ries of despair. For three or four days she
never left the nest but to go in search of food, which she offered the
male. Cuvier saw his sickly head come out with difficulty, and try in
vain to take the food offered by his companion; every day he appeared to
get weaker. At length, one morning, Cuvier was awakened by the cries of
the female, who with her wings beat against the panes of his window. He
ran to the nest--alas! it contained only a dead body. From that fatal
moment the female never left her nest. Overwhelmed with grief, she, five
days after, died of despair, on the dead body of her companion.

Some months after this, the Abbe Tessier, whom the revolutionary
persecution had compelled to flee to Normandy, where he disguised
himself under the dress of a military physician of the hospital of
Fecamp, fell in with the obscure tutor, who recounted to him the history
of the swallows. The abbe engaged him to deliver a course of lectures on
natural history to the pupils of that hospital, of which he was the
head, and wrote to Jussieu and Geoffrey Saint Hilaire, to inform them of
the individual he had become acquainted with. Cuvier entered into a
correspondence with these two learned men, and a short time after he was
elected to the chair of comparative anatomy at Paris His subsequent
career is well known.

[From Hunting Adventures in South Africa.]

A GIRAFFE CHASE.

This day was to me rather a memorable one, as the first on which I saw
and slew the lofty, graceful-looking giraffe or camelopard, with which,
during many years of my life, I had longed to form an acquaintance.
These gigantic and exquisitely beautiful animals, which are admirably
formed by nature to adorn the fair forests that clothe the boundless
plains of the interior, are widely distributed throughout the interior
of Southern Africa, but are nowhere to be met with in great numbers. In
countries unmolested by the intrusive foot of man, the giraffe is found
generally in herds varying from twelve to sixteen; but I have not
unfrequently met with herds containing thirty individuals, and on one
occasion I counted forty together; this, however, was owing to chance,
and about sixteen maybe reckoned as the average number of a herd. These
herds are composed of giraffes of various sizes, from the young giraffe
of nine or ten feet in height, to the dark, chestnut-colored old bull of
the herd, whose exalted head towers above his companions, generally
attai