the same house with the learned fish, was another
exhibition upstairs. Of course we went upstairs with the
rest of people, hardly knowing what we were to see. The
room was parted off by a curtain, and when silence was
obtained, the master of the show suddenly cried out,
" Skeletons appear \" Immediately from behind the

EXHIBITIONS OUTSIDE THE CATTLE SHOW. 25

curtain there came out two of the thinnest wretches
I ever beheld; they were short, grim, skeleton-headed
men, and wore nearly the same suit of clothes as those
patronized by Adam, according to the old pictures we see
in galleries. These two living skeletons were certainly
wonderfully thin ; the living skeleton next to me was, I
should say, thirty years old ; he stood with both arms
and legs extended, and laughing all over his face ; his
arms were about the thickness of a common broom
handle, and his fingers were like bird's claws ; his legs
were like the legs of an ostrich. I was about to ask
" the Skeleton" something of his history, when the master
of the ceremonies suddenly cried out, " Skeletons dis-
appear," and they both popped back behind the curtain
with the agility of mice when the cat comes into the
room. One skeleton, however, popped his bullet head
and grim features round from the curtain, and said to
me with a squeaky voice, " I say master, give a poor
skeleton a bit of baccy." I passed him in a cigar or two,
and trust that this poor phantom of humanity enjoyed
his smoke, and that the smoke did not dry up what was
left of his frame.

The original " living skeleton" was named Claude
Ambroise Seurat, who was exhibited in Pall Mall in
August, 1825. A picture of him is given in Hone's
" Everyday Book.'' The following were his measure-
ments : circumference of the chest directly under the
armpits, tivo feet six and three-quarter inches ; circum-
ference lower down opposite the second false rib, two
feet two inches ; circumference round the loins, one foot
nine inches ; circumference round the pelvis, two feet

26 LIVING SKELETONS AND FAT WOMEN.

three inches and a half. He was born at Troyes, in the
department of Champagne, on the 10th of April, 1797,
and was, when exhibited, twenty-eight years of age. Hone
also gives notice of a second living skeleton, a rival to
Seurat; this man's name was Thomas Feelwell, and his
great peculiarity was that he was an English and not a
French living skeleton ; he was exhibited at the Coburg
Theatre. Since this period there has been no lack of these
exhibitions, and it strikes me as very possible that the
market will be over-stocked with " Living Skeletons."

Immediately after the skeletons disappeared, there
came blundering out from behind the curtain a gigantic
fat woman ; the contrast between this huge creature and
the poor skeletons was certainly sensational, and the
sight was really worth a penny. She was said to be
forty stone, and to he four feet round the waist. For a
wonder I did not see attached to this woman an
advertisement of " Thorley's food."

Besides the shows above-mentioned, there were two or
three others, one of a pig with an extra leg growing out
of his side ; this pig was in a shed with a horse, but
whether the horse was put there for exhibition I could
not make out ; there was nothing particular about the
horse, only that he was very tall, very ugly, and carried a
huge head ; there was nobody in the place to explain —
this was a very dear pennyworth.

Altogether, my friends and I very much enjoyed going
round the shows — we did not experience any rudeness or
incivility from anybody; the people who owned the shows
were certainly a roughish lot, and the " Company " were
rougher still. Civility, however, begets civility, and if I

EXHIBITIONS OUTSIDE THE CATTLE SHOW. 27

did not learn much, at all events, I was very much
amused. I expect the poor people who own these shows
sometimes have a hard time of it, I was therefore pleased
to hear from most of them that they had done very well
during the Cattle Show.

I trust, then, that the remarks which I have made
may induce many of our friends in future years to
patronize the poor people who own exhibitions outside
the Cattle Show. In 1874, these exhibitions were
inside the Agricultural Hall, where I visited them.

A few days after my visit a friend of mine went to the
Cattle Show, and discovered a new exhibit which 1 did
not see. He thus writes : — " My attention was arrested
by a crowd, and an invitation issuing from stentorian
lungs to " Step hinside and see the Greatest cur'osity in
the world, as has been hex'ibited before all the crowned
'eds in Europe." There were two showmen who shouted
their appeals to the pubHc in somewhat the following
form : —

First Shoivman. — " Be in time ! be in time ! The 'all
is nearly full, and we are just agoing to begiu. 'Ere you
will see the mermaid recently caught holF the coast of
Japan. The honly one hever imported into this country."

Second Shoivman. — " It is alive ! alive ! alive ! Do
not miss the honly hopportunity you will ever 'ave hof
seeing the mermaid,"

First Showman. — " The haged Japanese fisherman his
now proceeding to feed the hanimal."

Second Showman. — " Alive ! alive ! alive ! hand now
feeding. (Appealing to the man inside), Is there hextia
charge at feeding time ? "

28

A JAPANESE MERMAID.

From inside. — " No, sir — no — no extra claarge " (and
then, in the loudest tone he could command) — " You are
satisfied, ladies and gentlemen, that there is no deception
— you are satisfied that it is alive ! "

Having, therefore, the assurance of these three gentle-
men that it was alive, I had no hesitation in entering,
but cannot say I felt impressed -with this temple of
science. The '"all," measured some 12 feet by 9
feet, and had neither fauteuils nor carpets. I then found
that the appeals to the audience unmistakably referred to
a sheep with two excrescences on the shoulders, which
was repeatedly referred to as the " six-legged sheep," and
•which certainly was " alive," and calmly munching some
sliced turnip, in the preparation of which the " haged
Japanese fisherman " took no part, nor did I even once
catch a glimpse of that worthy, the Professor announcing
his intention of at once introducing the mermaid himself,
which he did by mounting a pair of steps, and disclosing,
by the withdrawal of a curtain, a glass case fixed at a
great elevation and containing the upper half of a hideous
monkey, to which was clumsily attached the tail of an
ordinary cod-fish. " This, Ladies and Gents, is the
mermaid," said the Professor, replacing the curtain in
such a hurry as to leave little else for record. " The
performance is now concluded; sound the gong, Jem,
and let the gents pass out."

KING CHAELES THE FIEST'S PAEKOT.

About Christmas time whea quartered as assistant-
surgeon with my regiment, the 2nd life-Guards, at the
Cavalry Barracks, Windsor, my soldier-servant hrought
me a box which he said contained a very great curiosity.
The story was, that some labourers employed in the
repairs of Windsor Castle had found a most extraordinary
skeleton bricked up in an old chimney of one of the
Queen's state apartments ; the skeleton had been examined
by a great many people, and some of the old servants of
the Castle had pronounced it to be the " Skeleton of King
Charles the First's favourite parrot."

The box was opened with great solemnity, and I beheld
the strange looking and weird skeleton now presented
in the portrait. Its bird-like attitude, I confess, deceived
me for a moment, but I quickly discovered that a trap had
been laid by some of the troopers to catch " the Doctor ; "
for it must be acknowledged that the skeleton has a very
parrot-like appearance — see engraving.

This curious object is simply the skeleton of a
rabbit, put up in a bird-like attitude ; the rabbit has been
cut into two, and the flesh taken off the bones, which
are coloured brown to give an appearance of antiquity;

30 THE parrot's skeleton.

the neck bones and part of the back-bone have been left

SKELETON OF KING CHAELES FIRST'S FAVOUEITE PARROT.

KING CHARLES THE FIRSt's PARROT. 31

attached to the head ; the hind legs have also been left
attached to the hip bones, or pelvis, and the two halves
of the animal then fastened ingeniously together in the
outline of a bird's skeleton ; the hind legs have been
neatly tucked up exactly like the legs of a bird sitting, and
the bones of the rabbit's feet have been moistened and
then turned round a perch to give the idea of a bird's
claws. The whole thing was then set upon a perch to
carry out the idea of a bird, especially a parrot.

I afterwards found out that this skeleton had been pre-
pared for my special benefit by an ingenious Life-Guards-
man, who wanted to get a laugh against me. This then is
the true history of " King Charles the First's favourite
Parrot found in Windsor Castle." The specimen itself
is now in my museum.

FOOTSTEPS IN THE SNOW AT THE
ZOOLOGICAL GAKDENS.

On the morning of the 31st December, 1870, finding
the snow thick upon the ground, I determined to give
mj'self a couple of hours' holiday from writing, and, at
the same time, take a lesson in practical observation, my
favourite study. I have always been very fond of Ichno-
logy, or the study of footsteps. In the Zoological Gardens
we have the rare opportunity of studying the footsteps of
wild creatures from all parts of the world ; and when
Nature lays down a snow carpet easily impressed by their
feet, we have a chance of learning something new.

Upon arriving at the gardens I found my friend Bart-
lett luckily disengaged, and willing to accompany me in
my run round the various paddocks. The first creatures
we observed were the beavers ; they seemed quite at home
and happy in the snow. Their tracks were very curious.
When the beaver goes through the snow he makes himself
into a shape like a kind of plough, and drives the snow
with his paws before him into a heap. There were,
therefore, no footmarks at all, but the track left by the
tail is very perceptible. I recollect seeing a picture in a
book representing a beaver using his tail as a hammering

FOOTSTEPS IN THE SNOW.

33

insti-ument, or rather smoothing trowel, to flatten down
the mud on the top of his hut. The beaver never did,
and never will, make use of his tail after this fashion ; it
is simply the modification of a fin, enabling the animal to
steer himself in the water and to obtain a fulcrum on
marshy grounds and swamps, while he sits up on his
haunches to work with his fore-paws and sharp, chisel-
like, teeth. The wing of the penguin is not unlike the
tail of a beaver in general appearance. A chapter might
be written on tails, showing the great diversity of work
they have to do ; but who can tell the use of a pig's tail ?
The beavers seemed perfectly at home and happy in
the water, which they kept from freezing all over by con-
tinually swimming about. The}'- went down through one
hole in the ice and out at another. It may be possible
that this was an instinctive act to keep the holes open, so
that they should not be frozen out of their house.

We next examined the wolf ; the Arctic wolf has a very
large spread-out foot, much webbed between the toes ; the
expanse of the foot being, as far as I could make out,
quite four inches. Other wolves, which do not live in
the Arctic regions, have not this expanse of foot. Here
we have nature indicating snow shoes such as are worn
by Norwegians, Esquimaux, &c.

We next came to the Camel ; here we have a foot cer-
tainly not intended for snow, but yet for an elastic yield-
ing substance; the camel has a beautiful elastic pad,
(composed of horn outside and elastic tissue inside) at
the bottom of his foot, forming an admirable provision
for preventing him sinking into the sand. • The poor
camel did not seem to like coming out in the cold, but

34

MYSTEEIOUS FOOT PRINTS.

the few steps he took were quite enough to show me what
his track was like ; the mark of the foot is of a roundish
foi-m, and as he walks he puts the hinder foot exactly
into the track of the fore foot. There must be some
meaning in this, but, never having studied camels' tracks
on the sand of the desert, I cannot interpret this fact.

The distance the camel takes at each stride is only
one foot eight, so that the step is short and quick.

There were two Canada geese in the enclosure close by
the camel, and upon the snow in their enclosure I
observed some singular and remarkable tracks. For a
considerable distance along the snow on the right hand
side, there were a series of semi-circles ; on the left hand,
simply some gashes cut pretty deep into the body of the
snow ; between the marks there was a straight line cut
somewhat deeper into the snow. We afterwards found out
what this meant. A goose whose left wing had been cut,
while her right wing remained intact, had been making
an attempt to fly ; the semicircular marks were the beat-
ings of the wing which had not been clipped, as it swept
the snow backwards like an oar; the gashes on the
left band side were the markings of the wing which had
been clipped. The track in the middle was made by the
bird's feet.

The polar bear had unfortunately trodden down all the
snow in his den, so that his footsteps were very difacult
to make out. One footmark, however, was left by the
side of the pond ; this indicated that the track of the
polar bear shows claw markings on the anterior aspect,
that it is very broad, and that the hair which surrounds
the foot probably enables the animal to obtain a firm

FOOTSTEPS IN THE SNOW.

35

footliolcl upon the slippery ice. I could not, of course, get
itny notion of the tracks of the lion, tiger, &c., as they
■were in their dens, where there was no snow. The track
of the Llama is very curious; the foot is somewhat camel-
like, and the animal pushes the snow in front of him at
every footstep. Will anybody tell me why the Llama
uses its terrible power of spitting as a means of defence ?
Snakes are said to have the power of spitting, but they
never do anything of the kind.

The track of the emu is exceedingly interesting; it re-
minded me exactly of the representation of the celebrated
Ornithichnites, or bird -footsteps, figured in my father's
" Bridgewater Treatise;'^ the emu also drags his foot-
steps, so that there is a regular line upon the snow, con-
necting one footstep with the other.

Of all the animals in the Gardens, the Seals appeared
mostly to enjoy the cold weather. The sea-bear was
quite by himself, on the middle of his pond, not in it, for
it was frozen over. He scanned the horizon two or three
times with an anxious look, as though wondering where
Tierra-del-Fuego was, and possibly wishing he was back
again at home among his brother sea-bears, although he
could not possibly have a kinder friend or nurse than
M. Le Compte. There was a beautiful piece of undis-
turbed snow close by, so I requested Le Compte to march
Mr. Sea-bear over it. The apparently clumsy beast took
the low iron fence " like a bird," and the track he made
was very curious. This animal has two modes of pro-
gression ; the one where he puts forward alternately his
great Bo]? Ridley-like fore flippers, and pulls his hinder
flippers up to them with a jerk, somewhat like the action

D 2

86

TRACKS OF SEALS AND SWANS.

of a frog hopping; tlie other where he pulls himself
along by means of his fore flippers, Avhile the rest of
his body follows in a loose, draggling manner behind, his
hinder flippers being elongated as a tail. When progressing
in this way he reminded me much of a snake with a
broken back. Le Compte says that this is the ordinary
mode of progression of wild seals. There were three other
common seals. These merry little things advanced by
means of jerking themselves forward, the action being not
at all unlike that of a gigantic caterpillar. The track they
made Avas scai'cely a track at all, simply a deep, indented,
wide furrow. The seal has great power of progression by
means of rolling, and doubtless he is thus able to get off his
perch on the ice, into the sea, in a very short space of time.

The tracks of Avild swans are interesting. The foot is
of very great breadth ; the toes sink deeper than the
webs between them, so that the snow assumes the form of
a little hill where the web has touched it ; there are, on
the contrary, deep valleys where the toes have touched.
The smooth broad mark, left in the place where the swan
had sat down to rest in the snow in the usual elegant
attitude, was beautifully distinct. The Pehcans are such
clumsy, shuffling brutes, that their tracks simply amounted
to a rude disturbance of the snow. At a distance from
the track there were sharp cuts in the snow, made by the
lashings of the outermost tips of their long wings. Where
the pelican turned sharp he left a capital impression of
his tail, as sharply cut as the figures on the top of a pat
of butter. The wild duck's track shows how very regu-
larly the little rascal puts down his feet. He takes long
steps, no less than five inches between each step.

FOOTSTEPS IN THE SNOW.

37'

The cormorant makes a triangular footmark. It is
also very interesting to notice how the stiff tail feathers
give the bird an additional support, so that, in fact, he
sits on a three-legged stool. The eyes of the cormorant,
gannet, and all fish-eating birds, I may here remark, have
their axis of vision well forward, while their necks are
very pliable — obviously a piece of mechanism to enable
them to catch fish easily. The fish, being a water
creature, has a fair chance of escape from an air-breath-
ing creature like a bird. Nature, however, has given the
cormorant capital tools to work with.

The footsteps of the stork and heron make a deep and
well-formed imprint in the snow. The wild boar had
trodden out all his footsteps. Those of the peccary were
interesting, showing that this animal proceeds with a
high action, lifting his legs well at every step.

It may be recollected that some years ago a great sen-
sation was caused by the mysterious tracks of an animal,
that were traced for many miles right across country after
a heavy snow-storm. This happened either in Devon-
shire or Cornwall. The more absurd a story of this kind
is, the greater popularity it invariably gains. All sorts of
theories were started to account for these wonderful foot-
steps. All the old women of the country went to bed
trembling, and the farmers loaded their guns, and double
locked the doors. People would not go out after night-
fall ; in fact, there was a general alarm somewhat similar
to one which I can just recollect as a boy, when some
mysterious footsteps were discovered near Hounslow.
These were said to be made by " spring-heeled Jack,'^ a
certain mysterious individual who also took his walks

38 " SPRING-HEELED JACK " IDENTIFIED.

abroad in the dead of the night. The Devonshire mystery
Avas soon explained, when examined by a competent per-
son. The footsteps turned out to be simply those of a
poor tame racoon who had escaped and enjoyed a scamper
across country during the snowy nights for several miles.
I have a strong suspicion that spring-heeled Jack of ray
schoolboy days was simply an escaped kangaroo.

When passing through Tamiton once I found the walls
and hoardings placarded with gigantic advertisements.
" Five Pounds Eeward. Lost, a young Tasmanian Devil."
It appeared that a Diabolus Ursinus, well known to the
colonists of Van Diemen's Land, also called a " Tasma-
nian Devil," had got loose. I understand that he was
subsequently caught in a hen roost, where he had com-
mitted sad havoc among the fowls.

My father was very fond of Ichnology ; in fact, he and
I used to work at it for the sake of interpreting certain
fossil footsteps found in the old red sandstone. There were
some wonderful footsteps once discovered near Dumfries,
and my father had given a lecture upon them, I , think at
Edinburgh. During the discussion that followed the
lecture, one of the visitors put the following question
publicly :— " I wish to ask the learned Doctor how it is
that, according to his statement, the Cheirotherium seems
always to have gone persistently in one and the same
direction ? " The Dean, who could give a witty answer
when he liked, looked over his spectacles sternly at the
questioner, and answered, " Sir— Cheirotherium was a
Scotchman; he was ganging south, and na came back
again,"— a remark hailed with shouts of delight by a
Scotch audience.

ICE ACCIDENT TO THE EHINOCEKOS.

^ —

During tlie hard frost of December, 1870, the Zoolo-
gical Society nearly lost their Ehinoceros by drown-
ing. The animal had been turned out in the morning
as usual into the paddock behind the elephant house,
while the dens were being cleaned. The snow had
fallen thickly during the night, so that the pond was
not to be distinguished from the ground. The rhino-
ceros not seeing the pond put her fore feet on the
ice, which immediately gave way, and in she went, head
over heels with a crash. The keepers ran for Mr.
Bartlett ; when he came, in a few minutes, he found the
poor rhinoceros in great danger of drowning, as she was
floundering about among great sheets of ice, under which
she had been kept down till her great strength enabled
her to break up the whole mass. Here then was a most
awkward accident, under unexpected and novel circum-
stances, putting Mr. Bartlett's readiness of action to the
test. My friend, however, with his usual courage and
quickness of resource, was quite equal to the occasion.
He immediately let the water off the pond by knocking
away a large plug which, wlien the pond was originally

40 RESCUE OP THE RHINOCEEOS.

constructed, lie had thoughtfully fixed instead of a tap, a
contrivance liable to get out of order. In the meantime the
poor rhinoceros was in great danger of drowning, as the
pond is nine feet deep, so while the water was running
off, I\Ir. Bartlett, losing no time, sent for all the available
keepers and a long and strong rope ; barrow loads of
gravel were at the same time strewed on the sloping sides
of the pond, to give the exhausted animal a foot-hold.
The rope was then tossed round the haunches of the
rhinoceros, like the kicking-strap of a horse in harness,
and twenty-six men, one half at one end of the rope, and
the other half at the other, pulled hard on the rhinoceros,
so that in her struggles to get up the bank she would not
only be supported but pulled forcibly forwards. After
much hauling on the part of the men and much plunging
on the slippery bank of the pond, the rhinoceros was at
last landed on terra firma. The salvors of this valuable
living property had then to look out for themselves.
Mr. Bartlett had anticipated this, for he had left the
sliding gate of the enclosure open just wide enough to let
out one man at a time, but not a rhinoceros. When the
rhinoceros was landed, an absurd scene took place : every-
body rushed to the gate, but the first of the fugitives,
being naturally stout, and possibly stouter at Christmas
time than usual, jammed fast in the open gate, so that
the other twenty-five men were in the paddock with the.
rhinoceros. The poor frightened and half-frozen beast
luckily behaved very well ; she did not rusli after the men,
but stood still, pricked her ears and snorted, giving the
keepers time to get out as fast as they could and how they
could, through the ingenious "man-hole" or guard in the

ICE ACCIDENT TO THE RHINOCEEOS.

41

railing, made in case of emergencies. Neither the rhino-
ceros nor the men received the slightest injury. Shortly
after the accident I saw the rhinoceros munching her break-
fast as if nothing had happened. This rhinoceros was the
big female, which was about 10ft. Gin. long and about
5ft. high at the shoulder, and weighed at a guess between
three and four tons. The ice I found was four inches
thick.

I think the Society are much indebted to Mr. Bartlett
for the admirable way in which he prevented what might
have been a bad accident.

This rhinoceros died three years afterwards, in Dec.
1873, after having lived in the Gardens for twenty-two
years.

MOUSE BURR FROM HORSE'S TAIL.

In the spring of 1805 I Lad the honour of delivering a
lecture at Sheffield, and the next morning my friend, Mr.
Edwin Porter, was good enough to introduce me to the

Messrs. M , the principal manufacturers of hair in

that busy town.

The manufacture of the horse-hair itself, especially the
manner in Avbicli the hair is sorted into different lengths,
was exceedingly interesting; but what struck me most
was a magnificent horse-tail from Buenos Ayres, full
of burrs, not unlike the common burrs one finds in
England.

Among these tails sometimes are found most extra-
ordinar}'^ and curious burrs, which are called in ordinary
parlance, " Mouse Burrs," on account of their strong
resemblance to a mouse. Nature seems to have formed
this curious seed for the special purpose of sticking to
horses' tails. It will be seen from the drawing that its body,
which is three inches long and three inches in cu-cum-
ference, is thickly studded with hard and horny prickles,
the points of which are all directed upwards and outwards,
with the express object, one might almost imagine, of en-
tangling and holding fast in horses' tails. From the upper

MOUSE LUKIl I-I10J[ IIOK.SE'.S TAII,.

44

USES OF HOESE HAIR.

part of the seed extend two giant and formidable-looking
horns, each no less than five and three-quarter inches
long : they are curled and twisted so as to form nearly
three parts of a circle. The extremity of each arm is
tipped with an exceedingly sharp horn-like spur, and the
two arms cross each other in such a manner as to
embrace within their grasp a great bnnch of the horse's
tail. It is exceedingly difficult, even with a knife or pair
of scissors, to extricate the burr from the tail, and I am
quite certain that the horse could never get rid of it by
himself.

The horse-hair used in manufacture comes chiefly from
Siberia, Prussia, Sweden, and from Buenos Ayres, in
South America, especially from the half-wild horses found
in the Pampas.

In 1855 England imported 37,150 cwt. of horse-hair;
besides all this a great quantity of English horse-hair is
used, which is much better than that imported. The
hair cut off a live horse is very superior to that taken
from a dead animal. The curly hair is twisted into cords,
which are afterwards opened, and used for stuffing. The
straight hair is woven into cloth for upholstery purposes
and for army helmet plumes, especially in Turkey. A
queue or tail of horse-hair suspended at the end of a
pike, terminated by a gilded pennant, is the emblem of
authority of a Turkish Pacha of tlie third rank ; those of
the first rank have three tails. The usage of these tails
is of Tartaric origin.

The mouse burr is found only in horses' tails from
South America, and by the kindness of Dr. John Bennett,
head of the Botanical Department, British Museum, I

MOUSE BUr.R FllOM HOESE's TAIL.

45

am enabled to give the following information about it.
Dr. Bennett Avrites to me as follows : — " The drawing
represents the fruit of Martynia x>Tohoscidca, originally-
discovered by Houstoun, in Louisiana, about the com-
mencement of the last century, and since cultivated in
all the botanical gardens of Europe on account of the
singularity of its form. It inhabits all the warmer parts
of America, from the valley of the Mississippi to Peru.
There is another species in Mexico, with much shorter
and more rigid hooks, which is there called the * Devil's
claws.' " *

The subject of the spread of plants by seeds (we might
almost call it the locomotion of seeds) is exceedingly
curious. To take two extremes. We find that the thistle
seed is transported by means of very beautiful down-like
wings. The seeds of the plane and ailanthus trees have
wings amazingly like the wings of a dragon-fly, and as
they are transported by the wind twist round in the air
like an Australian boomerang. In the Mouse Burr we
find a seed literally armed with formidable claws, by
means of which it clings on to the tails of animals that
happen to pass by. We may suppose this " mouse burr"
to have been indigenous to the soil from the creation
of the soil itself. It cannot therefore have been especially

* A correspondent writes :— " I am happy to tell you that I was veiy
successful last year in raising that curious plant from South America
called the " Devil's Toe Xails." It is not a very euphonious name, but
I am quite ignorant of its having any other. I struck the seeds (which
were brought over and given to me by Mr. lligford Burr, of Alder-
raaston) in heat, and then put the young plants out on a bed pre-
pared the same as for vegetable marrow, where they did very well
indeed."

46

HEARSE-HORSE'S TAIL.

intended for horses, as horses are not hidigenous to South
America, but were introduced at a comparatively recent
period.

This event first took place, according to Azara, about
the year 1535, when the city of Buenos Ayres was sud-
denly abandoned by its inhabitants, who in their flight
left behind them on the plains five horses and seven mares,
which had been brought from Andalusia. These soon
multiplied and gave origin to those innumerable herds
which people the boundless plains southward and west-
ward of the Ptio de la Plata ; while others, escaping from
the settlement north of the same river, multiplied in
Paraguay and other parts of the interior.

I should feel obliged if any of my friends who have
been in South America would kindly give me further
information relative to the natural history of the Mouse
Burr, or furnish examples of the locomotion of seeds
from instances which have come under their personal
observation.

London hearse-horses have very fine tails. The largest
horse's tail -I ever examined weighed two pounds two
ounces ; the hair was no less than six feet in length. The
horse belonged to Mr. Ebbutt, undertaker, of Croydon,
whose team of hearse-horses have the best tails I ever
saw. Much trouble is taken with the tails to keep them
in order. If they were ornamented with a few Mouse
Burrs they would be still more interesting.

1

EMUS AND KANGAEOOS AT BLENHEIM
PALACE.

His Grace the Duke of Marlborougli has achieved a
triumph in accHmatization which has added a wonderful
charm to the beauties of his noble estate. Vast and
magnificent as are the grounds attached to Blenheim
Palace, no part of this beautiful domain can be of greater
interest to the true lover of natural history than the
Emu and Kangaroo paddocks. These paddocks it has
been my privilege to inspect. After first showing me the
rearing place built for the young great-lake-trout from
Neufchatel, with which he hopes to stock the lake at
Blenheim, the Duke handed me over to the care of old
Long, the special guardian of the Emus. Passing through
the weU-kept grounds, we soon came to a rustic temple,
commanding a glorious view of the lake and the sur-
rounding woods. On the temple is an inscription, pro-
bably suggested by some Poetical Oxford scholar, which
reads thus : * —

APTEMIAI AFPIAI L4AI 0PE2TIAA[

* A correspondent has suggested the following- translation for the
motto : — " Will you permit me. to mention what I think to be the
meaning of the third word in the inscription on the temple at Blenheim.
I believe that lAAI, the adjective in question, is the dative of 'lor dSos
(ri), and signifies Ionian, being made use of in reference to the great
huntress's temple at Ephesus in Ionia, reckoned one of the seven
wonders of the world. It distinguishes the daughter of Latona from

48

OLD TOM AND THE EMU CHICKS.

^vhich, being interpreted, means, " Dedicated by the

RUSTIC MOUNTAIN NyIMPHS TO THE lONIAN DiANA."

Turning short to the left after leaving this temple, Long
conducted me to the Emu paddock. " 1 will show you.
the chicles first," said he. Throwing open the door of a
shed, I saw a great lot of straw on the ground, and, in
one corner, what in the dim light appeared to be a feather
bed with a long neck. " That's the old bird," said he,
" but he is precious artful; he don't want to be disturbed."
The old Emu was evidently following his instincts by-
keeping as quiet as possible to avoid observation. " It's
always the male bird as sits,'' says Long ; " he has sat on
them eggs for eleven weeks, and I knows they is good for
nothing. There's a dead chick in every one on 'em. I
knows by the shake and the weight they ain't no account.
I be sure on it, and he'v' a'got three chicks as he's a
nussing as well as the eggs, and fine chicks they be."

" Get up, Tom ; get up, you rascal," said the old man,
giving the bird a slight touch with his stick. So Tom,
seeing that disguise was of no further use, jumped up like a
jack-in-the-box, shook out his beautiful feathers, gave a
peck at me as he passed, and stalked solemnly out . of the
building. To my great delight three little emus appeared
squatting on the ground as quiet as granite blocks, as their
magnificent nurse rose up from the nest. Seeing their
father go out, the dear little things ran after him. They
Avere all small editions of their parents. Imagine an Emu

her two less celebrated namesakes, the daughter of Proserpine and the
daughter of Glance. The meaning of the whole inscription I think is :—
Dedicated by the riistic mountain nymphs to the Ionian Diana, (Diana
of Ephesus.)"— B.B.

EMUS AND KANGAROOS AT BLENHEIM PALACE. 49

seen tlirougli the wrong end of a telescope, and you have
a good idea of an emu chick, but their colour does not
resemble that of theii* parents ; they are striped with
black and white, and look not unlike a bit of animated
zebra's skin.

" The old Tom " (said Long) " will take care on 'em till
they be big ones, and the t'others can't run 'em. He
picks up the food for /em, and drops it just like a hen
does for her chicks, and he calls 'em in his way. When
he takes 'em round the field he goes along with 'em, and
he picks up his great long legs so as to be careful not to
tread on 'em. They don't want for nothing, does them
chicks, and they are healthy and well. I feeds 'em now,
their mother don't care nothing about 'em ; if she was to
come into the paddock she would throw the chicks up
into the air with her head as high as them trees. I had
a job to find out how to feed 'em. I've reared thousands
of pheasants in my time.

" I am seventy-two years old, and I've never been fur-
ther away from Blenheim than fourteen miles, and then I
went a-shooting with the present Duke's grandfather, and
I recollect his great grandfather. I've three sons game-
keepers to the Duke now, and my sons knows how to rear
pheasants as well as I does. When the emus first come
from Australia the Duke put 'em under my charge, and
when the first lot of chicks was hatched I could not tell
how to feed 'em. So the Duke gives me a book ; but this
ere book ain't no use — not a bit on't. If I had agone
according to this book I should never have reared ' nairn' "
(Oxfordshire for " never a one "). " This book said I was
to give 'em peaches and apricots, and them sort of things,

50

HOW TO REAR EMUS.

but where was I to get peaches and apricots in May ? so
I lays in bed of a night and studies. I knows young
pheasants likes an3'thing milky, so all at once I thinks of
spinach. The next morning at sunrise I was off with
some spinach to the emus, and they pecked at it as
though they would eat the ground. So I says to myself,
What the old ones likes the young ones likes ; and now I
feeds 'em principally on spinach. I sits upon the stone
water trough, and if I says to chicks, ' Come,' they comes
along directly. I cuts up the spinach fine for 'em with
my knife, and I pads off the old Tom with my stick while
the young ones feeds; they likes bread, too, and cake,
but spinach is what they is most partial to. But these
little things wants a deal of feeding. I has to feed 'em
four and five times a day; they runs out and feeds, and
then back again they goes. I knows all about feeding
and rearing 'em now. I could breed as many emus as
pheasants if I could only get the old Tom to sit on the
eggs to hatch 'em ; I'd rear 'em if he'd only hatch 'em.
A hen lay her eggs this year among the dead leaves in the
sunk fence under the wall, and the male bird come to sit
on 'em ; he was often drove off the nest by visitors who
came to see the pleasure gardens. So I built a kind of a
house over him with bushes, but after I had put the
bushes he never come to sit on the eggs no more. It's
no use making a place for the emus to sit ; if they don't
fancy a place they won't have it ; they will go where they
have a mind. But what is a most curiosest thing, is that
the male birds knows when to go on the eggs, and he
don't go on till the hen has done a laying ; he has sense
enough for that, though he has not sense enough to know

EMDS AND KANGAROOS AT BLENHEIM PALACE. 51

when the eggs he's a-sitting on is addled and good for
nothing, but yet he keeps on ' sit/ ' sit,' ' sit,' though his
right time to sit is eight weeks and two days."

We then went on to the paddock where the full-grown
emus were kept. I do not recollect ever seeing such a
gi-and sight as these magnificent birds crowding round
the old man as he opened the gate. Tame as chickens,
and almost gigantic as ostriches, these glorious birds
nearly hustled old Long off his legs. " Go along with
ye, go along with ye," said the old man, as he pushed
them aside ; " you have all had your suppers, and I've
nothing more for you to-night. A fine lot of birds, ain't
they, sir ? Eleven in the paddock, and the old Tom in
the shed, that makes twelve, and then there is the three
chicks, fifteen in all ; and nice healthy birds they be, all
on 'em. The first birds were given to the Duke eight
years 'ago by his brother, Lord Alfred Churchill ; two
were males, and one was changed with the Zoological
Gardens for a female, and all the birds you see here come
from that lot. We never lost any from disease; only one
died, and that was from an accident— dancing on the ice
in frosty weather, he fell, and broke his leg. They seldom
go into the shed. I feeds 'em regular, but they picks up
many things we knows nothing about, and they're always
a-pecking at something.

"Eat, sir! Why, them things would eat any mortal
thing, but what they likes best is lumps of ice. One
frosty day I comes with my old knobby stick, and breaks
the ice in the stone trough, and they very soon ate it all
up, for when I saw they liked it I kept on breaking it
for 'era.

B 2

52

EMUS AND HARRIEHS.

" Make them run, Long," said I. " Eun, sir ! they
would run if / could run, sir, but I can't ; I got the gout
in one foot and the rheumatics in the t'other knee. I'm
lame of both legs, sir, and I can't make 'em run, and they
knows I can't run as well as I knows myself : but, bless
me, sir, you should have seen 'em when Lord Eandolph's
harriers got into the paddock. They run then — such a
job ; but the hounds never catched e'er a one, and his
lordship he run till his nose bled. It was a job, and no
mistake ; but no harm was done, and the Duke he never
said nothing about it."

We then inspected the kangaroos. These are kept in
a paddock with high walls. When Long unlocked the door
of the enclosure where the kangaroos were, they were feed-
ing at the far end of the paddock, and being frightened at
our coming in, they made off at once for their shed, several
yards away. In doing this they had to pass in front of us.
They came along in line at a racing pace, like horses in
the Derby passing in front of the grand stand at Epsom.
One of the lady kangaroos had her little baby in her pouch.
It was very funny to see the little thing's rat-like head
peeping out and looking one way while her mother was
hopping the other. The kangaroos did not use their tails
as propellers, but simply carried them behind them with a
gi-aceful curve. If I recollect aright, the tails did not even
touch the ground. The use, therefore, of the kangaroo's
tail is, not to act as a propeller, but rather as a balance,
and also as a support to his body when he is sitting up-
right, like the curious old seats one sees in cathedrals, so
arranged that the monks could lean against them, but if
the monks went to sleep, the seats fell down.

EMUS AND KANGAEOOS AT BLENHEIM PALACE. 53

I have the hones of a kangaroo's tail now hefore me.
The total lensth of the tail is two feet five inches ; it
consists of seventeen bones, all of them being very like
the bones found in ox-tail soup. The bones vary in
size from two inches in length to one not more than half
an inch in length. There are a series of projections upon
the bones, between which sinews run, as in the brush of
the fox, which, as most people know, is most diflScult to
skin properly. At the lower side of the tail the bones
are thrown over so as to afford protection to the continu-
ation of the spinal cord. These sinews and the gelatinous
material found inside the tail bones of most animals
— fox excepted — make excellent soup, and I am told that
kangaroo-tail soup is considered in Australia as good as,
if not better than, ox-tail soup.

The use of ox-tail soup in England, I am told, is not
very ancient, the origin being, I believe, as follows. At
the end of the great war there were a great many French
prisoners in England; byway of feeding them cheaply the
commissariat used to supply them with ox-tails, then
considered as offal, and left on the hides. The French-
men, with their usual cleverness in cooking, made these
tails into soup, and this is the origin of the ox-tail soup,
— a story which, I think, should not be forgotten.

The kangaroo principally propels himself by means of
tremendous muscles on his hind legs, and the length of
the bones beneath the hock gives him a considerable
leverage, by means of which he is enabled to hop with a
flea-like action. Under certain circumstances the tail
acts as a balance ; any one who has seen a rat crawl along
a rope, cannot fail to have noticed that the rat uses his

54

BALANCE FOR STATUES.

tail as an acrobat uses his pole when traversing the
tight-rope. The hare, also, has tremendous propelling
I)ower in her haunches, yet she has a short tail — nobody
ever yet saw a hare with a long tail. The hare does not
hop ; the kangaroo is a famous hopper.

Sculptors are sometimes obliged to use a species of
tail in balancing their statues. At St. Petersburg there
is a bronze statue of Peter the Great. The Czar is
represented as sitting on a horse ; the horse is rearing
upon his hind legs, and pawing the air over the brink of
a precipice ; at the feet of the horse there is a bronze
snake, whose coils project to a considerable distance from
the horse's tail. The sculptor's account of his reason for
introducing the snake is, that the " serpent is an alle-
gorical figure of envy, spurned by the Czar ; " whereas I
believe the real fact is, that the sculptor found that his
horse, Peter and all, might possibly topple over, so he put
the bronze snake as a balance to keep the horse standing
safely on his hind legs.

A somewhat similar fact can be observed nearer home.
If the reader, when he is next passing Charing Cross,
will look up, he will find that behind Lord Nelson's
statue, and a little to his right side, there is a mass of
granite representing a coil of cable ; this cable, I believe,
was introduced in order to act as a balance to the
tremendous weight of the figure.

The Duke's emus got off well when the hounds came
to Blenheim, not so his grace's kangaroos, for during a
run with the Heythrop Hounds on January 3, 1874, the
fox was run close to the cowhouse. The hounds got
off the scent, and in casting about got scent of the

EMUS AND KANGAROOS AT BLENHEIM PALACE. 55

kangaroos, and very soon a most exciting scene occurred.
The kangaroos bounded away in all directions, and the
hounds did not seem to know what to make of the matter.
I was sorry to hear that two of them were killed. This
of course was an accident much to be regretted.

I am very anxious that kangaroos should be cultivated
in English parks. I am sure they would do well, and be
very ornamental, as well as forming a new dish for
the table. I wish some gentlemen would oblige
me by trying the experiment. A French naturalist, M.
Comely, writes : " The experience of the various zoolog-
ical societies in Europe shows that kangaroos will thrive
and breed in our climate, damp being the only condition
which is fatal to them. They will bear great extremes of
heat and cold without injury. Kangaroos are not destruc-
tive to trees and shrubs, and if they contract the habit
of barking trees, they can be broken of it by shutting
them up for two or three days without food. On being
released, they are so eager in search of grass that they
do not touch the trees."

By the way, I wonder if the reader knows the origin of
the name kangaroo. The story, as told me by my friend
the late Mr. E. Blyth, runs, that when Captain Cook first
discovered Australia, he saw some natives on the shore,
one of them holding a dead animal in his hand. The
Captain sent a boat's crew ashore to purchase the animal,
and, finding, on receiving it, that it was a beast quite new
to him, he sent the boatswain back to ask the natives its
name. " What do you call this 'ere animal," said the
sailor to the naked native. The native shook his head
and answered, " Kan-ga-roo," which means in Australian

56 ORIGIN OF THE NAME ' KANGAROO

lingo, " I don't understand." When the sailor returned
to the ship the Captain said, "Well, and what's the name
of the animal ? " The sailor replied, " Please, sir, the
black party says it's a ' Kangaroo.' " The beast has kept
this name ever since.

I recollect once when at Oxford the prize poem for the
year was " Australia." A conceited undergraduate wrote
the following introduction to his poem, which he was so
certain would gain the prize that he rehearsed it privately
from the public rostrum in the theatre, where he was
overheard to express himself in the following verse : —

" I love to climb the lofty hills and view
The untamed pastures of the Kangaroo ;
Or, mid the gum trees' aromatic blossom,
To watch the gambols of the young Opossum."

HEAD OF INDIAN FROM SOUTH AMERICA.

Among the many strange and curious preparations of
the remains of our fellow creatures with which 1 am
acquainted, there are none more remarkable than the dried
heads of the Indians of Ecuador. By the great kindness
of Mr. Jamrach, dealer in animals, etc., 180, George's
Street, East, I am now enabled to give a drawing of one of
these most interesting preparations. It consists of a human
head which has by some process or other been shrunk to
about the size of a large orange. The features are perfect,
the eyes are closed, and the eyebrows still remain. The
lips are slightly parted, and threads of coloured cotton
have been introduced through both lips, arranged so as to
form a pendulous tassel. The face is painted with streaks
of red, giving it a savage and ferocious appearance. The
hair springs in its natural form from the forehead. It is
parted down the middle, and then falls gracefully back-
wards, as seen in the engraving. This hair is of a raven
black colour, very thick, and with a much higher gloss
upon it than any human hair I have ever seen in the
shops of London dealers. The total length of this hair
is twenty-eight and a half inches. The measurements
of the head are as follows : — From the roots of hair on

5S MEXICAN Indian's head.

forehead to nose, 2 inches ; nose to chin, 2 inches ; from

HEAD OF INDIAN FROM SOUTH AMERICA.

ear to ear (measuring across the nose), 6 inches ; width of
mouth, 1^ inches; length of ear, 1 inch. Mr. Berjeau,

HEAD OF INDIAN PROM SOUTH AMERICA.

59

the artist, has, at my suggestion, drawn a carpenter's
rule by the side of the head, in order to give an idea
of the proportionate size of this most interesting pre-
paration.

There can be no doubt whatever that this is really
the skin and hair of a human being. The head is
perfectly hollow, and the skin is as hard as, and about
the thickness of, thick pasteboard ; the skull is entirely
absent. No seams are perceptible in the features,
although a cut may be discovered with the finger in the
thick skin which carries the hair. The story is that
the whole skin of the head is present, and that it is
simply shrunk to its present size by some process un-
known to English medical men. The only way that I
can imagine it to have been prepared— and I have
experience in matters of this kind— is, that the process
of slow and careful drying by hot sand was adopted;
but still I fancy that this process would have impaired
the permanent beauty of the hair. I must, however,
confess, that a great deal of dexterity and ingenious
manipulation has been employed in a manner of which I
am sorry to say I am at present ignorant.

In the Exhibition of 1851 there was a head of this kind,
of which I have a photograph; the owner asked me a
fabulous price for it. About a year since, I examined
another of these heads, kindly submitted for my exami-
nation by Chevalier A. J. Ricci, Financial Agent to the
Portuguese Government; and I believe Mr. Bartlett lately
had one in his possession for a short time.

A correspondent has kindly directed my attention to an
article by Mr. Bollaert, F.R.G.S., in the " Intellectual

60

PREPARATION OF SKULLS.

Observer" (vol. i., 1862), in which much valuable in-
formation is given respecting the human shrunken head
I have figured : —

" On the eastern side of the Eepublic of Ecuador,
formerly known as Quito, lives a tribe of Indians called
Jivaros, a strange, wild people dwelling in the midst of a
most beautiful mountainous countrj', rich with tropical
vegetation, and dense forests, and including in its wild
grandeur the volcano of Macas.

" Their history is given by Velasco, the historian of
Quito, together with an account of their conspiracy
against the Spaniards in 1599, an outbreak which pro-
cured for them the title of Araucanos of the North.

" The Jivaros are a warlike, brave, and astute people.
Their bodies are muscular; they have small and very
animated black eyes, aquiline noses, and thin lips.

" One of their prominent customs is to deify the heads
of their prisoners. This fact has been known for some
time, but only lately have any specimens been obtained.
The first was brought to Europe by Professor Cassola in
June, 1861, and was exhibited to a few persons in London.
This had been stolen from a temple on the river Pastasa.
At the latter end of the same year another specimen fell
into the hands of Don K. de Silva Ferro, Chilian Consul
in London, with an explanatory document, which has been
translated by Mr. Bollaert, and communicated to the
Ethnological Society.

" These curious trophies are thus prepared : — After a
war the heads of the victims are cut off, the skull and its
contents removed, and a heated stone (it is said) is intro-
duced in the hollow of the skin, desiccation goes on,

HEAD OP INDIAN FROM SOUTH AMERICA. 61

and it is reduced to about one-fourth, retaining some
appearance of the features.

"A feast ensues, when the victor abuses the head
roundly, to which the head is made to reply in similar
terms, the Indian priest being the spokesman for the
head, or ' chancha' (an Indian name for a sow), and he
concludes his part thus : — ' Coward ! when I was in life
thou didst not dare to insult me thus ; thou didst tremble
at the sound of my name. Coward ! some brother of
mine will avenge me.'

" The victor at this raises his lance, strikes and wounds

the face of his enemy, after which he sews the mouth up,

doommg the idol to perpetual silence, except as an oracle ;

questions being put to it when the inquirer is under the

spell of a narcotic.

" A double string is attached to the top of the head, so

that it may be worn round the neck. The lips are sewn

together, and a number of strings hang from them, the

use of which is not apparent."

I think my readers will agree with me that this dried

head is a most valuable and interesting curiosity.

AN OLD MAN-OF-WAR'S-MAN, EOBINSON
CRUSOE.

It may be recollected that in my " Curiosities of
Natural History," I some years ago published an account
of " Robinson Crusoe " an old man-of-war's-man whom
I found fishing by the Spit Buoy, off Southsea. One
day in 1873, being in Hampshire on duty, I visited
Portsmouth in order to make inquiries after my good old
friend " George," alias " Robinson Crusoe."

While waiting for the floating bridge which goes over
to Gosport, I asked a very civil sailor in command of the
Sappho, an iron steam-launch, if " Robinson Crusoe "
was still alive. " If you mean old George Butler," he
says, " he is well, and as hearty as ever. I have known
him these forty -three years, and he don't look a bit older
than when I was a boy. His great friend and companion
(whom they called Uncle), died last year, and they say he
was 104."

An aged flyman in Gosport said he could take me to
"Robinson Crusoe's" (or, as he called him, "Mr. Butler's")
house. On arrival I found it to be situated in one of the
poorest lanes in Forton, the outskirts of Gosport. The
appearance of his cottage was that of extreme poverty.

AN OLD man-of-war's MAN.

63

His daughter, however, kept her three children exceedingly
neat and clean. I am sorry to say her husband, who was
in the Marines, had lately died of diseased heart, so that
poor old " Eobinson Crusoe " has an extra call on his
abeady limited means. When she saw me she cried out
in a shrill voice, " Father ! " " I'm a-coming," said the
old chap ; and down he came from the room in a moment.
The old man knew me instantly. He staggered back for
a while, and then, waving his wooden stump of an arm,
fairly cried with delight.

" Why, Lor' bless me if it ain't my old master, Mr.
Buckland ! I'm downright glad to see you again, that I
am. Will you go out a-fishing again along with me ? "

So I made him jump into the fly, and drove him down
to the beach amid the cheers of his neighbours.

" Well, George, how are you getting on, and how old
are you ? "

" Well, sir, thank God ! I am hale and hearty, though
I was born in the latter part of 1801. I have had nine
years and thirteen months' sea servitude. There was
thirteen months in the year in them times, and they call
them " King's months," and all that time I was fetching
money home to the country, and a looking after piratical
vessels. I served in the Hind frigate, tender to the
Royal Sovereign, in George the Fourth's time. Lord
John Churchill was captain of the Hind, and I was with
him seven years. I come out of the Naiad frigate to
join the Hind, and the first part of my time I was in the
Mediterranean and the Archipelago, a looking after the
Greeks and Turks ; a cruel set of scoundrels, them
fellows, but we English has been just as cruel. The

64.

CARGO OF PILGEIMS.

Turks are honest soi't of chaps tho'. If you give 'em a
gold watch you'd have it back again in twelvemonths ; but
them Greeks is born thieves. I wouldn't like to lay and
sleep with my mouth open when there was a Greek
about, for he'd try and steal my teeth out of my head.
"When we was off the coast of Barbary in the Naiad
frigate, we see'd a merchant brig making signals of
distress, so we went alongside, and a precious rum cargo
they had got aboard. There was nearly four hundred
pilgrims, all stowed in bulk, one on top of t'other, like
salt fish. They'd got cowls on, and looked like a parcel
of half-sheared sheep. * Where are you going with them
scarecrows ? ' our Captain sings out, ' they will all be
suffocated.' So we took a lot on 'em on board, but we
wouldnH let them go below, as they was devoured with
warmint. If we touched 'em, we see the warmint a flying
off on 'em like a flock of pigeons. So the Captain gives
his orders, and every day we scrubs 'em down with holy-
stone and sand and the ends of old swabs, and we often
wished 'em moored alongside their prophet, Old Mahomed.
They was forced to like the cleaning, or we would have
hove 'em overboard. There was pork served out for
these chaps every day, but they wouldn't eat it, so we
men got jolly good snacks out of 'em; they was going to
Mecca to worship the Prophet."

"Had any fishing lately, George?" said I, as we
passed a wheelbarrow with fish upon it. " I don't call
them 'ere fish," he says, "they are blue, dandy-grey-
russet, and all sorts of colours. Them things was
ketched in the North Sea, and when they've been knocked
about for a week, and put in the sun for a couple of days,

AN OLD man-of-war's MAN.

65

why then they are capital. We had a rum fish come into
Gosport Harbour not long ago ; it was the curiostest fish
I ever see, and I have seen some curious fish in my time ;
he was uglier than a "Pocket fish," and had two paws just
like a Christian. I couldn't send him up to you, though
I know'd he was a ' Curio.' "

" Did you ever see a sea-snake, George ? " " There
ain't no such a thing, sir. I knows what a sea-snake
is. They are a lot of hlubber-hke things of a yaller
colour, and about as wide as a small oyster ; they hangs
on together with their claws. I see'd lots of them off the
Western Islands. They ain't Portuguese men-of-war,
I knows them well. If a Portuguese man-of-war got
you in the water, if he got all his rigging round you, he
would sting ye to death. I caught one floatin' at the
back of Gosport Hospital, he touched my finger with one
sting of his rigging, and it burnt for two hours Hke hot
wire. At that time a great many Portuguese men-of-war
came into Portsmouth Harbour and was thrown up on
Southsea beach."

" Did you ever see any big cuttle-fish, George ? "
"There's three kinds of scuttle-fish, a squid, a scuttle,
and a sucker. I've seen a squid just before we come to
Callao ; he weighed, I should think, two hundredweight ;
at aU events, it took four or five men to haul him aboard
the boat. You could see to read a newspaper through
his backbone. A gentleman give me a glass of rum for
his backbone, it was so pretty. When I was in the
Rattlesnake, in the Gulf of Wynymas, I ketched another
big squid; that's the chap that's got ink in him ; his eggs
is naturally white, but he dips 'em in the ink to deceive

I

66 HOW THE CUTTLE THREDDLES HIS EGGS.

people. I think he'd better leave em white. It puzzles
me how he can threddle his eggs on to a blade of sea-
gi'ass.* The fellow I ketched with the hook was about
four feet long, and thirty-four inches round ; if he had
been full of ink, he'd a blinded all the chaps in the boat,
and we should have had to have painted the boat, for the

* Mr. Henry Lee writes : — Eobmson Crusoe unconsciously touched on
some very interesting matters relating to the history of these animals.
" It puzzles me," he says, "how he (the sepia) can threddle his eggs on
to a blade of sea-grass." Yes, and the question which George Butler
thoughtfully cons over in his mind is one which, to answer completely,
would puzzle many who pretend to more knowledge than he. Those who
know most about it will most readily admit that we have much to learn
on this subject. We know, however, that each of those eggs, which are
so like black grapes, are laid separately. It has a flexible stalk, looking
and feeling like india-rubber. The mother takes a turn with this stalk
round the stem of the twig or sea-weed to which she wishes to attach the
egg ; the india-rubber-like material is soft and sticky when first laid ; and
so, instead of splicing the loop, she brings the end round to the base of the
stalk, close to the egg, and cements or welds it there into a solid ring.
Thus the eggs are " threddled " one by one. Sometimes the stalk of one
is fastened round that of another, and occasionally the process is re-
peated until the whole mass is made up in this way, without any central
stem. The work is as well and as neatly done as if skilled hands had
been employed on it, but how the mother cuttle fish effects it I believe
no one knows.

Mr. Buckland's old friend also says of the sepia : — " His eggs is natu-
rally white, but he dips 'em in the ink to deceive people. I think he'd
better leave 'em white." For more than 2,200 years, and for how many
centuries before that it is impossible to say, this supposition has been
handed down from generation to generation in manuscript, ages before
printing was invented, and from father to son in oral tradition. Aris-
totle, who was in his prime 350 years before the Christian era, wrote that
the sepia fastens her eggs, near land, upon sea-weeds, reeds, and other
bodies which may be found on the shore, and even around sticks and
faggots placed there for the purpose of entrapping her. " She does not
lay them all at once," he says, "but at several intervals, the operation
lasting fifteen days ; and after the oviposit is completed she sheds her
ink upon them, which turns them from white to black, and causes them
to increase in bulk."

AN OLD man-of-war's MAN.

67

ink is awful stuff to stain ; as it was, the old squid throwed
a couple of gallons of water over the men in the boat. He
would have held over a gallon of ink if he had been full.
A sucker is very bad to meet in the water ; you see a man
hasn't much power in the water, and if the sucker gets some
of his suckers round a man, and holds on to a rock with
his other suckers, he will drownd him in spite of fate."

" Well, George, what do you think of the ironclads ? "

" I don't think nothing on 'em, they're only fit to bide
in Portsmouth Harbour. As for the Captain, when I first
seed her come out o' harbour, I paddled my boat along-
side, and I could look right on to her deck out of my
boat ; the decks was no higher than this 'ere beer-barrel,
and I says to myself, ' She'U be a coffin to the men in
her.' Those big transport ships ain't no good neither.
When they makes bad weather they makeH bad weather,
and roUs dreadful ; their sides is as straight as a wall,
and there's no baUast to ketch 'em. I like wooden ships,
like the Victory and the Duke of Wellington, or the Lord
St. Vincent; they're as stiff as a house, and some of 'em will
steer like a pleasure boat. Them Dutch galliots are good
sailers ; there's no fear of them things sinldng. When
it comes on to blow, the Dutchman lashes his helm,
battens everything down, and when he wants to look out,
pops his head up a wooden funnel, with a red nightcap or
the top of an old stocking on his head, like a chimney-
sweep. They stand a good chance to be run down ; but
then the Dutchman makes too much noise to be run over.
Talk about noise — why the guns in the ironclads would
make a man deaf and dumb, and turn him pretty near
inside out. When I was in action I've been as deaf as a

T 2

68 ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MODERN SHIPS.

block for a week after. It's a pity to see these beautiful
wooden ships, the pride and flower of England, lying idle
in the harbour, and so I would tell the Queen, or the Lords
of the Admiralty. Ironclads have no business with masts ;
if the foremast goes, away goes all three on 'em. The
men below will be smothered in the rigging, and the sails
will kill 'em ; and the masts don't add to the speed. They
must have more coals to drive the masts along against the
wind. You can't carry an umbrella to windward as well
as you can walk by yourself. They're a lubberly set
altogether. What I like is a 28-gun ship, like the old
Rattlesnake. She was just such another as the police -
vessel now in the harbour ; she'll ride as dry as a bone ;
you might lash your helm, and all hands go to sleep. I
don't think much o' them forts neither at Spithead. Them
forts 'U bury themselves in time, even if the bottom was
made of solid iron. I knows rocks at tbe back o' the
Hospital which have buried 'emselves in my time ; and it
stands to reason that the forts '11 bury themselves too. But
it may be a century before they do it. Never is a long
day. Instead of building the forts, they ought to put
guns all along the Isle of Wight. Ships would pass the
forts in ten minutes, and then they can only rake 'em
when they're at Spithead. I'd get into Portsmouth Harbour
any night with the Duke of Wellington if I could see the
lights, for I knows every inch of the ground, and the
soundings to an inch ; I've fished it too often not to know.
If they had guns in the Isle of Wight they could blaze
away at 'em at both sides ; and 'tain't every ship that can
fight both sides at the same time."
" Have you seen the Shah, George ? "

AN OLD man-of-war's MAN".

69

" No, I ain't seen him, but I've been near his countrj-,
up in the Persian Gulf. I suppose the English is civil to
him, because they wants to keep back ' Johnny Doby,' as
we calls the Kooshians. We calls the Frenchmen Johnny
Crapaud. I reads a good deal, sir, in the winter time ;
anything as I catch hold of. I likes history, and I reads
Eoman history and Young's ' Night Thoughts/ I see the
top of the Forum at Eome once, when I was with a boat's
crew going up the Tiber. If I'd only had a shilling for
every dead man as Tiberius chucked into that 'ere river !
Them Eoman Emperors were nice fellows ; they'd ought
to have an ironclad to give 'em a rise. There was an
Emperor as used to feed his lions and tigers with poor
people. I think his name was Caligula, and when there
was no more poor people, he used to heave in all the old
men and women for sport for Ladies and that. I read a
pretty Persian story the other day, all about a simple
shepherd, Ali Bad, The king says to the shepherd,
' Come with me to the city,' and he goes, and they tries to
turn him out; and then the king orders these 'ere fellows'
heads to be cut off, and he made the shepherd prime
minister. That's a Persian yarn, and a very pretty yarn
it is. There's not a poor man in Gosport as reads more
books than I do. I likes travels, history, and geography,
and I can go through Holy Writ, especially Judges and
the Prophets ; but we ain't got the rights of it yet, and I
suppose we never shall, as all this must have been written
on wood, or else the papyrus as they gets out o' the
river.

" I'm very fond of a hargument, and the Gosport people
often comes to me to settle disputes."

70

THE whale's life SPARED.

" Have something to eat, George ? "

" Don't mind what it is, sir ; meat's awful dear ! I has
to pay a whole day's pension to get a pound of meat ; and
I don't get a pound of meat in two months. My daughter
buys a jemmy's head, and it lasts us from Saturday to
Wednesday — half a week. Chewing tobacco has saved
many a man's life, as I knows. If a man was wrecked,
liim as chews would last twice as long as him as
doesn't."

" Ever seen a whale, George ? "

" I saw one once, sir, when I was in the Rattlemahe, off
the coast o' South America. The whale come up between
the ship and the boat. 'Twas the 'andsomest fish I ever
saw ; his skin was blue like a bottle, and his belly was
whitish, and he had a lovely tail. He was alongside of
us for two hours, and the captain give orders, ' Don't you
harpoon that 'ere fish ; ' for he was a ^andsome-made fish,
and I allow he was sixty or ninety feet long. He'd come
to the ship to get clear of a thresher; we seed this thresher
a-driving at him, and his fin come down on him like the
side of a house.

"I've seen lots o' things I'd like to tell 3'-ou about another
day. But I see you're in a hurry to go."

So I jumped into a cab and took old George up to the
station. He said he " hadn't been aboard of a fly for
thirty-two years." When I got to Portsmouth Station,
the old man, who had never seen it before, opened his
eyes with astonishment, and said, " Mr. Buckland, sir,

I'm if I don't think I'm cruising along with you

in a foreign country," so mightily astonished was he at
the phenomenon of a railway-station. Old George says

AN OLD man-of-war's MAN.

71

he is entitled to id. a day more pension now that he is
over seventy years of age. I have placed his case before
the authorities at the Admiralty, and I am happy to say
they have now increased his pension.

In the meantime, this fine old man-of-war's-man is very
poor, and if any of our friends would lil^e to send me
something towards making him comfortable in his old
age, I shall be very glad to forward it. Nor must I forget
to say that Eobinson Crusoe is very badly off for books,
and any present of books or periodicals will be very
acceptable; he can see to read in the sun without
spectacles. He has only got one arm, and he thinks the
other is getting withered through scuUing his fishing-boat
about so much, and I should be sorry that a fine old
sailor like this should end his days in anything like dis-
tress. His address is, " Eobinson Crusoe," 3, Willow-
place, Mill-lane, Forton, Gosport. Visitors to Portsmouth
should send for him to take them out fishing : he is sure
to show them first-class sport, and he will make one ill
with laughing at the dry way in which he spins his
numerous yarns.

HOESE-FLESH DINNEE AT THE LANGHAM

HOTEL.

I WENT to the horse-flesli dinner at the Langham Hotel
on February 29th, 1868, without fear or prejudice, and
came back from it a wiser and a sadder man; and, as I
lighted a post-prandial cigar at the door, I exclaimed with
uEneas of old, " Equo ne creclite Teucri." In my opinion,
hippophagy has not the slightest chance of success in this
country ; for, firstly, it has to fight against prejudice, and,
secondly, the meat is not good. I gave it a fair trial,
tasting every dish, from the soup to the jelly. In every
single preparation of the elegant forms in which it was
served (however nicely it might have been sent up, with
sauces, &c.) an unwonted and peculiar taste could be
recognised. The chief result aimed at by the supporters
of hippophagy is to provide a cheap food for the poor ; in
this respect the experiment must prove a failure. I have
talked to many people of this class upon the point. The
abhorrence expressed at the idea was very great, and this
especially among the women, who would " as soon think
of cooking a cat for their husband's dinner as cooking a
bit of cat's-meat." No class of persons are so quick to

IIORSE-FLESH DINNER AT THE LANGHAM HOTEL. 73

find out what is good and nutritious food as the feminine
part of the population :— witness the quality of provisions
sold in the " poor man's market," as I call it, every
Saturday night in London; and I feel convinced- that if
the flesh of the horse contained within itself the proper
elements of good and cheap food, the working classes
would have found it out long since of themselves, without
the necessity of a number of gentlemen meeting together
to show them the way.

During the dinner, photographs of the horses which
we were eating were handed round, and the appearance
of one of these was, I think, the turning point of the
argument. My personal experience leads me to vote
against horse-flesh as a food for the public in England.
Doubtless, for starving travellers, such as hunters and
trappers in the " far west," for cavalry troopers sepa-
rated from their commissariat, or others living and
sleeping for many weeks and months in the open air,
horse-flesh would afi'ord fair and nutritious food; but
in this country, as long as beef and mutton are to be
obtained, coarse meat, such as horse-flesh, will never
become popular, even though it be christened by the
elegant name " Ilippocreas."

Apropos of horse-flesh, Mr. Bartlett tells me that
formerly they used to feed the lions at the Zoological
Gardens upon joints of the best beef. The keepers gave
out that the lions, &c., would not eat horae-flesh. It was
observed at the same time that the lions looked very thin
and the men very fat. Mr. Bartlett determined to try if
the lions would or would not eat horse-flesh: and he
found they liked it quite as well as beef. So for the

74

ADVENTURES OP A BEAE's HAM.

future he ordered the lions always to have horse-flesh for
their dinners. The consequence was, that the tables
were turned : the men got very lean, and immediately the
lions began to get plump and fat ; the reader will easily
guess the meaning of this remarkable phenomenon.

At the horse-flesh dinner a bear's ham was served up,
and it really was very fair eating. It was one of two bears'
hams that had been sent over, and I cannot resist giving
the history of the second ham. A reverend friend of mine
residing at Great Grimsby had bought it, with the foot
attached, at a store in that town, the shopkeeper having
intended to sell it to the Baltic sailors who visit Great
Grimsby. My friend found it too large for domestic
consumption, so he thought he had better remunerate
himself by doing the handsome thing, and sending it
away as a New Year's gift. He therefore forwarded it to
friend No. 1, who with generous haste forwarded it to
friend No. 2. Perplexed at the present, No. 2 sent the
foot to a " scientific man," who pronounced it to be the
foot of some savage, whose tribe he had not yet discovered ;
so it went again on its travels to No. 3. In the meantime a
note that ought to have accompanied Bruin's "poor foot,"
which was really very human in appearance, came to No. 2.
The foot arrived unexplained at the house of his recently
married friend No. 3, who opened the Howell-and-James's-
like box, when lo ! the withered foot — no mere print, like
that seen by Robinson Crusoe on his desert island, but
a dread reality. With due presence of mind the in-
spector of rural police was promptly summoned, and this
intelligent official, "from information which he had re-
ceived," declared that it was a man's foot, and that he

HORSE-FLESH DINNER AT THE LANGHAM HOTEL. 75

kneio the man tvho had lost it. Then came another adviser,
who, quite agreeing with the verdict that it was a human
foot, proposed that it should he decently interred in^ a
proper locality, and it would actually have received a burial
if the letter of explanation had not arrived from No. 2 in

time to put a stop to the ceremony.

I must say a bear's foot is amazingly human. I have

the cast of the sole of the foot of a monster bear that

died at the Zoological Gardens on Derby Day, 1864.

The bear measured, when standing upright, nine feet.

The foot is twelve inches long and six inches wide at the

widest part. I have painted the cast which really is now

very like a nigger's foot.

bear's foot.

FOOT OF NAPOLEON'S CHAEGEE.

