Chapter VIII: Part 8

The time must be coming, when every farmer or peasant will be allowed to shoot hares. It is surely cruel to imprison or fine a man for shooting and shouldering a hare. Having lately traversed a goodly part of the Perthshire Highlands, we were struck with the numbers of Arctic hares that scudded away out of our path. What a fine help one of them would be to a poor family.

S. BISSET AND HIS TRAINED HARE AND TURTLE.

S. Bisset, whose training of other animals is elsewhere recorded, like the poet Cowper, procured a leveret, and reared it to beat several marches on the drum with its hind legs, until it became a good stout hare. This creature, which is always set down as the most timid, he declared to be as mischievous and bold an animal, to the extent of its power, as any with which he was acquainted. He taught canary-birds, linnets, and sparrows, to spell the name of any person in company, to distinguish the hour and minute of time, and play many other surprising tricks. He trained six turkey-cocks to go through a regular country dance; but in doing this he confessed he adopted the eastern method, by which camels are made to dance, by heating the floor. In the course of six months' teaching, he made a turtle fetch and carry like a dog; and having chalked the floor, and blackened its claws, could direct it to trace out any given name of the company.[179]

A FAMILY OF RABBITS ALL BLIND OF ONE EYE.

Lady Anne Barnard, in her Cape Journal,[180] referring to Dessin or Rabbit Island at the Cape of Good Hope, says that it is "dreadfully exposed to the south-east winds. A gentleman told me of a natural phenomenon he had met with when shooting there; his dog pointed at a rabbit's hole, where the company within were placed so near the opening that he could see Mynheer, Madame, and the whole rabbit family. Pompey, encouraged, brought out the old coney, his wife, and seven young ones,--all, like the callenders in the 'Arabian Nights' Entertainments,' blind of one eye, and that the same eye. The question was, on which side of the island was the rabbit's hole? With a very little reasoning and comparing, it was found that from its position, the keen blast must have produced this effect. The oddest part of this story is, that it is true, but I do not expect you to believe it."

THOMAS FULLER ON NORFOLK RABBITS.

"These are an army of natural pioneers whence men have learned _cuniculos agere_, the art of undermining. They thrive best on barren ground, and grow fattest in the hardest frosts. Their flesh is fine and wholesome. If Scottish men tax our language as improper, and smile at our wing of a rabbit, let us laugh at their shoulder of a capon.

Their skins were formerly much used, when furs were in fashion; till of late our citizens, of Romans are turned Grecians, have laid down their grave gowns and taken up their light cloaks; men generally disliking all habits, though emblems of honour, if also badges of age.

Their rich or silver-hair skins, formerly so dear, are now levelled in prices with other colours; yea, are lower than black in estimation, because their wool is most used in making of hats, commonly (for the more credit) called half-beavers, though many of them hardly amount to the proportion of semi-demi castors."[181]

DR CHALMERS AND THE GUINEA-PIG.

Mr Aitken alludes in a pleasing manner to an instance of Dr Chalmers's fondness for animals. He had just been appointed the head-master of one of the Glasgow parish schools (St John's). "Early in the week following my appointment, I received my first private call. One circumstance occurred during the visit which I still remember most vividly. One of my children had been presented with a pair of guinea-pigs. These had found their way into the apartment where we were sitting, and ran about in all directions. I could have wished to turn them out, but had not the power to rise from my chair. He soon observed them, followed them with his eye as they now retreated under his chair and again ventured out into his presence--he even changed the position of his feet to give them scope. That same kindly eye, one glance of which we all loved so much to catch in after-life, beamed only the more warmly as the creatures frisked in greater confidence around him. It was to me an omen for good. He who could enjoy thus the innocent gamble of these guinea-pigs could not fail to be accessible for good when occasion required. It was the first flush of that largeness of heart which afterwards appeared in all I ever heard him say or saw him do."[182]

FOOTNOTES:

[174] "Memoir of Wilson," p. 27, prefixed to his poetical works. Belfast, 1844.

[175] _Gentleman's Magazine_, for June 1784, being the sixth number of vol. liv., pp. 412-414, "Unnoticed Properties of that little animal the Hare."

[176] "History of England," vol. vi. p. 486.

[177] Mark Lemon, "Jest Book," p. 59.

[178] Mark Lemon, "Jest Book," p. 182.

[179] Biography of S. Bisset in G. H. Wilson's "Eccentric Mirror," vol. i., No. 3, p. 29.

[180] Published by Lord Lindsay in vol. iii. of his "Lives of the Lindsays," p. 387.

[181] "Worthies of England," vol. ii. p. 445 (ed. 1840).

SLOTH.

REVEREND SYDNEY SMITH ON THE SLOTH.

Few anecdotes can be published of this curious creature, though Waterton and Burchell, or Dr Buckland, for him and his friend Bates, have recorded much that is interesting of its habits. The following bit is peculiarly happy: "The sloth, in its wild state, spends its life in trees, and never leaves them but from force or accident. The eagle to the sky, the mole to the ground, the sloth to the tree; but what is most extraordinary, he lives not _upon_ the branches, but _under_ them. He moves suspended, rests suspended, sleeps suspended, and passes his life in suspense--like a young clergyman distantly related to a bishop."[183]

FOOTNOTES:

[182] Dr Hannah's "Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Thomas Chalmers, D.D., L.L.D.," vol. ii. p. 237.

THE GREAT ANT-EATER.

