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ZOOLOGICAL RECREATIONS

BY

W. J. BKODERIP, F.R.S.

He prayeth Best who loveth best
All things both great and small ;

F or the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all. — Coleridge.

LONDON:

WARD, LOCK, AND TYLER,

PATERNOSTER ROW, E.O

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2018 with funding from
University of Toronto

https://archive.org/details/zoologicalrecrea00brod_2

TO

RICHARD OWEN, M.D., F.R.S.,

HUNTEBIAN PEOFESSOE IN' THE EOYAL COLLEGE OF STJEGEONS OF

ENGLAND*

My dear Owen,

In dedicating to yon tliis little book, which
would never have appeared in its present form without your
suggestion and encouragement, I have only to hope that it will
not be deemed entirely unworthy of association with your name.

I am,

My dear Owen,

Your sincere Friend,

W. J. BEODERIP.

* My distinguished friend has left the College in which he had done so much for Science,
to preside over the Natural History Departments of the British Museum ; where, it may
safely be predicted, he will do much more.

W. J. B.

CONTENTS

PAGE

SINGING BIRDS ...... 1

RESIDENT SINGING BIRDS . . . . .12

MIGRATORY SINGING BIRDS . . . . .27

THE CUCKOO . . . . . .68

owls . . . . . . .82

PARROTS ........ 110

TURKEYS ....... 120

WILD SWANS . . . . . . .138

TAME SWANS ...... 151

A WORD TO ANGLERS . . . . . .167

MAY . . . . . . .172

DOGS . . . . . . .173

CATS ....... 190

APES AND MONKEYS ...... 210

AMERICAN MONKEYS ...... 225

APES AND MONKEYS OF THE OLD CONTINENT . . . 234

ELEPHANTS ....... 250

DRAGONS ....... 324

SEA-DRAGONS . . . . . .337

ANCIENT AMPHIBIOUS AND TERRESTRIAL DRAGONS . . 349

ANCIENT FLYING DRAGONS . . . . .367

POSTSCRIPT ....... 379

The Papers liere collected, were commenced by tlie particular
desire of one whose name cannot be written without a renewal of
the regret, felt so deeply, by so many, for his untimely loss. The
brilliancy of Theodore Hook’s wit, vivid, but innocuous as summer
lightning, was only equalled by the goodness of bis heart, and
when he sank,

‘ Like a bright exhalation in the evening,’

he left a dark void, which those who had the happiness of en¬
joying his charming society, can never hope to see brightened
again. For his sparkling conversation flowed continually, and
without effort, like an exuberant Artesian well. There was no
straining for effect : all was easy — springing from the gaiety of
a soul warmed by the presence of those whom he loved.

These pages appeared in the Hew Monthly Magazine under
his editorship. When the inimitable Thomas Hood — another
irreparable loss— -succeeded the lamented Theodore, the ‘Recrea¬
tions/ were continued at his request ; and they were concluded
when that periodical passed into the able hands of William
Harrison Ainsworth.

VI

PREFACE.

The ‘ Recreations ’ have had the good fortune to receive some
marks of public approbation ; but the author, who sketched them
as a relief from more severe studies and duties, would never
have thought of reprinting them, had not the great Comparative
Anatomist named in the dedication, and other scientific friends,
urged their re-publication, under the impression, that when
brought together, they might form a handbook which might
cherish, or even awaken a love for Natural History.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

In the multitude of counsellors there is safety ; in the multitude
of readers there is fame. The price of the former editions —
though that of the last was reduced — placed this little book
beyond the reach of those who had not some relationship with
Croesus. I now find, with sincere satisfaction, that a New Edition
is called for, at a rate which will put it in the power of every
lover of Natural History to possess ‘ Zoological Recreations.’
May they be received tby the many with as much kindness as
they have met with from the comparatively few ; and may my
new patrons be as easily pleased as my numerous old readers.

W. J. BRODERIP.

London, November, 1857.

ZOOLOGICAL RECREATIONS.

SINGING BIRDS.

‘Anna-Marie, love, np is the sun,

Ann a -Marie, love, morn is begun,

Mists are dispersing, love, birds singing free,

Up in the morning, love, Anna-Marie.’

Ivan:: on.

The melody of birds finds its way to the heart of every one;
but the cause that prompts the outpourings that make copse, rock,
and river ring again on a fine spring morning is more a matter
of doubt with ornithologists than the uninitiated in zoological
mysteries might suppose. Much has been written on this subject ;
but, upon a consideration of the different opinions, aided by our
own observations, we are inclined to think that love and rivalry
are the two great stimulants, though we do not mean to deny
that a bird may sing from mere gaiety of heart arising from
finding itself in the haunts dear to it, and in the midst of plenty
of the food it likes ; to give vent, in short, to the buoyancy of
spirit arising from general pleasurable sensations.

In this country the season of reproduction is undoubtedly that
wherein —

1 The isle is full of pleasant noises,

Sounds, and sweet airs that give delight.’

And about ten weeks have been mentioned as the period during
which most of our wild birds are in song. That there are excep¬
tions to this rule there is no doubt. We have heard a wild
thrush, one of the sweetest singers of his tribe, sing far into
September, but we watched narrowly, and never could find that he
had a mate. Then, again, we have the autumnal and even the
winter notes of the robin long after the breeding season ; and
caged birds, if well fed and kept, will sing the greatest part of the
year.

n

4

SINGING BIRDS.

sively that birds have not any innate ideas of the notes which are
supposed to be peculiar to each species. But it will possibly be
asked, why, in a wild state, they adhere so steadily to the same
song, insomuch that it is well known, before the bird is heard,
what notes you are to expect from him? This, however, arises
entirely from the nestling’s attending only to the instruction of the
parent bird, whilst it disregards the notes of all others, which
may, perhaps, be singing around him. Young Canary birds are
frequently reared in a room where there are many other sorts, and
yet I have been informed that they only learn the song of the
parent cock. Every one knows that the common house-sparrow,
when in a wild state, never does anything but chirp ; this does not,
however, arise from want of power in this bird to imitate others,
but because he only attends to the parental note.’

Two points in this interesting description will be noted by the
observer, and the question will occur — how was the first bird of
each species taught, and is not the assertion touching the sparrow
somewhat bold?

The difficulty surrounding the first is more apparent than real ;
for if it be granted that species were created, all the distinctions
of voice and plumage follow of course ; and it will equally follow
that they have been regularly transmitted down to the present
period in such species as have not become extinct. With regard
to the second we shall permit Mr Barrington to speak for himself,
for he has proved the fact : —

‘ To prove this decisively, I took a common sparrow from the
nest, when it was Hedged, and educated him under a linnet; the
bird, however, by accident, heard a goldfinch also, and his song
was, therefore, a mixture of the linnet and goldfinch.’

The same experimentalist educated a young robin, under a very
fine nightingale, which, however, began already to be out of song,
and was perfectly mute in less than a fortnight ; the scholar
afterwards sang three parts in four nightingale, and the rest of his
song was what the bird-catchers call ‘ rubbish,’ or no particular
note whatever.

Bechstein observes that nearly all birds when young will learn
some strain whistled or played to them every day ; but those only
whose memory is retentive will abandon their natural song and
adopt fluently the air that has been taught them. In proof of
this position, he adduces the cases of the goldfinch and bullfinch,
stating that a young goldfinch will, indeed, learn some part of the
melody played to the bullfinch, but will never repeat the lesson so
perfectly as the latter, and that this difference is not caused by
the greater or less flexibility of the organ of the voice, but rather
by the superiority of the bullfinch’s memory.

PRACTISING OR RECORDING.

In the cultivation and management of tiie human voice, and to
keep up its tone, and the power of execution, we know how neces¬
sary constant practice is ; and we find the same sort of discipline
resorted to both by caged birds, and those which pour forth their
4 wood notes wild.’

4 It is remarkable,’ says Bechstein, 4 that birds which do not
sing all the year, such as the redbreast, siskin, and goldfinch, seem
obliged, after moulting, to learn to warble, as though they had
forgotten ; but I have seen enough to convince me that these
attempts are merely to render the larynx pliant, and are a kind of
chirping, the notes of which have but little relation to the proper
song ; for a slight attention will discover that the larynx becomes
gradually capable of giving the common warble. This method of
recovering the song does not, then, show deficiency of memory,
but liability to rigidity, occasioned by disuse of the larynx. The
chaffinch will exercise itself in this way some weeks before it at¬
tains its former proficiency, and the nightingale practises as long
the strains of his beautiful song, before he gives it full, clear, and
in all its extent.’

This ‘practising’ is termed by our British bird-fanciers and
bird-catchers, 4 recording,’ a word, according to Daines Barrington,
probably derived from the musical instrument formerly used in
England, called a ‘recorder,’* which seems to have been a species
of flute, and was probably used to teach young birds to pipe notes.
The term ‘recording’ is more particularly used by the same fra¬
ternity, to distinguish the attempt of the nestling to sing, and which
may be compared to the babble of a child in its imperfect endea¬
vours to articulate.

4 1 have known,’ says Barrington, 4 instances of birds beginning
to record when they were not a month old. This first essay does
not seem to have the least rudiments of the future song ; but as
the bird grows older and stronger, one may begin to perceive
what the nestling is aiming at. Whilst the scholar is thus en¬
deavouring to form his song, when he is once sure of a passage
he commonly raises his tone, which he drops again when he is not
equal to what he is attempting ; just as a singer raises his voice,
when he not only recollects certain parts of a tune with precision,
but knows that he can execute them. What the nestling is not
thus thoroughly master of, he hurries over, lowering his tone, as
if he did not wish to be heard, and could not yet satisfy himself.
A young bird commonly continues to record for ten or eleven
months, when he is able to execute every part of his song, which
afterwards continues fixed, and is scarcely ever altered. When

* The passage in ‘Hamlet’ will occur to every one.

G

SINGING BIRDS.

the bird is thus become perfect in his lesson, he is said to sing his
song round , or in all its varieties of passages, which he connects
together, and executes without a pause.’

Barrington defines a bird’s song to be a succession of three or
more different notes, which are continued without interruption
during the same interval with a musical bar of four crotchets in
an adagio movement, or whilst a pendulum swings four seconds.
Now let us see what notes have been detected in the song.
Observers have marked f natural in woodlarks ; a in thrushes ;
c falling to a commonly in the cuckoo ; a natural in common
cocks ; b flat in a very large cock ; d in some owls ; b flat in others.
Thus we have a, b flat, c, d, and f, to which Barrington adds g,
from his own observations on a nightingale which lived three years
in a cage ; and he confirms the remarks of the observer who fur¬
nished him with the list, and says he has frequently heard from the
same bird c and f. To prove the precision of the pitch of these
notes, the b flat of the spinnet by which he tried them was per¬
fectly in tune with the great bell of St Paul’s, e, then, is the only
note wanting to complete the scale ; but, as he says, the six other
notes afford sufficient data for making some conjectures with re¬
gard to the key in which birds may be supposed to sing, as these
intervals can only be found in the key of f with a sharp third, or
that of g with a flat third ; and he supposed it to be the plaintive
flat third, that affecting tone which, in the simple ballad, or c wild
and sad’ chorus, so comes home to our bosoms.

‘ Oft have I listened, and stood still,

As it came softened op the hill,

And deemed it the lament of men,

Who languished for their native glen.’

Barrington pronounces in favour of the flat third, because he
agrees with Lucretius, that man first learnt musical notes from
birds, and because the cuckoo, whose c plain song’ has been most-
attended to, performs it in a flat third. He strengthens his
argument by showing that most of our simple compositions — old
melodies such as ‘Morva B-hydland,’ and ancient music generally
• — are almost always in a flat third. The music of the Turks and
Chinese, he also adduces as having half of the airs in a minor
third, which is ‘adapted to simple movements such as may be
expected in countries where music hath not been long cul¬
tivated.’

It will appear, however, from the following observations collected
by White, in his enchanting History of Selborne, that neither
cuckoos nor owls keep to one key. One musical friend informs
the natural historian that all the owls that are his near neighbours

CONVERSATIONAL NOTES OF BIRDS. 7

hoot in b flat. But in the nest letter to the author whom we hare
•so largely quoted, dated August 1, 1771, before the publication of
that zoologist’s memoir on the singing of birds, in the Philosophical
Transactions, bearing date 1773, White says that a friend remarks
that many (most) of his owls hoot in b flat ; and that one went
almost half a note below a. He adds, that a neighbour with a
nice ear remarked that the owls about Selborne hooted in three
different keys, — namely, in g- flat, or f sharp, in b flat, and a flat.
‘He heard two hooting to each other, the one in a flat, and the
other in b flat.’ The same person found that the note of the
cuckoo varied in different individuals ; for, about Selborne wood,
he observed, they were mostly in d ; he heard two sing together,
the one in d, the other in d sharp, ‘who made a disagreeable
concert;’ [one should think as much.] He afterwards heard one
in d sharp, and, about Wolmer forest, some in c.

It may seem a rather Milesian method of treating the subject of
singing birds, to dwell so long upon the notes of cocks, owls, and
cuckoos ; but we shall find that the distinctness and simplicity of
intonation in these birds afford a much better chance of accurately
determining the key than the rapid gush of song of the true warb¬
lers ; and it will be necessary, before we enter upon the melodies of
that exhilarating tribe, to draw the reader’s attention to what may
be called the conversational notes of birds.

Those which congregate in bushes keep up a constant twittering,
as if to apprise each other of their presence ; and all have
notes expressive of alarm, or satisfaction, to say nothing of the
language of incubation. These powers may be particularly re¬
marked in the common poultry. The peculiar shrill cry with
which the bird of dawning, with uplifted eye, and head raised on
one side, to give the widest upward sweep to his vision, gives
warning of the horrible advent of the kite or sparrow-hawk ; the
note with which he gallantly calls his seraglio about him, to feast on
the barleycorn which he has found and saved for them ; the exulting
cackle of Dame Partlet giving notice that one more milk-white egg
is added to the careful henwife’s treasure, a cackle that is caught
up from farm-yard to farm-yard, till the whole village is in an
uproar, must be familiar to every one : even the newly-hatched
chicken — it is White, we believe, who makes the observation — will
seize a fly, if offered to it, with complacent twitterings ; but if a
wasp be tendered, a note of aversion and distress is the conse¬
quence.

The wild fowl, in their lofty aerial flights, keep up a constant
watch-note of communication with each other ; and far and wide
in the silence of night does their cry resound. The windpipes of
many of these are complete wind instruments ; that of the wild

8

SINGING BIRDS.

swan takes a turn within the sternum somewhat after the fashion of
a French horn or bugle. May not these unearthly sounds, heard
from on high,

‘At the lone midnight hour, when had spirits have power,’

have assisted the legions of the ghostly huntsman, and his wild
chase in the air, sweeping overhead like the rush of withered
leaves ?

The call , as it is technically termed, of singing birds seems to
have an almost miraculous power over the race, as the bird-
catcher well knows.

‘ When the bird-catcher hath laid his nets, he disposes of his
call-birds at proper intervals. It must be owned that there is a
most malicious joy in these call-birds to bring the wild ones into
the same captivity, which may likewise be observed with regard
to the decoy ducks. Their sight and hearing infinitely excel those
of the bird-catcher. The instant that the wild birds are perceived,
notice is given by one to the rest of the call-birds , (as it is by the
first hound that hits on the scent, to the rest of the pack,) after
which follows the same sort of tumultuous ecstasy and joy. The
call-birds , while the bird is at a distance, do not sing as a bird
does in a chamber ; they invite the wild ones by what the bird-
catchers call short jerks, which, when the birds are good, may be
heard at a great distance. The ascendancy by this call, or invita¬
tion, is so great, that the wild bird is stopped in its course of
flight, and, if not already acquainted with the nets, lights boldly
within twenty yards of perhaps three or four bird-catchers, on a
spot which otherwise it would not have taken the least notice of.
Nay, it frequently happens that, if half a flock only are caught,
the remaining half will immediately afterwards light in the nets,
and share the same fate ; and should only one bird escape, that
bird will suffer itself to be pulled at till it is caught — such a fasci¬
nating power have the call-birds

We do not mean to detain the reader upon a bird-catching
expedition — though it would be more full of interest than some
would think — but he ought to know, before he goes on one, that
a bird acquainted with the nets is by the bird-catchers termed a
sharper; him they endeavour to drive away, as they can have no
sport in his company. It is worthy of note, too, that even in their
captivity the natural instinct of the call-birds is in many points no
whit blunted ; for the moment they see a hawk, caged though
they be, they communicate the alarm to each other, by a plaintive
note, nor will they then jerk or call, though the wild birds are near. I

* Barrington on the small Birds of flight.

f Ibid.

THE MOCKING BIHD.

0

It is in the Insessorial order * of birds that the songsters abound,
but there is one remarkable exception among the Raptorial order,
in that warbling African, Le Faucon Chanteur j- of Le Vaillant,
perhaps the only known bird of prey — Cuvier says the only known
one — that sings agreeably. Its song is very sweet, but dangerous
as the lay of the Syrens, and

‘Mocks the dead hones that lie scattered hy.’

Few spots are more musical with song-birds than these islands.
Not that the woods of America are mute — but they want the
brilliant variety of ours ; and one of her sons, who has so well
deserved of the lovers of natural history in all countries, has
endeavoured to colonize the Transatlantic groves with the feathered
songsters of Britain. And yet they have that wonderful polyglot
the Mocking-bird*! Him we have seen and heard in captivity, and
— but Wilsou has immortalized the bird with his graphic pen, and,
in all humility, we lay down ours.

‘ The ease, elegance, and rapidity of his movements, the anima¬
tion of his eye, and the intelligence he displays in listening and
laying up lessons from almost every species of the feathered
creation within his hearing, are really surprising, and mark the
peculiarity of his genius. To these qualities we may add that of
a voice full, strong, and musical, and capable of almost every
modulation, from the clear mellow tones of the wood-thrush, to
the savage screams of the bald eagle. In measure and accent, he
faithfully follows his originals. In force and sweetness of expres¬
sion, he greatly improves upon them. In his native groves,
mounted on the top of a tall bush or half-grown tree, in the dawn
of a dewy morning, while the woods are already vocal with a
multitude of warblers, his admirable song rises pre-eminent over
every competitor. The ear can listen to his music alone, to which
that of all the others seems a mere accompaniment. Neither is this
strain altogether imitative. His own native notes, which are
easily distinguishable by such as are well acquainted with those of
our various song birds, are bold and full, and varied seemingly
beyond all limits. They consist of short expressions of two,
three, or at the most five or six syllables ; generally interspersed •
with imitations, and all of them uttered with great emphasis and
rapidity ; and continued, with undiminished ardour, for half-an-
hour or an hour at a time ; his expanded wings and tail, glisten¬
ing with white, and the buoyant gaiety of his action, arresting the
eye, as his song most irresistibly does the car. He sweeps round

* Insessores— Perching birds. f Falco musicus of Daudin.

I Orpheus polyglottus.

10

SINGING BIRDS.

with enthusiastic ecstasy — he mounts and descends as his song
swells or dies away ; and, as my friend Mr Bartram has beauti¬
fully expressed it, ‘ He bounds aloft with the celerity of an arrow,
as if to recover or recall his very soul, expired in the last elevated
strain.’ While thus exerting himself, a bystander, destitute of
sight, would suppose that the whole feathered tribes had assembled
together on a trial of skill, each striving to produce the utmost
effect, so perfect are his imitations. lie many times deceives the
sportsman, and sends him in search of birds that perhaps are not
within miles of him, but whose notes he exactly imitates ; even
birds themselves are frequently imposed on by this admirable mimic,
and are decoyed by the fancied calls of their mates, or dive with
precipitation into the depths of thickets, at the scream of what
they suppose to be the sparrow-hawk. The mocking bird loses
little of the power and energy of his song by confinement. In
his domesticated state, when he commences his career of song, it
is impossible to stand by uninterested. He whistles for the dog ;
Caesar starts up, wags his tail, and runs to meet his master. He
squeaks out like a hurt chicken, and the hen hurries about with
hanging wings, and bristled feathers, clucking to protect its injured
brood. The barking of the dog, the mewing of the cat, the creak¬
ing of a passing wheelbarrow, follow, with great truth and rapidity.
He repeats the tune taught him by his master, though of con¬
siderable length, fully and faithfully. He runs over the quiverings
of the canary, and the clear whistlings of the Virginia nightingale
or red-bird, with such superior execution and effect, that the
mortified songsters feel their own inferiority, and become altogether
silent, while he seems to triumph in their defeat by redoubling his
exertions. * * * * Both in his native and

domesticated state, during the solemn stillness of night, as soon as
the moon rises in silent majesty, he begins his delightful solo, and
serenades us the livelong night with a full display of his vocal powers,
making the vdiole neighbourhood ring with his inimitable medley.’

But we must return to the singing birds of Britain, which may
be divided into two classes, the regular visitors, and the residents.
Food is the principal motive that induces migration on the part of
the former, which, like Grisi, Tamburini, Rubini, and, though
last not least, Lablache, leave the more genial climes of the south
to shiver in the spring of our more austere shores, delighting our
ears, and revelling in the harvest made ready for them. But we
are not entirely dependent on these warbling strangers, for wre
number among our residents many birds that in sweetness of tone,
if not in brilliancy of execution, rival their visitors.

What with the influenza and the cutting easterly winds, it has
been, Heaven knows, a bitter black season for us unfeathered bi-

RESIDENT AND MIGRATORY.

11

peds, but it lias been worse than bitter for the birds. What a
month was the

‘ Month before the month of May !

Well did it justify the corresponding line, telling us that
‘ The spring comes slowly up this way.’

The berries were almost all gone, the insects, wisely, came not forth,
and, in short, the supplies were all but stopped. Yerily there hath
not been much disposition

‘ To forestal sweet Saint Valentine’

* *

this year. But now, while we are writing, the redstart, which
seldom, it is true, appears among us before the middle of April,
and is often not seen till the end of that month, is running on the
grass plat, picking up its insect-food, and vibrating its tail at the
close of every run, its white cap and black gorget contrasting
strongly in the sunshine. It is a blessed change. The swallows
are come, and they do make a spring, if not a summer.

When we proceed to enumerate the different species of singing
birds, we shall inquire as to the time of year when each may be
considered, generally speaking, to be in full song. At present we
shall merely observe, that it depends in great measure both upon
the health and spirits of the individual, and the state of the weather.
Not that any of them, hardly, are to be heard in anything like full
song in January, except very rarely. February, March, and April,
are more and more tunable. Often, in the latter month, the chill
gloomy morning, rendered more dreary by a cutting easterly wind,
clears away into a fine warm afternoon. In such mornings, while
Eurus predominates, everything around is silent, with the exception
of the murmur of the brook; but the wind changes, the clouds dis¬
perse, forth breaks the sun, the insects swarm, the tuneful stream
becomes alive with the rising trouts, and the groves burst out into
melody.

In May, 4 the mother of love,’ the year is more confirmed, and
every garden, orchard, and copse rivals the singing tree of the
Arabian story. Now it is that the full power of song is developed;
witness the clear mellow pipe of that blackbird perched on the tall¬
est acacia in the garden, while his mate, with half-shut eyes, and
pressing her little ones to her bosom, listens in security on her nest
in yonder hawthorn hedge spangled with its dewy Mayflower blos¬
soms.

May, 1837.

SINGING BIRDS-RESIDENTS.

‘ Within the hush, her covert nest
A little linnet fondly prest,

The dew sat chilly on her breast,

Sae early in the morning.’

Buhns.

No: every green tiling lias not been sacrificed to the Frost-Genius.
Nights, rivalling the Iron Nights of the Swedish calendar, have, in¬
deed, done their work; and it may be doubted whether the horti¬
culturist lias had so much cause for lamentation since the 1 Black
Spring’ of 1771. Numbers are mourning their dead rhododen¬
drons, azaleas, and magnolias, and not a few have to sigh over
their withered bays, to say nothing of laurustinuses and roses —
even the hardy holly has, in some places, perished in its death-
struggle with the weather.

The determined lingering of winter in the lap of spring seems
to have checked every effort of vegetable life, producing one of the
most backward seasons remembered. This has had its effect upon the
Singing Birds; for, as the food of their nestlings consists almost
entirely of caterpillars and of insects generally in the early stages
of development, or of worms and slugs, all of which depend upon
plants for subsistence, their song, and incubation — there have been
exceptions, doubtless — are late this year. We saw one instance of
the ravenous eagerness with which the half-starved creatures at¬
tacked and made prey of some of the first flowers that dared to
show themselves. On a fine sunny morning after the first of the
one or two comparatively warm nights that came in March, the
garden, which on the preceding day had £ made no sign,’ was bright
with crocuses — every one of which the birds devoured or destroyed
before noon.

Of all the British resident Song-birds, the Merulidce are the
most remarkable for the strength of their vocal powers, and the
first of this family that claims our attention, for it is a brumal as
well as an early vernal songster, is a very curious bird, not
uncommon in some localities, but extremely rare in others, and
concerning which much of the marvellous has been written. If

THE DIPPER.

13

we are to believe some authors, the Water-Ouzel, Water Black¬
bird, or Dipper,* Der Wasserscliwatzer of the Germans, Merle
d'eau of the French, and Tor do del agua of the Spaniards, delibe¬
rately descends into the water, and walks about on the bottom of
the stream with the same ease and complacency as if it were
stepping on the dry land. Now, to say nothing of that ex¬
tremely impracticable law of which we are reminded every hour of
the day, and more especially 4 when china falls,’ the structure of
the bird itself is not adapted for such a feat ; and though we have
no doubt of its subaqueous habits, which have food more than frolic
for their object, we are more than sceptical as to its pedestrian
performances in such a situation. Mr Macgillivray, who writes
as none can write who have not beheld what they write about,
informs us that he has seen the Dipper moving under water in
situations where he could observe it with certainty, and he found
that its actions were precisely similar to those of the Divers,
Mergansers, and Cormorants, which he had often watched from an
eminence as they pursued the shoals of sand-eels along the shores
of the Hebrides. It, in fact, flew ; not merely employing the
wing from the carpal joint, but extending it considerably, and
availing itself of the whole expanse, just as it would have done if
it had been moving in the air. The general direction of the body
was obliquely downwards ; and great force was evidently used to
counteract buoyancy, the bird finding it difficult to keep itself at
the bottom. Mr Macgillivray remarks that Colonel Montagu
wrell describes the appearance which it presents under such
circumstances ; and the former goes on to state that, in one or
two instances vdiere he has been able to perceive it under water,
it appeared to tumble about in a very extraordinary manner, with
its head downwards, as if pecking something, and at the same
time great exertion of both wings and legs vras used. The
bird urns, we doubt not, at this time capturing the fresh-water
mollusca and insect-larvae which form its principal aliment. When
searching for food, the Dipper, according to Mr Macgilivray,
docs not proceed to great distances under water ; but, alighting
on some spot, sinks, and soon reappears in the immediate neigh¬
bourhood, when it either dives again, or rises on the wing to drop
somewhere else on the water, or to settle on an insulated stone in
the midst of the brook. The same ornithologist broadly, and
as we believe, truly, states that the assertion of its -walking below
the surface, which some persons have ventured, is neither made
good by observation nor countenanced by reason. Its short legs,
and long, curved claws, are, as he says, very ill adapted for running,

* Cinclus aquaticus — Turclus Cinclus of Linnaeus.

14

RESIDENT SINGING BIRDS.

but admirably calculated for securing a steady footing on slippery
stones, whether above or beneath the surface of the water.

The sonorous song of this extraordinary bird startles the ear
as it comes mingled with the hoarse tones of the torrent, or the
rushing of the wintry waterfall, sometimes in the midst of a
snow-storm. Mr Rennie, who remarks that it is one of the few
birds that are vocal so early in the year as the months of January
and February, heard it, on the 11th of the latter month — in a hard
frost, when the thermometer in the morning had been at 2G°,
sing incessantly in a powerful and elegant style, with much
variation in the notes, many of which were peculiar to itself,
intermingled with a little of the piping of the Woodlark. The
day was bright whilst it was singing, but it was freezing in the
shade ; and the sun, which had considerably passed the meridian,
was obscured from the songster by the lofty surrounding hills.
The same author declares that the Dipper consumes a considerable
quantity of fishes’ spawn, and, especially, of the ova of the salmon.
Bechstein, who also notices its winter music, alleges that it sings,
moreover, in the night.

The nest is as curious as the bird that makes it. In shape it a
good deal resembles that of a Wren, having a dome or roof, but
it is not so deep. Externally it is formed of water-plants, or
closely-interwoven moss; within, there is a lining of dry leaves.
The access to the hollow chamber is through an aperture in the
side. It is often placed in some mossy bank overhanging the
stream,

‘ Where the lady-fern grows longest,'

and has been detected under a projecting stone forming part cf a
cascade, and behind a sheet of falling water. Through this liquid
glassy curtain the bird darted to its home. The eggs, from four
to six in number, are white, and pointed at the end ; and where-
ever the nest is placed, such care is taken by the old birds to
assimilate its hues to those of the locality, that, large as it is, the
most acute eye is often unable to detect it. There is an excellent
vignette of the Dipper’s nest in Mr Yarrell’s delightful ‘ History of
Dritish Birds.’*

This Water Blackbird is not uncommon in Scotland, nor in the
North and West of England. In Wales and Ireland it frequently
occurs. Mr Yarrell mentions one which was seen at a water¬
mill, near Wyrardisbury, on the Colne, about two or three
hundred yards above the place at which that river falls into the
Thames, just below Bell Weir, well known to the angler who

* 8vo. London, Van Voorst.

THE MISSEL THRUSH.

15

goes after the great trouts. The bird, he adds, has also been seen
on the Mole, near Esher, and in Essex; but it is seldom found in
the counties near London.

Next in order comes the Missel Thrush,* la Draine of the French,
and Misteldrossel of the Germans. Perched on the top of the yet
leafless tree, he pours forth his loud and often-repeated strain of
melancholy, but musical cadences, —

‘ While rocking winds are piping loud,’

amid all the meteoric rudeness of February. The advent of the
storm is hailed by him in notes of more than ordinary power ; and
so remarkable is this habit, that it has obtained for the bird, in
many counties, the name of Storm Cock. Self-possessed and daring,
this, one of the largest of the British Thrushes, will suffer hardly
any animal to approach its haunts during the season of incubation;
hence the Welch call him Pen y Llwyn , the head or master of the
coppice; for he will not tolerate the presence of any thievish
Magpie, Jay, or Crow, but drives them from the spot with loud
cries. So pugnacious are both the sexes at this period, that the
hen bird has been known to fly at the face of man when he has dis¬
turbed her while sitting. White acknowledges the success with
which the Missel Thrush frequently repels the invader; but he once
saw in his garden at Selborne a sad exception to the general rule.
Several Magpies came down in a body, determined to storm the
nest of the poor Missel Thrushes, who ‘ defended their mansion
with great vigour, and fought resolutely pro aris et focis; but num¬
bers at last prevailed; they tore the nest to pieces, and swallowed
the young alive.’

The food of the Missel Thrush consists of slugs, worms,
insects, &c., with no small addition of berries, among which that
of the misseltoe (whence its name) is a decided favourite. The
nest, which is begun in April, is generally placed in the fork of a
tree, sometimes carefully concealed, but at others, remarkably
exposed: it presents externally a mass of coarse stems of plants,
moss, withered grasses, and lichens. Within, it is stuccoed with
mud or clay, which is again lined with delicate dry grasses, on
which are laid four or five eggs more than an inch long, generally
of a greenish white spotted with ruddy brown, but the colour
occasionally varies to pinkish or reddish white, mottled with dark
red-brown hues. The bird, though plentiful nowhere, is not
uncommon anywhere in Britain, and is to be found in most of the
counties near the metropolis; we have seen and heard it frequently
at Fulham.

* Turdus viscivorus.

16

RESIDENT SINGING RIRDS.

Brisson named the Song Thursh,* Throstle, or Mavis, the Small
Missel Thrush , and, indeed, it is very nearly a miniature resemblance
of the last-mentioned species. But this admirable musician, to
which the English and Germans have given a name expressive of
its melodious pipe, goes far beyond the Missel Thrush, or, indeed,
any of the tribe in Britain, in its vocal powers. From early spring,
throughout the summer months, even until the autumn, this charm¬
ing songster delights the rural inhabitants of this island, more es¬
pecially in the morning and towards the close of day. It generally
chooses the top of a high tree for its station, and we have some¬
times thought its music most perfect after a genial shower on a fine
warm spring evening, when the young foliage was glittering with
the rain-drops, and not a breath of air disturbed the direct upward
column of gray smoke rising from the neighbouring cottage.

Like all powerful song-birds, this thrush often seems to articu¬
late words distinctly. We have heard one express, in the course
of its singing, sounds which fell on the ear as if it were repeating
the words — ‘My dear — my pretty dear — my pretty little dear.’
These accents were not caught up by one listener alone, who
might, perhaps, have been deemed a little imaginative, but all who
heard them were struck by the resemblance.

This charming species is widely spread, and has been traced
eastward as far as Smyrna and Trebizond. It was evidently one
of the birds that ministered to the absurd wantonness of the
Roman voluptuaries in their olios of brains and tongues of singing
birds. Even at the present day, as we learn from a distinguished
ornithologist of that country, | it is considered among the Italians
as ‘molto grato agli Epicurei.’ The luscious grapes and figs on
which it there feeds are said to impart a most exquisite flavour to
its flesh, which seems well appreciated by the ex-maitre d ’ hotel of
Rascal Bruno’s friend, the Prince Butera, when the accomplished
artist treats, with all the solemnity due to the high importance of
the subject, of his Grivcs a la hroche, au genie vre, and a la jlammade.i
There is, it is true, no accounting for tastes, and we would speak
with all reverence for discriminating palates ; but some may think
that all taste, save that for the pleasures of the table, must have
vanished before the gourmand can sit down with gratification to his
dish of Song Thrushes.

The Throstle has been seen sitting on her eggs as early as
the third week in January. The first brood, however, rarely
makes its appearance before the beginning of April. The nest is

* Turclus mnsicus, Linn. The Germans call it Singdrosscl.

t The Prince of Canino and Musignano. Now (1S07) His Imperial Highness
Prince Charles Bonaparte.

X In ‘ Le Cuisinier des Cuisiniers.’

THE OUSEL COCK OR BLACKBIRD,

17

generally hidden in the midst of some tall bush ; green moss and
delicate roots form the outside; and within it is coated with a
thin smooth plastering, in which decayed wood is often an ingre¬
dient, so well laid on as to hold water for some time. In this cup¬
like receptacle the female deposits .four or five eggs of a beautiful
pale blue, scantily spotted with black at the larger end. It
appears, from a contributor to Mr Loudon’s ‘ Magazine of Natural
History’ — where will be found many pleasant anecdotes of animals
and much interesting zoological information, that both sexes parti¬
cipate in the duties of incubation. The author of the memoir
alluded to, who watched the progress of the nest, states that, when
all was finished, the cock took his share of the hatching ; but he
did not sit so long as the hen, though he often fed her while she
was upon the nest. The young were out of the shells, which the
old ones carried off, by the thirteenth day.

The ‘ Ousel Cock' may be thought too common to require notice ;
and yet some of our readers may not be aware that, glorying in
its prodigality of voice and revelling in its mimicry, it has been
known to crow like a cock and cackle like a hen. The power and
quality of tone of the Blackbird* is first-rate, and for these he is
justly more celebrated than for execution or variety of notes. His
clear, mellow, fluty pipe is first heard in the early spring, and his
song is continued far into the year, till the time of moulting. He
rejoices in the moist, vernal weather, and is heard to the greatest
advantage when

' The stealing shower is scarce to patter heard
By those who wander through the forest wale...

The thickest bush is generally selected for th? nest, which is
matted externally with coarse roots, and strong, dry grass stalks
or bents, plastered and mixed internally with earth, so as to
form a kind of cob-wall. Fine grass stalks form the lining on
which repose the four, five, or even six light-blue eggs, most
frequently mottled with pale rufous brown, but sometimes spotless.
The first hatch takes place about the end of March or beginning
of April. This species, the Sckwarzdrossel of the Germans, Merlo
of the Italians, and Merle of the French and Scotch, is widely and
abundantly diffused. It has been recorded by Temminck as far
eastward as the Morea, and Mr Darwin noticed it as far west as
Terceira, one of the Azores . but this is no place for a lecture on
the geographical distribution of birds. Albinos are not very
uncommon.

The fruit consumed by the Blackbird and Song Thrush is well

* Merulii vulgaris — Turdus Merula, Linn.

C

18

RESIDENT SINGING BIRDS.

repaid* not only by their music, but by the good they do to the
garden in destroying slugs and shell-snails. Besides their natural
notes, these Merulidoe may be educated so as to sing an artificial
song, and even articulate. Dr Latham relates that the tame
Blackbird may be taught to whistle tunes and to imitate the
human voice ; and Pliny tells us of the talking Thrush, ‘ imitan-
tem sermones hominum,’ which was the pet of Claudius Caesar’s
Agrippina. The Hon. Dailies Barrington quotes another sentence
from the same chapter and book of Pliny to show that the young
Caesars had a Thrush, as well as Nightingales, eloquent ia Latin
and Greek, The talking Thrush belonging to Agrippina we
admit ; but we suspect that the learned Thrush of the 4 Csesares
juvenes’ was no more than a starling: and, indeed, 4 sturnum’ is
the word in the Leyden edition (1548)

The Larks, those brilliant vocalists, next claim our notice, and
with the Sky-lark or Lavrock* we begin. Pear not, reader;
there is no description coming of the variety of the intense gushes,
the prodigal outpourings of this Ariel of song, as he mounts till
the eye can no longer follow him, though the ear still drinks his
wild music. We are not in a frame of mind for such attempts;
we have just read those beautiful lines that close the most
soul-stirring of all biographies^ — lines describing* with all the
touching fervour of a holy poetry, the affecting incident that made
its way to the hearts of the mourners when they laid in the earth
the daughter of the great and good Sir Walter —

‘ The minstrel’s darling i h'ld.’

Who, after reading that mournful and thrilling page, will not de¬
nounce the sacrilege of depriving the Sky-lark of his liberty ?

Of all the unhallowed instances of bird-incarceration (not even
excepting the stupid cruelty of shutting up a Robin in an aviary),
the condemnation of the Sky-lark to perpetual imprisonment is
surely the most repugnant to every good feeling. The bird,
whilst his happy brethren are carolling far up in the sky, as if
they would storm heaven itself with their rush of song, just at the
joyous season —

1 When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear/

is doomed to pine in some dingy street. There, in a den with &
solid wooden roof, painted green outside , and white, glaring white,
within — which, in bitter mockery, is called a SH/-lark’s cage, he

* Alauda arvensis.

f Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., by J. G. Lockhart, Esq., his
literary executor.

THE SKY-LARK.

10

keeps winnowing his wretched wings, and beating his breast
against the wires, panting for one — only one — upward flight into
the free air. To delude him into the recollection that there are
such places as the fields, which he is beginning to forget, they cut
what they call a turf — a turf dug up in the vicinity of this smoke-
canopied Babel of bricks, redolent of all its sooty abominations,
and bearing all the marks of the thousands of tons of fuel which
are now suffered to escape up our chimneys, and fall down again
upon our noses and into our lungs, — tons, which, when our coal¬
mines begin to shrink alarmingly — ’tis no laughing matter, the
time must come — some future Arnott* will, perhaps too late,
enable the public to save, while he, at the same time, bestows upon
them the blessing of a pure atmosphere.f Well, this abominable
lump of dirt is presented to the Sky-lark as a refreshment for his
parched feet, longing for the fresh morning dews. Miserable as
the winged creature is, he feels that there is something resembling
grass under him ; and then the fond wretch looks upward and
warbles, and expects his mate. Is it possible to see and hear this
desecration of instinct unmoved? and yet we endure it every
spring, and, moreover, we have our Society for Preventing Cruelty
to Animals.

When free, the Sky-lark never sings on the ground : his notes
are first heard early in the year, and his song is continued far into
the summer. About the end of April or the beginning of May
the nest is placed snugly among the corn or herbage, and rests
upon the earth. It is framed of the stalks of plants, with an inside
lining of fine dried grasses, and contains four or five greenish-white
eggs, spotted with brown. The first family is generally ready for
mounting into the air by the end of June ; and a second brood is
usually fully fledged in August. It is most persevering in the
great business of incubation ; and, if the early nests are taken,
will lay on till September. Such philoprogenitiveness may
account for the swarms that cover the face not only of this but
other countries in the autumn and winter, when the fatal net
entangles hundreds at a time, and thousands fall a sacrifice to the
various engines which are at work to bring them to the poulterer’s
stall. The duty paid on these victims at Leipsic amounted, when
Dr Latham wrote, to twelve thousand crowns per annum, at a

* We by no means intend to insinuate that the present gifted philosopher
is unahle to effect this ; we believe that he could : but revolutions to be stable
should be gradual, or they are apt to end in smoke.

f 1857. It is some consolation to have lived to see the operation of the Act
for the Prevention of Smoke, mainly due to the energy of Lord Palmerston,
though we must not forget the untired perseverance of Mr Mackinnon. The
London vegetation already bears testimony to the eliiciency of this wholesome
law.

20

"RESIDENT SINGING BIRDS.

groseh, or twopence-halfpenny sterling, for every sixty larks.
The first impulse is to regret the sacrifice of so sweet a singer ;
but if these myriads were left unmolested, what would become of
the other species — what would become of the Sky-larks themselves ?
Still they must be seen on the board with regret ; pretty accom¬
paniments though they be to claret when dressed a la broche, and
certainly consolatory when served a la minute or en caisse.

The Wood-lark,* if it cannot compete with the Sky-lark in
variety of notes, must be allowed to surpass it in the rich and
melodious quality of its tone. It sometimes sings on a tree, but
its favourite position for exerting its charming powers is in the
air; and it may be known to the eye of those whose ear, unac¬
customed to distinguish the song of birds, would not detect the
difference, by its flight in widely-extended circles ; whereas the
Sky-lark keeps rising almost perpendicularly in a spiral direction,
till it is lost in the clear blue above. The W ood-lark, which is a
comparatively scarce bird with us, appears to be much more
enduring on the wing than the Sky-lark, and will sometimes
continue in the air, soaring to a great height, singing, still singing,
for an hour together. It begins to breed early in the season.
Colonel Montagu found the nest, which is not unlike that of the
Sky-lark, with eggs in it, on the fourth of April. . A few fine hairs
are sometimes added to the lining, but the situation chosen for it,
though on the ground, is more frequently in wild and barren lands,
shielded by rank grass, a tuft of furze, or a stunted bush, than in
cultivated districts. The eggs, about four in number, are brown,
mottled with grey and ash-colour. Unlike the preceding species,
the Wood-lark does not assemble in flocks in the winter, but would
seem rather to keep together in families of from five to seven. It
is a very early songster, and, in favourable weather, will begin its
melody soon after Christmas.

The Pipits or Tit-larks, | though in many points resembling the
true larks, differ so much in others that they have been generically
separated. The Meadow Pipit is the most common : its nest is
placed on the ground, and the song, which is sweet but short, is
not commenced till the bird has attained a considerable elevation
in the air, whence, after hovering a little, it descends warbling till
it reaches the ground. In captivity, the Meadow Pipit is highly
valued by bird-fanciers for its song.

There is not much music among the Tit-mice, ;£ though the
Long-tailed Tit,§ in the spring, warbles a pleasing but low

* Alauda arborea.

f Anthus aquaticus — Rock or Shore Pipit. Anthus pratensis — Meadow
Pipit. X Parus — Tomtits.

§ Parus eaudatus.

THE LINNET AND CHAFFINCH.

21

melody near its bottle-shaped nest ; and, as the Buntings* hardly
deserve the name of song-birds, we pass from them to the other
‘finches of the grove.’ The song of the Bullfinch^ — we do not
mean the low whistle which is its call-note — is of a modest
softness and sweetness, but murmured in such an under-tone as
to require a close proximity to the bush whence it proceeds to
make the ear aware of it. Its docility in learning to whistle
tunes in captivity is well known ; and those who have once pos¬
sessed a musical pet of this description will know how to ‘ share
Mai •ia’s grief’ for the loss of her favourite. Numbers of these
performers are imported annually from Germany, where there are
regular schools for teaching themf The thick underwood, or a
low close-leaved tree, is most frequently selected for the nest,
which is made of small sticks, and lined with a few root fibres :
the four or five bluish-white eggs are spotted with pale orange-
brown.

The Greenfinch or Green Linnet§, though not gifted with
many natural notes, is prized in confinement for its facility in ac¬
quiring those of other birds. It soon becomes familiar with its
mistress, and has been known to make free with the soft delicate
downy hair on the back of her snowy neck, probably prompted to
this rape of the lock by the instinct which urged the poor bird to
prepare materials for a nest which was never to be built. In a
state of nature, the thick hedge, close bush, or impervious ivy,
hides the nest of moss and wool, lined with fine hair and feathers,
which is seldom complete before the end of May or beginning of
June, and the four or five bluish-white eggs are speckled with
light orange-brown.

The common Brown Linnet’s || ‘lay of love,’ though not long,
is very sweet. This bird, from the changes in its plumage conse¬
quent on the seasons, has lost its individuality with some authors,
and has been described, according to the state of its dress, as the
Linnet or Grey Linnet and the Greater Redpole. A bush of furze
is a favourite place for the nest, which is framed of interwoven
moss, grass stalks, and wool, lined with hair and feathers ; the
eggs, amounting to four or five, are bluish-white, mottled with
purple-red.

We now come to one of the most common of our English birds,
the Chaffinch^, whose song seems as much neglected in England
as it is worshipped on the continent. Not that there are no in¬
stances of its melody being prized with us, and indeed as much as

* Emberiza. f Pynimla vulgaris,

t There are some of these academies in Hesse and Fulda, and at Walters-
hausen. § Loxia Chloris, Linn. — Fringilla Chloris, Ternm.

|| Fringilla cannabina. Fringilla Coelebs.

22

RESIDENT SINGING BIRDS.

five guineas have been given for one with an uncommon note ;
but with the Thuringian, the admiration of the Chaffinch’s song
becomes a passion. He will travel miles if he hear of the arrival
of a wild one with a good note from a neighbouring country, and
will sell his cow to possess it. He has created a set of terms to
designate the eight different ‘songs’ which his ear has detected;
and, when he obtains a bird that sings the best of these in per¬
fection, hardly any price will tempt him to part with it. To pro¬
cure a good Chaffinch a common workman will deprive himself
almost of necessaries till he has saved the money which is to
make him happy by the possession of his favourite songster. The
Thuringian Fanatico carries his admiration to an excess that would
be incredible if Bechstein had not given the details with a most
amusing fidelity, describing at length all the songs, from the
Double Trill of the Hcirtz , the Deiterzovg , and the Wine-song , to
the Pithia or Trewethia. To his interesting and well-translated
book we refer those who are curious in tracing such phenomena
of the human mind : the passion for the rare varieties of the
Chaffinch’s song appears to be, with reference to the ear, what
the Tulip mania was, and, indeed, in great measure, is, with regard
to the eye.

The nest of the Chaffinch in this country is a masterpiece of art :
in the fork of some ancient apple-tree, venerable with mosses and
lichens (which are carefully collected for the outside of the symme¬
trical fabric so as to make it assimilate with surrounding objects),
this fine piece of workmanship of closely-interwoven wool and moss
is fixed : feathers and hair render the inside a soft, warm, cozy bed
for four or five bluish-white pink-tinged eggs, which are varie¬
gated with spots and streaks of impurpled red. The love-note
of the cock Chaffinch is heard almost as soon as that of the Black¬
bird ; for the species is very early in preparing for the hopes of the
year.

v

The debonnaire Goldfinch* builds one of the most elegant nests
that our English Finches produce : moss, lichens, wool, and dry
grass, artistically intertwined, form the outside of the fabric, which
is generally hidden in a quiet orchard or secluded garden, where,
in the midst of some evergreen — an arbutus, perchance — it is pro¬
tected from the prying eye by the compact, leafy screen, of the
well-grown, healthy shrub; the delicate down of willows, or
dwarf early-seeding plants, the choicest lamb’s wool and the finest
hair, form the warm lining on which the bluish-white eggs, dotted
with a few rich brown spots, are deposited. The beautiful
plumage and sweetly- varied song of the Goldfinch make it a great

* Cardtielis communis — Fringilla Carduelis, Linn.

TIIE GOLDFINCH.

23

favourite ; hence it is frequently consigned to captivity, and
taught to draw its water in a little fairy bucket, or to perform
many tricks, some of which have quite a theatrical air : a looking-
glass is frequently provided for it, and, from the solace which the
mirror affords to the bird, it has been supposed to be the vainest
of finches. Let us not, however, be too sure that all this ogling of
the reflected form is mere admiration of its own sweet person.
Pause, fair lady, before you pronounce this bird to be a little cox¬
comb, The plumage of the sexes is very nearly similar, the hues
of the female being only rather less brilliant, and the prisoner daily
deludes himself that the mate which he is doomed never to see is
come to visit him.

Most affectionate in disposition, it seems absolutely necessary to
the Goldfinch’s existence that he should have something to love.
The translator of Pechstein’s little book above alluded to informs

us that Madame - had one that never saw her depart without

making every effort to quit his cage and follow her ; her return was
welcomed with every mark of delight ; she approached — a thousand
winning gestures testified his pleasure ; she presented her finger,
and it was caressed with low and joyous murmurs : ‘ this attach¬
ment,’ continues the narrator, 4 was so exclusive, that, if his mistress,
to prove it, substituted another person’s finger for her own, he would
peck it sharply, whilst one of his mistress’s, placed between two of
this person’s, would be immediately distinguished and caressed.” *

The Finches are, for the most part, granivorous ; it is not to be
supposed, however, that they do not occasionally feed on cater¬
pillars, especially in the early part of the year ; seeds, however, form
their staple, and some are of opinion that the Goldfinch never
touches insects ; but we now turn to a group of singing-birds
whose nourishment is principally derived from those animals.

The Stone-chat f pours forth its varied and pretty song as it
hovers over the golden furze which contains its nest ; and the Pied
Wagtail, J a resident in the southern counties of England, warbles
to its mate very early in the year from the cattle-shed or the gar¬
den-wall, though it is more familiar to us as it runs along the grass-
plat or by the margin of the pond, capturing its insect-food. The
scarce Dartford Warbler, § like the Stone-chat, utters its hurried
trill on the open downs, generally while hovering over the furze, in
which it hides itself on the slightest alarm. The familiar Hedge-
sparrow || cheers us with its agreeable song at a very early period
of the year, when bird-music is scarce.

* Cage Birds, &c., by J. M. Beclistein, with notes by the translator; small
8vo. London : Orr and Smith. f Saxicola rubicola.

X Motacilla alba. § Sylvia provincialis. |] Accentor modularis.

24

RESIDENT SINGING BIRDS.

The notes of the Golden-crested Wren,* the smallest of British
birds, can hardly be called a song, but they salute the ear in the
beginning of February ; and the beautiful little bird, with its ele¬
gant nest and pale-brown eggs, weighing nine or ten grains each
— the bird weighs no more than eighty — must not pass un¬
noticed. A pair, which took possession of a fir-tree in Colonel
Montagu’s garden, ceased their song as soon as the young were
hatched ; and, when they were about six days old, he took the
nest and placed it outside his study window. After the old birds
had become familiar with that situation, the basket was brought
within the window, and, afterwards, was conveyed to the opposite
side of the room. The male had regularly assisted in feeding
the young ones as long as they remained outside the window ; and,
though he attended the female afterwards to that barrier, he never
once entered the room, nor brought any food while the young
were in it. But the mother’s affections were not to be so
checked : — she would enter, and feed her infant brood at the
table where Colonel Montagu was sitting, and even while he
held the nest in his hand. One day he moved his head as
she was sitting on the edge of the nest which he held. She
instantly retreated — so precipitately, that she mistook the
closed for the open part of the window, dashed herself against
the glass, and lay apparently breathless on the floor for some
time.

Neither the fright nor the hurt could, however, overpower her
maternal yearnings. Colonel Montagu had the pleasure of seeing
her recover, and soon return, and she afterwards frequently fed
her nestlings while he held the nest in his hand. The little
mother’s visits were generally repeated in the space of a minute
and a half, or two minutes, or, upon an average, thirty-six times
in an hour; and this continued for full sixteen hours in a day,
which would amount to seventy-two feeds daily for each, if equally
divided between the eight young ones, amounting in the whole to
five hundred and seventy-six. ‘From examination of the food,’
says the Colonel, ‘ which by accident now and then dropped into
the nest, I judged, from those weighed, that each feed was a
quarter of a grain upon an average, so that each young one was
supplied with eighteen grains weight in a day ; and, as the young
birds weighed about seventy-seven grains when they began to
perch, they consumed nearly their weight of food in four days at
that time. I could always perceive by the animation of the brood
when the old one was coming ; probably some low note indicated

* Regulus cristatus. There are two species, viz., Regulus aurocapillus (Gold-
crested Regulus), and Regulus ignicapillus (Fire-crested Regulus).

TIIE WREN.

25

her approach, and, in an instant, every mouth was open to receive
the insect morsel.’

When we made our annual pilgrimage last year to Mr
Waterer’s at Knapp Hill, we were attracted, even surrounded as
we were by that wilderness of sweets — that assemblage of all
that is rich and delicate in colour, when the azaleas and rhodo¬
dendrons form one splendid mass of bloom, almost too beautiful
for this earth — by one of these little birds that had her nest in a
yew hedge skirting one of the paths. An intelligent lad pointed
out the ‘ proereant cradle,’ put in his hand, and took out one
of the young ones, then nearly fledged. After it had been
viewed and admired — for it Avas very pretty, as most young birds
are not — he replaced the tiny creature, and, to the inquiry
Avhether the parents would not forsake the nest if so disturbed,
he replied in the negative, adding that they were old acquaint¬
ance, and ‘ didn’t mind,’ for he often took the young ones out
to ‘ see how they got on.’ As soon as the nestling Avas returned
to its happy home, the parent, that had been watching the
proceedings from a neighbouring rhododendron gorgeous Avith
flowers, among which her small bright streak of a crest still
shone brilliantly, repaired to her family, and covered them Avith
her wings, as if nothing had happened. We trust that Mr
Waterer’s noble collection has been spared by the ruthless season
which, even hoav, chills us as Ave Avrite ; but Ave shall go to
Knapp Hill under the fear that his lovely and rare hybrids have
been sadly scathed. The air is pure and mild there, it is true ;
but his Americans — -

' All unfit to bear the bitter cold,’

must have had a severe trial, Avken hardy, indigenous plants have
suffered.

Although the Gold-crested Wren braves our severest Avinters,
it appears to be very susceptible of cold, as aa’ ell as the common
Brown Wren of our hedges. The Hon. and Rev. W. Herbert
informs us that, in confinement, the least cold is fatal to them.
In a wild state, he says, they keep themselves warm by constant
active motion in the clay, and at night secrete themselves in
places where the frost cannot reach them : but he apprehends
that numbers perish in severe winters. He once caught half a
dozen Golden Wrens at the beginning of winter, and they lived
extremely Avell upon egg and meat, being exceedingly tame.

4 At roosting-time there Avas ahvays a whimsical conflict
among them for inside places, as being the Avarmest, which ended,
of course, by the weakest going to the Avail. The scene began
with a Ioav whistling call among them to roost, and the tAvo birds

2 C

RESIDENT SINGING BIRDS.

on the extreme right and left, flew on the backs of those in the
centre, and squeezed themselves into the middle. A fresh couple
from the flanks immediately renewed the attack upon the centre,
and the conflict continued till the light began to fail them. A
severe frost in February killed all but one of them in one night,
though in a furnished drawing-room. The survivor was preserved
in a little cage, by burying it every night under the sofa cushions ;
but having been, one sharp morning, taken from under them
before the room was sufficiently warmed by the fire, though per¬
fectly well when removed, it was dead in ten minutes.’

The common Wren* is too often shot by the sportsman for the
sake of the tail-feathers ; these, when skilfully manipulated,
admirably represent the spider of February, March, and April,
when anything like an insect is considered a bonne bouclie by the
trout ; and, indeed, the deceit, if lightly cast by a nice hand on the
ripple, is sure to take fish, and good ones, too, ‘if,’ as old
Izaak hath it, ‘they be there.’ The bird may be followed up
and down the hedge-row till it will suffer itself to be taken by
the hand. Then borrow — steal if you will — two or three of the
precious feathers — but let the little warbler go to enjoy its
liberty, and furnish ‘Wren’s tails’ for another year.

We must not forget the Redbreast, as we conclude this
imperfect sketch of Resident British Song Birds, already too
long. This, the familiar household bird, with its innocent con¬
fidence, would, we might have hoped, bear a charmed life every¬
where : but no. Sonnini tells us that it arrives in the Levant in
October, seldom passing into the open islands, but seeking the
luxuriant myrtle-groves of Scio, and those other isles which offer
shade and shelter. There the Greek bird-catcher takes them
by dozens in the snares to which, assured by the presence of their
murderer, they offer themselves ; and the same war is waged
against them, we are sorry to add, in other foreign countries, that
one more dish may be added to the luxury and profusion of the
table of Dives. With us this friendly bird is, and we trust
ever will be, sacred. When everything is fettered by frost —

‘When icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick the shepherd hloAvs his nail,’ —

even then the plaintive warbling of the Robin is heard ; as if to
remind man that, amidst all the apparent desolation, Nature is
not dead, but only sleeps, like the Beauty in the wood, to awake
with all her former charms renewed.

May, 1838.

* Troglodytes Europtens, Motacilla Troglodytes, Linn.

SINGING BIRDS— VISITERS.

‘Glarl moment is it when the throng
Of warblers in full concert strong,

Strive — and not vainly strive — to rout

The lagging shower, and force coy Phoebus out,

Met by the rainbow’s form divine
Issuing from her cloudy shrine.’

W ORDSWOr.TII.

How different has the season been from that which frowned
in 1838 ! In the present year the honest ancient severity of
winter, bringing to our comparatively open southern waters clouds of
hyperborean web-footed fowl, has been followed by a good
old-fashioned spring, with the hawthorn in bloom, and even
the oak-leaf out, near London, early in May — such a spring
as we remember in our childhood, when the live-long day was
passed in the balmy open air. How tranquil was it to lie among
the high and thick sward, already hained up for the scythe,
on the verge of the orchard, then one sheet of blossom, looking
askant at the insects in their gold-be-dropped and gorgeously-
emblazoned coats, climbing up the stalks of the herbage to
gain vantage for their flight, or gazing into the clear blue heaven
above in speculation whether the mote, all but invisible, were
the lark, whose carol, mellowed by distance fell upon the ear,
while the little sister, near at hand

— ‘As in the shining grass she sat conceal’d
Sang to herself ;’

and then the importance with which we returned to the house,
big with the secret that we had discovered the nest of some
errant turkey or guinea-hen, which all the acuteness and
experience of the dairy-maid had failed to detect. Those were
happy days : — but this is prosing ; and we proceed to fulfil our
promise of passing rapidly in review those melodious visiters who
hasten from foreign lands to make the hedge-rows, orchards, and
gardens of these fortunate islands their nuptial bowers.

28

MIGRATORY SINGING BIRDS.

This is no place for physiological discussion, and our readers
may be assured that they are not about to be drawn into a
dissertation on the general organization of the feathered tribes ;
but there are few who have thought at all on the subject who
have not been struck with the provision against the entire loss of
progeny which would otherwise arise from the acts of those
who rob nests for profit or wantonness. The eggs abstracted
from the nests of the Phasianidoe ,* Tetraonidce ,j Plovers, and a
long list of others, are frequently replaced by the females, as long
as the number appears to be incomplete. The pilferings of the
schoolboy bear hard upon the constitutions of the MeruMcei. and
the smaller birds ; but, unless nature is quite exhausted by
repeated robberies, the bereaved parents set about constructing a
new nest, finish it, and replenish it. How is this effected? By
one of those beautiful adaptations which meet the zoologist at
every turn, and bring home to his heart the wisdom and benevo¬
lence of the Creator. On the breast of the sitting hen is a plexus,
or net-work of blood-vessels, which are completely filled during
the time of incubation ; but, as long as there is a demand for
eggs, and the bird goes on laying, the blood is directed internally,
in order to secure the supply till the full complement is laid.
When that is accomplished, the blood is no longer sent inwards,
but is determined to the plexus on the breast ; and no doubt the
smooth and rounded surfaces of the eggs are soothing to the
heated bosom of the mother, making her apparently hard and
close confinement a labour of pleasure as well as love.

We shall have occasion in the course of this sketch to present
some striking instances which show that among other mental
powers — yes, mental, for it is certain that birds are gifted with
something beyond mere instinct — the songsters who visit us in
the season of love, joy, and hope, have very retentive memories.
Year after year, if they escape the ravages of the hawk, or of the
still more destructive gun, the same pair of visiters will return to
the identical nest in its cosy nook, if rude hands have not
destroyed the comfortable little home. By those who respect
their loves and domestic arrangements, our feathered summer
visiters are looked for as friends returning from a far country, and
their first appearance on some warm dewy spring morning at the
trellis of the cottage door, or the ivied window, or in the well-
known laburnum or lilac, is hailed by true lovers of nature with a
thrill of pleasure. The songsters themselves seem hardly less
pleased when they find all right ; and while they warble right

* Pheasants, common fowls, &c. f Grouse, partridges, &c.

t Blackbirds and thrushes.

T1IE FLY-CATCHER.

29

merrily, peer down through the open window with their bright
little eyes, as who would say, ‘ There you all are at breakfast in
your old places, good luck t’ye.’

In passing our feathered friends in rapid review, we think it
better not to notice them in the order of their coming, but rather
according to their powers of song : thus the Muscicapidcc , or Fly¬
catchers, and the Swallows, have no great pretensions to music,
though musical to a certain degree they are, and we will commence
with them.

The Spotted Fly-catcher ( Muscicapa grisola) can hardly be said to
be a song-bird, for a chirping call-note forms his whole musical
stock; but it is one of the most welcome and constant of our
migratory birds, and the untiring zeal with which it clears the
neighbourhood of small insects, such as gnats, make it a cherished
guest. Perched on the top of a stake, or a post, or an upper
gate-bar, or an outlying branch, the bird remains motionless, till
some luckless insect, humming his lay as carelessly as his brother
‘ water-fly/ the dandy, hums the favourite air of the last new
opera, comes within his range : off darts the Fly-catcher, finishing
the song and the life of the performer at the same instant, and
returns to his station to repeat the exterminating process through
the whole day. He is one of our latest visiters, seldom arriving
till late in May,* and his cpiiet hair-brown coat and his dull white
waistcoat, spotted and streaked with dark brown, are rarely seen
till the oak leaf has well burst the bud. As soon as the bird
arrives, it sets about the work of incubation.

‘ The Fly- catcher,’ says the inimitable author of the ‘ History of
Selborne,’ ‘ is of all our summer birds the most mute and the most
familiar ; it also appears the last of any. It builds in a vine or
sweetbriar against the wall of a house, or in the hole of a wall, or
on the end of a beam or plate, and often close to the post of a
door, where people are going in and out all day long.’

We observed a pair for several years, which built in a trellised
porch covered with woodbine and the white sweet scented
clematis, undisturbed by the constant ingress and egress of the
inmates — many of whom were children, — or the early and late
arrivals and departures of guests. Few places, indeed, come amiss
to this familiar bird as a locality for its nest. Thus a pair —
rather improvident architects those — built on the head of a garden
rake, which had been left near a cottage. f Two others made
their nest in a bird-cage, which was suspended, with the door
open, from a branch in a garden. ± Another pair chose the angle

* In White’s Calendar the earliest and latest periods noted are May 10 and
May 30: in Markwick’s, April 29 and May 21.

f Magazine of Nat. Hist., voJ. i. + Blackwall.

30

MIGRATORY SINGING BIRDS.

of a lamp-post in a street at Leeds, and tliere they reared their
young.* A nest with five eggs was found on the ornamental
crown of a lamp near Portland-place,f and this nest was seen by
the well-known author of ‘ British Birds and British Fishes,’ on
the top of the lamp at the office of Woods and Forests, in White-
hall-place.

‘ Of three cup-shaped nests before me,’ says Mr Yarrell, ‘one is
formed, on the outside, of old dark-coloured moss, mixed with
roots, the lining of grass stems, with only two or three wrhite
feathers : the second has the bottom and outside of fresh green
moss, lined with a few grass bents, long horse-hairs, and several
mottled feathers, frequently those of a turkey ; the third is similar
to the last in the outside, but lined with long horse-hairs, wool, and
feathers.’

As a proof of the memory of this species, and something more ,
we may mention a fact recorded by Thomas Andrew Knight, Esq.,
the late lamented president of the Horticultural Society of London.
A pair built in liis stove for many successive years. Whenever
the thermometer in the house wras above 72°, the bird quitted her
eggs ; but as soon as the mercury sunk below that point, she
resumed her seat upon them. The four or five eggs of this
interesting little bird are wdiite, with a bluish tinge, spotted with a
faint red, and the worthy male is most assiduous in feeding the
female while she sits ; and that as late as nine o’clock at night.J

One word in favour of these poor little birds, which are too
often mercilessly shot as fruit-eaters. That they may be seen
about cherry and raspberry trees, when the fruit is ripe, there is
no doubt; but Mr Yarrell observes — correctly in our opinion — that
they seem rather to be induced to visit fruit-trees for the sake of
the flies which the luscious fruits attract, than for the sake of the
fruits themselves, since, he tells us, on examination of the stom¬
achs of Fly-catchers killed under such circumstances, no remains of
fruit were found.

But wdience comes this insect destroyer, so common on every
lawn, and in every garden? From the arid regions of Africa,
where its range extends to the west, and even to the south, as far
as the Cape.

In the Pied Fly-catcher (Muscicapa atricapilla), a much more rare
visitant, wre have the powers of song more developed. Its notes,
according to Mr Blaekwall, are varied and pleasing, and are
compared by Mr Dovaston to those of the Redstart. The male of
this pretty species, with his deep black back, and under cover¬
ing of pure white, with which the forehead and wings are also

* Atkinson. Compendium of Ornithology.

f Jesse.

t White.

TIIE SWALLOW FAMILY.

31

marked, is, together with its more sombre partner, comparatively
abundant near the charming lakes of Cumberland and Westmor¬
land. Seven or eight eggs, of a uniform pale blue, are laid in a
rather inartificial nest of grass and roots, dead bents, and hair
in holes of decayed trees, oaks principally. In feeding, it
resembles the common Fly-catcher. The south of Europe, particu¬
larly the countries that border the Mediterranean, abound with
this species.

In the Hirundinidce , or Swallow family, we have another form
of insect-scourge. The attacks of the Fly-catcher are desultory,
and may be compared to those of an enemy in ambush ; but the
Swallows come upon the insect hosts in legions, charging and
dashing through their ranks with their open fly-traps of mouths.
The ranks close, as does a column of infantry or cavalry through
which the cannon has cut a lane ; but the winged foe wheels
round again, and as the ‘insect youth’ dance in the sun, annihi¬
lates hundreds. The survivors, like their brother mortals, pursue
their dance, and in the midst of life are in death. It may seem
strange at first sight to see the Hirundinidce mentioned as song¬
sters ; but to say nothing of the exhilarating cry of the Swift as
he darts round the steeple, or of the twitter of the Window Swallow
and the bank or Sand Martin — sounds which all assist in making
the air musical, and 1 aid the full concert’ — the Chimney Swallow,
llirundo rustica , can warble, softly indeed, but sweetly.

‘ The Swallow,’ says White, ‘ is a delicate songster, and in
soft sunny weather sings both perching and flying : on trees in a
kind of concert, and on chimney -tops.’

This charming bird, the harbinger of spring, has been welcomed
in all countries, and will be so welcomed as long as the seasons
last. The poets of all ages have hailed his advent ; and our own
Davy, with whose deep philosophy the poetical temperament was
strongly mingled, has pronounced his history in a few bright and
true words :

‘He lives a life of enjoyment amongst the loveliest forms of
nature : winter is unknown to him ; and he leaves the green
meadows of England in autumn for the myrtle and orange-groves
of Italy, and for the palms of Africa.’*

The Hirundinidce which visit this country are, the species last
above mentioned, the Martin (IJirundo urbica ), the Sand Martin
(llirundo riparia), the Common Swift (IJirundo] apus), and — but
very rarely — the Alpine or White Bellied Swift (Cypselus olpinus).

The Chimney Swallow makes his appearance amongst us earlier
or later, according to the mildness or severity of the season, but the

* Salmonia.

f Cypselus of modern authors.

32

MIGRATORY SINGING BIRDS.

10th of April appears to be the general average of the time of its
arrival; the earliest period noted by White is the 26th of March,
and the latest the 20th of April; the 7th of April and the 27th of
that month, are the respective dates recorded by Markwick. The
old French quatrain thus celebrates his habits :

‘Dans les maisons fait son nid l’Hirondellc,

Oil bien souvent dans queleque cheminca :

Car a voler legerement est nee,

Taut qn’il n’y a oyseau plus leger qu’elle.’

lie who would hear the Swallow sing must rise early, for the
bird is a matutinal songster, as Apuleius well knew. It would be
a wraste of time to do more than hint at the exploded fables of
Swallows retiring under water in the winter, though, from time to
time, some worthy goody or gaffer even now tries to revive them, not
without some recipients of the tale, so prone is the human mind to
catch at anything wonderful, and so constantly does error again
rise to the surface ! but the evidence of the migration of the whole
family is now so complete and irresistible, that it amounts to abso¬
lute proof. Again and again, have they been seen crossing the
sea, sometimes dropping into it to take a marine bath, and then
pursuing their journey refreshed and exhilarated.

The Martin, with his pure white lower back and under parts,
most probably turns his neb northward, from Africa, at the same
time with the Swallow, but his powers of wing cannot keep pace
with the extensive sail of the latter, and he generally arrives a few
days later. The earliest and latest periods recorded by White are
the 28th of March and the 1st of May, and those given by Mark¬
wick are the 14th of April and the lctli of May.

The Sand Martin arrives earlier than either of the other two
species. The earliest and latest dates noted by White are the
21st of March and the 12th of April; Markwick’s are the 8th of
April and the 1 6th of May. The average time of the arrival of
the Common Swift is early in May ; but White saw it as early as
the 13th of April, and the latest time noticed by him is the 7th of
May. Markwick never saw it earlier than the 28th of April, and
the latest arrival observed by him was the 19th of that month.

The great Alpine Swift, which chooses the highest rocks and the
most towering cathedrals for his nesting-places, can only be con¬
sidered as an accidental visiter to these islands, and does not
appear to have been seen here earlier than in June.

The architecture of the three first species of this family here
noticed, deserves attention. Early in the season the Swallows and
House Martins may be seen on the ground in moist places, or near
the edges of ponds or puddles. They are then collecting the clay

THE SWALLOW FAMILY.

33

or mortar, which — strengthened with straws and grass-stems to
keep it together in the case of the Swallow — is to form their
nest. One course or raise only, as the Devonians call it, is
laid on at a time, and that is left to settle and dry before the
next is added, as men proceed in making a cob-wall ; and thus the
work proceeds, day after day, till the saucer-shaped nest of the
Swallow and the hemispherical cob-house of the Martin are com¬
plete.

The Sand Martin proceeds upon a different plan : he is a miner,
and excavates his dwelling in the sand-bank, as the ancient Egyp¬
tian carved his temple out of the solid rock. Look at the bill of
this little bird. Though small, it is hard and sharp ; and well our
sapper knows how to use it. Clinging to the face of the sand¬
bank with its sharp little claws, and closing its bill, the bird works
away with its natural pickaxe, till hard sand comes tumbling
down on all sides. Round he goes, now with his head up, now
down, till he has planned his circular cave as regularly almost as
compasses could do it ; and yet he does not trace it out from a
fixed point in the centre, but works from the circumference. When
he has well broken ground, he tunnels away as truly as Sir Isambard
himself, and while the bird works into his excavation, he shifts his
position as the necessities of the case require ; now he stands on
the floor, now he clings to the roof with his back downward, and
how carefully does he remove the rubbish from the upward
inclined floor with his feet, taking care not to disturb its solidity.
Rut we must pause, and refer those who may be interested in the
operations of this industrious little bird to Mr Rennie’s excellent
description — we can vouch for its accuracy — in his ‘ Architecture
of Birds,’ a book in which every lover of nature will find amuse¬
ment and instruction.

The nest of the Common Swift is a farrago of bits of rag, a
feather or two, dry grass-blades and stems, and fragments of straw ;
but these materials appear to be cemented or glued together.
What this glue is composed of is not known, though some have
supposed it to be the saliva, or a mucous secretion of the bird
itself.

The nests of the Chinese Swallow, with which the brother of
the sun and moon enriches his soup when they are clean and fair,
and glues his bamboo-seat when they are dark and dirty, are said
to owe their glutinous quality to Ulvce , or sea- weeds, like our laver,
worked up by the builders. But the nest of the Ccmmon Swift,
which is deposited under the eaves of the old house or church, in
a hole in a steeple, or in some antiquated turret, has generally a
very compressed appearance, the result of the pressure of genera¬
tion after generation there hatched and reared.

D

34

MIGRATORY SINGING BIRDS.

Here again we have strong evidence of the memory of birds.
Dr Jenner proved, by the most irrefragable evidence, that the
same pair of birds returned to the same nest year after year.
Theirs is a chequered life. When the sun shines bright, and all
the insect-world is stirring, the Swifts are sporting in the brilliant
summer-light, and sailing in the air in all the luxury of enjoyment;
but let a windy, stormy time come — where are they then? Laid
up in solitude and darkness, hour after hour, in their gloomy
nesting-places, to climb into which their short feet are admirably
adapted, for all four of the toes are turned forward to aid them in
creeping into their narrow dormitories.

We cannot quit this family without adverting to a charge made
against some of the species — abandonment of their young. This
has been proved against the Swallow and the Martin; and the
Swift has been suspected, whether justly or not we shall presently
inquire.

There is no doubt that late broods of Swallows have been left
by their vagrant parents to perish in their nests by the most dis¬
tressing of deaths ; and as little that the Martins are guilty of the
same desertion. Dr Jenner has recorded the fact against a pair
of Martins which hatched four broods in one year ; the last hapless
brood came into existence early in October, and about the middle
of the month the old birds went off, and left their nestlings, then
about half-fledged, to die. They returned to the nest on the
17th of May, in the next year, and threw the skeletons out.
Mr Blackwall* has put the frequent occurrence of this unparental
act beyond doubt. Among many other evidences, he has seen a
pair of House Martins, after taking possession of an old nest, draw
out the dried bodies of three nearly full fledged nestlings, before
they established themselves therein. About the same time, and
near the same place, another pair endeavoured to get rid of the
dead bodies of the victims ; their efforts to dislodge the carcasses
were ineffectual, and they then closed up the aperture of the nest
with clay, thus converting it into a sepulchre. At first Mr Black-
wall was disposed to attribute the untimely death of the nestlings
to the accidental destruction of one or both parents; but the
accumulated evidence forbade any other conclusion than that these
cases of protracted suffering and ultimate dissolution, were the
result of voluntary abandonment. May not the praises bestowed
cf old upon the Swallow for its piety in burying its dead, have
'taken their origin from some such fact as one of those recorded
by Mr Blackwall?

But how are we to account for this perversion of the parental

* Besearclies in Zoology.

THE SWALLOW FAMILY,

35

feeling — that all-absorbing affection for offspring which, in birds
especially, is paramount? We find an answer in another law,
stronger even than parental affection, the law of self-preservation.
What were the unhappy parents to do ? Beguiled by the sunny
skies of a fine autumn, they hoped to rear their broods ; but with
the advancing season came churlish days and nipping frosts,
destroying their insect food, and making their case desperate.
Go they must, or perish likewise ; and the love of life prevailed.

We have observed in the west of England, the extreme anxiety
of the parent birds to get a late brood out of the nest in time for
the general departure. Toward the end of September, 1840, a
pair of Martins seemed at their wit’s end to get their nestlings to
leave the nest over the porch of the dwelling-house. At last,
one Sunday evening, all the Martins in the parish seemed to be
collected about the door, darting by the nest, wheeling in short
circles near it, and uttering a call-note as they passed the
aperture. It was as if the old Martins had gone round to
their friends and said, ‘ For any sake do come and help to
get those obstinate children out, or they will infallibly be left to
starve.’

The experiment succeeded, for next morning the young were
gone.

In the case recorded by White, the male Swift appears to have
been guilty of desertion, but the more affectionate mother staid
by her little ones till they were able to accompany her to more
sunny climes.

‘ Our Swifts, in general,’ says that delightful writer, ‘ withdrew
this year about the first day of August, all save one pair, which in
two or three days was reduced to a single bird. The perseverance
of this individual made me suspect that the strongest of motives,
that of an attachment to her young, could alone occasion so late a
stay. I watched, therefore, till the 24tli of August, and then
discovered that, under the eaves of the church, she attended upon
two young which were fledged, and now put out their white chins
from a crevice. These remained till the 27th, looking more alert
every day, and seeming to long to be on the wing. After this
day they were missing at once; nor could I ever observe them
with their dam coursing round the church in the act of learning
to fly, as the first broods evidently do. On the 31st I caused the
eaves to be searched, but we found in the nest only two callow,
dead, Swifts, on which a second nest had been formed. The fol¬
lowing remarks on this unusual incident are obvious. The first is,
that though it may be disagreeable to Swifts to remain beyond the
beginning of August, yet that they can subsist longer is unde¬
niable. The second is, that this uncommon event, as it was

30

MIGRATORY SINGING BIRDS.

owing to the loss of the first brood, so it corroborates my former
remark, that Swifts breed regularly but once.1*

The Purple Martin of the United States (Hirundo purpurea ),
appears to be as great a favourite with our transatlantic brethren
as the Swallows and Martins are with us.

‘ I never,’ says the celebrated Wilson, ( met with more than one
man who disliked the Martins, and would not permit them to settle
about his house. This was a penurious, close-fisted German, who
hated them because, as he said, “ they ate his peas.” I told him
he must be mistaken, as I never knew an instance of Martins eating
peas; but he replied with coolness, that he had many times seen
them himself, “ blaying near the hife, and going schnip sclmap,” by
which it was understood that his bees had been the sufferers, and
the charge could not be denied.’

We believe that all our species are guiltless of such depredations,
though Virgil, in his fourth Georgia, distinctly charges the Swallow
with the act.

Before we take leave of these innocent and useful little birds,
may we be pardoned for pleading in their favour against the wan¬
ton and cruel sport — if sport it must be called — of swallow-
shooting? We say nothing of the sudden deprivation of a life of
utility and enjoyment in the case of the bird shot, for the mere
amusement of any mischievous coxcomb who is master of a gun —
though that is something; it is to the agonizing and lingering death
to which this abominable practice condemns the nestlings that we
would point attention : and sure we are that there is no manly heart
that will not shrink with horror from knowingly inflicting such
suffering.

Another barbarous amusement — more practised, we are happy
to say, in foreign countries than in our own — is angling for the
Hirundmidee from some lofty tower. The bait is a feather, at which
the unsuspecting victim dashes to secure it as a prize for its nest.
The tormentor — we cannot call him sportsman — every now and
then drops small bits of white paper by way of attraction, as the
punt-angler throws in his balls of clay and bran to collect the fish.
The Swallow not unfrequently takes the trout-angler’s artificial fly,
to the distress of the fisherman, and the destruction of the unfor¬
tunate bird.

The migratory Menilidcc which come to our coasts, are mostly
winter visiters ; but as the majority arrive at a period when they
are mute as songsters, they do not claim more than a passing
notice here. The rare White’s Thrush, of which the Earl of
Malmsbury possesses so fine a specimen, was shot by his lord-

* Natural History of Selborne, vol. ir.

MISCELLANEOUS VISITERS.

37

ship in January, on his estate at Heron Court, near Christ¬
church.

The Fieldfare andRedwing are regular and annual winter visitants.
The nest of the former has indeed been found occasionally, but
very rarely, in England and Scotland. Norway, Sweden, Russia,
and Siberia, are their summer quarters, and they remain through¬
out the year in Poland, Prussia, and Austria. Harsh as is the
call-note of the Fieldfare, the song is soft and melodious, and the
bird sings agreeably in confinement, to which it soon becomes
reconciled. Bechstein gives it a very different character, for he
says that its song is a mere harsh disagreeable warble.

The Redwings have been seen and heard in Surrey, Essex, and
Yorkshire, as late as May, by Mr Blyth and Mr Williamson;
and in a cold backward season, they lingered in Hampshire, accord¬
ing to White, till June. Nests have occasionally been found in
Middlesex and Surrey ; but these were evidently accidental excep¬
tions to the general rule. The Redwing’s note, heard in Norway,
is characterized by Mr Hewitson as delightfully wild. Bechstein
says its song is in no respect agreeable. Here, again, ‘ who shall
decide when, &c„’

The Ring Ouzel, which visits us in April, sings sweetly, according
to Mr Hewitson ; clearly and powerfully, though the notes are few,
according to Selby. This species is by no means widely dispersed ;
and the western and northern parts of our island seem to be pre¬
ferred. Over Ireland they are generally distributed, according to
Mr Thompson. The nest, which is very like that of the common
Blackbird, is most frequently placed near the ground or on it, shel¬
tered by some stone or bush, and sometimes on the sides of heathy
banks, without such shelter.

Here we may mention the elegant and beautiful Rose Ouzel ( Pastor
roseus), of rare occurrence in these islands. The song of this
species appears to be peculiar. A wounded bird shot from a flock
by a sportsman near Meiningen, in Suabia, was soon healed and
tamed by the kindness of M. von Wachter, the rector of Fricken-
hausen, and it began to sing. Bechstein relates that its warbling
consisted at first of only a few harsh sounds, pretty well connected ;
but this in time became more clear and smooth. A connoisseur
who had heard the bird without seeing it, thought he was listening
to a concert of two Starlings, two Goldfinches, and perhaps a Siskin ;
and when he saw that it was a single bird that made this music,
he could not conceive how it all came from the same throat. One
of these birds is now in the aviary of the Zoological Society in the
Regent’s Park.

The flute-like notes of the Golden Oriole ( Oriolus gcilbula ), the
Frenchman’s Pere Loriot , has been heard in our orchards, but

38

MIGRATORY SINGING BIRDS.

very rarely. Beehstein states that its call-note, so familiar to the
Spaniard and Italian, and not unfamiliar to the Frenchman arid
German, may be well expressed by the words ‘ye puhlo.’ The
translator of Bechstein’s interesting book says, that the natural
song is very like the awkward attempts of a country boy with a
bad musical ear to whistle the notes of a Missel Thrush. But it is
no bad mimic ; for Beehstein saw two Golden Orioles that were
reared from the nest, one of which, independently of the natural
song, whistled a minuet, and the other imitated a flourish of trum¬
pets. One of his neighbours saw two at Berlin, both of which
whistled different airs.

Such accomplishments indicate a very correct ear ; and, indeed,
that organ is so nice in the Oriole, that when the sportsman endea¬
vours to approach it, whistling its note, the slightest mistake or
false intonation warns the bird of the imposition, and it instantly
flies away. The nest, which usually contains four or five white
eggs, tinged with purple, and scantily spotted with ash-grey and
claret, is generally suspended in a fork at the end of a bough ; and
the French have a saying purporting that the discovery of one
bodes no good end to the finder.*

But one regular visiter of the family Anthidce, or Pipit Larks,
comes to these islands, and that is the Tree Pipit ( Anthus arboreus),
so often confounded with the Meadow Pipit (Anthus pratensis), which
is a resident. The Tree Pipit arrives late in April, and begins his
pretty song on the top of a bush, or on a lofty branch of an elm.
Presently up he goes, rising somewhat after the manner of a Sky¬
lark, till he has ascended nearly as high again as the station from
which he sprang; when, with outstretched wings and expanded

* II.I.H. Prince Charles Bonaparte, has lately done me the honour to dedi¬
cate a beautiful species, Oriolus Broderipii , to me, with very kind words, which
I will try to deserve. (1857.)

W. J. B.

Since the above was written, and while these sheets were passing through
the press, came the distressing intelligence that this excellent ornithologist and
most amiable man was no more. Only a few days before, I had received from
the Prince one of his memoirs, with my name written as usual, with his own
hand, and with the usual addition, ‘ from his friend the Author.’ The four
volumes completing Wilson’s American Ornithology, the Specchio Compara¬
tive, afterward enlarged under the title of ‘a Geographical and Comparative
List of the Birds of Europe and North America,’ his great work, ‘ Fauna
Italica,’ and numerous papers on that branch of science which he has so well
illustrated, are among the proofs of the efficient zeal and learning of Charles
Lucien Bonaparte. He was one of the few who love Science for her own sake.
He was her votary in adversity and prosperity; nor did the dazzling position
which he occupied during the last years of his useful life, turn him from the
pursuits which were so dear to him, nor cool his devotion to the study of
Nature. This accomplished member of the imperial family passed away on
the 29th of July, deeply regretted by Foreign and English naturalists, mourned
by his attached friends, and leaving a name which the scientific world will
not willingly let die.

THE SHORE LARK.

39

tail, lie makes a half circle in his slow descent, singing all the while,
till he arrives at the spot from which he started, or reaches the top
of some neighbouring tree ; and this he will constantly repeat for
many times in succession, if not disturbed. Mr Yarrell saw these
musical evolutions most frequently during and after a warm May
shower, and we have watched the bird with the same success at the
same periods ; and it does make the heart glad to see him, and
rejoice in his gladness, as he carols away with the bright sun shin¬
ing on the emerald leaves, from which the rain-drops hang like
diamonds, whilst the glorious rainbow tells of peace and good
will to all creatures. The nest, formed of moss, fibrous roots, and dry
grass, lined with grass stems, and sparingly with hairs, is usually
placed on the ground ; but Mr Neville Wood once found one on
the lowest branch of a small thick bush. The four or five eggs vary
in colour in different nests, but the most usual tints are purple-
brown, or purple-red clouds or spots on a greyish white ground.

Richard’s Pipit (Anthus Ricardi) was first noticed by Mr
Vigors, as an occasional visiter, and though the appearance of
others here has been recorded, they can only be considered as
stragglers.

Of the True Larks ( Alaudidce ), the only visiter, and that
accidentally, is the Shore Lark ( Alauda alpestris). Its range from
north to south is great. Captain Sir James Ross, R.N., records one
shot near Felix Harbour, and Captain Philip Parker King brought
it from the Straits of Magellan ; or, more correctly, Magalhaens.
The bird is a sweet singer, and Audubon, who found it

‘ — on the dismal shore
Of cold and pitiless Labrador;

Where under the moon, upon mounts of frost
Full many a mariner’s bones are tost,’

graphically describes its zealous parental affection.

‘Although in the course of our previous rambles along the
coast of Labrador,’ says that eloquent and accurate ornithologist,

‘ and among the numberless islands that guard its shores, I had
already seen this Lark while breeding, never before that day did I
so much enjoy its song, and never before I reached this singular
spot had I to add to my pleasures that of finding its nest. Here I
found the bird in the full perfection of plumage and song, and
here I had an opportunity of studying its habits, which I will now
endeavour to describe.

‘ The Shore Lark breeds on the high and desolate tracts of
Labrador, in the vicinity of the sea. The face of the country
appears as if formed of one undulated expanse of granite, covered
with mosses and lichens, varying in size and colour, some green,

40

MIGRATORY SINGING BUDS.

others as white as snow, and others again of every tint, and
disposed in large patches or tufts. It is on the latter that this
Lark places her nest, which is disposed with so much care, while
the moss so resembles the bird in hue, that unless you almost
tread upon her as she sits, she seems to feel secure, and remains
unmoved. Should you, however, approach so near, she flutters
away, feigning lameness so cunningly, that none but one accus¬
tomed to the sight can refrain from pursuing her. The male
immediately joins her in mimic wretchedness, uttering a note so
soft and plaintive that it requires a strong stimulus to force the
naturalist to rob the poor birds of their treasure.

‘ The nest around is imbedded in the moss to its edges, which
is composed of fine grasses, circularly disposed, and forming a bed
about two inches thick, with a lining of grouse feathers, and
those of other birds. In the beginning of July the eggs are
deposited. They are four or five in number, large, greyish, and
covered with numerous pale blue and brown spots. The young
leave the nest before they are able to fly, and follow their parents
over the moss, where they are fed about a week. They run
nimbly, emit a soft peep, and squat closely at the first appearance
of danger. If observed and pursued, they open their wings to
aid them in their escape, and separating, make olf with great
celerity. On such occasions it is difficult to secure more than
one of them, unless several persons be present, when each can
pursue a bird. The parents all this time are following the enemy
overhead, lamenting the danger to which their young are exposed.
In several instances the old bird followed us almost to our boat,
alighting occasionally on a projecting crag before us, and entreat¬
ing us, as it were, to restore its offspring.’

The harder-billed or seed-eating singing-birds which pay us
visits, mostly come among us late in the autumn, or in winter, as
might be expected.

Of the Emberizidce , or Buntings, we have the Lapland Bunting,
the Snow Bunting, and the Ortolan Bunting. The Lapland Bun¬
ting (Plectrophanes Lapponica ), which is most Lark-like both in its
plumage and in the length of the hind claw, has rarely indeed —
but we believe as many as four different times, — been taken in this
country. There was one in the cabinet of the late Mr Vigors,
bought at a market in London, and now in the museum of the
Zoological Society. Mr Yarrell had one which was caught near
Brighton. Mr Gould has recorded the capture of one a few miles
north of London, and that in the Manchester Museum was taken
near Preston, in Lancashire. The species is a native of the Arctic
regions and the north of Europe, and Dr Richardson notices it as
breeding on the shores of the Arctic Sea. Though the instances

THE ORTOLAN.

41

above stated are the only occasions known to us on which this
hyperborean bird has been captured in these islands, it is far from
improbable that many visit us, especially in severe winters, or that
several are taken in the Lark nets without being detected by the
captors and consumers : they have been occasionally caught with
Larks in the neighbourhood of Geneva. Bechstein says, 4 We should
see them more frequently in Germany, if the birdcatchers who take
them in their Lark’s net did not kill them both indifferently.’ The
same author describes the song of the Lapland Bunting in captivity
as very similar to the Linnet’s ; and remarks that the female also
warbles, but only in the Bullfinch’s style.

The Snow Bunting, or Snow Flake (Plectrophan.es glacialis), the
Mountain Bunting, and the Tawny Bunting, are all identical, the
variation of the plumage at different times and seasons having
been the cause which led authors to describe the bird, in its various
dresses, as belonging to a distinct species. It breeds in the
northernmost of the American islands, and on all the shores of the
continent, from Chesterfield Inlet to Behring’s Straits, according to
Dr Richardson ; and Captain Lyon found its nest of dry grass,
carefully lined with a few feathers, and the hair of the deer, at
Southampton Island, singularly placed.

4 Near the large grave,’ says Captain Lyon, in his interesting
description of an Esquimaux burying-] fiace, ‘was a third pile of
stones, covering the body of a child, which was coiled up. A Snow
Bunting had found its way through the loose stones which com¬
posed this little tomb, and its now forsaken, neatly-built nest was
found placed on the neck of the child. As the Snow Bunting has
all the domestic virtues of our English Redbreast, it has always
been considered by us as the Robin of these dreary wilds ; and its
lively chirp and fearless confidence have rendered it respected by
the most hungry sportsmen. 1 could not on this occasion view its
little nest, placed on the breast of infancy, without wishing that I
possessed the power of poetically expressing the feelings it excited.
Before going on board I placed boarding-pikes, men’s and women’s
knives, and other articles which might be useful to the Esquimaux,
on the huts and various piles of stones.’

But if this familiar little bird was respected by the hungry
mariners, luxury spares it not in the midst of plenty. In Austria
they are caught and fattened with millet for the table of the
epicure, according to Pennant. Mr William Proctor, the curator
of the Durham University Museum, informed Mr Yarrell that he
found the nests in Iceland with eggs from four to six in number.
The male attended the female during incubation, and Mr Proctor
often saw him when he was coming from the nest rise up in the air
and sing sweetly, with his wings and tail spread like the Tree

42

MIGRATORY SINGING BIRDS.

Pipit.* Mr Macgillivray thinks it very probable that this pretty and
varying species breeds on the higher Grampians, and perhaps in
considerable numbers, but we are not aware of any instance of the
nest having been found in our islands.

The translator of Pechstein’s book remarks that the Ortolan
( Emberiza hortulana ) is not found in Britain ; but Mr Yarrell, in his
excellent work, has collected numerous evidences of its appearance
here, some of the instances having occurred a considerable time
since.

The bird is a regular summer visiter to the middle and north
of Europe, nor is it scarce in some of the German provinces,
where it arrives towards the end of April or the beginning of
May. Bechstein states that they are then met with in orchards,
amongst brambles, or in groves, where they build, particularly if
millet is cultivated in the neighbourhood. lie adds, that during
the harvest they frequent the fields in families, and leave after the
oats are gathered in. It is therefore remarkable that we do not
see more of them. The absence of its favourite millet may perhaps
be the cause that the Ortolan does not visit us in numbers ; but we
suspect that more come than are noticed, and that they are taken
by inaccurate observers for some other species. For instance, the
back of the Ortolan is very similar to that of the Girl Bunting, — so
like indeed, that Mr Yarrell’s admirably executed front view of the
bird was given, as he says, ‘ to avoid repetition.’ Mr Hoy informed
Mr Yarrell that he found the nests placed in slight hollows on the
ground in corn fields ; they were rather more compact than the
Sky-lark’s nest, but something similar. The eggs, from four to six
in number, were bluish white, speckled and spotted with black, j
This was on a part of the continent (Mr Yarrell does not specify it)
further north than that referred to by M. Vieillot. who states that
it is most numerous in the southern parts of France, where its
arrival is nearly contemporaneous with that of the Swallow, and
rather before that of the Quail.

Neither the elegant form and colouring of the Ortolan, nor its
deep flute-like warbling, plead with success against the cravings of
that all-devouring organ which has neither eyes nor ears. The
happy birds are decoyed into a snare, and hurried from the fresh
air and the blessed sun into a room lighted by lanterns, so that the
prisoners can no longer distinguish day from night. Here they are
abundantly supplied with oats, millet, and the crumb of white bread
spiced. The loss of liberty seems to be forgotten by the devoted
little gluttons in the more substantial enjoyments with which they
are surrounded, and they apply themselves so vigorously and un-

* See * Yarrell’s British Birds.’

f ‘British Birds.’

THE ORTOLAN.

43

weariedly to the good things set before them, that they become
delicious lumps of high-flavoured fat. When they weigh about
three ounces, their time is come; but such is their voracity, that if
left to themselves, they would die of suffocation from mere obesity.
The cuisinier des cuisiniers describes the victim, and pronounces its
eulogy with a pregnant brevity : —

‘ L’ortolan est un petit oiseau, a-peu-pres de la grosseur d’une
mauviette. II est grisatre, et a le cou jaunatre, aussi bien que le
ventre. II n’est jamais si bon qu’en aout et en septembre. 11 est
tres delicat et se digere aisement.’

But the voice of the Cuckoo, heard from yon lofty tree, loud
and clear above the flood of melody xioured from the hanging
copse below, warns us how much of our sketch remains untouched.
The Finches and True W arblers are still unnoticed, and we must
present them to such of our readers as may take an interest in
the subject.

June, 1C 41.

SINGING BIRDS-VISITERS.

‘ Sumer is icumen in
Lhude sing cuccu;

Groweth sed and bloweth med,

And springth the wde nu.

Sing cuccu.

Awe beteth after lamb,

Lhoutli after calve cu,

Bulluc sterteth,

Bucke verteth,

Murie sing cuccu:

Cuccu, cuccu;

Wei singes thu cuccu,

Ne swik thu naver nu.’

Very Ancient Ballad.

This cuckoo-song is considered by those best qualified to judge,
to be the earliest ballad in the English language now extant. Its
date is about the latter years of the reign of Henry III., and it
affords a curious example of the alterations which our tongue
has undergone since that time ; whilst the descriptions, which
breathe of rural sights and sounds, show that nature has suffered
no change. For the benefit of those who are not Fellows of the
Society of Antiquaries, we subjoin the translation, which does not
pretend to preserve the rhythm.

Summer is come in,

Loud sings the cuckoo;

The seed grows and the mead is in flower,

And the wood springs (or shoots) now.

Sing cuckoo,

The ewe bleats after the lamb,

The cow lows after the calf,

The bullock starts,

The buck verts (goes to harbour in the fern),

Merrily sings the cuckoo;

Cuckoo, cuckoo;

Well singest thou cuckoo,

Mayest thou never cease.

But before we inquire into the life, character, and behaviour
of the vocal vagrant in whose honour the antique rhymes of our

THE MOUNTAIN FINCH OE B GAMBLING.

45

motto were composed, we must resume the thread which we
dropped, and present, according to promise, the Finches and True
Warblers.

The Fringillidce or Finches being hard-billed, and consequently
seed-eating birds, arrive in autumn and winter mostly.

The Mountain Finch or Brambling, descending from the north,
is spread over the whole European continent in winter, and there
is a solitary instance of a bird having been shot so late as the 6th
of May, near York; but no evidence of their breeding in these
islands, either in a state of nature or captivity exists. They have
been observed to feed greedily on the seeds of the knot-grass
(Polygonum aviculare), and have been considered useful in arrest¬
ing the dissemination of that noxious weed. The bill of the male
in winter is yellowish- white, tipped with bluish black. The iris
of the eye is brown, and the crown of the head, the cheeks, the
ear-coverts, the nape, and the back, are dappled with brown and
black. The feathers of the smaller wing-coverts are tipped
with white, and as well as the scapulars, are of a rich fawn
colour. The greater wing-coverts are deep black, tipped with
fawn, and the quills are black. The rump and upper tail-
coverts are white, slightly mottled with black, arising from
the presence of a few feathers of the latter colour. The forked
tail is black, edged with white, inclining to buff colour. The
chin, the throat, and the upper part of the breast and sides are of
the same rich fawn colour as the scapulars, smaller wing-coverts,
and the broad edges of the tertials. The lower parts are white.
The spring or nuptial dress varies from the winter plumage. In
the season of hope and joy, the rusty brown tips of the head and
neck feathers vanish, leaving the head and neck gear of a rich
velvety black, and the bill becomes of a lead-blue hue throughout.
In this state the bird remains till the autumnal moult again clothes
it in its winter covering.

M. Temminck describes the bird under the name of Gros-bec
cV Ardennes , and it is probably the Pinson d' Ardenne of Belon, and
the old French authors. The ancient quatrain gives it a firm and
uncompromising character —

‘Pinson montain cest oyseau on appelle,

Pource qu’es monts il vit commimement.

Son coeur est tel que navre griefriement,

Ce nonobstant pinse, mord, et rebelled

And the Brambling is remarkable for its boldness and hardihood
in confinement. Of the song, if it be gifted with any, nothing
appears to be known : its call is a monotonous chirp.

As soon as the northern chills warn the Siskin or Aberdevine
(Fringilla spinus ), that it is time to quite the inhospitable regions

46

MIGRATORY SINGING BIRDS.

where winter has already begun its reign, the bird moves south¬
ward, and arrives in these islands in the autumn, abiding with us
from September to April, often in small flocks, but generally in
the company of Linnets and Redpoles, to feed on the seeds of the
alder, the birch, and the larch. The Siskin has but rarely been
known to tarry in this country; but its nest has been noticed
twice in furze, some three feet from the ground, near Coombe
Wood, by Mr Meyer, who informed Mr Yarrell of the fact, of
which there could be no doubt, for the eggs were taken in both
cases, and placed under Canaries which hatched them, and some
of the young Siskins were reared. Nor are these the only instances
of the stay of the Siskin during the breeding season. Sir William
Jardine, Mr Drew of Paisley, a correspondent in the sixth volume
of ‘ Loudon’s Magazine of Natural History,’ and Mr Gardiner,
junior, of Dundee,* all record evidence of its producing young
in this country, and the last-named gentleman bred and reared
the species in confinement. He ascertained that the incubation
lasted fourteen days ; the young were fledged in fifteen days, and
quitted the nest at the end of the third week.

The plumage of this pretty species is so well known, that it
would be needless to describe it here. If any one is not acquainted
with it, he will find admirable descriptions and figures in ‘Yar-
rell’s British Birds,’ and 1 Gould’s Birds of Europe.’ The song
is very sweet, though not loud ; and the Saxon stocking-weavers
fancy that they detect in it the noise made by the loom, which
makes the Siskin a great favourite with them. Siskins are not
bad bird-mimics, and will give imitations of the Tits, the Chaffinch,
and the Lark ; but their talents are unequal to repeating a musical
air. They are indefatigable singers and feeders, caring so little
for the loss of their liberty that they will eat as soon as they are
let out of the hand of the captor. Like the Goldfinches, they are
taught to draw up tiny buckets, and perform other tricks, and are
always gay. When they are not eating, drinking or singing,
they are generally arranging their plumage, of which they take
great care.

Though it may be

‘Wrong for the greenfinch to flirt with the siskin,’

a liaison with a Canary does not seem objectionable : for breeders
pair the Siskin with that bird, and thus obtain spotted mules,
highly valued for their song, which is not too loud for a room.

The Mealy Redpole (Linota ccinescens), which is distinct from
the Lesser or Common Redpole ( Linota linaria), is an Arctic bird,

* Loudon’s Magazine, vol. vm.

THE PINE GNOSBEAK.

47

with a very wide range over the North of America, Asia, and Europe,
and is found in Japan. It is only an occasional visiter to this
country, principally in winter, though it has been shot as late as
May. Much cannot be said for its song ; but the male Mealy
Redpole in his spring dress, when his forehead and crown are blood-
red, his throat and lore black, and the front of his neck, breast,
and rump rosy, setting off the pure white of his underdress, is a
very pretty bird. The seeds of forest-trees form the food of this
species.

The Mountain Linnet ( Linota montium ), though only a winter
visiter in the south of England, breeds in the north of England
and Scotland, as well as in the northern and western Scotch islands,
annually. It is the Heather Lintee of Orkney and Shetland, and
may be known from the Common Linnet and the Redpoles by its
longer tail, its reddish tawny throat, and the absence of red on
the head or breast at any season, though the rump has a tinge of
red in summer. The song is described by Mr Selby as pleasing,
though scarcely equal in compass to that of the Common Linnet.

The Pine Grosbeak (Corythus enucleator •), can only be considered
as an occasional visiter to any part of these islands. The species
is especially abundant in the north of Europe and America, and
occurs in Lapland, Norway, Russia, Siberia, Sweden, and the
north of Germany. The pine forests are its favourite haunts,
though it will eat the buds and seeds of most trees, and occa¬
sionally take an insect.

The male, when in full plumage, is a very handsome bird.
The bill is dark brown, tinged on the lower mandible with dark
red. The base of the upper mandible and the eyes are sur¬
rounded by a narrow dusky black band. The iris is hazel, and
the whole of the head, the cheeks, the ear- coverts, and the
hinder part of the neck, are of a fine vermilion. The greyish-
black feathers of the back and scapulars are edged with red,
and those of the rump and upper tail-coverts still more broadly,
so that the colour of the head and neck is apparently continued.
The wing-coverts and quills are greyish-black, and both greater
and lesser wing-coverts have broad outer edges, and the tips
white with a red tinge. All the quills have a narrow outer edg¬
ing of white, the first six of the primaries being partially tinged
with red. The slightly formed tail is uniform greyish-black.
When in their proper position, the feathers of the chin, throat,
breast, and sides make those parts appear of a fine vermilion
red; but if they are lifted, they will be seen to be only edged
with that colour and grey at the base like the feathers of the
upper parts. The beliy and under-tail coverts (the latter with
a white edging), are French-grey, and the wings and tail be-

48

MIGRATORY SINGING BIRDS.

neath slate-grey. The legs and toes are blackish-brown, and the
claws are black. The total length of this fine species is eight
inches.

