~~ 1)
~-" ~~~..                          ~
A~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
=- -~..~- ~-~~..?~             ~._~~==K~=
~~    ~:~~____ -~
DURIA ANTIGUIOR, OtR ANCIENT DORSETSHIRE. (See page 36.)




CURIOSITIES
OF
NATURAL HISTORY.
BY
FRANCIS T. BUOKLAND, M. A.,
STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD; ASSISTANT SURGEON SECOND
LIFE GUARDS; AUTHOR OF CURIOSITIES OF NATURAL HISTORY,
FIRST SERIES, ETC.
NEW  YORK:
RUDD & CARLETON, 130 GRAND STREET.
LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY.
M DCCC LX.




PRINTED FROM THE AUTHOR'S EARLY SHEETS.




CONTENTS.
PAGE
A GEOLOGICAL AUCTION....         23
THE GAME-KEEPER S MUSEUM.. 109
IN MEMORIAM.......  205
A HUNT ON THE SEA-SHORE.... 211








A SLIGHT TRIBUTE
TO THE MEMORY
OF
in tm r 1otta,
FOR WHOSE EARLY INSTRUCTION AND PARENTAL CARE
[ OWE A DEBT OF GRATITUDE
I CAN NEVER REPAY.
F. T. B.








A GEOLOGICAL AUCTION.








PREFACE.
IF we consider the numerous scientific and valuah.e
works on Natural History which almost daily appear
from the public press, it would seem almost superfluous to attempt to add another book on this subject. I
have, nevertheless, made bold to publish this little
work, because, in the first place, I do not think too
much can be written about the ever-various and beautiful works of the great Creator; and, secondly; because there are many little things which in general are
not thought worthy of being recorded, but which nevertheless have much interest to the true lover of Natural History.
In our leisure moments, when the business of the
day is over, we can hardly walk along London streets




Xii                  PREFACE.
-and certainly not along the hedge-rows and fields of
the country, or the wave-washed shore of the oceanwithout finding almost at every step something or
other worthy of observation; may-be our specimen is,
and probably will be, common enough, yet, if it be
rightly examined, it will be found to possess great interest, and to have an unwritten history of its own,
which it should be our pleasure to interpret.
There is nothing so wearisome, or so destructive to
the human mind, as the disease called "Nothing to
do:" there is always and everywhere something to be
done; there are no two places in this world exactly
alike in their products, animal, vegetable, or mineral,
and the objects you do not find in one place you will
find in another.
If the eyes be instructed and trained to observe
what is brought before their gaze, the mind is employed, and the feeling of weariness passes off: one
fact follows another; a new observation may be tacked
on to an old observation; the result being not only
pleasure in discovery, but pleasure in recollecting and
recording.




1PIEFALCE.                xiii
In the following pages I do not pretend to great
things: they are more a collection of occasional notes
than a literary production.
The skeletons of the " Gamekeeper's Museum" and
of the " Hunt on the Sea-shore" have already appeared
in that rising little periodical the St. James's Medley,
in the Naturalist's columns of the Field newspaper;
as well as in Household Words; and I here take this
opportunity of thanking the editors of those publications for their kind permission to reproduce these articles in their present form. I have, however, added
very much matter to them from subsequent notes and
repeated observations.
To my friend Professor Quekett, Curator of the
Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, and other
kind friends, I must return my sincere thanks for assistance during the progress of this little book.
Finally, the success of my First Series, which is
now in its fifth thousand, has emboldened me to write
a companion volume to it, and I trust the reader will
be pleased to approve of this my second humble at



xiv                 PREFACE.
tempt to instruct and at the same time, if possible, to
amuse.
The publication of my labors has been greatly delayed by the illness and, I regret to say, the death
(May 4, 1860) of my lamented friend, T. Tardrew,
Esq., Surgeon of the Regiment to which I have the
honor to belong. My professional duties have, from
this cause, for the last ten months, been heavier than
usual, and it is only my spare time that I can devote
to literary labors.
FRANCIS T. BUCKLAND,
2d Life Guards.
ATHENEUM CLUB, PALL MALL,
June, 1860.




EXPLANATION OF THE FRONTISPIECE.
1 Ichthyosaurus Vulgaris.     6. Pentacrinites Briaraeus (or
2. Ichthyosaurus Tenuirostris     the Hundred-handed.)
(or the slender-jawed.)  7. Cuttle Fish.
8. Plesiosaurus Doliclodirus (or  8. Ammonites.
the Long-necked.)        9. Crocodile.
4. Pterodactyles.            10. Lamia  or "Fossil Bird's
5. Lapedium  Pablum  (or the       nest.")
" Paving- stone"  scaled
fish.)
THE Frontispiece is an  attempt to  reproduce  a
remarkable  drawing by my father's friend, the late
lamented  Sir Henry  Delabeche.   After  lecturing
from his professional chair in the University of
Oxford, upon the numerous and valuable specimens
of extinct animal life contained in his museum, it was
his habit to distribute copies of Sir Henry's drawing,
in order to bring to the minds of his audience the
reality of the subjects on which he had been convers



X i    EXPLANATION OF THE FI'O.NTISPIECE.
ing. It is, I believe, one of the first attempts ever
made to restore to their living forms these monster
inhabitants of ancient seas, though this idea has been
of late fully developed by Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins,
in his admirable models in the gardens of the Crystal
Palace,
The  drawing by Sir H. Delabeche was called
"Duria Antiguior,"  or Ancient Dorsetshire.  For
along the sea-girt coast of this county is found a vast
charnel-house of the fossil bones of the monsters that
must at one time have lived, preyed upon each other,
and ultimately died, at or near this very spot, leaving
their remains to be discovered and described by geologists, and their forms as in life to be again restored
by the talented pencil of the great geologist above
mentioned.
In the centre of the plate, at fig. 1, is seen the
mighty Ichthyosaurus,* or the Lizard Fish; in form
and structure not unlike the marine mammalia that
play the same part at the present day as did these
* The remains of this animal are so abun(lantly found,
that its osseous and dental structure is as well known to
anatomists as that of a crocodile or other creature of our
own time.




EXPLANATION OF TIHE FiONTISPIECE.    Xvil
monsters in ancient oolitic times. And this is known,
on account, first, of there being an entire absence of
that peculiar modification of the bones which support
the gills in fish; second, the presence of true bony
nostrils and not olfactory bags placed in the skin
unconnected with bone, as in fish; third, the articulation of the ribs to the spine, as in recent air-breathing
animals. Ichthyosaurus had fins or paddles at its
side, and a long tail, at the end of which according to
Professor Owen's* recent discoveries, was a vertical,
conical fleshy fin. It was a true, air-breathing animal, and could do what no whale or grampus of the
present day is capable of accomplishing, viz.: the
Ichthyosaurus could crawl upon the shore, and that
most likely at periodical times as do the seal, walrus,
&c. It had an enormous eyeball, which was larger in
proportion to the skull than the eye in any other kind
of animal; and this eye, having no eyelids, contained
delicate humors, which, being liable to injury in a
* In the spring of this year, Professor Owen gave his
course of Fullerian Lectures at the Royal Institution, Albemarle Street, in which he gave a full description of this and
other animals. I have availed myself of my MS. notes, with
his permission, in the following descriptions.




Xviii  EXPLANATION OF THE FRONTISPIECE.
chopping sea, was composed of numerous thin and
(probably) flexible bones, which encased the pupil.
Owl-like, it probably pursued its prey at dusk of
evening, by moonlight, or at early morning   It had
a formidable array of teeth, each of which was undermined by the gum of its successor, so that if a violent
snap, or a too-vigorous-captured prey broke away the
old tooth, the new one would come up in its place.
In the engraving it is represented as making good
use of these teeth, for it has caught and is about to
devour Plesiosaurus, fig. 3.
This also is a curious whale-like creature, which
has aptly been likened to " a turtle threaded through
with the body of a snake." This animal was marineaquatic in its habits; but unlike the Ichthyosaurus,
which was a deep-sea animal, it was a shore creature,
and lived in the estuaries of brackish water; and
there, lurking under the oar-weed and other marine
vegetation, obtained its prey by darting out its long
neck, and seizing its prey with its sharp and formidable teeth, as is seen at fig. 4 (and also in the distance,)
where an unfortunate Pterodactyle has not got out of
the way quickly enough, anld is suffering for his lazi



EXPLANATION OF THE FRONTISPIECE.    XiX
ness; while his frightened companions are wheeling
about in the air overhead, like frightened sea-gulls
when one of their comrades has been captured or
shot.
This Pterodactyle, or winged-fingered Saurian, was
a monstrous beast, a true Saurian, but yet with
leather-like wings like a bat: the only living approach
to them is the insignificant little Draco Votaris of the
Isles of the Indian Archipelago (see p. 11.)
At fig. 5 is seen a fish whose name is Lapedium, so
called on account of its " pavement-like" scales; it
has encountered in its peregrination an Ichthyosaurus
who is making short work of him, and is about to
gorge him  down into its capacious stomach, in the
same manner that a jack does a roach or dace. We
know that Ichthyosaurus fed upon this fish, because
its scales are found in the fossil Coprolithes. (See
pp. 30-31.)  In the Oxford Museum is the petrified
stomach of an Ichthyosaurus that had died shortly
after its dinner, as it had not had time to digest
entirely the fish it had swallowed.  The Ichthyosaurus, as seen in the engraving, did not refuse to eat
cuttle-fish, and we know this because the ink of the




XX      EXPLANATION OF THE FRONTISPIECE.
cuttle-fish is found staining the fossil Coprolithes (see
p. 7.)
Other fish whose remains are found fossil are seen
swimming about in company with the young Ichthyosaurus, all enjoying life, and following the laws of
nature which ordained that they should both prey
upon one another, and be preyed upon themselves.
Sailing along the surface of the sea, upon which no
human eye ever rested, are seen a fleet of the beautiful Ammonite shells (see p. 35.) Their remains are
seen at the bottom of the sea (fig. 8,) where they would
become gradually covered with mud, and converted
into fossils, a theme for the geologists andan ornament of our cabinets.
At fig. 6 we see growing in great luxuriance a
remarkable form of life-the Pentacrinite, or Stone
Lily, so called on account of the pentangular, or fivesided shape of its supporting column. It consisted
of innumerable calcareous joints, united by a fleshy
material; it was, in fact, a " stalked star-fish," which
is represented in existing seas by the Comatula, or
Feather-stars of our own shores, and by the rare and
all but extinct Pentacrinites of the West Indies.




EXPLANATION OF THE FRONTISPIECE.    XXi
For a full and beautifully illustrated description of
the Pentacrinite, as well as the Ichthyosaurus, Plesiosaurus, Pterodactyle, and other creatures represented
in the drawing, I must refer my readers to Dr. Buckland's "Bridgewater Treatise."
At fig. 10 is represented Lamia, or " Bird's-nest,"
of the Portland quarrymen, together with restorations
of vegetation, the remains of which are found fossil in
abundance.
At the bottom of this primaeval sea are strewed
the bones and  carcasses of its inhabitants, both
small and great. Saurians, fishes, mollusks and shells,
have all yielded up their remains in obedience to the
dictum which pronounces the sentence of death upon
everything that has ever been animated with the
breath of life.
In their unknown graves for thousands of past cen.
turies, converted into hard marble like rock, they have
lain; and hundreds of skeletons will lie till time is no
more, leaving but a bare record of their former existence engraved in letters of stone on the shores which
once formed the bed of an ancient ocean now long
passed away.




XXii   EXPLANATION OF THE FRONTISPIECE.
Meanwhile let it be our privilege to read and inter
pret the history of our planet as it existed when yet
young in the starry firmament. Let us compare extinct forms of animal life with their modern living prototypes; and from the habits and instincts of animals
around us learn, not only the laws which govern them
as well as ourselves, the physiological causes which
regulate our bodies as well as their bodies, but also
endeavor to learn pleasurable lessons from daily scenes
around us, and to withdraw the veil which frequently
obscures the most enchanting scenes of nature from
ordinary observation; and, above all, to join with the
inspired writer when he admonishes us: "But ask
now the Beasts and they shall teach thee, and the
Fowls of the air and they shall tell thee; or speak to
the Earth and it shall teach thee, and the Fishes of
the sea shall declare unto thee!"




A GEOLOGICAL AUCTION.
A  CATALOGUE of the COLLECTION OF MINERALS,
FOSSILS from various localities, Casts and Jfedallions, together with a variety of iiscellanies,
the property of the late VERY REV. DR. BUCKLAND, Dean of lWestminster.-30th Jan., 1857.
IT is about three years ago that a sale took
place at Stephens' Auction  Rooms, in King
Street, Covent Garden, of the private collection
of minerals, fossils and curiosities collected by
my father, the late Rev. Dr. Buckland, D. D.,
Dean of Westminster, &c. This great Geologist
had been from his earliest days an enthusiastic
collector; endowed with a wonderful acuteness




24         THE BUCKLANDIAN MUSEUM.
of observation, he picked up and put away many
things which a superficial observer would think
worthless, but which he, with his usual eloquence and tact, would turn to account in some
future lecture, as illustrating the former condition of the planet on which  we live; and set
forth, as one of the many instances of the wisdom and the goodness of the great Creator towards the most humble of his creatures.
The greater part of the collection which he
had made during his numerous geological trips
both in England and Europe, he bequeathed
by will to the University of Oxford, in the following words:"I give and bequeath to the Vice-Chancellor
of the University of Oxford, and his successors
for the time being, for the use of my successors
in the said University, as Readers in Geology for
the time being, all my geological specimens, minerals, models, maps, and geological charts, drawings, sections and engravings connected with geology, which shall be in the Clarendon at the




FOSSIL BONES.                 95
time of my decease."-Extract from Dtr. Buck.
land's Will.
The University has but lately voted a sum of
money to  Dr. Buckland's  accomplished  successor in the Professorial chair, Professor Phillips, for the purpose of arranging and labelling the specimens, previous  to  their removal  from  the  Clarendon   Buildings, to  the
new  Museum   recently erected  near Wadham
College.  This collection, now called the " Bucklandian Museum," is particularly rich in cave
bones. The history of caves in which the bones
of extinct animals have been found  was the
Doctor's  great forte,  as has been  well exemplified by his "Reliquie  Diluvianae,"  and
other publications; and accordingly we find at
Oxford,* cabinets full of the most gigantic shells
* I would call attention to " Cavern Researches, or Discoveries of Organic Remains, and of British and Roman
Reliques, in the Caves of Kent's Hole, Ansti's Cove, Chudleigh and Berry Head," by the late Rev. J. McEnry,
F.G.S., (Simkin, Marshall & Co., 1859,) in which are sixteen beautiful lithographic drawings, intended by Dr.
Buckland to illustrate a second volume of " Reliquie Diluvianas," which, however, he never published. By permission of Dr. Buckland's Executors, they are now given to
c,




26             THE AUCTION ROOM.
and bones of monstrous elephants, rhinoceros,
bears, hyenas and wolves, which formerly roamed unmolested by man, not only over the greater
part of Europe, but even over ground on which
this great metropolis is built. Ages have passed
away, but in their gravel charnel-houses they
have left their bones; incontrovertible.evidence
of their once liaving inhaled the same air we now
breathe, and pressed with their feet the same
ground we now  walk upon.  These dry bones
united into perfect forms by the acumen of Dr.
Buckland, or touched by the magic wand of Professor Owen, again in these days start into life,
grim ferocious monsters of the past: at our ease
we study their forms and their anatomy; forms
which, while evincing marvellous adaptation of
means to ends, and Omniscient foresight, fill our
minds with awe at the power of God, and the
vastness of his creation.
But besides the  collection  at Oxford, Dr.
the public in aid of the Torquay Natural History Society,
for the further explorations of Kent's Cavern, and Brixham
Cavern.




THE MINERALS.              27
Buckland also formed a private museum, which,
at his death, shared the usual fate of private
collections. It was.transferred, in company with
his scientific books, from the library and drawing
room to the dismal, condemned cell of the auctioneer. Specimens that had been gathered by
tie same hand, from the same place, hundreds
of miiiles away from home, and which had lain
side ly side in the same drawer many a long
year, and which had been lectured on, disputed
abot t, and admired by crowds of the most learned of' davans, including, in many instances, even
the great Cuvier himself, were now to be ruthlessly torn one from the other, destined never
again to meet in their snug beds of cotton wool,
and bedsteads of cardboard, canopied over by a
gorgeous mansion of mahogany. In the auctionroom I found the usual representatives of the various classes of society, deputations from the British Museum, and many learned Societies of the
Metropolis; from the universities of Oxford and
Cambridge; first-class dealers in minerals; and




28              TME MINERALS.
proprietors of stores in Wardour street, and
swarms of smaller "dealers in  curiosities,"
whose dens are to be found in out-of-the way cornlers, in out-of-the-way streets; and who came to
buy anything that went cheap, either animal, vegetable or mineral, out of that large class termed
the "miscellaneous."  I found knowing old stagers in spectacles, who came to buy the pick of
the auction, and who merely glanced at the
trays as they were handed round; and green,
young, ardent collectors, who seized hold of the
trays as they were passed along, and retained
them, examining specimen after specimen, to the
annoyance of the tray-bearer, and the discomfort
of others who also wished to examine. Lastly, I
observed carpenters with paper caps and aprons,
who came to buy the cabinets and the bookshelves, and not a few of the Hebrew race, without whose presence a London auction cannot
possibly take place.
The first lots consisted principally of minerals
from many parts of the world; of Sulphurs and




THE MINERALS.               29
Celestines from Sicily, a very numerous collection, comprising beautiful and well-chosen specimens; most of them showing something different
fiom their neighbors, and all of them in good
condition-one specimen in particular was exceedingly beautiful; it was " a fine museum specimen of Sulphate of Strontian, or native sulphur
from Sicily."  It was a mass as large as, and
about the shape of a lady's good-sized work box,
and exhibited a natural miniature grotto extending three or four inches into the specimen, from
the sides of which projected most beautiful needle-shaped forms of pure crystal, in some parts
nearly meeting at the centre, and all glittering
and resplendent.
The specimens of Fluors and Spars from Durham, Cumberland, and  Derbyshire, attracted
much notice; as well as some good examples of
crystallized sandstone from Fontainebleau, which
are now becomning more and more rare. Most of
the minerals, I understood, were bought by Mr.
Tennant, of the Strand, to complete the Stowe




80                  COPROLITES.
Collection, which in  the aggregate is the finest
in England, and which we hear he intends to
make quite  complete, before he offers it for
sale.*
After the minerals came several trays of Coprolites.  Dr. Buckland was one of the first who
made out the history of these curious formations.
Along the sea shores at Lyme Regis, in Dorsetshire, peculiar looking stones were many years
ago found in great numbers, and they were called" Bezoar stones," from  their external resemblance to the concretions in the gall bladder of
the Bezoar goat, once so celebrated in medicine;
and they were imagined to be recent concretions
of clay, such as are continually  formed by  the
action of the waves, on clay-formed beaches.
* Mr. Tennant's Advertisement, 149, Strand: —" Extensive
and valuable Collection of Minerals.-Mr. Tennant bought at
the Stowe Sale the Duke of Buckingham's Collection of
Minerals, which he has greatly enriched by a collection of
Colored Diamonds, Australian Gold, and many other specimens of great value and interest. The collection, consisting
of 3,000 specimens, is in two cabinets, each containing thirty
drawers, with a glass case on the top for large specimens,
and is offered at ~2,000. Such a Collection is well adapted
for any public Institution or any gentleman interested in
mining pursuits."




COPROLITES.                31
Not so, however; Dr. Buckland proved that they
were the fossil exuviae of the extinct monsters,
the Ichthvsauri and Plesiosauri; whose fossil
remains are found so abundantly at Lyme Regis
and other places.  In the Frontispiece will be
seen the skeletons of these creatures gradually
becoming covered with mud at the bottom of the
water.  Many of the specimens of coprolites at
the auction were the very specimens used to
illustrate the points insisted upon by Dr. Buckland, in liis paper on this subject, published in
the Geological Transactions, February, 1829, and
also  engraved in  his Bridgewater Treatise.*
Several of them were highly polished, and exhibited well the scales, teeth, and bones of the fish
which the Saurians had eaten and half digested,
some also contained the bones of small Ichthyosauri, which had been devoured by their cannibal
relatives (see Frontispiece, figs. 1-5). In most of
them was manifest the peculiar jet black color
* See New Edition. G. Routledge & Co., Farringdon
Street, 1858, edited by myself.




32                COPROLITES.
which is probably the remains of the ink-bags of
Sepiae or Cuttle fish (see Frontispiece, fig. 7,)
proving that. the  ever hungry Ichthyosaurus
sometimes made his dinner off such small fry as
cuttle-fish. Many, again, of these  coprolites
were unpolished, but not the less valuable for
that; for they showed on their surfaces peculiar
spiral marks impressed on them when in a soft
state in the body of the  devouring  animal.
Others exhibited, on careful examination, minute
marks derived from the vessels of the intestines
in which they were formed; thus demonstrating
the structure of the mucous lining of the intestines of these pre-Adamite monsters.  In order
to follow this subject up, the Doctor had obtained
and injected with plaster of Paris the intestines
of dog-fish, skates, and other recent fish, which
have the same peculiar spiral form of intestine as
the fossil creatures must have had. Many of
these recent specimens, prepared by his own
hand, were placed in the tray side by side with
the fossil remains, to act as interpreters of their




USE OF COPROLITES.           33
real nature. Some of these coprolites have been
turned to purposes of art, under the name of
"Beetle-stones."  Dr. Buckland had a table in
his drawing-room that was made entirely with
these coprolites, and which was often  much
admired by persons who had not the least idea of
what they were looking at. I have seen in
actual use ear-rings made of polished portions of
coprolites (for they are as hard as marble); and
while admiring the beauty of the wearer, have
made out distinctly the scales and bones of the
fish which once formed the dinner of a hideous
lizard, but now hang pendulous from the ears of
an unconscious belle, who had evidently never
read or heard of such things as coprolites.
Dr. Buckland was, I believe, one of the first, if
not the first, who called attention to the application of these coprolites for purposes of manure.
In a paper published in the Journal of the Royal
Agricultural Society, November, 1849, " On the
causes of the general presence of Phosphates in
the strata of the Earth and in all fertile soils;
2*




34            USE OF COPROLITE8.
with observations on Pseudo-Coprolites, and on
the possibility of converting the contents of
Sewers and Cesspools into manure," he writes:
"Professor Liebig five or six years ago invited
the attention of agriculturists to the possibility of
applying to the same use as bone-dust, and guano,
the fossil bones and coprolites which occur together in certain beds of the Lias formation.
This invitation took place not many months after
I had the honor of conducting him to the wellknown bone-bed in the lower region of the Lias
at the Aust Passage Cliffs, on the left bank of the
Severn, near Bristol, where two beds of Lias
(each from one to two feet thick) are densely
loaded with dislocated bones, and teeth and scales
of extinct reptiles and fishes, interspersed abundantly with coprolites derived from animals of
many kinds which seem to have converted that
region into the cloaca maxima  of ancient Gloucestershire at the time of the commencement of
the formation of the Lias."
Ever ready to apply his knowledge to practical




AMMONITES.                35
purposes, Dr. Buckland in the above paper, after
analysing the probably chemical causes of the
present condition of these coprolites, gives some
valuable hints as the possibility of imitating the
natural processes that co-operated to their production; and of converting the valuable phosphates
of our sewers to the manufacture of a similar
manure, by placing sewage water into conditions
analogous to those which attended the formation
of phosphates in the crag, and in other strata
formed at the bottom of ancient seas and lakes.
Next in order in the list came a quantity of
shells, both recent and fossil, from Hordwell
Cliff, Lyme Regis, Isle of Wight, &c., and among
them  very good specimens of Ammonites (so
called because they are coiled like the horn of
Jupiter Ammon,) which had been cut and polished showing their internal structure; the animal
itself had died and rotted away ages ago at the
bottom of chaotic seas (Frontispiece, fig. 8.,) and
the shell, remaining empty, became converted
into a fossil.  Several sections, &c. of recent




36               PTERODACTYLES.
Nautilus shells were placed with them  to illus.
trate the anatomy of the extinct shell by that of
its still surviving relation. This tray brought to
my mind the beautiful verses of the
AMMONITE AND NAUTILUS.
*     *      *      *      *
They sailed all day through creek and bay,
And traversed the ocean deep;
And at night they sank on a coral bed,
In its fairy bowers to sleep.
And the monsters vast of ages past
They beheld in their ocean caves;
They saw them ride in their power and pride,
And sink in their deep sea graves.
And they came at last to a sea long past,
But as they reached its shore,
The Almighty's breath spoke out in death,
And the Ammonite lived no more.
We next observed a tray full of bones of the
flying lizard, the Pterodactyle  (Frontispiece, fig.
4,) whose headquarters seem to have been situated
at Stonesfield, near Oxford, for at this place their
great long wing-bones are found pretty abundantly in the slate quarries.




PTERODACTYLES.                  3(
It was often a puzzle to those who attended Dr.
BIuckland's lectures to understand how  so many
separate bones of these Pterodactyles are found.
He illustrated this point by the  dry body of a
bird picked up on the sea-shore; as putrefaction
advances, the bones become separated one from
the other.  The long wing-bones soon  get loose,
and, weighed down by the feathers attached to
them  (the pterodactyle  had wings of a leatherlike substance,) sink to the bottom, the rest of
the body floating away.
Pterodactyle bones are also found in abundance
at Lyme Regis.  Among my father's MSS. I find
the following letter* of his friend, and, I am proud
* MY DEAR BUCKLAND,
What think you of this for a motto?" Cesserunt nitidis habitandae pisibus undae,
Terra feras cepit, volucres agerabilis aer.
Sanctius his animal, mentisque capacius altse
Deerat adhuc, et quod dominari in caetera posset."
Ovid, Metam. lib. i. fab. i.
If you can construe feras " crocodiles," and volucres " pterodactyles,"-and why not?-there is a pretty motto running
on all fours as you shall see; winding up, moreover, with
an elegant compliment to the Mayor of Lyme (if there be
one) as the "sanctius animal," although he may resemble
some of the autochthenes represented in your drawing (see
Frontispiece) in his dining propensities.  If you want to




38          THE STONESFIELD OPOSSUM.
to say, my friend, the late lamented Mr. Broderip
It is too clever to remain buried in a scrap-book.
I trust the Mayor of Lyme will forgive Mr.
Broderip's classical joke.
The great gem of the Stonesfield  fossils, the
jaw of the Phasclotherium, a small marsupial or
pouched animal (hence such a big name for such
a little creature phaskolos, a pouch, and ti/er, a
beast,*) the first, and, at one time, the sole evidence of malnmalian life having existed at the earlier period of thb earth's history, when this slate
was deposited, was not at the auction rooms; it
has found a good, and, we trust, a lasting home
make it fit the Mayor exactly, you must adopt the reading
of the Codex Meimobianus" Sanctius his animal ventrisque capacius alti
Deerat adhuc, et quod dominari in caetera posset."
Yours ever, my dear B.,
Raymond's Buildings'.              W. BRODERIP.
* There are many who are deterred from the study of
Palaeontology, or the science of things which existed long
ago (palai, long ago,) by the hard names applied to the animals submitted to their notice. Let them only understand
the meaning of the Greek names given to these animals,
which is easily done by the help of Liddell and Scott'sDictionary, and they will find that these hard names are full of
meaning, and the very best that could be used.




DR. BUCKLAND S HAMMERS.        39
in the Museum at Oxford, but a few miles from
the place where, ages and ages ago, it roamed
over the neighborhood of Woodstock. Little did
this tiny beast think that one day its under jaw
would cause Dons to open their eyes with astonishment, and Professors to tax their memories and
brains for appropriate words wherewith to descant
upon its beauty, and upon the climate and state
of animal and vegetable life at the time it existed.
Dr. Buckland had hammered and chiselled
many of the above-mentioned fossils out of the
rock with his own lland, and several of the hammers, &c., which he used for this purpose were
included in the sale. There was a great competition for these among the buyers, and at last they
were purchased, at a long price, by Mr. Tennant,
of the Strand, for Mr. Sopwith, the engineer, one
of my father's oldest friends. Mr. Sopwith afterwards very kindly gave two or three of them away
to old pupils of my father's, who, although now
occupying high places both in society and in the
scientific world, have not forgotten the tiines when




40                FOSSIL FISH.
at Oxford they learned the A, B, C, of geology —
literally "hammering" away at its rudiments in
the stone-quarries of Shotover, Cumner, or Stonesfield.
These relics are much prized by the possessors,
for by means of them my father hammered out
much information from  the breast of mother
earth. They are, too, almost symbolical of the
profession of the geologist.  The Germans have
caught up the idea, for I recollect, when a student
at Giessen under Professor Liebig, that the young
men who were studying mining wore two geological hammers stamped out of silver, in front of
their working caps. This custom, I believe, is
prevalent all over Germnany.
After the hammers were sold there came a
"dish of fish," but not such fish as we see displayed on the marble slab of Grove's-the fish
now presented to our scientific appetites being
buried in, not placed  upon, slabs of stone.
Whereas Billingsgate supplies, from the Doggerbank, and the submarine feeding grounds of sand




FOSSIL MAMMALS.              41
plateaus deep under the waves of the British
Channel, great cod, ling, turbot, and soles, and
sends them to the cook in Belgrave Square but a
few hours after they have been taken out of the
water; our present bill of piscatorial fare, on the
contrary, warrants the fish to have been brought
from the Oolitic strata of Torre d'Orlonto, from
the coal strata of Eislebon, from  Lyme Regis, in
Dorsetshire, from the Isle of Sheppy, and from
Bohemia. Generally the fresher the fish the more
is the money the vender obtains for the article;
but, in this case, in proportion as the auctioneer
could warrant the antiquity and staleness of his
fish so did his hammer fall to longer prices. After
the fish came the more solid parts of our intellectual repast. As a top dish was set before us a
large box, full of gigantic bones of " the Mastodon, from South America," weighing at least half
a ton; set off at the bottom by a dish composed
of the bones of the Hippopotamus, from Sicily,
teeth of ditto, garnished with portions of a fossil
elephant's tusk.




42             FOSSIL MAMAS;LS.
For the side-dishes we had the vertebrae of a
crocodile from New Jersey (Frontispiece, fig. 9);
the bones of the ox, from Portland, and a fine
jaw and teeth of the fossil Horse. For entree',
the bones and jaws of the fossil Kangaroo, fiomn
a cave in Wellington Valley, in Australia, of
which every savant present seemed anxious to
partake, for their great rarity caused the mouths
of many a hungry collector to open and shut
with emulous biddings, till at last they ran up to
the sum of three pounds ten shillings, apparently
a long price for a lot of such broken, meatless,
and dirty-looking bones. Last of all, as pudding,
we had passed round, plaster models, looking
very white and pretty, and, moreover, much
resembling the various shaped tarts and fancy
cakes which the modern cook cuts out of pastry
with sharp edged tin moulds. These were four
boxes, containing " plaster models of microscopic
living ant fossil Cephalopods."  Most carefully
had they been prepared, and very pretty and
inviting did they look; plus a little color, they




FOSSIL MADREPORES AND VEGETABLES.    43
would have passed muster as dummies of cheesecakes and  other palatable preparations in a
pastrycook's window.
As dessert, were served up many trays full of
preserved crab, not apples, but crab creatures,
viz. crustacea; instead of candied ginger, beautiful white madrepores, whose appearance almost
invited a bite; and for the paper crackers with
elaborate patterns punched out in their ends,
pretty lacework corals, whose patterns were far
more delicate and far more beautiful, though
produced by some of the smallest species of
living  atoms in the ocean, than the clumsy
reticulations imagined  by the  brain  of the
biped creature that stands at the other end of
the chain of created beings. Instead of pines
from the hot-house, we had cones of the Araucaria excelsa, fossil vegetables from Chesterfield,
with sections of silicified palm, showing the
structure most beautifully. There were, also,
several fine specimens of fossil Zamias, tropical
plants not unlike  a common pine-apple in




44         46 BRIOK FROM BABYLON."
appearance (see Frontispiece, fig. 10.) They had
been procured by Dr. Buckland, in 1828, from
the so-called " dirt-bed;" a stratum consisting of
a dark brwn substance, containing much earthy
lignite, found immediately above the layers of
Portland stone: the workmen know them by the
name of birds' nests, their external form bearing
a rude resemblance to the shape and size of a
common crow's nest. It is a curious speculation,
to think that these very zamias might have
grown on the mud, which has since been converted by the hand of time into stone, and then,
by the hand of man, into St. Paul's Cathedral.
When I saw the aerial hut erected for the Ordnance survey, upon the top of the dome of this
magnificent edifice, I thought to myself, that
was not the first time since their creation, that
these very blocks had supported a crow's nest."*
Among the "Miscellanea" was a very remarkable "brick from Babylon, with inscription
and an impression of the foot of a dog."  It ap* For full description of these Zamias see " Bridgewatel
Treatise," vol. i. p. 453; and in various Plates, vol. ii.




MARKINGS UPON IT.            45
pears that it was the custom of the brick-makers
of old, to make their bricks in square moulds, and
not in oblong shapes, as is done in modern brickfields. These bricks were composed of mud, and
placed out in the field to be dried by the sun,
which, in eastern regions, is hot enough to do the
work of a brick-kiln. That brick-making in those
days was a most laborious and fatiguing task, is
evident from the first chapter of Exodus, where
one of the principal burdens placed upon the
children of Israel by their taskmasters is thus
mentioned: " And they made their lives bitter
with hard bondage in mortar, and in brick, and
in all manner of service in the field."  In those
days the reigning Kings did not put a broad arrow on government property, as is done now-adays, but instead, they impressed, probably with
an apparatus like a seal, a long inscription on the
centre of the brick; in this instance, the inscliption occupied about four inches by one.  Whatever meaning the letters joining the words might
have been intended to signify it is now impossible




46             [MARKINGS UPON IT.
to ascertain; as, through time and the decay of
brick, the characters are quite illegible.*  When
put out in a soft state, in order to get dry, it
must have been placed on the ground; and when
there, some careless and vagabond Babylonian
dog, had placed his foot right in the centre of the
inscription, and "his signature," written with his
foot, remains to this day as perfect as the sign
manual of the great Babylonian king, or even
more so; for the marks of the two front claws
and the double ball of the disloyal dog's foot are
seen obliterating the letters of the regal inscription as plainly as if they had been done yesterday; it was not a very large dog either, for a few
inches further back, and close to the edge of the
* I have lately been shown by Mr. Harle a pencil rubbing
of the seal of King Darius (but which king has not been
made certain.) The original is in the British Museum.
The king is represented as hunting lions from a chariot.
One lion is rearing up towards the king, who has an arrow
fixed in a bow ready to shoot, while the coachman, or
charioteer, is holding the reins.  Another lion is seen
defunct under the chariot-wheels. One cannot help associating this group of the figures of the King Darius and the
lions engraved on a signet with the story in the Book of
Daniel, chap. v., particularly when we read, " And a stone
was brought and laid upon the mouth of the (lion's) den, and
the king sealed it with his own signet."




MARKINGS UPoN IT.            47
brick, are seen the impressions of the claws of his
hind foot, showing that his stride was about that
of an ordinary sized terrier dog.  I have compared it with the foot of a common black and
white English fox terrier, and without knowing
the history of the brick, it could be easily supposed that the footmark on it had been done last
week by our trusty friend Pincher, instead of by
a dog six hundred years before Christ.
The brick, having been dried in the sun by the
Babylonian brick-maker, must have been taken
up, dog's foot and all, and built, among other
bricks, on the top layer of a wall, for at the bottom and on the sides, but not on the upper surface, we find, still adhering, a layer of bituminous
asphalt; and this, when burnt, smells exactly like
the bitumen we see sometimes being laid down
in the London streets.
Now this asphalt was employed as cement to
hold the bricks together; and, as our own bricklayers use cow-hair among their mortar, to make
it bind more firmly together, so did the Babylon



48            MARKINGS UPON IT.
iall workmen place between their layers of brick.
and among the asphalt, reeds and straw, Again
we turn to Exodus, where we find that straw was
necessary to the children of Israel during their
persecution by Pharaoh, " And the taskmasters
of the people went out, and their officers, and
they spake to the people, saying, Thus saith Pharaoh,'I will not give you straw.  Go ye, get ye
straw where ye can find it: yet not aught of your
work shall be diminished.' So the people were
scattered abroad throughout all the land of Egypt
to gather stubble instead of straw."
We examine the bitumen on our Babylonian
brick, and we find beautiful impressions still remaining of the reeds or straw that had been
placed in it for the purpose above-mentioned.
These straws have made indentations in several
places in the bitumen when it was put on soft,
and probably hot; and in one of these, which is
the size and shape of a slate-pencil, we can perceive even the cast of the parallel groovings in
the siliceous covering of the reed.




NEBUCHADNEZZAR'S DOG.         49
When lecturing on the footsteps of the Cheirotherium, and other animals, Dr. Buckland always
exhibited this Babylonian brick; and it was his
wont, when commenting on it, to surmise that
the inscription might be that of King Nebuchadnezzar, and that the dog who had put his foot
on it might have been the property of the king
aforesaid.
It was purchased at the sale, for the University
of Oxford, and it is doubtless destined to be deposited in the new Museum there. We trust, that
should this be read by any one who has the opportunity, they will examine for themselves this
foot-print of "King Nebuchadnezzar's dog."
Having learned that Colonel Rawlinson had discovered portrait models of the dogs used for
hunting by the inhabitants of ancient Ninevah,
I repaired to the British Museum, where my eyes
were gladdened by the sight of these very dogs.
Has the reader ever seen in the windows of the
London shops where they sell sugarplums, almond
toffee, and other variously shaped preparations of
3




50              NINEVEH DOGS.
" sweet stuff," images of cows, horses, pigs, and
dogs, made in red or white sugar? if so, he ha s
seen almost the counterpart of these Nineveh
models.  These British Museum precious little
relics, made of clay, are carefully locked up in
a glass case, and there can be seen the five little
models, as well preserved as though they were
unbaked specimens of the genus dog, such as the
gipsies use to put on the top of sticks at fairs and
races, and at which we are invited to try our aim
with thick sticks, at a small expenditure of the
copper currency.
The dogs made of sugar, the china dogs from
our English fairs and races, and the dogs from
Nineveh, have all this one point in common. viz.,
that they do not stand upon their four legs, like
the wooden horses on wheels that children ride
upon, but upon a pedestal which fills up the
space between the lower part of their bodies and
legs: effect is sacrificed to trouble, for it is very
difficult, as the writer well knows, to model an
animal to stand on four legs without a support




THEIR BREED AND USE.          51
for his abdomen. The centre of gravity is sure
to come in the wrong place. This fact became,
fiom experience, apparent to the Nineveh artists
as well as to the modern sugar-plum makers.
The animals of which these British Museum
models are the portraits are, however, of greater
antiquity than even the dog of the great King
Nebuchadnezzar, for they lived in the days of
Assur-bani-pal, B. c. 640. They were found at
Nineveh, let into a slab, the sculptured figures
on which represent a hunting scene, at which the
above king is figured as being present. Their
hair seems to have been cut poodle-fashion, or
else they have a heavy collar round their neck. I
could not quite make out for what the enlargement between the ears and shoulders was intended; it is more probable that a spiked collar
was intended, such as are used at the present day
by those lucky sportsmen who have the chance
of hunting bears and other wild animals in their
native  fastnesses.  Their shape, particularly
about the fore-arm and body, is somewhat like




52         FOOT-MARKS ON BRICKS.
the great, heavy half-pointer, half-cur dog used
in Germany, and called "jacht HTund;" they all,
however, seem to have curled tails, like the pugs,
and hPeads more like the bull-dogs of the present
day than any other of the canine race I can call
to mind. They are all represented standing in
an erect posture, with the eyes directed fiercely
forwards, and realize the idea of a gigantic housedog, who, having got to the furthest end of his
chain, is savagely straining to attack an intruder.
Down their sides are impressed arrow-headed
characters: these may or may not be the names
of the dogs or their owners. I was not learned
enough to read them.
In the same box with the ancient brick at the
auction were two modern examples, from brickyards in Oxfordshire; one showing the mark of
a pig's foot, the other that of a cat, where these
animals had been walking along.  I have not
unfrequently seen built into the walls of London
houses, bricks marked at their ends with four
thimble-shaped impressions, the moulds of the fin



EGYPTIAN CAT.                53
gers of some idle boy, who, wandering about the
brick-field when the bricks were yet soft, has left
his mark to be perpetuated as long as the brick
itself will last.
In the British Museum  too, I found another
parallel case with the foot-mark of Nebuchadnezzar's dog, but in this instance it was a cat, and
not a dog, that had "put her foot in it."  The
cat had evidently been walking more circumspectly than the dog, for she has not put her foot
on the royal stamp, but just by the side, or
rather, in front of it, considering the direction
she was walking in.  This brick, upon which are
both the regal mark and the cat's foot, is an
ancient Egyptian brick, also made of mud and
straw; it was probably put out in the sun to
dry, and has handed down to us (were it otherwise wanting) the fact that there were cats in
those days.*  This brick, too, most likely was
* The great engineer Brunel, but a few days before his
death, kindly sent me a mummy cat he brought from Egypt.
I have taken the bandages off it, and find that it must have
been a red-colored cat. Its dried-up tongue projects from
its mouth after the fashion of dead cats of our own period.




54           RAIN MARKS ON MUD.
placed on the top of other bricks to dry; for
cats are fond of walking on the tops of walls, and
probably paraded on the top row of the bricks
of Thothmes or Rameses, as unconcernedly as
they do now on the top of the brick stacks of
Farmer Jones. I am also informed that there is
a brick in existence which has on it the footprint
of a Jerboa, one of the rat-like little animals
common in Egypt even at the present day.
Among'the bricks of the pillars under the
Hypocaust (at the remains of a Roman Villa
discovered at Wheatley, five miles N. E. of
Oxford, 1845,) one was found with the marks of
a boy's finger, another with the impression of a
sheep's foot; presenting a curious illustration of
the impressions of reptiles' feet on the new red
sandstone. The tiles from the flues presented
on their outside, many curious scratches of a
dentated tool: these scratches varied with the
caprice of the maker, and their use was to insure
the adhesion of the mortar.
In an old basket in the auction-room were a




RAIN MARKS ON MUD.           55
numiber of thin cakes of mud, simple, common
mlud, taken from a dried pond in the neighborhood of Reading. They looked valueless, but
nevertheless were of some interest; for upon one
side they exhibited numerous little round pits
like the impressions of peas: these little marks
had been made by drops of rain; the water had
partially dried up in the pond, leaving the mud
at the edges, soft, and easily impressed upon. A
hard shower must have come on, for the rain-pits
were pretty deep, showing that the drops had
fallen with a considerable degree of force. Enticed by the rain, the earth-worms had come out,
and had dragged their slimy bodies through the
mud, leaving a long trail behind them. From
these two circumstances we may conclude that
all this happened in very hot weather; for why
should the pond partially dry up, except from the
evaporation of the water, leaving the edges
almost dry? What could make the pit marks be
so deep, except the heavy rain of a thunderstorm?  A slight rain would have made hardly




56           FOOT-PRINTS OF BIRDS
any marks. Then again, the worm came out on
the wet mud for moisture. Lastly, the mud was
contracted into saucer-like forms, and the edges
of the impressions on it were very sharp, proving
that after the thunder-storm, very hot weather
came on again, causing the mud to contract and
curl up in the above-named form. I have elsewhere seen the marks of a mole's comparatively
broad, heavily nailed fore feet, and little delicate
hind feet, in the half-dried mud in a drain in a
ploughed field. He had probably come out to
look for worms who were luxuriating therein.
The markings of duck's feet, too, I have seen in
the dried mud of a horse-pond, near Islip, in Oxfordshire, and have brought home a cake of it
peeled off by the heat of the sun, with a duck's
foot-mark beautifully impressed on it.
At Ruislip Reservoir, near Uxbridge, where I
have been kindly allowed by Colonel M. Martyn
to fish, there are extensive banks of mud left
when the water is drawn off by the Canal Company; and on these are beautifully seen the foot.




BOTH RECENT AND FOSSIL.         57
marks of the geese, ducks, and herons that come
down to feed there. It is most interesting to remark traces of the long, stately stride of Master
Heron, as if he had been stalking along at his
ease, and the spot where every now and then lie
had halted, faced the water, and made a lunge
with his long bill at a fish. I can also trace
where the little snipes have been running up the
ditches; and can easily see the holes they have
poked in the mud with their bills in search of
food. The water-rats also have made numerous
runs on the mud, and by the side of their holes,
the ground is beaten down quite firm by their
tiny feet.
In Connecticut, the fossil foot-prints of birds
are found, and a detailed account of them has
been published by Professor Hitchcock. There
is an engraving of some of these in the " Bridgewater Treatise." In the Proceedings of the'Ashmolean Society, at Oxford, an outline is given of
their story:-At a meeting of the Society, November 14, 1842, Dr. Buckland communicated
3*




58         BOTH RECENT AND FOSSIL.
the results of some very curious observations by
the late Hugh Miller, on the bottom  of a large
artificial lake, nearly sixty feet deep, at the base
of the Pentland Iills, S.W. of Edinburgh, called
the "Compensation Pond," which had been left
dry by the droughts of last autumn. One of the
phenomena in this pond, was the occurrence of
recent footsteps in sand and mud since the pond
had subsided. My father in giving the details of
these footsteps, in his "Bridgewater Treatise,"
has supposed the cause of their preservation to
have been, the passage of the animals over sand
covered by a thin film of tenacious mud, which
was punched  through by their feet, as they
crossed in the intervals between high and low
water, over a broad expansive strand on the
shores of the then existing seas.
When Professor Owen was lecturing at the
Jermyn Street Museum, on the fossil-footsteps of
birds, I made in a pie-crust and in soft clay several specimens to illustrate his lecture. By impressing the feet of herons, snipes, woodcocks,




DUCK'S FOOT-PRINT IN ROMAN CEMENT.   59
sand-pipers, &c., accurate footprints were formed,
showing even the divisions of the skin on the
under side of the bird's foot; if casts had been
taken of these footprints, we should have had
exactly the same appearance as the fossil " Ornithicnites" of America.  There happened that
day to be a dead ostrich at the College of Surgeons, which was under process of dissection;
and with Professor Quekett's permission I made
in plaster of Paris a beautiful impression of its
foot. This is now in the British Museum.
In the Zoological Gardens, at Bristol, I obser
ved a pseudo-fossil impression of a duck's foot,
which I am  convinced, would have taken my
father's fancy immensely had he seen it. By the
side of the duck-pond there was a margin of hard
Roman cement.  I suppose the ducks had not
been driven out of the pond when the cement was
put down, for one of them certainly had waddled
out of the pond on to the land, and in so doing
had put his foot in the Roman cement, which was
then quite soft.  It had subsequently hardened,




60   HORSE, COW, AND ELEPHANT " SPOORS."
and to this day this duck's foot remains impressed
as firmly, and nearly as durable, as if it were a genuine fossil. I really think this ought not to be
allowed to remain in its present position, but
should be carefully cut out and put in a museum,
to illustrate the science of footsteps.
The mud which, when moistened by the rain,
is soft enough to take the common impression of
a bird's foot, will, as can be easily conceived, give
way to a considerable extent when a great heavy
bull or horse puts his foot on it.  Accordingly,
on the bleak and marshy plain of Ottomoor, near
Islip, we find numerous deeply-indented footmarks of cows and horses; these prove fatal to
the young ducks; when following their mothers
to and fro, in search of food, they tumble into
these natural pitfalls, their soft bones and webbed
feet not allowing them to climb, the poor little
creatures cannot escape out of the hole, and there
they remain till rescued by the farmer's wife, who
is, from painful experience, well aware of what
often becomes of her ducklings, and knows where




HORSE, COW, AND ELEPHANT " SPOORS."  61
to look for them; or else they quack away till
night-fall, when a fox, weasel, or hedgehog, from
the neighboring preserve, makes a meal of them
and puts them out of their misery.
I have observed, in the Zoological Gardens,
that after wet weather the elephant leaves enormous footprints in the mud round his swimmingbath; should a small child be unfortunate enough
to fall into one of these, and be left to itself; it
would be as helpless as the little duck in the
cow's footprint.
These apparent trifles of every-day occurrence
become important evidence when applied to the
elucidation of geological questions.  What happened at the Reading pond, happened centuries
ago at the time that the old red sandstone was
deposited, when the world was yet in its infancy.
In the north gallery of the British Mluseum may
be seen, against the wall, a very fine specimen
of a slab from Storton Hill quarries, near Liverpool.  On this are seen the footmarks of an enormous creature which has been pacing along the




62             CHEIROTHERIUM.
mud that formed probably the side of some antediluvian lake or estuary; just as at this day the
mole crawls along a drain, and the duck paddles
along a muddy bank, all distinctly leaving their
footmarks.  The mud upon which the ancient
beast had trod must have been pretty soft, for
his feet have sunk deeply into it, leaving the outline of the toes well marked.  In one of the footprints, we can almost make out appearances that
would lead us to conclude that the owner of the
foot had found his progress rather slippery, for
his foot seems to have turned slightly after he
had placed it down. Such appearances may be
remarked in our own footsteps on the London
pavement, when the flagstones are greasy, as it
is called.  We may also remark in the slab,
marks where cracks have taken place, just as
cracks are visible in the mud of the dried pond.
Now, when these marks were first found, it
was uncertain what manner of beast had made
them; no bones were discovered that could be
put down as having formed part of his skeleton.




