CURIOSITIES
OF
NATURAL HISTORY.




AWFUL CHANGES.
MAN FOUND ONLY IN A FOSSIL BTATSTATB APPIARANBC OF ICHTHYOSAUIA.
A Lectre. —" You will at once perceive," continued PBOFEssOB ICHTHYosAURUS, "that the skull before
us belonged to some of the lower order of animals; the teeth are very insignificant, the power of the
jaws trifling, and altogether it seems wonderful how the creaturo could have procured food."




CJJRIOSITIE S
0'~
NATURAL HISTORY,
3Y
FRANCIS T. BUCKLAND, M.A.
BTIDINT OF OHRIST CHURaC, OXFORD;
AIIBTANT BURGBON SECOND LIFE OGUARD; LATE BOUSEX S8Gp00 OF
i. GEORXB'S IBOPITAL,
ftom tbt foutb Lonbonn iBbition.
NEW  YORK:
RUDD &  CARLETON, 130  GRAND  STREET,
(BROOKS BUILDING, COR. OF BROADWAY.)
MDCCCLIX.




aIr gltemrg of
THE FATHER,
TO WHOSE EXAMPLE AND INSTRUCTION
I OWE
THAT TASTE FOR NATURAL HISTORY
WHICH HAS FURNISHED ME WITH AGREEABLE OCCUPATION
DURING THE
LEISURE HOURS OF MY PROFESSION.
B. ORAIGHXAD,
Printer, Stereotyper, and ~blcttypr,
0Caxtotn uflbing,
81, 83, md 86 Cnde aui.




PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
0
TiE Preface is generally the last portion of a book which is
written, and on this account it ought to be read first. I would
beg of those into whose hands this book should come, to reverse
the usual order of things, and to read the Preface before they
dip into the content. They will then know why it was written.
For many years I had the great privilege of being much in the
company of my lamented father, the Very Rev. William Buckland, D.D., &c., &c., Dean of Westminster. I never missed one
course of his lectures during the time I was at Oxford, and he
hardly ever went out on any geological or other expedition without taking me with him.
Always a diligent note-taker himself, he encouraged me in
putting down every fact with which I was previously unacquainted, and in this way I accumulated much information,
both from him and from other sources.
These notes during the last five years I have occasionally put
together, and published in " Bentley's Miscellany," and in a rising
little periodical, " The St. James's Medley." I have now collected,
and have at the same time added very considerably to them.
I heard, not!ng ago, of a preparer of microscopic objects,
who complained that " he had exhausted the animal kingdom." I
am well aware that many books have been written on natural
history, but still am of opinion that the animal kingdom is not'
yet "exhausted," and with this belief, I have written the following pages.




vi                     PREFACE.
In natural -history, as well as in other researches, it is too much
the practice to copy facts and observations from printed books,
the great volume of Nature herself being left unopened. It has
been my endeavor to search into this book, and to record facts
which came under my own eyes. I have, nevertheless, not hesitated to use the eyes of other naturalists, at times and places
when it was impossible to use my own. I have plainly marked
as quotations all matter which belongs to other persons: should'
any one recognize any passage unacknowledged,, he is requested
to regard it as an oversight.
In the article on Rats will be observed several references. to a
paper which appeared on the same subject in the Quarterly Review, January 1857. I have thought it right to draw attention
to these, that I might not be thought guilty of plagiarism. The
article on Rats was published by me in Bentley's Miscellany,
August 1852.
Without the knowledge of the structure and physiology of the
lower members of the animal kingdom, it would be difficult
rightly to understand many functions of the human economy;
and much light has been thrown upon the art of healing by the
study of the lower links of the chain of animal life.
I would wish it, therefore, to be understood, that the following
pages have not been written to the neglect of purely professional
subjects of investigation. It has been acknowledged by many
of our greatest medical men, that Natural History is the handmaid to the study of medicine and surgery; and this is amply
proved by the collection made by John Hunter, the immortal
founder of the Royal College of Surgeons. This great man points
out to his followers the necessity of studying comparative as well
as human anatomy; for he has begun his series with the lowest
form of animal life, ending with man himself.
My sincere thanks are due to the Council of the Royal Cole
lege of Surgeons, London, for their kindness in allowing me to




PREFACE.                       Vil
examine the specimens contained in their noble Museum,
a vast storehouse of faets, the treasures of which can only be
appreciated by those who examine for themselves. To my friend
Mr. Quekett, Curator of the Museum, I am under great obligations, not only for his kindness in giving me every facility of
access to those specimens I wished to examine, but also for
much information relative to the subjects under my investigation.
The frontispiece (photographed on wood from the original) is
a reduction of a.drawing made many years ago forDr. Buckland
by the late lamented Sir Henry de la Beche. After my father's
death, I found that a few copies only remained, and the plate
could not be found. Unwilling, therefore, that it should be entirely lost, and at the same time having every reason to believe
that it had never yet been published, I determined to endeavor
to resuscitate it, as worthy of the brilliant imagination of one of
Dr. Buckland's most intimate friends. It was originally drawn
as a sort of quiz upon his geological lectures at Oxford, when he
was treating upon Ichthyosauri, a race of extinct fish-like lizards.
The subject of the drawing may be thus described-Times are
supposed to be changed. Man is found only in a fossil state, in
the same condition as the ichthyosauri are discovered at the present epoch; and instead of Professor Buckland giving a lecture
upon the head of an ichthyosaurus, Professor Ichthyosaurus is
delivering a lecture on the head of a fossil malL Around the
Professor, whose jaws and teeth are monstrous as compared with
those of a human subject, is gathered a class of attentive listeners of the same race as himself all anxious to learn the history
of the creature to whom the curious and, in comparison to their
own, diminutive skull belonged. Professor Ichthyosaurus is
made thus to address his audience-" You will at once perceive
that the skull before us belonged to some of the lower order of
animals-the teeth are very insignificant, the power of the jaws




viii                    PREFACE.
trifling; and altogether it seems curious how the creature could
have procured food."
In the following pages no attempt is made at fine writing; and
the matter is put down much in the order that it occurred to me
I trust it may afford some amusement, perhaps instruction, to
those who take an interest in the curiosities of Natural History.
F. T. BUCKLAND,
ind Lifb Guard, Knightsbridg Barracks
NOT. so, ISg.
AthMuum GClub, Pal MIL,




CONTENTS.
A  HUNT IN  A HORSE-POND.
The Pond a small World. Frogs on the Watch. Tadpoles feed.
ing. Skeletons made by Tadpoles. Sea Lice and Shrimps.
Use of Crab's Claws. Shed Skins of Shrimps. Acute Sense
of Smell in the common Lobster. Clever Rooks Showers of
Frogs explained. Frogs' Hiding-places in Hot Weather and
in Frost. Curious Provision for their Hybernation. They
absorb Water. Reservoir of Water inside their Bodies.
Dried human Bodies. Furnace-men and Stokers obliged to
drink much water. Croaking of Frogs. Horace and Ovid
allude to it. Adventure with Green-tree Frogs in a German Diligence. How the Croaking is produced. The Bullfrog. Frogs in Giessen Pine Forest. Mode of killing them.
The Paris Frog-market.  French Frog-catchers.  The
Vienna Frog Preserve. Food of Frogs. They are useful to
the Farmer. Curious Deposit found in the Tower of Ely
Cathedral, in the Caves of Vavou, and in the Moat of an
old Castle.  Frogs good Barometers. The Newt the King
of the Horse-pond. How to catch him. Saleable Articles
to be found in the Pond. Stupidity of Newts.  Their Cry
and Bite. Newts fighting. Their Eggs. Their Cast Skins.
Oysters fastened to the back of a Crab. Oysters can move
themselves. A green Lobster. Affection of the Lobster for




It                     cCONTENTS.
its Young. How it protects them. Cast Shells of Lobsters.
Mr. Gosse an Eye-witness of the Process of casting the
Shell. Larvae of Dragonflies in Weybridge Woods. Good
specimens of their Skins shed in the Process of Transformation. Secretion from the Body of the Newt. Its Use.
Its unpleasant effects upon the Dissecter. Lizard sent by
Post from America. A queer mode of dislodging a Newt
from a Man's Stomach. Salamander's Wool. The representatives of the Newt in Geological Times. Dr. Buckland's Speech at Taunton. His description of the Megalosaurus. Note taken at one of his Field Lectures. Megalosaurus and Iguanodon restored at the Crystal Palace by Mr.
Hawkins. Dr. Buckland and Dr. Mantell first made out
their History. Lizard from Japan. Chameleons. The true
cause of their changing color yet to be discovered. Toads
used as Beetle-traps by Entomologists. Decoy for Moths.
Toads destroy Bees. Poison of Toads. The part of the
body where it is found. Its poisonous effects on a drunken
Man. Composition of the Poison. Mr. G. Rainey's remarks
on the Poison. His observations on the Skin of the Toad.
Toads useful to Gardeners. They might be used to catch
Ants in London Houses. Dr. Buckland's experiments in
detail to explain the stories of Toads found in Stones,
Trees, &c. Fossil Frogs.  Bones of monstrous frog-like
Animals found Fossil. Newspaper story of an Antediluvian
Frog.........................................17-8
RATS.
Horace's description of a Rat's Feast. Two kinds of Rats
in Great Britain.  ProoF of the French. origin of the
Black Rat. Description of him. Why he is getting scarce.
JIis favorite Haunts. Few  Black Rats in the London




CONTENTS.                       xi
Sewers. Experience of the Owner of the "Happy Family."
Black Rats near London Bridge and at the Isle of Dogs. A
Present from Bristol History of the common Brown Rat.
An unsuccessful Experiment in Jamaica. The Brown Rat
in New Zealand. Australian Rats. A rare Species of Rat
in Oxfordshire. The breeding of Rats. A careful Mother.
Proof of Rats killing and eating each other-even when in
a Rat Pit. Their Cannibal Propensities indirectly beneficial
to their race and to Man. Cunning of a Pair of old Rats.
A dried Rat. Three cases of exhibitions of so-called " Fossil
Men." Cross Breeds of Rats. Mr. Shaw's calculation. A
bad Shot at a Rat. Rats at the Zoological Gardens. An invalid Rat. Natural Eeservoirs of Water in the African
Desert. Mice found where Rats cannot get at Food. A true
but horrible Story. The gnawing habits of Rats. They will
attack Men. Are fond of warmth. Impudence of College
Rats. Rats in Hair Warehouses. A Plea for the Rat. Professor Coleman's remark. War proclaimed against Rats Rats
at Montfaucon. Good use made of the dead Horses. Rats'
Skins sometimes used for leather. Use of Microscope in
examining Hairs. Danes' Skin on Church-door. The Rat's
Tail. Its Use. Mr. Bishop's Story. The Rat's equipment.
Beautiful provision to keep his Teeth always sharp. Beavers
in England. Rats gnaw Ivory. Reason why they do so. Mr.
R. Fauntleroy's Ivory warehouse. Gnawed Tusks founa in
store. Billiard Balls not made of Rat-gnawn Ivory. Rats
good Judges of the quality of Ivory: Specimens from Dr.
Buckland's Museum. Ivory Tips.  Facts about Billiard
Balls. The marks of Rats' gnawings useful to the purchaser of Ivory. Mr. Fauatleroy's Skull of wounded Elephant.  Information about Ivory-Ivory Jelly.  Rats
on board Ship. A set of drunken Rats. Wholesale destrlc



Xii                    CONTENTS.
tion of Rats. Rats killed in the Atmospheric Railway Pipes.
A lost Handkerchief. Tame Rats. The Author's Experience. Ship Rats. How to catch and hold a Rat. Observations on the habits of the Rat. Cases of Rat, Horse, and
Camel Bites. The Whipmaker's pet Rat. The Rat Ikey.
Runaway Rats in the Vauxhall-road.  Migration of Rats
A Nondescript. A Ghost Story. Oxford Rats in the Long
Vacation. Migration of Rats on the Ilsley Downs. Story
of a Rat-eating Slave. His Traps. Chinese dried Rats.
Human Hair sometimes used for Manure. Tame Seals at a
Fair. India-rubber Dogs. A Californian Cock. A French
Lawsuit about a "Trumpet Rat."  French Sailors eat Rats.
Dr. Kane obliged to do so also.. Admiral Beaufort's experience of Rats. Captain Inglefield's Pets. Adventures of a.
Dove. How to free Ships from Rats. The Long Boat overboard. The Water Rat. His Anatomy. His rudder-like
Tail.  His Ears and Fur. Catching Water Rats. Their
Enemies. The Heron's Bill. Structure of its Neck. A
good Fight. Use of serrated Claw of Heron. Parallel
Instances in other Birds. Fossil Water Rats. Hyaenas eat
Rats. Rat caught Fly Fishing. Rats' Brains are highly
developed. How to destroy Rats. Method of Smoking
them out. An ingenious but simple Trap for Indoor Use.
Another kind for Farm-yards, Kennels, &c......... 87-206
THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
Virgil's Description of the death of LaQcoon. The Man killed
by the Cobra in the Zoological Gardens, 1852. Beautiful
Structure of Snake's Vertebrae. How he progresses without
feet. His attitude when climbing. Emblematic Meanings
of the Snake. Sagacity of the Fowls in Jamaica. Birds and
the Electric Telegraph. Skin of the Snake. Dr. Russell's




CONTENTS.                     xiii
Plates coloured by Natives  Cast Sloughs of Snakes. Hottentots' Simile. Curious Disease of Snakes. Beautiful
structure of Snake's skin when injected. Tail of Rattlesnake.
Coprolites of Snakes. Covent Garden Snakes and Vipers.
Vipers used medicinally. Theriacum. The Serpents' Cavern.
-Dr. Meade on Viper Broth. JEsculapius  Snake-catcher at
Cambridge. Adder's Ears.  Skinning a Boa Constrictor.
Snake's Eggs. Snake Sugar-plums. The Bristol Monster..
External differences between venomous and harmless Snakes.
Instances of carelessness on the part of Modellers. Bronze
Casts of Lizards, &c. Mr. Hancock's Group in Silver. The
Snake Plant. Vegetable Caterpillars. Exhibition of Hottentot Adder. A Hairy Viper.  Double-headed Snake.
Anatomy of Head of Boa Constrictor. Arrangement of the
Teeth. Guinea Pig in Jack's Head. Savage Boa Constrictor. A Man eaten. How to kill a Snake. Instances of
Snakes swallowing Snakes. Poisonous Snakes. Remarks
on "the Sting." Scorpions. Centipedes. Poisonous Spur
of the Platypus. Teeth of venomous Snakes. Internal Teeth
of the African Snake. Fangs of-Cobra. Preparations in the
College of Surgeons. Poison Glands. Microscopic appearance of Poison of Puff Adder. Experiments with it. Also
with Wourali Poison. Shed Teeth of Snakes. Attempt to
explain an old Story. Poisoned Arrows. Old William and
the Crocodile. Hood of Cobra. Speculations as to'the
mode of progression of the Snake before the Curse. And
upon the meaning of the Words "Dust shalt thou eat."
Cobras in Egypt. *Pharaoh's Magicians. The Plague of
Fiery Serpents. Testimony of Herodotus. Mr. Broderip's
description of the Snake-charmers. Tricks of the Operators. An Accident. How to treat a Person bitten by a
poisonous Snake. Native Snake Doctors. Boy bitten by a




xiv                   CONTENTS.
Viper. Remarkable Cure of a Man bitten by a Cobra ir
India. Comments upon the Story. The Author poisoned
by a Cobra di Capello. A narrow Escape........ 206-305
FISH  AND FISHING.
Punt-Fishing at Windsor. Salmon-fishers pleased. Gudgeon.
Charon's Receipt to make them bite. Lines made of human
Hair. Also from the Tails of the Queen's Horses. How to
"Plug a Pope." Instinct in Fish. Pullah-fishing in India.
Gudgeon Tracks on the Mud. Dr. Buckland's Paper on
Fossil Fish Tracks. Fish can alter their Color. Instances.
"Black Ivory." Skeleton of a Brigantine Chief. Fishes'
Nests. Mr. Crouch's Observations. Mr. Hancock's Description of the building of the Nest. Sticklebacks in the Isle of
Dogs.  Remarks on stuffing. Fish.  Charon's Rushes.
Otters in the Thames. A monster Jack. The last Thames
Salmon. Prussian Carp at Oxford. A  new  species of
Mussel-shell.  Ingenious rod top.  The meaning of a
" drowned" Fish. Beautiful instance of design seen in the
Jack and Stickleback. Attempt to explain a remarkable
Passage in the Book of Job. The Roach. Observations on
the Mouths of Fishes. Angling for Sea Gulls. Wing Bones
of Birds. The anatomy of the Solan Goose. The Teeth of
the Rock Fish. The head of the Gurnard. Gold Fish.
Their Food. Fate of a Hedgehog. Supply of Gold Fish to
the London Market.  Eels found in the Fountains at
Charing-Cross. How they got therq A blind Eel. Potted
Eels. The Air-bladder of Fishes and Eels. Curious effect
of Frost on Conger Eels. Jews fond of Fish. A cartload
of Gold Fish. Mr. Hall's remarks on Gold Fish living in
Water at a High Temperature. Fish in the Serpentine.
Cause of the Color of the Water.  Ingenious mode of




CONTENTS.                      XV
setting Night Lines in the Serpentine. Decoy for Perch.
A starved Perch. Choked Kingfisher. Parallel Instances.
The BarbeL  His back Fin. Its Mechanism imitated by
Barge-builders. Spines in back Fin of the Dog Fish. Dr.
Buckland's Remarks on this Subject. A Sea-Snake Story.
The Dogger-bank. Ground Bait. Earth Quarries. Holes
dug by the Ancient Britons. Their contents accotited for.
A greedy Cow. A chest of Worms. Remarks on Gentles.
Fishing in Flood Time. Bleak. Their Scales. Used to
make Artificial Pearls.  The Oxford Pactolus.  Roman
Basse. Sharks' Skins.  Soles' Skins.  Parasites on the
Jack, Cod, Barbel, Roach, and Gold Fish. A good place for
Angling.....................................306-386
MY MONKEY JACKO.
Curiosities in the Shops at Havre de Grace. Monkeys for Sale.
Jacko discovered at Bayeux. He changes Masters. His
first Piece of Mischief. " Blackguard Monkeys." Jacko and
his Blue Bag. Zoological Opinion of a Railway Official.
Tortoises for Sale in London. A gourmand Omnibus driver.
Zouave's Mode. of killing Tortoises. The Christ Church
Turtle.  Boy bitten by a Turtle.  Jacko's Home in
England. A Monkey in a Manger. An old Man and his
old Donkey.  What becomes of all the old Post-boys.
Jacko a capital Mouse-Catcher. The Cook's Experiment.
It signally fails.  A  careful Old Woman.  The Dog
on guard.  Jacko and the Black-beetles.  Use of the
Monkey's Cheek Pouches.  Monkeys on the Rock of
Gibraltar. Natural Purses. How London Street Boys carry
their coppers. A sturdy little Fellow. The poor sick Boy
and the Baker's Shop. The Housemaid's Assistant. Jacko
escapes. The Pursuit. The Village in an Uproar. Jacko




XVI                    CONTENTS.
repents running away. My Monkey Jenny. A stand-up Fight.
Jenny loose in Westminster. Her Cunning and Activity.
She gets loose again and is shot at. Foxes at Leadenhall
Market. A Fox loose at Clapham. He is caught in a Wire.
Curious Result. Jacko attempts to clean the Knives, Shoes,
and Candlesticks. A pretty Mess. His warm Bath. He
is nearly boiled alive.  An Operation.  Jacko goes to
Oxford. His Tricks again. Scene with the Authorities.
Jacko dies. The Beetles' Revenge............. 387-423




CURIOSITIES
or
NATURAL HISTORY.
A HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
PRAY what is there to be found in a horse-pond
except mud, dead dogs and cats, and duck-weed?
the reader may ask.-Pray what is to be found in
that trumpery ball they call the earth? the "Man
in the Moon" may demand of his neighbor Saturn
as they both come out for their evening stroll. The
answer to such questions is, simply, "Life;" Lifein
all diversity of form, beautifully and wonderfully
arranged, each individual deriving benefit from the
well-being of the mass; the mass itself prospering in
ratio with the individual.
To the inhabitants of the pond, the pond is the




18          HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
world; to the inhabitants of the world, the world,
as compared to space, is but a pond; and when the
adventurous lizard has made a voyage of discovery
round his pond, he has as much right, comparatively
speaking, to boast of his performance to his fellowlizards, as Captain Cook had, when he first sailed
round the world, to write two thick volumes for the
information of his fellow-men. Well, let us have a
look at the pond-world; choose a dry place at the
side, and fix our eyes steadily upon the dirty water:
what shall we see? Nothing at first i but wait a
minute or two; a little round black nob appears in
the middle; gradually it rises higher and higher,
till at last you can make out a frog's head, with his
great eyes staring hard at you, like the eyes of the
frog in the woodcut facing iEsop's fable of the frog
and the bull; not a bit of his body do you see, he iq
much too cunning for that, he does not know who
or what you are; you may be a heron, his mortal
enemy, for aught he knows. You move your arm,
he thinks it is the heron's bill coming; down he
goes again, and you see him not; a few seconds, he
regains courage and re-appears, having probably
communicated the intelligence to the other frogs;
for many big heads and many big eyes appear, in
all parts of the pond, looking like so many Hippopotami on a small scale. Soon a conversational " Wurk,
wurk, wurk," begins; you don't understand it;




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.                19
luckily perhaps, as from the swelling ir their throats
it is evident that the colony is outraged' by the
intrusion, and the remarks passing are not compli-mentary to the intruder.
These frogs are all respectable, grown-up, well-todo frogs, and they have in this pond duly deposited
their spawn, and then, hard-hearted creatures! left
it to its fate;. it has, however, taken cate of itself,
and is now hatched, at least that part of it which
has escaped the hands of the gipsies, who not unfrequently prescribe baths of this natural jelly for
rheumatism.
In the shallow water close by, is a dark black
spot, that looks like a bit of old hat thrown away to
rot.* Touch it with the end of a stick-the mass
immediately becomes alive. Presto! thousands of
little black long-tailed rascals seem immediately to
start into life: these are embryo frogs, alias tadpoles,
alias porwiggles, alias loggerheads, alias toe-biters.
This last significant title has been given them by
the amphibious boys of Clapham  Common, whose
* Some beavers were one day building their dam across a
river, when'an old hat came floating down the stream and lodged
against their dam; the beavers collected round it and examined
it; at last one of them applied his nose to it and exclaimed
"AlasI our grandfather.". This happened in the days when
beavers wero killed and their skins made into hats. The grandfather had returned to his colony in the form of a hat.




20         HUrT IN A HORSE-POND.
toes they bite when fishing about for fresh-water
curiosities in the numerous ponds of that district.
These little creatures are evidently selfish like other
animals in the creation, for they are pushing, squeezing, and hustling each other, like people going to
hear Jenny Lind. And pray what are they all sor
anxious to get at?-simply a dead kitten. And
why should they not fight for good places? The
dead kitten is to them what a turtle dinner is to
the City folks; each duly appreciated by the rightful consumers.
But supposing there happens to be no dead kitten
or decayed vegetable matter in their pond, what
will the poor things get to eat? Why then they
will do what the New Zealanders have done before
them; they, the New Zealanders, ate up every
specimen of the Dinornis they could find on their
island, and then they set to work and ate up each
other; so do the tadpoles. You ask a proof: last
*year, I went, with a tin quart-pot in my hand, toebiter hunting, on Clapham Common, and brought
home exactly a quart of tadpoles; these I emptied
into a tub in the beer-cellar; there they lived, being
fed on meat several days, till one evening, on sending for a glass of the all-refreshing fluid, up comes
John with half a smile on his face, and simpers out,
"If you please, sir, I have brought the beer, but I
have upset the tadpoles." On arriving at the scene




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.          21
of the disaster, there were the poor things high.and
dry on the floor. I restored them to their tub, but
forgot to put back their meat. The next morning,
I found some had not recovered their accident, and
round the bodies of their departed brethren, were
crowded the cannibal survivors, eating and. pulling
away, each for himself. After this, I left them
much to themselves, and their numbers diminished
considerably; the cook's opinion being, as usual,
that that omnivorous creature, "the cat," had a
hand in it; bringing forward as an argument, which
is not strictly zoological, as applied to tadpoles, that
the " cat is fond of fish."
By the discovery of skeletons, murders are often
brought to light; so it was in the case of Tadpole v.
Cat; the skeletons of the murdered froglings I found
in abundance at the bottom of their tub: and' wonderful skeletons they were, the form of the little
creatures being beautifully shown in a framework
of delicate gristle, the various parts still united
together, but separating on the slightest touch.
I have sometimes seen capital skeletons of small
animals in ponds, the flesh having been eaten away
by tadpoles. In the United Service Museum are
some very perfect skeletons of sea-birds made somewhat in the same way; they were brought home
from the Arctic regions, and were made by the sealice; the birds were let down into the sea to an




22          HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
immense depth, and left there twenty-four hours
these bones are as'white as ivory.
Common shrimps are capital skeleton-makers;
these little creatures are wonderful scavengers, and
eat up the vegetable and animal refuse of the ocean.
Behind the ancient fort at Tilbury, opposite. Gravesend, is a considerable extent of flat ground, intersected by deep ditches. In these ditches I found
swarms of shrimps feeding on the weed along the
banks: though I could see them plain enough, I
found it very difficult to catch them; for the moment my hand-net touched the surface of the water
they vanished-shooting away like little meteors;
and even when I did get them in the net they
hopped out like gigantic fleas. I discovered a small
sluice-gate, through which a shallow stream of water was running: looking over very quietly, I saw
thousands of these little shrimps, all with their
heads pointed up stream, feeding upon what they
could find. Presently, a crab, about three inches
and a half long, appeared at the top of the water,
then another, and then another; and these perpetually caught with their claws at passing portions of
what they saw floating by; when they had got anything they sank with it, probably to devour it. Till
then I never quite understood the use of a crab's
claws; though clumsy-looking things, the crab can
wield them with great activi y and neatness, and they




HUNT IN A HOBSE-POND.           23
seldom missed what they clutched at. The boys, tak
ing advantage of this, drop into the stream a corn
mon bit of string, the crs] seizes hold, and goes to
the bottom to examine his prize; but before he has
time to ascertain that it is not edible, and to let go,
the boy whips him up on to the land. Over the
place where the shrimps were feeding, I observed
masses of white-looking substance floating: I got
them up, and they turned? out to be the shed skins
of the shrimps; for shrimps shed their skins as well
as lobsters. From examination, I should conclude
that the shrimp emerges from his old skin at the
junction of the tail with the body; he sheds even
the skin of his antennae or feelers, as-well as of the
peculiar saw-like weapon which projects between
his eyes.  When lobsters shed their outer skins,
strange to say, they shed also the lining membrane
of their stomachs.  I could not find any of
the lining membrane of the stomach among the
shrimp skins. They were for the most part much
broken up; but I picked out two or three good specimens, which are now in the College of Surgeons.
My friend, Mr. Roberts of Worthing, has informed me that both lobsters and prawns have the
most acute sense of smell. Nine miles out at sea,
off Lyme Regis, in Dorsetshire, is a ledge of chalk
rocks abounding with these animals. If a basket
be let down, the prawns directly crowd together




24         HUNT IN A EORSE-POND.
around it: if it.be daylight, and they can see
the boat, they will not g6 in, but at night they go
in in great numbers.  MW. Roberts says a lobster
will smell a putrid object a hundred yards off. A
crab is caught with fresh bait only. When at
Weymouth, many years ago, with my father, I recollect his telling me a story of a large ship being
wrecked off the Isle of Portland, and that many
persons were drowned. Soon after the wreck, a
great number of lobsters and prawns were caught,
and none of the Weymouth folks would eat them,
because they were supposed to have fed on the
bodies of the drowned people, and this was very
possibly the case. The lobsters were therefore sent
off to London, for the benefit of those who did not
know their history. It is extraordinary how soon
animals and birds find out the place where there is
anything to eat (we may include our own species
among the animals). The regiment to which I
belong very frequently marches down teWormwood Scrubs, for field days. Upon arriving at the
Scrubs, I have not seen a single rook; but the rooks
very soon appear: they come to pick out what they
can from the dung of the horses, and the bits of
bread which drop out of the paper in which the
men carry their refreshment. The rooks always go
to the place where the regiment has dismounted, as
there they find most to eat. These rooks come, I




-UNT IN A HORSE-POND.           25
believe, from the trees in Holland Park-they certainly often arrive from that direction.
The habit of eating each other among the tadpoles may by some be considered horrible and
unnatural; but when we consider the thousands
that are hatched from the egg, its beneficial use in
the' economy of nature will at once be perceived.
Were all the young tadpoles to become frogs, not
only would mankind be cursed with a plague of
Egypt, but the frogs themselves would suffer, inas
much as there could not possibly be food for all,
and starvation would be the consequence.  Thus,
by inquiry into the ways of an all-wise and munificqnt Creator, we may generally find that what at
first sight seems cruel, is in reality merciful and kind.
Come again to the horse-pond a few weeks after
the tadpole era, and you will find hundreds of lively
little fi'ogs, no longer black specks, but having lost
their gills, and their tails, and their dead-kitten
appetites, sent forth to fight their way in the world;
or may-be, not in the world, but in the regions of
the air above the world, thence suddenly to descend,
to the astonishment of rustics, and to the delight of
those profound philosophers, newspaper naturalists.
I will not enter into the various changes assumed
by the tadpole before it becomes a frog: this transformation has been ably described elsewhere. Those
who wish to Wee with their own eyes what happens
2




26          HUNT IN A HORSE-PONI.
have only to go to the College of Surgeons, where
they Will find a series of models, of gigantic size
compared to the originals, illustrating this point.
These models were presented by Professor Echer
of Freiburg.
It may not here be out of place to give the interpretation of frog showers, as now most generally
received by competent judges.  The actual fact,
that considerable spaces of ground have been suddenly covered with numerous small frogs, where
there were no frogs before, has been proved beyond
a doubt.  Some have called in the aid of waterspouts, whirlwinds, and similar causes, to account for
their elevation into the regions of air, and some have
even thought that they were formed in the clouds,
from whence they were precipitated. It -has generally been in August, and often after a season of
drought, that these hordes of frogs have made their
appearance; but, with Mrs. Siddons, we will exclaim,'" How gat they there?" Simply as follows:
-the animals had been hatched, and quitted their
tadpole state and their pond at the same time, days
before they became visible to, or rather observed
by, mortal eyes.* Finding it unpleasant in the hot,
parched fields, and also running a great chance of
* A Frenchman once observed to me, when I was commenting on his performing dogs, " Ah, sir, there are more lookers than
observers I "-a most true remark.




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.           27
Deing then and there dried up by the heat of the
sun, they wisely retreated to the coolest and damp.
est places they could find, namely, under clods and
stones, where, on account of their dusky color, they
escaped notite. Down comes the rain, out come
the frogs, pleased with the chance.  Forthwith
appears an article in the county paper; the good
folks flock to see the phenomenon. There are the
frogs hopping about; the visitors remember the
shower, and a "simple countryman" swears the
frogs fell in the shower, and he saw them fall: frogs,
visitors, countrymen, editors, are all pleased, and
nobody undeceives them, nor are they willing to be
undeceived.
The skin of frogs readily absorbs water, and in
hot weather they always retreat to places where
they will find moisture, or at least a certain degree
of dampness: if you want to catch a frog on a hot
day, you must look under boards, clumps of grass,
&c., and you will probably find him at home. After
a continuance of hot weather, frogs are frequently
found dead and quite dried up, particularly on or
near dusty roads: they have probably come out of
their damp hiding-places, and the moisture of their
bodies having been evaporated before they had time
to get back again, they have been dried up like
mummies. When water is scarce, frogs collect
together to keep each other moist. Water can




28          HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
become scarce, from frost as well as from heat; and
this was curiously exemplified by what once happened at Carlsruhe. The town, during a long frost,
became deprived of the- usual supply of water for
many days. A great number of frogs, to shelter
themselves from the frost, took refuge in the hydraulic engines by means of which the houses are
supplied with water. The cold increasing, the frogs
got up into the pipes, and in- many places became
agglomerated into a mass so compact, that it.was
with the greatest difficulty they were cleared out, and
a passage for the water made. There is a curious
fact as regards the hybernation or winter sleep of
frogs: of course in this state they cannot eat: most
other animals, as the bear, marmot, &c., which hybernate, lay up in their bodies a supply of fat during
the summer, which becomes absorbed in the winter.
According to this rule, a frog ought to be very fat
towards the close of summer, yet who ever saw a
fat frog?  Still a frog does lay up fat for winter
consumption, not outside his body, but inside; for
we find that the membrane which surrounds the
intestines, the peritoneum, contains remarkable
folds, and in these folds a fatty matter of a yellow
color is deposited, and this fat is, with reason, supposed to be stored up there for winter consumption.
Dr. Townson, in his'tracts on Natural History, London, 1799, records a series of observations which




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.            29
he made on frogs, and also on some toads: these
were directed chiefly to the very absorbent power
of the skin of these reptiles, and show that they take
in and eject liquids through their skin alone, by a
rapid process of absorption and evaporation; a frog
absorbing sometimes in half-an-hour as much as half
its own weight, and in a few hours the whole of its
weight of water, and nearly as rapidly giving it off
when placed in any position that is warm and removed from moisture. ~ Dr. T. contends that as the
frog tribe never drink water, this fluid must be supplied by means of absorption through -the skin.
Both frogs and toads  ave a-large bladder-like sack,
which is oftenfound full of water; "whatever this
fluid may be," (he says), "it is as pure as distilled
water, and equally tasteless. This I assert as well
of that of the toad, which I. have often tasted, as
that of frogs."  I myself hate frequently observed
that when a fiog is caught, by sullenly ejecting a
quantity of water he will diminish his size n~rly
half. When you first catch him he looks very fat,
but in five minutes he looks thin and half-starved;
place him all night in a little water, shallow enough
for him to sit comfortably in, and he will have recovered his plumpness by the morning.
The bag, or receptacle where this fluid is collected,
looks like the organ generally called the bladder;
but it is not the true bladder, for it is not in any




30          HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
way connected with the kidneys: it is formed out
of a peculiar membrane (called the allantois), and
serves two purposes;-first, it acts as a simple water
reservoir;.secondly, it assists in the process of respiration, for when injected with colored size, the
sides are found to be highly vascular, resembling
somewhat the true lung structure.
The body of man himself contains a large proportion of water, and if he has no water'he soon dies.
A person can live longer without eating than he can
without drinking. The bodies of men found dead
in the deserts are dried up almost to nothing. The
hot sand, wind, and sun, have caused every drop
of water to evaporate fiom the flesh, and even from
the bones. The bodies thus become very light in
proportion to their size.
In the College of Surgeons is the dried body of
a poor boy, that was found bricked up in a vault in
a London chur*q  This boy was about twelve years
of re. He was found erect, with his clothes on,
in a vault underneath St. Botolph's, Aldgate old
church, in the year 1742; and is supposed to have
been shut in at the time of the plague in London, in
1665, as the vault had not been opened since that
period till it was pulled down. This body-weighs
only eighteen pounds. Persons subject to great
heat are obliged to drink much water to supply that
taken away by evaporation. The Swansea copper




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.           31
furnace-man is exposed to great changes of temperature: a thermometer at his chest denotes 120~,
one on his back 60~ or 70~. After two hours' exposure to the scorching blaze, he retires to the open
air to cool himself, and to drink; his drink is generally water, two or three gallons in twelve hours;
but then he perspires six hundred gallons in the
year before his furnace. Yet Dr. Williams reports
that he is "a merry fellow, who lives to a good old
age, as hale, florid, and corpulent as his neighbors."
I am informed that, when steam-vessels are voyaging
in the tropics, the heat of the engine-room, combined
with the temperature of the air, is so.overpowering,
that the stokers and others have free access to an
unlimited supply of iced water, in which oatmeal
has been sprinkled; the drinkers say this oatmeal
prevents so much water disturbing the stomach, and
experience in these matters generally leads to right
conclusions. If the men had not this water they
would not be able to withstand the evaporation, and
the heat would kill them. The human skin is in
itself a great absorber of water, and sailors exposed
in the open sea without fresh water, find'their thirst
relieved by applications to their bodies of cloths wet
with salt water. Man has been aptly defined by a
writer in the Quarterly Review  as " Forty-five
pounds of carbon and nitrogen diffused through five
and a half pailfuls of water."




32          HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
For the poor little frog a cruel fate is often in
store-no less than to be buried alive, in a twolegged, hat-wearing tomb. I have often seen boys
allow frogs to jump down their throats -(never to
return), at a small charge of one half-penny each
frog. "Fiat experimentum in corpore vili "-they
received no hurt, or ill effects, therefore shall one
of the race be honored with a free passage down
yet another throat. I follow Mrs. Glasse's advice,
and first." catch my frog," then place him on the
brink of the abyss; he hesitates, I don't half like it,
one, two, three, he jumps-the deed is done. Am
I any the better or the worse for it? not that I
know of; others are of a different opinion. I am
told that my " croaking fits" date their origin from
the moment poor frogee entered upon his fatal journey. Many frogs have I eaten since this date, not
"in statu naturali," but cooked as a Frenchman
only'knows how to cook; and very good imitation
of whitebait is a dish of cooked frogs-the comparison will not hold when the frogs have not seen the
fire.
Happening to be in Germany, in 1846, I was
desirous of getting some insight into the manners
and customs of the inhabitants of the ponds, and
after much observation, arrived at the same conclusion concerning them as the master of one of Her
Majesty's ships did respecting the subjects of the




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.              33
Imaum of Muscat. Being compelled to record categorically a reply to the inquiry, " What are the
manners and customs of the inhabitants?" he wrote,
"Manners they have none, and their customs are
very beastly."  This is much the case with the sub
jects of King Frog.
My knowledge of their vicinity was based upon
auricular confession. Night after night, the most
dreadful din of croaking bore tetimony to the fact
that they were unburdening their consciences; and
I determined to try if I could not unburden their
bodies of their batrachian soJuls altogether. However, before I detail my proceedingsi I have a word
to say with reference to their croaking.
Horace bears expressive testimony to the disgust
he felt at it, when, after a heavy supper to help him
on his way to Brundusium, he exclaimed
" Mali culices, ranseque-palustres
Avertunt somnos."*
So loud and continuous is their song, especially
in the breeding season, that I find it recorded —in
the former good old times of France, when nobles
were nobles, and lived in their magnificent chateaux
scattered throughout the country-that the pr,'
* "The fenny frogs, with croaking hoarse and deep,
And gnats loud buzzing drive away our sleep." —Fancis
2*




34           HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
sants were employed during the whole night in
beating the ponds within earshot of the chateaux,
with boughs of trees, to prevent the slumbers of
the lords and ladies being broken by their paludine
neighbors. The frogs can produce this noise under
water as well as on land. Ovid alludes to this fact
when he says,
" Quamvis sint sub qua, sub aqua maledicere tentent,
Vox quoque jam rauca-est, infiataque colla tumescunt."*
In some places, from their making this peculiar
noise, they have ben called " Dutch nightingales."
In Scotland, too, they have a curious name, Paddock or Puddick; but there is poetical authority
for it:"The water-snake whom fish and paddocks feed,
With staring scales lies poisoned." —Dryden.
Returning from  the University of Giessen, I
brought with me about a dozen green tree-frogs,
which I had caugit in the woods near the town.
The Germans call them Laub Frosch, or leaf-frog;
they are most difficult things to find, on account of
their color so much resembling the leaves on which
they live. I have frequently heard one singing in
* "Although they are under the water, yet they try to curse
under the water.
Their voice too is hoarse, and their inflated throats swell."




IUNT IN A IIORSE-POND.          35
a small bush, and, though I have searched carefully,
have not been able to find him: the only way is to
remain quite quiet till he again begins his song. Atf
ter much ambush-work, at length I collected a dozen
frogs and put them in a bottle. I started at night
on my homeward journey by the diligence, and I
put the bottle containing the frogs into the pocket
inside the diligence. My fellow-passengers were
sleepy old smoke-dried Qermans: very little conversation took place, and after the first mile, every
one settled himself to sleep, and soon all were snoring. I suddenly awoke with a start, and found all
the sleepers had been roused at the same moment.
On their sleepy faces were depicted fear and anger.
What had woke us all up. so suddenly? The morning was just breaking, and my frogs, though in the
dark pocket of the coach, had found it out; and,
with one accord, all twelve of them had begun
their morning song. As if at a given signal, they
one and all of them began to croak as loud as ever
they could. The noise their united concert made,
seemed, in the closed compartment of the coach,
quite deafening; well might the Germans look angry; they wanted to throw the frogs, bottle and
all, out of the window, but I gave the bottle a good
shaking, and made the frogs keep quiet. The Germans all went to sleep again, but I was obliged to
remain awake, to shake the frogs when they began




36          HUNT IN A HOnSE-PONp.
to croak. It was lucky that I did so, for they tried
to begin their concert again two or three times,
These frogs came safely to Oxford; and the day
after their arrival, a stupid housemaid took off the
top of the bottle to see what was inside: one of
the frogs croaked at that instant, and so frightened
her, that she dared not put the cover on again.
They all got loose in the garden, where I believe
the ducks ate them, for I- never heard or saw them
again. These frogs cost six shillings each in Covent Garden Market: they are not difficult to keep
alive, as they will eat black beetles, and these are
to be procured at all seasons of the year.
In the green tree and edible frogs there are fissures at the corners of. the mouth, for admitting
the external protrusion of the bladder-like cheekpouches which are inflated from the windpipe; and
these are the instruments with which they produce
their noise. These cheek-pouches they invariably
protrude in their struggles to escape when held by
the hind legs. Under these circumstances they are
also capable of uttering a peculiar shrill cry of distress, differing completely from their ordinary croak.
The female frogs have not these voice sacs-in
the males alone we find them. Their use may possibly be to enable one sex to be aware of the pre.
sence of the other.
In the bull-frog we find a very peculiar piece ot




,,HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.        37
mechanism, by means of which the.animal ts enabled to produce the well-known bellowing sound
described by travellers; hence his name-bull-frog.
Certain portions of the larynx (the arytenoid cartilages) are convex externally, and concave internally, so that when the entrance to the larynx is
closed, they form a dome over the windpipe, which
Cuvier has compared to a kettle-drum.
In the centre of a dark pine forest near Giessen
in Germany I found a shallow black-looking pond
which was full of these noisy frogs. Anxious to
catch some specimens, and obtaining a landing-net, I
cautiously approached this pond, and then, without
allowing my shadow to fall on the water, or making
the slightest noise, I peeped through the dense
brushwood at the side; yet the moment I showed
myself, every individual who happened to be above
water, jumped off his perch, and was out of sight in
an instant. I tried every means to catch them, but
in vain. At last I borrowed from some boys a long
tube of wood with a small hole smoothly and equally
bored through the centre, which they used to shoot
small birds about the hedges. Armed with some
arrows made of sharp needles tipped with cotton
wool, I ensconced myself in a bush, and waited
quietly for my prey. In a few moments, the frogs,
one by one, began to poke their noses out of the
water. I selected the finest, and by dint of a good




38          HUNT IN A HORSE-PONi)
shot, I succeeded in fixing an arrow in his head. In
the course of the afternoon I bagged several of the
patriarchs of the pond, some of them as large as the
largest English toad. Upon being struck with the
arrow, they nearly all protruded their sacculi from
each side of the mouth, inthe manner above narrated.
These frogs are not often used for the table in
Germany, but in France they are considered a
luxury, as any bon vivant ordering a dish of them at
the " Trois Fr~res" at Paris may, by the long price,
speedily ascertain. Not wishing to try such an
expensive experiment in gastronomy, I went to the
large market in the Faubourg St. Germain, and inquired for frogs. I was referred to a stately-looking
dame at a fish-stall, who produced a box nearly full
of them, huddling and crawling about, and occasionally croaking as though aware of the fate to
which they were destined. The price fixed was two
a-penny, and having ordered a dish to be prepared,
the Dame de la Halle dived her hand in among
them, and having secured her victim by the hind
legs, she severed him in twain with a sharp knife;
the legs, minus skin, still struggling, were placed on
a dish; and the head with the fore-legs affixed,
retained-life and motion, and performed such motions that the operation became painful to look at.
These legs were afterwards cooked at the restaura.




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.            39
teur's, being served up fried in bread crumbs, as
larks are in England: and most excellent eating
they were, tasting more like the delicate flesh of the
rabbit, than anything else I can think of.
I afterwards tried a dish of the common English
fiog, but his flesh is not so whitenor so tender as
that of his French brother.
Should any person wish to have a dish of real
French frogs, he can buy at Fortnum'and Mason's,
for half-a-guinea, a tin-caseful. They are beautifully
preserved, and are ready for cooking.  I have
eaten them at the house of a lady, who kindly
invited me to luncheon when she tried the experiment.
The old fishwife, of whom I bought the frogs, informed me that she had a man regularly in her
employ to catch them. He went out every evening
at dusk, to the ponds in the neighborhood of Paris,
with a lantern and a long stick, to the end of which
was attached a piece of red cloth. The frogs. were
attracted by the light to the place where the fisher
man stood. He then lightly dropped his cloth on
the surface of the water; the frogs imagining that
some dainty morsel was placed before them, eagerly
snapped at it, and their teeth becoming entangled,
they became an easy prey, destined for to-morrow's
market, and the tender mercies of the fish or rather
frog woman.




40          HUINT IN A HORSE-POND.
I subsequently brought over several dozen of
these frogs alive to England; some of them are
still, I believe, living in the Ward's botanical cases
of those to whom I presented them; the rest were
turned out in a pond, where I fear they have been
devoured by the gourmand English ducks, its rightful occupants.
The edible frog (rana esculenta) is brought from
the country, in quantities of from thirty to forty
thousand at a time to Vienna, and sold to great
dealers,' who have conservatories for them: these
conservatories are large holes, four or five feet deep,
-dug in the ground, the mouth covered with a board,
and in severe weather with straw. In. these conservatories, even during a hard frost, the frogs
never become quite torpid; they get together in
heaps one upon another instinctively, and thereby
prevent the evaporation of their humidity, for no
water is ever put to them.
In Vienna, in 1793, there were only three dealers
who supplied the market with frogs ready skinned
prepared for the cook.
Frogs feed principally upon beetles, which they
find among the tufts of grass, by the sides of the
ponds. They do not, I think, grope.about among
the grass for their prey, but rather wait till the
beetles run near them, and then they easily catch
them by means of their projectile tongue. I have




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.           41
examined the stomachs of niany frogs just caught,
and have found both slugs, beetles, and caterpillars.
One year, wheri the wire-worm was proving very
destructive'.to the turnips, I examined some frogs
from a field swarming with it; the frogs were quite
gorged with the worm, and must have done much
good to the farmer. I mentioned the fact to him,
and he issued an edict for the preservation of the
frogs. In the cages where I have kept frogs, I have
frequently found masses of the wing-cases and legs
of the beetles and flies they have eaten. These
wing-cases, being composed of a horny material
called Chitine, are not digested. The same thing
happeitwith bats. When going over Ely Cathedral,
I observed on an old beam, up in the tower, a shining glittering mass of something; it turned out to
be a mass of the wing-cases of insects, mixed with
the wings themselvqe. This beam was just lhder
neath a hole which was full of bats, and what I found
was the dung of the bats: so full was it of these
wings and wing-cases, and also of the eyes of the
insects, that when the sun shone on it, it appeared
set with shining and iridescent points. Dr. Daubeny,
some years ago, exhibited to the Ashmolean Society
at Oxford, a silhilar mass of dung of bats, from a
crevice in the tower of Holton church.
When Sir E. Home, Mr. Quekett informed me,
visited the cave of Vavou, in the neighborhood of




42          HUNT IN A HORSE-POND,
New Caledonia, he found in a cave a quar tity of
very curious-looking material, which was ascertained
to be bats' dung, presenting the sabne appearance as
the specimen from Ely Cathedral. Its real nature
was not ascertained for some time. I have sometimes found the wings of flies and scales of beetles
in the dung of the common English swallow.
I have in my possession, a mass of the bones of
frogs, mice, and again beetles' wings: which was
found in a moat of an old castle (the locality I forget). There was a considerable deposition of this
peculiar mixture of bones, amounting to many inches
in thickness. It was a puzzle for some time, how
frogs, mice, and beetle bones came there aT mixed
together, but the two previous instances will give
an explanation. Above the' moat must have been
an owl's nest, and these birds always spit up the
bone# of what they eat. Owlg live on mice, frogs,
and t eetles, and hence the deposition of their bones.
Virgil, a good observer of nature, when describing the approach of rai'as predicted by animals,
mentions the flight of cranes and swallows, the cow
looking up to the sky, the pigs, etc., instances the
frogs, especially, as being good barometers"Et veterema in limo rana cecinere querelam."*
Georg. i 37;
m And the frogs have sung their old song in the mud.




'HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.             43
The green tree-fiogs are used to this day m Germafn  as barometers; they are placed in tall bottles,
with little wooden ladders. The steps of the ladder
mark as it were the degrees; the frogs always go
up towards the top in fine weather, and lower down
at the approach of bad weather.  I have often seen
the Germans consult their frogs when starting on a
pic-nic expedition. Leeches, too, make good barometers. I have two leeches in a lonTg bottle, which
generally will indicate what sort of weather is coming in the next twenty-four hours.
But let us return to our horse-pond; we have
been sitting there some time, looking at, and thinking about, tle frog famr. The sun is very hot,
and no horse has come to drink. Like a dandy4
from  his club, decked mn his best, the great waternewt, Sir Triton Cristatus (the-king of the pond in
the absence of the ducks, who are his arch-devourers)
rolls lazily forth from his hiding-place. Look at his
beautiful coat, and his orange-colored waistcoatdown the whole length of hais back disports a magnificent crest,* for just now he is in prime condition.
He is indeed a handsome beast, and by the way he
parades himself up and down, in front of his favorite
batch of weeds, he evidently knows it.
* I find that in captivity this crest becomes absorbed in a few
days; the colors on the belly also lose their brilliancy.




44           HUNT IN A IIORSE-POND.
"0 formosd' Triton,' nimium ne crede colori."*
We want you: how are we to get you? ThequeFs
tion is often asked, "What did your godfathers?"
etc. My godfather, peace to his memory, gave me
a silver cup, and a bit of advice. Sir Francis Chan.
trey was a fisherman, and a practical man. " Never,!'
said he, "go without a knife, a bit of string, and a
sixpence."  We have followed his advice, and have
all those three articles in our. pocket. When we
see the triton, our obedience to sponsorial authority is rewarded.  We cut a stick with our knife,
we tie a bit of string to the end of it; now for a
hook-ah, here is a pin al ready, in the corner of
our coat; this is soon crooked, and atworm affixed
thereto; Triton sees it, he snaps eagerly, we have
him, and for the first time in his life he is tied up in
the corner of a pocket handkerchief.  But where is
Lady Triton?  Not far off;' she is recognised by
her crestless and russet-colored body, but she refuses the worm. She shall be caught, nevertheless~
by means of our sixpence. This is quickly changed
into fine brass wire at a neighboring shop, the
proprietor of which seems to sell everything, from
a nail to a flitch of bacon, or a pair of old woman's
pattens. In true hangman style, a noose of wire is
* 0 beautiful Triton, do not trust too much to your appear,
ance.




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.            4b
made, and fastened to the stick-the captive couple
meet'again in the pocket handkerchief. This lizardfishing must be profitable sport to somebody, for on
asking the pice of some medium-sized specimens at
Covent Garden, in a shop up the stairs, I found
they were worth threepence eaoh. Tadpoles also
were saleable articles, ana cost twQpence a dozen,
and the water-beetles, that have oars like a waterman (dytiscus), cost from  twopence to sixpence
each. Of "weed," they could "make any quantity,
a pennyworth, or sixpennyworth,"-so something
saleable is to be got even out of a horse-pond.
The newts are stupid things, and. do'not profit by
experience. In a pond, in a brick-yard not far from
Hanwell, I caught many beautiful specimens: the
worm was fixed on to a good-sized fish-hook in this
instance, and it was impossible for the lizard to get
the hook into its mouth. I had a good day's sport,
although I only hooked one; the others I caught
by allowing them to bite at the worm; they went
at it fiercely like bull-dogs, and held on tight like
these animals. I gave my victim plenty of time,
and when he. had got a firm hold, quickly but cautiously pulled him out of the water. If the line became atall loose -the triton escaped. I found that
they were caught by their teeth sticking into the
worm. One triton actually took the bait seven
times, and was pulled out of the water thrice be.




46          HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
fore I got him. This shows how very inactive their
laceitine brains must be, and is another proof, were
it wanted, that the intelligence of an animal depends
upon the development of its cerebral *rgan. I observed that these lizards, when taken hold of, invariably uttered a small shrill cry, something between
a squeak and a croak: this cry I have heard frequently uttered by lizards in my vivarium; they
generally utter it about sun-down. Frequently also
they would turn sharp round and bite, or rather
pinch the finger, their small teeth not being strong
enough to break the skin. The females are either not
so bold or more cunning (probably the former) than
the males; they are much more difficult to catch, and
much more wary in their movements. I saw one
female have a fight with a gudgeon, who invariably
returned to the same clump of weeds, as if looking
for something; probably the female laid her eggs
in this clump of weeds, and the fish wanted to eat
them. The fish seemed afraid of the newt, and
always made off when she came near; she chargedc
him vigorously two or three times, and seem.ed to
bite him.
The scene changes: the male and female newt
have now resided a week in a private crystal palace
of a globular shape. What we observed about
them, imprimis, was that they lived like Mr. and
Mrs. Sprat, and always quarrelled at dinner-time: a




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.         4 
worm was given them-the gentleman did not wait
for the lady, but seized the one end of the worm
while she seized the other-each gulped their portion down as fast as Italians their maccaroni; but
there must be an end to all things, and worms are
included in the category. In due time the loving
couple meet, nose to nose, each having swallowed
exactly half a worm. Husband looks daggers at
wife, as much as to say, What business have you
here? The compliment is returned, and they begin
waltzing, twisting, twirling, and rolling over each
ether, round and round their globe; neither will
drop the worm, neither will cry "peccavi;" somebody must give way, and that somebody is the poor
worm, who "comes a two. in the middle," and settles the conjugal difficulty.
One day I quietly let a worm fall exactly between
two large newts that were resting at the bottom of
my vivarium; they both turned at it at the same
moment, and both made a bite. The worm gave a
wriggle just at that moment, and both newts missing him, caught hold of each other by the fore legs
-newt A having'the. right leg of newt B in his
mouth, and newt B the leg of newt A in the same
position; they soon' found out their mistake, and
began writhing and tumbling about over and over,
round and round the vivarium, as tightly fixed
to each other as a couple of bull-dogs, knocking




48          HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
off the shells from the sides, and frightening the
poor Water-beetle out of his wits, and causing him
to ply his oars vigorously. Both of the combatants
at last seemed tired, and opening their mouths, set
free the captured legs; they then retired to opposite ends of the tank, thoroughly exhausted. Could
these two creatures when fighting have been seen
under a powerful magnifier, they would have realized the strange pictures we see in Mr. Hawkins's
book on "The Sea Dragons.':
Secondly. I have observed that the lizards obey
the command, " Increase and multiply." The young
make their d6but in the form of an egg: the female
will deposit them when in captivity. These eggs
are not agglutinated together in a gelatinous lump
as are the frogs' eggs, but are carefully deposited
by the mother, one by one, each in a distinct spot
from the other. Resting on'a leaf or bit of weed,
she folds it, by means of her two hinder feet, into
the shape of a funnel, and therein deposits a single
egg, gluing, at the same time, the folded parts together, thus concealing and protecting the enclosed
embryo.  In due time the young lizard-tadpole
comes forth from  his egg, and much resembles,
during the few first stages of development, his
first-cousin, the frog-tadpole; both are furnished
with tufted gills or branchiae outside their body,
which act the part of lungs; these disappear in




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.              49
time, and are replaced by true lungs inside their
body.  The eggs are deposited at the latter end of
April, and during the months of May and June;
but I know not how soon the tadpole assumes the
form of a perfect adult lizard,
Thirdly.  I have observed that the lizards frequently change their skins, as do snakes; and this
much in the same manner. A few days before the
skin is coming off, the lizard looks covered with a
sort of slime, and appears stupid and sluggish.
When he feels his coat is loose enough, he get.s
between two conveniently-placed portions of stick
or weed, and, leaving the dead skin, or slough, as
it is sometimes called, behind him, comes forth
more brilliant and lively than ever. These cast-off
skins are sometimes most perfect, particularly when
the lizard has not been disturbed during the operation: the only way to examine it is to take it most
carefully out from the vessel in which it is found,
on the top of a camel's-hair brush* (anything ruder,
as a bit of stick, will tear it to bits), and place it in
a wine-glass of clear water, then, with the lightest
touch possible, brush the parts asunder, and, if you
are lucky and have a light hand, you may get the
whole skin expanded quite perfect, looking like the
* I once told a soldier servant to go and borrcw me a camel'shair brush; he came back and told me that - had not got a
camel's " hair-brush."
3




50          HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
ghost of its former owner. There is not a portion
of the body that has not parted with its covering;
the very toes and skin of the feet are seen hanging
like an empty glove; and even the beautiful and
yet hard and transparent covering of the eye remains faithfully fixed in its old companion, the skin.
The lizards, why or wherefore I know not, are very
fond of eating these cast-off skins. I have frequently seen them at work at it.
Crabs and lobsters, too, change their skins periodically, but how often is not certain. Mr. Quekett
lately showed me a crab upon whose back an oyster
had taken up its position, and there it was hard and
fast. Now by examining the oyster it was evident
that its age was about three years; it became,
therefore, a self-evident conclusion that the crab had
not cast his coat for three years, as an oyster, who
has once taken up his position and fixed himself
when quite young, can never make a change. Oysters, nevertheless, that have not fixed themselves,
but remain loose at the, bottom of the sea, have thE
power of locomotion; they open their shells to their
fullest extent, and then suddenly contracting them,
the expulsion of the water forwards gives a motion
backwards. A fisherman at Guernsey told me that
he had frequently seen oysters moving in this way.
Passing through Billingsgate-market I saw, in a
glass-case in a fishmonger's shop, a lobster, extended




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.           51
full length; of a green color. I immediately inquired
about it. It had been in the case some time, the
man told me, and the color had faded; but when it
was alive, the green was of a much.nore brilliant
hue. It came from the coast of Cornwall, and the
fishmonger's theory was that when it had cast off its
old coat and retired into a hole in the rocks for its
new coat to harden, this new coat became impregnated with copper, the chosen retreat being a hole
in a rock containing copper. I do not quite agree
with this theory, as I have seen the common freshwater crayfish of a green color, and they could not
have got at any copper. The theory is, however,
ingenious; there is no reason why a lobster should
not have been green instead of dark blue, its natural
color when unboiled. The cause of a lobster turning bright red when boiled, is a mystery I never yet
heard explained. Is it mechanical or is it chemical?
That lobsters have affection for their young is
proved from the following facts communicated to
my father by Mr. Peach, when writing to him on
the subject of fishes'.nests. He states, "This love
of offspring is not confined only to the scaly tribe.
I have been told by the fishermen of Goran Haven
(Cornwall) that they repeatedly see the lobster
surrounded by its young even until they are six
inches in length: this I have had, not from a solitary
observer, but from many, at different times, and




52          HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
quite unknown to each other. So large was one
taken by a fisherman's boy, that it was put into the
"store-pot," to be sold to the crab-merchant when
he came round, but the wicker-work allowed it to
escape. The old lobster has been seen lying with
its head peeping from under a rock, with its large
claws extended, and the young ones playing between them. When danger was near, the old one
rattled its claws; the young ones sheltered themselves'under the rock, and the old one followed."
Every person who has eaten a lobster salad, must
know what the so-called berries are like; they are
the eggs of the lobster. The kangaroo, as is well
known, has a pouch in its abdomen, where it carries
its newly-born young; and for this reason they are
called marsupial (from  tapnvuo0, a pouch): among
creatures that live in the water, lobsters and crabs
seem to be the representatives of marsupial tribes
on land. If the tail of a lobster be stretched out
straight, there will be seen on its lower surface a
number of flat finger-like projections. In the male
creature these are comparatively small and short;
in the female, they are long and broad: and if it be
the right time of year, clusters of eggs will be found
adhering to these appendages, so that by simply
examining the under surface of the tail, the fish
monger knows a male from a female lobster. This
same arrangement prevails in the common fresh




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.            53
water crawfish, and from a specimen in the College
of Surgeons, it seems probable that even after the
eggs are hatched, the young take shelter under the
motherly tail; for No. 3783 is a crawfish, where
several little mites of crawfish just come out of the
egg, and not much bigger than the egg, are seen
adhering firmly to the finger-like processes.  When
the mother closes her tail, her offspring will be
snugly concealed out of harm's way beneath it. So
that even in creatures so low in the scale of creation
as lobsters and crawfish, we see that parental affection has been planted by the great Creator of their
species, that the race may not become extinct.
Mr. Townsend, fishmonger, in Hungerford Market,
tells me that, not unfrequently, lobsters are brought
to Billingsgate with their two shells on, the old one
in process of peeling off from the new one underneath. He promised to procure me the first specimen he saw, and a few days ago he sent to the
College of Surgeons, two lobsters in the process of
moulting. The shell of the largest has split exactly
down the centre of the head portion, so that a
slight pull would tear the -two parts completely
away. The shell in fact comes off in two equal
halves, just as does a regimental cuirass from the
breast of a Life-guardsman, when loosened from the
shoulder-straps and waist-strap. The old shell or
the tail of the lobster is simply lbose, and not split.




