Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 383, September 1847
"At last, accordingly, this same wanderer did escape from thraldom, and come back to his native Germany. On reaching the place where his father's little hut had stood, by the side of the clear forest stream, which he remembered well, yet he found it gone, to the very threshold-posts. The clear stream ran past still under the old tree roots, and the entrance into the wood was there; but nothing remained of the dwelling whence he had stolen forth in the early morning to join the children's march, before its blue smoke had risen up over the forest top against the sky. There arose within him clearly, as he stood in a bitter trance, every little circumstance of the household; – what his father and his mother were; the common and quiet joy, without words, which he knew not till then had been hidden in sleep, and in meal-times, and in trifling acts; the happiness which he now felt would have grown daily out of helping them in their declining years. Yet these had been forsaken for a dream, excited perchance by evening radiance on the hills, by bright skies seen through the trees, by distant sounds, the very delight of which was lost when home was left. He stood close at hand, and, notwithstanding, the whole was more irrecoverable than ever – the open air came down to the foundations, and was spread across the chamber floor. The late dead forest was now putting forth its green buds – the grass was verdant with the spring – flowers were blossoming in it – birds were singing – and all nature was warmly bursting up again into full life after winter. The bells of the convent near rang loudly for the vesper-service, as it was Easter-day, the festival of Resurrection; and when the wanderer turned round the forest, he beheld village children rolling on the grass their coloured Paschal eggs. In these many years the unhappy departure of him and his companions had been forgotten. All were rejoicing because of some nameless cheer. But at the door of one cottage there sat an old pair upon a wooden bench, enjoying the warm evening air, and gazing at the children – while a young maiden, their daughter, stood behind in the doorway, her fair hair tinged with the golden light. These good people accosted the wanderer kindly, for they saw that his features were darkened by hotter suns; and it seemed to them that perhaps, he was a pilgrim and had been in the East. Their greeting was in accordance with the custom at that season of Easter, and they said, 'Peace be with you – Christ is risen,' expecting the usual answer – 'Yea, he is risen indeed.' But the wanderer stared blankly upon them and the young girl, wondering, in truth, as all the events of his past life came fast upon his mind, and as he recollected the old feelings with which he had set out from home. For a deep mystery of Home appeared at that moment to be revealed to him; he almost understood why it was vain, and had been to him vain, to seek abroad for that which all the while was nearest of all things to the soul. Yet, on the other hand, the old people were much surprised, when he told them that night of his wanderings, how it was that he who had visited the Sepulchre itself, did not perceive there best that the Saviour was risen. And it could perhaps only be thoroughly apprehended by the returned pilgrim himself, when once more there arose for him a home on the spot where his father's cottage had stood, and when it was shared with him by that fair young maiden whose countenance had first again restored to him the conception of life which he had lost. For then it was that, in the fulfilment of common simple necessities, in unquestioning intercourse with natural things, and in gradual progress to the holy grave, he felt truly how the pure and complete hope of happiness proceeds out of the bosom of human life; how the desire of goodness must be drawn out of real experience; and how enthusiasm disproportioned to its object is dangerous and false. It was thus, my children," said the old schoolmaster, looking round them all in succession, "that one of the children who sought the Holy Land far off, was taught to seek it near at hand; and that perhaps many knights and pilgrims of the Crusade may have found it on their return. And the mistakes of that period are doubtless capable of their benefit to us.
