passes the place of its confinement; and there is reason for believing that the stories told of the other vultures, in their free and natural state, standing respectfully aloof till their king has finished his repast, are not groundless, the respect being probably due to the superior courage of the monarch.

Of the condors, two males and one female are now alive in the garden of the society; but no egg has been laid since that whose history we have attempted to give was deposited.

In the same garden the king vulture-this looks very like poor dear Theodore Hook's story of the cock maccaws laying eggs has laid, but it never sat. The Chinese vulture has done the same, but never attempted incubation. The wedgetailed eagle of New Holland, and the lämmergeyer sighing for her mate and her mountains, have dropped eggs, but never attempted incubation. The eagle owl entered upon the business of the continuation of the species with greater energy and gravity. She laid and sat, but sat in vain: not an owlet rewarded her anxiety.

The white-headed eagles seemed very much in earnest. Of them the reader may know more hereafter, if he should choose to kill time by taking up a continuation of these

notes.

This, we are told, is a world of compensation, though the compensation is too often terribly on one side, as in the often-repeated case of Englishmen being called upon to pay for 'the vested interests' of a nuisance that would not be tolerated for three months in any city of civilized Europe except London-Smithfield Market, for instance. But still this best of all possible worlds is a world of compensation. In obedience to this law, Mr. Yarrell, in his excellent History of British Birds, has recorded a most interesting account of a buzzard † hatching chickens, in order, no doubt, to balance the fact of a hen hatching

a condor.

A solitary male buzzard in our time made desperate love to the shoe of the gardener of the Physic Garden at Oxford, with the gardener's foot in the said shoe; but Mr. Yar

*Strix Bubo.

rell's story relates to the gentler sex, and he prefaces it with an observation as to the extreme partiality of the common buzzard for the seasonal task of incubation and rearing young birds.

The bird mentioned by Mr. Yarrell was kept in the garden of the Chequers, in the good town of Ux-bridge, of ineffectual Treaty memory. The poor bird-she was well known to many a brother of the angle, 'now,' as old Izaak hath it, with God' manifested her inclination to frame a nest by gathering and twisting about all the loose sticks she could lay beak and claw on. The good master of the house had compassion on her, furnished her with twigs and all appliances and means to boot, and the solitary creature went to work and completed a nest. Two hens' eggs were put under her; she hatched them well and reared them bravely. Her desire to sit was indicated by scratching holes in the garden, and breaking and tearing everything within reach of beak and talons. Year after year did she hatch and bring up a goodly troop of chickens, and in 1831 her brood consisted of nine, after the loss of one, for she had brought out ten. Upon one occasion her kind master, to save her from what he thought the ennui of sitting, put down to her a newly-hatched lotluckless little ones, she destroyed every chick of them. The good man did not know the animal economy which makes the application of the eggs to the inflamed breast of the female bird a balm, rendering this labour of love twice blessed, and leading in its train all the maternal charities. The ready-made nestlings were treated as intruding impostors; but to her own fosterchicks no honest barn-door chuckie was ever more attentive: only when flesh was given to her and she broke it up for her young family, she appeared mortified that, after taking a few morsels, they left her and her carrion to pick up the grain with which they were supplied.

Have we not something to answer for in confining God's creatures in solitude where they cannot fulfil the divine command ?

† Buteo vulgaris.

THERE were we at the end of our

last Number? Preparing to start for the coast to the westward of Clovelly. Exactly; so here recommences my story. Claude and I went forth along the cliffs of a park, which though not of the largest, is certainly of the loveliest, in England,-perhaps unique, from that abrupt contact of the richest inland scenery with the open sea, which is its distinctive feature. As we wandered along the edge of the cliff, beneath us on our left lay wooded valleys, lawns spotted with deer, huge timber trees, oak and beech, birch and alder, growing as full and round-headed as if they had been buried in some Shropshire valley fifty miles inland, instead of having the Atlantic breezes all the winter long sweeping past a few hundred feet above their still seclusion. Glens of forest wound away into the high inner land, with silver burns sparkling here and there under their deep shadows; while from the lawns beneath the ground sloped rapidly upwards towards us, to stop short in a sheer wall of cliff, over which the deer were leaning to crop the shoots of ivy, where the slipping of a stone would have sent them 400 feet perpendicular into the sea. On our right, from our very feet, the sea spread out to the horizon; a single falcon was wheeling about the ledges below; a single cormorant was fishing in the breakers, diving and rising again like some tiny water-beetle;

The murmuring surge That on the unnumbered pebbles idly chafed

Could not be heard so high.

