&c.,' and some persons obtaining signatures
to a petition, was a red-faced gentleman, who
was continually calling upon the spectators
to 'put any questions,' or to 'state any
objections,' and he would immediatelly answer
them, and he would convince alll present, he
was sure, before they left the building, that
the present market was the only one that
could possibly supply London with meat.
Well, sir, at length a quiet, respectable
looking mechanic, mildly observed, that he
thought the present system led to a greater
desecration of the Sabbath than an improved
system would do. 'Oh!' exclaimed the
red-faced man, 'you object upon religious
grounds, do you!'. 'Principally,' replied the
mechanic, 'but upon many other grounds
besides.' 'Ah! well,' said the ruddy one,
'if you go upon religion, all I can say is, that
I know nothing about that! But I think I
can convince you this way; most people have
a joint of meat on Sunday, the remains of
which are hashed up on Monday. Well; on
Tuesday they want a fresh joint, which at
present, you can get; but if you remove
Smithfield, the butcher will not care to go to
market more than once a week, and so, when
you go on Tuesday for your usual joint, you
will find the butcher with his clean apron on,
smoking his pipe, and no meat to be had!'

"I was leaving the building, when I

observed two young men signing the petition.
I enquired of one, why he signed it, and he
replied, 'because my friend has done so;'
and upon making the same enquiry of his
friend, he replied that 'you can't well come
inside without signing.'
                                                    "I am, O.M."

A PLEA FOR BRITISH REPTILES.

WHAT the flourishing trademan writes

with pride over his shop, we might in most
cases write over our storehouse of antipathies,
—established in 1720, or 1751. For what good
reason we, in 1851, should shudder at the
contact of a spider, or loathe toads, it would be
hard to say. Our forefathers in their
ignorance did certainly traduce the charaters of
many innocent and interesting animals, and
many of us now believe some portions of their
scandal. To be a reptile, for example, is
perhaps the greatest disgrace that can attach to
any animal in our eyes. Reptile passes for
about the worse name you can call a man. This
is unjust—at any rate, in England. We have
no thought of patting crocodiles under the
chin, or of embracing boa constrictors; but,
for our English reptiles we claim good words
and good will. We beg to introduce here,
formally, our unappreciated friends to any of
our human friends who may not yet have
cultivated their acquaintance.

The Common Lizard,—surely you know the

Common Lizard, if not by his name of state
Zootoca vivipara. He wears a brilliant jacket,
and you have nmade friends with him, as a
nimble, graceful fellow; as a bit of midsummer.
His very name reminds you of a warm
bank in the country, and a sunny day. Is he
a reptile? Certainly; suppose we stop two
minutes to remember what a reptile is.

The heart of a reptile has three cavities;

that is to say, it is not completely double, like
our own. It sends only a small part of the
blood which comes into it, for renovation into
the air-chambers—the lungs;—while the
remainder circulates again unpurified. That
change made in the blood by contact with the
oxygen of air, is chiefly the cause of heat in
animals. Aëration therefore, being in
reptiles very partial, the amount of heat evolved
is small; reptiles are therefore called cold-blooded.
They are unable to raise their heat
above the temperature of the surrounding air.
Fishes are cold-blooded, through deficient
aëration in another way; in them, all the
blood passes from the heart into the place
where air shall come in contact with it; but,
then there is a limitation to the store of air
supplied, which can be no more than the
quantity extracted from the water. The
temperature of water is maintained below the
surface, and we know how that of the air
varies, since a certain quantity of heat is
necessary to the vital processes; reptiles,
depending upon air for heat, hybernate or
become torpid when the temperature falls below
a certain point. The rapidity of all their
vital actions will depend upon the state of the
thermometer; they digest faster in the heat of
summer than in the milder warmth of spring.
Their secretions (as the poison of the adder)
are in hot weather more copious, and in
winter are not formed at all. The reptiles
breathe, in all cases, by lungs; but, we must
except, here, those called Batrachians, as frogs
or newts, which breathe, in the first stage, by
gills, and afterwards by gills or lungs, or by
lungs only. The Batrachians, again, are the
only exception to another great characteristic
of the reptile class, the hard, dry covering of
plates or scales. The reptiles all produce
their young from eggs, or are "oviparous"—
some hatch their eggs within the body, and
produce their young alive, or are "ovo-viviparous."
Those are the characters belonging
to all members of the reptile class. The class
is subdivided into orders, somewhat thus: —
1. The Testudinate (tortoises and turtles).
2. Enaliosaurian (all fossil, the Ichthyosaurus
and his like). 3. Loricate (crocodiles and
alligators). 4. Saurian  (lizards). 5. Ophidian
(serpents); and the last order Batrachian
(frogs, toads, &c.); which is, by some, parted
from the reptiles, and established as another
class.

Now, we have in England no tortoises or

turtles, and no crocodiles: and the fossil order
is, in all places, extinct; so our reptiles can
belong only to the three last-named orders,
Lizards, Serpents, and Batrachians.

Thus we come back, then, to our Lizards, of

which we have among us but two genera, a