of her imagination. He was so untrained, so unmanageable, she knew that some accident would befall me. The very last day I saw her, I was a few minutes late in keeping my appointment, and found her in an agony of terror. She was convinced that I had been thrown from my horse, and that I was lying a mangled corpse by the roadside. The animal, in truth, was unusually skittish that day, and very nearly threw me in reality, though I am not a bad rider, as Minnie rose suddenly from the bank where she had been waiting for me. She made me promise, at parting, never to be late again. She never could again endure the misery of suspense she suffered during those few minutes of my delay; and I promised I never would again offend, and I pressed her in my arms, and I imprinted a last kiss on poor Minnie's lips. I never saw her again. Her presentiment proved true at last. My horse took fright as I was riding home that afternoon through the Edgeware Road. I was thrown on my head, and, as you know, very nearly killed. Brainfever ensued, and it was three before months I left my bed." "Now I understand it," said Seymour. "Minnie thought you were killed, and "And died. Yes. The first day I was allowed by the physician to go out, I drove to the old place of meeting. She was not there of course. I did not expect she would have been. But I spent the day in making inquiries in the neighbourhood. I described poor Minnie, told all I knew about her; but no one could give me information on the subject. No one knew of any old lady and her niece occupying any house in the vicinity. No one had ever heard of any one called Minnie. Some people remembered having observed a young lady walking in the lane I have spoken of, but they did not know who she was, or where she lived. I returned to town that day in a state of misery I cannot describe. "The next day I went again, and the next, and the next, but still with the same result as on the first day. For six months I pursued my researches, until the people in the neighbourhood began to look on me as an escaped lunatic. Everyone laughed at me the moment I appeared, and the boys would run after me and hoot me. I wandered like a ghost up and down the lane where my departed Minnie used to walk with me. But she never appeared again. Never again did I see her graceful form gliding towards me through the trees, or hear the sweet tones of her voice. Never again were those blue eyes lifted to my face with looks of earnest love. How could they? Those eyes were closed for ever, and closed on my account. Minnie had died for me, as she had said she would, and I was henceforth alone in the world, a blighted and miserable man." "Still," said Seymour, after a pause, "you never actually knew that she was dead. For aught you can tell she may be alive at this moment." "I did actually know it," answered Barton, in a voice which made Seymour start. His sentimental affectation of manner was suddenly gone, and he spoke in tones of real feeling. "I did know it, I do know it. The worst remains to be told." He rose and walked about the room in great agitation. Seymour looked after him with surprise. After walking rapidly backwards and forwards for several minutes, Barton resumed his seat. "Edward," said he, "as I have told you so much, I will force myself to tell you all. But it is a part of the story which I never, when I can help it, allow my own thoughts to dwell on. The recollection is too horrible. "Six months after my illness, I was wandering as usual in the lane. Suddenly I heard a man shouting from the end of a field at some little distance from where I was walking. My heart leaped into my mouth, for by some unaccountable instinct I connected the circumstance with Minnie. I leaped over the hedge and rushed across the field. In a moment I stood beside the man. He was looking intently into a pond a deep, dark, green pond-half covered with rotting weeds. There, floating on the surface, was a human body." - "Good God!" exclaimed Seymour, "it was Minnie." Barton covered his eyes, as if the body were still before them. "I shall never forget the fearful sight," said he at length, in a hollow voice. "The body was in an advanced state of decomposition; the face, the glorious face, half eaten by eels- Oh, good heavens! the recollection almost drives me mad." And he buried his head in his handkerchief, and Seymour heard his suppressed sobs. After some time Barton resumed "She had been evidently in the water for months, no one could tell how long. I had been in bed for three months, and it was almost another before I was allowed to leave the house. Nearly four months had thus intervened between the day I last saw her and the first time I visited the lane after my illness. At what particular period of those four months the fatal step was taken I cannot tell. It may have been the first day of my absence, it may have been the last. For aught I can tell, she lingered on for months in all the heart-sickness of hope deferred, listening day after day for the sound of my horse's hoofs, and returning heart-broken to her home. But nothing was known. There was an inquest of course. The verdict, was "found drowned." No one knew who she was; I did not know myself. She was Minnie," and she died for me. I knew no more. "So you see, my dear Edward, I have sad reason for my belief that a woman can die of love." [To be continued.] ASSOCIATIONS WITH ORNITHOLOGY.