"It is now with us no longer a formal, but a spiritual system of things; the heavenly good, the communion of God with man, are no more confined to particular places and signs, nor, on the other hand, to singular acts and language. Christ hath made all things, yea, the very commonest, holy to us and sacramental, if we only strive to apprehend their deep inward meaning. It is the religion of The Homely, – of Him who as a child in Bethlehem concerned himself with little household matters as they befell; and thus prepared himself for being about his Greater Father's business in the Temple. Duty extends her mighty, solemn chain unbrokenly from the lowest to the highest: nay, the least insect in the grass performs a behest that is not to be contemned. This was one chief lesson of The Great Master's earthly life, – and in his Resurrection from death, also, taught he his disciples not to limit his presence to any one form of things, but to look for it in all: when they found the Grave empty, and yet in an ordinary figure, or in a passenger by the way, they suddenly recognised their Lord, and He seemed to break out of every thing that was around them. There is nothing now in itself common or unclean, nothing in itself that contains a peculiar sacred virtue; but that which is next and nearest ourselves is capable, by inexpressible degrees, of all good, having been framed by God Himself. So often we seek far off what would have come to us and been ours, had we but sat still, waiting, acting with a simple heart. We mark out to us high deeds, we would fain search out somewhat great and painful to accomplish, – as if there were not small matters enough, and pleasant ones, – ay, and the most difficult, toilsome ones too, with their secret crowns and garlands of reward, – all bounded within the poorest threshold! – Now, my little youths and maidens, having listened so gravely to the old man's discourse, go like children and play yourselves homeward: there, and here you have need of all reverence, obedience, and thoughtfulness."
Whether or not old Wendel's hearers appreciated the particulars of his lesson, we are not aware; but from the excitement in the village having after that taken a decided turn, we may suppose that, on the whole, it was not without its use there and round about the place. And so, if more perfectly expressed, and when rightly and fully understood, the doctrine implied by this and numberless similar facts in human history might be in many another community.
TAXIDERMY IN ROME
In turning over the voluminous records of our travels abroad, we pause more particularly at those passages of our journals which relate to the study of Natural History. In these occur frequent references to agreeable pedestrian rambles undertaken alone, or in the company of unaffected friends, in France and Switzerland, Italy and its islands: of whole days spent, and twilight at last surprising us still bending over the unexplored treasures of unexhausted museums. Of Paris winters cheerfully passed in the enceinte of the class-rooms of the Sorbonne; of pleasant occasions in which our ears refused to take cognisance of the sound of town clocks and dinner bells, while our eyes were so agreeably forgetting themselves amid the profusion and variety of southern fish and bird markets. On this, if on any portion of our by-gone life, we look back with sadness indeed, but with a sadness unembittered by regrets; our only sorrow here being, that we knew not earlier in life those studies of which it may be pre-eminently said, that while they "delight abroad they hinder not at home." Happy indeed are the children who dream of butterflies, and wise the parents who encourage theirs to intertwine objects of natural history with their earliest associations! Not only has this charming study a strong tendency to confirm the health, to embellish the mind, and to improve the moral character of those who pursue it;
"Pour le bien savourer, c'est trop peu que des sens;
Il faut une âme pure et des goûts innocens;"
it is likewise a strong bond of union between man and man – where shall we find such another? Hounds and horses may connect, indeed, a greater number, but if one of the field breaks his neck, who cares? "he should have been better mounted,"1 or else, "he could not ride;" – but ours is a gentler and a kindlier community. Where else exists that unanimity to which this body may justly lay claim? Not in the professions, where law detracts, medicine dislikes, and the church does not always hold the truth in charity; nor yet amidst mankind in general, for philosophers misquote, scholars revile, merchants monopolise, courtiers traduce, statesmen deceive: but here no conflicting interests, nor uncharitable surmises, no morbid sensibility, nor false and narrow views of life, arise to estrange those whom Linnæus and Cuvier have once united in fellowship. Constant, cheerful, unaffected, and sincere, the happy members of our coterie, every where, and in all ranks alike, show an instinctive tact in making each other out, and once friends continue