and the soft expression of their heads, may be faintly gathered even from these inanimate stuffed skins with the glassy eyes instead of “the soft blue” celebrated by the poet.  Grouped hereabouts are also the four-horned antelope of India; the pigmy antelope from the coast of Guinea; and the madoka from Abyssinia.  Before leaving this room, or ante-room, to the great zoological sections of the museum, the visitor should notice the varieties of horns,—­straight and tortuous, but all graceful,—­of different kinds of hoofed animals.

Advancing eastward the visitor arrives in

The southern zoological gallery.

Here the visitor is still in the midst of the hoofed beasts.  The way lies between two rows of animals.  Of these the visitor should notice particularly the wild oxen of India and Java; compare the Indian rhinoceros with that of South Africa; and notice the hippopotamus family, from South Africa, as well as a diminutive specimen of the Indian elephant, and a half-grown elephant, from Africa.  Having noticed these ponderous creatures, the attention of the visitor will be next attracted to the Llamas, which are arranged in the first two wall-cases.  Of these, the wild are generally brown, and the tame of mixed colours.  The next fourteen wall-cases are filled with specimens of the different species of Oxen and the Elephant tribe.  Among the former the visitor should notice the white bulls of Scotland and Poland:  the splendid Lithuanian bison, with his shaggy throat, a present from the Russian Emperor; the bison of the American prairies; and the elando.  The specimens of the elephant tribe, ranged in the upper compartments of these cases, include the tapir of South America; the tennu, from Sumatra; the European boar, with its young; the Brazilian peccari:  and other curious animals.  Here, too, are specimens of the Armadillo tribe.  The attention of the visitor will, however, be soon riveted upon an animal which, with the beak of a duck and the claws of a bird, has the body of an otter.  In Australia (its native country) this singular animal is commonly called a water mole, but to scientific men it is known as the mullingong; it is placed in the same order with its neighbour, the spring-ant or echidra, also a native of Australia.  Before leaving these cases, the visitor should pause to notice the Sloths, and particularly the repulsive aspect of the yellow-faced sloth of South America.

The visitor should now pass to the cases marked from 17 to 30.  These are devoted to the Horse tribe and Deer.  Here the reindeer from Hudson’s Bay, the red fallow deer of Europe, the elk, and the cheetul of India, will catch the eye immediately.  The beautiful South African zebra is here also, grouped near the Asiatic wild ass, and the Zoological Society’s hybrids of the zebra, wild ass, and common donkey.  The upper shelves of the cases are devoted, as usual, to the smaller specimens of the tribe below.  Here are the European roebuck, the West African water musk, the Javan musk, the white-bellied and golden-eyed musk.  Having examined these zoological specimens, the visitor should proceed on his way east to