Bulbs of most sorts flourish in rooms with less care than most other kinds of plants. Hyacinths should be planted in autumn. In preparing pots for them, select such as are about four inches deep, and three inches wide, put a little rotten manure in each pot, fill it up with light rich soil, and plant the bulbs so shallow that nearly half the bulb stands above the soil; plunge the pots in the open air, and cover them six or eight inches deep with rotten bark. During spring, take them out as they are wanted to bring into flower, and set them in the window of a warm room, where they will be fully exposed to the sun. Those who do not possess a garden, may set the pots in the cellar or outhouse, or in the corner of a yard, and cover them with light soil or sand until they are wanted to bring into the room to flower. When the leaves begin to decay after they have done flowering, give them no water; when the leaves are dead, take them out of the soil and remove the offsets, and lay them in an airy situation until the time of planting. If grown in water glasses, they require to be placed in a light airy situation, and the water will require to be changed once in three or four days. If drawn up weekly, it will be necessary to support the stems with sticks, split at the bottom so as to fit on the edge of the glasses at the top. This, however, will not be necessary if they be kept in a light and airy situation. When out of flower, plant them in pots of soil to perfect their leaves, and treat them as above : they will then flower again the succeeding year. THE CHIMPANSEE. where the fruit-bearing trees are too small and far asunder for suiting the organization of the long-armed ape. hair, rather long, and forming a sort of whiskers or tufts on the cheeks, but otherwise longest on the upper parts of the back. The arms have the hair inclining downward from the shoulder to the elbow, and upward from the wrist to the same, and these form a sort of ruff at the point of meeting. This position of the hair enables the forearm to be more readily thrust among the leaves, to pull the fruit. When there are hairs on the human forearm, they are not turned toward the elbow, but outward, and inclining to the wrist. So that, down to the very minutest particular, we find in the ape adaptations to peculiar localities and habits, not one of which can be traced in man. THE chimpansee is, as has been said, found both in the Asiatick isles and in Africa; and it is said to be of larger size and more handsome form in the The face and ears of the chimpansee are of a latter country than in the former-that it has the brown colour, and naked; but the skin of the face, arms shorter, walks more erect, and has the neck especially, is withered and leather-like, and has no longer. These differences tend to show that the resemblance to the human skin in texture and gloss; trees which have apes' food, are of smaller growth it more resembles the naked parts of some reptiles, ánd further apart from each other than in Asia; and or those of the bats. The head, back of the neck, that, also, in part explains why none of the long-shoulders, and back, are covered with coarse black armed climbing apes are found in Africa, but have their place supplied by the baboons, which run well upon all-fours, and are more ferocious in their dispositions. The very few specimens of the chimpansee which have been seen in this country have been all of small stature; but they have been young, and we neither know the period which these animals require to attain their full stature, nor the circumstances by which their growth may be retarded or stopped. Travellers say that they attain the height of an ordinary man; but there is reason to suspect that in that, as well as in some other points, their history has been confounded with that of the larger baboons. It is said that they live in small bands, and construct a series of huts for their common residence. The former is likely, as all apes are, to a certain degree, social; but the construction of the huts is doubtful, as it has not been borne out by what has been observed of other apes, or even of the same species in the East. The fact is, that the comparisons which have constantly been made between these animals and man, render it no easy matter to determine what portion of the reports which are given of them should be received and what rejected and the chimpansee is not so very like man after all. The flat top of the head, the great round ears, and the short and scanty hair on the head, have nothing very human in their aspect. There is a ridge over the eyes, but it is not like an eyebrow; and the eyes have nothing human in their enforcement or their expression. The nose is merely a ridge on the muzzle; and the mouth, from the manner of its opening, as well as the extent to which it opens, is evidently intended for no purpose save that of biting. The lower jaw is not a chin either, in its anterior part, but merely a deep jaw, to afford insertion to the large teeth and the powerful muscle. : Even the trivial name of this species (troglodytes) is in some sort connected with gratuitous analogies, and as such calculated to mislead. In ancient times there was a race of people known by the name of troglodytes, or "dwellers in caves," said to inhabit somewhere in the vicinity of the Red sea, and to be of small stature and deformed outline; and so strong was the prejudice, arising probably from this similarity of name, that Linnæus himself made man one species of the genus homo, and the chimpansee, which of course, was not so well known to Europeans in his time as it is now, another, under the name of homo troglodytes. Now it does not appear that the chimpansee is troglodytes at all, inasmuch as it does not dwell in caves. It does not inhabit those regions in which the troglodytes of the ancients are said to have resided, and it is rather improbable that the ancients had any accurate knowledge of the places in which it is now found. THE OYSTER-CATCHER. seen It does not appear that the differences which have been mentioned as existing between the chimpansees THE oyster-catcher lives by the seaside, feeding of Africa and of the Oriental isles, are sufficient to on