(_Myrmecophaga jubata_, L.[184])

A few months ago a handbill was distributed in the neighbourhood of Seven Dials, inviting the public to visit a "wonderful animal fed with ants, and possessing strength to kill the lion, tiger, or any other animal under its claws." We entered the miserable apartment where it was exhibited, and any spectator must at once have been struck with the creature's want of resemblance to any other he had ever seen. Its head so small, so long and slender; the straight, wiry, dry hair with which it was covered, and its singularly large and bushy tail, first attracted notice. A second glance showed its enormously thick fore-legs, and the claws of its feet turned in, so that it walked on the sides of its soles. Oken and St Hilaire would have said that it was "all extremity." A cup, with the contents of one or two eggs, was brought, and it sucked them with great avidity, every now and then darting from its small mouth a very long tongue, which looked like a great, black worm, whisking about in the custard. One of its showmen told us that it had attacked the woman of the house the preceding day, and had scratched her arm. Whether this was true or grossly exaggerated, we know not; but if so, we suspect that the woman herself must have been in fault, and not the inoffensive stranger.

On the payment of a handsome consideration to her owners, the poor captive was transferred from her unwholesome lodging in St Giles's, to the Gardens of the Zoological Society in the Regent's Park. And within the last few weeks her solitude has been cheered by the arrival of a companion from her native forests. The new-comer is in beautiful condition, though not nearly so large. He has a head decidedly shorter and stronger, and is probably not yet fully grown.

The great ant-eater seems to be scattered over a wide extent of South America--Guiana, Brazil, and Paraguay, being its places of abode. It is a stout animal, measuring from the end of the snout to the tip of the long tail six or seven feet, of which the tail takes nearly the half; so that the actual size of its body is much reduced. In Paraguay it is named _Nurumi_ or _Yogui_. The former name is altered from the native word for _small mouth_, and indicates a striking peculiarity in its structure. The Portuguese call it _Tamandua_; the Spaniards, _Osa hormiguero_ (_i.e._, ant-hill bear). In Paraguay it prefers sides of lakes where ants, at least termites or white ants, are abundant; but it also frequents woods. In Guiana, Mr Waterton found it chiefly "in the inmost recesses of the forest," where it "seems partial to the low and swampy parts near creeks, where the troely tree grows."[185] It sleeps a great deal, reclining on its side, as the visitor to the Gardens may frequently see it do, with its head between its fore-legs, joining its fore and hindfeet, and spreading the tail so as to cover the whole body. Huddled up under this thatch, it might almost be taken for a bundle of coarse and badly dried hay. The tail is thickly covered with long hairs, placed vertically, the hairs draggling on the ground. When the creature is irritated, the tail is shaken straight and elevated. The natives of Paraguay, like other persecutors of harmlessness, kill every specimen they meet, so that the ant-eater gets rare, and so rare is it on the Amazon that Mr Wallace, who travelled there from 1848 to 1852, honestly tells us he never saw one. He heard, however, that during rain it turns its bushy tail over its head and stands still. The Indians, knowing this habit, when they meet an ant-eater, make a rustling noise among the leaves. The creature instantly turns up its tail, and is easily killed by the stroke of a stick on its little head.[186]

The ant-eater is slow in its movements--never attempting to escape. When hard pressed it stops, and, seated on its hind-legs, waits for the aggressor. Its object is to receive him between its fore-legs; and one has only to look at its arms and claws in order to fancy what a frightful squeeze it would give. Nothing but death, they say, will make the creature relax its grasp. It is asserted that the jaguar--the tiger of South America, and the most formidable beast of the New World--dares not attack it. This Azara, with good reason, doubts. A single bite from a jaguar, or the stroke of his paw, would fracture an ant-eater's skull before it had time to turn round; for the movements of this edentate quadruped are as sluggish as those of the toothed carnivorous tyrant are rapid.

As seen in its handsome and roomy cage, the ant-eater gives us an impression of dulness and stupidity; and always smelling and listening and looking at the door where its keeper introduces its food, its mind, when awake, appears to be constantly occupied about "creature comforts." In the course of the day it laps up with its darting tongue, and sucks in through its long taper snout a dozen eggs, and almost the whole of a rabbit, chopped into a fine mince-meat. With such dainty fare, and with the anxious attention which it receives from its sagacious curators, it is scarcely surprising that it thrives; and when the warm weather comes, it will be a fine sight to see these animals enjoying the range of a paddock, which will doubtless be provided for their use, and exercising their brawny forelimbs and powerful claws in pulling down conical mounds, which may remind them of departed joys and balmier climes. Nor will it be the least charm of the spectacle that it will enable us to compare this living species with other _Edentata_ of South America--such as the Megatherium, now only found in the fossil state, but so admirably restored by Mr Hawkins for the Crystal Palace.

We need not dwell on the admirable adaptation of the ant-eater to its position and to its few and simple wants. To those who have not studied "the works of the Lord," it may appear uncouth and unattractive. Compared with a dog, it is stupid; and alongside of a lion, it is slow. It has not the symmetry of the horse, nor the beautiful markings of the zebra and leopard. But its Creator has given it the instincts, the form, the muscular powers, and the colours which best answer its purpose. And no one can say that it is plain and ugly, who looks at its legs so prettily variegated with white and black, and its noble black collar.

Those of our readers who wish further information will find it in the _Literary Gazette_ for October 8, 1853. In that article it is easy to recognise the Roman hand of the _facile princeps_ among living comparative anatomists. Long may it be before either of our new acquaintances in the Garden afford him a subject for dissection; but when that day arrives, we hope that he will not delay to publish the memoir.[187]--_A. White, in "Excelsior" (with additions)._

FOOTNOTES:

[183] Sydney Smith, "Review of Waterton's Wanderings." _Edinburgh Review_, 1826. Works, vol. ii. p. 145.

