should be embalmed and preserved in the town-house, as a perpetual token of gratitude.

In the East, the employment of pigeons for the conveyance of letters is still very common, particularly in Syria, Arabia, and Egypt. Every bashaw has generally a basket full of them sent him from the grand seraglio, where they are bred, and in case of any insurrection, or other emergency, he is enabled, by letting loose two or more of these extraordinary messengers, to convey intelligence to the government long before it could be possibly obtained by other means. The diligence and speed with which these feathered messengers wing their course is extraordinary. From the instant of the liberation, their flight is directed through the clouds at an immense height, to the place of their destination. They are believed to dart onward in a straight line, and never descend, except when at a loss for breath, and then they are to be seen commonly at dawn of day, lying on their backs on the ground, with their bills open, sucking in with hasty avidity the dew of the morning. Of their speed, the instances related are almost incredible.

The consul of Alexandria daily sends dispatches by these means to Aleppo in five hours, though couriers occupy the whole day, and proceed with the utmost expedition from one town to the other.

Some years ago, a gentleman sent a carrier pigeon from London, by the stage coach, to his friend at St. Edmunsbury, together with a note, desiring that the pigeon, two days after its arrival there might be thrown up precisely when the town clock struck nine in the morning. This was done accordingly, and the pigeon arrived in London, and flew to the Bull Inn, Bishopsgate-street, into the loft, and was there shown at half an hour past eleven o'clock, having flown seventy-two miles in two hours and a half.

At Antwerp, in 1819, one of the thirty-two pigeons belonging to that city, which had been conveyed to London, and there let loose, made the transit back, being a distance, in a direct line of 180 miles, in six hours. It is through the attachment of the animals to the place of their birth, and particularly to the spot where they had brought up their young, that they are thus rendered useful to mankind. When a young one flies very hard at home, and is come to its full strength, it is carried in a basket or otherwise, about half a mile from its home, and there turned out; after this, it is carried a mile, then two, four, eight, ten, twenty, &c., till at length it will return from the furthermost part of the country.

THE ALLIGATOR HUNT!

Or, Travellers see Strange Things. "I must give a short account of an alligator-hunt (says Capt. Basil Hall, R. N.) at a

place called Nellivelley, near Trincomalee, got up for the admiral's express amusement, and performed by a corps of Malays in the British service, the 1st Ceylon regiment. Very early in the morning of the 22d of September, the party, which consisted of several ladies and a large proportion of red coats and blue coats were summoned from their beds to set forth on this expedition. The admiral, as usual, was up, dressed, and on horseback, long before any of the rest of the company, whom he failed not to scold, or to quiz, as they severally crept out of their holes, rubbing their eyes, and very much doubting whether the pleasure of the sport were likely to compensate for the horrible bore of early rising. In other countries the hour of getting up may be left to choice; in India, when any thing active is to be done, it is a matter of necessity; for after the sun has gained even a few degrees of altitude, the heat and discomfort, as well as the danger of exposure, become so great, that all pleasure is at an end. This circumstance limits the hours of travelling and of exercise in the East very inconveniently, and introduces modifications which help in no slight degree to give a distinctive character to Indian manners. As there was little risk of being too late on any party of which Sir Samuel Hood took the lead, the day had scarcely begun to dawn when we all cantered up to the scene of action. The ground lay as flat as a marsh for many leagues; here and there the plain was spotted with small stagnant lakes, connected together by sluggish streams, or canals, scarcely moving over beds of mud, between banks fringed with a rank crop of draggled weeds, and giving birth to clouds of mosquitoes. The chill atmosphere of the morning felt so thick and clammy, it was impossible for the most confident in his own strength and health not to think of agues, jungle fevers, and all the hopeful family of malaria. The hardy native soldiers, who had occupied the ground during the night in despite of the miasmata, were drawn up to receive the admiral; and a very queer guard of honor they formed. The whole regiment had stripped off their uniform, and every other stitch of clothing, save a pair of short trousers, and a kind of sandal. In place of a firelock, each man bore in his hand a slender pole about six feet in length, to the extremity of which was attached the bayonet of his musket. His only other weapon was the formidable Malay crease, a sort of dagger or small edition of the waving two-edged sword with which the angel Michael is armed in Raphael's picture of the Expulsion of our First Parents from Paradise. Soon after the commander-in-chief came to the ground, the regiment was divided into two main parties,and a body of reserves. The principal columns. facing one to the right, the other to the lett proceeded to occupy different points in one of those sluggish canals I have already mentioned, connecting the lakes or pools, scat

