them, to swim rivers in their irresistible anxiety to return to their home."* 66 Others again will tell you, I was disposed to be kind to that cat; but whilst I was caressing it the ill-natured beast turned on me, and bit and scratched me. No pleasant operation, certainly, under any circumstances, but becoming a fearful attack when it is recollected that the bite of a cat has been known to communicate the horrible hydrophobia, as fatally as that of the dog. Now in such cases, unless the animal be diseased, or, at least, in nine out of ten, it will be found either that puss's temper has been ruined by previous provocations, or that the party attacked does not know how to play with a cat-he does not understand the animal; what he calls play is teasing, and is resented. But when a cat has been kindly dealt with, and its master or mistress is really fond of it, few animals are more attached. Such cats have been seen to follow their patrons about like dogs, escort them to the door, when permitted to go no farther, and abide patiently on the mat listening for the much-desired return from morning till evening. On the entrance of their friend, no dog could express a more lively affection, a more hearty welcome. We need only allude to the story of the favourite cat that would not be parted from its dying master-was with difficulty driven from the chamber of death-and even after the body was Compounded with the dust, whereto 'twas kin," would return again and again to the grave, though repeatedly chased from the churchyard, and there lie, braving cold and hunger for hours. To be sure, puss is, as Pennant says, "a piteous, squalling, jarring lover;" nor need we wonder that the distinguished northern functionary "Unmov'd, unmelted by the piteous muse' of a cat-parliament held under his window, fired his blunderbuss upon the amazed wretches-not, however, till he had quieted his legal conscience by reading the Riot Act. The days of puss's gestation are fifty-six, or thereabout; and as she produces two or three litters in a year, and some five or six * Female cats are naturally kindly animals; and so strongly imbued with the love of offspring, that, at the season of maternity, all feelings seem to be merged in that passion. They have been known to suckle leverets and mice, and young rats have been seen sharing the full tide of maternal affection with a kitten. In the latter case the cat showed the young rats the same attentions in caressing them, and dressing their fur as she did to her kitten. at a birth, there is no fear that the cat population will decrease, notwithstanding the unsparing means used to keep it down. The young do not see till about the ninth day. The varieties are almost infinite: among them, the long silkenhaired Angora, the Persian, the bluish Chartreuse, the tortoiseshell, and the typical tabby, are the most prominent. There is also a tailless variety, which most probably owes its existence to its unfortunate ancestors having been deprived of that handsome appendage by accident. To Spain, it is said, we are indebted for the tortoiseshell variety; and a male of this colour, or rather assemblage of colours, being rare, even now, fetches a high price.* We have seen one of these unhappy varieties chained to his little kennel, at the door of a dealer in beasts and birds, looking as important, and withal as sorrowful, as any wild beast of them all could look in such a shackled situation. And here we are almost tempted to give a hint to the President and Council of the Zoological Society of London, on the subject of the sin of keeping cats in cages. They certainly were once guilty of such incarceration; but we hope that they have repented and let their prisoners out. At all events, the bereavement which they have recently had to lament disarms all censure; and for the incarcerated cats, if incarcerated they still be, we can breathe no * A friend, not less noted for his scientific labours than his fund of anecdote, tells us that some twenty-five, or (by'r Lady) thirty years ago, a tortoiseshell Tom-cat was exhibited in Piccadilly, where the Liverpool Museum was afterwards shown, and where dowagers and spinsters thronged to his levee, as was recorded in the caricatures of the day. "One hundred guineas," says our philosophical friend of many tales, "was the price asked; and I saw many a longing, lingering, coronetted coach at the door of the exhibition-room." † After a gestation of fourteen months and twenty days, the first giraffe ever born in Europe, came into the world at one o'clock, on Wednesday, the 19th of June, 1839, at the gardens of the Zoological Society of London, in the Regent's-park. It was a male, strong and hearty, and stood on its outstretched legs two hours after its birth. It was a most beautiful creature, and almost a perfect miniature of the full grown animal, standing about six feet high, the principal difference being in the smallness of the white divisions that separated the great spots. The horns, too, were relatively smaller; and the frontal protuberance was not developed. Not in the least shy, it came up to be caressed; and its full, large, lucid eye, with its long silken lashes, was lovely. The mother was not unkind to her offspring, but she would not let it come near her to receive nourishment. Persisting in this prohibition, she lost the power of affording it: still the vigorous young animal throve admirably to all appearance, upon cow's milk, and there was every reason to hope that it would be brought up well by hand. On Friday morning, the 27th, at six o'clock, it was frisking about the large box, or rather spacious