I SHOULD like in this place to put on record some
remarks on the hoof of Napoleon's favourite charger.
There is in the possession of the Household Brigade a
horse's hoof, poUshed, shod, and mounted so as to do duty
as a snuff-box. It is kept at the Foot Guards' mess at
St. James's, where I examined it when dining with my
friend Colonel Bridges of the Grenadiers. It is a hoof
of the great Napoleon's favourite charger Marengo. There
has been some doubt expressed as to which foot it belonged
to, but Mr. Wm. Hunting, M.E.C.V.S., with whose opinion
I agree, thkiks its form leaves no uncertainty as to its
being the hoof of a right hind foot. On the outside of
the gold lid is the following inscription : —

Hoof of Marengo,
Eare Charger

OP

Napoleon,

ElDDEN BY HIM AT

JNIarengo, Adsterlitz, Jena, WAGRAir,

IN THE CaMjPAIGN OF EuSSIA,
AND LASTLY AT "WATERLOO.

POOT OF napoleon's CHARGER. 77

As the battle of Marengo was fought in 1800, we may
conclude that this wonderful charger was at least about
twenty years old when ridden at Waterloo. An inscription
on the inside of the lid tells us the hoof was—
Presented 8th Apkil, 1840,

BY

H. W. Angerstein, Capn. Grenr. Guards,
AND Lt.- Colonel

TO HIS

Brother Officers of the Household Brigade.

Eound the outer margin of the shoe — a silver one of
the form usually applied to fore feet— is the following •.
" Marengo was wounded in the near hip at "Waterloo when
his great master was on him, in the hollow road in ad-
vance of the French position. He had been frequently
wounded before in other battles."

Mr. Hunting writes :— " Colonel Bridges told me that
the skeleton and other hoofs were to be found at the
United Service Institution. I found the skeleton and two
more hoofs, a fore and hind one, both of left feet.
Probably, therefore, an off fore-foot is still in the
possession of the late Col. Angerstein's family. The
skeleton is that of a very small animal, and agrees with
what an attendant told me, that Marengo was a barb
about fourteen hands high. I also learnt that he was
purchased by Colonel Angerstein, at the sale of Napo-
leon's effects in Paris, and kept by him till he died of
old age. The tradition that he was used by his last
owner for stud purposes I do not believe. The frequent
wounds referred to in the inscription on the shoe have
left no mark of injury on the bones. The spine of this
animal is arched like the back of a frightened cat, his

78 FURTHER RELICS OF NAPOLEON.

liasterns are in a straight line with his shank-bones
while his hocks are bent like a cow's."

It appears that the hoof of another of Napoleon's
chargers exists. Mr. Eichard Bell writes : — " Mr. Hunting's
letter, in which he gives an account of Marengo's hoofs,
brought to my recollection the hoof of another charger
once ridden by Napoleon, which is now in the possession
of Miss Douglas, Dovecot Street, Hawick. At first I
thought it might possibly be the missing one required to
make up Marengo's complement; but, upon inquiry, I find it
belonged, I presume, to the immediate predecessor of that
famous animal. It also is formed into a snuff-box,
mounted with silver, and bears on the lid the following
inscription : — ' This is the Hoof of Napoleon's
Horse, which was killed under him during the
Egyptian Campaign of 1798. From Captain W.
Sleigh, late 100th Regiment, to Dr. Douglas,
Hawick, 1817.' Miss Douglas's father was a doctor in
the army, and met Captain Sleigh during the American
"War, in the early part of the century, and having extracted
some bullets from the Captain's body, warm friendship
commenced between them. It was owing to this that the
interesting relic became an heirloom of Miss Douglas's
family. Another hoof of the same animal was, I imder-
stand, given to the Duke of York, and it would be in-
teresting to discover in whose possession the other two
now are, as I have no doubt they were all carefully pre-
served. The one I speak of struck me as being that of a
very small animal for a charger, but it was probably a
barb like Marengo. Barbs of fourteen hands must have
been light chargers to be ridden by Napoleon, who, I dare
say, rode no light weight."

FISH AT GEEAT GEIMSBY DOCKS.

EXPERIENCES OF A NORTH-SEA TRA^VLER.

I HAVE had the pleasure of a conversation with Mr-
Hill, late Captain of the trawling smack "Hurricane,"
which sails from Great Grimsby.

Captain Hill's conversation was so interesting that I
now give my readers the benefit of' his experience, as
far as possible in his own words.

*' I have been knocking about the North Sea for nearly
two-and-forty years, and I fancy I could find an orange if
it was moored in the part of the sea where I am used to
work. There ain't finer craft put upon salt water than
our North- Sea trawlers, and we are never afraid of
nothing, our eyes is always on the look-out day and night ;
there's no stowing away under the lee of the long-boat ;
we stands and face it ' as Jeffrey faced the cat:' no men
who goes to sea keeps a better look-out than we do. The
' Hurricane ' has been in every gale of wind that has
blow'd on the North Sea for the last six years, and that's
as long as she has been built. She has never exempted
any gales at all ; she has been through December gales
and all, and she has not lost a pound's worth of bulwark

80

TEAWLEES IN A GALE.

all the time. I never knowed her to blow away her jib
ever since I belonged to her, and she will come about in
any weather, and will twist about like a top ; anyhow, I
know what she can do and what she can't do, and I can
make her talk a'most. No big ship can do what we
trawlers can do, and we have to alter for every ship. If
there is a bit of a popple at all, a big ship will lay rolling
about in the sea just like a 'half-tide rock,' while our
little things are dodging about like ducks, and the ' Hur-
ricane ' is as upright as a house. The seas are some-
times terrible high, we can't see a great three-masted
ship a mile away as she faUs in the bend of the great
waves.

" We trawlers save many a ship's crew from wrecks ;
four ships' crews were brought in this season, and we get
nothing at all hardly for our trouble. As for English
crews, we never get a halfpenny ; we sometimes get some-
thing from foreigners, for the foreign King often sends us
over a medal or something. I lately saved a ship's crew
in my smack, and had to leave my work for six days to
deliver that lot at Yarmouth, and what's more, we had to
grub 'em all the time. When we first picked 'em up, the
Captain, he cried and promised aU sorts of things, what
he was a going to do, but I never got as much as a pin's
point; I never heard anything more about this captain, or
his men either, after they once got safe ashore. I have
scores and scores of times seen ships laying without a
stitch of canvas up ; but if there is anything in distress
in sight, we never leaves 'em ; for we likes to save life
if we can.

" We know our way about the North Sea well; the sun

FISH AT GREAT GRIMSBY DOCKS. 8L

gives us our latitude, and our longitude is our lead : we
know every mile of the ground, by the cast of the lead ;
the soil which comes up on the grease at the bottom of the
lead, tells us where we are, and that's how we works the
oracle, if there ain't no sun. Sometimes we never sees
the sun, nor nothing else for a long time. Yet we keeps
our course, and don't get a mile out of the line, one way
or the other.

"We trawlers often lose our nets on wrecks at the
bottom of the sea ; the * Hurricane ' lost hers last
voyage ; it caught on a wreck on a Sunday, and we rode
to it as to an anchor till ten o'clock on Monday night,
and then the warp parted ; we lost the whole kit and
seventy fathom of rope, and it will cost a tidy lot of
money to replace the gear. About eight hundred sail
fish tlie North Sea ; they come from Scarborough, Hull,
Grimsby, Yarmouth, and other places. We can begin
trawling fifteen or sixteen miles from Spurn Point, and
there is smooth sand as fine as silk from Spurn Point to
Horn Eeef, forty miles to the east of Heligoland, and
also right across to Norway. The trawling ground is so
big that these eight hundred trawlers are nothing to the
space they have to fish, and sometimes we do not see any
vessel for hours, although they're all on the fishing ground.

" Our trawl-beam is 42 feet long ; the foot-rope is 84
feet long, and 15 inches round; the smallest mesh of the
net is 2 ^ inches. The trawl is down about six hours, more
or less, and in the summer from dark to daylight. We
work in thirty to forty fathom water in winter; in summer
we work in shore from twenty-six to twenty-eight fathoms
of water.

a

8-2

HABITS OF DEEP-SEA FISH.

" We consider from fourteen to fifteen ton of fisli a fair
catch, but the catch depends very much upon the wea-
ther. If the weather is fine we should catch double that
number of fish. It's a'most always either a calm or a
gale in the North Sea. If it is very bad we lays-to till
the right weather comes, but we often fish in very bad
weather. There is not much current in the North
Sea.

" I can give you the list of the catch of one trawler as
follows : — Seventy kid of haddocks (two hundred weight
in each kid) — five score of turbot — forty boxes of plaice
— two boxes of soles — twelve score of cod — and four very
large sturgeons. This was exactly her voyage, and she
was gone eleven days. I have known another vessel
bring in as much as one hundred and ten kid of had-
dock, but she was gone a few days longer. We pack fish
and ice together. We never use the same ice twice, and
ice is often very expensive. It costs from three to six
pounds every voyage.

" In the winter time the fish are in the deep sea ; in the
summer months there are few fish in the middle of the
sea. The cod spawn about March, in deep water in the
Swatchway, at the Doggerbank. In May and June the
soles, plaice, etc., leave the deep water and go to the
German shore into from nine to fourteen fathoms. I
have often seen the spawn run out of the fish when taken
out of the net, but never saw this out in the deep sea.

" I never saw anything like spawn or young floating on
the water. I have read the accounts in Land and Water,
and I must say I hold with a proper close time along
shore. I have been forty-two years fishing in the North

FISH AT GREAT GRIMSBY DOCKS. 83

Sea, and there are now as many fish there as ever there
was. I don't see no difference.

" The boats that fish along shore should come to sea, as
they ought to do, and fish fau'. I should not be surprised
if the brood was very soon spoiled and destroyed by
small-meshed nets within the three-mile limit from the
shore."

This part of Captain Hill's statement is of great import-
ance— it quite agrees with my own ideas, viz., that the times
and places of the spawning of sea fish should be ascer-
tained by gentlemen who are perfectly competent to under-
take that office ; and that a close time for sea fish along
shore should be fixed according to the facts so ascertained.
Captain Hill's evidence that the flat-fish leave the deep
waters, and migrate for spawning purposes towards the
land in the summer time, is quite in accordance with
the results of my own abeady recorded observations. It
is in these comparatively shallow waters that small-
meshed trawl nets are used in the summer months, and
doubtless destroy the young fry in tons.

As the efforts of salmon protectors are directed to
guarding the spawning fish, and preserving the fry, so
should the efforts of sea fish protectors be directed to
these same important and vital points in the interest of
the sea fisheries.

" We keeps a good look-out for steamers at night : if the
trawl is down we are done for, we can't then shift for
the steamer. When the trawl is down we carry a light at
the masthead ; and if we see the steamer coming too nigh,
we light a large ' flare up,' like a bonfire, that they may
see which way our head is, and steer clear of us.

o 2

84>

STEAMBOATS V. TRAWLERS.

" The steamers look out for us, not we for them. They
make a terrible noise with their whistles, and we can hear
'em a long ways off — three or four miles. If there is any
possibility, they keep out of our way ; but we had a
narrow squeak* once in a fog. We could have stepped

* A "Steamship Oflacer," Mr. W. Jones, late of the P. & 0. Co., is not
satisfied witli this ; he writes : " As far as my experiences in the North
Sea go, I have sometimes found myself in charge of a big steamer
amongst a lot of fishing-boats without a vestige of a light aboard any of
them until within a few ship's length.^, when up goes a light jjist under
your fore-foot, and a collision is only avoided by the utmost exertion on
board the steamer. I remember on one occasion, after a ' narrow squeak'
like the above, we had scarcely time to breathe our congratulations and
curse the meanness and stupidity of the fishing-smack people for risking
their lives and ours for the sake of a shilling's worth of oil, when the man
on the look-out shouted, ' Bright light on the starboard bow,' immedi-
atdy followed by ' Bright light on the port bow ' and ' Bright light right
ahead,' — all fishing-boats within a pistol-shot of the ship. We were then
under full steam. We managed to get through the fishing vessels some-
how. If I had knocked one over, the men would have sworn they had
their lights up, the steamship owner would have had to pay damages,
and I, as ofiicer in charge of the steamer, should have been discharged
with a blemished character.

" A steam-ship is not a huge snorting monster going about the ocean
trying to run over .'sailing ships, or at least not trying to avoid them, for
nothing is farther from the fact. No one who has not had charge of
the deck of a passenger steamer on a dark night, with perhaps two or
three hundred lives in his hands depending on his judgment and vigi-
lance, can understand the anxiety attending this position, and how
desirable it is to give other vessels a wide berth. But they frequently
do not give us fair play, either by ignorance of, or inattention to, the
rules of the road, not showing their lights, or by getting in a panic and
tacking about to get out of the way — the worst thing they could do, for
they thereby upset aU the calculations of the steamboat ofiicer. If small
vessels could only be induced, or forced, to show good lights, and stand
on regardless of steamers, collisions would not so frequently occur.
This seems to me a matter in which the general public should feel an
interest as well as nautical men, for why should a trumpery little vessel,
as we should call them, such as a brigantine or schooner, of, say two

FISH AT GREAT GRIMSBY DOCKS.

85

aboard the steamer as she came alongside at full speed.
I told the captain he wanted reporting, he did ; but I
didn't do it. It was a vessel from Hull ; I knowed who
she was. The Captain asked me, as we passed, where he
was, and I was fool enough to tell him. I knew where I
was to an inch. A Grimsby trawler was, to my know-
ledge, cut in half by a steamer, and the owner's son was
drowned in his berth. All the rest got aboard the steamer.
The lad was asleep below when the steamer struck the
smack.

" The thresher sharks just do serve out the whales. The
sea sometimes is all blood. A whale once got under our
vessel — the Hurricane — to get away from these threshers,
and when she was there we was afraid to throw a rope
overboard, almost to walk about, for fear she should
chuck her tail and punch a hole in our vessel. She was
full length, in water as clear as gin, right under our
bottom, and laid as quiet as a lamb for an hour and a
half, and never moved a fin. Where they had been
a-thrashing of her the sea was just like blood. I have seen
them 'ere threshers fly out of the water as high as the
masthead, and down upon the whale, while the swordfish
was a-pricking of him up from underneath. There is
always two of 'em, one up and one under, and I think
they hunts together, and you can see the poor whale blow
up in great agitation ; and I be bound the pair on 'em
don't leave him until they have had their penn'orth out of

hundred tons and ten men, or less, be allowed to endanger the safety of
a steamship of two or three thousand tons, carrying, perhaps, H.M.
mails, millions of specie, a valuable cargo, and hundreds of Her Majesty's
subjects of all classes, because, forsooth, they are too niggardly to ex-
pond the necessary oil for lamps ? "

86

DEAD WHALES — ICELANDERS.

him. It's just for wengeance as they does it. Whether
Master Whale has offended them or not, it's hard to tell.
If they eats him they must have a tidy blow-out off of
him, but I don't think they lite the oil.

" I saw one engagement off the Staples ; it was all two
or three hours they was at it. I don't think they leave
him till they kill him. We once hit a dead whale on the
broadside as he was floatin' along, belly uppermost. After
we hit him we was afraid he was alive, but he was the
wrong way up to do us any harm. It's a pity we didn't
tow him ashore, as we should have had a tidy prize. He
was a tremendous big fish. He was quite dead, but didn't
appear to stink. He was over eighty feet long, and
longer than our vessel. Some time ago some of our
fellows pitched into a whale, and got four or five tons of
blubber out of him. Six of them tried to turn him over
with tackles, but couldn't move him, and they cut the
blubber off as he lay in the water.

" I have been in Iceknd and seen the sun never set for
five weeks off the reel: I had an argument the other
day about it, an' the person said, ' You know the sun
goes underneath;' 'But,' I says, 'I never lost sight of
him, at any rate— the sun just goes down, and appears to
touch the water, and then rises again.' The Iceland
women are fine-looking women, but the men are poor,
thin fellows ; our chaps used to go and have a ride on
the Httle Iceland ponies, for which they paid fourpence a
ride. The men come over the mountains, from their
huts, to the towns when the copemen (general dealers)
arrives in the harbours to sell their goods from the vessel,
and they get so tight that they cannot even climb on to

FISH AT GEEAT GRIMSBl^' DOCKS.

87

their ponies at night when they goes home again ; and
when they do get on, you should only see them see -saw
as they jogs along. It ain't often they gets a skin-full,
and you should hear the jabber they makes. And you
can't understand them, as they talks Dutch to us— one
language is as good as another. Brandy is only four-
pence a quart, it is corn brandy, and cherry brandy is a
shilling a quart ; it comes from Denmark, and don't they
get tight, that's all.

" The men take large quantities of birds from the rocks,
and exchange feathers and other things they manufacture.
You can see the land in Iceland sixty miles away ; the
mountains are very high. We went into harbour one day
and saw, as we supposed, a fleet of ships coming, which
turned out to be icebergs, and they drove in towards us,
and some grounded in 25 fathoms of water; we were
obliged to stop in the harbour two or three days; the
look of the icebergs is beautiful, like chandeliers in a
drawing-room ; we once had one of our ships jammed up
between two of 'em for forty-eight hours ; the icebergs
must have come adrift from Greenland.

" There are plenty of foxes in Iceland ; all my daughters
have muffs of the skins I have bought there; they are
grey foxes ; every bed I have is filled with feathers I
have bought there ; I paid lOd. a pound, of 18 oz. to the
pound. There are millions and millions of birds about
there, and on an island called Grim's Isle, about forty
miles out to sea : gentlemen's yachts should go out there
in the summer. I should like to get you one of them fish
we calls oak-kettles ; * they catches them off Iceland with

• I do not know what an oak-kettle is. Is it the Basking Shark ?

8S SHIPS BXJEYING THEMSELVES IN SAND.

a line and hook, and puts a tackle on to get them out,
and the liver would fill one of your tins there (holding
2 cwt. of plaster) ; they weighs sometimes 4 cwt. or 5 cwt.
The liver is sold for oil, and the Icelanders cut the fish
up in slips, and dry them, and eat them in winter.

" I have seen nine or ten ships ashore on the Gunfleet
sands, right abreast of Walton-on-the-Naze, and the
greater number bury themselves in the sand, and are lost.
I have travelled that part all hours of the night, and have
had eight hours at a stretch with the lead ; there are so
many lights now that it is seldom a ship gets ashore there,
and an old woman could sail a ship in the Swin. It's
wonderful curious how quick a wreck will bury herself in
the sand ; when the water is away the sand is quite hard,
when the tide is up it's all loose, and the weight of the
ship drags her down, and the sands are so quick they are
regularly on the move when the water gets into 'em ;
perhaps the ship floats out in some other country, as
some people say we stands on the top of Austraha.

" We was once hauling the lines off Saltfleet, and we
hauled up the body of a man on one of the cod hooks,
and we let him go again, and I was frightened to go below
that ere night. I was only a lad then, and hadn't much
pluck about me. We found out after we got to the
Humber that he was a pilot that had been washed over-
board, and he would have been a prize if we had took him
aboard, as he had his watch and money about him.

" I have never seen a salmon jump at sea, but I have
seen cods, coal-fish, and others. We catch curious fish,
but many we take no notice of ; some of 'em is rum-looking
customers. I should like you to take a trip at sea with

FISH AT GEEAT GEIMSBY DOCKS.

89

me in the summer ; you would require half a ship load
of paper to fill up what you would see.

" I have seen plenty of seals in Iceland, and the natives
catches 'em for their skins, and they eats the bodies. We
couldn't eat the stuff they can. In bad seasons, when
the cope vessels can't get in, they are obliged to eat their
dogs, poor things, and they would pick a crumb off the
table. I don't want to go to sea again if I can help it.
I have been 43 years at sea, man and boy, and I have
never missed a winter during all those years. The young
men now are quite a different race ; they are all old men
before they are any age. Some is born old, and ain't got
no life in them. I am as nimble as most of them, and a
deal nimbler. They don't put good timber into half the
sailor lads now. When I see fish in the shops in
London, the price of 'em is quite different from what we
receive for 'em. We fishermen never see a quarter the
price for the fish you pay in London. We have all the job
of catching of 'em, and have the least profits on them."

If any of our friends visit Great Grimsby, they should
call on Mr. Hill. He has now got employment connected
with the railway and fish trade.

About the middle of March, 1873, a favourable oppor-
tunity occurred to me when returning from an inspection
in the north, to visit Mr. Hill and the docks at Great
Grimsby. The most noticeable feature in Great Grimsby
is an immense shed, called the Pontoon. It is about 300
yards long, and the floor of it is frequently covered the
whole distance with freshly-caugbt sea fish, which are sold
by auction on the spot to dealers. Kailway vans are
brought up close to the Pontoon, and the fish are sent off

LIVING COD AND HALIBUTS IN BOXES.

daily by tons upon tons to London, Huddersfield, Hali-
fax, Bradford, Leeds, Birmingham, "Wakefield, and other
large towns. Passing through the Pontoon we get a
good view of the docks. Floating in the water are a
great number of immense boxes, looking like gigantic
dice. They measure about ten feet long, five feet wide,
and four feet deep. Sometimes the boxes are so thick
together that the water can hardly be seen. These
boxes contain live cod, and they get renewed water as
the tide goes in and out, through the holes bored in
their sides. There 'are so many of these boxes floating
about that men and boys are frequently seen walking
about on the top of them, and jumping from one to the
other, over a great extent of the dock. By the kindness
of Mr. Thomas Evans one of these boxes was hauled up
alongside a barge, and the lid opened for my inspection.
The sight was most interesting and curious ; there ap-
peared one solid mass of living cod, all strugghng and
gaping with their immense mouths. This is a sight
worth going all the way to Grimsby to witness.

In another of these boxes there was a large number of
great halibuts. I had never seen a live halibut before.
He is a curious looking fellow, one side brown, the other
a creamy white. The cod will live in the boxes about
eight weeks ; they have no food given them. The hali-
buts will also live from eight to nine weeks. A cod
■weighing fifty pounds is considered to be a large fish : one
was sold last year weighing fifty-two lbs. A seventy-pound
cod is the largest ever known. The largest cod are caught
off Cromer Knowles.

When walking round the dock I saw some men hauling

FISH AT GEEAT GRIMSBY DOCKS.

91

at a rope which was evidently made fast to something very
heavy. When this hody came to the surface, I found to
my astonishment that it consisted of a solid mass of live
cod, each individual fish being tied by the tail to the rope.
When the fish were in the water they spread themselves
out in a circle, looking like a large cartwheel without the
tire, only the spokes much more numerous. When the cod
were hauled up into the air they looked like a rope of
gigantic onions ; the poor cods' tails seemed very sore
and lacerated by the string which fastened them to the
rope. These cod, poor beasts ! must lead a miserable
life, and I think this practice of tying them up very cruel.
Walking about the docks I saw some Dutch fishermen,
very hardy, fine-looking men. I understand they are
very clever " artists," and can catch fish when nobody else
can. The Dutchmen bait with limpets, the Englishmen
use lamperns, and in the cod season a great number of
boys are employed putting lamperns (which are cut into
little pieces) on to the hooks.

The cod, when caught, are put alive into a well inside
the hold of the trawler. They are taken out by landing
nets. The cod will not live long in these wells when the
vessels are in the docks. A very ingenious device for
picking out any dead cod that might possibly remain in
the corners of the well is a kind of gaff, consisting of two
cod hooks hammered quite straight, with the barbs facing
each other.

There are two points requiring serious consideration
in the cod-fishery. The first is the destruction of spawn-
ing fish, both male and female. The cod are killed by a
blow on the head, and I was told that the deck of the

92

COD "SPRAGS."

boat, when cod are being killed for the markets, is actually
milk-white with spawn, and this fearful destruction has
been going on now for years. If I understood aright, the
cod are in the height of spawning about the middle of
February, and this is when the above lamentable sight
can be seen. Surely this must in time produce some
diminution in the number of fish, and I wish I could see
my way clearly as to advising legislation for the future.
The cod-fishers are, I believe, willing that this fearful
destruction should be stopped.

The next question relates to a fish of the cod kind,
called the " sprag." Some suppose that these sprags are
a distinct species of cod, and they call thetn "shore cod."
Others say that they are simply the young of the ordinary
cod. They generally run about the same size. I have now
in my museum a cast of a group of these, sent up to me in
the month of March ; they average about fifteen inches in
length, and two pounds in weight. I have been, and still
am, in communication with Mr. Mudd and other gentle-
men at Grimsby on this important point. These sprags
fetch very little in the market, as they are said never to
have any flavour in them, and are very thin and poor.
The general opinion is that there should be no sprags
caught between April and August, as there is good
evidence to show that the sprag-fishing in the summer
months affects the fishing for the larger cod in the winter
months. In other words, it appears that the sprags are
really young cod, which are not allowed to attain to a
proper size before they are caught. The question, then,
is, whether it is desirable that the sprag-fishing should be
controlled. The cod have been getting scarce the last

FISH AT GREAT GRIMSBY DOCKS. 93

two or three years, and something ought really to be done
to preserve the fishery. The question whether sprags
are really young cod or not could be easily solved by
sending a live specimen to the Brighton Aquarium.

The interest of the trawlers saiUug from Great Grimsby,
in this question, is very great. Each trawling vessel
carries usually five hands, men and boys, and there are
nearly five hundred sail of trawlers working in the North
Sea, and more are added every year ; yet it does not
appear that the supply of fish caught in the open sea is
perceptibly diminishing, and the value of the fish caught
is very great. One halibut has been known to bring four
pounds sterling, and the week before I paid my visit to
Grimsby a halibut* was sold for three pounds twelve and
sixpence. The value of flat fish — such as rokers, skate,
witches — varies very much, according to the supply ; but
at all events, very large sums of money change hands in
connection with the deep-sea fisheries.

I was informed by some gentlemen who were exceed-
ingly civil to me, and who are connected with the fish
trade of Grimsby, that 36,300 tons of fish were sent away
from Great Grimsby last year. Taking the market
prices of all the fish, both the highest prices and the

* In February, 1874, an immense halibut was brought to the London
market. By the kindness of Mr. Dearsley, of 1, Russell Street,
Covent Garden, I was allowed to make an outline of the fish in linen,
and Mr. Searle, my secretary, cut out the shape in board, and we painted
it. This fine fish was 6 ft. 3 in. long, 3 ft. 11 in. wide, and weighed nearly
2 cwt. I regret I could not afford to cast him. About the same time I
cut out the outline of a huge skate, which measured G ft. 10 in. long with
the tail ; width 5 ft. 3 in. Both these specimens are now at my
museum.

94

A CLOSE TIME FOR SEA PlSff.

lowest, it would appear that the average market value of
a ton of fish would be ;G15. If, therefore, we multiply
36,300 by 15, we shall get the enormous sum of £544,500
worth of fish sent away from Great Grimsby in one
year.

The general opinion seems to be that there should be
a close season for sea-fish within the three-mile limit
during April, May, and June ; that the large trawlers do
no harm out at sea, but that the smaller ones do mischief
trawling close in shore at the time the fish are spawning.
Some vessels go two hundred and forty miles from land
before they begin fishing. I was informed that the
trawling-ground may be said to extend from the North
Foreland to Duncansby Head, in the Pentland Firth,
and from the coasts of England to those of Norway, or
about five hundred miles long, and from three to four
hundred miles wide. The captain of one of the trawlers
stated to me he had been out on some of the besttrawling-
grounds within this space, and although he had remained
out at sea for nearly three weeks, he sometimes saw but
one other trawler the whole of that time. It was a very
pretty sight to see the trawling vessels going out of the
harbour. They were towed by ropes alongside the quay,
and when they got to the end of the quay, the tide — for
there happened to be no wind — dispersed them over the
broad expanse of sea.

During my visit to Grimsby, I was accompanied by my
old friend, Mr. Hill, whose experiences I have related
above. One or two of the vessels stuck in the mud going
out of the harbour. Mr. Hill explained" that this is not
an uncommon occurrence when the men on board are

PISH AT GREAT GEIMSBY DOCKS.

95

not in a particular hurry to go to work. There is an old
sajung at Grimsby that "it always takes a gallon of water
to get a trawler out of harbour, but she can come in when
there is only a pint."

In the club-house opposite the Pontoon I was very
hospitably entertained by Mr. Mudd and several other
gentlemen connected with the fish trade, who were kind
enough to give me a list of fishing smacks.

From this it appears that there were 36.9 vessels sail-
ing from Grimsby, eleven from Hull, five from Goole,
two from Lancaster, one from Preston, one from Ipswich,
fifty-eight from London, one from Eamsgate, and two
from Dartmouth. The first name is Aello. The list
is worth studying to see the curious collection of names
which have been given by the fishermen to their boats.
Some are classical, some are poetical, some are witty.
Here are a few of them, — Luck's all. Emu, Cockatoo,
General Havelock, Samaritan, Emma, Ebenezer, Jupiter,
Saucy Lass, Blue Bell, Ely, It, Harlequin, Eel, Mars,
"Wasp, Maid of Honour, Snipe, What's-that-to-You, Mer-
maid, Wilberforce, British Lion, Tickler, John Bright,
Dido, Moth, Waterloo, Smelt, &c.

Seeing, then, that we have no less than 443 English
trawlers at work in the North Sea, and that the money
value of the fish sold in one port alone is nearly ,£550,000
in one year, I think the reader will agree with me that
the subject of deep-sea fishing is of considerable national
importance, and requires further consideration from
Government, especially as regards the mesh of nets, and
close time within the three mile limit, during the spring
months.

" LITTLE JEMMY," THE SUBICATE.

In December, 1871, a Lady who was about to leave'
London asked me if I would like to take charge of a
" Prairie dog." It was a great pet, and she did not like
to send it to the Zoological Gardens. Of course I
accepted the offer. When the little animal arrived home,
and I turned him down on the floor out of his cage, I at
once saw that he was no " Prairie dog "—the " Prairie
dog " being an American animal, like a marmot — but that
he was the Zenick or Suricate of Southern Africa. His
mistress had named him " Jemmy," and he knew his name
quite well. In general appearance Jemmy is not unlike a
mongoose ; he is about the size of a very large rat, and has
a very pretty little head, like that of the hedgehog ; his
eyes are very bright, and he jerks his head about in the
most knowing way possible ; he was perfectly tame at once,
and ran about the house, up and down stairs, with a quick,
active, restless movement; he visited each room of the
house in turn, and pried most inquisitively into every hole
and corner, especially mouse-holes, and cracks in the
floor. He always runs about my table at breakfast time,
and invariably scrapes out the sugar from the basin and

" LITTLE JEMMY," THE SURICATE.

97

the salt from tlie salt-cellar, with his long bear-like
claws.

He has made friends with the monkeys, who have
taught him to steal ; and if I am not very sharp, he will
drink up all the milk or else upset it ; his head just fits
into the milk-jug. When he first arrived I thought I
would try him with an egg ; so I sent the page-boy John
for one, which, after a few minutes' delay, he brought up.
I put Jemmy on the floor with the egg ; he scratched it,
then smelt at it with his pointed nose, and immediately
bolted. I thought this very odd, as the suricates when
at home are known to be great egg-eaters. A minute or
two afterwards I found out the cause of the phenomenon,
for on picking up the egg I found that it had been boiled
just before the boy brought it up ; it was quite hot, and
of course poor Jemmy had burnt his nose when he had
attempted to crack the shell with his teeth. Jemmy soon,
however, made short work of an unboiled egg which I
immediately sent for for him. At breakfast time, now, I
always have a bother to keep Jemmy away from the eggs
after they are opened, for he has learned to eat them
boiled as well as raw.

It is the funniest thing in the world to see him sit up
and look out of the window; he rears himself up on his
hind legs, and in this attitude he looks just like a pen-
guin, as he hangs his fore-paws down in the same position
that the penguin hangs its wings. He will sit in this
penguin-like fashion in the window for hours looking at the
carriages and people in the street ; he will also sit in front
of the fire inside the fender, or at the corner of the table
nearest the fire, and warm his stomach. If he has been

H

98

JEMMY AND THE POLICE.

running about much, he will warm himself first and then
go into his cage and have a nap. He sleeps with his head
between his hind legs, and looks like a round ball of fur.

One Sunday night Jemmy was missing, and it was
supposed that he had gone out of the front door, which
had been left open a few seconds at church time. "We
hunted high and low and could not find him ; I imme-
diately sent up to my friend Mr. Nicks, Inspector of the
Albany Street Police-station, who kindly gave the men on
night duty strict orders to look out for him ; so that the
whole of the S division were on the look-out for little Jemmy
all night. When I came down to breakfast next morning,
I was delighted to find Master Jemmy sitting on the corner
of the table warming himself as usual. It appears that
when John the page went to bed on Sunday he found
Jemmy in the middle of the bed coiled up under the
clothes. Jemmy did not like getting up in the morning.

When he is running he keeps up an incessant little cry,
wliich reminds one much of a match being scratched on
a box for ignition ; he can also, when alarmed, utter a
sharpish bark. The lady who gave him to me said the
bark of a dog would kill him, as a dog once barked in
the street and he went over the side of the stairs down
another flight, and was nearly killed. Strange to say, in less
than two days after he came to me, he made friends first
with the cat, and afterwards with both the dogs, and he
now seeks them out himself at the bottom of the house.
The first two days the dogs ran away from J emmy, but
now they curl up on the mat together, Jemmy finding that
the fur of the dogs' long coats keeps him warm. At the
first introduction the cat went up the chimney straight off.

"little jemmy," the SURICATE. 99

I wish she had never come down, I cannot bear this cat.
The servants call her " Mollydods." It is a French cat,
and three parts a fool, and I have every reason to believe
that this brute has killed my singing-mouse, which for
many weeks had been running about among the boxes
of sample oyster-shells behind the casts of salmon in my
study. One evening I found " Mollydods " in my room,
and I have never heard the poor singing-mouse pipe
up since.

Jemmy has made friends with the monkeys. The
"old Hag" considers him beneath her notice, and does
not even grunt at him; but "Tiny" torments his life
out when she is let out of the cage. The suricate's tail
is a capital thing for her to pull, and she is so wonder-
fully quick that poor Jemmy has no chance to retaliate.
One day I caught Master Jemmy sitting on his haunches,
staring very intently at the old Poll parrot, and I
firmly believe that he would have nipped the parrot's
head off, if he could have had his own way. This bird,
however, — she is a wonderful talker — has held her own
against any carnivorous pet for some years ; and I rather
think Master Jemmy has had a taste of her powerful beak^
At all events, the bird and Jemmy seem to be very good
friends now. The greatest treat Jemmy can have is a
live mouse. Mice are now getting scarce in the house.
When a mouse is let out of the trap Jemmy has him in a
moment, and kills him instantly by a nip of his sharp teeth,
and sets to work and eats him up, skin, bones, and all, just
as one eats a fried sprat or a roast lark. He examines the
mouse-trap several times in a day. At first he used to
scratch at the traps, and " throw " them; now he only sniffs

II 2

100

THE " DIET OF WORMS."

at them and passes on. In his own country I expect his
especial business is to eat small rodents and the eggs of
birds that lay on the ground. His claws are admirably
adapted for scratching, and doubtless he digs mice out
of their holes. Jemmy, for his size, must haye a large
brain, for he is most intelligent, — much more so than a
mongoose, or other creatures of the kind. If any lady
wants a nice, affectionate, interesting, domestic pet, she
cannot do better than to get a " Jemmy ; " they are not so
mischievous as a monkey, never bite, are very playful,
very amusing, and good-tempered.

One day John brought Jemmy up to me decidedly ill.
He spun round and round on the floor like a mad thing.
" Poor little fellow," I said, " what's the matter ? " So I
nursed him, and he only grunted his gratitude. I had up
all the servants and took evidence. It appeared that
Jemmy had gone out into the garden — a London garden
— out of the open window. I saw my neighbour's
gardener working, and at once thought lie had struck
him. On inquiry, the man (who was very civil) assured
us that he had never struck Jemmy at all; but, as he was
digging the ground, Jemmy followed him, and had eaten
seven large lob-worms right off one after the other. 0
tempora, 0 mores ! Enough to make anybody ill, I
thought; so I brought my professional knowledge to
bear and Jemmy was himself again, in spite of the " Diet
of Worms."

I am sorry to say, however, that, since the above was
written, little Jemmy is dead, and I am more sorry he
died in great pain. I found that the cause of death was
a ball of cotton-wool in his stomac"h.

EAT WITH HAM-BONE ON HIS NECK.

By the kindness of Mr. Taylor, the civil and intelligent
ofl&cial at the Waterloo Railway Station, I received,
in May, 1867, the most remarkable rat it was ever my
luck to behold. The poor thing has a bone collar round
its neck ; this collar is evidently the section of a pig's
thigh-bone. It is a little larger and broader than a
gentleman's full-sized finger-ring. The only way I can
account for the bone being on the rat's neck — unless it was
put there by human hands — is that when he was young
he had been stealing and gnawing at a rasher of ham.
During his work he had, unfortunately for himself, thrust
his head through the ring-shaped bone, the set of his
head and the size of his ears not enabling him to pull it
off again. As the rat grew larger (he was about half-grown
at the time I had him) of course the bone got tighter, and
his neck is considerably diminished and elegantly fashion-
able. The neck I observed was in a considerable state
of inflammation ; but as the rat ran about his open wire
cage, I poured warm water on it with a large sponge •
The poor little animal stood still, raising himself on his
hind legs, and seemed to much enjoy the ease the fomen-
tation evidently afforded. Having fomented him awhile,

102

MOUSE TRAPPED BY AN OYSTEE.

I caught him, and placing him in a cloth, operated with a
sharp lancet on a swelling under the jaw, caused by the
pressure of the ring. The poor thing was very much
relieved by what I had done for him, and the ring seems
certainly looser. By judicious treatment I had hoped to
keep this rat alive with the collar round his neck, and
make " a perfect cure " of him, but ultimatel}'' I thought
the most merciful thing would be to kill the rat and set
him up as a preparation in spirits. This I did, and the
rat with the bone collar is now in my museum.

The subject of rats naturally suggests mice. The rat
with his bone collar reminds me of a curious specimen I
have in my museum, of a mouse caught by an oyster.
The oyster is a fine, well-grown five-year-old Whitstable
native, and between its shells is firmly fixed a poor little
mouse, the head and shoulders of which are thus en-
trapped. My interpretation of this fact is as follows : —
The oyster was put on the kitchen or larder floor; he
then opened his shells as oysters always will do under
such circumstances ; and the mouse — a young and inex-
perienced mouse — put his head in between the shells to
nibble the beard of the oyster, who instantly closed them
and made the mouse a prisoner.

This reminds me of the story of the nigger, who put
his tongue in between the shells of a gaping oyster,
which instantly closed his shells upon his tongue. The
nigger yelled famously. He was chafifed for yelling so
much. " Why, the oyster has no teeth," said his friend.
"No, massa," said Sambo, "he got no teeth, but by
gorra he hab very hard gums."

SINGING MICE.

Now mice sometimes sing ; a musical mouse has been
l^resented to me. When first brought into my study, the
mouse refused to "tune up," and looked silly and
frightened. At last, all of a sudden, she put her little
paws against the bars of the cage, and began singing
away famously. The song is a little sharp note, uttered
continuously. Translated into words, the song was some-
thing like this, " Twit a witter, twit a witter." Some-
times the mouse would sing clolce piano and then forte.
The little beast appeared to me to have two octaves, i.e.,
it could sing its song in a low key and in a high key, and
change quickly from one to the other. During the per-
formance the chest was palpitating violently, and the little
cleft nose moving about, but there seemed to be no forced
exertion at all. The real secret of these musical powers
in the mouse is not, I believe, known. Dr. Crisp, of
Chelsea, informed me that he thought the singing was
caused by the presence of a parasite in the liver. I have
a specimen, in spirits, of a singing mouse, in which this
parasite is certainly plainly visible, but I am not at all sure
that other mice also, who are not musical, have not this
parasite. The song is a genuine song — as good and as

104

A MUSICAL PARTY.

musical as that of a lark on a fine summer morning. I
thmk we should take a rather more sentimental view of
the matter, and call it a love song. Mice, I believe,
somewhat resemble birds in their anatomy. Certain
individual mice may be gifted with the power of a bird-
like song, and I fancy singing mice are not so uncommon
as they are generally supposed to be. Their concerts do
not generally begin till a late period of the evening, and
•this may be one reason why we are not often present
when the Chairman raps the warm hearthstone in front of
the kitchen fire and cries out : " Gentlemen and ladies,
the musical mouse will oblige next. After him, Mr.
Cricket will give his celebrated solo performance on the
banjo. Pray silence, if you please, for Mr. Mouse."

LEADEN PIPE GNAWED BY EATS.

— • —

My friend, Mr. P. M. Burgess, has kindly given me a
most interesting piece of leaden pipe. It is six inches
long, and two inches in diameter. It presents a wide gap
four and a half inches long, and about two in width,
running down nearly the whole of its extent. The edge's
of this gap present minute grooves close to each other.
On examining them it is quite evident that they are the
mai-ldngs of the teeth of rats — minute particles of lead,
the result of these gnawings, can be seen at the bottom
of the pipe as it is laid down flat, which I assume was its
original position.

It appears that this pipe carried the greasy water from
the kitchen at 119, Wood Street, Cheapside. The rats
gnawed at it, no doubt, to get at the water, and possibly
the grease also. These little animals cannot live long
without water, and they will brave almost any danger to
get at it. The question arises, how did the rats know
that if they gnawed the pipe they would find water ? Is
it that they heard the sound of it as it rushed through
the leaden tube ?

The engraving represents an exactly similar case of a

106

LEADEN PIPE GNAWED BY RATS.

leaden pipe gnawed by rats, which I have had in my

collection some time, and which was given me by Mr.
George Pollock, surgeon to St. George's Hospital. The

A rat's depeedations.

107

pipe was laid down on the hospital premises. The
markings of the rats' teeth in the lead can be plainly
seen in the engraving.

Eats will also gnaw wine casks, and drink the wine.
I have recorded a case of this in my " Curiosities of
Natm-al History," first series.* It was reported that there
was a ghost in the house — a gentleman's house near
Axminster, Devon. Precautions were taken to fight the
ghost, which turned out after all to be simply all the rats
in the parish having a " free and easy," and getting
screwed on some sweet home-made wine which had just
been prepared by the lady of the house, and to get at
which they had gnawed a great hole in the barrel.

Since the Exhibition of 1874 closed, and the refresh-
ment rooms went away, the poor " Exhibition rats " have
been very hard up for food, and they now come and try
to eat my live fish, and steal my salmon eggs.

Mr. W. Frazer, M.E.I.A., Lie. Coll. Physicians, Dublin,
suggests another explanation of the fact of lead pipes
being gnawed by rats. He does not consider that these
rodents cut across the pipes to get at the greasy water
contained in them ; and he sent me a drawing of a gas-
pipe of lead similarly gnawed through, which he thinks
points to a different conclusion. He says : —

" This gaspipewas eaten away about fifteen months ago
in a large establishment in this city, and the consequent
escape of gas was, as may be expected, so great as to
produce much annoyance. It lay under the flooring of a
room in the third story, and beneath was a large ware-
room. The gentleman who used the upper room, finding
• Published hy R. Bentlcy and Son, New Burlington Street.

108

RATS AND SEWERS.

the escape of gas offensive, went to try for its source with
a lighted candle, and applied it to a mouse -hole in the
skirting. The mixture of air and gas (which is well known
to chemists to he far more explosive than pure coal gas)
instantly hlew up, hurling the flooring upwards, and the
ceiling of the room underneath fell almost entirely, pro-
ducing considerable damage. It was fortunate there
was no one injured by its fall. It took place in the
evening, when the persons who worked there were absent,
but the incautious experimenter got a practical lesson on
the danger of gas explosion he is never likely to forget.

" I would suggest that rats and mice, like rabbits, are
fond of keeping their teeth at work, and a lead pipe
cannot be much harder than any description of wood
which these creatures work through. Eats will mine for
considerable distances to reach water, and medical men
weU know the danger of rat-holes forming communications
with sewers and receptacles of decaying matter, and the
springs or pumps too often placed for mere convenience
in contiguity with the ash-pit or manure-heap ; but this
is not a sufficient explanation for a rat trying its teeth on
a gaspipe.

" By-the-bye, why attribute the mischief to rats exclu-
sively ■? Could not our little gnawing friend the mouse
make his way through lead pipe also ? I have no
proof of his felonious deeds in this direction, but the size
of the teeth marks in the specimen now before me would
lead me rather to attribute the destruction to mice than
rats. I find that rats are well known in Dublin to eat
across lead pipes. A gentleman residing in Grafton
Street told me this day that rats had so often eaten

LEADEN PIPE GNAWED BY RATS.

109

through the soft lead gaspipe in his house, that he found
it best to replace the lead with copper tubing,"

Mice are, no doubt, almost as destructive in this way
as the larger animals, the rats. Not very long ago an
old ship, used as a sort of sailors' home, reading-room,
church, &c., in St. George's Dock, Liverpool, suddenly
foundered in consequence of leaks made by the rats and
mice on board. If the animals wanted to get to the
water in this case, one would have thought they could
have foimd an easier way by going overboard, instead of
gnawing through the ship's side.

PUSS, THE BLIND MAN'S DOG.

About Christmas time, 1872, after several hours of hard
work, writing my official report at my office, No. 4, Old
Palace Yard, I found on turning out that the weather had
become bitterly cold, blowing half a gale of wind, with
sleet. Running along the not particularly-well-lighted
pavement I nearly stumbled against a man standing at
the corner of the street by St. Margaret's Church ; luckily
the glitter of metal on his cap caught my eye, and looking
at this I saw that it was a brass plate with the word
" Blind " engraved on it. The poor man was tapping his
stick against the curb-stone, apparently wanting to cross
over the street ; so I waited quietly to see what would
happen. He had with him a little dog tied to a string ;
the dog was in the roadway pulling at the string while his
master kept tapping the edge of the pavement, and evi-
dently intently listening for the sound of wheels. At last
the man said " Go; " in an instant the little dog ran across
the street, pulling, with open mouth and extruded tongue,
at the string, like a greyhound in slips. I was pleased to
see that the pair of them arrived quite safe at the other
side. I at once entered into conversation with the blind
man, and, wishing to obtain his history, I told him to call

PUSS, THE BLIND MAN's DOG.

Ill

the next evening at my office as he went to his usual
stand.

I now give the story of this poor man as he told it me :
— "My name is James Stocks. I am twenty-eight years of
age; and I live at No. 1, Laundry Yard, Westminster.
I have been blind with both eyes [the poor fellow is also
otherwise terribly disfigured] three years next April. I
lost the left eye first with a blight [he must have had
ulceration of the cornea, as the eyeball was nearly empty],
and shortly afterwards a cataract came in the right eye.
I cannot see light from darkness. The middle of the
night is just the same to me as the middle of the day, and
the middle of the day the same as the middle of the night.
I used to get work sweeping mud in the streets for Mr.
Ferguson. My sight went very gradually, and latterly I
worked in great fear, as I could not afford to leave off.
At last I was knocked down by a hansom cab, and one
day, at the top of Eochester Eow, a break with two horses
came along, and I was struck down by the pole, and
somehow I got in between the two horses, which began to
jump about fearful. I was so much hurt that I was
frightened to work in the streets any more. The acci-
dent was no fault of the young man as drove the horses."

" Well my man," said I, " how long have you had your
little dog ? "

" Well, sir," he said, " my dog is as good to me as a
pair of eyes. I calls her 'Puss.' She is two years and
a-half old, and I gave two shillings for her off a stranger.
A blind man told the stranger to bring her to me, as he
knew I wanted a ' guide-dog.' I had to train her myself.
I took her to the safest place I knew, that is by the side

112

PUSS ON DUTY.

of a long blank wall. At first she would, only get lagging
behind me, but I took her out for half an hour every day,
and in two or three weeks she learnt to lead me quite well.
It took me longer to trust to the dog tlian it did for the
dog to learn to lead me along, and now I can go anywhere
with her. She knows her way as well as I do, and I
have never been run over since I have had my Puss. I
feeds her on cat's-meat, and I gives her an extra half-
IDennyworth whenever I can afford it. I cannot afford any-
thing better than cat's-meat for her, but she wiU eat
cakes, sweetstuff, apples, pears, and almost anything that
the children give her in the streets. She will also eat
any sort of pudding, and she has had several pieces of
plum-pudding given to her this Christmas time.

" I comes out with her every morning from twelve to
three, and at night from six to ten, and I stands on the
other side of Westminster Bridge by St. Thomas's
Hospital, selling cigar-lights, and sometimes the people
gives me a few halfpence. It's mostly the poorer sort as
gives me. I don't often get a bit of silver. I am obliged
to go out in all weathers, or I should have nothing to eat ;
whether it's blowing, wet, or cold, I has to go. When it's
very cold I carries a little chair in a bag at my back, for
Puss to set down upon to keep her off the damp cold
stones. I also ties a little bit of carpet on her in cold
weather, as I feels more for my little dog than I do for
myself as she sits there a-shiverin'. I always carries a
little water for her in a bottle in my pocket. I gives it
her in a penny tin mug, and. Lor' bless you, the little dog
knows her bottle and tin mug when I pulls 'em out of my
pocket as well as ' sighted people ' do a cup and saucer.

PUSS, THE BLIND MAN's DOG.

113

[It appears that blind people call those who, happilj^,
are not so afflicted, "sighted" people.] As I stands
at my post by St. Thomas's Hospital, Puss sits by the
side of me as quiet as possible. When she sees any-
body a-looking at me she stands up on her two hind
legs, wags her tail, and asks for something for me. I
think she knows them again as have ever spoken to me
once. I can't keep her down; just you try her now, sir,
and see if she will do it ; " so I rose from my seat, and
•went towards the poor blind man. In an instant, Puss,
who had been curled up at her master's feet, was upon her
hind legs begging for him, while every now and then she
gave a sharp yap, as much as to say, " Do give us some-
thing ; we are both very poor."

Puss is a very ordinary-looking, half-bred little Scotch
terrier. She is white, with liver-coloured spots. Her
master keeps her very clean. She has a long bushy tail,
^■hich she keeps incessantly wagging, and when engaged in
her daily occupation of begging, wriggles and jumps about
with that peculiar pleased manner which is the language
of dogs when they wish to be noticed. The face of this
little Puss is perfectly beautiful. Her eyes are jet black,
and an almost human intelligence beams from them. She
has long fox-like ears, which, at the least sound or motion,
assume an attitude of intelligent listening. Would that
some painter would take the portrait in oil of this humble
but intelligent and useful little blind man's " guide dog."

" There is one thing," the poor blind man continued,
" that as you are a real gentleman, I should like to call'
your attention to— it's the dog-tax. I has to pay five
shillings a year for my Puss. I've got to pay it, for if they

114.

TAX ON BLIND MEN's DOGS.

takes my dog away it would be as good as taking my sight
away again. Last year a gentleman gave me five shillings
to pay the amount of the licence. I got one last year,
but I am sorry to say it expired on Sunday last, and now
I shall have to begin to save to get a licence for this year;
I likes to make it safe, as I have heard I might get locked
up if I had not got one." Surely this is a case which should
be brought before the attention of the Government, as I
feel sure the Legislature never intended that the tax
should apply to the dogs of poor blind men. I wish some
M.P. would be good enough to take up the question.

The man then continued. " The parish allows me a
shilling a week and two loaves of bread ; when I goes for
my money I can't take my dog, and I feels the miss of
her very much. The other night I had an accident, at
the end of Tufton Street, for I hit my head against the
tail of a furniture van that was projecting across the
street ; there was nobody to mind the van and nobody to
stop me running against it. When I am without my dog
I has to go tapping along the edge of the curb with my
stick to find out the lamp posteses-. I sometimes knocks
my head very hard against them lamp posteses if I have
not got my Puss. But them pillar posteses for letters is
very bad for blind men ; there is no telling where they
are, and they seems to come up suddenly anywheres in the
streets. They sticks 'em up about a foot and a half inside
the curb. When the blind man goes along he keeps feel-
ing the curb with his stick, but the pillar posteses is just
in the line of the blind man's walk, and j ust measures
him in the face when he knocks up against it. Lamp
posteses is bad enough, but them pillar posteses is

PUSS, THE BLIND MAN's DOG. 115,

wuss, but when I has my clog I goes along quite safe
like.

" The otlier day a blind man fell down through an open
cellar-flap of a public-house. Puss saved me once from a
cellar-flap ; she ran me in amongst the barrels— that was
at the 'Jolly Millers,' in Westminster. Cellar-flaps is
regular traps for blind men, I always comes up the same
road every night, along Church Street, Wood Street, Col-
lege Street, and then I passes your door, sir, No. 4, Old
Palace Yard ; my dog is sure to stop there now as she has
once been in ; then I stops by the corner at St. Margaret's
Church where you first saw me. It's not a very difficult
crossing to Westminster Hall, but it's very bad to get
across them two roads, which the cabs uses, as they come
out and in to the New Palace Yard. Them two gateways
is most dangerous ; the cabs keep a coming in and going
out, and don't mind where they are a-running. Puss always
goes over them very quick, but when the Houses of Parlia-
ment are sitting, I am obliged to ask somebody to take
me over, as then I cannot altogether trust to the dog,
there are so many carriages about. One day when I was
crossing, a cab came up suddenly, and Puss jumps behind
me and barks as much as to say there was danger, and to
teU me to stop. I believe she saved my life that time.

" She once saved me from being hurt by a perambulator.
I heard it a-coming smart along the pavement in a narrow
street, but I could not get out of the way though I taps
loud with my stick; what does Puss do but she runs me
right out on to the road, and comes round again right
behind the perambulator ? If anybody had told me a dog
would have done this, I could not have beheved them, but

I 2

116 PUSS AND THE CATS. — GUIDE MONEY.

I knows it for a fact. I don't know who was with the
perambulator. I trusts much to the brass plate on my
cap. It says 'BLIND,' don't it, sir; but my little dog
takes me along as well, and as safe, as I could see to go
if I had got my eyesight.

*' The only fault Puss has is cats. She won't pass a
cat. If she sees a cat sitting up again the railings she
stops directly, and then runs me right up to the cat, and
I must go where she takes me. One day a cat flew out
at her, and scratched her nose. I was afraid she might
hurt my dog's eyes, and I had a hard job to drive that
'ere cat away. It's no use, Puss won't pass a cat if she
sees one in the street or sitting on the area-railings. She
gets on very well with the kitten at home. The two of
'em sleeps together in a half-bushel basket. The kitten
often takes a bit of meat out of the dog's mouth. I always
knows when the kitten robs the dog and has got the meat,
as she growls awful, but if Puss is hungry she will defend
her food then.

" I goes to a blind man's club once a week in West-
minster. There "are some forty or fifty blind men and
women there. We all sits down and a ' sighted man '
reads out loud to us. I never takes the dog there. They
gives each man and woman threepence for somebody to
bring them there. That is what we calls guide-money."

I trust my readers will be interested with this little history
of the poor blind man and his dog Puss. Should any
person who reads the above feel inclined to send him a
trifle towards paying the tax for poor little Puss, and giving
her an extra bit of meat, as well as buying the poor man
some warm clothes and new shoes, I shall gladly pass it

PUSS, THE BLIND MAN's DOG.

117

on to him, and I shall not regret that I happened to meet
with this poor blind wanderer and his faithful little dog in
the streets of our vast metropolis on a cold Christmas
evening.

The above article was copied into several papers, and
in a few weeks I received subscriptions, amounting to
upwards of £A0, for Puss and her master. The list of
subscribers can be found in the " Animal World," * and a
very good drawing of the Blind Man and his Dog, from the
pencil of Mr. Briscoe, appeared in No. 33 of that paper.
The subscribers represented kind-hearted people of all
classes, from Noblemen and Noble Ladies who sent their
sovereigns, to servants who sent their sixpences, and
school-children who sent theii- single penny Queen's
heads. This tells well for the vast amount of true
humanity that exists among English people. I am happy
to say that the blind man has been much bettered in cir-
cumstances through the subscription, and he — and so
Avould " Puss," if she could speak— desires me to return
liis most sincere thanks to those who have been so kind
to him and his dog. They are both (Jan., 1875,) at their
post on the Surrey side of Westminster Bridge.

♦ PubHshed by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals, 105, Jermyn Street, St. James's, London.

USE OF THE GULAR POUCH OF THE
BUSTARD.

By the kindness of Dr. Murie, I am enabled to publish,
a portrait of the bustard in the act of inflating his pouch.
Dr. Murie has lately published the results of his observa-
tions on this subject in the Proceedings of the Zoological
Society. The opening by means of which this pouch is
inflated is thus described : — " On looking into the mouth
of the bird, while the tongue lies between the rami of the
lower mandible, no opening into the gular pouch is seen ;
but when the tongue is raised and the parts held as in
the act of gaping, an aperture easily admitting one's finger
is observed. This is situated beneath, and almost an
inch behind, the tongue itself ; in fact, it lies underneath
the upper larynx, occupying the space between it and the
submandibular deep and cutaneous tissues. The gular
pouch, in fact, appears to me but an unfolding of the
membrane below the upper larynx, developed to a large
size in male bustards only after they attain ripe or old
age. This view, therefore, accounts for its absence in the
young, its moderate size in adults, and its increased
capaciousness in old birds." In Martin's "New Dic-
tionary of Natural History," 1785, the following details

USE OF THE GULAE POUCH OF THE BUSTARD. 119

relative to the bustard are given : — " These birds are
frequently seen in flocks of more than fifty on the exten-
sive Downs of Salisbury Plain, on Newmarket and Eoyston
Heaths, in Cambridgeshire, on the Dorset Uplands, and
even as far north as March or Lothian in Scotland."
The days of the abundance of the bustard in England
are now, unfortunately, past ; and an able paper was read
at the meeting of the British Association at Norwich, by
Mr. Stevenson, on the " Former Abundance of the Bus-
tard in England and the Cause of its Extirpation."
The use of the pouch of the bustard was thus described
A.D. 1785 : — " As a security against drought, nature has
furnished the males with a pouch, the entrance of which
lies immediately under the tongue, and which will contain
near seven quarts of water, and this they fill probably in
order either to supply the hen when sitting, or the young
till they are capable of flying." As the science of natural
history advanced, this idea was questioned. In 1836, the
author of the article on bustards in the " British Cyclo-
paediastates that the conjectures of the use of this
pouch are far from satisfactory. " It has been considered
to be a reservoir for water, but bustards drink very little,
if they drink at all ; and the usual stories of animals
carrying water in any reservoirs within their bodies, either
for their own supply or of that of their young, or for any-
tliing else, have no better foundation than the now-exploded
error, that water for the supply of travellers in the desert
can be had from the reticulated portion of the compound
stomach of the camel. The female bustard wants this
pouch, as also the pendant feathers and the violet-coloured
naked skin on the sides of the neck."

120

STEUCTUEE OF THE POUCH.

Under tlie above circumstances, therefore, it is very
interesting to know the decision which the late learned pro-
sector to the Zoological Society has arrived at relative
to the true anatomy and use of this peculiar organ. In
the Proceedings of the Zoological Society, June 25th,

BUSTAUD WITH POUCH EXTENDED.

1868, Dr. Murie comes to the following conclusions : —
" 1st. There is nothing in the structure of the gular
pouch, in its position, or in the habits of bustards, which
justifies a belief that its use is that of a water reservoir.
2nd. Its nature, etc., equally affords grounds for conside;'-

USE OF THE GULAR POUCH OF THE BUSTARD. 121

ing that it is not a residual sac for food ; the fact of a
trifling quantity of seeds, grass, or leaves being found in
it appears to me only an accidental circumstance, the
absence of great muscularity in the walls permitting the
foreign body temporarily to lie there. 3rd. What has
been observed in the Australian bustard in our gardens
shows that the pouch is a feature connected with the repro-
ductive function, and only a temporary air chamber.
4th. That the gular pouch is an organ of adult growth,
possessed only by the male, and not attaining its full
dimensions imtil the bird has arrived at maturity; to
such circumstances the incidental and non-development
of the organ may be ascribed." The Pouter pigeon has
a somewhat analogous apparatus. I am pleased to find
that my ideas had been anticipated by Dr. Murie, who
says, as an argument for the pouch being simply connected
with the breeding season : " The gaudy peacock swells
out with tremulous emotion, the turkey cock, the tragopan,
and other birds erect their wattles." To this list I may
add the case of the ruffed grouse {Tetrao umbelliis), which
is provided with two air pouches, by means of which it
erects the ornamental feathers of the upper portion of
the breast. By taking the beak of this bird in one's
mouth and blowing, I find that these air chambers can be
inflated ; the same can be done with a Pouter pigeon. In
order to make his observations on this curious subject
complete, Dr. Murie should put up preparations of the
pouches of the Pouter pigeon and of the ruffed grouse by
the side of that of the bustard.

The illustration represents the bustard with his pouch
inflated, or, as the keeper calls it, " showing off." This

122

BUSTARD SHOWING OFF.

occurs in the month of May, and continues into June.
" The neck swells, and the feathers of the lower part
descend gradually downwards in the form of a bag, often-
times nearly reaching the ground. The tail is shot
upwards and forwards over the back, coming almost in
contact with the neck ; in this attitude the bird struts
about in a somewhat waddling manner, the elongated
pouch swaj'ing to and fro. The display occurs chiefly in
the morning or at sundown." The above observations I
think, therefore, are conclusive as to the use of the
remarkable balloon-like bag under the skin of the neck
of Otis tarda.

DINNER OF AMERICAN GAME AT THE
LANGHAM HOTEL.

On Tuesday, February 7th, 1871, I had the great
privilege of being invited by Mr. Morton C. Fisher, of
New York, to an " American dinner " at the Langham
Hotel. A large number of distinguished American gentle-
men were present.

The dinner consisted almost entirely of American
dainties, sent over from the other side of the Atlantic ex-
pressly for this occasion. Upon entering the magnificent
banqueting room we found oysters upon the plates ; these
were the American oysters I have so often described;
they can always be easily recognised by the peculiar black
marking on the inner side of the shell, just at the points
where the ligament which holds the two shells together
is attached. Some English oysters were served at the
same time : the American oysters had a decidedly dif-
ferent taste to the English, but they were by no means
unpalatable, having somewhat the taste of a very good
periwinkle. I was fortunate enough to sit next to a
gentleman (Mr. C. G. Leland) who gave me much in-
formation about the various dishes put before us. He
tells me that the black markings, or " Wampum-spots "

124 AMERICAN OYSTERS. — TERRAPIN SOUP.

in the American oyster-shell were formerly cut out, made
into beads, and used as money or ornaments by the
Indians. These beads were still manufactured, not many
years ago, on the Hudson river, by white men, and sent
to the north-western coast, where they are even now used
by a few remote tribes.

Oysters are exceedingly plentiful in America,* and are
mostly served at table in a cooked state. They are in
some cases so large, that it is said to be impossible to
eat them in any other way. "We had some oysters rolled
into little round balls — fried and covered in bread-crumbs ;
they were very delicious. I should certainly advise those
who are fond of oysters to try this plan with the English
oyster.

The soups consisted of tomato soup, served with dry
sherry, and Terrapin soup, served with milk punch. The
terrapin {Malaclemys concentrica) is a little blackish water-
tortoise, and varies from three to six inches in length.
Mr. Holbrook, as quoted by the Eev. J. C. Wood, writes
as follows : — " The terrapins are very abundant in the salt
marshes around Charleston, and are easily taken when
the female is about to deposit her eggs in the spring and
early summer months. They are then brought in im-
mense numbers to market ; but they are so prolific that
notwithstanding this great destruction, their numbers
appear undiminished. Their flesh is excellent at all
times, but in the northern cities it is most esteemed when
the animal has been dug out of the mud in its state of
liybernation."

* I have a fine collection at South Kensington, in my Fish Museum,
of almost every kind of American Oyster — only the shells, of course.

DINNER OP AMERICAN GAME.

125

By the kindness of Prof. Spencer T. Baird, (Smithson-
ian Institute), Washington, U.S.A., I am enabled to give a
figure of one of the most remarkable adhesions of oysters
that ever came under my notice. As will be observed.

TERRAPIN WITH OYSTER SHELL ATTACHED.

the oyster has attached itself firmly to the shell of a
living terrapin, such as we had for dinner.

It will be seen from the engraving that the oyster
lias taken up its position immediately above the tail.
When the oyster first attached itself, in an early stage of
growth, the terrapin was probably not much troubled by

126 THE PROPER THEORY OF OYSTER GXJLTDRE.

it, but as the oyster became larger it doubtless became

a great nuisance to the unfortunate creature on which it

rode, particularly as the latter was unable to scratch it off.

Oysters do not certainly hybernate ; terrajjius do hj^ber-

nate ; it therefore becomes a curious question how the

oyster managed to get on during the time the tortoise

buried itself in the mud.*

My neighbour was good enough to give me some verses,

from American popular songs, about almost every dish on

the table ; these rhymes were principally made by the

Cuffies, or negroes. The following is a specimen of a

negro ode on terrapins : —

Ebery morning early, massa give me liquor,
Take the paddle wid me, and I pull out quicker.
Den we take the skiff an' row de ribbei; driff,
An' I cotch as many terrapin as we two niggers lifif.

* None of us have yet found out the exact mode by which an oyster is
enabled to anchor itself. One thing, however, is quite certain, that the
shell of the young oyster, when in a growing state, will take an accurate
cast of the object to which it has chosen to fix itself. If this oyster
were detached it would probably be found that the mouldings of the
homy case of the terrapin were reproduced line for line on the mineral-
formed shell of the oyster.

