whenever I chanced to be in the back part of the house, or took our friends to listen to it, and always with precisely the same unwearied cry, and the intervals between each as regular as the ticking of a pendulum. This species of owl, according to Professor Savi's excellent Ornitologia Toscana, vol. i. p. 74, is the only Italian species which migrates; passing the winter in Africa and Southern Asia, and the summer in the south of Europe. It feeds wholly upon beetles, grasshoppers, and other insects." In the Portraits d'Oyseaux, the following quatrain appears beneath the figure of this Little Duke: "Une Huette est petit Duc nommée, Pour ressembler au grand Duc, et moyen De différent, maist est ainsi formée." This elegant miniature species closes the list of British owls, properly so called, and we now proceed to a rapid sketch of the occasional visiters.. The hawk-owl, Surnia funerea (American and English), which as we have before observed, hunts by day, and, as might be expected, has, like the snowy owl, the facial disk less perfect than that of the nocturnal owls, can hardly be said to be a voluntary visiter; for the only instance recorded is the arrival of one on board a ship off the coast of Cornwall, whence it was afterwards landed and lived a short time in captivity; but the trim little owl, or passerine owl, Athene Noctua of the Prince of Canino, Strix passerina of authors, has been taken several times; and more rarely, another small species, Tengmalm's owl, Nyctale Tengmalmi of the Prince of Canino, Strix Tengmalmi of authors. This elegantly marked owl is abundant in North America, where it is the Cheepai-peethees, and Cheepomesees (death-bird) of the Cree Indians." "When," says Dr. Richardson, "it accidentally wanders abroad in the day, it is so much dazzled by the light of the sun as to become stupid, and it may then be easily caught by the hand. Its cry in the night is a single melancholy note, repeated at intervals of a minute or two; and it is one of the superstitious practices of the Indians to whistle when they hear it. If the bird be silent when thus challenged, the speedy death of the inquirer is augured; hence its Cree appellation of death-bird." The great snowy owl, Nyctea candida of the Prince of Canino, Strix nyctea of authors, which is a mighty hunter, and adroit fisher by day, in the northern and arctic regions at least, striking at the hare in its course, and clutching his finny prey with one sudden stroke of his powerful foot as he sails over the water, or watches patiently, perched on a stone in the shallows, with his legs and feet defended from the cold by his thick feather-boots, has occasionally been driven to our shores; less frequently, however, than the great horned owl, or eagle owl, Bubo maximus of Sibbald, Strix Bubo of Linnæus, the Grand Duke hereinbefore celebrated. But even his visits are so few and far between, that we are not justified in inflicting upon our readers his natural history and the feats that he does in the cold starlight when he leaves his lofty abode, or those done to him by the old French falconers, who turned him out with the appendage of a fox's tail, in order to entrap the kite that was sure to fly after him, if there was one in the country, to observe what Mrs. Tabitha Bramble would have called the "phinumenon," though the temptation thereunto be strong. So we are fain to conclude with the old quatrain of 1557, lamenting at the same time that though the Italians named him Duco and Dugo, they also called him Bufo (as Belon writes it, though we much doubt whether he has not omitted an "f") and what is worse, give him at the present day the appellation of Gufo In truth he does appear to have earned for himself among them and our mercurial near neighbours the character of a very funny fellow, a character that we have often suspected from the accounts of the ancient dance ycleped Bubo. There is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous : "Le Duc est dit comme le conducteur D'autres oyseaux, quand d'un lieu se remuent. "THE noble Philip Marnixius of St. Aldegond," quoth Clusius, in his "Discourse," "had a parrot, whom I have oft heard laugh like a man, when he was by the by-standers bidden so to do in the French tongue, in these words-Riez, Perroquet, Riez-yea, which was more wonderful, it would presently add in the French tongue, as if it had been endued with reason, but doubtless so taught, O le grand sot qui me faict rire, and was wont to repeat these words twice or thrice."* Whether it may be the lot of our parrots to provoke a smile, or, like the Parakeet of Topaze (which was hatched before the deluge, had been in the ark, had seen much, and was sent for by Rustan to amuse him till he went to sleep again), we shall be able to keep the reader awake, we know not. At all events, we should be more than satisfied if we were possessed of a tithe of its qualities for story-telling. "Sa mémoire," says. Topaze to Rustan, in Le Blanc and Le Noirwhat an opera that tale would make in these days of splendid scenery-"Sa mémoire est fidelle, il conte simplement, sans chercher à montrer de l'esprit à tout propos, et sans faire des phrases." But, if we should, indeed, shower poppies with effect, happy, in this world of care, will be the eyelids they weigh down. Sancho, at least, in such a case, would have blessed us for our invention. Now, thinks the Poppy-expectant, for the old stories of Bluff King Hal's Parrot, and in the exquisite spelling of Aldrovandi -"Gibe the Knabe a Grott," id est, adds the worthy, da nebuloni solidum, No-neither shall we dwell on Colonel Kelly's parrot; nor on the ill-used bird that, in consequence of having told of what it ought not to have seen, was made to believe a hand-mill, a watering-pot, and burnt rosin, a storm of thunder and lightning as good as any that Mr. Crosse brings into his house from "clouds With heaven's artillery fraught." Not that we have not a great respect for the birds above hinted at, and, indeed, for all of these Anthropoglotts, as the Greeks called them, from the similitude of their fleshy tongues to that of man, whether, like the Cardinal's parrot, they can say the Apostle's creed or not ;t though we do not, perhaps, carry our veneration quite so far as the learned Cardan, who was of opinion that they meditated as well as spoke. Their fondness, their jealousy, their hatred their exhibition of many of the passions which make the human race happy or miserable, beloved or “Clusius, his Discourse and Account of Parrots.”