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especially in the neighbourhood of the Cape, the ostrich sits like other birds, always choosing the most retired and solitary places. Her nest consists merely of a pit of about three feet in diameter, dug in the sand, which is thrown up around it so as to form an elevated margin. At some little distance are usually placed, each in a separate cavity in the sand, a number of rejected eggs, which are said to be intended to serve as nutriment for the young brood as soon as hatched; a most remarkable instance of foresight, if truly stated, but not yet confirmed beyond the possibility of doubt.

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The eggs are extremely hard, very weighty, and twenty or thirty times as large as those of our common hen. The colour of the shells is a dirty white, tinged with light yellow. These are frequently formed into cups; and are used in various ways as ornaments by the natives of the countries in which they are found. The eggs themselves form, according to Thunberg, an article of considerable commerce at the Cape, were they are sold to the vessels that touch there, the thickness of their shells rendering them preferable, for a sea voyage, to those of taken reading of a passage in Athenæus, which the any other bird. They are generally regarded as French academicians of the seventeenth century imgreat luxuries; but on this point there is some dif-properly applied to the bird before us. They regarded ference of opinion, M. Sonnini affirming that, either the resemblance to man implied by this epithet, as a from habit or from prejudice, he could not bring him convincing proof that the otus of the Greeks was a self to consider them so good as the eggs to which synonyme of the bird which they were themselves he had been accustomed; while M. Cuvier rap- describing under the name of demoiselle, from a turously exclaims, that they are not merely to be re-fancied coincidence between its graceful but somegarded as delicacies, but are, in fact, ipsissime delicia;" an expressive but untranslatable phrase, which we can only render, in piebald English, the ne plus ultra of good eating. It is by no means improbable that, in the latter instance, the rarity of the dish conferred upon it a higher relish than its own intrinsick flavour would have warranted; as was undoubtedly the case when the dissolute Roman emperour, in Rome's degenerate days, ordered the brains of six hundred ostriches to be served up to his guests at a single supper.

what affected attitudes, and the manners of a young and polished female. It is difficult, however, to conceive how these learned men, with M. Perrault at their head, could have stumbled on so gross a misapprehension; for the passages cited by them from Greek and Roman authors prove, beyond all question, that the scops and otus of the former, and the asio of the latter, were, in truth, nothing else than owls, and had consequently no connexion with the Numidian crane.

M. Savigny, on the other hand, refers the latter The flesh of these birds was among the unclean bird to the crex of Aristotle and other classical au meats forbidden to the Jews by the Mosaical law. thors; but we must confess that we entertain considIt seems, however, to have been in especial favour erable doubt of the accuracy of this opinion also.with the Romans, for we read of its being frequent- The scattered notices of the ancient crex, appear to ly introduced at their tables. We are even told by us by far too scanty and indefinite to admit of their Vopiscus that the pseudo-emperour Firmus, equally positive appropriation; and they combine, moreover, celebrated for his feats at the anvil and at the trench- several traits which are quite irreconcilable with the er, devoured, in his own imperial person, an entire identity of the two animals. With the exception of ostrich at one sitting. It is to be hoped that the this distinguished naturalist, almost all the modern bird was not particularly old; for it is allowed on authors who have spoken of the demoiselle have all hands, at least in the present day, that when it merely copied Buffon, who, with singular inconsisthas reached a certain age it is both a tough and unsa- ency, at the same time that he corrects the errour of voury morsel. The young are nevertheless said to synonymy into which the academicians had fallen, be eatable; and we may well imagine that the adopts all their quotations founded upon this very haunch of such a bird would furnish a tolerably sub-mistake. The truth is, that the real history of the stantial dish. The Arabs, it may be added, have adopted the Jewish prohibition, and regard the ostrich as an unclean animal: but some of the barbarous tribes of the interiour of Africa, like the Struthiophagi of old, still feed upon its flesh whenever it. they are fortunate enough to procure

bird cannot be traced with certainty beyond the period of M. Perrault's memoirs, in which it was for the first time described under the fanciful denomination which it has ever since retained.

In the Linnæan classification the two remarkable species of which M. Vieillot formed the genus Anthropoïdes, constituted a distinct section of the genus ardea, characterized by their short bills and the crest upon their heads. Modern systematists place them in the family of gruidæ, in an intermediate station They are charThe name of Anthropoïdes, conferred upon this ge- between the trumpeters and cranes. nus by its founder, M. Vieillot, owes its origin to a mis-acterized, according to M. Vieillot, as follows. Their

bill is scarcely longer than the head, compressed on the sides, entire at the point, thick, convex, and furrowed above; their nostrils are seated in the furrows of the bill, and are concave, elliptical, and open, but partly concealed.

consequently prefers seeds and other vegetable productions to every other kind of food. The convolu tions of its trachea are less extensive than those of the common crane, and its note is therefore weaker and less sonorous, although somewhat sharper.

