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signal for war, and rushing past the respect, not unmingled with impudence. young one, fairly challenged her lord and at his father. At the least movement on master to single combat. He instantly his governor's side he sank down into retreated a step or two, and his wife be- the water as quiet as an otter, without gan to pretend to munch at the grass, making the slightest ripple or sending up keeping her eyes always fixed spitefully a bubble of air, and shortly reappeared 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.

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 signals 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 wainto 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 diminutive of the original word— viz., "Hippopotamidion" or "Potamippodi

on."

This, as your correspondent Mr. E. K. Karslake remarks, "woula be barbarous." I should like to hear a stammerer tackle it. FRANK BUCKLAND.

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 homœopathists 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. serve 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.

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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 called. 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 :

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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 disinIn 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 in the case of the trees, by the supposithis, aerial toad-diet. "In "Pericles " he says:

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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 polon the present relations of Russia with Ger-icy; while neither the Conservatives nor the many and Austro-Hungary, in which he advo- Constitutional Liberals are for a moment sure cates 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

of retaining their political and personal free-
dom, 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 in-
volved. 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.

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From Fraser's Magazine.
THE STONE STEPS.

WHILE yet the nineteenth age was young,
And murmuring Rotha flowed unsung,
Where Forestside stoops down to greet
A cottage nestling at its feet;

Two stalwart men, with ponderous crow,
Dealt on the crag alternate blow;
While Silver How across the vale,
Kept reckoning of their noisy tale.
Long time in vain with sinewy shock
They smote the everlasting rock;
Some rough-hewn steps at length repay
The wearying toil of half a day.

Then, as with measured pace and slow,
From orchard seat to porch below,

Their new-made path they trod;
Quoth John, in mood of thoughtful glee,
"Stone steps be these and steps shall be
For many a year, when ye and me

Lig girning undert' sod!" *

Thus he:-But William mused awhile,
Scarce conscious of the kindly smile
That showed him not illpleased to find,
In that unlettered comrade's mind
Some rude resemblance to his own.
To him from earliest youth was known
What brotherhood is of guileless men
Who read the law of hill and glen;

And scarcely seem'd to think it odd
That John should prate of "ye and me'
As heirs of common destiny,

As though the world might little care,
Or soon or late, which of the pair

"Lig girning undert' sod!'

Not all unwisely preached the swain;
For still those time-worn steps remain,
Where summer suns and wintry storms
Have beat upon their rugged forms
Full seventy years: though modern care
Has paved the steep with smoother stair,
Through turf and moss you still may trace
The harder angles of its face.

The steps are there, but where are they,
Companions of that ancient day?
Not one their lot. In narrow bound
Is circumscribed the common round
Of dalesman's life: to scale the rock
And lead to fold the wandering flock;
Snatch the late crop from autumn rain,
And house in fear th' half ripened grain;
To win with no ignoble toil
Scant living from a thankless soil;
Thus John well played his humble part,
With proud content, and honest heart.

So lived and died: but now to tell,
What portion to his work-mate fell.
To err is human, and, if he
Was not from human error free,
You scarce shall find in all the age
A juster life, a purer page;
Yet was not thus his simple song
Scatheless of scorn; but he with strong

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 In those fair scenes he loved so well, To him, to them, for wisdom taught, Should homage pay of tender thought: 'Twas his with poet's ear to hear The ceaseless voice of fell and mere, To wait and learn what note of praise The solitary tarn might raise. The lone star peeping o'er the hill, The violet hiding near the rill, The lowliest thing in copse or field Some beauty taught, some truth revealed. With vantage small of wealth or birth, He made his verse a power on earth. Nor missed his lofty aim; He lived with loving eye to scan The inner soul of Nature's plan, And wrote upon the heart of man A long enduring name. And now to both their time is o'er, And those two workmen work no more; The deed they wrought beside the hill, That bygone morn, is living still,

And still the steps are there. But they, long since together laid, Have slept beneath the sacred shade

Of Grasmere's House of Prayer.

And see! there comes a pilgrim band
From thorpe, from town, from ocean strand,
From homes beyond the Western wave,
To worship at their Poet's grave.
What though the crowd unheeding pass
The little nameless mound of grass,
That marks to few the peasant's bed,
No jealousies divide the dead:

Partners of toil, and now of rest,
They share a slumber not unblest,
Beneath the hallowed sod.
And once again in that far land
Behind the veil, those two shall stand
Equal before their God.

WINGED SEEDS.

WAFT them, ye breezes, on from mind to mind, And whirl the bristly pappus high in air,

And let each tender seed prolific find

A welcome nook, a mould congenial, where It may develop its corolla fair, Dispread its calyx, and against rude wind Erect a firm stem, and the softest hair Upon its surface fearlessly unbind:If any latent beauty in the germ

Be casket of a truth more precious far,

I charge you guard that beauty from the worm,
And for the truth a way to light unbar;
And all the seedling's innate force confirm
In souls which like well-watered gardens are.
Temple Bar.
J. C. EARLE

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