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We ought to be just as tolerant of an imperfect creed as we are of an imperfect practice. Everything which can be urged in excuse for the latter may also be pleaded for the former. If the way to Christian accion is beset by corrupt habits and misleading passions, the path to Christian truth is overgrown with prejudices and strewn with fallen theories and rotting systems which hide it from our view. It is quite as hard to think rightly as it is to act rightly, or even to feel rightly. And as all allow that an error is a less culpable thing than a crime or a vicious passion, it is monstrous that it should be more severely punished; it is monstrous that Christ who was called the friend of publicans and sinners should be represented as the pitiless enemy of seekers after truth.' (P. 72.)

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Cannot the unpardonable sin of certain contemptuous expressions about 'little-minded and vexatious prohibitions, spasmodic efforts to kindle feeling, a hollow, poor, and sickly Christianity, be forgiven for the sake of so truly evangelical a passage as this:

vigour than the states which are founded on the relations of family, or language, or the

convenience of self-defence and trade. Not less vigour, and certainly far more vitality. It has already long outlasted all the states which were existing at the time of its foundation; it numbers far more citizens than any of the states which it has seen spring up near it. It subsists without the help of costly armaments; resting on no accidental aid or physical support, but on an inherent immortality, it defied the enmity of ancient civilization, the brutality of medieval barbarism, and under the present universal empire of public opinion it is so secure that even those parts of it seem indestructible which deserve to die.' (P. 325.)

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in the judgment of dogmatists, for not arrivBut no; nothing, it appears, can atone, ing at dogma in the authorised way. Health is nothing. The nostrum is everything. would rather see the patient die selon les And, like Molière's physician, these doctors raged all that was customary. Unless this régles than recover by a process that outauthor will consent, not only in his future volume and at a more mature stage of his argument, but now, on the spot, and at the word of command, - whether or not it ruin 'Justice is often but a form of pedantry, perdere. causas, his plan, and threaten vivendi causâ vivendi mercy mere easiness of temper, courage a mere to utter the recognised firmness of physical constitution; but if these formula of orthodoxy, he shall not be allowVirtues are genuine, then they indicate not good-ed to pass muster. Not the mispronounced ness merely but goodness considerably devel- word, but the unpronounced word, is to be oped. We want a test which shall admit all his condemnation. Hew him down! The who have it in them to be good whether their Lord will know his own.' We do not exaggood qualities be trained or no. Such a test is gerate. We repeat, and are prepared to found in Faith. He who, when goodness is impressively put before him, exhibits an in prove, that the way in which this book has stinctive loyalty to it, starts forward to take its been in certain quarters reviewed, reflects side, trusts himself to it, such a man has faith, the deepest disgrace on the writers, and and the root of the matter is in such a man. displays, in a shape which it would be suHe may have habits of vice, but the loyal and perfluous to caricature, the almost hopeless faithful instinct in him will place him above senility of modern orthodoxy.' many that practise virtue. He may be rude in unwilling to drop for a moment the usual thought and character, but he will unconsciously periphrases of courtesy; but indignation gravitate towards what is right. Other virtues compels us to pronounce the words, that can scarcely thrive without a fine natural or- the two main offenders against the first ganization and a happy training. But the most neglected and ungifted of men may make principles of fair-play and Christian toleraa beginning with faith.' (P. 66.) tion are the Quarterly Review' and Mr. Spurgeon. Will it be believed, that a supercilious critic who complains of 'ignoAnd yet once more, might not an occa-rance' should be ignorant that St. John i. sional rebuke of Churchmen's besetting 17 does not contain the words of the Bapsins be atoned for by such a noble concep- tist? that one who charges others with tion of the Christian Church as this: :

