the shape of a horse-shoe; or perhaps we should convey a better idea of it
by stating that the sticks are bent into a shape like the ribs of a
man-of-war, the top being open, and the length varying from six to twelve
inches. Against the sides, and at the entrance of the bower, the bird, in
a state of nature, places bright feathers, snail-shells, bleached
bones--anything, in fact, containing colour. When it is remembered that
Australia is the very paradise of parrots and gaudy-plumaged birds, it
will be seen that the little artist cannot lack materials to satisfy his
taste for ornament; nevertheless, we are told he goes for a considerable
distance for some of his decorations. When the structure is completed, he
sits in it to entice the female, fully aware, no doubt, that the fair are
attracted by a handsome establishment. Be that as it may, the couple
speedily commence running in and out of it, with as much sense, and
probably with as much enjoyment, as light-heeled bipeds perform a galop.
The consequence, however, of the male bird being bereft of his
companions, he seems careless of his bower, which is in a most forlorn
condition--a ball-room, in fact, a day after a _fête_. May a new companion
speedily arrive and induce him to put his house once more in order! The
satin bower-bird, like the magpie, is well-known by the natives to be a
terrible thief; and they always search his abode for any object they may
have lost. "I myself," says Mr. Gould, in his account of these birds,
"found at the entrance of one of them a small neatly-worked stone tomahawk
of an inch and a half in length, together with some slips of blue cotton
rags, which the birds had, doubtless, picked up at a deserted encampment
of the natives."

Scarcely a less interesting bird is the brush-turkey. In appearance it is
very like the common black turkey, but is not quite so large; the
extraordinary manner in which its eggs are hatched constitutes its
singularity. It makes no nest, in the usual acceptation of the term, but
scratches decayed vegetable matter into a pyramid with its feet. It then
carefully dibbles in its eggs at regular intervals, with the small end
downward, and covers them over with the warm fermenting gatherings. The
pair in the gardens, shortly after they were received from Australia,
commenced making one of these hatching-mounds, which, by the time it was
finished, contained upwards of four cart-loads of leaves and other
vegetable matter. After the female had deposited sixteen eggs, each
measuring not less than four inches in length--an enormous size,
considering the bulk of the bird--the male began to keep watch over this
natural Eccaleobion, and every now and then scratched away the rubbish to
inspect them. After six weeks of burial, the eggs, in succession, and
without any warning, gave up their chicks--not feeble, but full-fledged
and strong: an intelligent keeper told us that he had seen one fly up out
of the ground at least five feet high. At night the chicks scraped holes
for themselves, and, lying down therein, were covered over by the old
birds, and thus remained until morning. The extraordinary strength of the
newly-hatched bird is accounted for by the size of the shell, which
contains sufficient nutriment to nourish it until it is lusty.
Unfortunately, all the young but one have perished through various
accidents quite independently of temperature; and the next brood will
probably be reared. As both the flesh and the eggs of these birds are
delicious, the council is anxious to naturalize them among us. In fact,
one of the objects of the gardens, under their enlightened management, is
to make it what Bacon calls in his "Atlantis," "a tryal place for beasts
and fishes." For centuries a system of extermination has been adopted
towards many indigenous animals; the wolf and buzzard have quite
disappeared, and the eagle is fast being swept away even from the
highlands of Scotland--so rapidly, indeed, that Mr. Gordon Cumming is
anxious, we hear, for the formation of a society for the protection of its
eggs. Noxious animals have been replaced by the acclimatization of many of
the foreign fauna, which are either distinguished for their beauty or
valuable for their flesh. This transfer, which adds so much to the
richness of the country, can be vastly accelerated through the agency of
these gardens, which are a kind of "tryal ground" for beasts, as the
fields of some of our rich agriculturists are for foreign roots and
grasses, in which those likely to be of service can be discovered, and
afterwards distributed throughout the land.

If we may quote the brush-turkeys as instances of birds capable of
affording a new kind of delicate and easily-reared food, the splendid
Impegan pheasants, close at hand, bred here from a pair belonging to her
Majesty, and which endure, in the open air, the rigour of winter, may be
looked upon as "things of beauty," which may be produced among us to charm
the eye. The elands, again, on the north side of the garden, which have
bred so prolifically, and made flesh so rapidly, have been with advantage
turned out into our parks, where their beautiful forms prove as attractive
to the eye as their venison, of the finest quality, do to the taste.

But we can no longer tarry to speculate further on the riches of this
aviary, which contains rare specimens of birds from all parts of the
world. Passing along the path which takes us by the north entrance, we
reach the pelicans' paddock, in which we see half a dozen of these
ungainly creatures, white and grey, with pouches beneath their bills as
capacious as the bag of a lady's work-table. The visitor may sometimes
have an opportunity of witnessing an explanation of the popular myth that
the old bird feeds its young from the blood of its own breast. This idea
evidently arose from the fact that it can only empty the contents of its
pouch into the mouths of its young by pressing it against its breast, in
the act of doing which the feathers often became insanguined from the
blood of the mangled fish within it. The close observance of birds and
beasts in zoological collections has tended to reduce many fabulous tales
to sober reason. On the other side of the walk may be seen in immature
plumage one of the red flamingoes from South America, which are said to
simulate so closely a regiment of our soldiers, as they stand in rows
fishing beside the banks of rivers; and here, too, are the delicate
rose-colour specimens of the Mediterranean, which are likewise exceedingly
beautiful. Those accustomed to navigate the Red Sea frequently witness
vast flights of these birds passing and re-passing from Arabia to Egypt;
and we are informed by a traveller that on one occasion, when he had a
good opportunity of measuring the column, he convinced himself that it was
upwards of a mile in length! What a splendid spectacle to see the pure
eastern sky barred by this moving streak of brilliant colour!

But we have not yet explored the north side of the grounds, where the huge
pachydermatous animals are lodged. The difficulty caused by the
carriage-drive running between the two gardens has been vanquished by
means of the tunnel, the ascent from which on the opposite side, flanked
as it is with graceful ferns, is one of the most charming portions of the
grounds on a hot summer's day. If after passing through the subterranean
passage we turn to the right, we come immediately upon the reptile-house.
Unless the visitor selects his time, he will generally find little to
amuse him here. The great snakes have either retired from public life
under their blankets, or lie coiled upon the branches of trees in their
dens. The reptiles are offered food once a week, but will not always feed
at this interval. One huge python fasted the almost incredible time of
twenty-two months, having probably prepared himself for his abstinence by
a splendid gorge. After a fast of seven days, however, the majority of the
serpents regain their appetites. Three o'clock is the feeding-time, and
the reptiles which are on the look-out seem to know full well the errand
of the man who enters with the basket, against the side of which they hear
the fluttering wings of the feathered victims and the short stamp of the
doomed rabbits. The keeper opens the door at the back of the den of the
voluminous serpents on our right--for of these there is no fear,--takes
off their blanket, and drops in upon the clattering pebbles a scampering
rabbit, who hops from side to side, curious to inspect his new habitation;
presently, satisfied, he sits on his haunches and leisurely begins to wash
his face. Silently the rock-snake glides over the stones, uncurling his
huge folds, which, like a cable, seem to move as though by some agency
from without, looks for an instant upon his unconscious victim, and the
next has seized him with his cruel jaws. His constricting folds are
twisted as swiftly as a whip-lash round his shrieking prey, and for ten
minutes the serpent lies still, maintaining his mortal knot until his prey
is dead, when, seizing him by the ears, he draws him through his vice-like
grip, crushing every bone, and elongating the body preparatory to
devouring it. The boa and the rock-snake always swallow their prey head
foremost. How is that fine neck and delicate head to make room for that
bulky rabbit? thinks the spectator. Presently he sees the jaws gape, and
slowly the reptile _draws himself over_, rather than swallows, his prey,
as you draw a stocking upon your leg. The huge lump descends lower and
lower beneath the speckled scales, which seem to stare with distension,
and the monster coils himself up once more to digest his meal in quiet.
Rabbits and pigeons form the food of the pythons in these gardens. While
the smaller birds are preyed upon in the reptile-house, their big
brothers, the storks in the paddock, are reciprocating the law of nature
by eating snakes. As we pass to the opposite side of the serpent-room,
where the venomous kinds are kept, we perceive that a more cautious
arrangement is made for feeding. The door opens at the top instead of at
the sides of their dens, and with good reason; for no sooner does the
keeper remove with a crooked iron rod the blanket from the cobra, than the
reptile springs, with inflated hood, into an S-like attitude, and darts
laterally at his enemy. He seems incapable of striking well any object
above or below his level: watch, for instance, that guinea-pig: again and
again he dashes at it, but misses his aim; now he hits it, but only to
drive the poor frightened creature with a score of flying pebbles before
him: when at last he succeeds in piercing the sides of his victim, tetanic
spasms immediately commence, and it dies convulsed in a few seconds. It is
said by those who have watched venomous snakes, that the manner of dying
exhibited by their stricken prey discloses the nature of the reptile that
inflicted the poisoned wound. It is scarcely necessary to state that the
popular idea that the tongue darts forth the venom is a fallacy. The
poison is contained in glands which lie at the root of the fangs on either
side, and, by the compression of the powerful muscles which make the head
appear so broad and flat, it is forced into the fine tube which runs at
the sides of the fang, and finds its exit near the point by a minute
opening. The cobra at present in the collection, with its skin a glossy
black and yellow, its eye black and angry, its motions agile and graceful,
seems to be the very personification of India. As we watch it when ready
to spring, we suddenly remember that only a film of glass stands between
us and "pure death." But there is nothing to fear: the python, in the
adjoining room, which weighs a hundred and twenty pounds, being incensed
on his first arrival at being removed from his box, darted with all his
force at a spectator. Yet the pane of glass had strength enough to bring
him up, and he fell back so bruised about the head and muzzle by the
collision, that he could not feed well for several months. The cobra that
we see is the same that destroyed its keeper. In a fit of drunkenness, the
man, against express orders, took the reptile out, and, placing its head
inside his waistcoat, allowed it to glide round his body. When it had
emerged from under his clothes from the other side, apparently in good
humour, he squeezed its tail, when it struck him between his eyes; in
twenty minutes his consciousness was gone, and in less than three hours he
was dead. Before we leave this reptile-room, let us peep for a moment into
the little apartment opening from the corner, where, hanging from the
wall, we see all the cast-off dresses of the serpents. If the keeper will
allow us to handle one of them for a moment, we shall see that it is
indeed an entire suit of light-brown colour and of gauzy texture, which
covered not only the body and head, but the very eyeballs of the wearer.

The Python-house on the other side of the Museum contains two enormous
serpents. The adventures of one of them--the _Python reticulatus_--deserve
to be written: when small enough to be placed in the pocket, he was, with
a companion now no more, taken from Ceylon to Brazil by American sailors;
they were then exhibited in most of the maritime towns of South America,
and were publicly sold for a high price at Callao to the captain of a
ship, who brought them to the gardens, and demanded £600 for the pair;
fully persuaded of their enormous value, he had paid £30 to insure them on
the voyage, and it was not until he had long and painfully cogitated that
he agreed to sell them for £40. We have before referred to the
extraordinary length of time a python has been known to fast without
injury. Their fancies as well as their fastings are rather eccentric.
Every one has heard of the snake which swallowed his blanket, a meal which
ultimately killed him. A python who had lived for years in a friendly
manner with a brother nearly as large as himself, was found one morning
solus. As the cage was secure, the keepers were puzzled to know how the
serpent had escaped: at last it was observed that the remaining inmate had
swollen remarkably during the night, when the horrid fact became plain
enough; the fratricide had succeeded in swallowing the entire person of
his brother; it was his last meal, however, for in some months he died. A
friend informs us that he once saw in these gardens a rat-snake of Ceylon
devour a common _Coluber natrix_. The rat-snake, however, had not taken
the measure of his victim, as by no effort could he dispose of the last
four inches of his tail, which stuck out rather jauntily from the side of
his mouth, with very much the look of a cigar. After a quarter of an hour,
the tail began to exhibit a retrograde motion, and the swallowed snake was
disgorged, nothing the worse for his living sepulchre, with the exception
of the wound made by his partner when first he seized him. The ant-eater,
who lately inhabited the room leading out of the python apartment, has
died of a want of ants.

