wet when they make their plunge. There are many foreign varieties of this elegant bird.

I could tell you much more about the pretty birds-about the numerous tribes of gaily-coloured Honey-eaters of Australia, the painted Parroquets of the West Indies, the Love-birds of China and the Indian Archipelago, the gorgeous Ibis of the Nile, and the numerous tribes which people the forests of the tropics; but these, beautiful though they are, possess no song. Instead of making the woods vocal with melody, their cries and shrieks startle the echoes with discordant noises. Unlike the song-birds of our own dear country, they appear incapable of association with mankind. Some few, however, of the smaller kinds of foreign birds-such as the little red-beaked Love-birds and others-look pretty in our aviaries, and associate with our Canaries and Grosbeaks as easily as if no difference of relationship existed between them-thereby setting us a good example of behaviour.

The study of birds is called Ornithology, and is highly interesting. Whoever examines the works of the Great Creator will find in the feathered tribes an endless source of interest and amusement.

Let then this league between us made

Our mutual interests guard;

Ours be the gift of fruit and shade,

Your songs be our reward.

MORE ABOUT THE SEA.

MONG the phenomena which have long puzzled the curious is that of the luminous appearance often observed on the sea. Sometimes the sea for miles is covered with a sort of phosphorescent light, which is supposed to be caused by the decayed bodies or the fry of thousands of small fishes.

M. Dangelet, a French astronomer, in sailing into the bay of Antongil, in the island of Madagascar, observed a prodigious quantity of fry, which covered the surface of the sea for the extent of more than a mile, and which he, at first, on account of its colour, mistook for a bank of sand. This immense accumulation of spawn or fry exhaled a disagreeable odour; and it had been remarked that the sea had, for some days before, been covered with bright streaks of various colours, which gave to it an appearance