apartment, in which it was confined with its better wish than a speedy deliverance from their gaol, even if it be to embark with the grim ferryman on their transportation to the Feline Elysium. "There shall the worthies of the whisker'd race, Or raptur'd rove beside the milky way." mother; and at half-past ten was dead. On the post mortem examination, the first three stomachs were found in a healthy state; but the fourth was slightly inflamed, and the rest of the alimentary canal presented a similar condition. The inference to be drawn from this seems to be that its food disagreed with it. Not the slightest blame can attach to any one from this untoward event. The conduct of the keepers, both before and after the birth was exemplary; and we have only to hope that if Zaïda should present the society with another baby giraffe, that she will be able and willing properly to fulfil the duties of a mother. Since the last paragraph was written Zaïda has produced no less than three young ones, all healthy males. She nursed them admirably, and they are alive and well; two in England, and one, by the gift of The Zoological Society of London, in Ireland. APES AND MONKEYS. "A wilderness of Monkeys." MERCHANT OF VENICE. MAZURIER, it is said, after a long and patient attendance upon the monkeys domiciled in the Jardin du Roi, sewed up in skins, and with a face painted and made up in a concatenation accordingly, raised at last the benevolence of a tender-hearted one to such a pitch, that it offered him a bit of the apple it was eating, and drew from him that rapturous exclamation, pregnant with the consciousness of his apparent identity with the monkey-character Enfin enfin, je suis singe!" Poor Mazurier! when he died, Polichinelle was shipwrecked indeed. We can see him now gaily advancing, as if Prometheus had just touched the wood with his torch, in a brilliant cocked hat of gilt and silvered pasteboard, with rosettes to match, gallantly put on athwart ships; that very pasteboard, so dear to recollection as having glittered before our delighted eyes when old nurse unfolded the familiar little books of lang-syne-books which in these philosophical days are shorn of their beams; for "Cock-Robin,' "Little Red Riding Hood," "Jack and his Bean-stalk, The Children in the Wood," "" The Seven Champions,' Valentine and Orson," with the other dearly-beloved legends of our childhood, when permitted to enter the nursery, are more soberly clad: their splendid and many coloured attractive coats have almost entirely disappeared. Mazurier was the personification of that invincible Prince of Roués, Punch; but if the comic strength of this elastic, this Indian-rubber man lay in Polichinelle, it was in "The Ape of Brazil" that his tragic power lay—and that power, absurd as the expression may seem to those who never beheld him, was great. There was but one blot in his inimitable performance. It was perfect as a piece of acting-if that may be called acting which, like Morris Barnett's Monsieur Jacques, is nature itself; but, alas! Mazurier had dressed the character without a tail. The melodrama was admirably got up; but there, to the great distress of zoologists, was the tailless quadrumane in the midst of Brazilian scenery, where no traveller-and travellers are proverbial for seeing strange things has ever ventured to say that he saw a monkey without that dignifying appendage. How true is it that wisdom-such wisdom as it is-brings sorrow; all the rest of the world were in ecstacies; the zoologists shook their heads, and the scene ceased to affect them. Be it remembered henceforth by the getters-up of monkey melodramas, that all the monkeys of the New World yet discovered rejoice in tails; the anthropoid apes of the Old World have none. But, tailed or tailless, this amusing order of mammiferous animals has always been, and ever will be, regarded by the million with feelings of mingled interest and disgust. Every one is irresistibly attracted by the appearance and tricks of a monkey —very few leave the scene without something like mortified pride at the caricature held up to them. The zoologist regards the family with an interest proportioned to their approximation to man; but he knows that their apparent similarity to the human form vanishes before anatomical investigation; and that, although there may be some points of resemblance, the distance between the bimanous and the quadrumanous types, notwithstanding all the ingenious arguments of those philosophers who support the theory of a gradual development from a monad to man, is great. 'We would treat with respect such names as Lamarck, Bory de Saint Vincent-ay, and others, even unto Monboddo, though the announcement of the last will hardly be received by any naturalist with gravity; but we must beg leave to differ from them toto cœlo. Leaving the tail out of the question, there is no doubt that the number and quality of the teeth in some species are identical with the formula belonging to the human subject; and there may be as little that the peasants of the Landes of Aquitaine, who gain their living by climbing for the resin of the Pinus Maritima, have acquired a power of opposing, in a certain degree, the great toe to the others; but these facts are, after all, but traps for the unwary, as those who wish to be informed on the subject will see by turning to Professor Owen's paper on the Osteology of the Chimpanzee and Orang Utan.* A modern zoologist has, not inaptly, applied the term Cheiropeds or hand-footed animals to this group; and, indeed, strictly * Transactions of the Zoological Society of London, vol. 1. p. 343. |