applications: Mittdelsdorff of Breslau heats wires to a white heat by means of a battery, and uses them for cauterising interior surfaces, or to cut off tumours. The advantage is said to be great, because the wire can be applied to the part affected before heating, and that the heat, though intense, can be withdrawn as instantaneously as it is produced, and the patient is spared the alarm of seeing a red-hot wire brought near his face, breast, &c.-The Nuovo Cimento contains an account of experiments by Count Linati on that interesting subject-the reinvigoration of nervous energy by electricity. He brings a current from a Daniell's battery to bear at the same time on the dorsal and the epigastric regions of his patients for two or three hours at a sitting; and, after several sittings, he finds that the circulation is increased in activity by about one-seventh, with a more energetic pulse; that the respiratory function is augmented in a similar degree, as also that of the stomach and intestines, while the repairing power of assimilation is sensibly facilitated.

A frog poisoned with curare, that South American poison, exhibits curious results: the nerve will not contract on the application of electricity-shews, indeed, not the slightest sign of sensibility; but if the muscle is touched with the wires, it contracts strongly, and preserves the contractile power longer than if unpoisoned. Cold has the effect of diminishing the rapidity of a current of electricity through a nerve; a fact from which operators may take a hint. M. Duchenne of Boulogne-on whom a decoration was lately conferred by a decree published in the Moniteur -turning these and other conclusions to account, has demonstrated, and with marked success, the therapeutic effects of electricity. He owes much of his success to the means by which he localises his applications. He makes use of three terms in his process-namely, electrisation, galvanisation, and Faradisation; the last, which is induced electricity, is the best agent in muscular electrisation, especially when required to be long continued, and is, as M. Duchenne avers, the medical electricity par excellence. By dint of experiment, he has determined the proper dose for the respective nerves and muscles, an essential consideration, seeing that an overdose involves danger, and the patient might find himself fixed with a contraction, or deformity, greater than that he wished to cure. Some of M. Duchenne's cures are astonishing; by persevering in his electric applications, he has restored paralysed and contracted limbs to their natural condition, inducing the power of voluntary motion; and when that is once achieved, even in a small degree, he leaves it to the will to finish the work. His electric moxa is described as more severe than the actual application of fire.

Mr Gant, of the Royal Free Hospital, has published an inquiry on the Evil Results of Overfeeding Cattle, the main point of which is, that meat forced and formed unnaturally is unwholesome; hence disturbance or loss of health in those who eat thereof. Cattle, sheep, and pigs, are now fed up to a size quite disproportionate to their age, or rather to their youth, that prizes may be won at cattle-shows. The heart and lungs are in consequence made to work at high-pressure; these organs thereby become diseased, and with them the whole carcass. Mr Gant tested his conclusions by following the unwieldy creatures from the show to the slaughter-house, by observing what there took place, and by examination of the meat after it was cut up. Among the overfed animals, he mentions the Prince Consort's pigs as distressingly fat and heavy. These evils have been complained of before; but the answer is, that by overfeeding a few, you improve the whole breed of cattle, and so supply the market with better meat. However, seeing that Messrs Lawes and Gilbert have

written a paper on the feeding of cattle, and presented it to the Royal Society, we may hope ere long to be in the possession of sound, practical conclusions on the subject.

M. Gobley has made a careful analysis of snails, to determine anew the constituents of which those slow animals are formed, with a view to ascertain whether they really do contain a cure for thoracic affections. His conclusions negative the belief that the carbonate of lime acts on the tubercle; there is nothing, he says, 'which makes it possible to consider the constituents as exerting any specific action in maladies of the chest.'

PRECEDENCE IN THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES. HAVING given a view of housekeeping three hundred years ago, we readily embrace an opportunity that now presents itself of saying a word on the table observances of the time, as regards precedence. A rare black-letter book, to be found among Bishop More's valuable collection in the Cambridge University Library, and entitled The Boke of Kervynge [Carving], W. de Worde, 1506-8, affords us an interesting insight into the table etiquette of our ances tors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It gives us also an additional proof of the fallacy of the prevalent opinion as to the simple and patriarchal habits of our forefathers of the good old times.' In point of fact, society was hampered with absurd conventionalities and cumbersome ceremonials, which only ceased to be in vogue with the reigns of the latter Stuarts.