THE BOTHERATIO-THERIUM.        63
What name, then, should be given to the creature? Its form, shape, and structure were quite
unknown; but one thing was certain, that he had
a foot in the shape of a human hand. Taking
this, therefore, the only point certain about the
animal, they christened it the Cheirotherium, or
beast with a hand. Apropos to names given to
fossil creatures, we cannot help here recording
the fact that, after a long dispute among certain
geologists as to what name should be given to an
animal recently discovered, one wishing to give
it this name, another that name, a certain learned
and witty person proposed, that as it had caused
a great bother in learned circles, it should be
called the "Botheratio-therium."  Again, when
the reader next sees a picture of the extinct animal with tusks, somewhat like a walrus (only that
they grow from the lower, and not the upper
jaw), commonly called the Dinotherium, or
dreadful beast; let him remark that Mr. Dinotherium is always represented as quietly lying
down, like a cow chewing her cud, and always




64              WORM CASTINGS.
with his side towards the spectator.  Why is
this? The geologists have not yet ascertained
after what fashion the hind limbs were formed,
they therefore never represent the animal standing up, but always recumbent, leaving the form
of the hinder limbs entirely to the imagination
of the spectator, who, unless he be of a very inquiring mind, generally falls readily into the scientific trap.
As regards the marks made by the worms in
the soft mud, we find from  the "Bridgewater
Treatise" that Dr. Buckland has compared these
modern phenomena with those which took place
during the Eocene period; and draws from these,
in themselves, insignificant facts, logical conclusions as to the state of the atmosphere and water,
in the very remote period of this planet when the
Stonesfield slate was deposited. He writes: "We
find on the surface of the slabs, both of the calcareous grit and Stonesfield state, near Oxford, and
on sandstones of the Wealden formation in Sussex
and Dorsetshire, perfectly preserved and petrified




ITS FOOT-MARKS.            65
castings of marine worms, at the upper extremity
of holes bored by them in the sand, while it was
yet soft at the bottom of the water; and within
the sandstones, traces of tubular holes in which
the worms resided. The preservation of these
tubes and castings shows the very quiet condition
of the bottom, and the gentle action of the water,
which brought the materials that covered them
over without disturbing them."
I fancy I have discovered, as a pendant to
" Cheirotherium," above mentioned, a remarkable
creature which exists in our own time, and its
habitat is somewhere in London. During last
winter, I frequently observed in the London
streets, when the pavement was covered with
snow, or with mud that would easily take impressions, foot-marks of a very remarkable and puzzling kind. A creature wearing a human hobnailed boot evidently passed along, but the creature had not left the " spoor," or track of an
ordinary man, for the iron-shod heel was separated
some two feet from the equally well armed toe,




O6         PODOTIIERIUM DISCOVERED.
and the interspace between them was not marked
with any impression, so that the animal could not
have had a sole to his foot.  In its journeyings,
strange to say, it had invariably walked backwards; the turning up of the mud at the heel
showed that, moreover, it had never walked in
the center of the pavement or in the street, but
always at the road-side in the pavement. For
days and days I hunted this creature by its track,
up Regent Street (it never went over the crossing,) down Oxford Street, both east and west, but
I never could come up with it. Its home seemed,
from the track, to be somewhere in the densely
populated neighborhood of St. Giles'.  As the
Cheirotherium of ancient geological days was so
christened on account of the track he made, I did
not see why this Prae-Adamite animal, " the beast
with a hand," should not have a modern cousin,
"the beast with a foot," the true nature of both
being uncertain at their first discovery. I therefore christened my mysterious creature " Podotherium,"  or "the beast with a foot," a provi



PODOTHERIUM DISCOVERED.       67
sional name, until I could make out its real name
and nature. The snow melted and the mud was
nearly dried up, and I thought I should never
solve the mystery as to what Podotherium was.
At last, one day, after a heavy shower, I crossed
the tracks very strongly and recently marked, by
Wellington Street, Strand; I followed, them instantly, and found that this mysterious creature
was only a poor old cripple, who, having lost his
feet, could not walk upright after the ordinary
fashion of men; he could only crawl along upon
his knees, after the fashion of the monks of old,
who have worn away with their ascending knees
the stone steps of the shrine of Thomas a Becket
in Canterbury Cathedral. Necessity, in Podotherium's case, had been the mother of invention.
He had cut an ordinary hob-nailed boot in two,
had affixed the heel part on to his knee, and the
toe part on to the place where the foot ought to
have been: so that as he crawled along upon his
knees, the heel part of course had been going foremost, giving the appearance of a man walking




68      THE WATERLOO BRIDGE MURDER.
backwards.  "Podotherium" was gaining his
livelihood by selling to passers-by tin funnels,
which he carried in a string around his neck, and
he therefore always kept, as his footmarks indicated, to the roadside of the pavement to solicit
custom. As Cheirotherium in time was proved to
be a gigantic sort of a frog (whose restoration we
may see, by my friend, Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins,
at Sydenham Crystal Palace,) and now is known
by the name of Labyrinthodon, on account of the
labyrinth-like structure of the teeth; so " Podotherium" proved to be simply poor old --  of
Seven Dials, the tin funnel-maker. This story
may seem absurd to many of my readers; but I
would beg them to recollect what consternation
was caused by the newspaper accounts of some
mysterious footmarks in the snow in Devonshire,
not very long ago.
It also shows that observation of common
things is necessary to the elucidation of unusual
natural appearances,-and that, by being awake
to the commonest things that take place around




THE WATERLOO BRIDGE MURDER.      69
us, we are enabled to interpret unusual phenomena when they arise, whether the case be the fossil track of an animal which has long ceased to
exist, the track of a burglar who has broken open
the clergyman's house and taken all his plate, or
the clearing up of a murderer.  Take, for instance, that most remarkable instance of the
" Waterloo Bridge murder," where a number of
human bones were found cut up, semi-pickled
and boiled, put up in a bag, and all placed on a
jetty of the bridge. By the kindness of the authorities I was enabled to inspect these bones,
more than once, in company with Professor
Quekett. The only things that could be predicated from previous observation were that the
cuts had been made by a man accustomed to
handle a saw; that it was not done by a person
who had a knowledge of anatomy-the merest
tyro with the scalpel would have gone to work
differently; and that somehow a woman and a
cat were mixed up with the affair-for Professor
Quekett and myself found the long hairs of the




To            AFRICAN CRUELTY.
former, and the short hairs of the latter, sticking
on to the semi-pickled and afterwards boiled
bones. There were also interesting conclusions
to be drawn from the appearance of the clothes,
&c., whereby it was made quite clear how the
body was dissected; but it required quite a different series of reasonings to ascertain who committed the murder.
Mr. Galton, in  his most interesting book,
"Tropical South Africa," Murray, 1853, records
a barbarous semi-murder, which would never
have been discovered but for some very remarkable tracks on the soft sand of the desert, which
immediately  struck his observant eye.   He
writes:-" I saw a horrible sight on the way,
which has often haunted me since.  We had
taken a short cut, and were a day and a half from
our waggons, when I observed some smoke in
front, and rode to see what it was. An immense
blackthorn-tree was smouldering, and from the
quantity of ashes about, there was all the appearance of its having burnt for a long time; by it




AFRICAN CRUELTY.           71
were tracks we could make nothing of; no footmarks, only an impression of a hand here and
there. We followed them, and found a wretched
woman most horribly emaciated; both her feet
were burnt off, and the wounds were open and
unhealed.  Her account was, that many days
back she and others were encamping there; and
that when she was asleep a dry but standing tree,
which they had set fire to, fell down and entangled
her among its branches: there she was burnt before she could extricate herself, and her people
left her. She had since lived on gum alone, of
which there were vast quantities about; it oozes
down from the trees and forms large cakes on the
sand. There was water close by, for she was on
the edge of a river bed. I did not know what to
do with her; I had no means of conveying her
any where, or any place to convey her to. The
Damaras kill useless and worn-out people, even
sons smother their fathers; and death was evidently not far from her. I had three sheep with
me, so I off-packed and killed one. She seemed




72         WOODEN LEGGED PEOPLE.
ravenous, and though I had purposely off-packed
some two hundred yards from  her, the poor
wretch kept crawling and dragging herself up to
me, and would not be withheld, for fear I should
forget to give her the food I promised, &c.  I
did the only thing I could.  I cut the meat in
strips and hung it within her reach, and where
the sun would jerk (i. e. dry and preserve) it. It
was many days' provision for her. I saw she had
water, firewood, and gum  in abundance, and
then I left her to her fate." I myself have more
than once remarked the track of a man with a
wooden leg-it has a most curious appearancein the snow or mud; the mark of the human foot
catches the eye directly on the one side, the
round hole made by the wooden leg on the other.
There was an old verger at Westminster Abbey,
in Dean Ireland's time, who hated any person
with a wooden leg, and no persuasion would allow him to let the one-legged visitor into Edward
the Confessor's Chapel.  The verger had a reason for refusal: the floor of the chapel shows




NATURAL CASTINGS.             73
remnants of a beautiful tesselated pavement, and
the old verger said that wooden-legged people'"ptnche-d out the few remaining bits of the pavement with their wooden stamps."   He would
therefore never let them in.
As if in explanation of the science of natural
casting, there were put up for sale at the auction
some very pretty natural casts from the baths of
San Filippo, between Rome and Sienna. The
history of these casts is as follows. The water
at the above named place is very highly charged
with carbonate of lime; and the fact of its depositing the mineral mater it contains in solution,
upon sticks and grass, thus taking accurate casts
of them, having been observed, certain ingenious
persons have placed under the drip, moulds of
medallions of heads, antique figures, &c., made
of sulphur; the water, careless of results, artistic
or not, has deposited carbonate of lime in the
mould to the thickness of half an inch or more,
taking a most beautifully accurate cast of the
figure in relievo, the surface being very smooth
4




7'4         OBSTRUCTIONS IN PIPES.
and polished, answering to the surface of the
sulphur. This deposit goes on so gradually, and
with such minuteness, that even the lines in a
fine  wood  engraving  have  been  accurately
moulded, and we have the picture in hard solid
carbonate of lime, instead of thin perishable
paper. If we reverse one of these stone pictures,
we shall find that the outside layer is exceedingly rough and indented, the results of the
water dripping from the well. The process of
the formation of fur in the tea-kettle, is only
another instance of this process, except that the
deposit is not applied to useful and artistic
purposes. The best way, by the bye, to keep
off this fur, is to place a common marble in the
kettle, which by perpetually rolling about prevents the fur forming; or else to "put in a clean
oyster shell, which will always keep it in good
order by attracting the particles of earth or
stone:" but I have never tried this. In the
neighborhood of Oxford this deposition of fur is
not uncommon. There is in the Museum there




OBSTRUCTION IN PIPES.         75
about a foot of lead piping, which was taken up
because the water would not flow  properly
through it. The cause of the obstruction was
soon ascertained: a horse-chesnut, with its rough
spiny coat, had got in; the spines became
jammed between the sides of the pipe, and
there it had remained, forming a nucleus for the
deposition of the carbonate of lime, which had
formed quickly and densely, completely obstructing the pipe. In the same Museum is suspended
against the wall, what at first sight appears to be
a wooden pipe, but upon examination it will be
seen to be not a wooden but a stone one; it is a
stone pipe formed within a wooden one. The
original pipe, about four inches square, belonged
to the old conduit at Carfax, in Oxford; in
process of time the carbonate of lime had formed
equally on all four sides of the pipe to the thickness of about a quarter of an inch. When taken
up, the wood-work was found to be quite
decayed,* but, nevertheless, it did not leak, as
* I learn that the fashion of pollarding, or cutting off the




76              THE CARFAX PIPE.
there was another pipe within it, firmer, more
solid, and more lasting than the wooden one,
through which the water flowed; this second
pipe is of stone, naturally formed within  the
first.
On  examining our stone specimen we find
that the inside is smooth, but the outside, on the
contrary, is quite rough, preserving accurately
the lines of the rough fibre of the oak from
which the wooden pipe was made, and in one
place a mark, very like a saw-mark  can be
traced.
In the British Museum, North Gallery, No.
III., may be seen just such another naturally
formed stone pipe.  It was obtained nearly one
hundred years ago, out of a pipe that conducts
the waste water from a coal pit at High Littlebranches of elm-trees in the neighborhood to make them
grow tall and straight, arose from the former demand for
their stems, cut into lengths, and bored throughout, to
make pipes to conduct water. I have frequently seen these
in the London streets when the workmen have been making excavations for repairs. Coffins are generally made of
elm, because they last longer in damp places than any other
wood. Oak coffins last longest in dry places, such as family
vaults above ground, &c.-Auct. an Undertaker.




STATUES AT LIMA.            77
ton, between Bristol and Wells, and a description of it will be found in the " Philosophical
Transactions," 1773. The deposition is in laminae of various colors, some light colored, some
dark colored. In one place a nail has projected
from the outside to the inside of the board, over
this the lines of deposition have taken a curve;
on the outside of the pipe may be seen roughnesses, and marks of the knots in the elm board
of which the wooden pipe was formed. This
pipe was fixed in 1766, and was obliged to be
taken up in 1769.
The describer of the above states that in the
churches of Lima, South America, are many statues and beautiful holy water basins, formed entirely by deposition, moulds being placed in a
petrifying spring in the neighborhood. This is
indeed going a step further in applying natural
formations to art, than the good people at San
Filippo have yet done; statues and fonts could
probably be made as well there as in South America.




78           THE SUNDAY STONE.
As regards the difference in color in the deposition of the pipe, one authority states that it is
caused by ochre, but then why was there not'
always ochre in the water? This phenomenon
may most probably be explained by the fact that
the black marks were made on the days when the
men were working in the mine, and by their
operations made the water dirty, which of course
then deposited a black mark; on the days when
no work was doing in the mine, the water would
run out clean and deposit a white mark.
In the Oxford Museum is a fragment of calcareous deposit from a pipe, formerly attached to
a coal mine in the north of England; the marks
upon it tally exactly with the manuscript ledger
of the overseer. We find black and white marks
alternately, six of each, i. e. the men worked by
day and rested by night: then we have a mark
the size of a black and a white one put together,
which mark is quite white; it was Sunday, and
the men rested twenty-four hours: so goes on
week after week, black and white marks alter



A ROMAN AMPHORA.              79
nately, a double-sized white one for Sunday. In
the middle of one week we find a Sunday mark;
how  camne it there   The reason is this-the
races were held at a neighboring place, the colliers all left off and went to the races, and did no
work; but they made up apparently for lost time
afterwards, for our stone indicates by a subsequent double black mark that they worked day
and night. This is properly called " the Sunday
stone," and its history was a favorite story of the
late Dean's.
Another illustration of deposition was also put
up for sale at the auction; it was " a large and
perfect amphora, encrusted with shells from  the
bed of the Tiber." This amphora was of great
age, and had evidently reposed for many centuries in the mud at the bottom of that river, for on
it were seen in clusters, in different parts, from
eight to ten common oyster shells, which once
of course contained living inhabitants. The amphora itself was of the usual elegant shape, with
a handle at each side for lifting it, and the bot



80           A ROMAN AMPHORA.
tom tapered off to a sharp point like the conical
hats of ancient times. The Romans, who kept
their wine in these amphoras, were accustomed
to place them in sand, which necessitated this
pointed bottom, and the handles were admirably
placed, to give a purchase to the person who
screwed it into the sand. The workers in hardware of the present day, I see, have imitated
this form for holding flowers, &c., but they have
been obliged to fasten three of them together,
tripod fashion, in order to make them stand upright. Now, it is more than probable that this
amphora had taken its upright and proper position in the mud of the Tiber, for the oyster shells
were fixed not towards the lower part, but all on
the uppermost part; they could not get to the
parts below  the mud, but readily fixed themselves to those above it.  Dr. Buckland found
this amphora in a corner of an old curiosity shop
in Rome; purchased it, and for many a long
year it decorated his hall both at Christ Church
and at Westminster.




HUMAN SKULL, BIRD'S EGGS, ETC.    S8
In the British Museum, in the North Gallery,
No. III. Case 46, may be seen a still more remarkable object from the bed of the Tiber. It is
a human skull, which has become incrusted all
over with a coating of carbonate of lime. Not
only is the outside completely covered, but the
inside of the skull is also concealed by it; the
knobs and eminences therein existing, having
received their share of the deposit, stand outlike
little mountains amidst valleys.  Could we take
off a portion of the inside lining, we should most
probably-nay, even we might say, most certainly-find accurate castings of the grooves which
are hollowed-out in the bone, to contain arteries
and veins. The features of the skull are hardly
distinguishable; and from the uneven forms of
the deposition about the bones of the face, it
looks like a skull with the mumps.
Ill the same case may be seen other specimens
of incrustations, such as a bird's nest and eggs
from the wells at Knaresborough, and also a few
examples of the San Filippo natural casts. In
4*




82          ROCK-WORK AT WINDSOR.
the same gallery, Case 21 contains some remarkably beautiful incrustations of pure white deposit
upon a twig from the hot springs of Roturia, in
New  Zealand, which  were presented by  Sir
George Grey.  The twig looks as though it had
been gathered fiom an English hedge on a bright
frosty morning, and the hoar fiost had suddenly
become fixed permanently upon it, in defiance of
the powers of warmth to melt it.  In the same
case is exhibited the cast of a feather-moss and
other substances from Lazon, one of the Philippine Islands.
While walking lately in a garden near Windsor, my attention was attracted by the end of a
stone projecting from some rock-work, made of
flints, corals, biss of iron and brick, rounded
quartz, pebbles, broken portions of ammonites,
and other sundries, which were artfully piled together, and dignified by the name of rock-work.
The stone I observed was none of these; the portion projecting was about three inches in diameter, rounded at the edges, and concave, like the




REMARKABLE STONE.             83
vertebra of an ichthyosaurus, which I at first imagined it might be, particularly as it was covered with a thick coat of whitewash, and its structure concealed.  I received permission to examine it, and accordingly ruthlessly removed the
top stones of " the work," and obtained the specimen. Stone it certainly was, but a stone of no
geological formation, as I could declare the moment it came into my hands, from its lightness,
unless it might be a bit of pumice-stone; but
then who ever saw a bit of pumice-stone in the
shape of a three-sided pyramid, whose base was
round and concave, as if water-worn? yet it
could not be water-worn, as the three sides of the
pyramid were separated by a well-marked ridge
between them; the sides, too, being quite flat,
as if they had been in opposition to another
stone. All parts of the stone were covered thickly with a coat of whitewash, which quite concealed its structure. The stone was kindly presented to me. The punp soon took off the whitewash; and then, from its peculiar external struc



84               ITS HISTORY.
ture, it became evident that it was a calculus, or
stony secretion from the inside of an animal. To
a human being it was much too large to have
belonged, for it was as big as a good-sized cocoa-nut; it probably, therefore, had been taken
firom a horse. Down one of its sides there was a
slight crack: having placed it on a table, I carefully inserted a chisel into the crack, and after a
few gentle taps on the chisel with a hammer, an
outer case fell off, about one quarter of an inch
thick, leaving a second calculus inside, like a
little box found inside a big box in a so-called
nest of boxes. The structure of this second calculus was different from  the external one; instead of being fragile and porous, it was composed of a dense and hard limestone-like material. With some little difficulty, and with great
care, by the aid of a fine saw, I made a section.
My trouble was rewarded; for, as we had predicted to a by-stander as likely to be the case,
we found a nucleus, which nucleus was evidently
a bit of lead. Tie section at the same time re



ITS HISTORY.              85
vealed layers symmetrically placed one upon the
other-the first layer being formed round the bit
of lead, the second round that, and so on, exactly
as a schoolboy makes his great snow-ball the nucleus of his snow-man, by rolling it along the
snow-covered ground; layer after layer is added,
and if a section be made when the schoolboy is
tired of his work, the snow-ball will be found to
be formed by concentric layers, having for its nucleus, probably, a bit of snow hardened and well
kneaded by the hands of the operator.
To a horse, therefore, I concluded my pseudofossil had belonged. I made inquiries in the
neighborhood about its history, and learnt from
one of the servants, that some years ago, the house
belonged to the man who owned the mills at
Clewer, about a quarter of a mile distant  This
miller had a horse, which worked about the mill,
drawing the sacks of corn, &c. The horse died
suddenly, and the miller, anxious about his old
favorite had him opened: inside him were found
three stones, one of which had deen placed in the




86          " BILLY  THE HYENA.
rock-work, by way of ornament; the others had
been thrown away. Thus then, I account for the
marks on my specimen, which had told me that
it had been in juxta-position with something
which was not very hard, and which fitted on to
it.  But, to account for the nucleus of lead.  It
is most probable that this lead was a crushed
shot, which had got in among the horse's corn,
and been taken up with the corn into his mouth;
his great flat grinders had crushed it in their grip,
and flattened it, and down it had gone along with
the rest of the food: an insidious enemy, destined,
in course of time, to cause much pain to, and ultimately the death of the miller's poor horse.  In
order to verify my notion, I crushed several shots
with hammers and between heavy stones; the
shots came out presenting very much the appearance of the leaden nucleus. From my observations, it is probable that the size of the shot was
that commonly called partridge shot.
Almost the last lot in the auction catologue
was " A  stuffed TITyena on stand, twenty-four




BILLY'S LIFE SPARED.          87
years in the Surrey Zoological Gardens."  In
itself this signified not much, but there is a history connected with this animal. When Dr. Buckland was writing his essay on the celebrated bone
cavern of Kirkdale, in Yorkshire, he took great
pains to compare the bones there found with recent bones, so as to make his story quite complete.
In the Kirkdale Cave he found a portion of skull
which he believed belonged to a young hyoena,
and although nearly certain that it was what he
thought it to be, he ransacked all the collections
he knew for a recent skull of a young animal for
comparison; and not finding one, he requested
Mr. Burchell, the great African traveller, to send
him a young hyaena from  the Cape.  In course
of time the baby-beast arrived in the docks; a
pretty tame little beast, a great favorite with the
sailors, who had christened him " Billy," doomed
nevertheless to be slain for the sake of science.
The late Mr. Cross, then of Exeter'Change, and
afterwards of the Surrey Zoological Gardens,
acted as agent, and undertook the delivery of poor




88       BILLY BECOMES A PATRIARCH.
"Billy."  The little brute, however, by his good
temper and playful manners, quite won the heart
of Mr. Cross, who begged hard for his life, and
at length obtained a remand on condition that
the skull of a young hyaena should be forthcoming. Mr. Cross, we suppose,. turned out all his
drawers and cabinets in search; anyhow, he produced a skull within the given time, but it was
not the skull of poor Billy. His life was spared,
and he was forthwith taken to Exeter'Change,
and thence removed with the rest of the wild
beasts to the Surrey Zoological Gardens. I have
in my possession " The Companion to the Royal
Menagerie, Exeter'Change, containing concise
Descriptions, scientific and interesting, of the
curious foreign Animals now in that eminent Collection, derived from actual observation, by Edward Cross, Proprietor, 1820." The following is
the description of poor Billy, then in his youth,
but amiable withal:-" The lyamna in a cage at
the end of the room is possessed of a large share
of good humor, and entertains the visitors at feed



HIS FINAL DESTINATION.         89
ing time by the gesticulations of delight he man.
ifests at the moment, and by his curious imitations of the human voice resembling laughter.
This animal suffers himself to be caressed, and is
so farnliar with the keepers; that when any
repairs are wanting to his cage they have no hesitation in going in with him. (N. B. This was
before the days of Van Hamborough, and other
Lion Kings.) He is a native of the Cape of Good
Hope, and is frequently called the Tiger Wolf."
Billy arrived in England in the year 1821, and
he died in his den a peacable and quiet death,
January 14, 1846, having lived just a quarter of
century within thismetropolis. Irememberwell
when quite a child being taken to feed Billy with
cakes, and of later years I paid frequent visits of
inquiry, always with satisfactory results; he was
always in a good humor when we called on him, expressing his delight by spinning round and round
in his den as fast as he could manage to go without falling down, for he was getting old and decrepid; all this time he uttered that remarkable




90          HIS FINAL DESTINATION.
sound peculiar to hysenas, which once heard can
never be forgotten, and which sounds so much
like a laugh proceeding from human lips.
At his decease (the cause of death, plus old
age, being an enormous goitre in the throat,) Dr.
Buckland presented his carcass to the Royal
College of Surgeons, reserving, however, the
skin for himself.  Mr. Bartlett, the Taxidermist,
undertook the stuffing of it, and very cleverly
made a plaster cast of the head directly after the
skin was removed, leaving the muscles, &c. still
attached to the skull. This cast, when placed
into the skin of the head, of course accurately
fitted it, preserving to a certain extent even the
expression of the animal. This, then, is the
history of the " Stuffed Hysena at the auction."
The carcass was sent to the College, and was
carefully dissected, many of the internal parts
being preserved.  Professor Quekett, who dissected it, informs me that his flesh was as hard
and tough as a bit of shoe leather, and that he
was obliged to put a fresh edge on his knife




BILLY USEFUL IN LIFE.         91
after every two or three cuts. After dissection
the bones were made into a skeleton, where it
may now be seen, No. 4,446, in the Osteological
Gallery. One of the canine teeth is worn down
quite to a stump, and the grinders are covered
with tartar; one of them he has cracked in some of
his bone-splitting operations, for the jaw around
exhibits symptoms of former inflammation. On
the head may be seen lines and furrows in which
were inserted the great powerful muscles which
moved the under jaw. His legs, crooked and
bandy in life, preserve the same appearance in
death. Poor Billy first made his debut as the
youngest hysena in England; he ends his career
grim and grisly as the oldest hyaena in England,
and probably in Europe. The stuffed skin is
now at the College of Surgeons in company with
his skeleton, having been bought at the sale by
Professor Quekett.
lNot only was Billy subservient to the cause
of science when dead, but even when alive he unknowingly gave much important assistance to his




92          BILLY USEFUL IN LIFE.
former owner, then busy with the "Reliqua
Diluviana," for Billy cracked the marrow-bones
of oxen, and refused those bones which contained
no marrow, exactly as did his ancestors ages
before him in the wilds of Yorkshire, as yet
untrodden by the foot of man. So wonderfully
alike were these bones in their fracture, that,
judging from this point alone, it was impossible
to say which bone had been cracked by Billy,
and which by the aboriginal hyaena of Kirkdale.
Again, Billy polished with his feet and hide the
sides and floor of his den of wood, as his ancestors did the sides and floor of their den of stalactite in the Yorkshire hills; and as the ancient
beasts deposited " album graecum" in abundance
after a dinner of bones, so did Billy deposit
pounds of the same substance; even in this
minute circumstance illustrating the history of
his ancient British forefathers. The details are
recorded in Dr. Buckland's "Reliquae Diluvianae."
After vast labor and much accurate observa



THE JUDGE S VERDICT.         93
tion, Dr. Buckland at length made the evidence
of the former existence of hyelnas in England
quite complete; so complete indeed, that on one
occasion when surrounded by the actual bones
and specimens knocked out of the Kirkdale
stalactite by his own hand, and sitting in his
Professor's chair in his own museum, he appealed
to one of the most learned judges in the land,
who happened at be present at his lecture.
After having, with his usual forcible and telling eloquence, put his case, to prove not only the
former existence of hyaenas in England, but even
that they were rapacious, ravenous, and murderous cannibals, he turned round to the learned
lawyer and said, " And now, what do you think
of that, my lord?" "Such facts," replied the
judge, "brought as evidence against a man
would be quite sufficient to convict and even
hang him."




APPENDIX TO THE ABOVE ARTICLE.
DR. BUCKLAND was particularly careful to put
descriptive labels on all specimens that came into
his possession; the moment a fossil, a bone, or
other specimen, was transferred from the roadside quarry, or from the workman's cottage, immediately was written on it in ink the name of
the place whence it was procured, and also the
date when it came to lhand.  This we find on
many Saurian bones, teeth, vertebrae, &c.:" Lyme Regis, 1840;" "Shottover, 1824;" Val
D'Arno, 1826."  The task of labelling generally
fell to the lot of my beloved mother; she was
particularly neat with her fingers, and accurate
with her eye, and had the knack of picking out
good places on the specimens whereon to write




ON SPECIMENS.              95
the labels, without interfering with the appearance of the specimen itself (a no small art); she
likewise, from long practice, so formed the actual
letters that, in many cases, the words appear
more as if printed than written with the hand.
I cannot sufficiently urge upon all collectors,
whether of surgical, pathological, antiquarian,
geological, or zoological specimens, whether for
use or as simple curiosities, the absolute necessity
of labelling each individual article. It will not
suffice, and it is in many cases next to useless, to
put on a paper label; for consider what happens
in a few years (as I well know to my cost)-the
gum  or other cement cracks, and off goes the
label. The specimen is found without a history.
Take, for example, a tooth of a fossil Hippopotamus; unlabelled, it is not much more than an
old bone, but when its locality is written on it,say, in this case, "Sicily," or " haring Cross,"for Hippopotami bones are found in both places,
-and the specimen becomes immediately available as affording evidence which may be at some




36           FLINT ABROW-HEADS.
time _and in some place exceedingly valuable.
This plan may be well illustrated by what has
happened within the last few weeks, when a
great talk has been made about " Man among the
mammoths."  My brother recollected that there
was a box taken down to my mother's house at
St. Leonard's, containing "flints," &c., and he
thought there might be in it some of the very
ancient stone arrow-heads, which being found
mixed with bones of the primaeval elephants,
mammoths, &c., have lately caused so considerable a sensation in the scientific world.
This box was sent up to me, and I was much
pleased to find a beautiful series of fractured
flints, collected by my father. Apropos to this
story, and the conchoidal fracture of flints, from
gun-flint manufactories, &c., I found also a large
collection of stones used by the Druids to put a
polish on the stones at their ancient temple at
Carnac, together with a pretty little collection of
stone hatchets, used by savages of the present
day, all brought together (and Dr. Buckland




FLINT ARROW-HEADS.            97
must have had some trouble to do this), to illustrate what is certainly the nucleus of the whole
box, a very fine flint arrow-head or axe-head,
seven inches long by five wide, with this label in
the Dean's MS., written in ink upon the actual
surface, "lHoxne, Suffolk, found in loam  with
bones of elephant.  See Arlcheologia, Anno
1800."
These few words give authenticity and value to
what appears to be a simple bit of broken flintstone,per se worthless, but with its history exceedingly interesting and valuable.
At the top of the box are a number of papers,
old letters, scraps of notes, and pencil drawings,
which form a key to the contents of the box: and
this fact emboldens me to urge upon my readers
the necessity of putting all papers relating to
specimens, with those specimens, as well as writing on the specimens themselves, or, if this be
not possible, paste them into a scrap-book, with
numbers corresponding to the specimens they refer to. I must give an example.-In the Oxford
5




98         JOHN HUNTER'S REGRETS.
Museum is a boat-scoop, made of the tusk of a
fossil elephant. It was purchased by Captain
Beechy, from the Esquimaux, and my father has
pasted inside it a most interesting letter relative
to its history, giving it authenticity and great
value. No one who has visited the Museum of
the Royal College of Surgeons, Lincoln's Inn
Fields, can fail to be struck with the beauty,
rarity, and orderly arrangement of the numerous
specimens placed within the glass cases and on
the shelves. According to the last census, there
were no less than 44,701 preparations; each
specimen is labelled, and there is no difficulty in
finding its history, and all that is known about it,
in the pages of the catalogues. To get the Museum to this state of perfection has caused a vast
amount of labor; but now, thanks to Professor
Owen and Professor Quekett, admirable order
has been produced out of what was comparative
confusion some years back.  Hear the words
with which Professor Owen begins his preface to
the volumes of the present catalogue:-" Tlhe




JOHN HUNTER'S REGRETS.          99
surviving friends of John Hunter well remember
hlow deeply the latter period of his life was embittered by reflections on the imperfect condition
of the records and catalogues, so essential to the
value and utility of his collection. It appears to
have been too much a habit throughout the whole
period of its formation, to trust the history of the
specimens to memory; and the absence of any
adequate system of notation or reference by
which they could be recognised was severely felt
when the powers of mind which had called them
into existence began to be shaken, by the reiterated attacks of a severe and ultimately fatal disorder."
Luckily, however, sufficient evidence to the
identity of the preparations remained, but it had
to be gleaned from various sources with great
labor. The present indefatigable and amiable
Curator of the College, my good friend Professor
Quekett, is daily lamenting the want of labels
and  descriptions upon  different preparations
which from  time to time turn up. " Al," said




100          GLASS-CAPPED BOXES.
he, "if people would only write upon the ir
specimens, or give references to them, I might
have been saved hundreds of hours of hard
work."
Professor Quekett showed me some little
boxes, which he finds of the greatest use for
small specimens, which  otherwise would  be
folded up in a bit of paper, put away, and, in
ordinary hands, probably get mislaid; they are
very light and strong, made of the best cardboard, and the tops are of glass, so that at a
glance the contents of the box can be seen. I
find Mr. Tennant, 149, Strand, has lately added
a stock of these most useful articles to his shop,
and I can confidently recommend them. They
are called glass-capped boxes for eggs, shells,
fossils, minerals, medals, objects of antiquity,
jewelry, &c.; there are eight sizes of them, and
Mr. Tennant has a circular, showing the various
sizes, and the prices, which are very reasonable.
This practice of labelling may be applied to
every-day life, to keys, knives, &c. You find a




HOW TO LABEL KEYS.          101
bunch of bright keys in the street; you know
that somebody somewhere must or may be, at
that moment, distractedly turning out all his
pockets, and hunting his wife and servants all
over the house to " look for my keys." We also
see advertisements in the Times, nearly every
morning, for lost keys. Now if there had been
any notice affixed to the keys, showing who was
the proprietor, all this anxiety might have been
avoided. Now, it does not do to put the full
name and address of the owner upon the bunch
of keys, for Mr. Housebreaker might pick them
up, and take the opportunity of using those keys
for purposes exceeding the bounds of simple
curiosity. He might open the street-door (the
address on the keys would tell him where to go,)
and pay a midnight visit to the master's writingdesk, cash-box, the cellaret, or may be the plate
closet.
All the disagreeable chances may be avoided,
and yet the keys recovered, by a simple plan,
told me by my friend Mr. T. L. Coulson, of Bris



102          HOW TO LABEL KEYS.
tol. It is this:-have a bone or ivory label affixed to the keys, with an inscription such as
this, "Post-office, Charing-Cross, box 13, five
shillings reward." Or if the owner does not
live near Charing-Cross, let him put on the label
the name of the nearest post-office, or tradesman's
shops where he is known; still adhering to box
13 (or any number he chooses) and the reward
offered; or he may have the name of his club, or
the post-office of his country town inscribed,
though he may not have a box at all there. For
my own part I have on my keys, knife, &c.,
"Athenaeum  Club, Pall-mall, five shillings reward."  Now, how does the plan work?  The
keys are dropped you know not where, but the
chances are somebody finds them; he reads that
he will get five shillings by taking them to the
place indicated, and the keys will probably be
taken there at once, as they are of no use except
for old iron.  In the meantime, having discovered your loss, you should go to the post-master,
or the club-porter, say that "box 13" is on the




PAWS OFF.              103
label of a bunch of keys, which you trust will be
brought to him in the course of the day; deposit
the reward money, with a fee for the receiver;
and the chances are your keys will be in his
hands in twelve hours' time, and you will have
saved yourself a monstrous deal of anxiety and
fretting.
Visitors to museums are very apt to touch and
handle specimens,-this is an itching which seems
natural to us all.  Dr. Buckland had on his
drawing-room  tables, at Oxford, many things
very pretty to look at, and valuable in themselves. Through frequently handling, they had,
from time to time, been injured and broken; he
therefore placed on these tables labels with the
words, "Paws off," conspicuously engraved on
them. This concise mode of expressing the wish
of the proprietor had the desired effect, and paws
were kept off.
Dr. Buckland could not bear to lose an umbrella (they were never very good ones of their
kind, but still he could not bear to " lose his urm



104          THE OLD UMBRELLA.
brella.") He lost two or three in one way or
another, and at last he had inscribed, in conspicuous letters, on the handle of a new  one he
bought purposely, " Stolen from Dr. Buckland,"
and this he never lost. It was fairly worn to a
skeleton through long and faithful service, till at
last it became so very shabby, that I often wished
somebody would steal it; but the large label,
"Stolen from Dr. Buckland," kept away everybody, nobody even ever offered to "borrow " it
on the wettest of wet days, although it often invitingly stood by itself, in solitary glory, in the umbrella-stand in the hall.
Dr. Buckland, at the beginning of his lectures
on Mineralogy, invariably taught his class how to
handle minerals, &c. " Always take specimens
carefully by the edges between the finger and
thumb," said he, "and put them  down gently
directly you have finished examining them, and
don't keep them in the hand when you are thinking about other things."




CEMENTS.             105
Having mentioned paste and labels,* I would
here beg to give the receipt for the paste which
my father always used, and which may be useful
to some of my readers (if they did not know it before;) it is copied from my mother's MS.:
DR. BUCKLAND'S CEMENT.
i part finely-powdered white sugar,
3 parts finely-powdered starch,
4 parts finely-powdered gum Arabic.
All by weight. In mixing use cold water. Rub
the above ingredients (dry) well together in a
marble mortar; then, by very little at a time, add
the water till it is the thickness of melted glue;
put it in a wide-mouthed bottle, and cork closely.
Many of the larger bones and fossils at Oxford
have been mended with a whitish-colored cement.
which is exceedingly hard and tenacious. My
poor mother took great delight in mending and
putting together broken fossils which the Dean
* Good labels can be bought at 18 Holborn Hill, E. C.
5*




106         WOLLASTON'    CEMENT.
considered valuable enough to have the trouble
spent upon them. The quarrymen were often very
careless in getting the specimens out of their
matrix, and would bring a good fossil much in
the state of a London street flint when a great
coal-wagon has passed over it. Mrs. Buckland
would set to work at it, and build it up to its
original form with marvellous neatness. No mosaic work that I ever saw could have more time,
trouble, or ingenuity than she has bestowed upon
some of the specimens now at Oxford and elsewhere.
Among the Dean's papers I found the following
characteristic letter from Dr. Wollaston, enclosing
a receipt for this white cement for large and ponderous specimens. It runs as follows:" MY DEAR PROFESSOR,-I send your great gun
ship (along with your Rhinoceros tooth) sundry
specimens cemented in my fashion. Try them,
break them, do what you will with them, relying
for full explanation on,
"Yours ever truly,    I. WOLLASTON."




WOLLASTON'  CEMENT.         107
The cement mentioned above is thus made:1 part bees' wax,
4 parts resin,
5 parts powdered plaster of Paris.
Warm the edges of the specimens, and use the
cement warm.
I have never used the cement myself, so that I
cannot gua/rantee its efficacy. On the same paper
are two more receipts for cement in my father's
hand-writing. They may be useful, so I give
them:
CEMENT FOR MENDING SHELLS, USED AT PARIS.
Gum Arabic, two-thirds,
Sugar candy, one-third,
White-lead.
The other is: —
A CHINA-MENDER'S RECEIPT FOR MENDING BROKEN
CHINA.
Powder of Suffolk cheese dried, powdered, and
sifted.
Unslacked lime in powder.




108               CEMENTS.
Equal parts. Mix with hard water, cold, on a
slab till it is stringy. It is then fit for use. Put
on each side of the broken edges, and hold before
the fire till it sets, and in five hours it is done.
N.B.-The more cheese the stronger it is. Boil
the cheese to get the fat out.
Bones found in gravel pits, &c. are often in a
very fragile state. In order to harden them, they
should be washed frequently with a mixture of
common glue and whitening; a little experience
will indicate the proportions in which these materials should be used, there being always more
glue than whitening.
I must not, however, fill up my book with receipts, many of which, better perhaps than the
above, may be found in " The Encyclopedia of
Practical Receipts," " Enquire Within upon Every
Thing," and numerous other publications.




THE GAMEKEEPER'S MUSEUM.








THE GAMEKEEPER'S MUSEUM..MUCH has been lately said and written upon
educational subjects, and particularly upon the
formation of local Museums.
There exist, however, unnoticed and despised,
in most counties, local Museums, which will, if
carefully examined, yield the most instructive
information to those who take interest in the
history of the animals now indigenous to England; animals whose representatives were co-existent with the ancient Britons; nay, many of
them, as testified by the bones found in the caves
of Kirkdale in Yorkshire, "flourished" (as the
school-boy books have it) even in the days when
Elephants, Bears,* Wolves,t Tigers, Hyaenas and
* In the Field Newspaper I stated that a Gordon, in the
year 1057, killed a Bear, and received permission of the
king of Scotland of that day to quarter three Bears in his
coat of arms. I have since received a kind letter from the




112            WOLVES IN ENGLAND.
the great Rhinoceros roamed our broad acres,
the undisputed inhabitants of this island.
As the cave bones are to the Geologist and the
Palaeontologist evidences of existence of the animals of what is generally called the antediluvian
Earl of Granard, who says:-" Your statement is incorrect;
the shield, or rather the quartering of the Gordons, is three
Boar's-not three Bear's-Heads; the three Bears on the
shield or banner are the achievement of my family, one of
whom killed a ferocious Bear in the Highlands, and was
thus rewarded by Malcolm Canmore, or some sovereign
about the same date."
t The Wolf was common in England at comparatively a
modern date. King Edgar, A. D. 970, was a great Wolfslayer, and attempted to get rid of them by setting criminals to work out their punishments at Wolf-hunting (vice
oakum-picking of later times,) and petty offences were paid
for in Wolves' tongues. " In the reign of Athelstan, Wolves
abounded so much in Yorhshire, that a place of retreat was
built at Flixton, near Scarborough, for the protection of
passengers against their attacks. I have often longed to
have a hunt about " Wolvesey" Palace, close to the College
at Winchester. The ancient tribute of Wolves' heads was
deposited at the gates of the palace, and they were probably
buried close by, if one only knew whereabouts to look for
them. Wolves began to multiply in the reign of Edward
I. A. D., 1273, and one Peter Corbet was ordered to take
measures for their extirpation in Gloucestershire. After
this date there were no more Wolves seen in England and
Wales, but they were not exterminated from North Britain
till the seventeenth century. There are two claimants to
the death of the last Wolf in Scotland, viz. Sir C. Cameron,
1680, and MacQueen, who died 1797. (See interesting
paper, " Notes and Queries," November 12, 1859.) There
is, in the Dublin Archaeological Museum, a medallion on
which is an engraving commemorative of the last Wolf
killed in Ireland. I know not the date.




