56 THE CHAMOIS AND THE BEZOARS. 



established in 1866, by close observation of the Arctomys 

 bobac of the Zoological Garden of Vienna. The marmot 

 creates these balls by scratching up the earth, and appears 

 to amuse himself a child's amusement ! by rolling them to 

 and fro in his galleries. 



THE CHAMOIS. 



"Even so 

 This way the chamois leapt." * 



Must we omit this graceful ruminant from the number of 

 mammals inhabiting the eternal snows ? No ; for it is not of 

 his own will that the chamois has taken refuge upon the snowy 

 peaks of the Alps. If we meet with him there, it is because he 

 seeks to shelter himself from the destructive instincts of man. 



The chamois is one of those animal species which, before 

 a century, perhaps, will have disappeared ; his bones will then 

 figure in the palaeontological museums by the side of the 

 skeletons of extinct species. There, too, will be displayed 

 the famous chamois balls, each of the size of a nut, covered 

 with a shining substance resembling leather, of an agreeable 

 odour, and seeming to be a morbid dejection, composed of 

 roots and other undigested matter. These balls, the bezoars 

 of the old physicians, were regarded as a remedy against every 

 ill the human flesh is heir to ; it was even professed that they 

 rendered soldiers invulnerable, and were a better defence 

 against bullets than the finest armour ever wrought by the 

 smiths of Milan. How precious a remedy for this epoch of 

 civilisation, when man is he much wiser than his supposed 

 * Byron. 