[184] From [Greek: myrmex], ant; [Greek: phago], I eat; _jubata_, maned.

[185] "Wanderings in South America" (Third Journey), p. 159, (ed. 1839).

[186] "A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro," by Alfred R. Wallace, 1853, p. 452.

RHINOCEROS AND ELEPHANT.

Two genera of the bulkiest among terrestrial beasts. Just imagine the great rhinoceros at the Zoological Gardens taking it into its head, with that little eye, target hide, and bulky bones, and other items about it, to fondle its keeper!--he was nearly crushed to death. How the great thick-skinned creature enjoys a bath!

As for the elephant, he is a mountain of matter as well as of animal intelligence. Sir Emerson Tennant in his "Ceylon," but especially in his "Natural History," volumes, has given some truly readable chapters on the Asiatic elephant. We could have extracted many an anecdote, even from recent works, of the intelligent sagacity of the Indian as well as the African elephants. The account of the shooting of Mr Cross's well-known elephant _Chunie_, at Exeter Change, has been very curiously and fully detailed by Hone in his "Every-Day Book." A skull of an elephant in the British Museum, shows how wonderfully an elephant is at times able to defend itself from attack. Many a shot that "rogue elephant" had received, years before the three or four Indian sportsmen, who presented its skull as a trophy, succeeded in planting a shot in its brain, or in its heart. Think of the feelings of Lord Clive's relations, at the prospect of his sending home an elephant for a pet. The good folks, not without some motive, as the great Indian ruler conceived, other than mere love for him, had been sending him presents. Samuel Rogers, who wrote the neatest of hands, records that Clive wrote the worst and certainly the most illegible of scrawls. Instead of "elephant," as they read it, their liberal relative had written "equivalent!"

THE LORD KEEPER GUILFORD AND HIS VISIT TO THE RHINOCEROS IN THE CITY OF LONDON.[188]

It is strange to read in the life of the Lord Keeper Guilford, that his lordship's court enemies, "hard put to it to find, or invent, something tending to the diminution of his character," took advantage of his going to see a rhinoceros, to circulate a foolish story of him, which much annoyed him. It was in the reign of James II. his biographer thus records it. The rhinoceros, referred to, was the first ever brought to England. Evelyn, in his "Memoirs," says, that it was sold for L2000, a most enormous sum in those days (1685).

Roger North relates the story:--"It fell out thus--a merchant of Sir Dudley North's acquaintance had brought over an enormous rhinoceros, to be sold to showmen for profit. It is a noble beast, wonderfully armed by nature for offence, but more for defence, being covered with impenetrable shields, which no weapon would make any impression upon, and a rarity so great that few men, in our country, have in their whole lives the opportunity of seeing so singular an animal. This merchant told Sir Dudley North that if he, with a friend or two, had a mind to see it, they might take the opportunity at his house before it was sold. Hereupon Sir Dudley North proposed to his brother, the Lord Keeper, to go with him upon this exhibition, which he did, and came away exceedingly satisfied with the curiosity he had seen. But whether he was dogged to find out where he and his brother housed in the city, or flying fame carried an account of the voyage to court, I know not; but it is certain that the very next morning a bruit went from thence all over the town, and (as factious reports used to run) in a very short time, viz., that his lordship rode upon the rhinoceros, than which a more infantine exploit could not have been fastened upon him. And most people were struck with amazement at it, and divers ran here and there to find out whether it was true or no. And soon after dinner some lords and others came to his lordship to know the truth from himself, for the setters of the lie affirmed it positively as of their own knowledge. That did not give his lordship much disturbance, for he expected no better from his adversaries. But that his friends, intelligent persons, who must know him to be far from guilty of any childish levity, should believe it, was what roiled him extremely, and much more when they had the face to come to him to know if it were true. I never saw him in such a rage, and to lay about him with affronts (which he keenly bestowed upon the minor courtiers that came on that errand) as then; for he sent them away with fleas in their ear. And he was seriously angry with his own brother, Sir Dudley North, because he did not contradict the lie in sudden and direct terms, but laughed as taking the question put to him for a banter, till, by iteration, he was brought to it. For some lords came, and because they seemed to attribute somewhat to the avowed positiveness of the reporters, he rather chose to send for his brother to attest than to impose his bare denial, and so it passed; and the noble earl (of Sunderland), with Jeffries, and others of that crew, made merry, and never blushed at the lie of their own making, but valued themselves upon it as a very good jest."

And so it passed. What a sensation would have been caused by the sudden apparition in that age of a few numbers of _Punch_. What a subject for a cartoon, some John Leech of 1685 would have made of the stately Lord Keeper on the back of a rhinoceros, and the infamous Judge Jeffries leering at him from a window.

THE ELEPHANT AND HIS TRUNK.

Canning and another gentleman were looking at a picture of the deluge; the ark was seen in the middle distance, while in the fore-sea an elephant was struggling with his fate. "I wonder," said the gentleman, "that the elephant did not secure _an inside_ place!"--"He was too late, my friend," replied Canning; "he was detained _packing up his trunk_."[189]

SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS AND JELLY MADE OF IVORY DUST.--A VEGETARIAN TAKEN IN.

