Heads And Tales Part 23

Luckily there was a plentiful supply of carrots and turnips, and--jelly.

But was the latter made from calves' feet? Montgomery a.s.sured his guest that it was _not_; but, added he, with a conscientious regard for his visitor's scruples, from _ivory dust_. We believe the poet fancied the hypothesis of an animal origin of this viand could not be very obscure; it was, however, swallowed; the clever bibliopole perhaps believing, with some of the Sheffield ivory-cutters, that elephants, instead of being hunted and killed for their tusks, _shed them_ when fully grown, as bucks do their antlers!"

J. T. SMITH AND THE ELEPHANT.

That gossiping man, J. T. Smith, once Keeper of the Prints in the British Museum, and author of "Nollekens and his Times," relates, that when he and a friend were returning late from a club, and were approaching Temple Bar, "about one o'clock, a most unaccountable appearance claimed our attention,--it was no less than an elephant, whose keepers were coaxing it to pa.s.s through the gateway. He had been accompanied with several persons from the Tower wharf with tall poles, but was princ.i.p.ally guided by two men with ropes, each walking on either side of the street, to keep him as much as possible in the middle, on his way to the menagerie, Exeter Change, to which destination, after pa.s.sing St Clement's Church, he steadily trudged on, with strict obedience to the command of his keepers.[191]

"I had the honour afterwards of partaking of a pot of Barclay's entire with this same elephant, which high mark of his condescension was bestowed when I accompanied my friend, the late Sir James Wintel Lake, Bart., to view the rare animals in Exeter Change,--that gentleman being a.s.sured by the elephant's keeper that, if he would offer the beast a shilling, he would see the n.o.ble animal nod his head and drink a pot of porter. The elephant had no sooner taken the shilling, which he did in the mildest manner from the palm of Sir James's hand, than he gave it to the keeper, and eagerly watched his return with the beer. The elephant then, after placing his proboscis to the top of the tankard, drew up nearly the whole of the beverage. The keeper observed, 'You will hardly believe, gentlemen, but the little he has left is quite warm;' upon this we were tempted to taste it, and it really was so. This animal was afterwards disposed of for the sum of one thousand guineas."

THE ELEPHANT AND THE TAILOR.

This old story has been often told, but never so well as by Sydney Smith in one of his lectures at the Royal Inst.i.tution. "Every one knows the old story of the tailor and the elephant, which, if it be not true, at least shows the opinion the Orientals, who know the animal well, entertain of his sagacity. An eastern tailor to the Court was making a magnificent doublet for a bashaw of nine tails, and covering it, after the manner of eastern doublets, with gold, silver, and every species of metallic magnificence. As he was busying himself on this momentous occasion, there pa.s.sed by, to the pools of water, one of the royal elephants, about the size of a broad-wheeled waggon, rich in ivory teeth, and shaking, with its ponderous tread, the tailor's shop to its remotest thimble. As he pa.s.sed near the window, the elephant happened to look in; the tailor lifted up his eyes, perceived the proboscis of the elephant near him, and, being seized with a fit of facetiousness, p.r.i.c.ked the animal with his needle; the ma.s.s of matter immediately retired, stalked away to the pool, filled his trunk full of muddy water, and, returning to the shop, overwhelmed the artisan and his doublet with the dirty effects of his vengeance."

DR JOHNSON ALLUDED TO AS "AN ELEPHANT."

"If an elephant could write a book, perhaps one that had read a great deal would say, that an Arabian horse is a very clumsy, ungraceful animal." This was written by Horace Walpole to Miss Berry, in 1791, in allusion to Dr Johnson's depreciation of Thomas Gray the poet.[192] It is an acute observation, well worth being wrought out. There is a grandeur and even a grace about this bulky beast and its motions well deserving the study of any one who has the opportunity. Elephants in our streets are not now so rare as they used to be. We saw three in one procession in the streets of Edinburgh in 1865.

ELEPHANT'S SKIN.

"Did any of you ever see an elephant's skin?" asked the master of an infant school in a fast neighbourhood. "I have!" shouted a six-year-old at the foot of the cla.s.s. "Where?" inquired the master, amused by his earnestness. "_On the elephant!_" was the reply.

FOOTNOTES:

[187] This memoir has been published, and the subject of it was this very ant-eater. Professor Owen has introduced many striking facts from the history of its structure, in his lecture delivered at Exeter Hall, 1863, and published by the Messrs Nisbet.

[188] "The Life of the Right Hon. Francis North, Baron Guilford, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, under King Charles II. and King James II., &c." By the Hon. Roger North. A New Edition, in three vols., 1826, vol.

ii. p. 167.

[189] Mark Lemon, "Jest Book," p. 329.

