THE GOLDFINCH. 238 



Iii Art, the goldfinch is a great favourite. We all know it in the 

 Madonna del Cardelino. It occurs iu the publication of the Arundel 

 Society, as fed by St. Francis, with a troop of other birds. It is 

 excellently painted, with the sparrow-hawk, on a Horae of the School 

 of Van Eyck, circa 1410, in the Bodleian. It is magnificently depicted 

 in Gould's birds ; it is represented less gaudily, but with greater like- 

 ness in Messrs. Sharpe and Dresser's " Birds of Europe." The Eastern 

 form, carriceps, to the best of my recollection, is included in Gould's 

 first great work, " The Century of Himalayan Birds." 



As to its position in Literature, the goldfinch is probably meant by 

 Chaucer as the " finch ; " as also by Shakspere in Bottom's ditty — 

 " The finch, the sparrow, and the lark, 

 The plain-song cuckoo gray." 



Midsummer Night's Dream, III.. , 

 Again, the expression — 



" Finch egg," 



is used by Thersites to Patroclus as a slight thing, easily crushed, in 



Troilus and Cressida, Act V., Scene 1, 4. 



The goldfinch heads the list of birds, summoned — 



" Some to sing and some to say. 

 Some to weep, and some to praye', 

 For Philip Sparowes soule." 



In Dryden's " Flower and the Leaf " ; in Gay's " Wednesday or the 

 Dumps " ; in the writings of Cowper, Hurdis, Burns, in Dickens, 

 among prose authors, we have ample references to the goldfinch, 

 though such might be almost indefinitely multiplied. But to my 

 mind, no lines recall the wild woodlands, on the edge of which gold- 

 finches love to flutter round the prickly teazles, half so clearly as those 

 simple words of Keats, in his poem to Leigh Hunt — 



" Sometimes goldfinches one by one will drop 

 From low hung branches, little space they stop ; 

 But sip and twitter, and their feathers sleek ; 

 Then off at once, as in a wanton freak ; 

 Or perhaps, to show their black and golden winy~. 

 Pausing upon their yellow flutterings." 



FEESH-WATER AQUARIA. 



BY E. II. LLOYD. 



As much pleasure and endless subjects for profitable study are 

 derivable from a well-managed fresh-water aquarium, I offer a few 

 hints on the subject, based on a somewhat successful experience of 

 several years, and trust they may be of assistance to some of my fellow- 

 naturalists. 



The mam point to be kept in mind, and on attention to which 

 success chiefly depends, is the imitation of nature — that is, the subjects 

 placed in an aquarium must, as far as possible, be surrounded by con- 

 ditions which form a near approach to those in which they naturally 

 grow and thrive. 



