That they may have their attachments, is another matter. The objectors ask why each animal is found in its own climate. The answer is not very difficult. They have originally been placed somewhere, not every where, according to their construction and disposition; according to their wants, and chiefly their food. To these limits they naturally confine themselves; but there is no law which has said, thou shalt go no further. We have given proofs enough already. But they have not read Malthus, and therefore do not emigrate or colonize, or calculate when the population and "when the food weighs down the balance. We do not well see what motive an elephant could have to walk to Paris; and it is likely that if he were to try, he would be boxed up and shown for a shilling, if he escaped being skinned and eaten by a Hottentot.

The objection is like all the rest-nonsense. It is also unfounded. Mr. Buckland keeps a hyena in his bed-chamber, for the purpose of studying geology, because hyenas, which now belong to Egypt and Syria, once lived in a cave in one of the ridings of Yorkshire. The whole of these beasts, which must now be caged and blanketted in the Tower and at Exeter Change, once did the same: they would do it again if they could find the way, and swim the channel, and had read Guthrie's Geography, and— provided there were no Yorkshiremen in Yorkshire.

The world might have been better in those days: we doubt:it was before the Flood: we doubt that too: they were different hyenas, hippopotami, rhinoceroses, elephants, rats, sparrows, mice, bears, and ichthyosauruses. We doubt the whole, geology, geologists, and all. There was nobody then, no geologists to prove that naturalization was impossible, and, consequently, the beasts had no opinions to controvert and care for. They are dead and gone: because we are alive and here: or they may have been drowned in the deluge for ought we care.

We do seriously believe, for these and other reasons, that every animal of the world may be naturalized to every climate of the world; though we do not pretend to think so widely respecting plants. There are obvious reasons for the difference. The one tribe can produce heat; the other is purely dependent for that on the climate. That is the important difference; the others we need not notice.

But we are not going to assert that an aged elephant, for example, is to be brought over and turned loose with impunity to an English winter. By what gradation the horse became thus dispersed we do not know; but that it was by gradation, is very probable. We may more easily conjecture that this process is a process of gradation, by the fowls which we quoted above. The common fowl has probably been gradually dispersed through the Asiatic continent to Europe; and thus, in succession, to its colder parts. The pintado was imported from Africa by the Romans; and, from Italy, it has similarly spread itself. Thus also of the peacock; and thus

probably might the elephant, or any other beast or fowl, be transferred to Europe.

This is the exact process by which plants are naturalized; whether by former, gradual, and almost natural progress, or by more direct experiment. By direct experiment of this nature, many plants have been naturalized, even recently, as we shall show at some future day.

In plants, the operation is effected by uniting attention to a moderate and gradual change, with attention to the progeny. The seed that is produced in a climate of one quality, will grow in that which is next colder; and thus, in succession, the seeds from the last climate may, in time, produce plants reaching the utmost verge of cold which is consistent with the limit which we formerly suggested.

By this or an analogous process, it appears to us that animals have been naturalized, and may be naturalized again.. The progeny, nurtured in comparative cold, is less tender than the parent, and thus, in time, from the equator, the animal may reach the pole. Thus, probably, did the lost animals of northern Europe travel from their birth place by slow degrees; while the world was yet empty of man to obstruct their progress, and while the relations between their respective foods and their respective populations were different from what they are now.

It is by cultivating the progeny therefore, on this principle, that we should expect to naturalize to ourselves the animals of even the hottest climates. We have little doubt that a cub lion, imported very young, might live even now; and we are much more confident that one born at the Tower would prove hardier than the parents, and would produce a still hardier progeny, gradually naturalizing the animal. If the experiment is to be tried, on whatever animal, this is the reasonable method; and with the command which our wide and various colonies give us, we can foresee no difficulty for any one, of which the acquisition might be judged expedient. It might sometimes be the work of time; but we rather expect that it will be found a much easier problem than has been imagined. The first step will be to overcome prejudices; and probably that will prove the most difficult one.