[190] "John Holland and James Everett," vol. iv. p. 283.

[191] "A Book for a Rainy Day," p. 92.

FOSSIL PACHYDERMATA.

CUVIER AND THE FOSSIL.

George Cuvier was perhaps the first man who, by his admirable works and researches, gave zoology its true place among the sciences.

His discoveries of the structure of molluscous and other animals of the obscurer orders are perhaps eclipsed by his researches in osteology. He has enabled the comparative anatomist to tell from a small portion of bone not only the cla.s.s, but the order, genus, and even the species to which animal that bone belonged.

Mrs Lee,[193] in her Life of the Baron, gives an example of his enthusiasm in his researches.

M. Laurillard was afterwards his secretary and the draftsman who executed nearly all the drawings in his "Oss.e.m.e.ns fossiles." At the time of this story he had not particularly attracted Cuvier's notice.

"One day Cuvier came to his brother Frederic to ask him to disengage a fossil from its surrounding ma.s.s, an office he had frequently performed.

M. Laurillard was applied to in the absence of F. Cuvier. Little aware of the value of the specimen confided to his care, he cheerfully set to work, and succeeded in getting the bone entire from its position. M.

Cuvier, after a short time, returned for his treasure, and when he saw how perfect it was, his ecstasies became incontrollable; he danced, he shook his hands, he uttered expressions of delight, till M. Laurillard, in his ignorance both of the importance of what he had done, and of the ardent character of M. Cuvier, thought he was mad. Taking, however, his fossil foot in one hand, and dragging Laurillard's arm with the other, he led him up-stairs to present him to his wife and sister-in-law, saying, 'I have got my foot, and M. Laurillard found it for me.' It seems that this skilful operation confirmed all M. Cuvier's previous conjecture concerning a foot, the existence and form of which he had already guessed, but for which he had long and vainly sought. So occupied had he been by it, that, when he appeared to be particularly absent, his family were wont to accuse him of seeking his fore-foot. The next morning the able operator and draftsman was engaged as secretary."

FOOTNOTES:

[192] "Letters of Horace Walpole," edited by Peter Cunningham, ix., 319.

[193] "Memoirs of Baron Cuvier," by Mrs R. Lee (formerly Mrs T Ed.

Bowdich), 1833, p. 93.

SOW.

A very gross but useful animal, which can, by feeding, be stuffed into such a state of fatness as only one who has seen a Christmas cattle show in England could believe it possible for beast to acquire. Dean Ramsay, in a happy anecdote, refers to a good quality of the sow as food. He tells, that a Scottish minister had been persuaded to keep a pig, and that the good wife had been duly instructed in the mysteries of black-puddings, pork-chops, pig's-head, and other modes of turning poor piggy to account. The minister remarked to a friend, "Nae doubt there's a hantle o' miscellaneous eating aboot a pig." The author of "A Ramble,"

published by Edmonstone and Douglas in 1865, has devoted some most amusing pages of his work to an account of "Pig-sticking in Chicago," as witnessed by him during the late American war. The wholesale and scientific off-hand way in which living pigs enter into one part of a machine, and come out prepared pork, could only have been devised by a Yankee.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Wild Boar of Syria and Egypt. (Sus Scrofa.)]

The essay of Charles Lamb on Roast Pig, and his history of how the Chinaman discovered it, is a most characteristic bit of the productions of Elia. We have cut from a recent paper, what seems an authentic story, of one of this race having obtained a kind of mausoleum. We hope it is not a hoax, but that it is as genuine as all that is in one of "Murray's Handbooks:"--

MONUMENT TO A PIG.--"Up to the present time," says the _Europe_ of Frankfort, "no monument that we are aware of had ever been erected to the memory of a _pig_. The town of Luneburg, in Hanover, has wished to fill up that blank; and at the Hotel de Ville, in that town, there is to be seen a kind of mausoleum to the memory of a member of the swinish race. In the interior of that commemorative structure is to be seen a gla.s.s case, inclosing a ham still in good preservation. A slab of black marble attracts the eye of visitors, who find thereon the following inscription in Latin, engraved in letters of gold--'Pa.s.ser-by, contemplate here the mortal remains of the pig which acquired for itself imperishable glory by the discovery of the salt springs of Luneburg.'"

THE WILD BOAR (_Sus scrofa_).