The nest, built of small sticks and lined with feathers, is generally
placed on a low branch of a tree not far from the ground, and
contains four or five white eggs when the laying is complete. The
song of the Pine Grosbeak is very melodious. Mr Audubon states
that he once ‘knew one of these sweet songsters, which in the
evening, as soon as the lamp was lighted in the room where its cage
was hung, would instantly tune its voice anew.’ The same fasci¬
nating author states that they are caught under snow-shoes, put up
with a figure of four around the wood-cutters’ camps in the State
of Maine, and that their flesh is said to be good eating. A friend
of his gives the following account of one in a state of domestica¬
tion: —

‘ I received,’ said his friend, ‘ a male in splendid plumage, but
so emaciated, that he seemed little else than a mass of feathers.
By cautious feeding, however, he soon regained his flesh, and be¬
came so tame as to eat from my hand without the least appearance
of fear. To reconcile him gradually to confinement, he was per¬
mitted to fly about my bedroom ; and, upon rising in the morning,
the first thing I did was to give him a small quantity of seed. But
three mornings in succession I happened to lie rather later than
usual, and each morning I was aroused by the bird fluttering upon
my shoulder, and calling for his usual allowance. The third morn¬
ing I allowed him to flutter about me some time before showing
any symptom of being awake: he no sooner observed that his object
was effected, than he retired to the window, and waited patiently
until I arose.’

Surely there is more than instinct in such conduct: in such
actions have we not evidence of memory, association, and inference?
Mr Audubon’s friend goes on to say that, as the spring approached,
the bird used to whistle occasionally in the morning, and that his
notes were exceedingly rich and full. The migratory instinct seems,
however, to have prevailed in full force ; for the narrator adds, that
when the Pine Grosbeaks begin to move to the north, the former
familiarity of the bird entirely disappeared. The instance of the
night singing here recorded, does not appear to stand alone; for
Bechstein observes, that these birds (which are liked both on
account of the ease with which they are tamed, and of their agree¬
able song), will sometimes sing in the night; and he adds that, in
captivity, they keep their song throughout the year, whereas the
wild birds only sing in the spring.

Though there was circumstantial evidence to show that the
Common Crossbill (Loxia curvirostra), had bred in this country; and

THE COMMON CROSSBILL.

49

though it had been seen in some places throughout the year, Mr
Yarrell, whose industry in collecting facts is well known, was not
able, when he published his interesting account of the bird, to find
any instance in which the eggs or nestlings had been taken. Not¬
withstanding tne case of their being observed during twelve months,
the species, in the present state of our knowledge, can only be re¬
garded in the light of an occasional visiter. It inhabits Lapland,
Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Siberia, Russia, Poland, Germany,
Switzerland, the Alps, and the Pyrenees in the Old World, and
visits Spain and Genoa. These countries may be considered as its
southern limit, generally speaking; but the Prince of Canino notices
it as very rare and accidental near Rome; and adds, that it only
appears in the hardest winters. In North America — for there now
seems to be no doubt that the Crossbill of that country is identical
with the European bird — Mr Audubon found it more abundant in
Maine, and the British provinces of New Brunswick and Nova
Scotia, than anywhere else, and he met with it in the month of
August in the great pine forest of Pennsylvania. In the Old World
its haunts are in such forests.

To this country they have generally come in large flocks. Mr
Yarrell observes, that there are some curious records of their
appearance in the years 1254 and 1593. Of their visit in the
last-named year, he gives the following account from an old MS.,
with a copy of which he was favoured by the Rev. L. B. Larking,
of Ryarsh Vicarage, near Maidstone : —

‘The year 1593 was a greate and exceeding yeere of apples;
and there were greate plenty of strang birds that shewed them¬
selves at the tyme the apples were full rype, who fedde upon the
kernels only of those apples, and liaveinge a bill with one beake
wrythinge over the other, which would presently bore a greate
hole in the apple, and make way to the kernells ; they were of
the bignesse of a bullfinch, the henne right like the lienne of the
bullfinch in colour : the cocke a very glorious bird, in a manner al
redde or yellow on the brest, backe, and head. The oldest man
living never heard or reade of any such like bird ; and the tliinge
most to bee noted was, that it seemed they came out of some
country not inhabited; for that they at the first would abide
shooting at them, either with pellet, bowe, or other engine, and
not remove till they were stricken downe ; moreover, they would
abide the throweing at them, in so much as diverse were stricken
downe and killed with often throwing at them with apples. They
came when the apples were rype, and went away when the apples
were cleane fallen. They were very good meate ’ — as they are
considered to this day, especially at Vienna, where Mr Gould saw
multitudes of them exposed for sale for the table, in company in-

E

50

mGRATORY SINGING BIRDS.

deed with Swallows, Martins, and other small birds, but looked upon
as far superior to all the rest.

In the years 1821, 183G, 1837, and 1838, these Crossbills visited
England in considerable force. In 1791 many were taken at Bath.
Mr Yarrell remarks, that in 1828 they appeared at Westmoreland ;
that in 1829 they were numerous in Yorkshire; and that they
have been, he might also say, plentiful in various parts of Eng¬
land from the winter of 1835 to January 1839 (when he wrote
his history of the species), probably induced, as he observes, to
remain longer in this country now than formerly, by the greater
abundance of fir plantations, to which they particularly resort
for their principal food in winter. In April, 1839, Mr Charles-
worth exhibited at the meeting of the Zoological Society,
the nest, eggs, and young, so long in vain sought for, from the
neighbourhood of Farnham, in Surrey. Nests had before been seen
near Hartford, in Kent, and near Saffron Walden; in the first
case, on a pine-tree : in the last, in an apple-tree. No eggs,
however, were laid in either case; but, according to Mr Joseph
Clark, of Saffron Walden, a pair some years ago completed a
nest in the aviary at Audley-End, and the hen laid five eggs, but
did not sit. The specimens exhibited by Mr Charles worth,
were accompanied by notes relating to their discovery, by H. L.
Long, Esq., who stated that the nest was lodged close to the
central stem of a Scotch fir, about thirty inches below its highest
point, at the base of the shoots of the year 1837 : it was supported
beneath by five or six ascending lateral branches of the tree,
which so completely coiicealed it, that it could have scarcely been
perceptible from the ground, and the retreat of the parent birds
was only betrayed by their occasional visits. Mr Yarrell observed
that the eggs very nearly resembled those of the Greenfinch, but
that they were larger, and had a smaller portion of red colouring,
and this not confined to the larger end of the egg. It is
not stated of wliat the nest was composed; but that built at
Audley-End was of a loose texture, not unlike that of the Green¬
finch, ‘though not nearly so well, or so carefully built, and the
eggs contained in it were not unlike those of that bird, but
larger.’

The plumage varies greatly at different periods. The nestling
is dark green, with blackish longitudinal marks. The young-
birds in June and July have the head, neck, and all the under
parts of the body streaked longitudinally with dusky brown, and
then resemble the hen Siskin ; but the streaks in the male Cross¬
bills are much more distinct and bright than they are in the
females. In September, the colour of the males is more uniform,
and the stripes more diffused. At the first autumnal moult, some

TIIE COMMON CROSSBILL.

51

change to red only, or yellow only, and others to red and yellow
mixed.

The young liens at the same period become greenish-yellow on
the crown of the head, and on the whole of the under parts, mixed
with greyish-brown, primrose-yellow, tinged with green, on the
rump and upper tail-coverts, and of the same colour as the male on
the wings, tail, and legs.

• But the most curious part of the organization of the Crossbills

is the structure of the beak, the mandibles of which cross each

other at the extremity from right to left, or from left to right.
Buffon, who is ever too ready to charge nature with a fault,
speaks of this structure as a deformity. A more admirable

instrument for the purpose it has to accomplish was never

invented. In the nestlings the mandibles do not cross at all,
because in that state their crossing would interfere with the
sure reception of their food brought to them by their parents;
their bills, therefore, are straight, and the under mandible shuts
within the upper one. But as soon as the bird is arrived at an
age when it must provide for itself, the mandibles cross to form
a fitting tool for splitting apples, and even almonds, and for
opening fir-cones. Mr Townson kept some in captivity, and
had an opportunity of witnessing how perfectly the disposition of
the mandibles enables the bird to tear or wrench open what is
presented to it. Ilis pets would often come on the table whilst
he was writing, and carry off his pencils, little chip-boxes in
which he occasionally kept insects, and other similar objects,
and tear them to pieces in a minute. Their mode of operation
was first to peck a little hole, into which they inserted the
bill, and then split or tore the object by a force exercised
laterally. When lie treated them with almonds in their shells,
they got at the kernel in the same manner, namely, by first peck¬
ing a hole in the shell, and then enlarging it by wrenching off
pieces by the lateral power. Mr Yarrell mentions a pair kept
by Mr Morgan, which were impatient and restless under con¬
finement, climbing over the wires of their cage with beak and
claws, like parrots. One of their principal occupations was
twisting out the ends of the wires of their prison — a feat which
they performed with ease and dexterity. Then there was a short,
flat-headed nail, which confined some strong net-work, and was
an object on which they especially delighted to try their strength.
The male, who was the leader in every exploit, worked at this
nail till lie drew it out of the wood ; not, however, without break¬
ing off the point of his bill in the experiment. At last their
patron, wearied out by their incessant destruction of cages, was
obliged to banish them. With this same formidable instrument

MIGRATORY SINGING BIRDS.

u2

they can pick up the smallest seeds, and shell hemp and similar
grains, notwithstanding Buffon’s rash assertion to the contrary.
The beautiful disposition of the muscles by which the beak is
worked, and the exquisitely- adapted tongue, with its horny
scoop for the reception of the dislodged seed, is directed, are
figured and described in a masterly manner by Mr Yarrell, in
the ‘Zoological Journal,’ and in his ‘British Birds/

There is an odd superstition connected with these birds in
Thuringia, which makes the wood-cutters very careful of the
nests. The Crossbills in captivity are subject to many diseases,
such as weak eyes, swelled and ulcerated feet, &c., arising
probably from the heat and accumulated vapours of the stove-
heated rooms where they are kept. The Thuringian mountaineer
believes that these wretched birds can take upon themselves any
diseases to which he is subject, and always keeps some near him.
He is satisfied that a bird whose upper mandible bends to the
right, has the power of transferring colds and rheumatisms from
men to itself ; and, if the mandible turns to the left, he is equally
certain that the bird can render the same service to women. The
Crossbill is often attacked with epilepsy, and the Thuringians
drink every day the water left by the bird as a specific against
that disease.

The Parrot Crossbill ( Loxia pityopsittacus) which is much
larger than the common Crossbill, and the White-winged Cross¬
bill ( Loxia falcirostra) are both occasionally seen in this
country.

Passing by those Wagtails ( Motacillci ) that visit this country —
for they have no song beyond call-notes — we approach a family,
modest and even sombre in their attire, but in which the full
power of bird-music is developed. The Sylviadce, or Warblers,
afford examples of almost every degree of song, from the often
repeated double-note from which the Chiffchaff takes its English
name, to the rich and varied melody of the Blackcap and the
diapason of the Nightingale.

The Chiffchaff (Sylvia hippolais) is the smallest of the British
visiters, and we have received one in a cover, together with a
written half-sheet of paper, franked by the penny stamp, which
now affords such extensive communication on subjects of business
or pleasure. It is a welcome little bird ; for it is one of the
earliest heralds of spring, generally arriving early in March : it
has been heard in the very beginning of February. Its snug nest
is generally made on or near the ground, sometimes in the ivy
that covers a wall, and is framed of dried grass, withered leaves,
and moss on the outside, with an abundant warm lining of
feathers, on which the six tiny white eggs scantily speckled with

THE CHIFFCHAFF.

53

dark purplish, red, are deposited. This sprightly species lingers
long with us, and as he brings fine weather with him, so he
does not depart till the middle of October, after which the
winter generally comes rapidly upon us. Nay, so attached is the
bird to its summer quarters, that Colonel Montagu saw it in the
winters of 1806 and 1808 in the mild climate of Devonshire. In
a wild state it is of infinite service in gardens, the neighbourhood
of which it haunts, and is indefatigable in clearing the rose-trees
and honeysuckles of the aphides which so often disappoint the
hopes of the florist.

Confinement does not seem to affect it painfully ; for one caught
by Mr Sweet took to feeding directly, and learned to drink milk
out of a spoon. In three or four days it took a fly from his hand,
and would wing its way round the room after the person who
carried the spoonful of milk, of which beverage it was so fond
that it would perch on the hand that held the spoon, without
manifesting the least fear. Every now and then it would rise to
the ceiling, and bring down a fly every time.

At last the confiding little bird became so very tame, that it
would sit and sleep on Mr Sweet’s knee by the fire ; and when
the windows were open, it never attempted to fly out. Mr
Sweet then ventured to entice it out into the garden, to see if it
would return. It was with difficulty that the bird was induced
to come out at the door by the lure of its favourite spoonful of
milk ; twice it returned into the room : the third time it flew into a
little tree, from which it came and perched on Mr Sweet’s hand,
and drank milk out of the spoon : from thence it flew to the
ground on some chickweed, where it washed itself, and got into
a holly-bush to dry.

Here the instinct of migration seems to have overcome all the
■domestic comforts which its kind-hearted master had provided for
it, and to which it had become so attached; for, after the little
bird had got among the holly-leaves, Mr Sweet could see it no
more, though he heard it call several times.

4 I suppose,’ says he, 4 after it got quite dry, that it left the
country directly, as I could never see or hear it afterwards ; and
it was then the end of November, when all the others had left for
some time.’*

The Willow Warbler, Willow Wren, or Hay-bird (> Sylvia Tro-
chilus) generally arrives about the middle of April. The ear¬
liest arrival noted in ‘White’s Calendar’ is the 19th of March,
and the latest is the 13th of April. Markwick’s periods are
the 30th of March and the 16th of May, and he records it as

* ‘British Warblers.’

54

MIGRATORY SINGING BIRDS.

sitting on the 27th of May, and as last seen on the 23d of
October.

The nest, which is built on the ground, often in the bank of a
hedge skirting a wood, is a curious piece of architecture. It is
oval or rounded, and made of moss and grass externally, so that
it is with difficulty detected among the long grass and herbage in
which it is generally concealed. It is lined with feathers, and the
bird enters at the side. The six or seven eggs are generally
white, plentifully but minutely speckled with pale red : but they
have been found of a pure white.

Of the strong attachment of this lively bird to its nest a lady
gives a very striking account in the 4 Field Naturalist.’

She was walking, in the spring, through an orchard, when her
attention was attracted by something on the ground in the form
of a large ball . composed of dried grass. She took it up and
found that it was the domed nest of the Willow Wren. Regretting
her precipitation she restored it, as nearly as she could, to the
place where it had been found, but with small hope that the
owner would ever claim it again after such an attack. To her
agreeable surprise, the little occupier was next day proceeding
with its work. In a few days two eggs were laid, and the kind
lady now hoped that her little friends were safe from harm ;
when lo! an invading army of splay-footed ducks marched
straight upon the nest (which was conspicuous, for the grass had
not grown high enough to hide it), and with their broad shovels
of bills spread the nest quite open, displaced the eggs, and left
the neat and snug little domicile a complete ruin. The lady now
almost despaired; but having driven away the waddling intruders,
she did her best to restore the nest to something like its proper
form, and placed the eggs inside. Her perseverance was re¬
warded ; for that same day she was astonished to lind an
additional egg, and in about a week, four more. The birds sat,
and ultimately brought out seven young ones. It almost seems
as if this persecuted pair looked upon the lady as their guardian
angel, and that, confident in her protection, under the most ad¬
verse circumstances, they were determined not to abandon the nest.

Mr Yarrell speaks of the song of the Willow Warbler as being
soft and pleasing, sometimes given from a high tree, and oc¬
casionally while passing on the wing from place to place, but as
possessing but little variety. Mr Sweet characterises its musical
powers as of a much higher order ; and says, that as it is so fine a
songster, and almost continually in song, no little bird can be more
desirable in a cage with other birds; its note, when in full song,
being so loud and shrill, that its voice is plainly heard above the
Nightingale’s, when both are in full power.

THE REDSTARTS.

55

It is a great destroyer of apliides and other insects, and is too
frequently shot on the supposition that it devours fruit, which it
never eats. This useful and agreeable little warbler is courageous
withal ; and Mr Sweet found that it soon became very familiar in
captivity.

The Wood Warbler (Sylvia Sylvicola) is a loud, though a simple
songster, and, like the last species, sings from a lofty tree, and
as it flies. The nest is externally like that of the Willow
Warbler, but it may always be distinguished by the entire absence
of feathers within, fine grass and hairs invariably forming the
lining of the domed nest of the Wood Warbler. Like its con¬
geners, it feeds on insects and their larva?, but never on fruit.
It comes late, seldom arriving till toward the end of April ;
sings during the greater part of the summer, and leaves us in
September.

The Blue-throated Warbler, or Blue-throated Robin ( Cyanecula
Suecica ), seldom deigns to visit ns, though it is numerous as a
summer visiter on the continent of Europe, where its beauty and
voice do not save it from the cook; in Alsace, particularly, it is
considered a great delicacy, and numbers are immolated for the
table.

It were to be wished that this elegant and pleasing songster
would visit us more frequently; and as insects, earth-worms, and
berries are its food, it seems singular that . it does not favour
us regularly with its company ; for Russia and Siberia, as
well as Spain, France, Holland, Germany, and Prussia know it
well.

The Redstarts now claim our attention, and the more common
but more beautiful species (. Phamicura ruticilla , Gould ; Buticilla
jphcenicura , Bonap.) first presents itself. The second week in
April, or thereabout, generally brings it to our southern shores,
and by the third week it has penetrated to the north of England.
Its earliest appearance is noted by White on the 8th of that month,
and its latest arrival on the 28th. Markwick records April the
5th as the earliest ; states that it sings on the 25th of that
month, and adds, that it was last seen on the 20th of Sep¬
tember.

’Tis a pretty bird, too well known to every schoolboy with his
c shining morning face’ to require description : and though the
meadow, the orchard, and the garden, are not unfrequently chosen,
its favourite haunts are ivied ruins. In such scenes its soft song
has seemed to us sweetest, as it sat upon some broad stone among
the wall-flowers, or on the top of the low tree that had sprung up
in what was once a room, where men and women had lived, and
children had played, pouring forth a lament over the grass-grown

5G

MIGRATORY SINGING BIRDS.

hearthstone. lie is an affectionate bird ; and while his mate is on
the nest, he is constantly on the watch, sure to attract the eye and
provoke danger by his smart plumage, and singing indefatigably to
solace her. He is in truth ‘the bird of dawning;’ for he has been
heard as early as three o’clock in the morning, though he had not
ceased his song till ten o’clock on the previous night.*

We are hardly justified in considering the Black b cdstart (Ruti-
ci'lla Tithys ) as a visiter. Some five or six stragglers (one of them
in Ireland) have been recorded in the autumn and winter.

The habits of the Whincliat or Furzcchat (Saxicola fiubetra),
are nearly allied to those of the resident Stonechat, and the nest
and eggs are almost similar ; the eggs of the Whincliat, indeed,
are biuish green, minutely speckled with obscure reddish brown,
whilst those of the Stonechat are greyish blue, but speckled with
the same colour. The arrival of the bird takes place about the
middle of April, when it instantly repairs to its favourite furze-
commons, where it may be seen with the Stonechat ; but in its
musical powers, it far exceeds its companion.

Bechstein says, that its pleasing song very much resembles that
of the Goldfinch, but that what makes it more admired is, that it
is not only heard during the day, but also in the evening, and
sometimes during the night. According to him, the poor bird
acutely feels the loss of liberty; for he tells us, that however gay it
may appear when free, it becomes sad and melancholy within doors.
Mr Sweet, however, who seems thoroughly to have understood the
treatment of the warblers in confinement, had one of these birds,
(which exceeds the Redstart, no mean proficient, in mimicry), whose
spirits were no jot abated by being kept in the house.

4 One that I bred from the nest by hand,’ says Mr Sweet,
‘learnt the song of the White Throat, the Redstart, Willow
W ren, Nightingale, and also that of the Missel Thrush, which
it frequently heard singing in a garden close by ; of this latter
song it was so fond, that we were frequently obliged to put our
favourite out of the room, not being able to bear its loud notes ;
it was certainly the best bird I ever kept of any kind, singing
nearly the whole year through, and varying its song continually ;
the only fault was its strong voice. At last, our favourite was
turned out of its cage by a mischievous servant on a cold winter’s
day when we were from home for about an hour, and we could not
entice it back ; it most probably died of the cold, or took its flight
to a warmer region. 1 scarcely entertain any hopes of ever getting
such another.’

Worms, small snails, slugs, insects, and berries form the food of

*

Yarrell — ‘ British Birds.’

THE WHEATEAR.

57

the Whinchat, on which it becomes very fat about August, when
the epicure is on the look out for them ; for though smaller than the
visiter that we must next notice, they equal it in delicacy and flavour.

He who is fond of dancing as well as music, should keep the
Wheatear ( Viliflora (Enanlhe), which generally arrives here rather
early in the spring. White notes its first appearance on the 18th
of March, and its latest arrival as occurring on the 30th of that
month; whilst Markwick saw it, one year, as early as the 13th,
and has recorded its arrival in another year so late as the 23rd of
May. Mr Sweet states the general time of its coming to be about
the middle of March, and that of its departure to be about the end
of September, or the beginning of October, though he once saw a
pair in Ilyde Park as late as November.

‘ This,’ says Mr Sweet in continuation, ‘ is a very interesting
bird in confinement, and is almost continually singing ; it will also
sing by night as well as by day, if there is a light in the room
where it is kept ; it has a very pleasant, variable, and agreeable
song, different from all other birds, which in confinement it con¬
tinues all the winter. When a pair of them are kept together in a
large cage or aviary, it is very amusing to see them play with each
other, flying up and down and spreading their long wings in a
curious manner, dancing and singing at the same time. 1 have
very little doubt but a young bird, brought up from the nest, might
be taught to talk, as they are very imitative.’

This pretty warbler is too generally known on our downs and
sheep-walks, especially in the south of England, to demand a
detailed account of its plumage. The rude nest is formed of bents,
bits of shred, feathers, and any other materials that it can find.
The four eggs are pale blue. The nest is generally sheltered by a
stone or clod, and is often placed in stone-quarries, gravel-pits, or
chalk-pits. Sometimes it is so carefully hidden as to be beyond
the reach of either eye or hand.

Mr Knapp mentions a nest situated deep in the crevice of a
stone-quarry, so well masked by projecting fragments that it was
not to be observed till part of the rock was removed.

‘Another hen-bird,’ says this interesting author and acute
observer, ‘had descended through the interstices of some rather
large, loose stones, as a mouse would have done, and then
proceeded laterally to a hollow space in a bank, against
which the stones were laid ; and so deep had she penetrated,
that many of the stones had to be removed before we could
discover her treasure ; as no appearance led to any suspicion
of a nest, it would never have been detected but for our watch¬
fulness.’*

* ‘Journal of a Naturalist.’

58

MIGRATORY SINGING BIRDS.

St James’s day, the 25th of July, is a dark day in the "Wheat-
ear’s calendar, for then the shepherds take the field against the
devoted birds, beginning on that day to lay their traps cut in
the turf and covered by a severed portion of the same, which are
all in full play by the 1st of August. The slightest alarm, even
the shadow of the passing clouds that

‘ Imitate on field and furrow,

Life’s checkered scene of joy and sorrow,’

will make the birds run under the shelter of the severed turf,
and into one of the two twisted horse-hair nooses there set.
The numbers captured annually are almost incredible. One
shepherd has been known to take eighty-four dozen in a day
and Pennant has recorded that about 1840 dozen were annually
snared at Eastborne. All the inns of the Sussex coast are then
redolent of these savoury victims, and, sooth to say, their fat and
flavour are superlative.

That extraordinary ventriloquist, the Grasshopper Warbler
(Locustella Iicnji — Sylvia Locustella of authors), visits us from
the south, about the middle of April, and quits this country in
September,

‘Nothing,’ says White in a letter to Pennant, dated 18th
April, 1768, ‘can be more amusing than the whisper of this little
bird, which seems to be close by, though at an hundred yards
distance; and when close at your ear, is scarce any louder than
when a great way off. Had I not been a little acquainted with
insects, and known that the grasshopper kind is not yet hatched,
I should have hardly believed but that it had been a locusta
whispering in the bushes. The country people laugh when you
tell them that it is the note of a bird. It is a most artful creature,
skulking in the thickest part of a bush ; and will sing at a yard
distance, provided it be concealed. I was obliged to get a person
to go on the other side of the hedge, where it haunted ; and then
it would run, creeping like a mouse before us, for a hundred yards
together, through the bottom of the thorns : yet it would not
come into fair sight ; but in a morning early, and when undis¬
turbed, it sings on the top of a twig, gaping and shivering with
its wings.’

The greenish brown, and other shades of brown which tinge
the plumage of this curious little bird are admirably adapted for
concealment; and its nest, which is generally framed of coarse
dried grass, is as difficult to detect as itself, hidden as it generally is
under the furze, thorns, or matted coarse grass, in some ditch or
furrow. The fair white eggs, four or five, or even seven, in number,
are carnation, freckled. In the height of summer, he chirps all night.

THE GARDEN WARBLER.

59

Descend we now to the sedgy side of yon clear but sluggish
river, where the tall reeds make music as the wind sighs through
them; — there sits the Sedge Warbler (Calamodyta Phragmitis —
Sylvia Phragmitis of the older authors) in his quiet brown coat,
‘ the Delicate Polyglott’ as White aptly calls him, singing
incessantly night and day during the season of love and incuba¬
tion, and imitating with clear but hurrying execution now a
Sparrow, now a Swallow, and anon, a Sky-lark. The night is clear
and quiet, and, for a wonder, so is he ; but just throw a clod into
the willow-bush where he slumbers, and he starts from sleep,
trilling away as gaily as ever.* He came in April and will depart
in September ; and if you want to find his rather deep and hair-
lined nest, framed of grass and bents, with its five or six pale
yellowish brown eggs, mottled, and sometimes streaked with a
darker tint, you should look for it near the ground at or near the
bottom of some patch of thick herbage, for it rarely is supported
by the reeds.

But we must be careful not to confound this Polyglott with the
merry Heed Warbler ( Calamoherpe arundinacea — Sylvia arundinacea
of authors), for merry he is, notwithstanding his pale brown
quakerly suit. If you cannot find its beautiful nest, turn to the
elegant vignette in Yarrell’s book;f and there you will see it
supported on four reed-stems, formed of the seed-branches of the
reeds and very long grass coiled horizontally round with a little
wool, including the four upright reeds in the substance. How
deep it is ! but why ? — That the four or five greenish white eggs,
with their ash-green and light-brown freckles, may not be rolled
out by the blasts before which the waving reeds bend. Colonel
Montagu saw one of these birds retaining her seat on the
nest when every gust forced it almost to the surface of the
water.

The song is varied and pleasing, though hurried like that of the
Sedge Warbler, and is of better quality. Frequently have we heard
it when plying the rod on the banks of the Colne. It sings by
night as well as by day continually, and its loud music, often heard
clearest in the evening twilight or grey dawn, resembles the notes
and voices of several different birds.

Most of the true warblers sing concealed, and so, generally does
the Garden Warbler ( Gurruca hortensis — Sylvia hortensis , of authors);
though it sometimes quits its bower of chick foliage to pour forth
its wild, but richly deep and mellow flute-like notes from the top
branches of a tree. Its attire is modest, consisting of various
shades of brown, the under plumage being of a whitish brown. It

* See White’s ‘ Selborne.’

f ‘British Birds.’

GO

MIGRATORY SINGING BIRDS.

is a pea and fruit-eater, and in the cherry, and currant, and elder¬
berry season, its bill is always stained.

Toward the end of April or beginning of May, this exquisitely
modulating warbler arrives, and retires southward in the autumn.
The nest, formed of grass-bents and root-fibres, and a little wool
and moss, is generally fixed in a low bush, or in rank herbage,
and has been found in the ivy of a wall : the four or five greenish-
white eggs are speckled, and streaked with ash-green and light
brown.

This, little as it seems to be attended to in this country, is the
true becafico , so earnestly sought on the continent for the tables
of the dainty ; but it must be remembered that the terms becafico
and bec-figue are applied to any of the birds of this race that are
fruit-eaters, when they are fat with their summer feed. Listen
to the Professor who gave to the world the Physiologie da
Gout.

i Parmi les petits oiseaux, le premier, par ordre d’excellence, est
sans contredit le bec-figue. II s’engraisse au moins autant que le
rouge-gorge, ou ! ortolan, et la nature lui a dome' en outre une
amertume iegere , et un parfum unique si exquis qu ils engagent , remplissent
et beatifient toutes les puissances degustatrices. Siun bec-figue etait de la
grosseur d'un fiaisan , on le paierait certainement a I'egal d'un arpent de
terre.

1 C’est grand dommage que cet oiseau privilegie se voit si
rarement a Paris : il en arrive a la verite quelques-uns, mais il leur
manque la graisse qui fait tout leur merite ; et on pent dire qu’ils
ressemblent a peine a ceux qu’on voit dans les departements de
Test ou du midi de la Prance.’

This last is quite touching ; and, after these tears, such as epi¬
cures only shed, we are driven to confess that Paris, like all created
places and things, is not perfect.

The same cause probably, prevents the celebrity of the bird with
us; for it evidently owes its plumpness and delicious sapidity to
the figs, grapes, and other rich fruits of the south of Europe, and
thither should the devotee make his pilgrimage.

With what emotion does the philosophical gastronomer above
quoted relate the progress of such a pilgrim !

‘ J’ai entendu parler a Bellev, dans ma jeunesse, du jesuite Fabi,
ne dans ce diocese, et du gout particular qu’il avait pour les
bec-figues.

‘Des qu’on en entendait crier, on disait: “ Voila les bec-figues,
le pere Fabi est en route.” Effectivement, il ne manquait jamais
d’arriver le ler. Septembre avec un ami ; ils venaient s’en regaler
pendant tout le passage ; chacun sc faisait un plaisir de les in viter ;
et ils partaient vers le 25.

THE WIIITETHROAT.

61

4 Tant qu’il fut en France, il ne manqua jamais de faire son
voyage ornithophilique, et ne l’interrompit que qnand il fnt envoy e
a Rome, ou il mournt penitencier en 1688.’*

The common Whitethroat (Curruca cinereci), whose gray coat is
so well known to everybody, arrives in onr thickets, hedge-rows,
and grassy lanes, towards the end of April. He is a bold songster,
and sings in right earnest. The heat of the day, when most other
birds are hushed, does not silence him. On he trills, his little
throat swelling again, only pausing to refresh himself with a few
aphides from the rose-tree or honeysuckle, and a fly when he can
get one. Mr Sweet kept it in confinement, and says that nothing
can be more amusing ; it is full of antics, flying and frisking
about, and erecting its crest, generally singing all the time. He
kept one for eleven years, which, when he wrote, was in as good
health and as full song as ever ; and he declares that no song need
be louder, sweeter, or more varied. He describes the little bird
as being of the same temper as the Nightingale, never suffering
itself to be outdone. It would sing against a Nightingale which
Mr Sweet had : when the Nightingale raised its voice the White-
throat did the same, and tried its utmost to get above its great
rival. Sometimes in the midst of its song it would run up to the
Nightingale, stretch out its neck, as if in defiance, and whistle as
loud as it could, staring the Nightingale in the face. If the
Nightingale attempted to peck it, away it started in an instant,
flying round the aviary and singing all the time.

Mr Slaney, who was well aware of the Whitethroat’s habit of
singing in a sultry summer noon, gives the following instances of
the effect of association : —

4 It is singular how some well-known sounds- -even the song of
this little bird — associated with remembrances of other scenes and
times, will awaken long trains of thought in the minds of men.
We remember a few years since, under circumstances of some
depression, alone in a sultry day (when walking between the Hague
and the village of Scheveling, on the bleak shores of Holland),
hearing unexpectedly the song of this warbler of home, and the
note brought back in a moment, clear as a mirror, to the mind’s
eye, cherished scenes across the water, and the forms and voices of
those who gave them value. And once at Rome, amid the magni¬
ficent but melancholy ruins of the Colosseum, at noon, when no
cloud shadowed the deep blue sky, when all other voices were silent,
from the shrubs of that vast amphitheatre this English warbler sud-

* The ‘ Professeur’ adds, ‘ Le pere Fabi (Honore) etait un liomme d’un
grand savoir; il a fait divers ouvrages de theologie et de physique, dans l’un
desquels il cherche a prouver, qu’il avait decouvert la circulation du sang
avant, ou du moins aussitot, quTIarvey.’

62

MIGRATORY SINGING BIRDS.

denly poured forth his song, awakening a thousand recollections of
the land cf the free.’ *

There is a lesser Whitethroat ( Curruca garrula ) often called the
Babillard, that must not be passed without notice. He has some
clacking notes in his song which have given him the name of
the little miller among the Germans. Bechstein remarks that as
these notes are heard more distinctly than the others, they are
erroneously thought to be his whole song ; but he adds that the
rest, though certainly very weak, is so soft, so varied, so melodious,
that it surpasses other warblers, and that to enjoy the beauty of
its song you should have it alone in a room, and then no other
singing bird is more agreeable. Both Mr Sweet and Mr Blyth
speak highly of it. One that the former bred from the nest
became so attached to the cage, that it could not be prevailed on
to quit it for any length of time. When the cage-door was set
open, it would generally come out quickly, and first alight on the
floor, and then mount to the top of its cage, and thence fly to other
cages in the room, and catch any flies within its reach. It would
fly up and take those insects out of the hand, or drink milk out of
a spoon with much relish, when invited. The least fright sent it
to its own cage, first to the top, thence to the door, and then in.
Mr Sweet often hung it out at the window perched on the top of
its cage, with the door open, but it would never attempt to go
away. If a fly, indeed, passed near it, it would start off and catch
it, and return with it to the top of the cage ; and, after remaining
there a considerable time, it would either return into the cage, or
fly in at the window, and perch on the cages of other birds.

This familiar warbler arrives in all April and departs early in
autumn. The nest, framed externally of coarse bents, and lined
with finer ones, root-fibres, and horsehair, is generally to be found
in low bushes, or among brambles, and contains four or five white
eggs, rather smaller than those of the common Whitethroat, spotted
and speckled, but not closely, with greyish ash or light brown.

The Blackcap (Curruca atricapilla) is by common consent ac¬
knowledged to excel all the other warblers in the power, beauty,
and execution of its notes, excepting the queen of song ; and in
quality of tone it certainly is, in our opinion, inferior to the Night¬
ingale. But the male is a most sweet singer ; nor is the song of
the female without attraction ; and it is but fair to state that a very
good judge f says that the Blackcap rivals the Nightingale, and that
many persons even give it the preference.

‘ If,’ remarks Bechstein, 4 it has less volume, strength, and
expression, it is more pure, easy, and flute-like in its tones, and

* ‘An Outline of the Smaller British Birds.’ By Enhcrt A. Slaney, Esq., M.P.

f Bechstein.

TIIE NIGHTINGALE

63

its song is more varied, smooth, and delicate. It sings also for a
much longer period, both when wild and in confinement, its song
being hardly suspended throughout the year by day, and prolonged,
like that of the Nightingale, far into the night, though begun at
dawn.’

White gives it a high character for its full, sweet, deep, loud, and
wild pipe. lie adds that when it sits calmly and engages in song in
earnest, it expresses a great variety of soft and gentle modulations,
superior perhaps to those of any of our warblers, the Nightingale
excepted; and he characterises its music as having such a wild
sweetness that it always brought to his mind the song of Amiens , in
1 As You Like it.’ With all this it is, in confinement, most affec¬
tionate to its mistress or master.

A hedge or white-thorn bush generally conceals the nest, which
is framed of bents and dried herbage, lined with hair and root
fibres; it is most frequently placed near the ground — that is, not
more than two or three feet above it ; but we have seen one in
the garden attached to a house where we have spent many pleasant
days, suspended in a festoon of ivy which had shot out from the
wall, and clung to a neighbouring young tree some seven feet
from the ground.* The pale greenish-white eggs are speckled or
mottled with ash and light-brown, and mostly have a few dark-
brown spots and streaks.

The arrival of the Blackcap takes place in general about April,
and it returns southward in September. A later stay might pre¬
vent it from falling a victim to the spit ; for it is one of those un¬
fortunate birds that is doomed under the names of Becafice and
Macchetta , ‘ ogni qualvolta sieno grassi, ed in istato da far buona
figura sulla mensa,’ as the Prince remarks, j

The very name of the bird calls up the remembrance of such a
host of eulogists, that an expressive silence would perhaps be the
best tribute to the powers of the Nightingale ; and tame indeed
is that Saxon appellation to its Greek name, which would seem to
imply that it is the very soul of song. It has been the theme for
poetry in all ages, from the earliest lyre to the exquisitely-turned
harp that has immortalized the

‘ Bower of roses by Bendemeer’s stream.’

Milton, all ear, has introduced it in his finest scenes, and it sings
the nuptial song of our first parents in one of his most beautiful
passages. Nor has the eloquence of prose been less warm in its
praise. Only turn to the elegant fervour with which Pliny dwells
on its miraculous power and execution ; ± or to the honest, pious,

* In Theodore Hook’s garden at Fulham. Elieu!
f ‘ Specchio Comparative.’ $ Nat. Hist., x. 20.

G4

MIGRATORY SINGING BIRDS.

English admiration of Izaak Walton;* not to advert to a crowd of
others; and what more can be said? We shall, in all humility,
confine ourselves to a simple narrative, condensing as much of the
history of the bird as our space will admit.

The Nightingale (Luscinia Philomela — Motacilla Luscinia , Linn.)
arrives in England somewhere about the middle of April. The
males, as in the case of the Blackcap, come several days before the
females ; they are very easily caught, and the lynx-eyed, quick¬
eared bird-catchers are immediately on the watch, so that they
may secure them before the arrival of their mates ; for it is a sad
truth that if a male Nightingale be taken after his song has won
for him a partner, he hardly ever survives in a cage; he dies
broken-hearted.

Plentiful as this warbler is in some localities, it is never found
in others. Nightingales are numerous in the neighbourhood of
London, and a Surrey bird is considered by connoisseurs to possess
a first-rate quality of voice. Sussex, Hampshire, Dorsetshire,
Somersetshire, and the eastern part of Devonshire enjoy it, but
Cornwall knows it not. Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, and a great part
of Yorkshire possess it, but no record of its arrival in Lancashire
exists, though it has been heard as high up as Carlisle.

The Welshman, it is said, never hears it in the principality,
though a poetical licence has made it vocal there ;| and yet we
have heard it, and never sweeter, in the Yalley of Nightingales,
near Bristol. There is also a Welsh name for it — Eos or Eaws.\
Neither Scotland nor Ireland are known to possess it. Patriotic
attempts have been in vain made to introduce it into Wales and
Scotland, but we never heard of any effort to naturalise it in Ire¬
land ; and, indeed, the countrymen of Moore may well spare it,
while they listen to the thrilling strains of their own impassioned
bard.

Russia, Siberia, Sweden, Spain, Provence and Italy, North
Africa, Egypt, Syria, Smyrna, and the Grecian Archipelago, are
made musical by it ; but neither the Channel islands, nor Brittany,
are visited by the bird, though France generally owns it, for what
says the old quatrain ?

‘ Le Rossignol, des oyseaux l’outrepasse
Chante an prin-temps sans intermission,

Et nuict et jour avec invention

De chants divers, qui luy accroist la grace.’

The general site of the Nightingale’s nest is on the ground ; but
we have found it in the fork of a low and young tree some three

* ‘ Complete Angler,’ chap. i. f Dyer, Grongar Hill.

X Since the publication of the first edition, information that the Nightingale
lias been heard in the county of Glamorgan, by experienced ears, has been
kindly forwarded to the author. See Appendix.

\

CHIFFCHAFF, BLACKCAP, WHITETHROAT, NIGHTINGALE, &C.

THE NIGHTINGALE.

65

feet from the earth ; and a very loosely formed nest it is, made of
the dead leaves of the oak and hornbeam, with a few bents and bits
of rushes, lined at the bottom with root-fibres — so loosely formed,
indeed, that few have succeeded in taking up a Nightingale’s nest
whole, without first binding it round with string or thread. Four
or five olive-brown eggs are here deposited, and in this rude cradle
the most brilliant of song-birds is nursed.

But, besides its natural vocal powers, the Nightingale, it ap¬
pears, can be taught to speak. Moschus, Statius, and Pliny,
attest this, and the latter mentions, ‘ luscinias Graeco atque
Latino sermone dociles’ belonging to the young Caesars.* We
must confess that all the attempts to speak made by singing birds
heard by us, have been imperfect ; for though, as in the case of
the celebrated talking Canary, you might with a little aid from the
imagination make out ‘ Pretty Queen’ and other words, still the
speech, like that of the witch in ‘ Thalaba,’ was song, and the
sound could hardly be termed more than an articulate whistle : —
how different from the pronunciation of those anthropoglotts, the
parrots, so well exemplified in Campbell’s pathetic tale ; they speak
in earnest :

‘The captain spoke in Spanish speech,

In Spanish speech the bird replied.’

Like all other biped performers, Nightingales vary much in their
powers of song. They have among them their Rubinis, Marios,
Tamburinis, and Lablaches, and also their Mopers , that sing at
intervals only, without connexion, and with long pauses — some
minutes — between each strain. It is amusing to see when a man
mounts his hobby — and happy is he who has one in his stable —
how far it will carry him, aye, and merrily too. Thus Bechstein
prints no less than twenty-four lines of words — some of them rare
sesquipedalities — as expressive of the Nightingale’s song.

‘ Twenty-four different strains or couplets,’ says he, ‘ may be
reckoned in the song of a fine Nightingale, without including its
delicate variations. The song is so articulate, so speaking, that
it may be very well written. The following is a trial which I
have made on that of a Nightingale in my neighbourhood, which
passes for a very capital singer,’ and off the good Bechstein goes
at score :

‘ Tiou, tiou, tiou, tiofi,’f
&c. &c. &c. &c.

* Nat. His. x. 42.

f Aristophanes, in his ‘Birds,’ has the same syllables.— Belcher's Edition, line
237.

F

66

MIGRATORY SINGING BIRDS.

But we must introduce the reader to one or two of the words
representing the strains :

‘ Zozozozozozozozozozozozo, zirrhading.
Hezezezezezezezezezezezezezezezeze couar lio dze hoi.
Higaigaigaigaigaigaigai guiagaigaigai couior dzio dzio pi.’

The British bird-fanciers have, also, a vocabulary of their own to
express the same sounds.

The Honourable Daines Barrington, who kept a very fine
Nightingale for three years, attending particularly to its song,
remarks that the tone is more mellow than that of any other bird,
though at the same time, by a proper exertion of its musical
powers, it can be excessively brilliant. When the bird sang its
song round, Mr Barrington observed sixteen different beginnings
and closes, at the same time that the intermediate notes were
commonly varied in their succession with such judgment as to
produce a most pleasing variety. He also remarked that the
bird would sometimes continue without a pause not less than
twenty seconds ; and that whenever respiration became necessary,
it was taken with as much judgment as by an opera singer. lie
also observed that his Nightingale began softly, like the ancient
orators, reserving its breath to swell certain notes, which by this
means had a most astonishing effect, eluding all verbal description.
He took down indeed certain passages, which may be reduced to
our musical intervals ; but though, he remarks, one may thus form
an idea of some of the notes used, yet it is impossible to give their
comparative durations in point of musical time, upon which the
whole effect must depend ; and, indeed, he once procured a very
capital flute-player to execute the notes which Kircher has en¬
graved in his Musurgia as being used by the Nightingale, when,
from not being able to settle their respective lengths, it was
hardly possible to observe any traces of the Nightingale’s song.
He adds, that he thinks he may venture to say that a Nightingale
may be very clearly distinguished at more than half a mile, if the
evening be calm, and he suspects that it would be heard further
than a man.

The following is Mr Barrington’s table of the comparative merit
of singing birds, making twenty the point of perfection :

CONCLUSION,

67

Mellowness
of tone.

Sprightly

Notes.

Plaintive

Notes.

Compass.

Execution.

Nightingale . .

19

14

19

19

19

Skylark .

4

19

4

18

18

Woodlark .

18

4

17

12

8

Titlark .

12

12

12

12

12

Linnet .

12

1(1

12

16

18

Goldfinch .

4

19

4

12

12

Chaffinch .

4

12

4

8

8

Greenfinch .

4

4

4

4

6

Hedge-sparrow .

6

0

G

4

4

Aberdavine or Siskin

2

4

0

4

4

Redpole .

0

4

0

4

4

Thrush .

4

4

4

4

4

Blackbird .

4

4

0

2

2

Robin .

6

10

12

12

12

W ren .

0

12

0

4

4

Reed-sparrow .

Blackcap, or the Nor¬
folk mock nightin-

0

4

0

2

2

gale .

14

12

12

14

14

And here we conclude our imperfect sketch of the feathered
songsters who enliven us with their wood notes wild. In mute
July, all is, comparatively speaking, hushed ; and the concert
of birds may be said to be closed, till the returning year again
brightens our fields, —

‘Fields where the spring delays,

And fearlessly meets the ardour
Of the warm summer's gaze,

With hut her tears to guard her.

‘ Islands so freshly fair,

That never hath bird come nigh them;

But from his course through air,

Hath been won downward by them.’

THE CUCKOO.

' Don Adriano de Armado. — Hallo ! approach.*

(Enter all for the song.)

‘This side is Eiems , winter.

This Ver, the spring : the one maintain’d hy the owl,

The other by the cuckoo.

Ver begin.’

Love’s Labour’s Lost.

And a sweet rural song it is — a little piquante withal, as those
who are old enough to have heard Mrs Jordan’s arch intonation
of the word of fear in ‘As you Like it,’ whither it was trans¬
planted for Rosalind’s sake, will admit ; albeit, Shakspere thought
proper to quiz himself by making it the compilation of the most
exquisite Don’s ‘ two learned men,’ irreverently termed by Biron
‘ the pedant * and ‘ the hedge-priest.’ At the risk, however, of
being classed with those worthies, we must begin at the begin¬
ning.

It has been doubted whether the Cuckoo is the Shacaph or Sacaph
of Holy Writ. (Lev. xi. 16.) The Septuagint has not the Greet
name for the Cuckoo (xoxxvg). The Tigurine or Zurich version
translates the word by Cuculus ;* but the Vulgate renders it La-
rum,^ and the term employed by the Seventy would seem to
sanction the latter word.

Barker’s Bible (1615), generally known as the ‘Breeches
Bible’ (Gen. iii. 7.) gives the sixteenth verse of Leviticus
thus :

‘ The ostrich also, and the night-crow, and the seamew , and
the liauke after his kinde : ’ — but with the marginal note ‘ or
cuckowe’ referring to ‘ seamew.’

Scheuchzer, in his Pliysica Sacra (1732), figures the Cuckoo in
his plate illustrative of the verse in question (Tab. 224,) and
‘Cuckoo’ is the word in the edition now read in our churches.

This bird is not, it is true, mentioned by Ilasselquist among

* Cuckoo.

f Gull, or Sea-Mew.

OLD LEGENDS.

69

those which he saw in the Holy Land, though he noticed the
Nightingale amid the willows of Jordan, and the olive trees of
Judea ; but neither did he see the Cuckoo in Egypt, whence Pro¬
fessor Temminck received it ; and it is so widely spread, that there
is no reason for supposing that it is excluded from Syria. It is
well known in the Morea and the Grecian Archipelago, whence it
departs for Africa with the Turtle Dove, and is, in consequence,
called turtle-leader. The Turtle Dove is named in Scripture again
and again. The beautiful passage in the song of Solomon will
occur to every one —

4 11. For lo ! the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.

4 12. The flowers appear on the earth ; the time of the singing
of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.

4 13. The fig-tree putteth forth her green-figs, and the vines with
the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away ! ’

And Hasselquist saw the turtle (Columba Turtur) in the Holy
Land.

Mr Strickland noticed the Cuckoo at Smyrna, and Mr Dickson
and Mr Ross sent specimens of it from Erzeroum to the Zoologi¬
cal Society of London. It is spread over a great part of Asia, and
has been found in Japan and Java.

The disputed word, it will be observed, stands between the Night-
crow or Night-hawk, and the Hawk, the Owl being antecedent to
the Night-hawk in this catalogue of unclean birds. Now it was
one of the old legends that the Cuckoo, at a certain period, was
turned into a hawk ; and the evidence generally appears to be in
favour of the version at present in use.

If we turn from sacred to profane story, we shall find that the
Cuckoo bore no common part in ancient fable. The king and
father of gods and men himself did not disdain to take the form of
the bird when he was anxious to introduce himself to Juno. It is
well known how compendiously Saturn provided for his family;
and the future Queen of Heaven seems to have very nearly shared
the fate of her brothers and sisters. She was, however, restored to
the world by means of a potion administered to her ogre of a papa,
in order to make him return the indigestible stone which his better-
half had induced him to swallow instead of Jupiter. Poor bloom¬
ing Juno was separated from the rest of the heavenly conclave,
and wandering to Mount Thornax in Argolis, there remained in
solitude. Jupiter, who was on the watch, raised the most pelting
of pitiless storms, and, in the likeness of a Cuckoo, flew, all trembling
and shivering from the bitter weather, to Juno’s lap for shelter.
The kind-hearted goddess, pitying the bird’s condition, covered
him with her robe. In an instant the bird was gone, and the god

70

THE CUCKOO.

resumed his shape. The sudden transformation, startling as it was,
did not throw the prudent young lady off her guard, and they were
afterwards married in due form.

But there is always somebody ready to give an ill-natured turn
to a story : accordingly the gossip ran, that when the drenched
bird flew to her for refuge, she shook it out of her peplum; but
when the god stood confessed, she accepted him.

However this may have been, never was such a wedding as they
had. Gods, man and womankind, beasts, and all creation attended
at the solemnization of the nuptials, with one exception. Chelone
plumply refused to come, and treated the whole affair with ridicule
and contempt. Poor young lady — the world was in its infancy
then, or she would have known better than to contemn the powerful,
and would have escaped from figuring as a terrible example to
posterity. Mercury just looked in, waved his caduceus over her,
and down sank the shapely maiden,

‘As tall and as straight as the popular Tree,'*

into a tortoise. This was not pleasant, but worse remained behind ;
for she was condemned to perpetual silence, and, in her new form,
became the symbol of that unfeminine accomplishment. If any¬
body should be hardy enough to doubt all this, we would merely
observe, that the mountain, after Jove’s transformation, received
the name of Coccyx or Coccygia, being no longer known as
Thornax ; and that the Argives especially worshipped the goddess,
whose statue, seated on a throne, held a sceptre, upon the top of
which a Cuckoo was seated.

This elevation does not seem to have been lost sight of by the
Cuckoo, who began to think himself a very great bird ; and in his
pride of place, challenged the Nightingale one fine April evening,
to a trial of song. The difficulty was to find a good judge ; but
at last it was sagely remarked by an Owl, that as the contention
resolved itself into a question of sounds, the creature with the
longest ears would best become the bench upon the occasion, and
the animal appointed to keep down the growth of thistles took his
seat accordingly. The Cuckoo began and went on 4 cuckoo/
4 cuckoo/ for half-an-hour, during which the judge was observed to
prick up his long ears with a knowing air, to be equalled only by
Harley when he enacts the translated Bottom.

As soon as his antagonist had finished, the Nightingale poured
forth

‘With fast, thick warhle his delicious notes,

As he were fearful that an April night
Would be too short for him to utter forth
His love-chant, and disburden his full soul
Of all its music.’

* One of our sweetest native singers.

THE CUCKOO SPITTLE.

71

The judge had been nid-nid-nodding after the third or fourth strain,
and when the song was ended, he was awakened by a hoot from
the Owl, who was somewhat scandalized by his dropping asleep,
though she did not wonder at it, and had hardly been able to
keep her own eyes open. He gravely observed, that the Nightin¬
gale’s voice was very loud, and that his song might be very fine
for anything he knew ; but he, for one, did not understand it,
and he should be glad to hear who did. No answer being given
beyond a hum of applause from his auditory, his worship decided
in favour of the Cuckoo. The Nightingale, who thought this rather
hard, lodged an appeal to Man, after a sneer or two from the
president, and, to the astonishment of his absolute wisdom, his
judgment was reversed. This was before the time of Midas, and
the decision of the court below was, no doubt, the case relied upon
by that Justice for his judgment in the celebrated suit of Pan
against Apollo.

Nor did the Cuckoo fail to figure in the ancient pharmacopoeia.
Pliny tells us,* that if it be wrapped in a hare-skin and applied to
the patient, it will produce sleep, and Rondeletius notices its ashes
as good against disorders of the stomach. A somewhat unsavoury
decoction, into the ingredients of which we will not now enter,
but which could be procured only from the Cuckoo, was held to
be a specific against the bite of a mad dog ; and, according to the
Homan zoologist, the very sound of its voice, when assisted by
due ceremonies, produced a degree of domestic comfort, which, if
the ancient Italians were as much subject to pulicial persecution
as the moderns, must have been cpiite invaluable ; that they were
not spared the company of the indefatigable insect voltigeurs, any
more than their descendants, is rendered highly probable by their
lack of linen. If, when the bird was first heard, the auditor
circumscribed his right foot, and dug up the earth on which it
rested, not a flea would be hatched wherever that earth was scat¬
tered, f Nor did the ancient kitchens disdain it. On the contrary,
Aristotle states, that Cuckoos are fattest and most highly-flavoured
about the time of their laying ; ^ and Pliny declares that no bird
can compete with a young Cuckoo, just able to fly, in the sweetness
of its flesh. || Aldrovandus remarks, that the Italians still bring it
to their tables ; but that the Germans reject it with loathing as an
unclean bird, on account of its habit of spitting, to the consideration
of which charge we now proceed.

The country people and their children still give the name of
i Cuckoo-spittle ’ to the frothy nidus of Tettigonia spumaria , which

* Natural History, xxi. 15.
t Hist. Anim. vi. 7.

Nat. Hist. xxx. 10.
I lb. x. 9.

72

THE CUCKOO.

every one almost must have observed on plants in the spring.
The worst that now comes of this fable is, that when the
children surround a plant so embossed, one older and more
learned than the rest will clear away the froth to show the
admiring minors the inmate, gravely assuring them that it will
be a Cuckoo! But, no very long time ago, this ‘ Cuckoo-spittle’
had a very bad name, and constituted, under the name of ‘ witclics-
butter,’ one of the proofs, as the sages of the church and the law
then pronounced such absurdities to be, that consigned numbers of
women and children to the last penalties of the law at Molira, in
Sweden, in the year 1G70.

These unfortunates were better known as ‘ The Witches of
Blockula,’ that being the place of the infernal meeting, as was also
proved, to which the women and children aforesaid rode in the
dead of night upon men, and when they came to Blockula the
men were left reared against the wall asleep. But, besides this
human conveyance, they bestrode posts and goats, the backs of
the latter being elongated by an ingenious device for which wo
refer the curious to the trial. Nothing stopped them ; they flew
through chimneys and windows, and never broke a pane nor
displaced a brick. Scenes were given in evidence as having
occurred at their diabolical festival, such as cannot be written, but
we may notice an infernal coup d'etat , whereby the Prince of
Darkness tested the fidelity of his followers by giving out that he
was dead ; whereat there was great lamentation. Some of these
crack-brained women and children, worn out, no doubt, by the
cruel and abominable means then put in force for the purpose,
confessed among other things, that they had two spirits, one like
a raven, the other like a cat, and that these spirits fetched them
home butter, and cheese, and bacon, and all sorts of grain, and
milk, and that sometimes these carriers filled themselves so full,
that they disgorged part of the plunder by the way, which rejec¬
tamenta were found in several gardens where coleworts grew,
and not far from the houses of those witches, and were called
‘butter of witches.’

Dr Hutchinson, after arguing that it is plain as the day that
such froth in meadows and gardens is not from witches and spirits
disgorging, ‘but from grasshoppers and other little insects, that
hatch their young ones sometimes in cottons, and sometimes in
froths, &c.’ adds, ‘ and when I see Swedish judges, and Dr Horneck
after them learn from the rabble to call it “witches’ butter,”
and hang and burn their neighbours from such evidence, I cannot
but stand amazed, and am sorry so good a man as Dr Horneck
was so far overseen, as to translate such a dangerous history for
our people to learn from.’

ORGANIZATION AND NATURAL HABITS.

73

Of the Blockula witches, seventy were condemned, and most of
them suffered death; moreover, as in every deep there is a lower
deep still, twenty children were whipped on the hands, thirty-six
ran the gauntlet, and fifteen were executed! It is evident, from
the earnestness with which Dr Hutchinson argues against these
monstrous indictments, that there was still (1720) much lurking-
belief in witchcraft in these kingdoms. Even now we often find
evidence of its existence in the provinces, and whilst we write, the
enlightened public of 1841 have been set a wondering at the
haunted house at Clewer, which, for a time, bade fair to rival
Mr Mompesson’s and his drummer, c The Daemon of Ted-
worth.’* We had, according to the newspapers, the neighbouring
magistrates and the police, the chemists, and the sexton with his
sounding-iron, all bent on discovering the inexplicable knocking,
which ceased on the departure of the tenants, who, of course,
cannot be expected to pay any rent. Not that we ever for a
moment supposed that any of these wise and skilful visiters
regarded the knockings as supernatural; and if any whisperer
have hinted that some of them did shake their heads ominously,
we would comfort them by calling to their remembrance, that
Dr Johnson went to hear the Cock-lane ghost, f and lost his
temper when the pertinacious Boswell pressed him upon the
point; and that some of the clergy asked it questions, which it
answered by determinate ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ knocks.

We now come to a less gloomy part of the subject, and proceed
to inquire into the organization and natural habits of the Cuckoo,
not without the hope of interesting our readers in the history of a
bird in which that almost universal and strongest affection in the
warm-blooded vertebrata — the love for their offspring — seems
nearly, if not entirely obliterated.

Aristotle refuted the fable that the Cuckoo was, at a certain
period, changed into a Hawk, a tale that most probably had its
origin in the striking change of plumage that takes place. Few
species of birds differ more from each other than does a young
Cuckoo from the full-grown bird, which bears no small resem¬
blance to the Merlin, with ‘his pinion of glossy blue.’ The
Greek zoologist also noticed the fact that the female lays her eggs
in the nests of other birds. Pliny repeats both these observations,
and dilates upon the complacency with which the foster-parent
regards the well-fed bulk of her supposititious nestling, suffering
him to rob his wretched comates of their food, and them to be
destroyed in her sight, till at last, when her overgrown pet is
ready to fly, he finishes by making a meal of his nurse. After

* 1661.

f 1762.

74

THE CUCKOO.

this feat, he, as we have seen, becomes in his turn excellent
eating, according to Pliny. In allusion to this mode of showing
his gratitude, the Fool in ‘Lear,’ bitterly says,

* The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,

That it had its head hit off hy its young.’

And hence the French proverb, Ingrat commce un coucou.

The statement of Aristotle, that the builds its nest in

buildings and rocks, cannot be disputed (Hist. Anim. vi. 1): but
it is evident that the bird mentioned in this part of his great
work, was not the common Cuckoo ; for he distinctly says (ix. 39,)
that the female Cuckoo makes no nest, but, as we have reminded
the reader in the preceding page, deposits her eggs in the nests of
other birds (four of which he names), and leaves the bird in whose
nest her egg is deposited, to hatch it. Nor is it at all improbable
that the first passage here alluded to, was in great measure the
origin of the doubt imported into the natural history of the bird
at different modern periods. Thus Dr Brookes writes:

‘ This bird is remarkable for laying its eggs in the nests of
other birds, such as Hedge Sparrows, Finches, and the like, for it
has no nest of its own. It first devours the eggs it finds in the
nests, and then begins to lay its own in their room, where they are
hatched by the silly bird with a great deal of care, and it takes
the young Cuckoo for its own offspring. However, though this
has been asserted by many naturalists, yet from our own expe¬
rience we can affirm, that this bird hatches its own young, and
that its nest, like that of other birds, has something peculiar,
being made larger than that of a Blackbird on the outer side, of
the same materials, namely, thorns, long grass, and clay; and on
the inside it is covered warmly with wool and short hair from cows
and other animals.’*

In our own time the story of the Cuckoo making its own nest
has been revived, and sanctioned by no less an authority than
Dr Fleming. But there can be little or no doubt, as Montagu
has shown, that the evidence on which this nest-making and
feeding the young is asserted, is not to be trusted. The birds
taken for Cuckoos, were probably Nightjars, or as they are com¬
monly called, Goatsuckers (Cctprimulgus Europams).

Taking it then for granted that the female Cuckoo does not
make any nest, the next point of inquiry is what nests she selects
for the purpose of continuing the species. Aristotle names those
of Pigeons or Doves, and of certain small birds — probably one of

* A Complcat System of Ornithology, or a Natural History of Birds, Svo.
London, 177G.

THE CUCKOO’S EGGS.

75

the Warblers, the Meadow Pipit, or perhaps the Skylark, and the
Greenfinch. Pliny says, that the nests of Doves are principally
selected. In this country the eggs have been found in the nests of the
Hedge Sparrow or Hedge Warbler, the Redbreast, the Whitethroat,
the Redstart, the Willow Warbler, the Pied Wagtail, the Meadow
Pipit, the Skylark, the Yellow Buntin, the Chaffinch, the Green¬
finch, the Linnet, and the Blackbird. On the continent of Europe,
the egg has been also found in the nests of the Red-backed Shrike
and of the Thrush : in this country a pair of Red-backed Shrikes have
been seen feeding a young Cuckoo.* With us, the nests usually
selected are those of the Hedge Sparrow, the Pied Wagtail, and the
Meadow Pipit.

The great disproportion between the little birds last named, and
the Cuckoo, will at once strike the uninitiated ; but the egg of the
latter, which is of a pale reddish grey-colour is disproportionately
small. Dr Jenner found that the largest of two Cuckoo’s eggs
weighed fifty-five grains, whilst the smallest weighed only forty-
three grains ; and Mr Yarrell states, that the largest of four
specimens in his collection only measures eleven lines and a half
in length, and eight lines and a half in breadth, the exact size of
that of the Skylark, and yet, as he remarks, the comparative size
of the birds is as four to one. Row, if this egg of the Cuckoo had
been proportioned to the size of the bird, the difference between
it and the foster-mother’s own egg, must have been obvious to
the touch as well as the sight ; as it is, the foster-mother is not
startled by the imposition. As soon as the young cuckoo is
hatched, the parental affection is awakened towards it, and blinds
the poor dupes that watch over it to every thing but the necessity
of providing for their enormous nestling, who takes special care
that he shall be the only object of their cropyri.

The female Cuckoo lays at long intervals ; six or eight days
elapse between the times of deposit, and Schlegel thinks that the
particular nature and effect of its food produces an enlargement of
the stomach, which appears to influence the development of the eggs.

No difficulty would occur to prevent the direct deposit of the
egg in some of the nests above mentioned ; but it has been stated
that the egg of a Cuckoo has been found in the domed nest of a
Wren, and in a Wagtail’s nest under the eaves of a cottage: in
these cases the Cuckoo could not have sat upon the nest to deposit
the egg, and the inference is, that when the nest is of such a
nature, or so situated that it would not be possible for the Cuckoo
to sit upon it, she drops the egg in from her bill. Le Yaillant had

* Hence, probably, the provincial name for the Shrike, as in Herefordshire,
for instance, where it is called ‘ the Cuckoo’s maid.’

76

THE CUCKOO.

strong evidence to show that one of the African Cuckoos did carry
her egg in her bill, in order to drop it into nests having a narrow
side entrance. That some birds do carry their eggs in their
mouths, we have the testimony of Mr Audubon, who says, that
when the American Goatsucker discovers that its eggs have
been touched, it appears extremely dejected, and, after a few
low notes and some gesticulations, all indicative of great dis¬
tress, it takes an egg into its large mouth, and its mate does
the same, when they fly off together, skimming closely over the
ground.

The egg, however deposited, is, from the moment of its deposit,
abandoned by the Cuckoo, and, after a fortnight’s incubation, it is
hatched. Very shortly after its birth, the young Cuckoo is the
sole tenant of the nest. This was formerly accounted for in
various ways. Some declared that the foster-parents were so
enamoured of their Pantagruel of a nestling, that they killed their
own offspring, and gave them to the young giant to eat. Others
again asserted, that the old Cuckoo took advantage of the nurse’s
absence to gobble up the real Simon Pares, and so leave room for
the intruder. Others again, as we have above noticed, believed
that as the young Cuckoo gained strength, it swallowed the
nestlings, and at last the nurse herself.

The truth is, that the eggs and true nestlings arc, immediately
after its birth, got rid of by the young Cuckoo, which has a
depression upon the middle of its broad back to assist it in the
summary ejectment of its fellow-lodgers. Insinuating itself under
the egg or nestling, the intruder gets it upon the hollow of its
back, and, if left to itself, never rests till it has shouldered and
jerked it out of the nest. Dr Jenner, Colonel Montagu, and
many other accurate observers, have placed this wonderful and
early effort of instinct beyond doubt. In one case, two young
Hedge Sparrows and a young Cuckoo were hatched on the same
morning. In the evening the young Cuckoo was sole tenant.
Colonel Montagu took the nest and bird, when the latter was five
days old, to his house, and put a young Swallow, by way of
experiment into the nest with it. The Cuckoo frequently threw
the young swallow out for four or five days after. Sometimes,
indeed, the Cuckoo failed after much struggling, for the Swallow was
strong and nearly full-feathered ; but after a short rest to recover
its fatigue, the Cuckoo renewed its efforts, and seemed continually
restless till it succeeded. At the end of the fifth day this dispo¬
sition ceased, and the young Cuckoo permitted the Swallow to
remain unmolested in the nest. It is worthy of note, that when
the Cuckoo is about twelve days old, the hollow on the back is
filled up, and its shape is that of nestlings in general.

FEEDING.

77

Sometimes two eggs of the Cuckoo are deposited in the same
nest, most probably by different individuals. If these are hatched,
then comes the tug of war. Dr Jenner relates, that on the 27th
of June, 1787, two Cuckoos and a Hedge Sparrow were hatched in
the same nest ; one Hedge Sparrow’s egg remained unhatehed. In
a few hours after, a severe contest began between the Cuckoos for
the possession of the nest. The combatants appeared alternately
to have the advantage. Each carried the other several times
nearly to the top of the nest, and then sank down again under the
pressure of his burden. At length, after several struggles, the
strongest Cuckoo prevailed, turned out the other, the young Hedge
Sparrow, and the unhatched egg, remained sole possessor of the
nest, and was brought up by the old Hedge Sparrows.

The Cuckoo is thus the cause of keeping down the population of
the insectivorous birds, and those whose nests are made the places
of deposit. Mr Rennie calculates that it annually destroys about
3,500,000 of their eggs.

It may be readily conceived what a busy time of it the poor
dupes of foster-parents have in providing for the feathered Dando*
that they have unconsciously brought into existence. Cases are
on record where their compassionate neighbours are said to have
assisted them in providing for the overwhelming demands of their
big changeling.

Two instances are given in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1806
of young Cuckoos having been occasionally fed by large numbers
of birds of the same species as their foster-parents. One of these
nestlings, was, it is stated, supplied with nourishment by upwards
of twenty Titlarks, and the other was waited upon by forty-eight
Wagtails. Colonel Montagu and Mr Eaton of York, doubt the
accuracy of these reports ; but Mr Blackwall sees no occasion to
call the principal fact in question. The latter zoologist observes
that the young Cuckoo is particularly clamorous when stimulated
by hunger ; and he finds a reason for the benevolence of the con¬
tributing birds in their being unable to hear the distressed and
distressing cry for food, without being moved to succour the
hungry nestling. He gives several instances where birds of a
different species have brought food to deserted nestlings ; and he
therefore is of opinion that the article in the Gentleman’s Magazine
is perfectly correct in asserting that young Cuckoos are occa¬
sionally fed by a more than ordinary number of birds ; but that it
is erroneous to suppose that these numerous purveyors are in¬
variably of the same species as the foster-parents of the Cuckoos.

* A well-known gormandizer of the time, frequently brought to the bar of
the London Police Courts, for victimizing small tavern-keepers and oyster-
dealers. His voracity was wonderful.

78

THE CUCKOO.

But, according to observations made by Mr J. E. Gray, of the
British Museum, natural affection would not appear to be entirely
extinguished in the breast of the Cuckoo. He states that she does
not uniformly desert her offspring to the extent that has been sup¬
posed ; but, on the contrary, that she continues in the precincts
where the eggs are deposited, and in all probability takes the
young under her protection when they are sufficiently fledged to
leave the nest. This is as if the mother had put out her child to
nurse, but yet continued to watch over it.

Strange tales have been told relative to the food of the Cuckoo.
The nursery song says —

‘The Cuckoo is a fine bird,

He sings as he flies,

He brings us good tidings,

He tells us no lies.

He sucks little birds’ eggs
To make his voice clear.

And when he sings “ cuckoo”

The summer is near.’

Dr Brookes sets himself seriously to refute this story of the eggs,
and says, truly enough, that those Cuckoos which have been opened,
have had caterpillars and other insects found in their crops. Selby
remarks that it is an opinion very commonly entertained, that this
bird sucks the other eggs in the nest where it deposits its own ;
but that there appears to be no reason for supposing this to be the
case, and that the belief has without doubt arisen from the fact of
the young Cuckoo being so often found sole tenant, after the ex¬
pulsion of its co-partners.

Mr Hoy, Mr Salmon, and other observers of reputation, how¬
ever, testify that the adult Cuckoo occasionally destroys one or
more of the eggs that she finds in the nest where she deposits her
own. Still there canbe no doubt that the Cuckoo feeds principally,
if not entirely, upon insects. White saw one hawking for dragon¬
flies (Libellulce) over a pond, and the hairy larvas of some of the
lepidopterous insects are especial favourites.

It was formerly supposed that the hairs found on the inner
surface of the stomach of this bird were of spontaneous growth ;
and, indeed, very lately, Mr Thompson was disposed so to con¬
sider them ; but Professor Owen found that these supposed gastric
hairs presented under the microscope the complex structure
characteristic of those of the larva of the tiger-moth (Arctia
Caja) ; and proved to the satisfaction of Mr Thompson that
they were altogether borrowed from that insect, the only species
taken from the stomach of the bird in various specimens from
different parts of the country, examined by Mr Thompson in the

ARRIVAL AND DEPARTURE.

79

months of May and June, 1833. In the musuem of the Royal
College of Surgeons in London (No. 534, Physiological Series)
are balls composed of fine hairs, from the stomach of a Cuckoo;
and John Hunter, the founder of that noble collection, observes,
in his Animal (Economy, that the Cuckoo in certain seasons lives
on caterpillars, some of which have hairs of a considerable length
on their bodies, and that the ends of these hairs are found sticking
in the horny coat of the stomach or gizzard, while the hairs them¬
selves are laid flat on its surface ; not in every direction, which
would be the case if there was no regular motion, but all one way,
arising from a central point placed in the middle of the horny
part, the appearance on both sides of the gizzard evidently
corresponding.

The gallant Chanticleer has been termed the shepherd’s clock;
and the Cuckoo may be termed the husbandman’s timekeeper.
Hesiod ( Works and Days , 484), tells us that when the song of
the latter was heard amid the oak-leaves, it was late for ploughing,
though there was still good time, if it rained incessantly three
days and three nights ; and woe to the ancient Italian vine-dresser
whom the voice of the Cuckoo surprised before he had finished
pruning his vine. Hence the irritating mockery with which the
wayfarer, loudly imitating the notes of the bird, assailed the
husbandman as he cultivated his vineyard, taunting him with his
sloth* In this country the Cuckoo arrives in April. The earliest
time noted by White is the 7th of that month, and the latest the
2Gth. Markwick’s periods of arrival are April 15th, and May 3rd,
and he records the bird as last heard on the 28th of June; indeed
it has been observed that there is a remarkable coincidence
between the time of the bird’s song and the season of the con¬
tinuance of the mackerel in full roe; that is, from about the
middle of April to the latter end of June. The notes of the male
have, however, been heard as late as the end of July. As the
season advances, the clearness of his two distinct notes is gradually
lost, till at last they are curtailed to an indistinct ‘ gowk,’ whence
its provincial name. Aristotle has noticed the failure of its song,
and its broken notes before its departure.^

The male arrives here before the female ; the voice of the latter
is totally unlike that of the male, and somewhat resembles the
voice of the Gallinules and Dabchicks. This attracts the other
sex, and she may often be seen attended by one or two beaux,
crying most vehemently as they follow in her train, occasion¬
ally fighting with each other. The male seems to have favourite

* Hor. Sat. i. 7. Pliny, Nat. Hist, xviii. 26.

f Hist. Anim. ix. 49.

80

TIIE CUCKOO.

trees where they repeat their song, for Pennant caught in a trap,
which he placed on a tree frequented by them, no fewer than five
of that sex in one season. As the Cuckoo flies along he is often
mobbed by the little birds,

4 Le coqu est de tous oyseaux hay,

Parce qu’au nid des autres il val pondre,

Par cest oyseau fault, lest amans semondre,

Qu’aucun mary par eux ne soit trahy.’

The history of his advent to this country, and of his departure
from it, is comprised in these old English lines, of which there are
different versions : —

‘ In April
Come he will,

In flow’ry May
lie sings all day,

In leafy June
He changes his tune,

In bright July
lie’s ready to fly,

In August
Go he must.’

The young Cuckoos do not leave us till September. Some
few late-hatched birds may be found during winter in hollow
trees, as observed by Agricola in his book, De Animantibus Sub-
teiraneis, or in the thickest tangles of a furze-bush, as asserted by
others; yet these are but exceptions, for young Cuckoos have
rarely been kept alive till the ensuing spring. Indeeed, there can
be no doubt as to the fact of their migration; Mr Swaiuson saw
them arrive at Sicily and Naples in the spring, and thence direct
their flight northwmrd. One brought to Colonel Montagu in
July, just as it could fly, was by great care kept alive till the 14th
of December. This bird was very much afraid of strangers, but
suffered itself to be handled quietly by a young lady who had fed
it and been its kind benefactress, and it appeared to be comforted,
poor thing, by the warmth of her hand to its feet.

Mr Yon Schauroth gives the species a very unamiable charac¬
ter in captivity. He reared many, and tried to domesticate
one in particular, but it was never entirely tamed. Buffon, on
the contrary, states that he was acquainted with several persons
who had reared and tamed them, though he lost all he tried to
rear between autumn and winter. He relates that one knew his
master, came at his call, followed him in the chase, perched on
his gun, and, if it found a cherry-tree in its wray, would fly to it,
and not return till it had eaten plentifully. Sometimes it would
not return to its master for the whole day, but would follow

NURSERY RHYME

81

him from tree to tree. The account of the relish with which
this Cuckoo regaled upon the cherries is curious, with reference
to the old rhyme employed by nurses to teach a child its first
words,

‘ Cuckoo,

Cherry-tree ;

Lay an egg,

Bring it me

and indeed few of these nursery jingles are without some founda¬
tion. But, although the Cuckoo may occasionally solace its palate
witli cherries, insects certainly form the principal nourishment of
the species, as we have before observed.

And now farewell to our feathered vocal visiters

* Till green leaves come again.’

August, 1841.

G

OW LS.

' Now the wasted brands do glow,

Whilst the scriteh-owl, scritching loud,

Puts the wretch that lies in woe,

In remembrance of a shroud.

Now it is the time of night,

That the graves all gaping wide,

Every one lets forth his sprite,

In the churcli-way paths to glide.’

A Midsummer Night’s Dream,

The lurking belief in the existence of supernatural agency has
been apparent in every age of which we have any record. Men,
whether civilized or uncivilized, seem always to have been pos¬
sessed with a notion of spiritual manifestation ; and this notion,
combined with the longing after immortality characteristic of
human nature, has either taken the holy form of sound religion —
without whose aid no laws merely human could keep that strange
piece of work, man, within those bounds beyond which all would
become licence and confusion — or has degenerated into the

‘Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas,

Nocturnos lemurts, portentaque Thessala — ■’

that in some shape or other have darkened the page of history
with the terrors and the cruelties — for none are more apt to be
cruel than frightened people — of superstition.

When once this same evil principle has taken root in the mind,
its bitter fruit is soon seen in the horrors with which the most
ordinary accidents and the most common things, animate and in¬
animate, become invested. It is not uninteresting to observe how
a harmless bird or innocent quadruped, when looked at through
the superstitious medium, is magnified into a being of high im ¬
portance, capable, in the opinion of the soul-stricken spectator,
of working weal or woe on his destinies ; nor is it unamusing to
trace down these fantasies in connection with the natural history
of such charmed creatures, — though it by no means follows that
what amuses the writer must be pleasant to the reader.

SCRIPTURAL ALLUSIONS.

83

There are few animals that have been more suspiciously regarded
than Owls. Their retired habits, the desolate places that are their
favourite haunts, their hollow liootings, fearful shriekings, serpent¬
like hissings, and coffin-maker-like snappings, have helped to give
them a bad eminence, more than overbalancing all the glory that
Minerva and her own Athens could shed around them.

In the sacred volume, or rather in our translations of it, we find
the Owl again and again associated with desolation. The thirty-
fourth chapter of Isaiah, in the version now read in our churches,
teems with instances :

‘11. But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it: the
owl also and the raven shall dwell in it : and he shall stretch out
upon it the line of confusion, and the stones of emptiness.

‘ 13. And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and
brambles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation of
dragons, and a court of owls.

4 14. The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the
wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow;
the screech owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place
of rest.

4 15. There shall the great owl make her nest, and lay, and
hatch, and gather under her shadow : there shall the vultures also
be gathered, every one with her mate.’

But there are not wanting those who do not admit any Owl at
all into any of these verses, except the fourteenth, where the
original word rendered in our bibles 4 screech owl,’ is Lilith ;
and this, indeed, seems to be the better opinion.

In Barker’s bible — 4 Translated according to the Hebrew and
Greeke, and conferred with the best translations in divers lan¬
guages : with most profitable annotations upon all the hard places,
&c. &c. Imprinted at London by Robert Barker, Printer to the
King’s most excellent Maiestie, 161 G,’ the word 4 Owl’ does not
occur at all in the thirteenth verse of this chapter, where it is
signified 4 that Idumea should be an horrible desolation and barren
wildernesse.’

4 11. But the pelicane and the hedgehog shall possesse it, and
the great owle and the raven shall dwell in it, and hee shall
stretch out upon it the line of vanitie, and the stones of emptinesse.

4 13. And it shall bring foorth thornes in the palaces thereof,
nettles and thistles in the strong holdes thereof, and it shall be an
habitation for dragons and a court for ostriches.

4 14. There shall meete also Ziim and Jim, and the satyre shall
cry to his fellow, and the schricli owle shall rest there, and shall
finde for her selfe a quiet dwelling.

4 15. There shall the owle make her nest, and lay, and hatch,

84

OWLS.

and gather them under her shadowe : there shall the vultures also
bee gathered, every one with her mate.’

In the Septuagint, no word that can be fairly translated 4 Owl’
is to be found in any of these verses. The Zurich version has
Bubo in the eleventh verse only ; for even the Lilith of the four¬
teenth is translated Lamiam (the Naclit-frau , or night-hag), and
in the Vulgate we look in vain for the Owl in this chapter.
Demons and onocentaurs, and shrieking spirits, satyrs, and vul¬
tures, with kites and beavers, hedgehogs and pelicans, are the
principal personages that haunt the dismal scene in these versions.
In Scheuchzer’s* plate illustrative of the verses quoted, there are
no less than five Owls in the fore and middle grounds ; and dragons
are flying about the ruins.

If the saying, ‘ You may know a man by the company he
keeps,’ be applicable to Owls, the society in which they are
found in the verses and plate above noticed is not calculated to
enable them to give a very good account of themselves ; but bad
as their reputation may be in sacred history, in profane history
it appears to be considerably worse ; there, at least, no doubt can
exist in the great majority of instances as to the identity of the
culprits.

Virgil introduces one of these birds among the prodigies and
horrors that foreran the suicide of Dido : the whole passage is an
admirable model of the shadowy medium through which super¬
natural terrors should be conveyed : and in the following lines we
absolutely hear the death-song of the Owl :

‘ Solaque culminibus ferali carmine bubo
Sa3pe queri, et longas in fletum ducere voces.’

Again, in the twelfth book of the iEneid, one of the Dirrn sent
down by Jupiter to conclude the scene between ./Eneas and
Turnus, takes the form of the bird :

‘Quce quondam in bustis aut culminibus desertis,

Nocte sedens serum canit importuna per umbras.

Hanc versa in faciem Turni se pestis ob ora
Fertque refertque sonans, clypeumque everberat alis — '

till all manhood melted within the Rutulian like wax. His un¬
happy sister Juturna no sooner hears and sees the fatal advent,
than she exclaims in despair,

- ‘ alarum verbcra nosco

Letalemque sonum.’

There can be little or no doubt that Canidia’s Strix was a

* Physica Sacra, 1781.

CLASSICAL ALLUSIONS.

85

species of this genus; nor need we be surprised that it should
find a fit place among the ingredients of her infernal magazine —

‘Et uncta turpis ova range sanguine,

Pluraamque nocturnal strigis.’*

Pliny, indeed, says, ‘Esse in maledictis jam antiquis strigem
convenit: sed qum sit avium, constare non arbitror:’ allowing its
bad name, but not considering it certain what bird is meant. That
the portions of Canidia’s laboratory above noticed, were usually
considered potent in a love-charm, appears from the fifth Elegy of
Propertius (lib. 3).

‘ Ilium turgentis range portenta rubetge
Et lecta exsectis anguibus ossa trahunt,

Et strigis inventae per busta jacentia plumae,

Cinctaque funesto lanea vitta toro.’

Again, in Ovid (Metam. lib. vii.), the bird is used by wholesale
to make Medea’s gruel thick and slab —

‘Et strigis infames ipsis cum carnibus alas.’

Now we find these Striges just in the company where we should
expect Owls to be in the Thebaid of Statius,

‘Monstra volant, dirae strident in nube volucres
Nocturnoeque gemunt striges, et feralia bubo
Damna canens.’

And when we presently eome nearer to our own times, we shall
endeavour to show that some of these passages at least must have
been present to the mind of ‘Rare Ben,’ and that he who was a
ripe scholar, accepted the Strix as a Screech Owl. Indeed, the
description in Ovid’s Fasti (lib. vi.) presenting us with the great
head, unmoved staring eyes, beak formed for rapine, and hooked
claws, suits no bird so well as an Owl.

In the meantime we shall take the liberty of considering the Strix
as good an Owl after its kind as the Bubo itself, and follow out,
with the patience of the reader, other evidence of its exceedingly
wicked character.

The Striges appear to have been the terror of all mothers and
negligent nurses :

‘Nocte volant, puerosque petunt nutricis egentes;

Et vitiaut cunis corpora rapta suis.

Carpere dicuntur lactentia viscera rostris,

Et plenum poto sanguine guttur habent.’

Fasti, Lib. vi.

* Ilor. Epod. Lib. Ode v.

8G

OWLS.

In the case particularly alluded to by Ovid, the nurse, alarmed
by his cry, runs to the aid of the almost exhausted infant, who is
restored ; and the return of the Singes is prevented by charms,
among which is the arbutus leaf.

According to that learned physician, Serenus Samonicus, female
children were also subject to their nocturnal attacks.

4 Thfe little owl and the great owl’ are placed under the unclean
birds in our versions of the eleventh chapter of Leviticus (v. 17),
though some dispute the propriety of the translation. The Seventy
do not so render the words, but the Zurich edition and the Vulgate
have each an Owl (Bubo) in that verse. At any rate, Owls had a
very unclean reputation, and the transformation of the tell-tale
Ascalaphus, is marked by a concentration of the bad qualities of
the form with which he was cursed ;

‘ Foedaque fit volucris venturi nuntia luctus
Ignavus bubo, dirum mortalibus omen.’

In the same spirit Queen Labe in her vengeance changed King
Beder into 4 a vile Owl,’ a metamorphosis still less desirable than
his previous transformation into a white bird with a red bill and
feet, to which incarnation the Princess Giauhara had consigned
him. According to a provincial tradition, a baker’s daughter was
turned into an Owl for refusing bread to our Saviour. Shakspere
in ‘Hamlet,’ and Fletcher in 4 The Nice Valour,’ allude to the tale:
which if not invented by some Gloucestershire monk, with a design
on the oven, was probably of Eastern origin. The body of an Owl
was considered by Minerva a meet receptacle for the spirit of the
polluted Nyctimene.

It is not to be wrondered at that such a detested bird as the
Bubo should be conspicuous in Pliny’s chapter Be Inauspicatis
avibus :* — 4 Bubo funebris et maxime abominatus, publicis
preecipue auspiciis, deserta incolit : nec tantum desolata, sed
dira etiam et inaccessa : noctis monstrum, nec cantu aliquo vocalis,
sed gemitu. Itaque in urbibus aut omnino in luce visus, dirum
ostentum cst.’

These be hard words, my masters, and though the Roman
naturalist softens them a little by assuring us that to his knowledge
the perching of the bird upon the houses of private individuals
had not been fatal to them, he does not the less forget to tell us
that Rome underwent lustration twice in consequence of its
abominable visitation ; and that on one of these occasions it had
penetrated to the cella of the -Capitol: Julius Obsequens, in his
book 4 Be Prodigiis ,’ mentions one of these luckless birds which

* Nat. Hist. Lib. x. c. xn.

CLASSICAL ALLUSIONS-

87

was caught and burnt, and its ashes thrown into the Tiber. The
private visitations of the Owl do not, however, appear to have been
thought so harmless by the generality as they were by Pliny, or
the offending birds would not have been nailed to the doors to
avert the calamity their presence threatened.

It was in the shape of an owl that the Thessalian witch loved

‘ To sail in the air
When the moon shone fair ! ’

How exquisitely is the scene described in one of the most enter¬
taining romances that ever was written!* You see Fotis and
Lucius moving with stealthy pace toward the chink through
which, scarcely daring to breathe, he beholds Pamphile take from
the chest the box with which she anoints herself as she mutters
her charm, till completely feathered and transformed into an Owl
(Bubo), she spurns the floor with a shriek, and flies forth with full
power of wing. Man is an imitative animal, and no sooner does
Lucius recover from his astonishment, than he is earnest with the
reluctant Potis to assist him with a similar ceremonial, so that
in the form of a winged cupid, he may clasp her to his bosom.
She yields to his entreaties at last, and takes down the magic
chest, handing to him from it the precious pyx. Eagerly does
the ardent Lucius plunge his hand into the ointment, and
having besmeared himself most diligently, confidently does he
raise his arms and winnow the air in expectation of the sprouting
feathers: but alas for curiosity! Fotis in her trepidation had
made a slight mistake, and the discomfited Lucius, as his visage
and ears lengthen, and his smooth skin becomes a hairy hide,
whilst his hands and feet become solipede and quadrupedal, and
his heavy head is balanced by a length of tail, discovers in agony
that he has got into the wrong box. How does the distracted
Fotis beat her beauteous face and bewail herself, when she sees
her lover thus translated !

It was not to be expected that the Germans would neglect
to associate this bird of evil omen with scenes of horror. It
figures in Faust and in Rctzch’s admirable illustrations. What
would the incantation scene in the ‘Freischutz’ be, either on
the stage, or in II.B.’s piquant cartoon, without the Owl !

Nor have our poets been less apt to take up the dark ideas of
the ancients. Ben Jonson and Shakspere, among a host of others,
have immortalised the evil principle embodied in this nocturnal
wanderer.

* Apuleii Madaurensis Metamorpli.

88

OWLS.

In the ‘Masque of Queens/ a witch of the Canidian school*
thus chaunts:

‘The screech-owl’s eggs, and the feathers black,

The Wood of the frog, and the hone in his hack,

I have been getting; and made of his skin
A pursct, to keep Sir Cranion in.’

The third charm in the same masque runs thus:

‘The owl is abroad, the hat and the toad,

And so is the cat-a-mountain ;

The ant and the mole sit both in a hole,

And the frog peeps out of the fountain.

The dogs they do hay, and the timbrels play,

The spindle is now a-turning;

The moon it is red, and the stars are fled,

But all the sky is a-burning.’

Another witch boasts in the same masque :

‘ I went to the toad — breeds under the wall,

I charmed him out, and he came at my call;

I scratch’d out the eyes of the owl before,

I tore the bat’s wing, — what would you have more?’

Shakspere has introduced the bird into the most fearful scenes
of one of his most fearful tragedies. The ‘owlet’s wing’ is an
ingredient of the cauldron wherein the witches prepare their charm.
Its doleful cry pierces Lady Macbeth's ear whilst the murder is
doing :

‘ Hark ! Peace !

It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bell-man,

Which gives the stern’st good-night— he is about it.’

And immediately afterwards, when the murderer rushes in ex¬
claiming,

‘ I’ve done the deed — did'st thou not hear a noise ?’

she answers,

‘ I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry.’

* It is evident that Jonson had the fifth Epode of Horace in his mind
throughout this witch scene. Another of his witches sings —

‘I from the jaws of a gardener’s bitch
Did snatch these bones, and then leap’d the ditch.’

Here we have the

‘ Ossa ab ore rapta jejunce canis,’

and in the third charm we trace the ‘ Suburanrc canes.’ The ‘plumam noc-
t urn as strigis’ we have already noticed.

ENGLISH POETICAL ALLUSIONS.

80

Richard the Third , when he is irritated by the ill-news showered
thick upon him, interrupts the third messenger with,

‘ Out on ye, owls ! nothing hut songs of death ?’

In Fletcher’s song, which begins,

‘ Hence all ye vain delights,’

and not improbably, was the model from which Milton drew his
‘II Penseroso,’ the Owl is not forgotten :

‘Fountain heads, and pathless groves,

Places which pale passion loves,

Moonlight walks, when all the fowls
Are warmly hous’d, save hats and owls,

A midnight bell, a parting groan,

These are the sounds we feed upon ;

Then stretch our hones in a still gloomy valley,

Nothing’s so dainty sweet, as lovely melancholy.’

Poor Chatterton, in the spirit, but not in the phraseology of the
age which he selected for the date of his beautiful but transparent
forgeries, thus writes in the 4 Mynstrelle’s Songe’ in his ‘ JElla, a
tragycal enterlude,’

‘ Harke ! the ravenne flappes liys wynge,

In the hriered delle belowe ;

Harke ! the detlie-owle loude dothe synge,

To the nyghte- mares as heie goe ;

Mie love ys dedde,

Gone to liys deathe-hedde,

All under the wyllowe-tree.’

Gray introduces the complaint of the 11 Moping OwF among the
solemn sounds which usher in his celebrated elegy ; and Scott and
Coleridge have associated it with supernatural machinery.

When the Lady of Branksome sits

‘ In old Lord David’s western tower,’

and listens to the Spirit of the Flood as he calls on the Spirit ot
the Fell,

‘ At the sullen, moaning sound
The ban-dogs hay and howl ;

And from the turrets round,

Loud whoops the startled owl.

In the hall, both squire and knight,

Swore that a storm was near,

And looked forth to view the night,

Cut the night was still and clear !’

00

enVLS.

The wild lay of ‘ Christabel’ opens with a chorus of Owls .

‘Tis the middle of the night hy the castle cIock,

And the owls have awakened the crowing cock.

Tu-whit ! — tu-whoo !

And hark, again ! the crowing cock,

Iiow drowsily it crew.’

Nor has our inimitable Hogarth omitted the baleful bird in the
murder scene of his 4 Four Stages of Cruelty.’

These great masters knew that the introduction of the Owl
would help to make their images come home to the bosoms of the
people, who had from early times associated its presence with
melancholy, misfortune, and death. Every village possessed its
horrible story, never complete without an Owl, which had either
stared in at the cliamber-winclow of the dying, or answered the
passing bell from the house-top, or surely prognosticated the
speedy dissolution of the doomed by crossing his way, and
strenuously endeavouring to perch on the victim.

Such dark articles of belief are rapidly fading away before the
glare of gas, the rush of railroads, and the gallop of intellect ;
they still, however, hold their sway in quiet nooks of quiet counties,
which used to have their shrew-asli and other charms, to remedy
the evils inflicted by beast or bird.

But what was a shrew-ash ?

The common shrew-mouse (Sorex araneus), one of the most
harmless of animals, was considered to be a very pernicious
creature. Its bite was held to be venomous by the ancients ; and
our own ancestors believed, that if a shrew-mouse ran over the
limbs of man or beast, paralysis of those limbs was the conse¬
quence.* The cure was supposed to be effected by drawing twigs
torn from a shrew-ash across the parts affected; and in order
to make a shrew-ash, a hole was bored in the trunk of an ash-
tree, and an unhappy shrew-mouse was plugged therein with
certain ceremonies, and so left to perish. Now it is known that
some Owls feed on these little quadrupeds ; and what a concentra¬
tion of diablerie must our ancestors have believed an Owl to be after
a protracted shrew-diet !

About the commencement of the present century, there lived
near a village which once boasted its shrew-ash and was not far
from one of the great towns in the west of England, an attorney
in considerable practice. He began with nothing, but was rich,
and beloved — as rich attorneys generally are ; for it was averred
that he had been heard to swear that lie would scrape a place
which is said to be paved with good intentions, and is never mcn-

* Hence, perhaps, the old malediction, ‘ Bestrew thee !’

ANECDOTE.

91

tioned to ears polite, but he would leave his only child, a daughter,
fifty thousand pounds : and so he did.

W ell, it came to his turn to die ; and, you may be sure, there was
much talk at the ‘Jolly Ringers,’ where the village club was held,
about the alleged sworn determination of the yet unburied dead.
One honest farmer declared, that he knew, a month ago, that the
lawyer was not long for this world; and, being pressed for the
ground of his knowledge, informed the company, not without hesi¬
tation, that the last time the deceased came from church, an Owl,
as he passed along the darksome by-road, flew first across the
front of his coach, and then almost in at the coach-window, so
that the lawyer struck at it with his hat. The farmer said that
the shriek of the Owl as it vanished through the overshadowing
trees still rang in his ears.

Everything must have an end, and so had the sitting of the club
at the ‘ Jolly Ringers,’ which broke up for the night, and all
wended their way homewards.

The farmer’s wife had swept up the hearth three times, and
nodded over her Bible a great many more, when she looked up and
saw that the clock pointed to one. She now began to be seriously
alarmed, — for though it was some distance to the ‘ Jolly Ringers,’
her husband was regular in his habits — put on her bonnet and
cloak, and with some difficulty aroused her neighbours, who went
forth with lanterns to seek for him. They took the way which led
across the fields from the public-house to his own, and had to go
over a foot-bridge that crossed a brook almost hidden by arbeles
and hazels, which lay between him and his home.

In the pathway, near the foot of the bridge, on the far side, they
found the object of their search stretched apparently lifeless : they
recovered him with some difficulty and bore him to his house,
where he long lay very ill.

On his restoration to health, if that could be called health which
was a state constantly liable to fits, to which he was never before
subject, he for a long time evaded with shuddering the inquiries of
any one who led the conversation towards the cause of his first
seizure ; and it was not without evident suffering, that at length
he made a clean breast to a kind friend who had watched over
him during the worst periods of his illness.

The sick man declared that he was passing on his way in the
moonlight, thinking not at all of the main subject of conversation
at the chib, but considering, with what seed he should sow a small
croft of his, when he raised his eyes and saw Satan in his most
frightful shape, and the lawyer in his grave-clothes sitting up all
pale and ghastly in his coffin, playing at dice upon the coffin-lid,
which was placed across the coffin between the players. This

92

OWLS.

horrible apparition was within a very few yards of him, and right
across his path, at the bridge-foot. He declared that he saw the
name of the deceased on the coffin-plate, and heard the dice rattle
in the bone box as the black gamester was about to cast, when all
his strength failed and he became senseless.

After this, the poor farmer did well enough, unless he happened
to come suddenly in sight of a bridge ; when he was almost sure
to suffer an attack.

The story got abroad, but was hushed up — except at the club
— where the decided opinion was that it was quite true, that the
stake for which the lawyer was playing was his own soul, and
that he was so well up to his points, that he must have risen the
winner.

Some years afterwards, a youth, who had been early initiated
into all the villlage lore and something more, had left the well-
appointed house of a gentleman in this very neighbourhood,
known for his hospitality and scientific research, on an autumnal
night made beautiful by a glorious harvest moon. As he walked
across the fields in the path which the poor farmer, then gathered
to his fathers, had trod, he was musing over a learned discussion
about the pixies and nixies — elves which some said even then haunted
thereabouts — that had been the topic before his departure. lie
looked up and saw by the uncertain light as it struggled through
the foliage, a black coffinlike mass upon tressels, just in his way
at the bridge-foot. All the old story rushed upon him, his hair
began to lift up his hat, and a horrible shriek sent him to the right
about.

In truth, he took to his heels, and ran till he was out of breath,
never daring to look behind him. As he stood panting with
beating heart, the ‘ All’s well,’ of the sentinels of a French prison
about half a mile distant, came through the night air like music :
he knew the welcome sound of the human voice and was reassured.
Still he felt that he would rather face a battery than that bridge ;
but what was he to do ?

It was late. He was ashamed to go back to the house that he
had left, and to which he had come by the far-distant public road,
the more especially as he had been significantly cautioned, upon
his declaring his intention of returning by the field-way, to ‘have
a care of the bridge.’ So he took heart, faced about, and again
proceeded, till a short turn brought him in sight of the bridge.
There was the black object still. With the courage of despair he
rushed at it — and found a carpenter’s bench with some pitched
boards lying upon it, which the workmen had brought for the
repair of this infernal bridge. As he passed over it, an Owl flew
away from an overhanging tree.

VIRGINIAN HORNED OWL.

93

Now here was a ghost-story spoiled. If the youth had but
fainted or gone mad — and men have gone mad with terror — the
worthy farmer’s adventure might have been believed for another
thirty years at least.

If we turn to a race now fast dying out, we shall find that the
Virginian Horned Owl is not more welcomed to the Red man than
the European species was to the ancient Roman. The superstitious
terror of the American Indian was, perhaps is, carried so far, that
any one who presumed to mimic its hootings became an object of
their high displeasure. Indeed the loud halloos with which it
makes the woods resound, so that travellers have been led astray,
taking its shouts for the voice of a man,* and the unearthly
sounds which it sends forth in the evening from the solitudes of
dark swamps covered with gigantic timber — sounds, according to
Wilson, that hardly seem to belong to this world — may well
inspire feelings of horror.

I)r Richardson, in his ‘Fauna Boreali- Americana,’ gives a
striking instance of the effect produced by the wailings of this
species. Here it is in his own words.

‘ The Virginian Horned Owl is found in almost every quarter
of the United States, and occurs in all parts of the fur-countries
where the timber is of large size. Its loud and full nocturnal cry,
issuing from the gloomy recesses of the forest, bears some resem¬
blance to the human voice uttered in a hollow sepulchral tone,
and has been frequently productive of alarm to the traveller, of
which an instance occurred within my own knowledge. A party
of Scottish Highlanders, in the service of the Hudson’s Bay Com¬
pany, happened in a winter journey to encamp after nightfall in a
dense clump of trees, whose dark tops and lofty stems, the growth
of centuries, gave a solemnity to the scene that strongly tended to
excite the superstitious feelings of the Highlanders. The effect
was heightened by the discovery of a tomb, which, with a natural
taste often exhibited by the Indians, had been placed in this
secluded spot. Our travellers having finished their supper, were
trimming their fire preparatory to retiring to rest, when the slow
and dismal notes of the Horned Owl fell on the ear with a startling
nearness. None of them being acquainted with the sound, they
at once concluded that so unearthly a voice must be the moaning
of the spirit of the departed, whose repose they supposed they had
disturbed, by inadvertently making a fire of some of the wood of
which his tomb had been constructed. They passed a tedious
night of fear, and with the first dawn of day, hastily quitted the
ill-omened spot/

0 Lawson.

94

OWLS.

. The common consent of all nations seems to have been not very
complimentary to the Owls.

One word more. In the ancient pharmacopoeia, which, by the
way, savoured not a little of magic, the Owl appears to have been
‘great medicine.’ Thus, the feet of the Bubo , burnt with the
herb plumbago , were held to be a help against serpents. If the
heart of the bird was placed on the left breast of a sleeping beauty,
it made her tell all her secrets ; but the warrior who carried it,
was strengthened in battle. A Bubo’s egg and the blood of its
nestlings appear to have been as efficacious in preserving the hair
and making it curl, as

‘Tliy incomparable oil, Macassar.’

Pliny, indeed, begs to know, who ever saw a Bubo’s egg,
inasmuch as the bird itself is a prodigy, and he further inquires
who could try it, especially upon his hair? But he cannot deny
that the ashes of an Owl’s eyes mixed into a colhjrium gave clear¬
ness to the sight, and that those of its head with ointment, were
good against disorders of the spleen.

And so much for fable.

This is the dark side of the picture. Those who care to see the
bright side may find a more amiable and natural character of the
bird of wisdom in our next chapter.

But why is the Owl dubbed the Bird of Wisdom?

Because it is the only bird that looks straight forward.

OWLS.

* The lark is but a bumpkin fowl,

He sleeps in his nest till morn ;

But my blessing upon the jolly owl,

That all night blows his horn.’

Kenilworth.

So doubtless thought and felt the Fly-by-night Club, who bore
on their seal-rings the Owl for a device, with an appropriate legend
— and thereby hangs a tale.

It was widely whispered that the posy first adopted by these
minions of the moon was Node fugimus , but one of the jolly
companions, who had attended to his -verbs with a little more
profit than his co-mates, hinted that those winged words might
convey a very unclub-like notion of their prowess when confronted
with the Charlies who then made night hideous, and suggested
Node volamus , as more germane to the matter ; which motto was
engraved accordingly.

By the way, how the first verse of Master Goldthread’s morsel
of melody reminds one of the old well-known glee —

‘Of all the brave birds that ever I see,

The owl is the wisest in his degree ;

For all the day long he sits in a tree,

But when the night comes away flies lie;’

or as it has been classically rendered — though we do not find it
in the Anmdines Cami—

‘ Ex omnibus avibus quos video
Sapientissimus est bubo;

Nam sedet in arbore tota die,

At cum nox venit, volat ille.’

Which ought to have been chanted — perhaps it was — as the
evening hymn of the volatile association aforesaid, as ‘ Glorious
Apollo/ commences the harmonies of the Glee Club : — but we

96

OWLS.

proceed, according to our pledge, to a consideration of the bright
side of the character of the 4 bonny, bonny owl.’

And first, turn we to the pages of Aldrovandi. There we find,
in the second chapter of his eighth book, under the heading De
jBubone , and in the middle of the page, the word

DIGNITAS

in grand Roman capitals. And what word more appropriate?
What presence among the feathered bipeds is more dignified than
that of the Great Horned Owl, Le Grand Due , as he is most ap¬
propriately named in the kingdom of Clovis ? Who can look at
his feathered highness, as he sits solemn and sedate, without
inquiring

‘What doth gravity out of his bed at midnight ?’

A question to be presently answered.

Well is he termed the Eagle Owl. If Jove assumed the shape of
the Eagle, did not Juno select that of the Eagle Owl for her muta¬
tion? For, as the learned Italian remarks, it was not decorous
that the Queen of Heaven should take on herself the likeness of
any small or vulgar bird, but rather that she should be embodied in
one whose reign by night was coequal with that of the Eagle by
day — one that, if some ancient narratives be true, had not only
occasionally resisted the royal bird, but contended with him so
stoutly, as to leave the conflict doubtful.

Then the art military with which his grand ducal chateau,
on some towering precipitous rock, is fortified against the only
danger he fears — the attacks of man — for the brave bird

‘ Dallies with the wind and scorns the sun,’ —

betokens deep design and counsel, and a lofty spirit withal.

4 But he is a bird of evil omen according to your own showing
in your last.’ True, gentle reader, you who do me the honour
to remember the tediousness bestowed upon you — but audi alteram
partem ; in plain English, there are two sides to a case.