The elegant species to which the French acade- The gracefulness of its figure, and the elegance of micians have given the name of demoiselle is remark- its deportment, have always rendered this bird an obable for the graceful symmetry of its form, the tasteful ject of peculiar attraction; no living specimens have disposition of its plumage, and the agreeable contrast been brought to this country, and they have been of its lighter and darker shades of colour. In an up- very rare in England and France. Towards the right position it measures, when fully grown, about close of the seventeenth century, the menagerie at three feet six inches to the top of the head; and its Versailles contained six individuals which bred length from the point of the bill to the tip of the tail, there; and one of the young produced in that estabis about three feet. Of these measurements the neck lishment, lived for four and twenty years. This fact and legs form a very considerable proportion. A patch is sufficient to prove that it would not be difficult to of light gray occupies the whole of the upper surface acclimate them in the latitude of Paris. They are of the head, the sides of which, together with the extremely gentle and good tempered, and speedily neck, including the long, slender, pointed feathers, become familiarized with captivity, and contented which depend from its lower part over the breast, are with their condition. It has been remarked that of a uniform, but not very intense, shade of black.- they seem to take pleasure in being noticed and Every part of the head and neck is fully plumed. admired, and exhibit themselves on such occasions Behind each eye there passes off, in a backward with a kind of ostentation, making use of gestures direction, a tuft of pure white feathers, three or four which have been construed into bows and courtesies, inches in length. These crests, as they are im- and jumping about in a kind of artificial dance. To properly termed, are extremely light and flexible, this somewhat overstrained comparison, Buffon adds, and have their barbs so loose as to float in graceful that they are so fond of display, as to prefer the undulations on the slightest motion of the bird. The pleasure of exhibiting themselves even to that of rest of the plumage, with the exception of the outer eating, and to follow those who are on the point of halves of the quill-feathers of the wings and tail, is quitting them, for the purpose, as it were, of solicitof a uniform slaty-gray. The secondary quill-feath- ing another glance of admiration. For our own ers are considerably longer than the primary, and parts we must confess that we have never observed, when the wings are folded, form on either side of in any of the specimens that we have seen, those the body a tuft of dependent plumes, curving down- symptoms of affectation which may perhaps be obviwards towards their extremities. All the quill-feath- ous to a more lively fancy. Their manners appear ers have their outer halves of a dusky-black. The to us to differ but little in this respect from those of bill is yellowish or flesh-coloured; the iris red-others of their tribe, the only material distinction dish-brown; and the legs and claws approaching to consisting in the gracefulness with which they exeblack. awkward and even ludicrous. cute motions, that in others are not unfrequently

Like most of the birds of the wading order, the Numidian crane is migratory in its habits; but it never reaches a high northern latitude, and the environs of Constantinople are the only part of Europe which it is said to visit. It is affirmed, but we know not on what authority, to have been observed as far east as lake Baikal. The southern coast of the Black sea and the Caspian seem, however, to be its proper Asiatick limits. In Africa, which is truly its native country, it extends along the whole of the Mediterranean and western coasts, from Egypt to Guinea, but is most abundant in the neighbourhood of Tripoli, and throughout the tract of country which constituted the Numidia of the ancients. It arrives in Egypt in considerable numbers at the period of the inundation of the Nile; and makes its appearance about Constantinople in the month of October, being then probably on its passage from the Black sea towards the south. It is also stated to have been met with in the interiour of South Africa, in the neighbourhood of the Cape.

Although, in common with the rest of its tribe, it prefers marshy situations, and feeds occasionally upon fishes, insects, and mollusca; a vegetable diet is more congenial to its structure and habits. Its stomach is a true muscular gizzard, like that of the common fowl, and, as in most granivorous birds, contains a quantity of gravel, evidently swallowed for the purpose of assisting in the trituration of the hard substances on which it generally subsists. It

THE KANGAROO.
Macropus major. SHAW.