We have a specimen of the family of swine in that well-known and useful animal, with whose portrait Sir Charles Bell furnishes the reader, as an example of a head as remote as possible from the head of him who designed and executed the Elgin marbles. Although the learned anatomist brought forward the profile of this animal as the type of a "non-intellectual" being, yet there are instances enough on record to show that pigs are not devoid of intelligence, and are even, when trained, capable of considerable docility. "Learned pigs," however, such as are exhibited at country fairs, are a rare occurrence, and the family to which they belong is essentially one "gross" in character, and far from gainly in appearance. The most handsome of the race is one from West Africa, recently added to the Zoological Gardens, and described by Dr Gray under the name of _Potamochaerus penicillatus_. The wild swine of Africa are, with this bright exception, anything but handsome, either in shape or colour; and the large excrescences on their cheeks and face give the "warthogs" a ferocious look, which corresponds with their habits. In the East there are several species of wild swine. One of the most celebrated is the _Babyrusa_ of the Malay peninsula, distinguished by its long recurved teeth, with which it was once fancied that they suspended themselves from trees, or rather supported themselves when asleep. Mrs M'Dougall[194] refers to the wild hogs of Borneo, which seem to be dainty in their diet, as they think nothing of a swim of four miles from their jungle home to places on the river where they know there are trees laden with ripe fruit. These Borneo swine are active creatures too, as they can leap fences nearly six feet high. In South America the sow family is represented by the Peccaries (_Dicotyles_), of which there are two species, one of which is very abundant in the woods, and forms a most important article in the diet of the poor Indians.

They, too, can swim across rivers, and although their legs are short, they can run very fast.

It is chiefly in the warmer parts of the world that the species of this family are found. They are all distinguished by the middle toes of each foot being larger than the others, and armed with hoofs,[195] the side toe or toes being shorter, and scarcely reaching the ground. The nose terminates in a truncated, tough, grissly disk, which is singularly well adapted for the purpose of the animals, which all grub in the ground for their food. In some parts of France it is said that they are trained to search for truffles.

Having briefly alluded to different species "_de grege porci_," we now limit ourselves to our immediate subject.

The wild boar, at no very remote period, was found in the extensive woods which covered great portions of this island. The family of Baird derives its heraldic crest of a wild boar's head from a grant of David I., King of Scotland. This monarch was hunting in Aberdeenshire, and when separated from his attendants, the infuriated pig turned upon him; one of his people came up and killed it, and in memory of his feat received from the grateful king the device still borne by the family.

The name of a Scottish parish, and of one of the oldest baronial families in Scotland--Swinton of Swinton, in Berwickshire--is derived also from this animal, the first of the Swintons having cleared that part of the country from the wild swine which then infested it. It is curious to know that some large fields in the neighbourhood of Swinton still carry in their names traces of these early occupants. Dr Baird informed the writer that there are four of these fields so distinguished:--"Sow-causeway," and "Pikerigg," where the wild swine used to feed ("pick their food"); "Stab's Cross," where Sir Alan Swinton with his spear pierced some monarch of the race; and "Alan's Cairn,"

where a heap of stones was raised as a monument of his hardihood. In the southern part of our island only the n.o.bility and gentry were allowed to hunt this animal; and in the reign of William the Conqueror any one convicted of killing a wild boar in any of the royal demesnes was punished with the loss of his eyes.

In many parts of the Continent the wild boar is still far from rare, and affords, to those who are fond of excitement, that peculiar kind of "pleasure" which involves a certain amount of danger. Scenes somewhat similar to those depicted by Snyders may still be witnessed in some parts of Germany; and in the sketches of Mr Wolf, the able artist whose designs ill.u.s.trate these papers, we have seen animated studies of this truly hazardous sport.

The nose of the wild boar is very acute in the sense of smell. A zealous sportsman tells us, "I have often been surprised, when stealing upon one in the woods, to observe how soon he has become aware of my neighbourhood. Lifting his head, he would sniff the air inquiringly, then, uttering a short grunt, make off as fast as he could."[196] The same writer has also sometimes noticed in a family of wild boars one, generally a weakling, who was buffeted and ill-treated by the rest. "Do what he would, nothing was right; sometimes the mother, uttering a disapproving grunt, would give him a nudge to make him move more quickly, and that would be a sign for all the rest of his relations to begin showing their contempt for him too. One would push him, and then another; for, go where he might, he was sure to be in the way." In the extensive woods frequented by this animal in Europe, abundant supplies of food are met with in the roots of various plants which it grubs up, in the beech-mast, acorns, and other tree productions, which, during two or three months of the year, it finds on the ground. Although well able to defend itself, it is a harmless animal, and being shy, retires to those parts of the forests most remote from the presence of man. A site in the neighbourhood of water is preferred to any other.

Travellers in the East frequently refer to this animal and to its ravages when it gets into a rice-field or a vineyard; for although its natural food be wild roots and wild fruits, if cultivated grounds be in the neighbourhood, its ravages are very annoying to the husbandmen, who can fully and feelingly understand the words of the Psalmist, "The boar out of the wood doth waste it" (Ps. lx.x.x. 13).