NOTES OF A NATURALIST. CLANDESTINE marriages are the rule amongst the cryptogamous plants. The most remarkable instance of a hybrid animal is the cricketbat. The guinea-pig is not worth a guinea at the present day. Is your dog too noisy? Try and cure him homoeopathically, by administering a dose of bark. Of all the birds the chaffinch possesses the greatest powers of banter. The best place in all London for rabbits is the Borough. You may safely take a bull by the horns, if they are tipped. An appropriate present for a Zoologist would be a bunch of seals. The goat-sucker, when hard pressed, has been known to make shift with a kid glove. In his Anecdotes of Dogs JESSE has omitted to mention the instance of the polite dog, which bit a piece out and replaced it. The camel is said to have several stomachs. Let us hope the camel is not troubled with indigestion. It would be too horrible. Black Sheep have been seen in the Zoological Gardens. Live oysters "bred upon tiles." What hard fare for the poor natives! It is a wonder they survived it. The bookworm has been known to live to a great age. VERY DIFFERENT THINGS. HUNTERSON admits his ignorance of the precise meaning of a "purling brook :" but says he can speak from experience as to what a "purl" over a brook is. Mrs. Smith (to Mr. S., who has just arrived home at 2:30 A.M.). "WHAT DO YOU MEAN, SIR, BY COMING HOME IN SUCH A STATE AT THIS UNTIMELY HOUR!" Mr. S. (decidedly "fresh"). "S-8-SH-SHTATE! "TIMELY HOUR! EH! (After a pause, with intense dignity) FORSHINATE FOR YOU, MA-RAM, FRIEN' TOOK ME BRI'SH MUSHECM-(hic)-AN' IF WE HADN'T COME OUT FORE LASHT ACT PAN'OMIME-SHOULDN' A' BEEN HOME FOR VERY CONSHI'RABLE- "(hic). " WANT OF TACT. REMARKING to a fat man," May your shadow never be less!" Saying to a friend, whose nasal organ is not conspicuous for beauty, that something is as plain as the nose on his face. Asking a deaf man whether he hears good accounts from his son. WHY is a jibbing horse like a very lazy artist? Because, however much you coax him, you find that he won't draw. THE RESULTS OF DISSIPATION. -A rumour is afloat that the man who dived into futurity came up drowned in tears, and has since been in the depths of despair. He is now better, having dipped into a book. ADVICE GRATIS.-Do you object to the extraordinary proceedings of the Ritualists? Go to evensong: there can be nothing odd there. AN OMISSION OF THE POET'SCOWPER speaks of "the bubbling and loud-hissing urn." The same little machine, when it won't either bubble or hiss, may be described as tacit-urn. PHYSIOGNOMICAL. LAVATER could always, tell whether a man was a miser, by the way in which he pursed up his mouth. A PARDONABLE REMARK.-The wife of an Opera Dancer presented him with twins. Everybody, of course, said that he was a Pa de deux. "FRIENDS AT A PINCH." Snuff-boxes and tight-lacing. WHAT THEY SAID TO THEIR HORSES. Sweet thing on Heavy Animal. "GET ON, OLD MAN! I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE BRUSH, BUT I SHOULD LIKE TO CUT DOWN MISS CLARA ONCE TO-DAY IRISH MELODY ON ST. MARTIN'S DAY (Nov. 11). His cloak with a beggar Saint Martin divided, POETRY OF THE PLANETS. "O, this life Is nobler than attending for a check.'" " Messrs. Mordecai, Mephibosheth, Mahershahalhashbash, and Co. But that is not the matter. The Wang, not being much talked to at his own table, comforted himself by taking his own wine as freely as if A SELECTION FROM THE VERY LATEST LETTERS OF THE HONOURABLE he did not know how cheap and bad it was. When it was time to HORACE WALPOLE, OF STRAWBERRY HILL. FAVOURED BY OUR PRIVATE SPIRITUAL MEDIUM. To SIR HORACE MANN. join the ladies, he saw two suns and double Thebes appear. But as nobody noticed their host, this was not observed until he got upstairs. Now, some of the Timbuctoo ladies had been getting up a bazaar in aid of the conversion of the English, and just as the Great had been dressing for the sale. Wang gazed at it with optics that Wang entered, one of them held up a great large doll, which she reversed the stereoscopic process, and presently shouted forth furiously, "I hate twins!" and struck in the direction of the double image he beheld. There would have been confusion, but one of the Chief Sacrificers (I suppose he would be called a bishop here) who was one of the guests, sailed in a portly manner forward, like a worthy member of the Church navigant there at sea, took his lay to speedy sleep, I presume with a bit of a sermon.. I hope Wang will be grateful. Make no mistake in repeating this story, and be sure you do not say that Timbuctoo is in Belgravia, and if you are asked how I heard so quickly from a distant part of the world, say that the Jersey telegraph has just been completed. That will be explanation enough for your Italians, who have no geography. This is not trovato, mind. Do you remember-pooh, my dear Sir, a diplomatist's business is to remember everything-besides, this was only t' other day, that is to say, in the winter of 1739-that I met with a cruel accident on Mont Cenis? I was travelling with Gray. My poor dear little King Charles's dog, Tory, the prettiest, fattest, dearest creature in the world, was snapped up by a wolf, and carried away to be eaten? I screamed with rage and grief at the time, and have been ready to do so ever since when I have thought of it. I hate Mont Cenis. I friend Wang in tow, moored him in another room, and talked him have read with savage joy that the engineers and their iron have entered into his very soul, and made a great hole right through him, and henceforth and for ever shrieks shall come forth from his penetralia. It is something to be revenged on a great hideous mountain. You have influence with the sub-Alpine King. Ask him to ordain that the first railway engine shall be called Tory. So shall my lost darling's manes be appeased. The distinguished family of Prince Pigwiggin have been plunged into mourning by a melancholy and unexpected event he has We have a new show of old pictures at the Academy. I hear it is recovered, and will probably long survive to afflict them. To offer a good one, but I never go to private views, and the public have not them consolation in the circumstances