As we issue again into the open air, we have before us the whole length of
the avenue, arched with lime-trees, in summer a veritable isle of verdure.
What a charming picture it used to be to see the docile elephant pacing
towards us with ponderous and majestic steps, whilst, in the scarlet
howdha, happy children swayed from side to side as she marched. She, who
was our delight for so many years, died some time since of a storm of
thunder and lightning. Such indeed was what may seem at first the singular
verdict of the medical man who made his _post mortem_. The terror,
however, inspired by the storm appears to have produced some nervous
disease, under which she succumbed. There is a suspicion that the carcase,
five thousand pounds and upwards in weight, which was disposed of to the
nackers, ultimately found its way to the sausage-makers. Do not start,
good reader; elephant's flesh is considered excellent eating by the tribes
of South Africa, and the lion-slayer tells us that the feet are a true
delicacy. He used to eat them as we do Stilton cheese, scooping out the
interior and leaving the rind; he exhibited to his audience some of these
relics, which looked like huge leather fire-buckets. And now we have only
the young animal left, that once sucked his huge mother, to the delight of
the crowd of children, and to the disgust of the rhinoceros, who is the
sworn enemy to all elephants. The little one is growing apace, however,
and has already been promoted to carry the long-deserted howdha. The
rhinoceros, close at hand, is the successor of the fine old fellow
purchased in 1836 for 1,050_l._, the largest sum ever given by the society
for a single animal. The specimen now in the gardens cost only 350_l._ in
1850, so much do these commodities fluctuate in value. His predecessor,
who departed this life full of years, was constantly forced upon his belly
by a pugnacious elephant, who pressed his tusks upon the back of his
neighbour when he came near the palings which separated their inclosures.
This rough treatment appears to have led to his death, as Professor Owen
found, on dissecting the massive brute, which weighed upwards of two tons,
that the seventh rib had been fractured at the bend near the vertebral
end, and had wounded the left lung.

Not far from the picturesque house built by Decimus Burton, in one of the
cages fronting the office of the superintendent of the gardens, is to be
seen a beaver. The wonderful instinct of this little animal is certainly
not inferior to that of the huge elephant. As yet he has not been placed
in circumstances to enable the public to witness his building capacities;
but it is the intention, we understand, of the Council to give him a
stream of running water and the requisite materials to construct one of
those extraordinary dams for which this animal is so famous. In Canada,
where he used to flourish, the backwoodsmen often came upon hill-sides
completely cleared of good-sized trees by colonies of these little
creatures, who employed the felled timber to construct their dams--dams,
not of a few feet in length, but sometimes of a hundred and fifty feet,
built according to the best engineering formula for resisting the pressure
of water, namely, in an angle with its apex pointed up the stream, and
gradually narrowing from base to summit. In short, Mr. Brunel himself
could not outdo your beaver in his engineering operations. Even in
confinement this sagacious Rodent loves to display his skill, as we may
learn from Mr. Broderip's account of his pet Binney:--

    "Its building instinct," says that accomplished naturalist, "showed
    itself immediately it was let out of its cage, and materials were
    placed in its way, and this before it had been a week in its new
    quarters. Its strength, even before it was half-grown, was great, it
    would drag along a large sweeping-brush, or a warming-pan, grasping
    the handle with its teeth, so that the load came over its shoulder,
    and advancing in an oblique direction till it arrived at the part
    where it wished to place it. The long and large materials were always
    taken first; and two of the longest were generally laid crosswise,
    with one of the ends of each touching the wall, and their other ends
    projecting out into the room. The area caused by the cross-brushes and
    the wall he would fill up with hand-brushes, rush baskets, books,
    boots, sticks, cloths, dried turf, or anything portable. As the work
    grew high, he supported himself on his tail, which propped him up
    admirably; and he would often, after laying on one of his building
    materials, sit up over against it, appearing to consider his work, or,
    as the country people say, 'judge it.' This pause was sometimes
    followed by changing the position of the materials, and sometimes they
    were left in their place. After he had piled up his materials in one
    part of the room (for he generally chose the same place), he proceeded
    to wall up the space between the feet of a chest of drawers which
    stood at a little distance from it, high enough on its legs to make
    the bottom a roof for him, using for this purpose dried turf and
    sticks, which he laid very even, and filling up the interstices with
    bits of coal, hay, cloth, or anything he could pick up; the last place
    he seemed to appropriate for his dwelling, the former work seemed to
    be intended for a dam. When he had walled up the space between the
    feet of the chest of drawers, he proceeded to carry in sticks, cloths,
    hay, cotton, and to make a nest; and when he had done, he would sit up
    under the drawers, and comb himself with the nails of his hind feet."

Well done, Binney! If the beaver in the garden will only work out his
natural instincts as perfectly, we may expect some amusement. Up to a late
period the beaver had become rather a scarce animal, the exigencies of
fashion having nearly exterminated him. When silk hats came in, however,
the annual slaughter of hundreds of thousands of his race, for the sake of
the fur, gradually slackened, and now he is beginning to increase in his
native retreats,--a singular instance this of the fashions of Paris and
London affecting the very existence of a prolific race of animals in the
New World! In the very next compartment is a hare, who for years played
the tambourine in the streets of the metropolis, but his master, finding
that his performances did not draw, exchanged him at these gardens for a
monkey; and now, whilst he eats his greens in peace, poor Jacko, in a red
cloak and a feathered cap, has probably to earn his daily bread by
mimicking humanity on the top of a barrel-organ. But the hippopotamus
surges into his bath in the inclosure as we pause, and there is a rush of
visitors to see the mighty brute performing his ablutions. He no longer
gives audience to all the fair and fashionable folks of the town. Alas for
the greatness of this world! the soldier-crab and the Esop prawn now draw
better "houses." Whether or no this desertion has embittered his temper,
we cannot say, but he has certainly lost his amiability, notwithstanding
that he still retains the humorous curl-up of the corners of his mouth
which Doyle used to hit off so inimitably. At times, indeed, he is
perfectly furious, and his vast strength has necessitated the
reconstruction of his house on a much stronger plan. Those only who have
seen him rush with extended jaws at the massive oaken door of his
apartment, returning again and again to the charge, and making the solid
beams quiver as though they were only of inch-deal, can understand the
dangerous fits which now and then are exhibited by a creature, who was so
gentle, when he made his _début_, that he could not go to sleep without
having his Arab keeper's feet to lay his neck upon. This affection for his
nurse has undergone a great change, for, on Hamet's countryman and
coadjutor, Mohammed, making his second appearance with the young female
hippopotamus, Obaysch very nearly killed him in the violence of his rage.
He has a peculiar dislike to the sight of working men, especially if they
are employed in doing any jobs about his apartment. The smith of the
establishment happening one day to be passing along the iron gallery which
runs across one side of his bath, the infuriated animal leapt out of the
water, at least eight feet high, and would speedily have pulled the whole
construction down, had not the man run rapidly out of his sight. We trust
his temper will improve when his young bride in the adjoining room is
presented to him; but she is as yet but a baby behemoth, although growing
fast. The enormously strong iron railings in front of his apartments are
essential to guard against the rushes he sometimes makes at persons he
does not like. Look at that huge mouth, opened playfully to receive
nic-nacs! What is a bun or a biscuit to him? Down that huge throat goes
one hundred pounds weight of provender daily. Surely the dragon of Wantley
had not such a gullet.

The giraffes in the adjoining apartment have been in the gardens so long
that they are no longer thought a rarity; but it should be remembered that
the four procured in 1835 from Khordofan by the agent of the society were,
like the hippopotamus, the first ever exhibited in Europe since the days
of ancient Rome. Of these only one female now remains; but very many have
been bred in the gardens, and have continued in excellent health. At the
present moment three of their progeny are housed in the apartment we are
entering. The finest, a male, is a noble fellow, standing nearly seventeen
feet high. When he strides out into the inclosure, high up as the trees
are protected by boarding, he yet manages to browse as in his African
forests, and it is then that the visitor sees the full beauty of the
beast, which is lost in the house. The giraffe, in spite of his mild and
melancholy look, which reminds us forcibly of the camel, yet fights
ferociously with his kind at certain seasons of the year. Two males once
battled here so furiously that the horn of one of them was actually driven
into the head of the other. Their method of fighting is very peculiar:
stretching out their fore and hind legs like a rocking-horse, they use
their heads, as a blacksmith would a sledgehammer, and swinging the
vertebral column in a manner calculated, one would think, to break it,
they bring the full force of the horns to bear upon their antagonist's
skull. The blow is severe in the extreme, and every precaution is taken to
prevent these conflicts.

As we pass along a narrow corridor in which the ostriches are confined, we
reach at length the last inhabitant of the garden, and the most curious
creature, perhaps, which it contains. If the keeper is at hand, he will
open the door of the box in which it lives, and drive out for us the
bewildered-looking apteryx--the highest representative, according to
Professor Owen, of the warm-blooded class of animals that lived in New
Zealand previous to the advent of man. Strange and chaotic-looking as are
most of the living things brought from Australia and the adjacent islands,
this creature is certainly the oddest of the bird class, and is, we
believe, the only one ever seen out of New Zealand. As it vainly runs into
the corners and tries to hide itself from the light of day, we perceive
that it is wingless and tailless; it looks, in short, like a hedgehog
mounted upon the dwarfed yet powerful legs of an ostrich, whilst its long
bill, which seems as though it had been borrowed from a stork, is employed
when the bird leans forward, to support it, just as an old man uses a
stick. This strange creature seems to hold among the feathered bipeds of
Polynesia a parallel position to the New Holland mole (_Ornithorhynchus
paradoxicus_)--which possesses the bill and webbed feet of a duck with the
claws of a land animal--among the quadrupeds. Mr. Gould remarks that
nature affords an appropriate vegetation to each class of animal life. Our
universal mother seems to have matched her Flora to her Fauna in this
portion of the globe; at least, the paradoxical creatures we have
mentioned seem in happy accord with Australian vegetation, where the
stones grow outside the cherries, and the pear-shaped fruits depend from
the branch with their small ends downwards! The apteryx is entirely
nocturnal in its habits, pursuing its prey in the ground by smell rather
than by sight; to enable it to do which, the olfactory openings are placed
near the point of the beak. Thus the bird scents the worm on which it
feeds far below the surface of the ground. We must not regard the apteryx
as an exceptional creature, but rather as the type of a large class of
birds peculiar to the islands of New Zealand, which have been destroyed,
like the dodo in the Mauritius, since the arrival of man. Professor Owen,
long before the apteryx arrived in England, pronounced that a single bone
found in some New Zealand watercourse had belonged to a wingless, tailless
bird that stood at least twelve feet high.[9] This scientific conjecture
has lately been transformed into a certainty by the discovery of a number
of bones, which demonstrate that several species of Moas once roamed among
the fern-clad islands which stud the bright Polynesian ocean. These bones
have been found mixed with those of the apteryx, which thus becomes linked
to a race of mysterious creatures, which, it is supposed, have long passed
away, although a tale is told--an American one, it is true--of an
Englishman having come across a dinornis, whilst out on its nocturnal
rambles, and of his having fled from it with as much terror as though it
had been a griffin of old.

Our walk through the gardens has only enabled us to take a cursory glance
at a few of the 1,300 mammals, birds, and reptiles at present located
there; but the duty of the zoologist is to dwell minutely on each. To such
these gardens have, for the last twenty-six years, been a very
fountain-head of information. During that time a grand procession of
animal life, savage and wild, has streamed through them, and for the major
part has gone to that "bourne from which no traveller returns." Let us
rank them, and pass them before us:--

  Quadrumana      1,069
  Carnivora       1,409
  Rodentia        1,025
  Pachydermata      204
  Ruminantia      1,098
  Marsupialia       219
  Reptilia        1,861
  Aves            7,320

--making a total of 14,205. Out of this large number many curious animals
have doubtless left no trace; but through the care of the Council, no rare
specimen has died, within these five years at least, without previously
sitting for his portrait. The first part of the valuable collection of
coloured drawings, from the inimitable pencil of Mr. Wolf, accompanied by
a description from the pen of the late Mr. Mitchell, the editor of the
work, is published, under the title of "Zoological Sketches, &c.," and the
others will speedily follow. The work, when completed, will be unique in
the annals of zoology, both for the extreme beauty of the drawings, which
may be said to daguerreotype the subjects in their most characteristic
attitudes, and for the nature of the letterpress, which proves that the
editor has written from the life.

