signal for war, and rushing past the respect, not unmingled with impudence. young one, fairly challenged her lord and master to single combat. He instantly retreated a step or two, and his wife began to pretend to munch at the grass, keeping her eyes always fixed spitefully upon him. Just at this moment the sun shone out, and I was enabled to see most distinctly the remarkable phenomenon of the "blood-sweat" of these gigantic animals when excited. at his father. At the least movement on his governor's side he sank down into the water as quiet as an otter, without making the slightest ripple or sending up a bubble of air, and shortly reappeared with his pretty little head, erect ears, and bright eyes, and looking like a gigantic frog. During his subaqueous excursion the little rascal had probably gone up to and touched his father, for the old fellow gave a sudden plunge and jump as if he had been touched up from underneath by something alive. Thus the three remained for about half an hour, grunting and staring at each other. Obesh made one attempt to get out of his corner, and retreat into his den, but the artful old "missis" was too quick for him, cut off his retreat, and drove him back. The little one, I observed, always kept the far side of his mother, in case his father should turn rusty again. In about threequarters of an hour the row was all over, and instead of angry trumpetings the sig nals gradually assumed a more amicable tone, and it was evident that the two Behemoths were getting into good temper. At last the female swam nearer to her husband, and distending her great nostrils to the utmost, uttered a kind of hiss, not the least like a war cry. When the keeper heard this he said, "They are all right now, Sir; they'll not fight any more. See, the old man's beginning to smile, and he has uncocked his ears, and left off staring." The faithful keeper was quite right, for all three Hippos at once became friends, and the domestic row was over. The usual pale chocolate colour of the skin of the husband and wife became densely covered with spots that looked like thin red gum, and when the male turned his head I could see that these spots were globular; they glistened like dew on a cabbage, and stood high upon the skin like blood-stained diamonds. I managed subsequently to wipe off one of these globules, and it stained my notebook quite red. After gazing at each other for about a minute, old Dil-for that is the female's name - made a savage rush at her husband, and simultaneously both animals reared right up on their hind legs, like bull-dogs fighting. They gaped wide their gigantic mouths, and bit, and struck, and lunged at each other savagely, while the grass fell out of their great coal-scuttle mouths on to the battle-field. The crash of their tusks coming together was truly Homeric, and reminded me of the rattle and smashing clash, only exaggerated, when the Windsor Park red deer charge and fight with their horns. For a second or two these two gigantic animals closed together and swayed to and fro like Cornish wrestlers. I understand that on the previous day, This scene of the Hippopotami fighting when these three beauties were first put was grand in the extreme, and would together, little Guy Fawkes immediately form a good subject for an Oxford prize went up to his governor, and cheeked poem or the pencil of Landseer. When him in the most insolent manner; he they settled on their four legs again the bristled up, grunted at him, showed his old woman followed up her advantage by teeth, and actually challenged his father giving her husband a tremendous push, to fight. The mother then charged the well hit," with her head; and while the old father, scratched his face, and pushed cowardly old fellow sneaked backwards him right bang all of a lump into the wa into his pond, his wife trumpeted a trium-ter. The little one followed up directly, phant signal of victory from the bank. swam under his father's legs, and actually All this time little Guy kept well in rear bit at and pulled the paternal tail. On of his mother, occasionally peeping round the second occasion the youngster be her sides to see the rare and extraordinary phenomenon of a husband and wife having a row. Dil then slowly, and in a Shah-like manner, walked down the steps into the water, and hunted the old man about until she drove him up into a corner; she then mounted sentry over him. The young one then mounted on to his mother's back, and gazed with filial haved very differently; it was quite evi dent that somehow or other his mother had cautioned him and given him orders to keep in the rear while she fought her old man. On this occasion Obesh was terribly alarmed, although his wife frightened more than hurt him. She so alarmed him that a new discovery was made by Mr. Bartlett. After the row was over the cowardly old Obesh changed colour. His mulatto-coloured skin got gradually whiter and whiter, and the lower part of his head and sides became of a creamywhite tint, and the poor old fellow looked "as white as a ghost." It was some hours before he came to his proper