so for life. We speak from long and intimate acquaintance with many naturalists: to some, courteous reader, we purpose, with your consent, hereafter to introduce you. Our object meanwhile is, to set before you now two humble foreigners of the gentler sex, who have passed their whole lives in the study and practice of taxidermy. Real and zealous enthusiasts are Annetta Cadet and her mother, who, in order to surprise in their haunts, and study before they embalm them, the various inhabitants of the Campagna about Rome, think nothing of braving any amount of heat, fatigue, and inconvenience; and such adepts are they in this art, that when stuffed, their birds, beasts, and reptiles seem to have received new life at their hands, and to be about to spring from the ground or to leave their perches, and glide out of sight. When, therefore, you shall have examined the out-doors2 antiquities, (and unless you would reconstruct the Forum for the thousandth time on some original plan of your own, or were to go mare's-nest hunting amidst the ruins with certain German Barbatuli, – the Bunsenists of a season – ten days will be more than sufficient,) we charge you not to fail calling at No. 23, Via della Vite, where, if you should possess any lurking propensities for natural history, they are sure to be elicited. As to your first reception, if this should be of a somewhat abnormal kind, why, so was ours; – for Cadet and her mother are certainly originals: but that you should not be disconcerted, and in order to prepare you for the personal appearance, as well as the unusual qualities of our friends, we transcribe the memorandum of our own introduction to them. Prince Musignano, whose birds they mounted, professor Metaxa, who sent rare insects for them to determine, and W – who affirmed, (par parenthèse,) that no one could stuff birds like them but himself, had all prœconised their accomplishments to us; so one morning with a note-book full of queries, and a bottle full of insects, we descended the Scalinata, and knocked at the door. It was opened by a cord pulled from above, while a female voice demanded, more solito, "chi c'e?" On answering, that our visit was to the Signore who prepared insects, the voice said, "Come up, go in at the door to the right, and we will join you as soon as we have made ourselves tidy." Obeying this Little-red-riding-hood invitation, we entered the reception room, and began to amuse ourselves with a survey of a score or two of queer-looking pictures, (for the most part without frames,) with which the walls were adorned; strange landscapes were there, and allegorical subjects, treated with an equal perversity. On one that first caught our eye, a waning moon, resting on the grass with its horns upwards, formed a couch for Diana and Endymion; from this we had turned to a naked nymph with a pretty face, and a torso half hidden under a cataract of dishevelled tresses, "not penitent enough for a Magdalen," thought we, when mother and daughter entering together, "Ecco la mia madre," said the girl pointing to the picture in question. "Come?" asked we, "that your mother?" "Certainly, it was painted by my own father, six months after their marriage; she was then as you see, una bella giovanne assai." "Was your father, then, a painter by profession?" "Not originally," interposed the old dame: "he was designed for a missionary by his patron, who brought him over from his native country, San Domingo, when a boy; but the old man dying shortly afterwards, the Propaganda undertook to complete the youth's education with the same view. As, however, he chose to think that painting, not preaching, was his calling, and as an attachment had sprung up between us, and I preferred passing my life with him rather than with Santa Ursula and her virgins, to whom my friends would have dedicated me, we determined to take our own case into our own hands, married without asking permission, and then, to support ourselves, I turned my attention to Taxidermy and he to the Fine Arts. Thus we managed to subsist till Annetta was nine years old, when I lost him." "And I," interposed Annetta, "gained a score of old botany books, and these beautiful paintings; I wonder no one comes to propose for me." "E pazza quella ragazza!" said the mother; and, to judge by her appearance and attire alone, she might have been so. Her descent sufficiently accounted for her woolly hair; but in addition to its negro texture, it was unteazled and neglected, being mixed with bits of feather and other extraneous elements. She was swathed from head to foot in coarse soiled dimity; in one hand she was holding a half stuffed hawk, in the other a sponge, dipped in some arsenical solution to preserve it. Our eyes had never rested upon so wild, so plain, so apparently hopeless a slattern; but these unpromising appearances were soon forgotten, and amply made amends for by the intelligence of her remarks, and the sprightliness of her conversation; and we know,
"Before such merits all objections fly,
Pritchard's genteel, and Garrick six feet high."