marine insects, for which it may be constitute a difference or even a variety; the more actively searching at low water. Their name of so that we are but little acquainted with the appear- oyster-catcher is also derived from their expertness ance and habits of the adult animals in either region. in extracting the oyster, which however can be done All that can be inferred is, that they have to climb only when the shell is open, and not even then withmore and walk less, and their arms are lengthened out great caution; for instances have been known of and their legs shortened and weakened in proportion. the unfortunate bird being made prisoner by the Even those chimpansees which are the best walk- oyster closing upon its beak. ers, do not walk as man does, by advancing the leg, while the body remains square to the front; they roll the pelvis, and the feet, instead of moving over straight lines, move over arches of circles, of each of which the opposite hip joint is the centre; and even in them the feet are far more efficient in climbing and grasping than in walking, which shows that climbing is the grand motion for which they are organized; and that just as much of the power of walking is added, as enables them to be the passing feeders upon fruits in those parts of the forests Its eggs are laid on the bare ground, for the nest, if it deserves to be so called, consists only of small shingle and shells thrown up by the sea, so little above highwater-mark, that in high spring tides they When taken young, are frequently swept away. they may be easily tamed, and they are in England frequently introduced into pleasure-grounds. We remember seeing very considerable numbers of them, some years ago, on the lawn of the pavilion at Brighton, collected by order of his late majesty George IV., where they were running about with the tameness and familiarity of poultry. Nothing | make equal despatch on their journeys; that is, could be more ornamental than their smart pieballed they can move twenty-five or thirty miles miles in glossy coats, in contrast with their long, bright, the hour, the least of which would send them six orange beaks and legs, and crimson irides. THE WHALE. hundred miles a day, or from sixty degrees north. latitude, to sixty degrees south, in the short period of fourteen days. The velocity with which they move, and the periods at which it is probable their migration takes place, may both tend to make them in a great meas THE whale is one of the most interesting of na-ure unobserved. It is probable that they pass the ture's productions. The regions in which it is usually found; its vast size; its singular form; its curious habits: its combining at once the maximum of physical strength and gentleness of disposition; and a variety of other circumstances, all conspire to render the whale the wonder of the deep. middle latitudes in the stormy weather about the equinoxes; and thus thousands may pass without one of them being observed from a single ship. They may make their whole course too, without feeding, because of the vast accumulation of fat or blubber under the skin, which analogy leads us to The common whale may be said to inhabit the conclude, can, like the accumulated fat of landwhole ocean, and its size and power render it wor- animals, be in part at least, absorbed as nourishment thy of that ample field. It is not quite so discursive when food is scarce, or the habit of the animal preover the ocean, or so frequently seen in the middle vents it from feeding. At those periods too, the latitudes, or indeed in any places where the temper-young of many fishes are discursive near the surature is warm, as the more voracious whales which face, and these may serve for food on the passage. feed upon large fishes. Those, like the predatory These whales catch their food with the plates and land animals, are furnished with powerful weapons of prehension, so that wherever the sea is inhabited they can find food, and the shark himself cannot escape their all-powerful jaws. The common whale, on the other hand, more resembles some peaceful animal which grazes the savannah, or browses the leaves of the evergreen forests; and therefore it can remain and feed for a season in peculiar localities only. These localities may be said to be in an eminent degree the margins of the polar ice, the very extremes and confines, as it were, of the ocean. Little is known with certainty of the times or the extent of its migrations, because its march along the mighty waters is too fleet for our observations to follow. It is said that they can move as fast as a mail-coach and feed while they are moving; and as, when wounded by a harpoon, they can "take out" the line so fast that, if not watered, it would speedily take fire by the friction of the roller, it is probable that they can fringes of the baleen, as with a net, and the only sense that can guide them in the selection is taste, residing in the tongue; and the current of water passing over that, when the motion is rapid, must be like the stream of a rivulet. It is thus probable that they have little more selection of food than what the throat can swallow. In the balena that is very limited, the greatest extent of the gullet not being more than would admit a hen's egg. In some of the balanoptera it is considerably wider-as much as between three and four inches in diameter; and thus, though these are much smaller, they can swallow food in larger morsels. The common large whale certainly could not swallow any fish larger than the herring; and from its summer-feeding in the arctick seas, the times and places where we are best acquainted with its economy, it probably feeds very little upon fish of any description. Whales are found near the ice, or in the bays or openings among the different ice-fields, and generally in what is termed the green water. This green water derives its colour from the immense multitude of small animals which are dispersed through it; and these animals, many of which are almost, or altogether microscopick, appear to be the ordinary and proper food of the common whales. The creatures which colour this water, may appear to be but siender cheer for the largest of all animals; but their