supial animals derive their name, has been regarded The very peculiar structure from which the Marby almost every naturalist who has written on the subject, as so essential a deviation from the common type, that, setting aside all considerations of form or habits, and regardless even of those technical characters on which so much reliance is usually placed,

they have, for the most part, agreed in uniting under | will, when flying from danger, take a succession of the same family designation every animal in which leaps of from twenty to thirty feet in length and six or it occurred. This peculiarity consists in a folding eight in height; but even in their more quiet and or doubling of the skin and its appendages beneath gradual mode of progression they also make use of the lower part of the belly in the females, in such a their tail in conjunction with their four extremities. manner as to form an open pouch or bag, in which These singular animals were among the first fruits the young are contained from a very early period, in which accrued to natural history from the discovery of which the process of suckling takes place, and in New South Wales, a country which has since proved which, even for some time after, they have acquired so fertile in new and remarkable forms, both in the anisufficient size and strength to leave it, the little ones mal and vegetable creations. Their natural habits in continue to take refuge. a wild state, are still, however, very imperfectly But the presence of this one anomalous charac-known. They appear to live in small herds, perteristick is accompanied by so many striking discre-haps single families, which are said to submit to the pances in other parts, that, limited as this tribe is guidance of the older males, and to inhabit in preferin number, most of the principal forms of mammalia ence the neighbourhood of woods and thickets. find analogous representations among its groups. They are, as might be inferred from the small size Thus the opossums exhibit characters in some of their mouths and the peculiar character of their measure intermediate between the quadrumana and teeth, purely herbivorous, feeding chiefly upon grass the carnivora, to which latter the dasyuri, another and roots. Their flesh is eaten by the colonists, by marsupial group, closely resembling the civits in whom it is said to be nutritious and savoury, an asform and habits, approach very nearly; while the sertion which is confirmed by those who have parherbivorous races of the tribe might occupy a station taken of it in England. In order to procure this they between the rodent and ruminant orders, with each are frequently hunted in their native country; but of which they exhibit various degrees of relation- the dogs who are employed in this service someship. This want of uniformity in the essential parts times meet with dangerous wounds, not only from of their organization necessarily gives rise to much the blows of their powerful tail, which is their usual difficulty in determining their position in the system. weapon of defence, but also from the claws of their The mode of classification now most generally fol- hind feet, with which they have been known to lowed, is, perhaps, under all the circumstances, the lacerate the bodies of their assailants in a shocking best that could at the present be adopted; although manner. But, unless when thus driven to make use it must be owned that the purely herbivorous species of such powers of self-defence as they possess, they arrange themselves with a very ill grace under a sub-are perfectly harmless and even timid; and, when division of the order carnivora. Placed, however, domesticated, are not in the least mischievous.— as they are at the end of that order, and immediate- When confined in a small enclosure, they uniformly ly before the rodentia, the regular gradations from make their path round its circuit, seldom crossing it the type of the former to that of the latter, which or passing in any other direction except for the puroccur in their different groups, become most distinct-pose of procuring their food. Their whole appearly manifest. ance, and especially their mode of progression, is singularly curious and to a certain extent even ludicrous.

With the exception of the oppossums, which are natives of America, the tribe is peculiar to New Holland and its appendages, and to some of the islands which form the great chain of connexion between that insular continent and Southeastern Asia. The former is, however, their headquarters, and the species which are found beyond its limits are few in number compared with those which people its territory, and, what is more remarkable, people it to the exclusion of nearly all the other mammalia; the dog alone, the universal concomitant of man, and one or two species of rats, disputing with them their title to its exclusive possession; for those paradoxical creatures, the ornithorhynchus and echidna, if really mammiferous, approximate closely in structure to the marsupial tribe.

Modern naturalists have attempted to distinguish several species among the kangaroos; but as the characters on which these are founded consist merely in difference of size and slight modifications of colour, a much more complete acquaintance with them than we yet possess is requisite before they can safely be adopted. Our specimens are of a brownish-gray above, somewhat lighter beneath, with the extremity of the muzzle, the back of the ear, the feet, and the upper surface of the tail, nearly black, and the front of the throat grayish-white. They will feed like the domesticated ruminants, upon green herbage and hay; and may be made extremely tame and good tempered.

The largest of these animals are the kangaroos, whose generick characters we shall now proceed to describe. The most remarkable peculiarity in the As the vine which has long twined its graceful external form of these animals consists in the ex- foliage about the oak, and had been lifted by it into treme disproportion of their limbs, the anterior legs sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the being short and weak, while the posterior are ex- thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tentremely long and muscular. The tail too is exces-drils, and bind up its shattered boughs; so it is beausively thick at its base, of considerable length, and tifully ordered by Providence, that woman, who is the gradually tapering; and this singular conformation mere dependant and ornament of man in his happier enables it to act in some measure as a supplemental hours, should be his stay and solace, when smitten leg, when the animal assumes an erect or nearly with sudden calamity; winding herself into the rug erect posture, in which position he is supported, as ged recess of his nature, tenderly supporting the it were, on a tripod by the joint action of these three drooping head, and binding up the broken heart.— powerful organs. By means of this combination they | Irving.

