ostrich, and, wearing the most mild and benignant cast of face, swallowed them all, one after the other, like so many oysters, regarding the indignant hissings and bristling plumage of the hapless mother with stoical indifference." Baron Aucapitaine relates that he every evening used to regale a tame ostrich with a newspaper, which the bird completely swallowed, thus literally stuffing itself with all the knowledge of the day. The costly white plumes of the ostrich, which are chiefly obtained from the wings, form a considerable article of commerce, having been prized in all ages for the elegance of their long, waving, loose, and flexible barbs. The thinner the quill and the longer and more wavy the plume, the more it is prized. From seventy to ninety feathers go to the pound; but a single bird seldom furnishes more than a dozen, a many of them are spoilt by trailing or some other accident.

In the Tell, or the cultivated coast districts of Algeria, the ostrich is often domesti cated, particularly on account of its eggs, which weigh three pounds, and are equiva lent to twenty-four of the common fowl's eggs. It might be supposed that one of these giant eggs would be too much for the most vigorous appetite, yet Andersson saw two natives despatch five of them in the course of an afternoon, besides a copious allowance of flour and fat. According to the taste of this Swedish Nimrod, they afford an excellent repast; while Dr. Livingstone tells us they have a strong, disagreeable flavor, which only the keen appetite of the desert can reconcile one to. But as there is no accounting for tastes, the Romans seemed to have prized it; and Firmus, one of their pseudo-emperors, most likely desirous of emulating the gormandizing powers of the bird on which he fed, is said to have devoured a whole ostrich at one sitting. Even the egg shell has its value, and is an excellent vessel for holding liquids of any kind. The Bushmen have hardly any other household utensil. By covering it with a light network it may be carried slung across the saddle. Grass and wood serve as

substitutes for corks.

Though not possessing the true camel-bird, America has the large Rheas, which from their size and similar habits have been styled the ostriches of the New World, though differing in many essential characters One species, the Rhea Darwinii, inhabits Patagonia, while the Enu or Nandu (Rhea Americana) is found throughout the whole eastern part of South America, from Buenos Ayres to the Orinoco, wherever open plains, pampas, campos, or savannas, invite it to take up its residence. The nandu is not near so tall as the true ostrich, scarcely rising above four feet, and is of a uniform gray color except on the back, which has a brown tint. The back and rump are furnished with long feathers, but not of the same rich and costly kind as those which adorn the African ostrich. Its feeble wings merely serve to accelerate its flight, serving it as oars or sails, particularly when running with the wind. It is not easily caught, as it not only runs very fast, but in zigzag lines, so that the horse, rendered giddy by so many evolutions, at length drops down with its rider.

The galeated Cassowary, (Casuarius galeatus), thus called from its head being surmounted by a kind of horny helmet, is a native of Java and the adjacent isles. The skin of the head and upper part of the neck is naked, of a deep blue and fiery red tint, with pendant caruncles similar to those of the turkey cock. It is much inferior in size to the ostrich, and its wings are reduced to so rudimentary a state, consisting merely of five long bristles, without any plumes, that they are even unable to assist it in running. All its feathers are of the same kind, being entirely designed for cover

ing, and resemble at a little distance a coat of coarse or hanging hair. It feeds on fruits, eggs of birds, and tender herbage, and is said to be as voracious as the ostrich. The cassowary is a very swift runner; striking out alternately with one of its robust powerful legs, it projects its body violently forward with a bounding motion far surpassing the speed of the horse.

The Australian Emu (Dromaius Nova Hollandia) is allied to the cassowary, though differing in many external characters. Both the helmet, and the long pens or quills observable in the wings of the latter, are here wanting; its neck and legs are longer, its feathers, for the most part gray and brown mixed, are not so filiform, and its beak also is differently shaped. In size it more nearly approaches the ostrich, rising to a hight of seven feet, and from its great muscular power is able to run so quickly as to distance the swiftest greyhound. Incessant persecutions have driven it far away from the colonized parts of the country; but it has still a vast range in the wilds of the interior. It lives on fruits, eggs, and even small animals, which it swallows entire.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE CLIMBERS: BATS, SLOTHS, AND SIMIÆ.

