eight, than they would come rushing out again, | as if apprehensive of some approaching danger. Time after time the cavity was filled and refilled, with blue and brown intermingled, and as often emptied. Presently they tarried longer than usual, when I made a sudden sally and captured three, that found a warmer and safer lodging for the night in the cellar. In the fall birds and fowls of all kinds become very fat. The squirrels and mice lay by a supply of food in their dens and retreats; bat the birds, to a considerable extent, especially our winter residents, carry an equivalent in their own systems, in the form of adipose tissue. I killed a red-shouldered hawk one December, and on removing the skin found the body completely encased in a coating of fat one-quarter of an inch in thickness. Not a particle of muscle was visible. This coating not only serves as a protection against the cold, but supplies the waste of the system when food is scarce, or fails altogether. The crows at this season are in the same condition. It is estimated that a crow needs at least half a pound of meat per day, but it is evident that for weeks and months during the winter and spring they must subsist on a mere fraction of this amount. I have no doubt a crow or hawk, when in their fall condition, would live two weeks without a morsel of food passing their beaks; a domestic fowl will do as much. One January I unwittingly shut a ben under the floor of an out-building, where not a particle of food could be obtained, and where she was entirely unprotected from the severe cold. When the luckless Dominick was discovered, about eighteen days afterward, she was brisk and lively, but fearfully pinched up, and as light as a bunch of feathers. The slightest wind carried her before it. But by judicious feeding she was soon restored. The circumstance of the blue-birds being emboldened by the cold, suggests the fact that the fear of man, which now seems like an instinct in the birds, is evidently an acquired trait, and foreign to them in a state of primitive nature. Every gunner has observed, to his chagrin, how wild the pigeons become after a few days of firing among them; and, to his delight, how easy it is to approach near his game in new or unfrequented woods. Professor Baird tells me that a correspondent of theirs visited a small island in the Pacific Ocean, situated about two hundred miles off Cape St. Lucas, to procure specimens. The island was but a few miles in extent, and had probably never been visited half a dozen times by human beings. The naturalist found the birds and water-fowls so tame that it was but a waste of ammunition to shoot them. Fixing a noose on the end of a long stick, he captured them by putting it over their necks and hauling them in to him. In some cases not even this contrivance was needed. A species of mockingbird in particular, larger than ours, and a splendid songster, made itself so familiar as to be almost a nuisance, hopping on the table where the collector was writing, and scattering the pens and paper. Eighteen species were found, twelve of them peculiar to the island. Thoreau relates that in the woods of Maine, the Canada jay will sometimes make its meal with the lumbermen, taking the food out of their hands. Yet, notwithstanding the birds have come to look upon man as their natural enemy, there can be little doubt that civilization is on the whole favourable to their increase and perpetuity, especially to the smaller species. With man come flies and moths, and insects of all kinds in greater abundance; new plants and weeds are introduced, and, with the clearing up of the country, are sowed broadcast over the land. The larks and snow-buntings that come to us from the north, subsist almost entirely upon the seeds of grasses and plants; and how many of our more common and abundant species are field birds, and entire strangers to deep forests? In Europe some birds have become almost domesticated, like the house-sparrow, and in our own country the cliff-swallow seems to have entirely abandoned ledges and shelving rocks as a place to nest, for the eaves and projections of farms and other out-buildings. The European house-sparrow, by the way, has been introduced with entire success in this country, and in New York and the adjacent cities is already quite numerous, and is rapidly increasing. Before I was aware of this fact I was much puzzled, a couple of years ago, by a bird I saw in the streets of Jersey City. I had occasion one June morning, at a very early hour, to walk from the depot out into the suburbs toward Bergen Hill, and all along the streets, picking up food about the feet of the horses, alighting on the curb-stones, and on the houses, quite unmindful of the passers-by, feeding their young with much chattering, and quarrelling with the martins, with loud squeaking, my attention was attracted by these strange birds, evidently sparrows. The figures of some of the rarer species of buntings, like henslows and the black-throated, kept recurring dimly to my mind, but only to make the puzzle more puzzling, as both these species are shy field birds. The matter remained a mystery till I heard of the introduction of this house-sparrow. These birds are said to be performing a rare service in the parks of New York, and for the fruit growers round about, by utterly exterminating the canker-worm, and other pests of this kind. I hear they have been introduced in the island of Cuba, with like beneficial results. An importer in Havana, indignant at the duties imposed upon his feathered freight, liberated the birds in the faces of the customhouse officials, when they showed themselves masters of the situation, and at once made themselves at home. Attempts to introduce the English skylark into this country have been less successful, owing largely to the extent to which the birds suffer on the passage over. THE MANGO-TREE. [The Rev. Charles Kingsley, born at Holne Vicarage, Devon, 12th June, 1819 Educated at Cambridge, where, subsequently, he filled the chair of modern history