-No. III. THE true Egyptian IBIS was long supposed to be extinct; but Cuvier has identified it with the existing bird called in the East Abou Hanes. The ibis was greatly venerated in Egypt on account of its killing serpents, and when dead it was embalmed as a mummy, and honourably interred. To kill an ibis, even accidentally, was punished with death. When Cambyses, King of Persia, was besieging Damietta (anciently Thamiatis), in Lower Egypt, he placed several ibises in front of his army, and the Egyptians were, in consequence, afraid to use any of their weapons, lest they should slay the sacred birds; and thus they suffered the town, which was the key of Egypt, to be taken. The ibis, when viewed in a particular position, sitting with its breast advanced, and its head concealed under its wing, resembles the form of the heart, which the Egyptians considered to be the seat of all intellect; wherefore this bird was supposed to preside over all sacred and mystical learning, and was accordingly dedicated to Thoth, or Hermes Trismegistus, the Egyptian Mercury, who taught laws and letters to Egypt. It appears frequently on the Egyptian monuments; and the deities, Osiris (or the active and holy principle), Isis (Wisdom), his consort, Anubis their son, and Thoth are often represented with ibis heads. The Abou Hanes is considered to be the same as the ancient white ibis. The beautiful red curlew found at Demerara, South America, is called the scarlet ibis. The classic ancients made the Cock the companion of many of their deities. It was dedicated to Apollo, the sun-god, because its comb was thought to resemble rays, and because it announced the approach of day. Homer calls Apollo Alector, i.e., the cock. Alectryon, the youth who was charged by Mars to watch for the coming of Apollo, and apprise him, fell asleep on his post, and was turned by his incensed master into a cock, which has ever since taken care to redeem the error. This bird was also consecrated to Mars, and his warlike sister, Bellona, on account of its bravery, and on account of its proclaiming its triumph over its antagonist with a trumpet-like voice; for this latter reason Favine, the old French herald, says that the cock in blazonry takes precedence of the lion. It is often sculptured standing at the feet of ancient statues of Victory. It was associated with Esculapius, god of medicine, as the type of vigilance so necessary to a physician; and it was attributed to Mercury for the same quality, so much needed by that busy god in his many avocations. On Gnostic gems, especially those that were curative amulets, a human figure is often engraved, having the head of a cock and the legs of a serpent, the reptile denoting Prudence, and also Renovation, from the annual renewing of its skin. A cock, with an ear of wheat in his bill, was an emblem of Sylvanus, as Hercules Rusticus. The bird was sacrificed to Night, because its voice disturbed and drove away the sable goddess. Cock-fighting, that brutal and demoralizing practice, is of ancient date, even from the time of Themistocles.* Seeing two cocks fighting, he was so much struck with their pertinacity and courage, that in order to give an example of those qualities to his countrymen, he instituted an annual combat of cocks, the exhibition of which became a law at Athens, where coins were sometimes struck bearing a cock crowned with palm. We think that for this institution Themistocles deserved the exile to which, for other and less just causes, he was condemned by the jealous and fickle Athenians. Another people of Greece, the Elians, placed the pugnacious bird on the helmet of their Minerva. Aristophanes, in his play of "The Birds," calls the cock "the Persian bird," and says that he ruled Persia before any of its kings, and that "on this account, even now, like a great king he stalks about with a towering tiara on his head." Ancient soothsayers made use of a cock in a species of divination called alectryomancy. The letters of the alphabet were written separately on cards, which were spread on the floor of a room, and a grain of barley was laid on each card. A cock, previously prepared by magical incantations, was