that the creature was a full head taller than any man on board, measuring seven feet in what might be called his ordinary standing posture, and eight feet when suspended for the purpose of being skinned. Dr. Abel describes the skin, dried and shrivelled as it was, as measuring in a straight line, from the top of the shoulder to the part where the ancle had been removed, five feet ten inches; the perpendicular length of the neck, as in the preparation, three inches and a half; the length of the head from the top of the forehead to the end of the chin, nine inches; and the length of the skin still attached to the foot, from the line of its separation from the leg, eight inches. We thus," says Dr. Abel," obtain seven feet six inches and a half as the approximate height of the animal." These dimensions are startling, and far exceed those warranted by the skeletons of adult Orangs hitherto brought to this country.

The hair of the head was of a reddish brown, growing from behind forwards, and five inches in length. The chesnut-coloured beard was handsome, but very wiry, and appeared to have been curly in life, springing gracefully from the upper lip, near the angles of the mouth, in the form of moustaches, and thence descending to mingle with the portion growing on the chin.

The personage who has lately arrived at the gardens of the Zoological Society in the Regent's Park, and is now the "observed of all observers," is of the softer sex, and very young. She receives company in the Giraffe-house, and appears amiable, though of a gravity and sage deportment far beyond what is usual at her years. When we first saw her she was standing by her gentleman in waiting, who was patting her head and tickling her chin-familiarities which far from offending her, were admitted with the utmost complacency. Presently, however, she left him, evidently with the intention of making the acquaintance of a carpenter, who was kneeling with his back towards her, making some alterations in her apartment. It sounded odd to hear the gentleman in waiting say, as she laid her hand on the carpenter's shoulder, Come, Jenny, you must leave the carpenter alone," at the same time gently leading her away. "Dear me!" said a lady; 'Dear me! does she know what is said to her?" Yes, she knows her name, Ma'am," was the cautious reply upon which the lady said "Dear me !" again

Finding that she was checked in her proposed liaison with the carpenter, Jenny moved quietly into the box which served her for a bed-room, arranged her blanket, made a wisp of straw into a bundle for a pillow with dexterous manipulation, and then lay down at her ease upon her back with her straw-pillowed head towards the entrance of the box, still gazing, as she lay, at her

carpenter. As we have not observed her parure noticed in any of those "glasses of fashion," French or English, which abound in this metropolis, we think it right to state that her dress consists of a fine Welsh flannel chemisette, with continuations of the same, à la Turque, over which she wears a robe, seldom seen on the ladies of this country, called a Guernsey frock. She looks very comfortable, but we would advise our friends to pay their respects as soon as they conveniently can; for, though the temperature of the Giraffe-house is very good, experience has taught us not to consider the lives of such foreigners as Jenny very insurable.

In the Chimpanzee,* the African type of Orang, the arms are very much shortened, not reaching much below the knee; and the thumbs and great toes are much more developed than in the Orang Utan. There are some points in which the latter comes nearer to man than the former; but the Chimpanzee, taken altogether, is much more human in its conformation. Still, as we have before observed, there is a wide interval between the Simian and Human forms. This is strongly shown in the countenance. Lawrence well says that the brute face is merely an instrument adapted to procure and prepare food, and often a weapon of offence and defence. The human countenance is an organ of expression, an outward index of what passes in the busy world within.

*Troglodytes niger.

We feel that this is no place for anatomical detail, and yet it may not be amiss to draw the reader's attention to one or two of the many points on which this assertion rests. In man, the muscle called flexor longus pollicis pedis terminates in a single tendon, and its force is concentrated in the great toe-the principal point of resistance in raising the body upon the heel. In the orang, the analogous muscle has its termination in three tendons separately and exclusively inserted in the three middle toes, to enable them to grasp more forcibly, and so minister to the necessities of an arboreal animal. Surely," says Mr. Owen, who brings forward this striking difference, "it is asking us too much to require us to believe that in the course of time, under any circumstances, these three tendons should become consolidated into one, and that one become implanted into a toe to which none of the three separate tendons were before attached." Then again there is the discrepancy in the shape and disposition of the teeth. "What external influence," as the same acute author inquires, "operating upon and around the animal, can possibly modify in its offspring the forms, or alter the size, of the deeply-seated germs of the permanent teeth? They exist before the animal is born, and let him improve his thinking faculties as he may, they must, in obedience to an irresistible law, pass through their phases of development, and induce those remarkable changes in the maxillary portion of the skull, which give to the adult orangs a more bestial form and expression of head than many of the inferior Simic present." The osteology and myology of these animals, to say nothing of the rest of their structure, forbid the conclusion that the monkey could by any ordinary natural process be ever expanded into Man.