The biographers of James Montgomery[190] relate an amusing anecdote of Sir Richard Phillips, the eccentric London bookseller and author. He visited Sheffield in October 1828. "He had lived too long amidst the bustle and business of the great world, and was too little conscious of any feeling at all like diffidence, to allow him to hesitate about calling upon any person, whether of rank, genius, or eccentricity, when the success of his project was likely to be thereby promoted. The time selected by the free and easy knight for his unannounced visitation of Montgomery was _Sunday at dinner time_. He was at once asked to sit down and partake of the chickens and bacon which had just been placed on the table, but here was a dilemma; Sir Richard, although neither a Brahmin nor a Jew, avowed himself a staunch Pythagorean--he could eat no flesh! Luckily there was a plentiful supply of carrots and turnips, and--jelly. But was the latter made from calves' feet? Montgomery assured his guest that it was _not_; but, added he, with a conscientious regard for his visitor's scruples, from _ivory dust_. We believe the poet fancied the hypothesis of an animal origin of this viand could not be very obscure; it was, however, swallowed; the clever bibliopole perhaps believing, with some of the Sheffield ivory-cutters, that elephants, instead of being hunted and killed for their tusks, _shed them_ when fully grown, as bucks do their antlers!"

J. T. SMITH AND THE ELEPHANT.

That gossiping man, J. T. Smith, once Keeper of the Prints in the British Museum, and author of "Nollekens and his Times," relates, that when he and a friend were returning late from a club, and were approaching Temple Bar, "about one o'clock, a most unaccountable appearance claimed our attention,--it was no less than an elephant, whose keepers were coaxing it to pass through the gateway. He had been accompanied with several persons from the Tower wharf with tall poles, but was principally guided by two men with ropes, each walking on either side of the street, to keep him as much as possible in the middle, on his way to the menagerie, Exeter Change, to which destination, after passing St Clement's Church, he steadily trudged on, with strict obedience to the command of his keepers.[191]

"I had the honour afterwards of partaking of a pot of Barclay's entire with this same elephant, which high mark of his condescension was bestowed when I accompanied my friend, the late Sir James Wintel Lake, Bart., to view the rare animals in Exeter Change,--that gentleman being assured by the elephant's keeper that, if he would offer the beast a shilling, he would see the noble animal nod his head and drink a pot of porter. The elephant had no sooner taken the shilling, which he did in the mildest manner from the palm of Sir James's hand, than he gave it to the keeper, and eagerly watched his return with the beer. The elephant then, after placing his proboscis to the top of the tankard, drew up nearly the whole of the beverage. The keeper observed, 'You will hardly believe, gentlemen, but the little he has left is quite warm;' upon this we were tempted to taste it, and it really was so. This animal was afterwards disposed of for the sum of one thousand guineas."

THE ELEPHANT AND THE TAILOR.

This old story has been often told, but never so well as by Sydney Smith in one of his lectures at the Royal Institution. "Every one knows the old story of the tailor and the elephant, which, if it be not true, at least shows the opinion the Orientals, who know the animal well, entertain of his sagacity. An eastern tailor to the Court was making a magnificent doublet for a bashaw of nine tails, and covering it, after the manner of eastern doublets, with gold, silver, and every species of metallic magnificence. As he was busying himself on this momentous occasion, there passed by, to the pools of water, one of the royal elephants, about the size of a broad-wheeled waggon, rich in ivory teeth, and shaking, with its ponderous tread, the tailor's shop to its remotest thimble. As he passed near the window, the elephant happened to look in; the tailor lifted up his eyes, perceived the proboscis of the elephant near him, and, being seized with a fit of facetiousness, pricked the animal with his needle; the mass of matter immediately retired, stalked away to the pool, filled his trunk full of muddy water, and, returning to the shop, overwhelmed the artisan and his doublet with the dirty effects of his vengeance."

DR JOHNSON ALLUDED TO AS "AN ELEPHANT."

"If an elephant could write a book, perhaps one that had read a great deal would say, that an Arabian horse is a very clumsy, ungraceful animal." This was written by Horace Walpole to Miss Berry, in 1791, in allusion to Dr Johnson's depreciation of Thomas Gray the poet.[192] It is an acute observation, well worth being wrought out. There is a grandeur and even a grace about this bulky beast and its motions well deserving the study of any one who has the opportunity. Elephants in our streets are not now so rare as they used to be. We saw three in one procession in the streets of Edinburgh in 1865.

ELEPHANT'S SKIN.

"Did any of you ever see an elephant's skin?" asked the master of an infant school in a fast neighbourhood. "I have!" shouted a six-year-old at the foot of the class. "Where?" inquired the master, amused by his earnestness. "_On the elephant!_" was the reply.

FOOTNOTES:

[187] This memoir has been published, and the subject of it was this very ant-eater. Professor Owen has introduced many striking facts from the history of its structure, in his lecture delivered at Exeter Hall, 1863, and published by the Messrs Nisbet.

[188] "The Life of the Right Hon. Francis North, Baron Guilford, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, under King Charles II. and King James II., &c." By the Hon. Roger North. A New Edition, in three vols., 1826, vol. ii. p. 167.

[189] Mark Lemon, "Jest Book," p. 329.

[190] "John Holland and James Everett," vol. iv. p. 283.

[191] "A Book for a Rainy Day," p. 92.

FOSSIL PACHYDERMATA.

CUVIER AND THE FOSSIL.

George Cuvier was perhaps the first man who, by his admirable works and researches, gave zoology its true place among the sciences.

His discoveries of the structure of molluscous and other animals of the obscurer orders are perhaps eclipsed by his researches in osteology. He has enabled the comparative anatomist to tell from a small portion of bone not only the class, but the order, genus, and even the species to which animal that bone belonged.

Mrs Lee,[193] in her Life of the Baron, gives an example of his enthusiasm in his researches.

