Perhaps a few ascetic advocates of cant and care-wearing abstinence will think that we ought to conceal this exceptionable fact, lest Jerry’s example should be more frequently followed.  Justice demands otherwise; and as the biographers of old tell us that Alexander the Great died of hard-drinking, so ought we to record that Happy Jerry’s life was not shortened by the imperial propensity:  in this case, the monkey has beat the man:  proverbially, the man beats the monkey.  Jerry had, however, his share of ailment:  he had been a martyr to that love-pain, the tooth-ache; several of his large molar teeth being entirely decayed.  This circumstance accounted for the gloomy appearance he would sometimes put on, and his covering his head with his hands, and laying it in his chair.  Poor fellow! we could have sympathized with him from our very hearts—­we mean teeth.  Jerry’s remains have been carefully embalmed, (we hope in his favourite spirit,) and are now at the Surrey Gardens; where the arrival of a living congener is daily expected.  Meanwhile, will nobody write the hic jacet of the deceased? or no publisher engage for his reminiscences?  Mr. Cross would probably supply the skeleton—­of the memoir—­not of his poor dead Jerry.  What tales could he have told of the slave-stricken people of the Gold Coast, what horrors of the slave-ship whence he was taken, what a fine graphic picture of his voyage, and his travels in England, a la Prince Puckler Muskau, not forgetting his visit to Windsor Castle.

Baboons may be rendered docile in confinement; though they almost always retain the disposition to revenge an injury.  At the Cape, they are often caught when young, and brought up with milk; perhaps Jerry was so nurtured; and Kolben tells us, that they will become as watchful over their master’s property as the most valuable house-dog is in Europe.  Many of the Hottentots believe they can speak, but that they avoid doing so lest they should be enslaved, and compelled to work!  What a libel upon human nature is conveyed in this trait of savage credulity.  The bitterest reproofs of man’s wickedness are not only to be found in the varnished lessons of civilization.  Here is a touching piece of simplicity upon which James Montgomery might found a whole poem.

Baboons, in their native countries, are sometimes hunted with dogs, but their chase is often fatal to the assailants.  Mr. Burchell tells us that several of his dogs were wounded by the bites of baboons, and two or three dogs were thus bitten asunder.  A species of baboon common in Ceylon, often attains the height of man.  It is very fearless; and Bishop Heber relates that an acquaintance of his having on one occasion shot a young baboon, the mother came boldly up and wrested the gun out of his hand without doing him any injury.

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By way of pendent, we add the present state of THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY, from the report just completed.