When Agrippa, persecuted by Tiberius, was fast bound to a
tree awaiting his fate, did not the German augur, who stood
beside him languishing in the like bonds, cast his eyes upwards
and behold a Horned Owl perched in silence upon the branches,
and did not he comfort the discarded favourite with the assurance
that his chains should be loosened, and that he should escape to
become King of the Jews, and leave children who should enjoy
the kingdom after him — adding, however, by way of a cooler,
that if, on the other hand, the bird still continued to hang over

GREAT HORNED OWL.

97

his head next day, his fate was sealed, and his death might be
looked for within five days, — and did not Agrippa escape from
the fatal tree in good time and become King of Juduea, and did
not his children reign after him ? Inquire of Josephus and others,
so please you, if you have any doubt.

Should this testimony be deemed to be somewhat inconclusive,
cutting both ways, as the lawyer’s say, no one will call in question
the fact, that the Horned Owl was held in high honour as a sacred
and fortunate bird by the Tartars, who wore its feathers in their
caps as a talisman to ensure success, and why ?

It once happened that the Khan of Khans had taken refuge
from his enemies in a thicket. They followed with hot pursuit,
and came straight upon his hiding-place ; but there sat a guardian
cherub in the shape of this noble bird, and they, believing that it
would never rest quiet if any man were hidden near, passed by
with unbloodied scimitars. In the silence of the ensuing night
the Khan made his way to his delighted followers3 told them
the cause of his safety, and filled them with a reverential love
for the bird, that became national. The Khan had, on this
occasion, as much reason for saying, ‘Long live the Grand Duke,’
as the bird had, on another occasion to cry, ‘ Long live Sultan
Mahmoud.’

Then, with regard to the race in general, if the Romans had
their Eagle, the Athenians had their Owl. Who shall deny that
the last-named biped was the bird of Minerva? If any such
there be, let him go to the well-arranged British Museum, where,
in the room allotted to Greek and Roman sculptures, he
will find a colossal head of the goddess, with an Owl standing
sentinel on each side of her helmet. Kor did the Romans
themselves disdain the Owl, at least after the Acropolis was invaded
by the statue of Augustus — if ever one stood there.* On the
reverse of a coin of Trajan, a large Owl sits on a column of
elegant proportions, rising from a plinth ; and on the reverse of
another of Hadrian, the bird, resting on a shield, is associated with
a Peacock, and Rome’s own Eagle grasping a fulmen.j- If we
descend to humble life, we find the Owl depicted riding at its ease
on the frame carried by the man in the Fullonica at Pompeii :
whether to show that the establishment was under the protection
of the tutelary goddess of the loom, or introduced as the familiar
of the house, we leave the learned to determine.

* See Leake’s ‘ Topography of Athens.’

f Consult the excellent ‘Descriptive Catalogue of a Cabinet of Roman
Imperial large brass Medals,’ by Captain (now Admiral) William Henry Smyth,
R.N., &c., &c.

H

98

OWLS.

With regard to our own legends, we have referred to that which
says that the Owl was a baker’s daughter ; but the nurseries of
our time made her the offspring of an Earl, transformed for diso¬
bedience, and condemned to cry,

Oli ! — lioo — lioo— my feet are cold.*

Nay, the north-country nurses, according to Nuttall, would
have it that she was no less than the daughter of Pharaoh, and
when they heard the Owl hoot on a winter’s night, would sing to
the admiring child,

Oh ! ooo oo —

I once was a king’s daughter, and sat on my father’s knee,

Cut now I’m a poor Hoolet and hide in a hollow tree.

But we must now introduce those whose owlogical education
has been imperfect to a nearer acquaintance with the organiza¬
tion of this genus ; and although this is no place for searching
physiological inquiry, we hope to be pardoned for sketching out
the adaptation of the form to the wants and enjoyments of the
creature.

lie who delights in contrasts, need seek none more striking among
birds than that exhibited by a Swan and an Owl. The first with a
picturesque profile proudly crowning a neck so beautifully long
and graceful as to rivet the attention of the veriest Cymon of a
spectator ; the last with a great round head, looking almost as if
it were made for a hat, and a flat face, placed, apparently, upon
no neck at all. The long and flexible neck of the swan is ever
and anon elegantly dipped into the wave, as the spotless living
gondola glides over its surface, to crop the subaqueous herbage.
The disk-like face of the Owl turns upon the short-neck like a
pivot, to catch and concentrate every twilight ray and arrest every
sound, even that made by

The smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor;

and the bird, no doubt, derives some of its ill-omened repute from
the size of its organs of vision set in this concentrating facial
disk. Great staring, goggle, or saucer eyes, are popularly attri¬
buted to goblins and demons, and are prominent features in a tale
of terror. One word upon the conformation of these organs,
which give fullness and breadth to the head, and impart to it
somewhat of an intellectual character. The eyeball is supported

* Consult Waterton.

THEIR ORGANIZATION.

99

by a lengthened, concave, bony ring, or chalice-like tube, con¬
sisting of several staves or plates fitted to each other longitudinally.
The cornea is placed at the end of this tube, and so is carried out
beyond the feathers of the facial disk and head, whilst the whole
machinery can be adjusted at the volition of the animal with
greater nicety than that of any optical instrument made by human
hands, according to the quantity of light present, or the focus
required. In the typical Owls, the eyes are set so completely in
front, that in order to see anything at their side or a little behind
them, they must turn the head entirely, and thus bring the
whole concentrating apparatus to bear upon the object. In the
accipitrine or less typical Owls, — the Hawk Owl, Sarnia funerea ,
for example, which frequently hunts by day — the head is smaller,
and the facial disk less perfect, so that the bird is better able to
bear a strong light.

The sense of hearing is most acute. The wide and moderately
deep outward meatus is guarded by an internal fold of skin, and
provided with a well- developed auricular circle of feathers which,
together, well officiate as an external concha to catch and convey
the slightest sound. The rustling of a straw, a dead leaf, or
withered herbage, may betray the “timorous beastie” that runs
below. With all this, the plumage is of the softest texture, and
is so contrived, that the action of flying shall not interfere with the
perfect effect of the auditory machinery, or operate as a warning
to the prey. The external edge of the primary quill feathers is
serrated, so that less resistance is offered, and the flight is per¬
formed noiselessly, in strong contrast with the whirring wing of
the Partridge, whose heavy body is borne off with a startling sound
that brings the heart of the inexperienced sportsman into his
mouth, and often saves the game. Both bone and muscle are
kept down to the lowest point in the Owl, to make it as light as
possible ; and, thus framed and feathered, the bird

Floats in the air like a downy balloon.

The family of Owls known to modern zoologists by the some¬
what disreputable name of Suigidce , is very numerous, and its
geographical distribution very extensive. In all lands, from the
Arctic circle to Port Famine, and perhaps to the south of that
ominous locality, Owls are to be found. Any attempt to enumerate
the species would be an infliction which we, at least, have not the
heart to administer.

An account of the British Owls, including the visiters, will be as
much as the most resigned reader, who is not of the deepest orni-

100

OWLS.

Biological blue can bear ; and to these Strigidce we promise to
confine ourselves.*

We have not a regularly migratory Owl among us except the
Short Eared Owl (Stiix Ircichyotus ), and probably the little Horned
Owl (Scops). The other true British Strigidce are honest stay-at-
home people, and are quizzed accordingly. We will begin with
the residents, then take a look at the emigrants, and conclude with
the occasional visiters.

Of the residents, the Typical Barn Owl, W'hitc Owl, Church Owl,
Gilli Howlet, Screech Owl, Strix flammea , to mention only a few of
his names, first attracts our attention with his downy buff coat,
well powdered occasionally with black, white, and gray, and his
snowy waistcoat. Though he stays with us all the year, his race
is spread over a great part of the world, and they are to be found
settled all over temperate Europe, and as far south as the Cape
of Good Hope, not disdaining Japan and India, but eschewing
America.

The habits of this species — but White has so beautifully and
succinctly described them that we dare not venture on any descrip¬
tion of our own.

‘ We have had,’ says the charming author of ‘ The Natural
History of Selborne’ — ‘ever since I can remember, a pair of
White Owls that constantlv breed under the eaves of this church.
As I have paid good attention to the manner of life of these birds
during the season of breeding, which lasts the summer through,
the following remarks may not, perhaps, be unacceptable : —

‘ About an hour before sunset (for then the mice begin to run)
they sally forth in quest of prey, and hunt all round the hedges
of meadows and small enclosures for them, which seem to be their
only food. In this irregular country we can stand on an eminence
and see them beat the fields over like a setting-dog, and often
drop down in the grass or corn. I have minuted these birds with
my watch for an hour together, and have found that they return
to their nest, the one or the other of them, about once in five
minutes ; reflecting, at the same time, on the adroitness that every
animal is possessed of as far as regards the well-being of itself and

* This resolution requires great self-control. There is hardly an Owl in the

five quarters of the world— for Australia must now he considered the fifth _ _

about which much might not be written. That burrowing Owl, Noctua
cunicularia, the chum of the bizcacha, is one among a host of transatlantic
subjects that force themselves upon our attention, clamorous for notice ; but
the borough-monger has never appeared among us, in feathered form at least,
and we must be firm. New Zealand has lately supplied us, amongst other
ornithological curiosities, with a bird which may be said to be half an owl
and half a parrot. ( Strigops , Gray.)

BRITISH OWLS.

101

offspring. But a piece of address which they show when they
return loaded, should not, I think, be passed over in silence. As
they take their prey with their claws, so they carry it in their
claws to their nest ; but as the feet are necessary in their ascent
under the tiles, they constantly perch first on the roof of the
chancel, and shift the mouse from their claws to their bill, that the
feet may be at liberty to take hold of the plate on the wall as they
are rising under the eaves.

4 White Owls seem not (but in this I am not positive) to hoot at
all ; all that clamorous hooting appears to me to come from the wood
kinds. The White Owl does indeed snore and hiss in a tremendous
manner,- and these menaces well answer the intention of intimi¬
dating ; for I have known a whole village up in arms on such
occasions, imagining the churchyard to be full of goblins and
spectres. White Owls also often scream horribly as they fly along ;
from this screaming probably arose the common people’s imaginary
species of screech-owl , which they superstiriously think attends the
windows of dying persons.’

White was seldom wrong, and we here see that he qualifies the
assertion touching the non-hooting of this species. The general
opinion of naturalists was, that the Barn Owl was never known
to hoot, and so thought Montagu, a good observer. But Sir W.
Jardine shot one in the midst of its hooting solo, and he states that
hooting is their usual cry at night when undisturbed. Yarrell, we
think, comes nearest to the truth, when he states that this Owl
screeches, but does not generally hoot. That it does hoot occasion¬
ally there can be no doubt ; but the well-known nocturnal concerts
are, we believe, principally due to the performers mentioned by
White.

The nest is generally formed, rudely enough, in some old
building, and the number of white eggs, somewhat more oval than
those of the Brown or Wood Owl, is three or four. The young,
who stick to the nest a long time, — as long, indeed, as the old
ones will procure mice for them, — are at first covered with a white
down. Sometimes three different hatches of these animated,
important-looking powder-puffs are to be found iii the same
cradle, and not unfrequently eggs are discovered along with
them.

This Owl has a spice of the poacher about him, for he is a night-
fisher as well as a mouse-hunter, and has been seen to plunge into a
lake by moonlight, and bear away a perch to his nest. The claw
of his middle toe is serrated, and perhaps helps him on these slippery
occasions. He and his have found a zealous advocate in the warm¬
hearted proprietor of Walton Hall; and every farmer ought to
respect this eagle of the mice.

102

OWLS.

The Tawny Owl, Ivy Owl, or Brown Owl ( Surnium aluco), clad
in his russet coat, is a sylvan hermit with a dash of the poacher
about him too, — a sort of feathered clerk of Copmanhurst, for

‘ He whoops out his song and he laughs at his jest,’

living ostensibly on very simple food, but making free every now
and then with a young rabbit, or mayhap a leveret, and occasionally
fastening upon the best that the stream or pond contains, whether
it swims on the surface of deep waters, or lies at the bottom of
shallow brooks, like the loach and the miller’s thumb, which last is
better known to the Wykehamist schoolboy, who goes after him
with a fork instead of a trident, as a ‘Tom Cull.’ The old birds
have been seen to feed their young with these little fishes alive and
struggling from the stream ; and Brown Owls have been more than
suspected of stealing gold and silver fish.

This is a truly nocturnal species, hiding itself by day in the
darkness of deep forests, and never willingly venturing forth till
sunset ; for it bears the light worse than the Barn Owl.

Cowper has admirably sung the ‘ sidling’ and 4 ogling’ of a small-
bird flirtation ; but he does not appear to have ever witnessed the
grand passion of an Owl; would that he had! Such a serious
affair is only to be observed by the out-door naturalist, who will
bury himself for hours in the depths of the quiet woods near some
favourite owl-tree.

If he is so fortunate as to see the courtship on some warm,
gloomy, spring day, whose stillness is only broken by the pattering
of the shower, or the ‘ minute drops’ that fall from the moss-grown
trees, he will be well repaid for his watching, by the solemnization.
The Hudibrastic air with which the lover approaches, making lowly
gesticulations, as if to

‘Honour the shadow of the shoe-tie’

of the prim, quaker-like figure, that receives all these humilities
with the demure, starched demeanour of one of Richardson’s
heroines, only now and then slowly turning her head towards the
worshipper, when she thinks she is not observed, but instantly
turning it away when she thinks she is, — and the occasional prudish
snap of her bill, when she is apprehensive that he is going to be
rude — make a scene truly edifying.

This is the species that make the moonlight woods echo with its
bootings, when, as White remarks, its throat swells as big as a
hen’s egg. IS1 or is it vocal in the night alone, for when in love,
it will hoot in the middle of the day — at least a South- Welsh Owl
will.

Owls are not beloved by other birds, especially the smaller

GERMAN BIRD-CATCniNG.

103

ones, for tlie latter know well enough that the former will make
no scruple of gobbling up their young ones, and sometimes make
free with themselves; Sir W. Jardine found the remains of a
Thrush in an individual of the species of which we are now treat¬
ing. The German bird-catcher takes advantage of this antipathy,
particularly when he wants a few Jays, and, according to Bech-
stein, he proceeds after the following fashion.

In the autumn he seeks in a wood for a tree standing alone, a
few yards from the others most frequented by birds, and on it
places his limed twigs. In order to lay his twigs effectively, he
so cuts off most of the branches as to form a kind of spiral stair¬
case, beginning this operation some ten or a dozen feet from the
ground, and continuing it to within six feet of the top. The
branches being thus shortened to the length of five or six spans,
he builds a leafy' hut of green branches large enough to conceal
as many of his companions as are selected to enjoy the farce about
to be enacted. On the top of his hut he sets up a live Owl, or, if
he has none, the image of an Owl made of clay, or, in default of
either, the skin of a hare so managed that motion may be given to
it. All being ready, and the twilight approaching, nothing is
wanted but his bird-call, made of a small stick with a notch cut
in it, and a little piece of the bark of the cherry-tree inserted,
another bit serving for the cover. With this he imitates the voice
of the Owl, for whom the Jays have as much affection as the
population of the Queen’s Bench prison for the hapless gent,

4 one etc.,’ who is caught within its royal precincts.

As soon as the Jays hear the voice of their detested enemy
down they come screeching from all sides, whilst the repetition of
their cries by the bird-catchers in the hut, causes them to assemble
in great numbers. Entangled in the birdlime, crowded and
sticking together and dragging each other down, the whole sur¬
prised and peevish mass falls pell-mell in a fluttering, squalling
conglomeration into the hut, their weight carrying them through
its slight covering, and they are secured by the bird-catchers.
Nor are Jays the only birds taken on these occasions; for many
others, such as Magpies, Thrushes, Wood-peckers, and even Red¬
breasts and Tits hearing the row, hasten to the assistance of their
allies the Jays, and share their fate.

The eggs of the Wood or Brown Owl, which is widely extended
over Europe, and has been found in Smyrna and Japan, are
generally deposited in the hole of a decayed tree : but the bird
sometimes takes possession of the deserted nest of a Carrion Crow,
or a Magpie, and sometimes selects a hole in a rock. When the
large eggs, which are from three to four in number, white, and
nearly round, are laid in such holes, the bottom of them is

104

OWLS.

generally smoothed, where practicable, and a few slender sticks,
straws, or leaves of grass are placed over it. The downy young
are of a grayish white, and stay long in the nest, where they are
assiduously fed by their parents. When they quit the nest they
perch on the neighbouring branches, and are still catered for by
the old ones till they are well able to provide for themselves.

Some of the Owl-trees are haunted for years by these birds, and
contain the rejectamenta of many generations. White records the
grubbing up of ‘a vast, hollow, pollard ash that had been the
mansion of Owls for centuries’ and the mass of matter that was
discovered at the bottom. This proved to be ‘a congeries of the
bones of mice (and perhaps of birds and bats) that had been
heaped together for ages, being cast up in pellets out of the crops
of many generations of inhabitants. For Owls cast up the bones,
fur, and feathers of what they devour, after the manner of hawks/
White’s informant told him that he believed there were bushels
of this kind of substance ; and this habit should be remembered
by those who keep Owls in captivity, for if they are not given mice
in the fur, and birds in the feather, they are apt to die of decline,
for want of a proper cleansing of the stomach. White states that
he has known a Brown Owl live a full year without any water.

The Dominie Sampson style in which our learned feathered
friend bolts his late dinner, and the gesticulations in which he
indulges, are set forth in the ancient quatrain beneath the effigy of
the Aluco that adorns the Portraits d'Oyseaux:

‘ Le Chat-huant, on Hibou, de la teste

Imite et fait les gestes d’un danseur.

Son gousier est tant large qu’il est seur
D’avaler vif un Rat, ou telle beste.’

This Owl is no great respecter of property, in captivity at least,
and will often hide things like the Magpie and its congeners : we
can answer for the abstraction of an anodyne necklace by one ; —
but this brings back another to our remembrance, — that Owl of
owls, Captain Face as he was named, and his being sent to sea in the
horse-pond on a duck’s back, and the divings of the animated
bark when the captain in his terror stuck his claws into it, and
his submersion upon the instant, and his hooting astonishment as
he emerged, only to gripe harder and be again more deeply ducked,
till both were captured for fear of consequences and the captain
was unbound, shaking his feathers and staring at the perpetrators
with a vacant expression, as who should say, ‘ What does all this
mean?’ These aquatic excursions were inflicted upon the captain
whenever he got a little seedy and moping, and they certainly did;
him good.

LONG-EARED OWL.

105

The Long-eared Owl, Otus vulgaris , Le Moyen Due and Hibou
cornu of the French, hut to which the Italians give the somewhat
ominous name of Duco Cornuto, is a very beautiful bird, elegantly
dappled with black and dark brown on pale brown. He loves the
ivied tree and the thickest shades. Sir W. Jardine describes him
well :

‘ In a dull winter evening, he is frequently seen abroad before
sunset; and when disturbed during the day, the flight, though
sailing and buoyant, is bold and strong. lie perches openly, and
when approached, you can perceive his orange-coloured eyes
dilated, brilliant, and expressive, his long egrets raised and de¬
pressed ; he is aware of being pursued, and a second flight is
taken before a very near approach can be gained.’

This Owl generally looks out for the deserted nest of some
Carrion Crow or Squirrel, though it will sometimes make a rude
one for itself. The oval white eggs are four or five in number,
and the young are covered with white down. Whilst they are
perchers they utter a plaintive evening cry ; but the adult birds
are said to be almost silent in this country. Rats and mice are
its principal four-footed prey, and it frequently steals upon the
hapless small-birds as they roost in fancied security, and snaps
them up. It is widely spread over the world. All Europe pos¬
sesses it, and it has been traced as far eastward as Astracan.
To the south it has been seen in Trebizond, Egypt, and Africa.
Our northern travellers and voyagers found it in high latitudes.
Dr Richardson* states that it has been found in America as far
north as 60°, and probably extends as high as the forests reach.
It is the Ammislcoho (Beaver Owl) of the Cree Indians. The Indians
brought to Dr Richardson a nest which was in a bush, and con¬
tained one egg ; he adds, that Mr Drummond found a nest on
the ground with these eggs, and killed both the birds, and that
the above- mentioned eggs were smaller than those of the English
bird.

It is found in most of the United States. Nuttallf states
that it seldom, if ever, takes the trouble to construct a nest
of its own, seeking shelter amid ruins and hollows of trees,
and resting content with the half- ruined nursery of the Crow,
the Magpie, the Wild Pigeon, or the Buzzard, and even the
tufted retreat of the Squirrel.

Wilson found one of these birds sitting on her eggs in the
deserted nest of a Qua-bird ( Nycticorax ) in April, near Phi¬
ladelphia, in the midst of the gloomy swamped forest to which

* Fauna Boreali-Americana.

f Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and Canada.

10G

OWLS.

those Herons resorted, and one of the Qnas had a nest in the
same tree with the Owl.

Nuttall says that this Owl makes a hollow mourning, expressed
by the words clou cloud incessantly repeated during the night,
so as to be troublesome, and that it is employed as a decoy.
He further remarks that it is almost a denizen of the world,
being found from Hudson’s Bay to the West Indies, throughout
Europe, in Africa, Northern Asia, and probably China, in all
which countries it appears to be resident. It is said to be the
most common Owl in France.

‘Le moyen Due, ou Lien Hibou cornu,

Comme le Due par satyrique geste
Donne plaisir, et a cornes en teste.

Aux monts d’ Auvergne il est assez cognu.’

We now come to the only known regularly migrating British
Owl ; for though it is believed, and with reason, that the Scops ,
so rare with us, is a regular visiter, the fact has not been ascer¬
tained.

The Short-eared Owl ( Brachyotus palustris) comes to us from
the north about October : but Sir W. Jar dine has recorded
the breeding of some on the Scottish moors, where it is well
known to the grouse-shooter. The nest was a hole scraped
in the ground. In consequence of the general arrival of tnese
birds in the southern parts of Britain with the first fair October
winds, they are called Wood-cock Owls, an appellation branded
on the memory of more than one luckless would-be sportsman.

From some turnip-field hard by a plantation, or a tuft of
rushes close to a copse on a moist hill-side, up springs a russet-
plumaged bird and is in the cover in a moment.

The eager shooter 4 catches a glintse on ’in,’ as an old keeper
used to say, through the trees: bang goes the gun.

4 That’s the first cock of the season !’ exclaims he, exultingly.

Up comes John, who has been sent, ostensibly, to attend him, but
really, to take care of him.

4 I’m sure he’s down,’ pointing to the cover — as many are apt to
say when they shoot at a cock, without being able to produce the
body.

4 Well — let’s look, sir — where did a drop?

4 There — just by that holly.’

In they go, retriever and all.

‘There he lies,’ cries the delighted shot, loading his gun
triumphantly in measureless content: ‘dead as Harry the Eighth. I
knew he was down — there — just where I said he was, close by that
mossy stump — can’t you see?’

LITTLE HORNED OWL.

107

4 Iss, sir, I sees well enough, but I don’t like the looks
on ’in : — his head’s a trifle too big, and a do lie too flat on his
face.’

4 Pick up the cock, I say,’ rejoins our hero, somewhat nettled.

4 1 can't do that, sir,’ says John, lifting a fine specimen
of Otus palustris, and holding it up to the blank-looking cockney,
amid the ill-suppressed laughter of those confounded fellows who
attend to mark not only the game, but the number of shots that are
missed, on their abominable notched sticks.

4 Never mind, sir,’ adds the comforter, John, 4 if t’ant a cock,
a did kip company wi’ em ; and a’s curous like, and since you han’t
killed nothen else to-day, I’d bag un, if I was you ; hell look un¬
common well in a glass case.’

This Owl, again, is widely spread over the whole continent
of Europe, over India, and Africa. It has been found in America,
where it is the Tho-thos-cau-sew of the Cree Indians, as far
north as 67°. In summer, it haunts Hudson’s Bay, Labrador,
and Newfoundland. In winter, it goes as far south as Penn¬
sylvania.

The Scops-eared Owl, or little Horned Owl, Scops Aldrovandi
Le Petit Due and Huette of the French, Zivetta and Chiu, of
the Italians, is a very pretty little bird, the tints, shadings,
and pencillings of whose plumage it is impossible to describe
verbally. It is very rare in England, and generally considered
to be a summer visiter, retiring southward to the warmer parts
of Europe, and to Africa, before the cold weather sets in.

Mr John Hogg states in his 4 Natural History of the Vicinity
of Stockton-on-Tees,’ that it breeds in Castle Eden Dene. In
France, where it is far from common, its arrival and departure
are looked for at the same time as the advent and disappearance of
the Swallow.

Mr Spence, the well-known coadjutor of the Rev. William
Kirby, gives an interesting account of its habits in ‘Loudon’s
Magazine of Natural History.’

4 This Owl,’ says Mr Spence, 4 which in summer is very
common in Italy, is remarkable for the constancy and regularity
with which it utters its peculiar note or cry. It does not merely
44 to the moon complain ” occasionally, but keeps repeating its
plaintive and monotonous cry, 44 kew, kew,” (whence its Florentine
name of Chiu, pronounced almost exactly like the English letter
Q), in the regular intervals of about two seconds, the livelong
night, 'and until one is used to it, nothing can well be more
wearisome. Towards the end of April last year, (1830), one
of these Owls established itself in the large Jardin Anglais ,
behind the house where we resided at Florence ; and, until

108

OWLS.

our departure for Switzerland in the beginning of June, I
recollect but one or two instances in which it was not constantly
to be heard, as if in spite to the Nightingales which abounded
there, from nightfall to midnight (and probably much later),
whenever I chanced to be in the back part of the house, or
took our friends to listen to it, and always with precisely the
same unwearied cry, and the intervals between each as regular
as the ticking of a pendulum. This species of Owl, according
to Professor Savi’s excellent Ornitologia Toscana , vol. i. p. 74,
is the only Italian species which migrates ; passing the winter
in Africa and Southern Asia, and the summer in the south
of Europe. It feeds wholly upon beetles, grasshoppers, and
other insects/

In the Portraits d'Oyseaux , the following quatrain appears beneath
the figure of this Little Duke : —

‘ Une Huette est petit Due nommde,

Pour ressembler au grand Due, et moycn
Entierement. De vray elle n’a rien
De different, mais est ainsi formee.’

This elegant miniature species closes the list of British Owls,
properly so called, and we now proceed to a rapid sketch of
the occasional visiters.

The Hawk Owl, Surnia junerea (American and English), which
as we have before observed, hunts by day, and, as might be
expected, has, like the Snowy Owl, the facial disk less perfect
than that of the Nocturnal Owls, can hardly be said to be
a voluntary visiter ; for the only instance recorded is the arrival
of one on board a ship off the coast of Cornwall, whence
it was afterwards landed, and lived a short time in captivity;
but the trim little Owl, or Passerine OwI5 Athene Noctua of the
Prince of Canino, Strix passerina of authors, has been taken
several times ; and more rarely, another small species, Teng-
malm’s Owl, Nyctale Tengmalmi of the Prince of Canino, Strix
Tengmalmi of authors. This elegantly-marked Owl is abundant
in North America, where it is the Cheepai-peethees, and Cheepome-
sees (death-bird) of the Cree Indians.

‘ When,’ says Dr Richardson, ‘ it accidentally wanders
abroad in the day, it is so much dazzled by the light of the
sun as to become stupid, and it may then be easily caught
by the hand. Its cry in the night is a single melancholy
note, repeated at intervals of a minute or two ; and it is one
of the superstitious practices of the Indians to whistle when
they hear it. If the bird be silent when thus challenged, the speedy

CONCLUSION.

109

death of the inquirer is augured; hence its Cree appellation of
Death-bird.

The great Snowy Owl, Nyctea Candida of the Prince of Canino,
Strix nyctea of authors, which is a mighty hunter, and adroit
fisher by day, in the northern and arctic regions at least, striking
at the hare in its course, and clutching his finny prey with one
sudden stroke of his powerful foot as he sails over the water, or
watches patiently, perched on a stone in the shallows, with his
legs and feet defended from the cold by his thick feather-boots,
has occasionally been driven to our shores ; less frequently,
however, than the great Horned Owl, or Eagle Owl, Bubo maocimus.
of Sibbaid, Strix Bubo of Linnceus, the Grand Duke hereinbefore
celebrated.

But even his visits are so few and far between, that we are not
justified in inflicting upon our readers his natural history, and the
feats that he does in the cold starlight when he leaves his lofty
abode, or those done to him by the old French falconers, who
turned him out with the appendage of a fox’s tail, in order to
entrap the kite that was sure to fly after him, if there was one in
the country, to observe what Mrs Tabitha Bramble would have
called the ‘ phinumenon,’ though the temptation thereunto be
strong.

So we are fain to conclude with the old quatrain of 1557,
lamenting at the same time, that though the Italians named him
Duco and JDugo, they also called him Bufo (as Belon writes it,
though we much doubt whether he has not omitted an ‘ f ’),
and, what is worse, give him at the present day the appellation of
Gufo.

In truth, he does appear to have earned for himself among them
and our mercurial near neighbours the character of a very funny
fellow, a character that we have often suspected from the accounts
of the ancient dance ycleped Bubo. There is but one step from the
sublime to the ridiculous : —

‘ Le Due est dit comme le conducteur

D’autres oyseaux, quand d’un lieu se remuent.
Comme Bouffons changent de gestes, et muent

Ainsi est-il folastre et plaisanteur.’

PARROTS.

‘ 0, pretty, pretty Poll.’

Beggars’ Opera,

4 Txie noble Philip Marnixius of St Aldegond,’ qnotli Clnsius
in his 4 Discourse,’ 4 had a Parrot whom I have oft heard laugh
like a man, when he was by the by-standers bidden so to do in
the French tongue, in these words — Riez , Perroquet , riez — yea,
which was more wonderful, it would presently add in the French
tongue, as if it had been endued with reason, but doubtless so
taught, 0 le grand sot qui me faict rire , and was wont to repeat
these words twice or thrice.’* Whether it may be the lot of
our Parrots to provoke a smile, or, like the Parakeet of Topaze,
(which was hatched before the deluge, had been in the ark, had
seen much, and was sent for by Rustan to amuse him till he went
to sleep again), we shall be able to keep the reader awake, we
know not. At all events, we should be more than satisfied if we
were possessed of a tithe of its qualities for story-telling. 4Sa
memoire,’ says Topaze to Rustan, in Le Blanc and Le Noir — what
an opera that tale would make in these days of splendid scenery —
4 Sa memoire est fidelle, il conte simplement, sans chercher a montrer
de 1’ esprit a tout propos, et sans faire des phrases.’ But, if we
should, indeed, shower poppies with effect, happy, in this world of
care, will be the eyelids they weigh down. Sancho, at least, in such
a case, would have blessed us for our invention.

Now, thinks the poppy-expectant, for the old stories of Bluff
King Hal’s Parrot, and — in the exquisite spelling of Aldrovandi
— 4 Gibe the Knabe a Grott,’ id est , adds the worthy, da nebu-
loni solidum. No — neither shall we dwell on Colonel Kelly’s
Parrot ; nor on the ill-used bird that, in consequence of having
told of what it ought not to have seen, was made to believe a
hand-mill, a watering-pot, and burnt rosin, a storm of thunder

* ‘Clusius, his Discourse and Account of Parrots.’ — Willughby’s Trans¬
lation.

PARROTS OF THE NEW WORLD.

Ill

and lightning as good as any that Mr Crosse* brings into his
house from

‘ clouds

With heaven’s artillery fraught.’

Not that we have not a great respect for the birds above hinted at,
and, indeed, for all of these Anthropoglotts, as the Greeks called
them, from the similitude of their fleshy tongues to that of man,
whether, like the Cardinal’s Parrot, they can say the Apostle’s
creed or not jj* though we do not, perhaps, carry our veneration
quite so far as the learned Cardan, who was of opinion that
they meditated as well as spoke. Their fondness, their jealousy,
their hatred — their exhibition of many of the passions which
make the human race happy or miserable, beloved or odious, would
be enough to interest us : but they are, moreover, a kind of link
between the living and the dead — between the nations now upon
earth and those mighty ones that have been swept from it for ever.
The same form, nay, the same identical species of Parakeet! that
was caressed by Alexander, and nestled in the bosom of Thais —
that sat on the finger of Augustus, and fed from the lip of Octavia
—may now be the plaything of a London beauty.

But of these ancients more anon. We will begin with the Par¬
rots of the New World. Their habits, in a state of nature, are
well known ; and in none of the Psittacidcu is the bill more highly
developed. This organ is not merely a powerful seed-and-fruit-
stonecracker, to speak Benthamitically, but it is also a scansorial
organ, as any one may perceive who will take the trouble to observe
these birds as they climb about their cages ; and in some of the
Maccaws it is enormous. The Patagonian Arara,§ no less than
seventeen inches in length, of which the tail is nearly nine, lives in
the summer in the mountain-regions of Paraguay, Buenos Ayres,
Patagonia, and Chili, breeding in the holes of trees and rocks ; but
the approach of autumn is the signal for their gathering, and in
desolating flights, these mountaineers

1 Rush like a torrent clown upon the vale,’

stripping the gardens and laying waste the cultivated fields,
undeterred by the numbers which fall before the plundered owners.

* Since the publication of the preceding edition, my gifted schoolfellow,
Andrew Crosse, is gone where wits, philosophers, kings and subjects, rich and
poor, must go. Alas ! poor Andrew.

W. J. B.

f A correspondent, after speaking of this book in terms the most gratifying,
but far beyond its merits, suggests that I may mention, as a pendant to the
cardinal’s parrot, one that bc-longed to his sister-in-law in India, that used to
say his ‘Bismillah’ like a good Mohammedan, every morning before he had
Lis breakfast.

J Palccornis Alexandri.

Arara Patagonica of Lesson; Psittacus Patagonicus of D’Azara.

112

PARROTS.

Upon such occasions there seems to be a sympathy among these
birds that ensures their destruction : thus the Carolina Arara,*
which is found as high up as 42 degrees of north latitude, and
formerly was to be seen as far north-east as

‘Wild Ontario’s boundless lake,’

feeds in great flocks crowded together. The gun of the enraged
husbandman cuts a terrible lane through them while they are
thus employed: then comes a painful scene. ‘All the survivors
rise, shriek, fly round about for a few minutes, and again alight on
the very place of most imminent danger. The gun is kept at
work ; eight, or ten, or even twenty, are killed at every discharge.
The living birds, as if conscious of the death of their companions,
sweep over their bodies, screaming as loud as ever, but still return
to the stack to be shot at, until so few remain alive that the
farmer does not consider it worth his while to spend more of his
ammunition.’ j

Here we have a striking example of the effect produced by
man, and, in this case, by civilized man, upon the animal creation.
This species is fast diminishing before the colonist. Audubon
remarks that about five-and-twenty years ago, ‘ They could be
procured as far up the tributary waters of the Ohio as the great
Kenhawa, the Scioto, the heads of the Miami, the mouth of the
Manimee at its junction with Lake Erie, on the Illinois river, and
sometimes as far north-east as Lake Ontario, and along the
eastern districts as far as the boundary line between Virginia and
Maryland. At the present day, few are to be found higher than
Cincinnati, nor is it until you reach the mouth of the Ohio that
Parakeets are met with in considerable numbers. I should think
that along the Mississippi there is not now half the number that
existed fifteen years ago.’ These richly-plumed birds — Audubon
says that a stack on which they alight looks as if a brilliantly-
coloured carpet had been thrown over it — are eminently social;
for it appears, in addition to the anecdote above given, that many
females lay their eggs together, the places of deposit being, as it is
in most of the family, the holes of decayed trees. We must give
one more picture of the habits of the Carolina Arara, drawn by
the same masterly hand that sketched the preceding death-scene,
because it will convey a good idea of the general manners of the
American Parakeets : —

‘ The flight of the Parakeet is rapid, straight, and continued
through the forests, or over fields and rivers, and is accompanied

* Arara Carolinensis. Psittacus Carolinensis of Linnaeus.

f Audubon, American Ornithological Biography, vol. i. p. ISO.

1. THE MUTE SWAN.

2. BLACK-NECKED SWAN.

A.

A#

<s i\_ , m3^0

3. THE BLACK SWAN.

4. THE WHISTLING SWAN.

v-c4

1. CRESTED PARRAKEET.

2. CRYS0T1S ANGATHES.

3. MUSIACHOL PARRAKEET.

4. HAWK-HEADED PARROT.

5. OTAHEITE PARRAKEET.

AMERICAN" PARAKEETS

US

by inclinations of the body which enable the observer to sec,
alternately, their upper and under parts. They deviate from a
direct course only when impediments occur, such as the trunks of
trees, or houses, in which case they glance aside in a very graceful
manner, merely as much as may be necessary. A general cry is
kept up by the party, and it is seldom that one of these birds is
on the wing for ever so short a space, without uttering a cry. On
reaching a spot which affords a supply of food, instead of
alighting at once, as many other birds do, the Parakeets take a
good survey of the neighbourhood, passing over it in circles of
great extent, first above the trees, and then gradually lowering
until they almost touch the ground ; when suddenly re-ascending,
they all settle on the tree that bears the fruit of which they are in
quest, or on any one close to the field in which they expect to re¬
gale themselves.

4 They are quite at ease on trees or any kind of plant, moving
sideways, climbing or hanging in every imaginable posture,
assisting themselves very dexterously in all their motions with
their bills. They usually alight extremely close together. I have
seen branches of trees as completely covered by them as they
could possibly be. If approached before they begin their plun¬
dering, they appear shy and distrustful, and often at a single cry
from one of them, the whole take wing, and probably may not
return to the same place that day. Should a person shoot at them
as they go, and wound an individual, its cries are sufficient to bring
back the whole flock, when the sportsman may kill as many as
lie pleases. If the bird falls dead, they make a short round, and
then fly off.

4 On the ground, these birds walk slowly and awkwardly, as if
their tail incommoded them. They do not even attempt to run
off when approached by the sportsman, should he come upon
them unawares ; but when he is seen at a distance, they lose no
time in trying to hide, or in scrambling up the trunk of the
nearest tree, in doing which they are greatly aided by their
bill.

‘ Their roosting place is in hollow trees, and the holes exca¬
vated by the larger species of W oodpeckers, as far as these can be
filled by them. At dusk, a flock of Parakeets may be seen
alighting against the trunk of a large sycamore, or any other tree,
when a considerable excavation exists within it. Immediately
below the entrance the birds all cling to the bark, and crawl into
the hole to pass the night. When such a hole does not prove
sufficient to hold the whole flock, those around the entrance hang
themselves on by their claws and the tip of the upper mandible,
and look as if hanging by the bill. I have frequently seen them

i

114

PARROTS.

in such position by means of a glass, and am satisfied that the bill
is not the only support used in such cases.’* * * §

We must pass by the other American Parakeets, and leave,
unwillingly, such grand birds as the Great Green Maccaw,f the
Blue and Yellow Maccaw,J the Red and Blue Maccaw,§ the
Hyacinthine Maccaw,|| and the noble Parrot Maccaw,^[ gor¬
geously magnificent though they be ; merely observing, that the
first-named of these is found in the Andes as high as 3000 feet,
that it was considered an acceptable gift when presented to the
Incas by their subjects, and that when on its gregarious predatory
excursions a watch is kept on some high station — the top of a tree
generally— to warn the plunderers of the approach of danger, by a
loud and singular cry, on hearing which they immediately take
wing.

Nor is New Holland without its Parakeets of varied forms and
habits, though small when compared with the American tribes.
The elegant Pale-headed Broad-tail, Platijcercus palliceps ; the
pretty Hobart Ground Parrot, Nanones venustus of Vigors and
Horsfield; and the delicate Golden-eared or Crested Parakeet,
Nymphicus Novce Tlollandm of Wagler, Lcptolophus ciuricomis of
Swainson, are ‘beautiful exceedingly.’ Then there is the lovely
genus Trichoglossus .** Like the humming-birds, those Peris of
the feathered race, the food of these charming Parakeets is princi¬
pally the nectar of flowers — nothing more gross than the juices of
delicious fruits do they touch. A suctorial tongue of the most
exquisite workmanship fits them for this diet of the gods. Woe
to the unhappy captive whose mistress does not know this ; it
starves in the midst of apparent plenty. One of these wretched
ones, when a coloured drawing of a flower was presented to it,
applied its parched tongue to the paint and pasteboard ; and even
did this in the extremity of its distress, to the ruder image on a
piece of flowered chintz.

But hear the stern voice of Cato the Censor — ‘ 0 ! conscript
fathers — 01 unhappy Rome. On what times have we fallen,
when we behold these portents in the city — men, Romans,
parading parrots on their fists, and women cherishing dogs ! ’
One of these portents must have been the Ring Parakeet,

• Audubon, Ornithological Biography, vol. i. p. 137.

-f Macrocercus militaris. Psittacus militaris of authors,

j Macrocercus Ararauna.

§ Macrocercus Aracanga.

]| Macrocercus Hyacinthinus.

<[[ Psittacara nobilis. Psittacara frontata, Vigors. Psittacus noblis, Latham.

** Vigors. An Australian group, taking the place of the Indian Lories
in New Holland. Some ornithologists call them Lories, others Lori¬
keets.

INDIAN PARAKEETS.

115

Palceornis Alexandria * alluded to above, and said to have been
brought from India to Europe by the followers of the victorious
Macedonian. The descriptions of both Greeks and Romans, to
say nothing of antique gems and paintings, leave no doubt that
this was one of the species at least ; and it should be remembered
that, till the time of Nero, ‘ by whose searchers (as Pliny witnesseth)
Parrots were discovered elsewhere, viz. in Gagaude, an island of
./Ethiopia;’ none but Indian Parakeets ( Palceornis ) were known at
Rome. Highly wrere they prized, and, in spite of the Censor,
gorgeously were they lodged. Their cages were of gold, and
ivory, and tortoiseshell, and the houses and streets of the imperial
city rang with the ‘Hail, Cassar !’ of the occupants. If the
manes of the celebrated sparrow wrere appeased by the 1 melodious
tear’ of Catullus, Ovid and Statius poured forth the elegy of the
imitative Indian bird, and Martial made it the medium of a refined
compliment,

‘ Psittacus a voids aliorum nomina discam,

Hoc didici per me dicere — Caisar, Ave !’

Though Constantine does not name the bird, Aldrovandi doubts
not that it was a Parakeet that turned the heart of the Oriental
Emperor Basilius, by repeating, for his condemned and incarcerated
son Leo, those lamentations which it had learned from the sorrow¬
ing women ; a son whom he again took to his bosom, leaving him
the empire as an inheritance. There were evidently schools for
these feathered scholars. ./Elian says, they were taught like boys,
and Pliny says that they were corrected with an iron ferule ( ferreo
radio) during their instruction. The same method of castigation
is alluded to by Apuleius and Solinus.

Under the later Emperors, the Parrot became one of the rarities
of their monstrous feasts ; for, though Heliogabalus fed his lions,
panthers, and other carnivora with parrots and pheasants, he took
care to have a grand dish of their heads for his own table. If he had
selected the bodies, it might have been better, for the flesh of some
of the Psittacidce is said to be excellent ; and we suspect that Little
Pickle was not aware what a delicacy he might have been serving
up when he caused a Parrot and bread-sauce to be laid before the
old gentleman.

Next to the affection, almost amounting to passion for youth,
especially of the softer sex, the friendship of the Indian Parakeets
for doves is said to have been the most remarkable. W e can fancy
the portico of the Xystus, in one of the elegant houses at Pompeii,

* Vigors. Psittacus torquatus, Marcourus Antiquorum of Aldrovandus
Psittacus Alexandri of Linnceus.

116

PARROTS,

enlivened by a group of the family, attended by their fond and
friendly birds.

To come to more modern times ; there are instances of attach¬
ment on the part of these birds that would shame other bipeds.
They seem most sensibly alive to the caresses of their beloved
mistress ; and their gesticulations expressive of rage and hatred
when a rival is noticed by her show what an indignant favourite
feels at an infidelity. One of these affectionate creatures would
never settle itself on its perch, however late it might be, till it was
taken out of its cage and replaced with a kiss and a 4 good night/

The Parakeet of which the anecdote is told by Clusius, was
most probably the Red and Blue Maccaw, mentioned above.

4 Among others,’ says that author, 4 1 saw one of those great ones
in the house of the illustrious Lady, Mary of Bremen, Dutchess
of Croy and Areschot, of happy memory, before she went out of
Holland, the like whereto, for variety and elegancy of colours, I
do not remember to have ever seen. For though almost all the
feathers covering the body were red, yet the feathers of the tail
(which were very long) were partly red and partly blue ; but those
on the back and wings parti-coloured of yellow, red, and green,
with a mixture also of blue. Its head about the eyes was white
and varied with waved black lines. I do not remember the like
Parrot described in any other author. Moreover, this bird was so
in love with Anna, the Dutcliesse’s niece, now Countess of Meglicn
and Baronness of Grosbeke, that whenever she walked about the
room it would follow her, and if it saw any one touch her cloatlis
would strike at him with its bill ; so that it seemed to be possessed
with a spirit of jealousie.’*

Of the Short-tailed Parrots, or Parrots properly so called (sub¬
family Psittacino ), there are species both in the new and old world.
The Parrot of the Amazons, f commonly known as the Green Par¬
rot, and celebrated for its conversational powers, will serve as an
example of the American true Parrots. Brilliant as are the talents
of this species, its African brother, the Gray Parrot, if does not
yield to it in eloquence. The cardinal’s bird that could repeat the
whole of the Apostle’s creed, and for which, in the year of God
1500, a hundred gold crowns were paid, is believed to have been of
this species ; and so was the bird of which M. de la Borde declares
that it served as chaplain to a vessel, reciting the prayer to the
sailors, and afterwards repeating the rosary —

‘ It was a Parrot of orders gray
Went forth to tell his bead:/

* Clusius, his Discourse — Willughby's Translation.
f Psittacus Amazonicus of authors,
j Psittacus erithacus of Liuntcus.

ANECDOTES.

117

The Gray Parrot will breed in captivity under favourable circum¬
stances. Buffon speaks of a pair in Prance that nestled in a cask
with ‘lots of sawdust’ — no bad representative of a hole in a
decayed tree — and produced and brought up their young for five
or six successive years. Sticks were placed inside and outside of
the barrel, that the gentleman might ascend and descend to the
lady in the sawdust whenever he pleased. Nothing could be more
amiable than his conduct to her; but it was absolutely necessary
to go booted into the room if the visitor wished to go out of it
with unwounded legs. Those who have felt the gripe of a Parrot’s
bill will easily understand that it was not likely that any gentleman
should enter the sanctuary in silk stockings a second time. Father
Labat also gives an account of a pair whose loves were blessed
with several broods in Paris.

An attempt has been made by some of the Parrots in the brilliant
collection of the Zoological Society of London to fulfil the great
law of nature. We saw one pair of the long-tailed division, very
fussy, and busy, and nestifying, and we believe an egg or so made
its appearance ; ‘but,’ as Dr Johnson said on a more solemn
occasion, ‘nothing came of it.’*

That Parrots will live to a very great age there is no doubt. Le
Vaillant saw one that had lived in captivity, or rather in a domes¬
ticated state, for ninty-three years. When he saw the ancient it
was in the last stage of all. It had been celebrated in its youth
for its vigour, its docile and amiable disposition, the alert air
with which it would fetch its master’s slippers and call the ser¬
vants, — above all, for its flashes of merriment ; — and there it was,
entirely decrepit, lethargic, its sight and memory gone, lingering
out existence, and kept alive by biscuit soaked in Madeira wine.
Somewhere about the age of sixty it began to lose its memory,

* Our recently lost George Coleman used to relate a circumstance connected
with this subject, curiously illustrative of the manners and gaieties of his
‘ youthful days.’ A Lady Reid, a celebrated ornithologist of that time, had,
amongst a multitude of birds, a cock Maccaw, which, according to her Lady¬
ship’s account, and to her infinite surprise, one day laid an egg ! The story,
told by her Ladyship with perfect gravity, and in the full persuasion of its
truth, soon got about town. One day it reached the Cocoa-tree, where,
amongst others, Coleman and Francis North (afterwards fourth Earl of Guild¬
ford) were dining, at about three o’clock, in May or June; tvhence, upon
obtaining this marvellous information, Coleman, North, and a third — I am
not sure that it was not the late accomplished and amiable Sir George Beau¬
mont — issued forth, and proceeded to the top of St James’s-street, where,
having made for themselves trumpets of twisted paper for the purpose, they
gave a flourish, and proclaimed aloud the astounding words ‘ Cock maccaws
lay eggs!’ and this was repeated in the front of White’s; after which they
returned to finish their wine, — their costume then being that which is now
confined to the Court or full dress parties. — Theodore E. Hook.

118

PARROTS.

and, instead of acquiring any new phrase, it forgot some of those
it had learnt, and began to talk a jumble of words. At the age of
sixty its moulting became irregular, the tail became yellow, and
afterwards no change of plumage took place.

We will now draw upon the same Le Yaillant for the manners
of another African species in a state of nature. The Ilobust
Parrot ( Pionus Le Vaillantii of Wagler, Psittcicus robastus of
Latham) haunts the woods of the eastern part of the continent as
high as the thirty-second degree of latitude, in the breeding season
only, leaving them at the approach of the rainy season, after it has
brought up its young for warmer skies. A hollow tree is, as
usual, the receptacle for the eggs, which are four in number, and
about the size of those of a pigeon : both parents share in the
pleasing care of incubation. The nestlings are naked when they
first quit the eggs, and are soon covered with a grayish down ;
but their plumage is not complete till six weeks have elapsed, and
they keep to the nest a considerable time longer, during which
period they are fed from the crop of the old ones, like the pigeons.
When the periodical migration takes place, the flocks fly so high
that they are lost to the sight, though their call-notes still reach the
ear. The history of their day is not uninteresting. At dawn, the
whole flock of the district assembles, and with much noise settles
on one or more dead trees : there they display their wings to the
first rays of the sun, whose rising they seem to hail. They are
then drying their plumage charged with the night dews. As
soon as they are warmed and dried, they separate into small break¬
fast parties, and fly in quest of their favourite cherry-like fruit,
the stone of which they crack and regale on the kernel. They
like to linger over their breakfast, which continues till about ten
or eleven o’clock ; and the different parties then go to take their
bath. The heat by this time is getting intense, and they retire to
the deepest shades of the woods to take their siesta. There they
remain in profound repose, and all is so still, that the traveller
resting beneath a tree shall not hear a sound, though legions of
Parrots crowd the branches above him. The report of a gun
instantly puts to flight the whole flock, screaming most discord¬
antly.

When undisturbed, and their period of rest is terminated, they
again disperse in small dinner parties, and after the conclusion
of the evening repast, there is a general assembly of all the
flocks of the district, and a conversazione of considerable ani¬
mation: this ended, away they all fly to take their second bath;
and there they may be seen on the margin of the limpid pool,
for no water that is not 1 clear as diamond-spark ’ will please
them, scattering the water-drops over their plumage with their

LORIES AND COCKATOOS.

119

heads and wings, and playfully rolling over each other in all the
wantonness of an unchecked game of romps. This finished, they
again seek the leafless trees on which they sat at sun-rise, and
dress and preen their feathers in its parting rays. Then, as
the shades of evening close around, they fly off in pairs, each
couple retiring to its own roosting-place, where they repose
till dawn.

There is a smaller race of Short-tailed Parrots ( Agapornis ), the
love-birds, as they are called, from the affectionate attachment
which exist between the male and female. There certainly are
instances to the contrary, but the death of one is generally followed
by that of the other. A glass placed at right angles with the
perch has been used with success in reconciling the survivor to life,
by the delusion produced by its own image.

The Lories,* in all their oriental richness, and the Cockatoos, |
with their lofty crests and docile disposition, form two very inter¬
esting groups. The latter inhabit the woods of the Indian islands
principally. In the former, the bill is comparatively weak ; in the
latter it is strong and robust. Most of our readers will remember
the favourite Cockatoo of George the Fourth ; the bird was the
very pink of politeness.

Other forms crowd on us, but we are warned. Our eye has
just fallen on a pretty drawing from one of the Pompeian arabes¬
ques, of a grasshopper in a car, driving a parakeet — true ; we have
been 4 speaking parrot’ more than enough, and must refer
those of our readers who are not by this time in a balmy state of
oblivion, and who may wish to make their eyes acquainted with
the varieties of this beautiful family, to their portraits by Barraband
and by Lear, the Reynolds and the Lawrence of the Pxittacidce .

* Genus J.orius, t Subfamily Plyctolopliina, Vigors.

TURKEYS.

*■ - Man, cursed man, on turkeys preys, i

And Christmas shortens all our days.

Sometimes with oysters we combine,

Sometimes assist the sav’ry chine,

From the low peasant to the lord
The turkey smokes on every hoard.’

Gay’s Fables.

Mercy on ns! turkey again! We grant the infliction. Alt
the world has supped full of turkey. We are aware that the
martyr who reads these lines may have been very recently and
very intimately acquainted with the bird plain roasted, boiled^
grilled, devilled — aux truffes et d la broche — en daube — as a galan¬
tine, as a blanquette, and as a marinade ; that he has probably not
omitted to amuse himself with the cuisses et cdles d la sauce Robert ,
and with the ailerons piques et glaces en haricots , en fricassee de
poulets , d la Semite- Menehoidde , en cliipolata ou d la financier e, and
en matelotte — to say nothing of playing with the remains of the
goodly fowl served as a hachis d la reine. One word more only
on this part of the subject, as advice for the future to neophytes :
it is given with all the oracular gravity that distinguishes a high
priest of Comus. ‘Quand il est gras et dans la nouveaute, on le
sert a la broche, pique ou barde. Quand il est vieux, on ne l’emploie
que pour daube ou galantine a la gelee. La dinde est plus delicate
que le clindon.’ All this we devoutly admit — to this amiable
dictation of Le Cuisinier des Cuisiniers we bow ; but when the
great gastronomer asserts ex cathedra , that we owe this bird to the
Jesuits, qui Tout apporte de I'lncle en Europe , we, with all hu¬
mility, but with modest firmness demur to his natural history.
The eloquent and learned author of Tabellci cibarici , though he
leaves their origin in doubt, says that Turkeys were known in
Europe before the institution of Loyola’s order.

But whence was the Turkey imported into Britain — into Europe
— and thence spread over a great portion of the globe? ‘Ceux

HISTORICAL NOTICES.

121

qui pensent que les Coes cl’Inde n’ayent este cogneuz cles anciens
sont trompez. Car Yarro, Columelle, et Pline monstrent evidem-
ment qu’ils estoyent de lenr temps anssi communs es mestairies Ro¬
manies, qu’ils sont maintenant es nostres: lesquels ils nommoyent
de nom Grec Meleagrides et de 110m Latin Gibb eras, &c. Yarro
dit en ceste sorte, Gibb eras quas Meleagrides Greed appellant , &c.
Ceste chose est conforme a ce que Pline en escrit an vingt-sixiesme
chapitre du dixiesme livre de l’histoire naturelle. Meleagrides
(dit-il) hoc est Gallinarum genus Gibberum varriis sparsum plumis ,
&e. Pourquoy il est facile a prouver que nostre Coc d’Inde est
Gibbera Gallina ou Meleagris .’ These lie bold words : they come,
too, from that father of < rnithology, Pierre P>elon du Mans, and
he who wrote them was a man who saw through more than one
fable that had passed current down to his time. Moreover,
Aldrovandi and others speak, if possible, still more determinedly.
But, as wc once heard an advocate compendiously say, when hard
pressed by a host of adverse cases, which were not very good
law — they are all wrong together. Take our word for it, reader,
Apicius never tasted a Turkey : that excellent bird never graced
the Apollo chamber of Lucullus ; nor could all the wealth, nor all
the power of the Caesars have placed one on the Imperial board.
The Meleagris of the ancients was the guinea-hen of our poultry-
yards. — ‘Simple Susan’s’ guinea-hen.

If any one doubt this, let him read the description of Athenasus,
and give us his attention for a few minutes. Taking Clitus
Milesius, a disciple of Aristotle, as his guide, Athemeus notices
the small and naked head, the hard crest surmounting it like a
peg or nail, the small gills hanging from the cheeks, the peculiarly
spotted plumage, the spurless legs, and the similarity of the
sexes.* The descriptions of Varroj and Plinyi are equally con¬
clusive. To go into a detail of all the worthies who drew their
jiens upon each side of this question, which has caused so much
ink-shed, would be tedious ; the notice of one or two will suffice.

‘ That these birds,’ says Willughby, ‘ were the Meleagrides of
the ancients, as also their Gallinse Africans, and Numidicce
Guttatm, Aldrovandus takes much pains to prove. In England
they are called Turkeys, because they are thought to have been
first brought to us out of Turkey.’ § Ray knew better, and, in
his Synopsis, indicated the native country of the bird. But the
progress of a debate which has long been settled is not very en¬
tertaining ; and those who would wish to see the case well argued
are referred to Pennant, who, bringing much learning, and an

f Lin. hi. c. 9.

§ Ornithology, p. 158.

* Deipn. G55.

t Hist. Mund. Lib. x. o. G2.

122

TURKEYS.

ample knowledge of natural history to the discussion, may be
considered as having given the coup ch grace to the antiquarian
theory. Dailies Barrington was the last writer of any note who
supported that theory ; and though he makes a tolerably good
fight, it is, after all, a paradoxical fight, and he seems to be
arguing for victory, not truth. The Indian bird mentioned by
iElian was most probably one of the peacocks. The question is
now set at rest. The Turkey is one of the many good things that
we owe to America.

In the 4 Perfect Description of Virginia,' a small pamphlet in
quarto (1649) — £ With the manner how the Emperor Nicho-
towance came to Sir William Berckley, attended with five petty
kings, to doe homage, and bring tribute to King Charles. With
his solemne protestation, that the sun and moon should lose
their lights, before he (or his people in the country) should prove
disloyall, but ever to keepe faith and allegiance to King
Charles — it is certified that they (the colonists) have 4 for
poultry, Hens, Turkeys, Ducks, Geese, without number and in
the catalogue of 4 Beasts, Birds, Fish, and Trees ’ at the end of
the book, we find — ‘Wilde Turkies, some weighing sixtie pound
weight.’ The pamphlet was evidently written to encourage emi¬
gration and loyalty, and the writer may have put the weight of
his Turkeys rather high ; but that the wild Turkey grows to a
large size there is no doubt.

Lawson set out on his voyage to Carolina in 1700. Soon after
starting from Charlestown we find the following paragraph : —

4 Tuesday morning we set towards the Congerees, leaving the
Indian guide Scipio,’ — not Africanus, — 4 drunk among the Santee
Indians,’ — -jolly fellow! — 4 We went- ten miles out of our way
to head a great swamp, the freshes having filled them all with such
great quantities of water, that the usual paths were rendered im¬
passable. We met in our way with an Indian hut, where we
were entertained with a fat boil’d goose, venison, racoon, and
groundnuts. We made but little stay; about noon we passed
by several large savannahs, wherein is curious ranges for cattle,
being green all the year ; they were plentifully stor’d with cranes,
geese, &c., and the adjacent woods with great flocks of turkeys.’
We will follow the worthy Lawson into one of the natural Turkey
preserves, as he will give the reader some idea of the localities of
these birds; nor is the quaint language of the narrative un¬
pleasant: — ‘Next morning very early, we waded thro’ the
savannah, the path lying there ; and about ten o’clock came to a
hunting quarter of a great many Santees : they made us all
welcome ; showing a great deal of joy at our coming, giving us
barbacu’d turkeys, bear’s oil, and venison* Here we hired Santee

123

NATURAL TURKEY PRESERVES.

Jack (a good hunter, and a well-humour’d fellow), to be our pilot
to the Congeree Indians; we gave him a Stroud-water-blew, to
make his wife an Indian petticoat, who went with her husband.
After two hours’ refreshment, we went on, and got that day about
twenty miles ; we lay by a small swift run of water, which was
pav’d at the bottom with a sort of stone much like to Tripoli, and
so light that I fancy’d it would precipitate in no stream but where
it naturally grew. The weather was very cold, the winds holding-
northerly. We made ourselves as merry as we could, having a
good supper with the scraps of the venison we had given us by the
Indians, having killed three teal and a possum ; which medley alto¬
gether made a curious ragoo.

4 This day all of us had a mind to have rested, but the Indian
was much against it, alleging, that the place we lay at was not
good to hunt in, telling us, if we would go on, by noon he would
bring us to a more convenient place ; so we moved forwards, and
about twelve o’clock came to the most amazing prospect I had seen
since I had been in Carolina : we travelled by a swamp side, which
swamp I believe to be no less than twenty miles over, the other side
being as far as I could well discern, there appearing great ridges of
mountains, bearing from us W.N.W. One Alp, with a top like a
sugar-loaf, advanced its head above all the rest very considerably :
the day was very serene, which gave us the advantage of seeing a
long way ; these mountains were cloth’cl all over with trees, which
seem’d to us to be very large timbers.

4 At the sight of this fair prospect, we stay’d all night ; our
Indian going about half an hour before us, had provided three fat
turkeys e’er we got up to him.

4 The swamp I now spoke of is not a miry bog, as others gene¬
rally are, but you go down to it thro’ a steep bank, at the foot of
which begins this valley, where you may go dry for, perhaps, 200
yards, then you meet with a small brook or run of water about
two or three feet deep, then dry land for such another space, so
another brook thus continuing. The land in this Percoarson, or
valley, being extraordinary rich, and the runs of water well stor’d
with fowl. It is the head of one of the branches of Santee River ;
but a farther discovery time would not permit : only one thing is
very remarkable, there growing all over this swamp, a tall, lofty,
bay-tree, but is not the same as in England, these being in their
verdure all the winter long ; which appears here when you stand
on the ridge (where our path lay), as if it were one pleasant
green field, and as even as a bowling-green to the eye of the be¬
holder, being hemm’d in on one side with these ledges of vast high
mountains.

4 Viewing the land here, we found an extraordinary rich black

124

TURKEYS.

mould, and some of a copper colour, both sorts very good. The
land in some places is much burthen' d with iron-stone, here being
great store of it seemingly very good ; the eviling springs, which
are many in these parts, issuing out of the rocks. When we were
all asleep, in the beginning of the night, we were awaken’d with the
dismaH’st and most hideous noise that ever pierc’d my ears : this
sudden surprizal incapacitated us of guessing what this threatening
noise might proceed from ; but our Indian pilot (who knew these
parts very well) acquainted us, that it was customary to hear such
musick along that swamp-side, there being endless numbers of
panthers, tygers, wolves, and other beasts of prey, which take this
swamp for their abode in the day, coming in whole droves to hunt
the deer in the night, making this frightful ditty ’till day appears,
then all is still as in other places.

4 The next day it prov’d a small drisly rain, which is rare,
there happening not the tenth part of foggy-falling weather towards
these mountains, as visits those parts. Near the sea-board the
Indian kill’d fifteen turkeys this day, there coming out of the
swamp (about sun-rising) flocks of these fowl, containing several
hundreds in a gang, who feed upon the acorns, it being most oak
that grow in these woods. There are but very few pines in those
quarters.

‘Early the next morning, we set forward for the Congeree
Indians, parting with that delicious prospect. By the way, our
guide killed more turkeys, and two pole-cats, which he eat, esteem¬
ing them before fat turkeys. Some of the turkeys, which we eat
while we stay’d there, I believe, weigh’d no less than forty
pounds.

‘ The land we pass’d over this day, was most of it good, and
the worst passable. At night we kill’d a possum, being cloy’d
with turkeys, made a dish of that, which tasted much between
young pork and veal; their fat being as white as any I ever
saw.

‘ Our Indian this day kill’d good store of provision with his gun :
he always shot with a single ball, missing but two shoots in
about forty, they being curious artists in managing a gun, to
make it carry either ball or shot true. When they have bought a
piece, and find it to shoot any ways crooked, they take the barrell
out of the stock, cutting a notch in a tree, wherein they set it
streight, sometimes shooting away above a 100 loads of ammunition
before they bring the gun to shoot according to their mind. W e
took up our quarters by a fish-pond side ; the pits in the woods
that stand full of water naturally breed fish in them, in great
quantities. We cook’d our supper, but having neither bread or
salt, our fat turkeys began to be loathsome to us, although we

HABITS OP THE WILD TURKEY.

125

were never wanting of a good appetite, yet a continuance of on£
diet made us weary.’ *

Audubon says that the unsettled parts of the states of Ohio,
Kentucky, Illinois, and Indiana, an immense extent of country to
the north-west of these districts, upon the Mississippi and Mis¬
souri, and the vast regions drained by these rivers from their con¬
fluence to Louisiana, including the wooded parts of Arkansas, Ten¬
nessee, and Alabama, are the most abundantly supplied with the
Wild Turkey. It is, he adds, less plentiful in Georgia and the
Carolinas, becomes still scarcer in Virginia and Pennsylvania,
and is now very rarely seen to the eastward of the last-mentioned
States. In the course of his rambles through Long Island, the
State of New York, and the country around the lakes, he did not
meet with a single individual, although he was informed that some
exist in those parts. They are still to be found along the whole
line of the Alleghany Mountains, where they have become so wary
as to be approached only with extreme difficulty, according to the
same author, who, when in the Great Pine Forrest in 1829, found
a single feather that had been dropped from the tail of a female,
but saw no bird of the kind. Farther eastward, he does not
think they are now to be found, f Not much more than a century
and a quarter has elapsed between the dates of these two accounts,
and yet we see how remarkably the area over which the species
was formerly spread, is already diminished.

The following graphic description of the habits of the Wild
Turkey, by the enthusiastic American ornithologist, will be read
with interest : —

4 The Turkey is irregularly migratory, as well as irregularly gre¬
garious. With reference to the first of these circumstances, I
have to state that, whenever the mast\ of one portion of the
country happens greatly to exceed that of another, the Turkeys are
insensibly led towards that spot, by gradually meeting in their
haunts with more fruit the nearer they advance towards the place
where it is most plentiful. In this manner flock follows after
flock, until one district is entirely deserted, while another is,
as it were, overflowed by them. But as these migrations are
irregular, and extend over a vast expanse of country, it is
necessary that I should describe the manner in which they take
place.

* A History of Carolina, &c. By John Lawson, Gent., Surveyor-General of
ITorth Carolina. London, 1714, small 4to. p. 25, et seq.
f Ornithological Biography. London, 1831, 8vo.

X In America the term mast is not confined to the fruit of the heecli, but is
used as a general name for all kinds of forest fruits, including even grapes and
berries. (Audubon.)

12G

TURKEYS.

‘About the beginning of October, when scarcely any of the
seeds and fruits have yet fallen from the trees, these birds assemble
in flocks and gradually move towards the rich bottom lands of
the Ohio and Mississippi. The males, or as they are more com¬
monly called, the gobblers , associate in parties of from ten to a
hundred, and search for food apart from the females, while the
latter are seen either advancing singly, each with its brood of
young, then about two-thirds grown, or in connection with other
families, forming parties often amounting to seventy or eighty
individuals, all intent on shunning the old cocks, which, even
when the young birds have attained this size, will fight with, and
often destroy them by repeated blows on the head. Old and
young, however, all move in the same course, and on foot, unless
their progress be interrupted by a river, or the hunter’s dog force
them to take wing. When they come upon a river, they betake
themselves to the highest eminences, and there often remain a
whole day, or sometimes two, as if for the purpose of consulta¬
tion. During this time the males are heard gobbling , calling, and
making much ado, and are seen strutting about, as if to raise
their courage to a pitch befitting the emergency. Even the
females and young assume something of the same pompous demean¬
our, spread out their tails, and run round each other, purring loudly,
and performing extravagant leaps. At length, when the weather
appears settled, and all around is quiet, the whole party mounts to
the tops of the highest trees, whence, at a signal consisting of a
single cluck , given by a leader, the flock takes flight for the opposite
shore. The old and fat birds easily get over, even should the river
be a mile in breadth ; but the younger and less robust frequently
fall into the water, — not to be drowned, however, as might be
imagined. They bring their wings close to their body, spread out
their tail as a support, stretch forward their neck, and striking
out their legs with great vigour, proceed rapidly towards the
shore; on approaching which, should they find it too steep for
landing, they cease their exertions for a few moments, float down
the stream until they come to an accessible part, and by a violent
effort, generally extricate themselves from the water. It is remark¬
able that, immediately after thus crossing a large stream, they
ramble about for some time as if bewildered. In this state they fall
an easy prey to the hunter.

‘ When the Turkeys arrive in parts where the mast is abundant,
they separate into smaller flocks, composed of birds of all ages
and both sexes promiscuously mingled, and devour all before
them. This happens about the middle of November. So gentle
do they sometimes become after these long journeys, that they
have been seen to approach the farm-houses, associate with the

TURKEY COURTSHIP

127

domestic fowls, and enter the stables and corn fields, in quest of
food. In this way, roaming about the forests and feeding chiefly
on mast, they pass the autumn and part of the winter.’*

In February — sweet St Valentine ! — the scene is changed.
1 The females separate and fly from the males. The latter stre¬
nuously pursue, and begin to gobble, or to utter notes of exulta¬
tion. The sexes roost apart, but at no great distance from each
other. When the female utters a call-note, all the gobblers within
hearing return the sound, rolling note after note with as much
rapidity as if they intended to emit the last and the first toge¬
ther, not with spread tail, as when fluttering round the females
on the ground, or practising on the branches of the trees on
which they have roosted for the night, but much in the manner of
the domestic Turkey when an unusual or unexpected noise elicits
its singular hubbub. If the call of the female comes from the
ground, all the males immediately fly towards the spot, and the
moment they reach it, whether the hen be in sight or not, spread
out and erect their tail, draw the head back on the * shoulders,
depress their wings with a quivering motion, and strut pompously
about, emitting at the same time a succession of puffs from the
lungs, and stopping now and then to listen and look. But whe¬
ther they spy the female or not, they continue to puff and strut,
moving with as much celerity as their ideas of ceremony seem to
admit. While thus occupied the males often encounter each
other, in which case desperate battles take place, ending in blood¬
shed, and often in the loss of many lives, the weaker falling under
the repeated blows inflicted upon their heads by the stronger.’ f
This union of love and war, this ominous conjunction of Mars
and Venus, seems to be a necessary condition of animal life. The
females calmly look on and await the event of the struggle which
is to be settled by the law of the strongest, who reaps the reward
of his prowess. Thus a sturdy progeny is secured, and Nature
does all in her power to prevent the species from dwindling.

In the delightful book last quoted there is a fund of Turkey
entertainment for any lover of natural history. There may he
read how hens associate, probably for their mutual safety, deposit
their eggs in the same nest, and rear their broods together, the
common nest being watched by one of the females against the
Crow, the Raven, and the Pole-cat : how, to prevent the effects of
rainy weather, the mother, like a skilful physician, plucks the buds
of the spice-wood bush and gives them to her young ; how they
are hunted with the slow Turkey-hound, and how they are caught
in pens ; and how, of the numerous enemies of the wild Turkey,

* Ornithological Biography, vol. i., p. 2,

f Ibid, p. 3.

128

TURKEYS.

the most formidable, excepting man, are the Lynx, the Snowy Owl,
and the Virginian Owl. None but an eye-witness could have
described the following attack and defence : —

£ When attacked by the two large species of Owls above men¬
tioned, they often effect their escape in a way which is somewhat
remarkable. As Turkeys usually roost in flocks on naked branches
of trees, they are easily discovered by their enemies the Owls,
which, on silent wing, approach and hover around them, for the
purpose of reconnoitring. This, however, is rarely done without
being discovered, and a single cluck from one of the Turkeys
announces to the whole party the approach of the murderer.
They instantly start upon their legs, and watch the motions of the
Owl, which, selecting one as its victim, comes down upon it like
an arrow, and would inevitably secure the Turkey, did not the
latter at that moment lower its head, stoop, and spread its tail in
an inverted manner over its back, by which action the aggressor
is met by a smooth inclined plane, along which it glances without
hurting the Turkey ; immediately after which the latter drops to
the ground, and thus escapes merely with the loss of a few
feathers.’ *

But who imported the bird into Europe, and when was it intro¬
duced?

These are more difficult questions.

We do not find the Turkey in the list of the goodly provision
made for the intronization of George Nevell, Archbishop of York,
in the reign of Edward IV. : nor does it appear in the £ Regula¬
tions of the Household of the fifth Earl of Northumberland begun
in 1512,’ but long before the date of the oldest of the books on
Virginia and Carolina above mentioned, the bird was common in
the farm-yards of Europe.

4 Sebastian Cabot,’ or 1 Sebastian Gabato,' a Genoese son,
born in Bristow, sett forth from that town, and made great disco¬
veries. , in the thirteenth year of Henry VII. ’s reign, that is, in
1498. Other calendars make the time 1499 or 1497. f But the
voyage was deemed unprofitable, and we find that the king, in
1500, probably stimulated by the success of the Spaniards and
Portuguese, granted letters patent to Richard Warde, John
Thomas, and John Farnandus, empowering them to make voyages
of discovery and conquest. Nothing, however, seems to have been
done ; and again letters patent, a.d. 1502, were granted to the
same persons and others, containing a licence in the king’s Hc*me

* Ornithological Biography, i., p. 8.

f Sebastian, together with his two brothers, had been previously included
in a patent bearing date the 5th March, 149G, granted by Henry VII. to
his father John, for the discovery and conquest of unknown lands.

INTRODUCTION INTO EUROPE.

129

‘ to settle in places yet unknown, to take possession of lands, towns,
islands, castles, fortresses, &c., belonging to Gentiles and infidels/
Ac. It is a matter of doubt whether any voyages were under¬
taken in consequence of these last letters of licence. But though
Cabot’s voyage whs deemed unprofitable, his coast discoveries were
very extensive, and it is by no means impossible that the Turkey
might have been introduced into England by his or some of the
subsequent expeditions.

As for the often repeated couplet given by Baker —

‘ Turkeys, carps, hoppes, piccarel, and beer,

Came into England all in one year — ’

that is about the fifteenth of Henry VIII. (1524), there is no re¬
liance to be placed upon it, so far at least as the fish is con¬
cerned; for Dame Juliana Barnes, or Berners, Prioress of Sopewell
Nunnery, mentions in the Boke of St Alban’s, printed by Wvnkyn
de Worde in 1496,* the carp as a ‘deyntous fisshe/ and the price
of pike or pickerel was the subject of legal regulation in the time
of our first Edward.

Mexico was discovered by Grijalva in the year 1518, and we
soon after find a description of the Turkey as one of the produc¬
tions of the country by Gomarra and Hernandez, the latter of
whom gives its Mexican name, ‘ Huexolotl,’ and makes mention
of the wild birds as well as the tame. Oviedo, whose work was
published at Toledo in 1526, describes the Turkey well, as a kind
of peacock of New Spain which had been carried over to the
islands and the Spanish Main, and was about the houses of the
Christian inhabitants; so that it is evident that when Oviedo
wrote, the bird had been domesticated. Heresbach states that
they were brought into Germany about 1530, and Barnaby Googe
(1614) declares that ‘those outlandish birds called ginny-cocks
and turkey-cocks, before the yeare of our Lord 1530 were not
seen with us.’ But Barnaby had without doubt Heresbach’s book
before him when he wrote; and, indeed, the observations of the
German author may be traced throughout the pages of the English
writer on husbandry.

Pierre Gilles, in his additions to iElian (1535), gives a most ac¬
curate description of the Turkey, as being then in Europe. Pierre
had not at that time been farther from his native country than
Venice, and he says that he had seen it, and that it was brought
from the New World.

In 1541 we find a constitution of Archbishop Cranmer directing
that of such large fowls as Cranes, Swans, and Turkey-Cocks, there

* The first edition is said to have been printed in 1481, at St Alban’s.

K

130

TURKEVS.

should be but one dish; and we find the bird mentioned as no
great rarity at the inauguration dinner of the serjeants-at-law in
1555. The learned brothers had upon that occasion two Turkeys
and four Turkey Chicks, charged at four shillings each, Swans and
Cranes being valued at ten shillings, and Capons at half-a-crown.
Champier, who is supposed to have written his treatise, ‘ De Re
Cibaria,’ thirty years before it was published, (the publication was
in 1560,) notices them as having been brought but a few years
back from the newly discovered Indian islands. Zanoni quotes a
sumptuary law of Venice, made in 1557, prescribing the tables at
which these birds might be served. The municipality of Amiens
presented, in the year 1566, twelve Turkeys to the king; and
Anderson, in his ‘History of Commerce,’ says that they were
first eaten in France at his majesty’s* marriage, in 1570. This
assertion of Anderson does not seem to rest on any foundation,
and we know that in 1573, they had become so common in Eng¬
land that they formed part of the usual Christmas fare at a farmer’s
table. Tusser, in his ‘Five Hundreth Points of Good Hus¬
bandry,’ remarks this, and also that they are ill neighbours to
peason and hops. Hakluyt, in 1582, mentions ‘ Turkey-Cocks
and Hennes’ as having been brought into England about ffty
years past.

Upon the whole evidence, a verdict may, in our opinion, be
given in favour of the Spaniards as the importers of this great
addition to our poultry-yards; and we think that its introduction
into this country must have taken place about the year 1530, and
into other parts of Europe very nearly at the same time. Pennant,
indeed, says, ‘ It was first seen in France in the reign of
Francis I., and in England in that of Henry VIII. By the date of
the reign of these monarchs, the first birds of this kind must have
been brought from Mexico, whose conquest was completed
a.d. 1521, the short-lived colony of the French in Florida not
being attempted before 1562, nor our more successful one in
Virginia till 1585, when both these monarchs were in their
graves.’

The weight to which this bird will attain has been stated to be
enormous; we have given some of these statements, and there
has been doubtless a good deal of exaggeration. But even now
the wild birds arrive at a great size. Mr Audubon gives from
151b. to 181b. as the average, and mentions one in the Louisville
market which weighed 361b., and whose breast tuft was upwards
of a foot long. The length of the cock figured by Audubon was
four feet and uji inch, and the expanse of the wings five feet eight

* Charles IX.

ORIGIN OF THE NAME.

131

inches. The Prince of Musignano,* who has given a very inte¬
resting account of the habits of the wild Turkey, says that birds
of 301b. weight are not rare, and that he had ascertained the
existence of some which weighed 401b. The average weight of a
wild hen appears to be about 91b. ; but in the strawberry season,
when they are so fat as to burst with the fall after being shot, they
occasionally reach 131b.

But why is the bird called Turkey or Turky?f Every one has
observed the changing hue of his wattle from red to blue when he
is excited. In the small edition of Belon (1557) there is a cut of
a triad of these birds, under the title of £ Gallo d’lndia, Coq
d’lnde’ (Dinde Dindon), and beneath is the following quatrain: —

‘ Quand a orgueuil ce coq au Paon approche,

Et fait sa queue en roue comme luy,

Les Baroillons et creste d’iceiuy
Sont de couleur a l’azure'e proclie.’

This * azuree* is very like the Turquois or Turquoise — Gemma
Turcica — and is eminently characteristic of the bird. We do not
presume to give this as a solution, but merely mention the hint for
lack of a better.

Willughby and others notice the anger into which the Turkey
is thrown by the display of anything dyed of a red colour; but
that is not the only hue that provokes it, if we may believe a
catalogue of pictures printed in Germany for the special benefit of
the English; for there, we remember, was the following lot: — ‘A
Turkish Cook inflamed to choler by a Blackzer Boy.’ Whether
the writer had ever heard or read of Garrick’s performance in the
court-yard, with Sambo for audience, we know not : but from
other internal evidence we suspect that it was a bond fide catalogue,
written undoubtedly in choice English. For instance, another pic¬
ture was thus announced : — ‘ Nymphs bathing into a mountainous
landskip; Satyrs snooks about ’em.’

But to return to our Turkey. The author of £ Tabella Cibaria’
proves it upon the bird that it is ‘ so stupid or timorous that if
you balance a bit of straw on his head, or draw a line of chalk on
the ground from his beak, he fancies himself so loaded or so
bound, that he will remain in the same position till hunger forces

* Charles Lucien Bonaparte, afterwards Ills Imperial Highness Prince
Charles Bonaparte.

f In Lawson’s time Coona was the name for a turkey in the language of the
Tuskeruro Indians, and Yauta in that of the Waccons or Woccons. The same
author, speaking of the Indians, says, ‘They name the months very agreeably,
as one is the herring-month, another the strawberry-month, another the mul¬
berry-month. Others name them by the trees that blossom ; especially the
dogwood- tree ; or they say, “ We will return when Turkey-cocks gobble,” that
is in March and April ’

132

TURKEYS.

him to move. We made the experiment.’ We never did; but
we doubt it not, though we cannot accept it as proof of stupidity.
How much wit may be necessary to balance a straw may be
doubtful; but gallant chanticleer has never been charged either
with fear or folly, and yet you have only to take him from his
perch, place him on the table by candlelight, hold his beak down
to the table, and draw a line with chalk from it so as to catch his
eye, and there the bird will remain spell-bound, till a bystander
rubbing out the line, or diverting his attention from it, breaks the
charm. Many a fowl have we thus fascinated in our boyish
days.

Whatever may be the character for stupidity that the Turkey
has earned for itself in a domestic state, no such charge can be
established against it in its native woods, where its vigilance and
cunning are acknowledged by the hunters to their cost. Even in
the poultry-yard the attentions of the Turkey-Cock to the female
and the young, aye, and the courage with which he will defend
the brood from dogs and other intruders, have been noticed. He
has been known to take the sole charge of the brood upon himself,
and to sit upon the eggs. The editor of the pretty and interesting
volume on Gallinaceous birds * says, 4 I once knew it take place
upon two addled eggs, which the lien had long persevered upon,
and upon which he (the Turkey-Cock) kept his place a fortnight.’
This was certainly being paternal overmuch.

We must insert the following anecdote of the sagacity of a
half-reclaimed bird, from the pen of Audubon, by way of set¬
off : —

4 While at Henderson, on the Ohio, I had, among many other
wild birds, a fine male Turkey, which had been reared from its
earliest youth under my care, it having been caught by me when
probably not more than two or three days old. It became so tame
that it would follow any person who called it, and was the
favourite of the little village. Yet it would never roost with the
tame Turkeys, but regularly betook itself at night to the roof of
the house, where it remained until dawn. When two years old it
began to fly to the woods, where it remained for a considerable
part of the day, to return to the enclosure as night approached.
It continued this practice until the following spring, when I saw
it several times fly from its roosting-place to the top of a high
cotton-tree, on the bank of the Ohio, from which, after resting a
little, it would sail to the opposite shore, the river being there
nearly half a mile wide, and return towards night. One morning
I saw it fly off, at a very early hour, to the woods, in another

* Naturalist’s Library — Ornilbolncy, vol. iil

TIIE WILD TURKEY.

133

direction, and took no particular notice of tlie circumstance.
Several days elapsed, but the bird did not return. I was going
towards some lakes near Green River, to shoot, when, having
walked about five miles, I saw a fine large Gobbler cross the path
before me, moving leisurely along. Turkeys being then in prime
condition for the table, I ordered my dog to chase it and put it up.
The animal went off with great rapidity, and, as it approached the
Turkey, I saw, with surprise, that the latter paid little attention.
Juno was on the point of seizing it, when she suddenly stopped,
and turned her head towards me. I hastened to them, but you
may easily conceive my surprise when I saw my own favourite bird,
and discovered that it had recognized the dog, and would not fly
from it ; although the sight of a strange dog would have caused it
to run off at once. A friend of mine happening to be in search of
a wounded deer, took the bird on his saddle before him and carried
it home for me. The following spring it was accidentally shot,
having been taken for a wild bird, and brought to me on being
recognized by the red riband which it had around its neck. Pray,
reader, by what word will you designate the recognition made by
my favourite Turkey of a dog which had been long associated with
it in the yard and grounds? Was it the result of instinct or of
reason — an unconsciously revived impression, or the act of an
intelligent mind?’ A question to be asked.

But how many of our readers are there who have never seen a
wild Turkey ; and of those who have not, how few may care to
read a technical description of the bird ! and yet to some it may
be interesting. The Prince of Musignano, in his ‘ Continuation of
Wilson’s North American Ornithology,’ was the first who gave an
authentic figure of the wild Turkey; and nearly at the same time
(about eleven years ago) M. Vieillot published one in his ‘ Galerie,’
from a specimen in the Paris Museum. But it is to the magnificent
work of Audubon, 4 The Birds of America,’ that we owe a perfect
representation of the male, the female, and the young, upon a grand
scale, and with a minuteness of accuracy that an ornithologist alone
can appreciate, though every one must be struck with the truth of
the life-like portraits. W e are aware that, prior to the appearance
of the above mentioned works, there were figures — for instance
those introduced into a landscape in the account of De Laudoniere’s
Voyage to Florida, in De Bry’s Collection, and Brickell’s, in his
Natural History of North Carolina — but these are not only apo¬
cryphal, if they are to be considered as unadulterated representatives
of the wild bird, but too imperfect to be available.

The following description, from the pen of the lamented Mr
Bennett, appears to us to embody the best parts of all that have
appeared, and we accordingly select it.

134

TURKEYS.

‘ Those who have seen only the domesticated bird can form but
a faint idea of its beauty in a state of nature. When fully grown,
the male wild Turkey measures nearly four feet in length, and more
than five in the expanse of its wings. Its head, which is very
small in proportion to its body, is covered with a naked, blueish
skin, which is continued over the upper half of its neck. On this
skin are placed a number of wart-like elevations, red on the upper
portion and whitish below, interspersed with a few scattered
blackish hairs. On the under part of the neck, the skin is flaccid
and membranous, and extends downwards, in the shape of large
wattles. From the base of the bill, at its junction with the fore¬
head, rises a wrinkled, conical, fleshy protuberance, with a pencil of
hairs at the tip. This protuberance, when the bird is at rest, does
not exceed an inch and a half in length, but on any excitement
becomes elongated to such an extent as to cover the bill entirely,
and to depend below it for several inches. The lower part of
the neck, at its junction with the breast, is ornamented by a
singular tuft of black rigid hairs, separating themselves from the
feathers, and reaching as much as nine inches in length. The
feathers of the body are long and truncated, and generally speak¬
ing may each be subdivided into four parts. Their base is
formed by a light fuliginous down, which is followed by a dusky
portion. This again is succeeded by a broad shining metallic
band, changing to copper colour or bronze, to violet or purple,
according to the incidence of the light ; while the tip is formed by
a narrow black velvety band, which last is wanting on the neck
and breast. From this disposition of the colours remits a most
beautiful changeable metallic gloss over the whole body of the
bird, which is, however, less marked on the lower part of the back
and tail-coverts.

‘ The wings, which scarcely extend beyond the base of the
tail, are convex and rounded. They are furnished with twenty-
eight quill-feathers : the primaries are plain blackish, banded with
white, while the secondaries have the relative extent of these
markings so reversed that they may be described as white banded
with blackish, and tinged, especially towards the back, with
brownish yellow. The tail measures more than fifteen inches in
length, is rounded at the extremity, and consists of eighteen broad
feathers, which, when expanded and elevated, assume the form of
a fan. It is brown, mottled with black, and crossed by numerous
narrow undulating lines of the same. Near the tip is a broad
black band, then follows a short mottled portion, and lastly a
broad dingy yellowish band. The feet are robust, have blunt
spurs about an inch in length, and are of a red colour, with
blackish margins to the scales, and claws of the same dusky

THE WILD TURKEY.

135

hue. The bill is reddish and horn-coloured at the tip ; and the
irides are dark brown.

‘ The female is considerably smaller, not exceeding three feet
and a quarter in length. Her bill and legs are less robust, the
latter without any rudiment of a spur ; and her irides similar to
those of the male. Her head and neck are less denuded, being
covered by short decomposed feathers of a dirty grey. Those of
the back of the neck have brownish tips, producing a longitudinal
band on that part. The caruncle on the forehead is short and
incapable of elongation ; and the fasciculus on the breast is not
always present. The prevailing tinge of the plumage is dusky
grey, each feather having a metallic band, and a greyish terminal
fringe. On the feathers of the neck and under surface, the black
band is for the most part obliterated. All the parts, without
exception, are duller than those of the male ; less white exists on
the primary wing-feathers, and the secondaries are entirely desti¬
tute of bands. The tail is similar in colour to that of the male.

‘Until the naked membrane acquires its tinge of red, it is not
easy to distinguish between the two sexes ; but on the approach
of the first winter, the young males show a rudiment of the tuft of
hairs upon the breast, consisting at first of a mere tubercle : in
the second year the tuft is about three inches long; and in the
third the bird attains its adult form, although it certainly continues
to increase in size and beauty for several years. Females have
their full size and colouring at the end of four years : they then
possess the pectoral fascicle, four or five inches in length, but
much thinner than in the male. This appendage is more frequently
observed, and is acquired at an earlier period of life in the wild
than in the domestic female.

‘ The wild Turkey has been found native from the north¬
western territory of the United States to the Isthmus of Panama.
Towards the north, Canada appears to be the limit of its range :
but from this country, as well as from the more densely peopled
parts of the American Union, where it was once extremely abun¬
dant, it is gradually disappearing before the encroachments of the
Lord of the Creation. To the west, the Rocky Mountains seem to
form a barrier that it has never passed, if, indeed, it has reached
them ; but the wooded districts of the Western States are still
plentifully supplied with this valuable game, which there forms
an important part of the subsistence of the hunter and the traveller.
In the north-eastern States it has now become extremely rare,
although it is still occasionally found in the mountainous parts of
New Jersey and Pennsylvania; while in the south, Florida, Georgia,
and the Carolinas, where, three centuries ago, it wras most plentiful,
have still a small supply.’

136

TURKEYS.

The varied plumage of the bird in the domesticated state is well
known to every one ; and in no species is that sure mark of subjec¬
tion to man more strongly seen. Every gradation of colour, from
its original bronze, passing into buff, and, in many instances into pure
white, may be observed in these strutting denizens of our farm-yards.

But handsome as is the wild Turkey ( Meleagris Gallopavo ), which
has been our theme, there is yet another wild American species,
(. Meleagris ocellata), first described by Cuvier, from a bird which was
once English, but is now the property of the French Government,
far more beautiful.

The crew of a vessel who were cutting wood in the bay of Hon¬
duras saw three of these noble birds, and succeeded in taking one
alive. It was sent to the late Sir Henry Halford; but an accident,
whilst it was yet on the Thames, deprived it of life, and Sir Henry
presented it to Mr Bullock, whose museum, then in the Egyptian Hall,
was the place of deposit for the most valuable subjects of Natural
History. When that rich collection was dispersed, this unique spe¬
cimen was suffered to leave the country with a multitude of other
rarities, which are, even now, the stars of foreign establishments. It
was heart-breaking to see one fine lot knocked down after another,
and to learn that it was become the property of our more enligh¬
tened and more liberal rivals, and was no longer to remain on English
ground. M. Temminck has given a good figure of it in the ‘Planches
Coloriees;’ and the following is, in great part, from Sir William
Jardine’s description, which was taken from that of Temminck.

In size it is nearly equal to the common Turkey, but the tail is
not so ample. The bill is of the same form, and the base with a
caruncle, which is apparently capable of the same dilations and
contractions with that of its congener. The head and two-thirds
of the neck are naked, and appear of the same livid colour, but
without any trace of the fleshy tubercles on the lower part which
are so prominent a feature in the physiognomy of the common
Turkey : the only appearance of any is five or six above each eye,
five upon the centre of the crown, and upon the side of the neck,
six or seven arranged in a line above each other, and at nearly
equal distances. Upon the breast there was no trace of the tuft
of hair; but the plumage was somewhat damaged, and the ex¬
amination of other specimens must determine whether this
character is also present in the species under consideration. The
feathers are rounded at the ends; those of the lower part of the
neck, the upper part of the back, the scapulars, and the lower part,
are of a metallic green, or bronze hue, terminated by two bands,
one black, and that next the tip of a golden bronze. On the other
parts of the back, the distribution of the colours is the same ; but,
toward the tail coverts, the tints become comparatively vivid — the

THE OCELLATED TURKEY.

137

bronzed hues changing into rich blue, or emerald-green, according
to the incidence of the rays of light, and the band next the tip be¬
coming broader and more golden. Upon the rump, red becomes
mingled with the tints, so as to remind the observer of the throat
of the ruby-crested humming-bird. A band of deep velvety black
separates the blue from this border, and makes the brightness of
the latter more striking. The hidden part of each feather is gray,
mottled with black : upon the tail and upper coverts this gray part
becomes apparent, and the marks take the form of subcircular bars,
two of which, surrounding the blue band, give to each feather an
ocellated appearance. From the arrangement of the tail-coverts
and the lower feathers of the rump, there are four rows with these
ocellated tips, where the gray basal portion of the feathers is visible,
combining very chastely with the more vivid colour, and keeping
down its lustre. The tail is rounded, and consists of fourteen fea¬
thers. The lower parts of the body are banded with bronze, black,
and green; but they want the brilliancy of the upper plumage. The
quills and bastard-wing are black, edged obliquely with white,
which almost entirely occupies the outer margin of the first. The
outer webs of the secondaries are of a pure white, the central bands
not appearing when the wings are closed: the uppermost are
blotched in the centre with black, lustrous with green; and this
blotching, as the feathers shorten, extends more over their surface,
leaving the edge only of the last white. The greater coverts are of
a chestnut colour ; and the feet and legs are of a fine lake, or
purplish red.

We have given this description, not without hope that it may
perchance meet the eye of some one who has the will as well as the
power to bring the magnificent bird to this country. What has
been done once may be done again ; and we trust that, next time,
it will be done effectually. With the naturalized poultry from Asia,
Africa, and America before our eyes, there cannot exist a doubt
that the Ocellated Turkey would thrive with us.* The benefactor who
conferred the domestic Turkey upon Europe is unknown. He who
succeeds in naturalizing the ocellated Turkey will have the merit of
introducing the most beautiful addition to our parks and homesteads
— to say nothing of its utility — since the importation of the peacock;
and, in these days of record, his name will not be forgotten.*

February, 1837.

* In the garden of the Zoological Societ)’- of London, a pair of these beau¬
tiful birds, presented to the Society by Her Majesty the Queen, are now (16th
July, 1857) in^good health and fine plumage ; but no eggs have, as yet, made
their appearance. No dilatable caruncle at the base of the bill is visible, nor
any hair-tuft on the breast.

WILD SWANS.

‘The swans on sweet St Mary’s lake
Float double, swan and shadow.’

Wordsworth.

How simply and beautifully true to nature is this musical picture !
We behold the tranquil lake-scenery of the source of the Yarrow
as clearly as Ruysdael or Nasmyth— the names may be mingled —
could have impressed it on the eye of flesh.

Linnaeus has, somewhat profanely, placed the Swan among the
Anseres. Sacred to Apollo, it has been celebrated as the bird of
the muses in almost nil languages from Homer and Callimachus —
whose charming lines make the notes of the Swans that flew singing
sweetly round Delos absolutely audible — to him who wrote yester¬
day. In Retzsch’s exquisite designs for 4 Pegasus im Joch’* — not
the only ethereal creature doomed to drag on earth the basest ma¬
terials amid the barking of curs, and hissing of geese — the lake
surrounding the lonely island whereon the altar to Schiller is erected,
is sacred to him and the Swans alone.

Venus and her son clai ned the bird as wrell as Apollo :

1 See the chariot at hand here of Love,

Wherein n y lady rideth !

Each that draws is a swan or a dove,

And well the car Love guideth.

As .-he goes, all hearts do duty
Unto her beauty ;

And enamour'd, do wish, so they might •

Hut enjoy such a sight,

That they still were to run by her side,

Through swords, through seas, whither she would ri le.*

* Pegasus in harness.

VARIOUS SPECIES.

139

Well they might.

4 Have you seen but a bright lily grow
Before rude hands have touch’d it?

Have you mark’d but the fall o’ the snow
Before the soil hath smutch’d it ?

Have you felt the wool of the bever?

Or swan’s down ever ?

Or have smelt o’ the bud of the briar ?

Or the nard in the fire ?

Or have tasted the bag of the bee ?

0, so white ! 0, so soft ! 0, so sweet is she !’*

Rare Ren! But we must be zoological.

Let us examine the bony frame-work of a swan. What an
admirable piece of animated ship-building it is! How the ribs rise
from the broad and keeled sternum to support the lengthened pelvis
and the broad back which form a goodly solid deck for the young
cygnets to rest on under the elevated, arched, and sail-like wings of
the parent;f and how the twenty-live vertebras of the neck rise into
a noble ornamental prow, crowned with the graceful head. How
skilfully are the oary legs and feet fitted — just where their strokes
can be best brought to bear for the purpose of putting the living
galley in motion ! It is a work worthy of the Great Artificer.

The species of this elegant genus are now well defined, and we
proceed to notice them.

1. The Elk, Hooper, or Whistling Swan, Cygnus ferus of Lin¬
naeus, Cygnus musicus of Bechstein.

This pure white-plumaged Swan, with the exception of a slight
buff tinge on the upper part of the head, has the anterior part of
the bill black and depressed, but is squared at the base, and
yellow, which last hue is extended forward along each edge of the
upper mandible, beyond the opening of the nostrils, which are
black. Yellow also occupies the space between the base of the upper
mandible and the eye, and colours the posterior portion of the lower
mandible. There is no caruncle or ‘berry,’ as the Svvanherds call
it. The iris of the eye is brown, and the feet are black.

When a fine male Hooper is stretched out, he will measure,
neck and all, about five feet, and the expanded wings eight feet
from tip to tip. The female is not so large, and her neck is more
slender. It should be borne in mind, however, that the Hoopers
vary much in weight. Colonel Hawker, in the winter of 1838,
killed them from thirteen to twenty-one pounds : they have been
known to weigh twenty-four.

* ‘Underwoods. A Celebration of Charis. Her Triumph.’ — Ilorsely has
married these bright verses to rich harmony,
f See the 4 Fi’agment’ headed 4 A word to Anglers,’ p. 167.

140

WILD SWANS.

Oar islands only see tlie Hooper as a winter visiter from the
north. Its summer retreats are Iceland, Scandinavia, and the
inhospitable regions within the arctic circle. As they fly in
wedge-like figure, uttering their repeated cry of ‘hoop, hoop’ in
concert, their united notes fall not unmusically on the ear of the
wayfarer below.

The Icelander, who hears in their loud clarions the knell of
winter, and hails the shining aerial band as the heralds of summer,
compares their joint melody to the notes of a viol.

The wind-instrument which produces these sounds, is a curious
piece of animal mechanism. The cylindrical tracheal tube passes
down the neck, and then descends between the forks of the merry¬
thought to the level of the keel of the breast-bone, which is
double; and this windpipe, after traversing nearly the whole
length of the keel between the two plates, is doubled back as it
were upon itself, and passing forward, upward, and backward
again, ends in a vertical divaricating bone, whence two long
bronchial tubes diverge, each into their respective lobe of the
lungs. In short, our winged musician carries a French-horn in
his chest, but it is not quite so melodious as Puzzi’s* In the
females and young males, the windpipe is not inserted so deeply.

Like its congeners, the Hooper feeds on water-plants and
insects : but the vegetable diet greatly prevails. Leaves, flags,
rushes, and other spoils of the marshy Flora form his ample nest;
and his loves are generally blest with six or seven whitish eggs,
each some four inches and a half long, and about two inches and
three quarters broad, washed with a yellowish green tinge.

The Hooper breeds in captivity, soon becomes reconciled to a
state of half-domestication, and is now far from uncommon on our
ornamental sheets of water. He is a bird of high courage, and
fights stoutly pro aris et jocis.

On a glorious half-spring, half-summer morning, a little family
of newly-hatclied Cygnets were basking in their grayish downy
coats on the banks of one of the islands in the garden of the
Zoological Society, drinking in the rays at every pore, with half-
closed eyes and outstretched legs, their delicately transparent
foot-webs expanded to the genial sun. The parents complacently
rowed guard near them in all the enjoyment of honest family
pride; and the happy little ones were so close to the deep water,
that their forms were reflected therein as in a mirror. Suddenly
a Carrion Crow made a dash at one of the Cygnets. The enraged
father seized the felon on the instant with his bill. In vain the

iy A justly celebrated performer on the French-horn.

bewick’s swak.

141

surprised Crow struggled and buffeted to escape from the living
vice which firmly grasped him : the old Hooper’s blood was up, he
dragged his enemy into the water, and held him under it till he was
drowned. When the swan loosed his hold, an inanimate lump of
flesh and feathers floated to the surface, and as he spurned the
black mass for the last time, he looked in his snowy robe like some
good but indignant spirit trampling the evil one.

Colonel Hawker relates, that on one occasion when he knocked
down eight of these Swans at one shot, the old male was only
winged, and when he found himself overtaken by the colonel’s
skipper, Read, the brave bird turned round and made a regular
charge at him.

2. Mr Yarrell first drew the attention of zoologists to Bewick’s
Swan Cygnus Bewickii , which had previously passed undistinguished
from the Hooper, from which, however, it differs in being consi¬
derably smaller, as well as in other points.

This wild Swan has also a convoluted trachea, which enters the
hollow keel of the sternum, but its disposition varies from that
observed in the Hooper. When the windpipe, which is of equal
diameter throughout, arrives at the end of the keel, it gradually
inclines upward and outward, passing into a cavity of the sternum
destined for its reception, changes its direction from the vertical to
the horizontal, and when it reaches within half an inch of the
posterior edge, is reflected back, after describing a considerable
curve, till it again arrives at the keel, which it once more traverses
in a line immediately above its first portion, and then passes out
under the merrythought: here turning first in an upward, and
afterward in a backward direction, it enters the body, in order to
be attached to the lungs.

The sound produced from this convoluted pipe, in captivity, is
a low, deep-toned whistle, repeated only once. Such a note was
uttered by those in the possession of Mr Sinclaire, principally at
the migratory periods, March and September ; but Mr John
Blackwall gives a very different account of the clangour of a wild
flock of twenty-nine, as they were flying, in December, over
Crumpsall, not above fifty yards from the surface of the earth.

‘ They flew in a line, taking a northerly direction ; and their loud
calls, for they were very clamorous when on the wing, might be
heard to a considerable distance.’

An adult bird measures rather more than four feet in length,
and is pure white, with the base of the bill orange yellow Demon -
colour in a bird of the second winter). The iris is dark and the
legs and feet are black.

This species, according to M. Temminck, breeds in Iceland in
the month of May. Captain Lyon describes the nest, if indeed

142

WILD SWANS.

the bird noticed by him was a Cggnus Bewichii , and not one of the
American species, as built of moss-peat, and nearly six feet long,
by four feet and three-quarters wide. On the outside it was two
feet in height, and the diameter of the cavity was a foot and a
half — a roomy cradle. The eggs were brownish white, slightly
clouded with a darker tint. Temminck states that the colour
of the eggs, which are six or seven in number, is yellowish
brown.

When on the water, Bewick’s Swan is more anserine in its ap¬
pearance than the Hooper; but on land it shows itse.f to greater
advantage. It is a mild, inoffensive bird in disposition, living
amicably with the other water-fowl with which it may be associated
iu captivity, and never tyrannizing over such as are inferior to it
in size and strength. Mr Black wall tells a story, pregnant with
proof that it has warm feelings, and is capable of the strongest
attachment.

The twenty-nine, whose loud calls Mr Blackwall noticed,
alighted, he tells us, on an extensive reservoir near Middleton,
belonging to Messrs Burton and Sons, calico-printers. There
they were shot at, and one of them was so severely wounded in its
wing, that it was disabled. The stricken bird was left behind by
the herd, but it was not wholly abandoned; one faithful Swan
continued to fly about the spot for hours after the rest had
departed, uttering almost incessantly its mournful cry. This was
on the 10th of December. Mr Blackwall thus continues his
narrative :

‘In consequence of the protracted disturbance caused by the
persevering efforts of Messrs Burton’s workmen to secure its
unfortunate companion, it was at last, however, compelled to
withdraw, and was not seen again till the 23rd of March, when a
Swan, supposed to be the same individual, made its appearance in
the neighbourhood, flew several times round the reservoir in lofty
circles, and ultimately descended to the wounded bird, with which,
after a cordial greeting, it immediately paired. The newly-arrived
Swan, which proved to be a male bird, soon became accustomed to
the presence of strangers ; and when I saw it on the 4th of April,
was even more familiar than its captive mate. As these birds
were strongly attached to each other, and seemed to be perfectly
reconciled to their situation, which, in many respects, was an
exceedingly favourable one, there was every reason to believe that
a brood would be obtained from them. This expectation, however,
was not destined to be realized. On the 13th of April, the male
Swan, alarmed by some strange dogs which found their way to
the reservoir, took flight, and did not return ; and on the 5th of
September, in the same year, the female bird, whose injured wi'ig

THE POLISH SWAN.