This splendid collection has been got together by presents, purchase,
breeding, and exchanges. Out of the 14,205 specimens, however, which have
been in the possession of the society, scarcely a tithe were bought. The
Queen, especially, has been most generous in her presents, and the stream
of barbaric offerings in the shape of lions, tigers, leopards, &c., which
is continually flowing from tropical princes to the fair Chief of the
nation, is poured into these gardens. Her Majesty evidently pays no heed
to the superstition once common among the people, that a dynasty was only
safe as long as the lions flourished in the royal fortress. In fact, the
gardens are a convenience to our gracious monarch as well as to her
subjects; for wild animals are awkward things to have in one's back
premises. Neither must we overlook the reproduction which has taken place
in the gardens; to such an extent, indeed, has the stock increased, that
sales to a large amount are annually made. The system of exchanges which
exists between the various British and continental societies helps to
supply the garden with deficient specimens in place of duplicates. Very
rare, and consequently expensive animals, are generally purchased. Thus,
the first rhinoceros cost 1,000_l._; the four giraffes 700_l._, and their
carriage an additional 700_l._ The elephant and calf were bought in 1851
for 800_l._; and the hippopotamus, although a gift, was not brought home
and housed at less than 1,000_l._--a sum which he more than realized in
the famous Exhibition season, when the receipts were 10,000_l._ above the
previous year. The lion Albert was purchased for 140_l._; a tiger in 1852
for 200_l._ The value of some of the smaller birds will appear, however,
more startling: thus, the pair of black-necked swans were purchased for
80_l._ (they are now to be seen in the three-island pond); a pair of
crowned pigeons and two maleos, 60_l._; a pair of Victoria pigeons,
35_l._; four mandarin ducks, 70_l._ Most of these rare birds (now in the
great aviary) came from the Knowsley collection, at the sale of which, in
1851, purchases were made to the extent of 985_l._ It would be impossible
from these prices, however, to judge of the present value of the animals.
Take the rhinoceros, for example: the first specimen cost 1,000_l._; the
second, quite as fine a brute, only 350_l._ Lions range again from 40_l._
to 180_l._, and tigers from 40_l._ to 200_l._ The price is generally ruled
by the state of the wild-beast market, and by the intrinsic rarity of the
creature. A first appearance in Europe, of course, is likely to draw, and
is therefore at the top price; but it is wonderful how demand produces
supply. Let any rare animal bring a crowd to the gardens, and in a
twelvemonth numbers of his brethren will be generally in the market. The
ignorance displayed by some persons as to the value of well-known objects
is something marvellous. We have already spoken of the sea captain who
demanded 600_l._ for a pair of pythons, and at last took 40_l._! On
another occasion, an American offered the society a grisly bear for
2,000_l._, to be delivered in the United States; and, more laughable
still, a moribund walrus, which had been fed for nine weeks on salt pork
and meal, was offered for the trifling sum of 700_l._!

We could go on multiplying, _ad nauseam_, instances of this kind, but must
conclude the catalogue of absurdities by stating that there is a firm
belief on the part of many persons that it is the Zoological Society which
has proposed the large reward, which every one has heard of, for _the_
tortoiseshell Tom. "The only one ever known" has been offered accordingly
at the exceedingly low figure of 250_l._ On one occasion a communication
was received from some person of consideration in Thuringia, requesting to
be informed of the amount of the proffered prize, which he was about to
claim. This was shortly followed by a letter from another person,
evidently written in a fury, cautioning the society against giving the
prize to the previous writer, as he was not the breeder of the cat, but
was only trying to buy it for less than its value, "in which he would
never succeed so long as the true breeder lived." To prevent further
applications on the behalf of growers of this unique animal, we may as
well state that tortoiseshell Toms may be had in many quarters.

We have said that the value of animals depends upon the state of the
wild-beast market. "Wild-beast market!" exclaims the reader; "and where
can that be?" Every one knows that London can furnish anything for money;
and if any lady or gentleman wants lions or tigers, there are dealers in
Ratcliffe Highway and the adjacent parts, who have them on the premises,
and will sell them at five minutes' notice. They "talk as familiarly of
lions as ladies do of puppy dogs;" and a gentleman who purchased a bear of
one of them, lately informed us that the salesman coolly proposed that he
should take him home with him in a cab! We once had occasion to visit the
establishment of one of these dealers, and were shown up a ladder into a
cockloft, where, hearing a bumping, and perceiving a lifting motion in a
trap-door, we inquired the reason, which called forth the dry remark that
it was only three lions at play in a box below. Although these men
generally manage to secure their live stock in a satisfactory manner, yet
accidents will occur in the best-regulated lion-stores. A wild-beast
merchant, for instance, informed us that one night he was awakened by his
wife, who drew his attention to a noise in the back-yard, where he had
placed two lions on the previous evening. On putting his head out of the
window--his room was on the ground-floor--there were the lions loose, and,
with their paws on the window-sill, looking grimly in upon him. A good
whip and a determined air consigned Leo to his cage again without further
trouble. On another occasion this same man, hearing a noise in his back
premises, found to his horror that an elephant, with his pick-lock trunk,
had let out a hyæna and a nylghau from their cages, and was busy undoing
the fastenings of a den full of lions! The same resolute spirit, however,
soon restored order. Amateurs have not always the same courage or
self-possession, and they immediately have recourse to the garden-folks to
get them out of their difficulties, as a housekeeper would send to the
station-house on finding a burglar secreted in his cellar. On one occasion
a gentleman, who had offered a rattlesnake and its young to the gardens at
a high price, sent suddenly to the superintendent to implore immediate
assistance, as the said snake, with half a score venomous offspring, had
escaped from their box and scattered themselves in his nursery. The
possessor, to avoid worse losses, was only too glad to be rid of his
guests at any pecuniary sacrifice.

We cannot close our survey without touching upon the cost of the
commissariat. The slaughtered beasts appropriated to the carnivora, we
have before stated, cost in the year 1854 no less a sum than 1,367_l._
19s. 5d. If we go through the other items of food, we shall give some
notion of the expense and the variety of the banquet to which the animals
daily sat down during that year. Thus we see hay figures for 912_l._ 14s.;
corn, seeds, &c., 700_l._ 8s. 8d.; bread, buns, &c. (for the monkeys),
150_l._ 16s. 8d.; eggs, 87_l._ 4s. 1d. (for the ant-eater principally);
milk, 69_l._ 6s. 2d.; mangold-wurzel, carrots, and turnips, 22_l._ 6s.;
dog-biscuit, 135_l._ 19s. 10d. (for the bears and wolves and dogs
chiefly); fish (for the otters, seal, pelicans, &c.), 214_l._ 8s. 8d.;
green tares, 23_l._ 16s. 8d.; rabbits and pigeons (for the snakes), 33_l._
13s. 2d.; rice and oil-cake, 66_l._ 15s.; sundries, including fruit,
vegetables, grasshoppers, snakes, mealworms, figs, sugar, &c. (for the
birds principally), 157_l._ 1s. 11d.: making a total of 3,942_l._ 8s. 3d.;
a great increase on the food bill of 1853, and which was caused entirely
by the advance of prices.

The pitch of excellence to which the gardens have arrived has naturally
resulted in drawing the increased attention of the public towards them. We
have only to contrast, for instance, the number of people who entered in
the year 1848--the first in which a more liberal system of management came
into play--with those who passed in in 1854, to see that the establishment
flourishes under the auspices of the new management; for while in the
former year only 142,456 persons passed through the turnstiles, the number
had risen in the latter to 407,676. It is interesting to observe that,
although an increase of full 100 per cent. took place upon the privileged
and ordinary shilling visitors during that interval, yet that the
reduction of the admittance-charge to sixpence on Mondays and holidays was
the main cause of the gradual influx of visitors--the year 1848 showing
only 60,566 admittances of these holiday-folks and working-people, to
196,278 in 1854. Here, then, we have an increase of 135,712 persons, many
of whom were, no doubt, rescued, on those days at least, from the
fascinations of the public-house. With all this flood of life--the greater
portion of it undoubtedly belonging to the labouring-classes,--not the
slightest injury has been done to the gardens. A flower or two may have
been picked, but not by that class of Englishmen who were once thought too
brutal to be allowed access unwatched to any public exhibition. Every year
that passes over our heads proves that such shows as these are splendid
examples of the method of teaching introduced by Bell and Lancaster; that
they furnish instruction of a nature which is never forgotten, and which
refines at the same time that it delights.

RATS.

Boswell relates that the wits who assembled at the house of Sir Joshua
Reynolds to hear Grainger's poem on the "Sugar-cane" read in manuscript,
burst into laughter when, after much pompous blank-verse, a new paragraph
commenced with the invocation--

    "Now, Muse, let's sing of rats."

But if a mean topic for the bard, they are an interesting subject to the
naturalist, an anxious one to the agriculturist, and of some importance to
everybody. Though it was no easy matter to throw around them a halo of
poetry, and to elevate them into epic dignity--a difficulty which was
nowise surmounted by calling them, as Grainger subsequently did, "the
whisker'd vermin race"--yet there was nothing with which they had a more
serious practical connection than the "sugar-cane." It was reckoned that
in Jamaica they consumed a twentieth part of the entire crop, and 30,000
were destroyed in one year in a single plantation. In fact, rats are to
the earth what sparrows are to the air--universally present. Unlike their
feathered analogues, we rarely see them, and consequently have little idea
of the liberality with which they are distributed over every portion of
the habitable globe. They swarm in myriads in the vast network of sewers
under our feet, and by means of our house-drains have free access to our
basements, under which they burrow; in the walls they establish a series
of hidden passages; they rove beneath the floors and the roof, and thus
establish themselves above, below, and beside us. In the remote islands
of the Pacific they equally abound, and are sometimes the only
inhabitants. But we shall not attempt to write the universal history of
the rat. It is enough if we narrate his doings in Great Britain.

There are in England two kinds of land-rats--the old English black rat,
and the Norwegian or brown rat. According to Mr. Waterton, the black rat
is the native and proper inhabitant of the island; the brown rat not only
an interloper and exterminator, but a Whig rat--a combination which he
thinks perfectly consistent. In his charming essays on Natural History he
says--

    "Though I am not aware that there are any minutes in the zoological
    archives of this country which point out to us the precise time at
    which this insatiate and mischievous little brute first appeared among
    us, still there is a tradition current in this part of the country
    (Yorkshire), that it actually came over in the same ship which
    conveyed the new dynasty to these shores. My father, who was of the
    first order of field naturalists, was always positive upon this point,
    and he maintained firmly that it did accompany the House of Hanover in
    its emigration from Germany to England."

Having thus given the "little brute" a bad name, he pertinaciously hunts
him through the two volumes of his essays; nay, he does more, for, on
account of his Whiggism, he is the only wild animal banished for ever from
Waterton Hall, that happy home for all other fowls of the air and beasts
of the field, against which gamekeepers wage war as vermin. In Carpenter's
edition of Cuvier, however, an account is given of the brown rat, or
Surmulot, which, if true, entirely disposes of this pretty account of his
advent. We are there told that he originally came from Persia, where he
lives in burrows, and that he did not set out on his travels until the
year 1727, when an earthquake induced him to swim the Volga and enter
Europe by way of Astrakan.[10] When once he had set foot in England, he no
doubt treated his weaker brother and predecessor, the black rat, much as
the Stuart dynasty was treated by the house of Hanover. Though the black
rat was not himself an usurper, but rather an emigrant who took possession
of an unoccupied territory, his reign is also said by some to have been
contemporaneous with an earlier change in the royal line of England, for
he is asserted to have come over in the train of the Conqueror. He still
abounds in Normandy, and to this day is known in Wales under the name of
Llyoden Ffancon--the French mouse.

Rats are no exception to the law which, Wordsworth says, prevails among
"all the creatures of flood and field."

                        "The good old rule,
  Sufficeth them--the simple plan,
  That they should take who have the power,
  And they should keep who can."

But the black rat has kept more than is commonly imagined. Mr. Waterton is
mistaken when he adopts the popular notion that the old English breed
which came in with the Conqueror is almost totally annihilated by his
brown cousin. The first comer has no more been destroyed by the subsequent
invader than the Celt is annihilated by the triumphant Saxon. As we find
the former still holding their ground in Cornwall, Wales, and the
Highlands of Scotland, so we find the black rat flourishing in certain
localities. In the neighbourhood of the Tower, in Whitbread's brewery, and
in the Whitechapel sugar-refineries, he still holds his own, and woe be to
any brown trespasser who ventures into his precincts. The weaker animal
has learnt that union is strength, and, acting in masses, they attack
their powerful foe as fearlessly as a flight of swallows does a hawk; but
if an equal number of the two breeds are placed together in a cage without
food, the chances are that all the black rats will have disappeared before
morning, and, even though well fed, the brown Brobdingnags invariably eat
off the long and delicate ears of their little brethren, just as a
gourmand, after a substantial meal, amuses his appetite with a
wafer-biscuit.

The rapid spread of the rat is due to the fearlessness with which he will
follow man and his commissariat wherever he goes. Scarcely a ship leaves
a port for a distant voyage but it takes in its complement of rats as
regularly as the passengers, and in this manner the destructive little
animal has not only distributed himself over the entire globe, but, like
an enterprising traveller, continually passes from one country to another.
The colony of four-footed depredators, which ships itself free of expense,
makes, for instance, a voyage to Calcutta, whence many of the body will
again go to sea, and land perhaps at some uninhabited island where the
vessel may have touched for water. In this manner many a hoary old
wanderer has circumnavigated the globe oftener than Captain Cook, and set
his paws on twenty different shores. The rat-catcher to the East-India
Company has often destroyed as many as five hundred in a ship newly
arrived from Calcutta. The genuine ship-rat is a more delicate animal than
the brown rat, and has so strong a resemblance to the old Norman breed,
that we cannot help thinking they are intimately related. The same fine
large ear, sharp nose, long tail, dark fur, and small size, characterize
both, and a like antipathy exists between them and the Norwegian species.
It is by no means uncommon to find distinct colonies of the two kinds in
the same ship--the one confining itself to the stem, the other to the
stern of the vessel. The same arrangement is often adopted in the
warehouses of seaports, the ship's company generally locating themselves
as near the water as possible, and the landsmen in the more inland portion
of the building.