These relics of a quasi-obsolete feudalism, as regards the table arrangements, were still fully practised in the households of Elizabeth and the first James. We read that fully half an hour was occupied, after the table had been laid for the royal repast, in entries and exits of court officials, ushers, marshals, chamberlains, and married and single ladies of honour, who each made a prostration or genuflection in turn on entering or retiring, either to imaginary majesty, which was not then present, or literally to the bread or the salt, &c., as was then, it seems, their duty.

The present article treats of that portion of the Boke of Kervynge-a species of servant's manual of the time-which details the duties of the marshal and usher in a nobleman's house, and consequently combines the etiquette of precedence, as it then existed. It even gives us a tabular list of titles, ranks, and offices, which cannot but be found interesting.

Shenstone, a keen observer of the human mind, says, that there are no persons so punctilious as to preservation of rank, as those who have no rank at all, while the querulous assumption of the parvenu is proverbial; and when we recollect that nobility in Europe, as an institution, certainly dates no further back than the eleventh century, we can easily account for the tenacity with which the notables of the land at the feudal period held to their aristocratic position, and the importance they assigned to its different phases and gradations.

In our own day, the exclusive order has been well ventilated; but we rather believe that the most incroyable member of the Upper Ten Thousand' would be surprised to hear, that in the fifteenth century a duke might not kepe the hall, but suche estatte by themselfe in chambere or in pavilyon'that is, that he could not eat in the public room, but only in private with his own rank.

There are a few more things fully as interesting in the following extracts:

'The marshall and ye usher must knowe al the

estattes of ye lande, and ye highe estatte of ye kinge withe ye bloude ryall, the estatte of a kinge, of a kinge's son, a prynce, of a duke, of a marques, of an erle, of a bysshop, of a vysecounte, of a beron, of ye three chiefe judges, of a mayer of London, of a knighte batchelour, of a knighte, deane, of ye archdeackon, Master of ye Rolles, of ye other judges and ye Barons of Cheker, of ye mayre of Calice [query, Calais], of a doctour devine, of a doctour of bothe ye lawes, of hym that hathe beene mayer of London and sargeaunte of ye lawes. The estatte of a maister of the Chauncerie (and othere worshypefull prechers), and clerkes that be graduable, and al othere order of chast persons and prestes, worshypfull marchauntes and gentlemen-all these last may set at the squiers tabell.'

It must have been something to have had 'esquire' tacked to one's name in those days. However, could the editor of the quaint old Boke of Kervynge be brought to life, and could he stop one of our modern postmen, he would be as much astounded as scandalised. But to proceed:

'Marques, erles, bysshops, and vyscountes-al these may set togethere at a messe.

'And beron, and mayer of London, and three chiefe judges, and ye Spekere of ye parlyment-all these may set, but onlie two or three at a messe.

And al other estattes may set, or three or foure at a messe.

Also, ye marshalle must onderstand and knowe well of the bloude royall-for some lorde is of the bloude ryall, and peradventure of smal livelyhood. And some pore knighte is forsoothe wedded unto a ladye of ryall bloude; but she shall kepe the estatte of lordes bloude, and therefor ye ryall bloude shall have ye reverence as before have I sayde.

'Also, a marshalle must take grete hede of ye byrthe, and next of ye lyne of ye bloude ryall.

Also, must he take hede of the king his officers -of the chauncelor, steuard, chamberlan, tresurere, and comptrouller.

'Also, ye marshalle must take hede onto al straungers, and put them onto worshyppe and reverance, for minde; and if that they do have goode cheare, it is much to your soverayne his honnour. Also ye marshalle must take goode hede if that the kinge do sende your soverayne anie message; and if that he sende a knighte, receave him lyke to a beron; and if that he do sende but a yeoman, see ye receave him lyke a squier; and if he sende but a groome, receave ye him lyke a yeoman.

