but so soon as they pierce down to the marl or clay below the mould, the tree will canker and die. To prevent this, it is the custom of some to dig first down to the marl and put a layer of tiles upon it, which turn the roots of the trees from a perpendicular to a horizontal direction, and then they do well; but leave the tree without assistance and the fool will commit suicide, blindly rushing to its own destruction, while the vine will not only avoid it, but use every exertion to procure what is necessary for its continuing in health and vigour. The vine is therefore certainly the more intellectual plant of the two.

Strasburg.

I don't like this hotel, it is swarming with cats; and, although I have not the antipathy to a cat which some people have, I dislike their company. Although they do kill rats and mice, they are, after all, little better than wild beasts, and are very apt to prove it. The bite of an enraged cat has been attended with the same horrible results as from the hydrophobia. I have heard of great attachment on the part of cats, but this is quite as rare as what is occasionally shown by the beasts of the menagerie. Their attachment, generally speaking, is only local; they love the house but not the inhabitants. They are only partially reclaimed, like the animal who has been born in a menagerie and brought up by the keepers. In towns, they have no opportunity to return to a savage state, not being able to procure the necessary food; for a cat chasing a London cock-sparrow would be as bad as chamois hunting to a sportsman, the game scarce and the pursuit attended with difficulty and danger: but, in the country the greatest pest in the preserve is a tame cat which has returned to the woods. I have killed as many as eight in one season in a cover of sixty acres. In fact, in all countries abounding with game and affording the cat a sufficient provision, it will return to its savage state: as for not taking the water, they will leap into it and swim as fast as Newfoundland dogs-so will a hare and rabbit, if they cannot help themselves.

A Newfoundland dog is the most affectionate of dogs when young; but they become very savage and morose as they get old, and are not to be trusted. All dogs that go much in the water are troubled with the ear-ach; after a time, perhaps, this may occasion their feeling so cross. Gamekeepers are very apt to punish sporting dogs by pulling their ears —a very bad plan, for it brings on a cancer in the ear, which naturally makes them irritable. Great allowance should be made for dogs as they grow old.

The most affectionate animal that I know of is the common brown Mongoose it is a creature between the squirrel and the monkey, with all the liveliness, but without any of the mischief of the latter. Unfortunately they will not live in our country, or they would supersede the cat altogether; they are very clean, and their attachment is beyond all conception to those who have not seen them. They will leap on their master's shoulder, or get into his bed, lay upon his breast, and coil their long bushy tails round his neck like a boa, remaining there for hours if permitted. I recollect one poor little fellow who was in his basket dying-much to the grief of his master-who, just before he expired, crawled out of his straw and went to his master's cot, where he had just sufficient strength to take his place upon his bosom, coil his tail round his neck, and then he died.

Hares and rabbits are also very affectionate. One of my little girls had one of the latter, which she brought up in the house. He grew very large, and was domesticated just like a dog, following you everywhere, in the parlour and up into the bedroom; in the winter lying on the rug before the fire on his side, and stretching out his four legs as unconcerned as possible, even refusing to go away if you pushed him. As for the cat, she dare not go near him. He thrashed her unmercifully, for he was very strong; and the consequence was that she retired to the kitchen, where he would often go down, and if she was in his way drive her out. The hare and rabbit, as well as the deer tribe, defend themselves by striking with their fore-paws, and the blow which they can give is more forcible than people would suppose. One day when I was in the preserves, leaning against a tree, with my gun in my hand, I presume for some time I must have been in deep thought, I heard a rustling and then a squeak on the other side of the tree; I looked round the trunk and beheld a curious combat between two hares and a stoat. The hares were male and female, and had their leveret between them, which latter was not above six weeks old. The stoat-a little devil with all its hair, from the tip of its nose to the end of its tail, standing at end-was at about two yards distance from them, working round and round to have an opportunity to spring upon the leveret, which was the object of its attack. As it went round so did the hares face him, pivoting on a centre with the young one between them. They were, like Byron's dogs, too busy to look at me: at last the stoat made a spring upon the leveret. He was received by the hares, who struck him with their fore-feet such blows as I could not have believed possible; they actually resounded, and he was rolled over and over until he got out of distance, when he shook himself and renewed his attacks. These continued about ten minutes, and every time he was beaten off; but, as at every spring his teeth went into the poor little leveret, at last it gave its last squeak, turned over on its side, and died, the father and mother still holding their relative situations, and facing the stoat. The latter showed as much prudence as courage; for so soon as he perceived that the leveret was dead he, also, walked off. The hares turned round to their young one, smelt at it apparently, pushed it with their noses, and shortly after, as if aware that it was past all defence, hopped slowly away; they were hardly out of sight in the bushes when back came the stoat, threw the leveret, twice as big as himself, over his shoulders, and went off with his prize at a hard gallop, reminding me, in miniature, of the Bengal tiger carrying off a bullock. All the actors in the drama having gone off, I walked off, and shortly after both barrels of my gun went off, so the whole party disappeared, and there's an end of my story.