Bats: Their Wonderful Organization-The Fox-Bat-Eaten by the Malays-Vampire Bats -Their Blood-sucking Propensities-The Horseshoe Bat-The Nycteribia-The Flying Squirrel-The Galeopithecus-The Anomalurus.-The Sloth: Pitiful Description given of Him-His beautiful Organization for his peculiar Mode of Life-His rapid Movements in the Trees-His Means of Defense-His Tenacity of Life-The Unau-The AiGigantic Primeval Sloths.-Monkeys: Good Climbers, but bad Walkers-Imperfectly known to the Ancients-Similitudes and Differences between Man and Apes-The Chimpanzee-The Gorilla-Du Chaillu's First Encounter with a Gorilla-The Gorilla and her Young-The Orang-Utan, or Mias-Wallace's Accounts of Shooting the Orang-Their Tenacity of Life-Size of the Orang-The Orang as a Combatant-The Orang fighting the Crocodile and Python-Habits of the Orang-Wallace's Young Pet Orang-The Gibbons-Monkeys of the Old and New Worlds-The Semnopitheci-The Proboscis Monkey-The Sacred Ape of the Hindus-The Cercopitheci-The Magots-The Cynocephali, or Baboons-The Maimon-The Great Baboon of Senegal-The Derryas-The Loris-Monkeys of the New World-Monkeys Distinguished by their Tails and TeethThe Wourali Poison-The Indian Blow Pipe-Mildness of American Monkeys-The Howling Monkeys-The Spider-Monkeys-The Fox-tail Monkeys-The Saimaris-Nocturnal Monkeys-The Domesticated Nocturnals-The Squirrel-Monkey.

WE

Then there are others

E are accustomed to consider all animals as embraced in one of three great divisions: Beasts, or those that walk upon the earth; Birds, or those that fly in the air; Fishes, those that swim in the water. But closer investigation shows us that this division is wholly inaccurate. There are walkers upon earth, as the ostrich, which are not beasts; swimmers in the water, as the whale, which are not fishes; and flyers in the air, like the bat, which are not birds. whose home is neither upon the earth, in the air, nor in the water. able to fly a little in the air, others to walk a little on the ground, the branches of trees, their occupation is climbing. We will, regardless of other peculiarities, designate them as climbers; and will in this chapter group together a few species which are notably characteristic of the Tropical World; commencing with those which, like the bat, most nearly resemble birds, and ending with those which, like the monkey tribe, most nearly resemble man.

Though some are their home is upon

When the sun has disappeared below the horizon. and night falls on the landscape, which a little while ago was bathed in light, then from hollow trees, and creviced rocks, and ruined buildings, a strange and dismal race comes forth. Silently hovering through the glades of the woods, or skimming along the surface of the streams, it catches the crepuscular or nocturnal moths, and serves like the swallow by day to check the exuberant multiplication of the insect tribes. But while man loves the

swallow, and suffers him to build his nest under the eaves of his dwelling, he abhors the bat, which like an evil spirit avoids the light of day, and seems to feel happy only in darkness. The painter gives to his angels the white pinions of the swan, while his demons are made to bear the black wings of the bat.

And yet most species of the bat are most inoffensive creatures; while a closer inspection of their wonderful organization proves them to be far more deserving of admiration than of repugnance. Can anything be better adapted to its wants than the delicate membrane, which, extending over the long, slim fingers, can be spread and folded like an umbrella, so as to form a wing when the animal wishes to fly, and to collapse into a small space when it is at rest? How slight the bones, how light the body, how beautifully formed for flight! Admire also the tiny unwebbed thumb, which serves the bat to hook itself fast while resting, or to clip off the wings of the flies or moths, which it never devours with the rest of the body. But the exquisite acuteness of the senses of smell, feeling, and hearing in the bat is still more wonderful than its delicate flying apparatus. Naturalists, more curious than humane, have blinded bats, and seen, to their astonishment, that they continued to fly about, as if still possessed of the power of vision. They always knew how to avoid branches suspended in the room in which they were flitting, and even flew betwixt threads hung perpendicularly from the ceiling, though these were so near each other, that they were obliged to contract their wings in order to pass through them. To explain these wonderful phenomena, Spallanzani and other naturalists of the last century believed the bats to be endowed with a sixth sense; but Carlyle found that, on closing the ears of the blinded creatures, they lose their wonderful power, and hit against the sides of the room, without being at all aware of their situation. How they are able to distinguish night from day when shut up in a dark box, is a fact still unexplained. As long as the sun stands above the horizon, they will remain perfectly quiet, but as soon as twilight begins to darken the earth, a strange piping and chirping and scratching is heard within the lightless dungeon, and scarcely has the lid been raised, when the prisoners rapidly escape.

