shown large shells of turtles emptied by them. They follow the turtles towards the beaches, where the laying of eggs is to take place, surprise them on the sand, and in order to devour them at their ease, adroitly turn them on their backs; and as they turn many more than they can devour in one night, the Indians often profit by their cunning. The jaguar pursues the turtle quite into the water; and when not very deep, digs up the eggs; they, with the crocodile, the heron, and the gallinago vulture, are the most formidable enemies the little turtles have. Humboldt justly remarks, "When we reflect on the difficulty that the naturalist finds in getting out the body of the turtle, without separating the upper and under shells, we cannot enough admire the suppleness of the jaguar's paw, which empties the double armour of the arraus, as if the adhering parts of the muscles had been cut by means of a surgical instrument."

The rivers of South America swarm with crocodiles, and these wage perpetual war with the jaguars. It is said, that when the jaguar surprises the alligator asleep on the hot sand-bank, he attacks him in a vulnerable part under the tail, and often kills him, but let the crocodile only get his antagonist into the water, and the tables are turned, for the jaguar is held under water until he is drowned.

The onset of the jaguar is always made from behind, partaking of the stealthy treacherous character of his tribe; if a herd of animals, or a party of men be passing, it is the last that is always the object of his attack. When he has made choice of his victim, he springs upon the neck, and placing one paw on the back of the head, while he seizes the muzzle with the other, twists the head round with a sudden jerk which dislocates the spine, and deprives it instantaneously of life; sometimes, especially when satiated with food, he is indolent and cowardly, skulking in the gloomiest depths of the forest, and scared by the most trifling causes, but when urged by the cravings of hunger, the largest quadrupeds, and man himself, are attacked with fury and success.

Mr. Darwin has given an interesting account of the habits of the jaguar: the wooded banks of the great South American rivers appear to be their favourite haunt, but south of the Plata they frequent the reeds bordering lakes; wherever they are they seem to require water. They are particularly abundant on the isles of the Parana, their common prey being the carpincho, so that it is generally said, where carpinchos are plentiful, there is little fear of the jaguar; possibly, however, a jaguar which has tasted human flesh, may afterwards become dainty, and like the lions of South Africa, and the tigers of India, acquire the dreadful character of man-eaters, from preferring that food to all others. It is not many years ago since a very large jaguar found his way into a church in Santa Fé; soon afterwards a very corpulent padre entering, was at once killed by him: his equally stout. coadjutor, wondering what had detained the padre, went to look after him, and also fell a victim to the jaguar; a third priest, marvelling greatly at the unaccountable absence of the others, sought them, and the jaguar having by this time acquired a strong clerical taste, made at him also, but he, being fortunately of the slender order, dodged the animal from pillar to post, and happily made his escape; the beast was destroyed by being shot from a corner of the building, which was unroofed, and thus paid the penalty of his sacrilegious propensities.

On the Parana they have killed many woodcutters, and have even

entered vessels by night. One dark evening the mate of a vessel, hearing a heavy but peculiar footstep on deck, went up to see what it was, and was immediately met by a jaguar, who had come on board, seeking what he could devour: a severe struggle ensued, assistance arrived, and the brute was killed, but the man lost the use of the arm which had been ground between his teeth.

The Gauchos say that the jaguar, when wandering about at night, is much tormented by the foxes yelping as they follow him; this mayperhaps serve to alarm his prey, but must be as teasing to him as the attentions of swallows are to an owl who happens to be taking a daylight promenade; and if owls ever swear, it is under those circumstances. Mr. Darwin, when hunting on the banks of the Uruguay, was shown three wellknown trees to which the jaguars constantly resort, for the purpose, it is said, of sharpening their claws. Every one must be familiar with the manner in which cats with outstretched legs and extended claws, will card the legs of chairs and of men; so with the jaguar; and of these trees, the bark was worn quite smooth in front; on each side there were deep grooves, extending in an oblique line nearly a yard in length. The scars were of different ages, and the inhabitants could always tell when a jaguar was in the neighbourhood, by his recent autograph on one of these trees.