M. Laurillard was afterwards his secretary and the draftsman who executed nearly all the drawings in his "Ossemens fossiles." At the time of this story he had not particularly attracted Cuvier's notice.

"One day Cuvier came to his brother Frederic to ask him to disengage a fossil from its surrounding mass, an office he had frequently performed. M. Laurillard was applied to in the absence of F. Cuvier. Little aware of the value of the specimen confided to his care, he cheerfully set to work, and succeeded in getting the bone entire from its position. M. Cuvier, after a short time, returned for his treasure, and when he saw how perfect it was, his ecstasies became incontrollable; he danced, he shook his hands, he uttered expressions of delight, till M. Laurillard, in his ignorance both of the importance of what he had done, and of the ardent character of M. Cuvier, thought he was mad. Taking, however, his fossil foot in one hand, and dragging Laurillard's arm with the other, he led him up-stairs to present him to his wife and sister-in-law, saying, 'I have got my foot, and M. Laurillard found it for me.' It seems that this skilful operation confirmed all M. Cuvier's previous conjecture concerning a foot, the existence and form of which he had already guessed, but for which he had long and vainly sought. So occupied had he been by it, that, when he appeared to be particularly absent, his family were wont to accuse him of seeking his fore-foot. The next morning the able operator and draftsman was engaged as secretary."

FOOTNOTES:

[192] "Letters of Horace Walpole," edited by Peter Cunningham, ix., 319.

[193] "Memoirs of Baron Cuvier," by Mrs R. Lee (formerly Mrs T Ed. Bowdich), 1833, p. 93.

SOW.

A very gross but useful animal, which can, by feeding, be stuffed into such a state of fatness as only one who has seen a Christmas cattle show in England could believe it possible for beast to acquire. Dean Ramsay, in a happy anecdote, refers to a good quality of the sow as food. He tells, that a Scottish minister had been persuaded to keep a pig, and that the good wife had been duly instructed in the mysteries of black-puddings, pork-chops, pig's-head, and other modes of turning poor piggy to account. The minister remarked to a friend, "Nae doubt there's a hantle o' miscellaneous eating aboot a pig." The author of "A Ramble," published by Edmonstone and Douglas in 1865, has devoted some most amusing pages of his work to an account of "Pig-sticking in Chicago," as witnessed by him during the late American war. The wholesale and scientific off-hand way in which living pigs enter into one part of a machine, and come out prepared pork, could only have been devised by a Yankee.

The essay of Charles Lamb on Roast Pig, and his history of how the Chinaman discovered it, is a most characteristic bit of the productions of Elia. We have cut from a recent paper, what seems an authentic story, of one of this race having obtained a kind of mausoleum. We hope it is not a hoax, but that it is as genuine as all that is in one of "Murray's Handbooks:"--

MONUMENT TO A PIG.--"Up to the present time," says the _Europe_ of Frankfort, "no monument that we are aware of had ever been erected to the memory of a _pig_. The town of Luneburg, in Hanover, has wished to fill up that blank; and at the Hotel de Ville, in that town, there is to be seen a kind of mausoleum to the memory of a member of the swinish race. In the interior of that commemorative structure is to be seen a glass case, inclosing a ham still in good preservation. A slab of black marble attracts the eye of visitors, who find thereon the following inscription in Latin, engraved in letters of gold--'Passer-by, contemplate here the mortal remains of the pig which acquired for itself imperishable glory by the discovery of the salt springs of Luneburg.'"

THE WILD BOAR (_Sus scrofa_).

We have a specimen of the family of swine in that well-known and useful animal, with whose portrait Sir Charles Bell furnishes the reader, as an example of a head as remote as possible from the head of him who designed and executed the Elgin marbles. Although the learned anatomist brought forward the profile of this animal as the type of a "non-intellectual" being, yet there are instances enough on record to show that pigs are not devoid of intelligence, and are even, when trained, capable of considerable docility. "Learned pigs," however, such as are exhibited at country fairs, are a rare occurrence, and the family to which they belong is essentially one "gross" in character, and far from gainly in appearance. The most handsome of the race is one from West Africa, recently added to the Zoological Gardens, and described by Dr Gray under the name of _Potamochaerus penicillatus_. The wild swine of Africa are, with this bright exception, anything but handsome, either in shape or colour; and the large excrescences on their cheeks and face give the "warthogs" a ferocious look, which corresponds with their habits. In the East there are several species of wild swine. One of the most celebrated is the _Babyrusa_ of the Malay peninsula, distinguished by its long recurved teeth, with which it was once fancied that they suspended themselves from trees, or rather supported themselves when asleep. Mrs M'Dougall[194] refers to the wild hogs of Borneo, which seem to be dainty in their diet, as they think nothing of a swim of four miles from their jungle home to places on the river where they know there are trees laden with ripe fruit. These Borneo swine are active creatures too, as they can leap fences nearly six feet high. In South America the sow family is represented by the Peccaries (_Dicotyles_), of which there are two species, one of which is very abundant in the woods, and forms a most important article in the diet of the poor Indians. They, too, can swim across rivers, and although their legs are short, they can run very fast.

It is chiefly in the warmer parts of the world that the species of this family are found. They are all distinguished by the middle toes of each foot being larger than the others, and armed with hoofs,[195] the side toe or toes being shorter, and scarcely reaching the ground. The nose terminates in a truncated, tough, grissly disk, which is singularly well adapted for the purpose of the animals, which all grub in the ground for their food. In some parts of France it is said that they are trained to search for truffles.

Having briefly alluded to different species "_de grege porci_," we now limit ourselves to our immediate subject.

