complacency, that a person must have paid very little regard for the wonders of nature that has not often remarked this feat.

The dam betakes herself immediately to the business of a second brood as soon as she is disengaged from her first, which at once associates with the first broods of house-martins, and with them congregates, clustering on sunny roofs, towers, and trees. This hirundo brings out her second brood towards the middle and end of August.

All summer long, the swallow is a most instructive pattern of unwearied industry and affection: for from morning to night, while there is a family to be supported, she spends the whole day in skimming close to the ground, and exerting the most sudden turns and quick evolutions. Avenues, and long walks under the hedges, and pasture-fields, and mown meadows where cattle. graze, are her delight, especially if there are trees interspersed; because in such spots insects most abound. When a fly is taken, a smart snap from her bill is heard, resembling the noise at the shutting of a watch-case; but the motion of the mandibles is too quick for the eye.

The swallow, probably the male bird, is the excubitor to housemartins and other little birds; announcing the approach of birds

of prey. For as soon as a hawk appears, with a shrill alarm

ing note he calls all the swallows and martins about him; who pursue in a body, and buffet and strike their enemy till they have driven him from the village; darting down from above on his back, and rising in a perpendicular line in perfect security. This bird will also sound the alarm, and strike at cats when they climb on the roofs of houses, or otherwise approach the nest. Each species of hirundo drinks as it flies along, sipping the surface of the water; but the swallow alone in general washes on the wing, by dropping into a pool for many times. together: in very hot weather house-martins and bank-martins also dip and wash a little.

The swallow is a delicate songster, and in soft sunny weather sings both perching and flying; on trees in a kind of concert, and on chimney-tops: it is also a bold flyer, ranging to distant downs and commons even in windy weather, which the other species seems much to dislike; nay, even frequenting exposed seaport towns, and making little excursions over the salt water. Horsemen on the wide downs are often closely attended by a little party of swallows for miles together, which plays before

XXVII-993

and behind them, sweeping around and collecting all the skulking insects that are roused by the trampling of the horses' feet: when the wind blows hard, without this expedient, they are often forced to settle to pick up their lurking prey.

A certain swallow built for two years together on the handles of a pair of garden shears that were stuck up against the boards in an out-house, and therefore must have her nest spoiled whenever that implement was wanted; and what is stranger still, another bird of the same species built its nest on the wings and body of an owl that happened by accident to hang dead and dry from the rafter of a barn. This owl, with the nest on its wings, and with eggs in the nest, was brought as a curiosity worthy of the most elegant private museum in Great Britain. The owner, struck with the oddity of the sight, furnished the bringer with a large shell or conch, desiring him to fix it just where the owl hung: the person did as he was ordered, and the following year, a pair, probably the same pair, built their nest in the conch and laid their eggs.

THE HOUSE-CRICKET

Letter to the Hon. Daines Barrington: from The Natural History of

Selborne'

HILE many other insects must be sought after in fields, and woods, and waters, the Gryllus domesticus, or housecricket, resides altogether within our dwellings; intruding itself upon our notice whether we will or no. This species delights in new-built houses: being, like the spider, pleased with the moisture of the walls; and besides, the softness of the mortar enables them to burrow and mine between the joints of the bricks or stones, and to open communications from one room to another. They are particularly fond of kitchens and bakers' ovens, on account of their perpetual warmth.

Tender insects that live abroad either enjoy only the short period of one summer, or else doze away the cold, uncomfortable months in profound slumbers; but these, residing as it were in a torrid zone, are always alert and merry: a good Christmas fire is to them like the heats of the dog-days. Though they are frequently heard by day, yet is their natural time of motion only in the night. As soon as it grows dusk, the chirping increases,

and they come running forth, ranging from the size of a flea to that of their full stature. As one should suppose from the burning atmosphere which they inhabit, they are a thirsty race, and show a great propensity for liquids; being found frequently drowned in pans of water, milk, broth, or the like. Whatever is moist they affect; and therefore often gnaw holes in wet woolen stockings and aprons that are hung to the fire. They are the housewife's barometer, foretelling her when it will rain; and they prognosticate sometimes, she thinks, good or ill luck, — the death of near relatives or the approach of an absent lover. By being the constant companions of her solitary hours, they naturally become the objects of her superstition. These crickets are not only very thirsty but very voracious, for they will eat the scummings of pots, and yeast, salt and crumbs of bread, and any kitchen offal or sweepings. In the summer we have observed them to fly out of the windows when it became dusk, and over the neighboring roofs. This feat of activity accounts for the sudden manner in which they often leave their haunts, as it does for the method by which they come to houses where they were not known before. It is remarkable that many sorts of insects seem never to use their wings but when they have a mind to shift their quarters and settle new colonies. When in the air they move volatu undoso, "in waves and curves," like woodpeckers; opening and shutting their wings at every stroke: and so are always rising or sinking.