143

had recovered its original vigour, quitted the scene of its misfor¬
tunes, and was seen no more.’

Doubtless she joined her lover in regions where calico-printers
and strange dogs are unknown ; and it looks as if he had said to
her, ‘ There is no peace or comfort to be had here, though the
people are kind after their fashion. I must be off, or I shall be
worried as fair game; you’ll soon be well, and know where to
find me.’

3. Another species, the Polish Swan, Cygnus immutabilis , has
been added to those previously ascertained by the acuteness of Mr
Yarrell, who describes the adult bird as having the bill of a reddish-
orange ; the nail, lateral margins, and base of the upper mandible,
black ; the black tubercle or berry at the base of the bill, of small
size, even in an old male ; the elongated openings of the nostrils
not reaching the black colour at the base of the bill, on each side,
but entirely surrounded by the orange-colour of that organ ; the
irides of the eyes, brown ; the head, neck, and the whole of the
plumage, pure white ; the legs, toes, and intervening membranes,
slate-gray.

The same zoologist states the measurement of the Polish Swan
to be fifty-seven inches from the point of the bill to the end of the
tail ; and says, that the food and habits closely resemble those of
the mute Swan, Cygnus olor , whose organ of voice he found that of
Cygnus immutabilis to resemble. Considerable differences, however,
exist between the heads of the two species.

But whence the specific name immutabilis ? Unlike those of the
other Swans, the cygnet of this species is white, and no change
takes place in the colour of the plumage after its sortie from the
egg-shell.

Mr Yarrell remarks, that during the severe winter of 1838,
several herds * of this species were seen pursuing a southern course
along the line of our north-east coast from Scotland to the mouth
of the Thames, and several specimens were obtained. He exhibited,
at a meeting of the Zoological Society, one of four which were
shot on the Medway, near Snodland Church, where a herd of thirty,
and several smaller companies, were seen.

The Swan, Cygnus olor , is so interwoven with ancient lore, espe¬
cially that of our own islands, that it deserves a chapter, and shall
have it.

We must now take leave of Europe for the present, and beg our
readers to change the scene to America.

‘ Dissection,’ says Mr Yarrell,’ c which proved the distinction
between the Hooper and Bewick’s Swan, has also proved that the

* Herd is the technical term for a flock of swans.

144

WILD SWANS.

true wild Swans of North America are peculiar to that country, and
distinct from the two European Swans.

4. Of the American Swans, the largest — it is larger than our
Hooper — is the Trumpeter Swan, or Hunter’s Swan, Cygnus bucci¬
nator, the Keetcliee wapeeshew of the Cree Indians.

The bill of this species bears a close resemblance to that of the
Hooper in form; but that organ, as well as the cere and legs, is
entirely black. The reddish-strange tinge of the forehead is,
generally, the only exception to the pure white of the plumage :
some specimens, indeed (younger birds probably), have the crown
and cheeks of a bright chestnut. The total length of the bird may
be stated as nearly seven feet. Seventy inches is given as the total
length of one, and twenty-six inches as that of its wing, by Dr
Richardson.

Lawson, in his ‘Natural History of Carolina’ (1714), says: —

‘Of the Swans we have two sorts: the one we call Trompeters ,
because of a sort of trompeting noise they make. These are the
largest sort we have, which come in great flocks in the winter, and
stay commonly in the fresh rivers till February, that the spring
comes on, when they go to the lakes to breed. A cygnet, that is,
a last year’s Swan, is accounted a delicate dish, as indeed it is.
They are known by their head and feathers, which are not so white
as old birds.’

Dr Richardson observes, that a fold of the windpipe in this Swan
enters a protuberance on the dorsal or anterior aspect of the ster¬
num at its upper part, which is wanting both in Cygnus Jems and
Cygnus Bewichi; in other respects the windpipe is, he says, distri¬
buted through the sternum, nearly as it is in the latter of these
species. The curious reader will find this part of the organization
well described and figured in the seventeenth volume of the ‘ Trans¬
actions of the Linncean Society.’

Whatever associations the Icelanders may have combined with
the notes of the Hooper, Hearne rejoiced not at those of the Trum¬
peter. ‘ I have heard them,’ says he, ‘ in serene evenings, after
sunset, make a noise not very unlike that of a French horn, but
entirely divested of every note that constituted melody, and often
been sorry that it did not forebode their death !’ and yet those caco¬
phonous Keetcliee wapeesliews are the harbingers of the geese, whose
advent is anxiously watched for in the fur countries, and hailed
with exceedingly great joy by the Indians of the wood and swamp,
whose summer, or rather spring manna, the geese are.

The Trumpeter Swans are stated by Dr Richardson, to breed
as far south as latitude 61°, but principally within the arctic circle.
Great flights of them come sweeping down the valley of the
Mississippi as the winter approaches, with their hoarse unearthly

THE AMEKICAN SWAN.

145

music sounding like the horns of the wild chase in the air in the
Freischutz.

If this be the species which Hearne alludes to, and there can be
little or no doubt that it is, their rapidity when going down wind
must be excessive.

‘In a brisk gale,’ says he, ‘they cannot fly at a less rate
than a hundred miles an hour, but when flying across the wind or
against it they make but a slow progress, and are then a noble
shot.’

Again, he declares that it is ‘ frequently necessary to take sight
ten or twelve feet before their bills ; ’ but this was in the good old
slow flint and steel times, and long before the days of copper caps
and cartridges. When, however, a sportsman had knocked one
over, — with what a thump a wild Swan, when killed clean, comes
down! — he had something besides the satisfaction of the shot.
The bird itself is described by Hearne as ‘ excellent eating, and
when roasted, is equal in flavour to young heifer-beef, and the
cygnets are very delicate,’ and then there were the quill-feathers
and the soft plumage.

Most of the swan-down which comforts whilst it adorns our fair
countrywomen, is the spoil of the Trumpeter, from which the Hud¬
son’s Bay Company principally derive their importation of swan¬
skins.

5. Hr Sharpless has described the second species of Swan
peculiar to America, in the ‘American Journal of Science and
Arts,’ where an account of it will be found under the name of
Cygnus Americanus. Mr Audubon subsequently gave a very good
description of it in the fifth volume of his highly interesting
‘ Ornithological Biography.’

This evidently is the Swan alluded to by Lawson in the following
passage : —

‘ The sort of Swans called Hoopers are the least. They abide
more in the salt water, and are equally valuable for food with
the former. It is observable that neither of these have a black
piece of horny flesh down the head and bill as they have in
England.’

Cygnus Americanus resembles Bewick’s Swan in some respects
internally as well as externally. The total length ascribed to it is
four feet six inches, and the weight is stated as twenty-one
pounds. Thus it almost equals the European Hooper in siae. and
has apparently been mistaken for it by authors generally.

Nuttall in his pleasant little book* makes the American Swans

* ‘A Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and of Canada.’
2 vols. 8vo. Boston, 1834.

L

146

WILD SWANS.

consist of the Trumpeter, the wild, or whistling Swan (Cygnus
ferns), and Bewick’s Swan.* Dr Richardson notices the Trumpeter
and Bewick’s Swan only.

6. When Juvenal wrote the often quoted hundred and sixty-
fourth line of his bitter sixth satire, little did he or his readers
think that the time would come when a country would be disco¬
vered occupying a space upon the globe almost co-extensive with
the empire under which he flourished, where the Swans would be
black instead of white, and where the rarity would be to find one
of the latter hue.

Witsen’s letter to Dr Martin Lister, giving an account of the
transmission of this Plutonian Swan to Europe, appears in the
‘Philosophical Transactions’ and a pair were brought alive to
Batavia in 1726, as Valentyn has related. Cook, Vancouver,
Phillip, White, Labillardiere, and D’Entrecasteaux, the latter,
during his search for the unfortunate La Perouse, all mention it,
and of these D’Entrecasteaux enters into a comparatively
particular description of this remarkable bird, no longer uncom¬
mon, and breeding in captivity like its white congeners among
the

‘ Penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos,’

who now possess a much more ample share of that very world than
ever the Romans did.

So familiar is the black Swan, (Cygna atratus ), that it hardly
becomes necessary to describe it, but as its white brethren have
been pourtrayed with the pen as well as our hand would permit,
some account of this species will be expected.

In form, the black Swan is not unlike the white Swans of Europe
and America, but in size it is somewhat less. The black plumage
is only relieved by the small portion of white which the primary
and some of the secondary quills show.

The bright red upper mandible is banded with white anteriorly,

* Another beautiful and remarkable species is Cygnus nigricollis, the black¬
necked Swan of Central America. Both sexes are white, with the exception
of the jet-black neck and head. The ‘berry,’ which is most prominent in
the male, and red, is of a deep flesh-colour in the female. A pair in a half-
domesticated state, are swimming about one of the breeding ponds in the
garden of the Zoological Society, with four downy grayish white yygnets,
whose bills are bluish black, and which are now (16th J uly, 1857), three
weeks old. The bills of the old birds are black; and there is a white eye-stripe
passing through the black. The female is most careful of her young, and
keeps uttering a little cry with upturned head and bill. The male rows
guard, and chases away all other water-fowl. This is, I believe, the first
time of their breeding in this country, though the late lamented Earl of Derby
had them in his noble zoological establishment. I saw others on another pond
in the Zoological Garden, and, Her Majesty, I hear, possesses one. — W. J. B.

THE BLACK SWAN.

147

and at its base, in the male, there is often a light tubercle, which
is wanting in the female. The lower mandible is grayish white.
The legs and feet are of a dull ash colour. The cygnets, when
they are about a fortnight old, are clothed in a down which, above,
is of a dusky gray colour, but lighter on the under parts ; their
little bill, eyes, and feet are dusky black.

Lieutenant-colonel Collins, in his account of the English colony
in New South Wales, and of the voyage, &c., abstracted from the
journal of Mr Bass (1802), states that the Norfolk, after leaving
Furneaux’s islands, proceeded towards the north coast of Yan
Diemen’s Land, and on the 1st of November anchored for a tide
at the largest of the 4 Swan Isles,’ two small islands so named by
Lieutenant Flinders, when he was there in the Francis, because an
European who belonged to Sidney-Cove, had assured him that he
had met with vast numbers of breeding Swans there. The island
at which the sloop anchored was low, sandy, and barren.

4 Notwithstanding the information given by the European,’
says Collins, 4 not a single Swan was found upon the island, but
several Geese were breeding there, and the Sooty Petrel possessed
the grassy parts ; the Swans of the sailor, in this instance there¬
fore turned out to be Geese. This bird had been seen before upon
Preservation Island, and was either a Brent or a Barnacle Goose,
or between the two. It had a long and slender neck, with a small
short head, and a rounded crown, a short, thick, arched bill, partly
covered with a pea-green membrane, which soon shrivelled up and
came away in the dried specimens. Its plumage was, for the most
part, of a dove colour, set with black spots. It had a deep, hoarse,
clanging, and, though a short, yet an inflected voice. In size, it
was rather less than our tame Geese, and lived upon grass. The
flesh was excellent.’

There can be no doubt that these birds .were of the species since
described under the name of Cereopsis Novcb Hollandice and which
have bred for some years in this country. There is, however, some
excuse for the sailor, for this New Holland Goose is not without
something of a swanlike appearance.

The Norfolk afterwards proceeded to Port Dalrymple, and
Mr Bass had an opportunity of observing a portion of the
country situated within an angle formed by two chains of moun¬
tains, and more especially, those parts which lay contiguous to
the river, which they examined up to the point where it had
become half fresh, half salt ; although its breadth was from half
a mile to a mile and a half, and its depth eight or nine fathoms.
The few rocky shores of the river presented nothing remarkable.
The great gray kangaroo abounded in the open forest, and the
brushes were tenanted by the smaller black kind, the wal-li-bah

148

WILD SWANS.

of the Port Jackson natives. The plumage of the Psittacidcer
near the settlement, is rich in colour and lustre, but here
the garb of the Parrots, as if to be in keeping with the
gloomy colour of the Swans, was remarkably sombre, and there
only wanted the melancholy toll of the Bell-bird — Dii Boong
of the natives, which seemed to be unknown in this spot — joined
to the mournful aspect of the feathered bipeds, to make the
funeral scene complete.

Many water-birds swam or waded about the arms and coves of
the river; but the black Swans alone were remarkable in point
of number. Mr Bass once made a rough calculation of three
hundred swimming within the space of a quarter of a mile square;
4 and heard the dying song of some scores — (that song so cele¬
brated by the poets of former times, exactly resembled the
creaking of a rusty sign on a windy dayj. Not more than two
thirds of any of the flocks which they fell in with could fly ; the
rest could do no more than flap along upon the surface of the
water, being either moulting or not yet come to their full feather
and growth, which they require two years to attain. They swam
and flapped alternately, and went along surprisingly fast. It was
sometimes a long chase, but the boat generally tired them out.
When in danger, and speed makes no part of their escape, they
immerse their bodies so far, that the water makes a passage
between their neck and back, and in this position they would
frequently turn aside a heavy load of shot. They seemed to be
endowed with much sagacity ; in chase they soon learned the weakest
point of their pursuers, and, instead of swimming directly from them,
as they did at first, always endeavoured in the most artful man¬
ner, to gain the wind, which could only be prevented by anticipating
their movements, and by a dexterous management of the boat.

This last manoeuvre of the persecuted Swans looks very like the
result of reflection, when contrasted with their actions before bitter
experience had taught them to put their wit to their enemies, and
may be added to the numerous instances on record, which prove
that the reasoning faculty, as well as instinct, is possessed by ani¬
mals, at least to a certain extent.

4 This Swan,’ continues our author, 4 is said to feed upon fish,
frogs, and water-slugs; but in the gizzards of many, that at
different times, and at different places, were examined by Mr Bass,
nothing ever appeared but small water-plants, mostly a kind of
broad-leaved grass, and some little sand. To their affection for
their young, he had seen some lamentable sacrifices ; but of their
fierceness, at least when opposed to man, or their great strength, he
had seen no instance.’

A pair of these birds were with great care brought alive to

ANCIENT IRISH BALLAD.

149

England in the Buffalo, which arrived at Spithead in May, 1801*
and were given by Lieut. William Kent to Earl St Vincent,
who presented them to Queen Charlotte, by whom they were
sent to Frogmore. They were of different sexes ; but the female,
unfortunately, died in moulting, and the widower having recovered,
together with his health, the complete use of his wings, which
had not been cut, availed himself of the liberty he enjoyed, and
was shot by a nobleman’s gamekeeper as he was flying across the
Thames.

In Van Diemen’s Land, New South Wales, and New Holland,
the black Swans have generally been seen in herds of eight or nine,
floating quietly on some lake or pool. When flushed, they go off
in a straight line, one behind the other ; and when in full
plumage, or not detained by parental affection, are difficult of
approach, seldom suffering the sportsman to come within gun-shot.
Their disposition seems to be mild, and they are no match for the
violent temper of the mute Swan Cygnus olor , as those who may
think it worth while to look at our future sketch of that species
will find.

Here then we must, for the present, take our leave, with an
adomonition to those ‘gunners’ or ‘punt-shooters’ who go after
the wild fowl in England or America, by night, to take warning
from Jemmy Randall’s shot, immortalized in the ancient Irish
ballad intituled :

MALLY BANK.

1.

Jemmy Randall went a shooting,
A shooting in the dark ;

But to his great misfortune,

He did not miss his mark.

2.

His love’s apron being about her,
He took her for a swan ;

But alas ! and for ever, alas !

It was sweet Mally Bann.

3.

When he came up unto her,

And found that she was dead,
Great abundance of salt tears
For his darling he shed.

4.

He went home to his father
With his gun in his hand,
Crying, ‘ Dear father, dear father,
I’ve shot Mally Bann.’

WILD SWANS,

5.

His father looked upon him
(Ilis hair being gray)
Crying, ‘ Oh! my dearest son,
You must not run away:

6.

‘ Stay at home in your own country —
Let your trial come on ;

By the laws of sweet Ireland
You shall never be undone.’

7.

Within two or three months after,

To her uncle appeared she,

Crying, ‘ Dear uncle, dear uncle,

Let Jemmy Randall go free.

8.

‘ For my apron being about me,

He took me for a swan.5

But it’s oh ! and for ever, alas !

It was sweet Mally Bann.

9.

When the fair maids in the city
Were assembled in a row,

She appeared among them
Like a mountain of snow.

10.

All the maidens in the country
They held up their head,

When this beautiful, this lovely,

This fair one was dead, &c./&c.

Ehen Mariola -

TAME SWANS

* I go to soft Elysian shades
And bowers of kind repose ;

Where never any storm invades,

Nor tempest ever blows.

‘There in cool streams and shady woods
I’ll sport the time away,

Or swimming down the crystal floods,

Among young halycons play.’

Song of the Dying Swan.

Thomas Brown, doctor of physic, in the third book of his
‘ Pseudodoxia Epidemica,’ chapter xxvn., ‘ compendiously treating
of sundry tenents concerning other animals, which examined, prove
either false or dubious,’ thus writeth :

‘And first from great antiquity, and before the melody of the
syrens, the musical note of Swans hath been commended, and that
they sing most sweetly before their death. Thus we read in Plato,
that from the opinion of Metempsuchosis , or transmigration of the
souls of men into the bodies of beasts most suitable unto their
human condition, after his death, Orpheus the musician, became a
Swan. Thus was it the bird of Apollo, the god of musick by the
Greeks, and the hieroglyphick of musick among the ^Egyptians,
from whom the Greeks derived the conception, hath been the affir¬
mation of many Latines, and hath not wanted assertors almost
from every nation.’

After much learned discussion wherein, inter alia , he refutes the
story ‘delivered’ by Aldrovand ‘concerning the musick of the
Swans on the river of Thames near London,’ and shows that ‘ the
formation of the weazon’ in those birds is not peculiar to them
‘but common also unto the Platea or Shovelard, a bird of no
musical throat,’ he alludes further to the confession of the Italian,
that the tracheal apparatus in the Swans may be contrived to
contain ‘a larger stock of ayr, whereby being to feed on weeds
at the bottom, they might the longer space detain their heads under
water.’

But a still further objection occurs to the philosophical doctor
in ‘the known and open disadvantage’ of a flat bill, ‘for no
latirostrous animals (whereof nevertheless there are no slender
numbers) were ever commended for their note, or accounted among

152

TAME SWANS.

those animals which have been instructed to speak.’ And he sums
up his argument thus :

‘When, therefore, we consider the dissention of authors, the
falsity of relations, the indisposition of the organs, and the im-
musical note of all we ever beheld or heard of, if generally taken
and comprehending all Swans, or of all places, we cannot assent
thereto. Surely he that is bit with a tarantula , shall never be
cured by this musick ; and with the same hopes we expect to hear
the harmony of the spheres.’

The latter certainly may be expected to regale our ears at about
the period when our much confiding friend, Mr Simbledon Hope¬
ful, receives his first dividend from the grand joint-stock company
for pickling pine-apples.

It is curious that ornithologists should term the Swan of the
poets The Mute Swan , and it is by no means clear that the ancients
did not confound the more canorous and less graceful species,
the Hooper, with the tame or mute Swan, the bird now under
consideration. Hoopers may be seen to this day on ‘Cayster’s
flowery side,’ and we know that they ‘sang their last and died’ in
the great holocaust when the sun’s son was run away with ; but
the mute Swan, Cygnus olor , does not appear to have been ever
noticed there. That the last named species was the musical Swan
of the ancients there can be no doubt. A cameo, representing
Leda and the Swan, figured in the ‘ Gemmae’ of Leonardus Augus¬
tinus from the Orsini collection, would extinguish any doubt on
that point. The Hooper carries its neck nearly upright as it floats
and walks, looking stiff and awkward when compared with the
elegant bending carriage of Cygnus olor. When, therefore, Aris¬
totle is quoted as saying that Swans are canorous, especially at the
end of life, and that they pass over the seas singing, it is almost
evident that there is a confusion of the attributes of two species.
However this may be, it is pretty clear that rb xvxvuov abuv passed
into a proverb for a dying speech, and that often none of the most
decorous. A Deipnosophist in Athenseus tells a story from
Chrysippus of a poor devil led forth to death, who prayed the
executioner to stay his hand a little while, for that he had a
great longing to die like the Swans, singing. The carnifex, who
from experience knew what odd fancies are apt to come into the
minds of men when ‘ small back is gripping them,’ granted his
prayer ; when the condemned poured forth such a torrent of in¬
vective upon all and sundry as, if done into choice English, would
not have disgraced the most celebrated of our Tyburn heroes ; — no,
not Abershaw himself,

‘When the king and the law, and the thief had their own.’

LEGAL ENACTMENTS.

153

To talk of the music of the mute Swan, seems to be rather
Hibernian ; and, indeed, to apply that term to the notes uttered
by any of the Swans, is to use a licence more than poetical, albeit,
as we have admitted in our last chapter, the clangour of some of
them sounds not unpleasantly, when softened by distance. Oppian
makes them the birds of dawning, pouring forth their song upon
the sea-shore before sunrise, when

‘ Lucifer had chas’d

The stars away, and fled himself at last.'

But whether they sang early in the morning, or at the latest pos¬
sible period of life, the mute Swans are not condemned to the silent
system, as the name would imply. They may be heard in spring
and summer, murmuring rather than singing, with a soft, low voice,
plaintive withal, while complacently accompanying their young.
Colonel Hawker has printed a few bars of a domesticated wild
Swan’s melody, the notes being two, C, and the minor third (E flat) ;
and the gallant writer declares that the musician kept working his
head, as if delighted with his own performance.*

The wind instrument of the mute Swan is thus constructed.

The keel of the breast-bone is single, there being no cavity :
the windpipe comes down between the forks of the merry-thought,
and then curves upward, and passes backward to the bone of
divarication, whence its short tubes proceed to the lungs.

In this country, the bird has long been considered of sufficient
importance to demand the special care of the legislature, and steal¬
ing or spoiling its eggs was punishable by statute.^

By the old law, when a marked Swan was stolen in an open and
common river, the purloined bird, if it could be obtained, and if not,
another Swan, was hung up by the bill, and the thief was compelled
to hand over to the party robbed as much wheat as would cover all
the Swan, the operation being effected by pouring the grain on its
head till it was entirely hidden. But stealing marked and pinioned
Swans, or even unmarked birds, if kept in a moat, pond, or private
river, and domesticated, is felony. The taking of Swans not so
marked or kept is a misdemeanor only.

In England, the Swan is a royal bird, and, by a statute of our
fourth Edward, no person other than the son of the king could
have a Swan-mark, or ‘game of Swans,’ unless he possessed a free¬
hold, of the clear yearly value of five marks, £3, 6s 8d of our
present money. The privilege of keeping a game of Swans
deductus cygnorum , or, as it more rarely runs in the old law-Latin,
volatus cygnorum , is manifested by the grant of a Cygninota

* Instructions to young Sportsmen. fn. Hen. vn. c. 17. i. Jnc. c. 27.

154

TAME SWANS.

or Swan-mark, which is a freehold of inheritance, and may be
granted over. Leland in his zvxvsiov ac[ui or Swan-song, shows
forth the royalty of the bird and figures a Cygnea pompa, wherein a
crowned Swan rows his state, surrounded by nine cygnets.

There appears to be a doubt whether the Swan is a bird royal
in Scotland ; but, although the proprietors of the

‘Land of the mountain and the flood’

possess the right of fowling over their own grounds, Swans, it seems,
unless specially granted, are reserved to the crown.

Nor was the cygninota the only privilege accorded by royalty :
there was also the delegation of the prerogative right of seizing,
within certain limits, all white Swans not marked. In the palmy
days of the Roman Catholic Church, such a privilege was vested in
the princely Abbot of Abbotsbury, whose district extended over
the estuary formed by Portland Island and the Chesil Bank, the
stern barrier to the fury of the waves rolling in from the Atlantic,
and the scene of many a shipwreck. When that church tottered
to its fall, this royal right was granted to the ancestor of the Earl
of Ilchester, in whom it is at present vested, and, although some¬
what shorn of its ancient extent, it is still the largest swannery of
this description in the kingdom. A noble spectacle, even now, is
presented there ; for the Swans are not crippled in the pinion, and
the sight of some eighty of these splendid birds, many of them on
the wing together, will not be readily forgotten by those who have
witnessed it.

There was, in old times, an officer called the royal swanherd,
magister deductus cvgnorum , and that not with reference to the
Thames alone. Persons who executed this office of ‘ master of the
king’s Swans’ in the counties of Huntingdon, Cambridge, Northamp¬
ton, and Lincoln, as well of that of ‘ supervisor and appraiser ’ of
all Swans in any mere or water in Huntingdonshire, may be traced
in the parliament rolls. There was a swannery of some extent at
Clarendon in Wiltshire, as an appendage to that royal palace or
manor ; and there was also one in the Isle of Purbeck.

Nor was the Isis unadorned, formerly, by these noble birds, for
in the sixteenth century, Oxford, Isidis vadum , Saxonice Ousford,
and Ousenford, boasted of a game of Swans. ‘Her husband
Thame ’ bore and still bears upon his bosom the greatest numbers,
although they are sadly reduced. The Queen and the city com¬
panies of the Dyers and Vintners are at present the largest
Swan-owners on the Thames. When numbered in 1841, there
were two hundred and thirty-two belonging to the crown, one
hundred and five the property of the Dyers, and one hundred

SWAN-HOPPING.

155

of the Vintners. In the good old times the Vintners alone reckoned
five hundred as their share.

But the Swan-mark ?

This is cut upon the upper mandible, and consists of certain
figures denoting the ownership. Queen Victoria’s mark — and it
was that of the three last kings — is composed of five open, rather
long ovals, pointed at each extremity. Two of these are placed
with the ends in a longitudinal direction on each side of the ‘berry/
and a little below it : the other three go across the bill transversely
a little lower down. Mr Yarrell, in his interesting ‘British Birds/
figures many of these cygninotce. Two cuts or nicks in the form
of a V placed longitudinally on the bill, the open part of the letter
being towards the berry, form the Vintner’s mark, and from their
Swans with two nicks have been hatched — we speak with all due
reverence for Mr Kempe’s doubts — the double-necked Swans
whose portraits grace our sign-boards.*

It is to review or repair these marks, and cut them upon the
bills of the young birds, that the markers of the royal Swans, and
of those belonging to the companies above-mentioned, on the first
Monday in every August go a ‘ Swan-upping/ or ‘ Swan-hopping/
according to the popular and corrupted term, when the ‘Swan-
uppers’ catch the Swans, and then take them up for inspection
and notation.

‘ What a great trust it is/ says Howell, in his Lonclinopolis ,
‘ for the Lord Mayor to have the conservation of the noble river
of Thames, from Stanes Bridge till she disgorgeth herself into the
sea ! How stately he is attended when he goes to take a view of
the river, or a Swan-hopping ! And lately, what a noble addition
was it for the Lord Mayor to have a park of deer of his own so
near the city, to find him sport and furnish him with venison ?
What an honour is it for the Lord Mayor to be accounted the
first man of England upon the death of the sovereign prince. As
when King James was invited to come and take the crown of
England, Robert Lee, Lord Mayor of London, was the first man
who subscribed, and then the officers of the crown, with the chief
noblemen after him. The Recorder of London, also, is Primus

* A kind and learned reviewer is of opinion that the ‘ Swan with two necks’
originated from the elevation of the young cygnet’s head and neck close be¬
hind the neck of the parent, when the cygnet is carried on the parent’s back,
as noticed in p. 139, and described in p. 168. But when the weary cygnets are
thus permitted to ride at ease, they are so small that their heads, when their
necks are outstretched, appear but little above the plumage of the back and
wings of the old bird. Grateful as the author is for the valuable praise of the
critic, truth and long observation compel him to retain the opinion expressed
in the text. See ‘ The Quarterly Review ’ for December, 1847, p. 136.

156

TAME SWANS.

Consiliarius Anglice, and is privileged to plead within the barre.
The Lord Mayors of London have been called sometimes to sit at
the council-table, as Sir John Allen was in Henry the Eigth’s
time, with others (which Allen gave that rich collar of gold which
the Lord Mayors use to wear) and the aldermen his brethren,
were used to be called barons.’

And again :

1 Now touching the magnificence, gravity, and state of the chief
magistrate : neither the Pretor of Rome, nor the Preject of Milan :
neither the Proctors of St Mark in Venice, or their Podestcis
in other cities ; neither the Provost of Paris, the Marhgrave of
Antwerp, can compare with the Lord Mayor and Sherilfs of
London; if one go to the variety of their robes, sometimes scarlet,
richly fur’d, sometimes purple, sometimes violet and puke. What
a goodly spectacle it is to behold the Lord Mayor, and the
Companies attending him in so many dainty barges, when he goes
to be sworn in Westminster-Hall ; and what brave shews there
are attending him by land at his return! What a plentiful sumptuous
dinner, consisting of so many huge tables, is provided for him !
What a variety of domestick officers wait upon him perpetually,
whereof, with the Remembrancer, there are five of them esquires
by their places ! What a comely sight it is to see the Lord
Mayor, sheriffs, and aldermen, going in their robes upon festivals
to the cathedral church of St Paul’s, though they who stand
so well affected to the present government, say, that he goeth in
now at the wrong end of the church : what a goodly sight it is
when he goeth upon Easter holidayes to the Spittle , with the sword
and cap of maintenance going before him ! How his robes are
fitted for the season, as from Michaelmas to Whitsontide, he weares
violet fur’d ; from Whitsontide to Michaelmas, scarlet lined ; and
for distinction among the aldermen, they who have bin Lord
Mayors, have their cloaks lined with changeable Taffata; but
those that have not, with green Taffata ! What great places of
trust are committed to the Lord Mayor, as the keeping of the
great Bridge in repair, which hath such large revenues belonging
unto it, with a particular stately seal, which of old had the effigies
of Thomas of Becket (a Londoner born) upon it, with this inscrip¬
tion in the name of the city —

“ Me quae te peperi, ne cesses, Thoma, tueri.”

But the seal was altered in Henry the Eighth’s reign.’

Reverting to the legislative protection thrown round the Swan,
it may be asked how came the bird to be held in such high esti¬
mation by our ancestors ? It is pleasant to look upon certainly —

AN OXFORD ROW IN THE XIII. CENTURY.

157

4 beautiful exceedingly,’ no doubt — and there was the old prestige
in its favour ; but still this will hardly account for its being hedged
in by penal statutes so closely, that it was only accessible by
royal grant or prescription: no; the truth must be told; the
cause lay deeper, — in that omnipotent assimilating agent, the
stomach.

Now the possession of a stomach per se is not distinctive —
nay, the lowest Infusoria are endowed with a polygastric power,
to which the most accomplished alderman has not the slightest
pretension : the life of these Polygastria , indeed, is one perpetual
feast. But it is the cultivated and discriminating stomach that
distinguishes civilized man; and one of his first legislative cares
has always been to protect his tit-bits. Nor is it matter of
wonder that the 4 flaming minister ’ who laid his offerings before
the gastric shrine, should have been considered, even in early
times, a personage of some consequence. Accordingly, we find
him a character of high repute among the polite Athenians,
although it must be admitted that the cook seems to have been a
slave of no high grade among the stern Romans.

The Larderarius, however, of the Normans was often a clergy¬
man, and instances are on record of his leaving the larder
to assume the mitre. The Chians Queux were officers of dignity
in the palaces of princes, and so it was in the golden days of
the monasteries, where they were always monks, and indeed
in old times there is reason for believing that the execution
of the office by ecclesiastics was not confined to those establish¬
ments. In the affray at Oxford in the year 1238, between the
retinue of the Pope’s Legate, Cardinal Otto, and the students,
the cardinal’s magister coquorum and own brother lost his fife.
Poisoning was then rife in Europe generally, and this accounts
for the appointment of persons of rank to the culinary depart¬
ment. Matthew Paris gives it as a reason for the tenure of the
office by so near a relation of the Cardinal — ‘Ne procuraretur
aliquid venenorum quod nimis timebat legatus.’ Every thing
relating to diet was considered of great consequence by our
ancestors, and there is extant in Leland an order for a physician
to watch the young prince’s wet-nurse at every meal, as inspector
of her meat and drink.

Our readers may not be unwilling to learn what an Oxford
row in the thirteenth century was like. A grand row it was,
as may be supposed, when it had for its initiative elements an
Irishman, a Welshman, and an Italian. The clerical scholars
sent to the abbey where the Legate was lodged a present of
viands and liquors for his use, before dinner. After dinner they
waited on him themselves for the purpose of saluting him with all

158

TAME SWANS.

honour and reverence. Unfortunately a Transalpine porter, more
impudent than beseemed his station, holding the gate ajar and
shouting, 4 more Romano,’ cried somewhat petulantly, 4 what d’ye
want V The scholars replied that they wanted to see the
Legate that they might salute him ; for they thought, it seems, that
they were to receive honour for honour. The porter, however,
treating them with a most provoking haut en has, not without
abuse, flatly refused to admit them. Upon which the scholars made
some such a rush as their successors made in better temper at the
theatre when the hero of a hundred fights was installed, and got
in pell-mell. They were met by a body of the Romans, who pum¬
melled them with their fists, and belaboured them with sticks, not
without repayment by the storming party, and when the fray was
at its height, and they were abusing each other in university
Latin, and choice lingua franca , plying their staves by way of
accompaniment, a poor Irishman, who stood by the kitchen door,
more mindful of his empty stomach than the row — he must have
been very hungry — begged for a morsel of something good for
God’s sake. When the proud master cook heard his prayer, which
he probably did not understand, he became so wrathful, what with
the noise of the combat and the heat of his post, that he dipped a
ladle into the boiler where the fat meats were simmering, and threw
its contents into the petitioner’s face.

A fiery scholar from the principality saw the indignity. Up
rose his Welsh blood: he exclaimed, 4 Proh pudorV Anglice
4 What a shame ! ’ and, bending his bow, which he had brought to
aid his fellow-students, drew it with such hearty will that he
sent a shaft right through the body of the chef who fell dead.
The Legate, on hearing the shout that accompanied his brother’s
fall, gat him up into the church-tower in his canonicals and also
in a parlous fear, and there locked himself in. At nightfall, and
when the tumult had somewhat subsided, he threw off his sacred
vestments, mounted his best horse, forded the river not without
peril, and fled to King Henry for shelter and redress, leaving the
enraged scholars seeking for him with expressions that left
little doubt what his fate would have been had he fallen into their
hands. They paid dearly for this outbreak: the most active
were brought to London, imprisoned, and most catawampously
anathematized; or as Matthew Paris has it, 4 anathemate inno -
dati’

But to return to our Swans. From a very early date the bird
has held a high place at high feasts. It graced the board at the
nuptial dinner when Ipliicrates married the King of Thrace’s
daughter ; and, to come at once to our own country, greatly did
it shine forth at the ancient British festivals, when

IIIGII PLACE AT HIGH FEASTS.

159

‘ O’er capon, heron-shaw, and crane,

And princely peacock’s gilded train,

And o’er the boar’s head garnished brave,

And cygnets from St Mary’s wave ;

O’er ptarmigan and venison,

The priest had spoke his benison.’

At the ‘ intronazation’ of George Nevell, Archbishop of York
(to whom no less a person than Lord Willoughby was carver)
in Edward IV.’s reign, four hundred Swans were among the
‘goodly provision’ made for the same; there were the same
number of ‘ heron-shawes,’ and two hundred and four cranes,
the same number of bitterns, and no less than a thousand
‘egrittes,’ fit company for the hundred and four oxen, six
‘ wylde bulles,’ and thousand ‘ muttons,’ to say nothing of
two thousand ‘pygges,’ ditto geese, ditto chickens, four thou¬
sand pigeons, ditto ‘ conyes,’ fifteen hundred hot pasties of
venison, four thousand cold ditto, ‘ stagges, buck, and roes,
500 and mo.,’ and twelve ‘porposes and seals’ among a pro¬
fusion of game (including two hundred ‘ Fessauntes’), fish, and
a wilderness of sweets.

Grand were the doings, albeit upon a somewhat less scale,
at the marriage of Sir Gervas Cliftoa, of Clifton, in the county
of Nottingham, with Mary Nevile, third daughter of Sir John
Nevile, of Chevet, or Chete, in the county of York. The last-
named worthy knight seems to have been a careful economist,
notwithstanding his open-handed liberality and true old English
hospitality; for he appears to have personally superintended
the keeping of his household book on such occasions, if he
did not enter the items of the account with his own hand, both
on this happy occasion, and when Roger, eldest son, and after¬
wards heir of Sir Thomas Rockley, of Rockley, in the parish
of Worsborough, Knight, married Elizabeth Nevile, Sir John’s
eldest daughter. Every item, even to the bride’s most indispen¬
sable garment in the last case, is stated, with its price; and
if our space would allow a transcript of the whole, it would afford
a curious picture of the costume and manners of the period when

‘Bluff King Hal the stocking threw.’

Sir John’s account of the expense of the dinner at ‘The
marriage of my son-in-law, Gervas Clifton, and my daughter,
Mary Nevile, the 17th day of January, in the 21st year of the
reigne of our Soveraigne Lord King Henry the VUIth,’ includes
‘ Swans, each swan 2s., 12s.’ Three Hogsheads of Wine,
1 white, 1 red, and 1 claret, charged at 51. 5s., moistened the

160

TAME SWANS.

swans, the two oxen, two brawns, six calves, seven lambs, six
‘ withers’ (wethers), every wither 2s. 4d,’ ten pigs, ‘ every one
5 d.,’ forty-six capons, the whole flights of wild fowl, &c. &c.
&c., that loaded the board at this marriage feast ; to say nothing
of the produce of eight quarters of barley-malt, every quarter,
14s.’

But the bride’s dress ?

We care not to be particular, madam, and therefore will only
state that she wore — ‘A Millen (Milan) Bonnit, dressed with
Agletts,’ which cost eleven shillings, a large sum in those days,
when the price of an ox was only 1Z. 15s. The ‘ Wedding-ring
of gold’ is charged 12s. 4 d.

At the marriage ‘of my son-in-law, Roger Rockley, and my
daughter, Elizabeth Nevile, the 14th of January’ in the seven¬
teenth year of the same King, we find in the ‘Eirst course at
dinner.’

‘ Imprimis, Brawn with musterd, served alone with Malmsey.

‘ Item, Erumety to pottage.

‘ Item, a Roe roasted for standert — (a large or standing-dish.)

‘ Item, Peacocks, 2 of a dish.

‘ Item, Swans, 2 of a dish,’ &c. &c. &c.

Among the pieces of resistance in the second course was ‘a
young Lamb whole roasted,’ and ‘ For Night’ there was

‘ First a Play, and straight after the Play a Mask, and when
the Mask was done then the Banekett, which was 110 dishes,
and all of meat ; and then all the Gentilmen and Ladys danced :
and this continued from the Sunday to the Saturday afternoon.’

The bride Elizabeth wore ‘a Bonnit of Black Velvet’ which
cost fifteen shillings, and ‘ a Frontlet for the same Bonnit’ which
cost twelve shillings.

‘For Frydays and Saturdays there was a splendid display of
Fish, but no fleshmeats ; and the following were

‘ Waiters at the said Marriage.

Storrers, Carver.

Mr Henry Nevile, Server.

Mr Thomas Drax, Cupbearer.

Mr George Paslilew, for the Sewer-board end.

Robert Smallpage, for the Cupboard.
William Page, for the Celler.

William Barker, for the Ewer.

CHAUDRON FOR SWANS.

161

Robert Sike, the younger, ancl
John Hiperon, for Butterye.’

1 To ivait in the Parlour .

Richard Thornton.

Edmund North.

Robert Sike, the elder.

William Longley.

Robert Lire.

William Cook.

Sir John Burton, steward

My brother Stapleton’s servant.

My son Rockley’s servant to serve in the state.’

The same worthy knight’s charges when Sheriff of Yorkshire,
in the 19th year of the same king at the Lent Assizes, and in the
20th year of his reign at Lammas Assizes, bear testimony to the
hospitality exercised by that officer in those days. Among the
other provisions, we find a charge at the former of these assizes,
for five hogsheads of wine, three claret, one white, and one red ;
the cost of which was 10/. 16s. 4 d.; but, though there are
quantities of fish, no flesh appears in the account.

At the Lammas Assizes, neither flesh nor fowl were spared ;
nine quarters of wheat, twelve quarters of malt, five oxen, twenty-
four wethers, six calves, sixty capons of Grease, charged at 25 s.,
as many other capons as cost 31 14s., twenty-four pigs, three
hogsheads of wine, and twenty-two swans, carry us a very little
way down the ample bill of fare.

It will naturally be inquired how the Swan was presented on
these great occasions ?

There is reason for concluding that the Royal Bird was generally
roasted, of which more anon ; but there were other ways of serv¬
ing it up. For instance, among the receipts of the master cooks
of Richard II., is the following, which we shall attempt to reduce
to the English of the present time.

4 CHAUDRON FOR SWANS.

‘ Take the fiver and the offal (that is, the giblets) of the Swans,
put it to seethe in good broth, take it up, take out the bones, and
‘ hewe’ the flesh small. Make a mixture of crust of bread and of
the blood of the Swan sodden, and put thereto powder of cloves
and pepper, wine and salt, and seethe it, cast the flesh thereto
“hewed,” and “mess it forth” with the Swan.’

M

TAME SWANS.

ll>2

When served with this sauce, the dish was called ‘ swann with
cliaudron.’

The bird also not unfrequently came to table ‘ baked in a pye ;*
but its most usual appearance was as a roast.

The Norwich method is to take three pounds of beef beaten fine
in a mortar, adding salt, pepper, mace, and that grand culinary
gift, an onion, and stuff the Swan (which must not be skinned") with
it. The bird must be tied up tight to keep in the juices, and a
stiff meal paste should be laid on the breast, the other parts being
covered with whited brown paper ; about a quarter of an hour
before the Swan ‘ is enough,’ as the cooks say, the paste must be
taken off and the breast browned.

It has been said, somewhat oracularly, that port wine should
never come into a kitchen. If the word had been seldom , it would
have been more germane to the matter ; for there are occasions,
trust us, reader, when it cannot well be dispensed with, and the
gravy for the Swan is one of them; half a pint of that wine
added to good, strong, beef-gravy, should be poured through
the Swan, which should be presented with hot currant jelly.

A well-fatted cygnet thus cooked, if taken at the proper mo¬
ment, that is, not kept beyond November, after which time
the bird falls off in flesh, fat, and flavour, however well pro¬
vided with barley — is a very delicious dish, and we have
heard it compared, not inaptly, to something between goose
and hare.

The foregoing receipt, in printed verse, which will be found in
Mr Yarrell’s ‘British Birds,’ is usually sent with each Norwich
bird.

The Swan seems never to have appeared except on the tables of
the great. Thus the Gild of the Holy Trinity at Luton, in Bed¬
fordshire, appear, from old records ranging from 19 Henry VIII.,
to the beginning of Edward VI., to have lived well at their anni¬
versary feasts ; but we cannot find that they ascended beyond
‘ Geys,’ eighty-two of which geese, at a charge of 1Z. Os. 7 d., were
among the multitudinous dishes placed before the Gild at the feast
in the nineteenth year of Henry Till.

The swanherds call a male Swan a Cob, and the female a Pen.
A fine old male will sometimes reach, when stretched out, five
feet in length, and will weigh some thirty pounds. The nail
at the termination of the bill, its edges on each side, its base,
the naked skin or lore up to the eye, the opening of the nos¬
trils, and the tubercle or berry, are black. The rest of the bill is
of a ruddy orange colour. The iris of the eye is brown ; the whole
of the plumage is of the purest white ; and the legs and toes, with
their webs, arc black.

HABITS.

163

The female is not so large as the male, and her tubercle is less,
her neck is not so thick, and she swims lower in the water than her
mate.

In a wild state, this species is found in Russia and Siberia, and
almost throughout Europe. In Germany, the cygnets that have
not been pinioned migrate in Autumn. Lithuania, Poland, Eastern
Prussia, Holland, France, Provence, and Italy, are all recorded as
its habitat in an unreclaimed condition ; and so are the countries
between the Black and Caspian Seas. In winter they have been
seen in the Bay of Smyrna.

The Swan’s nest is a great mass of rushes, reeds, flags, and other
coarse water-side plants, pitched on the ground near the water’s
edge, in some ait, for choice; and on this stack of herbage the
Pen deposits some six or seven eggs of a greenish white, rather
dull withal, and about four inches in length by two. Six weeks
must pass before the young cygnet breaks through its prison-walls
into light and life ; and during the whole time of incubation the
male is most assiduous in his attendance, keeping guard, and ready
to do battle against all comers ; yet thinking no scorn to take the
mother’s place occasionally on the eggs.

About July, the colour of the cygnets is dark lead-gray, ap¬
proaching to sooty-gray above, the neck and under parts of the
body not so dark, the bill lead-colour, and the line at the margin
of the base black. At the end of October, when they almost equal
their parents in size, the bill changes to light slate-gray, with a
tinge of green. The sooty-grayish brown prevails uniformly over
the head, neck, and all the upper surface ; while the lower surface
of the body is uniformly of a lighter hue. The gray colour vanishes
almost entirely after the second autumn ; and when the cygnet has
seen two years, the white robe is donned: in the third year the
Swan celebrates his nuptials.

In their half-domesticated state, the young family keep with their
parents during the first winter ; but, on the return of spring, the
latter show their cygnets the cold shoulder ; and, if they will not
take the hint, fairly drive them away, and compel them to seek
their own food, which consists of the tender parts of aquatic plants
and roots, water insects, and now and then — but only now and
then — small fishes.

Aristotle noticed the pugnacity of the Swan, saying, that
it will even fight the Eagle — not that the Swan will begin
the quarrel, but he will not brook the attack of the Prince
of the Birds of Prey. In rivers they have their own districts;
and if one Swan trespasses on the domains of another, woe to
the weaker vessel. We have attempted to describe a bloodless en-

164

TAME SWANS.

counter of this kind :* but Swan-fights do not always terminate so
harmlessly.

It is on record, that black Swans have more than once fallen
victims to the prowess of their white neighbours. On one occasion,
in the Regent’s Park, two white Swans set upon a black one, and
one of the whites seizing the black’s neck in his bill, shook him so
violently and fatally, that he died almost on the spot ; whilst the
conquerors rowed proudly up and down with arched wings and
feathers erect in all the pride of victory.

A friend, who was an early riser, had long noticed four Swans
on the Serpentine river. When taking his morning walk in June,
1840, he missed one of them, and saw blood upon the wing of one
of the survivors. Upon inquiry, he found that the other three had
attacked the fourth, and killed him. The body of the murdered
Swan was whealed as if he had been beaten with sticks.

Long life, when it is not interrupted by violence, is the Swan’s
portion. Willughby speaks of him as ‘a very long-lived fowl,
so that it is thought to attain the age of three hundred years :’
‘which,’ (saith Aldrovandus) ‘to me seems not likely. For my
part, I could easily be induced to believe it: for that I have
been assured by credible persons, that a Goose will live a hun¬
dred years or more. But that a Swan is much longer lived than
a Goose, if it were not manifest in experience, yet there are
many convincing arguments to prove, viz. : that in the same
kind it is bigger : that it hath harder, firmer, and more solid flesh ;
that it sits longer on its eggs before it hatches them. For,
that I may invert Plinie’s words, those creatures live longest
that are longest borne in the womb. Now incubation answers to
gestation.’

Whatever weight there may be in Willughby ’s argument, there
can be no doubt that a Swan will live a very long time. Mr Yarrell
says, that marked Swans have been known to live fifty years ; but
there was one not very long ago, in the neighbourhood of Shepper-
ton, though not upon the Thames, over whose head more than
double that length of years was supposed to have passed.

The Morning Post of the 9th of July, 1840, had the following
notice :

‘ DEATH OF A CELEBRATED CHARACTER.

‘ The beginning of last week an exceedingly well-known cha¬
racter departed this life, namely, Old Jack, the gigantic and
venerable Swan, with which the public have been so long acquainted

* See the ‘Fragment’ headed, ‘A Word to Anglers,’ p. 1G7.

OLD JACK.

165

on the canal in the enclosure of St James’s Park, at the advanced
age of seventy years. Old Jack was hatched some time about the
year 1770, on the piece of water attached to Old Buckingham
House, and for many years basked in the sunshine of royal favour,
Queen Charlotte being extremely partial to him, and frequently
condescending to feed him herself. When the pleasure-gardens in
St James’s Park were laid out, Jack was removed there, and his
immense size, sociable disposition, and undaunted courage, have
often excited the admiration of the public. Jack’s strength and
courage were, indeed, astonishing. Frequently has he seized an
unlucky dog who chanced to approach to the edge of his watery
domain by the neck and drowned him ; and, on one occasion, when
a boy, about twelve years of age, had been teazing him, Jack
caught him by the leg of his trousers, and dragged him into the
water up to his knees. Jack, however, never acted on the offensive,
and, if not annoyed, was exceedingly tractable. But the march of
modern improvement affected poor Jack as much as it has done
thousands of more pretending bipeds. The Ornithological Society
was formed, and a host of feathered foreigners found their way on
to the canal, with whom Jack had many fierce and furious encoun¬
ters, and invariably came off successful. But a legion of Polish
geese at length arrived, who commenced hostilities with Jack.
Despising everything like even warfare, they attacked him in a
body, and pecked him so severely, that he drooped for a few days
and then died. The body of poor old Jack is to be stuffed for one
of the scientific museums.’

Those who live near the banks of the Thames well know the
instinctive prescience with which Swans will, before a flood, raise
their nests so as to save their eggs from being chilled by the water ;
and we will conclude this chapter, already we fear too long, with
an account of one of these wonderful preparations, clearly showing
that to the incubating Swan,

‘ Coming events cast their shadows before,’

for which Mr Yarrell was indebted to the kindness of Lord
Braybrooke.

The scene of this true tale was a small stream at Bishop’s
Stortford. A female Swan had seen some eighteen summers, had
reared many broods, and was become familiar to the neighbours,
who valued her highly. Once, while she was sitting on four or
five eggs, she was observed to be very busy, collecting weeds,
grasses, and other materials to raise her nest. ‘ A farming man
was ordered to take down half a load of haulm, with which she

166

TAJME swans,

most industriously raised her nest and eggs two feet and a half:
that very night there came down a tremendous fall of rain, which
flooded all the malt-shops, and did great damage. Man made no
preparation, the bird did. Instinct prevailed over reason : her eggs
were above, and only just above the water.’*

* British Birds. A very interesting account of similar foresight in the
Beaver will he found in the New Sporting Magazine , for July, 1840. The Elbe,
upon a particular occasion, had been higher than it had risen within the
memory of man; but the event had been expected, because the beavers had
been observed to build such unusually high dams, a sure sign of spring tloods
in that river

A WORD TO ANGLERS.

‘ Good luck to your fishing.’

Tiie Monastery.

If, as ‘Thomas Best, Gent., late of his Majesty’s Drawing¬
room in the Tower,’ saith, ‘ Patience is highly necessary for every
one to be endowed with who angles for carps, on account of
their sagacity and cunning,’ — that virtue is still more essential as
an endowment to the angler who goes after the great Thames
trouts. He must be content to spend much time in dropping
down from stream to weir, from pool to stream, and from stream
to weir again, and to burn all the skin off his face many times
before he has even a run : moreover, unless he wears gloves — and
no one handles his tools with mittens so well as he does without
— he will have to present a pair of hands at the dining-table
only to be rivalled in their nut-brown hue by those of the gipsy
or the gravel-digger. But when he does get a nine or ten
pounder into his well, the look-down upon the fish, after all the
hair-breadth hazards of losing him when hooked, is worth the
weariness of many blank days, and the production of those unpre¬
sentable hands to boot.

To be sure, it does sometimes happen, even to the best of
sportsmen, that, after the struggle is apparently over, and the fish
is close to the boat’s side, something will give way, leaving the
unhappy Piscator with a straight rod and suddenly slackened line,
and also with a sensation as if he had been suddenly deprived of
his back-bone.

But for a lover of nature, even when fortune smiles not, this
kind of fishing has many charms : — the bright river, the continual
change of scene, the rich beauty of the highly cultivated and pictur¬
esque country through which it flows, and the exhilarating freshness
of the air as it comes laden with the perfume of the new-mown
hay, or of the honeysuckle blossoms from

‘ the cottage of thatch,

Where never physician has lifted the latch,

make mere existence a pleasure.

168

A WORD TO ANGLERS.

Then there is always something to be seen by one who has eyes
and knows how to use them. There are the wild flowers that
enamel the banks, the insects, the fish — it requires a practised eye
to see them — the birds. Here, a King-fisher shoots by like a
meteor — there go the Summer-snipes — the Swift darts by close to
the boat, like

‘An arrow from a Tartar's bow’ —

That back-water is positively carpeted with the green leaves and
snowy star-bloom of the water-lily — and the Nightingale hard by,
in shadiest covert hid , fairly sings down all the host of day-
songsters, though the Blackbird and Thrush make melody loud and
clear.

On one of these expeditions not long ago, we observed below

- Lock, just as a thunder-storm was coming on, a pair of

Swans with seven young ones. There was evidently something
more than usual going on — some sensation , as the French say,
among them. The young were collected between the parents, and
the whole party pushed up stream. At first we thought they
were nearing our punt, as we were dropping down from trying the
weir, in the hope of bread ; but three of the young ones mounted
on the back of the female swan, who elevated her wings to receive
them, the brilliant whiteness of her plumage contrasting beauti¬
fully with the gray down of the little creatures, and there was a
scared appearance about the whole party. The cause was soon
manifest.

A magnificent Swan, worthy of Leda herself, came ploughing
up the water, indignant at a trespass on his domain. The family
hurried on : and in their haste, one of the young slipt off its
mother’s back. There was distress ! A weakling was left behind
in the wake of its father, and whilst it scrambled along, non
passibus cequis, uttered shrill cries as the enemy advanced. Up
came the mighty bird, and then the father, evidently inferior ta
the attacking Swan in age, size, and strength, turned to meet him,
while the little family, huddled close to the mother, made haste to
escape up the river. Proud as the senior, the young father
threw back his neck between his arched wings, and confronted the
giant. This was unexpected ; they kept sailing backward and
forward abreast of each other, across the stream, like two war¬
ships; and the watchful turns of their graceful neck and bodies,
as each tried to take the other at advantage, was a sight to see.
We thought at last that they would do battle ; for each of the
rivals elevated himself on the water, and made show of combat to
the outrance. But, by this time, the family, under the guidance of
the affectionate mother, were safe, and the elder male Swan seemed

A WORD TO ANGLERS.

169

to think that the better part of valour is discretion, and that he
had driven the intruders from his royalty. So they parted. The
young one went up to receive his reward from the mother of his
family, and the old one rubbed his neck on his wings, and dived,
and dropped down stream again, evidently comforting himself that
he had given the trespasser a lesson.

There was a dog belonging to the Lock-house. He, from expe¬
rience, seemed to know that all Swans are bullies ; but still the
encounter was something for a dog at a lock-house, where any¬
thing is an incident. And, indeed, this was so much more earnest
in show than the usual conflicts, that he moved down toward the
brink, though the rain was coming on. At first he sat upon his
tail ; but, as the affair gave hope of becoming serious, he couched,
and when the birds lifted themselves, as in act to fight, dropped
his head on his outstretched fore legs, with all the ecstasy of an
amateur. When, however, he found that it was no go , and that
the menaces ended as usual — much in the same way as they have
done of late among the unfeathered bipeds, according to the
new code of chivalry, — he shook himself, like a sensible dog, and
went back to shelter.

On another occasion, after fishing many miles of water with
nothing but a few perch and .jack in the well as the results, we
dropped down to - Weir.

Wearied with my no-sport, I stretched my listless length on
the dry boarding that flanked the main weir, and watched with
half-shut eyes, through the tremulous aerial medium that often
attends a warm summer’s day, the osiers on my left. The thun¬
dering of the fall had, by degrees, something soothing in it, and I
felt that I was sinking fast into a doze, when I beheld a tall figure,
in rusty black, with a club-foot, swarthy sharp visage, and an eye
that positively glowed, looking down upon me.

4 Ah ! ’ said he, 4 no sport ! Well, I, too, am a sportsman — and
a very keen sportsman ; but I am getting old, and I cannot walk
the weirs now.’

How he could ever have walked the weirs with that foot of his
seemed a mystery ; but the love of sport will carry people over
anything. Finding I made no reply, the figure continued —

4 What would you give to have on your line that fish, whose
glittering side you saw but now, a a he leaped from the river, till
his splash was heard above the noise of the waters? He that
was afterwards chasing the bleak on the shallow till his huge
shoulders and back-fin were fairly shown.’

4 Anything/ replied I ; for I had been watching this fish — a
twelve or fourteen pounder at least, strong on his feed, and
making the small fish skip into the air before him — 4 anything !’

170

A WORD TO ANGLERS.

4 I do not want anything very substantial,’ said he, meekly.

I looked up.

4 You said awhile you would give anything ?’

4 I did.’

4 You will give it, then V

4 Certainly.’

4 Agreed.’

He produced a small but most brilliant fish — such a one as I
had never seen, and I had seen many, a kind of miniature Opah or
King-fish — and fixed it on the hooks of the trace most skilfully.

4 You don’t repent?’ said he.

4 No ; but I am to have that great fish on my line?’

4 Yes.’

4 And land him ? ’

4 The fish shall be landed.’

4 1 shall want to send him to town. Can you meet me at the
church yonder with a basket ? ’

4 1 don’t go much to churches,’ said he ; 4 people would stare at
me so ; but if you mean there,’ (as I pointed with my rod towards
the tower) 4 1 will see you in the churchyard.’

I examined my splendid bait to see that it was all right. Neither
Wilder, Purdy, nor Goddard could have fixed it better. I tried it
in the still water, and it spun admirably. When I raised my head
to praise the baiter, he was gone.

I was anxious to try my bait ; and beckoned to the fisherman,
who was sitting on the other end of the long weir-beam by my
companion, as the latter was fishing between the two last spurs,
near the eddy in the corner. He came.

‘Have you had a run?’ said I.

4 Yes,’ replied the fisherman; but not from the big fish, though
the one as come at us was a solaher — I put him at seven or eight
pounds.’

4 Where was it?’

4 There, in the corner ; he came out of the foam, and took us in
the wambling — but the hooks drew.’

4 Then the fish are on the feed?’

4 Yes; the sun has draw’d the baits up close to the weir, and
the fish are come up arter ’em. That great fish druv the baits
right out of the water but now, at the far side there, just by that
shrimplet

I showed him my bait fish. 4 Where did you get that ? ’ said
he ; 4 and who put it on ? ’

‘Did you not see the man in black who was talking to
me?’

4 No : I sid no man in black. I sid a great dark-looking heron

A WORD TO ANGLERS.

171

fly away just beyond them osiers, and I wondered how he come to
let you be so nigh him; you must ha’ bin werry quiet.’

I began to climb to the top of the weir-beam. ‘ Is it any use to
try again, think you ? ’

‘It’s a werry odd bait as ever I see,’ responded the fisherman;
‘ but it’s werry bright, and you may as well try the weir over with it.’

I stood on the weir-beam.

Now, no one who has not walked the Thames’ weirs can tell wdiat a

task it is to walk them, till practice has made it easy. - Weir

is one that affords as steady footing as any ; but to stand on that
narrow beam for the first time, whilst the ear is stunned by the roar
of the fall, and the eye reels as it is dazzled with the raging white
water of the boiling pool, fifteen feet below, demands good nerves.
To fish in such a position requires strong ones.

My bait was, at one time, spinning far down in the pool thirty yards
off- — and at another, as I shortened my line, — which then lay at my
feet on the beam or hung down from it, — and reversed my rod, it
was glittering close beneath me in the foam on the apron. Suddenly
I lost sight of it, and, at the same instant, there was a snatch that I
felt to my spinal cord. I had him ! I raised my rod in the twinkling
of an eye, gave him the butt, and up he sprang in the broad sun-light,
showing a side like a sow.

‘ Don’t check him 1’ cried the fisherman, in a voice that was heard
above the river-thunder. Out ran the line ! Who can be collected
at such a moment ? It coiled round my ankle, and down I went
headlong into the mad water below.

Strange as it may appear, my principal anxiety, as I struck out
into the pool to avoid being sucked back under the apron, was to
secure the fish, which I felt was still fast. This embarrassed me,
and, notwithstanding my efforts, I was drawn back into the wel¬
tering waves under the weir. I looked round, — and there I beheld
that dreadful face glaring ghastly at me through the smooth glassy
sheet of the falling water; and I felt the long deadly arms dragging
me, feet foremost, under the apron. In the delirium of despair I
cried out, — ‘You said I should land the fish.’ ‘I said,’ shouted
the horror, 4 that the fish should be landed, and that I would see you
in the churchyard ;’ and he mercilessly pulled me under.

‘Lord! Lord! methought what pain it was to drown.’ The
long, cruel arms kept dragging me deeper and deeper. The bright¬
ness became less and less. My agony was inexpressible. Then
came darkness, — the blackness of darkness. Suddenly my sensa¬
tions were even pleasant, and I fancied that I was in a delicious
meadow.

A fearful change succeeded. I found myself in a well-known
burial vault, —

172

A WORD TO ANGLERS.

‘Girt by parent, brother, friend,

Long since numbered with the dead.’

And there was that grim feature still claiming me, and the long
lean arms were stretched out to grapple me, and the grasp entered
into my soul. I turned to make one desperate effort at escape,
and, opening my eyes, I found myself still stretched on the dry
boards. My companion was shaking me by the shoulder, and
inquiring, with something like reproach, if I thought that was the
way to get the great fish into the well ?

MAY.

L

Upon a bright and balmy day.

The flow’rs around were springing ;
With hymns of love the birds so gay
Set all the woods a-ringing.

The trouts did leap, the herds did low,
The merry lambs were playing;
And in the hawthorn dell below,

A lassie fair was maying.

2.

The blackbird piped so loud and clear,
The thrush the air was filling,

Above a floating downy cloud
The heaven-ward lark was trilling ;
And loudly did the cuckoo call,

As he his way was winging :

And yet I heard above them all
That pretty lassie singing.

Adown the vale a zephyr flew,

As if he would adore her;

The hawthorn bush above that grew,
Dropp’d show’rs of spangles o’er her:
She rais’d her head and shook her locks,
Her laughing eyes did glisten —
Then sang again, till the very flocks
Stood quietly to listen.

4.

‘ Here are nodding cowslips meet
For my little brother,
Primroses and violets sweet
For my own dear mother.
Seated on my father’s knee
I shall hear his praises,

While he fondly makes for me
A necklace of these daisies.’

5.

I’ve Pasta heard and Bartleman,
Persiani and Rubini ;

Sontag, Grisi, Malibran,

Lablache and Tamburini :

But though their voices rich and clear,
Set all the town a-ringing,

Far sweeter fell upon mine ear
That little lassie's singing.

DOGS.

‘The little dogs and all,

Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart.’

Leak.

Yes, Dogs are honest creatures, and the most delightful of four-
footed beings. The brain and nervous system may be more highly
developed in the Anthropoid apes, and even in some of the mon¬
keys; but for affectionate, though humble companionship, nay
friendship ; for the amiable spirit that is on the watch to anticipate
every wish of his master — for the most devoted attachment to him,
in prosperity and adversity, in health and sickness, an attachment
always continued unto death, and frequently failing not even
when the once warm hand that patted him is clay-cold; what — we
had almost said who — can equal these charming familiars? Your
dog will, to please you, do that which is positively painful
to him. Hungry though he be, he will leave his food for you ; he
will quit the strongest temptation for you ; he will lay down his
life for you. Truly spake he who said, ‘ Man is the God of the
dog.’

Of all the conquests over the brute creation that man has made,
the domestication of the dog may be regarded as the most com¬
plete, if not the most useful: it is the only animal that has fol¬
lowed him all over the earth. And to see how these noble animals
are treated by savages civilized as well as uncivilized; kicked,
spurned, harnessed to heavy carriages, half-starved, cudgelled,
they still follow the greater brute that lords it over them, and if
he condescends to smile upon them how they bound in gladness !
if he, by some inexplicable obliquity of good feeling, in a mo¬
ment of forgetfulness caresses them, they are beside themselves with

joy-

As a whole their lot seems to be the worst, if it is cast among
savage or imperfectly-civilized nations. When Lawson was among
the North- American Indians, he was present at a great feast
where was ‘store of loblolly and other medleys, made of Indian
grain, stewed peaches, bear venison, &c. ;’ when all the viands

174

DOGS.

were brought in, 4 the first figure began with kicking out all the
dogs, which are seemingly wolves, made tame with starving and
beating ; they being the worst dog-masters in the world ; — so that
it is an infallible cure for sore eyes ever to see an Indian’s dog
fat.’ The tribe who exercised this summary calcitration on the
poor dogs, that had most probably contributed not a little to the
venison part of the entertainment, rejoiced in the appropriate name
of the Whaclcsaws or Waxsaws ; and yet these same Indians
delighted in feeding up their horses till they were comparable to
nothing more aptly than an English prize-ox. Though much
advanced in the scale of civilization, the Javanese, according to
Dr Horsfield, seem to be little better dog-masters than the Wax-
saws ; for he remarks that the poor brutes, we mean the dogs,
are not cared for, and are ill treated, so that their famishing con¬
dition is disgusting to Europeans. This is the more extraordinary
as many of these dogs pursue the Java deer called the Iiidang with
great ardour and courage. They are led in slips and loosed when
they come upon the scent. Away they go, and the hunters, who
follow more quietly, generally find the deer at bay and the hounds
going gallantly into him. This is no joke, for the male Iiidang
makes a capital fight with his tusks, wounding his assailants
severely, often fatally. 4 The sportsmen,’ says the Doctor,
whose book is full of interesting passages, 4 uniformly are pro¬
vided with remedies and applications, and by a simple suture
attempt to unite those wounds which are not immediately
fatal. In this operation they frequently succeed and preserve
their most valuable dogs.’ But even this small care appears to
be the exception to the rule. 4 The natives of Java, like other
Mohammedans, entertain prejudices unfavourable to dogs ; they
rarely treat them with kindness, or allow them to approach their
persons ; and it is only in extraordinary instances, or when they
contribute to their amusement, that they feed or care for them.’
To be sure, as a set-off, they rarely show attachment to their
masters, and no wonder ; even Bill Sykes’s dog could not carry his
otherwise unqualified obedience to the length of getting over his
very particular objection to being drowned.

On the other hand, the good dog-master considers his four -footed
follower as his friend, his other self, his doppelgcmger, so that ‘Love
me, love my dog,’ has passed into a proverb which has sometimes
led to deadly results ; we need only allude to the fatal duel between
Colonel Montgomery and Captain Macnamara.

Nor can it be wondered at that a man should feel strongly for
the faithful animal that distinguishes him from all others, an
animal that may be a burr but is hardly ever a bore. Now and
then, indeed, an ill-bred cur will, like Launce’s Crab, thrust him-

* LOVE ME, LOVE MY DOG.’

175

self into the company of three or four gentlemanlike clogs; but
your Biped Bore constantly and unrelentingly intrudes into a
happy knot of mortals, not of his quality, who are shaking off the
cares of life with a little joyous converse, till he has succeeded in
reducing the gaiety that was flashing so brilliantly to a heap of
ashes, and the merry tongues to a dead silence/. Or he finds out
when you are sick, and by an incomprehensible power possessed
only by the typical Bore or Augur — not soothsayer — drills himself
through all the doors barricaded against him, and having perfor¬
ated to your sanctum, preys upon you in your own arm-chair,
giving you all the while, under colour of much pity, broad hints
that you are ‘ booked,’ and wimbling deeper and deeper still, till
he has shattered the remains of your nerves to atoms ; when,
having absolutely devoured you in your shell, he leaves you, a
complete caput mortuum , to go and finish with some other victim
— the cannibal !

Why, why, is there not in our great clubs a power of repro¬
bation as well as of election ? Surely it would not be too much
for twelve hundred men to have the power of excluding eight
annually : — a power, by the way, which would be seldom exerted,
for the very knowledge of its existence would have its effect,
though it might be necessary now and then to eject some incor¬
rigible pachydermatous bore pour encourager les cmtres. There is
already a law prohibiting the entrance of our friends the dogs into
those masculine establishments, a law which one is, at first, dis¬
posed to regard as harsh ; but the reflection that most of the
members of a club show no backwardness in availing themselves
of its privileges, reconciles the mind to the inhospitable practice
of making the worthy beasts sit in the porch, anxiously watching
for the egress of their masters. Think of the assemblage of the
doggies belonging to a thousand or twelve hundred masters, and
the duels — the principals, to be sure, nowadays, never hit each
other — which would spring out of the collision. Besides, they
are not admitted at court, according to the old French quatrain —
for which of their qualities we may not guess :

‘ A la, court les gros courtisans
Sont ours, ou tygres, ou lyons ;

Les petits qui sont moins puissants
Sont regnards ou cameleons.’

But if they are not allowed to grace our assemblies within doors,
there is no lack of them when men are gathered together under
the canopy of heaven. At a fair, at a fight, at the most solemn
spectacles : wherever, in short, there is a crowd, there are dogs
to be seen, as a matter of course, apparently discussing the mat-

176

DOGS.

ter in hand, or inquiring of each new comer whether he had any¬
thing to do with the embassy, and getting into little coteries and
fights of their own ; for, on these occasions, especially if there be
a lady in the case, jealousies and suspicions do abound.

When the citizens feasted the allied sovereigns, we were snugly
placed, at an early hour, at the window of a most worthy trader
in the precious metals, upon Ludgate-hill ; one who had been
prime warden of the worshipful company, and had two gowns,
and everything handsome about him. His hospitable house was
well filled with honest men and bonnie lassies, but we, who had
not been long in the small village, were constantly drawn from the
well-spread table, and the bright eyes that surrounded it, to the
window aforesaid, by the note of preparation. In the street were
the heaps of gravel intended for smoothing the path of the
Regent and the crowned heads. Workmen were employed in
levelling these heaps, which the dogs, already collected in con¬
siderable numbers, evidently considered as pitched exclusively for
their accommodation. The thickening crowd were in their holi¬
day suits, every thing was bright and gay, the dogs were frisky
beyond expresssion, and the gravel heaps produced the most social
feelings among the assembled quadrupeds.

By and by the gravel wras spread — the dogs, that had been
chasing each other’s tails from an early hour, began to be a little
tired, but were still in good spirits. The troops now lined the
streets, and at length there seemed to be a disposition on the part
of the dogs to consider that they had had enough of the fete.
Erery now and then, a canine sceptic, who began to think that
matters were taking an unpleasant turn, would go to the sides of
the street and try to make his way through the living wall that
bounded the carriage-way. In nine cases out of ten he was
kicked back by the soldiers, and if some particularly enterprising
individual succeeded in passing them, a greater obstacle remained
behind ; for there was no possibility of getting through the con¬
glomeration on the foot pavements : trampled upon by the crowd,
and butt-ended by the soldiers, he was kicked back with curses
into the arena, erst the scene of his gaiety, yelping and howling,
and then and there immediately pitched into by his now hungry,
peevish companions.

Well, the day wore on, the dogs lay down; — the usual cries,
e They are coming!’ brought every body from the creature-
comforts to the windows, and the usual disappointments sent them
back to their more substantial enjoyments. At last, the pealing
and firing of bells announced the advent of the kings of the earth.
Shouts were heard booming from the distance — the heads in the
crammed windows were all craning westward, — the procession

BULLDOG, SCOTCH TERRIER, AND MASTIFF

.

INQUIRY INTO THEIR ORIGIN.

m

was now coming in earnest. It was headed by a large body of
distressed dogs, the phalanx increasing as it advanced. Worn
out, kicked to death’s door, and scarcely able to crawl, the miser¬
able curs marched in solemn silence, with head depressed, and
slinking tail, to which here and there might be seen appended the
badge of the order of the tin canister or kettle. By the side there
was no escape — they could not retreat, and so the dejected wretches
marshalled the way, unwillingly and slow, till our country’s
honour, and that of Europe, were roofed in the Guildhall of the
city of London.

Seeing these familiars, as we do, every where around us, and
the infinite variety of form and colour exhibited among them, we
are at once led to the inquiry whence they sprang, — what was the
stock from which the canine family was derived? Your good
cynogenealogist will trace out for you the pedigree of any parti¬
cular race, and will be eloquent on King Charles’s breed of
spaniels, and the delicate Blenheim breed, nor will he not descant as
learnedly as any historian of the turf on the Czarina, Snowball,
or Claret blood, to him who loves ‘ The Couples but, if you
ask the said genealogist who was the common acestor, you
may ‘pause for a reply.’ Inquire among the zoologists, and
one will tell you that the jackal, with his unearthly cry and
ghoul-like habits, that robber of the Asiatic and African grave,
is the impure source of all that is quadrupedally good and
amiable. Another, with more show of reason, will point to the
gaunt wolf,

‘ With his long gallop that can tire
The hound’s deep hate and hunter’s fire

but it will be difficult to find one who will give you any authority
for the existence of a primitive race of dogs in the common
acceptation of the term. Little osteological difference is to be
detected in the dog, wolf, fox, or jackal : none, indeed, on which
generic distinction can be founded with any degree of safety, and,
therefore, no satisfactory evidence is forthcoming from the fossil
canine animals, such as the ccinis spelceus of the Bone-caverns, the
cams giganteus of Avary, and the Agnotlicrium , an animal of the dog-
kind, as large as a lion, discovered at Epplesheim, by Professor
Kaup. There is now ground for believing that Sir Roderick Mur¬
chison’s fossil quadruped found at Gffiiingen, was not a true fox.*
The dog, the wolf, the jackal, and the fox, are all collected under
the generic appellation, canis, by Linnaeus, Cuvier, and other great

* See Professor Owen’s interesting paper ‘ On the extinct Fossil Viverrine
Fox of (Eningen, showing its specific characters and affinities to the Family
Viverridce.’ Proceedings of the Geological Society, 184G, p. 55.

N

178

DCGS.

zoologists ; but the principal character assigned by the first of
these philosophers to the domesticated dog, or cam’s familiar is,
is 1 cauda (sinistrorsum) recurvata ,’ ‘ tail curled towards the left.’
There are, indeed, well-marked external differences between the
four animals just mentioned, as every one knows who has looked
with any attention at them ; and other distinctions will be detected
on a closer examination. In the dogs properly so called, the
pupil of the eye is round; this modification of the organization
exists in the wolf and the jackal, and for this reason, the African
Fennec or Zerda is now associated with the true dogs ; but the
pupil of the eye in the foxes, whose habits are more nocturnal,
is vertical. The wild dogs, as they are called — and we do not
mean to say that they are improperly named — in whatever quarter
of the world they are found, do not, in our opinion, help the
question; indeed they have embarrassed it. Now there is evi¬
dence of the existence of the domesticated dog from the earliest
times, and we see no sound reason for concluding that these wild
races, some of which are well known to our Indian friends, and
one of which has been named somewhat boldly, canis primcevus, do
not owe their origin to dogs which have been once under the sub¬
jection of man, partially at least, and have from circumstances
taken to roving habits and a natural state, like the wild horses of
America.

In pursuing this inquiry, it becomes of importance to ascertain
in which of the supposed stocks we can trace the seeds of that
affection for man, — yes, affection is the word, — which so highly dis¬
tinguishes the dog. The jackal is altogether unamiable, and we
know from the experiments of John Hunter, that though it will
breed with the dog, the period of gestation is fifty-nine days. If
the fox is looked to — we say nothing of an appeal to another of
the senses — there does not appear any very inviting symptom to
encourage us to make a fireside companion of him ,

‘Who ne’er so tame, so cherish’d and lock’d up,

Will have a wild trick of his ancestors.’

Now, your wolf, truculent though he be, is capable of a most
cordial attachment to man. We have seen one follow his master
about with all the manners of a faithful dog, and doing his bid¬
ding as obediently. In the instance recorded by M. F. Cuvier, the
wolf was brought up and treated like a young dog ; he became
familiar with everybody whom he saw frequently, but he distin¬
guished his master, was restless in his absence, and happy in his
presence, acting almost precisely as a favourite dog would act.
But his master was under the necessity of being absent for a time,
and the unfortunate wolf was presented to the Menagerie du Hoi

ATTACHMENT OF THE WOLF.

179

— where he was incarcerated in a den — he who had 4 affections,
passions.’ Most disconsolate of wolves was he, poor fellow! he
pined — he refused his food — but the persevering kindness of his
keepers had its effect upon his broken spirit, he became fond of
them, and everybody thought that his ancient attachment was
obliterated. Eighteen long months had elapsed since his impri¬
sonment, when his old master came to see him. The first word
uttered by the man, who was mingled in the crowd, had a magical
effect. The poor wolf instantly recognised him with the most
joyous demonstrations, and being set at liberty, fawned upon his old
friend and caressed him in the most affecting manner. We wish
we could end the story here ; but our wolf was again shut up, and
another separation brought with it sadness and sorrow. A dog
was given to him as a companion, three years had elapsed since he
last lost sight of the object of his early adoration, time had done
much to soothe him, and his chum and lie lived happily together —
when the old master came again.

The 4 once familiar word ’ was uttered — the impatient cries of
the faithful creature, and his eagerness to get to his master, went
to the hearts of all, and when he was let out of his cage, and rushed
to him, and with his feet on his shoulders, licked liis face, redoubling
his cries of joy, because he who had been lost was found, the eyes
of bearded men, who stood by, were moistened. His keepers, to
whom a moment before he had been all fondness, now endeavoured
to remove him ; but all the wolf was then aroused within him, and
he turned upon them with furious menaces. Again the time came
when the feelings of this unhappy animal were to be sharply
tried. A third separation was effected. The gloom and sul¬
lenness of the wolf were of a more deep complexion, and his refusal
of food more stubborn, so that his life appeared to be in danger.
His health, indeed, if health it could be called, slowly returned,
but he was morose and misanthropic, and though the fond wretch
endured the caresses of his keepers, he became savage and danger¬
ous to all others who approached him. Here was a noble temper
ruined.

Nor are these the only instances of the disposition which is
latent in these animals. The she-wolf mentioned by Mr Bell, in
his delightful ‘History of British Quadrupeds,’ would come to
the front bars of her prison in the garden of the Zoological So¬
ciety in the Regent’s Park to be noticed ; and when she had cubs
she would bring them forward in her mouth to be fondled ; indeed,
she was so pertinacious in her endeavours to introduce them into
society, that she killed all her little ones, one after the other, by
rubbing them against the bars, that they might be within reach
of the caressing hand of man. It was as if the poor creature

180

DOGS.

bad said, ‘ Do take me and mine out of this place and make pets
of us.’

When, therefore, we find this; strong disposition for associating
with man, we are no longer startled at the views of those who regard
the domestic dog, with all its varieties, as the descendant of the
wolf. Let us look a little further into this point. As far as the
skeleton is concerned, generally, there is hardly any difference, or
very little, between the wolf and the dog, while the skull is almost
exactly similar. The days of gestation in the bitch are sixty-three ;
precisely the same period is allotted to the wolf. The young of the
domestic dog are born blind, as everybody knows ; those of the
wolf come into the world in the same condition ; and both first see
the light at the same time, their eyes being opened on the tenth or
twelfth day. In the wolf, as well as in the dog, the duration of life
averages from fifteen to twenty years. It is true that the jackal,
as well as the wolf, will breed with the dog; but we have no
authority to prove that the offspring of the latter and the jackal is
fertile, as that of the dog and wolf is. We do not think much of
the principal difference between the two animals last mentioned,
namely, the comparative obliquity in the position of the eyes of the
wolf : domestication for a long series of years may have given a
forward direction to those organs in the faithful follower of man.
Then, if we look at the Dhole of India, the Dingo of Australia, and
other wild or half-reclaimed races, we find the uniformity of colour,
the tail, and somewhat of the general aspect of the wolf ; indeed,
one of the earliest English names for the Dingo was, the New South
Wales Wolf. It is also worthy of remark, that the wild dogs, and
even those of the Esquimaux and Mackenzie River breeds, do not
appear to bark, though, like the wolf, they may ‘behowl the moon.’
The Dingo sent over to Mr Nepean, by Governor Philip, and kept
at Hatfield House by the Marchioness of Salisbury, neither barked
nor growled. Ashkelli, a male Esquimaux dog, brought from the
Polar Sea, by Mr Richards, in Captain Parry’s first voyage, though
domesticated and good-humoured, seldom barked, according to Mr
Children, but if displeased, uttered 4 a low wolfish growl.’ Mr
Bennett, in his account of the Mackenzie River, or Hare Indian
dogs, presented to the Zoological Society by Captain Sir John
Franklin and Dr Richardson, says, ‘In their native country they are
never known to bark, and this peculiarity is still retained by the
elder dogs ; but the younger one, which was born in this country,
has learned to imitate the language of his fellows.’ Now these dogs
were particularly good tempered and familiar with those who noticed
them. Upon the whole evidence, we incline to the opinion of those
who would derive the domestic dog from the wolf ; and though the
former will hunt the latter, it should be remembered that dogs,

ANECDOTES.

181

with a very little encouragement, will also hunt one of their own
undoubted race.*

But from whatever source the dog be derived, he is one of the
most sensible of four-footed animals. Gifted with a most reten¬
tive memory, he applies his power of observation to the regulation
of his conduct so skilfully, that the result has very much the
appearance of reasoning ; if, indeed, it may not, without violence,
be considered as the exercise of that faculty. His intellect, when
well developed, is of no common order, and its constant activity
is exhibited when, like the Fury in iEschylus, he

‘ Opens in liis sleep, on tli’ eager chase
E’en then intent.’

Our readers will, we hope, pardon us if we inflict on them a
story or two in proof of our assertion.

We remember to have been once particularly struck with the
behaviour of a dog that had lost his master. This, to us, is

* It is gratifying to read the following from the pen of so good an observer
and zoologist as the late lamented Dr Kane : — ‘ There is so much of identical
character between Arctic dogs and wolves, that 1 am inclined to agree with
Mr Broderip, who, in the “Zoological Recreations,” assigns to them a family
origin. The oblique position of the wolf’s eye is not uncommon among the
dogs of my team. I have a slut, one of the tamest and most affectionate of
the whole of them, who has the long legs and compact body, and drooping
tail, and wild and scared expression of the eye, which some naturalists have
supposed to characterize the wolf alone. When domesticated early — and it is
easy to domesticate him — the wolf follows and loves you like a dog. That
they are fond of a loose foot proves nothing; many of our pack will run away
for weeks into the wilderness of ice; yet they cannot be persuaded Avhen they
come back to inhabit the kennel we have built for them only a hundred yards
off. They crouch around for the companionship of men. Both animals howl
in unison alike. The bell at the settlement of South Greenland always starts
them. Their footprint is the same, at least in Smith’s Sound. Dr Richard¬
son’s remark to the contrary made me observe the fact that our northern dogs
leave the same “ spread track ” of the toes when running, though not perhaps
as well marked as the wolf’s. The old proverb, and the circumstance of the
wolf having sometimes carried off an Esquimaux dog, has been alluded to by
the editors of the “ Diffusion of Knowledge Library.” But this, too, is incon¬
clusive; for the proverb is false. It is not quite a month ago since I found
five of our dogs gluttonizing on the carcasses of their dead companions who
had been thrown out on a rubbish-heap; and I have seen pups only two
months old risk an indigestion by over-feeding on their twin brethren who
had preceded them in a like imprudence.

‘Nor is there anything in the supposed difference of strength. The Esqui¬
maux dog of Smith’s Sound encounters the wolf fearlessly and with success.
The wolves of Northern America never venture near the huts; but it is well
known that when they have been chasing the deer or the moose, the dogs
have come up as rivals in the hunt, beaten them off, and appropriated the prey
to themselves.’ — Arctic Explorations in the Years 1853, 1854, 1855. By Elisha
Kent Kane, M.D., U.S.N.; Vol. 1, p. 398.

f urther on, the Doctor seems to have made up his mind on the point: — ‘At
home, one would fear to encounter such hoop-spined, spitting, snarling
beasts as the Esquimaux dogs of Peabody Bay. But, wolves as they are , they
are far from dangerous: the slightest appearance of a missile or cudgel sub¬
dues them at once.’ — Vol. 2, p. 13.

182

DOGS.

always a distressing sight, and enough, in our humble opinion, to
have made Democritus himself look grave: but in the instance
alluded to, there was food for reflection.

W e were walking down a hilly field, whose path terminated at
a stile which opened upon a road running due east and west.
This road was cut at right angles by another road running north¬
ward. A dog passed with his nose close to the ground, keeping
the downward path till he arrived at the stile, through which he
squeezed himself, and, with his nose still down, he first hunted
busily along the eastern branch, and then along the western. He
now retraced his steps, and when he came nearly opposite to the
northern road, he lifted his head, looked about him for a moment
or two, and then set off along that road as fast as he could go,
without again putting his nose to the ground, as wTho should think
to himself — ‘lie is not gone that way, nor is he gone that way
therefore he must have gone this way’ — an operation of the mind
very like a syllogism.

Then there is the well-authenticated story of the dog that was
left, in December, 1784, by a smuggling vessel, near Boomer, on
the coast of Northumberland; and we shall let Bewick, who records
the fact, tell his own tale.

‘Finding himself deserted,’ continues Bewick, speaking of the
abandoned dog, ‘ he began to worry sheep, and did so much damage,
that he became the terror of the country within a circuit of twenty
miles. We are assured that when he caught a sheep, he bit a hole
in its right side, and, after eating the tallow about the kidneys, left
it: several of them, thus lacerated, were found alive by the shepherds,
and, being taken proper care of, some of them recovered, and
afterwards had lambs. From his delicacy in this respect, the
destruction he made may in some measure be conceived ; as it may
be supposed that the fat of one sheep in a day would not satisfy his
hunger. The farmers were so much alarmed by his depredations,
that various means were used for his destruction. They frequently
pursued him with hounds, greyhounds, &c. ; but when the dogs
came up with him, he lay down on his back, as if supplicating for
mercy; and in this position they never hurt him; he therefore lay
quietly, taking his rest till the hunters approached, when he made off
without being followed by the hounds, till they were again excited
to the pursuit, which always terminated unsuccessfully. It is worthy
of notice, that he was onedaypnrsuedfrom Howick to upwards of thirty
miles distance, but returned thither and killed sheep the same
evening. His constant residence during the day, was upon a
rock on the Henghliill, near Howick, where he had a view of four
roads that approached it; and in March, 1785, after many fruitless
attempts, he was at last shot there.’

183

ANECDOTES.

Now, to say nothing of the ruse whereby he regularly saved
himself from his pursuers, this was very like communing with him¬
self, and, as a result, taking up the best possible position for
his security under existing circumstances, a position which enabled
him to baffle his enemies for upwards of a year : — what is this if
it be not reason ?

One more illustration of this part of our subject. In the west
of England, not far from Bath, there lived, toward the close of
the last century, a worthy clergyman, who was as benevolent as
he was learned. There were turnspits in those days — a most
intelligent set they were, and Toby, who was an especial favourite,
was a model of the breed, with legs worthy of the Gow Chrom
himself, upon which he waddled after his master every where,
sometimes not a little to his annoyance ; but Toby was a worthy,
and he could not find it in his heart to snub him. Things, how¬
ever, came at last to such a pass, that Toby contrived somehow or
other to find his way to the reading-desk on Sunday, and when
the door was opened, he would whip in, well knowing that his
reverend patron was too kind and too decorous to whip him out.
Now, though it has been said, that

‘ He’s a good dog that goes to church,’

the exemplary Dr. B., who thought he had traced a smile upon
the countenance of some of his parishioners on these occasions,
felt the impropriety of the proceeding ; so Toby was locked up
in the stable on Sunday morning ; all to no purpose, however,
for he scrambled through the shut window, glass, lead and all, and
trotted up the aisle after his annoyed master as usual. Mat¬
ters were now getting serious; so as soon as he had on the
Saturday caused the beef to revolve to a turn which was to be
served cold for the Sunday dinner — for the good man chose that
all around him should find the Sabbath a day of rest — Toby was
taken out of the wheel, and his dinner was given to him; but
instead of being allowed to go at large to take his evening walk
after it, Molly, to make sure of him, took him up by the neck,
and putting him into the wood-hole where window there was
none, drew the bolt, and left him therein. Toby revenged himself
by ‘drying up the souls’ of the whole family with his inordi¬
nate expostulatory yells during the whole of the remnant of
Saturday and the greater part of Sunday. However, there was
no Toby dogging the heels of the surpliced minister, and it was
concluded that the sufferings that the doggie and the family had
undergone, would have their effect. Well, the week wore on, with
Toby as amiable and as useful as ever, and without a particle of
sullenness about him — into the wheel went he right cheerfully, and

184

DOGS.

made it turn more merrily than ever; in short, parlour, kitchen,
and all were loud in his praise. However, as it drew toward
twelve o’clock on the Saturday, Toby was missed. Poor Molly,
the cook, was at her wit’s end.

‘Where’s that vexatious turnspit gone?’

was the question, and nobody could answer it. The boy who
cleaned the knives was despatched to a distant barn where Toby
was occasionally wont to recreate himself after his culinary labours,
by hunting rats. No — no Toby. The sturdy thrashers, with
whom lie used sometimes to go home, under the idea, as it was
supposed, that they were the lords of the rat-preserve in the barn,
and who, being fond of Toby in common with the whole village,
used occasionally to give him

‘ A bit of tlieir supper, a bit of their bed,’

knew nothing of him. Great was the consternation at the Rec¬
tory. Hints were thrown out that ‘ The Tramps’ in the green
lane had secreted him with the worst intentions, for he was plump
and sleek : but their camp was searched in vain. The worthy
family retired for the night, all mourning for Toby : and we believe
there is no doubt that when the reverend master of the house
came down on Sunday morning his first question was, ‘Any
tidings of Toby?’ — A melancholy ‘No, sir,’ was the answer.
After an early breakfast, the village schools were heard — their
rewards distributed, not without inquiries for Toby — and when
church-time came, it is said that the rector, who walked the short
distance in full canonicals, looked over his shoulder more than
once. He passed through the respectful country-people collected
in the little green grave-yard, who looked up to him as their
pastor and friend, he entered the low-roofed old Norman porch
overhung with ivy, he walked up the aisle, the well filled pews
on either side bearing testimony that his sober minded flock hun¬
gered not for the excitement of fanaticism, he entered the reading-
desk, and as he was adjusting his hassock, caught the eye of Toby
twinkling at him out of the darkest corner. Need we say more,
than that after this, Toby was permitted to go to church, with the
unanimous approbation of the parish, as long as he lived. Now
if this was not calculation on the part of Toby, we know not what
else to term it, and we could refer our readers to well-authenti¬
cated stories in print — as our dear old nurse used to say when she
was determined to silence all incredulity — that go as far, and
even farther, to show that these animals can calculate intervals of
time.

It is this intellectuality, joined with their individuality — for no

FRENCH DOGS.

185

two dogs are alike — that makes them such admirable subjects for
the gifted hand of Edwin Landseer. It is said that dogs have
been taught to utter, after a fashion, one or two simple words,
not exceeding two syllables; however this may be, no one, we
apprehend, who has seen The Twa Dogs can doubt that they con¬
verse. When we ‘ look around the walls,’ as the patronizing
orators say at the annual festival in Trafalgar-square, and catch
the Promethean fire infused into the portrait of A Respectable
Member of the Humane Society and others, his fellows, we suspect
that a few of the gentlemen — ay, and ladies too — who have paid
for having their faces mapped and hung on those same ‘walls,’
sigh occasionally as their eyes rest on the beautifully characterized
doggies, and feel an irresistible preference for the Cynic school.
The Mohammedans were forbidden to represent either man or
other animals ; and the prohibition, if we mistake not, arose from
a tradition that those who are hardy enough to make the attempt
will be called upon, hereafter, to put a soul into every one of their
representations — or else — : if there be any foundation for this
creed, what an awful future awaits some of our exhibitors.

Another consequence of the intellect manifest in our friends, the
dogs, and the almost human affections that belong to them, is,
that superstition has conferred upon them a sort of immortality.
To say nothing of ‘ Cerberus,’ of the poor Indian’s ‘ equal sky,’
or the ‘ Tomalins,’ and other black-dog familiars of the ages of
witchcraft, we have the Mauthe Doog of the Manksman, the Fiend
Hund of Faust, and the Hell-hound of Britain. As the dog was
supposed to be gifted with the power of seeing spirits when they
were invisible to man, it is no wonder that we have spectre-
hounds, or that our ghostly enemy himself should have been sup¬
posed in those dark and disgraceful times to which we have
alluded, to have condescended to put on the shape of the most
sagacious of four-footed beings, one that the ancient Egyptians
worshipped as a god.

The variety of form and colour in the races of dogs is infinite.
Contrast the mastiff with the spaniel — place the St Bernard dog
— the great Thibet watch-dog — that of Spain, or the gallant
Scotch deerhound, by the side of our rector’s Toby, or one of
that curious family of French — not Dutch — pugs, and it seems
almost incredible that they should be all of one species. Yet the
most acute observers have failed, and, in our opinion, always will
fail, to seize on any character which shall be found to warrant
specific distinction.

We have heard the tiny French dogs, above mentioned, libelled
as being useless ; but they have very winning ways, and gain
upon you, till they almost become little friends. The great luxury

186

DOGS.

of their life seems to consist in being nursed in the lap, — that of
a lady for choice, — and for this they will sit up, and beg as perti¬
naciously as other dogs will for food. The hound has been sung
in every language since Cadmus taught his dragon-lads the alpha¬
bet. The bloodhound, and the greyhound, have been immortalized
by our best poets, ancient and modern ; a Newfoundland dog was
the friend of Byron, and Scott had his Maida. There is hardly a
great dog, from that of Ulysses downwards, that has not had
his eulogist ; but these little dogs are a despised generation, and
though they may suffer by our pen, we venture a word or two,
by way of introducing them to our readers, the more especially as
none of them appear to have sat to Edwin. If they had, we would
gladly have left their character in his hands. Very fine neat limbs,
very high foreheads, prominent, expressive eyes, long ears, which
they erect, so as to look a little like Fennecs, a tight-curled tail,
and a very close, fine coat, are their characteristics : the true bred
and handsome ones show a great deal of blood. They are most
intelligent and affectionate, and understand in a very short time
whether the conversation relates to them, though not addressed to
them, nor carried on in an altered tone — as indeed is the case with
most sensible dogs.

It was amusing to see three of these little dogs in company with
Bundy, a beautiful beagle, especially when a splendid fellow of a
French pointer was occasionally admitted into the party. The
well-educated pointer, who could do everything but talk as they
say, was ordered into a chair, where he sat with a most becoming
gravity, and there, wrapped in a cloak, and with his foraging
cap jauntingly cocked over one eye, and a roll of paper in his
mouth for a cigar, he looked much more manly than the whey-
faced bipeds who pollute our streets and add their mouthful of
foul smoke to ‘the fog and filthy air’ of this reeking town.
When the little lapless dogs on the carpet saw this, they would
surround his chair, sitting up in the usual begging position, and
hoping, apparently, that among his other accomplishments, he
had learned the all-soothing art of nursing. Bundy generally took
this opportunity of securing the best place on the rug, where he
lay stretched out on his side, before the fire. The suppliants
finding that the Frenchman in the chair made no sign, and that
they could produce no impression on the flinty hearts of the rest
of the company, to each of whom, in succession, they had sat
up, adjourned one after the other, and after sitting up for a
moment to the recumbent Bundy, sat down upon him, looking, as
a friend once said, like a coroner’s jury sitting on the body ; and
indeed, Bundy, who was good-tempered and used to the operation,
lay as still as if he had been no longer of this world. They

HYDROPHOBIA.

187

seemed to have the greatest objection to resting on the floor,
richly Turkey-carpeted though it was. When they were thus
seated looking at the fire, with their backs to the company, the
words, ‘Well, you may come,’ uttered without any particular
emphasis, would bring them all in a moment bounding into the
laps of the speakers. At night they were always on the look out
for a friend who would take them to bed, otherwise the mat was
their portion. At the well-known ‘ au lit , au lit,’ they would rush
from the snuggest of laps, and gambol before you to your bed¬
room. As soon as they entered it and were told, ‘you may go
into bed,’ they would creep in between the sheets at the top, and
work their way down to the bottom, where they would lie all night
at your feet, without moving, unless a particularly favoured Lili-
putian was permitted to come up and lay its head on the pillow or
your arm.

That these faithful creatures should be subject to the most
frightful and fatal of diseases — a disease which they too frequently
communicate in their madness to their beloved master or mistress,
is one of those inscrutable dispensations that sets all our philosophy
at nought.

The chamber of a human being, writhing under hydrophobia,
is a scene never to be forgotten by those who have had the mis¬
fortune to witness it. There lies the wretched victim under a
certain sentence of death — death the most dreadful ! His unsteady
glistening eye wanders over the anxious faces that surround him ;
the presence of any liquid — the noise of pouring it out — a polished
surface — or anything that suggests the idea of it — even the sudden
admission of a cold current of air, bring on the most agonizing
paroxysms of spasm in the throat. Oh ! to see him strong in
resolution, determined to make the rebel muscles obedient — to
see and hear him

‘ Struggle with the rising fits,’

and sit up and say that he will take his medicine. And there he
is, apparently calm — the attendant approaches with the cup — he
receives it — you almost think, so much does he seem to have his
nerves under command, that he will drain it. He lifts it to his
parched lips, his haggard eye rolls, the rising spasms overpower
him — ‘ I can’t,’ he faintly utters, and falls back in agony.
We dare not go on : it is too horrible !

But we may point out, especially as there is a good deal of
misunderstanding upon the subject, the usual symptoms that
denote the rabid dog ; for it frequently happens that a dog is
destroyed as mad, when he has no disease of the kind about him ;
whilst, on the other hand, the rabid animal is often suffered to

188

DOGS.

live and deal destruction around. It is an error to suppose that a
mad dog always shows aversion to water, as the name of the
disease implies ; he will, on the contrary, sometimes lap it — nay,
swim across a river without manifesting any of the horror that
marks the disease in man. The most sure symptom is a complete
alteration of temper, from the mild and the familiar to the sullen
and the snarling ; he snaps at all objects, animate and inanimate,
and gnaws them. Even in this state his behaviour often con¬
tinues unaltered to his master or mistress ; and hence the cases
which have arisen from having been licked by the tongue of such
a dog, on some part of the face or hands where the skin had been
broken. Though he goes wildly about, apparently without an
object, foaming at the mouth generally, and snapping as he pro¬
ceeds, he rarely gallops, but mostly keeps to a sullen trot with
his tail down. The best representation of this mad gait that we
have seen, is in ‘ Bewick’s Quadrupeds,’ where the vignette at
p. 330, of the edition of 1820, gives a very correct idea of the
rabid animal in its progress.

What produces this cruel disease in the dog, is a mystery : it
can hardly be hardship or ill-treatment, for it frequently happens
to pets

‘ Bread with all the care
That waits upon a fav’rite heir.’

Just see what Sonnini says of the dogs at Rosetta, where,
though ‘ repelled by man, to whose personal use nature seems to
have destined them, they are, nevertheless, incapable of deserting
him.’ In modern Egypt the dog is considered an unclean beast,
not to be touched without subsequent purification, and, therefore,
carefully shunned by the Mohammedans. ‘ There are few cities
in the world,’ writes Sonnini, ‘which contain so many dogs as
those of Egypt; or at least, there is no one which has the
appearance of containing more, because they are there constantly
assembled in the streets, their only habitation. There they have
no other supplies of food but what they can pick up at the doors
of houses, or scramble for by raking into filth and garbage. The
females drop their young at the corner of some retired and unfre¬
quented street ; for a disciple of Mahomet would not permit them
to approach his habitation. Continually exposed to the cruel
treatment of the populace ; massacred sometimes without mercy
by an armed mob ; subjected to all the inclemency of the ele¬
ments ; hardly finding the means of supporting a wretched exist¬
ence ; meagre ; irritated to madness ; frequently eaten up by a
mange which degenerates into a species of leprosy ; hideous even
from the forlornness of their condition; those miserable animals

HYDROPHOBIA.

189

inspire as much compassion, as they excite contempt and indig¬
nation against the barbarians among whom they live. It is
undoubtedly astonishing that amidst a life of misery and suffering,
many of those dogs should not be subject to attacks of the
hydrophobia. But this malady, rare in the northern parts of
Turkey, is still more so in the southern provinces of that empire,
and is totally unknown under the burning sky of Egypt. I never
saw a single instance of it ; and the natives whom I consulted
on the subject, had not so much as an idea of the disease.’

We willingly drop this distressing part of our subject; but we
must not conceal that though hydrophobia generally makes its
appearance in man between the thirtieth and fortieth days after
the communication of the virus, fatal cases that have occurred
after a lapse of eighteen months are on record ; and there is not
wanting high authority for the assertion that a person cannot be
considered perfectly safe till two years at least have passed,
reckoning from the time when the injury was received.

‘ I come, Graymalkin ! ’

Macbeth.

If dogs are the friends of mankind, their companions in their
walks, and their partners in the pleasures of the chase, cats may
be considered as the chosen allies of womanhood. Not that the
sterner sex have not shown as much fondness for these luxurious
quadrupeds as the ladies have exhibited, ay, even those who cradle
the blind offspring of their Selimas, and adorn the pensive
mother’s neck with coral beads. Mahomet, Montaigne, Richelieu,
and Johnson, were not exactly simpletons, though it might be
difficult to make a modern dandy understand the kindness of
heart that sent the lexicographer out to purchase oysters for his
favourite Hodge, when he was old and sick, and fancied no other
food.

When we reflect that these purring associates of the Englishman’s
fireside are so closely connected with the untranslatable word £ com¬
fort’ — a word that has neither name nor representation out of this
4 nook-shotten isle,’ and its snuggeries of sea-coal and hearth-rugs
with which their satisfactory song harmonizes so soothingly ; that
they are the guardians of the store-room, the larder, the dairy, and
the granary ; that they

‘ Watch o’er the weal of Rhedycinian cheese;

And melting marhle of collegiate brawn
For heads of houses guard, and lords in lawn;’

we are led to inquire the cause of the hatred, even where no anti¬
pathy exist, which rages against this maligned and persecuted
race. The gardener and the gamekeeper, the latter especially,
have some grounds for their deadly enmity ; the schoolboy
too often looks upon them as having been brought into the
world for the express purpose of being shod with walnut-
shells, or thrown off the church tower with blown bladders tied
to their necks ; and of being sent to navigate the horsepond
in a bowl, there to withstand the attacks of a fleet of water-

SCHOOLBOY VENGEANCE.

191

dogs, and, finally, die by the teeth of his terrier ; * whilst
the murderous cat-skinner only sees in them subjects appointed
to be flayed alive. These are their open and avowed foes ; their
secret enemies are scarcely less numerous. Why is this ?

The answer may be, perhaps, found in a dark and disgraceful
portion of the criminal annals of this country, of which more
anon.