'Also marke, it is no rebuke even unto a knighte, that ye set a groome of ye kinge's at his tabell.

'Thus endeth the Boke of Servyce and Carvynge and Servinge, and al mannere of offyces [in his kinde] onto a prynce, or anie otter [other] estatte, and al ye feestes in ye yeares.'

It is amusing to remark, that all throughout this rare old tract, each servant-as in this case the usher or marshal, in our day known as groom of the chambers-invariably styles his employer his 'sovereign.' The master may be a nobleman, however, as this quaint relic of the past sets forth on its title-page that its information is intended 'for the servyce of a prynce or anie otter estatte.' In those days, dukes, marquises, and earls were called 'princes.' This brevet arrangement of titles of nobility was prevalent, indeed, for at least two centuries later; and we find that the profligate Buckingham is addressed, in one of the servile and fulsome dedications of the period, as The most High and Puissant Prince, the most Exalted and Noble Duke of Buckingham,' &c.

That portion of the above extracts which speaks of some pore knighte' married to a lady of the 'ryall bloude, throws us back to the stormy period when

faction, violence, or intrigue having disposed of British kings in the very summary way peculiar to our early history, set up new occupants of the throne, whose families, and even distant connections, must have been often surprised to have suddenly found themselves included in the 'ryall bloud.' The marshals and ushers' of those days would have found such changes particularly perplexing to them occasionally, in the exercise of their somewhat onerous and responsible vocations.

STORY OF A RURAL NATURALIST. THE following truthful narrative exhibits, we think, a degree of devotion in the pursuit of science under difficulties which has rarely been paralleled.

There lives at present in Banff a journeyman shoemaker named Thomas Edwards. Ever since he can remember, Mr Edwards has had a strong predilection for pursuits connected with natural history; more especially, he has devoted himself to making a collection of the land-animals of the district around Banff, as well as the productions of the neighbouring sea. In making this collection, he was engaged for eleven years. During five particular summersbetween 1840 and 1846-when he was from about twenty-five to thirty years of age, Edwards generally passed only part of two nights each week in his own house-namely, from a little before twelve on Saturday night till late on Sunday morning; and again on Sabbath evening till near dawn on Monday morning. But even this latter portion of the night he frequently passed dozing in a chair, or lying across his bed, having previously donned his working-clothes, so as to be prepared to start with the first peep of day. All this time Edwards was working from six in the morning till between eight and nine at night; his wages, with which he maintained a wife and a family of five daughters, being about twelve shillings a week. The other nights of the week, unless a storm prevented him, he spent out of doors in the woods with his gun, or by the sea-shore, or wherever he expected to find what he was in search of; but regularly he was at home for his work by six in the morning.

He used to sleep an hour or so during the darkest part of the night, wherever he found himself; if the rain was heavy, if possible under a tree, or such-like accommodation; if not, he did without shelter at all. By persevering thus, he made a collection numbering two thousand specimens. These, on certain fair-days, he used to arrange in the town-hall-filling three sides-and expose for a small charge. Sometimes he made a pound or two this way. Unfortunately, he was advised, some years ago, to try an exhibition in Aberdeen. He paid a pound a week as rent for a shop in Union Street, and advertised liberally. The consequences were to him ruinous. In six weeks he was hopelessly in debt. A party of equestrians arrived in the town, and, to use Edwards's own words, a few came to him after the performance, and said the birds were nearly as good as the horses'—not so the mass. He commenced by charging sixpence, and ended by admitting visitors for a penny; but all was in vain.

