however costly, or, when furtively plucked from its
native spot by schoolboy fingers, it is turned
into the juvenile angler's line—though the latter
use we deem not ignoble when we remember
how highly prized was our horse-hair tackle of
old, first in the inventory of all our property,
and mourned, when lost on a log in the bottom
of an eddying trout stream, with our sincerest
sorrow. Nor is it to be thought degraded—
rather the reverse—when, bound to the magic
bow of a Paganini or an Ole Bull, it

               Untwisteth all the cords that tie
               The hidden soul of harmony;

or, when drawn by fairy fingers with nimble
needle through silken fabrics, it has formed
embroidery which any lady might covet. The
horse's tail, in short, has attained in many ways
to more honour than sits on the hair of most
heads.

To appreciate, however, its perfection in its
native ornamental capacity, look at the horse as
nature made him and gentlemen ride him, and
then as jockeys transform him, and livery-stable
keepers let him on hire. All grace vanished, the
waving line of beauty destroyed, the docked and
set-up tail of the hack is eloquent of his
degradation. What the moustaches and imperial of
the snob are when compared with the beard of
Jupiter or Moses, is the bob-tail of the horse
driven by a snob in Rotten-row, when compared
with the waving switch of the barb ridden by
the descendant of Ishmael on the shores of the
Red Sea. A character remarks in one of Sir
Bulwer Lytton's novels, that whenever a lady
has to choose a horse, she always selects a horse
with the longest tail.

Look, now, at another variety of the tail—
that which appertains to the lordly lion. Not
altogether unlike is it to those of the bovine
family, inasmuch as it is a bare, tapering, vertebral
prolongation, with a tuft at the tip. The
tail of the ox, when a hundred are whisking at
once over the backs of a dense drove, has a
somewhat picturesque air; and the same member,
when lashing the brindled flanks of the square-
browed leader of the herd, rises into decided
dignity. So Childe Harold saw him at the bull-
fight in Seville:

Here—there—he turns his threatening front to suit
His first attack, wide waving to and fro
His angry tail—red rolls his eye's dilated glow.

Yet the tail of the lion has a quiet self-possession
and dignity in its motion, which make it a fit
sceptre for the monarch of the desert. Whether
trailing in the sand as its illustrious predecessor
crouches in ambush for the giraffe, or streaming
meteor-like on the troubled air in the deadly
bound, it is ever the tail of a lion, fit companion
for the mane and talons, broad front and powerful
muscles, with which it is associated.

And how different in air and character are
the tails of the less noble feline races! Regard
those of the leopard or tiger, those long, cylindrical,
snaky rolls of fur, pliant, twisting, coiling;
so fitly associated with half-mild, half-
ferocious casts of features, and peering diagonal
eyes, and, equally with these, evincing to the
physiognomist a nature formed for treasons,
stratagems, and spoils, and expressing cruelty,
foppishness, and insincerity.

In the most familiar of the feline races we can
observe the expression of the tail change as its
owner outgrows its early innocence and develops
it treacherous and cattish nature. Notice the
tail of the nursling kitten, before the blood of
mice has reddened its incipient whiskers. There
is no deceit nor malice in it; it is carried about
honestly, bolt-upright, rigid, or oscillating in a
paroxysm of fun. As the kitten becomes a cat,
the tail changes; it lengthens and limbers,
droops and bends, until, as the mature puss
sneaks round the chicken-coop, or prowls in the
larder, its air and motions betray all the guile of
her nature. In the veteran mouser it varies as
content or passion bears sway. Purring in your
lap, puss waves it coquettishly or droops it in
drowsy satisfaction. But the same tail, when
its proprietor is cornered by your terrier,
becomes a thick club on which each particular hair
stands on end as if electrified with anger.

In significance, however, all tails yield to
that of the dog. Endless in its variety, from
the sweeping train of the Newfoundlander to
the long naked whip of the greyhound, or the
stiff wisp of the terrier, its expressive curves
and motions ever harmonise with its owner's
feelings, from the brisk, animated flourish of
the setter, as the gun is taken a-field, to the
miserable droop or reversed curve of the beaten
hound. Living illustrations worthy of study
are to be found in every street. Hardly any
two canine extremities alike, or any one which
presents the same character and expression for
five minutes together.

Among the families of birds, every child will
select the peacock as the glorified exemplar of
ornamental tail. Nothing certainly can be more
splendid than this gorgeous circle of green and
gold, though it is not really a tail, but a train
of long feathers growing from the back, the
true tail being beneath, and serving only as a
support to this overshadowing splendour. The
kindred tribes of pheasants and turkeys, however,
display a similar though plainer show,
made of true tail-feathers. The bird of paradise,
the willow-finch, the domestic cock, and
many other examples may be readily called to
mind, showing how far both the grace of form
and the beauty of plumage are dependent on
this part of the organisation of birds.

But enough of tails in their ornamental and
expressive aspect: let us turn to their practical
use, and look at the part they play in the animal
economy. In this some caution is necessary,
lest we adopt some of the romantic fictions
which have found their way into grave treatises
of natural history, some with so much colour of
truth as to make the separation of fact and
falsehood as difficult as was the task of Niebuhr
in deciding on the credibility of early Roman
history.

We may, in the exercise of this discrimination,
reject the story how the fox makes of his tail a