feeling unwilling to offend him. He took no
notice of her.

She went to the table, to rouse him. Was he
deep in thought?

He was dead.

THE END OF THE FIFTH SCENE.

WHAT WILL OUR GRANDSONS EAT?

WHAT will our grandsons eat? Divers things,
doubtless, not eaten by us, as we also have
enlarged and improved upon the diet of our
grandfathers. Englishmen a generation or two
hence may, for example, eat eland and yam, as
commonly as beef and greens. When the first
dinner of the British Acclimatisation Society
was lately held at Willis's rooms, one hundred
diners were assembled, and divers speculative
eatables were introduced. There being only one
quart of birds'-nest soup, the stewards were
enabled to give a taste, and a taste only, to
every member of the company; but the
gelatinous quality thereof was pronounced excellent.
The supply of Japanese trepang or sea-slug was
not more abundant, and had but a sluggish
reception. The kangaroo ham was too salt and
tough. We must, therefore, console ourselves,
and dispense with these rarities in our English
cuisine. But, after all, the society cares little
for mere curiosities. Leaving to zoological
gardens the exhibition of rare animals, and to
hot-houses the rearing of rare plants, its
ambition is to bring to England animals and
vegetables which can be naturalised and made to
contribute to our want s. We have discussed this
heretofore.* It has already introduced the prairie
grouse from North America, a new variety of
turkey from Honduras, and the excellent Chinese
sheep that breed twice a year. It has introduced
the Chinese yam, highly applauded at
the dinner, very much like good mashed
potatoes, and this is a plant which has taken so
kindly to our English earth, that it is not easy,
when it has once struck, to remove its roots. It
has succeeded in bringing to this country the
Bombyx Cynthia silkworms, which were found to
thrive on the allanthus, a plant flourishing
almost everywhere, and of which a specimen may
be seen any day in St. James's-square. Lord
Bacon early declared that heat and cold were the
hands of nature. The hands clasp in England.
A visitor to our Zoological Gardens is struck
by the singular capacity with which groups of
beings individually natives of climates different
from each other, and in some respects essentially
dissimilar to our own, become reconciled
to alternations of temperature. We have now
the bird of paradise of Central America breathing
the same atmosphere as the ostrich of
Central Africa, the Polar bear existing under
the same sun as the tiger of Bengal, and the
bower bird of Australia a near neighbour to
the bearded vulture of Algiers. Acclimatisation,
though not undertaken systematically, is, of
course, but an old custom of civilisation. The
turkey, a bird in which our interest now
deepens as Christmas is seen growing on us
from afar, was introduced into Europe by the
Spaniards, from the high regions of Mexico, after
the subjugation of that territory. It was said by
Benjamin Franklin, that the wild turkey, which
is truly a national bird, indigenous to the soil,
and not found beyond the limits of the continent,
ought, after the example of the Gallic
cock, to have been the national emblem of
Northern America. The traveller who has seen
the wild cock of the wilderness gleaming with
bright and golden plumage, tinted with the
varieties of blue, violet, and green, broken by
the deep black bands and metallic lustre of the
feathers, looks with disdain upon the conceited
gobbler of our homesteads. The wild
cocks are the sentinels of the forest:

On the top
Of yon mangolia, the loud turkey's voice
Is heralding the dawn, from tree to tree
Extends the wakening watch note, far and wide,
Till the whole woodlands echo in the cry.

* See "Acclimatisation," page 492, volume v.

A bird so capable of European naturalisation
soon found its way into England, and although
the wild beauty of the bird is gone, we have
reason to be content with a native born and
reared in Norfolk, as an example of what accli-
matisation can effect.

The peacock was a bird of India, originally
brought to Macedon by the soldiers of Alexander
the Great, and afterwards distributed in the
course of their conquests by the Romans. The
pheasant, also of Eastern origin, and originally
restricted to the Asiatic continent, was
first brought from Asia Minor, but its hardy
constitution has fitted it for almost every
country. The earliest mention of the bird in
England is in the reign of our first Edward, but
it has become a settled denizen of our woods,
and a general delicacy on our tables. The
partridge is said by some to have originally been a
visitor from Egypt and the Barbary coast, but
the red-legged bird is a modern introduction from
France, and to the regret of many has become
only too plentiful in some preserves, and too
completely acclimatised. It persecutes our
native breed, which is better both for the sportsman
and the table, while by its determined
running it does what it can to spoil the best-
trained pointer. The guinea-fowl, as its name
announces, is a native of the Guinea coast, but
its noisy presence in our farm-yards, and its
introduction at certain seasons at our entertainments,
show how completely it has made itself
at home. Even the favourite cage-songster of
our homes—the canary-finch—did not visit
England until the sixteenth century, and its first
introduction into Europe was remarkable. A
vessel, with a few of the birds on board, was
wrecked on the Italian coast, opposite the island
of Elba, where some of them having escaped
found a refuge, and, the climate proving favourable,
their number increased. From that parent
stock it is believed that all our domesticated
warblers have sprung, and they have been long
considered members of our families. But to
go back to eatables, let venison bear witness to