CONTENTS OF THE MUSEUM.         113
period, so does the "Gamekeeper's Museum"
inform  the naturalist that there are yet represen
tatives of the ancient wild animals in existence
in our woods and fields; and that although
"man's hand has been against them" for many
centuries, yet he has not utterly exterminated
them from the face of the earth.
There is hardly an estate in England where
the gamekeeper has not formed such a museum,
or " larder." He selects generally the wall of a
barn, or dog-kennel, or a tree near the house, as
its site. He is the sole collector, preparer, and
conservator of it. His business is to kill and destroy all the enemies of his special charge, the
game.  He does so, and nails or hangs up in his
collection the heads of cats, hawks, owls, hedgehogs, stoats, weasels, and other so-called vermin,
thereby demonstrating his power of field-craft,
and his diligence in preserving his master's property.
After an absence of some months, perhaps during the whole of the nesting time and breeding




114            FALSE TROPHIES.
season of the various kinds of game preserved in
the coverts, it must indeed be satisfactory to the
master to have ocular proofs of his gamekeeper's
prowess, and such guarantees of future sport,
offered by the increased number of specimens in
the keeper's museum; presuming always that the
master is well assured of his k eeper's honesty and
good faith; for whereas adulte ations and frauds
are unfortunately too common in sugar, coffee,
pickles, &c., even so do we find that the stocking
of the gamekeeper's museum is open to rascality,
and is often replenished with victims not caught
on the premises.
We well recollect the disgust depicted on the
face of a well-known game preserver when he
related how that his good-for-nothing gamekeeper
had bought up all the cats in the neighboring
town, cut off their heads, and nailed them up, as
trophies of veritable captures in the neighboring
woods; and how that the same man had given a
large order in an adjacent county for jays and
magpies in order to swell the ranks of feathered




INSECT SKELETON MAKERS.       115
culprits, and to palm off his purchased specimens
as a bonafide collection shot and trapped by himself.
We remember the moral that the master drew
and propounded to us, that it were better not to
see the vermin at all, alive or dead; that is, they
ought not to be alive about the coverts, nor yet
be hung up when dead, as there is opening for
rascality.
It requires a sportman of no moderate order to
be able to go the rounds of his woods and game
preserves, and from his personal knowledge of
the art of woodcraft, to pronounce an opinion as
to whether or not the game-keeper has done his
duty in his absence, and whether the vermin that
ought to be nailed up for the benefit of his game,
as well as science, are still ranging at will or
have been destroyed.
But lately I came across one of these rural
museums, belonging to a friend of mine, on an
estate not far from Brighton, where I had gone
on a professional visit, and had half a day to look




116       INSECT SKELETON MAKERS.
about me after attending to my patient. Three
years it had taken the honest game-keeper to
form his collection; and not a little proud of it
was he.  The vermin, as he called them, " had
lately got scarce," and all the heads and bodies
hung up were perfectly hard and dry; nor was
there the slightest effluvium-that had passed off
long ago-and the specimens were much in the
same condition as the mummies we see in the
British Museum, hard, dry, and grim. It is a
curious thing that there seems to be an insect especially created to eat up dead animal matter.Whether at home or abroad, I never found a dry
body of an animal that had not, in and about it,
specimens of a creature called " Dermestes lardarius;" they are the "hoppers" of the ham and
bacon merchants, and specially delight in eating
dry animal flesh; hence they are such plagues to
the ham merchants. They are capital skeleton
makers, and if the skins of the creatures in the
gamekeeper's museum be removed, the skeletons
will be found underneath in a most perfect state




AFRTOAN TROPHIES.          117
of preservation, and quite fit, after a little washing, for the cabinet. Hoppers also eat dry leather; and the late Mr. Baker, of Bridgewater,
took advantage of their powers by setting them
to work to make skeletons of delicate things, such
as small birds, fish, frogs, lizards, &c.: neat
workmen are these little hoppers, touching nothing but the flesh-and they clean much better
than ants. The animal to be made into a skeleton should be soaked in water to get all the blood
out, then dried and placed with the hoppers in a
covered box; a few birds' feathers should be put
over them, as they will work only in the dark.
There were hoppers about even in the time of
the Egyptians, and they used to eat the mummied bodies, for I have found them hard ahd dry
inside the skull of a mummy in the Ashmolean
Museum at Oxford.
The love of collecting trophies of the chase
seems natural to man. In some instances they
are held sacred, and the following is a good case
in point. In his " Exploring Voyage up the Riv



118        THE HEAD OF A POACHER.
er Kwora or Niger, (west coast of Africa,) in the
Pleiad," Dr. W. Baikie writes: " In the centre
of the village, (a long way up the river,) I found
a pile of skulls and heads of hippopotami, buffaloes, deer, leopards and crocodiles; this part being considered sacred, and dedicated to the god
of hunting.  I wished to purchase some specimens, and after much debating, was allowed to
offer terms. At Zhiru, where a similar heap was
seen, the people obstinately refused to sell any of
their spoil."
The victims in our gamekeeper's museum had
not been nailed up by chance in the first vacant
place, but arranged with a certain degree of taste,
a row being apportioned to each species of animal.
The keeper's greatest enemies of course occupied the most prominent position; and in the top
row no less than fifty-three cats' heads stared hideously down upon the visitor. There was a story
attached to nearly each head: this cat was killed
in such a wood, this in such a hedge-row, some




THE HEAD OF A POACHER.        119
in traps, some shot, some knocked on the head
with a stick; but what was most remarkable was,
the different expression of countenance observable
in each individual head.
This one had died fighting bravely to the last;
inch by inch it had yielded up its nine lives.
Caught possibly in a trap in the early part of the
evening by one of its legs, it had lingered the
night through in agony, the pain of its entrapped
limb causing it to make furious efforts to escape,
and those very efforts adding additional torments
to the wound. In the morning the keeper had
come with his gun and his dogs; putting his foot
on the spring of the trap, he had let out the
wounded and exhausted animal to the mercy of
his terriers; whlat little life was left in it the dogs
worried out. It had died a martyr to its natural
instinct.
Do you doubt this?  Look at the head, now
dried by the heat of two summers: the wrinkled
forehead, the expanded eyelids, the glaring eyeballs, the whiskers extended their full stretch, the




120              SHOT DEAD.
spiteful lips exposing the double row of tiger-like
teeth envenomed by agony, teaches us all this.
The hand of death has not been powerful enough
to relax the muscles racked for so many hours
with terror and pain.
Let us examine another head; what a difference in expression do we see in this cat at the end
of the row; she has never been worried or tormented; stealthily creeping on the tips of her
beautifully padded feet along some hedge-row,
she has come within the range of the gun of the
concealed keeper, and in an instant been shot
dead; yes, shot dead; her calm look, her ears
cocked well forward, the sagacious set of the muscles of her face remain to this'moment,-so sudden was her death that other feelings had not
time to work upon her expression and physiognomy.  Her mummied head tells us the story of
an unexpected and instantaneous death.
The cat has numerous muscles about her face,
and she is capable of assuming numerous expressions. Let the reader nurse a cat on his lap, tickle




NO ANTIPATHY TO CATS.          121
her nose, ears, eyes, whiskers, &c., he will see
what I mean. Above all, she cannot bear her
whiskers to be touched or pulled; at the end of
each of these stiff hairs is a large bnlb of nervous
substance, which converts them into the most
delicate feelers. They are of the greatest use to
her when hunting about in the dark: in the Lion
these nerve-bulbs at the end of the whiskers are
as large as small peas.
There is yet another head in the museum from
which we can read another history; it is that of
a poor little puss who had died before she had
attained the age of cathood. Her young life had
probably been knocked out of her tender body
with a stick; for her head still retains the playful look of the kitten; and there is a sort of a
" what-have-I-done-look " about it, as though she
had died with submission, and in ignorance of the
keeper's anathema against her species.
I would remark that personally I have no antipathy to cats.  I rather like them. - I am  now
writing of them only in their character of vermin.
6




122             PUSS IN POETrLY.
To the admirers of cats as pets, I can recommend
a little book written about cats, and nothing but
cats, viz: " The Cat, its History and Diseases,"
by the Honorable Lady COst. 1856.  Groombridge and Sons, Paternoster Row. Price Is.
Many persons dislike cats and other destructive
animals because they are so blood-thirsty towards
their fellow-brutes; but that one kind of beast
should eat another, is a bountiful law of nature
which I cannot now go into. The following verses have been kindly given to me; they were
composed by Canning, after he had heard a discussion on the subject of animals killing and devouring one another.
Tell me, tell me, gentle Robin,
What is it sets thy breast a throbbing?
Is it that Grimalkin fell
Hath killed thy father or thy mother,
Thy sister or thy brother,
Or any other?
Tell me but that,
And I'll kill the cat.
But stay, little Robin, did you ever spare
A grub on the ground, or a fly in the air?
No, that you never did; I'll swear.
So I won't kill the cat,
That's flat 




THE EVIDENCE              123
But why have all these cats been killed?  It
is unfortunately impossible to convert woodland
coverts into caged happy families, where cats
will live in harmony with birds, and their co-existence in amity is incompatible with the law of
nature.  The master of our covert is jealous of
the cat's destructive powers, and naturally applies
the law of force to maintain his right to kill and
destroy; hence this feline Golgotha. Let us hear
what our friend the keeper has to say on the subject; he will tell us that the cat is the worst vermin in existence, for although not hungry, she
will kill for sport, and if an old she-cat should lay
up her young in the woods, it is incredible the
amount of game and rabbits she will destroy.
"Prove the keeper's sweeping accusation
against the feline race," says Pussy's friend.
"Do they not prowl by night?  How does the
keeper know they do such mischief?  Alas for
the counsel for Pussy's defence! Let him go the
rounds with the keeper in the morning, and under the warm shelter of a wall or bank, and even




124             THE EVIDENCE,
occasionally in the very middle of the rides and
paths, shall he find the skins of fresh-killed rabbits turned completely inside out! a sure sign
that the diner-out was of the feline genus.
" And why might not the rabbit have been slain
by a fox, weasel or other animal?" says Mr. Counsellor for the feline defendant.  "Because," answers the keeper,   every animal has his own
way of killing and eating his prey. The cat
always turns the skin inside out, leaving the same
reversed like a glove. The weasel and stoat will
eat the brain and nibble about the head, and
suck the blood. The fox will always leave the
legs and hinder parts of a hare or rabbit; the dog
tears his prey to pieces and eats it' anyhow-all
over the place;' the crows and magpies always
peck at the eyes before they touch any part of
the body."
Again, let the believer in the innocence of
Mrs. Puss listen to the crow  of the startled
pheasant; he will hear him  "tree,"  as the
keeper calls it, and from his safe perch up in a




AGAINST THE POACHER.          125
branch again crow as if to summon his protector
to his aid. No second summons does the keeper
want; he at once runs to the spot, and there,
stealing with erect ears, glaring eyes, and limbs
collected together and at a high state of tension,
ready for the fatal spring, he sees-What? the
cat, of course, caught in the very attitude of premeditated poaching.
Again, let him listen to the tale of destruction,
and learn how such and such a " nide" of young
pheasants fell victims to his neighbor Turniptop's "Black Tom" in  broad  daylight, the
" Black Tom" aforesaid, never, of course, having
been known to poach before. Let him pay due
deference to the keeper's opinion that to the cat
alone he owes the loss of many a pheasant's nest.
He is certain of this fact because the pheasant's
eggs are all out of the nest, and scattered along
in a line directly opposite to where the cat made
her advance, the sitting  bird having in her
hurry and flutterings to escape swept her eggs
out of the nest, for a foot or two along the track




126        GAME V. RATS AND MICE.
she had taken; just as if the reader should strike
a pack of cards placed flat upon the table with
his hand, driving them forwards in a line with
his blow.
At Castle Forbes, in Ireland, last spring, the
gamekeeper was in the habit of seeing every
morning nearly a dozen young rabbits sunning
themselves close under his window. Suddenly
they disappeared. He went and looked round,
and found the remains of one rabbit half pulled
into a hole at the foot of an old tree; he instantly
put a trap down, and caught successively an old
she-cat and four young ones. The old she-cat he
recognised as the cat belonging to the kitchen at
the castle, which had been missing for a week or
two previously.
It is unfortunate for cats in general, that if one
of their race once takes to poaching, their nature
prompts them  to continue these evil ways.
They find out that game is better eating than
rats and mice; they leave the homestead and
take to the woods; thenceforward becoming per



GAME V. RATS' ND MICE.      127
fectly useless in the domestic economy of the
farmer or cottager. So strong is this passion for
hunting when once acquired, that it is impossible
to break them  of it. We once knew of a cat
against which  sentence of death  had been
recorded, but the owner begged its life on condition that it should be shut up every night and
well fed. The very first night of its incarceration, it escaped up the chimney, and the following
morning astonished the eyes of the gamekeeper
as the soot-begrimed occupier of one of his traps.
Feed the cat as much as you please, make a pet
of it, &c., you will never break it from night
hunting, though you may succeed in stopping its
diurnal rambles.
It is quite wonderful to see a cat jump down
heights. She never seems to hurt herself, or to
feel giddy with the fall; she always falls on her
feet, and these are so beautifully padded that
they seldom or never get brokeu. I never knew
of a cat breaking its leg from an accident, but in
one instance, and that was a French cat, which




128       CATS FREE FROM HEADACHE.
fell down stairs in the most stupid  manner
Why does not the cat get a headache after her
deep jumps? —why does not she get concussion
of the brain, as a man or a dog would, if he
performed a similar acrobatic feat? If we take
down one of our dry cat's heads off the keeper's
museum wall, and break it up, we shall see that
it has a regular partition wall projecting from its
sides, a good way inwards, towards the centre,
so as to prevent the brain from'suffering concustion. This is, indeed, a beautiful contrivance,
and shows an admirable internal structure, made
in wonderful conformity with external form and
nocturnal habits. Apropos to feline skulls, I
may here give the lesson I learnt from Professor
Quekett, of the Royal College of Surgeons, as to
how to tell a Lion's skull from a Tiger's skull;
for, when placed side by side, there is not much
perceptible difference between them. All that
is required is, to  remember that the  word
"Level," as well as the word Lion, begins with
the letter L. In the lion's skull the points of the




EAR-LESS CATS.             129
four bones, which form the nose part of the face,
are on a level with each other.  In the tiger's
skull, on the contrary, the points of the two
central bones run higher up the skull than the
two outside ones.
It has been said, with partial truth, that cutting
off the ears of cats to the level of their heads,
and at the same time removing with scissors the
hair all round the exposed aperture of the ear,
will keep cats out of the woods: for the simple
reason that, being earless, when they go out
hunting among the wet bushes and grass, drops
of water will get into the internal cavity of the
ear, the effect of which is, as we ourselves know,
to cause a disagreeable sensation almost amounting to pain. Let the reader examine the cat's
ear as she is purring before the fire; he will find
that the  opening  to  it is amazingly large,
though partially concealed by hairs which grow
up from  its internal surface.  The cat, from
experience, understands the doctrine of cause
and effect, and stays at home when her ears are
6*




130       THE CAT DISLIKES WATER.
cropped. But does she always stay at home?
No; the cunning creature waits for a nice fine
day, when the grass and hedges are quite dry,
and off she goes at her old poaching tricks. Put
the intelligent sportsman in the witness-box; he
informs us that he has often shot or trapped
" doctored" cats in the heart of the covert in fine
dry weather, but in wet weather, always those
who have never been submitted to this mutilation. A cat hates nothing so much as getting
wet, and hence we learn from "High Elms," a
good plan to catch a poaching cat. He says,
" In damp weather, or when the dew is rising, a
cat almost invariably walks along a wall to get
to her hunting grounds. I have caught many a
one by this means; I need hardly tell you no
bait is required.'   Again, " If there should
happen to be a watercourse running through the
plantation, a trap set in a coping, where the
stream goes under the wall, will be very effective
as a cat will be at the trouble of climbing on to
the wall, crossing over the stream, and jumping




TRAPS FOR CATS.            131
down again, sooner than leap over the stream
itself." No vermin is more easily trapped than
the cat; in summer, when rabbit-paunches will
not last, but get full of fly-blows, a little valerian
root will serve equally well; they smell it afar
off, and eagerly come near to rub themselves on
it, though the pleasure they can derive from it is
to us bipeds unintelligible.
A  facetious young urchin, at home for the
Christmas holidays, knowing well the love cats
had for valerian, once played an old lady a pretty
trick.  He put some of this plant under the
hearth-rug one evening; puss soon found it out,
and began scratching and rubbing her back upon
it, and then getting up and dancing about, till the
poor old lady'got frightened, thinking the cat
was suddenly possessed. The valerian was quietly taken away, and puss recovered her self-possession, which confirmed the old lady in her
original opinion.
Where cats are numerous, a hutch-trap, such
as are used in warrens, will be found very kill



132            TRAPS FOR OATS.
ing; it must be baited with fish of some kind, but
a red-herring is most captivating.  If another
red-herring be dragged about the covert, and
then up to the trap, puss will run up the drag
and of course be trapped, provided always she
is hungry and inclined for a fish dinner.  A
caged cat is an awkward customer to handle; so
that unless the cat-catcher knows how to kill his
victim, he had better not have set the trap at all.
Let him again beware, when he comes to look at
his trap, not to be too eager or curious to open
the door to see what he has caught; for the cat
has an unpleasant habit of striking at the human
face divine the moment she sees light, and her
sharp claws and pointed teeth can make severe
wounds, difficult to heal. There is only one safe
way of getting the cat out of the trap, and that is
to place a sack over the door-end of the trap, and
then rattle the other end with a stick; the foolish creature goes into the sack immediately, and
you can then let the " cat out of the bag " at the
proper time and place.




WILD CATS.               133
Should the hutch-traps be made with latticework or grating, a very simple method of killing
the " betrayed one," is to insert a wire noose between the bars, over the victim's head, and so,
by strangulation, put a speedy end to its misery.
Not a single head of a genuine wild cat did we
see in the museum-they are now nearly extinct;
all the heads were those of house cats.  " The
wild-cat is the only species of the family which
is indigenous to the British Isles.  It is now
almost entirely restricted to Scotland, some of
the woods north of England, the, woody mountains of Wales, and some parts of Ireland. It is
necessary to guard against confounding the wild
cat with numerous instances of escaped domestic
cats, returning to a state of almost absolute wildness, breeding in the woods, and feeding on birds
and quadrupeds.  The assertion that the wild
and domestic cat will breed together, I believe
absolutely to be without foundation.  The head
of the wild cat is triangular, strongly marked;
the ears rather large, long pointed and triangu



134       TRADITIONS ABOUT WILD CATS.
lar; the body strong and rather more robust
than that of the domestic cat. The tail of equal
size throughout its length, or rather larger towards its extremity." —Extract from  "Bell's
Quadrupeds."  I learnt, when a little boy, from
my father, that the common cat was brought over
here from Italy by the Romans; and that a wild
cat's tail ends in a tuft, as if it had been chopped
off with a hatchet on a block; whereas the common cat's tail ends in a point, and tapers to a
point as if it had been gradually drawn out of
the body.
" At the village of Barnborough, in Yorkshire,
there is a tradition extant, of a serious conflict
that once took place between a man and a wild
cat. The inhabitants assert that the fight commenced in an adjacent wood, and that it was
continued from  thence to the porch of the
church, where each died of the wounds received.
A rude painting in the church commemorates
the event; and the red tinge of some of the
stones (though probably natural) has been con



TRADITIONS ABOUT WILD CATS.     135
strued into bloody stains, which all the soap and
water hitherto used, have been unable to efface.
In the time of Richard II., 1377, wild cats
were reckoned among the beasts of the chase,
and there was an order that no abbess or nun
should use more costly apparel than that made
of lambs' or cats' skins. What would the Abbesses have said to the beautiful North American
Sea-otter's skin, now worn by English ladies?
But a few minutes after my inspection of the
museum, I saw a house cat out in the open fields,
creeping, as only a cat can creep, up a hedgerow; evidently she had not seen the Golgotha of
her species, or she would have remained home,
warming herself by the fire.  Many a poor old
woman has wondered, as only an old woman can
wonder what has become of " our Puss?"  The
keeper could, if he liked, answer her question,
pointing triumphantly to his museum: " There she
is on my barn-door, executed for a poacher."
But in all probability the old lady never once
divined that the reason why her poor puss slept




136       DOGS FEAR THROWN STONES.
so soundly all day, and dozed so lazily in the
window, was because she had passed the previous
night in the game preserves.
The heads of dogs are seldom  seen in the
keeper's museum.  He generally buries them.
I have heard a theory that the reason why the
gamekeeper generally can produce finer gooseberries, cabbages, &c. than his neighbors, is that
his garden is well manured with defunct dogs
buried all about it. If an Englishman is persecuted and followed by a yelping cur, he can
generally manage to get rid of him by stooping
down and pretending to pick up a stone, for all
curs have a mortal dread of a thrown stone; but
on the bogs of Ireland the dogs don't care a bit
if the person they are barking at pretends to pick
up a stone; they know, cunning brutes, there
are no stones on the bogs to be picked up and
thrown at them, but they act very differently if
there happens to be a heap of stones anywhere
handy.  It is an unpleasant situation  to be
attacked by a dog; if you are so circumstanced,




CHIMNEY-SWEEP AND BULL-DOG.    137
never attempt to run, try throwing a stone at
himn, or present your hat in your hand, and when
he has seized it, hit him with a stick across the
nose or fore leg. These are the most vulnerable
points in a dog; a blow on any other part of
the head but the nose won't hurt him a bit.
If a dog comes up to you and growls, and
won't be friendly, don't withdraw from him; but
put on a bold face, and stretch your hand
towards him, keeping it quite still (if you withdraw it after stretching it out he will bite you);
the dog will come up and smell the hand, and,
having once done this, will be your fiiend for
life. A chimney-sweep once made a match to
fight a bull-dog single handed, armed only with
his brush. He entered the arena with his brush
in one hand and a foot of bramble bush covered
with thorns in the other. The dog sprung at
him; he presented the bramble bush to the
animal, who seized it in his mouth, and so got
hooked by the thorns on it; the chimney-sweep
belabored him over the head and nose with the




138            POACHING-DOGS.
back of the brush, and won the match. We
may learn from this, that if a man is attacked by
a bull-dog, he should hold out a stick between
his hands, and present it to the dog who will
seize it, and give the man time for further measures. A rat-catcher lately told me that he had a
monkey that would be " a match for any dog in
any pit."  The monkey was given a short stout
stick; he watched his opportunity, sprang on the
dog's back, it was impossible for the dog to
throw him, and the monkey beat him about the
head at his will.
Dogs, like cats, sometimes run wild, and nothing is more difficult to kill than a wild Irish dog,
hunting by himself, in the bogs or on the open
ground. He will always keep well out of shot,
and really there is only one way to get near him;
and that, it must be said, is a gross imposition on
canine confidence. When the dog is seen hunting about, take no notice of him, but pretend to
hunt about also yourself; beat the bushes, and
cheer lustily: the unsuspicious dog, prompted by




POCAHING-DOGS.           139
his instinct to be of use to man, comes to afford
assistance; he is put off his guard, approaches
within shot, and is carried off defunct by the
keeper to be converted into gooseberries.
Shooting poaching-dogs often gets gamekeepers
and others into hot water with the owners of the
dogs. I lately heard of a gamekeeper who shot
a farmer's dog which was always in and out of the
coverts, doing harm to the game. At last, one
day the keeper met the dog wandering along, off
his guard, and shot him; he immediately dug a
hole and buried him. While thus occupied, he
happened to look up, and there he saw the dog's
master watching him through the hedge some
distance off. The farmer did not come nearer,
but walked away quickly in the direction of the
mansion-house of the keeper's master.  He was
ushered in, and made his complaint that he had
seen the keeper shoot his dog. The master sent
his steward off to the gamekeeper's house, with
orders to inquire about it, and to dismiss the
keeper if the charge were true.




140        THE FARMER OUTWITTED.
But the proof was wanting, and the farmer
proposed going to dig up the dog then and there,
so off they all started, and dug away the freshly
moved earth till they exposed the dog's tail:
when they dragged the body out, what was the
farmer's bewilderment to find it was not his dog,
but a dog he had not seen before. Now the keeper had really shot the farmer's dog and buried
him in this place; and having plenty of ready wit,
reasoned that the farmer, having seen the deed,
had gone off to make a complaint against him.
He therefore ran off home as quickly as he could,
shot a cur he happened to have, that luckily resembled the farmer's dog, put him in his great
hare-pocket, and buried him in the hole he had
just dug, taking out, of course, the farmer's dog
he had shot. The poor farmer was not up to this
quick manoeuvre, rubbed his eyes, saying it was
very odd, he could not make it out, he was certain
he saw his dog buried not half-an-hour ago in that
very hole, but it was not there now. The matter
ended by the farmer accompanying his apologies




THE FARMER OUTWITTED.         141
to the keeper with a fee; and to this day it is a
mystery in the parish as to what became of the
dog.
In former times the rangers of the New Forest
were very particular about poaching-dogs.  I
lately spent a couple of hours at Lyndhurst; the
most considerable village within the precincts of
the Forest, of which it is in reality the capital
town. In the centre of the village or town
stands the King's House. "The ancient hall of
the hunting-seat has obtained  the name of
Rufus's Hall. Here the Forest Courts are held.
The seats at the upper end of the'verderers'
and other officers of the Courts are all of sturdy
oak and of great age, as are also some capacious
tables. The walls are hung with antlers of stags,
and with the skins of two eagles, which were
shot many years ago by some of the keepers of
the Forest."  In Rufus's Hall I was shown what
in modern parlance might be called a " dog
guage," to measure dogs. Over the fireplace
was hanging a curiously-shaped  bit of iron,




142        STIRRUP OF WILLIAM RUFUS.
which is reported to have been the stirrup ot
William Rufus.  There are traces of gold upon
it. Its extreme width at the bottom is ten inches
and a half, its depth seven inches and a half,
measured all round, it compasses no less than
two feet seven inches. It was formerly applied,
so says the legend about it, as a test for ascertaining what dogs kept within the Forest should
"suffer expeditation."  If a dog could not be
drawn through the stirrup, he was to suffer this
operation to disqualify him from the pursuit of
deer.  The above process is thus described in
Manwoods on Forest Laws, p. 35:-" The way
of expeditating mastiffs is done after this manner,
viz. three claws of the fore-foot shall be cut off
by the setting one of his fore feet upon a piece
of wood eight inches thick and a foot square;
with a mallet, setting a chisel of two inches
broad upon the three claws of his fore feet and
at one blow cutting them clean off."*
* I am much indebted to Mrs. Fenwick of Lyndhurst for
a transcript of these particulars.




FEATHERED POACHERS.         143
When my uncle, T. Morland, Esq. was master
of the old Berkshire hounds at Sheepstead, near
Abingdon, Berks, I used to help the huntsman
clip the hounds' ears into a rounded shape, just
in the manner above described. We found it
always much more difficult to do the second ear
than the first, tile hound being naturally unwilling to come up to the block the second time; it
also required some management to make the two
ears both of a size. Nobody who has not tried
it can tell how difficult it is to cut the ears of
common terriers so as to make them  cock up
nicely. There are men in London who make a
business of ear-clipping.
Underneath the row  of cats' heads in the
gamekeeper's museum, were deposited dry bodies
of the birds, the feathered enemies to the game.
there were magpies, jays, owls, crows and hawks
-of the latter, I counted thirteen bodies, principally sparrow-hawks-and kestrels. The keeper
called these latter " Fanner Hawks," and a very
good name this is, for they swim, so to say, about




144         PUNCTUALITY OF HAWKS.
in the air, surveying with telescopic eye* the
ground for their food; having discovered it, they
remain hovering over it, suspending themselves
in the air by means of a rapid movement of their
wings, much like a bee when inspecting the
inside of a flower. In other parts of England
they call these birds " wind hovers;" an equally
good name, inasmuch as it indicates the habits
of the animal as it hovers in the wind, previously to making its arrow-like descent upon the
unconscious mouse below.
A great observer of nature, and a clever sportsman told me that hawks have their regular beat,
and frequent daily the same line of country,
soaring along for miles and miles in quest of
prey.   So strongly impressed was he with this
idea, that he always marked the time and place
* In the eyes of these dried hawks the peculiar construction of the hard coat of the eye, the sclerotic, can easily be
seen; it is formed of numerous plates beautifully fitted
together, in a manner which a human workman could hardly
equal, and certainly could not excel. It has its special uses,
which I cannot here enter into. Many of the ancient Saurians of former days had the sclerotic coats of their eyes
formed after this plan  See Dr. Buckland's " Bridgewater
Treatise," Description and Plates.




KITES AND RAVENS.          145
when he saw a hawk on the hunt, and sure
enough the next day would find my friend at the
spot, waiting in ambush gun in hand, and consulting his watch, as confidently as if he were
expecting a friend by the most punctual of railways.  He assured me that he always found the
hawk true to his time by half an hour or so, and
seldom vary his line of flight by more than a
hundred yards.
I saw no heads, or remains of the fork-tailed
kite in the gamekeeper's museum; it has become
nearly extinct in the southern parts of England.
When my father was a young man at Oxford,
about 1803, these birds were numerous in Bagley
Wood, and he frequently saw them sailing about
over the Thames, when walking round Christ
Church meadow.
I think there were one or two raven's heads
nailed up; these birds are also getting very
scarce. I see young ones in Leadenhall Market
for sale every year. Last year I bought two; one
I sent to a friend, a Prefect at Winchester
T




146           KITES AND RAVENS.
School, the other is become the "Regimental
Raven," and is now hopping about the barrack
yard; he is a capital rat and mouse catcher.  I
gave ten shillings each for them.
The hawks had been killed by the keeper, because they destroy the young pheasants and
partridges; the crows, jays, and magpies, because they destroy the eggs of the game. If we
examine their hard, sharp-pointed, conical bills,
we shall see at once what a capital instrument
Nature has given these birds, to enable them to
fill the position allotted to them in the chain of
animal economy. It is a compound of a dagger,
a bayonet, and a club; there is no egg hard
enough to withstand one peck from  its point;
there is no rabbit's hide that is proof against its
bayonet thrust; nor is any mouse alive after one
or two sharp blows, when the bird uses it as a
club.  I lately turned out a mouse to a tame
magpie-the poor little thing ran for his life towards the nearest cover; but mag's sharp eye
had seen it, and a few hops soon brought her up




RETRIEVING MAGPIE.         147
to the mouse, just as he was getting under a
board.  She caught him in her bill, and threw
him back again into the open; she then gave him
a stab, which made a cripple of him, and
knocked out of his tiny panting body with a few
blows of her dagger-like beak the little life that
remained.
Magpies, if properly trained, can be taught to
do the work of retriever dogs, on a small scale.
Mr. Blick, of Islip, is in the habit of shooting
sparrows in his garden: on these expeditions he
is always accompanied by his dog and his cat,
who run round him in great delight whenever
they see the gun taken down.  At the same
time, out hops from under the bushes where he
has been hunting for worms and slugs, a pert impudent-looking magpie, jerking his long tail, and
croaking " mag, mag," out with ten magpie power. A shot is fired at the unsuspecting sparrows,
who are filling their little crops with the corn
spread out to delude them into the idea that they
are welcome visitors to the yard. A shot is fired,




148          RETRIEVING MAGPIE.
a victim falls lifeless to the ground; up rush dog
cat, and magpie, each anxious first to secure foi
themselves a dainty morsel.  It is a good race:
but the magpie generally gets in first, and seizing the panting bird, hops off with it underneath
the dense shrubs, closely pursued by the dog and
the cat, who are obliged to look on patiently at
their more successful competitor the magpie, who
is now picking off the sparrow's feathers and
throwing them down, as if in mockery, on the
heads of his rivals, the said rivals being unable
to reach him, his natural sagacity having suggested to him the propriety of taking up his position on a twig, just too high for the dog to reach
by jumping, and too slender to bear the weight
of poor disappointed puss.
Magpies have always been connected with
some superstitious stories; even the peasants of
Norway say that they have to do with witches:
and who does not know the old rhyme about
magpies so often quoted by good folks setting out
on pic-nic expeditions? A'magpie appears alone,




FRENCH MAGPIES.             149
or in  company, and  immediately  somebody
says:
One the sign of sorrow,
Two the sign of mirth,
Three the sign of a wedding,
Four the sign of a birth.
I do not know what the French peasants think
of magpies, for all along the railway from
Boulogne very nearly into Paris, I saw a magpie's nest in almost every tree-their numbers in
this case certainly proved prophetic, for I was on
the road to a wedding at Paris. It is often said,
that it is unlucky to rob a magpie's nest; it is a
fact, that when this has been done, the parentbirds become more destructive to the hen-wife's
poultry than they were before.  Magpies are
often taught to talk, and it is very curious that
they pick up the accent of their teacher. Outside the cottage of a Berkshire villager, I espied
a fine magpie in a cage, and he began talking
away in as broad Berkshire as ever I heard. I
also recollect a German student, who said he
could talk English; he certainly could say a few




150            TALKING MAGPIES.
words, but lie spoke with a broad Yorkshire
accent; he had picked up the accent fiom  a
Yorkshireman, his fellow-student. I may here
say, that it is no use whatever, as is often supposed, to split the tongues of these birds in order
to give them facility of speech. It is cruel work,
and does no good. Magpies can talk sometimes
even better than men. I was told of a conceited
young  gentleman  who  naturally  stammered,
coming up to the owqer of a magpie who was a
working man, and after rattling the bars of the
cage with his gold-headed cane, he said, " I say,
my man, can y-o-u-r mag-mag-mag-pie t-t-t-talk 2"
"Yes," said the man, "a precious deal better
than you can, or I would wring his neck on the
spot."
As the museum  was situated near the seacoast, I was therefore not surprised to see in the
collection a Royston, or hooded crow.   This
bird's proper home is the sea-shore, where his
business is to follow the retiring tide, and eat
what is left thereby. Nor does he object to




SADDLE-BACK CROWS.           151
small crabs, and those curious sea anemones
which the good folks at Guernsey so aptly call
" bloody fingers."  Having capital wings, he
often takes a look at the rocks, where the gulls
and other sea-birds build their nests and place
their eggs. When these fail him, he will take
an inland journey, and very naturally mistakes a
pheasant's egg for a gull's egg. The keeper, in
his turn, very naturally seeing what he is after,
mistakes him  for a carrion crow, shoots and
gibbets him-hence his appearance in the museum.  The keeper calls him  the  saddle-back
crow; a good name again, for his head, tail, and
wings are black, and the rest of his body of a
fine ash-grey color, so that he looks very like a
common crow with a saddle on his back.  Our
French neighbors too, whose shores he also visits,
have evidently, with the same idea, christened
him Corneille mantelee, or crow with a cloak on
These crows are very quick in finding out dead
-or wounded birds. A great sportsman tells me
that he has often gone at daylight, to pick up




152              SCALCROWS.
wild fowl which he had shot the previous evening, and found that these saddle-back crows had
anticipated him, and made a meal of his wild
ducks and teal.
In Ireland these birds are called "Scalcrows,"
and they are very numerous, frequenting chiefly
the vicinity of the larger lakes and rivers. Having never had an opportunity of comparing the
Royston crow of England with the Scalcrow of
Ireland, though it is most likely that they are the
same species under a different name, I cannot
pronounce an opinion why in the sister country
they appear to be far more destructive and formidable enemies to game than they are in England. In Ireland a pair of scalcrows will hunt a
moor or bog, and quarter the ground as regularly
as a brace of well-broken pointers-and woe to
any brood of grouse or young leveret they may
find. Nothing comes amiss to them. The old
hen-grouse in vain sits close on her nest. The
scalcrows persecute her, and hover round and
round about her, alight, and fairly beat her off




SCALCROWS.             153
their luxurious banquet of egg omelet.  On an
Irish bog they are without exception the worst
vermin the gamekeeper has tc contend with.
Even in England, game-eating and egg-destroying birds are very wary, and difficult to get
near with a gun. The best way, therefore, of
ridding the covert of them, is to poison a dead
rabbit and place it in their way; they quickly
find it out, peck at it, and suffer death in consequence.  At Castle Forbes, the keeper has
picked up as many as twenty-one magpies and
crows to one rabbit at one time, and seven magpies and seven carrion crows at one another; but
this did not last long; somehow or other the cunning birds found out that it was dangerous to
peck at dead rabbits; in vain therefore were they
laid down; the crows and magpies were for a
season triumphant. But their enemy, man, was
more cunning than they; he shot some woodpigeons, poisoned them, down came the less cunning birds, and not suspecting treachery in a
wood-pigeon, though they knew it was present in




154                STRYCHNINE.
a rabbit, they pecked  and died.  Strychnine,*
the most deadly poison made use of, is mostly
sent to Australia, where it is used by the colonists for killing the dingoes, or native wild dogs,
also the eagles, hawks, and vermin of that wonderful continent. The colonists have remarked
the peculiar effects of this poison on the creatures who eat it. An eagle has been seen to peck
at the poisoned bait and then soar away; in the
midst of his flight the poison has taken effect, the
bird falls swiftly to the ground, and, in a very
short time, the body becomes perfectly rigid and
set, preserving, when dead on the ground, the
beautiful attitude of flight peculiar to this splendid bird.
I saw no trace of an Eagle in the Museum, but
still these birds sometimes come very far south.
When we were quartered at Windsor, in 1856,
* At the request of the editor of The Field, I have lately
made a series of experiments relative to a dispute as regards
the action of strychnine.  I arrived at some interesting
results, which will be found in that publication should the
reader take interest in these matters.




EAGLE IN WINDSOR FOREST.       105
an eagle was shot in Windsor Forest, and I then
sent the following account to " Household Words."
" The Royal Forest of Windsor has lately been
honored by a visit from a royal bird. The Eagle
of the north visited the domains of the Queen of
the south. The particulars are as follows:
" On the afternoon of the 12th of December
last, as one of the officers of the garrison of Windsor was riding in the great park, not far from the
statue of King George III., at the end of the Long
Walk, he was surprised to see a large bird on the
ground, gorging himself with a rabbit. He advanced towards it, but the bird flew up into a
tree.  When on the tree it appeared to have a
chain round its leg, but this was afterwards ascertained to be a portion of the rabbit it had just
been eating.  The pursuer having clearly made
out that this large bird was an eagle, a most unusual visitor to the Royal Forest, rode off immediately to the keeper's lodge with the news. The
keeper, while mounting his pony, stated that the
bird had been seen about the forest for four or
five days, but had always kept out of shot. When




156             THE PURSUIT.
they both got back to the place where the bird
was sitting, the keeper concealed himself and his
gun, while the officer rode round the bird, endeavoring to drive him over the ambush. Off he
went at last, but flew wide of the keeper. Then
came the riding part of the business, partaking
more of the character of a steeplechase than of
hunting. By dint of hard and difficult galloping
among rabbit holes, thick ferns, and open drains,
the eagle was again marked down in a clump of
trees.  Then followed a little stalking. The
keeper on his pony and his companion on his
horse advanced carefully, but the cunning bird
would not allow them to come near. The keeper
then get off his pony, and walked alongside the
horse, which was of a grey color, and seemed
not to alarm the bird so much as the pony, which
was of a dark color.
" After a few steps, the keeper suddenly and
quietly glided behind a tree, and the grey horse
and his rider advanced farther.  To divert the
attention of the suspicious bird, the latter wisely
made as much noise as he could, tapping the




THE PURSUIT.            157
saddle with his whip, riding among the thick
ferns, and pretending all the careless unconcern
Be could assume. In the meantime the keeper
got near, and fired both barrels. The bird flew
away, but had been evidently hard hit, for his
flight was labored and near the ground. He
alighted at last upon the bough of a young tree,
where his drooping wings and fainting form made
him look more like an old coat hung up as a scarecrow than an eagle.
" Both the pursuers then rode up, and again,
although wounded and bleeding, the courageous
bird started off, but he could not go far: it was
his last flight; for, in another minute, he dropped
dead, shot through the right eye. The former
shot had hit him in the body, but had in no way
damaged his plumage.  Shortly afterwards we
inspected this noble bird, and found him to be a
fine specimen of the white-tailed Sea-eagle. He
measured with outspread wings eight feet; the
length of his body frOm his beak to his tail was
three feet two inches; and he weighed twentytwo pounds. From his plumage, which was in




158          THE OXFORD EAGLE.
excellent condition, it seemed probable that he
was a wild bird; there being no marks either of
cage or chain to indicate that he had ever been
in captivity. His skin has been well preserved
in a well-chosen attitude.  Three or four years
ago a Golden-eagle was shot in the forest, and
presented by his Royal Highness the Prince Consort to Eton College."
When at Oxford, I had a tame Eagle, which I
kept outside my rooms in " Fell's Buildings," at
Christ Church; and my Eagle got me into much
trouble, as it was an un-academical bird.  I was
obliged to banish him to the care of Mr. Osman,
the bird stuffer, in St. Aldate's Street. When I
left Oxford, I took the eagle with me, and, having
received a University education, I suppose he
thought h1 must do something in this great metropolis. So he took unto himself wings, and
flew; and that upon a memorable day in the
annals of Londoners. An account of his performances at the time was written by me, and pub



EAGLE ON WESTMINSTER ABBEY.        159
lished by a fiiend of mine;* it ran as follows:
" The Chartists and special constables of Westminster, who were preparing on the 9th of April,
1848, for the grand' demonstration' of the following day, beheld with varied feelings an omen
which they interpreted according to their views.
A magnificent eagle suddenly appeared sailing
over the towers of Westminster Abbey; and,
after performing numerous gyrations, was seen
to perch upon the summit of one of the pinnacles.
He formed a most striking object, and a crowd
speedily collected to behold this unusual spectacle. After gazing about him for a time he rose,
and began ascending, by successive circles, to an
immense height; and then floated off to the
north of London, occasionally giving a'gentle
flap with his wings, but otherwise appearing to
sail away to the clouds, among which he was ultimately lost.
* See Zoological Notes and Anecdotes. Bentley, New
Burlington Street, 1852.




160              HIS HISTORY.
" Whence came this royal bird, and whither
did lie wend lis way?
" His history was as follows. Early in 1848
a white-tailed sea eagle was brought to London
in a Scotch steamer, cooped up in a crib used for
wine bottles, and presenting a most melancholy
and forlorn appearance.  A  gentleman, seeing
him in this woeful plight, took pity on him, purchased him, and took him to Oxford; he being
duly labeled at the Great Western Station,' Passenger's Luggage.' By the care of his new master,
Mr. Francis Buckland, the bird soon regained
his natural noble aspect; delighting especially to
dip and wash in a pan of water, then sitting on
his perch with his magnificent wings expanded
to their full extent, basking in the sun, his head
always- turned towards that luminary, whose
glare he did not mind. A few nights after his
arrival at his new abode, the whole house was
aroused by cries as of a child in mortal agony.
The night was intensely dark, but at length the
boldest of the family ventured out to see what was
the matter. In the middle of the grass-plot was




ITS HISTORY.             161
the eagle, who had evidently a victim over which
he was cowering with outspread wings, croaking
a hoarse defiance to the intruder upon his nocturnal banquet.  On lights being brought, he
lopped off, with his prey in one claw, to a dark
corner; where he was left to enjoy it in peace,
since it was evidently not, as at first feared, an
infant rustic from the neighboring village. The
mystery was not, however, cleared up for three
days; when a large lump of hedgehog's bristles
and bones, rejected by the bird, at once explained
the nature of his meal. He had doubtless caught
the unlucky hedge-pig (as it is called in Oxfordshire) when on his rounds in search of food; and,
in spite of his formidable armor of bristles, had
managed to uncoil him with his sharp bill, and to
devour him. How the prickles found their way
down his throat, is best known to himself: but it
must have been rather a stimulating feast.
" This eagle was, with good reason, the terror
of all the other pets of the house. On one occasion he pursued a little black and tan terrier,
hopping with fearful jumps, assisted by his wings,




162         JACKO AND THE EAGLE.
which, happily for the affrighted dog, had been
recently clipped. To this the little favorite owed
his life, as he crept through a hedge which his
assailant could not fly over; but it was a very
near thing, for if the dog's tail had not been between his legs, it would certainly have been
seized by the claw which was thrust after him
just as he bolted through the briars. Less fortunate was a beautiful little kitten, the pet of the
nursery,-a few tufts of fur alone marked the
depository of her remains. Several Guinea pigs
and sundry hungry cats too paid the debt of
nature through his means; but a sad loss was
that of a jackdaw of remarkable colloquial powers and unbounded assurance, who, rashly paying
a visit of a friendly nature to the eagle, was instantly devoured. Master Jacko, the monkey,
on one occasion only saved his dear life by swiftness of foot, getting on the branch of a tree just
as the eagle came rushing to its foot with outspread wings and open beak. The legend is, that




THE EAGLE AND THE HAM.         163
Jacko became suddenly grey immediately after
this; but the matter is open to doubt.
"One fine summer's morning the window  of
the breakfast-room was thrown open, previous to
the appearance of the family. On the table was
placed a ham of remarkable flavor and general
popularity, fully meriting the high encomiums
which had been passed upon it the previous day.
The rustling of female garments was heard-the
breakfast-room door opened, and-oh, gracious!
what a sight!  There was the eagle perched
upon the ham, tearing away at it with unbounded
appetite, his talons firmly fixed in the rich deep
fat. Finding himself disturbed, he endeavored
to fly off with the prize, and made a sad clatter
with it among the cups and saucers; finding,
however, that it was too heavy for him, he suddenly dropped it on the carpet, snatched up a
cold partridge, and made a hasty exit through
the window, well satisfied with his foraging
expedition. The ham, however, was left in too
deplorable a state to bear description.  The
eagle was afterwards taken to London and placed




164      THE EAGLE AND THE CHICKEN.
in a court-yard near Westminster Abbey, where
he resided in solitary majesty. It was from
thence he made his escape on the 9th of April.
He first managed to flutter up to the top of the
wall, thence he took flight unsteadily, and with
difficulty, until he had cleared the houses, but as
he ascended into mid-air his strength returned,
and he soared majestically up as has been narrated.  After his disappearance his worthy
master said with a disconsolate air:' Well, I've
seen the last of my eagle!' but thinking that he
might possibly find his way back to his old
haunt, a chicken was tied to a stick in the courtyard, and, just before dark, master eagle came
back, his huge wings rustling in the air: the
chicken cowered down to the ground, but in
vain-the eagle saw him; and pounced down
in a moment in his old abode.  Whilst he was
busily engaged in devouring the chicken, a plaid
was thrown over his head and he was easily
secured. After this escapade he was sent to the
Zoological Gardens, Regent's Park, where he




HOW TO HANDLE AN EAGLE.         165
may be recognised by having lost the outside
claw of the left foot."
I often had fights with this bird, who was of
rather a savage disposition. He once got hold
of my leg, and his claws were obliged to be
unfastened one by one. It is very easy to handle
an eagle, hawk, owl, or other such bird, with
sharp talons, if you only know how. The brute
always strikes first with his claws, and then
pecks with his bill. Remembering this, allow
the eagle, hawk, or owl, to clutch something or
other, say a broom-handle, or a walking-stick;
then quickly throw a Scotch plaid, or a blanket,
over his head, when you may release the stick,
let him clutch a bit of the plaid, tie his legs, and
he can be carried anywhere. In this manner I
once carried my eagle on the top of an Atlas
omnibus, from the Zoological Gardens, Regent's
Park, down to Westminster Bridge. He got his
head out and pecked me in Regent Street, but I
soon secured him  again.  He was furious at
being treated in this way; he ruffled up his
feathers and looked spitefilly at me when I




166         BIRDS USED FOR AUGURY.
untied his legs and let him loose again, after he
had arrived at his destination; but I made
friends with him  by means of a good lump of
beef-steak.
In the present stage of man's history, birds are
not often consulted, under the impression that
they have the power of foretelling events; but
in the days of the Romans, the art of augury*
was at its height; no Gamekeepers' Museums
then existed, and instead of being persecuted,
the wild birds were consulted and looked up to
with the same sort of reverence as is the surgeon
by the patient after he has examined his bad
knee, and before he gives his opinion.
In the summer of 1844, I accompanied my
father to Weymouth: my usual office on these
occasions (as I have described in my memoir of
him  in the third edition of his "Bridgewater
Treatise") was to carry his inseparable bag,
which he used for collecting.  When at Wey* "Augury, or divination, or soothsaying, by the flight
or singing of birds. Qu. Avigerium vel Avigarrium."-Old
Dictionary. "Da, pater, augurium; atque animis illabere
nostris."- En. iii. 89.




ROMAN REMAINS.             167
mouth  we visited  the remains of a Roman
temple, and a Roman villa, found on the top of
Jordan  Hill, close by, by Mr. Medhurst of
Weymouth. In these Roman remains, among
other things we found bones of animals and birds,
that had been used for the purposes of sacrifice
and augury; and among them  those of birds
which have since been deposed from their sacred
offices, and classified by us moderns under the
ignominious term of vermin. Tempora mutantur,
and so much the worse for the birds.
My father afterwards read a paper on this
subject, which I will not spoil by mutilation,* as
it contains much that is very interesting; it runs
as follows:
" Dr. Buckland  then proceeded to give a
detailed account of the remains of many Roman
buildings, discovered recently by Mr. Medhurst,
near Weymouth.  The neighborhood abounds
with vestiges of Roman occupation. The large
military station and Roman walls, Roman camp,
* See Proceedings of Ashmolean Society at Oxford, Vol.
I. p. 55, Nov. 4, 1844.




