passage of the bird would be more than usually difficult-the snow frequently blinding it. As, however, no stipulation was made for fine weather, the parties took up their appointed station, accompanied by several of their friends, and in exactly nineteen minutes after, the pigeon alighted on the roof of the house.

But the pigeons, of which this was one, were not always remarkable for accuracy, for sometimes they remained away so long on their aerial excursions, that their owner gave them up in despair. On one occasion they were absent upwards of four hours. While, however, he was concluding they were gone for ever, his attention was attracted by the apparently unaccountable behaviour of three that had been left behind, and who, with their heads elevated in the air, were all gazing with great earnestness at one point of the horizon. After straining his eyes for a long time without avail, he thought he discerned a small black speck at a great height above him. Nor was he mistaken, for, by and by, it proved to be the lost flight of pigeons returning home, probably after an excursion of several hundred miles.

Out of one hundred and ten pigeons brought from Brussels to London, in the summer of 1830, and let fly from London July 19, at a quarter before nine A. M.,

one reached Antwerp, one hundred and eighty-six miles distance, at eighteen minutes past two, or in five hours and a half, being at the rate of nearly thirty-four miles an hour. Five more reached it within eight minutes after. Thirteen others took two hours and a half more for the journey, or eight hours in the whole.

THE PARTRIDGE.

THIS bird seems to be well-known all over the world.

It is found in every country - in the torrid tracts beneath the equator, as well as in the frozen regions about the pole: not that in the same state it is prepared for circumstances so different; but He who formed it, and intended that it should be widely diffused, adapted it to its appointed condition. Thus, when dwelling in Greenland, the partridge, as soon as winter sets in, has a covering suited to its rigour: a warm down clothes it beneath, and its outward plumage is white, like the snow in which it seeks its food.

It has often been remarked, that the culture of waste lands renders scarce and drives off the birds which were once numerous there; but it is not so with the partridge. Wherever the husbandman prospers most, and the fields are most productive, these birds are dressed in the finest plumage, and appear in the greatest abundance. So considerable, however, is the difference between the dwellers in the richly-clothed corn-fields and those in

the moors, that it has led to the latter being called, to mark the variety, moor-partridges.

Partridges are very prolific; the eggs being never fewer than twelve, and often as many as twenty. A hole scratched in the dry mould, commonly sheltered by a bush or tuft of grass, serves for a nest. The male takes no part in the toil of incubation; but he is attentive to his mate, and joins with her in defending the brood. Of this the following is an instance. The attention of a person was arrested by some objects on the ground, which, on approaching, he found to be a male and a female partridge, engaged in a battle with a carrion-crow. So absorbed were they in the issue of the contest, and moreover so successful, that they actually held the crow till he was seized and taken from them

by the spectator. On search being made, the young birds, very lately hatched, were found concealed among the grass. It appeared that the crow, a mortal enemy to all kinds of young game, in attempting to carry off one of these, had been attacked, and that successfully, by the parent-birds.

The devices of the partridge to save its brood have often been noticed. White, of Selborne, says: "A hen partridge came out of a ditch, and ran along shivering with her wings, and crying out as if wounded, and

unable to get from us. While the dam acted this distress, the boy who attended me saw her brood, that were small and unable to fly, run for shelter into an old foxearth under the bank. So wonderful a power is instinct."

Another instance is more remarkable. A gentleman was hunting with a young pointer, when the dog ran on a brood of very small partridges: the old bird cried, fluttered, and ran tumbling along just before the dog's nose, till she had drawn him to a considerable distance, when she took wing and flew still farther off, but not out of the field. On this the dog returned to his master, near which place the young ones lay concealed in the grass, which the old bird no sooner perceived than she flew back again, settled once more just before the dog's nose, and, by rolling and tumbling about, drew off his attention from her young, and thus, for the second time, preserved her brood.

Captain Head describes an adventure of his with an American partridge. The snow in the woods was crisp from the night's frost, and the sun was just rising in a clear sky, when the marks of game attracted his notice, and his spaniel at the same time showed the most eager curiosity in the pursuit, quartering the ground from right to left. After walking about half an hour, the dog suddenly went in search, and on going up to him, the