We have seen tigers stretching their enormous limbs in this manner, and were recently interested in watching the proceedings of two beautiful young jaguars now in the Zoological Gardens, Regent's Park; they are scarcely half grown and as playful as kittens. After chasing and tumbling each other over several times, they went as by mutual consent to the post of their cage, and there carefully and with intensely placid countenances scraped away with their claws as they would have done against the trees had they been in their native woods. This proceeding satisfactorily concluded, they swarmed up and down the post, appearing to vie with each other as to which should be first. The six young leopards are equally graceful and active with the above, and the elegance and quickness of their movements cannot fail to command admiration. They seem to be particularly fond of bounding up and down the trees, and sometimes rest in the strangest attitudes, stuck in the fork of a bough, or sitting as it were astride of one, with their hind legs hanging down. M. Sonnini bears testimony to the extraordinary climbing powers of the jaguar; "For," says he, "I have seen, in the forests of Guiana, the prints left by the claws of the jaguar on the smooth bark of a tree from forty to fifty feet in height, measuring about a foot and a half in circumference, and clothed with branches near its summit alone. It was easy to follow with the eye the efforts which the animal had made to reach the branches; although his talons had been thrust deeply into the body of the tree, he had met with several slips, but had always recovered his ground; and attracted, no doubt, by some favourite object of prey, had at length succeeded in gaining the very top!"

The following is the common mode of killing the jaguar in Tucuman: The Guacho, armed with a long strong spear, traces him to his den, and having found it, he places himself in a convenient position to receive the animal on the point of the spear at the first spring; dogs are then sent in, and driving him out he springs with fury upon the Guacho, who fixing his eyes on those of the jaguar, receives his onset kneeling, and with such

consummate coolness that he hardly ever fails. At the moment that the spear is plunged into the animal's body the Guacho nimbly springs on one side, and the jaguar, already impaled on the spear, is speedily dispatched.

În one instance the animal lay stretched on the ground, like a gorged cat, and was in such high good humour after his satisfactory meal, that on the dogs attacking him he was disposed to play with them; a bullet was therefore lodged in his shoulder, on which rough salute he sprang out so quickly on his watching assailant, that he not only received the spear in his body, but tumbled the man over, and they rolled on the ground together. "I thought," said the brave fellow, "that I was no longer a capitaz, as I held up my arm to protect my throat, which the jaguar seemed in the act of seizing; but at the very moment that I expected to feel his fangs in my flesh, the green fire which had blazed upon me from his eyes flashed out-he fell upon me, and with a quiver died.

Colonel Hamilton relates, than when travelling on the banks of the Magdalena, he remarked a young man with his arm in a sling, and on inquiring the cause, was told, that about a month before, when walking in a forest, a dog he had with him began to bark at something in a dark cavern overhung with bushes; and on his approaching the entrance, a jaguar rushed on him with great force, seizing his right arm, and in the struggle they both fell over a small precipice. He then lost his senses, and on recovering found the jaguar had left him, but his arm was bleeding and shockingly lacerated. On surprise being expressed that the animal had not killed him, he shrugged up his shoulders, and remarked, "La bienaventurada virgen Maria le habia salvo."-The blessed Virgin had saved him.

In the province of Buenaventura it is said that the Indians kill the jaguar by means of poisoned arrows, about eight inches in length, which are thrown from a blow-pipe: the arrows are poisoned with a moisture which exudes from the back of a small green frog, found in the provinces of Buenaventura and Choco. When the Indians want to get this poison from the frog, they put him near a small fire, and the moisture soon appears on his back; in this the points of the small arrows are dipped, and so subtle is the poison that a jaguar struck by one of these little insignificant weapons, soon becomes convulsed and dies.

The jaguar has the general character of being untameable, and of maintaining his savage ferocity when in captivity, showing no symptoms of attachment to those who have the care of him. This, like many other points in natural history, is a popular error; there is at the present time a magnificent jaguar in the Zoological Gardens, who is as tame and gentle as a domestic cat. We have seen this fine creature walking up and down the front of his den as his keeper walked, rubbing himself against the bars, purring with manifest pleasure as his back or head was stroked, and caressing the man's hand with his huge velvet paws. There is in the collection another jaguar, just as savage as this one is tame. There was also a jaguar formerly in the Tower, which was obtained by Lord Exmouth while on the South American Station, and was afterwards present at the memorable bombardment of Algiers. This animal was equally gentle with that we have described, and was presented to the Marchioness of Londonderry by Lord Exmouth on his return to England after that engagement: it was placed by her Ladyship in the Tower, where it died.

