assiduous frequenter of the habitations of man, I cannot have a doubt but that it was the same bird which King David saw on the house-top before him, and to which he listened as it poured forth its sweet and plaintive song. Moved by its melody, and comparing its lonely habits with his own, he exclaimed in the fulness of an afflicted heart, "Vigilavi, et factus sum sicut passer solitarius in tecto." "I have watched, and am become as a thrush, all alone upon the house-top."

ON DESTROYING VERMIN IN SMALL GARDENS, AND ON RELATIVE MATTERS.

In reply to a letter from Mr. Loudon.

You say, "you will send to a gardener in the country for a weasel." You must send for two, male and female. A bachelor weasel, or a spinster weasel, would not tarry four and twenty hours in your garden. Either of them

would go a sweethearting, and would not

return.

You remark that your "hedgehogs soondisappeared." No doubt: unless confined by a wall, they would wander far away, and try to get back to their old haunts. You request me "to suggest some place of shelter for them, to which they might have recourse when attacked by the cats?" I cannot believe that hedgehogs are ever attacked by cats. A garden, well fenced by a wall high enough to keep dogs out, is a capital place for hedgehogs. But there ought always to be two, man and wife.

Your "frogs and toads disappeared in a very short time, notwithstanding a small cistern of water which was open to them." They would have preferred a pond or ditch. No doubt they left you in search of more agreeable situations.

"Were it not for the cats we should have

plenty of birds." Granted. Cats amongst birds are like the devil amongst us; they go up and down seeking whom they may devour. You must absolutely chase them away for good and all, otherwise there will be

no peace for your birds. A small quantity of arsenic, about as much as the point of your penknife will contain, rubbed into a bit of meat either cooked or raw, will do their

business effectually.

"I have often thought of suggesting to the Board of Woods and Forests the idea of feeding the birds, or rather of putting down the different kinds of food proper for the different kinds of singing-birds, in Kensington Gardens." This would not be necessary. All our soft-billed summer birds of passage, and those soft-billed birds that remain with us the year throughout, live on insects; and insects abound during the period when these birds are in song. But if you could prevail upon the Board to prevent idle boys from chasing them, and gunners from killing them, and bird-merchants from catching them, all would be right; and almost every bush and tree would have its chorister.

66 If you could give any hints as to the next best quadruped to the weasel for keeping in gardens, or, in fact, anything relative to keeping down insects, it would be of very great use."-I know of no other quadruped. The

barn owl is a great consumer of slugs; and the lapwing will clear a garden of worms. Our singing-birds are the best for destroying softwinged insects. The windhover hawk is excellent for killing beetles, and also for consuming slugs and snails: cats dare not attack him, wherefore he is very fit for a garden, and is very easy to be obtained, I could send you a dozen any season.

on paper

Were I now a writer in the Magazine of Natural History, I would not agree with a Master Charles Coward in his "The carnivorous Propensities of the Squirrel." (See the Magazine for 1839, p. 311.) And so this keen observer has found out at last, that squirrels in confinement are occasionally carnivorous animals. Indeed! And so are my

hens in confinement: they will kill and swallow a mouse in the twinkling of an eye, and a tame parrot will perform the same feat. All our granivorous birds in confinement will eat raw and cooked meat. My black cat "Tom," which is fed and pampered by my sisters, will often turn up his nose at a piece of good roasted mutton, and immediately after will eat greedily of dry bread. What would you

think of me were I to write for you a paper in which I would state that the cat is occasionally an animal that is very fond of bread? You cannot judge of the real habits of an animal when it is in captivity. The want of exercise, the change of economy, the change of food, and the change of habit altogether, tend wofully to change the very nature of the stomach, and cause it to accommodate itself to aliment which it would never touch in a wild state. We see people out of health eating chalk; and we see others again, who spend their lives in sedentary employments, loathing food which is very palatable to him who passes the day in the open air. Thus, the ploughman will bolt fat bacon by the cubic inch, whilst the tender young milliner will turn sick at the very taste of it. I myself cannot bear melted butter; but I can and do often thrive, by preference, on a hard crust of bread. Still this would not be the case with one of your London aldermen, who would turn up his nose at the gifts of Ceres, unless those of Nimrod and Bacchus appeared on the same festive board.

The squirrel, in the state of liberty, lives on