ABOUT THE MARMOT.

53

the lower limit of the perpetual snows. Is it the only mammal which can live at such a height?

THE MARMOT.

Who, in the wide world of London, where so many waifs and strays are drifting with the great current of human life, has not observed the Savoyard wanderer with his dancing marmot? If the man did not attract our notice, his curious companion would. In form he belongs partly to the bear, and partly to the rat. Naturalists have, therefore, expressly created for him the genus Arctomys,—a Latinised Greek name, signifying "The Bear-Rat."

In fact, the marmot resembles Harlequin's cloak, or rather, if it be permissible to compare little things with great, the Austrian Empire,—a composite of territories and races; and Buffon has described him very aptly. He has, he says, the nose, the lips, and the shape of the head of the hare; the hair and nails of the badger; the teeth of the beaver; the cat's whiskers; the eyes of the dormouse; the feet of the bear, with a short tail and truncated ears.

Add to this that the marmot-he is a little larger than a rabbit-is omnivorous like man and the bear, with whom he shares his aptitude for dance and sport. While he eats any and everything, he nevertheless prefers vegetable food to all other kinds; and with his orange-coloured incisors gnaws the bark of shrubs. He rarely drinks, but when he does drink takes a hearty draught; is particularly fond of milk; drinks it by raising his head at each mouthful, like a hen, and giving

54

THE MOUNTAIN RATS.

utterance to an audible murmur of contentment, just as if he were reciting his Benedicite. Will it be in allusion to this characteristic that the common French phrase has originated, Marmotter des prières ?*

During the summer the marmots inhabit the snowy summits of the Alps. At the beginning of autumn they descend to a lower level, for the purpose of excavating the burrows in which they pass the winter, completely benumbed by the frost. This is the time when the hunters easily capture them ; they have nothing to do but to dig (creuser is the technical word); and frequently they are found as many as ten or twelve in the same burrow, rolled up like balls, and buried in a litter of hay. Their sleep, says De Saussure, is so profound, that the hunter deposits them in his sack and carries them away without awakening them. The Chamounix hunters, he adds, have already entirely expelled or destroyed the goats formerly so abundant on their mountains; and it is probable that, in less than a century, we shall see neither chamois nor marmots.

This prophecy of De Saussure's is on the point of being realised. Still, even at the present day, marmots are not very rare in the Valais and the canton of Ticino (du Tissin), where they are called Mure montane (mountain rats); a phrase from which is derived, without doubt, the appellation marmot. They prefer as their abode the stony islets which rise here and there in the midst of the rocks. The ears of travellers who venture into the barrenest recesses of the Alps of the Bernese Oberland are sometimes struck by a very sharp

* That is, muttering, marmot-wise, one's prayers.

WHAT WERE GRAETZ'S BALLS?

55

whistling, for which, at first, they find it difficult to account. It is the young marmot's cry of alarm; for the old appear to be deprived of this strident faculty.

For a considerable period only a single species was known -the marmot properly so called (Arctomys marmotta, Gmelin); but four others must now be added :—1st, The marmot of the Caucasus (Arctomys musicus), still imperfectly known; 2d, The marmot of Canada (Arctomys empetra), who clambers up the trees like a cat, and is distributed throughout all North America, particularly in Hudson's Bay, and Alaska, on the north-west coast; 3d, The Arctomys monax, who appears to be peculiar to Maryland; 4th, The Russian marmot (Arctomys citillus), of the size of a field-mouse, and of a brown colour, spotted with white; 5th, The marmot of Siberia (Arctomys bobac), smaller than the common species, of a yellow gray, and building vast burrows shaped like a funnel.

Will the reader permit us an allusion, in passing, to a question which we do not see discussed in books of natural history? Formerly among the treasures of ancient druggists figured a kind of panacea, called "Graetz's balls." What were these "Graetz's balls," at one time esteemed as a universal medicine, but no longer included in our pharmacopeia?

This was their origin :-The subterranean dwellings which certain species of marmots construct with so much skill, are each composed of two galleries, which unite together like the arms of a Y, and terminate in a cul-de-sac. There are found the globules of clay known as "Graetz's balls." They are an industrial product of our rodents, as M. Oscar Schmidt

56 THE CHAMOIS AND THE BEZOARS.

established in 1866, by close observation of the Arctomys bobac of the Zoological Garden of Vienna. The marmot creates these balls by scratching up the earth, and appears to amuse himself—a child's amusement!-by rolling them to and fro in his galleries.

THE CHAMOIS.

"Even so

This way the chamois leapt."

Must we omit this graceful ruminant from the number of mammals inhabiting the eternal snows? No; for it is not of his own will that the chamois has taken refuge upon the snowy peaks of the Alps. If we meet with him there, it is because he seeks to shelter himself from the destructive instincts of man.

The chamois is one of those animal species which, before a century, perhaps, will have disappeared; his bones will then figure in the paleontological museums by the side of the skeletons of extinct species. There, too, will be displayed the famous chamois balls, each of the size of a nut, covered with a shining substance resembling leather, of an agreeable odour, and seeming to be a morbid dejection, composed of roots and other undigested matter. These balls, the bezoars of the old physicians, were regarded as a remedy against every ill the human flesh is heir to; it was even professed that they rendered soldiers invulnerable, and were a better defence against bullets than the finest armour ever wrought by the smiths of Milan. How precious a remedy for this epoch of civilisation, when man-is he much wiser than his supposed

* Byron.

THE EAGLE'S HABITAT.

57

progenitor, the ape?-seeks to replace the cholera and the pestilence by the most terrific engines of destruction!

The birds inhabiting the inhospitable region of the snows are more numerous than the mammals. Let us briefly refer to a few of the more important.

THE EAGLE AND THE WREN.

In speaking of the eagle, Tennyson's noble lines to that "imperial bird" will occur to every reader, from the force and clearness of the picture which they present:—

"He clasps the crag with hookèd hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

"The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls."

The affection of the eagle for his "mountain walls may be easily understood. This giant bird, with his carnivorous instincts, is endowed with a remarkable tenacity of life, and can exist in habitats wholly inaccessible to man. But it is strange that a bird, which is as common a type of humility as the eagle is of ambition, and which we almost always cite as a contrast to the eagle-we mean, the delicate little wren-should also be found among the snow and ice, the silence and solitude, of the loftiest mountain regions.

To study the flight of the eagle, we should repair to Alpine highlands. When he has reached a certain altitude of the atmosphere, the royal bird descends obliquely, as upon an inclined plane, with a rush and a din of wings,