Although celebrated for its shy timid disposition, which seems kindly bestowed by nature as a safeguard against its many foes, the hare has proved susceptible to the kindness of man, and has been the pet of one whose descriptions have associated its peculiarities with his name. Cowper's three historic hares, Puss, Tiney and Bess, are among the most interesting of domesticated creatures. These hares, it seems, differed in their dispositions one from the other. Tiney was reserved and surly; Bess was full of frolic and drollery, but did not live long. Here is the poet's own account of Puss, who evidently became a privileged character. "Puss grew presently familiar, would leap into my lap, raise himself upon his hinder feet, and bite the hair from my temples. He would suffer me to take him up and carry him about in my arms, and has more than once fallen fast asleep upon my knee. He was ill three days, during which time I nursed him, kept him apart from his fellows that they might not molest him-for, like many other wild animals, they persecute one of their own species that is sick-and by constant care, and trying him with a variety of herbs, restored him to perfect health. No creature could be more grateful than my patient after his recovery, a sentiment which he most significantly expressed by licking my hand, first the back of it, then the palm, then every finger separately, then between all the fingers, as if anxious to leave no part of it unsaluted; a ceremony which he never performed but once again upon a similar occasion.

"Finding him extremely tractable, I made it my custom to carry him always after breakfast into the garden, where he hid himself generally under the leaves of a cucumber vine, sleeping or chewing the eud until evening; in the leaves also of that vine he found a favorite repast. I had not long habituated him to this taste of liberty, before he began to be impatient for the time when he might enjoy it. He would invite me to the garden by drumming upon my knee, and by a look of such expression as it was not possible to misinterpret. If this rhetoric did not immediately succeed, he would take the skirt of

my coat between his teeth and pull at it with all his force. Thus Puss might be said to be perfectly tamed, the shyness of his nature was done away, and, on the whole, it was visible by many symptoms, which I have not room to enumerate, that he was happier in human society than when shut up with his natural companions."

An English writer thus speaks of an instance of the power occasionally shown by hares in swimming. "A harbor of great extent on our southern coast has an island near the middle of considerable size, the nearest point of which is a mile distant from the mainland at highwater, and with which point there is frequent communica

tion by a ferry. Early one morning in spring, two hares were observed to come down from the hills of the mainland toward the seaside, one of which from time to time left its companion, and proceeding to the very edge of the water, stopped there a minute or two, and then returned to its mate. The tide was rising, and after waiting some time, one of them, exactly at high water, took to the sea, and swam rapidly over in a straight line to the opposite projecting point of land. The observer on this occasion, who was near, but unobserved by the hares, had no doubt they were of different sexes, and that it was the male that swam across the water, as he had probably done many times before. It was remarkable that the hares remained on the shore nearly half an hour, one of

them occasionally examining, as it appeared, the state of the current, and finally taking to the sea precisely at that period called slackwater, when the passage across could be effected without being carried by the force of the stream either above or below the desired point of landing. The other hare then cantered back to the hills."

There are numerous varieties of these interesting little creatures, but we have chosen for our illustration on page seven the English hare, which loves to frequent the rich dry downs of England, and which is hunted by greyhounds. Coursing, as the pursuit of the hare is termed, is esteemed next to the fox-chase the greatest field

AN ELK.

sport, by the English aristocracy. Beside the greyhound, which runs by sight, the hare is also hunted by the dogs called harriers and beagles, which follow by scent.

The noble elk above carries his branching horns with all the dignity and grace of nature. He resembles the European red deer, with his lofty horns sometimes reaching the height of six feet, his commanding form and royal air. The elk's length is seven to eight feet, and its height from four to five. The branching horns are shed in February and March. The Indians hunt it, chiefly for the skins, as the flesh is rather coarse.

