Dr. Graham Renshaw,



336



The Tower of London is famous for its list of illustrious

victims, though block and axe have long been idle. About 1828,

however, it witnessed a novel tragedy. The famous Tower menagerie

at that time included a Secretary Bird, together with several other

African animals, such as a lion, cheetahs, spotted hyaenas, a hyaena

dog, baboons, and so forth. The Secretary being one day let out for

an airing, thrust an inquiring head into the cage of a hyaena, who

promptly bit it off. Tims the unfortunate bird, like many other

better known characters, was in deed and truth “ beheaded in the

Tower.”


Probably the most earnest student of the Secretary Bird was

M. Jules Verreaux. In his day he was a well-known collector, and

with his brother established the firm of Verreaux Freres, naturalists

and taxidermists. The trophies of Sir Alexander Smith and Sir

William Harris were mounted by Verreaux’s, and specimens of their

art are still to be seen at the Natural History Museum at South

Kensington. Long resident at the Cape, Jules Verreaux had many

opportunities of natural history study ; he kept a large collection of

living animals, which included many Secretary Birds. He was

apparently the first aviculturist to breed them in captivity, though

the experiment got no further than the egg stage. Three eggs were

laid and partly incubated, but the crowded state of the menagerie

precluded complete success. Firmly convinced of the great value of

the Secretary as a vermin-destroyer, Verreaux advocated its intro¬

duction into the French colonies, and when M. Freycinet went in

1826 to govern Cayenne he took with him several pairs on Verreaux’s

recommendation. Unfortunately, the colonists took so little interest

in the experiment that it proved a failure; perhaps, also, the climate

of Cayenne was unfavourable to the new importations. A whole¬

hearted aviculturist, Verreaux also advised the introduction of the

Secretary into Algeria and even India ; from what the present writer

has seen of the former country the wide, sandy, reptile-haunted

wastes of the Sahara would seem excellently adapted to its habits.

Northern Africa, indeed, curiously parallels Southern Africa in many

of its characters; in Sahara and Karroo alike there occur arid sandy

flats, with appropriate desert fauna. In the North, for instance, we

find various gazelles, in the South the springbok : in the North the