If an elephant were not so very unwieldy, and at the same time so very uncertain in his temper, he is the animal who has the most claims from affection and intelligence to be made a pet of; but an elephant in a drawing-room would be somewhat incommodious; and, although one may admit a little irritability of temper in a lap-dog weighing three pounds, the anger of an elephant, although he expresses himself very sorry for it afterwards, is attended with serious consequences. There is something very peculiar about an elephant in his anger and irritability.

It sometimes happens that, at a certain season, a wild elephant will leave the herd and remain in the woods alone. It is supposed, and I think that the supposition is correct, that these are the weaker males who have been driven away by the stronger, in fact, they are elephants crossed in love; and when in that unfortunate dilemma, they are very mischievous, and play as many fantastic tricks as ever did any of the knights of the round table on similar occasions in times of yore.

When I was at Trincomalee, an elephant in this situation had taken possession of the road at some leagues distant, and, for reasons best known to himself, would not allow a soul to pass it. He remained perdu in the jungle till he saw somebody coming, and then he would burst out and attack them. It is the custom to travel in palanquins from one part of the island to another, as in all parts of India. If some officer or gentleman was obliged to proceed to Colombo or elsewhere, so soon as the palanquin came towards him, out came the elephant; the native bearers, who knew that it was no use arguing the point, dropped the palanquin and fled, and all that the occupant could do was to bundle out and do the same before the elephant came up, otherwise he had little chance of his life, for the elephant immediately put his knees in the palanquin, and smashed it to atoms. Having done this, he would toss the fragments in the air in every direction, at the same time carefully unfolding all the articles contained in the palanquin for the occupant's use, shirts, trowsers, boots, bottles, books, undergoing a most rigid examination, and after that being rended to fragments. If the cooley who had the charge of the bag of letters made his appearance, he was immediately pursued until he gave up the whole correspondence, official or private. The bag was opened, every letter was opened one by one, and then torn in fragments and tossed to the winds. In this way did he keep possession of the road, stopping all communication for several weeks, until it was his sovereign will and pleasure that people might receive their letters and travel across the country as before. Now what an unaccountable freak was this! It was like the madness of a reasonable being. If I recollect right, it was when Captain Owen was on the cast coast of Africa, some of his party who landed were attacked by elephants, who threw them down on the ground, and, instead of killing them, as might have been expected, and would have given them no trouble, they drew up a large quantity of mud in their trunks and poured it into their mouths so as to nearly suffocate them, and then left them. On another occasion, they put their fore-feet on their limbs, so as to pinch and bruise them severely in every part of their bodies, but avoided their bones so as not to fracture one. Now this was evidently two species of torture invented by the elephants, and these elephants in a wild state. There certainly is something very incomprehensible about these animals.

The lion has been styled the king of beasts, but I think he is an usurper allowed to remain on the throne by public opinion and suffrage, from the majesty of his appearance. In every other point he has no claim. He is the head of the feline or cat species, and has all the treachery, cruelty, and wanton love for blood that all this class of animals have to excess. The lion, like the tiger and the cat, will not come boldly on to his prey, but springs from his concealment. It is

