The Sun.
London, England, 1867-10-12 00:00:00

TIIE SUN-. LOINDOY SATURDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 12, 1367.

100, though it is proof of the recklessness which
characterises owners and men that they should be
so employed. We need not, therefore, attribute
the rotten condition of some of the more juvenile
craft to actual age, but rather to their utter
unseaworthiness. It is not a little singular that,
since the greatest number of casualties almost
always occur on our eastern coast, the
colliers of the north-eastern ports have such an
established reputation as the worst vessels afloat.
This has a great deal to do with the loss of life and
shipping in this direction, and if something could be
done to supervise these vessels the discrepancy
might not be so great as we find it in the Register.
East coast, 953 ; south co ist, 274 ; west coast.,
412 ; north-west coast of Scotland, 47 ; Irish coast,
144. Some efforts have been made to improve
matters with regard to these ships. Mr. LAIRD
and other members exerted themselves to ob-
tain an act to secure the testing of their cables
and anchors, but the whole shipping trade
of that class is in so unsatisfactory and demoralised
a condition that much remains to be done. The
men employed are so ignorant and uneducated that
they are often not aware of the dangers to which
they expose themselves, and the class of seamen
who can be got to sail in such ships are not likely
to lessen the risks of disasters by good seamanship
or skilful navigation. The standard of qualifica-
tion for masters and mates of our merchant
vessels has of late years been considerably
raised ; if it were generally extended we might
see an improvement by degrees effected in our
coasting trade. it is an inexcusable thing for a
shipowner to send craft to sea which insurance
associations will not admit on their books, yet such
is constantly done, and we may see the result so
plainly inscribed in the Wreck. Register. We are
glad to find that, in addition to the official returns
of the Board of Trade, the statistical committee of
Lloyd's have resolved to issue a tabulated analysis
of the wrecks and casualties of the year. The first
of such reports is now issued for the year 1866, and
it will no doubt do material service in bringing to
light the causes of some of our shipwrecks. That
many of them are due rather to defects in the ship
and its management rather than to the violence of
the weather is proved by the fact that 733 casualties
happened when the wind was at force six and under,
that is to say when it did not exceed a strong breeze,
in which the ship could carry single reefs and top-
gallant sails ; 122 happened with the wind at force
7 or 8, that is to say a fresh gale ; and 954, or little
more than half the total number of disasters,
occurred with the wind at a force of 9 or upwards,
from a fresh gale to a hurricane. Another signifi-
cant fact is that the number of ships totally lost on
the British coasts from unseaworthiness alone in 10
years is 423, and the number of casualties caused
through unseaworthy ships, unsound gear, &c.,
and resulting in partial damage in the
same time is 586. The number of wrecks
among colliers, laden and in ballast, in 1866 was
Bbs, a number altogether out of pioportion to the
rest of the shipping. Besides these there were 141
vessels laden with metallic ores, and 154 with stone,
all no doubt to be placed in the same category. The
total number of vessels lost or damaged in the year
was 2,289, and of these only 99 were above 600
tons burden, as many as 977 being 100 tons and
under, and 939 from 100 to 200 tons. It is evi-
dent, therefore, that the number of our wrecks and
losses means something more than the mere in-
crease of our shipping, and good service might be
done to the public by instituting an official inquiry
into the condition of our coasting vessels. Of the
2,289 ships lost or damaged during the twelve-
month, 1,961 are known to have been ships be-
longing to Great Britain and its dependencies. Of
the British ships, 1,409 were employed in the
coasting trade, and 549 in the over sea trades, so
that the question is one of considerable import-

DE

ance.

The list of collisions is a very heavy one—no less
than 422. These disasters involve d the loss of two
or more ships, which accounts for the seeming
discrepancy between the number of ships lost or
damaged, and the number of casualties reported.
Unfortunately these collisions are becoming more
and more frequent, and have actually occurred at
the rate of more than one a day, since 422 are re-
corded in the year. Our naval authorities should
exercise a strict supervision on this point, since the
carelessness or indifference in which these disasters
too frequently originate can hardly be too severely
blamed.

