411 
" Box cages " are most suitable for fresh caiii^ht nightingales ; 
they should have thin paper pasted over the front. 
Torpidity, p. 120. — White is continually mentioning torpidity. 
In this country dormice and hedgehogs become torpid. Here is a 
portrait of a monkey that in White's time would probably have 
been said to have laid himself up torpid. TJiis remarkable 
specimen (see next page) was given to me by my brother-in-law, 
the liev. H. Glordoii, of Hartiiig, near retersfield, with tlie 
following history : — 
" In the year 1868 this skeleton of a monkey was given me 
by the Itev. H. Mitchell, rector of Bosham, near Oliichester. It 
had been found at Bosham Mill. The owner of the mill, who has 
since left, had a monkey that disappeared. A birch tree was 
cut down upon the premises, and lay for some time in an adja- 
cent carpenter's shop ; and when a part of the bark was found 
to be loose it was detached, and the monkey's sarcophagus was 
revealed, as you have it in the woodcut. It was a great jDuzzle 
to me that, while the lower part of the body was so much 
squeezed up, the hcdd had resisted all pressure from the growth 
of the tree. I thought at one time that the head had fitted into 
a decayed cavity of the tree ; but on showing the bark adjacent 
to the head, some experienced connoisseurs of English timber 
pronounced it to have been living wood when the tree was 
felled, and added that the said bark was still green, a proof that 
the tree had lived within two years of 1868. At a neighbouring 
dinner party in 1869, the late Bishop of Winchester, Dr. S. 
Wilberforce, was giving us some jokes about Darwin, and I 
took the opportunity of introducing this dried monkey. An 
illustrious mock jury was at once impanelled to try the cause 
of our Darwinian brother's death. No verdict, however, was 
returned. The Bishop thought it might be a hoax, but Sir 
Eoderick Murchison pronounced it genuine and remarkable." 
This monkey is a Marmozet ; his length is — body, six inches 
tail, seven inches. The poor little creature is quite dried up 
into a mummy ; the hair on his head and the aspect of the eyes 
make him look very like a small human baby mummified. 
The hands rest against the sides of his head as if in pain. I 
am afraid the poor little fellow must have crawled in and died 
of starvation. 
It is a very remarkable thing, but there is no mark of his 
having been touched by any fly or other insect. The body still 
adheres very tight to the bark ; the lower part of the body is 
very much crushed, but, as ]\Ir. IMitchell remarks, the head 
remains intact. The appearance of the bark covering the 