The only sound besides the rustle of the fern before the startled deer was the soft mysterious treble of the wind as it swept over the face of the cliff beneath us; but the cool air was confined to the hill-tops round; beneath, from within a short distance of the shore, the sea was shrouded in soft summer haze. The far Atlantic lay like an ocean of white wool, out of which the Hartland Cliffs and the highest point of Lundy just shewed their black peaks. Here and there the western sun caught one white bank of mist after anVOL. XLI. NO. CCXLII.

other, and tinged them with glowing gold; while nearer us long silvery zig-zag tide-lines, which I could have fancied the tracks of water- fairies, wandered away under the smoky grey-brown shadows of the fog, and seemed to vanish hundreds of miles off into an infinite void of space, so completely was all notion of size or distance destroyed by the soft gradations of the mist. Suddenly, as we stood watching, a breeze from the eastward dived into the basin of the bay, swept the clouds out, packed them together, rolled them over each other, and hurled them into the air miles high in one vast Cordillera of snow mountains, sailing slowly out into the Atlantic; and instead of the chaos of mist, the whole amphitheatre of cliffs, with their gay green woods, and spots of bright red marl and cold black iron-stone, and the gleaming white sands of Braunton, and the hills of Exmoor bathed in sunshineso near and clear we almost fancied we could see the pink heather-hue upon them; and the bay one vast rainbow, ten miles of flame-colour and purple, emerald and ultra-marine, flecked with a thousand spots of flying snow. You may believe or not, readers of Fraser, but we saw it then, not for the first time, or the last, please God. No one knows what gigantic effects of colour even our temperate zone can shew till they have been in Devonshire and Cornwall; and last, but not least, Ireland

the Emerald Isle, in truth. No stay-at-home knows the colour of the sea till he has seen the West of England; and no one, either stay-athome or traveller, I suspect, knows what the colour of a green field can be till he has seen it among the magic smiles and tears of an Irish summer shower in county Down.

Down we wandered from our height through trim walks and alleys green,' where the arbutus and gum-cistus fringed the cliffs, and through the deep glades of the park, towards the delicious little cove which bounds it.. -A deep crack in the wooded hills, an old mill half-buried in rocks and flowers, a stream tinkling on from one rock-basin to another

N

towards the beach, a sandy lawn gay with sea-side flowers, over which wild boys and bare-footed girls were trotting their poneys with panniers full of sand, and as they rattled back to the beach for a fresh load, standing upright on the backs of their steeds, with one foot in each pannier, at full trot over rocks and stones where a landsman would find it difficult to walk on his own legs.

Enraptured with the place and people, Claude pulled out his sketchbook and sat down.

'What extraordinary rocks!' said he, at length. How different from those Cyclopean blocks and walls along the Exmoor cliffs are these rich brown purple and olive iron-stone layers, with their sharp serrated lines and polished slabs, set up on edge, snapped, bent double, twisted into serpentine curves, every sheet of cliff scored with sharp parallel lines at some fresh fantastic angle!'

'Yes, Claude, there must have been strange work here when all these strata were being pressed and squeezed together like a ream of wet paper between the rival granite pincers of Dartmoor and Lundy. They must have suffered enough then in a few hours to give them a fair right to lie quiet till Doomsday, as they seem likely to do. But I can assure you that it is only old Mother Earth who has fallen asleep hereabouts. Air and sea are just as live as ever. Aye, lovely and calm enough spreads beneath us now the broad semicircle of the bay; but to know what it can be, you should have seen it as I have done, when, in the roaring December morning, I have been galloping along the cliffs, wreckhunting. One morning, I can remember now well, how we watched from the Hartland Cliffs a great barque, that came drifting and rolling in before the western gale, while we followed her up the coast, parsons and sportsmen, farmers and Preventive men, with the Manby's mortar lumbering behind us in a cart, through stone gaps and track-ways, from headland to headland.-The maddening excitement of expectation as she ran wildly towards the cliffs at our feet, and then sheered off again inexplicably her foremast and bowsprit, I recollect, were gone short off by the deck; a few wild rags of sail fluttered from her main and mizen.

