146 WHAT ARE THE? FOR? 



rubbish, from which she collects moss, roots, and dead leaves, and has a 

 pretty snug nest, with five or six largish-sized eggs of a rust-colour. The 

 Starling will take any hole that comes to hand, and, with Jackdaws, lays 

 its blue eggs in old castle-tunnels, church-steeples, and such places. Hawks 

 usually build in trees, but some of the Buzzards on the ground, and almost 

 all the Eagles in rocky cliffs, which are, indeed, a kind of ornithological 

 nursery for Pigeons, Choughs, and the majority of the Cormorants, Gannets, 

 and Gulls; besides, Jackdaws, Grey Crows, and even Swallows infest them. 

 In the breeding-season birds purely marine, and which make no great figure 

 in flying, choose the most convenient situations which they can come at, 

 and their powers of locomotion on the water supply them with the means 

 of rendering these sufficiently inaccessible. All sea-birds generally have their 

 nests in a sort of societies or colonies, and swarm in such numbers as to 

 exceed conception; thus the Gannets are so numerous on the Scotch coast, 

 that a small island called Bass Rock is rented at a considerable sum annually, 

 merely for the eggs and young of these birds, which assemble there in the 

 spring and summer in countless myriads. To attempt any particular descrip- 

 tion of the eggs and mode of nesting of these tribes, would carry me to 

 an extent sufficient to weary both my own patience and much more that 

 of my readers; suffice it to say they use very little art or material in 

 their construction, marine grasses being the chief materials, lined with 

 feathers from their own breasts; for all water-birds are provided with a 

 large clothing of down, probably partly for this very purpose. Their eggs 

 are extremely various, white, speckled with various hues, grey or green. 



The Duck tribe use the materials above-mentioned almost without 

 exception, and place their nests in the midst of the thick aights or reedy 

 islands which abound in large tracts of fen, or on the edges of extensive 

 waters. The eggs of all these are white, partaking of a blue or greenish 

 tint. 



C To be continued.') 



WHAT ARE THEY FOR? 



BY G. R. TWINX, ESQ. 



The marvels revealed by the study of Natural History, cannot fail 

 to excite in the thoughtful, sensations of admiration and praise to the 

 Great wonder-working God. The many contrivances He has bestowed on 

 the very lowest orders of life, for their general harmony, are as equally 

 worthy of our grateful regard, as the complex machinery of that being 

 who is "fearfully and wonderfully made." To a superficial observer of 

 Nature's great museum, some of the most interesting objects are unknown 

 and perfectly foreign; and whenever he may hear of them by means of 



