Old Lady and the Beasts on the Mound.
When the houses were cleared from the head of the Mound in Edinburgh, a travelling menagerie had set up its caravans on that great earthen bridge, just at the time when George Ferguson, the celebrated Scotch advocate, better known by his justiciary title of Lord Hermand, came up, full of Pittite triumph that the ministry of "all the talents" had fallen. "They are out! they are all out! every mother's son of them!" he shouted. A lady, who heard the words, and perceived his excited condition, imagined that he referred to the wild beasts; and seizing the judge by his arm, exclaimed, "Gude heaven! we shall a' be devoored!"[144]
SEALS.
A most intelligent group of creatures, some of which the compiler has watched in Yell Sound, close to Mossbank. He has even seen them once or twice in the Forth, close to the end of the pier. In the Zoological Gardens a specimen of the common seal proved for months a great source of attraction by its mild nature, and its singular form and activity. It soon died, and, had a coroner's jury returned a verdict, it would have been "Death from the hooks swallowed with the fish" daily provided. We have heard seal-fishers describe the great rapidity of the growth of seals in the Arctic seas. They seem in about a fortnight after their birth to attain nearly the size of their mothers. The same has been recorded of the whale order. Both seals and whales have powers of assimilating food and making fat that are unparalleled even by pigs. The intelligence of seals is marvellous. Many who visited the Zoological Gardens in the Regent's Park in May and June 1866 witnessed instances of this in a seal from the South Seas, recently exhibited in London. Persons on the sea-side might readily domesticate these interesting and truly affectionate creatures. Hooker's sea-bear, the species exhibited in London, was at first, so the kind Frenchman told us, very fierce, but soon got reconciled to him, and, when I saw it, great was the mutual attachment. It was a strangely interesting sight to see the great creature walk on its fin-like legs, and clamber up and kiss the genial-bearded French sailor.