We may now ask what advantages we propose to ourselves by naturalizing the animals of warm climates, since we may as well dispose of this part of the question first. Ornament and use. To admire, to work for us, and to be eaten. Utility in another way, if we could find it out. To consume such vegetable productions as are of no use to the animals which we at present cultivate, or to occupy regions or places which we have now no animals to occupy. And this purpose applies to the naturalization of animals generally, so as to render it unnecessary to separate the two

cases.

We must put the improvement rather theoretically than practically, because we have not the gift of foresight. If we had not

possessed the goat, for example, we should not have found an use for our poisonous plants. The goat is the universal scavenger of the vegetable creation, as the hog is the consumer of all, in every kind, that would otherwise be wasted. The goat climbs pastures inaccessible to almost all other animals; and thus, in two ways, it produces profit, pure profit. If we have pastures which even the goat cannot climb, we might cultivate the chamois. The hog is a still stronger instance. We may put the supposition that we had not possessed it. Possessing it, possessing the goat, or any other animal which consumes what could not otherwise be occupied, we make a clear gain from nothing. It is very much the same as to the duck and the goose: if we pursue the method of exhaustions, we shall find that we gain from the wide and wild vegetable creation, little more than what is given us by the animal which forms the intermediate laboratory of grass and thistles.

To name thistles, gives us the case in another way. No animal will eat them; the ass attempts it, but they puzzle him. Even the Scotchman cannot eat the emblem of his starving country; he cannot eat the food of asses, though he feeds greedily on that of horses. Naturalize an animal which eats thistles, and we gain an animal; perhaps a labourer, perhaps a dinner. If we naturalize a reindeer, we gain venison which we can use, in exchange for lichens that

we cannot.

Such is a sketch of one of the leading advantages to be derived from cultivating new animals. It is easy to see how numerous they might prove. Find an animal to eat up brambles, or ragweed, or docks, or nettles, or to thrive on the fallen leaves of autumn, or even on green leaves, since we are too proud to give them to our cattle, like the Romans, and do not keep a "frondator" qui "cantet ad auras." Cultivate an elephant, and let the Lord Mayor ride on him.

Perhaps there is an animal that will live on sea weed. Behold the gain. We should care no longer for the fall of barilla: a Scotch highlander might feed hippopotami, if that should prove the eonsumer, instead of starving his vassals, while he starves himself; and Smithfield would soon rejoice in gigantic sirloins, replacing the bare bones of Highland stots.

We need not distinguish further respecting the climates of the animals that we are to naturalize, but examine the question generally, whether it relates to ornament, or amusement, or to the use that we may derive from them, either as servants and fellow-labourers, or articles of food.

As ornament, we have the peacock almost alone among birds, when there is no end to those from which we might, in a similar way, derive pleasure. The golden pheasant is rarely seen; and whatever else of foreign and ornamental birds we have, are boxed up in cages, like lions and monkeys, incapable of breeding, and affording no pleasure. There is not one of them all, besides many more yet unknown to our menageries, that might not as well be

naturalized as the peacock and pintado. The flamingo and the ibis might ornament our waters, as the black swan of Australasia has lately done in a very partial manner. It is a slender attempt towards this improvement. The beautiful cranes might equally be our friends. The pelican would be more than our amusement: he might fish for us, as he does in China, and pelicanizing might in time become as chivalrous an amusement as hawking. We might even teach our own yellow eagles to catch trout for us, or use our brown eagle instead of a greyhound, or fish our herrings by means of gannets, or our cod by seals, or our salmon by otters. We might even cultivate crocodiles, to prevent idle boys from bathing in the Serpentine, and thus relieve the police officers and Sir Richard Birnie.