The services of the National Lifeboat Institution
form a pleasing part of the mournful chronicle, and
it is satisfactory to know that they have now a fleet
of 183 lifeboats on our coasts, so ably manned
and so efficiently directed as to call forth the
cordial approval of continental nations. The In-
ternational Jury of the Paris Exhibition awarded
to the Institution ono of their nineteen great gold
medals in acknowledgment of the important ser-
vices which they had rendered to shipwrecked
sailors of all nations, and we have no doubt the
benefits of their good example will soon extend still
further.

The York Church Institute was inaugurated on
Wednesday last, when the Archbishop of YORK
delivered an address full of interest to those who
take pleasure in such proceedings, and expressed

a hope that at a time when so much occurred to

distract men's minds they :might be able to pre-
serve unity of feeling and sentiment. The object
of this institute in question is to provide recreation
for the mind, which is, in fact, as needful as em-
ployment for it, and also to see that the amusement
is of a satisfactory kind, and one which will not
cause regret or retrospection. Self-education, it is
truly said here, is a thing possible to all, and a faith

in its possibility is a great step towards realising it.
Connected with this subject the Archbishop made
some remarks on the tendencies of literature at the
present day. During the last half century many
things have occurred which have combined to give
a peculiar turn to thought and a rapid development

to literature. In France, at the end of last century,
great confusion reigned in all these matters, and it
was difficult to distinguish the prevailing feeling of
the people amid the tangled web that chance and
change had woven. In Germany attempts were
made to show that religion was beyond man's
understanding, and in England teachers started up
to spread the doctrines of the material school, and
make philosophy superior to faith. From these
complications a new and better state of things has
arisen, and men have turned with satisfaction
from the wearisome details of abstract philosophy
to subjec!s that come more within the legitimate
scope of their observation. In some respects art has
gone through changes somewhat similar, and
realism in art has kept pace with physical inquiry
and with philosophic doubt. In too many cases
the directors of our present literature have consi-
dered it a sufficient excuse that a thing is like real life
to render its description admissible into the pages
of romance. As it is forcibly put in this discourse,
" There are noble exceptions, no doubt, but the
painter and the novelist arc often content to repro-
duce, with minute fidelity, the facts of life as they
are, and besides are led into haunts of sin, and
taught how usurers colter each other, and harlots
live and die, because the picture it prezeuts is true,

and it is the business of life to observe facts and
phenomena as they are." Those who have taken
anything more than a cursory glance at the pre-
vailing state of literature and art must agree in the
truth of this criticism, and fully appreciate the sad
consequences of such a tendency to lower rather
than to elevate the tone of thought and feeling.

There can be no doubt whatever that the next
thing to do is to seek to alter this state of things
by all means in our power. And bow is this to be
done ? is a question easier asked than answered.
Notwithstanding the truth of all this, people are
very apt to forget the importance of it if they are
not continually told ; and an address, like this
one before us, is worthy of especial notice
and consideration, on account of its importance,
both intrinsically and relatively. There are
two ways of regarding things, one of which tends
to promote religious feeling and the other to destroy
it, and hence it follows that the right course to adopt
is to strengthen all that is in the direction of the
former without dragging religious topics in un-
awares, and at unnecessary seasons. In_ works of
fiction especially it is necessary to draw a line, if

we would select the profitable from the undesirable ;
and it may well be asked what profit is there in
perusing them, while we must think how far these
delineators of the strong sensation school fall short
of the real vocation of the art they uphold. It
is truly said here that there is no true in-
terest in these sad pictures of fallen humanity,
and that they teach nothing. " Unfold for us some
struggle of a moral being like ourselves, fallen, yet
with a power of choice, and capable of good ; give
us as spiritual beings something worthy of the sym-
pathy of spiritual beings, something to quicken our
souls as well in true knowledge, true reverence, and
true love, and you will do what the masters of your
art have always arrived at." It is well that we
meet occasionally with a protest of this kind against
the prevailing tendencies of the age we live in, in
art and literature, for it is easier to fall back and
to deteriorate than to keep up to a high standard or
to recover the position when lost.

lungs, and of course prove mortal. M.
Fould, who was very uneasy upon the subject,
wrote a letter on the morning of the day he died to
Madame Furtado, his sister, begging her to send him
full information respecting her husband without
delay. M. Fould added, in reference to his own
health, that he never felt better in his life. The
letter was sent to Madame Furtado by post, but the
telegram announcing M. Fould's death reached.
Madame Furtado before it. An intimate friend of
the Furtado family, who was anxious to know if M.
Furtado was better, had sent to inquire about him,
and his messenger was at the house at the moment
when the telegram from Tarbes arrived in Paris,
and the answer sent by him to his master was that
M. Furtado was out of danger, but that M. Fould
was dead !

