no peace for your birds. A small quantity of arsenic, about as much as the point of your penknife will contain, rubbed into a bit of meat either cooked or raw, will do their business effectually.

"I have often thought of suggesting to the Board of Woods and Forests the idea of feeding the birds, or rather of putting down the different kinds of food proper for the different kinds of singing-birds, in Kensington Gardens.' This would not be necessary. All our soft-billed summer birds of passage, and those soft-billed birds that remain with us the year throughout, live on insects; and insects abound during the period when these birds are in song. But if you could prevail upon the Board to prevent idle boys from chasing them, and gunners from killing them, and bird-merchants from catching them, all would be right; and almost every bush and tree would have its chorister.

"If y

you could give any hints as to the next best quadruped to the weasel for keeping in gardens, or, in fact, anything relative to keeping down insects, it would be of very great use."-I know of no other quadruped. The

barn owl is a great consumer of slugs; and the lapwing will clear a garden of worms. Our singing-birds are the best for destroying softwinged insects. The windhover hawk is excellent for killing beetles, and also for consuming slugs and snails: cats dare not attack him, wherefore he is very fit for a garden, and is very easy to be obtained, I could send you a dozen any season.

paper on

"The

Were I now a writer in the Magazine of Natural History, I would not agree with a Master Charles Coward in his carnivorous Propensities of the Squirrel." (See the Magazine for 1839, p. 311.) And so this keen observer has found out at last, that squirrels in confinement are occasionally carnivorous animals. Indeed! And so are my hens in confinement: they will kill and swallow a mouse in the twinkling of an eye, and a tame parrot will perform the same feat. All our granivorous birds in confinement will eat raw and cooked meat. My black cat "Tom," which is fed and pampered by my sisters, will often turn up his nose at a piece of good roasted mutton, and immediately after will eat greedily of dry bread. What would you

think of me were I to write for you a paper in which I would state that the cat is occasionally an animal that is very fond of bread? You cannot judge of the real habits of an animal when it is in captivity. The want of exercise, the change of economy, the change of food, and the change of habit altogether, tend wofully to change the very nature of the stomach, and cause it to accommodate itself to aliment which it would never touch

Thus,

in a wild state. We see people out of health. eating chalk; and we see others again, who spend their lives in sedentary employments, loathing food which is very palatable to him who passes the day in the open air. the ploughman will bolt fat bacon by the cubic inch, whilst the tender young milliner will turn sick at the very taste of it. I myself cannot bear melted butter; but I can and do often thrive, by preference, on a hard crust of bread. Still this would not be the case with one of your London aldermen, who would turn up his nose at the gifts of Ceres, unless those of Nimrod and Bacchus appeared on the same festive board.

The squirrel, in the state of liberty, lives on

nuts and seeds, and on the tender bark of the lime tree, &c. but rest assured that it never touches flesh, or kills birds, or sucks eggs. The shepherds of Wiltshire who have backed Master Charles in his important discovery deserve a birch rod. These rural sinners, both young and old, would swear that the moon was made of Jones's lucifers, if you would give them a quart of ale apiece. All my labourers believe that the heron thrusts its legs through the nest during incubation; and they will all tell you that the cuckoo becomes scabbed at the close of summer. "As scabbed as a cuckoo." This, by the way, comes from the mottled appearance which the plumage of the bird puts on at that time of the year. It is caused by the growth of the adult feathers amongst the chicken feathers. I pity the poor squirrels from my heart. Our country squires will now consign them over to the tender mercy of their gamekeepers, and we shall hear of squirrels shot by the dozen. The squirrel is a most harmless animal, except in a nut orchard, from which he ought to be expelled without loss of time, as the damage which he does there is incalculable; but I would trust him

for ever in a butcher's shop, provided he were allowed to go and take his breakfast and dinner in the neighbouring woods. I can see the squirrel here just now, living entirely on the seeds of the cones of the spruce firs; I can see him in the very trees which contain nests of ringdoves, thrushes, chaffinches, and blackbirds. Still the owners of these nests betray no fears on his approach; and he himself shows no inclination for raw eggs, or for or old birds, whereon to make a meal.

young

THE CIVETTA, OR LITTLE ITALIAN OWL.*

THIS diminutive rover of the night is much prized by the gardeners of Italy for its uncommon ability in destroying insects, snails, slugs, reptiles, and mice. There is scarcely an out-house in the gardens and vineyards of that country which is not tenanted by the civetta. It is often brought up tame from the nest;

* See a correct description of this bird in the Ornitologia Toscana, vol. i. p. 76., by Professor Paolo Savi.