54          HUNT IN A HORSE-POND,
From  what I observed in the Tilbury  Fort
shrimps, it is possible that the tail part is never
split, but that the tail slips out of it, like a hand
from a glove.
The second lobster is a very ragged-looking
thing: he is casting his shell in a very slovenly
manner; it is coming off here and there in patches
and bits, which is I believe an exception to the rule.
In the Vivarium House, at the Zoological Gardens,
is the shell of a lobster cast in confinement-and it
is pretty perfect. I find in the Magazine of Natural
History for 1852, a most interesting account of this
process of shell-casting in a spider-crab, from the
pen of Mr. Gosse. I am  not aware that there is
any other account published of this most curious
operation; and as Mr. Gosse watched it himself, I
may be pardoned for introducing his own words: it
occurred at Ilfracombe.
" In the remotest corner of a tide-pool, crouched
a spider-crab, face outwards, as is the custom with
crabs under such circumstances. On pulling it out,
I was astonished and delighted to observe how completely the carapace and the limbs were covered
with parasitical zoophytes, and also while in the act
of securing the crab, I felt the body fall away from
the carapace, which hung for an instant by the
frontal part, and then gently detached itself, with a
feeling to my fingefs as if it had.been torn away




HUNT IN A HORSI-POND.             55
On looking at the crab, I saw the new carapace perfectly formed and colored, with no marks of injury
where the slough had parted from it."  Mr. Gosse
took it home, and watched the process of sloughing.
"The posterior legs were freed first, the anterior
pairs were about half out, and the animal pulled first
at one, then at another, until they were quite drawn
out as if from boots. The joints as they came out
were a great deal larger than the cases from which
they proceeded. It seemed to me that the parts,
which had  an  almost jelly-like softness when
extruded, were Gompressed as they were drawn
through the narrow  orifices by the fluids being
forced back, these returning through their vessels,
and distending the liberated portion of the limb as
it was freed. The whole of the branchia were
represented in the most beautiful order in the
exuviae. The coats of the stomach, with its minute
teeth, were also there in the form of a membranous
bag attached to the mouth by the lining of the
esophagus. The coats of the antennae (the feelers)
remained attached to the carapace (the upper shell),
and the glassy cornea (the eye-cases) of the latter
were not reversed. I did not see any of the struggling that is sometimes spoken of-it seemed a very
easy and simple matter."
Though I have never witnessed the casting of the
shell in a crab, I have been fortunate enough to




Q5Q6     HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
find two dragonflies in the act of coming out of
their larva state. Hunting about in the woods, at
Weybridge, near London, I came upon a pond,
round which were hovering hundreds of the largest
species of dragonflies, or, as the French call them,
demoiselles; they were foraging about for food, and
every now and then made a pounce down upon some
unfortunate insect smaller than themselves. Looking about among the rushes at the edge of the
pond, I was much pleased to find in nearly every
tuft, two or three cast skins of this insect. The
first part of his existence the dragonfly passes in the
water, in a very different shape to what it afterwards assumes. When it is time that the transformation should take place, the larva crawls out of
the water, and on to a stick, bit of rush, or in fact
anything that it can catch hold of. Now unless
there existed some contrivance for holding firm the
skin which is to be cast, it would hang about the
body of the fly as it made its exit. Accordingly we
find that at the ends of each of the legs of the larva
are two curved and sharp-pointed hooks.  When
its instinct prompts, it places itself in such a position
that the hooks shall have a firm hold, and keep the
skin destined to be left in an immovable position.
The skin then splits at the back, and out comes the
perfect fly. The larva-cases which I found were
most abundant. There was an old post of rotten




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.           57
wood close to the margin of the pond, and this giving a firm hold, was literally covered with cast skins.
On one bunch of rushes, I found a dragonfly just
half way out; the head and one of the wings were
quite free, but its tail was not as yet liberated.
Most carefully did I catch it, wishing to preserve it
in the act of transforming; I put it in my hat, but
in a few minutes it came quite out of its old skin.
A few yards further on from the place where I
found the last specimen, I found another dry skin
on a tuft of rushes; two of the rushes had been
taken hold of by the legs of the opposite sides, and
had been pressed together, so that their elasticity,
in attempting to resume their natural positions'
kept the legs quite tense, and the skin perfectly
fixed. A few inches below this cast skin, I found
the dragonfly which had just come out: it was resting upon a rush, and its wings were spread out to
their fullest extent. The body of the creature was
quite soft and moist, and it was evidently exposing
itself to the sun, to allow its wings and body to
harden before it took its flight. I brought home
both the cast skin and the'insect (which I killed by
holding it over a chloroform bottle), and they are
now in a cabinet in the Museum of the College of
Surgeons. A few weeks afterwards I again visited
this pond; hardly a dragonfly was to be seen, and
the cast larvarcases had nearly disappeared.
3*




58           HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
But to return to the lizards. A magnifying glass
will reveal, on the surface of the cast-off skin aforesaid, numerous pits and depressions (remember the
skin is inverted): these pits and depressions correspond to their relative elevations and furrows on the
body of the lizard. These curious formations are
little glands, set in the skin, which secrete a peculiar
fluid, and which serve, I think, two purposes-first,
to keep the body-of the lizard moist when he goes
out of the water, which he not unfrequently does (I
mean on his own account); secondly, to afford his
poor naked body some sort of protection. Who
ever saw a dog hold a lizard long in his mouth?
Certainly not. The captive exudes a peculiar acrid
fluid from  these glands, and the dog drops him
instanter. This fluid is also partially poisonous to the
human race. I remember once killing a lizard; and
began to dissect him immediately afterwards: upon
dividing the skin of the abdomen, there came forth
a very peculiar and remarkably offensive odor.
Though I cannot say it amounted to a stench, I
confess I was obliged to give up my dissection; for
I felt faint, and was obliged to lie down for a few
minutes. An hour afterwards there was no trace of
the odor, and I finished my work. I therefore advise naturalists never to dissect a newt till he has
been defunct some little time. They are very difficult to kill by violence, but a little salt sprinkled or




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.             59
them soon causes them to die. The lizard tribe will
remain alive a long time under circumstances that
would be fatal to most other creatures. Mr. Quekett showed me a lizard called the " horned-frog of
Texas," in a little tin box in which holes had been
perforated: this was the most hideous creature I
ever saw, looking like a five-shilling piece, with a
tail on one side and two horns on the other. It had
been sent in its bol by post all the way from Carolina, in America. It had started on May 1st, and
arrived at the College of Surgeons, London, May
17th, 1857. The box was not big enough for it to
turn in, and it must have remained in the same position all this time: it looked very thin, and refused
all food. Having frequently had occasion to feed
snakes and tortoises when they would not eat, I
proposed to Mr. Quekett to feed it; I accordingly,
with somedifficulty, opened its mouth with a bit of
ivory, and having, as it were, gagged it open, I put
in three big flies, and then took away the ivory, and
the lizard swallowed the flies with apparent relish.
This lizard, unlike the tritons, has not poison-secreting
glands; nor are the Italian land-lizards armed with
them, for the Italian cats delight to catch and eat
them. Crocodiles have not glands in their skin
which secrete acrid matter. Their skin is exceedingly hard and strong; so strong, indeed, as to be
useful even in the shape of armor. In the Britisl




60          HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
Museum  there is a suit of armor-from  ancient
Egypt, I believe-made to fit a man, and composed
entirely of crocodile skin. The stuffed crocodiles in
museums are of a dark, almost black color; but I
read that when alive, and in their native haunts, the
skin is of a greenish hue. With reference to killing
lizards by means of salt, I was lately told a wonderful story by a raw Lancashire man. It appears that
once upon a time there lived a taan whose appetite
was enormous: he was always eating, and yet could
never get fat; he was the thinnest and most miserable of creatures to look at. He always declared
that he had something alive in his stomach; and a
kind fiiend learned in doctoring confirmed his opinion, and prescribed a most ingenious plan to dislodge the enemy, a big Triton, who had taken up
his quarters in the man's stomach. He was ordered
to eat nothing but salt food and to drink no water;
and when he had continued this treatment as long
as he could bear it, he was to go and lie down near
a weir of the river, where the water was running
over, "with his mouth open."  The man did as he
was told, and open-mouthed and expectant placed
himself by the side of the weir. The lizard inside,
tormented by the salt food, and parched for want
of water, heard the sound of the running stream,
and came scampering up the man's throat, and
jumping out of his mouth, ran down to the water




HUNT IN A IIORSE-POND.           61
to drink. The sudden appearance of the brute so
terrified the weakened patient that he fainted away,
still with his mouth open. In the meantime the
lizard had drunk his full, and was coming back to
return down the man's throat into his stomach; he
had nearly succeeded in so doing when the patient
awoke, and seizing his enemy by the tail killed him
on the spot. I consider this story to be one of the
finest strings of impossibilities ever recorded.
It is possible that the power of secreting or
exuding fluid possessed by lizards has given rise to
the well-known story of the Salamander.  The
ancients, and some moderns, doubtless, believed, and
do yet believe, that the Salamander is incombustible, and has the power (like Phillips's suicidal fire
annihilator) of putting the fire out. Aristotle says,
it is reported that the salamander, when it goes
through the fire, extinguishes it. Elian says that it
will live in flames, and attack fire like an enemy.
From  the above erroneous notions of the poor
beast's power, the name of " Salamander's wool" has
been given to asbestos; and, why or wherefore I
know not, but the alchemists tortured Salamanders
in their attempts to change quicksilver into gold. I
have never tried the experiment, nor do I intend to
do so; but I conceive it likely that a lizard that has
glands in his skin thrown into a fire, might escape
death, and possibly be able to crawl away, defend




62           HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
ing himself from the heat by means of the exudation therefrom.
The alchemistshave not been the only persecutors
of the poor Tritons; modern philosophers have fre
quently tried experiments upon them, and  have
found out that, like lobsters and crabs, they can
reproduce limbs or parts of limbs which have been
amputated, whether by nature or accident.
A French philosopher, M. Bonnet, has amputated
their tails, and arms, and legs, which have been
reproduced with toes capable of motion; and in one
case the same limb was reproduced four times; an
eye, also, which he cut out, was reproduced in
twelve months; and the results of many other
similarly interesting, but cruel, experiments, are on
record.  Would that the poor limbless fellows from
the Crimea had had this triton-like power, instead
of being obliged to appeal to cork and wood-but
clumsy substitutes at the best-for the useful members they have lost!
The tritons* of our glass-bowl are the representatives of the crocodiles and gavials, which formerly
inhabited  this "right little, tight little island."
Query, was it an island in those days? Geologists,
*- Several of the tritons above-mentioned have been transferred from their glass-bowl to the fresh-water tanks of the
Aquarium, in the Regent's Park Zoological Gardens. We advise
the reader to inspect and admire them for himself.




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.             63
with good reason, think not; here, however, island
or continent, gigantic lizards lived, died, and were
buried. Should there be an unbeliever, let him go
to the British Museum, and look at the bones of
these gigantic British lizards in their coffins of
hardened mud; let him read the white labels upon
them, informing him where they were found; he
will recognise many names of true English towns
some of them, perchance, nearer London than hb
had imagined.
I find in a Taunton newspaper that my late father,
when addressing the Somerset Archaeological Society,
in 1849, made reference to the extinct lizard-like animals found fossil in England. He thus remarks:" The lias to be found in the neighborhood of Taunton was not only useful to the architect, but to the
archaeologist. It was the rock of which it might be
said, as Virgil said of some of the pests of the farm,'Qume plurima terrm
Monstra gerunt."' *
The monsters of the lias stone were indeed most
awful monsters. My father valued one collection
of them at the British Museum at 20001.; they were
so perfect that they could be dissected, as an ana.
tomist would a dead dog; the skin, the scarf-skin,
and even what they had eaten for their dinners,
* The monsters which the earth (or strata) bears in abundance.




64           HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
were discoverable.  After referring to the Plesio
saurus, discovered by Mr. Conybeare, Dr. Buckland
stated " that on Tuesday last at Birmingham there
was laid upon the table a thigh-bone larger than that
of any elephant ever seen; it had no marrow, and
was as solid as a gate-post-had perforations for the
blood-vessels that intersected it to enter; and it had
a fibrous structure which is not found in the whale,
and also particular perforations which exist now only
in the families of frogs, toads, and salamanders. It
was the thigh-bone of a colossal salamander, and
was found not thirty-three miles from that place."
Again in a MS. note of one of my father's celebrated field lectures I find the following amusing
description of the Megalosaurus (,syc/as  great, and
~avupog lizard), whose bones had been discovered in
the neighborhood of Oxford.  "During this period
of monsters there floated in the neighborhood of
what is now the lake of Blenheim-huge lizards,
their jaws like crocodiles, their bodies as big as elephants, their legs like gate-posts and mile-stones,
and their tails as long and as.large as the steeple of
Kidlington or Long Hanbro' (two  neighboring
villages). Take off the steeple of either church,
lay it in a horizontal position, and place legs to it,
and you will have some notion of the animal's bulk.
These stories look like fables, but I ask not your
indulgence to believe them.  There the monsters




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.           65
are, and I challenge your incredulity in the face ot
the specimens before your eyes;-disbelieve them if
you can."
Elsewhere my father remarks of this Megalosau.
rus: "Although no skeleton has been found entire,
so many perfect bones and teeth have been disco:
vered in the same quarries, that we are nearly as
well acquainted with the form and dimensions of
the limbs as if they had been found together in a
single block of stone." Not only may the reader
see and examine the actual bones of these gigantic
lizards in the British Museum and other places, but
he may, in these days of wonders, behold with his
own eyes the bones as it were again clothed with
flesh and muscle, and the monster Megalosaurus
restored to life, hideous yet wonderful in its vastness.
Baron Cuvier estimated the Megalosaurus to have
been about fifty feet in length, but Professor Owen,
having more bones to examine and compare than
the Baron had, has reduced its size to about thirtyfive feet; but in his own words, "the superior proportional height and capacity of trunk, as contrasted
with the largest existing, the length even of thirtyfive feet gives a most formidable character to this
extinct'predatory' reptile."  Mark the word predatory. As there is never fire without smoke, so
there is generally some sort of foundation for every
story we hear. May not the idea of the dragons,




66          HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
curious stories of which are chronicled in various
parts of England, owe their origin, in some way or
other, to the veritable existence of these large
lizards in former ages? To point out the train of
ideas or circumstances which led to these ancient
dragon stories is of course impossible, particularly
as man was not coexistent with Megalosaurus and
Co.-still there is a certain shadow of connexion
between them.
In the garden of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, stands the mighty giant Megalosaurus formed
and fashioned by the hands of the modern Pygmalion, Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins, and not far from
this Oxfordshire representative of giant lizards is
the model of another huge creature, the Iguanodon
(Iguana, oDoiu, tooth), so called because the form
of its teeth resembles those of a lizard called the
Iguana. The Megalosaurus was a predatory reptile; the Iguanodon was herbivorous, and is found
at Lewes in Sussex. Its bones were first discovered
by the wife of Dr. Mantell, and the Doctor made
out its history most satisfactorily. Strange it is
that both my father and Dr. Mantell should be
taken fiom us before the restorations of these and
other monsters were erected. Neither of them
lived long enough to see the results of their laborious investigations, amid the broken fragments of
dirty bones dug out of the Oxfordshire and Sussex




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.             67
quarries, embodied, and the animals again, as it
were, embued with life. The magnificent collection of Megalosaurus' bones in my father's museum
at Oxford, and also that left behind him by Dr.
Mantell, testify to their industry.
One of the most celebrated newts ever discovered
was found about a century ago, in a miocene deposit, at CEningen, and was described by a philosopher of those days as a human skeleton, which- he
called "Homo diluvii testis;" and a great fuss it
then made in the learned world. Cuvier, however,
came to the rescue, and decided that it was not the
skeleton of a man, but of a gigantic salamander.
This skeleton is still, I believe, in the Museum of
Haarlem. Since this date, the Prince of Canino
has examined it, and decided that it is closely allied
to his genus, Sieboldtia, a gigantic water newt,
three feet long, found by Sieboldt (whence its
name), in a lake within a volcanic crater in Japan.
A  male and female specimen of this enormous
water newt were brought alive from Japan, by their
discoverer Sieboldt; but the female was eaten, during the voyage to Holland, by the male, which arrived safe and sound at Leyden, often changing its
skin and feeding on small fishes, and snapping at
the fingers of any man that attempted to catch it.*'
* I find among Dr. Buckland's papers, a portion of the epiderm or scarf-skin of this very lizard. A MS. note states that




68           HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
Chameleons do not secrete any acrid poison, but
they have, as it is well known, the power of changing
their color. I had a couple at Oxford, and tried
several experiments, placing them on different colored cloths; the variety of colors they can assume
is not very great. They unfortunately soon died,
my servant having put the box in which they were
kept in a very cold place. They are very passionate
creatures.  Mr. Madden writes: "I trained two
large cameleons to fight; I could at any time, by
knocking their tails against one another, insure a
combat, during which their change of color was
most conspicuous. This change is only effected by
paroxysms of rage, when the dark-green gall of the
animal is transmitted into the blood, and is visible
enough under its pellucid skin.  One of them,
which I kept for some months, deposited thirteen
eggs in a corner of the room, each about the size
of a large lavender-seed; the animal never sat on
them."
The reason here given to account for the change
of color is not very satisfactory. It has been said
elsewhere to be caused by the injection of the blood
vessels of the skin, but Mr. Quekett tells me that
he saw the animal alive at Leyden, October 20, 1835, and that
it had lived there many years; it was one foot long when it
arrived, but it grew to be three feet long. It had no nails on
any of its toes.




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.            69
he has injected many chameleons, but has not
found the blood vessels of the skin by any means
numerous or capable of dilatation.  The real cause
of this phenomenon has yet, I believe, to be discovered, though there are many theories about
it.
There are many insects and beetles which come
out only at night. These are very interesting to
the entomologist, who often finds it very difficult to
catch the minuter kinds.  Toads are therefore
turned into beetle-traps, and made to catch these
little night insects. A brigade of skirmishing toads
is turned loose into the garden in the evening; the
toads, unconscious why so much kindness is shown
them, do their best to get a good meal, but in the
morning their master comes and makes them eject all
their night-work, which he does without hurting
them; and in this way many curious and rare specimens of minute nocturnal insects have been obtained. I have heard of a capital way to catch
night-moths, with little trouble; it was practised
by a brave-hearted and gallafit artillery officer, alas,
now no more!  He lived in a charming countryhouse near St. George's Hill, at Weybridge: the
woods thereabouts are full of curious insects; and
he used to catch the moths by smearing the trunk
of a tree with sugar and beer boiled together. A
lantern was then placed near the trap; the moths,




70            HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
attracted by it, came flying round, and were caught
by the sticky mixture.*
Toads are capital hands, too, at eating bees, when
they can get no other insects. A gentleman in Oxfordshire had a hive of bees in the cavity of a wall:
a common toad which had taken up its residence in
a hole close by was observed to walk forth and
place himself at the mouth of the hive, and to catch
the bees in their coming from and returning to the
hive with much dexterity and activity. After witnessing the toad at work for some time, and feeling
convinced that if his depredations were suffered he
would eventually destroy the whole hive, the owner
of the bees killed the robber, and on inspecting his
stomach, it was found full to repletion of dead bees.
Toads are generally reported to be poisonous, and
this is perfectly true to a certain extent. Like the
lizards, they have glands in their skin, which secrete
a white highly-acid fluid, and just behind the head
are seen two eminences like split beans; if these be
pressed, this acid fluid will come out-only let the
* "Mr. Buckland, we suspect, is not much in the habit of
reading entomological publications [this is quite true]; if he
were, he would frequently see opposite one and another name
the mysterious announcement,' At Sugar.' This means that the
moth was taken by the very device here described,-a device as
familiar to the insect-hunter as his collecting-box."
Review, Literary Gazette, Jan. 2, 1858.




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.              71
operator mind that it does not get into his eyes, for
it generally comes out with a jet. There are also
other glands dispersed throughout the skin. A dog
will never take a toad in his mouth, and the reason
is that this glandular secretion burns his tongue and
lips. It is also poisonous to the human subject.
Mr. Blick, surgeon, of Islip, Oxfordshire, tells me
that a man once made a wager, when half drunk in
a village public-house, that he would bite a toad's
head off-; he did so, but in a few hours his lips,
tongue, and throat began to swell in a most alarming way, and he was dangerously ill for some time.
lie had probably bitten right through the centre of
the glands behind the head, and had got a dose of
the poison. This toad's poison mixes readily in water.
Under the microscope I find that it appears composed of numerous round cells. A  small animal
that I inoculated with it was not in any way affected.
When first this juice is squeezed out it is in external
appearance very like the juice of the sow-thistle,
which juice must also have some acrid properties, for
it is often used to destroy warts by country people; Mr. G. Rainey, in the Microscopic Journal for
1855, has written a most interesting paper on the
structure of the skin of the toad. He states that
some French experimenters assert that the secretion
from the toad's skin is fatal to animals; but that in
his hands they have not proved so. That it should




72          HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
not be, what is commonly called venomous, he adduces the following most logical argument:-" There
is one consideration which, as mere circumstantial
evidence, may be mentioned in opposition to the
views of the intensely venomous power of the secretion in the toad, and that is, its general diffusion
over a large part of the body, whilst in all those
animals which are decidedly provided with a specific venom and not a mere irritant, the frightful
apparatus which produces it is well known to occupy but a very confined locality." When a toad
is taken into the hand it feels somewhat hard, and
its skin is not soft and slippery to the touch, as is
the skin of the frog. Mr. Rainey tells us the reason of this is, that " underneath the true skin is a
layer of earthy material that will effervesce with
acids." Tortoises have a covering, not of skin but
of bone, and Mr. Rainey very justly considers this
earthy deposit in the toad's skin to be analogous to
the scaly covering of the chelonean (XsXu!, a tortoise) reptiles. As regards the use of the skin follicles in the toad, Mr. Rainey gives the following
solution:-" These follicles have something to do
with the absorption and retention of fluid which in
this class of reptiles is taken into the system by the
skin. Frogs have no cutaneous organs to retain
fluid, so that this reptile requires more frequently
than the toad a fresh application of moisture to its




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.            73
surface. If a frog be exposed to the absorbing
power of dry mould, as the toad frequently is, the
fluid would pass through the skin into the dry earth.
The contents of the follicles of the toad mixing
with the dust and other extraneous substances, constantly in contact with its skin, especially as the
secretion is of a glutinous material, and has a tendency to coagulate when wetted, may possibly form
a coating on its external surface, and thus tend to
diminish evaporation; and in this way it may assist
in retaining the fluid absorbed into the body, and in
preventing its desiccation, and thus furnish another
means of adapting this animal to the physical and
physiological states and conditions under which it is
ordained to live and perform its part in the accomplishment of that one universal and wise purpose,
for which this much-despised reptile, in conjunction
with all other living beings, was destined and created."
But do not let my verdict of poisonous cause the
destruction of toads by my readers; they are most
useful reptiles, and devour thousands of small insects, that would otherwise eat up the vegetation.
Gardeners well know this when they turn them into
the hot-houses. As proof, I subjoin this testimony
from a gardener: "In the autumn of last year a pit
wherein I grew melons was so much infested with
ants, as to threaten the destruction of the whole
4




74          HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
crop, which they did first by perforating the skin,
and afterwards eating their way into the fruit; and
after making several unsuccessful experiments to destroy them, it occurred to me that I had seen the toad
feed on them. I accordingly put half-a-dozen toads
into the pit, and in the course of a few days hardly
a single ant was to be seen."  There is just now a
plague of ants in many of the London houses, which
defy extermination. I strongly recommend those
who are troubled with these plagues to try whether
a toad or two won't help them.
In the year 1825, my father tried a series of experiments, relative to the old story of toads being
found in stonesblocks of wood, &c. As these experiments were made with much care, and the
detailed account is rarely to be met with in print, I
may be pardoned for here introducing my father's
own words, for the benefit of observers of the present day. He writes:"In the month of November, 1825, I commenced
the following experiments with a view to explain
the frequent discoveries of toads enclosed within
blocks of stone and wood, in cavities that are said
to have no communication with the external air.
"In one large block of coarse oolitic limestone
(the Oxford oolite from the quarries of Heddington), twelve circular cells were prepared, each about
one foot deep and five inches in diameter, and




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.           75
having a groove or shoulder at its upper margin
fitted to receive a circular plate of glass, and a circular slate to protect the glass: the margin of this
double cover was closed round and rendered impenetrable to air and water by a luting of soft clay.
Twelve smaller cells, each six inches deep and five
inches in diameter, were made in another block of
compact siliceous sandstone, viz. the Pennant Grit,
of the coal formation near Bristol; these cells also
were covered with similar plates of glass and slate
cemented at the edge by clay. The object of the glass
covers was to allow the animals to be inspected
without disturbing the clay so as to admit external
air or insects into the cell. The'limestone is so
porous that it is easily permeable by water, and probably also by air; the sandstone is very compact.
"On the 26th of November, 1825, one live toad
was placed in each of the above-mentioned twentyfour cells, and the double cover of glass and slate
placed over each of them, and cemented down by
the luting of clay: the weight of each toad in grains
was ascertained and noted by Dr. Daubeny and Mr.
Dillwyn at the time of their being placed in the
cells; that of the smallest was 115 grains, and of
the largest 1185 grains.  The large and  small
animals were distributed in equal proportion between the limestone and the sandstone cells..
"These blocks of stone were buried together in




76          HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
my garden, beneath three feet of earth, and re.
mained unopened until the 10th of December, 1826,
on which day they were examined. Every toad in
the smaRer cells of the compact sandstone was dead,
and the bodies of most of them so much decayed,
that they must have been dead some months. The
greater number of those in the larger cells of porous
limestone were alive. No. 1, whose weight when
immured was 924 grains, now weighed only 698
grains. No. 5, whose weight when immured was 1185
grains,-now weighed 1265 grains. The glass cover
over this cell was slightly cracked, so that minute
insects might have entered: none however were
discovered in this cell; but in another cell whose
glass was broken, and the animal within it dead,
there was a large assemblage of minute insects; and
a similar assemblage also on the outside of the glass
of a third cell. In the cell No. 9, a toad, which
when put in weighed 988 grains, had increased to
1116 grains, and the glass cover over it was entire;
but as the luting of the cell within which this toad
had increased in weight was not particularly examined, it is probable there was some aperture in it
by which small insects found admission. No. 11
had decreased from 936 grains to 652 grains.
"When they were first examined in December,
1826, not only were all the small toads dead, but
the larger ones appeared much emaciated, with the




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.           7
two exceptions above mentioned: we have already
stated that these probably owed their increased
weight to the insects which had found access to tho
cells and become their food.
"The death of every individual of every size in
the smaller cells of compact sandstone, appears to
have resulted from a deficiency in the supply of air,
in consequence of the smallness of the cells, and the
impermeable nature of the stone; the larger volume
of air originally enclosed in the cells of the limestone, and the porous nature of the stone itself (permeable as it is slowly by water and probably also
by air), seem to have favored the duration of life
to the animals enclosed in them without food.
" It should be noticed that there is a defect in
these experiments, arising from the treatment of the
twenty-four toads before they were enclosed in the
blocks of stone. They were shut up and buried
on the 26th of November, but the greater number
of them had been caught more than two months
before that time, and had been imprisoned all together in a cucumber-frame placed on common
garden earth, where the supply of food to so many
individuals was probably scanty, and their confinement unnatural, so that they were in an unhealthy
and somewhat meagre state at the time of their
imprisonment. We can therefore scarcely argue
with certainty from the death of all these individuals




78          HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
within two years, as to the duration of life which
might have been maintained had they retired spontaneously, and fallen into the torpor of their natural
hybernization in good bodily condition.
" The results of our experiments amount to this:
all the toads, both large and small, inclosed in sandstone, and the small toads in the limestone also, were
dead at the end of thirteen months. Before the expiration of the second year, all the large ones also
were dead: these were examined several times
during the second year through the glass covers
of the cells, but without removing them to admit
air; they appeared always awake, with their eyes
open, and never in a state of torpor; their meagreness increasing at each interval in which they were
examined, until at length they were found dead:
those two also which had gained an accession of
weight at the end of the first year, and were then
carefully closed up again, were emaciated and dead
before the expiration of the second year.
" At the same time that these toads were enclosed
in stone, four other toads of middling size were
enclosed in three holes, cut for this purpose on the
north side of the trunk of an apple-tree; two being
placed in the largest cell, and each of the others in
a single cell. The cells were nearly circular, about
five inches deep, and three inches in diameter; they
were carefully closed up with a plug of wood so as




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.            79
to exclude access of insects, and apparently were
air-tight; when examined at the end of a year every
one of the toads was dead, and their bodies were
decayed.
"From the fatal result of the experiments made
in the small cells cut in the apple-tree, and the block
of compact sandstone, it seems to follow that toads
cannot live a year excluded totally from atmospheric
air; and from the experiments in the larger cells
within the block of oolitic limestone, it seems also
probable that they cannot survive two years entirely
excluded from food; we may therefore conclude
that there is a want of sufficiently minute and accurate observation in those so frequently recorded
cases, where toads are said to be found alive within
blocks of stone and wood, in cavities that had no
communication whatever with the external air.. The
fact of my two toads having increased in weight at
the end of a year, notwithstanding the care that was
taken to enclose them perfectly by a luting of clay,
shows how very small an aperture will admit minute
insects sufficient to maintain life. In the cell No. 5,
where the glass was slightly cracked, the communication, though small, was obvious, but in the cell
No. 9, where the glass cover remained entire, and
where it appears certain, from the increased weight
of the enclosed animal, that insects must have found
admission, we have an example of these minute ani




80          HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
mals finding their way into a cell, to which great
care had been taken to prevent any possibility of
access.
"Admitting, then, that toads are occasionally
found in cavities of wood and stone, with which
there is no communication sufficiently large to allow
the ingress and egress of the animal enclosed in
them, we may, I think, find a solution of such phenomena in the habits of these reptiles, and of the insects which form their food..The first effort of the
young toad, as soon as it has left its tadpole state
and emerged from the water, is to seek shelter in
holes and crevices of rocks and trees. An individual which, when young, may have thus entered a
cavity by some very narrow aperture, would find
abundance of food by catching insects, which like
itself seek shelter within such cavities, and may soon
have increased so much in bulk as to render it im.
possible to get out again through the narrow aperture at which it entered. A small hole of this kind
is very likely to be overlooked by common workmen, who are the only people whose operations on
stone and wood disclose cavities in the interior of
such substances. In the case of toads, snakes, and
lizards, that occasionally issue from stones that are
broken in a quarry, or in sinking wells, and sometimes even from strata of coal at the bottom of a
coal-mine, the evidence is never perfect to shom




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.            81
that the reptiles were entirely enclosed in a solid
rock; no examination is ever made until the reptile
is first discovered by the breaking of the mass in
which it was contained, and then it is too late to
ascertain, without carefully replacing every fragment (and in no case that I have seen reported has
this ever been done), whether or not there was any
hole or crevice by which the animal may have
entered the cavity from  which it was extracted.
Without previous examination it is almost impossible to prove that there was no such communication.
In the case of rocks near the surface of the earth,
and in stone quarries, reptiles fincd ready admission
to holes and fissures. We have a notorious example
of this kind in the lizard found in a chalk-pit, and
brought alive to the late Dr. Clark. In the case
also of wells and coal-pits, a reptile that had fallen
down the well or shaft, and survived its fall, would
seek its natural retreat in the first hole or crevice it
could find, and the miner dislodging it from this
cavity, to which his previous attention had not been
called, might in ignorance conclude that the animal
was coeval with the stone from which he had ex.
tracted it.
" It remains only to consider the case (of which I
know not any authenticated example) of toads that
have been said to be found in cavities within blocks
of limestone, to which, on careful examination, no
4*




82          HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
access whatever could be discovered, and where the
animal was absolutely and entirely closed up with
stone. Should any such case ever have existed, it is
probable that the communication between this
cavity and the external surface had been closed up
by stalactitic incrustation, after the animal had be.
come too large to make its escape. A  similar
explanation may be offered of the much more probable case of a live toad being entirely surrounded
with solid wood. In each case, the animal would
have continued to increase in bulk so long as the
smallest aperture remained by which air and insects
conld find admission; it would probably become
torpid as soon as this aperture was entirely closed
by the accumulation of stalactite or the growth of
wood. But it still remains to be ascertained how
long this state of torpor may continue under total
exclusion from food and from external air: and
although the experiments above recorded show that
life did not extend two years, in the case of any one
of the individuals which formed the subjects of them,
yet, for reasons which have been specified, they are
not decisive to show that a state of torpor, or suspended animation, may not be endured for a much
longer time by toads that are healthy and well fed
up to the moment when they are finally cut off
from food, and from all direct access of atmospheric
air.




1UNT IN A i11OSE-ProNI).         83
"The common experiment of burying a toad in a
flower-pot covered with a tile, is of no value unless
the cover be carefully luted to the pot, and the hole
at the bottom of the pot also closed, so as to exclude
all possible access of air, earthworms, and insects.
I have heard of two or three experiments of this
kind, in which these precautions have not been
taken, and in which at the end of a year the toads
have been found alive and well.
" Besides the toads enclosed in stone and wood,
four others were placed each in a small basin of
plaster of Paris, four inches deep and five inches in
diameter, having a cover of the same material carefully luted round with clay; these were buried at
the same time and in the same place with the blocks
of stone, and on being examined at the same time
with them in December, 1826, two of the toads were
dead, the other two alive, but much emaciated. We
can only collect, from this experiment, that a thin
plate of plaster of Paris is permeable to air in a
sufficient degree to maintain the life of a toad for
thirteen months.
"In the 19th vol. No. 1, p. 167, of Silliman's
American Journal of Science and Arts, David
Thomas, Esq., has published some observations on
frogs and toads in stone and solid earth, enumerating
several authentic and well-attested cases. These,
however, amount to no more than a repetition of




84         YT:SUT IN A HORSE-POND.
the facts so often stated and admitted to be true,
viz. that torpid reptiles occur in cavities of stone,
and at the depth of many feet in soil and earth; but
they state not anything to disprove the possibility
of a small aperture, by which these cavities may
have had communication with the external surface,
and insects have been admitted.
"The attention of the discoverer is always directed
more to the toad than to the minutiae of the state of
the cavity in which it was contained."
But frogs are found sometimes in a true fossil
state: some good specimens have been discovered
in the so-called "papier kohl" (a species of semifossil wood that splits up into thin sheets like paper),
near the town of Bonn, on the Rhine. They were
associated with remains of roach, dace, and a curious
kind of carp. Possibly in former days there might
have been in the antediluvian forest (now turned
into coal) just such another pond as that I found in
the pine-wood near Giessen, where I killed my frogs
with the blowing-tube. As in former times there
existed gigantic lizards, so also there were gigantic
frogs, or creatures very frog-like in their conformation. Specimens of these creatures have been modelled by Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins, and may be
seen at Sydenham. This beast has been christened
the Labyrinthodon, because, when a thin slice is
Inade of its tooth, the structures are seen blending




HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.           85
one with the other in an in-and-out fashion like a
labyrinth. I lately saw in a sugar-plum shop a stick
of what the boys call sweetstuff, composed of
various-colored sugars intermixed; strange to say,
they had assumed exactly the pattern we find in the
tooth of the Labyrinthodon.  Long before they
found the bones of our friend they found his footsteps; like hounds who have to hunt along the footsteps of the fox a long time before they catch their
fox. These. footsteps were like the impression of a
man's hand, so they called it the Chirotherium, or
beast with a hand. There are some fine specimens
of these footsteps in my father's geological museum
at Oxford; and many years ago I well recollect
making frogs walk over soft plaster of Paris to show
the similarity of their foot tracks with those of their
great-great, etc. grandfather.
As a sample of the " toad in a hole " stories which
we see every now and then in newspapers, I insert
the following newspaper scrap, which I find among
some MS. notes of my father's, relative to toads:" A few days ago, as two colliers were working coal
in a pit in the neighborhood of Bathgate, Linlithgowshire, they were astonished, on breaking a large
piece of coal, to see a living frog skip nimbly from
it. The niche in which it had lived was perfectly
smooth, and of the exact shape of the frog. The
hind legs of the animal are at least twice as long




86          HUNT IN A HORSE-POND.
as those of an ordinary frog, the fore legs almost
gone. It'is of a beautiful bronze color. It leaped
briskly about the moment that it was liberated from
its dark abode. How many generations it may have
been shut up from light and air it is impossible to
say; certain it is that although diminutive in form,
and with great brilliancy of eye, it is a very antediluvian-looking customer. It inspires us with a kind
of fear to be brought into contact with a living being
that has, in all probability, breathed the same air
as Noah, or disported in the same limpid stream
in which Adam bathed his sturdy limbs."
Examine this story by means of the key afforded
by my father's experiments, and its absurdity becomes apparent.




RATS.
Aridum et ore ferens acinum, semesaque lardi
Frusta dedit, cupiens variA fastidia ccena
Vincere tangentis malt singula dente superbo:
Cam pater ipse domus palea porrectus in hornd
Esset ador loliumque, dapis meliora relinquens.*
Horace, Sat. II. vi. 85.
IN the above lines Horace amusingly describes the
grave hospitality shown by the. Mius rusticus towards his old friend the Mus urbanus, the feast
being held, we are given to understand, "in paupere
cavo,"t situated on a rugged mountain-side. During
the entertainment the conversation turned upon the
vanity of mundane affairs, and the certainty of death
* He goes, and freely fetches
Whole ears of hoarded oats and vetches;
Dry grapes and raisins cross her chaps;
And dainty bacon, but in scraps:
If delicacies could invite
My squeamish lady's appetite.
The matron of the house, reclined
On downy chaff, discreetly dined
On wheat and darnel from a manger,
And left the dainties for the stranger. —Francis.
t Miserable burrow.




88                    RATS.
to all, whether bipeds or quadrupeds: the moral
appearing with the dessert —that it behoves rats, as
well as men, to be jolly, under whatever circumstances they may happen to be placed. On taking
leave, the city beau returned the compliment of the
mvitation, and his country friend trotted off with
him to enjoy, as well as he might, the contrast to
his own humble apartments,
In locuplete domo-rubro ubi cocco
Tincta super lectos canderet vestis eburnos.*
Whether other such murine feasts have taken place
since, or whether the London mures are given to
the same hospitality towards their brethren as their
predecessors of Italy exercised, I know not; but I
do know, and we all know, that there are many
representatives of this noble and ancient family in
London, whose habits and modes of living (though
we don't often read notices of their soirees and
entertainments in the columns of the "Morning
Post") are exceedingly interesting, and point out
to us, that if we only look we may find something
* When harass'd with a length of road,
They came beneath a grand abode;
Where ivory couches, overspread
With Tyrian carpets, glowing, fed
The dazzled eye.-Francis.




RATS.                   89
to admire and reflect upon in the humblest works
of the munificent Creator.
But to our subject:There are two kinds of rats known in Great Britain-the black rat and the brown rat. The black.
rat, or, as it is sometimes called, the old English
rat, does not seem to be an aboriginal occupier of
the British soil. The earliest mention of it is by
Genner, in his " Historia Animnalium," published at
Zurich about the year 1587. It is probable that it
was introduced into this country from France, the
Welsh name for it being to this day, as I have it
from a gentleman of Welsh extraction, " Llygoden
Ffrancon"-" the French mouse;" and I am, moreover, given to understand, on good authority, that
it still abounds in the barns and granaries scattered
throughout Normandy.*  We all know the common brown rat when we see it: the black rat is a
different-looking animal; he is much slighter in
make, his upper jaw projects further over the lower
jaw than it does in the brown rat, his ears are
much larger, and his tail very much longer than in
his.first cousin, and lastly his color is a jet black,
with numerous long hairs projecting out from the
lower fur-like coat. He is a very timid creature,
and rarely shows fight; he is, in fact, not very
* Quoted by the Quarterly Review.




90                  RATS.
powerful, but his want of strength is made up by
his excessive activity. I have examined several,
and found their bodies a mass of muscle without a
particle of fat.
By the side of the rat now so common in England, the aboriginal rat has no chance; he might
get away from him, being more active, but in a
pitched battle the brown, through his weight and
superior power, must be victorious. Rats, as will
be seen hereafter, are very fond of fighting, and
are addicted. to cannibal habits. In the rat tribe,
as well as among ourselves, the maxim that "the
weakest goes to the wall" holds good, and the consequence is that the black rat has become very
scarce indeed, and the brown rat reigns predominant in his stead. Stuffed specimens, even, are
very rare in museums, and the example they have
in the British Museum is by no means a good one.
I hope to be able to present them with a better.
There is a. case on record to prove that the Norway rat is the principal agent in the extirpation of
the black rat. Some years ago a London rat-catcher
shut up together in a cage the result of his day's
work, consisting of several dozen rats, of both species, and put them away carefully for the night,
their intended fate being to afford sport to his employer's dogs the next morning. What was his
astonishment, when he came to fetch them, to find




RATS.                       91
none but brown rats remaining! these cannibals
having cruelly devoured all their sable brethren.
The black rat is reported by phrenologists to have
the cerebral organs differently developed to those
of the brown rat (and this fact was insisted upon by
Spurzheimn in support of his theories).* The black
rat delights not in low haunts, such as cellars, pig.
sties, nor does he burrow and run into holes, etc.,
but lives chiefly in the ceilings and wainscoats of
houses, and under the ridge-tiles, and behind the
rafters of out-houses. Advantage may be taken of
this habit; for the surest way to catch him is to
place snares of thin wire, fixed open, on the beams
or rafters which he is in the habit of traversing.
Into these he will thrust his head, and struggling
to escape, will throw himself off the beam, and
thereby become strangled in the wire by his own
weight.
The author of a curious book-" The Vermin
Catcher, 1768,"-confirms this fact.  He writes:
* "It is certain, and must be conceded, that animals which
live on mountains, or which are fond of high regions, have one
part of their brain more developed than the species of the same
genus which live in flat and low countries. This difference is
very sensible in roes, hares, rats, etc. One species of rats lives in
canals, cellars and the lower parts of houses; another in cornlofts and garrets, and the difference in their cerebral organization
is very distinguishable."-Spurzheim's Phrenology, p. 142, 1825.




92                   RATS
"I was once exercising my employment at a gentle
man's house, and when the night came that I
appointed to catch, I set all my traps going as
usual, and in the lower part of the house in the
cellars I caught the Norway rats, but in the upper
part of the house I took nothing but the black rats;
I then put them together into the great cage to
keep them alive till the morning, that the gentleman
might see them, when the Norway rats killed the
black rats immediately and devoured them in mypresence."
It is a general notion that there are many black
rats still remaining in the vast city of sewers underneath the houses and streets of London, but the
author of " London Labor and London Poor" tells
us otherwise.* " One man, who had worked twelve
years in the sewers before flushing was general, told
me he had never seen but two black (or old English
rats." His evidence, however, goes to prove that
they are not quite extinct. He says: "In my inquiries as to the sale of rats (as part of the live animals
dealt in by a class in the metropolis), I ascertained,
that in the older granaries, where there were series
of floors, there were black as well as brown. rats;'Great black fellows,' said one man, who managed
a Bermondsey granary,'as would frighten a lady
into asterisks to see of a sudden.' 
* All the sewer-laborers I have spoken to, confirm this.




RATS.                  93
There are two exhibitions of happy families in
London; one stands at Charing Cross and about the
streets, the other remains permanently at Waterloo
Bridge. They both claim to be the original " happy
family" but I think the man at the bridge has the
greatest claims to originality. He is the successor
to the man who first started the idea, thirty-six
years ago-Austin by name; the present owner has
exhibited eight years, and always in the same place.
Both of these men told me that black rats were very
scarce things indeed; one of them had to give half a
crown for a single one. He afterwards got another,
but finding they would not breed in captivity, he
turned them out under the floor of his room, to give
them a better chance of breeding: the result of the
experiment he has promised to let me know.
I have been informed that a gentleman who was
in the habit of crossing London Bridge early in the
morning some years ago, frequently saw whole colonies of black rats out on the mud banks by the
river side at low-water; lately, however, they have
all disappeared, killed, most probably, by the increasing numbers of the Norway rats from the large
granaries and store-houses that have sprung up
near the bridge.
An intelligent rat-catcher informs me that the present head-quarters of the old English black rat is the
Isle of Dogs: that they abound there in the numerous




94                  RATS.
ditches, and come out to feed upon what is left by
the tide. In his opinion these black rats are not
aboriginal in England, but that they came over
originally from Jersey in ships. They thrive, he
tells me, in marshy places, particularly where the
water is brackish, and there are many such places in
Jersey. I have not yet had an opportunity of veri.
fying his assertion.  My friend Mr. Coulson, of
Clifton, Bristol, most kindly sent me up five beautiful young black rats from Bristol; they were in a
large iron cage, and when excited moved about the
cage more like birds than rats. I never yet saw
other creatures with four legs so active as they:
their tails are remarkably long, and they use them
as levers to spring by when about to jump. Opening the cage to examine them, one escaped, running
under my hand. It took myself, three other persons, and, two dogs, three quarters of an hour hunting in my room to catch him again-so active was
the little brute. We were obliged finally to kill him
to get him at all: one of my friends present very
appropriately called him " black lightning."
The other species of rat, now so universally
known, and generally esteemed a pest by all, is
commonly supposed to have come from Norway,
and is, therefore, called (but wrongly) the Norway
rat. This is a strange mistake, for it would imply
that this animal was aboriginal in that country:




RATS.                  95
whereas, in fact, at the time when the name was
first applied to it, it was not even known to exist
there. How this mistake arose I know not, except
from the fact that there exists in Norway a little
animal, not unlike a rat, called a lemming, describee
in a treatise entirely devoted to it by the celebrated
Danish historian and antiquary, Wormius, about the
seventeenth century. This may be the origin of
the name; but, however, it made its appearance in
Paris about the middle of the eighteenth century,
and in England not many years earlier. It is now
agreed by most naturalists that it is a native of
India and Persia; that it spread onwards into
European Russia, and was thence transferred by
merchant-ships to England and elsewhere.
This species of rat having nearly exterminated the
black rat, has multiplied in the course of years to a
fearful extent, and has taken sole possession of every
haunt and lurking-place where he can be warm and
dry, and at the same time find food in abundance.
What has happened in England has happened
elsewhere, viz. the Norway rat has destroyed the
aboriginal rat of the country. A gentleman whose
family had property in Jamaica, informs me that
several rats were imported to that island to keep
down the plantation rats. This was not a wise
plan, for no sooner had the Norway rats arrived in
their new quarters, than they multiplied so exceed



96                  RATS.
ingly that they became a greater pest than the ori.
ginal rat.
Again, as regards New Zealand, we read in the
"Field" newspaper, in answer to a question as to
whether any good sporting can be had there, an
answer from a gentleman who signs himself Kaiapoi:
" With the exception of a small species of rat, now
nearly extinct, having been all but exterminated by
the importation of the common Norway rat, there
is not a single indigenous animal in the country;
the rats have become a serious nuisance."
Again, another answer to the same question:
"In reply, I may state that New Zealand is about
the worst country for a sportsman in the world.
Nearly a century ago, Captain Cook left pigs and
rats upon the island, and these have become a serious nuisance in many parts."  I lately saw an
advertisement of a man who was "willing to buy
any number of live cats for exportation." Doubtless these cats are destined for New Zealand; we
shall have the story of Whittington and his cat
over again. It is by no means a bad speculation.
But according to a Canterbury paper the tables
are now turned here in England against even the
Norway rat. We read: "Among the numerous
articles for sale in our market on Saturday last was
a number of live rats from Australia. When asked
what inducement there was to introduce vermin




RATS.                   97
into one's house, we were told such was the anti
pathy of English rats to those from Australia, that
it required only the introduction of some two or
three of the Australian breed to extirpate any number of English rats. We were further told that
they realized a high price, in consequence, from
those who had faith in their frightening propensities." I have heard rumors of the existence of an
other species of British rat, that has become nearly
extinct. Mr. Blick,'of Islip, informs me, that some
years ago he well recollects seeing in Leicestershire
and Northamptonshire a small species of black
water-rat, shaped like a mole, with a long body and
short legs and a short thick head; but this rat is
now very rare. The fishermen report that the common water-rat has killed them. It is reported that
they are still to be found in Barton brook, near
Woodstock in Oxfordshire; but I have never yet
seen one.
It is a curious, but nevertheless well-ascertained
fact, that wherever there is a good habitat for a
rat, it is quite certain that there a rat will be. The
immediate occupier may be slain, but in a few days
the favorite spot will be found out, and taken possession of by another rat, who will in his turn meet
the same fate as his predecessor, and will be succeeded by another deluded victim, who is doomed,
as the doctors would say, " to be taken as before."
5




98                    BATS.
The rat is a most strict observer of the law " Be
fruitful and multiply;" for Madame la Ratte is
generally in an interesting condition thrice a-year,
and on these occasions she does not look forward to
nursing one helpless little individual, but thirteen or
fifteen small unfortunates. I have had practical
demonstration of the aptness of this family for propagating its species. In cleaning out the cage containing a little happy family'of five rats, of variegated colors-all of which were perfectly tame, and
live in peace and harmony-I felt something among
the hay, warm and soft; on taking it carefully out,
it proved to be a little tiny rat, hairless and eyeless,
but nevertheless endowed, like a biped baby, with
the full and audible use of its infant lungs. On
hearing its cries, the mother-a beautiful snowwhite rat, upon whose head maternal cares were
pressing at the early age of eight weeks-,-rushed
forward, and seizing her screaming infant between
her teeth, hastily ran off with it. TUpon further examination, ten other young innocents were found
carefully packed up in the corner of a cigar-box,
which had been placed in the cage for the use of
the colony in general, but which had been kindly
vacated by the other considerate rats in favor of the
lady who was literally in the straw. The owner is
happy to announce that the mother and her little
family are all doing well.  Such, indeed, is the




RATS.                    99
amazing fecundity of this animal, that they would
soon overrun the whole country, and renider all our
attempts to destroy them fruitless, had they no
enemies to lessen their numbers. But this baneful
increase is happily counteracted, not only by numerous foes among other animals, but by their destroying and eating each other. The same insatiable
appetite that impels them to indiscriminate carnage,
also incites the strongest to devour the weakest,
even of their own kind; and a large male rat is as
much dreaded by its own species, as the most
formidable enemy.
I once had three rats brought to me in a cage; in
removing one it got hurt. I fed them, and put them
into a stable. The next morning there were only
two rats in the cage, the injured rat having been set
upon and slain by his fellow-prisoners. They had
not only slain him, but had actually begun to eat
him, choosing the head to begin upon. Wishing to
see the result, I left him, and in the course of the
day, although well supplied with bread and milk,
these cannibals had nearly devoured their friend.
I have preserved the bones as proof of the fact. I
afterwards ascertained that it was'one only of these
rats that was murderously inclined, for he killed and
ate every rat put in to him. In the course of about
a month, this brute killed five rats that were put
into his cage. He always began at the neck, just




100                 RATS.
behind the ear. A gentleman at Clapham, to whom
I gave some rats, had bred a number in a squirrel's
cage, which was hung up in a garden. One morning, not long ago, he looked at the rat in it-a
white female with young. Instead of the white rat,
he found a great brown male of the common kind
coiled up in the nest. The white one was gone, and
the young ones all killed and partly devoured.
This brown rat must have climbed up a perpendicular smooth iron bar to get at the cage. Out of the
hole in the cage, where the intruder got in, the
white mother might have got out if she liked, but
she preferred staying at home and looking after her
young ones.
The Yankees, I am told, take advantage of the
cannibal propensities in the rats. A clever Yankee
being much troubled with rats, and being determined to get rid of them, tried every possible plan,
but without success. At last he got a lot of rats
and shut them in a cage; they devoured one another till only a single one was left. He then turned
this one loose, who, excited with the blood of his
fellow-rats, and having become a genuine cannibal,
killed and ate all the wild rats he could find on the
premises. A good Yankee story.
I was witness to the following circumstance: A
dog had been killing some rats for a match, and one
wounded rat was left alive in the rat-pit. Twenty




RATS.                  10]
other rats were then placed in for another dog.
These fresh comers found out the wounded one, and
instantly, though there were many people lookiig
on, set upon him and killed him then and there.
One of the rats seemed to take the part of the
wounded one, but a gigantic rat left the wounded
one he was murdering and attacked the would-be
rescuer, and killed him also.  This seems a wise'
provision, though, at first sight, a cruel one.. If a
wounded rat got into a hole, he would linger
there perhaps many days in a dying state.  His
fellow-rats, however, soon find him out and put him
out of his misery. At the same time it is a salutary
check upon their increase, for a colony of rats has
thus in itself the elements of self-destruction. Were
all to live, there would not be sufficient. food for
their existence; some must die, and those are killed
who are disabled from foraging for themselves. In
this way, too, one poisoned rat often kills more; his
neighbors eat his body, and with it the poison. But
it appears that the rats have found out what poison
is, for a gentleman with whom I was conversing on
the subject informed me, that he knew a case where
poison having been placed down for rats, a pair of
old ones drove their young away from it, and filled
up the holes where it was placed, so that they should
not get at it.
Rats are remarkably subject to tumors in the




102                 RATS.
skin. Examining about half a sackful of dead rats
one day, I found that more than half had these
tumors. I have in my possession a dried body of a
rat with a little round hole in its back, where one
of these places had burst. This had probably caused
the death of the animal, and he had gone away to
die in solitude, as is the habit with most animals.
Not long ago, I examined the body of a man which
was exhibited at Hungerford Market. The handbill of the exhibition stated that it was a fossil man;
no fossil was it, but simply a body quite dried up,
just as was the rat's. This body was found buried
in the guano, but in which island I cannot recollect.
His name was Christopher Toledo; for one of the
staves of an oil-barrel was found on his body, with
the name and the date, 1670, cut out rudely, probably with a sailor's knife. To the head a long black
pigtail was attached. Sailors in former days wore
pigtails, and I see that in the castings affixed to the
Nelson column, Charing Cross, the sailor who is
carrying Lord Nelson has a pigtail. This poor
man, whose body I examined, had met with cruel
treatment; he had probably been tortured, and then
murdered. The right collar-bone had been broken;
and that he had lived some time after the accident,
or more probably the blow, was evident from the
fact that his right arm was much larger than the
left-the result of swelling. Had he died imme



RATS.                 1 0
Aiately, the arm could not have had time to swell.
I thought the teeth projected in a remarkable way.
I examined them more closely, and ascertained that
the upper lip had been cut off quite to the bone.
The owner of the skeleton was not aware of this
till I pointed it out to him. lie fully agreed with
my observation. What a story could poor murdered Christopher Toledo tell us, could his body
have the power of articulation!
In Oxford street there was, about four years ago,
another exhibition of" a semi-fossilated man from
the guano island of Ichaboe." To see this I paid
one penny. It cost me a shilling to see Christopher Toledo. This man was a Chinese; his Tartar
features, small feet, and peculiar hair told us this.
The proprietor considered his mummy much more
valuable than the specimens from Egypt; for he
writes in his exhibition bill-" The length of time
it has been covered with guano is undecided, but it
cannot be rated at less than from two to three
thousand years; how much more it is impossible to
state, but the probability is that it far exceeds in
antiquity, as it does in interest, those gum and
bitumen preserved bodies imported to us from
Egypt."
I have a notice of yet a third human fossil. It is
a handbill of an exhibition, preserved by my father.
" Now exhibiting, an antediluvian child, found in a




104                  RATS.
supercritacy soil at Dielgen, near Brussels, Belgium
There does not perhaps exist in the world a discovery
so rare and so wonderful in the matter of geological
science. Until now there never was found but the
bones of animals to have turned into a fossil state.
Cuvier, the most celebrated of his age, has denied
the existence of human fossil remains, and others
pretend, that previous to the deluge the human race
had no existence. The proprietors of this fossil being
obliged to return to Paris, &c. &c. Admission ~1
each."
On the above bill I find the following in my
father's MS.: " I saw the above, with Mr. Pentland
and Sir Francis Chantrey, 12th June, 1840. It is
nothing but concretion of chert in the Brussels sand,
something like the head and trunk of a child without legs.                     W. BUCKLAND."
But enough of human fossils.
Mr. Gibbons, a most intelligent and civil ratcatcher, residing in the Broadway, Westminster,
informs me that the rat will breed every seven
weeks, and that the female will begin to have young
as early as fourteen weeks old. He has one now in
his possession of this age, who has eight young ones,
and likely soon to have another family. The rat in
question is a cross between the old British black rat
and a white rat, which he turned out in a place
where he knew the black rat still existed. In a




RATS.                 105
few weeks he caught a young one, of a piebald
color-viz. a beautiful jet black and a pure white,
plainly denoting its parentage. By cross-breeding
with the offspring of this rat, he has obtained some
remarkable and very curious piebald varieties, which
are perfectly tame, and bear handling. One of them
is now sitting on the writer's table washing and
cleaning himself with his little white paws. Mr.
Gibbons informs me, that in a litter of rats the
boars predominate in number over the sows. In a
litter of eight, there were only two females, in a
litter of eleven only three. He supposes this very
justly to be a provision of Nature to keep down
the breed.
Mr. Shaw, of rat-catching notoriety, informs us,
in a little book on the rat, that " his little dog Tiny,
under six pounds weight, has destroyed two thousand
five hundred and twenty-five rats, which had they
been permitted to live, would, at the end of three
years, have produced one thousand six hundred and
thirty-three millions one hundred and ninety thousand two hundred living rats!"
During summer the rat resides chiefly in holes on
the banks of rivers, ponds, and ditches; but on the
approach of winter they visit the farm-houses, and
enter the corn-ricks and barns, where they devour
much of the corn, and damage more than they consume. They are very fond of pig-sties, running
5*




106                 RATS.
about among the pigs, picking up the leavings of
the oatmeal out of the troughs, and even nestling
down near to the warm body of the fat unwieldy
porkers, whose obese sides make not bad pillows
for his impudence the rat.
On one occasion, when a boy, I recollect secretly
borrowing an old-fashioned flint gun from the birdkeeper of the farm to which I had been invited. I
ensconced myself behind the door of the pig-sty,
determined to make a victim of one of the many
rats that were accustomed to disport themselves
among the straw that formed the bed of the farmer's
pet bacon-pigs. In a few minutes out came an old
patriarchal-looking rat, who, having taken a careful
survey, quietly began to feed. After a long aim,
bang went the gun-I fell backwards, knocked
down by the recoil of the rusty old piece of artillery. I did not remain prone long, for I was soon
roused by the most unearthly squeaks, and a dreadful noise as of an infuriated animal madly rushing
round and round the sty. Ye gods! what had I
done? I had not surely, like the tailor in the old
song of the." Carrion Crow,"
" Shot and missed my mark,
And shot the old sow right bang through the heart."
But I had nearly performed a similar sportsman-like