The wild boar, at no very remote period, was found in the extensive woods which covered great portions of this island. The family of Baird derives its heraldic crest of a wild boar's head from a grant of David I., King of Scotland. This monarch was hunting in Aberdeenshire, and when separated from his attendants, the infuriated pig turned upon him; one of his people came up and killed it, and in memory of his feat received from the grateful king the device still borne by the family. The name of a Scottish parish, and of one of the oldest baronial families in Scotland--Swinton of Swinton, in Berwickshire--is derived also from this animal, the first of the Swintons having cleared that part of the country from the wild swine which then infested it. It is curious to know that some large fields in the neighbourhood of Swinton still carry in their names traces of these early occupants. Dr Baird informed the writer that there are four of these fields so distinguished:--"Sow-causeway," and "Pikerigg," where the wild swine used to feed ("pick their food"); "Stab's Cross," where Sir Alan Swinton with his spear pierced some monarch of the race; and "Alan's Cairn," where a heap of stones was raised as a monument of his hardihood. In the southern part of our island only the nobility and gentry were allowed to hunt this animal; and in the reign of William the Conqueror any one convicted of killing a wild boar in any of the royal demesnes was punished with the loss of his eyes.

In many parts of the Continent the wild boar is still far from rare, and affords, to those who are fond of excitement, that peculiar kind of "pleasure" which involves a certain amount of danger. Scenes somewhat similar to those depicted by Snyders may still be witnessed in some parts of Germany; and in the sketches of Mr Wolf, the able artist whose designs illustrate these papers, we have seen animated studies of this truly hazardous sport.

The nose of the wild boar is very acute in the sense of smell. A zealous sportsman tells us, "I have often been surprised, when stealing upon one in the woods, to observe how soon he has become aware of my neighbourhood. Lifting his head, he would sniff the air inquiringly, then, uttering a short grunt, make off as fast as he could."[196] The same writer has also sometimes noticed in a family of wild boars one, generally a weakling, who was buffeted and ill-treated by the rest. "Do what he would, nothing was right; sometimes the mother, uttering a disapproving grunt, would give him a nudge to make him move more quickly, and that would be a sign for all the rest of his relations to begin showing their contempt for him too. One would push him, and then another; for, go where he might, he was sure to be in the way." In the extensive woods frequented by this animal in Europe, abundant supplies of food are met with in the roots of various plants which it grubs up, in the beech-mast, acorns, and other tree productions, which, during two or three months of the year, it finds on the ground. Although well able to defend itself, it is a harmless animal, and being shy, retires to those parts of the forests most remote from the presence of man. A site in the neighbourhood of water is preferred to any other.

Travellers in the East frequently refer to this animal and to its ravages when it gets into a rice-field or a vineyard; for although its natural food be wild roots and wild fruits, if cultivated grounds be in the neighbourhood, its ravages are very annoying to the husbandmen, who can fully and feelingly understand the words of the Psalmist, "The boar out of the wood doth waste it" (Ps. lxxx. 13).

Messrs Irby and Mangles,[197] as they approached the Jordan, saw a herd of nine wild pigs, and they found the trees on the banks of a stream near that river all marked with mud, left by the wild swine in rubbing themselves. A valley which they passed was grubbed up in all directions with furrows made by these animals, so that the soil had all the appearance of having been ploughed up.

Burckhardt mentions the occurrence of the wild boar and panther together, or the _ounce_, as he calls it, on the mountain of Rieha, and also in the wooded part of Tabor. He mentions "a common saying and belief among the Turks, that all the animal kingdom was converted by their prophet to the true faith, except the wild boar and buffalo, which remained unbelievers; it is on this account that both these animals are often called Christians. We are not surprised that the boar should be so denominated; but as the flesh of the buffalo, as well as its Leben or sour milk, is much esteemed by the Turks, it is difficult to account for the disgrace into which that animal has fallen among them; the only reason I could learn for it is, that the buffalo, like the hog, has a habit of rolling in the mud, and of plunging into the muddy ponds in the summer time up to the very nose, which alone remains visible above the surface."[198] Wild boars were frequently fallen in with by this traveller during his Syrian travels in the neighbourhood of rush-covered springs, where they could easily return to their "wallowing in the mire;" he also met with them on all the mountains he visited in his tour. In the Ghor they are very abundant, and so injurious to the Arabs of that valley that they are unable to cultivate the common barley on account of the eagerness with which the wild swine feed on it, and are obliged to grow a less esteemed kind, with six rows of grains which the swine will not touch.

Messrs Hemprich and Ehrenberg tell us that the wild boar is far from scarce in the marshy districts around Rosetta and Damietta, and that it does not seem to differ from the European species. The head of a wild boar which these travellers saw at Bischerre, a village of Lebanon, closely resembled the European variety, except in being a little longer. The Maronites there, who ate its flesh in their company, called it _chansir_,[199] a name evidently identical with the Hebrew word _chasir_, which occurs in the Bible. The Turks, according to Ehrenberg, keep swine in their stables, from a persuasion that all devils who may enter will be more likely to go into the pigs than the horses, from their alliance to the former unclean animals.--_A. White, in "Excelsior."_

THE RIVER PIG, OR PAINTED PIG OF THE CAMAROON.[200]

The other day we revisited the Zoological Gardens, and found that two old friends had got--the one, a companion, the other, a neighbour. The latter was the bulky hippopotamus, now most bearish, and more and more unmistakably showing the minute accuracy of those master lines in the Book of Job, in which Behemoth's portrait, pose, and character are depicted. The former was the subject of this article--evidently, as far as colour goes, "the chieftain of the _porcine_ race."

