e funny pelicans--cleanliness, ugliness, and contentment in
one happy combination; a band of flamingoes; eagles and vultures; the
harpy--that Picton of the birds--looking defiance as he stands, with
upraised crest, flashing eye, and clenched talons, over his food; the
wily otter; the amiable seal, which carries us to the seas and rocks of
much-loved Shetland, with their long, winding voes, their
bird-frequented cliffs, and outlying skerries; the Indian thrush, which
reminds one of a "mavis" at home; the parrot-house, with its fine
contrasts of colour and its discordant noises; Penny's Esquimaux
dog--poor fellow, a prisoner, unlike to what he was when, with our dear
friends Dr Sutherland and Captain Stewart, this very dog breasted the
blast before a sledge in the Wellington Channel.[202] Look at that
wondrous sloth, organised for a life in a Brazilian forest--those two
restless Polar bears; and though last, not least, those wonders of the
great deep, "the sea-anemones," the exquisite red and white "feathery"
tentacles of the long cylindrical-twisted serpulae, and
marvellously-transparent streaked shrimps, all leg, and feeler, and eye,
and "nose"--in the salt-water tanks in the Vivarium.--_A. White, in
"Excelsior."_

S. BISSET AND HIS LEARNED PIG.

S. Bisset, formerly referred to, when at Belfast bought a black sucking
pig, and after several experiments succeeded in training a creature, so
obstinate and perverse by nature, to become most tractable and docile.
In August 1783, he took his learned pig to Dublin for exhibition. "It
was not only under full command, but appeared as pliant and good-natured
as a spaniel. He had taught it to spell the names of any one in the
company, to tell the hour, minute, and second, to make his obeisance to
the company, and he occasioned many a laugh by his pointing out the
married and the unmarried. Some one in authority forced him to leave
Dublin, and he died broken-hearted shortly after at Chester, on his way
to London, where forty and more years before he had first been induced
to train animals."[203]

QUIXOTE BOWLES FOND OF PIGS.

Southey records of Quixote Bowles that he "had a great love for pigs; he
thought them the happiest of all God's creatures, and would walk twenty
miles to see one that was remarkably fat. This love extended to bacon;
he was an epicure in it; and whenever he went out to dinner, took a
piece of his own curing in his pocket, and requested the cook to dress