RATS.                  107
feat. There was poor piggy, the blood flowing in
streamlets from several small punctures in that part
of his body destined, at no very distant period, to
become ham, in vain attempting, by dismal cries
and by energetic waggings of his curly tail, to
appease the pain of the charge of small shot which
had so unceremoniously awaked him  from  his
porcine dreams of oatmeal and boiled potatoes.
But where was the rat? he had disappeared,
unhurt; the buttocks of the unfortunate pig, the
rightful owner of the premises, had received the
charge of shot intended to destroy the daring intruder.
To appease piggy's wrath, I gave him a bucketfull of food from the hog-tub: and, while he was
thus consoling his inward self, wiped off the blood
from the wounded parts, and said nothing about it
to anybody: no doubt, before this time, some frugal
housewife has been puzzled and astonished at the
unwonted appearance of a charge of small shot in
the centre of the breakfast ham, which she procured
from Squire Morland, of Sheepstead, Berks.
The frequenters of the Zoological Gardens in
Regent's Park, may, if the room be quite quiet,
and the sun warm, observe numerous rats in the
den of the rhinoceros. I have frequently watched
them playing about, and running backwards and
forwards over his thick armor-like hide, as he lies




108                  RATS.
basking in the pleasant sunshine. He evidently
thinks them quite beneath his notice, for he makes
no efforts to drive them away, beyond occasionally
flapping his great ear when they tickle him in any
tender part. They come to the rhinoceros' house
foi the same purpose that they go to the pig-sty,
viz., to get what they can from the leavings of their
superiors. The keeper informs me that he not unfrequently finds dead rats crushed quite flat in the
straw under the place where the rhinoceros has been
sleeping. The poor sat has but a small chance of
escape when the huge carcase of the great beast
comes plump down upon him, and settles itself
there for a good long sleep. Rats, too, are also
found killed in the same manner in the straw bed
of the elephant. These rats probably come out of
the straw thatch which covers the building where
the rhinoceros and elephant live; they are common
also in the deer-house, where they come for the
oats, of which they are particularly fond. If any
person wishes to keep rats alive a long time in a
cage, let him give them plenty of oats and plenty
of water, for the absence of water will kill them in
a very few  hours.  A  fine full-grown rat was
brought to me; it appeared in perfect health and
vigor, and when I went near it, it ran about the
cage uttering its peculiar cry of alarm, and fixing
itself in an attitude of defence up in one corner of




RATS.                  109
the cage. I introduced a spoonful of water to it;
and in a moment it seemed to forget its ferocity, for
it came up hesitatingly at first, and tasted the
water; gaining courage, it soon took hold of the
spoon with its fore-paws to steady it, and greedily
drank up all the water. I gave it two or three
spoonfuls more, and then some wet bread; the next
day it had again some wet bread, but not any
water. On looking at it the next morning I found
my poor rat in the agonies of death. I took it out
of its cage and poured some brandy down its
throat, at the same time putting its hind feet in hot
water, but in vain, it died in my hand. I could
find no internal cause for its death; but on consulting a rat-catcher he informed me that it died for
want of water without a doubt. I must therefore
confess that I unwittingly was the cause of its
dying, and for the future I shall know better how
to act towards captive rats. One great reason why
they are so abundant at the Zoological Gardens is
that they have free access to water from the banks
of the Regent's canal, as well as plenty of food,
which they purloin from  the animals.  In  the
deserts of Africa there are. numerous colonies of
rats and mice of different kinds; now how do these
little beasts live during the droughts without
water? The all-wise and ever kind Creator has
provided for their wants. An African traveller,




110                  RATS.
Campbell, writes-" I was surprised how so many
mice could have lived without water till I observed
them rolling berries from succulent plants into their
holes. On examining one of the largest of these
berries I found it contained about three teaspoonsful of water. This is a provision God has made to
supply the wants of these little animals."  MIan,
too (the poor Bushman), is supplied with water
from a similar source, for he finds growing in arid
and dry places natural water reservoirs in the shape
of " melons, which being roasted yield good water."
As a curious instance of the ayay in which animals always find out the place best adapted for
their habitation, I may adduce the fact that at the
Zoological Gardens, although the rats swarm not
ten yards away from the parrot-house, yet they
never come.into this building. Here mice take
their place. How is this? The rats have probably
found out that it is no use going there, they would
get nothing for their trouble, for they could not
get through the bars of the birds' cages to get at
the seed: the little mice, on the contrary, who, as
all well know, are great seed-eaters, with ease run
in and out between the wide bars of the parrots'
cages, and help themselves both to seed and water.
They have found out that, although the great cockatoo has such an enormous and formidable-looking
bill, it won't hlurt them, and that Mr. Cockatoo is




RATS.                  11 
not a carnivorous bird. When, therefore, these
gaudy denizens of the tropics have finished theirday's screaming and "pretty pollying," out pop
the little mice, taking tithe of all the seed-boxes
they can get at. Having finished their meal they
retire behind the hot water pipes which run round
the room, and with full stomachs lie lazily in their
warm and comfortable quarters alongside the pipes
till they are hungry again. No wonder, therefore,
they obey the law "increase and multiply."
Rats, when hard pressed for food, are not particular as to what they eat. In extremities they
will attack and devour human flesh. An instance,
corroborating this fact, came to my personal knowledge and inspection about Christmas-time, 1851.
The body of an. unfortunate pauper, whose frame
was emaciated to the last degree by famine and
want, was brought to one of the theatres of anatomy in London for dissection. When the corpse
was placed on the table, it was found that the whole
of the lips and parts of the ears were wanting; in
the place of the eyeballs were empty sockets; the
parts also covering the palmar surface of the fingers were gone, only the bones and nails being left.
Besides this, marks of teeth were visible on various
other parts of the body. How came all this mutilation?  What had caused this fearful disfigurement?  Upon inquiry, it was ascertained that this




112                 RATS.
poor victim of starvation had been taken in from the
streets, friendless and unknown, into a workhousethere he had died, and had been carried to the
dead-house previous to removal to the dissectingroom. The rats (for, living in a workhouse, we
may suppose that they, too, did not get too much
to eat) had found out the corpse, and in the space
of one night had committed all this havoc, devouring the most tender parts of the body; at least, I
suppose they had found the parts that were missing
were the most dainty morsels, for the marks of
their sharp teeth showed that they had had a taste
of nearly every other part of the body. After this
event, means were taken to prevent the ingress of
the rats into the dead-house; and a similar case has
not since occurred.
A gentleman who has seen much of the world
informs me that when coming from India he was
very much annoyed by the cockroaches: they actually at night, when he was asleep, came and devoured the little rims of white skin at the roots of
the finger-nails. I have also heard that they will
eat the hair of the sleeper, which, I think, is very
likely, particularly if there be any oil on the hair.
Sailors are inclined to be merciful to the cock.
roaches, because they wage war with and devour
the bugs. Bearing these facts in mind, when looking at the elephant in the Zoological Gardens, I




RATS.                  113
observed that just at the roots of all his nails were
white marks, as if the skin had been rasped away
by a file: the elephant, we observed, perpetually
picked at these places with the finger-like extremity
of his trunk. It occurred to me that it was not at
all unlikely that the rats had been gnawing at these
parts when the monster was asleep; I am by no
means certain of the fact, but think it not at all unlikely, knowing the habits -of rats. That rats will
gnaw the skin of dogs' feet is evident from the following extract from Dr. Kane's most interesting work.
" Last week I sent down Rhina, the most intelligent dog of our whole pack, to bivouac in their
citadel, forward. I thought she might at least be
able to defend herself against them, for she had distinguished herself in the bear hunt. She slept very
well for a couple of hours on a bed she had chosen
for herself on the top of some iron spikes. But the
rats could not or would not forego the horny skin
about her paws; and they gnawed her feet and
nails so ferociously that we drew her up yelping
and vanquished."
A hungry rat will sometimes attack and kill an
infant; a case occurred in 1853, at Bristol. "The
mother was woke by the cries of her child, and she
found that the poor little thing had been bitten by
a rat under the right eye, and it was bleeding profusely." It ultimately died of haemorrhage, the rat's




1 i -                RATS.
sharp tooth having probably cut across an arteiy or
a vein.
Rats will sometimes attack living men, though in
this case fear, and not hunger, is their motive. Mr.
Mayhew writes as follows:-" About that time a
troop of rats flew at the feet of another of my
informants (one of the men who work in the London
sewers), and would have no doubt maimed him
seriously,' but my boots,' said he,'stopped the
devils.''The sewers generally swarm with rats,'
said another man:'I runs away from'em, I don't
like'em. They in general gets away from us; but
in case we comes to a stunt end where there is a
wall and no place for'em to get away, and we goes
to touch'em, they fly at us. They're some of'em
as big as good-sized kittens.  One of our men
caught hold of one the other day by the tail, and he
found it trying to release itself, and the tail slipping
through his fingers; so he put up his left hand to
stop it, and the rat caught hold of his finger, and
the man's got an arm now as big as his thigh.'"
Rats are very fond of warmth, and will remain
coiled up for hours in any snug retreat where they
can find this very necessary element of their existence. The following anecdote well illustrates this
point: — My late father, when Fellow  of Corpus
College, Oxford, many years ago, on arriving at his
rooms late one night, found that a rat was running




RATS.                 115
about among the books and geological specimens,
behind the sofa, under the fender, and poking his
nose into every hiding-place he cquld find. Being
studiously inclined, and wishing to set to work at
his books, he pursued him, armed with the poker in
one hand, and a large dictionary, big enough to
crush any rat, in the other, but in vain; Mr. Rat
was not to be caught, particularly when such " Arma
Scholastica" were used.
No sooner had the studies recommenced, than the
rat resumed his gambols, squeaking and rushing
about the room like a mad creature. The battle
was renewed and continued at intervals, to the
destruction of all studies, till quite a late hour at
night, when the pursuer, angry and wearied, retired
to his adjoining bedroom: though he listened attentively, he heard no more of the enemy, and soon fell
asleep. In the morning, he was astonished to find
something warm lying on his chest; carefully lifting
up the bed-clothes he discovered his tormentor of
the preceding night quietly and snugly ensconced in
a fold in the blanket, and taking advantage of the
bodily warmth of his two-legged adversary. These
two lay looking daggers at each other for some
minutes, the one unwilling to leave his warm berth,
the other afraid to put his hand out from under the
protection of the coverlid, particularly as the
stranger's aspect was anything but friendly, his




116                  RATS.
little sharp teeth and fierce little black eyes seeming
to say, "Paws off from me, if you please!"
At length, remembering the maxim that " discre.
tion is the better part of valor"-the truth of which,
I imagine, rats understand as well as most creatures
-he made a sudden jump off the bed, scuttled away
into the next room, and was never seen or heard of
afterwards.
In my college rooms at Christchurch, a bachelor
rat had taken up his quarters, but where these
quarters were I never could find; he used to appear
on the floor when all was quiet and disappear again
dn the slightest noise. I never could catch him,
but he was a terrible nuisance, for he made a great
noise running about during the night. The scout
used to put out the breakfast before the chapel hour,
-and when I returned I frequently found marks of
the rat's paws and teeth on the butter-pat. What
became of him in the long vacation I could not tell;
on my return to the rooms he soon reappeared. At
last I found his retreat: it was under a heap of
papers on a side table, and he had made his nest in
an old college cap. He had lined it with pieces
gnawed off the carpet, and. had made a fine store of
provisions in the shape of bits of bread, cake, cheese,
and everything edible he could find about. The
collection was so various that I made a catalogue at
the time.




RATS.                 117
The love of warmth brings many rats out of the
sewers to take their siestas in the large hair ware.
houses in Lambeth. They only come in the day,
and decamp at night, probably in quest of food.
They have made runs up on to the floors where the
hair is placed to dry, and, finding a nice soft bit,
roll themselves up quite into a ball, the outside of
which is horse-hair, the nucleus a live rat. The
boys connected with the establishment have found
this out, and go feeling among the hair with their
hands. The moment they come on a lump harder
than the rest, they pounce upon it without fear, for
the rat cannot bite through his thick, self-made
great-coat: they then rush off to a tub of water
and shake poor Mr. Rat out of his hairy (not
downy) bed into the merciless element, when he is
soon drowned.
Let us here pause for a moment, and see whether,
with all his bad qualities, we cannot find some good
trait joined, and something to admire in the constructlon of his body, as adapted to his very peculiar mode of life.
The rat is one of the most despised and. tormented of created animals; he has many enemies,
and very few friends; wherever he appears, his life
is in danger from men, dogs, cats, owls, etc., who
will have no mercy on him. These perpetual per.
secutions oblige him to be wary in his movements,




11.8                  RATS.
and call for a large amount of cunning and sagacity
on his part, which give his little sharp face a pecu
liarly knowing and wide-awake appearance, which
the most superficial observer must have noticed.
Though, poor creature, he is hated and killed by
man, his sworn foe, yet he is to that same ungrateful race a most useful servant, in the humble capacity of scavenger; for wherever man settles his
habitation, even in the most. remote parts of the
earth, there, as if by magic, appear- our friends the
rats. There were thousands of rats in the camp before Sevastopol; and a rat-hunt in the trenches was
not an uncommon occurrence. Again, they swarm
at the camp at Aldershot: the sentries see them at
night going to the nearest water to drink. The rat
quietly takes possession of the out-houses, drains,
etc., and occupies himself by devouring the refuse
and filth thrown away from  the dwelling of his
master (under whose floor as well as roof he lives).
This refuse, if left to decay, would engender fever,
malaria, and all kinds of horrors, to the destruction
of the children of the family, were it not for the
unremitting exertions of the rats to get rid of it, in
a way, no doubt, agreeable to themselves, namely,
by eating it. Let us take an example. The sewers
adjoining a connected series of slaughter-houses, as
Newgate-market, Whitechapel, Clare-market, etc.,
are often nearly choked up with offal and the foul




RATS.                 119
refuse of animal matter, swept into them ny the
careless butchers. It may be imagined what fearful maladies would arise from this putrid mass if it
were allowed to stay there neglected. How is this
evil result prevented? Why, by the poor, persecuted rats, who live there in swarms, and devour
every morsel of concentrated cholera as it comes
down to them, profiting, thereby, themselves and
the inhabitants of the houses who reside above their
haunts.
The late Professor Coleman remarked that a rat
was the only animal who would thrive, and always
have a clean coat, living, at the same time, in the
most filthy and stinking places. And he was right;
for a rat will live in air that would be fatal to any
other animal. Hence, too, we see why the rat is
always cleaning himself. Never does a rat finish a
bit of food, or is touched by human hand, but that
he cleans himself immediately afterwards.
Passing lately through Newgate-market, I inquired
concerning the rats, and was told by several butchers
that but few rats are now seen there. A war of
extermination was waged against them not very
long ago, and all were killed that could be killed.
The holes were covered with iron, and the rats
obliged to remain in their drains. Again, the rats
are deprived of most of their perquisites, even when
they do get out, by the officers of the Sanitary




120                 RATS.
Commission, who take good care that the offal shall
be removed very frequently. Talking to a man who
kills horses in the neighborhood of Regent's Park,
I learnt that formerly they used to congregate in
great numbers in the place where he used to stack
the horses' bones; and that when the bones have
been removed, between eighteen and twenty dozen
rats have been slain in a morning-this, after the
bones had been allowed to remain many months
undisturbed. Now, however, in these degenerate
times, he is obliged by the Commissioners to remove
the bones of every three horses; and a rat is but seldom seen. When in Paris, I paid a visit to the horseslaughtering place at Montfaucon; there I saw from
fifteen to twenty horses, tied up in a row, all to be
killed that day. I was told that sometimes they
slay double that number. The horse being killed,
and the skin taken off, the carcass is cut up with
hatchets, and thrown into a huge metal tub, big
enough to contain the bodies of several horses;
when it is full, the top is fixed on, and steam turned
into it. After a time the lid is again taken off, and
it is found that the steam has quite separated all
the flesh from the bones, which are beautifully white.
The bones are then picked out, and placed in stacks;
the flesh is thrown out by shovels, and spread out
widely on floors, to which the air has free access.
It soon becomes quite hard and dry, and is then




RATS.                  121
sent off in sacks to the chemist, who, operating on
it, soon converts it into Prussiate of Potash, and
this, again, into Prussian blue.  The bones are
ground up in a mill for manure; so that, in a comparatively short space of time, the horse, having
worn out his energies in the service of man, and
being of no further use, is converted, one half into
Prussian blue, the other into loaves of bread, through
the medium of the wheat which absorbs his powdered skeleton. Thus the Frenchman practically
carries out the threat of the ogre, who, when he
smelt the Englishman, pronounced the following
anathema against him"Fe fa fum;
I smell the blood of an Englishman;
Be he alive, or be he dead,
I'll grind his bones to make my br( id."
In the place where these bones are stacked were
plenty of rats. It is walled round; and in the inside of the wall are several holes left. When the
bones are taken out, the rats, finding themselves
becoming exposed, endeavor to conceal themselves
in the holes.  These holes are only just deep
enough to contain half their bodies; and their tails
are left exposed, capital handles for the men to
catch them by. They are placed, when caught, in
cages, and carried off. But what becomes of them?




122                  RATS.
We have heard that their skins are used to make
gloves. I have inquired in many glove shops in
London for gloves of this description; and friends
in Paris have also made the same inquiries, but
without success. Either they are not used for this
purpose, or, what is more probable, the glove-dealers won't own to rat-skins in their gloves. By way
of testing the fact, I have tanned several rat-skins;
and the result of my experience is that, in a prepared state, the skins are very thin and very fragile; still, however, they might be made into gloves
of a very delicate description.
The thumbs of gloves are generally of a different
kind of leather to that of the rest of the glove.
Rat-skins would do well for the thumb part of the
glove.
Small delicate hairs are often seen still adhering
to gloves-I am keeping a sharp look-out for these,
to examine them with a microscope. The structure of a rat's hair is very peculiar, and is unaltered by being immersed in tanning; so that if
I could find the hair of a rat still remaining on
the skin which forms the glove, I could verify
the fact of rat-skins being used by the Frencf fui
riers.
Not very long ago, a portion of hard dry skin
was found underneath the bossed head of a hugo
iron nail, that was fixed into the door of the Chay




1ATS.                 123
ter-house at Westminster. Upon this skin were
found several hairs. Mr. Quekett, curator of the
museum of the College of Surgeons, recognised this
hair to be human, and asserted that it belonged to
a fair-haired person. In former times, the Danes
used to come up the mouths of the English rivers to
pillage the churches.  When they were caught,
they were skinned, and their skins nailed to the
door of the church they attacked. In the course
of time, all the exposed portion would peel off;
that covered by the nail would remain protected,
and thus bear testimony to the cruelty of our ancestors.
In the College of Surgepns may be seen three
specimens of human skin, presented by Mr. Albert
Way, viz.: " Portion of human skin, said to be that
of a Dane, from the door of a church at Hadstock,
Essex;" a second specimen is from Copford, in Essex; and a third from "the north door of Worcester Cathedral."
Again: a murder was, by means of a few hairs,
brought home to a cruel woman, who had cut the
throat of her little daughter. These hairs were
found on the blade of a knife, and sent to an eminent microscopist for examination. They came back
labelled, "Hairs of a squirrel."  Now, this fact.
convicted the woman, as it was the link wanting in
the chain of evidence. The poor child, when mur




124                 RATS.
dered, had' on a boa made of squirrels' hair, and
some of the hair had adhered to the knife when the
murder was committed.
Should the idea of utilizing rat-skins come into
operation, my friend Mr. Coulson suggests opening
a trade with the Chinese for the skins of the rats
which they eat. This would be a new feature in
the fur trade. Even in England rats' skins have
been sometimes used for the purpose of clothing;
but this, as will appear from the following paragraph
extracted from an old newspaper, was more for
ornament than use:"An ingenious individual of Liskeard, Cornwall,
has for some time past been exhibiting himself in a
dress composed from top to toe of rat-skins, which
he has been collecting for three years and a half.
The dress was made entirely by himself: it consists
of hat, neckerchief; coat, waistcoat, trousers, tippet,
gaiters, and shoes.. The number of rats required
to complete the suit was 670; and the individual,
when thus dressed, appears exactly like one of
the Esquimaux described in the travels of Parry
and Ross. The tippet, or boa, is composed of the
pieces of skin immediately round the tails of the
rats, and is'a very curious part of the dress, containing about 600 tails-and those none of the
shortest."
Again: " A lady in town (Glasgow) has just nom




RATS.                  125
a pair of shoes, of exquisite workmanship, the upper
parts being made of the skins of rats. The leather
is exceedingly smooth, and as soft as the finest kid,
and appears stout and firm. It took six skins to
make the pair of shoes, as the back of the skin is
the only part stout enough for use."
An eminent skin-merchant in the city informed
me, that several years ago a batch of several thousand. rat-skins were imported from France, but they
did not answer for manufacturing purposes, as they
were too small, and too fine in texture. None are
now imported that he knows of.
An old book on natural history thus describes the
rat's personal appearance:-" The eyes are large
and black; the tail is covered with minute scales,
mixed with a few short hairs; and the general figure
is disgusting." Now this very tail, ugly as it may
appear, is mentioned by the great Cuvier as one of
the first things that struck his mind, as demonstrate
ing the bounty of the Crieator towards the humblest
of his creatures, in adapting their bodily formation
to the peculiar mode of life which He intended
them to enjoy. We all admire the wonderful construction and admirable working together of the
numerous muscles of the human hand and forearm,
yet, says Cuvier, "there are more muscles in a rat's
tail than there'are in that part of the human eco.
nomy we admire so much, the hand."




126                   BATS.
The tail is indeed a most useful appendage to
the rat: it is composed of a chain of small bones
with a multitude of muscles above mentioned to
move them.  "Many minute scales and short hairs
cover it, and thus constructed it becomes prehensile,
as the tails of many monkeys and lemurs; in fact,
a sort of hand to the rat, by means of which he is
enabled to crawl along the tops of railings, and
along narrow ledges of walls, balancing himself by
it, or entwining it round the projecting portions of
the difficult passages along which his course lies.
By means of it, too, he is enabled to spring up
heights otherwise inaccessible, using it on these
occasions (like the kangaroo), as a lever, or rather
as a projectile spring. When, moreover, according
to a story, which requires confirmation, the delicious
oil or sweet wine lies beneath his reach in the longnecked bottle, his ever-useful tail serves him in good
turn; he dips it into the coveted fluid, and then
enjoys the reward of his sagacity, and says to himself, as he licks it up, "What's a rat without a
tail?"
He can climb up trees also, for many years ago a
gentleman who had rooms at Christ-church, Oxford,
looking on to a garden belonging to Oriel College
opposite, observed the rats climb up the currantbushes and eat the fruit, while the boughs were
bending, and almost breaking with their weight




RATS.                  127
The loss of the fruit was put down to biped thieves;
nobody ever thought of the rats.
We all know that rats can burrow well. Mr.
Bishop, the celebrated gun-maker of Bond-street,
tells me that he recollects that at Ealing, near London, there were, once upon a time, some gooseberrytrees, planted in a row. These trees suddenly died,
and they died in regular order, one after the other.
Nobody could tell the reason, till one day a tree
was dug up, and its roots were found "stript off as
if with a scissors."  They found, also, a hole under
the trees, and at the end of the hole an enormous
rat. "This rat," says Bishop, "had begun at the
first tree, gone on to the second, and so on tillit had
eaten the roots of all the trees, and killed them." I
tell the tale as it was told to me.
The rat is admirably armed and equipped for the
peculiar mode of life which he is ordained to lead.
IHe has formidable weapons in the shape of four
small, long, and very sharp teeth, two of which are
fixed in the upper and two in the under jaw. These
are formed in the shape of a wedge, and by the following wonderful provision of Nature, have always
a fine sharp cutting edge. On examining them
carefully, we find that the inner part is of a soft,
ivory-like composition, which may be easily worn.away, whereas th  outside is composed of a glass-.ke enamel, which is excessively hard. The next




128                  RATS.
time the reader has a boiled rabbit for dinner, let
him perform a simple experiment and convince himself of this peculiar structure common to the rat,
rabbit, and, in fact, to all rodent animals. Let him
extract from the rabbit's jaw one of the teeth, and
with his pen-knife let him ascertain the comparative
hardness of the two component parts of the tooth:
he will find that he will be able easily to cut away
the internal softer portion, but that the external hard
glass-like enamel of the tooth will be so hard that it
will not only resist the knife, but will readily cut
and scratch the human nail. He will also, if the
rabbit be not boiled too much, observe that the
lower end of the tooth is quite hollow and contains
a jelly-like substance. This substance is the pulp
of the tooth, which, by the addition of earthy matter, and gradually growing onwards, ultimately
becomes hard, true tooth-material. On showing a
rat's tooth, taken out of its socket, to a friend who
has been through the worst part of the Crimean
campaign, he looked at it attentively and said,
"Ah, if a Zouave had that he, would soon fasten it on
to a bit of stick, and turn it to some useful purpose."
The upper teeth work exactly into the under, so
that the centres of the opposed teeth meet exactly
in the act of gnawing; the soft part is thus being
perpetually worn away, while the hard part keeps a
sharp, chisel-like edge; at the same time the teeth




RATS.                  125
grow up from the bottom, so that as they wear
away a fresh supply is ready. The consequence of
this arrangement is, that if one of the teeth be
removed, either by accident or on purpose, the
opposed tooth will continue to grow upwards; and
as there is nothing to grind it away, will project
from the mouth and be turned upon itself; or if it
be an under-tooth it will even run into the skull
above. There is a preparation in the museum of
the Royal College of Surgeons which well illustrates
this fact. It is an incisor tooth of a rat, which,
from the cause above mentioned, has increased its
growth upwards to such a degree, that it has formed
a complete circle and a segment of another. The
diameter of it is about large enough to admit a
good-sized thumb. It is accompanied by the following memorandum, addressed by a Spanish priest to
Sir J. Banks, who presented it to the museum:" I send you an extraordinary tooth of a rat. Believe
me it was found in the Nazareth garden (to which
order I belong). I was present when the animal
was killed, and took the tooth. I know not its virtues, nor have the natives discovered them."*
In the same cabinet as the above specimens, there
are others, illustrating the same point, both in rats
and rabbits. In this case the under teeth are seen
in their places, but shorter than they are naturally
* Quoted by the Quarterly Review.
6*




130                 RATS.
probably the under teeth of this rat had been
knocked off by an accident, and the upper teeth
being unopposed, grew in the form of a ring, before
the others had time to attain their natural size, and
so keep the upper teeth in check by wearing them
down. The beaver, too, being a rodent, or gnawing
animal, is subject to the same dental accident; and
we find in No. 2203 a very remarkable case in point.
Here the tooth in the right half of the lower jaw,
from want of opposition to its corresponding tooth,
has proceeded to grow until it has again penetrated
the mouth, near the spot where it is joined to the
upper jaw, thus completing a circle. It is not improbable that the right half of this poor beaver's
jaw became dislocated from its socket by an accident some considerable time before its death; for
otherwise there would not have been time for the
tooth to have grown to such an extent; the beaver
meanwhile continued able to eat with the left half
of the lower jaw, which was not dislocated. The
portion of the lower jaw which forms the actual
joint confirms this supposition, for it is quite rough,
and exhibits signs of inflammation having taken
place; whereas it ought in a natural state to be of a
glass-like smoothness. The molar teeth, too, in the
dislocated side have grown beyond their usual size.
These beaver's teeth are formidable weapons, and
there is a bit of wood close by the last-mentioned




EArTS.                 131
specimen, beautifully grooved by their sharp cutting
teeth.
Beavers have not long been extinct in England.
I have a fine specimen of a beaver's jaw, not fossil,
dug up in the fens of Lincolnshire, and I have heard
on good authority that beavers were killed in Wales
in the time of Oliver Cromwell. Still I imagine
they were never very common, for I have never yet
seen a beaver's bone or tooth among ancient Britisl
or Saxon remains. These former inhabitants of
Great Britain used much bone in their household
implements, and had beavers been common we
should probably find some bone or other converted
to some useful domestic purpose.
There is a curious but little known fact, which
well illustrates the ravages which the rats can inflict
on a hard substance with their little sharp teeth.
Miany of the elephants' tusks imported into London
for the use of the various workers in ivory are
observed to have their surfaces grooved into small
furrows of unequal depths, as though cut out by a
very sharp-edged instrument. Surely no man would
have taken the trouble to do this, for what would be
the profit of his labor? The rats, however, have
found out there is something worth working for, or
else, clever fellows, they would not have used their
chisel-like teeth with such effect. They have dis
covered which tusks contain the most gelatine or




132                  RATS.
animal glue-a sweet and delicious morsel for theil
dainty palates; and, having gnawed away as much
as suited their purpose, have left the rest for the
ivory-cutter; he, for his part, is neither unable nor
unwilling to profit by the fact marked out by the
rats' teeth; for ivory which contains gelatine is particularly valuable for many purposes.
Being anxious to get further evidence on this,point, I called upon Mr. Robert Thomas Fauntleroy,
of the great ivory firm in Tooley Street, near the
London Bridge Station.  He most politely  and
kindly took me into his warehouse, where, arranged
on shelves, and placed on the floor, I saw more elephants' tusks than I ever saw together before in my
life, representing altogether a vast amount of
capital. In these rooms were tusks of elephants
from all parts of the world where elephants existfrom India, Ceylon, North Africa, the Cape, Siam,
etc.; each having their peculiar characteristics,
which I cannot now go into, as this is not a special
treatise on ivory. In the room  devoted to the
tusks from  India a delicious odor pervaded the
whole place; this proceeded from the Indian spices
and other foreign aromatic substances, which had
been packed with the tusks. In the room set apart
for African ivQry, I scanned the rows oftusks, and
to my delight found many-nay, very  manygnawed by rats; guessing roughly, about one tusk




RATS.                  133
in twenty was rat-gnawed. Now from experience
I can swear to the mark of a rat's tooth, whether
the material gnawed be hard or soft, and if ever I
saw the marks of rats' teeth, it was upon these
tusks. The rats had touched only just the tip of
the tooth, and in one instance they had gnawed the
tip quite away, leaving a blunt stump; this must
have been a particularly savory tusk. In one tusk
only could I find marks at the upper end, and these
but very slight: the rat had been making an experiment to see whether it was good; he had found out
that there was but little gelatine up there, and
therefore had not prosecuted his researches. It is a
curious fact, as narrated to me by Mr. Jaques, the
ivory-turner of Hatton Garden, that the rats gnaw
the African ivory, more especially that which is
called green ivory, on account of its amber-tinted,
transparent color; Indian ivory they will not, and
do not touch; there is not enough gelatine in it to
make it worth their while to be at the trouble of
gnawing. Even of the African ivory they touch
only the tip and lower extremity, and why? because it is the purest, and densest, and softest part
of the tusk.
When this article on rats first appeared in Bentley's Miscellany, I stated that the ivory-turner
chooses the rat-gnawn ivory to make his billiardballs; and this statement was copied by the Quar



134                  RATS.
terly Review; but I have since ascertained that I
was mistaken in the fact. I consulted Mr. Jaques
upon the subject, and he tells me that billiard-balls
are made only of East Indian ivory, that which the
rats never touch; and not of African ivory, whiclh
they always do touch. The African ivory contains
more moisture and gelatine than the other kind;
and this occasions the ivory to shrink in drying, and
consequently the ball, when turned, to get out of
the round; it is, however, very valuable to make
other articles, not billiard-balls. Mr. Jaques tells
me that the trade have always given the alligators
the credit of gnawing the ivory; which is simply
impossible, for when and where could they have the
opportunity of getting at the tusks? Anl even if
they had been gnawing-or rather champing at it,
for an alligator is not a rodent, or gnawing animal
-the marks on the ivory would have been very
different to those made by the rats. Mr. Jaques
confirms the fact, that where the gnawing has taken
place, the ivory has been " very transparent, and of
the finest quality."
In my father's museum at Oxford is a specimen
of a rat-gnawn tusk. From the shape, it will be readily seen that it is the lower end of the tusk; the
grooves in it. are very deep, and very well marked.
I find that, with a tooth taken from the skull of a
rat, I can easily make grooves in this bit of ivory




RATS.                    135
similar to those made by the rats when alive-only,
of course, my grooves are not so clean cut as those
made by the live rats.
The ivory-turner values his "tips" or "points"
more than any part of the tusk.  The "hollow"
part of the tusk is cut either into sections to make
napkin rings, or into strips to make paper cutters.
The tip is used for the more delicate turnings, and
particularly for fine carvings, as brooches, umbrella
and parasol handles, and ivory chessmen. It is, it
appears, very difficult indeed to turn a billiard-ball
perfectly true.  It may be as true a circle as the
lathe can make it, and yet not be a good ball when
put to the test.  The test is this: the ball is rolled
gently along a billiard-table, till it stops of its own
accord.  If at that moment it falls either to one
side or the other, it is useless to the player; if, on
~the contrary, it remains motionless on the same
line on which it was originally  projected, it is
allowed to pass muster.  The density of the ivory
in different parts of the tusk occasions this difference
to the ball, and often gives great annoyance to the
ivory-turner, who, after all his trouble in turning,
finds his ball untrue from causes beyond his reach.
One would have thought that a billiard-ball would
have lasted for ever, but it appears they very soon
wear out; many thousands are exported to Paris
and the large continental cities, and also to'New




136                  RATS.
York, in which places the billiard-tables are going
day and night: the consumption of billiard-balls
from this cause is astonishing.
The rats are useful in an indirect way to the purchaser of ivory from another cause. Not only is
the fact of the rat's judgment in choosing good
ivory, by making a meal of it, acknowledged and
acted upon by the turner who wishes to get a good
bit of ivory; but the mark of his teeth will. show
to the eye what the substance of the ivory, otherwise concealed under the external crust of the tusk,
is like-whether good, bad, or indifferent. Many a
turner will give the merchant a higher sum for a
tusk, if previous to the bargain he will saw off the
tip, that he may see more of the quality of the
ivory, whether the tusk is sound throughout. Now
if the rat has been gnawing, the turner does not
make this request, because in the grooves eaten by
the rat, he can see plainly what the substance under
the external coat is. Inside the elephant's tusks
very frequently bullets, both of lead and iron, are
found: those who wish to know how they get there,
will find all they want in the Proceedings of the
Society of Arts, for December 17, 1856, in a paper
read by Professor Owen, F.R.S., in which he most
clearly describes the growth of the elephant's tusks,
and the result of the introduction of a foreign body
into'that tusk. I have seen two or three good spe



RATS.                    13)
cimens of bullets in solid ivory, in a shop window in
St. Paul's Churchyard: these balls are of lead or
iron, and I understand that in this shop a tusk was
once cut which contained a bullet of gold. In Mr.
Fauntleroy's warehouse I saw an, entire skull of an
elephant, which was exhibited in the Exhibition of
1851.*  A special order was sent to the West Coast
of Africa for this skull, African skulls being rare in
Europe. This poor brute had been in the wars, for
I detected a lead ball flattened and sticking into the
bone just above the eye.  Upon examining the
head more minutely, I found at the top of the skull
a hole large enough to admit a finger: it was a shot
hole, for the edges of the bone round were pressed
inwards, and there were marks round it where the
periosteum  of the bone had been inflamed.  The
fracture had, however, partially healed up. In
my opinion the bullet found had entered the head
by this hole, and traversed the cellular substance of
the skull till it had been arrested on the opposite
side by the great masticatory muscle; and having
there spent its force, it remained, and remains to
this day firmly fixed in the wall of the skull. I also
observed a great quantity of the teeth of the seacow, or walrus. Each tooth has a hole bored in it
* Since sent by Mr. Fauntleroy. to the South Kensington Museum, where it can be seen forming the nucleus of a fine collection of ivory, both manufactured and in the natural state.




138                  RATS.
by the Esquimaux, who having passed a bit of seal
skin, or gut, through it, transport it from place to
place. In one instance the tooth has split under
the operation, showing the structure beautifully.
The Hippopotamus is commercially called sea-horse,
while the walrus is called sea-cow; these two varieties of ivory are much used in the manufacture of
artificial human teeth. Some of the elephants' tusks
also were bored, but for a different purpose. On
account of their weight they are difficult to get off
to the ships: they are therefore often bored in the
hollow part, and slung on to empty casks, and thus
conveyed safely to the ship in the offing, through
the surf, which dashes on the shore. Many of the
tusks are covered with minute cracks, and Mr.
Fauntleroy informed me that these cracks are generally found in North African ivory. This ivory is
conveyed on the backs of camels over the desert 
the camels are unladen every night, and the tusks
are placed on the ground: the dew moistens them,
and the next morning they are placed, without
being wiped, on the camel's back  again.  The
burning sun of the desert falls full upon them all
the next day's march, and this alternation of heat
and moisture causes the tusks to crack:- good specimens of this cracked ivory can be seen fastened to
the wall outside Mr. Holtzapfell's shop at Charing
Cross.  Strange to say, these tusks have more




RATS.                   139
cracks inside than appear externally, evidencing the
superior hardness of the "bark," as the outer coat
of the tusk is called.
Apropos to elephants, my friend Mr. Neil, the
engineer, told me a capital story of one. A menagerie came once upon a'time to Lavington, near
Devizes, and at nightfall they turned the elephant
out into a grass field to eat his fill. Th'e beast
found out that there were turnips not far off, so he
got through the fence and made terrible havoc
among them.  In the early morning, a laborer
comes, and finds the elephant pulling up the turnips with his trunk, and devouring them.  He
rushes off to his master, and says, " Master, master,
do come, there is an awful beast in the turnip-field,
a walking backwards and picking up turnips with
his curly tail!" The man had never seen an elephant before, and mistook his trunk for his tail.
Mr. Fauntleroy tells me that even in his warehouse the rats will find out and gnaw the so-called
ivory nut, or vegetable ivory, sometimes nearly
consuming the entire nut. Now this fact of rats
gnawing ivory is not only an important diagnostic
mark in the choosing of a tusk, but we ourselves
follow the rats' example, arrd for the same reason.
In the manufacturing districts many tons of ivory
are sawn up to make handles of knives and forks.*
* According to Mr. P. L. Simmonds, the total imports of ivory




140                      RATS.
From  this operation a great quantity of dust of
ivory is the consequence. This dust is sold at the
rate of sixpence a pound; and when properly boiled,
and otherwise treated, makes the finest, purest, and
most nutritious animal jelly that we know of. I
lately recommended this ivory jelly to a patient who
required some form of food highly nutritious, but yet
not bulky, and my prescription answered admirably.
The ivory-dust can be procured at most of the large
ivory-turners in  London.  Years ago ivory jelly
used to be a fashionable remedy, and much sought
after, and it only now requires to be known to be
appreciated.*
Rats have a remarkable instinct for fihding out
where there is anything good for food; and it has
been often a subject of wonder how they manage to
in the past three years have shown a gradual decline: the imports
from India and the East, according to a parliamentary paper,
averaged, the last seven years, about 3341 cwt., estimated in
1855 at ~68,874. When we come to consider that each elephant
has but two tusks, and how many must be killed to make up
the above weight, it will be easily seen how it is that elephants
are gradually getting rare, and the hunters obliged to go further
inland for them.
* Receipt to make Ivory-dust Jelly.-In a brown stewing-pan
with a cover, put 1 lb. of ivory-dust, and three quarts of water;
let it gently simmer for twelve hours, or until it is reduced to
one quart; then put it away to cool, and take the clear jelly off,
Add wine and sugar ad libitum.




RATS.                  141
get on board ships laden with sugar and other
attractive cargoes.  This mystery has, however,
been cleared up, for they have been seen to come
off shore to the ship by means of the rope by which
she is moored to the quay, although at some distance from  the shore. By the same means they
will leave the ship when she comes into port, if
they find their quarters filling or filled with water;
hence the saying, that " rats always leave a sinking
ship," is perfectly true. If, however, the ship be
water-tight, they will continue breeding to an enormous extent.  M. de St. Pierre informs us, that on
the return of the Valiant man-of-war from the Havannah, in the year 1766, its rats had increased
to such a degree that they destroyed a hundred
weight of biscuit daily. The ship was at length
smoked between decks, in order to suffocate them;
and six hampers were for some time filled every day
with the rats that had thus been killed.
Rats are not selfish animals: having found out
where the feast is stored, they will kindly commu.
nicate the intelligence to their friends and neighbors. The following anecdote will confirm this fact.
A certain worthy old lady, name Mrs. Oke, who
resided at Axminster several years ago, made a cask
of sweet wine, for which she was celebrated, and
carefully placed it on a shelf in the cellar. The
second night after this event she was fiightei-d




142                  RATS.
almost to death by a strange unaccountable noise in
the said cellar. The household was called up, and
a search made, but nothing was found to clear up
the mystery. The next night, as soon as the lights
were extinguished and the house quiet, this dreadful noise was heard again. This time it was most
alarming: a sound of squeaking, crying, knocking,
pattering feet; then a dull scratching sound, with
many other such ghostly noises, which continued
throughout the live-long night. The old lady lay
in bed with the candle alight, pale and sleepless
with fright, anon muttering her prayers, anon determined to fire off the rusty old blunderbuss that
hung over the chimney-piece. At last the morning
broke, and the cock began to crow. -"Now,"
thought she, "the ghosts must disappear." To her
infinite relief, the noise really did cease, and the
poor frightened dame adjusted her nightcap and
fell asleep. Great preparations had she made for
the next night; farm servants armed with pitchforks slept in the house; the maids took the family
dinner-bell and the tinder-box into their rooms; the
big dog was tied to the hall-table. Then the dame
retired to her room not to sleep but to sit up in
the arm-chair at the fire, keeping a drowsy guard
over the neighbor's loaded horse-pistols, of which
she was almost as much afraid as she was of the
ghost in the cellar. Sure enough her warlike pre



RATS.                 143
parations had succeeded; the ghost was certainly
frightened; not a noise, not a sound, except the
heavy snoring of the bumpkins, and the rattling of
the dog's chain in the hall, could be heard. She
had gained a complete victory; the ghost was
never heard again on the premises; and the whole
affair was soon forgotten. Some weeks afterwards
some friends dropped in to take a cup of tea, and
talk over the last piece of gossip. Among other
things the wine was mentioned, and the naid sent
to get some from the cellar. She soon returned,
and gasping for breath, rushed into the room, exclaiming-"'Tis all gone, ma'am;" and sure enough
it was all gone. "The ghost has taken it" —not a
drop was left, only the empty cask remained; the
side was half eaten away, and marks of sharp teeth
were visible round the rugged margins of the
newly-made bung-holes.
This discovery fully accounted for the noise the
ghost had made, which caused so much alarm.
The aboriginal rats in the dame's cellar had found
out the wine, and communicated the joyful news to
all the other rats in the parish; they had assembled
there to enjoy the fun, and get very tipsy (which,
judging from the noise they made, they certainly
did) on this treasured cask of wine. Being quite
a family party, they had finished it in two nights;
and having got all they could, like wise rats, they




144                 RATS.
returned to their respective homes, perfectly uncon
scious that their merry-making had nearly been the
death of the rightful owner and " founder of the
feast." They had first gnawed out the cork, and
got as much out as tliey could: they soon found
that the more they drank the lower the wine became. Perseverance is the motto of the rat; so
they set to work and ate away the wood to
the level of the wine again. This they continued
till they. had emptied the cask; they must then
have got into it and licked up the last drains;
for another and less agreeable smell was substituted
for that of wine. I may add, that this cask, with
the side gone, and the marks of the rats' teeth, is
still in my possession.
Rats, like men, being kindly disposed, often give
information of good things to others, which, alas!
may prove in the end to be the destruction both of
the informers and the informed. I give a case in
point.
A country gentleman was much annoyed by a
colony of rats which had settled in his cellars, and,
though he caught several of them in traps, yet he
never could succeed in getting rid of them entirely.
At last, knowing well the habits of the animal, he
determined on destroying the whole colony at one
grand coup. He therefore procured a large box,
and having half filled it with meal, sat himself down




RATS.                 145
in the cellar, by the side of it, concealing his person
under some sacks, and leaving only a spy-hole for
his eyes. The rats soon poked their noses out to
reconnoitre, timidly at first, but soon they came out
and began to eat the meal sprinkled about, cautiously, however, keeping one eye upon the mysterious bundle in the corner.
The next night he repeated the same plan of
action. The rats this time were bold enough to get
into the box by means of little ladders placed for
them. The first of them was rewarded by a plentiful feast of meal, and was soon joined by many
hufigry companions.
On the fourth night, however, it was determined
to put an end to their proceedings. By this time
the rats had lost all fear, and had spread the news
far and wide of their good fortune, so that there
was a large assembly of them in the box, greedily
devouring the remains of the meal, unsuspicious of
the fate that awaited them at the hands of the
apparently innocent bundle, of which they had now
no dread.
Mistaken creatures! up rose the executioner, and
down went the lid. The rats became prisoners
under a padlock, with strong oak boards between
them and liberty. The next morning the box and
its living contents were lifted into the yard, and, at
a signal, launched into a horsepond. It swayed to
7




146                  RATS.
ad fro, and while kept under water with poles by
two men, the numerous bubbles of air escaping from
the chinks of the box told plainly of the death-.struggles of the little quadrupeds within.
At length all was quiet.  The colony of rats,
which had possessed the cellar for so many generations, was no more. Their holes were filled up with
mortar mixed with glass, until a new generation
should arise to meet the same fate in some future
meal-box.
There is another curious instance of rats losing
their lives in quest of food, which has been kindly
communicated to me by a friend. When the atmospheric pump was in use at the terminus of the
Croydon Railway, hundreds of rats lost their lives
daily. The unscientific creatures used in the night
to get into the large iron tube, by exhausting the
air from which the railway carriages were put in
motion, their object being to lick off the grease from
the leather valve, which the engineers of the line
were so anxious to keep air-tight. As soon as the
air-pump was put to work for the first morning
train, there was no resisting, and out they were
sacked dead corpses!*
This atmospheric railway on one occasion certainly
committed a theft. As a train was passing a railway
* Quoted by the Quarterly Review.




RATS.                  147
station a lady happened to have a white pockethandkerchief in her hand: the draught of the train
snatched it away, and it fell under the passing carriages; in an instant it was sucked up and drawn
into the pipe, the train passed on, and the handkerchief was never seen again.
The rat, though naturally a savage creature, is,
by dint of kindness, capable of being tamed and
made obedient to the will of man.  Some of the
Japanese tame rats and teach them to perform many
entertaining tricks; and thus instructed exhibit them
as a show for the diversion of the populace.
We read in the Naturalists' Cabinet, 1806, that
"a gentleman travelling through Mecklenburg about
forty years ago, was witness to a very singular circumstance in the post-house at New Hargard. After
dinner, the landlord placed on the floor a large dish
of soup, and gave a loud whistle. Immediately there
came into the room a mastiff, a fine Angora cat, an
old raven, and a remarkably large rat, with a bell
about its neck. They all four went to the dish, and
without disturbing each other, fed together, after
which the dog, cat, and rat lay before the fire, while
the raven hopped about the room. The landlord,
after accounting for the familiarity which existed
among these animals, informed his guest that the
rat was the most useful of the four, for the noise he
made had completely freed the house from the other




148                 RATS.
rats and mice with which it had previously been
infested.
But capacity for becoming tame and accustomed
to the presence of man, is not confined to the
"foreigneer" rats; I myself have had many tame
ones.
When carrying on my observations on rats, I
bought a pair of piebalds, and put them in a Ward's
case, which formed a capital cage for them. In the
course of a few weeks my colony increased to an
enormous extent: I had specimens of almost every
kind of rat-the pure white albino rat with pink
eyes, the common brown rat, the true black rat, and
the snake or ship-rat. I had to pay several shillings
for my black rat, but he was a fine beast. By taking
trouble I obtained some very remarkable crosses; I
had one litter half albino half black-the white the
color of snow, the black the color of coal. Their
physiognomy, too, was very peculiar, and a rat from
this lot might readily have been taken for a new
species: they were really very pretty creatures. I
could never obtain a cross between a black and a
brown rat, except through the medium of a hybrid
in whom the blood of the black breed existed. Of
the cross between the brown and white rat I had
many live specimens, so many, indeed, that periodically I took a bag full to the Zoological Gardens,
for the benefit of the snakes. All my rats knew me




RATS.                 149
well. The moment I came to the room they swarmed
round the door of the cage, and I was obliged to
keep them back while I put in their food, as a
huntsman does to his hounds. At feeding-time
there was not a single rat in the cage that I could
not take up and handle with impunity; they never
offered to bite me. If, however, a stranger tried to
touch them, they — ere all up on their hind legs in a
fighting attitude in a moment. The snake or shiprats, however, I acknowledge beat me. I got two
from the docks, and unwisely turned them in with
the others. In a few moments a most tremendous
fight began-snake-rats versus the company..I put
them into another cage by themselves, after having
had the greatest difficulty in catching them; and
this, first, because the moment I got hold of their
tails the skin came off in my hand, and secondly,
they were so tremendously active that having
caught them I could hardly hold them. When
you wish to' catch an ordinary rat, seize his tail, and
lift him from the ground: at this instant he will try
to turn up and bite, and a most severe bite he will
give if you don't keep perpetually twisting him
round and round-he then can't turn upwards;
then having caught. him in the right hand by the
tail, swing him under the left arm. The rat will
immediately endeavor to get away, and so doing
fix himself on your waistcoat; bring your arm to




150                 RATS.
your side, and you have him a prisoner: then if you
wish further to examine him put the fore-finger of
the right hand behind his right shoulder.and the
thumb in fiont of the left, he is secure and can't
possibly bite; don't squeeze too much or he will
die, for a rat is a tender beast, and does not require
much killing. The snake-rats, however, managed
to twist round; one made his teeth meet in my
hand, so I let him go. A day or two afterwards I
found the remains of his body eaten by the common,
or, as I then called them, the wild rats, who used to
come nightly to the tame rats' cage to see what
they could pick up. This, I think, was the only
time I was ever bitten by a rat, but I should nevertheless advise a novice to be careful what he is
about in his first attempts.
Rat-catchers will frequently tell you that, to prevent the rats biting them, they put some preparation disagreeable to the rats upon their hands; but
this is not the truth. It is done by knowing the
habits of the animal. I subjoin the experience of
an old rat-catcher on this subject:"Rats may be taken out of the cage very easily;
for, if you don't hurt them, they will not bite you;
for, by standing together in the trap, they are
cowed, and have not the least notion of biting,
unless you should happen to squeeze them too hard
as you catch them one by one with your hand




UATS.                 151
There is a wide difference in the temper and disposition of these animals; for some are so savage and
untamed, that they will set up their -backs, looking
very fiercely, and crying out if you do but look at
them: but when you meet with one of this kind,
shake him well in the cage, together with the rest,
and observe when he has put his head among the
others, and take him out by his tail, and he will not
bite you; but observe, when you have first catched
them, do not go to handle them directly, for then
they are so mad and furious that they will bite anything."
I have frequently had rats brought to me in iron
cages.  On arrival they have shown themselves
exceedingly fierce, biting at everything and uttering
their peculiar cry of alarm when I went near them.
In the course of a few hours they become pretty
tame, even eating bread and milk out of a spoon
introduced between the bars.  In a day or two
they take no notice of me whatever, except to beg
for food with their noses through the bars wheii I
go near; and here, be it observed, a rat invariably
washes himself all over after eating, no matter
what. The operation is performed just as a cat
does it, viz., by licking the paws. They are naturally exceedingly clean animals: I never yet saw a
parasite of any kind on one. When a rat eats, he,
by means of his sharp front teeth, gnaws away a




152                  RATS.
mouthful, which he deposits in a sort of pouch
formed between his grinding teeth and his cheeks;
then he ceases gnawing and masticates his food, by
moving his jaws incessantly and without pausing.
They move ten times faster than the jaws of a rabbit. When a rat drinks, he laps up the fluid like a
dog, and does not suck it up like sheep. A  rat
generally tastes his food with his tongue previous to
eating it. It is curious to see a rat asleep. I never
saw it but once, and that in a case where the animal
was ill. It is as difficult to catch a rat asleep as it is
a weasel. The rat coils himself into a ball, and places
his nose down between his hind legs: his tail is
curled up round the outside of his body: he then
looks like a mass of hair. No part of his body projects but his two delicate ears, which are beautifully
adapted for catching the least sound, and which
seem to be placed there as sentries; and pretty
sharp sentries they are. It is certainly not the case,
as has been stated elsewhere, " that the garbage on
which rats live poisons their teeth and renders
the wounds they make deadly."  A rat, though
living in and among garbage, is always clean in its
person, and his teeth are always beautifully clean:
the yellow-looking substance on the front part of the
tooth is its natural color, and not the result of the
accumulation of tartar.
When house-surgeon at St. George's Hospital I




RATS.                 153
had to attend several cases of rat-bites. The result
of my experience is that a person with a good constitution will easily recover without any severe
symptoms from the bite, which is a pure, punctured,
clean-cut wound; but a person who has not healing
power in him might suffer severely. If a drayman
who is full of beer, or a highly fed and pampered
gentleman's servant-representatives of the two
most " unhealing" classes I know-were bitten by a
rat, it would go hard with them, and they might lose
their lives. I would, myself, much rather be bitten
ten times by a rat than once by a man or a horse. I
have seen severe consequences from the former
accident; and, but lately, a slave-owner in America
hit his slave in the mouth, and the teeth made a
severe wound, which ultimately proved fatal. A
horse's bite is a terrible thing: a poor little " tiger"
groom was brought to the hospital; the great cab
horse, of which he had charge, pushed hint down,
and then took him up between his teeth and shook
him as a cat does a mouse. The poor boy had two
great black marks on his back where the horse's
teeth had been, just as though he had been pinched
in a door. A friend of mine, who has charge of a
regiment in India, writes to me that he has to
attend to very many severe wounds caused by the
bites of camels, who not only have front teeth like
a horse, but also enormous tusks in the upper jaw,
7*




154                 RATS.
sharp and pointed like a dog's. I have also been
called upon to treat two or three horse-bites which
occurred in the regiment to which I belong.
Although my rats were very prolific, not above
one litter in three ever grew to be decent-sized
animals. If the mother was disturbed in any way,
even by moving her cage, she would set to work
and kill and eat every one of them. I have also
seen the mother move her little hairless and blind
young from one corner of the cage to another in her
teeth. How she manages not to hurt them with
her sharp teeth I know not; she carries them with
the greatest care and delicacy. One day a poor
mother had moved her young about into several
parts of the cage, but could not fix on one point. I
saw what was wanting, she could not obtain cover
for them. I put my hand into the cage full of tow
and cotton wool; she came instantly and took it out
of my hand and covered up her young. But, notwithstanding all this care, and although evidently
most anxious for their welfare, this kind mother,
obeying, I suppose, some wise law of nature, devoured during the following night every one of the
little ones of which she had been so careful the preceding day.
Talking of tame rats, I knew a worthy whipmaker who worked hard at his trade to support a
large family. He had prepared a number of strips




RATS.                  155
of leather, by well oiling and greasing them. He
carefully laid them by in a box, but,, strange to say,
they disappeared one by one; nobody knew anything about them, nobody had touched them.
However, one day, as he was sitting at work in
his shop, a large black rat, of the original British
species, slyly poked his head up out of a hole in the
corner of the room, and deliberately took a survey
of the whole place. Seeing all quiet, out he came,
and ran straight to the box wherein were kept the
favorite leather strips. In he dived, and quickly
reappeared, carrying in his mouth the most dainty
morsel he could find. Off he ran to his hole, and
quickly vanished. Having thus found out the thief,
the saddler determined to catch him. He accordingly propped up a sieve with a stick, and put a bait
underneath; in a few minutes out came the rat
again, smelling the inviting toasted cheese, and
forthwith attacked it. The moment he began nibbling at the bait, down came the sieve, and he became a prisoner. "Now," thought he, "my life
depends upon my behavior when this horrid sieve is
lifted up by that two-legged wretch with the apron
on, who so kindly cuts the greasy thongs for me
every day: he has a good-natured looking face, and
I don't think he wants to kill me. I know what I
will do."
The whipmaker at length lifted up the sieve,




156                 RATS.
being armed with a stick ready to kill Mr. Rat
when he rushed out. What was his astonishment
to see that the rat remained perfectly quiet, and,
after a few moments, walk quietly up on his arm,
and look up in his face, as much as to say, " I am a
poor innocent rat, and if your wife will lock up all
the good things in the cupboard, why I must eat
your nicely-prepared thongs; rats must live as well
as whipmakers."  The man then said, " Tom, I was
going to kill you, but now I won't; let us be
friends. I'll put you some bread and butter every
day if you will not take my thongs and wax, and
leave the shopman's breakfast alone; and-but I am
afraid you will come out once too often; there are
lots of dogs and cats about who won't be so kind to
you as I am; you may go now."
He then put him down, and Mr. Rat leisurely
retreated to his hole. For a long time afterwards
he found his breakfast regularly placed for him at
the mouth of his hole, in return for which he, as in
duty bound, became quite tame, running about the
shop, and inquisitively turning over everything on
the bench at which his protector was at work. He
would even accompany him into the stables when he
went to feed the pony, and pick up the corn as it
fell from the manger, keeping, however, a respect.
able distance from  the pony's legs. His chief
delight was to bask in the warm window sill, stretch




RATS.                15T
iag his full length to the mid-day sun. This unfortunate though luxurious habit proved his destruction, for one very hot day, as he lay at his ease
taking his siesta, the dog belonging to the bird-shop
opposite espied him afar off, and instantly dashed at
him through the window. The poor rat, who was
asleep at the time, awoke, alas! too late to save his
life. The cruel dog caught him, and took him into
the road, where a few sharp squeezes and shakings
soon finished him. The fatal deed being done, the
murderous dog left his bleeding victim in the dusty
road, and,#with ears and tail erect, walked away as
though proud of his performance. The dog's master,
knowing the history of the rat, had him stuffed, and
his impaled skin, with a silver chain round the neck,
forms to this day a handsome addition to the shopfront of the bird-shop in Brompton.
Another still more remarkable instance of a tame
rat has come to my knowledge.
Some time ago the driver of a Bow and'Stratford
omnibus was moving some trusses of hay in his hayloft, when snugly coiled up in a corner, he found a
little miserable-looking rat, whose mamma, having
carefully tucked him up in bed, had gone out on a
foraging expedition to find something for her darling's supper. The little fellow being of a remarkably piebald color, excited the pity of the omnibus
man, who took him up, and brought him home to




158                 RATS.
his family. The little children soon took to their
new pet, and named him Ikey, after their eldest
brother, whose name was Isaac. The little creature
soon grew up, and reciprocated the kindness he had
received, by excessive tameness towards every
member of the family. He was therefore allowed
to roam  about the house at perfect liberty. His
favorite seat was inside the fender, or on the clean
white hearth, but, strange to say, he would never
get on it unless it was perfectly clean. On one
occasion, when the good wife was cleaning the
hearth, she gave Master Rat a push; up' he jumped
on the hob, and, finding it an agreeable restingplace, there he stayed. As the fire grew brighter
and brighter, so the hob became warmer and
warmer, till at last it became unpleasantly hot; but
he would not move from his perch till the hair on
his legs and body became.quite singed with the
heat.
His master had perfect control over him, and
made, for his special benefit, a little whip, with
which he taught him to sit upon his hind legs in a
begging posture, jump through a whalebone hoop,
drag a small cart to which he was harnessed, carry
sticks, money, etc., in his mouth, and perform many
other amusing tricks.
The rat perfectly understood the meaning of the
whip, for whenever it was produced, and his mas



RATS.                 159
ter's countenance betrayed coming wrath, in fear
and trembling he would scamper up the sides of the
room or up the curtains, and perch himself on the
cornice; waiting there till a kind word from his
master brought him down again, hopping about,
and squeaking with delight. In these gambols of
mirth he would run so fast round after his tail, that
it was almost impossible to distinguish what the
whirling object was. At night he would exhibit
another cat-like habit, for he would stretch himself
out at full length before the fire on the rug, seeming to enjoy this luxurious way of warming himself.
This love of warmth made him sometimes a troublesome creature, for when he found the fire going
out and the room becoming cold, he would creep up
into his master's bed, and try to insert his little
body under the clothes. He was never allowed to
remain here long, but was made to decamp as soon
as his presence was discovered. He then took up
his refuge in the folds of his master's clothes which
were placed on a chair, and of these he was allowed.to retain quiet possession till the morning. The
master became so fond of his rat that he taught him
at the word of command, " Come along, Ikey," to
jump into his greatcoat pocket in the morning,
when he went out to his daily occupation of driving
the'bus.
He did not, however, carry him all day in his




16G                 RATS.
pocket, but put him in the boot of his'bus to act as
guard to his dinner. But why did not the rat eat
up his master's dinner? because, as said the man,
" I always gives him his bellyful when I has my own
breakfast before starting."  The-dinner was never
touched, except when it happened to consist of
plum-pudding.  This Ikey could not resist; his
greediness overcame his sense of right, and he invariably devoured the plums, leaving the less dainty
parts of the repast for his master. The rat acted as
a famous guard to the provisions, for whenever any
of the idle fellows who are always seen lounging
about the public-houses where the omnibuses bait,
attempted to commit a theft, and run off with the
bundle out of the boot, Ikey would fly out at them
from under the straw, aud effectually put to flight
the robbers.
At night he was taken home in his master's
pocket, and partook of the family supper; but if any
strangers happened to be present, he was taken
with a shy fit, and in spite of his hunger, secreted
himself till they had gone.
His teeth, after a time, became bad and worn out,
and the children finding this out, delighted to give
him a sort of hard cake, made of treacle, called, in
infant parlance,'jumbles, or brandy-snacks. Of these
Ikey, in his younger days, was very fond; but now,
on the contrary, they gave him much trouble to




RATS.                  161
masticate, and his perseverance and rage when
attacking the said brandy-snacks caused the young
folks many a hearty laugh.
This rat is, I believe, still alive, and enjoys good
health, though, the weight of age pressing on his
hoary head, he requires many little attentions from
his kind and tender-hearted protectors.*
Ah amusing incident took place not long ago in
the Vauxhall Bridge Road, which a bystander afterwards described to me. A rat-catcher, carrying a
cage with six rats in it, entered a public house; he
unwisely left his cage on the form outside. The
folding-doors of the tavbrn had no sooner closed,
than a band of young urchins who had been following at a respectful distance came up and espied the
cage, and the rats within.   Let's have a lark,"
says the greatest rogue of the party. "Look here,
here are some rats in a cage, where is the man what
belongs to the rats?"    He is in the public-house,"
exclaimed his comrades, "I seed him go in." "Let's
let'em out, and see if they will run," continued the
first speaker. " I'll tell the man, I'll tell your mother if you do," exclaimed a timid, white-haired
lad. "I will, though," said the other, " here goes."
He accordingly opened the door of the cage, and
out they all bolted in an instant.  "Master, master,
* Quoted by the Quarterly Review.




