their downy young are admirably given by Mr. Wolf in the 'zoological sketches,' sailing tranquilly under the green foliage which overhangs their water in the Regent's Park. The sense

of security, which water birds appear to make a sine quâ non before they betake themselves to family cares, came but slowly to the black-necked swans. It appears from the short note by Mr. Mitchell accompanying Mr. Wolf's drawing, that the old birds were brought to the gardens from Lord Derby's collection at Knowsley in 1851, but evinced no disposition to breed before 1856, and only bred their first young in 1857.

We happened to be whiling away an hour one autumn day in the park, meditating on the delight with which Bacon would have wandered in that 'tryal place of birds and beasts,' and had not long left these very swans; they were four in number then, when the distraught aspect of a keeper, looking anxiously towards the sky, attracted our attention. A black-necked swan was on the wing; making large hilarious circles in the air. She had just discovered she could fly; for four years and more she had been earthbound by cruel shears, and now she flew. Higher and higher she mounted as if she yearned for the Atlantic; the man was stricken with shame; it was his duty to have clipped her quills; he had imprudently left her when he cut the others, because they were not sufficiently advanced, and he was ordered not to make them bleed. The moment of suspense was overpowering, but the force of habit and domestic ties prevailed; the cygnus nigricollus thought better of it, and having by this time alarmed everybody, she wheeled down in a few gyrations, and to the joy of her beloved, and amidst the congratulations of her cousins, she descended once more into the bosom of her greenery. The keeper heaved a sigh of relief, and before we left the garden, had succeeded in capturing the runaway, and made future aërial exploits impossible for a twelvemonth. The flight is beautiful, and when near the earth, the sparkling black and white gives peculiar interest to the bird. Certainly the palm of beauty among swans goes to the black-necked.

Swans are subject to great irregularities of temper. Every one who has approached a patriarchal swan and his family in their downy state, knows with what a surge he rushes through the water, dashing it aside from his brawny breast, charges the shore, and comes headlong on with every feather quivering to show fight for mother and children. Nothing calms him so effectively as an open umbrella. He is puzzled at first, then gets a sense of his having made himself ridiculous and stands. still.

There is a legend in Ireland, that a pair of black Australian

6

swans were put by one of the Earls of Shannon on a piece of water previously occupied by a pair of the common white bird. They lived a wretched life, -the ladies disagreed, the males looked sulkily at one another, but somehow never came to actual blows, until one fine morning the lady Australian died suddenly. Whether her mate thought she had had foul play or not does not appear. Whether she had discovered his infidelity and died of grief, does not appear; but it is certain, that as soon as this sad event took place, the Australian black 'fellow' concentrated his pent-up rage, sailed straight to the haunt of his white enemy, and without a moment's parley, made a furious onslaught on him, in presence of the scared object of his affections. Knights in the tournament field never fought more bravely for the scarf of the Queen of Beauty, than the swarthy bird of the antipodes and the snow-white cygnus of Erin. Long and bloody was the fight, but fury, revenge, and mad desire gave supercygnian vigour to the bereft; and faintly, slowly, feebly struggling to the last, the vanquished fell gurgling, sinking, drowning into the depths of the blue lake, held down by the firm resistless grasp of the oppressor.

And then

upon the bosom of the water remained the two- the black victor, small, strong, shivering with the intensity of the struggle and the white widow. There was a pause. a pause not long but significant. In the next year there floated on that lake a brood of cygnets partly black and partly white, which must have much resembled the Chilian birds -and one of them, we think, is still to be seen in the gallery of the Royal Society at Dublin.

Between the swans and geese there is exactly this transition in the black and white swan-goose (anserinus melanoleuca) of Australia which is living in the Zoological Gardens. It is said that this curious bird, which bears confinement extremely well, has recently bred in Sydney, and we shall therefore be able to add it to the musk-duck in our poultry yard at no very distant period. A bean goose of the first year from the old fenny district of Lincolnshire, now rich in agricultural produce, is a bird worth record; and a tender brent is far from uneatable. All these grass-feeding brents must be good, and there is a fair array of them, about a dozen species at the least, from temperate regions, and therefore acclimatisable. The prettiest of them all is the red-breasted goose (B. ruficollis), which breeds in Northern Asia, and now and then wanders to England. The only living bird we ever saw, is in the Zoological Society's collection, and we believe they obtained it from HolIn the vivaria of the last century, in which the Dutch

land.

delighted, the red-breasted goose was more frequent, as it occurs in several of the Menageric Pictures painted from Prince Maurice's collection and others. Some years ago, eight of these birds were brought to a poulterer in Amsterdam, who knowing nothing about species and only looking at roasting qualities, immediately plucked them and sent them out as ordinary brents to his customers, having previously cheapened them of his chasseur, because they were not the real article. This bird is so rare in museums, that a good skin is worth at least ten pounds. The brents of South America are particularly attractive. The upland goose is as pretty a bird as can be seen: ganders effulgent in snowy whiteness, grey barred on the back; goose bright ruddy chesnut, beautifully crossed with black upon her back with golden legs, while he modestly walks on sable stilts. The ashy-headed goose,' figured erroneously in the zoological sketches as Bernicla Magellanica, is not less beautiful, but preserves the normal character of the genus in the similarity of male and female. The admirable drawing of Wolf is so truthful, that one cannot but desire to see the whole of the Society's catalogue illustrated by his hand. The black-necked swans, and the three noble falcons of Iceland, Greenland, and Cilicia, islandicus, græalandicus and sacer, are pictures which ought to be in the studio of every lover of the science. This artist has a singular perception of bird-life; not even Landseer approaches him in accurate delineation of habit and character. Want of execution alone prevents him from taking a place of the highest rank, and he is still young enough to attain it.