Though the temperate regions possess many bats, yet they are most numerous and various in the woody regions of the tropical zone, where the vast numbers of the insect tribes and forest fruits afford them a never failing supply of food. There also they attain a size unknown in our latitudes, so that both from their dimensions and their physiognomy, many of the larger species have obtained the name of flying dogs or flying-foxes.

On approaching a Javanese village, you will sometimes see a stately tree, from whose branches hundreds of large black fruits seem to be suspended. A strong smell of ammonia and a piping noise soon, however, convince you of your mistake, and a closer inspection proves them to be a large troop of Kalongs or Fox-bats (Pteropus) attached head downwards to the tree, where they rest or sleep during the day time, and which they generally quit at sunset, though some of them differ so much from the usual habits of the family as to fly about in the broad light of day.

It is said that it must have been a very hungry man who first ate an oyster; and we are not told that the omniverous Chinese have yet got as far as to include bats among their edibles; but Mr. Wallace* assures us that the natives of Batchian, one

* Malay Archipelago, 341.

of the Malay islands, "consider the great ugly flying-foxes an especial delicacy. At about the beginning of the year they come in large flocks to eat fruit, and congregate during the day on some small islands in the bay, hanging by thousands on the trees, especially on dead ones. They can then be easily caught or knocked down with sticks, and are brought home by basketfuls. They require to be carefully prepared, as the skin and fur has a powerful foxy odor; but they are generally cooked with abundance of spices and condiments, and are really very good eating, something like hare." The phyllostomidæ, a species of bat distinguished by having the orifices of the nostril placed in a kind of membranous scutcheon, surmounted by a leaf-like expansion, like the head of a lance, and supposed to extend in an extraordinary degree the sense of smelling, are exclusively confined to the western continent. These phyllostomida are remarkable for their blood-sucking propensities, and under the name of Vampires have brought the whole race of the large tropical bats into evil repute.

Prince Maximilian of Neu Wied often saw by moonshine, or in the twilight, the Guandiru (Phyllostoma hastatum), a bat five inches long, and measuring twenty-three inches with outstretched wings, hover about his horses and mules while grazing after their day's journey. The animals did not seem incommoded by its presence, but on the following morning, he generally found them covered with blood from the shoulders to the hoofs. The muscular under-lip of the phyllostoma can be completely folded together in the shape of a sucking-tube, which, after the sharp canine teeth have penetrated the skin, continues to pump forth the blood. Even man himself is liable to the attacks of the larger phyllostomida.

"Some years ago," says Mr. Waterton, "I was in Demarara with a Scotch gentleman, by name Tarbet. We hung our hammocks in the thatched loft of a planter's house. Next morning I heard this gentleman muttering in his hammock, and now and then letting fall an imprecation or two, just about the time he ought to have been saying his morning prayers. What is the matter, Sir?' said I, softly: is anything amiss?' What's the matter?' answered he surlily; why, the vampires have been sucking me to death.' As soon as there was light enough, I went to his hammock, and saw it much stained with blood. There,' said he, thrusting his foot out of the hammock, see how these infernal imps have been drawing my life's blood.' On exam ining his foot. I found the vampire had tapped his great toe: there was a wound somewhat less than that made by a leech; the blood was still oozing from it. I conjectured he might have lost from ten to twelve ounces of blood. Whilst examining

6

it, I think I put him into a worse humor by remarking that an European surgeon would not have been so generous as to have blooded him without making a charge. He looked up in my face, but did not say a word; I saw he was of opinion that I had better have spared this piece of ill-timed levity."

Captain Stedman, while in Surinam, was attacked in a similar way. "On waking," he says, "about four o'clock one morning in my hammock, I was extremely alarmed at finding myself weltering in congealed blood, yet without feeling any pain whatever. Having started up, I ran for the surgeon, with a fire-brand in one hand, and all over besmeared with gore. The mystery, however, was soon solved, for I then found I had been bitten by the vampire or spectre of Guiana." Other instances of the same kind are mentioned by Tschudi, Schomburgk, Azara (who was phlebotomized no less than four times by the vampire,) and other naturalists of equal repute, so that there is no