for several years (1859-69). He is now chaplain in ordinary to the Queen, and to the Prince of Wales, and canon of Chester. In the church and in literature he has worked with much industry; and his interest in the labouring classes has found fervent expression in his books. He has won high distinction as preacher, poet, novelist, and miscellaneous writer. His chief works (published by Macmillan & Co) are: The Saint's Tragedy, and other Poems; Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet-a novel which obtained much favour, and helped to earn for the writer the name of the "Chartist parsou;" Yeast; Westward, Ho! Hypatia; Glaucus; Two Years Ago: The Water Babies: Hereward, the Last of the English; The Heroes; or Greek Fairy Tales; Miscellanies; At Last, a Christmas in the West Indies, &c. &c. He has also published several volumes of germons. His works are characterized by originality of thought and force of expression.] He wiled me through the furzy croft; He wiled me down the sandy lane. He told his boy's love, soft and oft, Until I told him mine again. We married, and we sailed the main; But his-God keep it safe from harm. He toiled, and dared, and earned command, And those three stripes upon his arm Were more to me than gold or land. Sure he would win some great renown: I had his children-one, two, three. "Tis I, not they, am gone and dead. All things, save I, are full of life: The minas, pluming velvet breasts; The monkeys, in their foolish strife; The swooping hawks, the swinging nests. The lizards basking on the soil, The butterflies who sun their wings; The bees about their household toil, They live, they love, the blissful things. Each tender purple mango shoot, That folds and droops so bashful down; It lives, it sucks some hidden root; It rears at last a broad green crown. It blossoms; and the children cry"Watch when the mango-apples fall." It lives; but rootless, fruitless, I I breathe and dream;-and that is all Thus am I dead; yet cannot die: But still within my foolish brain There hangs a pale blue evening sky: A furzy croft; a sandy lane. MODERN GALLANTRY. BY CHARLES LAMB. In comparing modern with ancient manners, we are pleased to compliment ourselves upon the point of gallantry—a certain obsequiousness, or deferential respect, which we are supposed to pay to females as females. I shall believe that this principle actuates our conduct when I can forget that in the nineteenth century of the era from which we date our civility, we are but just beginning to leave off the very frequent practice of whipping females in public, in common with the coarsest male offenders. I shall believe it to be influential when I can shut my eyes to the fact that in England women are still occasionally-hanged. I shall believe in it when actresses are no longer subject to be hissed off a stage by gen tlemen. I shall believe in it when Dorimant hands a fish-wife across the kennel; or assists the applewoman to pick up her wandering fruit, which some unlucky dray has just dissipated. I shall believe in it when the Dorimants in humbler life, who would be thought in their way notable adepts in this refinement, shall act upon it in places where they are not known, or think themselves not observed-when I shall see the traveller for some rich tradesman part with his admired box-coat, to spread it over the defenceless shoulders of the poor woman who is passing to her parish on the roof of the same stage-coach with him, drenched in the rain-when I shall no longer see a woman standing up in the pit of a London theatre, till she is sick and faint with the exertion, with men about her seated at their ease, and jeering at her distress; till one that seems to have more manners or conscience than the rest significantly declares, "she should be welcome to his seat if she were a little younger and handsomer." Place this dapper warehouseman, or that rider, in a circle of their own female acquaintance, and you shall confess you have not seen a politer-bred man in Lothbury. Lastly, I shall begin to believe that there is some such principle influencing our conduct, when more than one-half of the drudgery and coarse servitude of the world shall cease to be performed by women. speare commentator, has addressed a fine sonnet-was the only pattern of consistent gallantry I have met with. He took me under his shelter at an early age, and bestowed some pains upon me. I owe to his precepts and example whatever there is of the man of business (and that is not much) in my composition. It was not his fault that I did not profit more. Though bred a Presbyterian, and brought up a merchant, he was the finest gentleman of his time. He had not one system of attention to females in the drawing-room, and another in the shop or at the stall. I do not mean that he made no distinction. But he never lost sight of sex, or overlooked it in the casualties of a disadvantageous situation. I have seen him stand bare-headed-smile if you please--to a poor servant-girl, while she has been inquiring of him the way to some street— in such a posture of unforced civility as neither to embarrass her in the acceptance nor himself in the offer of it. He was no dangler, in the common acceptation of the word, after women; but he reverenced and upheld, in every form in which it came before him, womanhood. I have seen him-nay, smile not-tenderly escorting a market-woman, whom he had encountered in a shower, exalting his umbrella over her poor basket of fruit, that it might receive no damage, with as much carefulness as if she had been a countess. To the reverend form of Female Eld he would yield the wall (though it were to an ancient beggar-woman) with more ceremony than we can afford to show our grandams. He was the Preux Chevalier of Age; the Sir Calidore, or Sir Tristan, to those who have no Calidores or Tristans to defend them. The roses, that had long faded thence, still bloomed for him in those withered and yellow cheeks. Until that day comes, I shall never believe this boasted point to be anything more than a conventional