servation, combines some novel and interesting facts with the best part of the experience of Bechstein, Daines Barrington, and Gilbert White, in the elucidation of the nature, the periods, and the mode of acquisition of the various melodies of song-birds. dences are forced upon their attention-and it | and often loud notes of the little warblers are exebecomes as much their duty as it is their nature | cuted, and, drawing from his own stores of obto exercise the gifts intrusted to them in truly interpreting such evidences. They are instruments in the hands of a Providence governing the psychical progress of mankind. When a fact reveals itself to such a man, "it lies not in his will what he shall say or what he shall conceal. If he think to be silent as Jeremiah did because of the reproach and derision he met with daily, and all his familiar friends watched for his halting, to be revenged on him for speaking the truth,' he would be forced to confess as the prophet confessed-'his word was in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones; I was weary with forbearing and could not stay.'"* In that field of the "lower wisdom" which rests in the contemplation of animated nature, the harvest is truly abundant, but the laborers are few. We have adduced one only of many problems in zoology which deeply concern both the feelings and interests of mankind, and which demand the combined efforts of many observers and thinkers for their solution. He, therefore, who diffuses the elements of the science in a cheap form, and who attracts to its study by a perspicuous style, has rendered no small service in relation to its advancement in a country which has hitherto been too poor or too busy to endow a professorship of zoology in any one of its universities, or in connection with any one of its museums. This author entices us with "wood-notes wild" into the paths of his science, from which so many are repelled by the barbarous array of technical words that "perplex the things they would explain." His first chapter is on singing-birds: "The melody of birds finds its way to the heart of every one; but the cause that prompts the outpourings that make copse, rock, and river ring again on a fine spring morning, is more a matter of doubt with ornithologists than the uninitiated in zoological mysteries might suppose. Much has been written on this subject; but, upon a consideration of the different opinions, aided by our own observations, we are inclined to think that love and rivalry are the two great stimulants-though we do not mean to deny that a bird may sing from mere gaiety of heart, arising from finding itself in the haunts dear to it, and in the midst of plenty of the food it likes; to give vent, in short, to the buoyancy of spirit arising from general pleasurable sensations. In this country, the season of reproduction is undoubtedly that wherein "The isle is full of pleasant noises, Sounds, and sweet airs that give delight.'" — p. 1. He conveys a very just idea of the natural musical instrument with which the sweet and varied, * Milton, "Reason of Church-Government," &c. Few, probably, suspect how much the particular song of any given species depends upon the circumstances under which the bird was hatched and reared. Barrington thought he had clearly established "that birds have not any innate ideas of the notes which are supposed to be peculiar to each species." The reason, he says, why, in a wild state, they adhere so steadily to the same song is, that the nestling's attention is given solely to the instruction of the parent bird, whilst it disregards the notes of others which may be singing in the vicinity. "He took a common sparrow from the nest when it was fledged, and educated him under a goldfinch also, and his song was therefore a linnet; the bird, however, by accident, heard a mixture of the linnet and goldfinch.' The same experimentalist educated a young robin under a very fine nightingale, which, however, began already to be out of song, and was perfectly mute in less than a fortnight: the scholar afterwards sang three parts in four nightingale, and the rest bish,' or no particular note whatever. of his song was what the bird-catchers call 'rub "I have known,' says Barrington, 'instances of birds beginning to record when they were not a month old. The first essay does not seem to have the least rudiments of the future song; but, as the bird grows older and stronger, one may begin to perceive what the nestling is aiming at. Whilst the scholar is thus endeavouring to form his song, when he is once sure of a passage, he commonly raises his tone, which he drops again when he is not equal to what he is attempting; just as a singer raises his voice, when he not only recollects certain parts of a tune with precision, but knows that he can execute them. What the nestling is not thus thoroughly the master of he hurries over, lowering his tone, as if he did not wish to be heard, and could not yet satisfy himself. A young bird commonly continues to record for ten or eleven months, when he is able to execute every part of his song, which afterwards continues fixed, and is scarcely ever altered. When the bird is thus become perfect in his lesson, he is said to sing his song round, or in all its varieties of passages, which he connects together, and executes without a pause.""