The officina was a curious place, and worthy of its mistress. It was something between a shambles, a museum, and a tanyard, and exhaled in consequence the mixed effluvia of decomposing flesh, alcohol, tannin, and the oil of petroleum. In one corner stood a large tawny dog, stuffed, and fixed to a board, with a new pair of eyes in his head, and his mouth well furnished with grinders. "Era molto vecchio questo cane," going up to introduce him to our notice, and patting his back affectionately: "his sockets have not had such eyes in them for many a day, nor his jaws such teeth. I have strengthened his legs with wire, and restored the proper curl to the tail; nothing further is now lacking but some tufts of hair to cover these bare patches on his haunches, when his master will at once recognise unaltered the favourite of fourteen years ago." "And whence the supplies necessary for your purpose?" "From this," replied she, drawing out from under the table a skin of the same tawny colour, "Eccola," and then pinching off with her tweezers a small tuft from the supplementary hide, and gumming over with a camel's hair brush, a bare spot, she proceeded to cover it. "And what's your remedy here?" said we, laying our hand upon a large duck,3 whose glossy grass-green neck had lost much of its plumage, especially at the base, where it is wont to be, encircled with a cravat of white feathers. "By robbing others of the same family: for I always think a bird, while he lacks any of his feathers, is looking reproachfully at me, and if a parrot could find tongue it might say,
''Tis cruel to look ragged now I'm dead;
Annetta, give my tail a little red.'
But here are my stores;" and, touching a spring, the door of a small room opened, and revealed unstuffed skins of all sorts, dangling from strings like Fantoccini near the Sapienza, at Christmas-time. "Yonder is a bird, Annetta, that shot across our path yesterday in the villa Borghese; was he not then a foreigner of distinction escaped from the prince's aviary?" – "No; a Campagna bird, but rare;" and she proceeded to display his lapis-lazuli wings, which shone like burnished armour, and were set off by a brilliant edging of black feathers, as polished as jet, while the back was a rich dark brown, and the neck and breast light azure. "Oh! stuff us one of these birds, pray!" – "Non dubitate, one shall be on his perch expecting you when you return to Rome in November." – "And we must have, too, that beautiful neighbour of his who wears a short silk spencer over his back and shoulders, and a full-breasted waistcoat of buff." – "The Alcedo Hispida: he shall be ready too; they call him hereabouts, 'Martin the Fisher.'"
We took leave for the time, but frequently returned to the workshop. On one occasion, we asked Cadet how she attained such skill in taxidermy? "Our art," she replied, "like yours, consists mainly in observation, and therefore it must needs come slowly. In fact it has taken my mother and myself fifteen years to learn the natural instincts, habits, and attitudes of the birds and beasts of the Roman Fauna; every summer we visit their haunts, and bring back such specimens as we may catch or as the peasants, who all know us, may bring. Thus, we return, ever richly laden, sometimes with the carcass of an eagle, or it may be of an African Phenicopterus; or, failing in such large game, we are tolerably sure of porcupines, fine snakes, a nest of vipers, specimens of our three several kinds of tortoises, and different species of land crabs; to say nothing of the Tarantulas, Scholias, and Hippobosques, which I pin round my bonnet, or pop into spirits of wine. As to stuffing – the witnessing how some, who call themselves naturalists, stuff birds, has been long as a beacon to me! They really seem to forget, that it is one thing to prepare a goose for the spit, and another to fill his skin for the museum; they cram whatever they have in hand, as Fuocista Beppo crams a sky-rocket to repletion. Few take the natural shape as a model for the embalmed body. In such hands, sparrows become linnets, owls appear to have died of apoplexy, kestril eyes shine in Civetta's sockets, and the jackdaw has a pupil like the vulture. Then in grouping, they make all to look straight forward, as if, when a hawk has swooped upon a teal, his eyes did not turn downwards in the direction of his victim, or those of the poor teal upwards, in the direction of the expected blow; he too, should be represented as striving to extend