three such babes as might have sprung from the foreheads of men made out of the dust of encyclopædias. As late as July 1874, in reply to a coaxing letter from George S. Nottage, we see Cruikshank making human figures of the letters of the word "Portraits." [Illustration: "while he spake a braying ass Did sing most loud and clear.--William Cowper. From "The Diverting History of John Gilpin," 1828. An earlier design by Cruikshank for "John Gilpin" is in "The Humourist," vol. iii. (1819). 1836 is the date borne by a new edition of W. A. Nield's very monotonous musical setting of John Gilpin, "illustrated by Cruikshank" (presumably Robert).] We return now to the zoological humour which has flashed across these pages. In the United States the art of humanising the creatures of instinct to make them articulately droll has been practised with such success by Gus Dirks, J. S. Pughe, and A. Z. Baker, that if Noah's Ark is not too "denominational," it is there that we should seek the origin of their humour. Cruikshank, though he did re-draw William Clarke's swimming duck holding up an umbrella (in "Three Courses and a Dessert," 1830), achieved nothing so triumphantly zoological as the ostrich who swallowed her medicine but forgot to uncork the bottle containing it, or the porcupine who asked a barber for a shampoo, or the cat who discovered that her Thomas was leading a tenth life, or the elephant who wondered how the stork managed to convey him to his parents, or the beetle-farmer who mowed a hairbrush. Cruikshank, however, was in the Ark before them, and brought back enough humour resembling theirs to show what he missed, besides humour of a different kind which they do not excel. In "Scraps and Sketches" (1829) he preceded the Americans in the humour which makes the horse the critic of the motor-car, though not in that which seems to make the motor-car the caricaturist of the horse; and in the above-named publication he represents a dog in the act of prophesying cheap meat for the canine race. Again, in "Scraps and Sketches" (1832) two elephants laugh together over a pseudopun on the word trunk. [Illustration: "When the Elephant stands upon his Head, does he himself know whether he is standing upon his Head or his Heels?" "George Cruikshank's Magazine," February 1854.]