We are

'defiance of elementary principles which are familiar to children and peasants,' 'However impossible it may seem, this specu- should state that a church of which the ultilation of a commonwealth developed from first principles has been realised on a grand scale. mate object was the improvement of moralIt stands in history among other states; it sub-ity [the equivalent in Ecce Homo' for the sists in the midst of other states, connected with them and yet distinct. Though so refined and philosophic in its constitution, it has not less

saving of men's souls'] would not be Christian but infidel'? And that this staunch malleus hæreticorum should himself fall into the fol

lowing deadly heresy, 'The doctrine that He who was perfect God and perfect man could admit the idea of taking wrongful courses, that He could entertain the Temptation for a moment if it arose. . . is only consistent with some of the lower grades of Socinianism'? And yet once more, is it credible that The Sword and Trowel,' edited by Mr. Spurgeon, to represent (we may presume) Dissenting principles of freedom and toleration, should in one breath describe the writer as 'no blasphemer of the Lord Jesus, but a warm admirer of the self-denying love of the Man of Sorrows,' as not denying miracles, nor impugning even the Deity of Christ,' as clearly seeing that Christ's kingdom is spiritual. . ., and its principles in the highest degree promotive of freedom, philanthropy, brotherhood, and progress,' and then turn round upon him with the most vulgar vituperation if this treatise be the production of a minister of any denomination of Evangelical Christians, he ought, if he has even half as much honesty as any ordinary thief, to resign his position at once'?†

tion, which every day's experience must make more clear, that he is at least understood by those for whose especial benefit he has been labouring, has kindled faith afresh in many a wavering soul, and inspired with that love of Christ which saves and redeems men, many a heart that could find no beauty in dead formulæ and no rest in barren 'Evidences.' From such thoughts he may well draw lessons of thankful tranquillity and content, and find courage to prosecute his fruitful studies in peace. For 'no greater subject can in our own day employ any man's noblest energies than preservation or renewal of the truth of God, not fettered overmuch by the human accidents of our ancestors in the faith, yet with reverential tenderness even for these.' *

From the Intellectual Observer.

ANIMAL LIFE IN SOUTH AFRICA.

BY H. CHICHESTER, ESQ.

ALTHOUGH narratives of travel and of

sporting adventure in Africa have of late
become so numerous, the amount of infor-
mation to be acquired through their medium
respecting the peculiarities of the animal
world in these regions, still beyond doubt
the finest game countries of the older conti-
nent, is (with one or two exceptions) scanty
indeed. We
in the following pages
propose
to notice a few among the many points thus
generally overlooked.

For such a reception as this, in such quarters, we do not think the author of Ecce Homo' could have been prepared; nor yet for the singular inability of a great Roman Catholic writer in The Month' to perceive that 'to exhibit some sides of Christianity and not others,' which he holds to be the main fault of the author,' is precisely an essential part of his plan. To have his noble and truthful work characterised by a philanthropical earl as the most pestilential work that was ever vomited out of the jaws of hell,' must have cost him far less surprise and far less pain. Nor has he met with better usage at the hands of the opposite party. The critics who have exercised their ingenuity on Ecce Homo in the Westminster Review 'and in Fraser's Magazine,' are evidently not men who would be alarmed at any want of orthodoxy; but we must be permitted to say that they have entirely failed to apprehend the scope of the work, and that their objections apply to that which the author of it certainly never intended, his book to be. But whether received with vituperation or with misunderstanding, whether pertinaciously censured as if complete when it proclaims itself incessantly to be a fragment,' whether scorned by unbelievers, rejected by believers, or neglected by men of the world, the author may at least take comfort from the reflec-ping away," when his acute senses of smell

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*Quart. Rev.; April, 1866.

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† Sword and Trowel; January, 1866.

The Month; June, 1866.

Commemcing with the hugest specimen of nature's handiwork, the elephant, we have generally found two curious points overlooked or ignored by writers - one is the rapid and noiseless movements of this aniImal in the thickest cover; the other, his

capabilities of passing over ground for him apparently utterly unfeasible. The elastic noiseless footfall of the elephant has been frequently referred to by writers on Indian the most agreeable feature in journeying on subjects, and has been rightly asserted to be elephant-back.

