KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



203 



made her little heart almost burst with uncom- 

 prehended jealousy. 



She would steal up to him at times when 

 he was absorbed in calculations ; and, throw- 

 ing her arms round his neck, woo him from 

 his thought. A smile, revealing love in its 

 very depths, would brighten his anxious 

 face, as for a moment he pushed aside the 

 world, and concentrated all his being in one 

 happy feeling. 



She could win moments from him, she 

 could not win his life ; she could charm, she 

 could not occupy him ! The painful truth 

 came slowly over her ; as the deepening 

 shadows fall upon a sunny Day until at last 

 it is Night. Night with her stars of infinite 

 beauty, but without the lustre and warmth 

 of Day. 



She drooped ; and on her couch of sickness 

 her keen-sighted love perceived, through all 

 his ineffable tenderness, that same remote- 

 ness in his eyes. This proved that, even as 

 he sat there grieving, and apparently ab- 

 sorbed in her, there still came dim remem- 

 brances of Care to vex and occupy his soul. 



" It were better 1 were dead," she thought ; 

 " I am not good enough for him.'''' Poor 

 child ! Not good enough, because her simple 

 nature knew not the manifold perplexities, 

 the hindrances of incomplete life ! Not good 

 enough, because her whole life was centred 

 in one whose life was scattered ! 



And so — she breathed herself away, and 

 left her husband to all his gloom of Care, 

 made tenfold darker by the absence of those 

 gleams of tenderness which before had 

 fitfully irradiated life — The night was star- 

 less — and he ALONE ! 



Who, we ask, among the ranks of wedded 

 life, can read this episode without having a 

 bleeding heart ? May it wound us all, very 

 deeply : and speedily lead to the cure of a 

 most frightful evil ! 



ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE. 



Do Toads and Frogs eat their own Skins?-— 

 A gentleman, named William Marshall, asserts, 

 Mr. Editor, in the Gardeners' Chronicle of Sept. 

 4, that frogs, &c, shed their skins, and swallow 

 them. [This vulgar error has long prevailed.] 

 He lays much stress on the fact of his having in 

 his possession a singular toad, of a curious color, 

 and with pink eyes. Now I have kept these 

 animals so long, and made them so constantly 

 my study, without ever observing anything of the 

 kind, that I may venture to doubt the fact of the 

 question being settled in a satisfactory manner. 

 There are many phenomena in nature for which 

 we cannot accoun t,— such as white hedge-spar- 

 rows, house-sparrows, blackbirds, &c, &c, and 

 no doubt the toad with pink eyes is one of these 

 phenomena, or exceptions to general rule. My 

 frogs are now in all their glory, full of life 

 and energy. Every morning I turn in a store 

 of blue-bottle flies, and it would highly delight 



you to see how each frog darts from out of the 

 water at its prey, catching it with unerring cer- 

 tainty at a distance of about ten inches. Their 

 spots are increasing in beauty and brilliancy, 

 daily. Never were animals more joyous — more 

 enviably happy. — J. Lusher. 



The Surfeit in Birds. — I have a thrush, with 

 a bald head and neck. The feathers are con- 

 stantly falling off, and do not grow again. I 

 have also another thrush, very mopish. I fear I 

 shall lose him. What shall I do ? — Robin. 



[For the cure of " surfeit," see Article on 

 page 298, Vol. I. The ailing thrush requires 

 change of air and scene, also change of food. 

 Give him some cheese now and then; a snail or 

 two ; and some bread and butter. Hang him up 

 in a cheerful situation (out of the reach of 

 draughts), and he will soon recover.] 



Unnatural Dogs. — The late Mr. Shaw, demon- 

 strator of anatomy, has left on record a very 

 curious anecdote of an unnatural and also of a 

 natural dog. The former was running, one very 

 wet day, by the side of a man on horseback, at 

 North End, Hampstead. She was observed to 

 droop, and could not proceed with the other dogs 

 which were in company. Being left in the care 

 of a boy in the neighborhood, she brought 

 forth in the course of an hour several pups. The 

 next morning she was gone, and in her place 

 (attracted by cries of distress) was found a New- 

 foundland dog, some six months old ! Never 

 having been a mother, there were " no supplies " 

 for the puppies. Nature, however, never de- 

 feated, triumphed here; and the energies of the 

 pups actually produced a supply of milk, which 

 never ceased until they were all reared. They 

 were of the spaniel breed. — Verax. 



[This is the third case of the kind that we have 

 already recorded. In every instance, milk was pro- 

 vided, where in the regular course of nature none 

 was procurable.] 



The Ant. — You have been dwelling much of 

 late on the sagacity of the ant. Let me add to 

 the interest already created thereby, by another 

 pretty little fact, proving that among them, as 

 among ourselves, "unity is 'strength.'' One 

 day during the summer of 1816, I was seated 

 on the lawn of a cottage at Twickenham. Just 

 above my head was a large cedar tree ; imme- 

 diately below this, lay a dead rat. This rat 

 I observed to "move " very mysteriously. It 

 appeared to heave backwards and forwards. I 

 rubbed my eyes over and over again; still the 

 body " moved " perceptibly. Incredulously I 

 then approached the spot, and there found an 

 ant-hill. It was distant from the rat about 

 eighteen inches; and around and under the rat 

 there were many thousands of these creatures 

 busily at work. Their object was to carry off the 

 body, and store it in the colony. This, after 

 several days' labor, I may add, they accomplished. 

 Excellent anatomists were they, withal, — the rat 

 was a perfect natural skeleton ! When I state that 

 the removal of this body was up an inclined plane, 

 the marvel is the greater. All hands went to 

 work cheerfully. The labor was great, but 

 being divided and shared, it was anything but 



