100 LEAVES FROM THE 



was swallowed up by Kome, wlio in her turn fell at the 

 feet of the Goth; and in the fulness of time there 

 arose a wizard from the great northern hive, he of the 

 polar star, who waved his wand, aroused the Sirens 

 from the annihilation into which they had escaped, 

 and degraded them into one of the lowest reptile forms 

 of America. 



The Arabs have a saying that monkeys are enchanted 

 men, and the most elegant of modern poets has been 

 heard to declare that they reminded him of poor rela- 

 tions: but what is the lot of humanity so transformed 

 compared to the degradation of sirens into Perennibran- 

 chiate Batrachians. 



What on earth are Perennibranchiate Batrachians ? 



A Batrachian, in the language of the learned, means 

 a reptile of the great frog family, and a Perennibran- 

 chiate — there is certainly some sesquipedality in the 

 word, as there too often is in those coined by the scien- 

 tific ; with all due submission to their worships be it 

 written — a Perennibranchiate Batrachian is one that 

 does not go through metamorphosis, like a common frog, 

 for instance (which first bursts upon the aquatic world as 

 a tadpole, then acquires limbs, and then drops his tail 

 and gills, as becomes a citizen of the terrestrial as well 

 as the watery world thenceforth blessed with lungs), but 

 remains a gill-breathing, muddy, fishlike groveller, all 

 the days of its life. 



In my zoological obituary for last March, I find the 

 death of Siren lacertina recorded towards the end of 

 the month. The melancholy event took place in the 

 Garden of the Society in the Regent's Park, where the 

 siren had lived for many years in the parrot-house, 

 domiciled in a vessel of pond water, with a bottom of 

 deep mud. It was during its life as vivacious as any- 

 thing existing in inky-looking mud could be, and throve 

 well on worms — with some dozen and a half of which it 



