last only the hind-legs of the mouse and the end
of its tail remained outside the snake's jaws,
and that after this the form of the mouse was
plainly discernible as it made its way along the
interior of the snake's throat, till it was lost in
the coils of the reptiles body, and might be
considered to be finally disposed of; at which point
in their their dream Gentlemen Nos. 2 and 4 both felt
as if they had taken a large and uncompromising
pill.

After this, both these gentlemen saw in their
dream, a monster nightmare frog, impossibly
huge and bloated, and then they went on to a
place where they had the most horrible vision of
all; the dream-monster this time being called
"The Javan Loris."

2nd Gentleman and 4th Gentleman imagined
that they went into a place where there were
more festoons of Python snake over their
heads, heaving and swelling like animated sandbags,
where there was a very sleepy sloth, who
was so drowsy that he could never keep upon
the top of the tree-boughs among which he
resided, but always appeared to have tumbled off,
and to be holding on by his hands and feet, and
looking at society upside down; and our two
gentlemen dreamed, moreover, that there were
here some very noisome impossibilities which
hung pendent from other boughs of trees, and
were supposed to be asleep, but could not really
have been so, or they would have dropped off—
supposing the laws of gravitation to apply to
flying foxes, which is, perhaps, supposing too
much—and then they thought that all these
things had ceased to be, and had turned into a
small brown animal something like a rabbit, but
more like a huge rat, concerning which a dream-
voice spake, and said:

"This is the Javan Loris, and you will
observe that one of its chief peculiarities is, that
it does not kill its prey, but eats it alive."

It was quite a comfort to our two sleepy
gentlemen to remember in their dream that they
were dreaming, for the Javan Loris actually
seemed to sit up on its hind-legs, and holding a
live mouse in its paw, took bites out of it, as a
schoolboy does out of an apple.

From these horrible visions Gentlemen Nos.
2 and 4 awoke as the night air blew upon them
in emerging from the land of reptiles, and they
hastened to tell their dreams to their
companions. But what was the worst of it all was,
that 1st Gentleman and 3rd Gentleman, who
professed to have been awake all this time,
were not a bit surprised, and said that they, too,
had seen and heard all these things, and that
they were not dreams but dire realities. Nos.
2 and 4 were so horrified at their statement,
that they expressed a desire to return and sacrifice
the Javan Loris on his own hearth; they
were, however, not allowed to proceed with this
praiseworthy act of retribution.

Truly there is a great deal of suffering mixed
up with the lives of most members of the animal
creation. What a hideous time of it, for
instance, a little fish residing in the same
neighbourhood with a large pike must have. Those
great jaws must be a perpetual nightmare to
the poor little wretch, who surely has intellect
enough to know that he is continually in
danger of finding his way into them. How can
he enjoy his meals, the society of his friends, his
natural rest and sleep, with that long, narrow,
dangerous-looking wolf of the waters ever on
the spot, ever ready for a pounce?

Do fish ever sleep? They certainly none of
them appeared to be in a slumbering condition
when Gentlemen 1, 2, and 3, came in the course
of their night journey to the watery regions, and
surveyed (outrageous combinations of things)
the bottom of the sea, by lamp-light, in the
Regent's Park. Gentleman No. 4 was left behind
at this particular point in the voyage, and was
found by the other more active voyagers, when
they emerged from the fish regions, sitting bolt
upright upon a bench and fast asleep.

There was something almost painful about
the bright-eyed wakefulness of those fish. The
pike was lying watching the gudgeons, and the
gudgeons were wakefully conscious of the pike.
The perch and the minnows were going through
a performance of the same kind. The roach had
quite a red rim round his eyes from want of
rest; and even the zoophytes and sea-anemones
were making short excursions at the bottom,
progressing by means of a kind of ambling
movement, compounded of a paralytic hop and
a kind of hopeless attempt to swim, ending in a
drunken stagger and total collapse of the entire
animal into a mass of quivering jelly.

The aggravatingly wakeful condition of the
inhabitants of those deep waters, through which
our hardy adventurers were now wading, seemed
to have upon these three travellers an effect
somewhat the reverse of what might have been
expected. Far from being refreshed by their
bath, or stimulated to wakefulness by the
example of these lively animals, our three friends
appeared to be suffering under a perfect agony
of fatigue and drowsiness, insomuch that they
would cling to such under-water plants and other
means of support as came in their way, with a
drowning man's grasp; would occasionally stagger
against each other; would fall into paroxysms
of yawning, and would listen to all statements
concerning the habits of the race they were
among, with a fixed stare, indicative of hatred
towards a tribe concerning which so much useful
information was obtainable. They all fell foul,
however, of No. 4 when they emerged from the
bottom of the sea, and said that he ought to be
ashamed of the want of interest he was showing
in the whole affair.

It was refreshing, after the detestable
wakefulness of the fish, to find in the monkey
country, which lay next in the route of our
travellers, that the inhabitants were an orderly
and well-conducted race, and were taking their
rest in a natural way, at a natural time.
Nervous, too, in the dark, and glad to sit very
near each other on their perches. There was
one tree which our voyagers passed by on which
more than a dozen of these right-minded animals
were sitting in a row, packed together like larks