BT THE PRESIDENT. 47 



especially popular books on natural history, without being struck 

 •with the number contained in them. This arises from the fact 

 that writers have to a great extent been content to copy from one 

 another, instead of consulting the Book of Nature for themselves, 

 and making their own observations, which, if made with the view 

 of arriving at truth, not of supporting a foregone conclusion, must 

 always be valuable. Indeed, the most pleasing as well as the most 

 instructive books are those which, without aiming at any great 

 scientific result, record in simple language the daily occurrences 

 brought under the authors' notice. Such authors — I do not refer 

 to living authors — are "Waterton, St. John, White of Selborne, 

 Buckland, Knox. The nonsense promulgated by many writers 

 occasions infinite mischief, especially amongst the young, who are 

 apt to give implicit credence to anything and everything they see 

 in print. Only yesterday I happened on an anecdote I remember 

 in more than one book, years since ; it is of a venerable rat, blind 

 through age, which, on the occasion of a migration of its tribe, 

 was led by two other rats by means of a stick held in its mouth. 

 I venture to say that if a blind rat was unfortunate enough to fall 

 in with any number, even of his nearest relations, they would in- 

 continently kill and eat him, body and bones. In Bishop Stanley's 

 * Book of Birds ' I read a story of a finch, which, having made 

 her nest at the end of a bough, and finding when the young 

 were hatched that their weight bowed it down, to the manifest 

 danger of toppling them out, got a bit of string and tied the branch 

 to the one above it. In the first place, there never was a finch, 

 since the world began, that built its nest at the end of a bough, 

 and if one were eccentric enough to do so, it would hardly have 

 the wit to repair the error in so scientific a manner. Tarrell is a 

 most painstaking author, and, as a book of reference, his work 

 enjoys a deservedly high reputation, but he had little opportunity 

 of observing for himself the haunts and habits of birds, and in 

 consequence fell into many errors. Take, for instance, his de- 

 scription of the feeding of its young by the pigeon — a bird, by the 

 way, most improperly classed among the llasores, the scratchers 

 — it might as well have been classed with the crows. After 

 stating that the old birds first swallow and partially digest the 

 food intended for their nestlings, he says: "Inserting their bills 

 betwixt the soft mandibles of their young, they feed them with the 

 half-digested mass." Amongst other peculiarities of the pigeon, a 

 very striking one is that, contrary to the established custom of 

 birds, the young pigeon thrusts its soft mandibles into the mouth — 

 ay ! and half down the throat — of the parent bird — it sucks its 



