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[Illustration:  Racing Tout (arrested the day before). “CAN YER TELL ME WOT WON THE THREE-THIRTY?”

Magistrate.  “SILENCE!” Tout. “W’Y, THERE WASN’T NO SUCH ’ORSE RUNNING.”]

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OUR NATURAL HISTORY COLUMN.

Letters to the Editor.

THE HYDE PARK MONUMENT.

DEAR SIR,—­The experience of the Parisian scavenger who recently discovered a crocodile in a dustbin encourages me to write to you on a similar subject.  I note with profound dismay the proposal to turn Hyde Park into a Zoological Garden.  At least this is not an unfair deduction from the scheme to instal a huge python in the neighbourhood of Hyde Park Corner.  I do not profess to know much about snakes, but I believe the python is a most dangerous reptile, and I see it stated that the pythons which have just arrived at Regent’s Park are “large and vigorous, already active and looking for food.”  Surely this monstrous suggestion, threatening the safety of the peaceful frequenters of the Park, calls for a national protest.  Can it be that the PREMIER is at the back of this, as of every invasion of our rights?

Yours faithfully, MATERFAMILIAS.

P.S.—­My son says it is a pylon, not a python, but that only makes it worse.

STRANGE EXPERIENCE OF A HERMIT.

DEAR SIR,—­My grandfather, who died in the ’fifties, used to tell a story of a hermit who lived in Savernake Forest, an extraordinarily absent-minded man with a beard of such colossal dimensions that several of the feathered denizens of the forest took up their abode in its recesses.  This curious phenomenon was, I believe, commemorated in verse by an early-Victorian poet, but I have not been able after considerable research to trace the reference.  I have the honour to remain,

Yours faithfully, ISIDORE TUFTON

    (Author of The Growth of the Moustache Movement, The Topiary Art as
    applied to Whiskers, and the article on “Pogonotrophy” in The
    Hairdressers’ Encyclopaedia).

PRESENCE OF MIND IN A PORBEAGLE.

DEAR SIR,—­The following verses, though not strictly relevant to the crocodile incident, commemorate an occurrence illustrating the extent to which piscine intelligence can be developed in favourable circumstances:—­

  “There was an unlucky porbeagle
  Who was picked up at sea by an eagle;
      On reaching the nest
      It began to protest
  On the ground that the speed was illegal.”

I am Sir, Yours faithfully,
GEORGE WASHINGTON COOK.

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    “Lieut.-Commander Kenworthy said it had been advocated in The Times.

    The Premier:  I will be prepared to believe anything of The Times, but
    really I do not tink it has ever suggested tat.”—­Daily Mail.