168             AT WEYMOUTH.
and amphlitheatre at Dorchester, contiguous to
the  gigantic British  triple camp of Maiden
Castle, are well known. The situation of Weymouth Bay and Weymouth Harbor, close to the
shelter of the Isle of Portland (Vindelis), and the
distance of Dorchester from any other port, must
have rendered Weymouth a most convenient and
necessary naval station, during the residence of
the Romans in Dorsetshire. The nearest rising
grounds on the north-west and north-east of
Weymouth are strewed with fragments of Roman
buildings, tesserae, bricks, pottery, and tiles, and
Roman copper coins. A large handsome Roman
pavement was laid open, and covered up again
by King George the Third; and Mr. Medhurst
has recently discovered the foundations of several villas, of a Roman temple and of a Roman
road.  Dr. Buckland supposes these villas to
have been occupied by the families of Roman
officers or civilians connected with their great
military establishment at Dorchester. The most
renarklable discoveries made by Mr. Medlhurst
in 1843, and visited in October last by Dr. Buck



SKERLETONS OF BIRDS.        169
land and Mr. Conybeare, were the foundations
of a temple on the summit of Jordan Hill, and
of a villa, a quarter of a mile distant, in the
meadow  between this hill and the village of
Preston.
" The temple appears to have consisted of a
cella twenty-four feet square, surrounded by a
peristyle, the walls of which inclosed an area of
a hundred and ten feet square. In the earth
which  occupies this peristyle Mr. Medhurst
found more than four sacks of bones, and many
horns (chiefly of young bulls), also many Roman
coins, fragments of Roman Pottery, cement, &c.
Near the centre of the south wall were the foundations of steps, indicating the ascent to the door
of entrance; and four feet in advance of this
wall are the foundations of four small columns.
A layer of cement, which probably supported a
pavement that has been removed, occupies the
interval between these pillars and the foundation
of the south front wall. Within the temple, in
the south corner, was a dry well fourteen feet
8




170          SKELETONS OF BIRDS.
deep, that had been filled in a very curious.and
unexampled manner. It was daubed all round
with a lining or parjeting of clay, in which was
set edgewise (like Dutch tiles round a fireplace)
a layer of old stone tiles, which, from their pegholes, appear to have been used or prepared for
use on roofs of houses;at the bottom of the well,
on a substratum  of clay, was a kind of cist
formed by two oblong stones, and in this cist two
small Roman urns, a broad iron sword, twentyone inches long, an iron spear-head, an iron
knife and steel-yard, two long irons resembling
tools used by turners, an iron crook, an iron
handle of a bucket, &c., but no bones. Next,
above this cist, was a stratum of thick stone tiles,
like those which lined the well; and upon it a
bed of ashes and charcoal; above these ashes
was a double layer of stone tiles arranged in
pairs, and between each pair was the skeleton of
one bird, with one small Roman coin; above
the upper tier of tiles was another bed of ashes.
Similar beds of ashes, alternating with double
tiers of tiles (each pair of which inclosed the




TEMPLE OF ESCULAPIUS.         171
skeleton of one bird and one copper coin), were
repeated sixteen times between the top and the
bottom  of the well; and half-way down was a
cist, containing an iron sword and spear-head,
and urns like those in the cist at the bottom  of
the well.  The birds were the raven, crow,
buzzard, and starling; there were also bones of
a hare.
" Dr. Buckland conjectures that this building
may have been a temple of Esculapius, which
received the votive offerings of the Roman families and invalids who visited Weymouth for seabathing and for health; the bones of young bulls
found in the peristyle being those of the victims
offered in ordinary sacrifice, while the smaller
birds, whose bones are found so remarkably
arranged in the well, may have been the votive
offerings presented by those who received their
cure from sea air and sea-bathing, and possibly
from the mineral waters of Radipole and Nottington, all in the salubrious vicinity of a
temple, which there is such professional reason




172         TEMPLE OF ESOULAPIUS.
for supposing to have been dedicated to Esculapius.
" Dr. Buckland then described the remains of
a villa in a meadow between Jordan Hill and
the village of Preston, and exhibited specimens
of tiles, both stone and brick, and various bones
and the claw of an eagle, found in the ruins of
this villa. In some fields, also, near Radipole,
on the north-west of Weymouth, Mr. Medhurst
has discovered Roman urns and human bones,
and conjectures the spot in which he found them
to have been used as a cemetery. The contiguous fields are covered with fragments of Roman
bricks, pottery, and copper coins.  One gold
coin of Constantine, discovered here some time
ago, is in the possession of Mr. George Frampton.
" Mr. Duncan expressed his approbation of
the supposition that the remains of the large
building are those of a temple of Esculapius; but
he was unable to account for the pieces of money
found with the skeletons of the birds, &c."
At a subsequent meeting of the Ashmolean




HUMAN AND OTHER BONES.         173
Society, Dr. Buckland continued his subject. 1
have all his MS. notes, which he collected at
considerable pains; but I prefer giving  his
account as it was printed under his own direction
at the time.  We read:" Dr. Buckland next exhibited a part of a
human lower jaw, a clavicle, astragalus, and
portion of a pelvis, found in the Roman grave
by the side of the Roman road, four miles south
of Dorchester, on the way to Weymouth, mentioned at the last meeting. The age was indicated by the small size of the bones and jaw, and
by the posterior molar or wisdom  tooth not
being fully formed.
" He also exhibited many fragments of coarse
dark-colored  Roman pottery, and of Roman
mortar (containing pounded bricks), and fragments of the bones of swine and young bulls
found in the peristyle, containing in their cavities ashes mixed with earth; but none of the
bones found here bore the least marks of fire on
them,
"Dr. Buckland then spoke of the absence of




174           BONES OF ACHILLES.
evidence in classic writers as to the disposal
which the Romans made of the bones of animals
offered in their many and sumptuous sacrifices.
The Greeks, he observed, destroyed them  with
fire. He then quoted Iomer's description of the
funeral pile of Patroclus: on the top was placed
the body, then were killedna number of sheep
and oxen, from which having taken the fat and
spread it over the corpse, they placed the carcases
around the pile, with vessels filled with honey and
oil. They next laid on four horses and two favorite dogs, and twelve Trojan captives. In another passage, Achilles says it would be easy to
discover the remains of Patroclus, from their
place in the centre, whilst the other men and
beasts would be found intermixed near the circumference. In a subsequent passage, the bones
of Achilles himself also are said to have been distinguished in the same way:'Ev pEicr, y&p ExwlrO T7;vpj 7, 8' atotm iV&vO& v'E(X!%a^' xaiov' &t7   L'tt, oit'~  TE xa7  a vspXe.
"Dr.Buckland also exhibited the claw of an
eagle found by himself in the ruins of the adja



SACRED BIRDS.            175
cent Roman villa, and, recurring to the conjecture he offered at the last meeting, that these
were bones of sacred birds connected with augury,
and probably with votive sacrifices to Esculapius
(of which we have an example in the cock which
Socrates, in his dying moments, commanded to
be sacrificed to that deity), and having quoted
passages fro.m Horace, in which the raven is mentioned amongst birds that foreboded by the voice,
he read, from Littleton's Dictionary, the following passage:-' Oscines aves Appius Claudius esse
ait, quae ore canentes faciunt auspicium,'ut corvus, cornix, noctua, parra, picus: Alites, quee alis
ac volatu, ut buteo, sanqualis.'
" Dr. Buckland then stated that, considering
the universal application of birds to the purpose
of augury and of sacrifice, by the Greeks and
Romans, from the time of the Trojan war to the
destruction of the Roman Empire, it was surprising there were so few allusions in classic authors
to the ceremonies of sacrificing them, and no reference at all to the disposal made of the bodies
either of the wild sacred birds of omen and of




I T6           FIGHTING COCKS.
sacrifice, or of the bodies of the cocks and hens,
which were not only used in their ordinary temples, but were carried about with their armies.
Further, we know not whether the same individual
fowls, being considered sacred, were kept on
through life either in the temples or as travelling
appendages to the Legions, and after death buried with religious ceremonies, as appears to have
been the case in the temple at Christ Church; or
whether the fowls were changed continually and
formed the temporary stock of poultry for the
table of the priests. Nor have we any reference
to interments of ravens, crows, buzzards, and starlings, in a well like that discovered on Jordan-hill.
" Dr. Buckland next read an extract from Dugdale's' England and Wales Delineated,' stating
that the late Gustavus Brander, in tracing the
ichnography of the priory of Christ Church,
Hampshire, which is supposed to have been the
previous site of a Roman temple, discovered
within the foundations a cavity about two feet
square, which had been covered with a stone,
cemented with lead into the adjoining pavement,




BIRDS' BONES AT CHRIST CHURCH.    1 i7
and containing about half a bushel of the bones
of birds, such as herons, bitterns, cocks and hens,
mostly well preserved.-He then quoted, from a
letter of Professor Owen, a list of the birds whose
bones he had identified in the small handful Dr.
Buckland had submitted to him; which were all
that had been preserved out of nearly a bushel
found by Mr. Medhurst, in the curious, dry, sepulchral well, within the Roman temple, near
Weymouth. These bones were of the raven, crow,
buzzard, and starling: in the same well were
found the bones of a hare."
Dr. Buckland has subsequently discovered the
following examples of funeral honors offered to
the raven and the crow, by the Romans and
Egyptians.
" Et Romani Corvo dedere exequias, praecedente
tibicine duorum ~Ethiopum humeris elato." [And
the Romans performed funeral rites to the Raven
-a flute player leading the procession, borne
aloft on the shoulders of two Ethiopians.] " Circa
lMyridis paludem Cornicas atqne Ibidis sepulchra
8*




178            MODERN SACRIFICES.
sumptuoso lapide  visebantur."-Alexander  ab
Alexandro, lib. vi. cap. 14.  [Around the Marsh
of Myris sepulchres of the Crow  and the lbis
made of valuable stone were visited.] It appears,
also, from the following passage, that eagles were
offered in the more sumptuous imperial sacrifices:
"Quod si Imperator rei daret operam  divinae,
centeni feriebantur leones, aquilis nec paucioribus.". CUalius Rhodig. lib. xx. cap. 6.
One more note to show that the modern Greeks
use sacrifice of birds to this day. The letter is
from a gentleman whose signature I cannot read.
" DEAR DR. BUCKLAND,-As you are interested
in the iegistering of all that relates to the sacrifice of birds, I send you a passage I have just met
with in' Ainsworth's Travels and Researches in
Asia Minor,' vol. i. p. 131.'One morning, in the
midst of this scarcity, we were surprised to find
in front of the house a cock newly killed, but not
eaten.  Upon inquiring, the Greeks said they had
killed it in order to propitiate the genius of the
mines, and a sacrifice must not be eaten.' This is
a remnant of a very old superstition; for cocks




MODERN SACRIFICES.           179
were sacrificed to Pluto by the ancients in a similar manner.  Mr. Ainsworth gives no authority
for this statement."
I must now return to the Gamekeeper's Museum, from  which subject I fear I have sadly
digressed.
Tastefully arranged in rows were the tails of
pole-cats, stoats, and weasels. Imagine the strong
and powerful smell of these little animals to be
quite enough to prevent the keeper bringing them
home bodily, as a larger trophy.  The mischief
done by them to game and rabbits is very great,
but they are easily taken, and many fall victims
to the gun; for when once seen by the gunner,
whether in hedgerow, rabbit-burrow, or thicket,
he need only sit still within shot, and by imitating
the cry or squeak of a young rabbit, bring the
intruder almost up to the muzzle of his gun.
Wonderful is it how these little animals kill hares
and rabbits, but it seems that when pursued by
them a rabbit loses its senses, becomes fascinated
as it were, and through its simple folly falls an
easy prey.




180          STOATS AND WEASELS.
Sucking the blood, and eating merely a por
tion of the neck and head, and despising the rest
of the spoil, the stoat or weasel requires more
than one victim for a meal, and hence is doubly
destructive.  Though so destructive, they are
easily trapped, owing to the extraordinary manner in which they stick to a certain line of country.
The best trap is a little steel trap covered over
with a couple of bricks, and four more placed as
sides, so as to form as it were the entrance to a
drain or a sort of gallery. This judiciously placed
will not fail to catch any passing stoat or weasel,
without any bait whatever.
A friend, a good observer of nature, writes to
me as follows:"I will mention one curious instance of the
voracity of a stoat.  Last March year, at Castle
Forbes, my servant was throwing the casting-net
in to catch me some live bait near one of the coverts, when he saw a rabbit start out, evidently
ill at ease; it paused, went on, stopped again, till
it got two hundred yards from the covert. Then




RABBIT AND STOAT.            ISi
came out a stoat, hunting on his track, and the
rabbit actually stopped, as it were petrified, till
the stoat jumped on his back.  My servant ran
up, tried to kill the stoat with a stick, but it got
away back to the covert; however, he secured
the rabbit, which was slightly bitten on the neck
and disabled.
"' About half an hour afterwards, within twenty
yards of the same place, out came another rabbit
in precisely the same way-the stoat following.
Again my servant attacked it-the stoat ran between his legs and got into the covert; he secured the rabbit as before.  Shortly afterwards, I
came up to see if my servant had caught me any
live bait, and he was in the act of relating what
he had seen, when out came from the same covert a third rabbit, in precisely a similar manner,
and hunted by the stoat. My gun was on my
arm (as it always is in that wild district,) but I
let the stoat kill the rabbit, and then I shot him;
thus bagging three rabbits, and killing the stoat
into the bargain."
The same gentleman witnessed an extraordina



182         PHEASANT AND STOAT.
ry encounter between a stoat and a cock-pheasant
in an open field.  The pheasant ran a few yards,
then awaited the attack of his enemy; the stoat
followed and sprang upon him, and was received
with a more vigorous welcome from his spurs.Again the pheasant ran, and the stoat pursuedanother encounter, and similar reception. This
was repeated half a dozen times across the field,
without any apparent advantage to either sidebut our friend had them well within range, and
put an end to the combat by shooting Mr. Stoat,
and by sparing Mr. Pheasant.
I have heard that the poachers sometimes put
down food for the pheasants in an open place in
the covert, and when these birds have arrived,
they let loose a fighting-cock or two among them
armed with sharp steel spurs. The pheasants
have no chance against these horrible weapons,
and so often get killed by the fighting-cocks, and
bagged by the poachers. All this can be done
with very little noise, so as not to attract the
gamekeepers.
It is often a difficult matter to know which of a




HOW TO MARK DEAD GAME.        183
lot of birds, pheasants or partridges, hanging in a
larder, ought to be cooked first.  Mr. Coulson,
of Clifton, Bristol, has shown me how to put a
date upon each bird, without using pen, ink, or
pencil, and it is a very simple but useful plan.
When the birds are brought in after shooting,
hold up each before you with his breast facing
you-then begin to count his toes from your right
towards your left, after the manner that children
in the nursery play the game of " Whose little
pigs are these?" Let the claws indicate the days
of the week; if the bird was shot on a Monday,
pull the claw off the first toe you count-if on a
Thursday, the claw from the fourth toe, and so
on. When the birds are subsequently examined
each will bear a mark to show immediately on
what day ofthe week he was killed. This plan
may be known to many, but still I give it for the
benefit of those who have never heard of it before.
In our keeper's museum we observed two rows
of dead hedgehogs, numbering in all one hundred and thirty. These had been executed for




184          FOOD OF HEDGEHOGS
the crime of egg-eating. For many years I had
upheld the cause of the hedgehog; but I fear the
verdict of " Guilty upon the above plea" must be
found against him. A hedgehog will eat almost
anything. He will eat dead birds, roots, beetles,
and slugs. I have often seen the heaps of cowdung by the sides of coverts turned over. The
hedgehog has been at work looking for the
beetles and worms which are found under them;
but I am sorry to say an egg is to him a most
savory feast.
I lately obtained a hedgehog, and gave him
some bread and milk and an unbroken egg. The
egg was the first course of his dinner he attacked
-upon examining the basket a few hours afterwards we found the egg entirely gone-not one
little bit of the shell was left; he had eaten up
every bit of it. This, we think, will fully account
for the keeper's not finding any broken shells in
the pheasant's nest.
A hedgehog will not only eat eggs, but he will
also eat flesh; and if he can't find anything dead
to eat, he will kill some on his own account.




AND YOUNG ANIMALS.        185
Now, a hedgehog is not a very powerful animal;
he therefore of necessity attacks something weaker
than himself, such as young partridges and
leverets. We will again put a witness of great
experience in the box.  He was out by a covert
side with his keeper, when the terrier dog set at
something in the ditch; he heard a terrible
squeaking at the same time.  On turning over
the long grass and brambles that overhung the
ditch, he found a leveret, about the size of a rat,
in the jaws of a hedgehog, palpitating in the
struggle of death. The sharp teeth of the hedgehog are adapted equally for catching a small animal, such as a leveret, or for munching up with
ease the hard and horny cases of beetles.
Mr. Francis Francis, in an admirable letter in
The Field, gives the following evidence as to this
point:
" Several instances have been forwarded to
Thie Field, and some few have been related and
sent to me privately, wherein hedgehogs have
been proved to have broken into hen-roosts, and
abstracted young chickens, ducks, turkeys, and




186           CASES IN POINT.
also to have taken young pheasants, and other
kinds of game; and these instances have not been
one or two, but more than a dozen in number,
and from all parts of the country.  One instance
of a hedgehog carrying off two partridges, quite
two thirds grown, came under my knowledge;
and well-authenticated instances of their voracity
are so numerous, that I cannot doubt that to an
extent they may be kloked upon as vermin and
destructive to game.  That their prevailing
characteristics are carnivorous is easily discerna
ble by the teeth.  Upon two occasions those in
my possession killed and ate one of their number;
and on the second occasion the individual killed
and devoured was fully two-thirds grown, and as
large as any one of the family, excepting the old
one. In one night there was nothing left of him
but the bare skin and prickles. Now, if a hedgehog is capable of devouring another one of his
own size, body and bones, will any one pretend
to find a reason why he cannot accomplish the
same feat upon a partridge or a young pheasant 2"
Early in the spring, I tried to buy a hedgehog




DO HEDGEHOGS HYBERNATE?       187
in London, but could find one neither in Leadenhall, St. Giles's, nor in other animal markets;
they were not to be had for love or money.  A
few days afterwards, the warm weather came,
and I found plenty of hedgehogs for sale.  The
probable reason of this fact is, that the hedgehogs
had been concealed in their winter quarters during the cold weather, and that, coming out in
the warm, had been caught by the dogs of those
curious fellows who poke about the hedges near
London for snails, snakes, birds' eggs, &c.-all
saleable articles in St. Giles's animal market.
At Castle Forbes, in Ireland, there are many
hedgehogs; and there they are caught in a boxtrap, made of iron bars, called an " iron witch."
During the spring of last year, more than fifty of
them were caught by one of these iron witches,
the bait being always a rabbit's paunch. Like
the cats, the hedgehogs are very fond of valerian,
and, with their sharp sense of smell, soon find out
a trap baited with it.
A gamekeeper at Ringwood informed me that
he trains retrievers to catch hedgehogs for him,




188             BLACK BOBS.
and he goes out at night to hunt for them. He
has killed upwards of thirty in one night by
trampling on them. (N. B.-Nearly all these animals found in the museum have been thus served,
and I always find it most difficult to get a perfect
skull from the collection.) The keeper informed
me that the hedgehog " eats black-bobs-them
great beetle things;" that they resort to the same
place to feed, night after night; and that they
" routs up the cow-dungs for the black-bobs;" and
that a stinking bait is best for them. The otters,
too, have also regular hunting-places, and they
have beaten down paths and tracks across the interspace of land about two miles between the
rivers Stour and Avon. When a trap is set for
them, it should never be fixed; because if it is
loose, it will float in the water when the otter
retreats there, and will help to kill him.
I have often heard that hedgehogs are good to
eat, and that gipsies are very fond of them, and
that they are great proficients in the art of cooking them. I have lately had the good fortune to
obtain information on this point from a high au



HOW TO COOK HEDGEHOGS.       189
thority. In the neighborhood of Oxford I met an
old gipsey woman, who, although squalid and dirty,
was proud in being able to claim relationship
with Black Jemmy, the king of the gipsies. She
informed me that there were two ways of cooking
a hedgehog, and seemed much surprised at my
question whether her tribe ever ate them; as if
there could ever exist a doubt. I expressed a wish
to know the process, the receipt for which I subjoin in her own words: "You cuts the bristles
off'em with a sharp knife after you kills'em fust,
sir; then you sweals them (Oxfordshire, burns
them with straw like a bacon pig,) and makes the
rind brown, like a pig's swealings; then you cuts'em down the back, and spits'em on a bit of
stick, pointed at both ends, and then you roasts'em with a strong flare."
It appears that hedgehogs are sometimes in
season, and sometimes out of season. My informant told me that " they are nicest at Michaelmas
time, when they have been eating the crabs which
fall from the hedges. Some," she added, "have
yellow fat, and some white fat, and we calls'em




190     MUTTON AND BEEF HEDGEHOGS.
mutton and beef hedgehogs; and very nice eating they be, sir, when fat is on'em."
The other way of cooking hedgehogs is gone
out of fashion. The gipsy's grandmother used to
cook them in the following manner; but it appears they are best roasted. The exploded fashion is to temper up a bit of common clay, and
then cover up the hedgehog, bristles and all, in
it,-like an apple in paste, when an apple-dumpling is contemplated,-then hedgehog, clay and
all, is to be placed in a hole in the ground and a
fire lighted over it; when the clay is found to be
burning red, the hedgehog is done and must be
taken out of the hole; the clay-crust of the pie
being opened, the hedgehog's bristles are found
sticking to it, and the savory dinner is ready.
The fashion of eating hedgehogs was not, in
former days, confined to gipsies. There was a
farmer's family living at Long Compton, near
Oxford, who were supplied with hedgehogs by
our informant's grandmother; this family used
also to breed them, keep and fatten several litters,
" and," said the gipsy, " they used to eat up every




SNAKE AND HEDG:HOG.          191
litter they bred, dressing'em just when they
wanted'em, like they did the fowls." Sometimes
a nest of young hedgehogs is found by the gipsies;
if they are too small for eating, they are preserved
till fit for use, or, as it is called in Oxfordshire,
"flitted;" that is, a string is tied to the hind leg,
and the doomed animal is allowed to wander
about the length of his tether, picking up what
he can get; under this system, if well fed, he will
fatten wonderfully.
It has long been a disputed point as to whether
hedgehogs will eat the common harmless snake
or not. There is no reason why they should not,
as their teeth are sufficiently sharp and pointed
both to catch the snake and munch him  afterwards.  Again, it might be argued that the
snake would be too swift for his bristled enemy,
and be able to escape by flight. This is not the
case; for, in the first place, the crafty hedgehog
might come upon the snake when basking in the
sun; and even supposing the alarm  was given,
and a pursuit took place, the hedgehog would
have the best of the race. It is quite surprising




192         SNAKE AND HEDGEHOG.
how fast a hedgehog can run, if he likes; all his
bristles lie quite smooth on his back, his little
legs generally coiled up tight in the centre of his
body, and he hustles along at an amazing pace;
and, in a fair race in the open, with a fair start
(a difficult thing it is to start a hedgehog for a
race, as I have tried, the brute will persist in
rolling himself up and not starting), we would
back the hedgehog against the largest snake in
England.  I therefore determined to try the
experiment, whether a hedgehog would really
eat a snake or not. I caught a snake near Harrow, and bought a hedgehog in St. Giles's. For
several mornings I placed them together on the
grass, but they took no notice of each other.
The.snake never went towards the hedgehog, if
he could help it; if he had a choice, he went in
the contrary direction; but, whether through
shyness at my presence, or whether because he
was not hungry, the hedgehog never attacked
him. At last, one evening, I shut them both up
in a box together. The next morning, the lid
was opened, and the murder was discovered.




EXPERIMENT.             193
The hedgehog had, during the night, attacked
and eaten half the snake, beginning at the tail.
He had not left a single bit of the lower half of
the body, and instead of the fine active snake I
had put in in the evening, I found only half a
snake was left; just as if he had been cut in two
with a knife, and the lower half taken away. As
the hedgehog had begun his meal, I thought I
would allow him to finish it, which he did in a
very few hours. We must at the same time be
guarded against the conclusion that we are dealing with a great serpent slayer; and, a little
reflection upon the habits of the individuals in
question will tend much to set.us right upon this
point.
The snake loves the sun, the hedgehog is a
nocturnal animal; he is very seldom or ever seen
out looking for his food before the sun is down;
he then comes out of his den, and begins hunting
for beetles and worms-particularly the big lobworms that come out of their holes to enjoy the
dew of the evening, as every fisherman well
9




194         USE OF THE HEDGEHOG.
knows. If he came out in daytime, he would
find no worms, and but very few beetles, even if
he were to look for them, which, by the bye, he
would have some difficulty in doing, as his eyes
are of a dark color, and more suited for twilight
than  sunshine.  The snake, on the contrary,
comes out only in the heat of the day, to bask in
the sun, or hunt in the shade of the long grass
for frogs; these two animals are therefore not
very likely to come across one another; still such
a thing is possible, and does, we believe, occasionally happen-the rencontre taking plape between an early hedgehog and a late snake. The
hedgehog is, par excellence, one of the scavengers
of our fields; and although his staunchest supporters may not be able to clear him from the
foul stain of occasionally indulging in a pheasant's egg, garbage and animal refuse form his
general repast, seasoned with insects. It is very
probable, too, that the hedgehog appropriates to
himself the wounded game. After a day's covert
shooting, many a wounded pheasant, hare, and
rabbit, mortally struck, escapes from  the dogs




BABY HEDGEHOGS.             195
and the beaters, to retire into some quiet hidingplace to die; the hedgehog finds them  out, and,
if half dead, performs an act of mercy in putting
them out of their misery; if he finds them quite
dead, he is saved his trouble, and makes a good
supper, devouring that which  would shortly
become putrid, and do harm  to the remaining
living inhabitants of the covert.
There is a slight difference in the color of the
sexes of the hedgehog, as well as in the size; the
male being longer and darker. Both are tainted
with a decided musky smell, and the exuviae of
the hedgehog can always be distinguished by
this peculiar odor. Some years ago, when routing about an old ruined castle, situated in the
centre of a pine forest in Germany, I discovered
among the ruins a fine specimen, which illustrated the above statement., Many a naturalist
has since been puzzled with our specimen.
The baby hedgehogs are the funniest little
things possible; they are born covered with tiny
spines, which are quite soft almost like 1)air. If
touched, their natural instinct prompts them to




196      USE OF HEDGEHOG'S BRISTLES.
curl up. This they cannot do, as the beautiful
yet complicated set of muscles whereby they are
enabled  to  perform  this operation  are not
developed till the spines acquire some degree of
hardness.
A female hedgehog was bought from a boy a
few weeks ago, in the neighborhood of Oxford,
and placed in a basket: in a short time, four
baby hedgehogs made their appearance; but
their cruel mamma devoured all her progency,
leaving not a bone or a bristle. It appears,
however, that her meal disagreed with her, for
she shortly afterwards died herself, her children
not agreeing with her parental stomach.
The bristle of the hedgehog, if cut across, will
be found to be quite hollow; the walls are formed
of a hard horny substance, and the interior is
filled with a sort of pitch-as pith lies in a stem
of elder. It is, in fact, nothing more than a magnified human hair; and a human hair, under the
microscope, looks very much like a hedgehog's
bristle when viewed with the naked eye. We
know only of two uses to which the hedgehog's




GAME KEEPING.            197
spiny coat is put by his enemy, man. Coachmen
will sometimes tie a hedgehog's skin on to the
pole of the carriage, to prevent a shirking horse
from leaning against it; and we have seen the
single spines used by the German professors of
anatomy, to pin out dissections of nerves and
muscles. These preparations are often placed in
bottles containing a corrosive fluid; and were the
pins used made of metal, they would shortly corrode, and spoil the preparation. In the hedgehog's bristles they have ingeniously found a natural pin, which serves the purpose admirably. I
have often wondered they have never been made
use of by English ladies. The North American
squaws ornament baskets, mocassins, &c., with
porcupines' bristles, and hedgehogs' bristles are
not very unlike them.
I cannot conclude this article without mentioning, in short, a few hints given to me by a friend,
who has so kindly supplied me with much of the
matter I have embodied in the previous pages,
relative to the science of game-keeping, in which
he is a great practical authority.




198             WIDE AWAKE.
The  unthinking,  unobserving  gamekeeper
shoulders his gun, and walks round his coverts
and woodlands, disturbing everything, and tires
out his legs instead of using his brain; in fact, he
defeats his own object, and gives himself much
trouble into the bargain. To know if all is quiet
in a covert, the observant sportsman  should
quietly steal into it, and station himself where he
can have as extensive a view as possible. Having chosen his point, he should remain there as
still as possible, with his eyes wide open and ears
all attention. He should go early in the morning, or else in the evening, when the animals are
all out at feed; and he should be particularly
careful not to let them get scent of him. If he
sees the game all out, quietly feeding,-the hares
and rabbits unalarmed, the pheasants picking
about at their ease, the wood-pigeons flying lazily
to and fro among the trees,-he may conclude
there is no enemy about, either vermin or poacher. A good telescope, or, what is better still, a
good pair of double race or opera glasses, are exceedingly useful when on the look-out. The only




WIDE AWAKE.             199
drawback to their use is, that (as I have understood) statements of facts and deeds observed
through a telescope will not be received by
county magistrates as evidence. If the watcher
sees no hares or rabbits, and no game out of the
covert feeding, he may be quite sure that there
is something about to disturb them; particularly
if he sees (as he probably will) a started hare or
rabbit, fleeing from danger, come cantering along,
stopping every now and then to listen, he may
be certain there is something behind in pursuit,
and should take his measures accordingly.
He should look at all footmarks, both of man
and beast; and if he sees the print of a boot, he
should know who has made that print, and
whether the owner has any business going along
there. He should watch the actions and countenances of the people laboring in the fields, and
take mental notes at every gap in the hedgerow,
every footstile in the path, and every gate in the
roadway. In fact, the science of game-keeping
requires a good head, a sharp eye, an accurate
observation of the commonest things, and a ready




200              HALF ASLEEP.
application of what has been observed. It is a
talent that can never be acquired, unless it is in
the man at starting. Observation, and accurate
observation too, is the foundation of success.
I will give an instance. A  gamekeeper is
sound asleep in his bed. He suddenly wakes,
and fancies he has heard a gun in the coverts;
but, being still half-asleep, he is not sure, and
even if he did hear the report distinctly, how is
he to know in what part of the covert it was
fired? In an instant, he should (without attempting to dress) rush to the house-door, and opening
it, look out sharply towards the moon, or, if there
is no moon, towards that part of the sky where
there is most light. The chances are that, in a
minute or two, a frightened bird (most probably
it will be a wood-pigeon) will pass between him
and the light; he will note from what direction
it is flying, and will start immediately in that
direction to look for the poacher. The bird
would not be flying in that course, if he had not
been startled from  his roosting-place by some
intruder.




THE SQUIRE AND HIS GUEST.       201
Observation, too, is most necessary for those
who delight in fox-hunting; and people often get
lost in strange countries for want of it.  A master of fox-hounds-a specimen of the olden stamp,
full of years, good health, and sound common
sense-started one morning from his house to
meet the hounds that had gone on to the coverts
some time previously. He was accompanied by
a gentleman, in whom the power of observation
was by no means developed.  The squire soon
struck off the main road, through a bridle-gate;
then down a hedgerw; through a gap; then up
a wet and muddy lane; then through a farmyard;
then from one corner of a ploughed field to the
other corner, where there was no exit without
jumping a ditch; and so on, through most out-ofthe-way places, but yet always on a straight line.
At last his friend ventured to remark, "Are
you sure you are right, squire "  "Right!  Of
course I am right," was the answer.  And on
they went again, straight across the country.
Again the friend said, " It's very odd; I don't see
9*




202         SMELLING THE HOUNDS.
any road at all. Where are we going?"  "To
the meet, to be sure. The hounds have gone
along here."  "The hounds gone along here!
Why how can you know that."  "I can smell
them," growled the squire, "quite plain; can't
you f  They have only been gone on an hour,
and that's nothing."  The visitor sniffed and sniffed, but could perceive nothing.  " I don't suppose you could," remarked the squire; " it's only
the master that can smell his own hounds: and
you see I have been right all along, following my
nose, for there they are by the covert's side."
In the evening, after dinner, the visitor was
telling a long story of the wonderful power of
the master's olfactory organs,-how that he followed the hounds to covert by their smell, and
did not make a mistake the whole way. The story was passed round the table, and a discussion
began among the younger hands; the old stagers
held their peace, or narrated still more wonderful
stories; till at last the squire let the " cat out of
the bag," and explained that he had not smelt
the hounds at all, but onlyfollowed theirfootsteps




SMELLING THE HOUNDS.       203
in the mud, from the highway where they turned
off towards the meet by the covert side. Shouts
of laughter ensued at the discomfited visitor,
now that his wonderful story had exploded; and
he packed up his bag next morning, thinking
what a goose he had been not to have better trained his powers of observation of common things.








IN MEMORIAMW








IN MEMORIAM.
AMONG my father's papers were a few copies
of the following beautiful verses. They were
written, as appears by the date upon them, December 1st, 1820, about one year after his election to the professorial chair of geology at Ox
ford.
Dr. Buckland, at that time in the fullest vigor
of mind and body, stood forth as the champion
of geology, then a new science in the University.
He created a taste for its study in the minds af
young and old. Heads of houses and undergraduates flocked to his lectures, and alike became admirers of the Professor and his pursuits.
Alas! how few of his class are now alive; the




208         VERSES ON THE LATE
teacher and the students alike have passed from
among us.
One of the class who assembled in the Clarendon Museum, December 1, 1820, was so struck
with the lectures that he had heard, that he composed the following lines, which he has kindly
allowed me to reproduce and publish in this little
book.
I here beg to thank him for his kind permission, and to hope that he may be long spared to
enjoy good health and the high position which he
has won by his great talents and exemplary character. The lapse of forty years has added meaning and force to his lines; and some of them
may almost be said to be prophetic.
MOURN, Ammonites, mourn o'er his funeral urn,
Whose neck ye must grace no more;
Gneiss, Granite, and Slate! he settled your date,
And his ye must now deplore.
Weep, Caverns, weep! with infiltering drip,
Your recesses he'll cease to explore;




DR. BUCKLAND.            209
For mineral veins, and organic remains,
No Stratum again will he bore.
Oh! his Wit shone like Crystal! his knowledge
profound
From Gravel to Granite descended;
No Trap could deceive him, no Slip could confound,
Nor specimen true, or pretended:
He knew the birth-rock of each pebble so round,
And how far its tour had extended.
His eloquence roll'd like the Deluge retiring,
Which Mastodon carcases floated;
To a subject obscure he gave charms so inspiring,
Young and old on Geology doted.
He stood forth like an Outlier,-his hearers admiring,
In pencil each anecdote noted.
Where shall we our great Professor inter,
That in peace may rest his bones?
If we hew him a rocky sepulchre,
He'll rise and break the stones;




210              LINES, ETC.
And examine each Stratum that lies around,
For he's quite in his element under ground.
If with Mattock and Spade his body we lay,
In the common Alluvial soil,
He'll start up and snatch those tools away
Of his own Geological toil.
In a Stratum so young the Professor disdains
That embedded should be his Organic Remains.
Then exposed to the drip of some case-hard'ning
spring,
His carcase let Stalactite cover,
And to Oxford the petrified sage let us bring,
When he is incrusted all over;
There,'mid Mammoths and Crocodiles, high on
a shelf,
Let him stand as a Monument raised to himself.
1st December, 1820.




A HUNT ON THE SEA-SHORE








A HUNT ON THE SEA-SHORE.
"A  TELEGRAM  for you, sir."   Very well.
"Wanted at Brighton immediately, to see an
invalid."  My portmanteau is soon packed, and
as I roll over London Bridge, looking out for the
White Horse that is proverbially always to be
seen on the bridge, I think how soon I shall
change the view of the muddy river for that of
the open sea, and the rattle of cabs for the rattle
of the pebbles on the beach.
Comfortably seated in the carriage, I remark
to my companion, as we travel over the tops of
the houses close to the railway-station, that it is
generally possible to know upon what geological
formation  a town stands, by observing thle
substance with which the walls of the houses are
built. Thus, Bath is built principally of the




214          BUILDING MATERIALS.
stone found so plentifully close by; Oxford, of
oolite, of which stone there are beds in abundance close at hand; London is built principally
of bricks made from  the London clay, upon
which, for the most part, it stands. The time
rolls quickly by, and we are at Brighton. Now
let us apply this theory. Chalk, chalk everywhere. People cannot build houses of chalk!
I wonder (for it is my first visit) what the
Brighton folks use for this purpose. I am not
kept long in suspense; one of the first houses
that meets the eye, in going out of the station, is
built, not of chalk, but of something that comes
out of the chalk-viz. flint. We examine the
walls of the house; we find there flints of two
kinds-those worked by the hand of man, and
those prepared by the sea; the former are,
for the most part, nicely squared, the latter as
nicely rounded, and, strange to say, all about the
same size, as though picked out by a careful
sorter.   Who this sorter was, we shall see
presently.
But how do the Brighton people manage for




BUILDING MATERIALS.          215
pavement?  They have no stone quarries near,
so they use what they have at hand-viz. clay.
The bricks are of a bright red color, showing
that they contain much iron. In places, however, where there is a great deal of traffic, as on
the Marine Parade, we observe that they have
placed down layers of small flag-stones and!ricks alternately-parallel, however, with the
direction of the road-presenting a magnified
view of the structure of an Indian elephant's
molar tooth; and, in consequence of this arrangement of bricks and stones, a curious thing has
happened: the softer material, the brick, has
worn away into hollows, leaving the harder, the
stone, projecting; thus puddles are formed at
the crossings, to the discomfort of the passengers
and the advantage of the crossing-sweepers. It
would have been better if the crossings had been
made either entirely of brick, or entirely of stone,
as the wear and tear would have been equal in
all parts, and no holes formed.
Brighton seems to be the Paradise of invalids,
and, according to the old maxim that demand




216          BRIGHTON AS IT WAS
creates supply, we find that chemists' shops have
sprung up in all directions.  People who have
over-eaten  themselves, evidently  come down
here to look for good digestion, or repair that
which they have already damaged, for we see
advertisements in the windows, of medicines done
up in a palatable form, such as " Magnum
bonum jujube," " Digestive dinner tablets," &c.
People whose lungs are unsound also come here,
as is evident from the many kinds of respirators
we see exposed for sale, from the five-shilling
one of cork and cotton, to the higher priced article of gold and silver.
That the visitors to Brighton bathe in the sea
is also pretty clear, from the army of bathingmachines we see drawn up along the shore,
above ordinary high-water mark (it was winter
when I made these observations); yet the proprietors do not feel quite certain that their property is safe from storms even here, and accordingly they have not placed all their machines
with the doors facing the sea: the front rank are
turned with their sides towards it, and thus act




ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO.        217
as a barrier, should the pebbles be washed away
from under the wheels of their comrades in the
hindermost ranks, and they should spontaneously
march off down the inclined beach into the deep
water, according to their summer wont.  While
looking at the machines, I was informed by my
companion that the English have not been a seabathing nation such a very long time, and that,
therefore, bathing-machines are a comparatively
modern invention.  It is exactly one hundred
and ten years ago that a physician, named Russell, wrote a book upon the advantages of washing the body in sea-water-an idea which had
not previously entered into the brains of our forefathers. Up to that time, to use the words of
my learned informant and friend, Mr. Roberts,
of Dover, " the sea was judged to have been designed for commerce, and sea-side towns for the
residence of merchants and fishermen.  At no
previous period had there been sea-side visitors.
Why should they go to the sea-coast, when no
motive  could  be  stated,-at a  time, too,
when Northampton's healthy climate was attrib



218              SEA BATHING.
uted to its distance from  the noxious fumes of
the sea?  There were certainly watering places;
but these were towns where mineral waters
existed, such as Bath, Cheltenhain, Harrowgate,"
&c.  Dr. Russell's brother doctors took up the
cry; sea-bathing suddenly became the fashion;
Dr. Russell was obliged to come to reside at
Brighton; and the fishing villages in various
parts of the kingdom became inundated with visitors.  Brighton, being the point where the sea
could be most easily reached from London, was
soon found out, and taken possession of by a colony of citizens, anxious to follow the fashion and
recruit their health at the same time.  Besides
Brighton, many  other watering-places have
started into existence, and the sea is now found
efficacious for nearly all ailments, whether of
mind or body, and it often effects a cure when
nothing else will; an annual migration, like that
of anadromous fishes, of thousands of persons
now takes place to those very shores which their
grandfathers regarded with a species of horror.
In most books, Brighton is stated to be forty




THE SEA A STONEMASON.         219
odd miles from London. This we believe not to
be strictly correct; but it is made under fifty
miles from London, because, as we have heard
the tale, in former times, the King was not
allowed to go more than fifty miles from London
without a minister. Now, the sovereign who was
so fond of Brighton did not want to be bored with
a minister at his elbow; and therefore Brighton
was put down as being under the proscribed distance, and the Pavilion, &c., started into existence.
The general complaint of a sea-side place is,
that there is nothing to do; and we see ladies and
gentlemen basking in the sun, and lounging on
the piers, reading shilling novels and tales of love
and murder, surrounded on every side by objects
which, if they would only use their eyes, would
afford endless amusement and instruction.
I lost no time, the morning after my arrival
(business, of course, being first attended to,) in
getting down to the sea-side, and listening once
more to the ocean's solemn and never-ceasing
song of praise to the great Creator. To the ob



220         THE SEA A STONEMASON.
server, the composition of a sea-beach will tell
much. From the Brighton beach we learn that
the bottom of the sea, off the land whereon we
now stand, is principally chalk; for it is composed almost entirely of flints of every possible
form and shape, but all of them  more or less
rolled, and their edges worn off by the action of
the water-for Nature never turns her work out
square, always round. As the stonemason picks
out the flints from the chalk-pit, pickaxe in hand,
so does the sea, by the force of her waves, extract
from their chalky bed the flints; but she does
more than extract them-she, so to say, manufactures the raw material, and not only manufactures, but even sorts her work, when finished,
ready for the use of man. Upon a careful examination of the pebbles on the beach, we find that
they are sorted in a very regular gradation.
When a wave runs in, it carries with it a certain
number of stones, at the same time driving a certain quantity along the bottom. We find that
the largest always go the farthest, the smallest
stop first. Now, let us apply this. The portion




THE DEBRIS OF BRIGHTON.       221
of the beach nearest the shore is composed of the
largest stones, ready sorted to the hand of the
wall-maker; the intermediate sizes are farthest
out, and are sifted by the mortar-mixer to mix
up with his lime. Farther out still, and under
the water, are the smallest stones of all, namely,
the sand. Of this the shrimper takes advantage;
for, at low tide, he may be seen, up to his hips,
pushing before him his shrimp-net, and disturbing
the little denizens of the sand, the shrimps and
prawns-condemned shortly to enter water at a
considerably higher temperature than they have
been accustomed to.
Among the shingle on the Brighton beach, I
found many interesting things, which most people
would call rubbish. They are of no use in themselves; but imagine the beach to become suddenly fossil, and how interesting would all these
bits of rubbish then become, as proving the existence of a highly civilized people who once
inhabited these shores. We find, mixed up with
fish-bones, sea-weed, &c., various kinds of the jetsaml and flotsam of the ocean. Rolled bits of




222     EVIDENCE OF A POPULOUS CITY.
ginger-beer bottles, made of clay; of wine bottles, tobacco-pipes, &c., made of glass, proving
the luxury of these ancient people; of old shoes,
of knives, of hard slag (whence we might infer
the existence of gas-works,) of combs, hair-brushes, &c.; and, what is rather curious, I found a
ball, as large as a good-sized turnip, and quite as
round, composed entirely of human hair. The
only way I can explain the formation of this ball
is, that the hair taken from the combs of the inhabitants of Brighton is thrown away, floats down
the drains into the sea, and there becomes regularly felted and matted together by the waves
perpetually rolling it up and down on the hard
shingle. I at first wondered how the harder and
heavier articles of human manufacture, such as
bottles, &c., became spread in such abunds- e
along the shore, for, they would not float down
the drains, like the hair.  The problem  was
solved when I discovered that the rubbish carts
of the town, shot their loads over the cliff at the
extreme east end'of Brighton; the authorities
hoping thereby to prevent the cliff falling further




THE DEBRIS OF LONDON.         223
than it has fallen already. This then is, I believe, the main source of most of the water-worn
human manufactures found spread out, for some
three or four miles to the eastward of the town.
The deposit of the river Thames is, likewise,
most interesting, and a chapter might be written
on the various articles found mixed with the
bones of turtle, snakes, and sharks, and even tropical fruits, in the Isle of Sheppy, at the mouth
of the Thames. By means of these, an observant
explorer landing on the spot from his discoveryship, even if he knew not of the existence of London, might come to the conclusion that the river
which brought the deposits of human manufacture to the shore he was exploring, ran through
a large city, inhabited by a highly civilized people, far advanced in the arts.  I believe many
curiosities of ancient manufacture are found at
the bottom of the river in the neighborhood of
London Bridge. May not the cause of their getting there be, that they became lost, and thrown
over into the water, at the time that the bridge,




224          PHOLADES OR PITTICKS.
upon which  dwelling-houses were built, once
spanned the river at or near this place 
The sea at Brighton not only rolls in flints from
the chalk, and sundries from the rubbish-hole, it
also washes up lumps of chalk, from the size of
a small apple to that of a child's head. These
lumps will be found, for the most part, bored
through and through with holes, as if an industrious cheesemonger had been working away at
them  with his cheese-taster.  If the inside of
these holes be examined, it will be seen marked
all over with minute scratches or indentations; it
is, as a friend has aptly expressed it, " rifled in
the barrel."   These perforations and riflings are
not, however, the work of man, but of a delicate
little shell-fish, called a Pholas. We showed
one of these to a fisherman, wishing to get the
local name.  "Them things, sir?  Why, them
things be pitticks; but I don't expect that's the
right name for'em."   There is a large flat surface of chalk to be seen at low tide, to the east
of Brighton, perfectly riddled with holes made
by these creatures.  If an empty pittick's hole




HOW PHOLAS BORES.          225
be examined, it will be found covered  with
markings, as though some instrument or some
acid had been at work.  Now, this is the very
point which has set those interested in the subject at loggerheads; but, while they are arguing
and disputing, the Pholas quietly goes on working away, making a comfortable hole for himself. On the whole, however, the jury seem inclined to bring the Pholas in guilty of mechanical, not chemical violence, inasmuch as there is
no acid found, or other solvent known, that will
act equally well upon wood, limestone, hard and
soft clays, sandstone, and even, in one case, upon
wax; it is also highly improbable that the animal
can secrete a solvent for each and every substance
in which he may feel desirous to hide his head.
In the " Annals of Natural History," Mr. Albany Hancock says that the excavating instrument of Pholas is formed of the anterior portion
of the animal, in the surface of which are embedded siliceous or hard flinty particles; these particles give the skin (which covers the shell) much
10*




226           How PHOLAS BORES.
the appearance of sand-paper. The whole forms
a rubbing surface, which, being applied closely
to the bottom of the cavity, by the adhesion of
the foot, enables the animal to rub down, and so
penetrate shell, chalk, wood, &c. Now, Professor
Forbes looked for these siliceous particles, and
found none; neither the microscope nor'the contents of the laboratory bottles would prove their
existence. He therefore puts M. Necker in the
witness-box, who states, that " the composition of
the shell is the same as arragonite, and it is plain
that it can act mechanically on the hardest limestone."
If the reader will examine the outside of a
Pholas shell, he will find it studded in regular
rows, with little projections, which are copied
exactly on the rough surface of a farrier's file; he
will also see models of them on the inside of the
common nut-crackers.  It is, therefore, most
probable that, when the shell wishes to embed
itself, it fi.xes itself firmly by its foot-which acts
like the leather sucker used  to lift stones by
school-boys-and then, by working itself from




OPINION OF PROFESSOR FORBES.      227
side to side, presenting the edges of its shell to
the substance to be bored, it gradually cuts away
a cavity for itself somewhat in the same way as
the instrument used by the artesian well-makers
cuts through the soft clay. Now, what becomes
of the dust, or rather mud, which must naturally
result from the boring of the shell?  Unless he
had some apparatus to eject it, it would accumulate in the hole, and considerably inconvenience
the operator; accordingly, we find that he has a
very pretty contrivance for ejecting the same. If
the reader happens to be in a neighborhood where
the Pholas is left dry by the retiring tide, he will
have an opportunity of judging for himself; for,
as the shells perceive his footstep, they will eject,
to a considerable distance, a spout of water, which
is generally clear, but which, if they have been
at work lately, will be colored with mud, the re
sult of their borings.
Dr. Buckland wrote to the late lamented Professor Forbes on this subject, and the following is
part of his reply:-" Pholas, Xyloplaga, and Teredo are mechanical borers, and, as far as I know,




228       THE- PHOLAS SEEN AT WORK.
do not bore much below low-water mark-very
generally above (Pholas especially;) Xyloplaga
and Teredo are confined to wood.  Pholas bores
indifferently in limestone, slate, and wood; and in
Mr. Curnming's collection there is a group of
Pholades living in wax."
Having mentioned this subject in The Field, a
gentleman, who signs himself " Astur," interested
in the matter, was kind enough to write the following.  He was fortunate enough to see the
Pholas actually at work, and his observations are
most valuable.
" Having seen in the first of Mr. Buckland's
interesting communications, entitled' Sea-side
Gatherings,' that it was still a' disputed point as
to how these very delicate creatures (the Pholades) make holes in this very hard stone;' and
having had the good fortune to witness how they
performed this apparently impossible operation, I
feel great pleasure in laying it before your read
ers, and corroborating Mr. Buckland's hypothesis, that it is by a mechanical process.  The
mode by which the Pholas bores its habitation,




ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE EXPERIMENT.  229
even in the hardest rock, has long been a subject
of ingenious  speculation  among  naturalists.
None of the theories advanced, however, have
been accepted as fully satisfactory: and no one
previous to myself has had, I believe, the satisfaction of seeing the animal in the operation.
The aquarium, one might have supposed, would
have afforded an easy means of solving the problem. But here we meet a fresh difficulty, from
the supposed fact that the Pholas, being dragged
from its rocky cave, would not take the trouble
to excavate another.  This theory appeared to
me most unnatural and improbable; and my
opinion seemed to be further borne out by the
fact, that old logs of wood thrown up by the
waves were frequently covered with holes of
different sizes and depths, from one-eighth of an
inch to the entire thickness of the log.  These
holes appeared to me evidently made by Pholades, and to have been  abandoned, either
through caprice or necessity. The latter we may
suppose to be frequently the case, when the log,
resting quietly at the bottom of the sea, is pitched




230         CONCLUSIVE TESTIMONY.
upon by a houseless Pholas, and operations commenced, when the ruthless storm drifts the log
on shore, and hurls the Pholas once more at the
mercy of the winds and waves..Here is another
case in which the Pholas may require a fresh
habitation, for the procuring of which we should
suppose Nature had given it the means:-it is
this-many of the logs, &c. tenanted by Pholades
are so thin, that they would serve the growing
mollusk but a short time, and, moreover, wood
and other substances used by then being of a
perishable nature, must render a fresh abode frequently necessary.  Having, therefore. procured
several of these mollusks in pieces of timber, I
extracted one, and placed it loose in my aquarium, in the vague hope that it would perforate
some sandstone on which I had placed it.  It
possessed the powers of locomotion, but made no
attempt to bore.  I then cut a piece of wood
from the timber in which it had been found, and
placed the Pholas in a hole a little more than an
inch deep.  Its shell being about two inches
long, this arrangement left about an inch and




CONCLUSIVE TESTIMONY.         231
three-quarters exposed.   After a short time,
the animal attached its foot to the bottom of
the hole. and commenced swaying itself from
side to side, until the hole was sufficiently deep
to allow it to proceed in the following manner.
It inflated itself with water, apparently to its
fullest extent, raising its shell upwards from the
hole; then, holding by its muscular foot, it drew
its shell gradually downwards. This would have
produced a perpendicular and very inefficient
action but for a wise provision of Nature. The
edges of the valves are not joined together, but
are connected by a membrane; and instead of
being joined at the hinge, like ordinary bivalves,
they possess an extra plate, attached to each valve
of the shell, which is necessary for the following
part of the operation. In the action of boring,
this mollusk, having expanded itself with water,
draws down its shell within the hole, gradually
closing the anterior edges until they almost touch.
It then raises its shell upwards, gradually opening the lower anterior edges and closing the upper, thus boring both upwards and downwards.




232         CONCLUSIVE TESTIMONY.
The spines (points) on the shells are placed in
rows, like the teeth of a saw; those toward the
lower part being sharp and pointed, while those
above, being useless, are not renewed. So far
for the operation of boring; but how to account
for the holes fitting the shape of the animal inhabiting them? To this I fearlessly answer, that
this is only the case when the Pholas is found in
the rock which it entered when very small. This
mollusk evidently bores merely to protect its fragile shell, and not from any love of boring; and
in this opinion I am borne out by my own specimens. The young Pholas having found a substance suitable for a habitation, ceases to bore
immediately that it has buried its shell below the
surface of the rock, &c. It remains quiescent
until its increased growth requires a renewal of
its labors. It thus continues working deeper and
deeper; and should the substance fall or decay,
it has no alternative but to bore through, and
seek some fresh spot, where it may find a more
secure retreat.                       ASTUR.
Oct. 1, 1859."




