flock contains as many foreigners as natives: no prejudice prevents them from taking their meals together, without rivalry or dispute. The mountain finch has a beautiful plumage; the mottling of bright bay and black is singularly elegant.

An accurate and highly finished coloured print of this little visiter (often overlooked, though not uncommon) will be found in Donovan's British Birds.

CHAP. II.

SUMMER VISITERS.

They

LET us turn to our summer visiters. come to us in the spring, as the weather becomes warmer, the earth clothed with vegetation, and the air and surface of the ground begin to teem with insect life: when the chrysalis bursts its case, the worm, and slug, and caterpillar, "and every creeping thing after his kind," come forth; then appear, led by an unseen hand, myriads of soft-billed warblers from distant lands, formed to thin the insect race, and whose services warmly deserve our gratitude and protection.*

From March till May ten thousand busy pinions ply the air, by day and night, and bring these melodious visiters from all the southern countries, where the parching heat at this season renders their food difficult to procure. As they arrive, they disperse throughout the country,

"They to their grassy couch, these to their nests." Each grove and shrubbery, each "bosky dell

* Vide Mrs. Hemans's beautiful lines, beginning, "Birds, joyous birds of the wandering wing, Whence is it ye come with the flowers of spring?"

from side to side," each heath and upland common, each hedge and garden, and petty rural homestead, receives some of these wandering minstrels.* It is probable they return, if undisturbed, year after year to the same haunts; and perhaps revisit with as much pleasure as ourselves the well-known scenes of their youth

"When nature pleased, for life itself was new,

And the heart pictured what the fancy drew."

We may smile at the idea of fancy or feeling in a bird; yet those who have closely watched these beautiful beings, will readily believe as much difference in their dispositions as Cowper found in the temper of his hares. The "mellow lark who at Heaven's gate sings" must be endowed with instincts superior to those of the 66 poor beetle that we tread upon." Memory birds possess in a considerable degree.+ Swal

“It has always appeared to me," says an eminent writer and accurate observer," that the two great sources of change of place of animals was the providing of food for themselves, and resting-places and food for their young. Swallows and bee-eaters decidedly pursue flies over half a continent. And a journey from England to Africa is no more for an animal that can fly with the wind one hundred miles an hour, than a journey for a Londoner to his seat in some distant province." Salmonia.

M. Buffon mentions a bullfinch which had had its cage upset by a rabble of low people, and used to fall into fits when ill-dressed persons approached it.

lows will choose out the same nook for their nest year after year. That elegant little bird, the common fly-catcher, is attached to the same spot. A pair built for three summers successively in the same place, close to the writer's study window; and their chase for gnats and other insects was under his view, as he sat reading and for a considerable period the parent birds, "from early dawn till latest eve,” might be observed catching assiduously our English muskitoes.

It is not likely, in the vast solitudes and extensive forests of Africa (whither many, probably, retire in winter), that our summer visiters are much pursued or frightened by men. This habit which they possess, of returning to the same haunts year after year, might therefore be turned to account by partially taming them; at least their fear of the human shape might be greatly lessened if the annual guest of the same shrubbery was undisturbed and protected his progeny (in due succession likewise our guests) would lose their dread of man. Birds in confinement evidently know the figure and voice of those who are kind to them*; and wild birds know their enemies, if not their friends, and

* An interesting account of several summer visitants in Sweet's" British Warblers," where accurate directions for preserving them in health through the winter are given.

will gradually become comparatively familiar with those who do not hurt them.

Would it be an unbecoming or ungrateful task for the gentler sex to extend their kind offices even to these innocent and delicate beings, and to prevent, as far as their influence extends, the nests of the summer birds from being taken ? These aërial travellers do no hurt to any one, they do much good to many; they amply pay our slight protection by their melody; and if we rob their nests, we can seldom feed or rear their young.

We venture, moreover, to recommend to our female friends the observation (we had almost said the acquaintance) of those whom their goodness has preserved: lessons of maternal love may be learned even from the birds. If industry is admirable in the bee, so is it in the little wren*; and we persuade ourselves, when their protectress walks forth in the fresh morning, and is saluted by a hundred tuneful voices of joy and gladness, that melody will be still sweeter as it springs from happiness to which she has contributed.

* "A golden-crested wren," says Mr. Montagu, "fed her young thirty-six times an hour; and this continued for sixteen hours a day. I could always perceive by the animation of the young brood when the old one was coming-probably some low note indicated her near approach; and in an instant every mouth was open."