upon the Rump of Birds. 325 



notion of the nature of my goods ; for I find that I have 

 already furnished them with more than fifty parcels of natural 

 history. I am aware, however, that there are ingredients in 

 some of the parcels, of a nature not to suit persons of certain 

 constitutions ; and methinks that these persons would have 

 done well not to have applied to me. * I remember, when 

 I was once feeding my bees, on a cold autumnal morning, that 

 the ass Wouralia (mentioned in the Wanderings, and still alive) 

 came up, and looked wistfully at the honey-pot. " Friend," said 

 I, " I dare not give thee any ; for Don Quixote is absolute in 

 this case. ' La miel,' says he, * no es para la boca del asuo.' 

 Honey is not for Dapple." 



His reverence exclaims, " What, sir ! are we to infer from 

 your barn-door fowl's having no tail, that therefore it has no 

 oil gland ? " Yes, your reverence ; positively, you are. There 

 is not a particle, not an atom, of oil gland in any bird that is 

 not furnished by nature with a tail. Please to accept this 

 morsel of information from the Wanderer, who, according to 

 your own statement, will never possess the experimental know- 

 ledge of English birds which you have acquired. (See in 

 p. 271.) 



" What," continues his reverence, " in the name of all the 

 barn-door fowls that ever lived, have the feathers of a bird's 

 tail to do with its anatomy ? " Every thing, an 't please your 

 reverence. The oil gland certainly forms part of the anatomy 

 of a bird; and this oil gland is so intimately connected with 

 the feathers of the tail, that, where this oil gland is wanting, 

 the feathers of the tail are also wanting. See the cassowary, 

 emeu, little tinnamou, and many others. By these two im- 

 portant questions, which you have put to me in the Magazine 

 for May [p. 271.]? I am enabled to form an accurate opinion 

 of the intensity of your ornithological studies whilst I was 

 absent in Guiana. 



Your reverence promises that I shall hear from you again, 

 on the method of stuffing birds. This is just what I want. 

 1 take you at your word, and am quite ready to come up to 

 the scratch, tomahawk in hand, as Fraser wittily calls my 

 dissecting knife. If, during our competition, I do not manage 

 to turn your reverence inside out, may I be doomed never 

 more to ascend a tree in quest of carrion crows ! 



As your reverence seems to imagine that my wandering in 

 South America deprived me of the opportunity of acquiring 

 an experimental knowledge of our British birds, I beg to ob- 

 serve, that, when I was at the Jesuits' College of Stonyhurst 



* See foot note in Vol. VIII. p. 375. 



