deserves his name, for he is a pleasant man, and we dined with his wife and himself and the keepers of the Beasts (name given by men to quadrupeds). None of the company were very polished, but all behaved with propriety and good humor, and I liked it on many accounts. Mr. Cross conversed very entertainingly. Bentley had two tickets for Drury Lane Theatre. It was "The Critic" again; immediately after, as if in spite of that good lesson, "The Haunted Inn" was performed, and the two gentlemen called Matthews and Litton so annoyed me with their low wit that I often thought that, could Shakespeare or Garrick be raised from their peaceful places of rest, tears of sorrow would have run down their cheeks to see how abused their darling theatre was this night. Bentley was more fortunate than I, he went to sleep. At my rooms I found a little circular piece of ivory with my name, followed by "and friends," and a letter stating it was a perpetual ticket of admission to the Zoölogical Gardens. This was sent at the request of Mr. Brookes.
February 2. Bentley and I went to the Gardens of the Zoölogical Society, which are at the opposite end of Regent's Park from my lodgings. The Gardens are quite in a state of infancy; I have seen more curiosities in a swamp in America in one morning than is collected here since eighteen months; all, however, is well planned, clean, and what specimens they have are fine and in good condition. As we were leaving I heard my name called, and turning saw Mr. Vigors with a companion to whom he introduced me; it was the famous Captain Sabine,[1] a tall, thin man, who at once asked me if among the Eagles they had, any were the young of the White-headed Eagle, or as he called the bird, the Falco leucocephalus. Strange that such great men should ask a woodsman questions like that,
- ↑ Captain (Sir) Edward Sabine accompanied Parry's expedition to the Arctic regions, a mathematician, traveller, and Fellow of the Royal Society, 1819. Born in Dublin, 1788, died in Richmond, 1883.