— p. 6. The most striking characteristics of all our resident singing-birds are selected with judgment, and described with the accuracy of a practised observer. The missel-thrush, the songthrush, and the blackbird seem, in the lively est lays, with the accompaniments of the greenwood, the blossoms, and the bright sunshine. Every line breathes of vernal nature; as we read, we are withdrawn from the cares of busy life, and the noise and gloom of the populous city, to listen to the carol of the lark, and in imagination we follow it, mellowed by distance, as he soars aloft into the clear blue heaven above. Hear the humane magistrate's protest against the unwarrantable imprisonment of this songster: diction of this portrayer, to tune for us their sweet- | the same chapter, and Gilbert White is cited in favor of the swallow as a delicate songster- but we are told that he who would hear the swallow sing must rise early. The section in which he condenses the natural history of the nightingale well exemplifies the judgment and taste of this unpretending volume. Many writers would have yielded to the temptation, and have cloyed their readers with the oftenrelished beauties with which the poetry of all ages abounds in allusion to this chief of songsters. It is a relief to listen to the sober- not to say severe-brevity in which the migration, geo "Of all the unhallowed instances of bird incarceration (not even excepting the stupid cruelty of shutting up a robin in an aviary), the condemnation of the sky-lark to perpetual imprisonment is surely the most repugnant to every good feeling. The bird, whilst his happy brethren are carolling far up in the sky, as if they would storm heaven itself with their rush of song, just at the joyous season 'When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear,' is doomed to pine in some dingy street. There, in a den with a solid wooden roof, painted green outside, and white, glaring white, within which, in bitter mockery, is called a sky-lark's cage, he keeps winnowing his wretched wings, and beating his breast against the wires, panting for one -only one-upward flight into the free air. To delude him into the recollection that there are such places as the fields, which he is beginning to forget, they cut what they call a turfa turf dug up in the vicinity of this smokecanopied Babel of bricks, redolent of all its sooty abominations, and bearing all the marks of the thousands of tons of fuel which are now suffered to escape up our chimneys, and fall down again upon our noses and into our lungs tons which, when our coal-mines begin to shrink alarmingly 't is no laughing matter, the time must come some future Arnott will, perhaps too late, enable the public to save, while he at the same time bestows upon them the blessing of a pure atmosphere. Well, this abominable lump of dirt is presented to the sky-lark as a refreshment for his parched feet, longing for the fresh morning dews. Miserable as the winged creature is, he feels that there is something resembling grass under him; and then the fond wretch looks upwards and warbles, and expects his mate. Is it possible to see and hear this desecration of instinct unmoved? and yet we endure it every spring, and moreover we have our Society for Preventing Cruelty to Animals."-p. 19. Of our migratory singing birds he passes in review the shore-lark, the pipit-larks, the flycatchers, the field-fare, the red-wing, the buntings, the ring-ouzel, the beautiful rose-ouzel, and the rare golden oriole. A clever sketch of the Hirundinida or swallow tribe is introduced into graphical distribution, and nidification of Luscinia Philomela are scientifically expounded. The very melody of the bird is analyzed — nay, criticized. We are told that "Like other biped performers, nightingales vary much in their powers of song. They have among them their Rubinis, Tamburinis, and Lablaches, and also their Mopers, that sing at intervals only, without connexion, and with long pauses - some minutes-between each strain. It is amusing to see when a man mounts his hobby and happy is he who has one in his stable how far it will carry him, ay, and merrily too. Thus Bechstein prints no less than twenty-four lines of words-some of them rare sesquipedalities - as expressive of the nightingale's song. Twenty-four different strains or couplets,' says he, may be reckoned in the song of a fine nightingale, without including its delicate variations. This song is so articulate, so speaking, that it may be very well written. The following is a trial which I have made on that of a nightingale in my neighbourhood which passes for a very capital singer'- and off the good Bechstein goes at score: "Tioù, tioû, tioû, tioû," &c., &c., &c., &c., but we must introduce the reader to one or two of the words representing the strains: "Zozozozozozozozozozozozo, zirrhading. Hezezezezezeze zezezezezeze couar ho dze hoi Higaigaigaigai guiagaigai couior dzio dzio pi. The British bird-fanciers have, also, a vocabulary of their own to express the same ideas." -p. 65. With the cuckoo (which he treats with great skill) Mr. Broderip takes leave of the feathered vocalists, and next introduces his reader, by way of contrast, to the owls. "There are few animals that have been more suspiciously regarded than owls. Their retired habits, the desolate places