colour again. When his wife gave him a hiding on the second day Obesh again turned somewhat white, making his blood spots stand out with unusual clearness. Now that this family scrimmage is over, we trust that for the future they will enjoy domestic felicity. By the way, the controversy has not yet been decided whether the present name "Hip-po-po-ta-mus" (which means a horse-river, not a river-horse), shall not be re-cast into Potamippus, and the little Guy Fawkes receive a new appellation the timinutive of the original word-viz., "Hippopotamidion" or "Potamippodion." This, as your correspondent Mr. E. K. Karslake remarks, "woula be barbarous." I should like to hear a stammerer tackle it. FRANK BUCKLAND. called. ON TOADS. From Belgravia. "precious jewel" in the toad's head was also an article of general belief in Shakespeare's time; and is explained by Halliwell to have been a stone of potent effect in medicine. Any book of folk-lore will show how much the medicine of the mediaval period dealt with all kinds of reptiles, and other such "uncanny animals "as hedgehogs, bats, owls, and other weird and darkness-loving things. Serpents, we know, were sacred to Esculapius, not on account of their supposed wisdom or subtlety, but by reason of their yearly renovation in a change of skin; and it would seem that all the reptiles of the lizard and frog classes, which inherit some share of the enmity sown in Eden between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, inherit also some part of this affinity between snakes and the practice of physic. I find that the homoeopathists of the present day retain at least one drug derived from snakehood "lachesis "-which is said to be the poison of the lance-headed viper, though it may perhaps be doubted whether their chemists have really supplied their vials from the poison-bags of that interesting reptile. They also use the sepia of the cuttle-fish; and I have often been struck by the appropriateness of sepia as a medical emblem. I observe that doctors, when hard pressed in argument, always escape in a flood of hard words; like the cuttle-fish, protected and concealed by the blinding inky trail it leaves behind it. THE Rev. J. G. Wood, that excellent naturalist and charming writer, assures us that his children have a trough full of tame toads, each of which answers to its own particular name, and comes when The children, he says, carry them round the garden, and hold them up I am not sure that the existence of the to any insect which they may chance to jewel in the toad's head has not been fancy, to enable them to swallow it, supported, if not suggested, by the exwhich they do by a lightning flash of traordinarily brilliant eye of the reptile, their glutinous tongues. Nay more, their which appears to flash and scintillate tender care for their unlovely pets is so with some inward light, thrown into great that they bathe and kiss them daily, stronger relief as it is by the dark, dull, he declares, just as they themselves are hideous skin in which it is set. I find treated by their nurse. Upon one occa- this corroborated by the fact that in sion, one of the children, who had re- classical times the toad was supposed to ceived an orange, was seen with her own partake somewhat of the power of the special toad seated on her hand, partak- fabulous basilisk in the ability to fasciing with his mistress of the orange in al- nate any person it looked on by the ternate sucks or bites. Well! de gustibus glance of its eye. In the basilisk, inis an old maxim, and, it seems, a true deed, this power was fatal to the life of one. From the experience so gained, Mr. the person beheld, -a gift never claimed Wood declares the toad to be more quick- for the toad. But if this part of the ly and easily tamed than most other ani- zoology of the toad has enshrined a popumals. So that its disposition seems to be lar error of long standing, the nature of as devoid of venom as its physique. It its food appears to have been no better is curious, by the way, that the word understood. The "gentle lady wedded "ugly" across the Atlantic refers only to the Moor" makes her jealous, fiery to moral deformity, and has no bearing husband exclaim in the agony of his feon physical appearance of any kind. The ver-fit: I had rather be a toad, And live upon the vapour of a dungeon, Than keep a corner in the thing I love For others' uses. late the finding of toads entombed in the centre of aged trees when cleft open by the woodman's wedge, or inclosed in chambers of chalk or stone until disin In which, though the sentiment may be terred by the miner, but still alive, and noble, the science is certainly false. The seemingly in good health. Their presfood of snakes, according to Shake-ence in such places was accounted for, speare, was hardly more material than this, aerial toad-diet. "In "Pericles" he says: And both like serpents are, who though they feed On sweetest flowers, yet they poison breed. Exactly reversing the alchemy of the bee, which from the same source distils sweet and wholesome honey. The notion that toads can live