When rats have once found their way into a ship, they are secure as long
as the cargo is on board, provided they can command the great
necessary--water. If this is well guarded, they will resort to
extraordinary expedients to procure it. In a rainy night they will come on
deck to drink, and will even ascend the rigging to sip the moisture which
lies in the folds of the sails. When reduced to extremities, they will
attack the spirit-casks and get so drunk that they are unable to walk
home. The land-rat will, in like manner, gnaw the metal tubes which in
public-houses lead from the spirit-store to the tap, and is as convivial
on these occasions as his nautical relation. The entire race have a quick
ear for running liquid, and they constantly eat into leaden pipes, and,
much to their astonishment, receive a douche-bath in consequence. It is
without doubt the difficulty of obtaining water which causes them in many
cases to desert the ship the moment she touches the shore. On such
occasions they get, if possible, dry-footed to land, which they generally
accomplish by passing in Indian file along the mooring-rope, though, if no
other passage is provided for them, they will not hesitate to swim. In the
same manner they board ships from the shore, and so well are their
invading habits known to sailors, that it is common upon coming into port
to fill up the hawser holes, or else to run the mooring-cable through a
broom, the projecting twigs of which effectually stop the ingress of these
nautical quadrupeds. Their occupancy of the smaller bird-breeding islands
invariably ends in their driving away the feathered inhabitants, for they
plunder the nests of their eggs, and devour the young. The puffins have in
this way been compelled to relinquish Puffin's Island, off the coast of
Caernarvon.

The ship-rat must not be confounded with the water-rat, which is an
entirely different species. The latter partakes of the habits of the
beaver, and is somewhat like him in appearance. He possesses the same
bluff head and long fur, in which are buried his diminutive ears. He
dwells in holes in the banks of rivers, which he constructs with a land
and water entrance to provide against destruction by the sudden rising of
the stream. This animal lives entirely upon vegetable food, which he will
now and then seek at some distance inland, and we suspect that to him may
be traced many of the devastations in the fruit and vegetable gardens for
which the poor sparrows get the blame. We have seen water-rats cross a
wide meadow, climb the stalks of the dwarf beans, and, after detaching the
pods with their teeth, shell their contents in the most workmanlike
manner. They will mount vines and feed on the grapes; and a friend informs
us that on one occasion he saw a water-rat go up a ladder which was
resting against a plum-tree, and attack the fruit. If a garden is near the
haunts of water-rats, it is necessary to watch narrowly for the holes
underneath the walls, for they will burrow under the foundation with all
the vigour of sappers and miners. Such is the cunning with which they
drive their shafts, that they will ascend beneath a stack of wood, a heap
of stones, or any other object which will conceal the passage by which
they obtain an entrance. The water-rat is, however, a rare animal compared
with its first-cousin, the common brown or Norway rat, which is likewise,
as Lord Bacon says of the ant, "a shrewd thing in a garden." They select,
according to Cobbett, the prime of the dessert--melons, strawberries,
grapes, and wall-fruit; and though they do but taste of each, it is not,
as he remarks, very pleasant to eat after them. Not many years since they
existed in millions in the drains and sewers of the metropolis. Several
causes have been in operation to diminish their numbers, and in some
quarters of the town almost wholly to extinguish them. In the first place,
the method of flushing the sewers lately adopted is exceedingly fatal to
them. When the sluices are opened, go they must with the rush of waters,
and they may be seen shot out by hundreds from the mouths of the culverts
in the Thames. The fact that rats are worth three shillings a dozen for
sporting purposes proves, however, the most certain means of their
destruction, for it insures their ceaseless pursuit by the great hunter,
man. The underground city of sewers becomes one vast hunting-ground, in
which men regularly gain a livelihood by capturing them. Before entering
the subterraneous world, the associates generally plan what routes they
will take, and at what point they will meet, possibly with the idea of
driving their prey towards a central spot. They go in couples, each man
carrying a lighted candle with a tin reflector, a bag, a sieve, and a
spade; the spade and sieve being used for examining any deposit which
promises to contain some article of value. The moment the rat sees the
light, he runs along the sides of the drain just above the line of the
sewage water; the men follow, and speedily overtake the winded animal,
which no sooner finds his pursuers gaining upon him, than he sets up a
shrill squeak, in the midst of which he is seized with the bare hand
behind the ears, and deposited in the bag. In this manner a dozen will
sometimes be captured in as many minutes. When driven to bay at the end
of a blind sewer, they will often fly at the boots of their pursuers in a
most determined manner.

The favourite stronghold of the rat is that portion of the house-drain
which opens at right angles into the main sewer. Here he sits like a
sentinel, and in security watches with his keen but astonished eyes the
extraordinary apparition running with a light. It is a remarkable fact
that most untrapped house-drains are inhabited by their own particular
rats, and woe be to the intruder who ventures to interfere with those in
possession. The rat as well as the cat may thus be classed among the
domestic animals of the household, who acts as a kind of preventive puss
in keeping out the whole underground community of vermin, which otherwise
would have the run of our basements.

These vermin congregate thickest in the neighbourhood of slaughter-houses,
or, in other words, where food is most plentiful. They are frequently
found sitting in clusters on the ledge formed by the invert of the sewers.
As the scavengers of drains, they undoubtedly do good service, but it is a
poor set-off for the mischief they perpetrate in destroying the brickwork
of the sewers--burrowing in every direction, and thus constructing lateral
cesspools, the contents of which permeate the ground and filter into the
wells. In making these excavations, moreover, they invariably transfer the
earth to the main sewers, and form obstructions to the flow. The
accumulations of their paw-work have regularly to be removed in small
trucks constructed for the purpose, and if this precaution were not taken,
they would in a few years entirely destroy the vast system of subterranean
culverts which have been laboriously constructed at the expense of
millions. The pipe-drains with smooth barrels, which the rat's tooth
cannot touch, alone baffle him; indeed, the rapid flow of water in their
narrow channel prevents his even retaining his footing in them. In revenge
for thus being circumvented, he has in many cases entirely ruined the
newly-laid channel of pipes by burrowing under them, and causing them to
dip and open at the joints.

In France the sewer authorities hold an annual hunting-match, on which
occasion there is a grand capture of rats; these animals are not destined
to afford sport to the "fancy" under the tender manipulations of a dog
"Billy;" on the contrary, our neighbours have too much respect for the
integrity of his hide. We are informed that they have established a
company in Paris, upon the Hudson's Bay principle, to buy up all the rats
of the country for the sake of their skin. The soft nap of the fur when
dressed is of the most beautiful texture, far exceeding in delicacy that
of the beaver, and the hatters consequently use it as a substitute. The
hide is employed to make the thumbs of the best gloves, its elasticity and
texture rendering it preferable to kid.

Parent Duchâtelet collected several particulars of the rats which in his
day frequented the knackers' yards at Montfaucon. Attracted by the
abundance of animal food, they increased so enormously that the
surrounding inhabitants, hearing that the government intended to remove
these establishments, were seized with apprehension lest the vermin, when
deprived of their larder, should spread through the neighbourhood, and,
like a flight of locusts, swallow up everything. The alarmists may even
have feared lest they should meet with a similar fate to that of the
Archbishop of Mayence, who, if old chronicles are to be believed, retired
to a tower in one of the isles of the Rhine to escape being devoured by a
host of these creatures whose appetites were set upon him, and who,
pertinaciously pursuing him to his retreat, succeeded in eating him up at
last. The report of the Commission instituted to inquire into the
circumstances of the Montfaucon case, showed that the apprehensions of
serious damage were by no means unfounded.

    "If the carcases of dead horses be thrown during the day in a corner,
    the next morning they will be found stripped of their flesh. An old
    proprietor of one of the slaughter-houses had a certain space of
    ground entirely surrounded by walls, with holes only large enough for
    the ingress and egress of rats. Within this inclosure he left the
    carcases of two or three horses; and when night came, he went quietly
    with his workmen, stopped up the holes, and then entered into the
    inclosure, with a stick in one hand and a lighted torch in the other.
    The animals covered the ground so thickly that a blow struck anywhere
    did execution. By repeating the process after intervals of a few
    days, he killed 16,050 rats in the space of one month, and 2,650 in a
    single night. They have burrowed under all the walls and buildings in
    the neighbourhood; and it is only by such precautions as putting
    broken glass bottles round the foundation of a house attached to the
    establishment, that the proprietor is able to preserve it. All the
    neighbouring fields are excavated by them; and it is not unusual for
    the earth to give way and leave these subterraneous works exposed. In
    severe frost, when it becomes impossible to cut up the bodies of the
    horses, and when the fragments of flesh are almost too hard for the
    rats to feed upon, they enter the body and devour the flesh from the
    inside, so that, when the thaw comes, the workmen find nothing below
    the skin but a skeleton, better cleared of its flesh than if it had
    been done by the most skilful operator. Their ferocity, as well as
    their voracity, surpasses anything that can be imagined. M. Majendie
    placed a dozen rats in a box in order to try some experiments; when he
    reached home and opened the box, there were but three remaining; these
    had devoured the rest, and had only left their bones and tails."

We have been informed that these rats regularly marched in troops in
search of water in the dusk of the evening, and that they have often been
met in single file stealing beside the walls that lined the road to their
drinking-place. As the pavement in Paris overhangs the gutters, the rats
take advantage of this covered way to creep in safety from street to
street. Their migratory habits are well known, and every neighbourhood has
its tale of their travels. Mr. Jesse relates an anecdote, communicated to
him by a Sussex clergyman, which tends to prove that the old English rat
at least shows a consideration and care for its elders on the march which
is worthy of human philanthropy. "Walking out in some meadows one evening,
he observed a great number of rats migrating from one place to another. He
stood perfectly still, and the whole assemblage passed close to him. His
astonishment, however, was great when he saw amongst the number an old
blind rat, which held a piece of stick at one end in its mouth, while
another had hold of the other end of it, and thus conducted its blind
companion." A kindred circumstance was witnessed in 1757 by Mr. Purdew, a
surgeon's mate on board the _Lancaster_. Lying awake one evening in his
berth, he saw a rat enter, look cautiously round, and retire. He soon
returned leading a second rat, who appeared to be blind, by the ear. A
third rat joined them shortly afterwards, and assisted the original
conductor in picking up fragments of biscuit and placing them before their
infirm parent, as the blind old patriarch was supposed to be. It is only
when tormented by hunger that they appear to lose their fellow-feeling and
to prey upon one another.

The sagacity of the rat in the pursuit of food is so great, that we almost
wonder at the small amount of its cerebral development. Indeed, he is so
cunning, and works occasionally with such human ingenuity, that accounts
which are perfectly correct are sometimes received as mere fables.
Incredible as the story may appear of their removing hens' eggs by one
fellow lying on his back and grasping tightly his ovoid burden with his
fore-paws, whilst his comrades drag him away by the tail, we have no
reason to disbelieve it, knowing as we do that they will carry eggs from
the bottom to the top of a house, lifting them from stair to stair, the
first rat pushing them up on its hind and the second lifting them with its
fore legs. They will extract the cotton from a flask of Florence oil,
dipping in their long tails, and repeating the manoeuvre until they have
consumed every drop. We have found lumps of sugar in deep drawers at a
distance of thirty feet from the place where the petty larceny was
committed: and a friend saw a rat mount a table on which a drum of figs
was placed, and straightway tip it over, scattering its contents on the
floor beneath, where a score of his expectant brethren sat watching for
the windfall. His instinct is no less shown in the selection of suitable
food. He attacks the portion of the elephant's tusks that abounds with
animal oil, in preference to that which contains phosphate of lime; and
the rat-gnawn ivory is selected by the turner as fitted for billiard-balls
and other articles where the qualities of elasticity and transparency are
required. Thus, the tooth-print of this little animal serves as a
distinguishing mark of excellence in a precious material devoted to the
decorative arts. The rat does not confine himself to inert substances:
when he is hard pressed for food, he will attack anything weaker than
himself. Frogs, Goldsmith says, had been introduced into Ireland some
considerable time before the brown rat, and had multiplied abundantly, but
they were pursued in their marshes by this indefatigable hunter, and eaten
clean from off the Emerald Isle. He does not scruple to assault domestic
poultry; though a rat which attempted to capture the chicken of a
game-fowl was killed by the mother with beak and spur in the course of
twelve minutes. The hen seized it by the neck, shook it violently, put out
an eye, and plainly showed that the fowl in a conflict would be the more
powerful of the two, if he was only equally daring. The number of young
ducks which the rats destroyed in the Zoological Gardens rendered it
necessary to surround the pools with a wire rat-fencing, which half-way up
has a pipe of wirework, the circle of which is not complete by several
inches in the under part, and the rat, unable to crawl along the concave
roof which stops his onward path, is compelled to return discomfited.

