112 



CHAPTER OF VARIETIES. 



frequent experiments have satisfactorily proved. It seems, indeed, to 

 be absolutely necessary that the stomachs of some birds shall always 

 contain pieces of stones and other hard bodies for the purpose of assist- 

 ing- and facilitating- the process of digestion. Messrs. Kirby and Spence, 

 in their Introduction to Entomology, tell us, that one of the camellicorn 

 timber beetles occasionally g-naws a passage through sheets of lead, the 

 particles of which are taken into the stomach. " The larva of a Ceram- 

 byx" say these famed entomologists, " which Dr. Leach has discovered 

 to be Cerambyx bajulus, sometimes does material injury to the wood- 

 work of the roofs of houses in London, piercing in every direction the 

 fir-rafters, and when arrived at the perfect state, making its way out 

 even through sheets of lead one-sixth of an inch thick, when they 

 happen to have been nailed upon the rafter in which it has assumed its 

 final metamorphosis." They afterwards mention their being " indebted 

 to the kindness of Sir Joseph Banks for a specimen of such a sheet of 

 lead which, though only eight inches long and four broad, is thus 

 pierced with twelve oval holes, of some of which the longest diameter 

 is a quarter of an inch ! Mr. Charles Miller first discovered lead in 

 the stomach of this insect." Hard substances are sometimes swal- 

 lowed by animals, without any better motive than that of mischief. 

 D'Azara mentions the circumstance of an American tapir, (Tapirus 

 Americanus^) which he kept domesticated, swallowing his silver snuff- 

 box. The ingulf ment of D'Azara's snuff-box (are naturalists really 

 given to taking snuff?) was not a matter of so serious a moment as 

 that detailed in the following account of an expensive meal made by 

 an elephant, as reported in the Morning Chronicle of September 19, 

 1833. " On Friday afternoon, at the Zoological Gardens, Regent's 

 Park, a lady was holding a biscuit to the elephant from the top of her 

 reticule, when the animal, mistaking the extent of the lady's generosity, 

 seized the reticule with his trunk, and conveyed it with its contents, con- 

 sisting of a ten-pound note, some loose money, and a bunch of keys, 

 into his stomach, to the dismay of the lady and amusement of the 

 bystanders." The animal in this case, no doubt, swallowed the keys to 

 open his trunk, but what he needed the money for, unless to present 

 his keeper with a pecuniary reward, is difficult to discover. What a 

 pity that the thought did not occur to the lady, of sending for an 

 officer to overhaul the trunk, and insist upon the seizure of the 

 smuggled goods. Solitarius. 



Paddington. 