-

But with all straining of eyes and glasses, we could discern no sign of man on board. Well I recollect the mingled disappointment and admiration of the Preventive men, as a fresh set of salvors appeared in view, in the form of a boat's crew of Clovelly fishermen; how we watched breathlessly the little black speck crawling and struggling up in the teeth of the gale, under the shelter of the land, till, when the ship had rounded a point into smooth water, she seized on her like some tiny spider on a huge unwieldy fly; and then how one still smaller black speck showed aloft on the main-yard, and another-and then the desperate efforts to get the topsail set and how we saw it tear out of their hands again, and again, and again, and almost fancied we could hear the thunder of its flappings above the roar of the gale, and the mountains of surf which made the rocks ring beneath our feet-and how we stood silent, shuddering, expecting every moment to see whirled into the sea from the plunging yards one of those same tiny black specks, in each one of which was a living human soul, with wild women praying for it at home! And then how they tried to get her head round to the wind, and disappeared instantly in a cloud of white spray-and let her head fall back again-and jammed it round again, and disappeared again -and at last let her drive helplessly up the bay, while we kept pace with her along the cliffs; and how at last, when she had been mastered and fairly taken in tow, and was within two miles of the pier, and all hearts were merry with the hopes of a prize which would make them rich, perhaps, for years to come-one-third, I suppose, of the whole value of her cargo how she broke loose from them at the last moment, and rushed frantically in upon those huge rocks below us, leaping great banks of slate at the blow of each breaker, tearing off masses of iron-stone which lie there to this day to tell the tale, till she drove up high and dry against the cliff, and lay, the huge brute, like an enormous stranded whale, grinding and crashing itself to pieces against the walls of its adamantine cage. And well I recollect the sad records of the log-book that was left on board the deserted ship; how she had been water-logged for weeks and weeks,

buoyed up by her timber cargo, the crew clinging in the tops, and crawling down, when they dared, for putrid biscuit-dust and drops of water, till the water was washed overboard and gone; and then notice after notice,

On this day such an one died,' ' On this day such an one was washed away.' The log kept up to the last, even when there was only that to tell, by the stern, business-like merchant skipper, whoever he was; and how at last, when there was neither food nor water, the strong man's heart seemed to have quailed, or, perhaps, risen, into a prayer, jotted down in the log, The Lord have mercy on us!'.

6

and then a blank of several pages, and, scribbled with a famine-shaken hand, Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth;'-and so the log and the ship were left to the rats, which covered the deck when our men boarded her. And well I remember the last act of that tragedy; for a ship has really, as sailors feel, a personality, almost a life and soul of her own; and as long as her timbers hold together, all is not over. You can hardly call her a corpse, though the human beings who inhabited her, and were her soul, may have fled into the far eternities; and so I felt that night, as I came down along the very woodland road on which we are now walking, with the north-west wind hurling dead branches and showers of crisp oakleaves about my head; and suddenly, as I staggered out of the wood here, I came upon such a piece of chiaroscuro as would have baffled Correggio, or Rembrandt himself. Under that very wall was a long tent of sails and spars, filled with Preventive men, fishermen, Lloyd's underwriters, lying about in every variety of strange attitude and costume; while candles, stuck in bayonethandles in the wall, poured out a wild glare over shaggy faces and glittering weapons, and piles of timber, and rusty iron cable that glowed red-hot in the light, and then streamed up the glen towards me through the salt misty air in long fans of light, sending fiery bars over the brown transparent oak foliage and the sad beds of withered autumn flowers, and glorifying the wild flakes of foam, as they rushed across the light-stream, into troops of tiny silver

angels, that vanished into the night and hid themselves among the woods from the fierce spirit of the storm. And then, just where the glare of the lights and watch-fires was most brilliant, there too the black shadows of the cliff had placed the point of intensest darkness, lightening gradually upwards right and left, between the two great jaws of the glen, into a chaos of grey mist, where the eye could discern no form of sea or cloud, but a perpetual shifting and quivering as if the whole atmosphere was writhing with agony in the clutches of the wind.

6

The ship was breaking up,' and they sat by her like hopeless physicians by a deathbed-side, to watch the last struggle,—and the effects of the deceased. I recollect our literally warping ourselves down to the beach, holding on by rocks and posts. There was a saddened, awe-struck silence, even upon the gentleman from Lloyd's with the pen behind his ear. A sudden turn of the clouds let in a wild gleam of moonshine upon the white leaping heads of the giant breakers, and on that tall pyramid of the Black-church Rock, which now stands in such calm grandeur gazing down on the smiling summer bay, with the white sand of Braunton and the red cliffs of Portledge shining through its two vast arches; and there, against that slab of rock on your right, still discoloured with her paint, lay the ship, rising slowly on every surge, to drop again with a piteous crash as the wave fell back from the cliff, and dragged the roaring pebbles back with it under the coming wall of foam. You have heard of ships at the last moment crying aloud like living things in agony? I heard it then, as the stumps of her masts rocked and reeled in her, and every plank and joint strained and screamed with the dreadful tension.

A horrible image, a woman shrieking on the rack, rose up before me at those strange semi-human cries, and would not be put away and I tried to turn, and yet my eyes were rivetted on the black mass, which seemed vainly to implore the help of man against the stern ministers of the Omnipotent.

Still she seemed to linger in the death-struggle, and I turned at last