This peculiarity may be easily explained by an examination of the lent stealthy way in which he will pass structure of the animal's foot; but the sithrough the densest thicket, literally "slip

or hearing warn him of danger, has been generally overlooked, and appears to us

Williams' Rational Gocl ne s,' p. 401.

somewhat difficult of explanation. Let any- no doubt of its having been repeatedly

one unskilled in the mysteries of " bush ranging," attempt to move even a few paces in an ordinary fox-covert without noise, and he will form some idea of the difficulties presented to the passage of so huge an animal as the elephant through the dense tangled undergrowth of a South African "bush." Yet that the animal, despite his enormous bulk, will "draw off," when within a few yards of his pursuer, without the slightest noise, and with the greatest rapidity, even in the thickest cover, is undeniable. We may, however, remark that this faculty or by whatever other term it may be described, is not peculiar to the elephant alone, for it has been observed to a marked extent in the moose or cariboo of North America.

Again, his powers of passing over difficult ground are often underrated even by hunters. When experiments were first made * in India in training elephants to draw the guns, it was observed with surprise that the animal's powers of ascending steep and rugged ground were far greater than had been anticipated. The gun, a light six-pounder, with which the trial was first made, was drawn up a slope so steep as to require the animal to crawl upon its foreknees, without hesitation. On the other hand, hampered by the gun and harness, the elephant (a small female) showed unusual dread of soft and swampy ground. In Africa, marshes do not seem to possess the same terror for these animals in their wild state, for if they offer tempting pools, however uncertain the footing may, be the elephants appear to find a track across them.† In the river courses too, deepened as they are by the torrent of the rainy season many yards below the surface of the surrounding country, and having banks nearly perpendicular, small shady pools close sheltered from the sun's rays, often remain in the hot season when the rest of the stream has disappeared, and to these, should no other way be open, may be found tracks of the animals, leaving no doubt they have reached the coveted water by slipping down on their posteriors. In what position the hinder legs are placed during this operation we cannot tell, but the "spoor" leaves

* About thirty years ago by a committee of Indian Artillery officers. Elephants, we may remark, had been previously used in assisting the gun teams by pushing with their heads, and aiding with their trunks, and not by drawing in harness.

Elephants, like the generality of wild animals, take the water readily and swim well. Even ba boons, though unwilling to do so, will on emergen cies, swim with strength and rapidity, although with a queer and somewhat ludicrous action.

adopted in places apparently inaccessible.

The elephants generally remain in the thickest part of the forest during day, making for the water, to which they often go long distances, shortly before midnight, and returning to cover some hours before dawn. We may here remark, that although these animals, owing no doubt to their acute sense of hearing and of scent, have never been surprised in a recumbent position, there is ample proof that the bulls at any rate, usually rest lying on their sides. The late Mr. Gordon Cumming was, we believe, the first to note this fact, which we can ourselves confirm. He remarked that the sides of the enormous ant heaps so common in this region, were apparently preferred, and that the ground was often distinctly marked with the impression of the under tusk as well as of the animal's body.

The influence of the particular tract of country in which they are found upon these animals, and the influence which they, in their turn, like all other living creatures, exercise on their habitat, should not escape a short notice.

On the borders of the Cape Colony and Natal, we find the few elephants that remain large in size, but with comparatively small tusks of inferior ivory. As we approach the equator, although food is far more plentiful, we find the animals smaller in size, having far larger tusks, the latter too being of an ivory far superior in hardness and closeness of grain. Indeed, although naturalists have not recognized more than one species of the African elephant, the varieties of ivory exported from the north, west, south-west, south-east coast, and the Cape, have each marked differences of quality by which they are easily recognizable. The animals in their turn, however, likewise affect the economy of the country they inhabit. The damage done even by a single elephant in a very short time to a patch of cultivated ground is truly frightful, and having been once seen, would lead one to imagine that when these animals are herded together in vast troops such as the one seen by Dr. Livingstone on the banks of the Zambesi, consisting of over eight hundred, covering an extent of two miles of country, their course would be marked by utter desolation. The havoc thus caused is not however perceptible, a fact which that observant traveller has attributed, no doubt rightly, to the care shown by the elephants in the selection of their food- a point, as he justly remarks, often overlooked in estimat

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ing the quantity of food required by the larger animals.