162                  RATS.
your rats are gone!" exclaimed the whole party
assembled. Out came the old rat-catcher with the
half-emptied porter pot in his hand, exclaiming,
" Where, where?"  " There, there, up the street,
master, run."  The old man dashed down the pot,
and away he went up the road as hard as he could
go. The rats in the meantime made best use of
their liberty, and were scampering up the middle of
the dusty road, jumping and squeaking, with their
long tails well stretched out behind them, running
in a straight line, one behind the other, like horses
in a well-contested race. They did not seem inclined
to listen to the oaths and injunctions of the old man
in pursuit, but continued their course direct to a
heap of bricks and rubbish close by. Here the old
man pulled up, arriving some minutes after the rats,
and then, dashing down his cap, exclaimed, " It's no
use running after'em: if they go at that rate they
will get home before me; however, I dare say I
shall meet with my friends another day; let'em go
and enjoy themselves while they can!" With these
words he ran back again in pursuit of the young
miscreants, the cause of all his misfortune; they
too, like the rats, had quicker legs than the old man,
and again he was unsuccessful in his pursuit. Like
a wise man, therefore, he picked up his empty cage
and retired again to the tap-room, to console himself for the loss of his rats, to abuse the whole race




RATS.                   163
of boys in general, and the boys of the Vauxhallroad in particular.
There is a curious fact connected with the habits
of the rat, which warrants acloser observation on the
part of those who have the opportunity-it is the
emigration of rats. It appears that rats, like many
birds, fish, etc., are influenced to change their abode.
by want of food; by necessity of change of temperature; by want of a place for incubation, where they
may obtain food for their young; and, lastly, by
their fear of man.
"A Spanish merchant some years ago had forestalled the market of Barcelona filberts on speculation. He filled his warehouse with sacks of them,
and refused to sell to the retail dealers, except at
such a price as they could not afford to give. Thinking, however, that they would be obliged to submit
to his demand, rather than not procure them for
sale, he persisted in exacting his original price, and
thus lost nearly all his treasure; for he was informed,
by an early-rising friend, that he had seen, just before
sunrise, an army of rats quitting the warehouse. He
immediately went to examine his sacks, and found
them gnawed in various places, and emptied of above
half their contents, and empty shells of filberts
strewed over the floor."
Pennant relates a story of a burglarious troop of
rats, which nearly frightened a young lady out of




164                 RATS.
her wits, by mistaking her chimney for one leading
to a cheese-room. Sle was suddenly wakened by a
tremendous clatter in her bed-chamber, and on looking up saw a terrific troop of rats running about in
wild disorder. She had presence of mind enough
to throw her candlestick at them  (timor arma
ministrat*), and to her great joy she found that
they speedily departed by the way which they had
entered her apartment, leaving only a cloud of soot
over the room.
Forty years ago, the house of a surgeon in Swansea
was greatly infested with rats, and he completely
got rid of them by burning off all the hair from one
which he had caught alive, and then allowing it to
return to its hole. It Was said that he never afterwards saw a rat on his premises, except the burnt
sufferer, which on the following day returned, and
was caught in the same trap from which he had
been but just set at liberty. I suppose that in their
"Advertiser," the description of a ghost, and a
notice of haunted premises, was given, which caused
the whole colony so unanimously to decamp.
The above story reminds me of a curious nondescript animal from the torrid zone, which was
exhibited some years ago at Yarmouth. A gentleman who, unfortunately for the showman, happened
to be a naturalist, paid his penny, and went in
* Fear finds arms.




RATS.                 165
to see it. It turned out, though the owner posi.
tively denied the fact, to be a large bear, with his
hair closely shaven away, except in sundry places,
which added much to the grotesque appearance of
his nude person.
Speaking of ghosts, I have heard that some years
ago there was a lone house standing by itself near a
plantation, not far from  Guildford.  This house
nobody would ever take because it was haunted,
and strange noises heard in it every night after
dark; several tenants tried it but were frightened
away by the noises. At last, one individual more
courageous than the rest resolved to unravel the
mystery. He accordingly armed himself cap-a-pie,
and having put out the light remained sentry in one
of the rooms. Shortly he heard on the stairs pit,
pat; a full stop, then pit, pat; a full stop again.
The noise was repeated several times, as though
some creature, ghost or no ghost, was coming up
stairs. At last the thing, whatever it was,-came
close to the door of the room where the sentry was
placed and listening; his heart, too, chimed in with
the tune pit, pat, rather faster than it was wont to
do. IHe flung open the door-hurry, skurry, bang;
something went down stairs with a tremendous
jump, and all over the bottom of the house the
greatest confusion, as of thousands of demons rushing
in all directions, was heard. This was enough for




166                 RATS.
one night. The next night our crafty sentry established himself on the first landing with a heap of
straw and a box of lucifer-matches; soon all was
quiet. Up the stairs again came the pit pat, pit
pat. When the noise was close to his ambush he
scraped his match and set fire to his straw, which
blazed up like a bonfire in an instant; and what Aid
he see? only a rabbit, who stood on his hind legs,
as much astonished as was the sentry. Both man
and beast having mutually inspected each other, the
biped hurled a sword at the quadruped, who disappeared down stairs quicker than he came up.
The noise made was only the rabbit's fore and hind
legs hitting the boards as he hopped from one stair
to the other. The rabbits had got into the house
from the neighboring plantation, and had fairly
frightened away, by their nocturnal wanderings,
the rightful owners thereof. The more courageous
sentry was rewarded for his vigil, for he held his
tongue as to the cause of the ghost. He got the
house at a reduced rent, and several capital rabbit
pies made of the ghosts' bodies into the bargain.
That rats will emigrate we well know from expe.
rience. My father, when Canon of Christ church,
Oxford, was usually in residence during the long
vacation; when the young men went away, their
rooms, in consequence, became bare of food for the
rats, and they all emigrated to my father's house in




RABT.                 167
Tom quadrangle; many scores of them I myself
have caught in traps at that particular time of the
year. When term commenced again, the rats went
away only to reappear at the next vacation. The
same thing happens at Westminster: the Canons'
houses there have numerous rats in them  when
the Westminster boys are gone home for their
holidays.
On the bleak and bare downs, near Isley, in Berkshire, not very far from the Didcot station of the
Great Western Railway, are situated lone barns, in
which the corn gathered from the neighboring fields
is stacked. Rats have been frequently met in colonies by shepherds at early morning, marching in
long lines direct from one barn to another. They
have been watched and seen to go direct across
country in a straight line. They generally leave one
barn for another, when the wheat has been threshed
out and their food thus taken from them.  But
the curious point is how they know where to go;
how do they find out where there is a barn containing food for them? do they send out scouts, or
does their instinct guide them? I believe it is the
same marvellous instinct that guides the hungry
rats, as that which guides the swallow in her long
and wearisome journey to warmer climates, or impels
the shoals of herrings and sprats to visit our shores.
A medical gentleman, who lived in the neighborhood




168                 RATS.
of these downs, tells me that on one occasion preparations were made to ferret and destroy all the rats
in a barn near Weston.  The next morning the
company came-ferrets, dogs, big sticks, and allbut not a rat could be found. In vain the ferrets
poked in and out of the holes; in vain the dogs
routed under the straw; in vain the men brandished
their sticks; the rats were all gone, not one solitary
individual remained. We can but conclude that,
from  former experience, some of the patriarchs
among the rats, observing the preparations made,
had advised a general change of quarters, and their
advice had been taken by the whole colony. Curiously enough, my friend afterwards ascertained
from a laborer that he had met a regiment of rats
very early in the morning of the day the hunt was
to have taken place in the Weston barn, marching
along Chilton bottom towards another barn situated
some distance away. Some years ago a gentleman
driving in a gig, about three o'clock one fine summer's
morning, met, upon Kingston Bridge, a colony of rats
on the march. He pulled up, and the rats filed off
to the right and left, taking not the leant notice of
either him or the gig.
Though not considered a delicacy by English
palates, the rat, nevertheless, used to afford a dainty
dish to the negro slaves of Jamaica. The slavemasters did not often ruin themselves by long




RATS.                  169
butchers' bills for meat for their living property; so
that the poor wretches were obliged to set their
brains to work to' procure animal food for their
craving appetites.  They caught and afterwards
cooked the rats in the following way, as described
by the Rev. B. Vernon, in his " Eaily Recollections
of Jamaica."
He writes as follows: "But to return to Inkle (a
native of Congo, in Africa, who was employed as a
watchman over a coco piece, or yam-ground). His
larder did n'ot afford many delicacies, and when the
continuance of a storm  detained me beyond the
usual hour of an early dinner, I have enjoyed a
black coco, or part of a roasted yam, at his expense,
and to his apparent gratification; which latter was
not diminished, perhaps,by the certainty of having
such favors returned in kind; for I blush not to
avow, that I carried to him many a salt shad or
herring to season his vegetable diet.
"The most pressing case of hunger never carried
me so far beyond the prejudices of civilised life as
to induce me to partake of roasted rat, in which he
delighted. His method of catching and of cooking
this vermin deserves notice.  It were, perhaps,
more easy for me to make, than to describe, his
simple but efficient trap. It consisted of a small
conical basket, to which was fastened in the wicker
work outside (running from the apex to the open
8




1 70                 RATS.
mouth), a tough and elastic lance-wood stick, three
or four feet long, with a strong twine, manufactured
by himself from the bark of a tree, attached'to the
further and smaller end. In order to set the trap,
the stick was bent into a bow; a ~unning noose
being formed af the end of the twine, and passed
through an aperture left in the edge of the basket
for the purpose. This noose was carefully spread
out round the inner edge, and concealed under the
rim. Below the noose a separate piece of twine
was fixed, drawn through the basket twice, so as to
cross at right angles, and firmly secured on the outside.  In order to reach  the bait, which was
deposited at the apex, the rat must gnaw through
these cross strings. As soon as they gave way, the
elasticity of the bow suddenly and tightly drew the
noose, and the rat was strangled. These traps were
laid upon the ground, and seldom failed to secure
the prize, which was prepared for the table in the
following primitive manner. After carefully cleaning the inside and cutting off the tail, the body was
impaled on a long wooden skewer, and turned
briskly round over a fierce fire, until the hair was
completely burnt; it was then scraped with a sharp
piece of wood, until free from fur, and of a rich,
toasty, brown color; and finally, the end of the
skewer was stuck into the ground, inclining towards
the fire, where it remained sometimes for hours,




RATS.                   171
with an occasional change of position, until it
became quite dry and crisp, and thus ready for the
evening meal. When I expressed surprise that he
could eat such food, Inkle would reply with a merry
grin,'Ki? nyoung, massa, ratta sweet, hearee? If
nyoung massa nyam ratta one time, no more him
nyam ratta ebery day, hearee?'-The French are
right who say,'Ce n'est que le premier pas qui
coute;' but that'premier pas' in rat-eating I could
never take.
" Poor Inkle's ingenuity in procuring, and afterwards preparing, his repast, fully illustrates the
truth of the saying,
Ingeni inventor venter.'  *
The natives'in India who cut grass for the officers'
horses are very fond of rats when they can get them:
they singe and eat them as did Inkle.
In that marvellous country, China, where every
inch of ground is cultivated, and every bit of refuse
of all sorts and kinds, even to the hair collected and
sold by the barbers who shave the pate of John
Chinaman, is collected for manure in order to grow
food for the millions of starving wretches, almost
everything that can be cooked is eaten up-to rats,
and dogs, and mollusks. I have seen a dried rat
X The empty stomach the mother of invention.




172                  RATS.
bought in the market of a Chinese town. It has
been split down the centre, powdered with some
white substance, and pressed under some heavy
weight, as is evident from its shape, its appearance
being very much like that of the common English
haddock. These John Chinaman buys, soaks in
water, and then dresses "more suo"-boils,,roasts,
or fiies. In reference to the subject of using human
hair for manure, as I was being operated on by a
celebrated London barber he informed me, that he
was obliged to burn the cuttings of the hair to get
rid of the mess out of his shop; but when he was
an apprentice at a town in Huntingdonshire, he was
allowed the sweepings of the shop as a perquisite,
and that he sold it at sixpence per bushel to'a
neighboring farmer. The farmer told him that the
places where he had placed the hair did not require
manure for three years afterwards. He was not
aware that barbers ever sold hair-cuttings in London
for manure: he did not think it would pay, because
it required the cuttings of so many people to get a
bushel. In the country the customers came in with
long locks, which were cropped off pretty close, but
in London the customers do not have much hair cut
off at a time.
In a penny exhibition at a fair, I went in to see some
"sea lions"-two beautiful little seals —and some
" India-rubber dogs."  The seals were in very good




RATS.                 173
condition, and obedient to the word of command.
At the word of command, " Lay on your back, Jem,
my," Jemmy turned himself gracefully into the posi
tion ordered, and looked up at his master with a
look of affectionate obedience. Jack's (the other
seal) turn came next. "Roast the pig, Jack," was
the word of command; immediately Jack rolled
himself round and round in the water, staying
always in the lame place in his tub, so fast that it
was quite impossible to make out his form. The performance being concluded each received a bit of fish.
I am now sorry that I did not buy a seal that was
once offered to me in the neighborhood of the docks
for ten shillings. The poor seal was in a tub, and
looked moribund; his head too, strange to say, was
covered with a very peculiar species of tick, such as
I never saw before nor since. Thinking the seal
would not live long enough to get as far as Westminster, I did not buy him. I afterwards heard
that a Jew bought him for five shillings, cured him,
and sold him at a considerable profit.
But the " India-rubber dogs:" these were three
dogs looking like a cross between an Italian grey.
hound-which by-the-by has been aptly defined by
a Frenchman as " un chien sans un profession "*and a terrier; hair they had none; they looked like
scalded black pigs, for their skin was as black as a
* A dog without a profession.




174                  RATS.
hat, firm yet exceedingly elastic to the touch, giving
one the idea of India-rubber-hence the showman's
name for them. This man informed us that his dogs
were brought from China, and that they were of the
kind eaten by the Chinese. Were I compelled to
eat a dog, I would certainly choose this kind in preference to a rough, hairy, dissipated-looking English
terrier.
In another show I inspected a " Californian cocl"
It was a fine specimen of the English cock,, upon
which John Hunter's famous experiment had been
repeated-the spur had been cut off the leg and
implanted in the comb; strange though it may.
seem, yet it is true, that the spur will actually take
root and grow in its new place. Let the sceptic go
and inspect for himself at the Royal College of
Surgeons, London, two or three heads so treated.
In the " Californian cock," this operation had been
performed, and a very successful one it had been;
for the spur had not only taken root, but had actually grown; taking the form of a corkscrew, and
representing two turns and a half of the screw.
Hearing that I was interested in rats, Mr. Rupert
Jones kindly sent me an extract fiom a French
newspaper, of which the following is a translation.
It appears from it that there can be lawsuits about
rats, as well as about other matters, and also that
the Zouaves perform the Hunterian experiment of




RATS.                  175
transplanting one part of an animal's body on to
another. The story runs thus:
Pliny, Buffon, and  Lacepede have made us
acquainted with the races of animals which inhabit
the two hemispheres, but none of these savants, any
more than the naturalists their successors, have
made mention of the " trumpet-rat," and a search for
it among the antediluvian animals discovered by
science will be equally unsuccessful. The " trumpetrat" is modern; its existence dates from the time
the Zouaves were in Africa. The action at law
brought by M. Triguel against Girome, a retired
Zouave (ancient Zouave), makes us believe that this
is the animal in question.
The Plaintiff. "Gentleman, this individual has
cheated me out of a hundred francs (41.), and has,
at the same time, wilfully abused my confidence.
He knows that I am much interested in geology,
antiquities, natural sciences. I have collections of
fossils, of medals, of shells, of rare animals, of
curious plants. One day he called upon me, and
said,' Sir, I have a kind of animal which has never
been mentioned by any naturalist.''What is it,
Sir?'  It is "the trumpet-rat."'What do you
call the trumpet-rat?''Sir, as the name indicates,
it is a rat which has a trumpet.''Where is it?'' On his nose like a rhinoceros.'' And you have it
alive?'' Alive and well; if you wish to see it,-you




176                  RATS.
have only to come to my house.''Directly; come
along.'
"I was very anxious to see this strange animal.
We arrive at his house, and he shows me in a cage
an enormous rat, very lively and in good condition,
and which really had on its nose a sort of slender
excrescence about two centimetres long (two-thirds
of an inch), covered with. hair like the body of the
animal, with vertebrae in it, and, a most extraordinary thing, larger at the summit than at the base, the
contrary to what it ought to be in the usual course
of things. I ask to examine this phenomenon; he
puts it in my hand, and holds its paws and head
that I might examine at my ease this extraordinary
trumpet. I ask him if it were not a dupe, and a
mystification, and to convince myself I take a pin
and force'it into the trumpet. The animal cried
out, winced, and a drop of blood came from the
prick.  The experiment was conclusive-it was
really a trumpet forming a part of the rat.
" I wonder. I ask this man if he would sell his
rat. He answers in the affirmative. I ask his price.
Fifty francs. I pay it without any bargaining, and
I bring the animal home. I invite my friends and
servants to see it, the cry of admiration was universal
-I was enchanted.
" Some one says to me,'You ought to procure
a female (this was a male).' I had thought of that,




RATS.                  17 7
but having seen but one rat at the house of the person who sold it to me, I concluded that he had no
more. I determined, therefore, to go directly to
see, and I ask him if it were possible to get a female.'Nothing easier,' he answered me;' I have written
to Africa, and they have sent me many trumpet-rats,
of which I have two females.' With these words,
he brings out a cage full of rats like that which he
had sold me. He chooses me a female, for which
I pay him fifty francs (21.). I carry it off more
enchanted -than ever. Some.months afterwards the
female has young: I look at them, they had not
trumpets. I say to myself,'Without doubt they
will sprout hereafter like the elephants' tusks.' I wait
one month, two months, six months; every day I
look at the nose of my rats, but the trumpet never
appeared.
"In a house where I go frequently I make the
acquaintance of an officer who had served a long
time in Africa.'Tell me,' I says to him one day-'you have been in Africa-do you know the trumpetrats?''Perfectly,' he answers me.' Ah! then you
can inform me.' I then tell him my story. Then
this gentleman began to laugh, as though his sides
would split. I say to myself,'Certainly then I
have been duped.' When he was calm I beg him
to explain the motive of his hilarity. Then he tells
me what follows:'The trumpet-rat, he tells me, is
8*




1 78                 RATS.
not a supernatural thing, it is an invention due to
the leisure moments of the Zouaves. This is how
they make them: you take two rats; you tie their
paws firmly on a board, the nose of one close to the
end of the tail of the other; with a pen-knife or a
lancet you make an incision into the nose of the rat
which is hindermost, and you graft the tail of the
first into the nose; you tie firmly the muzzle to the
tail, and you leave the two rats in this position for
forty-eight hours. At the end of the time the union
has taken place, and'the two parts are grown together; then you cut off the tail of the rat which
is in front to the required length, and let him go,
but still keep the other tied to the board but with
his head loose, and you give him something to eat.
At the end of a month or more the wound is perfectly healed, and the eyes of the most curious
scrutators would not see a trace of the'grafting.
This is what these Zouaves do; the rats have no
trumpet, you have been deceived,' (les rats n'ont
pas de trompe; vous avez ete trompe).
"On the part of the defendant, it was urged that
he had certainly made up the rats as has been
stated, but he affirms that he had not sold them to
the plaintiff as rats'born' with a trumpet.
The.President. "' Is this true, M. Triguel?'
A.- Triguel. "' You understand, Sir, after the experiment which I made with the prick of the pin,




RATS.                  179
which bled and made the animal cry, I ought to
believe that the trumpet was natural.'
The President. "' Then the defendant told you
that it was a particular kind of rat?'
The Plaintiff. "  Yes, without doubt.'
The:Defendant. "' In fact —it is a particular kind
of rat.'"
Verdict for the Zouave-the trumpet-rat maker.
(Gaz. des Trib.)
To my mind this story seem almost impossible;
not that the tail of one rat would not grow on to
the nose of another, for I believe it would, were the
operation properly performed; butI confess that if
I were told to tie a rat down in such a manner that
he could not move for eight and forty hours, I
should express my inability so to do.
Rat-eating is not confined to China alone. Mr.
Blackwell, of Bristol, informs me, that when a
French schooner was windbound at Hale in Cornwall, not very long ago, the sailors cleared the
country round of rats and snails; they pouched
and scalded the rats, and then.hung them up by
dozens, looking beautifully white, on the yardarms
to dry.
Poor Dr. Kane was seriously troubled with rats
in his North Pole expedition, but afterwards they
served him a good turn. He writes: " We have
been terribly annoyed by rays; some clays ago we




180                   RATS.
made a brave effort to smoke them  out with tne
vilest imaginabie compound of vapors-brimstone,
burnt leather, and arsenicj and we spent a cold
night on deck in consequence, and to give the
experiment fair play, but they recovered the fumigation. We now determined to dose them  with
carbonic acid gas: Dr. Hayes burnt a quantity of
charcoal, and we shut down the hatches, after pasting up every fissure that communicated aft. They
nearly set the ship on fire during this operation;
but, however, the next day upon inspecting the
scene of our operations, we found twenty-eight
well-fed rats of all varieties of age." Afterwards,
when the crew were starving, the rats came in as an
article of food, and Dr. Kane himself says:" Another article of diet, less inviting at first, but
which I found more innocuous (than bears' liver),
was the rat.  We had failed to exterminate the
animal by our varied and perilous efforts of the year
before, and a well-justified fear forbade our renewing
the crusade. It was marvellous, in a region apparently so unfavorable to reproduction, what a perfect
warren we soon had on board. Their impudence
and address increased with their numbers; it became
impossible to stow anything below decks. Furs,
woollens, shoes, specimens of natural history, every.
thing we disliked to lose, however little valuable tc
themn, wtas gnawed into and destroyed.  They har




RATS.                  181
oorea among the men's bedding in the forecastle,
and showed such boldness and dexterity in dodging
missiles that they were tolerated at last as inevitable
nuisances. Before the winter ended I avenged our
griefs, by decimating them for my private table. If
I was asked what, after darkness, and cold, and
scurvy, are the three besetting curses of our Arctic
sojourn, I should say rats, rats, rats.
"Before I pass from these intrepid and pertinacious
visitors, let me add that, on the whole, I am personally much their debtor. Through the long winter
night, Hans used to beguile his lonely hours of
watch by shooting them with the bow and arrow.
The repugnance of my associates to share with me
the table' luxury of'such small deer' gave me the
frequent advantage of a fresh-meat soup, which contributed no doubt to my comparative immunity
from scurvy."  Again he writes: " Our diet will be
only a stock of meat biscuit, to which I shall add for
myself a few rats chopped up, and frozen into tallow
balls."
When that gallant sailor Rear-Admiral Beaufort
was making a cruise in H.M.S. "Woolwich," his
ship was swarmed with rats. He has kindly informed
me that the boys amused themselves by catching
them with cane spears, armed with needle points,
and they killed scores at a hunt. Determined to
get over the silly prejudice against such animals, as




.82                 RATS.
they fed on his peas and flour, he ordered those that
were killed to be brought to his steward for selection, and he reports that the old grizzly ones were
very strong, but that spatchcocked and broiled,
with plenty of salt and pepper, the head quarters
were really not bad; but prejudice was stronger
even than rats, and no one, either young or old,
could get down a mouthful without a long face.
One morning the admiral was awoke by the cold
nose of a rat licking his lips. The rat was chased,
and wedged itself so firmly between the timbers
that the ship's carpenter had actually to cut away a
considerable portion of one of the timbers to get at
him; he then got hbld of him, but the rat wisely
slipt his tail, and again escaped; but at last the
armorer's long-handled pincers brought him out.
When Captain Inglefield went to the North Pole
in the ship "Phoenix," in the year 1853, my sister
gave him three white pet rats which were quite
tame. These*three rats went to the North Pole in
a cage specially provided for them, and became
quite favorites on board. One of them died of an
abscess in the back, the second was given away to
one of the officers belonging to a ship that was at
Melville Island, and the third came back to England
sound and well, and when I last heard of it, it was
still alive.
A charming young lady was kind enough to give




RATS.                  183
me the particulars of her pet dove, who is a great
Arctic voyager. This tender bird has been twice
to the North Pole, and spent the summers of 185354 there on board Captain Inglefield's ship the
"Phcenix." She then remained with Captain Inglegeld in the " Sidon," in the Black Sea. Not only
is this dove a great traveller, but she is a fighting
dove as well, for she was present at the bombardment of Sebastopol, and her cage was knocked to
pieces by a shot. Her only other adventure was
making herself ill by eating some strange berries,
but she recovered after the administration of an
emetiet This bird has picked up wisdom in her
travels, and now considers herself a veteran bird,
and entitled to take liberties. When a stranger
comes into the room, she flies, as often as she can
get out of her cage, on to his head, or on to the
nearest corner of the table or floor; then she stands
at his feet, and commences the funniest succession
of jerks and bows, cooing loudly and hoarsely.all
the time. A few weeks after she came home from
the North Pole, an officer of the ship happening to
call upon her mistress, she manifested. the utmost
impatience to get out of the cage even when she
only heard his voice, but the moment she saw him
she flew direct into the breast of his coat, where she
had been accustomed to nestle in the homeward
voyage.  She was scarcely ever in her cage on




184                  AXTS.
board  ship, as she was too tame to fly away.
Captain Inglefield took a large quantity of wheat
and canary-seed and gravel with him on each voyage,
as the dove's provision.
Rats are terrible plagues on board ships. There
is an improvement upon the old plan of killing them
by means of smoke. A rat is not so easily killed by
stinking vapors, as remarked above. The new plan,
as I have been told, is to take the infected ship alongside a steamer, and having stuffed up every crack,
and door, and window, to introduce a leather hose;
steam is then forced down the hose into the ship;
the rats can't stand this; they get parboiled, and
the cockroaches with them; the ship is thus thoroughly fieed fiom all its live stock. I have it on
the authority of Captain Shipton, R.N., that in the
American war it was no uncommon thing to get
hold of a. lot of coasting vessels, and in order to get
rid of the trouble of them, after taking the crews
out, the captors set fire to them; and then hundreds
of rats were seen scudding up the rigging, not knowing which death was least disagreeable-drowning
or burning.
A friend who has travelled much, tells me that
when off the Cape of Good Hope a heavy sea struck
the ship he was in, and lifting up the long boat from
her lashings, knocked her against the bulwarks, and
made a great-hole in her side. This long boat was




RATS.                  185
the receptacle for all sorts of lumber, and had been
taken possession of by a colony of rats.  At the
moment of concussion, the rats retired into the
innermost crevices of the lumber. As the boat was
now of no further use, it was determined that she
should be thrown overboard; tackle was therefore
fitted, and she was hoisted up, and dropped plump
into the raging sea. The scene of confusion amongst
the rats, who discovered too late their fate to be
committed to the deep, was indescribable. The
carpenter had bored a hole in the bottom of the
boat, as sailors do not like that anything they throw
overboard should be picked up; and as the boat
began to fill, the rats came nearer and nearer to the
surface of the sea, fill at last they were entirely
deserted by the faithless boat, and obliged to swim
about, as best they might; but this did not last long,
a heavy sea was on, and a great wave came thundering along; the half-drowned rats were borne to
the top of it, and then were lost in the watery valley
the other side.
There is a third kind of rat, which is very generrally distributed throughout England, whose personal
appearance is well known to most anglers; it is the
"water-rat," or as it is sometimes called, the " watervole."  This little animal may be considered as the
representative of the beaver (many years extinct) in
the British isles. He is entirely aquatic in his habits,




186                  RATS.
and is never seen except by the water-side. Upon
examining his anatomy we shall find that he, too, is
constructed with reference to the mode of life he is
destined to follow. His neck is very short, his head
rounded and convex above, to enable him to swim
fast through the water. His fur is almost-waterproof, being composed of two sets of hairs, some
long and projecting, others short and thickly set,
together forming a close silky pile, which effectually
resists the entrance of the water, and serves its
owner in the place of a very warm, waterproof
great-coat. I have often seen the water-rat swimming under water, and have frequently observed
that'he appears to be surrounded, by a case of air, in
fact, looks like a large air-bubble swimming along.
This effect is produced, I imagine, by means of the
first set of hairs above mentioned. The air which
he takes down with him on plunging in, would
naturally escape were it not that it is delayed by
adhering to these long quasi reservoirs, and thus
renders the whole body more buoyant than it otherwise would be. The tail in the house-rat, as we
have above mentioned, serves as an organ of balancing and prehension; in the water-rat it is so modified
as to become a sort of rudder and paddle; it is much
rounder and more taper, being slightly compressed
towards the tip, to afford as much resistance as possible to the water; acting, in fact, like the broad




RATS.                  18 7
end of the oar, as used by fishermen in propelling
their boat from its stern end.
In the-house-rat the ears are long and projecting,
so placed as to catch the smallest sound. What
would be the use of such ears to the water-rat? they
would only be in his way; accordingly we find the
following beautiful modification and adaptation of
means to ends. The external ears are short, and
rounded, and entirely concealed in the fur, overlapped, moreover, externally with extremely soft
hairs. The hair of the rat under the microscope is
a most beautiful object; it looks like a number of
-small kidney-beans placed side by side in a row inside
a tube. As though these hairs were not sufficient
protection against the entrance of the water, the
meatus, or aperture of the ear, is capable of being
closed up entirely by a thin angular operculum. This
admirably-designed curtain the rat is enabled, when
he plunges below the water, entirely to draw across
the passage of the ear, and completely exclude the
element in which he swims. The water-rat never
comes near the. abode of men, water-mills excepted;
he prefers living by the sides of canals and ponds,
and in the water-meadows, forming a secure retreat
for himself in the banks in case of need. The holes
and tortuous burrows he excavates are, beyond
description, complicated. Frequently a large portion of the bank by the side of the river Itchen, in




1 88                  RATS.
Hampshire, has given way underrny feet, completely
undermined by the rats. In this way much damage
is done to the dams and banks, on whose security
and firmness much valuable property depends.
Aware that he has many enemies, and that flight is
his only chance for life, the water-rat has not made
a "single" entrance to his spacious habitation, but,
being amphibious, finds it positively necessary to
have two portals, one under water, the other by the
side of the bank, or on the top of the bank, and on
this account it is very difficult indeed to catch him.
When a boy at Winchester, I used often to go out
into the water-meadows to hunt rats.  Having
marked them  to their holes, sharp stakes were
thrust into the soft grassy banks, which generally
dislodged the quarry. He would first come up to
his land-hole to see if the field were clear, if not,
rush out into the water, through his aquatic portal,
and swim away as quietly as he could. The great
art was at this moment to slip over his head, as he
swam, a thin loop of brass wire tied to the end of a
long stick, and whisk him out of his native element,
to become a prey to the scholars on the bank, by
some of whom water-rat's skins were collected on
account of their beauty and silk-like softness. When
hunting about a stream under a viaduct at Hanwell,
for creatures for a vivarium, a boy told me that
once he saw a big water-rat, as he thought, enter a




RATS.                  189
hole. He put his hand up and caught it, but the
creature bit him severely. It turned out to be, not
a water-rat, but a polecat. He sold it in the village;
but his hand was so bad that he was obliged to go
to the doctor, and the doctor's bill came to more
than.he got for the polecat. I asked him it he ever
caught any more.  "No," says he, "I be afeard
on'em."
The water-rats are nocturnal in their habits, and
prefer coming out at night for their food, which is
entirely vegetable.  They are, however, often
tempted out on a fine day, and I have watched them
for hours feeding on a large patch of floating weed
on the river Itchen, near a place well known to
Wykehamists as the "' Waterman's-hut," and most
amusing were their gambols and petty disputes
about some dainty morsel of cabbage or potato-skin.
I had some difficulty in obtaining watei-rats for dissection from  Islip, near Qxford; Mr. Blick, my
friend, who resides there, informing me that the
man who leases the river thereabouts destroys all
the water-rats he can, as they eat up his young
osiers, which he sells to make baskets, etc.
Water-rats "are said" to eat the eggs of the
moor-hen, and the poor bird has no defence against
its enemy. The rat himself gets eaten sometimes,
by a large and hungry pike, who will snap him up as
he swims across the water. Herons, too, will eat




190                  RATS.
him. Mr. G. Berkeley writes: " In a small stream
inland I have caught many herons in hard weather,
laying the bait-a little eel, or the tail only of a
larger one, with a hook in it-so that it would gently
play in the stream on the shallow which the herons
used in search of the little trout. In the maw of
one heron so caught were seven small trout, a thrush,
and a mouse. I once killed a heron with a large
water-rat in his belly, which effectually prevented
my dressing them again at table, though the heron,
in former days, was considered a princely delicacy."
The heron's bill is a most formidable, dagger-like
weapon. I once very nearly got a severe peck from
a bittern, which has a similar bill, in Leadenhall
Market; it was in a cage, and darted its bill at my
eyes just as I was passing. I have seen in a museum
at Cambridge, the bill of a heron mounted on a
handle brought from some savage country. It makes
a formidable, sharp-pointed, conical weapon, very
like a bayonet in shape, when both portions of the
bill are tied together. Herons stand motionless in
the water when fishing; they do not go after fish,
but wait for the fish to come to them. By some it
is supposed that there is a peculiar scent in the
heron's legs which attracts the fish, and with this
idea it is the custom in some countries (I heard of
it in Oxfordshire) to cut qff the legs of a heron and
obtain from them the oil, which is used by the fisher




RATS.                  191
man to anoint his bait. I should be inclined to doubt
its efficacy. The heron has a very peculiar and beautiful structure in its neck, which enables it to turn
its head almost at right angles to its neck. It is a
peculiar formation in the junction of one of the
neck-bones with its neighbor. In pictures of hawking we generally see a heron represented with its
bill pointed directly upwards from its back, so as to
transfix.the hawk who is about to pounce down upon
it from above. It is this peculiarly beautiful construction of the neck-bones which enables it to do so.
My friend, Mr. Bush, of Clapham, tells me he
once saw a heron make good use of his powerful
neck. He had a pugnacious fighting-cock, which
attacked everything he saw. One day the cock
caught sight of the heron, and rushed at him with
outstretched neck and drooping wings. The heron
could not make him out at all, his great long legs
keeping his body out of the way of the cock's spurs.
The cock made a second charge, but this time the
heron was ready for him. He placed his long neck
quite back on his body, so that his head was over his
tail feathers.  Mr. Cock advanced bravely: just
when he was within reach, the heron let fly his neck
and head with the power of a steel' spring, and
caught the cock's body as he was coming onward.
Lucky it was for the latter that he was not nearer
or the heron's bill would have gone'through him




192                 RATS.
The cock had had a lesson; he never molested the
heron again, and slunk out of the way when he saw
him coming.
Herons have on one claw of each leg a serrated
edge of horn, like a small-tooth comb. The use of
this comb has been generally stated to be to enable
the bird to hold the fish he catches; but a heron
does not use his feet as organs of prehension as
a hawk does. The more probable use of it is, as
observed and made out by Mr. Bush. In a wood
near Witney, in Oxfordshire, called Tarwood, of
fox-hunting notoriety, there are, or there used to
be, some herons' nests; from these nests Mr. Bush
procured some young birds. Under the feathers
of the heron is a layer of a sort of mealy down,
which, I imagine, acts as a greatcoat for the bird
when standing out in the cold, waiting for the fish
by the side of the water. When Mr. Bush's birds.pruned and cleaned themselves with their bills, he
observed that this mealy down adhered to their
bills. To get rid of it they used the comb of the
claw, given them for that purpose, always moving
it from the tip towards the base of the bill, and not
in the reverse direction. They also used it to clean
off the slime which adhered to their bills after they
had eaten an eel or a slimy fish. The gannet, or solan
goose, has its middle claw serrated or combed, and
Mr. Montagu remarks on this point: "The serrated




RATS.                   193
middle claw cannot be indicative of its habits, since
many land birds are equally furnished with a similar
formation, the use of which has never been discovered." I consider, therefore, that Mr. Bush's
observationrs on its real use, viz., to act as a comb to
clean the plumage of its owner, are important, if
not quite original. We see a similar comb on the
foot of the night-jar. This bird has bristles on each
side of its bill, to which the scales of the night-moths,
on which he feeds, will adhere. With the comb on
his foot he can clean these his whiskers after a night's
hunting.
Another instance of a serrated claw is to be found
in the capercailzie, or cock of the wood. Here,
however, we find all the claws on each foot armed
with stout whalebone-like projections. The use of
these, unlike the former cases, does not refer to the
cleanliness of the possessor, but the combs are given.him as a means of supporting his heavy body on the
snow, which for many months in the year covers
the regions he inhabits. Thus to those who observe,
and reason upon what they observe, arises the great
and delightful privilege of seeing, in apparent trivial
matters, proof of the beneficence of the Creator
towards his creatures.
The water-rat is probably the original rat of Great
Britain, the black rat even being an intruder. The
teeth of the water-rat were found in abundance by
9




194                 RATS.
my father, the late Dean of Westminster, in the
cave at Kirkdale, and were figured by him in his
"Reliquie Diluvianoe," published 1824. He says:
"But the teeth which occur perhaps in greatest
abundance are those of the water-rat, for in almost
every specimen I have collected or seen of the
osseous breccia there are teeth or broken fragments
of all the larger bones. These rats may be supposed
to have abounded on the edge of the lake which I
have shown probably existed in this neighborhood."
This Kirkdale cave was proved beyond a doubt to
have been.the den of hyenas, who, in times long
antecedent to the appearance of man upon the face
of this planet, inhabited this Yorkshire cave, and
made it their head-quarters, whence they started on
their foraging expeditions. Arguing on this subject,
the Dean goes on to say: "Though the idea of hysenas
eating rats may appear ridiculous, it is consistent with
the omnivorous appetite of modern hyaenas, and with
the fact quoted from Johnson, that they feed on
small animals as well as carrion and bones. Nor is
the disproportion in size of the animal to that of its
prey greater than that of wolves and foxes, which
are supposed by Captain Parry to feed chiefly on
mice during the long winters of Melville Island.
Hearne, in his'Journey to the Northern Ocean,'
mentions the fact' of a hill called Grizzle Bear Hill,
being deeply furrowed and turned over like ploughed




RATS.                   195
land by bears in search of ground squirrels, and perhaps mice, which constitute a favorite part of their
food.' If bears eat mice, why should not hyaenas
eat rats? and in masticating the bodies of these
small animals with their coarse conical teeth, many
bones and fragments of bones would be pressed outwards through their lips and fall neglected to the
ground."  In the copy of the "Reliquiae" which is
in my possession, and which is interlarded with notes
and letters on the subjects mentioned in the book,
I find, at the page whence the foregoing passage has
been quoted, the following important note in MS.,
written by my mother, but evidently at my father's
dictation.
" On my presenting a living house-rat to a Cape
hyena in London,* one evening at its usual feedingtime, the hyaena refused to touch it, but on a subsequent occasion I presented it with a rat again when
it had not been fed for thirty-six hours; the rat was
soon devoured. In fifteen or sixteen minutes after,
the hyaena became sick, vomited up the skin and
bones of the rat, together with fragments of other
bones which it had swallowed immediately after the
rat. This experiment explains the presence of so
many bones and teeth of rats in the cave of Kirkdale.
* This was Billy, the celebrated hyaena, who lived just a quarter of a century in this metropolis, first at Exeter Change and
afterwards at the Surrey Gardens.




196                  RATS.
They had probably been swallowed and vomited up
again on the floor of the den. Had they continued
in the stomach they would have been digested and
reduced to the state of album graecum. We know
that cats and dogs usually become sick if they swallow the skin of a rat."
Wishing to know if there were any anatomical
difference between the Kirkdale rat and the modern
water-vole, I consulted Professor Owen's valuable
work on British fossil mammalia, published many
years after the "'Reliquise;' the following passage
gave me the required answer. "The like antiquity
of another and smaller rodent of the beaver family
still existing in most of our British rivers and smaller
streams and ditches is more abundantly testified by
the numerous fossils of a species of arvicola, which
I have been unable satisfactorily to distinguish from
the arvicola amphibia, or common water-rat." Dr.
Buckland appears to have been the first to have
noticed the fossil arvicolve in British localities, in
his "Reliquiae Diluvianae."
As in the modern day the rats in the London
warehouses gnaw the ivory, so in the ancient caves
did the rats gnaw the bones which lay about. Dr.
Buckland found marks of teeth upon the ulna of a
wolf and the tibia of a horse in one of the caves at
Oreston.
A Wykehamist friend ascertained most practically




RATS.                  19)
that the water-rat was a nocturnal animal. He was
out late one night fishing for trout-for the largest
fish always feed at that time-and had cast his line
across the river. In a few moments he felt a tug
and a jerk, as though the fly had been taken by a
large fish; accordingly he played his line in the most
scientific and judicious manner, and had unwonted
sport with his supposed five-pound trout. He landed
it, and put down his hand to grasp it: instead, however, of encountering the scales of a fish, he received
a severe bite on the fingers. Certain, from this
proof, that if it were a fish it must be of a very
extraordinary-breed, he dropped the net, and ran
off to the "waterman's hut" for a lantern. On
returning to examine his capture, he found coiled
up in a most dreadful tangle of his best silk-worm
gut, and his best made flies, a large water-rat. The
rat must have been unsuspiciously swimming along,
when the line happened to drop directly over him.
One of the hooks had caught in his fur, and had
given a jerk to the rod, which the fisherman had
mistaken for a trout rising, and had naturally struck
the supposed fish, thereby firmly fixing the sharppointed hook into the body of the unfortunate rat,
who must have been greatly surprised at being so
suddenly and unceremoniously dragged to  the
shore.
It has been said, and with much truth, that it is




198                  RATS.
an easier task to learn a proposition of Euclid than
to catch a rat. The love of self-preservation is particularly developed in this beast; and being surrounded by enemies, he becomes very suspicious
and ever on his guard against treachery. The
brain of the rat, as stated in the "Quarterly Review," is small in proportion to its size. I do not
agree with this statement; for I have examined the
brains of many rats, and find that though the head
appears small externally, yet it contains a large
brain.- Moreover, if a section be made of the brain,
I find that the grey matter (the thinking portion of
the brain) is highly developed. The clever tricks,
therefore, that we hear of rats avoiding poison and
traps are accounted for; their natural cunning arising from  their mental faculties (if I may use the
expression) being of a high order, amounting more
to reasoning than to instinct.
To exterminate rats entirely (even if it were desirable in a sanitary point of view) I believe to be
quite impossible. We can only keep their race in
check, and make them confine their ravages to our
leavings.  They can be destroyed principally in
three ways, viz., by traps, by poison, and by animals naturally their enen es, such as dogs and
ferrets. Among poisons may be mentioned phosphorus (a good receipt for preparing which is given
in a little book entitled "The Pests of the Farm"),




RATS.                  199
arsenic, corrosive sublimate, strychnia, etc. But I
should not recommend any poison to be used in a
dwelling-house, because the rat's natural instinct is
to die in privacy, if he can, and he generally, when
poisoned, manages to get into a hole; there his
body remains, and, as I know from  personal experience, a dead rat in a room is by no means, a
pleasant subject, the odor proceeding therefrom
being none of the nicest.
The best way, I believe, to get rid of rats is, as
an old rat-catcher said to me, to "make the place
too hot to hold them."  As we have seen, they
will migrate in bodies. To catch single. individuals
is no use, unless there be an outlying rat about the
premises; our efforts must therefore be directed to
call their habit of migration into play, and make
them go off in a body. To produce this effect, it is
a good plan to tar their holes well,, or to do as Mr.
Waterton did, tar a single rat and let him run: he
will cover the sides of the runs with tar. Rats
cannot bear tar; it sticks to their fur, and they cannot get it off again, nor, indeed, do they like the
smell. Another way is to catch two or three, or if
you cannot catch them, buy them; cover them well
with horse turpentine and let them go. They will
scent the runs well with it, and the suspicious inhabitants thereof will be off forthwith, thinking there
is treachery about, and their quarters are becoming




200                 RATS.
dangerous. The smell, too, is probably unpleasant
to them.
In " The Vermin Catcher, 1768," the author gives
the following prescription, acting upon the idea
that it is a good plan to make them migrate:.' I
shall here give the reader another maxim I have
often followed very successfully. Take a pint of
common -tar, half an ounce of vitriol, and a good
handful of common salt: mix them all well together
in any old deep pan. Get some pieces of paper, and
put some of the above mixture very thick on the
paper, and place enough of this into the holes, sufficient to stop them, and then let the bricklayer
make good after you; and if you should find any
of the holes opened again, it is quite certain you
had not put in a sufficient quantity; then put in
some more; and if it is done as it ought, they will
never approach there any more while either taste
or smell remains in it. Now, by stopping in the
shores [quaere, sewers?] in town with the above
mixture, I have kept a gentleman's house entirely
clear, and have never caught a single rat."
Again, he gives a capital plan for smoking them
out when they get up behind the wainscot. " Find
out a small hole or crack, then take a handful of
common salt, and put it in at the hole or crack, and
pour upon the salt a spoonful or two of oil of vitriol,
and this will make such a fumigation or smoke that




RATS.                 201
they cannot bear it. Then stop the hole or crevice
again, that the smoke may not come out. Do this
in two or three places as near where you hear they
are as you pan, and it will cause them to forsake
those places.  This method is very safe, as no
damage can possibly ensue to the wainscot from
the smoke."
The iron wire cage traps and the common hutch
traps are sometimes useful in houses, but they soon
lose their efficacy, because after one or two rats are
caught the others find out that it is a dangerous
machine, and do not go into it. The traps then do
more harm than good, because the rats, smelling
the bait, come to it from all parts; and as we have
seen news flies quickly among them, you get your
neighbors' as well as your own into your premises.
They play round the bait, but do not go into the
trap; then being hungry, both the strangers and
the original rats of the place begin foraging about,
and make holes in the corn-bins, cupboards, etc.
The same thing holds good with the fly-papers; it
is true you catch some of the flies, but you get
double your share of flies in the room, as they are
attracted by the poison placed for them.
The most ingenious and simple trap I know to
catch rats is made with a common tub or barrel
and a little bit of board. A tub or barrel without
a head must be procured, deep enough to prevent
9*




202                 RATS.
a rat getting out of it when he is once in; then cut
a bit out of its upper edge, and to this fit a bit of
board about a foot long and an inch or more broad;
through the centre of this board run a~bit of wire,
and so fix it by its centre into the notch in the tub
that it is perfectly balanced, like the boards on which
the boys play see-saw. On to the end which overhangs the tub fasten firmly a bit of bacon or cheese,
and let the other, the free end, rest against a shelf
or any projection, so that the rats can get on it to
eat the bacon. By means of a nail or two, or an
upright bit of wood, fix the swinging board, so that
it becomes perfectly steady and immovable. Let
the rats become accustomed to get upon it and eat
the bait without its being moved by their weight,
for two or three nights, till they gain confidence;
then, on the night that you wish to catch them,
simply remove the supporters from under that half
of the board which overhangs the barrel, leaving the
supporters of that half of the board which is outside
the tub still in their places. The bait must remain
in its place at the end overhanging the tub; the
rats will come as usual, and run along the board to
get to the bait; but directly they get upon the inside
half of the board, which is now no longer supported,
it will tip up with them and precipitate them into
the barrel below. This done, the board, if properly
balanced, will return to its proper position, and be




RATS.                  208
ready for another rat. In this way an indefinite
quantity of rats may be caught in a single night.
The barrel may be half filled with water, if it is
desirable to kill the rats, for they cannot swim about
very long without being drowned, and can get no
purchase for their claws or solid place from which
they might make a spring to get out. When swimming about they will probably make a noise of
distress, and the other rats (for they are inquisitive
animals) will come to see what is the matter. The
inquirer will probably go on to the treacherous
board to look, and will become a victim  to his
curiosity, for he will fall in as well as his brethren
who have preceded him. This is the plan adopted
by the captain of the slave-ship when he makes his
unfortunate fellow-creatures " walk the plank."
There is another efficacious way to catch rats
about farm-yards, dog-kennels, etc., which has the
merit of simplicity as well as of cheapness. It has
been kindly mentioned and explained to me by a
gentleman who has used it with great success. It
is made with an elastic twig of willow, or any other
tree, two bits of wood, a bit of string, and a noose
of wire.
The first thing to be done is to ascertain the run
of the rat, which is easily found out, as their pathways are generally well trodden down; then fix the
twig, which ought' to be about two yards and a half




204                  RATS.
long, into the ground by its thick end, and fasten a
bit of string on to it; to the end of the string fasten
a bit of wood cut in the shape of 1.  On to this bit
of wood fasten your wire, which must have a noose
at its end a little larger than the body of a rat. By
the side of the run thrust firmly into the ground a
stout bit of wood, having a finger to it, then bend
the twig over so that the bit of wood at the end of
the- string fastened to it shall catch under the finger
of the peg of wood in the ground; adjust the noose
of the wire at the right height from the groundabout an inch and a half-and your trap is set. It
requires some nicety to arrange the distances, etc.,
but a little experience will soon teach this. When
the rat comes along the run he will put his head into
the wire, and in his struggles to get loose will let
free the twig, which will whip him up into the air,
where he will remain till you come to take him out.
These traps are best set at night, when the rats cannot see the wire very well. The finest copper wire
is the best to use, and if the wire will not stand in
its proper position over the run, it may be supported
by a little forked stick underneath it.
This trap has been used with great success at the
Rufford kennels, Notts. The best night's sport
showed fifteen rats in the air, with twenty traps
down; and the sum total in about three months was
upwards of two hundred rats. One great merit of




RATS.                     205
this trap is, that the rats do not seem to be the least
aware of the danger they are in from the snares, as,
when caught, there is no noise. If the rats get at
all shy, spring the traps for a night and change the
place of setting.




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
"Tur vero tremefacta novus per pectora cunctis
Insinuat pavor; et scelus expendisse merentem
Laocoonta ferunt, sacrum qui cuspide robur
Laeserit et tergo sceleratam intorserit hastam."*
VIRGIL, JEn. II. 228.
WITH these lines might have ended a paragraph
of "The Times," as published in the famous city
of Troy many a long year ago, and handed thence
down to posterity by the poet Virgil, detailing a
full and true account of the dreadful accident
which had just happened to Mr. Laocoon and the
two Master Laocoons.  Mr. Laocoon, it appears,
held the office of high-priest to Apollo, and probably was superintendent of detectives in thaj farfamed city.  The Greeks were encamped before
the ramparts, and had been so for some time. They
were nearly tired of such fun; and unable to get in
by fair means and the force of arms, and not having
brought with them  Captain Warner's long-range,
*  Amazement seizes all; the general cry
Proclaims Laocoon justly doomed to die,
Whose hand the will of Pallas hadc withstood,
And dared to violate the sacred wood." DRYDEN.




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.         207
or a lot of Minie rifles, they adopted a most peculiar and original notion. They built a great wooden
horse, such as might have been seen in the studio
of the late Sir Francis Chantrey, when he was
modelling the statue of George the Fourth now at
Charing Cross. What the exact shape of this Trojan steed was we are not informed. Virgil was
not well up in Tattersallian phrases, so he contented himself by saying that he was " instar montis," as big as a mountain, and that his ribs were
made of cut fir. The gates of Troy must, in consequence, have been a little larger than those of Temple Bar.
The crafty Grecians having constructed this
noble animal, adopted that piece of advice often
given to Sunday cockney equestrians by small boys,
" Hadn't you better pay the difference, sir, and get
inside?"  They accordingly filled their helmets
with food-they had no pockets in their armorsoldiers never had, and never will have pocketsand in they tumbled-how many we are not toldclose quarters it must have been for these brave
Greeks.  They dared not abuse each other for
squeezing, or poke holes in the horse's sides for
breathing, as they overheard Mr. Laocoon, who
was haranguing the assembled Trojans close by,
propose to set fire to their equestrian prison, and
see if there was anybody inside. The Master Lao.




208          THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
coons were seen by the serjeant of the company,
who was looking through the animal's ear, piling
up trusses of straw in the manner of burning pigs,
if the Trojans singed their bacon.  While Laocoon
was striking a light, he was assailed by cries of
"Shame" from the crowd, and being enraged took
up a spear and hurled it into the nag's side. The
fat corporal
"Ipse doll fabricator Epeus,"*
was hit in the leg; and while his comrades were
trying to put a pocket-handkerchief in his month to
prevent him  crying out, their heavy metal coats
clashed together-' Insonuere cavse gemitumque dedere cavernea."t
No sooner had Laocoon done this, than two snakes
appeared out at sea making their way from the island
of Tenedos, for the place where the horse stood.
(Strange to say, these monstrous sea-snakes are
described by the poet as having crests, such as are
generally attributed to modern sea-snakes, by those
who have been lucky enough to see, or fancy they
saw them.)  Away went the crowd.
"Diffugimus visu exsangues."'
* "The famed
Epeus who the fatal engine framed."  DRYDEN.
f " The sides transpierced return a hollow sound,
And groans of Greeks enclosed come issuing through the
wound."" We fled amazed." DRYDEN.




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.               209
The poor Laocoon family seemed to have been fascinated, as birds are by the rattlesnake in South
America.  The great sea-monsters came gliding up
with vibrating tongues; and, entwining.their muscular folds round the two younger branches of the
family, fixed their teeth in their young linibs (the
snakes were evidently of the boa-constrictor tribe,
or they would not have used this mode of attack}.
Laocoon, like a brave father, came to the rescue;
in vain did he hack at the scaly limbs of the monsters:
they caught him in their folds; and he perished miserably, a great example to the pious AEneas, and the
Trojans il general, of the necessity of obeying the
will of the gods. This scene has been so admirably
represented in marble by the sculptor, and so wonderfully painted in words by Virgil, that we here
introduce his admirable lines, not to be read over
with  a schoolboy listlessness, but as a truthful,
accurate, and grand description of a serpent seizing
a human victim:
"Post ipsum, auxilio subeuntem ac tela ferentem
Corripiunt, spirisque ligant ingentibus; et jam
Bis medium amplexi, bis collo squamea circum
Terga dati, superant capite et cervicibus altis.
Ille simul manibus tendit divellere nodos
Perfusus sanie vittas atroque veneno."*
* "The wretched father running to their aid
With pious haste they next invade;




210           THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
Having done the cruel deed, the snakes did not
attempt to eat the slain, but quietly glided away
into the sacred part of the city"Delubra ad summa dracones
Effugiunt, seevaeque petunt Tritonidis arcem
Sub pedibusque Deae, clypeique sub orbe teguntur."*
By a somewhat similar and shocking occurrence
were the good folks of this modern Troy, the city of
London (who are now by means of the press united,
as it were, into one family), disturbed by reading in
"The Times" of October 21st, 1852, the following
account of a LaQcoon-like proceeding, which had
occurred at the Zoological Gardens, Regent's Park,
the previous day.  It runs as follows:
" Edward Curling, aged 31, was brought to University College Hospital yesterday morning, October
20th. His occupation was that of a keeper at the
Zoological Gardens, and the care of the reptile-house
Twice round his waist theii winding volumes roll'd,
And twice about his gasping throat they fold.
The Priest, thus doubly choked, their crest divides,
And towering o'er his head in triumph rides:
With both his hands he labors at the knots
His holy fillets the blue venom blots."
* "Their task perform'd, the serpents quit their prey,
And to the tower of Pallas make their way;
Crouct'd at her feet they lay protected there
By her large buckler and protended spear." DRYDEN.




THE COBRA DI CAELLO.          211
was his special duty. About 8 A.M., while engaged
at his work in this department, he commenced a
series of rash familiarities with some of the venomous serpents. After removing an African cobra
from its cage, and twirling it about his head, he
replaced it without having received any injury, and
took out an Indian cobra. This he also played with
for some time with impunity, allowing it to crawl'
round his body beneath his waistcoat.  Shortly
afterwards, however, while he was holding the
snake before his face the creature made a dart at
him, and inflicted a wound on the upper part of
his nose, etc. In forty minutes past 9 A.M. he was a
corpse."
It is not my intention to go into all the circumstances of this case, as this has been already amply
done by the various letters we have seen in the
newspapers on the subject. We may, however,
usefully and profitably employ our time in examining, admiring, and wondering, at the structure and
conformation of the snake tribe, with special reference
to their small but effective apparatus of death, as
developed in that most poisonous of all snakes the
cobra di capello. Although deprived of feet, fins,
and other obvious members for walking, the serpent
glides on the earth, ascends trees, or even directs its
course through the waters, with surprising agility,
and with graceful evolutions: yet the serpent was




212          THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
" cursed above every beast of the field," and man,
as if remembering the curse, turns from the reptile
with disgust and horror, or seeks to effect its instant
destruction. Let us examine how all this is effected,
and first as to the spinal column.
The numerous bones or vertebrae which form this
chain, are united together by ball and socket articulations, or, in other words, the rounded head of
each is fitted into a cup like cavity in its predecessor,
so that the whole column is a chain of these joints,
capable of the utmost mobility compatible with the
safety of the spinal cord enclosed within. The articulations can only be moved from side to side; and
their progress by vertical undulations, as is seen
in many old prints of serpents, is anatomically impossible.
So also it is impossible for the snake to perform
the feat which has been ascribed to him, when he
wishes to go quickly down a hill; for, according to
an absurd story, he is said to put his tail in his mouth,
and toll himself down, being in the form of a hoop.
It is just as well to recollect the fact that a snake
cannot turn himself directly upwards when held by
the tail. He can wriggle famously from side to side,
but certainly not upwards. Hence it follows, that
the best way to handle a snake is to hold him out
at arm's length: in this position he can do no harm,
But how, it will be asked, does the snake contrive




THE COBRA DI CAXPELLO.         213
to get along the ground so fast, as he has no perceptible legs or arms to help him? This is managed as
follows: —To each vertebra-and a large snake has
many dozen vertebrae-is attached a pair of ribs:
the small ends of these ribs are not attached.to a
sternum, or breast-bone, as in man, but to a single
scutum  or scale on the abdomen, by means of a
slender cartilage and a set of short muscles. It is
on the points of these ribs, which may be compared
to the legs of a millipede, that the snake rests, and
they act in progressive order, just like the legs of
that creature, each pair bringing forward the plate
or scutum to which it is attached. This row of scuta
may thus be regarded as one long ample foot. Sir
E. Home, in his " Comparative Anatomy," gives an
account of the puscles which, arising from the ribs,
give motion to the scuta. Hie observes, that the
rib in the snake performs two functions; the upper
half is concerned in respiration, the lower in locomotion.
If a snake be allowed quietly to crawl over the
hand the progressive movement of the ribs may be
easily distinguished, and also if it be watched while
crawling over any raised edge (as the back of a
book), requiring the firm application of two or three
scuta in succession as the body glides over it.
If you put a snake on a bit of plate-glass he can
get no hold with the scuta, and becomes powerless.