The rats have been for a long time the pests of these gardens, attracted
by the presence of large quantities of food. The grating under one of the
tigers' dens is eaten through by this nimble-toothed burglar, who makes as
light of copper wire as of leaden pipes. Immediately upon the construction
of the new monkey-house, they took possession, and eat through the floors
in every direction to get at poor Jacko's bread. Vigorous measures were
taken to exclude them; the floors were filled in with concrete, and the
open roof was ceiled; but they quickly penetrated through the plaster of
the latter, as may be seen by the holes to this day. They burrowed in the
old inclosure of the wombat till the ground was quite rotten; and they
still march about the den of the rhinoceros and scamper over his
impregnable hide. It is only by constantly hunting them with terriers that
they can be kept down; and as many as a hundred in a fortnight are often
despatched, their carcases being handed over to the vultures and eagles.
Many of them seek in the daytime a securer retreat. They have frequently
been seen at evening swimming in companies across the canal to forage in
the gardens through the night, and in the morning they returned to their
permanent quarters by the same route.

The proprietors of the bonded-wheat warehouses on the banks of the Thames
are forced to take the utmost precautions against the entrance of these
depredators; otherwise, they would troop in myriads from the sewers and
waterside premises, and, as they are undoubtedly in the habit of
communicating among their friends the whereabouts of any extraordinary
supplies, they would go on increasing day by day as the report of the good
news spread through rat-land. To repel their attentions, the wooden floors
and the under parts of the doors of the granaries are lined with
sheet-iron, and the foundations are sometimes set in concrete mixed with
glass--matters too hard for even their teeth to discuss.

Country rats in the summer take to the fields, and create enormous havoc
among the standing corn. They nibble off the ears of wheat, and carry them
to their runs and burrows, where large stores have been found hoarded up
with all the forethought of the dormouse. Farmers are often puzzled to
account for the presence of rats in wheat stacks which have been placed
upon the most cunningly-contrived stands. The fact is, these animals are
tossed up with the sheaves to the rick, where they increase and multiply
at their leisure, and frequently to such an extent, that a rick, seeming
fair on the outside, is little better than a huge rat-pie.

The propensity of the rat to gnaw must not be attributed altogether to a
reckless determination to overcome impediments. The never-ceasing action
of his teeth is not a pastime, but a necessity of his existence. The
writer of an interesting paper on rats in _Bentley's Miscellany_ has
explained so clearly the dentistry of the tribe, that we extract his
account:--

    "The rat has formidable weapons in the shape of four small, long, and
    very sharp teeth, two of which are in the upper and two in the lower
    jaw. These are formed in the shape of a wedge, and by the following
    wonderful provision of nature have always a fine, sharp, cutting edge.
    On examining them carefully, we find that the inner part is of a soft,
    ivory-like composition, which may be easily worn away, whereas the
    outside is composed of a glass-like enamel, which is excessively hard.
    The upper teeth work exactly into the under, so that the centres of
    the opposed teeth meet exactly in the act of gnawing; the soft part is
    thus being perpetually worn away, while the hard part keeps a sharp,
    chisel-like edge; at the same time the teeth grow up from the bottom,
    so that as they wear away a fresh supply is ready. The consequence of
    this arrangement is, that, if one of the teeth be removed, either by
    accident or on purpose, the opposed tooth will continue to grow
    upwards, and, as there is nothing to grind them away, will project
    from the mouth and turn upon itself; or, if it be an under-tooth, it
    will even run into the skull above. There is a preparation in the
    museum of the Royal College of Surgeons which well illustrates this
    fact. It is an incisor tooth of a rat, which, from the cause above
    mentioned, has increased its growth upwards to such a degree, that it
    has formed a complete circle and a segment of another; the diameter of
    it is about large enough to admit a good-sized thumb. It is
    accompanied by the following memorandum, addressed by a Spanish priest
    to Sir J. Banks, who presented it to the Museum: 'I send you an
    extraordinary tooth of a rat. Believe me, it was found in the Nazareth
    garden (to which order I belong). I was present when the animal was
    killed, and took the tooth; I know not its virtues, nor have the
    natives discovered them.'"

We once saw a newly-killed rat to whom this misfortune had occurred. The
tooth, which was an upper one, had in this case also formed a complete
circle, and the point in winding round had passed through the lip of the
animal. Thus the ceaseless working of the rat's incisors against some hard
substance is necessary to keep them down, and if he did not gnaw for his
subsistence, he would be compelled to gnaw to prevent his jaw being
gradually locked by their rapid development.

The destructive nature of the rat, the extraordinary manner in which he
multiplies, and his perpetual presence--for where there is a chink that he
can fill, and food for him to eat, there he will be, notwithstanding that
a long line of ancestors have one after another been destroyed on the
spot[11]--necessitates some counteracting influence to keep him within due
bounds. This is done by making him the prey of hunting-animals and
reptiles, beginning with man, and running down the chain of organized life
to the gliding snake. The poor rat, although he doubtless does service as
a scavenger, and must have his use in fulfilling some essential purpose of
creation, finds favour nowhere: every man's hand, nearly every feline paw,
and many birds' beaks are against him. The world thinks of him, as of the
pauper boy in "Oliver Twist,"--"Hit him hard; he ain't a'got no friends."
Dwelling in the midst of alarms, he might be supposed to pass an uneasy
and nervous existence. But it is nothing of the kind. The same Providence
which has furnished him with the teeth suitable to the work they have to
perform, has endowed him with the feelings proper to his lot; and no
animal, if he be watched from a distance, appears more happy and
complacent. In danger he preserves a wonderful presence of mind, and acts
upon the principle that while there is life there is hope. His cunning on
such occasions is often remarkable, and evinces a reasoning power of no
contemptible order:--

    "A traveller in Ceylon," says Mrs. Lee, in her entertaining "Anecdotes
    of Animals," "saw his dogs set upon a rat, and, making them relinquish
    it, he took it up by the tail, the dogs leaping after it the whole
    time. He carried it into his dining-room, to examine it by the light
    of the lamp, during the whole of which period it remained as if it
    were dead,--limbs hanging, and not a muscle moving. After five minutes
    he threw it among the dogs, who were still in a state of great
    excitement, and, to the astonishment of all present, it suddenly
    jumped upon its legs, and ran away so fast that it baffled all its
    pursuers."

The sagacity of the rat in eluding danger is not less than his craftiness
in dealing with it when it comes. A gentleman, Mr. Jesse relates, who fed
his own pointers, observed through a hole in the door a number of rats
eating from the trough with his dogs, who did not attempt to molest them.
Resolving to shoot the intruders, he next day put the food, but kept out
the dogs. Not a rat came to taste. He saw them peering from their holes,
but they were too well versed in human nature to venture forth without the
protection of their canine guard. After half an hour the pointers were let
in, when the rats forthwith joined their hosts, and dined with them as
usual. If it comes to the worst, and the rat is driven to bay, he will
fight with admirable resolution. A good-sized sewer-rat has been known to
daunt for a moment the most courageous bull-terrier, advancing towards him
with tail erect, and inflicting wounds of the most desperate nature. The
bite of any rat is severe, and that of a sewer-rat so highly dangerous,
that valuable dogs are rarely allowed by their masters to fight them. The
garbage on which they live poisons their teeth, and renders the wounds
they make deadly. Even with his great natural enemy and superior, the
ferret, he will sometimes get the advantage by his steady bravery and the
superiority of his tactics. Mr. Jesse describes an encounter of the kind,
the circumstances of which were related to him by a medical gentleman at
Kingston:--

    "Being greatly surprised that the ferret, an animal of such slow
    locomotive powers, should be so destructive to the rat tribe, he
    determined to bring both these animals fairly into the arena, in order
    to judge of their respective powers; and having selected a fine large
    and full-grown male rat and also an equally strong buck ferret, which
    had been accustomed to hunt rats, my friend, accompanied by his son,
    turned these two animals loose in a room without furniture, in which
    there was but one window. Immediately upon being liberated, the rat
    ran round the room as if searching for an exit. Not finding any means
    of escape, he uttered a piercing shriek, and with the most prompt
    decision took up his station directly under the light, thus gaining
    over his adversary (to use the language of other duellists) _the
    advantage of the sun_. The ferret now erected his head, sniffed about,
    and began fearlessly to push his way towards the spot where the scent
    of his game was strongest, facing the light in full front, and
    preparing himself with avidity to seize upon his prey. No sooner,
    however, had he approached within two feet of his watchful foe, than
    the rat, again uttering a loud cry, rushed at him with violence, and
    inflicted a severe wound on the head and neck, which was soon shown by
    the blood which flowed from it; the ferret seemed astonished at the
    attack, and retreated with evident discomfiture; while the rat,
    instead of following up the advantage he had gained, instantly
    withdrew to his former station under the window. The ferret soon
    recovered the shock he had sustained, and, erecting his head, once
    more took the field. This second rencontre was in all its progress and
    results an exact repetition of the former--with this exception, that,
    on the rush of the rat to the conflict, the ferret appeared more
    collected, and evidently showed an inclination to get a firm hold of
    his enemy; the strength of the rat, however, was very great, and he
    again succeeded not only in avoiding the deadly embrace of the ferret,
    but also in inflicting another severe wound on his neck and head. The
    rat a second time returned to his retreat under the window, and the
    ferret seemed less anxious to renew the conflict. These attacks were
    resumed at intervals for nearly two hours, all ending in the failure
    of the ferret, who was evidently fighting to a disadvantage from the
    light falling full on his eye whenever he approached the rat, who
    wisely kept his ground and never for a moment lost sight of the
    advantage he had gained. In order to prove whether the choice of this
    position depended upon accident, my friend managed to dislodge the
    rat, and took his own station under the window; but the moment the
    ferret attempted to make his approach, the rat, evidently aware of the
    advantage he had lost, endeavoured to creep between my friend's legs,
    thus losing his natural fear of man under the danger which awaited him
    from his more deadly foe."

Driven from his defensive position, the rat continued his attacks, but
with an evident loss of courage, and the ferret ultimately came to the
death-grapple with his crafty antagonist. A similar battle was witnessed
by a friend, with the difference that the rat, being undisturbed in his
advantageous position with regard to the light, finally beat off the
ferret, which was absolutely bitten into shreds over the head and muzzle.
The repetition of the same conduct by a second animal shows that this
particular species of cunning is a general faculty of the tribe. The main
superiority of the ferret is in his retaining his hold when once he has
fastened on his prey, sucking his life's blood the while; whereas the rat
fights by a succession of single bites, which wound but do not destroy.
The snake prevails by his venom. Mrs. Lee relates the particulars of a
combat in Africa, in which rat and snake repeatedly closed and bit at one
another, separating after each assault, and gathering up strength for a
fresh attack. At length the rat fell, foamed at the mouth, swelled to a
great size, and died in a few minutes.[12]

If he can be savage when self-protection requires, he also has his softer
moments, in which he shows confidence in man almost as strong as that
exhibited by the dog or cat. An old blind rat, on whose head the snows of
many winters had gathered, was in the habit of sitting beside our own
kitchen fire, with all the comfortable look of his enemy, the cat; and
such a favourite had he become with the servants, that he was never
allowed to be disturbed. He unhappily fell a victim to the sudden spring
of a strange cat. A close observation of these animals entirely conquers
the antipathy which is entertained towards them. Their sharp and handsome
heads, their bright eyes, their intelligent look, their sleek skins, are
the very reverse of repulsive; and there is positive attraction in the
beautiful manner in which they sit licking their paws and washing their
faces--an occupation in which they pass a considerable portion of their
time. The writer on rats in _Bentley's Miscellany_ relates an anecdote of
a tame rat, which shows that he is capable of serving his master as well
as of passing a passive existence under his protection. The animal
belonged to the driver of a London omnibus, who caught him as he was
removing some hay. He was spared because he had the good luck to be
piebald, became remarkably tame, and grew attached to the children. At
night he exhibited a sense of the enjoyment of security and warmth, by
stretching himself out at full length on the rug before the fire; and on
cold nights, after the fire was extinguished, he would creep into his
master's bed. In the daytime, however, his owner utilized him. At the word
of command, "Come along, Ikey," he would jump into the ample great-coat
pocket, from which he was transferred to the boot of the omnibus. Here his
business was to guard the driver's dinner; and if any person attempted to
make free with it, the rat would fly at them from out the straw. There was
one dish alone of which he was an inefficient protector. He could never
resist plum-pudding; and though he kept off all other intruders, he ate
his fill of it himself. These are by no means extraordinary instances of
the amiable side of rat nature when kindly treated by man, and we could
fill pages with similar relations. But it seems, in addition to his other
merits, that he possesses dramatic genius. We have heard of military
fleas, we have seen Jacko perform his miserable imitation of humanity on
the top of a barrel-organ; but who ever heard of a rat's turn for tragedy?
Nevertheless, a Belgian newspaper not long since published an account of a
theatrical performance by a troop of rats, which gives us a higher idea of
their intellectual nature than anything else which is recorded of them.
This novel company of players were dressed in the garb of men and women,
walked on their hind legs, and mimicked with ludicrous exactness many of
the ordinary stage effects. On one point only were they intractable. Like
the young lady in the fable, who turned to a cat the moment a mouse
appeared, they forgot their parts, their audience, and their manager, at
the sight of the viands which were introduced in the course of the piece;
and, dropping on all-fours, fell to with the native voracity of their
race. The performance was concluded by their hanging in triumph their
enemy the cat, and dancing round her body.