PHOLADES IN SANDSTONE.         233
Both the north and south piers, or "horns," at
Folkstone are formed of gigantic blocks of stone
piled closely against one another in a slanting direction, and not, cemented together.  When a
great wave comes thundering in, it does not hit
these breakwaters nearly so hard as if they were
quite solid, but, on the contrary, gets broken up,
and runs through the interstices of the stone;
the consequence is, that numerous miniature
caves are formed, which are full of animal life.
We see the surface of the rocks bored; and these
borings contain Pholades, which the fishermen
here call " clams."  The Folkstone sandstone is
so hard that it is with difficulty broken with a
hammer; and it is most marvelous how these very
fragile and paper-like shells have managed to
bury themselves in it. The actual shells crumble
under the finger, but yet they have the power of
boring clean-cut holes in a substance which a
crow-bar will hardly touch.
My friend Mr. Woodward, of the British Museum, very kindly showed me some exceedingly fine
specimens of fossil Teredo; one, in particular fiom




234          VARIOUS SPECIMENS.
the Upper Greensand at Blackdown, presented
by my father to the Museum; also a very fine
specimen, beautifully polished, of Teredo and
Teredo's holes, in a bit of fossil wood from Kew,
which belonged to the late eminent botanist, Mr.
Lambert. TIe also pointed out a specimen of the
sandstone from the London clay formation, which
is dredged up in vast quantities off the town of
Harwich, and which is used to make Roman cement. This also contained many Pholades. In
this formation the fossil bones of elephants and
other large animals are found; the Pholas had
attacked these also, but could not bore more than
than a certain depth into them.  In making the
large metropolitan sewer near Dulwich, they have,
during the last few weeks, found fine specimens
of fossil Teredo.
I mentioned my idea, in which he agreed with
me, that Pholas bores entirely by mechanical
means, to Mr. Woodward, and told him that I
had just been endeavoring to make castings, by
pouring in hot wax, of the rifleing marks inside
the borings of the Pholades from the Brighton




NATURAL CAST OF PHOLAS BORINGS.   235
chalk, and that I had partially succ eeded; when
he pointed out to me, in a case (just under the
nose of Megatherium skeleton, at the end of the
long North Gallery), a most beautiful natural
cast of these rifleing marks. The animal having
been gone from the sole, iron sand in a soft state
hlas filled it up, and has afterwards become as
hard as an ordinary hammer.  The markings on
the side of the sole, made by the shell, are beautifully cast, and stand up in bold relief.  They
remind one much of that instrument which the
cook uses to make lines and patterns upon soft
pie-crust.  This instrument has a sort of spur
rowel at its end, and the projections on this rowel
are much like those on this natural cast of the
boring marks of Pholas crispatus.  The Rey. J.
Layton presented this remarkable specimen to
the Museum, and I, for one of " the public," thank
him for so doing. It was found at Harboro', Norfolk.
NMr. Woodward also shewed me a mass of hard
mica slate rock with a gigantic Pholas in it, and
a lump of gum from Australia; probably floated




236      PHOLAS AND PORTLAND STONE.
down some river into the sea; also bored by a
Pholas.
The breakwater at Plymouth is, I hear, much
injured by the attacks of the Pholades.  I have
seen a beautifully polished specimen, showing
their ravages in the stone of which the breakwater is formed. It is apparently a limestone, and
is as hard as marble to the touch.
It is, I believe, a well authenticated fact, that
the Pholas will not bore into Portland stone (of
which the Cathedral of St. Paul's is built), on
account of the quantity of silica or flinty matter
it contains.
The new breakwater at Weymouth is being
made of this stone. The convicts who quarry it
in the island above, load railway-trucks with
huge blocks of it; these run down an incline.
It is a work which redounds to the great credit
of Mr. Coode, the Engineer; and this gentleman
may congratulate himself that there are not
other "Engineers" at work, in the shape of
boring shells, to eat into the foundations of his
breakwater.




HOLES MADE BY LAND SHELLS.       237
My father collected what information he could
on the subject of Portland stone not liable to
boring shells; and Mr. Roberts, who then lived.
at Lyme Regis, in Dorsetshire, made observations for him. Mr. Roberts writes: " There is
no block of Portland stone at Lyme Regis older
than 1793. No Pholas has pierced any Portland block at all."
But have we no shells on land which act the
same part on land in boring stone as does the
Pholas in water? My father was, I believe, the
first to point out holes in old stone walls and
other edifices made by lalnd snails; and, in 1841,
he published in "The Proceedings of the Geological Society," p. 2, a paper upon the agency
of land snails in corroding and making deep
excavations in compact limestones.
This paper runs as follows:" During the meeting of the Geological Society
of France at Boulogne, in September, 1839, Dr.
Buckland's attention was called by Mr. Greenhough to a congeries of peculiar hollows on the
under surface of a ledge of carboniferous lime



238        DR. BUCKLAND'S OPINION.
stone rocks. They resembled, at first sight, the
excavations made by Pholades; but, as he found
in them a large number of the shells of Helix
Aspersa, he inferred that the cavities had been
formed by snails, and that probably many generations had contributed to produce them."
A  few years since, the Rev. N. Stapleton
informed the author that he had discovered at
Tenby, in the carboniferous limestone on which
the ruins of the castle stand, perforations of
Pholades, thirty or forty feet above high-water
mark; but, having recently examined the spot,
Dr. Buckland ascertained that these excavations
were the work of the same species of Helix as
that which formed the cavities in the limestone
near Boulogne, and he found within them specimens of the dead shells as well as of the living.
That the perforations both at Boulogne and
Tenby were not the work of Pholades, Dr.
Buckland says is evident.
First, from their size and shape, which, instead
of the straight and regular form, accurately
fitting the shell of the animal by which each




DR. BUCMKLAND'S OPINION.       239
hole was perforated, are tortuous, irregularly
enlarging and contracting, and rarely continuous
in a straight line. The holes, moreover, are
often separated by only a thin partition, or are
confluent.
Secondly, because they are wanting on the
upper surface of the projecting ledges of limestone; whilst, on the sides and lower surfaces of
the ledges, they are excavated to considerable
depths.
The above reasons, Dr. Buckland says, against
the excavations having  been  made by any
marine lithophagous animal, are favorable to
the hypothesis which refers the production of
them to snails.
" These animals," he observes, "could find
shelter only on the margin or lower surfaces of
the projecting rock, and the irregular form of
the confluent cavities correspond with that of
the clusters of snails in their ordinary habitat
and hybernation; and if to these reasons be
added the fact of finding both living and dead
shells in  the excavations, the evidence, the




240          MODE OF OPERATION.
author conceives, is decisive as to the agency of
snails in producing the phenomenon under consideration.
" In conclusion, the author offers some remarks
on the means by which these hollows have been
corroded; having  been overlooked in consequence, he suggests, of their having been probably referred to the action of the weather, or to
original irregularities in the composition of the
stone."
My father intended to pursue these investigations further, in order to ascertain whether the
cavities were hollowed out by these snails
by means of an acid secreted by them, or by
means of their rasp-like tongues; like sea-limpets,
most probably the latter.  This investigation I
propose to follow up myself, if it has not already
been done by some more competent person.
When  wandering along  the sea-shore at
Brighton, I picked up a mass of black and halfdecayed-looking wood; through this, too, the
Pholas had made its hole, and a fine patriarch
Pholas he must have been, for his house was big




C STROMBOLO  WOOD.         241
enough to admit two fingers. But what was the
wood, and whence came it? Some boatmen had
hut a few moments before-complaining of the
hardness of the times, the coldness of the weather,
&c.-been begging for alms to buy fuel: why
did they not pick up this black-looking wood, of
which there was abundance thrown up on the
beach?  Probably, I thought, because it won't
burn; so I took a bit home, and put it into the
fire.  As I expected, the wood would not burn;
it crumbled and smouldered away slowly into
powder, emitting at the same time, a disagreeable
smell, like sulphur and bitumen being burnt
together. A section made with the knife into it
exposed a beautiful woody fibre.  I therefore
pronounced this wood to be lignite, or wood in a
state intermediate between fresh wood and coal.
As there were such quantities of it about, it must
be certain that there must be a bed of lignite under water, not far from the shore. This idea was
shortly afterwards confirmed by a very intelligent man, who was found mending his nets; he
11




242          " TROMBOLO" WOOD.
infurmed us that there was a bed of it not far off,
to the westward of Brighton, and that they called the place where it was found the " Jenny
ground."  Why it was thus named he did not
know, but he did know that there were plenty of
whiting to be caught thereabouts. The wood he
called  Strom'bolo."  The reason of this was also
unknown to him; but, upon consideration, I
thought it likely  that it was so christened
by some sailor who had seen the mountain Stromboli, and who had inhaled the sulphurous vapors
common thereabouts. The smell of the wood
had recalled to his mind the mountain, and lie
had named it accordingly.  This strombolo was
bored through and through by the Pholas, and a
fine time of it they must have had on the " Jenny
ground," boring away to their hearts' content.
Upon mentioning my idea of the derivation of
the word strombolo to my friend, Mr. Roberts of
Coved, he kindly sent me the following comnmunication:
"Strombolo has been erroneously supposed to
have some reference to the volcano. It means in




ORIGIN OF THE WOOD.         243
Flemish, stream-balls, str6m-bol, and was so
named by some Flemings, who settled years ago
at Brighton.  Between Kent and Sussex and
France, are beds of lignite. After much agitation, pieces of this black material, laminated with
a transverse fracture, floats up and is driven
ashore, when it is water-worn and rounded,hence stream-balls. A  bye-law was passed at
Brighton against the burning of strombolo, as
the smell emitted is very unpleasant. Strombolo
is to our channel much like amber in the Baltic.
It floats up and drifts ashore, from the brown
coal-beds of the bottom of that sea."
In the Museum at Oxford are some very pretty
specimens of fossil wood.  The wood had been
bored when in a recent state by the Pholas, and
had subsequently become, by the infiltration of
silica, converted into a fossil. The borings are,
in many places, still wide open, and filled with
most beautiful crystals, looking like a fairy's
grotto.
Submerged forests are not uncommon in some
parts of our coasts. In 1838 Mr. Hall, of Wood



244          SUBMARINE FORESTS.
side, near Liverpool, stated the following curious
fact:
"By order of the Corporation, a sewer was
made at a place called Beacon's Gutter, the
boundary line of Liverpool, on the north shore;
and the men in digging found a great quantity
of hazel nuts, imbedded in a sort of peat, formed
of decayed wood. They were found about eight
or ten feet below the surface. Between high and
low water mark large pieces of oak have been
found in a very good state of preservation, the
interior being quite hard, and fit for fire-wood.M:any of the nuts appear to have been gnawed
by squirrels or mice; some of them crumble to
pieces on being touched; but the shell of a great
many is tolerably firm. Large quantities are in
possession of different individuals."
There is also a submerged forest off the coast
of Hastings, and ornamental boxes, &c. are made
of this semi-fossil wood.
In Sir Henry Delabeche's " Geological Observer," several of these submerged forests are mentioned. Sir Henry writes



SUBMARINE FORESTS.           245
"Various nooks and corners of oceanic bays,
where we. may suppose vegetation could have
flourished under differences of level, so that more
dry land was exposed, should be examined, as
well as very sheltered situations, in places less
open to the ravages of the sea. Thus a part of
tile coast of Tiree, Hebrides, and of another in
the Bay of Skaill, mainland of Orkney, though
both exposed to the ocean, furnish the remains
of these  forests,' as well as the ramifications of
old estuaries, amid the shores of the British
Channel and Severn.  The forest (in this place,)
passes beneath a considerable portion of the flat
low land, commonly known as the Bridgewater
levels. Dr. Buckland and Mr. Conybeare mention oak, fir, and willow trees, sometimes of large
dimensions, partly rooted as they grew, and partly prostrate, fifteen to twenty feet beneath the
surface of the Bridgewater levels. Furze and
hazel-bushes, with their nuts, are intermingled
with them."
Occasionally the bones of quadrupeds and the
traces of their foot-prints are discovered in these




246           REMAINS OF DEER.
forests, as also the remains of insects, which are
important, as enabling the observer to consider
the distribution of the terrestrial animal life, as
well as of the plants of the time. It lies among
the vegetable accumulations apparently of this
date. On the banks of the Humber, remains of
the red deer and the fallow deer have been detected, and in the " submarine forest" of Minehead, Somersetshire, the bones and antlers of the
red deer are discovered amid the upright stumps
of trees (chiefly oaks) now below the level of the
sea, and covered by it at high water-the trees
rooted as they grew. The latter is especially an
interesting circumstance, as the red deer are still
found wild in the adjoining forest of Emoor, so
that the change of level has been effected since
the red deer inhabited the district.
Extending our researches into Cornwall, nwe
find that a change of level may have happened,
submerging vegetation in its place of growth,
even after the introduction of man into Western
England; for at the Carrion Tin Steam  Works,
north of Falmouth, human skulls are stated to




FOOTSTEPS OF GIGANTIC OX.      247
have been discovered among the trees, and other
vegetable remains, covering the stanniferous gravel. These forests were tenanted also by at least
one species of large quadruped, which is now extinct. Among other places where these are found
on the shores in that district, there is a considerable tract of low ground, extending from the
mouth of the Neath river, eastward beyond Port
Talbot, fringed by a covering of low sand hills.
On the surface of the clay in which the trees are
rooted, footprints have been here and there detected, as if in passages amid the trees, by which
animals found their way through them-these
footsteps are of various forms and sizes, some
clearly those of deer, while now and then a large
impression would be observed, resembling that of
some gigantic ox, even of the largest size now
known.
The " submerged forest" at Brighton, judging
from'the quantities of bored fragments of wood
we pick up. must swarm with Pholas, and I was
still further convinced of the fact when I inspected the chain-pier.




248   THE ARMOR ON THE BRIGHTON PIER.
The piles of the pier are formed of wood, and
short work of this wood the Pholas would make,
if they once established a colony on it. They
would pierce it in all directions, till it would become as full of holes as an old target of a wellpatronized toxophilite society, and then "down
would come Pholas, chain-pier and all."  Not
so, however. Sir S. Brown, the architect of the
pier, has stolen a march upon his little hungry
enemies, and has circumvented their cunning.
He knew well enough that their boring apparatus, though it would cut wood and stone, would
not cut iron. To enclose each pile of the pier in
a solid case of iron would not only have been expensive, but also clumsy looking, so he has hit
upon a much more simple plan; he has had
made many thousand iron  nails, with short
spikes, but with enormously broad heads. These
nails have been driven into every portion of the
wood which is ever liable to be covered withi water, as close together as it is possible to drive
them; so that no portion of the wood whatever is
exposed, and the great piles look as though they




HOW TO STOP A BURGLAR.         249
were covered with a coat of mail, such as we see
worn by the heavy cavalry who bestride their
wooden coach horses in the Tower of London.
From the Brighton architect's plan of arming
his piles with nails, we too, in these burglarious
times, may learn a lesson-not that we have
Pholas to contend against, but another species of
boring animal, namely, the house-breaker. This
creature is nocturnal in his habits; when the inmates of the house are fast asleep, he quietly applies his boring apparatus-a " centre-bit," well
oiled-to the softest place of the house he can
find, namely, the wooden door; a few swift turns,
and there is a Pholas-like hole big enough to admit one's finger; a few more holes like it, and a
circular portion is bored out of the door, big
enough to admit his hand, which said hand instinctively finds out the lock, undoes the latch,
and the burglar enters. Now luckily for us, this
"centre-bit," like the boring apparatus of the
Pholas, cannot touch iron. We, therefore, advise
all householders to go to the expense of a few
11*




250                TEREDO.
shillings, and to nail broad-headed iron nails,
with longish spikes to them, thickly all over the
inside of their doors and shutters; outside, they
would not only be unornamental, but useless, for
they would tell the burglar that his visit was expected.  Inside, however, they are not very
readily seen. When the centre-bit from the outside touches the spikes, it will snap like a bit of
glass; and even should twenty centre-bits be applied, they will meet with the same fate from all
parts of the door, to the great discomfort of the
biped Pholas.
Besides Pholas, there are other kinds of woodboring animals living in the sea. Teredo (from
the Greek TEREO, I bore,) and Zyloplaga, or the
wood-eater, are the most to be dreaded. At the
Institution of Civil Engineers, December, 1849, a
discussion was held on Mr. Paton's description of
the Southend Pier, and the vagaries of the Teredo Navalis. The following is an abstract of
this paper:" Numerous specimens were exhibited, and
commented on, of timber thoroughly perforated




PRESERVATIVES OF TIMBER.       251
by worms; whilst, beside them, under the same
circumstances, the Jarrow wood, from Australia,
was shown to have remained completely free
from injury.
"The reference to the age of Homer, as an instance of the ancient ravaging habits of the Teredo, induced a return to Geological questions;
and it was shown, that in the London clay, remains had repeatedly been found, of timber perforated by sea-worms. The Oolite and Greensand formations also exhibited petrified wood,
filled with boring Mollusca.
"The early state of the Teredo was noticed;
when escaping from the egg, in the shape of a
free swimmer it was drifted about with the tide
until it met with a log, a pile, or the side of a
ship, to which it attached itself, and making an
inroad into it, became a non-locomotive animal
of different form and habits, never again to leave
the habitation it had burrowed for itself in the
body of the timber.
" The various materials, such as Kyan's Corrosive Sublimate of Mercury, Sir W. Burnett's




202         PRESERVATIEES OF TIMBER.
Chloride of Zinc, Margary's Salts of Metals,
Payne's combination of Muriate of Lime and
Sulphate of Iron, forming in the timber an insoluble compound, and Bethell's Creosote, or Oil of
Coal Tar, were discussed. All had their partisans, and were stated to have succeeded and
failed under certain circumstances. Specimens
of piles from  Lowestoff harbor, whose waters
were notoriously full of worm, showed that timber in a natural state was, in a few months, thoroughly perforated by Teredo in the centre, and
Limnoria on the surface; but that piles, which
had been properly saturated according to Bethell's system, in exhausted receivers, and subjected
to such pressure as insured the absorption of
about ten pounds' weight of the creosote, or oil
of coal tar, by each cubic foot of the timber, were
perfectly preserved from attacks of marine animals of any kind.
"In one instance a partially creosoted pile had
a notch cut into it, deeper than the impregnation
extended; a Teredo made its entry, and was
found to have worked in every direction, until it




IRON NAILS THE BEST PRESERVATIVE.  253
arrived within the reach of the cresote, when
the animal turned away and eventually left the
pile.
"Bethell's system  was admitted, by all the
speakers, to be that which hitherto, after many
years' experience, had afforded the most satisfactory results.
" Some most conclusive experiments, instituted by Mr. Rendel at Southampton, were
stated to have produced the same results; and
at Leith all the piles were weighed before and
after their saturation, to insure their absorbing
the full allowance of at least ten pounds per
cubic foot."
I believe, however, that the plan of using
broad-headed nails, as at Brighton, is better than
any chemical preparation, and is now generally
adopted in English harbors.
In the British Museum, Eastern Zoological
Gallery, at the end of table-case, No. 30, and
close by the stuffed herons and cranes, is a very
beautiful series of wood, bored by Pholas and
Teredo: there may be noticed a specimen of




254   TEREDO BORINGS IN BRITISH MUSEUM.
ignite, similar to what we find at Brighton, with
the boring shell still remaining in the hole it has
cut for itself.
The following specimens are also placed in the
cabinet, and are well worth attention, as showing
what serious mischief these boring animals do to
the woodwork of our harbors, and even to the
ships themselves.  Yarmouth seems especially
to suffer, for we find " a section of Quebec elm,
in the sea four years, and English oak, both
from the Yarmouth pier, and both quite honeycombed with the'worm,' as the shipwrights
call it."  Then we have the following bits of
worm-attacked ships:-" Portion of bottom  of
her Majesty's ship Blenheim, 74, lost, with her
commander, Sir Thomas Troubridge, and her
crew, on her passage from India. Plank of the
barge of her Majesty's ship Etna, employed on
survey of coast of Africa, 1832-one hundred
days in the water, bored by Teredo Navalis."
In the Royal College of Surgeons is a very
fine specimen of the keel of a ship, bored by




MR. ROBERTS ON THE RUSSIA  SHIPS.  255
Teredo; it is so fragile that it is put under a
glass case.
I learn from  an officer, who served in the
yacht Fox, (the little vessel whose name will
ever be connected with that of Sir John Franklin), that the Fox had no copper on her bottom
when she made her perilous voyage; and that
the whale-ships are not protected  under the
water line. Hence I conclude, that there are
no boring Pholades or Teredo in the cold waters
of the Arctic Seas.
I have subsequently looked carefully over the
" Franklin Relics," and among all the bits of
wood, both small and great, there preserved, I
can find no trace of the boring of Teredo or
Pholas.
It is the Teredo which did so much mischief to
the Russian ships which were sunk before the
mouth of the harbor of Sebastopol. My friend
Mr. Roberts has published his remarks, in 1857,
upon this subject, in Household Words which I
quote in extenso, as they are the result of much
patient investigation.




256        THE DIVER ANTICIPATED.
" When the Russian commander of Sebastopol
found that he would not be able to screen his
ships from  the fire of the enemy, and that the
fleets of England and France would come into
the harbor, he sunk the great fleet of sixty-two
ships! The British sailor sighed as he viewed
the tops of the masts peeping out of the water,
and counted the loss this act was to himself.
What a rich prize did the harbor of Sebastopol
contain!
"After the city had fallen, a company of
divers, under Mr. Deane, was sent out from
Kent. The director of the party was prepared
to send down his men, and furnish a report of
the condition and situation of the ships; but the
guns from the north side prevented the vessel,
which bore the diving apparatus; and then
peace came, and the sunken ships, that cost
millions in their construction, were left to the
Russians. They have not been raised'; though a
contract has been entered into with an American,
who is reported to have shown great skill in
recovering fiom  a depth large sunken ships in




BORING WORM.               257
other parts of the world. A newspaper account
has conveyed to the public many particulars of
the intended plans, and of the descent of a diver
to view many of the costly ships. This explorer
found the American raisers had been anticipated
by a more numerous, indeed innumerable party
of joint carpenters and masons, destroyers. Let
us confine our attention for a while to these
operatives, whether working  for themselves
alone, or revenging the Turks for the affair of
Sinope.
"The boring  worms are most destructive
creatures. Like other pests, as man calls such
things, when he suffers individually by them,
they are of great use in the world.  Their
mission is well defined. They are of several
sizes, and are generally spoken of as the Teredo
or boring-worm. There is a smaller kind, which
is very destructive, the Limnoria terebrans. In
many climes the rainy seasons cause floods,
which bring down and lodge at the mouths of
the rivers thousands of trees, which threaten to
close their mouths. This would be the inevit



258             ITS RAVAGES.
able result if the tree were left to undergo slow
decay.  The Teredo, however, comes to the aid
of man, and renders incalculable services in boring every tree till it is internally like a honeycomb, and breaks up and floats away piecemeal.
Thus an entrance is preserved and an outlet
maintained for a country extending perhaps for
hundreds of miles.  In civilised countries the
services of this great family are not required.
The inconveniences and the costly damages they
effect are the occasion of loss, and of a serious
expenditure to prevent their ravages.  It has
been estimated, that at Plymouth and Devonport
alone the boring-worms have in one year damaged Government works to the amount of eight
thousand pounds.  In 1731-2 they committed
such ravages in the piles forming the sea-defences of Holland, that the Dutch were seriously
alarmed.  In England, when oak timber was a
drug, this wood was much used for marine constructions, such as harbors, groynes, &c.  In
Queen Elizabeth's reign the name applied to




THE THAMES TUNNEL COPIED FROM TEREDO. 259
them  in petitions setting forth the losses sustained, was expressive. This was Artes.
" The animal of the Teredo is like a long white
worm, varying from a foot to two feet and a half
in length, and about the size of a person's finger.
Mr. Brunell, perceiving how this soft creature
bored on, and encased itself in a calcareous piece
of masonry or tube as it progresses, perceived
how he might bore the great Tunnel under the
Thames. Men drove rods into the mud from a
shield, which was moved forward as they bored
their way, and a brick arch was constructed behind, ih imitation of the calcareous tube of the
worm.  Thus does observant man treasure up
and apply what even the animals in the lower
scale of creation can teach.
" The destructive Teredo, like the lion, has his
jackal-the  Limnoria  terebrans, or gribble
worm.  Woodwork in most situations, as posts
in harbors, and piles of wooden bridges, must be
protected by copper sheathing or square-headed
nails made for the purpose. The gribble finds
some little space, bores in and destroys the wood




260           THE GRIBBLE WORM.
around. The Teredo then finds an entry, and
destruction follows.  The wooden bridge ovei
the estuary of the Teign was destroyed some
years ago.  Other similar works, and particularly projecting landing piers, have been either
eaten away or jeopardised.
" In the account that has been circulated,
through the medium of the press, of the sunken
fleet, its condition, and the ravages of the worm,
there is matter that is not intelligible to one who
studies the habits of the lower animals of creation.
" We are told that a diver has gone down to
visit the great fleet which he finds in the middle
of the harbor, and upon the north side, lying
there on the sand; on the south side, on mud.
" It is further stated that the depth of water is
sixty feet. Now this is a very convenient depth,
for Man and the Teredo are limited in their
operations to the same depth from the surface.
A ship sunk in water twenty fathoms, or one
hundred and twenty feet deep, is safe from the
family of carpenter-mason worms, of whatever




OPERATIONS OF TEREDO LIMITED BY DEPTH. 261
species, (and for which consult that admirable
treatise, the Manual of the Mollusca, by S. P.
Woodward, Esq., F.G.S., of the British Museum).
Mlan has gone down so deep, but he can do but
little under such a pressure; and that is his
limit. Perhaps few men could descend so far.
At half that depth each of Mr. Deane's party
with his crowbar is in power as a giant, and in
the four hours during all which time each remained below, working at a wreck, performed
prodigies!
" The Russian ships that lie upon the sand are
reported to be untouched by the worm; while
those ships upon the mud are in this short time
so much affected that they will be worthless.
"Reading this statement, many understand
that the Teredines do not exist where the bottom
is sand; and where the mud is, they are ready
to transfer themselves, like rats in a dock, at
once to do execution upon sunken timber fullygrown and with fully-developed powers.
"From  my experience I can readily believe
there are seasons when the ravages of these




262 OPERATIONS OF TEREDO LIMITED BY DEPTH.
animals are more felt than at others. As a
member of a south-western town-council, I learnt
that elm sheathing to masonry or oak-posts were,
though upon the sand, at times eaten up presently.
"As to the mud of Sebastopol harbor being
the habitat of the fully grown worm, this must
be quite a mistake.
"The balk, floating planks, and beams of different woods, occupied and quite honeycombed
by the Teredo, show no outward signs of being
tenanted by the carpenter-mason. The worm
entered when very minute, when an emigrant
upon the look-out for a domicile, and fully
endued with the powers of locomotion. Some
bored for three feet and encased themselves with
masonry as they proceeded. No one interferes
with another, in which admirable social excellence they are probably guided by sound. They
work with the grain and are not afterwards
migratory. Like Charles the Second, they have
no disposition to go again upon their travels.
"A  mere view would not have allowed the




SHIP SUNK AT TORBAY.        263
diver to judge of the ravages already effected.
It may be that lie cut off pieces of the ships, and
so ascertained with some precision.
" The venerable line-of-battle ship sunk in
Torbay, when getting under weigh, some seventy
years ago, was eaten to pieces. When there
was motion, then pieces would break off and
float up, and fish  by shoals remain around
expectant of their meal. There is no hooking
ground for fishermen so good as that round a
sunken ship."
Being convinced that such an important subject to the naval architect as the boring of
Teredo could not have escaped the notice of the
officers of that most interesting institution, the
Royal Service Institution, Whitehall-yard (of
which I have the honor to be a member, and
which I advise everybody to visit), I went carefully over the museum  and found on the wall
(close to the Nelson relics) a fine specimen of
Teredo-eaten wood from the Sebastopol ships.
The reader may, therefore, with his own eyes,




264 SPECIMENS AT UNITED SERVICE INSTITUTION.
see the effects produced by the worm  as described by Mr. Roberts.
The ravages of the worm  are most apparent,
and it will be easily imagined that it is impossible to use the ships even if they could again be
raised from the bottom.
Close underneath these two interesting specimens is a most curious relic; it is:
" Gun from the wreck the Mary Rose, sunk in action
with the French off Spithead. Time,-Henry viii.
1545.
The wood-work in which this is placed is, I
believe, part and parcel of the gun.  I was
much delighted to find the large end of this also
bored by the Pholas shell but not by Teredo.
And here I may remark that the worm-like
Teredo always makes his tunnels regular, and
never cuts or crosses into that of his neighbor;
whereas Pholas is not so polite, and gouges the
wood he attacks in all directions.
From  this ancient gun I also learnt a useful
lesson, and Mr. Brett, of submarine telegraph
notoriety, confirmed my observation; it is that




ANCHOR FROM SPANISH ARMADA.    265
the oxide, &c. formed by the rust of iron under
water cements to itself all the shingle in the
neighborhood; and upon this gun pieces of
shingle are seen adherent fiom this cause. Outside the museum, in the open air, a much better
example of this can be seen; it is an anchor
from the wreck of one of the ships which formed
the Spanish Armada; it was sunk off the coast
of Ireland in 1588, and is quite covered with a
mass of shingle and shells. The dining tables in
the boys' hall at Westminster are said to be
made out of the oak wood from  the Spanish
Armada; they are beautifully polished, and
will last many hundred years more. In one of
the tables Mr. Cleghorn the butler shows a round
hole from a cannon shot; to my mind it looks
more like a natural knot in the wood. Now
this fact of decomposing iron making a natural
cement is most important to the engineer who
lays submarine telegraphs (it has been doubted
by some), and not a little assists the preservation
of the expensive and carefully prepared wire.
12




G66   WESTMINSTER SCHOOL DINING TABLES.
For my own part I believe they will never be
able to recover the great Atlantic cable, it
having been probably firmly cemented to the
surrounding shingle before this time.
As being at present resident in London, I had
not the opportunity of examining personally the
action of " the worm" upon the bottoms of ships,
I paid a visit to an establishment where I could
see these planks at my ease.  I accordingly
introduced myself to the son of Mr. Castle, Baltic
wharf, Milbank, close to Vauxhall Bridge. Mr.
Castle buys old ships and breaks them up for
firewood, which he sells at a cheap rate, and
capital fires they make. One gentleman, he tells
me, has had a set of furniture made from the oak
planks of these old ships. On the wall outside
the premises are fixed the figure-heads of some
of the ships that have been broken up; they are
more or less artistically carved, and therefore
worth preserving: and here we have a curious
collection, such as George IV., Neptune, Queen
Adelaide, Acheron, W. Manning, Jupiter, and
Lord Sidmouth. Over the door of the counting



OLD SHIPS BROKEN UP.         26T
house is an immense wooden arm holding out a
money bag which is gilt; it belonged to the
figure-head of the ship Commerce, and is not a
bad emblem of the office over which it is fixed.
Mr. Castle kindly showed me over the yard,
having previously taken from his desk a fine
specimen of Teredo-bored wood which he had
preserved from  one of his ships. One of the
workmen informed me that they found " the
worm" in old ships, and generally in ships that
had been sailing in tropical climates. It prefers
African oak and teak, for " them' things has as
nice appetites as we have ourselves."  Last year
he found in the Flamer and the BatAurst, which
were broken up, a great number of " them short
worms with hard heads that makes long holes
and lines them with cement as they go along" (a
capital description of Teredo).  "These two
slhips were' quite full of them; they scrunched
under the feet, and the birds came and picked
them  out to eat; they will get in anywhere
where the copper is knocked off the bottom of
the ship, and we finds'em  principally on the




268         OAK STAINED WITH INK.'flats' of the vessel; when they comes to an iron
or copper bolt they turns a one side and goes
round it, as they don't like it." This man promised to save for me the next good specimen he
obtained.  I observed in several portions of
wood among the bones and skeletons of the ships
that were about the yard, a most interesting
natural preservative process which takes place in
oak ships which are fastened together with iron.
I found many bits of oak-wood stained of a blue
ink-like color. Iere then is the explanation;
the iron of the bolt becomes decomposed by the
action of the water, and combines with the
tannic acid in the oak, thereby forming, as
everybody knows, genuine ink. The wood saturated with this ink resists the action of the water
better than the uninked wood, and the worm
will not bore into it. I obtained several fine
specimens of this wood; the stained part tastes
bitter, exactly like ink, when crushed between
the teeth.  This same phenomenon may be
observed in oak gate-posts in the country which
have iron fastenings or nails driven into them.




SILK OF MUSSEL SHELL.        269
But although, at Brighton, the burglarious
Pholas is kept out of the wood of the pier by
means of the iron nails, yet other parasites have
established themselves on the iron armor thereof; for I observed large masses of the common
mussel-shell hanging  on  to them, like huge
bunches of black llamburgh grapes.  While I
was looking from them above, a colossal wave
came thundering in, giving the poor mussels a
tremendous blow, and making them rattle again.
Why did not that wave, I thought, knock off
the shells? An opportunity soon came, for, on
examination, I found that they were all strung
on together, like a rope of onions.  There is a
centre rope, upon which, or rather to which,
each shell is attached by an independent string;
nay, more than this, each shell has tied himself on to his neighbor for common safety's sake,
like the travellers do going up Mont Blanc, as
we see in Albert Smith's picture.  The shells'
rope looks like a very coarse bit of unravelled
tow which has been soaked in water; it is, in
fact, a sort of natural string.  I have seen a




270            TONS OF MUSSELS.
ladies' glove made from the tow, or rather silk,
secreted by the pinna-shell, and the pinna uses
his silk for the same purpose as the mussel his
tow, namely, to anchor himself firmly to a rock.
In the British Museum may be seen some exceedingly fine specimens of the pinna-shell, and
also gloves made from its silk or byssus.
On the ends of the iron drain-pipes at Brighton, I found another cluster of these mussels.
Here, the object to which they had attached
themselves being round, they  had  moulded
themselves accordingly; and, instead of being in
the form of a bunch of grapes, they had closely
and firmly spun themselves together, so as to
form a thick, firm sheet, which could be easily
peeled off, being nearly as firm as a house-door
mat.
This fact of their binding powers has been observed and acted on by the French engineers in
Cherbourg; for, to make the breakwater, they
have planted, as it were, several tons of mussels,
throwing them upon the loose masses of stone.
In course of time, these little workmen will spin




NOTES AT FOLKESTONE.         271
their string-like webs for self-security's sake, and
will bind the loose stones firmly together, thus
unconsciously making a living cement, more durable than any material ever invented by man.
Thus we see that these two apparently unimportant shells-the Pholas the destroyer, and the
Mussel the preserver-silently and unobserved
in the depths of the ocean, mnay bring about important changes in the affairs of men, and even
turn the scale in the destiny of nations.
I must now, with the reader's permission,
change the scene of the " Hunt on the Sea-shore"
to that charming sea-side town, Folkestone, where
I had spent most of the autumn of 1859,
and much of the following has appeared in The
Field, under the "Naturalist" columns, and by
the title of " Sea-side Gatherings."
Folkestone, anciently called "Fulchestan" and
Folkston," was of considerable note even so long
ago as the times of the Romans. As we have a
" King's-stone" near London, so we have a " Lapis
Populi," or people's (folks) st'one in Kent; and
from  this we may conclude that, when the




272            MILITARY CAMPS.
invading Romans came over to this island, they
found numerous inhabitants at this town. It is
believed to have been the site of one of their
numerous fortresses, which they wisely erected to
guard themselves against the bugbears of those
days-the Saxons. Just as we, the present occupants of this island, have a military station at
Shorncliffe, for defensive purposes, on the heights
above Folkestone, so did the Romans form a camp
and look out upon the top of Castle Hill, about a
mile and a half behind the town, and just above
our present encampment.  There is about as
much trace left of the Roman camp now as there
will be of Shorncliffe a thousand years hence, viz.
a few earthworks covered over with nature's carpet, green grass and turf. But if the works of
man are perishable, the works of nature are not.
The action of the waves upon hard stone near
this town, as well as upon chalk at Brighton, can
be well observed; for, in order to preserve the
town from the white-crested battering-rams of
Father Neptune, two sea-walls, called "The
Horn," have been constructed, on each side of




FOSSIL; LUGS" AND CANNON-BALLS.   273
the entrance to the harbor, with stones collected
from the neighboring cliff.  This cliff is composed of sandstone, disposed in layers, which crack
off in places fiom each other like the sheets of an
unbound book. There can be no doubt that this
sandstone, now as hard as sheet iron, once formed
an ancient sea-beach, and that, long before the
creation of man, the waves rolled in, and the
tides ebbed and flowed upon this now fossil sand,
exactly as they do at the present moment.  Examine it, and you will find well-marked holes and
borings of the " lugs," or sea-worms, the decen
dants of which are this day alive in hundreds in
tile mud of the harbor not three yards off. When
the lug makes his boring, he lines it with a sort
of cement, and thus leaves a regular open tunnel;
the next tide fills up these holes with sand and
mud, and we find these turned into fossil, resembling holes made with a common walking-stick.
These ancient lugs were evidently gigantic fellows, if we judge by the holes they made. They
themselves have disappeared, but their holes re12*




274    FOSSIL' LUGS" AND CANNON-BALLS.
main, converted by the magic hand of Time into
adamantine rock.
We observe in this formation a good example
of the tendency of sandstone to assume rude crystalline forms, for it often presents blocks the
edges of which are rounded and smoothed with
almost mathematical accuracy; and this explains
how a large stone as round as a cannon-ball, and
exceedingly like one in appearance, was obtained
by the coastguard man at Sandgate (a village close
by) to form the summit of his garden gate-post.
At first, I thought it was some ancient stone cannon-ball of gigantic dimensions; but, no, it was
never manufactured by the hand of man, but by
the ocean, whose delight it seems to be to transform everything submitted to the action of her
workmen-the  waves-into a rounded  form.
Who ever picked up a stone on the sea-shore, that
had been long submitted to the action of the
waves, that presented any edges or square corners? The ocean has put these blocks of semi-crystallize sandstone into her water lathes and converted them  into cannon-balls.  It would be




INHABITANTS OF " THE HORN.        275
entering into a difficult geological question as to
when this sandstone formed the actual sea-beach.
Suffice it to say, that it was long anterior to even
the creation of man, that it had nothing to do
with the deluge, and that there is no doubt that
a gradual upheaval of the land has taken place at
some very remote period, raising up the chalk
downs, and the various strata near it.
In the hard stone blocks which compose the
walls of the " Horn" are thousands of the holes
of the Pholas, made at the time that these stones
were lying in the sea, at the base of the neighboring cliff; and when the Pholades die, and
their shells drop out, numerous sea creatures use
their holes for habitation. Little crabs, shrimps,
sand-hoppers or (as the men call them here) skipjacks, together with thousands of little animals
exactly like common woodlice, which the amphib
ious boys about the pier call " monkey-peas" (and
not a bad name either-monkey, because of their
activity; pease, because they roll up, and look
like pease), are seen swarming in every direction.
These little "monkey-peas" are vegetable fee




2706    " MONKEY-PEAS  AND  SLUTTERS."
ders, and they will get into the boats and devour
the planks forming their sides, if not well looked
after. They also eat up the sails and nets, if left
rolled up any time. Then, again, the whole surface of the rocks are coated with hard white peppercorns. These are thousands of acorn shells, or
barnacle shells-stupid and uninteresting things
when left high and dry, but beautiful when seen
feeding in a vivarium.
But have all these little beasts no enemies?
The long swell of the tide brings them  in in
legions: first of all come sailing along the jellyfish, curious things, that look like a flexible soupplate of calves'-foot jelly.  They are of a bell
shape, and swim along by means of contracting
and expanding their bodies, like the opening and
shutting of an umbrella.  They have numerous
queer names. The Folkstone name for them  is
" slutters;" at Dover they call them " water-galls"
and " miller's eyes," and " sea starch;" at Portsmouth they are called' blubbers "   elsewhere
"slobs" and " slobbers."  When preserved in the
cabinet, they are placed among the Medusee, or




BLUE SLUTTERS STING.          277
Acephalous Mollusks. They are great bores to
the fishermen, who often catch so many in their
trawl nets that they can hardly haul them  on
board their boats. When the nets are brought
up, they appear to have been soaked in a strong
solution of common starch, and require boiling
before they are fit for use again. There is also a
species of jelly fish that has long strings like wire
tendrils hanging down from  them, which have
the power of stinging: these are called " sea
nettles" and " stingers."   These latter kind are
not common in shore; their home seems to be out
at sea, where they are caught of an enormous size.
ITard weather drives them in, and then let the
bathers beware.  I know a young lady who was
severely injured by one of them: being ignorant
of its powers, she foolishly caught it as it floated
by, put it to her mouth, and bit it; she suffered
acute pain and swelling of the lips and face for
several days, in consequence of the sting she
received from the brute.  The sensation of the
sting is like a sharp blow with a bunch of common stinging-nettles; it causes a sense of irritation




278        SLUTTERS EAT SKIP-JACKS.
and itching all over the body. On the 25th of
August, when out fishing, I observed innumerable
specimens of a very large kind of jelly-fish, which
the fishermen call "blue slutters."   They were
about the size of a very large cabbage, and presented round the margins of their cup-shaped
bodies an edging of a most beautiful blue color.
I dissected several on the spot, but was soon
obliged to desist; for the left hand (in which I
held them) became covered with a red rash, and
the fingers felt numb and as though seized with
an attack of "pins and needles." It is, doubtless,
this power of stinging that enables the slutters to
procure food. The fishermen declared that they
subsist on the water, but I found out they ate
something more substantial. I never examined
a specimen without finding in one of four cavities
which form the stomachs several skip-jacks, some
alive, some half digested. Sometimes I have
found these little brutes so recently made prisoners, that Mr. Jack has made a skip out of the
jailor's stomach, and was free again in the sea.
I now understand why they are called "mill



BEAUTY OF THE BLADDER-WRACK.    279
er's eyes."  When the stomach is full of food,
they present the appearance of having four great
goggle-eyes staring through a pair of spectacles.
I know not what creatures eat these " slutters"
when alive, but I found one dead, around which
were a whole shoal of hungry shrimps, eating
away as hard as they could. When the " slutter"
is dried, it shrivels away to nothing, there being
so much water in its composition. They are on
this account useless to the farmer as manure. In
the Chinese seas they are found of gigantic dimensions; and a gentleman informs me that when
off Macao, in China, he saw the fishermen collecting them by boat-loads. They did not touch
them with their hands, but caught them  with
large iron rakes. These Chinese (probably aware
that they would dry up if exposed to the sun,)
wisely mixed them up in other manure, which
was afterwards dug into the rice fields.
The base of the Folkestone pier is covered with
numerous plants that are commonly called seaweeds. I do not think they ought to be called
weeds, because, according to Johnson, a weed is




280     BEAUTY OF TIHE BLADDER-WRACK.
" a noxious or useless herb;" let us rather call
them sea plants," for they are quite as useful in
the economy of the world of water as the green
vegetation is in the well-being of the world of
land. When the tide is down, these plants hang
about, dirty and black looking objects. When
the water comes in, they assume another aspect,
and float about with graceful wave-like motions.
Why are they not knocked to pieces by the restless waves? Take one example, the common
" bladder-wrack;" we find every here and there,
regular bladders in its substance, each containing
air-and these act the part of buoys, lifting up
the whole plant, and preventing injury being
done by the crushing and bruising action of the
rolling swell. If we make a section of these
bladders we shall find inside a beautiful network
of silk cobweb-like fibres, which form a pretty
pattern with their complicated interlacings.When these plants have been submitted any time
to the action of the sun, the air inside the bladders becomes expanded, and they make a famous
popping noise when trodden upon. Nature seems




ROOTS OF SEA-WEED. POUTERS.     281
frequently to apply modifications of one and the
same plan to different purposes, and man follows
her example; thus we have a bubble of air inclosed in an iron case, forming a floating buoy to
mark out dangerous sands, &c. to sailors, and we
have a lighter kind of air, commonly called gas,
inclosed in a silk case, which will float in a different medium from water, in the form of the
Royal Vauxhall balloon.  If we were given a
yard of rope, the end of which was untwisted for
a couple of inches, and were told to fasten the
unstranded portion on to a rock in such a manner
that the waves would not move it from its place,
we should attempt our task in vain; but yet in
the roots of humble and despised sea plants,
which have taken their growth on bare and
smooth stones, we find a wonderful example of a
fastening more adhesive than any human sewing
or screwing-more difficult to be moved than if
it were attached by marine glue of a hundred
horse power.
Among the thickets of the submarine underwood live the enemies of the crabs, the shrimps




282              BULL-ROUTS.
and the barnacle shells. I caught many whiting
pouts, or " pouters," as they are called at Folkestone, and found, without exception, that there
was a red brickdust-like substance upon the lower
surface of their bodies; this felt gritty to the
fingers, and I suspected it was the powdered
shells of crabs.  My idea was soon substantiated
by my finding in the stomach of a "pouter" two
or three crabs more or less digested, and their
hard shells powdered by the action of the digestive process. At low tide the crabs get into the
holes of the rocks, and come out again as the water rises, just in time to meet the hungry pouters,
who come in with the tide to look for their dinner in the harbor.
Upon my hook, close to the pier, I caught a
little black fish with a malignant, diabolical countenance. I was going to unhook him when a boy
cried out, " Don't touch him, sir; he is a' bullrout,' and he will bite you." I shook him off the
hook, and found the boy's advice to be founded
on experience, for Mr. Bull-rout fastened on to a
bit of wood, and bit it severely.




