THE Albatross is the largest of all the birds that frequent the seacoast, and measures as much as three feet in length, while its expanded wings are from nine to ten feet. The common Albatross has been called the Cape sheep, by the Dutch, on account of its extreme corpulence. The beak of this bird is very powerful, but although so well provided with a weapon of offence, it is naturally a cowardly creature, and seldom acts except on the defensive; it gets rid of the sea-gulls who are constantly teasing it, in rather a singular manner, by descending rapidly through the air, and plunging its assailant into the water.

Small marine animals, zoophytes, and the spawn of fishes, form the chief food of the Albatross; but it also greedily devours all descriptions of fishes, when it can obtain that food, and is so voracious, as to be taken with a hook and line baited merely with a piece of sheep's skin.

On account of their great weight, these birds have much difficulty in raising themselves into the air, and are obliged to assist themselves in this manoeuvre by striking the surface of the water with their feet; but when once on the wing, their flight is rapid, and apparently performed with great ease, as they appear to do little else than sway themselves in the air, sometimes inclining to the left, and at others to the right, gliding with great rapidity over the surface of the sea. It is only in bad weather that their flight is at any great elevation; their voice is extremely disagreeable, and resembles the braying of an ass.

The principal resort of the Albatross tribe, of which there are four or five species, is the ocean in the vicinity of the Cape of Good Hope, but they are found in all parts of the South Seas. As an article of food, the Albatross is but

little sought after; its flesh, on account of the nature of its food, being very rank and disagreeable; it is, however, sometimes used by the sailors, who, after skinning it, place it in salt for a few days, and eat it with some strong seasoning.

About the middle of September the female builds a nest on the sand, about three feet in circumference, and lays a considerable number of eggs, of a greyish colour and speckled black; but a great portion of these are destroyed by birds of prey, reptiles, &c.; they are also much sought after by the inhabitants of the Cape of Good Hope and islands of the Indian Ocean, as an article of food, as they partake in a very slight degree of the peculiar flavour of the flesh of the birds themselves. It is a singular fact, that the yolk of these eggs never becomes hardened by the process of cooking.

FONDNESS OF CERTAIN BIRDS

FOR WALNUTS.

THE TITMICE will sometimes feed on walnuts, attacking and devouring them as they grow on the tree, and before they are ripe enough to quit the green outside husk. A walnut-tree on the premises here affords peculiar facilities to the operations of these little depredators: it bears nuts which are frequently more or less imperfect in their shells; that is, the shells, instead of being composed throughout of a hard woody substance, are partially defective towards the apex on each side, or consist of a soft texture easily pervious to the bills of the titmice. Here, at the soft or imperfect apex of the shell, these birds commence their attack, and peck out the kernel to the utmost depth that their bills will reach. I have frequently known the entire kernel completely scooped out by the titmice, before the nut was ripe enough to fall from the tree. On one large

tree, with a good crop, scarcely a walnut remained that had not been attacked by these birds, and more or less eaten. I mention this circumstance merely as a fact in natural history; not by any means with a view to blacken the character of the birds in question, a race which, I cannot help thinking, is already more persecuted than it deserves to be.

THE NIGHTJAR OR FERN

OWL.

THE Nightjar partakes of the form and habits of the Owl and of the Swallow; like the latter, its beak is very deeply cleft, and its principal food consists of insects which it takes upon the wing; but, like the owl, it pursues its prey only in the dusk of the evening, and early in the morning. If disturbed during the day, its flight is heavy and embarrassed, but at night, its motions are rapid and certain. It is enabled by a curious provision of nature (a glutinous secretion from the inside of the mouth), to prevent the escape of such insects as it may capture, without the necessity of swallowing them too frequently. The nests of the Nightjar, or rather the places in which it lays its eggs, are small holes at the foot of trees, or even sometimes on the naked ground; it is among our latest spring visiters, and does not make its appearance till the latter end of May. The chief food of the Nightjar consists of beetles, and other insects.

The Rev. Mr White, from whose works we have already made such frequent quotations, says, speak ing of this bird." A Fern Owl this evening (August 27), showed off in a very unusual and entertaining manner, by hawking round the circumference of my great spreading oak, for twenty times following, keeping mostly close to the grass, but occasionally glancing up among

the boughs of the tree. This amusing bird was then in pursuit of a brood of some particular Phalana (moth) belonging to the oak, and exhibited on the occasion a command of wing, superior I think to the swallow itself.

"When a person approaches the haunts of the Fern Owls in an evening, they continue flying round the head of the intruder, and by striking their wings together above their backs, in the manner the pigeons called Twisters are known to do, make a smart swap. Perhaps at that time they are jealous of their young, and their noise and gesture are intended by way of menace. Fern Owls have attachment to oaks, no doubt on account of food, for the next evening we saw one again, several times, among the boughs of the same tree, but it did not skim round its stem over the grass, as on the evening before. In May these birds find the Scarabaeus melolontha (the common Cockchafer) on the oak, and the Melolontha solstitialis (the July Chafer) at Midsummer. These peculiar birds can only be watched and observed for two hours in the twenty-four, and then in a dubious twilight, an hour after sunset, and an hour before sunrise."

THE CUCKOO.