The above specimen is also highly interesting as regards the scientific
theory of oyster culture. In my opinion it is possible to have everything
in perfect order upon an oyster bed ; the cultch may be clean, and there
may be an abundance of parent oysters ; but if the natural conditions
for the well-being of the young spat are not present, no young oysters
wUl be found to adhere to the cultch, and in proportion as the con-
ditions are favourable or not, so the numbers of young oysters fixed will
be larger or smaller. The localities where these terrapins are found
are quiet creeks, etc. ; and where could we have better conditions for
the existence of " heat and tranquillity " than in these creeks ? A
young oyster swimming about in one of these creeks in search of a habi-
tation could not do better than to " sit down " upon the clean polished
shell of a terrapin, and there fix itself for life.

DINNER OF AMERICAN GAME.

127

This terrapin soup is exceedingly good, and I wonder
it is not introduced into England in hermetically sealed
tins, as lobsters and salmon are sent over. Its taste is
not unlike a good turtle soup. Terrapins might be made
to breed in English greenhouses, &c .

The entrees consisted of

Tournedos of buffalo, sauce Italienne ;
Quail, broiled k la maitre d'hotel ;
Salmi of Prairie hen, with truffles.

These were served with Champagne and Bordeaux. The
buffalo was exceedingly tender, more so than any rump-
steak I ever tasted. Buffalo tongue and hump are also very
good. My neighbour had been in the buffalo country, in
Kansas, and he told me many anecdotes of buffalo-hunt-
ing. A new fact he told me is, that when buffalo are on
the run they appear to have an undulating " pitching and
heaving" motion. Among buffaloes proper, are the African
buffalo {Bubalus buffelus)— and the Cape buffalo (Buhalus
caffer), whereas the American buffalo is a bison {Bison
Americanus.) There is a very fine specimen of this animal,
stuffed, in the Liverpool Museum; it is a well-known
animal, whose capture was so well described, some years
since, by the Honourable Grantley Berkeley. There is,
I believe, a story of this animal, that those who skinned
it on the prairie cut off the legs at the knee-joints ; the
stuffed specimen therefore stands not upon his own legs,
which were left in the prairie, but on cow's legs.

I have in my scrap book a most amusing drawing of a
buffalo taking off his skin just as a man takes off his
coat. The skin is coming off at the neck; the head
remains intact. A sportsman in the distance is coming

128 DESTEUCTION OF AMERICAN GAME.

up with the gun ; the buffalo says, " Don't shoot ; take
my robe, and let me go in peace,"

In January when the wolfing season has commenced on
the prairies, the hunter impregnates the carcase of a
buffalo or other animal with strychnine and places it in a
likely position. As many as fifty wolves are occasionally
found dead around the carcase on the following morning.

The quail served at dinner I suppose to be the Ortyx
Virginiana. The flesh was exceedingly good, and very
white : its feet were unfortunately cut off by the cook.
The "prairie-hen" — viz., the Pinnated grouse (Tetrao
ctipido) — was exceedingly good. These birds often ap-
pear in numbers in the London poulterers' shops.*

The haunches consisted of

Haunch of elk, with apple sauce ;
Wild turkey, with cranberry sauce ;
Sweet potatoes and Lima beans.

As usual the dispute as to what was an " elk" turned

* A correspondent in " Land and Water," writes : — " With the close
of January the close season in America for nearly all the upland game
ceases. Water fowl continue in till the spring-. In Florida, deer, woodcock,
quail, turkeys, and snipe may be shot until March, and in Canada female
moose and caribou are in season till February. In the Eastern States
woodcocks and hares are the only game left for shooting until
another season. At a friendly match between some sportsmen of Oxford,
New York, the following bag was made : one fox, two racoons, two wood-
chucks, eight rabbits, seventeen skunks, 338 black and grey squin-els^
206 red squirrels, .S,420 chipmucks, four hawks, ten owls, thirty-five
crows, 244 partridges, seventeen pigeons, eight woodcocks, two wild-
ducks, and one crane. One gun in a week's trip in the wilds of Canada
bagged eleven deer. Three guns from Bismark, banks of Missouri,
killed 246 pinnated grouse in three hours. All kinds of game are
plentiful in this district ; for hundreds of miles on either side of the
river there are very few trees ; in cold weather the grouse congregate on
these, and can be shot in large numbers.

DINNER OF AMERICAN GAME.

129

up. The animal that we English know as an elk is the
moose {Alces malchis), whose natural history has been
exhausted by my friend Captain Hardy. An excellent
picture of two elks, the property his Royal Highness the
Prince of Wales, has appeared in Land and Water
(Aug. 15, 1868, No. 134). The animal caUed " Elk" by
an American is that magnificent stag, the " "Wapiti," or
Carolina stag {Cervus canadensis). This is the animal I
am so anxious to get introduced into Scotland, to increase
the size, weight, and head of the native deer.

The wild turkey was exceedingly good — more tender
than the English turkey. I had never tasted cranberry
sauce before ; it has a nice sharp semi-acid about it, which
goes exceedingly well with turkey, and would probably
be found a great adjunct to roast pheasant. Cran-
berries are to be had at the general shops in London
during the winter. They are principally used, I beheve,
for making tarts. The ^" sweet potatoes" were literally
what their name professes. In taste they were very like
Diascorea batatas, which the Acclimatization Society
tried to introduce into this country. Our efforts, how-
ever, failed, as the roots persisted in growing straight
down to such a depth in the ground that it was next to
impossible to dig them up. My neighbour gave me the
following verses, composed by one Grumbo Cuff, in
which the sweet potato and the turkey are rendered im-
mortal : —

A grasshopper mt on a sweet-potato vino,

Sweet-potato vine,

Sweet-potato vine ;
A big wild turkey came running up behind,

K

130

CANVAS-BACKED DUCKS.

And yanked the poor grassliopper
OfiE the sweet-potato vine,
The sweet-potato vine.

" Yanked" is a good word, wMch I tliink we ought to in-
troduce into this country.

At this stage of the dinner an interval took place,
and to my intense delight the waiter came round with
cigarettes of the most perfect tobacco I ever smoked.
If cigarettes were introduced at an early period of
English public dinners, I feel certain that the host would
keep his guests together much longer than at present,
and that the speeches would be much more eloquent.
Medically speaking, I feel convinced that there is no
greater adjunct to digestion, and no greater prompter of
good fellowship, than a whiff of tobacco. The cigarette
being thrown away, we began again with : —

Eoast canvas-back duck ;
Roast partridge.

Served with Chamberton and Chateau Cos.

I had often heard that the canvas-back ducks are the
finest food that can be placed upon the table ; having now
tasted them, I feel convinced that a better dish does not
exist. This duck is allied to the English pochard duck ;
its name is Fuligula Valesneria. I am told these ducks
derive their name from the appearance of the skin of the
back after the feathers are taken off, which very much
resembles the canvas used by ladies for their Berlin-wool
work. These canvas-back ducks are said to derive their
flavour from feeding on wild celery, to obtain which they
dive to a considerable depth. I do not know what wild

DINNER OF AMERICAN GAME.

131

celery is : I should much Hke to have some seeds. A
duck called the red-headed duck lives with the canvas-
back, and its flesh is almost as good. The following
verses are sung by the niggers about the canvas-back : —

Down de Susquehanna me and bully Jock,
Dar we git the reed-bird, and slay de canvas-back.

Once, upon a drift log, tink I see an alligator,
Scull my boat around and chuck him sweet potato :
I hit him on de head and try for to wix it.
Couldn't fool him bad, couldn't nohow fix it ;
Den I up wid a brick, and hit him such a lick.
And 'twas nufan but a pine log upon a big stick.

EXPEEIENCES OF A WHITSTABLE DIVER.

In July, 1871, I had the pleasure of an interview with
Mr. W. Wood, of Herne Bay, who, after having followed
the business of a diver for upwards of twenty-two years,
has retired after a long and active service. The stories
Mr. Wood told me were so interesting that I obtained his
permission to publish them.

Mr. AVood made his first real start in life by an extra-
ordinary, and as it turned out, a very lucky, piece of
diving. If the reader will look at the map of Ireland, he
will see that outside Belfast Lough, and a little to the
south-west, opposite Donaghadee, are situated the Cope-
land Islands. It so happened that a Whitstable man
was a coastguardsman in this district. He heard a legend
that a ship laden with a heavy cargo of silver had been
wrecked oS the Copeland Islands some half a century
ago. He, therefore, communicated with some of his
friends at Whitstable who were divers. Accordingly,
Mr. Wood and four others put their diving-dresses on
board a vessel, and sailed from Whitstable to Dona-
ghadee.

The story they heard when they got to their destina-

4

EXPEEIENCES OP A WHITSTABLE DIVER. 133

tion was, that the wrecked vessel was in the slave trade,
and that she had on board a large number of slaves when
she struck on the rocks, and also a considerable sum of
money in the form of silver dollars. Nothing would
have been known of the wreck having taken place, had
not somebody discovered human legs projecting above
the surface of the water. It appears that the people on
board the ship had tried to escape, having first filled their
shirt-sleeves with doUars ; but in getting up the rocks
many of them had fallen back and met with an untimely
end, as the weight of the dollars had kept their heads
ixnder water. No one had ever disturbed the wreck since
the vessel went down, so Mr. Wood and his friends set to
work to find out where she was.

They put on their diving-dresses, and for two or three
days walked about to and fro at the bottom of the sea in
about forty feet of water searching for the treasure.
This they did by clearing away the weeds and turning
over the stones with crowbars, and feeling for the dollars
with their hands, as the water was too thick to see. The
wood part of the wreck itself had entirely perished
through lapse of time and the ravages of sea-worms. After a
long and careful search at last they came upon the dollars ;
they were mostly spread about among the stones, but
many had slipped down among a heap of iron ore which
had formed the ballast of the ship. Many of the dollars
were worn thin by the action of the water. Some were
lying separate, others in great lumps, like rocks, soldered
together by iron. In some cases certainly this iron had
once been handcufi-s used for the slaves. Some days the
divers got two hundred dollars, sometimes three hundred.

134

" HAUL AWAY " AT THE LOBSTER.

sometimes a thousand; the best day they got five
thousand, i.e., £1,000. In all, the number of dollars
they got up from the wreck was about twenty-five
thousand, which, when reduced to English pounds, equals
five thousand pounds.

When the dollars were in the sand they took down
sieves and wooden corn shovels, and riddled them out
at the bottom of the sea.

Mr. Wood showed me one of the dollars, which he
always carries about with him. The following is the
inscription: — On one side, " Carolus iiij. Dei Gratia.
1797. Hispan et Ind Eex M 8 E. FM." The coin is
about the size of an old five-shilling piece. The "Divers'
Arms," near the clock-tower at Herne Bay, of which
Mr. Wood is proprietor, owes its existence to the dis-
covery of these dollars.

When hunting among the wreck for the dollars, Mr.
Wood had some curious under-water adventures. One of
the divers complained that he was annoyed by a lobster,
and couldn't work. Mr. Wood learned the whereabouts of
the lobster, and went down after him. He soon discovered
Mr. Lobster sitting under a rock, looking as savage as a
lobster can look. His feelers were pointed well forward,
and he held out his two great claws wide open in a
threatening attitude. Wood, knowing the habits of
lobsters, offered this fellow his crowbar, which he imme-
diately nipped with his claws. Then, watching his
opportunity, he passed his signal-line over the lobster's
tail, made it fast, and signalled to the men above to
"haul away." This they did, and instantly away went
Mr. Lobster flying up through the water into the air

EXPEEIENCES OF A WHITSTABLE DIVEK. 135

above, witli his claws still expanded, and as scared as a
lobster could be.

A great conger- eel also paid the divers a visit. He
was an immense fellow, and kept swimming round Wood,
but would not come near him. Wood was afraid of his
hand being bitten, as a conger's bite is very bad. He
once knew a diver whose finger was seized by a conger.
The brute took all the flesh clean off the man's finger.
A conger is a very dangerous animal to a man when
diving in the water. However, this conger kept swimming
round about Wood, so he took his clasp knife out and
tried to stab him, but the conger would not come near
enough to be " knifed." It was a long while before the
conger would go away, and even after he had gone away
Wood could not go on working because he was not sure
that the brute was really gone for good, and he might
have come out of some corner at any minute and nipped
his fingers.

Mr. Wood has had other adventures with fish when
working under water. He was once employed in fixing
some heavy stones in the harbour at Dover; while waiting
for the stones to come down from the ship above, he sat
down on a rock, and being quite quiet, a shoal of whiting-
pout came up to examine the strange visitor to their sub-
aqueous residence ; they played all about him, and kept
on biting at the thick glass which formed the eyes of his
diving helmet ; so next time Wood went down, he took
with him a fish-hook fastened to the end of a short
stick — a gaff, in fact. The pouts came round him as
usual, and he gaffed them one after another with his
hook. He then strung them on a string, and came up

136 ADVENTURE AT THE BOTTOM OP THE SEA.

after his day's work was over with a goodly fry of whiting
pouts for his supper.

On another occasion "Wood was employed to bring up
some pigs of lead from the hold of a vessel. When he
was walking about on the top of the lead, he felt some-
thing alive under his feet. It kicked tremendously, but
he knelt down upon it to keep it steady ; he soon ascer-
tained that it was an enormous skate that he was standing
on, so he served him as he did the lobster. He watched
his opportunity and slipped the noose of his line round
the skate's tail; he then signalled to "haul away," and
up went Master Skate, flapping his great wings like a
wounded eagle ; and mightily astonished were the people
in the boat when they found a monster skate on the end
of the line, and not a pig of lead.

Wood once nearly lost his life when at the bottom of
the sea. A Prussian vessel had gone down off the Mouse
Buoy in the Thames estuary. The captain was drowned
in his cabin, and Wood had undertaken to get him out if
he possibly could. Arriving at the bottom of the sea,
he found the vessel lying over on her side, and that
she had gone down with all her sails set. He tried to
get into the cabin, but found the mainsail blocking the
cabin door. He was just about to return when he found
that his air-pipe and signal line had suddenly got
jammed. Fully aware of his very dangerous position,
and without losing his presence of mind, he sat quietly
on the edge of the vessel and considered. The men
above, he could find, were signalling violently to him to
come up, but he could not answer, as the line was
jammed. He took out his pocket-knife, and thought two

EXPEEIENCES OF A WHITSTABLE DIVEE. 137

or three times of cutting himself adrift. As a last chance,
he determined to adopt another course, and climbed up
the rigging, among the great wet sails and loose ropes, as
well as he could, and fortunately found the place where
his ahr-pipe was. hitched. He carefully loosened it, gave
the signal, and was hauled up immediately. If I under-
stand aright, the line was clear enough when he went
down, but while he was at work on the sunken ship, the
tide changed, and his pipe and line, being carried in the
opposite direction to that in which they had been origin-
ally conducted, became jammed. He did not get to the
surface one instant too soon, for the boat was just drifting,
as her anchors would not hold.

Wood told me he once found a " Sea Snake " drifted
ashore near his public-house at Heme Bay. A showman
declared it was a Boa-constrictor, but a very big one.
The snake had probably died in some ship "from foreign"
coming up the Channel, and had been thrown over-
board.

Wood, also, one day came across a live tame goose
swimming all by himself off the Pan Sands, a considerable
distance out at sea from Herne Bay ; he caught the old
goose, and he and his wife cooked it for dinner. This
goose had also probably escaped overboard from some
ship.

At a very low tide at Herne Bay, Mr. Wood discovered
a fossil elephant's tusk, nearly perfect, sticking out of the
mud. He had not time to take it all out before the
tide came up ; but still he got a large piece of it.
This curious fossil ivory is now in my museum at South
Kensington.

138

THE END OF THE DIVER.

I am sorry to say that since the above was written,
poor Mr. Wood has died. He suffered terribly for many
years with rheumatism, the result of spending so much
of his time vmder water. Peace to the memory of this
brave, kind-hearted old Whitstable diver.

FIGHT BETWEEN A SCOEPION AND A
MOUSE.

In Feb., 1869, I received by post a small box. On
account of the holes pricked in the cover, and my pre-
vious experience with queer looking parcels, I suspected
it might contain something alive, and therefore refrained
from opening it until I had read my letters. It was for-
tunate I did so, for from one of the letters I learnt that
the box contained two live scorpions, a present from my
friend J, K. Lord,* who had caught them under a stone at
Heliopolis, in Egypt, and sent them off at once by post
from Egypt.

On carefully opening the box I saw two scorpions
sitting in it, with their tails turned over their backs.
They were divided from each other by a partition, and
were very quiet, but on seeing the light they immediately
began to move, so that I had to be careful not to let them
escape into the room. Sending for a glass fish globe, I
turned the box suddenly over, and with a tap at the
bottom shook them out into it. For a moment the
scorpions remained quiet at the bottom ; then waking up
they suddenly rushed at each other, and began fighting

* Poor Lord died in 1873. Peace to his memory.

140 THE MOUSE INTERVIEWS THE SCORPION.

and wrestling, claw to claw, like two bulldogs. I liad
great trouble to separate them, and get one of them out
of the globe. At last I succeeded, by using two paper
knives and a long pair of forceps. I wonder they did
not poison each other or myself.

In the course of the morning it was announced that a
mouse had been caught in a trap. I immediately thought
of testing the poison of the scorpion upon the mouse.
The reader must know that my scorpion is a little beast
with a body the size of a large blackbeetle. He has
small legs on each side like tlie legs of a lobster, and
also two nipping claws. At the end of the body is a
tail, nearly two inches long, consisting of five joints,
strung together like a portion of a lady's watch chain.
At the end of the last joint is the sting, which consists
of a horny bag the shape of an apple-pip, and armed
with a brown coloured sting having a curve like a bramble
thorn. The point of the sting is exceedingly sharp. The
general colom- of the scorpion is a horrid-looking waxy
brown. The eyes of the scorpion — little black shining
points — are situated at the top of his head. When pre-
paring to fight he carries his tail in a curve over his back,
and brandishes his sting with immense rapidity. He
aims his blows directly forward, as a soldier gives a
bayonet thrust.

The scorpion was lying quietly at the bottom of the
globe when I shook the mouse from the trap into it, but
the sudden arrival of a stranger into his private apart-
ments woke him up directly. He hoisted his sting, and
began brandishing it about. The mouse shortly crossed
his path ; the scorpion instantly lunged his sting into

FIGHT BETWEEN A SCOEPION AND A MOUSE. 14 L

him. This in turn woke up the mouse, who began to
jump up and clown like a jack in the box. When he
became quiet, th'e scorpion again attacked the enemy,
with his claws extended, like the pictures of the scorpion
in the signs of the zodiac ; he made another shot at the
mouse, but missed him. I then called " Time," to give
both combatants a rest. When the mouse had got his
wind, I stu-red up the scorpion once more, and, as " the
fancy" say, "he came up smiling." The mouse during
the interval had evidently made up his mind that he
would have to fight and not strike his colours to a scorpion
as he would to a cat. When, therefore, the scorpion came
within range, the mouse gave a squeak and bit him on
the back ; the scorpion at the same moment planted his
sting well between the mouse's ears on the top of his
head. The scorpion then tried to retreat, but could not,
for one claw had got entangled in the fur of the mouse.
Then came one of the most ludicrous scenes I ever
beheld. Mouse and scorpion "closed," and both rolled
over and over together, like two cats fighting. The
scorpion continued stabbing the mouse with his sting, his
tail going with the velocity and swift spring of a needle
in a sewing machine ; in fact, the scorpion had the mouse,
as pugnacious schoolboys used to say, "in chancery."
The moment the scorpion got tired, and the lunges of
his tail became less frequent, the mouse got hold of the
last joint of his adversary's tail with his paw, and gave
the sting a sharp nip with his teeth (it was most inte-
resting to notice that the mouse used his paw). The
scorpion at once tried to beat a retreat, but he
couldn't get away, as his claws were entangled in the fur.

142

THE THICK OF THE FIGHT.

The mouse seized tliis opportunity, and deliberately bit
two of the scorpion's side legs off. He then retired to
the corner, and began to wash his face and comb his fur.
I took out my watch to note how long it would be before
the poison of the scorpion took effect. I waited minute
after minute, and nothing happened ; the mouse seemed
a little tired, and that was all. When ten minutes had
passed I shook the scorpion up to the place where the
mouse was sitting. The scorpion was a plucky " Arach-
noid," for he tried to come up to the scratch once more ;
but, as a ship is disabled when she has lost her mainmast
by a shot, so " Scorpio formidolosus," as Horace calls
him, was crippled for further encounter. He tried to
hoist his sting, but the bite from the mouse had injured
his tail, so that he could not strike straight with it, and
it had lost its spring from the wound. Seeing that the
scorpion was " lying under bare poles," the mouse sat
himself down and began deliberately to eat the scorpion's
legs up one after the other. I was at this time obliged to
go away to my work, and when, in about six hours, my
Secretary came down to my office, he reported that the
mouse had shown no symptom whatever of poisoning.
When I came back in the evening I went at once to the
globe to see what had happened ; instead of finding a
dead mouse I found about half a dead scorpion, and a
live mouse. The mouse had, in fact, made a good meal
off his enemy. Some bread had been placed in the globe,
and the mouse had eaten this also, so I hope he enjoyed
his meal of bread and scorpion. The battle therefore
was decided in favour of the mouse, and the backers of
the scorpion had to " throw up the sponge," while, as a

FIGHT BETWEEN A SCORPION AND A MOUSE. 143

reward for his courage, the mouse, after a parting supper
of toasted cheese and milli, was let free in a place where
the cat was not likely to find him. The friends of the
scorpion have lodged a protest, inasmuch as the scorpion
was not " in training," and the mouse was not a " fair
mouse," being too large and too heavy. For my own
part I think the fight was hardly fair, as the scorpion had
just come off a long cold journey, and had not eaten any-
thing. The mouse, on the contrary, was fresh caught and
in good fighting condition.

THE WOODPECKEK AND THE BITTEBN.

By a piece of good luck, the poulterer who lives near
my house in Albany Street, Mr. Ware, of No. 100,
Albany Street, has taken to buy curiosities when he goes
to market in the morning. During the Spring of 1874
I obtained from him two birds — namely, a bittern and
a woodpecker.

As I am exceedingly fond of dissecting when not
engaged in other work, I set to work to find out the
anatomy of these birds, and I will now proceed to
describe their structure, as I wish to demonstrate what
admirable beauty and design may be found in the com-
monest objects, if only the student of natural science
knows how, when, and where to look. The woodpecker I
bought is the great green woodpecker (Picus viridis).
According to Wood it is also called the "rain-bird," " the
woodspite," "thew-hole," and "woodwall." In Oxfordshire
they are called "eccles," or " heccles." The structure of
this bird will, I think, form an answer to the Darwinian
theory. In every respect it is most admirably suited
to the duty which it has to perform in nature. In the
first place, the colouring of the bird is a lovely green.
What could be a better dress for a bird who lives in a
wood than green ? The Foresters parading at their fetes,
I observe, wear green coats. The woodpecker has to run

THE WOODPECKER AND THE BITTERN.

145

up the sides of trees; and whereas the tail-feathers of a
peacock are made to expand, so as to exhibit aU the
glorious colours of the rainbow, showing that nature
intended that this kind of tail should be purely orna-
mental, so we find, on the contrary, that the tail of the
woodpecker is made entirely for utility. The bird has
ten feathers on its tail. The two centre feathers are four-
and-a-half inches long. They are as stifi" as wire, and
pointed at the ends somewhat like the head of a spear.
The tail-feathers on either side are also spear-headed,
so that when the tail is expanded like a lady's fan it forms
a most admirable prop, by means of which the bird sup-
ports himself as he climbs up the sides of the tree.
Whereas the claws of the fowl are made to scratch in the
earth, or the claws of the eagle for seizing its prey, we
find that the claws of the ' woodpecker are so acutely
curved that they form half a circle. The points are
exceedingly sharp, so as to enable the bird to get a firm
hold on the roughness of the bark. The hind-claw is very
small. The two front-claws are of unequal length, but
the middle claw is so situated as almost to turn at riaht
angles with the leg, thus preventing any chance of the
bird's slipping. The tongue of the woodpecker, however
IS the most remarkable piece of mechanism about his
body. If the bill be opened, and the tongue drawn out
It will be observed that it can be protruded nearly four
inches from the gape of the beak. It is almost cylindrical
and can be pushed back into a sheath, which fits it just
as a pencil can be pushed back into a silver pencil'case
This IS very similar to the mechanism that we find in the*
long worm-like tongue of the great ant-eater of South

146

TONGUE OF THE "WOODPECKER.

America ; but the tongue of the woodpecker presents a
structure not visible in the ant-eater, for on carefully
examining the top of the woodpecker's tongue, we find
that it ends in a sharp horny point, and that on each side
of this sharp horny point there are some small barbs di-
rected backwards, reminding me somewhat of the " snatch "
made of fish-hooks which is used for poaching salmon. Now
we find that the hyoid, or tongue-bone, which works this
marvellous tongue, extends not only as far back as the
base of the head, as is the case with most birds, but is
actually prolonged right over the top of the head, and is
firmly fixed into the skull, at the base of the beak, on the
right side. The reader can easily realize this curious
structure if he imagines the tongue-bone in his own
head to be extended backwards on each side of the head
to the poll, and these two bones to run parallel with each
other in a depression on the top of the skull, till they are
finally inserted into the bone of the forehead just above
the right eye. This tongue of the woodpecker, therefore,
may be said to be worked by two highly elastic steel
springs, and I have no doubt that in life the bird is
enabled to protrude and draw back his tongue with amaz-
ing celerity.

But I have not yet done with the numerous mechanisms
in the head of the woodpecker. A further ingenious
contrivance was, I believe, first described by Mr. Bowman,
of Wrexham ; who writes thus : —

In the back part of the palate," he says, " is inserted
a longitudinal groove, which tapers to a point outwards,
and is fringed with stiff hairs pointing towards the throat.
Without this provision it would be difficult to conceive

THE WOODPECKER AND THE BITTERN. 147

how the bird could so easily and speedily detach its food
from the barbs of the tongue as it is known to do,
pai-ticularly as the groove in the palate is placed much
too far backward for the tip of the former, in the natural
position, even to reach it ; and, even if it could draw it in
so far, the peculiar direction of the hairs would prevent
their action. We must, therefore, infer (though the
motion is performed with such celerity that we can never
expect to observe it), that the tongue is taken into the
mouth in a reflected position, Hke that of the frog, and
that the tip of it is drawn through the groove, the sharp
haii-s of which scrape off the insects from the barbs, while
the deglutition is assisted by the tubercles on the surface of
the tongue, during the first part of the operation of drawing
it into the mouth."

^ The stomach of the woodpecker is not at all like a
gizzard such as we find in many birds; it is simply a
fleshy bag. I was pleased to find the stomach was, in this
case full of food. On opening this bag-like stomach, I dis-
covered a mass of a black-looking substance, which, on
turning it into water, I at once discerned to be black ants,
in number sufficient to fill an egg-cup.

The police of nature ordains that these ants should
eat decaying vegetable matter, especially in fir woods
where their nests are frequently robbed for the sake of
feeding young pheasants with the eggs. Mr. Jamrach
imports sacksful of these eggs from the forests in
Germany.

May we not also learn a practical lesson from studyiucr
the habits of the woodpecker ? I frequently hear conv
plaints that the pine forests in this country and Scotland

148 STEUCTURE OF THE BITTERN.

are seriously injured by a beetle which bores into the
sprouting tops of the pine trees, and thereby does great
mischief to woodland property. If the proprietors of the
forests are so foolishly ignorant as to allow the wood-
pecker to be shot, it serves them right that their trees are
injured; when in the pretty harmless woodpeckers they have
valuable servants who would, without being paid for their
trouble, find out these insect pests on the pine trees, and
very quickly dig them out of their retreat by means of
their sharp-pointed bayonet-shaped bills. Woodpeckers
are getting gradually more and more scarce ; owners had
better take the hint at once and preserve them, otherwise
they will soon be nearly, if not quite, exterminated.

I will now venture to make some observations on
the bittern. The bittern is, I am sorry to say, also get-
ting very scarce in this country; he lives in the most
retired places he can find, and especially among rushes
and reeds. He is a nocturnal bird. What a contrast
do we immediately find between the colour of his coat and
that of the woodpecker's. Instead of his feathers being of a
brilliant green, they are of a brown black, mixed with
buff; the general colouring is in fact much like that of
the common brown owl. The feet, instead of being
adapted for climbing, are admirably arranged so as to
support the bird's weight when walking on marshy
ground. The toes have, when spread out, an expanse,
from the top of the middle claw to the end of the
back toe, of a little over seven inches, and when ex-
tended they cover a space of nearly six inches from
side to side ; the legs are of a peculiar green, like
common duckweed. On carefully examining the feet, it

THE WOODPECKEE AND THE BITTERN. ]4..9

will be found that one side of the middle toe of each foot
IS serrated. The serrations, examined through a glass
are found to be composed of a strong horny matter, in
fact they form a regular comb. It has been stated by
some that the use of this comb on the foot of the
bittern — and the same structure is also found on the
heron — is to grasp the slippery eels.' In my opinion
the theory is wrong, for neither herons nor bitterns
ever use their feet as organs of prehension. This comb
is, I believe, used by the birds to clean off the slimy
mucus which collects on their bill and feathers, from
the eels and fish on which they prey. It may also be
utilised by the bird in dressing the powder patches
which are found on this skin.

The stomach of the bittern is a membranous bag ; hence
we may conclude it eats soft food, such as eels— possibly
horse-leeches— certainly frogs, small fry of fish, when it
can catch them, and the spawn of fish. A bittern caught
once at Abingdon, and kept some months in captivity, was
fed on small roach and other fish.

The cry of the bittern called " booming " is very pecu-
liar and entirely suited to the place he inhabits. I have
never heard it myself, so I cannot describe it. I under-
stand it is very peculiar. Sir Walter Scott mentions it in
one of his poems : —

" But the lark's shrill pipe shall come,
At the daybreak, from the fallow ;
And the bittern sound his drum,
BoomirKj from the sedgy shallow."

I was therefore anxious to examine the vocal organs of
the bittern. The trachea or windpipe bifurcates within

]50 THE "booming" of THE BITTERN.

the chest, and at the point of bifurcation I discover the
musical apparatus. It consists of a series of cartilages
which, when extended, are nearly two inches in length,
and shaped like a conical fool's cap. Between these
cartilages, extended from side to side, are exceedingly-
delicate membranes, like the thinnest parchment. This
musical instrument reminds me very much of a kind of
banjo used by the natives of Central Africa. In fact, it
is a regular di'um, and I propose to submit it to the
examination of a maker of musical instruments. It may
be possible for him to obtain from it some hint for the
manufacture of a new kind of musical instrument.

NETTING- THE FISH IN THE SEEPENTINE.

The Eight Honourable A. H. Layard, when First
Commissioner of Works, was kind enoiigh to promise
that I should be informed when the water would be let
off from the Serpentine previous to its being cleared out.
I received a notice from Mr. Fowler, the engineer,
telling me that they intended to begin to let off the
water on the 24th of September, 1869. It was not till
the 11th of October (seventeen days afterwards), that the
water had sufficiently gone down to enable us to catch the
fish. On arriving at the Serpentine everything and
eveiybody was ready for work. I was also delighted to
find, in appropriate costume, our friend Mr. Higford Burr,
who had come up from Aldermaston Park to witness
the fun. An old fisherman from Hammersmith had been
engaged with his nets, which were worked from one of
the ordinary row-boats of the Serpentine. The old man
liad brought several nets, all of them of very small mesh,
but not " trammels,^' and without a bag.

It is very extraordinary how a London mob finds out
when anything is going on. When we first arrived at
the place of meeting there were very few people present,
and we made our first haul on to the bank ; but by the
time we had got the net on shore so many people had

152 SMALL BOYS AND STICKLEBACKS.

assembled, and they pushed down the^bank so heavily on
us, that it was almost impossible to do any work at all.

The first sweep of the net brought to shore an enor-
mous shoal of sticklebacks and a few small roach. As
the net came nearer to the land the sticklebacks began to
dance into the air and over the net, glittering in the sun
like a shower of silver spangles. The crowd hailed our
first haul with a shout of derision, mixed with groans
from the small boys, who had come with their pickle
bottles, worsted threads, and worms to enjoy their usual
morning's fishing. These little wretches were exceedingly
indignant at our proceedings. "Jimmy," said a little
urchin to his fellow-angler, " we'd better go home again,
the gents is killing all the tittlers." Finding that it was
impossible to go on with the fishing where we were, we
consulted with the sergeant of police, who told us that if
we drew the net towards the railed embankment at the
west end of the Serpentine he would order his men to
keep the people away from the ground where we were
•working. The old fisherman then took another turn
round with his net; but as the hauling rope was not quite
long enough, he had to walk over a bit of ground that
looked nice and solid. He had not, however, proceeded
many steps before he found himself in mud some five or
six feet deep, and every step he took he went further in,
floundering about like a great Hippopotamus. Mr. Lee and
two or three others joined hands with me, and, advancing
into the mud at the end of a chain, I caught hold of the old
man's hand, and with a " one, two, three, and away," we
gave a good pull at him, and he came suddenly out of the
mud with a " flop " like a cork out of a wine bottle. The

NETTING THE FISH IN THE SERPENTINE. 153

crowd shouted and laughed heartily at the old Charon
heing hauled out of his troubles. We managed to tie a
new piece of rope on to the hauling line, and dragged the
net ashore. It contained a mass of animated mud ;
no fish could be seen, but hundreds of little tails flapping
the mud in all directions. Lee and I rushed in to secure
the lead-line of the net, and in two minutes we were
covered with mud from head to foot. Feeling about
among the mud and fish, my fingers touched something
which I knew must be a monster fish. Catching him by
the tail I let him kick till he was quiet, and then came
ashore with him ; I could hardly tell what he was till I
had thrown a bucket of water over him, and I then per-
ceived that he was a big bream, I held him up for the
people to see, after the " Behold the head of a traitor "
style of the ancient executioner. The crowd by that
time had become very dense, and when I held up the
struggling bream they gave him a great shout of welcome
which would have done honour to a whale.

Mr. Chamberlayne, one of the authorities, had ordered
three water-carts to be brought close to the railing, and
as the fish were taken out of the net they were transferred
in buckets to the carts. Besides the big bream that we
caught at the second haul were a great number of little
roach and one or two big ones. Finding that our net was
not long enough, and that the old man had several others
in his boat, we made him join them all together, so as to
have a good sweep of the whole water. While this was
being done, Lee and myself got on a watering-cart and
rode up with the old man to the Eound Pond in Kensinrr-
ton Gardens, where the fish were to be deposited. I

154

THE jews' holidays.

never rode on a water-cart before, and particularly one like
the present, that had no springs. The jolting was some-
thing tremendous, but we managed to hold on, and after
all it was not bad fun to ride down the drive, among the
smart carriages, on a water-cart. When we arrived at the
Eound Pond we tilted the cart up, let as much water run
out of it as possible, and then turned the fish out with our
hands, as the aperture at the top of the cart was not large
enough to admit a net. This first cart-load of fish, which
was by no means a heavy one, contained about 500 fish,
little and big. We came back to the Serpentine on the
water-cart at a trot, — about the roughest riding I ever
experienced — and found that the men had joined all the
nets together, and were preparing for a grand haul ; the
net was exceedingly heavy as we dragged it towards the
shore, and our expectations were not disappointed. The
old fisherman was delighted. " Lor', sir," said he,
" there's all twenty pounds' worth of fish in the net, and
if it had been the Jews' holidays* there might be thirty
pounds' worth." At all events there was a tremendous

* During the Jews' holidays the Jews in London consume a large
quantity of fish ; they are more especially fond of fi-esh-water fish.
At this time, Mr. Brougham, Secretary of the Thames Angling Preser-
vation Society, is obliged to put on extra watchers, to prevent the fish
being poached.

The Jews' holidays are —

1. Pesach, or the Passover, the later Paschal festival ; our Easter or
Spring.

2. Seeboot, the feast of weeks, or Pentecost ; corresponding with our
Whitsuntide.

3. Succoth, or Tabernacles, i.e., Booths ; corresponding with our
October or Autumn, when people seek shelter.

The Jews are very careful about their diet, and are exceedingly clever
in cooking fish. I believe they cook them in boiling oil.

NETTING THE FISH IN THE SERPENTINE. 155

lot in the net. We filled three water-carts as full as we
dared with these fish, and away we went again to the
Eound Pond, Lee sitting on the advance cart, and myself
on the rear cart.

This time we had a strong escort of hundreds of dirty
little vagabonds, shouting, laughing, and wild with excite-
ment. Looking into the water-cart, I found a few dead
fish on the top, and when we got into Kensington Gardens
among the trees, in answer to the cry, " Give us a fish,
master," I threw them out for a scramble. The little
urchins raced after them like greyhounds, and fought for
them on the ground, a dozen at a time, like hounds
breaking up a fox. It was quite a treat to see how these
boys enjoyed themselves; being English boys I suppose
they have a natural love of sport in them. I don't believe
they wanted the fish a bit ; but it was the fun of seeing
us draw the net, hunting the water-cart, and scrambling
for the dead fish that seemed to amuse them so much.
We had so many fish in these three carts that I found it
perfectly impossible to count them ; so I got the men to
run the cart as near to the edge of the water as they
could, and then we tilted it up as far as we dared.
Having done this I opened the door of the cart, and
there poured out a regular cataract of struggling fish.
About twenty or thirty of them were sickly, but altoge-
ther we lost really very few indeed. The water-cart which
carried the third load of fish was of a different construc-
tion from the others, and Lee and myself found it very
difficult to get tlie fish out of it. We, therefore, backed
it a little way into the water on the sloping bank, while
the men on shore tilted up the shaft, and it was here an

156

ACCIDENT WITH THE WATER-CART.

accident occurred. Lee was standing in the water taking
the fish out of the hole in the cart, and I had that instant
moved on one side, when I saw the cart moving deeper
down into the water. " Look out, Lee," I cried, " she's
got way on her," but in a moment, before there was time
for thought or action, this infernal water-cart, fish, water,
and all, "turned turtle," and made a summersault
clean over, " end for end." The great shafts came rush-
ing down from above like two scaffold poles, and the
body of the cart fell right over into the water, wheels
uppermost, making a tremendous splash and sending the
water flying high into the air. My first thought was for
my friend Lee ; he had luckily run backwards when he
heard my shout, but could not get far enough to escape
the shafts; something came down upon him with a
tremendous crash, and he disappeared clean under water.
I rushed immediately into the water, nearly to a swimming
point, and got hold of his collar : he came up in a second,
blowing like a grampus, and I was glad to see he did not
appear hurt. I think, however, that he was a little
stunned, although he said he was not.

If the shaft had hit him on the head the result would
have been very serious. He had a narrow escape and no
mistake.

The crowd standing round stood like a lot of marble
statues ; nobody off'ered to move, or say, or do, or suggest
anything. Upon my word, I think an English crowd is
either very selfish or exceedingly stupid, I think the
people of the present day are a great deal too highly
educated, as it is called. They are too clever to think or
act quickly enough in a case of emergency. Competitive

NETTING THE FISH IN THE SERPENTINE. 157

examinations will never teach presence of mind, or suggest
a remedy for a sudden accident.

After we were both thoroughly wet, I think we worked
very much better than in the morning, for before the sun
set we had made several more hauls and sent up four
more cartloads of fish. It was after dark and getting
cold when I went up with the last cartload, and when I
got to Kensington Gardens the gates were locked, so I
had to put that lot of fish back again into the Serpentine.
The total result of our day's work was eleven water-
carts-full of living fish ; each cartload I average at about
500 fish, little aud big, and that would make altogether
over 5,000 fish. This is not so many fish as I expected
we should have found. AU about the mud I observed
great lumps of lime ; this lime I understood was thrown
into the water to purify it some three years ago, and it
doubtless destroyed very many of the ancient inhabitants
of the place — how many we cannot tell. If lime had not
been thrown in, our take of fish would have been very
much larger than it was.

The greater majority of these fish were little roach
from two to four inches long ; there were, I suppose, from
200 to 300 large roach; the biggest weighed 2 lbs., and
there were many from ^Ib. to l^lh. We did not catch
any common carp at all, but considerable quantities of
some small Prussian carp, and also a fair number of
crucian carp. The largest of these weighed 1 lb. 9 oz.
(I took the precaution to bring a pair of weighing scales
with me, and weighed the fish as they were put into the
pond.) There was a fair sprinkling of little tench, atid
eight big ones from 2 lbs. to 3 lbs. each.

158 KINDS OP FISH IN THE SERPENTINE.

I expected, of course, to find a great many eels, but
not a single one was seen or heard of during the whole of
the netting, and the men who were working in the mud
told me they had not seen one move. Subsequently one
of the labourers found a fine eel in a hole in the mud.
He weighed 6 lbs., — large for an eel; the taxidermist who
stufted the skin ate the flesh for dinner. It made him
and his family very ill for several hours. A cast of this
fish is in my museum. An old boatman told me he
thought the lime had killed all the eels.

I also thought we should find a great number of perch ;
strange to say we only caught one, and he was a cripple,
for his upper jaw was rounded into a knob like an apple,
and his deformed face looked like a pantomime mask.

The largest fish we caught were bream, but there were
only five big bream; the biggest weighed 5| lbs. and
measured 22 inches in length and 8^ inchss in depth ;
the smallest of these five weighed 3j- lbs. Besides
these, there was a considerable number of little bream,
the size of the palm of one's hand. Of course, every-
body expected to catch some large jack, but there
was not a single jack or anything like a jack in the whole
of the lake. We also caught four very fat and red gold-fish ;
and three large bleak. We also caught either the first or
the " last of the Mohicans," viz. : one gudgeon, but he
was a " whopper." A little trout eight inches long and
weighing 4 oz. came up in the third haul. This little
fish is a " great lake trout," and must be the sole survivor
of a family of " little great lake trout " that I had put into
the Serpentine some two years before. The fish was fat
and well coloured.

NETTING THE FISH IN THE SERPENTINE, 159

It was a very extraordinary thing to remark that, as a
rule, the fish we caught were either very Httle or very
big ; there seemed to be no intermediate size, I cannot
quite account for this, but it is worthy of remark that
there were no predaceous fish among these herbivorous
fish. It is generally the case where you have too many
roach or carp, and no jack or perch, i.e., ail sheep and
no wolves, the fish are exceedingly abundant, but are all
very smaU. It is necessary in stocking ponds always to
consider the balance of life, and put into them such fish
as will keep down superabundant population, and there-
fore prevent degeneration of the stock of vegetable feeders.

For my own part, in all cases where fish-ponds are to be
emptied, I should advise the water to be drained away as
much as possible, the mud to be left alone, and a crop of
cabbages or rye grass to be planted on it. The mud would
then lose much of its moisture, and could be carted away
much more easily than in its original semi-fluid state.

Besides the fish, we dragged up some curious relics
from the bottom of the Serpentine, At almost every
haul we brought to land a wreck of a model sailing yacht.
These little vessels lie in great abundance in the mud at the
bottom of the Serpentine : they get upset in their voyage
from shore to shore, and are never rescued by their owners.

If the relics that we brought up with our net had been
placed together on the shelves of a Museum, they might
afford anthropologists (who have often only the remains
of the handicraft of ancient men as guides to find out
who and what they were) an excellent study for a picture
of London and its natives, and their amount of civilizatioii
in the nineteenth century.

160 RELICS FROM THE SERPENTINE.

I now give a catalogue of the relics whicli. perhaps
may one day become evidence of the former existence
of London : —

Pickle bottles, wine bottles, soda-water bottles, blacking
bottles, ink bottles, physic bottles, ginger-beer bottles,
beer cans, sardine cases, coffee-pots, tea-cups, egg-cups,
shoes, boots, pipes without end, dogs' bones, cats' heads,
skate straps, gallipots, a top of a lamp, india-rubber balls,
cocoanut, curtain rings, a loaded shot cartridge, an iron
weight. Here there is plenty of material for any one
who wishes to argue out the existence of a big city and
the customs of the inhabitants. If this had been the
remains of a Koman camp, we should have been sure to
find plenty of coins, but English people don't seem to
throw their money away in the curious manner that appears
to have been fashionable among the Romans. If we
ploughed up an English camp, such as Aldershot, we
should find that the English soldiers had dropped very
few shillings or coppers ; but the Roman soldiers, on the
contrary, seem to have spread their money broadcast. I
suppose they had no pockets in their armour. One
human skull only was found near the bridge of the
Serpentine ; there are possibly more human bones in the
mud near this " Bridge of Sighs."

Some men were actually engaged digging and examin-
ing the mud near the railings at the east end. I was told
that they were searching for a casket of valuable jewels
which had been thrown into the water by a woman some
years ago. The casket was never found. A curious
sword was subsequently found in the Serpentine. Mr,
Coombe, of Chelsea, was good enough to send me this

NETTING THE FISH IN THE SERPENTINE. ICl

weapon, which was dug out of the mud by one of tlie
workmen. It is a bayonet-shaped rapier, thirty and a
half inches from point to end of handle ; the handle is
roughly fixed into a piece of hollow wood, and a leathern
strap is rudely bound round it. The guard is made of a
piece of rough wood; the point has evidently been
ground sharp on a stone. Altogether it is a most
formidable little weapon, and evidently made for " busi-
ness." Of course, I know nothing whatever of its history,
though doubtless it had been used for some evil deed or
other.

OLD SWOED FOUND IN THE SERPENTINE.

Mr. Lambton Young, of the Eoyal Humane Society,
hearing of this sword, says, " I imagine it must be one of
those which were taken out of the lake some years since,
just after one of those riots which occur from time to time in
London ; they appeared to have been hastily manufactured
from old scythe blades, and were just such as any mob would
extemporise as weapons for any rising against the powers

162 PROPOSED CULTIVATION OF THE SERPENTINE.

that keep the peace. This mass of weapons was taken
possession of by the police, and on my asking for one as
a curiosity, I was informed that Sir Richard Mayne had
presented them to the Museum of the United Service
Institution, where, on apphcation, I found no such things
were in the collection. In the end I procured one, which
is about two feet six inches long, with a wooden handle
similar to a butcher's knife, rivetted through the sub-
stance of the blade ; it seems to have been made of an old
scythe, and was rough from the grindstone, — altogether,
a very nasty weapon for close quarters."

I should think the possessor of these swords became
alarmed, and threw them into the Serpentine to get rid
of such dangerous property. The sword above men-
tioned is now in my Museum at South Kensington.

I confess I should very much like to stock the Serpen-
tine with fish, for I think it very possible that, under
judicious management, a fine head of fish might be grown
in this lake for the benefit and amusement of anglers.

TAETAEIAN LAMB.

In 1872 a gentleman sent me an old print wliicli had
evidently been torn out of a book. The only printing
about it read as follows :— " D. Scott, &c., published for
E. S. Kirby, 11, London House Yard, and J. Scott, 447,
Strand, Nov., 1803. I described the print in Land and
Water, and, by the kindness of correspondents, have now
been able to obtain a great deal of information about it.
The print is taken from Kirby's " Wonderful and Eccen-
tric Museum/' vol. i. p. 471, and was copied from Black-

TAllTAniAN LAMB.

well's " Curious Herbal." It represents what is called a
" Tartarian" or " Scythian Lamb," a species of fern, native
of China, with a decumbent root, covered with a dense soft

M 2

164 A VEGETABLE LAMB.

wool, intensely yellow. The stem is sometimes pushed
out from the ground in a horizontal position hy the inferior
branches of the root, so as to give it some resemblance to
a lamb with four legs. This curious plant is personified in
Darwin's " Loves of the Plants " as follows : —

" Cradled in snow, and fanned by arctic air,
Shines, gentle Barometz, thy golden hair.
Rooted in earth each cloven hoof descends,
And round and roxmd her flexile neck she bends,
Crops the grey coral moss and hoary thyme.
Or laps, with rosy tongue, the melting rime.
Eyes with mute tenderness her distant dam,
Or seems to bleat— a vegetable lamb."

Sir Hans Sloane has given a print of it, but thinks
that some art had been used to give it an animal
appearance. (Philos. Trans., abridged, vol. ii. p. 646.)
Dr. Hunter, in his edition of " Evelyn's Terra," has a
more curious print of it, much resembling a sheep. He
quotes Dr. de la Croix's " Connubia Florum : " —

" Surgit humi Barometz prsecelso in stipite fructus,
Stat quadrupes, olli vellus duo comua fronte
Lanea, nec desunt oculi, rudis accola credit
Esse animal, dormire die, vigilare per umbram,
Et circum exectas pasci radicitus herbas."

A long correspondence took place in Land and Water
on the subject of this vegetable curiosity, from which I give
the following extracts : —

" The tale runs, that, 'on an elevated, uncultivated, salt
plain of vast extent, west of the Volga, grows a wonderful
plant with the appearance of a lamb, having feet, head, and
tail distinctly formed, and its skin covered with soft down .
the lamb grows upon a stalk about three feet high, the

TARTARIAN LAMB.

165

part by which it is sustained being a kind of navel ; it
turns about and bends to the herbage, which serves for its
food, and pines away when the grass dries up and fails.'
Now, it is scarcely necessary for me to point out the fact
of this tale being erroneous, for no one, I should imagine,
would be found sufficiently credulous to believe that a
being, half quadruped, half vegetable, really existed. The
fact is, simply, that the rhizome of a fern, Cibotium
glaucescens (sometimes called Cihotium barometz), when
destitute of fronds, may, with a slight stretch of the
imagination, be said to resemble a lamb, and the fact of
these rhizomes being found dead when the herbage is
dried is only a proof that the ferns died when the
drought set in, which destroyed the surrounding vegeta-
tion. The stout rhizome or decumbent stem, is clothed
with soft downy hair, resembling fine wool, and this
has helped the story considerably. The plant is tolerably
plentiful in our ferneries in this country, and it is ad-
mirably adapted for the decoration of apartments : but it
requires many years to develop a lamb under cultiva-
tion. This downy covering is held in high repute by
the Chinese, who. call it 'poco sempic,' and is applied

to wounds for the purpose of stopping the blood." W. H.

GowE.

" The Tartars call the plant Barometz (their name for
a rufous dog), and the Chinese terms of Cau-Fich and
Kew-tjie signify the same thing. Linnceus, Reicliardt, and
various botanists mention it as the ' contorted root-stock
of a fern,' and two well-known German writers speak of
it as the Cibotium barometz and the G. glaucescens. One
well-attested tale is, that the fresh-cut root exudes a red

106 "golden moss" foe, stopping bleeding.

juice resembling blood, and another medical fact is that
it is an astringent and -will stop bleeding. One thing
respecting its down I do happen to know. A gentleman of
my acquaintance was given a packet of this fine, yellowish,

silk -like down by a brother officer (General C ), who

had been out in China, and he was informed it would
stop bleeding. He tried its power first on himself. He cut
his hand severely, and applied the down, as old women do
cobwebs, when it stopped the bleeding. Shortly after this
the only daughter of a person in our county was sud-
denly seized with hjemorrhage from the nose at a large
party in her father's house. We (the guests, those who
knew of it) were alarmed, when the doctor, who had been
immediately sent for, found it impossible to stop the flow,
and my friend sent his groom off home (ten miles) for the
stuff. The poor girl was nearly dead before it arrived, but
the blood was soon checked, when once the down had been
applied ; ordinary plugging of the nostril had previously
failed. The Chinese call the down ' golden moss,' " —
H. G. W.

"In the museum of the College of Surgeons, can
be seen the veritable ' Lambkin. The leaf stalks have
been cut off within three or four inches of the stem, and
the stem itself turned upside down. There is a figure of
it in Lindley's 'Vegetable Kingdom,' p. 76. There is a
notion that so long as grass grows around the lamb it
flourishes, but when it dies, the fern dies also." — Petros.

" I was looking over a very curious old book, translated
from the French in the year 1650, of which I now give
an extract. The reverend divine alludes thus to the
Scythian lamb : — ' If, after you have considered all

TARTARIAN LAMB.

167

the parts severally, you but take the whole entire plant
altogether, you will yet meet with some such rare figures,
as would seem incredibile : did not such excellent historians
confirme us in the beliefe of the Kelation. Of this sort is
the Boramet, which grows in Scythia, having a perfect
resemblance to a Lamb, having a Head, Eyes, Eares,
Teeth, and the rest of the parts of the body proportion-
able. This plant crops and feeds upon all the grasse that
growes rounde about it ; and when there is no more left it
dies of famine. A French poet speaks of it in these
verses : —

' Tels que les Boramefcs, qui chez les Scythes naissent,
D'une graine mince et de plantes se paissent :
Bien que du corps, des yeux, de la bouche et du nez,
lis semblenb des Moutons qui sent nez n'aguerez nez.

' Englished thus by Jos. Sylvester : —

' Sucli are those Boramets in Scythia bred
Of slender seeds, and of green fodder fed :
Although their Bodies, Noses, Mouthes and Eyes,
Of new-yearned Lambs have full the form and guise.'

This is copied literally, and the old mode of spelling care-
fully retained. I should say it appears to me the third
letter in ' agueres ' is a mistake of the printer, and should
have been 'n' instead of 'u.' Perhaps in those days
the same letter did for both." — Jackson Gilbanks.

OUT SNAKING.

The thermometer showed the temperature of 82 deg.
in the sun, when a large party, on Friday, August 8th,
1873, assembled after breakfast on the lawn in front of
the hospitable mansion of my kind friend Higford Burr,
of Aldermaston Park, Eeading. "Where will you go
to day, Buckland ? " said the Squire, as he gave out the
orders of the day to his guests. "Well," said I, "if I
have my wish, I should like to go out ' Snaking ' in the
morning and fishing in the evening. It's a splendidly hot
morning, and I am certain some of your snakes, which you
preserve so humanely, will be out basking in the park ;
but we must lose no time, or the snakes will be in,"
"Those who will go out snaking with Buckland will
please hold up their hands ; he wants beaters to help,"
said the Squire. I was delighted to find that a goodly
number of recruits, ladies included, would join the snaking
party. So we paraded at once. Sticks were cut to hunt
for the snakes — not kill them, mind— and the squire and
myself carried sticks fork-pointed at the end, in case we
should come across a viper, as I wanted to try experiments
with the fresh poison. We first drew the " Home Covert,"
a bank by the side of a garden wall, a favourite abode of
snakes ; but none happened to be at home ; at least, if

OUT SNAKING.

169

they were, they were among the stones of the wall. Form-
ing a regular line, we then hunted carefully along a hill-
side. It so happened that I had lately been reading
Virgil's Georgics and Eclogues out of an old edition of
that author, in which I found my mother had written my
name when I went to school — dreadful moment : the date
is 183iJ. This same old dogs'-eared school book has been
the cause of my being hided and flogged so often at school
that for years afterwards I looked upon this very book as
representing Vu-gil personally, and I considered Virgil to
be a bitter, spiteful enemy. When I read him — now that
his awful hard words have no terror for me — I consider
him not an enemy, but my best friend. This fine old
poet (who was a fair naturalist also) was evidently fond of
the country, and especially woodland country, for he
writes : —

" Nobis placent ante omnia sylvse."

It was evidently very hot weather — I wonder if Virgil
had a thermometer — when he wrote his Eclogues, and I
would therefore advise my friends in the country to take
down their dusty Virgil from the library and " interview "
him in the open, especially on a hot day, when the brain
is bored and requires real rest from hard mental work. It
is very hard work to do nothing ; in fact, it is impossible
for some busy bees to do nothing and think about
nothing.

Although Virgil was born seventy years before our
Saviour, at Mantua, he has put into the most beautiful
language the ideas which occur to every one of us every
day. This is how he describes a day like this Friday :

170

Virgil's summer day.

" Nunc etiam pecudes umbras et frigora captant.
****«#

Et nunc omnis ager, nunc omnia parturit arbos,
Nunc frondent sylvse, nunc formosissimus annus."

With my mind, therefore, full of Virgil, I walked
steadily along the Squire's park, looking for snakes. A
gentleman with us at last made a point. I immediately
sang out, "Too— ho, steady!" and motioned him to
remain as firm as a pointer-dog tUl I came up. When I
had gradually crawled up, I whispered in his ear —

" Frigidus, O Pueri fugite Mnc, latet anguis in berbS,."

But I said " Don't you cut away." Virgil probably did
not know the external difference between a poisonous and
a harmless snake. "I'll have your snake in a minute.'-*
Waiting very quietly, we heard the least possible rustle,
but could see nothing except that the heather and grass
trembled just perceptibly. I could not see a smgle bit of
the snake, or I should have pounced at once upon him,
and chanced his being a viper; but, whilst I was con-
sidering, Mr. Snake had gone away so quietly into his
hole, or hiding-place, that no trace whatever of him could
I find. Fixed between two bits of heather, however, I
foimd portions of a cast snake's skin, so that our friend
the snake had taken advantage of this fine morning to
throw off his old coat, and sport his new summer go-to-
meeting garment.

I am sorry, therefore, 1 did not catch him, because
snakes, Hke ourselves, look better in their new than their
everyday working clothes. Virgil describes very prettily
the swagger of a snake with a new skin ; —

OUT SNAKING.

171

" Oum positis novus exuviis, nitidusque juventa
Volvitur, aut catulos tectis aut ova relinquens
Arduua ad solem, et Unguis micat ore trisulcis."

Although "the slough " or shed skin of this snake was
much broken, yet it was impossible not to admire the
exceedingly beautiful structure of the horny membrane of
which it is composed. A snake is ordained by nature to
crawl about among brushwood and thorns ; we find there-
fore that his eye is protected from injury by, literally, a
pair of spectacles made of horn as transparent as the very
best eye-glass.

Having examined the slough, we halted for a few
minutes and listened to the remarkable sounds going on
all around us. The whole forest seemed alive with
creatures innumerable ; nor indeed was the vegetable
world silent- All around me 1 heard a sharp crack, crack,
crack, like tiny pistols going off, but I could see nothing
to account for this peculiar noise. The squire then in-
formed me that the " crack " was caused by the sudden
opening of the black seed-pods of the broom plant. I
applied a slight pinch to some of these pods, and the
spring and crack they instantly gave as they shot out the
seeds was very remarkable.

This rest in the forest in midday was very pleasant; it
made me, as well as it did Virgil, sleepy, for has he not
written —

" S£Epe levi somnum suadebit inire susurro ? "

Yes, all very fine, but don't go to sleep on an ant's nest,
nor yet in Squire Burr's summer-house, where some
gigantic hornets are building their " paper house."

172

HOW THE GEASSHOPPER SINGS.

It was quite evident that the grasshoppers were having
a "free-and-easy" this hot day, for the merry green-coated
things were singing in all directions around us. Again I
recollected Virgil. Eeader, is not this a pretty line ?—

" Sole sub axdenti resonant arbusta cicadis."

When we examine a grasshopper or cricket, it is not
very easy at first to see what musical apparatus these
insects carry about with them to enable them to make
such a tremendous noise. It is only the male grass-
hoppers that sing, and that's a mercy as times go. The
musical apparatus of the great green grasshopper {Gryllus
viridissimus) has been thus described :— " In that part of
the right wing-cover of the male, which is folded hori-
zontally over the trunk, there is a round plate, made of
very fine transparent membrane, resembling a little
mirror, or piece of talc, of the tension of a drum. This
membrane is surrounded by a strong and prominent
nervure, and is concealed under the fold of the left wing-
cover, which has also several prominent nervures, answer-
ing to the margin of the membrane, or ocellus. There is
every reason to believe that the brisk movement, with
which the grasshopper rubs these nervures against each
other, produces a vibration in the membrane augmenting
the sound. The males in question sing continually during
the months of J uly and August, especially towards sunset
and part of the night. On approaching them they im-
mediately cease their song." With all due deference to
the writer, I hardly think this a sufficient explanation of
the grasshopper's music. I do not think, of course, the
mouth has anything to do with it, and I wish our country

OUT SNAKING. 173

friends would make observations, and watcli how grass-
hoppers give their morning concert.

After a rest we again commenced "snaking," and hunted
carefully along the side of a bank of a pond, where the
squire's great lake trout are (I trust) doing well. About
a yard ahead of me, just as we began work, something
shook a tuft of long grass quickly. Before I could speak,
the keeper put his foot upon whatever it was that moved.
As he lifted his foot carefully, I found a beautiful little
lizard underneath. Virgil has watched the habits of
lizards : —

" Nunc virides etiam occultant spineta lacertos."

Knowing how delicate these lizards are, I tried to catch
him by the head. He slipped my fingers and I got him
by the tail, and in an instant, as I expected, his tail
snapped right off, and it was most interesting to see the
tail kicking and struggling by itself on the pathway. I
put it in my hat for an ornament, and I felt it moving for
a long time. I do not think that the shed tail of a lizard
can ever be joined on to the old stump again, but I believe
it is a fact that these creatures have the power of growing
a new tail, and that sometimes even two new tails sprout
out at one time, just as, when the finger of a " five-
finger," {i.e., a star-fish) is pinched, the new one is very often
double or deformed. This growing of a new tail reminds
me of some wonderful restorative ointment invented by
an American. To prove its efficacy, the inventor exhibited
a dog from which he had cut off the tail. On applying
this ointment to the stump, a new tail grew on to the dog.
He then took the tail of the dog just cut off, and anointed

snake's nest.— toad in a hole.

it with his ointment. Immediately a new dog grew on
to the end of the old tail.

Just as I had put the lizard into a bag, I heard the
Squire's voice signalling me from the distance. He apolo-
gised for my want of sport in my snaking expedition, but
at the same time he dehghted me by promising to guide
me at once to a dimg-heap, where it was reported that
some snakes had laid their eggs. This dung-heap was
situated in the middle of a yard where the cows lived in
the winter, and was just the very place snakes would
choose to lay their eggs. The keeper got a dung-fork, and
diligently turned over the straw at the top, while the
Squire and I worked away at the sides of the dung-heap.
We found an enormous number of wood-lice, little and
big, and one diabolical-looking, jet-black, carnivorous
beetle, with tremendous jaws. Upon the back of this
beetle, curious to say, was a great bunch of creatures
looking like white lice. I emptied a fusee box, and put
the beetle in, but somehow or other the brute escaped, and
I believe he was alive for some days in one of my numerous
pockets. Our next find on the dung- heap was a grand old
toad, living in a beautiful palace all to himself, under a
stone. He was evidently there to eat the wood-lice.
Virgil calls him one of the pests of the farm—

" Inventusque cavis Bufo ; "

but I must cross-examine Virgil some day on his list of
" Pests of the Farm." I expect his baiHfiP or his gardener
at Mantua had been humbugging him, even as happens to
gentlemen-farmers now-a-days.

I was dreadfully afraid we should draw the dung-hill

OUT SNAKING.

175

blank, but at last I gave a view holloa, when, underneath
a bit of the straw, I saw something of a milk-white
colour. " Avancez," I said, " go ahead ; I'm certain that's
a snake's nest." Lifting up the straw most carefully, I was
delighted to find first one, then two, then a dozen eggs.
The squire and I then proceeded to dissect out the nest
with our pocket-knives and a dung-fork most carefully.
Snakes' eggs are not quite so large as a blackbird's ; they
are round at both ends like a sugar-plum. They have no
hard shell like a hen's egg, but the shell is composed of a
soft elastic substance, like thin wash-leather. Some eggs
were lying quite separate. The greater part were, how-
ever, stuck firmly together, so tightly that it was almost
impossible to tear them apart without breaking the sldn.
The eggs were not held by a ligature, but appeared pasted
together by some strong adhesive gum, end on end.
Most of the eggs were quite distended : the shells of
some, however, had fallen in, and they looked crumpled.
The appearance of the eggs in this dung-heap, just as the
parent snake or snakes had placed them, was so striking,
that a gentleman, well known for his artistic talent, took
a sketch of the egg and the nest.

When the sketch was finished, I proceeded to examine
the eggs more closely ; there were sixty-four. I do not
know from experience how many eggs the common snake
lays, but I should say from twelve to twenty. It is, there-
fore, possible, even probable, that more than one snake
had chosen the spot on the dung-hill to deposit their eggs,
just as one salmon will deposit her eggs in a favourable
place without consideration for the other mother salmon
that may precede or follow her.

176

YOUNG SNAKES IN EGGS.

The temperature of tlie spot where the eggs were de-
posited in the dung-heap was about 84 deg. in the sun, and
the nest was buried about 18 inches deep on the southern
aspect, as though the mother snake knew that that was
the best place for the eggs. I then proceeded to dissect
some of these eggs. A few of them were blanks, con-
taining nothing, but all the rest were good. When the
skin was cut through, a quantity of clear albumen came
out, just the same as the white of a hen's egg. Floating in
this was a yolk of a much yellower colour than that of the
hen's egg, and inside this yolk was discoverable by careful
dissection the embryo snake. Out of three I examined,
two of the embryo baby snakes were quite lively, but too
gelatinous, and as yet not well enough developed, to do
more than to give a slight wriggle. The heart, however,
could distinctly be seen to beat under the transparent
skin for some seconds. The brain, also, was very promi-
nent. I confess I do not know why the brain in the
embryo snake should be so large and perceptible, because,
when the creature becomes adult, the brain appears very
small in proportion to the rest of the body ; for, mind
you, I don't believe in the wisdom of the snake, except
the wonderful Yankee snake who had been caught so often
by the tail as he went into his hole, that at last he hit
upon the plan of retreating into the hole tail foremost,
leaving the enemy merely to confront his head and poison
fangs.

The Squire kindly allowed me to take all the eggs out
of the snake's nest in this dung-heap, and I placed
them under favourable circumstances in a glass bowl in
my museum, to find out how long it would be before the

OUT SNAKING.