ARRIVALS AT THE ZOOLOGICAL

GARDENS.

The grand acquisition of the past week has been
a great ant eater (Myrmecopbaga jubata). There
has also been received a coypu (Myopotamus coypu),
an aquatic rodent, something like a gigantic water
rat in appearance, but which is more nearly akin to
the porcupine ; and another wapiti fawn has made
its appearance. A pair of common wood pigeons
have been added to the collection; also a West Indian
snake (rropedonotus), and a number of Hippo-
campi, commonly known as sea horses, which are
very interesting objects in one of the aquaria in the
fish house.
The great ant-eater is kept in the house opposite
to the kangaroo enclosures, in the cage in which the
three-banded armadillo was formerly exhibited, and
appropriately next to that containing the sloths
(Bradypus). Our readers are well aware that this
most remarkable animal is not now exhibited for
the first time. There was a very fine one some years
ago, which has been admirably represented by Joseph
Wolf in sundry characteristic attitudes, as may be
seen in the neighbouring picture gallery near the
reptile-house ; and during last winter a particularly
large specimen was offered to the society, but at a
prohibitive price, and it was afterwards taken to
Antwerp, where it expired very recently.
The order Edentata, to which this curious animal
appertains, is exclusively American, with the ex-
ceptions of the genus Mauls or pangolin in Asia and
Africa (and very anciently in Europe), and the
genus Orycteropus in Africa—the aardvark (or
" earth-hog") of the Dutch colonists in the south.
With those two exceptions, the Edentata arepeculiar
to South America at the present time, where they
are exemplified by three principal groups— the
sloth, the ant-eaters, and the armadillos. At no dis-
tant date, geologically, the present wholly arboreal
sloths (Bradypus) bad their exceedingly gigantic
ground representatives in the extinct genera
Megalonyx and Megatherium, as the very
curious three-banded armadillo (Tatusia) of the
present day—which is a very different animal from
other armadillcs—had its less gigantic, though still
enormous, relatives of the genus Glyptodon, which
probably stepped on the points of the great claws
of their fore-feet, in like manner to the diminutive
Tatusia. Another most remarkable genus, akin to
the armadillos, exists in the diminutive Chlamydo-
phorus, of which most of our readers will have seen
both skin and skeleton set up in the bird gallery of
the British Museum, placed over one of the shell

cases. But little is known of thel habits of that
singular little animal, except that it is em-
phatically a burrower, as indicated by its struc-
ture, and it inhabits certain districts of the Andes.
The Priodon, or gigantic armadillo, is another
remarkable animal, which is a great desideratum for
the gardens, but it does not appear to have even
been brought alive to Europe, although there should
be no difficulty in introducing it. Of the ordinary
type of armadillo (Dasypus) two or three species are
generally to be seen in the collection, one or two of
them, indeed, being commonly placed along with
the lemurs and monkeys, by which animals theydo
not appear to be molested.

That extraordinary African animal, the Oyrc-
teropus, and again the several species of Mania or
Pangolin, inhabiting Africa, with south-eastern
Asia and its principal islands, are likewise great
desiderata in the Regent's-park collection. We
heard of a living example of the former, which
was kept for several months in South Africa,
fed chiefly upon blood from a slaughter-house,
for which scraped meat might doubtless be
substituted, mixed with the yolks of eggs ; and
we have seen two species of pangolin kept upon
similar food in India, so that we need not despair of
yet seeing both of those genera alive in the Zoolo-
gical Gardens. No creature has been more carica-
tured in the representations hitherto published of it
than the pangolin. The huge claws of its fore-

feet are bent upwards in walking, precisely as in
the great American ant-eater ; its back is much
arched, and the limbs are stout and pillar-like.
On the tripod of its hind feet and massive tail

it can swerve the body about in every
position, reminding the observer of the move-
ments of certain caterpillars ; and it has a clam-

bering propensity, as observed in captivity, with
considerable prehensility of the tail, enabling it to
hold on by the very tip, which can thus support
the whole weight of the animal. It is capable of
exceedingly prolonged abstinence, so that it can be
brought several days' journey without suffering
from want of food, and with assiduous attention
might doubtless be made to survive the voyage to
this country.

