increase as in their native country. In addition
to this, her Majesty has presented the society
with some roebucks, and these are, we believe,
on their way to their new homes.

In fish, of course the great desire is to get
possession of the salmon, but hitherto every
effort has failed; though, while we write, a
further attempt, at an expense of over two thousand
pounds, is being made such expense being
defrayed by money specially voted for the purpose
by the Tasmanian and Victorian parliaments.
Dace, roach, carp, tench, and gold and silver
fish, do exist, and are increasing; but at present
it is too soon to say with what rapidity.

The government of Victoria have made over
to the Acclimatisation Society, for their use, the
Royal Park—a fine piece of timbered grass land
lying on the north side of Melbourne—and the
work of fencing and providing accommodation
for the animals and birds is making rapid
progress.

In exchange for what Australia is trying to
introduce from other countries, hardly a ship
leaves her shores but takes some native animals
to foreign countries; and although the idea may
seem absurd to an Englishman of ever really
establishing in Europe such an animal as the
kangaroo or the walloby, yet any one who has
tasted kangaroo tail soup, or dined off a slice of
roasted haunch, or stayed his hunger with a
steak—we are admonished to say nothing for
the salted ham—would look forward to such a
chance with pleasure.

When we look at the broad lands of Australia,
well grassed and well watered, and think of the
comparatively little animal life is indigenous
to the soil, we cannot but feel that the
Acclimatisation Societies of the Antipodes have a
noble work before them—a work of which we may
not see the fruits, but which shall, if it succeed,
make Australia a far happier and greater land
than she is now. And so we heartily wish the
Australians and their Society, together with
ourselves, God speed!

ALEXANDRIA OLD AND NEW.

AT Alexandria, very near the house in which
I passed a winter, lived a French physician, an
agreeable and very intelligent man, who held
an important post in the Institut Egyptien.
Learned also in antiquities was Dr. S., and most
evenings, when his day's work was done, might
his pale clever face, and his French
curlybrimmed hat, surmounting his huge white
massive-headed donkey, be seen crossing the patch
of desert between the city and the remains of
ancient Alexandria, Greek and Roman, that
border the coast in the direction of Ramlegh.

Very precious relics had he collected in his
solitary excursions, especially as the Arab
fellahs employed in excavations knew where to
apply for a certain purchaser of whatever objects
of value or curiosity they might find, and they
generally gave him the choice and the refusal of
their discoveries.

He had also a large collection of antique
skulls, taken from the vast necropolis, which
forms an important portion of the Greek remains
of the great city—skulls in a more or less
perfect condition, but, in most cases, bearing the
pure Caucasian stamp, often in its highest
development.

I had long been anxious to visit at leisure
this supereminently classic ground, over which
a ride on horseback had already greatly
stimulated my interest and curiosity, and knowing
how admirable a cicerone would be found in Dr.
S., I made interest with him to take me there.

Some others of our friends agreed to join the
party, and one fine afternoon we started, a
cavalcade of six on donkeys, headed by the
doctor on his milk-white asinine charger, and
attended by two or three Arab donkey-boys,
prodding the beasts behind to keep them at the
shuffling trot which is their usual pace.

Soon we were out of the city, and striking
across the desert sands towards our destination.
The weather was delicious, neither hot nor cold;
the sea-breeze swept athwart the broad open
space, bringing a sense of refreshing and
invigoration delightful to feel. We were all in
gay spirits, and the small incidents and accidents
of the route, inseparable from the conduct
of a troop of donkeys, for the most part carrying
riders not much accustomed to such a mode
of locomotion, only formed fresh food for "jest
and youthful jollity."

My donkey, borrowed from an acquaintance,
and no vulgar street-donkey, was a very handsome,
well-bred, well-broke beast, with housings
of a gorgeous description, so that I got on
smoothly enough, but some others of the party
were less fortunate. It seemed that the doctor's
ass, generally accustomed to go alone, was apt,
when in the company of his fellows, to be seized
with hostile dispositions towards them, on which
occasions, as the brute was as strong as an
elephant and as dogged as a mule, no means of
securing peace were to be found but in diverting
his attention and expending his energies by a
brief gallop.

Accordingly, very often in the midst of a most
interesting conversation, the doctor, who was
on the qui vive for the first symptoms of such
demonstrations, would suddenly strike his spurs
into the beast's sides, administer a sounding
whack of his cane on its head, and shoot ahead
into the desert at full gallop, perform a series of
wheels, curvets, and meanderings, then return,
and, without remark or comment, resume the
thread of his discourse exactly where he had
broken it.

Presently we came to the bank of a steep
ravine; at the bottom flowed a green and sluggish
stream, most untempting to sight and smell,
and on the opposite shore rose an Arab village,
with its mud-huts, dogs, goats, fowls, and half-
naked children, and its perpetual atmosphere of
peat smoke, by far the most wholesome and
savoury of the odours in which those dens are
rich.

Along the side of this ravine, by a narrow