The rat, as we have said, has many enemies: the weazel, the pole-cat, the
otter, the dog, the cat, and the snake hunt him remorselessly all over the
world. Man, however, is his most relentless and destructive enemy. In some
places he is killed for food, as in China, where dried split rats are sold
as a dainty. The _chiffonniers_ of Paris feed on them without reluctance.
Nor is rat-pie altogether obsolete in our own country. The gipsies
continue to eat such as are caught in stacks and barns, and a
distinguished surgeon of our time frequently had them served up at his
table. They feed chiefly upon grain; and it is merely the repulsive idea
which attaches to this animal under every form that causes it to be
rejected by the same man who esteems the lobster, the crab, and the shrimp
a delicacy, although he knows that they are the scavengers of the sea.
They were not always so nice in the navy. An old captain in her Majesty's
service informs us that on one occasion, when returning from India, the
vessel was infested with rats, which made great ravages among the biscuit.
Jack, to compensate for his lost provisions, had all the spoilers he could
kill, put into pies, and considered them an extraordinary delicacy. At the
siege of Malta, when the French were hard pressed, rats fetched a dollar
apiece; but the famished garrison marked their sense of the excellence of
those which were delicately fed by offering a double price for every one
caught in a granary. Man directs his hostility against the rat, however,
chiefly because he considers him a nuisance; and the gin and poison, cold
iron and the bowl, a dismal alternative, are accordingly presented to him.
With the former he is not so easily caught, and will never enter a trap or
touch a gin in which any of his kind have fretted and rubbed. Poison is a
more effectual method, but it is not always safe. Rats which have been
beguiled into partaking of arsenic instantly make for the water to quench
their intolerable thirst, and, though they usually withdraw from the
house, they may resort in their agony to an in-door cistern, and remain
there to pollute it.[13] The writer who calls himself "Uncle James," and
who, for a reason that will shortly appear, is exceedingly anxious to
impress the public with the belief that the best mode of getting rid of
the rat is to hunt him with terriers, states that a dairy-farmer in
Limerick poisoned his calves and pigs by giving them the skim milk at
which rats had drunk when under the pangs produced by arsenic. One mode of
clearing them out of a house is either to singe the hair of a devoted rat,
or else to dip his hind-quarters into tar, and then turn him loose, when
the whole community will take their leave for a while. But this is only a
temporary expedient, and in the interim the offenders are left to
multiply, and perchance transfer their ravages to another part of the
domain where they are equally mischievous. The same objection applies to
the remedy of pounding the common dog's-tongue, when gathered in full sap,
and laying it in their haunts. They retire only to return. The Germans
turn the rat himself into a police-officer to warn off his burglarious
brethren. Dr. Shaw, in his General Zoology, states that a gentleman who
travelled through Mecklenburg about thirty years ago saw one at a
post-house with a bell about its neck, which the landlord assured him had
frightened away the whole of the "whiskered vermin" which previously
infested the place. Mr. Neele says that at Bangkok, the Siamese capital,
the people are in the habit of keeping tame rats, which walk about the
room, and crawl up the legs of the inmates, who pet them as they would a
dog. They are caught young, and, attaining a monstrous size by good
feeding, take the place of our cats, and entirely free the house of their
own kind. But the most effectual and in the end the cheapest remedy is an
expert rat-catcher. Cunning as an experienced old rat becomes, he is
invariably checkmated when man fairly tries a game of skill with him. The
well-trained professor of the art, who by long habit has grown familiar
with his adversary's haunts and tactics, his hopes and fears, his
partialities and antipathies, will clear out a house or a farmyard, where
a novice would merely catch a few unwary adventurers and put the rest upon
their guard. The majority of the world have, happily for themselves, a
better office, and the regular practitioner might justly address the
amateur in much the same words that the musician employed to Frederick the
Great, when the royal flute-player was expecting to be complimented on his
performance: "It would be a discredit to your Majesty to play as well as
I."

"Uncle James," however, is of a different opinion. This author considers
that every man should be his own rat-catcher, which he evidently believes
to be the most improving, dignified, and fascinating calling under the
sun, as he considers rats themselves to be the crying evil of the day,
second only in his estimation to the grand injustice of the old corn-law.
Indeed, we cannot see from his own premises how the evil can be second to
any great destructive principle, earthquakes included. He takes a single
pair of rats, and proves satisfactorily that in three years, if
undisturbed, they will have thirteen litters of eight each at a birth, and
that the young will begin littering again when six months old; by this
calculation he increases the original pair at the end of three years to
six hundred and fifty-six thousand eight hundred and eight. Calculating
that ten rats eat as much in one day as a man, which we think is rather
under than over the fact, the consumption of these rats would be equal "to
that of sixty-four thousand six hundred and eight men the year round, and
leave eight rats in the year to spare." Now, if a couple of rats could
occasion such devastation in three years after the original pair marched
out of the ark, how comes it that the descendants of the myriads which
ages ago co-existed among us have not eaten up the earth and the fullness
thereof? Uncle James conveniently forgets that animals do not multiply
according to arithmetical progression, but simply in proportion to the
food provided for them. He must not, however, be expected to be wiser than
Malthus on the subject of animal reproduction, and he has the additional
incentive to error, that he evidently paints up his horrors for an artful
purpose. There can be no sort of doubt that he has several well-bred
terriers to dispose of, and hence the following panacea for all the evils
which afflict society.

    "A dog, to be of sound service, ought to be of six to thirteen pounds
    weight; over that they become too unwieldy. I would also recommend,
    above all others, the London rat-killing terrier: he is as hard as
    steel, courageous as a lion, and as handsome as a racehorse!--[Uncle
    James is a Londoner, of course.] Let the farmers in each parish meet
    and pass resolutions calling upon their representatives in parliament
    to take the tax off rat-killing dogs. Let them devise plans for
    procuring some well-bred terriers and ferrets, and spread the young
    ones about among their men. Let there be a reward offered of so much
    per head for dead rats, and let there be one person in each parish
    appointed to pay for the same. Rats are valuable for manure; let there
    be a pit in each locality, and let this man stick up an announcement
    every week, in some conspicuous place, as to the number of rats
    killed, and by whom. Then, what will be the result? Why, a spirit of
    emulation will rise up among the villagers, and they will be
    ransacking every hole and corner for rats. _Thus will a tone of
    cheerful enterprise, activity, and pleasantry come in among them_,
    'with a fund of conversation;' and instead of that crawling, dogged
    monotony which characterizes their general gait and manner, they will
    meet their employers and go to their labour with joyous steps and
    smiling countenances."

The coming man, so long expected, is it seems the rat-catcher. Here is
manure multiplied, agriculture improved, food husbanded, a smiling,
enlightened, and conversible peasantry--and all the result of
rat-catching. But a difficulty has been overlooked. When the entire
population is converted into rat-catchers, rats must shortly, like the
dodo, be extinct. For a while we shall become an exporting country, but
this resource must fail us at last, and England's glory will expire with
its rats. Then once more we shall have a sullen, silent, discontented
peasantry; "their fund of conversation" will be exhausted, or at best the
villagers will be reduced to talk with a sigh of the golden age, never to
be renewed, when the country enjoyed the unspeakable blessing of
rat-catching. In short, we fear that Uncle James has been so exclusively
devoted to the science of rat-catching, that he has neglected to cultivate
the inferior art of reasoning; but, interested as we suspect it to be, we
join in his commendation of the virtues of the terrier. The expedition
with which a clever dog will put his victims out of their misery is such
that a terrier not four pounds in weight has killed four hundred rats
within two hours. By this we may estimate the destruction dealt to the
race by that nimble animal, "hard as steel, courageous as a lion, and
handsome as a race-horse." A custom has sprung up within the last twenty
years of watching these dogs worry rats in a pit, and there are private
arenas of the kind where our fair countrywomen, leaning over the cushioned
circle, will witness with admiration the cleverness of their husbands' or
brothers' terriers. "Uncle James" might commend their taste, and think the
sport calculated to furnish them with "a fund of conversation, and a
spirit of cheerful enterprise and pleasantry;" but except the fact had
proved it to be otherwise, we should have supposed that there was not an
educated man in Great Britain who would not have been shocked at this
novel propensity of English ladies.

LUNATIC ASYLUMS.

Horace Walpole, whose pen has graven so deeply the social characteristics
of his age, in describing to his friend Mann the terrors excited by the
Lord George Gordon mob, says "they threaten to let the lions out of the
Tower, and the madmen out of Bedlam." In this short sentence we have a
clear view of the opinion which our forefathers entertained of
lunatics--an opinion which the pictures of Hogarth's Madhouse Cells have
impressed on the popular mind even to this day. And in truth it is not
fifty years since the state of things which now exists only in the
imagination of the ignorant, was both general and approved. The interior
of Bethlehem at that date could furnish pictures more terrible than
Hogarth ever conceived. It is not our purpose, however, to dwell upon
these horrors of former days. Through the instrumentality of the late
Samuel Tuke, of York, Gardner Hill, Charlesworth, Winslow, and Conolly, of
London, the old method of treatment, with its whips, chains, and manacles,
has passed away for ever; and as a true emblem of the revolution which has
taken place, we may mention that some years since a governor, in passing
through the laundry of Bethlehem, perceived a wrist-manacle, which had
been converted by one of the women into a stand for a flat iron!

In spite of the ameliorations in the condition of the insane, many among
the higher, and nearly all among the lower classes, still look upon the
County Asylum as the Bluebeard's cupboard of the neighbourhood. These
unfounded ideas act as a powerful drawback to the successful treatment of
insanity, for as the vast majority of cures are effected within three
months of the original attack, whatever deters the friends of the patient
from bringing him under regimen at the earliest possible moment, probably
ensures the perpetuation of the disease. We can well imagine the undefined
awe and tribulation of spirit with which the unhappy creatures who are
stricken in mind enter the gates of an abode in which they are supposed to
be given over to a durance worse than death; but so mistaken is the
impression, that the feelings of desperation are almost immediately
succeeded by the inspiriting dawnings of hope. The furious maniac who
arrives at Colney Hatch or Hanwell in a cart, or a hand-barrow, bound with
ropes like a frantic animal, the terror of his friends and himself, is no
sooner within the building which imagination invests with such terrors,
than half his miseries cease. The ropes cut, he stands up once more free
from restraint, kind words are spoken to him, he is soothed by a bath,
and, if still violent, the padded room, which offers no aggravating
mechanical or personal resistance, calms his fury, and sleep, which has so
long been a stranger to him, visits him the first night which he spends in
the dreaded asylum. An old lady--a relapsed patient--whose silver locks
hung dishevelled on her shoulders, was, when we visited Hanwell, waiting
in a cab in a state of the wildest excitement. Immediately she was
admitted, and recognised the faces of the nurses who had formerly been
kind to her, her whole countenance changed. "What, you Burke and you
Thomson again!" she exclaimed, delighted at renewing former friendships;
and settling herself down peaceably in the ward, she appeared as
comfortable as at her own fireside.

Not only have the old methods of treatment been abandoned, but many
changes have been made to render the houses for the insane less repulsive
to the eye. Thousands of pounds have been spent in replacing the
dungeon-like apertures (often without glass) with light-framed windows,
undarkened by dismal bars; the gratings have been removed from the
fireplaces; and that all the other associations may be in harmony with the
improved appearance of the building, the harsh title of keeper has given
place to that of attendant, and the madhouse has become the asylum. In the
old plan, the entire treatment seemed to consist in secluding the patient
from every sight which renders life sweet, and in wrenching him violently
from all the conditions which formerly surrounded him; the new idea is to
bring within the walls as much of the outside world as possible. Here the
artisan finds employment in various handicrafts, the agricultural labourer
renews his commerce with the soil, and the female plies her needle or
pursues her accustomed occupations in the laundry or the kitchen.
Amusement takes its turn, and those who travel by the Great Western train
on winter evenings are surprised to see the lights streaming from the
great hall of Hanwell, and to hear perchance the sounds of music. These
issue from the ball-room of the establishment! In place of the dark
dungeon, the bonds and the blows which once added outward to inward woe,
the inmates are realising the poetic picture of Gray,--

  "With antic Sport and blue-eyed Pleasures,
    Frisking light in frolic measures;
  Now pursuing, now retreating,
    Now in circling troops they meet:
  To brisk notes in cadence beating
    Glance their many-twinkling feet."

Mental aberration is not of necessity the bane of mental enjoyment. There
are many sweets by which its bitterness may be diluted and diminished,
though our ancestors were so ignorant of the fact, as to believe that the
best thing to be done for a mind o'erthrown was to pour vinegar to gall.