tered over the plain. These detachments, being stationed about a mile from one another, enclosed an interval where, from some peculiar circumstances known only to the Malays (who are passionately fond of this sport), the alligators were sure to be found in great numbers. The troops formed themselves across the canal in three parallel lines, ten or twelve feet apart; but the men in each line stood side by side, merely leaving room enough to wield their pikes. The canal may have been about four or five feet deep in the middle of the stream, if stream it may be called, which scarcely moved at all. The colour of the water when undisturbed was a shade between ink and coffee; but no sooner had the triple line of Malays set themselves in motion, and the mud got stirred up, than the consistence and colour of the fluid became like those of pease-soup. On every thing being reported ready, the soldiers planted their pikes before them in the mud, and, if I recollect right, each man crossing his neighbour's weapon, and at the word march' away they all started in full cry, sending forth a shout, or warwhoop, sufficient to curdle the blood of those on land, whatever effect it may have had on the inhabitants of the deep. As the two divisions of the invading army, starting from opposite ends of the canal, gradually ap proached each other in pretty close column, screaming and yelling with all their souls, and striking their pikes deep in the slime before them, the startled animals naturally retired towards the unoccupied centre. Generally speaking, the alligators, or crocodiles (for I believe they are very nearly the same), had sense enough to turn their long tails upon their assailants, and to scuttle off as fast as they could towards the middle part of the canal. But every now and then, one of the terrified monsters, either confused by the sound, or provoked by the prick of a pike, or mystified by the turbid nature of the stream, floundered backwards, and by retreating in the wrong direction, broke through the first, second, and even third line of pikes. This, which would have been any thing but an amusement to unpractised hands, was the perfection of sport to the delighted Malays. A double circle of soldiers was speedily formed round the wretched aquatic who had presumed to pass the barrier. By means of well-directed thrusts with numberless bayonets, and the pressure of some dozens of feet, the poor brute was often fairly driven beneath his native mud. When once there, his enemies half choked and half spitted him, till at last they put an end to his miserable days in regions quite out of sight, and in a manner as inglorious as can well be corceived. For the poor denizens of the pool, indeed it was the choice between Scylla and Charybdis with a vengeance; and I am half ashamed to acknowledge the savage kind of delight with which we stood on the banks, and saw the distracted creatures rushing

from one attack right into the jaws of another. The Malays, in their ecstacy, declared that the small fry from one side rushed down the throats of the big ones whom they met flying in the opposite direction. But this seems very questionable, though positively asserted by the enraptured natives, who redoubled their shouts as the plot thickened, and the two bodies of troops, marching from opposite quarters, drew within a hundred yards of each other. The intermediate space was now pretty well crowded with alligators, swimming about in the utmost terror; at times. diving below, and anon showing their noses, well plastered with mud, high above the surface of the dirty stream; or occasionally making a furious bolt in sheer despair right at the phalanx of Malays. On these occasions, half-a-dozen of the soldiers were often upset, and their pikes either broken or twisted out of their hands to the infinite amusement of their companions, who speedily closed up the broken ranks, as if their comrades had been shot down in battle. The killed were none, but the wounded many; yet no man flinched in the least. The perfection of the sport appeared to consist in detaching a single alligator from the rest, surrounding and attacking him separately, and spearing him till he was almost dead. The Malays then, by main strength, forked him aloft, over their heads, on the end of a dozen pikes, and, by a sudden jerk, pitched the conquered monster far on the shore. As the alligators are amphibious, they kept to the water no longer than they found they had an advantage in that element; but as the period of the final mélée approached, on the two columns of their enemy closing up, the monsters lost all discipline, floundered, and ploutered up the weedy banks, scuttling away to the right and left, helter-skelter. 'Sauve qui peut !' seemed to be the fatal watch-word for their total rout. That prudent cry would, no doubt, have saved many of them, as it has saved other vanquished forces, had not the Malays judiciously placed beforehand their reserve on each side of the river to receive the distracted fugitives, who, bathed in mud, and half dead with terror, but still in a prodigious fury, dashed off at right angles from the canal, in hopes of gaining the shelter of a swampy pool overgrown with reeds and bulrushes, but which, alas for most of the poor beasts, they were never doomed to reach. The concluding battle between these retreating and desperate alligators and the Malays of the reserve was formidable enough. Indeed, had not the one party been fresh, the other exhausted-one confident, the other broken in spirit, it is quite possible that the crocodiles might have worsted the pirates, as the Malays are called in every other part of the world but the east, where they are generally admitted to be as good a set of people as any of their neighbours. It is needless to say, that while all this was going on, our gallant admiral, sir Samuel Hood, was a pretty busy

