and ball (the ball not being held by a string),
were also much admired; but nothing pro-
duced so great a sensation of admiration and
anxiety as the following:-
:-

This alarming performance realises twenty times in succession the marvellous exploit of William Tell. One of the jugglers places himself against the boards, with his hand extended. Another, who is provided with a number of sharp knives, throws them one after another; and, passing through the interstices of the fingers with a precision that makes one shudder, they remain fixed in the board. A hair's breadth, more or less, and the hand would be nailed to the plank! One is at a loss which most to admire, the man who throws the poignards, or the man who consents to serve as their target. What precision!-what courage !-what coolness!

The most skilful master of the knife of Seville or Cordova would hesitate to throw his weapon at this living target. But, listen further the head takes the place of the hand, and the knives are thrown, near the throat, the nape of the neck, the forehead, with unerring certainty. The slightest deviation might be fatal. We have seen nothing to exceed this. After each trial, the human target plays, by way of rejoicing, some little air upon the gong, imitating that of the tamborine of Karagheny (the Turkish Punch), that makes one almost die of laughter.

Besides their incomparable dexterity as jugglers, in vaulting, and sleight of hand, these Chinese possess true artistical talent. In the spoken dialogue, which intervenes between the different performances, one is struck with the truth of the pantomine and the quick play of the features. At the same time, what laughter is evoked by the unheardof tones of their unknown language, its sudden clinking accents, its unexpected sharp ones, its intonations altogether so discordant to European organs!

1 have translated the above from the French. There is a "closeness" about it, and an individuality, peculiar to themselves alone. These wonderful Chinese folk have lately exhibited here,-exciting at once surprise, horror, and admiration.

FORESTIERA.

[There is no comparison to be drawn between the feat of WILLIAM TELL and the Chinese man of many knives. The cutting jokes of the latter are indeed fearful to witness. Few are the hairs which ornament our royal head; yet were these fairly erect-stiff as any bristles-whilst gazing on the flying steel dismissed from that strange man's hand. "How does he do it?" asked a sweet voice behind us. We whispered a "notion" into the ear of the fair postulant that caused her to turn deadly pale!]

LOVE LANE.

A SKETCH.

IN MY NATIVE VILLAGE, in that fair vale of Suffolk, there is a long, narrow lane, which bears the sweet name of Love Lane. I love its simple name, as I love other country names-names of fields, and meadows, and woods-Mill Piece, Double Acre, Daisy Nook, Dingle Wood, Stack Close, and other words which tell their own tale, even to the simplest.

Let me love Love Lane, then, for its sweet simple name. Let me love it also for itself. It is a pleasant country walk, just out of the village; you enter it by an old brown stile. On the right it is bounded by a hedge, and a deep-toned shady wood of firs; on the left by another hedge, a garden, and soft, cool, green meadows, reaching to the village with its neat thatched houses, and its white church spire. The lane itself is straight, but the firs reach over it here and there; and their dark boughs, gemmed with delicate cones, and intermixed with graceful branchy larches, take off all harshness from the outline. Then there are long-haired tufts of grass hanging from the bank; and in sunny spring-tide, mild-eyed primroses, and sweetfaced bramble-flowers, and dog roses, and blue-orbed violets, and golden buttercups, and our own fair daisies, peering from amid or beneath the hedge. What festooning and draping of man-milliner can do more for reforming into the curves of beauty a straight outline than Nature's eternal dress-making! In robes of green she oftest tires her darling earth; but what shot-silk of ball beauty can rival the glancing changing lights and shades, and tints and dyes, with which she throws out that ground color of her garmenture! And then, when she crowns her bright high temples, and garlands her glorious flowing locks with leaves, and flowers, and fruits-it is Eve in Paradise.

Love Lane, also, is not only straight, but narrow. Along its little beaten path, only two can walk abreast. Shall this, however, be regretted, when God has made us in pairs! Let us not regret then that it is narrow, but rather be glad that a couple may walk in it together. Only reflect that all the blessed world of people might thus walk through a grand Love Lane, in sweet pairs, in choice couples-two and two, brave boy and fair girl, loving husband and happy wife, nob e veteran and worthy matron. Even in this Love Lane of ours, how many young hearts may have been glad that only two could walk abreast in it! For each of these, to the other, was the whole world. Future generations walked with them; and how many hopes and fears! How many of these may not our narrow Love Lane have joined never

from the earliest times. The first is well founded; the last fabulous, but the fable has been fortified by the power possessed by the reptile of living in apparently good health for a long time-many weeks-without visibly taking any sustenance.