turned loose into the apartment, and those letters from which he picked the barley were combined to form names, or words, which were believed to be prophetic. The Emperor Valens having disgusted the Byzantines by his tyranny, some persons met together in private to discover by divination who should be his successor on the throne. They performed the ceremonies of alectryomancy under the direction of the Philosopher Iamblicus; and the cock designated the Greek letters . E. O. (th. e. o.) The secret, however, transpired, and Valens, transported with anger and alarm, put to death great numbers of innocent persons bearing the names of Theodore, Theodosius, Theophilus, &c., in the hope of destroying his predicted rival. Iamblicus, dreading to fall into his power, poisoned himself. Among the victims of the imperial vengeance was Theodore, an excellent general, to whom Valens had been indebted for the suppression of a formidable insurrection in the African provinces, and whose services were thus ill requited. By a singular coincidence Theodosius, afterwards surnamed the Great, the son of this slaughtered Theodore, was called to succeed Valens in the empire, when the latter was defeated and slain by the Goths near Adrianople, A.D. 378. Notwithstanding the honours paid to the cock, he was sometimes considered of old as an emblem of parricide, because he does not scruple to attack and beat his own father; and when a parricide was punished by drowning (as the law was), a cock was enclosed with him in the sack. It was from this association with parricide that the custom of "cock-throwing" at Shrovetide took rise, to mark abhorrence of the crime; for anciently morals and manners were taught by types and illustrations. The cock was long attributed as a national symbol to France, from a pun, Gallus, a Gaul, Gallus gallinaceus, a cock; and certainly from its strutting, conceited, yet lively and martial character, it was an appropriate emblem of a Frenchman. Over the principal entrance at Blen *Born about 514 before Christ. heim, the architect, Sir John Vanburgh, has allegorized Marlborough's victories over the French by sculpturing the British lion tearing to pieces a cock. This device has been greatly censured for its bad taste. From the great disproportion between the animal and the bird, the former seems, instead of achieving an honourable victory, to be exercising an unnecessary cruelty on a victim too much his inferior in size and strength to be considered an antagonist. Some one of the wits of Queen Anne's time (we forget which) wrote an epigram on the occasion: દ EPIGRAM. "Had Marlborough's troops in Gaul no better fought, But our old enemies and new allies may now say with Moliére, « Nous avons changé tout cela" (Malade imaginaire). The cock is superseded in France by eagles and bees, and such like "Idées Napoleoniennes." In the Scandinavian mythology the cock, at the last day, or twilight of the gods, awakens Odin's horses, and by his cries proclaims the approach of the evil genii. The Rev. Dr. Macknight says-" In remembrance of the crowing of the cock, which brought St. Peter to a sense of the great evil he was guilty of in denying his Master, the practice (it is said) began of placing weather-cocks upon towers and steeples"-no doubt as a visible admonition. Fish, arrows, &c., used as vanes, are modern innovations. Though the ancients considered the crowing of a cock an auspicious omen, they held the crowing of a HEN to be a most unlucky portent. There is an Irish proverb, that a crowing hen, and a woman who whistles, should not be allowed about a house." The Sidonian goddess Astarte was represented under the figure of a hen covering her chickens, in allusion to the protection of Divine Providence. To Tecla, the ancient British goddess of Wealth and Medicine, a hen was sacrificed by female convalescents, and a cock by male. Subsequently, in Christian times, a hen was offered to St. Vitus on his festival day, June the 15th. Among the birds from which the Roman augurs drew their omens, the sacred CHICKENS were the most esteemed. They were procured from the Isle of Eubosa (now Negropont), and were kept in coops, under the care of a person called the "Pullularius." When they were to be oracularly consulted, food was thrown to them, and auguries were deduced from their manner of receiving it. If they ate it, the omen was favourable, and especially so if they flew upon it greedily, and dropped bits from their bills in their eagerness. But if they refused it, and scattered it about, or trod it under foot, the portent was so evil, that any enterprise which was projected must be at once abandoned. The signal defeat of Flaminius by Hannibal, was attributed by the Romans to their General having persisted in fighting with the |