Of the American ant-eaters there are three
genera, viz., Myrmecophaga, to a living example of
which attention is now called ; Tamandua, with an
evenly prehensile tail, i.e., not specially so at its
extremity, and which is clad with short close hairs ;
and Cyclodurus, the diminutive two-toed ant-eater,

which is something like a sloth with a long prehen•
silo tail, the extremity of which coils like tha

of an opossum or chameleon. Both of the
latter genera are arboreal, and the last ex-

•
elusively so, the singular little animal preying
chiefly on the nympba3 of hymenoposterous in-

sects, which it seizes adroitly by means of the two
nipper-like claws of each fore-foot. The Tamandua
we may hope some day to see alive, but scarcely the
Cyclodurus. The Myrmecophaga jubata attains to
the magnitude of a small bear, and can use its
powerful anterior limbs, with their huge and for-

midable claws, with effect, it is said, even against
the jaguar; but the ordinary employment of these

powerful implements is to tear open the hard clay
nests of termites, or so called white ants, for, pro-
perly speaking, the ant-eater does not prey on ants,

but on the termites, which belong to quite a differ-

ent order of insects.

We were struck with the

resemblance of the eye of the great ant-eater to that
of the pangolin ; but the latter cannot strike with
its fore paw, and can only passively defend itself by

rolling itself into a compact ball, which a tiger might
pat and toss about without injuring the animal.
The skull of the Myrmecophaga is so remarkable
that, had it only been known as a fossil more or less

mperfect, anatomists would probably have been

puzzled even as to the class of vertebrata to which
they should assign it.—Land and Water.

TIIE QUEEN'S THEATRE.—It being found impos-
sible to complete this new theatre by the 17th inst., the
opening of it has been postponed until the 24th.
MISS BATEMAN AT LIVERPOOL—For the third

time this week the Theatre Royal was last night crowded
with a fashionable audience. The enthusiasm with which
Miss Bateman was received as "Leah" on Monday night
is still elicited by that gifted lady, whom the audience con-
tinuo to call to the front at intervals during the progress
of the play. Such manifestations of popularity as those
which are still evinced by the crowded houses at the
"Royal" aro sufficient to induce Miss Bateman to prolong
her stay in this town beyond the short period of a fort-
night which she contemplated, or at all events cause her to
take an early opportunity of revisiting Liverpool, if her
present arrangements prevent an extended sojourn at this
time.—Liverpool Courier.

The Duke of Larochefoucauld is entertaining an
immense hunting party at Gaudiniere. The chateau,
built in the time of Louis XII., stands in the midst of s
forest teeming with grouse and pheasants. The stables
contain 120 horses. The guests who go out with the duke
wear a special dress, as in the days of the Grand Monarque,
when every great house had its own distinctive hunting
costume. A baud of thirty musicians is engaged for the
months of October, November, and December; after
which the Duke's Parliamentary duties comrol him to
break up this ostablishrasut.

LA TEST INTELLIGENCE:

(REUTER'S TELEGRAMS.)

ITALY.

FLORENCE, Oct. 11 (Evening).
The Official Gazette corrects the news published
in the Igonna, but confirms the statement that
Garibaldi attempted to leave Caprera on the 2d inst.,

but was prevented so doing by the Italian steamship
SCSII.

The telegraph lines between Viterbo and Villetri
were cut by the insurgents, but are now restored.

Roan , Oct. 11 (Evening).
Nearly the whole of the garrison of Rome left
the town yesterday, but have now returned. The
cause of this movement is not known.

Reports are current of encounters in various
localities, but up to the present these have received
no reliable confirmation.