66

To repeat the stories so well known of the life, character, and behaviour of the Chimpanzee, would be to occupy space on which we have already trespassed, to say nothing of its renewing the Infandum, &c." Poor dear Tommy, we knew him well, and who is there who was not, at least, his visiting acquaintance? Was he not immortalized in the carmen zoologicum of the illustrious Bull? Peace be with him! Everybody loved him; everybody was kind to him. In his last illness he was suffered to come forth for a closer enjoyment of the kitchen fire; and there we saw him sit, "leaning his cheek upon his hand," watching the gyrations of a depending shoulder of mutton, as it revolved and hissed between him and the glowing grate-no, not with the prying mischievous eyes of ordinary monkeys; but with a pensive philosophic air that seemed to admit his own inferiority, and to say—“Ah! man is, indeed, the cooking animal."

January, 1838.

ELEPHANTS.

PART I.

"Of all the Beasts which thou This-day did build,
To haunt the Hils, the Forrest, and the Field,
I see (as Vice-Roy of their Brutish Band)
The Elephant the Vant-guard doth command:
Worthy that office; whether we regard
His Towered back, where many Souldiers ward;
Or else his Prudence, wherewithall he seems
T'obscure the wits of human-kinde sometimes :
As studious scholar, he self-rumineth
His lessons giv'n, his king he honoureth,
Adores the moon: moved with strange desire,
He feels the sweet flames of th' Idalian fire,
And (pierc't with glance of a kinde-cruell eye)
For humane beauty, seems to sigh and dye.

Yae (if the Grecians doe not mis-recite)

With's crooked trumpet he doth sometimes write."

DU BARTAS: The Sixth day of the First Weeke.

THESE lines are translated " by y'. famous Philomusus, Iosvah SYLVESTER, Gent.," as we are informed in the quaint title-page of the folio edition, printed at London in 1633, by Robert Young, who collected his "most delight-full Workes," and gave them to the public with the following dashing address :

"THE PRINTER TO THE READER.

"The name of Joshua Sylvester is garland enough to hang before This doore; a name worthily deare to the present Age, to Posteritie. I doe not therefore, goe about to apologize for this Worke, or to commend it: it shall speak for itselfe, louder than eyther others' friendship or envie. I only advertise my Reader that since the death of the Author (if at least it be safe to say those men are dead who ever survive in their living monuments) I have carefully fetcht together all the dispersed Issue of that

divine Wit: as those which are well worthie to live (like Brethren) together under one faire roofe, that may both challenge time, and outweare it. I durst not conceale the harmless fancies of his inoffensive youth, which himselfe had devoted to Silence and Forgetfulness: It is so much the more glory to that worthy Spirit, that hee who was so happy in those youthful strains (some whereof, lately come to hand, and not formerly extant, are in this edition inserted) would yet turne and confine his pen to none but holy and religious Dities. Let the present and future times injoy so profitable and pleasing a work, and at once honour the Author, and thank the Editor."

The book is got up in the best manner, dedicated to gentle King Jamie, and with its Anagrammata Regia—“ Jacobus Stuart, Justa Servabo, James Stuart A just Master," for example-and its pilastered "Corona Dedicatoria," forms a very curious and characteristic specimen of the Euphuistic and Garamna literature of the time. But, alas for posthumous fame! how few of the present generation have even heard of Sylvester? Were it not for the imperishable Isaak Walton,* what would be known of Du Bartas himself? There is much more about the Elephant, and the way in which the Dragon circumvents and kills the huge beast, in verse which, although it might have sounded charmingly in the ears of the Royal Apprentice, our readers would hardly thank us for disinterring.

Before we enter upon the natural history of the Elephant, and the uses to which he has been applied either in war, the chace, the procession, or the theatre, we will, with the reader's leave, take a rapid view of the organic structure of the huge animal, beginning with the gigantic bony framework.

One of the first particular objects that strikes the beholder after the mind has recovered from the impression which the colossal whole never fails to produce, especially when the skeleton of a full grown male is viewed in front, is the enormous size of the cranium; and few of those who are not conversant with the organization of the skull, with its broad anterior expanse, fail to express their surprise at its proportions, or to inquire how a weight apparently so great is supported.

The muscles necessary for working the complicated, powerful, and delicate evolutions of the trunk or proboscis, require a broad surface for their attachment; and ponderous as the skull seems, it is in great part weighty in appearance only. The chamber of the brain, which last forms in the elephant of the whole body, is but of comparatively small extent, although there is

* 66 Compleat Angler," ch. 1.