214          THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
Snakes are often in the habit of climbing trees, and
we see them represented in engravings, particularly
in old pictorial Bibles, where the serpent is seen
tempting Adam and Eve, and in stuffed specimens
in museums, as coiling their bodies round  the
branches, in corkscrew-like folds. Now the snake
(when alive) never does this: it simply glides up
with the whole body extended in a straight line,
clinging by means of the tips of the expanded ribs
with the scuta attached, as has been above explained.
Mr. Gosse tells us that " the black snake in Jamaica
will allow the greatest part of its body to hang
down in the air, and thus remain still, while little
more than the tail maintains its position by clinging
(straight, not spirally, and not half round it, but
longitudinally along it) to the upper surface of a
branch; and it will often pass freely and gracefully
from  one branch to another at a considerable interval, projecting its head and body with the utmost
ease across the interval. The motions of a snake in
a tree are beautifully easy and free, and convey the
impression  that the reptile feels quite at home
among the branches."
The apple on a branch, with a snake coiled round
it, is used as an emblem.of the fall of man, or
original sin.  Again, the snake is used as an emblem
of the devil, in allusion, probably, to Revelation xii.
9: "And the great dragon was cast out, that old




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.          215
serpent, called the devil." The figure is generally
drawn in the form of an enormous crocodile, ot
hideous lizard.
The virgin, trampling on the head of the serpent
or dragon, is the usual figurative manner of representing the Conception. The chalice is the sign.of
the priestly order, because the cup was forbidden
to the laity, and only received by the priests. With
a snake or scorpion in it, it is usually the attribute
of those saints who are said to have drunk off
poison without being affected by it, as St. John the
Evangelist and St. Benedict.
I recollect the late lamented Sir Henry De La
Beche telling me that in Jamaica, when the fowls
go to roost, the young chickens always take up
their position at the end of the branch furthest
from the trunk of the tree, the oldest birds occupying that part of the chosen branch which is close to
the trunk; the reason of this being, that the snakes
frequently, in the stillness of the night, glide up
among the branches of the trees, and along the
trunk. As the first birds they would attack would
be those nearest the trunk, these crafty old sentries
piquet themselves a night-guard over the tender
and inexperienced chicks, whom they have, with a
wonderful instinct,  posted at the point furthest
away from  danger, viz. at the extremity of the
branch. Fowls are very wakeful creatures; a very




L16         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
little noise will cause them to set up their " cluck,
cluck;" and we have often thought, that if made
to roost in the area of a London house, they would
give the alarm should any person attempt an entry
in that direction. Geese, as we well know, once
served an important turn to the Romans in olden
time, giving an early alarm of the approach of the
enemy.
Another curious, and to me inexplicable point in
the instinct of birds, is this: it is mentioned in that
most interesting book of the great observer of the
habits of animals, the Hon. Grantley Berkeley. In
"The Reminiscences of a Huntsman" he writes:
" When the electric wires were first put up, a vast
number of birds, which in windy weather fly swiftly
and low, killed themselves in their flight by concussion with the wires. These victims consisted chiefly
of golden plovers, black game, grouse, woodcocks,
snipe, partridges, etc., and  occasionally woodpigeons, pheasants, and a few other birds; but
since the wires have been up, now a space of some
years, the deaths by birds flying against them have
considerably decreased."
Mr. Neil, who is much occupied with railways,
tells me that it always happens where wires are
placed on the poles, in situations where they never
have been erected before, that many dead birdsiare
picked up, killed by flying against them; but this




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.          217
only for a few weeks. When the wires have been
up some time the birds avoid them: this looks like
profiting by experience.
Next, as to the skin of the snake. The patterns
and structure of the skin vary in each tribe of
snakes. In some parts of India the skins of snakes
are used for ornamental clothes, on account of their
uncommon beauty; and being extremely rare they
are valued in proportion. Several years ago Dr.
Russell wrote a book on the snakes of India, his
object being to show Europeans which snakes were
poisonous and which not. The native Indians were
skilful colorists; and he took native artists into the
woods with him, to color the snakes directly they
were killed. These artists were not good hands at
perspective, so they have drawn all the snakes quite
flat, but the colors are amazingly like nature. The
snake requires no tailor when, after remaining under
some stump all the winter, he comes out to enjoy
the bright sun of a spring morning, and thinks that
his old, dirty, last year's coat is much too shabby to
be worn any longer; he therefore literally oasts it
off, and, lucky fellow, finds a new one underneath.
Every one is familiar with the appearance of this
cast-off garment; but if we examine it carefully,
we shall ascertain a curious and interesting fact,
namely, that the eyes of these beasts, which, not
being protected by eyelids, are always liable to
10




218         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
injuries from the thorns and bushes among which
they creep, are defended by a hard and firm merm
brane, which, however, is transparent, and forms a
complete and close-fitting protection for these delicate organs.
Just before a snake casts his skin he is, on this
account, nearly blind, as there are then two membranes over his eyes, the old one, not yet gone and
tow become opaque, the new one underneath not
yet quite formed. At this period, too, they are
always sleepy and out of condition, and if in confinement not unfrequently die. The same poor man
whose unfortunate death we have above recorded
remarked to me, in one of my visits to the gardens,
not long before his death, that one of his snakes
(which he pointed out to me) was very sickly, and
that he was afraid he should lose him, as he was
"casting his coat unkindly."  It was, in fact, peeling off in irregular scales, some quite detached,
some still adherent; whereas it ought all to come
off as perfect and unbroken as a glove from the
hand. If this snake had been at home among the
brushwood and rough grass of his native jungle,
instead of in a smart mahogany cage with plateglass windows, he would soon have got rid of his
encumbrance by pushing himself between two
conveniently-situated obstacles.
I have read that a Hottentot convert, when hold.




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.            219
ing forth to his brother blacks, used this fact of the
snake's changing his skin, as a simile of the immortality of the soul.  "When," said he, " we find the
skin, we do not call it the serpent-no, for we
know it is alive, and has only cast its skin: the serpent is the soul, the skin is the body."
Snakes in captivity are subject to a disease which
kills many of them; it is a peculiar fungus-like substance which grows upon their lips; and this fungus
sometimes grows to an enormous extent. No cure
is known for it; nor, indeed, if we did know a cure
would it be easy to apply a remedy. Who would
undertake to doctor a cobra's teeth? and even a
boa-constrictor would be an awkward patient. I
understand that the snakes at the Zoological Gardens at Bristol are never troubled with this disease:
this is a very remarkable fact. It is curious, also,
that most of the animals breed better at Bristol
than in London.  Our London gardens are most
unfavorably situated, for they are upon the London
clay, and are much subject to fogs.' As regards
snakes'. skins, Mr. Quekett kind4y showed me two
specimens, one of the common English snake, the
other of the boa, in which the blood-vessels had
been filled with red-colored injection.  I could
hardly believe that a snake's skin was so vascular
till I saw these preparations. Being fully extended,
the scales were seen separated one from the other,




220         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
a wise arrangement to allow extension when the
animal has fed. These scales were in a hexagonal
form, and the blood-vessels were also of the same
shape: the points of the hexagons formed by the
blood-vessels corresponded to the centres of the
scale hexagons, forming a most beautiful transparent pattern, much like a first-class glass window.
In the common snake, the peculiar leaden hue of
the skin was beautifully preserved.
In the rattlesnake we find the skin performing a
new function. I say the skin advisedly, for the
rattle of this snake is composed of a hard horny
material, similar to the common skin hardened.
This rattle is composed of links, fastened together
by a most peculiar and beautiful joint, which I wonder has never been applied to the arts. I here
throw out the suggestion, which may be of use'to
some one. I showed Mr. Hancock, jeweller of
Bond street, the exquisite neatness and workmanship displayed in the vertebrae or back-bone of the
snake, and he promised to make me a chain after
the model. He found that the little prominences of
bone projecting naturally from each vertebra would
interfere with its being generally adopted, so they
would be always catching in things. Still a snake
back-bone modelled in gold would make a pretty
watch-chain or bracelet.
When examining the cast-off skins at the Zoolo.




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.          221
gical Gardens, we observed some white-looking
substance in a box. This is the dejecta of the
snakes. It is a perfectly white substance, looking
very like plaster of Paris, and is composed of nearly
pure uric acid. It is bought by a doctor (I imagine
a chemist) for the high price of nine shillings
a pound. What he can do with it is as yet a mystery to me, not to remain so long, I trust. Some
of these pieces were well marked with circular
depressions, the casts of the lining membrane of
the snakes' intestines. The coprolites, the dejecta
of the ancient ichthyosaurus and plesiosaurus, were
marked in this way, as described by my father in
his Bridgewater Treatise. I was much pleased to
find such a capital modern illustration of this phenomenon. When in a herbalist's shop in Coventgarden, I observed a large glass bottle nearly full of
common snakes, of all sizes and ages, varying in
price from ninepence to two shillings. I found that
my friend, "the doctor," had been here too, and
that he bought many snakes. What he did with
the snakes the herbalist could not tell me, but he
imagined he boiled the oil out of them, and mixed
it up with some kind of ointment. In one season
" the doctor" was supplied with over thirty pounds
weight of snakes. Most of the snakes supplied to
London come'from Harrow, and the woods to the
north of London.




222            THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
The man also informed  me that he sometimes
sold vipers for some medicinal purpose, but they
were " nasty customers," and he did not much like
having them in his shop. In former times vipers
were much  used  in medicine.  In  a curious old
book entitled "Physico-Theology; or, a Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, from
his Works of Creation, being the substance of sixteen Sermons preached in St. Mary-le-Bow Church,
London, in the years 1711 and 1712, by W. Derham, Canon  of Windsor,"  I find  the  following
among what he  calls "the large notes:" "That
vipers have their great uses in physick is manifest
from their bearing a great share in some of our
best antidotes, such as Theriaca* Andromachi and
others;' also in the cure of Elephantiasis and other
* The word Theriacum is often used in the present day in
prescriptions; and when the chemist reads it he knows " treacle "
is meant. I find in an old dictionary, " Theriacum, good against
the biting of vipers, or other venomous beasts, either because it
is an antidote to poisonous beasts, or because it is made from
their poison, from a wild beast,'a viper."' The original preparation was, I imagine, of a viscid nature, and dark color; and
when treacle was invented, they probably wanted a Latin name
for it, so they christened it Theriacum, from its appearance. I
see there were several kinds of Theriaca in use formerly, as
Theriaca coelestis, liquid laudanum; Thoriaca Londinensis, a
cataplasm of cummin-seed, bay-leaves, germander, snake-root
cloves, and honey; Theriaca rusticorum, the roots of the garlic.




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.          223
like stubborn maladies, for which I shall refer to
the medical writers. But there is so singular a case
in the curious collection of Dr. 01. Worm, related
from Kircher, that I shall entertain the reader with
a translation of the passage. Near the village of
Saffa, about eight miles from the city Bracciano, in
Italy, he saith, there is a cavern commonly called
La Grotta del Serpi, big enough to hold two men,
perforated with many pipe-like holes, after the
fashion of a sieve, from which a great number of
parti-colored snakes come forth at the beginning of
the spring of each year; none of these snakes, it is
said, are imbued with the power of poisoning.
"In this cave they are accustomed to expose
persons afflicted with elephantiasis, leprosy, paralysis, diseases of the joints, gout, etc., who, presently
flling into a perspiration from the warmth of the
subterranean exhalations, are said to be so divested
of all vicious and.virulent humors by the suction
and licking of serpents casting their sloughs (propullulantium), which twine themselves about the
whole of the body of the sick man, that. this treatment having been applied for some time, they are
at length restored to perfect health."
This cave Kircher visited himself. He found it
warm, and every way answering to the description
he had of it. He saw the holes, and heard a murmuring' hissing noise in them; but although he




224         THE. COBRA DI CAPELLO.
missed seeing the serpents, it not being the season
of their creeping out, yet he saw great numbers of
their exuvixe or sloughs, and an elm growing hard
by laden with them. The discovery of this cave
was by the cure of a leper going from Rome to
some baths near this place; who losing his way, and
being benighted, happened upon the cave. Finding
it very warm, he pulled off his clothes, and being
weary and sleepy, had the good fortune not to feel
the serpents about him till they had wrought his
cure. Now this story is pretty clear. The cure
was put down to the snakes when it was due to the
hot vapors, possibly containing sulphur, for the cave
is in a district abounding with hot.volcanic springs
and cracks, from which issue all sorts of vapors, the
results of volcanic action. The snakes found out
this cavern to hybernate in, for it is particularly
remarked by Kircher that they are most abundant
in the beginning of the spring. They had hidden
themselves in the warm cracks all the winter, and
coming out simultaneously in the spring would
appear in great numbers. Again, "the elm laden
with the sloughs " testifies to this fact, for they shed
their old winter coats previously to dispersing themselves over the country for the summer season. A
continued repetition of medicated vapor-baths provided by nature herself would possibly cure many
of those afflicted with the various diseases men



THE COBRA DI{ CAiELLO.          225
tioned, particularly the gout, the skin and joint
cases, and the snakes got the credit for the cures.
From the following passage it appears that vipers,
in Dr. Meade's time, 1745, were used frequently by
apothecaries: "Whosoever reflects on what has
been said on this head, will very readily acknowledge that our physicians deal too cautiously or
sparingly with a remedy which may be applied to
very good purposes, when they prescribe a few
grains of the powder of dried vipers, or make up a
small quantity of their flesh into troches,* whereas
that service may really be done in this way, the
patient ought to eat frequently of viper jelly or
broth; or rather, as the ancient manner was, to boil
vipers and eat them like fish. If this food will not
go down (though really very good and delicious
fare), to make use at least of wine in which dried
vipers have been digested two or three days in a
gentle heat, from  which I have seen very good
effects in obstinate Lepra (a skin disease): or lastly,
where wine is not convenient, to take either the
powder, or good quantities of the viperine salt, in
which alone the virtue of all medicines made from
this creature resides. And therefore the salt of any
other animal which is still more pungent and stimulating than this, is yet a more powerful remedy in
dry and scaly leprous eruptions, which may without
* Lozenges.
10*




226         THE  3OBRA DI CAPELLO.
any inconvenience be given in the form of a tincture
made with spirit of wine, vide Pharmacopoeia, London."  iEsculapius, the god of medicine, is generally represented with a rod wound round with two
snakes, because they were supposed by the ancients
to contain many medicinal virtues. He is also represented on ancient Greek coins with a large
matted beard, and a knotty stick in his right hand,
a symbol of the difficulty of his art.
The crow, too, owes his black color to Esculapius, for his mother, the nymph Coronis, had a tiff
with his father Apollo, who killed her then and
there. Apollo, sorry for the murder, changed the
crow's feathers, which were white before, into black,
that he might mourn for the death of Coronis.
Even in our time snakes are used medicinally.
We read in Notes and Queries: "Many Cambridge
people still remember an old man called the Duke
of York, who earned his living by sitting on the
steps of King's College and exhibiting to the
strangers, who went to see that far-famed building,
live specimens of the common English snake, which
abounds in this neighborhood. This man added to
his earnings by selling the sloughs or cast-off skin
of these reptiles as sovereign remedies for all pains
in the head when bound round the forehead and
temples. My informant has frequently seen him
dispose of them for this purpose."




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.               225
When in the woods at Weybridge, near London,
a boy told me he had just killed an adder, but he had
thrown away the body.  He showed me the fat he
had preserved, and which he reserved "for cuts,
burns, and sprains." This youth informed me that
adders had ears, snakes had not, a bit of zoology I
was not aware of before, and which is not the fact.
I imagine that he had not long escaped from a
Sunday-school, and had conjured up his theory
from the passage in the Bible,
"Like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ears."
After the operation  of shedding  his skin, the
snake recovers his lost spirits, and glides about as
if proud  of his personal appearance.  Virgil observed, and has recorded this fact in the following
beautiful lines:
" Cum positis novus exuviis, nitidusque juventl
Volvitur, aut catulos tectis aut ova relinquens,
Arduus ad solem et linguis micat ora trisulcis."*
* "When he, renewed in all his speckled pride
Of pompous youth, has cast his slough aside,
And in his summer livery rolls along,
Erect and brandishing his forky tongue,
Leaving his nest, and his imperfect young,
And, thoughtless of his egg, forgets to rear
The hopes of poison for the following year."-DRYDEN




228         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
This operation of skinning is performed by man
in a much more clumsy way than by nature. This
has been described by Captain Stedman, and we
insert it here that our readers may appreciate the
difference between nature and art.  The gallant
captain had, with some difficulty, managed to kill a
large boa in a jungle on the border of a river in
Surinam: the brute measured twenty-two feet seven
inches, though the natives declared it to be a young
one. He says: "We now secured the snake by
passing a rope round over its head and towed him,
at the end of the canoe, to the shore; here, upon
due consideration, it was determined to have him
skinned, for the sake of the oil. In order to effect
this purpose, the negro David, having climbed a
tree with the end of.a rope, let it down over a
strong forked branch, and the other negroes hoisted
up the snake and suspended him from the tree.
This done, David, with a sharp knife between his
teeth, now left the tree and clung fast upon the
monster, which was still twisting, and began his
operation by ripping it up and stripping down the
skin as he descended. Though I perceived that the
animal was no longer able to do him any injury, I
confess I could not, without emotion, see a man
stark naked, black, and bloody, clinging with arms
and legs round the slimy and yet living monster.
This labor, however, was not without its use, since




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.         229
he not only dexterously finished the operation, but
provided me, besides the skin, with above four
gallons of fine clarified fat, or rather oil, though
there was wasted perhaps as much more."  The
adventure was concluded by the negro spectators
making a grand feast on the body, and very good
it was, no doubt.
Virgil, in the lines quoted above, mentions the
eggs. There is often present in the minds of people
who are afraid of objects of natural history, a very
vague and obscure idea of the mode in which the
said objects of their alarm  are propagated.  I
recollect showing, on one occasion, a dead bat to a
schoolboy of this character, who, standing as far off
as he could without pretending to be alarmed, and
holding his handkerchief to his nose, asked in the
most innocent manner what color bats' eggs were.
This same timid youth, when I suddenly presented
a coiled-up hedgehog to him, exclaimed, "If you
bring that thing near me, I will break it."
However, though bats don't lay eggs, snakes do.
They are generally deposited in a long string, connected together by a sort of viscous matter. I have
seen as many as thirty in one string. The mother
generally deposits them in a dunghill or heap of decaying vegetable matter, and gives herself no more
concern about them. The shell of the egg.is of a
beautiful white color, like a common hen's egg, and




230         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
feels like a very soft white kid-glove. If we cut open
these eggs just before they are hatched, the young
snakes will come out quite lively and attempt to
escape. I tried this experiment last summer, and I
have been credibly informed that a gentleman, fond
of natural history, while taking a ramble on the
coast of Essex, killed a viper full of eggs. He took
out his penknife and let out a string of eggs, fourteen in number. In each of these was a young
adder, perfectly formed, and enveloped in a glutinous fluid. The little creatures, although they had
never seen the light before, raised themselves up
and evinced an inclination to bite, an absurd proceeding on their part, as they soon afterwards ended
their short lives in a bottle of spirits of wine.
Hens' eggs, we know, are good to eat, but I
never tried a snake's egg. I may, however, say
with the small boy in the street, "I knows somebody wot has." Some years ago, I obtained several
eggs of the common English snake, and put them on
a shelf of a greenhouse to see if the heat of the sun
would hatch them. One morning I found several
of my eggs gone; everybody denied touching them.
At the same time a certain young lady, then an inmate of the nursery,.was suddenly taken ill. The
doctor was sent for, but was puzzled to ascertain
the cause of the illness. At last the confession
reluctantly came out from the sobbing culprit, that




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.          231
she "had eaten some large sugar-plums she had
found on a shelf in the greenhouse." She had, in
fact, made a repast on the snake's eggs, under the
delusion that she was robbing the cook of preserves
put out to dry. The young lady aforesaid would, I
think, now feel uncomfortable if her partner at a
ball-room supper, in picking out the nice bits of egg
from a lobster salad, should, by way of keeping up
theolagging conversation, hazard the observation,
"Pray, did you ever try a snake's egg?"
In May, 1857, the body of an enormous boa-constrictor was sent to me from the Zoological Gardens,
at Bristol, for examination, previous to its being
made into a skeleton by Mr. Flower, articulator to
the Royal College of Surgeons.  This snake contained from forty to fifty eggs, each about the size
of a large hen's egg. I could find no cause for its
death, and agree with my friend Mr. Coulson, of
Bristol, that the possible cause of the death of the
animal was, that it wanted to lay its eggs and had
no proper place provided for that purpose. This
snake was sixteen feet long,'and had been in the
Bristol gardens seven years. Mr. Flower has now
made a skeleton of it as white and as beautiful as
that under the glass case in the College Museum.
Snakes may be broadly divided into two classes
-the venomous and the non-venomous. It is of
great importance to be acquainted with  some




232         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
general external appearances by which at a glance
we may be enabled at once to say whether a snake
may be handled with impunity or not. Thus, in tho
non-poisonous species we find, for the most part, the
form of the head and body cylindrical and the scales
comparatively small. The tongue, which is generally
protruded when the beast is alarmed, in order to
intimidate the bystander, is thick and short when
compared with the tongue in the poisonous reptile;
this is well exemplified in that most harmless, yet
most persecuted, of the snake family, the blind worm,
or, as it is sometimes called, the slow-worm.
In the venomous species, on the contrary, we find
the head and body flattened, the head particularly
broad, and the neck behind, in consequence, narrowed in a marked degree. They have, moreover,
an unmistakably ferocious aspect (as though con
scions of their powers), which announces their malevolent nature. When irritated or alarmed, these
poisonous beasts assume an attitude of defiance,
whereas the harmless snake generally seeks safety in
flight.
I cannot here refrain from observing how very
careless artists and jewellers are in making their
snakes' heads, whether the snake be intended as an
ornament for a lady's wrist or a monster bronze
python on a marble pedestal. These artistic snakes
are like nothing ever created; witness the head of




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.             233
the dragon on the parade in front of the Horse
Guards. Certainly the artist must have searched a
long time before he could have found a model
dragon; but, nevertheless, this brute's head bears
no resemblance to anything which creeps or flies.
He might surely have found some snake or lizard
whose head would have been hideous enough for his
purpose, and certainly more like nature than the
nondescript placed there to astonish, and doubtless
frighten the public.*  Who ever saw a lion's head
door-knocker bearing the least resemblance to the
noble head of the king of the beasts? or a bear's
paw on a hammer-cloth like the paw of the most
miserable representative of the race who was ever
slaughtered for bear's greasd in Oxford-street?
A most marked instance of this want of observance
is to be seen, " I have been told," in the fountain
erected to the great father of natural history, Cuvier, outside the gates of the Jardin des Plantes, at
Paris.  Here is represented, first, an anatomical
impossibility, viz., a crocodile turning his head at
right angles to his body; secondly, a zoological
absurdity, viz., a walrus, a graminivorous rather
than a piscivorous animal, holding a fish in his
mouth, and that a fresh-water fish. Surely Cuvier,
if he could see his own fountain, would be much
* There is a good specimen of an ideal flying dragon placed as
a weathercock on the steeple of Bow Church in the city.




234         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
pleased to observe the good use that had been made
of his investigations into the secrets of nature by the
artist.
When in a plaster of Paris shop near Drury-lane,
I saw a magnificent cast of a lion's head, which, I
was informed, was intended as a study for artists.
Upon examining the teeth, I found that the sharp
and formidable canine teeth were certainly not like
those we see in a lion's mouth. I mentioned this,
and was told that it certainly was a cast from nature,
but that most likely the modellers had touched up
the teeth afterwards. What a pity it is these worthies will try to improve on nature. The molar
teeth were quite copies of nature: they had not
been " touched up." If the reader ever goes to the
new and magnificent cattle-market at Islington, let
him notice the lamp-posts.' Models of the heads of
oxen in iron are affixed to the upper part of the
posts, but, strange to say, they are all about as
unlike oxen's heads as it is possible to imagine.
The reason is, I suppose, that in this neighborhood
an ox is rarely seen, and the artist had no opportunity of studying a living animal, from which he
might model. Again, in a monument to a veterinary
surgeon, I have seen a horse's head, or what is intended
for a horse's head; could the poor man come to life
again, I doubt if he would recognise the head of his
favorite animal on his tomb.




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.          235
Human hair is above all things best calculated
for making models of some kinds of dark-colored
snakes. I have observed in Farrer's shop in Regentstreet, where they work up hair into all sorts of
devices, several very good models of snakes. Black,
white, and brown hair being intermixed, give exactly
the appearance of the common viper. One hair
snake, in particular, has its marks perfectly correct,
whether by design or accident I know not, but there
it is, a model of a viper, only unfortunately it has
the ideal head fashioned by an unobservant artist.
A  shop close by presents some beautiful bronze
models of snakes coiled up, which being heavy, are
intended for paper-weights. These are no ideal
snakes; they are, I am certain, casts from the original; and I have heard that lizards are put into
plaster of Paris alive and left to die there. When
dead the plaster is put into a furnace, and the body
of the lizard being consumed is shaken out.in the
form of powder, through a hole made for the purpose; the metal is then poured in, assuming, of
course, the accurate shape of the lizard. I have in
ny possession a sprig of common English prickly
urze made in this way, and also an electroplated
nollow model of a toad. I am certain, from marks
in the model, that the metal was deposited on the
actual body of the toad, and also that in this case
the toad was dead before operated on.




236         THE CORBA DI CAPELLO.
Silversmiths are not always very careful about
their models. I once saw on the top of an enormous
silver dish, intended for a haunch of venison, two
deer modelled in silver. I was sorry to see how
these deer had been imagined by the artist: their
legs looked dropsical, and their bodies like the
bodies of cows, clumsy, and devoid of that grace
peculiar to the deer tribe. As an offset to these,
I have seen in Mr. Elkington's window a beautiful
bit of presentation plate, made by an artist who took
the animal itself as a model. It is a palm-tree under
which stands a giraffe. The limbs and shape of the
animal are perfect, and he has hit off the great
peculiarity of the giraffe, the long black prehensile
tongue which the animfal.uses to pull down the
leaves into his mouth; even the tongue itself is a
perfect model of nature. Quaere. Were giraffes
ever used as beasts of burden?  I have seen an
ancient picture in the palace of the Luxembourg,
where a giraffe is represented being led by a man,
and upon its back is a package fastened with ropes.
I have also seen a pretty idea; viz., the model of
the merrythought bone of a bird made in gold with
a pin attached to it so as to form a brooch. In Mr.
Hancock's shop, too, is a capital group in silver, of
the death of a fox. It was made as a testimonial to
Lord Forrester by the members of the Beivoir Hunt:
it represents an incident that really took place. A




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.          237
fox had given the hounds a remarkably long run,
and at last escaped into a tree. The whipper-in got
up the tree, and succeeded in driving the fox down,
not, however, to be killed, for he made his escape
after a second severe gallop. The horsemen, horses,
and hounds are all perfect; so also is the fox, who
is up in a tree concealing himself behind a branch.
The head, with the expression peculiar to a fox, has
been hit off exactly by the artist.
Lastly, in the city-a very proper place for it-I
have seen a capital silver soup tureen in the shape
of a turtle. The great sprawling silver turtle is
placed on the table, his carapace, or upper shell, is
lifted off, and his body is found to contain soup fit
for Jove himself.
Nature, frequently prone to produce in inanimate
substances models of her own living creations, has
produced a plant that resembles a snake in a most
remarkable manner. Some four years ago I received
a drawing, said to be that of a cauliflower, from
a gentleman who had kindly forwarded it to me.
The history of this cauliflower accompanied it; it is
as follows:-" Sitting one day, in the year 1848, in
the Palazzo Buttera in Palermo, which opened upon
the orangery, a lady walking there exclaimed that a
snake was in her path. We rushed to the rescue,
and killed the snake as it retreated upon a bed of
small cauliflowers. Its head was beaten into the




238         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
earth beside one of them, which was injured thereby,
but we heaped the earth again round its roots, and
so covered the snake. Two years afterwards, I saw,
in the same apartment, a large glass with something
indescribable floating in it, when the same lady said,'Don't you remember, when you were last here,
killing a snake in the garden? that is the cauliflower
at whose roots you smashed its head, and there you
see the snake almost as you left it, and in its natural
color, but found transformed into the vegetable substance of the plant. We watched its marvellous
growth, and then preserved it in spirits, after an
artist had made an accurate drawing of it.' "
I confess I was surprised at the story, and put
She drawing away: but a few days ago, passing
through Covent Garden, I suddenly found the explanation of this extraordinary phenomenon. Growing
in a pot was the fellow specimen to the Palermo
snake cauliflower, and this a simple house-leek
(Sedum Commune), which in certain stages of its
growth remarkably resembles a snake; but consider
for a moment, how is it possible that a snake should
be converted into a vegetable substance such as the
cauliflower? for where did the bones of the snake
go to? where the skin? how could a cauliflower
mould itself into the narrow skin of a snake which
had not even an opening in it, and which would,
under an Italian sun, become decomposed in a few




THlE COBRA DI CAPELLO.         239
hours? There is, however, a genuine case of a living
creature becoming converted into a vegetable. It
occurs in a caterpillar that lives in New Zealand and
in Australia.  There are several specimens at the
College of Surgeons. We see a caterpillar as hard
as if it was carved out of wood; and from it is grow.
ing a long stem. The history of it is as follows.
The caterpillar eats a fungus, or the sporules of a
fungus, and these immediately begin to grow in its
inside. The beast feels uncomfortable, and possibly
thinking it is going to turn into a chrysalis, buries
itself in the ground, and there dies. The fungus
goes on growing and absorbing the entire contents
of the skin, taking the exact form of the creature.
Having done this it throws out a shoot, and this
always at a certain fixed spot, namely at the joint at
the back of the head. My friend Mr. Quekett has
kindly shown me many specimens, and has explained
them to mae. This caterpillar is found also in China,
where it is used as food.
A most marvellous snake was brought to the village of Islip, my father's parsonage, for exhibition,
the charge for seeing it was one penny. The handbill was as follows:
"To the lovers of natural curiosities. Just arrived, one of the largest Hottentot adders ever
brought into England, being one of the most curious species in nature. A native of the Hottentot




240         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
country, and that quarter of the globe alone, it has
been well denominated the Hottentot adder, from
the fact of its being a most ferocious animal, and
attacks the poor Hottentot natives when on their
way hTme from market. This singular curiosity is
upwards of three feet in length, having a very
curious tail turned round, is supplied with four feet,
and on each foot five hooks, and is beautifully scaled
like a salmon. The face resembles that of a human
being, and has a fan under the jaw, with which it
fans its victims to put them to sleep. It was brought
in a vessel to Liverpool, where it was bought by the
proprietor, who now goes round to exhibit it to the
public for their inspection."
This Hottentot adder was a wonderfully ingenious
composition. The head was made of an eel's skin,
and into the forehead were inserted the sharp hooked
bony spines from the back of a common skate. Two
staring glass eyes were fixed in, giving it a hideous
appearance: the mouth was made of the jaws of
the skate, so common in museums. The feet were
those of a tortoise, the tail that of a skate, covered
with spines, and was arranged in an elegant curve.
The proprietor did not seem at all aware that his
animal was not the skin of a real creature.
One of the country folks who went to see this
exhibition, shortly afterwards, knowing that I was
fond of such things, sent me the following letter,




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.          241
together with a kitten that had six legs. It is a
literary curiosity. "Sir. I hope you will cuse the
liberty in Wrighting But By graite chance I drapped
a Cross the kitin I have sent to you. I shoed it to
Mr. B       who said it was a good Speriment,"
(experiment).
In the "Observer" of January, 1852, I find the
following story of a " Hairy Viper," a good pendant
to the Hottentot adder. "In the Algerian paper
we read that a hairy viper was seen aifew days ago
near Drariah, coiled round a tree. It resembled an
enormous caterpillar, and was of a brownish-red
color; its length was about twenty-two inches. The
moment it saw that it was observed, it glided into
the brushwood, and all attempts to discover it were
unavailing. The authorities of the Museum  of
Natural History of Paris have sent off orders to
their agents in Algiers to get a specimen of this
viper."
We do sometimes find real monstrosities among
snakes. As there are'monstrous sheep, pigs, etc., so
are there born monstrous snakes. We have all
heard of the many-headed hydra. In the museum
of the College of Surgeons there are two specimens
of real veritable double-headed snakes. No. 264 is
a little Coluber natrix, or common English snake,
about four or five inches long. This creature has
two heads, each about a quarter of an inch long,
11




242         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
united together at one neck. The creature must
have lived some time in this condition, for, from its
appearance, I should consider it to be three or four
months old. I should be curious to know if it has
a double gullet.  Alongside this preparation is
another of a double-headed snake, and one description will answer for both. Coming out of the Col,
lege I saw in a shop-window an advertisement of a
play about to be acted, entitled " Two Heads Better
than One." I wonder if the author took the doubleheaded snakes for his theme.
Curiously enough, not far from the place where
the bottles stand in the College containing the
above-mentioned creatures, is the double skull of a
child, the upper head being placed upon and inserted
into the lower one. The label on this head states
that the child was born of native parents in Bengal
in 1783, and that it lived to the age of four years.
It is an odd coincidence that the label states that
the child did not die from natural causes, but from
the bite of a cobra di capello.
There are certain anatomical distinctions which
are well marked, especially as regards the teeth, by
which we may at once pronounce whether a snake
is poisonous or not. It would be a dangerous
undertaking to examine these teeth in the living
subject; let'us, therefore, adjourn to the museum
of the Royal College of Surgeons, in Lincoln's Inn




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.          24 
Fields, and examine with safety the apparatus which
the omniscient Creator has given to the class of
snakes to enable them to procure their food.
Let us first direct our attention to the skull of
the non-venomous snakes, and take for our example
the Python, or boa-constrictor, of which we shall
find a most beautiful skeleton in the splendid new
room of the museum. If we examine the conformation of the head, we shall find that the bones of
which it is composed, instead of being locked
together, as in mammalia, are separate, and retained
in their places only by skin and ligaments. The
lower jaw is composed of two separate portions,
united at what we should call the chin, not by bone,
but by a lax membrane. By the above arrangement
it follows that, literally, the whole head is capable
of enormous distension, and of admitting a body
which, apparently, it would by any mechanical
means be impossible to stuff in without killing the
snake. Between the lower jaw and the upper jaw
we do not find, as in our own heads, and the heads
of other animals, a "single" joint straitened and
confined in its movement: but to enable the under
jaw to be extended to a very great extent, so that
the snake shall swallow its prey with ease to itself,
an extra bone is inserted between the head and the
lower jaw, and thus the "gape" of the snake
becomes incredibly large.




244         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
The teeth in the tribe of non-venomous snakes
are arranged in four rows in the upper jaws; two
corresponding to the rows of teeth in man, two fixed
on the palate. These teeth are imperforate, that is,
they have no hole piercing them, as in the case of
the cobra di capello, presently to be described.
In the boa, the teeth are directed backwards, in
such a manner, that, should anything once get into
this trap, it would with difficulty be got out again.
This was well illustrated in the case of the boa who,
the other day, most unserpent-like (for they are
the emblems of wisdom among so many nations)
swallowed the blanket at the Zoological Gardens,
thinking, no doubt, that it was a particularly hairy
goat. The teeth being directed backwards, the poor
beast was obliged to swallow it, in order, as he
foolishly thought, to get rid of it. After it had remained in his stomach some time, it was vomited up
again; but this time, it could pass the barricade of
teeth, for it was thickly covered with a layer of mucus, and tightly twisted together by the vain at-'tempts of the muscles of the stomach to digest it.
The same arrangement of the teeth, pointing back.
wards, prevails in the mouth of the common pike.
The following story will illustrate its action.'When at Oxford, I had in my rooms the dried head
of a very large pike, captured in Holland and sold
at Hungerford Market. It was kept underneath a




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.         245
book-case. One evening, while reading, I wasmuch
surprised, and rather alarmed, to see this monstrous
head roll out spontaneously from under the bookcase, and tumble along the floor; at the same time
piteous cries of distress issued from it. The head
must be bewitched, thought I; but I must find out
the cause. Accordingly, I took it up, when, lo and
behold! inside was a poor little tame guinea-pig,
which was a pet, and allowed to run with two companions about the room.  With an unsuspecting
curiosity Master Guinea-pig had crept into the dried
expanded jaws of the monster, intending, no doubt,
to take up his abode there for the night. In endeavoring to get out again he found himself literally
hooked. Being a classical guinea-pig he might have
construed " Facilis descensus Averni;" it is an easy
thing to get down a jack's mouth; " Sed revocare
gradum," etc., but it is a' deuced hard job to get
out again.
In vain did the poor creature cry and push with
all his might backwards; the more he tried,. the
faster the teeth stuck into his devoted hide. What
was the remedy? I could not get him out the way
he got in, that was certain; he must be made to go
forwards. I accordingly cut away some of the gills
that were left dried on the head, and poking and
pinching him a tergo, made him come out at the
hole where the gullet ought to have been, but,




246         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
luckily for the guinea-pig, was not. He must have
told his two companions of his night's adventure, for
although the head was again put on the ground, they
never attempted to repeat the experiment of their
companion.
To illustrate this point further;-I recollect hearing of a large, hungry boa-constrictor at the Surrey
Zoological Gardens seizing the hand of the keeper,
who was cleaning out his cage. The snake would
have twined his folds round the man's body had he
not wisely withdrawn his arm, still, however, in the
snake's mouth, and shut the glass door on the snake's
neck, thus preventing the body, the dangerous part
of the boa-who kill their prey by crushing and not
by biting-from doing him any harm. It was only
with the greatest care, and by means of wedges of
wood, that the hand was extracted from the snake's
mouth. It was, however, fearfully lacerated.
I find, in reference to this subject, a manuscript
note to the following effect: it is dated "The
Tower of London, March, 1825," and is addressed
to my father:
"I am sorry to say the calls of hunger made it
necessary to feed some of the snakes this morning,
but I have desired the keeper to keep back the rest
until Saturday, for you at three o'clock. A few
days since the largest snake was so hungry that
when the keeper Went near his cage with a fowl ir




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.            247
his hand, the animal darted at the bird, but missing
his aim, seized the keeper's hand, and before he
could extricate himself the snake wound round his
neck, arm, and body, and threw him on the floor, so
as to render him quite helpless. It was with the
utmost difficulty that two other keepers got the
animal off, which was only effected at last by breaking some of his teeth in the hand of the keeper."
Be it known to any person to whose lot it should
fall to rescue a person from the crushing folds of a
boa-constrictor, that it is no use pulling and hauling at the centre of the brute's body; catch hold of
the tip of his tail,-he then can be easily unwound,he cannot help himself;-he "must" come off.
Again, if you wish to kill a snake, it is no use hitting and trying to. crush his head. The bones of
the head are composed of the densest material,
affording effectual protection to the brain underneath; a wise provision for the animal's preservation; for, were his skull brittle, his habit of crawling on the ground would render it very liable to be
fractured. The spinal cord runs down the entire
length of the body; this being wounded, the animal
is disabled or killed instanter. Strike, therefore,
his tail, and not his head; for at his tail the spinal
cord is but thinly covered with bone, and suffers
readily from injury. This practice is applicable to
eels. If-you want to kill an eel, it is not much use




248         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
belaboring his head: strike, however, his tail two
or three times against any hard substance and he
is quickly dead.
In the two stories above mentioned we see that
the boa was both ready and willing to eat the man
if he could. The following passage, quoted from a.
wonderfully entertaining book, "Twenty Years in
the Philippines, by M. Gironiere," shows that boas
do sometimes succeed in actually swallowing mena dreadful death for a human being. " A criminal
hid from justice in a cavern; his father, who alone
knew of his hiding-place, went sometimes to see
him, and to take him  rice. One day he found,
instead of his son, an enormous, boa asleep. He
killed it, and found his son's body in his stomach.
The priest of the village who went to give the body
Christian burial, and who saw the remains of the
boa, described it to me as of almost incredible size.
Many other similar facts were told me by the
Indians. They told me of men who, whilst passing
through the forests, had been seized by a boa,
crushed against a tree, and afterwards devoured.
It is not surprising that a serpent that can swallow
a deer can swallow a man."  In reference to the
crushing power of the boa, I find the following
note: " Mr. Wise says, that when at anchor on the
coast of Ceylon, a python slid along the cable, and
entered the mate's.cabin. When perceived, some




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.         249
of the crew threw a noose of rope round it, but it
contrived to turn itself round a butt of water. By
fixing a rope to a pulley, they, with infinite diffi
culty, disengaged it from the butt, but not until it
had so compressed it that the hoops from the middle sunk to the bottom."  Snakes are sometimes
cannibals, and devour one another. I went one
day to the Zoological Gardens, when I knew there
would be few visitors about, and the animals, not
having their attention distracted by the curious,
would relapse more into their natural, state than
when disturbed by moving about. When I came
to one of the cages in the snake-house, I found it
contained many. harmless snakes, of the common
English kind (those with a yellow ring round the
neck), and also about an equal number of the
French common snakes. One of the English snakes,
I found, was murdering a Frenchman, or at least
trying so to do; for in the centre of the cage there
he lay, with his body enormously distended, and
half another snake down his throat. How he managed to catch the Frenchman by the head I know
not; but certain it was the head had gone down
foremost: the teeth in the, jaws of the English
snake, which project backwards, sticking  into
the scales of the victim, prevented his retreat. I
watched them. Every now and then the English
snake gave a gulp, and down went a bit more of his
11*




250         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
living dinner. The dinner did not seem to relish
the dark hole he had got into, for at the same time
he generally gave a wriggle and a twist, as though
anxious to escape, a foolish move, for it only helped
his downward passage. This went on for some
minutes, the Frenchman gradually disappearing inside the Englishman, till at last more than half was
swallowed, and the swallower became enormously
dilated. I then called the keeper, who took the
English snake by the tail and gave him two or
three good shakings, hitting him, at the same time,
gently against the wall, as if to loosen the contents
of his abdomen. The French snake, finding deliverance was at hand, began to coil about, till at last
out he fell on the floor, again restored to daylight.
He seemed rather stupid, but otherwise none the
worse for his trip down what the children call " the
red lane" of his English brother snake. The cannibal, disappointed in his wicked deeds, when put into
the cage, glided about, with head erect, hissing,
and putting out his tongue, apparently in a great
rage at having been interfered with. The French
snake slunk under some carpet that was in the
cage, not wishing to repeat the experiment. It is
remarkable that the snake swallowed was about the
same size as that of the swallower.
Boa-constrictors will also swallow boa-constric
tors.




TIE COJ3RA 1) CAPELLO.          251
On the 21st of March, 1841, a python, nine feet
long, swallowed his living companion of eight feet,
both being apparently in the same state of health.
When the keeper made his morning visit he saw
but one in the box, and "he" was distended for
about a yard beyond the head to treble his ordinary dimensions, having doubled up his victim in
the gullet. In the course of the week much copros
was ejected, of which I- have a fine specimen, containing scales and small bones of the one swallowed;
it illustrates the case of the coprolites.with scales
from fishes.
Snakes sometimes miscalculate the. stretching
powers of their stomachs, and swallow not only
more than is good for them, but even so much that
they actually burst from repletion. In the museum
of the Royal College of Surgeons are three preparations illustrating this point, viz., No. 308, a small
snake of Demerara, with the.stomach exposed,
which contains a fish, the diameter of which equals
the ordinary breadth of the snake itself. The tail
of the snake is rounded and slender, showing it to
be a land species, which, occasionally at least, seeks
its food in the water. Again, preparation 508 B.
A small snake with the stomach exposed, showing a
rodent quadruped more than twice the size of the
snake itself. The skin of the muzzle has been lace.
rated where the animal was seized by the snake




252          THE COBRA DI C4PELLO.
Thirdly, we have a'snake with a toad projecting
from an opening in the belly. I have read somewhere of a boa-constrictor who was found dead,
having swallowed a goat; the horns of the goat had
not been digested, and had ulcerated a hole through
its side, thus killing it. This story reminds me of
the Esquimaux plan of catching Polar bears. A bit
of strong whalebone is coiled up and inserted into
the centre of a bit of whale's fat and left in the
bear's track: the bear swallows it. The fat soon
becomes dissolved, and the whalebone springing
out straight in the stomach, ultimately destroys the
unfortunate animal!
We now come to the poisonous class of snakes;
and I will say a few words regarding the venom apparatus as developed in this class. There are, I
believe, many persons, who, not having paid much
attention to the subject, imagine that the snake
stings with his tongue. The real fact is, that no
snake ever stung anybody, for he has io sting; a
wasp, a bee, and a scorpion, may be said to sting,
but a snake can only be said to bite. The one class
has stings, properly so called, the other simply
teeth. Both the sting and the teeth can only be
regarded as transmitters of the poison from the
gland above. This difference, also, is to be remarked, that stings, properly so called, are gene.
rally situated in the tail of the creature, whereas




THE COBRA DI) CAPELLO.            253
the serpent is to be dreaded, not on account of the
sting in his tail, for he has none there, but for the
teeth in his mouth.
In Holy Writ, however, we find both words
mentioned as regards snakes; for example, they
occur side by side in the following passage in Proverbs: " At last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth
like an adder."
Johnson defines the word " sting," as "to wound
or pierce with a point darted out, as that of wasps
or' scorpions." Being further inquisitive on this
point, I consulted a learned friend, deeply versed
in classical criticism, upon the true meaning of the
word "sting."  He kindly gave me the following
information: "The word translated in our version' stingeth,' is met with nowhere else. It may, to a
certain extent, be explained by its Syriac and Arabic kindred roots; and they convey the meaning of'puncturing,''slitting,' or' piercing,' so as to cause
an open wound; and hence, in a secondary sense,
we get the notion of'spreading,''diffusing,' and
such like words, evidently drawing their meaning
fiom the natural results of such piercing, etc. And
it must be, I think, from this manner of construing
the Hebrew word, that we find the text, Proverbs
xxiii. 32, construed into the Latin words,'Sicut
regulus diffundet venena.'  Moreover, our word'sting,' is directly derived from  the Anglo-Saxon




254         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
word Styng-an, which means to pierce, or puncture
without any reference to head, tail, tongue, or any
other corporeal part whatever."
The scorpion is a beast that really stings.. He
carries his weapon, as is well known, at the end of
his tail. The last joint of his tail is hollowed out,
and contains two little white glands that entirely
fill the cavity.  These glands secrete the poison,
and it is conveyed into the body of its enemy by
means of a curved, sharp-pointed, horny sting,
which he brandishes about at the end of his long
and elastic tail. With this sting the scorpion becomes a formidable beast. Luckily, however, his
poison is not so dangerous in its effects as the poison
of snakes. It is a curious fact that, although the
scorpion secretes poison from his body, yet if that
poison be introduced through a wound into his body,
or into the body of another scorpion, it will prove
fatal. This same fact holds good, I believe, as regards snakes. If a snake be made to bite himself,
he will die from his own poison. I have an extract
from an African traveller, who writes that his native
staff, wishing for amusement, and knowing the natural pugnacity of scorpions, got a couple and put
them  into a hole whence there was no escape.
They set to work fighting directly, seizing each
other by their claws, and endeavoring to strike with
the poisonous tail: at last one got a chance, and




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.               255
with a vigorous lunge stung his adversary. The
wounded scorpion, as if aware of the fatality of the
wound, resisted no more, but lay down till he
expired.  The vidtor, conscious of the fatality of th(
sting, gave himself no further trouble. The scorpion has been picked out of the numerous creatures
which live on the face of the earth to figure among
the signs of the zodiac. Virgil, in his flattering
address to Mfeecenas (see Geo. I.) proposes to make
a constellation of him, and suggests, as a good place,
that next to the scorpion.  He is
" Ipse tibi jam brachia contrahet ardens
Scorpius, et coeli justA plus parte reliquit."*
In India, scorpions are naturally fond of secreting
themselves in holes, and have a nasty habit of getting into Wellington boots. One day an officer was
putting on his boot.  He felt something in it, and
thinking it was a scorpion, he pulled it on instantly
and stamped violently on the floor, thus killing the
scorpion.  He narrated this at mess.  A few days
afterwards another officer was pulling on his boot,
when he, too, felt something in the boot. Recol
* "Where in the void of heaven a space is free
Betwixt the scorpion and the maid for thee,
The scorpion, ready to receive thy laws,
Yields half his region, and contracts his claws."-DRYDEN.




256         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
lecting the scorpion story, he thought he could not
do better than stamp his foot down also in the boot
He did so, but the experiment did not succeed, as
there was no scorpion this time, but a regimental
spur with the rowel upwards.
Centipedes also have an apparatus for inflicting
a poison wound, but their weapon is neither the
sting in the tail nor the tooth in the head. Having
so many legs, the pair which are next to the head
are adapted to this purpose. They are largely
developed, and being curved inwards towards each
other, look not unlike two scorpions' stings facing
each other. Colonel De Bathe, of the Scots Fusilier
Guards, tells me that when encamped before Sevastopol he kept a great'many chickens, but he found
that his chickens used to die in the most unaccountable manner. One day, however, the mystery was
explained, for he saw an old hen running about with
a centipede fastened on to her neck: the brute had
got tight hold, and had evidently fixed his poisonclaws into her flesh. It appeared that the chickens
wandering about, pecked at the centipedes, taking
them, probably, for large caterpillars, thereby losing
their lives. The sting of the bee, again, is peculiar:
it consists of " a horny scabbard, which contains two
bearded darts. This sheath ends in a point near the
extremity through which, at the time of stinging,
these two bearded darts are protruded. One is a




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.            257
little longer than the other, and fixes itself first, but
the'other follows immediately afterwards. They
penetrate alternately deeper and deeper, taking hold
of the flesh with their beards till the whole sting
becomes buried in the wound, and then a venomous
juice is injected through the same sheath from a
little bag at the root of the sting."-Cat. Royal
College of Surgeons.*
As regards the subject of stings, I must not omit
to mention the very peculiar poison apparatus which
is found in that most remarkable of Australian
animals, the Platypus, of the existence of which
*some of my readers may not be aware. The male
animal has a gland on the back part oT the thigh,
communicating, by means of. a'duct, with a sharp
spur, very like a cock's spur. This spur is perforate
like the cobra's tooth, and the secretion of the gland,
doubtless poisonous, is thus transmitted into the
wound formed by the spur.
The tongue of the snake is generally imagined to
be his sting; it is not really so. It appears to be
concerned in the function of voice, that is to say,
hissing: it also acts as a sort of intimidation to its
aggressors, for the snake generally puts out his
vibrating tongue and hisses at the same time. This
performance alone would make nine people out of
* A good drawing of this may be seen in the South Kensing
ton Museum.




258          THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
ten run away.  Upon examining the tongue carefully, we find that it is long, moist, deeply forked,
not into three parts, but into two only, and capable
of being moved in all directions. When withdrawn
it is received into a sheath, which can either be
elongated or contracted. Ovid has observed this
bifid form of the snake's tonge. Cadmus, he informs us, was changed into a snake, and during the
transformation he endeavored to speak. In this he
singularly failed, because" Lingua repente
In partes est scissa duas;" *
an uncomfortable sensation, I should think, for poor
Cadmus.
Shakspeare uses the word " sting" frequently as
regards snakes. He was a good observer of nature,
and therefore probably used it in a poetical sense.
This, however, has doubtless led many persons into
the belief that snakes really do sting, and thus the
popular error is partially accounted for. I subjoin
two passages from his writings. The first is certainly
very much calculated to mislead; it is"For never tongue
Than thine, thou adder, more severely stung."
Again, in Hamlet, the Ghost says* "His tongue was immediately cleft into two halves."




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.               259
"Now, Hamlet, hear:'Tis given out,.that, sleeping in my orchard
A serpent stung me."
Sophocles, however, says nothing about stinging
in his play of "Philoctetes:" he plainly writes it
otherwise-'Aypia
N6dac KarabOivovra, riiS dv3spo(p6pov
llxycvr' cXiqvr;s dypii() yapyplartl.
The snake, therefore, has no sting; his tongue is
harmless, but his teeth are to be feared. Let us
say a little more about them. On examining the
skull of a venomous snake, we shall find an arrangement of teeth prevailing, different from that above
described as peculiar to the harmless tribes. Instead of a long row of imperforate teeth on each
side of the mouth, we shall find two teeth only, and
these fixed at the extremity of the upper jaw.  The
arrangement of the palatal teeth, and of those in
the under jaw, is the same in both classes. The
reason why this row of numerous teeth exists in
the one class, and is represented by two only in the
other, becomes obvious, when we consider the way
in which they severally secure their prey. The non* " Me brought to naught by a cruel disease, and wounded by
the malignant bite (Xapaypa, any mark, engraved, printed,) of a
viper."




260         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
poisonous snake literally catches his victim, and
entangles him in his teeth; whereas the poisonous
snake gives a dart, inflicts the wound, and waits
quietly till the poison has done its work.
The teeth of the snake are not always found in
its mouth. There is a snake in Africa that lives
upon the eggs of birds, which he purloins out of
the nests. This snake has no teeth proper in its
mouth; if he had, they would be much in his way,
for they would break the egg when he caught hold
of it. Instead, then, of teeth in his mouth, he has
them in his belly; and they are formed in a very
curious manner. Certain little bits of bone, parts
of the vertebra, are made to perform the function
of teeth: they project one from the centre of each
vertebra. The ten next to the mouth point in a
forward direction, the last ten backward. The ends
of these bits of bone go through the wall of the
stomach, and then become covered with enamel
like real teeth; so that, on looking into the stomach,
a row apparently of real teeth is seen at its back
part. The egg, when swallowed by the snake, goes
down into the stomach, and there meeting. with the
teeth, is broken against them by. the pressure of the
walls of the stomach. The contents of the egg
being thus broken cannot escape; had there been
teeth in the mouth the egg would have broken
there, and most of the fluid contents been lost. A




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.              261
preparation exhibiting this structure is in the
College of Surgeons, No. 638. It was presented by
Dr. Andrew Smith, the present Director-general of
the Army Medical Department.
The details of the poison-fangs are so well marked
m the subject of this article, the cobra di capello,
that I will here describe the mechanism as found in
that reptile, and which will apply equally to the
whole  class  of which  it forms a  well-marked
example.
The remark of Horace will well apply to this
case, that-a thing seen by the eyes is better understood than by the most lucid description in words.
He says:"Segnius irritant animos dimissa per aures,
Quam quse sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus."*
I would therefore advise my readers, who wish to
understand these fearful weapons, to pay a visit to
the College of Surgeons-a visit which will well
repay their trouble.
In the beautifully-dissected head of the cobra in
that Museum, No. 2164, we shall find a fine specimen of these poisonous teeth. It requires rather a
* "What we hear,
With weaker passion will affect the heart
Than when the faithful eye beholds the part."-FRANCIS.




262         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
careful examination at first to see these poison
fangs at all, foi they lie, when in a quiescent state,
quite parallel to the jaw, concealed in a fold of the
gum, which forms a case for them, protecting their
sharp points from injury, and preventing them from
impeding the passage of food down the throat.
Their habitual position is recumbent, protected by
a scabbard, if I may use a metaphorical term. We
will now remove the sheath, and expose the fangs
themselves. In the preparation above mentioned
the largest tooth on each side is nearly half an inch
long, and the second behind is nearly- the same
length. If we gently move these teeth when in
situ, we shall find that they are. fixed firmly and
immovably into a distinct bone; they therefore
follow  its movements, and cannot, as is often
imagined, move independently. By a peculiar and
very beautiful arrangement of the bones and muscles
about the head, this bone, with the teeth attached,.
either lies at rest or is raised instantly into an erect
position ready for action; suffice it to say, that its
action is very like that seen in the lock of a gun,
and that the snake, in opening its mouth preparatory to striking, as a mechanical necessity elevates
its fang into the most favorable position for inflicting the blow.
Jn a preparation near the former, we see the
teeth separated from all other surrounding parts,




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.         263
and also in a dried preparation of the skin, with
head attached, of a cobra killed in.India, and presented to the College by a gentleman formerly resident there. He had seen the brute for several days
about his premises, but had been unable to kill it;
he was, in consequence, obliged to have wire blinds
with thin meshes put on all his windows, fearing
that the snake might crawl up the ivy surrounding
the house and get into some one of the rooms. Ie
at last caught him asleep under a tree, and sent him
to the museum. The teeth of this snake are remarkably large and well developed, the largest
tooth being nearly an inch long' no wonder he was
a cause of alarm to those who knew he was about
the premises.
We find, on examining this preparation, that,
running down the outer side of each poison-tooth,
is a canal large enough to admit a pig's bristle.
The upper opening of this duct is connected closely
with the duct or pipe which conveys the poison
from the gland secreting it. The lower aperture is
oblique, presenting the form of a narrow elliptical
fissure, and is situated at a short distance from the
point of the fang. It follows, therefore, that this
tooth performs the office of a dagger. It makes an
aperture in the flesh of the victim struck, and, while
fixed there, the poison is injected through the tooth
into the wound, thus ready made for its reception.