Again, all these animals, rhinoceri and hippopotami included, are, as M. Krapf observed, the true pioneers, "the real pathmakers of the tropical forest, which without their tracks would be often utterly impenetrable to man." Further, these paths leading as they most frequently do, to water, are often the only open channels for the surface-flow of the heavy rainfalls, and thus materially contribute to the continuance of the water supply of the district, to the very existence of which they owe their formation. While the elephant does not thus destroy vegetation which would ruin the shelter which appears indispensable to him, on the other hand he directly assists the production of new growths by his habit of searching for the many succulent bulbs to be found below the surface of the soil in every open space.

Mr. Gordon Cumming, in whose time elephants were more plentiful in the neighbourhood of the colonial frontier, than they are at the present, described large patches of many acres each in extent, as being thus ploughed up to a depth of several inches by the tusks of the elephants in quest of roots and bulbs; thus doubtless bringing to the surface germs of a fresh vegetation which would otherwise lie dormant. It is curious to remark that Pliny was acquainted with this habit (generally overlooked by modern writers) and he describes the "indians" (?) as sowing their corn in the furrows thus provided for them by the elephants.

We have already alluded to the influence of locality on the size of the elephant, and the same remark appears to hold good with other animals. Many of the so-called varieties of antelope are asserted by Dr. Livingstone in a note to his last work to be but local variations of other species already known. The same remark applies to the carnivora; the varieties of lion, the yellow and black, as they are styled by the colonists, thus appear to be one and the same animal at different ages and under the influence of different localities; the darker colour coming with age, and the thickness of the coat and the shagginess of the mane being apparently in a great measure dependent on the nature of the cover frequented by the animal.

Mr. Frank Buckland, in his interesting Curiosities of Natural History, Second Series, relates two curious circumstances showing the subtle occult influences of locality on animals when in confinement. Animals

in travelling menageries, he informs us are, as a general rule, more healthy than those confined to one spot, as in the Regent's Park collection. This, too, is shown especially during gestation and parturition. Again, of several pairs of lions (from different places and kept always apart) which were successively placed in one particular cage in the Zoological Society's Collection, the lionesses in each case produced cubs with a singular malformation of the palate of the mouth, the cause being, it is needless to say, inexplicable.

We may here briefly refer to the effects instanced in the case of those two formidable foes of domestic animals the "fly," or tsetse, and the lung sickness or peripneumonia of South Africa, both of which appear so dependent on locality. The "tsetse" is a small active bee-like insect found in certain regions only, which sucks, in mosquito fashion, the blood of every creature it comes across. Its bite is harmless to man (even to the smallest children), to the mule, ass, and goat, to calves while sucking, and to all wild animals; yet it is certain death to the horse, ox, and dog; the symptoms, which last for months, pointing apparently to a strong poison introduced into the system. The localities in which this formidable pest is found are very circumscribed. Dr. Livingstone relates that although the south bank of the river Souta was a noted " fly district, he found on the north bank the plague was unknown, the river being scarcely fifty yards wide, and tsetse being frequently carried across on the bodies of dead game by the natives.

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Again, peripneumonia, known as "lung. sickness" when it attacks the oxen, and "horse sickness" when it affects the horse, which is in fact the rinderpest of which we have of late had so much bitter experience, and which is equally fatal to domestic cattle and to the bovine antelopes and quaggas, appears unaccountably to be restricted to certain localities. In some parts of the Cape Colony there are very limited tracts of moderate elevation which appear to procure for horses while kept there a perfect immunity from the attacks of the disease from which they have acquired from the Dutch the name "Paarden bergen," or horse hills. They appear to possess no

There are certain localities in India which appear to be similarly endued in respect to cholera. These have long been known to the natives who suppose them to be under the protection of a swamy," or deity. The credit of first having called attention to these spots, we believe belongs to Colonel Haley, H. M. 108th Regiment, who has recently referred to them in the United Service Mag

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peculiarities of soil, vegetation, elevation, or climate to distinguish them from other spots around, and the cause of the immunity they enjoy remains as obscure as when it was noticed by the Dutch traveller Sparmann a century ago.*