his neck beyond the drooping screen of the other's impenetrable wing. Then birds of prey should not perch like barn-door fowls, nor a parrot divide his toes before and behind unequally; yet some taxidermists there are, who consider these things trifles!" "Well, sir, what do you think of my daughter's stuffing?" said the old woman. "Why, that she stuffs beautifully, but the smell of those old hides in the corner makes me sick." Whereupon they both laughed out at our affectation. "A doctor, and made sick!" said they, and they laughed again. "Have you heard of the Brazilian consul's lion?" interrogated the daughter, endeavouring to make us forget our sickness by exciting our curiosity. "No; nor even that he had a lion." "Oh, tell the story to the Signor Dottore, mother!" said the girl; "I can't for laughing." Upon which the old woman, summoning to her aid a ludicrously solemn look, prefaced the anecdote by supposing "We must know the Brazilian consul?" – "Not even by name." – "In that case we were to understand that he was by nature a man of great tenderness of character, but had once been chafed into an act of extraordinary ferocity, killing with his own hand, during the last year of his consulate, (but unfortunately, like Ulysses, without a witness,) a lordly lion: as there was no embalmer on the spot, he simply flayed his victim, and preserved the skin with spice till his return last year, when the wish naturally arose to have the lion mounted after the most approved models, in order that the dimensions of the body and the respective length of tusks, tail, and claws, might appear to the best advantage, making it very evident that this had been a lion that none but Hercules or a Brazilian consul would have ventured to cope with. On making inquiries for an accomplished embalmer, our diplomatist unfortunately stumbles upon a Frenchman – a gentleman of rare accomplishments, as they all are, perfectly versed, by his own account, in that ancient Egyptian art in all its branches; this man, on seeing the skin, takes care duly to appreciate the courage of the consul in killing so immense a beast, whom he promises forthwith to restore to his pristine dimensions and fierceness of physiognomy; his adroitness is rewarded by carte blanche, to purchase any amount of spices and cotton he may require, and his honoraire is fixed at fifty scudi on the completion of the job. Hoping to increase the family satisfaction by showing them the lion once again on his legs, without their previously witnessing the steps by which this was to be effected, he requests that in the interval no one would visit the workshop." "Mind you make him big enough;" says the Consul, signing the contract. "Laissez-moi faire," rejoins the other. After three weeks' mystery, the artist sends for his employer, who, speedily obeying the summons, finds the exhibition-room arranged for a surprise, and the Frenchman in anticipation of an assured triumph, rubbing his hands before a curtain, on the other side of which is the object of this visit. "Hortense, levez la toile!" says the Frenchman, giving the word of command. Hortense does as he is bid; up goes the curtain, and the Consul beholds his old friend, not only with a new face but with a new body: whereat, astounded and aghast, – "That's not, my lion, sir," says the Brazilian. "How, sir, not your lion; whose lion then? – you are facetious." "I facetious, sir," roars the impatient lion-killer, "and what should make me facetious?" "I have the honour to tell you, sir, that this is your lion," says the Frenchman chafing in his turn. "And I have the honour to tell you, then," reiterated the other, "that you never saw a lion." When the Consular family assembled, it was worse still; the children laughed in his face, and the lady said, "that but for his mane and colour she should not have guessed what animal he personated." It was a family misfortune. "Why did you trust a Frenchman with it?" asked his affectionate spouse: "you recollect that Alfieri calls them a nation of Charlatans, whose origin is mud,4 and that all he ever learned of them was, to be silent when they spoke." "But what's to be done now?" demands the disconsolate man. "Send for the little women who understand stuffing, and take their advice." "So we went," continued the old woman, "and were personally introduced to this lion." "Ah! che Leone!" interrupted the daughter, laughing at the recollection of the quizzical beast. "A lion indeed!" said the mother laughing, but