that are their favorite haunts, their hollow hootings, fearful shriekings, serpent-like hissings, and coffin-maker-like' snappings, have helped to give them a bad eminence, more than overbalancing all the glory that Minerva and her own Athens could shed around them." — p. 83. They are associated with desolation and unclean things wheresoever they are mentioned in the sacred volume. Virgil introduces an owl among the prodigies and horrors that foreshadow the fate of Dido. Horace, Propertius, and Ovid allude to a species of the owl-genus, in citing the nocturnal strix as an ingredient in the infernal philters and witch-broths of Canidia and Medæa. So Shakespeare, also, adds the "owlet's wing" to the cauldron wherein the weird sisters prepare their charm for Macbeth. The modern superstitions connected with or excited by the unearthly sounds of the owl are quaintly touched upon; and we may refer to the volume for one of the best of modern ghost-stories, in which the bird of night plays a prominent part. In a second chapter devoted to the Strigida our worthy Justice changes the key, and gives a more amiable and natural character of the "bird of wisdom," or, as others are pleased to regard him, Cowper has admirably sung the 'sidling' and 'ogling' of a small-bird flirtation, but he does not appear to have ever witnessed the grand passion of an owl: would that he had. Such a serious affair is only to be observed by the out-door naturalist, who will bury himself for hours in the depths of the quiet woods, near some favorite owl-tree. If he is so fortunate as to see the courtship of some warm, gloomy, spring day, whose stillness is only broken by the pattering of the shower, or the minute drops' that fall from the moss-grown trees, he will be well repaid for his watching by the solemnization. The Hudibrastic air with which the lover approaches, making lowly congés, as if to "Honor the shadow of the shoe-tie" of the prim Quaker-like figure that receives all these humilities with the demure starched demeanour of one of Richardson's heroines-only now and then slowly turning her head towards the worshipper when she thinks she is not observed, but instantly turning it back when she thinks she is and the occasional prudish snap of her bill, when she is apprehensive that he is going to be rude- make a scene truly edifying. -p. 102. A brief but accurate account is given of each of our native species of owl, and of occasional visitors. The barn or white owl (Strix flammea), which is the true "screech-owl," claims the first notice; next comes the tawny or ivy owl (Surnium aluco); then the long-eared owl (Otus vulgaris); and, lastly, the short-eared owl, better known perhaps as the fern owl (Otus palustris), which appears to be the only regularly migratory British owl. The organization of the nocturnal bird of prey, and its relations to the habits and mode of life, with the principal incidents in the economy of each of the British species, are well elucidated; and the history of the race, gloomy and foreboding at its commencement, gradually brightens to culminate in the following incident, depicted with the truth and reality of a Dutch picture. In reference to the migratory species, he says "In consequence of the general arrival of these birds in the southern parts of Britain with the first fair October winds, they are called woodcock owls-an appellation branded on the memory of more than one luckless would-be sportsman. From some turnip-field hard by a plantation, or a tuft of rushes close to a copse on a moist hill-side, up springs a russet-plumaged bird, and is in the cover in a moment. The eager shooter catches a glimpse on 'in,' as an old keeper used to say, through the trees. Bang goes the gun. That's the first cock of the season!" exclaims he, exultingly. Up comes John, who has been sent ostensibly to attend him, but really to take care of him:-'I'm sure he's down,'-pointing to the cover, as many are apt to say when they shoot at a cock, without being able to produce the body-Well, let's look, sir; where did he drop?" There, just by that holly.' In they go, retriever and all. . There he lies,' cries the delighted shot, loading his gun triumphantly in measureless content; 'dead as Harry the Eighth. I knew he was down; there, just where I said he was, close by that mossy stump. Can't you see?' Iss, sir, I sees well enough, but I don't like the looks on 'in. His head's a trifle too big, and a do lie too flat on his face.'-'Pick up the cock, I say,' rejoins our hero, somewhat nettled. I can't do that, sir,' says John, lifting a fine specimen of Otus palustris, and holding it up to the blank-looking cockney, amid the ill-suppressed laughter of those confounded fellows who attend to mark not only the game, but the number of shots that are missed, on their abominable notched sticks. Never mind sir,' adds the comforter John, 'if t'aint a cock, a did kip company wi' em; and a's curous like, and since you han't killed nothen else to-day, I'd bag un, if I was you; he'll look uncommon well in a glass case.'"