264         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
The poison itself is secreted by a large gland
which occupies nearly the whole of the posterior
part of the head; it seems to be simply analogous
to the salivary glands found in mammalia, and the
secretion is carried on in the same manner. This
gland has the peculiarity, however, that it is covered
by a strong layer of muscles which, on the snake's
opening his mouth, firmly compresses its substance,
and forces the poisonous contents out into the
wound through the perforated teeth.  I have
myself made two or three dissections ofthis muscular covering, in snakes taken  out of spirits.
Though easily explained when before the eyes, it is
difficult to describe. I find in the "Tasmanian
Journal," 1844, a paper on the teeth and poison-'
apparatus of snakes, by Dr. J. Agnew, who had
many opportunities of dissecting fresh specimens
of snakes. He has very neatly described this muscular coat in the following words:" The provision made by nature for forcing the
poison out of the gland is at once simple, elegant,
and effectual. It consists in a single muscle which
rises from a ridge of bone, that sweeps in a slightlycurved line from behind the orbit of the eye in froni
to the back part of the skull. The anterior fibres of
the muscle descend downwards, and somewhat
backwards; and are inserted along the upper margin
of the gland; whilst the posterior fibres, describing




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.          265
a considerable circuit, sweep round the gland behind
to become inserted into its posterior surface or base.
When all these fibres, therefore, act in unison, they
must necessarily press the gland from behind forwards, and thus force the contents into the duct, to
be thence conveyed to the tubulated fang.  The
compressor, or ejaculator of the gland would, therefore; be an appropriate name for the muscle."
I learn from another quarter that, when the snake
is about to bite, and is irritated at the anticipation
of wounding its prey, these muscular fibres can be
seen contracting and expanding with a wave-like
motion.
If we examine some of the poison itself, we shall.find it -to be a transparent fluid, of a yellowish color,
of about the same consistency as the human saliva:
it has a sharp taste but no odor.
I have had the opportunity of examining some
recent poison from the head of a large puff-adder,
one of the most poisonous of snakes. It had been
dead about four days. Upon turning up the pouch
or fold of gum by which the poison-fangs are covered
when in a quiescent state, I discovered a quantity
of this thick yellowish poison saliva. This saliva I
placed under the microscope; it.revealed a few fine
spicula or hair-like crystals, and which, as the fluid
containing them dried, became more apparent. I
then made a section of the duct, but the spicula
12




266         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
were fewer in number. Anxious to obtain more
perfect specimens, I examined the tooth itself, and
in the hollow was a firm white-looking substance,
easily pushed out by means of a bristle: this proved
to be, as it were, concentrated essence of poison, for
it consisted of one mass of the most beautiful spicula,
They were scattered about in all positions, and at
all angles one with the other. In one or two places
I saw bundles of them tied together in the centre as
it were by a cord. There is a common mode in
London of darkening shop windows on'the inside,
not by painting them with white paint, but by
covering them on the inner side with a mass of the
most beautiful crystals. These are made by washing the glass with a "saturated " solution of sulphate
of magnesia or Epsom salts. Having the appearance
of the snake's poison in my eye, I happened to pass
one of the windows so operated on. The resemblance between the two was very remarkable, so
that if my reader wishes to have an idea of the poison under the microscope, let him notice the next
"salted " window he passes.
Dr. Mead, who wrote a treatise on poisons in 1745,
also observed these crystals. He writes:-" I have
oftentimes, by holing a viper advantageously, and
enraging it till it struck out its teeth, made it to
bite upon somewhat solid, so as to avoid its poison,
which,. carefully putting upon a glass plate, I have




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.           267
with a microscope, as nicely as I could, viewed its
parts and composition. Upon the first sight I could
discover nothing but a parcel of small salts, nimbly
floating in the liquor, but in a very short time these
saline particles were now shot out as it were into
crystals of an incredible tenuity and sharpness, with
something like knots here and there, from which they
seemed to proceed."  These crystals can, I believe,
be seen also in the poison from a bee's sting.
These preparations of snakes' poison were carefully mounted for me by my brother, as microscopic
objects, both in a wet and dry state; but in a few
days the crystals had quite disappeared.
Wishing to try whether the poison of this puffadder still retained its virulent power after the death
of the animal, I inoculated both a sparrow and a
guinea-pig with it. I obtained the poison from three
places-from  under the sheath which covers the
teeth, from the duct, and fiom the gland itself. The
guinea-pig was fairly inoculated with poison from
all three places, but beyond a slight difficulty in
breathing, it did not stem to suffer in the least.
The sparrow was killed by the poison from the tooth
sheath, but remained alive nearly twenty minutes
after the first dose. It is not'impossible that the
poison had lost much of its power in consequence of
the progress of putrefaction, for I received the snake
hi very hot weather, and decomposition had already




268         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
begun in the body: the poison also might have beer
partially decomposed, and have thus lost its deadly
properties. If the poison had been taken from the
tooth immediately on the death of the animal, and
had been dried, the results to the guinea-pig would
probably have' been fatal; for Dr. Christison dissolved a grain and a half of it in ten drops of water,
and introduced it under the skin of a rabbit; in
twenty-seven minutes the poor beast was dead.
Mr. Stone, of the College of Surgeons, happening
to have some arrows, the tips of which were covered
with wourali poison, made so famous by Mr. Waterton's experiments, kindly presented me with some
of them, and also a bit df the poison itself, in a
lump looking like a bit of pitch. I bought a bird,
a thrush, in St. Martin's lane, and having made a
solution of the poison in water, placed a drop on
the tip of a sharp-pointed instrument and wounded
the bird. I waited five or ten. minutes, but it did
not seem any the worse. I then cut off a very
small portion of skin of the bird, and placed the poison on the muscles of the breast; in about three
minutes the bird began to pant and open its beak,
the nictitating membrane, at the same time, coming
forward over the eye. In six minutes it suddenly
sprang up into the air and fell down dead. This
poison had been kept in the College many years,
yet it seemed not to have lost any of its efficacy. A




THE' COBRA DI CAPELLO.         269
post-mortem examination revealed effused blood at
the point where the wound was inflicted, as was the
case with the rat struck by the cobra (see further
on); the lungs were not gorged with blood, but the
heart was full of thick black clots. Animals killed
with the poison are not injurious when eaten.
I have also killed frogs with wourali; they take
from five to twenty minutes to die. I killed a rat
also with it, and continued artificial respiration for
one hour and twenty minutes.  The rat so far
recovered as to be able to crawl alonr, but it soon
afterwards died; I had great hopes 1 fhould have
recovered it. As Mr. Waterton mentions the fangs
of snakes as forming part of the wourali poison, I
placed a solution of it under the microscope, but I
could find neither traces of powdered bone, nor of
spicules peculiar to the poison itself: it appeared to
be composed of vegetable matter.
This poison would have been fatal to the animals
in a much shorter time had it been fresh instead of
having been made some thirty years ago; even at
this length of time it preserves its fearfully poisonous
powers. What must they have been when it was
freshly made!
All poisonous snakes shed their poison-fangs, but.
not their other teeth; the reason being, that often,
when they catch hold of an animal, the tooth gets
broken off. Now if another tooth did not come ur




270         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
in its place, the snake would be deprived of its
weapon, whether of offence or defence. In a little
bag behind the tooth which is in working order,
are other teeth in all stages of development, from
that ready to come into work to-morrow to that the
size of a small hair. The snakes at the Zoological
Gardens frequently shed their teeth, which are found
about on the floor of the cage. Not unfrequently,
too, they get broken off when a victim is seized, and
get swallowed with that victim: they are then passed
out in the dung.
Wishing to ascertain whether these shed teeth
were poisonous, I inserted underneath the skin of a
rat the separate tooth (given me as a separate tooth),
and left it in the wound above an hour. It had no
effect whatever upon the rat, except to make him
hungry. I did not much expect it would have any
effect, for there were marks at the top of the tooth,
showing that it had been thrown off Jy absorption,
and not broken off by violence. The tooth is simply
a poison-conductor, and if the owner had not ejected
poison lately through it, it would, of course, be as
harmless as any other non-venomous tooth.
I well recollect a story impressed upon my mind
in infancy-but I know not the origin of it, or where
to look for it-of a farmer in America having been
bitten in his boot by a snake; he went home and
died.  His son soon " stepped into his father's




THE COBElA DI CAPELLO.         271
shoes;" he died also, and I believe a third person
also died, having -worn the boots. My interpretation of this story is, that "the boot" was a thin
leather mocassin, as is generally worn in America.
The snake bit the farmer through the mocassin, and
the.tooth being ready for shedding, was torn out,
and remained highly charged with poison, which
poison was emitted by the snake when he made his
bite. The second man put on the mocassin, thereby
receiving a slight scratch in the foot. He would
probably take no notice of this, but continue working; the heat and perspiration of the foot would
then dissolve the poison still adhering to the fang,
and it would find easy access into the body through
the scratch made by the tooth, and the man would
die. This might happen a third time, if the dose of
poison on the tooth was very strong.
In confirmation of my theory, I would adduce the
fact that vaccine matter is allowed to dry on the tip
of a lancet. When introduced into a puncture made
in the human skin, it is found not to have lost its
efficacy; but this vaccine matter must be fresh when
first placed on the lancet, or it will not prove to be
of any use.
The Scythians must have been aware that this
poison of snakes would retain its venomous effects
after it had been taken from the animal and dried,
for they were accustomed to dip their arrows in it




272         TH  COBRA DI CAPELLO.
when re-dissolved in the water, and allow it tc
remain there ready for use. The South American
Indians also are aware of this fact; for Mr. Waterton
tells us, that "in preparing that most deadly of all
poisons, the'wourali,' besides pounding together
with certain roots two species of ants-one of which
is very large and black, and so venomous that its
sting produces a fever, the other a little red ant,
which stings like a nettle-he adds the pounded
fangs of the Labarri snake, and those of the Counacouchi snake: these he commonly has in store, for
when he kills a snake he generally extracts the fangs
and keeps them by him."
The flesh of snakes is not uncommonly eaten by
the poor Bushman, and also by the Australian
natives. Wandering along their vast deserts, and
having but the bow and arrow to rely upon to kill
an animal for their dinner, they often go many
hours, nay even days, without flesh. The wild
creatures soon find out that man is their enemy, and
avoid him. Great as may be the natural cunning
of the savage in the capture of his prey, greater still
is the wariness of the wild deer or kangaroo to get
out of the way. The puny arrows, without poison
on them, of the Bushman would fail to bring down
any large animal, it would only go away and die of
the wound; he therefore tips his arrow with poison.
This poison is easily soluble in the blood of the




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.         273
victim,. and his exertions to escape by flight only
hasten the operation of the poison; as the motions
of the muscles, and the accelerated action of the
heart, soon distribute the fatal fluid throughout the
system, and the animal quickly falls.
Mr. Campbell, in his travels, narrates that one of
his attendant Bushmen was shot with a poisoned
arrow between the shoulders. His head swelled up
to an enormous size, and he died with all the
symptoms of snake-poison.  The arrow was probably armed with poison extracted from the puffadder or some other poisonous desert snake. Again,
Mr. Gironiere, in his " Twenty Years in the Philippines," tells us that he paid a visit to the Agetas or
Negritos-a savage people living in a state of
nature, the tiue aborigines of the Philippines. He
was obliged to fly from them under a shower of
poisoned arrows. He says: "On emerging from
the forest I noticed a slight scratch and a few drops
of blood on the first finger of the right hand, a
scratch which I attributed to an accident during my
hasty flight: I thought no more of it." The scratch,
however, was determined not to be forgotten: it
soon became; a serious wound, and nearly cost Mr.
Gironitre his life. Doubtless, a poisoned arrow had
just grazed his finger, and, as his body was-in a
heated and excited state, had quickly been absorbed.
Sir T. Mitehell, in his interesting book, gives us
12*




274         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
direct.evidence of the Australian natives. eating
snakes.
I myself once had the opportunity of tasting a
snake; a boa-constrictor had been killed by an accident, and came into my possession. I tried the experiment, and cooked a bit of him: it tasted very
like veal, the flesh being exceedingly white and firm.
If I had had nothing else, and could have forgotten
what I was eating, I could easily have made a dinner
of it. In November, 1829, my late father, then canon
of Christchurch, met in the High-street, Oxford,
Black Will-who was then a celebrated coachman,
and drove the "Defiance"-carrying, not a coachman's whip, but tugging along in each hand a crocodile about four feet in length. Will had bought
them on speculation in London, and my father purchased them from him. The first thing he did was
to prove (which he never doubted) the possibility
of turning the crocodile's fore legs backwards, so as
to make a sort of bridle, thus confirming, if indeed
it required confirmation, that a crocodile could be so
treated. Both the crocodiles were put into hot
water: one died in the water, and the other lived
but a few hours. They were taken over to the
anatomy school at Christchurch, and dissected by
the late Dr. Kidd. Both Dr. Kidd and my father,
thinking they would never have such a good chance
again, agreed that they would taste a little bit of




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.          2 5
the crocodile, and see whether its flesh was good
or not. They did so, and without suffering from
the experiment. Many persons assisted at this
feast, and the flesh was pronounced to be excellent,
much resembling sturgeon or tunny. At that time
there lived in the anatomy school, all among the
skeletons and preparations, a very old man named
William. I don't believe he ever had any other
name, for he was always known in Oxford as William. Now this William  was the most curious
weazen old fellow ever beheld. He wore the oldfashioned knee-breeches, gaiters, and broad-tailed
black coat. His face looked exactly like a preparation, and on his little round head (more like a skull
than a head) he wore a very old wig. Altogether
he looked much like an injected skeleton with
clothes on; and I confess that, when a little boy, I
had the greatest awe and respect for William, particularly when he let down from its aerial position
the skeleton of the man who murdered the lady at
Abingdon. This skeleton had a rope attached to it,
and it was suspended high up in the air, in the
centre of the anatomy school.  It was William's
favorite lion, and when I went to see him he always
let down the skeleton to give a lecture on the
beauties of anatomy, and the atrocity of the murder.
The rope was just long enough to allow the skeleton's feet to touch the ground, and it used to come




276         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
down thump on the floor, making its articulated
bones rattle again; and then when on the floor, the
slightest' touch would make it reel and roll about,
swinging its gaunt arms in all directions. Little did
I then think what labor was in store for me in the
shape of "grinding at the bones" (as studying
human osteology is called in medical-student par
lance), previous to appearing before the examiners
at the Royal College of Surgeons:-but to return to
the crocodile. William, with his hands in his
pockets, watched narrowly the dissection going on,
and still more narrowly did he observe the steak
sent away for a gastronomic trial, resolving in his
own mind to have, as well as his master, a slice off
the crocodile. In the middle of the night there
came a furious ringing at the bell, and a messenger
from the anatomy school to say that William was
dying. Poor William was found with his wig off
sitting up in his bed with his hands to his stomach,
looking the picture of misery and ugliness. The only
answer he returned to questions was, " Oh that crocodile! oh that crocodile!" It was soon seen what was
the matter, and by proper remedies William was
cured of his crocodile. In the morning, being now
quite recovered, he confessed that, as-the gentlemen
had taken home a bit of the crocodile to eat, he did
not see why he should not have some also, so he had
a bit for supper. He found it so good that he hat




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.          277
saved his butcher's meat, and made a meal of it.
He declared, and I believe in all honesty, that he
would never again eat crocodile for supper. The
reason why William suffered from the crocodile, and
his masters did not, was that William ate enough
for five people, and his masters merely had just
tasted it for curiosity. That crocodiles can be eaten
without injurious results is evident from the following passage from  Madden's "Travels in Egypt:"
" I got a small portion of a young crocodile, six feet
long, broiled to ascertain its taste. The flavor a
good deal resembles that of a lobster, and, though
somewhat tougher, it might certainly be considered
very excellent food." The most striking peculiarity
in the crocodile is its digestion. In the one I dissected I found several pebbles in the stomach: on
each side of the fore shoulder I found a follicle containing mhsk, or at least a substance which does not
differ from it in smell. One weighed two drachms,
the other something less. This, in Cairo, fetches a
large price, being used as a stimulant. In reference
to these stones the Arabs, I understand, say that
the crocodile swallows a fresh one at each birth-day.
Mr. Quekett showed me a box full of pebbles about
the size of marbles: these are from the gizzard, or
rather from the place where the gizzard was before
it was decayed, of that most curious gigantic New
Zealand bird; the Dinornis or moa.




278         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
The cobra di capello, whose other names are the
Nag, El Haje, or Haje Naseler, in Arabic, has
received its name, capello, from the appearance it
presents when viewed in an irritated state, or when
preparing to bite, at which time it bends its head
rather downwards, and seems, as it were, to have a
hood on. The head is comparatively small, and at
a slight distance behind it is a lateral dilation or
swelling of the skin. This part can be extended at
the will of the animal, and is marked by a very
large and conspicuous patch, resembling a pair of
spectacles. This is prodiced by a thick layer of
black pigment underneath the skin, as may be seen
in a preparation at the College of Surgeons. At
this same place may be seen a beautiful skeleton of
a cobra in the act of striking, from which it will be
seen that the distension of the skin above mentioned
is produced by the ribs below the head being perfectly moveable at right angles to the spine, so that
the act of elevating the ribs stretches out the loose
skin of the neck, after the manner of a fan.
One would think, from the following lines, that
Virgil must have seen a cobra in its well-known
menacing attitude. It is a beautiful description of
a man killing his sworn enemy, a snake; and the
very words he uses express the haste and fright of
the  one, and  the proud inturgescence of the
other:



THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.                279
"Cape saxa mann, cape robora, pastor,
Tollentemque minas, et sibila colla tumentem
-Dejice." *                        Geor. iii. 421.
Our great poet, Miltonj, also describes this re.
markable fact, at the same time starting the supposition that, previous to the fall, the snake
" Addressed his way; not with indented wave,
Prone on the ground, as since, but on his rear
Circular base of rising folds, that towered
Fold above fold a surging maze."
It has often struck me to consider a curious point
as regards the mode of progression of the serpent
before the curse was pronounced upon him.  Milton,
in the above lines, tells us how this progression was,
btt  his description  seems rather vague.  We read
in the third chapter of Genesis, "And the Lord God
said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this,
thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every
beast of the field; upon thy belly thou shalt go,
* "Take, shepherd, take a plant'of stubborn oak,
And labor him with many a sturdy stroke;
Or with hard stones demolish from afar
His haughty crest, the seat of all the war;
Invade his hissing throat and winding spires
Till stretch'd in length the unfolded foe retires.
He drags his tail and for his head provides,
And in some secret cranny slowly glides."-DRYDEi.




280         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life." If
this passage be taken literally, it would appear that
before the curse the serpent did not go " upon his
belly."
Anxious to obtain high authority on this point, I
consulted a learned divine, an old and sincere friend
of my father's, who most kindly and candidly
informed me that, having looked into commentators
ancient and modern, he could arrive at no satisfactory conclusion.
All the pre-Adamite snakes whose bones have
hitherto been discovered hare certainly the same
conformation of vertebrae or back bone, viz. the
ball-and-socket joint, as those of the present day;
which conformation is expressly adapted to their
moving along upon their bellies; and their internal
organs must have necessarily been in conformity
with their vertebral structure.
If, then, the serpent before the curse progressed
by any other means than upon his belly, his structure, especially that of the back bone, must have
been different to that proved to have been present
by geological researches; in fact, it must have been
a different animal altogether.
The nearest approach to a snake is a lizard: this
creature does not go upon its belly but upon four
legs. In the southern districts of Africa there is a
most curious creature that seems intermediate be.




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.          281
tween a snake and a lizard. It has four minute
limbs, which are furnished each with four toes, and
it is most properly called a Saurophis (taupog, a
lizard, and oqg, a snake), or the snake lizard. I
read, "that, as might be inferred from its figure, its
movements are completely serpent-like." This is
very remarkable, inasmuch as it is, speaking with
all deference, within the limits of possibility that
the pre-Adamite snakes were like the Saurophis, and
had legs which they might have used as legs. If
we were to find the bones of a Saurophis under the
same circumstances that we find those of the preAdamite snakes, there  would probably be no
evidence of its having had legs, and we should not
know that it had differed from other snakes in this
particular point. The pre-Adamite snakes, then,
might have had legs for all we can tell to the
contrary.
After the curse had been pronounced, if it had so
pleased the Creator, he might have caused the snake
to be formed without legs but still in structure a
true snake. In this case the curse may be said to
be held in abeyance in the Saurophis.
Again, it is an interesting fact, that we find, even
in some snakes of the present day, typical legs,
existing under the skin; thus in the boa-constrictor
we find near the tail two hook-like claws, sheathed
with horn, which are visible externally. Dissect up




282         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
the skin above these claws, and we find a series of
bones, exactly corresponding to the hind leg of an
ordinary animal, but of course imperfectly developed: thus we have a bone corresponding to the
tibia or shin bone, to the tarsus or ankle, to the
metatarsus or small bones of the foot. This rudimentary leg has muscles to move it, and its use is to
assist the animal in the grasping or prehensile action
of its tail.
Supposing, then, the pre-Adamite snake to have
gone on four legs, we might explain the passage by
saying that after the curse the legs were struck off,
but that the undeveloped legs were left (concealed,
however, from casual observers) as evidence of what
it formerly'had been, and a type of its fallen condition.
Upon the whole, however, it is more probable that
the curse has a figurative meaning; and that, as
explained to me by the gentleman above mentioned,
the passage may be thus paraphrased: "Thy original
formation.moving upon thy belly, shall henceforth
be a mark of thy condemnation, as it.wili facilitate
the predicated evil, Thou shalt bruise his head, and
he thy heel."  In a similar way the rainbow probably
appeared in the clouds to mankind before the flood;
but after the flood it was made a " token of a covenant" that the earth should not again suffer from a
flood. The woman; too, would always have brought




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.         283
forth, but after the curse she was to bring forth in
sorrow. Upon this I would submit the remark that
the words are, "Unto the woman he said, I will
greatly multiply thy sorrow," which would give the
notion that even before the curse the sorrow was
not altogether absent.
The second part of the curse, "Dust shalt thou
eat all the days of thy life," may be said to be
literally fulfilled in the present day, even though it
has (as is most probable) a deeper figurative meaning. That the snake actually swallows much dust
when feeding I have frequently observed. His head
being of necessity on the ground when he gorges
an animal caught on the ground, the dust would
naturally adhere to the prey as it was being gulped
down. This fact was more forcibly impressed upon
my mind when, examining a box full of the dung of
many different kinds of snakes, I found adhering to
the dung, and also mingled with it, numerous stones,
from the size of a pea to fine sand, which the snake
had swallowed when gorging his prey.
These rentarks upon the literal meaning of the
word quoted, I write with all deference to- higher
authorities than myself: it is, however, a subject
upon which speculations may be harmlessly enter
tained.
Milton alluding to the cobra's hood, says:



284          THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
"His head 
Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes;
With burnish'd neck of verdant gold, erect
Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass
Floated redundant."
Further on, when the snake is leading the way to
the forbidden fruit, Milton says of him:"Hope elevates, and joy
Brightens his crest."-Paradise Lost, Book ix.
From its frequently moving along with the greater
part of its body erect, and with its head in continual
action, as if looking round with great circumspection, this species is regarded by the East Indians as
the emblem of prudence, and they seldom name it
without some epithet, as "royal, holy." The ancient
Egyptians also observing the habits of this serpent
imagined that it guarded the place it lived in;
accordingly they made it the emblem  of Cneph,
the divinity whom  they supposed to govern the
world (i 7aoc JoS aiv), and with this idea represented
it in their temples, sculptured on each side of a
winged globe.
The cobra was also employed by them as a mark
of regal dignity, and is seen on the fore part of the
tiara of almost all Egyptian statues of deities and
kings, as may be observed on the caps of Memnon
and other figures in the British Museum. We fre




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.          285
quently see the figure of this serpent in the hieroglyphic records of this wonderful people, where it
seems to have two meanings, according to the bend
of its body. First, it simply signifies the form and
power of the letter S; secondly, it indicates the
planets on account of the obliquity of their course,
whereas the sun is represented by a beetle.
The cobra still abounds among the rocks and ruins
of ancient Egypt, and in its native untamed state
(that is, when it still has its poison-apparatus intact)
it is regarded with well-founded dread by the inhabitants. It is very fond of getting into houses, or
rather mud-huts, which abound in Egypt. The mud
cracks with the heat, and these cracks form convenient resorts for the cobra's domicile. We find
a passage in the prophet Amos that distinctly alludes
to this fact:-" As if a man did flee from a lion, and
a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned
his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him." Amos
v. 19.
It is nearly certain that this is the snake which the
ancients described under the name of Cleopatra's
asp; and its predecessors were probably the serpents
chosen by the magicians of Pharaoh when they imitated the divine miracle wrought by Moses. Genesis
vii. 10.
I have heard an explanation of this false miracle as
performed by Pharaoh's magicians. They took the




286         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
snakes tight round the neck, and, by compressing the
parts with their fingers, prevented the return of blood
fiom the head, thus producing pressure on the brain,
and for a time insensibility. A snake thus operated
on would remain quiet some time on the ground,.
looking not unlike a rod.
In the book of Numbers we read that serpents
were sent to punish the children of Israel: "And
the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and
they bit the people, and much people of Israel died."
This took place near Mount Hor in Arabia, and as
a confirmation of the fact, I find in Herodotus a
curious passage relating to the abundance of snakes
in Arabia and the plague of serpents. "Arabia is
the last inhabited country lying to the southward,
and the only region which produces frankincense,
myrrh, cassia, and ledenum. All these things the
Arabians gather with some difficulty, myrrh only
excepted. They collect the frankincense by burning
styrax, which the Phoenicians export into Greece;
for flying serpents, small of body and with variegated
skins, guard the trees which bear the frankincense,
a great number round each tree, etc. As for vipers,
they are found in all parts of the world; but flying
serpents are found in thick swarms in Arabia, and
nowhere else, and therefore they appear to be very
numerous."
From our earliest infancy.we have all heard of the




THE COBRA DI CAPELtO.          287
snake-charmers of India, who are said to handle these
venomous reptiles with impunity: some believed it,
some did not. In the year 1850, however, the Londoners had an opportunity of seeing with their own
eyes (since the invention of the pseudoscope this,
however, has been proved a dubious test) this wonderful performance. We have most of us seen it at
the Zoological Gardens; but Mr. Broderip, in'his
"Note Book of a Naturalist," has so graphically
described the scene, that I may be pardoned for
introducing it here. He says: " Standing in the
open space in the reptile-house, the old Arab said
something to the young one, who stooped down
under the reptile-cases on the north side of the room,
and took out a large deal box with a sliding cover.
Having withdrawn the cover, he thrust in his hand
and pulled out a large, long'Naia Haje.' After
handling it, and playing with it a little while, he set
it down on the floor, half squatted close to it, and
fixed his eye on the snake. The serpent instantly
raised itself, expanded its hood, and turned slowly
on its own axis, following the eye of the young Arab,
turning as his head, or eye, or body turned. Sometimes it would dart at him, as if to bite. He exercised the most perfect command over the animal.
All this time the old Arab stood still, passively
regarding the operation.; but presently he, too,
squatted down, muttering some words opposite to




288         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
the snake. He evidently affected the reptile more
strongly than his more mercurial relative, though he
remained motionless, doing nothing that I could see
but fixing his eyes on the snake, with his face upon
a level with the raised head of the serpent, which
now turned all his attention to him, and seemed to
be in a paroxysm of rage. Suddenly it darted openmouthed at his face, furiously dashing its expanded
whitish-edged jaws into the dark hollow cheek of
the charmer, who still imperturbably kept his position, only smiling bitterly at his excited antagonist.
I was very close, and watched very narrowly; but
though the snake dashed at the old Arab's face, and
into it more than twice or thrice with its mouth
open, I could not see the projection of any fang.
Then the youth brought out a cerastes, which I
observed seemed overpowered, as if, as the country
people say, something had come over it. He placed
it on the floor, but this serpent did not raise itself
like the naia, bit as the charmer stooped to it,
moved in a very odd, agitated manner on its belly,
regarding him askance. I thought the serpent was
going to fly at him, but itdid not.
"He then went to another box, drew the lid, and
took out more snakes, one of which was angther
naia, and the others of a most venomous kind.
Now there were two naias, with heads and bodies
erect, obeying apparently the volition of the char



THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.         289
mers. -One of the snakes bit the youth' on the
naked hand and brought the blood; but he only
spat on the wound and scratched it with his nail,
which made the blood flow more freely.
"I observed that the charmers only used their
own serpents, which they had, I presume, brought
with them; and I confess that the impression on
my mind was, that they had been rendered innoxious by mechanical means."  Mr. Broderip afterwards makes this observation: "There is no longer
a shadow of doubt that the subjects operated upon
by the serpent-charmers at the Zoological Gardens
had been deprived of their poison-fangs."  It is
therefore pretty clear that these cobras were harmless, and that these Indian fellows, who, as we all
know, are the best conjurors in the world, take
advantage of the habits of the cobra to gain a livelihood, blinding the eyes of the bystanders by telling them that their music, such as.it is, causes the
snakes to dance; and that their lives are defended
from the poison by some supernatural gift.
I must here add that no doubt these Indian gentremen are up to the fact that the snake's fangs,
although once removed, will quickly grow again, so
that a snake whose bite may be innocent to-day,
will, in the course of a short time, have a fresh
supply of poison-fangs, and will become a dangerous customer to handle. If I were a snake-charmer,
13




290         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
I should look to the teeth of my operatees every
other day. I must also beg to add to Mr. Broderip's observations that the Arabs wore red buskins
and drawers, with the evident purpose of exciting
and teasing the snakes, who can't bear this color
near them, and, as in the case of the common viper,
always fly at it when brought in contact with them.
Let the reader wave a red handkerchief before the
snake-cages in the Zoological Gardens, and he will,
if they be in an excitable state, see the creatures'
attention immediately attracted.
Red seems either to be very attractive or else
very disagreeable to most creatures. Fishermen
bait for mackerel with a bit of red cloth; and I
have read a story of a shark having been attracted
by the red frock which a poor little child had on
when playing about the sands at the mouth of the
Buffalo river. The shark had come close to the
shore to eat the entrails of an animal which had
been thrown into the sea: the brute saw the child,
and made a plunge at it, but providentially missed
its aim.
I have requested a friend in India to report to
me his observations on the tame cobras. He tells
me that the men make a cut under the upper lip of
the cobra they wish to tame: they then turn up the
lip and expose the parts which secrete the poison or
rather the duct and the reservoir for the poison




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.                291
j3st above the teeth: this they completely eradicate with  a knife, and then  apply the hot iron,
effectually  destroying  the parts.  A  snake thus
operated on would be for ever afterwards harmless,
as the burnt parts could never recover themselves.
At the College of Surgeons, in the cabinet containing the preparations of the parts of snakes, is a
very interesting specimen, which fully explains, further, how these Egyptian and other serpent-charmers tame their snakes. It is labelled thus:-" No.
651. The skull and anterior vertebrae of a poisonous. naja which had been deprived of its fangs,
together with part of the short maxillary bone
which contained their matrices. This was one of
the specimens exhibited by the snake-charmers in
India. Presented by Dr. Wallich."*
In a pretty little paper entitled "Anecdotes of
Serpents," published  by  Chambers, we read the
following story, fully confirming the idea that the
fangs of the charmed snakes are removed:" In Madras, while I was there," says a corre* It has been suggested to me that if the cobra be irritated
and made frequently to bite some object, just before the juggler's
performance, the fangs, no longer supplied with poison from the
exhausted glands, would be innocuous; I think the experiment
would be dangerous, for physiology teaches us that the secretion from many glands, particularly the salivary, is instantaneous
under fresh excitement.




292         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
spondent, " this belief (that the charmers can handle
poisonous snakes without suffering hurt) received-a
sad shock by a circumstance which occurred. One
of the most noted serpent-charmers about the district chanced one morning to get hold of a cobra of
considerable size, which he had conveyed to his
home. He was occupied abroad all day, and had
not time to get the dangerous fang extracted from
the serpent's mouth. In the evening, he returned
to his dwelling, considerably excited with liquor,
and began to exhibit tricks with his snakes to
various persons who were around him at the time.
The newly-caught cobra darted at his chin and bit
it, making two marks like pin-points. The poor
juggler was sobered in an instant.' I am a dead
man,' he exclaimed;'nothing can save me.' His
professional knowledge was but too accurate. In
two hours he was a corpse. I saw him a short time
after he had died; his friends and brother jugglers
had gathered round him.' No, no; he only forgot
one little word, one small portion of the charm.'
In fact, they declared that he was not dead at all,
but only in a sort of swoon, from which he would
recover in seven days. But the officers of the barracks close to which the deceased had lived interfered in the matter. They put a guard of one or
two men on the house, but of course the poor ser
pent-charmer never came to life again."




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.          293
Besides showing off these tricks with the cobras,
the Egyptian mountebanks have another mode of
deceiving the spectato s. There abounds in Egypt
a very small, but very venomous, snake called the
cerastes, of which there are three specimens at the
Zoological Gardens. This species of snake these
men pretend to handle with impunity, but in reality
they procure from Turkey a snake that very much
resembles the Egyptian, with this difference, that
the former is perfectly harmless and has no horns on
its head, whereas the latter is very venomous, and,
as we may see at the Gardens, has a little horn projecting on each side from the summit of the head.
The use of these horns is probably to act as a sort
of bait for small birds, who imagine them to be
worms, and thus become an easy prey to  the
cerastes. Be this, however, as it may, the mountebanks place the spurs of the common lark, or other
small birds, on the head of the harmless Turkish
cerastes, and handle it as though it were a true
native of the Egyptian desert.
There remains, however, another, and that an
important point, which must not be passed over in
silence: It is, what can be done to save the life of
a person who has been bitten by a cobra or any
other poisonous serpent? It is within the bounds
of possibility (may it not be so?) that the reader of
these pages may be so unfortunate as to be bitten




294         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
by a snake; my advice to him would be, instantly
to suck the wound as hard as he can for some time.
Care must at the same time be taken that the skin
inside the mouth be perfect and unbroken; for, by
a wise provision of Nature, no external poison is an
internal poison, and vice versd. Whether the saliva
decomposes the poison or not, we are as yet ignorant; suffice it to say, that the poison of the snake,
as has been frequently proved by experiment, is
innocent when taken into the stomach, most deadly
when applied to an external wound, however minute.
M. Humboldt has observed that in some experiments performed with the poison of vipers, one person swallowed the whole of the poison that could be
extracted from four large Italian vipers, without
suffering from it. In the same way, the poison from
the poisoned arrows of the South American Indians
can be swallowed without deleterious consequences,
provided always that there is no wound on the lips,
then it would le fatal. Writing on this point, Fontana, who in 1737 published a book upon poisons,
remarks: "These contradictions reduced me to the
philosophical necessity of tasting the venom myself.
I did so, but not without repugnance, and, as the celebrated Morgagni observes, I shall advise ho one to
try it in the gaiety of his heart, lest he should happen at the time to have some excoriation on the
tongue, which is a circumstance not always easy to




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.          295
determine."  Fontana tasted the poison himself; I
myself have had a dose of it, and would rather not
repeat the experiment. He says: "I could find no
taste in it, except of a very insipid liquor."
If the sucking operation cannot be performed
instantly, put on a cupping-glass. This answers the
same purpose, it abstracts the poison from  the
wound, and, at all events, prevents its going far into
the system, and poisoning the blood. The sucking,
however, is the safest and most efficient remedy.
The African cupping instrument is the horn of a
cow. Small cuts are made on the skin, and then
the horn is applied, the tip of which is cut off. The
operator then exhausts the air, and, finally, he stops
the opening in the horn with a bit of wax, which he
holds in his mouth for that purpose. We all of us
recollect the story of Queen Eleanor sucking the
poison out of the wound in her husband's arm;
and a wise and physiological queen she was; she
could not have done better under the circumstances.
Ladies are often the best doctors, after all: they
were so formerly, it appears, and in many cases
prove so even now.  So well aware were the
ancients of the efficacy of suction in such wounds,
that when Cato made his expedition through the
African deserts, abounding in snakes, he employed
certain native wild tribes, called Psilli, to follow in
the rear of the armiy. These fellows pretended te




296         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
have a charm against snakes: they were, however,
great imposters, for all they did was to suck out the
poison from the wound. Knowing human nature,
however, they, like wise men, ascribed their cures
to certain awful, mystic rites performed over the
patients, and, I have no doubt, exacted fees accordingly. It appears that there are to this day tribes
in the East who practise these same arts. Savory
relates, that when at Rosetta, he was present at a
procession, the rear of which was brought up by a
crowd of savage-looking outcasts, who held snakes
in their hands, and played all manner of tricks with
them, to the astonishment of the natives.  These
fellows were professed curers of snake-bites. I have
myself witnessed the good effects of suction in snakebites. When house-surgeon at St. George's Hospital, I was called on to treat a boy who had been bitten in two places in the forefinger of the right hand
by a viper which he had caught on Wandsworth
Common. He had carried it up to London by the
tail-without its touching him: he then, out. of bravado, put it on the table of a public-house, and
began to play tricks with it; in an instant it bit him.
I ordered him (half-an-hour after the infliction of
the wound) to suck it as hard as he could, This he
did for nearly two hours. Some slight inflammation
of the arm followed, but in four days he was quite
well, and went about his usual, occupation again,




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.          297
The viper, it being the middle of summer, was in
good condition, and on dissecting him I squeezed
only two or three drops out of the poison-glands,
showing that the boy must have had a full dose of
the venom. I have carefully examined all the evidence on record, as regards the most efficacious
internal medicine that can be given in such cases,
and have come to the conclusion that nothing is so
good as ammonia; that is, the common hartshorn,
which everybody is so prompt to suggest in faintingfits. The best form of it is the preparation called
"Eau de luce," of the remedial powers of which we
have lately read so much in the journals. This eau
de luce, be it known, is composed of hartshorn,
spirits of wine, and oil of amber. Those whose
travels lead them into places frequented by venomous snakes would be wise to carry a bottle of it in
their pocket..
Talking the other day to my friend Mr. Frcehnert,
bandmaster of the regiment to which I have the
honor to be attached, he related to me the following
most interesting story, which is worthy of all credit.
Mr. Frcehnert is a most intelligent and observant
gentleman, who. has seen much of India, when
serving there in another regiment. He said that
when travelling over a desolate plain in India, forty
miles from Bangalore, he saw three men at some
little distance mowing about as if something was
13*




298         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
the matter. He went up to them, and found that
they were natives, catching cobras anong the rocks
and stones, and that the cause of the disturbance
was that one of them had been bitten by a cobra.
One of his companions, however, had the means to
cure him in his pocket, for he took out two small
round balls, one of which he applied to the wound,'and, at the same time, made passes from the shoulder
towards the fingers, that is, in a contrary direction
to what the poison taken up by the absorbents
would go, with something that looked like a small
stick. In about five minutes the sufferer began to
get better, and ultimately recovered. Mr. Frcehnert,
thinking this very extraordinary, obtained the balls
from tLe man. Knowing that the native Indians
are wonderfully quick at changing things, he expressed his doubts as to whether the balls just used
were those he then had in his hand,*even though he
had never let them go out of his sight. The proprietor of them then took an oath that they were
the same, the form of swearing being peculiar. He
took the tail of the cobra which had inflicted the
bite upon the man, and had been killed, and twisted
it round a leaf of the betel-nut, and upon this he
swore that he was telling the truth.
Some time afterwards, at quite a different place, a
man happened to be bitten by a cobra, and Mr.
Frcehnert volunteered the use of his little balls and




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.          299
stick. They were applied, and with good effect, and
the man soon recovered.
Mr. Frcehnert has most kindly given me the two
little-balls, each the size of a large pea, and the bit
of wood-like material. Upon one of the balls the
dry blood of the man who was bitten is still to be
seen. The stick I have ascertained to be a little bit
of common gamboge, used in our phalmacopceia as
a drastic purge: no anti-poisonous virtues have
hitherto been ascribed to it. The two little balls I
took to the College of Surgeons, where Mr. Quekeft
kindly examined them for me. We could make out
nothing of them but that they were composed of
some vegetable material, for vegetable hairs were
seen in abundance.
Now, what is to be said to this story? That the
natives of India have remedies suited to the diseases
of the country is quite certain; certain also is it, as
I have it from several persons, that a native doctor
can cure where a European fails. Snake-bites are
not uncommon in these regions, and it is reasonable
to suppose that long experience should have led to
the discovery of some antidote to the poison, so fatal
to human life. It is an unwise and an unphilosophical act to laugh at and leave unexamined as good
for nothing the native remedies of any country, and
I am quite certain that there are many substances,
particularly in the vegetable kingdom, which are




300         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
successfully used in the cure of disease by the
natives of India and other countries, long experience
having taught their value; yet these remedies remain unknown to our Pharmacopoeia simply from
want of observation on the part of Europeans. It
might be said that the men Mr. Frcehnert saw were
cheating and wishing to deceive; but yet this seems
unlikely, for they were far away from any human
habitations, catching cobras, their stock in trade for
their performances. A European was the last person they would expect to see in this spot, and they
could not have seen Mr. Frcehnert coming, for he
was under a canvass covering to the carriage or cart
he was travelling in.
The accident had happened before Mr. Froehnert
came up, and the man was rolling about in agonies
when he came on the scene; his arm swollen and
useless: it was a case of life and death. Was, then,
this the time for a trick? Again, on a second occasion, the balls and stick were used with success. I
confess I cannot explain this, but I shall endeavor to
test their efficacy by direct experiment. Any how,
I shall present the blood-stained balls and stick to
the College of Surgeons, with their history appended, for the use of others interested in this
subject.
About four years ago I myself, in person, had
painful experience of the awful effects of snake's




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.         301
poison. I have received a dose of the cobra's
poison into my system, luckily a minute dose, or I
should not have survived it.  The accident hap.
pened in a very curious way, I was poisoned by
the snake, but not bitten by him. I got the poison
second-hand. Anxious to witness the effects of the
poison of the cobra upon a rat, I took up a couple
in a bag alive to a certain cobra. I took one rat out
of the bag and put him into the cage with the snake.
The cobra was coiled up among the stones in the
centre of the cage apparently asleep. When he
heard the noise of the rat falling into the cage, he
just looked up and put out his tongue, hissing at the
same time.  The rat got in a corner and began
washing himself, keeping one eye on the snake,
whose appearance he evidently did not half like.
Presently the rat ran across the snake's body, and
in an instant the latter assumed his fighting attitude.
As the rat passed the snake, he made a dart, but,
missing his aim, hit his nose a pretty hard blow
against the side of the cage. This accident seemed
to anger him, for he spread out his crest and waved
it to and fro in the beautiful manner peculiar to his
kind. The rat became alarmed, and ran near him
again. Again cobra made a dart,'and bit him, but
did not, I think, inject any poison into him, the rat
being so very active; at least no symptoms of
poisoning were shown.  The bite, nevertheless,




302         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
aroused the ire of the rat, for he gathered himself for
a spring, and measuring his distance sprang right on
to the neck of the cobra, who was waving about in
front of him. This plucky rat, determined to die
hard, gave the cobra two or three severe bites in
the neck, the snake keeping his body erect all this
time, and endeavoring to turn his head round so as
to bite the rat, who was clinging on like the old
man in Sinbad the Sailor. Soon, however, cobra
changed his tactics. Tired, possibly, with sustaining the weight of the rat, he lowered his head, and
the rat, finding himself again on terra firma, tried to
run away; not so, for the snake, collecting all his
force, brought down  his erected poison-fangs,
making his head tell by its weight in giving vigor
to the blowv, right on to the body of the rat. This
poor beast now seemed to know that the fight was
over, and that he was conquered. IHe retired to a
corner of the cage, and began panting violently,
endeavoring, at the same time, to steady his failing
strength with his feet. His eyes were widely
dilated, and his mouth open as if gasping for breath.
The cobra stood erect over him, hissing and putting
out his tongue as if conscious of victory. In about
three minutes the rat fell quietly on his side and
expired: the cobra then moved off and took no
further notice of his defunct enemy. About ten
minutes afterwards the rat was hooked out of the




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.         303
cage for me to examine. No external wound could
I see anywhere, so I took out my knife and began
taking the skin off the rat. I soon discovered two
very minute punctures, like small needle-holes, in
the side of the rat, where the fangs of the snake had
entered. The parts between the skin and the flesh,
and the flesh itself, appeared as though affected
with mortification, even though the wound had not
been inflicted above a quarter of an hour, if so
much.
Anxious to see if the skin itself was affected, I
scraped away the parts on it with my finger-nail.
Finding nothing but the punctures, I threw the rat
away and put the knife and skin in my pocket, and
started to go away. I had not walked a hundred
yards before all of a sudden I felt just -as if somebody had come behind me and struck me a severe
blow on the head and neck, and at the same time I
experienced a most acute pain and sense of oppression at the chest, as though a hot iron had been run
in and a hundred weight put on the top of it. I
knew instantly, from what I had read, that I was
poisoned; I said as much to my friend, a most intelligent gentleman, who happened to be with me, and
told him if I fell to give me brandy and eau de luce,
words which he kept repeating in case he might forget them. At the same time I enjoined him to keep
me going, and not on any account to allow me to




304         THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.
lie down. I then forgot everything for several mi.
nutes, and my friend tells me I rolled about as if very
faint and weak. He also informs me that the first
thing I did was to fall against him, asking if I looked.
seedy. He most wisely answered, "No, you look
very well." I don't think he thought so, for his own
face was as white as a ghost; I recollect this much.
He tells me my face was of a greenish yellow color.
After walking or rather staggering along for some
minutes, I gradually recovered my senses, and steered for the nearest chemist's shop. Rushing in, I
asked for eau de luce. Of course he had none, but
my eye caught the words " Spirit. ammon. co.," or
hartshorn, on a bottle. I reached it down myself,
and pouring a large quantity into a tumbler with a
little water, both of which articles I found on a sodawater stand in the shop, drank it off though it burnt
my mouth and lips very much. Instantly I felt relief from the pain at the chest and head. The chemist stood aghast, and on my telling him what was
the matter, recommended a warm bath. If I had
then followed his advice these words would never
have been placed on record. After a second draught
at the hartshorn bottle, I proceeded on my way,
feeling very stupid and confused.
On arriving at my friend's residence close by, he
kindly procured me a bottle of brandy, of which I
drank four large wine-glasses one after the other,




THE COBRA DI CAPELLO.         305
but did not feel the least tipsy after the operation.
Feeling nearly well, I started on my way home, and
then, for the first time, perceived a most acute pain
under the nail of the left thumb: this pain also ran
up the arm. I set to work to suck the wound, and
then found out how the poison had got into the
system. About an hour before I examined the dead
rat I had been cleaning the nail with a penknife, and
had slightly separated the nail from the skin beneath.
Into this little crack the poison had got when I was
scraping the rat's skin to examine the wound. How
virulent, therefore, must the poison of the cobra be!
It already had been circulatedin the body of the rat,
from which I had imbibed it second-hand.




FISH AND FISHING.
THE cold winter months have arrived; yet we have
been out fishing on the days apparently the most
favorable for sport, though without much success.
The fish have retired into winter quarters among
the reeds and' mud, so we content ourselves with
recollections of past sport, and dip our pen into the
inkstand instead of our hook into the Thames.
We well remember, one fine day in August last,
going out on a gudgeon-fishing expedition. A luxurious dog-cart carried us quickly to Surley Hall,
well known to'Etonians.  There we found the
Charon of this part of the river, Finmore by name,
waiting for us in his punt. This old man's family
has had the fishing of the water for more than a
hundred years; and the old man himself knows
every hole and patch of weeds in the river just
about Windsor as well as a Londoner does the shops
of Regent Street.
In the punt were placed three chairs and three
fishing-rods, two punt-poles with sharp iron spikes
on their ends, called in these parts "rypecks:" why
or wherefore they have received this name we cannot ascertain; lastly an enormous iron rake. Three




FISH AND FISHING.          307
anglers occupied the three chairs; two of them
were great salmon-fishers, who, but a few weeks ago,
thought a fish under twenty pounds nothing: they
were now pleased by catching a little gudgeon not
a quarter of an ounce in weight. The laziness of
gudgeon-fishing is indeed laziness.  "If" (as most
aptly remarked at the time) "you exert yourself in
the least, the whole thing is spoilt." It is quite
contrary to the rules to put on one's own bait, to
alter one's own float, to take the captured fish off
the hook: all is done by Charon, who not unfrequently has quite enough to do. Everything prepared, the boat is pushed out into the middle of the
river, the two rypecks are fixed firmly into the
ground at the bottom, and the boat is fastened to
them across the stream. The first operation is to
rake up the bottom well with the big rake. Immediately this is done, all the gudgeon in the neighborhood flock to the place, and if they are in a biting
humor, begin instantly to be caught,  Bold biters
are these gudgeon: they take the hook with a rush,
and down goes the float deep into the water. This
is capital fun when the fish are on the feed: so
pleased, indeed, was one of the salmon-fishers aforesaid, that he exclaimed, " Well, there are only two
kinds of fishing, salmon fishing and gudgeon fishing," a dictum worthy of the respected speaker.
When we first went out, not a fish could we catch,




308           FISH AND FISHING.
though we knew there were plenty close under the
punt. The reason was that we had not got the
hook at the proper depth; it ought to be an inch,
or rather less, from the bottom; if it is more, the
fish, who feed only at the bottom, don't see it, and
it passes over them untouched. Gudgeon are curious fish as-regards biting; some days they will bite
furiously, another day they won't look at the bait.
Even when they are biting well, they will suddenly
leave off. The remedy then is to "scratch their
backs," as Charon says, "with the rake."  This will
often make them begin again. We have been out
and caught eight or ten fish in one day, and a few
days afterwards, with two rods in the same place,
we catch fifteen dozen-the best day's sport we ever
had. Much, however, depends on the bait; worms,
we find, are-decidedly the best, and those the small
red worm from the dunghill. They will be taken
by the fish better if they are kept in moss a day or
two beforehand, than if used directly they are dug
up. We have found that a little cream poured on
the moss causes the fish to bite at them with eagerness; the reason probably is, that the worms feed
on the cream and thereby acquire a fine transparent
look. Something, too, depends on the line: this
must not be too thick, nor of a color easily seen in
the water. The finest line that can be used is made
of human hair; it is much finer and much stronger




FISH AND FSHING.             309
than gut made from silk-worms; but it must be
made by the fisherman himself; it cannot be bought
anywhere that we know of. It is difficult, also, to
get human hair long enough; the hair-merchants in
the City are the only people who sell it; it is,
moreover, very expensive. In the New Museum at
South Kensington I see some very fine specimens of
human hair among the "Animal Products."  The
label affixed to it gives the following interesting
information: " Human hair is much used for curls,
wigs, &c. It is an article of commerce in many
countries, young women selling their tresses for
trinkets and dresses. A head of hair weighs from
i lb. to a lb.; its wholesale price is from 30s. to 60s.
per lb. The light colored and most valuable hair
comes from Germany and the Scandinavian States.
The darker shades are supplied by the female
peasants of France, from whom the spring harvest
of hair is stated to average 200,000 lbs..' I understand that very light-colored hair is the most
expensive.
I learnt casually that some anglers who are very
fastidious about their lines, prefer above all things
hairs out of the tails of the Queen's cream-colored
horses; but as the tails of these horses seemed in
pretty good condition the last time I saw them, I
imagine the favor of pulling them is granted only to
a few.




310             FISH AND FISHING.
Very often, in gudgeon-fishing, I have caught a
most beautiful little fish, covered with scales in
which all the colors of the rainbow are visibly glittering.  This fish is called a "Pope," and is, as
Charon informed me, a breed between a gudgeon
and a perch-a very excusable mistake, for it presents characteristics of both its reputed parents.
It resembles the perch (unfortunately for itself) in
having a very long and prickly fin on its back,
advantage of which is taken by the boys about
Windsor, who are very fond of " plugging a pope."
This operation consists in fixing a bung in the sharp
spines on the poor pope's back fin, and then throwing him into the water. The pope dives and swims
away merrily; but immediately he ceases swimming
the bung brings him  to the top of the water;
astonished and frightened, he dives again-again to
be brought to the surface.  The dead bodies of
popes which have been thus cruelly plugged are
frequently seen floating down the river. I suppose
there must be some relic of Catholic persecution
about this; but Charon knew no more than how to
operate upon the unfortunate fish.*
* The fish (but I cannot name any fish in particular) is well
known as an emblem of our Saviour, from the fact that the
Greek word for fish, IXOv;, contains the initials of His name and
titles, viz., Ir7aovs XpoLTrS Oeov vlos SorTp; Jesus Christ the Son
of God, the Saviour. Again, the idea has been enlarged upon,




FISH AND FISHING.               311
When the gudgeon are caught, they are placed in
the well of the boat, which communicates with the
water outside by means of an open grating. The
fish seem to know they are captives, for they all.
crowd to the grating when one attempts to take
them -out of the well. I have also observed, about
all the kinds of fresh-water fish that I have caught,
that they will, when placed on the bank, always
jump towards the water.  I once saw a fine barbel,
that was covered with grass by the water side and
thought to be quite defunct, suddenly begin a series
of jumpings towards the river; and a fine race I
had to prevent his getting back again into the hole
whence he had just been taken. How is this to be
accounted for? I have placed a fish where he can
neither see nor hear the water, even supposing that
he has the power of seeing and hearing when out of
his own element; yet he has always jumped in the
proper direction towards it.
In a letter published for private circulation from
the son, since unfortunately deceased, of one of our
for the two curved lines which form the outline of a fish are
joined at their ends, and used to enclose either the figure of our
Saviour, the Virgin, or the patron Saint.  Fishes are also
emblematic of Christians in general, in allusion to the call of
the Apostles, or to the supposed meaning of the miraculous
draught of fishes recorded in the last chapter of St. John's
Gospel.




312           FISH AND FISHING.
greatest naturalists, to his father, I find the following
interesting description of a mode of fishing in India,
which I have never seen described elsewhere: " The
peculiarities and the lions of the Indus are the'pullah'
and the pullah fishers. The pullah is a much esteemed
fish, said to be found only in the Indus. It is something like the grey mullet in appearance, and in
taste a little better than a mackerel; but it is
thought a great deal of. Every one eats pullah.
It is caught in the following manner, by a particular
caste of natives brought up to the business. A large
earthen vessel is procured, shaped like a lentil seed
(or rather a saucer with a dome to it) with an aperture at the top: the vessel is about a yard in diameter,
and half-a-yard deep, the orifice eight inches across.
This of course floats on the water, and will sustain
a considerable weight. Pushing it off from the side,
the fisherman throws himself on his belly across it,
and so closes the aperture, with his body thus forming a kind of boat, which is propelled by the motions
of the arms and legs, as in swimming. This buoys
him up on the rapid stream, and prevents his being
swallowed up by the eddies of the river, and also
enables him to use his net, which is stretched across
a kind of fork attached to the end of a long pole.
This machine is held perpendicularly in the water,
the ends of the fork touching the bottom. The
current causes the net to bag and spread out as the




FISH AND FISHING.           313
man floats on his earthen pot down stream. The
pullah, lying head up, cannot see the net from the
muddiness of the water; so that it comes upon him
unawares. The fisherman feels a tug, and instantly
closes the net by means of a string he holds, and
the pullah is caught. The next process is to haul
him up, and stick the poor brute with a skewer;
and shifting his belly to one side, the pullah wallah
drops the fish into the pot, and resumes his employment. Would not this do for -? He might
catch scores of gudgeons in the Thames by this
means, besides astonishing the natives."
When the water is low and there is no wind the
marks of the gudgeons' snouts can be seen on the
mud by the sides of the river, or even in the centre
of the river if the water is low enough. lThese
gudgeon-tracks are interesting to the geologist, for
they might afford a key to many marks found in
a fossil state in several districts of England. Witness
the block of stone in the British Museum, showing
the marks of the retiring tide and the indentations
of the rain which must have been falling at the same
time. If an antediluvian gudgeon had been grubbing on this stone, I trow his marks would have
puzzled many of the learned.
Upon the mud in shallow pools, curious marks
can often be observed, as if a person had been
drawing patterns on it with a small stick. These
14




314           FISH AND FISHING.
are the tracks of the common caddis-worm, that
curious worm which forms for its unprotected body
a covering of sticks, small stones, and even shells,
which house it carries about on his back; it is these
houses that make the grooved marks in the mud.
Relative to these marks of fishes made in geological
periods, I here insert a communication made by my
father to -the Ashmolean Society at Oxford, June,
1843.
"Dr. Buckland made a communication on other
modes of locomotion than swimming in the family
of fishes, and showed that the fins in certain genera
perform the functions of feet and wings. Several
fishes of the Lophius family, or' fishing frogs,' have
the fins converted into feet, or paddles, by means of
which some species have the power of crawling and
hopping on sand and mud, whilst the Lophius Histrio
can live three days out of the water, and walk upon
dry land. The climbing perch, Perca, or Anabas
Scandens, of the.Indian rivers, is known to live a long
time in the air, and to climb up the stems of palmtrees in pursuit of flies, by means of spinous projections on its gill covers. Fishes of the Silurus family
have a bony enlargement of the first ray of the
pectoral fin, which is also armed with spines; and
this organ is not only an offensive and defensive
weapon, but may also give ambulatory movements
along the bottom of the fresh waters which these




FISH AND FISHING.            315
fish inhabit. The flying fishes are notorious examples of the conversion of fins into an organ of
movement in the air. MI. Deslongchamps has lately
published, in the Transactions of the Linnaean Society
of Normandy, 1842, an account of his observations
on the ambulatory movements of the gurnard (Trigla) at the bottom of the sea. In 1839 he had an
opportunity of observing these movements, in one
of the artificial sea ponds, or fishing traps surrounded by nets, on the shore of Normandy. He
saw a score of gurnards closing their fins against
their sides, like the wings of a fly in repose, and,
without any movement of their tails, walking along
the bottom by means of six free rays, three on each
pectoral fin, which they placed successively on the
ground. They moved rapidly forwards, backwards,
to the right and left, groping in all directions with
these rays, as if in search of small crabs. Their
great heads and bodies seemed to throw hardly any
weight on these slender rays or.feet, being suspended in water, and having their weight further
diminished by their swimming-bladder.  During
these movements the gurnards resembled insects
moving along the sand. When M. Deslongchamps
moved in the water, the fish swam away rapidly to
the extremity of the pond; when he stood still,
they resumed their ambulatory movement, and
came between his legs.  On dissection, we find




316           FISH AND FISHING.
these three anterior rays of the pectoral fins are
supported each with a strong muscular apparatus to
direct their movements, apart from the muscles that
are connected with the smaller rays of the pectoral
fin. Dr. Buckland then stated that Miss Potts, of
Chester, had lately sent to him a flagstone from a
coal shaft at Mostyn, bearing impressions, which he
supposed to be the trackway of some fish, crawling
along the bottom by means of the anterior rays of
its pectoral fins. There were no indications of feet,
but only scratches symmetrically disposed on each
side of a space that may have been -covered by the
body of the fish whilst making progress by pressing
its fin bones on the bottom. As yet, no footsteps
of reptiles or of any animals more highly organised
than fishes, have been found in strata older than
those which belong to the Triassic or New Red
Sandstone series, of.which the Cheirotherium of
Germany and Cheshire and the Ornithichnites of
Connecticut are notorious examples. The abundant
remains of fossil fishes, armed with strong bony
spines, in strata of the Carboniferous and Old Red
Sandstone series, would lead us to expect the frequent occurrence of impressions made by their
locomotive organs on. the bottom of the ancient
waters in which they lived. Dr. Buckland proposes
to designate these petrified traces or trackways of
ancient fishes by the term Ichthyopatolites, or Fish.




FISH AND FISHING.            317
tracks (IXuu, a fish; rcarog, a path)."  How pleased
my father would have been with the Windsor
gudgeon marks!
It would appear that fish have the power of
altering their color, so as to resemble the color of
the water in which they have been confined: this is
the case particularly with minnows, sticklebacks,
and trout. Ir. Grove, the fishmonger at Charing
Cross, will tell you where a trout comes from, by
his color. The trout which live in peat-colored water are sometimes nearly black; those from fine
running streams, such as the clear chalk streams
about Winchester, are of a beautiful silvery color.
Gudgeons placed in a glass bowl will become very
white, and lose the beautiful brown color on their
backs. Not long ago, I observed some very woebegone, pale, debauched-looking carp in the tanks of
the Regent's Park Gardens. I remarked to my
companion that I was sure, from their pale color,
they had been in captivity somewhere. The keeper
soon afterwards told me that they had been presented by Mr. Albert Smith, who had had them in
his artificial pond, in the Egyptian Hall, for many
weeks: the poor fish had been all this while living
in gas-light. I am anxious to see if they will recover their colors: they probably will in course ot
time.
In a cheesemonger's shop, in Tottenham-court



318            FISH AND FISHING.
road, is a large glass bowl full of gold fish: these
fish look ghastly pale and white, poor things! They
cannot help so doing, for their transparent habitation is fixed on a stand which is painted dead white,
and they sympathise with the color. In the same
street, a fishmonger has a vivarium, but he wisely
has placed in it several of those beautiful Venus-ear
shells that exhibit such wonderful iridescent colors:
the fish have benefited by this, and they look as
well again as the cheesemonger's fish.  A  fishmonger at Billingsgate-market told me he generally
knew from what part of the coast fish came by the
color of them. This observation was apropos to a
quantity of Dutch Jack that were displayed on his
slab; and which looked very dingy and darkcolored, as though they had lived in stagnant and
dirty water; very different from a clean and brightcolored Thames Jack. Dutch Jack never look to
me the same fish as the English Jack: there is no
real difference, I believe. The fishmonger said
there was about as much difference as there is between an Englishman and a Dutchman. Some of
the trout in Scotland, which live in water discolored
by the peat, become quite black, but they do not
appear to be the worse as regards eating. In some
of the Scotch lakes, I understand, trout of two
kinds are found, viz., the original inhabitants of the
lake, which are of a bright fresh color, and also




FISH AND FISHINW.           319
black-looking fish which have come down the
streams into the lake.
Mr. Quekett also tells me that in these Scotch
lakes the trout which live in the deep water in the
centre of the lake are of a dark color, and those
which are found along the shallow margins are of a
bright color. The reason of this probably is, that
the fish near the margin receive more light-both
that which comes directly through the water and
that which is reflected from the stony bottom-than
those which live in the deeper parts of the stream.
While upon the subject of black fish, I must introduce a curious instance of a white man's body, or
rather his bones, being turned black. The African
slavers call their human cargo "black ivory," and in
the following story we have agenuine case of " black
ivory."  It was frequently mentioned by my father
in his lectures, but is, I believe, not generally known.
In the year 1834, a large tumulus or barrow was
opened in the village of Gristhorpe, near Scarborough, and in it they found a coffin made of the
trunk of an oak tree, the bark of which remained
perfect, and even the lichen upon the bark. Over
the coffin had been placed oak branches the thickness of about one foot, likewise covered with bark.
When the coffin was opened they found the skeleton
of a man, who must have stood not less than six feet
three or four: the marks upon the bones indicated




820            FISH AND FISHING.
that the muscles that had been attached to them had
been very powerful, and that he must have been a
very strong man. His head was examined phreno
logically by Professor Elliotson, and he pronounced,
from its configuration, that the owner had been well
calculated for command; and it is reasonable to
conclude from this fact, and from the evident attention paid to his burying-place, that he had been a
great chief; other evidence also adduced rendered
it probable that he belonged to the tribe of ancient
Britons called the Brigantes. The body was enveloped in a strong skin, the hair of which was soft
and fine, much resembling that of the sheep, or of a
goat, but not quite so long.* It was much decomposed. Among the portions of skin were found a
few foot-bones of some small animal, supposed at
first to be those of a small hunting-dog; but they
were afterwards examined by my father, who pronounced them  to be the bones of a weasel, and
accounted for their presence by supposing that, as
the savage tribes ofNorth America and elsewhere,
at the present day, use the skins of animals with the
feet attached for purses and bags (Mr. Catlin figures
them in his book under the name of medicine-bags),
so the ancient Britons probably used the skins of
* The microscope would have set this point at rest had it been
used.