is what I dare not attempt. had it long enough to leave the place decently free. I like to go to I think I told you that there was a philosopher over here some years such things when I can be quiet, and escape the instructive remarks ago who held, or at least preached, that the soul was merely of the Scrubbers and Scumblers. glue. I suppose that Pigwiggin's, if he have one, is more than usually sticky. You have been educated, and you know that there is a place called Timbuctoo. Well, it is civilised, and there are fashionable squares, and great folks dwell therein, and give great feasts. They keep Christmas, it seems, in our own heathenish way, over-eating and over-drinking. One night last week there was a big dinner in a fine house. It was given by a notable called the Great Wangdoodle, whom you are not to confound with the one in Mr. Marks's famous sermon. You might; for this great Wangdoodle, like the other, howleth for his first-born, but then it is by reason that the said firstborn is a silly horse-racing boy, and hath got into the hands of Would you believe it ?-yes, you should believe everything-the enemies of the Government were so eager to find out a job in the retirement of Mr. Bright, that they triumphantly accused him of having remained in office exactly two years in order to qualify himself for a pension. Such are our public writers! I do not believe that their malice prompted a wilful blunder. I believe that as old Bear Johnson had the courage to say when asked how he came to give the wrong definition of a horse's pastern, it was Ignorance, Madam, sheer ignorance.' Yet they might have remembered that last year Mr. Gladstone carried an Act by which five years of service is necessary before a pension can be earned. 66 I published, in 1746, my Scheme for a Tax on Message Cards and APPROPRIATE. When the KING OF PRUSSIA becomes EMPEROR OF GERMANY, he will probably assume the title of Prous THE FIRST. ON BEING TAKEN UP AND PUT DOWN AGAIN. OR the third time, OUT. Odd. What can it mean? Three calls and three "Not at Homes," delivered by a whose smirking menial head I longed to punch; and no return card or invitation. And yet I was a great creature among them last year; especially when the Thunderer patted me on the back as it did. They took me up warmly, and made no end of a fuss with me; between ourselves, you know, they rather overdid it, though to be sure that book of mine was a hit, and worth its reputation! I was their pet lion for the time, and none of their parties were complete without me. And their other pets showed me divers attentions. That velvet-tongued Greek, HIPPOPOTAMUS PREPOSTEROS, asked me to breakfast, gave me tobacco fit for the Padishah, and presented me to his honey-tongued friend BUBBLIJOKIDOS, who rather implied that having met me, he had nothing more to live for. Twice was I invited to dinner by SIR AARON CONTANGO, who told me wonderful stories about the Rothschilds, and offered to invest for me in Montezuma Intangibles. And was I not even bidden to one of LADY AFTERGLOW's suppers, and shown one of her Ladyship's own poemsnot a thing (for many reasons) to be shown to everybody? And I thought I did my roaring pretty well on the whole, and got through all that was expected of me. I wrote in their albums-wretched stuff I know it was, but no worse than my collaborateurs; it was all wretched stuff together; I made myself agreeable to their rich snobs, and paid court to their titled ones; and religiously made believe to accept their faced gilt for gold; and if I lost certain flakes of self-respect by the way, I was the poorer, not they. But what I cannot quite understand is, why they have dropped me. We have had no quarrel, and I have not been guilty of any omission of my duties. I am just the same as I was in fact, just the same, not having gone forward or backward in fortune, fame, or position. I wonder if that is it ?-if my being stationary is the cause of their letting me drop? Social dynamics are unfathomable; as we all find out in time. I think it must be that. People who feed lions like a change of stock, and think themselves cheated of their rations if their old beasts have not got new coats by the turn of the year. You have a fixed amount of pudding for what you have already done; if you want more, you must do something fresh to get it. Lions are not like bears, who can suck their own paws, and live on their past accumulation of fat; lions must be always at it, always practising new roars, digging out higher tracks, making londer echoes, else they will find themselves shelved, and left to their den in the desert, unmolested. The people who take them up, and put them through their paces, do so because they are Somebodies in the world of notoriety. They like doing Maecenas cheaply-how about the Sabine farm ?-but don't think for a moment they mean any regard for you personally; they only like the reflected sparkle of your glory, whatever it may be; and if they cannot write your book, or paint your picture, they can patronise you, which puts them above you, all the same. So they take you up vehemently; and if you have a weak head, as in all probability you have, you lose your balance, and think it means you, when it really means themselves and your renown. You find out your mistake in time; for they will drop you when they are tired of you, and have had enough of you, as they are sure to have had before long. And they drop you in the handsomest manner. You have been their Pet Lion for one season, yet the chances are, when they meet you in the Park, the beginning of next, they do not see you, and are, most curiously, not at home whenever you call. If, however, you do something to set the newspapers on you again, everything goes into its old grooves, and you are gently reproached for your long absence from their drawing-rooms, and tenderly reminded of past friendships. If they have just so much human conscience as would lead them to make the semblance of an apology, they say how sorry they are that illness, business, anything you like. that never existed, prevented their digging you out; but, naughty man! you should not have wanted digging out, you should have |