200 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



But, in spite of a somewhat vigorous confidence in the 

 faith, there was nothing actually stiff about our naturalist 

 either in mind or muscle. At a ripe age he met his old 

 friend, Captain Jones, in Rome, " when we visited the 

 castle of St. Angelo and contrived to get on to the head 

 of the guardian angel, where we stood on one leg." 

 When he was seventy-seven, " I (Hobson) was witness 

 to his scratching the back part of his head with the big 

 toe of his right foot." (" If they should see their bishop 

 stand, His foot supported in his hand.") Indeed, the 

 Home, Habits and Handiwork (1866) of Hobson's is very 

 happily stored with records of the squire's " callisthenic 

 feats." In his eightieth year he would show his 

 pleasure " in receiving me by actually dancing down 

 the whole length of the broad walk, occasionally throw- 

 ing one of his loose slippers from his foot high up in the 

 air above his head and expertly catching it in his hand 

 in its descent." 



At an advanced age he made himself a pair of wings, 

 and would have sallied off the roof of his stables had 

 not his Boswell arrived in the nick of time to remind 

 him of the fate of Icarus. Being so excellent a Latin 

 scholar he desisted. In 1850, he was up in one of his 

 trees. " Suddenly the ladder swerved in a lateral direc- 

 tion I adhered to it manfully ; myself and the ladder 

 coming simultaneously to the ground with astounding 

 velocity." Partial concussion of the brain was the 

 result, somewhat aggravated the same day by his 

 servant withdrawing the chair he was about to sit down 

 upon. Never did virility of body and character emerge 

 so triumphantly from a sufficiently searching test, for 

 the one survived the ministration of the local bone- 

 setter and his own blood-letting and aperients, the 

 other resolved in the future " to mount into trees with- 

 out the aid of ladders." " And here I am just now, 

 sound as an acorn," having arisen from " my expected 

 ruins." At any rate, from strangling boa constrictors 

 in the Guiana wilds (first thrusting his hat down their 

 throats) to his arboreal exercises, he certainly did 

 throughout his long life display no less robustness of body 

 than of faith, no less agility of muscle than of mind. 