* We cannot resist the temptation of recording a case of tempered
schoolboy vengeance. Some few years ago, horticulture was the fashion,
not to say passion, at a certain school; and the master thinking, wisely
enough, that the boys might have worse pursuits, encouraged the zeal with
which they cultivated their little gardens. Whether any of these horti¬
culturists aftenvards belonged to the agricultural society of a celebrated col¬
lege in one of our universities, whose members, in their zeal for improvement,
one fine night ploughed up the lawn in the middle of the quad, with sofas,
and planted the Principal out of his own chapel, with shrubs and trees trans¬
planted from his own garden, does not appear ; the schoolboys, at all events,
dibbled, and delved, and sowed, and weeded, and were kept out of mischief.
But who shall reckon upon happiness ? There was a tremendous bluff-
visaged, dark-coloured tabby cat, belonging to a little spiteful tailor, who
lived hard by. This provoking beast nightly tore up their crocuses, polyan¬
thuses, and hyacinths, and laid low whole rows of mustard and cress : nor was
there not a suspicion that in the destruction of the last-mentioned articles
puss was assisted by his master; for though the flowers were prostrate, the
esculents for the most part vanished altogether. The boys went up in a body
with a complaint to him of the shears, reciting the damage done, and warn¬
ing him that he should keep his cat at home at night. Their just indignation
was treated with derision by the little tailor, who received the remonstrance
seated at his door, pipe in mouth. Two or three of the strongest of the youths
were for executing summary justice on the irritating schneider , and quenching
him and his pipe together at the pump ; but they were restrained by a sage
among them, who, looking unutterable things at the smoker, informed him
that he had better look out, or he would not know his cat again when he saw
it, and left him in no very comfortable state of mind.

After the exhibition of much ingenuity and many failures, the trespasser was,
at last, caught, bagged, and carried into a room, where a convention of out¬
raged gardeners, immediately proceeded to consult upon his doom. Two or
three of the greatest sufferers loudly gave their voices for death : others were
for sparing his life, but curtailing his tail of its fair proportions, and otherwise
maltreating him so that he should never be the same cat again. At length
the sage, who was merciful, but determined, begged to be heard. He said
that the tailor was in fault more than the cat, which did but after its kind in
frequenting gardens, if suffered to go abroad at night; and as he had by him
some of the best fyn zegellak (wel brand en vast lioud) for electrical experi¬
ments, he proposed to make the unhappy bagster a warning to all tailors to
keep their cats from wandering. He explained his plan, which was adopted
nem con., and having dissolved sealingwax quant suff. in spirit of wine, dipped
a brush therein ; and while two assistants, who were bit and scratched worse
than Hogarth’s actress in the barn, held the victim, painted the struggling
Tommy all over of a bright vermilion, with a masterly hand. The tableau
vivant was then set down, and home he bolted in the gloaming. How the cat
entered the tailor’s house, and what the tailor thought of the advent no one
knew; but it was observed that the tailor’s hair became rather suddenly
gray. For two days nobody saw either him or his cat. On the third, he,
remembering the threat of the philosophic gardener, walked into the school¬
room, at high school-time, with his vermilion quadruped under his arm, held
him up before the master, and asked, with a solemn voice and manner, ‘if that

192

CATS.

But we must first say a word or two, touching the natural his¬
tory of this familiar beast : no easy task ; for the origin of the house
cat, like that of many other of our domestic animals, has puzzled
the learned ; and the stock from whence it sprung, is still, in the
opinion of some, a problem for the zoologist to solve.

That the cat was domesticated among the Egyptians, we have
pregnant evidence, not only in their custom of shaving their brows
when their cats died a natural death, but also in the mummies
found in their catacombs* (no pun meant), and in the figures of
these animals on the monuments of that ancient country, —perched
on the top of the Sistrum, for instance, and supposed to represent
the moon — probably from the following mythological legends.

Jove, tired of state affairs and Juno’s tongue, sought, one day,
a little relaxation in the company of his pretty Lajtona twins,
Apollo and Hecate. To amuse them, he bade them try their hand
at creation, and do something towards filling the empty globule,
now called earth. Apollo set his wits to work, and produced
man. No one likes to be outdone ; so, as Diana saw at a glance
that there was no going beyond her brother’s handiwork, she
tried to turn the laugh against him, and concocted a sort of H. B.
of her brother’s production, in the form of an ape. No one likes
to be laughed at : so Pol cut his sister’s fun rather short, by
turning up a ramping lion. Di, however, was not to be frightened,
and played another card of ridicule in the shape of a cat. Apollo,
upon this, got into good humour, and, determined to beat his lively
antagonist at her own weapons, made a mouse, — which Hecate’s
cat immediately ate up. The lovely sex always have it hollow in
matters of finesse.

Her success at this game seems to have pleased the Goddess :
for when Typhon and his giant host pressed the gods so hard, that
they were compelled to flee into Egypt, and save themselves from
his fury by shooting their souls into the bodies of quadrupeds and
birds, she chose the form of a cat for her metamorphosis, whilst her
brother was glad to escape into the person of a crow, and her
papa into the woolly carcass of a ram.

No, say others, that is a fable ; but the reason why the cat was
sacred to Hecate is this: The triple night consequent on Jupiter’s
visit to Alcmena, set all Olympus a wondering ; and it was not long
before Juno, whose acuteness was not suffered to become dull for

wjis the way a cat ought to he treated ?’ The master, who was taken by sur¬
prise, burst out into a fit of laughter, in which he was, of course, joined by
the boys. The crest-fallen tailor turned round, and with the port of a much-
injured man, walked out with his rubicund cat under his arm as he had walked

in.

* Herod, u., c. 66, 67.

DOMESTIC CAT AND KITTENS,

ORIGIN OF THE HOUSE CAT.

193

want of exercise, soon discovered tlie liaison. The months rolled on.
The Queen of heaven sent for the Parcae, and gave them her im¬
perial orders, which they sternly obeyed, and poor Alcmena had a
weary time of it. Her gossip, Galanthis, after scolding, beseeching,
and saying and doing all that a kind woman, almost at her wit’s
end, from witnessing the agonies of her bosom friend, could, to make
an impression on their stony hearts, had recourse to a little decep¬
tion. She persuaded the Fates and Lucina, that it was the will of
Jove that Hercules should be born. They believed her, dissolved
the spell,

‘ And made that lady light other sons.’

The good Galanthis, however, paid dearly for her friendly ruse:
she had provoked the fiercest of all vengeance — that of a deceived
Queen, and was turned into a cat.* Hecate, though a bit of a
prude, was so struck with commiseration, that she chose the me¬
tamorphosed dame as her consecrated attendant. Accordingly
it was said that the number of the cat’s offspring was a gradual
progression — one, two, three, four, and so on, always augmenting,
till a litter of seven was produced, and the total amounted to
twenty-eight, the days of a lunation, and that the pupil of the
cat’s luminous eye dilated and diminished as the moon waxed or
waned.

Leaving the mythologists to settle the question how Hecate
and the cat became associated — a connexion, which at one dismal
period, many were made to rue, we must return to Egypt, where,
without doubt, the cat was domesticated. Thence it may have
come to the Greeks, and from them to the Homans, and from the
Homans to the rest of the world, as far as their empire extended.

But why seek so far, when in your indigenous wild- cat, you
may find the ancestor of the playful house-kitten that now chases
the straw which you draw before it ?

So thought Linnaeus, Pennant, and Cuvier.

In opposition to this high authority, are arranged the following
reasons, historical and zoological :

By the laws of Howel ddci (Howel the GoodJ who died in the
year 948, after a reign of thirty-three years over South Wales,
and eight years over the whole of the principality, the price of a
titling, before it could see, was to be a penny ; till it caught a

* There is another version, setting forth how Galanthis was turned into a
weazel by Lucina, who, delegated by Juno, sat near the door of Alcmena’s
house, with her legs crossed and her fingers joined, in the form of an old woman.
Galanthis, suspecting Juno’s jealousy, and that the cross-legged old woman
Avas the cause of Alcmena’s protracted pain, rushed out of the house with a
joyful countenance, and informed the crone that the birth had taken place.
Whereupon Lucina uncrossed her legs and loosed her fingers, when Hercules
and Ipliicles were immediately born.

O

194

CATS.

mouse, twopence; unci when it commenced mouser, fourpence;
but then it was a sine qua non that it should be perfect in its senses
of hearing and seeing, be a good mouser, a good nurse, and
have the claws entire. If there happened to be a failure in
these essentials, the vendor was to forfeit a third of its value to
the vendee. Again ; he who stole or killed the cat that guarded
the prince’s granary, was to forfeit a milch ewe, its fleece and
lamb ; or as much wheat as when poured on the cat suspended by
its tail (the head touching the floor), would form a heap high
enough to cover the tip of the tail.*

Pennant, who quotes these laws in his British Zoology (1777),
observes, that this evidence almost proves to a demonstration, that
cats were not aborigines of these islands, nor known to the earliest
inhabitants ; and yet in his Synopsis of Quadrupeds , (1771), and in
his History of Quadrupeds (3d edition, 1793), he makes the wild cat
of these islands, and of the woods of most parts of Europe, the
stock of the domestic variety, and, in the very same work that
contains the observation above quoted, says, speaking of the wild
cat, ‘ This animal does not differ specifically from the tame cat ;
the latter being originally of the same kind, but altered in colour
and in some other trifling accidents, as are common to animals
reclaimed from the woods and domesticated.’

Now, though domestication will do a great deal in modifying
form and colour, there are some points of difference between the
true wild cat and tame cats, which are well worthy of notice.

The wild cat is described by Pennant, as being three or four
times as large as the house cat. The teeth and claws are, to use
his expression, ‘tremendous,’ and the animal is altogether more
robust. Domestication does not, generally, diminish the size of
animals ; on the contrary, it is the experience of every day that
the tendency is of an opposite quality, unless the care of the breeder
be directed to secure a comparatively minute race ; as, for example,
in the case of Bantam fowls and lap-dogs. The tail of the wild
cat is stout and as large at the extremity, as it is in the middle
and at its insertion, if not larger ; that of the house cat tapers from
the base to the tip. Though colour is but a treacherous guide, it
should not pass unnoticed that the tail of the wild cat always
terminates in a black tuft.

Well ; but the house cat will breed with the wild cat, and the
offspring will be fruitful. Even if this were satisfactorily proved,
it would not, in our opinion, be entirely conclusive; most of the
so-called wild cats, however, are merely house cats, which have
left their homes, or whose homes have left them, and which have

* Leges Wallicco.

WILD CAT3.

195

taken to a vagabond and marauding life. Place one of these
vagrant cats by the side of a real Scottish wild cat, and you will
soon perceive the difference. The latter looks like a stout dwarf
tiger ; and his trenchant teeth, broad foot, and powerful claws,
well justify the motto of the Clan Chattan, 4 Touch not the cat
but* the glove.’

Dr Ruppell discovered in Nubia a cat (felis maniculata), and M.
Temminck agrees with the doctor in thinking that this is the stock
from which the Egyptian and our domestic cats sprang. It is one
third smaller than the European wild cat, and the proportions of
the limbs are more delicate ; indeed, Dr Ruppell calls it kleinpfotige
Katze , but its tail is longer. Its stature is about that of a middle-
sized house cat. He found it in the craggy and bushy country
near Ambukol, west of the Nile, and, on comparing a specimen
with the skeleton of a cat’s mummy, the latter agreed with the
former in the size of the body, the shape of the head, and the length
of the tail. On this and other evidence, Dr Ruppell comes to the
conclusion that his felis maniculata is descended from the domestic
cat of the Egyptians.

Sir William Jardine concurs with Dr Riippell andM. Temminck ;
out Mr Bell, and his opinion is worthy of all respect, differs from
them, principally upon the ground that the tail of felis maniculata ,
instead of being taper, like that of our house cat, terminates in a
thickened and tufted extremity, although it is somewhat slender
in the greater part of its length. The ears, too, Mr Bell observes,
are much longer and broader, and the legs are longer and more
slender.

‘ Who shall decide, when doctors disagree ? ’

We have seen how the cat is associated with Hecate ; and wo
accordingly find it acting a conspicuous part in witchcraft.

The expostulating tabby, in Gay’s Fables, says to the old
beldame,

‘ ’Tis infamy to serve a hag,

Cats are thought imps, her hroom a nag;

And hoys against our lives combine,

Because, ’tis said, your cats have nine.’

The cat probably owes this reputation of a ninefold vitality,
not only to its extraordinary endurance of violence, and its recovery
from injuries which, frequently, leave it for dead, but also to the
belief that a witch was empowered to take on her a cat’s body
nine times.

Absurd as these fancies now appear to us, they become matter

* Without.

19 G

CATS,

of grave and even painful interest, if considered as to their effect
on the manners of the time when the belief in witchcraft was rife,
and when hundreds of wretched old women, in these islands
alone, were sent out of life ‘in a red gown’ (the slang of that
day for being ‘ burnt quick’ or alive), after undergoing the most
excruciating tortures to make them confess the impossibilities for
which they suffered. The smile that rises upon reading these
absurdities is changed to the frown of horror and execration at
the fate of these unhappy creatures, and the stupid zeal of their
prosecutors.

Our gentle King Jamie, the great malleus malejicaruin was,
naturally enough, supposed to be the special object of the wrath
of the whole sisterhood, and, accordingly, we find that on his
return from Denmark, in 1590, all the powers of darkness were
in league to prevent the completion of his matrimonial union
with the princess of that state. Whilst a favouring gale for¬
warded the rest of the fleet, the royal pair were vexed by storms,
and the ship that carried the queen sprang a leak. Nor was the
mischief confined to royalty, for the loss of a passage-boat between
Leith and Kinghorn was attributed to the war of elements raised
on this occasion. Here is a specimen of one of these conjurations :

‘Agnes Sampsoun, Jonnet Campbell, Jolinne Fean, Geilie Duncane, and
Meg Dyn, baptesit ane catt in the wobster’s* hous, in the maner following :
First, twa of thame held ane fingar in the ane syd of the cliimnay cruik ; and
ane vther held ane vther fingar in the vther syde, the twa nebbisf of the
fingaris meting togidder. Than they patt the catt thryis throw the lynkis
of the cruik, and passet it thryis vnder the chimnay. Thaireftir at Beigie
Todis hous, thay knitt to the foure feit of the catt foure jountisj of men;
quliilk being done, the said Jonet fetcliit it to Leith; and about midniclit,
she, and twa Luikehop,§ and two wyfeis callit Stobeis, came to the peir lieid,
and saying thir Avordis, “ see that thair be na desait amang ws,” and thay caist
the catt in the see, sa far as thay mycht, quliilk swam owre and came againe :
and thay that war in the panis, caist in an vther catt in the see at xi liouris,
efter quliilk, be thair sorcerie and inchantmentis, the boit periscliit betuix
Leith and Kingliorne.’||

We also find in an old pamphlet (1591) ‘Newes from Scotland,
&c. &c. &c.,’ the following version of an enchantment on the same
occasion :

‘Moreover she confessed that she took a cat and christened it, &c. &c.,
and that in the night following, the said cat was conveyed into the middest
of the sea by all these witches sayling in their riddles, or cives,^[ and so left
the said cat right before the towne of Leith in Scotland. This doone, there
did arise such a tempest at sea, as a greater hath not been seen, &c.’ —
‘Againe, it is confessed that the said christened cat was the cause of the
Kinges Majestie’s sliippe, at his comming fortlie of Denmarke, had acontrarie
wintle to the rest of the sliippes then being in his companie, which thing was

* Weaver’s. t Joints.

f Extremities. § Two persons of that name.

|] Trial of Agnes Sampsoun, 1590. ‘In a sieve I’ll thither sail.’ — Macbeth.

ASSOCIATED WITH WITCHES.

197

most straunge and true, as tlie Kinges Majestie acknowledgetli, for when the
rest of the sliippes had a fair and good winde, then was the winde contrarie,
and altogether against his Majestie, &c.’

Nor was this an unconvivial expedition ; for 4 they together went
to sea, each one in a riddle or cive, and went in the same very sub¬
stantially with flaggons of wine, making merrie, and drinking by
the way in the same riddles or cives.’

In 1594 we find a convocation of sorcerers assembled at Seaton
Thorn christening a cat, and making the poor beast an oblation to
Satan ; and this also stated in a criminal trial*.

Isobell Griersounf had, it seems, a grudge against Adam Clark,
and to feed it fat, she, 4 in the likeness of her awin catt, accompanied
with ane grit number of vther cattis, in ane devilish maner enterit
within the hous quhair tliay maid ane grit and feirful noyis and
trnble, quhairby the said Adam, then lying in his bed, with his
wyfe and seruand, appreliendit sic ane grit feir that tliay wer liklie
to gang mad.’ Another witch lady was seen making her escape
by 4 ane hole in the ruife,’ and another stated that she was among
4 the cattis that onbesett him.’ In short, it was the favourite shape
in which the witches played their pranks.

‘ Under the cradle I did creep
By day, and when the child was asleep
At night, I suck’d the hreath and rose
And plucked the nodding nurse hy tl.c nose.’

Even in our own times we have seen a good old nurse drive a
cat out of the room with much significance of manner, that it
might not 4 suck the child’s breath ;’ nor is such caution to be
wondered at, when it was the fashionable form for the witches to
appear in at their sabbath. It is recorded of Fontcnelle, that he
confessed to having been brought up in the belief, that all the
cats deserted their dwellings on the Eve of St John, to hie them
to the infernal assembly.

But, as far as our islands were concerned, such gross super¬
stitions and disgraceful trials as we have noticed, were not con¬
fined to Scotland. The following depositions of Matthew Hop¬
kins, Gent., appear in an old tract (1645) intituled, 4 A true and
exact relation of the severall informations, examinations, and con¬
fessions of the late witches, arraigned and executed in the county
of Essex. Who were arraigned and condemned at the late ses¬
sions, holden at Chelmesford before the Right Honorable Robert,
Earl of Warwiclce, and severall of his majesties justices of
peace, the 29 of July , 1645. Wherein the several murthers and
devilfish witchcrafts, committed on the bodies of men, women, and
children, and divers cattell, are fully discovered. Published by Authorities

* Trial of Beigis Tod May, 1G08. f Tried in 1G07.

198

CATS.

The informations appear to have been taken before ‘ Sir Har-
bottell Grimston, Knight and Baronet, one of the Members of the
Honourable House of Commons : and Sir Thomas Bowes, Knight,
another of his majesties justices of the peace for the county.’

The first informant is ‘ John Kivit, of Mannintree, Tayler ;
who, on the 21st March, 1645, deposes that about Christmas
last, his wife was taken sick and lame, with such violent fits that
lie verily conceived her sickness was something more than merely
natural ; whereupon, about a fortnight since, he went to a
cunning woman, the wife of one Hovye, at Hadleigh in Suffolk,
who told him that his wife was cursed by two women who were
liis near neighbours, the one dwelling a little above his house,
and the other beneath his house (which stood on the side of a
hill), whereupon he believed his said wife was bewitched by one
Elizabeth Clarke, alias Bedingfield, that dwelt above his house,
‘for that the said Elizabeths mother and some other of her kings-
folke did suffer death for witchcraft and murther.’

The tailor having laid this very satisfactory and sure foundation
on the 21st, Ilopkins the witchfinder, who lived by his nefarious
trade, and had doubtless either got scent of the case or had been
apprized of it by the Manningtree sages, makes his appearance
on the 25th. The scoundrel’s deposition would suffer by more
curtailment than is absolutely necessary, and therefore we give
it as far as we can in his own words.

‘ This informant saith, that the said Elizabeth Clarke (sus¬
pected for a witch as aforesaid) being by the appointment of the
said justices watched certaine nights, for the better discovery of
her wicked practises, this informant came into the roome where
the said Elizabeth was watched as aforesaid, the last night,
being the 24th of this instant March, but intended not to have
stayed long there. But the said Elizabeth forthwith told this
informant and one Master Sterne there present, if they would
stay and do the said Elizabeth no hurt, shee would call one of her
white impes and play with it in her lap ; but this informant told
her, they would not allow of it ; and that staying there a while
longer, the said Elizabeth confessed’ — ("Here follows an alleged
confession, the particulars of which we must omit ; suffice it that
the prince of darkness is not made to possess the most refined
taste, though it is stated that he appeared ‘in the shape of a
proper gentleman with a laced band.’) The deposition then
goes on: ‘And within a quarter of an houre after there ap¬
peared an impe like to n dog, which was white, with some sandy
spots, and seemed to be very fat and plumpe, with very short
legges, who forthwith vanished away; and the said Elizabeth
said the name of that impe was Jcirmara : and immediately there

ASSOCIATED WITH WITCHES.

199

appeared another impe, which sliee called Vinegar Tom , in the
shape of a greyhound with long legges : and the said Elizabeth
then said that the next impe should be a black impe, and should
come for the said Master Sterne , which appeared, but presently
vanished; and the last that appeared was in the shape of a
polcat, but the head somewhat bigger. And the said Elizabeth
then told this informant that she had five impes of her owne,
and two of the impes of the old Beldam Weste (meaning one
Anne Weste , widow) who is now also suspected to be guilty of
witchcraft : and said sometimes the impes of the old beldam
sucked on the said Elizabeth; and sometimes her impes sucked
on the old beldam Weste. And the said Elizabeth further told
this informant that Satan would never let her rest, or be quiet,
until she did consent to the killing of the hogges of one Mr
Edwards of Mannintree aforesaid, and the horse of one Robert
Tagler of the same towne : and this informant further saith, that
going from the house of the said Mr Edwards to his own
house about nine or ten of the clock that night, with his grey¬
hound with him, he saw the greyhound suddenly give a jumpe,
and ran as shee had been in full course after an hare ; and that
when this informant made haste to see what his greyhound so
eagerly pursued, he espied a white thing about the bignesse of a
kitlyn, and the greyhound standing aloofe from it; and that by
and by the said white impe or kitlyn daunced about the said
greyhound, and by all likelihood bit off a piece of the flesh of the
shoulder of the greyhound; for the greyhound came shrieking
and crying to this informant with a piece of flesh torn from her
shoulder. And this informant further saith, that coming into his
own yard that night he espied a black thing, proportioned like a
cat, onely it was thrice as big, sitting on a strawberry-bed, and
fixing the eyes on this informant ; and when he went towards it,
it leaped over the pale towards this informant, as he thought, but
ran quite through the yard, with his greyhound after it to a great
gate, which was undersett with a paire of tumbrell strings, and
did throw the said gate wide open, and then vanished; and the
said greyhound returned againe to this informant, shaking and
trembling exceedingly.’

Mr Matthew Hopkins having delivered himself of this dainty
farago, ‘ Mr J ohn Sterne, Gent,’ on the same day confirms him,
of course ; spicing his own account, however, a little more highly
with ‘Impes.’ ‘And the said Elizabeth desired this informant,
and the rest that were in the roome with her to sit downe, and said
she would show this informant and the rest some of her impes :
and within half an hour there appeared a white thing in the likeness
of a cat, but not altogether so big: and being asked if she would

200

CATS.

not be afraid of licr impcs, the said Elizabeth answered, “ What,
doe yee thinke I am afraid of my children?” And that she called
the name of that white impe Hoult ,’ &c. &c.

Then follow five other informations, also upon oath, to the
same tune, and the confession of the poor overworn old woman
herself, giddy for lack of sleep — and upon this evidence she was
executed at Chelmsford.

Hopkins, having made his footing good, witch prosecutions, of
course, abounded in the county. The conviction of Elizabeth
Clarke was made the stepping-stone for that of Anne Leech, who
was also executed at Chelmsford, as was Ilellen Clark. His
depositions do not indeed appear in the two last mentioned cases,
which were heard before the justices in April, of the same year ;
but he was, doubtless, busy on the spot, aiding and abetting ;
indeed, we find him in that same month giving his information
upon oath in the case of Rebecca West, against whom a true
bill was found by the grand jury ; though she escaped capital
punishment on her trial, being ‘acquitted of life and death.’
Anne Weste was not so fortunate, for she was executed at
Manningtree, on the first of August in that year.

Our readers, if we have any, must be sick at heart of these
melancholy and disgusting details ; but before we close the
painful catalogue, we must draw their attention to one more
case ; for it strongly shows how completely the mania for witch¬
finding had pervaded all ranks, reaching even that holy profession,
the duty of whose members it is to preach peace on earth, and
good-will towards men. We have, indeed, the information of
‘John Edes, Clerke,’ in the cases of Rebecca and Anne West,
or Weste ; but in those cases there was much more evidence
such as it was. In the following case, the Rev. Joseph Long
appears to be the principal and almost the only witness.

‘ The Information of Joseph Long, Minister of Clacton, in the
county of Essex, taken before the said just., April 29, 1645.’

‘ This informant saith, that Anne, the wife of John Cooper,
of Clacton aforesaid, being accused for a witch, confessed unto
this informant, that she the said Anne was guilty of the sin of
witchcraft ; and that she hath had three black impes * * * * called
by the names of Wynowe, Jeso , and Pcinu. And this informant
saith, that the said Anne told him, that once she cursed a colt of
one William Cottingams, of Clacton aforesaid, and the said colt
broke his neck presently after going out of a gate ; and the said
Anne further confessed unto this informant, that she the said
Anne offered to give unto her daughter, Sarah Cooper, an impe
in the likeness of a gray kite, to suck on the said Sarah ; which
impe’s name, the said Anne called Tomboy, and told the said

ASSOCIATED WITH WITCHES.

201

Sarah, there was a cat for her ; and this informant saith, that
the said Anne confessed unto him, that she the said Anne, about
ten yeers since, falling out with Johan, the wife of Gregory Rous,
of Clacton aforesaid, the said Anne Cooper sent one of her impes
to kill the daughter of the said Gregory and Johan, named Mary.
And this informant saith, that to his own knowledge, about the
same time, the said child was strangely taken sick, and languishing,
within a short time died.’

The deposition of this clergyman seems to have been nearly
all sufficient of itself, for the only other information given in this
case is that of Roger Ilempson, taken before the said justices
on the same day ; this compendious piece of evidence runs thus :

‘ This informant doth confirm the information of the said
Joseph Long, and concurs in every particular.’

The unhappy woman against whom this miserable stuff was
recorded, was also executed at Manningtree, on the 1st of August
in the same year.

In 16G1 we find the Demon Drummer of Tedworth, among
other varied pranks, in the house of Master John Mompesson,
purring, one night, in the children’s bed like a cat, ‘ and at that
time the clothes and children were lift up from the bed, and six
men could not keep them down.’

The lingering but expiring belief in this wretched sort of
witchcraft is admirably touched by Addison* in his account of
Moll White and her Cat, which, according to Sir Roger de
Coverley, Gay under as bad report as Moll White herself; for
besides that Moll was said often to accompany her in the same
shape, the cat was reported to have spoken twice or thrice in her
life, and to have played several pranks above the capacity of an
ordinary cat.’ The worthy knight’s chaplain is made to act a very
different part from the odious character assumed by the minister of
Clacton, for Mr Spectator tells us that he had found upon inquiry,
that Sir Roger was several times staggered with the reports that
had been brought him concerning this old woman, and would fre¬
quently have bound her over to the sessions, had not his chaplain
with much ado persuaded him to the contrary.

We willingly quit this dark part of our subject, and return to
honest every-day household cats ; observing only, at parting, that
if any modern Canidia should wish to concoct a charm, the brain
of a black cat, the blacker the better, is a special in¬
gredient.

The animal mechanism of this lion of the mice is admirably
adapted to the work that the creature has to do. The apparatus

* In the year 1711.

202

CATS.

by which the claws are retracted, and sheathed within the folds of
the integuments, so that they may be unworn by ordinary pro¬
gression, and always ready for use, is a most beautiful consentaneous
arrangement of bone, elastic ligament and tendon. When the claws
of a cat are thus retracted, nothing is softer than

‘ The velvet of her paws ; ’

Nothing can be more noiseless than the silent tread with which she
steals along on these pattes de velours ; but the concealed weapons
are ready to start on the instant into sharp and lacerating action —
quick as the lancets of a cupping instrument in the hands of the
most skilful operator. How she crouches, as if she would almost con¬
ceal herself in the ground when she settles herself for her spring — with
what slashing force does she throw herself on her nimble four-
footed prey — with what agility does she leap into the air, and
strike down her feathered game! Her moveable spine enables
her to turn in an almost inconceivably small compass; and with
the aid of the powerful muscles of the posterior extremities and
her clutching claws, she is up a tree in an instant. Her powerful
canine teeth — her scissor-like back teeth, for they can hardly bo
called molars, and her rough tongue, with its horny retroverted
papillae, are all fashioned to assist in the destruction and dissection
of her prey ; that is, when she has satiated herself with the enjoy¬
ment of its agonies of terror, and fruitless, though desperate efforts
to escape.*

Some have found it difficult to account for the cause of the
cat’s proficiency in the art of ingeniously tormenting : a scene of
this sort is a horrible sight to any one of good feeling ; but it is
not at all clear that the cat, though she evidently takes great
delight in the sport, perpetrates the act as a mere gratification of
wanton cruelty. On the contrary, it seems that she resorts to
this agonizing amusement as an exercise to sharpen her powers,
or to keep, as it were, her hand in. A kitten, three parts grown,
is very much given to this pastime. The mouse, in its paroxysms
of terror, leaps aloft: the cat secures the victim with a bound.
She then remains quite quiet, giving the panting trembler time to
recover, and, presently, the poor mouse attempts to steal off gently.
She suffers him to go on — he quickens his pace — he is near the
door — you feel almost certain that he is safe : bounce she pitches
on the wretch, and has him secure. In this way the mouse is
made to exhaust all his powers of strength and ingenuity in his

* Those who wish to make themselves minutely acquainted with the
organization of the common cat should consult the elaborate and accurate
work of Straus-Durcklieim, entitled: ‘ Anatomie Descriptive et Comparative
du Chat,’ 4to. 1845.

PANTOMIMIC CAT.

203

anxious endeavours to escape; whilst the cat, like a cunning
fencer, is exercising herself to foresee and counteract every at¬
tempt. Sometimes a cat with kittens will slightly cripple two or
three young rats which she keeps under surveillance, occasionally
turning out one for the sport and practice of herself and family.
But a cat knows better than to pursue this system with a bird
which she has knocked down with a coup depatte: no; she kills the
winged prey at once.

Familiar as this animal is to every eye, it seems to be the
opprobrium of painters. With one or two brilliant exceptions, of
which Edwin Landseer is the chief, artists generally fail in repre¬
senting a house cat. So, when it is brought upon the stage, how
seldom does the actor understand his part ? When a cat is in the
bills, we are not often absent, and most catawampous failures has
it been our lot to see. But in this branch of art, also, a genius
occasionally appears.

Upon one occasion a Tartar enchanter had been for some time
on the stage, magnificently clad, and with the lower part of his
person dazzlingly enveloped in something like a Brobdignag card-
purse : not only did he not get a hand, but his insufferable dulness
began to endanger the piece. Coughs became extremely prevalent,
and an awful sibilation from the pit

‘Rose like an exhalation;’

when to him entered a cat about the size of a leopard, but ad¬
mirably dressed, walked up to a tree, and raising himself on his
hind-legs against it, began clawing, as cats do, to keep their talons
in trim. This immediately brought down the house ; one of the
greatest philosophers of the day who was present exclaiming :
‘ That’s an observer ! ’ and leading the rounds of applause like
the trunk-maker of old. We know how difficult it is to get
human artists to enter into the conception of this extremely
difficult part ; but when the actor succeeds, the success is perfect.
Could any one or any thing excel Jenmj Vertpre in the ‘Femme
Cliatte ? ’

A docile doggie, sewed up in cats’ skins, has sometimes been
substituted ; but do what you may, he will be a doggie still. It
was a four-footed actor of this description that performed the cat
in that pretty pantomime — pantomimes were pantomimes then —
4 Harlequin Whittington.’ When the rats ran about ‘to eat
all up,’ to the great consternation of King Longobarobonyo, and
the infinite delight of the holyday children, both small and great,
down the captain of the ship put Whittington’s cat. The cat
did his duty, and was always cruelly severe upon one particular
scamperer, evidently not formed of pasteboard, and made to feel

204

CATS.

‘lie was no actor there:’ so far so good, excepting that the
principal performer was rather of the least for a pantomimic cat ;
and moreover pursued his prey more in the canine than the feline
style. Still he got applause, and all went well, save with the
poor real rat, who appeared for that night only. But when the
victorious cat was brought forward to the floats in the arms of
the captain, surrounded by the admiring king and queen, and
their whole court, panting from the recent deed, and with a real
red elongation of tongue hanging out of his mouth, all the terrier
was confessed.

In these days, when the schoolmaster is not only abroad, but
knocketh at the nurserv door, to disenchant the nurslings and
reduce their tales to the simplicity of unromantic matter of fact, we
dare not conceal the appalling fact that doubts have been cast
upon the authenticity of the almost sacred story of 4 Whittington
and his Cat.’

‘Cat?’ say the learned. ‘Bah! Cat it might have been,
but it was no mouser. Do we not know that catta signified a
vessel? Does not the profound Bailey, in his edition of Facciola-
tus and Forcellinus acknowledge this, when under that word catta
he says, ‘ Videtur genus esse navigii , quod et Angli nos dicimus ,
a cat?’ Did not Philip once build a great ship — and how was
it named ? ‘ Tandem ,’ says the erudite Aldrovandus, ‘ Catus
erat navis genus; legimus enim in annalibus Flandrice a Philippo
Burgundione grandem navim Cati nomine ceclificatam fuisse , quee
valli instar esse videbatur; nec preeter rationem cum Ccitcu naves
apud Gellium etiam leganturd We hope here be truths. Whit-
ington’s cat , then, was merely the lucky freight of one of these
vessels, which, well husbanded, and fortunately and skilfully in¬
creased, raised the venturer to the lofty eminence on which is
placed the chair whence the Lord Mayor of London looks down
upon all sublunary things made to be eaten and imbibed. And
we allow you this out of our great mercy ; for if you show any signs
of discontent, it shall go hard but we shall damage the theory that
London has any exclusive right to the story at all. Have no other
countries in Europe such a tale? Is there no such story current
in Asia somewhat generally, and in Persia very particularly ?
When you have answered these questions, and mayhap a few more,
we will condescend further.

Still, as it would be as difficult for the learned of the present
day, say what they will, to convince a thorough-bred cockney
that Whittington’s cat was not a bond fide mouser, as it was for
the learned of a former day to convince Uncle Toby that there
was no consanguinity betwixt the Duchess of Suffolk and her
son, we would advise them not to waste their lore upon ears

WHITTINGTON AND HIS CAT.

205

unalterably charmed by the music of Bow bells chiming so
merrily

‘ Turn again Whittington.’

In the preface to the famous ballad of ‘Sir Richard Whit-
ington’s advancement’ we find it stated* as certain that there
was such a man, a citizen of London, by trade a mercer, one
who left public edifices and charitable works behind him sufficient
to transmit his name to posterity. He founded a house of prayer,
with an allowance for a master, fellows, choristers, clerks, &c., and
an almshouse for thirteen poor men, called Whittington College.
He rebuilt the wretched and loathsome prison standing in his time
at the west gate of the city, and called it Newgate. The better
half of St Bartholomew’s Hospital was built by him, and the fine
library in Grey-friars, afterwards called Christ’s Hospital, as well
as great part of the east end of Guildhall, with a chapel and a
library, in which the records of the city might be kept.

The same authority adds that he was chosen sheriff in the
seventeenth year of the reign of King Richard II., William
Stondon, grocer, being then mayor of London. He was knighted,
and in the twenty-first year of the same reign was chosen mayor —
an office which he held thrice, his second mayoralty being in the
eighth year of Henry IY.’s reign, and his third in the seventh
year of Henry V., to whom he is said to have advanced a very
considerable sum towards carrying on the war in France. His
generous conduct to the conqueror of Agincourt is thus noticed in
the ballad :

‘ More liis fame to advance,
Thousands he lent the king,
To maintain war in France,
Glory from thence to bring.

‘ And after, at a feast

Which he the king did make,
He burnt the bonds all in jest,
And would no money take.

‘ Ten thousand pounds he gave
To his prince willingly;

And would no money have
For his kind coiirtesy.’

We shall now let the writer of the preface speak for himself :

‘He marry’d Alice, the daughter of Hugh and Molde Fitz-
warren : at whose house, traditions say, Whittington liv’d a
servant, when he got his immense riches, by venturing his cat
in one of his master’s ships. However, if we may give credit to

* a.d. 1727.

206

PANTOMIMIC CATS.

his own will, he was a knight’s son; and more obliged to an
English king and prince than to any African monarch, for his
riches. For when he founded Whittington College, and left a
maintenance for so many people, as above related ; they were, as
Stow records it (for this maintenance), bound to pray for the
good estate of Richard Whittington and Alice his wife, their
founders; and for Sir William Whittington and Dame Joan his
wife; and for Hugh Eitzwarren and Dame Molde his wife; the
fathers and mothers of the said Richard Whittington and Alice
his wife : for King Richard II. and Thomas of Woodstock, Duke
of Glocester, special lords and promoters of the said Richard Whit¬
tington, etc.’

Howel in his Londinopolis ,* speaks of Richard Whittington as
having been chosen for the mayoralty four times. The ballad and
the preface above quoted give him that office only thrice.

‘ For to the city’s praise,

Sir Richard Whittington,

Came to he in his days,

Thrice Mayor of London.’

Generous, charitable, and exemplary as was his life, it does not
appear that his bones were left undisturbed ; for the same Howel
says that he was ‘ thrice buried.’

In the chapter ‘Of Yintry Ward’ the last-mentioned author
thus writes : — 1 Then is the fair parish church of Saint Michael,
called Paternoster church, in the Royal-street. This church was
new builded, and made a colledge of S. Spirit and S. Mary,
founded by Richard Whittington, mercer, four times mayor, for
a master, four fellows, masters of arts, clerks, conducts, chorists,
etc. ; and an alms-house, called God’s House or Hospital, for
thirteen poor men, one of them to be tutor, and to have sixteen
pence the week, the other twelve, each of them to have fourteen
pence the week for ever, with other necessary provision, an hutch
with three locks, with a common seal, etc. The licence for this
foundation was granted by King Henry IY. the eleventh of his
reign, and in the twelfth of the same king’s reign, the mayor and
the communalty of London, granted to Richard Whittington, a
vacant piece of ground thereon, to build his colledge in the Royall ;
all which was confirmed by Henry YI. the third of his reign, to John
Coventry, Jenkin Carpenter, and William Grove, executors to
Richard Whittington. This foundation was again confirmed by
Parliament, the tenth of Henry YI., and was suppressed by the
statute of Edward YI. The alms-houses with the poor men do re¬
main, and are paid by the mercers.’

* a.d. 1657.

WHITTINGTON AND HIS CAT.

207

‘This Richard Whittington was (in the church) three times
buried: first, by his executors, under a fair monument; then in
the reign of Edward VI. the parson of that church, thinking
some great riches (as he said) to be buried with him, caused his
monument to be broken, his body to be spoiled of his leaden
sheet, and again the second time to be buried ; and in the reign of
Queen Mary, the parishioners were forced to take him up, and lap
him in lead, as afore, to bury him the third time, and to place his
monument, or the like, over him again, which remaineth still, and
so he rested.’

At all events, so long as London is London, Whittington will
be always associated with his cat ; and no bad associate either,
notwithstanding the vile character given of the slandered quadru¬
ped by Buffon and others, for caprice, treachery, and in short,
every bad quality that would make a companion odious.

Now, though we grant as a general proposition that cats are
attached more to the place than the person, we at the same time
are free to confess our belief that they are capable of the most
steady personal attachment. There are

‘ Some that are mad, if they behold a cat,’

and the antipathy is so strong that they are ready to faint if one
be in the room with them. The gallant Highland chieftain al¬
luded to by Sir Walter Scott, had ‘been seen to change into all
the colours of his own plaid’ on such an occasion. Such
persons cannot be friendly to cats. But though these animals
are too often treated with contumely and cruelty, the instinct of
attachment is so strong, that they will still keep about the place,
notwithstanding the bad treatment they have endured. Though
proverbially loth to wet their feet, they have been known, after
being carried to a far country in bags, in the hope of banishing
them, to swim rivers in their irresistible anxiety to return to their
home.’*

Others again will tell you, ‘ I was disposed to be kind to that
cat ; but whilst I was caressing it the ill-natured beast turned on
me, and bit and scratched me.’ No pleasant operation, certainly,
under any circumstances, but becoming a fearful attack when it is
recollected that the bite of a cat has been known to communicate
the horrible hydrophobia, as fatally as that of the dog. Now in
such cases, unless the animal be diseased, or, at least, in nine out

* Female cats are naturally kindly animals ; and so strongly imbued with,
the love of offspring that, at the season of maternity, all feelings seem to be
merged in that passion. They have been known to suckle leverets and mice,
and young rats have been seen sharing the full tide of maternal affection with
a kitten. In the latter case the cat showed the young rats the same attentions
in caressing them, and dressing their fur, as she did to her kitten.

208

CATS.

of ten, it will be found either that puss’s temper has been ruined
by previous provocations, or that the party attacked does not
know how to play with a cat — he does not understand the animal ;
what he calls play is teasing, and is resented. But when a cat
has been kindly dealt with, and its master or mistress is really
fond of it, few animals are more attached. Such cats have been
seen to follow their patrons about like dogs, escort them to the
door, when permitted to go no farther, and abide patiently on the
mat listening for the much-desired return, from morning till even¬
ing. On the entrance of their friend, no dog could express a
more lively affection, a more hearty welcome. We need only
allude to the story of the favourite cat that would not be parted
from its dying master — was with difficulty driven from the
chamber of death — and even after the body was

‘ Compounded with the dust, whereto ’twas kin,’

would return again and again to the grave, though repeatedly
chased from the churchyard, and there lie, braving cold and
hunger for hours.

To be sure, puss is, as Pennant says, ‘a piteous, squalling,
jarring lover;’ nor need we wonder that the distinguished
northern functionary

‘Unmov’d. unmelted hy the piteous muse'

of a cat-parliament held under his window, fired his blunderbuss
upon the amazed wretches — not, however, till he had quieted his
legal conscience by reading the Riot Act.

The days of puss’s gestation are fifty-six, or thereabout ; and
as she produces two or three litters in a year, and some five or six
at a birth, there is no fear that the cat population will decrease,
notwithstanding the unsparing means used to keep it down. The
young do not see till about the ninth day.

The varieties are almost infinite : among them, the long silken¬
haired Angora, the Persian, the blueish Chartreuse, the tortoise¬
shell, and the typical tabby, are the most prominent. There is
also a tailless variety, which most probably owes its existence to
its unfortunate ancestors having been deprived of that handsome
appendage by accident. To Spain, it is said, we are indebted for
the tortoiseshell variety ; and a male of this colour, or rather
assemblage of colours, being rare, even now, fetches a high
price.* We have seen one of these unhappy varieties chained to

* A friend, — now, alas, no more, — not less noted for liis scientific labours than
his fund of anecdote, told me that some 25 or (by’r Lady) 30 years ago, a tor¬
toiseshell Tom-cat was exhibited in Piccadilly, where the Liverpool Museum
was afterwards shown, and where dowagers and spinsters thronged to his
levee, as was recorded in the caricatures of the day, ‘One hundred guineas,’

CONCLUSION.

200

his little kennel, at the door of a dealer in beasts and birds,
looking as important, and withal as sorrowful, as any wild beast
of them all could look in such a shackled situation. And here
we are almost tempted to give a hint to the President and Council
of the Zoological Society of London, on the subject of the sin of
keeping cats in cages. They certainly were once guilty of such
incarceration ; but we hope that they have repented and let their
prisoners out. At all events, the bereavement* which they have
recently had to lament disarms all censure ; and for the incar¬
cerated cats, if incarcerated they still be, we can breathe no
better wish than a speedy deliverance from their gaol, even if it
be to embark with the grim ferryman on their transportation to the
Feline Elysium.

‘ There shall the worthies of the whisker’d race,

Elysian mice o’er floors of sapphire chace,

’Midst beds of aromatic marum stray,

Or raptur’d rove beside the milky way.’

said my philosphical friend of many tales, ‘ was the price asked ; and I
saw many a longing, lingering, coronetted coach at the door of the exhibition
room.’ The narrator was William Clift, the friend of John Hunter, and, for
many years, Curator of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, in which
office he was succeeded by his distinguished son-in-law, Richard Owen.

* After a gestation of fourteen months and twenty days, the first giraffe
ever born in Europe, came into the world at one o’clock, on Wednesday, the
19tli of June, 1839, at the gardens of the Zoological Society of London, in
the Regent’s-park. It was a male, strong and hearty, and stood on its out¬
stretched legs two hours after its birth.

It was a most beautiful creature, and almost a perfect miniature of the full
grown animal, standing about six feet high, the principal difference being in
the smallness of the white divisions that separated the great spots. The
horns, too, were relatively smaller; and the frontal protuberance was not
developed. Not in the least shy, it came up to be caressed ; and its full,
large, lucid eye, with its long silken lashes, was lovely.

The mother was not unkind to her offspring, but she would not let it come
near her to receive nourishment. Persisting in this prohibition, she lost the
power of affording it: still the vigorous young animal throve admirably to all
appearance, upon cow’s-milk, and there was every reason to hope that it
would be brought up well by hand.

On Friday morning, the 27th, at six o’clock, it was frisking about the
large box, or rather spacious apartment, in which it was confined with its
mother; and at half-past ten was dead. On the post mortem examination, the
first three stomachs were found in a healthy state ; but the fourth was slightly
inflamed, and the rest of the alimentary canal presented a similar condition.
The inference to be drawn from this seems to be that its food disagreed with
it. Not the slightest blame can attach to any one from this untoward event.
The conduct of the keepers, both before and after the birth was exemplary ;
and we have only to hope that if Za'ida should present the society with
another baby giraffe, that she will be able and willing properly to fulfil the
duties of a mother (1839).

Since the last paragraph was written Zai'da has produced no less than three
young ones, all healthy males. She nursed them admirably, and they are
alive and well; two in England, and one, by the gift of the Zoological Society
of London, in Ireland (1849).

P

APES AND MONKEYS.

* A wilderness of Monkeys.’

Merchant of Venice.

Mazurier, it is saicl, after a long and patient attendance upon
the monkeys domiciled in the Jardin du Roi , sewed up in skins, and
with a face painted and made up in a concatenation accordingly,
raised at last the benevolence of a tender-hearted one to such a
pitch, that it offered him a bit of the apple it was eating, and drew
from him that rapturous exclamation, pregnant with the conscious¬
ness of his apparent identity with the monkey-character — 4 Enfin !
enfin, je suis .singe !’

Poor Mazurier ! when he died, Poiichinelle was shipwrecked
indeed ! W e can see him now gaily advancing, as if Prometheus
had just touched the wood with his torch, in a brilliant cocked hat
of gilt and silvered pasteboard, with rosettes to match, gallantly
put on athwart ships ; that very pasteboard, so dear to recollection
as having glittered before our delighted eyes when old nurse
unfolded the familiar little booxs of lang-syne — books which in
these philosophical days are shorn of their beams ; for 4 Cock-
Robin, ’ 4 Little Red Riding Hood/ 4 Jack and his Bean-stalk,’
‘The Giildren in the Wood,’ 4 The Seven Champions,’ ‘Valen¬
tine and Orson,’ with the other dearly-beloved legends of our
childhood, when permitted to enter the nursery, are more soberly
clad : their splendid and many-coloured attractive coats have
almost entirely disappeared.

Mazurier was the personification of that invincible Prince of
Rou^s, Punch; but if the comic strength of this elastic, this
Indian-rubber man lay in P ilichinelle, it was in 4 The Ape of
Brazil’ that his tragic power lay — and that power, absurd as the
expression may seem to those who never beheld him, was great.
There was but one blot in his inimitable performance. It was
perfect as a piece of acting — if that may be called acting which,
like Morris Barnett’s Monsieur Jacques, is nature itself; but
alas ! Mazurier had dressed the character without a tail. The

MONBODDO’S THEORY.

211

melodrama was admirably got up ; but there, to the great distress
of zoologists, was the tailless quadrumane in the midst of Brazilian
scenery, where no traveller — and travellers are proverbial for seeing
strange things — has ever ventured to say that he saw a monkey
without that dignifying appendage. How true is it that wisdom —
such wisdom as it is — brings sorrow ; all the rest of the world were
in ecstacies; the zoologists shook their heads, and the scene ceased
to affect them.

Be it remembered henceforth by the getters-up of monkey
melodramas, that all the monkeys of the New World yet dis¬
covered rejoice in tails; the anthropoid apes of the Old World have
none.

But tailed or tailless, this amusing order of mammiferous animals
has always been, and ever will be, regarded by the million with
feelings of mingled interest and disgust. Every one is irresistibly
attracted by the appearance and tricks of a monkey' — very few
leave the scene without something like mortified pride at the cari¬
cature held up to them. The zoologist regards the family with an
interest proportioned to their approximation to man ; but he knows
that their apparent similarity to the human form vanishes before
anatomical investigation ; and that, although there may be some
points of resemblance, the distance between the bimanous and the
quadrumanous types, notwithstanding all the ingenious arguments
of those philosophers who support the theory of a gradual develop¬
ment from a monad to man, is great.

We would treat with respect such names as Lamarck, Bory do
Saint Vincent — ay, and others, even unto Monboddo, though the
announcement of the last will hardly be received by any naturalist
with gravity; but we must beg leave to differ from them toto
ccelo. Leaving the tail out of the question, there is no doubt that
the number and quality of the teeth in some species are identical
with the formula belonging to the human subject ; and there may
be as little that the peasants of the Landes of Aquitaine, who gain
their living by climbing for the resin of the Pinus Maritima , have
acquired a power of opposing, in a certain degree, the great toe to
the others ; but these facts are, after all, but traps for the unwary,
as those wdio wish to be informed on the subject will see by turn¬
ing to Professor Owen’s paper on the Osteology of the Chimpanzee
and Orang Utan.*

A modern zoologistf has, not inaptly, applied the term Chei -
ropeds or hand-footed animals to this group ; and, indeed, strictly

* Transactions of the Zoological Society of London, vol. i. p. 343. This sub¬
ject has since been further followed out by the Professor with his usual power.
The highly interesting additional facts and observations brought forward by
him will be found in the same publication.

f Mr Ogilby.

21-

APES AND MONKEYS.

speaking, they can hardly be called quadrumanous or four-handed.
Their extremities, admirably fitted for grasping and climbing, as
far as their arboreal habits require those actions, fall short — how
very far short ! — of that wonderful instrument which surrounds a
being born one of the most helpless of all creatures, with neces¬
saries, comforts, and luxuries, and enables him to embody his
imaginings in works almost divine. We look in vain among the
most perfectly-formed of the anthropoid apes for the well-deve¬
loped opposable thumb of the human hand — that great boon, the.
ready agent of man’s will, by means of which he holds ‘ dominion
over the fish of the sea, and over the fowls of the air, and over every
living thing that movetli upon the earth.’

The hands of the monkeys are at best but ‘half made up/
and they are generally more or less well fashioned in proportion
to the greater or less prehensile development of the tail. The
habits of the race, as we have already hinted, are arboreal, and
their favourite haunts are the recesses of those tropical forests
where they can either sport in the sunbeams on the topmost
boughs, or shelter themselves from its scorching rays under the
impervious canopy of a luxuriant vegetation. When their pri¬
vacy is invaded by man, a restless and constantly recurring
curiosity seems to be their prevailing feeling at first, and at last
the intruders are frequently pelted with stones, sticks, and fruits
heavy and hard, more especially if they make any demonstration of
hostility.

Robert Lade thus speaks of their behaviour when he went to
hunt some of them near the Cape : —

‘ I can neither describe all the arts practised by these animals,
nor the nimbleness and impudence with which they returned after
being pursued by us. Sometimes they allowed us to approach so
near them, that I was almost certain of seizing them; but when
I made the attempt, they sprung, at a single leap, ten paces from
me, and mounted trees with equal agility, from which they looked
with great indifference, and seemed to derive pleasure from our
astonishment. Some of them were so large, that if our interpreter
had not assured us that they were neither ferocious nor dan-
gerous, our number would not have appeared to be sufficient to
protect us from their attacks. As it would serve no purpose to
kill them, we did not use our guns’ (we respect the good feeling
of honest Robert and his companions) ; ‘ but the captain hap¬
pened to aim at a very large one which sat on the top of a tree,
after having fatigued us a long time in pursuing him. This kind
of menace, however, of which the animal perhaps recollected his
having sometimes seen the consequences, terrified him to such a
degree, that he fell down motionless at our feet, and we had no

HABITS.

210

difficulty in seizing him. But whenever he recovered from his
stupor it required all our dexterity arid efforts to keep him.
We tied his paws together; but he bit so furiously that we
were under the necessity of covering his head with our handker¬
chiefs.’

Indeed, those who have only seen these agile creatures in
menageries, or in a reclaimed state, can have no idea of the wild
activity of the tribe in their native woods. Swinging and leap¬
ing from tree to tree, ever on the hunt for fruits and birds’
nests — they are most unconscionable plunderers of eggs — they
lead a merry life, which is, however, often cut short by those
mighty snakes that frequently lie in ambush near them careless,
unsuspecting prey. These serpents are the greatest enemies of
the monkeys, with the exception of the common persecutor — man.
He, indeed, is sometimes touched by compunctious visit ings, when
it is too late.

‘Seeing me,’ says a South American traveller, speaking of a
monkey, ‘ nearly on the bank of the river in a canoe, the creature
made a halt from skipping after his companions, and, being
perched on a branch that hung over the water, examined me with
attention and the strongest marks of curiosity, no doubt taking
me for a giant of his own species, while he chattered prodigiously,
and kept dancing and shaking the bough on which he rested, with
incredible strength and agility. At this time I laid my piece to
my shoulder, and brought him down from the tree into the
stream ; but may I never again be a witness to such a scene ! The
miserable animal was not dead, but mortally wounded. I seized
him by the tail, and taking him in both my hands to end his
torments, swung him round and hit his head against the side of
the canoe ; but the poor creature still continuing alive, and look¬
ing at me in the most affecting manner that can be conceived, I
knew no other means of ending his murder than to hold him
under the water till he was drowned, while my heart sickened on
his account, for his dying little eyes still continued to follow me
with seeming reproach, till their light gradually forsook them, and
the wretched animal expired. I felt so much on this occasion that
I could neither taste of him nor his companions when they were
dressed, though I saw that they afforded to some others a delicious
repast.’

The repentant writer and his party were driven to the commis¬
sion of the act for want of fresh provisions ; and many of the
family are considered most excellent eating — by those who can
get over the appearance of the animal and of its bones when
cooked. There are not many, however, who can sit down to a

214

APES AND MONKEYS.

disli of monkevs without feeling that it is rather a cannibalish

•/ V— t

proceeding.

It will be obvious, when the leafy home of this restless race is
considered, that it is of the utmost consequence that the infant-
monkey should be protected as much as possible from a fall.
Accordingly, the prevailing instinct of a young one is, in sailor’s
language, to hold ou. It clings to its mother with the greatest
tenacity; and, to enable it to do this, considerable strength is
thrown into the extremities, the anterior limbs especially.

Le Yaillant, in his introduction to his first voyage, gives the
following carious instance of the exhibition of this instinct under
extraordinary circumstances. When living in Dutch Guiana, at
Paramaribo, where he was born, and where he had already,
though very young, formed a collection of insects, the future
traveller and his party in one of their excursions had killed a
female monkey :

4 As she carried on her back a young one, which had not
been wounded, we took them both along with us; and when we
returned to the plantation, my ape had not quitted the shoulders
of its mother. It clung so closely to them, that I was obliged to
have the assistance of a negro to disengage them ; but scarcely
was it separated from her, when, like a bird, it darted upon a
wooden block that stood near, covered with my father’s peruke,
which it embraced with its four paws, nor could it be compelled
to quit its position. Deceived by its instinct, it still imagined
itself to be on the back of its mother, and under her protection.
As it seemed perfectly at ease on the peruke, I resolved to suffer
it to remain, and to feed it there with goat’s milk. It continued
in its error for three weeks, but after that period, emancipating
itself from its own authority, it quitted the fostering peruke,
and by its amusing tricks became the friend and favourite of the
whole family/

Though it is difficult to suppress a smile at the idea of a
monkey clinging to a full-bottom on a wig-block and fancying it
its mamma, the story, as it begins mournfully with the slaughter
of the poor mother, ends tragically for her unhappy offspring: it
died a terrible death, — the result, indeed, of its own mischievous
voracity, but in agonies frightful to think of: —

‘I had, however,’ continues Le Yaillant, ‘without suspecting
it, introduced the wolf among my flocks. One morning, on
entering my chamber, the door of which I had been so imprudent
as to leave open, I beheld my unworthy pupil making a hearty
breakfast on my noble collection. In the first transports of my
passion I resolved to strangle it in my arms; but rage and fury

FORM OF SKULL.

215

soon gave place to pity, when I perceived that its voraciousness
had exposed it to the most cruel punishment. In eating the
beetles it hod swallowed some of the pins on which they were
fixed, and t) agh it made a thousand efforts to throw them up, all
its exertions were in vain. The torture which it suffered made me
forget the devastation it had occasioned ; I thought only of afford¬
ing it relief ; but neither my tears, nor all the art of my father’s
slaves, whom I called from all quarters with loud cries, were able
to preserve its life.’

To return to the instinct exemplified in the first part of this mel¬
ancholy tale ; we remember to have seen a female monkey and her
young one in the cage of a menagerie — and a small cage too. In
this case the instinct, — audit was a good example of the wide differ¬
ence between that quality and reason, — both on the part of the
mother and her offspring, was just as strong as it could have been
in their native forests. The young one clung as tightly, and the
mother showed as much anxiety lest it should be dashed to pieces
by a fall whilst she was sitting at the bottom of her cage, which
rested on the ground, as if she had been swinging with the breeze
upon the tree top.

The form of the skull in some species approaches to that of
man, and the theory of the facial angle adopted by Cuvier and
M. Geoffroy St Hilaire, a theory founded on the application of
Camper’s rule for asceitaining the degree of intelligence and
beautiful expression of the human face divine, would at first lead
us to conclude that the family which is the subject of our inquiry
stood high in the intellectual scale. But, if the facial angle in the
young anthropoid apes is equal to 65°, in age that angle frequently
sinks below 30°; and, indeed, we shall find that the docility and
apparent intelligence which are so strongly marked in the Chim¬
panzee and Orang, and which have given rise to such exag¬
gerated ideas of their intellect, have been always observed in
youthful animals ; while untameable ferocity and brutality, — in
short, the very reverse of the amiable and interesting qualities
which have been so much dwelt on, — have been uniformly the
concomitants of age. The old anthropoid apes have ‘foreheads
villanous low.’

Accordingly, though there may be exceptions to the general
rule — and that there are we shall show — the stories told of our
friends, whether by ancients or moderns, are hardly ever in their
favour. There may be a certain degree of cunning, and even of
accomplishment, in the monkey of whom the tale is told ; but, in
nine cases out of ten, the laugh is either at his expense, or he
is only saved from ridicule by some horrible catastrophe. From
the earliest ages down to the time of that wancliancy creature

216

APES AND MONKEYS.

Major Weir, Sir Robert Redgauntlet’s great ill-favoured jacka-
nape, the whole tribe have been regarded as unlucky, meddling
beings ; the Major came to an untimely end, as every one knows,
and where he went, or, at least, was expected, after the breath was
out of his body, is pretty plain.

Either, like JEliau’s ape, the mimic, in its zeal for imitation,
makes the trifling mistake of plunging a child into boiling water
instead of cold, or it is taken by the hunter’s stratagem of washing
his face in its presence, and then leaving, by way of a lotion for the
poor animal that has been watching his motions, some of the best
bird-lime, with which it belutes its eyes till they are sealed up ; or
a parcel of shell-snails are placed round it, in the midst of which it
sits like a fool, not daring to stir for fear.

The same iElian, indeed, and others, tell us of the ape that
was a most skillful charioteer; of the adroitness of another in
escaping from cats, when hunted by them on trees in Egypt, by
running to the extremity of a bough too slender to bear the cats,
and so, taking advantage of its bending, reaching the ground in
safety, leaving the cats plante's Id, clutching and clinging on as
they best might to save themselves from the shock of the recoil ; of
that renowned and all accomplished animal, to come to more modern
times, the Prccgrandem svmiam , which Parseus saw in cedibus Puds
Somei , and which so excelled in many arts, that it was named
Magister Factotum , but not till after the poor beast’s hands had
been cut off to keep is out of mischief, — to say nothing of the cele¬
brated coup, dear to diplomatists, of the cat's paw. Some of our
readers, by the way, may not know that this scene which Edwin
Landseer has so admirably represented — painted, wTe would have
said, but pointing it may not be called, for the coals are live coals,
and the yelling cat is held by the imperturbable monkey to a fire
that makes one hot to look at it — that this event, so familiar to
every schoolboy, is recorded as having actually taken place in the
hall of Pope Julius the Second.

But what are these to the clouds of unfortunate adventurers?
An ape may generally be considered to be wrell off* if he only loses an
eye, like the cheiropecl king’s son in the Arabian story, by magical fire.

It is but fair to add a legend evidently intended to convey an
impression of the sapience of our friends ; not that ure are going to
enter into the controversy as to whether the Prince of Darkness
chose the similitude of an ape as the most appropriate for the
temptation of our common mother Eve ; we leave that to the ini¬
tiated : our tale is much more humble in its pretensions.

In ‘ A New History of Ethiopia, being a full and accurate
description of the kingdom of Abessinia, vulgarly, though erro¬
neously, called the Empire of Prester John, by the learned Job

LEGENDS.

217

Ludolphus, author of the Ethiopic Lexicon Made English by I. P.
Gent.’ (folio, 1682,) there is a grand engraving of apes with this
superscription : —

£ 1. Scrambling about the mountains.

‘ 2. Removeing great huge stones to come at the wonnes.

‘ 3. Sitting upon ant-hills and devouring the little creatures.

‘4. Throwing sand or dust in the eyes of wild beast that come
to sett upon them.’

The whole being illustrative of the following edifying piece of
information : —

‘ Of apes there are infinite flocks up and down in the moun¬
tains themselves, a thousand and more together : there they leave
no stone unturned. If they meet with one that two or three can¬
not lift, they call for more, and all for the sake of the wormes
that lye under; a sort of dyet which they relish exceedingly.
They are very greedy after emmets. So that having found an
emmet-liill, they presently surround it, and laying their fore-paws
with the hollow downward upon the ant-heap, as fast as the
emmets creep into their trecherous palrnes they lick ’em olf with
great comfort to their stomachs : and there they will lye till
there is not an emmet left. They are also pernicious to fruit and
apples, and will destroy whole fields and gardens, unless they be
carefully looked after. For they are very cunning, and will never
venture in till the return of their spies, which they send always
before; who giving information that all things are safe, in they
rush with their whole body, and make a quick dispatch. There¬
fore they go very quiet and silent to their prey : and if their young
ones chance to make a noise they chastise them with their fists,
but if they find the coast clear, then every one hath a different
noise to express his joy. Nor could there be any way to hinder
them from further multiplying, but that they fall sometimes into
the ruder hands of the wild beasts, which they have no way to
avoid, but by a timely flight or creeping into the clefts of the
rocks. If they find no safety in flight, they make a virtue of
necessity, stand their ground, and filling their paws full of dust or
sand, fling it full in the eyes of their assailant, and then to their
heels again.’

Most learned and veracious Job !

A collection of stories, printed by John Rastell considerably
more than a century before the date of the work last quoted, and
not long ago discovered by the lamented Rev. I. I. Convbeare,
next attracts our notice. It is no other than i The Hundred
Merry Tales,’ the opprobrium of Benedick, or as it is imprinted
1 SI. (E. fHcrp (Ealgs.’ This curious and important addition to
the stock of Shaksperiana had^ as it is stated in the advertisement

218

APES AND MONKEYS.

of the private reprint (Chiswick, 1815J been converted into the
pasteboard which formed the covers of an old book. As far as the
pleasantry is concerned generally, we do not wonder at Benedick’s
wincing under Beatrice’s imputation that he got his wit out of it.

But though there is much matter of fact in the book, there
are also many queer tales, some of which ha ve passed for new, —
‘Old Simon,’ for instance. One of them, the forty-sixth tale, is
instructive, inasmuch as it shows what chief-justices were in those
days.

The story is headed ‘ Of the W elcheman that clelyuered the
letter to the ape.’

The first lines are wanting, but there is enough to make it
appear that a master sends his Welsh retainer with a letter to
the Chief Justice, in order to obtain favour for a criminal who
had been in the writer’s service, with directions to the said
Welshman to return with an answer. The tale then proceeds
thus :

‘ This Welcheman came to the Chefe Justyce place, and at
the gate saw an ape syttynge there in a cote made for liym, as
they use to apparell apes for disporte. This Welcheman dyd
of his cappe and made curtsye to the ape, and sayd — “ My nmyster
recommendeth him to my lorde youre father, and sendeth him
here a letter.” This ape toke this letter and opened it, and lokyd
thereon, and after lokyd vpon the man, makynge many mockes and
moyes as the propertyes of apes is to do. This Welcheman, because
he understood him nat, came agayne to his mayster accordynge to
his commandes, and told liym he delyuered the letter unto my lorde
chefe iustice sonne, who was at the gate in a furred cote. Anone his
mayster asked him what answere he broughte? The man sayd
he gaue him an answere, but it was other Frenclie or Laten, for
he understode him nat. “But, syr,” quod he, “ye need nat to
fere, for I saw in his countenance so much that I warrante you
he wyll do your errande to my lorde his father.” This gentylman
in truste thereof made not anye further suite. For lacke whereof
his seruant that had done the felonye within a monthe after
was rayned at the kynge’s benche, and caste, and afterwarde
hanged.’

And what does the reader think the moral is ? Some reflection,
perhaps, upon the impunity of those attached to the great, with
a hint at God’s judgment against unjust judges'? No such thing:
— 4 By this ye may see that every wyse man ought to take nede
that he sende nat a folyssclie seruante vpon a hasty message that
is a matter of nede.’ Not a bad specimen of the morality of the
good old times.

Those who would amuse themselves with more monkeyana of

MONKEYANA.

219

ancient date, will find some choice passages in Erasmus, Porta, and
others; and may learn how a monkey may occasionally supersede
the use of a comb — what a horror monkeys have of tortoises and
snails — how violent is the antipathy between the cock and the ape,
— and how both of these were added to the serpent and introduced
into the deadly sack wherein the matricide was inclosed to suffer
the frightful punishment awarded to his unnatural act. But we
beg to offer the following trifle, showing how a monkey can behave
at a dinner-table.

In a country town, no matter where, there lived the worthiest
and most philosophical of old bachelors, with a warm heart and
a sound head, from whose well powdered exterior dangled that
most respectable ornament a queue. Long did this august appen¬
dage, now no longer seen, linger among the Benchers of the inns of
court. Two worthies w~e have yet in our eye, — Ultimi Caudatorum!
with what veneration do we look up to yel with what fear and
trembling did we regard the progress of the influenza! — the destroy¬
ing angel has passed by, and the tails still depend from your ‘ frosty
pows’ blessings on ’em!

Pardon the digression; and return we to our bachelor, who
entertained a monkey of such good breeding and so much discre¬
tion, that Jacko was permitted to make one at the dinner-table,
where he was seated in a high child’s chair next to liis master,
and took off his glass of perry and water in the same time and
measure with his patron, and in as good a style as Dominie
Sampson himself could have performed the feat. Now, his
master’s housekeeper made the best preserved apricots in the
county, and when the said apricots were enshrined in a tart, the
golden fruit set off by the superincumbent trellis, a more tempting
piece of 'patisserie could hardly he laid before man or monkey.
One of these tarts enriched the board at a small dinner-party,
and was placed nearly opposite to Jacko, who occupied his usual
station. The host helped one and another to some of this ex¬
quisite tart, but he forgot poor Jacko, who had been devouring
it with his eyes, and was too well-bred to make any indecorous
snatch at the attraction, as most monkeys would have done. At
last Jacko could stand it no longer, so looking to the right and
left, and finally fixing his eyes on the guests opposite, he quietly
lifted up his hand behind his master’s back, and gave his tail such
a tug as made the powder fly, withdrew his hand in an instant,
and sat with a vacant expression of the greatest innocence.
People don’t like to have their tails pulled. His master gave him
a look, and Jacko gave him another, but even the eloquent expres¬
sion of Hogarth’s monkey on the offending bear’s back, fell short
of it. It said as plainly as look could speak — ‘Don’t be angry —

220

APES AND MONKEYS.

don’t thrash me — they did not see it — I beg your pardon, but I
must have a bit of that apricot tart — he was forgiven and
helped.

Authors generally seem to think that the monkey race are not
capable of retaining lasting impressions ; but their memory is
remarkably tenacious when striking events call it into action.

One that in his zeal for imitation had swallowed the entire
contents of a pill-box — the cathartics, fortunately, were not
Morisonian — suffered so much, that ever afterwards the produc¬
tion of such a box sent him to his hiding place in a twinkling.

Another that was permitted to run free had frequently seen
the men-servants in the great country kitchen, with its huge fire¬
place, take down a powder-horn that stood on the chimney-pieco,
and throw a few grains into the fire, to make Jemima and the
rest of the maids jump and scream, which they always did on
such occasions very prettily. Pug watched his opportunity, and
when all was still, and he had the kitchen entirely to himself,
he clambered up, got possession of the well-filled powder-horn,
perched himself very gingerly on one of the horizontal wheels
placed for the support of saucepans, right over the waning ashes
of an almost extinct wood-fire, screwed off the top of the horn,
and reversed it over the grate.

The explosion sent him half-way up the chimney. Before he was
blown up he was a smug, trim, well-conditioned monkey as you
would wish to see on a summer’s day : he came dow n a carbonadoed
nigger in miniature, in an avalanche of burning soot. The a plornb
with which he pitched upon the hot ashes in the midst of the general
flare-up, aroused him to a sense of his condition. He was missing
for days. Hunger at last drove him forth, and he sneaked into
the house close-singed, begrimed, and looking scared and devilish.
He recovered with care, but, like some other great personages,
he never got over his sudden elevation and fall, but became a
sadder if not a wiser monkey. If ever pug forgot himself and
was troublesome, you had only to take down a powder-horn in
his presence, and he was off to his hole like a shot, screaming and
clattering his jaws like a pair of castanets.

Le Vaillant, in his African travels, was accompanied by an ape,
which lived on very good terms with the cocks and hens, showing,
in defiance of the legend, no antipathy to the former, and a strong
penchant for the latter, for whose cacklings he listened, and
whose eggs he stole. But this and other peccadillos were amply
atoned for, by the bonhomie and other good qualities of Kees, for
that was the name of the traveller’s ape, which seems to have
almost realised the virtues of Philip Quarl’s monkey.

‘An animal,’ says Le Vaillant in his first voyage, just after

MONKEYANA.

221

speaking of the benefits that he derived from his gallant chanticleer,
1 that rendered me more essential services ; which, by its useful pres¬
ence, suspended and even dissipated certain bitter and disagreeable
reflections that occurred to my mind, which by its simple and
striking instinct, seemed to anticipate my efforts, and which com¬
forted me in my languor — was an ape, of that kind so common at
the Cape, under the name of Bawians. As it was extremely
familiar, and attached itself to me in a particular manner, I made
it my taster. When we found any fruit or roots unknown to my
Hottentots, we never touched them until my dear Kees had first
tasted them: if it refused them, we judged them to be either
disagreeable or dangerous, and threw them away.

‘An ape has one peculiarity which distinguishes it from all
other animals, and brings it very near to man. It has received from
nature an equal share of greediness and curiosity : though destitute
of appetite, it tastes without necessity every kind of food that is
offered to it ; and always lays its paw upon everything that it finds
within its reach.

‘ There was another quality in Kees which I valued still more.
He was my best guardian ; and whether by night or by day he
instantly awoke on the least sign of danger. By his cries, and
other expressions of fear, we were always informed of the approach
of an enemy before my dogs could discover it : they were so ac¬
customed to his voice, that they slept in perfect security, and never
went the rounds ; on which account I was extremely angry, fearing
that I should no longer find that indispensable assistance which I
had a right to expect, if any disorder or fatal accident should
deprive me of my faithful guardian. However, when he had once
given the alarm, they all stopped to watch the signal ; and on the
least motion of his eyes, or shaking of his head, I have seen them
all rush forward, and scamper away in the quarter to which they
observed his looks directed.

‘ I often carried him along with me in my hunting excursions,
during which he would amuse himself in climbing up trees, in order
to search for gum, of which he was remarkably fond. Sometimes
he discovered honey in the crevices of rocks, or in hollow trees ;
but when he found nothing, when fatigue and exercise had whetted
his appetite, and when he began to be seriously oppressed by
hunger, a scene took place which to me appeared extremely comic.

When he could not find gum and honey he searched for roots,

and ate them with much relish ; especially one of a particular
species, which, unfortunately for me, I found excellent and very
refreshing, and which I greatly wished to partake of. But

Kees was very cunning : when he found any of this root, if I

was not near him to claim my part, he made great haste to

222

APES AND MONKEYS.

devour it, having his eyes all the time directed towards me. By
the distance I had to go before I could approach him, he judged
of the time that he had to eat it alone ; and I indeed, arrived
too late. Sometimes, however, when he was deceived in his calcu¬
lation, and when I came upon him sooner than he expected, he
instantly endeavoured to conceal the morsels from me ; but by
means of a blow well applied, I compelled him to restore the theft ;
and in my turn becoming master of the envied prey, he was
obliged to receive laws from the stronger party. Kees enter¬
tained no hatred or rancour ; and I easily made him comprehend
how detestable that base selfishness was of which he had set me an
example.’

This is all very fine, but we confess that we think poor Kees
hardly used in this matter ; nor are we aware of any law, written
or unwritten, human or Simian, by which the conversion of the
root, which he had sagaciously found, to his own use could be
made a theft, or by which the prize could be ravished from him,
except indeed by the 4 good old law’ that 4 sufficeth’ people in
such cases —

‘the simple plan,

That they should take who have the power,

And they should keep who can.’

But to return to Le Vaillant’s entertaining narrative.

4 To tear up these roots, Kees pursued a very ingenious method,
which afforded me much amusement. He laid hold of the tuft
of leaves with his teeth ; and pressing his fore paws firmly against
the earth, and drawing his head backwards, the root generally
followed: when this method, which required considerable force,
did not succeed, he seized the tuft as before, as close to the
earth as he could ; then throwing his heels over his head, the
root always yielded to the jerk which he gave it. In our marches,
when he found himself tired, he got upon the back of one of my
dogs, which had the complaisance to carry him for whole hours
together : one only, which was larger and stronger than the rest,
ought to have served him for this purpose; but the cunning
animal well knew how to avoid this drudgery. The moment he
perceived Kees on his shoulders, he remained motionless, and
suffered the caravan to pass on, without ever stirring from the
spot. The timorous Kees still persisted; but as soon as he
began to lose sight of us, he was obliged to dismount, and both
he and the dog ran with all their might to overtake us. For
fear of being surprised, the dog dexterously suffered him to get
before him, and watched him with great attention. In short, he
had acquired an ascendancy over my whole pack, for which he

MONKEYANA.

223

was perhaps indebted to the superiority of his instinct ; for among
animals as among men, address often gets the better of strength.
While at his meals, Kees could not endure guests ; if any of the
dogs approached too near him at that time, he gave them a hearty
blow, which these poltroons never returned, but scampered away as
fast as they could.

4 It appeared to me extremely singular, and I could not account
for it, that, next to the serpent, the animal which he most
dreaded, was one of his own species : whether it was that he was
sensible that his being tamed had deprived him of great part of
his faculties, and that fear had got possession of his senses, or
that he was jealous and dreaded a rivalry in my friendship. It
would have been very easy for me to catch wild ones and tame
them ; but I never thought of it. I had given Kees a place in my
heart, which no other after him could occupy ; and I sufficiently
testified how far he might depend on my constancy. Sometimes
he heard others of the same species making a noise in the moun¬
tains ; and, notwithstanding his terror, he thought proper, 1 know
not for what reason, to reply to them. When they heard his
voice they approached : but as soon as he perceived any of them
he fled with horrible cries ; and, running between our legs, implored
the protection of everybody, while his limbs quivered through fear.
We found it no easy matter to calm him; but he gradually re¬
sumed, after some time, his natural tranquillity. He was very
much addicted to thieving, a fault common to almost all domestic
animals ; but in Kees it became a talent, the ingenious efforts of
which I admired. Notwithstanding all the correction bestowed
upon him by my people, who took the matter seriously, he was
never amended. He knew perfectly well how to untie the ropes
of a basket, to take provisions from it ; and, above all, milk, of
which he was remarkably fond : more than once he has made me
go without any. I often beat him pretty severely myself; but,
when he escaped from me, he did not appear at my tent till towards
night.’

4 Milk in baskets!’ why, truly, the term ‘basket’ as applied to a
vessel for holding milk appears to require some explanation ; but
it was really carried in baskets woven by the Gonaquas, of reeds,
so delicate, and so close in texture that they might be employed in
carrying water or any liquid. The abstraction of the milk, &c.,
we consider as a kind of set-off against the appropriation of Kees’s
favourite root by his master.

The pertinacious way in which Kees bestrode Le Yaillant’s
dogs will recall to the remembrance of some a monkey that was
and perhaps still is, riding about London, in hat and feather, with
garments to match, upon a great dog, with the usual accom-

221

APES AND MONKEYS.

paniments of hand-organ and Pan’s pipe. Upon these occasions
the monkey evidently felt proud of his commanding position;
but ever and anon we have seen him suffer from one of those sad
reverses of fortune to which the greatest among us are subject. In
the midst of the performance, while the organ and pipe are
playing, and the monkey has it all his own way, and, elevated
with the grandeur that surrounds him, is looking rather aristo¬
cratically at the admiring crowd, some good-natured but unlucky
boy throws the dog a bit of cake, in his zeal to pick up which
the latter lowers his head and shoulders so suddenly as infallibly
to pitch his rider over his head. We have thought more than
once that there was a sly look about the dog as he regarded the
unseated monkey, utterly confounded by his downfall and the
accompanying shouts of laughter from the bystanders.

We shall now proceed to give sketches of the most remarkable
species of monkeys in the New World, as well as of those in the
Old Continent and its Islands ; merely observing, en passant , that
though zoologists declare that there is but one European species,*
another, at least, is to be met with in our quarter of the globe.
The Demopithecus of Aristophanes, c qui vel fraudatione vel adu-
latione erga populum simiam se exhibet,’ is, assuredly, not yet
extinct ; on the contrary, it still is, and seems at all times to have
been, common in Ireland ; nor is it by any means of rare occur¬
rence in Great Britain, especially about the period of a general
election.

* Macacus sylvanus, Lacepede — the Barbary Ape which has established
itself on the rock of Gibraltar.

V

o

2. CHIMPANZEE.

1. ORANG-UTANG

3. GORILLA

AMERICAN MONKEYS.

* High on the twig I’ve seen you cling,

Play, twist, and turn in airy ring.’

The Two Monkeys.

Many of the forests of South America flourish in all their primi¬
tive grandeur. Immense tracts are covered with vegetable forms
in every stage of luxuriant development. Towering trees, their
trunks embraced by gigantic twiners and garlanded by a profusion
of plants,* in whose curious and splendid blossoms Nature seems
to have imitated, in the wantonness of her prodigality, almost every
variety of insect shape — shoot up and darken the light of day with
their broad shadows.

In these 4 boundless contiguities of shade,’ which have never
echoed to the woodman’s axe, the most perfect silence reigns during
the day; a silence, unbroken save by the crashing fall of some
ancient tree prostrated by the weight of years, and carrying with
it in one vast ruin all that it had long fed and fostered.

But, if all is silent during the day, at night

‘ The wonted roar is up amidst the woods,

And fills the air with harharous dissonance

for in the depths of these solitudes live the Howling Monkeys, to
whose voice the voice of the Rev. Gabriel Kettledrummle would
be but as the sough of the wind in the bracken.

* The Orchidaceous Epiphytes. So great is their number in humid situa¬
tions that a thousand species, may, it is asserted, be found in Tarma, Huanuco,
and Xauxa alone. They abound in the recesses of tropical forests ; but, in
the Orchidacese, imitation is not confined to images of the insect world, as
those will acknowledge who have seen the flower of the Peristeria, enshrining
the semblance of a milk-white dove, which seems actually to hover above an
altar; wax could hardly be modelled into a more perfect representation.

Q

226

AMERICAN MONKEYS.

We have already stated that the South American monkeys are
all blessed with tails, but they are deprived of those brilliant blue
and red callosities which give so much splendour to the integu¬
ments of many of the Old W orld family, and recall sometimes a
part of the costume of a certain unearthly pedestrian; for his
femoral habiliments

‘ were blue,

And there was a hole -where the tail came through.’

Neither do they rejoice in cheek pouches : they are, consequently,
unable to keep anything in the corner of their jaws, or to furnish
forth any rebuke to the Rosencrantzes and G uildensterns of the
several courts in this best of all possible worlds.

4 The Howlers,’ as they are termed, claim our first attention.
Tliev are the largest of the American Simiadcc ,* and the fierce-
brutality of their disposition, joined to their low facial angle, re¬
mind the observer of the baboons of the old continent, whilst their
gregarious habits and nocturnal bowlings agree with the manners
of the Gibbons. The yells uttered by these Howlers in the dead
of the night are described as absolutely appalling. They strike
upon the ear of the uninitiated benighted traveller as if they were
not of this world; and even to the naturalist they are terrible.
4 Nothing,’ says Waterton, speaking of the Mono Colorado , or Red
Howler, 4 nothing can sound more dreadful than its nocturnal
bowlings. While lying in your hammock in these gloomy and im¬
measurable wilds, you hear him howling at intervals from eleven
o’clock at night till day-break. You would suppose that half the
wild beasts of the forest were collecting for the work of carnage.
Now it is the tremendous roar of the jaguar as he springs on
his prey; now it changes to his deep-toned growlings as he is
pressed on all sides by superior force ; and now you hear his last
dying moan beneath a mortal wound.’

When Humboldt and Bonpland landed at Cumana they saw the
first troops of Araguatos,*j* as they journeyed to the mountains of
Cocallor and the celebrated cavern of Guacharo. The forests
that surrounded the convent of Caripe, which is highly elevated,
and where the centigrade thermometer fell to 70° during the
night, abounded with them, and their mournful howling was
heard, particularly in open weather or before rain or storms, at the
distance of half a league. Upwards of forty of this gregarious
species were counted upon one tree on the banks of the Apure;

* Genus Mveetes.

f Mycetes Ursinus. It is nearly three feet in length, without including the
tail.

STRUCTU11E.

227

and Humboldt declares his conviction that, in a square league of
these wildernesses, more than two thousand may be found.
Melancholy is the expression of the creature’s eye, listless is its
gait, and dismal is its voice. The young ones never play in cap¬
tivity like the Sagoins ; no, ‘ The Araguato de los Cumanenses,’
as the worthy Lopez de Gomara voucheth, ‘hath the face of a
man, the beard of a goat, and a staid behaviour,’ such, in short,
as may well beseem the possessor of such a ‘ powerful organ,’
as the newspaper critics have it.

We will endeavour, with Humboldt’s assistance, to convey to
the reader some idea of the structure of this sonorous instrument.
That most observing traveller states that the bony case of the
os hyoides, or bone of the tongue, in the Mona Colorado is, in
size, equal to four cubic inches (water measurement). The larynx,
or windpipe, consisting of six pouches, ten lines in length and
from three to five in depth, is slightly attached by muscular fibres.
The pouches are like those of the little whistling monkeys,
squirrels, and some birds. Above these pouches are two others,
the lips or borders of which are of a yellowish cast ; these are the
pyramidal sacs which are formed by membranous partitions and
enter into the bony case. Into these sacs, which are from three
to four inches in length and terminate in a point, the air is
driven ; the fifth pouch is in the aperture of the arytenoid car¬
tilage and is situated between the pyramidal sacs, of the same
form but shorter; and the sixth pouch is formed by the bony
drum itself : within this drum the voice acquires the doleful tone
above alluded to. But we are becoming anatomical and sopo-
rifical ; no more, then, of this ‘ evening drum,’ and turn we to
that grotesque race, the Sapajous.

They are slender, mild in disposition, flat in face, long in tail,
and spidery in general appearance. The genus Ateles of M. Geof-
froy St Hilaire stands first upon the roll. With anterior hands,
either entirely deprived of thumbs, or only supplied with mere
rudiments, and weak, long limbs, justifying their popular names
of ‘Spider Monkeys,’ they are compensated by a prehensile tail
of such exquisite sensibility and power, that it may be almost
considered a fifth hand. For a length of six or seven inches
from the tip, this is naked ; and, on the under surface, it is com¬
paratively callous, for the purpose of prehension. Humboldt
asserts that the animal can introduce it. without turning its head,
into narrow chinks or clefts, and hook out any substance ; but he
never saw it employed to convey food to the mouth, though the
natives will have it that the monkey goes a fishing with it. Leap
the species of this genus cannot, or, at most, but very imperfectly ;
this tail of all work, however, amply makes amends, for by it they

228

AMERICAN MONKEYS.

hang’ suspended from the branches, or swing themselves from
bough to bough, and from tree to tree, with the utmost agility.
Dampier relates, and his statements are generally worthy of credit,
that, when troops of them have occasion to cross rivers, they look
out for a point where the trees are most lofty, and project farthest
over the water. Having arrived at such a place they climb to
the boughs best suited to their purpose, and form a long chain by
grasping the tails of each other. This chain hangs free at the
lower end, while it is held on at the top, and the living pendulum
is swung backwards and forwards, till it acquires sufficient vibra¬
tion to carry the lower end to the opposite bank. Then the
lowest joint catches hold of the first branch within his reach,
and mounts as high as he can. As soon as he has made himself
fast, the upper joint on the other side lets go, and the whole con¬
joined ‘tail’ swings, and is carried safely over. Humboldt and
Bonpland saw some of them which inhabit the banks of the
Orinoco suspended in great numbers from the trees, and hanging
on to each other by tail and hands in the most ridiculous groups.

The Quata, or, as the French write the word, Coaita is said
to unite activity with intelligence, gentleness, prudence, and pene¬
tration. To be sure the Quatas will, when they meet with a
learned traveller, or any other strange animal, descend to the lower
branches of their trees, to examine the phenomenon, and, when
they have satisfied their curiosity, pelt the phenomenon aforesaid
to get rid of him or it ; but that they be sensible and trustworthy
is proved by Acosta, who has immortalised the Quata belonging
to the Governor of Carthagena. This domestic was regularly
sent to the tavern for wine. They who sent him put an empty
pot into one hand, and the money into the other ; whereupon he
went spidering along to the tavern, -where they could by no means
get his money from him till they had filled his pot with wine. As
this Ganymede of the Governor came back with his charge, cer¬
tain idle children would occasionally meet him in the street, and
cast stones at him; whereupon he would set down his pot and
cast stones at them , c till he had assured his way, then would he
return to carry home his pot. And what is more, although he
was a good bibber of wine, yet would he never touch it till leave
was given him/ We are sorry to add that this amiable genus is
considered very good eating. Humboldt frequently saw the broiled
limbs of the Marimonda in the huts of the natives on the Orinoco ;
and, at Emeralda, he found in an Indian hut a collation of their
roasted and dried bodies, prepared as the pieces de resistance for a
4 harvest home.’

* Ateles paniscus.

THE HORNED SAPAJOU.

229

In Lagothrix , the head is rounder than it is in A teles , the hands
are provided with thumbs, such as they are, but the tail is still
long and prehensile, and the under surface at the tip is naked.
The species of this genus are of some size. The Caparro which
inhabits the banks of the Guaviare, one of the streams that flow
into the Orinoco, is two feet two inches in length, without including
the tail. The head is very large and round in proportion.

Cebus next claims our attention. In this form we find the tail
beginning to lose somewhat of its prehensile powers, and no longer
bared at the tip to add to its sensibility as an organ of touch. In
lieu of this, the strength is thrown into the limbs, which are well
developed, and the anterior hands are remarkably well formed —
though, still, less perfectly than those of the Old World monkeys.
The first of the five fingers is become more thumb-like, and the
palms of the extremities both before and behind are endowed with
much sensitiveness. These sylvans are excellent climbers, and of a
surprising agility.

Of these Cebi, the Horned Sapajou,* with the hair of its forehead
standing up so as to give the animal the appearance of having a
London Waterman’s cap on, is one of the largest, while the Ouava-
pavi des ccitaractes ,j which is very mild and intelligent, is of small
size. We remember once to have heard of a sort of compact
which was said to have been entered into between a monkey and
a pig, the latter of which carried the monkey a certain number
of times round an orchard, in consideration of the monkey’s
climbing the apple-trees, and giving them a shake for the benefit
of the porker. Though not very old at the time, we gave the
narrator credit for being blessed with a very lively imagination,
albeit the story was told gravely and vouched as a fact. But
Humboldt actually saw, at Maypures, one of these domesticated
Ouavapavis, obtaining his rides apparently without any such
understanding ; for this clever monkey used to bide his time, and
every morning caught a luckless pig, which he compelled to per¬
form the part of his horse. Seated on pigback did he majesti¬
cally ride about, the whole day, clinging to his bristly steed as
firmly as ever the Old Man of the Sea clung to Sinbad, not even
giving poor piggy a respite at meal times, but continually be¬
striding him all the time he was feeding in the savanna that sur¬
rounded the Indian huts. A missionary had another of these
riders ; but the missionary’s monkey had laid the strong hand of
possession on a comfortable cat which had been brought up with
him, carried him well, and bore all his felestrian exploits with pa¬
tience and good humour.

* Cebus fatuellus.

f Cebus Albifror.s.

230

AMERICAN MONKEYS.

The tail which has become less and less prehensile in the genera
last noticed, becomes in Callithrix no longer capable of use as a
support. The pretty playful little Siamiri,* whose length hardly
exceeds ten inches exclusive of the tail, which reaches thirteen or
fourteen, winds that appendage like a boa round its body and
limbs, reminding the zoologist in some degree of the mode in
which the white-fronted Lemurj* disposes of his; and we now
begin to observe, moreover, traces of insectivorous aud carnivorous
appetite. The Macavacahow,^; at the sight of a bird, is roused
at once from its apparent apathy ; darting on its victim like a cat,
it secures the prize, and swallows it in an instant, with all the
actions that mark the beast of prey.

In the Dourocouli,§ the Cara rayada of the missionaries, we
observe traces of the cat in appearance, voice, and manners. This
curious animal is nine inches in length ; and its tail, which is hairy,
but not prehensile, is about fourteen; the head is large and round:
the muzzle short ; the eyes very large ; but there is no apparent
external ear. Three dark stripes are drawn on the head, and come
down in front, the centre stripe on the forehead and the two lateral
ones reaching to the rounded corners of the eyebrows.

The animal is, during the day, 4 a huge sleeper,’ whence its
name 4 Mono Dormillon.’ Humboldt, notwithstanding the warning
of the natives, that the Dourocoulis will tear out the eyes of
slumbering men, kept one in his bed-room. It slept regularly
from nine in the morning till seven at night ; and sometimes it
went to sleep at daybreak. It hated the light, and, when dis¬
turbed, the lethargic animal could scarcely raise its heavy white
eyelids; and its large eyes, which, at nightfall, were lighted up
like those of the owl, were lustreless. It must have been but a
restless companion for the night: then it was all exertion and
activity, made wild noises, and was constantly jumping up against
the walls. It lived for five months, but all attempts to tame it
were fruitless.

The Dourocoulis are captured during the day by the natives,
when they are fast asleep in some hollow tree. The male and
female are often taken in the same hole, for they live in pairs. In
a state of nature they pursue small birds and insects, not neglect¬
ing vegetables, almost every kind of which they will eat. Hum¬
boldt’s specimen was very fond of flies, which it caught dex¬
terously, and would even sometimes rouse itself for this chase on
a gloomy day. Its night-cry resembled that of the Jaguar, and it
is thence called Titi-tigre. The mewing notes which it occasion-

* Callithrix sciureus.
f Lemur albifrons.

X Simia lugens.

§ Aotes trivirgatus.

THE CAPUCHIN.

231

ally sends forth remind the hearer of a cat, and this resemblance
is heightened when the head of a Dourocouli in a state of irri¬
tation swells, and the animal hisses or spits, throws itself into the
position of a cat when attacked by a dog, and strikes quick and
cat-like with its paw. Its voice is very powerful for its size. In
the Leoncito,* whose body does not .exceed seven or eight inches
in length, we have much of the appearance of a tiny lion.

But it is in the genus Pitliecia that we have the nearest
approach to human likeness. There are some strong resemblances
in the Couxio ;f but, as Humboldt well observes, of all the monkeys
of America, the Capuchin J of the Orinoco bears the greatest
similitude in its features to man. There are the eyes with their
mingled expression of melancholy and fierceness ; there is the
long thick beard ; and, as this last conceals the chin, the facial
angle appears much less than it really is. Strong, active, fierce,
the Capuchin is tamed with the greatest difficulty, and, when
angered, he raises himself on his hinder extremities, grinds his
teeth in his wrath, and leaps around his antagonist with threaten¬
ing gestures. If any malicious person wishes to see this Homun¬
culus in a most devouring rage, let him wet the Capuchin’s beard,
and he will find that such an act is the unforgiveable sin. There
is one point, indeed, wherein our monkey differs from civilized
man — he very seldom drinks; but, when lie does, the similarity
returns. Unlike the other American monkeys, which bring their
lips to the liquid, the Capuchin lifts the water in the hollow of
his hand, inclines his head upon his shoulder, and carrying the
draught to his mouth in the cup of Diogenes, drains it with great
deliberation. This appears to be his mode of drinking in a state
of nature ; and Humboldt thinks that it is adopted to prevent the
wetting of the beard which renders the animal furious, and which
could not be avoided if the lips were applied in the usual Simian
mode. Our friend the Capuchin is about two feet nine, bushy tail
and all, of a brownish red colour, the hair of the body being long,
and that on the forehead having a direction forwards. The beard,
which arises below the ears, is brown, inclining to black, and
covers the upper part of the breast. His large sunken eyes are
overarched with well-marked brows, and his nails are bent, with
the exception of those on his thumbs. He is not gregarious, and
is seldom found in company with his female.

We must not omit to notice another of these Pitliecice with
black face and hands and a shorter tail, having a good deal of the
general aspect in miniature of one of those respectable, ancient,
withered negroes, who, after a long life of slavery, find themselves,

* Midas leonina.

f Pitliecia Satanas.

f Pitliecia chiropotes.

AMERICAN MONKEYS.

23%

in their old age, transmuted, by legislative magic, into apprentices.
This species, which is termed the Cacajao,* is hardly more than a
foot long. It is voracious, weak, very lazy, mild, easily frightened,
and lives in troops in the forests.

In Callithrix and Aotes, the carnivorous propensity and cha¬
racter are, as we have seen, joined to the general habits of the
monkey; and we proceed to finish this imperfect sketch of the
American Simiadcc, by calling the reader’s attention to forms dis¬
tinguished by a union of that character and propensity with
souirrel-like manners. Such are the genera Hcipales and Midas.
To the latter belong the pretty diminutive Marikina or Silky
Monkey f and the Leoncito before alluded to. These, though
their way of life is but little ascertained, are supposed hardly ever
to quit the trees.

Of the debonnaire Ouistiti or Sanglainj; much more is known.
This small, delicate creature, with its rich pale gray coat, and pale
grayish-white ear-tufts, like the ailes de pigeon of the old beau of
other days, feeds in its native woods not only on fruits, roots, and
seeds, but also indulges occasionally in insects and little birds.
In captivity the Sanglams are great pets, and Edwards relates a
curious instance of the craving for something that possessed life
breaking out in one that was the favourite of a lady. Once, when
he was let loose, he snatched a gold fish from its £ watery
glass,’ and instantly killed and devoured it. The lady, upon
this, made him a present of some live eels, and, as the little
fellow was not more than eight inches long without his tail, these
lively gifts frightened him at first a good deal by twisting round
his neck when he seized them. His carnivorous nature, however,
prevailed, and, without a well sanded hand, he soon mastered and
ate them.

M. F. Cuvier had an opportunity of observing their domestic
arrangements in a conjugal state. He had a pair who were blest
with three young ones; but it seems to have been the Lady
Sanglain’s first accouchement, and she had no experienced female
friend to direct her ; so after regarding her interesting progeny,
she proceeded to bite off the head of one of them ; the otner two,
in the mean time, took to the breast, and the moment the mother
felt them she was all affection. The papa was even more affec¬
tionate than the mamma, and assiduously assisted in the nursery.
The favourite position of the young ones was upon the back or
bosom of the mother ; and, when she was tired of nursing, she
would come up to her mate with a shrill cry, which said as plainly

* Pitheciamelanoceuhala. f Midas rosalia.

J Rapales lacchus, Illiger. Iacclius vulgaris, GeoRVoy.

ANECDOTE.

233

as cry could speak, - Here! do take the children.’ He, like a good-
natured father, immediately stretched forth his hands and placed
his offspring upon his back or under his body, where they held on
while he carried them about, till they became restless for want of
that which he could not give them ; and then he handed them back
to his partner, who, after satisfying their hunger, again turned
them over to their papa.

Cuvier seems to think that their intelligence is inferior to that of
many of the smaller monkeys. That their attachment to each
other is sometimes great, the following anecdote, related by a lady,
who kept a couple of them, and who could never tell the story
unmoved, will prove.

These playful Sanglians, had not, indeed, any family, but they
were very happy and were all in all to each other. One of them,
unfortunately, died. The other seemed to be unwilling to believe
the change that had taken place, and continued to caress the body
until it became absolutely necessary to remove it. Everything
was done to console the survivor that its fond and distressed mis¬
tress could think of : but, as soon as its mate was taken away, the
poor widowed Sanglian pressed its little hands to its eyes, refused
to be comforted, and remained pining in that attitude till death
relieved it from its sufferings.

APES AND MONKEYS OF THE OLD CONTINENT.

‘ Almost a man in size ancl look.-

Gay’s Fables.

Voltaire’s Vieux Solitaire , speaking* of those lofty systematists,
‘ qui ont cree Vunivers avec leur plume ' — they are not altogether ex¬
tinct in our clay — notices two zoological theories.

One of these taught that the mountains and man were produced
by the waters of the sea. At first, it seems, there were charming
marine men, who afterwards became amphibious, and then their
fascinating forked tail (how the conservative belles of those days
must have deplored the change) became transformed into the lower
extremities, on which the great biped has walked ever since. The
age of King Saleh, and of his daughter Queen Gulnare, evidently
formed an epoch in this transition.

The second ‘Treatise’ demonstrated that the race of men were
bastard slips of a tribe of baboons.

The controversy seems to have waxed as warm as that between
the Big-endians and the Little-endians ; but the worthy Solitaire
appears to have been daring enough to entertain doubts of the
correctness of both genealogies, and does not show any very marked
preference for either of these systems : — ‘ J’aimai ,’ says his manu¬
script, ‘ autant descendre d'an poisson que d'un singe.’

And yet there have not been wanting philosophers, as we have
seen, to advocate the cause of the latter pedigree, which is in¬
volved in the theory of gradual development. Notwithstanding,
however, the different phases which Tiedemann and others have
clearly shown to take place in the formation of the human brain
before birth, ascending, as they do, from the structure of that
organ in the lower animals to that of fishes, reptiles, birds, and
mammiferous quadrupeds, till, during the last period of gestation
it receives the finish which distinguishes the encephalon of man ;

TI1E ENTELLUS MONKEY.

235

and notwithstanding the occasional difficulties presented by that
respectable, persevering, and omnipresent sub-family, the Bores,
most of whom afford grounds to the credulous for suspecting
that they have not succeeded in entirely rubbing off their
excrescences — we eschew the fallacy. At the same time, feeling
bound to pay all proper respect to those who are interested in
maintaining the doctrine of Monboddo and others, both French
and British, we beg leave to commence our sketch with those old
world Monkeys whose tails still flourish in all their pendnlosity
and perfection.

The Guenons form a very large group. Robed in bright and
beautiful furs, and often light and graceful in their proportions,
they still vary greatly in size and shape. Many of them are
gifted with a most bounding agility, which carries them from
bough to bough, in their African and Asiatic forest-homes, with
nearly the velocity of a bird. When, unhappily for them, they
are captured, they prove amiable in disposition, very playful but
not malignant nor mischievous ; and, with due submission to the
late all accomplished Mr Astley, tailed though they be, they are
distinguished for the facility with which they learn tricks, and the
address with which they perform them.

The Entellus Monkey ,* widely spread as it is over the continent
of India and its islands, is but little known to those who frequent
our menageries ; for, in the first place, the species is held in great
respect by the natives; and, in the next, the captives generally
pine and die soon after their arrival in Europe. There was one
in our Zoological Garden in the Regent’s Park, and another at
Paris ; but neither of them long survived their arrival ; and
Thunberg’s specimen died from cold in the delicious climate of
the Cape of Good Hope. The accounts given by the last-men¬
tioned author and Wolff are very amusing ; but they appear to
have been embellished by a very vivid fancy. There seems, how¬
ever, to be no doubt that these worshipful monkeys have acute¬
ness enough to take advantage of the veneration in which they
are held, and to make the unfortunate husbandman pay a ruinous
tribute to their sanctity. When the fruits of the well-tilled earth
are ripe and ready to be gathered in, down from the forests come
overwhelming bands, confident in their sacred character, and make
spoil of the harvest before the eyes of the cultivator. There he
stands, on the spot now rich with the produce of his labours,
vainly endeavouring to scare away with loud cries these swarms
of relentless foragers, who quickly consume everything. He sees
his luscious figs, his refreshing cocoa-nuts, his choice apples, and

* Semnopithecus Entellus.

23 G

APES AND MONKEYS OF THE OLD CONTINENT.

mellow pears, disappear at this fete chcimpeire; nor do even his
cabbages and potatoes escape the appetite of his self-invited and
unwelcome guests.

Dr Horsfield, who notices the domestication of another species
of monkey by the Javanese, and its association with the horse,
remarks, that in every stable, from that of a prince to that of a
mantry or chief of a village, one is to be found : but he never saw
the Budeng * the poor Negro Monkey , thus comfortably situated.
On the contrary, this unfortunate species, which possesses a jet
black fur, with long silvery hairs, much prized, both by natives
and Europeans, for their riding equipages and military decora¬
tions, is cruelly attacked with cudgels and stones wherever it is
found, and slaughtered in great numbers. Associated in large
troops on the trees of the extensive forests of Java — as many as
fifty are often found together — the proscribed Budengs, at the
sight of their deadly enemy, man, lift up their voices in loud
screams and wailings. A violent bustle and commotion ensues,
and branches of decaying trees, detached by their movements, are
not unfrequently, precipitated on the heads of those spectators
who have, imprudently, not been satisfied with observing them at
a distance.

The genera Cercopithecus and Cercocebus form the section of
the true Guenons. Of the former genus, which is short in the
muzzle, and has a facial angle extending fifty degrees, a round
head, slightly flattened in front, and a flat nose, the Diana
Monkeyf and the Mona afford perhaps the most pleasing ex¬
amples. It is, indeed, rather hard upon the Queen of the silver
bow, that she should be degraded to the likeness of an African
tailed Quadrumane; but we suppose that the white crescent on
the monkey’s brow was irresistible to M. Geoffroy. ‘ Mona ’ is
a term applied to all long-tailed monkeys, with certain modifi¬
cations, by the Moors of North Africa, and is, most probably,
of Arabian origin ; but the individuals of the pretty species which
M. Geoffroy names Cercopithecus Mona , appear to differ much in
disposition, though the general character of the species is con¬
sidered to be gentle and piayful. M. E. Cuvier’s Mona was the
most amiable of monkeys, and its sweetness of temper, which
grew with its growth, and was developed under his own eye,
remained unimpaired by age. It was, to be sure, a most expert
and noiseless thief; and, being suffered to roam at will, -would
open a chest or drawer by turning the key in the lock, untie
knots, undo the rings of a chain, and pick pockets with admirable
dexterity. This last accomplishment was is favourite pastime;

* Semnopithecus Maurus.

| Cercopithecus Diana.

THE MANGABEY.

237

and a stranger seldom departed without having undergone a
search, with a delicacy of touch not to be detected, and always
successful. It was very affectionate; and the gentle satisfaction
with which it would receive and return caresses, and its low but
expressive cry of pleasure on such occasions, made it very endear¬
ing ; nor was this feeling toward it checked by any of the dis¬
gusting habits too often exhibited by its congeners. One which
was kept in the menagerie of the Zoological Society was, on the
contrary, as ill-conditioned a brute as the worst of the Simian, or
of any other family.

