POPULAR MISCELLANY. 



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only so many points of a single stroke, that 

 by its infinitely varied circumvolutions traces 

 out to the astonished eyes of the cherubim 

 the forms, proportions, and concatenations of 

 all earthly beings. This single stroke deline- 

 ates all worlds." Mr. Wesley says again: 

 " All is metamorphosis in the physical world. 

 Forms are continually changing. The quan- 

 tity of matter alone is unvariable. The 

 same substance passes successively into the 

 three kingdoms. The same composition be- 

 comes by turns a mineral, plant, insect, rep- 

 tile, fish, bird, quadruped, man." Further, 

 Mr. Wesley spoke of the bat and flying squir- 

 rel as animals " proper for establishing the 

 gradation that subsists between all the pro- 

 ductions of Nature " ; of the ostrich as 

 seeming to be " another link which unites 

 birds to quadrupeds " ; and of the ape as a 

 rough draught of man. He also considered 

 the most primitive form of organic life as the 

 connecting link between the animal and the 

 vegetable to be the polypus. It did not 

 occur to Mr. Wesley that man as the result 

 of evolution had a debased origin, but he 

 went on to say : " Has God created as many 

 species of souls as of animals ? Or is there 

 only one species of soul in animals, differ- 

 ently modified according to the diversity of 

 organization ? This question is absolutely 

 impenetrable by us. All we can say con- 

 cerning it is this : If God, who has always 

 acted by the most simple means, has thought 

 proper to vary the spiritual perfection of ani- 

 mals merely by organization, his wisdom 

 has so ordained it. At the summit of the 

 scale of our globe is placed man, the master- 

 piece of earthly creation." Further : " Man- 

 kind have their gradations as well as the 

 other productions of our globe. There is a 

 prodigious number of continued links be- 

 tween the most perfect man and the ape." 



Tropical ininials in Frost. The animals 

 in the London Zoological Gardens were sur- 

 prised by a hard frost (16) in the last days 

 of November, 1893, but, according to an ob- 

 server who was there to see, the animals 

 from warm and tropical regions seemed no 

 more inconvenienced by the cold than were 

 their fellow-residents from far northern re- 

 gions. With every pond and pool sheeted 

 with ice, and the gravel walks as hard as 

 granite, birds and beasts from such regions 



as Burmah, Assam, Malacca, and Brazil 

 " were abroad and enjoying the keen air ; 

 and others, which are usually invisible and 

 curled up in their sleeping apartments until 

 late in the day, were already abroad, sniff- 

 ing at the frost and icicles, and as Mr. Sam 

 Weller's polar bear ' ven he was a-practic- 

 ing his skating.' A visit to the Gardens in 

 such weather suggests a modification of too 

 rigid ideas of the limitation of certain types 

 of animals to warm or torrid climates, and 

 illustrates the gradual and reluctant char- 

 acter of the retreat of species before the ad- 

 vance of the glacial cold in remote ages. 

 No creatures are, as a rule, more sensitive 

 to cold than the whole monkey tribe. Yet 

 there is at least one species of monkey which 

 habitually endures the rigors of a northern 

 winter. One of the cleverest antique Chi- 

 nese drawings at South Kensington repre- 

 sents a troop of monkeys caught in an ava- 

 lanche of snow. The grotesque discomfiture 

 of these pink-faced monkeys rolling down 

 the hillside, helplessly clutching at each 

 other's bodies and tails, grinning and grim- 

 acing as their heads emerge from the pow- 

 dery snow, is something more than the 

 fancy of a Chinese painter. The incident is 

 probably drawn from an actual scene, and 

 one of the creatures, the Scheli monkey from 

 the mountains of Pekin, was in an open cage 

 in the Gardens, and in far better health and 

 spirits than in the height of summer. Its 

 fur had grown thick and close, and the 

 naked face had assumed the dark madder- 

 pink with which it was adorned in the Chi- 

 nese drawing. When presented with sticks 

 crusted with hard ice, it sucked the chilly 

 damty with great relish, and only showed 

 signs of sensitiveness to cold by putting its 

 fingers to its mouth, then sitting on its 

 hands to warm them. The behavior of this 

 northern monkey is only strange by contrast 

 with the general hab'ts of its kind. But the 

 indifference to cold of the capybara, a gigan- 

 tic water guinea pig from the warm rivers of 

 Brazil, is not easy to explain. Two of these 

 quaint creatures had left their snug sleeping 

 apartments, and were stepping gayly among 

 pools of half-frozen water and broken ice. 

 One had gained an extra coat by burrowing 

 in its straw and then emerging with a pile 

 upon its back ; and when this fell off, re- 

 tired and shufiied on another pile ; but the 