For a

Not having the means to pay the charges he had incurred, he advertised his collection for sale, and, after considerable negotiation, got L.20 for it. This sum cleared him of Aberdeen, and brought him back to Banff, a sadder, if not a wiser man. while he was sorely discouraged; but, by and by, his old tastes returned, and although pursued now with moderated zeal for exposure has not strengthened his constitution-Tom has again begun to collect specimens, has been appointed keeper of the local museum, which he has aided in bringing to high order, and, with two or three able coadjutors, is

marc, the colouring matter of the grape residing altogether in the skin, with the exception of the grape called tintilla, from which tent-wine is made, in which the juice

RAREY ANTICIPATED. DR CASAUBON, in his work, entitled Of Credulity and Incredulity in Things Natural, Civil, and Divine, printed in the year 1668, speaks of one John Young, a horsecourser,' as follows:

'Whilst we were above, in the best room I had, and the servants in the kitchin by the fire; my son-the only I then had, or since have had; some twelve or thirteen years of age-comes in with his mastiff, which he was very fond of, as the mastiff was of him. John Young, to make himself and the company sport: "What will you say, sir," saith he, "if I make your dog, without touching of him, lie down, that he shall not stir?" Or to that effect. My son-for it was a mastiff of great strength and courage, which he was not a little proud of-defied him. He presently to pipe, and the mastiff, at a distance, to reel; which, when the boy saw, astonished and amazed, he began to cry out. But the man, fearing some disturbance in the house, changed his tune, or forbare further piping, I know not which, and the dog suddenly became as well and as vigorous as before. Of this I knew nothing, till the company was gone. Then a maid of the house observing that I much wondered at it, and wished I had seen it "O master," said she, "do you wonder at it? This man doth it familiarly, and more than that, the fiercest horse or bull that is, if he speak but a word or two in their ears, they become presently tame, so that they may be led with a string; and he doth use to ride them in the sight of all people."

Dr Casaubon hears also, upon good authority, that 'this man was once in company, and being in the mood, or to that effect, began to brag what he could do to any dog, were he never so great or so fierce. It happened that a tanner, who had a very fierce mastiff, who all the day was kept in chains or musled, was in the company, who presently-not without an oath, perchance, it is too usual; good laws against it, and well executed, would well become a Christian commonwealth-offered to lay with him ten pounds he could not do it to the said dog-that was, without any force or use of hands to lay him flat upon the ground, take him into his arms, and to lay him upon a table. Young happened to be so well furnished at that time, that he presently pulled out of his pocketI think I was told-ten pounds. The tanner accepts; the money on both sides laid into the hands of some one of the company, and the time set. At which time, to the no small admiration, certainly, of them that had not seen it before, but to the great astonishment, and greater indignation of him that had laid the wager, with a little piping the party did punctually perform what he had undertaken. But instead of the ten pounds he expected, being paid only with oaths and execrations, as a devil, a magician.'

Our author himself never sees any of these wonders performed, but he appears to be well convinced of them, and he is greatly impressed with Mr John Young's own manner, who, 'earnestly looking upon him, begins a discourse, how that all creatures were made by God for the use of man, and to be subject unto him; and that if men did use their power rightly, any man might do what he did.'

COLOUR OF WINE.

The colour of wine is owing to the following causes: If the skins of the grapes, or marc, are entirely excluded from the fermenting vat, a white wine is always obtained, the juice of almost all grapes, black and red, as well as green, being colourless. Champagne is made from a red grape, so deep in colour as to approach to black; and

is coloured. This colouring principle is soluble in alcohol; therefore, when the alcohol is developed by the fermentative process, the must becomes coloured in consequence of the action of the spirit upon the mare. The wine is also more deeply coloured from a higher degree of pressure given to the husks of the grapes. The colour of red wine varies from a light pink to a deep purple tint, approaching to black; the clarets hold the intermediate rank between these two extremes. Dr Henderson observes that on exposing red wine in bottles to the action of the sun's rays, the colouring matter is separated in large flakes without altering the flavour of the wine. The colour derived from the skins of the grapes alone is not generally very deep; the high-coloured wines of France and Portugal are often rendered so by colouring ingredients, particularly by mixture with an intensely deep red wine, called vino tinto, and sometimes by elder. berries and colouring drugs.'-Housewife's Reason Why.

CUCKOO.

THE moon is but a crescent white,
Toward the setting of the suu;
Through the throbbing of the night
Comes a mellow monotone :
Cuckoo-cuckoo !

