After this butchery, for the poor animals suffered themselves to be shot in the eyes with small shot, and in some cases to be knocked on the head with sticks, I scrambled with difficulty through the brushwood and over fallen trees, to reach the higher land with the surveying instruments; but the thickness and height of the wood prevented anything else from being distinguished. There was little doubt, however, that this extensive piece of land was separated from the continent; for the extraordinary tameness of the kanguroos, and the presence of seals upon the shore, concurred with the absence of all traces of men to show that it was not inhabited.

But the sheep now walks where the kanguroo formerly bounded, and the wedge-tailed destroyer makes terrible havoc with the lambs. Not that it will refuse carrion; for Mr. Gould, during one of his journeys into the interior to the northward of Liverpool Plains, saw no less than thirty or forty assembled together round the carcase of a dead bullock; some, gorged to the full, perched upon the neighbouring trees, the rest still in the enjoyment of the feast. And he adds, that for the sake of the refuse thrown away by the kanguroo hunters it will often follow them for many miles, and even for days together.

The nests observed by the same scientific traveller were placed in the most inaccessible trees, were very large, nearly flat, and built of sticks and boughs. The eggs he never could procure.

The latest news from Egypt reports the young hippopotamus to be thriving and waxing strong, but more goodnatured and amiable than ever. His teeth are advancing: he takes his rice and meal with such a hearty good-will that his allowance of milk-to the great comfort, no doubt, of the good people of Cairo, who must have had some fears of a famine of that nutritious beverage is reduced to fifty pints a-day; and this Brobdignag baby has contrived to win good Mr. Murray's heart so effectually, that it is hoped he may embark for England, with his huge pet, somewhere about the 10th of May next, by which time

F

it is expected that the infant's daily stint may be comfortably lowered to twenty-five pints. And so farewell, friendly reader, for the present. Before these notes meet your eye the groves and gardens will be vocal, and rejoicing nature will be glowing under the influence of spring,

May, 1850.

Cum Zephyris et hirundine primâ.

99

CHAPTER VI.

PARTHENOPE, Ligeia, Leucosia-these are pretty

names as ever were bestowed on the offspring of a

river god and a muse; nor are Molpe, Aglaophonos, and Thelxiope*—which some will have it were the true designations of the daughters of Achelous and Melpomene -unmusical. Blessed with powers of voice and fascination equal to Sontag-for, however the habitués of her Majesty's Theatre may reasonably doubt it, they too were irresistible, the sirens, unlike that fair, spotless enchantress, poured forth their gush of song to the ruin of their entranced audience, though they certainly never executed Rode's variations; it may, indeed, be doubted whether any sublunary being, with the exception of the gifted countess, ever could—at least with her supreme excellence. And so these accursed of Ceres continued in their course of musical murder, surrounded by the corses of their victims, whose remains were wreathed with flowers, radiant with beauty, as our own Etty has depicted them, till their career was closed by the wily Greek, who had received his lesson from another mistress of enchantment; and so they perished.

But, it seems, their crimes were not sufficiently exGreece piated. Years rolled on their ceaseless course.

* Or, according to others, Thelxione. The maternity is given by some genealogists to Calliope, by others to Terpsichore; but the better opinion is, that Melpomene was the mamma of these deluders. Like other irregular branches of families they became troublesome to theirs; a meddling friend, Hera, excited them to contend with the Muses, who conquered them, and, as a punishment for their presumption, tore off their wings.

was swallowed up by Rome, who in her turn fell at the feet of the Goth; and in the fulness of time there arose a wizard from the great northern hive, he of the polar star, who waved his wand, aroused the Sirens from the annihilation into which they had escaped, and degraded them into one of the lowest reptile forms of America.

The Arabs have a saying that monkeys are enchanted men, and the most elegant of modern poets has been heard to declare that they reminded him of poor relations: but what is the lot of humanity so transformed compared to the degradation of sirens into Perennibranchiate Batrachians.

What on earth are Perennibranchiate Batrachians?

A Batrachian, in the language of the learned, means a reptile of the great frog family, and a Perennibranchiate—there is certainly some sesquipedality in the word, as there too often is in those coined by the scientific; with all due submission to their worships be it written a Perennibranchiate Batrachian is one that does not go through metamorphosis, like a common frog, for instance (which first bursts upon the aquatic world as a tadpole, then acquires limbs, and then drops his tail and gills, as becomes a citizen of the terrestrial as well as the watery world thenceforth blessed with lungs), but remains a gill-breathing, muddy, fishlike groveller, all the days of its life.

In my zoological obituary for last March, I find the death of Siren lacertina recorded towards the end of the month. The melancholy event took place in the Garden of the Society in the Regent's Park, where the siren had lived for many years in the parrot-house, domiciled in a vessel of pond water, with a bottom of deep mud. It was during its life as vivacious as anything existing in inky-looking mud could be, and throve well on worms-with some dozen and a half of which it

was daily supplied-and small fish. It was very eel-like in its motions, though blessed with two small anterior extremities; but as you may wish to know something about the animal, curious reader, here is a description of it, which those who are not inquisitive may skip if they please.

The generic character of the sirens consists in an elongated form, nearly similar to that of the eels. There are three external branchial or gill tufts on each side. No posterior feet, but two anterior small ones. Not a vestige of a pelvis. The head depressed; the gape of the mouth moderate; the muzzle obtuse; the eye very little; the ear concealed; the lower jaw sheathed with a horny substance, and armed with several rows of small teeth; the upper jaw toothless; on the palate numerous small retroverted denticles.

Such is the reptile of which Dr. Garden, in the years 1765, 1766, sent a description to Ellis and Linnæus, when the immortal Swede established an additional order for the siren in his class Amphibia-the order Meantes. Such is an outline of the creature which Cuvier pronounced to be one of the most remarkable of the class of reptiles, nay, of the whole animal kingdom; a bold declaration, but borne out by the anomalies of its structure, its relationship to different families, and its approximation even to different classes.

Thus, Pallas, Hermann, Schneider, and Lacépède, classed it as the larva of a great unknown salamander. Camper placed it among the fishes. He was followed by Gmelin, who made an eel of it, conferring on it the name of Muræna siren; and 'tis almost a pity that the lastnamed worthy doctor was dead wrong in making it a Murana: it would have been so everlasting classical for that enlightened Republican, brother Jonathan, who loves to copy the Romans, to have thrown his slaves to the Murance. But he may still be imitative, and throw