numbers are such, as to make up for their small size; and the prehensile apparatus which the whale - displays, is sufficient to filter a mile of the sea, in a comparatively short time. The size of the mouth of course varies with that of the body; but a gap of more than twenty feet in length, and fifteen in breadth, is not extravagant. The opening of the jaws may be estimated at eight or perhaps ten feet, which is about the length of the longest plates of baleen, which are situated near the middle of the length. The section of the mouth is therefore about three hundred and seventy-five feet, and the solid contents three thousand. So that making every allowance, the whale, as it feeds along the deep, commands more water than the North river discharges; and this immense volume of water passing regularly through the mouth of one animal, at the rate of say only five or six miles an hour, enables it to collect an incredible quantity of the small matters upon which it feeds. The form of the mouth, the way in which the plates of baleen are arranged, and the fringes with which they are furnished, both on their edges, and at their extremities, enable the animal to detain every small substance which the water may contain, while the whole arrangement is such, that these substances are, as they accumulate, carried towards the opening of the gullet. It may here be mentioned, that the lips of the whale have a peculiar double curvature in their lateral outline. The lower one is also larger than the upper, and has a double margin, forming a groove into which the edge of the upper lip fits when the mouth is shut, and the ends of the baleen when the mouth is open. The internal palate is formed of two curved inclined planes, one on each side, and to these the thick ends of the plates of baleen are attached by a ligamentous substance. These plates are parallel to each other, and placed across the mouth. There are sometimes several hundreds of them on each side. They are thinned off toward their inner sides, and it is to these that the fringes are attached. The plates appear to have no proper motion or muscular apparatus for effecting it. When the mouth is opened, they fall pendent by their own weight, so that the fringes on their lips touch the tongue, and those on their sides, reach from the one plate to the other. When the animal moves forward, the plates are bent back a little at their points, by the resistance of the water, and the fringes are also turned to the direction of the throat. At the anterior part they are shorter in proportion to the middle of the gap, so that they give way and admit the water more freely but become stiffer and offer more resistance as the throat is approached. From the great length of the gap, the water escapes easily in the lateral notices between the plates, while the eatable bstance which it contains, are kept back by the yes. The bending backward at the points, sends wi food downward in the direction of the ample VOL. II.-19 and fleshy tongue, which lies like a great cushion, filling the under part of the mouth. It does not appear, however, that the tongue acts in directing the food to the gullet, in any other way than by influencing the set of the current of water that way. From the smallness of the gullet, the quantity of water which reaches it must be small, and as a return by the same way that it arrives, would be inconvenient, it is received into cavities in the head; and, from time to time, discharged by the operation of blowing. The feeding-apparatus, and the whole operation of feeding are thus, in the baleen, or whalebone whales, very peculiar, and quite different from those of any other species of animal. Feeding, in them, can be attended with no more fatigue than what results from their progressive motion through the water, and the occasional blowing of the water from the cavities in the head. There is no motion of the jaws, or of the baleen, and it does not appear that there is much of the tongue. The food receives no kind of preparation in the mouth, but goes to the gullet in precisely the same state in which it is separated from the water by the filtering action of the baleen. Though interrupted in all parts of its progress by the plates, the current of water toward the gullet may be compared to a wedge, which gets smaller as it proceeds, in consequence of the quantity which escapes laterally. Toward the top of this wedge, the food is collected, and by that it is carried onward to its destination, the small quantity of water which carries it there, being disposed of in the manner above stated. If the productiveness of the water be considered as uniform, the rate at which the whale feeds will thus be proportionate to that at which it moves through the water; and rapid motion along a bare pasture, will have the same effect as slow motion over a rich one. The only efficient organ of motion in whales is the tail; and therefore, strange as it sounds in words, the tail of the whale is the active instrument in the procuring of its food. Its usual mode of feeding is near the surface, so that a considerable portion of the body is above water. That portion is wholly black in colour, and not very handsome in shape; and as there is no fin on the back, and the eyes, though well-formed, and even expressive, are very small for the size of the animal, (about equal to those of an ox,) there is nothing animated in the appearance of the floating whale, when seen from a distance. It looks like a floating log, or the top of a small dark islet; and when the jets of water and steam are thrown up in the operation of blowing, it does not require much stretch of imagination, to consider the islet an infant volcano. HOUSEHOLD DUTIES. TOWARDS the end of the month preparations should be made for a general house-cleaning; and it is as well to anticipate bugs, by having the bedsteads taken down and well washed with solution of corrosive sublimate, named in a former number: if this business is delayed later, it will be more troublesome, as the weather is often warm and calls insects into activity. Where paint and repairs are needed, they should of course be completed before cleaning, precedence being, however, always given to the chim |