Wolf's earliest published work of importance issued from the house of Ainz, in Leyden. Holland has ever been among the foremost in cultivating natural science, and the noble collection at Leyden, and the monuments made by the Professors of the University, are ample proofs of it. The old love of animals which naturalized the Curassows, and which gathered together the Vivaria, to which we have passingly alluded, has reawakened latterly in the Society Natura Artis Magistra, at Amsterdam, who have the credit of possessing a collection which equals that at Antwerp, and is not very far inferior to our own in the Regent's Park. The glory of Amsterdam is the great salamander, Sieboldia maxima, which has lived there for many years, and luxuriating in an ample fish diet, has now attained extraordinary dimensions. This curious Batrachia was discovered in the lava pools of Niphon, and bears an extreme degree of cold with impunity: a startling contrast to the tradition of the fiery salamander girded round with a belt of flame. The inhabitants of London are still ignorant of the big-mouthed sala

mander of Niphon, who lives in water instead of fire, and devours a shoal of barbel per diem, instead of preying on his own extremities. Among the other rarities of this collection is an unique specimen of the Sumatran elephant, a young female, presented to the Society by one of their colleagues settled in the Archipelago. To the profane eye she differs but little, if at all, from the Indian species, and one has to go to the great storehouse of zoological lore at Leyden, to compare anatomical differences as did the Prince Charles Bonaparte, to comprehend the true essential characters on which their distinction depends.

What are genera? what are species? Mr. G. R. Gray has written a very dry book on the Genera of Birds. M. Wagler, long ago, wrote his Species Avium.' Prince Charles Bonaparte's last work of love was his Conspectus Avium.' And Mr. Darwin has just thrown the scientific world into unwonted excitement, by the boldness of his speculations on the origin of species and the struggle for life. It is possible that the theory of certain naturalists may be true, that if we saw the whole scheme of nature in a complete series, we should find such a gradual transition from form to form, that we should recognise at once the unity of plan, on which the great Architect of the universe has framed the mystery of LIFE. For ourselves, we are content humbly to note the curious facts, which constant study of the lower animals presents from day to day, in the faint hope that hereafter some master-mind may come, who will reduce the scattered labours of many into some harmonious, useful conclusion, and clearly resolve this question. We find that certain animals are capable of radical ameliorations of form, that colour can be modified as well as form, and that a creature can by judicious management be produced to pattern within the limits of his genus and species rightly defined. Hitherto this art has been confined to the domesticated animals; but we have already seen that domestication, after at least 6000 years, is in its infancy, and we do not know to what extent the principle demonstrated in the construction - we deliberately say construction of the Short Horn, the Southdown, the Berkshire hog, the greyhound, and the sea-bright bantams, may not be carried. It is certain, that between many forms apparently distinct there are connecting links which go far to break down the arbitrary divisions which systematic writers have sought to establish, and we shall shortly have occasion to revert more fully to this interesting part of the subject.

ART. VII.-Lord Brougham's Acts and Bills from 1811 to the present time, now first collected and arranged, with an Analytical Review, shewing their results upon the Amendment of the Law. By Sir JOHN EARDLEY-WILMOT, Bart. London:

1857.

UPON the 26th of October in the past year the citizens of Edinburgh received Lord Brougham at a public banquet in the Music-hall of this city, where every man most eminent at the present time on the Bench and at the Bar of Scotland-every man most distinguished in science, in literature, or by public services - had spontaneously assembled to pay a mark of respect to one whose long life and varied labours have embraced almost all the objects which other men have, in their several vocations, pursued, and whose glory it has been to surpass the efforts of most of his contemporaries. Two days later the Academic Body of the University of Edinburgh, convened for the first time to exercise its powers under the new statute, displayed its high sense of the importance of this trust, and its sound judgment of the real interests of the University, by conferring upon Lord Brougham, by a large majority, the office and dignity of Chancellor of this learned foundation. Fortunately for Edinburgh, a man was to be found for this post, high in rank and in fame-the rewards. of his own genius-who was born in St. Andrew's Square; who had sat on the benches of the High School; who had followed the courses of this very University; who had been admitted, some sixty years ago, an Advocate of the Bar of Scotland; who was one of the founders of the Edinburgh Review; who has been one of the leading contributors to this journal during no inconsiderable portion of its existence; and who still retains in an advanced age, the power and the will to promote those reforms in the higher studies of Scotland, which are of such vital importance to the people of this part of Great Britain. We cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of putting on record these remarkable occurrences, not only because they are true indications of the veneration and regard of the men of Edinburgh and the graduates of her University for Lord Brougham, but because they are a homage to the principles to which his life has been devoted. It was to uphold those principles that this journal was commenced by Henry Brougham and his contemporaries, now somewhat more than fifty-seven years ago; it has adhered to them with unabated fidelity; and though many of those who were once foremost in the struggle have done their work and are at rest, Lord Brougham