HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



•207 



Lord Mayo. Our friends whose dealings with 

 creatures /era naturae have been chiefly conducted 

 within the palings of the Zoological Gardens, 

 Regent's Park, can hardly realize the joy with 

 which the dwellers in less-favoured lands will wel- 

 come the day when "the lion shall eat straw like 

 the ox, and the sucking child shall play on the hole 

 of the asp," and how, pending its somewhat tardy 

 arrival, they will bless the noble Viceroy for trying 

 to keep them in check a little. 



Dear readers, should you ever chance to wander 

 far away from the safe and comfortable realms of 

 Cockaigne, into some of the wild waste places of 

 the earth, you may chance to see strange and pain- 

 ful sights, that will make you put on your consider- 

 ing cap, however little you may be given to thinking. 

 Your true and trusty friend and comrade sickens on 

 the voyage within the tropics, and with his enfeebled 

 hand clasped in yours, he passes quietly into eternity 

 while trying to breathe into your attentive ear some 

 sacred message to the loved ones far away : at sun- 

 set the ship's bell tolls, and a sorrowful company 

 gathers round the sewed-up hammock stretched 

 upon a grating in the gangway and covered with 

 the Union-jack; glance your eyes over the still deep 

 blue surface of the summer sea, and behold the rip- 

 ples cut in it by the tall back fins of several very- 

 fine specimens of a certain genus of Plagiostomous 

 fishes, who know the meaning of that booming bell 

 as well as you do,'and, obedient to its summons, have 

 quitted their wonted station some ten feet below 

 the surface and fifty yards astern of the vessel, 

 where they have watched and chased day and night 

 for nearly a week, and now come sailing gaily to 

 and fro ajleur d'eau, well abreast of the gangway, 

 in the sure and certain hope of a joyful supper. 



Go to the swampy jungles, the river-villages, and 

 wood-embowered lagoons of Borneo, and watch the 

 loathsome pot-bellied alligators lying in ambush, 

 with their wicked cat-like eyes on the look-out for 

 venturesome Malays and incautious Dyaks, whom 

 they will snap up without respect of persons, just 

 as young hounds chop leverets. 



We once beheld a learned and .Reverend gentle- 

 man — an M.A., Cantab, great in the schools, and 

 powerful in the pulpit, dashing madly over the lea, 

 with eyeballs starting from their sockets and dis- 

 hevelled locks streaming wildly in the wind, running 

 for the dear life from a veritable " old serpent," — 

 no mythical sermon-book bogie, — but a real right 

 down rock-snake about nineteen feet long, raven- 

 ously hungry, and determined to breakfast upon 

 the terrified parson, whom he would most certainly 

 have s.wallowed, holy orders and all, without the 

 slightest compunction, had not an " arm of the 

 flesh " intervened in the very nick of time. 



Should it ever be your misfortune to see a man 

 (not " a mere nigger, only one remove from an 

 ourang-outaug," but) an educated chivalrous high- 



minded Christian geutleman, your friend and equal, 

 pulled down by a fierce brute so mad with famine 

 that, regardless of your approach and the shouts of 

 the hunters, it proceeds to devour him before your 

 very eyes, bolting great masses of the quivering 

 flesh and turning it into tiger before " the reason- 

 able soul " is fairly out of it, a dreadful sense of 

 humiliation (perhaps not altogether unspiced with 

 indignation) will steal over you ; and though you 

 may have the luck to slay the slayer, and rescue 

 some mangled remains of him who five minutes 

 before enjoyed the pride and strength of intelligent 

 manhood, still a bewildering horror will chill the 

 triumph of your vengeance, and while shuddering 

 over the bloody wreck of the Divine likeness slaugh- 

 tered to stay the craving stomach of a famished 

 beast, you may perhaps remember and repeat — as 

 one whom we know once remembered aud repeated 

 — the words "In the image of God created He 

 him," and you will be furnished with something to 

 wonder over and think about for the rest of your 

 days, — ay, even though you may never have won- 

 dered or thought about anything before, in all your 

 life. 

 Bury Cross, Gosport. 



THE OTHER SIDE OF THE VIVARIUM. 



~VTO one would rejoice more heartily than the 

 -^ writer, at any contrivances which could be 

 resorted to which promised to facilitate the study 

 of entomology, and render it more popular than it 

 is at present. But I cannot look with any hopeful- 

 ness upon the suggestions as to the establishment 

 of Insect Vivaria upon au extended scale. I am 

 convinced, not merely by consideration of the pecu- 

 liarities of the habits of insects of the different 

 orders, but by the results of actual experiment, 

 made, it is to be acknowledged, on a small scale, 

 yet with careful watching as to the results, that 

 though the proceedings of many species can be 

 watched with advantage while they are kept in 

 cages of a kind adapted to their nature, the mixing 

 up of a number of different kinds in any common 

 receptacle will prove more or less a failure. 



Some will at once exclaim with surprise, " Why 

 should any difficulties attend the establishment of 

 insect vivaria, when the aqua-vivarium, marine and 

 fresh, has proved so highly successful?" And others 

 will add, appealing to seeming experience, " Have 

 these not been tried, and found to auswer very well 

 on a small scale, and would they not do so also on 

 a more extended one ? " Now, on the first point 

 it must be noted, that however diverse may bet he 

 contents of your artificial pond or receptacle, though 

 it includes amongst its inhabitants not only insects, 

 out animals belonging to other classes, they all live 

 in the same fluid, and to a very great extent what 

 is conducive to the health of one species, in the 



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