A remarkable instance of the influence of the animal on the vegetable world, occurs in the migrations of game which annually takes place, from the desert towards the Cape Colony and Natal. In some cases these may be due to the state of the herbage, which varies considerably at different elevations, but in the more marked cases as the migrations of the spring bok (Antlope euchore) this is not the case. These animals leave the desert at the time the grass is best, and track down towards the colony. The difficulty of estimating the numbers of a herd of animals in movement is always great; indeed, during the frontier struggles with the Kaffis, it was always remarked that the number of cattle driven off or recovered, was in every case overrated by the most experienced stock keepers, even where no object was to be gained by misrepresentation. With these antelopes the difficulty is greatly increased by a certain quivering motion of their horns which they maintain, and also by the gleams of white from the beautiful fan like manes which extend along their backs, and which they invariably erect when moving; considering, however, the great numbers afterwards found in the colony when the main body has divided, it appears probable that the estimate which places the numbers at between thirty thousand and forty thousand at starting, † does not exceed the truth. On certain seasons, generally recurring about once in ten years, there is a vast increase in numbers which causes the movement to take some of the features of an American "stampede." We have ourselves witnessed instances on these occasions, when the animals hurried along and seemingly bewildered by the numbers round them have allowed themselves to be caught by the hand.

It is to these larger occasional migrations that the Dutch Boers more especially apply the term "trek bokkens."

A scarcity of food in certain seasons inducing greater numbers thus to migrate, is

This disease, which is endemic in a part of the Trans-Vaal territory, becomes annually epidemic throughout a considerable part of the Cape Colony and Natal. Horses which have once passed through the disease are termed "salted," and are supposed to be safe from future attacks, a security which in the case of oxen is sought to be attained by inoculation with a portion of the diseased lung of a dead ox inserted in the fleshy part of the tail, near the root. They have never been noticed returning to the

desert.

the cause usually assigned to these movements, but there is another which we think may have at least an equal share in producing them. These animals are polygamous, consorting in the proportion of four or five females to one male. Now it has been asserted with apparent truth, in the case of animals in a state of domestication that the proportion of the sexes born in different years varies considerably, and it is we think likely that these "trek bokkens " take place when the numbers have been increased by a large preponderance of females born a few seasons previously.

Dr. Livingstone assigns another cause, viz., the wary habits of the animals which induce them to leave the high and rank grass and choose more open feeding grounds, an instinct by the way, often displayed by domestic oxen.

Wherever the herds of antelope are found, whether the numbers be large or small, they appear materially to influence the herbage of the district they frequent. Their close, cropping bite resembling that of sheep, opens out a place for the young shoots, while their droppings not only fertilize the ground, but return to it the seeds in the form most suitable for fecundation.

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Dr. Livingstone has related some instances where the game having been destroyed, the grass totally disappeared, being succeeded by a growth of mesembryanthemum-like plants, a change, which it is needless to say, would materially affect the water supply of a scantily watered country.*

The migratory habits of these animals also prevent the herbage, and consequently the water supply, of any particular district being affected by over-cropping. In the Cape Colony, near Graaf-Reinet (and, we have been told, in some of the Merino districts in Spain), the reverse of this picture may be seen. In these cases, by over-feeding certain of the sheep-walks, the herbage has first become impoverished, and in the end, like the water supply, has nearly disappeared.

The numbers of these animals are also kept in check by the large proportion of the

The difference in the quality of the flesh of different closely allied varieties of antelope feeding on the same herbage is noteworthy; while the flesh of some is tolerable venison (as the spring bok), that

of others (as the rhei bok) is rank carrion. This reminds us that the Dutch colonists have a curious idea respecting the varieties of the common hare, which are very numerous. These animals, they maintain, feed on garbage, an idea certainly confirmed by the places they appear to frequent. To give an example of this habit in a herbivorous animal, the writer remembers many years ago in Lisbon, seeing the goats feeding in the vicinity of the city muzzled, which he was informed was done with a view to prevent their feeding, as they would, if possible on the offal and impurities that fill the purlieus of that dirtiest of dirty cities.

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