net, of which strange stories of strength and prowess are related.
The velocity with which they dive in search of food has been variously
estimated. It is said that on the coast of Scotland, fishermen have
found them entangled in their nets at the extraordinary depth of a
hundred and twenty feet below the surface. Pennant relates a story of
a bird, which, on seeing some pilchards lying upon a floating plank,
darted down with such strength, that its bill pierced the board. And
now the visitor should turn to contemplate the grand and solitary
Frigate Bird. This bird appears to have the power of sustaining itself
in the air for an indefinite period, and to wander with the utmost
confidence on its broad pinions, over hundreds of miles of ocean, now
and then dipping to secure its prey. This slim, pale, and solitary
wanderer must have a noble appearance, when calmly 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 Kubens; 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
Plas 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