Cercocebus approaches in its manners very near to Cercopi-
thecus; but the greater development of the long canine teeth, the
facial angle, the large cheek-pouches, and the shortening tail,
seem to lead toward the Baboons. The Mangabey, or White-
eyelid Monkey,* and the Green Monkey f belong to this genus.
Western Africa is supposed to be the locality of the former; and
the latter is known to be an inhabitant of the Cape cle Yerd
Islands, as well as of the African Continent. The Mangabey, with
its upper eyelids of a dead white, was so named by Buffon, from
the erroneous supposition that his specimens were brought from
that territory in Madagascar. In a state of captivity it is a most
unwearied droll — frolicsome and good-natured withal. Sir William
Jardine mentions a female in Mr Womb well’s menagerie that
was most lively, and gives a figure of her, no easy task, for she
was never at rest for one moment ; and her activity was increased
when she perceived that she was noticed. ‘ She performed,’ says
Sir William, ‘many of the attitudes of the most experienced
harlequins * * *. She was remarkably cleanly, and careful not
to soil her person. When feeding, she seldom put her head to the
food or dish, but lifted and conveyed it to her mouth.’ Her diet
consisted of bread and milk principally, and vegetables occasionally ;
like Potemkin, she was very fond of a raw carrot. The large
troops in which the Green Monkeys assemble have been remarked
by many travellers. It was one of these societies, most probably,
that afforded M. Adanson the excellent sport, on the enjoyment
of which he dwells with so much satisfaction. The poor animals
were surprised in the midst of their tricks ; and M. Adanson
declares that nothing could be more entertaining than the endea- .
vours of the little wretches to escape from the slaughtering gun
which the traveller seems to have worked most unrelentingly.
Though he killed twenty-three in less than one hour, within a
space of twenty toises, and wounded, we dare say, many more,
not one of the sufferers screamed during the whole time; but

* Cercocetms fuliginosus.

f Cercocetms sabtcus.

238 APES AND MONKEYS OF THE OLD CONTINENT.

the rest gathered together in companies, knit their brows, gnashed
their teeth, and jelled as if they intended to attack him. We
wish they had, with all our heart, and to some purpose, too,
though we have great respect for philosophers in general, and for
zoologists in particular.

Before we proceed to the Baboons, we must not forget a curious
form which is placed by some naturalists among the Guenons.
The Proboscis Monkey* unites in its person the unshapely cor¬
pulence of the Orangs, with the long arms of the Gibbons and
the guttural sac of the Howlers. Its physiognomy defies descrip¬
tion. Diego’s feature shrinks into insignificance— though he had
been to the Promontory of Noses and got him 4 one of the good¬
liest that ever fell to a single man’s lot’ — in comparison with the
proboscis of the Kalian. He who has only seen stuffed specimens,
can have no idea of the hideous mask that the undried face
presents ; for the protuberance is entirely cartilaginous, and can
be inflated by the animal to a prodigious size. The Kahau is
about three feet high when erect, and has a long tail. We saw
one taken out of spirit in which it had been preserved, looking
like one of those horrible female fiends sometimes pictured in old
wood cuts —

‘Not uglier follow the night hag.’

A celebrated French naturalist, ^ who was present at the opening
of the casket which contained this zoological jewel, was in raptures,
and, as the bust emerged, he uttered an exclamation significatory
of her maternity. We looked in vain for the young imps, which had
probably escaped when their poor barrelled-up mother fell. It
must be startling to look round in the wilderness of Borneo, and
behold one of those horrible visages peering, Zamiel-like, from behind
the trunk of some dark tree. At sunrise and sunset these ani¬
mated caricatures assemble in the woods that border the rivers.
Then and there they continually ply their guttural sacs and sonor¬
ous noses, till the vicinage echoes again with a cry, supposed
to be expressed by the word 4 Kahau ’ often repeated ; and hence
their name. Their activity is energetic, and they will bound from
tree to tree, clearing an intermediate space of from fifteen to twenty
feet.

Passing by the Done, or Cochin-China Monkey, J with its many-
coloured coat, for its manners are little known, we must now call
the reader’s attention to forms in which monkey-depravity seems to
reach its height.

* Nasalis larvatus, Geoffroy: Guenon nasique, Desmarest; Le Kahau
Audebert.

The late M. de Blainville.

+ Lasiopyga nemtea.

THE WANDEROW.

230

The Baboons concentrate all that is fierce, malicious, and dis-
gustiug. There are two tribes of these enormously powerful and
furious brutes. The first, and best, are distinguished by having
their nostrils situated on the face, so to speak ; the second form the
group of Dog-headed Baboons, Cynocepholi , and in them the nasal
aperture is placed at the end of the muzzle.

Of the more gentle tribe, the Wanderow* presents itself as a
good example. This 4 Child of the Sun,’ as our showmen used
always to designate it — why, heaven only knows, unless, as the
French have done their best for Diana, the English are determined
that they will not be behind their neighbours in doing honour to
her glorious brother — wears a uniform of deep black, with the
exception of the ruff, beard, or mane, which surrounds the face,
and varies from ashy-gray to pure white. This ornament may
have assisted in fixing the parentage above alluded to, and may
have reminded the Polito-people of the jolly face of Sol, looking
out from his radiant circumference, over mine host’s door. Father
Vincent Maria, who observes that there are four monkeys on the
coast of Malabar, hath executed a flattering portrait of our friend;
and here is the picture, drawn by the hand of that worthy procu¬
rator-general of the Bare-footed Carmelites. ‘ The first is per¬
fectly black, clothed with glossy hair, with a white beard round
Ins chin, a span or more in extent. To him all the other monkeys
show such deep respect, that in his presence they are submissive
and humble themselves, as if they were aware of his pre-eminence.
The princes and great lords esteem him highly, for that he is,
above every other, gifted with gravity, capacity, and a wise ap¬
pearance. Easily is he taught to perform a variety of ceremonies
and courtesies, and all these in so serious and perfect a style, as to
make it matter of great wonder that they should so exactly be
enacted by an irrational animal. ’f

We have had our eye upon one or two of these Wanderows.
There was one in the Zoological Society’s collection, then in
its infancy, in Bruton Street, and a right merry fellow was he.
He would, run up his pole and throw himself over the cross-bar,
so as to swing backward and forward, as he hung suspended
by the chain which held the leathern strap that girt his loins.
The expression of his countenance was peculiarly innocent ; but
he was sly, very sly, and not to be approached with impunity
by those who valued their head-gear. He would sit demurely
on his cross-perch, pretending to look another way, or to examine
a nut-shell for some remnant of kernel, till a proper victim came

* Maeacus Silenus.

j Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological Society delineated. Yol. i

240

APES AND MONKEYS OF THE OLD CONTINENT.

within his reach ; when, down the pole he rushed, and up he was
again, in the twinkling of an eye, leaving the bare-headed sur¬
prised one minus his hat, at least, which he had the satisfaction of
seeing undergoing a variety of metamorphoses under the plastic
hands of the grinning ravisher, not at all calculated to improve a
shape which the taste of a Moore, or a Lock, perhaps, had designed
and executed. It was whispered — horrescimus referentes — that
he once scalped a bishop, who ventured too near, notwith¬
standing the caution given to his lordship by another dignitary
of the church, and that it was some time before he could be made
to give up, with much mowing and chattering, the well-powdered
wig which he had profanely transferred from the sacred poll to his
own. The lords spiritual of the present day, with one or two
laudable exceptions, are safe from such sacrilege : now, it would
be nearly as difficult to take a wig off a bishop, as it once was to
take the breeks off a Highlandman.

But another W anderow confined in the open part of the gardens
in the Regent’s Park was of a different temperament. There
was melancholy about this creature. He would climb his pole,
ascend to his elevated house-top, and there sit for half an hour
together, gazing wistfully at that distant portion of the park
which presented, when viewed from his position, the appearance
of a thick wood, every now and then looking down, as if he were
contrasting the smooth-shaven painted pole to which they had
fettered him, with the rugged living ‘ columns of the evergreen
palaces’ of his fathers.

It is impossible not to feel some compassion for this persecuted
race. Monkeys, generally speaking, never live long in confinement.
How should they ? The most restless and mercurial of animals,
to whose existence the balmy fresh air, constant change of place,
and prodigality of exercise, seem absolutely necessary, they are
shut up for the greatest part of the year in close, sickly, noisome
apartments, artificially heated, and miserably ventilated ; or often
only ventilated by the admission of a current of cold air, like the
Clubs. Their lungs, poor prisoners, soon become affected, and
strumous attacks gradually render the whole organization a mass
of disease under which they pine and die. Those that are suffered
to go at large, whether in houses, about the streets, on board
ships, or at fairs (the favoured ones we mean who skip along the
ropes and poles on the outside of the shows to attract company)
are better off: but hapless is the monkey doomed to the civiliza¬
tion of the menagerie.

Before we arrive at the more brutalized Baboon form, we must
notice the Barbary Ape,* the only European Monkey. This

* Innus sylvanus, Cuvier ; Macacus sylvanus, Lacepede ; Le Magot.

BABOONS.

241

species has established itself on the rock of Gibraltar, and next
to the Green Monkey is the most frequent slave of the travelling
showman or Thespian, a misfortune which it owes to its superior
intelligence. Though apparently without a tail, it has, neverthe¬
less, a small tubercle in the place of that organ. This is the ape
that figures so often in fable both ancient and modern, and it
is extremely probable that it was the only tailless monkey known
to the Greeks. There is no doubt that it was the subject anato¬
mized by Galen, -whose account has been verified by the obser¬
vations of Cuvier and of M. de Blainville.

Some of our readers may not have heard of an old story, of
which, by the way, there is more than one version, setting forth
how a strong party of these apes, headed by a knowing old
cheiroped, gave so much annoyance to a certain regiment in
garrison on the Rock, that at last they set their wits to work and
succeeded in capturing the ringleader. Him they shaved close
both head and face. They then let him go. Away he scampered
to his party, who had been watching him at a distance, eager, no
doubt, to place himself again at their head, and lead them down
to vengeance. He was received with a volley of sticks and stones
by his own troops, who treated him so roughly that he was
forced to fly for his life. In this deplorable and degraded state he
was fain to sneak back to his old enemies, the — th ; and pre¬
sented himself at their quarters so woe- begone, and with such a
rueful visage ‘all shaven and shorn,’ that there was no resisting
the appeal. He was admitted and remained with his new allies,
whom he served with fidelity, upon the same principle that
secures the faith of all other allies, — because he couldn’t help it.

The Cynocephalous Apes, or true Baboons, which form the
second tribe above alluded to, have a very low facial angle, varying in
the adult from 30° to 35°. They may be naturally separated into
those which have a considerable length of tail, and those whose
tail, if tail it may be called, is dwindled into a mere tubercle with
a tuft of hairs by way of finish. In captivity these apes (which
are not, however, indocile, if taught during their youth) present a
more undisguised and complete development of the active animal
passions than is perhaps to be found in any other creature. Of
large size, and proportions fitted for the exertion of great strength
and agility, their fierceness is almost incontrollable, their
paroxysms of rage being so violent, it is said, as occasionally to
kill them. They are evidently capable of attachment, such as it
is ; and the following anecdote, related by M. F. Cuvier, well
illustrates the dominion of passion over them. A Chacma,* kept

* Cynocephalus Chacma, Desmarest. It belongs to tlie section with long
tails.

E.

242

APES AND MONKEYS OF TIIF- OLD CONTINENT.

in the Paris menagerie, managed to escape one day from his
cage into the enclosure belonging to it. Irritated by the
stubborn refusal of the baboon to return, his keeper, not very
prudently, threatened him with a stick. This, instead of
producing the desired effect, roused all the ferocity of the beast,
and he flew at the unfortunate man, whom he wounded so
severely in the thigh as to endanger his life. The Chacma con¬
tinued at large, though almost every expedient to make him return
to confinement was resorted to. No, — all would not do. At
last it was recollected that the keeper’s daughter, who had been
kind to the prisoner, seemed to be a decided favourite ; so the
pretty Frenchwoman, three a qnatre epingles, appeared at a grated
door opposite to that of the cage through which the animal had
to pass. But even so powerful a lure had no effect till a man
approached the belle, and pretended to caress her. This was too
much ; the poor jealous dupe could not bear the sight. Fie
darted furiously through the open door of his prison at the hate¬
ful intruder, and was instantly secured. This was treacherous;
but as the Lords of the creation themselves, from Samson
down to the Macheaths, have been the victims of the dear
delightful deluders, a Chacma has no right to complain.

Cunning appears to be a principal feature in the character
of the wild baboons. In their attacks, they commence operations
at a distance, and endeavour to terrify their foes by their cries.
Bands of these marauders are stated to be cruel enemies to
the planter, and the author last quoted even goes so far as
to declare that they will watch their opportunity and destroy a
plantation from motives of revenge.

In the short-tailed section, consisting of the Drill * and
Mandrill,! we have a personification of brutality, with just enough
of humanity about the caricature to make it painfully striking, and
to remind us of —

‘ All that the hody perpetrates of had.’

The showmen name the Mandrill £ the wild satyr of the woods/
no infelicitous designation. £ Happy Jerry/ with his pipe of to¬
bacco and glass of sling, was about as odious a looking monster as
the debauched Falri himself.

The Gibbons, or long-armed Apes,| are, generally speaking,
as mild and amiable as the Baboons are savage and disgusting.
The entire absence of the tail is well compensated by the extraordi¬
nary length of the anterior extremities, and the agility of the
tribe is quite surprising. They seem to represent in the old
continent the Mycetes or Howling Monkeys of America. In

* Papio leucophams. f Papio Mormon. f Hylohates, Illiger.

GIBBONS, OR LONG-ARMED APES.

243

some of the genus, which has hitherto been found only in India
and its islands, the guttural sacs are so extensive as to be visible
externally from their protrusion, and all of them howl.

These Gibbons, notwithstanding their long and sharp canine
teeth and length of upper limb, present, in many of the species,
a very human appearance; and, if all tales be true, rival the Orangs
in their mimicry of human actions. Dr Burrough’s male Hoolock,*
which came from Goalpara, on the Burrampooter river, would take
hold of the Doctor’s hand, and, assisting himself with his other
arm, walk with him. He would come at his master’s call, seat
himself in a chair by his side at the breakfast-table, and help him¬
self to an egg, or to the wing of a chicken from the plate of the
Doctor (who seems to have indulged in praiseworthy breakfasts),
partaking of the coffee, chocolate, milk, tea, and other liquid
adjuncts ; sometimes, indeed, contenting himself, like the great
Grimaldi, with dipping his fingers into the vessel and licking them,
but, when thirsty in earnest, lifting the cup and drinking, not
from the rim, but as a man drinks when he applies his mouth to
the surface of a well or spring. Boiled rice, boiled bread and
milk with sugar, plantains, bananas, and oranges were relished,
but. bananas seemed to gratify him most. He had, however, a
low taste for insects, and would search into crevices for spiders :
as for blue bottles , he would catch them in his hand with a
dexterity worthy of the silly Single himself. The poor animal
was very affectionate to the Doctor, who appears to have been a
most kind-hearted protector, and used to comb and brush his pet,
to the great delight of the latter, who always acknowledged his
master’s morning appearance with a loud, shrill, and often repeated
‘ Whoo !’ But —

‘ A favourite lias no friend

and the poor monkey was killed by a blow across the loins with a
small stick, inflicted by some lout of a servant — inadvertently, as it
is said. There was another, a female about nine months old, in
the possession of the Doctor, who did all that he could for his little
patient in the way of castor oil, calomel, and warm baths, but she
‘ died one day.’ The sufferer laboured under great pain and op¬
pression in the chest : it is affecting to read of the eagerness with
which she hurried back to the soothing comforts of the bath when
she was removed from it, and lay there in comfortable quiescence
as long as she was permitted.

Among these apes, there is a curious Sumatran form, I with the
first and second fingers united up to the middle of the second
phalanx. The Siamangs, as they are called, are supposed by the

* Hylobates Hoolock, Harlow,
f Hylobates syndactyla. Simia syndactyla, Raffles.

244

APES AND MONKEYS OF THE OLD CONTINENT.

Malays to be conducted by a bead or chief, who has the character
of being the strongest of the party, and is believed to be invul¬
nerable. Like other leaders, he directs their motions, and pre¬
sides at their morning and evening howlings. Authors give very
contradictory accounts of the disposition of this species. Some
zoologists characterize the animal as stupid, dull, and inactive,
whilst others describe it as being remarkably tractable and brisk,
showing a lively affection towards those who behave kindly to it,
and never so happy as when in society. The truth seems to be,
as the groom said of the horses, ‘ they’ve a got their different
tempers just like we Christians.’ At all events, the lady Siamangs
are most excellent mothers, and carefully preside over the ablutions
of their little ones. These they carry to the banks of the stream,
wash them thoroughly, notwithstanding their cries and kickings,
and then wipe them dry, after the most approved methods of con¬
ducting the baby-toilette.

We now come to those forms of which such marvellous stories
have been told. The Orangs, or 1 Wild men of the Woods,’ for
a long time enjoyed a reputation almost human, a reputation kept
up by the prints and drawings which formerly placed them almost
uniformly in an erect position, and by the tricks which those
brought to Europe were taught. But neither is the Asiatic nor
the African Orang formed for erect progression. If left to them¬
selves, they move on the ground most awkwardly, doubling their
anterior hands, moving in their advance upon the knuckles, and
resting upon the outward edge of the posterior feet. Among trees
they are as active and rapid iii their motions as they are clumsy
and slow on the ground.

The anterior extremities of the Orang Utan* are nearly as long
as they are in Hylobates ; the hands, in this Asiatic, reach nearly
to the heels. There is a marked difference between the skull of
this species and the crania of Hylobates and of the Chimpanzee.
The interparietal crest in Pithecus satyrus is as highly developed as
it is in the carnivorous tribe, and the zygomatic arch is widely
expanded ; nor are these the only points of resemblance. In the
Iloolock and in the Chimpanzee the skull is comparatively smooth
and human on its outward surface.

Sumatra and Borneo are the principal localities where the
Orang Utan has been hitherto found ; and those which have been
brought to Europe have exhibited a considerable degree of intelli¬
gence, though, as far as our experience and information go, not so
high a degree as is manifested by the Chimpanzee. An Orang
Utan, brought to England by Captain Methuen, made no attempt
to escape when suffered to be at large before he was shipped, but

* Pithecus satyrus.

THE ORANG UTAN.

245

became violent when incarcerated in a bamboo cage. He, at
first, shook the rails violently, but, finding that they did not yield
to his efforts, he tried them separately, pitched upon the weakest,
and perseveringly worked at it till he broke it and regained his
liberty. Then they tried to confine him by a chain fastened to
a strong staple ; he soon unfastened it, and ran off. Finding
the incumbrance of the chain, as he dragged it after him, he
collected it into one or two coils and threw it over his shoulder :
this he did, as occasion required, till, finding that it slipped
from his shoulder, he held it in his mouth. At last he was
suffered to roam freely about the ship, and became a general
favourite, from the grave playfulness of his manners, and his
burlesque of human actions and passions. Among other feats
he stole the captain’s brandy-bottle, and did his best to throw
a cage full of small monkeys overboard. This propensity to
monkey-murder has been observed in most of the individuals who
have had an opportunity of shewing it : as if the Orangs con¬
sidered the monkeys libellous caricatures upon their more dignified
development, and were eager to get rid of their irritating presence.
When refused what he wanted he would roll himself on deck, and
behave as naughtily as any froward child could ; nay, if the
refusal were persisted in, he would suddenly rise, and, uttering
piercing screams, rush over the ship’s side, as though, in his
despair, he were going to throw himself into the sea. At first
the captain and his crew actually thought that they had carried
the joke too far, and driven their clieiroped shipmate to commit
suicide ; but, on searching, they found him concealed under the
chains.

The individuals, however, brought to this country, give but a
faint idea of the size and appearance of a full-grown Orang
Utan. Professor Owen, in his highly interesting memoir on the
osteology of this species and the Chimpanzee, gives the height
of the Orang Utan as under five feet ; but, according to Dr Abel,
its stature when adult is, sometimes at least, much beyond that
limit.

In the ‘ Asiatic Researches,’ the Doctor lays before us an ac¬
count of a scene in which one of these unfortunate Orangs was a
principal actor, or rather sufferer ; an account which no one can
read without pain : —

A party from a brig had, it appears, landed at Ramboon, on
the north-west coast of Sumatra, to procure water. The place
was much cultivated, and there were but few trees ; on one of
these trees they discovered a gigantic animal. They approached,
and he came to the ground. They pursued, and he made for
another tree at some distance, presenting to his pursuers a tall

246

APES AND MONKEYS OF THE OLD CONTINENT.

man-like figure covered with a fell of shining brown hair, moving
almost erect with a waddling gait, sometimes assisting his pro¬
gress with his hands, and sometimes by the impulse of a bough
which he held. On gaining a small clump, he sprang at a bound
to a lofty branch, and passed from one limb of the tree to another
with the greatest ease and alacrity. They felt that, if the country
had been well wooded, he must, in all probability, have escaped ;
for he travelled from tree to tree with the swiftness of a horse on
the ground. Confined as he was to only a few trees* his move¬
ments were so quick that it was very difficult to take aim, and it
was not till his hunters had cut down one tree after another that
they were able effectually to begin their butcher work. Five
balls pierced the wretched creature before his exertions relaxed;
then, reclining, apparently exhausted, on one of the branches, he
copiously vomited blood. Still he held on ; and their ammunition
being all expended, they proceeded to cut down the tree, con¬
vinced that he was so far gone that they could then secure him
without trouble. The tree nodded to its fall; but, as it was
falling, they, to their surprise, saw him gain another, and they
w^ere obliged to cut down all the trees before they could bring
him to the earth. Even then, mangled as he was he made a
most determined defence against the numbers who attacked him
with spears, large stones, and other missiles. He broke the
shaft of one spear — it was made of a supple wood, and would
have withstood the strength of the stoutest man — c as if it had
been a carrot,’ to use the words of the narrator. Those who
aided in this slaughter acknowledged that they were distressed
by the human-like expression of his countenance, the piteous
manner m which he applied his hands to his wounds, and the
whole bearing of the dying combatant. They confessed that the
sight was such as almost to make them question the nature of
the act they were committing. He lay dead before them, upwards
of six feet in length at the lowest computation, according to the
narrative.

We know not what view their worships of the learned societies
may take of this transaction, for there is no telling how far a zeal
for science may carry its votaries,* but to the unlearned it must
look rather murderous.

The captdn, who furnished Dr Abel with the details, stated

*Wc remember to have heard of a clause said to have been in the direc¬
tions given, many years ago, to a commander of an expedition of discovery,
somewhat to the following eflect: — ‘ You are to avoid collision with the
natives; but if, unfortunately, such an event should happen, and one of them
should be killed, you will preserve the body in spirit and bring it home for
examination.’

THE ORANG UTAN.

247

that the creature was a full head taller than any man on board,
measuring seven feet in what might be called his ordinary stand¬
ing posture, and eight feet when suspended for the purpose of
being skinned. Dr Abel describes the skin, dried and shrivelled
as it was, as measuring in a straight line, from the top of the
shoulder to the part where the ankle had been removed, five feet
ten inches ; the perpendicular length of the neck, as in the prepar¬
ation, three inches and a half ; the length of the head, from the
top of the forehead to the end of the chin, nine inches; and the
length of the skin still attached to the foot, from the line of its
separation from the leg, eight inches. 4 We thus,’ says Dr Abel,
4 obtain seven feet six inches and a half as the approximate height
of the animal.’ These dimensions are startling, and far exceed
those warranted by the skeletons of adult Orangs hitherto brought
to this country.

The hair of the head was of a reddish brown, growing from
behind forwards, and five inches in length. The cnestnut- coloured
beard was handsome, but very wiry, and appeared to have been
curly in life, springing gracefully from the upper lip, near the
angles of the mouth, in the form of moustaches, and thence de¬
scending to mingle with the portion growing on the chin.

The personage who has lately arrived at the gardens of the
Zoological Society in the Regent’s Park, and is now the 4 observed
of all observers,’ is of the softer sex, and very young. She receives
company in the Giraffe-house, and appears amiable, though of a
gravity and sage deportment far beyond what is usual at her
years. , When we first saw her she was standing by her gentleman
in waiting, who was patting her head and tickling her chin — fami¬
liarities which, far from offending her, were admitted with the
utmost complacency. Presently, however, she left him, evidently
with the intention of making the acquaintance of a carpenter, who
was kneeling with his back toward her, making some alterations
in her apartment. It sounded odd to hear the gentleman in
waiting say, as she laid her hand on the carpenter’s shoulder,

4 Come, Jenny, you must leave the carpenter alone,’ at the same
time gently leading her away. ‘ Dear me ! ’ said a lady ; 4 Dear
me! does she know what is said to her?’ 4 Yes, she knows her
name, Ma’am,’ was the cautious reply: upon which the lady said
i Dear me !’ again.

Finding that she was checked in her proposed liaison with the
carpenter, Jenny moved quietly into the box which served her
for a bed-room, arranged her blanket, made a wisp of straw into
a bundle for a pillow with dexterous manipulation, and then lay
down at her ease upon her back, with her straw-pillowed head
towards the entrance of the box, still gazing, as she lay, at her

248

APES AND MONKEYS OF THE OLD CONTINENT.

carpenter. As we have not observed her parure noticed in any
of those 1 glasses of fashion,’ French or English, which abound in
this metropolis, we think it right to state that her dress consists of
a fine Welsh flannel chemisette, with continuations of the same,
a la Turque , over which she wears a robe, seldom seen on the
ladies of this country, called a Guernsey frock. She looks
very comfortable, but we would advise our friends to pay their
respects as soon as they conveniently can ; for, though the tem¬
perature of the Giraffe-house is very good, experience has taught
us not to consider the lives of such foreigners as Jenny very
insurable.*

In the Chimpanzee, | the African type of Orang, the arms are
very much shortened, not reaching much below the knee ; and
the thumbs and great toes are much more developed than in the
Orang Utan. There are some points in which the latter comes
nearer to man than the former ; but the Chimpanzee, taken
altogether, is much more human in its conformation. Still, as we
have before observed, there is a wide interval between the Simian
and Human forms. ;f This is strongly shown in the countenance.
Lawrence well says that the brute face is merely an instrument
adapted to procure and prepare food, and often a weapon of

* Poor Jenny has, long since, ceased to exist. No care has heen spared to
preserve those anthropoid apes which have heen kept in the Regent's Park;
hut all the watchful anxiety has proved fruitless. 1848.

f Troglodytes niger.

X We feel that this is no place for anatomical detail, and yet it may not be
amiss to draw the reader’s attention to one or two of the many points on
which this assertion rests. In man, the muscle called flexor longus pollicis
pedis terminates in a single tendon, and its force is concentrated in the great
toe — the principal point of resistance in raising the body upon the heel. In
the orang, the analogous muscle has its termination in three tendons sepa¬
rately and exclusively inserted in the three middle toes, to enable them to
grasp more forcibly, and so minister to the necessities of an arboreal animal.
Surely,’ says Professor Owen, who brings forward this striking difference, ‘ it is
asking us too much to require us to believe that in the course of time, under
any circumstances, these three tendons should become consolidated into one,
and that one become implanted into a toe to which none of the three sepa¬
rate tendons were before attached.’ Then, again, there is the discrepancy
in the shape and disposition of the teeth. ‘ What external influence,’ as the
same acute author inquires, ‘ operating upon and around the animal, can
possibly modify in its offspring the forms, or alter the size, of the deeply-
seated germs of the permanent teeth ? They exist before the animal is born,
and let him improve his thinking faculties as he may, they must, in obe¬
dience to an irresistible law, pass through their phases of development, and
induce those remarkable changes in the maxillary portion of the skull, which
give to the adult orangs a more bestial form and expression of head than
many of the inferior Simice present.’ The osteology and myology of these
animals, to say nothing of the rest of their structure, forbid the conclusion
that the monkey could by any ordinary natural process be ever expanded;
into Man.

THE CHIMPANZEE.

249

offence and defence. The human countenance is an organ of
expression, an outward index of what passes in the busy world
within.

To repeat the stories so well known of the life, character, and
behaviour of the Chimpanzee, would be to occupy space on which
we have already trespassed, to say nothing of its renewing the
4 Infandum, &c.’ Poor dear Tommy, we knew him well, and
wdio is there who wras not, at least, his visiting acquaintance?
Was he not immortalized in the carmen zoologicum of the illus¬
trious Bull? Peace be with him! Everybody loved him; every¬
body was kind to him. In his last illness he was suffered to come
forth for a closer enjoyment of the kitchen fire ; and there we saw
him sit, 4 leaning his cheek upon his hand/ watching the gyrations
of a depending shoulder of mutton, as it revolved and hissed between
him and the glowing grate — no, not with the prying mischievous
eyes of ordinary monkeys ; but with a pensive philosophic air that
seemed to admit his own inferiority, and to say — 4 Ah ! man is,
indeed, the cooking animal.’

January, 1838.

ELEPHANTS.

PART I.

4 Of all the Beasts which t-liou This-day did build,

To haunt the Hills, the Forrest, and the Field,

I see (as Vice-Roy of their Brutish Band)

The Elephant the Vant-guard doth command:

Worthy that office; whether we regard

His Towered back, where many Souldiers ward ;

Or else his Prudence, wherewithal! he seems
T’ obscure the wits of human-kinde sometimes :

As studious scholar, he self-ruminetli,

His lessons giv’n, his king he honoureth,

Adores the moon : moved with strange desire,

He feels the sweet flames of th’ Idalian fire,

And (pierc’t with glance of a kinde-cruell eye)

For humane beauty, seems to sigh and dye.

Yae (if the Grecians doe not mis-recite)

With’s crooked trumpet he doth sometimes write.’

Du Bartas : The /Sixth day of the First Weehe.

These lines are translated ‘by yt. famous Philomusus , Iosvah
Sylvester, Gent.,’ as we are informed in the quaint title-page of
the folio edition, printed at London in 1633, by Robert Young,
who collected his ‘most delight-full Workes,’ and gave them to the
public with the following dashing address :

‘ The Printer to the Reader.

‘ The name of Joshua Sylvester is garland enough to hang
before This doore ; a name worthily deare to the present Age, to
Posteritie. I doe not therefore, goe about to apologize for this
Worke, or to commend it: it shall speak for itselfe, louder than
eytlier others’ friendship or envie. I only advertise my Reader
that since the death of the Author (if at least it be safe to say
those men are dead who ever survive in their living monuments)
I have carefully fetclit together all the dispersed Issue of that

STRUCTURE.

251

divine Wit; as those which are well worthie to live (like
Brethren) together under one faire roofe, that may both challenge
time and outweare it. I durst not conceale the harmless fancies
of his inoffensive youth, which himselfe had devoted to Silence
and Forgetfulness : It is so much the more glory to that worthy
Spirit, that hee who was so happy in those youthful strains
(some whereof, lately come to hand, and not formerly extant, are
in this edition inserted) would yet turne and confine his pen to
none but holy and religious Dities. Let the present and future
times injoy so profitable and pleasing a work, and at once honour
the Author, and thank the Editor.’

The book is got up in the best manner, dedicated to gentle
King Jamie, and with its Anagrammata Regia — ‘ Jacobus Stuart,
Justa Servabo, James Stuart A just Master,’ for example — and
its pilastered 1 Corona Dedicatoria ,’ forms a very curious and cha¬
racteristic specimen of the Euphuistic and Garamna literature of
the time. But, alas for posthumous fame ! how few of the
present generation have even heard of Sylvester? Were it not
for the imperishable Izaak Walton,* what would be known of
Du Bartas himself? There is much more about the Elephant,
and the way in which the Dragon circumvents and kills the huge
beast, in verse which, although it might have sounded charmingly
in the ears of the Royal Apprentice, our readers would hardly
thank us for disinterring.

Before we enter upon the natural history of the Elephant, and
the uses to which he has been applied either in war, the chase,
the procession, or the theatre, we will, with the reader’s leave
take a rapid view of the organic structure of the huge animal,
beginning with the gigantic bony framework.

One of the first particular objects that strikes the beholder
after the mind has recovered from the impression which the
colossal whole never fails to produce, especially when the skeleton
of a full grown male is viewed in front, is the enormous size of
the cranium ; and few of those who are not conversant with the
organization of the skull, with its broad anterior expanse, fail to
express their surprise at its proportions, or to inquire how a
weight apparently so great is supported.

The muscles necessary for working the complicated, powerful,
and delicate evolutions of the trunk or proboscis, require a broad
surface for their attachment ; and ponderous as the skull seems,
it is in great part weighty in appearance only. The chamber
of the brain, which last forms in the elephant 3-)^ of the whole
body, is but of comparatively small extent, although there is

* ‘ Compleat Angler,’ ch. 1.

252

ELEPHANTS.

ample room for that grand centre of the nervous system in pro¬
portion to the necessities of the animal: and many who have
heard of or witnessed its sagacity, deceived by appearances, come
to the conclusion that the development ot the brain is commensu¬
rate with the external surface. If this had been the truth, we
should probably have had in the elephant a forty-man reasoning
power imprisoned in a frame utterly unfit to carry out the ideas
and reflections engendered in that brain, which would have been
but inadequately protected from the dangers surrounding a
creature whose food is principally obtained by breaking down large
branches of trees, and uprooting others of no small dimensions.
But as it is, the forehead, with its great frontal sinuses, which are
larger in the elephant than in any other animal, may be safely
used as an immense battering-ram to clear away all obstructions
in its path, whilst comparative lightness is secured by the exten¬
sive, thin, but firm cellular texture which is so largely developed
between the outer and inner tables of the cranium, and becomes an
almost impregnable fortification to secure the brain from external
danger. It is well known to hunters that the place to which their
aim is best directed in elephant shooting is behind the ear, — the
vulnerable point by which the massacred Chunee was reached at
Exeter Change, after his cruel and clumsy foes had been blazing
away at him in front till they were weary ; and the back part of
the cranium is the thinnest and least protected, because it is less
exposed to danger.

In the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England is
the skull of a fine Ceylonese elephant, which has, at some time
long passed, been the living target for the rifle of the hunter.
There are three bullet wounds, all healed, in the face, and the
bullets are still, without doubr, lodged in the reticular diploe
between the two tables of the skull which we have above attempted
to describe. One of these wounds is in the forehead. The marks¬
man had evidently aimed at the point where the nasal aperture is
situated, and if the ball had entered there it would have only
had to encounter the comparatively thin wall of bone at the back
of the chamber, and would in all probability have brought the
animal down. The second hole is a little to the left of the chamber.
The third ball had passed through the upper part of the great
temporal muscle of the right side, and entered far into the osseous
net-work. On introducing a finger into this wound, a smooth-
walled circular bony canal is felt as far as one can reach, so admir¬
ably has nature completed the curative process.

Still when we remember that in man the brain forms from
■2V to of the body, the proportion in the elephant does seem
somewhat of the least ; but small animals have, generally speaking,

I

THE PLESIOSAURUS1.

TEILOBITE.

EYE OF TRJLOBITE.

FOOTMARKS IN THE NEW RED SANDSTONE

. -

■ . . • « . '-***— • • 'i :

STRUCTURE.

253

a greater brain in proportion to their body than larger ones — in a
mouse, for instance, the proportion is in a canary bird ^ — and
the pachyderms, as a class, have it very small.

But, notwithstanding these provisions for lightening the burden,
the mass to be supported on the neck is enormous : the tusks, the
teeth of the upper jaw, the proboscis, and the heavy under jaw,
form together the greatest weight that the muscles of the neck and
back of any terrestrial animal have to bear. The elevated and
roughly-knobbed spinous processes of the vertebrae afford ample
surface for the attachment of the ligaments and muscles that
support and wield the enormous head, tusks, and trunk ; whilst, in
tlie cranium itself, the great temporal fossae make room for the
massive crotaphite muscles to suspend and work the ponderous
under jaw.

Old elephants have but one tooth on each side of their jaw : nay,
they have seldom, till they are aged, a perfect tooth at all ; for as
the jaws continue to grow, the new or succeeding tooth acts par¬
tially only at first, and then may be seen two teeth in action.
When this advancing tooth has come so forward as to be consi¬
derably exposed, the old tooth, reduced and decaved by the pres¬
sure of its successor, is shed. This is repeated as long as the
animal continues to grow ; but when the growth of the jaw stops,
the elephant has no longer more than a single tooth to depend
upon. The new or advancing grinder is formed not under, but
immediately behind the old tooth, and the anterior end of the
new tooth comes into play long before the old one is ripe for
shedding. Thus the grinding surface is increased and continued
by both, till age reduces the elephant to a single tooth. The beau¬
tiful provision of bone-forming pulps or plates winch unite with the
enamel-forming pulps to make the strong and compact com¬
pound molar teeth, may be well seen by steeping one of them in
acid.

The tusks, or, as they were anciently and erroneously deemed,
horns, are formed upon a different principle. Instead of a suc¬
cession of plates, the ivory is deposited by successive secretions of
a vascular pulp, in very thin layers, from within. The hollow in an
elephant’s tusk is familiar to most ; this cavity is the seat of the
pulpy substance in which are not unfrequently found foreign
bodies, such as musket-balls, which have entered through the wall
of the hollow part of the tooth when the ivory was in its soft state,
and have become firmly imbedded in the ripened and hardened
tusk.

The enormous size that these offensive and defensive weapons
acquire in fine old males is still manifested by specimens which

254

ELEPHANTS.

have been kept, on account of their great development and beauty,
and saved from the manufacturer. These ponderous tusks are
held in the upper jaw not by any adhesion to the pulpy root,
as it may be termed, but by the elasticity of the parts alone,
somewhat in the same way that a nail keeps its place in a plank.
Some notion may be entertained of the high degree of vascularity
of the tusk from an accident that happpened to one of the ele¬
phants formerly kept at Exeter Change. The animal nearly bled
to death from the laceration of the vessels of the pulp contained
in the cavity for the purpose of supplying constant internal
additions of successive lamina), as the tusk is worn down ex¬
ternally.

Mr Lawrence, in a note to his translation of Blumenbach, thus
lays before us the modes in which a foreign body may become set,
as it were, in the surrounding ivory.

‘We can explain very satisfactorily how a bullet may enter the
tusk of an elephant, and become imbedded in the ivory without
any opening for its admission being perceptible. It will be
shown in a subsequent note, that these tusks are constantly
growing during the animal’s life, by a deposition of successive
laminae within the cavity, while the outer surface and the point are
gradually worn away ; and that the cavity is filled for this purpose
with a vascular pulp, similar to that on which teeth are originally
formed. If a ball penetrate the side of a tusk, cross its cavity,
and lodge in the slightest way on the opposite side, it will become
covered towards the cavity by the newly deposited layers of ivory,
while no opening will exist between it and the surface to account
for its entrance. If it have only sufficient force to enter, it will
probably sink by its own weight between the pulp and tooth,
until it rests at the bottom of the cavity. It there becomes
surrounded by new layers of ivory ; and as the tusk is gradually
worn away, and supplied by new depositions, it will soon be
found in the centre of the solid part of the tooth. Lastly, a
foreign body may enter the tusk from above, as the plate of bone
which forms its socket is thin ; if this descends to the lower part
of the cavity, it may become imbedded by the subsequent for¬
mations of ivory. This must have happened where a spear-head
was found in an elephant’s tooth. The long axis of the foreign
body corresponded to that of the cavity. ISTo opening for its
admission could be discovered, and it is very clear that no human
strength, could drive such a body through the side of a tusk/
{Phil. Trans. 1801, Part I.)

The greatest recorded weight of a tusk known to us is three
hundred and fifty pounds : the tooth was sold at Amsterdam.

STRUCTURE.

255

Topsell, to whose work, quoted by Izaak Walton in the seventh
chapter of the first edition of his ‘ Compleat Angler,’ and in the
eighth of the second, we shall presently draw attention more at
large, mentions a book on Judsea, without the name of the author,
who affirms that he saw an elephant’s tooth sold to a Venetian
merchant for six-and-thirty ducats, fourteen spans long, and four
spans broad, and it weighed so heavy that he could not move
it from the ground. 4 Vartomanus also saith,’ continues Topsell,

4 that he saw in the Isle of Sumatra, two elephant’s teeth which
weighed three hundred six-and-thirty pounds.

The other longest measurements stated are nine feet, and, in one
instance, upwards of fourteen feet. What stupendous brutes must
the owners of these tusks have been! A length of from six to seven
feet, and a diameter at the base of from five to six inches, are con¬
sidered now as dimensions above the usual average.

Without wearying those who may take up this sketch with a
description of the entire massive skeleton, there are some points on
which we may perhaps touch without being tedious. Unlike the
herd of mammiferous animals, the thigh bone of the elephant wants
the smooth round ligamentous chord* which moors, as it were, the
round head of the femur in man, and in the greater part of quad¬
rupeds, to the round hip-socketf in which it moves. The want of
this ligament is supplied, in the elephant, by the projecting aceta¬
bulum, which closely embraces, and nearly hides the round head of
the bone in its deep and nice-fitting cavity, wherein the bail of the
femur is so safely secured, that dislocation is almost impossible
without fracture of this part of the pelvis.

The travelling showman now enlightens the gaping spectators
that crowd his booth at a country fair with — 4 Some says as ele¬
phants got no joints in their legs, but that ere’s fabulous;’ and yet,
there was a time when the popular belief — originating no doubt, in
the stiff march of the animal, which results in a motion so disagree¬
able to the rider, when compared with the easy paces of a horse,
arising frcm the more complicated machinery of the limbs of the
latter — was so strong, that Sir T. Brown found it necessary to
set himself seriously to refute it as a vulgar error. Strength, certain¬
ly, rather than flexibility, is the principle on which the legs of
the elephant are formed. But Ulysses , in 4 Troylus and Cressida,’
says,

The elephant hath jovnts, hut none for curtesie ;

His legges are legges for necessity, not for flight £

And yet when the animal kneels he bends his hind legs, as a
man does when he assumes the kneeling position. Sir T. Brown

* Ligamentum teres.

f Acetabulum.

t Folio.

256

ELEPHANTS.

in liis third book, ‘Of divers popular and received Tennets concern¬
ing Animals: which examined, prove either false or dubious,’ says,
‘ The first shall be of the elephant; whereof there generally passeth
an opinion, it hath no joynts ; and this absurdity is seconded with
another, that being unable to lie down, it sleepeth against a tree :
which the hunters observing, do saw almost asunder ; whereon the
beast relying, by the fall of the tree, falls also down itself, and is
able to rise no more.’

It would be a waste of space at this time of day, to follow Sir
Thomas through his learned and grave refutation of this absurdity,
the more extraordinary, inasmuch as though there are not wanting
passages in ancient authors to countenance it, there are multitudes
of others referring to actions by elephants, which could not be per¬
formed without flexure of their joints, and some which expressly
describe genuflexion and lying down.

Propped upon the high, huge limbs, which look like great col¬
umns when the animal is at rest, and even when in ordinary pro¬
gression, how was the elephant, with his extremely short, compact
neck — a compactness and brevity necessary to the easy support of
the colossal head — to reach the succulent plants beneath it, or even
any vegetable production that was not upon a level with its mouth?
The cervical vertebrae of the ruminants generally, are so modified
as to enable the animal to crop with ease the herbage of the field :
and in the giraffe the neck is so extremely lengthened as to lift its
towering head above the acacias on which it principally browses,
while its flexibility enables the animal to apply its prehensile
tongue and lips to any food that may suit it, from the ground
to a height of eighteen feet.* In the horse and other pachyderms,
which are grazers, the proportions of the legs and neck are
so adjusted, that the mouth reaches the ground with ease, as
the spectator immediately perceives when he sees their skeletons
only. But place a man who has never seen an elephant in the
flesh, or a pictorial representation of the animal, before its skeleton,
and one of his first mental inquiries will be, ‘how was the
creature fed?’ The moment you explain to him that the short¬
ness of the neck was compensated by a long flexible proboscis, which
depended from the head, between the tusks, capable of touching
the ground, or of reaching to that extent above the head, the pro¬
blem is solved.

* On the night of the 25th of February, 1844, Zaida, the female giraffe,
in the possession of the Zoological Society of London, gave birth, in the
Regent's Park, to a fine healthy male, after a gestation of sixty-five weeks
and three days, being the third of that sex produced by her in captivity at
that place. She has since become the mother of a fourth male. — See ante ,
p. 209, note.

ASIATIC ELEPHANT,

STRUCTURE OF THE PROBOSCIS.

257

This wonderful organ — almost equal to the hand of man,
superior to that of the apes — is, perhaps, the most elaborate
piece of mechanism as yet known to us. In consequence of the
space necessarily occupied by the sockets of the tusks, the nasal
bones are limited in their development ; and the nostrils in the
skeleton are situated toward the upper part of the face. But in
the living animal they are prolonged into a cylindrical proboscis,
endowed with exquisite sensibility, the utmost facility of motion,
and enormous strength. At its distal extremity is a small
muscular appendage, which has aptly been termed the finger.
Between thirty and forty thousand muscles enable the elephant
to extend this animated instrument, shorten it, and bend it in
every direction, so that there is hardly any curve or position
which it cannot assume at the will of the animal, nor any sub¬
stance, large or small, with which it cannot grapple. One of the
most philosophical poets of ancient Borne uses the term ‘ angui-
manus,’ or 1 snake-hand,’ to designate an elephant ; and her greatest
orator terms the proboscis ‘the elephant’s hand.’ Even the rude
Caffre, when he has slain one of these huge beasts, is said to amputate
the trunk with a feeling of awe, and, as he solemnly buries it, to ex¬
claim, ‘ The elephant is a great lord, and the trunk is his hand.’

But this is not all. The proboscis is the elephant’s pump, his
drinking -cup, his water reservoir, his jet cVeau — from whose foun¬
tain he besprinkles his broad back and ample body — his powdering
apparatus, wherewith he puffs the collected dust over his moistened
hide to protect it from flies, his foraging instrument with which
he collects his food, from the enormous leafv branch torn from the

V

lofty tree, to the stalk of grass, or the barleycorn picked up from
the ground, his tooth-brush — we have seen one rub his teeth with
mud dentifrice by its aid — and his all-powerful arm. Such is this
wonderful concentration of might and skill, capable of the most
tremendous exertion, and the most delicate adjustment, now dash¬
ing a strong living man against a wall, from which he falls a
mashed and blood-stained inanimate mass, at the behest of an
eastern tyrant, and anon gathering up the comfits granted as the
terrible brute’s reward.

This ‘ proboscis ’ or ‘ promuscis,’ as it was termed by the an¬
cient Italians, was so named, with reference, in all probability,
to the organ by which flies, ‘ muscse,’ take their food : indeed,
Cardan, comparing the proboscis of the beast with that of the in¬
sect, remarks, that whilst nature was framing a gnat, she was
meditating on the production of an elephant ; for which conceit he
receives a most unsparing castigation at the hands of the sarcastic
Scaliger. 'E ‘Tifiocr/.ig ( epiboscis , or feeder,) was the Greek word used
to designate the proboscis of a fly

s

258

ELEPHANTS.

Edward Topsell, who was, 4 Chaplaine in the church of Saint
Buttolphe, Aldersgate,’ to 4 The Reverend and Right Worshipful!
Richard Neile, D. of Divinity, Deane of Westminster, Maister
of the Savoy, and Clearke of the King his most excellent
Maiesties Closet,’ in his rare 4 Historie of Four-footed Beastes,’*
which is generally considered to be one of the first, if not the first
book on Zoology written in Great Britain, thus quaintly describes
the proboscis : —

‘ His trun eke called Proboscis and Promuscis, is a large hollow
thing hanging from his nose like skinne to the groundward : and
when he feedeth it lyeth open, like the skin upon the bill of a
Turkey-cock, to draw in both his meate and drinke, using it for a
hand, and therefore improperly it is called a hand. For by it he
receiveth of his keeper whatsoever he giveth him, with it he over-
throweth trees, and wheresoever he swimmeth through it he
draweth breath. It is crooked, gristly, and inflexible at the roote
next to the nose ; within, it hath two passages, one into the head
and bodie, by which he breatheth, and the other into his mouth,
whereby he receiveth his meate : and herein is the worke of God
most woonderfull, not only in giving unto it such a diverse pro¬
portion and anatomie, but also giving him reason to knowe this
benefite of it, that so long as lie is in the water and holdeth up
that trunck, he cannot perish.

4 With this he fighteth in warre, and is able to take up a small
piece of money from the earth ; with it he hath beene seene to pull
down the toppe of a tree, which twenty-foure men with a rope could
not make to bend. With it he driveth away his hunters when he
is chased, for he can draw up therein a great quantity of water,
and shoote it forth againe, to the amazement and the overthrow of
them that persecute him.’

The height of the elephant has been greatly exaggerated.

4 Of all earthly creatures,’ says Topsell, 4 an elephant is the
greatest : for in India they are nine cubits high, and five cubits
broad ; in Affrica foureteene or fifteene ful spans, which is about
eleven foot high, and proportionable in bredtli, which caused
ZElianus to write that one Elephant is as big as three Bugils : and
among these the males are ever greater than the females. In the
kingdome of Melinda, in Aft'rieke, there were two young ones, not
above six months old, whereof the least was great as the greatest
oxe, but his flesh was as much as you shall find in two oxen ; the
other was much greater.’

These dimensions are tolerably large ; but an altitude of from
seventeen to twenty feet has been ascribed by others to the ele-

* London : Printed by William laggard. 1607.

SIZE.

250

phants of Madras. The average height, however, seems to be
under ten feet, measured from the wither or top of the shoulder :
that of the skeleton of Chunee, in the Museum of the Royal Col¬
lege of Surgeons, is about nine feet six inches from the pedestal
on which it stands to the top of the head ; and the male elephant
now in the garden of the Zoological Society of London, in the
Regent’s Park, measures about nine feet six inches from the
ground to the top of the shoulder.* One belonging to a vizier of
Oude was twelve feet two inches high when his head was raised,
as he marched in state, and measured ten feet six inches from the
ground to the top of the shoulder. This was the only instance
known to Mr Corse, who was indefatigable in collecting accurate
information on the subject, of an elephant exceeding ten feet in
height. He had indeed some trouble in getting at the truth of
rumours spread abroad by those who had seen the animal, relative
to the ultra-gigantic proportions of one at Dacca belonging to the
nabob, and said to be about fourteen feet high.

Now Mr Corse had formerly seen this very elephant, and
then judging from his eye, had supposed the height of the
animal to be twelve feet. Determined to ascertain the fact, he
set out for Dacca, where the mahout of the elephant in question
assured Mr Corse that his charge was from ten to twelve cubits
high — in other words, from fifteen to eighteen feet, but that he
dared not bring the animal for Mr Corse’s examination without
the permission of the nabob. Mr Corse, however, who from
experience knew that the eye is occasionally endowed with a high
magnifying power, especially in cases where old prejudices exist,
was not to be satisfied with this evidence, direct as it was, and
good as it seemed. He asked the nabob’s permission to apply the
test of actual measurement, it was granted, and the dimensions of
the animal immediately shrank under its exact severity. Rs
height did not exceed ten feet. Le Vaillant, it is true, mentions
an enormous African elephant which he wounded, and which, he
says, was at least thirteen feet high, with tusks which, to judge by
the eye, could not have weighed less than a hundred and twenty
pounds each. But the animal escaped, and Le Vaillant had no
opportunity of measuring it accurately.

Pringle, too, came suddenly upon a male of this species, which
two officers of engineers, who were with him, and had been
familiar with the sight of wild elephants agreed was at least
fourteen feet in height : here again there was no actual measure¬
ment.

The Asiatic is as fastidious with reference to the perfection of

* Dead. See Appendix.

260

ELEPHANTS.

his elephant as he is with regard to female beauty. Oriental
writers dwell upon the normal points of loveliness in the form of
woman ; nor are they less particular in laying down the laws of
proportion which ought to govern the full development of an
elephant without blemish.

A perfect elephant must have long, rounded ears, without ragged
or indented edges. His eyes, free from specks, should be dark
hazel. Neither black nor dark spots of any size ought to dis¬
figure the roof of his mouth or his tongue. His trunk must be
large and well developed. His tail should be long, and the ter¬
minal tuft of hair should nearly reach to the ground. On each of
his fore-feet there ought to be five nails, and on each of his hind-
feet four, making his full complement eighteen. His head should
be well set on, and carried high and stately. The curve of his
back ought to rise gradually from the shoulder to the middle,
whence it should decline to the setting on of the tail. His limbs
must be strong, and his joints firm and well knit.

The quantity of food necessary for the support of this colossal
frame is great, and the expense of keeping a large body of ele¬
phants, as was formerly the practice in India, for war or ceremony,
must have been excessive. Akbar’s own stud, kept for his per¬
sonal use, amounted to one hundred and one, and the daily allow¬
ance to each was two hundred pounds of food. The greater
number of them had, moreover, ten pounds of sugar, in addition
to rice, pepper, and milk. Three hundred sugar-canes were daily
supplied to each of them during the cane season. The elephant
kept by Louis XIY. had a daily allowance of eighty pounds of
bread, twelve pints of wine, and an enormous mess of vegetable
soup, with rice and bread. These were his ordinary provisions,
and he picked up no small gleanings besides in the shape of grass
and presents from visiters.

The daily rations of Jack, the male elephant kept in the garden
of the Zoological Society of London, and now* about thirty-three
years old, are a truss and a half of hay, forty-two pounds of Swedish
turnips, a mash consisting of three pounds of boiled rice, a bushel
of chaff, and half a bushel of bran, ten pounds of sea-biscuit, a
bundle of straw for his bed, weighing about thirty-six pounds,
which he usually eats by the morning, and thirty-six pails of water.

Besides this he collects no small portion of savoury alms from
the public. Formerly his allowance was larger, and he had oats
and mangold-wurzel ; but at that time Sunday was a day of fasting
with him (as it still is to the carnivora) only broken by a slight
morning meal. Some four or five years ago he determined to
stand this hebdomadal privation no longer, and for two or three

* 1847. See Appendix.

ALIMENT.

261

successive Sabbath-nights he made such a disturbance that the
keepers had small repose. Finding that this hint was not taken,
he went a little further next time, and so bestirred himself that,
like other agitators who have known exactly how far to go, he
carried his point ; for he made an attack upon his door with such
good-will and effect, that they were fain to get up in the middle of
the night to feed him. Since this demonstration of physical force
he has enjoyed his full meals on Sundays.

While writing this, a curious instance of his ingenuity has come
to our knowledge. The boarded ceiling in front of his apartment
is low, compared to the height within, but still it was thought to
be sufficiently lofty. He has lately, tired probably by his long
winter confinement, commenced operations upon it and pulled
down some of the boards. The nice application of the tools with
which nature has furnished him was cleverly manifested on this
occasion. Raising his head suddenly, he drove his tusk through a
board, splitting it with the blow ; he then applied the finger of his
trunk to the aperture, and tore away till he was found out and
stopped. Nothing could be more unpromising than the smooth
surface of planks above his head, or could have afforded less op¬
portunity for grasping ; but he tried it with his proboscis, found
it hollow, and pierced it with his tusk, so as to obtain trunk-hold.
This was very like reasoning.

The necessary daily aliment for the elephant in a state of domes¬
tication may be stated, on an average, at about two hundred
pounds in weight. Twenty-five rupees a month is the modern
Asiatic allowance for each elephant.

Le Vaillant had a view of the mode in which the wild African
elephants feed, and he describes their method of purifying their
ligneous salads before they become the grist of the powerful mill
which we have attempted to describe. From the top of an emi¬
nence at the edge of a wood he perceived four in some very thick
bushes, and taking care to get to the leeward of them he ap¬
proached with great precaution. For half an hour did he survey
them while they were eating the extremities of the branches.
Before they took the branches into their mouths, they beat them
three or four times with their trunks, in order, as he imagined, to
shake off the ants and insects. This done, they grasped with their
trunks all the branches they could, and conveying them to their
mouths always on the left side, swallowed them without much
chewing. He remarked that they preferred those branches which
were best furnished with leaves, and that they were, besides, ex¬
tremely fond of a yellow fruit, when it was ripe, which in the
country is called a cherry.

But it would seem that after a long fast, or in moments of care-

262

ELEPHANTS.

lessness, the purifying process above noticed by Le Vaillant is
occasionally neglected, for the worthy Topsell, drawing from the
ancient legends, and especially from Pliny, who never let a won¬
derful story pass unnoted, tells us that 4 They live upon the fruits
of plants and roots, and with their trunks and heads overthrow
the tops of trees, and eat the boughes and bodies of them, and
many times upon the leaves of trees he devoureth cliaimeleons,
whereby he is poisoned, and dieth if hee eat not immediately a
wild olive!’ The bane and antidote are equally credible. Top-
sell then proceeds to state that they are so loving to their fellows
that they will not eat their meat alone, but having found a prey
4 they go and invite the residue to their feastes and cheere, more
like to reasonable, civill men, than unreasonable brute beasts.’
He thus describes the domesticated elephant’s apolaustic propen¬
sities : —

4 It will forbeare drinke eight claies together, and clrinke wine to
drunkennesse like an ape. It is delighted above measure with
sweet savours, oyntments, and smelling flowers, for which cause
their keeper will in the summer time lead them into the meadowes
of flowers, where they of themselves wall, by the quickness of their
smelling, chuse out and gather the sweetest flowers, and put them
into a basket if their keeper have any ; which being filled, like
daintie and neate men, they also desire to wash, and so will go and
seeke out water to wash themselves, and of their owne accord
returne backe againe to the basket of flowers, which if they find
not they will bray and call for them. Afterward, being led into
their stable, they will not eat meat untill they take of their flowers
and dresse the brimmes of their managers therewith, and likewise
strew their roome or standing-place, pleasing themselves with their
meat, because of the savour of the flowers stuck about their cratch,
like dainty fed persons which set their dishes with greene hearbs,
and put them into their cups of wine.’

Great longevity was attributed to these quadrupeds. More
than four hundred years of life were anciently supposed to be
their portion, if their career was not shortened by sickness or
accident. This enormous duration seems to have been allotted to
them principally on the faith of a story relating to one marked in
a particular manner, which was captured by a king of Lydia four
hundred years after a battle in which this remarkable animal had
figured. A little cross-examination might possibly have thrown
some doubt on the identity, and it is hardly necessary to observe
how improbable it is that any living frame could sustain the wear
and tear of four centuries. Still there are cases on record of
elephants having been in captivity, in more modern times, for a
hundred years, and even for a hundred and thirty, to which credit

GESTATION.

263

ought not to be rashly denied. In a vegetable-feeding quadruped
the duration of the teeth offers a fair criterion by which to judge
of the probable extent of life, and we think that Sir Everard Home
is the physiologist who has observed that the teeth of the deer and
sheep are worn down in much less than fifteen years ; those of the
ox tribe in about twenty years ; those of the horse in forty or fifty
years; while those of the elephant will last for a century. The
longevity of the last-mentioned animal must be, therefore, in all
probability very considerable, although falling far short of the an¬
cient estimate.

The period of gestation is between twenty and twenty-one
months. Mr Corse records the birth of a fine young male thirty-
five inches and a half high, at the expiration of twenty months and
eighteen days. The breasts are situated on the chest, and the
young one takes the nourishment with the mouth, not with the
trunk, as Perrault and Buffon insisted, in contradiction to the
actual observation of Le Vaillant. So much for the value of ana¬
logical reasoning by closet zoologists when opposed to the expe¬
rience of out-door naturalists — men who have endured and still
endure the greatest fatigues and privations, that they may watch
the operations of nature in the forest and the desert, and too often
reap for their reward the sneers of incredulous and ignorant
critics, who have never passed the boundaries of sea-coal fires
and sooty trees. The error of the trunk-sucking faction was
strengthened by those who had seen the young elephant or calf,
as it is termed, touching the breast of its mother with its pro¬
boscis ; but it no more sucks with that organ than a child does
with its hand.

All the young elephants seen by Mr Corse, began to nibble
and suck the breast, to use his own expressions, soon after birth,
pressing it with the trunk to make the milk flow more readily.
He says, that the mothers never lie down to give their young ones
this first and natural food, and that it often happens when the
dam stands high on her legs that she is obliged to bend her body
towards her offspring to enable it to reach the nipple with its
mouth. Mr Corse well remarks that, if ever the trunk was
used to lay hold of this part in the mother, it would be upon
such occasions, and at this period, when the young one is making
laborious efforts to reach it with the mouth, which it could at all
times easily effect with its trunk, if that would have answered the
purpose. He had often observed the young elephant grasp the
nipple, which projects horizontally from the breast, with the side
of its mouth, and he adds, that it is a common practice with the
natives of India to raise a small mound of earth some six or eight
inches high, for the young one to stand on, thus saving the mother

2G4

ELEPHANTS.

the trouble of bending her body every time she gives her calf the
breast, an effort which she could not make with ease when tied to
her picket.

The general evidence is in favour of the female elephants as
affectionate mothers, and the painful story recorded by Bruce,
whose heart was evidently a very kind one, shows that strong filial
attachment is felt by the young.

After an animated description of an Abyssinian elephant-hunt,
the African traveller thus concludes : — ‘ There now remained but
two elephants of those that had been discovered, which were a
she one with a calf. The agageer would willingly have left these
alone, as the teeth of the female are very small, and the young
one is of no sort of value, even for food, its flesh shrinking much
upon drying ; but the hunters would not be limited in their sport.
The people having observed the place of her retreat, thither we
eagerly followed. She w7as very soon found, and as soon lamed
by the agageers ; but when they came to wound her with their
darts, as every one did in turn, to our very great surprise, the
young one, which had been suffered to escape unheeded and
unpursued, came out from the thicket, apparently in great anger,
running upon the horses and men with all the violence it was
master of. I was amazed, and, as much as ever I was upon
such an occasion, afflicted, at seeing the great affection of the
little animal defending its wounded mother, heedless of its own
life or safety. I therefore cried to them for God’s sake to spare
the mother — though it was then too late, and the calf had
made several rude attacks upon me which I avoided with diffi¬
culty ; but I am happy to this day in the reflection that I did
not strike it. At last, making his attacks upon Ayto Engedan,
it hurt him a little upon the leg ; upon which he thrust it
through with his lance as others did after, and it then fell
dead before its wounded mother, whom it had so affectionately
defended.’

According to the interesting account of Mr Crawfurd, upon
whose narrative the most undoubting reliance may be safely placed,
the young male elephants are weaned at Ava when they are three
years old ; in other words, they are then separated from their dams
and broken in. Their youth and domestication, it might be
thought, would render this an easy process ; but it appears to be
as tedious and difficult as the reduction of a full-grown elephant,
captured in the forest, to obedient subjection.

Mr Crawfurd relates, that previous to the commencement of
the separation and tuition of the infant elephants, a ceremony,
consisting of an invocation to the genius of elephant-hunting,
who rejoices in the appellation of Nat Udin-main-so, is cele-

ELEPHANT WEANING.

265

bratecl. Between the walls of the town, and an artificial mount
verdant with trees, and raised upon a ledge of rock jutting into
the Irawadi, is a small elephant-paddock, a single square palisade
without gates. On the side of the mount, under a little pavilion,
sat the king, personally directing the ceremony which Mr Craw-
furd so ably describes. A banana-tree had been planted in the
middle of the paddock. It was removed with great observance;
and on the spot where it had been standing, five persons, ad¬
vanced in age, came forward with solemn strut and dance, bearing
branches of a species of Eugenia , or Jambu, and carrying offerings
of rice and sweatmeats to the Nat. The exact words of the
incantation Mr Crawfurd could not learn ; but the substance of
it was an information to the demi-god, that a glorious prince, the
descendant of a line of kings, presided ; that the demi-god was
therefore requested to be propitious — to lend his aid in getting
the elephants quietly into the pen, and generally throughout the
ceremony. Then some two-and-thirty female elephants, with
their young, were driven into the enclosure ; four males followed,
and their riders were provided with long ropes having a noose at
the end. Their object was to entangle the young elephants
about to be weaned, by the hind leg ; and they did not succeed
without great difficulty, for the weanee, as a lawyer might term
him, was protected by the herd of elephant matrons, who made
common cause for the protection of the persecuted youngling.
When he was at last secured, no wild elephant just caught could
have been more outrageous and obstreperous. The huge mounted
elephants had to ply their trunks and beat the neophyte fre¬
quently, and Mr Crawfurd observed, once or twice, that they
raised the terrified recusant quite off the ground with their tusks,
without doing him any material injury. When thus lifted up, the
cry of the patient differed in no way, but in degree, from the
scream of a hog in pain or fear. Ultimately, the young probo¬
scidian, consigned to dry nursing and tuition, was shut into a
small pen, where he was under the surveillance of two male ele¬
phants, who continued to watch him. Mr Crawfurd appears to
have left him still very outrageous, and making violent efforts to
extricate himself to very little purpose.*

Pringle, in the narrative of his encountering the huge African
elephant, which we have already noticed, gives a lively account of
the natural habits of that species, from personal observation. He
was riding with his party, and while they ascended the Winter-
berg, the grand aspect of which, with its coronet of rocks, frowning
front, and steep, grassy skirts, feathered over with a straggling

* Embassy to Ava.

266

ELEPHANTS.

forest, partly scathed by fire, he well describes, he constructed a
sort of booth or shieling, for their shelter at night on the edge of a
wood in a lovely verdant glen at the foot of the mountain, all alive
with the garrulity of monkeys and parrakeets. Lions were numer¬
ous in the vicinity, and they protected themselves by a blazing
watch-fire, and a couple of sentinels during the night ; but no dis¬
turbance interrupted their repose.

Next day they followed the course of the Koonap, over green
sloping hills, till the ruggedness of the ravines, and prevalence of
jungle, compelled them to follow a Caffre path, kept open only by
the passage of wild animals along the margin of the river. Herds
of quaggas, and various antelopes were seen during the forenoon ;
but, after mid-day, they came upon the recent traces of a troop of
elephants.

4 Their huge foot-prints were everywhere visible ; and in the
swampy spots on the banks of the river, it was evident that some
of them had been luxuriously enjoying themselves, by rolling
their unwieldy bulks in the ooze and mud. But it was in the
groves and jungles that they had left the most striking proofs of
their recent presence and peculiar habits. In many places paths
had been trodden through the midst of dense forests, otherwise
impenetrable. They appear to have opened up these paths
with great judgment, always taking the best and shortest cut to
the next savannah, or ford of the river; and in this way their
labours were of the greatest use to us by pioneering our route
through a most intricate country, never yet traversed by a wheel-
carriage, and great part of it, indeed, not easily accessible even on
horseback. In such places, the great bull elephant always marches
in the van, bursting through the jungle as a bullock would througdi
a field of hops, treading down the brushwood, and breaking off
with his proboscis the longer branches that obstruct the passage,
whilst the females and younger part of the herd follow in his
wake.’

This observing painter with the pen, then proceeds to describe
the traces of the operations of these huge animals among the
mimosa-trees, sprinkled over the meadows, or lower bottoms. Great
numbers of these trees had been torn from the ground and placed
in an inverted position, so that the elephants might browse at their
ease upon the succulent roots. Many of these trees were of consi¬
derable size, and in such cases, the elephant had brought one of his
tusks to bear, as a man would use a crow-bar, digging it under
their roots to loosen their hold, before he had attempted to wrench
up the trees with its trunk.

While the party were admiring these and other tokens of the
elephant’s strength and sagacity, they suddenly found themselves,

THE ELEPHANT IN STATE OF NATURE.

267

on issuing from a woody defile, in the midst of a numerous herd.
None of the elephants^ indeed, were very close to them, but were
scattered in groups over the bottom and sides of a valley, two or
three miles in length. Some were browsing on the juicy spek-
boom, with which the skirts of the hills on each side were fringed ;
others were busy among the young mimosas and evergreens
with which the meadows were sprinkled. As the party cautiously
proceeded, some of the groups came more distinctly into view.
These, in many instances, appeared to be separate families, con¬
sisting of the male, female, and young of different sizes. The
gigantic proportions of the chief leaders, and their calm and
stately tranquillity of deportment became more and more striking,
as the band of about a dozen horsemen, including Hottentots,
advanced ; but the elephants seemed either not to observe, or to
disregard the march of the travellers down the valley. As they
rode along leisurely through a meadow, thickly studded over
with clumps of tall evergreens, they suddenly came upon the
enormous male, which they conjectured to be at least fourteen
feet high, right in their path, and within a, hundred paces. Tho
Hottentots, in their broken Dutch, whispered that he was een
gruwzaam Icarl — hania\ hernia' groot, which, according to the inter¬
pretation of one of them, signifies a ‘ hugeous terrible fellow, plenty,
plenty big.’

The great grewsome carle did not, however, seem to notice them ;
for the wind was brisk, and they stood to leeward of him, so that
he was not warned by his senses of smelling and hearing. When,
however, they turned off at a gallop, making a circuit through
the bushes to avoid collision with him, he was startled by the
sound of the horses’ feet, and turned towards them menacingly,
erecting his enormous ears, and raising his trunk as if about to
charge. Fortunately for the party, however, he remained on the
spot, looking after them, in front of two or three females, and as
many young ones, which had hastily crowded up behind from the
bank of the river, as if to claim his protection.

Such is the portrait of an elephant in a state of nature. How
different is its bearing when it has become subjected to man, whose
hand and head subdue all living tilings, however enormous, to his
will. The greatest of terrestrial animals, conscious as it is of
enormous strength, obeys all his behests for good or for evil;
stalking, stately and huge in the solemn procession, proud of its
gorgeous trappings ; amusing him with unwieldy, but well-adjusted
gambols, and clever tricks ; or ‘ barded from counter to tail,’ with
steel-clad trunk and tusks armed with poisoned daggers, dealing
destruction in war, and trampling down masses of men, as if they
were no more than an army of locusts.

ELEPHANTS,

PART II.

* Let them show their features in war.’

Macpiierson.

That the obedient sagacity of an animal endowed with such enor¬
mous strength, should have led the strategist to employ the elephant
as an agent, and that such agency should, at first, have been over¬
whelming, was to be expected.

In the early periods, the art of war was, in a great degree,
reduced to a trial of physical strength ; and victory, for the most
part, was the reward of personal valour. The general, as well as
the common soldier, fought hand to hand ; and the effect of the
first sight of a well-appointed troop of elephants, when opposed to
ancient cavalry and infantry, may well have turned the tide of
battle.

Although the triumphant Liber Pater is stated to have been the
first to yoke those of India to his car, the ambushed elephants of
King Amoraeus that put to flight the horsemen of Cyrus in his
expedition against the Derbices, appear to have been the earliest
on record actually engaged. The ancient Indian monarchs, if we
are to believe Pliny and others, numbered thousands of these living
mountains among their standing armies ; and the story told by
Diodorus of the stratagem of the Assyrian Queen, when, weary of
the want of excitement attendant upon a long peace, she languished
again for conquest, shows in what consideration these animals
were held as an arm of war. India was her object ; but then what
was to be done for elephants? Stabrobates, the king against
whom her expedition was to be directed, possessed, besides his
other almost countless forces, numbers of these huge animals, well
accoutred for the field.

Semiramis, therefore, caused three hundred thousand black
oxen to be slaughtered, and of the skins, sewn together and

USE IN WARFA11E.

269

stuffed with straw, her mechanics formed artificial elephants;
there was a man to direct, and a camel to carry each of them, so
that at a distance they well might pass for living beasts. The
workmen laboured in a secret place, walled round and guarded,
so that no hint of what was passing within should transpire ; and
when all was finished, the horses of her army were familiarised
with the machines, as the knight reconciled his horse and dogs
to the presence of the real Rhodian dragon, by teaching them to
fight the artificial model. Her troops, which were assembled in
Bactria, amounted, according to Ctesias, to three millions of in¬
fantry, two hundred thousand cavalry, a hundred thousand war-
chariots, and a hundred thousand soldiers, armed with very long
swords, mounted on camels. With these, the mock-elephants,
and two thousand boats so contrived that they could be taken to
pieces and reconstructed, and which were transported on the backs
of camels, Semiramis took the field.

On his side, Stabrobates, who had heard of these warlike pre¬
parations, was not idle; he increased his army in every branch,
and summoned all his resources to outdo Semiramis. And
though he does not seem to have been in the secret of the stuffed
machines, he augumented the number of his real elephants, and
furnished them so completely with offensive and defensive armour,
that it seemed impossible to resist them. He then sent ambas¬
sadors to the queen, upbraiding her with commencing an unpro¬
voked war ; wrote to her some rather strong epistles, in which
he touched not very politely on her private habits, and finished
by informing her that if he caught her, she should be crucified ;
whereat the queen smiled, proceeded to the Indus, where the king’s
fleet lay, sank a thousand of his vessels, and took a great number
of captives. Stabrobates feigned a panic and fled; the feint
took: Semiramis crossed the river and pursued the Indians with
the whole of her forces, except eighty thousand men left to guard
the bridge.

In her front Semiramis placed her artificial elephants ; and
when the amazed scouts carried to the king the news of the mul¬
titude of those beasts that protected her line, every one looked on
his neighbour, and inquired in surprise, from what source the
Assyrians could have been supplied ivith such numbers? Sta¬
brobates now, in his turn, began to repent his retreat, and great
must have been his comfort when the deserters — for they as
usual brought the information — from the queen’s army, enlightened
him as to the true state of the case.

Both were now confident, the queen still believing that the
cheat was undiscovered, and both marched to the attack. The
cavalry and chariots formed the Indian van, and the horses, taking

270

ELEPHANTS

the stuffed machines, which were placed before the Assyrian
main body, at a distance, for real elephants advanced boldly
enough. As they came nearer, the scene was changed, the horses
were no longer deluded, but found themselves opposed to
monstrous shapes, the sight and smell of which were equally
strange to them : they kicked, they plunged, they reared ; some
threw their riders, whilst others madly carried them among the
enemy, who fell upon them and drove them in confusion back
upon their own main body.

Stabrobates was again surprised; but he brought up his in¬
fantry headed by his elephants, the king himself commanding
in the right wing, mounted on a stately beast, and fiercely charged
the queen, who was opposite to him. The poor made-up elephants
behaved nobly, but soon gave way before the massive weight of
the real war-brutes, who were not to be taken in by the shredded
and patched appearance of their leathern opponents, and a
miserable slaughter of the queen’s troops ensued. The field was
covered with the torn and trampled slain, the king’s elephants
hurling some high into the air with their trunks, goring, rending,
and tossing others with their tusks, treading down whole ranks
of men, and destroying all before them. The Assyrians could no
longer stand before such frightful devastation, and their whole army
fled with their queen, whose arm had been pierced by the Indian
king’s own arrow, and her shoulder by one of his darts ; but the
fleetness of her horse saved her life.

Long afterward, we find elephants among the opponents of
Alexander, who encountered them before he passed the Indus ; for
at the battle of Gaugamela, or Arbela, as the field is usually termed,
where the power of Darius fell before the irresistible Macedonian
phalanx, all the elephants of the Persian appear to have been taken.
As he marched on Susa, twelve elephants, brought from India by
Darius, were among the magnificent gifts presented to Alexander
by the governor of tne province. The victorious army of Philip’s
warlike son seized, on the bank of the Indus, some of these beasts
from the affrighted natives, who fled at his approach.

The Indus passed, the conqueror marcned unchecked till the
broad and rapid Hydaspes crossed his path, and he beheld, on the
opposite bank, Porus and all his host, presenting a wall of fl esh and
steel beyond its waves. F amiliarised as the Greeks had been to the
sight of the beasts, the prodigious size and enormous number of
the Indian king’s elephants, their horrible roarings, as, provoked by
their keepers, they menaced the invaders, his multitudinous and well-
appointed army, with the war-chariots and the horsemen thereof,
made them pause. The sun rose and set again and again ; and
there stood the Macedonian and the Indian gazing at each

USE IN WARFARE.

271

other across that wild water. There, too, stood the elephants
on the watch; every stratagem of the wily Greek to effect
a passage had hitherto been baffled, and to attempt it
openly, in the face of those threatening living bulwarks, was to
court destruction ; for the danger apprehended was, that the
horses, seized with terror as they neared the elephants, would
wildly leap from the boats into the rolling river. Thus passed
several days. At length the watch of the Indians was relaxed.
The great Greek Captain made a diversion with a part of his
army, that drew off the enemy, and the main body of the Macedo¬
nians crossed and stood safely on the ground so lately occupied by
the elephants.

But there was yet a terrible struggle to be sustained. Porus
had drawn up his army upon a firm and sandy plain, offering the
best ground for the operations of his chariots and cavalry. In
front stood the war-elephants, like towers, a hundred feet apart,
to cover the infantry and paralyse the Grecian horse with fear.
Other huge elephants bearing large wooden towers, full of armed
men, flanked each wing. On the right and left the foot were pro¬
tected by the horse, and the horse by the chariots in their front.
The colossal Porus himself was borne upon an elephant towering
far above the rest of his fellows.

Alexander gazed at this imposing and glorious array with stern
delight. He burst out into a joyous exclamation, that he had at
last before him a danger worthy of the greatness of his soul.

The signal was given. Onward rushed the long levelled pikes
of the phalanx, whilst the rapid charges of the cavalry, and the
incessant storm of arrows from the light-armed Thracian bowmen,
added to the panic that began to spread among the Indians.
Still the elephants stood firm, trampling down the infantry like
grass-hoppers, or seizing the armed Greeks in their trunks, and
delivering them to the tender mercies of their governors. The day
was waning, but not the battle, which was still doubtful, when the
Macedonians saw that their only chance was to turn all their
strength upon these huge and stubborn enemies. Then was the
crashing axe driven deep into their enormous legs, — their trunks
were lopped with scythe-like weapons, — and, while the infantry
were thus at work upon them, the Greek cavalry surrounded
them. The enraged, mutilated, and liemmed-in beasts dealt
destruction to friend and foe, and, after a carnage to which
modern battles offer scarcely any parallel, the wounded and
wearied elephants which had not yet dropped, but had no longer
strength to push against the masses that opposed them, first
stood still, uttering hideous cries, and then staggered out of the
fight.

272

ELEPHANTS.

Unmoved by this disastrous scene, the Indian king did not quail.
His lofty stature and enormous elephant exposed him to the aim
of all, but, covered as he was with wounds, he still darted his
javelins at the enemy, till they dropped from his unnerved arm.
Exhausted, he attempted to slide down from his elephant, and its
governor perceiving the king’s wish, commanded the beast to kneel.
This was the finishing stroke ; for, as all the elephants had been
trained to imitate the movements of the king’s, they knelt too, and
became an easy prey.

In that collection of wonderful stories, got up in all probability
for the entertainment of the Empress Julia, the life of Apollonius
of Tyana, the Cappadocian seer of impossible sights is related to
have found in an Indian town an elephant honoured by the inha¬
bitants with perfumes and garlands, bearing a Greek inscription on
the gold rings that adorned his tusks, purporting that Alexander,
the son of Jupiter, had dedicated Ajax to the sun. The name of
the elephant belonging to Porus, was said to be Ajax, and, ac¬
cording to this account, he had survived the defeat some three
hundred and fifty years.

It may be doubted whether Alexander himself had, as one writer
at least declares,* elephants among the effective forces of his army
on the occasion of that victory. The better evidence leads to the
conclusion that, with the shrewd sagacity of a great general, he
despised them as incumbrances, and as likely to inflict at least as
much injury on their friends as on their foes. Not that he did not
take care to secure all the elephants that his success or the influence
of his name might procure. He had his elephantarch, and appears
to have been anxious to leave none of those animals to his enemies,
either for pomp or war. His stud, which must have been very
numerous, seems to have been divided amongst his successors, of
whom he prophetically said that they would celebrate his obsequies
with bloody hands.

In the first chapter of £ The first booke of the Maccabees,’ in
Barker’s Bible, f we find the following record : —

£ 1 After that Alexander the Macedonian, the sonne of Philip,
went foorth of the land of Chettiim, and slew Darius King of
the Persians and Medes, and reigned for him as he had before in
Grecia.

2 Hee tooke great warres in hand, and wanne strong holds, and
slew the kings of the earth.

3 So went hee thorow to the endes of the world, and tooke
spoyles of many nations, insomuch that the world stood in awe of
him : therefore his heart was puffed up and he was hautie.

* Polyamus, who places them in Alexander’s left wing. f 1615.

1. INDIAN ELEPHANT

2. AFRICAN ELEPHANT

U6E IN WARFARE.

273

4 Now when liee had gathered a mighty strong hoste,

5 And had reigned over regions, nations, and kingdomes, they
became tributaries unto him.

6 After these things hee fell sicke, and knew that hee should die.

7 Then hee called for the chiefe of his servants, which had been
brought up with him of children, and parted his kingdom among
them, while he was yet alive.

8 So Alexander had reigned twelve yeeres when he died.

9 And his servants reigned every one in his roume.

10 And they all caused themselves to be crowned after his
death, and so did their children after them many yeeres, and much
wickednesse increased in the world.’

Elephants were employed by these crowned servants and their
descendants in the bloody wars that followed the partition of Alex¬
ander’s kingdom. In the battle fought by Eumenes (who had pos¬
sessed himself of the elephants of Porus) against Antigonus, those
animals were arrayed in the armies of both. It would weary the
reader to follow the history of these pachyderms as an arm of war
during this sanguinary period: and through the details of their
destruction by stratagem, the sword, and famine. Suffice it to
allude to the attack of Polysperchon on Megalopolis, when his
sixty-five elephants and the flower of his army miserably perished
in spiked ditches strewed over with earth ; and to the siege of
Pydna by Cassander, the son of Antipater, which terminated in the
massacre of Alexander’s mother, wife, and son, who were there
taken with the town, not before the besieged had suffered the most
pinching pangs of hunger, and the elephants had been starved on
saw-dust.

We must not, however, pass unnoticed the gallantry of Ptolemy,
when Perdiccas attacked him upon the Nile, and with mounted
elephants overthrew his fortifications. Seizing a long pike Ptolemy
manned the wall, pierced the eyes of the foremost elephant, wounded
his Indian governor, and restored confidence to his soldiers, by
whom the storming party were hurled into the river. Again when
Ptolemy attacked Demetrius at Gaza, Seleucus and himself erected
an iron sharp-pointed palisade strengthened with chains, as a
barrier against the elephants of Demetrius. The enemy made a
terrible onset with their beasts, thinking to conclude, at once, a
doubtful battle, but they came to a sudden check at the pali¬
sade : and though forced by their gallant governors, who were
terribly galled by the darts and arrows of Ptolemy’s soldiers, on
the spikes, the lacerated elephants were, after the death of most
of their riders, taken, and the horse of Demetrius fled in conster¬
nation.

Notwithstanding these examples of successful resistance on his

T

274

ELEPHANTS.

part, it seems to have occurred to Ptolemy that the personal
bravery of his troops might be materially aided by opposing the
African elephant to his Indian relative. Forthwith he prohibited
their slaughter by proclamation, and issued orders for their cap¬
ture, not without effect, for we find his son Ptolemy Philadelphus
in possession of three hundred. The son of Philadelphus considered
himself indebted to them for his victories over the Syrian Antiochus
Theus : but the fourth Ptolemy (Philopater) in his disastrous en¬
counter with Antiochus, the Great, had, if we are to believe Poly¬
bius, the mortification of witnessing the inferiority of the African
to the Indian species in fight.

The description of the battle glows with the graphic power that
distinguishes the Greek historian. When the advance was sounded,
the elephants commenced the fray. Some of those belonging to
Ptolemy boldly attacked their adversaries, and then might be seen
the spearmen fighting hand to hand from the towers on their backs.
Nor were the elephants themselves idle, affording a grand spectacle
as front to front they furiously charged each other. 'With inter¬
twisted trunks, each strove to maintain his position, and when, in
the fierce struggle, the stronger turned the flank of his opponent,
he- gored him with his tusks, as fighting bulls pierce each other
with their horns.

But the greater number of Ptolemy’s elephants could not be
brought up to the combat ; and here, Polybius observes, that this
is generally the case with African elephants, wrhich, unable to bear
either the odour or the cry of the Indian species, or, more pro¬
bably, terrified by the great bulk and strength of the latter, fre¬
quently turn their backs and flee from the contest. And so it
happened on this occasion. For the panic-struck African elephants
fell back in disorder against the ranks of their own army, and
broke the line of the royal guards. Then Antiochus, wheeling
round the elephants, attacked the cavalry of Ptolemy’s right wing,
and, at the same time, the Greek mercenaries, who stood near the
phalanx and within the elephants, charged and routed the Peltastm,
already disorganized by the African elephants, so that Ptolemy’s
whole left wing was driven from the field.

This was the Ptolemy, who, on his visit to Jerusalem, in revenge
for the insult offered to him by the Jews, in forcibly preventing
him from entering the temple, determined to extirpate them, and,
as a commencement, ordered a vast number to be exposed to his
elephants, and trodden under their feet. But the elephants, instead
of trampling down the Jews, turned their rage against the Egyp¬
tians, who crowded to feast their eyes on this horrible scene —
an unexpected event, which so struck Ptolemy, that he treated with
more than ordinary consideration the nation which he had doomed.

USE IX AVAUFAUE.

275

In the apocryphal book already quoted, we find curious details
of the methods employed to marshal and excite the war-elephants
of Antiochus. The tenth verse of the first chapter has been
quoted. The eleventh proceeds thus : —

4 For out of these came the wicked roote, even Antiochus Epi-
phanes, the sonne of King Antiochus, which had been an hostage
at Rome, and hce reigned in the hundredth and seven and thirtieth
yeere of the kingdome of the Greekes.’

In the thirtieth and subsequent verses of the sixth chapter of the
same book it is recorded that,

4 The number of his armie was an hundred thousand footemen,
and twenty thousand horsemen, and two and thirtie elephants exer¬
cised in battell.

4 These came through Idumea, and drewe neere to Betli-sura,
and besieged it a long season, and made engines of warre : but
they came out and burnt them with fire, and fought valiantly.’

4 Then departed Judas from the castle, and removed the hoste
towards Beth-zacarias, over against the king’s campe.’

4 So the king arose very early, and brought the armie and his
power toward the way of Beth-zacarias, where the armie set them¬
selves in aray to the battell and blew the trumpets.’

4 And to provoke the elephants for to fight, they showed them
the blood of grapes and mulberries.’

4 And they set the beastes according to the ranges : so that by
every elephant there stood a thousand men armed with coates of
male and helmets of brasse upon their heads, and unto every beast
were ordained five hundreth horsemen of the beast.’

4 Which were ready at all times wheresoever the beast was : and
whithersoever the beast went, they went also, and departed out
from him.’

4 And upon them were strong towres of wood that covered every
beast, which were fastened thereon with instruments, and upon
every one was two and thirty men that fought in them, and the
Indian that ruled him.’

4 They set also the remnant of the horsemen upon both the sides
in two wings of the hoste, to stirre them up and to keepe them in
the valleyes.’

4 And when the Sunne slionne upon the golden shields; the
mountains glistened therewith, and gave light as lampes of fire.’

4 Thus part of the king’s armie was spread upon the high moun¬
tains and part beneath: so they marched forward warily, and in
order.’

4 And all they that heard the noyse of their multitude, and the
marching of the companie and the rattling of the harnesse, were
astonished : for the army was very great and mighty.’

276

ELEPHANTS.

All this pomp and circumstance, however, failed to daunt the
valiant Jew and his brave companions ;

4 Then Judas and his host entred into the battcll, and they slewe
sixe hundreth men of the king’s armie/

4 Now when Eleazar the sonne of Abaron, saw one of the ele¬
phants armed with royall harnesse, and was more excellent than
all the other beasts, lie thought that the king should bee upon
him.’

4 Wherefore he ieoparded himself to deliver his people and to get
him a perpetual name.’

4 And ran boldly unto him through the middes of the hoste,
slaying on the right hand and on the left, so that they departed
away on both sides.’

4 So went hee to the elephant’s feete, and gate him under him,
and slew him, then lei the elephant downe upon him and there he
died.’

We must now change the scene to ancient Italy, where the
Indian species was first opposed to the Roman soldier by Pyrrhus,
who, as the ally of the Tarentines, came to assist them in their
vain endeavour to stay the tide, that, rolling from the Tiber, was
already overwhelming the neighbouring states. The first impres¬
sion of the twenty elephants brought into the field by the king,
did its work, and gave him a dearly-bought victory ; but use
lessens marvel, and every succeeding encounter dissipated the
terror which this prodigious novelty had inspired, till the ele¬
phant had much the same effect upon the Roman line of battle
as its sudden appearance produced upon Fabricius, wrho seems to
have been no more moved by this attempt on his nerves by the
king at Epirus, than he had previously been by the Grecian gold.
Dentatus taught his soldiers to provide themselves with a blazing
torch in one hand and a sharp sword in the other, and to rush at
the huge beasts through the iron shower of arrows discharged from
the towers ea their backs. This mode of attack soon made them
more formidable to the enemy than to their opponents. The
maternal instinct of a female elephant on one of these occasions,
contributed in no small degree to the success of the Romans,
according to Eutropius; for a young one, smarting with its
wounds, roared horribly in its anguish, and its mother, in her
anxiety to hasten to its succour, broke through every obstacle in
her way, and was followed by others, overturning all before them,
and throwing the troops of Pyrrhus into irretrievable confusion.
The result was the capture of four of these 4 Lucanian oxen,’
which were led to Rome in triumph. Nor was this the only
disaster sustained by Pyrrhus from the employment of this dan¬
gerous arm. At the siege of Argos, when every external barrier

USB IN ‘WAUBAUE.

277

had been passed, and the besieging army were pressing into the
town, the progress of the tower-bearing elephants was suddenly
checked by the lowness of the gates, from which they crowded back
upon the eager swarming assailants till all was disorder.

The Punic wars introduced the elephants of Africa to the
Romans in much greater force than those of India had presented.
In the first, the ill-fated consul took no less than eighteen in one
battle, whilst his star was in the ascendant ; but the Spartan
general opposed to him, wielded this powerful arm with such
skill, that Regulus, whose subsequent ungenerous and cruel mur¬
der will remain a blot upon the page that records it as long as
history endures, was utterly defeated by the troops of Carthage.
It was long before the legions recovered from the panic of that
day ; and the Carthaginians seeing the effect produced, transported
numbers of these beasts across the sea to Sicily, where nearly
a hundred and fifty towered before the beleagured Palermo. The
incessant discharge of javelins directed against them by Metellus,
was, however, irresistible. The elephants fled, carrying destruc-
tion and disorganization in their terrified path ; and the Romans,
sallying forth, obtained a complete victory. More than a hundred
elephants were among the spoils of the day ; and it is no small
proof of the power and mechanical ingenuity of the republic, that
they were conveyed to Reggio on a monster raft, covered with
earth, and floated upon empty casks. From Reggio they were
conducted to Rome, there to feast the eyes of the ill-fed and worse-
clothed populace, and pamper their pride with an incontrovertible
sign of the prowess of the national arms.

Hitherto, the African elephant had only been seen at Rome as a
triumphant exhibition ; but the time was now at hand when the
Roman was to behold him as an invader. What stronger instance
can be adduced in proof of the indomitable energy of Hannibal than
the passage of these animals with his host over the Pyrenees, the
Alps, and the Appenines ?

- Great was the tumult there,

Deafening the din, when in barbaric pomp
The Carthaginian on his march to Rome
Entered their fastnesses. Trampling the snows
The war-horse reared ; and the towered elephant
Upturned his trunk into the murky sky,

Then tumbled headlong, swallowed up and lost,
lie and his rider.

And although the mountaineers fled at the approach of these
huge animals, many must have perished among the icy precipices
so utterly unfit to afford them sure footing. But, after all such
losses, sufficient numbers arrived safely in the plains of Italy, to

278

ELEPHANTS.

support Hannibal’s line of battle with striking effect, and to afford
seasonable aid to his troops in their progress. Thus when he
passed the Po, the elephants were so disposed as to act as a
breakwater above the crossing army, and lessen the force of the
current. The African species was led into battle by him and his
brother Asdrubal with various success ; but the period was at last
come when Scipio was to carry the war into the country of the in¬
vaders.

The reinforcements necessary to fill the places of the numbers of
elephants that were constantly falling in Italy (seven, for instance,
died of starvation during their passage over the Appenines after
the battle of Trebia, and the remnant, with the exception of the
beast that carried Hannibal, were swept away, together with masses
of men and horse, by the swollen Arno,) together with the supplies
demanded for keeping up the requisite force at home, drained Bar¬
bary of a great portion of these animals, which at that time must
have been plentiful there. In vain did Mago, when he invaded
Italy in requital of Scipio’s descent upon Africa, present his
frowning front of elephants at Insubria. The Roman defeated
the Carthaginian, and Hannibal found it necessary to follow
Scipio, who was thundering at the gate of Zama. There, the
eighty elephants that covered Hannibal’s line spread devastation
among the light-armed troops of the Roman ; but Scipio dis¬
mounted his cavalry, and concentrating the whole power of his
bowmen against the elephants, threw the galled and terrified beasts
in confusion upon Hannibal’s right wing, and terminated the second
Punic war.

The Roman generals, relying upon the discipline and valour of
their soldiery, had hitherto directed their energies to turning the
elephants of their enemies against the troops on whose side the
beasts were arrayed, and when they took those living pieces of
artillery — for elephants seem to have been employed by the
ancients for the same purposes, in some degree, as cannon in
modern strategy — they merely kept them as trophies; but when the
Punic wars were ended, and the Macedonian wars commenced, we
find the elephants of Africa in the Roman ranks, and managed with
such tact that they contributed largely to the reduction of Mace¬
donia to the grade of a Roman province. The share attributed to
these belligerents in the victories which led to that conclusion was,
in fact, admitted and illustrated by the device of the last Mace¬
donian king, who, for lack of living beasts, followed the example of
Semiramis in the construction of artificial elephants, only that those
of Perseus were made of wood, and each contained a trumpeter
ready to imitate the animal’s battle-cry.

Moreover, in the interval between the first and second Macedo-

USE IN WARFARE.

279

Ilian wars, African and Indian elephants were again opposed to>
each other, but the Roman’s African beasts appear to have been
very inferior to the Indian elephants of Antiochus. Scipio’s quick
eye saw this at a glance, and he ordered them into the rear. But
if Antiochus had the superiority in this respect, he had not the
Sword before which, when wielded by Roman hands, both man
and elephant went down. Only fifteen of the Syrian king’s ele¬
phants survived the lost battle, and he was reduced to the same
humiliating necessity which had been enforced in the case of the
Carthaginians — the delivery to his European conquerors of those
which he already possessed, and an undertaking never again to
train elephants for war. His successor, however, seems to have
got up a troop of them, for, as we have seen, he led thirty-two
against Jerusalem.

Topsell, in his quaint language, gives an interesting summary
of the use of the elephant as a military engine, and, as the book is
scarce, the length of the extract may be forgiven : —

c The king of India was woont to go to warre with 30,000
elephants of war, and beside these he had also followed him 3000
of the chiefest and strongest in India, which at his command would
overthrow trees, houses, walles, or any such thing standing against
him : and, indeed, upon these were the Indians wont to fight, for
the defence of their coast and country. The farthest region of that
continent is called Partalis inhabited by the Gangarides and Calingre,
the king whereof was wont to have seven hundred elephants to
watch his army, and there was no meane prince in all India whick
was not lord of many elephants. The king of Palibotrre kept in
stipend eight thousand every day, and, beyond his territory, was
the king of Modubm and Molindse, which had four hundred ele¬
phants. These fight with men, and overthrowe all that come within
their reach, both with trunke and teeth.’

4 There were certaine officers and guiders of these elephants,
which were called elephantcirchce , who were the governors of six-
teene elephants, and they which did institute and teach them
martiall discipline were called elephantagogi. The military ele¬
phant did carry 4. persons on his bare backe, one fighting on the
right hand, another fighting on the left hand, a third which stood
lighting backward from the elephant’s head, and a fourth in the
middle of these holding the raines and guiding the beast to the
discretion of the souldiers, even as the pilot in a ship guidetli the
sterne wherein was required an equall knowledge and dexterity,
for they understand any language quickly, for when the Indian
which ruled them said, strike heere on the right hand, or else on
the left, or refraine and stand stil, no reasonable man could yeald
readier obedience. They did fasten by iron chaines, first of all,

280

ELEPHANTS.

upon the elephant that was to beare ten, fifteene, twenty, or thirty
men on either side, two panniers of iron bound underneath their
belly, and upon them the like paniers of wood hollow, wherein
they place their men at armes, and covered them over with small
boards, for the trunk of the elephant was covered with a made for
defence, and upon that a broad sword, and two cubits long : this
(as also the wodden castle or paniers aforesaid) were fastened first
to the necke, and then to the rumpe of the elephant. Being thus
armed, they entered the battell, and they shewed unto the beast
to make them more fierce, wine, red liquor made of rice, and white
cloth, for at the sight of any of these, his courage and rage
increaseth above all measure ; then at the sound of the trumpet
he beginneth with teeth to strike, teare, beate, spoyle, take up
into the air, cast down againe, stamp upon men under feet, over¬
throw with his trunke, and make way for his riders to pierce
with speare, shield and sword ; so that his horrible voice, his
wonderfull body, his terrible force, his admirable skill, liis ready
and inclinable obedience, and his straunge and seldome seene
shape, produced in a maine battell no meane accidents and over-
turnes. For this cause we read how that Pyrrhus first of all
produced elephants against the Romans in Lucania : afterward
Asdruball in Affrica, Antiochus in the East, and Iugurtha in Nu-
midia.’

Let us now see how his opponents contended with this formid¬
able adversary, and the wild sway of his trunk wielding a long and
trenchant sword :

4 Against these new kindes of castle-fighting and souldier-bear-
ing beastes, on the contrary, they invented new kindes of strata¬
gems, as is before sette downe, and also new instrumentes of warre,
for a century on in Lucania with a new devised sharp sword, cutte
off the trunke of this Beast: againe other invented, that two armed
horsses should draw a charriot, and in the same armed men with
Iavelins and sharpe speares, the speedy Horsses should with all
force run upon the elephants, and the speare-men directing their
course and weapons some upon the beast, other upon the riders,
did not onely wound the beast, but also by celerity of the horses,
escape all danger.’

In Potter’s 4 Archreologia Gi-teca’* there is an engraving of an
armed elephant and a war-chariot. The front of the head of the
elephant is protected by scale-armour, and from the centre of the
forehead projects a sharp spike. The forepart of his trunk is
defended with jointed plate armour. On his neck sits a governor
holding the reins for his guidance in the right hand and a long

Sac. Iciulcn, 170G.

USE IN WARFARE.

281

spear in the other. On his back is a wooden tower in the top of
which are seen two men in the act of casting javelins, and two
archers with their arrows drawn up to the heads. To the chariot
are harnessed two horses covered with scale armour, excepting
their crests, which are surmounted with plates of steel. From the
pole two long spears project, and from a cross-piece behind the
horses and made fast to the front of the car proceed scythes (two
on each side). Scythes also project from the naves of the four
wheels. The horses are guided by a man armed with two jave¬
lins, and behind him sits a warrior with his bow bent, as in the act
of discharging his arrow. But to return to Topsell :

4 Other againe sent against him armed souldiers, having their
armour made full of sliarpe prickes or piercing piked Navies ’ [as
Moore, of Moore-hall, went forth to fight the dragon of Wantley]

4 so that when the beast did strike at them with his trunke, he
received grievous woundes by his own blowes. Againe there were
certaine young men souldiers, armed with light armour, which
being mounted uppon swift horsses, could cast darts with singular
facility, and without the reach of the beast, many times wounding
him with long speares, and so by example of the horse-men, the
footemen grew more bold, and with piles in the earth annoyed
the belly of the Beast, and utterly vanquishing it and the rider.
Againe, they devised slings to cast stones, whereby they beate off
the riders, and many times overthrewe the castle-bearer, as it
were by some violent stroke of a cannon-shot ; neither was there
any more easie way to disaster these monster-seeming soldiers,
then by casting of stones, and lastly they would suffer their ele¬
phants and their riders by poore hopes and appearances of feare,
to enter into the middest among them, and so begirte and inclose
them, that they tooke the elephants alive ; and also more shooters
of Darts carried in chariots with the strong course of horsses, did
so annoy them, that whereas their bodies were great and unweldy,
not nimble to stir out of place, it became more easie to kill an
■elephant than a Horsse, because many shooters at one time could
pierce so faire a marke with unresistable weapons. And these
things are related by Vegetius.’*

And here we may close our sketch of the use made of the ele-
phant in ancient warfare; for although it is clear that Julius had
elephants in his armies, he seems to have held them in the same
estimation that Alexander did. The enormous armed beast came,
it is true, effectively upon the battle-scene when the object was
to terrify antagonists unaccustomed to such a sight. One of
Caesar’s victories over the Gauls has been ascribed to a single war-

* The Ilistorie of Foure-footed Beastes.

282

ELEPHANTS

elephant, and it is affirmed that he brought one to Britain, a fact,
by the way, unnoticed in his own commentaries. Milton, however,
adopts the statement of Dion, that Claudius employed •armed
elephants as antagonists to the valour of the naked Brition.

In our next chapter we shall endeavour to present the elephant
as he w'as exhibited in ancient processions and shows.

ELEPHANTS.

PART III.

Th’ unwieldy elephant

To make them mirth us’d all his might, and wreath’d
His lithe proboscis.

Paradise Lost.

4 The pictures of the nine worthies,’ writes Sir Thomas Brown
in his ‘ Pseudocloxia Epedemica,’ are 4 not unquestionable, and, to
critical speculators, may seem to contain sundry improprieties.
Some will inquire why Alexander the Great is described upon an
elephant ; for we do not find he used that animal in his armies,
much less in his own person ; but his horse is famous in history,
and its name alive to this day. Besides, he fought but one remark¬
able battel wherein there were any elephants, and that was with
Porus, King of India, in which, notwithstanding, as Curtius, Arri-
anus, and Plutarch report, he was on horseback himself. And if,
because he fought against elephants, he is with propriety set upon
their backs, with no less greater reason is the same description
agreeable unto Judas Maccabeus, as may be observed from the
history of the Maccabees, and also unto Julius Caesar, whose triumph
was honoured with captive elephants, as may be observed in the
order thereof set forth by Jacobus Laurus.’

The strictures of the learned and astute 4 Dr of Physick ’ seem
to have run on this occasion, so entirely in what may perhaps be
termed the matter-of-fact vein, that he appears to have lost sight
of the allegorical style generally adopted in ancient pictorial and
sculptured representations. There is not a cabinet of rare coins
that does not alford pregnant evidence of this custom, to which we
shall hereafter have occasion to refer. But some sages are

284

ELEPHANTS.

nothing if not critical, and, in the same spirit, those who flourish
in the year 3000 may be treated with a discussion upon the disputed
point whether her most gracious majesty Queen Victoria walked
about London, Una-like, with a lion, as represented on the reverse
of the splendid five-pound piece, or whether Sir Benjamin Brodie
had in his house an altar dedicated to Aesculapius, with a minis¬
tering priestess of the first order of fine forms, such as is imperishably
stamped on one of the most beautiful medals of ancient or modern
times.

The year 3000 ! Where will the principalities of Europe be
then? Will the wrave of empire have rolled westward, following
that law which hitherto seems to have ruled it? Will civiliza¬
tion be still advancing with rapid current, or be at its height, or
on the ebb? Will some catastrophe, like the burning of the Alex¬
andrian library, have swept away the lore treasured up for ages,
leaving men again to begin at the beginning in science and art ?
The last of these questions alone can be answered peremptorily in
the negative. The diffusive magic of Gutenberg, Faust, and
Schoeffer called up inextinguishable light, and secured immor¬
tality to the thoughts and inventions of men. The printing-press
forbids retrogression, and the streams of knowledge which it
pours forth must continue to flow with increased power and full¬
ness, till time is lost in the eternity of which the elephant was the
emblem.*

The triumphant entry of Alexander into Babylon wras not im¬
probably rendered more imposing by the introduction of elephants.
Such striking accessories are not likely to have been omitted in
that grand scene of oriental pomp ; but Quintus Curtius does not
mention their presence among the lions, leopards, and other beasts
driven and led along the flower-strewed roads, which wrere dressed
with silver altars perfuming the air with frankincense, in honour
of the hero whose chariot was preceded by the Magi and Chal¬
deans chanting hymns in his praise, as he passed in all the flush
of manhood and conquest, to a premature death, not without sus¬
picion of poison. Vanity of vanities ! At the age of thirty-two

* Tims on the reverse of a large brass medal of the Emperor Philip we find
AETERN1TAS AEGG. (./Eternitas Angustorum) and ‘ A caparisoned elephant,
with a naked, rider, who holds a goad in each hand, and sits on the animal’s
hack, a less usual berth than the neck and shoulder's. This was one of the
collection of beasts which Gordian had prepared for his triumph, but which
became an organ of his destroyer’s popularity and fame; for there can be no
doubt that the medal was struck on the occasion of the secular games, though
tlie legend merely augurs the length of Philip’s reign, of which the longevity
of the elephant was deemed typical.’ — Smyth.