In the stomach of one dissected by Hasselquist, he found the remains of various insects,-tipula, coccinella, and butterflies; and, in its droppings, he found part of an entire ear of barley, which he characterises justly as very singular. He kept one alive for a considerable time, and applied himself

to observations on its habits.

Hasselquist kept this creature alive from the 8th of March to the 1st of April, without affording it an opportunity of taking any food. This is much to be regretted, because, in its native climate, there can be little doubt that, from its vivacity, it would have fed freely, and the powers of abstinence of the animal had been tested again and again. Notwithstanding its fast, it was nimble and lively during the greater part of the time, climbing up and down in its cage, fond of being near the light, and constantly rolling its eyes. At last Hasselquist could plainly perceive that the victim waxed lean and He could never see that it assumed the suffered from hunger; but the Swede was color of any painted object presented to its obdurate, though he saw that it could no view, though he made many experiments longer hold fast by the bars of its cage, from with all kinds of colors, on different things--which it fell through weakness, when a flowers, cloth, paintings, &c. Its natural turtle, a thirsé probably, which was kept in color was iron-grey, or black mixed with a the same room, bit it, and hastened its little grey. This it sometimes changed, and death. became entirely of a brimstone yellow. That was the color which he saw it most frequently assume, with the exception of the hue first mentioned. He had seen it change to a darker yellow, approaching somewhat to a green, sometimes to a lighter; at which time it was more inclined to a white than a yellow. He did not observe that it assumed any more colors; such as red, blue, purple, &c.; and, for that reason, was inclined to believe that all which has been said concerning the changing and shifting of colors in the animal, consisted only in this-that on certain occasions it changes the dark color, which seems to be natural to it, into yellow

of various shades.

He observed that his reptile more particularly did it on two occasions: one was, when he exposed it to the hot beams of the sun; and the other, when he made it angry by pointing at it with his finger. When it was changing from black to yellow, the soles of its feet, its head, and the bag under its throat, began first to alter-an alteration which was afterwards continued over the whole body. He saw it several times speckled, or marked with large spots of both colors over the whole body, which it an elegant gave appearance. When it was an iron grey color, it extended its sides or ribs and hypochondria, which made the skin sit close to the body, and it appeared plump and handsome; but, as soon as it turned yellow, it contracted those parts, appearing thin, empty; lean, and ugly; and the nearer it approached in color to white, the emptier and uglier it seemed; but it appeared worse, in regard to shape, when it was speckled.

*The presence of the grain may be accounted for by the presence of an insect on it, when the chameleon, with the tip of its adhesive tongue, may have brought away the grain with its natural

prey.

Before I came to the resolution induced by the death of poor Binny, my tame beaver, a remained with me nearly two months. It friend gave me a living chameleon, which was winter, and every precaution was adopted to make the poor reptile as comfortable as possible. It lived in a wicker cage, to the bars of which it clung with feet and tail; but, after it had been with me a few days, it ornamental work of the iron fender before would leave the cage and establish itself on the the fire. Soon it began to recognise me, surveying me with a knowing roll of its singular optics, opened in the centre of the shagreen-like globes of the eyes. It then would leave the bars of the cage for my hand, the warmth of which seemed to comfort it, and would remain in it till I transferred it to the warm fender, which was its favorite post. Clinging with its feet and tail, with one eye directed backwards towards me, and with the other forwards, scanning the fire as if it were looking for the faces of other chameleons in it, the creature would remain motionless for hours. enjoying the genial temperature.

During the whole time it was with me it never took any nourishment, though mealworms and other insects were procured for it. roll its eye and bring it to bear upon them; When they were presented, it would but neither Mrs. M..the good old housekeeper, who was so fond of Binny, nor myself, ever from among those presented to it. saw it take one, nor was one ever missed housekeeper was at her wits' end what to do for it, till at last she became pacified, fully

The

believing that it fed upon air; for, notwithstanding its abstinence, it did not apparently fall away. But it was distressing to watch its strict fast day after day, and yet day after day I hoped this long fast would be broken, and did not like to abandon it. I was the more anxious to get it to feed,

because it was full of eggs in the progress of development, which must have made great demands on its constitution, and I had frequently seen chameleons take insects freely; of which more anon. One facetious friend would never call it anything but Martha Taylor; in memory, I suppose, of the fasting woman of Derbyshire, who, in consequence of a blow on the back, fell into such a prostration of appetite, that she took hardly any sustenance, but some drops with a feather, from Christmas, 1667, for thirteen months, sleeping but little all the time. After laying a large number of apparently perfect eggs, my chameleon died; and Mrs. M. announced the event to me as a “happy release.”