177

young snakes hatched out. Some say they will hatch out
in a few weeks, while others maintain that they will not do
so till the following spring. Before placing these eggs in
the artificial nest, I made a cast of the whole of them, just
as I found them on a portion of the dung-heap. The cast
has come out well, and the group now forms a pretty
illustration of natural history in my Fish museum.

On our road home we examined another heap of ferns,
etc., which the squire had especially put together for the
benefit of his snakes. This looked a very likely " draw "
indeed, hut we turned it all over and did not find an egg
or living snake. There were, however, bucketsful of
empty sheUs of, I suppose, last year's eggs. Very few
were addled, so there must be a lot of snakes in the park.
Everywhere the heap was quite riddled with snake holes.
We had nearly demohshed this heap, and had hoped to
get some snakes at the bottom, when the sound of the
gong in the distance obliged our party to retire home-
wards, I am sorry to say, " snakeless,^' after having been
out " snaking " all the morning. If however we had no live
adult snakes, we had sixty-four eggs, nearly all with a live
snake in them. On the following morning the keeper
brought me a splendid snake, which, probably, may be the
mother of the eggs I tried to hatch out; at all events, I have
put her with the eggs.

After our snaking expedition a cup of claret was most
acceptable. I believe Mrs. Virgil, or some ladies-say
Miss Thestylis-at his country house, knew how to brew
good summer drinks, or otherwise the poet would not have
written : —

" Thestylis et rapido fessis messoribus fC8tu,
AUia serpyllumque herbas contuudit olentcs."

178

TWO-HEADED SNAKE.

I believe, therefore, that Virgil was the original inventor
of " Badminton." Will some one try the above recipe,
for I'll be bound it will turn out a good summer drink, or
the grand old Poet would not have immortalised it in his
glorious Eclogues.

I have a great deal to say about snakes. Among my
many stories I cannot possibly omit that of the

SNAKE WITH TWO HEADS.

De. Boweebank, of St. Leonards, was kind enough iu
1872 to send me a specimen of the common English snake
(Coluber natrix), that was blessed with two heads. This
" double-headed nightingale " among snakes is six inches
long, and had evidently not long survived his, her, or their
birth.

As will be seen by the engraving, the left head — i.e.,
that which is about to seize the fly — is a little larger than
the right head, which grows, as it were, out of the side of
the beast. The left head has a fair-sized neck; the
right head, so to speak, has no neck at all. The left head,
therefore, may be considered to be the head proper, the
right the secondary head.

Double-headedness is not uncommon among snakes
and fishes. There are in the College of Surgeons two
specimens of double-headed snakes. One is, as in this
instance, the common English yellow-ringed snake ; the
other is a small American snake. Every year I have one
or two double-headed salmon hatched out in my breeding
boxes. They generally live about three weeks, and then
die simultaneously. The gills in these double-headed
salmon both breathe, but I have never seen them feed.

OUT SNAKING.

179

I once read au account of a double-lieaded catfish (Anar-
hiclias lupus), having been caught in the North Sea.
What a valuable specimen this would be. In the College
of Surgeons, there is a specimen of a foetal dogfish (Squalus

DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE.

canicula), with two perfect heads, which unite in one
body behind the gills.

Double-hcadedness is also frequently found in calves,

N 2

180

CHILD WITH DOUBLE HEAD.

lambs, kittens, and chickens. Our own species, even, is
not free from this deformity.

The most remarkable specimen of this, that I know, is a
preparation, in the Koyal College of Surgeons, of the double
skuU of a double-headed male child, born in May, 1783,
in the province of Burdwan, in Bengal. These skulls are
placed one on the top of the other, and united in this
position. Even though the two heads were united, the
child lived to be more than four years old, and, strange
to say, died from the poison bite of a cohra di capello.

HOW I SPENT WHIT-MONDAY AT HAETING.

Having been invited by my brotber-in-law, tbe Eev. H.
Gordon, Vicar of Harting, near Petersfield, to be present,
on Wbit-Monday, 1874, at tbe annual meeting of tbe
Harting Benefit Society, I availed myself of his kindness,
as I was anxious to see a country festival. Business
prevented my arrival at Harting till tbe afternoon, when
I found tbe benefit club assembled in a low and very long
room in tbe local inn. Tbis is a very old club. Its age
is seventy-five, tbe same age as tbe century, and it bas
doubtless done mucb good in its generation. Tbe
members, 129 in number, are all working labourers of tbe
distiict. Tbey were mostly dressed in clean smock frocks,
and wore gaiters, and bob-nailed boots of extraordinary
tbickuess : eacb of tbem carried a wbite peeled willow
wand in bis band, representing tbe quarter-staves tbat
were fasbionable in former days ; and all wore a blue
rosette in tbe bat or cap. Tbe 129 members of tbe
club were sitting at deal tables, discussing beer over
" churchwarden " pipes, and looked a much more merry,
happy party than many an assemblage that I have met at
London public dinners. Tbe Vicar had just proposed
" Prosperity to the Club," as I arrived, and tbe band at
the end of the room immediately " struck up " such a

182

COUNTEY CUSTOMS.

lively tune as to immediately inspire some of the members
to the " light fantastic." I whispered to the Vicar : —

' ' Nunc est bibendum,
Nunc pede Kbero
Pulsanda tellus."

" Leave them alone," said he, " and you will see some
fun." Bang ! bang ! went the drum, the cornet brayed,
the trombone worked away like the engines of a P. and
O. steamer, and up jumped two or three Herculean
ploughmen to dance — such dancing ! These good fellows
only dance once a year ; but it was pleasant to see the
" dancing bear "-like movements, which, according to
Darwin, might, in a hundred thousand years, develop
themselves into the graceful movements we see in a ballet ;
but the ploughmen seemed to enjoy it, though, from the
twinkle in the eye, I fancy they would have much rather
had a good go-in with the boxing-gloves or quarter-staff —
ergo, why not revive " quarter-staff?" — the " pig with the
soapy tail," " racing in sacks," " the greasy pole," and,
above all, the " quintain," as used by the Normans. By
the way, how could the Eomans or the Normans have got
on without tobacco ? Fancy old Julius Caesar smoking a
long clay ! How William the Conqueror, when he first
came to England, would have enjoyed his cigar after lun-
cheon on a hunting day in the New Forest. We find no
traces of pipes, etc., in the graves of these ancient men
and warriors. I fear the present generation is different.
" I had a son once," said an old sea-captain to a widow
who wanted to catch him, "but he was eat up by the
cannibals, and they said he tasted very strongof ter-backer."

HOW I SPENT WHIT-MONDAY AT HARTING. 1S3

The Vicar persuaded me, " unaccustomed as I am
to public speaking," to address the audience. I forget
what I said, but I made them laugh, especially when I
told them of a rough-looking chap who came to a con-
tractor, and asked for a job. " Can ye read ?" said the
master. " No," said Jawdy. " Can ye write ? " " No,
master, I can't write." " Can ye work ? " " No, I can't
work, and I don't mean to it." " Why, then, do you
come here for a job, if you can't read, write, or work ? "
said the master. " Well," said Jawdy, " don't fret yerself,
governor. I can't work myself, but I am a tremendous
fellow to make other chaps work — nobody better.''

The party soon broke up, and the " high table " was
filled up, and we began a most interesting conversation on
local dates. Country people have tremendous memories
for local events. I learnt that the church steeple was
covered with copper in 1822 ; legends that the roof of the
church was made of oak from the Spanish Armada ;
curious stories about the Carrol family, now dead and
gone, and only represented by an alabaster gentleman
outside the church wall, who is gradually being dissolved
by the rain and the roots of the moss. The Vicar has
promised me — if I am very good — that some day I shall
be allowed to scrub up, and soap-and-water this ancient
lord of the manor ; if Mr. Searle (my secretary) and I
can't do him up, I don't know who can. Then came a
dispute as to whether Oliver Cromwell had ever been at
Harting, and I had it on the authority of Mr. Eookshell,
shoemaker, that old Ohver pounded away at Chichester
with his cannon, and that he stabled his troop-horses for
eight days in the Cathedral. This fact was being argued,

184

VERY OLD WOMAN.

when the band paraded outside, and we were obliged to
join in -the procession to the vicarage. Then, during a
tremendous thunderstorm, I interviewed a living curiosity,
ia the shape of " Old Mother Sarah," or to put it more'
politely, "Mrs. Pook." Old Sarah was a wonderfully
wrinkled, but handsome old lady ; she was sitting huddled
up by the fire, after the fashion of very old people ; she
was not very deaf, nor particularly blind, and she could
still talk, " weight for age,'' against any woman in the
parish. Mrs. Pook was born in 1779. "I shall be
ninety-five come next Michaelmas," said this venerable old
dame, " and I be pretty hearty now, though I'se troubled
with the rheumatiz." Fancy, the old woman must have
been thirty-six years old when the news of the Battle of
Waterloo arrived at Harting. I myself, the Vicar, and a
learned friend, a member of the legal profession, tried to
pump some information as regards olden times from her,
but she was as silent as the Sphynx in the desert. " Can't
you recollect somethin'g that happened when you were a
girl ? " I shouted into her ear. No answer. At last she
woke up. " Now, sir, I recollects something," she said ;
" I recollects when I was a gal I was keeping cows, and the

cows got over into Farmer 's clover field, and the

farmer he comes out, and he saj^s to me, 'gurl,'"— andthen
the old woman rattled out such a volley of oaths — such a
shower of swearing, as would make the captain of a
Yankee slaver ashamed of the poverty of his vocabulary.
It was good old-fashioned swearing, and no mistake. I
suppose it was the ordinary language of the day when the
old lady was a girl. " Goodness gracious," said the Vicar,
" do pray, leave the old woman alone, if that's a sample

HOW I SPENT WHIT-MONDAY AT HARTING. 185

of what she recollects." The grave and legend-loving
lawyer hid his face, and bolted ; Mrs. Vicar, hearing me
roar with laughter, appeared on the scene. The old
woman had some tea, and I gave her an arm down the
steps, and a fee for the specimen she had given ns of the
manners and customs of the ancient Hartingites. Apropos
to Mrs. Pook, I told them at dinner afterwards about the
old negi-o woman, out of whom a learned scholar wished
to make capital. " How old are you, mother ? " " Don't
know." " How old, do you think ? " " Can't think."
"WeU, give a guess." "Can't guess; all I knows for
certain I was here in Merriker when Columbus come ; I
recollecks him well."

The storm being over, we adjourned to the village.
There were three very rickety square tents, where they
sold nuts, gingerbread, sweetstuff, and cakes, beautifully
flyblown, and as hard as board. The rising Hartingites
were gorging these, and I congratulated the local doctor.
" There's a good time coming, boys," I said, pointing out
a group of urchins eating gilt gingerbread pigs and kings
and queens, or grinding at whole ounces of " toffy " or
farthingsworths of " all sorts "—i.e., sweepings of the
counter. "Wise in his generation, the doctor telegraphed
to London for supplies of " hydrarg cum creta," " pulvis
rhoei co.," and other delicacies " now in season." He
then took me into his garden, and showed me the head of
the humerus of a very large fossil elephant (I think from
Himalaya), which he has Idndly promised me for my
museum.

Away went the band again with a merry march, up the
village, by the church, turn to the left, through the big

186

HUNT IN THE HORSE POND.

gate, halt under the trees, a country dance — very country
indeed, considering the grass was very long and thick, with
plenty of thistles, and an occasional stinging nettle. I
never despise the manners and customs of the natives.
Now I see why thick hoots are necessary for such festive
occasions. The ladies began to take part in the festivity,
and the dancing went on so long — so long, I went up to
see how it was done. The band was artful, the tune very
simple — half of them plaj'ed a few minutes and rested,
then the other half began, and so on. But the dancers
were determined on having their money's worth, par-
ticularly a certain stalwart damsel, who looked as though
she would dance for ever, if properly wound up. In the
meantime, I inspected some ancient fish stews, the pro-
perty of Lady Featherstonehaugh, of Up Park, and sighed
to have the command of them (perhaps I may), to show that
my theory of the cultivation of fish-ponds is really practical.
With me were a troop of little nephews and nieces, and I
taught them — especially Master Frank, a bright little boy
— the art of wading in the mud and keeping tbeir eyes
open. We discovered and examined several tadpoles, some
water newts, water spiders, a dead duckling, — on which I
showed the children how to make a "post-mortem,'^ —
and above all, a stickleback tending her nest. I sent my
page-boy, John (who had persuaded me to bring him from
town on the strength of his having on a previous occasion
found at Harting the skuU of a dead rabbit), to the
vicarage togeta bit of wire and an old pocket-handkerchief
to make a net, and a soda-water bottle, while my nephews
and nieces and myself in silence watched the stickleback
hovering over her nest. Just before John returned, the

HOW I SPENT WHIT-MONDAY AT HARTING. 187

Stickleback bolted. At last Jobn appeared with a net of
illegal mesh, viz., a bit of a lady's veil. How curious it
is that young ladies always go about, not only carrying,
but actually wearing, a net with an illegal mesh in the
form of a veil ! For who ever saw a lady's veil with a
mesh of two inches from knot to knot, for this is the legal
mesh ? and these ladies who do not know, or who do not
certainly observe, " weekly and annual close time," catch
tremendous big fish in the form of husbands. Once
entangled in this fixed engine, the veil, it's all up with
the poor fish. He may flounder a bit ; but if he once
touches the veil with a fin, he is a " Donner." Young
ladies should really be forced by Act of Parliament to
■ give us men our proper " weekly and annual close time."

However, John returned with his net with an illegal
mesh, to catch the stickleback. He also returned with a
pale face, blood running down his cheek, and a tremendous
big hole in the side of his hat. It appears that John, in
his anxiety to obey orders quickly, had run behind the
cloth of a man who had set up a " cockshy," i.e., three
sticks a penny to shy at cocoa-nuts. One of the sticks
had been badly hurled, missed the legitimate cocoa-nut,
and hit John's " cocoa-nut," which, luckily, was made of
such adamantine stuff that it did not crack like the cocoa-
nut proper. These " three-a-penny sticks " are like the
Yankee's revolver — " If," said the settler, " she don't fetch
what you send her for, she'll fetch something else.
'Tother day, I sent her at a haystack, and she fetched a
cow ; and the owner came out and persuaded me to buy
that cow." However, everything has its moral. I now
keep a " three-shies-a-penny " cocoa-nut stick on my desk

188 HOW MOLES AFFECT THE HEALTH OP THE NAVY.

at home. I have only to hold it, in the attitude of an
Australian with a boomerang, at John, if he does not pay
attention to orders, and the effect is glorious.

After dinner, we went round the sweetstuff and toy
booths in the street, and the Vicar introduced me to a
merchant of gingerbread-nuts, who is a great authority
on moles. He tends cows for a contractor who keeps a
great many of these animals to make concentrated milk
for the navy. The moles are of great service ; they eat
up the worms which eat the grass, and, wherever the moles
have been, the grass afterwards grows there very luxuri-
antly. When the moles have eaten all the grubs and
worms in a certain space, they migrate to another, and
repeat their gratuitous work. The grass where the moles
have been is always the best for the cows. I think it
would puzzle even Mr. Darwin, or even the Eight Hon.
G. W. Hunt, First Lord of the Admiralty, to connect
the health of British seamen witli the poor despised
moles, if they did not know the facts.

The sun woke me up early the following morning, and
I went out to see the Vicar's bees. The Vicar is very fond
of bees, and they seem to know it, for they never sting
him. He and 1 have some experiments to make, to ask
them whether they work by instinct or reason. What
tremendous advantages people living in the country have
for asking animals questions, but they don't do it. A little
four-year-old nephew went out to show me the bees ; the
little urchin cried to me. " Where am you going. Uncle
Frank ? you will get stinged "—two mistakes in grammar
m one line : rather a family failing, I fear, as Dr. Moberly
used to say to me at Winchester School. However,

HOW I SPENT WHIT-MONDAY AT HARTING. 189

Master Eoclerick (named after the late Sir E. Murchison)
is a sturdy little fellow, and he climbed up the creeper
into the drawing-room window. He wanted help ; I would
not help him, though I took care he did not fall. When
I was a boy I feU into the gardener's water-butt: my father
would not help me out ; this early lesson has helped me
out of many difficulties since. After breakfast we called
on my friend Mr. Mitchell, the miller at Harting, and I
frightened him dreadfully by quoting horrible clauses in
the Salmon Act, apropos to mill-leats and weirs. No
salmon ever comes near Harting, except by rail, but
sea-trout may come up some day to this mill, which is
situated (and there is a bridge near, called Elver Bridge)
on a very high tributary of the Bother, so that Mr.
Mitchell treats me with great respect. Mr. Mitchell says
his mangold wurzel wiU not come up because there has
been no rain. I showed him how to pump water on to it
from his mill-head by simply attaching a fire hose (which
he has got) to the pump connected with the engine of the
mill. At the mill I picked up a most lovely section of
the jaw of a young pig. The dog had been gnawing it —
the marks of his teeth were there ; and it showed beauti-
fully how the permanent set of teeth, growing upwards
from below, displace the milk teeth.

The Vicar then lionised the church. A real old beauty
is this church, and he and my sister — his wife — have done
an immense deal for it ; their choir is very good ; the
organ is a fine instrument and well played ; and there are
several curious old monuments and tablets on the walls.
My sister (I tell it to her credit), has put up a window in
the church, from her earnings from the sale of paintings

DIGGING UP AN ANCIENT GRAVESTONE.

on copper, of wild plants, and birds, and nests, drawn from
nature. These beautiful oil paintings make panels of
doors, and are great additions to the ornamentation of a
lady's drawing-room. While going through the church-
yard, the Vicar showed me the top of a stone, that looked
like an old grave stone, projecting about five inches from
the ground. He said it had been a puzzle for years ;
there was evidently something carved on it ; so I at once
took off my coat, and passing my hand down as deep as I
could, felt out a raised substance. This put me on the
scent, and I tore away at the grass, disturbing a colony
of ants, and no end of woodlice. " By Jove, Vicar," I
said, " I can feel the outline of a face and arms; I sup-
pose you are master here : do give me leave to go ahead."
" Certainly," said the kind Vicar, " go ahead." I then
sent for some men I had just before observed, working
near the churchyard, at a new wall. With spade, pickaxe,
and shovel, we dug most carefully round the relic, I
shaking the stone all the time; at last I exclaimed,
" She's loose, my boys, up with her." A judicious appli-
cation of crowbar, pickaxe, shovel, and the arms of myself
and three strong men — " One, two, three, and away ; up
she comes," — and up came a most splendid half lid of a
stone cofiin of Purbeck marble, with a figure carved upon
it. The head is resting on a pillow, the hands together
as in prayer. " Quick, John ! hot water, soap, sponge,
scrubbing brushes ! " and in ten minutes the Vicar, and
John, and I scrubbed the dirt of ages oft" this wonderful old
relic. We then, with reverence and tenderness, put him
into a wheelbarrow, and carried him, and wedged him up iu
the porch of the church, where he now is. The Vicar was

HOW I SPENT WHIT-MONDAY AT HAKTING. 191

delighted. He said the figure of the stone makes his church
date back to the Saxons, and this is the very proof he
wanted. I have since heard that the Vicar has reason to
believe that the figure is that of the great nephew of
William the Conqueror.

" Time's up ! You must be off to catch the train.
Hark ! the church clock/' said the Vicar, so I gave the
men a fee to drink the health of the old gentleman we
had just discovered — the Vicar's oldest parishioner, a thou-
sand years old at least.* "We jumped into the pony car-
riage, made the fat old grass-fed nag trot along, and away I

* The Vicar writes in the Athenceum, Aug. 8, 1874 : —
" CARDINAL POLE.

" Harting Vicarage, Petersfield.

•■' In Dean Hook'g life of Cardinal Pole, somewhat doubtful mention
is made of his birth at Lordington, about seven miles north-west of
Chichester, in 1500. It is singidar, however, that the Dean seems to
have overlooked the fact that the Cardinal had other ties to the neigh-
bourhood of his birthplace. Had the Dean consulted the archives of
his Cathedral, he would have found, in the Register of Bishop Robert
Sherbum (Bishop of Chichester, ab anno 1508), p. 52, that April 10, 1526,
is the date of the admission of ' Reginald Pole (who is described as
cUriciis) to the Rectory of Harting, Chich. Dioc, vacant by resignation
of William Gibson, last rector ; patron, Henry Pole, Lord Montague
(uncle of Reginald), acting in commission for Sir Roger Lewknor and
Lady Constance, his wife, patrons of the Church for this turn,' &c.

" It further appears, p. 78 of same register, in a list of Pensions,
that April l."?, 152G (three days after his institution), Reginald Pole
made a pension of 2U. out of the fruits of the rectory of Harting, part
of which was to pay for the salary of Warblyngloii, diocese, Winton,
another place in the neighbourhood of Lordington.

" Reginald Pole continued to be rector of Harting, for the Valor
Ecclesiasticus (1535) describes him as rector of Harting ('clericus
rector ibidem ' ).

" H. D. GOEDON.

192

AN inspector's DUTIES.

went at it again — oflficial work — inquiring into weirs, pol-
lutions, close seasons, mesh of nets, etc. In the railway
carriage, good reader, going to Exeter, I write these lines
to let you know how pleasantly I spent Whit Monday,
1874, at the hospitable vicarage of Harting.

THE BRIGHTON AQUAEIUM.
— f__

Just one hundred and twenty years ago a very small
but very remarkable book was published. The title of it
was " A Dissertation on the Use of §ea Water in the
Diseases of the Glands, Particularly the Scurvy, Jaundice,
King's Evil, Leprosy, and the Glandular Consumption ;
translated from the Latin of Richard Russell, M.D., by
an Eminent Physician. ' The sea washes away all the
evils of mankind.' — Eurip., Iphig. in Taur., v. 119.3.
London : Printed at Homer's Head, Temple Bar ; and
R. Goadby, at Sherborne, 1752."

This little book caused quite a revolution in the habits
of the Londoners of that date. Previously to its publica-
tion invalids were accustomed to seek restoration to health
by visiting Bath, Cheltenham, and other inland places in
order, as the phrase then was, "to be removed from the
noxious fumes of the sea." As I have heard the story.
Dr. Russell established himself at Brighton. He — or
rather the fine sea air— cured the patients that were sent
down to him, and this, according to the story I have
heard, was the first beginning of Brighton, then simply a
fishing village called Brighthelmstoue.

Brighton has now a new and most interesting attraction
in the AquaHum. The visitor who walks into this palatial

0

194

PET SEA FISH.

edifice, which does Mr. Birch, the architect, the highest
credit, can have no idea of the vast amount of labour,
thought, and money which have been expended on it. An
Aquarium on such a large scale as this has never been
built before ; it is, in fact, a Solomon's temple among
aquaria.

Up to the present time we air-breathing people have
had but little dealings with the fishes of the sea; the only
occasions on which we have had the opportunity of
" interviewing " them have been either when struggling
for their lives with a sharp barbed hook through their
jaws, or else as netted fish, jumping about in wild eon-
fusion as the seine is hauled up on the shore, or the
purse of the trawl-net is emptied out on to the deck of
the vessel. How difi"erent do these wondrous fish look
now that they are tamed and made pets of !

The first idea that struck me was that fish are lazy
creatures ; as long as they get their food regularly, and
have nothing particular to do but to lounge about, they
are perfectly happy. I know several people that are very
fish-like in this respect.

These aquarium fish have nothing whatever to do
except to stare at the visitors, who stare at them, a plate
glass alone intervening between the two representatives of
the " Vertebrate kingdom," as Peter Parley would have it.
" A cat may look at a king," — by the same rule why may
not a " Cod make eyes at a Brighton belle ? "

I doubt very much whether any Brighton lassie could
find a prettier object to put in her hat than a Hve herring.
The herrings at the Brighton Aquarium are perfectly
beautiful. As they swim about, their lovely scales ghsteu

THE BRIGHTON" AQUAEIUM.

195

and glitter with gold, silver, and ruby colours all inter-
mixed. I think it would puzzle even Eolfe — the Landseer
of fishes — with all his talent, to paint a live herring.
These herrings, too, seem to me to have artful-looking
faces. They always swim together, and it appears to me
they have a leader, who shows them the road. They swim
up to the glass, halt like cavalry, then " threes about,"
and away they go again. They are rather restless ; they
want to go somewhere. Where do you want to go, my
dear fish ? Far, far away, no doubt, into the deep ocean's
sea- weed forests. But we have got you now, and we
intend to make you tell us some of your family secrets.

Then, again, there are the mackerel — " the same old
mackerel " that have been there ever since the aquarium
opened. They have grown. Why not ? they have
nothing to do but eat, sleep, and grow ; and the late Mr.
J. K. Lord used to say he was certain they do sleep. All
day long they are going round and round their tanks,
ever restless. When one comes noiselessly at night, and
turns on the light of one's bull's-eye upon them, one sees
them poised in the water perfectly motionless, not a fin
moving. This is discovery No. 1, made at the Brighton
Aquarium.

The cod in the big tank are splendid to behold.
Quantum mutatus ab illo. How unlike — how very unlike
—is a live cod to the flabby, big-headed creature one sees
on the fishmonger's slab ! The Hve cod is an intelligent-
looking creature. Truly he has an immense mouth and
great rolling eyes, but can't he swim ! He goes as easily
and as swiftly as an express train. A shght move of his
tail and away he goes, darting like an arrow. There is a

0 2

196

HAPPY COD FISH.

big cod in the tank — such a fine fellow. I never saw such
a big cod alive in captivity before. It is worth going all
the way to Brighton to have a look at him. The other
cod, smaller fellows, follow this big cod about the tank.
I suppose they imagine he must know where he is, and
" all about it," so they keep in his wake. I have seen
the same thing on land, little fish following big fish
because they are big fish. So we see that size and
swagger go down as much among the fish as they do
among our noble selves.

In another tank can be seen five gigantic cod, as large
as the largest cod generally seen on the fishmongers'
slabs. These magnificent fish seem to be very sociably
inclined ; they swim about not separately, but in a group.
For the most part they keep to a certain place where two
rocks form a sort of cavern, and they keep on swimming
round and round their home in a quiet, listless sort of
manner, from which I conclude that they have nothing on
their minds— no bills, no Christmas boxes, no midnight
waits, no coal accounts, etc., to pay. Happy cod ! no
thought of oyster sauce in the distance ! They seem to
take their turns in swimming under a certain ledge of
rock, and swimming out again, with their great eyes
rolling about, and their features looking as jolly and as
expressive as is possible for fish. I fancied sometimes I
saw a smile steal across the face of the largest cod. How
do we know these fish have not a language ? They don't
speak, certainly, but they may converse by the eye. We
have all heard of " the language of the eye.''

What can be more lovely than the Sapphirine Gur-
nards ? These pretty, like-cat-faced, fish, sit in a happy

THE BRIGHTON AQUARIUM.

197

party all together at the bottom of the tank ; shrimps
suddenly arrive from above (it's dianer time) ; in an instant
they are all "alive oh!"; they spread out their lovely fins
and hunt the shrimps. Each fin has a margin of the
most resplendent colours. Reader, you can't imagine
how resplendent the colours are till you see them, and, as
the fish in numbers are swimming about, the appearance
is that of many gorgeous butterflies dancing a merry
dance in a noon-day tropical sun. WeU might this fish
be called a " butterfly fish." He is very like a butterfly,
first because he sits almost motionless for hours together,
like a butterfly on a flower, and when disturbed he spreads
his lovely wings and soars away, not into mid-air, but
into mid-water. Come, come, my Winchester friends,
some of you, do give us a few pretty Latin verses, or some
neatly turned Greek Iambics, about the butterfly fish.

As the very opposite to the butterfly fish, commend me
to the turtle. Deep down under many feet of water the
poor old turtle is taking a deep sleep. He has a ridi-
culous look about him. Pie is dreaming, I am sure he is,
or why did he just open one eye slowly and give a kind
of a yawn. Poor old turtle ; " Wake up, my boy, here s
the Lord Mayor's cook coming with a sliarp knife ; the
pot's a boiling, and I fancy I see the inscription on your
shell — ' Soup to-morrow.' " The conger eels have taken
advantage of your sleepiness, you lazy old turtle, for I
see four or five of them under your shell. I tap the glass,
" Hi ! hi ! wake up, old man; here is Mr. Lawler with a
nice basket of ' sea-grass ' for your dinner, and some bits
of fish for your cousins, the hawk's-bill turtles." But
the old turtle said to me, " How the d can I possibly

19S SMOLT TRANSFORMED INTO A SALMON.

keep awake in this cursed cold water ; my toes are cold ;
bring me a blanket, a glass of hot grog, and a pipe."
" Never mind, my shell-backed friend," I said, "Mr. Lee
will bring a steam pipe into your tank in a day or two to
warm you, and then you must wake up, and be a little
more civil to the visitors, instead of lying there like a fat
hog in a sty. If you don't wake up you will be made into
soup for the Directors' dinner ; so you had better mind."

There are occasions of supreme felicity. They don't
come often, but I confess to the immense delight that I
felt when I saw the salmon in the Aquarium. In the
spring of 1873, my friend Mr. Berrington, Chairman of
the Usk Board, sent some salmon smolts to the Aquarium.*
They all died except one, and friends, fishermen, what
can you see now ? This smolt has become a grilse. It is
not a large grilse, not more than ten or twelve inches
long, but a pure salmon grilse for all that. He shines
like a bar of silver as he swims round his tank, sometimes
leisurely, sometimes with the rapidity of a hawk. He is
a wonderful and beautiful fish, the first smolt- that ever
turned himself into a grilse under the ken of us air-
breathing mammalia. Naturalists can't live in the water,
fish can't live in the air ; so we make water cages for
our fish, and we observe their wondrous transmutations
from one stage of adolescence to another, changes quite as
wonderful as the transformation of a dull-coloured hairy
vegetable-eating caterpillar, creeping along the ground,
into a butterfly, which flies with ease in the air, and whicli
is ornamented with colours, on wings thinner than silver-

* Large glass carboys, sucli as are Tised for sulphuric acid, are e.\-
oellent things for the transport of small lish.

THE BRIGHTON AQUARIUM,

199

paper — colours far more beautiful than anything that can
be painted by artists.

My readers have probably heard of the celebrated Scotch
tame sraolt. Some fishermen were " yarning " against
each other, and at last an old fellow informed the com-
pany that salmon-fishery Inspectors and people of that
kind did not know their business. They knew nothing
about the salmon. "When he was a boy he caught
a salmon smolt, and took it home, and after a time he
tamed it. He then had to go away for several years, and
when he came home again his smolt had grown into a
thirty-pound salmon, and was going about the farmyard
picking up seeds with the hens."

As we lament the poor old rhinoceros at Eegent's Park,
so we lament our friends the porpoises at Brighton. They
were most intelligent creatures, and seemed almost to
understand what was said to them ; at all events they
understood signals and sound, especially when hungry ;
— as an old saying has it, " The nearest way to the
heart is down the mouth." To put this maxim into
practice, mem., " never ask a man for a subscription
before he has had his dinner." A very stingy man had his
portrait painted. A friend, who was always cadging for
shillings and half-crowns for something, met the stingy
man at dinner. The friend said, " I saw your portrait at
the exhibition to-day, and was much struck with it."
" Did you ask it for a subscription ? " said the stingy
man ! " No," said the other, " the picture was so like
yon that I saw that if I had asked it for a subscription I
should not have got one."

I think the porpoises were killed by the gas. The last

200

CHEISTMAS IN THE ARCTIC SEAS.

porpoise used to come to the surface and breathe, taking
in a long inspii'ation, like a spoony sweetheart when he
leaves his lady love. The porpoise — spoony or not we
cannot tell — sighed so deeply, that he blew out the gas
light above his tank, and breathed a lot of gas into his
lungs, and he never recovered it. Moral : don't sigh too
deeply near a gaslight. Porpoises are only little whales,
and we don't know much as yet about whales, I know at
least, from information given me from my good friend
Captain Gray, of the steamship Eclipse, of Peterhead, that
the price of whalebone here in London, is now £i90 per
ton. Ladies, who use whalebone for your dresses, see
how you command even whales amidst the icebergs and
snow of the Arctic regions. " Whales," says the Captain,
" are getting very artful, and are bad to catch." Nobody
knows much about whales, where, how, when they breed,
how long they live, etc. A whale it is supposed, is not
fully grown till he is twenty years old. He may possibly
live to the age of one hundred or more.

After all, how very little we men know about our fellow-
animals, whether living in, the water or on the land.
These animals don't ask us what to do — they know their
own business. I wonder how the whales are keeping
Christmas week in the Arctic Seas, and how the seals
pass their time. I should dearly like to spend my Christ-
mas among these poor persecuted things. I would not
shoot, hurt, or frighten them if they would only take me
into their confidence, and admit me into their family
circle.

The seals up in the corner, near the platform of the
orchestra, appear to be in perfect health, and are, doubt-

THE BRIGHTON AQUARIUM.

201

less, as liappy as seals can be. They are exceedingly
intelligent little creatures, and know their keeper's whistle
and voice perfectly well. I observe that two of the seals
always swim on their backs, while the other swims in the
manner of a dog in the water. The two seals which swim
on the back are those which were sent from the Arctic
Eegions by Captain Gray's brother ; and Mr. Lawler and
myself took them from on board of a Dundee steamer
when she arrived in the Thames some months ago. These
seals are rather expensive pets to keep, as they daily
devour an enormous quantity of fish. I have warned Mr.
Lawler to take special care that there are no fish-hooks
left in the fish he gives the seals. Fishermen very often
do not take the trouble to remove the hooks from the fish
which they catch on the hand-lines, and the consequence is
that when the seal swallows the fish he swallows the hook
also ; and the natural result is that the hook becomes the
cause of a lingering and painful death to the poor animal.

Seals have the power of making a sound which is
not unlike the human voice, and I have heard many
" talking-fish," as they are called by the penny showman,
pronounce the words " papa," " mamma," very distinctl3%
The young bladder-nose seal, which I received from
Captain Gray some months since, and which unfortu-
nately died soon after its arrival, certainly cried amazingly
like a human baby.

The barnacles are very pretty objects. A stick that
was thrown ashore covered with goose barnacles, was
secured for the Aquarium, and it is truly a wondrous
sight to see the shells of the barnacles wide open and the
curious fan-like feeders of the animal within, working

20^ WHY "messages FKOM THE SEA" OFTEN PERISH.

away incessantly, grasping at the water. I suppose they
catch something, or they would not work so hard.

Th ere is a bottle floating in the barnacle tank, and some
barnacles are attached to it. This bottle might have once
contained some " message from the sea," written in pencil
by some poor fellow who found the ship sinking under
him in the mid Atlantic. The message perished, but the
barnacles clung to the bottle, and very pretty objects
they are. There were some whiting formerly in the
barnacle tank; but the whiting came round the barnacles,
and bit ofl" their feelers one by one as they put them out,
so the whiting were shifted, and the barnacles now have
an easier time of it. Nevertheless the shrimps in the
tank must be a great nuisance to the barnacles, at whose
spread-out feelers the are continually nipping.

I was told by Admiral Hall that for many years of his
life, when far away at sea, he used to throw over a bottle
with a wi-itten message in it at least once a day, but
these bottles were seldom if ever picked up again. He
considered the reason of this was that barnacles attach
themselves to the bottles and breed so quickly that they
sink the bottles altogether. That barnacles delight to live
near the surface is proved by the fact of being found on
ship bottoms and floating timber.

Sea-horses — Hippocampi. Funny little fellows in a
pretty aquarium all to themselves ; with curious horse-like
heads and little fins which shake like horse's ears. They
have also a long fin on their backs, not unlike a horse's
mane, and they make it quiver every now and then so
that the fin seems to vibrate. But why hold on so with
your tails, like so many spider monkeys, my pretty little

THE BRIGHTON AQUAEIUM. 203

fellows ? You can swim if you like, I know. See, there's
one of you eating a sandhopper, catching him with his
trumpet-shaperl mouth. Brave little sea-horse ! you shall
be first favourite for Neptune next Derby !

One of Mr. Lee's great successes are the young dogfish,
hatched out of eggs laid in the tanks. These little " sea-
pnppies " are very pretty, and not a bit nervous. I think
we should arrange an Aquarium pantomime for the
Brighton children, and let them ride the Hippocampi, and
go out with a pack of puppy " dog-fishes " to hunt tbe
herrings and the sprats around the rocks and sea-weed
forests of the mighty ocean. We could get up a nice
I)ack of " sea-hounds," and write over their kennel, as was
done by a wag over the kennel of a scratch pack of
hounds that would hunt and kill anything, "Pro Aris et
Focis,"* with the translation : — " For Hares and Foxes."

The octopus tnnk is in fine order, and it is interesting
to see the curious and hideous creature feed. He evi-
dently has good eyesight. The moment a crab is dropped
in from above, he spies it from bis lurking-place, and out
he comes like an ogre from his den ; he spreads his great
tentacles all round in a circular form, and pounces down
on the poor crab, enclosing him in the membrane wliich
connects his eight arms together at their base. The crab
has not a chance of escape from this umbrella-shaped
covering thrown so suddenly over him. He is instantly
seized and devoured ; but we have not yet seen the process
of devouring. The poor crab seems to know his danger ;
he has probably never before seen an octopus, yet he is
afroid. If I were a crab I should certainly be afraid of

* The Roman soldiers' war cry : " For Homes and Hearths."

204

THE CEABBERY— USE OF CRABS.

an octopus. I wonder if crabs have nerves, and if some
crabs have pluck while others are cowards ?

Mr, Lawler kindly showed me the " crabbery " in the
naturalists' room, where these unfortunate things are kept
alive in hundreds (they cost one penny for four) for the
octopus's dinner. He dropped in a bit of fish amon<^
them. In a moment the crabs near rushed' towards it.
The crabs at a distance perceiving that " something was
up," began to run also, just as Londoners will run to ii
fire, an accident, or any other gratuitous amusement jh-o-
vided for them by circumstances. In about half a minute
there were at least 20 or 30 crabs fastened on to this one
bit of fish, a living ball of crabs, in fact. The ball then
began to roll. Some crabs fell off the ball on one side,
while other crabs climbed up the ball on the other, and
then the moving ball rolled away into the other end of
the tank, the mass of crabs fighting, pushing, and pinch-
ing each other most gloriously.

I imagine, therefore, crabs must be very selfish
creatures, and that they act on the principle of first come
first served. But yet, do we not learn from this scene
the great use of crabs, that is, to sweep up and tidy the
bed of the ocean ? If these active, hungry, and unpaid
little scavengers were not in existence all sorts of dead
creatures, fish, shells, etc., would accumulate, and foul the
water ; but the crabs' business and delight is to eat up
all he can find. Therefore, I admire the little crabs for
doing their duty, even though they do it unconsciously.
Crabs are, in fact, the rats of the ocean, ready to eat up
all the garbage they can find. At ray own house I never
allow a rat to be killed, that is, if I can help it. That

THE BRIGHTON AQUARIUM,

205

dreadful institution, the London dustbin, becomes replete
with the refuse of the kitchen. The rats come and eat
up the refuse. Therefore I preserve the rats. I give the
dustman sixpence not to kill my rats : my Missis gives the
dustman a shilling to kill them. It is wonderful how
attentive the dustman is to my dustbin !

It is a great feature in human curiosity that, when a
great novelist or great poet writes about an animal, the
beast immediately becomes celebrated. It may itself be
common enough, but when invested with a halo of mys-
tery— and novelists and poets are generally not famed for
a profound knowledge of natural history — it suddenly
becomes a hero in the public mind. Victor Hugo wrote
about the Octopus or man-sucker. Of course, like the
Yankee showman, he made his yarn " as good as he could."
An Octopus arrives for the first time at the Brighton
aquarium ; the Directors find to their joy that their new
treasure fortunately becomes a subject of correspondence
in the Times, and for many days we read a good deal
about " sea monsters." As the Octopus sits in a squat
position at the bottom of his tank, his head is amazingly
like that of an elephant, a similarity which is fully carried
out by the continual wave-like motions and curlings of
Ids long prehensile arms. I am, in fact, rather surprised
that this animal has not attained the name of " the Water-
Elephant," a name certainly more appropriate than
" devil fish;" for he is not a fish, and there is nothing
diabolical about him.

It would be interesting to get a series of drawings of
the various organs of prehension as found in animals.
We should have upon our list the proboscis of the

206

STRUCTURE OF OCTOPUS.

elephant, the mouth of the leech, the foot of the New
Forest fly, the head of the tape-worm, the curious
apparatus on the head of the remora or sucking-
fish, the spider-monkey's tail, etc. The body of the
octopus is of the shape of a very large swollen pear. It
also reminds one of the body of a fat spider. The arms
or " cephalic processes " in the Octopus are (as the name
implies) eight in number. The preparation No. 2,080 in
the Eoyal College of Surgeons shows the suckers. " These
suckers are sessile in this species of Cephalopod, and
consist of expanded circular discs formed by a duplicature
of the integument including radiating and circular mus-
cular fibres. The inner surface of the disc is marked by
lines which converge to the margin of the central cavity ;
the bottom of this cavity is occupied by a muscular sub-
stance which can be protruded and retracted like the
piston of a syringe. When the animal applies the sucker
to any object to which it is to attach itself, the piston is
raised and the cavity obliterated ; it is then withdrawn
and a vacuum is produced, which can be further increased
by a retraction of the central part of the disc itself, when
the adhesion produced by the surrounding atmospheric
pressure is so great, that in the living animal the arm
may be torn off before the suckers will yield." This is
certainly a marvellous piece of mechanism, well worthy
of study, and even imitation, by engineers.

When fishing for whiting at Folkestone, a great " man-
sucker " (as the Octopus is there called by the fishermen)
came floating past the boat, and I put my hand and arm into
the water in his way. In an instant the long arms were
coiled round my hand, quick as the end of a driving-whip

THE BRIGHTON AQUAEIUM.

207

twists round a gig shaft; the brute did not bite me; I
almost wish he had given me a nip. In the centre of the
eight arms is the beak ; this is in shape like a parrot's
beak, but not nearly so hard or strong. The substance
into which his beak is set is something like a bit of mus-
cular tripe, therefore I do not think that the bite of an
Octopus would be so very bad. A discussion has taken
place in the Times as to whether the Octopus would seize
a man or not. Certainly he would, if he got near him in
the water, though not with the intention of swallowing
him, but because he would seize anything moving. I do
not think an Octopus would come out of water to attack
a man, nor would he, I think, " fly at " a man, for the
Octopus moves by going " stern foremost," his long arms
being stretched out behind his head, looking like the legs
of a heron when flying.

The Octopus of the British seas is comparatively a
small animal, but in tropical seas there exists no doubt,
Octopi of enormous size. In the "Naturalist Library," Vol.
8, Marine Amphibise, we have the following evidence :

" In the Indian seas a species of eight-armed cuttle has
been found of such a size as to measure twelve feet in
breadth across the central part, while each arm was fifty -
four feet in length, thus making it extend from point to
point about 120 feet. He further states that the natives
of the Indian Isles, when sailing in their canoes, always
take care to be provided with sharp hatchets, in order
immediately to cut off the arms of such of these animals
as happen to fling them over the sides of the canoe, lest
they should pull it under water and sink it." Dr. Shaw
writes : — " The existence of some enormously large species

208

CAUGHT BY A CUTTLE FISH.

of the cuttle-fish tribe in the Indian northern seas can
liardly be doubted ; and though some accounts may have
been much exaggerated, yet there is sufficient cause for
believing that such species may very far surpass all that
are generally observed about the coasts of European seas.
A navigator, of the name of Dens, is said to have lost
three of his men in the African seas by a monster of this
kind, which unexpectedly made its appearance while these
men were employed, during a calm, in raking the sides of
the vessel. The colossal fish seized three men in its
arms, and drew them under water, in spite of every effort
to rescue them : the thickness of one of the arms, which
was cut off in the contest, was that of a mizen-mast, and
the suckers of the size of pot-lids."

Denys Montfort mentions that " at St. Malo, in the
chapel of St. Thomas, there is an ex voto picture
deposited there by the crew of a vessel, in remembrance
of their wonderful preservation during a similar attack
off the coast of Angola. An enormous cuttle-fish sud-
denly threw its ai-ms across the vessel, and was on the
point of dragging it to the bottom, when the combined
efforts of the crew succeeded in cutting off the tentacula
with swords and hatchets. During the period of their
greatest danger, they invoked the aid of St. Thomas, and
being successful in freeing themselves from their dreadful
opponent, on their return home they went in procession
to the chapel, and offered up their thanksgivings. They
also procured a painter to represent, as accurately as
possible,- their encounter, and the danger which, at the
moment, threatened the termination of their existence."*

* A correspondent has been good enough to send the following

THE BRIGHTON AQUARIUM!. 209

It is possible that the Kraken of Olaus Wormius,
Pontoppidon, etc., was simply a gigantic Octopus. But
we must remember that the water ia the arctic seas would
be too cold for these kind of creatures to grow to such a
vast size. In a book (Gesner's "Natural History of
Heidelberg," a.d. 1506) there is a very good picture of the
Octopus. He calls it a polypus, and gives no special
information about it except that the Germans call it
" Ein grosser Polkuttel." I wonder if this means " parrot
cuttle," the idea being taken from the shape of his beak.

There is in my museum a cast of a very fine Octopus.
The animal was given me by Mr. Grove, of Charing-cross.
His pear-shaped body measures ten inches in length and
five and three-quarters in width— total length from end
of body to tip of longest arm, three feet four inches, the .
longest arm being two feet six inches. This animal when
alive must have been a formidable beast.

When making this cast an idea suddenly struck me
that the Hydra, which Hercules killed, was simply a huge

information concerning this picture:-" I spent the best part of
a day in St. Male, trying to find if the picture described by Montfort
was m existence, and upon making inquiries of several persons
who ought to know, besides going about myself, I found that such
a picture was not known in St. Malo. However, there appears to
be such a story as Montfort speaks of known to the Malosicns and
one person told me that he thought there was a picture at MarseiUes
painted to commemorate the fight said to have taken place between the
octopus and a crew from St. Malo. I might add that there is no church
or chapel called St. Thomas in St. Malo. If any one is curious or
wishes to study the octopus, or minord, as it is called here, I sho'uld
advise them to pass a summer in this neighbourhood, for I have seen
as many aa twenty taken in an hour. The spring tides rise over forty
feet, and a better place certainly does not exist on the channel for the
study of all the 'common objects of the sea-shore. ' "-Top Knot
(La Roche Pendante, Dinard, lUc-et-Vilainc.)

P

210

HERCULES AND THE HYDRA.

Octopus. An author who wrote in 1658, thus describes
the Hydra : — " A monstrous dragon with whom Hercules
strove, and as he struck off one head, or tentation, so two
or three others rose continuously in the room thereof/'
This is just what would happen if a man fought with an
Octopus ; for when the conqueror cut off one arm or " ten-
tation"— mark the word — the Octopus would put out
another, in its turn to be severed. My idea of Hercules'
Hydra being an Octopus was subsequently strengthened
by the following letter which I received from my father's
old friend Mr. Pentland, who was then residing in Eome :
— " I have seen a letter from you in which you put for-
ward the theory that the dread Hydra which Hercules
killed was a great Octopus, or 'man-sucker.' I can fully
confirm your view from an examination of several Eoman
terra-cottas in the Campagna and Vatican Museums,
where the demigod is represented slaying an immense
Octopus, which is very correctly represented, although
sometimes with more or fewer arms than in the great
cephalopod. I think you might see representations of
these ornamental tiles in Campagna's work on the terra-
cottas of his collection, which will be found in the library
of the British Museum. The nearest representation of
the living Octopus is in the Gregorian Museum at the
Vatican, where it forms one of a series of the labours of
Hercules, and is probably of the time of the Antonines.
You will see these terra-cottas noticed in Murray's ' Hand-
book of Rome.' "

Numerous as are the natural history books, and able
as are the descriptions and engravings of the creatures
given therein, nothing can impress the human mind

THE BRIGHTON AQUAEIUM.

211

so strongly as an examination of the living Octopus
itself.

In my fish museum, at South Kensington, can be seen,
cut out in wood and painted to life, the exact dimensions
of the largest cuttle-fish that has been captured and
brought to public notice. The following are the circum-
stances under which I became acquainted with this
valuable specimen.

In December, 1873, I received the following corre-
spondence : —

" Downing Street.

" I am directed by the Earl of Kimberley to transmit
to you a copy of a despatch from the Governor of New-
foundland, enclosing, with other papers, photographs of
the arm of a gigantic cuttle-fish, recently brought to
shore by some fishermen of that island.

"Lord Kimberley is quite willing that you should
make such use of these papers, in the interest of science,
as you may think proper ; but I am to request that his
Lordship may be informed in which museum you consider
they should be finally deposited.

" EoBEET G. W. Herbert.

"F. Buckland, Esq."

" Government House, Ncftrfoundland.

" My Lord,— The existence of a large cephalopod in
the North Atlantic has been so questioned by naturalists
that I am induced to bring under your Lordship's notice
the circumstances under which one of the arms of a

P 2

Zl-Z MONSTER CUTTLE FROM NEWFOUNDLAND.

gigantic cuttle-fish was secured in Conception Bay, New-
foundland. With this view I have the honour to transmit
copies of two letters from the Rev. Moses Harvey, of
St. John's, N.F., in one of which he describes the size of
the captured arm of that fish, and deduces from certain
data the proportions of the cephalopod. In his second
letter he describes the appearance of an almost perfect
specimen taken recently at Logy Bay, though of inferior
size to that seen in Conception Bay.

"I have further the honour to submit photographs
of the arm and of the ceptalopod, illustrative of the
descriptions contained in Mr. Harvey's letters.

" I trust that your Lordship will be pleased to
forward the enclosed documents and photographs to the
department of science in London to which they relate.

(Signed) " Stephen G. Hill."

Mr. Harvey writes as regards the cuttle from which
the arms were cut : — " Two fishermen were out in a punt,
on October 26, oS Portugal Cove, Conception Bay,
about nine miles from St. John's. Observing some
object floating on the water, they rowed towards it, sup-
posing it to be a large sail, or a wreck. One of the men
struck it with his ' gaff/ when immediately it reared a
parrot-like beak, which they declare was as big ' as a six-
gallon keg,' with which it struck the bottom of the boat
violently. It then shot out from about its head two huge,
livid arms, and began to twine them round the boat. One
of the men seized a small axe, and severed both arms as
they lay over the gunwale of the boat, whereupon the fish
moved off, and ejected an immense quantity of inky fluid.

THE BRIGHTOJT AQUARIUM.

213

which darkened the water for two or three hundred yards.
The men saw it for a short time afterwards, and observed
its tail in the air, which they declare was ten feet across.
They estimate the body to have been sixty feet in length,
five feet in diameter, and of the same shape and colour as
the common squid ; and they observed that it moved in
f the same way as the squid, both backwards and forwards.
" One of the arms, which they brought ashore, was
unfortunately destroyed, as they were ignorant of its
importance ; but the clergyman of the village assures me
it was ten inches in diameter, and six feet in length.
The other arm was brought to St. John's, but not before
six feet of it were destroyed. Fortunately I heard of it,
and had it preserved ; Mr. Murray, of the Geological
Survey, and I, afterwards examined it carefully, had it
photographed, and immersed in alcohol; it is now in our
museum. It measured nineteen feet, is of a pale pink
colour, entirely cartilaginous, tough and pliant as leather,
and very strong. It is but three inches and a-half in
circumference, except towards the extremity, where it
broadens, like an oar, to six inches in circumference, and
then tapers to a pretty fine point. The under surface of
the extremity is covered with suckers to the very point.
At the extreme end there is a cluster of small suckers,
with fine sharp teeth round their edges, and having a
membrane stretched across each. Of these there are
about seventy. Then come two rows of very large
suckers, the movable disc of each an inch and a quarter
in diameter, the cartilaginous ring not being denticu-
lated. These are twenty-four in number. After these
there is another group of suckers, with denticulated edges

214 DIMENSIONS OP MONSTER CUTTLE.

(similar to the first), and about fifty in number. Along
the under surface about forty more small suckers are
distributed at intervals, making in all about 180 suckers
on the arm.

" The men estimate that they left about ten feet of the
arm attached to the body of the fish, so that its original
length must have been thirty-five feet.

" More than once we have had accounts of gigantic
cuttles cast ashore in different localities ; but not until
now have any of them been preserved.

" By this mail I send you a photograph of the arm ;
it is one-fourth the original in size. You will readily see
the suckers at the extremity of the arm. The discs of
several of the larger ones have been torn off by careless-
ness on the part of the captors. A few of them, howevei",
are perfect, and the smaller ones are not injured."

As regards the entire specimen of the large cuttle,
Mr. Harvey writes : —

" Since the appearance of the large cuttle in Concep-
tion Bay, I have been fortunate to obtain possession of a
^perfect specimen, though far inferior in size to the monster
whose arms were amputated. It was taken in a net near
Logy Bay. The body is upwards of seven feet in length,
and about five feet in circumference. From the head ten
arms radiate, two of them each being twenty -four feet in
length, and armed at the extremities with a cluster of
sucking discs, some of them an inch and a quarter in
diameter, and furnished with small sharp teeth round
their edges. Eight of the arms are each six feet in length,
and nine in circumference at the junction with the head.

THE BRIGHTON AQUAEIUM.

215

They are completely covered on the inner surface with
rows of large denticulated suckers. The beak is in the
middle of the centre nucleus from which the arms
radiate, and the large eyes, which, unfortunately, have
been destroyed, were on each side of this central mass.
The remains of one of the eyelids show that the eyes
were four inches in diameter. They are dark and beauti-
ful, but, when the creature is enraged, assume an expres-
sion of intense ferocity. The beak is sharp and powerful.
The fishermen were compelled to kill it by cutting off its
head before it could be landed, and it was with great
difficulty that three men despatched it.

"Messrs. McKenny and Parsons have succeeded in
obtaining admirable photographs* of this specimen. One
of these photographs shows the head and surrounding
arms, with the beak in the centre. The head is sup-
ported on a stand, and the arms hang down with the
rows of suckers displayed, and taper to a fine point. The
two long tentacles are coiled in short lengths, and hang
from the ends of the rail on the right and left of the
larger arms. They are about three inches in circum-
ference, and the rows of splendid suckers at their ex-
tremities are very distinct in the photograph. The body
had to be photographed separately. The formation of
the tail is very striking. No specimen at all to be com-
pared with this is to be found in any museum in Europe
or America. In the aquaria of Brighton, in England,
and Hamburg, in Germany, there are living specimens,
but they are not more than two or three feet between the

* These can now be obtained from tlie London Stereoscopic Company,
110, Regent-street, London.

216

MARINE OBSEEVATORY.

extremities of the extended arms. This one is forty-
eight feet between the extremities of the longer arms, and
nearly fourteen feet from tip to tip of two of the shorter
arms. " M. Haeyey."

The reader, by going to my museum, can realise from
the wooden model the exact dimensions of this giant
cuttle.

I could, if space allowed, write much more on the living
wild beasts of the sea, caged in the Brighton Aquarium,
an institution which will not only enable us to make great
advances in the knowledge of marine fauna, but will also
much assist in solving diflBcult fishery questions relating to
the management of fisheries. If the establishment of the
Brighton Aquarium does not turn out to be a key which
will unlock many difficulties in practical history, I shall
be much disappointed.

To this marine observatory, therefore, I look forward
to the solution of a great number of questions of the
highest importance to the national wealth as represented
by the fisheries of this country.

When I think of the great secrets of nature locked up
from our knowledge (yet under our eyes, at every turn of
our daily duty), and imagine what a mine of intellectual
wealth remains to be opened out by quickness of sight,
clearness of intellect, and the pickaxe of hard work — a
great panorama opens before me. How ignorant — how
terribly ignorant — are we of God's great laws as applied
to the creatures that live in the element in which we are
forbidden to exist !

Poor, pretty, silent things, yet endowed with the most

THE BRIGHTON AQUARIUM.

217

sublime eloquence, if we have only ears to hear, Fishes
will whisper to us, and talk into our eyes — even if they
do not speak louder — the lesson of humility.

To quote my Father's words from his " Bridgewater
Treatise," " The sterility and solitude which have some-
times been attributed to the depths of the ocean exist only
in the fictions of poetic fancy. The great mass of the
water that covers nearly three-fourths of the globe is
crowded with life, perhaps more abundantly than the air
and the surface of the earth."

It has been so crowded ever since this planet, once
" without form, and void," roUed out of chaos, in all its
beauty and purity ; and the edict went forth, " Let the
waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that
hath life. And God created great whales, and every
living creature that moveth, which the waters brought
forth abundantly after their kind."

"When we attempt, in the feebleness of our vaunted
intellects, to grasp or get the slightest idea of the millions
upon millions of square miles which form the fathomless
abyss of the everlasting Ocean, inhabited by fish or other
living marine beauties, the human mind is staggered with
the thought of the greatness of the Almighty Creator :
and man — Adam the man — falls prostrate, awe-struck in
his littleness and insignificance.

Since the above article has been in print, I have had
the honour of rendering my assistance at the opening of
the Southport Aquarium. Southport is easily reached
from Wigan or Liverpool. There are about three millions
and a half of people within an easy " return ticket" from
Southport. This magnificent aquarium owes its exist-

218 THE SODTHPOET AQUARIUM.

ence principally to my friend, Mr. Alderman Smith, of
Southport. The aquaria at Brighton and Southport are
great educational schools, which will do much to teach
kindness to animals, to humanise those but little brought
into contact with the living works of the Creator, and
above all to break do^vn the ideas of scepticism and in-
fidelity which are now temporary candidates for public
approval.

EEMINISCENCES OF NATUEAL HISTOEY IN

SCOTLAND.

' — » —
Scotch Eed Deee.

In the course of my official inspection of salmon
fisheries in Scotland,* as S^Decial Commissioner, with my
colleague, Mr. Young, of Edinburgh, in 1870, 1 had the

* During my long tour of official river inspection in Scotland, I was
more than ever pleased with the Scotch people, the Scotch coimtry, and
the Scotch fisheries. My friend and colleague, Mr. A. Young, of Edin-
burgh, and myself, were most hospitably received, and every opportunity
was afforded us of obtaining the information on the Scotch salmon
fisheries which it is our pleasure as well as duty to collect. I trust
the good folks in Scotland will not take it amiss if I venture to publish
some general remarks upon their magnificent country, the resources of
which I do not think to be as yet half developed. I wiU take the sub-
ject of railways.

It is a most fortunate thing for commissioners and inspectors of
salmon fisheries that railways generally run along the valleys of rivers,
so that one's work of inspection is of ten very much facilitated, especially
in getting general ideas of spawning grounds, &o., above weirs, and pol-
lutions. Now where a road can go, a railway, for the most part, can go
also ; and I candidly confess that, when I was far away up the country,
out of the reach of telegraphs and railways, I did not feel half so
comfortable as when within their reach.

It is a great comfort to feel oneself within the reach of home by means
of rail and telegraph. I am, therefore, a strong advocate for opening
up Scotland in every direction. Where there are no railways, tho
" machine," as a carriage, fly, four-wheeler, etc., is called in Scotland, is
dragged along by a pair of wretched horses, which are used for farm
work in the winter, and to tug tourists about in the summer ; for these

220

SIZE OP BRAIN OF DEER.

pleasure of meeting many gentlemen interested in the
noble sport of deer-stalking, and we conversed much
about Eed Deer, their habits, management, &c. I only
saw one wild live red deer in Scotland, and he was about
five miles away, and looked more like an old woman
gathering sticks on the hill-side than a red deer. I had
only five minutes to look at him ; but I examined two or
three dead animals that had been shot, and found that
there was much to be learnt from their anatomy.

In the first place, I consider red deer must be very
clever animals, and not nearly so stupid as sheep. I have
weighed the brain of a red deer ; it weighs one pound
one ounce. A sheep's brain weighs four ounces, and
two sheep about equal a 16-stone stag in weight; there-
fore a sheeps' brain is, in proportion to the size of the
animal, only half as large as that of a deer, and it will re-
quire four sheeps' brains to equal the brain of one stag.

I understand a certain portion of a deer forest is called
" the sanctuary When a hunted deer has once reached

miserable beasts, I would, wberever possible, substitute the locomotive
engine with its glittering brass harness, dragon-like nostrils, and life-
inspiring whistle. Many excellent folks bmld their comfortable nests
on a hillside, with a fine view, and glory Ln the fact that there is no
railway within twenty miles of them, that they have thirty mUes
to send to the nearest baker's shop, and that they have to give their
chimney-sweep a bed ; the post, moreover, takes two or more days to
come from London, and telegrams are unheard of. In such houses, I
liave felt uncomfortable ; the owners, in my opinion, also ought to feel
uncomfortable ; but the answer is, that they " like the country. " True,
but the rat always leaves a bolt hole to his private establishment, and
General von Moltke carefully spun out a telegraph wire behind him
towards Berlin, wherever he went with the staff of the Prussian army.
Just so, again, a cautious old spider always takes care to spin out a rope
up which he may swarm back into his hole should danger threaten.

SCOTCH EED DEEK.

221

this sanctuary Ms life is safe. In proof of the sagacity of
the deer I may remark that those which live on the moun-
tains in the neighbourhood seem somehow to find out very
quickly which portion of the ground is " the sanctuary/' A
very experienced deer-stalker told me that he had seen a
cunning old stag make direct for the sanctuary when he
was in trouble. Having arrived there, the knowing old
fellow simply lay down and looked at his tormentors, as
much as to say, " Ah, now I am in the sanctuary, you
can't touch me."

I have several times examined the peculiar blind
pouches at the inferior angle of the eye of the red deer.
They exist both in male and female. I observed from some
tame deer, at Dunrobin Castle, that the animal has the
power of contracting or expanding the orifice of this
pouch ; and from subsequent dissection I find that there is
an orbicular muscle, which works it just like the muscle of
the human eyelids. In this pouch I always found a mass
of wax-like secretion, though the gland which secretes it is
difficult to find. I have not the least idea what is the use
of this peculiar secretion. When touched with a red-hot
iron, it gives out an aromatic smell, not unlike some of
the gums used for incense in churches. I went up to
see what the living red deer in the Zoological Gardens
would say to it. They did not seem to notice the places
where I had rubbed it against the bars of their inclosure ;
but one female red deer smelt very hard at it, and then
ate it up. This, however, goes for nothing, as I heard of
a fallow deer at Hampton Court eating up a whole box of
acidulated lemon lozenges, one lozenge after the other.
It may be possible that this wax-like secretion has some-

222

GROWTH OF DEER HORNS.

thing to do with the " Bezoar " of the ancient books on
Pharmacy.

The horn of the red deer is simi^ly an external bone,
which grows out from the skull, taking a thin layer of skin
with it as it grows ; the skin is called the velvet, and
underneath the velvet are large blood vessels which
secrete the bone. When the horn has attained its full
development the " burr" appears at the base of the horn,
and strangulates the blood-vessels (see preparations by
the great John Hunter, at the Eoyal College of Surgeons,
London) ; the velvet then falls off, or is rubbed off by the
deer, leaving the horn, i.e., bone in an ornamental shape,
exposed. From a deer's head which I found on the
rubbish heap behind the kennel at Dunrobin Castle, and
which Mr. McDonald, head forester, gave me, I perceive
that the two largest arteries which secrete the bone are
situated in the rear of the horn — an admirable pro-
vision against injury during the time the horn is growing.
Deer-stalkers should examine these facts for themselves.
The deer will often eat the dried portions of the velvet as
they fall off the horns ; the reason why the velvet from the
horn, as served up with deer's fry, is so good is that it is
composed of the delicate skin and tender blood-vessels.

The formation of these horns of phosphate of lime

and other bone-making material is a great drain on the

system, and deer will eat bones if they can get them ;

and I hear they wiU even eat their own shed horns in

order to keep up the necessary supply; bones should,

therefore, be strewed about in deer parks and forests.*

* The Marquis of Ripon tells me that hinds will eat the antlers of
the bucks even when they are on the bucks' heads. His Lordship has
kindly given me a splendid specimen to show this fact.

SCOTCH EED DEER.

223

The deer in a certain forest in Scotland, I was told by
Lord Lovat, once ate up the whole of an old woman ; the
keepers found strange bits of bone about, which the deer
had been gnawmg. They traced up these bits of bones,
and found the remains of the skeleton of an old woman
that had been lost in the forest some long time back. The
deer had nearly eaten up the skeleton.

Eed deer are very fond of salt. Captain Houstoun told
me that deer had been known to go as far east as Peter-
head, and drink sea water, getting at it at the end of a
bay to the north of the town. I can see no reason why
rock-salt should not be put about all deer forests : it would
cei-tainly improve the condition of the animals.

Deer-stalkers complain that the heads are getting
smaller and smaller every year ; of course they are, and it
is quite the fault of the owners of the deer forests them-
selves. It is simply a bit of " cause and effect." Those
who breed race-horses select the finest males for the stud,
and the breed gradually approaches perfection. Those
who breed red deer, on the contrary, select the finest
males /or the rifle; the moment a stag grows horns larger
and finer than his brother stags he is doomed to death :
everybody is after the " muckle stag of Ben-something or
another;" he is ultimately shot, and the breed is not
benefited by the continuance of his kind. Nature, how-
ever, herself comes to the rescue— the largest stags that
are left beat off the smaller stags, vi et armia. I was told
lately that " Nature had had her day." I doubt it ; let
owners of deer forests take a hint from Nature, and spare
their big stags ; I am sure it is the proper thing to do.*

* Lord Ripon tells me that the Duke of Westminster is now carryincr
out this idea. I am glad the Duke has shown such a good example. "

224

FOSSIL DEER HORNS.