THE DRAIN PIPES AT BRIGHTON.      283
The bull-rout is the "goby" of Yarrell.  His
mouth will well repay examination-a more formidable and desperado-like set of teeth I never
saw. They are more like a tiger's than a fish's
teeth-but how beautifully are they adapted to
their work! All the bull-routes I caught had
their stomachs full of the barnacle shell, and their
office seems to be expressly to feed on the barnacle.  Every one knows how  tightly this little
shell fastens itself to the rocks, and the bull-rout's
teeth seem to have been made expressly to tear
it off.
Now these barnacles have a certain amount of
what might be vulgarly called sense, but is in reality an instinctive act, for at certain periods I
had observed at Brighton that there was a peculiar smell in the houses, as though proceeding
from the drains. During a walk on the beach I
discovered the reason of this. There are several
iron pipes projecting out of the shingle towards
the sea-at high water their mouths are covered,
at low water they are open.  Thus therefore the
alternating smells could be accounted for-when




284     THE DRAIN PIPES AT BRIGHTON.
the end of the pipe was exposed by the flowing
of the water, up would come all the noxious gases
formed by the drainage-when, on the contrary,
the water covered the mouths of the pipes, the
smells remained quiescent.
Wishing to ascertain this for a certainty, at low
tide I placed my head inside one of the pipes and
puffed away at a cigar. Away flew the smoke
upwards into the dark regions of the pipe, and
probably had it lasted long enough, would have
come out in some of the smart houses facing the
sea.
During the experiment, I ascertained a curious
fact: the upper half of the pipe was lined with
Balani or acorn shells about the size of a split
pea, the same kind that we see in the Vivaria of
the Zoological Gardens, and which continually
expand and contract their little hand-like infusoria catchers; on the lower half of the pipe, however, not a single barnacle could be seen. The
reason was evident; down the lower half was
rushing a stream  of fresh water.  Now, fresh
water is death to the Balani, and therefore they




IRON POLISHED BY ROLLING STONES.   2S5
wisely keep above its level, and confine the limits
of their colony to the upper half of the pipe.
Snug quarters have they found inside the pipe:
they get their dinner when the sea water comes
up; and when the tide goes down, they have a
nice airing from the fresh sea-breeze as it rushes
upwards.
Upon examining the outside of the pipe, I
found it to be most beautifully polished, feeling
like glass to the touch. This is caused by the
perpetual motion of the pebbles rolling over it;
even the joints where the pipes met had their
edges worn off and smoothed. In one junction,
I observed that a stone had become fixed, and
that the iron round it had become worn away, so
that thin edges of iron were projecting over it;
in fact, it was, to use a jeweller's expression, set in
iron, just as precious stones are set in gold and
silver. The pipe looked red; it was covered by
a thin coat of rust, which is probably formed
fresh every time the tide goes out. In proof of
this, I adduce the fact that Robinson Crusoe-like,
I observed the mark of a foot which  had




286       FOOTSTEP OF YOUNG LADY.
been set upon the pipe. This impression certainly
was not that of a cannibal, but had been made
by the tiny and delicate little foot of a pretty
young English girl (for I afterwards saw her
walking along, about a quarter of a mile away,)
who had stepped upon it when passing over.
The young lady had on a new pair of India-rubber shoes, as we dare predicate, from  the fact
that the impressions of the triangles usually
found at the bottom of such shoes were well
marked. If the shoes had been old, the triangles would have been worn off, and of course no
impressions of them made on the rust of the
pipe.  Underneath the foot-mark, we saw the
common surface of the iron with a fresh coating
of rust all round; proving that, at every fall of
the tide, a fresh process of oxydation or rust
goes on, which, in time, must greatly diminish
the thickness of the pipe.
The action of the breaking waves and rolling
shingle often produces curious results upon wood
submitted to their action.  Long jetties of deal
wood are run out from the shore at Folkestone,




SEA GRAPES AND SCUTTLES.        287
to enable the shingle to accumulate for the protection of the harbor; fastened upon these deal
piles I observed a substance that looked like an
extraneous growth.  It was nothing but the
softer parts of the wood hammered by the waves
and shingle into a sort of pulp, which had afterwards got dry. It was arranged somewhat like
the curls of the hair of an African negro, and in
a pretty chequered pattern. I was much pleased
to find exactly the same appearance on the
board, also of deal, belonging to one of our soldiers' wives whose sick child I was attending.
The perpetual friction of wet clothes, soap, &c.,
will therefore produce the same result upon a
soft deal board, (only in a minor degree,) as do
the waves of the sea upon the deal piles of the
breakwater.
Cast up by the waves, and lying among the
seaweed at the foot of the pier, I espied a black
mass of something that looked like a bunch of
burnt vial corks tied together. I asked a prawnfisher what they were. " Sea grapes," said he. I
pretended not to understand. " Well, sir, if they




288        SEA GRAPES AND SCUTTLES.
aint sea grapes they  are tortoises' spawn."
" And what are tortoises'  "Tortoises is ink
spewers, and ink spewers is scuttle fish." Here,
then, is the fisherman's account of the eggs of
the common cuttle (not scuttle) fish. These eggs
are very like a bunch of black Hamburgh grapes,
each conical-shaped egg being composed of a
thick, hard material, and bound by a foot-stalk
on to a centre string, which is as thick as a lead
pencil, and feels like india-rubber when cut with
a knife. As the specimen was recently thrown
up, I thought that possibly the young cuttle
might be alive.  I opened one of the largest
eggs, and there I was pleased to find a little
cuttle, the size of a split horse-bean, all alive,
oh! It was perfectly in shape as its parent,
but soft in substance as a bit of fresh paste
made of flour.   I put him  in a quiet pool
of sea-water, and in an instant the water became
black, as though a thimbleful of writing-ink had
been upset into it. The cuttle is a favorite food
of many sea animals, and he has no defence but
concealment.  When he sees his enemy coming




FOSSIL INK OF CUTTLE-FISH.      289
he has the power of emitting from his body a
quantity of ink-like fluid, which obscures the
water and hides his shining body.  This ink,
when collected and prepared, is known as sepia,
and is, as everybody knows, much used  for
hdrawing and other purposes. It was most interesting to see that this little cuttle-fish, which
was only half-way through his egg-state of existence, used his natural defence the very instant
le first saw sunlight, and some days, may be
weeks, before his proper and natural time of
appearance.
Dr. Lankester, in lecturing upon the Sepia at
the Royal Institution, remarked,   That like
human scribes, the cuttle-fish frequently delighted to envelope itself in clouds of ink."
The ancient cuttle-fishes of geological times
are found fossil, with their ink-bags quite perfect
and full of ink. In my lamented father's museum
at Oxford is a splendid specimen of a fossil cuttle
with the ink still in it. It is mentioned in his
"Bridgewater Treatise," p. 218, vol. i., and a
13




290     DR. BUCKLAND S OBSERVATIONS.
plate given in vol. ii. He says of it: " So completely are the character and qualities of the
ink retained in its fossil state, that when, in
1828, I submitted a portion of it to my friend,
Sir Francis Chantrey, requesting him to try its
powers as a pigment, he had prepared a drawing
with a saturated portion of the fossil substance;
the drawing was shown to a celebrated painter,
without any information as to its origin, and he
immediately pronounced it to be tinted with
sepia of excellent quality, and begged to be
informed by what colorman it was prepared."
Dr. Buckland, with his usual acumen, draws a
conclusion from the fact that these fossil ink-bags
were found full. He writes, p. 289: "I have
drawings of the remains of extinct species
prepared also with their own ink; with this fossil
ink I might record the fact and explain the
causes of its wonderful preservation. I might
register the proofs of instantaneous death detected
in these ink-bags, forthey contain the fluid
which the living sepia emits in the moment of
alarm; and might detail further evidence of




INK SPEWERS AND TORTOISES.      291
their immediate burial in the retention of the
forms of these distended membranes, since they
would speedily have decayed and have spilt
their ink had they been exposed but a few hours
to decomposition in water.  The animals must,
therefore, have died suddenly, and been quickly
buried in the sediment that formed the strata in
which their petrified ink-bags are thus preserved."
The Folkstone fishermen have observed the
habit of the cuttle-fish of ejecting a coloring
material when alarmed, and have christened
them by the significant but not elegant name of
"ink-spewers."   They call them  "tortoises,"
because, when taken out of the water, "they
hunches up their backs like a tortoise."
The kind of cuttle-fish whose eggs I found has
a curious shaped white bone in the centre of its
soft body, and we frequently see large bottles in
chemists' shops full of these cuttle-fish bones.They are used when finely powdered for tooth
powder, and also to rub out ink marks fiom paper-their gritty consistency makes them useful




292           "MAN SUCKERS."
for these purposes, and whereas they are composed principally of lime, they are often cut into
bits, and given to canary birds to peck at. Their
beautiful laminated internal structure will well
repay examination.
Besides this common cuttle-fish, there is another kind of creature very like it found in the sea
near Folkestone. They have no bone in their
bodies; the fishermen call them squibs and mansuckers, because they have powerful sucking
discs on their long arms, with which they can
take a very firm hold on intruding hands. They
are not commonly found near the shore, but live
more out at sea. I bargained for one, and forthwith dissected him. His length was about two
feet when spread out-the body of the shape and
the size of a large Jersey pear-the head in its
outline much resembled that of an elephant when
viewed from the front, surrounded by eight long
arms, the lower surface of which were covered
with numerous sucking discs, and upon turning
these away the mouth was exposed, formed by
two hard, black, horny beaks, exactly like the




THE A"MAN SUCKERE' CAUGHT.      293
beak of a parrot-and this is well calculated to
inflict a severe bite upon the unfortunate fish or
crab that is held fast to it by the powerful suckers. These beaks are found fossil, and in early
times of geology were a great puzzle to beginners, and there were many disputes as to what
they were. Although the body seems soft and
jelly-like, yet the man-sucker has a highly complicated stomach, composed of firm, musculal
substance, like the gizzard of the fowl. The livei
is as large as a hen-egg, and altogether it is a
highly formed animal as regards its inside. The
eye is very beautiful-it is oblong, like the eye
of a Chinese, and the pupil is of a bright and resplendent gold color. The lens is highly complicated, and shaped like a Coddington magnifying
lens.
The power of vision must be acute, for shortly
after my dissection, when fishing with a line
about two miles out at sea, I espied a man-sucker
of a large size, floating quietly by the boat. I
was preparing to plunge in to catch him, or he
to catch me with his suckers, but he saw me and




294   EXPERIMENTS WITH C MAN SUCKER."
sank down out of sight like a ten-pound shot.He was floating wiitl his beak upwards, and his
arms hanging downwards like the plume on a
soldier's helmet, the boss of the helmet representing the mouth. Determined not to be disappointed, I offered a reward of beer, and have obtained a living specimen of a man-sucker.
The color of the specimen when first caught
was that of brown silk, a pleasing color to the
eye, shot with gold; but the tints gradually got
dull as the animal became exhausted.  Underneath the skin of the body and the arms is seen
waving about as if from cell to cell a dark brown
colored fluid, causing the tints of the skin to become at times almost white, at other times almost
iradescent. I do not know that this fact has ever
been noticed before. I find that strong brine has
caused my pet man-sucker (who soon died) to
turn of a red color, like the outside of a bit of
boiled beef. The conical eyes are defended with
eyelids, which the animal closes when the eye is
touched. The natural position when at rest is
with the mouth turned downwards, and the suck



SEA MONSTERS.            295
ers applied to the bottom of the vessel-they
hold so tight that the creature can be removed
with difficulty; the moment one arm relaxes, the
others hold firmer still. I allowed him to grasp
my hand and arm-the feeling is that of a hundred tiny air-pumps applied all at once, and little round red marks are left on the skin where
the suckers were applied-and when they were
all fast, the animal could hardly be got off again.
The sensation of being held by a man-sucker is
anything but agreeable. The feeling of being
held fast by a (literally) cold blooded, soulless,
pitiless and voracious sea monster, almost makes
one's blood run cold. I can now easily understand why the natives of the Chinese and Indian
seas have such a horror of them, for in these climates they are seen large and formidable enough
to be dangerous to any human beings who may
be so unfortunate as to be clutched by them.
It is not impossible that the extraordinary seamonster, the "Kraken,"  may have been some
kind of gigantic cuttle-fish. Mr. Pennant thus
writes of the eight-armed cuttle-fish: —  In the




296          ATTACKS UPON MEN.
Indian seas this species has been found of such a
size as to measure twelve feet in breadth across
the central part, while each arm was fifty-four
feet in length; thus making it extend from point
to point one hundred and twenty feet."  He
further states, that "the natives of the Indian
Isles, when sailing in their canoes, always take
care to be provided with hatchets, in  order
immediately to cut off the arms of such of these
animals as happen to fling them over the side of
the canoe, lest they should pull it under water
and sink it."
The opinion of Dr. Shaw is equally decided
regarding the occurrence of this animal. "The
existence of some enormously large species of
the cuttle-fish tribe in the northern Indian seas
can  hardly  be doubted; and  though  some
accounts may have been exaggerated, yet there is
sufficient cause for believing that such species
may very far surpass all that are generally
observed about the coasts of European seas. A
northern navigator, of the name of Deris, is said,
some years ago, to have lost three men in the




ATTACKS UPON MEN.           297
Afiican seas by a monster of the colossal cuttlefish kind, which unexpectedly made its appearance while the men were employed, during a
calm, in raking the sides of the vessel. The
colossal fish seized three men in its arms, and
drew them under water, in spite of every effort
to preserve them: the thickness of one of the
arms, which was cut off in the contest, was that
of the mizen-mast, and the suckers of the size of
pot-lids."
In his work on the "Natural History of the
Mollusca," Denys Montfort details the circumstances above alluded to by Dr. Shaw, from the
account as supplied by Deris himself; and,
among other instances, he mentions that at St.
Malo, in the chapel of St. Thomas, there is an ex
voto, or picture, deposited there by the crew of
the vessel, in remembrance of their wonderful
preservation during a similar attack off the coast
of Angola (west coast of Africa). An enormous
cuttle-fish suddenly threw its arms across the
vessel, and was on the point of dragging it to the
bottom, when the continual efforts of the crew




298            JAPANESE SHOW.
succeeded in cutting off the cenacula with swords
and hatchets.  During the period of their greatest danger, they invoked the aid of St. Thomas;
and being successful in freeing themselves fiom
the dreadful opponent, on their return home
they went in  procession to the  chapel, and
offered up their thanksgiving. They also procured a painter to represent, as accurately as
possible, their encounter, and the danger which
at the moment threatened the termination of
their existence. The above stories are  taken
from vol. viii. of the " Naturalist's Library," by
Dr. R. Hamilton. Avery striking representation
is given of the Angola cuttle-fish seizing the
boat in its long arms.
The Japanese have evidently a belief that the
cuttle-fish will attack human beings; for in Mr.
L. Oliphant's "China and Japan," I find  a
description of a Japanese show, which consisted
of " a series of groups of figures carved in wood,
the size of life, and  as cleverly colored  as
Madame Tussaud's wax-works."  One of these
groups Mr. Oliphant describes as follows: " No.




C FOLKESTONE BEEF."           299
5 was a group of women bathing in the sea; one
of them had been caught in the folds of a cuttlefish; the others, in alarm, were escaping, leaving their companion to her fate. The cuttle-fish
was represented on a huge scale, its eyes, eyelids, and mouth, being made to move simultaneously by a man inside the head."
Mr. Beale in his " South Sea Voyage" describes
an adventure he had on the Bonin Islands, where
lie tried to stop a large " Man Sucker," (which
was four feet across its expanded arms,) from
getting back into the water, the brute fastened
upon his person with a murderous clutch: it had
to be cut off him bit by bit.
Most of the fishermen's houses in Folkestone
harbor are adorned with festoons of fish hung
out to dry; some of these look like gigantic
whiting. There was no head, tail, or fins to
them, and I could not make out their nature
without close examination. The rough skin on
their reverse side told me at once that they
were a species of dog-fish. I asked what they
were?   "Folkestone  beef,"  was the  reply.




300       FISHERMEN'S NOMENCLATURE.
What sort of fish is this? " That's a Rig;" and
this? " that's a Huss;" and this other? " that!
a' Bull Huss;'" this bit of fin? " that's a' Fiddler;'"  and this bone? "that's the'jaw  of
Uncle Owl,'" &c., &c.
Here, then, was a new nomenclature; but I
determined to clear up the matter, so day after
day, when waiting in the harbor for the trawlboats to arrive, I took down my two volumes of
"Yarrell's' British Fishes."   A  class was soon
assembled, and turning over the pages one by
one, I asked the name of the fish whose portraits
formed headings to the chapters. In this way I
got a curious collection of local names.  I give
now only the dog-fish kind.  A  "rig" is the
" common tope," Yarrell; a " bastard rig " is the
"smooth hound," Yarrell; the "huss, or robin
huss," is the small spotted dog-fish; the "bull
huss," the large spotted dog-fish; the " fiddler,"
is the angel, or shark ray; " uncle owl's jaw," belonged to a species of skate.
I must here bear testimony to the excessive
civility, and really gentleman-like conduct of the




FISHERMEN'S NOMENCLATURE.       301
Folkestone fishermen; at first they were shy of
me, and tried to cram me with impossible stories,
&c.; but we soon became the best of friends, and
I really believe I have made some true friends
among these rude but most honest and sterling
men.
Nearly all these kinds of dog-fish above mentioned, are caught by the men who "go out after
rigs" to the " hungry ground," over the Warne
sands; and they catch them with "long lines,"
laid down all night.
Some of the large rigs are nothing more nor less
than sharks of the English waters, and most formidable creatures they are. They have teeth of
a triangular shape, exceeding sharp, and so
arranged that if one is broken off another comes
up into its place. "You see, sir, they has jaws
as tears ye like a bramble-bush."  The skin is
not covered with scales, but with an exceedingly
tough armor, which sets the teeth on edge when
felt, and is " a terrible thing to dull your knife."
When the rigs, &c. are caught out at sea they are
thrown down to the bottom of the boat, and as




302     ROUGH.DOGS AND SMOOTH DOGS.
they jump about there, they can be heard "grating one against each other."   A rig lives longer
than any fish in warm weather, but dies soonest
in cold. When the lines are hauled, and there
are a lot of freshly-caught rigs at the bottom  of
the boat, the men are obliged to be careful not
to get bitten.  " They all goes mad, sir, and it's
like being among a lot of wild beasts."  They
have been known to catch hold of the men's
"barbell," or fishing petticoat, and shake it.  I
have seen a small boat nearly full of these various
kinds of fish-rigs, husses, bull-husses, fiddlers,
&c. They are vagabond curs of the ocean, that
go prowling and snapping anywhere and anyhow
for food. The fishermen hate them because they
do so much damage to the herring-nets, eating
the fish actually out of the net, and often rolling
themselves right up in it. At Dover, during the
herring time, there are plenty of " rough dogs"
and " smooth dogs," and the sea sometimes boils
with them. There is a very peculiar smell about
these dog-fish, and they are not good to eat boiled
or fried. Ten minutes after the arrival of the boats




FOOD OF RIG.              303
the small fish-dealers may be seen cutting off
their heads, tails, and fins, and splitting them
into halves; they are then salted and hung out
to dry, and  taste, when  broiled, "like  veal
chops."  They are eaten by the poorer class, as
" a relish for breakfast." The great heads, and
the intestines, &c, are left in the harbor till
picked up by the owners of crab-pots, or stalkers
for baits. The livers are colled and boiled for
oil for the boats in winter.  There is an immense
deal of gelatine in these heads and fins, and I
tried in vain to persuade the men to boil them
up, quoting the example of the Chinese, who
esteem shark's-fin soup as a great delicacy.  An
Englishman is naturally a bad cook, and soupmaking of any kind is not his forte.
The Rigs have a long projecting nose (one
species of the shark is called "old shovel-nose,"
by the sailors), and this nose is of the same service to the rig as the snout is to a pig, for with
it he routs about among the sand for small fish.
The plaice, sole, &c., are essentially hiders in
the sand, and the dog-fish comes and routs them




304            THE RIG'S HEAD.
up with his nose, and then snaps them  up as
they attempt to escape.  I found several of
these small fish in their stomachs, and in one
monster the skin and the dorsal spikes of his
cousin, the "pike dog-fish," called by the men,
tle " spur-fish."  In Dorsetshire they call them
" spur-dogs."  In order to see how  this nose
acted, I pressed a rig's head into a heap of wet
sand and shingle. It was quite marvellous to
remark how beautifully the nose was fitted to
its work; man, curiously enough, copies its
shape exactly in the instrument used for paring
turf. On making a section of the nose I was
much struck at its internal anatomy; it is not
solid, for that would be too heavy; the outer
skin forms a framework, and from side to side
firm white strings are stretched across so as to
make a series of chambers, which are filled with
a beautiful white gelatinous fluid. The organ
of smell is highly developed, and the delicate
membrane on which  the  nerves are  spread
(answering to the Schneiderian membrane in our
own bodies) is defended by a fold of skin to




STORY ABOUT THE RIG.          305
keep the sand out of it, answering to our nostril.
The eye, when fresh, can be compared to nothing
but a cup hollowed out of a large pearl, containing a diamond as its lens, and powerful muscles
move it in all directions. On sinking the blead
in clear sea-water, the eye glares like a cat's eye
in the dark. I can fancy nothing more horrible
than the glare and terrible rolling of this merciless, ravenous sea-tiger, deep down under water,
and can well understand the piercing cry of
horror which a human being naturally utters
when he sees the murderous glance of the pur
suing and man-eating shark. I heard a story
that, some five years ago, the rigs for some
reason migrated into shallow water somewhere
at the back of the Isle of Wight, and that people
" was afraid to bathe for them." Rigs' teeth are
found loose on the sand of the harbor.  The
South-Sea islanders fasten them, in a firm and
most ingenious manner, in rows on sticks, spears,
&c., and make formidable weapons of them.
There are several well selected and beautiful
examples of this art in the United Service Insti



306         SKIN OF' THE IIUSS."
tution, Whitehall. The whole of the skeleton is
made of cartilage, or gristle, and easily decays;
the glass-like teeth will last almost for ever; and
here we have an explanation of a geological
phenomenon. In many fossil-beds of England,
sharks' teeth are found fossil by the thousand.
In Malta they are called St. Paul's teeth. There
were no fishermen to set " long lines" for them.
They must have multiplied  exceedingly, and
when they died, and their bodies decayed, every
particle would disappear but the teeth, which
would sink down into the mud, there to remain
till turned up by the geological hammer of the
present period. All the bony material in the.
dog-fish tribes, seems concentrated on the outside
of the body, in the form of this rough armor.
Man turns this to account, for the skins of the
huss, "which rasp like a file," are sold to wheelrights, and they do certain kinds of polishing
better than any sand-paper made by human
hands. The fishermen collect the heads of these
fish, and they make most convenient and handy
things to scrub the wooden boards of the fish



4 FIDDLERS.              307
truck. It is a curious sight to see the fishmonger's boy working away at his board with the
head of a huss as a scrubbing-brush. The skins
of the soles are collected and "sold for three
shillings and sixpence a score to make isinglass."
On the rig lines they often catch the fiddlers;
"' we calls them fiddlers because they are like a
fiddle." These, also, as well as the two kinds of
huss, are cut open and dried for food. The fiddlers' heads remain alive a long time. I was
cutting up one of them more than half an hour
after its decapitation, and the jaws on a sudden
spontaneously closed firmly upon my knife and
held it fast.
A wandering showman came into the town,
and, for the sum  of one penny, I saw  " the
largest alligator ever imported into this country
taken alive;" the thing had been stuffed the
last twenty years. It had been captured on the
banks of the Nile, to the great joy of the inhabitants, whose cattle and children it had frequently
devoured, and its natural teeth had been replac
ed with pegs of wood and tips of cows' horns;




308      YANKEE STORY OF ALLIGATOR.
and it was indeed "a monster."  I saw also in
the  show  "the  angel-fish;" the body, and
shoulders, and neck, are like a girl of fourteen;
the feet and legs are like a large goose; the
rest of the body like a fish: it was " caught in
Africa." This wonderful thing was only a large
" fiddler," tortered into something like a human
shape.
Here is another wonderful story of an alligator,
which is too good to be lost.  It is from  "the
other side," as the Yankees have it.
" A dead alligator, as newspaper readers may
remember, which was lately found floating in the
bay of New York, awakened much speculation
among naturalists; the recent discovery of the
skeleton of another, almost as far north, in New
Jersey, is therefore not a novelty of wonder in
these regions, except from the immense size of
the latter, and from a matter of most curious antiquarian interest connected with its exhumation.
This last, alligator or crocodile, measuring thirty
feet in length, was found at Eatontown, New Jersey, about ten miles from Long Branch, while




FATE OF A " NOBLE ROMAN."         309
digging for marl. The skeleton lay about six feet
beneath the surface, in a stratum of green sand;
underneath this skeleton, as if it had dropped from
the mouldering stomach of the monster, was
found an ancient coin! This coin was described
to us by an intelligent correspondent, who has
handled it, as about the size of a dollar; its composition, in which there is a large share of silver,
being probably Corinthian brass.  On the face
of it is the figure of a lion, with the date' 6-48'
in Arabic numerals; on the reverse, amid several
illegible letters, the fragmentary words,'Arg.
Procon. Latia Mo.' may be deciphered, surrounding two large letters in the centre, one of which
is the Greek' H' with an' R' interwoven with it.
We understand that the whole of this curiousmatter is to be brought before some antiquarian
society in the regular mode, with all the necessary testimony as to facts particular of the discovery. But while those learned gentlemen are puz
zling themselves as to the pro-consulship in which
this coin was cast, and calling in the aid of the
geologists to account for its locality, our quick



310            SAGACITY OF PIGS.
minded readers will instantly jump to the honest
conclusion that this crocodile, who found his burial
amid the sands of New Jersey, had, 2,000 years
ago, half digested some Roman soldier in the rivers of Africa, ere he floated westward for a new
meal, with the poor fellow's last coin still preserved in his maw."-New  York Literary  World,
October, 1848.
While thinking about alligators and crocodiles,
a letter was put into my hands from my cousin,
Charles Buckland, Esq., who holds a high and
responsible situation in the Civil Service of India.
When he went out, I requested him to record for
me all remarkable facts in natural history (and
he is no bad observer) which came under his
notice. He writes to me as follows:" It chances that I am now at Burdwan, where
there is a native rajah who keeps a really good
menagerie.  He has two rhinoceroses, who live
in a large walled enclosure, in the centre of
which is a reservoir of water, and five crocodiles
live in this lake.  The said crocodiles are fed
with young pigs, which  are turned into the




SAGACITY OF PIGS.           311
enclosure; and when, unconscious of their danger,
they go down to the water to drink, they fall into
the jaws of the grim alligators.'  There is however, one full grown pig now in the enclosure,
who has grown up there, having survived the
perils of his early youth in this dangerous place.
It seems that he all at once took a fancy to the
rhinoceros, and when the rhinoceroses went down
to drink, he went with them, and managed to
escape under their legs from the rush of the alligators. Since his first escape, he only goes to
drink under the protection of the rhinoceroses,
with whom he is on the most familiar terms.  I
was told that he looks on with perfect unconcern
at the fate of the young pigs which are now sent
in to feed the crocodiles, and never attempts to
associate with them or warn them of their danger."
Now many may think this an unlikely story,
but, barring my cousin's observation, I can assert that the pig is one of the most " talented
of beasts."   I have had conversations with men
who  have trained "learned pigs," and have




312           THE KETTLE-MAW.
learnt their secret, which I am not at liberty to
divulge.  Suffice it that, fiom what I learned
from the pig-trainers, and my own observation, I
can assert that the pig has a good brain, and
knows how to use it to the best advantage.
When hauling the deep sea lines for " rigs"
and other kinds of dog-fish, the Folkestone fishermen sometimes find they have caught a " Kettle-maw."  I had some difficulty in finding out
what this curious fish could be; it turned out to
be an old friend, whose fin I had often shaken in
Bond Street. Who has not seen Lophiduspiscatorius, alias " the sea-devil," alias " the wide-gap,"
exposed to the gaze of the Londoners in Groves's
shop   Of all hideous fish, I think this is the
ugliest.  He looks like a huge fresh-water tadpole, and is like that wonderful hero of the nursery, one " Hoddy Toddy," of whom it is recorded that he was " all head, and no body." When
the jaws of this fish are pulled asunder, his head
expands into an immense mouth-a good model,
as far as the gape is concerned, for the artists
who make those gigantic  pasteboard, open



THE " TORTOISE;  FAMILY.      313
mouthed, human faces we see at the toy-shops,
and afford children sport to throw balls into.
The "kettle-maw " has a natural fishing-rod tastened to his head; it is in the form of a long rod
of bone, to the tip of which is attached a loose
bit of skin. The joint by which this rod is fastened to the bones of the head is exceedingly
curious in its anatomy.  You may see a model
of it if you close the forefinger and thumb of the
left hand and hook the right hand round the circle thus formed. The fish, who is most happily
called " the angler," conceals himself in the mud
and waves, his fishing-rod above his body. Small
fish are attracted by it, and, when smelling about
the bit of skin that acts as a bait, are suddenly
snapped up by the great mouth that all of a sudden rises up from below, and sucks them into its
gape.  There are several stuffed specimens of
this fish in the British Museum, and the visitor
will see at once how well this natural fishing-rod
and gigantic mouth are adapted to act in concert.
When hooked out at sea, they are lazy brutes,
14




314       WHELK AND KELETON COD.
and don't struggle or tiy to get away. The fishermen don't attempt to sell them for eating purposes, but simply to show about the town on a
tray (one was shown last year of an enormous
size,) and this exhibition will often collect a
pretty good lot of halfpence in the old teapot
used as a money-box. Sometimes they are sent
up to London to be sold as curiosities. These
peripatetic exhibitions of sea monsters are profitable things "at times."  An ingenious man,
quite a Barnum in his way, well knowing that
the knowledge of natural objects was not over
rife in country places, selected from a trawl-net
two large tortoises (or cuttle-fish;) he spread
them out neatly on a clean tray, and by their
side he placed five other "tortoises" of gradu-,ated sizes, the last in the row being quite a little
one. These were exhibited as " the father, mother, and five children," and they got him a good
dinner and a skin-full of beer." A lady at Dover, not long since, bought two very curious fish;
they were, the man told her, male and female.




WHELK AND SKELETON COD.        315
They proved to be the upper and lower jaw of a
species of skate, nicely cleaned and dried.
Cod-fish come in within three or four miles of
the shore in September, and stay till April.
The men look out anxiously for them  to be
caught in the trawl-nets, as this gives notice of
their arrival. The animal from  the whelk-shell
is the best bait for cod; a salted sprat is also
used. The whelks are caught by simply letting
down open-mouthed baskets, with odds and ends
of fish for bait, among the rocks.  The whelks,
who are horriblycarnivorous, will eat anything
high-flavored, and soon crowd into the baskets;
they are then easily hauled up and carried home.
I have heard terrible stories of these whelks devouring human bodies found floating out at sea
from wrecks-one in particular, where the flesh
of the face and hands of a sailor had been eaten
off, besides other instances too horrible to repeat.   I always shudder when I see people
eating whelks in the London street stalls.
Two or three cods were caught in August last,
miserable looking things, with enormous heads;




316         HOOKING FOR POUTES.
they call them " skeleton cods "-a famous name
for them, as they look like ghosts of a good Dogger-bank fish, as he appears at Christmas time.
These unfortunates had been living on "'sea
mice"-these curious creatures, that look like
a large black garden slug, covered with a coat
of the most beautiful iridescent hairs.  Two
"skeleton cods" sold for 9d., to be salted down.
When without their heads, they would not look
so bad.
Before the cods arrive, during the summer
months, when there is no wind, and the boats
cannot for this reason go out trawling, the fishernen occupy their time in catching " pouters,"
alias " pouts," "bibs," " blens,"   blinds," and
" stink alives;" the latter elegant but appropriate name is given them  because they so soon
become unfit to eat after being caught. This
pouter-fishing is good sport when it is a "fine
catching day."  The boats are anchored over
the rocks, lines are sunk with leads attached,
and at right angles to the lines project what are
called " chopsticks;" two old umbrella iron ribs




HOOKING FOR POUTERS.         317
make capital " chopsticks."  The bait (the thick
end of a lugworm) floats free on the end of a
"snood" in the tide-stream; and if there is a
pouter near, he is sure to take the hook. It is a
curious fact that if a pouter be taken out of the
water and put in again, the moment he is
released from the hok, he "gets blowed and
can't swim," but floats on the surface of the
water, till a "sea-maw" (gull) spies him, and
" whaffes him down."  When flopping about at
the bottom of the boat, the pouters are of the
most beautiful iridescent colors, which play
about their quivering skins, and bands of a dark
color are seen on their bodies.  They soon
assume a dull "brown paper" color, and the
bands quite disappear. These fish have strings
depending from their months, like cod, whiting,
&c.; and these feelers are endowed with great
sensibility, for the fish jumps about famously
when they are touched, and if pinched hard,
they will bring an apparently dead fish almost
to life again. They doubtless act as feelers to
these fish, who live in broken rocks, and may




318  TO CONVERT A POUTER INTO A WHITING.
also serve as baits to the crabs-for, as I ascertained, they feed mostly upon crabs; and the
process of digestion seems to turn the crab-shells
of a scarlet color, as if they had been boiled.
The pouters come in inshore water in June,
and go away again in January. The best bait
for the latter are sand-eels. The " pouters" are
frequently, by an ingenious process, " made into
whiting;" and I saw, one very calm day, an old
man in the harbor hard at work at this manufacture. With a sharp knife he very carefully
cut out the gills and the feelers, and then sliced
a great bit off the top and bottom of the fish, and
nipped off the remaining fins and poked out the
eyes. He then stripped off every bit of skin
from the whole fish, head and all, and twisting
round the tail, passed it through the holes where
the eyes had been, and over a certain bone
which kept it fixed there; a neat twist of the
tail prevented its coming out again, and the tailfin itself was neatly rounded off close to its
stump. Tile fish was then put into cold fresh
water to stiffen, and afterwards exposed for sale,




CURIOUS FISH TRANSFORMATIONS.     319
coiled up in the most approved whiting fashion.
The pouter, before being " doctored," was worth
a penny-he now sells for sixpence; and I defy
the whole British Association to make out his
true nature when thus metamorphosed-whlether
whiting or pouter; but it does not much matter
as far ai eating goes, for the one is as good food
as the other when nicely sent to table. By a
somewhat similar process " Uncle Owl" and the
" sand-rate" (ray) are  made  into  "crimped
skate" for the market at Ransgate and Margate.
There is likewise an ingenious process of "stuffing a skeleton cod," so as to render him fat
looking and more saleable in the market.
The thornback family have, as the reader well
knows, a fearful armament of prickles and spines
upon their fins, their backs, and on their tails;
and these thorny and uneatable portions, and
sometimes the spines themselves, are found in
abundance ill Folkestone harbor. Now, hereby
hangs a tale, which I published in "Household
Words."  It runs as follows:When, in the month of June, 1855, the great



320        A SMALL MONKISH RELIo
est Greek scholar of the day, the Rev. Dr. Gaisford, Dean of Christchurch, Oxford, was carried
to his last resting-place within the walls of the
ancient cathedral over which he had presided so
many years, the students of the house, clad in
white snrplices, preceded the remains of their
venerated Dean as the procession passed along
the east side of the quadrangle from the deanery
to the cathedral.  Great Tom had, by tolling
every minute (a thing never done, except at the
death of the sovereign or the dean), announced
the decease; and now a small hand-bell, carried
in front of the procession by the dears's verger,
and tolled every half-minute, announced that the
last rites were about to take place. I was, of
course, present at the funeral, and  a most
impressive sight it was.
The cathedral clock struck four; the usual
merry peal of bells for evening prayers was
silent.  I strolled towards the cathedral, and,
finding a side-door open, walked in. The dull,
harsh, and grating sound of the workmen filling
up the grave struck heavily on my ears, as it




IN CHRIST CATHEDRAL.        321
resounded through the body of the church. The
mourners were all gone; and alone, at the head
of the grave, watching vacantly the busy laborers, stood the white-headed old verger; another
hour, the ground would be all levelled, and the
stones replaced over the master he had served
faithfully so many years.
The verger informed me that the ground now
opened had not been moved for 200 years, and
that a Dean had not been buried within the
precincts of the church for nearly 100 years.
Bearing these facts in mind, I poked about
among the earth which had been thrown out of
the grave. I found among the brick-bats and
rubbish a few broken portions of human bones,
which had evidently been buried very many
years; but, fastened on to one of the brick-bats,
I discovered a little bone, which I at once
pronounced not to be human. It was a little
round bone, about the size of a large shirt-stud,
fiom  the centre of which projected a longish,
tooth-like spine, the end of which still remained
1*




322            EXPLANATIONS.
as sharp as a needle, and the enamel which
covered it still resisted a scratch from a knife.
The actual body of the bone was very light and
brittle, and a simple test I applied showed that
it hlad been under ground very many years.
The question arose, what was this bone, and
how did it get to the place where it was found?
It was shown to the greatest authority we have
in comparative anatomy, and he immediately
pronounced it (as I thought it was) to be a spine
from the back of a large thornback.  The creature has, fixed into the skin of his back, in a row
along the back of his tail, many very sharp
prickles of a tooth-like character, and covered
with enamel, just like our specimen. If one of
these skin-teeth be cut out from a recent fish,
the stud-like knob of bone into which the spine
is fixed, will be found, serving to keep this formidable weapon (for such it is) in its proper position; and dreadful blows can Mr. Thornback
give with his armed tail in his battles, be they
submarine, or be they in the fisherman's boat.
How did the spine of a thornback get into




EXPLANATIONS.              323
Christ-church Cathedral, into ground that had
not been moved for 200 years?  I am indebted
to the gentleman above mentioned for the idea
of the following explanation, which I think will
"hold water."  Before the days of Henry the
Eighth, the precincts, where the college now
stands, were occupied by monkish buildings,
where monks had many fast-days, and, on these
days, were great consumers of fish. The supply
of fresh-water fish, from the Thames close by,
would hardly be equal to the demand.  It is
therefore probable that they procured salt-water
fish; and a thornback is, above all fish, the most
likely to have been supplied by the fishmonger.
In an old book on fishes and serpents I found
unexpected evidence to prove that these fish, a
hundred years ago, formed a favorite dish at
the high tables of the colleges.  The book was
published in 1763, and the passage runs thus:"The skate, or flaire, is remarkably large, and
will sometimes weigh above one hundred pounds;
but what is still more extraordinary, there was
one sold by a fishmonger at Cambridge to St.




324    HOW IT GOT INTO THE CATHEDRAL.
John's College, which weighed two hundred
pounds, and dined 120 people. The length was
forty-two inches, and the breadth thirty-one
inches."
The monkish cook, like a cook of the present
day, would, probably, skin and cut off the tail of
the thorn-back, when he cooked him for the monks'
dinner, and then he would probably throw  both
skin and tail, spines and all, into the rubbish-hole
outside the kitchen; there they would remain till
removed. And, next, when did this removal take
place? A curious book (" Collectanea Curiosa")
published at Oxford in 1781, tells us. In this
book there is an article entitled, " Out of the journal book of the expences of all the buildings of
Christ Church College, Oxon, which I had of Mr.
Pore, of Bleclinton."
The second item runs thus: " Spent about the
femerell of the new kitchen and sundry gutters
pertaining to the same, xviijd."
Further on we find, " Paid to Thomas Hewister,
for carriage of earth and rubble from the fayre
gate, and the new stepull to fill the ditches, on




THE OLD MAN'S " HARD TIMES."       325
the backside of the college, clvj. loads, at a peny
the load by computation, xiijs."
Again: "Paid to Mr. David Griffith, Priest,
for his stipend for wages, as well for keeping of
the monastery of St. Frideswide, and saying of
Divine service after the suppression of the same
unto the first stalling of the dean and canons in
the said college, as for his labours in overseeing
the workmen dayly labouring there in all by the
space of thirteen months, vij~.."
From this evidence it will appear that for a
considerable space of time (probably about five
vears) many alterations were made, and much
earth removed from place to place. The Cathedral of Christchurch, and, in fact, nearly all the
quadrangle-as will appear by comparing their
levels with that of the street outside-stand upon
made ground.  It is probable, therefore, that
some of the earth from outside the monkish kitchen, or other rubbish-hole, was carted to form the
floor of the cathedral, and with it, of course, any
rubbish that happened to be there.
This, then, was the fate of our thornback's spine.




326      THE OLD MAi'S " HARD TIMES."
The thornback was eaten by the monks of St.
Frideswide, the spine thrown away, unheeded,
unregarded, to be disinterred, after the lapse of
more than 300 years, at the funeral of one of the
greatest and most learned men who ever presided
over " The House."
One day at Folkestone, when it was blowing
hard, I saw the same old man mentioned before,
looking out towards the sea with the most dismal
countenance.  " What is the matter a" said I.
" Lord, sir, it's hard times; I have not catched a'pung' or a' heaver' in my' stalkers' this week;
the' man-suckers' and' slutters' gets into them,
and the congers knocks them all to pieces." My
friend was a hearty old man, over eighty, and
gained his living by sinking among the rocks his
" stalkers," i.e. crab-pots, made of hops and nets,
in order to catch " pung " or "heavers," that is,
crabs.  The "man-suckers"  and  "slutters"
which annoyed him are cuttle fish and jelly-fish.
The poor old fellow gets a scanty living by paddling about all day in his boat in fine weather;
but I fear he will one day lose his life in his




A WONDERFUL HAT.             327
occupation, for he has twice been found watching
his stalkers, helpless and half frozen, and has
been towed into Folkestone harbor by the trawlboats.
As his' stalkers " are always down, he has
bad sport, because " the rocks is all catched up"
-anglice he has caught all the crabs that are
about. The great even in his life was the capture of a crab, for which he got two shillings at
the " Flower-de-luce," i.e. Fleur-de-lis publichouse.  He is contented now if he gets a dozen
little crabs the size of a coachman's buttons,
worth a halfpenny each.   His costume, and
solemn, wrinkled, but handsome face, were so
remarkable, that I persuaded him  to sit for a
photograph with his old hat on. This is a wonderful hat-at least fifty years old, and without
a particle of nap on it.  It forms his storehouse,
and in which I found that he kept hooks, lines,
tows, needles, knives, bread and cheese, and,
last but not least, a stout bit of knotted rope
coiled up at the bottom, with which he " jackets"
the boys when he finds them  playing with his




328                " PUNGS."
boat.  He is full of stories of the good old
smuggling times, of wrecks, and of local fishing
and seafaring events, which but few men in the
harbor but himself can recollect. I had many E
long chat with him  when he was in a good
humor.
There are several kinds of crabs which he
catches, viz. the "Spanish crab," a green fellow
" which has oars to swim with " (the edible crab
can't swim,) the "spider crab," and the " adder
crab," a little fellow, capital bait for " hooking"
or fishing, in deep water from a boat, for whiting
and "pouters," or whiting pouts; he "heaves
them  all overboard" except the "pungs" or
edible crabs.  The "pungs " alone I have observed simulate death when brought out of the
water, the other kinds run about the bottom of
the boat right merrily.  "A good pung' heaves'
(i.e. bulges out) at the tail, and is thin in the
shell, showing he is full of fish and not water."
IHe can be killed by a stab under the tail.  This
operation is generally advisable, because Mr.




HONORS OF THE PUNG.          329
Pung " pinches on the sly without mercy, and
holds on like a bull-dog;"
With stony gloves his hands are firmly cased;
and when he has once got hold, the only way to
get him off is to snap off his claw from the body.
The green crab "nips ye sharp and lets go
again."
A fisherman in the harbor was holding up a
large pung for sale, when he was caught by one
of the claws, and in trying to get it off the other
claw got hold also, and made him a prisoner by
both hands, to the delight of the amphibions
boys who abound in this locality.  Finger nails
are often destroyed by the pungs, being pinched
off as though in a door.
We must not despise the poor "pung;" for
he is immortalized, possibly on account of his
holding powers, by being placed among the
signs of the Zodiac, and the following is the best
explanation I can find of his being promoted to
that dignity:-" Taurus, the bull, is emblematical of culture and settlement; Gemini, the Twins,




330       "PUNGS SHOOT TIIER CLAWS."
are expressive of the fertility and consequent
abundance following the domestication of the ox,
and of the brotherhood or union of man with
man for mutual advantage and agricultural purposes; " Cancer," the Crab, considered as indicating the firmness of that brotherhood, the
establishment of which is typified by Gemini."
The crab, too, in that wonderful Japan, is
used as a type of distinction.  Mr. Oliphant
writes: "We found the commissioners strutting
about the deck of the yacht in all the bravery
of their resplendent costumes. Higo was literally
covered with crabs, some of them large enough
to be an honor to an English seaport. The dress
was embroidered silk, with these crabs in raised
silver, standing out in high relief."
Crabs are terrible fighters, and often lose their
claws, which sometimes grow again. I got one
specimen without any  claws at all, and no
appearance  of their coming  again, for the
wounds were covered with barnacle shells. The
explanation of this phenomenon was that "he
throw'd his claws when he was young, and they




BOILING FOR THE MARKET.        331
never grow'd again."  My father's old friend,
Mr. Stowe, of Buckingham, tells me that when
at Carnarvon, he saw several women sitting at
stalls selling bundles of crabs' claws for a penny.
On asking where the crabs were, they said,
" We puts them back again into the water, and
they grows again." Lobsters are terrible fellows
"to shoot their claws," which detracts much
from their value, and when alive and freshly
caught the fishermen won't allow them  to be
handled for this reason. When first taken, they
are " awful savage, and flies at ye like a dog."
In the London markets they are obliged to
stab and kill the crabs before they put them into
the boiling pot, or they would cast their claws.
Lobsters seem not to do so.  Their pinchers are,
however, always tied together by a peculiar
knot, sometimes of wire, sometimes of string;
they are never kept together by means of pegs
of wood driven in, as there is an Act of Parliament to forbid this practice.  The lobsters die
directly they are put into the boiling water,
and it is cruel to put them in unless the water




332      MUSCLES " FRET THEMSELVES."
is boiling. There is one man in Hungerford
who " boils for the market" every day, to save
individual fishmongers trouble.  Each lobster
ought to " have twenty minutes to boil;" a crab
requires a good hour if large: a deal of salt
must be pat in with them. Winkles take about
three minutes to boil. I lately saw a man in
the street putting muscles into water which did
not boil, in order to cook them. As the poor
things went in there was a peculiar hissing
sound, and a scum on the top of the water. I
remonstrated with him on his cruelty.  " That's
nothing, sir; it's only the things a-fretting themselves," was the answer. I asked him  if he
would not "fret himself" if he was gradually
boiled to death? It was a new idea that had
never struck him, and he promised to use boiling
water for the future.
It is curious to remark the difference in structure of the lungs of the fish, and the lobster and
crab. They both live in the water, but yet, if
taken out of the water, the fish dies at once, the
lobster will live some hours.




LOBSTERS OUTWITTED.          333
May not the explanation of the structure of
the lung which breathes as well in water as in
the air be as follows — The fish are supposed
always to live in the water: those which live in
deep water never run the chance of being left
high and dry; those which live along shore, as
the fisherman well knows, run in and out with
the tide, as their instinct prompts them to do, in
order to avoid this catastrophe. If by chance
these fish are left by the receding tide, they soon
die; crabs, lobsters, and cuttle-fish, on the contrary, live among the rocks; they can't run in
and out with the tide, and they therefore often
get left high and dry on the rocks, or on a fishmonger's slab, which is the same thing in effect.
Nature, in her wonderful wisdom, anticipates all
this (not the fishmonger's shop,) and gives them a
breathing apparatus, by which they are enabled
to keep alive till the tide comes up again and
covers the rocks, enabling them to refill their
breathing sacks. A lobster, I believe, if left on
the rocks, never goes back into the water of his
own accord; he waits till it comes to him. I say




334  A CURIOUS SPECIMEN OF TURTLE SHELL.
this, because when the landslip took place near
Lyme-Regis, in Dorsetshire, a great portion of
the bottom  of the sea was forced up by the
weight of the landslip on the margin of the
shore. On this suddenly elevated bit of ground
there happened to be several lobsters, who,
doubtless, thought the low tide had taken place,
with uncommon celerity, and that it would
return again. Anyhow the brutes, obedient to
their instinct (I dare not call them  stupid),
waited for the tide to come up and cover them.
Of course it never did come up again; they
remained in their places and died there, although
the water was. in many instances only a few
feet from their noses, and they had not the sense
to tumble into it and save their lives.
The crab's broad back affords a capital habitation for minor sea creatures.  Sailors have
observed the fact of shells sticking to crabs and
other animals,which live in the sea. Hence, an
old patriarch sailor who has long been at sea
often goes by the nickname of " Old Shellback."
I have got a crab with a regular crop of young




WHOLESALE DESTRUCTION.        335
oyster's on his back, and another whose shell had
been pierced by some boring animal; in order
to mend the hole, the crab had secreted a round
nob of shell on the inside, and this looked very
like a pearl.  In the Museum  of the Royal
College of Surgeons is a very remarkable specimen, showing the same process of healing a
wound of the shell in the true tortoise-shell
turtle. The creature had been wounded in the
back, probably by a spear such as is used to
catch them when floating on the water; it had
escaped with a hole in its shell, which nature
has beautifully mended with a round nob of true
pure tortoise-shell. This nob is about the size
of a cricket-ball, and like the cricket-ball presents a series of laminae on a section being made.
It is a unique and most curious example of
nature's mode of healing under difficulties.
Every day hundreds of little soles (slippers as
they are called,) young turbots, flounders, &c.,
too small for cooking, are brought in by the
trawl-nets and thrown away as useless. Twenty
or thirty little turbots have been thus sacrificed




336        WHOLESALE DESTRUCTION
in one day. Sometimes they are hung up in
long festoons to dry, like haddocks. This wholesale slaughter in time will tell on the number of
fish in the trawling ground, which is but a limited space after all. The fishermen told me they
were aware of this, but could not remedy it,
because everybody would not agree to use nets
with smaller " shale" or mesh, and when the
trawls were hauled aboard the small fish were
found for the most part to be dead from being
dragged so long along in the net with the other
fish. I have seen a bunch of little dabs and
flounders, &c., worth fourpence or sixpence for
the lot to a London costermnonger, tied up in a
stalker to catch a halfpenny crab.
As regards the above passage, the editor of
" The Field" for October 15, 1850, remarks, under
the' Angling" column:
" Mr. Buckland, in his last paper of' Sea-side
Gatherings,' touches upon a highly important
subject when he deplores the destruction of
small flat-fish in trawls, and says that it will tell
in time on the trawling-grounds. The fish, how



OF SMALL SEA FISH.          33T
ever, destroyed in the trawl-nets do not amount
to a tithe of what are destroyed in the shrimpInets. We have seen hundreds of small soles,
plaice, turbots and dabs not two inches long,
cast with abominable recklessness dead upon the
shore by shrimpers, when it would have been
even less trouble to return them to the water.
Idle boys, too, yearly destroy thousands of these
small fry by way of amusement.  That these
practices have a most injurious effect upon the
fisheries there cannot be a shadow of a doubt.
We have repeatedly urged upon the public, and
shall do so upon every opportunity, the extreme
importance to Great Britain of her coast fisheries.
It is to the hardy race of mariners bred in the
following of the occupation of fishermen that
she owed her supremacy of the seas; and if she
is to retain that supremacy, she must, to a great
extent, rely upon her fisheries as a school for
experienced  and  adventurous seamen.   Our
fathers well knew the importance of this matter,
and framed wise laws for the control and management of their fisheries-in many instances




338      THE LOBSTER S LOOKING-GLASS.
fostering them  to their utmost power by means
of bounties and rewards. The size of every fish,
and under which no fish could legally be taken,
was laid down in the 1 Geo. I. That Act, as far
as we are aware, has not been repealed; and it
provides, first, that save for herrings, pilchards,
sprats, or lavinian, no net shall be used of less
than three and a half inch mesh under a penalty
of 201.  And, further, that a fine of 20s. be
imposed for every offence in the case of a person
bringing to shore or offering for sale, &c. &c.
any turbot of less than 16 inches in length, brill
14 inches, codling 12 inches, whiting 6 inches,
bass and mullet 12 inches, sole 8 inches, plaice
or dabs 8 inches, and flounders 7 inches.
These matters have, since the date of this Act,
been placed under the charge of the Coastguard,
and the Coastguard have lately received' orders
to enforce the fishery laws strictly.  A  week or
two since we gave an instance in which these
laws had been strictly enforced in consequence
of this order; and we hope that the lead thus
aken will be followed up, and thesemischievous




4C LOCK NETS."            339
and ruiuous practices summarily put a stop
to."
I was told of a great curiosity, a most wonderful new bait to put into the lobster-pots; I found
it out, and ascertained it to be a common phial
physic bottle, silvered in the inside like a looking-glass.  It was given by a gentleman  to
Smith, sen., one of the patriarch fishermen in the
harbor, who showed it to me. His theory was,
that "the lobsters comes to see themselves in
the glass;" but I doubt whether a lobster (even
though he has "a lady in his head") has vanity
enough to use a looking-glass. It must be the
glistening of this bright object that attracts
them, because, when bait is scarce. a " bunch of
oyster-shells with the dark part scraped away"
will sometimes catch them; " but they gets out
again pretty quick if they don't find nothing to
eat."  There are plenty of fine prawns about the
rocks, and there are two modes of fishing for
them; first, with  a common  shrimping-net
pushed along the sand; and, second, the " locknets," which are simply a large form  of the




340              " LOCK-NETS."
round nets used to catch freshwater crayfish. A
bunch of fish (with the dark skins taken off) is
tied on to " the bridle," a string that goes across
its centre, and a long line with corks attached;
the corks are covered with white linen, that they
may be seen in the dark. The " prawner" has a
stick some seven feet long, with notches at the
top; as the tide goes down he puts his net
among the rocks, and leaving it a few minutes
hauls it up on the stick with a jerk, as the prawn
is an active fellow  and soon jumps out. The
best bait for prawns is " a fresh sheep's head."
It is no use fishing for prawns till the sun is
down, and then, and not till then, the prawns
begin to feed. It is a curious fact that the
prawns are most numerous "just as the visitors
go away;" but the season has, in my opinion,
more to do with this than the visitors. The crabs
-the spiders, the Spanish, the soldiers, and the
adders-are a great nuisance in the lock-net
fishing; they get to the bait and are hauled up
by the score, pinching the poor man's fingers
terribly when he tries to get the prawns out




THE ROBBER TREE CRAB.        341
from among them; for it must be recollected
that it is pitch dark, and the contents of the net
not easily seen. The prawns themselves make
wounds on the fingers with their sharp and
projecting " spears." The hands of one of the
prawn boys was just as if it had been " crimped"
all over from this cause. It is dangerous work
fishing in pitchy darkness among the slippery
rocks, "where you may knock yourself all to
pieces in a minute," the tide rolling in fast all
the time; and the following was the anathema
of my companion, a poor man who had been
hauling up red crabs, and not prawns, from nine
to eleven that night; "D-   them crabs, the
rascals, they hinder me of many a shilling and
rob my young ones of many a slice of bread and
butter; them fellows won't let ye have a prawn
if there is one in the net. I will smash some of
ye, anyhow," said he, as he dashed crab after
crab on the rocks. However, I consoled him
somewhat by buying a large bag full of his crabs,
and served them out by boiling them for supper
but they were very bad eating.