Red and white were supposed to be the colors which it could never assume. The former color no one has recorded as visible upon the chameleon's skin throughout; but the latter has been mentioned both in prose and poetry. A vir nobilissimus fide dignus related to Aldrovand, that he wrapped up one which had been presented to him in a white handkerchief; and when he arrived at home, proceeded to open it in order to examine the animal, but could see nothing but the handkerchief. At last he detected the chameleon, which had so completely ac quired the whiteness of the wrapper as to be invisible.

The gentlemen who nearly lost their of these reptiles were all put in the wrong ,,temper in disputing about the color of one by him who

Produc'd the beast, and lo! 'twas white.

into green, greyish, or blackish, were the prevailing changes; but I never saw it white. I have seen it of a whitey-brown color; and such was its prevailing hue in its latter days and at its death.

Le Bruyn, in his "Voyage to the Levant," declares that the chameleons which he kept in his apartment at Smyrna lived on air, adding. however, that they died one after another in a short time. Sonnini, who saw My experience supports the conclusions of several of them at the entrance of the cata- Sonnini and Milne Edwards as to the mutacombs at Alexandria, wishing to satisfy bility of color. When the chameleon kept himself how long they could subsist without by me first came into my possession, and was food, employed every precaution to prevent comparatively vigorous, substances of various their having any, leaving them, however, colors were placed near it without its ever exposed to the open air. They lived under altering its hue accordingly, as far as I could these conditions for twenty days, but soon perceive. It would roll its eye and bring it to began to dwindle. When they were first bear on the subject, and sometimes the tints caught they were plump, but they soon be- of the skin would vary, but not in unison came very thin. They gradually lost their with the adjacent color. When it was agility and their colors with their good con- clinging to the dark bronze-work of the dition; their skins became livid and wrinkled, fender, enjoying the heat of the fire, I someand adhered close to the bone, so that, to use times thought that its hue became more his own expression, they had the appearance sombre: but this effect was by no means of being dried before they ceased to exist. constant. Grey, Isabella color, and pale The apparent good condition of my cha-yellow, with the spots or granules varying meleon may have been due to its good plight when I received it; most oviparous animals, at the time when the eggs are in the early process of formation, being well fed and filled, as we see in the case of fish. As the eggs are developed the system is drained, till at last, when they are fully formed, the fish is nearly worthless as food, all its goodness having gone into the roe. In the case of insects the silk moth, for example-no sustenance is taken after the worm has woven the shroud, from whose cerements it is to burst forth made perfect. The imago has every sign of a well-filled system, till, in obedience to the great law of nature, the eggs are laid; and the parents having finished the work which they were appointed to perform, die without having any support, save that which they derive from the sun and air. The power of abstinence, even in those warmblooded animals whose food is not always ready for them-the carnivora, for instance -is very great; and in the reptiles generally most remarkable. The belief that the chameleon fed on air only was general amongst the ancients. The mode in which it gulps the air for respiration favored this notion."

The French Academicians seem to have come to the conclusion that the sun was a principal agent in such changes. They describe the color of the eminences of their chameleon, when it was at rest in the shade, and had remained a long time undisturbed, as of a bluish grey, except under the feet, where it was white inclining to yellow, and the intervals of the granules of the skin were of a pale and yellowish red. This changed when the animal was in the sun; and all the parts of its body which were illuminated altered from their bluish color to a brownish grey, inclining to tawny. The rest of the skin, which was not illuminated by the sun, changed from grey into several lively shining colors, forming spots about half a finger's breadth, reaching from the crest of the spine to the middle of the back; and others appeared on the ribs, forelegs, and tail. All the spots were of an Isabella color, through the mixture of a pale yellow, with which the

The blood, in the opinion of M. d'Obsonville, was the cause of the change. That *The Tarandus of Pliny will occur to those of fluid, according to him, is, in the chameleon, our readers who are conversant with his wonderof a violet blue; which color, he says, it willful magazine, where the beast is described as retain on linen or paper for some minutes, if it be previously steeped in a solution of alum. The coats of the blood-vessels he found to be yellow, both in their main trunks and ramifications, and he comes to the conclusion that