tolerably gentle, so much so as to allow a
person who kuew him, to enter the den and
handle him." —vol. i., p. 244.

Bishop Heber saw a striped hyæna in
India, that followed its master and fawned
on him like a dog. Barrow also narrates
with respect to the spotted hyæna, that, in the
district of Scheufberg, at the Cape, it is
domesticated and used like a hound for the
chase. Lieutenant-Colonel Sykes tamed a
young hyæna in India; he brought it over to
England when full grown; but, out of
respect, doubtless, for the prejudices of Oxford
Street in regard to the quadruped followers
of its promenaders, he presented the animal,
though as gentle as a spaniel, to the
Zoological Society. "In India," writes that
gallant and accomplished officer, "It was
allowed to run about my house, and on board
ship it was released from its cage two or three
times a day to play with the sailors, and
gambol with the dogs. It early recognised
my person and voice, would obey when called,
and in general was as playful and good-
humoured as a puppy. My visits to it in
the Gardens have been rare and at long
intervals, nor have I ever carried it food. I
anticipated therefore, that it would outgrow
its early affection, and that I should be to it
as any other stranger; but it has always
greeted me, not only as an old acquaintance,
but as an old friend; and if I am to judge
from its agitation and peculiar cries, the
animal's recognition is that of affection. On
Sunday last it was asleep in its cage when I
approached. On calling it by its name it
looked up, distinguished me in the crowd,
started on its legs, and on my applying my
hand to its mouth to smell to, it threw itself
down against the bars, rubbed its head, neck,
and back against my hand, and then started
on its legs and bounded about its cage, uttering
short cries. On ceasing to speak to it
and moving away, it looked wistfully after
me, nor resumed its motions till I addressed
it again. Its manifestations of joy were so
unequivocal as to excite the surprise of a
great number of bystanders." (Zoological
Proceedings for eighteen hundred and thirty-
three, page seventy-six.) To their successors
in that attractive part of the Society's Gardens,
I would wish, in taking leave of the hyæna—
with these the kindest words ever offered in
behoof of the poor imprisoned brute—to
recommend it to the best sentiments that its
visage and voice may permit them to feel in
its favour.

THE GOLDEN VALE.

THERE is not a more fertile part of land in
the world than that which is called, and
precisely on account of its fertility, the Golden—
or rather, as they pronounce it, the Goolden—
Vale, in the county Tipperary. To look at it
a little before harvest time, were at once to be
convinced of its fertility; a fact which one
might doubt at any other time, especially if
the squalor of the population and the wretchedness
of the hovels be contemplated also.

No travellers in this part of Ireland
should fail to visit the Rock of Cashel. The
Rock will always be beautiful; but, it was
once surmounted by one of the most beautiful
specimens of old Irish ecclesiastical architecture
in the island. Not many years since,
the ruins of the old cathedral—for it was no
less—were still in a perfect state. Time and
neglect, however, have done their worst
service, and less and less remains, every year,
of that most stately structure. But the Rock
of Cashel is still there, and from it the view
of the Golden Vale is something that will
not moulder away, and will make very nearly
as deep an impression as the ruined cathedral
itself.

A casual visitor might, as we have
observed, doubt the great fertility of the vale:
Liebig, however, or one of his disciples, would
recognise the truth in a very short survey,
and would account for it by the continuous
washing of fertilizing matter from the bare
limestone of the hills down on to the deep
recipient valley. What a happy race the owners
and landlords of such a region ought to be!
How amply must it be in their power to make
the peasants dependent on them and their
employment, more comfortable than the
peasants in a poorer district! What scope for
improvement, for justice, for charity, for good
agriculture, for all the elements of virtue and
happiness.

Unfortunately the history of the Golden
Vale cannot be written in such characters.
There is scarcely one of the gentlemen's seats
which dot it, that has not been the scene or
the subject of a sad story. Recklessness,
prodigality, cruelty, murder—all the great
temptations and besetting sins of Irish life have
been here accumulated and exaggerated. In
consequence of the great fertility of the
land, and of the great rise of corn prices, the
competition amongst the tenants was perfectly
insane. Instead of doubting and checking
delirium, the squires thought their land a
permanent source of wealth, and spent and
mortgaged in proportion to the rent offered.
At that time—in the years of war and war-
prices—the ousted tenant went to the wars
himself, turned pig-driver, or found some
other way of life. But, when peace came and
with it that downfall of prices which roused
the squirearchy of Ireland—and, indeed,
of England too—to the poorness of reality,
then, neither peasant nor landlord had
patience to bear his reverses. The squire,
ruined by the change of circumstances,
if he did not commit actual, perpetrated
moral, suicide. He plunged into vice, drank,
gambled, did anything to keep up his spirits,
and that only for a day. The tenant felt
the bad effects of his landlord's behaviour:
he got small abatements, and no mercy. He
had no longer the resource of the war, or