The red deer, once plentiful, but now found in Scotland only, has furnished from early times the most exciting sport for

the English nobility. A stag hunt was formerly esteemed the grandest diversion afforded to man, though we cannot repress, if we would, the thought of its cruelty. So beautiful and inoffensive a creature as the deer surely deserves a better fate than to be hunted down by hounds in spite of its gallant but unavailing attempts to out-distance its pursuers. Wordsworth's poem on the legend of Heart-leap Well has found many admirers, not only for its beauty, but also for its pathetic truth. The shepherd, meditating on the wonderful chase, thus rhymes:

"For thirteen hours he ran a desperate race; And in my simple mind we cannot tell What cause the hart might have to love this place, And come and make his deathbed near the Well. "Here on the grass perhaps asleep he sank, Lulled by the Fountain in the summer-tide; This water was perhaps the first he drank When he had wandered from his mother's side.

"In April here beneath the scented thorn

He heard the birds their morning carols sing; And he, perhaps, for aught we know, was born Not half a furlong from that selfsame spring. "Now, here is neither grass nor pleasant shade; The sun on drearier hollow never shone; So will it be, as I have often said,

Till Trees, and Stones, and Fountain, all are gone,"

"Gray-headed Shepherd, thou hast spoken well; Small difference lies between thy creed and

"The Pleasure-house is dust:-behind, before,
This is no common waste, no common gloom;
But Nature in due course of time, once more
Shall here put on her beauty and her bloom.
"One lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide,
Taught both by what she shows, and what
conceals;

Never to blend our pleasures or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."

Very different from the stately elk is the appearance of the wolf, which is the subject of our next illustration. The character of the wolf is too well known to need description. It is always the same fierce, cowardly, bloodthirsty creature. Wolves formerly existed in great numbers in this country from Maine to Georgia, and the early inhabitants of Boston were accus

tomed to fence in their cattle to protect them from the attacks of fierce foes; and although these animals are now unknown in the thickly settled regions of America, they are still found in the wilder northern portion of the country. Richardson thus mentions them: "Their footmarks may be seen by the side of every stream, and a traveller can rarely pass a night in these wilds without hearing them howling around him. They are very numerous on the sandy plains which, lying to the eastward of the Rocky Mountains, extend from the sources of the Peace and Saskatchewan rivers toward the Missouri. There bands of them hang on the skirts of the bison herds, and prey upon the sick and straggling calves. They do not, under ordinary circumstances, venture to attack the full-grown animal, for the hunters informed me that they often see wolves walking through a herd of bulls without exciting the least alarm; and the marksmen, when they crawl toward a buffalo for the purpose of shooting it, occasionally wear a cap with two ears, in imitation of the head of a wolf, knowing from experience that they will be suffered to approach nearer in that guise. On the Barren Grounds through which the Coppermine River flows, I had more than once an opportunity of seeing a single wolf in close pursuit of a reindeer; and I witnessed a chase on Point Lake when 'covered with ice, which terminated in a fine buck reindeer being overtaken by a large white wolf, and disabled by a bite in the flank. An Indian, who was concealed on the borders of the lake, ran in and cut the deer's throat with his knife; the wolf at once relinquished his prey and sneaked off. In the chase the poor deer urged its flight by great bounds, which for a time exceeded the speed of the wolf; but it stopped so frequently to gaze on its relentless enemy, that the latter, toiling on at a long gallop, with its tongue lolling out of its mouth, gradually came up. After a hasty look, the deer redoubled its efforts to escape; but, either exhausted by fatigue or enervated by fear, it became, just before it was overtaken, scarcely able to keep its feet."

Many stories are told of the ferocious wolves of Northern Europe, which sometimes pursue the traveller's sledge as it passes through the woods and over barren

D

tracts, imperilling his life, if not destroying it.