- p. 107. Leaving the "parrots" to speak for themselves, which they do through a most entertaining chapter, we come next to a bird of more immediate and general interest, especially at the present festive season. Long and grave has | ocellated turkey will have the merit of introduc been the discussion as to when and whence the turkey was first brought into Europe. ing the most beautiful addition to our parks and homesteads, to say nothing of its utility-since the importation of the peacock; and, in these "As for the often-repeated couplet given by days of record, his name will not be forgotten. Baker-p. 137. 'Turkeys, carps, hoppes, piccarel, and beer, that is about the fifteenth of Henry VIII., (1524), there is no reliance to be placed upon it, as far at least as the fish is concerned; for Dame Juliana Berners, prioress of Sopewell, mentions in the Boke of St. Alban's, printed by Winkyn de Worde in 1496, the carp as a deyntous fisshe;' and the price of pike or pickerel was the subject of legal regulation in the time of our first Edward.... Oviedo, in 1526, describes the turkey well, as a kind of peacock of New Spain which had been carried over to the islands and the Spanish Main, and was about the houses of the Christian inhabitants, so that it is evident that, when Oviedo wrote, the bird had been domesticated. Heresbach states that they were brought into Germany about 1530, and Barnaby Googe (1614) declares that "those outlandish birds called ginny-cocks and turkey-cocks before the yeare of our Lord 1520 were not seen with us.' In 1541 we find a constitution of Archbishop Cranmer directing that of such large fowls as cranes, swans, and turkey-cocks, there should be but one dish; and we see the bird mentioned as no great rarity at the inauguration dinner of the serjeants-at-law in 1555. The learned brothers had upon that occasion two turkeys and four turkey chicks, charged at four shillings each, swans and cranes being valued at ten shillings, and capons at half-a-crown."- p. 129. Upon these and other carefully collected evidences, a verdict, according to the careful Justice, may be given in favor of the Spaniards as the importers from America of this great addition to our poultry-yards; and he abides by old Barnaby Googe's decision, that the introduction of the turkey into this country must have taken place about the year 1530. The habits of the wild turkey of North America are drawn from Lawson, Audubon, and Bennett; and a very picturesque description of the wild turkey of Honduras (Meleagris ocellata) is abridged from Cuvier. In regard to this noble species, we would recommend the author's concluding paragraph to the special attention of the present intelligent secretary of the Zoological Society or why not the spirited Marquis of Breadalbane, who has so successfully restored the Capercailzie: "With the naturalized poultry from Asia, Africa, and America before our eyes, there cannot exists a doubt that the Ocellated Turkey would thrive with us. The benefactor who conferred the domestic turkey upon Europe is unknown. He who succeeds in naturalizing the In his chapters on swans our Zoologist rises in style and illustration to the height of all the associations which the image of that noble and graceful bird recalls. England, it appears, every winter sees two species of wild swan the Hooper (Cygnus ferus), and Bewick's swan (Cygnus Bewickii), first accurately distinguished by Mr. Yarrell;—and is occasionally visited by the Polish swan (Cygnus immutabilis.) The tame swan (Cygnus olor) is a distinct species from these. There are few writers - indeed we know of none in our language, by whom the characters, the habits, and the singular anatomy of these stately aquatic birds have been more It is plain clearly and beautifully described. that few non-medical naturalists have so diligently availed themselves of the instructions and illustrations which our museums of comparative anatomy afford. Take for example this sketch of the chief characteristics of the osteology: "Let us examine the bony framework of a swan. What an admirable piece of animated ship-building it is! How the ribs rise from the broad and keeled sternum to support the lengthened pelvis and the broad back, which form a goodly solid deck for the young cygnets to rest on under the elevated, arched, and sail-like wings of the parent: and how the twenty-five vertebræ of the neck rise into a noble ornamental prow, crowned with the graceful head. How skilfully are the oary legs and feet fitted-just where their strokes would be best brought to in motion! It is a work worthy of the great bear for the purpose of putting the living galley Artificer."— p. 139. - Or this picture of the vocal organization of the Hooper, whose loud and wild but plaintive. notes procured for it the name of Cygnus musicus from Bechstein, and were the origin of the classical allusions to the song of the dying swan, deemed fabulous by those who have supposed the ancients to have referred to the mute and tame swan exclusively : "The wind instrument which produces these sounds is a curious piece of animal mechanism. The cylindrical tracheal tube passes down the neck, and then descends between the forks of the merry-thought to the level of the keel of the breast-bone, which is double; and this windpipe, after traversing nearly the whole length of the keel between the two plates, is doubled back as it were upon itself, and passing forwards, upwards, and backwards again, ends in a vertical divaricating bone, whence two long bronchial tubes diverge, each into their respective lobe of the lungs. In short, our winged musician carries a French horn in his chest, but it is not quite so melodious as Puzzi's. In the females and young males, the windpipe is not inserted so deeply."