You may take a crimson clond,
Bind it with a golden band,
All its richness were a shroud

To this o'er the meadow-land:
Cuckoo-cuckoo!

Glory, might, and mystery,

Beauty, wonder, and unrest,
The whole soul of melody,

In a rolling note exprest:
Cuckoo-cuckoo !

Gleby fields it overfloats,

Like a tidal wave upbent,
Over wheat and yellow oats,
In the valley falling spent:
Cuckoo!-cuckoo !

It will touch the soul to tears,
List'ning in the falling dew:
All the sadness of the years

Cometh rushing over you:
Cuckoo!-cuckoo !

Things of beauty and delight

You have dreamed of, overjoyed,
Will loom out as though you might
Reach and clasp them through the void:
Cuckoo-cuckoo!

It will touch from summer woods
Joyous heart or wo-begone;
Melteth music for all moods

From the rapture floating on:
Cuckoo-cuckoo !

Balmy airs of autumn nights,
Any charm or spell that is,
Windy whispers on the heights
Know no magic like to this:
Cuckoo-cuckoo!

Sphered notes of starry belts
In its airy net are knit;
All the heart of nature melts
On the twilight out of it:
Cuckoo-cuckoo !

T. A. Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON, and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH. Also sold by WILLIAM ROBERTSON, 23 Upper Sackville Street, DUBLIN, and

all Booksellers.

OF

OPULAR

LITERATURE

No. 240.

FEATHERED MINNESINGERS. THERE are two things for which I have a passion wild-birds and wild-flowers; by which avowal let me not be understood to mean that I am insensible to the delicious aroma of conservatories, or the gorgeous bloom of parterres; much less that I have any rooted affection for the harpy-eagle, or entertain a special predilection for the serpent-eater. But I fear I must confess that I prefer a harebell to a cactus, and speedwell and forget-me-not to calceolarias; and no rajah lory or scarlet macaw need attempt to make up to me for the little wildlings that, whether heard or not,' sing by myriads in the hedgerows, hiding in the scented clumps of the milky hawthorn, or shaking free its ruddy berries from the new-fallen snow. Since the days when I gravely followed sparrows in my pinafore, with a handful of salt, the victim of an infamous nursery fraud relative to a caudal application thereof, I have been a devout bird-worshipper, loving with my whole heart, though perfectly innocent of scientific mysteries. My ornithological conclusions at that time, however, were chiefly derived from the curious antediluvian specimens indigenous to a Noah's Ark, and the sparrow-stalking alluded to took place in one of those small mural enclosures which go in cities by the name of gardens.

The dove was my undoubted favourite, secretly, I believe, owing to its prerogative of olive-branch; and after this, my affections wavered between two chromeyellow canaries and a very remarkable pure scarlet species-name unknown. There was no robin that at all came up to my preconceived ideas, formed upon the dear old ballad that has immortalised the bonny bird-no modern version, plastered with prosy incident, or hammered out into smooth and polished rhymes, till its pathos and its raciness are lost, but the real lilting lines that are so inexpressibly sweet and touching. Children who have read the original, scoff at Babes in the Wood in prose. I suppose I may have been six years old, and the book has long been dust; but do I not remember the thin octavo, precious as an Elzevir, with its limp, shining cover of paly green, and leaves of burnished satin; the clear type, speaking from the glossy page; the soft wood-cuts, infrequent, perhaps, but each one honoured with a separate leaf, and its own excerpted legend, and carefully protected from the ravages of the unwary by a dainty film of pink paper! We are not so prodigal of margin and letter-press now.