In former times red deer, carrying very large liorns,
existed in Scotland. I have in my collection a fragment
of a gigantic horn, which was presented to me by a gentle-
man living at Perth. It measures 13^ inches in length,
and would be about one-third of the entire horn. The
horn is still attached to a jiortion of the skull. The stag
which once carried the horn must have been an enormous
animal. I give the following measurements of deer horns
for comparison : —

Round base Above brow
of horn. antler.

Red deer (recent, Windsor Park) 7^ inches. 7 inches.

Red deer (fossil, bed of Thames) 8 „ 5| „

Red deer (fossil, Tay) 9 4 „ 8 4 „

It will thus be seen that the ancient Scotch stag must
have been much larger than the Windsor Park red deer,
or the ancient English red deer. By comparing the Tay
horn with specimens in my museum, and with the figures
given by Professor Owen in his " British Fossil Mam-
mals," there can, I think, be no doubt that this is the horn
of Strongyloceros Spelceus, the gigantic round-antlered
deer. It is called Spelseus on account of horns having
been found in caves with bones of hyaenas, elephants, bears,
etc. My father described some horns of this deer, from
Kirkdale Cave in Yorkshire, in his "Eeliquse Deluvianae."

The animal which carried the horn found in the estuary
of the Tay was probably drowned, and the carcase carried
down by a flood. As the flesh decayed, the bones would
fall down separately to the bottom, and become embedded
in the mud. There were no deer-stalkers in those days ;
and getting into a lake or river, whichever the Tay was,
he died in the water, and was carried down by a spate.

SCOTCH EED DEER.

The same thing is going on now in the case of the dead
dogs, cats, pigs, sheep, etc., that we see (unfortunately too
often) floating down rivers. Wounded deer, moreover,
often seek the water. As regards the size of this ancient
Scotch stag {Cervus Strongyloceros), Professor Owen
writes: — " If the trunk and hinbs bore the same propor-
tion to the head and antlers as in the wapiti and red deer,
as most probably they did, the species indicated by this
remarkable fragment of antler (figured in his book) must
have been the most gigantic of our extinct cervine animals."
We may, therefore, conclude that in former times enormous
deer, as large as, if not larger than, the wapiti of America,
roamed over the highlands now drained by the Tay.

Deer horns are often subject to deformities. I have a
photograph, sent me by Mr. W. A. Leay, of a stag's head,
with very curiously malformed horns, which was shot by
the Earl of Stamford and Warrington in his forest of
Glenmore.

The head presents a very remarkable deformity ; the
right horn consists of a single tyne ; the left horn consists
of a single tyne for about half its length, and then, as it
were, suddenly falls over, becoming palmated as in the
fallow deer. This palm then sends a branch upwards
and another downwards, while there is one very small
button in the centre. The photograph was evidently taken
before the head was stufied. May I be allowed to suggest
that in all photographs of specimens a scale should be
given ? This may be done very easily if a foot rule
be simply photographed at the same time as the object.

Considering how soft deer horns are when tlxey first
sprout, it is wonderful there are not more deformities than

226

DEFORMED ANTLERS.

we find in practice. Should a deer injure his horn when
soft — say half break or bend it — it will not recover itself.
Malformation of horns, however, often depends upon
injuries to the internal organs, as was proved some years
back by experiments carried out at the park of Sir Philip
Egerton. Lord Lovat was kind enough to show me
several remarkable specimens of deformed horns in his
collection. In one case the right antler stood straight
upright, and had no tynes to it at all. The left antler,
on the contrar}', hung down by the side of the head over
the eye, falling like the ear of a lop-eared rabbit. The
so-called "crommy heads" of Jura are also remarkable
specimens. In one instance the two antlers seem to have
united at their base into a solid lump, hke the nodules
we see growing out of old trees. This deformity seems
to be peculiar to Jura. On this point Mr. W. B. Eedfarn
writes in Land and Water, May 8, 1869 : —

" The extraordinary growth of antlers found on the
deer in the island of Jura has attracted the attention of
the few persons who have heard of them. Macgillivray,
in his ' Natural History of Deeside,' makes a passing
allusion to it, and I believe H.E.H. the late Prince
Consort sent for a few specimens, but as far as I am aware
there has never been anything written on the subject.
For the truth of the following notes I can vouch, having
received my information from the laird of Jura, and having
also myself been long enough in the forest to have seen
sufiicient to convince me had I been inclined to doubt. It
is a well-known fact that deformed and peculiar antlers are
often the effect of a wound, but this is not the case with
the Jura deer, as one might at first glance suppose, for the

SCOTCH EED DEER.

227

forest being stalked almost solely by the laird, who very
rarely allows a wounded stag to escape, it is impossible
for crommy heads to be so caused ; besides which they
abound in such numbers that the idea is out of the
question ; the only cause I can suggest is the continual
breeding from the same stock, and I am confirmed in this
opinion by the fact, that these crommy heads are not now
quite so numerous since a few stags were introduced into
the island from the forests of Athole and the Black Mount
some years ago. These crommy heads, as they are called
in J ura, vary very much in appearance, and grow in most
wonderful forms, while others are remarkably small and
simple. Some heads carry one horn perfectly well shaped,
and the other a crommy one ; others again may have but
one antler, and it is either a crommy or a perfect one ;
this is the case in about one in every twenty or twenty-
five, while the ordinary crommy or pecuUar headed deer
is much more plentiful, perhaps one in every twelve or
fifteen. The laird has seen several stags without a vestige
of a horn, though he has only killed one of this kind,
whose head was as plain as a hind's, and was known never
to have been touched with lead. There is also another
kind of head sometimes, but very rarely, met with in Jura;
this is a horn on one side branching into splits, the other
being perfect in form. A deer with horns of this descrip-
tion was killed about three years ago, and was known to
have borne, previously, a large heavy upstanding antler of
five points, and had, to the certain knowledge of the laird,
never been wounded.

" From the accompanying drawings it will be seen that
the crommy antlers lie back from the head, very like

Q 2

228 " CROMMY HEADS " OF JUEA.

those of a goat, at almost right angles with the brow antler,
instead of growing up in the usual manner.

" SVptp.li No. 1 shows a crommy head of six points, the

CKOIIMT ANTLEKS FEOM JUEA. — No. 1.

longest measuring twenty-one inches. No. 2 is a more
remarkable shape, having nine points, all short, with the
exception of one, which measures twenty-two inches. I
could give numbers of others equally curious, but perhaps
these will sufficiently illustrate the crommy heads of Jura.
It must not be supposed that there are no well formed

SCOTCH EED DEER.

229

antlers in this forest, for as a rule it produces rather fine
heads, crommies being the exceptions."

In the following number of Land and Water, Sir Victor
Brooke writes : —

" The crommy heads of Jura are a most interesting
example of the delicate adjustment of the laws which
govern the growth of deers' antlers. Breeding in, and over-

CROMMY ANTLERS FROM JURA. — No. 2.

stocKing, will he in all probability the main cause of this
unnatural growth, so common in Jura; and their home being
an island, any malformation proceeding from a general
cause would sooner develop itself amongst the deer. The
irregularity of the horns bending back over the neck
seems to be not an unusual indication of something work-
ing unnaturally upon the constitution of a deer. I have

280 EFFECTS OP WOUNDS ON DEER HORNS.

in my collection the head of a deer that I wounded very
severely in 1866, and killed in 1867. He had a splendid
head when I wounded and lost him, but when I killed him
his horns were most extraordinary. The left horn is two
inches and three quarters long, the right six inches; there
are no brow antlers, and the horns, such as they are, bend
backwards just like a crommy head from Jura, that I once
saw in Mr. Leadbeater's house in Brewer Street. I have
also the head of a very aged fallow buck, given me by Mr.
Sawyer, of Eichmond Park, in which the left horn bends
backwards in exactly the same manner. A severe wound
in the first of these instances (and extreme age in the
latter) seem to have produced in principle exactly the same
effect as that produced so constantly amongst the stags
of Jura. Though breeding in may set a law at work
with the tendency to interfere with the natural growth of
the deer's antlers, this law must, in the case of the
Jura deer, be connected with other and more mysterious
laws. If not, other forests suffering from breeding in and
overstocking, and several parks in England where the deer
have not been crossed for centuries, would constantly
exhibit similar appearances, which, as far as I know,
is not the case. The force or forces which act in
combination with that set working by breeding in are
probably closely related to the influence which causes
healthy antlers grown in a particular country, forest, or
park, so closely to resemble the type of antler locally
prevalent."

The hoofs of red deer are also subject to deformities. I
have examined the hoof of a stag in Lord Lovat's collection.
Each hoof was some five or six inches long, and they

SCOTCH EED DEEE.

231

crossed eacli other, almost forming a figure of eight. In
this case the leg had been fractured by a gun-shot wound,
and the bone had become so united as to shorten the leg and
to keep the foot off the ground. The horny hoof continued
to grow, not being worn away by friction against the ground.
A very similar deformity takes place in the hoofs of the
cattle which live in the Falkland Islands. Dr. Murie has
described and figured a case in Land and Water. "Mr.
Darwin," he writes, " in his ' Voyage of the Beagle,' in
Teferring to the horses of the Falldand Islands, says : —
' From the softness of the ground their hoofs often grow
irregularly to a great length, and this causes lameness.'
Those that know anything about fillies are well aware
that before they are shod, or travel much on hard ground,
there is a tendency to overgrowth of the hoofs. In short,
their hoofs, like our own nails, grow freely, and to a,
certain extent without stint, unless counteracted by ordi-
nary mechanical agencies. The various wild donkeys
and other equine tribes in the Eegent's Park Gardens are
all unshod, and it is notorious that their hoofs grow
abnormally long, surpassing what ordinarily obtains in
their fellow kind frequenting our hard English soil, and,
similarly, those that are trimmed and shod. The
menagerie donkeys, &c., therefore have their hoofs pared
occasionally."

Another telling example of irregularity in the growth
of hoofs is seen in our dairy cattle. Cows which are long
confined in a dairy, without regular access to the green
fields, or which travel on macadamised or paved roads, are
subject to elongation and twisting of the hoof points. Sheep
which are kept grazing for a lengthened period on low-

232

LOCKED DEER HORNS.

lying or marshy land, not unfrequently exhibit exces-
sive enlargement of the hoofs, and they also occasionally
overlap or curl about.

It not unfrequently happens that a pair of bucks, when
fighting, manage to entangle or lock their horns so closely
that they cannot be extricated without the aid of a saw.
This is due to a certain amount of elasticity existing in
the horn, which allows the tynes of the antlers to pass each
other, when the horn immediately resumes its spring, and
henoe they become locked together. I saw a pair of horns
of the reindeer similarly locked in Mr. Leadbeater's shop
in Brewer Street ; and there is, I believe, a specimen of
two heads of the American deer {Cervus Virginianus)
in the museum at Oxford ; and instances have oc-
curred with both the red and the fallow deer. There is,
in the museum of the Eoyal College of Surgeons, a
very fine pair of locked antlers of the elk or moose
of North America, which were found on the skeletons of
the poor animals. When thus entangled, they probably
lingered out a slow and miserable death, or else they
were speedily discovei^ed and devoured by wolves. A
portrait of these horns appeared in Land and Water,
August 26, 1866 ; and a correspondent having seen them
was good enough to send me the following interesting
story : — " The illustration in Land and Water reminded
me of an incident that occurred to me a few years since.
One evening in the autumn of 1857, I was crossing the
lawn with my dog Eover, bent on retrieving a wounded
bird in the fern, when, through an opening in the latter,
we suddenly espied two bucks in fierce conflict. In
October these desperate encounters are almost of hourly

SCOTCH RED DEER.

233

occun-ence all over the park ; and on a frosty, moonlight,
night especially, the clash of horns, where there are up-
wards of a thousand head of deer, powerfully adds to the
disconcerting character of their autumnal serenade, when
a stranger to the economy of the fallow-deer happens to
be one of the audience. The belligerents, however, will
seldom allow any one, with or without a dog, to approach
them within twenty yards, so that my surprise at seeing
Eover run barking up to the desperadoes on this occasion
without causing them to desist was sufficiently great to
induce me to draw nearer to them myself. It then be-
came evident to me that the horns were firmly locked
together, and that the object nearest their hearts at that
supreme moment was anything but mutual destruction.
Their struggles to effect a separation were indescribably
violent, and, as they alternately rolled over and over, and
laghted themselves again half-a-dozen times in a few
minutes, it seemed marvellous to me that either of them
should escape a dislocation of the vertebras of the neck ;
but the great development of muscle which enables the
buck to wield his horns so skilfully in battle would also
seem to be an effectual provision against such a contin-
gency. It would be difficult to convey an idea of the
frantic energy displayed by the infuriated animals from
the time Eover surprised them till, in their efforts to escape
from him and from each other, they plunged headlong
into the fern, which at that spot was more than six feet
liigh, and rolling over again and again eventually became
helplessly entangled, literally bound over to keep the peace
towards each other by a process as stringent as any that
was ever devised in a court of law.

234

HYBRID DEER.

" At this compulsory suspension of hostilities I could
approach them without much danger to myself, and I
then made a curious discovery. I found that the brow
antlers of one of the bucks, instead of presenting the
simple form of such appendages, had each in the course
of Its development assumed a sharp outward and back-
ward curve near its extremity, forming a complete hook,
and these having been forcibly wedged between the horns
of the other had hooked on to them with a spring, and
retained their hold so immovably that nothing short of a
fracture could have loosened it.

"Taking a horn in each hand I tried with all my strength
to break one or both, but finding that I could only bend
them, I hastened to the cottage of the park-keeper, who,with
his assistant, at once followed me to the " gory bed " of the
prostrate heroes; and while he and his man held them
firmly by their hind-legs, I sawed off one of the hooked
antlers, and thus effected their liberation, as much perhaps
to their surprise as to their satisfaction. This antler,
which I have retained as a trophy, I have since had
mounted as a desk seal."

I am a great advocate for crossing the breed of red
deer ; I several times mentioned to proprietors in Scot-
land the advisability of crossing the red deer with the
wapiti of North America ; and I fancy I made an impres-
sion in some quarters.

Some of my friends said it was impossible ; I am not
of that opinion. A gentleman who is much interested in
the deer forests of Germany sent me facts to show that
wapiti had been crossed with success with red deer : —
" The Prince Pless, who has large possessions in

SCOTCH EED DEEE.

235

Silesia, has succeeded in obtaining a cross between the
wapiti {Cervus Canadensis) and the common red deer
{Cervas Elephas). The breeding of the pure wapiti,
which were first imported in 1862, appearing to be a
failure, it was decided to try a cross with the native red
deer, although zoologists had pronounced this to 'be an
impossibility, or at least had predicted that the offspring
would be sterile. Early in 1868 all the pure wapitis
except one had died, and there remained twenty-eight
head of half-breeds, of which three or four had been once,
and others twice, crossed with pure wapiti.

" The half-bred deer is of colossal size, little inferior
to wapiti in bulk and antlers. Its roar is less sonorous
than that of the red deer. A four -year-old half-breed,
twice crossed, carries antlers with fourteen points. In
general appearance it resembles the red deer, hut is
larger."

I do so much wish some Scotch proprietors would try
this experiment ; I' am sure it would answer, and greatly
improve the heads of deer in their forests.

I have never yet been out deer-stalking — being much
too busy with my inspection work — but I have been told
many a tale of the difficulty there is in getting near
enough to the deer to get a shot. I understand that one
of the perilous moments of the stalk is when, having
walked a long round to get at the corrie where the deer
are lying, it becomes necessary to peep over a rock to
have a look at the deer. On such occasions, the deer
often take alarm, and I do not wonder, as a man's face
peeping over a rock must necessarily be a new object for
the deer, and it is impossible for a man to see unless his

236

A NEW DEER-STALKING CAP.

eyes are above the level of the rock and at least half his
face is exposed to the gaze of the animals.

The colour of the deer-stalker's cap under these cir-
cumstances becomes important, and I was much pleased
to observe that the cloth cap worn by one of Mr.
Tennant's deer-stalking gillies at Auchnashellach was
made of a black and white material, exactly resembling a
granite boulder, so that when this man's head was pro-
truded above the rock, the deer might easily be pardoned
(if the man remained quite still) for imagining the
new object to be simply a real granite stone. The idea
of assimilating the colour of the cap, and clothes as well,
to the colour of the ground, struck me as a great dodge.

I think, however, I have hit upon an improvement,
which I now throw out, more for fun than as a real
practical suggestion. The head of a red deer, shot by
H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, was kindly sent me by Mr.
Tennant. I happened to be thinking of this game-
keeper's cap as I was skinning the head, and an idea
suddenly struck me— why should I not make a deer-
stalking cap of the deer's head itself ? thought I— so I
took all the skin off the skull, and with a surgical saw,
carefully cut the skull in such a manner that the horns
(which are by no means large) should remain in situ,
while the loose skin hung all round it. I then put my
head through the skin of the neck, pulling on this new-
fashioned cap, made of the whole deer's head, skin, ears,
horns and all, just as a diver puts on his diving helmet.
The nose part I managed to stuff out into a natural
position with cotton-wool and a spring of whalebone.
I then sent for a looking-glass, and arranged the holes

SCOTCH RED DEEE.

237

where the deer's eyes formerly were in such a raanner
that ray own eyes came exactly in the place of the deer's
eyes. I found with this arrangement that I had plenty of
air to breathe, and could obtain an excellent view from
between the deer's eyeUds. With this deer's head on, I
then ran upstairs, and frightened the whole household —
monkeys and all — out of their wits.

It would not, therefore, I imagine, be a bad plan for
the deer-stalker to carry one of "Buckland's Patent
Deer-stalliing Caps " with him. My cap, horns and all,
weighs but very little, and when it is dry it will be lighter
still. When it is necessary for him to look over the edge
of a rock to examine what the deer are after, he can just
put on the deer's-head cap. The horns of the deer would
appear just above the edge of the rock, and then gradually
the whole head of the deer, which head contains the head
of the deer-stalker, who thus would be enabled to get an
excellent view from his patent observatory. The deer
ought not to be alarmed at seeing the head of a comrade,
and the stalker's eye, moving and glistening inside the
skin would add to the general appearance of the thing
being alive. I say the deer ought not to be alarmed.
The experiment anyhow is worth trying. There is, how-
ever, one danger that must not be overlooked. Some
stalker might possibly be " stalking the stalker," and, mis-
taking his patent cap for a real deer's head, might take a
shot at it, which would be " decidedly a bawr," as Lord
Dundreary has it.

I must not in this chapter omit to mention a curious
instance of a supposed hybrid between a cow and a red-
deer which came under my notice. When inspecting the

238

SUPPOSED HYBRID DEER.

river Beauly, near Inverness, Lord Lovat kindly asked
me to examine a supposed hybrid between a red-deer stag
and a cow, which was in the cow byres at Beaufort Castle.
The animal was standing in a straw-yard. With its
head turned away, it Avas like an ordinary black Scotch
cow, but when she turned her head I was amazingly
struck with the very deer-like appearance of the face,
which the set-on of the ears, the oblong Chinese-like
eyes, and the narrow prolongated muzzle, increased.

The story is that a cow was kept in a distant locality,
where she could have access to none of her own species,
but that there were red-deer stags about. A calf was un-
expectedly born in which the deer features appeared. This
calf has now grown up into the animal, as above described,
which was then four years old. The herdsmen told me
that the other cattle would never associate with it ; and in
fact, when he drove it into the cow-shed, in order to tie
it up for me to examine, the other animals turned their
heads, and snorted at it.

The voice is not like that of the other cattle ; it is a
short noise like " ump ! " " ump 1 " The action when
trotting is somewhat higher than that of an ordinary
cow. There are no horns, but a bony knob of a some-
what triangular shape between the ears. Although the
resemblance to the deer about the head is exceedingly
remarkable, I cannot bring myself to believe that it is a
true hybrid. When the animal was killed the hdad was
sent to me, and I made a cast of it, preserving the deer-
like features, in a way that no stuffing could have done.

I have rather come to the conclusion that it is a
" Free Marten," or else a case of " mother marking."

SCOTCH EED DEER.

239

It would appear that Free Martens are not uncommon
among black cattle. Lord Lovat's beast is of the " black
cattle " breed. John Hunter figures the " Free Marten "
he anatomised. There is, however, not the least deer-
like appearance about the face.

While writing on "mother marking," it occurs to me to
ask whether any gentlemen who breed stock can account
for the remarkable facts as detailed in the thirtieth chapter
of Genesis : — "And Jacob took him rods of green poplar,
and of the hazel and chesnut tree; and pilled white
strakes in them, and made the white appear which was
in the rods. And he set the rods which he had pilled
before the flocks in the gutters in the watering-troughs
when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive
when they came to drink. And the flocks conceived
before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked,
speckled, and spotted. And it came to pass, whensoever
the stronger cattle did conceive, that Jacob laid the rods
before the eyes of the cattle in the gutters, that they
might conceive among the rods. But when the cattle
were feeble, he put them not in : so the feebler were
Laban's, and the stronger Jacob's."

I confess I am quite at a loss for an interpretation.
Were the facts as above recorded a miracle, or were they
the results of natural physiological causes ?

On this curious point, along correspondence took place
in Land and Water, whence the general conclusion
seemed to be that Lord Lo vat's strange animal was
simply a case of " mother marking." " S. C." writes :

"I remember an exhibition in London about twenty-
five years ago, of a supposed hybrid between a New

240

MOTHER MARKING.

Forest pony and a red-deer. The late Sir Benjamin
Brodie told me he did not believe this to be a true hybrid,
but thought it probable that the pony-mare had been
much in the company of red-deer during gestation.
(This was before the miserable cheese-paring policy of
disafforesting, when the red-deer were still to be seen in
the forest glades.) Hence the indication of a divided
hoof and other resemblances, in both the head and tail,
to the deer."

I do not think railways interfere much with red-deer.
A grand advance has been made in making the railway
which runs due west from Dingwall, thus bringing
Skye into communication with big towns. I visited Mr.
Tennant, of Leeds, who had a splendid shooting-lodge
at Auchnashellach ; his private railway station is in his
garden. He is quite in the country, but yet in railway
and telegraph communication with everywhere. People
may say, " Oh ! but there can be no good shooting here!"
Quite the contrary, red-deer can be seen from the draw-
ing-room windows, and there are lots of roebuck in the
woods close by the house ; and from the front door I saw
two eagles high up in the air watching for blue hares.
The deer-forest, within a quarter of a mile drive from the
house, is well-stocked ; in fact, I sat upon the railway
bank and "spied" the beautiful creatures in Corryvannie,
five miles distant from us. These are the very animals
the Prince of Wales was shooting the following Wednes-
day. His Pioyal Highness, I understand, killed twenty-
five stags, and " there were upwards of 600 deer in the
ravine." This corrie, I have no hesitation in saying,
was filled to the brim with vast blocks of ice during the

SCOTCH EED DEER.

241

glacial period in Scotland— a scientific discovery in geology
which my father was one of the &rst to bring before the
public.

We hear the shrill whistle of the locomotive in the
distance. " Stand by the horses " is the word, for the
train will pass at full speed, in a minute or two, within a
few yards of their heads, and on the same level. The
engine-driver sees us as he comes round the sharp corner,
and sounds his whistle loud and shrill. "What a grand
roll of echo comes back from the corrie and the mountain
opposite! What other instrument of sound could produce
the same effect but a railway whistle ? It is worth the
while of Scotch proprietors to " breed railway engines
artificially," in order to make them scream and give effect
when they give entertainments in their shooting-lodges.
" Does not the railway whistle interfere with you.r deer-
forest ? " was my question to Mr. Tennant, after the train
had gone by. " Not a bit of it," said he, " the deer soon
get accustomed to the passing trains, and they don't
mind them at all." Why should they ? We have all of
us seen sheep and cows staring quietly at the train as it
passes at full speed through their enclosure, and why
should not deer also get accustomed to the noise and rattle ?

I understand, however, that railway wire fencing will
sometimes cut off deer from their own forests, but I have
heard from Lord Lovat that the deer go along by the
wires until they find out the passage of the bridges, and
then get over them. Railways therefore do not, as far as
I hear, interfere with shooting ; they open up properties,
they encourage commerce, they bring capital and fresh
blood into Scotland.

R

24:2 ORIGIN OP WORD FOREST."

As regards the word " Forest," as applied to a place in-
habited by red deer, I heard the following story :—

An inquisitive tourist was once taking a ride in the
Glencoe coach. The coach went through the vast estates
of the Earl of Breadalbane. The tourist kept continually
asking the coachman " who owned the property ? " When
they first started he inquired, " Who owns this property ? "
The coachman growled out, " The Marquis." " Which
Marquis ? " said the tourist. « Bread- Al-Bane," was the
answer. Ten more miles were passed. Again the same
question, and the same answer, " The Marquis ; " " which
Marquis?" "Bread- Al-Bane," and so on, to the end of
a very long day's journey. At one place the tourist asked
" what they called yon hills ? " "Eh, but that's just a
deer-forest," said the coachman. "Deer-forest?" said
Mr. Tourist ; " but I see no trees." « Trees," said coachee ;
" but, man, wha ever heard of trees in a forest ? " " But,"
said the tourist, " I can see no deer." Coachee lost Ms
temper. "It's no to say that there are nae deer because
the like of you canna see them."

In a true etymological sense I believe the coachman's
definition of a "Forest" was right, for I find the following
definition in a dictionary :—" Foeest, in geography, a
huge wood ; or, a large extent of ground covered with
trees. The word is formed of the Latin forefta, which
first occurs in the capitulars of Charlemagne, and which
Itself is derived from the German frost, signifying the
same thing. Spelman derives it from the Latin foris
restat, by reason forests are out of towns. Others derive
foresta from feris, q.cL, Foresta quod fit tuta statio f era-
rum, as being a safe station or abode for wild beasts."

NATURAL HISTORY IN SCOTLAND.

243

Scotch Wild Cats.

I am the possessor of two wild cats from Scotland.
They can both be seen in a case at my museum.
The first was sent me by Mr. Donald Cameron, of
Lochiel, M.P. I had discovered the head of a wild cat
nailed to the back of the kennel (in which were some
splendid Scotch deerhounds), at Mr. Cameron's house, at
Auchnacarry, Fort Wilham, and he kindly ordered his
keeper to send me the first wild cat caught on the
estate. This wild cat was a female. She weighed eight
and a quarter pounds, and measured two feet eleven inches
in length; the length of stride (that is, with the legs
stretched forwards and backwards) measured three feet
five inches. Mr. Cameron tells me that this wild cat
came down in the snow from the woods and killed two of
his Eouen ducks. She was tracked in the snow and
captured six days afterwards by setting traps round the
undevoured portion of the ducks. One of her hind and
one of her fore legs had been smashed by the trap, the
bones protruding through the skin. The skull had been
completely smashed, and the bones comminuted into
many fragments.

The second cat was given me by Captain William
Houstoun, of Kintradwell, near Golspie; this was also
a female ; she weighed seven and a half pounds, and
measured two feet eleven inches, the length of stride being
three feet four inches. Both these cats were of the
ordinary colour of wild cats, i.e., very much resembhng the
grey striped or ordinary tabby cat, only that the mark-
ings were very prononces. The most ordinary observer

B 2

244

WILD versus tame cats.

might see that the wild cat is a much more powerful and
strongly-built animal than the common house cat: the tail
is almost as bushy as a fox's brush, and ends in a black
tuft, above which there are three or four black rings
encircHng the tail. Much has been said as to the tail
being a diagnostic mark between the wild and tame cat. If
the reader wiU observe a tame cat, he will find that the
tail tapers considerably towards the point, whereas the
tip of the tail in the wild cat very much resembles a
badger's-hair shaving-brush when dry. This is certainly
a marked feature in all the wild cats I ever saw. As
regards this point, Professor Owen gives his opinion as
follows :— " The tail of the domestic cat is more tapering
and a little longer than in the wild cat ; but the extent to
which this part is shown, by a curious propagated variety
of tailless cat, to be susceptible of modification, ought to
warn us against inferring specific distinction from slight
differences in the proportions of the tail."

Wild cats for the most part are found in Perthshire,
Aberdeen, and Argyle. They are seldom, if ever, met with
in bleak or exposed places ; and they seem to like brakes
or copses rather than forests of tall trees. They are more
nocturnal than diurnal in their habits, and the structure
of the eye at once indicates this. A friend of mine has a
fine rug of wild cats' skins, collected in the neighbourhood
of Newton Stewart, Wigtownshire ; it had taken him eleven
years to collect twelve skins. When the Highland meet-
ing was going on at Inverness I observed several gentle-
men wearing wild-cat sporrans. The price asked for a
sporran of cats' skins at a shop was fifteen shillings ; but
the maker of this identical sporran, hung up in one of the

SCOTCH WILD CATS.

245

minor shops, had very foolishly so arranged the skin that
the tip of the tail could easily be seen to be that of a
house tabby cat, for which I thought fifteen shillings was
rather a high price to pay. In other shops I saw some
splendid sporrans of true wild cats' skins.

I have now before me a very beautiful print of wild cats
and nest. It is by Eeidinger. The mother is playing at
the root of an old oak-tree, with three kittens, that look
as fierce and savage as tiger cubs. The old Tom is
evidently just come home from a hunting excursion, and
is crouching down and snarling at another wild cat, which
is just coming down a bough, and evidently an unwelcome
visitor. The fellow's back is arched like a Chinese bridge,
and he is evidently " swearing famously." The following is t
the inscription on the print :—" Die wilde Kaz oderKuder
wird im Alter sehr gros, haben 3 4 bis 6 jungen." " The
wild cat when old becomes very large. It has three, four,
to six kittens." This reminds me of the stupid butler,
who announced in a drawing-room, " Mr. and Mrs. Cat
and the Misses Kittens."

The wild cat's voice is said to be very peculiar. Mr.
St. John writes : — " I have heard their wild and unearthly
cry echo far in the quiet night, as they call to and answer
each other. I do not know a more harsh and unpleasant
cry than that of the wild cat, or one more likely to be the
origin of superstitious fears in the mind of an ignorant
Highlander."

My friend. Captain Houstoun, of Kintradwell, is a great
autliority on wild cats, and I now reproduce his remarks :

" Writing from a country which still carries its Gaelic
name of ' Chatt,' the crest of its noble proprietor being

ANCIENT SCOTCH WILD CATS.

a cat, and its specialite of old being a peculiarly large and
fierce breed of that same animal, I think it may interest
naturalists to know that to this day there is, perhaps, no
district in the Highlands where the breed exists in greater
purity or perfection.

" Tradition has it, that once upon a time Sutherland
was invaded by a hostile band, and that upon landing
they were opposed by an advanced guard of furious wild
cats, and so well did the latter defend the coast that the
enemy skedaddled without coming to the scratch ! This
is, perhaps, not so much to be wondered at when we
consider the very scanty 'garb of old Gaul' of the
period, and we can fancy that in those times if prizes
..were given, as now, for the ' best dressed Highlander at
his own expense, the judges must have had an arduous
duty to perform !

*' May there not, however, be some foundation for such
a tradition, if we must allow that beasts of prey, as well
as cattle and deer, have deteriorated so much in size and
vigour in latter days ? Take, for instance, the large and
magnificent heads of the ox and stag, so frequently dug
up in our peat bogs, mud and marl pits, and compare
them with those of the present day ; in like proportion
would it be too much to imagine the Highland wild cat
of olden time prowling about in size equal to the lynx or
panther of our day ?

" The breed of real wild cats is, I am sorry to say, in
many districts extinct, and is getting more scarce every
year in this county. Civilization in general, and keepers'
traps and terriers in particular, will ultimately finish
the race.

SCOTCH WILD CATS,

" Nevertheless, a goodly remnant will be left for future
lovers of natural history, as long as the fine old deer-
forests are kept up.

" It has frequently struck me that the distinguishing
features of the wild and tame cat, as laid down by
naturalists, have been trifling and indefinite, the principal
difference being in the shape and length of the tail.

" This is, as far as my experience goes, not to be de-
pended on, although as a general rule the tail of the wild
animal does not taper, as in the tame, but carries the
same length of fur to the tip, which gives it a stumpy
appearance. But the length of the tail varies so ex-
tremely in different specimens, that it would almost lead
one to suppose that there may be two sorts of wild cat —
the short and long tailed. The head of the wild cat
always seems larger and rounder in proportion to the
body than that of the tame. This appearance may, how-
ever, be deceptive, as the body has always, in the wild
species, a peculiarly lean and lanky look, notwithstanding
the goodly lining of fat which generally adheres to the
skin.

"But there is one most striking difference which I
must mention, although it may not be new to many
naturalists — I mean the great difference in the length of
the intestines of the wild and tame species. In two very
fine specimens of the wild cat, over four feet in lengtli,
captured last winter, and which now hang in my gun-room,
I found the intestines of each, taking in the small and
empty stomach, to measure only five feet, whereas any
common house cat would probably be found to carry three
times the above length. I should like to know the ex-

248 TRAPPING WILD OATS.

perience of naturalists on this point. Do the intestines
lengthen in the tame animal, as their duties become more
various and arduous?

" The way in which my two wild cats, male and female,
were caught, may throw some light on their mode of
living. An otter had taken a fancy to some pet trout
placed in a small pond for experiment, and added insult
to injury by killing more than he could eat, and leaving
the fish untouched on the bank. So, to stop his little
game, traps were set on the edge of a small brook down
which he was in the habit of coming to his supper. In
one of these traps both cats were taken on consecutive
nights, suggesting the idea that they had been in the
habit of following their amphibious neighbour and coming
in for the reversion of the epicure's meal. This may also
account for the fact that one seldom finds portions of half-
devoured fish so frequently left by otters in localities
where wild cats exist. I would notice one other pecu-
liarity which has always struck me in the wild cat as
differing from the tame. I mean the strange manner in
which when bolted from a cairn, or disturbed from its bed
among the heather, it gallops off in a series of bounds,
carrying its big bushy tail vertically, and giving it a wavy
motion which looks strangely awkward.

"Judging by the lanky appearance of the Highland
wild cat, one would infer that it does not fare sumptuously
every day, but that, saving where game is very abundant,
it has to work hard for sustenance. I have frequently
followed its track on snow for from ten to twelve miles, over
ground which it had hunted during the previous night;
and it is then that its tactics in stalking its prey can best

SCOTCH WILD CATS.

249

be seen. Although not above digging up a half-frozen
mouse en passant, grouse seem to be its chief food at such
times, and as the latter scrape holes in the snow for
shelter, and to get at the heather tops, they become the
easier prey. Nature having denied the cat the white
winter coat which some of its relatives put on, it is placed
at sad disadvantage in stalking over white ground, and
many a failure to circumvent the wide-awake hare is the
result,

" With birds lying under the surface, however, it is
very different, and when the cat by its quick sense of
smell becomes aware of their proximity, a deep furrow
can be seen in the snow, where it has pulled itself along,
so as not to be seen ; and the mark of a gathering for the
fatal spring of six or eight feet, and some blood and
feathers where the grouse lay, teU the rest.

" Unless caught when very young, I believe the wild
cat to be quite untameable, and when captured full grown
it will often die of starvation, refusing to touch the most
tempting food. This I had a good instance of, not long
ago — for having caught a fine large male specimen by one
of its claws, which was only slightly bruised, I had him
taken home in a sack and put into a comfortable box with
iron bars in front, so as to be able to watch his move-
ments. This, by the wajr, was no easy business, for he
fought like a devil, tooth and nail, and sprang at the bars
of his cage with dreadful fury when anyone approached.
When left alone, his first duty was to examine his injured
foot, which he soon licked into a mending state; and,
coiUng himself up in the corner of his den, he lay ready
to spring forward at the slightest noise or intrusion.

250 WILD CAT TAKEN ALIVE.

But nothing would entice him to eat, although the most
tempting food, alive and dead, was left in the cage • and
after his starving for a fortnight, at the end of which time
he was as fierce as ever, I could stand the sufferings of
the plucky fellow no longer, and put an end to them.

" Let us hope that game preservers and keepers may
deal leniently with this fine animal, now becoming so
scarce, and that Sutherlandshire in particular may never
want some living representatives of the crest of its noble
house."

Subsequently Captain Houstoun wrote :— « I have to
announce the capture of a wHd cat, not dead this time ;
but alive, and at present in famous health and spirits.
She was taken in a trap set for a fox (we are all professed
vulpicides here), and the claws of the right fore-foot, being
a great deal crushed, have sloughed away; but the wound
has healed up kindly. From having failed in getting a
wild cat to feed in captivity, I had great fears in this
latter case of a similar result; and more especially
so, as for the first few days she would not touch food.
However, she most sensibly saw the folly of her obstinacy,
and one night, to my great delight, she commenced
operations by devouring the best part of a rabbit, crunch-
ing up bones and aU. I have now had her about six
weeks, and she thrives well, supping on a rabbit, rook, or
pigeon every night. Her habits are entii-ely nocturnal;
and during the day, if not disturbed, she moons and dozes
m the sun like the most refined tabby, her domestic
economy being quite as methodical. She is a bit of an
epicure in her way, and her predilections are almost
human. Hare, rabbit, rook, or pigeon she delights in ;

SCOTCH WILD CATS.

251

rats or mice are only eaten under starvation pressure, and
grey crow or gull she will not touch under any circum-
stances. Notwithstanding all the comfort, so new to her,
of peace and plenty, her temper has all along been simply
diabolical, and does not seem to improve much with
acquaintance. She looks so viciously intelligent, that I
cannot help sometimes treating her to a lecture on
ingratitude, which she receives with growls and spitting ;
and her aim. in life seems to be to 'lacerate the hand
which feeds her.' Twice only has she been seen to relax
into a jolly mood, and then she scampered through her
cage, playful as a kitten j but upon seeing she was watched,
her sudden transition from gay to grave was more than
ludicrous.

" There seems to be great room for doubt as to the
wild and tame breeds being identical. Animals when
domesticated have, I believe, invariably increased in size,
but this is very far from the case with the cat ; and
a number of differences, in external appearance, all tend
to separate the breeds. The specimen I now possess,
when enraged, buries the ears quite out of sight in the
fur of the scalp ; and to the credit of heraldry be it said,
the cat rampant attitude is perfectly natural to the wild
cat, when on defence or at bay."

In Sutherlandshire the sign of the wild cat is common
in public-houses. His Grace the Duke of Sutherland is
head of Clan Chattan, or the " Clan of the Cats."* His
Grace was good enough to show me the silver brooch
that he wears in his bonnet. It represents the head of a

* A correspondent writes— "This honour is claimed by both Cluny
Macpherson and Macintosh of Macintosh."

253

THE CLAN CHATTON.

cat, and is mounted with two wild cats' teeth, one of
which was found in an ancient Pictish tomb. In the
village of Golspie, close to the Duke of Sutherland's
noble castle, Dunrobin, the sign of the pubHc-house is a
wild cat. If I recollect aright, the cat is represented as
sitting, though I believe the cats on these signs are in
different positions in different parts of the country.

At a little roadside inn below the falls of the Spean,
some fifteen miles from Fort William, at Eoybridge!
where we stopped to lunch, I again found the sign of the
cat. Two cats stand rampant, supporting a coat of arms,
and a little cat is represented above the coat of arms.
Upon one quarter of the shield there is a figure of an
ancient galley, indicating that the bearer of the arms had
a right to port-dues upon ships. There is also, in another
quartering, the figure of an arm, with a glove on it. The
motto is,

" Toucli not the cat but a glove."

The landlord told me that these were the arms of the
Macintosh family.

I understand that the Scotch word "but" means
"without," and consequently the motto warns against
meddling with the Macintosh, unless prepared to meet
the consequences. The motto is referred to under the
word "BUT " in Jamieson's " Scottish Dictionary."

At the first Cat show held at the Crystal Palace, in July,
1871, the Duke of Sutherland exhibited a splendid wild
cat, which had been caught by Captain Houstoun. He
was first sent to my house in Albany Street, but the beast
was so fierce that there would have been a "mutiny at the

SCOTCH WILD CATS.

253

Nore," both of bipeds and quadrupeds, if I had taken him
as a guest, so I was unwillingly obliged to pass him on in
a cab up to my friend Mr. Bartlett, at the Zoological
Gardens, who put him in excellent condition for the show.
This wild Scotch cat won a prize of £1 10s. I think the
poor thing should have a silver collar made of this value ;
only who will " bell (or rather collar) the cat " ? At the
show he looked very bitter and snarly ; he kept his ears
flat down, and every now and then smiled a ghastly grin
and showed his white teeth, with a hissing " kuss, kuss,"
as much as to say, " Let me out of this cage, but for a
minute, you wretched Londoners, and I make the lot of
you skedaddle. I am a prisoner now, but Fve got good
old Scotch blood in my veins, and I would make the
bundle of you clear out like frightened sheep, like my
ancestors did the Picts, hundreds of years ago.-" I went
.behind the bar to examine him more closely, and called
him "Puss, pxiss, puss." I fancied the poor brute smiled,
and I fancied also I heard him whisper, " Mr. Buckland,
Dear sir, I owe to you this delightful afternoon in the
Crystal Palace in a cage, instead of spending it, in a hollow
tree, in the far north with my wife and dear kittens. ' Kuss,'
' kuss ' you ; but never mind, you are a good sort of a fellow.
I suppose mourir pour la patrie is the correct thing. Do
pray ask the Duke to give his gamekeepers orders not to
kill down my friends and relations quite so hard ; for we
do him more practical service than he thinks ; and if we
do some mischief there will be plenty of grouse left for
the guns on the 12th ; and we would all of us rather be
shot and ' die game,' at the hands of a sportsman with a
breechloader, than be ignominiously trapped, and have our

254

LAMENT OF THE WILD CAT..

poor legs snapped in half by the cruel iron teeth of a gin,
set for us when we are nearly starved; or even let the
gentlemen come out and hunt us with terriers and sticks,
and we wHl show some sport. Do, sir, please ask the
Duke to preserve us poor wild cats. Our next door neigh-
bours, in the Craig-the eagles-told me before I

was fool enough to be caught, that the Duke protected
them; so perhaps, if you will kindly tell the Duke what I
ask you, this charming (oh, how hot it is !) visit to the
Crystal Palace may be of use to us poor Scotch wild cats."

The Chasse IllustrSe says:— "There are many wild
cats in the mountains between Spain and France, where
they are hunted in October and November, when a great
procession of sportsmen starts in state from Pampeluna.
The peasants put down baits fastened with wire, in
localities frequented by the cats. The beaters then beat
for the cats, which are shot when in the trees. At the
end of the day, the dead cats are hung up in a cart,
covered with garlands, and a triumphal entry formed into
the town. A dinner then takes place, and they sit down
(mayor and all) to eat the cats. We are informed 'that the
flesh of the wild cat is exquisite, in the opinion of every
gourmand that has eaten it. It is white, like the flesh of
the rabbit, but more delicate, and of a much finer flavour.
It IS not good roasted, so the cooks serve it trh friands.'

The price of a hare in the market is three francs ; a
wild cat, fit for the table, is worth six to seven francs.
The fur is very fashionable among the ladies at Madrid.
The kings of Aragon used it as a royal fur for coronation
and ceremonial robes. Parchment was also made of the
skin of wild cats. It is called 'Felin.' It was only

NATURAL HISTORY IN SCOTLAND. 255

used for Acts of Parliament and ordinances of the kino-
of the highest importance. In the town-hall of Navarre
is a valuable registry, dated 1481, written on ' Peau de
Felin.' On this, charters of the utmost public import-
ance are transcribed, and each page is certified as being
true cat's skin. There are no less than 2,500 leaves."

Wild Cattle from Hamilton Palace.

When officially engaged in September, 1871, inspect-
ing the Eiver Clyde above Glasgow, I had the pleasure of
being introduced to Mr. Stewart S. Eobertson, Cham-
berlain to His Grace the Duke of Hamilton. I asked Mr.
Eobertson to be kind enough to procure for me a head of
one of the celebrated breed of wild cattle {Bos Scotticus),
which still roam through the magnificent park round His
Grace's palace in Lanarkshire. In due time the head
arrived ; and it has been admirably set up by Mr, Edon
and is now in my museum. The head is that of a fine
specimen of this now rare species of cattle. The colour
is a milk white ; the muzzle (all round) being an ink black.
The ears are black inside and out. The horns measure,
from tip to tip, 13 in., and resemble the horns of an
ordinary cow. The tip of one horn is, unfortunately,
broken off. The measurements are from crest of fore-
head to nose 1 ft. 6^ in., across forehead 10 in.

There are, I believe, only two places in Britain where
these wild cattle now exist, viz., at Hamilton Palace in
Lanarkshire, and at Chilhngham Park in Northumberland.
Some years since Lord Tankerville was kind enough to
show me his herd at ChiUingham. We did not see much of

256

THE BOS SCOTTICUS.

the cattle themselves, but we found a calf among the fems,
and were about to examine him when we saw and heard
the mother comiDg, and beat a most precipitate retreat.

This Bos Scotticus may, I believe, be considered to be
a genuine wild animal still existing in the midst of
civilisation.

In the " Naturalist's Cabinet," 1806, I find the follow-
ing paragraph : — " The cows of this species, at the time
of parturition, seek out some sequestered retreat, where
they conceal their young for a week or ten days, occasion-
ally going to suckle them. The calves, if approached by
any one, clap their heads close to the ground and lie like
a hare in order to hide themselves. This seems a proof
of their native wildness, and is corroborated by the foUow-
lowing circumstance related by Dr. Fuller, author of the
' History of Berwick.' He found a hidden calf about
two days old, very lean and weak^ but on his stroking its
head it got up, pawed two or three times like an old bull,
bellowed very loud, retreated a few steps, and bolted at
his legs with all its force ; it then began to paw again,
bellowed, stepped back, and bolted as before ; but, being
aware of its intention, he moved aside and it missed its
aim and fell, and was so very weak that, though it made
several efforts, it was unable to rise. The noise it had
made, however, had alarmed the whole herd, and our
author was compelled to retire.

" It has been remarked that when an individual of this
species happens to be wounded, or is grown weak and
feeble through age or sickness, the rest of the herd set
upon it and gore it to death."

Not having been able to spare time to examine the

WILD CATTLE FEOM HAMILTON PALACE. 257

Hamilton breed of cattle, I am compelled to give what in-
formation I can from sources already published. In Sir
William Jardine's "Naturalist's Library," vol. iv., 1836,
is an admirable account of Bos Scotticus. Sir William
seems to have been very much in the same position, as re-
gai'ds information, as I now find myself; but he had the
advantage of receiving a special paper upon the wild
cattle, by Mr. Eobert Browne, a predecessor of my friend
Mr. Stewart Eobertson in the office of Chamberlain to
the Duke. I now will give an abstract of this valuable
paper.

These white cattle are believed to be the remains of the
ancient breed of white cattle which existed when the
Eomans inhabited the country. Some of the oaks in the
park (which is upwards of 1300 Scotch acres) are sup-
posed to have been planted by King David, about a.d.
1140. In general habits the wild cattle resemble the fallow
deer more than any other domestic animal. Great care
is taken that they shall not cross with the ordinary cattle
of the country. When feeding, they do not scatter them-
selves like tame cows, but feed in a herd. They have
great power of smell, and do not like to be approached by
strangers. When these animals perceive any one approach-
ing them, they set off in full gallop, and, at the distance of
two or three hundred yards, wheel round and come boldly
up again, tossing their heads in a menacing manner.
They then stop suddenly at the distance of forty or
fifty yards, and look wildly at the object of their "sur-
prise ; but on the least motion they all turn round and
gallop off again with equal speed, but to a shorter
distance ; forming a smaller circle, and again returning

s

258

KILLING THE WILD BULL.

with a more threatening aspect than before, they ap-
proach much nearer, probably within thirty yards, when
they make another stand, and again gallop off. This
they repeat several times, shortening their distance and
advancing nearer, till they come within a few yards,
when it is advisable to leave them, as in a few turns
more they would probably make an attack.

The ancient mode of killing these animals was very
singular. On notice being given that a wild bull would
be killed on a certain daj-, the inhabitants of the neigh-
bourhood assembled, sometimes to the number of a
hundred horsemen and four or five hundred foot, all
armed with guns or other weapons. Those on foot stood
upon the walls, or got into trees, while the horsemen drove
a bull from the rest of the herd until he stood at bay,
when they dismounted and fired. Sometimes, on these
occasions, twenty or thirty shots have been fired before
the animal was subdued; in which case the bleeding
victim grew desperately furious from the smarting of his
■wounds, and the shouts of savage exultation echoing from
every side. But from the numerous accidents which
happened, this dangerous practice has been disused of late
years, the park-keeper generally killing the animal with a
rifle at one shot.

The Hamilton breed differs from the Chillingham breed.
In the latter the colour is invariably white, the muzzle
black, the whole of the inside of the ear and about one-
third of the outside from the tip downwards, red. In the
Hamilton Urus the body is dun-white; the inside of the ears
and the muzzle, black, and the fore part of the leg, from
the knee downwards, mottled with black; the roof of the

WILD CATTLE PROM HAMILTON PALACE. 259

mouth and the tongue are black. The size of the smaller
Hamilton cows does not exceed fifteen stone ; but some of
the larger bulls average from thirty-five to forty-five
stone. The Eoman historians talk much of the furious
wild bulls which the forests of Caledonia brought forth.

In those early days they are represented as possess-
ing jubavi densam ac clemissam instar leonis. The uni-
versal tradition in Clydesdale is that they have been
at Cadzow from the remotest antiquity ; and the proba-
bility is that they are a remnant of the establishment of
our ancient British and Scottish Idngs.

The other parks where this breed was once kept up were
at Wallaton in Northamptonshire, Gisburne in Craven,
Yorkshire, Limehall in Cheshire, Chertley in Stafibrdshire,
Burton Constable, in Yorkshire, and Drumlanrig, in Dum-
friesshire. At all these places they have worn out, or have
been destroyed by neglect, disease, or some other means ;
for we possess no very recent information regarding them
in other parks except at ChilHngham and Hamilton,

I do not quite understand how it is that these wild
Scotch cattle became enclosed in parks, unless it is to be
accounted for by the fact that in the ancient border
marauding expeditions they became the chief objects of
attack, and were consequently enclosed to prevent their
straying into the woods and open places.

As regards the relation of Bos Primifjenuis to Bos Scot-
ticus, Professor Owen writes :— " In the manuscript cata-
logue of the British Museum, this fine specimen is ascribed
to ' the Caledonian ox, Bos Taurus, var. girjantea: But the
wild white variety with black muzzles, ears, and horns, the
Boves sijlvestres of Leslie, which are identical with the cattle

s 2

260

THE ANCIENT BOS URUS.

preserved at ChiUingham, are of very inferior dimensions,
and differ particularly in the smaller proportional size, and
finer and more tapering figure of the horns. The kyloes
of the mountainous regions of Scotland, which are more
likely to have been derived from an indigenous wild race
than the cattle of the Lowlands, differ still more from the
Bos Primigenius than does the Chillingham breed in their
diminutive size, and very short horns."

He then gives the following interesting passage :—
"It is remarkable that the two kinds of great wild
oxen recorded in the 'Niebelungen Lied,' of the 12th
century, as having been slain with other beasts of chase
in the great hunt of the forest of Worms, are mentioned
under the same names which they received from the
Romans :

' Dar nacli schluch er schiere, einen TF^scni und einen Elch,
Starcher Ure vier, und einen grimmen Schelcli.'

' After this he straightway slew a Bison and an Elk,
Of the strong Uri four, and a single fierce Schelch.'

" The image of the great Urus in the full vigour of
life IS powerfully depicted in a later poem, destined,
perhaps, to be as immortal as the ' Niebelungen' :—

' Mightiest of all the beasts of chase

That roam in woody Caledon,
Crushing the forest in his race,

The Mountain Bull comes thundering on.'

" But the following stanza shows that Scott drew his
picture from the Chillingham wild cattle :—

' Pierce, on the hunter's quiver'd hand

He rolls his eye of swarthy glow ;
Spurns, with black hoofs and horns, the sand,
•And tosses high his mane of snow.'

—Scott, ' nallad of Cadgow Castle' "

NATURAL HISTORY IN SCOTLAND.

26]

May we hope that the wild cattle of Chillingham and
Hamilton will long survive. ]3eautiful as they are in
themselves, they are still left to us as representatives
of a race of the aboriginal cattle of this favoured land.

The son of my friend Mr. Bartlett, of the Zoological
Gardens, having been commissioned to prepare, for the
Moscow Exhibition, skins and skeletons of various
breeds of Enghsh cattle, applied in 1872 to Lord Tan-
kerville for a specimen of one of his cattle, a request
which his lordship kindly granted. As these animals are
very shy, the keeper and Mr. Bartlett concealed them-
selves among the hay, in a hay waggon, to the approach of
which they were accustomed. The keeper was thus
enabled to get close up to the herd, and one of the finest
bulls was brought down with the rifle. Mr. Bartlett suc-
ceeded in making a splendid preparation of it for the
Moscow Exhibition.

Golden Eagle from Sutheklandshire.

His Gi'ace the Duke of Sutherland has formed an
excellent museum at Dunrobin Castle. The museum,
situated in the pleasure-grounds near the castle, is ad-
mirably fitted up, and contains a most interesting collec-
tion. The antiquities, especially the Pictish relics, are
well worthy of notice, but to the naturalist the collection
of birds is of the highest interest. In the museum we
find specimens of nearly all the native avi-fauna in Scot-
land. Some of them, I am sorry to say, are fast disap-
pearing before the gun and the trap of those horrid
creatures, the gamekeepers.

EAGLE ON THE WATCH.

Among the native Scottish birds, the eagle is by far
the most noble ; and I am very sorry to say eagles are
getting scarce. It is, therefore, with the greatest gratifi-
cation that I acknowledge, with many thanks, the receipt
of an exceedingly handsome specimen of the golden
eagle, from my friend Captain Houstoun. This bird
is indeed a noble creature. It has been admirably
set up by Mr. M'Leay, of 80, Church Street, Inver-
ness. The bird is represented as sitting on the top
of a rock, with his wings slightly expanded. His head
and brilliant eyes are in the attitude of looking out,
expecting the approach of an insidious enemy. The
whole attitude of the bird admirably realises the fol-
lowing graphic passage in Mr. St. John's "Highland
Sports :" —

"How picturesque he looks, and how perfectly he
represents the genus loci as, perched on some rocky point
or withered tree, he sits unconcerned in wind and storm,
motionless and statue-like, with his keen, stern eye,
however, intently following every movement of the shep-
herd or the sportsman, who, deceived by his aj^pareut
disregard, attempts to creep within rifle-sliot. Long
before he can reckon on reaching so far with his bullet
the bird launches himself into the air, and, gradually
sweeping upwards, wheels high out of shot, leaving his
enemy disappointed and vexed at having crept in vain
through bog and over rock in expectation of carrying
home so glorious a trophy of his skill."

The measurements of this grand bird are as follows :—
Length from tip of beak to end of tail, 35 in.; from the
rock upon which he is sitting to top of head, 20 in. ;

GOLDEN EAGLE FROM SUTHERLANDSHIRE. 263

■width of partially expanded tail, 15in. ; length of wing
(as nearly closed) from shoulder to end of flight feathers,
24 in. He is now in my museum at South Kensington.

The plumage is in perfection, and still retains traces of
the lovely metallic colour so noticeable in a living speci-
men. When alive it would have formed a good study for
the great Landseer, and it is almost a fac simile of the
eagle as represented in that most glorious picture by
our friend Wolff, now in the ante-hall of Dunrobin Castle.
In this beautiful picture the eagle is represented as sitting
on the very highest peak of a granite mountain in the
midst of a terrific snowstorm. The snow-flakes are
whirled past the bird by a cutting gale of wind. Appa-
rently a sudden gust in the storm has just taken place,
for a few of the eagle's feathers are slightly rufiled, and a
snow-flake or two have settled on his back, while the bird
looks round with an air of scorn and indignation, as
though he defied the wind and the Storm-King to frighten
him, much less make him stir from his mountain home
— the position he had chosen from which to witness the
battle of the elements.

The eagle is admirably adapted to perform the duties
assigned to him. The anatomy of the eye of the eagle
is in itself a study, and this wonderful organ has a
power of vision, of which we men have not the slightest
idea, even though our sight might be aided by a tele-
scope.

The brain is large and well developed, the convolutions
of grey matter dipped deep down into the white matter,
thus showing a considerable amount of intelligence in
the bird. The optic nerve is large, the coats of the eye

264

STRUCTUEE OF THE EAGLE.

Strong and horny, but not so strong as the eyeballs of
sharks and deep-water fish, which require a very tough
coat (sclerotic) to the eye to stand the pressure of the
water. The lens of the eagle's eye is very peculiar ;
It IS flattened on each side and as brilliant as a diamond.
A fish's lens is round. The eagle has, I believe, a mus-
cular apparatus connected with his eye, by means of
which he can convert it, as it were, into a telescope
for seeing long distances, and he can so adapt his powers
of vision as to see clearly at shorter distances. An eagle
must have the most perfect organs of sight of any created
thing. When he is soaring so high in the air that he can
hardly be seen by the human eye, it is said the noble
bird can see a hare or a lamb on the ground. I do not
know of any good case where the sight of an eagle has
been tested by experiment. The poor things are so
hunted and persecuted, and the gun-bearing people are
so anxious to destroy them, that they have no time or
thought for experiment.

I never but once saw eagles flying. When staying at
the house of my friend Mr. Teunant, at Dingwall, two
eagles passed over the wonderfully beautiful valley of the
Etive at early morning. The birds were at such a terrific
height that they did not appear larger than swaUows.
They were evidently hunting in couples, as they whirled
round and round in the most graceful circles, apparently
describing a series of figures of eight. Tlieir motion in
flying was elegance itself, and it was very marvellous to
observe how one slight flap of the wing served to carry
them on for many minutes without the shghtest further
exertion on their part.

GOLDEN EAGLE FROlM SUTHERLANDSHIEE. 265

It is in the bones of the eagle that we find a most perfect
mechanism for flying. The wing-bone is a perfect hollow,
and made of the lightest possible material. The left
humerus of a large eagle weighed only one ounce, and is
almost transparent. With much difficulty I made a section
of it with a fine surgical saw. I find the inside of the
bone composed of the most lovely honey-comb structure,
and little pillars of bone are thrown across from side to
side throughout nearly its whole extent. The object of
this beautiful mechanism is, probabl}', to distribute the
power of the wing-muscles when in the act of flying.
Towards the upper end of the bone there is a good-sized
hole. This hole is placed there in order to admit air,
and, though I believe the fact is disputed by some, yet I
believe that the wing-bones of the eagle and other birds
are connected with the lungs, so that the bird can fill his
skeleton with warm air when he wants to fly, and thus
become an animated balloon. As I hinted before, there
is no trace whatever of marrow in the wing-bone, and
that is the chief reason why we men will never be able to
make wings and fly in the air. We have marrow in our
arm-bones, and we cannot fill them with air ; an eagle
can, and that's the difference. I do not believe in Dteda-
lus if he was made like other people. The thigh-bones
of the eagle are also marrowless and quite hollow. They
are composed, like the wings, of bone not much thicker than
a single sheet of note-paper, but the bone, though thin, is
as strong as the steel of a steel-pen before it is tempered
in the fire. Let us look a little further, and we find
that the leg-bones immediately below the hip-bones are
quite full of marrow, and that the structure of the bone

266

BONES AND CLAWS OP THE EAGLE.

Itself IS much firmer. The reason for this is that hollow
boues would not do for the work to be done here. ' All
the great muscles which work the tremendously powerful
claws are connected with these bones, and here mechanics
require strength, and firm pillars of bone, to form attach-
ments for the claw muscles. The ribs and neck, pelvis
and other bones of the skeleton, are also made of the
Hghtest possible material; altogether, the mechanism
of the eagle for flying, both external and internal, is an
excellent example of beauty and design.

^ The great power of the eagle is concentrated in the
hind claw. If the reader will crook his thumb forwards,
and partially contract his fingers backwards, he will have
a general idea of the conformation of this wonderful
seizing weapon of oftence. When the eagle strikes his
prey he does so from above ; charging downwards with
immense velocity, he drives his hind claw into the body
of his victim. In my specimen this talon in the end of the
hind toe measures two inches ; the toe itself measures
about one inch, and the point is as sharp as a needle.
This formidable weapon would drive the body of the prey
seized directly into the grasp of the three talons which
form the front of the foot. The innermost talon is the
longest, measuring two inches and a quarter ; the outer-
most talon is the shortest, measuring one inch. Thus we
have a grasping machine combining the essentials of
strength and lightness. Nobody better knows than
myself what may be the effects of this terrible weapon.
When at Oxford I had a tame eagle, which I kept at
the back of my rooms in Fells Buildings. One day I
had a row with the eagle about something or other— I

GOLDEN EAGLE FROM SUTHERLANDSHIRE. 267

think it Avas about a dead cat — and, pouncing down from
the bough where he was kept, the rascal fastened both his
claws into the front part of my right thigh, causing the
blood to flow copiously, and, at the moment, giving intense
pain ; the claws had to be taken out one by one, beginning
with the hind claw, and I ordered a broomstick to be put
within the grasp of the bird, and he clutched hold of the
broomstick with the tenacity of a vice. I did not want
to spoil my bird by cutting his claws, but nevertheless I
punished him by putting wine corks on to his talons, and I
made him do penance in them for a week.

I really wish Scotch gentlemen would preserve their
eagles more than they do. I believe they feed principally
on blue hares, and surely there are plenty of blue hares
— enough to spare a few for the poor eagles. Again,'
eagles are said to be foes to the grouse ; they probably do
kill the grouse when they can get them, but it must be
recollected that the eagles would catch diseased and sickly
birds, and thus go far to stamp out the grouse disease.
By destroying the eagles, therefore, I cannot help think-
ing that the Scotch proprietors are acting unwisely, for
surely the fee of a few grouse and hares is not too great
a payment to the eagle for the good he otherwise brings
about by his gratuitous exertions.

In November, 1873, I bought from Mr. Ware, poul-
terer, of Albany Street, a cinereous, or Sea Eagle. He
was a young bird, in most splendid plumage ; his weight
nearly ten pounds, his length 3 feet 2f inches ; his wings
when fully extended covered the space of 7 feet 9^ inches
from tip to tip ; his feet were of a most beautiful yellow,
and claws ebony black. I understand that this magni-

268

SIGN OF "the eagle AND CHILD.'

ficent bird came from Norway. I saw no trace of blood

about the feathers, but found some shots about the heart;

from the fact that there was some wool in the stomach, it

was evident he had been eating a sheep.

The skiu of this eagle has been well set up by Mr. Edon
in a flying position; the wings extended, and the head
shghtly bent downwards as though iii search of his dinner.
It is a great addition to my museum.

I have several times during my official inspections
observed roadside public-houses bearing the sign of the
" Eagle and Child." I especially recollect one sign most
marvellously designed and painted on a public-house
near Kendal.

Not knowing the origin of this story, and wishing to
obtain information about babies being carried off by
eagles, I put a query in Land and Water, and got the
following replies : —

"Eagle and Child. — Under this heading in your
last, you say that you will be glad if any of your cor-
respondents would inform you if they have ever known
an authentic case of a baby child having ever been carried
off by an eagle, and if not, if they would inform you of the
origin of the story in any ancient legend. The best written
and best known story in Scotland, is that written by the
late Professor Wilson, which I enclose. Another, in verse,
by Samuel Rogers, is also very well known, a copy of
Avhich I enclose also. Similar stories are told of eagles in
America, Switzerland, &c., and even here, in the far north,
the thing is believed to have happened more than once.
I am glad to say, in Orkney, eagles are strictly preserved
by the land-owner of the only island in which they now

GOLDEN EAGLE FROM SUTHERLANDSHIEE. 269

breed, viz., Hoy. ' Many stories ' — I quote from the
' Natural History of Orkney ' — are told of the great
strength of the eagle. Wallace mentions a well-authenti-
cated case of one John Hay, who, when a child, was
carried off by one of these birds. There is at present a
woman living in the Island of Graemsay, who goes by the
name of the ' Erne,' from a tradition that her grandmother,
when an infant, had nearly likewise fallen a victim to
their voracity. — ^W. R."

" I beg to inform you that the said 'sign is common
in Lancashire, about St. Helen's, Prescot, Knowsley, &c.
When residing there I inquired as to its meaning and
origin, with the following result: — Many years ago a
certain Lord Derby and his lady were childless, and
walking out one day (in what locality unknown) they
discovered a child in an eagle's nest, and rescued and
adopted it. Tradition hinted that his lordship knew
more of the child than he was willing to admit, and that
it was placed in the nest by human hands, rather than by
the claws of an eagle, in order to excite her ladyship's
sympathy. — J. H."

" I would remind you of the well-known crest of
Lord Derby, viz. : — ' On a chapeau, gules, an eagle,
wings endorsed, or, feeding an infant in its nest, proper,
swaddled, azure, banded of the third.' This crest was,
1 believe, derived from the family of Latham, and
Burke records that ' In an old visitation of the county of
Lancashire, in the College of Arras, it is stated, that a
child was found in an eagle's nest upon the estate, and
adopted by one of the Lathams ; and this, it is assumed,
was the origin of the crest.' In Cassell's 'Popular

070

^ LARGE goat's HEAD.