spectator. His eagle eye glanced along the canal, and at a moment took in the whole purpose of the campaign. As the war advanced, and sundry small affairs of out-posts took place, we could see his face flushing with delight. But when the first alligator was cast headlong and gasping at his feet, pierced with at least twenty pike wounds, and bristled with half a dozen fragments of these weapons fractured in the onslaught, the whole plain rang with exclamations of boyish delight. When the detachments closed in upon their prey, and every moment gave birth to some new prodigy of valour, or laid a whole line of the Malay soldiers prostrate on the muddy stream, like so many nine-pins, verily believe that if none of his own people had been present, the admiral would have seized a pike himself, and jumped into the thickest of the fight, boots, sword, cocked hat, and all! As it was, he kept himself close to the banks, and rivalled the best Malay amongst them in yelling and cheering on the forces to their duty. This intensity of eagerness had well nigh proved rather awkward for his excellency's dignity, if not his safety; for, in spite of the repeated warnings of the English officers of the regiment, who knew from former hunts what was sure to happen eventually, the admiral persisted in approaching the edge of the canal, as the final act of the alligators' tragedy commenced. And as we, his poor officers, were, of course, obliged to follow our chief into any danger, a considerable party of us found ourselves rather awkwardly placed between the reserve of Malays already spoken of, and the canal, just as the grand rush took place at the close of the battle. If the infuriated crocodiles had only known what they were about, and had then brought their long sharp snouts, and still harder tails, into play, several of his majesty's officers might have chanced to find themselves in a scrape. As it was, we were extremely near being wedged in between the animals' noses and the pikes and creases of the wild Malays. It was difficult, indeed, to say which of the two looked at that moment the most savage-the triumphant natives, or the flying troop of alligators walloping away from the water. Many on both sides were wounded, and all, without exception, covered with slime and weeds. Some of our party were actually pushed over, and fell plump in the mud, to the very provoking and particular amusement of the delighted admiral, whose superior adroitness enabled him to avoid such an undignified catastrophe, by umping first on one side and then on the other, in a manner which excited both the mirth and the alarmn of his company; though, of course, we took good care rather to laugh with our commander-in-chief, than at him. I forget the total number of alligators killed, but certainly there could not have been fewer than thirty or forty. The largest measured ten feet in length, and four feet girth, the

head being exactly two feet long. Besides these great fellows, we caught, alive, a multitude of little ones, nine inches long, many of which we carried back to Trincomalee. Half

a dozen of these were kept in tubs of water at the Admiralty House for many days; the rest, being carried on board, became great favorites amongst the sailors, whose queer taste in the choice of pets has already been noticed."

THE COYA.

In the district of Popayan (according to Ulloa's Voyages,) which lies to the north of Quito, there occurs an insect of very remarkable properties. It is shaped like a spider, and is much less than a bug: its common name is coya, but others call it coyba; its colour is of a fiery red, and, like spiders, it is generally found in the corners of walls, and among the herbage. Its venom is of such a malignity, that on squeezing the insect, if any happen to fall on the skin of either man or beast, it immediately penetrates into the flesh, and causes large tumours, which are soon succeeded by death. The only remedy hitherto known, is,on the first appearance of a swelling, to singe the party all over the body with the flame of straw, or long grass growing in those plains. In order to this, the Indians of that country lay hold of the patient, some by the feet, and others oy the hands, and with great dexterity perform the operation, after which the person is reckoned to be out of danger. But it is to be observed, that though this insect be so very noxious, yet squeezing it between the palms of the hands is attended with no bad consequence: from whence the plain inference is, that the callus, usual on the hands of most people, prevents the venom from reaching the blood. Accordingly the Indian muleteers, to please the curiosity of the passengers, squeeze them between the palms of their hands, though unquestionably, should a person of a delicate hand make the trial, the effects would be the same as on any other part of the body.

TOM SPRING'S FAREWELL TO IRELAND.

AIR

"Tho' the last glimpse of Erin with sorrow I see.”
Though the last glimpse of Erin with sorrow I see,
Yet Dublin shall always be precious to me,
And though to my "Castle" again I repair,
I shall think of the whiskey I tippled when there.
Though again in my parlour I pass round the joke,
Encircled by friends, and enveloped in smoke,
Yet nothing on earth shall my memory rob
Of Simon, Tom Reynolds, and Whiteheaded Bob.

Adieu, worthy friends, may your spirits be light-
Your potatoes be mealy--your whiskey be bright-
Days of darkness, I trust, will to you be unknown
And your Winter dissolve into Spring like my own.

12.

Amidst VARIETY's great range,
In LONDON's splendid mart-
Take a peep at that "Gay Exchange,"

Where sportsmen play their part?
All thorough-bred! such chaffing pals:
With HIGH, Low, JACK, and GAME,
Sure to meet with-at TATTERSALL'S,
So old in sporting fame!

