396 LEAVES FROM THE 



lanthorn. The light is no sooner unveiled, than it seems 

 to have a Promethean effect on the statue-like forms that 

 were so still in the morning. Now the scene is changed : 

 now all is action, terrible action; and we behold the 

 monstrous constricting serpents, and the horrible poi- 

 sonous snakes, and the uncouth lizards, writhing, coiling, 

 creeping, running, and pushing against the transparent 

 walls of their crystal prison, till the nervous anxiety of 

 some temperaments may be pardoned for huddling up to 

 the keeper, and inquiring, with bated breath, whether the 

 glass is p5rthon and boa -constrictor proof ? 



March 27th. — The rain it raineth every day. The 

 peck of dust, worth a king's ransom, will hardly be forth- 

 coming, and the farmer begins to be uneasy about his 

 oats. The garden in the Regent's Park is a swamp. 

 Both the great and the smaller tortoise in the ostrich- 

 house are dead, as I feared. A small one that buries 

 itself two or three feet deep in the earth exposed to all 

 the skiey influences, does well. Hippo is flourishing, and 

 now has clover-chaff tea, with the boiled chaff as a change 

 of diet. He drinks the tea, and then eats the sop. His 

 tank in the open air is advancing rapidly towards com- 

 pletion. The beautiful crested pigeons,* with their 

 hybrid young one, are in fine condition. On the 8th 

 September, in the last year, I found Goura Victorias on 

 her nest, with her young one able to fly. On that day it 

 was five weeks old. The male bird, Goura coronata, 

 better known as ' the great Amboyna pigeon,' which be- 

 longs to her Majesty, was strutting about on the ground. 

 His productive alliance with the species which bears our 

 gracious Queen's name is worthy of notice, particularly 

 when the difference of climate is taken into the account. 

 The egg — there was only one — from which the hybrid 

 sprung was sat on twenty-eight days before the young 



* Goura coronata and Goura Victorice. 



