l895 . NOTES AND COMMENTS. 15 



cattle as rats and mice, they ate up nearly all the animals in the 

 " Jardin des Plantes." Many of these proved excellent; they com- 

 pared very favourably with the harmless necessary dog. Dogs, 

 indeed, were largely eaten. At the end of the siege the sight of a dog 

 or a cat was a rarity in Paris. But it presented difficulties even to 

 the Parisian chef. " You may disguise anything with saffron except 

 dog's flesh. His meat is oily and flabby; stew him, fry him, do 

 what you will, there is always a castor-oil flavour remaining, which 

 cannot be got rid of. The only way to minimise that flavour — to 

 make him palatable, is to salt, or rather, pepper him, to cut him up 

 into large slices and leave them a fortnight, bestrewing them very 

 liberally with pepper-corns. Then before cooking them put them into 

 boiling water for a time and throw the water away." 



Additions to the Zoo. 

 The collection of animals in the Zoological Gardens recently has 

 been enriched by a number of valuable acquisitions — an unusual 

 number, perhaps, for the time of year, which is obviously not favourable 

 to new-comers. As the Regent's Park Gardens have been open to 

 the public for over sixty years, it is not so very often that an animal 

 " new to the Society's collection" arrives. But within the last week 

 or two a flourishing colony of Surinam toads (Pipa amevicana) have 

 been accommodated in one of the tanks in the Reptile-house, and, 

 better still, have already begun to breed. It seems to be uncertain 

 at present which sex carries the nursery about in the curious way. so 

 familiar to those who possess any illustrated work upon Natural 

 History ; but, in any case, the interesting phenomenon can now be 

 seen at the Gardens, one individual being pitted with holes with 

 developing eggs in them. An equally interesting recent acquisition is 

 the Tree Kangaroo (Dendrolagus benettii) — a remarkable instance of a 

 creature that has changed its habits radically without any appreciable 

 and corresponding alteration in structure. A pair of that singular 

 bird, the Horned Screamer (Palamedea corimta), has been placed in 

 one of the large aviaries. A pair has never been on view, and it is 

 not often that a single individual has been exhibited. One of the two 

 specimens is provided with the curious median frontal horn so dis- 

 tinctive of this bird — differentiating it from its near ally, the Screamer 

 ■Chauna — the other is hornless; presumably one is a male, and the other 

 a female. It is a matter for speculation whether the horn of this 

 undoubtedly archaic form of bird has any relation to the horns occa- 

 sionally found among the Dinosaurs. The bird, however, has a 

 decided tendency to develop horny appendages ; for it has two strong 

 ones on the wings, useful for fighting purposes, which cannot be said 

 of the rather frail horn on the forehead. 



The British Lion in America. 

 We reprint the following amusing complaint from the American 

 Naturalist for November : — 