But a crocodile is not a bird, and we are now treating of "fowl that wing the air or wade the deep." It would be very convenient to grow spoonbills, that they might swallow up the frogs which make such an abominable noise on Blackheath in the month of May; or condors, to eat up the superfluous children of the Irish labourers; or albatrosses, that Mr. Wordsworth might be enabled to write more poetry. We might cultivate humming birds; and when lilies of the valley and jessamine were out of date, they might kiss the far sweeter honey that breathes between the lips of Miss S

or any other of the blooming beauties of England. The stork would teach us to love our "tuguria," and the tailor bird might countenance that much bespattered race, without which we should all look like a clothier's sign. People know well enough how to appropriate other people's property, whether in office or out, and therefore we need not multiply magpies and jackdaws, barring, that like other thieves, they are abundant enough already. But we might substitute, for frogs in St. James's Park, the duck-billed beaver; which would serve the double purpose of wonderment to the natives on Sundays, and of duck, when roasted with sage and onions. Besides which, it is very possible that he would swallow up all the malaria, and prevent his Majesty King George the Fourth from dying of the ague, which his Majesty seems very desirous of doing, considering that he is going to build another receptacle of poison behind his new palace, that if the fever misses him in the front it may hit him in the rear.

Thus much of birds, and the muse must proceed to treat of beasts. Let us begin soberly, as our horse is given to running away. But we forget; for what reason is it that, there being a hundred and twenty of the genus Anas, we cultivate but two, the goose and the duck? The teal is a much prettier bird to look at than either, and it is much better when roasted. The Hollanders cultivate it in their yards, and we do not. For what reason should we not cultivate the wigeon, and the sheldrake, and the bran goose, and the mandarin duck, and the eider duck? by which we might uff our pillows as well as our stomachs, and the anas coscoraba,

melanotos, tadorna, montana, nilotica, moschata, albicans, clypeata, capensis, penelope, and so on to the end of the chapter.

On this we have a serious remonstrance to make, for we must now pass from amusement to utility. In the space of four thousand years, which is about the time which has passed since the deluge, when all the beasts and birds were let loose, we, the world altoge ther, have tamed about half a dozen birds, when it might have tamed the whole ark. We ourselves have the goose and the duck, which the Londoners, like fools, eat when they are jelly and gristle, and which the wiser Cornish roast when they are solid, substantial, ever-during food. We have the turkey, honoured with a seat in the Norfolk mail coach at Christmas; the pintado, which makes an abominable noise, but which is better than a pheasant; the common fowl, which the French turn into poularde and capon; the swan, which was fit only to be eaten by the barbarians of feudal England; and the peacock, which was the food and pride of kings and chivalry, but which we cannot buy at Mr. Fisher's above once or twice in a year, if we would give a guinea for it.

Such is the catalogue of our domesticated birds, and not one of them have we acquired by our own exertions. We might have had the whole British Museum walking about our yards by this time, or swimming in our ponds, ready for roasting, and that would have been no great number either. It is a long time since the deluge. We have pheasants indeed from Colchos; but then we must shoot them, at the expense of a license, or at the risk of being prosecuted for poaching, or caught by the leg in a steel trap, and breaking our tibia and fibula, one or both. And quails, if we choose to buy them out of a cage; and partridges, when we can get leave to shoot on some great man's manor; and moor-fowl, if we choose to hire a farm from some Highland chief, at five hundred pounds, for the sake of giving away two hundred and forty moor-fowl to our friends, who grumble at paying the carriage, and eating the other ten brace.

If we do not choose to domesticate ostriches, why should we not at least domesticate our own quails, and pheasants, and partridges, besides owls, ravens, and magpies. The ostriches would run admirably in a light curricle, or they would carry the idle heir of a dukedom, who is too wise to make themes and nonsense verses, better than a Shetland pony. A hungry man would not require two of their eggs for breakfast. The undertakers' feathers need not be worn so very bare. Madame Carbery the plumassier, would diminish her rates; and the Duke of York might raise another regiment of Highland savages, or of Irish manufacturers and vagabonds, and call it the third battalion of the glorious Forty Second.

We desire to see all the animals that wing the air domesticated, except a bat, which has no flesh on its bones. We desire to increase the variety of our food; we desire to increase our amusement, and our knowledge of the character of animals; we desire VOL. VII. No. 42.-Museum.

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