Nature, anecdotes are related of eagles carrying away
chxidren; amongst the authorities given are indtrson'I
History of Ireland; and Sir Robert Sibbald's 'Account

Humhl.r^^^^^

"I often heard an uncle of mine, who married a
mece of one of the Earls of Derby, allude to the origin
on the Derby crest (an eagle preying upon a child in its
cradle), and if Mr. Buckland will inquire in the College
of i^-ms, of Lancashire, he wiU find it recorded that a
child was found in an eagle's nest on the estate of the
Lathams of Latham, an old Lancashire family, who are
now represented by the Stanleys -Sir John Stanley
havuig ,n (I think) 1385 married the daughter and heiress
ot Latham. Hence the crest of the present Earl of
Derby.— Helen E. Watney.''

The above witnesses, to whom I am much obliged for
their mformation, have, therefore, I think, quite proved
the origin of the sign of the Eagle and Child.

"Wild Goats in Scotland.

The first thing I saw in the hall of my hospitable
triend. Captain Colin Stewart, of Newton Stewart, County
Wigtown, was the bleeding head and horns of a very fine
goat, which had just been cut off the animal. It was a
splendid head with very fine horns, 1 foot 9| inches
long, and a grand beard. Captain Stewart kindly gave
me the head, which has been admirably set up by
Mr. Edon.

WILD GOATS IN SCOTLAND.

271

The next day, when inspecting the salmon rivers Cree
iind Minnock, Captain Colin Stewart gave me the follow-
ing interesting particulars about the goats of the dis-
trict. These animals are semi- wild, and live high up
among the grand mountains to the east of Wigtown Bay.
They are all owned by somebody; the farmers catch
them as kids, and put their own mark on the ear ; and
then let them go again. When harvest time comes
round, the farmers begin to " drive the goats," and they
feed the harvest labourers upon the goats' meat. They
surround the flock of goats as well as they . can, and drive
them towards the steepest precipice in the neigbourhood ;
they then send in dogs which pin the goats, which are at
once slaughtered. If I understand aright, the dogs are let
loose at the goats, just before they get to the precipice,
and so the goats are cut off by the men behind, and the
dogs in front ; the dogs are done if the goats get to the
precipice, as they are terribly active among the rocks. One
gentleman kills as many as twenty goats every year, and,
in the hills about Newton Stewart, at least fifty goats are
killed every year ; a good goat will give about fiO lbs. of
meat. When a goat is caught and killed in the common
hunt, his ear is examined, and he is at once sent to the
farmer who has fixed liis mark upon the beast. This is
done with the greatest fidelity ; each farmer has his own
mark. If a goat is unmarked, he becomes the property of
whoever catches him. The billy goats are in best order
in August and September. The farmers never shoot the
goats, they only catch them at the proper time of " goat
gathering." If they cannot catch the goats one year, they
hope to catch them next. The goats are very artful and

272

HOW THE GOATS ARE CAUGHT.

wary, and require careful "gathering;" many escape
every year.

I have never tasted goat's meat, but I believe the
harvest-men eat it readily.

0 dura messorum ilia !

I once heard of a stingy old lady, who, to the astonish-
ment of the town, invited a grand party to eat a " hauncli
of venison." The dinner passed off well enough, only it
was remarked that the venison was "rather tough" and
high-flavoured. The next morning it was remarked
that " Old Billy," the well known oldest inhabitant of
the stables, was missing. Poor Billy had been slain by
accident, and had supplied the " haunch of venison."

Scotch Eiveb Peaels.

In passing over Moy Bridge, near the junction of the
rivers Blackwater and Connor, Sutherlandshire, a gen-
tleman who was with me told me that that part of the
river we were then crossing was once celebrated for the
number and quality of its pearls ; but of late years they
have diminished both in quantity and quality. The
reason assigned for this was remarkable. According to the
local theory "the building of bridges diminishes the
number of pearls in the river." In former times bridges
were not very numerous in Scotland, and the cattle,
passing the rivers by means of the fords, trod upon the
mussels, and by injuring their shells caused them to form
pearls. After the bridges were built, the cattle no longer
went across the fords, but over the bridges. The mussels

SCOTCH ElVER PEARLS.

273

not being any more injured ceased to secrete the pearls.
There was formerly an old man at this place who gained
his living by collecting these pearls. The poor fellow
was blind, but nevertheless he continued his occupation
as pearl catcher. He used to wade into the river, and
pick up the mussels off the bottom with his toes, his wife
standing on the bank, telling him in which direction
to go.

When he had filled the bag which he carried round his
neck with the pearl mussels, he brought them to the bank
for his wife to open. A pearl the size of a pea was worth
.£1. I was very sorry to hear the tragic end of this poor
man. He got out of his depth, fell into a deep hole in
the river, and was drowned.

Having heard that there were some exceedingly fine
pearls among the Scottish regalia now in Edinburc^h
Castle, I wrote to a young lady residing in that celebrated
city, and asked her to find out what she could about
them for me. She was kind enough to go up to the
castle, and the following is her report : —

" Visitors have to look at the regalia at a respectful
distance through a grating, so I can only tell you that
the four large pearls are curious from their size, which
seemed to me like that of a very large pea. They are
said to be Scotch, but are more like oriental pearls in
colour, having none of the slightly blue tinge which
usually characterises Scotch pearls. Between twenty and
thirty much smaller pearls are set in the circlet of the
crown, but they look very common-place beside the four
large ones on the velvet cap. The best and largest
Scotch pearls that I have seen were got some years ago

T

274 PEARLS IN THE SCOTTISH REGALIA.

in tlie Brora, a river in Sutherland, about ten miles from
Golspie, and some, I believe, were got in Loch Brora.
It seemed, however, an accidental * take ' of pearl mussels,
as hardly any have been found since then. The Germans,
I think, have a superstition about pearls that they are
unluck3\ Lessing, in one of his plays, makes somebody
say, ' Perlen hedeuten Thrcinen' "

Some official attention should be given to the cultiva-
tion of the fresh water mussels which produce the pearls,
or they will become exterminated. These very pearls
may have been one of the causes of Julius Csesar invading
Great Britain. "We read that he came " Propter margari-
tas Anglicas," — on account of the English pearls.

INJURY TO A SUBMAEINE TELEGRAPH CABLE
BY A FISH IN THIRTY FATHOMS OF
WATER.

By the kindness of Mr. Latimer Clark, C.E., engineer
■to the British Indian Extension Telegraph Company, I
had submitted to me, in June, 1873, a portion of the

ICflHAPIt CABLK AND TOOTH OF SAW FLSII.

submarine telegraph cable laid between Pennng and
Singapore, of which the engraving will give a good idea.
The drawing is made the actual size of the injured portion
of the cable.

T 2

276 HISTOEY OP THE FAULT IN THE CABLE.

A hempen rope (A) is tightly coiled round the gutta-
percha portion of the cable. This was, of course, under-
neath the iron wires which formed the outside of the cable.
In the middle of the gutta-percha, the copper wires are
seen embedded at b. In the middle of this gutta-percha
there is a jagged hole exactly the size and shape of that
given in the drawing at a. A minute observation of the
interior of the wound shows that three of the wires at
this point are snapped right across, the broken ends being
all thrust in the same direction, viz., aivay from the
spectator as he examines the drawing. The remaining
four wires (there are seven at the point b), however, remain
intact. The uninjured wires can be seen at the lower
side of the wound, the weapon which made the hole
having missed them.

The following information has been kindly furnished
by Colonel Glover, E.E. : —

" I really have very little information to give you about
the fault in the Penang and Singapore section of our
cable. The cable was laid on 11th December, 1870, and
its tests were satisfactory. It worked well as far as we
know, and we had no reason to suppose anything wrong,
when on 1st March, 1871, or three months afterwards, a
telegram was sent from Singapore, saying that a serious
fault had developed itself, which prevented direct working
between Singapore and Madras, and necessitated ' trans-
mission ' at Penang. Work was carried on this way for
some time, when, in June, one of our vessels went out,
found out the fault, and repaired it on the 7th June, 1871.
After this the tests were satisfactory, and the cable has
continued so ever since. The fault was two hundred and

INJURY TO A CABLE BY A FISH.

277

twenty-two miles from Singapore, and in thirty fathoms
water; the bottom being marked sand and mud. The
report which came home to us was that a bony substance
had been found jammed hard in the cable through the
wires, and it was supposed to have been done before laying.
As we could not understand why the original tests should
be good if the substance had not existed, and why failure
should be sudden, I did not believe this, and on receiving
the faulty specimen I went to Willoughby Smith, and we
opened it together. The bony substance appeared to us
a fish tooth, and probably a shark's ; but as no mark of
the other jaw appeared, we were puzzled, and gave it to
you. This is all the information we possess, nor, indeed,
can I see how we can get more, as no persons have seen
it since.'"

I confess I was exceedingly puzzled with this most
difficult problem. The hole towards the spectator is two-
thirds larger than it is on the opposite side. If it had
been an ordinary fish, such as a shark, there ought to have
been the marks of a bite on both sides of the cable,
namely, of a tooth in both the lower and upper jaws!
This wound, therefore, must of necessity have been made
by a fish having but one tooth, and one tooth only ; but
what fish is there that has only one tooth ? For several
weeks I kept the specimen on my mantelpiece, and was
constantly thinking over the puzzle. At last one day I
hit it ofi", all in a minute. On going round my museum I
observed with most intense interest a beak or saw of a
sawfish (Pristis antiquorum), presented to me by Dr. Day,
Inspector of Indian fisheries, the fish having been taken
in the Andaman Islands. " That's the fellow," I said to

278

WHO BROKE THE CABLE ?

myself, "that made the hole in Mr. Latimer Clark's
telegraph cable;" so, taking one of the teeth out of the
beak of the sawfish, I placed a spare portion of the
telegraph cable on the table and struck the end of the
tooth with the mallet, and immediately produced a wound
almost, I may say exactly, similar to that found on the
Penang telegraph cable. This tooth is seen at B.

My theory is, therefore, very simple, and I think is
correct, viz., that the perpetrator of the wound was a big
sawfish. The cable lay quiescent at the bottom of the
sea, when one day a sawfish came by, hunting for his
dinner. The mode which the sawfish adopts to get his
food is, I believe, by waving his saw horizontally right and
left, and turning up the mud or sand in order to dislodge
the delicate-bodied marine creatures on which he subsists.
His teeth will tell us he cannot eat hard substances.
"When thus engaged in his submarine digging, the sawfish
suddenly came across the telegraph cable. Hisbeak'getting
entangled in it, he gave it an extra blow and a smash
downwards, and finally getting enraged, hit it so hard that
one of his teeth went between the outer wires — through
the hempen rope — and then through to the gutta-percha,
injuring the wires. These various substances probably
then held the tooth somewhat tightly. The fish then
struggled and broke his tooth short off, leaving a bit of it
actually imbedded in the cable among the wires.

I am inclined to think that the sawfish uses his for-
midable weapon to stir up the mud in search of his food,
because the points of the teeth in the saw, which are
composed of a very hard bony substance, are always very
sharp, as sharp, in fact, as the tips of a wild boar's tusk.

INJURY TO A CABLE BY A FISH. 279

which, as we all know, are kept finely pointed by constant
friction.

I have made a section of a tooth of the sawfish as
represented at B in the drawing. The light-coloured
portion which fits into the blade of the saw is cellular, and
presents the structure of a common walking-cane. The
sharp point will be observed in the engraving. At C,
there is a smaU drawing of the entire beak of the sawfish,
and I leave it to the reader to weigh the evidence I have
now adduced, and consider if my theory is correct.

I have submitted the small portion of the bone, which
was actually embedded in the wound, to my friend Mr.
Henry Lee, who, after microscopic examination, says, " It
is more like the tooth of the sawfish than anything else."
This report agrees entirely with my own observations.

"JEMMY" THE WALKUS.

The 1st of November, 1807, will ever be memorable in
the annals of Natural History as the day on which a
living walrus {Trichecus rosmarus) arrived at the Eegent's
Park Zoological Gardens. As it was late in the evening
when the van containing the animal arrived, Mr. Bartlett
determined to place the huge box, in which the beast had
travelled, alongside the enclosure set apart for his accom-
modation, and to leave him undisturbed for the night.
The next morning a portion of the wire-work of the
enclosure was taken down, the box shifted close up to the
aperture, a plank carefully removed, and out came the
head of the walrus. The poor beast snuffed and stared
about, wondering where he was. We waited, quite silent,
and then out he came, further and further, till at lasti
finding the road clear, he waddled right out on to the open!
The first thing he did was to put down his great nose and
to sniff at the grass— he had, probably, never seen grass
before— he then went straight up to a little tree, and
examined it with the same sort of curiosity with which
we spectators were examining him. He then made direct
for the pond, and pulled himself up on to the edge, first
with his chin and then with his flippers. After looking
round again, he ducked his head under water with the

" JEMMY " THE WALRUS.

281

same kind of eagerness that a two montlis' absence from
a bath would be likely to produce in a water-loving
animal. Finding it all right, he slipped into the water
with the noiseless glide of an otter; down he went,
luxuriating in the bath for which he had pined for two
months or more. After a long dive up came his intelligent
head to the surface once more, and he gave a long and
anxious look round.

At this moment we were much amused to observe the
seals in the pond close by. These pretty little things had
" clambered " to the edge of the stone parapet of their
pond, and were all eyes, expressing intense wonder, at
the poor walrus, in whom, possibly, they recognized an
old acquaintance. Jemmy — for that is the name of the
walrus — then came out of his pond, and up to the rail-
ings, so that we had a good look at him. He was just
about the same size as the sea-beax*. I tried to take his
measurements, but the moment I put the tape near him
he turned round and looked so terribly fierce, that I, of
course, instantly desisted.* He probably thought the tape
was a rope, and knowing from experience that a rope Avas
no friend of his, objected to its coming near him. His
head is seal-like, but the bloodshot eyes are not so large;
there are no apparent eyelashes, and they reminded me
much of the eyes of the hippopotamus. Their colour is
dark brown, and the pupil exceedingly small. It is, as far

* Dr. Murie, in his valuable monograph on the -walrus, subsequently
gave these dimensions : extreme length, 7 feet to feet ; muzzle to tip
of tail, 0 feet to 8 feet ; girth round the neck, 2 feet to 4 feet ; girth
round thorax, 4 feet to 3 feet ; greatest stretch of transverse diameter
of fore limbs, 4 feet to 8 feet.

282

STEUCTURE OF THE WALRtJS.

as I could make out, not circular, but vertical, like that of
a cat. I think this peculiar structure is given to preserve
the retina of the eye from the glare of the sun on the ice,
and save the animal from " snow-blindness." Again, it
doubtless has to do with his being able to see during the
semi-darkness of the long arctic winter : possibly it serves
both purposes.*

The colour of Jemmy's coat is tawny, not unhke that
of Scotch snuflf ; his hair is rather short, and throws off
the water easily from its surface. When damp, it is
apparently divided into diamond-shaped patterns, like a
quilted petticoat. In his walk he wriggles much more than
the sea-bear. His hind flippers are connected together
by loose skinf ; on land they appear awkward, but in the
water they give him great facilities of swimming. When

* Dr. Murie, when examining the eye after death, writes : " I had
thought the intense redness of the conjunctival membrane was due to
pathological lesion ; but I find that several voyagers caU special attention
to the red eye of the walnis. This unusual condition, therefore, must
be a natural one, the physiological reason of which I am not prepared
to give."

+ Dr. Murie remarks : " A notable peculiarity in this animal was the
curious wrinkled condition of the skin. The cutaneous wrinkles and
furrows varied in height, depth, and direction in the several regions of
the body, and altered considerably, according to the position assumed.
The stuffed skins found in museums, of large or full-grown walruses,
give no idea whatsoever of the characteristic in question. A plausible
reason may be assumed. PeriodicaUy the walrus becomes veiy fat,
and during such times the elastic capacity of the skin allows of
sufficient storage room for the superabundant adipose tissue. Mr.
Lamont says the walrus has not nearly so much blubber in proportion
to his size as the seal. Thus a seal of 600 lbs. will carry 200 lbs. or
250 lbs. of fat. An ordinary walrus may weigh 2000 lbs. j but his fat
will not exceed that of a seal. A full-sized old bull walrus must weigh
at least 3000 lbs., and such a walrus will produce at most C50 lbs. of
blubber, but seldom more than 600 lbs."— The badger has naturally a

"jemmy" the walrus.

283

displeased he roars famously. His voice is not at all
unlike that of a lion, only, of course, not so loud. He is
supposed to be about eight months old, and is certainly
not so big as he will be. I make him out to be over seven
feet in length. A full-grown walrus will measure some
sixteen feet long, ten feet in girth, and have twenty inches
to two feet of tusk, and a weight of over 3000 lbs. Jemmy's
blunt muzzle is the most peculiar part about him. It is full
and fleshy, like the " moufile " of a North American elk.
The whole of its exterior surface is covered with strong
whalebone-like whiskers ; the uppermost rows of these are
quite short, the lower are much more developed, being
from two to three inches in length. The points of all
these whiskers are directed downwards, and somewhat
towards the median line of the nose. They look stiff,
like wires, but to the touch are soft, like the wetted bristles
on a camel-hair brush. I have now some walrus bristles
before me — they are not from Jemmy's nose — when wetted
in warm water they become quite soft. Their colour is
exactly that of a tortoiseshell-comb, and they resemble
the teeth of a comb in other ways. They are quite hollow
— like a rabbit's tooth — for one-third of their length.
As in the lion and seal, so also in the walrus, these ap-
parently rude organs of touch are exceedingly sensitive.
The conical cavity of the whisker is filled with nervous
pulp ; in fact, one might almost say that the whisker is
simply a horn cap upon the top of an exceedingly large
nerve. In the skull the foramen, through which these

very loose skin. As in the case of the ■walrus wo do not know why ; I
do not think the " fat theory " will do. The fact is, we don't know, and
we had better say so. If we could observe the "walrus at home," wo
might find out the reason.— (F. B.)

28i

"jemmy's" tusks.

Bose nerves send their main telegraph wires to the
brain, is exceedingly large, larger even than in the lion

Jemmy" has two tusks; they are but about two
inches long-recollect that "Jemmy" is only a baby •
nevertheless, when angry he curls back his great lips'
shows his tusks, and at the same time he chatters his
teeth together with great rapidity, making a noise like
the chattering of teeth when a man is very cold, only of
coui'se the sound is much exaggerated. Qu^re, is the
wabus so subject to cold that this teeth-chattering
has become a permanent habit? Again, it is not unlike
the noise of the wooden clappers used by boys to scare
the birds from the fields. This chattering is certainly
a new idea to most of us.

I vvas not, of course, able to examine "Jemmy's"
teeth, but I have a walrus-skull from my museum now
before me. It is that of an adult animal ; length, 1ft. 4 in. ;
weight 15 lbs. There are two large cavities on each side
of the angle of the upper jaw, each six inches deep ; into
tliese, the tusks proper are inserted. A skull which Mr.
Bartlett has placed by "Jemmy's" house weighs, with
tusks, which are 14 in. in length, 25 lbs. (One can hardly
credit the terrible want of common sense on the part of
some people. A visitor, seeing this skull hung up on a tree
by the walrus house, asked, in all seriousness, whether the
walrus had shed his skull, and if so, if that skull on the
tree was the last one shed.) In the upper jaw are eight
teeth, four on each side ; in the lower also four on each side.
They are by no means formidable in appearance, being like
^pered pegs of wood fixed into a simple hollow in the bone.
The dentine is worn away from the inner side, so as to

"jemmy" the walrus.

285

leave the enamel a sharp cutting edge on the outer side.
The teeth of the lower jaw work against those of the
upper. It is curious that the two front molar teeth of the
lower jaw do not correspond with their fellows in the
upper: each tooth works but half the surface of that above
it ; the two front teeth, however, correspond exactly. The
projecting tusk cavities prevent much motion of the lower
jaw from side to side, but it has free play up and down ;
by rattling the teeth together, I produce the chattering —
the same song that " Jemmy " sings when anything dis-
pleases him. The working teeth of the walrus seem to be
all consolidated into the two huge tusks which ornament
each side of his head ; with these he can rake up the sea-
weed and sand, using them like a two-pronged hoe. He
doubtless does this when he wants shrimps and mollusks
for dinner.* He can fight the other walruses ; he can
drag a boat's edge down to the level of the water, or,
using them as an " alpen-stock," can climb up the sides
of the ice-covered rock. The visitor has only to watch

* The author of " Sport in Norway " thus writes in confirmation
of this theory:—" In 1861, during a residence in Norway, I made the
acquaintance of a Swede, Magester Terrell, who had just returned
from Spitzbergen, where he had been on a scientific expedition. He
told me that he was fully of opinion that the tusks of the walrus,
among other uses, such as for hanging on to the edge of the ice, &c.,
were much, if not mainly, employed by the animal for the purpose of
digging up food from the bottom. Not only did the peculiar ' dung-
fork ' shapo of the tusks lead him to infer this, before the stomach of a
dead walras was examined, but when, on opening the stomach of one,
a quantity of bivalve shells {My a truncata) were found in it, of a species
that always lies buried at least one foot below the sui-face of the mud,
he and his colleagues felt convinced that the tusks were employed by the
animals for the purpose of digging up their food." The partiality of
" Jemmy " for mussels seems also to confirm this idea.

286

NOSTRILS OF THE WALRUS.

"Jemmy," to see at once how — his tusks not being yet
developed — he will hold on with his chin when he wants
to climb, and pull himself up ; in fact, the rascal tries to
climb the fence of his enclosure ; if he has his chin once on
the top, he is " as good as over." These tusks (and his oil)
are the casus belli between the poor walrus and the sailors
of the whale-ships. I lately saw a great lot of them at a
city warehouse. They are of uniform texture (unlike
elephant ivory), and are, I believe, used principally by the
dentists, who prefer, for making artificial teeth, walrus,
hippopotamus, and whale ivory to that of the elephant.
It is possible that the walrus was at one time pretty
abundant on the British coasts. Some suppose that the
ivory bits, of British manufacture, exported to Kome were
made of walrus or narwhal tusks.

The nostrils of the walrus are very peculiar ; they have
not apparently the same arrangements of the sphincter
muscle that we find in the seal, hippopotamus, &c. ; but
a kind of lobular projection is thrust forward at the will
of the animal ; this projection accurately fits the nostril —
there is one on each side — and acts like a cork in the
neck of a bottle. When these curious doors are open one
can look right into the nostrils, which are perfectly
circular, and about big enough to admit a large cedar
pencil. I am no disciple of the development theory, but
keep to the path so plainly pointed out by the Bridge-
water Treatises, by Paley, and by Eay and Durham, in
their "Physico-Theology ; " and cannot help seeing in the
peculiar mobile lip, in the whiskers, and nostril of the
walrus, an adaptation to the means of its existence, giving
a clue to the determination of the food of the beast.

"jemmy the walrus.

287

It has been stated that the morse or walrus is herbivorous.
I cannot think this is the case; for in its general structure it
agrees more with the seals than with any herbivorous animal.

What, then, is the food of the walrus ? Mr. Bartlett
informed me that when "Jemmy" was first captured at
sea he sulked for two or three days, and would eat
nothing. The sailors then offered him strips of fat pork.*
Finding it, I suppose, not tinlike his mother's milk, he
devoured it readily, and from that time his daily rations
on board ship consisted of from seven to eight pounds of
fat pork; besides which, the sailors occasionally added
oatmeal-and-water, which they poured down his throat by
means of a spout. When they got near Shetland, they
found "Jemmy's" allowance pressing rather hard upon
their own mess; so they got some mussels for him —
gigantic fellows, six inches in length, and proportionately
wide — and, opening the shells, gave him the meat, which
he much enjoyed. When Mr. Bartlett first took charge
of him at Dundee, the poor beast looked very thin, and

* "Writing in Land and Water, " Arctic " thus describes the way in
which his pet walrus {sQQpostca page 2!)1) was fed. — " The stomach of the
mother only contained a small quantity of chyle, so we were quite at a
loss what to feed our captive on. Unsuccessful attempts were made to
induce him to drink oatmeal-and-water, and to suck the teats on the
hide of his defunct parent, from which the "blubber "had not been
removed. He lay on the maternal remains all night, and next day was
offered a strip of blubber from it, which, to our great delight, he began
to suck with apparent gusto ; and, during the three months we kept him,
he had — with the exception of an occasional basin of pea-soup — no other
food but strips of his mother as long as she remained fresh, and after-
wards of whale-blubber, which was tied to his kennel in such a way as
to prevent his swallowing it. On several occasions, notwithstanding
our precautions, " Jemmy " sucked too hard, and had narrow escapes
from choking, owing to the smallncss of his gullet."

28S

FOOD OP THE WALKUS.

the men agreed that he was going wrong. He then
suggested fish diet; the men told him that they had tried
fish, but " Jemmy " had spit them out, and would not
swallow them. Mr. Bartlett was sure that the reason of
this was, that " Jemmy " could not swallow a ivJwle fisli if
it were larger than a herring. Nevertheless, he went to
the market, and bought a large cod ; he cut it into sirips,
free from bone, and was delighted to find that "Jemmy "
would suck down these strips; in fact, he greedily de-
voured a whole cod weighing at least eight pounds.
Finding this to be the case, Mr. Bartlett took a good
supply of cod, &c., on board the steamer, and fed the
hungry captive as he came along. "Jemmy's" diet in
the gardens is principally fish ; the flesh only is given
him, and this is carefully cut up into strips and washed in
water, to avoid all danger from fish-hooks, as hooks in fish
have proved the death, not only of many seals, but also
of a sea-bear at the gardens. When he sucks in his food,
it slips down with a loud " flop.''

"When at home, it is probable, according to the evidence
of the sailors, that the walrus feeds largely upon shrimps:
they told Mr. Bartlett they found the stomachs full of
shrimps and prawns. On one occasion the prawns from
the stomach of a walrus were so fresh that they might
have been cooked. May not, therefore, the whiskers of
this beast be of use to him in hunting for shrimps,
mussels, and other soft and nutritious things in the sea
sand ? I argued, from their action when the beast was snuff-
ing the grass, that they might also act in some degree as
a trap to help him entangle these active little creatures,
and doubtless he eats crabs as well as shrimps ; he may

"jemmy" the walrus.

289

<3atch small fisli also, but I do not see how he is to catch
the large ones. That is the peculiar business of his first
•cousin the seal, and it is curious to remark how the walrus,
being a " bank animal," does not poach upon the hunting
grounds of the seal. Mr. Bartlett, indeed, by a process
•of ingenious reasoning, solved the difficult problem of the
food of the wabus. Arguing from what he observed of the
beast, and from -what he learnt from the sailors, viz., that
the food was of small size, he obtained from Billingsgate
a bag of whelks and a bag of mussels ; having removed
the shells, he gave " Jemmy " two quarts of whelks and
four of mussels mixed together. This soft and gelatinous
food — which is probably his natural aliment — suited him
admirably.; he devoured six quarts of it daily. The
■tvalrus uses his whiskers like brushes, to draw to his
mouth what he likes, and push away what he dislikes, and
probably when at home he searches with them for soft
mollusks in the sand. This observation of Mr. Bartlett's
of the real use of the whiskers of the walrus is most
valuable and interesting.

In the illustration will be seen an excellent portrait of
the walrus " Jemmy."

By the kindness of Mr. Bartlett I am enabled to
give the following particulars of the capture of the
animal : — Captain Richard Wells, of tbe steam-whaler
Arctic, of Dundee, was, on the 28th August last, in
latitude 69° N., longitude 64° W. According to the map,
the locality maybe fixed, between Cumberland Island and
Disco Island, in the centre of Davis' Straits, on the Avest
coast of Greenland. Captain Wells saw, basking upon
the ice, between 250 and 300 walruses, and sent out his

u

290

CAPTURE OF THE BABY WALRUS.

boats to kill as many of them as possible. Among those
killed was a very large female. Captain Wells fastened
this animal to the stern of the boat, to tow her to the
ship ; he soon found out that her cub was clinging to her,
and the poor thing followed its dead mother to the side of
tlie ship. When the sailors had hauled the mother onboard,
the cub still remained alongside, and they managed to
catch him round the neck with the bight of a rope, and
haul him also on board. At first they tied him to a ring
on the deck, and afterwards made a big box for him.
When Mr. Bartlett arrived at Dundee, he found the walrus
still in this box, and wisely determined to bring it direct
to London by sea. He fortunately found the steam-ship
Anglia, Captain Speedy, just about to start, and came
straight away, with his valuable charge, to London. Captain
Speedy and his officers showed Mr. Bartlett the greatest
attention, and afforded him every facility both in shipping
and in landing the animal.

Few people have any idea of the dangers incurred by
whalers in the Arctic Seas. The ships are built exceed-
ingly strong, and necessarily so, for the work they have to
do is very perilous. At the end of the last whaling season
the Arctic had to cut a passage through the ice by sheer
main force. With all her steam up she charged a bar-
rier of ice, crashing a passage through it. No less than
five times did she make her fearful charge, succeeding at
last in forcing a way through ; five ships then followed
her out of the ice, which threatened to impound them in a
fearful prison, and to subject them to all the horrors of
an arctic winter.

I am sorry to say that poor "Jemmy" died at the

"jemmy" the walrus.

291

gardens December 19, 1867. In his stomach were found
numbers past counting of small roundish parasitic worms
— a new species of Entozoon.*

Having thus placed on record a memoir of poor
"Jemmy," I think my readers will be interested in the
following account of a previous "Jemmy," which was
kindly sent to me, for publication in Land and Water, by
a gentleman writing under the nom de 2)kme of " Arctic"
Early in the summer of 1861 a solitary female walrus
was harpooned by Captain J. B. Walker, of the steamship
Wildfire, of Dundee, in Davis Straits. Immediately
after the smoke of the harpoon-gun had cleared away,
a sound, somewhat resembling the grunt of a pig and the
bark of a dog, was heard close under the stern of the
boat, which proceeded from a baby walrus. I was steer-
ing, so I leant over and caught hold of one of its fore
flippers, and, with the assistance of one of the men, pulled
it into the boat. It proved to be a young. male, and was
about three feet long. Our pet, like the distinguished
arrival at the Zoological Gardens, was immediately named
"Jemmy" by the sailors.

I cultivated "Jemmy's " acquaintance assiduously, and
he soon became very friendly. Ordinary scratching and
patting made little impression on my pachydermatous
friend, who, however, turned over on his side and grunted
with satisfaction when I scratched him with a heather
broom. He was always extremely docile and fond of
society, and this gregarious instinct was of considerable
service to our " spectioneer," as the officer in charge of

* Ascaris bicolor. Dr. Lee, Proceedings of the Zoological Society 18G8
p. 67. ' '

V 2

292

INTELLIGENCE OF PET WALRUS.

the third watch on hoar^ a whaler is called. This
functionary was unfortunately not remarkable for the
possession of great administrative talents, and prior to
" Jemmy's " advent had great difficulty in keeping his
men from going below to the galley fire, on the cold
nights in the early part of the season ; but " Jemmy" —
who, if shivering may be considered any criterion, felt
the cold as keenly as they did — sternly set his face against
this breach of discipline, and so soon as he observed an
appreciable diminution in their numbers, began to bark
vigorously, and thus drew the attention of the officer to
the skulkers. I was often much amused by watching the
great state of excitement he got into when a boat got fast
to a whale, on which occasion it is customary to " call all
hands," who then rush on deck, only partly dressed,
shouting, " A fall ! a fall ! " " Jemmy " would then
shuffle about, barking loudly and getting into everybody's
way; when the ship was deserted by almost every one
but the engineers, firemen, and the man at the wheel, he
moved about the deck in great distress, barking and look-
ing into every comer, climbing upon a chest which stood
below a ventilating scuttle in the bulkhead of the poop,
through which he could command a view of the interior
of the cabin, searching for a companion, and would not
be comforted until some one came and patted him and
spoke to him.

" Sallying" the ship, in order to break the ice when
the ship got wedged in a narrow channel, was another
period of excitement for him ; at the word " over " he
would attempt to follow the men as they rushed from side
to side, but from his slowness of locomotion he seldom

"jemmy" the walrus.

293

reached one side before the order was given to return ;
he would then give a short bark of disappointment and
turn again, but never seemed to tire of the amusement.
When called by his name he would, when he knew the
voice, come shuffling along from one end of the ship to
the other. He conceived a strong affection for a young
Esquimaux dog, which I obtained from the natives in
Pond's Bay; he good-naturedly shared his kennel and
food with him, and seemed terribly annoyed that he
could not keep pace with him in walking about the deck ;
and he certainly exhibited much more intelligence and
affection than this degraded but useful section of the
canine race seemed capable of. On several occasions he
was lowered into the water for a bath by a tackle from
the mainyard, but this was a kindness which he never
seemed to appreciate, as he immediately swam to the
boat, looking up and grunting as if asking to be taken
aboard again. On the last occasion on which he had a
bath one of the men frightened him away with an oar, in
order to induce him to take a longer swim, when he
dived under the edge of the floe at which we were lying,
and did not reappear for so long a time, that we began to
fear he was lost, and when he did get out again he was very
much exhausted. He was shortly afterwards seized with
a severe cold in the head, and died within a fortnight,
apparently from the extension of the inflammation to his
lungs. I think it probable that the irritation from cutting
his tusks may have contributed to cause his death, as
they were at that time about an inch and a half through
the gum. During his illness he was very much troubled
with coryza, and would steal up softly behind the men

294

COST OF WALRUS.

and wipe his nose on the legs of their trousers ; he was
on this account supplied with a swab, and quite under-
stood the use for which it was intended. Poor fellow,
when I visited him a few minutes before his death,
although very weak, he knew my voice at once, and
slightly raised his head and gave a low grunt of recogni-
tion. I intended to have preserved his skull, but unfor-
tunately, through the stupidity of one of the men, it was
thrown overboard during the night.

I trust that the time is not far distant when we may
again have the opportunity of seeing a walrus at the
Zoological. " Jemmy " cost something like two hundred
pounds, so that it will be worth the while of whaling
vessels to see if they cannot bring home a " Jemmy the
Second."

THE ECLIPSE WHALING AND SEALING

SHIP.

When I was at Peterhead* in May, 1870, I had
the good fortune to be able to inspect a whaling-ship
which had just come into port from the Arctic Seas.
My official work with the Salmon Fishery District
Board of the river Ugie was luckily over early in the
afternoon ; I therefore had three or four hours to devote
to the whale-ship. I found her alongside the pier, which
was covered, for a considerable distance, with huge barrels
containing seal-oil. The name of this ship was the
Eclipse, Captain David Gray. Stepping on board, I sent
down my card to the captain, who most kindly welcomed
me at once into his cabin. The Captain said he knew my
name perfectly well from my writings. It is, therefore,
some little comfort that they afforded amusement and

* The Peterhead Museum contains many most interesting Arctic
specimens : a splendid harp seal, presented by Captain Gray ; a fastal
walrus, about six inches long ; a foetal black whale from Greenland
about sixteen inches long, no whalebone yet developed ; a foetal seal'
which the old woman, the curator of the museum, said truly, " was just
like a little cat ;" several Esquimaux things now getting rare ; a mag-
nificent walrus's head ; and, above all, " Captain Ross's stocking," to
which the attentive and polite lady curator, Mrs. Adams, kept per-
petually calling my attention. This is evidently a precious relic in her
sight. When I appeared not particularly interested in it, she said
pointedly, " Some people thinks muckle of it, some people nothing of it.''

296

THE eclipse's ARMOUK.

instruction to gentlemen among the icebergs of tlie Arctic
Seas.

The Eclipse is a fine screw-steamer, whose sole busi-
ness is to pursue and catch seals and whales. She is 29
feet wide, and 1.50 feet long, and built of amazing
strength. About forty feet of her, outside, from the stem.

CLtTB FOR KILLING AECTIO SKALS.

is, as it were, double armoured with an amazing thick-
ness of oak planking, and iron bolted together in the
manner which experience proves is best suited for fighting
ice. The cut-water is made of iron, forming a very
sharp wedge to split the ice. AVoe betide any ship that
" collides'* with her, or any ordinary ice-floe that opposes
her course.

The voyage from which the Eclipse had just returned
had been very successful. She had been after seals
only, and had killed no less than thirteen thousand, —

THE ECLIPSE WHALING AND SEALING SHIP. 297

two thousand six hundred being adult seals, ten thou-
sand four hundred being young seals, the total value
of the cargo being about £12,000. The ship had been
away two months onl3% The seals had yielded two
hundred tons of oil. The cub seals grow very fast
indeed, and at twelve days old are large enough to be
killed. Captain Gray gave me the skin of one of the
pups, which is now in my museum. I saw a great pile
of the skins (all salted down) of these little seals in the
•warehouse. To kill the seals the sailors go on to the
ice -with what are called "clubs." These are almost
exactly the same instruments as those used for poleaxing
horses, and consist of a sharp spike and a hammer-headed
end. This implement is fixed on to a long but strong
and light handle, so that the sailors can poleaxe the
poor seals before they have time to bite or get far away.
Captain Gray gave me a seal club, which is now in my
museum at South Kensington.

The hold of the Eclipse is almost entirely occupied by
huge iron tanks, which fit into the shape of the vessel.
There is a man-hole in each tank, and the oil is hoisted
out of it with a bucket worked by pulley and rope.
When the oil gets low, the men go into the tank to scrape
out the bits called " finks " left in the bottom. Each
iron tank holds some thousands of gallons of oil and finks.
I do not envy the men wlio have to go down into these
tanks. The whole ship smelt unpleasantly of oil, but the
information Captain Gray gave me was much too inte-
resting for me to mind that. The seal-oil is taken to the
boiling-house, not far from the ship, and boiled. After
boiling twenty minutes it comes out like beautiful pale

298

WHALE-GUN AND HARPOONS.

sherry, and doubtless would be as good for invalids as
cod-liver oil. Seal-oil is in much demand for some
manufactures, especially iu the preparation of jute, to
which it gives a silk-like appearance. But if the seals
are killed at the present rate the jute people will have to
look out for some other kind of oil.

Captain Gray and his ship Eclipse are also cele-
brated for the killing of whales. I examined the tackle
used for this purpose. It consists of harpoons, lances,
knives, etc., fixed on a long handle. Captain Gray has
found from experience that it is better to shoot the
harpoon from a gun than to allow it to be thrown
from the hand of a sailor. The whale-gun, made by
Greener of Birmingham, was lying in the cabin, and I
examined it carefully. It is like a stumpy duck gun
with a very large bore. The lock is covered over with a
brass case in order to keep the wet out. It is placed on
to the bow of the whale-boat, on a joint that turns every
way, and is fired from this position. The charge is
twelve drachms of gunpowder ; ten or eleven fathoms is
the greatest distance it is advisable to fire this gun at a
whale. The harpoon makes a curve in its flight.

I had a long argument with Captain Gray as to which
was the most vulnerable part to fire into. The captain
asked me at what part of the whale I would aim. I told
him the head or the heart. He said I was quite wrong,
an'd the proper place was the tail, for this reason — the
tail is the whale's chief pi-opelling power, and if you
cripple his tail, it is like injuring the screw of a steamer.
It is, however, difficult to get at the tail, as it is always
under water. The harpoon lines are neatly coiled up in

THE ECLIPSE WHALING AND SEALING SHIP. 299

the boats, and they are jomed together, so that when one
coil is out another immediately comes into action. The
lines pay out from the inside, like a ball of twine. Each
coil of line is 720 feet long, and there are about five
coils to each boat, all spliced together before starting.
The whale-line is very strong, but very supple. Each
yarn is tested to bear a hundred-weight, and there are
thirty-two yarns in a strand, and three strands in a single
line. If there is not enough line in one boat, another
boat comes alongside, if possible, and pays out her lines.
Captain Gray has known as much as two miles and
seventy-eight yards run out by one whale.

An old man, James Milne, who was boiling the seal-
oil, told me that on one occasion, when harpooner's mate
in one of the whaling-boats, his legs were caught by the
line when the whale was fast, and he was dragged under
water with the velocity of a cannon-shot. He did not
know how far he was carried under, but it must have
been an immense depth before he got clear of the line.
His bonnet came up first and showed the men where
to look for him. When he did reappear, he came up
close to the boat, so his life was saved. " But," says
the old man, " we got the fash after all." Captain Gray
said that, apart from the great value of the whale when
caught, whale-shooting is the finest sport in the world.
He does not approve of explosive harpoons. He killed a
whale that had been fired at by a German whaler with
an explosive harpoon. The whale had been struck
fourteen days before by the German. He did not seem
to be much the worse for it.

Harpoons will remain a long time in whales. On the

300

THE whale's food.

30th June, 1803, the captain took a harpoon out of a
whale -with the following inscription : — " Pow and Fawcus,
Newcastle, 1839," so that, supposing it was used when
new, the whale must have carried the harpoon ahout
with him, sticking in his blubber, for no less than
twenty-four years. The captain also took two old har-
poons out of whales in July, 1872.

The water in the Arctic Sea is in some places as
clear as the firmament ; in others it appears quite thick
from the presence of millions of minute creatures. The
whale not only eats the Clio horealis, but this living mass
of animal life. These little creatures are not so big as a
carraway-seed. In the middle of the body of each is a
single drop of red oil. The captain has boiled some of
these little beasts for an experiment, and has got oil out
of them.*

* Mr. H. Woodward thus writes as regards whale's food : — " The
whale's food forwarded to me through Mr. Buckland, from Captain Gray,
of the Peterhead whaler Eclipse, proves to contain a large number of a
smaU but graceful crustacean, belonging to the genus CetocMlus, which
was so named by Roussel de Vauzdme, in the ' Ann. des Sc. Nat.,' 2nd
series, 1, 1834, who gives a very interesting account of its use, as con-
stituting, in a great measure, the food of the whale. Vauzeme was
attached to a vessel employed in the whale-fishery in the Southern
Ocean, and for four months the crew were engaged in the neighbour-
hood of the island of Tristan d'Acunha, in the South Atlantic, without
his ever having been able to observe what formed the food of the whales.
Leaving that quarter, however, at the end of that time, and steering for
Cape Horn, he, one morning in the month of February, observed the
surface of the sea streaked with red lines, of several miles in extent, and
giving the appearance of blood to the water. The experienced sailors
on board immediately announced that they had now reached Vti^ pasture
of the whales. Accordingly, they very soon afterwards saw them
sporting about in the midst of these ruddy banks. Upon examining the
water thus coloured, Vauzeme found it was caused by an immense number

THE ECLIPSE WHALING AND SEALING SHIP. 301

»

In 1870 I made a cast of a whale's head now in my
museum. It was the Piked whale, Balcenoptera rostrata.

HEAD OF PIKE WHALE.

He was 13 feet long. I could not afford to cast more
than his head.

of small crustaceans, which were of a red hue. They swarmed in
myriads upon the surface of the sea, and when the wind was boisterous
a whole bank of them would be taken up by a wave, and carried on
board, covering the deck and the clothes of the sailors. The whales
swallowed them in myriads, and they served for food not only to them,
but to the Cirripedes (the CoronulcB and Tuhicincllm) , which live as
parasites upon their skin.

BAENACLES FEOM A WHALE.

— ♦ —

It will be recollected that in No. 5 of Land and Water,
appeared an account of a whale being cast ashore near
Kintradwell, in the north of Scotland.

I wrote to my correspondent, who most kindly answered
the letter as follows : —

" Kintradwell, Golspie, N.B.

" Sir, — Having been among the first to board the
monster when stranded, I secured the largest and best
shells, and consigned them to a bucket of sea-water, where
they lived for a considerable time. I therefore hope you
will not find them much decayed. I should perhaps
mention that they were attached principally in thickly-
studded patches round his nose and at the root of the
tail, and that one or two specimens I have still by me
are larger than those sent you. The dimensions of the
whale were : length, 45 ft. ; girth round the thickest
part, 48 ft.; breadth of tail, 12 ft.; side fins, 8 ft.
The belly very pure white and deeply corrugated,
the furrows running parallel from stem to stern. The
Crown have taken possession of, and sold, the fish. —
W. H."

BARNACLES PEOM A WHALE.

303

I now give the figure of this most remarkable and
valuable specimen. Two — not one — species of barnacle

PAUASmcJ IlAllNACLKS FllOJI IIlCAl) OV WUM.K.

have made their home upon the body of this unfortunate
whale. The former is about the size and shape of a

304

DOUBLE PAEASITE.

Normandy pippin apple, and much resembles the usual
appearance of the "acorn" barnacle, so common along
our shores ; this species is, however, peculiar to whales,
and hence is called Coronida halcenaris.

The shell is of a peculiar white hardness and colour,
and from the centre of the shell can be seen the beauti-
ful " casting net " apparatus, by means of which the
creature which lives in the shell obtains its food from the
surrounding water. Upon Coronula Balcenaris another
parasite has taken up its position ; this is formed of a
strong, finger-like cartilaginous substance, the head being
formed by two projections, as though the beast had a
double fool's cap on. By some, these appendages have
been supposed to be like ears, hence its name Otaria
Cuvieri. The whole head much reminds one of the
flower of the common garden plant, the snapdragon.
Why coronula should make its habitat upon the whale,
and why otaria again upon coronula, I know not, except it
be in obedience to some laws of animal parasitic growths,
of which we know really nothing ; though we can bring
forward numerous examples of animals, both in the water
and on the land, having a parasite peculiar to themselves.
Coronula had attached himself to the whale's skin, and a
portion of the skin still remains firmly adherent to the
specimen. This double parasite is, I believe, very rare.
In the museum of the College of Surgeons, there is but
one specimen, and a note in the catalogue runs as
follows : — " There is no record as to the way in which John
Hunter became possessed of this remarkable specimen,
but there is abundance of evidence in the collection that
he purchased largely at the sale of Mr. Ellis's specimens ;

BAENACLES FROM A WHALE. 305

and in the ' Account of several rare Species of Barnacles '
given by that excellent observer of nature, in the 50th
volume of Phil. Trans., p. 845, there is a figure of a
similar specimen with the following description : ' This
extraordinary animal (the naked fleshy barnacle with ears),
of which there were seven together, was found, sticking to
the whale barnacle, by Mr. Smith, of Stavenger, in Norway,
who cut both kinds together off a whale's lip, that was
thrown upon the coast last year, 1757, and immediately
immersed them in spirits of wine, by which means we
have been able more exactly to describe them.' "

John Hunter seems to have had great difficulty in
getting whale preparations, for he writes elsewhere : " As
the opportunities of ascertaining the anatomical structure
of large marine animals are generally accidental, I have
availed myself as much as possible of all that have
occurred ; and, anxious to get more extensive information,
engaged a surgeon, at a considerable expense, to make a
voyage to Greenland, in one of the ships employed in the
whale fishery, and furnished him with such necessaries as
I thought might be requisite for examining and pre-
serving the more interesting parts, and with instructions
for making general observations ; but the only return I
received for the expenses was a piece of whale skin with
some small animals sticking upon it."

The engraving of this most interesting specimen repre-
sents the coronula uppermost, with the otaria depending
from it. The original can be se^n in my museum.

X

THE GEEENLAND SEAL FISHEKIES.

Captain Gray has most kindly given me the following
most interesting and valuable paper on the Greenland
Seal Fisheries — Habits of Arctic Seals : —

" The vessels bound for the Greenland seal fishing leave
Dundee and Peterhead, the only two places in this
country now engaged in the trade, about the first of
March, and proceed to Lerwick, the capital of the Shet-
land Isles, for the purpose of completing their crews;
the usual custom being to ship only the principal ofi&cers
and boat-steerers in Scotland, making up the rank and
file at Shetland. The other nations engaged in this trade
are, Norwegians, Danes, and Germans. The vessels
remain at Lerwick a few days, to allow the men time to
get their clothes ready, many of them having long journeys
to make on foot to bring their traps into town. At this
time the men on board ship are busy in getting the fish-
ing gear into order, and making everything secure to
encounter the often very stormy passage to the ice. This
will occupy about eight or ten days if the winds are
favourable, but it often takes three weeks or a month if
the north-east winds set in with their usual heart.

"The vessels make the ice usually about 73° or 73°

THE GREENLAND SEAL FISHERIES.

307

north, in the neighbourhood of the Island of Jan Mayen,
a volcanic mountain rising eight thousand feet above the
level of the sea. The ice, or pack, as it is called, is
composed of numerous different pieces, varying in size
from a pancake to an iceberg, closely packed together ;
hence its name.

" Upon this ice the young seals are pupped. In choosing
the place for this purpose the old seals are influenced by
several things : first, that the ice lies upon water in which
their food abounds, consisting principally of a small kind
of shrimp ; second, that the ice is sufficiently sheltered
from the sea, and at the same time as much exposed to
the action of the swell as to keep it in motion, and prevent
it from freezing into a solid mass, which would keep
them from getting down to feed. Hummocky ice is also
preferred, as it breaks the wind and gives the young seals
shelter, which they know well how to take advantage of.

" There are four species of seals inhabiting the Green-
land seas, the 'harp' or 'saddleback' being the most nu-
merous. These animals congregate in large herds, and
early in March come from the north to the place appointed
for bringing forth and rearing the young brood. They
seem to have a wonderful instinct in doing this, following
each other in droves for days, all steering a course to
their chosen breeding-place. They drop their young
from the 16th to 32nd of March, beautiful little creatures,
with long, soft, light yellow fur to keep them warm during
their short infancy; and so rapid is the growth of the
young, that if the weather is good, and they are left undis-
turbed, a marked difference in their size and fatness can
be noticed day by day. By the 14th of April the old

X 2

308 FOUR KINDS OF ARCTIC SEALS.

ones have left their young to take care of themselves.
The young ones at this time begin to cast the fur for the
beautiful smooth spotted coat, which they retain untU the
third year, when they become full-grown.

"The old seals pair immediately after leaving their
young; they go eleven months, and have but one at a
time.

" The next in importance to the saddleback is the ' blad-
der-nose ' or ' hooded ' seal, so called from having a loose
bag hanging over the nose of the male, which it has the
power of blowing up, and it always does so when enraged.

" This seal is twice the size of the saddleback, is black
in colour, and spotted somewhat like a leopard.

" Before the rifle came so much into use, the old blad-
der-nose was held in deep respect. Many a time a boat's
crew have had to beat a hasty retreat off the ice into the
boat after having had their seal clubs snatched out of their
hands by this powerful animal. One peculiarity about
them is that the females are not more than half the size
of the male. They are more irregular in giving birth to
their young than the saddleback; and, strange to say,
the young ones cast their fur in the mother's womb,
and it is found lying beside the young in round balls.
They are always most numerous near the saddlebacks,
but are seldom amongst them.

The next is the ' ground ' or ' bearded ' seal, so named
from being always near the land, and from its mag-
nificent white beard. Its colour is of a dull brown.
This is the largest of the seal tribe. Its food consists
mostly of prawns.

" The fourth and smallest kind is the 'floe ' seal, or

THE GREENLAND SEAL FISHERIES. 309

' floe rat,' as the sailors call them. They get their name
from the habit of always lying on the field ice, and having
holes ready to pop into when alarmed. Their great
enemy is the polar bear; they are his principal food.
The floe seal is a very pretty little animal ; its hair is
short, with grey irregular stripes down the back. The
young one is not much larger than a soda-water bottle.

"Making the ice from the 15th to 20th of March, as
before stated, the ships cruise along its margin, following
the well-known rule that if it lies to the eastward of the
meridian of Greenwich, in lat. 73 deg. N. the seals will
be found to the north of the island of Jan Mayen ; but if
it is much to the west of this line, the seals will be to the
south and west of the island, for reasons which need not
here be given.

" Starting with this knowledge, the longitude of the
pack is first ascertained before starting to look for the
seals. This being found, the ice is taken, and the ships
forced through the pack under steam and canvas, very
frequently receiving severe shocks, sometimes getting
their bows stove in. Every effort must now be used to
force the ships through the ice in the desired direction.
All hands have often to be on deck to roll the ship from
side to side to break the ice down, heaving at windlass
and capstan on stout hawsers attached to the ice, using
ice-saws to cut, and powder to blast, a passage.

Fifteen or twenty years ago a pack of seals would have
extended in every direction as far as could be seen with a
good telescope from a ship's mast-head, lying as close as
a flock of sheep, the reflection darkening the sky above
them. In those days a ship, falling in amongst them

310

MASSACKE OF BABY SEALS.

about the first of April, had no difficulty in getting as
many as she could hold. The case is . greatly altered
now : a pack very rarely exceeds a twentieth part of the
above size, owing to the cruel manner in which they have
been destroyed.

On the seals being reached, the men are sent over the
ice, the harpooners armed with rifles, the other men with
seal-clubs, knives, &c., also a rope to drag the skins to the
ship, which are allowed to lie on deck until cold, and then
put into the tanks. And now a work of brutal murder and
cruelty goes on enough to make the hardest-hearted turn
away with loathing and disgust. The harpooner chooses
a place where a number of young seals are lying, knowing
Avell that the mothers will soon make their appearance to
see if the young are safe, and then shoot them without
mercy. This sort of work goes on for a few days, until
tens of thousands of young ones are left motherless to die
of starvation : not so much from the number of old ones
killed (although too many of them are slain at this season,
forty thousand being killed last year in March) as from
those wounded and scared away. In a short time the old
ones become shy, and will not come near where men are
standing, but keep at a respectful distance. It is horrible
to see the young ones trying to suck the carcases of their
mothers, their eyes starting out of the sockets, looking
the very picture of famine. They crawl over and over
them until quite red with blood, poking them with their
noses, no doubt wondering why they are not getting their
usual food, uttering painful cries the while. The noise
they make is something dreadful. If one could imagine
himself surrounded by four or five hundred thousand

THE GREENLAND SEAL FISHERIES, 311

babies all crying at tbe pitch of their voices, he would
have some idea of it. Their cry is very like an infant's.
These motherless seals collect into lots of five or six and
crawl about the ice, their heads fast becoming the biggest
part of their bodies, searching no doubt to find the
nourishment they stand so much in want of. This is
indeed a case where the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals would find full scope for carrying out
its benevolent intentions, for there are no greater cruel-
ties perpetrated on the face of the globe than at the
Greenland seal fishing.* There is a close time to pro-
tect most useful animals, and unless this is extended to
the seals in Greenland they will soon be exterminated.
The case is different at the Labrador fishing ; the seals
are not interfered with until the mothers are leaving their
young. An international treaty between this country and.
Norway, these being the two principal nations engaged in
this fishery, should be entered into, not to begin fishing
until 6th April.

" The females are very affectionate towards their young.
It is very amusing to watch the old one coming on to a
piece of ice where there are ten or a dozen young ones, going
from one to the other until she finds her own, kissing and
patting it and teaching it where to go to get a suck. But
liny of the others had better not venture near; if they
do, the old seal will stretch out her neck, give an angry
' wurr,' fly at them, and scratch them with her sharp claws,

* I quite agree with Captain Gray. I really wish the Society would
take up the matter. I understand from high authority that it is possible
to frame an international treaty for a close time for seals between the
nations who send ships to the seal fisheries.

313

NUMBER AND VALUE OF SEALS.

making the fur fly out of them. At other times, seeing
men approaching, a mother will occasionally snatch up
her young one, dive under the ice with it, and carry it,
for the time, out of the reach of danger. The male seals,
on the other hand, never lose an opportunity of worrying
the young, taking them in their teeth, and shaking them
as a terrier dog would a rat.

" In April the young seals are beginning to be better
worth taking. The rifles are then laid aside, and every
man is employed in killing and flaying the seals, and
dragging the skins to the ship. Three thousand is not an
unusual number to be slaughtered in a day by a single
ship. At this work many of the men do not put them-
selves to the trouble of carrying clubs, but give the seals
a tap on the nose with their foot to stun them, and skin
them alive. They have often been seen to try and swim
after having their skins taken off". The largest number
of seals taken in one season by a single vessel was twenty-
three thousand, yielding two hundred and seventy tons of
oil, valued at ^14,000, more or less, according to the
price of produce at the time.

" The young seals having now taken the water and dis-
persed, which they do very quickly, the operation of
' making off ' is commenced ; that is, separating the blub-
ber from the skins, putting the former into the tanks and
salting part of the latter. Two rows of planks are put
up along . each side of the deck, waist high, at an angle of
twenty degrees from the perpendicular; the skins are
laid across these after being 'kranged,' the term used
for cutting away any pieces of flesh adhering to the
blubber. The skins are then flenched, and the blubber,

THE GREENLAND SEAL FISHERIES. 313

cut into long strips, forked down into the hold and put
into the tanks. Two thousand skins flenched is con-
sidered a good day's work,

" After all the skins are salted down, the ships proceed
farther north to hunt up the old seals. These animals
go on to the ice about the beginning of May, and will lie
for weeks without coming off to feed, if left undisturbed.

" This is for the purpose of starving off the superfluous
fat, so that they may be better able to enjoy the warmer
weather during summer,

" The seals are now fair game. It requires labour and
skill to approach near enough to shoot them, some of
them being always on the watch. The best way to get at
them is to approach from the lee side, or, if the sun is
shining, to keep in his rays. Once within seventy yards
or so, if the man is a good shot he ought to be able to
kill as many as will load his boat, if the seals are lying
well, without changing his position. But few of the
men can do this, being indifferent shots, and the seals
can only be killed instantly by shooting them through
the head. This is necessary, for, if one is wounded, it
runs off, alarms the others near, and they follow ; whereas,
if shot dead, the rest fancy it is lying down to have
another sleep, and follow its example. An indifferent
shot is a great nuisance to the other men, he scares off so
many seals that they have double the work to do. Two
thousand old seals is considered a fair season's catch,
although double that number are often taken. This
fishing is over by the 16th of May, for those who intend
to proceed to the whaling. When the seals intend shift-
ing they make a great noise, all giving tongue together

3U

PEOTECTION FOR THE SEALS.

in a kind of ' wurr ' ; they also do the same before bad
weather."

I am glad to be able to add that the question of en-
forcing a close time for seals is being taken up by our
Government, and much correspondence' has taken place
upon the subject between the Board of Trade and the
owners and captains of sealing vessels in Scotland and in
Norway. This movement will, I trust, result in some
protection being afforded to the breeding and immature
seals.

The official correspondence on this matter has been
printed by the House of Commons, and pubhshed.

On Monday, the 8th of March, 1876, I wrote a letter
in the Times, fully explaining all the details of the seal
question.

THE BLADDEE-NOSED SEAL OF THE
AECTIC SEAS.

In 1873, when Captain Gray returned from the
Arctic Seas, he kindly brought me two heads of the
bladder-nosed seal, which had been simply cut off the
animals, with the long skin of the necks adhering to
them, and packed in a barrel with salt. After soaking
one of them in cold water until the skin became soft, I
proceeded to anatomise the bladder portion of the head.
Passing the hand up underneath the upper lip, which I
partially dissected off, I found that the internal portion
consisted simply of a very large cavity. Further dissec-
tion showed that this cavity was lined by the ordinary
mucous membrane of the nose, and that it had sphincter
muscles — i.e., muscles which expand or contract like
somewhat similar muscles in the nose of the camel for
keeping out sand, or like the nose of the hippopotamus
for keeping out the water.

The other head I gave, at Captain Gray's wish, to Pro-
fessor Flower, at the College of Surgeons, The Professor
had already set up the head of a small bladder-nosed seal
which had died at the Zoological Gardens. It is beauti-
fully mounted in spirits, showing a section of the bladder.
It is very difficult to account lor the presence of this sac-

31b STRUCTURE OF THE BLADDER NOSE.

like crest. An American author writes : " The dilatable
sac, which comes over the head of the animal, and which,
when swollen up, appears Hke bladders, is covered with
short brown hair. The opinion of the fishermen regard-
ing the appendage is that it is a sort of reservoir for air
which the animal uses when under water. Its great bulk,
however, when distended, would prevent the animal from
descending freely, or moving with facility beneath the
surface of the water. The connection of the nostrils with
the hood, the configuration of this part, and its internal
structure, indicate its importance as subsidiary to the
sense of smell. The weak arm of o£fence and defence
allotted to this animal renders it necessary that this
faculty should be exercised in the greatest possible degree.
The hair of its hide is soft and long, and woolly underneath,
dark in the old, and grey in the young, covered with
irregular brown spots." Against this "air reservoir"
theory will have to be urged the fact that this singular
appendage is found in the mature males only, and is
wholly wanting in the females and the young. It, there-
fore, is probably simply a sexual ornamentation, as the
comb in the cock, the horns of the stag, &c.

It may be possible, reasoning from analogy, that the
seal may be able to make a peculiar noise with this sac.

The other day, when at the Zoological Gardens, I was
very much struck with the musical note which the female
Indian elephant was playing up as she was eating her
dinner. She could emit three distinct, long, booming,
resounding notes, reminding me of a man tuning the pedal
pipes of an organ. The sound was very fine. Will any
of our musical friends go and listen to the elephant, and

BLADDEE-NOSED SEAL OF THE AECTIC SEAS. 317

tell us what notes they are ? It may be possible that the
bladder-nosed seal can make call-notes — musical or other-
wise— especially at breeding-time, like the challenging of
the red deer, by means of the curious structure that I have
above described.

This fine specimen of the bladder-nosed seal's head
is now placed in my museum alongside the formidable
seal-club, figured at page 296, used for killing these
unfortunate animals for the sake of their oil and skins.
Here is a drawing of it.

HEAD OF BLADDEE-NOSED 8EAL.

A very fine specimen of a Bladder-nosed seal is now at
the Zoological Gardens. He was caught by Captain
Gray by using a ship's sail as a trap. I have also a
cast of a baby bladder-nosed in my museum.

HABITS OF THE FUE SEAL.

I HAVE often been asked by ladies to tell them some-
thing of the habits of the animal, whose handsome warm
fur they so much appreciate in cold weather when made
up into cloaks, hats, muflPs, &c. Professor Flower has
been kind enough to lend me a most interesting pamphlet
on the eared seals (Otariadce), and especially on the habits
of the Northern fur seal {Callorhinus ursinus), by Charles
Bryant, forming No. 1 . of vol. ii. of " Bulletin of the
Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College,
Cambridge, Mass."*

It appears that these valuable animals are regularly
cultivated, instead of an indiscriminate slaughter being
allowed.

" The principal places where these fur seals are found,
are the Pribyloff Islands, to the westward of Ounalaska.
The inhabitants of these islands cultivate the seal
diligently, and with a well-ordered system, as will be seen
hereafter. The male fur seal, when in his prime, is about
six years old, and measures from seven to eight feet long.
The breeding grounds are called " rookeries." The seals
take up their position on the belt of loose rocks along the

* Cambridge University Press.

HABITS OF THE FUR SEAL.

319

shores between the high-water line and the base of the
cliffs. Each seal selects a special rock as his own. The
young seals are not allowed to land ; they swim in the
water all day, and at night spread themselves out, like
flocks of sheep, to sleep on the shore above the rookeries ;
going through passes which the other seals allow them to
traverse in peace. The old male seals are called
• Seacutch,' the bachelors ' HoUuschuck,' and the
mothers * Motku.' The old veteran male seals come
first from the sea in the middle of April, and take up
their position after a careful reconnaissance. All fires in
the island are then put out and everything kept as quiet
as possible. No human being is allowed to go near the
seals' rookery. All the males have arrived about the 15th
June, and then the females come, and the family party is
complete by the middle of July. Each seal takes from ten
to fifteen wives. The males fight most dreadfully, and
inflict terrible wounds on each other. The noise of their
fighting is like a railway train approaching. None of the
seals eat anything during the time they are on the
rookeries. The milk of the seal is of a yellowish colour,
very insipid, and contains no sugar. The males teach the
pups to swim. The cry of the pup is like that of a lamb ;
the voice of the mother is like the bleating of a sheep.

" When the killing time arrives, a party of men creep
quietly between the seals and the shore ; they rise up
suddenly with a shout, and drive inland all the seals that
happen to be inside the line. When out of hearing and
sight of the main body of seals, they sort the animals
they have cut off, allowing those that are too old to go
back again to the sea-shore. They keep only those that

320

VALUE OF FUR SEAL SKINS.

are two or three years old, as they give the hest skins. It
is necessary to drive the flock some distance from the
breeding ground, as the smell of the blood and the
carcases disturbs the seals. Another object is to make
the seal carry his oivn shin to the salt-house, and it is
hence sometimes necessary to drive them six or seven
miles. The driving has to be conducted with great care,
as the violent exertion causes the seals to heat rapidly,
and if heated beyond a certain degree the fur is loosened,
and the skin becomes valueless. On a cool day they may
be driven a mile and a half per hour with safety.

"They travel by lifting themselves from the ground on
their forelegs, and hitching the body after them with a
kind of sideways loppeting gallop. A few boys are
employed to watch the seals and keep them together, and
they are killed, as they are wanted, by a blow on the head.
The time required for killing the seals depends on the
number of men and workmen available to skin them and
prepare their flesh, which is dried and used for the winter
food of the islanders.

" Only the males are destroyed for the sake of their
skins ; the females and animals with bad skins are
allowed to escape, to keep up the stock.

" Mr. Bryant makes a calculation as to the number of
seals upon the island, and, from data which seem fair
enough, he makes out that there are no less than one
million one hundred and fifty-two thousand breeding
males and females; this is only upon the island of St.
Paul's.