-p. 140. Mr. Broderip does not allow even the "Swan with Two Necks" to escape him, but evidently deems that common sign to have no foundation whatever in nature; for, in his learned antiquarian dissertation on "swan-marks," he alludes to the two cuts or "nicks" in the Vintner's mark, and infers that "from their 'swans with two nicks' have been hatched the double-necked swans whose portraits grace our sign-boards." With much submission, we would venture to recall a picture in nature, which can hardly have escaped this observer. When the swan takes its weary cygnet on its back, and arching over it the protecting pinions, swims deeply with its procious burthen, the hidden young one may be seen to protrude its head and neck from its downy chamber close behind the neck of the parent- and the two slender flexible columns springing, as it were, from a common base, and often moving in opposite directions, then present a lively image, though with some disproportion, of the "swan with two necks." It is curious to watch the modified instincts of the parent under these circumstances. If a tempting weed floats deeply past, the mother dips her head and neck at full stretch, but makes no effort to give that half-rotation of the trunk which is the common movement when about to feed, for this act would produce a vertical position of the body which would throw the cygnet overboard. the fossil "Saurians;" which, realizing or surpassing in bulk, in power, and in strange combinations of forms, the dragons of romance, have been, of late, restored as they were in life, for all the purposes of contemplation. The dragons of the sea, or Enaliosaurs, are first tabled—namely, the Ichthyosaurus, the Plesiosaurus, and the Pliosaurus:—to which he subjoins a skilful sketch of the great extinct marine monster-lizard," of the length and bulk of a grampus," the remains of which are most abundant at Maestricht, in the bed of the Meuse, whence its name Mosasaurus. The Ichthyosaurus, or great fish-dragon, has been well compared in its general form to a gigantic fish of the abdominal order, i. e., with the hinder fins placed far behind the fore pair- but with a longer tail and a smaller caudal fin-scaleless, moreover - having apparently been covered with a smooth and finely-wrinkled skin like that of the whale-tribe. It had a huge head, with long and strong jaws well set with sharp destructive teeth, and provided with enormous eyes, furnished like the sea-turtle and birds with a circle of osseous plates arranged round the aperture in the sclerotic where the clear cornea or window of the eye was set. The general type of construction of the skeleton of the ichthyosaurus, and especially of his skull, was that which we now trace in the crocodile, but the vertebræ were cupped at both ends like those of fishes. Thus the head of a crocodile, the eyes of a bird, the paddles and skin of a whale, and the vertebræ and outward form of a fish were all combined in this extinct monster. The deposits of the primeval seas, forming the oolitic and cretaceous series of the secondary strata of England, have already been found to contain ten species of ichthyosaur, some of them upwards of thirty feet in length. The Plesiosaurus-a less bulky and portentous dragon, but with a dentition as strictly carnivorous-appears to have infested estuaries rather than the open sea. The most striking difference in its external appearance as compared with the ichthyosaurus is the excessive length of the neck with a corresponding smallness of head; the trunk and tail present the ordinary proportions; it was provided with four From the specimens which we have culled as to the feathered tribes, a just estimate may be formed of the bulk of the work. The chapters on dogs and cats, apes and monkeys, elephants and-dragons are truly "Recreations." We had supposed that the teeming literature of late devoted to popular science had exhausted all that could be told of elephantine memory, canine sagacity, and quadrumanous dexterity and imitativeness; but we were mistaken. The tact displayed in the selection of instances, with the life of the descriptions, has proved sufficient to impart a freshness to the most hackneyed subjects in zoology. But the closing section? What, it will be asked, has he found to say about Drag-paddles like those of the turtle, but longer, more ons? Have the regions of romance and nursery-rhyme been ransacked for his finale? Much goodly narrative and legend in both prose and verse have unquestionably contributed to lighten and embellish the pages on sea-dragons, flying dragons, and ancient terrestrial dragons. But the greater part of them is honestly filled by a most agreeable and instructive reviewal of the zoological, anatomical, and geological history of tapering, and flexible. The vertebræ are nearly flat at the ends, as in whales, but are constructed after the type of the crocodiles: the skull combines the cranial characters of the existing crocodiles and lizards: and with these characters borrowed from, or rather now divided amongst, very different orders of animals, was associated this long and slender and flexible neck, which must have resembled the body of a serpent. |