LEAVES FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 



skipping on his great, flat, scaly tail in a second. 

 Then Binny would shake his head, wheel round 

 like a ponderous wagon, and, by the time he had 

 brought his head where his tail was, Macky had 

 bounded from the tables and chairs on and off him 

 twenty times. Binny at last would slap his tail 

 again and again against the floor till he'made all 

 ring, whereupon Mack'y would dance round him, 

 and cut the most extravagant capers, touching 

 Binny's tail with his finger and jumping away as 

 quick as thought. 



They had evidently a good understanding with 

 each other, and were on the best terms. One day 

 they were left al large in a room together, where 

 there was a linen press, the doors of which had 

 been left open. Macky climbed the doors, ran- 

 sacked the press, pulled out the sheets, table- 

 cloths, &c., and threw them down to the beaver, 

 who, jpving made a most luxurious bed, laid him- 

 self down thereon ; and when the room was en- 

 tered Macky and Binny were found fast asleep, 

 the former with his head and shoulders pillowed 

 upon Binny's comfortable neck. When Binny 

 died, his master determined to have no more sor- 

 rowing for pets, and sent Macky to the Zoological 

 Society's garden, in the Regent's Park, where 

 they got him a wife, with whom he lived long 

 and happily. 



The two beavers which were in that garden 

 when the writer gave the late lamented Mr. Ben- 

 nett permission to print the account of his domesti- 

 cated beaver, were sent to the society from Canada 

 by Lord Dalhousie. They were partially deprived 

 of sight before their arrival in this country ; but 

 one of them had the use of one eye ; and the other, 

 although totally blind, dived most perseveringly 

 for clay! and applied it to stop up every cranny in 

 their common habitation that could admit " the 

 winter's flaw." They lived some time together, 

 apparently happy and contented. 



GREAT as have been the advantages of menage- 

 ries, in bringing immediately under the eyes of 

 every observer animals which would otherwise be 

 hardly known except from books, or from their 

 remains preserved in museums, they have, it must 

 be confessed, been fatal to romance. The exag- 

 gerated proportions which travellers have assigned 

 to birds and, beasts ay, and men partly from 

 seeing the objects at a distance, and partly from 

 the highly-colored and, in many instances, imper- 

 fectly understood accounts of the natives, shrink 

 when the living creature is before the spectator. 

 In such cases, truth like the best pictures of the 

 Italian masters, which are not satisfactory at first, 

 especially to those who have admired the extrava- 

 gances, however poetical, of a Fuseli looks 

 poorly ; and it is only after consideration that the 

 mind becomes reconciled to the light, before which 

 errors and false pretensions vanish. 



How many, who have read of the condor till he 

 has been almost magnified into the roc of Arabian 

 story, have been disappointed at the first sight of 



those birds which have been kept so long at the 

 garden of the Zoological Society of London ! I 

 can hardly call to mind one who has so seen them 

 in my presence whose expectations had not gone 

 far beyond what he then saw. To say nothing 

 of more general romantic statements, eighteen feet 

 have been given as the actual measurement across 

 the expanded wings of the great vulture of the 

 Andes. The old male belonging to the society, a 

 very fine specimen, measures eleven feet from tip. 

 to tip when his wings are outstretched ; his length 

 does not exceed four feet nine inches. Both he 

 and his partner, notwithstanding their confinement 

 a confinement which must be peculiarly irksome 

 and unnatural to a bird, the greater portion of 

 whose free life is spent on the wing, sailing in 

 the higher regions of the atmosphere, far above 

 the throne of clouds of the 



Giant of the western star, 



appear to enjoy good health, proofs of which have 

 been given in their attempts to continue the spe- 

 cies, notwithstanding their unfavorable situation. 



In a state of nature, the eggs of the condor are 

 said to rest on the rock, without stick or straw, 

 and unprotected by any border. There, at an ele- 

 vation of from ten to fifteen thousand feet above 

 the level of the sea, on such ledges and plateaux 

 as " The Condor's Look-out," " The Condor's 

 Nest," "The Condor's Roost," the nestling first 

 breathes the highly rarefied air. A year elapses, 

 it is asserted, before the downy young one is suffi- 

 ciently plumed to leave the mother. About the 

 end of the second year, the color is a yellowish 

 brown, and, up to this time, the gallila or ruff IB 

 not visible, whence probably arises the notion that 

 there are. two species of condors, one black, (the 

 color of the adult,) and one brown. Flying to a 

 more lofty pitch than any other bird, and reduced 

 in the sight of the upward gazer, amid the grand 

 and gigantic scenery, to the size of hawks, they 

 wheel round, keeping their telescopic eyes on the 

 valleys, watching for the fall of some failing 

 horse or cow. Then down come the condors to 

 the feast. In their daintiness they generally 

 begin with the tongue and the eyes, but the rage 

 of a hunger sharpened by days of watching on 

 the wing, in the eager air of a very high altitude, 

 is not easily appeased. The bird, rioting in the 

 midst of the plentiful table which death has spread 

 for it in the wilderness, after tearing up the hide 

 with its trenchant beak, carves out and swallows 

 gobbet after gobbet, till it is so gorged as to be 

 unable to raise itself on the wing. This the 

 Indians well know, and when they have a mind 

 for a battue they set forth a dead horse or cow, 

 and quietly watch the progress of the repast, 

 which is sure to be attended by the condors, some 

 of them being almost always on their walch far 

 aloft. When they are well gorged, and looking 

 on each other with gluttonous gravity, the Indiana 

 make their appearance with the deadly lasso. 

 Then comes a scene of excitement, gladdening the 

 heart of the sportsman only a degree less than the 