For dashing Cab,
With natty lad,
Out-and-out Prad,
Going-going-going--the last time-

from a good house, I pledge, my word, gentlemen. My Lord Duke, will you allow me to say 2501. for your Grace? She will, not withstanding the excellence of your Grace's stud, be an ornament to it. She is a picture-complete to a shade; in fact, I could gaze upon her for ever, and always be struck with some new beauty she possesses. Thank you, my Lord Duke, I was certain your Grace would not let such an opportunity pass. There is not a horse dealer in the kingdom who can show such a fine creature! She is above competition-I may say, she is matchless! the Regent's Park might be betted to a mole-hill with safety that she has no paragon. Sir Henry, let me call your attention to CLEOPATRA! She is like her namesake in the olden times-but beautiful without paint! She is pure Nature, and no vice! Her action, Sir Harry-yes, her action-I could dilaté upon it for a quarter of an hour-but puffing is out of the question-you shall judge for yourself. Run her down, John-The Graces, I am sure, Sir Harry, were they to behold her movements, would be out of temper with her captivating excellence! Taglioni, I must admit, can perform wonders with her pretty feet; but Cleopatra, my Lord Duke, can distance the whole of them put together; and positively leave the Opera House with all its talent, in the back ground. In fact, I am deficient in words to display her immense capabilities

66

2001. Going! Going! 310 Thank you, my Lord Duke, she must be yours. For the last time, going at 3101.; but I will do the handsome thing, I will allow you five minutes to compose your mind-I am well aware that such unparalleled beauty is very dazzling-therefore, before you lose sight of this handsome creature, I do impress upon you, to remember that the opportunity once lost-3201.; Sir Harry, I am obliged to youthe world has always acknowledged you as a man of great taste in matters of this kind; and, without flattery, you have never shown it more than in the present instanceaccording to the poet, Beauty unadorned, is adorned the most!" Going-CLEOPATRA, my Lord Duke, will be in other hands if your Grace does not make up your mind in your usual princely style of doing things-a good bidding will make CLEOPATRA your own for ever, therefore, now's the time to put on the distancing power, and your Grace will win the race in a canter! 340l. My Lord Duke, I can only express my gratitude to say, that you have done me honor-Going!-going-in fact, gentlemen, I am like an artist in this case, I do not like to leave such a delightful picture and 1 could dwell upon the qualities of CLEOPATRA to the echo that applauds again-but most certainly I have given you all a fair chance-CLEOPATRA is on the go-are you all silent-going for 340l. after all, what is that sum for one of the greatest English beauties ever submitted to the inspection of the public! 350., thank you, Sir Charles-worth your money at any price. I have witnessed your

notice of CLEOPATRA for some time past-she will bear looking at, again and again! Charming CLEOPATRA! I am glad to see she has so many suitors for her hand-I beg pardon, gentlemen-a slip will happen to the best of us-her feet, I should have said, but nevertheless, I am happy to see she has a host of admirers. I cannot bid myself, or else I would "make play," and CLEOPATRA should become a noble prize. 3701. Bravo! my Lord Duke ! for 370l. positively, yes positively, 'pon my honor, positively the last time-or else the beautiful CLEOPATRA goes into the keeping of my Lord Duke. You are sure, gentlemen, that you have all done? Don't blame me, don't blame yourselves! Going, once! Going, twice! Going, three times! [The auctioneer, after a long pause, and numerous flourishes with his hammer, in hopes to obtain another bidding, but the 'cock would not fight,' exclaimed,] GONE!!! CLEOPATRA belongs to the Duke.

Then TATTERSALL'S the place,
For pedigree to trace,

One of the tip-top shows in London.

For the last fifty years, and upwards, the name of TATTERSALL, and his establishment, have stood eminently conspicuous in the sporting world; and, notwithstanding the opposition started at various times against it, yet naturally to be expected in an improving Metropolis, like London, where myriads of speculators and men of talent are always upon the look out, to have a finger in the pie, of good things,' none of the 'new concerns' have been able to reduce its consequence, or lessen its character in the eyes of the public; but, on the contrary, it has increased rather than diminished both in point of business and attraction. There is no establishment that we can remember, and also from the best information we have acquired upon the subject, that has kept its ground so firmly, in every point of view as-TATTERSALL's; therefore we are induced to quote from ourselves-" Life in London, 1821 ;" and have no reason to alter our opinion:

"This scene is so very familiar to a certain part of the public, and can also be identified at any period, that it scarcely requires a comment. But to a great portion of society in the Metropolis, who are quite aloof from sporting transactions, a short account of this most celebrated repository may prove not altogether unacceptable.

"Jerry expressed himself so much pleased with his visit to TATTERSALL's, that he observed to Logic, during his stay in London he should often frequent it. "I delight," said HAWTHORN, "to be in the company of sportsmen; and no objects afford me greater satisfaction than the sight of a fine hunter,-the view of a high-mettled racer,-and the look of a perfect greyhound." "I admire them also," replied the Corinthian; "and Tattersall's will always prove an agreeable lounge, if no direct purpose call a person