true that he will face his assailants bravely when wounded, but so will the tiger. Mons. Martin, the French lion tamer, as they call him, prefers going into the den with the Bengal tiger to the lion. Mons. Martin, who was at Brussels some months, has obtained a great celebrity in France from his feats with animals. He is lithographed, pamphletized, &c. I went more than once to witness his performances, which were got up in a theatrical manner; all things are in France: but I have seen Mons. Martin's exploits outdone by a man who had a travelling menagerie in England. In this menagerie there was one den, in which were confined a lion, a Bengal tigress, and four hybrid cubs, the progeny of the above two animals. It has always been supposed by poets that, to interfere with a tigress and her cubs, was a work of insanity. If so, this man was most profoundly mad, for he went into the den with nothing but a little dog-whip, sat down, made the lion come on one side of him, and the tigress on the other, flogged the cubs into the centre, and then made them put themselves into a variety of what the French call tableaux; such as the lion with a paw on his shoulder, the tigress with another, two cubs saliant and two couchant-quite a novel coat of arms and supporters. I thought this sufficiently extraordinary, but the last feat beat all. He dismissed the lion and the cubs, and producing a small hoop about eighteen inches in diameter, held it up to the middle bars, and requested the tigress to jump through it. In the first place, the hoop was so small that it required much dexterity on her part to pass her body through it. In the next, the den was not long enough for her to be able to make a spring so as to leap through it; and thirdly, the tigress appeared very much inclined to rebel, growling and showing a few incisors-anything but pleasant. It was quite a toss up, in my opinion, whether she meant to go through the hoop or to bite the keeper's head off. But the man persisted, and used his little dog-whip to enforce compliance; the animal then went to the side of the cage, putting her fore-paws up against the planks for a point d'appui to spring from, and, in so doing, her back was towards the hoop, she looked round over her shoulder, threw herself in the air, turning her body half round as she sprang, and went clean through the hoop. I never was more astonished, and, if I had not seen it, could not have credited it; but, as the feat was performed before hundreds every day, there will be plenty to vouch for the truth of this assertion. The animal's own instinct must have invented this ingenious plan of leaping through the hoop in such a confined space. And when it is considered that it was made to do this feat with a lion in the cage and its four cubs, which it was still nursing, Mons. Martin must hide his diminished head. Mons. Martin pretends it is entirely by the eye that he subdues the animals, and that if he took his eye off one moment his life would probably pay the forfeit but our showman proved this to be unnecessary, for he could not look on both animals at once, having his back to the lion for five minutes while he was making the tigress perform her duty. I recollect, when a boy, having been told that the eye of man had so great an effect upon animals, and, wanting to prove it, I walked up, like a fool, with my eyes fixed upon a large dog, who, fortunately, was chained up. He, at all events, did not pay that proper respect due to the eye of a lord of the creation, for he flew at my coat,

and I had to retreat, minus one of its lappells,-to me a convincing proof that the asserted effects of our optics upon animals are "all my eye."

In my opinion, the horse is the most noble of all animals, and, I am sorry to say, the most ill-used, at least in England; for I do not recollect a single instance of having seen a horse ill-treated on the continent. In fact, you hardly ever see a horse on the continent that is not in good working condition: you never meet the miserable, lame, blind, and worn-out animals that you do in England, which stumble along with their loads behind them till they stumble into their graves. If any one would take the trouble to make friends with their horses, they would be astonished at the intelligence and affection of this noble animal; but we leave him to our grooms, who prefer to use force to kindness. At the same time, I have observed even in colts, very different dispositions; some are much more fond and good-tempered than others: but let them be what they will as colts, they are soon spoiled by the cruelty and want of judgment of those who have charge of them in the stable. The sympathy between the Arab and his horse is well known: the horse will lie down in the tent, and the children have no fear of receiving a kick; on the contrary, they roll upon him, and with him: such is the result of kindness. And I can now give a proof of the effects of the contrary, as it was, in this instance, what may be termed malice prepense in the animal. The horses used in the West Indies are supplied from the Spanish Main; they are from the Andalusian stock originally, partly Arab and barb. These horses are taken by the lasso from the prairies, and are broken in as follows:-They lead them down to the sea beach, saddle and bridle them for the first time, and mount them with a pair of spurs, the rowels of which are an inch long. So soon as the animal plunges and attempts to divest himself of his rider, he is forced into the sea, and there he is worked in and out of his depth till he is fairly worn out and exhausted. This is repeated once or twice till they are submissive, and then they are sent off as broke horses to the West India islands. A friend of mine had a very beautiful animal, which he had purchased from one of these ships. He had not bought him more than a week before he took the bit in his mouth, and ran away with the black boy who was exercising him. The boy lost his seat and fell, and the horse, for a hundred yards, continued his career; and then it stopped, turned round, and galloped up to the boy, who was still on the ground, and never ceased kicking him till the poor fellow's brains were scattered in the road. Now this was evidently determination for revenge.

(To be continued.)