The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 552, June 16, 1832Various
History
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 552, June 16, 1832
Various
Popular literature -- Great Britain -- Periodicals
Bishop Heber,[2] calls them _Brahminy_ Bulls, and tells us they are
turned out when calves, on different solemn occasions by wealthy
Hindoos, as an acceptable offering to Siva. It would be a mortal sin to
strike or injure them. They feed where they choose, and devout persons
take great delight in pampering them. They are exceeding pests in the
villages near Calcutta, breaking into gardens, thrusting their noses
into the stalls of fruiterers and pastry-cook's shops, and helping
themselves without ceremony. Like other petted animals, they are
sometimes mischievous, and are said to resent with a push of their horns
any delay in gratifying their wishes.
[2] Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Provinces of India,
vol. i. 4to., 1828.
We may here in connexion with the Zoological Gardens, not
inappropriately introduce the following graphic passage from the
concluding Number of Mr. Landseer's "Characteristic Sketches of
Animals." It appears as a "Note by the Editor," Mr. John Barrow, and
represents the labours of the Zoological Society as very gratifying to
the subscribers and the public.[3]
[3] We are indebted to the _Literary Gazette_ of Saturday last
for early cognizance of this extract.
"By the spirit and perseverance with which they have succeeded in
_domiciling_ their magnificent collection of living animals in the
Regent's Park--by the knowledge and experience they have evinced in the
arrangements adopted in that establishment, and the good taste, skill,
and industry, they have employed in carrying into effect its multiplied
details--they have accomplished a task of far higher importance, and of
infinitely nobler character, than that of merely providing for all
classes of an enlightened metropolis an additional source of amusement
and recreation. Such a collection, so maintained and so displayed,
advances--slowly but certainly--the best interests of morals and
philosophy. The curiosity which it excites, the gratification it
affords, operate, though with differing degrees of intensity, on the
most uncultivated and the best informed of those who visit it, to beget
inquiry and awaken reflection; and in what can inquiry and reflection,
thus originated, determine, but in producing or extending the most
sublime impressions of the beneficence, the power, and the providence,
of the Great Author of Creation? The physical mechanism of birds, the
muscular energies of brutes, strike us at first with wonder, or move us
with mingled terror and delight; but the activity of the human mind will
not suffer us long to remain at this point of simple excitement. We
involuntarily begin to analyze the properties of animals, the relations
of their structure to those properties, the adaptation of the parts to
the whole of that structure, and the conformity of their physical
endowment and their instincts to the various _habitats_ or regions in
which they respectively exist. Whether we reason from causes to effects,
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