342             soFT LOBSTERS.
In1 the islands of the Pacific Ocean there lives
a fiugiverous crab, which " climb a species of
palln Pandanus oderatissimus), and eat a small
kind of cocoa-nut that grows thereon; they live
in holes at the roots of the trees, and are a favorite food of the natives." The name of this crab
is Birgus Latro, or "the Robber."  Now, the
natives aforesaid cannot use " stalkers" or " locknets" to catch the poachers, but they have a
most ingenious and simple trap  instead.  A
good way up the stem  of the palm, they tie
round a thick bit, of rope or matting; the crab
comes down the tree tail foremost, and when he
gets to the rope, he thinks he has got to the
ground at the bottom of the tree; he lets go his
hold, and falling to the ground, gets either
killed or else so injured that he is easily caught.
Both lobsters, crabs, and prawns cast their
armor when they get too big for the one they occupy. When a lobster is being eaten at table, a
skin will be found under the shell, and it is this
skin which will harden into a shell when the old
one is cast off.  I was lucky enough to obtain




SOFT LOBSTERS.            3:3
from a shrimping boy a lobster who had just cast
his coat. The new one was soft to the touch, and
like moistened parchment.  It is a rarity to catch
these " soft lobsters," as the creature knows that
before his armor gets hard he has no mode of
defence, and hides himself away in a snug corner;
but my friend did not calculate upon the shrimping boys, who espied him under a rock at low
spring-tide, and made an easy capture of him. I
obtained last year from Mr. Townsend, fishmonger, of Hungerford Market, a fine specimen (now
in the Royal College of Surgeons) of a lobster
with his old coat off his back, showing the new
one hardening underneath.
Mr. Townsend tells me that there are three
kinds of lobsters sold in the London markets;
viz. the English, which " boils heavy," and is of
a white color under the claws and the tail; the
Norway lobster, which is much lighter after boiling, and is principally used for making sauce;
and, lastly, the Norway lobster (a coarser kind),
which has a very hard shell, and is generally




344           HIPPOCAMPI ALIVE
covered with little round white things, like hard
chalk (i. e. serpule).
The light and delicate cast skins of prawns and
shrimps I saw frequently floating about in the
harbor, and when placed in a glass of clear water,
they look like the bodiless ghosts of their former
tenants.
Lobsters are very coarse feeders, and can be
caught with a stinking bait; not so with " pungs"
— he fresher the bait, the better chance of sport.
The old man came down daily to the fishing boats,
and collected the heads. entrails, &c. of the fish,
which he used for bait, tying them up in a great
bunch in the centre of his " stalkers."
In the " stalkers," and in the shrimp nets, fishermen sometimes catch what they call "Sea
Snakes," more commonly known by the name of
"Pipe Fish."  This curious fish belongs to the order Syngnathidce-so called because " the jaws
are united," so that the mouth forms a long cylindrical tube.  Now, to this family belongs the
Hippocampus, or Sea Horse, which has occasion
ally been taken on our own southern shores, and




AT THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS.      345
also at the islands of Guernsey and Jersey. A
pair of the-e curious and pretty little creatures
were lately exhibited alive in the Regent's Park
Gardens. They were brought from the mouth
of the Tagus, and presented by a Portuguese gentleman. Two were offered for sale, not long ago,
alive, in Hlungerford Market, for a guinea each.
If there were more demand for them, they would
doubtless be more fiequently seen in our vivaria
than they are at present.  The Regent's Park
specimens were not much larger than a goodsized sprat.  The head is wonderfully like that
of a horse; the eyes are exceedingly bright and
prominent, and they have the power of moving
each independently, like a chamelion.  Their
gill-flaps cannot be seen to move up and down;
they are fixed down to the adjoining skin, as we
see in the eel family. The actual gills, moreover,
are not comb-shaped, like those of other fish, but
are disposed in tufts, about the bones which support them.  On each side of the head there appeared to be ears erect and expressive, like those
of a horse when in a listening attitude.  These




346          FOOD OF HIPPOCAMPUS.
are not ears, but tiny fins, which, when the owner begins to move, vibrate with astonishing velocity. There is also a fin on the back; and when
this is put in motion, it vibrates from end to end
in serpentine waves, like a bit of rope laid on
the ground  and  sllaken sharply.   When in
motion, it is an exceedingly pretty object. The
body is terminated by a long and gradually
pointing tail, which is of the greatest use to the
owner; for by bending and uncoiling it, he is
enabled to assist his progress in swimming: he
generally carries it coiled upwards in a graceful
form.  But the Hippocampus is a lazy fellow,
and had rather sit still than move about; and
here the tail is of the greatest service, for he
twines it round bits of sea-weed, projecting rocks,
&c., and remains, as it were, anchored, while he
sways his body backwards and forwards in search
of food. It is doubtful what substance forms his
food. Both the upper and lower jaws are connected together along their whole length, leaving
only a very little mouth at the end, exactly like
the mouth of the ant-eater.  I am  inclined to




MARSUPIAL IISH.           347
believe they live on infusoria and very minute
sea insects, which they find abundantly at the
sides and bottom of the rocky pools which they
naturally inhabit.  I watched one of them come
and anchor himself near to a bit of sand in the
vivarium, and then, bending his head downwards
on to it, peck about it exactly like a hen scrutinising a dust heap. He perpetually took up, with
a sucking action of the jaws, grains of sand into
his mouth, and spat them out again, as if trying
whether they were good for food or not; and I
fear, poor fellow, he did not get much for his trouble. If it were possible to procure some of those
little shrimp-like things we see hopping about
the sea-weed on the shore, and which they call
"skipjacks," I am  convinced  the  prisoners
would eat them with eagerness.
The Hippocami are admirably adapted for
living among rocks.  They have no scales; but
their heads, bodies, and tails are defended by a
casing of bony armor, of a pretty and complicated pattern, so that they shall not get hurt and
bruised as they wander about in their rocky




348             DEEPl SE'A FISH.
feeding-grounds.  When viewed under certain
lights, their armor, or the interspaces between its
plates, seems to be iridescent, like the beautiful
blue and green colors of a mackerel.  This is
not an exception to the rule, for most fish that
live down in the dark recesses of the rocks, such
as the rock-fish, whiting, and poult, display exceedingly beautiful colors on their skins when
first taken out of the water.  They are, moreover, capital climbers, and manage by means of
projections from their armor, by hooking on with
their heads, and by grasping with their prehensile tail, to scramble up and about rocks which,
to the Hippocamni, must be comparatively as
high as Dover cliffs to ourselves. As the kangaroo and opossum are marsupial, and carry their
young in a bag or pouch in the abdomen, so,
strange to say, even among fish we have an example of a marsupial creature.  In the male
Hippocami, contrary to what we should expect
to be the case, we find that the bony armor in
front of the abdomen is converted into a sort of
leatherlike bag; and into this the young escape




DEEP SEA FISIT.          349
at the appearance of danger, and they would
rather swim into this place of concealment (as
has been observed) than to any neighboring bit
of sea-weed or crevice in the rocks.  We have
several preparations at the college of Surgeons to
show this very remarkable part of their economy.
I regret that both these interesting little animals are dead. I wished I had been enabled to
have supplied them with plenty of " skip-jacks,"
which I am sure they would have eaten.
As the steamer from Folkestone paddles along
towards Boulogne she crosses over two sandbanks
that lie about mid-channel.  These are doubtless
two sub-aqueous chalk hills, the summits of
which have been covered with sand by the
action of the tides; between these hills deep
water (i. e. a valley) is found. These banks are
called by the fishermen the  "Warne,"  or
"Werne," and the "Ridge."  Congers, dog-fish,
basse, &c. form the game in these submarine
preserves, and to  catch them  the fisherman
"shoots " not his gun, but his " long line."
Besides the Warne and the Ridge there is




350           SHINGLE " BEXTERS. 
another naturally formed longer preserve "off
the Ness,"  i. e. "Dungeness  IIead,"  about
eleven miles by sea S.E. of Folkestone.  Extending several miles from Dungeness towards
Hythe there is a long dreary beach, composed
entirely of loose shingle.  It is exceedingly difficult to walk for any long time on this shingle; it
is just loose enough to admit the foot and ankle
at every step, and in a few minutes the pedestrian becomes exhausted, and can hardly proceed on his way, or, in fisherman's language,
"the stones would pull your legs out of the
sockets of your body."  Business compels these
poor fellows to walk on the shingle, and necessity
being the mother of invention, they have contrived  a species of shoe  or patten, on the
principle of the Esquimaux shoe, or the mudslhoes of the wild-duck shooter.  They consist of
light boards, about the length of an Esquimaux
shoe, upon which is a strap to insert the foot.
On these they are enabled to traverse the shingle
without sinking in. The local name for these
ingenious contrivances is " Bexters;" the deri



OONGERS AND 4 LONG LINES.'      351
vation of this word is a mystery to me, unless a
man of this name invented them-thus becoming
immortalized, as the memory of our great surgeon, Abernethy, is daily called to mind when
we ask for sixpennyworth of Abernethy biscuits.
The water just at the Ness is exceedingly deep;
even close up to the cliff there is from twenty to
thirty fathom water. Down among the rocks at
the bottom of this hole or natural pond the
" great" congers hold nightly revel. Their midchannel brethren are not nearly so large. The
first sight I got of the congers at Folkestone was
in a " lugsail boat," which ran in at high tide in
company with a fleet of trawl-boats, laden with
congers, or rather marine boa-constrictors. When
the boat stranded, the men threw them out on
the shore one by one, and there they lay, just
able to wriggle, and to gasp with their formidable mouths.  Some of them  were of a pale
white color, but the majority were sprinkled here
and there with nut-brown markings, making
them  look much more snake-like than when
hung up in Billingsgate. The crowd gathered




352      CONGERS AND " LONG LINES.;'
round.  "Who will buy this parcel of congers?"
said the fisherman, picking up a stone, and
standing with the congers all placed before him.
The biddings went on fast. ~1 5s. was bid for
the lot, in number twenty-one, large and small;
down went the stone, and the purchaser hastily
pitched the great brutes into " kittens," as they
call the fish-baskets, and in twenty minutes the
congers passed me in the open luggage-van of
the train on their road to London. These were
"Ness congers," and are caught on a "long
line." The lines laid for them are seventy-five
fathoms long, and on each line are attached at
right angles other smaller lines, viz. the " snoods,"
twenty-three snoods to each line, each snood
nine feet long. The hooks are nearly as large
as the hook of a roasting-jack; they are made of
exceedingly tough wire, that will bend to any
amount, but never break. Strange to say, these
hooks can't be bought in England; they are all
of French make, and cost about 2s. 6d. a hundred.
Each hook is fastened by a simple but very firm
knot to the " snood," by means of a tough bit of




USE OF CONGERS.             353
cord called the " beckett"-a wise provision, for
the congers "saw themselves on the rocks, and
often burst the line;" and when they are first
hauled up there is no getting the hook out of
their mouth or throat, as the case may be. The
"beckett" is therefore cut, and the conger slips
into the bottom of the boat, to die at his leisure
The conger " often gorges the hook," and it gets
fast a long way down from  his mouth.  When
the fisherman arrives on shore he has a summary
way of getting it out; he takes hold of the
"beckett," and smacks the conger as you would
smack a hunting-whip; the hook soon straightens
and comes out; a tap with a hammer makes it
fit for service again. The line complete is worth
between 7s. and 8s., and as many as nineteen
lines are sometimes laid down in a night. Thirty
congers is a good haul; formerly eighty or
ninety were caught, but then " they were of no
use, because there was no railway, and therefore
no ready sale." At present the Billingsgate salesmen will take any number, and the congers, in
consequence, are "more gone after."   Those




354             USE OF CONGERS.
that are not sold for food in London are made
into isinglass.  One Fagg, a fisherman, told me
that three years ago " the more stinking his
congers were, the more money they fetched in
London. He never could understand this, but it
was all the better for him, as congers don't keep
over well in hot weather. They lives as long
again in cold weather as they does in hot."
When the long line is hauled the hooked
congers sometimes (if they are big ones) " yawls
on  the  lines;"  sometimes " they, comes up
quietly;" at other times " they hangs like a log
of wood;" but they nearly always " makes a curl
with their tail, so as to hang back in the water;"
when in the boat they try to get out by " clinging their tails over the side." (I have observed
this same fact with fresh-water eels.) To get
them into the boat the fishermen have an enor1mous " heaf  or "' prule," i.e. a gaff-hook.  Whenl
in tile boat " the congers are terrible things to
bite sure-ly."  To kill them, " it's no use knocking them on their great heads, no more than a
great bull; just hit'em  a sharp smack on the




A GIANT CONGER.           355
belly, and that turns'em up directly, because
all their blood lays there."
One of the fishermen, George Smith, caught a
" whacker" last year. When he hauled the line
he thought " he had got hold of a wreck," but he
managed to pull him up gently to the side of the
boat, and whip the "heaf" into him.  He
"kicked up Mag's diversion" in the boat, and
nearly got out again; so Smith tied him by the
" beckett" to the thwart of the boat with a new
French whiting line, which Master Conger broke
three times. Smith himself, who is a very powerful mail, tried afterwards to break the same
whiting line, but could not. This conger measured eight feet within an inch, and was twentysix inches in girth at his fins. He was sent off
to London directly in a " kitten," or fish-hamper,
all to himself. I myself measured a conger on
the beach twenty-four inches girth and fire feet
seven inches long. I had no time or means of
weighing him, which I regret.  He had two
soles and a flounder inside him. Congers are
" the daintiest fish out. They won't look at a




P56          FRENCH FISHERMEN.
bait that is the least tainted;only lobsters and
bass eat stinking fish." The surest way to catch
them is to " trawl for the bait (small flounders,
dabs, plaice, &c.)as you go along to the Ness."
On these expeditions the boat must be out all
night, shooting the lines at sundown, and hauling
them to sunrise, or as soon after as the tide will
serve.
One day a French fishing-boat came into
Folkestone from Portelle, near Boulogne, the
weather being too rough for them; they had a
few small congers on board, and I observed that
they had been baiting their " snoods" with the
arms of cuttle fish cut into bits. They called all
Englishmen " John," and when I went to talk to
them a red-nightcapped fellow held up a dogfish, and said in broken English, " Vil you buy a
dog, John 2" I did not buy the dog, but I got a
conger's head for threepence, and was told by
Mr. Warman, the fishmonger, soon afterwards,
that I was liable to ~50 for buying in the harbor
fish of a Frenchman.  The Frenchmen turned
out of their boats in the afternoon, and boiled




DIVERS AT ALDERNEY.           357
the conger's body on the beach, putting sundry
odd scraps of fish into the pot- as well.  As a
bystander said, " There's very little fish as them
chaps heaves away; they eats a'most anything.'
Poor fellows, they were very poor and verj
hungry, and mamazed at the small quantity of
eaa de vie they got for the money pouzr boire I
gave them.
There is another more curious way of fishing
than by the long-lines, at present practised by
not a few persons.  What does the reader think
of an iron hammer as a bait a To lay the foundation of some new works in the island of Alderney divers are employed; these men, enclosed in
their India-rubber armor, see strange sights at
the bottom of the ocean. The fish, and no wonder either, at first are alarmed at the unwonted apparition, with its huge glass goggle eyes; but,
soon recovering confidence, approach to satisfy
themselves of the real nature of the intruder.
The monster raises his hammer which he has
brought with him to quarry the rocks; the curious fish come up and inspect it; while doing so




358            SUBMARINE FIGHT.
they receive a sudden knock on the head which
stuns them; and, when they recover their senses,
they find a bit of string through their gills, and
themselves prisoners tied fast to the India-ruber
monster.
On one occasion, a diver had a fight under
water with one of the rightful inhabitants of the
rocks, which he was so unceremoniously breaking up.  A  huge conger eel suddenly started.
from its favorite hole, and furiously attacked the
destroyer of his home.  A short but severe combat, between the eel and the man, ensued; but a
well-directed blow of the hammer soon settled
the question against the eel.
In the first series of " Curiosities of Natural
History " I have recorded a curious fact, communicated to me by Dr. Turner, of Hastings, relative to the action of intensely cold weather upon
the air-bladders of the congers.  "In January,
1855, thousands of congers were found floating
upon the water. They could progress readily in
any direction, but could not descend, and consequently fell an easy prey to the boatmen.  In




FROST KILLS CONGERS.          359
Ihis manner no less than eighty tons were captured," &c. &c.  The Folkestone fishermen, I
found on inquiry, also took an enormous quantity of congers at this time.  One man brought
home 800 in his boat. The same cause acted on
the Folkestone as upon the Hastings congers, viz.
the action of the frost caused the air in their
swimming-bladders to expand so much that the
ordinary muscles could not expel it at will.
The Folkestone fishermen explained this phenomenon thus: " You see, sir, the congers comes
up to the top of a frosty night to look at the
moon, gets nipped by the cold, and can't get
down again."   Barring the moon part of the
story, their theory is correct.
Mr friend Mr. Roberts, of Dover (a great observer,) has kindly sent me the following note on
this subject: "After a sharp snow-storm I saw
picked up behind the cob at Lyme Regis, Dorset,
several hundred red rock, or sea perch, called
locally'conners,' small'blins,' i. e. whiting
pouts, and a conger eel or so.  The people cmine
to pick up the fish blinded by the snow on Cbh-t




360         FROST KILLS C'}NGi:RS.
mas-day. They were lying stranded among the
sea-weed.  There may have been five hundred
fish at least of eatable size, and about three hundred smaller ones.  Three years ago a respectable man named Wood told me that he had made
a good meal upon a present of conger eel, made
him by the captain of a trading vessel. The vessel was bound to London in some very severe
weather in January.  Near the mouth of the
Thames the frost and snow had so affected the
congers that the crew of the trader had speared
and salted several magnificent fellows. A vessel
had gone to catch the blind congers, and had
sold one hundred and fifty tons weight of them
in Billingsgate-market.  The fact of the effect
produced upon the fish along shore I can attest
from very frequent observation.
I was not able to go out to the Ness to fish for
congers, but neverless I got my sea fishing-tackle
ready, and fished from off the end of the harbor
pier, on the chance of catching one of the small
congers that are sometimes found there; although
fishing in the sea, the first fish I caught was a




FRESH WATER EELS IN SALT WATER.   361
regular freshwater fish, viz. an eel, with not a bit
of the conger about him.  Though brackish, the
water is quite salt to the taste, and regular saltwater fish, such as the plaice, bass, whiting
poults, horse mackarel, &c. live in it, for I have
caught specimens of all.  There are plenty of
eels in the mud of the harbor, and some of them
are occasionally taken of a large size.  They
must breed there, for the simple reason that there
is no exit for them except towards the sea, save
except a sewer, the hatch of which is occasionally opened to flush off the water; the stones
over which this sewer-water runs are covered
with a green weed, and in this green weed I observed boys catching little eels about as big as a
quill toothpick, and  matching in appearance
the young eels from the Thames, which are sold
in Hungerford market just at this time of the
year for vivaria specimens. I am almost certain
these eels were bred in the harbor; the migrating instinct was very strong in them, for they
were all crowding up to the hatchway, beyond
16




362      BILLINGSGATE EEL "' SKOOTS. 
which of course, they could not proceed.  An
old man who has been at Folkestone all his life,
tells me that he is sure the eels breed in the harbor, and that they can be caught there all the
year round.
I tried my luck fishing in the military canal
near Hythe, but as they had let the salt water in,
they had killed all the jack, perch, and roach,
and I caught nothing but a few eels.  I believe
these eels breed in the canal, because if they
went down to the sea they would find no mud,
but only a bank of loose and rolling shingle, a
most unfavorable place for them to deposit their
ova. Again, there is every reason to believe
they breed in ponds whence there is no exit, as
has been asserted by numerous observers.
The number of eels consumed by Londoners il
the form of stewed eels and eel-pies is incredible.
The great proportion of these fish come froml
Iolland, and the visitor to Billingsgate-market
will always be sure to see some Dutch eel-boats
at anchor in the river just off the market.
Anxious to obtain information from head-quar



HOW EELS ARE CARRIED.          363
ters, I have made an excursion to the market on
purpose to examine the internal economy of these
boats, and learn how they carry the eels, &c.
The fiery sun had caused the market to be nearly
deserted, and the fish, shrimps, &c. exposed for
sale emitted odors that were none of the sweetest.  Getting on board a wherry, I was soon
alongside the nearest Dutch "skoot," as this
kind of vessel is called by the men about the
market; on it were three men, two indulging
in a nap, the third smoking one of the longest pipes I ever saw.  Making a polite bow,
I asked leave to come on board, which was
immediately granted by the master-he of the
pipe-one of the tallest, best-built, grey-eyed
Dutchmen I ever saw.
Letting myself drop down through a hatchway,
I was obliged to stoop low to walk along under
the deck, through an apartment which ran from
the dwelling-cabin in the stern to the bows of
the ship. On one side I saw four leaden tanks,
in which I was told the eels were carried. I
could not understand how this could be (as they




364      THAMES WATER FATAL TO EELS.
were not big enough) till the Dutchman explained
that under the floor whereon we were standing
was a false bottom, running nearly the length
and breadth of the ship, and that these four
tanks communicated with a large chamber or
reservoir in which the eels were kept. Holes
were bored in the sides and bottom of this reservoir to admit the water to the eels. The seawater enters freely through these holes, but the
eels don't mind this, and live very comfortably,
even though they are surrounded by salt water
during their passage across the Channel, which
occupies from four days to a week. It is far
otherwise with the Thames water. I asked if
there were any eels on board at that moment.
He smiled with astonishment. " Why," said he,
" they would die if put into Thames water up
here by'London Bridge in ten minutes; the
water has been getting worse and worse, and the
eel-boats have been obliged to anchor lower and
lower down the river. It is many years now
since eels would live at London Bridge. The
boats have gone first to Eiith, then Greenhithe,




THAMES WATER FATAL TO EELS.    365
and now  they cannot come up further than
Gravesend without killing the fish."  The boats
arriving from Holland stop at Gravesend. There
are always two or more boats moored off Billingsgate, and every morning eels are sent up in flat
boxes to these floating shops from Gravesend, to
be sold to all corners fiom their decks by the
pound.
Here, then, we have additional evidence of the
excessive impurity of our noble river-even eels,
that will live almost anywhere, can't exist in its
waters, except at a great distance from the
mouths of drains and other abominations, which
pour into it a poison reminding us of the plagues
of Egypt. In order to get the eels out of this
false deck, the Dutcllhman showed me a net with
small meshes, mounted on a pole, of a circular
shape, and with this he could, from one or other
of the tanks, get every eel out of the false bottom
in the vessel. The ship (her name was Cornelia)
sailed from Texel. The Dutch fishermen brought
the eels on board for sale.  Sometimes there
was a cargo ready for them on arrival, sometimes




366              SANDED EELS.
they had to wait till a sufficient quantity was
collected. And how much is a cargo?  Only
fancy; six tons!-(Query, how many eels go to
a ton?)-of slimy, crawling, slippery creatures,
all alive, and packed one upon the other in the
false deck of the skoot. When the water on
either side of the channel is low, and there is
danger of the skoot grounding, Mr. Dutchman
takes out from  between decks two enormous
wooden chests, exactly like large coffins, full of
little holes; he fills these with eels, and tows
them  along behind the vessel, and so lightens
her not a little. He never feeds the eels, and
they will-live at Gravesend for a week or ten
days; he never saw eels larger than five or six
pounds; they are very scarce this time of year.
The fishmongers, costermongers, and others
come to buy on the deck of the Cornelia, and
later in the day we see the eels hawked about
the streets. I have observed that the venders,
under the pretence of not being able to handle
the slippery eels, cover them with sand, but they
don't wash the sand off when they iweigh them;*




HERRING "HANGS."             367
the customer, therefore, as Professor Quekett
wisely remarks, when he buys eels thus treated
buys wet sand as well, at about the rate of 4d. a
pound-caveat emptor.
The last week in August, when fishing for
" pouters," eels, coal whiting, and " bull routs,"
off the horn, at Folkestone, one of the largest
fishing-boats in. the harbor sailed away to the
northward-the contrary direction to the usual
fishing-ground. I learnt that she was gone to
Yarmouth for herrings.  In a few  days she
returned, and on going on board saw her hold
quite full of these useful fish, salted, it is true,
but yet glistening as though their scales had
been electrotyped with silver. Gangs of men
carried them away immediately to the " herring
hangs," or, as they are called elsewhere, "herring dees." Of course I followed them, anxious
to learn the process of " red-ding," or "bloating" herrings. The "hang" consisted of a very
lofty square brick room, which can be made
perfectly smoke-tight; stout beams traverse it
from  top to bottom, supporting a ladder-like




368           IHERRING 4 SPITS. 1
frame-work, the bars of which are called the
"rangers;" upon these " rangers" are placed the
spits," i. e. bits of wood about the length and
thickness of a common walking-stick-these are
best made of pine-wood; upon them the herrings
are hung up.
When the herrings are brought from the boat,
they are washed as soon as possible in large tubs,
by poor women, who are only too glad to earn a
few shillings at this easy work. Six shillings is
paid " per last" (N.B. "a last" is 10,000, with 100
given in for broken fish) for washing and spitting.
They tell me that on these occasions the female
tongues work as merrily as the female hands.
This chance of " big talk," as the Mandan Indianls call it, is never thrown away.
Active boys are employed to climb up with
the herring spits; and this is by no means easy
work, as some of the hangs are over forty feet
ligh, the wood slippery, and they often have to
work in a cloud of smoke.
When all the fish are hung up, the doors and
windows are closed, and a fire made on the brick




HERRING " SPLITS."          369
floor of logs of oak wood and oak sawdust, and
there they remain enveloped in a dense atmosphere of the most pungent smoke (it makes tears
come into the eyes) for several hours, till they
attain the peculiar flavor which every one knows.
The reader has doubtless remarked that the
red herrings in the shops, or those which fill the
baskets of the loud-voiced costermonger, who at
early morn disturbs the Londoner with sleep-dispelling cries of "yar-Mouth, yar-Mouth," have
their gills on one side distended, and their
mouths wide open and gaping.  This is the hole
made by " the spit," when the fish was hung up
to dry, and which remains open after it was
taken out.  When, indeed, the retailer comes to
the hang to buy, he brings his own bundle of
spits, and the row of fish are slid on to them
from off the spits on which they were dried.
When there is no fish brought into Folkestone,
the bare legged boys buy a spit or two on speculation, to hawk about the streets.
It naturally happens that among 10,000 her16*




370        " SCRAPS'  AND TIE-TAILS.
rings or more, there are some which are "gillbroken," and therefore cannot be hung up by
the heads; they are therefore tied on to the spits
by the tail, and have on this account received
the appropriate name of " tie-tails," or " scraps,"
-the London costermongers call them "plucks."
Though they are just as good eating as the
others, they fetch less money; and when I was
in the hang, a tiny child came in and addressed
the burly owner thus:-" Please, sir, mother
wants a farthing's worth of tie-tails for her tea."
She got two or three, and some broken " scraps"
into the bargain.
There is great art in salting the herrings to
the right pitch; and they should be in salt fortyeight hours if wanted to keep for the winter,-if
for quick sale, ten hours in salt is sufficient.
They ought to have one ton of salt to each last.
"If there is not enough salt, they won't hang in
the smoking, and when the door is opened they
are found to be dropping down one by one, like
ripe plums, leaving their heads up aloft on the
spits."  The way to know  whether they are




THE HERRING HARVEST.           371
properly salted, is to take the fish by the head
and tail, and give it a gentle pull; if it feels
moist and " lissom," it is not properly cured; if,
however, the bones can be felt to crack smartly,
make your bidding for the lot.
The men who go to Yarmouth salt the fish as
they buy them.  Those at the bottom  of the
boat are the best, as, being the first lot put in,
they get the drainings of those above them.
The experienced eye will tell from the appearance of their salting the different catches put in
the boat at different times. If they stick together, or have begun to ferment, they are all
spoilt: so that much judgment is required to
buy herrings, as it is no joke to buy several lasts
which " go off" before they are fit for sale, In
this condition they are not fit even for manure.
The experiment of digging them into his garden
was tried by one of the men, but he found his
vegetables grown on the soil tasted "fishy"and a fishy potato is not the best of eating.
When the shoals of herrings come off Folke'
stone (and they ought to be there now), enor



372        HEMP AND COTTON NETS.
mous quantities are caught by the fishermen, to
whom this wonderful migration is as good as a
dividend at the bank. Mr. Warman, fishmonger,
told me that he bought "fifty-three lasts" of
herrings the season of 1858. 1 saw several hundreds still in the " hang." It must have been a
curious sight to see 583,000 (or more than half a
million) herrings all on the spits being " red-ded."
At Yarmouth there must be very many more
than these cured by herring-dealers, but I can
write only of what I saw.
Each Folkestone herring-boat carries a " fleet"
of nets, and sixty nets make a " fleet." A net,
which is about thirty yards long, is made four
"rans" deep, and there are sixty meshes to a
" ran."  The nets are made in two or more
breadths joined together, each of which is one
fathom in width, and is termed a " ran." To
supply the wear and tear, the lowest " ran" is
removed after every season, and a new top one
added, so that the net is thus constantly kept in
repair. I learnt, but lately, from a gentleman,
(Mr. Jefford, surgeon, whom I met on the top of




HEMP AND COTTON NETS.           373
the Brlidport coach), that they are now  making
nets of cotton.  At Bridport, Dorset, there is a
large manufacture of nets, &c. from  Russian
hemp, and Russian vessels are often in the harbor. Cotton nets will not do for deep-sea fishing;
they are not strong enough. Cotton nets catch
more fish than hemp nets, when used near the
surface. An experiment was tried-I believe,
in Cornwall-by placing alternately cotton and
hemp nets. The cotton nets caught most fish;
both kinds of nets were fishing under exactly the
same circumstances. Nets are very expensive
things, and soon get injured by the sea water.
I observed that all nets at Folkestone, and even
the men's frocks, were colored of a deep mahogany color. This I ascertained was caused by
their having been boiled in a preserving or
tanning material. Experience has taught seagoing  folks  both  here  and  elsewhere  that
"cutch," i. e. " catechu," is best fitted for this
purpose.  This catechu  was formerly called
Terra japonica, as it was thought to be of mineral origin; it is obtained fiom the wood of the




374      NETS OF ANCIENT EGYPTIANS.
"Acacia Catechu,'" a tree, native of the mountainous parts of Ilindostan; but we luckily need not
go so far as that to get it, as it is to be bought
of Mr. Henry Barnes, drysalter, 38, Long Acre,
W.C., at sixpence (retail) a pound.
I mention this catechu, because I think we
fresh-water anglers may use it to great advantage; it may be doubtless known to many of us,
but I have never seen lines and nets tanned with
it in the London tackle-makers' shops. All that
is required is to boil the landing-nets, lines, and
other items of the angler's kit, in a strong solution of it for an hour or so, and then let it dry.
I have no doubt that sixpennyworth of catechu,
and a little trouble, would save many shillings,
if not pounds, in the wear and tear of fresh-water
as well as salt-water tackle.
It appears, from  a most interesting  book,
entitled " Ancient Egypt, her Testimony to the
Truth of the Bible," by William Osburn, Jun.,
1846, that the ancient Egyptians used nets for
fishing made of leather, afterwards greased, foi
we read:



NETS OF ANCIENT EGYPTIANS,        375
"The four men represented (in the drawing)
are engaged in a process for the manufacture of
leather, which, as the inscription informs us,
fitted it to make sandals and nets for fishing.
The'inverted boat' signifies'nets' elsewhere;
the hieroglyphic group is the'Coptic fish;' the
link represents the mesh of the net, and determines the whole group, which reads'fishingnets.' The use of leathern wine bottles by the
ancients is perfectly familiar to every reader of
the New Testament (see Matt. ix. 17.) It was
not so generally known that these skin vessels
were of elegant shapes, and designed for ornament as well as mere utility. These pictures
(there are many illustrating the manufacture of
leather among ancient Egyptians) abundantly
prove the existence of the manufacture as a
mechanical art among the Egyptians at the time
of the Exodus, and therefore that the Israelites,
who had been captives there, would be well able
to perform  this portion of the service of the
Tabernacle."  These groups of Egyptian workmen strongly remind one of the old song —




376     SIR ELIAB IIARVEY S TAN-HOUSE.
" Oh that the man in heaven may dwell
Who first invented the leathern bottle."
So important is the tanning-net process with
catechu to  the Folkestone fishermen, that a
charity has actually been established to tan the
nets for the poor fellows.
About 1674 A.D. Sir Eliab Harvey, brother to
the immortal Harvey who discovered the circulation of the blood (1628), both founded the
Folkestone Grammar School and provided a tanhouse, for the support of which the fishermen
mere to pay eighteenpence a time. Mr. William
Bennett has now charge of this really practical
benevolent institution. Strangers pay more than
the inhabitants to have their nets tanned, and
fishermen  fiom  Rye and other parts of the
neighborhood  avail themselves of Sir Eliab
Harvey's foresight.   This great man was a
native of Folkestone, and there is now an " Har.
veian Institution" in the town. His mother was
buried in the parish church of St. Mary and St.
Eanswith.  A  tablet to her memory has lately
been removed during the alterations; it luckily




THE IMMORTAL HARVEY'S MOTHER.   377
fell under the notice of one of our most learned
London physicians, who has caused it to be carefillly preserved in an appropriate place in the
clhurch.
The migration of animals may be instanced as
one of the appointed laws whereby man derives
benefit, directly or indirectly, from the obedience
of the created beast, bird, or fish, to the will of
the Creator.   Unconsciously  they follow  the
promptings of their instinct, and, in so doing,
they not only derive pleasure to themselves, but
also play the special part allotted to them in the
chain of animal life, the links of which are so
united that the acts of individuals finally become
conducive to the well-being of the whole.
The miraculous migration of quails in the wilderness of Sin was, we read, brought about by
the direct interposition of Providence for a
special purpose, viz. the support of the starving
tribes of Israel, already murmuring at the loss of
the fleshpots of Egypt.
Who can dare say that this same influence over
the animal kingdom does not continue at this very




378         MIGRATION OF HERRINGS.
day, though, from its regular occurrence, we are
familiarized with what is in reality a continuous
miracle? Who can sufficiently admire the beneficence which ordains that countless myriads of
herrings and other fish should annually visit our
shores-the sea yielding a crop of fish not only
good for human food, but even exceedingly palatable to the taste?   What is this but the fulfilment of a law which ordains that things animate and inanimate shall all pay their tithe to
man, and help support him in his position as the
head of created beings?
There are two theories as to where the herrings
come from. The old story-promulgated, if not
originated, by Pennant-was, that these mighty
armies of fish came from the far North, from those
inhospitable, ice-locked regions, where it will be
impossible for our race ever to attempt to thrive.
Pennant says:-" The herrings begin to appear
off the Shetland Islands in April or May.  This
is the first check the army meets with in its
march southward.  There it is divided into two
parts; one takes to the east, the otller to the wes.




DIFFERENT THEORIES.          379
tern shores of Great Britain; others proceed to,
wards Yarmouth, the great and ancient mart of
herrings; they then pass through the British
Channel, and after that in a manner disappear,"
&c. &c.  The western division he describes as
being divided by Ireland into two brigades, one
of which runs down each side of the coast.  The
more modern idea is, that the herrings come up
out of deep water, in order to deposit their spawn
in the shallow water, where it may become vivified by the light and heat, which would not reach
it in the deep sea. They remain some time near
the shore before they spawn, in order, as it is supposed, that the ova in their bodies may become
mature; and this is the time when they are best
fitted for food.
The proprietor of the Folkestone Herring Hang
strengthened this theory when he told me that
" at the beginning of the season all the fish have
roes-towards the end they are all' shotten,' i. c.
they have no roes."  The shotten fish are worth
much less than when they have roes.  We ourselves must have remarked that the herrings we




380           SHOTTEN HERRINGS.
buy in the London market, when they first come
into season, are quite bursting with a mass of
eggs.  My Folkestone friend was, however, of
opinion that herrings "were a fish of passage "
He says:-" They catch them in June at Shetland,
about October off the North Foreland, in November at Folkestone, at Hastings soon after that, and
then more to the southward, off the coast of
France, up to the month of Febuary."  I give
this for what it is worth. It is possible that this
migration stream towards shore begins at the north
part of England, and gradually runs along the
coast to the southward; and it is a very pardonable
mistake to suppose that the line of march of the
fish is down the Channel, and not from the centre of the Channel towards the sides.
My friend, Mr. Roberts, having read the above,
wrote to me as follows:
" Herrings, sprats, mackerel, and pilchards,
hlave a deep-sea habitat; this they leave under
the operation of a certain law, and come to the
oxyginated surface water.
"They do not migrate from the distant North,




MR. ROBERTS' OPINION.           381
as Tennant asserts.  It is true that they appear
at different localities at various times.   Let us
take the herring.  It strikes in to the north of
Scotland in early autumn; it is early winter before the shoals of this fish appear at Dover and
south coast, 600 miles from the great fishery of
Wick.  This looks, at first view, very much like
migration firom the North, but it is not so. Whenever the fish strike in first (I say from  the deep,
their particular habitat), they are full of roe, or,
as it is expressed,'in season.' This does not continue long, and the fishermen yawl or mesh in
their nets only'shot herrings,' lean and low priced in comparison to what they were a week or
two before. This is repeated at every locality
along the east coast of England and Scotland.
" Were the herrings of Wick to come to us in
the south, they would spawn by the way; and
what would the Yarmouth bloaters be?  A Worthing boat sets out to the north for herrings. The
skipper thinks not of meeting the herring army,
but he goes eastward, and depends upon accounts
of wllat is doing off many ports.  lie looks for




382          YAWLING FOR HERRINGS.
his penny letter, sent by some friend, advising
himr  whither he shall steer-northward or southward-and where the gulls are, and where the
herrings full of roe abound.  There is no such
thing as a continuous stream of fish.  They come
in detached shoals.   The necessity for early
information, so that the fish do not stay in the
fiords uncaught and shedding  their roe, has
caused the Norwegians to establish an electric
telegraph, so that the herring fleet may sail at
the earliest appearing of the fish to the fiord or
fiords where the fall-roed herrings are.
" The splat is tound all through the summer
in the stomachs of our larger fish.  I cannot
learn that it is so with the herring, or the mnackerel.  The mackerel comes in from  tile ocean;
so does the herring.  The salmon's habitat is
known to the seal, who leaves the marks of his
teeth on tlie backs of the fish.
"As to the law which makes the deep-sea fish
stir, tllis we know, that tley are obedient to it.
Mackerel strike in upon the sliioes of tle west




YAWLING FOR HERRINGS.          383
in great numbers at times in  the  autumn
Temperature may play an important part.
" Lake fish become at one season restless, and
migrate to the other end of the lake. The subject is a grand one."
When the herrings come off Folkestone, the
boats all go out with their fleets of nets, " yawling," i. e. the nets are placed in the water and
allowed to drive along with the tide, the men
occasionally taking an anxious look at them, as
it is a lottery whether they come across the fish
or not. It is the received opinion that the fish
rest at the bottom of the water. One of the men
stated that he had seen them  resting themselves
once, and once only; when looking down into
the water which happened to be very clear, he
saw " thousands of fish, all quite stationary and
resting, their noses being on the sand at the
bottom, their bodies off the ground."  The nets
sometimes drift.a long time, catching nothing,
and all of a sudden " the fish rise like a flock of
sheep," and the nets are full. The fish have,
moreover, stated times for rising, and these are,




384        CURIOUS NOISES AT NIGHT.
"at the rising or setting of the moon, and at
daybreak, just before sunrise."
All anglers well know how sensitive fish are
to atmospheric changes; the above facts, noticed
by men whose living depends upon their powers
of observation of the habits of fish, are an additional proof (were it required) of the influence of'
meteorological causes upon the movements of
the inhabitants of the waters, both salt and
fresh.
Strange things are seen and heard by the fishermen, when drifting silently along, far out at
sea, through the murky darkness of midnight.
My fiiend, Mr. Roberts, of Dover, informs me
that a gentleman was lately out on one of these
occasions, on a remarkably dark night, in order
to see the process of catching the fish. All of a
sudden, a curious rushing and a rustling sound
was heard over and above the boat, accompanied
by low musical twitterings; this phenomenon
was not continuous, it passed away, and in a few
minutes was again repeated; meanwhile all was
darkness and mystery. He asked the man what




THE " HERRING SPEAR."          3S5
strange noise that was; they shook their heads
in ignoralce; they did not know what it was,
whether earthly or unearthly; they evidently
regarded it with somewhat more than awe, and
were unwilling to converse about it; their dread
of it was great; all they knew was that it was
the " Herring Piece."  I asked one of the oldest
fishermen in Folkestone about this.  lie had
heard the noise often, he told  ne, but that the
Folkestone  name  for it was the  " Herring
Spear."   "I likes to hear it," he said; " we
always catches more fish when it is about." And
what is this " herring piece," or " herring spear,"
after all  The courage of the sturdy fisherman,
who will face the gigantic waves of a storm from
the south-west, and bravely run his boat down
into the boiling surf to render assistance to the
Indiaman that is firing minute guns on the Goodwin  Sands, is appalled and trembles at the
rushing noise of the wings and the musical callnotes of the flocks of those pretty little birds, the
redwings, who choose a dark still night to wing
1T




386  THE' SEVEN WHISTLERS" AND' COMPOSANT.T
their flight across the Channel to the Britisl
shores. Their time of migration is always about
the herring-fishing time, and hence the noise
caused by them in their flight is always associated with these fish.  No harm  follows the
"herring piece" to the listener; not so with the
" Seven Whistlers;" woe betide those who hear
this evil-portending sound; "I never thinks ally
good of them," said old Smith; " there's always
an accident when thev comes.  I heard'em
once one dark night last winter.  They come
over our heads all of a sudden, singing'eweewe,' and the men in the boat wanted to go
back. It came on to rain and blow soon afterwards, and was an awful night, sir; and, sure
enough, before morning, a boat was upset, and
seven poor fellows drowned.  I knows what
makes the noise, sir; it's them long-bill'd curlews; but I never likes to hear them."
Besides hearing these strange sounds, the poor
fisherman often sees the " Composant."  As he
sails along, a ball of fire appears dancing about
the top of lhis mast; it is of a bluish, unearthly




THE WATER-BURN.             387
color, and quivers about like a candle going out;
sometimnes it shifts from  the mast-head to some
othler portion of the boat, where there is a bit of
pointed iron, and sometimes there are two or
three of them on different parts of the boat. "It
never does anybody any harm, and it always
comes when squally weather is about."  I know
not the origin of this curious term " coinposant;"
the nearest I can get to it are the Frenich words,
"coin blasant," burning or shining corner; or,
better still, from the Italian " corpo-santo." Englishmen are not good hands at inventing names;
and I think the Folkestone people most likely
picked up the word from the Frenchmen whom
they met out at sea in pursuit of herrings as well
as themselves.
Besides this " composant," the " water-burn"
is very frequently met with; and by this is
meant the very peculiar luminous appearance of
the sea, when the waves seem to be formed of
liquid phosphorus, and to leave a coating of
phosphorus upon all they touch. "Water-burn"
is much disliked by the hIerring yawlels, as the
L~ -~IVI    MUL~-VI  J V-~-~Y-Iln




388      WHALES IN BRITISH CHANNEL.
cunning fish can see the net and will not go into
it. When comfortably seated at dinner in a
warm room, with a dish of these fish before us,
let us think of these poor fishermen, who risk
their lives these long winter lights, watching
their drift-nets in solitude, cold, and silence.
There is at Folkestone harbor a long flight of
stone steps, which in the warm  summer days
becomes a sort of fishermen's club, where, when
work is over, they meet and discuss the affairs of
the harbor.  Close by these stairs I espied, half,buried in the ground, a gigantic bone, which
these men told me was a whale's " rump-bone."
Upon examination it turned out to be, not what
they described, but the back part of the head of
a large whale. It was dug out of the "lug sand"
(the sand where the lug-worm is found), when
they were building the pier.  Though much
knocked about, I could distinguish in this bone
the brain cavity and the holes for the exit of tle
nerves, some of which must have been as large
as a man's thumb. Tlis was not thle head of a
fossil whale, but of some whale that had probably




WHALES IN BRITISH CHANNEL.      389
died out at sea, been washed ashore, and buried
in the mud. None of the fishermen knew anything of its history; it might have been one hundreed or five hundred years old, but it was not a
fossil in the true acceptation of the term.
It is not such a very long time ago that whales
(the true or "right" whale) were common in
the English Channel: in the time of Edward the
Third, A.D. 1312-27, they were frequently seen
and captured; and every now and then, even in
the present day, they appear off our coasts.
In olden times a curious law existed, that when
a whale was taken on the British coast it should
be divided between the king and the qusen, the
head only being the king's property, and the
tail the queen's; the reason for this distinction
being, as assigned by our ancient records, "to
furnish the queen's wardrobe with whalebone."
I never saw a whale alive; but they have been
seen alive near Folkestone, and I heard several
stories about them from the fishermen.
Some twelve years ago a whale appeared off
Hythe. The inhabitants turned out and attacked




390        THE WHALE IN A NET.
him with guns, scythes, and all sorts of weapons;
they seriously wounded him, but did not kill
him.  He was afterwards found floating dead
out at sea, and towed into Folkestone harbor.
They sunk a barge under him, and, as the tide
went down, allowed him to sink into the barge.
The barge, whale and all, with his tail hanging
over, was afterwards towed up to London by a
steamer, and was sold for 401. for oil.
Once upon a time, as M]r. Smith, one of the
most experienced of the Folkestone fishermen,
tells me, a large whale appeared off Weymouth,
and was seen by several fishermen.  The affair
was talked over at night in the public-houses,
and one of the company, who happened to have
a new seine-net which he had never used, was
much taunted about it, and he was dared to go
and net this whale with his new net. At first he
took it as a joke, but, under the influence of beer
and the chaff of his comrades, he stamped his
hand on the table and said, " Well, d- me, if 1
don't go and shoot the net after him, catch or no
catch."  Accordingly a sentry was poste(, and




HOW TO MARK A WHALE.          391
the next morning the whale was signalled as
being in the offing.  So the owner of the new
seine put it into the boat, and, rowing quietly
along, shot the net round the unsuspicious whale.
At last Mr. Whale put his nose into the net, and
feeling something strange, charged against it,
dragging men, boats, and all along with him.
He then plunged and dived, and, ultimately
taking the new seine-net, rolled about his body,
right away with him, in spite of all the fishermen could do.  They looked after the whale,
who had gone off with the net, much as an
angler looks into the water when a fine fish has
escaped from his hook; but, however, the whale
was gone, and the would-be captors rowed home
disconsolate and whaleless.
Some three or four days afterwards, as a coastguard was going his rounds in the dead of the
night, he saw a huge black mass come rolling in
with the tide; it looked like a wreck, yet it was
not a wreck, for a wreck has not a tail wherewith
to flop the water as the object had.  The coastguardsman waited till the tide turned, and as it




392        HOW TO MARK A WHALE.
went down he got near to this strange object,
which had got hard and fast among the rocks.
He then saw that it was a whale, and, what was
exceeding strange, the whale had a net entangled
round about him in the most complicated manner. "First come, first served,' said the coastguardsman to himself, as he pulled out his knife
and cut two great slashes in the whale's fat
sides, during which operation (mark it, 0 reader)
the whale kicked and evinced signs of life. The
finder then shut up his knife and posted off with
the news.  Of course, as there was a net round
the whale, his identity was established directly,
and the owner of the net claimed the carcass because his net had caught him; the coastguardsman claimed it because he had found him.
Meanwhile, when the dispute was still going on,
the lord of the manor put in his claim, as it was
found between high and low water-mark, gained
it, took possession of the whale, cut him up and
boiled all the oil out of him, getting forty barrels,
worth a lot of money; and there the matter
ended.




