Must we omit this graceful ruminant from the number of mammals inhabiting the eternal snows? No; for it is not of his own will that the chamois has taken refuge upon the snowy peaks of the Alps. If we meet with him there, it is because he seeks to shelter himself from the destructive instincts of man.
The chamois is one of those animal species which, before a century, perhaps, will have disappeared; his bones will then figure in the palæontological museums by the side of the skeletons of extinct species. There, too, will be displayed the famous chamois balls, each of the size of a nut, covered with a shining substance resembling leather, of an agreeable odour, and seeming to be a morbid dejection, composed of roots and other undigested matter. These balls, the bezoars of the old physicians, were regarded as a remedy against every ill the human flesh is heir to; it was even professed that they rendered soldiers invulnerable, and were a better defence against bullets than the finest armour ever wrought by the smiths of Milan. How precious a remedy for this epoch of civilisation, when man—is he much wiser than his supposed progenitor, the ape?—seeks to replace the cholera and the pestilence by the most terrific engines of destruction!
The birds inhabiting the inhospitable region of the snows are more numerous than the mammals. Let us briefly refer to a few of the more important.
The Eagle and the Wren.
In speaking of the eagle, Tennyson's noble lines to that "imperial bird" will occur to every reader, from the force and clearness of the picture which they present:—
"He clasps the crag with hookèd hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.
"The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,