sailing upon its great expanse of wing, a thousand miles from any resting-place, its food floating in the element below, to be taken at will. Before leaving the last, or most northerly apartment of the eastern zoological gallery, the visitor would do well to notice a few of the pictures which are suspended above the wall cases. Here are portraits of Voltaire; the hardy Sir Francis Drake; Cosmo de Medici and his secretary (a copy from Titian); Martin Luther; Jean Rousseau; Captain William Dampier, by Murray; Giorgioni's Ulysses Aldrovandus; Sir Peter Paul Rubens; the inventor of moveable type, John Guttenberg (which would be more appropriately placed in the library); John Locke; a poor woman, named Mary Davis, who in the seventeenth century, was celebrated for an excrescence which grew upon her head, and finally parted into two horns; the great Algernon Sidney; Pope; Ramsay's portrait of the celebrated Earl of Chesterfield, who, according to Dr. Johnson, “taught the morality of a profligate, and the manners of a dancing master," and a landscape by Wilson. At the northern door of this gallery are, a painting of Stonehenge, and one of the cromlech at Plâs Newydd, in Anglesea.

The visitor's way now lies to the west out of the eastern zoological gallery into the most southerly of the two northern galleries. This gallery, which consists of five compartments, or rooms, is called

THE NORTHERN ZOOLOGICAL GALLERY.

The wall cases of this gallery, to which the visitor's attention should now be exclusively devoted, contain various zoological families. In the first eight wall cases of the room are distributed the varieties of Bats. These are placed here, away from the mammalia, on account of the pressure of room. They are not to be mis

taken as birds in any particular. They are essentially mammalia, inasmuch as they produce their young in a breathing state and suckle them. The bats of England and other cold climates remain in a torpid condition, and only spread their wings of stretched skin when the songbirds report the advent of the warmth of spring. The visitor will notice amongst the varieties in the three first cases, the Brazilian bats, including the vampire bat (which has been known to attack a man in his sleep and suck blood from him), the remarkable leaf-nosed bats which are ranged upon the upper shelves, and the Indian and African varieties; and underneath are grouped the well-known horse-shoe bats of the eastern hemisphere. In the next case (4) are the longeared European bats, with ears like curled leaves; and the American, African, and Australian varieties. The fifth case is filled with groups of the African and Indian taphozous; the South American tropical bats; and the West Indian chelonicteres and moormops. The last three cases, devoted to the varieties of the bat (6—8), contain those sub-families which are known as Flying Foxes, from their great size. These live on fruits, and inhabit Australia, and the southern countries of the eastern hemisphere.

The visitor's way now lies westward into the second compartment of the northern zoological gallery; for in this room, as in the rooms through which he has already passed, he should confine his attention, for the present, to the wall cases, reserving the examination of all table cases for his return visit, on his way out. And here the visitor may well pause to think upon the zoological travels he has already made, from the mammalia, which present the highest types of animal life; through the sub-families of birds, which form Cuvier's secondary class of vertebrata, or animals with a back-bone; to the

threshold of the room in which the tertiary class of back-boned animals are deposited. This class includes the great families of

REPTILES,

of which there are no less than six hundred and fiftyseven varieties. Reptiles are vertebrated animals belonging to Cuvier's first great section, but distinguished from mammalia and birds, by their cold blood, their oviparous generation, and the absence of either feathers or hair from their bodies. They take precedence of fish in the animal kingdom, having lungs for aerial respiration, and "a higher circulatory organisation than the exclusive inhabitants of the water." In the museum, Cuvier's classification has been followed, with slight variations; that is to say, the reptiles have been re-divided into four classes :-the Sauria, or Lizards (in which class some modern naturalists, as Merrem and others, include serpents); the Ophidia, or Serpents; the Testudinata, or Tortoises; and the Batrachia, or Frogs. The lizards occupy the first ten wall cases in this room. The first case contains those lizards of India and Africa which have long held the regard of eastern nations, upon the slender report that they hiss upon the approach of a crocodile, and so warn the incautious traveller to retreat in time. The truth is, these sauria prey upon the crocodile's eggs, no doubt to the particular annoyance of the crocodile, who are, therefore, it is more than probable, no friends of the monitors. The Egyptian would love the monitor for feeding upon the crocodile germ, as much as for his timely warning of the approach of the uncouth enemy. The curious heloderms, from Mexico, with their ophidian teeth, lie at the bottom of the fifth case: they are supposed, but as yet on insufficient grounds, to be poisonous. In the next case (6) are the lizards of tropical America,

called safeguards. Their reputed peculiarity is that, of beating beehives till they compel the bees to retire, and then feasting upon the sweet booty: in the same case with these, is the lizard with the double-keeled tail, known as the crocodilurus. The visitor next faces a case (7) of Serpent Lizards, which do not deserve their reputation for poisonous properties, being quite harmless: here, also, are the Skinks and other varieties, including the blind worms with their hidden legs. Having dismissed the serpent lizards, the visitor will notice the Night Lizards and Guanas. The former are inhabitants of warm climates, and from the ease with which they can adapt themselves to any positions, they may be troublesome visitors; they can run with ease about the walls and ceilings of rooms, like flies; and their propensity is to roam abroad in the darkness of the night. Their broad, ugly heads, and repulsive general appearance, have won for them the character of poisonous reptiles, but the truth is they are harmless. The Crested Lizards which the visitor will notice hereabouts, are the American fruit-eating species, celebrated for violent quarrelling among themselves, and for their power of changing colour with great rapidity. They do not crawl upon the earth, but live on trees, the fruits of which sustain them. Here, too, are the Anoles, with their distended toes, that enable them to imitate the crawling feats of the night lizards. The tenth case devoted to the lizard tribe, is the most interesting of the series. It contains the family of lizards known as the Agama. This family boasts many famous scions. First, here are the Indian dragons; their resemblance to the fabled monster slain by St. George, consists of a loose skin over the ribs, which they can open or fold at pleasure. These bat-like wings will not support them in the air, but serve to steady their bodies when leaping

from branch to branch of a tree. From these lilliputian representatives of the monster of fable, the visitor's attention will most probably be called by an importantlooking lizard, of which Mr. Allan Cunningham brought the first specimens to this country, from Port Nelson, Australia. We allude to the lizard with a frill round its neck, which has been universally likened to that worn by Queen Elizabeth : it is called the frilled agama. It is supposed that this harmless sauroid extends this frill to frighten away its enemies; as old ladies, who can preserve their presence of mind in the neighbourhood of a bull, open their umbrella to frighten it into an opposite direction. Under these interesting sub-families are grouped the varieties of a species of agama that has won for itself an imperishable reputation-having furnished imaginative minds with matter for the most extravagant speculations—and yielded to the political writer abundant sarcastic images. No politician who has thought proper in the course of a long career, to change his old principles for new ones (as housewives exchange worn-out apparel for new gilded pottery); no philosopher who has by turns embraced conflicting principles of human action;, no man of science who has published two opposite theories of the formation of our universe, can pause without emotion before this case of classed Chameleons; for the politician, the philosopher, and the man of science have inevitably figured in hostile reviews under the head of colourchanging sauroids. The popular notion respecting the colour-changing powers of these lizards is, that at will the chameleon can habit itself in any colour of the rainbow; that by turns it is a red chameleon, a blue chameleon, a green chameleon, and a yellow chameleon. The fact of the case is very far from this notion. Chameleons are found chiefly in Africa and India, but