ROMAN TRIUMPHS.

285

he had conquered all before him, was worshipped as a God, and
then,

- two paces of the vilest earth

Was room enough.

The elephants of Pyrrhus were the first that appeared in a
Roman triumph ; and, from that period to the decline of the empire
they were, at each successive series of victories, paraded through
the thronged streets the outward and visible signs of extended and
extending domination. In Scipio’s procession, the elephants that
marched to the capitol after the sacrificial victims, brought home
the humiliation of Africa to the bosom of every artizan. On the
last night of Caesar’s triumph these massive animals bore in their
trunks immense torches. The most graceful of our poets thus
brings before us the splendid but painful scene :

Along the Sacred Way

Hither the Triumph came, and winding round
With acclamation and the martial clang
Of instruments, and cars laden with spoil,

Stopt at the sacred stair that then appeared.

Then thro’ the darkness broke, ample, star-bright,

As tho’ it led to heaven. ’Twas nignt; but now
A thousand torches, turning night to day,

Blazed, and the victor, springing from liis seat,

Went up, and kneeling as in fervent prayer,

Entered the Capitol. But what are they
Who at the foot withdraw, a mournful train
In fetters ? And who, yet incredulous,

Now gazing wildly round, now on Ins sons,

On those so young, well-pleased with al! they see.

Staggers along, the last ? — They are the fallen,

Those who were spared to grace the chariot wheels;

And there they parted, where the road divides,

The victor and the vanquished — there withdrew;

He to the festal board, and they to die.

According to Suetonius, Julius, as he passed the Velabrum,
was nearly thrown out of his chariot by the breaking of the axle-
tree, and ascended the steps of the capitol lighted by forty ele¬
phants,* bearing torches on the right hand and on the left. Dio
says that Caesar made the ascent on his knees, and seems to inti¬
mate that it was not during the Gallic, but the African triumph
that he returned home, accompanied by nearly the whole of the

* Some make the number four hundred. Thus Topsell — ‘ Being thus
tamed, they grow into civill and familiar uses, for Ctcsar ascended into the
capitall betwixt four hundred elephants, carrying at either side burning
torches.’

28G

ELEPHANTS.

populace and a multitude of those enormous four-footed LycJino-
phori. It appears certain, at all events, that on the last-named
occasion the elephants figured pre-eminently, and the spoils were
displayed on ivory cars.

Much stress is not to be laid upon the medals which represent
Caesar and others riding in chariots drawn by elephants, for many
of these were merely emblematical. Dignity, as well as eternity,
and the conquest of the country to which it belonged, were
typified by the beast. Doubts have been expressed whether the
medal of Alexander, with his head on the obverse, and himself in
a car drawn by four elephants on the reverse, was of his own time,
although of ancient date : but it is generally considered that the
reverse presents him in triumph after his Persian conquests. At
Dome, it does not appear to have been unusual to open the public
games with car-borne statues drawn by elephants. Thus was the
image of Augustus carried in procession after his death, and its
arrival at the circus was the signal for the commencement of the
sports, as is recorded by a medal whereon the Divus Augustus is so
portrayed, his head surrounded with rays. The Quirinal games
were probably opened in like manner; for an ancient bas-relief
represents Romulus, as is generally supposed, drawn by four of
these animals.

Pompey, it seems, was the first who actually harnessed ele¬
phants to his car, intending thus to mortify those whose jealousy
envied him his triumph. The mortification, however, recoiled upon
himself ; for the gate was too narrow for his ambitious attempt,
and the chagrined victor was compelled to content himself with
horses.*

This failure had its effect, and it was not till long after, and
when the Romans had turned their irresistible arms against Persia,
that the conqueror appeared in the triumphal procession drawn by
elephants. The surpassing grandeur of these pomps can hardly
be conceived, and the English reader who would form any idea of
their splendour may turn to Gibbon’s dazzling description of the

* The following is Holland’s version of Pliny’s account : — ‘ The first time
that ever they were knowne to drawe at Rome, was in the triumph of Pompey
the Great after he had subdued Afrieke, for then were two of them put in
geeres to his triumphant chariot. But long before that it is said that Father
Bacchus having conquered India did the like when he triumphed for his con¬
quest. Ilowbeit in that triumph of Pompey, Procilius affirmeth, that, coupled
as they were, two in one yoke, they could not possibly go in at the gates of
Rome.’ Pliny’s words are, ‘Romm juncti primum subiere currum Pompeii
magni Africano triumpho : quod prius India victa triumphante Libero patre
memoratur. Procilius negat potuisse Pompeii triumpho junctus ingredi
portam.’ — Nat. Hist. viii. 2. Plutarch states that Pompey resolved to have his
chariot drawn by four elephants on this occasion.

G L ADI ATOM AL COMBATS.

287

triumpli of Aurelian after the fall of Palmyra, when the beautiful
Queen of the East, fettered with gold, and almost fainting under
the intolerable weight of jewels, ‘preceded on foot the magnificent
chariot in which she once hoped to enter the gates of Rome.’
This procession was opened by twenty elephants, four royal tigers,
above two hundred of the most curious animals of all climates,
and sixteen hundred gladiators.

But it was in the theatres that the most extraordinary feats of
elephants were exhibited to the Romans. The prodigal luxury of
these buildings, and the waste of life that steamed up for the
excitement of a people requiring the stimulus of blood to arouse
their jaded attention, would be incredible if the most satisfactory
evidence did not place the startling accounts of wholesale slaughter
beyond doubt. The gladiator was sworn to the faithful per¬
formance of his deadly duty, to do or to suffer as his master might
command; to his service he bound himself, body and soul, and
bright but pitiless eyes were among the thousands that looked
down upon him as he fearlessly pronounced his hopeless mori-
turus vos saluto.

Some notion of the lavish expenditure with which wealthy
Romans purchased the transient favours of the multitude may bo
formed from the account of the structures raised by two candidates
for popular applause.

Speaking of the theatre of Marcus Scaur us, Jonston, in his
4 Constancy of Nature,’* says, ‘ That was a temporary work,
and the use thereof was to be scarce for one moneth, yet it had
three floors, in which there were 360 marble pillars. The lowest
part of the theatre was all of marble, the middle was of glasse,
and the uppermost was guilded : the inferiour pillars were fourty
foot long, and between them were 3000 brazen statues. The
whole theatre was so capacious that it would contain 80,000
men.’

Curio caused two theatres to be framed of timber, ‘ and these
exceeding big, howbeit so as they might bee turned about as a
man would have them, approach neere one to the other, or be
removed farther asunder as one would desire, and all by the means
of one hooke apiece that they hung by, which bare the weight of
the whole frame, the counterpoise was so even, and all the whole
therfore sure and firme.’

4 Now he ordered the matter thus ; that to behold the severall
stage plaies and shews in the forenoone before dinner, they shall
be set back to back, to the end that the stages should not trouble
one another : and when the people had taken their pleasure that

* 12mo. 1G57.

288

ELEPHANTS.

way, he turned the theatres about in a trice against the after-
noone, that they affronted one another : and toward the latter end
of the day, and, namely, when the fencers and sword-plaiers were
to come in place, he brought both the theatres nearer together
(and yet every man sat stil and kept his place, according to his
1 rank and order), insomuch as by the meeting of the homes and
corners of them both together in compasse, he made a fair round
Amphitheatre of it: and there in the middest between, he ex¬
hibited indeed unto them all jointly, a sight and spectacle of
sword-fencers fighting at sharpe, whom he had hired for that
purpose : but in truth, a man may say more truly, that he carried
the whole people of Rome round about at his pleasure, bound
sure enough for stirring or remooving. Now let us come to the
point, and consider a little better of this thing. What should a
man wonder at most therein, the deviser or the devise itselfe?
The workeman of this fabricke, or the maister that set him on
worke ? Whether of the twaine is more admirable, either the
venturous head of him that devised it, or the bold heart of him
that undertooke it ? to command such a thing to be done, or to
obey and yeeld to goe in hand with it? But when we have said
all that we can, the follie of the blind and bold people of Rome
went beyond al ; who trusted such a ticklish frame, and durst sit
there in a seat so moveable. Loe where a man might have seen
the boclie of that people, which is commander and ruler of the
whole earth, the conqueror of the world, the disposer of king-
domes and realms at their pleasure, the deviser of countries and
nations at their wil, the giver of lawes to forrein states, the vice¬
gerent of the immortall gods under heaven, and representing their
image unto all mankind : hanging in the air within a frame, at
the mercy of one only hook, and readie to clap hands at their own
danger.’*

Of some of the permanent theatres and amphitheatres we have
in our own day the remains, attesting the colossal scale on which
those national edifices were erected.

Jonston, in the book above quoted, after stating that ‘Cara-
calla also, wheresoever he did or purposed to stay in winter, caused
amphitheatres and playhouses to be builded and suddenly they
were to be demolished,’ thus continues : ‘ Amongst those that
lasted, it shall suffice me to make mention onely of the Theatre of
Titus. A man could hardly see to the top of it, and a whole
river of wealth was spent in the building of it, wherefore Martial
writes,

Csesar’s amphitheatre hath the name,

Let all give place, this doth deserve the fame.

* Holland’s Pliny

-

J

I

THE FIGHT IN THE AMPHITHEATRE.

THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. IGNATIUS.

GLADIATORIAL COMBATS.

289

And though such stately structures consumed infinite wealth, yet
if we regard the furniture, and such things as were employed
besides, we shall finde that the cost they were at, would have
served for great Cities. And that the magistrates did prodigally
wast in Theatres, Playes, Wrestlers, Fencers, and such kindes of
men all their patrimony, that they might win the peoples liking
for an liowers time. In a word; The workmanship was more
than the matter. Nero, to show his wealth to Thiridates King of
Armenia, covered all the theatre with gold, and the very hangings
that hung up were of purple, and bossed with golden stars,*
whence that was called a Golden day, and Lucretius alludes unto
it.

Yellow and Golden Hangings commonly,

And murry coloured in the theatres

Hung, twinkling like to stars within the sky.

Also Caligula, when he set forth some principall sports, He com¬
manded that the floore round about should be made with minium
and chrysocolla ; Probus commanded to let loose at once 1000
Ostriches, 1000 Stags, as many Bears, 1000 Bogs, with wild
goats and many other beasts, and at these sports he gave them
to the people by way of Magnificence, and it was free for every
one to kill as many as he could : And to add to this, the next day
he caused to be shewed openly a 100 he Lyons, a 100 Leopards of
Africa, as many of Syria, a 100 she Lions, and 300 Bears. And
Titus, who though he were called the delights of mankinde, did
the like.

All kindes of beasts, that on the Mountains be,

Cmsar, thy Theatre aftords to thee ;

The Rocks did creep, the woods did run, men guesse,

Such was the wood of the Hesperides.

But Heliogabalus was the maddest man of them all: For it is
reported of him that he made at these sports, his ships flote in
Channels that ran with Wine. And Carinus was not far short of
him.

Amid all this splendour, troops of gladiators, variously armed,
rushed to the conflict, under the direction of the Lnnista. Here
was the Thrax opposed to the Myrmillo , there the Secutor chasing
the wily Retiarius , who fled, biding his time to throw his net over
the head of his adversary and pierce the entangled wretch with
his trident — with many other combatants all with distinctive

* The centre of the awning on this occasion displayed -embroidery Nero
us the Sun guiding his chariot.

I Constancy of Nature.

n

290

ELEPHANTS.

names, some hotly engaged, others lying lifeless in their gore — the
wounded appealing, with raised fingers, for mercy to the perfume-
besprinkled spectators, and the victors staying their hands as they
watched for the signal of life or death. Too frequently did the
downward-pointing thumbs, tier above tier, remind the vanquished
that they were

Required

To fall with grace, with dignity — to sink,

While life was gushing, and the plaudits rang
Faint and yet fainter on their failing ear,

As models for the sculptor.

The Christian bravery of one man stopped this outpouring of
life. Obeying the dictates of the religion of the heart, Telemachus
descended into the arena to part the combatants, and suddenly
checked the charge of the devoted swordsmen, braving the wrath
of the assembled people, and securing the abolition of these
butcheries with his blood.* The excitement of the savage popu¬
lace at the interruption of the sport was not to be controlled,
and the martyr was overwhelmed with a shower of stones.
But when their madness had passed away, the noble self-sac¬
rifice of the Asiatic monk sank deep into their repentant hearts,
and they submitted to the laws that forbade those sanguinary
spectacles.

The Bestiarius, or beast-fighting gladiator, does not appear to
have been employed at the exhibition of the elephants brought to
Borne by Metellus. They seem to have been driven about the
Circus by slaves, to familiarize the people with their appearance,
and to destroy, by the humility with which the beasts submitted,
the terror of their name ; but Pompey exhibited them in a general
fight with multitudes of lions and with armed men ; and, in his
second consulate, when they were matched against Getulians, one
of the wounded elephants shewed his dexterous training by snatch¬
ing the shields of his opponents, and whirling them into the air
with his trunk in such a manner as to give them a rotatory motion
in their ascent and descent. Here is Topsell’s description of some
of these encounters :

4 At the last the fight with elephants turned into a publike
game or pastime, both to see them fought withall by men, and
also among themselves. When certaine prisoners of the Romans
were taken by Anniball, he first constrained them to skirmish
among themselves, and so slew one another except only one ; and

* This heroic act was done during the games with which Honorius was
celebrating the retreat of the Goths ; and, in his time, the laws alluded to were
framed.

GLADIATORIAL COMBATS.

291

he was by the like commaundement forced to fight with an ele¬
phant, but upon condition of liberty if he escaped alive: and
thereupon joined combat and slew the elephant to the great griefe
and amazement of all the Carthaginians ; but going home, accord¬
ing to agreement, Anniball fearing that by this fact those great
beasts would grow into contempt, sent certaine horsemen to kill
him by the way.’

‘ Their trunke or hand is most easie to be cut off ; for so it
happened in the sedility or temple office of Claudius, Antonius and
Posthumus being consuls, and afterward in the Circus, when the
Luculli were the commons officers. And when Pompey was con-
sull the second time, there were 17. or 20. which at one time
fought within the Circus, at the dedication of the Temple of
Venus the Victoria, where the Gfetulians fought with them with
speares and dartes ; for their happened an admirable accident, one
of the souldiers who having a hurt in his feete did creepe uppon
his knees betwixt the legges of the elephants, and caste up the
dartes over his head into the beastes belly, which fell downe round
about him, to the great pleasure of the beholders, so that many of
the elephants perished rather by Art then tne strength of the
Souldier. No less was the miracle of another slaine with one
stroke, for a pile ran into his temples through his eie, and there
stacke so fast, that it could not be pulled forth againe; which
thing was afterward assayed by lulius Ctesar, and in the third
time of his consulship, there were twenty elephantes, which in the
games fought with five men, and so many towers on their backes,
bearing threescore men in every tower.’*

They were also opposed to bulls ; and Martial, in his nineteenth
epigram f records the destruction of one by an elephant, the former
having rashly come into contact with the latter, and fancying that
the solid bulk of the elephant might be tossed with as much ease
as the stuffed figures on which he had been exercising his horns.

Pliny, in the quaint but striking dress in which ‘ Philemon
Holland, Doctor in Physicked J has presented him, thus relates
in detail, their pugnacious deeds in the arena.

‘Fenestalla writeth that the first sight of them in Rome, was
exhibited in the grand Cirque, during the time that Claudius Pul-
cher was dEdile Curule, when M. Antonius and A. Posthumius
were consuls : in the 650 yere after the citie of Rome was built.
In like manner, 20 yeres after, when the Luculli were dEcliles
Curule, there was represented a combat between Bulls and Ele¬
phants. Also in the second consulship of C. Pompeius at the

* Historie of Foure-footed Beasts. f Spectaculorum Liber.

t Folio, 1601.

292

ELEPHANTS.

dedication of the temple to Venus Victoresse, 20 of them, or as
some write, 17 fought in the grand Cirque. In which solemnitie
the Gsetulians were sent to launee darts and javelins against them.
But among all the rest, one elephant did wonders : for when his
legs and feet were shot and stucke full of darts, he crept upon his
knees, and never staid till he was gotten among the companies
of the said Gaetulians, where he caught from them their targets
and bucklers perforce, flung them aloft into the aire, which as
they fell turned round, as if they had bin trundled by art, and not
hurled and thrown with violence by the beasts in their furious
anger : and this made a goodly sight and did great pleasure to
the beholders. And as strange a thing as that was seen in another
of them, whose fortune was to be killed out of hand with one
shot : for the dart was so driven that it entered under the eie, and
pierced as far as to the vitall part of the head, even the ventricles
of the brain. Whereupon all the rest at once assaied to break
forth and get away, not without a great hurry and trouble among
the people, notwithstanding they were without the lists, and those
set round with yron gates and bars. But those elephants of Pom-
pey being past all hope of escaping and going cleere away, after a
most pittifull manner and ruftdl plight that cannot be expressed,
seemed to make mone unto the multitude, craving mercie and
pittie, with grievous plaints and lamentations, bewailing their hard
state and wofull case : in such sort that the peoples hearts earned
at this piteous sight, and with teares in their eies, for very com¬
passion, rose up all at once from beholding this pageant, without
regard to the person of Pompey that great Generali and Com¬
mander, without respect of his magnificence and stately shew, of
his munificence and liberality, where he thought to have woon
great applause and honor at their hands, but in lieu thereof fell
to cursing of him, and wishing all those plagues and misfortunes
to light upon his head, which soon after insued accordingly.
Moreover, Caesar the Dictatour, in his third consulship, exhibited
another fight of them, and brought forth twenty to maintain skir¬
mish against five hundred footmen : and a second time he set out
twenty more, with wooden turrets upon their backs, containing
sixty defendants a piece : and he opposed against them five hun¬
dred footmen and as many horse. After all this, Claudius and
Nero, the emperors, brought them forth, one by one, into single
fight, with approved, expert, and accomplished fencers, at the end
of al the other solemnitie when they had done their prizes.’

Such touches of mercy as that above recorded, were, however,
as few and far between as angels’ visits ; and, by a just retribu¬
tion, the hard-eyed spectators were not always exempt from their
share of the danger. The general rush of the elephants upon this

GLADIATORIAL COMBATS.

293

very occasion — before whose overwhelming charge the iron balus¬
trade must have been as a fence of reeds, — was made non sine vexa-
tione populi; and, occasionally, that populace had to endure the
tormenting caprice of a tyrant. Caligula, when the mortal game
was reaching its most interesting and sanguinary point, and the
heat was most intense, suddenly caused the awning to be drawn
back, and forbade the sun-struck sufferers to leave their places.*
Sometimes they were exposed to a more fatal burst of temper.
Commodus, when hailed with divine honours by the acclamations
of the people, assembled to behold one of his gladiatorial exhibi¬
tions in the arena, believing that they mocked him, issued orders in
his fury for their instant slaughter.

Julius Caesar, indeed, when, conqueror of the world, he returned
to Rome, and forgave all who had been opposed to him in arms,
at his grand exhibition of Naumachice as well as of battles between
horse, foot, and elephants, caused the arena to be surrounded by
ditches for the protection of the people from the infuriated beasts,
to which they had been exposed in the games given by Pompey.
The naval fights made this precaution the more necessary on
account of the fear which the elephants were supposed to feel at
the sight of water. Nets were also stretched to secure the spec¬
tators from the mad leaps of the leopards and lions. The prodi¬
gality of the emperors had here room for display. Nero caused
these nets to be knotted with amber ; and in the time of Carinas
they were made of gold, either in the form of cord or wire.

* In the earlier periods, the Romans sheltered themselves from the weather
in the theatres as they could, wearing their broad-brimmed causice as a de¬
fence against the sun, and trusting to their hoods and mantles as a protection
against the rain. ‘ In processe of time, Lentulus Spinter (by report) was the
first man that in the solemnity of the games anci plaies Apollinate, drew fine
curtaines over the great amphitheatre at Rome; howbeit, not long after
Csesar Dictator caused the grand Forum or common place at Rome to be
covered all over with such rich curtains; yea, and the high faire street called
Sacra, to be hanged on both sides, from liis own dwelling house to the very
capitol cliffe : which magnificent and sumptuous sight was more wondred at.
and seene with greater admiration, than the brave shew and Tourney that he
set out at the same time of sworde-plaiers at sliarpe and to the utterance.
Then followed Marcellus, also the son of Octavia, sister to the Emperour
Augustus, who, in his own fEdileslnp and in the tenth consulship of his uncle
Augustus beforesaid, upon the calends or first day of August in that yeare,
caused the Romane Forum to be drawne all over and shadowed with the like
courtains, although he represented at that time no solemnitie at all of games
and plaies ; and this he did only, that they who came to plead at the barre,
might stand under shade more wholesomely. Lord, what a change was here
at Rome since the daies of Cato the Censor. * * * Of late daies there
were seene in the amphitheatres of Emperour Nero, traverses drawne upon
coras and ropes, with fine courtains of blew azure colour like the skie, and
those beset with stars; where the very floore of the ground under mens feet,
was coloured red. But for all these paintings and rich dyes, yet when all is
done, the white linnen held the own still, and was highly esteemed above all
colors.’ — Holland's Pliny.

294

ELEPHANTS.

Thirty-two elephants, ten tigers, ten elks, sixty lions, thirty
leopards, ten hyaenas, one hippopotamus, ten cameleopards, multi¬
tudes of deer, goats, antelopes, and other beasts were turned into
the arena at the Secular Games, celebrated by the Emperor Philip ;
and a murderous match of two thousand gladiators crowned the
carnage. For three days and three nights were the games inces¬
santly continued in honour of the thousandth anniversary of Rome.
When the sun went down, innumerable torches scattered the dark¬
ness, till they, in their turn, paled before the dawn. But the mea¬
sure of iniquity was full, and the end was at hand. The agonies
of the followers of Him whose kingdom is not of this world, were
no longer to make sport for the heathen. The Christian jubilees
proclaimed peace and good-will to men ; and the arena ceased to
be saturated with human blood.

Elephants were also employed by the ancients, as they have been
in modern times, to execute criminals, but it appears that they
were not always to be depended upon ; ‘ for when King Bochus
had condemned thirty men to be torne and trod in pieces by ele¬
phants, and tying them hand and foote to blocks or pieces of wood,
cast them among thirty elephants, his servants and officers could
not by al their wit, skil, or provocation, make the beasts touch one
of them: so that it was apparent they scorned and disdained to
serve any man’s cruell disposition, or to be the ministers of tyranny
and murther.*

Dark as the picture presented by the exhibitions of the Roman
theatre generally is, it had its brighter side, and elephants were not
unfrequently presented as actors in genteel comedy, and as ballet-
dancers. The training required for these performances, and other
almost incredible feats, must have commenced when the animal was
young ; indeed, there is no doubt, notwithstanding the supposed
impossibility of breeding the animals in confinement, so long che¬
rished in modern times, that elephants were bred at Rome ;f and
as little that the ancients were well acquainted with the fact, so
much disputed by Buffon and others, that the young elephant took
its maternal nourishment with the mouth, and not with the trunk.
The picture of a young elephant and its mother at Pompeii demon¬
strates this knowledge.

* Topsell.

f In another chapter we have stated the rations of a modern elephant in
captivity ; here is an account of the diet of an ancient tame elephant. ‘ When
they are tamed they will eat barlie either wnole or grounde: of wnole at one
time is given them nine Macedonian bushels, but of meal six, ana of drmke
eytlier wine or water thirty Macedonian pintes at a time, that is fourteen gal¬
lons, but this is observed, that they drinke not wine except in warre, when
they are to fight, but Avater at all times. Also they will eat dryed figges,
grapes, onions, bulrushes, palmes, and ivy-leaves.’ — Topsell.

295

ELEPHANT-DANCING.

But their genteel comedy? Six gentlemen-elephants, clad in the
toga, accompanied as many lady guests of the same quality, dressed
in the stola, to the banqueting-room, and there they went through
the ceremonies of the triclinium after the most approved fashion.

4 There was a certain banquet prepared for elephants upon a low
bed in a parlour, set with divers dishes and pots of wine, whereinto
were admitted twelve, six males, apparelled like men, and six fe¬
males, apparelled like women : when they saw it, they sat downe
with great modesty, taking lieere and there like discreet, temperat
ghests, neither ravening upon one dish or other, and when they
should drinke, they tooke the cup receiving the liquor very manerly,
and for sport or festivity would, through their trunks, squirt or
cast a litle of their drink upon their attendants.’*

Their dances and feats of dexterous strength were no less ad¬
mirable.

4 In the late solemnity of tournois and sword-figlit at the sharp
which Germanicus Crnsar exhibited to gratify the people, the ele¬
phants were seen to show pastime with leaping and keeping a stir,
as if they danced, after a rude and disorderly manner. A common
tiling it was among them to fling weapons and darts in the aire so
strongly, that the winds had no power against them : to flourish
also beforehand; yea, and to encounter and meet together in fight
like sword-fencers ; and to make good sport in a kinde of moriske
dance. Some of them were so nimble and well practised, that they
would enter into an hall or dining-place where the tables were set
full of guests, and passe among them so gently and daintily, weigh¬
ing, as it were, their feet in their going, so as they would not hurt
or touch any of the company as they were drinking.’ f

Their dancing at last was carried to a high pitch of refinement,
for 4 they learned to daunce after pipes by measure, sometime
dauncing softly, and sometime apace, and then again leaping up¬
right, according to the number of the thing sung or played upon
the instrument. There was an elephant playing upon a cymbaJl,
and others of his fellowes dauncing about him, for there was fas¬
tened to either of both of his fore-legs one cymball, and another
hanged to his trunke, the beast would observe just time, and
strike upon one and then the other, to the admiration of all the be¬
holders.' I

But all the feats of ancient and modern times were eclipsed by
those which now demand our notice. Madame Sacqui, when she
ascended and descended the rope stretched from the gallery to the
stage, over the upturned heads of the wondering and trembling pit,
was hailed as the princess of funambulists. Afterwards, two per-

* Topsell.

f Holland’s Pliny.

X Topsell.

296

ELEPHANTS.

formers descending from a height which reduced them to the size
of fairies, excited, as they danced down the tight-rope amid the
blaze of fireworks at Yauxhall, the fears and applause of half
London. But when we contemplate an elephant, with all its in¬
stincts warning it not to venture its immense weight on any frail
foundation, — an animal that cannot be tempted to pass a wooden
bridge or tread a stage till it has satisfied itself of its sufficient
strength, — in a similar situation, the fame of all biped rope-dancers
fades before the nicely-adjusted skill of the gigantic quadruped,

‘ One of the greatest wonders of them was, that they could mount
up and climb against a rope ; but more wonderfull that they should
slide downe again with their heads downwards.’* In Nero’s time,
at the celebration of the Ludi maximi , a distinguished Roman
knight descended the rope, seated on an elephant and, at the
Floral Games, Galba exhibited rope-dancing elephants.

The crowning exhibition of this sort is recorded by Pliny. Four
elephants, advancing along ropes, bore, in litters, others personating
that interesting situation in which the Roman ladies were wont to
call upon Juno Lucina.j;

The only modern teat at all comparable to this, was exhibited at
the marriage of the King of France’s brother, in the thirteenth
century, when a man rode on horseback along a rope. Whether
the horse was shod 4 with felt’ does not appear.

* Holland’s Pliny.

f ‘Ludis, qnos pro seternitate imperii snsceptos appellari maxhnos voluit,
ex utroque ordine et sexn plerique ludicras partes sustinuerunt. Notissimus
eques Romanus elephanto supersedens per catadromum decucurrit.’— Sueto¬
nius. Nero.

+ ‘ Per tunes incessere, lecticis etiam ferentes quaterni singulos, puerperas
i mi tames.’ — Pliny Nat. Hist., viii. 2. See further, the ‘ Audria’ of Terence.

ELEPHANTS.

PART IV.

‘Who doubts that elephants are found
For science and for sense renown’d?

Bom records their strength of parts,

Extent of thought and skill in arts;

IIow they perform the law’s decrees,

And save the state the hangman’s fees;

And how by travel, understand
The language of another land.

Let those who question this report,

To Pliny’s ancient page resort.

ITow leam’d was that sagacious breed!

Who now (like them) the Greek can read!’

The Elephant and the Booksellek.

The passage in Pliny alluded to by Gay in his caustic fable will
be found in the third chapter of the eighth book of the ancient
Italian’s 4 Natural History/ and is thus translated by Philemon
Holland :

4 Mutianus, a man who had in his time bin thrice consull, re-
porteth thus much of one of them, that he had learned to make the
Greeke characters, and was wont to write in that language thus
much, Thus have I written, and made an offering of the Celticke
spoiles.’*

This sentence is preceded by another in proof of their 4 doci-
litie

4 This is knowne for certaine, that upon a time there was an
Elephant among the rest, not so good of capacity to take out his
lessons, and learn that which was taught him : and being beaten
and beaten again for that blockish and dull head of his, was found

* Mutianus ter consul auctor est, aliquem ex his et literarum ductus Grae-
carum didicisse, solitumque praescribere ejus linguae verbis: ‘ipse ego haec
scripsi, et spolia Celtica dicavi.’

298

ELEPHANTS.

studying and conning those feats in the night, which he had been
learning in the day time.’ The honest, industrious, hopeless dunce
in Webster’s charming picture of the ‘ Dame’s School’ could do no
more.

Old Topsell, commenting upon the passage in Pliny descriptive
of the elephant’s writing accomplishments, remarks :

c But in these actions of writing, the hand of the teacher must
be also present to teach him how to frame the letters, and then as
sElianus sayeth they will write upon tables, and followe the true
proportion of the characters expressed before their face, whereupon
they looke as attentively as any grammarian.’

Some people cannot bear to be outdone, and a worthy modern*
has gone beyond the ancients, for he has endowed the elephant with
speech. He tells us that at Cochin there was one that worked with
human skill and dexterity. He had one day done a good day’s
work, in the course of which he had made more than ordinary exer¬
tions, and he was fatigued ; when the governor of the port directed
that he should assist in launching a vessel. To the astonishment of
those who knew the willingness and docility of the good-natured
beast, the governor’s order was met by the most cool disregard on
the part of the overwrought elephant. Caresses and threats were
resorted to without the slightest effect, when the governor, as a
last resource, elevating his voice, commanded him to execute the
task in the name of the King of Portugal. This appeal to the
elephant’s loyalty was not made in vain. To the surprise and joy
of the bystanders, he answered, ‘ I will, I will!’ and immediately
applied himself to his task, which he performed to the satisfaction
of all. Nor is this the only instance on record of the speechifying
power of the elephant ; though the other speeches are in the same
laconic style.

There is, as usual, some foundation for these marvellous tales.
Elephants, it is well known, manifest a perfect intelligence of the
commands addressed to them by their keepers, and when called on,
will answer to their names by uttering a shrill note, such as most
of those who have visited menageries where they are kept have
heard. Here we shall probably find the key of the Cochin story :
for one could hardly better express in writing this shrill note than
by the word ‘ Hoo,’ which, in the Malabar language, signifies, ‘ I
will.’

And indeed such stories are so captivating, that we cease to
wonder at those, who finndig it much easier to believe than exa¬
mine, give a ready assent to every record of the sagacity of these
stupendous creatures ; but, after a somewhat extensive experience,

* Acosta.

ELEPHANTIANA.

299

founded on a long inquiry into the relative intelligence of animals,
we are compelled to agree with Cuvier that the intellect of the
elephant does not surpass that of the dog. This conclusion, how¬
ever, places the hugh pachyderm in a very high grade ; for no one
can have studied the canine race closely without joining Sir
Walter Scott in his declaration, that there was hardly anything
that he would not believe of a dog. The heavy and imposing
mass of the elephant’s body, together with the certainty that the
animal is conscious of the vast strength and crushing weight that
he can, in a moment, bring to bear against an enemy ; his appa¬
rently enormous brain-case, and dignified, sagacious aspect — his
tremendous trunk-power, and infinitesimally delicate adjustment
of it — all strike the spectator with awe. Then, he goes through
his feats and tricks with such a grave face, that one is hardly sur¬
prised at hearing a spectator involuntarily exclaim, as he comparer

the brute with his keeper, ‘that the quadruped is the cleverer

fellow of the two.’ And it is certain that when a sensible ele¬
phant and a shrewd keeper put their heads together, they are

generally more than a match for an ordinary spectator, and some¬
times too many for a learned philosopher.

Not a great many years since, one who held, and justly, a high
rank among English physiologists, determined on sounding the
depths and shallows of the elephant’s organ of hearing. The phi¬
losopher had, no doubt, read the passages which we have quoted
in a former chapter, illustrative of the ear which that animal has
for music, and the advantage taken of it to make him both a
dancer and musical performer. Accordingly he repaired to old
Exeter Change, and there gave the elephant a morning concert.
The organ pealed forth its full, rich notes ; the grand piano
sounded its measured marches, and rattled away its jigs. The
elephant made no sign. Violins, violoncellos, double basses,
horns, trumpets, were tried singly and in concert. The elephant
was still impassible. At last a gong was struck, and the hitherto
placid animal became all animation, rapturously trumpeting forth
his shrill accompaniment. Away went the delighted philosopher,
and enlightened a celebrated scientific society by an elaborate
paper, in which an account was given of the various instruments
played before the elephant, and his apathy till the gong was
struck; with an argal to the effect following, videlicet , that the
organ of hearing was so constituted in this huge creature, that it
was only affected by the most sonorous of instruments.

This passed for a very sage deduction, till a sceptic thought he
would go to the menagerie and ascertain whether his own expe¬
rience accorded with that of the writer of the paper. He did go,
and was constant in his attendance for a week, when he found

<300

ELEPHANTS.

that the striking of the gong was the signal for feeding-time, and
that the elephant’s rapture was invariably shared by the whole
ward of wild beasts — lions, tigers, bears, hyaenas, jackals, mon¬
keys, and all — who, to a quadruped and quadrumane, leaped up
in the wildest excitement at the braying of their brazen dinner-
bell.

That the elephant is a very ‘Fine-ear’ in his uditory faculty
there can be no doubt. A friend, gifted with great acuteness of
observation, witnessed the following scene.

He went to see an elephant, accompanied by two ladies, and
among other performances, the keeper — permission having been
asked and obtained — told his monstrous charge to let him know
the age of one of the ladies by scraping with his foot as many
times as the lady had lived years. The elephant scraped one, two,
three, and so on, till he stopped at twenty-eight : the lady was,
in fact, under thirty. The keeper was then desired to tell the
elephant to indicate the age of the other lady. The obedient
creature scraped with his foot as before, and again stopped at
twenty- eight.

‘ Look again,’ said the keeper.

The elephant surveyed the second lady, with a searching scru¬
tiny, and recommenced his scraping ; but he stopped, this time,
at twenty-seven — and she was, in reality, about a year younger
than her companion.

My friend, who had seen as many shows as the late Lord
Stowell, avowed to me that he was puzzled, and entirely at a loss
to discover how the feat was performed, although he had closely
watched the man. Determined to give himself another chance, he
requested the keeper to make the elephant repeat his answers.

The keeper, who forgot the conjuror’s old maxim, ‘never show
the same trick twice to the same party at the same time,’ com¬
plied ; and the delusion was now detected. The keeper made the
signal by giving the cane which he held in his hand, a succession
of nicks with his thumb-nail, conformable to the number of scrapes
that the elephant was to make with his foot.

In truth, the quickness with which a well-trained elephant will
take a hint from his mohout is astonishing.

Bishop Heber mentions a horrible instance of this. Just before
his arrival in India, one of these mohouts had been executed for
revenging himself on a woman, who had said something to offend
him, by means which he thought would be undiscovered. He
made a sign to his beast, which, in obedience, instantly killed her.
When Tavernier travelled with the Mogul’s Mohammedan army,
he was, at first, lost in astonishment at seeing the elephants as
they marched along seize upon the idols that stood before the

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301

pagodas and dash them to pieces, to the great distress and dis¬
comfiture of the Hindoos; but he soon found out the carefully-
concealed truth. The mahouts, who seem to have been imbued
with a spirit of intolerance worthy of modern bigots, made, as they
passed, secret signals to their beasts to destroy the symbols of a
mode of faith offensive to them.

This extreme docility is the result of memory and a power of
combining ideas — of that condition of intellect, and exercise of its
faculties, which, notwithstanding the logic of Descartes, INJale-
branche, and their disciples, induces the close observer and deep
thinker to come to the conclusion that brutes arc not mere machines,
but are endowed with reasoning powers to a very considerable
extent.

Nor is this a new doctrine. It may be traced in the writings
of ancient as well as modern poets — in the works of the philoso¬
phers of old, of the Jewish Rabbis, and of the Christian Fathers.
The notion of a soul includes, it is true, that of immortality —
endless duration of existence: and the ancients interpreted the
word as having a triple meaning or distinction. They considered
it as indicating a spiritual, a sensitive, and a vegetative principle.
According to them, man is possessed of a soul in all the three
senses, and brutes in the two last ; while plants have a vegetative
soul only. When we read the beautiful lines of the 4 little Queen
Anne’s man’ —

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor’d mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;

His soul proud science never taught to stray
Far as the Solar Walk or Milky Way;

Yet simple Nature to his hope has giv’n
Behind the cloud-topp’d hill an humbler heav’n,

Some safer world in depth of woods embrac’d,

Some happier island in the wat’ry waste,

Where slaves once more their native land behold,

No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.

To be content’s his natural desire,

He asks no angel’s wing, no seraph’s fire;

But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,

His faithful dog shall bear him company —

we are carried back to the time of Augustus and the Elysian
Fields, where the souls of the blessed were surrounded by those of
their favourite animals, and revelled in the enjoyment of all that
was pleasant to them in life —

Stant terra defixse haste Qpassimque soluti
Per campum pascuntur equi. Quse gratia currfim
Armorumque fuit vivis, quce cura nitentes
Pascere equos, eadem sequitur tellure repostos.

302

ELEPHANTS.

The unsophisticated Red man still looks forward to a heaven of
bears and bisons ; and the survivors are careful to place his bow
and hunting implements beside him in his tomb.

It requires no great learning to show that the notion of the
future existence of brute animals is not so novel as some may
suppose. Manasseh, discoursing of the resurrection, lays it down
that brutes will enjoy a much happier state of being than ever
they enjoyed here, when men shall rise again ; and Philo, in his
treatise of ‘Future Rewards,’ asserts without doubt, that fero¬
cious beasts will be divested of their savage nature, and become
tame and gentle. He expatiates eloquently on the harmony and
love that shall be manifested when innocence shall reign in all the
regions of restored nature, when the whole race of scorpions, ser¬
pents, and poisonous insects and reptiles in general shall become
harmless, and have no power to afflict the blessed with their
venomous weapons. Tertullian, not improbably, had this passage
in his mind when, commenting upon the words of St Paul,* he
declares that there shall be an end of death when the Devil, its
chief master, shall go away into the fire which God has prepared
for him and his angels : — when the sons of God shall be made mani¬
fest, and their manifestation shall release the world from the evil to
which it is at present subject when the innocence and purity of
nature shall be restored ; when beasts shall live in harmony with
beasts, and infants shall play with serpents : — when the Father
shall have subdued his enemies to his Son, and put all things in
subjection under his feet.

Every brute acts, doubtlessly, upon the impulse of an intelligent
principle of its own, wisely and wonderfully adapted to its position
upon the earth' or in its waters. It has a power of distinction and
comparison commensurate with the state of being to which it has
pleased the Creator to call it, and, to a certain extent, is a free,
though not, like man, a responsible agent.

Philosophers, such as those above alluded to, are compelled to
allow that the actions of brutes express an understanding ; but,
in order to prove the position that those animals have no souls at
all, say that it is only as everything else which is regular ex¬
presses it, such as a watch, a clock, or any other kind of machine ;
and they assert that this understanding is as distinct from the
beast, as that which arranges the movements of a clock or watch
is from those instruments. If this be so, they must consider the
animal as insensible to all its natural operations. They must hold
that it eats without pleasure, and is insensible to pain— that

* ‘ And the creature itself shall he delivered from the bondage of corruption
into the glorious liberty ot the children of God.’

ELEPHANT! AN A.

303

it is, in short, a mere automaton. When we read such arguments
as those which we have here noticed, tending to prove that a dog
or an elephant is a mere animated parcel of matter, we are forcibly
reminded of that beautiful passage in Scripture, 4 The stork in the
heavens knoweth her appointed times, and the turtle, and the crane,
and the swallow, know the times of their coming, but my people
do not understand the judgments of their Goch’

This is a most pregnant subject, one on which we could dilate
much ; but, for the present, we must leave it to inquire into the
degree of intellectuality that has been assigned to the massive qua¬
druped which is the subject of this sketch.

As long as the elephant is under the direct guidance of man,
there is no ground for wonder that even a child should lead him.
It is when he is out of the reach of immediate human direction
that the measure of his sagacity should be taken. Some of the
anecdotes illustrative of his conduct when left to himself, may be
accounted for from the influence of habit, as in the instances of
elephants tying their own legs at night, or after swimming a river
laden, unloading themselves in the most orderly manner on the op¬
posite shore. But in the case recorded by M. d’Obsonville, there
is something more.

Two elephants had been directed to knock down a wall by
their cornacs, who had dismissed them to their task with their
trunks guarded by leather, and with the usual promise of fruit
and spirituous liquors if they performed it well. The elephants
proceeded to their work, not singly, but, doubling up their guarded
trunks, they combined their forces, and, swaying themselves in
equal and measured time, these huge living battering-rams pro¬
pelled their broad fronts against the building. As it shook
under the repetition of their overpowering and uniform shocks,
they watched the vacillating equilibrium of the tottering wall,
and having made, at the precisely proper moment, one grand,
simultaneous effort, suddenly drew back to avoid the tumbling
ruins.

This may be 4 what we somewhat superciliously call instinct,’
to use the expressive language of the author of 4 Yathek,’ but it
looks very like reason. Two men could not have wielded their
instruments of destruction with more efficiency and discretion. In
the case of these elephants the utmost possible advantage was taken
of their own organization. The broad and massive forehead, ex¬
panded and fortified by the voluminous cellular sinus which sepa¬
rates the external from the internal table of the skull, the short
compact neck, and the impulse of the well-balanced, overwhelming
weight, were all brought to bear in the most effective manner.
And here we may remark, that among quadrupeds, the elephant

304

ELEPHANTS.

has, proportionally, the shortest neck, the giraffe the longest neck,
and that the Megaceros , or great extinct Irish cleer, had the stoutest
neck, fit to bear the enormous spread of the gigantic antlers. In
the camel and dromedary, the flexuous neck is peculiarly marked
by the absence of the lateral foramina for the vertebral arteries.
These peculiarities are well shown in the grand group at the mu¬
seum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, of which the
skeleton of Chunee, the Asiatic elephant, is the centre, flanked by
those of the elk and giraffe on one side, and by those of the Mega¬
ceros and dromedary on the other.*

It may be said, indeed, with reference to the unity of strength
and purpose exhibited by the elephants in battering down the wall,
that, in a state of nature, the necessity of removing or pulling down
some great obstacle — a large tree for instance — would naturally
induce the combination of two or more elephants to effect the re¬
moval, when it was discovered that the strength of one was inade¬
quate to the task. Rut this observation, so far from weakening
the case, strengthens it, by admitting spontaneous sagacious com¬
bination in the untutored beasts.

Then there are instances where single elephants left alone have
acted according to the necessities of the case with the most remark¬
able intelligence. Take, for example, the story told by the author
of 1 Twelve Years’ Military Adventure,’ who declares that he had
seen the wife of a mohout give a baby in charge to an elephant
while she went on some business, and had observed the sagacity
and care of the unwieldy nurse, to his great amusement. The
babe, with the restlessness of childhood, began, as soon as it was
left to itself, to crawl about, getting, in the course of its vagaries,
sometimes under the huge legs of the animal, and at others, becom¬
ing entangled among the branches of the trees on which he was
feeding. On such occasions, the elephant would, in the most tender
manner, disengage the child, either by lifting it out of the way with
its trunk, or removing the impediments to its progress in the same
manner. When the child had crawled so far as nearly to reach
the limits of the elephant’s range (for he was chained by the leg to
a stump driven into the ground), he would protrude his trunk and
lift the child back, as gently as possible, to the spot whence it had
started.

No old woman could have tended her charge with more show of

reason.

These will appear wonderful manifestations of intellect to such
as have not been accustomed to observe the actions of animals :

* See the excellent ‘ Catalogue ’ and ‘ Synopsis’ "by the curator of that time,
Professor Owen, F.R.S., &c., &c. The grand group is now (1857) dispersed,
in consequence of an alteration in the arrangement.

ELEPHANT I ANA.

305

but the ancients went far beyond anything stated in modern times ;
and not only endowed elephants with human passions, but gave
them a high moral and religious character.

And first for their morality : —

6 A certaine elephant seeing his Maister absent, and another man
with his Mistresse, he went and slew them both. The like was done
at Rome, where the elephant having slaine both the adulterer and
adulteresse, he covered them with the bed-clothes untill his keeper
returned home, and then by signes drew him into his lodging-place,
where he uncovered the adulterers, and shewed him his bloody
tooth that tooke revenge upon them both for such a villany:
whereat the Maister wondering, was the more pacified because of
the manifest-committed iniquity. And not only thus deale they
against the woman, but they also spare not to revenge the adultery
of men, yea, of their owne keeper : for there was a rich man, which
had married a wife not very amiable or lovely, but like himselfe
for wealth, riches, and possessions, which he having gained, first
of all set his heart to love another, more fitting his lustfull fancye,
and being desirous to marry her, strangled his rich il-favored wife,
and buried her not farre from the elephant’s stable, and so married
with the other, and brought her home to his house : the elephant
abhorring such detestable murther, brought the new-married wife
to the place where the other was buried, and with his teeth digged
ud the ground and shewed her the naked bodve of her predecessor,
intymating thereby unto her secretly, how unwortnely she had mar¬
ried with a man, murtherer of his former wife.’

Next for their piety : —

‘ They have also a kincle of religion, for they worsliippe, reve¬
rence, and observe the course of the sunne, moone, and starres ; for
when the moone shinetli, they goe to the waters wherein she is ap-
parant, and when the sunne ariseth, they salute and reverence her
face : and it is observed in ^Ethiopia, that when the moone is
chaunged untill her prime and appearance, these beastes by a se-
cret motion of nature, take boughes from of the trees they feede
upon, and first of all lift them up to heaven, and then looke upon
the moone, which they doe many times together ; as it were in sup¬
plication to her. In like manner they reverence the sunne rysing,
holding up their trunke or hand to heaven, in congratulation of her
rising.’

4 Juba was woont to say, that this beast was acceptable to those
Gods which ruled sea and land, bycause of their reverence to sunne
and moone, and therefore Ptolomeus Philopator offered four elephants
in a sacrifice (to recover the quietnesse of his mind), thinking that
the Gods would have been well pleased therewith, but finding that

x

COG

ELEPHANTS.

his fearfull clreamcs and visions departed not from him, but rather
his disquietnesse increased, fearing that the Gods were angry with
him for that action, he made four elephants of brasse, and dedicated
them to the sun, that so by this deede he might purchase pardon
for the former offence.’

4 This religion of theirs also appeareth before their death, for
when they feele any mortall woundes, or other naturall signes of
their later end, either they take up the dust, or else some greene
herbe, and lift it up to heaven in token of their innocency and im-
ploration of their own weakenes, and in like manner do they when
they eate any herbe by natural instinct to cure their diseases : first
they lift it up to the heavens (as it were to pray for a devine bless¬
ing upon it), and then devoure it.’

4 I cannot omit their care to bury and cover the dead carkases
of their companions, or any other of their kind ; for finding them
dead they passe not by them till they have lamented their com¬
mon misery, by casting dust and earth on them, and also greene
bouglies, in token of sacrifice, holding it execrable to doe other¬
wise; and they know by a naturall instinct some assured fore¬
tokens of their owne death. Besides, when they waxe old and
unfit to gather their own meate, or fight for themselves, the
younger of them feed, nourish, and defend them, yea, they raise
them out of ditches and trenches into which they are fallen, ex¬
empting them from all labour and perill, and interposing their own
bodies for their protection : neither do they forsake them in sick-
nesse, or in their woundes, but stand to them, pulling darts out
of their bodies, and helping both like skilfull ehirurgians to cure
their woundes, and also like faithfull friendes to supply their
wants.’

For these refined qualities Topsell quotes the authority of Pliny,
Solinus, JElian, Plutarch, and Tzetzes.

Whatever may be thought of these ancient and somewhat mar¬
vellous records, we have modern accounts of the tender sympathy
shown by elephants to their suffering brethren upon the most indu¬
bitable evidence. Bishop Heber, for instance, relates that an old
starved elephant having fallen from weakness, another of very large
size and in better condition, was brought to its assistance, and that
he was much struck with the almost human expression of surprise,
alarm, and perplexity in the countenance of the vigorous elephant
as it approached its fallen companion. They fastened a chain
round the neck and body of the sick beast, and urged the other in
all ways, by encouragement and blows, to drag it up. The other
pulled stoutly for a minute, but on the first groan given by its
wretched companion stopped short, turned fiercely round with a

ELEPHANTIANA

307

loud roar, and with trunk and forc-fect began to attempt to loosen
the chain from its neck.

But to return to Topsell. As a proof of the susceptibility of
elephants, and their proneness to the tender passion, take the fol¬
lowing antique version of Beauty and the Beast •

‘ At the sight of a beautifull woman they leave off all rage, and
grow meeke and gentle, and therefore JElianus saith, that there
was an elephant in Egypt which was in love with a woman that
sold corrals, the selfe same woman was wooed by Aristophanes,
and therefore it was not likely that she was chosen by the elephant
without a singular admiration of hir beauty, wherein Aristophanes
might say as never man could, that he had an elephant for his rivall,
and this also did the elephant manifest unto the man, for on. a day
in the market he brought her certaine apples, and put them into
her bosome, holding his trunke a great while therein. Another
likewise loved a Syrian woman, with whose aspect he was suddenly
taken, and in admiration of her face stroked the same with his
trunke, with testification of farther love ; the woman likewise failed
not to frame for the elephant amorous devises with beads and co¬
rals, silver and such things as are gratefull to these brute beastes,
so she enjoyed his labor and diligence to her great profit, and he
hir love and kindnes without offence to his contentment, which
caused Horat. to write this verse :

Quid tibi vis mulier nigris dignissima barris.

At last the woman died, whom the elephant missing, like a lover
distracted betwixt love and sorrow, fell beside himselfe and so
perished. Neither ought any man to marvel at such a passion in this
beast, who hath such a memory as is attributed unto him, and un¬
derstanding of his charge and busines as may appeare by manifold
examples, for Antipater affirmeth that he saw an elephant that
knewe againe and tooke acquaintance of his maister which had
nourished him in his youth after many yeares absence.’

And we have this further proof of their affectionate regard for
their keepers :

1 Their love and concord with all mankind is most notorious,
especially to their keepers and women for if through wrath they
be incensed against their keepers, they kill them, and afterwarde by
way of repentance, they consume themselves with mourning ; and
for the manifesting of this point Arrianus telleth a notable story of
an Indian who had brought up from a foale a white elephant, both
loving it and being beloved of it againe, he was thereupon carried
with great admiration. The king hearing of this white elephant,
sent unto the man for it, requiring it to be given him for a present,
whereat the man was much grieved, that another man should pos-

303

ELEPHANTS.

sesse that which he had so tenderly educated and loved, fitting him
to his bowe and purposes, and therefore like a ryvall in his ele¬
phant’s love, resolved to deny the king, and shift for himselfe in
some other place : whereupon he fled into a desert region with his
elephant, and the king understanding thereof, grew offended with
him, sent messengers after him to take away the elephant, and
withall to bring the man back againe, to receive punishment for his
contempt.’ '

4 When they came to the place where he remained and began to
take order for their apprehension, the man ascended into a steepe
place, and there kept the king’s messenger off from him by casting
of stones, and so also did the beast like as one that had received
some injury by them ; at last they got neare the Indian and cast
him down, but the elephant made upon them, killing some of them,
and defending his maister and nourisher, put the residue to flight,
and then taking up his maister with his trunke carried him safe into
his lodging, which thing is worthy to be remembered as a noble
understanding part both of a loving friend and faithfull servant.’

4 Generally, as is already said, they love all men after they be
tamed, for if they meet a man erring out of his way they gently
bring him into the right againe, yet being wilde are they afraide
of the footsteps of men if they minde their treadings before they
see their persons, and when they find an herbe that yeeldetli a sus-
pition of man’s presence, they smell thereunto one by one, and if al
agree in one savour, the last beast lifteth uppe his voice and crieth
out for a token and watchword to make them all flie away.’

4 Cicero affinneth that they come so neare to a man’s disposition,
that their small company or nation seemeth to overgoe or equall
most men in sence and understanding.’

With which not very complimentary affirmation we close this
chapter.

ELEPHANTS.

PART V.

‘ Lucifer — What thy world is, thou see’st,

But carist not comprehend the shadow of
That which it was.

‘ Cain — And those enormous creatures,

Phantoms inferior in intelligence
(At least so seeming) to the "things we have pass’d,
Resembling somewhat the wild habitants
Of the deep woods of earth, the hugest which
Roar nightly in the forest, but ten-fold
In magnitude and terror; taller than
The cherub- guarded walls of Eden, with
Eyes flashing like the fiery swords which fence them,
And tusks projecting like the trees stripp’d of
Their bark and branches — what were they?

‘ Lucifer — That which

The Mammoth is in thy world ; — but these lie
By myriads underneath its surface.’

Cain.

The ancients had a notion that the locality from which the ele¬
phants came had great influence on their temper and character.

Thus we read that ‘ The Kinge of the Indians was watched with
foure-and-twenty elephants, who were taught to forbeare sleepe,
and come in their turnes at certaine houres, and so were they most
faithfull, carefull, and invincible. And as there be of them three
kindes, the Palustrians or Marishye elephants are hair-brained and
inconstant, the elephantes of the mountaines are subtill and evill-
natured, lying in waite to destroy and devoure, but the campes-
triall elephants are meeke, gentle, docible, and apt to imitate men.

310

.ELEPHANTS.

Iii these is ths understanding; of their country language, of obedience
to princes, government, and offices ; the love and pleasure of glory
and praise*, and also that which is not alway in men; namely,
equity, wisdome, and probity,.’*

However fanciful this theory may be, there is no question as to
the fact of difference of temper and character. Among elephants
may be found as vicious brutes as ever walked on four legs or two
either, and also as generous, noble-tempered animals as good men
ever delighted to win to their will by kindness. When Bishop
Heber was travelling in Oude, three elephants were in his train.
One was described by his mohout as a fine-tempered beast, but
the other two as great rascals. Between a good elephant and
his attendants there seems to be the most perfect understanding.
The man who walks by its side is talking to it all the time they
are jogging on, and very often in a jargon which no one else can
understand, but which is perfectly intelligible to the elephant.
1 My dove!’ ‘ Take care!’ 4 Well done, my dear!’ 4 My son!’
4 My wife ! ’ If a fault is committed, 4 How could you do that ? *
if it is often repeated, 4 What can you be thinking of?’ accompanied
by a dig with the sharp iron liawkuss or ankush, inflicted by the
mohout.

I have seen many strong instances of the attachment of brutes
to man ; but I do not think I ever saw that feeling so strongly
manifested as by a very young elephant that was brought to this
country. Never was parent more fondly caressed by a child than
was the keeper of this affectionate creature by his charge. If he
absented himself even for a moment, the little elephant became
restless ; and if the absence was continued for a few minutes, its
distress was quite painful to the spectator. After trying the dif¬
ferent fastenings of its prison with its as yet weak proboscis, it
would give vent to the most lamentable pipings, which only ceased
when its friend and protector reappeared. And then how it would
run to him, passing its infant trunk round his neck, his arm, his
body, and lay its head upon his bosom. The poor man had a weary
time of it , he was a close prisoner, nor was he released at night
even ; for he was obliged to sleep by the side of his nursling, which
would have pined and died if left by itself.

But great as is the attachment of these animals to their keepers,
and obedient as they are, generally, even to a tyrannical mohout,
it is dangerous to try their tempers too far. 4 Of all the dumb
beasts,’ quoth the learned Job Ludolphus, author of the 4 Ethiopic
Lexicon,’ speaking of the elephant, 4 this creature certainly shares
the most of human understanding : kind usage excites their am-

* Topscll,

ELEPIIANTIANA.

311

bition, contumely fires their revenge and doubtless the elephant
will treasure up a wrong with human tenacity, and sometimes
avenge himself as cruelly as Tiberius himself. Keepers who have
needlessly mingled their caresses with blows have felt the fatal
effects of their wanton conduct. Fancying that they have the
animal entirely under their control, they become the dupes of his
apparently submissive behaviour ; but the injured animal bides
his time, and, taking advantage of an unguarded moment, balances
the accumulated account of wrong with the death of the wrong¬
doer, A terrible instance of this is recorded in one of Zoffany’s
pictures. When the Vizier — we cannot make up our pen to
write Wezeer or Wuzeer, as, according to modern authorities,
we ought — when the Vizier of Oude sent his embassy to meet
Lord Cornwallis at Calcutta, there was among the elephants that
carried the baggage, a male with a number of people on his back.
This elephant, suddenly irritated by a violent and, as far as we
know, an undeserved stroke with the penetrating hawkuss,
snatched the unhappy driver from his seat, held him up in his
trunk so as to render escape or aid impossible, and, after sus¬
pending him, as if in warning to others, for a few moments, during
which the trembling victim must have endured the very extremity
of agonizing fear, deliberately dashed him to pieces. Not long
ago, an unhappy English keeper was killed by the elephant
placed under his charge: he had provoked the vengeance of the
long-suffering creature by his persecutions, and paid the deadly
penalty.

In the case recorded by Zoffany, the immediate agression was,
in all probability, the last drop that made the bitter cup overflow ;
for, unless the animal be naturally of a malignant disposition, there
is so much attachment and respect on the part of the brute, that
it requires a long course of ill treatment to push him beyond the
bounds of endurance and make him turn on his master. But there
are occasions when he is not less prompt to avenge an insult on the
spot, and such an one occurred during the siege of Bhurtpore, soon
after the commencement of the present century.

The beleagured city had for a long time been pressed by the
British army attended by its host of camp-followers* and attendants.
The hot season approached, and the dry burning winds were at
hand : as they prevailed, every tank and every pond were dried up,
and the enormous multitude of human beings and cattle were thrown
upon the wells alone for their supply of water. The scenes of con-

* Some idea of the comparative numbev of camp-followers attached to a
British army engaged in Indian warfare may be arrived at from the statement
of Lieutenant Shipp, who, in one case, gives 80,000 camp followers, where the
fighting men were 8000 only.

312

ELEPHANTS.

fusion at these points of attraction may be better imagined than
described.

Two elephant drivers with their beasts were at one of these wells
together, and when the usual struggle and confusion amid a war
of words were at their height, one of the elephants, which was re¬
markably large and strong, snatched from the smaller and weaker
one the bucket with which his master had provided him, and which
he carried at his trunk’s end. Loud and long was the squabble
between the keepers. The little elephant quietly watched his op¬
portunity, and when Ills gigantic aggressor was standing with his
side to the well, retired a few steps, and then making a rush, came
with his head full butt against Ills antagonist’s side, and tumbled
him in.

Here was a pretty business. The surface of the water was some
twenty feet below the level of the ground, and the immersion of the
elephant was not calculated to improve the quality of the spring ;
besides, how was he to be got out ? Not that he seemed much
disturbed at his ducking, for, though there were many feet of water
below him, he floated about at his ease, appearing rather to enjoy
his cool retreat, and to be in no haste to use any exertion for his
deliverance.

At length the mohout bethought him of the fascines which had
been employed in great numbers by the army in conducting the
siege, and had them lowered into the well, with the hope that the
animal might be induced so to place them under him as gradually
to raise himself to the top. And here was exhibited a striking in¬
stance of the power of man over these massive creatures, and their
quickness of perception and obedience. The mohout soon suc¬
ceeded in making the elephant understand what he wished him to
do, and the sagacious beast continued to dispose of the fascines
thrown to him under his feet, to such good purpose, that he soon
was enabled to stand upon them. But here the charm of the
keeper’s ascendancy seemed to be broken: for the sly elephant,
finding himself on firm footing, struck work, and quietly made the
most of the deliciously cold bath which had so unexpectedly fallen
to his share, revelling in a luxury winch he had not enjoyed for
many a day. But what will not the love of arrack do ? The
bather was at last roused by the most earnest and stimulating pro¬
mises of the intoxicating draught, and again began to arrange the
fascines under his feet, till he had raised himself so high that, by
removing a portion of the masonry surrounding the top of the well,
he was able to step out at the expiration of fourteen hours from
the commencement of the affair.*

* See Griffith’s Ciuvier.

ELEPHANT! ANA.

o i * *

olo

But numerous as are the stories told of the stern vengeance of
the elephant, there are not wanting instances where the punish¬
ment inflicted by the injured beast has been of a degrading and
even ludicrous character ; as if scorn and contempt were the pre¬
dominant feelings that dictated the retribution. The dirty water¬
spout that overwhelmed the treacherous Delhi tailor, who had
treated the elephant to a prick with his needle instead of an apple ;
and the muddy shower bestowed on Lieutenant Shipp (who had
irritated another by giving him a large quantity of Cayenne pepper
between two pieces of bread), six weeks after the commission of
the offence, and as a termination to the caresses and fondling of
the lieutenant, are of this character, as well as the delayed ven¬
geance of the elephant mentioned by Williamson under the name
of Paugul, or fool. The Paugul, who had most likely been put
upon like other butts till he could stand it no longer, had refused
to bear a greater weight upon a march than he liked, and the
angry quarter-master threw a tent-pin at the head of the obsti¬
nate beast. Some days afterwards, as the elephant was going to
water, he came suddenly upon the quarter-master, seized him
with his trunk, and lifting him among the branches of a large
tamarind tree, there left him between heaven and earth, as being
unworthy of either, to hold on if he were able, and get down if he
could.

A very intelligent elephant was shown, some years since, in a
caravan of wild beasts, at a fair in the West of England. One of
those practical jokers, whose wit lies in pouring melted butter into
a friend’s pocket, or conveying a putrid oyster into his plate, had
been doling out some gingerbread nuts of the first quality to the
elephant, who received the instalments, small as they were, with
satisfaction and gratitude, manifesting the latter by the spontaneous
performance of some of his tricks between the somewhat protracted
intervals of supply. Suddenly, his benefactor produced a large
paper parcel, weighing some two or three pounds, and presented it
en masse. The elephant took it as it was, and consigned the whole
to his powerful crushing-mill. Hardly, however, had he swallowed
the dose, before he gave a loud roar, and exhibited all the symptoms
of suffering severely from internal heat, handing — yes, handing, for
the trunk acted as dexterously as a hand — the bucket to his keeper,
as if beseeching for water, which was given to him, and of which
he continued to pour floods sufficient to drive a mill down his capa¬
cious and burning throat.

‘Ha!’ said the joker, addressing his victim, ‘those nuts were a
trifle hot, old fellow, I guess !’

‘ You had better be off,’ exclaimed the keeper, ‘ unless you want
the bucket at your head, and sarve you right too.’

314

ELEPHANTS.

The dispenser of ginger and pepper took the hint ; for there was
an angry glare in the drinker’s eye, while the distressed beast was
pumping up his sixth bucketful ; and in good time he took it, for
he had scarcely cleared the entrance of the show, when the empty
bucket was hurled after him by the elephant with such force and
correctness of aim, that, if he had been a moment later, his joking
would, in all probability, have been terminated, with his life, on the
spot.

A year had passed away, and the wayfarers from the country
villages trod over the withered leaves that had, when fresh, green,
and vigorous, shielded their heads from the burning summer’s sun,
as they again bent their steps to the same annual autumnal fair,
where the elephant had been before exhibited, and where he was
again ready to receive company.

Our joker was again among his visiters, and, forgetful of his
narrow escape from the bucket, which, at the time, another wit
observed he had been near kicking, came, as before, with one coat-
pocket filled with ' best nuts,’ and the other with hot nuts. lie
gave the elephant two or three nuts from the best sample, and then
drew forth and presented him with a hot one. No sooner had the
elephant tasted it, than he seized the coat-tails of his tormentor,
and, with one whirling sweep with his trunk lifted him from the
ground, till, the tails giving way, the man dropped half-dead with
fright, and with his coat reduced to a jacket. The elephant, mean¬
while, quietly inserted the end of his trunk into the pocket con¬
taining the best nuts, and leisurely proceeded, keeping his foot on
the coat-tails, to discuss every nut of them. When he had finished
the last, he trampled upon the pocket containing the hot nuts, till
he had reduced them to a mash : and then, after having torn the
tails to rags, threw the soiled fragments at the head of his facetious
friend, amid the derision of the assembled crowd.

The late tenant of the elephantine departments in the Jardin de$
Plantes manifested, according to a story related of him, no small
sense of discrimination under somewhat unworthy treatment.

A painter was in the habit of choosing for his models the animals
confined in the garden. When it came to the elephant’s turn to
stand for his portrait, the artist, wishing to represent the grim
giant in a striking attitude, employed a little boy to throw apples
into the mouth of the elephant, thus obliging him to keep his
trunk uplifted. The apples were numerous, but the painter was
not a Landseer ; and as he had not the faculty of seizing and
transferring character with Edwin’s magical power and rapidity,
the task was tedious. By the master’s directions, the boy occa¬
sionally deceived the elephant by a simulated chuck, and thus eked
out the supply.

GARDENING ELEPHANTS.

315

# Notwithstanding the just indignation of the baulked expectant,
his gourmandise checked his irritable impatience ; and, keeping his
eye on the still well-filled bag, he bore the repeated disappoint¬
ments, crunching an apple, when it chanced to come, with apparent
glee.

At length, the last apple was thrown and crunched : the empty
bag was laid aside ; and the elephant applied himself to his water-
tank, as if for the purpose of washing down his repast. A few
more touches would have completed the picture, when an over¬
whelming douche from his well-adjusted trunk obliterated the design,
and drenched the discomfited painter. Having, by this practical
application of distributive justice executed judgment on the insti¬
gator, the elephant, disdaining the boy, whom he regarded as the
mere instrument of wrong, marched proudly round his enclosure,
loudly trumpeting forth his triumph.

It is worthy of remark that, in modern times, the African ele¬
phant has not been brought under the domination of man for the
purposes of utility or parade, whilst his Asiatic relation has been
made to minister so largely to human convenience, and almost every
phase of oriental pomp and luxury . When Kubla Khan amused
himself with ornamenting his ‘stately pleasure dome’

- Twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round;

And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossom’d many an incense-bearing tree,

and here these gigantic landscape-gardeners did good service ; for
whenever the khan received information that a handsome tree was
growing in any place, he caused it to be dug up with all its roots
and the earth about them, just as Sir Henry Stuart has since pro¬
ceeded, and, whatever were its size and weight, caused it to be
transported by elephants to an artificial mount that rose in the
enclosure, where the tree was added to the verdant group that
crowned the hill. Nearly a hundred elephants were employed by
Timour in conveying the stones for building the great mosque at
Samareand ; and they have been most efficiently used in the East
in ship-launching, and dragging vessels on shore.

We pass over the cruel pastime of fighting them with each other,
or with tigers, wild horses, or dogs, and other barbarous sports of
the Mogul amphitheatre. These degrading scenes want the excite¬
ment of danger and retributive excuse which dignify the hunter’s-
craft, especially when the destruction of the man-eater is sought.
Down to a late period, some of these hunting-expeditions were
conducted on a scale of prodigious grandeur.

When the Nawaub of Oude took the field, which he generally

316

ELEPHANTS.

did in the month of March, ten thousand cavalry, a like number
of infantry, seven or eight hundred elephants, and from forty to
sixty thousand camp-followers with grain and merchandise
marched with him. From his palace at Lucknow this host went
forth, Asoph-ul-doulah himself occupying the centre of the line,
mounted on an elephant, and attended by two others, one bearing
his state howdah, the other that which he used in the chase.
On each side of the Nawaub was a prolonged rank of elephants.
Straight on did this moving mass proceed, regardless of conse¬
quences, annihilating the hopes of the husbandman, and deaf as
an adder to his cries for mercy. Before the prince, the land was
smiling with crops. He passed, and the torn and trampled vege¬
tation looked as if a devastating hurricane had swept the country.
Still onward, onward went the tens of thousands, hemming in
daily whole herds of antelopes for his highness’s battues, and stop¬
ping nightly at appointed stations, where every luxury that Vathek
could have wished for awaited the court, till they approached
the stronghold of the buffaloes, leopards, panthers, and tigers, in
the Thibet mountains. Here an encampment was formed, and, for
weeks, the carnivora that had fattened upon the flocks and herds
of the peasantry, paid the penalty of their ravages; the hunters
thus, in some measure, making compensation for the injury done
on their march.

Those hunting armies have now dwindled away before European
rule, and the task of clearing the country from ferocious beasts is
left to the gallantry of such avengers as ‘Koondah’* and his forest¬
ranging co-mates.

An elephant, when he smells or sees a tiger, casts up his trunk
almost perpendicularly, trumpets shrilly, and then immediately
recurving it, secures the lower part in his mouth, thus presenting
to the savage beast nothing but the rounded contour of the ex¬
posed part, well protected by the two flanking tusks. Then may
be seen that peculiar determined expression on the faces of the
men, which those who have seen it, never forget — an expres¬
sion which, at length, leaves an indelible trace on the visages of
some old tiger-hunters, and well it may, especially if the game
sought be a ’confirmed man-eater. The Himalaya mountaineers
are soon made aware of the vicinity of one of these murderous
plunderers. First, from some lonely spot, children are missing,
then a shepherd or shepherdess disappears, and, at last, the chief
himself is carried off, as he lies asleep under the shade of his own
tree.

* See the graphic papers of the ‘ Old Forest Ranger ’ in the New Monthly
Magazine.

ELEPHANTS ON THE MODERN STAGE.

317

It seems strange that people liable to such attacks, should have
less apparent habitual terror of the tiger, than we who view him in
a cage. The peasant will walk through the high grass of the
jungle, confident in the protection of his gods, or firm in his belief
of predestination, although he knows that the destroyer lurks in the
neighbourhood ; and, indeed, it seldom happens that even the man-
eaters attack a man when he is in action. They are on the watch
to surprise him when he is off his guard, or at rest.

By the way, the great Himalaya dogs when they are brought
out to attack leopards, are clad like some of those represented in
the old boar and stag hunts of Snyders and others, in defensive
armour. A spiked collar and breast-plate protect the neck and
narrow chest of the dog from the deadly bite of the great spotted
cat.

The shows of the ancients, to which allusion has been made in a
former chapter, independently of the mighty scale on which they
were conducted, exhibit a striking difference when compared with
those of the moderns. Where we have representations, they had
things. With the exception of the Spanish bull-fights, no national
combats with animals now exist in Europe. The days of Orson
Pinnit, his bears with their pinky eyes, and stout English mastiffs,
have long since passed away. Bull-baiting is happily extinct ; and
badger- uniting rarely practised, and then only ‘on the sly’ in the
neighbourhood of London. The celebrated ratticide Billy has long
since gone to that bourne whence neither rats, dogs, nor travellers
ever return. It is only in the East that

AJ l the current of a heady fight

between elephants and other great quadrupedal gladiators may be
witnessed. We have, indeed, had our Yan Amburgh and other
dompleurs de betes , whose advent was heralded, some years since, by
the introduction of a real live elephant on the London boards.

The first appearance of this great performer will not be soon
forgotten by those who were present.

The house was crowded to the ceiling ; and when, at last, the
curtain drew up, unveiling the first scene of the splendid Oriental
melodrama, there was a cry of ‘down!’ ‘down!,’ and then a
breathless silence. The distant march was heard, and the mimic
procession was seen afar off, winding its way over the hills and
amid ravines, approaching nearer and nearer as the music became
more audible. Gradually the stage was filled by a host glitter¬
ing in all the splendour of new dresses and decorations : the host
divided, and the elephant, gorgeously caparisoned, and bearing a
gilded turret containing armed men, burst upon the spectators,
who greeted the huge novelty with a tremendous shout and a per-

318 elephant:: .

feet hurricane of applause as the elephant advanced. Those who
were near, however, began to perceive that the animal, whose trunk
was nervously moving from side to side, was reluctantly urged on
from behind, and kept in a forward direction by the guides on
each side. With some difficulty the unwieldy performer was got
to the front amid increasing shouts, but there all control ceased.
The terrified beast suddenly turned tail to the audience, and lifted
its trunk with a shrill shriek of mingled anger and fear. At the
same moment the ‘ floats ’ in its rear were extinguished, and the
affrighted fiddlers fled in all directions. Then came chaos ; and in
a few seconds the stage was cleared, the half-mad elephant alone
remaining, without guide or mohout ; and then did those eight
mail-clad gentlemen-supernumeraries manifest a strong disposition
to resign their elevated situations. One trembling leg was already
advanced over the rocking battlements by each of the terror-
stricken inmates, and unwillingly drawn back, as the frantic
stage-manager in the wing, with uplifted fist and something very
unlike a prayer, threatened them with instant discharge if they
did not keep their places, and, as he put it, 4 do tbeir duty.’
There they sat, looking deadly pale through their rouge, expecting
instant destruction, but retained by the dread of losing the nightly
five shillings, and of the awful reception that awaited them from
their wives and families, when that loss and the manner of it
should be made known to them. At length the oaths and
exertions of the manager drove some of his cowed herd to their
quarters. The mohout and guides sneaking up, succeeded in
soothing the elephant and leading it off shivering in every limb.
But use lessens marvel, and the obedient beast soon went through
its part as discreetly as the biped actors. The experiment once
made, this example was soon followed. Many of our readers will,
for instance, remember the sagacious acting of the elephant at the
Adelphi theatre, about eighteen years ago.

The two well-trained elephants at the Cirque in Paris so
delighted the spectators lately, that, at the fall of the curtain, they
were loudly called for. When they appeared in obedience to the
call, wreaths and bouquets were thrown at their feet. These they
gratefully lifted to their heads, and swallowed .*

The quantity of elephantine remains spread so widely and so
plentifully over the earth, and especially in Europe, demand some
notice before this outline of their history is ended. And here we
may observe, that of this form but three species are well known.
These are the African elephant, the Asiatic elephant, and the
fossil elephant or mammoth , for notwithstanding the number ot

* Since the above was written, all London has been made familiar with the
elephant performance at Astley’s.

FOSSIL REMAINS.

319

fossil species recorded, amounting, according to Hermann von
Meyer, to eight, Professor Owen has clearly proved that all the
fossil remains of the elephants hitherto found in Europe are refer¬
able to one species only — elephcts primigenius*

Before the specific distinctions marked in the teeth were clearly
defined, those who would not admit the existence of extinct species,
endeavoured to account for the numerous specimens found in
Italy by assigning them to the elephants brought thither in the
ancient Italian wars. But, at last, some of these relics were dis¬
covered in Britain, and as the antiquaries could not find any
account of more than one elephant imported by the Romans, f
Dr Ciiper attributed the molars of the elephant found in blue
clay beneath vegetable mould and loam in Northamptonshire, and
the tusks dug out of the gravel in Gray’s-inn-lane, in the time of
Sir Hans Sloane, to the elephant introduced by Caesar. This
mare’s nest passed muster very well till the progress of further
works brought more to light, when it became apparent that if all
these remains belonged to the Roman conqueror’s elephant, the
teeth of that extraordinary beast must have far exceeded in num¬
ber the multitudinous beavers shown as 4 Bradshaw’s Hat,’ and
the limbs, Cromwell’s interminable exhibited stock of boots.
Besides, some fossil elephant’s teeth had been discovered in
Ireland, whose soil was never sullied by the sandals of Caesar’s
soldiery

Still, only the disjecta membra had been detected, when, in
1799, Scliumachoff, the Tungusian hunter, who was also a col¬
lector of fossil ivory, observed among the ice-blocks at the mouth
of the river Lena a huge indefinite mass. He approached as near
to it as he could, but failed to make out what it was, though he
made the first step in discovery by ascertaining what it was not :

* There are good grounds for concluding that the fossil species found in the
Sewalik tertiary formations are distinct. Dr Falconer and Major Cautley, in
their highly interesting and beautifully illustrated work, ‘ Fauna antiqva Siva-
lensis, being the Fossil Zoology of the Sewalik Hills in the North of India,’
now in the course of publication, describe no less than seven species of Eleplias
and three of Mastodon. One of these, E. Namadicus, is remarkable for a bulge
around the forehead. The skull looks as if it were frowning on the spectator,
and brings to mind the tradition of the Virginian Indians relative to the Mas¬
todon of America. The tradition stated that as a troop of these terrible quad¬
rupeds were destroying the deer, bisons, and other animals created for the use
of the Indians, the Great Man slew them all with his thunder, except the Big
Bull, who fearlessly presented his enormous forehead to the bolts anu shook
them off as they fell ; till, being at last wounded in the side, he fled toward
the great lakes, where he is at this day.

The enormous size of some of the proboscidean species recorded by Dr
Falconer and Major Cautley is quite astounding; and the Beptilia described
by them are formed on the same gigantic scale.

f Polyamus, lib. viii., c. 23.

320

ELEPHANTS.

for he saw enough to convince him that it was not one of the
pieces of floating timber frequently found there.

When he returned the next year he perceived that the mass was
more free from the ice, and that it had two projections. About
the end of 1801, he beheld the entire side of a gigantic animal
and one of its enormous tusks. Here was a mine of wealth for
the ivory-collector, and he hastened home to tell the news to his
wife and friends. But this mine would seem to have been like
the treasures of old, where there was a guardian spirit of no very
gentle character to be overcome, or a fiend roused, ready to rend
the intruder limb from limb. His intelligence was received by
his family and familiars in a way that turned his joy into mourn¬
ing. The old men shook their heads and remembered a saying of
their fathers, that the discovery of a similar monster had been
speedily followed by the death of all the family of the discoverer.
Imagination and superstition will do their work when the mind is
not enlightened by education and fortified by learning and expe¬
rience, and our poor Tungusian fell ill in good earnest. He
recovered, however, and cupidity came hand in hand with return¬
ing health, for he thought of the noble tusks of the icy-shrouded
mammoth, and how much they would bring into his purse.
The summer of 1802 had been cold and churlish, and the mammoth
still lay almost as completely entombed in his glacier as ever ;
but toward the termination of the fifth year tne more genial
weather operated so effectually on the ice, that the result was an
inclined plane, and down came the mountain of frozen mummy
on a sandbank. In 1804, the recovered Tungusian visited his
prize,, cut off the tusks, and made fifty roubles by them in his
dealings with a merchant.

When Mr Adams arrived at the place, two years afterwards,
that is, in the seventh year after the discovery, he found the mam¬
moth, but it had undergone sad mutilation. The flesh of the
carcase was so fresh, that the inhabitants of Jakataski fed their
dogs with it, and the white bears, wolves, wolverines, and foxes,
that had feasted on the remains, had left the traces of their foot¬
steps around it. There lay the skeleton almost entirely fleshless,
and complete with the exception of one fore-leg, with which the
strongest of the unbidden carnivorous guests had probably walked
off. The ligaments and portions of the skin held together the
vertebral column, one shoulder-blade, the haunch bones, and the
other three extremities. A dry skin covered the head, and one
well-preserved ear was tufted with hair. The apex of the lower
lip had been gnawed away; the upper lip and proboscis had been
devoured, and the molar teeth were brought into view. In the
skull was the brain, but as dry as the remainder biscuit after a

MAMMOTH, TELEOSAURUS, AND GLYTTGDON.

«

*

»

FOSSIL REMAINS.

321

voyage. Of the tail only eight of twenty-eight or thirty vertebrae
remained ; but a fore-foot and a hind-foot were covered with skin,
and the sole remained attached. Some of the skin * is in the
museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and, when
it was first brought there, it smelt offensively. The covering of
the skin, which was of a dark gray colour, was woolly and hairy.
The woolly or curly portion was of a reddish hue, and some of
the coarse, long black hairs or bristles were a foot and a half long.
This mammoth was a male ; his neck was ornamented with a
long mane, and he must have been one of the Falstaffs of the
primeval forests ; for, according to Schumachoflf, he was so fat
that his portly belly hung down below his knees. The skeleton,
with the tusks, is now mounted at St Petersburg, in the museum
of the Petropolitan Academy. From the front of the skull to the
end of the tail, or rather, of as much as remains of it, the skeleton
measures sixteen feet four inches ; the height is nine feet four
inches ; and the tusks, measured along the curve, were nine feet six
inches.

Such was the well-preserved animal enclosed in the ice : but
4 how gat he there V

Cuvier, aud he had his followers, had recourse to the Deus ex
machine 5, in the shape of a great and sudden geological cataclysm,
affirming that the change of temperature was immediate, in short,
that at the moment when the animal was destroyed, the soil on
which he trod became ‘fields of thick-ribbed ice.’ Lyell, with
more respect for the Horatian precept, f and in a truly philo¬
sophical spirit, shows how these phenomena, which were sup¬
posed to be the result of sudden and violent changes, may be
accounted for by the gradual operation of ordinary and existing
causes,^ anc^ Professor Owen, in his admirable ‘ History of British
Fossil Mammalia,’ entirely dissipates the difficulty raised with
regard to the non-existence of the food necessary for the animal’s
subsistence. It would be unjust to the professor to clothe his
reasoning in other words than his own.

4 Dr Fleming,’ writes the professor, 4 has observed that 44 no
one acquainted with the gramineous character of the food of our
fallow-deer, stag, or roe, would have assigned a lichen to the
rein-deer.” But we may readily believe, that any one cognisant
of the food of the elk, might be likely to have suspected crypto-
gamic vegetation to have entered more largely into the food of a
still more northern species of the deer tribe. And I can by no

* Mr Adams, in his interesting account, states that the skin was of such ex¬
traordinary weight, that ten persons found great difficulty in transporting it
to the shore.

f De artepoetica, line 191. f Principles of geology.

Y

822

ELEPHANTS.

means subscribe to another proposition by the same eminent
naturalist, that “ the kind of food which the existing species of
elephant prefers, will not enable us to determine, or even to offer
a probable conjecture concerning that of the extinct species.”
The molar teeth of the elephant possess, as we have seen, a
highly complicated and a very peculiar structure, and there are
no other quadrupeds that derive so great a portion of their food
from the woody fibre of the branches of trees. Many mammals
browse the leaves ; some small rodents gnaw the bark ; the ele¬
phants alone tear down and crunch the branches, the vertical
enamel-plates of their huge grinders enabling them to pound the
tough vegetable tissue, and fit it for deglutition. No doubt the
foliage is the most tempting, as it is the most succulent part of the
boughs devoured ; but the relation of the complex molars to the
comminution of the coarser vegetable substance, is unmistakeable.
Now, if we find in an extinct elephant the same peculiar principle
of construction in the molar teeth, but with augmented com¬
plexity, arising from a greater number of triturating plates, and
a greater profusion of the dense-enamel, the inference is plain that
the ligneous fibre must have entered in a larger proportion into
the food of such extinct species. Forests of hardy trees and
shrubs still grow upon the frozen soil of Siberia, and skirt the
banks of the Lena as far north as latitude G0°. In Europe,
arboreal vegetation extends ten degrees nearer to the pole, and the
dental organisation of the mammoth proves that it might have
derived subsistence from the leafless branches of trees, in regions
covered during a great part of the year with snow. We may,
therefore, safely infer, from physiological grounds, that the mam¬
moth would have found the requisite means of subsistence at the
present day, and at all seasons, in the sixtieth parallel of latitude ;
and, relying on the body of evidence adduced by Mr Lyell, in
proof of increased severity in the climate of the northern hemi¬
sphere, we may assume that the mammoth habitually frequented
still higher latitudes at the period of its actual existence. “ It has
been suggested,” observes the same philosophic writer ; “ that as
in our time, the northern animals migrate, so the Siberian ele¬
phant and rhinoceros may have wandered towards the north in
summer.” In making such excursions during the heat of that
brief season, the mammoths would be arrested in their northern
progress by a condition to which the rein-deer and musk-ox are
not subject, viz., the limits of arboreal vegetation, which, however,
as represented by the dominating shrubs of Polar lands, would
allow them to reach the seventieth degree of latitude. But with
this limitation, if the physiological inferences regarding the food
of the mammoth from the structure of its teeth be adequately

FOSSIL REMAINS.

323

appreciated and connected with those which may be legitimately
deduced from the ascertained nature of its integument, the neces¬
sity of recurring to the forces of mighty rivers, hurrying along a
carcase through a devious course, extending through an entire
degree of latitude, in order to account for its ultimate entomb¬
ment in the ice, whilst so little decomposed as to have retained the
cuticle and hair, will disappear. And it can no longer be regarded
as impossible for herds of mammoths to have obtained subsistence
in a country like the Southern part of Siberia where trees abound,
notwithstanding it is covered during a great part of the year with
snow, seeing that the leafless state of such trees during even a long
and severe Siberian winter, would not necessarily unfit their branches
for yielding sustenance to the well-clothed mammoth.’

Gigantic as the Siberian mammoth, was, there is evidence to
prove that the species was developed to still greater proportions.
We have seen a mammoth’s tusk that measured ten feet two inches
along the curve, and a comparison of the cast of the third or middle
metacarpal bone of one found in the brick earth at Grays in Essex
(which may be seen in the museum of the English College of Sur¬
geons) with the corresponding bone in the skeleton of Chunee in the
same noble collection, will give some idea of the huge bulk of the
extinct species.

The old bull mammoth was at least one-third larger hi all his
dimensions than the largest existing elephant; but no human eye
beheld him as he stalked silently along in his might over desolate
tracts where corn now grows, and the busy hum of civilization is
heard,

‘.Lord of his presence end the land beeides.'

DRAGONS.

1 The Dragon of Wantley churches ate
(He us’d to come of a Sunday),

Whole congregations were to him
A dish of Salmagundi.

Parsons were his black- puddings, and
Fat aldermen his capons,

And his tit-bit the collection plate
Brimful of Birmingham halfpence.

The corporation worshipful
He valued not an ace :

But swallow’d the mayor, asleep in his chair, ;
And pick’d his teeth with the muce ! ’

Heroick Baluaia

Gkeat as lias been the progress made in the wide field of natural
history within the last forty years, in no direction has the advance
been more decided or more satisfactory, than in that hitherto ob¬
scure part of it which sepulchres the remains of animals that lorded
it over sea and land when this earth was young.

And although there is nothing among the earliest known orga¬
nized forms fashioned by the Hand which weigheth all things, that
is not pregnant with proof of the same care and design and harmony
in the construction of the animal, as shines forth in the being born
into the world yesterday, let no one picture unto him or herself the
youth of our planet as lovely to any but the grosser natures then
placed upon it to breathe an atmosphere which no human lungs,
nay, no lungs of any vertebrate of a high grade could have long
breathed as the breath of life. It was a place of dragons : fit only
for Saurians, Batrachians, and the like.

4 Dragons?’

Y es, dragons : not such as the small, living winged reptiles,
that skim from place to place in search of their insect food, relying
on their natural parachutes, constructed upon a somewhat safer
principle than that of poor Mr Cocking,* and rejoicing in the
generic name of Draco ; but downright enormous dragons with

* This unfortunate man lost his life by a descent from a baloon in an ill-
constructed parachute.

TIIE OLD DRAGON.

325

bellies as big as tuns and bigger ; creatures that would have cared
little for Bevis’s sword 4 Morglaye,’ nor that of the Rhodian
Draconicide, nor St George’s 4 Askalon,’ no, nor the 4 nothing-
at-all’ of More of More Hall, even if those worthies could have
existed in the pestiferous region in which the said dragons
revelled.

For in a slough where Calamites and other gigantic marsh-plants,
now extinct also, rooted themselves at ease, and reared themselves
into a damp jungle; in a dreary bog, to which the undrained Pon¬
tine marshes would have been the land of health, was their lair.
In such a nauseous quag, wholesome to them, these monsters roared
and wallowed : there they growled their horrid loves, and there they
made war upon each other — the strong devouring the weak, and
the carnivorous 4 chawing-up ’ the herbivorous in the midst of the
wildest convulsions of a nascent world.

While this was going on upon what then passed for dry-land,
great sea-dragons rushed through the waves, or sported on the
■surface of an ocean not unlike, as far as the waters were concerned,
our own, while flying dragons hovered, like Shakspeare’s Witches ,
through the fog and the filthy air. These last ancient Saurian
forms have left no living representative upon the earth.

Just one hundred years ago, Scheuchzer published his 4 Physica
Sacra,’ and favoured the world with an engraving of the remains
of the 4 Homo diluvii testis.’ Those were, indeed, the days of con¬
fident assertion, when the blind led the blind ; but it is difficult to
believe how a physician, for such was Scheuchzer in every sense of
the word, writing M.D. after his name, could mistake the fossil
bones of a salamander, or rather of a newt, for those of a human
being. 4 Homo diluvii testis,’ what a comprehensive form of words
— Poussin’s picture rises before us as we read them — and yet ’twas
neither man, woman, nor child, but a squab extinct reptile, that
never witnessed the deluge at all.

As the Zurich physician had figured the man, he gave his
draughtsman directions to portray man’s eternal enemy, and the
accomplished artist has with some invention and in his best
manner represented the fiend. The usual diabolical head and
shoulders of the time are placed upon the body of a huge polypod
caterpillar.

Now, we do not feel disposed to go so far as the charitable
preacher, who, after exhausting his benevolent prayers for all earthly
beings, proposed to his congregation to pray for 4 the puir deil.’
No, let justice be done ; but this is more than summum jus , and
beyond summa injuria. The doom was deserved ; but a degrada¬
tion of the old dragon below any thing vertebrate, to the base
condition of an annulose animal, to a vile grub, was not in the sen-

326

DRAGONS.

tence, and if the Prince of Darkness be a gentleman, Scheuckzer
has not treated him like one.

4 There are more ways than one of looking at a subject,’ says Mr
Serjeant Rebutter, retained in defence of the author of 4 Pliysica
Sacra;’ 4 there are, I say, more ways than one of looking at a sub¬
ject : permit me to suggest that Beelzebub was the lord of flies,
and a caterpillar may be a butterfly.

4 Then, sir, the moral is as bad as the design ; but the truth is
that degradation was meant, and the notion is clumsily conveyed.
Scheuclizer seems to have shone in the one case as brightly as in
the other, and has treated his subjects very scurvily in both.’

But to return to our mortal dragons.

It may be fairly asked by the uninitiated why the philosophers of
1943 should not smile at the Cuviers, and at the Conybeares, the
Bucklands, and the Owens of 1843, as complacently as we of the
present day curl our lip at old Scheuclizer ?

Because his work was almost all guess : because he and those of
his time jumped to conclusions instead of painfully making them
out, and the authority of a learned name was sufficient with the
multitude to insure without further inquiry the reception of any
dictum , however absurd on the face of it, as Scheuchzer’s assertion,
coupled with his imposing plate, undoubtedly was. No man who
had the knowledge of a diligent medical student, in the first half
year of his anatomical studies could, if he had looked attentively
on that plate, much less on the fossil itself, have come to the con¬
clusion that it was an anthropolite. But Scheuclizer was blinded
by theory : he would not apply what knowledge he had : he pro¬
nounced the humanity of the fossil to be without a shadow of
doubt ; he appealed to it as 4 a relic of the accursed race which
had been buried under the great waters ;’ and he was for a time
implicitly believed. It was not till 1758 that Gesner, apparently
for the first time since Scheuchzer’s announcement, threw doubt on
his declaration, and stated his own belief that the specimen Avas a
fish ( Silurus ).

Cuvier, before whose eye all false fossil pretensions vanished,
and every bone told its true story, came to Haarlem in 1811, and
begged permission to work on the stone with a view to the further
development of concealed parts. The figure of a salamander’s ske¬
leton was placed beside the fossil, and as the operation proceeded
Cuvier had the pleasure of seeing the chisel bring to light the very
bones which he had expected, and which were portrayed in the
figure.

A finer specimen than Scheuchzer’s — that which belonged to Dr
Ammann of Zurich — is in the British museum, and this gigantic
fossil newt is now named Andrias Scheuchzeri .

THE GEOLOGIST THE TRUE ANTIQUARY. 827

Nothing in palaeontology is, at present, talien on trust. Every
statement and every opinion relating to the science undergoes the
strictest scrutiny by acute and accurate critics.

The bony framework of the old bygone-world dragon is now as
satisfactorily demonstrated as that of the human skeleton which
hangs beside the anatomical lecturer of the Royal Academy.

That is a striking scene. There stands the professor in all the
pride of intellect, surrounded by the rising and risen pictorial talent
of the day. ITe has to illustrate a proposition in his discourse, and
turns to a tall, shrouded figure behind him. The mantle is
dropped, and a naked, living man, in the bloom of health and
strength starts forward, throwing his muscular and well propor¬
tioned body and limbs into the required attitude. Every being in
the room is alive and attentive, all is in suppressed activity but
the ghastly pendant form, and as the lecturer raises the dry bones
to explain the action of the living model, and they drop from his
warm hand like wooden cylinders, we almost fancy that the grim
feature smiles as who should say

To this complexion, you must come at last.

Nor is the osseous system of the bygone dragons the only por¬
tion of their history clearly unfolded. Their muscular develop¬
ment, their organs of sense and of motion, their respiratory and
circulating systems, the colour and quality of their blood, their
digestive organs, their food, their integument, and, for the most
part, their habits, are now as well known as the organization and
natural history of the little agile lizard, that basks on the sandy
heath in the neighbourhood of Poole.

With all due respect for the learned who usually monopolize
that title, your geologist is the true antiquary. He deals with the
relics of a former world ; his statues and coins are the shells and
bones stored up, in many cases before the creation of man ; and
with these he deciphers the annals of the earth. A thousand
years in the history of man and his institutions present an accu¬
mulation of facts and doubts sufficient to daunt the stoutest Fellow
of the Society of Antiquaries ; but what are a million of years in
the sight of the geologist ?

Before we enter upon the zoological, anatomical, and geological
history of these fossil reptiles, the only real dragons on a grand
scale, and which we shall endeavour to give in future chapters
in a popular manner, encumbered with as few learned terms as
possible, it will be necessary for us, in this, to feel our way for
awhile in the mists of antiquity, and point out to those who may
be interested in the inquiry, as well as the twilight of the time

328

DRAGONS.

will permit, some of the traditions relating to dragons handed down
to us.

If the infant Hercules, in his eighth month, as some say, but
according to the exquisite twenty-fourth Idyll of Theocritus, in
his tenth, strangled the two dragons sent by Juno for his destruc¬
tion, Apollo, as soon as he was born, seized his bow and slew
with his arrows the Python which the same jealous goddess —
she had, in truth, some cause for jealousy — had sent to perse¬
cute his mother. And here let us pause for a moment, to pick
up what information we can concerning this Python. The mon¬
ster was said to have sprung from the mud and stagnant water
that blotted the earth’s surface after Deucalion’s deluge, and
although another legend states that it was produced from the
earth, and sent upon the persecuting errand above alluded to, we
pray our readers to bear in mind the first of these traditions.

Old stories tell how Hercules
A dragon slew at Lerna.

With seven heads and fourteen eyes,

To see and well discern-a.

Now what was this Lerna ? It was said to be the lake into
which the daughters of Danaus threw the heads of their slaughtered
bridegrooms : here, according to many, harboured the hydra ;
and although some held with Hesiod that this hydra was the
daughter of Echidna and Typhon, its origin was attributed by
most to the putrescent contents of the lake. The ballad above
quoted has been very sparing in the number of heads which it
bestows on the Lernaean hydra. Alcaeus gave that renowned
dragon nine, Simonides fifty, and Diodorus one hundred heads.
Sharp work for Hercules with his arrows and club, and his assistant,
Idas, with his actual cautery, if Diodorus be correct in his
numbers.

The Megalciunce of Pausanias, dragons or serpents, thirty cubits
long, inhabiting India and Africa, were Pythons of the modern
nomenclature, probably, but none of your true crested dragons,
which appear to have been divisible into five classes :

1st. Those without either wings or legs, 0/ croXXo/.

2d. Those with two feet and no wings. The Lernaean hydra
and the dragon that laid Rhodes waste, seem to have belonged to
this class. These wingless bipeds evidently took a step considera¬
bly beyond the legless.

3d. Those with four feet of a still higher grade, and somewhat
rare.

4, Those with two feet and two wings, yet more exalted : and

THE CRESTED DRAGON.

329

5th. Those with two wings and four feet, which seem to have
soared to the highest pitch of dragon aristocracy.

These dragons were not all cruel destroyers and worthless
ravagers , some of them were worthy creatures, taking pleasure in
doing good. Such were those two that licked the eyes of Plutus
at the temple of iEseulapius with such happy effect that he began
to see ; but the dragons unfortunately died, and he had a relapse
from which he does not seem likely to recover in our days. Others
again were trustworthy, and suffered accordingly: for the hydra
was not the only dragon against which the adult Hercules was
pitted. There was that terrible sleepless one sprung from Typhon,
that kept watch

All amidst the garden fair
Of Hesperus and his daughters three
That sang around the golden tree —

with its hundred heads and as many voices. We are quite aware
that some reformers have reduced the heads to one, and that on
the shoulders of the shepherd who kept the flocks, /xJjagc, — oh,
those ambiguous Greek words — of his good masters or mistresses.
And so because /xijXos/ signifies a sheep as well as an apple, we are
to loose our Hesperian dragon? No, by St George!

Well, this honest dragon, if all tales be true, was basely mur¬
dered by Hercules while doing his golden-apple-watching duty,
and the demi-god immediately proceeded to rob the orchard • the
poor dragon went to heaven, where he may be seen to this day by
those who know where to look for him, with the foot of the mur¬
derer, who, from his high connexions, contrived to get there too,
upon the head or heads of his victim.

Notwithstanding these exceptions, however, your dragon, gene¬
rally speaking, was a most cantankerous monster.

Of the crowned basilisk, the terror of all other dragons, and
general destroyer of animal and vegetable life, which could slay
with its eye, and make the weapon that smote it the conductor of
its deadly poison to the withering arm that wielded it, whether in
its apod form or octopod shape, we must only observe that it has
sunk into a very harmless, but somewhat terrible-looking lizard.
A whole chapter might be occupied with the marvellous stories
connected with this horror; but we have dragons more than enough
on our hands and spare the infliction.

According to Philostratus, your mountain dragon had in his
youth a moderate crest, which increased as he grew older, when a
beard of saffron colour was appended to his chin ; but the dragons
of the marsh had no crests. They attained to an enormous size,

330

DKAGONS.

so that they easily killed elephants. jElian and others make their
length from thirty or forty to a hundred cubits. Posidonius
described one a hundred and forty feet long that haunted the
neighbourhood of Damascus : and another, whose lair was at
Macra, near Jordan, was an acre in length, and of such bulk that
two men on horseback, with the monster between them, could not
see each other. Then, was there not in the library of Constanti¬
nople, according to Ignatius, the intestine of a dragon one hundred
and twenty feet long, on which were written the Iliad and Odyssey
in letters of gold ?

A subject so pregnant with the wild and wonderful was not likely
to be missed by the Scalds of the Gothic nations, nor by the bards
of the ancient British. Before the revival of letters these were the
historians of the time, and they interwove among their facts the
embellishments of dragons, giants, dwarfs, and the like, fit machinery
for arresting the attention of their audience. Firm believers, for
the most part, in enchantment and the existence of those romantic
beings, they delighted in astonishing their hearers with recitals of
combats with monsters such as Schiller’s ‘ Kampf mit dem drachen,’
so admirably illustrated by Retzsch.

Sometimes a true story was veiled under the allegory. Thus,
the youth of the pirate king, Regner Ludbrog, who ruled in Den¬
mark in the year 800, or thereabout, was marked by a gallant
exploit. The story ran that the lovely daughter of a Swedish
prince was intrusted by her father, during his absence on a distant
expedition, to the care of one of his strongest castles, and one of his
most tried officers. But

You may train the eagle
To stoop to your fist;

Or you may inveigle
The Phoenix of the east,

The lioness ye may move her
To give o’er her prey;

But you’ll ne’er stop a lover
He will find out the way —

and the guardian fell in love with his beautiful ward, bearded the
prince, her father, from his almost impregnable fortress, and held
her against all comers.

The prince, after stamping and raving according to the most
approved forms of the eighth century, put forth a proclamation
promising his daughter in marriage to him who should conquer
the treacherous guard and deliver her from thraldom. Many were
the competitors for the prize, but the castle stood strong, and he
who held it was an experienced captain. All the adventurers

MADE-UP DRAGONS.

tiol

ooJL

failed till Regner buckled on his armour. The fortress could not
resist his fierce attack : he carried it by storm, delivered the lady,
and obtained her as the reward of his valour.

How did the Scalds relate this action ? The name of the traitor
was 4 Orme,’ and 4 Orm * in the Swedish language signifies a
serpent, so they by a slight poetical license represented the fair
daughter as detained from the agonized father by a ruthless
dragon, which Regner slew and set her free. Regner himself,
who was a poet of celebrity, strengthened this version by
adopting it in his own Runic rhyme, recording the exploits of his
life.

Nor were the nations of the south less credulous upon the sub¬
ject of dragons. So late as 1557 we find in the 4 Portraits de
quelques animaux, poissons, serpents, herbes et arbres, homines et
femmes d’Arabie, Egypte, et Asie, observez par P. Belon du
Mans,’ under a terrific figure of a winged biped dragon super¬
scribed 4 Portrait du Serpent selle,’ the following quatrain,

Dangereuse est du Serpent la nature,

Qu’on voit voler pres le mont Sinai.

Qui ne seroit, de le voir, esbahy,

Si on a peur, voyant sa pourtraiture ?

Gesner copies this likeness of the dragon which, it appears, was
also in the habit of flying out of Arabia into Egypt, and he adds
three other cuts of formidable dragons, one apod and wingless,
another apod and winged and a third in a most rampant state,
winged, 'stinged. biped, and clawed. Aldrovand (1640) has cuts
of many large flying dragons from Pare, Grevinus, and others, and
Jonston Cl 657) collects most of the portraits of basilisks and
dragons given by Aldrovand and others up to his time.

It is hardly to be wondered at that monsters of which so much
had been said and sung, to say nothing of pictorial representation,
should have become desiderata for the cabinets of the curious, and
it seems to have been no bad speculation to manufacture speci¬
mens for collectors. The skates, or rays, among the fishes, offered
admirable materials for this purpose, and a very little ingenuity in
cropping, drying, and distorting, soon transformed them into
most desirable dragons. Others were made up with much greater
care. Such were the biped seven-headed hydras figured by
Gesner, Aldrovand, and Jonston, one of which was brought
from Turkey to Venice 4 Anno a Christo incarnato tricesimo supra
sesquimillesimum mense Januario,’ and afterwards given 4 Fran-
corum regi.’ It was valued at six thousand ducats, and appears
to have been put together even more skilfully than the mermaid
which beguiled the good cockneys of their shillings some years

332

DRAGONS.

since. The museums of the Cokeltops of former days were
nothing without their dragon, and as the rage for collecting
increased, the market was supplied with some monster more
hideous than the last purchase, and well worthy of a place on the
standard of the Brother of the Sun and Moon. Of course every
collector’s dragon was the real Simon Pure, and above all sus¬
picion. Tradescant’s museum (1(556) boasted of c Two feathers
of the Phoenix tayle,’ and ‘ A natural dragon above two inches
long.’