Dr. Conolly, in his lately-published volume on "The Treatment of the
Insane without Mechanical Restraint," looks upon the banishment of the
strait-waistcoat with a just pride, for to him we owe the abolition of the
last mechanical means of coercing temporary violence; but we cannot
participate in his fear that the selfishness and ignorance of human nature
will ever be able to restore the gloomy reign which has at last been
brought to a close. We can no more go back to the days of hobbles and
handcuffs, chains and stripes, than we can go back to the days of the rack
and thumbscrew. We may have, it is true, lamentable exposures, such as
took place at Bethlehem in 1851, but the depth of the public outcry, and
the promptness with which the irregularities were remedied, is of itself
an evidence that general opinion will prove the corrective of occasional
abuses. Nor can we, from a fancied apprehension of the return to obsolete
practices, join in the fanaticism which forbids the use of the
strait-jacket as a means of coercion under all circumstances. There can be
no doubt that the treatment which requires its frequent use is a bad one;
but to deny that there are cases which call for its restraints would be to
deny the evidence of our senses. Mr. Wilkes, the late medical officer to
the Stafford County Lunatic Asylum, and now Commissioner in Lunacy, in
answer to a series of questions issued by the Commissioners on Lunacy upon
the subject, makes the following remarks:--

    "With every disposition to advocate the disuse of restraint to the
    utmost extent, I am compelled to admit that the result of my
    experience in this asylum, up to the present time, leads me to the
    conclusion that cases may occur in which its temporary employment may
    be both necessary and justifiable. Besides the occasional use of some
    means of confining the hands when feeding patients by means of the
    stomach-pump, a more prolonged use of restraint was necessary in two
    cases which occurred some years since. One of these was a man of so
    determined a suicidal disposition, that on more than one occasion he
    nearly effected his purpose by trying to beat his head and face
    against the walls, to throw himself from tables and chairs, and thrust
    spoons and other articles down his throat. When first admitted, he was
    not suspected of having any suicidal tendency, and for some weeks did
    not show any; as a matter of precaution he slept in a padded room, and
    one night he so battered his head with a tin vessel that he was found
    nearly dead from loss of blood, and his life was subsequently in much
    danger from extensive sloughing of the scalp. In this case it was
    absolutely necessary to confine the hands to keep any dressings on the
    head, and after the wounds had healed, and the confinement of the
    hands had been discontinued, he wore a thickly-padded cap for many
    months. Several years after this, he bit both his little fingers off;
    and though the suicidal disposition has in a great measure subsided,
    he is still at times much excited, but does not require any restraint.
    The second case was one of acute mania. A powerful young man refused
    all food under the impression that it was poisoned, and imagined that
    every one who went near him intended to murder him. Every inducement
    to get him to take food was in vain, and though a sufficient body of
    attendants, under my own inspection, attempted to do what was
    necessary for him, he became so much bruised in holding him in his
    struggles to assail the attendants, when it was urgently requisite
    that food should be administered into the stomach, that I decided upon
    confining his hands, and both food and medicine were then readily
    administered. The result certainly justified the means employed, as
    the excitement subsided, and he soon recovered."

So much for the experience of the medical attendant of a public asylum;
now let us hear the testimony of Dr. Forbes Winslow, whose experience in
his private asylum, Sussex House, Hammersmith, has been as great perhaps
as that of any man, since he has lived with his family for ten years in
the very midst of his patients, and who is surpassed by no one in his
enlightened and gentle treatment of the insane.

    "Patients," he says, in his Report to the Commissioners, "have often
    expressed a wish to be placed under mechanical restraint, should I, in
    my judgment, believe that they would, when much excited, commit overt
    acts of violence, and be dangerous to themselves and others. In cases
    like these, mechanical restraint may for a short period be applied,
    not only without detriment, but with positive advantage as a curative
    process. Several instances relative of this fact have come under my
    observation. I have seen cases where no food or medicine could be
    administered without subjecting the patient to restraint. In these
    cases, if all idea of cure had been abandoned, and I could have
    reconciled it to my conscience to allow the disease to take its
    uninterrupted course, and have permitted the patient to exist upon the
    minimum amount of nutriment, and take no medicine, all restraint might
    easily be dispensed with; but considering the cure of my patient
    paramount to every other consideration, I had no hesitation as to the
    humane and right mode of procedure."

In a case which came under our knowledge, a patient imagined that the
text, "If thine eye offend thee pluck it out," was literally intended,
and, after various attempts to comply with the command, he succeeded in
destroying the sight of one orbit. Such instances are rare, but the
medical man should at all times be prepared to meet them, instead of
folding his arms and looking helplessly on whilst the mischief is being
done, through a craven fear of the non-restraint cry. The strait-waistcoat
is certainly liable to great abuse, but less than the padded room, which
may be converted into a cruel means of coercion in the hands of unwatched
attendants.

There yet remains a vast amount of restraint, which is almost as
irritating, if not so strongly reprobated, as the implements which bind
the limbs of the suicidal or violent. Restraint is only comparative. The
strait-waistcoat is the narrowest zone of confinement, and the padded room
but a little wider. Next to these comes the locked gallery for a class,
then the encircling high wall for the entire lunatic community; and
lastly, that aërial barrier the parole, for those who can be trusted to go
beyond the asylum. The efforts of philanthropists will not, we are
convinced, cease, until all the methods of confinement, down to the
parole, are removed; or at least so disguised as to hinder their present
irritating action upon the inmates. As long as the chief idea in
connection with these establishments is that they are receptacles for the
_detention_ of the insane, so long perhaps the means taken to prevent
flight will obtain; but when they are simply regarded as hospitals for the
cure of mental disease, we shall witness the abandonment of many
arrangements which are as barbarous and ineffectual as the cruelties
practised in the last century. The asylums where the restraint is greatest
are precisely those from which the largest number of patients contrive to
escape; whereas, when restrictions of all kinds are abolished, as at the
insane pauper colony of Gheel, in Belgium, but few persons ever attempt to
get away.

In former days the public were admitted to perambulate Bedlam on the
payment of twopence. A writer in the _World_ gives a narrative of a visit
to it in Easter-week, 1753, when he found there a hundred holiday-makers,
who "were suffered unattended to run rioting up and down the wards, making
sport of the miserable inhabitants." Richardson, the novelist, had, a few
years earlier, depicted the scene in the assumed character of a young lady
from the country, describing to her friends the sights of London.

    "I have this afternoon been with my cousins to gratify the odd
    curiosity most people have to see Bethlehem, or Bedlam Hospital. A
    more affecting scene my eyes never beheld. I had the shock of seeing
    the late polite and ingenious Mr. ---- in one of these woful chambers.
    No sooner did I put my face to the grate, but he leaped from his bed,
    and called me with frightful fervency to come into his room. The
    surprise affected me pretty much, and my confusion being observed by a
    crowd of strangers, I heard it presently whispered that I was his
    sweetheart and the cause of his misfortune. My cousin assured me that
    such fancies were frequent upon these occasions; but this accident
    drew so many eyes upon me as obliged me soon to quit the place. I was
    much at a loss to account for the behaviour of the generality of
    people who were looking at these miserable objects. Instead of the
    concern I think unavoidable at such a sight, a sort of mirth appeared
    on their countenances, and the distempered fancies of the miserable
    patients provoked mirth and loud laughter in the unthinking auditors;
    and the many hideous roarings and wild motions of others seemed
    equally entertaining to them. Nay, so shamefully inhuman were some,
    among whom, I am sorry to say it, were several of my own sex, as to
    endeavour to provoke the patients into rage to make them sport."

Supposed to be degraded to the level of beasts, as wild beasts they were
treated. Like them they were shut up in dens littered with straw,
exhibited for money, and made to growl and roar for the diversion of the
spectators who had paid their fee. No wonder that Bedlam should have
become a word of fear; no wonder that in popular estimation the bad odour
of centuries should still cling to its walls, and that the stranger,
tempted by curiosity to pass beneath the shadow of its dome, should enter
with sickening trepidation. But now, instead of the howling madhouse his
imagination may have painted it, he sees prim galleries filled with
orderly persons. Scenes of cheerfulness and content meet the eye of the
visitor as he is conducted along well-lit corridors, from which the bars
and gratings of old have vanished. He stops, surprised and delighted, to
look at the engravings of Landseer's pictures on the walls, or to admire
the busts upon the brackets; he beholds tranquil persons walking around
him, or watches them feeding the birds which abound in the aviaries fitted
up in the depths of the ample windows. Indeed the pet animals, such as
rabbits, squirrels, &c., with the verdant ferneries, render the
convalescent wards of this hospital more cheerful than any we have seen in
similar institutions. At intervals the monotony of the long-drawn
corridors is broken by ample-sized rooms carpeted and furnished like the
better class of dwellings. If we pass along the female side of the
hospital, we find the apartments occupied by a score of busy workers, the
majority of whom appear to be gentlewomen. Every conceivable kind of
needlework is dividing their attention with the young lady who reads aloud
"David Copperfield," or "Dred;" while beside the fire, perhaps, an old
lady with silver locks gives a touch of domesticity to the scene, which we
should little have expected to meet within these walls. In traversing the
male side, instead of the workroom we find a library, in which the
patients, reclining upon the sofas or lolling in arm-chairs round the
fire, beguile the hours with books or the _Illustrated News_. Many a
scholar, the silver chord of whose brain jingles for the moment out of
tune, here finds a congenial atmosphere, and such materials for study as
he often could not obtain out-of-doors; and here many an artist,
clergyman, officer, and broken-down gentleman, meets with social converse,
which the world does not dream could exist in Bedlam.[14]

No cases of more than twelve months' standing are admitted within the
walls of Bedlam, and only ninety persons termed incurables are allowed to
remain beyond that period. These regulations exclude the idiotic and
epileptic patients, who form such distressing groups in other
establishments, and the interest required to obtain admission into this
amply endowed charity ensures at the same time a much higher class of
inmates. Clergymen, barristers, governesses, literary men, artists, and
military and naval officers make up the staple of the assembly. The
representatives of the lower orders are also present, but the educated
element prevails, and the tone of dress and manners is vastly above that
to be found in the pauper-swarming county asylums. There is a ball on the
first Monday in every month, and the company that gathers in the crystal
chamber at the extreme end of the south wing would not disgrace in
behaviour and appearance any sane and well-bred community. The polka, the
waltz, and the mazurka, performed with grace and ease, declare the social
standing of the assembly; and many a pedestrian who sees the dark
silhouettes of the dancers as they whirl across the light, is astonished
at the festivities of the inmates. In the summer evenings the spacious
courts are crowded with the patients, not gloomily walking between four
dismal walls in which the very air seemed placed under restraint, but
enjoying themselves in the bowling-green or in the skittle alley. The
garden is at hand for those who love the culture of flowers. When we
contrast the condition of the Bethlehem of fifty years ago with the
Bethlehem of to-day, we see at a glance what a gulf has been leaped in
half a century--a gulf on one side of which we see man, like a demon,
torturing his unfortunate fellows, on the other like a ministering angel
carrying out the all-powerful law of love. Can this be the same Bethlehem
where, in 1808, Mr. Westerton, Mr. Calvert, and Mr. Wakefield saw ten
patients in the women's gallery, each fastened by one arm or leg to the
wall, with a length of chain that only allowed them to stand up by their
bench, and dressed in a filthy blanket thrown poncho-like over their
otherwise naked bodies? Can this be the same institution in which poor
Norris, like a fierce hound in a kennel, was favoured with a long chain
that passed through the wall into the next room, and which, while
permitting him a little extra tether, enabled the keeper to haul him up to
the side of the cell when it was necessary to approach him? But this
indulgence did not last, and from the pages of Esquirol we learn the
infernal torture which was finally put upon him.

    "A stout iron ring was riveted round his neck, from which a short
    chain passed to a ring made to slide upwards or downwards on an
    upright massive iron bar, more than six feet high, inserted into the
    wall. Round his body a strong iron bar, about two inches wide, was
    riveted; on each side of the bar was a circular projection, which,
    being fastened to and enclosing each of his arms, pinioned them close
    to his side."

In this position, in which he could only stand upright or lie upon his
back, he lived for twelve years! But in nothing, perhaps, is the contrast
between the past and the present more apparent than in the two pictures
presented by Dr. Hood, the resident physician, from the case book of the
Bethlehem Hospital, which at once show the difference of treatment and the
different results which attended it.

    "A. F., admitted into the Hospital, February 6, 1808, aged 34. This
    woman was born at Derby. At the age of 20 she came to London to seek
    for service, but she soon lost her character. The natural violence of
    her disposition was increased by her intemperance. She was the most
    turbulent of all the females that disturb the night about Fleet
    Market, and has been repeatedly flogged at Bridewell for her extreme
    violence and disorder. She became at length the horror of the
    watchmen, for punishing and imprisonment had no effect in checking her
    career. She was known to her companions by the name of 'Ginger.' In
    one of her paroxysms of rage she attacked the windows of the Mansion
    House, and on her examination before the Lord Mayor, it appeared that
    her violent disposition had gradually passed into a state of complete
    madness. Under these circumstances she was sent, February 6th, 1808,
    to the Hospital, and placed on the curable establishment. At the
    expiration of twelve months, her lunacy continuing, she was admitted
    on the incurable list. There is no record of the manner in which she
    conducted herself during the first year, but it appears _that she was
    chained to her bed of straw for eight years without any covering or
    apparel_. So long as she continued thus coerced the violence
    continued. The last entry is '_coercion still makes her ferocious, but
    when left at liberty she is not in the least degree dangerous_.'"

