xxxvi 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



Canada goose, and which had the unlucky ad- 

 venture through the rough streets of Hull, 

 when they were arbitrarily ordered to the 

 Customhouse by the ignorance of one officer, 

 and peremptorily sent out of it by the ill- 

 humour of another. 



The Japan monsters, shown in the museum 

 at the Hague, are clumsy fabrications. 1 could 

 make better work with my left hand. The 

 moth has perforated them to a great extent. 

 Tis time, indeed, that they w r ere cast out of the 

 way. One of them put me in mind of Ovid's 

 Famine, — 



" Hirtus erat crinis, cava lumina, pallor in ore, 

 Labra incana situ, scabrae rubigine fauces." 



But a sight of Potter's bull repays one for the 

 penance done in examining these mouldering 

 imitations of what may be termed death alive. 



Celebrated as the museum at Leyden is in 

 most of its departments, that of zoology, as 

 far as preparation goes, is wretched in the 

 extreme. It is as bad as our own in London ; 

 and we might fancy that Swainson had been 

 there with his own taxidermy, marring every 

 form and every feature. It is lamentable, 

 indeed, that such celebrated naturalists as 



