he returned to. Westminster Hall, but, luckily, it was
found and replaced at once.

In 1762 the eldest son of the King and Queen was
born, and he became in after years George the Fourth.
In all, there were fifteen children, nine sons and six
daughters. The Queen died in 1818, aged seventy-
four; and the King lingered until 1820, when he
died in the eighty-second year of his age, entirely
blind. G.S.

 

ELEPHANTS IN ENGLAND.
N° doubt most of the boys and girls of England

-\ have at one time or another seen an elephant.
Not to speak of the Zoological Gardens, there are
travelling menageries visiting all parts of the
country, and these often have an elephant.

But what shall we say of elephants which were
born in this country, and roamed in herds over the
land in a wild state, just as they do now in Africa
or India? Few of us would care to come upon an
untamed elephant while we were walking quietly
through a wood. There is very little fear of that
now. And yet through the valleys where the rail-
way now runs, and the screech of the engine startles
the quiet sheep, over the land on which busy towns
now stand, the elephant once roamed at will.

This we know, because in various parts of the
country at different times some bones, undoubtedly
those of the elephant, have been discovered. An
entire skull with enormous tusks still attached, which
must once have formed part of an elephant not less
than sixteen feet in height, was found at Hoxton in
the early part of this century. Remains in an excel-
lent state of preservation have also been found in
other parts of London. At and around Oxford, too,
discoveries of a similar kind have been made. Of
course the workmen who came upon these remains
were much puzzled about their nature, and sometimes
thought that they must be the remains of giants who
made England their home at a very far-off period.

R.

 

 

OUR WILD BIRDS.

, Bh XII.

i ve now, having told you

   
  
   

@ want to say a word about
i some other creatures.
\ 4 The picture represents
<? four of the gardener’s
truest friends. I shall not
say anything now about
the Tomtits, as I have
already told you what pat-
terns of ceaseless activity
and usefulness they are.
ButT cannot help saying a good word for each of the
rest of the party. The two at the bottom area couple
of Froggies, or, perhaps, the further one is meant fora
Toad, and so much the better if it is. Somehow or
other I think most people haye a kindly feeling to-
wards a poor frog, but I cannot say the same of a
toad. He is too ugly to make a pet of, and one

something about birds, I |

 

  
 

 

shrinks from touching him. It is a sad thing for any
one to have a repulsive appearance, but after all we
must not judge by appearances, for if we do we are
pretty sure to be unjust. I once killed a hideous
lizard in Spain; it was about six inches long,

eifectly black, and bristling with the most horrid-
ooking spines and prickles. It required some reso-
lution to touch it, and yet I afterwards found to my
shame that, misled by appearances, I had destroyed a
perfectly harmless and very useful creature. So the
poor toad seldom gets a kind word because he is ugly,
but few people Imow how useful he is in a garden.
In London quite high prices are given for a single
toad, in order to keep down the slugs, woodlice, and
other enemies which infest suburban gardens. Frogs,
too, are very useful, and I think ornamental, and
whenever I catch one in my walks I always bring him
home and put him in my garden. It is a pleasure to
get him to sit in my hand and watch his beautiful
eyes and panting yellow sides. If those who live in
the country knew their friends from their foes they
would never injure a Hedgehog, as he is an insatiable
destroyer of slugs and snails and other harmful
animals, and yet whoever looked at the ghastly rows
of festering corpses which the game-keeper is so proud
of displaying on the door or side of his outhouse, with-
out seeing hedgehogs among them? People seem
to think that an occasional fault is more to be
thought of than a pretty consistent life of usefulness.
And so the Hedgehog is killed for occasionally treating
himself to the egg of a game-bird in spring, and
his good. services all the rest of the year are ignored.
This is neither kind, nor just, nor wise.

It is much the same with the Mole. Of course
there are situations where moles are not wanted, and
their hills are anything but desirable on our closely-
shaven lawns and dainty flower-beds. But every-
where except in gardens their presence should be
hailed with pleasure, as they fertilise the soil, im-
prove the drainage, and are merciless devourers of
wireworms and other grubs which attack the roots of
grass and grain. People have tried the experiment
of killing off all the moles on their property, just as
they have of killing all the Rooks, and the result
has been the same in both cases; when they saw
their crops utterly destroyed by the ravages of wire-
worms and insects, they were glad enough to get the
rooks and moles to live with them again. God, who
giveth food to all flesh, has been pleased to implant
such instincts in His various creatures, that while they
feed they are all unconsciously keeping down an over-
abundance of the things they feed on. This I have
been trying to show all through these papers.

What the Psalmist said of the Lions is equally true
of the Kestrel or Owl hunting for mice and beetles,
the Swallow for flies, the Rook for wireworms—they
“do seek their meat from God ;’ that is, as I take it,
they seek it by following those instincts and employing
those weapons and devices with which God has en-
dowed them. In this way one creature keeps down
another, and if we kill the stronger, the weaker is sure
to prevail to a mischievous extent. This proportion
of one creature to another is called the ‘ Balance of
Nature,’ and it is a dangerous thing to disturb it: in
fact, we can only do so just to the extent we may
have changed the aspect of nature. In a garden, for