It appears to have been decided that one of the royal princesses of England can be allowed to marry, without being obliged to find some royal prince for that purpose. Perhaps this course has been discovered to be possible from the fact that the stock of royal princes is getting short in Europe. Prussia has gobbled up any number of German ones, and bids fair to do so with the rest. But we prefer to think that this innovation is really due to the women's rights movement. Their platform is broad enough for the entire sex to stand on, and why should a princess, from the unfortunate accident of her birth, be debarred her natural right to fall in love with the man of her choice, and to marry the man she loves. At any rate we commend this change of policy to the leaders of the women's rights party, as a proof of the success their movement has gained, and advise them to send a series of congratulatory resolutions to the princess in question, upon her gaining her unquestioned right to consult her heart rather than a Lord Chancellor in the bestowal of her hand.

An Anecdote from Salt Lake

A GYPSY came to BRIGHAM YOUNG with a pony for sale.

"Why, the beast is half-starved," said BRIGHAM, running his hand over the pony's side. "You can count his ribs."

"That's more'n a chap could do with yours," retorted the gypsy.

BRIGHAM YOUNG did not buy that pony.

NATURAL HISTORY IN OUR PARKS

No greater tribute has yet been paid to the already improved condition of our city parks under the new régime, than the arrival in them of strange birds by which they had not hitherto been patronized. Within a few days past several owls have been captured in the solemn pines with which these delightful retreats have lately been made green, if not shady. The owl, as is well known, was regarded by the ancients as the Bird of Wisdom. He fully sustained his right to the title by letting severely alone the city parks while they were still dreary and disgusting wastes. The only night-birds by which these were, then occupied were of the featherless (and apparently motherless) kind, and were well known to the police. They were quite as watchful, it is true, as the genuine feathered owl that has just commenced to give its very extraordinary countenance to the parks, but then it was with other people's watches, not their own. It is with much concern that we hear reports of the slaughter of some of these solemn but beautiful owls that have come to ventilate their wisdom among us. The reports in question were very definite and unmistakable, most of them proceeding from revolvers handled by members of the Municipal Police Force, while others emanated from the barrels of shot-guns wielded by beery Teutons, who rushed frantically out from their sawdust lairs when they were told that the game was up—that is, that an owl was up a tree. This was scurvy treatment for the visitors. To "put a head on" an owl, which is already provided with one so large and so comical, appears to be a work both superfluous and inhuman. The only apology for it in this instance is, that these night-birds of prey were supposed by the police to have been attracted to the parks by the prospect of succulent suppers on the very well-fed sparrows by which these resorts are now thickly tenanted. The owls hooted at this notion; but their hooting was only answered by shooting, and the poor foolish Birds of Wisdom have been stuffed with tow instead of sparrows, and set up to form the nucleus of an ornithological Rogues' Gallery in the City Hall.

On visiting the Battery a few days ago, one of the park-keepers (himself looking in his bright new uniform somewhat like a blue-jay) expressed his conviction that, next spring, that time-honored pleasure-garden of the old Knickerbockers will be a paradise for song-birds such as it has not been since the original Swedish Nightingale warbled her "woodnotes wild" there a score of years ago, more or less. The sea-gulls, he thought (will Judge HILTON have the goodness to provide these park officers with manuals of ornithology?), would build their nests in the pine-trees with which the wide esplanade that stretches away to the water's edge will soon be bristling. Honest, but mistaken young man! As well might he have said that the sea-wall [a very substantial one, by the way] would build its nest in the melancholy pines. But it is reasonable to hope that pine grossbeaks will find their way thither, and that the German flutes of various finches will provide for the coming Bavarians and Hessians (should any be left after the siege of Paris and the sorties of the truculent TROCHU) a welcome such as has not heretofore been accorded to the strangers who at Castle Garden first set foot upon our shore.

The Bowling Green—late a nuisance and a pandemonium, now an oasis of verdure—has not as yet reported its owl, but the public eye is upon it, and the nocturnal marauder may yet be detected in the forks of the great willow-trees, which still retain their verdure. The sparrows are almost disproportionately numerous in this small park, but this may be accounted for. It has lately been laid down with new grass, the green, tender blades of which, just now beginning to crop out, are probably mistaken by the birds for "sparrow-grass" munificently provided for them by the Commissioners.

In all of these city parks the contrast between past and present is very striking and agreeable. But a few short months ago they were the domiciles and dormitories of outcast roughs and vagrants of the worst description, whose "'owls," as a Cockney explorer observed, "made night 'ideous." The only muss now common to them is the mus tribe, comprising the mus ratus, or ordinary rat (so called from its haunting ordinaries, we suppose), and the timid mouse, with which the Bird of Wisdom is contented to put up when the sparrows decline to come to his claw.

Central Park offers numerous attractions now to all who love to keep up their animal spirits by studying animal life. There is a fat little Asiatic pig there, who is the very picture of content. A red pig he is, and exceedingly well behaved. The best red pig, in fact, that we remember ever to have seen, beating the learned pig by several trumps and an ace. When we last saw him he was very busy with his pen, and our surmise was that his mind was fully occupied with arrangements for editing the works of BACON, or, possibly, those of HOGG.

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Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870

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Odious Comparison

ROYAL DEMOCRACY

An Anecdote from Salt Lake

NATURAL HISTORY IN OUR PARKS

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