Perhaps we ought not to mention an idea we sometimes entertain—that our readers may imagine we are partial to Mr. Haydon, and that we pay an undue share of attention to his works. The truth, however, is that his pictures always work upon us with greater intensity than those of any other living artist. Further, we know Mr. Haydon but by his works. We are acquainted with the original of Pharaoh, in his great picture of the Plague, but this association has nothing to do with our admiration of Mr. Haydon’s genius. One of the specimens—Eucles—will not soon be absent from our mind’s eye; and for days after we first saw it, the sorrowful mother, and the ghastly, falling figure of the warrior, haunted our imagination at every turn.

THE SELECTOR; AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS

THE ARCHITECTURE OF BIRDS

This is another volume of the delightful Zoological series of the Library of Entertaining Knowledge. We have already a volume and a half of Quadrupeds from the Menageries, a volume of the Transformations of Insects, and another of their Architectural Labours. The present, in well-chosen continuity of a novel plan of illustrating the Animal economy, is devoted to “an examination of Birds in the exercise of their mechanical arts of constructing Nests.” “This work,” observes the ingenious Editor, “is the business of their lives—the duty which calls forth that wonderful ingenuity, which no experience can teach, and which no human skill can rival.” The few introductory pages include a rapid sketch of the methods of classifying Birds adopted by some of the most distinguished naturalists, in which their characteristics are stripped of the jargon of technicality and hard words: thus, “Diurnal” birds are explained as “preying in the day-time;” “Piscivorous, feeding upon fish;” “Passeres, or Sparrows;” “Columbæ, or Pigeons,” &c. An outline of Mr. Vigors’s Quinary System, is also given, and the reader referred to proper sources for illustrations. The Editor then, leaving the beaten path of his predecessors, rambles through “fields and forests, unfettered by system, but alive to whatever he meets with likely to interest for its curiosity or its novelty.” The birds are classed according to their peculiar labours: thus, there are Mining Birds, Ground Builders, Mason and Carpenter Birds, Platform Builders, Basket-making Birds, Weaver Birds, Tailor Birds, Felt-making Birds, Cementers, Dome-builders, and Parasite Birds. Each division is so abundantly attractive to the observer of Nature in field or folio, that we scarcely know how to decide on an extract; and the reader will readily admit this dilemma, if he but recollects the early enthusiasm, wonder, and delight, with which he must have regarded a Bird’s Nest, unless he has been pent up all his life in the brick and mortar and chimney groves of a metropolis. Even then, the ingenuity of rooks may have occurred to him as not a whit less wonderful than the proud glories of art with which he has been environed. It is, however, time to determine, and we, accordingly, choose the following:—

The Osprey.

It would appear that the Americans are very fond of these birds, from some prevalent superstition connected with them. “It has been considered,” says Dr. S. Mitchill, of New York, “a fortunate incident to have a nest and a pair of these birds on one’s farm. They have, therefore, been generally respected, and neither the axe nor the gun has been lifted against them. Their nest continues from year to year. The same couple, or another, as the case may be, occupies it season after season. Repairs are duly made; or, when demolished by storms, it is industriously rebuilt. There was one of these nests, formerly, upon the leafless summit of a venerable chestnut-tree, on our farm, directly in front of the house, at the distance of less than half a mile. The withered trunk and boughs, surmounted by the coarse-wrought and capacious nest, was a more picturesque object than an obelisk; and the flights of the hawks, as they went forth to hunt, returned with their game, exercised themselves in wheeling round and round, and circling about it, were amusing to the beholder, almost from morning till night. The family of these hawks, old and young, was killed by the Hessian jagers. A succeeding pair took possession of the nest; but, in the course of time, the prongs of the trunk so rotted away that the nest could no longer be supported. The hawks have been obliged to seek new quarters. We have lost this part of our prospect, and our trees have not afforded a convenient site for one of their habitations since.4”

Herons and Heronries.

The several species of herons may not improperly be ranked among the platform builders; for though they construct a shallow depression in the centre of the nest, which is by all the species, if we mistake not, lined with some sort of soft material, such as dry grass, rushes, feathers, or wool, the body of the nest is quite flat, and formed much in the manner of an eagle’s eyry, of sticks crossing one another, and supported upon the branches or between the forks of high trees. All the species also are social, nestling in large communities, after the manner of rooks; though instances are not uncommon of individual pairs breeding solitary. Belon tells us, that “the heron is royal meat, on which the French nobility set great value;” and he mentions it as one of the extraordinary feats performed by the “divine king,” Francis I., that he formed two artificial heronries at Fontainbleau;—“the very elements themselves,” he adds, “obeying the commands of this divine king (whom God absolve!) ; for, to force nature, is a work partaking of divinity! 5” In order to enhance the merit of these French heronries, he undertakes to assert that they were unknown to the ancients, because they are not mentioned in any of their writings; and for the same reason, he concludes that there are none in Britain. Before Belon’s time, on the contrary, and before the “divine” constructor of heronries in France was born, there were express laws enacted in England for the protection of herons, it being a fine of ten shillings to take the young out of the nests,6 and six shillings and eightpence for a person, without his own grounds, killing a heron, except by hawking or by the long-bow;7 while, in subsequent enactments, the latter penalty was increased to twenty shillings, or three months’ imprisonment.8 At present, however, in consequence of the discontinuance of hawking, little attention is paid to the protection of heronries. Not to know a hawk from a heronshaw (the former name for a heron) was an old adage, which arose when the diversion of heron-hawking was in high fashion. It has since been corrupted into the absurd vulgar proverb, “not to know a hawk from a handsaw!” 9 The flesh of the heron is now looked upon as of little value, and rarely if ever brought to market, though formerly a heron was estimated at thrice the value of a goose, and six times the price of a partridge.10

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The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 17, No. 486, April 23, 1831

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THE SELECTOR; AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS

THE ARCHITECTURE OF BIRDS

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