138 
LIVINGSTONE FESTIVAL. 
[Feb. 13, 1858. 
ness the deep-thinking Traveller illustrates by comparison with the 
heating of the heart, perhaps unconscious of the profound physiolo- 
gical truth embodied in this comparison of insect movements with 
the involuntary or reflex muscular action in higher animals ! How 
mysterious seems that power of most rapid diffusion of a subtle 
penetrating effluvium, which Livingstone notices as the defence of 
certain ants, with experimental determinations of distance and rate 
of progress of the emanation ! (Applause.) The same faculty of exact 
inquiry is manifested in the experiments, which remind us of those 
of Hunter — born, like Livingstone, in the parish of Kilbride — by 
which our traveller determined the independent source of the fluid 
secretion of the tree-insect, from which it dripped in such extraor- 
dinary quantity, both whilst attached to the twig and when insu- 
lated from its sap-vessels. The ornithologist has wondered at the 
seeming monstrous beaks of the hornbills, little dreaming of that 
strange economy manifested in the voluntary imprisonment of the 
incubating female, plastered up with her nest in the cleft of a tree, 
a fissure only being left through which she can protrude the tip of 
her long bill to receive food from her attendant mate, and he, reci- 
procally, poke his into the procreative prison to tempt her with 
some dainty. (Applause.) 
Of the ostrich much has been written ; yet we wanted Living- 
stone’s testimony of the vocal power of the wild male, roaring like 
the lion, and only, as our traveller tells us, distinguishable by being 
heard in broad day instead of by night. (Continued applause.) Of 
the king of beasts himself the volume contains the richest store- 
house of facts, from direct and varied observations of him in his 
native wilderness. 4 
Perhaps, however, this is the part of our friend’s book that has 
failed to give unmixed satisfaction to the British public. We dis- 
like to have our settled notions disturbed by provokingly unvar- 
nished, uncompromising assertions of facts that militate against a 
cherished prepossession. Some of us feel rather sore at our notions 
of the majesty of England’s old emblematic beast being upset by 
the sum of our guest’s opportunities of intimate acquaintance with 
the natural disposition and habits of the lion of South Africa. 
(Laughter.) Fearfully intimate, indeed, was part of his experience ! 
That direful grip — which since has left one arm a dangling ap- 
pendage — when the dishevelled mane of the irate monster was 
tossed about his victim’s head, and the hot breath driven with 
deafening roar into his ear ! — did it shake all respect for the tra- 
ditional nobility of the lion out of the Doctor’s mind ? Certain it 
is, the sum of his recorded observations shows the lion to be a 