less boisterously than her daughter. "What a king of the forest!" said the girl, going off again into inextinguishable merriment: "mother, do you remember his eyes sunk in his head as if he had died of a decline, his chest pinched in to correspond, his belly bulging out like the pouch of an opossum, with all her family at home, his mouth twisted into a sardonic grin, his teeth like some old dowager, one row overlapping the other, his cheeks inflated as if his stomach was in his mouth, and then the position of one of his fore-legs, evidently copied from that of the old bronze horse on the Capitol, while his tail wound three times and a half round its own tip!" "Basta, basta!" said the old woman, "he was a queer lion, and looked easy enough to kill if you could only keep your gravity while you attacked him." "And what said the Consul?" asked we, laughing with them. "The Consul cospettoed again and again, and was for knocking him off his legs at once, and then giving him to us to re-arrange. 'You and your daughter,' said he, 'will take him home and do what you can for me;' but we told him plainly, that to expect a new birth, after such a miscarriage as this, was only to indulge a vain hope, sure to issue in new disappointment. Why, the very tail would have taken us a fortnight to uncurl and make a lion's tail of it; the ears were quite past redemption; the bustle might have been removed from behind, and the wadding placed in front, where it was wanted; but the hide itself was corrugated into plaits that nothing could have removed. 'Cospetto!' said the Consul, poveretto, who had nothing else to say – 'and am I thus to lose my lion, the only lion I ever killed, and such a fine lion too!' and then he fell to abusing the Frenchman. 'I can't keep him here to show my friends,' pursued he; 'for it is obvious, if I do, that instead of admiring my courage, they will only ridicule me, and perhaps betray me into the hands of that rogue Pinelli as a fit subject for his caricature.' We could not say they would not; so we recommended him, upon the whole, as the best thing under the misfortune, to re-consult the French artist. 'Scelarato porco! consult him about a lion? why the commonest daub on a Trattoria sign-board gives a better idea of the noble animal than this." "It is difficult to stuff a lion," said the girl, half apologetically: "one cost me a fortnight's hard work to prepare." "Yes," added the mother eagerly – "yes, but he looked like a lion, he did." Then turning to us, "Well, sir, at last, as we could not help the Consul, he was obliged to have recourse to this Frenchman again, who admitted that the bulk of the animal was in the wrong place, and une idée trop large, and removed some of it accordingly. With respect to the hind-quarters, he cleverly got rid of this difficulty, by inserting three-quarters of the noble beast into a den, formed in a recess of the drawing-room, and hung with a profusion of green paper, representing bushes falling across its mouth, while beyond them protruded the head and open jaws of the lord of the forest, as reconnoitring the ground previous to a sally upon the guests; and there, doubtless, he is still exhibiting."… Well did Cadet herself avoid the errors she thus ridiculed. We possess one of her animated groups, of which the subject is an eagle killing a snake, and the execution is so true to nature, and so beautifully disposed for effect as to render improvement impossible: from some such original did the Locrian and Girgenti mints copy one of their finest reverses, and Virgil and Ariosto their lively descriptions. Our bird, which lay, a month before, an unsightly mass of blood-stained feathers, broken-winged, on the ground, when he came into our possession, stuffed, looked not only alive but in action. The talon which supported the body seemed to grasp the perch beneath it so tightly, as to convey a very lively impression both of his prehensile powers and of his weight; round the other, (embracing it as in a vice,) writhed the body of a large snake; the eagle's neck was erect, his head slightly bent, his wonderfully expressive eye glancing downwards, his hooked beak opening and disclosing the tongue slightly raised; the scant feathers round the olfactory fissures up; the snake hissing, his head elevated, and darting upwards, to anticipate the lacerating blow:
"Hic sinuosa volumina versat,
Arrectisque horret squammis, et sibilat ore,
Arduus insurgens; illa haud minus urget adunco,
Luctantem rostro."