The poet tells us, however, "Nimium ne crede colori;" and observation, as well as the Scripture, shows us daily that "fair havens" in summer are but foul places to "winter in;" that fair speeches, and a flattering tongue, and the kisses of an enemy, "are deceitful;" and that beneath a fine spotted or barred coat, the jaguar and the tiger, the cobra and the hornet, conceal both the power and the propensity for mischief. So with our old friend Potamochoerus. The pretty creature,--beauty is relative--the Cameroon pig is the prettiest, the gaudiest of the race,--the pretty creature, we repeat, is of a fine bay red, made to look more bright from the circumstance of the face, ears, and front of the legs being black, while the red is relieved, and the black is defined, by the pencilled lines of white which edge the ears, streak over and under the eye, and ornament the long whiskers, another long white line traversing the middle of the back; a very attractive combination of colour--the painting of "Him who made the world"--and one which must make the _Potamochoerus penicellatus_ most conspicuous among the bright green shrubs and dark marshes of the rivers of equinoctial Africa, on whose banks the race has been planted. The present largest specimen was taken, when a "piggie," by a trading captain, as it was swimming across the Cameroon River. He brought it to Liverpool; Dr Gray, of the British Museum, gave an account of it in the "Illustrated Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London for 1852"--an excellent work--where its figure, drawn and coloured by the hand of Wolf, shows the condition of the African sow four years ago. It was then a round, comfortable, kind-looking creature, which one might almost have fondled as a pet. The pig now looks rather a dangerous beast, and its beauty is not increased by its face having grown longer, and by the bump and hollow on each cheek being larger and deeper; nor is its mouth so attractive or innocent, now that its tusks--those ivory daggers and knives of the family of Swine--have grown longer. The creature, partly it may be from familiarity, jumps up against the iron palisade which separates the visitor from its walk, but a poor pannage as a substitute for its African home. We would advise him to read the notice: "Visitors are requested not to tease the animals;" "not to touch" would be a good reprint--for few, we fancy, would try to tease.

One, however, especially a lady, likes to know and to feel _texture_; and sadly used the fine, mild Edward Cross, of Exeter Change and the Surrey Zoological Gardens, once the Nestor as well as the King among keepers of wild beasts--a gentle, gentlemanly, white-haired, venerable man,--sadly, we say, used Mr Cross to lament that there _were_ parasols, and that he could not keep them _out_ of his garden. Mr C. told the writer that he lost many a beast and bird from the pokes of that insinuating weapon. We dissuade any lady from touching or going near a zebra's mouth, or the horns of an ibex or an algazel, or the pointed bill of a heron or stork, or from putting her hand near this fine painted pig.

Up jumps Potamochoerus--eye rather vindictive, however--and mark, as that big specimen is foreshortened before you, the profile of the little companion pig of the same species, standing within a few feet, but safe from the poke of any umbrella or parasol; look how innocent and inviting--how quiet, and sleek, and polished, and painted, and mild it looks, all but that little suspicious eye, with its wink oblique, and its malicious twinkle.

Of the habits of this pig we can find no written record, though in the journals of the Scottish or Wesleyan Missionaries there may be some notices of it. We do not know whence the Society procured the second specimen, but it shows that Africa's wild animals, like its chain of internal Caspian seas, and its mountain-ranges and rivers, are becoming gradually known. Old Bosman, who was chief factor for the Dutch on the Gold Coast 150 years ago, refers to the swine near Fort St George d'Elmina being not nearly so wild as those of Europe, and adds, "I have several times eaten of them here, and found them very delicious and very tender meat, the fat being extraordinarily fine."[201] He evidently refers to some other species.

Travellers in South Africa have made us familiar with the habits, and specimens in the Zoological Gardens, in a pannage close to that of the "painted pig," show us the form and ugliness, of the bush pig and flat pig (_Choiropotamus Africanus_) of that southern land, with their long heads, long legs, upturned tails, and horrid tusks. They have a strange habit of kneeling on their fore-legs. In South Africa they abound; and the natives--our excellent friend, the Rev. Henry Methuen, tells us--often bring their jaws for barter. They are of a dingy, dirty gray; the boar is two feet and a half high, and his tusks sometimes measure "eleven inches and a half each from the jawbone," are five inches and a half in circumference at the base, and are thirteen inches apart at their extremities.

