Here is a picture of the tallest animal that is known. He measures almost six yards from the ground to the top of his ears. He is as tall as a small house.
The giraffe lives in the wilds of Africa; he is never tamed and put to work like the horse. His skin is fawn-colored, with black spots. He is a timid creature, and runs away as fast as he can scamper whenever a man comes near.
Sometimes the lion attacks the giraffe; his only defence in such a case is to turn round and kick the lion as hard as he can. Sometimes he succeeds in defending himself in this way, but often he falls a victim to the fierce king of beasts.
The giraffe is occasionally caught and carried to Paris and London and this country. There have been several in the United States; but they are tender creatures, and are very apt to die if taken away from their native country.
The Arbor.
Here are two girls and a boy in the arbor; one of the girls is reading, and the others are listening. It is a pleasant thing to be beneath a roof of green leaves, and to be surrounded by sweet-scented flowers. It is a very pleasant thing to sit down in such a place with an agreeable book. Do you not envy the children in the picture?
And what book do you imagine they are reading? Perhaps it is one of the numbers of Parley’s Cabinet Library, which Messrs. Bradbury & Soden have just published. No doubt you have read them; but I will tell you about one of the volumes that is to be published in a few days.
It is entitled Curiosities of Human Nature, and it gives an account of a great many wonderful people. It tells about Zerah Colburn, who was a natural arithmetician. One day, his father heard him, while he was a little child playing among the chips, saying the multiplication table to himself. His father then began to examine him, and he found that he could answer almost any question in arithmetic, although he was only six years old, and could not read, and had never been taught anything.
His father took Zerah to Boston and New York, and other places, and the child astonished everybody, by his wonderful answers to arithmetical questions. He could tell how many minutes there were in two thousand years; how many steps, three feet long, it would take to go round the earth; he could find the square root and the cube root of any number. His performances were indeed amazing.