The delusion as to the substance and weight of the bird was perfect. At first we doubted being able to lift him without considerable effort. On making the attempt, however, we find him light as a Nola jar. A glorious bird is the eagle, well worthy the attention and regard bestowed on him in ancient times by prophet, priest, and poet; but had they been silent, we should have learned the veneration in which he was popularly held by the frequent recurrence of his image – whether incised on Egyptian obelisk, chiselled by Grecian hands on ornamented casque, guarding the tombs of heroes, grasping the thunderbolts of colossal Joves, perched on Latin, standards, carrying off young Ganymedes to wait, invitâ Junone, on the gods above5– or bearing aloft, on consecrated coin, some most religious and gracious Augusta to Glory and to Olympus!
One day, meeting the elder Cadet in the street returning alone from the bird-market – a very unusual occurrence, for they generally hunted in couples – we asked after the daughter, and hearing she was ammalata assai, and wanted one of our little pills to set her to rights, turned in with the mother, and found the young naturalista reclining on an ill-stuffed bergère, with a large Coluber coiled round her temples, and a half-prepared Hoopœ in her hand. In the same apartment were a vulture picking an old shoe to pieces under the belly of an Esquimaux dog, and some little land-tortoises nibbling away at a large lettuce in the middle of the floor. Our inquiries were somewhat embarrassed by the unusual circumstances of our patient, particularly by the presence of the snake, which now began to untwist. "See! he has recognised his master," said the dame: "or perhaps has raised his head with a view of taking part in the consultation." We had seen snakes entwining the lovely brow of Medusa, in marble, cameo, and intaglio – painted snakes in clusters hissing in the hair of the Eumenides – but a living snake wound round living temples we had never seen till to-day. "Come, sir, you are only the snake to Esculapius; and though I am not ungrateful for what you have done in refreshing my hot forehead with your cool skin, now the doctor is come, bon giorno!" and, removing him like a turban from her head, she placed him in a box at her side. This was, then, that Epidaurian Coluber which we had so frequently seen in marble effigy wound round the consultation cane of the God of Physic,6 and not to be viewed by us alive for the first time without interest. "Mother," said the younger Cadet, brightening up when she perceived this, "bring our snake-boxes, and let us show them all to the dottore." In less than five minutes the cases were before us. The first contained a mother blind-worm and her viviparous family of ten offspring, not two inches long, while she stretched to about twelve. A Coluber Natrix inhabited the second. "He is a great favourite with children in Sardinia," said Cadet, "twisting himself round their arms, and sucking milk from their mouths; but if these supplies fail, he feeds on frogs and fish. His flesh is a sovereign remedy, say our doctors, in skin diseases; and they also say – but you know best how true this may be – that one of the late Dukes of Bavaria became a father by merely eating fowls that had been fattened on them." A Coluber Austriacus followed – a rare snake, and chiefly remarkable for his pleasant herbaceous smell, very unlike what proceeded from a neighbouring box, holding a Coluber Viperinus, who secretes, when irritated, a yellow fluid of intense fœtor, like the mixed stinks from asafœtida and rotten eggs. The specimen in this box was large. It had vomited, we were told, two frogs the day after its capture; and on cutting open another of the same species, Annetta had seen a living toad creep, Jonas-like, from the paunch, and make the best of three legs to escape, the fourth being already disposed of, and digested in the body of the serpent. The solitary Coluber Atro-virens passed next in review. She gave him a character for preferring good cheer to the best company, ex gr.– Out of two taken last week, one only survived; the other devoured his friend in the night, and next morning they found his enormously distended body dilated almost to transparency, and palpitating under the feeble movement of the victim, doubled up in his inside, but not yet dead. Being very exclusive, some call him "il milordo;" others, from the beauty of his colour, "il bello." When about to moult, his wonted vivacity changes to moroseness. Like a mad dog, he will snap at every thing. Perhaps the loss of all his beauty, which then takes place, may account for such peevishness. A glaucomatous state of the eye always precedes by some days the moult, which is accomplished by the skin cracking from the jaws, and afterwards being reflected over the head and shoulders, till by degrees the snake skins himself alive, leaving his old investment turned completely inside out. As gross a feeder as an alderman, he more frequently recovers from a surfeit, perhaps because, though a glutton, he will not touch wine.