and will still be in after life. The poultry
mania, which at present startles while it
delights the world, and has solved the problem
of discovering a new pleasure, is nothing but
an instance of Nature returning with a
vengeance, after she has been forcibly driven
out with a pitchfork.

We, for our parts, will be candid; and
will unblushingly, openly, and unreservedly
confess to having lately set up a childish
menagerie; and that under circumstances
of considerable difficulty. We were travelling
about, with no settled home—a month
at one place and a month at another. It
was, therefore, impossible to include in our
suite even a selection of the beauties of the
Birmingham list of feathered fowl. It was
quite out of the question to hope to be
preceded by a herdsman driving a Knowsley
flock of antelopes and vicunas for our daily
diversion. But, if one thing can't be had, to
get another, and a next best, is the part of
wisdom. A travelling menagerie we managed
to collect, not so ponderous as Wombwell's, nor
so valuable as Batty's trained steeds, but quite
as amusing as either of them in its own little
way.

It is instructive to observe the virtues, and
sometimes the caprices and failings, of humble
life. We had an excellent opportunity during
the great part of last summer. One
compartment of our zoological promenade, an
aquarium, was a large tumbler glass filled
with sea water, and mainly tenanted by a
sea anemone and a mussel. Other visitors
were now and then introduced; but they were
fleeting mortals, here to-day and gone to-
morrow. Some infant crabs, as big as your
finger-nail, would look up ravenously to a
gay young codling that was swimming in
mid-water overhead. If the tender fry sunk
down to repose, his body was instantly ripped
open by the pincers of the crabs; so there
was rapidly an end of him. But, of all
selfish and unamiable creatures, these crabs
were the very worst. While feasting on the
murdered carcase, the strongest crab
invariably amused himself by kicking his weaker
comrades back, and driving every one but
himself from table. In front, he was stuffing
his funny flat jaws with tit-bits torn off by
his finger and thumb; behind, he was carrying
on a pugilistic contest with his feet.
We determined to have no more to do with
crabs, mainly because they would let the sea
anemone have no rest, but perpetually
annoyed him, and made him shrink into
nothing, by putting their toe-nails into his
mouth.

One thing which struck us as particularly
droll, was that such despicable creatures—
"the last links of Nature's chain," and so
forth—should presume to have a will of their
own. The mussel, when put into his crystal
bath, of course sank down to the bottom of
the glass, and lay there motionless, like a
stone. He seemed to us to be just as well off
there as anywhere else. He did not think so
himself, however. In a day or two he was
suspended, by a tackle of his own spinning,
half-way up the inside of the glass, with the
widest part of his shell downwards. And so
satisfied was he with his new situation that
he strengthened and multiplied his cordage,
as fast as his resources allowed him to do so.
We could never discover how he reached his
elevation; but it must have been by shooting
forth a self-grappling mooring-rope, and then
climbing up it with his tongue or foot.

You may fancy that an oyster, of all
creatures in the world, would be the one to
take things coolly and contentedly, as they
come; but you are yielding your mind to a
vulgar delusion. An oyster is very particular
about lying in a comfortable position in his
bed. If accident or violence has turned him
in a wrong one, he fidgets till he gets into the
right one again. And his right position is
exactly that which his faithful friend and
obedient servant, the fishmonger, believes to
be the wrong one. Both the dissentient
parties are wise in their generation. The
object of the one is to let the fresh tidal stream
run in and out of his shell as fast as possible, at
certain epochs of the day; the interest of the
other is to confine a table-spoonful of sea-water
as long there as may be. So the oyster-
merchant deposits the mollusc with its hollow
shell downwards, while the oyster himself is
fretful and rebellious till he can repose upon
the flat valve of his castle. For, besides the
advantages of ventilation, or water-ation,
which the pose upon the flat shell secures, the
oyster is also well aware that his hollow
valve, when uppermost, serves him as a dome
capable of sustaining pressure, on the
principle of the arch. An oyster, lying on his
hollow shell, is exactly in the fix of a tortoise
on his back, not to mention the advantage
lost of being steadily settled in life instead of
rocking about in the unstable equilibrium of
a rolling oyster that can gather no moss.
Apropos of the moss, our mantel-shelf museum
contains several beautiful specimens
illustrative of the oyster's sucessful resolution
never to stand upon his head, if he can help
it. And those are some hollow oyster-shells,
from each of which a feathery tuft of delicate
coralline springs up, like a petrified plume
growing at the bottom of the sea. If the
oyster had not been permanently placed upon
his flat shell, how could that brittle calcareous
ramification have sprouted so elegantly on his
concave scull-cap? This native crest of the
native oyster decides the question of upside
down. The fish shop individual is all out of
sorts. If you doubt the vivacity of oysters at
large, take a walk amongst them any hot
summer's afternoon when the tide is out.
Their clatter and spurting, their snapping
and sucking, make you think they can
hardly be the same creatures which you are
accustomed to behold so "mush" and downcast
in the condemned cell of a Christmas