was half grown, was great. It would drag along a large sweeping-brush, or a warming-pan, grasping the handle. with its teeth so that it came over its shoulders, and advancing with the load in an oblique direction till it arrived at the point where it wished to place it. 4. The long and large materials were always taken first, and two of the longest were generally laid crosswise, with one of the ends of each touching the wall, and the other ends projecting out into the room. The area formed by the crossed brushes and the wall he would fill up with hand-brushes, rush-baskets, books, boots, sticks, clothes, dried turf, or anything portable. As the work grew high, he supported himself on his tail, which propped him up admirably; and he would often, after laying on one of his building materials, sit up over against it, appearing to consider his work, or, as the country people say, “judge it." After this pause he would sometimes change the position of the material "judged," and sometimes he would leave it in its place. 5. After he had piled up his materials in one part of the room (for he generally chose the same place), he proceeded to wall up the space between the feet of a chest of drawers which stood at a little distance from it, high enough on its legs to make the bottom a roof for him; using for this purpose dried turf and sticks, which he laid very even, and filling up the interstices with bits of coal, hay, cloth, or anything he could pick up. This last place he seemed to appropriate for his dwelling; the former work seemed to be intended for a dam. When he had walled up the space between the feet of the chest of drawers, he proceeded to carry in sticks, clothes, hay, cotton-wool, etc., and to make a nest. When he had done this to his satisfaction, he would sit up under the drawers and comb himself with the nails of his hind feet. 6. Binny generally carried small and light articles between his right fore-leg and his chin, walking on the other three legs; and huge masses, which he could not grasp readily with his teeth, he pushed forwards, leaning against them with his right fore-paw and his chin. He never carried anything on his tail, which he liked to dip in water, but he was not fond of plunging in the whole of his body. If his tail was kept moist he never cared to drink; but if it was kept dry it became hot, and the animal appeared distressed, and would drink a great deal. 7. Binny must have been captured too young to have seen any of the building operations of his parents or their co-mates; but his instinct impelled him to go to work under the most unfavorable circumstances, and he busied himself as earnestly in constructing a dam, in a room up three pairs of stairs in London, as if he had been laying his foundation in a stream or lake in Upper Canada. 8. Some highly comic scenes occurred between the worthy but slow beaver and a light and airy macauco that was kept in the same apartment. The macauco was a white-fronted lemur, and presented to me by the late Captain Marryat. 9. Macky would bound on Binny's back, dance a kind of saraband upon him, and then leap before him; upon which Binny would charge the dancer with the most determined heavy alacrity. Macky was over his head and skipping on his great flat, scaly tail in a second. Then Binny would shake his head, wheel round like a ponderous wagon, and by the time he had brought his head where his tail was, Macky had bounded from the tables and chairs on and off him twenty times. Binny at last would slap his tail again and again against the floor, till he made all ring; whereupon Macky would dance round him and cut the most extravagant capers, touching Binny's tail with. his finger, and jumping away as quick as thought. 10. They had evidently a good understanding with each other, and were on the best terms. One day they were left together at large in a room where there was a linen-press, the doors of which had been left open. Macky climbed the doors, ransacked the press, pulled out the sheets, tablecloths, etc., and threw them down to the beaver, who, having made a most luxurious bed, laid himself down thereon; and when the room was entered, Macky and Binny were found fast asleep, the former with his head and shoulders pillowed upon Binny's comfortable neck. BRODERIP. 60. THE SHIP OF THE DESERT. că'liph, one of the successors of Mai-tin'er-ant, wandering. [homet. ko'ran, the Mahometan scriptures. met'a-phor, a figure of speech. 1. SHIP indeed! never was metaphor more true. Launched upon the sandy ocean, where the compass is not unfrequently used, the camel fleet pursues its voyage until it reaches its anchoring ground for the night in some wellknown break, making commerce easy between nations to whom the desert would otherwise be an unconquerable bar; or smoothes the dreary way from Damascus to Mecca for the Mahometan pilgrim. 2. The hadj, or pilgrim caravan, pursues its route principally by night, and by torch-light. Moving about four o'clock in the afternoon, it travels without stopping till an hour or two after the sun is above the horizon. The extent and luxury of these pilgrimages, in ancient times especially, almost exceed belief. Haroun, of Arabian Nights' celebrity, performed the pilgrimage no less than nine times, and with a grandeur becoming the commander of the faithful. The caravan of the mother of the last of the Abassides numbered one hundred and twenty thousand camels. Nine hundred camels were employed merely in bearing the wardrobe of one of the caliphs, and others carried snow with them to cool their sherbet. 3. Nor was Bagdad alone celebrated for such pomp and luxury in fulfilling the directions of the Koran. The Sultan of Egypt on one occasion was accompanied by five hundred camels, whose luscious burdens consisted of sweetmeats and confectionery only, while two hundred and eighty were entirely laden with pomegranates and other fruits. The itinerant larder of this potentate contained one thousand geese and three thousand fowls. Even so late as sixty years since the pilgrim caravan from Cairo was six hours in passing one who saw the procession. 4. The departure of such an array, with its thousands of camels glittering in every variety of trappings, some with two brass field-pieces each; others with bells and streamers; others, again, with kettledrums; others covered with purple velvet, with men walking by their sides playing on flutes and flageolets; some glittering with neckornaments and silver-studded bridles, variegated with colored beads, and with nodding plumes of ostrich-feathers on their foreheads; to say nothing of the noble, gigantic, sacred camel, decked with cloth of gold and silk, his bridle studded with jewels and gold, led by two sheiks in green, with the ark or chapel containing the Koran written in letters of gold, forms a dazzling spectacle. BRODERIP. 1. THE camels receiving their burdens was a spectacle never to be forgotten. They never varied in their behavior, |