    "M. C., admitted into this Hospital, Sept. 30, 1853, in a state of
    violent raging excitement, depending upon acute mania. She had been in
    this state three days previous to her admission, and had wandered
    about the streets in a comparatively naked state, under the excitement
    of religious enthusiasm. She was a powerful, muscular woman; and to
    bring her to the Hospital it was necessary to impose upon her the
    restraint of a strait-jacket. She screamed violently all the way to
    the Hospital, and used the most threatening language, refusing to
    listen to anything that was said to her, but when tired of
    vociferating, contented herself with kicking and spitting at those
    within her reach. On admission, the mechanical restraint was removed;
    she was ordered a warm bath, and two grains of the acetate of morphia,
    and afterwards placed in a bed in a padded room. She continued noisy
    for an hour or two, and then became quieter; but the attendant, who
    looked at her every half-hour, always found her sleepless. The
    following day she continued tranquil, but when addressed, responded
    with an oath. She was ordered one grain and a half of acetate of
    morphia. The third day she continued quiet and sullen, but permitted
    the nurse to dress her and place her in a chair in the day-room with
    the other patients. The following day (the fourth) she continued
    tranquil and rational, rather shrinking from conversation; and being a
    little feverish, was ordered 'henbane,' with a saline. From that day
    she speedily became convalescent, and was discharged cured, November
    11, 1853, having been a patient in the Hospital forty-two days."

Thus diversely does disordered nature answer to an appeal according to the
spirit in which it is made. There is a reverse, however, to every medal,
and the skeleton cupboards of Bethlehem are the male criminal lunatic
wards. These dens, for we can call them by no softer name, are the only
remaining representatives of old Bedlam. They consist of dismal, arched
corridors, feebly lit at either end by a single window in double irons,
and divided in the middle by gratings more like those which enclose the
fiercer carnivora at the Zoological Gardens than anything we have
elsewhere seen employed for the detention of afflicted humanity. Here
fifty male lunatics are herded together without regard to their previous
social or moral condition. Thus the unfortunate clergyman, the Rev. Hugh
Willoughby, who fired a pistol two years since at the judge at the Central
Criminal Court, is herded with the plebeian perpetrator of some horrible
murder. Side by side with the unfortunate Captain Johnson, of the ship
"Tory," who, in a fit of extraordinary excitement during a mutiny on board
his vessel, cut down some of his crew, but is now perfectly sane, sits
perhaps the ruffian who murdered the warder in cold blood at Coldbath
Fields--a villain brought in mad by a tender-hearted jury who shrunk from
the responsibility of hanging him. Here also poor Dad, the artist, who
killed his father whilst labouring under a sudden paroxysm of insanity, is
obliged to weave his fine fancies on the canvas amidst the most revolting
conversation and the most brutal behaviour. Those who contend that all
criminal lunatics should be treated alike, do not consider the vast
difference between the tone of mind in an abandoned wretch who has lived a
life of villany, and the gentleman who has committed a casual offence. As
the former advances towards sanity the brutal disposition, which early
training in vice and dissipation has engraved upon his nature, comes into
strong relief, whilst the good breeding which is natural to the latter,
and which was but temporarily eclipsed in him, resumes its sway. Nay,
nothing is more certain than that the previous habits and manners of the
lunatic are to a great extent unaffected by his unfortunate malady, even
when it is at its height. The disgrace of thus caging up together the
coarse and the gentle, the virtuous and the abandoned, rests wholly upon
the shoulders of the Home Secretary. The governors of the hospitals, the
medical officers, and the lunacy commissioners, have over and over again
remonstrated against the enormity, and to our national shame have
remonstrated in vain. It is proposed to build a special asylum for all the
state lunatics who are now distributed among county asylums, hospitals,
licensed houses, workhouses and jails, to the number of 591,[15] and it is
a duty which we trust will not be longer delayed. There can be little
doubt that the presence of these crime-tainted individuals is felt deeply
by the innocent lunatics, and that their recovery is retarded by the
indignation excited at their degrading companionship with the outcasts of
society. The erection of a criminal asylum upon a large scale would both
compel a better system of classification, and would necessitate some
solution of the difficult question--What shall be done with criminal
patients who have recovered? One class of cases at least, as Dr. Tyler
Smith has pointed out, leaves no room for doubt. The females who have
committed offences whilst under the influence of the delirium attendant
upon puerperal fever, and who, having recovered, are past the age of
child-bearing, should at once be released. They are no longer liable to a
recurrence of mental aberration, and to keep them incarcerated for life,
is to treat past misfortune as an inexpiable crime. Nothing can be more
cruel, unjust, and motiveless.

It is proposed to remove Bethlehem Hospital into the country, on the plea
that ground cannot be obtained in sufficient quantity for the use of the
inmates. If by this is meant that agricultural pursuits cannot be carried
on in St. George's Fields, we rejoice in the fact. A sane man, accustomed
to the busy scene of a large town, would be wretched if he was condemned
to pass the remainder of his days amid the silence of the fields, and the
lunatic remains for the most part under the same domination of former
habits. The notion that his faculties are universally disordered, all his
perceptions destroyed, all his tastes obliterated, and all his sympathies
extinct, is one of the grossest errors which can prevail. Nor do the
better class of patients (such as form the inmates of Bethlehem) require
the hard exercise which is necessary for the maintenance of health with an
agricultural pauper. They find far more recreation in strolling through
the streets in the neighbourhood of the asylum, under the care of an
attendant, than in wading through ploughed fields, or in taking a turn at
spade husbandry. To this we must add, that insanity is often a sudden
seizure, that individuals go raving mad in the streets; that, in short,
there are frightful casualties of the mind, as of the body, which require
the instant attention of the mental physician. For this reason alone every
lunatic asylum should no more be removed into the country than every
ordinary hospital. But, apart from this circumstance, we repeat that
Bethlehem, within call of friends and within the hum of the busy world,
glimpses of which can be caught by the patients from the loopholes of
their retreat, and into which they are occasionally allowed to enter, is
far better placed for purposes of cure than in any rural district, however
well supplied with the means of pursuing agricultural labour. At present
all the sights of the metropolis are from time to time enjoyed by the
inmates. "The male patients last year," says Dr. Hood, the resident
physician, "who were not fit to be discharged, were allowed to spend a day
at Kew; another day they went by steamboat to the Nore; and, conducting
themselves well under the charge of careful attendants, visited many
public exhibitions--the National Gallery, the Crystal Palace, Marlborough
House, the Zoological Gardens, Smithfield Cattle-show, &c." Who can doubt
that people accustomed to such sights and sounds would infinitely prefer
them to the delights of walking between hedge-rows, hoeing weeds, or
digging potatoes? Who can doubt that these little excursions of the
wall-bound inmates into the cheerful life of the outside world are a vast
advantage to the slowly-recovering brain, and constitute just that
desirable transitional training necessary to their safe restitution to
unlimited freedom? In fact, under the old system, when convalescent
patients, who had been confined for months in dungeon-like cells,
bristling with bars, were taken to the gates and returned suddenly to
unrestrained liberty, the effect of the contrast was often so great, that
they set off running in a paroxysm of excitement, and were frequently
brought back again in a few days, reduced by a too abrupt release to their
old condition. It would not perhaps be undesirable to add to Bethlehem
some small rural establishment, answering to the _succursales_ of foreign
lunatic asylums; but this should be strictly an appendage, to which
patients should be sent for a short time, for change of air and scene,
just as all the world now and then take a trip to the country to refresh
the wearied eye with the sight of green trees and fields, and to cure that
moral scurvy contracted by perpetually dwelling upon the dismal vistas of
blackened bricks which constitute metropolitan prospects.

For the fullest development of the prevalent system of treating the insane
we must go to Colney Hatch and Hanwell, the two great lunatic asylums for
the county of Middlesex. The former, situated on the Great Northern
Railway, only six miles from the metropolis, is the largest and perhaps
the most imposing-looking non-metropolitan building of the kind in Europe.
In this establishment, built within the last six years, we may study the
merits and demerits of modern asylums. Containing within its walls a
population, inclusive of officers and attendants, of 1,380 persons, which
is equal to that of our largest villages, and presenting the appearance of
a town, its wards and passages amounting in the aggregate to the length of
six miles, it is here that we shall find the completest system of
organization, and, if we may use the term, of official routine. The
enormous sum of money expended upon Colney Hatch, which has reached
already to £270,000, prepares us for the almost palatial character of its
elevation. Its _façade_, of nearly a third of a mile, is broken at
intervals by Italian campaniles and cupolas; and the whole aspect of the
exterior leads the visitor to expect an interior of commensurate
pretensions. He no sooner crosses the threshold, however, than the scene
changes. As he passes along the corridor, which runs from end to end of
the building, he is oppressed with the gloom; the little light admitted by
the loop-holed windows is absorbed by the inky asphalte paving, and,
coupled with the low vaulting of the ceiling, gives a stifling feeling and
a sense of detention as in a prison. The staircases scarcely equal those
of a workhouse; plaster there is none, and a coat of paint or whitewash
does not even conceal the rugged surface of the brickwork. In the wards a
similar state of things exists: airy and spacious they are, without doubt;
but of human interest they possess nothing. Upwards of a quarter of a
million has been squandered principally upon the exterior of this
building; but not a sixpence can be spared to adorn the walls within with
picture, bust, or even the commonest cottage decoration. This is the vice
which pervades the majority of county asylums lately erected. The visiting
justices doubtless believe that it would be a superfluous and even
mischievous refinement to trouble themselves about pleasing the eye or
amusing the brain of the lunatic; but this is a mighty error, as every
person knows who understands how keenly sensitive are the minds of the
majority of the insane.

  "Stone walls do not a prison make,
  Nor iron bars a cage,"

sings the graceful Lovelace; but it should be remembered that the lunatic
has no divine Althea to muse upon in his house of detention, and the
majority of the insane have no healthy wings by which their minds can leap
beyond the dreariness of the present. To divert them from the demon in
possession, all the ingenuity of philanthropy should be employed; but this
truth has been overlooked both here and at Hanwell; and we are lost in
astonishment when we reflect upon the folly of lavishing hundreds of
thousands upon outward ornamentation, whilst the decorations common among
the poorest labourers are denied to the inmates for whom all this expense
has been incurred. There is no more touching sight at Colney Hatch than to
notice the manner in which the female lunatics have endeavoured to
diversify the monotonous appearance of their cell-like sleeping-rooms with
rag dolls, bits of shell, porcelain, or bright cloth placed symmetrically
in the light of the window-sill. The love of ornament seems to dwell with
them when all other mental power is lost; and they strew gay colours about
them with no more sense, but with as much enjoyment, as the bower-bird of
the Zoological Gardens adorns his playing-bower.[16] The prison dress of
the male patients is in keeping with the desolate walls. It is infinitely
depressing, even to the visitor, to see nothing but dull grey garments;
and the lunatics themselves feel degraded by a uniform dedicated to the
gaol-bird. The medical officers of both this asylum and Hanwell are deeply
impressed with its injurious effects, and they have long denounced it.
Happily the system is confined to the men, not, however, from any
benevolent feeling towards the females, but simply because gown-pieces of
the same pattern cannot be procured in sufficient quantities to clothe the
entire community. Among the sane, self-respect is increased by the
possession of decent clothes, and the lunatic is often still more amenable
to their influence. A refractory patient at Colney Hatch was in the habit
of tearing his clothes into shreds. Mr. Tyerman, one of the medical
officers, ordered him to be dressed in a bran-new suit. The poor man, a
tailor by trade, either from a professional appreciation of the value of
his new habiliments, or from being touched by this mark of attention,
respected their integrity, and from that moment rapidly recovered. Before
leaving the asylum he stated that he owed his cure to the good effect
produced upon his mind by being intrusted with this new suit of clothes.
At Hanwell, the patients who destroy their dresses are put into strong
canvas garments, bound round with leather and fastened with padlocks. This
plan is adopted at some other lunatic asylums; but it always looks
repulsive.

It is only, we believe, in the metropolitan county asylums, which should
be model establishments, that the grey prison dress is retained. In the
majority of county asylums the smock-frock of the district is used, and
the patient moves about undistinguished from the rest of the population by
any repulsive badge. In France and Belgium they manage better still. Dr.
Webster, in his notes on foreign lunatic asylums, published in the
_Psychological Journal of Medicine_, speaks of the bright head-dresses and
vivid shawls used in France, as giving a cheerful appearance to the
assembled inmates. Nothing less could be expected from the known
disposition of a people of whom it has been said, that if any man among
them was thrown naked into the sea, he would rise up clothed from head to
foot with a sword, bag-wig, and ruffles to boot. In the present matter
they have been wiser in their generation than ourselves; and we can
imagine with what surprise they would learn that at Hanwell, the most