THE LAWYER AND THE WHALE.       393
Some weeks afterwards, as the coastguard was
sit ing on his " donkey " (the term applied to the
portable stool used by these men,) a respectablelooking gentleman walked up to him, and said,
" My man, don't you recollect the whale that
you found hereabouts some time since?" " Yes,
sir," said the man, "it was me as found him."
" Well, now, can't you recollect whether, when
you cut him (as they tell me you did,) he kicked
and winced under the knife?"  "In course he
did I" was the answer; " he nearly knocked the
knife out of my hands with his tail."  "Well,
then," said the old gentleman, bristling up all of
a sudden, "now, I am lawyer, and mind that
you tell the same story to-morrow, sir; for, as
sure as to-morrow comes, you will have to swear
in court."  On the morrow the coastguardsman
swore that the whale was alive when first he saw
him on the shore, and that he knew it by the
knife test, as stated above.  It was now the lord
of the manor's turn to sing small, for he. could
not claim a thing if cast up alive., He had to
refund the money he got for the oil, having taken




394     WHALES' BONi S IN ODD PLACES.
all his trouble for nothing; so that, after all, the
owner of the new seine caught his whale, got his
new net back, and nearly a hundred pounds besides.
I mentioned this fact to Mr. Marder, of Lyme,
a naturalist and a great sportsman.  He told
me a curious circumstance of whales' bones.
One day, when out shooting, he found in the
middle of a ploughed field a great round thin bit
of bone, which, as an anatomist, he at once knew
to be from off a whale's vertebrae; but how did
it get into the ploughed field?  He afterwards
ascertained that the farmer to whom  the field
belonged had bought from a fisherman the skeleton of a whale, and had pounded it up for
manure. The fisherman had shown the skeleton
for some time, but soon got tired of the oily
bones and the exhibition, and was glad to sell it
to the farmer for manure; and this accounted
for the whale in the ploughed field.
Whales' bones get to odd places.  I know a
garden at Abingdon, in Berkshire, where the
entrance to a pretty artificial grotto is under a




SIGN BOARDS OF WHALES' BONES.    395
porch of ivy. The ivy, I found, is supported by
the lower jaw-bones of a gigantic whale.  How
they got it there I could not ascertain.  In a
garden at Claphaml I once saw a chair that had a
very anatomical look about it; no carver would
ever have thought of that shape for a chair,
thought I. I examined it, and found that it was
one of the vertebrae or back bones of a whale,
painted green; it made a capital seat.
In the neighborhood of Hull, and also Newcastle-on-Tyne, it is, according to Birdcatcher,
"very common to see the huge jaw-bones of
whales used as posts for field or even for approach gates, and very good and durable ones
they make, whether painted or not."
The rib of the Dun Cow at Warwick, and the
gigantic rib at St. Mary Redcliffe's Church at
Bristol, are the bones of whales.  There is suspended in the yard of the Royal College of Surgeons a gigantic blade-bone, with an anchor
painted in gold upon it, and Calvert and Co's
Entire  underneath.   This  bone,  Professor
Quekett informs me, formed, for half a century,




396             SPERM WHALES.
the sign of a public-house at Portsmouth, where
they sold Calvert's beer.  The blade-bones of
whales are not uncommonly seen at the present
day in the bone-shops of London. There is the
top of a whale's humerus or arm bone hanging
outside a bone-shop in Hammersmith, with the
following inscription:-" The largest bone ever
known: weighs 128 pounds."   I have seen another in a shop near the Vauxhall Road; also a
large scapula in the "Seven Dials;" they seem
placed, not for sale, but to attract attention. The
immense importance of whales' bones to the
poor Esquimaux is too well known to need comment.
The whales seen about the British seas are
generally stragglers from the northern waters;
but it sometimes happens that a whale from the
southern regions pays us a visit; however, this is
a very rare event.  As my readers are probably
aware, the great Sperm  or Spermaceti whale is
found south of the equator only, and, according
to Maury's " Physical Geography of the Sea,"
there is a line (marked in his map) across which




PARASOLS FROM WHALES' JAWS.       397
the sperm whale cannot pass.  Nevertheless, I
lhave a well authenticated case of a sperm  whale
appearing in the Bristol Channel.  I have also
a good engraving of a whale which was cast
ashore near Antwerp, A.D. 1576.  This creature
is also a large sperm whale. There is a figure of
a man measuring it, and the result of his observations are (as it were) given in the inscription
on the plate:   Ein grosser Wallfisch von 60
schuch lang und 41 schuch hoch."   The costumes of the people about are most quaint and
curious. There was evidently great excitement
about it, as streams of people are seen in the distance, and  an old-fashioned  coach, with the
horses galloping.  There is a booth erected, in
which a man is playing the fiddle, and people
drinking.  There is no mistaking a sperm whale
when once seen; the form is different from the
true or " right" whale; and he has teeth in his
lower jaw, whereas the right whale has " baleen," improperly  called  whalebone.   These
sperm whales' teeth are very common in curiosity shops and in private collections, and they




398        WHALE TIED BY THE TAIL.
often have figures of sailors, ships, anchors, &c.
carved upon them.   Many  of the  so-called
"ivory " handles of ladies' parasols are made of
rods of bone cut out of the solid " teeth-armed "
under jaw of this monster of the deep.  The
"engine-turned appearance," as seen in all sections of ivory, such as an opera ticket, upon this socalled ivory handle will be absent; and if so, the
owner of the parasol may console herself that she
is holding in her hand, not a portion of an elephant's tusk, but of a whale's jaw.  Curious it is
that in this respect the most gigantic of land animals and most monstrous of marine creatures
should become subservient to the hand of beauty.
Talking of whales to a friend well known as
one of the first of our English naturalists and
ornithologists, I learnt from  him  the following
story, which he has kindly allowed me to place
on record:" Nearly thirty years ago, as a French vessel
was going down the Thames, her captain saw a
huge object floundering about on a sandbank
near the Nore.  A boat was put out, and this




WHALE TIED BY THE TAIL.       399
object was ascertained to be a large specimen of
a sperm whale which had got on the sandbank,
and was gradually being left high and dry as the
tide went down.  They waited till the water allowed them to get to the whale, who appeared
almost dead, and then, passing a rope from the
ship, they tied it tightly round him above his
tail, and returned to the ship.  As the tide rose,
the whale floated, the ship set sail, towing along
the whale in high glee, thinking in their simplicity that they were going to take him as a
prize into Calais harbor. Mistaken Frenchmen!
They had not got far before the whale showed
symptoms of returning life, by wriggling, twisting, and not following the ship in the orderly
manner becoming a dead whale. At length the
dragging through the water and the pulling at
his tail roused him up completely; he came quite
to life, and threatened to damage the ship. The
Frenchmen, finding they had caught a Tartar,
cut the rope as it passed over the stern of the
ship, and away went the whale one way, back
again towards the mouth of the Thames, with a




400      DISSECTION ON A LARGE SCALE.
great, long, thick rope still tied to his tail and
dragging behind him; the ship went the other
way, towards Calais, having lost their prize.
"The whale was seen occasionally for some
days after this, still with the rope on his tail.
At last he foolishly came into Whitstable Bay.
The men in the oyster-boats saw him, and, by
shouting and splashing, forced  him  up  into
shallow water, where the tide left him. They
then wisely made sure of him by killing him outright. No pig-sticking knives were big enough
to cut his throat, so they fixed scythes on to
poles, and pierced him till he died. Then came
the question, what was to be done with him?
and at last a deputation of fishermen went up te
Messrs.        and Co. in the City, the great dealers in whale-oil, whalebone, &c., who gave the
fishermen 801. for their capture, and sent down
men, blubber-knives, iron pots, &c., to boil him
up.  At the same time an offer was made to a
London society, to which my friend was attached,
to send down and take what parts of the whale
were wanted for anatomical and scientific pur



DISSECTION ON A LAIGCrlI SCALE.    401
poses.  Of course lie went down iinmediately to
Whitstable Bay, and there found this gigantic
sperm  whale, between seventy and eighty feet
long, surrounded by workmen digging and cutting the blubber off his huge carcase, and filling
the surrounding atmosphere with a most overpowering effluvium  which was anything  but
pleasant.  Everything was on such a gigantic
scale, that the dissection could not be carried on
without the aid of horses; so when the blubber
was all taken off the upper side of the whale, my
friend harnessed the horses to the ribs, and
hauled them out one by one, thus exposing all
the contents of the body.  He then carefully
descended into the gigantic mass of anatomical
horrors, and took out what parts he wanted.
This service was not, however, done without
danger, for when dissecting the enormous heart
his foot slipped and he fell into one of the cavities of the heart, his feet passing down into the
great artery, the aorta. Assistance was luckily
at hand, or lie would have slipped right down
into this huge pipe, and might have met with a




402           A CURIOUS ACCIDENT.
fatal accident. To show  the narrow escape lie
had, he subsequently cut rings out of this aorta,
and found he could pass them, without stretching, over his head and shoulders right down to
his feet.
" Nothing daunted by the smell, or other
disagreeable circumstances, he continued his
dissection till he had made a valuable and interesting collection of preparations. One morning,
when he was still working away, and the men
boiling or'trying down' the oil, a very officiallooking personage came up, and in a haughty
manner said:'Leave off work, all of you,
directly; do nothing more to the whale. I claim
thisfsht (he was no naturalist, for a whale is a
warm-blooded animal, and no fish) in the name
of the lord of the manor, and nothing whatever
must be touched or removed.' My friend had
just taken out the whale's eye, which exhibits
remarkable structures, and, offering it to the new
cormer, said:'Well, I suppose the lord of the
manor does not want the whale's eve?''You




VARIOUS CLAIMANTS FOR THE WHALE.   403
may keep that, sir,' was the answer. This disagreeable intruder then departed.
" While the dissectors, both anatomical and
commercial, were recovering their wonder, from
another quarter of the compass, lo! another
Jack-in-office, who stalked into the assembled
crowd, and with a wave of the stick proclaimed:'Touch nothing-move nothing-I claim all this
in the name of the Lord Warden of the Cinque
Ports.'
" Vultures smell the stinking carcase from
afar; so did it seem that the smell of this unfortunate whale had found its way so far as London,
and  even to the  Crown  authorities, for yet
another human vulture arrived on the wings of
the wind, and, spreading his official papers over
the putrid mass pronounced,' Tllis is a royal fish,
and I claim it in the name of the Crown.' Here,
then, was a pretty mess, both literal and physical; the three claimants set to work disputing
with each other for possession; the fishermen
quietly wiped their oily hands, packed up their
traps, and adjourned to the public houses to




404    VARIOUS CLAIMANTS FOR THE WHALE.
drink out their eighty pounds and talk over the
matter. My friend, seeing nothing could be
done, packed up his whale's eye, and went back
to London in an oyster-boat, as he carried such
aroma about with him that they would not take
him  in the coach.  The three vultures - then
departed to their respective nests, and transferred the cause to the lawyers, who managed to
spin out their disputes for a whole year. In the
meantime a fourth claimant, and that a most
powerful one, appeared. Father Neptune, seeing
that mortals would not take advantage of his
gifts, ordered his white-capped servants, the
rolling sea breakers, to remove his present; they
did so, bit by bit, rolling back into the bosom of
the ocean, blubber, oil, bones, and anatomicalpreparations, except the huge jaws, which were
saved, and, if I mistake not, are now in a garden
at Canterbury. So that by the time that the
lawyers had finished their learned arguments,
there was nothing whatever left of the sperm
whale, about which they had been so foolishly
disputing."




AN APOCRYPHAL ANIMAL.         405
The skulls and bones of whales have often
given rise to many wonderful stories; but nothing
can beat the story of a marvellous skull that
was found in Australia, and of which an account
from  the Sydney 3Morning Herald was, in 1847,
sent to my father for his opinion. It runs as
follows:-' THE APOCRYPHAL ANIMAL OF THE INTERIOR OF
NEW SOUTH WALES.
"To the Editors of the Sydney 7Morning Herald.
" GENTLEMEN,-I need scarcely observe to you
that this colony is distinguished by the most
grotesque variations of the customary phenomena
of nature; birds without wings scour our plains,
and marsupial quadrupeds, with claws on their
fore paws and talons on their hind legs, like
birds, hop on their tails; the moles lay eggs,
and have duck's bills; we have birds with
brooms in their mouths in place of tongues; fish
for which it is utterly impossible to find a place
in the existing systems of scientific men; and
salt growing in perfection on the bushes of our




406    THE 4 KATENPAI,"  OR " BUNYIP.'
forests. Until lately it was supposed that nearly
all our quadrupeds belonged, or were intimately
related, to the glires of Linnaeus; but whilst it
was generally known that at least two-thirds of
the Australian quadrupeds made their way by
springing in the air, it has been but lately that
rumors have reached us of a huge animal of the
fere  order disporting in clumsy gambols, and
inhabiting the waters of the lakes and rivers of
the  interior.   These  rumors have, however,
begun to assume a more certain form; and, inasmuch as during my recent trip on the banks of
the Laclllan and Murrumbidgee, and through the
Murray district, many details in reference to this
apocryphal animal were given to me, I will, with
your permission, lay before your readers such
particulars as I have been enabled to collect.
" The Murrumbidgee blacks assert that a large
animal,'big as him bullock,' exists in the lakes
of that district; they describe it as having a
hlead and long neck like an emu, with a thick
mane of hair from  the top of the head to the
shoulders; four-legged, with three toes on each




ITS SKULL DISCOVERED.         40 
foot, which is webbed: and having a tail like a
horse. They call it the Katenpai, whilst by the
Watta Watta tribe (who similarly describe it) it
is called Kyenpate; by the Yabala Yabala
tribe on the Edward River, it is known as the
Tunatbah; whilst the Burrula Burrula trilbe
call it Dongus. I have been informed that the
blacks on the Great Carangamite Lake, in the
Portland district, describe a similar animal which
they call the Bunyip; and I have heard various
accounts from white men (shepherds and otlers)
who profess to have seen the animal at its gainbols in the water.  But the following incident
has been productive of so tangible a result that,
however I may have doubted the exaggerated
narratives of some of my informants, I cannot
but conclude that some large animal, with which
we are yet unacquainted, really exists in the
districts I have named.
"Mr. Fletcher, who resided on the Lower
Murrumbidgee, was told by a tribe of blacks
that they had some time previously killed a
Kaltenpai, on the banks of a lake near the Mutr



408    DISAPPOINTMENT FOR THE CURIOUS.
rumbidgee.  It must be observed that the blacks
have a great dread of the animal, and avoid
bathing or fishing in the waters where they
assert that it exists. They assured Mr Fletcler
that the remains of the creature would be found
in the spot where they killed it; and, although
doubtful of the fact, that gentleman proceeded
to the place minutely described by the blacks,
and there found a large portion of the skull of
some animal, which, to all appearance, had not
been dead for any great length of time. No
traces of any more bones or other remains could
be discovered, but enough was found to prove
the existence of the supposed fabulous Katenpai.
Every black to whom  the skull was afterwards
shown agreed that it belonged to the dreaded
monster of the lakes; and in order to give your
readers as accurate a notion as is in iny power
of all that can be gathered from Mr. Fletcher's
discovery, I will request their attention to the
following rude sketches of the skull, which was
afterwards taken by Mr. Fletcher to Melbourne,
and where it will doubtlessly receive the most




REAL NA'TURE OF TIE BUNYIP.        409
careful examnination from  skilful comparative
anatomists."
[Here follows a description and drawing]
This slip was sent to the late lamented Mr.
Broderip for his opinion, which is as follows:" I return your Sydney slip with thanks.  If
the artist who drew the figures be anything of a
draughtsman, the skull looks marvellously like
that of a calf. Tlhe Katenpai, appears to be a
near relation of the Water Bull of some of the
Scotch Lakes.       "Ever yours,
"W. J. BRODERIP."
Professor Owen also wrote his opinion to my
father, and he has kindly allowed me to insert
his letter in this place:" The opinion which you have received from
Broderip I believe to be near the truth.  It was
founded, however, lnot on the cuts in the slip
fiom  the newspaper, which are problematical
enough, but on a pencil sketch the size of the
skull itself, brought to me a few days ago by a
18




410      REAL NATURE OF THE BUNYIP.
gentleman from Port Philip, who has seen the
specimen.. That sketch showed the crowns of
the teeth of a young ruminant just peeping out
of the sockets, and left little doubt in my mind
that the story had no other foundation than the
skull of a calf.
"Ever yours,
" lRIcHARD OWEN."
This " tale of a Bunyip" shows, what I have
often experienced myself, how readily uneducated and illiterate workmen and\laborers (and savages in particular, in the case of travellers.) will
instinctively endeavor to impose impossible stories
upon the " gentleman as looks after curiosities."
They generally, however, defeat their own object
by stretching the truth to such an extent that
they are obliged to laugh at their own stories;
and it is most amusing to strip off one by one the
bandages of lies, in the centre of which a very
small bit of truth indeed lies buried.  Good humor and beer should be the instruments employed
in this dissection.
There is a natural curiosity that occasionally




A MERMAN IN SPITALFIELDS.          411
turns up in London in the shape of a mermaid,
and I have been lucky enough to have seen one.
The  greatest of British  naturalists (Professor
Owen) having, in August, 1858, kindly informed
me that there was a specimen of a " merman "
on exhibition in London, and that he wished me
to examine and report on it, I hastened (honored
with tie request) forthwith to view this monster
of the deep.
In tlhe back parlor of the Whiite Hart, VineD
court, Spitalfields, high and dry upon  a deal
board, lay this wonderful object-hideous enough
to excite the wonder of the credulous, and curious
enoughl to afford a treat to the naturalist.  Sulch
a thing as a merman0 or mermaid of course never
really existed; I was therefore most anxious to
examine its composition, which, by the kindness
of the landlady (a remarkably civi] woman), who
removed tile glass which covered her treasure, I
was enabled to do.  Tile creature (a gentleman,
not a lady specimen of the tribe) was from three
to four feet long.  The upper part of its body w'as
composed of the head, arms and trunk of a mon



412      REPORT UPON ITS COMPOSITION.
key, and the lower part of a fish, which appeared
to me to be a common hake; and the head was
really a wonderful composition: the parchmentlike, hideous ears stood well forward, the skin of
the nose when soft had been moulded into a de
cided specimen of " the snub," the forehead was
wrinkled into a frown, and the mouth " grinned
a ghastly grin;" the curled lips partly concealed
a row of teeth which in the upper jaw were of a
conical form and sharp-pointed, taken probably
from the head of the hake, whose body formed
the lower part of our specimen. The lower jaw
contained these fish's teeth, but conspicuously in
front was inserted a human incisor or fiont tooth,
and a vacant cavity showed that there once had
been a pair of them.  These were probably
placed there to show the " real human nature"
of the monster. The head had once been covered
with hair; but visitors, anxious to obtain a lock
of a merman's hair, had so plucked his unfortunate wig that only a few scattered hairs remained; the relic-seekers are now, therefore, ignoral t ly




BISTORY OF THE MERMAN.           413
treasuring in their cabinets hairs from  the pate
of anl old red monkey.
The eyes, sunk deep in the sockets, are formled
of round bits of leather, with the pupils marked
in black paint; and altogether the features of the
merman are those of a disagreeable old man, who
was trying not to laugh.  There is no portrait of
the nerlnan tribe in "Bell's Anatomy of Expression," and a portrait of our Spitalfields friend
ouglht really to find a place in the next edition.
The arms, long, shrivelled and gaunt, were
ljaced in an easy position, as though the owner
was kissing its hand to the spectator, and the soft
parts having receded fiom  the nails left them
long and projecting, like a bird's claws. The
chest of the monkey had hardly been big enough
to hold the shoulders of the fish, so it is extended
with a cage of wire, which also gives the appearance of ribs.  The waist is very much larger than
the chest proper; from which fact we may learn
that the fashion of tight-lacing was not derived
from the mermaid family.
The fish (neatly stuffed) was placed with its




414         HISTORY OF THE MIERMAN.
belly outermost, so that its back fin formed a continuation with the back of the monkey, The
junction was cleverly managed, and the tail part
was gracefully curved to the left, like the heraldic pictures we sometimes see on coats of arms,
&c. The merman was placed on his back; but
his proper position is evidently erect, for if he
stood up on his tail he would have a much more
imposing appearance.  The history of it is, that
it was bought at a sale of old furniture, &c., of a
certain old Mr. Ellis, of whom all I could learn
waVs, that "lie bought and sold for the East India
Company;" but whether he bought and sold tea,
silk or mermaids, I could not ascertain.  The
present proprietors think it was sent to Mr. Ellis
from  " foreign parts," on account of the foreign
look and spice-like smell of the material which
formed its bed in the box with which it was
bought. Rumors, however, came to my ears
that it is a " London-made" merman, and that a
certain bird-stuffer in the west end of town, several years ago, made a pair, a merman and a
mermaid, and sold them for exhibition.  Ilnmedi



MERMAID IN HUNGERFORD MARKET.   415
ately upon hearing this an idea struck me that I
knew  the whereabouts of Mrs. Mermaid. Slhe
also is in London, and but a short distance from
her husband.
In an old curiosity-shop, in the west arcade of
Hungerford Market (where they sell poultry), I
found my lady, looking as pretty as ever, under
her glass case; and the proprietor kindly allowed
me to inspect her. About half the size of her
partner-she too is formed of a monkey and a
fish-but not put together quite so artistically:
her head is too bullet-shaped, her eyes decidedly
glass doll's eyes, her teeth no teeth at all, but a
small bit of bone just cut into notches, and
which interfere much with her personal appearance and detract from her interesting look; but
to make up for this, her hair is longer, and her
chest, &c. exceedingly well developed. She is
fastened upright by means of the curved portion
of her tail, and smiles gracefully through her
dusty glass house. Her history, as told me by
the proprietor, is curious: she came fiom Yankee
land, and was exhibited years ago at the Egyp



116         ANTIQUITY OF MERMAIDS.
tian Hall, forming one of the first, if not the
very first, exhibitions in that place.  She was
sold to two Italian brothers for 40,000 dollar',
and there was a Chancery suit about her, as one
of the partners wished to prevent his brother
exlibiting her.  Her age is certainly forty-five
years, as the present owner could trace  her
during this period-how much older she may be
it is rude to inquire, considering her sex.
Mermaids were, I believe, not very uncommon
exhibitions in days gone by; and they may be
still seen occasionally at country fairs, &c.  The
good folks of England are getting every year
more and more educated, and mermaids do not
take so well now  as formerly, when pack-horses
performed tile part of railways, and horn-books
composed the village library.  Still the idea of
a mermaid can be traced to very remote ages.
The ancient Greeks had a presiding nymph over
their favorite fountains and streams.  The bold
sailors of Eineas kept well to leeward of " the
rocks of tlhe sirens, white with scattered hones;"
well they knew the stories of tlhe three sister




ORIGIN OF THE SUPERSTITION.      417
sirens, " Parthenope, Locosia, and Ligea," whio,
presenting the form of a beautiful woman above,
a fish below, with soft music enticed the mariners
to shipwreck and destruction.
For a belief so universally prevalent there
must be a foundation of some kind.  Sailors,
always superstitious, and employed for the most
part in an occupation of solitude and apprehension, would easily convert into a human form
the sudden appearance of a seal, walrus, &c.
coming up fiomn the depths of the ocean to
breathe and look about. Thus Dr. Scoresby, the
celebrated  Arctic traveller, writes:-" I have
myself seen a sea-horse (a walrus) under circumstances that it required little stretch of the
imagination to mistake it for a human being;
and the surgeon actually reported to me that he
had seen a man with his head above the water."
Let the reader look at the big walrus at the
British Museum, and if he has a large acquaintance and a fertile imagination, he will very
possibly recollect some one of whose face he is
18*




418      THE DUGONG-JACK'S ORDERS.
reminded by the features of that animal.  Sir
W. Jardine's opinion, is, " that it is generally
some species of seal, very frequently the barbata
or haaf seal, which, from its more solitary habits,
has given rise  to these mermaid legends."  No
one who has watched the seal at the Zoological
Gardens can help being struck with its very
human face as it gazes out of the water; and
even wlien it turns round and dives, the lower
part of its body gives the appearance of a man
diving with his legs tied together.  But the
most human-like of sea creatures are the Dugong
and Manatee, which are found in the warmer
parts of America and its islands, and also in
Western Africa  and  Australia;  their skulls
(there are several in the Royal College of Surgeons, Lincoln's-inn-fields) resemble that of a
man with a very long nose; their mammne are
placed in the same position as in the human
species; and they have very free use of their
anterior extremities, which they use for progressing, nursing their young, &c.
The Portuguese and' Spaniards call them by a




JACK'S ORDERS.             419
name which signifies " woman fish," and the
Dutch call theml " Baard mannetje," or littlebearded man, as they have a quantity of thickset
hair round their muzzles. These creatures are
herbivorous; after cropping the herbage at the
bottom of the water, they rise up suddenly, thus
exposing the upper part of their bodies out of
the water; at the least noise down they go
again; having firmly impressed poor Jack on
the look-out from the foretop that he has seen a
mermaid, Jack comes home with his story, and
takes care to tell it; and if the ingenious Taxidermist can't catch a merman or mermaid, there
is no reason why he should not make one. The' lines" are laid down by Jack-" half a man
half a fish," are the orders; a monkey's body
makes a capital figure-head, a fish's body a capital stern; a glass-case keeps off inquisitive
fingers, and the merman and mermaid are ready
for the " walk-up-ladies-and-gentlemen" orator,
who not unfrequently reaps a good harvest from
those who go to see because they do believe,




120      NOTES ON BARNUM'S MERMAID.
and those who go to see because they don't
believe.
I lately heard of a speculator giving a very
large sum of money at the Cape of Good Hope
for a mermaid. He exhibited it; and when he
had got all his money back, and something over
for his trouble, his curiosity could no longer be
restrained. He cut up the mermaid publicly,
and discovered its composite nature.
I attended Mr. Barnum's lecture on " Humbug,"
and the following are my notes of what he said
of his celebrated Fejee  Ierniaid.  He defined
" Humbug " as " The art of attracting attention,
whether the article is good or bad;" and his mermaid story exemplifies his theory. He bought
the mermaid, which was being exhibited in Watson's Coffee-house, London, for a shilling, and
then he (Barnum) showed it in his museum foi'
not/hing, and yet made money. He had an elaborate and really beautiful picture painted, which
he hung outside the museum; the picture represented three lovely creatures with beautiful ioncg
hair, the traditional looking,-glass and comb, &c.




THE GREAT OSTEND WHALE.         421
disporting themselves in a fairy-like submarine
grotto; but lie did not say his mermnaid was like
those in the picture. Attracted by the picture
and notice, " A mermaid is added to the museum,
-No extra charge," thousands paid to go in,
and then they saw a " hideous, shrivelled-up old
mummy; and if people were not satisfied with
the mermaid, they had their shilling's worth in
looking at the rest of the museum."  Mr. Barnum
confessed that he did not pursue his studies in
Natural History too far, or he might learn too
much.
Much of the small-shot of wit and pun has lately been fired at an extensive Pavilion erected
upon the area of the King's Mews at Charing
Cross (probably with Carlton House in their recollection). Epigrammatists have called it the
" Palace of the Prince of W(b})ales," others, " A
tub for a Whale;" but we must assure them that
the stupendous occupant of this handsome building is entitled to their courteous attention.  At
Ostend this occupant of the deep created what
journalists call a sensation, and our gay neigh



422          THE WHALE PAVILION.
bors made its capture the occasion of three days'
"fetes," with a host of allegorical and processional accompaniments, which  are detailed  in a
" Memoire pour servir " of the whole affair. The
proprietors next visited Paris, and there pitched
their Pavilion in the Place Louis XV. Thence
they journeyed to London, where we hope the
exhibition will receive all the encouragement it
merits, &c.
The skeleton is placed in the area or pit, and
within the ribs is a stage, to which the visitor ascends by a flight of steps. Here are tables and
seats; on the former we found three volumes of
Lacepede's Natural History, and a folio album,
with epigrams, poems and other small wit of visitors at Ostend and Paris.  One specimen, a
conundrum, signed by two illustrious gladiators,
is as follows: " Why should we be mourned for,
if killed by the falling of the bones of the whale?
We should be be-wailed."  "Why is the Whale
like Noah's Ark? Because it contains an Ass."
Altogether, "The  Pavilion of the Gigantio




A LARGE WHALE'S HEAD.         423
Whale is one of the pleasantest places we have
visited this season."
Again, in May, 1836, were exhibited, at the
Cosmorama, Regent-street, London, "The wonderful remains of an enormous head, 18 feet in
length, 7 feet in breath, and weighing 1,700
pounds. The complete eighty-eight bones were
discovered in excavating a passage for the purpose of a railway, at the depth of 75 feet from the
surface of the ground, in Louisiana, and at the
distance of 160 miles fiom the sea."  My father
has annoted on this handbill, " Balcena Mysticetus, recent and oily."
In the month of March, 1857, there appeared
in the Times an advertisement for a vacant bit
of ground whereon a whale might be exhibited.
I watched anxiously for the result, and with success; for shortly I read another notice to the effect
that the whale had arrived, and was now in the
Mile-End Road, Whitechapel, near the King
Henry the Eighth public-house.  That same day
found me on the top of a Bow and Stratford onm



:24            A STUFFED SKIN.
nibus, the conductor promising to set me down
"at the whale."
The admission fee of sixpence being paid, I entered a tent, and for the first time in my life enjoyed a full and uninterrupted view of the monster. I had expected to have seen a skeleton; but,
instead, the proprietor has preserved, stretched on
a framework, the skin entire. The head remains
attached with the bones, whalebone and all complete; so that it was a stuffed whale I went to
see, and not a skeleton-none the less interesting
for that. It rarely happens that Londoners have
a chance of seeing a specimen of the largest animal in creation.  Pictures certainly convey an
idea in a whale; but to have a notion of its huge
bulk, the thing itself must be seen extended on
the ground, examined by the eyes, and felt by
the fingers. The specimen was a young female
Rorqual, or razor-backed whale (so called from
its havin, a fin on its back somewhat like a razor.)  It was driven on shore at Winterton, eight
miles from Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, in a tremendous gale from east-south-east, on the fifth of




DESCRIPTION OF THiE WVIINLE.      425
day of January, 1857.  Her full length is fortyeight feet; her weight about twenty-five tons.
The color of the skin is dark brown on the back,
vanishing off towards the body in a bluish-grey.
The tail measures, from tip to tip, eleven feet.
This is composed of a dense fibrous mass, and
feels to the touch like a thick sheet of india-rubber. It is placed at right angles to the body, in
the reverse way to that usually seen in the fish.
The eye is remarkably small, and the folds of the
eyelids well marked: as it was impossible to preserve the eye in its natural bright state, an artificial glass model had been inserted into the eyelids, the natural colors of the eye having been
closely imitated. The liver of this animal completely filled a one-horse cart, and was as much
as the horse could draw. The heart about filled
a good-sized washing-tub, and a section of the
principal artery (the aorta) would about fit round
an ordinary sized bucket.  The weight of the
blubber was not ascertained.  It seems extraordinary that the captors were not aware of the
value of the oil; for they cut the great masses of




426        ACCOUNT OF ITS CAPTURE.
the blubber off, and spread it as manure over the
fields. The fin which is placed by the side of the
animal is remarkable; it contains four fingers,
like human fingers, not, however, all separated
one from the other, but inclosed in the skin of
the fin, which looks like that of an ordinary fish.
Imagine a human hand inserted into a hedge-cutter's glove, and wax poured round it, and you
have (minus the thumb, of which the whale has
no trace) an exact model of the whale's fin.
When the whale found itself on shore, it " roared
loudly," as the proprietor described it. The noise
was probably produced by the whale expelling
air through his spiracles or blow-holes. A man
went out into the water with an anchor, and rope
attached, by way of a harpoon; twice, with all
his force, did he dig the anchor into the fat blubber of the beast, twice did the beast by his tremendous struggles tear the weapon out again; but
the third time, the anchor luckily turned, and
thus caught about two feet of the skin in one of
its flukes, and thus was the whale secured.  Tile
three gaping rents in the skin were plainly visi



WHALES AND CRINOLINE.         427
ble. The operator, however, had a dangerous
task; for the whale, in its agonies, struck right
and left with its tail, nearly drowning its enemy
in the whirlpool caused thereby.
Its gigantic mouth is placed wide open by
means of props, and a moderate-sized man can
stand upright in it. This mouth was by far the
most curious part of the exhibition; for in it can
be seen, in their natural position, the plates of
whalebone, or baleen, so much used, not only in
the arts, but by ladies in almost every portion of
their dress. Let the ladies consider how much they
are indebted to the poor whale, as far as their
dress is concerned; for how would they get out
without whalebone?  A fashion started by them
extends its influence to distant regions of which
they often have no idea.  Betore the invention
of crinoline, the whales far away in the northern
waters carried their baleen, or whalebone, in
their mouths, and spouted water through it, thereby obtaining their dinners of minute sea animals
in comparative peace and quietness. But, fashion
invented crinoline. Whalebone was required to




428        WHALES AND CRINOLINE.
make it, and the price of whalebone went up from
~150 per ton to ~620. Beaver hats, and bonnets,
and muffs have gone out of fashion; so the poor
beavers have a rest, and are not nearly so much
persecuted as they were in former days. It is
now the whale's turn, and they are harpooned
and otherwise slaughtered in order that their baleen, or whalebone, should be transferred from
their mouths into ladies' dresses.  No living
creatures will be more pleased when the reign of
crinoline is over than the whales; but many of
them must yet fall victims to the fashion which
has proved so " killing" to them.
Now, whalebone is by no means true bone.
Put a bit of so-called whalebone by the side of
the bone of a leg of mutton, and the difference
will be perceived. There are three hundred and
eighty plates on each side of the mouth; on the
right side, the foremost hundred and twenty are
of a beautiful milk-white, the rest being nearly
black. This is simply a variety; some whales
have been killed entirely white-they answer to
the Albinos in the human species. Whalebone is




WHAIILEBONE Ol1 BALEEN.      429
composed of a substance of a horny appearance
and consistence; internally it is of a fibrous texture, resembling hair; and the external surface
consists of a smooth enamel, capable of receiving
a good polish. It answers the purpose of teeth to
the whale, and is placed in the position where
teeth are usually found in other animals, in the
upper jaw; none whatever are found in the lower
jaw, which is covered by a hard, firm gum, as
polished and as smooth as a mahogany table.
Along each side of the jaw are found plates or
layers of this whalebone. These can be counted
from the outside, and look like the portions of a
Venetian-blind when half opened; inside they
cannot be counted, because they appear to be
covered with hair. The hair is in reality nothing
more than the actual substance of the baleen, unravelled, as it were, like tow from the end of a
rope. If the reader wishes to prove this, let hin
take a thin bit of whalebone, boil it and soak it
well, and then beat it with a wooden mallet.
The result will be a bundle of coarse hair like
horse-hair. This hair hangs in thick masses in



430    CURIOUS GRoWTH OF THE BALEEN.
side the beast's mouth; in the specimen I saw, it
gave me exactly the idea of the long and beautifull silky white beard of a venerable old man.
This is a thing which cannot be seen in any museum, and of which a picture would convey but
an erroneous idea.
Upon going to the College of Surgeons, I found
but few specimens of the baleen, but those very
interesting. The indefatigable John Hunter dissected, among others, a bottle-nosed whale, which
was cast ashore from the Thames in 1783. Its
skeleton is now suspended from the roof of the
new and magnificent room of the museum, and
sections of its baleen are preserved in bottles. It
appears, from his observations, that the baleen,
like the teeth of rodent (or gnawing) animals, is
endowed with perpetual growth, and that material is supplied from above as it is worn away
from below; moreover, it is composed of three
parts-the centre portion, being secreted from a
soft cone, becomes hair-the external portions
become horn, inclosing the hair. These three
appear solid; but when the baleen has grown to




CURIOUS GROWTH OF THE BALEEN.    431
a certain extent, the two external walls become
worn off, and, as a matter of necessity, leave the
hair exposed, so that, as said before, the mouth
appears to be lined with hair. Aristotle has remarked this fact, for he writes: "The whale has
hairs inside his mouth, in the place of teeth, like
the bristles of a pig." A superficial observer,
looking at our Whitechapel whale, would probably make exactly the same remark. In a picture
I have of the Rorqual, there is drawn a tuft of
hair projecting from the anterior end of the upper
jaw. There is no real tuft there; but, upon examining the specimen, I perceived how the mistake originated. The baleen at this part consists
entirely of hair, unconfined at either side by the
side portions as above described. When the animal is in the water, this would probably float upward, giving the appearance of a tuft of hair on
the tip of the nose.
It was aptly remarked by my lamented father,
in one of his Oxford lectures, that the whale, being the largest of warm-blooded animals, and requiring a vast quantity of food to support its huge




432 WHY THE WHALE IS MAIE A SEA CREATURE.
carcass, would have starved to death, if, like other
creatures which have heart and lungs, and not
gills like fish, it had been sent to sustain itself on
land, either in the form of a carnivorous or gramnivorous animal.  The Great Creator has in his
omniscience, therefore, ordained that this, the
largest of his creatures, should have the wide expanse of the ocean for his habitat; there, it would
have plenty of room for its roamings, and plenty
of food for its support. The whale, therefore,
preserving every organ typical of the land animal,
and remaining a true mammalian in every sense,
associates with fishes, and grazes upon the products of the deep.
The sea, as we well know, swarms with life;
but the minute creatures therein exceed by myriads the larger forms.  Upon these atoms the
whale feeds, and not only feeds, but gets fat,
which fat it converts into blubber.  Now, for the
sake of this blubber, man will brave the perils of
the Arctic seas, and bring home with him, in the
form of valuable lamp-oil, the substance of acres
of minute sea-creatures, which, but for this wise




FOOD OF THE WHALE.          433
economy in the system of creation, would have
lived and died neglected and useless. Thus we
see, in the works of the benevolent Creator, wheel
within wheel-nothing lost, nothing allowed to
decay-all working together with an admirable
and designed order. The creatures which principally form the food of the whale are a delicate
mollusk called the Clio Borealis (of which specimens may be seen in the College of Surgeons).
These creatures live in patches on the surface of
the Northern Ocean; and could we look down on
those Arctic Seas from a balloon, we should see
greenish and blackish patches here and there;
these are formed by colonies of the Clio Borealis.
A somewhat similar appearance may be observed
on stagnant fresh-water ponds, where the water
is colored, here and there, by the larva of gnats
and other insects.
Having found out the whereabouts of his food,
the whale opens his gigantic mouth, and charges
at full speed in among them; and I believe he
has the power of actually smelling their where19




434         FOOD OF THE WHALE.
abouts. Drawn into his month by the vast current of water created by the charge, like sticks
il a mill-tail, they become engulphed in the
natural trawl-net of the sea-giant, who then composedly shuts his mouth, and expels the water
through the interstices of the baleen, leaving the
Clios, and whatever else he is lucky enough to
catch, high and dry upon the hairy roof of his
mouth. In the specimen under notice, I observed
that there were several folds of skin, extending
from the tip of the lower jaw some distance down
the belly; and the man informed me that when
the lower jaw was lifted off the ground, the tongue
was left on it some three feet below; the folds of
skin at the same time becoming quite smooth.
Here, then, we have an explanation of the use of
these folds: they form an immense pouch, into
which the detained animals drop, being freed
from the hair. The bag of a lady's work-table
gives a very good idea of the pouch of the whale
-the silk portion representing the folds, and the
board at the bottom the tongue.
The reader is not very likely ever to see a




ITS MODE OF FEEDING.          435
whale at feed; he may, however, very likely see
a duck feeding in a gutter. Let him observe,
and he will see, that (to compare great thing
with small) the duck goes to work in a very similar manner to the whale. The duck is looking
after minute creatures-so is the whale; so he
takes a billful of mud, and, squirting out the refuse, he retains what is good to eat. The bird
has no baleen, and no pouch; but, nevertheless,
he has an equally beautiful apparatus in the conformation of his bill, which answers the same
purpose, and at the same time is less cumbersome. From the size of the whale's mouth, one
would naturally be led to conclude that the gullet (or esophagus) is of an enormous size. No
such thing-it is exceedingly small.  In the
whale examined (forty-eight feet long), the entrance to the gullet is hardly large enough to admit a man's hand. Why is this? The Rorqual
does not confine himself to the Clio Borealis;
but he feeds upon sprats, herrings and little fish.
If he had a capacious gullet, the fish having been
swallowed might, not liking their new quarters,




136  REASON WHY THE (ESOPHAGUS IS SMALL.
wish to return again to the sea; had the Whale
an enormous gape, like a boa-constrictor, they
might easily do this, as the stomach is on the
same line as the mouth. This is, however, anticipated by the form to the cesophageal pipe. Upon examining a section of it, which is not much
larger than the thickness of a good-sized walkingstick, we see that it has numerous muscular fibres
surrounding it, and which can close it effectually; nay, more, the inner lining is disposed in
longitudinal fibres the size of a little finger,
which, meeting together in the centre, effectually
render it impervious at the will of the animal.
Wishing to examine more minutely the base
of the skull of the Whitechapel specimen, I
crawled in through the place where the throat
formerly was situated, and obtained an excellent
view of the parts not externally visible.
At the College of Surgeons there is an enormous head of a whale (the bones only, without
the baleen). It would contain three heads of the
Whitechapel whale and an infinity of children.
This was the first head ever seen in this country,




A LARGE SKULL.            437
and has been described and figured by the great
Baron Cuvier himself. The form of the bones is
that of three bows, two placed on the ground
with their concave parts facing each other (the
lower jaws), the third being represented by the
upper jaw  arching over them, its two  ends
corresponding with the points where the other
bows touch one another.
I was exceedingly anxious to obtain the head
of the Whitechapel whale, as a companion to
the large head above mentioned, particularly as
the whalebone, or baleen was in good condition.
Knowing that the proprietor set great store on
his acquisition, I approached the subject carefully, and was not surprised when he asked 1251.
for his whale. It happened to be very warm
weather just then, and when I was inside the
whale's mouth I had observed that none of the
bones of the head were in any way cleaned, or
otherwise preserved, but still remained full of
oil, &c. which, as a matter of course, I knew
would soon become so offensive through the
weather, that the proprietor would be only too




438    PRICES FALL WITH THE WEATHER.
glad to get rid of it at any price. It was only,
therefore, necessary to bide one's time. My conjectures proved correct: in a week or so a letter
came to Professor Quekett from the whale proprietor, offering to take less money; and as time
advanced, and as the whale became more and
more offensive, so did the price of the whale get
less and less, the result being, that Professor
Quekett, at the College one morning, received
the whale's head, packed up in a large box, and
sent back a cheque for 51. only, instead of the
1251. originally demanded.
This head will shortly be articulated by Mr.
Flower, and will be the only specimen in London
showing the head of a large whale with the
baleen in situ.
The whale skin is about as thick as six sheets
of common note-paper placed together, and is
very tough and elastic. It is covered with a
scarf-skin.   When dried, this thin  scarf-skin
peels off, and the true skin underneath is found
to be of a jet black color, of a shining appearance,
exactly like newly-tarred boards of a farm-yard




ACCIDENT TO A PHILOSOPHER.      439
fence that have been submitted to the heat of
the sun.
Some years before I was born, a large whale
was caught at the Nore, and towed up to London
Bridge, the Lord  Mayor having  claimed it.
When it had been at London Bridge some little
time, the Government sent a notice to say the
whale belonged to them. Upon which the Lord
Mayor sent answer, "Well, if the whale belongs
to you, I order you to remove it immediately
from London Bridge.' The whale was therefore
towed down stream again to the Isles of Dogs,
below Greenwich. The late Mr. Clift, the energetic and talented assistant of his great master,
John Hunter, went down to see it.  He found it
on the shore, with its huge mouth propped open
with poles. In his eagerness to examine the internal parts of the mouth, Mr. Clift stepped inside
the mouth, between the lower jaws, where the
tongue is situated. This tongue is a huge spongy
mass, and being at that time exceedingly soft,
from exposure to air, gave way like a bog, at the
same time he slipped forwards towards the whale's




440      ACal ENT TO A PHILOSOPHER.
gullet, nearly as far as lie could go.  Poor Mr.
Clift was in a really dangerous predicanent; he
sank lower and lower into the substance of the
tongue and gullet, till he nearly disappeared altogether. He was short in stature, and in a few
seconds would, doubtless, have lost his life in the
horrible oily mass, had not assistance been quickly afforded him. It was with great difficulty that
a boat hook was put in requisition, and the good
little man hauled out of the whale's tongue.
A few days after the visit of Mr. Murie and
myself, the Gravesend whale was sold to Mr. Blaker, an oil and cart-grease manufacturer, who
lives on the marsh on the other side of the river.
We paid it two or three visits, and were allowed
to take away all parts of the whale which were
not required for making oil; the result was, that
we obtained many most interesting and valuable
preparations, which are now at the Royal College
of Surgeons.  While we were at work, the proprietor of Rosherville Gardens was bargaining
for the skeleton, which he is now exhibiting in a
beautiful state of preparation at the gardens




A GOOD SKELETON.            441
The whole scene fully realized the details of a
very old print of " The Dissection of a Whale,"
thus quaintly described, " Cetus ingens quem Farce
Inlsulae Incola ichthyophagi, tempestatibus appulsum securibus dissecant et partiuntur inter se."
[A huge whale, which being cast up by a storm,
the fish-eating inhabitants of the Faroe Islands
dissect with axes, and divide among themselves.]
19#




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