In the early literature of our own country, especially in the
ancient ballad and broadside, dragons shone forth in all their glory,
only to be eclipsed by the valour of our champions. Nobody
was anybody in the old chivalry days who had not slain his
dragon.

One of the oldest, if not the oldest of these poetical legends,
well known in Chaucer’s time, was that which set forth the deeds
of ‘Syr Bevis of Hampton.’ The following is the description
of the dragon in that canticle :

Whan the dragon, that foule is,

Had a syght of Syr Bevis,

He cast up a loude cry,

As it had thundered in the sky;

He turned his body towarde the son,

It was greater than any tonne;

His scales were brighter than the glas,

And harder they were than any bras :

Betweene his shoulder and his tayle,

Was forty fote without fayle.

He waltred out of his den,

And Bevis pricked his stedethen,

And to him a spere he thraste
That all to shyvers he is braste:

The dragon then gan Bevis assayle,

And smote Syr Bevis with his tayle ;

Then downe went horse and man,

And two rybbes of Bevis brused than.

The fight was long and fearful :

There was a well, so have I wynne,

And Bevis stumbled right therein.
Than was he glad without fayle,

And rested awhile for his avayle;

And dranke of that water his fyll :

And then he lept out with good wyll,
And with Morglaye his brande,

He assayled the dragon, I understande;
On the dragon he smote so faste,

Where that he hit the scales braste:
The dragon then fainted sore,

And cast a galon and more

Out of his mouthe of venom strong,

DRAGON LEGENDS,

333

And on Syr Bevis he it flong :

It was venomous y-wis.

This well gave Syr Bevis the victory; for, whenever he was hurt
sore, he went to the well, washed, and came forth

- as hole as any man,

Ever freshe as when he began;

The dragon saw it might not avayle
Beside the well to hold batayle ;

He thought he would with some wyle,

Out of that place Bevis begyle ;

He would have flowen then away,

But Bevis lept after with good Morglaye,

And hit him under the wynge,

As he was in his flyenge,

There he was tender without scale,

And Bevis thought to be his bale
He smote after, as I you saye,

With his good sword Morglaye.

Up to the hiltes Morglaye yode
Through harte, liver, bone, and bloud
To the ground fell the dragon,

Great joy e Syr Bevis begon.

Under the scales all on night.

He smote off his head forth right.

This, as the Bishop of Dromore remarks, is evidently the parent
of the dragon in the ‘ Seven Champions,’ slain by St George,
as any one may satisfy himself by comparing the two descriptions.
Nor is it uninteresting to turn from the dragon of the old
romance to that in Spenser’s ‘Faery Queen,’ with its ‘wynges
like sayls, cruel-rending clawes, yron teeth, and breath of smother¬
ing smoke and sulphur;’ and then to that most striking passage
in the ‘ Pilgrim’s Progress,’ descriptive of the battle between
Christian and Apollyon, who spake like a Dragon, and when at
last, says Bunyan in his dream, Christian gave him a deadly
thrust, ‘ spread forth his dragon’s wings, and sped him away that
I saw him no more.’

Sir Guy of Warwick had slain more than one dragon in his time.
Dead his own account of the feats.

I went into the souldan’s lioast,

Being thither on embassage sent,

And brought his head away with mee,

I having slain him in his tent.

There was a dragon in that land
Most fiercelye mett me by the way
As hee a lyon did pursue,

Which 1 myself did alsoc slay.

When he came home he did greater actions; for, in addition to
killing the dun cow, he demolished a monstrous bore — what a

334

DRAGONS.

god-send a Sir Guy would be at the clubs! — and sent him to
Coventry :

But first, near Winsor, I did slaye
A bore of passing might and strength ;
Whose like in England never was
For hugeness both in bredth and length.

Some of liis bones in Warwicke yet
Within the castle there doe lye:

One of his shield-bones to this day.

Hangs in the city of Coventrye.

Then again:

A dragon in Northumberland,

I also did in fight destroye,

Which did both man and beaste oppress
And all the countrye sore annoye.

This dragon is thus portrayed in the old metrical romances

A messenger came to the king,

Syr king he said, lysten me now,

For bad tydinges I bring you,

In Northumberlande there is no man,

But that they be slayne everychone :

For there dare no man route,

By twenty mile rounde aboute,

For doubt of a fowle dragon

That sleathe men and beastes downe.

He is black as any cole
Hugged as a rough foie :

His body from the navi 11 upwarde,

No man may it pierce it is so harde;

His necke is great as any summere;*

He runneth as swift as any distrere;f
Pawes he hath as a lyon :

All that he touclieth, lve sleath dead downe,

Great winges he hath to flight
There is no man that bare him might.

There may no man fight him agayne,

But that he sleath him certayne :

For a fowler beast than is he,

Ywis of none ever heard ye.

In the ballad of ‘ Guy and Amarant,’ Sir Guy alludes to his former
victories when he says to the thirsty giant,

- - — Goe drinke thy last,

Go pledge the dragon and the savage bore:

Succeed the tragedyes that they have past.

But never think to drinke cold water more:

Drink deepe to Death, and unto him carouse:

Bid him receive thee in his earthen house.

* A sumpter horse.

t The horse ridden by a knight in the tournament.

DRAGON LEGENDS.

335

Nor was this any vain boast : for Guy dealt this pagan,

A blowe that brought him with a vengeance downe

Then Guy sett foot upon the monster’s brest.

And from his shoulders did his head divide,

Which with a yawninge mouth did gape unblest,

Noe dragon’s jawes were ever seene so wide
To open and to shut, till life was spent,

Then Guy tooke keyes and to the castle went.

The giant’s miserable captives are then delivered, and among
them some 4 tender ladyes,’ who

- had noe other dyett every day,

Than flesh of human creatures for their food.

It was hard that one who thus went about doing good, should
have met with so ill a reward : all these brilliant actions could not
save poor Sir Guy from being crossed in love, nor from the tragic
end which the reader will find, if so disposed, recorded in his 4 Le¬
gend.’

St George’s dragon was eminently pestiferous ;

Against the Sarazens so rude,

Fought he full long and many a day;

Where many gyants he subdu a,

In honour of the Christian way ;

And after many adventures past,

To Egypt land he came at last.

Now, as the story plain doth tell,

Within that country there did rest

A dreadfull dragon tierce and fell,

Whereby they were full sore opprest :

Who by his poisonous breath each day,

Did many of the city slay.

******** i?

The dragon’s breath infects their blood,

That every day in heaps they dye ;

Among them such a plague is bred,

The living scarce could bury the dead.

The rest of this legend is so well known, that it would be need¬
lessly occupying space to dwell further upon the subject of it. We
would only observe that the dragon’s poisonous breath did the
principal mischief.

But the time was at hand when the coup de grace was to be given
to these dragon tragedies by the comic verse, showing how

More of More Hall, with nothing at all,

He slew the dragon of Wantley.

This clever performance was, as has been well observed, to the
old metrical romaunts and ballads of chivalry what Don Quixote
was to prose narratives of the same kind , and whether the witty

336

DRAGONS.

author made his dragon out of a bloated Yorkshire attorney who
had stripped three orphans of their inheritance, and had become
intolerable by his encroachments and rapacity till a neighbouring
gentleman took up the cause of the oppressed, went to law with
him, and broke his hard heart ; or some other passages in local
history are therein alluded to, no dragon could be brought before
the public thereafter without ridicule.

Thus much for the fabulous part of our subject, as far as it
regards terrestrial dragons. We constantly find allusions to the
malaria which surrounded these monsters and their localities. It is
not unworthy of remark, that the crass air which the real extinct
dragons breathed, would, as has been satisfactorily established,
have been fatal to man if he had then been upon the earth which
now holds their remains. That earth is one vast grave of cities, of
nations, of creations.

/

THE ALLIGATOR

SEA DRAGONS.

* And there in many a stormy vale
The scald hath told his wondrous tale:

And many a Runic column high
Had witnessed grim idolatry.

And thus had Harold in his youth
Learned many a Saga’s rhyme uncouth — •

Of that sea-snake, tremendous curled,

Whose monstrous circle girds the world.’

Lay of the Last Minstkee.

The Hebrew words 4 Than,’ 4 Thanin,’ and 4 Thanim,’ which occm
so frequently in the sacred Scriptures, seem to have puzzled the
learned, for they sometimes appear as 4 whales,’ sometimes as 4 ser¬
pents,’ 4 sea-monsters,’ and 4 dragons’ in their English dress. That
some of the 4 Thanin’ were crocodiles, — particularly the living idol
which the Babylonians worshipped according to 4 the Historie of
Bel and the Dragon, which is the fourteenth chapter of Daniel after
the Latine,’ as the apocryphal book is headed in 4 the Bible trans¬
lated according to the Hebrew and Greeke, and conferred with the
best Translations in divers languages : Imprinted at London by
Robert Barker, printer to the King’s most excellent Maiestie.
1615. Cum Privilegio ’ — seems generally agreed ; and in Egypt the
crocodile was one of the symbols of Typhon.

Your crocodile comes of a very ancient house, for, to say nothing
of the evidence above hinted at, we think we have proof to show
that the great Gangetic crocodile (not the Gavial) now fast retiring
before the inroads of steam, was in existence with some of the ex¬
tinct Saurians or Old World dragons. What is all the blood of all
the Howards to such ancestry ?

The Ed da, overflowing as it is with fiction, comprises no wilder
tale than that of the 4 Jormungandr,’ the ocean-snake or dragon
alluded to by the Wizard of the North in our motto. Thor, no

z

338

SEA DRAGONS.

bad hand at battering serpents, as Fuseli has shown in one of his
most characteristic works, was, it appears, wont to solace himself
in his hours of relaxation with the contemplative man's recreation , and
accordingly, he went a fishing for this monster. Having set forth
his rod in his best style, he baited his hook with a bull’s head, and
like many other anglers who relate their adventures in trying for a
trout of extraordinary dimensions, very nearly caught it : — the said
trout being a twelve or fifteen pounder, and although his eyes
have been greeted with the devices of half the fishing-tackle shops
in London, still coolly enjoying his ancient haunt in the deep glassy
eddy that curls by the side of one of the great Thames weirs,
where half the mighty river comes thundering down. The snake,
however, was not to be had, and is still reserved for the exploits
which he is to perform in the battle royal between demons and
divinities that is to precede the ‘ Ragnarockr,’ or twilight of the
gods.

It must have been a very tiny infant Jormungandr that Olaus
Magnus has depicted in the shape of a sea-serpent, not above two
or three hundred feet long, quietly intruding his head between the
main and mizen masts of some £ great ammiral,’ and cracking the
crew like sugared almonds. To the same family must have be¬
longed the ‘ Re versus’ of the Indian sea, by means of which the
Cuba fishermen were said to fill their canoes with turtle, et ccetera.
This serpent-like looking anguilliform entity is figured with a kind
of purse proceeding from his crown, and falling in a descending
curve over his very sharp pike of a nose upon the head of a de¬
voted seal which, thus ‘ bonnetted,’ and staring with terror and
astonishment, is held fast by the Reversns , as the Retiarius of old
held his antagonist : whilst a piteous-looking turtle is biding his
turn to be taken in like manner. Not that it is improbable that the
highly coloured description of some ancient mariner of the alleged
method of fishing with the adhesive Remora , by putting it over¬
board tied to a long string, till it fastens on some sleeping Testu-
dinarian, which is thus drawn to the boat and secured, may not
have run away with the artist’s imagination, and produced the
grand cut which graces the page of Aldrovand.

But these legends were of yesterday; nor must we be tempted
by Pontoppidan or Egede, nor by any modern sea-serpent or
dragon, whether Scandinavian, Caledonian, or American, to forget
our petrified old friends, who lead us back to a period long before
the fair face of this blest Isle of beauty

‘ Arose from out the azure main

when the Trilobite adhered wdiere the snail now creeps ; and

Dll BUCKLAND’S BRIDGEWATER TREATISE.

339

when the extinct sea-dragons rushed through living groves of
Encrinites and Pentacrinites, devouring fishes now only known
in a fossil state, each other, and occasionally perhaps a Pterodac-
tyle, in a universal round game of snap-dragon.

To arrest the creclat, which most probably and pardonably
will rise to the lips of those to whom such a scene is now first laid
open, we must call in the aid of the Dean of Westminster.*

4 During these ages of reptiles,’ says the eloquent author
of the 4 Bridgewater Treatise,’ 4 neither the carnivorous nor
the lacustrine mammalia of the tertiary periods had begun to
appear; but the most formidable occupants, both by land and
water, were crocodiles and lizards, of various forms, and often
of gigantic stature, fitted to endure the turbulence and continual
convulsions of the unquiet surface of our infant world.’

4 When we see,’ continues the Doctor, 4 that so large and
important a range has been assigned to reptiles among the
former population of our planet, we cannot but regard with
feelings of new and unusual interest, the comparatively diminu¬
tive existing orders of the most ancient family of quadrupeds,
with the very name of which we usually associate a sentiment
of disgust. We shall view them with less contempt when we
learn, from the records of geological history, that there was a
time when reptiles not only constituted the chief tenants and
most powerful possessors of the earth, but extended their
dominion also over the waters of the seas, and that the annals
of their history may be traced back through thousands of years
antecedent to that latest point in the progressive stages of animal
creation when the first parents of the human race were called into
existence.’

This it must be granted is startling ; but it is not more startling
than true : hear Dr Buckland again : —

4 Persons to whom this subject may now be presented for
the first time, will receive with much surprise, perhaps almost
with incredulity, such statements as are here advanced. It must
be admitted that they at first seem much more like the dreams
of fiction and romance than the sober results of calm and deli¬
berate investigation ; but, to those who will examine the evidence
of facts upon which our conclusions rest, there can remain
no more reasonable doubt of the former existence of these
strange and curious creatures, in the times and places we assign
to them, than is felt by the antiquary, who finding the catacombs
of Egypt stored with the mummies of men and apes and croco¬
diles, concludes them to be the remains of mammalia and reptiles

* Dr Buckland, long lost to us, alas ! and lately removed from among us,
(1857.)

340

SEA-DRAGONS.

chat have formed part of an ancient population on the banks ot
the Nile/

We will now venture to introduce to such of our readers as
may be strangers to them, those

' Dragons of the wave,’

THE TRUE ENAI.IOSAURIANS OR ANCIENT SEA DRAGONS.

These marine lizards were cold-blooded vertebrate animals,
breathing atmospheric air — zoophagous reptiles, in short, that
had suffered a sea-change, adapting them to an aquatic life.

The peculiar modifications of the Saurian type necessary for
fitting the animal for its watery career — in other words, the
special enaliosaurian characteristics — consist, as Professor Owen
points out in his valuable ‘Report on British Fossil Reptiles/
in the absence of the ball and socket articulations of the bodies of
the vertebra? ; the position of the nostrils at or near the summit of
the head ; their separated lisemapophyses ;* and the numerous short
and flat digital or finger-bones, which must have been enveloped in
a simple, undivided, tegumentary sheath, forming in both the fore
and hind extremities, a fin resembling in external appearance the
paddle of the cetaceans or whales.

The anatomical structure of this highly interesting race, which
has no existing representative, is so modified as to result in two
generic types, to which Paheontologists have severally assigned the
names of Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus. With the former of these,
which was first well defined, we will begin.

ICHTHYOSAURUS.

At the first glance, the skull of an Ichthyosaurus , with its elon¬
gated snout and beak-like jaws armed with large destructive teeth,
reminds the observer of the cranium of the cetaceous dolphins.
But two striking differences soon present themselves ; the first is
the reduced development of the cavity for the brain, which is so
ample in the comparatively highly-organized Cetacea, and the unan-
chylosed state of the cranial bones — both phenomena indicating the
lower or reptilian grade of the enaliosaurian : the second is the
large size of the eye and of the orbit in which it is set. The
external nostrils, too, placed at a short distance in front of the
orbits, mark the Saurian character of the animal.

The teeth are not lodged in distinct sockets as they are in the

* Professor Owen uses the term licemapophyses to designate the two inferior
lamina) developed generally to protect the great blood-vessels on the under
surface of the centrum or body of the vertebra).

ICHTHYOSAURUS.

341

Plesiosaur ; they are free at their bases, but inserted in a groove
between the outer and inner alveolar or socket-plates, and are
more crocodilian than lacertian in their conformation.

This prolonged and formidably armed head, which is known to
have reached six feet in length, permitted the opening of the elastic
jaws to an enormous extent, and was joined to a very short neck,
— so short, indeed, that the animal in the flesh presented in all pro¬
bability no more appearance of it than a fish or a dolphin exhibits ;
that is, none at all. The articulating surfaces of the centre of the
vertebras were concave, and, as Professor Owen observes, lead to
the inference that they were originally connected together by an
elastic capsule filled with fluid, as are the vertebral joints of the
back-bone of fishes and of the Perennibranchiate or most fishlike of
the reptiles.

The four paddles, two anterior and two posterior, with which
the fish-lizard worked its way through seas long since dried up,
were more like the fins of fishes than the swimming paws of the
whale-tribe ; although in external appearance the resemblance to
the latter is strong; for the typical number five, which reigns
throughout the mammalian hand and foot, however fettered and
invested by integument, is here exceeded, and the numerous little
phalanges, or joints, resemble the articulated rays of the breast and
belly-fins of fishes: besides which many cartilaginous bifurcate rays
added to the horny constituents, aided in supporting the tegumen¬
tary expansion of the Ichthyosaur’s paddle.

But there was yet another portion of progressive machinery
wanting to complete the outfit of this Preadamite. Professor
Owen, with his usual acuteness and soundness, came to the follow¬
ing conclusions as to the structure of the tail :

4 With these important modifications of the head, trunk, and ex¬
tremities in immediate relation to aquatic progression, the law of
the correlations of organic structure would lead us to anticipate
some corresponding modification of the tail. Accordingly we find
the vertebrae of this part to be much more numerous than in the
previously described enaliosaurian group.* There is no trace, how¬
ever, of any confluence of the terminal caudal vertebrae, or of any
modification of their elongated neur — and hoemapophysial spines,
such as form the characteristic structure supporting the tail of the
osseous fishes. The numerous caudal vertebrae gradually decrease
in size to the end of the tail, where they assume a compressed form;
and thus the tail, instead of being short and broad as in fishes, is
lengthened out as in the crocodiles.’

* The Plesiosauri.

342

SEA DRAGONS.

Sacli being the structure and the inferences justly deduced from
it, we shall next see how accident may be improved by a good
observer.

The very frequent occurrence of the fracture of the tail about
one -fourth of the way from its distal extremity, had led Professor
Owen to suspect that the accident was connected with the presence
of a tegumentary caudal tin ; and the laterally compressed form of
the terminal vertebrae since ascertained by Sir Philip Grey Eger-
ton, afforded additional demonstration both of its existence and
direction. The only evidence, in fact, as Professor Owen observes,
which the skeleton of the cetaceous mammal gives of the powerful
horizontal caudal fin which characterizes the recent animal, is the
depressed or horizontally flattened form of the terminal vertebrae,
He, therefore, infers, from the corresponding vertebrae of the
Ichthyosaur being flattened in the vertical direction, or from side
to side, that it possessed a caudal tegumentary fin expanded in
the vertical direction : and he recommends a narrow examination
of the lias matrix in which the tail may have been imbedded, for
the traces of carbonaceous discoloration, or of an impression of
this fin, from which some idea might be formed of its shape and
size.

The occurrence of such a desired impression is not so impro¬
bable as those unacquainted with the subject may suppose.
Dr Buckland described the tegument of the abdomen, and Pro¬
fessor Owen that of the fin, from specimens found at Barrow-on-
Soar.

‘ Thus,’ says Professor Owen, 1 in the construction of the princi¬
pal natatory organ of the Ichthyosaurus we may trace, as in other
parts of its structure, a combination of mammalian, saurian, and
ichthyic peculiarities. In its great length and its gradual diminu¬
tion we perceive the saurian character ; its tegumentary nature,
unsupported by osseous rays, bespeaks its affinity to the cetaceans ;
while its vertical position brings it close to the peculiar condition
of the natatory organ in the fish.

4 But,’ continues the professor, ‘ it may be argued, the horizon-
tality of the caudal fin of the Cetacea is essentially connected with
their exigencies as breathers of the atmospheric air : without this
means of displacing a mass of water in a vertical direction, the
head of the whale could not have been brought with the required
rapidity and facility to the surface to inspire : and as the ichthyo¬
saurus was also an air-breather, a like position of the caudal fin
might be considered to be equally essential to its existence in the
water.’

To this objection, the professor replies that the Ichthyosaurus
not being warm-blooded, would not need to bring its head to the

ICHTHYOSAURUS.

343

surface so frequently, or perhaps so rapidly, as the cetacean ; and
moreover, a compensation for the absence of a horizontal terminal
fin is provided in the presence of the two posterior paddles, which
are wholly deficient in the Cetacea.

The professor’s conception of the appearance of this bygone
form, ‘in his habit as he lived,’ is, that the animal must have
presented the general external figure of a huge predatory abdo¬
minal fish, with a longer tail and smaller caudal fin than usual ;
scaleless, moreover, and covered with a smooth or finely- wrinkled
skin analogous to that of the Cetacea. But a closer inspection of
the enduring parts of these singular inhabitants of the ancient
deep, shows, he justly observes, that under their fishlike exterior
was concealed an organization which, in the main, is a modifica¬
tion of the saurian type.

A word or two now as to the enormous and curiously-con¬
structed eye of the Ichthyosaur, which must have possessed great
visual powers, always on the watch to minister to its predaceous
habits, and to preserve it from the attacks of the larger individuals
of its own kind ; for that the Ichthyosaurs preyed on each other as
well as on the Plesiosaurs and fishes, is as clearly proved as that
the pike will dine on the pickerel.

This eye was both a microscope and a telescope, modified in its
action by an apparatus similar to that which exists among the
feathered tribes, and is most highly developed in the birds of prey.
Like the eagles and the owls, the Ichthyosaurus was furnished
with a bony sclerotic ring, or circle of osseous plates, arranged
around the aperture where once the pupil glittered, and which
with its attendant muscles altered the convexity of the cornea, so
as to adjust the scope according to the necessities of the animal.
Was a near object to be examined ? — this machinery by the
retraction of the plates protruded the eye, which thus became
microscopic. Was distant vision required? — the plates resumed
their ordinary position and a telescopic range was secured. Here,
in short, was an instrument to light the Ichthyosaur by day or by
night, near the surface and in the deep, armed against external
injury in the first-named locality, and against the pressure to which
it must have been frequently subjected in the second.

So far as the known specimens can lead us to conclusions with
regard to size, some of the species of the Ichthyosaurus, when
full grown, must have exceeded thirty feet in length. The great
relative proportion of the eye may be imagined from Dr Buck-
land’s declaration that it was sometimes larger than a man’s
head.

Ten species of these extinct Sea-dragons are enumerated by

SEA DRAGONS.

344

Professor Owen, four described by the Rev. W. Conybeare, one by
Mr Koenig, and five by himself.

PLESIOSAURUS.

With much of similarity in general form to the Ichthyosaur,,
the ancient Plesiosaur, its contemporary, presents considerable
differences even in external appearance. The first and most
striking is the excessive length of the neck and the comparative
smallness of the head. Cuvier says of this inhabitant of the ancient
world of waters, that it is the most heteroclite of forms, and one
which seems best to deserve the name of monster.

4 To the head of the lizard,’ says Dr Buckland, 4 it united the
teeth of the crocodile; a neck of enormous length, resembling the
body of a serpent ; a trunk and tail having the proportions of an
ordinary quadruped; the ribs of a chamelion; and the paddles
of a whale.’

To the Rev. W. Conybeare and Sir Henry de la Beclie * we are
indebted for the notice of this most extraordinary addition to the
ancient Fauna, the first specimens of which appear to have been
discovered about twenty years ago.

To form the head of a Plesiosaur we must combine the cha¬
racters observable in the Ichthyosaur, the crocodile, and the lizard;
but to that of the last-named saurian, the head of the Plesiosaur
bears the nearest approximation.

4 It agrees,’ says Dr Buckland, 4 with the Ichthyosaurus in the
smallness of its nostrils, and also in their position near the anterior
angle of the eye; it resembles the crocodile in having the teeth
lodged in distinct alveoli ; but differs from both in the form and
shortness of its head, many characters of which approach closely
to the Iguana.’

The teeth are comparatively slender and sharp-pointed.

The swan-like neck, which is almost as long as the body and
tail together, consists of from twenty to forty vertebrae. The tail
is relatively much shorter than that of the Ichthyosaur, and there
is, Professor Owen observes, an obvious reason for the curtailment
of this part of the animal ; because the length and mobility of the
neck of the Plesiosaur renders a special development of the tail, for
producing the lateral movements of the head, unnecessary.

In the anterior or pectoral extremities the digits never exceed
the metacarpal bones, which are five in number. The first, or
radial digit, corresponding with the thumb, has generally three ;

* The first named of these, now Dean of Llandaff, is still preserved to us ;
the last, to our sorrow, has been taken from us.

Within a very short time after the first part of this note was written, William
Conybeare was suddenly called away. But his name will not die. (1857).

PLESIOSAUR Ob.

345

the second six or seven, the third eight or nine, the fourth eight,
and the fifth six phalanges. Professor Owen, who gives these num¬
bers, adds that there can be little doubt that they were enveloped,
like the paddles of Cetacea , in a common sheath of integument, and
that, from the natural curve of the digits, the paddles of the Ple¬
siosaur must have had a more elegant and tapering form, and have
possessed greater flexibility than those of the modern whales.

The posterior or pelvic extremities almost always equal, and
sometimes, as in Plesiosaurus macrocephalus , exceed the anterior
extremity, but they closely correspond with them in their radiated
appendages. The five metatarsals and their digits, Professor Owen
observes, correspond in structure with those of the fore-paddle.
The first or tibial metatarsal, he tells us, supports three phalanges,
the second five, the third eight or nine, the fourth eight, and the
fifth six phalanges. The structure of the bones of this extremity
indicates, in Professor Owen’s opinion, that the hind paddle had a
freer inflection forward or upon the tibia, than in the opposite direc¬
tion ; and he thinks that it may have given a compound motion to
the propelling stroke of the paddle, similar to that which in skilful
rowing is termed 4 feathering the oar.’ He further remarks, that
the articular extremities of the phalanges of both the fore and hind
paddles are sub-concave, with an irregular surface, indicating that
they were joined by ligaments or fibro-cartilage, and not by a syno¬
vial membrane.

But what were the habits of this chimagra-like creature ? The
best answer will be given by the Rev. W. Conybeare, who thus
infers those of Plesiosaurus dolicliodeirus :

4 That it was aquatic is evident from the form of its paddles ;
that it was marine is almost equally so, from the remains with
which it is universally associated ; that it may have occasionally
visited the shore, the resemblance of its extremities to those of the
turtle may lead us to conjecture ; its motion, however, must have
been very awkward on land ; its long neck must have impeded its
progress through the water ; presenting a striking contrast to the
organization which so admirably fits the Ichthyosaurus to cut
through the waves. May it not therefore be concluded (since, in
addition to these circumstances, its respiration must have required
frequent access of air), that it swam upon or near the surface,
arching back its long neck like a swan, and occasionally darting it
down at the fish which happened to float within its reach. It may,
perhaps, have lurked in shoal water along the coast, concealed
among the seaweed, and raising its nostrils to a level with the sur¬
face from a considerable depth, may have found a secure retreat
from the assault of dangerous enemies ; while the length and flexi¬
bility of its neck may have compensated for the want of strength

346

SEA DRAGONS.

in its jaws, and its incapacity for swift motion through the water,
by the suddenness and agility of the attack which they enabled it to
make on every animal fitted for its prey, which came within its reach.

Professor Buckland is of opinion that the tail, being compara¬
tively short, could not have been used like the tail of fishes, as an
instrument of rapid impulsion in a forward direction ; but was pro¬
bably employed more as a rudder to steer the animal when swim¬
ming on the surface, or to elevate or depress it in ascending and
descending through the water. The same consequence as to slow¬
ness of motion, would, lie thinks also, follow from the elongation of
the neck to so great a, distance in front of the anterior paddles.
The total number of vertebras in the entire column was, he ob¬
serves, about ninety. Prom all these circumstances, Dr Buckland
infers that this animal, although of considerable size, had to seek
its food as well as its safety, chiefly by means of artifice and con¬
cealment.

No less than sixteen species are enumerated by Professor Owen,
— one described by Cuvier, two by Conybeare, and the rest by
himself.

The period of existence of these enaliosaurians, extended through
the whole of the oolitic range, including the lias and oolite of the
TVealden and chalk formations. The chalk marl appears to be the
most recent deposit where they have been found : they occur also
in the gault.

Their name was legion. To say nothing of the bones which tes¬
tify to their numbers, the petrified remains of their digested food
put the question of their numerical force out of doubt.

‘ On the shore at Lyme Begis,’ says Dr Buckland, 4 these copro-
lites are so abundant, that they lie like potatoes scattered in the
ground; still more common are they in the lias of the Estuary of
the Severn, where they are similarly disposed in strata of many
miles in extent, and mixed so abundantly with teeth and rolled
fragments of the bones of reptiles and fishes, as to show that this
region, having been the bottom of an ancient sea, was for a long
period the receptacle of the bones and fceeal remains of its inhabi¬
tants. The occurrence of coprolites is not, however, peculiar to
the places just mentioned: they are found in greater or less abun¬
dance throughout the lias of England ; they occur also in strata, of
all ages, that contain the remains of carnivorous reptiles, and have
been recognised in many and distant climates both of Europe and
America.’*

* Coprolites and otlier organic remains are now used extensively in this
country as valuable manure, when they have undergone a triturating process.
Felixstow in Suffolk is the principal locality where coprolites are gathered,
sifted, and pounded for agricultural purposes.

PLESIOSAURUS.

347

The sea in which these extinct monsters gambolled, must have
been not unlike that of the present day, especially in tropical
climates. That the medium was capable of transmitting light in
the same manner as sea-water now does, might be safely inferred
from such parts of the ocular apparatus of the fossil reptiles
and fish as are still preserved to us, although the soft parts of
the eye are, of course, absent. But in the Trilobites , those most
ancient and extinct crustaceans which inhabited the bottom of
the old seas, we have the eye itself petrified; and this, when com¬
pared with the similar compound eyes of the Serolis and Limulus ,
or King Crab, which now exists, proves, as Dr Buckland has
pointed out, that the visual organs of both were fashioned for
media essentially the same, and entirely dispels the dream of those
• geologists who believed that a turbid chaotic fluid holding in solu¬
tion the precipitates from which the earth’s crust was deposited,
then prevailed.

In the same sea wherein the Ichthyosaur and Plesiosaur took
their pastime, swam shoals of the finny tribe, now extinct and
potted in their ancient mud, — among them the great Sauroid fishes,
which must have almost disputed the mastery with some of the
younger branches of the enaliosaurian families. Star-fishes, or
Oplmivi , not unlike those which at present occur on our shores ;
crinoideans, or stone-lilies, as the collectors term them; and
extinct crustaceans, organized, however, in the same manner as
existing species, were present. Belemnites and Cornua Ammonis ,
which have left no living representative, and Orthocerata, with
numerous other testaceous mollusca , were there, — to say nothing of
turtles; so that the ancient and respectable enaliosaurian corpora¬
tion must have fared sumptuously; and, certainly the Ichthyosaurian
branch of it had a more than aldermanic development of the
mouth-and-stomach power.

The enaliosaurians, Professor Owen observes, are immediately
connected with the crocodilian reptiles by the extinct and gigantic
Pliosaurns , which is more closely allied to the true Saurians, and
whose remains occur in the Kimmeridge and Oxford clays. The
teeth are remarkable for their thickness and strength, and the cer¬
vical vertebrae for their shortness, the enormous jaws having been
wielded by a neck, if neck it may be called, as short and strong as
that of the whales.

But there were other sea-dragons besides the enaliosaurians,
framed, however, upon a somewhat different principle, and accord¬
ing to the Lacertian type, such as the Mosasaurus or great animal
of Maastricht.

This marine giant appears to have been most nearly allied to
the Monitory lizards, as they are called, which now. frequent the

348

SEA-DRAGONS.

river-sides and marshy places in warm countries, and have had
the credit, not very deservedly, we believe, of warning the
traveller, by a peculiar whistling sound, of the approach of cro¬
codiles and their congeners. Five feet is a great length for an
existing Monitor to attain; but the Mosasaur must have reached
twenty-five feet. The noble head in the Paris Museum, of
which we have casts in this country, is four feet long; that of a
large existing Monitor does not measure more than five inches in
length.

The fossil was found in the calcareous freestone, near Maastricht,
the most recent deposit of the cretaceous formation, in company
with Ammonites, Belemnites, and other organic remains of the
chalk formation in 1780, and for some time adorned that city.
But it was a very sphinx’s riddle to be learned. Some thought it
was an enormous crocodile; others would have it to be very like a
whale; but at last Camper suggested, and Cuvier afterwards con¬
firmed its true zoological relations.

Fancy a marine Monitor of the length and bulk of a Grampus,
with four paddles instead of legs, and a high and deep oar-like tail
formed for propelling the animal through the wave, instead of the
long and slender tail of the living species — and you. have some notion
of the Mosasaur.

Its jaws and teeth were tremendous. Nothing comparable to
them can be imagined, excepting the ancient caricature, which may
be known to some of our readers, representing a learned gentleman
in his robes, not quite at his ease, between a pair of Saurian jaws,
worthy of Munchausen’s creation, and underwritten,

A LAWYER AND A SAWYER.

The rush of the Mosasaur through the water must have been
most rapid; and its whole structure bespeaks an agent for keeping
down the larger races of ancient fishes, more active and destructive
than the great Ichthyosaur itself.

The Paris specimen belonged to the collection of Hoffman, from
whom it was said to have been taken by the chapter of Maastricht,
by virtue of some droits vested in them, and was given up by the
Dean to the French army when it invested the city. Fortunate
was the inhabitant whose dwelling lay near the place where the
head of the Mosasaur was deposited: for the story goes, that to
prevent the possibility of injury to a prize, which the besiegers
were determined to possess, the French cannoneers were enjoined
not to point their artillery towards that part of the city which held
the remains of this grand Sea-Dragon.

ANCIENT AMPHIBIOUS AND TERRESTRIAL

DRAGONS.

‘Through many a dark and dreary vale
They passed, and many a region dolorous,
frocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death.’

Paradise Lost.

Tf with the eyes of the imagination aided by the lights afforded
by the strata and the ancient inhabitants buried therein, we look
back upon our earth when the forms of crocodilian reptiles first
came upon it, we may picture to ourselves an oozy, spongy,
reeky land, watered with wild rivers, and largely overspread by a
vast expanse of lakes, on whose dreary, slimy banks gigantic
crocodiles reposed amid enormous extinct bog-plants, or floated
log-like in the fenny sunshine on the waters, while the silence
of the desolate scene was broken by the clank of their monstrous
jaws, as they ever and anon closed upon the bygone generations
of fishes, — or by the growlings and explosions of the distant
volcano.

With, perhaps, one exception — the crocodile of the Ganges
namely — none ot the ancient crocodilians exhibit specific identity
with the alligators, crocodiles, and gavials now existing. And
while they differ from the present races, the modifications of their
osseous structure in which they so vary, as well as from each other,
are much greater than any of those by which the skeletons of the
existing species differ among themselves.

‘Not only,’ says Professor Owen, ‘do the form and propor¬
tions of the peripheral parts, as of the jaws, the teeth, and the

locomotive extremities vary, but the spine or central axis of the
skeleton, offers modifications of the articular surfaces of the com¬
ponent vertebrae, which are quite unknown in the alligators,

crocodiles, and gavials of the present epoch. In these existing

species the anterior surface of the vertebral centrum is concave,

850

ANCIENT DRAGONS.

the posterior convex, except in the atlas and sacrum. But besides
this mode of junction, Cuvier has recognized in the crocodilians of
the secondary formations two other types of vertebral structure :
in one of these the positions of the ball and socket are reversed ; in
the other, and more common modification, both the articular surfaces
of the vertebra are flat or slightly concave. Remains of extinct
crocodilians, exhibiting all the three systems of vertebral articulation,
occur in English formations.’

The professor then divides the extinct British species which,
generally, agree with the existing crocodilians, into two sections.

First, those with concavo-convex vertebrae : secondly, those
with biconcave vertebrae.

In the first of these divisions he notices and describes a single
species — Crocodilus Spenceri.

In the second he arranges and gives a description of the follow¬
ing : Suchosaiirus cultridens , Goniopholis crassidens , Teleosaurus Chap-
manni, Teleosaurus cadomensis , Teleosaurus aslhenodeirus, Steneosaurus
rostra -minor , Poikilopleuron BucJelandi , Streptospondylus Cuvieri, Cetio¬
saurus brevis , Cetiosaurus brachyurus , Cetiosaurus medius , and Cetiosau-
rus longus.

The destructive nature of these ancient inhabitants of the swamps
which once occupied the place of the fair fields and cities of these
islands, may be imagined from the multitude of weapons that armed
their jaws.

It has been calculated that Teleosaurus cadomensis had one hun¬
dred and eighty, and Teleosaurus C/iapmanni at least one hundred
and forty teeth. The gavial of these degenerate days cannot boast
of more than one hundred and twelve.

But terribly voracious as these and other crocodilians, (the
enormous Sewalik crocodilian for example*) must have been,
their efforts in keeping down the animals of the ancient
Fauna of Britain could only have been feeble compared with
those leviathans the Cetiosauri, some of which, according to
Professor Owen’s well-grounded statement must have rivalled
the modern great whales in bulk, and which he holds — with
reason, we think — were strictly aquatic, and most probably
marine in their habits. The larger alligator of the Ganges has
been known in our own times to descend beyond the brackish
water of the delta into the sea, though it is now frightened from its
propriety by the steam-paddles which constantly vex that sacred
river.

The evidence from which Professor Owen comes to this con-

* See tlic work of Dr Falconer and Major Cautley above noticed, p. 319,
note.

§

AMBLYRHYNCIIUS CKISTATUS.

351

elusion rests on the sub-biconcave structure of the vertebra), ancl
the coarse cancellous tissue of the long; bones, which show no
trace of a medullary cavity. In the great expanse of the coracoid
and pubic bones, he tells us, as compared with the Teleosaurs
and crocodiles, the gigantic saurians in question manifested their
close affinity to the true Enaliosaurs which formed the principal
subject of our last chapter ; whilst their essential adherence to
the crocodilian type is marked by the long bones of the extremi¬
ties, especially the metatarsals, and above all, by the toes being
terminated by strong claws.

The main organ of swimming is, the professor adds, shown, by
the strength and texture and vertical compression of the posterior
caudal vertebrae, to have been a broad vertical tail; and the
webbed feet, probably, were used only partially, in regulating the
course of the swimmer, as in the puny Amblyrhynchus of the Galla-
pagos Islands.

But what is an Amblyrhynchus!

There are terrestrial and marine Amblyrhynchi , but it is the
aquatic species Amblyrhynchus cristatus , to which the professor
alludes. Here is its portrait drawn by the master hand of
Darwin : —

4 It lives exclusively on the rocky sea-beaches, and is never
found, at least I never saw one, even ten yards inshore. It is a.
hideous-looking creature, of a dirty black colour, stupid and
sluggish in its movements. The usual length of a full-grown one
is about a yard, but there are some even four feet long : I have
seen a large one which weighed twenty pounds. On the island
of Albemarle, they seem to grow to a greater size than on any
other. These lizards were occasionally seen some hundred yards
from the shore, swimming about ; and Captain Colnett in his
voyage says, 4 they go out to sea in shoals to fish.’ With respect
to the object, I believe he is mistaken ; but the fact stated on
such good authority cannot be doubted. When in the water the
animal swims with perfect ease and quickness, by a serpentine
movement of its body and flattened tail, the legs, during this
time, being motionless, and closely collapsed on its sides. A sea¬
man on board sank one with a heavy weight attached to it,
thinking thus to kill it directly ; but when, an hour afterwards, he
drew up the line, the lizard was quite active. Their limbs and
strong claws are admirably adapted for crawling over the rugged
and fissured masses of lava which everywhere form the coast. In
such situations, a group of six or seven of these hideous reptiles
may oftentimes be seen on the black rocks, a few feet above the
surf, basking in the sun with outstretched legs.’

This extraordinary animal, notwithstanding its disgusting

352

ANCIENT DRAGONS.

appearance, seems to be very harmless. Mr Darwin found the
stomachs of all which he opened distended with minced sea-weed,
a food for the procuring and comminution of which its teeth,
unlike those of the crococlilians, are well adapted ; nor does he
recollect having observed this sea-weed in any quantity on the
tidal rocks. He states his belief to be that it grows at the bottom
at some little distance from the coast, and he observes that, if such
be the case, the object of the animals in going out to sea is explained.

Another peculiarity in the habits of this creature is thus noticed
by the same acute and accurate observer :

‘ The nature of this lizard’s food, as well as the structure of its
tail, and the certain fact of its having been seen voluntarily swim¬
ming out at sea, absolutely prove its aquatic habits ; yet there is
in this respect one strange anomaly ; namely, that when frightened
it will not enter the water. From this cause it is easy to drive
the lizards down to any little point overhanging the sea, where
they will sooner allow a person to catch hold of their tail than
jump into the water. They do not seem to have any notion of
biting ; but when much frightened they squirt a drop of fluid from
each nostril. One day I carried one to a deep pool left by the
retiring tide, and threw it in several times as far as I was able.
It invariably returned in a direct line to the spot where I stood.
It swam near the bottom, with a very graceful and rapid move¬
ment, and occasionally aided itself over the uneven ground with
its feet. As soon as it arrived near the margin, but still being
under water, it either tried to conceal itself in the tufts of sea¬
weed, or it entered some crevice. As soon as it thought the danger
was past, it crawled out on the dry rock, and shuffled away as
quickly as it could.’

Mr Darwin goes on to state that he several times caught this
same lizard, by driving it down to a point, and though possessed
of such perfect powers of diving and swimming nothing would in¬
duce it to enter the water : as often as he threw it in, it returned
in the manner above described by him. He thinks that this singular
piece of apparent stupidity may, perhaps, be accounted for, by the
circumstance that this reptile has no enemy whatever on shore,
whereas at sea it must often fall a prey to sharks.

‘ Hence,’ acids Mr Darwin, 1 probably urged by a fixed and here¬
ditary instinct that the shore is its place of safety, whatever the
emergency may be, it there takes refuge.’*

And this innocuous herbivorous lizard is the only known example

* Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the various
countries visited by H.M.S. Beagle, under the command of Captain Fitz-Roy,
R.N. from 1832 to 1836. By Charles Darwin, Esq., M.A. F.R.S., Secretary
to the Geological Society, a work rich in vivid and accurate descriptions of
nature.

CROCODILES.

353

of a saurian of decided marine habits at the present period. Strong
is the contrast between the lacertian inhabitants of the world of to¬
day and those which peopled it in the age of reptiles to which we
must now return, and incpiire into the state of things when the
crocodilian dynasty prevailed.

Remains of the extinct crocodilians may be traced from the early
tertiary formations (the Eocene period of Lyell) down to the oolite
and lias, in both of which strata they occur ; and it is worthy of
observation that the deviations from the existing genera and species
increase in degree, as the beds containing those extinct species
indicate periods more remote from the present time, as Professor
Owen has pointed out.

Dr Buckland, in a few eloquent words, has summed up the ap¬
pointed task of these ancient agents in the police of nature. After
observing that their occurrence in a fossil state is of high impor¬
tance, inasmuch as it shows that whilst many forms of vertebrated
animals have one after another been created and become extinct,
during the successive geological changes of the surface of our globe,
there are others which have survived all these changes and revolu¬
tions, and still retain the leading features under which they first
appeared in our planet, he thus proceeds :

‘ If we look to the state of the earth, and the character of its
population at the time when crocodilian forms were first added to
the number of its inhabitants, we find that the highest class of living
beings were reptiles, and that the only other vertebrated animals
which then existed were fishes; the carnivorous reptiles at this
early period must therefore have fed chiefly upon them, and if, in
the existing family of crocodiles, there be any that are in a peculiar
degree piscivorous, their form is that we should expect to find in
those most ancient fossil genera, whose chief supply of food must
have been derived from fishes. In the living sub-genera of the cro¬
codilian family, we see the elongated and slender beak of the gavial
of the Ganges, constructed to feed on fishes; whilst the shorter
and stronger snout of the broad-nosed crocodiles and alligators
give them the power of seizing and devouring quadrupeds that
come to the banks of rivers in hot countries to drink. As
there were scarcely any mammalia during the secondary periods,
whilst the waters were abundantly stored with fishes, we might
a priori expect that if any crocodilian forms had then existed, they
would most nearly have resembled the modern gavial. And we
have hitherto found only three genera which have elongated beaks,
in formations anterior to and including the chalk ; whilst true cro¬
codiles, with a short and broad snout like that of the cayman and
the alligator, appear for the first time in strata of the tertiary pe¬
riods, in which the remains of mammalia abound. During these

A A

354

ANCIENT DRAGONS.

grand periods of lacustrine mammalia, in which but few of the
present genera of terrestrial carnivora had been called into exis¬
tence, the important office of controlling the excessive increase of
the aquatic herbivora appears to have been consigned to the cro¬
codiles, whose habits fitted them in a peculiar degree for such a
service. Thus the past history of the crocodilian tribe presents
another example of the well-regulated workings of a consistent plan
in the economy of animated nature, under which each individual,
whilst following its own instinct, and pursuing its own good, is in¬
strumental in promoting the general welfare of the whole family of
its contemporaries.’*

Our attention is next arrested by the ancient terrestrial dra¬
gons,

THE DIN O SAURIAN S, "j"

as Professor Owen has aptly termed them, and although he has,
upon the most satisfactory data, somewhat reduced the enormous
dimensions originally assigned to them, ‘ fearfully-great lizards’
must they have been.

This tribe of gigantic crocodile-lizards of the dry land, as Pro¬
fessor Owen designates them with his usual accuracy, excepting
that we may be permitted to express our doubts as to the land
being very dry, are, he observes, as clearly distinguished from the
modem terrestrial and amphibious saurians, as the opposite modifi¬
cations for an aquatic life characterize the extinct Enaliosaurians
or marine lizards. To Professor Buckland and Dr Mantell are
those interested on the subject — and their number is, we are happy
to say, no longer small— principally indebted for a knowledge of
these wonderful and long-buried forms which once had dominion
where Queen Victoria now reigns.

One of the most distinguishing characteristics of these great
land-lizards is the possession of marrow-bones. The great bones
of the extremities of the Enaliosaurians and ancient crocodilians
were solid throughout, and the comparative weight, so far from
being inconvenient in the medium through which they generally had
to make their way, performed the office of ballast to steady them
in and on the water, and prevent them, when on the surface, from
exposing too much of their bodies, and being what the sailors call
crank.

But in the enormous and dragon-like forms now under con¬
sideration, those oviparous quadrupeds, in short, whose progres-

* Bridgewater Treatise.

f a uvo;, terrible, fearfully great : <rvpo;, a lizard.

IGUANODON.

A K K

OOO

sion was to be performed on the land, and most probably in sandy
or miry places and sloughs, a combination of lightness with strength
was required, and the marrow-filled cylinder made the appropriate
machinery complete.

Here is Professor Owen’s general definition of his Dinosau-
rians : —

‘ This group, which includes at least three well-established genera
of Saurians, is characterized by a large sacrum composed of five
anchylosed vertebras, of unusual construction, by the height and
breadth and outward sculpturing of the neural arch of the dorsal
vertebrae, by the twofold articulation of the ribs to the vertebrae, —
viz., at the anterior part of the spine by a head and tubercle, and
along the rest of the trunk by a tubercle attached to the transverse
process only, by broad and sometimes complicated coracoids and
long and slender clavicles, whereby crocodilian characters of the
vertebral column are combined with a lacertian type of the pectoral
arch ; the dental organs also exhibit the same transitional or annec¬
tent characters in a greater or less degree. The bones of the
extremities are of large proportional size for saurians; they are
provided with large medullary cavities, and with well-developed
and unusual processes, and are terminated by metacarpal, metatarsal,
and phalangeal bones, which, with the exception of the ungual
phalanges, more or less resemble those of the heavy pachydermal
mammals, and attest, with the hollow long-bones, the terrestrial
habits of the species.’*

The most remarkable of these Dinosaurians hitherto discovered
are the Iguanodon , the Megaloscmrus , and the Hylceosaurus. W e will
commence with the

IGUANODON.

The habits of the existing members of the family of crocodiles
are so well ascertained and familiarly known, that it would have
been needless to go into details on that head ; but the manners of
the Iguanas or Guanas which are now living, and come nearest to
the great extinct Iguanodon , are not so generally understood.
A few words, therefore, explanatory of their form and mode of
life, may not be uninteresting previous to a description of the old
saurian.

The modern Guanas are lizards with long scaly bodies and tails,
furnished with a depending, deep, thin, gular pouch, also covered
with scales, and serrated on the anterior portion of the edge near

* Report on British Fossii Reptiles.

356

ANCIENT DRAGONS.

the chin. The head is somewhat pyramidal. The neck is a little
compressed, and there are cuticular folds on its sides and on the
trunk, the upper part of which is convex and rounded, and the
under part flattened. The tail is very long and slender, slightly
compressed on its sides. The rather long limbs are terminated by
five toes with serrated edges and sharp claws, the three middle
toes longer than the outside ones : the posterior toes are of greater
length than those of the anterior extremities. A crest of elevated
strongly-compressed scales, often curved in a posterior direction,
arises behind the head, and is continued along the mesial line of
the back to the end of the tail, diminishing as the extremity of
the latter is approached, and producing a serrated appearance
throughout its extent. This saw-like back, joined to the gular
pouch and extraordinarily-shaped head, defended by large scaly
plates of different forms, gives these animals a formidable aspect,
especially when they have attained to their full growth, which
frequently reaches five feet where they have not been disturbed, but
does not often exceed that length.

The geographical distribution of the Guanas extends over a
great part of South America and the West India islands. Although
they occasionally eat eggs and insects in a wild state, and in cap¬
tivity have been known to feed on the entrails of fowls, their ordinary
food consists of buds, leaves, flowers, and fruits, for the cropping
of which their numerous teeth, which may be compared to small
lancets, terminating in broad blades with minutely serrated edges,
are admirably adapted. As this diet leads the Guana to the trees,
both form and colour conjoin to aid in securing its safety ; the first
enabling it to climb and stand firm on the branches, and the second
going far towards concealing it in its leafy haunt. The long, slender,
serrated, sharp-clawed toes and lengthened flexible tail, here come
into play ; and the green, blueish, or slaty hue of the upper part
of the body, together with the yellowish green or brownish of the
under parts, harmonize with its situation. Sometimes there are
brown stripes or yellow-edged zigzags on the sides of the body;
sometimes there is an oblique yellow line on the forepart of the
shoulder ; some are dotted with brown, the limbs of others are
mottled with brown on a blackish ground, and the tail is generally
annulated with alternate large brown and green or yellowish rings.
These variations are, however, in strict keeping with its sylvan
habits.

The Guanas take well to the water in their natural state, and
swim with ease and tolerable rapidity. We have seen one in
this country perform this feat more than once. The animal
entered the pond belonging to the enclosure in which it was kept,
of its own accord: the motion was easy and graceful, and the

THE GUANA.

357

long flexible tail appeared to be the principal, if not the only instru¬
ment by whose oar-like but sinuous action progression was effected.
We have also seen a Guana feeding on the leaves of the common
kidney bean, to which plant it had resorted after refusing
insects and other animal food. The colour of this Guana was
a beautiful green. The leaves were assisted into the mouth by
the fleshy tongue, and from the very short time they remained
there must have been transmitted to the stomach but little com¬
minuted by the teeth, whose services were evidently more applied
to prehension and cropping than mastication.

These animals are oviparous: their eggs are round, with a
thinner shell, or rather tegument — for it is tough, not brittle, — than
that of those of the common poultry, but with a white and yolk
resembling that of a hen’s egg in flavour. Nor is this the only
delicacy supplied by the uncouth-looking Guanas. They become
very fat upon their wholesome diet, and are much sought after for
their flesh, which is white as that of a chicken, and equal if not
superior to it, when properly offered to the palate. The old
authors confine their cookery to boiling and frying: thus Piso
says that they love to feed on fruits and eggs, whence they derive
much fat, and the whitish flesh ‘quae elixa vel frixa inter delicias
expetita, nec gallinaeeis pullis cedit.’

The same learned Amsterdam physician condescends to give a
receipt for dressing their eggs in water, but without either oil or
butter — ‘ quae addita aqua, non oleo aut butyro friguntur ; ’ a
method of frying which does not appear to have occurred to Dr
Kitchener. Modern refinement, however, soon discovered that
Guana, to be eaten in perfection, should be presented in the
savoury and delicate shape of a fricassee,

A few words further in illustration of the existing Guanas
from eye-witnesses, whose works are not in the hands of every
body.

Sir Hans Sloane gives the following account of an attempt to
bring some of the reptiles of Jamaica to England :

‘ Though I foresaw the difficulties, yet I had an intention to
try to bring with me from Jamaica some uncommon creatures
alive ; such as a large yellow snake, seven feet long, a Guana , or
great lizard, a crocodile, &c. I had the snake tamed by an
Indian, whom it would follow, as a dog would his master, and
after it was delivered to me I kept it in a large earthen jar, such
as are for keeping the best water for the commanders of ships
during their voyages, covering its mouth with two boards, and
laying weights upon them. I had it fed every day by the guts
and garbage of fowl, etc., put into the jar from the kitchen.
Thus it liv’d for some time, when being weary of its confinement,

ANCIENT DRAGONS.

QKO

OoO

it shov’d asunder the two boards on the mouth of the jar, and
got up to the top of a large house, wherein lay footmen and
other domesticks of her Grace the Duchess of Albemarle, who
being afraid to lie down in such company, shot my snake dead.
It seem’d before this disaster to be very well pleas’d with its
situation, being in a part of the house which was filled with rats,
which are the most pleasing food for these sort of serpents. ’Tis
upon this account that the European nations inhabiting the
countries producing sugar do not molest these creatures, because
they destroy the rats (which came originally from ships cast away
on the coast, &c.,) which multiply strangely there, and do infinite
mischief to the sugar canes, not only eating them, but spoiling
the juice of those they gnaw. The Guana us’d to feed on cala¬
bash-pulp, and liv’d very well aboard of the yacht, till one day
when it was running along the gunnel of the vessel, a seaman
frighted it, and it leap’d overboard and was drown’d.’*

Catesby describes the Guana ( Lacerta Iguana , Linn.) as a
kind of lizard somewhat resembling the crocodile or alligator in
shape, but having a shorter head and a serrated crest on the ridge
of the back, extending from behind its head to the middle of the
tail ; they are, he says, of various sizes, from two to five feet in
length.

‘Their mouths,’ continues Catesby, ‘are furnished with ex¬
ceeding small teeth, but their jaws are armed with a bony beak,
with which they bite with great strength. They inhabit warm
countries only, and are rarely to be met with anywhere north or
south of the Tropicks. Many of the Bahama islands abound
with them. They nestle in hollow rocks and trees ; their eggs
have not a hard shell like the eggs of alligators, but a skin only,
like those of turtle, and are esteemed good food : they lay a great
number of them at a time on the earth, which are there hatch’d
by the sun’s heat. These Guanas are a great part of the sub¬
sistence of the inhabitants of the Bahama island, for which pur¬
pose they visit many of the remote Bays and Islands, in their
sloops to catch them; which they do by dogs trained for that
purpose, which are so dextrous as not often to kill them ; which,
if they do, they serve only for present spending ; if otherwise,
they sew up their mouths to prevent their biting, and put them
into the hold of their sloop till they have catch’d a sufficient
number ; which they either carry alive for sale to Carolina, or
salt and barrel up for the use of their families at home. These
Guanas feed wholly on vegetables and fruit, particularly on a kind
of fungus, growing at the roots of trees, and of this and others of

* ‘Jamaica.’ Yol. u.

THE GUANA.

359

the Anona kind. Their flesh is easy of digestion, delicate, and
well tasted : they are sometimes roasted, but the more common
way is to boil them, taking out the leaves of fat, which they melt
and clarify ; this they put- into a calabash or dish, into which they
dip the flesh of the Guana as they eat it. It is remarkable that
this fat, which adheres to the inside of the abdomen, imbibes the
colour of the fruit they last eat, which I have frequently seen
tinged with pale red, yellow, and sometimes of a purple colour,
which last was from eating the Prunus Maritima , which fruit at
the same time I took out of them. Though they are not
amphibious, they are said to keep under water above an hour :
when they swim they use not their feet, but clap them close to
their body, and guide themselves with their tails : they swallow
all they eat whole. They cannot run fast ; their holes being a
greater security to them than their heels. They are so impatient
of cold that they rarely appear out of their holes but when the sun
shines.’*

The ‘Anona’ to which Catesby alludes, and which is figured
in the plate opposite to his description, is the Anonci Glabra of
Linnaeus, the Sour-sop (or Sowr-sop, as Sloane writes if) of the
colonists. Catesby says of it that it is an eatable fruit, very
sweet, but somewhat insipid ; ‘ yet,’ he adds, ‘ it is the food of
guanas and other wild creatures.’ Sloane has this passage re¬
specting the fruit of this tree — ‘ an anonymous Portugal observed
this fruit in Brasile. Purchas saith it tastes like a musty melon,
and is shap’d like an ox’s heart.’ The simile as to the shape is not
bad.

Dr Patrick Browne, in his ‘ History of Jamaica,’ speaks of
the Guana as a native of most parts of America, and, generally,
an inhabitant of the woods ; but remarks that like others of the
tribe it lives a very considerable time without food, and changes
its colour with the weather or the native moisture of its place of
residence.

‘ I have kept,’ observes our author, ‘ a grown Guana about
the house for more than two months , it was very fierce and ill-
natured at the beginning, but after some days it grew more
tame, and would at length pass the greatest part of the day upon
the bed or couch, but it went out always at night. I have never
observed it to eat any thing, except what imperceptible particles
it had lapped up in the air ; for it frequently threw out its
forked tongue, like the chameleon, as it walked along. The flesh
of this creature is liked by many people, and frequently served
up in fricassees at their tables, in which state they are often

* ‘ Carolina.’ Yol n.

360

ANCIENT DRAGONS

preferred to the best fowls. The Guana may be easily tamed
while young, and is both an innocent and beautiful creature in that
state.’

If the worthy doctor had spared his poor Guana a morsel of his
mango or custard-apple, or even thrown it a few succulent leaves,
it need not have starved ; but he seems to have thought that it
lived upon the chameleon’s dish.

Now turn we to its ancient prototype, the Iguanodon , whose
teeth and remains were discovered by Dr Mantell in the Weald,
where the climate, in the Age of Reptiles, far from being tempe¬
rate, must have been of a tropical character, from the evidences
exhumed from its strata.

The thigh-bone of this monster was larger than that of any
existing elephant. Indeed, the size of its bones took its first de-
scribers so much by surprise that we have heard 1 a tail as long as
St Martin’s steeple’ ascribed to it or some of its fossil brethren, in
the enthusiastic eloquence of the moment — after dinner. Nay,
seventy-five, eighty, and even one hundred feet have been delibe¬
rately stated as the length of the Iguanodon, from a comparison
of its teeth, clavicle, femur, and claw-bone with those of the Guana
at present in existence.

Now, as Professor Owen remarks, if the comparison had been
founded on the claw-bone from Horsham, instead of that compared
by Dr Mantell, two hundred feet as the total length of the Iguanodon
would have been the result ; for the Horsham bone exceeds the
corresponding phalanx by forty times. Upon measurements and
calculations, however, that appear to be incontrovertible, the total
length of the Iguanodon — which differs in some parts of its struc¬
ture, the articulation of the ribs for example, from that of the
Guana — is set down by Professor Owen at twenty-eight feet ;
and when its enormous bulk and strength is recollected, this an¬
cient herbivorous dragon must have been of a size to have fitly
supplied the commissariat of the giants when they warred against
Jove.

The teeth with which this monster cut out its huge morsels from
the tough Clathrarice , and other similar rigid plants which are found
entombed with its remains, are instruments whose adaptation to
the work which they had to perform beautifully shines out upon
examination.

Professor Owen justly observes that the teeth of the Iguanodon ,
although they resemble very closely those of the Iguana , do not
present an exact magnified image of them, but differ in the greater
relative thickness of the crown, its more complicated external
surface, and still more essentially in a modification of the internal
structure, by which the Iguanodon deviated from every known

IGUANODON.

361

reptile. The structure of the teeth is fully described by the
Professor, both from ordinary and microscopical examination, in
his ‘Report;’ but our limits will not permit us to go into the
details, notwithstanding their great interest. We can only here
state, that in its first or incisive condition, the tooth presented a
sharp serrated edge, extending down each side from the point
to the broad portion of the body of the tooth ; and as this
was necessarily liable to wear away by use, a provision was made
to convert it into a molar or grinding tooth, till it was worn down
so as to become no longer available, when its place was supplied
by a new tooth. To preserve a cutting edge, there was a partial
coating of enamel, and to secure the wearing away of the tooth
in a more regular oblique plane, the dentine is rendered softer
as it recedes from the enamelled edge, by the simple contrivance
of arresting the calcifying progress, along certain tracts of the
inner wall of the tooth. When attrition had exhausted the
enamel, and the tooth became limited to its grinding function, the
ossified remnants of the pulp came into operation to add to its
molar efficiency.

Even before Professor Owen had thus laid open the internal
structure of these admirable plant-cutting and plant- crushiug
instruments, Professor Buckland was struck, from mere external
examination, with the exquisite design manifested in their con¬
formation, which he describes with his wonted felicity ; and he
shows how, while the tooth was gradually diminishing above, a
simultaneous absorption of the root went on below, caused by the
pressure of a new tooth rising to replace the old one. until, by
this continual consumption at both extremities, the middle portion
was reduced to a hollow stump, which fell from the jaw to make
room for a more efficient successor. In this last stage, he observes,
the form of the tooth had entirely changed, and the crown
had become flat, like that of worn-out human incisors, and
capable of performing imperfect mastication after the cutting
powers had diminished.

‘In this curious piece of animal mechanism,’ says Dr Buckland,
in concluding his interesting chapter on the Iguanodon, 6 we
find a varied adjustment of all parts and proportions of the
tooth, to the exercise of peculiar functions ; attended by compen¬
sations adapted to shifting conditions of the instrument, during
different stages of its consumption. And we must estimate the
works of nature by a different standard from that which we
apply to the productions of human art, if we can view such
examples of mechanical contrivance united with so much economy
of expenditure, and with such anticipated adaptations to varying
conditions in their application, without feeling a profound convic-

362

ANCIENT DEACONS.

tion that all this adjustment has resulted from design and high
intelligence.’ *

Such was the Iguanodon which once basked in the tropical
jungles of Sussex, amid extinct plants that formed its shelter
and its food. Trees there were none for such a giant to climb,
and indeed the caudal vertebras show, as Professor Owen points
out, that the tail of the Iguanodon was relatively shorter than
that of the Iguana, whilst the size and structure of the sacrum,
thigh-bone, and tibia further indicate the adaptation of the great
herbivorous saurian for terrestrial life. Neither the invention of
the herald who drew the supporters of the shield of the city of
London, ready to attack fiercely any reformer who approaches the
cockney Goshen, nor even the imagination of Retzsch, can match
this bulky monster. Truth is stranger than fiction. j*

IIYLALOSAURUS.

Another great dragon or lizard of the Weald, to which Dr
Mantell assigns the above name, was discovered by that indefati¬
gable paleontologist in Tilgate Forest. It was, at first, sup¬
posed to have been, like the Iguanodon, herbivorous ; but the
observations of Professor Owen go to prove that the jaws con¬
tained a series of true sockets, and were fitted for the thecodont or
socketed mode of attachment of tlie teeth, and thus agreed with
the carnivorous Megalosaurus. There is some doubt, moroever,
. as to the enormous dermal fringe which was supposed to have
extended along the back of the animal, analagous to that which is
seen on the modern Cjclura lizard, for reasons given by Pro¬
fessor Owen m his Report; but the existence of dermal scutes in
the Hylceosaur analogous to those in the recent crocodiles, rests
upon unequivocal testimony, and some of them may be seen still
adhering to the caudal vertebrae, decreasing in size as they
approach the end of the tail. The diameter of the largest of
these scutes which must have studded the skin of this great reptile,
was found to be not more than three inches : that of the smallest
was one inch.

But the most formidable, as well as the most remarkable of
these Old World Terrestrial Dragons, must have been the highly
carnivorous

MEGALOSAURUS.

To Dr Buckland, who first founded this extraordinary genus

* Bridgewater Treatise.

f The horn which was supposed to have projected from the snout of the
Iguanodon is one of its claw-hones, and so Proiessor Owen has noticed it.

itfEGAEOSAURUS.

363

on specimens discovered in the oolitic slate of Stonesfield, near
Oxford, we are indebted for this, in every sense of the word, great
addition to the extinct Fauna of these realms. For, although the
length of from forty to fifty feet assigned to this ancient and trucu¬
lent dragon by Cuvier and others, has shrunk before the accurate
measurements and calculations of Professor Owen to a total length
of thirty feet, its gigantic bones give evidence of an enormous bulk
which must have realized the ‘ bely greater than any tonne,’ of the
old legend; whilst its terrible jaws and trenchant teeth, which
partook of the structure of those of the crocodile and monitor,
attest its great destructive power.

As Dr Mantell found the bones of the Megalosaurus in the
Wealdean fresh-water formation of Tilgate Forest, this slashing
destroyer may have helped to keep down the great herbivorous
Iguanodons, as well as the smaller reptiles, such as crocodiles and
tortoises, whose remains are found embedded with it. Dr Buckland
also suggests that it may have taken to the water in pursuit of
Plesiosauri and fishes ; and infers from the localities whence it has
been disenterred, that it existed during the deposition of the
entire series of oolitic strata. The Iguanodon would hardly have
succumbed to the Megalosaur without resistance, and the fight
between the herbivorous and carnivorous Titans must have been a
tremendous tug of war.

Professor Owen observes, that the most authentic remains of the
Megalosaur prove it to have been closely related to the Lacertian
division of the Saurian order ; but that the teeth, the vertebrae,
and some of the bones of the extremities, indicate its affinities to
the crocodilian group ; and that all these parts manifest more or
less strongly the peculiar characters of its own remarkable family.
In the instructive and characteristic portion of the lower jaw, he
remarks, the sockets, like the teeth, are compressed, and are sepa¬
rated by complete partitions ; but they are so much wider than the
teeth as to suggest the existence of a greater portion of ligamen¬
tous gum at the upper part of the alveolar tract in the recent
animal than in the crocodiles. There is, he remarks, a slight
groove and ridge along the inner side of the sockets, and it is at
this groove, at the interspace of each triangular plate, that the
points of the new teeth, which are to supply the place of the old
ones broken or blunted by slaughter, protrude.

The crowns of these destructive implements were compressed,
conical, and pointed, double-edged, and serrated on both the ante¬
rior and posterior edges. Straight at their first profusion, they
afterwards became slightly curved, or sabre-shaped, as they grew,
and were covered with a fine polished enamel. In the dentition,
the Megalosaur approaches nearest, in Professor Owen’s opinion,

364

ANCIENT DRAGONS.

to the Yaranian family, which at present includes the largest and
most carnivorous species of lizard properly so called.

Now let us hear Dr Buckland on the teeth. He points out
that in their structure we find a combination of mechanical contri¬
vances, analagous to those which are adopted in the construction of
the knife, the sabre, and the saw.

When first protruded above the gum, the apex of each tooth
presented a double-cutting edge of serrated enamel. In this stage
its position and line of action were nearly vertical, and its form
like that of the two-edged point of a sabre, cutting equally on
each side. As the tooth advanced in growth, it became curved
backwards in the form of a pruning-knife, and the edge of ser¬
rated enamel was continued downwards to the base of the inner
and cutting side of the tooth ; whilst, on the outer side, a similar
edge descended, but to a short distance from the point, and the
convex portion of the tooth became blunt and thick, as the back
of a knife is made thick for the purpose of producing strength
The strength of the tooth was further increased by the expansion
of its sides. Had the serrature continued along the whole of the
blunt and convex portion of the tooth, it would, in this position,
have possessed no useful cutting power ; it ceased precisely at the
point beyond which it could no longer be effective. In a tooth
thus formed for cutting along its concave edge, each movement
of the jaw combined the power of the knife and saw ; whilst the
apex, in making the first incision, acted like the two-edged point
of a sabre. The backward curvature of the full-grown teeth,
enabled them to retain, like barbs, the prey which they had pene¬
trated. In these adaptations we see contrivances, which human
ingenuity has also adopted, in the preparations of various instru¬
ments of art.*

But it may be asked, how is this ingenuity in the formation of
cruel instruments expressly formed for inflicting pain, and dealing
destruction and death, reconcilable with the mercy attributed to
the Creator, who manifests in the structure of the lowest of his
creatures the best adaptations to its wants and pleasures? The
querist will be best answered by the thirteenth chapter of Dr
Buckland’s ‘ Bridgewater Treatise,’ wherein he proposes to show
that the aggregate of animal enjoyment is increased, and that
of pain diminished by the existence of carnivorous races. In
reading that eloquent chapter, let him keep these points steadily
in view, first, that it was written with reference to the lower
animals ; next, that man is the only animal that knows he is to
die , thirdly, that there is room in the world for only a certain

* Bridgewater Treatise.

MEGALOSAUIiUS.

3G5

amount of enjoyable animal existence ; and he will find that what
at first sight appears to be ‘a scene of perpetual warfare and
incessant carnage,’ is in reality a system of the most enlarged
benevolence. We can only find room for the following para¬
graph :

‘ The law of universal mortality being the established condition
on which it has pleased the Creator to give being to every creature
upon earth, it is a dispensation of kindness to make the end of life
to each individual as easy as possible. The most easy death is,
proverbially, that which is the least expected; and though, for
moral reasons peculiar to our own species, we deprecate the sudden
termination of our mortal life; yet, in the case of every inferior
animal, such a termination of existence is obviously the most
desirable. The pains of sickness and decrepitude of age are the
usual precursors of death, resulting from gradual decay. These
in the human race alone, are susceptible of alleviation from internal
sources of hope and consolation, and give exercise to some of the
highest charities and most tender sympathies of humanity. But,
throughout the whole creation of inferior animals, no such sym¬
pathies exist; there is no affection or regard for the feeble and
aged : no alleviating care to relieve the sick ; and the extension
of life through lingering stages of decay and of old age, would, to
each individual, be a scene of protracted misery. Under such a
system, the natural world would present a mass of daily suffering,
bearing a large proportion to the total amount of animal enjoy¬
ment. By the existing dispensations of sudden destruction and
rapid succession, the feeble and disabled are speedily relieved from
suffering, and the world is at all times crowded with myriads of
sentient and happy beings ; and though to many individuals their
allotted share of life is often short, it is usually a period of unin¬
terrupted gratification ; whilst the momentary pain of sudden and
unexpected death is an evil infinitely small, in comparison with the
enjoyments of which it is the termination.’

This being granted, the more efficient the weapon of destruction
is, the less will the suffering of the individual be. The wish of
the honest host in c Marmion’ was, after all, not an uncharitable
one:

‘ Gramercy, gentle southern squire,

And if thou com’st among the rest,

With Scottish hroad-sword to he hlest.

Sharp he the brand and sure the blow.

And short the pang to undergo.’

How many of our noble sufferers in those dark days, when the
laws may truly be said to have been written in blood, have felt the
edge of the axe that was to dismiss them to their account ? One

366

ANCIENT DRAGONS.

of the last who resorted to this test was Lord Balmerino ; but in
liis case, it unexpectedly brought additional suffering; for the
unaffected gallant bearing of the man completely unnerved the
executioner, and a scene ensued which every lover of his country
ivould wish to veil. That scene took place one hundred years
ago, wanting three. What changes have since taken place in the
spirit of our punishment! how much butchery has been swept
away, never again, we trust, to defile this land !

October, 1843.

ANCIENT FLYING DRAGONS.

‘ Their earth is gone for ever —

So changed by its convulsion, they would not
Be concious to a single present spot.’

Byron.

In the remote ages of the earth, when the forms which we have
already attempted to lay before our readers were among the
highest of created beings, the reptilian appears to have been
nature’s pet type, and she seems to have revelled in modifying it
for progression in the sea, by land and water, on land, and through
the air —

— ‘ To fly, to swim,’
at her 4 strong bidding.’

But before we enter upon the description of the Pterosauria or
winged Saurians, it will be necessary briefly to notice some other
old dragon forms of whose relics, although few and rare, sufficient
remain to show to what class they belonged.

Such, in the natural order Lacertilia , are the teeth of the
Leiodon from the chalk of Norfolk, making the nearest approach
to those of the Mosasaur; and the small Baphiosaurus of the
chalk formations near Cambridge, affording another instance of the
‘ proccelian’ type of vertebras, or those with the anterior cup and
posterior ball. It is worthy of remark that Professor Owen, to
whom geologists are so much indebted for the notice of these
genera, had not met with any instance of a reptile agreeing with
the existing species in this structure below the chalk.

To the same order is to be referred a Pleurodont lizard from the
Eocene sand underlying the Red Crag at Kyson or Kingston,
in Suffolk, about the size of a Guana; a small Scincoid lizard
from the Stonesfield Oolite ; and the rare Rhynchosaurus from the
new red sandstone near Shrewsbury.

Professor Owen observes that the general aspect of the skull
in this last form differs from that of existing Lacertians, and

3G8

ANCIENT FLYING DRAGONS.

resembles that of a bird or a turtle, which resemblance is increased
by the apparent absence of teeth. The intermaxillary bones,
moreover, are double, as in crocodiles and chelonians, but, with
this exception, all the essential characters of the cranium are those
of the lizard. Of this small but interesting Saurian the same
palaeontologist further remarks that there are few genera of
extinct reptiles with regard to which it is more desirable to obtain
the means of determining the precise modifications of the locomo¬
tive extremities, than in the Rhynchosaur. The fortunate preserva¬
tion of the skull, he adds, has brought to light modifications of the
Lacertian structure, leading towards chelonians or turtles and
birds, which before were unknown; while the vertebrae likewise
exhibit very interesting deviations from the Lacertian type.

Then there were certain Thecodonts ; and as the terms ‘ Theco¬
dont,’ and ‘ Pleurodont,’ may not be familiar to some of our
friends, we shall endeavour to explain them shortly to those who
may desire the information.

A pleurodont lizard, then, is one whose teeth are attached to
the bottom of an alveolar groove, and supported by the side-wall
of that groove ; but Professor Owen has so luminously and con¬
cisely defined the Acrodont, Pleurodont, and Thecodont Saurians,
that we shall give the definition in his own words.

‘ Among the inferior or squamate saurians there are two lead¬
ing modifications in the mode of attachment of the teeth, the base
of which may be either anchylosed to the summit of an alveolar
ridge, or to the bottom of an alveolar groove^ and supported by
the lateral wall. These modifications are indicated respectively
by the terms “ acrodont” and “ pleurodont.” A third mode of fixa¬
tion is presented by some extinct Saurians, which in other parts
of their organization adhere to the squamate or Lacertine division
of the order, the teeth being implanted in sockets, either loosely
or confluent with the loose walls of the cavity . these I have
termed the “thecodont” Lacertians^ the most ancient of all
Saurians belong to this group.’*

To this tribe belongs the Thecodontosaurus of Dr Riley and
Mr Stutchbury, from the dolomitic conglomerate of Redland near
Bristol; the Palceosciurus of the same zoologists from the same
formation ; and the Cladyodon of Professor Owen, who, among the
sauria incertcc sedis, places the large Polyptychodon from the Kentish
rag-quarries (lower green sand) near Maidstone, whose teeth — one
of which, in the possession of Mr Benstead in that town, is three
inches long, and one inch four lines across the base, — in size and
general form resemble those of the great sauroid fish Hypsodon , of
Agassiz.

* Report on British Fossil Reptiles.

PTEROSAURIANS.

oGD

Here also must be arranged an unnamed gigantic fossil saurian
from the lower green-sand at Hythe, whose remains were discovered
by Mr Mackeson of that place. This Saurian, in Professor Owen’s
opinion, was mariue ; but most probably of the crocodilian order ;
and as enormous in its dimensions as the Pohjptychodon and the
Cetiosaurus. The last thecodont saurian noticed by Professor
Owen is his genus Pysosteus, from the bone-bed of Aust Passage,
near Bristol, and from that of West Cliff on the Severn, eight miles
from Gloucester.

We now turn our attention to the

PTEROSAU RIANS

comprised in the genus Pterodactylus of Cuvier, of which he truly
says that of all the forms whose ancient existence has been revealed
to us, these flying reptiles are incontestably the most extraordinary,
and -such as, if living, would appear most at variance with any
animal now endowed with life.

For these ancient flying dragons did not sustain themselves in
the air by means of their ribs, like those which now skim from
tree to tree in India ; nor by a wing like that of a bird ; no, nor by
one like that of a bat ; but by a membrane, upheld principally on
a very elongated finger, whilst the other fingers preserved their
ordinary dimensions and their claws. With this extent of wing
the Pterodactyle presented the likeness of the bill of a bird, placed
upon a long neck. Well may Cuvier declare that to those who
had not followed out the details of its structure, a representation
of the animal as it formerly breathed and moved would appear
more like the offspring of a disordered imagination than of the
ordinary powers of nature.

But a word or two will be expected relative to existing flying
dragons.

He who would read of the dragons of ‘ Mooren-Landt,’ and
of the audacity of Juba in writing that dragons have a feathered
crest upon their head, when no man could be brought forward
able to state with truth that he had ever seen a dragon with a
plumed crest, although they have an ornament on their heads ; —
how they congregate, linking themselves together in groups of
four or five, erect their heads to catch the gale, and so swim or
sail across the sea to Arabia, a ghastly crew, for improved change
of pasture ; — how the herb Palis will restore a man poisoned by a
dragon, and even bring a dead dragon to life, with much more
dragon-lore ; — may consult Pliny’s Natural History, and a curious

ANCIENT FLYING DRAGONS.

OTA
O ( U

Dutch work published at Amsterdam in 1662,* where many of the
ancient stories are collected, and very interesting zoological in¬
formation of more modern date is to be found. In this book are
figures of both the fabulous and existing flying dragons, the first
under the name of Draeck and the second under that of Boom-
draeck.

Bontius, whose observations were collected and published by Biso
in his folio work ‘De Indice utri usque re naturali et medica’ (1G58),
was one of t-lie first to reduce the fabulous accounts of dragons to
something like their proper dimensions. Here the Draco volans of
Linnaeus is figured in a rough cut, bearing no bad resemblance,
considering the state of wood engraving at the time, to the animal-
The chapter is headed

Lacerlus volans , sen Dracunculus alatus

Aera pervolitans junxisse Medea Dracones
Dicitur : e Java num tulit has volucres ?

and ire are informed that this is the dragon described by Belorp
noticed in a former chapter of this sketch, but that Bontius had
found it necessary to describe it a little more accurately, inasmuch
as he had seen it not only dead, but alive ‘here in Java,’ where lie
practised physic.

He observes that Belon has figured this ‘insect’ as a biped,
whereas it is a quadruped, and he proceeds to give a good account
of its form, colours, and habits, and to relate how these dragons-
pass ‘cum stridore’ from tree to tree, when the distance is as much
as twenty and even thirty paces, as' the flying fishes, called aquatic
swallows by Gesner, are said to raise themselves from the water for
a short time. Bontius adds, that he has not ascertained whether
these lizards are poisonous, but that the Javanese deny that they
are so, and handle them like other lizards with impunity. Their
food, he says, consists of flies, ants, and other small insects ; and
lie notices them as frequent in the woods of Java, where they
become a prey to ‘ greater serpents,’ quoting the well-known and
bitterly true ‘Homo homini Lupus,’ of Plautus, as a justification of
the proceeding.

It was the old belief, that whenever a serpent devoured a
serpent, a dragon was produced; nay, that this was the only
operation by which a serpent could be promoted to dragon’s
estate.

We have in a former chapter observed, that no collection of
curiosities was anciently considered worthy of much attention, if
it did not include a dragon; and as even the rudest people

* C. Plinii Secundi des wiidt-vermaerden Natuurkondigers, &c. &c.

THE CELEBRATED HAMBURG DRAGON.

371

quickly perceive what collecting travellers want, and as speedily
furnish them with their desiderata , it is no subject for wonder that
the more civilized fabricators of rarities exercised their ingenuity
in supplying the cabinets of the curious with the much-coveted
monster.

If any one wishes to see what the celebrated Hamburg dragon
was like, he will find it figured by Seba (1734) in the hundred and
second plate of his first volume. It was seven-headed, biped, and
wingless — in short, purporting to be one of the hydros to which
we have before alluded ; and it may not be uninteresting to some of
our readers to learn what Seba says of it.

Seba then calls the attention of his readers to the large engraving
which extends across two folio pages, as that of an animal which
jiasses for a serpent with seven heads. He states that a stranger
who did him the honour to visit his cabinet of natural curiosities,
first gave him a figure of it, saying, that he had seen the animal at
Hamburg — that it resembled a serpent with seven uplifted heads,
each having the month open, and armed with great and small teeth
— That it had only two feet and a long tail — so that, although it
passed for a serpent with seven heads, it approached nearer to a
dragon then a serpent.

‘ I avow,’ remarks Seba, ‘ that this story appeared to me very
paradoxical, and to be nearer to fable than truth.’

But Seba goes on to state that M. F. Eibsen, a minister of the
gospel at Wursten, in the duchy of Bremen, coming one day to see
his cabinet, gave him the same account of this Hydra, and promised
to procure for him a drawing of the animal, which the clergyman
could easily effect, as he was connected with MM. Dryern
and Hambel, the Hamburg merchants, who were the possessors
of it. He said that it had first belonged to Count Koningsmarck ;
and that, after his death, it had been inherited by Count
Leeuwenhaupt.

Seba then relates that, as he had heard that this specimen was
for sale for ten thousand florins — a statement which M. Eibsen
confirmed — the magnitude of the sum re-awakened his desire to
have a faithful portrait of it. M. Eibsen kept his word, and ob¬
tained for Seba the co'py which he wished for.

Seba, however, still incredulous, wrote to his friend M. John
Frederick Natorp, of Hamburg, who was very curious in natural
history, had seen this same Hydra, and assured Seba that it was no
work of art, but truly that of Nature. This friend, at Seba’s re¬
quest, sent him a drawing of the natural size, very well coloured;
and from this last Seba’s engraving was made.

Now for Seba’s description of the monster:

It was of a bay-brown colour, shaded with ashy gray. Its back

ANCIENT FLYING DRAGONS.

372

was uneven and rugged. On each of its sides were six large
tubercles, which were oblong, and hard as horn, under which row
seven other tubercles, which were round, and of the same nature,
were arranged along the sides from the feet to the tail. The skin
of the whole of the trunk, as well as that of the seven heads, was
without any scales, and of a colour approaching to chestnut, and
marbled. The seven necks were encircled in front, as it were, by
rings placed across them. All the seven mouths were equally
open, and armed with teeth like those of a lion. Its long tail was
entirely covered with rhomboidal scales. Each foot — there were
but two — terminated in four toes, each toe being furnished with a
long and pointed claw.

There can be little doubt that the publication of this figure in
such a work as that of Seba, who gives two very fair representa¬
tions of the Draco volans now existing — one on the same page with
the Hydra — must have added greatly to the fame of the dragon
possessed by MM. Dryern and Hambel. Still no collector, even in
that Tulipomaniacal country seems to have screwed his courage to
their price.

One fine day, in walked a quiet foreigner, with a sparkling eye,
to whom the precious specimen was shown with the half-concealed
exultation of those who are wrapped in the comfortable certainty
that they possess 4 a gem ’ which is unique.

The foreigner was Linnaeus, who was asked ‘ What he thought
of that V

The great naturalist carefully examined the dragon, and appeared
to the surrounding circle to be lost in admiration — for the question
was repeated. He declared that it ivas wonderful, very, — and a most
ingenious combination of snake-skins, teeth of weasels, claws of
birds, etc. etc. etc.

The owners were probably saved by their wrath and fond
credulity, from dying on the spot, and by their wholesome dread
of a public sudden death, from executing summary vengeance on
the acute Swede. Clinging, however, to the belief that their lion,
their treasure, their time-honoured Hydra was genuine, Linnoeus
was threatened with a prosecution for injuring their property;
and it is said that he left Hamburg as soon as he could, to avoid
their ire.

It must have been a great shock and a sore trial : — a real
dragon — all others of course counterfeits — worth ten thousand
florins, changed in a moment, at the keen glance of the Knight of the
Polar Star, to a worthless, fraudulent thing c of shreds and patches.’

This sort of ingenuity, no longer finding employment in the
creation of dragons, has, of late, solaced itself in the manufacture
of mermaids.

EXISTING FLYING DRAGONS.

oiO

But to return to our real, existing flying dragons.

The harmless lizards of the genus Draco are insignificant in
size, not being more than nine or ten inches, or a foot in
length, the tail being long in proportion to the body. The
aspect of the head is singular, and beneath the throat is a
large pouch; so that Cuvier gives a good notion of the animal
when he remarks, that the dragons are endowed with the head
and teeth of the Stellio lizards, and the scales and gular
pouch of the Iguanas. The neck is not large, and the
body and limbs are rather slender. The four feet are each
furnished with five toes, armed with sharp nails. The species
vary in colour : that of Draco volans is pale blue, or bluish gray,
with several dusky-waved markings above. The wings are bor¬
dered with white, and spotted with black, deep brown, and white,
so as to produce a not inelegant pattern. Beneath, this dragon is
pale or whitish brown.

The ribs in the ordinary serpents, especially in the boas and
pythons, are so articulated as to become active instruments of
terrestrial progression. In the existing dragons, this part of the
skeleton is also made subservient to locomotion ; but in a very
different way. Instead of being numerous and comparatively stout
and curved, they are few in number, very much elongated, and
slender, presenting, when advanced to a right angle with the spine,
a graduated appearance, the first being the longest, and the last
very much shorter. On these ribs, as on the whalebones of an
umbrella, the membranes of the wings are sustained ; and when the
dragon wishes to put them in action, the muscles bring the ribs
forward and unfurl the wings, so to speak, which then become
expanded, and uphold the dragon in the air as it proceeds from
tree to tree, or whither its inclination leads it.

There appears to be scarcely any of that motion with which the
wing of the bird or the bat is endowed, for the purpose of progres¬
sion, by beating the air with a succession of strokes, if any at all, so
that the apparatus may be considered as merely a natural parachute,
expansible at the will of the animal.

Very different were the flying dragons of the Age of Reptiles ;
nor can we be surprised that an animal like the Pterodactyle,
whose remains presented such a variety of contradictions should
have caused some difference of opinions among naturalists, before
the penetrating eye of Cuvier cleared away the clouds that sur¬
rounded it, and reduced the darkness and apparent confusion to
fight and harmony.

Collini, a Florentine man of letters, director of the cabinet of
the Elector Palatine, at Manheim, and well known from his
memoirs of Yoltaire, to whom he was for some time attached,

374 ANCIENT FLYING DItAGONS.

first drew public attention to the large and long-beaked species,*
which had been found in the lithographic Jurassic limestone of
Aichstadt, a formation abounding in animal exuviae, such as those
of fishes, crustaceans, insects, and mollusks. These remains
appeared to Collini to belong to an animal so heteroclite, that he
long hesitated under what class to arrange it. He justly declared
that it was neither a bird nor a bat, doubted whether it might not
be an amphibian, and finished by the conclusion that its place was
to be sought among marine animals.

Professor Hermann of Strasburg was of opinion that it was a
mammiferous animal, and, after long consideration, produced a
restoration of the creature, with a hairy covering, believing that he
had fixed its position as an intermediate species between the bats
and the birds. lie was greatly strengthened in this belief by
Sommering, an authority of no small weight, from the deserved
respect in which the latter was held, and who, notwithstanding the
appearance of Cuvier’s memoir — another wonderful instance of the
acuteness of that great man, for he had never seen the specimen,
and Collini’s figure and description were his only materials — arranged
the form among the mammals, in the vicinity of the bats. Now
Sommering had seen the specimen, and Cuvier’s remarks indicating
its true and reptilian character, reached him just as he was going
to press with his dissertation, which was read to the academy at
Munich in 1810 ; but instead of opening his eyes at the just reason¬
ing of Cuvier, Sommering set himself to oppose, and vainly attempt
to destroy the arguments of the great French zoologist.

Blumenbacli, in 1807, had referred the puzzling fossil to the
aquatic web-footed birds, with less reason even than that which
led Sommering to consider the animal mammiferous ; for, as Cuvier
succinctly observes, the teeth on the bill of the Mergansers or
Goosanders do not go beyond the horny sheath, and are not to be
seen on the bone of the bill.

Cuvier returned to the charge, recapitulating more explicitly his
arguments in favour of the reptilian condition of the animal, and
had now an ally in Oken, who had inspected the fossil, and pub¬
lished Ins memoir in the ‘Isis’ of 1810, explaining his reasons for
concluding that it was a reptile.

Not to weary our readers with the controversy, it will be suffi¬
cient to state that Cuvier, as usual, was right, and that not the
most distant doubt is now entertained that the Pterodactyle was
a reptile. Professor Owen .well observes that the term Ornitho-
cephalus , originally imposed by Sommering on the genus Ptero-
dactijlus of Cuvier, the type of the distinct order of Pterosauria ,

* Pteroclactylus longirostvis.

PTERODACTYLES.

375

would be much more applicable to the PJujnchosaurus ; for
although a more striking approach to the class of birds is made
by the pectoral extremity, which endowed the Pterodactyle with
the power of flight, it is, the professor observes, precisely in the
structure of the cranium that it adheres most closely to the
Saurian type of structure.

Dr Buckland accounts for the discordance of opinion above
noticed, respecting the nature of a creature whose fossil skeleton
was almost entire, by alluding to the presence of characters in it,
apparently belonging to each of the three classes to which it was
referred. There were the birdlike neck and head, the wing
approaching in form and proportion to that of the bat, and a
body and tail approximating to that of the mammal.

‘ These characters,’ says Dr Buckland, 4 connected with the
small skull, as is usual among reptiles, and a beak furnished with
not less than sixty pointed teeth, presented a combination of
apparent anomalies which it was reserved for the genius of Cuvier
to reconcile. In his hands, this apparently monstrous produc¬
tion of the ancient world, has been converted into one of the
most beautiful examples ever afforded by comparative anatomy of
the harmony that prevades all nature in the adaptation of the
same parts of the animal frame, to infinitely varied conditions of
existence.’*

Although the cervical vertebra} of the Pterodactyles were
lengthened in form, their number falls short of that of birds. Not
more than six or seven have been found in the extinct flying
Saurians, whilst they are numerous in the plumed bipeds ; the
neck of the swan consists of no less than twenty-three. The thin
slender lizardlike ribs of the Pterodactyle from a strong contrast to
the flat and broad costal apparatus of birds ; and in the pelvic
bones of the extinct Saurian, the lacertian type is followed. The
metatarsal bones of the foot are distinct in the Pterodactyle, but
consolidated in the bird.

It is in the bones of the forefoot, however, that the modification
of the reptile for the medium in which it was sustained, is most
striking. There is no difference in the number, and but little in
proportion between the bones of a living lizard’s forefoot, and
those of a Pterodactyle’s anterior or pectoral extremity ; but the
latter are so arranged as to fit them for expanding the mem¬
branous wing which was to enable that strange-looking dragon
to steer its flight through the heavy atmosphere,

Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air,

an operation which its low organization, and comparatively weak

* Bridgewater Treatise

37G

ANCIENT FLYING DRAGONS.

muscular irritability, would have rendered far more difficult in
the rarer and purer fluid that now surrounds our earth. This
wing differed much in the arrangement of its bones from that of
the bat.

The eye of the Pterodactyle was very large, and the animal
was probably noctivagous as well as diurnal.

Of these anomalous creatures no less than seven species have
been described and named ; nor is there reason for doubting that
more remain to be discovered : an eighth undescribed species has
been found at Stonesfield. Two of these are British, both brought
to notice by Dr Buckland ; and the most perfect of these, the head
of which, however, is wanting, is the Pterodactylus macronyx ,
Buckl., from Lyme Regis in Dorsetshire.

Dr Buckland is of opinion that these Pterodactyles did not sus¬
pend themselves, when at rest, with their heads downward, like the
bats : but he relies on the size and form of the thigh, leg, and foot,
for the inference that they had the power of standing firmly on the
ground, (where they possibly move with folded wings, after the
manner of birds,) and of perching on trees, and climbing on rocks
and cliffs, by the joint aid of their anterior and posterior extremi¬
ties, like bats and lizards.

With submission to an authority worthy of the greatest
respect, we cannot subscribe to the whole of this inference. The
smallness and weakness of the pelvis forbids us to agree with Dr
Buckland, when he infers that the Pterodactyle stood firmly on the
ground, and probably moved thereon with folded wings, after the
fashion of a bird. The hooks on the anterior extremities
would not only have enabled this Saurian to suspend itself when it
wished to rest, but to drag itself along prone on the earth, on which
the structure of the pelvic organization forbade it to walk like a
bird.

A careful examination of the whole osseous fabric conducts us
to the conclusion that the Pterodactyle shuffled along upon the
ground, after the manner of a bat, and scuttled through the
water when it had occasion to swim ; nor do we see why it might
not, when at rest, have suspended itself by the hind legs, like the
volatile quadruped. The general colour of the body was probably
lurid, and the texture of the skin shagreen-like, resembling in
some degree the external tegument of a chameleon or guana,
excepting the smooth membrane of the wing.

Insects, such as the large fossil dragon-flies ( Libellulce ), dis¬
interred with them from the Solenhofen quarries, and Cole op ter a,
whose elytra are found with the bones of the Stonesfield species
in the oolitic slate there, contributed, doubtless, to their food;
but Dr Buckland well observes that the head and teeth of some

CONCLUSION.

377

species are so much larger and stronger than would be required
for insect capture, that the greater Pterodactyles may possibly
have fed on fishes, darting upon them from the air, after the
manner of Terns or Solan geese. The enormous size and strength
of the head and teeth of Pterodcictylus crassirostris , he adds,
would not only have enabled it to catch fish, but also to kill and
devour the few small marsupial animals which then existed upon
land.

Such were the heteroclite animals to which nothing modern
can in the slightest approach be comparable, except, perhaps, the
pictorial dragons of a Chinese screen ; and such, in all probability,
were their habits when thousands of years ago they flitted heavily
above

‘ The pois’nous fields with rank luxuriance crown’d,’

where the wholesome air now refreshes the well-cultivated land
white to harvest, and the healthy civilized race of men, whose holy
and happy day of rest is announced by the Sabbath bell.

If the ploughshare, brightened by the fertile soil which it now
divides, brings before us, when it turns up from the furrow some
ancient Italian coin, the march of the Roman legions over our hills,
plains, and valleys, what visions does the petrified bone of one of
these Preadamite Saurians call forth !

Look at the reptilian relic in the stone which helps to form
that cottage wall. As we gaze, the wall disappears ; and, to the
mind’s eye, its place is occupied by a vast sea, which, when
circulation animated that bone, covered its site. Through the
waters of this sea, Ichthyosaurs, Plesiosaurs, Mosasaurs, and
Cetiosaurs dart, swim, and gambol. If we turn landward, the
sluggish river, the marshy jungle and the dreary plain seem peopled
by ancient Crocodilians, Iguanodons and Megalosaurs, while
Pterodactyles appear to hover in the murky atmosphere of the old
dragon times.

Now, how changed the scene! Instead of animals of a low
grade of organization, which then were the highest and predominant
forms, the most elaborate and perfect of the animated works of the
Creator abound.

Pterodactyles have been succeeded by birds — Ichthyosaurs,
Plesiosaurs, Mosasaurs, and the like, by whales, dolphins, and
great fishes. "Where the herbivorous Iguanodon revelled, the ox,
the deer, and the sheep, quietly crop the fragrant herbage ; whilst
in place of the destructive Megalosaur, the carnivorous mam¬
malia keep down the excessive multiplication of the ruminants;
and MAN has the dominion over all. In future ages his remains

373

ANCIENT FLYING DRAGONS

will fill the bosom of the earth ; and the traveller in some far
distant century will feel the full force of Byron’s lines wherever he
Gets his foot : —

Stop!— for thy tread is on an Empire’s dust!
An Earthquake’s spoil is sepulchred below!

POSTSCRIPT.

Since the publication of the first edition of this book, poor Jack
has sunk under a complication of diseases. His demise was thus
noticed in the Observer of the 13th June, 1847 :

4 DEATH OF AN ELEPHANT.

‘ The habitual visitors of the Zoological Gardens in the
Regent’s Park, will learn, with regret, that their old friend, the
elephant, known by the familiar name of “ Jack,” departed this
life on Sunday morning last, after a short illness. During the
last few weeks preceding his dissolution, the health of the poor
brute had been rapidly deteriorating. On Friday, the 5th inst.,
the skin under the lower jaw cracked, and a copious effusion of
blood took place. This was the reason which determined the
authorities of the garden to keep poor Jack in solitary confine¬
ment, but he did not long survive his seclusion. On Sunday
morning he sunk back upon his haunches, with his fore-legs
extended before him, and remained in this motionless posture
for about two hours, when at half past seven o’clock, his trunk
dropped to the ground, and he expired without making any
further movement. He did not fall over, but stiffened in the
upright position in which he lay, not even his head sinking.
The probable cause of Jack’s death, was a disease provoked by
his great weight, and aggravated by the want of sufficient exer¬
cise, in that part of his fore-legs situated beffiw the knee. This
was productive of excessive irritation, which affected the nervous
system generally. His sufferings were terminated by a stroke of
apoplexy. A large abscess had formed under the lower jaw, of
itself quite sufficient to cause death. Thus terminated the

880

POSTSCRIPT.

career of poor Jack, whose amusing tricks and docile manner-
had rendered him everybody’s favourite. His mangled remains
are distributed amongst the medical professors resident in the
metropolis, the larger having been assigned to the College of
Surgeons, the Veterinary College, and the King’s College. It is
expected that the sale of the skin will realize a considerable sum ;
and an attempt will be made to recover the dispersed fragments
of the skeleton. The loss of this fine specimen of the elephantine
tribe must prove a very serious one to the Zoological Society,
and can scarcely be replaced for a less sum than £800 or £1000.
The height of the elephant was between twelve and fourteen
feet.’

I find, among my papers, the following note :

4 The last time I saw poor Jack alive, was on Whit-Sunday 1847,
when I had the honour of attending His Imperial Highness the
Grand Duke Constantine of Russia in his walk over the garden, in
company with Sir Roderick Murchison, Professor Owen, and the
Grand Duke’s suite.

4 The elephant was miserably fallen away, and stood, as he
had long previously remained, supporting himself by laying his
huge trunk along the bar that fronted his apartment. He was
evidently suffering much, and the keeper warned me not to go
near, his temper having become ferocious. I knew him well,
however, and ventured to approach ; and he threw up his trunk
and showed his molar teeth in his open mouth at my usual signal.
I had nothing to give him but bran, and that he took from my
hand.

4 After his death, when the operation of skinning was going
on, the sight was disgusting enough. The skinners, in the obscure
light of the den, looked like vultures on the huge bloody mass.
Professor Owen was desirous of securing the brain entire, and had
given his directions accordingly ; but his aids, though skilful, met
with difficulties, and were obliged to send for him. There had
been great inflammation of the brain. The dura mater adhered
to the pia mater, and this last to the brain. In the Professor’s
endeavour to extract the brain, he was wounded in the left hand
in two places by spicula of bone. Mr Cooper (of Tenterden Street)
cauterized the worst wound. His friends were uneasy, remem¬
bering the recent melancholy death of Mr Potter, of University
College Hospital, who long lingered, and at last sank, in conse¬
quence of the absorption of deleterious matter, in extracting
the pelvis of a diseased subject (abscess) with an abrasion of the
skin of the hand. Professor Owen had the dangerous symptom
of pain up the arm; but when I saw him on Thursday even-

rOSTSClllPT.

381

ing that pain had left him, and he was only suffering from
the pain of the cauterized wound. In the throat of the elephant
was an abscess a foot deep. The Professor told me that the
heat of the body was very great, the chemical heat having
immediately succeeded the animal heat/

To this, I have only to add that, to the great joy of his many
friends, the Professor entirely recovered from his perilous wound;
and that I have obtained from the intelligent keepers of the animals
kept in the garden of the Zoological Society of London, the follow¬
ing information relative to the elephant.

After he became ill, and suffered from the disease of the joint of
the fore-leg, poor Jack remained on his legs till within two hours
of his death. In the summer of 1846, he rolled in the mud in tho
paddock two or three times ; but he had not lain down to rest for
two years, dating from March, 1847. About midsummer, 1846,
he ‘fell off in his appetite,’ to use the keeper’s expression; and
for the last six months of his life had not taken more than half
of his usual allowance. His temper was not altered by his illness
until he was unable to move about, and then a marked change for
the worse took place. There must be some mistake in the mea¬
surement given in the Observer ; for the keeper informs me, that
when he was last measured (in June, 1846) his height was nine
feet three inches; and he could hardly have gained such an
addition in two years, and while under the pressure of disease.
The age of poor Jack was, it is supposed, about forty years.*

W. J. B.

31st January, 1848.

With reference to the note relative to the alleged absence of the
nightingale from Wales, (p. 64) I have been favoured with the
following interesting narrative, written to my friend, William Pyle
Taunton, Esq., of Ashridge. in the county of Hants, by Mr
and Mrs Storey Maskelyne, both good observers, and blest with
accurate ears for bird-music.

Mr Storey Maskelyne thus writes to Mr Taunton on the 31st
of March in the present year : — c Whether the nightingales
accompanied us into Wales from their favourite shady coverts
here (Basset Down House, near Wroughton, Swindon, Wilts),
and tuned their nocturnal note solely for us, I will not decide, but

* At p. 260, tlie age of Jack is stated as thirty- three years ; and such it
was when the account was written. The falling off in the height, stated as
about nine feet six inches, at p. 259, may have been the result of illness.

382

POSTSCRIPT.

our neighbours among the Welsh never confessed to hearing
them.

‘Having much business at the time alluded to on our hands,
we generally retired late to bed : it was generally at a matutinal
hour rather than before midnight. As we were pretty well
crowded in our cottage, I always kept a skylight open till we
went to bed, when it was secured the last thing. One night,
or rather morning, to my infinite delight, I heard the notes of our
Basset-Down favourite ! I shut down the skylight, but opened
our bed-room window, and we enjoyed beyond expression on that,
and on many a subsequent night, the delicious harmony of these
birds. We could not be mistaken.’

Mrs Storey Maskelyne writes to Mr Taunton,* on the oth of
April, in the present year, thus — ‘Your letter has been forwarded
to me here, and I lose no time in giving you the information
you require on the subject of our favourite bird’s visits to the
principality. The Welsh say the nightingale never passes the
Bulch Hill. This I doubt, as we certainly frequently heard a
song so lovely and varied, it could be no other than the ‘ most
musical, most melancholy’ songstress of the night. We were
frequently late, between eleven and twelve, and then we heard
the singing. Being acquainted with the note, we could distin¬
guish it in the day-time, and have frequently detected the bird by
its song in one of the woods by our house at Glanwysk, where a
walk goes round the wood on the hill, so there was no doubt of
the locality of it. I also heard it in other places. The situation
was near the confluence of the Usk and the Senny, in the parish of
Devynnock. The singing was not confined to one season; we
heard it several years : and I make no doubt, were I there now,
this warm weather would be propitious to our having the same
treat again.’

May, 18-18.

* Another ok! ai d valued friend whose loss the author has to deplore
(1857).

CO

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