this my testament contayned in these wordis, saying
that thus hyt shuld be undrestonde.

"But like wise as oure Lorde gave me or graunted
me grace simply and purely or playnelye to say or
to shewe the rewle, and these wordis soo sympilly
and purely without any glose, you that be my
bretherne shall undrestonde them and with holy
operation and with frewtefull werkis and holy
conversatioune ye shall observe and kepe them unto
your lyves ende. And who soeuer trewly observe
and kepe he shalbe fulfilled with the blessinge of the
most hiest Father in hevyne, and ere in erith he
shalbe fulfilled with the blessyng of his most best and
swetest Sonne, with the moost Holiest Goste. And
they shalle afterward be also accomplysshed with
alle the orders of angellis and withe alle sayntis,
abidyng alweys in ther holy, blessid, and joyfulle
company in the kyngdome of hevyne. And I, brodre
Frauncis, youre yongelyng and your pour seruaunt,
how muche soeuer I may or as for furthe as I cann
or may establische and conferme unto you within
forthe and withoute forthe this forsayd most holiest
benediction and blessyng.

"Here endithe the testament of oure holy Fadre
Seynte Frauncis."

It would be impertinent to mar a text so
replete with charity, humility, and good sense as
this is with any derivation or explanation.

GAMEKEEPER'S NATURAL HISTORY.

IT is my fervent belief that the natural history
of England will never be written properly till
it is taken in hand by the English gamekeepers:
written by those sinewy, stalwart men addicted
to velveteen shooting jackets and leather
splatterdashes, and taken from the ink-stained hands
of those pale, weak legged, purblind men in
spectacles, who review everything second hand.
I maintain that old Targett, the gamekeeper
at my friend Colonel Hanger's, who spends all
day waiting for vermin, trapping, and shooting,
and all night watching for poachers, in Redland
Woods, must know more about the habits and
customs of the fox, the badger, the marten, the
rat, and the rabbit, than Professor Mole of St.
John's Wood, who, never goes into a field, never
rode after a fox in his life, was never present at
the "drawing" of a badger, never fired off a
gun, never dug out a dog-rat, never bit the tip
of a bull-dog's tail to make him stop fighting;
who does not know how pheasants roost, could
not catch a weasel asleep, or otherwise is, in
fact, a poor, respectable, over civilised,
rheumatic, narrow- chested Professor; very great
with his books and lamps, but a mere
ignoramus down beside our tough friend Targett,
who cannot write (who, in fact, I caught the
other day tearing up an old volume of Cuvier to
make wadding of the covers), but who has spent
his life, not in reading other men's thoughts,
but in observing living things, and studying
their ways. He has never heard the word
Mammalia, but he knows the individuals of the
class, knows how to feed 'em, and snare 'em,
and generally circumwent 'em. In fact, all he
knows is how they live, eat, drink, and sleep;
what they feed on, to what extent their instinct
goes; how far they can be tamed; their times
of breeding, and haunts—things which Professor
Mole merely writes about.

It is a sad thing, I often observe to my friend
Mr. Fox, of Great St. Andrew-street, who stuffs
birds and sells them, that men who know a
subject generally, cannot write, and those who
know nothing about it, but only think they do,
can. Here, down in Wiltshire, we have Targett,
who knows more about English natural history
than all the F.Z.S.s and presidents of societies
in the world, yet cannot sign his name, and
always puts a cross to his sharp son's weekly
register of game killed that is sent in to Colonel
Hanger. Professor Mole, who does not know
a polecat from a ferret when it flashes across a
country road, yet compiles his naturalist's
library, &c. &c., the only books where an
Englishman can learn anything about the animals of
his own country, though he may go to the
Regent's Park and make faces at the lion, or throw
a bun to the bear with impunity. In fact, the
more I read Cuvier, and Jardine, and "the whole
bilin' of 'em," the more I feel that English natural
history is yet unwritten, and is to be compiled
from the half-century wisdom of earth-stoppers
and gamekeepers, and woe be to the infant science
if we stop till these old men go to earth, or
death makes game of our gamekeepers. As
the Dodo and the Mammoth have perished; as
the Great Sea Serpent of the Indian Seas, and
gigantic Kraken of the Northern Ocean, have
passed into myths, so will pass the English
badger, the wild deer, and the corncrake. The
wild cat is almost gone, the fox in time will
follow, and where will be their histories?

Our child of the year two thousand and fifty,
dressed in crimson silk breeches and satin and
cloth-of-gold night-gowns, going out to dinner in
steam balloons, and using electric telegraphs to
ring the bell with, will, perhaps, some day, want to
know what the fox, people hunted in one thousand
nine hundred on steam-engine horses, was like.
This student goes to his cupboard of thirty
thousand books, and running round the tramroad
lined with shelves on a velocipede, he takes down
a dusty French book, Dictionnaire Classique, or
l'Histoire Naturelle, and finds to his
delight that the Renard is a Canis Vulpes
of the order mam. He is also overjoyed
—this enthusiast for antiquarian knowledge
—to find that Renarde is the female of
Renard. The food of the almost forgotten
animal and its habits it was too trifling for
scientific men to give. But still he is gratified
and comforted to learn, on the conjoint testimony
of MM. Bourdon, Pierrot, De Candolle, Delafosse,
and others, that the fox is a species of the
genus dog, and that it is a cunning and greedy
animal, its odour unpleasant, and its fur of a
reddish brown colour.

Stop! the historian gluts our enthusiast with
information. Here is more news: "The tail of
the Renard is bushy and of considerable
magnitude." O these valuable and laborious French
writers; what years of watching beside damp fox
earths, and under ash roots and behind tight-