FISH AND FISHING.             321
small animals as convenient receptacles for their flint
arrow-heads, food, &c. But the most curious part
of the story is, that the bones, being naturally
white, were found to be of an ebony color, quite
black, and also in a marvellous state of preservation.
The water had dissolved out the tannin from the
oak bark, and the tannin had combined with the iron
of the soil, making tannate of iron, or, in other
words, ink. These bones might have been polished
and passed off well as " black ivory," in the common acceptation of the term.
Sticklebacks are wonderful fish to change their
color. I have seen sticklebacks at the tail of a millpond at Islip, of the most beautiful iridescent color:
the bottom  was composed of clean white gravel
stones.  Again, there is a ditch running round
Christchurch meadow, at Oxford: here the water
is black and dirty, and the sticklebacks are of a
brown and almost black color. It is in this family
of sticklebacks that we find an instance of a fish
making a nest. At first this sounds curious, " fish's
nest", being in the same category as " a mare's
nest;" but I do not see anything contrary to reason
in it, as the idea of a nest is usually associated with
eggs, and everybody has heard of fishes' eggs or
spawn., The fifteen-spined stickleback is known to
build its nest along our shores; it is a sea-fish. In
the Naturalists' Library, in vol. V. of British Fishes,
14*




322           FISH AND F1SHING.
I find a description of one of the nests of these fish,
as follows: "The nests are to be found in several
parts of the coast (of Berwickshire) in spring and
summer, in rocky and weedy pools, between tide
marks; they are about eight inches in length and
pear-shaped, formed of branches of common fucus
with various corallines, &c.
" These are all bound together in one confused
compact mass, by means of a thread run through
and round in every conceivable direction.  This
thread is of great length, and as fine as ordinary
silk, and somewhat elastic, whitish, and formed of
some albuminous secretion. The eggs are laid in
the middle of the nest, in several irregular masses
of about an inch in diameter, each consisting of
many hundred ova, which are of the size of ordinary shot, and of a whitish or amber color, accord.
ing to their degree of maturity. It would appear
that the fish must first deposit its spawn amid the
growing fucus, and afterwards gather its branches
together round the eggs; at the same time weaving and incorporating all the rubbish that is lying
or floating round the nucleus."
Mr. Peach, a great observer, wrote to my father
on this subject in 1845, as follows: "Mr. Crouch,
of Penzance, was the first that I heard of noticing
a fish's nest, and it was that of the fifteen-spined
stickleback; he has, paid great attention to the




FISH AND FISHING.            323
habits of this fish. It is a mostdetermined warrior;
and will give battle to a fish of much greater size
than himself: they are plentiful in this harbor
(Fowey, in Cornwall.) The nest is c.omposed of
the Corallina officinalis, and it is a difficult matter to
find it out. There is also a fish which deposits its
ova in the fissures in the rocks, and this fish watches
both ova and young."  The nidification of fishes
does not rest on the testimony of Mr. Crouch only,
for they have been frequently found after the ova
have been hatched; and similar observations made
by several on the Cornish coast, so that which was
at first doubtful, is fully proved. Mr. Crouch and
myself have frequently found specimens when we
have been out ^ fish-nesting."
Again, Mr. Moggridge, who lives near Swansea,
writes to my late father on this subject: "Mr.
Crouch, of Penzance, was the first to observe the
fishes' nest.  In May and June six nests were
discovered near that town.  They are formed in
ledges or recesses of the rocks. The Corallina officinalis is laid in strata the shape of a compact ball,
but rough and not easily distinguished from  the
adjacent weeds. Others are made by bringing together with a glutinous thread the broad leaves of
Ulva, somewhat after the manner of the tailor bird,
only that the process is by lapping and not by
stitching. The eggs have been examined by the




324            FISH AND FISHING.
microscope both before and after birth. They are
easily hatched by changing the water every day,
but the little fish soon die. Mr. Crouch has seen,the old fish in the act of nidification; if the fabric is
damaged it is repaired the next tide."
I am aware that the fresh-water stickleback, so
common in our ponds and ditches, makes a nest like
his salt-water relation. I have never been lucky
enough to find one.
Mr. Albany Hancock has, however, recorded in
the Magazine of Natural History, 1852, many interesting observations on this curious subject; and as
he himself watched the whole process, I take the
liberty of inserting an abstract of his observations:
" I had the pleasure of seeing the nest built from
the very commencement, and through all its stages.
The place selected for the nest was the bare, flat
top of a piece of oolite, where it formed a right
angle, by resting against the glass partition which
separated two ponds (in a tank), in one of which
were kept four minnows and two small eels, and in
the second the sticklebacks.. Now he (the male
fish) arrives with a large fibre in his mouth, deposits it, re-arranges the whole of the materials,
already accumulated, with his mouth; removing
one fibre to this place, and another to that, and departs in his search for more. Now he returns, carrying a small piece of gravel, which is carefully




FISH AND FISHING.             325
placed on part of the fibres, as it were, to keep
them down; he then draws himself slowly over the
whole, and is off again. Now he brings another
fibre, which he dibs in with his snout, so as to make
it interlace with the others. Now he is busy poking
a circular hole in the middle of the accumulated
materials with his snout; thus he conveys, without cessation, decayed rootlets, gravel, sand, and
whatever he can find that will answer his purpose.
"But I must observe that the specific gravity of
his materials is continually tested; for having found
what appears a suitable fibre, it is carried a little
way, then projected to a short distance from his
mouth, and watched as it falls; if it falls rapidly, it
is tried again in the same manner; and if it then
proves too light, it is abandoned altogether, and
another selected. If there should be any strong
fibre, which he has a difficulty in causing to remain
in the position he requires, a small quantity of sand
is brought in his mouth, and adroitly placed on the
top of the fibre to keep it down: if this does not
effect the purpose so as to please him, the refractory
piece is taken out, and rejected altogether. At the
same time he hangs or hovers close over the surface
of the nest, and throws his whole body into a
curious and rapid vibratory motion, by which he
causes a rapid current of water to be projected onl




326           FISH AND FISHING.
the materials as though to prove their stability;
and when this operation is performed, the lighter
particles and light mud, as it were, fanned or winnowed out by the generated current, may be seen
floating away. Another very curious operation is
the action of drawing his body slowly over the surface of the materials which form the nest. I believe that at the time he excretes a glutinous matter, which acts as a species of cement, and tends to
keep the materials together; at the same time that
the pressure of his body may render them more
compact; or it may be that the whole surface of
the nest is by this action charged with the milt, and
thus the impregnation of the eggs more perfectly
insured. The whole time occupied in accumulating
the materials for the nest was about four hours,
during which interval a goodly quantity had been
obtained. If we wish to study to advantage the
nidification of this species, a few specimens should
be placed in confinement about May or June." As
these fish are so common, and so easily observed,
the above passage may induce some of my readers
to make further observations on this comparatively
new subject.
But lately I made an expedition to the Isle of
Dogs, opposite Greenwich. I found (end of July)
thousands of young sticklebacks in the shallow
ditches which intersect the island. They were all




FISH AND FISHING.             327
very minute; only two full-grown sticklebacks did
I see all day. One was dead, and the other was
very nearly dead. Query, what becomes of all the
full-grown fish?  The waterman who pulled me
across the river said that shoals of sticklebacks
come sometimes to the landing-steps, close by where
the steamers stop; he thinks they are washed out
of the ditches of the Isle of Dogs opposite. I did
not see any when I was there, but the water was
very muddy, and the wind was blowing.The male stickleback, in the breeding season, is
really a most beautiful little fish. His skin is quite
iridescent, with magnificent red and green colors
blended together. These colors, as is the case with
most fish, are very evanescent, and soon fade away
after the animal's death. The best way I know of
td preserve them is to skin the fish, as soon as they
are taken out of the water, varnish them carefully
directly the skin is dry enough to receive it, and
hang. them up to dry in the dark. I never yet saw
a stuffed fish in a fishing-tackle shop or elsewhere
that had not lost its colors. If these fish had been
dried in the dark, the colors would have remained
much more perfect. This rule will apply to the
skins of snakes and lizards as well as to fish.
Mr. Rowell, the intelligent subcurator of the
Ashmolean museum  at Oxford, tells me that the
best dressing for preparations of fish, crocodiles,




328            FISH AND FISHING.
etc., which will never get perfectly dry of them
selves, is painters' knottings: it is made of shelllac and naphtha. He says: "The specimen I tried
it on is a crocodile's head, that was always damp
in wet weather, but now feels dry at all times.
I made it very dry and hot, and then put the varnish on with a brush, giving it two or three coats,
as it dries in a moment. It is now about three
years since the head was varnished, and it looks as
well as when first done."
In the fishing-tackle shop of Mr. Gouland of
Crooked Lane, near London Bridge (Mr. Gouland,
by-the-by, makes the best roach-hooks I ever fished
with), I saw several stuffed fish. Fish stuffed are,
generally, hideous objects, but these were beautifully prepared, their shape being well cared for,
and their colors preserved in an extraordinary manner. I inquired who had stuffed them, and was
told that the stuffer's name was Cooper, and that
he lived in Radnor street, St. Luke's. I would advise my readers, if they ever want a fish stuffed, to
employ him.
In our gudgeon-fishing expeditions I often observed large islands of rushes, of which Charon
seemed very careful, not allowing the purit to break
or otherwise injure them. These rushes are valuable for two things: firstly, they are sold to make
chairs and baskets; secondly, they harbor the jack,




FISH AND FISHING.           329
which the knowing Charon catches. A few days
ago I saw a man making chairs with this sort of
rushes; he informed me that he bought them at
Maidenhead, and that they were very dear,'as he
had to give four shillings "a bolt" for them, a bolt
being about as much as he could grasp with both
arms.
In these rushes, too, the otters live. I much
doubted their existence so near London, till I saw
their spoor or foot-marks under the high muddy
banks; and having taken the impression of a dead
otter's foot in clay, I know it again when I see it.
Charon says, when he is out in the grey'of the
morning, taking up his nets, he hears them barking and calling to one another. On cross-examination, he "supposes" there must be twenty otters
between Windsor and Maidenhead. If they exist,
they must be very wary animals, and don't often
show.
A famous hiding-place are these rush islands for
the jack: as many as twenty-six jack have been
caught im a net in one day, and some of them fine
fish! but the king of the jaaks was caught in the
autumn of 1855 at the first lock above Windsor.
Charon informed us that he had "been after him"
many days. A big fish has as much chance of
escaping our friend as a noted pickpocket of escape
ing the detectives at Jullien's concerts. At last the




330           FISH AND FISHING.
big jack was marked down behind the lock-gate,
and was immediately captured. When in the net,
he made no resistance at all, but lazily gave up the
ghost at the bottom of the punt; and so proud was
Charon of him, that "he sat up all night"  watching
his body; why or wherefore we can't conjecture,
except that he was looking forward to getting a
guinea for him in the morning. This immense fish
was in beautiful condition; he weighed upwards of
thirty pounds, and had a barbel three pounds weight
in his stomach. He was caught a few days after a
flood, when the water was beginning to run off. It is
therefore probable that he escaped out of some pond
higher up the river and swam downwards in search
of adventures, which adventures turned out unfortunately for him. Charon is also of this opinion;
for had he been a river fish, he says he would have
had his wife near him, as jack generally live in pairs.
Nets and divers devices were put into requisition to
catch the female fish; but she, like a wise fish, had
remained at home to be "preserved" in water, not,
like her husband, to be "preserved" in a glass case
in varnish.
But this is not the only large fish Charon ever
caught; it was he who captured the last salmon
ever seen in the Thames above London. Forty
years have passed since the last of his species, in the
Thames, became a Victim to the cupidity of man.




FISH AND FISHING.           331
This poor fish had a favorite hole near Surley Hall,
which was at last found out, and his destruction
determined upon. Accordingly one day the hole
was surrounded with nets on every side, and the
fishermen made sure of their prey; but they were
mistaken. The salmon discovered suddenly that
there was treachery, and, like a brave and wise fish,
he made a jurp, not into the net,-he was too
knowing for that,-but right over it, escaping
triumphant, for a time at least.
Some days afterwards he returned home to his
hole; the nets were again put round him; but this
time, on to the cork lines of the nets which were in
the water, was fastened a net, which remained
suspended in the air by a string. Again.the salmon
made a rush and a jump; he got well over the net
in the water, but fell, of course, into the net suspended in the air. He died an inglorious death,
but his remains were honored by becoming "a
dainty dish to set before a King;" for he was taken
to the King, then residing at Virginia Water, who
gave the lucky netter a guinea a pound for his fish;
twenty guineas for a few hours' work! But, alas!
salmon in the Thames are now as extinct as Dodos
inf the Mauritius. It is Charon's opinion that the
salmoA are kept away from the Thames, not by the
steamers or by the sewage matter in the water, but
by the drainage from the gas-works. He gave his




332           FISH AND FISHING.
reasons at the time he told us this, and we were
persuaded to back his theory.
Not many years ago there came a great flood,
and this flood had no respect for the royal fish-ponds,
but flooded them also. We understand that when
the water subsided very many fine specimens of fish
were caught in the Thames by our friend Charon:
these fish had escaped from the royal preserves,
never again to return there. A somewhat similar
instance has occurred at Oxford, where, within the
last two years, great numbers of Prussian carp have
been caught, where no carp were caught before.
I understand that the original stock came from a
gentleman's pond, and the fish got out in the flood
time. That terrible weed which has done so much
harm in Cambridgeshire has got up to Oxford, and
is filling up the ditches in Christchurch meadow, and
the shallow water where the boats are stationed,
very fast; we wonder swans are not turned down
to eat it, for they thrive upon it. Mr. Quekett
informs me that a species of mussel (Dreissena
polymorpha) has been imported from abroad, and
began by making a colony in the docks, in the
neighborhood of London; thence it has gradually
spread, and is now working its way up the Thames
and its tributaries.
Among thick banks of weeds in shallow places, in
the neighborhood of deep water, the jack delights




FISH AND FISHING.                 833
to bask-a fatal habit for him: many a jack have 1
wired in the neighborhood of Oxford when basking
in this way.* On watching a jack in a vivarium 1
remarked a curious provision given him, to enable
him to thrive well in this stagnant water. All fish
* Capital jack trolling may be had in the neighborhood of
Windsor during the autumn and winter; and I have known
many fine fish taken by a single rod in one day. Jack trollers
would do well to examine a very pretty little contrivance invented by Mr. Andersson, fishing-tackle maker, of 12, LongAcre, to facilitate the running out of the line, when a dead or
other bait is attached to it. Ordinarily speaking, the fixed loop
on the top of the rod is not placed in such a position as to allow
the line to run freely when a cast is made in a side direction.
Mr. Andersson has invented a loop of solid metal, which, by a
very pretty but simple contrivance, moves readily either to the
right or left according to the direction in which the line is cast.
He calls it " the steel swivel loop."  To effect the same purpose,
and to ease the friction of the line through the ordinary wire
loop, he has invented a very neat little roller, like that inserted
into a common pulley: this he calls the roller loop. I am no flyfisherman myself never having had the opportunity to practise
the art; but I have seen in Mr. Andersson's shop a very neitlooking fly-rod, the lengths of which are fastened together by
exactly the same sort of joint as that used for ladies' parasols;
the advantage being, that all the lengths of the rod can be folded
up parallel to the bottom length, even without removing the line.
It might also prove useful in getting through a hedge, as the rod
could be unfastened in the centre or at any other joint and refixed in a minute without disturbing the line.




334           FISH AND FISHING.
breathe by means of their gills. The little red slips
we see forming the gills contain blood-vessels, and
the blood becomes aerated by means of these quasi
lungs being waved backwards and forwards in the
water. A fish, like a man, requires a perpetual
supply of air to his breathing apparatus, whether
that be gills or lungs. A fish gets his air from the
water, a man gets it from the atmosphere around
him. Reverse the position of the fish and the man,
and the former becomes what is called "drowned"
in the open air, the man is "drowned" in the water.
Sir B. Brodie writes: "Although a diversity of
opinions may have existed formerly as to the mode
in which submersion in water produces death, there
is no such diversity at the present time. Death from
drowning is similar to death in consequence of strangulation; and the want of the due oxygenation,-or
decarbonization of the blood, is the sole cause of the
animal's destruction. A fish taken out of water dies
from drowning, the cause being equally'the want
of the due oxygenation or decarbonization of the
blood."' In both cases the air cannot get to the
breathing apparatus; in the case of the man because
the water intervenes, in the case of the fish because
the numerous little blood-containing filaments which
compose the gills become stuck together, and of
course cannot act. This is the meaning of the violent
gasping of the fish when taken out of water: it is




FISH AND FISHING.           335
endeavoring to separate the gill filaments, but
cannot do so without the intervention of water.
We have heard of fishermen drowning the fish, and
drowning him in the water. Immediately a fish is
hooked, he begins rushing about in a state of alarm,
and thus, every minute, takes more and more out
of himself, till at last he begins to get tired, and to
flag. Then the fisherman wakes him up, and causes
him to continue his exertions to get free; and, of
course, the faster he moves the faster he breathes,
and the more exhausted he becomes. After a while
the strength of the rod and line, or, rather, of the
man's arm at the end of it, becomes superior to the
strength of the fish; and the fisherman gently pulls
the fish's head to the surface of the stream, between
wind and water. Then, upon the exhausted system
of the fish is superadded obstruction in breathing,
and the creature becomes more and more faint as its
head is elevated out of the water. Iis gills stick
together, and he ultimately becomes an easy prey —
a fish drowned in the water. I believe, too, that if
a fish be held by a hook in a very rapid stream he
would be drowned, the water rushing on each side
of him not allowing the coverings of the true gill
substance to expand, so that the breathing-apparatus becomes enclosed as it were in a tightly-fitting
box.
Now the jack living in a favorite stagnant shallow




336            FISH AND FISHING.
requires water to be brought perpetually to its gills.
The water does not come of itself, so the fish, I have
observed, keeps continually moving the two fins
nearest its gills, to create a perpetual change in the
water, propelling that which has already passed
through the gills, and bringing fresh in its place.
We see in this provision an admirable instance of
the foresight and benevolence of the great Creator,
ever adapting the structure and habits of the creature
to the locality intended for it to occupy. Again, to
go back to the common stickleback for an instant:
this little fish living in shallow stagnant water, by
means of a continuous motion of his pectoral fins
keeps up a current of fluid towards his gills.
Neither to the jack nor the stickleback does the
motion appear to cause any exertion:' it seems
natural to them, and a distinct.function apart from
the motion of the fins for swimming purposes. It
is somewhat analogous to the perpetual motion
of the heart, lungs, and internal viscera in our
own bodies. All this is accomplished by a set
of nerves,-the sympathetic,-over which we have
no control. It is. no exertion to us to keep our
hearts or lungs moving, they are not subject to
our will, but sympathise with the emotions of
the body. There is in reference to this a passage
in the book of Job, which I consider to be very
remarkable.  In the thirty-sixth verse of chapter




FISH AND FISHING.          383
xxxviii. we find it written, "Who hath put wisdom
in the inward parts? or who hath given understanding to the heart?"
The chapter in which this passage occurs begir s
with these words:" Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said,
"Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words
without knowledge?
"Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will
demand of thee, and answer thou me."
The verses which follow, among which are the
words quoted above, at verse 36, are all put in the
form of questions, and refer to the power of the
great Creator, as exemplified in the creation. Phenomena never yet understood by man'-such as the
movements and order of the heavenly bodies, the
mysteries of the sea, of thunder, of lightning, of the
clouds, of the snow, of the hail, of the rain, of the
ice, of the hoar frost-all are vividly portrayed to
mortals as things beyond their comprehension. Let
the reader ponder over this and the two following
chapters, and he will be led to feel his own ignorance
of the/ways of the Almighty and the thunder of his
power. Many of the passages in Job referring to
physical phenomena, though at first sight unimportant, may have a deeper sense belonging to
them, which.requires only a knowledge of actual
15




338           FISH AND FISHING.
facts to render every word full of meaning. Thus
we read, chapter xxxvii.,
" Out of the south cometh the whirlwind; and
cold out of the north.
"Also by watering he wearieth the thick cloud:
he scattereth his bright cloud:
"And it is turned about by his counsels: that
they may do whatsoever he commandeth them upon
the face of the world in the earth."
Now what is this but an epitome of the theory of
the circular motion of storms, now so fully made
out, understood, and acted upon, to the great advantage of those who have the necessary knowledge? It would also apply with equal force to that
wonderful regulator of temperature on the face of
the earth, the trade wind.
As regards geological phenomena, we find an
observation in the book of Job insisted upon by the
Director-general of the Geological Survey, Sir
Roderick I. Murchison, F.R.S., etc., in his beautiful
work on Siluria, who at the end of the chapter upon
Job, after telling us " that the indisputable fact is,
that the chief quantities of gold originally embedded
in the upper parts of the vein, have been broken up
and transported with the debris of the mountain
tdps into adjacent slopes and valleys. Silver and
argentiferous lead, on the contrary, expanded so
largely downwards into the bowels of the earth that




FISH AND FISHING.              339
they must yield enormous profits to the miner for
ages to come."  Sir Roderick writes: "Modern
science, instead of contradicting, only confirms the
aphorism of the patriarch Job, who has shadowed
forth the downward persistence of the one, and the
superficial distribution of the other..' Surely there
is a vein for the silver.''The earth has dust of
gold.' 
In a similar way I would explain the passage,
"Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts? or.who hath given understanding to the heart?"
As regards the first half of the verse, let me instance the wonderful process of digestion, whereby
nature, in her secret and living laboratories, works
out such marvellous results. At the lower end of
the stomach is a valve called the pylorus or gatekeeper (-ruXv, a gate; opaw, to overlook). The office
of this remarkable valve is that of a sentry (a sentry,
too, that is never relieved, and yet is always on the
alert) to prevent any portion of food not thoroughly
acted upon or dissolved in the stomach from passing
onwards until it is in a fit state to do so. The dissolved food is caused to traverse'the length of the
intestines, which in man is about thirty feet, or
between five and six times the length of the bodya pretty long tube-by means of what is called the
peristaltic action (rEp, round about; oraXXw, to
draw in, contract).  These peristaltic movements




340           FISH AND FISHING.
continue quite unaffected by the will, which has no
influence whatever over them, but yet, curiously
enough, the emotions seem to affect them. We are
not conscious of the passage of the alimentary matter along the canal so long as it is in a state of
health; but directly anything is wrong, notice is
given by the coming on of pain, or in other words,
a stomach-ache, nature's nrode of attracting attention, and letting us know that her machinery is out
of order.
Along the whole course of the intestinal canal we
find the lining or mucous membrane furnished with
very numerous folds, or minute tufts, called villi:
these project inwards among the food, now converted into a pulpy substance, and absorb from it
what is nutritious, allowing to pass what is not so.
I might give other instances of the meaning of this
word "wisdom," if it be regarded as having a
literal sense applicable to the functions of the " inward parts," but let the above suffice.
I am well aware that the word " understanding,"
as applied to the heart, is generally taken in a
figurative point of view, the heart being regarded
as the centre of life. But the heart cannot properly
be called " the centre of life."  Life is, so to speak,
supported on a tripod, the three divisions of which
have been so ably pointed out by the learned Dr.
Watson in his "Principles and Practice of Medi



FISH AND FISHING.            341
cine."  "First, there is an hydraulic apparatus distributed throughout the frame, consisting of the
heart and other blood-vessels. Next there is a large
pneumatic machine, forming a considerable part of
the whole body. Lastly, the power by which this
machine is to be worked and regulated is vested in
the nervous system (the brain and nerves). Each
of these systems must continue in action, or the
circulation will stop and life will cease." The heart,
-therefore, cannot, in the true acceptation of the
word, viz., "intellectual powers of mind, faculties
of the mind, especially those of knowledge and
judgment," be said to have understanding. But it
has understanding when it alters its pulsations and
regulates the flow of blood according to circumstances, either external or internal. If it were not
to Ilo so the animal economy would be upset by its
means. Thus, in fever, it accelerates its action, as a
means of throwing off the poison. The act of
blushing is but a minor and temporary form of the
same thing. Both these actions are quite out of the
power of our will, and the heart performs them of
its own accord.
Another kind of fish common about Windsor is
the roach, and these will bite well in the winter
time; but they are most uncertain feeders. Some
days they will bite as fast as the hook is put in;
another day, the weather the same, the wind the




342           FISH AND FISHING.
same, the water the same, and not a bite will the
angler get.
These fish run from two ounces to a pound in
weight; and capital sport they give. Being delicate
biters, a very small hook must be used, a line of the
finest silk-worm gut, and a small porcupine-quill
float. An inexperiencedhand will hardly ever catch
fish the first time he goes out; for if he expects to
see his float suddenly disappear, he will be disappointed; a slight jogging of the float is all he will
see. Let him strike quick and sharp, for Mr. Roach
has a-very small mouth, with no teeth in it, so that
he sucks in the bait with his prehensile lips. If we
examine the lips of fish, we shall find another proof,
were it required, of beauty and design, everywhere
apparent in the works of the Omniscient Creator.
The roach lives principally upon small insects and
spawn of fresh-water mollusca, which he finds adhering to the weeds. Unless he had these prehensile
lips, how  would he manage to get his dinner?
Again, examine the mouth of a sprat (an uncooked
one, mind); it looks a little tiny mouth, not large
enough to admit a pin's head; but just push down
the lower jaw, and what will you see? Why one
of the most beautiful insect nets that it is possible to
conceive; a net into which you can get the top of
your little finger, and, of necessity, terribly destructive among the minute sea creatures which the sprat




FISH AND FISHING.            343
feeds on: those pretty little animals which cause the
sea to be luminous at night forming, doubtless, part
of the bill of fare.
Lately, when going over to Guernsey in the steamboat, the captain was feeding the gulls, which followed the boat, with sprats, of which there were
many baskets full on board. Sending coals to Newcastle; thought I; but I soon learned there were
no sprats caught near the Channel Islands. I showed
the captain the mechanism of the sprat's mouth,
and he informed me that, when opened, it much
resembled the net used by fishermen in matching the
sprat itself; so that the fish has furnished his captor
with a pattern for an instrument to work out its
destruction.
On my return from Guernsey, I determined to try
to catch one of these gulls. I accordingly procured
a very long fishing-line, and some fine hooks, tied to
common gut; on these hooks I placed bits of fish,
and cast my line behind the steamer. It was quite
wonderful how soon a gull would see the bait, and
dart at it. But, alas! I never got a single bite at
my hook; the birds were too sharp-sighted; il
every instance just as the gull was about to seize the
hook, he suddenly turned aside as if suspecting that
all was not right: and, although hovering over the
tempting morsel for many minutes, his quick eye
detected the thin gut or the string, and wisely he




344           FISH AND FISHING.
did not try the experiment, but left the bit of fish to
jump up and down in the steamer's wake, and myself at the other end of the string, looking foolish,
and well exemplifying Johnson's definition of an
angler —-a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
What made me more angry was that the gulls would
pick up instantly any bit of fish that was thrown out
without a hook, however small it was. How keen
must be the sight of these birds to discern a bit of
fish not so big as a shilling, in the frothy sea, at the
wake of the steamer? How, again, did these beautiful birds manage to keep up with the vessel, which
was going pretty fast through the water? They
never seemed to move their wings as in flight, but
simply to glide onwards, as though attracted to the
ship's stern by some magnetic power. Let the
reader examine the pectoral or breast muscles of the
next gull he kills, he will find them one solid mass
of firm hard muscle admirably adapted to sustain
-and work the wings. What models of beauty and
lightness are the wings of the gull! The bones are
composed of the hardest possible kind of bone material arranged in a tubular form, combining the
greatest possible strength with the greatest possible
lightness. If we make a section of the wing bone of a
gull, or, better still, of that of an albatross, we shall
find that it is a hollow cylinder like a wheat straw;
but in order to give it still further strength, we see




FISH AND FISHING.             345
many little pillars of bone, about the thickness of a
needle, extending across from side to side: these
buttress-like pillars are in themselves very strong,
and do not break easily under the finger. Again, at
the top of the bone we find two or three holes which
communicate with the interior: through these, when
the bird is alive, pass tubes which are connected with
the lungs; so that when the bird starts for a flight,
he fills his wing and other bones with air, causing
them to act somewhat like a balloon on each side
of him. This explains one of the chief reasons why
man will never be able to fly; his arm bones are
filled with marrow of which he cannot by any means
get rid, should he be ever so anxious to fly like a
bird.
The gannet or solan,goose is a bird that seems
perfectly indifferent to stormy weather and to cold;
if any bird is abroad battling with the elements it is
the gannet. This is by some considered as a sign
of courage on the part of the bird, but it is not s(
much pluck as confidence in its powers. The aircells which give lightness to its body are developed
in an extraordinary degree, so much so that Mr. G.
Montagu writes (1808):
"The gannet is capable of containing about three
full inspirations of my lungs, divided into nearly
three equal portions, the cellular parts under the
skin on each side holding nearly as much as the
15*




346            FISH AND FISHING.
cavity of the body." Now, as a full or extraordinary expiration of the human lungs has been considered to occupy a space of about sixty cubic inches,
so the gannet is capable of containing not less than
180 cubic inches of air at one time, subject to its
will. And it must be recollected that the gannet is
not a very large bird, to contain all this air. This
bird is accustomed to dart suddenly down from a
considerable height upon the fish which it sees on
the surface of the water: its air-padded skin and
body lessens the concussion, and prevents its being
dashed to pieces. Again, nothing could possibly
conduce more to its security against intense cold, or
be better adapted to preserve its animal heat, than
this intermediate space of air between the skin and
the body-on the same principle that we sometimes
put double windows to our houses in very cold weather. The Russians, I hear, have their panes of
glass sometimes three or four double, with an interspace between each pane, to keep out the cold, so
intense in northern latitudes.
I had brought a fish with me, when gull-fishing
from the steamer, to cut up for bait for the gulls:
it was of the species called rock fish, its habitat
being among the rocks. Upon examining the head
of this fish, I found that it had a beautiful contrivance in the conformation of its mouth. Its food
consists of small shell-fish, spawn of shells, etc.,




FISH AND FISHING.           347
which adhere firmly to the rock: now how w as the
fish to pull these off? In the anterior part of the
mouth, both in the upper and lower jaw, we find
several teeth projecting in a forward direction; but
this is not all: suppose a dainty bit of food is espied
snugly concealed deep down in a small hole, how is
the fish to get it out? It has the power of prolongating both its jaws to, nearly the extent of half
an inch from their natural position; this is done by
a most beautiful bit of mechanism, somewhat on the
principle of what are called "lazy tongs."  When
the jaw is in a natural position, the mouth looks not
unlike the mouth of an ordinary fish; but pull the
teeth, and out will come half an inch of retractile
jaws. Thus this fish is fully equipped with a contrivance, by means of which he obtains his daily
food. Who can look at this without seeing in it a
proof of an omniscient and kind Creator? Take,
again, another form of mouth in the fish tribe-the
common gurnard. This fish lives at the bottom of
the water, and hunts about among the sand and
mud for its food. To enable him to do this, the
bones of the head are composed of a bone-like
material, like the skin of a sturgeon, and not of a
soft substance like the head of a mackerel. These
bones end in a shovel-shaped projection, almost
amounting to a snout, at the top of which there are
eight very, hard bony pegs. With this snout he




]348           FISH AND FISHING.
probably pokes about among the mud, and stirs up
the animals he feeds on, which he then easily catches
with his capacious mouth. He has also three things
like fingers on each side of his head, which probably
assist him to feel about, for he lives in very deep
water, where there cannot be much light. The
position of his eyes tells us this also, for they are
placed quite at the top of his head, and in an
upward direction, so as to catch every ray of light
coming from above.
The only fish that is, so to speak, domesticated —
viz. the gold-fish-is a capital example of an infusorial feeder. These poor things when kept in glass
globes, live apparently upon nothing. Give them,
however, fresh water frequently and they will get
fat-that is, as fat as fish ever will get. The bits
of bread thrown in they seldom eat. Upon what,
then, do they thrive?  Why, upon the small, invisible animals, that abound in the water. If the
exuviae of these fish be examined with a microscope,
the flinty skeletons of these said small, invisible
animals will be seen in abundance; their bodies
having been. digested by their devourer, the goldfish. We can no more deny that the fish has. fed.
upon infusoria, under these circumstances, than we
can deny that an owl has eaten a rat when we pick up
the rat's skeleton and fur matted together, as ejected
from the crop of this benefactor to the farmer.




FISH AND FISHING.           349
I once lost a pet hedgehog. High and low I
hunted for it, but nowhere was it found. The next
day, when going to feed an eagle I kept tied up ii.
the garden, I found a large ball underneath his
perch, which turned out to be composed of poor
hedgehog's bristles, bones, and skin. The unsuspecting brute had gone out at night into the garden
to look for slugs and beetles, but had unluckily
come across the eagle, who had made mince-meat
of him, though it is still a puzzle to me why the
hedgehog's sharp bristles did not stick in the eagle's
throat and choke him.
I was informed by a man, who wanted to sell me
five gold-fish, and the bowl in which they were, for
ten shillings, that the fish he buys are bred by a
gentleman near Amsterdam, and sent over by hundreds, in zinc tanks, on board the Dutch eel-boats.
From another source, I learn that there is a breeding-pond near or at Bradford, in Yorkshire, and the
fish are sent up thence by rail to London. Goldfish are said to have been originally confined to a
lake near. the mountain Tsientsing, in China. They
were first brought to Europe in the seventeenth
century, and continued very rare in England till the
year 1728, when a fresh accession was received.
The first which were seen in France were brought
for Madame de Pompadour.
When they were cleaning out the basins of the




350           FISH AND FISHING.
fountains at Charing-cross, I asked the foreman if
he ever found any fish at the bottom, when the
water had been drawn off. He told me that sometimes gold-fish were found, and that he imagined
they got there out of the glass globes of the men
who go about the streets.selling gold fish, and who
come to the Charing-cross fountains-to change the
water. During this operation, a gold-fish or two
might easily escape; or, if the glass bowl got broken
(they are not made of very thick glass) against the
side of the basin the pool would at once become
well stocked.
Some four years ago, I bought in Hungerfordmarket a quantity of small eels, and taking them
home, placed them in a large tub; but they did not
thrive, so I tied them up in a handkerchief, and
transferred them to the Charing-cross basins. I
heard no more of them till a friend told me of a
paragraph he had seen in a newspaper, stating that
some good-sized eels had been found in the basins
at Charing-cross; and that the newspaper correspondent accounted for their presence by supposing
"that they had escaped from the fishmongers' shops
at Hungerford-market, and had gone to the nearest
water by instinct." Now, in the first place, this is
not the nearest water; the Thames is nearer to the
market than Charing-cross. Next, imagine an eel
escaping from a fishmonger's, crossing over the




FISH AND FISHING.            351
crowded Strand, and climbing up the sides of the
stone basins to get into the water! I know that
eels will travel from place to place; but I much
doubt their ever taking such a journey as attributed
to them  by the newspaper correspondent, who
needed not to have resorted to such an ingenious,
but impossible theory, had he seen me put the eels
into the basins some months before.
In the fountain in the Temple Gardens, eels are
frequently found. The water comes from the New
River, and it is quite probable that they get into
the pipes when quite small, and afterwards grow in
the fountain. Mr. Quekett had an eel some years
since that stopped up a water-pipe leading to a fishmonger's shop in Clare-market.  The pipe was
taken up, and examined, and in it was found a
blind eel nearly two pounds weight. The largest
eel I ever saw was found dead in a pond at Mr.
Drury's house, at Shotover, near Oxford. It was
supposed to have died of old age, for no marks of
injury were found on it. It is now preserved in the
Ashmolean Museum. I understand, from a friend
just returned from  New Zealand, that enormous
eels are found in the rivers there, larger than any
he ever saw in England.
In the museum of the College of Surgeons there
is a bottle, containing a curious-looking cake, composed of many hundreds of small eels: close by in




3562           FISH AND FISHING.
another bottle, are several of these little eels, separate. They' are about two inches long, white, and
transparent. These eels are found at Langport, in
Somersetshire, where, at certain seasons of the year,
they are caught in thousands, and after being placed
in scalding water, are pressed into a mould, and are
then, as Mr. Quekett tells me, the most delicious
eating. The air-bladder of the eel is very remarkable. Mr. Quekett has published a paper on this
subject in the Microscopical Transactions.  He injected the bladders of many fish, and, from  the
peculiar distribution of the blood-vessels in them,
is led to believe that they perform some function
connected with respiration. In the eels, the structure of the bladder much resembles that of the lung
of the snake; but the real function of the air-bladder
in fish; though the subject has been deeply inquired
into by many physiologists, remains a mystery.
It is well known that eels are very sensitive to
changes in the weather; and they are generally on
the move when thunder is about, or, in other words,
when the atmosphere is charged with electricity.
This fact is curious, in connection with the so-called
electrical eel, which seems to have a store of bottled
electricity always ready for use. "Eels, too, are
much affected by frost.  On this subject.I learn
from my friend Mr. Turner, of St. Leonard's, who
in his capacity of surgeon on board ships going to




FISH AND FISHING.            35:
and from India, has niade many curious and good
observations in natural history, that, in the months
of January and February, 1855, the conger-eels, in
the sea opposite St. Leonard's, were affected by the
frost in a most remarkable manner. He writes to
me:"During the intense cold (Jan. 1855), some few
miles out at sea, thousands of conger-eels were
found floating on the surface of the water. They
could progress readily in any direction, but could
not descend, and consequently fell an easy prey, the
boatmen catching them by means of hooks on the
end of a long stick. In this manner no less than
eighty tons were captured, of all sizes, some being
as much as six feet.long, and of a surprising circumference. The greater part of them were sent to
London per rail. One of them I opened, and found
the air-vessel distended with air to the utmost, so.as
to completely close the valvular opening. It was
this, evidently, that buoyed them up. No other fish
were observed in the same condition. The thermometer at this time was very low, and one night.
went down to 16~. On the 17th Feb., I have a note,
that as the tide receded, the beach was left as if
covered with snow, but on an examination, this
appearance was found to be owing to crystals, as if
of frozen sea-water."
I learn that these congers are eaten in London,




354           FISH AND FISHING.
principally by the Jews, who are very fond of them.
The neighborhood of Petticoat-lane is the great
market for them.
The fisherman at Teddington lock, Mr. Kemp, a
very civil and intelligent man, tells me that the
Jews, during "their holidays" (I suppose some
festival of their church) eat nothing but fish, and
at that time they will buy as many barbel as he can
catch.  Barbel is a coarse-flavored fish, but the
Jews do not seem to mind that. The Jews are the
best judges and cooks offish in the world. I have
ascertained that they generally fry them in boiling
sweet oil.
Fish, in general, are very difficult to transport,
but I can readily imagine that a gold-fish would
bear a long journey, as they are of the carp tribe,,
and will exist, and thrive too, in very foul and dirty
water: when even taken completely out of water
they will live a very long time. The conformation
of their gills explains this. The gill filaments do
not readily adhere together, and so they continue
to breathe if there is any moisture at all left in their
gills, whereas most other fish soon get suffocated
out of water, as previously explained. I once had
a curious confirmation of this fact. I was invited
to the clearing out of a pond in the neighborhood
of London, which was full of gold-fish. I arrived
late in the day; the work had been all done, and in




FISH AND FISHING.          355
an out-house I was shown a common water-cart,
such as is used to water the roads, quite full of goldfish, nearly all of them alive, all quite small, none
weighing above three ounces. The owner kindly
gave me a dozen, which I placed in wet grass, and
then in a cloth in a carpet-bag. There the fish
remained all night. On my arrival in London, the
afternoon of the following day, I placed them in
water, and found, to my surprise, that half of them
were still alive having passed a night and half a day
in a carpet-bag. Those that were dead, I cooked:
they were like carp, and I cannot say good eating.
Those that were alive, I transferred to a glass bowl.
In a few hours they were well and swimming about,
though at first they rolled about in the water as if.intoxicated. I was informed that the pond having
been cleaned out, the water-cart was wheeled to its
margin, and the gold-fish turned in again. Twothirds of them recovered, and are living in the pond
to this day.  These fish were taken out of the
water on Monday morning early, and remained in
the water-cart till Tuesday afternoon! Who, after
this, will doubt the vitality of the gold-fish?  I
understand that no young gold-fish are ever seen in
this pond: they do not seem to breed. I believe
they do breed, but the spawn never comes to anything; because the ducks get at it,.whilst it adheres
to the weed in the pond, and eat it all up. Another




356           FISH AND FISHING.
cause why these fish do not increase, is that they
devour each other. The spawn is eaten, and the
young fish also, by their comrades.
Well aware that gold-fish will live in very high
temperatures, I was anxious to obtain further particulars on this point, and I applied to my friend
Dr. Warden, of Manchester, who kindly obtained
from Mr. Hall, of the marble works, Derby, the following particulars, which he has obligingly allowed
me to print. "You have been correctly informed
as to the breeding of gold-fish in reservoirs used for
cooling down the water from the condensers of
steam-engines.  I have myself a small tank or
reservoir in a yard where I have- kept gold-fish for
the last thirty years. It wias at first stocked from
a pond in the neighborhood with half-a-dozen fish,
which were about twelve years old then;-the
longest survivor of them only died about ten months
ago, June 1857, and I have many now from twenty
to twenty-eight years old. As my place was constructed to keep them for amusement only, and not
for breeding them rapidly, it was not made of a
proper form for the latter purpose, having walls
square up from the..bottom; but for breeding it
should have been run out into shallows. These fish
(and I presume others also) eat up all the spawn
they can find,, aud should any spawn escape they
eat the young fry; and even the young ones three




FISH AND FISHING.          357
months old will devour their younger brethren only
just born: so that, in a tank with upright sides, there
is little chance of any escaping; but if the receptacle
run out into shallows, the smaller fish can easily
keep in a small depth of water out of harm's way.
The propensity of these fish to devour their own
young is no doubt a provision of nature to prevent
their over increase; however, to enable some to
escape, they are born nearly the color of the moss
which grows on the sides of the pond, and begin to
change to red in the course of a year, when they
are about an inch in length. The old ones seem to
take very little notice of them. To keep up the
stock I have been obliged to take out the spawn
and keep the young fish during the first few months
of their lives in separate vessels.
"These fish live in extremes of heat and cold.
The water in my place flows in at the top, and consequently all the hot water keeps uppermost, The
temperature of this has occasionally been as high as
90~ and at the bottom not more than 30~, yet all
the fish keep close to the top in the hottest part.
Then, again, in winter, when the conducting pipes
have been frozen up, the pond also has been frozen,
and all we do is to break the ice every day to give
a supply of air."
The Serpentine in London contains some fish, but
not many. I see men and boys frequently fishing




358           FISH AND FISHING.
on the south bank, but they never seem to catch
anything except a few roach and bream. It has
been said that the reason why fish do not abound in
the Serpentine is that the water-fowl eat up the
spawn before it has time to hatch, but there does
not appear to be a sufficient quantity of birds to do
much execution in this way. Ducks are, however,
terribly destructive to fish-spawn in some places, as
the fish generally place it in the shallows, just where
the ducks love to hunt for food. The most probable reason why fish are scarce in " Loch Serpentine,"
as it has been aptly called, is that the water is so
very dirty, and charged with decaying animal matter, that they positively cannot live there. This
summer I bought three good-sized bream, from a
man who had caught them in this dirty pond, and
I had them  cooked for dinner; they tasted so
strongly of the foul mud, that to call them simply
"nasty" would be a stretch of politeness. From
the Knightsbridge barrack window I have a capital
view of the Serpentine. In April it was of a dark
mud color seen from the distance; about June, it
assumed a greenish hue: and now (August) it has
the same appearance as the sea in a calm. This is
due, I imagine, to the hatching of thousands of minute
infusoria, and the generation of minute vegetable
matter. Both the animals and the plants assimilate
and convert into their own forms what would otheo




FISH AND FISHING.           359
wise fly off in the form of gas and miasma, and be
injurious to the Londoners who walk on the banks.
Thus nature partially works her own cure. In
reference to this point, a gentleman who has been
much engaged in engineering works in Holland,
informs me that the canals and ditches in some of the
Dutch towns smell most offensively till the water
becomes green, and then the smell disappears: the
same thing that happens in the Serpentine happens
in Holland. I have lately seen a blue book containing drawings of the little beasts and the vegetable
matter from the Serpentine. These little animalcula are generally looked upon as being the cause of
all the foulness of the Serpentine, but the saddle is
put on the wrong horse. If these little creatures
and plants did not come into existence, the miasma
from the decaying matter would be insupportable.
The Serpentine is capable of being improved in
many ways, into which it would be foreign to the
subject now to enter.
Frogs are seldom found in ponds where ducks are
kept. The ducks devour the tadpoles, and have no
objection to young frogs, even if they have got over
the tadpole state. Mr..Quekett tells me, that in
the neighborhood of Willesden there are no wells,
and each householder has a pond: these are kept
free from newts and frogs by the keeping a jack in
them, who eats up every frog and newt that makes




360           FISH AND FISHING.
its appearance. I once saw a little boy fishing in
the'Serpentine with very primitive tackle. All of a
sudden there came a tug at his line, nearly pulling
the rod out of his hands. He gave a jerk upwards
in answer to the unexpected bite, and out came a
lively black eel about two pounds in weight. The
boy was so frightened at the writhing eel that he
put down his rod and ran away, leaving the eel on
the grass.
Night lines are forbidden in the Serpentine. We
have all seen the pretty little model sailing-boats
scudding across the Serpentine, with all their neat
white rigging glistening in the sun. Who would
imagine that some of these harmless little craft are
up to mischief? I have learnt that towards the
close of the evening, when it is getting dusk, a night
line is neatly coiled up on the deck of the pigmy
frigate, and she is set to sail across. As she sails,
the night line plays out, unseen by anybody, from
her stern. One end of the line is tied to a stone,
which is thrown a little way into the water, at themoment the ship starts: this acts as a weight to
keep the line at the bottom, the other end of the
line is loose on deck. By the time the frigate
nears the opposite shore, all the line has been payed
out, and she sails right under the nose of the parkkeeper, with nothing on her deck. She has, nevertheless, been transgressing the laws, though she




FISH AND FISHING.          361
looks so innocent. In the morning the owner comes
and fishes out the stone which he has thrown in with
the line attached, and sometimes gets rewarded with
an eel for his trouble. In the evening between
eight and nine bathing is permitted, and on a warm
day hundreds of boys get into the water. They are
principally, I imagine, boys who have been employed
all the day in manufactures, judging from their dress.
About half-past eight the water is alive with them,
and they look, from the barrack windows, like a lot
of white tadpoles clustering along the shore.
Again, to return to the perch. Its mouth will
admit two fingers, also a minnow or a gudgeon,
when the perch wishes to catch one. Ask for a
perch-hook at the fishing-tackle shop,'and you will
find that you will be presented with a pretty large
one.
The best bait for perch is a live minnow; the
perch can't resist it; he comes at it with a rush, and
is caught by the hook,-which is only just run through
the upper lip of the minnow. In order, therefore,
to be hooked, he must swallow the bait, beginning
at the tail end; this his capacious mouth enables
him well to do.
I have lately heard of a capital plan to catch
perch, and likewise to keep the shoal together while
you are pulling out the individual fish. It is to
place several live minnows in a decanter of uncut
R16




362           FISH AND FISHING.
glass, and then sink it, with a string attached, deep
into the water. The perch, who can't make out the
glass, keep rushing at the encaged minnows, which
they cannot, of course, reach; they lose their tempers, and their appetites are sharpened; therefore
the more readily do they take the baited and spinning minnow, which you artfully troll close to your
decoy bottle.
A fine perch was found floating dead, on the top
of the water in a pond, in one of the gardens at Oxford; upon examination, it was found to be very
thin, and apparently starved to death. Some devotee of the " gentle art" had been the unconscious
cause of the sad fate of this poor fish; for a hook
was found firihly fixed in his upper jaw, the shank
of which projected so far beyond his mouth that his
efforts to obtain food must have been useless;the
hook always projecting forwards, kept him at a
tantalizing distance from the desired morsel. The
fish I have dried,'and preserved with the hook fixed
in his mouth.
But fishes which, like perch, are provided with
sharp prickles, occasionally cause the death of those
creatures that feed upon them. A kingfisher was
brought to me in the summer of 1848, by a boy
who had found it dead on the banks of the river
Cherwell, near Oxford. No shot or other marks
of injury were found on it, the feathers being per



FISH AND FISHING.           363
fectly smooth, dry, and unstained. What, then,
was the cause of death?  Upon a careful examination, I found the end of a small fish's tail protruding from one of the corners of its mouth. I endeavored to drag it out but in vain, it was firmly
fixed. By dissection, I found that the fish in question was one of the finny tribe which abound in
shallow water, and which are called in Oxford the
bull's head, or miller's thumb. They have a strong
prickle, nearly a quarter of an inch long, with very
sharp and firm ends, projecting on each side of the
gills. The fish had, in its struggles, protruded its
prickles, which, sticking in the enemy's gullet, had
effectually stopped up the entrance, and pressing
on the windpipe caused its death.
Mr. Quekett has observed a case exactly parallel
to this. When fishing at Great Marlow, he saw a
dabchick floundering about in the water, as if something was the matter with it. He secured it, and
found that it was choking with a miller's thumb in
its throat. The bird is now stuffed, and can be
seen at the College of Surgeons, with the fish still
in the gullet.  When the same gentleman was
angling for perch in a Scotch lake, he sent a boy for
some minnows; the boy brought back sticklebacks.
One of these was put on the hook, and a perch was
caught; another perch then bit at the hook and
carried the bait, but was not taken. Mr. Quekett




364           FISH AND FISHING.
afterwards went to another spot, but returning in
the evening cast in his line where he had missed the
perch. He caught a perch immediately, and, upon
examining his mouth, found the stickleback he had
lost off his hook some hours before, firmly fixed in
the perch's throat.  The stickleback had emcted
the spine on his back, which had caught and fixed
him firmly in the gullet of his devourer.
An intelligent lady tells me she once had a pet
owl. The bird all of a sudden refused its food: it
sat upon its perch, and got thinner and thinner
every day, and at last it died. The hard horny bill
of a chicken was found sticking right across its gullet: thus the poor thing was starved to death.
Should you ever be lucky enough to catch a
large jack, mind how you take the hook out of his
mouth; for it is lined with a terrible array of long,
sharp teeth, all set backwards; once inside, it is
very difficult to get out again, whether the captured
object be a man's finger or a fish. Sharp points
have these teeth, as the troller knows well, when
he pulls up his bait scored on both sides, after he
has had an unsuccessful run.
The barbel, on the contrary, has not a tooth in
his head: his mouth is made for poking about
among the stones at the bottom of the river, and
procuring his prey, which consists of almost anything. He is a regular fresh-water pig, and lives by




FISH AND'FSlHIG.              865
picking up what he can find, be it animal or be it
vegetable: a good big lob-worm, however, he can't
resist, as I have discovered to my great delight.
That most observant of'poets, Hood, has aptly
recorded this grubbing propensity of the barbel in
the following lines:"In they went and hunted about,
Open mouthed, like chub or trout,
And some with upper lip thrust out,
Like that fish for routing-a barbel."
When a barbel is hooked, he always endeavors to
strike at the line with his tail, to break it. Now if
we examine the back fin of the barbel, we shall
find that the first ray of it is cut out into deep
notches, just like a saw, and I always fancy that the
barbel in these struggles is endeavoring to use this
saw-like fin. It can be of no use to him, however,
as regards severing the line, for the serrations are
quite covered by the membrane which envelopes
this first ray of the fin, in common with the other
rays. The use of it I imagine to be to steady and
steer him in the rapid currents and mill streams in
which he lives. If we move the serrated ray upwards, we find the whole fin follows it, and is kept
tense by it; let it go, the fin again sinks down.  In
the mast of the London barge we find a parallel
contrivance; when about to pass under a bridge,




366           FISH AtD FISHING.
the men let down the sail (the fin), which is at.
tached to a strong mast (the serrated ray), and
which works from the deck by means of a joint.
Having passed under the bridge, the men hoist up
the mast, and the sail becomes tense. This is
exactly what the barbel does, only that his sail (as
it were) is opposed to water, and not to wind. The
barge makes headway by means of this contrivance,
so does the barbel. This, again, is a pretty instance
of adaptation'of means to ends.
The boys at Windsor have an ingenious plan of
their -own to catch barbel: they throw out their
line into the stream, generally in a shallow at the
tail of a rapid current, and attach it to a strong
and flexible twig of willow.  They then, having
fixed several of these rude kind of rods, retire to a
distance, where the fish cannot see them. The
moment the fish takes the hook, the top of the
twig. begins to bend, then they come up and play
him. They generally have good sport, as there is
no noise and no shadow on the water, and the fish's
suspicions are not roused. In France, they fix a
fishing-rod which has a little bit of whalebone at
the top, with a bell attached; when a fish strikes
the bell gives notice.
At St. Leonard's I picked up a dog-fish, and found
that this fish, also, has a spine in his back fin. My
father, in, his Bridgewater Treatise, mentions this




'FISH AND FISHING.             367
ftt: "The common dog-fish, or spine-shark, has a
horny elevator spine on each of his dorsal fins,
but without teeth or hooks."  By means of this
fact he explains what some curious fossil objects
really are. These have been called Ichthyodorulites
(a hard name, but easily explained by the help of a
Lexicon, tXugs a fish, 3opu a spear, and XAtos a stone,
fossil fish-spears, therefore).  He writes: "The
bony spines of the  Port Jackson shark throw
important light on the history of fossil spines, and
enable us to refer those very common but littleunderstood fossils, which have been called Ichthyodorulites, to extinct genera and species of the
family of Cestracions (a kind of shark).  Several
living species of the great family of sharks have
smooth horny spines connected with the dorsal fin.
In the Cestracion Philippi alone we find a bony
spine, armed on its concave side with tooth-like
prickles, similar to  those which occur in fossil
Ichthyodorulites.   These  tooth-like  prickles, or
hooks, act as points of suspension and attachment,
whereby the dorsal fin is connected with the bony
spine, and its movements regulated by the elevation
or depression of that spine during the peculiar rotatory action of the body of the shark.* The great
variety of fossil spines, from the Silurian series to
* This rotatory action I have observed in the barbel also.
when I have been playing him on the end of my line in a mill tail




368           FISH AND FISHING.
the chalk inclusive, indicates the number of extinct
genera and species of the family of the sharks, that
occupied the water throughout these early periods
of time. Not less varied are the forms of palate
bones and teeth, in the same formations that contain
these spines; but as the cartilaginous skeletons have
usually perished, and the teeth and spines are generally dispersed, it is chiefly by the aid of anatomical
analogies, or from  occasional juxtaposition in the
same stratum, that their respective species can be
ascertained. Writing about sharks, I may be pardoned for giving an account of a creature which
was said to be a veritable sea-snake, and which, upon
examination, turned out, as most other sea-sriakes
have done, to be something else, and not a sea-snake.
In the year 1808 a great sea-snake was reported
to have been cast ashore on the island of Stronsa,
one of the Orkneys.  Dr. Barclay published an
account of it in the Memoirs of the Wernerian Natural History Society. In order to substantiate his
account, he appends the affidavits of four of the
inhabitants of the island, and thus we read: " Compeared Thomas Fotheringham, house-carpenter in
Kirkwall, who solemnly declared that he went to
see the strange fish which had been driven on
shore in Rothiesholm Bay; that he measured it
with a foot rule, and found it to be exactly fiftyfive feet long; that the wings of the animal were




FISH AND FISHING.           369
jointed near the ridge of the back; that the mane
or bristles of the back extended from the shoulder
to within two feet and a half of the tail; that part
of the bones of the lower jaw, resembling those of
a dog, were remaining; that the stomach was about
the size of a ten-gallon cask; and the bowels about
the bulk of those of a cow, etc. Compeared John
Peace, George Sherar, and another." These men
all "solemnly declare," certainly not untruths, but
what they actually saw. They were under the idea
that it was the great sea-snake they were describing,
so they evidently have taken pains about it; only,
unfortunately for the romance of their story, all their
descriptions exactly fit, not a sea-snake, but a huge
basking.shark.  Sir Everard (at that time Mr.)
Home examined the bones, and made-out clearly
that they belonged to a Squalus Maximus, or basking shark. A figure of the supposed sea-snake is
given in the Wernerian Memoirs, alongside a figure
of a basking shark: the former is simply a caricature of the latter, with a tint of the marvellous
added. The under jaw of the creature having
fallen off through putrefaction, the head, according
to the drawing, resembles more that of a snake than
it would have done before the jaw fell off: the back
fin is extended down the lower half of the back;
the fins are converted into legs, and an extra pair
of legs is added.
16*




370           FISH AND FISHING.
Most of the codfish sold in London are caught on
the Dogger-bank, with line and hook. The dogfish
are great plagues to the fishermen, for they take
the bait intended for the cod, being in themselves
worthless, except that an inferior sort of medicinal
oil, passed off as "pure cod-liver oil," is made from
them. The fishermen's boys, however, take the
spines out of their backs, and string them together
to make necklaces.
Like the roach, the barbels require an invitation
in the shape of ground bait to assemble together:
for the barbel, worms and clay mixed are thrown
into the place where the angler intends fishing; for
the former, bran and bread, well mixed up with
sand, to make it sink are used. In the summer I
had observed by the river's edge several large holes
dug in the sides of the bank. They looked like
incipient foxes' earths, or gigantic rabbit holes; yet
there were no foxes or rabbits about. These, I have
since found out, are made by the good folks who
come fishing. They bring the bran and bread in a
basket, and mix them up with earth at the nearest
point to the place where they are about to com.
mence operations. Once a good place for roach
always a good place, is the rule; and successive
generations of anglers coming to the same fishingholes, have in places made excavations like small
stone, or rather earth-quarries. Often I have found




FISH AND FISHING.            71
out a good roach-hole by observing the excavations
for earth close at hand.
These excavations form capital shelter should rain
come on. The ancient Britons were in the habit oi
digging holes like these, not for fishing's sake but
for shelter. Not many weeks ago some laborers,
when digging gravel at Brighthampton near Oxford,
came across several such excavations: they were
simply pits dug in the earth, large enough to hold
one or two persons. From  the sides of each of
these pits a certain quantity of earth had been
removed, so as to form a seat. They were, in fact,
nothing more than what were used by the riflemen
before Sevastopol in our day. The ancient Britons
made them probably only for shelter. At the bottom of these pits were found a few rude arrowheads made of flint, and a quantity of bones. I
examined these bones, and found them to bQ of
frogs and shrew-mice. I suppose that these creatures fell into the open pits, long after they had
ceased to be used by their original makers, and
anterior to the time that they were finally filled up.
Frogs and mice in their nocturnal peregrinations
would very likely fall into such holes, and remain
there till they died of starvation.
Since writing the above, I have heard a story from
my friend, Mr. Bush, which may account for finding the bones of the frogs and shrew-mice in the




372            FISH AND FISHING.
same place and under the same circumstances.  He
was riding home one eyening when he heard, by the
hedge-row, cries as of an animal in distress: he got
off his horse and saw a frog close to a patch of grass,
something having got hold of its leg, so that the
frog was a captive. He struck with his riding-whip
behind the frog, and then found he had killed a
shrew-mouse,* whose sharp teeth were still firmly
embedded in the muscular substance of the frog's
leg. Now I do not know whether the fact of shrews
eating frogs has been observed, but I think this
would lead us to imagine that they did. His teeth,
though insectivorous, are quite capable of eating
flesh if he could get it. I hope shortly to set this
at rest by experiment. However, had a deep hole
been near the scene of the fight described above,
both frog and mouse would have fallen in, and their
bones been found together, as in the case of the
Brighthampton pits.  It is extraordinary how often
dead shrew-mice are found about our hedge-rows,
but rarely are common mice found. This is, I believe, to be put down to the cat. Cottagers' cats
are very fond of getting out at night and hunting
in the hedge-rows; they see the shrew-mouse, also
* A so-called shrew-mouse is not a true mouse, for he has
simply insectivorous teeth, somewhat like a hedgehog, and not
gnawing teeth, like the common mouse.




