2Q0 FALCO ^SALON. 



of the Merlin, if nest that can be called, which is mere- 

 ly a little flat space strewn with a few sticks and wither- 

 ed sedges. You hear the hungry plaint of the young, 

 as the morning dawn rouses them from their slumbers. 

 See! the mother advances a few steps, stretches her 

 wings, shakes herself, inspects her plumage, trims a 

 bent feather in her tail, picks a little clot of peat from 

 her toe, eyes the heavens slantingly, and throwing her- 

 self forward, spreads out her beautiful pinions, and 

 launching into the air, ascends a few yards by strong 

 flappings. How lightly she wheels in her circling 

 flight, as she seems now to glance toward her young a 

 look of parental aff^ection, and again surveys the distant 

 plains ! Now, her few short wheelings ended, off she 

 shoots, flying in a direct line towards the Giff"ord woods, 

 where, no doubt, she expects to find a missel thrush by 

 the edge of the orchard, a young partridge beneath the 

 hedge, a lark carolling over the field, or, at all events, 

 some object worthy of her pursuit. As you watch her 

 motions, the male, having shaken off^ his drowsiness, 

 trimmed his plumes, and scratched his cheek — he could 

 do no more, for he has none of those combs on his claws 

 with which the philosophers tell us some birds are fur- 

 nished for the purpose of combing their whiskers — 

 springs into the air, and almost touching the tops of 

 the broom and heather, the inhabitants of which might 

 conceive him to be a harpy, speeds directly over the 

 shoulder of the hill, to search the upland moors. They 

 are gone ; and what remains ? Look around you. 



In the crimsoned east stretches out the smooth ex- 

 panse of the German ocean, bounded to the northward 

 by the coast of Fife, toward the south by the shores of 