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In returning once to New England, from a visit to to climb, and high enough to look into every corner Niagara, I found myself, one summer's day, before of the fortress. St. Clair's most probable reason, noon, at Orwell, about forty miles from the southern however, for neglecting to occupy it, was the defiextremity of lake Champlain, which has here the ciency of troops to man the works already constructaspect of a river or a creek. We were on the Ver-ed, rather than the supposed inaccessibility of mount mont shore, with a ferry of less than a mile wide, between us and the town of Ti, in New York.

On the bank of the lake, within ten yards of the water, stood a pretty white tavern, with a piazza along its front. A wharf and one or two stores were close at hand, and appeared to have a good run of trade, foreign as well as domestick; the latter with Vermont farmers, the former with vessels plying between Whitehall and the British dominions. Altogether, this was a pleasant and lively spot. I delighted in it, among other reasons, on account of the continual succession of travellers, who spent an idle quarter of an hour in waiting for the ferry-boat; affording me just time enough to make their acquaintance, penetrate their mysteries, and be rid of them without the risk of tediousness on either part.

Defiance. It is singular that the French never fortified this height, standing as it does in the quarter whence they must have looked for the advance of a British army.

In my first view of the ruins, I was favoured with the scientifick guidance of a young lieutenant of engineers, recently from West Point, where he had gained credit for great military genius. I saw nothing but confusion in what chiefly interested him; straight lines and zigzags, defence within defence, wall opposed to wall, and ditch intersecting ditch; oblong squares of masonry below the surface of the earth, and huge mounds, or turf-covered hills of stone, above it. On one of these artificial hillocks, a pine tree has rooted itself, and grown tall and strong, since the banner-staff was levelled. But The greatest attraction in this vicinity, is the where my unmilitary glance could trace no regularfamous old fortress of Ticonderoga; the remains of ity, the young lieutenant was perfectly at home.which are visible from the piazza of the tavern, on He fathomed the meaning of every ditch, and forma swell of land that shuts in the prospect of the lake. ed an entire plan of the fortress from its half obliterThose celebrated heights, mount Defiance and mount ated lines. His description of Ticonderoga would Independence, familiar to all Americans in history, be as accurate as a geometrical theorem, and as barstand too prominent not to be recognised, though ren of the poetry that has clustered round its decay. neither of them precisely correspond to the images I viewed Ticonderoga as a place of ancient strength, excited by their names. In truth, the whole scene, in ruins for half a century; where the flags of three except the interiour of the fortress, disappointed me. Mount Defiance, which one pictures as a steep, lofty, and rugged hill, of the most formidable aspect, frowning down with the grim visage of a precipice on old Ticonderoga, is merely a long and wooded ridge; and bore, at some former period, the gentle name of Sugar Hill. The brow is certainly difficult

nations had successively waved, and none waved now; where armies had struggled, so long ago that the bones of the slain are mouldered; where peace had found a heritage in the forsaken haunts of war. Now the young West-Pointer, with his lectures on ravelins, counters carps, angles, and covered ways, made it an affair of brick and mortar and hewn

stone, arranged on certain regular principles, hav-p ing a good deal to do with mathematicks but nothing at all with poetry.

I should have been glad of a hoary veteran to totter by my side, and tell me, perhaps, of the French garrisons and their Indian allies, of Abercrombie, Lord Howe and Amherst; of Ethan Allen's triumph and St. Clair's surrender. The old soldier and the old fortress would be emblems of each other. His reminiscences, though vivid as the image of Ticonderoga in the lake, would harmonize with the gray influence of the scene. A survivor of the long-disbanded garrisons, though but a private soldier, might have mustered his dead chiefs and comrades, some from Westminster Abbey, and the English church-yards and battle-fields in Europe, others from their graves here in America; others, not few, who lie sleeping round the fortress; he might have mustered them all, and bid them march through the ruined gateway, turning their old historick faces on me as they passed. Next to such a companion, the best is one's own fancy.