FISH AND FISHING.           373
a nocturnal animal, and kill it, but they will not eat
it, as it has a peculiarly naSty effluvium about it,
which makes it an unpleasant subject for dissection.
The cats have found this out also. For the same
reason, many cats will not eat rats.
On one occasion, when intently watching my float,
I heard an odd sound as. of grinding teeth at my
back, but did not take much notice of it, being
otherwise interested. Soon I turned round for more
ground bait: it was nearly all gone; and where?
Why down the throat of a great cow, who, I suppose, must have had a fancy for bran and brown
bread, She did not evidently much relish the admixture of sand with the two former ingredients,
for she often shook her head, and looked much
puzzled, when she found the sand grating harshly
on her teeth-a lesson to her never again to eat
ground bait, look it ever so tempting.
Not long ago I was informed, at Andersson's fishing-tackle shop in Long Acre, that a party of fishermen had just arrived from the midland counties to
fish for barbel in the Thames, and that these gentlemen had brought with them "a large tea chest"
quite full of lob worms. What a sight for a customhouse officer!
Some time ago during the frosty weather, when
the roach were biting freely, I was compelled to
buy some " gentles" (AnglicB, maggots): they were




374           FISH AND FISHING.
very dear and scarce; so I got only 120 for twe
shillings-a very bad. investment; for, two days
afterwards, I found that every one of them had
most provokingly turned himself into a chrysalis.
Having been placed, on a table near the fire, they
probably imagined, from the warmth, that summer
was coming, and that it was high time for them to
see about becoming blue-bottle flies. In the chrysalis state they were of course useless, or comparatively so, for fishing.
Some months afterwards, in turning out a cupboard, I again came across this box, and opened it:
it was summer-time, and out flew immediately a
crowd of great blue-bottles-all that I got for my
two shillings.
It is extraordinary how difficult it is to keep these
gentles from becoming hard and useless chrysalids,
even when they are placed in a cool place. They
are most liable to transform themselves when the
weather is changeable, and when they have not
much to eat. I never knew them turn as long as
they had abundance of food. The fisherman Rogerson, at Thames Ditton, tells me that he can earn a
few shillings in the winter time, roach-fishing from
a punt, as then the largest fish are on the feed. He
always manages to have plenty Jf gentles during
the winter. To keep them alive, he gets several
small tin boxes, such as bait-bi,.es, ani puts the




FISH AND FISHING.           375
gentles in with bran, saw-dust, and greaves from
the tallow-chandlers, and then buries them about
six inches under ground. He takes up a box at a
time as he requires them, leaving the others undisturbed. He says, when first dug up they are quite
Torpid, but soon begin to move about when exposed
to the air. Rogerson also, having a great demand
for worms, has made a place where he breeds them,
so as to have them always fresh and ready to hand.
He makes his worm bed in the winter, with about
equal parts of pig's and horse dung and road dirt,
well beaten down together: it does not require
stocking, the worms come there themselves. There
are two kinds of gentles sold in the-shops-the liver
gentle and the carrion gentle-and they appear to
be distinct creatures. The former are bred from
sheep's livers and are plump and white, the latter
are much longer and coarser looking: they are sold
at a cheaper rate, and thrown in for ground bait to
attract the fish. When the carrion gentle turns into
a chrysalis, it is nearly black; the liver gentle chrysalis is of a clear mahogany color, and roach will bite
at it: they will not do this with the other kind.
There is a third kind of gentle which I have heard of
but not recognised-it is the gut, or paunch gentle.
It is the opinion of a man who breeds great quantities of these gentles for fishing, that the -liver gentle
is- deposited by the great blue-bottle fly, that the car




376           FISH AND FISHING.
rion gentle is from the common house fly, and that
the third kind is from the flies intermediate in size,
between the blue-bottle and the common fly, which
have a shiny green-colored body, and I am inclined
to back his opinion. There is a man at Bermondsey
who gets his living entirely by the sale of these
gentles; he also deals in worms, and they tell me
he gets on well with the proceeds of his trade. Most
of the London fishing-tackle shops are supplied by
him. Gentles seem to be most attractive when fed
upon fish previous to being used as bait. They
should always be kept in moist sand, as that seems
to harden their skins, so that they do not fall so
readily off the hook.
When the floods are out, it is no use angling for
roach, or any other fish in their usual haunts; they
go away, as the flood rises, on to the meadows, to
pick up worms and insects, and are not to be found
at'home in their holes. But lately I received a kind
invitation to dine, and fish after dinner. This I
gladly accepted, and, after a sumptuous repast, we
adjourned to the river, where we found a punt
waiting, also a man, with an immense casting-net
ready on his shoulders. In vain did we cast in the
holes-nothing did we catch but a few gudgeons,
who were there in winter quarters, little expecting
to be disturbed in fifteen-feet water. But on the
flooded meadows, in two-feet water, the catch of




FISH AND FISHING.             377
roach and bleak was very satisfactory. Cold work
it was-out in a punt, on flooded meadows, till
nearly midnight-but very pleasant withal. Very
many bleak did we catch on this occasion. At Oxford they call these fish " Tailor-Blays;" but by the
time they have got so far down the river as Windsor, they have lost one of their names, and are called
simply "Tailors." There is, however, no resemblance
in any respect to a tailor that I can see or learn.
" Blay," the great Johnson definies as a " small white
river fish, also called a bleak." Walton calls him the
fresh-water sprat, and says he is ever in motion, and
is therefore called by some the river swallow. He
adds: "His back is of a pleasant, sad, sea-water
green; his belly white and shining like the mountain
snow." A very beautiful description this is!-but
it is an unfortunate thing for this fish that he is so
beautiful. Ever-designing man hunts and entraps
him for his scales, wherein constitute his beauty;
and what does he do with these scales?  Why he
robs the fish to adorn his own species; he makes
with them  artificial pearls. A Windsor fisherman
tells me he recollects the time when men went out
poaching bleak all over the' river at the dead of
night: and many a bloody battle has there been, and
many a head has been broken, over a bucketful of
these fresh-water sprats.
Mr. Yarrell gives more particulars of this curious




378            FISH AND FISHING.
trade. We read: " On the inner cutaneous surface
of the bleak, roach, dace, white-bait, and similar
fishes, is found a silvery pigment, producing the
lustre whicIr their scales possess. "The ornaments
manufactured from  it bore the name of patent
pearls, and their use was universal in the bead
trade, being employed in the manufacture of necklaces, ear-drops, etc. So great, formerly, was the
demand at particular times, that the *price of the
quart measure of fish-scales varied from one guinea
to five. The Thames fishermen caught the fish,
took off the side scales, and threw  them  immediately into the river again; and it was the custom
of hawkers, regularly before selling any of these
fish, to set apart the scales for the bead-makers.
The method of obtaining and using the pigment
was, first, thoroughly to clean the scales by exposing them to a current of water, and then to soak
them for a time; after which the coloring matter
was deposited. When thus procured, small glass
tubes were dipped in the pigment and injected into
hollow  glass beads of various forms and sizes.
These were then spread upon sieves, and dried in
a current of air.  If greater weight and firmness
were required, a further injection of wax was practised. Of this pigment the white-bait afforded the
most delicate and beautiful variety, and used to obtain the highest price. The bleak was next in




FISH AND FISHING.              379
esteem, and the roach and dace the least valuable.
The French were the inventors of the art; and Dr.
Listre informed us that one artist in Paris, during
the course of the winter, used thirty hamperfuls of
these bleak scales in this manufacture."
The drainage of Oxford for the most part is con.
ducted into the Thames by a stream  that runs
alongside a wall on the west end of Christchurch
meadow; the stream is called Pactolus. The original Pactolus was a river in Lydia (also called Chrysorrhoas, or golden-streamed, because it contained
sands of gold). The story is, that a certain foolish
king, named Midas, entreated Bacchus that everything he touched might be turned into gold.  His
prayer being granted, his meat also became gold,
which caused him to see his folly. Having given
him a lesson, Bacchus kindly restored him to his
former position, and ordered him to wash in the
river Pactolus, the sands of which immediately became gold.
" Sis pecore et multA dives tellure licebit
Tibique Pactolus fluat."*-HORACE, 4pod. Ode xv. 20.
The modern Pactolus does not contain gold, but
something convertible into gold, if used by the
farmer as manure, viz., xo0rpo  (manure), converti* "Though wide thy land extends, and large thy fold,
Though rivers roll for thee their sands of gold."-FRANCIS




380           FIS  AND FISHING.
ble into Xpa'os (gold). Now where this stream
joins the Thames there are thousands of bleak
always swimming, with their heads up stream, and
feeding upon what floats down. When quite a
little boy, I recollect the bleak at this spot; and
but the other day, when I went to Oxford, there
was Pactolus still rolling down his golden sands,
and the bleak exactly in their old place, just as they
were twenty years ago,* and at exactly the. same
work; nobody seemed to molest them, as it is
pretty well known what they fged upon.
I find a parallel instance to the above in a work,
"Ancient and Modern Fish Tattle," by the Rev.
Dr. Badham: "Most rivers were thought to impart
flavor and to improve the condition of his solids;
but as tawny Thames has the pre-eminence amongst
rivers for the quality of its porter, so had the Tiber
for the quality of its basse. The Tiber had its noted
holes, and haunts; and there was one special spot,
often mentioned by Latin writers,' between the two
bridges,' whence all the finest specimens used to be
fetched. Here they acquired that delicate, bouquet
so appreciable by Roman connoisseurs, who, according to  Horace, knew  at a bite  whether
what their fishermen had supplied  had,really
come from this dainty site or from  some more
distant reach of the river towards Ostia." The
author saw an old ague-stricken man fishing in this




FISH AND FISHING.             381
very place, just as the Romans did centuries before
him.
To take the opposite extreme to the bleak, fishes
with rough skins are also deprived of their jackets.
The dog-fish and the shark, worthless in other
respects, are skinned by the fishermen, and the
skins sold to be used in the process of polishing
various articles, and also to bind round the handles
of swords. In the actual skin are set numerous
small tooth-like plates, each distinct from its fellow,
of a very hard and durable nature, forming, in fact,
a sort of natural file. The polisher buys this natural file to finish off his fine work; the sword-maker
puts it on the sword-handles-to afford a firmer
grasp to the soldier; and, lastly, the man who
makes lucifer-match boxes buys it to put round
his boxes, so as to afford a rough surface-always
handy to the housemaid when she wants to strike a
light; thereby saving the expense of sand-paper,
and preserving the walls of the house from the lucifer-match marks, so characteristic of a careless
householder.
The South Sea islanders have found out this fact
also, for in the Ashmolean museum  at Oxford I
observed a bit of shark's skin rolled up in a circular
form and evidently intended as a polisher. In Paris,
I have seen walking-sticks covered with fish's skin,
probably those of the dog-fish; they looked very




382           FISH AND FISHING.
neat, and the roughness gives a good hold for the
hand.  The new trolling spoon baits, which are
spoken of so highly by anglers, are nothing more
than- an improved copy of the savage's hook; he
ties on to his hook portions of the iridescent shell
of the Venus-ear, which, glittering in the water,
attracts the fish. In the British Museum are some
good specimens of Esquimaux fish-hooks made of
walrus-ivory and bone. In the Ashmolean museum
at Oxford is a capital net made of the twisted intestines of the walrus: tle knot is the same as that
used by the English fishermen of the present day.
This gut net was brought from the Arctic regions
by Captain Parry.
The cook, too, takes advantage of the rough skins
of the sole; she buys them from the fishmonger, and
puts a bit in the.coffee when boiling up. She will
tell you the rough skins entangle the falling "grouts,"
and so make the coffee clear; but my own idea is
that the albumen boiled out of the skin, like isinglass, is coagulated by the heat, falls to the bottom,
carrying with it the impurities, and so accounts for
the clearness of the coffee. I once gained a prize,
when a fag at Winchester school, for making coffee,
and therefore have a right to an opinion on the art.
The material called shagreen is composed of the
skin of a species of ray. In former times, surgical
instruments, cerate, and other cases were almost




FISH AND FISHING.            383
invariably covered with it. The skin, in its unmanufactured state, is studded with little bone-like
plates: these are all filed down level, and the interspaces filled with some pigment material, which may
be red, green, or any other color. The boxes
covered with this are everlasting wear, as they are,
so to'say, encased in a bony armor. The fishes with
hard skins have, however, one advantage over the
soft-skinned fishes, to a greater or less degree. They
are not so much troubled with parasitic animals
adhering to them. To sickly fish do these parasites
principajly adhere, just as the bill-stickers in London
select a tumble-down house, or else premises in
chancery, to stick their paper parasites, in the shape
of advertisements, upon.
Not long ago, when trolling for jack at a pond
called Ash Mills, near Slough, I observed that the
dead roach with which I was fishing, became, after
two or three casts in the water, covered with little
worms, long and narrow, and having, I should judge,
excessively sharp teeth. So tightly did they stick
to the slippery scales of the roach, that they would
allow me to pull them asunder rather than let go
their hold, so I left them alone. They soon, however, disappeared from off the fish as I went on
trolling; finding out, probably, that they had hit
upon a dead fish, and that they could squeeze no
blood out of it, suck they never so hard.




384           FISH AND FISHING.
A few days afterwards, when preparing a large
jack's head for stuffing, I found several of thesesame
little worms sticking fast to the roof and sides of the
jack's mouth; but they were quite dead. I may
here mention that I fully believe the story of the
insects inside the Egyptian crocodile's mouth; nor
do I think it improbable that the small bird, as
related by Herodotus, picks them off. An analogous case nearer home is the starling on the sheep's
back, hunting for the little tormentors of the sheep,
who quietly go on grazing during the operation.
Upon the head of a decapitated cod, in Mr.
Groves's shop, I not long ago found some very
curious worms with star-like mouths-these were
sticking to the gills. They were presented to me,
and I took them to the College of Surgeons, where
they were pronounced to be interesting and not
very common specimens.
At Teddington lock I caught one day this year
three barbel. I observed that the bellies of these
fish were covered with little, round, red spots, as
though they had been pricked with a needle. I could
not understand what these spots were, till I caught
the third barbel; on to its belly was still adhering a
little leech-like beast, that curled himself into a ball
when touched, like a wood-louse. With some difficulty I got him off the barbel's belly, and in the
place where he had been sucking was one of these




FISH AND FISHING.           385
little, round, red spots. The mystery was thus fully
cleared up: the parasite had an amazingly sharp
pair of nippers, wherewith to pierce and hold on to
the barbel's thick skin.
When fishing at the weir at Thorney broad fishery, near West Drayton, in the month of May, a
gentleman who was angling above me cried out:
"Look out, there is a great fish coming down the
weir!" and sure enough there was a fish coming
down in the rapid stream, tail foremost as fast as it
could. I just managed to catch him with the landing-net, and found that he was a large roach weighing one pound and three-quarters. The- poor fish
had been wounded in the back, probably by a puntpole, and was in a bad way. It was quite covered
with the same kind of parasites that I found on the
dead trolling bait, so that these little creatures perform in the water the same office that the flies, by
means of their maggots, do on land: they devour
the offensive animal matter which would otherwise
pollute all around.
The gold-fish in the round pond at Hampton
Court are also much troubled with a parasitic fungus
which grows upon them, but I never had an opportunity of examining one out of the water.
Mr. Hall tells me that his fish are much troubled
with this fungus; "occasionally they are attacked
with a disease of the eye, causing it to bulge out
17




386           FISH AND FISHING.
like a small bladder, and sometimes the scales stand
up. The most fatal complaint they hav,- is a sort
of ulceration which takes place on the body on
which this vegetation occurs and shortly covers the
fish, after which very few recover."
This is doubtless a vegetable fungus. Near Hammersmith, there are several flood-gates communicating with the Thames, round.which the roach and
dace collect: these fish are covered with this parasitic fungus. It ultimately causes the death of many
of them, as it becomes adherent to the gill substance, and prevents their breathing. Mr. Quekett
tells me that he has seen a stickleback come up to a
newt in a vivarium, and the newt has eatEn off the
fungus, the fish remaining quiet all the time. The
newt, too, sometimes suffers from the samn disease.
I have seen frequent cases of it.
Those who are fond of a day's fishing, I would
certainly advise to go and try Windsor; whether
for gudgeon in the summer or jack in the autumn.
At Surley Hall, two miles from Windsor, thej will
find boats, every accommodation for eating and
drinking, and a remarkably civil landlord; bul the
boat ought to be engaged the day before. At
Monkey Island, also, further up the river, about five
miles from Windsor, good fish of all sorts are to be
caught, and the water there is more or less preserved
by the landlord of the inn on the island, for'he
benefit of his customers.




MY MONKEY JACKO.
THOSE who have visited the French sea-port of
Havre-de-Grace must well recollect the innumerable
curiosity shops which therein abound; curiosity
shops, not like those in the Wardour or the Dean
Streets of London, where are exposed for ignomini —
ous sale the cast-off Penates of London folk, both
rich and poor; but real curiosity shops, on whose
shelves are arranged in a strange medley the products, animal, vegetable, and mineral, of far-distant
and little-known climes; brought home by the sailors
who navigate the numerous and busy trading ships
which line the quays, and we may almost say the
streets of this French Liverpool. Let us enter one
of these and examine its contents. On the one shelf
we see curiously-carved baskets, cut with ingenuity
from a cocoa-nut brought from the South Sea Islands,
and beside it armlets of the same all-useful nut, from
the Storrs and Mortimers of the islands aforesaid.
On the neighboring shelf are displayed the products of the Arctic Regions, snow spectacles used
by the Esquimaux in his journeys over the frozen
snows of his ice-bound but well-beloved home, bartered most likely to the mate of yon tall-masted




388           MY MONKEY JACKO.
whaling ship for a drink of brandy from his flask, or
a sixpenny Birmingham knife. Teeth of that monster
of the deep, the cachelot whale, lie here,omixed with
the whalebone from the capacious mouth, or, as we
may justly call it, infusorial trap of the true, or right
whale; the oil from whose sides fills those greasylooking barrels just hoisted out of the hold of the
floating oil-shop close by.
On the longest "fin" of this whalebone, behold arude but correct portrait, carved with a sailor's
jack-knife, of the oak and iron-bound vessel whose
comfortable berths formed the only home of the
artist when daring the perils of the Northern Ocean.
From the ceiling are suspended cages full of tropical birds. Here, in a dark and gloomy-looking wired
box-we can hardly call it a cage-huddle together
a crowd of Java sparrows and wax-bills, thinking of
their native jungles, and making, in their own language (could we only understand it), unpleasant
comparisons between the stale and mouldy food in
their feeding-troughs and the sweet and pleasant
fruits so agreeable to their epicurean palates, when
free and at liberty in their far:distant homes.
What is that harsh and unearthly noise as of a
duel between two rabid cats, which brings the
proprietor (probably not a fat one, for this sort of
business is not the most profitable in the world)
breathless to the door?  "Bella, horrida bella!"




MY MONKEY JACKO.             389
the tailless, green-coated, African monkey, who
hangs suspended from an old parrot's cage outside the window, has seized the incautiously-protruded tail of his prettier, and therefore more
favored brother, the monkey from South America;
he, unfortunate creature, has crossed the "herring
pond" in a hen-coop, which is much too small to
contain himself tail and all. This appendage, which
in his present condition of life is neither useful no;
ornamental, is perpetually getting him into scrapes
which the honorable representative of Africa, being,
per naturam, tailless, escapes.
Conscious of his condition, the poor Yankee
monkey pulls in his tail, coils it up as well as he
can, and gives it a most malicious bite, as much as
to say, " I wish you were off: you are of no use to
me now, and you look terribly shabby."  He then
covers it up with straw and looks miserable.
"How much for that monkey," I say; " the one
in the hen-coop?"  The monkey looked up as though
he understood what was said, and with a face which
evidently says, "Please buy me." The merchant's
price is too high: the African rascal he will sell for
half the sum, but this gentleman grins so maliciously at the customer that the bargain is off.
The wanderings of the Yankee are not, however,
yet finished. He is bought by a knowing innkeeper
at Bayeux, near Havre, and for half the price previ



a90           MY MONKEY JACKO.
ously set upon his head; and over he goes to his new
home. His master, finding out his fond and quiet
nature, turns him out with a light chain round his
neck, into a comfortable stable, where he can nestle
under the hay, and' get his sea-worn coat into a
respectable condition.
The recollection of this poor monkey haunted me
for some time, and I often thought I should like to
gwn him. In the course of time, the celebrated
tapestry of Bayeux, worked by the hands of the
wife of William the Conqueror, attracted me to that
ancient and venerable city. After seeing and wondering at the lions of the place, I went into the
stable to find out the coachee, and to order the
horses to be re-fastened to the rickety vehicle which
had brought the sight-seers there-carriage it could
not be justly called. What was my delight to see
my old friend of the hen-coop perched on the
manger, looking as happy as a monkey could look.
He really was a pretty little fellow; his bright eyes
sparkled like two diamonds from beneath his deepset eyebrows; his teeth were of the most pearly
whiteness, and of these, whether through pride or a
wish to intimidate, he made a formidable display on
the entrance of visitors. His hands were certainly
not similar to those of Fair Rosamond, of Woodstock renown, but more like the shrivelled and driedup palms of the old monks at St. Bernard, whose




MY MONKEY JACK0.             391
mortal remains are made an exhibition of in that
far-famed convent. A more wicked pair of pickers
and stealers we may, however, with confidence say,.,were never encircled with the Queen's bracelets by.Sir Richard Mayne. His tail, which had now recovered its good looks, gave additional charms to his
personal appearance, and, moreover, was most useful, inasmuch as it performed the office of a third
hand to its owner. With this he could cling on to
the bar of the rack above the manger, and swing
himself about, a perfect living pendulum. Well,
too, he knew the use of it, for if a nut or apple
thrown to him lodged just out of the reach of his
hands or feet (for he could use the latter quite as
cleverly as the former), he would. run to the full
length of his chain, and turn his face round to the
place where it was attached, so as to get as much
length as possible, stretch out this member, and pull
towards him  the coveted delicacy.  If pursued,
moreover, and the chain, dangling after him, got
in his way, he would invariably coil it round the
links, and carry it high over his head, by means
of this most useful extremity, out of the way of his
spider-like legs. Should human beings, blessed with
tails, be ever discovered in some hitherto unexplored
regions, as certain travellers insist, we doubt much
whether these appendages will be as useful to their
proprietors as Jacko's was to him.




392            MY MONKEY JACKO.
After some considerable amount of bargaining (in
which amusing, sometimes animated; not to say
exciting, exhibition of talent, Englishmen generally
get worsted by the Frenchmen, as was the case in
the present instance), Jacko became transferred,
chain, tail, and all, to his new English master.
Having arrived at the hotel, it became a question
as to what was to become of Jacko while his master was absent from home. A little closet, opening
into the wall of the bed-room, offered itself as a
temporary prison. Jacko was tied up securelyalas! how vain are the thoughts of man!-to one
of the row of pegs that were fastened against the
wall. As the door closed on him, his wicked eyes
seemed to say,.' I'll do some mischief now;" and
sure enough he did, for when I came back to release
him, like  uEneas,
" Obstupui, steteruntque comae et vox faucibus haesit."*
The walls, that but half-an-hour previously were
covered with a finely-ornamented paper, now stood
out in the bold nakedness of lath and plaster; the
relics on the floor showed that the little wretch's
fingers had by no means been idle. The pegs were
all loosened, the individual peg to which his chain
had been fastened, torn completely from its socket,
* Aghast, astonished, and struck dumb with fear,
I stood; like bristles rose my stiffened hair.-DRYDEX.




MY MONKEY JACKO.             393
that the destroyer's movements might not be impeded, and an unfortunate garment that happened
to be hung up in the closet was torn to a thousand
shreds. If ever Jack Sheppard had a successor, it
was this monkey. If he had tied the torn bits of
petticoat together, and'tried to make his escape
from the window, I don't think I should have been
much surprised.
Conversing with the proprietor of the "Happy
Family," which stands on Waterloo Bridge, I was
informed that this exhibition had been in his family
upwards of thirty years, and that his mode of socializing the animals was simply by placing young ones
in the cage in lieu of those who died. The magpie
was the patriarch of the cage; he had had this
bird five years hopping about and chattering. The
next to the magpie was the starling; he had been
in the cage two years. He left all the creatures in
the cage together regularly every night, owls, rats,
rabbits, jackdaws, dogs, etc., but he was obliged
always to take the monkey out and put him in a
different place; he was so very mischievous, and
kept all the other animals awake, teasing them when
they were asleep. "Ah," said he, " them monkeys
is awful blackguards."
It was, after Jacko's misdeeds, quite evident that
he must no longer be allowed full liberty, and a
lawyer's blue bag, such as may be frequently seen
17*




394           MY MONKEY JACKO.
in the dreaded neighborhood of the Court of Chan.
cery-filled, however, more frequently with papers
and parchment than with monkeys-was provided
for him; and this receptacle, with some hay placed
at the bottom for a bed, became his new abode. It
was a moveable home, and therein lay the advantage,
for when the strings of it were tied, there was no
mode of escape. He could not get his hands through
the aperture at the end to unfasten them, the bag
was too strong for him to bite his way through, and
his ineffectual efforts to get out only had the effect
of making the bag roll along the floor, and occasionally make a jump up into the air, forming altogether an exhibition which, if advertised in the
present day of wonders, as " Le bag vivant," would
attract crowds of delighted and admiring citizens.
In the bag aforesaid he travelled as far as Southampton on his road to town.  While taking the
ticket at the railway station, Jacko, who must needs
see everything that was going on, suddenly poked
his head out of'the bag, and gave a malicious grin
at the ticket-giver. This much frightened the poor
man, but with great presence of mind, quite astonishing under the circumstances, he retaliated the
insult, "Sir, that's a dog; you must pay for it
accordingly."  In vain was the monkey made to
come out of the bag, and exhibit his whole person;
in vain were arguments in full accordance with




MY MONKEY JACKO(.           39b
the views of Cuvier and Owen, urged eagerly,
vehemently, and without hesitation (for the train
was on the point of starting), to prove that the
animal in question was not a dog, but a monkey.
A dog it was in the peculiar views of the official,
and three-and-sixpence was paid. Thinking to carry
the joke further (there were just a few minutes to
spare), I took out from my pocket a live tortoise I
happened to have with me, and showing it, said,
" What must I pay for this, as you charge for all
animals?" The employe adjusted his specs, withdrew from the desk to consult with his superior;
then returning, gave the verdict with a grave but
determined manner, "No charge for them, sir;
them be insects."
Not long ago I met a man in Oxford Street who
was wheeling along a truck full of tortoises of
different sizes. He said he had bought them as a
speculation, from the captain of a ship, then in the
Victoria Docks, who had got a cargo of them.
In order to get customers he assured the passers-by
that they were capital things to " keep the kitchen
clear of black beetles." This was simply untrue,
for this kind of tortoise is purely a vegetable eater.
However, he sold not a few to those who believed
him. He told me that the tortoises were brought
over on trays fixed-inside the ship, and that the
captain had many thousands of them. I bought the




396           MY MONKEY JACKO.
largest of the lot, and took him home on the top of
an omnibus. The driver had evidently not had a
zoological education, for he could not make out
the nature of my prize at all. After patiently
hearing my lecture upon tortoises in general, he
relapsed into silence; then, suddenly stretching
out his hand, asked for the tortoise. I gave it him,
and he weighted it, or, as a countryman would say,
"heifted it," as the housekeeper does her goose
when she is choosing one for her Michaelmas dinner.
At length he returned it to me, with the remark,
" I wonder, sir, how it would eat biled with sage
and ineons!"
Though these tortoises are not often eaten in
England, I believe they are in France. I have a
receipt for cooking them given me by a Frenchman,
a patient of mine while I was house-surgeon at St.
George's Hospit:al. A friend, who went to Bulgaria
with the English cavalry, during the last war, tells
me that the Zouaves are very fond of tortoises, but
they are difficult to kill, as they retract themselves
into their shells. The mode the Zouaves adopt to
get them out was simple, but cruel. They put a redhot coal on the poor brute's back, and when he puts
his head out from  pain, they cut it off with a
knife.
I well recollect many years ago, when the Duke
of Wellington was made Chancellor of Oxford, a




MY MONKEY JACKO.            b97
live turtle was sent down from London to be converted into soup, for the banquet given to the Duke
in Christ Church Hall. In the middle of the qua,
drangle at Christ Church is a circular pond. Somebody tied a rope to the turtle's fin, and let him
have a swim in this pond previous to his execution;
and mightily the poor thing seemed to enjoy it. I
recollect, too, that my father made me stand on the
back of the turtle while he held me on (I was then
a little fellow), and I had a ride for a yard or two
as it swam round and round the pond. I have got
the head of this turtle now in my collection. A
few weeks ago, when on my way to see the great
iron ship opposite Greenwich, a boy got into the
steamer at' London Bridge carrying a turtle on his
back. The turtle was a very large specimen, and
it was as much as the boy could carry. I observed
that the boy had got the rounded back of the turtle and not the flat side towards his back. This, I
thought, was a clumsy way of carrying it, as the
turtle did not seem to sit at all easily, but continually rolled about, even though the boy had got a
tight hold of its flippers. I sopn got into conversation with the boy, particularly as I observed that
his hand was tied up as if injured. He told me his
business was to fetch turtle from  London when
wanted for one of the hotels at Greenwich (I forget
which), and that he geuerally carried the creatures




398.w MONKEY JACKO.
with the flat side towards him; but the last turtle
he so carried " caught hold of his hand, and nearly
bit off four of his fingers," and it was a long time
before he could get it out of his mouth. I examined
the hand, and sure enough four of his fingers were
frightfully lacerated. For the future, he intended
always to carry the turtle with his flat part outermost, as it could not then turn its head round and
bite him.
When Jacko arrived at his ultimate destination.in England, a comfortable home was provided for
him in the stall of a stable, where there was an aperture communicating with the hay-loft, so that he
could either sleep at his ease in the regions above,
or, descending into the manger, amuse himself by
tearing to pieces everything he could get at. This
stall was usually unoccupied, except by his serene
monkeyship; but he was not destined to remain
lord of the manor in perpetuo. One cold winter's
evening, when the snow lay thick on the ground,
the family donkey was brought up from the field,
where it was endeavoring to keep itself warm by
the side of a haystack, and placed in these more
comfortable quarters. A plentiful supper of hay
was placed before the hungry animal, which it began to devour with great eagerness. About an
hour after, the groom  happened to go into the
stable to see that all was right. What was his




MY MONKEY JACKO.             399
great astonishment to see Jenny, without any apparent cause, pulling away at her halter, and trying
to keep her head as far away as possible from the
bundle of hay, which had suddenly acquired some
invisible noxious properties.'
Not knowing what to make of it, the man gave
the poor donkey a blow, to make it "come up," in
the stable parlance; no sooner had the long ears'
approached the hay than the mystery was explained.
A tiny pair of hands were suddenly thrust out from
under the cover, and the ears seized: at the same
moment master Jacko's face appeared, chattering
his teeth as though he had an attack of ague, and as
quick as thought their sharp points met in the unfortunate Jenny's aural appendages. Jenny instantly
retreated with force enough almost to break the
halter, and Jacko covered himself up again in the
hay, keeping, however, a small opening patent,
through which he could observe the movements of
the enemy. The little rascal, from the hole in the
loft, had seen the hay spread out by the man, and
thinking it would make a capital warm bed for himself, had quietly taken possession, quite regardless
of the inward cravings of poor Jenny, who would,
if she dared, have most greedily devoured the signor's bedclothes. I remember well in an old AEsop's
fable-book, illustrated with quaint woodcuts, the
fable of "The dog in the manger," and also a pic



400           MY MONKEY JACKO.
torial representation (certainly not after Landseer)
of this same well-known event, but I never had
hoped to see the actual drama performed by two
quadrupeds. I must not, however, omit to say,
that I, and doubtless the reader also, have frequently seen a very fair representation of this scene
admirably performed by two bipeds. If Jacko had
lived in the time of AEsop, doubtless the former
would have been immortalized by the latter, and
"The monkey in the manger" been as familiar in
our mouths as "The dog in the manger."  It is,
however, a curious fact, that this monkey, at the
same time that he conceived too great an animosity
against the donkey, took a gieat liking to a dun
pony of a neighbor, who, on paying his visits, usually
tied him up on Jacko's territory. On these occasions Jacko seemed delighted to see his four-footed
ally, running frantically about as far as his chain
would allow him, and when the pony was fastened
up, and the corn placed before him, jumping on his
back and nestling down there, or searching eagerly
in the mane for imaginary parasites.
Speaking of donkeys, there is a poor old man living
in the neighborhood of Albany-street, who is in the
habit of coming up with his donkey-cart full of
flowers to the Regent's-park barracks. Old Joefor that is his name-is very proud of his donkey,
and boasts that he and his donkey together are 103




MY MONKEY JACKO.            401
years old. I suggested that when the donkey died
he should send him to the British Museum. "No,
sir, he ain't old enough for the British Museum. I
expect that there are older things in the British Museum than my donkey," was his reply. Thinking
" Old Joe" would be a good authority on the old
story of nobody ever having seen a dead donkey, I
questioned him, and he confessed he never had seen a
donkey dead from natural causes. Wandering one
day about the race-course at Epsom, I came across
two post-boys of the genuine old sort, thin, weazen
old fellows, whose garments seemed held together
by pipeclay only. Thinking these might be about
the last real post-boys I might ever meet, I got into
conversation with them, and asked what had become
of all the old post-boys. " What, don't you know
that?" said the oldest, thinnest, and ugliest of the
two; "why, they are all changed into donkeys, and
turned out on Blackheath.". When sitting on the manger, Jacko had one peculiar amusement, and that was catching mice. These
unsuspecting little animals would come out to pick
up the corn left by the horses in the next stall.. To
get at their feeding-ground they had to run the
gauntlet of Jacko's premises. He was up to this,
and would pretend to be asleep, keeping, however,
one eye half open. The trick answered, the mouse
made a rush-in vain; Jacko, as quick as lightning,




402           MY MONKEY JACKO.
had his paw upon him, and with a tight squeeze
crippled the poor little brute; he would then play
with him for some minutes, every now and then
giving him a pat to make him go faster. When the
poor victim thought he had got away, Jacko caught
him again, made a complete search through his hair
for parasites, and then-oh, carnivorous representative of the class Quadrumana!-ate him up (as a
child described it to me) like a sugarplum. The fun
over, he would again assume his manceuvres and catch
another member of the murine family, to be treated
in a similar way as the last unfortunate. In this
way I have known him catch as many as seven or
eight mice in one afternoon. The servants having
observed Jacko's talent in this line, bethought themselves that they would turn it to some account;
and as the cat of the house, the Felis domesticus of
the place, was ill, and unable to perform her duties,
they, not having undergone a severe training in the
logical school of Aristotle, or committed to memory
the rules' which are summed up in those most
delightful, and at the same time most poetical, lines
of dreaded Little-Go memory, viz.,
"Barbara celarent Darii ferioque prioris," &c. &c.
reasoned to themselves as follows: Cats catch mice
in the dark: Monkeys catch mice in the dark: there.
fore Monkeys are Cats.




MY MONKEY JACKO.             403
Acting upon this syllogism, they one evening took
poor Jacko out of his comfortable bed in the loft,
and chained him up in the larder, having previously
removed every eatable or drinkable thing, except
some jam-pots, which were put seemingly out of
reach, and, moreover, were well secured with bladder
stretched over the tops. The night passed long
and miserably' to poor Jacko, who was evidently,much astonished at this unwonted treatment. All
night longthe mice scampered about the place,
regardless of their enemy, while he, most uncatlike,
was coiled up in a soup tureen fast asleep. The
morning dawned, the mice retired to their holes;
Jacko awoke, scratched his shivering hide, and
having first pushed the tureen, his bed, from the
shelf, to its utter demolition, looked about for something to eat.  The jam-pots attracted his notice.
" There is something good here," thought he, as he
smelt the coverings. "I'll see."  His sharp teeth
soon made an aperture; he was not disappointed.
The treasured jams, raspberry, strawberry, plum,
the vaunted Scotch marmalade, the candied apricots,
the pride and care of the cook, disappeared in an
unaccountably short time down into the seemingly
small gullet of the sweet-toothed Jacko. Not if 1
had a hundred mouths and a hundred tongues could
I describe the imprecations hurled at the devoted
head of the now sick and overgorged gourmand by




404           MY MONKEY JACKO.
the disappointed and illogical cook, the owner of the
jams, as she -opened the door of the larder at breakfast time to see how many mice the monkey had
caught. Great was the anger of the female gaoler;
great the malicious grins of the captive. Mischievous boys will sometimes open jam-pots as well as
monkeys, and in London they often run off from
applestalls and sweetstuff stalls with a purloined
something. There is a poor old woman who sits in
the Strand selling boiled pigs' feet. She is a decrepit person, and cannot run after the boys if they
come and pick while she, poor soul! is snoozing.
She has, therefore, gone on the principle that "prevention is better than cure," and has covered her
basket all over with a net, leaving only one aperture
for her hand, to fetch out the pigs' feet for her customers. At Hyde Park Corner there sits a man
who sells sweetstuff. When he runs away to get a
glass of beer, he leaves his dog on guard, a white
mongrel-looking beast, sagacious withal, for he sits
in his master's chair with his head over the goods.
He looks all importance, as passers-by glance at the
stall: but should any boys come near (he knows the
street boys well enough), he curls up his lips, and
shows his sharp teeth at the intruders, and would
doubtless bite them if they came too near. Tastes
differ as much in animals as in man, and, moreovel,
there is no accounting for them in either case




MY MONKEY JACKO.             405
Some few days after this afaire de jam, Jacko,
having been reinstated in favor, was warming himself before the kitchen fire. A cricket that had
been singing merrily in the ashes came a little too
far out on to the hearthstone: his fate was sealedthe next jump he made was down the throat of
Jacko, who munched himlup as an epicure does the
leg of a woodcock. The next tit-bit was a blackbeetle, who ran out to secure a crumb dropped from
the servants' supper-table: he, too, became a victim
to his rashness; and not he alone, but many of his
black friends and relatives, who incautiously exposed
themselves before the candles were put out. Having
ascertained that these beetles were nuts to Jacko, I
one day gave him a great treat by upsetting the
kitchen beetle-trap in his presence. Both paws
instantly went to work-whole bunches of the unfortunate insects he crammed into the pouches
(which he, like most other monkeys, has on each
side. of his mouth, and which serve as pockets),
munching away as hard as he could, at the same
time. His paws could not catch the prey fast
enough, so he set his feet to work, and grasped with
them as many as he could hold. This was not
enough. He swept a lot together with his tail, and
coiling it up closely, kept them there close prisoners
till his mouth was a little empty, and he had time
to catch and devour them.  This v-as really too




406           MY MONKEY JACKO.
greedy. I took him away from the feast, still, how.
ever, munching with all his might, and looking back
at the box with wistful eyes. If we wanted at any
future period to make him in a good humor, his
flagging spirits were instantly roused by the sight
of the beetle trap.
Almost all monkeys have pouches in their cheeks.
I recollect, one Saturday night, hearing a man who
was selling riddles at a penny per yard, in long slips
of paper, in the neighborhood of Westminster,
propose the following enigma, as a specimen of the
best of the pennyworth-"Why does a dog carry
a bone in his mouth?"  He volunteered the answer
immediately afterwards:-" Because hehas no pocket
to put it in."  Now the monkey, like the dog, carries his food in his mouth; but that mouth contains
a pocket. The skin of the cheek is very loose;
when empty it falls in wrinkles, which gives the
"old-man like" appearance to his face.  In this
natural pocket he places his -food, and keeps it there 
till he wishes to devour it. Now this is a beautiful
provision given to the monkey by its all-wise
Creator. Trees are the monkey's proper habitat,
but he often descends to the ground to get roots,
and to catch beetles under the stones. While his
attention is taken up by looking for his food, he
might be surprised by his enemy, and be obliged to
make a precipitous retreat, so, as he catches his




MY MONKEY JACKO.             407
beetles, he puts them in his pouch; and thus he can
carry off his earnings with him if surprised; or, if
not surprised, can take them up to his home, the
top of a tree, to devour them at his leisure. I find
a MS. note to the effect that the monkeys which
live on the rock of Gibraltar have, in the course of
time, somewhat altered the features of the ravines
about, by rolling stones down from the heights, in
their search for insects, which they find underneath.
Thus a formation is made, which would be difficult
to account for by any ordinary geological theory.
But not only does the monkey make use of the
pouch in his cheeks when hard pressed; the creature next above him in the scale of creation does
the same thing, as prdved by the following observed
circumstances:
Passing one day along the Strand, on an omnibus, two ragged urchins came running alongside.
In an instant one of them sat down on the pavement, and the other turned a very clever summersault over him, their hands just touching in midflight. I observed that one cheek of the boy who
jumped over the other projected considerably: I
suspected the cause, and threw down a halfpenny;
in a moment the boy put it in his mouth, and, with
a dexterous twitch of his tongue, lodged it within
his cheek. Anxious to carry out the experiment, I
continued throwing down coppers to him, stipulat



408          MY MONKEY JACKO.
ing that he should perform a summersault for every
copper, which he readily did. Every penny and
halfpenny went into his.mouth, till at last his cheeks
looked ready to burst. At length we came to a
halt at Charingcross, and I gave him a threepenny
piece to show me what he had in his mouth. He
quickly turned out all his earnings, consisting of
fourpence halfpenny in coppers, and one bit of
silver.  The poor little fellow seemed mightily
pleased with the contents of his mouth. I asked
him why he put his money in his mouth. " Cos, sir,
I aint got no pockets; and if I ad, my money would
fall out when I turns over,' was the reply. "It's
a wonder he don't get canker in his mouth,"
was the remark of the driver of the bus, a very
fatherly-looking man. A fine specimen of muscular
development, and perfect figure, did this little,
hard-working, active child of eleven exhibit, uncramped by clothes, and always in high training for
running. Nature had in his person her full development; and a marvellous and beautiful form she
had produced in this specimen of a neglected English boy.
As a contrast to this boy, I recollect, when walking, one cold and wet day, in the neighborhood of
St. Giles's, passing a baker's shop, and remarking
how, from the heat of the oven below, the stones in
front of the shop quickly dried, when all the paving



MY MONKEY JACKO.            409
stones around remained quite wet and muddy. As
I stood looking at the dry stones, a poor, little,
miserable, shivering boy, v.ery slightly clad, and
looking veryIll, came wandering by: he, too, saw
the dryness of the stones, but he went a step further in his inquiry than I; for he felt them with his
hand, and immediately lay down on them at full
length, close under the window, to get all the
warmth he could. At the same time he cried to
another little boy, who was on the other side of the
road, "Come along, Billy; here's a nice warm
stone."  Billy came, and warmed himself on the
stone by the side of his friend. A roll apiece each
from the baker's shop made them both for the time
happy. I have heard of sailors, when on deck all
night, pricking the boards to find a soft place to
sleep on. The theory is exemplified by the boyls
choice of a stone to warm himself by.
Jacko's insectivorous propensities were not confined to black-beetles alone. Spiders formed a pleasant variety; not a spider was left alive either in
the stable or outside the stable where he was confined; and most enormous stones would he pick out
of this wall with his little fingers, in search of a
runaway web-spinner. He was really of great use
in clearing the house of this housemaid's pest. I
often used to put a bit of string to the end of his
chain, and make him run up the curtains of the
18




410          MY MONKEY JACKO.
rooms of the house. He would then completely
rummage out and devour every spider, who having
had their webs so frequently knocked down by
the relentless broom, had thought t& spin them in
security on the top of the cornices and among
the curtain-rods.
On one of these occasions he watched his opportunity, and suddenly snatching the string out of my
fand, straightway bolted out of the window, the
top part of which happened to be open. Away he
went, the chain held up aloft in his tail, as was his
wont when he found it in his way,-over the gardenwall, down the village road, up into the village.
The parish school turned out from their lessons at
this moment, and a regular pursuit took place; the
boys shouted and threw up their parochial caps, the
girls did not know whether to laugh or be frightenled. In an instant Jacko was on the top of the
nearest cottage, and returned the derisive shouts of
the boys by angry and incessant chattering; he
grinned from -ear to ear, and showed an array of
sharp teeth, as much as to say, "Touch me if you
dare."  His hair was all erect —as was always the
case when he was alarmed or excited-so that he
looked double his natural size, and he shook his tail
in angry defiance. The numerous stones and sticks
thrown at him in fun by the boys, for they knew
him well and did not want to hurt him, soon made




MY MONKEY JACKO.             411
him decamp, and off he went along the roofs of the
cottages, his chain making a fearful clatter on the
tiles, to the alarm of the aged inmates sitting at
their ease within. The crowd collected, the excitement became immense; the police were not called
out, because there is only one constable; h, being
a baker, turned out in his white cap, and sleeves
tucked up, armed with the official wand of office,
determined to take up somebody. Next came the
churchwarden; "Lay hold of the rascal, boys,"
cries he, "and we will put him in the pound."
" Likely I'll stay there," clatters Jacko, " and,
moreover, you must catch me first," and off he goes
again, followed by the whole village. The fun gets
warm; Jacko begins to repent, jumps on to a tree,
and slips down one side while the boys are watching on the other. He bounds across the road, over
the garden gate, through the broken stable-window,
to his own bed in the hayloft, where he lies, his eyes
closed, his little sides ready to burst from running,
and his mouth half open. Doubtless, at this moment* he came to-the determination never to leave
home again, for he certainly never did, and likewise
to have his revenge upon the parish boys for persecuting him; for fronm this day he always flew at,
and tried to bite any boy wearing the parochial
livery.
I had at one time a very large fine ape, which was




412           MY MONKEY JACKO.
caught, when quite young, on the rock at Gibraltar
This monkey is still alive and well, and lives in the
garden of a friend of mine at Clapham.  Poor
Jenny has now lived out of doors day and night,
summer and winter, for the last seven or eight
years,and hasnever had a day's illness. She has a
dog-kennel into which she can retire at will; but
until lately she did not often make use of it. She
is getting old now, and feels the weather more than
she did formerly. Her coat in winter is wonderfully thick, and she has an enormous quantity of
hair round her face, like a beard and moustachios
all in one. Once I had a terrible fight with her; it
was soon after she came into my possession, and she
was not aware that I intended to.. be master. She
began to chatter at me and make faces, so I threatened her with a stick. In an instant she came at
me like a bull-dog, and gave me a sharpish bite. I
caught her round her neck immediately, and gave
her such a shaking as she never had before or since.
I made her quite giddy, but I never struck her; I
then put her down gently, and patted her.; she
never flew at me again. One day, when I was
mending her chain, she watched the opportunity,
and jerked it out of my hand; in a moment she
was up at the top of the pole, and, finding herself
loose, made off as fast as she could. She climbed
up a water-pipe and got on the roof of the Dean




MY MONKEY JACKO.            413
ery. After a hunt there, she bolted down. on to the
top of the Chapter-house, and thence along a wall
to the top of the houses on the west side of Dean's
Yard. Here she sat on the coping, chattering at
me. I ran back for my coat and hat, but when I
returned she was nowhere to be seen. I ran round
into the street, and found an immense crowd collected, shouting and throwing at her. Fearing she
would be hurt, I determined to try to catch her
again. Some bricklayers' tall ladders were placed
not far off; so I went up the longest: it did not
quite reach to the height of the house, and shook
fearfully with my weight as I neared the top. I
then wished for the agility of Jenny; but determining not to be beat, I managed to climb on to the
roof of the house, and by getting round the chimney-pots, succeeded in getting close up to her.
Though her attention was quite taken up with the
people below, she heard me coming, and made off
again. I pursued her over the roofs of several
other houses, but could not get near her. At one
time her chain, which was still attached to her neck,
hungdown over a window below. Without making any gesture, I said to a woman who was looking
out of a window, " Please put your hand out and
catch hold of that chain." She attempted to do so,
but Jenny, who was too quick for her, hauled it up
hand over hand, as a sailor does a rope, and was




414           MY MONKEY JACKO,
off again. This is curious, because I was careful to
make no motion or sign of. nmy intentions, and
merely spoke the words. The monkey seemed to
understand what I said, for she hauled up her chain,
even before the woman put her hand out of the
window (which was already open) to catch hold
of'it.
After a long and tiresome chase,'I drove her up
to the end of the houses close by Dean's Yard.
Here I thought I had her, but she made a most
frightful jump on to some leads below. I expected
she would have fractured some of her limbs, but she
merely shook herself, and was off again. However,
by this time she had had enough, for she ran along
the pavement.right away home to her pole; and
there quietly awaited my arrival to ti6 her up again.
I don't know which was the blackest, Jenny or I,
after our trip among the chimney-pots. At Clapham
she again got loose, and lived several days up among
some high trees. Nothing would persuade her to
come down, and no sooner did a man climb up into
one tree, than she jumped on to the next. At last
matters came to extremes: a gun loaded with a few
shots was fired at her. She received.a shot in her
body, and thus learned that the gun could hurt her.
After this, whenever it was pointed at her, she
crouched down on a branch, so that it was very
difficult to hit her. At length, after repeated firings,




MY MONKEY JACKO.            415
sae became so frightened and subdued that she
seemed to have lost all presence of mind, and
allowed a man to get on the tree and catch her.
Three years ago, when passing through Leadenhall market, I saw in a hen-coop a pretty little cub
fox, and began to ask questions about him. The
man said if I wanted a fox "he could show me somt
more;" accordingly I went with him to the back of
the shop, and he lifted up the lid of a large, shallow,
square box. To my astonishment, this box was as
full of cub foxes as it could hold. There were from
fifteen to twenty little beauties, all crowded together
in one corner, and their small bright eyes shone like
diamonds. I picked out the finest of the lot, and
took him home. The little brute got loose in the
night, and it took me an hour the next day to catch
him again, as he got into the cellar among empty
boxes, potatoes, and wine bins. The next day I
sent him off to a fiiend at Clapham; but in a few
days he slipt his collar again, and got loose, wandering about the-neighborhood of Clapham many weeks.
Wires were set for him in the same manner that
poachers set them for hares, and the fox was taken
several times in these wires, but he generally managed
to escape. At last he got into a stack of wood, and
there he was, with difficulty, captured. On qxamination, a bit of wire was found sticking out of the
skin close to his hind leg, and apparently firmly fixed




416           MY MONKEY JaCKO.
in the flesh. After some pulling at it, it became
evident that there was a wire firmly fixed round his
loins, for the poor brute's body was contracted into
an hour-glass form. The poor animal had been
caught in it some weeks previously, and had by its
struggles broken it off from the stick by means of
*hich it was fastened to the ground. The wire had
been so tightly drawn that it had eaten its way right
into the flesh, and the skin. and the hair had grown
over it, so that its presence was indicated only by a
hard line under the skin. The wire was taken out,
and the fox is alive and well, but still retains an
hour-glass shape, the result of his adventure.
Jacko once got loose again. Remembering his
previous adventure with the school-boys, he ventured not beyond the premises, but quietly sneaked
into the knife-house, and tried his hand at cleaning
the knives. In this attempt he was evidently not
successful, inasmuch as the handles were the parts he
attempted to polish on the brick-board, and a cut
was found in the middle of his hand the next day.
Resolved, however, not to be defeated, he set to
work to clean the shoes in imitation of the man
William, his kind and indulgent custos here. Again,
he had not distinctly recollected the various steps
necessary for the right performance of the operation,
for he covered an unfortunate shoe all over, sole and
all, with the blacking which he got out of the black




MY MONKEY JACKO.            417
ing-bottle, and then he emptied what was left of the
precious I)ay and Martin into the hollow of the shoe,
nearly filling it: his coat was in a nice mess for soume
days afterwards. One morning, again, when the
servants returned from the parlor into the kitchen,
they found Jacko had taken all the kitchen candlesticks out of the cupboard and arranged them onr
-the fender, before the fire, as he had seen done
before. Finding the black-lead in the same place,
he took it to a bowl of water which was at hand,
wetted it, and was diligently rubbing the table all
over with it when he was caught in the act. On the
entrance of the servants, he immediately retreated
to his basket in the corner, and tried to look as
though nothing had happened. A great treat to
this would-be kitchenmaid was to have a large bowl
of warm water given him. He would first of all
cunningly test the temperature with his hand, and
then gradually step into the bath, first one foot and
then the other, finally, completely sitting down in it.
Comfortably placed, he would then take the soap in
his hands or feet, as the case might be, and rub
himself all over. Having made a dreadful mess on
the table, and finding the water becoming cold, the
next part of the play was to get out and run as
quickly as he could to the fire, where his coat soon
became dry. If anybody laughed at him during
this performance, he would chatter and grin at them,
18*




418           MY MONKEY JACKO.
and frequently even splash water out of the bath
towards and sometimes over them.
There was a story told of this pattern of cleanliness in animals, for the truth of which I cannot vouch,
but it is, that Jacko one day nearly committed
suicide in a most extraordinary way, namely by
boiling himself to death. The large kitchen kettle
was left on the fire to boil for tea: after a time.
Jacko jumped up and took the lid off. Finding it
becoming warm, he got in and sat down with his
head only appearing above the water. This was all
very comfortable for some little time, but the water,
heated by the flames beneath, began to get hot:
Jacko raised his body a little, but finding it very
cold, immediately sat down again. This he continued
for some time, never having, or rather being able to
sum up the courage 4o face the cold air. The consequence was that the poor little wretch was nearly
boiled to death, and, if it had not been for the
timely interference of a bystander, who took his
parboiled carcase out bymain force-for he never
would have got out of his own accord-he would
have become a martyr to his own want of pluck and
firmness in action.
Monkeys very frequently eat their own tails: it
would seem that captivity is not a favorable state
for the development of that organ. I once bought
a monkey for -a few shillings, whose tail was in A very




MY MONKEY JACKO.             419
bad condition. This animal had naturally a long
tail, but had lost a considerable portion, and what
remained was as hard and as dry, as an old stick
from a hedge-row. Not liking the appearance of.
this, I gave the monkey an apple to eat, and while
his attention was thus taken up, I proceeded to cut
away his tail with a sharp knife, joint by: joint.
During the operation, he looked on quietly and
composedly, as I removed, bit by bit, about three
inches. He did not feel it in the least, and seemed
rather satisfied than otherwise.  At last, as I approached to that portion of the tail which was still
alive, I proceeded very cautiously; but, unfortunately, not enough so, for I touched a tender bit,
which was not dead.  The monkey dropped his
apple, and scampered round and round the room,
chattering furiously, till the pain was over; he then
quietly sat down, and inspected his tail, holding it
between his hands. He seemed none the worse for
the operation, and was certainly improved in personal appearance.
If phrenologists had made out that there was a part
of the brain especially devoted to mischief. I am certain that it would have been found largely developed
in Jacko. He was for ever tearing things to bits.
Whenever ladies came near him, his first object
was to get hold of their dresses, and bite or pull
a hole in them. Being a most ungallant monkey, he




420          MY MONKEY JACKO.
never could bear the approach of any except one
lady; with' the exception of my good mother.
Why or wherefore he took particular fancy to her
I don't know, except that he followed the example
of all, whether biped or quadruped, who came near
her. In this lady's lap, he would quietly repose,
when she allowed him to take this liberty; but, the
little rascal very frequently took unfair advantage
of this privilege,.by quietly munching up a portion
of her dress when not closely watched.'
This destructive propensity was nearly bringing
vengeance down on his master's head, and his own
at the same time. On going to Oxford of course I
took Jacko with me. His presence was soon ascertained by the sharp-sighted regulator of fines for
dogs, and many a fine I paid for Jacko, who has
already been demonstrated to be a dog in the sight
of railway as well as college authorities. However,
I kept him in my roop, teaching him to retire into
his bag at the word of command, when any suspicious
footstep approached. The end of term arrived, and
with it the day of examination (commonly called collections), to be dreaded by delinquents, as then all
the evil deeds during the term of the examinee were
summoned up by the tutor, and-judgment pronounced by greater authorities. For some days previous to this ordeal I had feared that I should be
called to task for harboring such an anclassical




MY MONKEY JACKO.             421
animal as a monkey, and therefore redoubled my
exertions; principally by taking great pains to make
a very careful written analysis, in a well-ruled notebook, of one of the tutor's lectures: so that were
the monkey mentioned, the note-book might by
chaiice save me from the presentation to the goodnatured but strict interpreter of the law.
The vivd-voce examination on the appointed day
went off well; " Where is your note-book, sir?"
was the question. Woe be to the man who has no
note-book on such an occasion!  Off I went to
fetch it. On opening the door of my rooms, oh, horror, the note-book was torn into a thousand pieces!
"Jacko, we are both ruined!" I exclaimed.
Jacko did not seem to mind it in the least, but continued his work of destruction; not a page was left
in the book. The diagrams were torn into shreds,.
and even the paper from the covers had not resisted
his relentless fingers. The perpetrator of all this
ruin simply grinned a grin of delight, while watching me pick up the bits, which I did with a trembling
hand and misgiving heart. I had not even courage
to scold him or pitch him out of the window, so terrific might be the consequences to his master, resulting from this rascal's misdeeds. Gathering up the
scattered relics of many an hour of weary writing,
I made as decent a bundle of them as possible, and
pale, partly with anger against Jacko, half with fear




422           MY MONKEY JACKO.
of impending circumstances, re-entered the hall and
presented them to the expectant tutor, who wo'ndered what had kept me so long away. Still more
did the good man wonder when he saw such a notebook presentedto him. In a few words I explained
what had happened and awaited my doom in silence.
Most kindly, however, he examined the fragments,
more particularly the diagrams (which by-the-by I
had not drawn myself, but had intrusted to the
clever hand of the good-natured lady mentioned
above as taking such notice of Jacko), and said,
" You have evidently taken much pains with your
notes, sir; you may go." So great was my glee,
that I had mercy on Jacko, and did not shake him
well, the greatest punishment I could inflict on him,
but merely shat him up ih his bag, and for three
hours hung him up for penance on a hat-peg.
"Pallida mors sequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas,
Monkiumque tubbos." *
And Jacko escaped not; he lived some two years
after this, but. alas! he got an attack of bronchitis,
was wrapped in flannel, and placed before the fire.
Invalids' diet was administered, but in vain,-he
died, and his- remains' were sent up to London.
* "With equal pace, impartial Fate,
Knocks at the palace, as the cottage gate." —FRAoSl




MY MONKEY JACK2.             423
Not wishing to lose sight of him altogether,. and
knowing what hideous objects stuffed monkeys generally are, I made his skin into a mat for the table,
and the rest of him into a skeleton. The blackbeetles on this occasion had their revenge, for
placing them in a box where they could get no
other food, they very soon cleaned the bones of their
enemy and devourer.-And now,
In a cabinet, high on a shelf
He lies as a monument rais'd to himself
THE END.








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