Among the curiosities of zoological gardens or menageries the hippopotamus is reckoned a first-class attraction, though personal beauty cannot be said to be one of its attributes. It is found, as we know, only in Africa, where it dwells in the rivers, and feeds on the vegetation along the banks. Its disposition is not the most amiable; a very slight provocation will rouse it to fury, and it is no despicable antagonist. Yet, formidable as this huge creature is when infuriated, the natives of the Makoba tribe, which dwells at the east of Lake Nyami in Southern Africa, do not hesitate to attack it in its native element. When enjoying its freedom in the African rivers, it is said that the hippopotamus

wears a very different aspect from that which it assumes in confinement, not only its ears and nostrils, but also the ridges over its eyes, being then a bright scarlet, so intensely brilliant that no comparison can convey any correct idea of it.

In hunting the hippopotamus the Makoba makes use of harpoons, to each of which a long strong rope made of palm-leaf is attached. Armed with a number of these harpoons and a supply of ordinary spears, the natives embark in their canoes and float down stream in perfect silence till they reach the bathing-place of the animals. When one appears the hunter throws his harpoon with unerring aim, and the victim, roused by the sudden and unexpected pain of the wound, gives a convulsive spring and shakes the head of the harpoon out of its socket, leaving it only attached to the shaft by a many-stranded rope. At this stage of the fight it does not

often show fight, but rushes down the stream at full speed, only revealing the upper part of its head and back above water, and towing the canoe along like a feather. At the same time the natives hold fast to the rope, paying it out sometimes, and at others hauling it in, playing their enormous prey as if it were a large fish. They aim to exhaust the animal, and to get it into shoal water, as until these ends are accomplished they could not hope to contend with it successfully.

The most perilous part of the chase is when the hippopotamus feels that its strength is failing, and, turning, with all the force of desperation upon its pursuers, threatens to demolish the canoe with one

THE HIPPOPOTAMUS.

crush of its enormous jaws. If it succeeds in destroying the canoe, the danger to the natives is imminent; for if it can reach one of them with its terrible teeth it is certain death to the unfortunate hunter, since the creature has been known to bite a man in two. But the men make use of a curious expedient to avoid so dreadful a fate. They dive to the bottom of the river and grasp a stone, a root, or anything that will keep them below the surface, and hold on as long as their lungs will let them. The reason for this manoeuvre is, that when the animal has sent the crew into the river it raises its head and looks about on the surface of the water for enemies. If it cannot see anything that looks like a man, it makes off, and so allows the hunters to emerge, half-drowned, into the air. To keep the animal off, spears are freely used,

but they cannot harm him much unless one should enter the eye, which is unusual. The head of the River Horse is one huge mass of solid bone, so thick and hard that even firearms make but little impression on it, except in one or two spots. So it is not with the hope of inflicting a fatal wound that the spears are used, but merely to deter the beast from charging by causing it pain.

But at last the hippopotamus becomes wearied, and is guided into shallow water; several of the crew jump on shore with the rope and fasten it to a tree, after which the animal's fate is sealed. In vain it fights and struggles, and makes the most frantic attempts to free itself from the rope that

holds it to the shore; nearer and nearer it is drawn, until it is close to the bank, when the natives attack it afresh with large, heavy long-bladed spears made expressly for this purpose, until, worried to death by its many wounds, it falls helpless, never to rise again. Such is often the fate of the hippopotamus in its native rivers at the hands of man. Our illustration represents it feeding upon the river banks.

Since the above was written, a baby hippopotamus has made its appearance at the London Zoological Gardens, the first one born in England that has not died soon after birth. It was christened "Guy Fawkes," and

a British journal states that "almost as soon as Guy was born he began to take his proper nourishment. When about four hours old he accompanied his mother into the bath, and remained in the water for nearly two hours, keeping below the surface for fifteen minutes or so at a time. When fatigued with swimming and diving, the young animal gets on its mother's back, and lies there lengthwise, his head in the same direction as hers, with a quaintness resembling that of some grotesque Eastern carving. Both the beasts are pretty nearly of the same hue-black, graduating downwards to pale slate colorbut the skin of the little one is just a shade or two lighter, and its comparative softness makes it seems lighter still.

"One incident of our new friend's brief history seemed like to close it. There is a massive iron gate, fastened by a chain, be