376 LEAVES FROM THE 



heralds of spring, decked with their glowing tabards, as 

 early as the 2nd of that month some few years since. 



The Frost-genius takes his opportunities of convincing 

 mortals that his reign has not passed away, by a demon- 

 stration of more than ordinary severity, as he did in 

 1783-4, when Paris especially was frozen to her very 

 marrow, and the greatest distress prevailed; nor did the 

 thaw permanently take place till late in February. 

 Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette put forth all their 

 benevolent powers to relieve the pinching misery of that 

 icy grasp, and the blessings of the people were inscribed 

 on obelisks of snow — as durable as their gratitude. 



19th January. — A genial afternoon, with a good spice 

 of an old May day in it, led me to the Zoological Gardens, 

 where a tapir was lounging about in the open air, as com- 

 fortable apparently as if it had been in South America. 

 Hippo very much grown, and thriving admirably. His 

 food still oatmeal and milk, and it must be told — as the 

 well-bred Hamet informed me in a whisper — ' many 

 horse-dung,' of which latter condiment he consumes a 

 great deal, and has long done so. This reminded me of 

 a passage in Sparrman, in which he anticipates the possi- 

 bility of bringing one of these animals to Europe. Speak- 

 ing of the sucking hippopotamus which he captured and 

 dissected, the Swedish doctor says, ' I am apt to suppose 

 that one a little older than this would not be very nice 

 in its food ; as that which we caught was induced by 

 hunger, as soon as it was let loose near the waggon, to 

 put up with something not extremely delicate, which had 

 been just dropped from one of our oxen.' 



It is not at all improbable that the animal took this, 

 not from pressure of hunger, but as a corrective to the 

 milk, the curd of which was found in its stomach ; and it 

 is possible that the sucking hippopotamus, in a state of 

 nature, may have recourse to the droppings of the parent 

 for that purpose. This does not seem to have occurred 