fiction; a pageant got up between the sexes, in a certain rank, and at a certain time of life, in which both find their account equally. I shall be even disposed to rank it among the salutary fictions of life, when in polite He was never married, but in his youth he paid circles I shall see the same attentions paid to his addresses to the beautiful Susan Winstanley are as to youth, to homely features as to hand--old Winstanley's daughter of Clapton-who, some, to coarse complexions as to clear-to the woman as she is a woman, not as she is a beauty, a fortune, or a title. I shall believe it to be something more than a name, when a well-dressed gentleman in a well-dressed company can advert to the topic of female old age without exciting, and intending to excite, a sneer;-when the phrases "antiquated virginity," and such a one has "overstood her market," pronounced in good company, shall raise immediate offence in man, or woman, that shall hear them spoken. Joseph Paice, of Bread-street-hill, merchant, and one of the directors of the South Sea Company-the same to whom Edwards, the Shak dying in the early days of their courtship, confirmed in him the resolution of perpetual bachelorship. It was during their short courtship, he told me, that he had been one day treating his mistress with a profusion of civil speechesthe common gallantries-to which kind of thing she had hitherto manifested no repugnance-but in this instance with no effect. He could not obtain from her a decent acknowledgment in return. She rather seemed to resent his compliments. He could not set it down to caprice, for the lady had always shown herself above that littleness. When he ventured on the following day, finding her a little better humoured, to expostulate with her on her coldness of yesterday, she confessed with her usual frankness, that she had no sort of dislike to his attentions; that she could even endure some high-flown compliments; that a young woman placed in her situation had a right to expect all sort of civil things said to her; that she hoped she could digest a dose of adulation, short of insincerity, with as little injury to her humility as most young women: but that a little before he had commenced his compliments-she had overheard him by accident, in rather rough language, rating a young woman who had not brought home his cravats quite to the appointed time, and she thought to herself, "As I am Miss Susan Winstanley, and a young lady-a reputed beauty, and known to be a fortune-I can have my choice, of the finest speeches from the mouth of this very fine gentleman who is courting me; but if I had been poor Mary Such-a-one (naming the milliner), and had failed of bringing home the cravats to the appointed hour-though perhaps I had sat up half the night to forward them what sort of compliments should I have received then?-And my woman's pride came to my assistance; and I thought, that if it were only to do me honour, a female like myself might have received handsomer usage: and I was determined not to accept any fine speeches, to the compromise of that sex, the belonging to which was, after all, my strongest claim and title to them." I think the lady discovered both generosity and a just way of thinking in this rebuke which she gave her lover; and I have sometimes imagined that the uncommon strain of courtesy, which through life regulated the actions and behaviour of my friend towards all of womankind indiscriminately, owed its happy origin to this seasonable lesson from the lips of his lamented mistress. I wish the whole female world would entertain the same notion of these things that Miss Winstanley showed. Then we should see something of the spirit of consistent gallantry; and no longer witness the anomaly of the same man-a pattern of true politeness to a wife of cold contempt, or rudeness, to a sister the idolater of his female mistress-the disparager and despiser of his no less female aunt, or unfortunate-still female-maiden cousin. Just so much respect as a woman derogates from her own sex, in whatever condition placed her handmaid or dependant she deserves to have diminished from herself on that score; and probably will feel the diminution, when youth, and beauty, and advantages not inseparable from sex, shall lose of their attraction. What a woman should de mand of a man in courtship, or after it, is first respect for her as she is a woman;—and next to that to be respected by him above all other women. But let her stand upon her female character as upon a foundation; and let the attentions incident to individual preference be so many pretty additaments and ornaments -as many, and as fanciful as you please-to that main structure. Let her first lesson be -with sweet Susan Winstanley-to reverence her sex. WOMAN'S INCONSTANCY. [Sir Robert Aytoun, born in Fifeshire, 1570; died in London, March, 1638. A courtier and oet, a friend of Ben Jonson, and acquainted with all the wits of his time. He served James I. and Charles I, and was knighted by the first-named monarch. He was an an cestor of W. Edmondstone Aytoun. Several of his poems are quoted in Watson's Scottish Poems, 1706–11, and in Ritson's Caledonian Muse.] I lov'd thee once, I'll love no more, Thine be the grief, as is the blame; What reason I should be the same? Nothing could have my love o'erthrown, If thou hadst still continued mine; Yea, if thou hadst remain'd thy own, I might perchance have yet been thine: But thou thy freedom did recal, That if thou might elsewhere enthral; And then how could I but disdain A captive's captive to remain? When new desires had conquer'd thee, And chang'd the object of thy will, It had been lethargy in me, Not constancy, to love thee still. Yea, it had been a sin to go And prostitute affection so; Since we are taught our prayers to say To such as must to others pray. Yet do thou glory in thy choice, Thy choice of his good fortune boast; I'll neither grieve nor yet rejoice To see him gain what I have lost. 1 Burns took from this poem the idea for his song, "I do confess thou art sae fair." |