At another visit I was alone, and, after rambling all over the ramparts, sat down to rest myself in one of the roofless barracks. These are old French structures, and appear to have occupied three sides of a large area, now overgrown with grass, nettles, and thistles. The one in which I sat, was long and narrow, as all the rest had been, with peaked gables. The exteriour walls were nearly entire, constructed of gray, flat, unpicked stones, the aged strength of which promised long to resist the elements if no other violence should precipitate their fall. The roof, floors, partitions, and the rest of the woodwork, had probably been burnt, except some bars of stanch old oak, which were blackened with fire, but still remained imbedded into the window-sills and over the doors. There were a few particles of plastering near the chimney, scratched with rude figures, perhaps by a soldier's hand. A most luxuriant crop of weeds had sprung up within the edifice and hid the scattered fragments of the wall. Grass and weeds grew in the windows, and in all the crevices of the stone, climbing, step by step, till a turf of yellow flowers was waving on the highest peak of the gable. Some spicy herb diffused a pleasant odour through the ruin. A verdant heap of vegetation had covered the hearth of the second floor, clustering on the very spot where the huge logs had mouldered to glowing coals, and flourished beneath the broad flue, which had so often puffed the smoke over a circle of French or English soldiers. I felt that there was no other token of decay so impressive as that bed of weeds in the place of the back-log.

Here I sat, with those roofless walls about me, the clear sky over my head, and the afternoon sunshine falling gently bright through the window-frames and doorway. I heard the tinkling of a cow-bell, the twittering of birds, and the pleasant hum of insects. Once a gay butterfly with four gold-speckled wings, came and fluttered about my head, then flew up and lighted on the highest tuft of yellow flowers, and at last took wing across the lake. Next a bee buzzed through the sunshine, and found much sweetness among the weeds. After watching him till he went off to his distant hive, I closed my eyes on Ticonderoga in ruins, and cast a dreamlike glance over pictures of the past, and scenes of which this spot had been the theatre.

At first, my fancy saw only the stern hills, lonely lakes, and venerable woods. Not a tree, since their seeds were first scattered over the infant soil, had felt the axe, but had grown up and flourished through its long generation, had fallen beneath the weight of years, been buried in green moss, and nourished the roots of others as gigantick. Hark! A light paddle dips into the lake, a birch canoe glides round the point, and an Indian chief has passed, painted and feather-crested, armed with a bow of hickory, a stone tomahawk, and flint-headed arrows. But the ripple had hardly vanished from the water, when a white flag caught the breeze, over a castle in the wilderness with frowning ramparts and a hundred cannon. There stood a French chevalier, com mandant of the fortress, paying court to a copper coloured lady, the princess of the land, and winning her wild love by the arts which had been successful with Parisian dames. A war-party of French and Indians were issuing from the gate to lay waste some village of New England. Near the fortress there was a group of dancers. The merry soldiers footing it with the swart savage maids; deeper in the wood, some red men were growing frantick around a cog of the fire-water; and elsewhere a Jesuit preached the faith of high cathedrals beneath a canopy of forest boughs, and distributed crucifixes to be worn beside English scalps.

I tried to make a series of pictures from the old French war, when fleets were on the lake and armies in the woods, and especially of Abercrombie's disasterous repulse, where thousands of lives were utterly thrown away; but being at a loss how to order the battle, I chose an evening scene in the barracks after the fortress had surrendered to Sir Jeffrey Amherst. What an immense fire blazes on that hearth, gleaming on swords, bayonets, and musket-barrels, and blending with the hue of the scarlet coats till the whole barrack-room is quivering with ruddy light! One soldier has thrown himself down to rest, after a deer-hunt, or perhaps a long run through the woods, with Indians on his trail. Two stand up to wrestle, and are on the point of coming to blows. A fifer plays shrill accompaniment to a drummer's song; a strain of light love and bloody war, with a chorus thundered forth by twenty voices. Meantime, a veteran in the corner is prosing about Dettingen and Fontenoye, and relates camp-traditions of Marlborough's battles; till his pipe, having been rigorously charged with gunpowder, makes a terrible explosion under his nose. And now they all vanish in a puff of smoke from the chimney.

I merely glanced at the ensuing twenty years, which had glided peacefully over the frontier fortress, till Ethan Allen's shout was heard, summoning it to surrender "In the name of the great Jehovah and of the continental Congress." Strange allies! thought the British captain. Next came the hurried muster of the soldiers of liberty, when the cannon of Burgoyne, putting down upon their stronghold from the brow of mount Defiance, announced a new conquerer of Ticonderoga. No virgin fortress, this! Forth rushed the motly throng from the barracks, one man wearing the blue and buff of the Union, another the red coat of Britain, a third, a dragoon's jacket, and a fourth, a cotton frock; here was a pair of leather breeches, and striped trousers there; a

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