No animal is more formidably armed; and his rapidity and lightness of movement make him a very marked object to the African Nimrod, who, midst "clumps of bush"--be they Proteacae, heaths, or Diosmeae--not unfrequently comes on a herd of wild pigs "headed by a noble boar," with tail erect. We could enter largely on the history of this active species, and quote many a stirring anecdote of travellers' rencontres with this fearless animal. The lion skulks away from him, but the rhinoceros--at least one species--the buffalo, with his formidable front of horn and bone, and the bush pig, with his dreaded tusks, show but little fear; and it is well for the huntsman that he has a sure eye, a steady hand, and a double-barrelled gun, and not a few Caffir followers to help him, should his eye be dim, his hand waver, or his gun "flash in the pan." Dogs avail but little; a deadly gash lays open their ribs, and a side-thrust of a wild boar will cut into the most muscular leg, and for ever destroy its tendons. We have done with pigs, and would only recommend a visit--a frequent visit--to that paradise of animals, the Zoological Gardens, where, a fortnight ago, we saw wild boars from Hesse Darmstadt; wild boars from Egypt; bush pigs from Africa; peccaries from South America; and two painted pigs from West Africa; all "_de grege porci_," and in excellent health: to say nothing of two hippopotamuses; four "seraphic" giraffes; antelopes (we did not number them); brush turkeys from Australia; an apteryx from New Zealand; the curious white sheathbills from the South Seas; the refulgent metallic green and purple-tinted monaul, or Impeyan pheasant, strutting with outspread, light-coloured tail, just as he courts his plain hen-mate on the Indian mountains; a family of the funny pelicans--cleanliness, ugliness, and contentment in one happy combination; a band of flamingoes; eagles and vultures; the harpy--that Picton of the birds--looking defiance as he stands, with upraised crest, flashing eye, and clenched talons, over his food; the wily otter; the amiable seal, which carries us to the seas and rocks of much-loved Shetland, with their long, winding voes, their bird-frequented cliffs, and outlying skerries; the Indian thrush, which reminds one of a "mavis" at home; the parrot-house, with its fine contrasts of colour and its discordant noises; Penny's Esquimaux dog--poor fellow, a prisoner, unlike to what he was when, with our dear friends Dr Sutherland and Captain Stewart, this very dog breasted the blast before a sledge in the Wellington Channel.[202] Look at that wondrous sloth, organised for a life in a Brazilian forest--those two restless Polar bears; and though last, not least, those wonders of the great deep, "the sea-anemones," the exquisite red and white "feathery" tentacles of the long cylindrical-twisted serpulae, and marvellously-transparent streaked shrimps, all leg, and feeler, and eye, and "nose"--in the salt-water tanks in the Vivarium.--_A. White, in "Excelsior."_

S. BISSET AND HIS LEARNED PIG.

S. Bisset, formerly referred to, when at Belfast bought a black sucking pig, and after several experiments succeeded in training a creature, so obstinate and perverse by nature, to become most tractable and docile. In August 1783, he took his learned pig to Dublin for exhibition. "It was not only under full command, but appeared as pliant and good-natured as a spaniel. He had taught it to spell the names of any one in the company, to tell the hour, minute, and second, to make his obeisance to the company, and he occasioned many a laugh by his pointing out the married and the unmarried. Some one in authority forced him to leave Dublin, and he died broken-hearted shortly after at Chester, on his way to London, where forty and more years before he had first been induced to train animals."[203]

QUIXOTE BOWLES FOND OF PIGS.

Southey records of Quixote Bowles that he "had a great love for pigs; he thought them the happiest of all God's creatures, and would walk twenty miles to see one that was remarkably fat. This love extended to bacon; he was an epicure in it; and whenever he went out to dinner, took a piece of his own curing in his pocket, and requested the cook to dress it."[204]

ON JEKYLL NEARLY THROWN DOWN BY A VERY SMALL PIG.

"As Jekyll walk'd out in his gown and his wig,
He happen'd to tread on a very small pig;
'Pig of science,' he said, 'or else I'm mistaken,
For surely thou art an _abridgment of Bacon_.'"[205]

GOOD ENOUGH FOR A PIG.

An Irish peasant being asked why he permitted his pig to take up its quarters with his family, made an answer abounding with satirical _naivete_. "Why not? Doesn't the place afford every convenience that _a pig can require_?"[206]

Mrs Fry, in 1827, visited Ireland on one of her Christian and philanthropic tours. In a letter to her children from Armagh she says--"Pigs abound; I think they have rather a more elegant appearance than ours, their hair often rather curled. Perhaps naturalists may attribute this to their intimate association with their betters!"[207]

THE COUNTRYMAN'S CRITICISM ON THE PIGS IN GAINSBOROUGH'S PICTURE OF THE GIRL AND PIGS.

Thomas Gainsborough, the great English painter, exhibited, in 1782, among pictures of noblemen, gentlemen, and ladies, his well-known "Girl and Pigs."[208]

Wolcot, better known as "Peter Pindar," in his first "Ode to the Royal Academicians," refers to this picture.

"And now, O Muse, with song so big,
Turn round to Gainsborough's Girl and Pig,
Or Pig and Girl, I rather should have said;
The pig in white, I must allow,
Is really a well painted sow,
I wish to say the same thing of the maid."

"The expression and truth of nature in the Girl and Pigs," remarks Northcote, "were never surpassed. Sir Joshua Reynolds was struck with it, though he thought Gainsborough ought to have made her a beauty." Reynolds, indeed, became the purchaser of the painting at one hundred guineas, Gainsborough asking but sixty. During its exhibition, it is said to have attracted the attention of a countryman, who remarked--"They be deadly like pigs, but nobody ever saw pigs feeding together but what one on 'em had a foot in the trough."

HOOK AND THE LITTER OF PIGS.

Once a gentleman, who had the marvellous gift of shaping a great many things out of orange-peel, was displaying his abilities at a dinner-party before Theodore Hook and Mr Thomas Hill, and succeeded in counterfeiting a pig. Mr Hill tried the same feat; and after destroying and strewing the table with the peel of a dozen oranges, gave it up, with the exclamation, "Hang the pig! I _can't_ make him." "Nay, Hill," exclaimed Hook, glancing at the mess on the table, "you have done more; instead of one pig, you have made a _litter_."[209]

Hook, we may add, was an original wit. He did not, like most professed wits, study his sayings before, and arrange with his seeming opponent for an imaginary war of words. He was an _impromptu_ wit.

JESTS ABOUT SWINE.

Lord Chancellor Hardwicke's bailiff, having been ordered by his lady to procure a sow of a particular description, came one day into the dining-room when full of company, proclaiming with a burst of joy he could not suppress--"I have been at Royston Fair, my lady, and I have got a sow exactly of _your ladyship's_ size."[210]

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