"Previous to 1866 the skins were only worth three
dollars or 12s. Qd. each, but when ladies made them

HABITS OF THE ¥JJR SEAL.

321

fashionable, the price rose to 7 dollars, or 29s. 2d. each, in
the raw state. The market is now somewhat overstocked,
the skins being from three to four dollars, or 16s. 8d.
The agents for the Eussian Fur Company are the chief
regulators of the supply. The opinion of the men who
have the special care of the seals is that about a hundred
thousand animals are killed by them every year, and yet
owing to the care taken in preservation, there seem to be
just as many seals as ever."

This account cannot, I think, fail to be interesting to
my readers, especially as we see so many garments made
of seal skin just now in the shop windows.

The skins of other animals are often sold as seal skins,
and when they are well dyed, to the proper bright
mahogany colour, they are difficult to distinguish from
the genuine article.

The late Mr. Eoberts, furrier, of Eegent Street, in-
vented a most excellent plan for getting rid of the loose
exterior hairs of the seal skin, leaving the thick fur
jjortion alone.

Formerly the long hairs were pulled out with great
expense and trouble. Mr. Eoberts found out that the
roots of the long hairs were fixed deeper into the skin
than the roots of the fur or short hairs. He therefore
suggested the following plan; the skin was stretched
tightly, with the hair side downwards, on a table. With a
sharp cutting instrument, the skin was then pared down
till all the roots of the long hair were cut, the roots of the
short fur being carefully left intact. The skin beinrr
then reversed, the long hairs having no roots could bo

Y

322

SEAL SKINS FOR LADIES.

simply swept off with the hand, leaving the valuable fur
below in a sheet like pure velvet.*

* As regards the general supply of the seals for the London market,
Mr. J. H. Ince, furrier, of 75, Oxford Street, has given me the following
information : —

" Seal skin has been found to be specially adapted for a climate like
that of England, as it naturally offers the best resistance to damp and
cold, protecting the invalid and the sportsman alike. In no other part
of the world is it brought to such perfection as in this country,
through the successful manipulation of the dresser and the dyer ; so
that there are some descriptions which can be rendered almost as light
and soft in texture as velvet. Unlike other products, the imports of
seal-skin do not greatly vary, so that as the demand increases, the prices
must necessarily advance ; and probably, not many months hence, seal-
skins of the finest quality may be twenty per cent, dearer. At the pre-
sent time a cloak of the richest fur seal, a yard deep, can be sold for £25.
By far the greater number of fur seals, and those of the best description,
are brought from the North Tacific in the neighbourhood of Alaska.
The annual supply from thence is about 100,000 skins, but it must be
remembered that not one-fourth of these are of the finest quality, and, for
the purposes of sale, are divided into many portions, those from the large
male seal, seven feet in length, to the yearling, or small pup, and from
the rich pink wool to the old and grey. A large quantity are annually
shipped from here to the United States and elsewhere, so that the pro-
portion of fine skins for home use must continue small. From the Lobos
Islands we receive some 20,000 skins annually, but these are of inferior
quality. The supply of fur seals from other parts is uncertain ; 2000 or
3000 from the South Sea and Falkland Islands, and GOOO or 8000 from
islands off the Cape of Good Hope. The skins coming from Alaska have
been known to improve by the long voyage, the wool or fur growing
richer, but when carelessly packed the leathers have become tainted,
and proved a heavy loss to the merchant : in such cases they are only
fit for hatters. It may be interesting to learn that the beaver and the
otter can be prepared the same in every respect as the seal, although
when not dyed they form the most suitable trimming for seal jackets.
The dyeing of all these skins is now brought to great perfection ; we
have the golden colour and any shade of bro^vn, from light bronze to
nearly black. The above remarks apply simply to fur seals as distin-
guished from hair-seals, which are chiefly used for leather and military
purposes."

HABITS OF THE FUR SEAL.

3^3

In my museum is a very handsome seal skin presented
by Mr. Collins, of Finsbury, througli Mr. Henry Lee.
This skin is so cleverly prepared as to show, in one
unbroken hide, the natural state of the fur, as well as
three different manners of preparing and colouring the
same for ladies' use.

At my Lecture at the Society of Arts, Jan. 1874, on
Birds, Beasts and Fishes, I was, through the kindness of
my friend, Mr. Nicholay, furrier, of 82, Oxford Street, able
to exhibit a magnificent coUection of seal skins from all
parts of the world. Some of these I consider are the
most beautiful animal products known for ladies' dresses.

MY MONKEYS *
— t —

"the hag" and "tiny."

I AM sure that we do not take sufficient notice of what
maybe called the "mind" of animals. There is something
which regulates their actions and thoughts, which is cer-
tainly a degree higher than instinct ; and it is this pecu-
liar faculty which I am so fond of studying. The monkeys
at the Zoological Gardens are very interesting animals ;
but they are not, so to speak, civilised ; they have only
their own relatives as associates, and they have not
. learned the elegances and refinements of polite society, to
which monkeys accustomed to the continual company of
our noble selves will attain.

I have two little monkeys at home of which I am ex-
ceedingly fond. They are really half educated in their
way, and are almost fit to go up for a competitive exami-
nation. My monkeys' names are "The Hag" and
"Tiny." Hag's original name was "Jenny," but she
has so much of the character of a disagreeable old woman
about her that I call her " The Hag," and she " answers to "
that name. Tiny was originally a very little monkey

* This article appeared in Temple Bar, Jan. 18G8. J3y the permission
of the proprietors I now republish it.

MY MONKEYS.

325

indeed, not much bigger than a large rat. My friend
Bartlett brought her to me from the Zoological Gardens
as a dead monkey; she was "as good as dead" — a
perfect skeleton, and with but little hair on her. She
arrived tied up in an old canvas bag, I put her into
" The Hag's " cage. The old Lady at once " took to her,"
and instantly began the office of nurse ; she cuddled up
poor Tiny in her arms, made faces, and showed her
teeth, at anybody who attempted to touch her. Tiny had
port-wine negus, quinine wine, beef-tea, egg and milk-
in fact, anything she could eat ; and " The Hag " always
allowed her to have "first pull" at whatever was put
into the cage. In time. Tiny, through Mrs. Buckland's
good nursing, stood up, then began to run, her hair all
came again ; and she is now one of the handsomest, most
wicked, intelligent, funny little beasts that ever com-
mitted an act of theft. Steal ? "Why, her whole life is
devoted to stealing, for the pure love of the thing. The
Hag's Latin name is Cercopithecus petaurista, or the
vaulting monkey. Tiny is a " Mona." When pleased
her cry is very like the word "mona " prolonged.

Tiny and " The Hag " are dressed like two sisters
going to a ball, and it is difficult, for a person who does
not know them well, to tell them apart. They are each
a little larger than a big guinea-pig, with a long tail.
" The Hag " has a green head, a very handsome white
beard, with a snow-white spot on her nose, and brilliant
lustrous brown eyes ; the cheeks are beautifully marked
with silk-like black hairs ; the ears are well turned, and
very small. I put earrings once iuto " The Hag's " ears,
but Tiny pulled them out and crushed them up with her

326

THE HAG AND TINT'S WAEDROBE.

teeth. On the hair on the top of the head there are
markings reminding ns of the "plate bonnets" once
worn by ladies : the monkeys " wear their own hair," and
not chignons. My monkeys are, summer and winter,
dressed in seasonable garments : their wardrobe consists
of three sets of dresses. 1st. Their common winter dress
of thick white flannel, trimmed with red braid, and peg-
top sleeves, with large capes : in these they look like the
old-fashioned " Charlies," or night-watchmen. Their
" second best" dresses are of green baize without capes,
made to fit quite tight, like a friar's frock, tied on round
the waist by means of a girdle of ornamental ribbon
or a patent leather strap.

They never— like the casuals at the workhouse-
attempt to tear their dresses off; but it is a great treat
for them to be undressed and put before the fire, and
have a good scratch, after which their fur is brushed
with a soft brush. They very soon come of their own
accord to have their clothes put on again ; for they are
most sensitive to cold. Their best dress for summer
evenings, at tea or dessert, when "company is coming,"
is a green velvet dress, trimmed with gold lace, like the
huntsman of the Queen's staghounds.

Under their dresses, their chests are carefully wrapped
round with warm flannel, sewed on. In very cold
weather they have an extra thickness of flannel. I feel
convinced that all valuable monkeys should be dressed
m this way, and that this plan should always be adopted
at the Zoological, especially with the ouraugs, chim-
panzees, spider monkeys, and other rare and costly
specimens.

MY MONKEYS,

327

There is not the shghtest suspicion of any parasites, or
of any unpleasant smell, about Tiny or " The Hag."
They have two cages — a day cage and a night cage.
The day cage is a large wire cage, with a rope on which
they can swing ; the night cage is like a dormouse cage,
only, of course, of a larger size. They go into the box at
the end, and tumble themselves up in the hay, with which
the bos is nearly filled. A cover is also put over the
cage, to keep them warm all night.

"When the fire is lighted in the morning, in my museum,
the servant puts the monkeys in their night cage before
it, and directly I come down to breakfast I let them out.
They are only allowed to be loose in my museum, as
they do so much mischief ; and in my museum I alone am
responsible for the damage they do. The moment the
door of the cage is opened they both rush out like
rockets, and " The Hag" goes immediately to the fender
and warms herself, like a good monkey, as she, being
older, seems to know that if she misbehaves herself she
will have to be put back into her cage. Tiny, on the
contrary, rushes round the room with the velocity of a
swallow, and takes observations to see what mischief she
can do.

Tiny steals whatever is on the table, 'and it is great
fun to see her snatch off the red herring from the plate
and run off with it to the top of the book-shelves. While
I am getting my herring, Tiny goes to the breakfast-
table again, and, if she can, steals the egg; this she tucks
under her arm and bolts away, running on her hind legs.
This young lady has of late been rather shy of eggs, as
she once stole one that was quite hot, and burnt herself.

3-^8

TINY AT HEU GAMES.

She cried out, and " The Hag'' left off eating sardines,
shook her tail violently, and opened her mouth at me, as
much as to say, " You dare hurt my Tiny ! " If I keep
too sharp a look-out upon Miss Tiny, she will run like a
rabbit across the table and upset what she can. She
generally tries the sugar first, as she can then steal a bit ;
or she will just put her hand on the milk-jug and pull it
over. If she cannot get at the sugar-basin or milk-jug,
she will kick at them with her hind legs— just like a
horse — and knock them over as she passes.

Having poured out the tea, I open the Times news-
paper quite wide, to take a general survey of its contents.
If I do not watch her carefully, Tiny goes behind the
chair on to the book-shelf, and comes crash, with a
Leotard-like jump, into the middle of the Times, like a
foxhunter charging at a five-barred gate. Of course, she
cannot go through the Times; but she takes her chance of
a fall somewhere, and her great aim seems, to perform
the double feat of knocking the Times out of my hand
and upsetting the tea-cup and its contents, or, better
still, the tea-pot oh to the floor. Lately, I am glad to
say, she did not calculate her fall quite right ; for she put
her foot into the hot tea and stung herself smartly, and
this seems to have had the effect of making her more
careful for the future. All the day of this misfortune she
walked upon her heels, and not upon her toes as usual.

" The Hag " will also steal, but in a more quiet
manner. She is especially fond of sardines in oil, and I
generally let her steal them, because the oil does her
good, though the servants complain of the marks of her
oily feet upon the cloth. Sometimes the two make up a

MY MONKEYS.

329

" stealing party." One morning I was in a particular
liurr}'-, having to go away on salmon inspection duty hy
train. I left the breakfast things for a moment, and in
an instant Tiny snatched up a broiled leg of pheasant
and bolted with it — carried it under her arm round and
round the room, after the fashion of the clown in the
pantomime. While I was hunting Tiny for my pheasant,
" The Hag" bolted with the toast : I could not find time to
catch either of the thieves, and so had to go off without
any breakfast.

Tiny and " The Hag" sometimes go out stealing
together. They climb up my coat and search all the
pockets. I generally carry a great many cedar pencils :
the monkeys take these out and ^^bite off the cut ends.
But the great treat is to pick and pick at the door of a
glass cupboard till it is open, then to get in and drink
the hair-oil which they know is there.

Any new thing that comes they must examine ; and
when a hamper comes I let the monkeys unpack it, espe-
cially if I know it contains game. They pull out the
straw a bit at a time, peep under the paper, run off
crying, in their own language, " Look out, there's some-
thing alive in the basket \ "

The performance generally ends by their upsetting
the basket, and if they turn out a hare they both set to
work and " look fleas" in the hare's fur. I once received
a snake in a basket, and let the monkeys unpack it :
they have a mortal horror of a snake. When they found
out the contents of the hamper, they were off in double-
quick time, crying " Murder ! thieves ! " and it was a
long time before they would come down from behind the

830

MONKEY BILLS.

cast of a very large Loch Tay salmon on the top of the
book-shelves.

It is extraordinary to see the love between these two
pretty beasts. Tiny runs cUrectly to " The Hag" if she is
in trouble, and " The Hag " seems to know Tiny is the
weakest, and must be protected.

In a great measure, Tiny owes her life to "The Hag," for
when she was very ill, " The Hag" nursed her like a mother
does a baby; but, at the same time, " The Hag" gives her
a thrashing now and then to keep her in order ; and this
castigation consists in hunting her round the cage, and
making a scolding noise. If "The Hag" is in earnest,
Tiny hides her head in the hay, and waits till " The
Hag's " temper is over.

The miscliief this bright pair do, or are said to do, is
appalling. Anyhow, I have tremendous long " Monkey
Bills " brought up to me for immediate payment once or
twice a week. The damages claimed are for destruction
and injury to flowers ; bugles and beads torn off bonnets
— sometimes alas ! whole bonnets ; pins broken from
brooches ; ornaments, &c., taken from tables, that cannot
be found ; tea-cups, saucers, — saucers and plates without
end ; tumblers innumerable, &c., &c. After they have by
any chance escaped into the bed-room, and had ten minutes
there all to themselves, the bill will rival that for the
Abyssinian expedition. It is, moreover, very difficult to
catch them in the drawing-room or bed-room, because, if
hunted, they run over the mantelpiece and side-tables
and knock over the ornaments like skittle-balls, and no
amount of persuasion will induce them to come and be
caught.

MY MONKEYS.

331

One day a scene of liavoc was discovered in the bed-
room; it was known the culprit was " The Hag," and that
she viiist be in the bed-room : the servants Avere called up
and the room searched thoroughly, sofa and other pieces
of furniture moved, and the whole place thoroughly
examined ; still no " Hag " could be found. The hunt was
given up, but a strict watch kept. At last, after she
knew the hunt was over, and we were waiting for the old
lady to come out from somewhere, just the top of her
head and her bright eyes were seen in the looking-glass
on the table — the original of the reflection being on the
top of the great old-fashioned four-post bedstead,
crouched down behind the board like a rifleman in a
pit, " looking to see how we were looking," and as quiet
and noiseless as a marble bust.

When I go to Herne Bay to attend to oyster cultiva-
tion, I take the monkeys with me for the benefit of the
sea air. I always put up at Mr. Walker's, the confec-
tioner, in the Esplanade. Mrs. Walker is very fond of
the " Coloured Ladies," as she calls them, and allows
them to take great liberties.

Mrs. Walker is rather proud of the way she dresses
her shop-window with cakes, buns, sweet-stufi", &c. One
day " The Hag" had crept very quietly into the shop, and
was having a "field day " all to herself in the shop-window
among the sweets. Mrs. Walker, sitting in the back
parlour, was aroused by hearing a crowd of boys laughing
outside the window. On coming into the front shop she
found "The Hag" all among the cakes, &c., in the win-
dow ; both her cheek-pouches were as full as ever they
could hold of lemon-peel, and she was still munching at

332 THE MONKEYS AND THE PASTRY-COOK.

a great lump of it. My lady was sitting on the top of a
large cake lilce a figure on a twelfth-cake. Tiny was not
in this bit of mischief for a wonder.

Mrs. Walker declared she would send "The Hag"
before my friend, Captain Slark, the chief magistrate of
the town, for stealing, and have her locked up for a fort-
night; but the thief had first to be caught, and this was
a difficult task, for she bolted out into the bakehouse, and
upstairs into the loft where the flour is kept. There is a
large wooden funnel through which the flour is passed
into the bakehouse below. Trying to hide herself from
Mrs. Walker, " The Hag " jumped into the open top of it,
and, much to his astonishment, lighted on Mr. Walker's
head as he was making the bread below : she knew she was
all right with Mr. Walker, but she was one mass of flour.
Her green baize coat was quite white, and she looked
like a miller on a small scale, and the flour could not be
brushed out of her for two or three days.

Mr. Walker tied her up, and there she stayed by the
warm oven, the rest of the day, chattering and telling
him in monkey-language of all her troubles.

The monkeys' principal companions in the house are
a very valuable talking parrot and a handsome French
Angora cat. Tiny, when loose, renders the lives of these
creatures miserable.

The parrot had originally about fourteen handsome
red feathers in her tail : noio she can only muster three
feathers. Tiny has pulled all the rest out.

Tiny runs and jumps round and round the cage, and
, pretends to steal the Indian corn : the poor bird turns
round and round, with her feathers all the wrong wa}'.

MY MONKEYS.

333

and pecks at Tiny, fighting her like an old woman up in
a corner defends herself from a lot of mischievous, teazing,
street boys. While protecting her corn, Polly forgets
her tail ; and Tiny watches her opportunity and tears out
a handful of feathers at a time, and off she goes like a
shooting-star. "When the cat is asleep in front of the
fire, Tiny's great delight is to creep noiselessly up
behind and puU the fur out ; and, if that does not wake
her, she will get the end of her tail in her mouth and give
it a bite, and this operation soon starts the cat. The cat
is, in spite of the persecution she receives, not bad friends
with the monkeys ; they will sometimes both go and sit
on her back and " look the fleas " in her fur.

The worst of the monkeys is that they have pockets in
which to pack away the goods they steal. These pockets
consist of a pouch each side of the face. When empty
these pouches are not observable, but yet the owners can
stow away an immense amount in them. It is great fun
to see how much they will hold ; and this is done by
giving them an unlimited supply of acid drops: they
immediately fill their pouches as full as ever they can
cram them, and I find they can pack away about twenty
acid drops in each pouch. One day several things were
missing : at once I thought of the monkeys. I caught
them and searched their pouches, — a pretty safe find for
stolen goods : in " The Hag's " pouches were a steel
thimble, my own gold finger-ring, a pair of pearl sleeve-
links, a farthing, a button, a shilling, and a bit of sweet-
stuff.

There is no trouble to catch the monkeys. I have
only to open the door of theu' cage, and say, " Caere !

334

THE MONKEYS AT DESSERT.

cage ! go into your cage ! quick march ! " and tliey go in
instantly, like the good beasts they really are. The
parrot has caught up these words, and when the monkeys
are running about often cries out, " Cage ! cage ! go into
your cage ! " but the little wretches do not care for old
Poll. Luckily, the monkeys are afraid of a stuffed Aus-
tralian animal that hangs in my room. When I have
any specimens or bottles that I do not want the monkeys
to touch, I simply set down the " bogie " to act as a sentry,
as I know the monkeys will not come near it.

My friend, Bartlett, is greatly amused with the monkeys,
and he has put it about among our Zoological friends that
when I want to be quiet, I go into the cage myself and
shut the door while the monkeys run loose.

Both monkeys come in to dessert, and get their
" monkey's allowance." They will drink wine and spirits :
sweetened gin and water is especially a favourite drink.
Their great delight is to be near me, one sitting on my
knee and the other on my shoulder. I have to keep a
sharp look-out, especially on Tiny, as she is particularly
fond of watching till a lump of sugar is placed in the
grog. She will at once make a jump, alight close to the
glass, and put her hand and arm into the glass and steal
the half-melted sugar out of the grog.

I fear that if the poor monkeys could read the cha-
racters I have given them, they would not be much
pleased with me. I must, therefore, say something of
their good qualities. They are both very amiable and
affectionate, and there is not the least humbug about
them. If they steal, it is only because it is their instinct
to do so, and for the pure innate love of mischief ; and

MY MONKEYS.

835

nobody can blame them. They understand every word I
say, but at the same time are occasionally most disobe-
dient. Nay more, they understand my thoughts : one
glance at me with their little diamond-bright eyes tells
them how far they may go with their teazing me ; and
when they see I am getting out of temper they will jump
into my arms, and chatter and look " Don't be angry
with us ; it's only our fun ! " They even know when I
am thinking of catching them, and this before I have
made the least sign of being about to do so; they then
get out of the way in the most cunning manner, sneaking
round the furniture, like a fox leaving the covert into
which the hounds have just been cheered by the hunts-
man. At other times, they always scamper about the
rooms at a " racing pace.'" I use the words advisedly, as
in their gallop they have the exact action of a racehorse
just finishing a race, only that they can pull up short in
a moment, and take the most wonderful flying-leaps
without changing their pace. Frequently, when they
have been hunted into the passage to be caught, and
must pass me to get by, they have galloped to within a
few inches of my hands, and then, taking a tremendous
spring, jumped exactly on to my head, thence slid down
my back, and escaped capture.

AVhen I come home in the evening tired from a long
day's work, I let out the monkeys, and give them some
sweet-stuff I bring home for them. By their affec-
tionate greeting and amusing tricks they make me forget
for a while the anxieties and bothers of a very active life.
They know perfectly well when I am busy, and they
remain quiet and do not teaze me. " The Hag " sits on

336 THE monkeys' CHRISTMAS-BOX.

the top of my head, and " looks fleas " in my hair, while
Tiny tears up with her teeth a thick ball of crumpled
paper, the nucleus of which she knows is a sugar-plum,
one of a parcel sent by Mrs. Owen, the kind-hearted wife
of my friend, Mostyn Owen, of the Dee Salmon Board,
and received through the post in due form, directed,
" Miss Tiny and Miss Jenny Buckland."

I must now finish the " Memoir," though, if I had
time, I could go on writing for a month describing my
little pets.

The dear old "Hag" has been my constant com-
panion, living in her cage in fi'ont of the fire close to my
wa-iting desk, for nearly ten years. I am sorry to say
she is now getting aged and infirm. Tiny has been " The
Hag's" companion nearly five years. Mrs. Buckland
feeds and tends the monkeys with the greatest care, and
they -are very fond indeed of her. The monkeys owe
their good health entirely to Mrs. Buckland.

Although my monkeys do considerable mischief, yet I
let them do it. I am amply rewarded by their funny and
affectionate ways.

The reader may wonder that I like to keep my monkeys
at all in my house; but I do like to keep them, and
nothing whatever would induce me to part with them.

My monkeys love me, and I love my monkeys.

' " The Hag " on Darwin.

" The Hag," who has seen me write so much, has ap-
peared in public as an authoress, and the following is the
letter she addressed to Land and Water : —

MY MONKEYS. 337

" One evening, as I sat on the edge of the fender
warming myself before the fire, I watched my master—
who always lets me, if I am good, out of my cage after
dinner— reading a book with a green cover. All of a
sudden my master put down his cigar; he looked very
inquiringly at me, and he then beckoned. ' Come here.
Old Hag,' said he ; ' quick, dear old girl.' I immediately
jumped- on to his shoulder with a grunt, took a sip of his
gin-and-water to compose my nerves, and then inspected
the book. 'Look here. Old Hag,' he said, 'this is page
309 of Mr. Darwin's "Descent of Man," and this is a
picture of you.' I looked at it, of course, most atten-
tively. I did not consider it a very flattering likeness •
so, as I am not yet suflaciently ' developed' to speak my
mastei-^s language or to read his books— though I can
tear them up, as he well knows,— I asked him in my own
language, which he well understands, to read out to me
what Mr. Darwin says of me and my family. ' The face
of the Cercopithecus petaurista'~{my Latin name you
know-though they call me the Old Hag)-' is black, the
wliiskers and beard being white, with a defined round
white spot on the nose, covered with short white hair
which gives to the animal an almost ludicrous aspect.'

"Ludicrous aspect/ What next, indeed? I shake
my tail with rage, I bristle the hair of my head, and
show my teeth with indignation at the cat, and my master
too, for he is the same species as Mr. Darwin. I am
considered by my master, and everybody who sees me to
be exceedingly pretty, and, when my Missis has washed
ray white beard and white nose, which get dirty from my
sitting so much before the fire, to be as handsome a lady

338

THE HAG ON DARWIN.

monkey — bar none — as any out of the Zoological
Gardens. I have been \vith my kind master and missis
nearly ten years ; and now that my face should be
called ludicrous ! Oh, dear ! I will stand no nonsense,
so I shall just give you my opinions. I have often
thought of writing to Land and Water, only I have not
got the muscle o^jponens pollicis in my right hand, it is in
my foot. What a pity ! So I shall dictate to my master
what I want to say. I think my master looks much
more ludicroiLS than I do. I am pleased to hear, from
Mr. Darwin's green book, that he is descended from
some of my ancestors, and that he is a near relation of
mine. I have examined his ear, and have found in it
'the little blunt point projecting from the inwardly folded
margin or helix' (see Darwin, p. 22). There can there-
fore, of course, be no possible doubt that my master is
(as Mr. Darwin gives in his conclusion) descended from
' a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed
ears, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of
the old world.' I, the Old Hag, have not got pointed
ears, but I have a splendid tail, and I am an inhabitant
of the old world. Poor dear master ! what a wretched
make-up, after all, he is after perfect one ! I shall order
a cage for him, and shall immediately take his chair, and
become a candidate for the first vacancy there may be at
the nearest School Board. Won't I go in for ' develop-
ment,' that's all ! I see the reader is laughing at my
letter. What business has he to laugh at me, the repre-
sentative of his great-great-great-great — add 1,000,000
more ' greats ' — grandmother ?

" I will take another point. I knew that my master

MY MONKEYS.

339

was very busy writing his official report on the Scotch
Salmon Fisheries, so I watched my chance and bit him
through the thick of the muscle of his right hand,
making my teeth meet : his hand was closed, more or
less, for nearly nine months, so that he could not cast a
single fish. I have seen him write with one hand. / can
use both hands alike : that proves my superiority. He suf-
fered great pain, and as he could not write, he was obliged,
like the sailor's parrot who would not speak, ' to think
the more.' I am now very sorry for what I did. But,
after all, it proves his inferiority to me, for I found he
could not bite me in return : of course he could not, his
canines are not sufficiently developed, though they might
have been so a hundred thousand years ago. The poor
man has blunt undeveloped canine teeth : mine are long,
sharp, and pointed, like surgical bistouries, and I can
bite if I like. I only wish Mr. D. would come here and
see me, I'd give it him. Now how can you expect my
master to give me a return bite in his degenerate state of
development? Eead your Darwin, ye monkeys, tame
and wild, and you will see that I am right. Mr. Darwin
says : ' The males alone of the anthropomorphous apes
have their canines fully developed; but in the female
gorilla, and in a less degree in the female orang, these
teeth project considerably beyond the others ; therefore
the fact that women sometimes have, as I have been
assured, considerably projecting canines, is no serious ob-
jection to the belief that this occasional great development
in man is a case of reversion to an ape-like progenitor.

" ' He who rejects with scorn the belief that the shape
of his own canines, and their occasional great develop-

z 2

340

TINY DISCOVERS LOCOMOTION.

ment in other men, are due to our early progenitors
having been provided with these formidable weapons,
will probably reveal the line of his descent by sneering.
For though he no longer intends, nor has the power, to
use these teeth as weapons, he will unconsciously retract
his ' snarling muscles' (thus named by Sir C. Bell), so as
to expose them ready for action, like a dog prepared to
fight.' Just so. Let me catch any of the readers of
Land and Water retracting their ' snarling muscles,' at
me, and I will show them that my canines have not been
diminished in size or power.

" By the way, my friend and companion Tiny, who
lives in the same cage with me, has told me something.
We are both Ladies, and of course have private chats
together. Tiny says, ' Don't be hard on the master. I
will prove Darwin's theory. I have discovered 'Loco-
motion' all out of my own head. You see we are both
in the same boat — i.e. cage — and you are too old to be
up to any larks ; but there is no g;ame that I am not up
to. Now you know my master is proud of his sofa-cover ;
now I want to tear that up, and I am determined to do
it. Now, see how I will manage matters. I often shake
the cage for amusement and exercise. One day I found
that during the shaking process our cage advanced in a
particular direction. You, you lazy old thing, will not
help me to shake the cage, you only shake your tail, and
that's not business, you know. Now I have discovered
that I can, by shaking the cage in a particular direction,
get it right across the room; and so, as the governor
knows, I can shake the cage up to the sofa from the fire-
place, some six feet, and can tear up the linings of the

MY MONKEYS.

341

sofa. What did Brunei do half as good as this ? I am
the originator of locomotion, and you may depend upon
it that the creature who designed and built the locomo-
tive engines of the Great Western that take you down to
Bristol in three hours, or built the Great Eastern ship, was
only ' a descendant of a hairy quadruped furnished with
a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its habits.' "

The Andaman Monkey.

In July, 1869, a new and unique monkey (Macacus
andamanensis) was presented to the Zoological Society
by Captain Brown, E.N., of Her Majesty's ship Vigilant.
It dates its joining the ship's company, from Port Blair,
Andaman Islands, in' the Gulf of Bengal, lat. 11° 43' N.,
long. 92° 47' E., in the year 1864. Jenny (for that is her
name) is supposed to be eight or nine years old. For the
last four years she has " served" on board the ship, and
having passed all the dangers of the Abyssinian campaign,
and been discharged with a first-class certificate and silver
chain and medal for good conduct, is now waiting to
receive her share of the prizes taken during the time she
was in Her Majesty's service.

Jenny stands about 2 feet 4 inches in height. In general
appearance she is most like the "Pig-tailed" monkey
(Macacus nemcstrinus), but is at once distinguished from
this species by a remarkable arrangement of the hair on
the top of the head, which is somewhat of a V shape,
and parted down the middle. The hair itself is very
fine, and it is elegantly arranged round the ears. The
first impression upon seeing this animal is, that it is
intermediate between Macacus Rhesus and Macacus ne-

342

jenny's performances.

mestrimis. The face is by no means fierce, the features
may even be called good-natured. She has been made a
great pet of by the sailors, the result being that she has
been educated to an extraordinary degree of cleverness.
She is fond of company, and her constant companion is
a chicken (a regular ship-chicken with hardly any fea-
thers), which lives with her in her cage day and night,
and accompanies her in her perambulations. She walks
Tipright on her hind legs with remarkable facility, and
with much less effort than even the performing monkeys
as seen in the London streets. When in an erect attitude
she will carry things. Thus she will pick up her chicken
and run about with it, holding it in her arms as a nurse
does her child : the chicken does not seem to mind this
in the least. At the word, " Throw her overboard," Jenny
throws the chicken smartly away from her. It has been
said that monkeys would talk, but that they know that if
they talked they would be made to work. Now the
Andamanian Jenny forms an exception to the "working"
part (only that is very agreeable work) of the story, for if
a soda-water bottle is given her, she will set to work to
untwist the wire : this done, she will get out the cork, if
it be not too tightly fixed, and then drink the contents of
the bottle. Her attitude in drinking is something quite
new. She sits down on her haunches, holds the bottle
with both hands, and tilts the end of it up loith her hind
foot, so that the liquid shall flow at the proper level into
her mouth. In this attitude her appearance is most
comical, and at the same time most interesting.

The most extraordinary part of Jenny's performances
is that she smokes a pipe. Most monkeys will carry a

MY MONKEYS.

343

pipe in their mouth and pretend to smoke ; but this is the
first monkey that we have ever known actually to smoke

"jenny," TJIK ANDAMAN MONKEY.

liglited tobacco out of a pipe. The illustration shows
Jenny adorned with her silver collar and war medal,
enjoying herself after her day's work. Most monkeys

314

MONKEYS AT SCHOOL.

will drink grog ; but Jenny is especially fond of it, and
she always takes her glass with her pipe, which she
enjoys quite as much as Forecastle Jack after he has
been reefing topsails. When I called to see Jenny, the
fair Andamanian, devoid of shyness, repaid the compli-
ments I oifered her in monkey language, by snatching a
half smoked hghted cigar out of my mouth, and did me
the honour to finish it, throwing away the end when it
threatened to burn her lips.

The Andaman natives are said to be the most degraded
of human beings. If Jenny is an average sample of the
monkeys of the country I would as soon be a monkey as
a man, if nature had cast my lot in these far distant
Islands of the Bay of Bengal.

The discovery in the Andaman Islands of a new species
of Quadrumana is a very important addition to our know-
ledge of this interesting country. One or two species of
monkeys were known to exist on the adjacent Nicobar
Islands, the common Macaque {M. synomolgus) being one
of them ; but, until Captain Brown brought home the
present individual, no monkey was known to exist on the
Andaman Islands. One or more species of monkey being
found on the Nicobar Islands would lead us to expect
such a thing as highly probable, and had this species
of monkey been met with there, nothing very remark-
able would have been thought about it; but the discovery
of a species, hitherto unknown, upon the islands that have
already furnished us with a man and a pig that are quite
unlike any of the neighbouring races, is a circumstance
deserving particular attention, and affords material for
much speculation and investigation.

MY MONKEYS.

345

Monkey Training.

At the time the Andaman monkey was exhihited at
the Zoological Gardens, there lived, in an adjoining cage,
a monkey whose history is somewhat remarkable. She
was very old, and nearly blind with both eyes from
cataract. For very many years she had done good duty
as a performing monkey in the London streets, and Mr.
Bartlett informs me, on the authority of her owner, that
he used to earn as much as £2 or ^3 a day with her. When
she got so old that she could no longer work, she was sent
up to the Gardens to finish the rest of her days in peace.

Every now and then her master had her out again
for the purpose of teaching other monkeys. It appears
that there is a point at which the human mind cannot
reciprocate ideas with the monkey mind. The monkey
trainers can teach the monkeys up to a certain point ;
when that point is reached it becomes absolutely neces-
sary for the man to have, as it were, an interpreter ; the
monkey-trainer therefore is obliged to send for this old
monkey to convey by her actions to his pupils the ideas
which he wishes to impress upon them. I once met a
man who made a living by training monkeys: he in-
formed me that monkeys differed very much in ability,
some learning their tricks much quicker than others ;
some, too, were so stupid that he was obliged to give
them up as a bad job, and to take another monkey of
greater natural ability into training, Mr. Bartlett kindly
assists the " performing monkey " men by exchanging
monkeys that will not learn, for other monkeys which,
from their physiognomy, appear likely to become good
performers. Some monkeys are clever, some, born fools.

THE BORE ON THE SEVERN.

One afternoon, when spinning along in the Great
Western train between Chepstow and Newnham, on my
way to examine the Salmon fisheries belonging to the
Messrs. Miller, at Chepstow, I was amazed to see the
state of the Severn : the river itself seemed to have almost
disappeared, enormous sandbanks were everywhere visible,
and the main channel was diminished to a small sti'eam
so shallow that three fishermen were standing waist deep
in it working their lave nets. In the distance I could see
figures moving; these also were men (licensed I trust)
who were catching salmon in the pools left by the reced-
ing water among the sands. At Newnham I went out in
Mr. Miller's salmon coble, and assisted in running a shot
with the sweep-net across the river. Some boys were
bathing on the opposite side to where we were fishing,
and a half-grown lad was standing nearly in the centre of
the stream.

The reader may say, Yes, but what of all this ? Wait, my
friend, and see what is coming. From the nets we walked
to the top of Newnham hill, whence a magnificent view
can be obtained. I asked Mr. Miller why the salmon -
boats fishing at the lower shots did not come in ? " They

THE BORE ON THE SEVERN.

347

are waiting for the tide," said he, " and we shall have a
bore to-night, if I mistake not." Peeping over the
edge of the high cliff (which, by the way, although a
jDublic walk, has no fencing whatever), I observed that
the down-current of the river gradually began to lessen
its force ; it then became perfectly still, and as calm as
a lake, upon which the boats sat as steady and motion-
less as rocks. In about ten minutes I heard in the far
distance a peculiar dull, heavy, rushing sound, but could
see nothing.

" The bore is coming now," said Mr. Miller, " we shall
have it here very soon." In a few minutes I saw a curved
white line, stretched right across the channel, coming
round the corner of the river. With a fearful velocity
this white line advanced steadily up the river, and as it
neared us I saw that it consisted of a wave more than
three feet high, curling over with foam at its summit, and
forming a distinct wall, reminding me of the pictures that
we see of the wall of water forced back when the Israelites
made their miraculous passage through the Eed Sea. Tbis,
tlien, was "the bore." A truly grand, and almost awful,
object it is — its rush might almost be taken as an emblem
of velocity, combined with weight and power. The roar
that it made was like nothing I had ever heard before, and
never before did I so fully understand the meaning of the
expression " the voice of many waters." Behind the first
wave-wall came a second, then a third, and then the full
body of the tide boiling like a cauldron. Behind this, again,
swept along a bx'oad sheet of water— the main army of the
flood in rear of the advance-guard. The bore rushed past
the place where I was watching, with the velocity and rush

348 SALMON BOATS TAKING THE BORE.

of an express train going through a station, and in a few
minutes the whole appearance of the river was altered :
not an inch of sand could be seen anywhere, but, instead of
bare sand, a vast expanse of water reaching from one side
to the other. At Newnham the banks of the river are
said to be a mile apart. When I was in the boat the river
was represented by a channel about the breadth of Eegent
Street, and nowhere deeper than six feet. Five minutes
after the bore had passed this place, the whole extent of
the channel was " full up " from side to side. I thought
of the poor fishermen that I had seen but lately standing
in the bed of the river; I thought of the men hunting the
salmon on the sands, and of the boys bathing. If they
had forgotten, or not known, that the bore was coming,
nothing could have saved them from a sudden and fearful
death. I must therefore entreat all our friends who
happen to be in this district to be exceedingly careful to
inquire into the times and seasons this bore rushes up the
river, and never to go on to the Severn sands without a
guide.

It was most interesting to watch how the salmon and
other boats took the bore. They pulled out into the
middle of the river, and waited with the bow of the boat
well steadied towards the advancing wave. At the moment,
just before the wave touched them, I trembled for their
fate — the next instant the wave shot under the keel of
the boat— and she took a sudden leap upwards like a
rearing horse, then down she went almost bows under ;
then up again twice, as she crested the two secondary
waves that follow the main wave of the bore. She then
shot into the boiling water, all hands at the oars, and

THE BORE ON THE SEVERN.

349

pulled away, for a little distance, against the stream.
Then she gradually slewed round (like a steamer turning
the post at the measured mile on the Maplin Sands), and
submitted herself to the full rush of the tide. The men
took a dip with the oars every now and then, and she
soon got way on her ; faster, faster, and faster she went ;
and now with "all steam up," she rushed past us like
a gull, scudding down the wind, with outspread wings.
Some scene of this kind must have been witnessed by
Job, or otherwise he never could have written the fol-
lowing "prose poetry: "—" They are passed away as the
swift ships ; as the eagle that hasteth to the prey."

One of the salmon-boats had not calculated her time
properly ; she came up in front of the bore ; as the wave
advanced it made the water in front of it recede, as men
recede when a Life Guardsman's charger is made to
" shoulder in " upon a dense crowd of human beings.
The men in the boat evidently wished themselves behind,
—not in front of the wheels of the chariot of the water
king, who was racing up with his foaming steeds. They
pulled their hardest, but what human arms can contend
against nature's race-horses : the bore caught them ; up
went the stern of the boat, while her head dipped down
like a diving porpoise ; as quick as thought she righted
herself, and away she went at full speed, riding lightly
upon the wave-top, like a stormy petrel upon the summit
of an Atlantic roller. Several boats passed up-stream
with the bore ; among them I observed Mr. Miller's
private boat with three young gentlemen in it. They
seemed to enjoy the fun amazingly ; and no doubt the
sensation of being carried along by the bore is most

350

HOW BARGEMEN MEET THE BORE.

deliglitful after your boat has made its leap up on to the
crest of the wave.

The bore I saw, Mr. Miller informed me, was but a small
bore. It often runs up with a wave six feet high, and on
some occasions the wave is known to go very much higher
than this. The bores, I understand, occur more or less
at every spring-tide. The highest bores are what they
call the " Palm Tides " in the month of March. The
wave, I understand, attains its greatest height just below
Gloucester, and one of the best places to see it is from the
banks near Elmore, a few miles from Gloucester. Newn-
ham is also a capital place ; the view of the bore as it
approaches this place is very fine.

The barges which navigate the Severn find the bore
very useful in assisting them in making their upward
passage, and I have been told of an instance of a barge
having run up with the bore from the mouth of the Bristol
river nearly to Gloucester.

The barges at anchor are careful to have their anchor
tackle right when the bore is expected, and although the
bore can be heard coming from a great distance, the barge-
men give notice of its proximity by shouting " Flood, oh ! "
This watchword is passed up the river as occasion serves.
In going down the river the barges frequently "miss
stays " and get aground on the sands, and are left high and
dry by the receding waters. As they are flat-bottomed
boats they do not sink into it as a keeled vessel
would ; sometimes, however, they ai-e apt to " suUc," and
sink so deeply into the sand that when the tide rises they
do not " lift " to it, and the waves go over them. When
this is likely to occur, the men ram in straw between the

THE BORE ON THE SEVERN,

351

barge and the sand so as to allow the water to percolate
into it, and so assist her in lifting when the rise of water
takes place.

In March, 1874, 1 again witnessed "the Bore " runnin<r

to

up the Severn. The Times was good enough to publish
the following letter from me : —

A most remarkable natural phenomenon was observed
yesterday morning, Friday, March 30. A gigantic tidal
wave called " the Bore " made its expected appearance,
accompanied by an unusually high tide, in the Severn.
Anxious to see if the salmon fisheries would be affected
by it, I, in company with Messrs. Cadle and Bennett, of
Westbury-on-Severn, members of the Board of Salmon
Conservators, and the Eev. the Vicar of the parish, waited
the arrival of the Bore at Denny Eocks, five miles below
Gloucester. At 9.20 a.m. some boys perched high in a
tree shouted out the warning, " Flood 0 ! " " Flood 0 ! "
and then, to a minute of her time, up came the Bore,
sweeping with a magnificent curve round a bend in the
river. Hurrying towards us with fearful force, there
rushed a dense wall* of water, curling over with foam at
its summit, and extending right across from bank to
bank.

As the wave approached nearer, and nearer, the "voice
of many waters," accompanied by a strange and sudden
blast of cold wind, was truly awe-inspiring. In an instant
the Bore swept past us with a mighty rush and the wliirl
of a thousand Derbys passing the grand stand. Two
angry precipices of water, the escorts on either side of
this terrible wave, swept with terrific weight and power
along, the banks, throwing high up into the air, and well

352

THE BORE PASSING DENNY ROCKS.

above the pollard trees, a sheet of water mixed wltli mud
and sticks. We all cheered the Bore as she passed, so
grandly were Nature's racehorses running their course.
In a few momenta after the Bore had passed, the river,
which had been rather low before, was ' brim full to over-
flow' from bank to bank, and, having previously taken
marks, I ascertained that the sudden rise of the water
was between eleven and twelve feet. An old man told
me that this was as good a head as he had seen for forty
years. The tide following the Bore rose with great rapi-
dity, and flooded the fields and roads far and near.

It was most interesting to see a barge plunge up like
a rearing horse to take the Bore, while some frightened
ducks swam out into the river and topped the wave in a
most graceful manner.

The illustration in the frontispiece gives a very good
idea of the Bore as she passes Denny Bocks.

I have had a third opportunity of inspecting the Bore,
and published the following in the Daily News : —

I was due at Lydney, below Gloucester, at midday on
Monday, October 26, 1874, to hold aH official inquiry on
the Severn bye-laws. On Monday morning I determined
to go from Gloucester and inspect the fish-pass which Mr.
Williams, engineer to the Severn Navigation Commis-
sioners, has erected under a clause of the Salmon Fishery
Acts, at the side of the navigation weir lately erected at
Maisemore. I walked from the road on to the top of the
high bank, and had just time to catch one look at the
pass, when, to my amazement and delight, up came a
tremendous wave, racing up stream at a furious pace, and
in an instant the weir was invisible. A great solid mass

THE BORE ON THE SEVERN.

353

of water covered it over and buried it deep out of sigbt in
a moment.

This, then, was my old friend the Severn Bore. I had
not the least idea the Bore was due at that time, or I
should have looked out for him. It was, however, very-
lucky that I arrived at the weir when I did, for if I had
arrived five minutes earlier I should certainly have been
either standing on the weir or else in the hollow under
the cliff, and the weir being situated in a lone place, the
Bore might have caught me in a trap, particularly as the
mud banks at this place are very steep and very slip-
pery. I watched the ocean of water coming up for about
a quarter of an hour; it brought up with it an immense
quantity of wreck of all sorts, and pummelled the bank
on the right side of the river so hard that at a big bend
where I stood overlooking a regular Scylla and Charybdis
were formed. The lock-keeper told me that sometimes
the Bore came up so heavy that there were great wave
the size of sea breakers on the up stream side of the
weir. It was most interesting to see the stream in the
Severn running bacJcivards ; and this even though a heavy
fresh, coming down from the upper country, had to be
forced back by the ascending tidal wave — for the Bore is
really a gigantic tidal wave. As I stood watching, up
came the tidal flood, and in ten minutes there was no
trace whatever of the existence of the weir, except every
now and then a slight boil in the water.

The next morning I determined again to pay my
respects to the Bore before leaving for London by the
morning Express. I chose this time a new place for my
observatory — viz., the navigation lock close to the new

354 THE BORE CHARGES THE LOCK GATES.

weir at Llantlion)' — a short distance from tlie upper
entrance of the Gloucester and Berkeley Canal. The-
first thinf^ I saw was the big wave, about a quarter of a
mile oflf, tumbling and rolling about at a terrific pace,,
sending the sticks and mud flying well over the bank on
each side of him. On he came. "Now then, myboj-s,"
I cried, "look out, see what he does when he comes to
the nose of the island " — we were standing on the nose.
The Bore hardly attempted to scale the nose of the-
island ; he seemed to know it was no good, but he cut
himself right in two. There was a momentary lull, and
then one of his divided streams, gathering itself together,
went smack bang at the lock-gates. Having about forty
yards good run at them, Mr. Bore did not knock at the
gates in a polite manner; he simply went straight at
them with all his awful force. In the twinkling of an eye
the lock-gates flew wide open, as though blasted by a ton
of gunpowder, and as they rattled against the brick walls
of the lock they vibrated and shook as though trembling
with fear, reminding me of the old Homeric description
of how an ancient armour-clad Trojan hero fell smitten
with the spear of Achilles :

" Down he fell with a crash, and his arms they rattled about him."
Throwing aside the lock-gates with his mighty arms, the
Bore, paying no toll, charged bang through the lock and
away, away, away as though racing for life.

The moment the Bore was through the lock I ran
across to see him take the weir. Now this weir is built
diagonally across a large pool, which is narrow at the
upper, and wider at the lower, side. As I stated, the
nose of the island cut the Bore in half: one half charged

THE BORE ON THE SEVERN.

355

through the lock, the other half went round the other
side of the island. I was just in time to see him approach
the weir. The poor Bore was evidently a little puzzled
ahout the road, particularly as, the river being wide at .
this part, the foremost waves of his line could not keep
their dressing properly. The commanding officer did
not, however, take long to make up his mind ; he seems
to have trumpeted the order, " Take open order ; right
wheel ; charge." The waves at the bend of the current
seemed to accumulate in a deep pool, while the wares at
the outer end wheeled at a swift gallop round the outer
curve of the river's course. Away they went crushing
into the Avillow banks, bending the willows down to the
bank with the force of the rush and the weight of the
accompanying mud storm, and then the word seems to
have been given, as in a cavalry charge, " Steady men.
Form line on the pivot flank. Trot; gallop; charge." I
ran up the bank as hard as I could, to find that the Bore
had again united his broken forces, and was tearing away
up stream, not so much, now, in a head, as with a series of
great undulating waves, which in a few yards' run would
have again formed a white- capped, fearful-looking wave.
This wave would, about a mile above, have joined with
another wing of the Bore's forces that had been obliged
to rush up on the east side of the great island which
divides the Severn into two channels as it passes near
Gloucester. The forces thus joined would have rushed
on over Tewkesbury Weir, till at last, the Bore, I under-
stood, would have expended himself at or about Diglis
"Weir near Worcester.

I marked the height of the water by the figures at the

856

HOW THE BORE IS FORMED.

Llantliony Lock-gates before the Bore came. The mark
was XI. One minute after he was past I could hardly
see the figures XVI. ; so that his height at this point
must have been about five feet. In about five minutes
my attention was called to the fact that the water was
suddenly sinking; and, sure enough, down it went about
four inches, with a steady drop. In a few minutes, up it
went again, and this time about three inches over the
figures XVI. The lock-keeper told me that there were
three bores at his lock: — No. 1, the great Bore — this is
the water that had rushed through the deep channels in
the estuary below ; No. 2, a smaller Bore that had been
retarded by the passage over the wide and shallow sands
between the sea and Newnham ; and No. 3, a Bore which
had run up the channel, on the west side of the big
island, in which Maisemore Weir is built, and for some
reason invariably came back to Llanthony with a rebound.
There cannot be a better place to study the Severn Bore
than Llanthony "Weir.

These Bores occur at every spring tide, though it is
only occasionally that they are to be seen to perfection :
the large Bores are generally succeeded by several more,
each less powerful and grand than the others.

The night Bores are said always to be higher, heavier,
and to make a greater noise, than the day Bores. It was
quite by good luck that I discovered that this big bore was
due on 26th October, 1874. I am sorry nobody told me it
was due, as I should certainly have given public notice,
for I am sure many of my countrymen would have liked
to have witnessed this the greatest natural phenomenon
in the British Islands.

THE BOKE ON" THE SEVEEN.

357

The bore in the river Severn is caused by the peculiar
formation of its estuary. In that most interesting and
valuable work, the " Geological Observer," by the eminent
and lamented Sir Henry De la Beche, will be found the
explanation of the cause of the bore. Sir Henry tells us
that the great tidal wave coming from the Atlantic is
narrowed by the local conditions of the Bristol Channel.
From the decrease in the width and depth of the channel,
which may be said to be funnel-shaped, and the weight of
the Atlantic behind pushing the tide forward, the elevation
of water is increased, and the bore thus formed, runs up
the river. If the wind blows in the same direction with
the tide, the size of the wave is much increased, or to put
it in the words of a facetious friend, in order to have a
good Bore it must be accompanied by a so?f;-wester.

A heavy Bore also runs up the estuary of the Solwa3\
A Bore also sometimes appears on the Humber, where
it is called the " Eagre," or " Hygre." My friend and
colleague, Mr. Spencer Walpole, was once caught by the
Humber Bore.

On the 12th April, 1868, a huge bore came unexpectedly
in from the sea at Axminster, in Devonshire. When
surveying the estuary of the river Axe, in company with
the Chairman of the Axe Salmon Fishery District, Mr.
W. T. Hallett, of Stedcombe House, I observed that the
entrance to the river was blocked up to a great extent
by an enormous accumulation of shingle. I was told
that in April a most remarkable wave came in suddenly
from the open sea. The sea had been j)reviously
perfectly calm, and there was no wind whatever •
the water must have risen sudclenhj, as far as I could

358

GREAT SEA WAVES.

make out, at least twenty or thirty feet. Mr. Beard,
foreman to Mr. Hallett, gave me the following parti-
culars : —

" The first ground-sea was seen on 12th April, 1868,
about three or four miles out at sea ; it reached the shore
about half-past four o'clock, p.m., and continued till nine
o'clock. About eight o'clock, just at the turn of tide, it
was tremendous."

None of tlie newspapers appear to have noticed this
phenomenon at all. Some time since I heard of some un-
fortunate bathers on the coast of Spain being suddenly
swept away by a heavy sea ; and I have heard of a wave
■which sometimes suddenly appears on the west coast of
Ireland, aiad which is called the " death-wave.'^ The late
Mr. George Ffennell told me he had heard of people
meeting their deaths through it. I examined the coast
round the mouth of the river Axe, to see if the wave could
have been of the nature of a " bore," as is found in the
estuary of the Severn, but the conformation of the coast
will not admit of this idea. I conclude, therefore, that it
must have been an earthquake wave. Sir H. De La Beche
writes : —

" The ' great sea-wave ' produced by earthquakes sometimes aids
materially in the modification of the coasts shaken, seizing and trans-
porting before it masses of matter which could not be moved under
ordinary circumstances, and tearing up deposits thrown down in, or
raised to, shallow situations. ... In the Jamaica earthquake of 1692,
* a heavy rolling sea ' followed the shock at Port Royal, and the ' Swan '
frigate, which was by the wharf, careening, was borne by it over the ■
tops of houses, and some hundreds of persons escaped by clinging to the
ship. The sea-wave of the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, rose to the height
of forty feet in the Tagus, leaving the bar dry as it rolled inwards, fol-
lowed by others, each less in importance, until the water again returned
to its ordinary repose. The sea-wave of the same shock was 60 feet high

THE BORE ON THE SEVERN.

359

at Cadiz, 18 feet at Madeira, and, under modified conditions, was felt on
the coast of Great Britain and Ireland, rising 8 to 10 feet on the coast of
Corn-wall. . . . The coasts of Chili and Bem have suffered from similar
•waves ; in the Calabrian earthquake of 1783, the shore of Scilla was inun-
dated by one, mshing 20 feet high over the low grounds. Such waves are
indeed sufficiently common, though seldom prominently noticed unless
productive of considerable effects. The sudden rise and fall of the sea
observed in so many harbours of the world, as well in tidal as tideless
seas, evidently independent of the tides in the former, and not due to
wind-wave undulations prolonged to the shores, often seem little else
than the continuation of those waves reacliing coasts where the earth-
quake itself has not been noticed."

I give another well authenticated case of a great sea-
wave. Mr. D. G. Bruce Gardyne writes me as fol-
lows : —

" In the autumn of 1866, the keeper of the lighthouse
near Tobermory, in the Sound of Mull, favoured me with
some of his reminiscences of Skerryvore, where he was
stationed before he came to Mull. He spoke of a bright
clear Sunday morning, when, as it was low tide, and the
top of the rock was above water, he went down the ladder
to smoke his pipe, for once in a way, on diyland. When
at the bottom of the ladder, he found he had left his
matches behind him. As he was returning up the ladder,
he saw a big wave coming. He steadied himself as well
as he could, and clung like grim death to the ladder,
which fortunately was a fixture. The wave came and
swept his legs from beneath him, but he held on, and the
wave passed away. The mark on the lighthouse showed
(if I remember right) that two-and-twenty feet of water
had passed thus suddenly over the rock. The wave gave
no notice of its approach."

Being anxious to find out the meaning of the word
Bore, and learn more about it, I requested the opinions

360

ORIGIN OP WORD ' BORE.'

of correspondents in Land and Water, and the following
notes were kindly sent me : —

"A remarkable] 'Eagre,' in the Witham, in the year
1571, is the subject of one of the most perfect poems in
the language, by Jean Ingelow. If not familiar with it,
you will thank me, I am sure, for giving you a new
pleasure in its perusal. The scene of this is Boston, in
Lincolnshire, where the tide of Friday last was, I believe,
extremely high, but not, so far as I can gather, a true
* eygre.' — Eev. H. Anders."

" ' Lo ! along the river's bed,
A mighty eygre reared its crest,
And uppe the Lindis raging sped.
It swept with thunderous noises loud ;
Shaped like a curling snow-white cloud,
Or like a demon in a shroud.
And rearing Lindis backward pressed.
Shook all her trembling banks amaine ;
Then madly at the Eygre's breast
Flung up her weltering walls again.
Then banks came down with ruin and rout,
Then beaten foam flew round about,
Then all the mighty floods were out,
So farre, so fast, the eygre drove,
The heart had hardly time to beat.
Before a shallow seething wave
Sobbed in the grasses at our feet ;
The feeb had hardly time to flee
Before it brake against the knee,
And all the world was in the sea.' "

"I see that you ask for the origin of the word *bore.'
We have the same phenomenon in the Hooglily, and, I
believe, in many other Indian rivers ; the word used in
the north of India would be Barh, a flood. In the south
and west the word would be, ' Poor,' a flood. Both these

THE BORE ON THE SEVERN.

361

words are of Sanscrit origin. Kindly let me know if this
idea of mine should be confirmed by any authority.— G.
Crossmakee, Capt., Guildford."

" The phenomenon of the Bore is seen in the river
Seine; and the first time I was in France, nearly thirty
years ago, going by the steamer from Havre to Eouen, I
purchased on board a little book giving local information,
and, amongst other things, relating the effect of a high
spring tide in that river. There I found it is called the

* Barre,' which, I believe, signifies ' the dash of a wave.'
As the people on the west side are of Norman descent,
may not this be the origin of the term ? On the banks
of the river Trent it is called the ' Eagre,' which, as the
people thereabouts are descended from Danes, Belgians, ,
and Dutch, may have come across the German Ocean. —
J. W. P."

"Is not the * Bore' the local name on the Hooghly for
the phenomenon described by you, or rather the Angli-
cised form of the Indian word? Geographical books,
and sailors from Calcutta, have given me that impression.
Bailey and Johnson know of no such word. Richardson
can find no earlier authority for it than two passages in
the speeches of Burke, who loved to draw upon the
wonders of the East for his similes. Tha Anglo-Saxon
' borian ' is only quoted by Richardson as the equivalent
of 'bore, to make a hole.' On the other hand, 'higra,'

* eygre,' and ' eagre,' are old English words. Bailey has
' higra, the raging of the River Severn below Gloucester.'
Dryden introduces an ' eygre ' into one of his poems, and
describes it in a note. Dr. Donaldson, in his ' Varro-
nianus,' connects both 'bore' (boar) and 'hygre' with

S62 BORES IN OTHER PARTS OP THE WORLD.

other words in which the breaking crest of a high wave,
the sui'f on a rock or sandbank, and other concealed
ridges or swelHngs, are somehow or other supposed to be
related to the maned edge of a hog's back, (surf, scruff,
scrofa, scrofula, scropulus, rupes, etc.), but whether later
photologists accept the idea I know not.— Charles J.
Gedge, Bury Herald, Bury St. Edmunds."

" I venture to give you a guess at the derivation of the
term 'bore,' as I was struck by the German word for
boar, and the fact of this wave, the ' bore,' being, as you
rightly say, called the ' eagre,' in some counties of Eng-
land. The German word for a wild boar is 'eger,' the
first E of which is, however, pronounced like A in Eng-
lish. Do you not think there is a plausible connection
between the two words, both of which are suggested,
perhaps, by the formation of the wave, i.e., like a boar's
back. I have never seen the wave, but have often
thought that there must be some truth in my idea. — J.
EoBERTsoN, Hatton Court, Threadneedle Street."

" May I venture to make a suggestion about the word
bore ? Shall we not find its meaning by going a little
further back than the Saxons ? The Celtic varieties of
the word " Great," in the forms of vawr and mor seem to
point to ' bore ' as having a similar meaning, the v and b
being usually interchangeable. — Eleanob Hervey, Eams-
gate."

" I wondered that you did not give us the height of
the rise of the tide on that day from low-water mark at
some places on the Severn, and particularly in the Wye
at Chepstow-bridge. I remember a record on a stone
m that bridge of a rise of tide of 64ft. from low-water

THE BORE ON THE SEVERN". 363

mark. It would be interesting to know what was the rise
in the late tide. I wish you would, in a supplementary-
letter, give the world these facts. It would be very
interesting if some first-rate astronomer would give the
world a clear scientific account of this tide in all its
bearings, giving the position and distances of the sun and
moon from the earth and each other, the effect of wind,
and other causes. — E. B. Beldome, 37, Nicholas Lane,
City."

" I think you may like to know that the ' bore ' on the
Mersey is larger and more frequently seen than the
* bore ' on the Huraber, and is, I am told, second only to
that on the Severn. — L. B. W."

" Surely the derivative of the ' bore ' is from ' Boreas '
— ^North wind :

" ' Boreas and Caecas and Argestas loud,
And Thrascias rend the woods, and seas upturn.'— Milton.

" ' Crete's ample fields diminish to our eye,
Before the boreal blasts the vessels fly.' — Pope.

The tide in Bay of Fundy comes in nine to twelve feet
high. All vessels not anchored with their heads to it are
smashed to atoms. The people drive stakes into the mud
close to low-water mark, and close together, and the fish
are left behind them ; three tons in weight are caught,
wire also being used as net-work, attached to the
posts.— F. S."

" The account of your experience of the ' Severn Bore,'
which appeared in the Daily Neivs, interested me and my
friends very much. Although I have calculated the
times and heights of the tides at some of the principal
sea-ports for many years, I have never happened to see

364

SANDS IN ESTUARY OF SEVERN.

the 'bore;' but several of us have arranged to make a
trip on purpose next April (7th, 1875), Avhen I predict a
grand hove, the tide rising to nearly 34ft. above the sill
of the Cumberland Dock, at Bristol. I enclose for your
acceptance a copy of my Annual. I am told by harbour
officials at the various ports that these tables are more
reliable than any issued, even more so than the Admiralty
tables.— Samuel E. Townshend, Stationer, Liverpool."

" The size of the ' bore ' at Newnham greatly depends
on the position of the sands below, at a point called the
' Noose.' When it happens that the low-water channel
lies round the Frampton side, and the Noose sand is
higb, so that the tide has a long roundabout course to
go, then there is always a very big ' bore ' at Newnham in
spring tides. I think it is mainly caused by the great
body of water being for a time kept back by the Noose
sands, till, rising higher, it suddenly bounds over, and
joins the current on the Frampton side, at a place called
Hock Cut, both currents, after meeting in wild confusion,
sweeping up the river with renewed vengeance. Should
there be a low- water channel through the Noose sands,
close to the Aivre side, then there is rarely a ' bore ' of
any size at Newnham, the tide having a straight course
upward. It is always in a freshet season that the Channel
cuts down the Frampton side ; and in a dry summer the
up flood tide cuts a low way in the Aivre shore, through
the Noose. There is no * bore ' takes place in the Severn
below Shapness point (except on very rare occasions),
and it is not of much size till it gets up in the Frampton
Channel. The tidal portion of the Severn flows through
a very low flat country, and the rise of the tide in the

THE BORE ON THE SEVERN.

365

Bristol Channel is so extraordinarily fast that it will have
begun ebbing at Kingroad before it reaches Newnham ;
and, as it only flows one hour and twenty minutes at
Newnham, where the river is about three quarters of a
mile wide, and rises sometimes nearly twenty feet, you
can have some idea of the strength of the tide. That
same tide, after passing Newnham, may flow nearly to
Worcester, a distance little short of forty miles, thus
showing what an immense force it has with it to flow
such a long way *up the country — James Millee, Junr.,
Salmon Fishery, Newnham."

Mr. Marrico, of Newcastle, wrote me thus, 27th April,
1874 :—

'* I send you a paragraph from the Neivcastle Chronicle,
of April 20th, giving an account of a supposed tidal wave
at Tynemouth on the 19th April, 1874. I was on the
cliff about two miles north at the time, and after looking
at the pier with our race glasses, we thought there was a
swell on, worth walking down to see. The sea was almost
calm, with long swells rolling slowly in, and breaking
with tremendous force on the cliffs north of Tynemouth,
sending the spray right over them more than once. At
Tynemouth, however, there seems to have been only this
one wave, concerning which the paper says : —

" ' Last night, about half-past five o'clock, a most
extraordinary and appalling accident occurred on the
North Pier, at Tynemouth. During the day the sea had
been calm, with the exception that wreaths of sea came
rolling in upon the North Pier every now and then in a
remarkable and unexpected manner, but without causing
much alarm. It was high water about half-past five o'clock.

366

DANGEROUS WAVE AT TYNEMOUTH.

but the sea was then comparatively tranquil. People
were promenading on the pier in apparent safety, when
suddenly a huge tidal wave broke over it without
warning, which caused great alarm. Those who were
walking at the far-end of the promenade were driven
either between the rails at the side or on to the waggon-
way beneath. Three persons — a gentleman and two
ladies — were very badly hurt. Such an accident as this
has not occurred at Tynemoutli within the recollection of
the oldest resident. There must have been a heavy
storm many leagues away in mid-ocean, and the waves-
have reached our shores, in a calm, to spend themselves
upon them with their destructive force.' "

" As to the derivation of the word ' bore,' I have been
told that it meant a cross, but I cannot trace the source
of the information. The Saxon is horian, but this-
appears to me so very near the Latin, Boreas, and Greek,
fiopeas (the north wind), that I cannot but think the
tradition must have an origin apart from Saxon. —
William A. Scott, Westbury on Severn."

Before concluding this article on the Estuary of the
Severn, I beg to call the attention of my readers to a
curious mode of catching salmon, adopted by the riparian
owners of fisheries. The visitor will observe, in the
lower estuary, stretching for a considerable distance into
the water from the muddy banks, rude piers made entirely
of wickerwork, which look like large eel baskets ; these
are called "ranks" of ''putchers." Each putcher is
about 5 feet 6 inches long, and U,l inches across the
mouth.