without material food is, however, both more generally believed and better supported than that touching the jewel in its head. Numerous accounts, apparently well authenticated, re in the case of the trees, by the supposi tion that they had either climbed, or been dropped by some bird of prey, to extricate themselves, had been graduinto the hollow trunk; and, being unable ally shut in by a growth of wood overhead. In the case of chalk or stone, it was believed that the egg had been washed by floods through some minute crack or crevice into an already existing chamber in the mine, which egg had hatched in due course, and produced the interesting recluse in question. Both of which suggestions seem possible, if not probable, explanations of the mystery. DR. WELCKER, a Russian Professor of po- | powerless by abandoning the Poles, who are litical economy, has just published a pamphlet the chief supporters of a Roman Catholic pol on the present relations of Russia with Ger-icy; while neither the Conservatives nor the many and Austro-Hungary, in which he advocates the sale of Russian Poland to Prussia. "It is the interest of Russia," he says, "in accordance with the precedents afforded by the Ionian islands, Lauenburg, and Russian Amer- | ica to sell Poland either to Prussia or to the German Empire. Prussia has already occupied Warsaw and a considerable part of Poland from 1795 to 1807. She would be able to check any aggressive tendencies of the Poles in the direction of Lithuania; her superior civilization would by degrees Germanize the whole of the Polish territories under her rule; and all danger of a union between Congress Poland and Lithuania would then cease. Russia would even gain if she gave up this costly possession for nothing; but this she can hardly do with propriety. Both sides would profit by the bargain; Russia because she wants money, and Prussia because she wants fertile territory. The purchase-money could be taken out of the Prussian war indemnity, or, if this is no longer at the disposal of the Government, it might be raised by a Prussian or a German loan. The interest of this loan could easily be covered by the surplus of the Polish revenue, which would rapidly increase in an extraordinary degree under the excellent Prussian administration and by the importation of capital and intelligence into the country.... The Russian Conservatives, who detest the Katkoff party, would make it totally ... Constitutional Liberals are for a moment sure of retaining their political and personal freedom, or even their property, so long as the Mouravieffs and the soldiery who have been trained in Poland à la Haynau may be let loose against them. The influential Russian grandees who obtained estates in Poland in 1831 and 1863 would also be great gainers, for these estates would enormously increase in value under the Prussian rule. On the Prus sian side, too, great interests would be involved. At present the army, the agricultur ists, and the capitalists in Poland occupy an aggressive position towards Prussia; they are a permanent menace to her of a Panslavist agrarian war, or at least of a constant striving in this direction, and it is most probable that if Russia does not sell Poland, she will invade Prussia." As to what the Poles themselves would think of such a bargain, Dr. Welcker does not consider this as a matter of much consequence. He admits that what they would like best is a restoration of their country to its ancient independence; but this he thinks is quite out of the question. The Poles would "no doubt gain by exchanging the Russian rule for the mild rule of the first civilized na tion in the world;" and, on the other hand, "the German Empire will much more rapidly disarm Polish Ultramontanism than Russia, notwithstanding all her severe measures, has been able to do." Pall Mall Gazette. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year, nor when we have to pay commission for forwarding the money; nor when we club the LIVING Age with another periodical. An extra copy of THE LIVING AGE is sent gratis to any one getting up a club of Five New Subscribers. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & GAY. From Fraser's Magazine. WHILE yet the nineteenth age was young, Two stalwart men, with ponderous crow, Then, as with measured pace and slow, Their new-made path they trod; Thus he: Lig girning undert' sod!" * But William mused awhile, And scarcely seem'd to think it odd "Lig girning undert' sod!" Not all unwisely preached the swain; The steps are there, but where are they, So lived and died: but now to tell, * Lie grinning under the sod. Self-trust, conscious of mind sincere And lifelong purpose calmly clear, From his own time could well endure Detraction, of the future sure. He willed that they who roam or dwell With vantage small of wealth or birth, And now to both their time is o'er, And still the steps are there. Of Grasmere's House of Prayer. And see! there comes a pilgrim band Partners of toil, and now of rest, WINGED SEEDS. WAFT them, ye breezes, on from mind to mind, Be casket of a truth more precious far, |