THE most curious part of the history of the Cuckoo, consists in the manner in which the female disposes of her eggs: in this she differs so extremely from every other bird, that were it not that the fact has been attested by the most credible and intelligent eye-witnesses, it would hardly be deserving of belief. The female cuckoo, in general, builds no nest of her own, but deposits her eggs, almost always singly, in the nest of some of the smaller birds, most frequently in that of the hedge-sparrow. The small bird carefully sits on the egg thus placed,

and, when the young is hatched, it is attended with as much care as if the offspring was her own; experiment has proved, that if the egg of any other bird is introduced into the nest, it is either thrown out and broken, or the nest is entirely deserted. Another curious fact is, that the young of the cuckoo, as soon as it is hatched, applies itself to the task of ejecting the rightful owners of the nest; to effect this, the young cuckoo thrusts itself underneath the egg, or young bird it wishes to remove, and then carries it on its back, which is peculiarly broad and flat, to the edge of the nest, and throws it over; this, however, is sometimes a work of considerable difficulty, and only effected after repeated trials.

I HAD an opportunity of witnessing the case of a young cuckoo which was hatched in the nest of a waterwagtail, who had built in some ivy on a wall close to my house. It required the united efforts of both the old birds from morning to night to satisfy his hunger, and I never saw birds more indefatigable than they were. When the young cuckoo had nearly arrived at his full size, he appeared on the nest of the water-wagtail, like a giant in a cock-boat.' Just before he could fly he was put in a cage, in which situation the old birds continued to feed him, till by some accident he made his escape, and remained in a high elm-tree near the house. Here the water-wagtails were observed to feed him with the same assiduity for at least a fortnight afterwards. This cuckoo was very pugnacious, and would strike with its wings and open its mouth in great anger, whenever I put my hand near him. JESSE.

SWALLOWS.

AMONG the migratory birds, none have attracted more attention, or

been the cause of more difference of opinion, than the Swallows. Linnæus, the great Swedish naturalist, unfortunately for science, relying too much on the accounts furnished him by his correspondents, recorded his belief that, in many instances, the swallows, instead of leaving this country at the approach of winter, retreated to holes of rocks and other places of concealment, and remained there, in a torpid state, until the return of spring. It was even asserted by Olaus Magnus, a Bishop of Upsal, that in the north of Europe, the peasants were frequently in the habit of drawing up, from the bottom of ponds and lakes, by means of nets, numbers of these birds.

Although later writers did not agree in all that had been stated by their predecessors on this subject, still, countenanced by the learned Swede, who was then deservedly considered the greatest naturalist that Europe had ever produced, they believed that it was not an uncommon thing, for these birds to remain dormant during the winter. Later observations have, however, clearly proved that the only effect produced on them, by exposure to cold, is that of benumbing their faculties, and quickly depriving them of life; it has also been ascertained, that they moult their feathers during our winter months, and when they return in the spring, they are clothed in a new suit.

At first we are apt to be startled at the idea of the immense distances traversed by birds during their migrations, but if we submit our remarks to calculation, the difficulty of the performance at once vanishes; since the longest flight across the sea, which a swallow is likely to take in his journey to Africa, would only be from the south of France, across the Mediterranean, a distance not much exceeding 400

miles; and, as a bird flies at the rate of 60 miles an hour, it would only be on the wing for about seven hours, a matter of very little difficulty. But even this journey might be avoided; for if, instead of crossing the sea, it proceeded over the Peninsula of Spain and Portugal, a short trip would bring the feathered traveller to his winter-quarters. If the migratory route of any other bird, with whose movements we are acquainted, were submitted to the same test, we should, no doubt, find a similar result.

The swallow tribe is scattered over the surface of nearly the whole globe; but in the regions between the tropics, where the insects on which these birds subsist are found in abundance throughout the year, the instinct of migration is not displayed.

There are four species of the swallow-tribe known in England: the House-Martin, whose wellknown nest is found under the eaves of houses and in the angles of windows; the Chimney-swallow, that builds its nest in old chimneys, barns, and hay-stacks; the SandMartin, that frequents holes in sand-banks; and the largest of the tribe, the Swift, or Great Black Swallow.

and to destroy them seems to be a matter of self-defence: but the poor swallow does us no harm at all: there is reason to think that he is sent to do us good. When he is darting through the air, and wheeling round and round so swiftly that the eye can hardly follow him, he is catching flies, which are intended to be his food. Many thousands and millions of flies are destroyed in this way: and if they were all suffered to live, they would in time cover the earth; and we should be as badly off as the Egyptians, when God sent upon them the plague of flies and other insects. We ought to feel much obliged to the swallows for lessening the number of these troublesome guests.

We should also remember, that the swallows come to England to build their nests. They set about this very soon after their arrival; and when their young ones are strong enough to fly, they all leave the country. It is hardly possible, therefore, to kill a swallow, without robbing some little birds of a father or a mother. The female swallow leaves her nest on a summer's evening, and fills her beak with flies. But she does not catch them only for herself: she has some young children at home, and she is thinking of them all the time after her prey. When she is rethat she is gliding through the air turning to her nest with her mouth full of food, she is suddenly struck with a shot, and down she drops to the ground, bleeding and dead. Her little ones go without their supper for that night; they pass all the time in a sad and piteous chirping; and their father does not know how to quiet them, when he finds himself in the nest without his partner. After a sleepless night, he sets out to catch some flies; but he does not know how to feed them as their mother did; and before the evening is over, he too is shot