which is by them led to trace bad effects
to their cause in conditions of existence
that require amendment; as for example we
are taught by cholera that we must not so
misuse our power of free action as to pen one
another up in filthy heaps, neglecting to use
the fresh air, the pure light and the clear
water that lie ready to our mouth and eyes
and hands. Brutes, however, are created not
for progressive development, but for the
simple enjoyment of the life and power that
they have. Sickness has not for them its
uses, instinct commonly teaches them to
avoid causes of disease, and those which
become a prey to animals that feed upon
them die suddenly a quick and easy death,
after a life that has been wholly free from
aches and pains, and all the toils that old age
and debility bring with them. They go to
make fresh life and vigour, and there is in
this way a great wealth of strong and happy
life established in the world, and a great deal
of fatigue and suffering kept out of it. A
further use of this method of maintaining
one set of animals on the waste of another, is
to increase very much the variety of form
and structure which give to our universe so
much beauty and interest, and to the thinking
man so many clues by which he may lead his
thoughts upward and increase his own small
stock of wisdom by the study of a wisdom that
is infinite and perfect. While the varieties
of form are increased there is a due check put
on the undue reproduction of any single
species.—We might follow these reflections
out a great deal farther, but we have said
enough for our purpose, which was to suggest
the reflection that a large animal created
with direct and obvious reference to his
assigned business of destroying ant's nests
and subsisting upon their inhabitants, illustrates
a great principle in the government of
the world that springs wholly from beneficence,
and can be thought strange only because
it is unfamiliar and striking. Equally
or even more surprising would be the net
spread by the spider, if one, with the animal
at work upon it, could be exhibited to a
people among whom spiders never have been
seen. Yet we sweep such things down from
the corner of our houses and regard them
but as common dust.

There is some reason to doubt whether the
Ant-bear in Bloomsbury will live through an
English winter. It is now healthy, but thin
and languid, as most exotic animals become
when they are brought among us. Mrs.
Meredith, in her account of her Home in
Tasmania, gave us the other day quite startling
accounts of the briskness of a tame opossum
under its own skies, in opposition to the
common statement made here, even by some
naturalists, that they are sluggish animals.
The Ant-bear that crawled lazily out of its
box under the shadow of St. Giles's steeple,
would at this time have been fishing and
leaping with fierce vigour if left to the shelter
of the forests of Brazil. At home, when
rendered fierce by hunger, it will make a
bound of ten feet to spring on the back of
a horse, tear open the horse's shoulder with
its huge claws, and then suck the blood out
of the wound. Here it comes, lean as it is,
very lazily out of its box at the crackling of
an eggshell to follow its master about, licking
the yolk out of an egg with its long tongue.
It does that very cleverly. Like most of
the tame Ant-bears in Brazil, this one in
Bloomsbury, though but an infant, eats fifty
in a day, with a little milk, and meat chopped
finely or in soup.

It needs not only food but air. It would
do best, said the German, if it had some
green to run upon. The air of a small room
in Holborn or in Oxford Street, to which last
thoroughfare the show entertained a notion
of removing, adds one more peril to the
chance of maintaining alive this little
stranger. The peril, however, is not very
likely to be of long duration. Such a prize
as an Ant-bear could not hide itself a day in
London from the eye of the ever active secretary
of the gardens in Regent's Park. He
was already in treaty with the Germans, and
had offered them, if they went with their
animal to the Zoological Garden, the weekly
payment of quite a royal pension during its
life. They were to have every week certainly
as much as they could make of profit out of
their show during six months in Broad
Street. They had refused that offer, and
desired to sell their treasure outright at a
price that was but ten weeks' purchase of
the pension offered, with a condition that
they would return one-third of the money if
the Ant-bear died within ten weeks. This
suggestion proves that the owners themselves
consider the Ant-bear's life a very bad one to
ensure themselves a salary upon. So the
negociation stands at present, that is to say
while we write. When this is read, the matter
will be settled. The strange animal may
have become famous among us, and be
in a fair way to get through the winter
under able watching and with the best
artificial aid, or it may be still pining in
an obscure show-room, or it may be dead
and stuffed and framed and glazed, or dead
and dissected.

If dead and stuffed, let no man put faith in
its appearance. We have seen no English
picture of the Ant-bear at all equal to the
truth, and if we may take as a sample the
stuffed specimen brought from Rio Janeiro
with this living animal, the stuffer fails yet
more completely than the painter. The long,
smooth, hard nose, like a stiff, straight, hairy
proboscis, only by no means a proboscis, for
it has no mouth under it but carries a little
toothless mouth at the end of itself, and a
pair of small, keen eyes at its root; that
wonderful long head which we call nose,
which is made to dive into the innermost
recesses of the ant's nest, and which is