The Death and Burial of Cock Robin, a legend of a very different stamp, unveiled new marvels of birdlore, infusing martial ardour by the very abruptness

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of its initial question and answer, and the haught apparitions of the audacious criminal, bow and arrow in hand, on the title-page. The catechetical plan of this startling drama is highly original, and the excited spectator is introduced to a wide field of ornithological inquiry, not to mention the edifying episodes of the fish and the beetle, and the rather anomalous introduction of the bull as bell-ringer. How the fish obtained possession of that most terrene-looking dish, used to be to me a serious mystery, rousing painful misgivings as to the individual honesty of the benevolent blood-catcher, and involving deep speculations on the subject of fish-potteries and their possible connection with potted fish. The beetle's undertaking capacities were more admissible; but I always considered the owl's feat of sextonship as the ne plus ultra of legerdemain. Why the lark so strenuously insisted on the obsequies taking place by daylight, I never could understand, since she made it a point of honour that she was to carry a torch on the occasion; but I rather contemptuously concluded that she must have been afraid of ghosts, and suffered the matter to drop. Of course, I had not the remotest suspicion of any base, underhand doings between rhyme and reason. But all honour to these good old nursery classics! I would give a whole wagon-load of modern importations for Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, Cock Robin, and the History of an Apple-pie-which last, by the way, forms the most admirable system of baby mnemonics, and whose most illogical sequences I now gratefully acknowledge, for they taught me the alphabet.

One swallow does not make a summer,' says the ancient adage; and yet when we see the beautiful darting creature careering swiftly in the pale April skies, we are apt to ignore the wary old saw, though the hedges are sprouting very timidly, and the morning primroses are still cold with frost, and the hoary dew lies white upon the dead beech-leaves till the sun is hot, and hardly a tree but the larch and the sycamore is green, and the snow-clouds are perhaps hovering ominously upon the sky-line. We cannot, it is true, take up the full burden of the quaint old English songSummer is ycomen in,

Loud sing cucku;

Groweth seed, and bloweth mead,

And springeth the weed new;

but there rise to our lips the words of a yet older refrain, that the winter is past, and the time of the singing of birds is come.' We must, indeed, make up our minds to wait for the halcyon days when the life of the little lovers is nothing but a gush of song;

when, from dawn to twilight, the ear vainly listens for a break or a hush in the 'fast thick warble;' but even now, many a winged minnesinger is piping music by snatches; and the faithful triad of voices that cheered the long, lonely winter, is already merged in a fuller chorus: the brave sweet robin, the daisy of birds; the little wren, chirping softly by her 'ain fireside,' as she looked out at the drifting snow; and the stormcock, or missel-thrush, whose cheery whistle was heard among the loud bleak winds that swept howling through the rowan-trees, and stripped the branches of their scarlet fruit.

The robin and the wren are among the sacred birds of England. This is the odd chant current among the peasantry of Warwickshire, who make their children learn it with all reverence:

The robin and the wren

Are God Almighty's cock and hen;
The martin and the swallow

Are God Almighty's bow and arrow.

This feeling with regard to the red breast is perhaps connected with the pretty legend-one of those harmless and suggestive superstitions which extend to certain of the dumb creation an indirect interest in the higher mysteries of the universe; and which, scattered among the more questionable traditions of the Romish Church, certainly tended to humanise the masses, by bringing all things that had life within the limit of a catholic blessing, and casting over the birds and the flowers the beautiful shadow of Christianity. As in the German myth of the crossbill, a place is claimed for the robin among the Josephs and the Magdalenes, who were not contented with standing 'afar off the day that the sun was darkened. It is said the fearless little mourner flew straight against the heart that had just been pierced by the soldier's spear, and was bidden to wear his ruddy plumes for

ever.

