ing
a model to wives and mothers--really they are people to be proud of, and
a few such would reconcile one to one's species.--_From Lady
Blessington's Conversations--New Monthly Magazine._

_Cats Horticulturists._--Cat Mint is a species of _Nepeta_. It is
covered with a very soft, hoary, velvet-like down, and has a strong,
pungent, aromatic odour, like penny royal or valerian, that is
peculiarly grateful to cats, whence its specific and English names.
These animals are so fond of it, that it is almost impossible to keep
them from it, _after being transplanted_. Ray and Miller, both assert,
however, that cats will never meddle with such plants as are raised from
seed. Hence the old saying,

"If you set it,
The cats will eat it;
If you sow it
The cats don't know it."

P.T.W.

_Beef-eaters_, or yeomen of the guard, are stationed by the sideboard at
great royal dinners. The term is a corruption from the French
_buffetiers_, from _buffet_, sideboard.

_A Lion Killer._--Lions abound in the west of India. A gentleman assured
Captain Skinner that he had, in one season, killed forty-five in the
province of Hissar, alone. None of them were large, but he mentioned
having met with one of uncommon beauty; its skin was of the usual tawny
colour, but its mane a rich glossy black, as was also the tuft on the
tail.

_Vultures._--On passing the carcass of a bullock (says Captain Skinner,)
we had a proof of the keenness of the vulture's scent. An hour before
not one was seen; nor was the place, being so wild and far removed from
all habitations, likely to be haunted by them: yet now they thronged
every tree in the neighbourhood. There could not have been less than
four or five hundred.

_Jackalls._--In some parts of India the howling of innumerable jackalls
is never out of your ear, from the minute night falls to the first dawn
of day. Captain Skinner says, until he became familiar to the screaming
sound, he used to start from his sleep, and fancy some appalling
calamity had driven the inhabitants of a neighbouring town to rash forth
in fear and madness from their homes. Such frightful clamour might
attend an earthquake or a deluge. The animals come up close to your very
doors in large packs, and roar away without any apparent object,
frequently standing a longtime in one place, as a dog does when "baying
the moon."

_Narrow Streets._--In grand Cairo, if you unfortunately meet a string of
masked beauties upon donkie