When they increase to a great degree, as they did once in the house where I am now writing, they become noisome pests, flying into the candles and dashing into people's faces; but may be blasted and destroyed by gunpowder discharged into their crevices and crannies.

In families at such times, they are like Pharaoh's plague of frogs, in their bedchambers, and upon their beds, and in their ovens, and in their kneading-troughs. Their shrilling noise is occasioned by a brisk attrition of their wings. Cats catch hearth crickets, and play with them as they do with mice, and then devour them. Crickets may be destroyed, like wasps, by phials half filled with beer, or any other liquid, and set in their haunts; for being always eager to drink, they will crowd in till the bottles are full.

RICHARD GRANT WHITE

(1821-1885)

ICHARD GRANT WHITE was an essayist who combined scholarship with a strong individuality and popular qualities of style, the latter due in part to a varied activity as journalist and magazine writer. A keen-eyed observer of affairs, something of a satirist, and cultured especially in music, philology, and literature, his most lasting work is that which he did for Shakespeare study, as expositor and editor. He was a healthful influence in the United States in fostering Shakespeare study, and his authority

R. G. WHITE

was considerable. In his criticism, commonsense is a marked characteristic: he is most vigorous and enjoyable when letting in the daylight upon pedantry, or ridiculing the thin-spun theories of extremists. His gift of expression was decided; and his command of the critical apparatus ample.

Richard Grant White was born in New York city, May 22d, 1821; and was graduated at the University of New York in 1839. He studied both medicine and law, chose the latter profession, and was admitted to the bar in 1845. But he soon turned to journalism and literature. From 1851 to 1858 he was associate editor of the New York Courier and Enquirer, and during the years 1860-61 had an editorial connection with the New York World. He wrote for the papers on many topics; and much of his work partook of the fleeting character of journalism. For several years (1863-67) his Yankee Letters' in the London Spectator were enjoyed as a lively chronicle of contemporary events. The book entitled 'England Without and Within' (1881) was regarded in that country as an estimate of unusual judgment and insight. His literary excursions also included a novel, The Fate of Mansfield Humphreys' (1884), an amusing but overdrawn study of Yankee character in a European environment. Mr. White's philological studies are best exemplified by the volume 'Words and Their Uses, one of the most readable discussions of the subject given forth by an American: it is at times dangerously dogmatic and

hasty in generalization, but as a whole both sound and stimulating. 'Studies in Shakespeare,' made up of papers collected by his wife after his death (1885), gives in an attractive way his views on the English master-poet. For twenty-five years Mr. White worked at Shakespearean criticism; and his final Riverside Edition of Shakespeare, which appeared in 1884, proved one of the most popular prepared by an American.

Mr. White was for many years the chief clerk of the United States Revenue Marine Bureau for the District of New York,- a post he resigned in 1878. His life was a busy one, calling on his time and strength in many ways. Looking at his work as a whole, and disregarding what was necessarily temporary in it, a residue of valuable and enjoyable literary work remains to give him his place among American essayists and scholars. He died on April 8th, 1885, at his birthplace, New York city.

THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CRAZE

From Studies in Shakespeare.' Copyright 1885, by Alexina B. White. Reprinted by permission of Houghton, Mifflin & Co., publishers

AND

ND now we are face to face with what is, after all, the great inherent absurdity (as distinguished from evidence and external conditions) of this fantastical notion,- the unlikeness of Bacon's mind and of his style to those of the writer of the plays. Among all the men of that brilliant period who stand forth in all the blaze of its light with sufficient distinction for us at this time to know anything of them, no two were so elementally unlike in their mental and moral traits and in their literary habits as Francis Bacon and William Shakespeare; and each of them stamped his individuality unmistakably upon his work.

Both were thinkers of the highest order; both, what we somewhat loosely call philosophers: but how different their philosophy, how divergent their ways of thought, and how notably unlike their modes of expression! Bacon, a cautious observer and investigator, ever looking at men and things through the dry light of cool reason; Shakespeare, glowing with instant inspiration, seeing by intuition the thing before him, outside and inside, body and spirit, as it was, yet molding it as it was to his immediate need, -finding in it merely an occasion of present thought, and regardless of it except as a stimulus to his fancy and his imagination: Bacon, a logician; Shakespeare, one who set logic at naught,