Of course, robin is a favourite with the poets. Thomson draws him tapping at the frosty window, and boldly picking up his morning crumbs; Keats hears him whistling from a garden croft,' when the swallows are gathering in the autumn skies; Gray's robin 'builds and warbles' among the churchyard violets; Wordsworth's chases the crimson but terfly; Collins pictures him still at his legendary toil, heaping up moss and flowers in the warm summer evenings; and Cowper, wandering through the silent, leafless woods, hears no sound among the powdery trees except the loosened icicle that drops in the winter noon into the rustling leaves at his feet, and the short, broken song of the robin, perched in a gleam of frosty sunshine among the rimy branches. The affectionate and confiding nature of this little bird wins him a way everywhere. He is capable of strong personal attachment; and one of his most winning attributes is a strange rapport, which he has not seldom evinced towards the sick and the infirm. Wordsworth has a pretty sonnet to a wild redbreast that pecked confidingly from his lips in Rydal woods; and he tells of another which took up his nightly abode in the chamber of one entirely confined to a sick-bed. Roosting there upon a picture-nail, he constituted himself the delegate of the countless warblers from whose songs she was shut out; and his cheery matins broke forth with the returning dawn, sweet and clear as if he was nestled beneath the stars in the whispering greenwood. We knew a robin which displayed a similar instinct, emboldened, it would seem, by the presence of sickness; and which in the fresh summer mornings would enter unbidden at the open window, take his welcome for granted, fly without the smallest fear upon the bed, and take his breakfast under the very eye of the invalid. The robin builds a neat and unpretending nest, rather

brown than green, and generally contrived so as to elude observation. An anecdote is preserved of one who made a little autumn eyry in the shrouds of the war-ship which was building at Chatham to commemorate the victory of Trafalgar. The work was suffered to proceed unmolested, and the little patriot actually laid the first of six eggs on the 21st of October, the anniversary of the battle-quite unmoved by the presence of the hundred guns, whose sleeping thunder was destined to waken across the sea the name of England and the memory of Nelson.

But the wren, the wren, the king of all birds,' bears off the palm in nest-making. Fabulists say that she alone of the whole feathered race had patience to conclude her studies in architecture; and she certainly presents the most finished specimen of patience and perseverance. The tiny moss-house, roofed over from the rain, appears hardly large enough to accommodate the diminutive owner; yet it affords a cradle to near a score of wrenlets; and as during the leafy summer the wren alone can fulfil literally the pretty line of the American poet,

The little bird sits at his door in the sun;

so in the darker days, when the infant brood is fledged, and the leaves are blown from the shivering boughs, the parent bird returns with faithful love to its summer home, and, hidden in its mossy porch, flings out its music, a viewless minstrel, to the wintry winds.

Nor is the wren without his proper legends. Both in Ireland and in Germany, the story goes how he crept unperceived on to the outstretched wings of the eagle, when the birds were flying high for a kingdom; how he was borne aloft by an impetus quite independ ent of his own volition; and how the astute little politician was thus enabled to outsoar his magnificent rival, and had the crown-royal set upon his head by the universal suffrage of the over-reached spectators. Paddy, however, has private reasons of his own for paying homage to his little majesty, who is said, during the commotions of one of the civil wars, to have awakened a sleeping sentinel by tapping thrice with his beak upon an adjacent drum, and by this timely admonition, to have saved a party of royalists from impending destruction. The Munster boys still drink to his health and happiness on St Stephen's Day, and think him worthy of being ranked with the geese of the Capitol: and so he is.

But the gem of our British birds is the regulus, or golden-crested wren. This fairy 'kinglet'-as he is sometimes called-is not more than three inches long in his feathers: but this is only the full-dress standard; for those who have studied him in puris naturali bus, aver that his actual longitude is somewhere about an inch. He flits with his tiny queen among the great oaks and elms, like an autumn leaf, or a swallow tailed butterfly; and here, with a slender cordage of moss and down, they sling their nest, something in sailor-fashion, from a bough, and bring out a numerous progeny of crested atoms-more like bees than birds-to swing in turn upon the swaying branches, and creep among the sunny leaves.

Lower down, upon the same tree, fixed, perhaps, in some young bough that has sprouted from a bole in the elm, or hidden in the brier-rose that is twining round the roots of the oak, is the beautiful nest of the chaffinch. No one who has not seen a spink's nest, knows what a bird can do. The delicate cup, crusted with lichens, might have been turned on a potter's wheel. It resembles an exquisite bowl of frosted silver, within which lie the fawn-coloured eggs, flecked with irregular purple stains. The chaffinch, like the West Indian humming-bird, makes use of the cobweb in its architecture; for it is with the silken thread of the spider that it stitches the mossy thatch to its fibrous walls. It commonly shuns the larger forest trees,