A framework is made by driving stakes into the mud^

THE BOllE ON THE SEVERN. 367

and the putcliers are then fastened together in rows one
above the other, often to the height of ten feet or more ;

SALILOX I'UTCUER AS USED IX THE ESTTJjVIlY OF THE SEYEEX.

these great walls of baskets look not unlike, as my friend
the late John Keast Lord remarked, " a gigantic wine-
rack filled with bottles encased in wickerwork,"

As the salmon come along with the tide, in the thick
muddy Severn water, they run their noses into the open
mouth of the putchers, and speedily get jammed up at the
narrow end ; the poor things cannot turn, and the more
they struggle to get out, the -firmer they become wedged
in ; as the tide recedes they are left high and dry. I have
often observed that wasps wait about till the tide. goes,
down, and then take first cut at the salmon.

This mode of fishing, is, I believe, the most ancient in
England, and it was doubtless first invented andpi'actised,
some two thousand years ago, by the ancient Britons,
who, as we know, were very clever at basket work. A
great many first-class Severn salmon are caught in these
putchers and sent to the London market. Should any
one wish to examine these ranks of putchers closely, they
have only to apply to my friend Mr. Alexander Miller^

S68 FIXED ENGINES FOR CATCHING SALMON.

the lessee of the Duke of Beaufort's fishery, who resides
Bear the iron railway bridge at Chepstow. Many of these
putchers have been abolished by the Special Com-
missioners of English Fisheries as having no title. In
1874, 5,280 putchers were licensed by the Severn Board
of Conservators, at the rate of ;£l for fifty putchers.

Besides the putchers, another kind of basket is used,
called putts. It will be observed that the wickervvork is
much closer in this case than the other ; the] putt con-
sists of three parts, the large part or mouth, called the
putt ; the middle, called the butt ; and the small end, or
bag, called the firwell. Each part is made of smaller

SALMON PUTT.

wickerwork than the other : the engraving represents the
putt " and the " butt," without the " firwell." The dia-
meter of the opening is about 5 feet, and the length from
12 to 13 feet; they are used to catch flat fish, &c. Of
these, in 1874, 255 were licensed by the Board at 2s. Qd.
each.

My late lamented friend, Mr. Lord, told me that
baskets, similar to the putts and putchers of the Severn
estuary, are used at the present day by the Indians of
North Western America.

TITLES OF DUMMY BOOKS FOR A LIBRAEY.

♦

— » —

When lately staying at the hospitable mansion of my
friend, Mr. Higford Burr, Aldermaston Park, Reading,
I got up early to look over the books in the library,
always a great treat to me. As I passed down the
shelves, I suddenly came to a series of books which, I
confess, I had never seen before, and the titles of which
very much astonished me. The books were admirably
placed among the other volumes, so that the deception
was complete. By the permission of Mr. Burr, I am
able to give some of the titles : —

'* Farmer's Manual, by Virgil.

" Geology of the Moon," Two Vols.

" The Lost Books of the Sybil."

" Plans and Elevations of the Tower of Babel," Two
Vols.

" Tour in the British Islands," by Julius Cajsar.

*' Secret Memoirs of the Court of Troy."

" Solon's Geography of America."

" Logbook of the Ark."

" Sections of the Trojan Horse."

" Horace, on the Salt Mines of Africa."

" Archimedes, on the Steam Engine."

D n

370 NEW WORKS BY UNKNOWN AUTHORS.

" Samson, on Fox-Hunting."
" The Eape of the Lock/' by Hobbs.
" Ministerial Papers during the reigns of Augustus and
Tiberius/' Six Volumes.

" Empedocles, on Volcanoes."

" Orations on the Sea-shore/' by Demosthenes.

" History of the Winged Hat of Mercury."

" Belshazzar, on Unknown Characters."

" Nero, on the Violin."

" Calliope, on Poetry," &c.

While I was still in a state of astonishment, the Squire
came into the room, and laughed heartily at the new literary
victim he had caught wondering at the backs of the books,
which formed " dummies " to conceal a door opening out
among the book-shelves.

My friend, Henry Lee, wrote subsequently in Land
and Water: — "lean supplement Mr. Buckland's list of the
* dummies ' in the library of Mr. Higford Burr, with the
following imaginary titles of volumes proposed by Hood
to be painted on a false door in the library of the Duke
of Devonshire, at Chatsworth : —

" On the Quadrature of the Circle ; or. Squaring in the
Eing/' by D. Mendoza.

" Dante's Inferno; or, The Description of Van Diemen's
Land."

" Lamb, on the Death of Wolfe."

" Malthus' Attack of Infantry."

" McAdam's Views in Khodes."

" Earl Grey on Early Eising."

" Memoirs of Mrs. Mountain/' by Ben Lomond.

"Boyle on Steam."

TITLES OF DUMMY BOOKS FOR A LIBRAEY. 371

" On Sore Throats, and the Migration of the Swallow,"
by J. Abernethy.

" Pul on Bell's System."

" Johnson's Contradictionary."

*' SheHey's Conchology."

" Eecollections of Banister," by Lord Stair.

" Wykehamist," then kindly wrote : — " I see that you
have given some lists of the names of ' dummy books.'
If you wish to continue the subject you had better go at
once to Eabelais, the great storehouse of wit, from whom
the humorists of the last few centuries have constantly
helped themselves, and who wrote just such a list as you
want."

n 'A 2

ANTIQUITIES.

King Alfred's Jewel.

When a lad, I spent many of my holidays from
Winchester School with my relations, the Eev. B. Mor-
land, Rector of East Ilsley, and Edward Morland, of
West Ilsley, near Abingdon, Berks. From my uncle's
church, at East lisle}'', we could see the race-horses
exercising at the top of the downs, near an ancient barrow^
locally called Scutchimore Nob. My father used to take
us to the top of this barrow, and give us a lecture upon tho
battles of the great King Alfred, which took place all
along these Berkshire downs. It was inside Scutchimore
Nob that an ancient British warrior was dug up. Inside
the skeleton was a mass of seeds of wild raspberries,,
probably the remains of this gentleman's last repast.
My father took some of these seeds to Dr. Daubeny,.
Professor of Botany at Oxford, who grew plants from
some of them. The traveller, by a down train on
the Great Western, can see a high mound just beyond
Reading, called " King Alfred's standing." Ti-adition
states that the king stood on the top of this hill and
watched the Danes' retreat, after they had been well

KING Alfred's jewel.

373

thrashed by his Saxon soldiers, fighting along the
downs to the west of this jjoint. Again, a little before
the traveller arrives at Swindon, he can see, to the
south of him. White Horse Hill, on the side of which
is cut out in the turf a rude outline of a white horse ;
the white chalk shows up from the lines where the turf
has been pared away.

The great King Alfred first saw the light in this part
of England; he was born at Wantage, in Berkshire, a.d.
849. In October, 1849, the 1000th anniversary of his
birthday was celebrated at Wantage. In the museum at
Oxford, is a most interesting and valuable relic * of King
Alfred the Great, of which I now give an illustration, t

The jewel is made of gold, elaborately wrought in a
peculiar kind of filagree, mixed with chased and engraved
work. The legend around the edge of the jewel (No. 4),
" Aelfred Mec Heht Dewercan " (Alfred ordered me to be
wrought), is cut in bold characters, the intervening spaces
being pierced, so that the crystal within is seen (No 2).
The face is formed of a piece of rock crystal four-tenths
of an inch in thickness, under which is placed the singular
enamelled subject No. 3. It has been supposed to be a
representation of the Saviour, St. Neot, St. Cuthbert, or
of King Alfred himself. The v/orkmanship on the other
side (No. 1), is very curious; the design was first traced
out in filagree attached to the face of the plate of gold ;
the intervening spaces were then filled up with vitreous

* This relic was formerly in the Ashmolean Museum.
+ This illustration is copied from the Proceedings of the Arch(Bolo-
gical Society, and was used by the late Mrs. Quekett, when writing in
Land and Water, " upon Ancient Jewels.

374.

COLLECTION OF ANCIENT ARMOUR.

pastes of different colours, so that at first siglit the work
appears to resemble a mosaic. The colours were probably
fixed upon the plate by fusion. This relic was found,
1(593, at Newton Park, in Somersetshire, not far from
Athelbury, the ancient jEthburgay, where the great
Saxon king took refuge with a few followers, and fortified
himself successfully against his Danish foes, a.d. 878.

Execution Axe.

In Nov., 1874, when on duty, officially inspecting the
Cound Brook, a tributary of the Severn, near Shrewsburj^
my friend, Mr. Cholmondeley, of Condover Hall, kindly
invited me to dine and stay a few hours at his mansion.
Condover Hall is a very old place, and contains a
collection of very valuable pictures.

The house is built in the form of two letters E placed
back to back. This building of a house in the shape of a
monogram is supposed to be a compliment to Elizabeth,
who was Queen when the house was built. The hall at
Condover contains a beautiful collection of ancient
armour and weapons of all kinds, all of great antiquity
and value. My host kindly explained the various objects
in his collection ; and, as we remained in the armoury till
far into the small hours, the silence and the darkness of
the ancient hall, where suits of armour, &;c., stand,
perpetual sentries, gave additional interest to the various
venerable and historical arms he kindly took down from
the walls to show me. Two objects in the armoury, above
all others, took my fancy, viz., an Execution Axe and a
Slave's Collar. By the kindness of Mr. Cholmondeley,

A DEADLY WEAPON.

375

I am able now to give drawings of botb. Here is tbe
Execution Axe.

EXECUTION AXE.

I took a rubbing of it in pencil, and Mr. Cbol-
mondeley's carpenter made me a model in wood.

It measures along tbe curve twelve-and-a-balf inclies.
One side of it is sloped off in a very peculiar manner,
evidently the result of experience on the part of exe-
cutioners. The edge is sharp, but not so sharp as one
would have anticipated.

On placing the edge on a table, and rolling the axe
gently forwards and backwards, I find that there is
always a point where it bites. It is a most scientifically
constructed instrument. Into the socket was fixed a
handle, of wood, probably. Mr. Cholmondeley tells me
that it is recorded that the handles of some execution

376

EXECUTION AXE.

axes were liollow, and that a cavit}' at the lower end con-
tained quicksilver ; when the blow was given the quick-
silver ran instantly down the handle, and thus added its
weight to that of the a?;e itself, plus the force with which
it was wielded.

This is a German execution axe, of the date of
Edward VI., about three hundred years ago. These
execution axes, Mr. Cholmondeley told me, generally bore
a sacred inscription. By referring to the engraving, it
will be seen that not only is there an inscription on the
Condover axe, but also a group of figures, representing,
in a very rude style of art, the " Flight out of Egypt."

With great diflSculty, Mrs. Midford and myself made
out the words on the axe, and she kindly wrote them out
exact for me. They read thus : —

''^tnck Uavan (3 Sttntrcrman
em esdfici^rev trcu ^txxm ^t^pmx
ifolg nacTj sciu sitcn mxts gcijtrtrcn
So Ujirst Utt muff Scclig bjcrtfat/'

These verses may be thus translated : —

" Think of this, 0 sinful man ;
A donkey driver and the Lord mounted,
Follow after his precepts and example,
And thus shalt thou be blessed."

Nothing more than I have written above is known of
the history of this axe. Mr. Cholmondeley tells me it is
a very precious relic. Would that the axe could only tell
us its story

ANTIQUITIES.

377

Collar of Black Page.
This collar is just about large enough to fit round the
neck of a youth ; it is 15h inches round, measured inside,
and If inch wide. It was fastened on with a padlock.

slave's COLLAll.

Mr. Cholmondeley tells me that about one hundred
years ago fashionable ladies thought it "the thing"
to be attended by a Black Page, who wore ornamental
collars on their necks. In Hogarth's picture, " Taste in
High Life," 1742, a black Page is represented wearing
a collar similar to that here shown. In the present
instance the collar, though very like an ordinary dog's
collar, is rather ornamental than otherwise. These Pages'
collars are now exceedingly rare, as, when the slaves were
liberated in England, the collars were used for dogs'
necks. In fact, it may be that the pattern of the present
dog collar was originally taken from the slave's collar.

Roger Owen, whose name is engraved on the collar as the
owner of the slave, was an ancestor of Mr. Cholmondeley's.

JOHN HUNTER REVIVED.

J OHN HuNTEE, the greatest anatomist, physiologist, and
surgeon that England ever produced, died October 16,
1793, aged sixty-four. His memory has not yet passed
away from amongst us, and I trust it never will pass away,
so much does sufi'ering humanity owe to his great dis-
coveries. John Hunter had a country residence at Earl's
Court, Kensington. The old parish church has lately
been pulled down, and it has been proposed to place
memorial windows, in memory'- of historical personages
connected with Kensington parish, in the church lately
built by Sir Gilbert Scott, R.A., which was consecrated
in 1872. A list has been published of the illustrious in-
dividuals who lived at or near Kensington, and whose
memory will be thus recorded for generations to come.
Among these illustrious names I find Sir Isaac Newton,
Charles James Fox, Lord Macaulay, Archbishop Whatel}',
William Wilberforce, Sir David Wilkie, Sir Augustus
Callcott, R.A., Dean Swift, William Penn, Robert Nelson
C Fasts and Festivals "), W. M. Thackeray, Dr. Crotch
(Doctor of Music), and many others. The royal names
of Queen Victoria (born in Kensington Palace), King
William III., Queen Mary II., Queen Anne, George I.,

JOHN HUNTER REVIVED.

Georgell., the Ducliess of Kent, and Queen Caroline, must
also be be included, as they all lived in Kensington.

The Presidents of the Eoyal Society, the Eoyal College
of Surgeons, the Eoyal Academy of Arts, the Eoyal Society
of Literature, and the Society of AL-ts,have been asked to join
the committee, with the view of seeing that the men, eminent
in the respective subjects watched over by each society,
are properly represented by the proposed memorials.

In the list of illustrious persons whose names will be
thus handed down to posterity is that of John Hunter,
who for many years lived at Earl's Court, Kensington.
My friend John Merriman, whose family has been so long-
established at Kensington, has been kind enough to invite
me to examine this house, and the grounds connected with
it. In Foot's " Life of Hunter, 1794," we read : " To un-
bend the mind from the tedium which, during the summer
months, comes over every man of care, stationary in this
metropolis, to refresh the animal functions, half poisoned
and debased by anatomical miasma, and to be as little as
possible out of the way of the sudden calls of a surgeon,
John Hunter chose a cottage at Earl's Court, about a
mile, in the midst of fields, beyond Brompton. There he
sometimes retreated for fresh air and took his hobby
horse along with him. Nobody of common curiosity could
have passed his original cottage* without being obliged
to inquire to whom it belonged. By observing the back
of the house a lawn was found stocked with fowls and
animals of the strangest selection in nature, as if it had
been another repository belonging to Brooks ; and in the
front there were to be seen four figures in lead or stone re-
♦ This is the very building now standing.

S80

earl's couet as it was.

presentiug lions, two in a form passant, placed upon tlie
parapet, and on the ground two more couchant, guarding
the double flight of steps leading to the vestibule. On
the sides of the area were seen two pj^ramidal collections
of shells, each of them seeming to conceal a subterranean
entrance to a Golgotha. Over the front door was pre-
sented the mouth of a crocodile gaping tremendously
wide. It was also at Earl's Court that he pastured those
buffaloes which he, so lately as in 1792, put into harness
and trotted through the streets of London. Savage beasts,
said to have been snared on the lofty and barbarous
mountains of Thibet, or on the dreary wilds of Boutan,
and imported here for autumnal exhibition on carnival days
at Smithfield, held in honour of St. Bartholomew, were
sure to be first shown to John Hunter, by their keeper,
thus enhancing the estimation of his rare Asiatic curiosi-
ties. We are also told that giants and dwarfs were certainly
retained by him for dissection whenever the Fates should
determine it — whenever the sisters' shears of destiny
should cut the threads on which their lives suspended."

Mr. Merriman assured me that, according to all local
tradition, the house and grounds are very little, if at all,
altered since the days when John Hunter lived there. It
was, therefore, a real treat to me to be allowed to go over
them with Mr. Merriman and his partner, Mr. Arthur
Eoberts, and we owe many thanks to the present occupier
of the house. Dr. Gardiner Hill, for his kindness in
allowing us to go over the premises.

John Hunter built this house himself. It was originally
a plain brick building, in the form of a square ; but, as liis
practice increased, he added to it on both sides. It is

JOHN HUNTER EEVIVED.

381

just the sort of house the great anatomist would have
huilt. There is not the slightest attempt at effect or
useless ornamentation. His favourite room was evidently
the large room on the ground floor, looking out on the
park. In this room there was plenty of space for his papers,,
books, instruments, microscopes, and all the paraphernalia
of a working physiologist. Mrs. Hunter's rooms were
evidently up-stairs, and the panels of the doors are orna-
mented with drawings painted in water-colours. No
doubt John Hunter had as great a horror of feminine in-
terference in his studio as have most philosophers of the
present day.

All round the house is a covered cloister dug about six
feet into the earth. I expect John Hunter had two reasons
for making this cloister, which is very like a prolongation
of an area to a London house. Firstly, this cloister
would keep the house dry, and secondly, it would form a
grand place for keeping live stock. I have no doubt,,
therefore, that in this cloister he kept many of his smaller
animals used for experiments, such as dormice, hedge-
hogs,* bats, vipers, snakes, and snails, for his researches

• John Hunter -was very fond of experimenting with, hedgehogs.
He thus writes to Dr. Jenner :— " I received yours with the hedge-
hog, but I want more : I want you to get a hedgehog in the begin-
ning of winter and weigh him ; put him into your garden, and let.
him have some leaves, hay, or straw to cover himself, which he mil
do ; then weigh him in the spring and see what he has lost. Secondly,
I want you to kill one in the beginning of winter to see how fat he is^
and another in the spring to see what he has lost of his fat." Again
—"If you could send me a colony of hedgehogs, I shall bo glad, as
I have expended all I had but two ; one an eagle ate, and a ferret
caught the other." Subsequently — " Can you send me more hedgehogs
this spring ? all those you sent me died, so that I am hcdgclioglcss."
Jenner was the great discoverer of vaccination, A.D. 1780.

3S2

John's dissecting area.

on torpidity ; and hutches full of rabbits, whose unfortu-
nate fate would be to have their ears frozen, to prove
points connected with blood circulation.

It would also be a good place to hang up skeletons, or
■dry preparations, or to macerate bones. Nobody knows
better than myself the value of an area — I am sorry to
say my own area in Albany Street is terribly small — to a
London house, especially when one has a great many
dissections on hand ; and I have no hesitation in saying
that John Hunter made a great many of his preparations,
now in the Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons,
in this cloister-like area.

The entrance into these cloisters leads through a sub-
terranean passage, very dark, and like an enlarged fox's
•earth. This passage, again, I warrant, was one of Master
John's contrivances, for into his burrow he could wheel a
tidy-sized cart or truck, and drag into his den anything,
from a giant's body up to a good-sized whale ; and I have no
doubt that the Balcenoptera Rostrata, seventeen feet in
length, described in his works on whales, was once carted
down this passage into the area, to be cut up and figured and
described. The entrance to where the stables originally
stood was not far from this burrow, and John could have
easily whipped anything into the stable-yard down
his fox's earth, and into the area, without Mrs. Hunter
knowing anything about it ; and I'll be bound to say she
used occasionally to " lead him a life," and kick up a
row if any preparation with an extra effluvium about it
was left on the dissecting-table, when the great surgeon
was obliged to go out on his professional duties. This
dissecting-table is now in the museum of St. George's

JOHN HUNTER REVIVED.

38:8

Hospital. We have also the skin of the cow from which
Jenner first took vaccine lymph.

At one end of his burrow there is a mysterious-looking
door, which leads into a small room, now used as a general
receptacle for rubbish. Up in the corner were a lot of
bones. I eagerly examined them, but they were only
kitchen bones. In another corner of this room there is
a largish-sized copper boiler standing out of the wall.
Two doors fit on the top of this boiler and close it
up quite tight. Ah! if this old boiler could only tell
what it had boiled ! One giant, we know, was boiled up
in it; for in 1787 John Hunter wrote as follows to Sir
Joseph Banks : — " I have lately got a tall man. I hope
to be able to show him to you next summer." This tall
man was no doubt O'Brien, the Irish giant, whose
skeleton is now in the Hunterian Museum at the College
of Surgeons, alongside the skeleton and coffin-plate of
" Jonathan Wild," the great thieftaker of Jack Sheppard's
time. O'Brien (or Byrne) was said to be over 8ft. high,
In the Annual Beporter Chronicle, June 1783, we read:
— " The giant expressed an earnest desire that his pon-
derous remains might be sunk out at sea ; but, if such
were his wish, it was never fulfilled, as Mr. Hunter
obtained his body before interment of any kind had
taken place." Elsewhere we read : —

" In the dead of night the body was removed in a
liackney coach, and having been carried through several
streets, was transferred to Hunter's own carriage, and
conveyed immediately to Earl's Court. Fearing lest a
discovery should take place, Hunter did not choose to
risk the delay which the ordinary mode of preparing a

3S4

SKELETON-MAKING COPPER.

skeleton would require ; accordingly the body was cut to
pieces, and the flesh separated by boiling ; hence has
arisen the brown colour of the bones, which in all other
respects form a magnificent skeleton."

John Hunter is said to have given £500 for the body
of O'Brien. I doubt if he did anything of the kind, for
I well recollect old Mr. Clift (who was John Hunter's
assistant), telling me when a boy a very different story.*
In Bristol Museum, if I recollect aright, there is, or was,
a stocking of O'Brien hanging against the wall. As far
as I remember the inscription says, " This is the stocking
of O'Brien, the Irish giant, who lies buried in the cathedral
churchyard." At all events, there is but little doubt
that O'Brien was wheeled down John Hunter's fox earth,,
cut up in the area, and boiled down in John's universal
preparation maker. I looked, therefore, upon this boiler
with a certain degree of awe and reverence, and as I got
upon the stool to examine it, I repeated to Merriman a
verse out of the old Winchester song of the workhouse
boy : —

At length the soup-copper repairs did need ;

The coppersmith came, and there he see'd

A dollop of bones lay grizzling there

In the leg of the breeches the poor boy used to wear.

I opened the cover of the boiler and anxiously felt about
in the dark for anything I might find, as I thought it was
just possible that some relics of the great John's cuHnary
operations might still be left. I could not, however, dis-
cover anything except a very old rusty key covered up
with dust at the bottom of the copper. Whether this

* See subsequent correspondence.

JOHN HUNTER EEVIVED.

385

was O'Brien's key I don't know, at all events it is an
interesting relic. John Hunter took care that neither
Mrs. Hunter nor anybody else should go prying about this
copper. The big doors are so arranged that no smell
should escape except up the chimney, and that there should
be more room than at first sight seems possible, for steam-
ing as well as boiling.

My remarks about the giant led to a great deal of
correspondence in Land and Water, which I now append
for future reference : —

Skeleton of O'Beibn the G-iant.— A correspondent to the Bristol
Daily Post writes as follows : —

" Sir : Tour correspondent, Mr. Allen, is in error in supposing that the
skeleton of Patrick Cotter O'Brien, known as Larry O'Brien, the famous
Irish giant, who died at the Clifton Hotwells, and was buried at the
Eoman Catholic church of St. Joseph, Trenchard Street, is in the
museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, London, The skeleton to
which he refers is that of Charles Byrne, who went by the name of
O'Brien, in order to claim descent from some of the Kings of Ireland,
and who died in 1783, at the early age of twenty-two years. Byrne was
said to have measured in his life-time 8ft. 4in. in height ; but it is
doubted by those who know the skeleton whether he quite reached that
standard. Patrick Cotter O'Brien died in 1806, in his forty-sixth year.
His stature exceeded 8ft. 3in., and he was proportionately large, as may
be seen by his shoe and stocking, which are still preserved in the
museum of our Philosophical Institution, and I believe also a cast of his
hand. It is true, a.s stated, that he used to take the covers off the street
lamps, which were then of oil, and not fixed so high as at present, for
the purpose of lighting his pipe ; and I have heard my late father, who
attended him medically, say that it was a habit with him, when in a
room, to rest his arms on top of the door. At his burial, I was assured
by my father, extraordinary pains were taken to prevent the possibility
of his remains being disinterred. O'Brien, who was a man of exceed-
ingly tender disposition, had an intense horror of the anatomists and
the priest who ministered to him in his last illness gave him a promise
that his body should never be disturbed. His coffin was filled with
quick-lime, and it was lowered to an enormous depth into the solid rock.
A ponderous stone was then fastened over it by means of iron bars, and

386 THE giant's skeleton.

the vault was then built up to the level of the ground. Besides all
these precautions, many of his countrymen and friends for a long time
kept watch ; and I have heard my father express his assurance, in
the strongest terms, that all that is mortal of the greatest man of
his age, still lies beneath the earth in Trenchard Street."

" Sir : As Mr. F. Buckland is so anxious to make out the true history
of 0 'Bryan, the Irish giant, whose skeleton is in the Museum of the
Royal College of Surgeons, perhaps the following account of it in Drewry
Ottley's admirable ' Life of John Hunter ' will Jassist him : — Byrne,
or O'Brien, the famous Irish giant, died in 1783, He had been in a
declining state of health for some time previously, and Hunter, anxious
to procure his skeleton, set his man, Howison, to keep watch on his
movements, that he might be sure of securing his body at his death.
Byrne learned this, and, as he had a horror of being dissected, deter-
mined to take such precautions as should ensure his not falling into the
hands of the doctors. He accordingly left strict orders that his body
should be watched day and night until a leaden coflBn could be made,
in which it was to be enclosed, and carried out to sea and sunk. Byrne
died soon after, and in compliance with his directions -the undertaker
engaged some men to watch the body alternately. Howison soon learned
this, found out the house where these men went to drink when off duty,
and gave information to Hunter, who forthwith proceeded thither, with
the view of bribing them to allow the body to be carried ofE. He had
an interview with one of the party at the alehouse, and began by offer-
ing him fifty pounds if he would allow the body to be kidnapped. The
man agreed, provided his companions would consent, and went out to
consult them. He returned shortly, saying that they must have £100.
Hunter consented to this, and thought the affair settled ; but the men
finding him so eager, soon came back with an increased demand, which
was also agreed to ; when further difficulties were found, and larger and
larger demands made, untU, it is said, they raised the price to £500 1
The money was borrowed from Pidcock to pay them. Now, I believe
there were two * giants in those days,' one who died in London, and is
now in the College Museum, and another in Bristol ; the real name of one
of them being Patrick Cotter, who assumed one of the above names. I
know there was a rumour of one being buried at (I think) St. Mary's,
Redcliffe, Bristol : another statement was that the body was carried out
to sea, and then ' committed to the deep.' Perhaps I have now put Mr.
Buckland on the track he wants."

" Patrick Cotter O'Brien was a native of Kinsale, and bom in 1761 .
His real name was ' Cotter,' and his parents were very poor people.
His father let him out, if I may use the expression, when eighteen years

JOHN H [INTER REVIVED.

3S7

of age, to a showman for fifty pounds a year, but Cotter, on arriving'
at Bristol, refused to exhibit unless the man gave him some private re-
mimeration besides food, clothes, and lodging. The showman put him
in prison, and some kind man, finding that the contract was an illegal
one, succeeded in liberating him from it. He then took the field on his
own hook, with such success that he pocketed £30 in three days. He
became ashamed of the plebeian name he bore, so tacked on O'Brien to
it, and said that he was descended from the Irish king, the real ' Brien
Boreau.' He realised a little fortune, and died at CHf ton, when he was
forty-seven years old. This information I got from an Irish gentleman
who says he has often heard the account, and asserts that it is an
authentic one ; but there was a well-known Irish giant named Charles
Byrne, who died in Cockspur Street at the age of twenty-two, some time
in the autumn of 1782. He requested that his body might, after his
death, be thrown iato the sea, and some people assert that his remains
were really put on board a vessel and sunk in the Downs in twenty
fathoms of water, but it was not so. WilUam Hunter gave five hun-
dred pounds for Byrne's body, and it was placed in the Museum of the
College of Surgeons. Now which of these two men does your corre-
pondent, Mr. Buckland, allude to ? Magrath is another big man of the
period. His skeleton adorns Trinity College, Dublin, I believe. Did
Mr. Buckland ever read of the giant and dwarf Congress at Vienna in the
seventeenth century, when the dwarfs, Uke so many Pucks, tormented
the giants nearly out of their senses, and sentinels were stationed to
protect the big specimens of humanity from the little ones ? " — Eve.

" Sir : It appears that the giant who died in London was not the same
individual who was buried at Bristol. It is thought they were identical,
and that Hunter sent a party after the hearse, who overtook it on the
way to Bristol, made the man drunk at a public, then substituted a
weighted cofiin, and slipped back to London with the giant's remains.
As these ' great men,' living and dying about the same time, assumed
names without the king's sign-manual, it is very lUcely that tlie confu-
sion it has caused may have led to the skeleton at the Museum of the
Royal College of Surgeons being incorrectly labelled." — F. H. Salvin.

As I searched about in the copper I fancied the great
John behind me, with his high cheek-bones, bright intelli-
gent eyes, expressive eyebrows, and white hair curled
behind, and his hands in his pockets, smiling his satirical
smile at me and saying, " So, Master Frank, there you are

0 c 2

388 cock's spur growing in his own comb.

again ; you found my body in the vaults of St. Martin's-in-
the-Fields and got me buried in Westminster Abbey twelve
years ago ; and now I find you actually in my house inves-
tigating my private skeleton-making copper. Never
mind, my son, keep up my memory, and perhaps I will
give you a wrinkle about Salmon from my notes that
may be of use to you, a cartload of which (as Sir
William Fergusson rightly said in his last oration in my
honour at the college) Sir Everard Home burnt, and
which are now lost to your generation."

The great John thus wrote to Dr. Jenner:— "I
received your salmon, and just examined enough to want
another." " If you can get me some salmon spawn, I
should like to have it, and out of different places, as it
will be of different ages." " I want to examine the spawn
of fish in the progress of the formation of the young
one." How I should like to show the great physiologist
over my Museum of Economic Fish Culture at South
Kensington ! How pleased he woxild be with my hatching-
troughs, my yearling salmon, and my four-year-old lake
trout ; also, I trust, with my "pyloric appendage" theory,
and my casts of dissections in plaster-of-paris, especially
when painted by my good friend Kolfe— the dear John
was not well up in casting. In my humble way I mean
to follow the steps of my great Master, and am trying to
make such a Bucklandian fish museum as will be appre-
ciated some of these days. My Father left his museum of
Geology to the University of Oxford. It is called the
" Bucklandian Museum."

Close to the boiler are the old (now tumble-down) pig-
styes, and it was doubtless in these very pig-styes that

JOHN HUNTER REVIVED.

389

Jolm Hunter kept the little pigs which he fed with
madder, so as to cause their bones to become red, (See
preparations in the College of Surgeons.) This was doubt-
less also the place referred to -n^hen he wrote : — " I gave
pigs a preference over any other animal, as being easily

cock's spue teansplantbd to his comb.

managed, and breeding perfectly well under the confine-
ment necessary for experiments. I selected a sow and
cut a slit in her ear to distinguish her from the others."
From observations made here, doubtless, came Hunter's
valuable paper on the functions of the ovnria.

In the farmyard, by the pig-stye, no doubt were kept

390

DOUBLE SPUR IN COCK's COMB.

the cocks and hens whose spurs John Hunter cut off and
planted into their combs. In his Hunterian Oration for
1871, Sir William Fergusson, F.K.S., President of the
College of Surgeons, writes : — " Dr. Hamel and John
Hunter were the great animal transplanters, if I may so
call them, of their day." Here are the celebrated pre-

COCK WITH SPUES GltOWING IN HIS COMB.

parations, from Hunter's own hands, of cocks' spurs taken
from their natural locality, growing in their own combs.

By the kindness of Sir William Fergusson and Messrs.
Churchill, of New Burlington Street, I have been allowed
the loan — which I most gratefully acknowledge — of the
blocks used in Sir William's Hunterian Address for 1871.

Mr. Bartlett, of the Zoological Gardens, tells me that

JOHN HUNTER REVIVED.

391

the Prince of Wales received, as a present, one of these
" Hunterian Fowls," the true nature of which Mr.
Bartlett explained to His Koyal Highness.

Mr. Ward, naturalist, of 27, Harley Street, in June,
1871, was good enough to submit to me a cock with a
transplanted spur growing in his comb. Mr. Ward, at
the same time, furnished me with its history. The owner
writes : —

" The bird was brought into Zanzibar from the interior
of Africa, and was purchased by the ex-King of Oude for
fifty guineas, from whom I got him, owing to his crowing
all night, which, among Asiatics, is a sign of death. I
have endeavoured to find out if any bird of the kind has
ever been heard of, but have always been replied to in the
negative. I should feel exceedingly obliged by your
giving me any information you can regarding hira.
Fortunately, I have nine of his breed just hatched, and I
hope they may prove to be the same as regards the
peculiarity of the horn.

" George Bishop.

" Hedenham Lodge, April 30."

The moment I saw the bird, I recognised it as a good
example of the famous experiment of the great John
Hunter. I cannot, of course, deny the foreign origin of
the cock, but I can easily account for the horn in his
comb. One of his own spurs, or even the spur of another
cock, has been cut off and transferred to the comb, in the
substance of which it has taken root and grown. This
experiment is so interesting that I shall quote John
Hunter's own observations from his well-known work on
the blood.

392

HUMAN TOOTH IN COCK's COMB.

" Union of different farts of the same or different todies— TransiMnting or

grafting of parts.

" I have hitherto explained union as taking place only in the division
of corresponding parts of the same living body ; but it is equally
possible to unite different parts of the same or of different bodies by
bringing them into contact under certain circumstances. There is
seldom occasion for such practice ; but accident, or rather want of
attention, has in some cases been the cause of union taking place
between different parts of the body. The chin has been united to the
breast, the tongue to the lips or cheek, etc., and when this happens it
has commonly been through the medium of granulation. The attempt
to unite parts of two different bodies has only been recommended by
Taliacotius. The most extraordinary of all the circumstances respect-
ing union is by removing a part of one body and afterwards uniting it
to some part of another, where on one side there can be no assistance
given to the union, as the divided or separated part is hardly able to do
more than to preserve its own living principle and accept of the union.

" The possibility of this species of union shows how strong the
uniting power must be. By it, the spurs of the young cock can be
made to grow on his comb, or on that of another cock. Teeth, after
having been drawn and inserted into the sockets of another person,
unite to the new socket, which is called transplanting.

"Ingrafting and the inoculating of trees succeed upon the same
principle.

" I took a sound tooth from a person's head ; then made a pretty
deep wound with a lancet into the thick part of a cock's comb, and
pressed the fang of the tooth into this wound, and fastened it with
threads passed through other parts of the comb. The cock was killed
some months after, and I injected the head with a very minute injec-
tion. The comb was then taken off and put into a weak acid, and the
tooth being softened by this means, I slit the comb and tooth into two
halves in the long direction of the tooth. I found the vessels of the
tooth well injected, and also observed that the external surface of the
tooth adhered everywhere to the comb by vessels, similar to the union
of a tooth with the gum and sockets."

There are several of Hunter's preparations now in
the College of Surgeons to show the experiments he
carried out in order to prove his statements as ahove,
thus : —

47. A section of the head of a cock and a human tooth, which was

JOHN HUNTER REVIVED.

393

transplanted, immediately after extraction, into a wound in tlie cock's
comb. The surface of the fang is intimately united to the surrounding
substance of the comb, and, by the injection of the blood-vessels of the
head, vessels are demonstrated passing from those of the comb into the
pulp of the tooth.

48. The other section of the same head and tooth.

49. A section of the comb of a cock into which a human tooth was
similarly transplanted. The surface of the fang of the tooth is in
contact, but not evidently imited with the comb. A pale fleshy growth
extends from the comb into the pulp-cavity ; but it has not, as in the
last preparation, the appearance of a tooth pulp, neither is its vascu-
larity evident.

60. The other section of the same tooth and comb. There is here a
narrow empty space between the surface of the tooth and the adjacent
substance of the comb.

In the farmyard at Earl's Court, besides the cocks
with their spurs in their combs, John Hunter kept likewise
the ducks used for the table, and also for experiment ; for
he writes: — "I took two ducks, and fed one with barle}',
the other with sprats, for about a month, and killed both
at the same time. When they were dressed, the one fed
wholly with sprats was hardly eatable, it tasted so strongly
of fish."

Above the stable was the pigeon-house, in which lived
the pigeons, from the observation of which he was enabled
to write as follows : — " During incubation, the coats of
the crop in the pigeon are gradually enlarged and
thickened, like what happens to the udders of females in
mammalia in the time of uterine gestation. If we allow
either of the parents to feed the brood, the crop of the
young pigeons, when examined, will be discovered to
contain the same kind of curdled substance as that of the
old ones, which passes from thence into the stomach,
where it is to be digested."

394 JOHN hunter's animals AND BIHDS.

This, then, is the philosophical explanation of the
vulgar story of "ijigeon's milk." The poor cocks and
hens, the turkey cocks and the geese in the farmyard, the
eagles, owls, and hawks in the hayloft, and the ostrich in
the cow-house, were all likewise subjected to experiment
to prove that the air-cells in birds' bones and feathers
communicated with the lungs, for he writes : — " I next cut
the wing through the os humeri in another fowl, and,
tying up the trachcea, as in the cock, found that the air
passed to and from the lungs by the canals in this bone.
Hence the story that John Hunter " made a cock breathe
through his wing bones." The same experiment was made
with the OS femoris of a young hawk, and was attended
with a similar result. In the stable-yard were chained
up wolves, jackals, and dogs, whence he obtained those
cui'ious hybrids, " one of which, being three-parts dog, I
gave to my friend Mr. Jenner, of Berkeley." John
Hunter accidentally broke his tendo Achillis, so he set to
work experimenting with dogs ; he divided the tendo
Achillis in several dogs by subcutaneous incision, and
killed the dogs at different periods to see the progress of
the union. There were boxes for the accommodation
of opossums, " which I have often endeavoured to breed
in England. I have brought a great many, and my
friends have assisted me by bringing them or sending
them alive, but I could never get them to breed, so that
I am left to conjecture as to many parts of their economy."
Here also was, in his kennel, the dingo, of which John
says, " he is capable of barking, although not so readily
as a European dog; he is very ill-natured and vicious,
and snarls, howls, and moans like dogs in common." In

JOHN HUNTER KEVIVED.

395

the stables he doubtless kept the donkeys, and the mules,
and the celebrated free marten, " which I had from Ben-
jamin May, Esq., of Denham, near "Oxbridge, who knew
my anxiety to ascertain this point.''

After Merriman and myself had examined the house,
we went into the field in front of John Hunter's sitting-
room. In the middle of the field there is a hollow. This
was formerly a pond, in which John Hunter tried experi-
ments to force Scotch river mussels to form pearls after
the manner of the Chinese experiment. In 1787 he
writes as follows to Sir Joseph Banks : — ■

" Dear Sir Joseph, — I have these two days been
draining the pond, or rather fishing for pearls, the success
of which you will see by the specimens. Those I had
made the experiments on were dead, but there is one
recent. I have a few alive that I mean to put under
experiment ; but I shall open the shell and put in the
extraneous body. If any other method suggests itself to
you, be so good as to inform me. I would not have you
make Lady Banks a present of them; I hope to get
better, at least as large as my thumb."

Here, too, he kept his fish, frogs, leeches, and eels for
experimental purposes. These fish contributed much to
his paper on " Animals Producing Heat." Thus we
read : —

" I froze the tail of a tench, which became as hard as a
board. "When thawed, that part was whiter than common,
and when it moved the whole tail moved as one piece, and
the termination of the frozen part appeared like the joint
on which it moved. On the same day I froze the tails of
two gold-fishes till they became as solid as a piece of

896 hunter's experiments on fish and trees.

wood. They were put into cold water to thaw, and
appeared for some days to be very well ; but that part of
the tails which had been frozen had not the natural colour,
and the fins of the tails became ragged."

John Hunter writes the following Irishism: — "Frogs
live an amazing while after they are dead." As regards
eels, he says : — " I received yours with the eel. I shall
send you back the eel again with the liver, stomach, and
gut removed, and nothing left but a fringe, which passes
down the sides of the backbone, which I took, and still
take, to be the spawn. But I never saw any difference in
it at any time of the year ; and this one you have sent
is similar to all I ha,ve yet seen. I think your stopping
the eels a good plan, but I should suspect they would be
more slippery than hedgehogs." Again — " Have you
begun the eels ? No porpoises — no salmon spawn ; you
see I am very greedy. What the devil becomes of your
eels in the winter."

In the pathway near the house I observed a tree bear-
ing very peculiar incision marks upon the bark. I think
these markings upon the tree were also some of John
Hunter's handiwork, inflicted on it when he was carrying
out experiments on vegetable life apropos to the heat of
vegetables, or more likely as to the relative powers of
union in the bark of a tree as compared with that of the
human skin. The markings were mostly above my head,
but this might be accounted for by the fact that when
J ohn Hunter cut the poor tree about, the markings would
be about the level of his head ; but the growth of the tree
since then would of course carry the markings up many
feet higher. This, again, might have been the very tree

JOHN HUNTER REVIVED.

397

•whose temperature was taken. " I put my long thermo-
meter into the feather of a peacock's tail and introduced
it into a hole in the tree. I began my experiments at six
in the morning. The atmosphere was 57j°, the thermo-
meter in the tree 55°." In one portion of the ground is
a very old mulberry-tree. John Hunter says : " I made
experiments on several trees of different kiads, as pines,
yews, poplars, walnuts." He does not, however, mention
this old mulberry-tree ; but I'U be bound the j)oor old
tree did not escape having holes bored into him by gim-
lets, to take his temperature, or freeze his sap in the spring
months. Oh ! that the mulberry -tree could tell us of the
suffering of his fellow trees in the grounds, years ago, at
the hands of John Hunter! The trees he experi-
mented on were then little saplings, now they are great
big full-grown trees. I should like to examine them all
closely when they are cut down.

Close to the mulberry-tree at one corner of the field is
an artificial mound of earth very much the shape of an
ancient burial tumulus such as we see on the Downs.
The west side of this mound has a passage in it leading
to three cellar-like vaults. This is even now called the
" Lion's Den," and there can be no doubt that John
Hunter used to keep his lions and leopards in this place.

His sitting-room windows face this den, so that he
could readily watch the animals from his easy-chair. This
is doubtless the den from which his leopards escaped, the
incident of which is thus recorded : — Two leopards broke
from their confinement, and got into the yard with the
dogs; a fierce encounter immediately commenced, the
noise of which alarmed the neighbourhood, and quickly

398 hunter's leopards and bull.

brought out Hunter to inquire into its cause. He found
one of the leopards engaged with the dogs, whilst the
other was making his escape over the wall ; and instantly,
though quite unarmed, he ran up and laid hold of both
the animals, which fortunately submitted to be led back
to their den and secured. When the danger was over,
however, he became so agitated at the recollection of it,
that he fainted.

I closely examined these dens, but could find nothing
but a very decrepit old wheel-barrow, which might have
been John Hunter's, from the look of it. In the largest
den, however, I found a post and iron chain, such as is
used for tying up cattle. The block of wood at the end
of this chain is very old and worm-eaten, the chain also
is very much worn. I think there can hardly be a doubt
that this was the post to which John Hunter used to tie
up the little bull which the Queen gave him, and which
little bull nearly killed the great John ; for the story
goes that one day when wrestling with the bull the beast
knocked him down, and would have gored him severely
had not one of the servants driven the animal off with a
stick.

On the top of the " Lion's den " there is a little ram-
part made of bricks and tiles, after the fashion of the top
of a castellated tower — a sort of private fortress, in fact.
The legend is that John Hunter kept a gun here, which
he used to fire off occasionally ; gun or no gun, there is
an excellent look-out from the top of the " Lion's den."
In John Hunter's time. Earl's Court was quite in the
country, and from the Lion's den " he would have had
a good view of Westminster Abbey, little tliinkiug he

JOHN HUNTER REVIVED.

399

would ever be buried there. Near this j)lace is a gate-
way, but neither Merriman nor I could make out whether
this was a " dummy " gateway or intended for use ; but
depend upon it, John Hunter put it there for some pur-
pose. His town house was situated about the middle of
the eastern side of Leicester Square, and extended
through into Castle Street ; and here he established his
museum. The great J ohn Hunter's bust is at the north-
east corner of the Square. Eeader, go and take your hat
off to a wonderful likeness of this great man.

J ohn Hunter used to drive a pair of bay stone-horses to
and fro from Leicester Square to Earl's Court. Foot
writes : — " On being told 6f his death at St. George's
Hospital, on the 16th of October, 1793, on the same day
I recollect having seen his bay stone-horses returning
through Piccadilly hr jie without their master ; and this
cii'cumstance introduced to my reflection the sympathy
which Virgil has -attributed to the war-horse of young
Pallas in his funeral procession : —

" Post Bellator Equus positis insignibus ^thon
It lachrymans."

As I stood on Hunter's " Lion's den," I imagined this
same carriage, with the high-stepping bay stallions, their
coachman in tears, turning in for the last time to this very
gateway, after Mr. Foot had seen them in Piccadilly on the
16th October, 82 years ago, and I pictured to myself the
consternation and grief, which spread like wildfire through
the establishment, on the sad news of "the Master's"
sudden death. From that day the glories of Earl's Court
set. There can never be another John Hunter.

I have thus endeavoured to describe Earl's Court, the

400 THE MEMORY OF THE GEEAT JOHN.

residence of the great and illustrious founder of the Koyal
College of Surgeons, and, to myself, a Demigod. During
my visit to his former residence I almost imagined that I
was in the presence of the great man himself, so little is
the place changed. Mr. Merriman has kindly informed
me that he will send to anybody who asks for it a picture
of John Hunter's house and the "Lion's den" as they now
stand, from drawings made by Mr. Arthur Eoberts.

The memory of John Hunter will always be kept up
by his immortal discoveries in Surgery and Physiology,
by his Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, and
by the window in the new church at Kensington.

I conclude this slight sketch of our great John Hunter
by quoting the words of Sirach as recorded in the Book
of Ecclesiasticus : —

" Let us now praise famous men and our Fathers that
begat us."

" Leaders of the people by their counsels, and by their
knowledge of learning, meet for the people, wise and
eloquent in their instructions."

"All these were honoured in their generations, and
were the glory of their times."

" Their bodies are buried in peace ; but their name
liveth for evermore."

" The people will tell of their wisdom, and the congre-
gation will shew forth their praise."

INDEX.

AcciDKNT to the rhinoceros, 39.
Adhesion of oysters, 126.
Affection in monkeys, 325, 336.
Alaska, seal-hunting in, 319.
Alfred's (King) jewel, 372.
American game, 123.

close time for, 128.

Buffalo, 127.

Indians, fishing instrument

of, 368.
Andaman monkey, a, 341.
Antiquities, 372.
Aquarium at Brighton, 193.

Southport, 217.

Arctic regions, life in, 290, 292,
296, 306.

water in, colour of,

300.

wolf, foot of, 33.

Armour, collection of, 374.
Artists' devices, 9, 13.
Axe, execution, 374.
Axminster, tidal wave at, Sf>7.

Balancing statues, 54.
Barnacles, 201.

from whales, 302.

Bear, Polar, foot of, 75.

footsteps of, 34.

Beard, of monkey, 325, 337.

hair of, 74.

Beaver, footsteps of, 32,

tail of, 33.

Bcsioar stone, the, 221.
Birds, power of flight in, 394.
Bittern, the, 148.
Black page, collar for, 377.
Bladder-nosed seal, 308, 315.

Bleeding, cure for, 166.
Blenheim Palace grounds, 47.
Blind man and dog, 110.
Blubber of seal, 313.
Boats taking the Bore, 348.
Bones of eagle, 265.

birds, structure of, 394.

Books, dummy, titles of, 369.
Booming of the bittern, 150.
Bore, on the Severn, the, 346.

Humber, 357.

Witham, 360.

origin of the word, 360.

Bos Scotticus, 256.
Brain of red-deer, 220,

eagle, 263.

Bream, large, 153, 158.

Brighton aquarium, the, 193.

Buffalo, American, 127.

Bull, John Hunter's, 398.

BuiT, mouse, 42.

Bustard, gular pouch of the, 118.

Byrne, the giant, 383.

Capprks, and their performances, 18,
20.

Camel, foot of, 33.
Canvas-back duck, 130.
Cap for dccr-stalkcrs, 236.
Carp, in tlio Serpentine, size of,
167.

Carrots floating in water, 10.
Cat Show at Crystal Palace, 252.

/Icsh of, as food, 255.

Cats, wild, 243.

~ tail of, 244.

voice of, 245.

*■ defeating an army, 24G.

D D

402 INDEX.

Cats, wild, intestines of, 247.

in France and Spain, 255.

capture of, 250.

Cattle, malformed, lioofs of, 231.

wild, white, 255.

at Tankerville, 258.

Chattering of walrus, 284.
( heirotherium, the, 38.
Chicken and monkey, 342.
Child with two heads, 180.

carried off by eagles, 268.

Church roof of oak from Spanish

Armada, 183.
Cinereous eagle, 267.
Claws of eagle, 266.
Cloisters at Earl's Court, 382.
Close time for sea fish, 83, 92, 94.

seals, 311, 314.

Club for killing seals, 296.

Cock's spur growing in its comb, 389.

comb, with human tooth

grafted in it, 392.
Cod, 90, 194, 195.

spawn, destruction of, 92.

alive in boxes, 90.

Collar for black page, 377.
Comb of cock with spur gi-owing in it,
389.

with human tooth

grafted, 392.
Condover Hall, 374.
Copper for making skeletons, 384.
Cormorant, foot of, 37.
Country customs, 181.
Cow and red deer, hybrid between,

236.
Crab, the, 203.

as food for fish, 202.

food of, 204.

Cricket, singing of, 172.
Crommy heads of Jura, 226.
CromweU, Oliver, at Harting, 183.
Cuttle-fish, 65, 203, 205.

eggs of, 66.

gigantic, 207, 211.

. at Brighton aquainum,

203, 205.

Dangers of sea fishermen, 80, 84.
Daniel in the lions' den, 1.
Darwin and Develoijment, 337.
Deer, red, 9, 219.
salt for, 223.

Deer, red, and railways, 240.

fighting, 232.

brain of, 220.

eating each other's horns,

222.

and cow, hybrid between,

. 236.

curious pouches of, 221.

fossil horns of, 224.

deformed horns of, 225.

hoofs of, 230.

Deer stalkers' cap, 236.
Deformities of deer horns, 225.
Dissecting house, John Hunter's,
382.

Diver, experiences of a, 132.
Dog-fish, 203.

of blind man, 110.

Dollars found at bottom of the sea,
133.

Double-headed snake, 178.

. salmon, 178.

child, 180.

Dragon, the, anatomy of, 2.
Dresses for monkeys, 326.
Dried head of Indian, 57.
Duck, wild, foot of, 36.

canvas-back, 130.

Dummy books, titles of, 369.

Eagle, golden, 261.

carrying off a child, 268.

brain of, 263.

flight of, 264.

wing of, 263.

eye of, 263.

food of, 267.

structure of, 264.

protection of, 267.

claws of, 266.

cinereous, 267.

Eagre, or eygre, the, 360.
Earl's Court, John Hunter's house at,
379.

Earthquakes and sea waves, 358.
"Eclipse" whaling-ship, 295.
Eggs of snakes, 174, 175.

of cuttle-fish, 66.

Elephant's tusk, fossil, 137.

humerus, fossil, 185.

Elk, the, 123.
Emu, the, 48.

INDEX.

403

Emu, foot of, 35.

food of, 49.

Emus at Blenheim Palace, 48.

chased by harriers, 52.

Estuaiy of the Severn, the, 364.
Execution axe, 374.
Eye of eagle, 263.
walrus, 281.

Fat women, 26.

Kire-eatei-s, 20.

Fish, musical, 23, 310, 316.

birds eating, 37.

caught by trawlers, 82.

in the Serpentine, 151.

ponds, cleaning of, 1 59.

Fishing scenes, 5, 8.

instruments of American

. Indians, 368.

in the North Sea, 79.

boats leaving port, 94.

Flesh of cat as food, 255.
Floe seal, 308.
Food of emu, 49.

sawfish, 278.

walrus, 285, 287.

whale, 300.

monkeys, 328.

suricatc, 97, 99.

eagle, 267.

crabs, 204.

wild cats, 248.

Foot, muscles of the, 22, 338.

of bear, 75.

■ Napoleon's charger, 76.

camel, 33.

. emu, 35.

woodpecker, 145,

bittern, 148.

monkey, 338.

Footsteps of beaver, 32.

cormorant, 37.

camel, 33.

— Canada gecso, 34.

ducks, wild, 36.

emu, 35.

kangaroo, 38.

llama, 35.

peccary, 37.

■ ~ Polar bear, 34.

seal, 35.

swan, wild, 36.

wolf, 33.

Forest, origin of word, 242.
Fossil human skeleton, 19.

humerus of elephant, 185.

elephants' tusk, 137.

deer-horns, from Tay and

Thames, 224.
Foxes in Iceland, 87.
Free martens, 238.
Frost, effect of on fish, 395.
Fui- seal, the, 297, 316, 318.
Fiu's, collection of, 323.

GrAJiE, American, 123.

Geese, Canada, footsteps of, 34.

Giant O'Brien, the, 383.

skeleton of, 383.

Gigantic cuttle-fish, 207, 211.
Goats, wild, 271.
Golden eagle, 261.
Grafting of parts of bodies, 392.
Grasshopper, singing of, 172.
Great Grimsby docks, 89.
Greenland seal fisheries, 306.
Grouse disease, the, and eagles, 267.
Guide money for blind men, 116.
Gurnard, sapphirine, colours of, 196.

Hair of South American Indian, 57.

seal, 316.

Halibut, live, 90.
Hamilton wild cattle, 255.
Hand, muscles of the, 22, 338.
Harp seal, 307.
Harpoon for whales, 298.
Harting Benefit Society, 181.

church, 183.

Head of Indian, dried, 57.
Heat of animals and plants, 395.
Hedgehogs, e.xperiraents with, by

John Hunter, 381.
Henry VIII. , portrait of, 4.
Hercules and the hydra, 210.
Herrings, migration of, 194.
Hippocampi, or sea-horses, 202.
Hooded seal, 308, 315.
Hoof of Marengo, Napoleon's charger,
76.

malformed, of deer, 230.

cattle, 231.

sheep, 231.

Horns of doer, 222.

404

INDEX.

Horns of deer, size of, 224.

curious, 226.

deer eating, 222.

fossil, 224.

• wild cattle, 255.

Horse, curious muscles of, 3.

hoofs, of, malformed, 230.

flesh as food, 72.

introduction of, into South

America, 46.

and deer, hybrid between,

239.

Horsehair cloth, manufacture of, 44.
Horse's tail, long, 46.
Humber, bore on the, 357.
Hunter, John, and the whale, 305.

his house iit Earl's

Court, 371.

researches of, 378.

nearly killed by a bull,

398.

■ death of, 399.

Hunting scenes, 3, 4, 11.

seals, 309.

in Alaska, 319.

Hybrid between cows and deer, 236.

horse and deer, 239.

Hydra, the, and Hercules, 210.
is it the octopus ? 210.

loK, ships breaking through the, 290,
292.

seals on the, 309.

Icebergs, 87.
Iceland, 86.
Ichnology, 32, 38.
Indian, dried head of, 57.
Indians, North American, 7.
Intelligence of walrus, 292.

■ monkey, 345.

Intestines of wild cat, 247.

Ironclads, 67.

Ivory from walrus, 286.

Jacob's flocks, colour of, 239.
Jewel of King Alfred, 372.
Jews' holidays, 154.
Jura, deer in, 226.

Kangaroos, track of, 38.

Kangai-oos, tail of, 52.

at Blenheim Palace, 52.

chased by hounds, 54.

cultivation of, 55.

origin of came, 55.

Kensington, notabilities of, 378.

Laban's flocks, colour of, 239.
Labrador seal fishery, 311.
Lamb, Tartarian, 163.
Landseer's (Sir E.), lions, 9.
■ pictures, and the

"red spot," 9, 13.
Leopards, John Hunter's, 397.
Lions, value of, 2.

Sir Edwin Landseer's, 9.

den, at Earl's Court, 398.

Daniel in the, 1.

Lizards, 173.

Llama, foot of, 35.

Lobsters, colour of, 9.

Locomotion discovered by a monkey,

340.

Mackerel, 195.

Malformed hoofs of cattle and deer,
230.

— horns of deer, 225.

Marengo, Napoleon's charger, 76.
Mermaid, a, 27.

Mice and rats sinking a ship, 109.

singing, 99, 103.

parasite in liver of, 42.

Migrations of fish, 194.
Milk of seal, 319.
Moles, uses of, 188.
Monkey, the, 124.

dresses for, 326.

■ — and the parrots, 332.

thieving propensities of,

330.

and Dai-win, 336.

Andaman, the, 341.

and chicken, 342.

and parrot, 332.

■ smoking, 343.

intelligence of, 345.

aflTection in, 325, 336.

beard of, 325, 337.

food of. 328.

foot of, 338.

INDEX.

405

Monkey, pouch of, 331, 337.
Mothei-Mai-kiug, 238, 240.
Mouse burrs, 42.

caught by oyster, 102.

and scorpion, fight between,

139.

Muscles of the foot and hand, 22, 338.

— the kangaroo's legs, 53.

monkey's feet, 338.

under horse's skin, 33.

Museum at Peterhead, 295.
Mussels, pearls from, 273, 395.

Names of fishing smacks, 95.

Napoleon's charger, 76.

Nets destroyed by wrecks, 81.

Nicobar Islands, monkeys in, 344.

North Sea, fishing in the, 79.

Nostrils of walrus, 288.

bladder-nosed seal, 315.

Oak kettles, 87.

O'Brien, the giant, skeleton of, 383.
Ocean, iDeauties of the, 216.
Octopus, the, 65, 203, 205.

enormous, 207, 211.

Oil from seals, 297, 313.

- — - — - walrus, 286.

Old woman, a very, 184.

One-legged girl, 21.

Organs of prehension in various

animals, 205.
Origin of word kangaroo, 55.

forest, 242.

Otters and wild cats, 248.
Oxtail-soup, origin of, 53.
Oyster killing a mouse, 102.

attached to terrapin, 125.

Oysters, American, 123.

power of adhesion of, 126.

Paintino, effects of, 8, 12.
Parasite in stomach of walrus, 291.

liver of mouse, 42.

— on whaio, 302.

Parchment from cat-skin.i, 255.
Parrot, skeleton of, a curious, 29.

and suricate, 99.

monkeys, 332.

Pearls in Scotch rivers, 272.

Pearls in Scotch regalia, 273.
from mussels— experiments hy

J. Hunter, 395.
Peccary, foot of, 37.
Penguin, wng of, 33, 97.
Penny shows, 17.
Perseus and Andromeda, 2, 11.
Peterhead Museum, 295.
" Pigeon's milk," 393.
Pigeon, pouter, the, 121.
Pig with six legs, 26.
Pike whale, the, 301.
Pilgrims on board ship, 65.
Poison of scorpion, 140.
Polar Bear, foot of, 34, 75.
Pole, Cardinal, 191.
Porpoise, the, 199.
death of, at BrightoUj

200.

Potato, sweet, 129.

Pouch of monkey, 331, 337.

■ bustard, 118.

near eye of deer, 221.

Prairie hens, 128.

Putts and putchers for catching
salmon, 366.

Quail, 128.

Eabbit, skeleton resembling a parrot,
30.

Eailways and deer, 240.
Rat with ham-bone round its neck,
101.

— gnawing lead pipes, 185.
Rats and mice sinking a ship, 109.

eaten by Caffres, 18.

Red, effect of, in pictures, 9, 13.

deer, 9, 219.

habits of, 220.

pouch of, 221.

brain of, 220.

Relics found in the Serpentine, 160.
Rhinoceros, ice accident to the, 39,
River pearls, 272, 395.
Robinson Crusoe, 62.
Roman coflin, 190.

Saddle-dack seal, 307.
Salmon, 15.

406

INDEX.

Salmon, instruraents for catcliing,
366.

jumping at sea, 88.

double-headed, 178.

growiih of, 198.

John Hunter's experiments

with, 388.
Salt, deer eating, 223.
Sapphirine, gurnard, colours of, 106.
Saw-fish, food of, 278.
damage by to . telegi'aph

cable, 275.
Scorpion and mouse, fight between,
139.

poison of, 140.

Scotland, opening up of, 219, 240.
Sea-horses, 202.

— fish, close time for, 83, 92. 94.
spawn of, 83, 92.

— snake, the, 65.

— wonders of the, 217.
Seal, the, 23, 84. ,

■ track of, 35.

fisheries, Greenland, 306.

Alaska, 319.

• Labrador, 311.

Seals, saddle-back, 307.

breeding of, 307.

hooded, 308, 315.

bladder-nosed, 308, 315.

floe, 308.

— hai-p, 307.

destruction of, 309.

~ fur, the, 318.

skin of, 297, 316, 321.

-= at Brighton, 200.

— — fcetal, 295.

blubber of, 313.

milk of, 319.

close time for, 311, 314.

oil from, 297, 313.

■ in the South Sea,

322.

Sealing ships, 290.

the "Eclipse," 295.

Seeds, transport.ation of, 45.

Sepia, the, 66 {sea also Octopus and

Cuttle-fish).
Serpentine, fish in the, 151.

curiosities in the, 159.

Severn, bore on the, 346.

Sharks, thresher, and whales, 70, 85.

Sheep with six legs, 28.

Sheep, malformed hoofs of, 231.
Ship sunk by rats, 109.
Show of cats at Crystal Palace,
252.

Singing mice, 99, 103.
Skeleton, John Hunter's mode of pre-
paring, 384.

fossil, 19.

of O'Brien the giant, 383.

Skeletons, living, 24.
Skin of walrus, 282.

seals, 297, 316.

preparation of, 321.

snakes, 170.

Skull of walrus, 284.
Slave's collar, 377.
Sleeping fish, 195.
Snake, habits of, 169.

eggs of, 174, 175.

with two heads, 178.

Solway, bore in the, 359.
Soup from kangaroo's tails, 53.
Southport aquarium, 217.
Spawn of sea-fish, 82.

destruction of, 83,

92.

Sporrans of cats' skins, 244.
Sprags or young cod, 92.
"Spring-heeled Jack," 37.
Spur of cock growing in his comb,
• 389.

Squids, 65 (see also Octopus and

Cuttle-fish).
Statues, balances to, 54.
Steamers, at night, at sea, 83.
Sting of scorpion, 1 40.
Stomach of woodpecker, 1 47.

bittern, 149.

Suricate, the, 96.

Suckers of octopus, 206.

Swan, wild, foot of, 36.

Sword-fish and whales, 85.

found in the Serpentine, 160.

TAiii of beaver, 33.

horse, long, 46.

kangaroo, 52.

wild and tame cats, 244.

rat, 53.

woodpecker, 145.

lizard, 173.

Tankerville wild cattle, 258.

INDEX.

407

Tartaviau lamb, 163.
Teeth of pigs, 189.

walrus, 285.

monkey, 338.

Telegraph cable injured by a saw-
fish, 275.

Temperature of animals and plants,
395.

Tench, tail of, 395.

Tendo AchiHis, rupture and union of,

394.
Terrapin, 124.

vnth oyster attached, 125.

Thresber shark and whale, 70, 85.
Tidal waves, 350.

at Axminster, 357.

at Tynemouth, 365.

Toad, 174.

Tobacco, uses of, 130, 182.
Tongue of woodpecker, 145.
Tooth of saw-fish, 277.

transplanted into cock's comb,

392.

Train monkeys, how to, 345.
Transplanting parts of bodies, 392.
Trawlers in the North Sea, 79.
Trees, temperature of, 396.
Turkey, wild, the, 129.
Turtle, 197.

■ oyster attached to, 125.

Tusks of walrus, 284.

Value of sea-fisheries, 93, 95.

fresh-water fish, 154.

Voice of wild oat, 245.

walrus, 283, 291.

seal, 23, 310, 316.

elephant, 316.

WAtRU-s, the, 280.

eye of, 281.

food of, 285, 287.

intelligence of, 292.

tusks of, 286.

skin of, 282.

Walrus, foot of, 283.

fcetal, 295.

nostrils of, 288.

oil fi-om, 286.

Wapiti, the, 129.
War, episode of, 10.
Water in Ai'otic Sea, colour of,
300.

Waves, tidal, 350.

caused by earthquakes, 358.

Whalebone, value of, 200.
Whales in the Pacific, 70.

aud thresher sharks, 70, 85.

and sword-fish, 85.

age of, 200.

harpoon for, 298.

velocity of, 299.

food of, 300.

pike, the, 301.

baraacles from, 302.

Whaling ships, 290.

the "Eclipse," 295.

Whiskers of walrus, 283.
White wild cattle, 255.
Wild duck, the, 36.

swan, track of, 36.

turkey, 129.

cats, 243.

tail of, 244.

in Erauoe and Spain,

255.

food of, 248.

voice of, 245.

defeating an army, 246.

intestines of, 247.

capture of, 250.

cattle, white, 255.

at Tankerville, 258.

■ goats, 271.

Wing of eagle, 263.

penguin, 33, 97.

Wolf hounds, 6.

Arctic, foot of, 33.

hunting in America, 127.

Wolves' heads, as ta.\es, 0.

Woodpecker, the, 144.

Wrecks, in the North Sea, 81, 88.

THE KND.

DRADBURV, AQMEU', Si CO., PP.I.VTKRH, Wll ITEFItlAnS.