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He often lays the elephant dead. His colour is a light yellow, and 

 purple drops adorn his back. All of this species are males — at least 

 no female was ever seen. How they are generated he knows not, 

 unless they spring from the earth, or by some mysterious mode from 

 each other, without love, nuptials, or parturition, as some of the testa- 

 ceous tribes are generated in the sands. 



As to the smaller animals, his muse cannot condescend to sing of 

 them, though he speaks of the dormouse and its winter's sleep with 

 his usual descriptive powers. Neither will he sing of the squirrel, 

 whose bushy tail covers his whole body, as his gorgeous plumage 

 covers the peacock ; nor of the rough race of hedge-hogs, of 

 which there are two species, bristled with sharp thorny prickles ; 

 nor of the three kinds of apes, a weak, mischievous, and imperti- 

 nent race ; nor of the blind mole, though sprung, according to fame, 

 from the royal blood of Phineus, who was changed, by the wrath 

 of Phoebus, into an animal which still retains his similitude in its 

 blindness and voracity. 



