548 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ENTERTAINING VARIETIES 



Four-footed Outlaws. "France must elevate her soul to the height of 



the situation," wrote Louis Napoleon after the battle of Gravelotte. She didn't; 

 but the instincts, as we are pleased to call the talents of our dumb fellow-creat- 

 ures, seem really able to adapt themselves to any possible emergency. In the 

 border-lands of culture, in the Jura, the Cheviot Hills and the Adirondack^, there 

 are deer and foxes that can not be outwitted by ordinary means, and succumb 

 only to an in-pre-calculable combination of circumstances. Among the half-wild 

 cattle of the Texas frontier there are individuals whom the Genius of Civiliza- 

 tion has given up for lost, human ingenuity being no match for such instincts as 

 theirs. Even in the Belgian Ardennes, where every acre of woodland is under 

 the control of professional foresters, a runaway pony managed to elude his pur- 

 suers for more than eight years. His haunts were pretty well known, experience 

 and emulation had sharpened the wits of his persecutors, but all plans to recapt- 

 ure him went somehow aglee he was not only cautious but caution incarnate 

 the quintesseuce of his five senses seemed concentrated on the problem of pre- 

 serving his liberty. A single glance enabled him to distinguish harmless bipeds 

 from dangerous or suspicious ones; old crones in quest of their milch-cows, and 

 berry-gathering boys, he simply ignored ; but at the approach of a game-keeper 

 he instantly vanished from human sight or at least out of rifle-range. He used 

 to make his headquarters in the dense pine-jungles of the Sambre highlands, but 

 in night-time he sometimes revisited the glimpses of the moon on business that 

 finally brought him to grief. After he had repeatedly stampeded the mares of 

 a highland stud-farm, the proprietors put a price on his head, and ne Theseus 

 quidem contra plures the wary outlaw was at last shot near the Col de Grappe, 

 on the border of Lorraine. 



A Paragon of Ugliness. The ancient Huns seem to have been the 



ugliest of all the ugly races of Central Asia ; and the homeliest individual with 

 one exception was probably the " veiled Prophet of Bokhara," Mullah Ibn 

 Said, the repulsiveness of whose features was so overpowering that he did not 

 dare to show himself without a mask, for which he afterward substituted a 

 golden veil, whence his surname, Almukana " The Veiled One." Yet his biog- 

 rapher, Ibn Chaldir, assures us that an elder cousin of Almukana, who proudly 

 disdained to hide his face, exceeded him not only in erudition but also in ugli- 

 ness. This man, called Kofta Ben Lukas, and famous as a philosopher and 

 grammarian, must actually have been the ne plus ultra of homeliness. He was 

 an accomplished teacher of languages, but the only pupils he could procure at 

 the Lyceum of Bagdad were adult males, of exceptional fortitude, all others 

 being overcome by the terrors of his presence. "When Almohadi, the Caliph, 

 inquired after the best teacher of the Persian language, the name of Ben Lukas 

 was mentioned among those of the highest merit, but when further inquiries 

 proved this worthy to be identical with the formidable licentiate of Bagdad, 

 Almohadi, who wanted the instructor for his own son, was earnestly advised to 

 alter Ids choice, as a prince of such tender years would surely succumb to nerv- 

 ous prostration at the first grammatical interview. The Caliph ridiculed these 

 fears, and ordered the grammarian to report at his court ; but no sooner had 



