much to send them to the Zoological, but I know I promised them to your boy, and I am sure he will like them. All they want is to have their coop moved from one ground to another, as they live by scratching up the earth; and of course when snow is cheap they might like a taste, as they lived on the snowy range, and hardly ever came so low as Simla. They will bear to be driven, but not to be handled.
Yesterday was what may be called a day of misfortunes. I borrowed ’s thermometer, and that slipped through my fingers and broke all to pieces before I could even see how hot I was; then I opened a table with a glass top, where I kept my choicest curiosities, forgot the punkah, which blew down the lid and shivered that; then there came a crack like a pistol shot, which was my Bombay workbox succumbing to the climate and opening a wide fissure. In short, my household gods were uncommonly shivered about me; so now I think that storm must have cleared the atmosphere, and I shall be lucky again.