—Willughby's Trans lation. † A correspondent, after speaking of this book in terms the most gratifying, but far beyond its merits, suggests that I may mention, as a pendant to the cardinal's parrot, one that belonged to his sister-in-law in India, that used to say his "Bismillah” like a good Mahommedan, every morning before he had his breakfast. odious, would be enough to interest us: but they are, moreover, a kind of link between the living and the dead-between the nations now upon earth and those mighty ones that have been swept from it for ever. The same form, nay, the same identical species of parakeet* that was caressed by Alexander, and nestled in the bosom of Thais-that sat on the finger of Augustus, and fed from the lip of Octavia-may now be the plaything of a London beauty. But of these ancients more anon. We will begin with the parrots of the New World. Their habits, in a state of nature, are well known; and in none of the Psittacidæ is the bill more highly developed. This organ is not merely a powerful seed-and-fruitstone-cracker, to speak Benthamitically, but it is also a scansorial organ, as any one may perceive who will take the trouble to observe these birds as they climb about their cages; and in some of the Maccaws it is enormous. The Patagonian Arara,† no less than seventeen inches in length, of which the tail is nearly nine, lives in the summer in the mountain-regions of Paraguay, Buenos Ayres, Patagonia, and Chili, breeding in the holes of trees and rocks; but the approach of autumn is the signal for their gathering, and in desolating flights, these mountaineers "Rush like a torrent down upon the vale," stripping the gardens and laying waste the cultivated fields, undeterred by the numbers which fall before the plundered owners. Upon such occasions there seems to be a sympathy among these birds that ensures their destruction: thus the Carolina Arara,‡ which is found as high up as 42 degrees of north latitude, and formerly was to be seen as far north-east as "Wild Ontario's boundless lake," feeds in great flocks crowded together. The gun of the enraged husbandman cuts a terrible lane through them while they are thus employed:. then comes a painful scene. All the survivors rise, shriek, fly round about for a few minutes, and again alight on the very place of most imminent danger. The gun is kept at work; eight, or ten, or even twenty, are killed at every discharge. The living birds, as if conscious of the death of their companions, sweep over their bodies, screaming as loud as ever, but still return to the stack to be shot at, until so few remain alive that the farmer does not consider it worth his while to spend more of his ammunition."§ * Palæornis Alexandri. † Arara Patagonica of Lesson; Psittacus Patagonicus of D'Azara. Audubon, American Ornithological Biography, vol. i. p. 136. Here we have a striking example of the effect produced by man, and, in this case, by civilized man, upon the animal creation. This species is fast diminishing before the colonist. Audubon remarks that about five-and-twenty years ago, "They could be procured as far up the tributary waters of the Ohio as the great Kenhawa, the Scioto, the heads of the Miami, the mouth of the Manimee at its junction with Lake Erie, on the Illinois river, and sometimes as far north-east as Lake Ontario, and along the eastern districts as far as the boundary line between Virginia and Maryland. At the present day, few are to be found higher than Cincinnati, nor is it until you reach the mouth of the Ohio that Parakeets are met with in considerable numbers. I should think that along the Mississippi there is not now half the number that existed fifteen years ago." These richly-plumed birds-Audubon says that a stack on which they alight looks as if a brilliantlycoloured carpet had been thrown over it-are eminently social; for it appears, in addition to the anecdote above given, that many females lay their eggs together, the places of deposit being, as it is in most of the family, the holes of decayed trees. We must give one more picture of the habits of the Carolina Arara, drawn by. the same masterly hand that sketched the preceding death-scene, because it will convey a good idea of the general manners of the American Parakeets : "The flight of the Parakeet is rapid, straight, and continued through the Forests, or over fields and rivers, and is accompanied by inclinations of the body which enable the observer to see, alternately their upper and under parts. They deviate from a direct course only when impediments occur, such as the trunks of trees, or houses, in which case they glance aside in a very graceful manner, merely as much as may be necessary. A general cry is kept up by the party, and it is seldom that one of these birds is on wing for ever so short a space without uttering its cry. On reaching a spot which affords a supply of food, instead of alighting at once, as many other birds do, the Parakeets take a good survey of the neighbourhood, passing over it in circles of great extent, first above the trees, and then gradually lowering until they almost touch the ground; when, suddenly re-ascending, they all settle on the tree that bears the fruit of which they are in quest, or on any one close to the field in which they expect to regale themselves. 66 "They are quite at ease on trees or any kind of plant, moving sideways, climbing or hanging in every imaginable posture, assisting themselves very dexterously in all their motions with their bills. They usually alight extremely close together. I have seen branches of trees as completely covered by them as they could possibly be. If approached before they begin their plun |