In a state of nature these animals have been known to show not only forbearance, but even playfulness, of which Humboldt relates the following instance which occurred at the mission of Atures, on the banks of the Orinoco :-"Two Indian children, a boy and girl, eight or nine years of age, were sitting among the grass near the village of Atures, in the midst of a savannah. It was two in the afternoon when a jaguar issued from the forest and approached the children, gambolling round them, sometimes concealing itself among the long grass and again springing forward with his back curved and his head lowered, as is usual with our cats. The little boy was unaware of the danger in which he was placed, and became sensible of it only when the jaguar struck him on the side of the head with one of his paws. The blows thus inflicted were at first slight, but gradually became ruder; the claws of the jaguar wounded the child, and blood flowed with violence; the little girl then took up the branch of a tree, and struck the animal, which fled before her. The Indians, hearing the cries of the children, ran up, and saw the jaguar, which bounded off without showing any disposition to defend itself." In all probability, this fit of good-humour was to be traced to the animal having been plentifully fed; for most assuredly the children would have stood but little chance, had their visitor been subjected to a meagre diet for some days previously.

Mr. Edwards, in his voyage up the Amazon, tells of an exchange of courtesies between a traveller and a jaguar. The jaguar was standing in the road as the Indian came out of the bushes, not ten paces distant, and was looking, doubtless, somewhat fiercely as he waited the unknown comer. The Indian was puzzled for an instant, but summoning his presence of mind, he took off his broad brimmed hat, and made a low bow, with "Muito bene dias, men Senhor," or "A very good morning, Sir." Such profound respect was not wanting on the jaguar, who turned slowly and marched down the road with proper dignity.

It is difficult to say how many leopard and jaguar skins are annually imported, as the majority are brought by private hands. We have been told by an eminent furrier that about five hundred are sold each year to the London trade. They are chiefly used as shabraques, or coverings to officers' saddles in certain hussar regiments, but skins used for this purpose must be marked in a particular manner, and the ground must be of a dark rich colour. Such skins are worth about three pounds; ordinary leopard and jaguar skins are valued at about two pounds, and are chiefly used for rugs or mats. The jaguar skins are sometimes of great size, and we have measured one which was nine feet seven inches from tip to tip. The leopard skins are exclusively used for military purposes, and the jaguar's are preferred for rugs.

GREEK LITERATURE.*

"THE Literature of Greece," as Professor Browne truly observes in the Preface to these volumes," has been stamped by universal testimony as being beyond comparison with that of subsequent periods. We admire and imitate the Greeks, but we cannot equal them." After the lapse of thousands of years, and in the midst of the restless mental activity of this our own most enlightened and energetic age, we still look up to Greece for our models of intellectual beauty and power. It is by Greek standards that we try the efforts of the orator, the historian, the philosopher, and the poet. Yet there are very few among us, even of those who devote not only their boyhood, but also their youth to the study of the classics, who are familiarly acquainted with the whole or with the greater part of the literature of this wonderful nation. Some men, when they leave the University, have thoroughly mastered Homer, some the dramatists, some the historians, some the orators, some Plato, some Aristotle; some, indeed, have acquired a full knowledge of several of the branches of the Greek Classics: but there are very few who will even pretend to have mastered them all. Their knowledge of what has been written by many of the highest Greek authors, is necessarily, to a great extent, second-hand. They leave the University thus; and when a man is launched on the world he cannot hope to increase, and he scarcely can keep up his Greek. If this is the case with those who are called scholars, par excellence, it is still more so with the great mass of those who pass current as educated men. A work, therefore, which, in a moderate compass, gives a good account of the characters and writings of each of the great poets, historians, philosophers, and orators, of ancient Greece, is valuable to grown men, who are never likely to have the leisure again to become students, besides being pre-eminently useful to the young, who still are in their career of study. If the writer of such a work, besides possessing the requisite learning and sound sense, have also elegant literary taste, and a pleasing style, his book will be found as entertaining as it is useful.

We have no hesitation in saying that we recognise all these qualities in Professor Browne. We certainly do not agree with him in all his criticisms. For instance, we think that he sets too slight a value on the martial poetry of Tyrtæus. Nor, in our opinion, does Pindar receive full justice in his pages. We should have liked to see attention drawn to the remarkable fragments of the Opñvo, where the Theban poet describes with such power and beauty the future states of the good and of the wicked. There is also a characteristic of Pindar's poetry, which we have never seen pointed out by commentator or critic, but which an attentive reader of the Odes, if he is also a keen observer of nature, must recognise. We mean Pindar's marvellous power of depicting, in a few vigorous words, objects of natural scenery. We will cite as an instance of what we mean, the lines in the sixth Olympic, where,

A History of Classical Literature, by R. W. Browne, M.A., Prebendary of St. Paul's, and Professor of Classical Literature in King's College, London.