Then another New Year entered, like another dancing child,
With his tresses as a glory, and his glances bright and wild;
And he flashed his odorous torch, and he laughed out in the place,
And his soul looked forth in joy, and made a sunshine on his face.

Out from spire, and from turret, pealed the sudden New Year bells,
Like the distant songs of angels in their fields of asphodels;
And that lustrous child went sparkling to his aged father's side,
And the New Year kissed the Old Year, and the Old Year gently died.

JUSTICE TO THE HYÆNA.

MY most favourite resort (and I believe I
am not singular in that respect) for relaxation
and recreation during the busy season I am
compelled to pass amidst the smoke and din
of the metropolis, is the Zoological Society's
Gardens.

The access to these extensive and
well-arranged grounds by the noble roads, malls,
and avenues of the Regent's Park, invites the
sedentary valetudinarian to the healthy exercise
of walking; and the succession of varied
forms of animated Nature, never before
exhibited with so much latitude for the enjoyment
and exercise of their natural habits and
modes of motion, suggests a pleasing variety
of subjects, not only for the skilled observer,
but for the fleeting thoughts of a merely
speculative, though unscientific visitor.

Many an hour of mine has been occupied—
not uuprofitably I hope—by considerations so
suggested, which have led me often to refer to
the best authorities—and so made me
acquainted with many delightful works—for
further and precise information as to the
habits and organisation of the animals that
have arrested my attention. As to the
minutiae of specific definitions and the
technicalities of the binomial nomenclature, I must
confess them to be above niy scope and
faculties. Like all things remote and
shadowy, they have begot in me something
akin to a reverential awe for the adepts in
those zoological mysteries, whose names I
find are indicated by the kind of
hieroglyphical abbreviation which follows the
nomen triviale of the subject of their
nomenclative skill.

For a long time I was puzzled by the
letters or mutilated syllables standing by
themselves at the end of such labels as Felis
Lynx, Tern.; Phalangista fuUginosa. Og.;
Cheiropotamus crassiceps, Gr.; &c. But a
gentleman who honours me with his acquaintance
and occasional converse in the Gardens,
and who is F.R.S as well as F.Z.S., kindly
explained to me that those letters are the
initials of the great naturalists who have
undertaken to construct the Greek and Latin
names for the dumb creatures when they are
caught; and that they very cleverly take the
same opportunity of handing their own
names down to an admiring and grateful
posterity.

I was further gratified by my friend's
pointing out to me one of the very savans
whose name was indicated by letters, which,
previously, in my simplicity, I had imagined
to refer to the grey colour of the animal
he had named.

I thought, indeed, my respected instructor
inclined to be a little severe when he hinted
that the hieroglyphic appendage in question
was the cause of many more hard names being
invented than science would otherwise have
been burdened with; for, the custom being to
substitute one's own symbol for that of the
naturalist who had the trouble of first
describing and making known a species; where
any excuse can be invented for giving it a
new name, it was seized, he said, and thus the
custom had become a premium for superfluous
synonyms. " Equus Asimis, L.," observed the
F.R.S., " would, doubtless, have been deemed
quite adequate for an uumistakeable indication
to all ages of the humble and useful
beast of burthen, so called by the great
founder of zoological and botanical
nomenclature, if the newer name of Asinus vulgaris
had not led to the substitution of the nominal
symbol of its proposer for that of the
immortal Linnæus, in regard to this particular
species. In short," concluded my authority,
"uow-a-days every hodman in Natural History
rushes with his individual brick to the rising
zoological edifice, for the purpose of scribbling
his own name upon it."

What more might have followed in the
mood into which my unlucky question had
led the philosopher, I know not, and am glad
not to have to record. At this turn of the
discourse, we were startled by a loud and
shrill cachinnation, which at first I thought
had proceeded from some under-bred,
strong-lunged listener, who knew enough of the
subject to appreciate the point of my
informant's sarcasm.

On turning round, however, we found
ourselves, as we had supposed, standing on the
green sward apart from the crowd, who were
clustered about the hyæna's den, from which
another of the unearthly laughs proceeded,
followed by others in rapid succession and
increasing shrillness.

This strange and—when heard at some
distance—close imitation of the laughter of our
own species, is excited by very different
sentiments in the ill-favoured beast: in whom it is
the pure expression of rage and baffled desire.
In the present instance, it was called forth by
the sight of the bony part of a leg of mutton,
which the keeper was holding up at the end
of his iron staff, in front of the hyæna's cage,
but beyond the reach of the agitated and
irate brute. He, with upraised bristles and
exposed fangs, traversed rapidly to and fro